And indeed it seemed to Arthur quite impossible at that moment to give any reason for his going at such foolishly short notice. Downstairs, or talking to Eleanor, the situation appeared so entirely different. Then, this quiet old man, with his deliberate movements, took the shape of a tyrant, cruel, and malignant. Here, in this room, he was a stately old gentleman, naturally affronted by what was almost an insult.
Arthur blushed vividly. "You see, sir," he blurted out, with the gaucheness of a peccant schoolboy, "I feel rather—as if—if I were wasting my time here—in a way. I don't really want to be ungrateful, you know, although I suppose it must seem like it, but—I'd be awfully glad if you could see your way to letting me off."
"And your promise?" Mr Kenyon asked, still in the same cool, formal voice. "Does that count for nothing with you?"
"I'm sorry, sir. I feel that I can't stay," Arthur looked down again as he spoke. He found it difficult to meet the stare of those fierce hunting eyes.
"You realise, of course," Mr Kenyon continued, "that this will put an end to your engagement? I could not spare Eleanor."
"She—she wants to go too, sir," Arthur said.
"But she can't," Mr Kenyon replied, in the tone of a man who pronounces an unimpeachable judgment. "If you go, Arthur, you will go alone." Then, with a change of voice, he went on, "But you will alter your mind about this, I am sure. When you come to think it over, you will realise, I hope, how dishonourable it would be for you to leave me, after the bargain we made and the promise you gave me. In any case, take a week to think it all over. Take a month if you like."
Arthur sat in silence for what seemed to him a considerable time after the old man had finished speaking. He was thinking of the rest of the Kenyons downstairs. He had blamed them many times for their weakness, but he understood now how nearly impossible it must have been for them to have done anything but wait, postponing any decision from month to month. He himself, with all their experience behind him, was faltering; though surely he could not be mistaken now in assuming that all this effect of persuasion was nothing more than a method. When he was bound—fairly caught in the meshes of the net—he would become as all the others had become, an object of indifference, subject now and again to subtle forms of intimidation, but never to any form of affection. In ten years, he would become like them, and Eleanor....
"No," he said, with sudden determination, jumping to his feet and almost forgetting the person of the old man in front of him. "No! I'm going to-day, and Eleanor goes with me. You have no power to keep her, no sort of authority over her. We have made up our minds."