Hugh Walpole. From a photograph by Messrs. Elliott & Fry

THE

WOODEN HORSE

BY

HUGH WALPOLE

WITH A PORTRAIT

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1919

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON — BOMBAY — CALCUTTA — MADRAS
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK — BOSTON — CHICAGO
DALLAS — SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO

COPYRIGHT
First Published April 1909
Second Impression October 1909
Wayfarers' Library 1914
New Edition 1919

TO
W. FERRIS
AFFECTIONATELY

"Er liebte jeden Hund, und wünschte von jedem Hund geliebt
zu sein."—FLEGELJAHRE (JEAN PAUL).

CHAPTER I

Robin Trojan was waiting for his father.

Through the open window of the drawing-room came, faintly, the cries of the town—the sound of some distant bell, the shout of fishermen on the quay, the muffled beat of the mining-stamps from Porth-Vennic, a village that lay two miles inland. There yet lingered in the air the faint afterglow of the sunset, and a few stars, twinkling faintly in the deep blue of the night sky, seemed reflections of the orange lights of the herring-boats, flashing far out to sea.

The great drawing-room, lighted by a cluster of electric lamps hanging from the ceiling, seemed to flaunt the dim twinkle of the stars contemptuously; the dark blue of the walls and thick Persian carpets sounded a quieter note, but the general effect was of something distantly, coldly superior, something indeed that was scarcely comfortable, but that was, nevertheless, fulfilling the exact purpose for which it had been intended.

And that purpose was, most certainly, not comfort. Robin himself would have smiled contemptuously if you had pleaded for something homely, something suggestive of roaring fires and cosy armchairs, instead of the stiff-backed, beautifully carved Louis XIV. furniture that stood, each chair and table rigidly in its appointed place, as though bidding defiance to any one bold enough to attempt alterations.

The golden light in the sky shone faintly in at the open window, as though longing to enter, but the dazzling brilliance of the room seemed to fling it back into the blue dome of sea and sky outside.

Robin was standing by a large looking-glass in the corner of the room trying to improve the shape of his tie; and it was characteristic of him that, although he had not seen his father for eighteen years, he was thinking a great deal more about his tie than about the approaching meeting.

He was, at this time, twenty years of age. Tall and dark, he had all the Trojan characteristics; small, delicately shaped ears; a mouth that gave signs of all the Trojan obstinacy, called by the Trojans themselves family pride; a high, well-shaped forehead with hair closely cut and of a dark brown. He was considered by most people handsome—but to some his eyes, of the real Trojan blue, were too cold and impassive. He gave you the impression of some one who watched, rather disdainfully, the ill-considered and impulsive actions of his fellow-men.

He was, however, exactly suited to his surroundings. He maintained the same position as the room with regard to the world in general—"We are Trojans; we are very old and very expensive and very, very good, and it behoves you to recognise this fact and give way with fitting deference."

He had not seen his father for eighteen years, and, as he had been separated from him at the unimpressionable age of two, he may be said never to have seen him at all. He had no recollection of him, and the picture that he had painted was constructed out of monthly rather uninteresting letters concerned, for the most part, with the care and maintenance of New Zealand sheep, and such meagre details as his Aunt Clare and Uncle Garrett had bestowed on him from time to time. From the latter he gathered that his father had been, in his youth, in some vague way, unsatisfactory, and had departed to Australia to seek his fortune, with a clear understanding from his father that he was not to return thence until he had found it.

Robin himself had been born in New Zealand, but his mother dying when he was two years old, he had been sent home to be brought up, in the proper Trojan manner, by his aunt and uncle.

On these things Robin reflected as he tried to twist his tie into a fitting Trojan shape; but it refused to behave as a well-educated tie should, and the obvious thing was to get another. Robin looked at his watch. It was really extremely provoking; the carriage had been timed to arrive at half-past six exactly; it was now a quarter to seven and no one had appeared. There was probably not time to search for another tie. His father would be certain to arrive at the very moment when one tie was on and the other not yet on, which meant that Robin would be late; and if there was one thing that a Trojan hated more than another it was being late. With many people unpunctuality was a fault, with a Trojan it was a crime; it was what was known as an "odds and ends"—one of those things, like untidiness, eating your fish with a steel knife and wearing a white tie with a short dinner-jacket, that marked a man, once and for all, as some one outside the pale, an impossible person.

Therefore Robin allowed his tie to remain and walked to the open window.

"At any rate," he said to himself, still thinking of his tie, "father won't probably notice it." He wondered how much his father would notice. "As he's a Trojan," he thought, "he'll know the sort of things that a fellow ought to do, even though he has been out in New Zealand all his life."

It would, Robin reflected, be a very pretty little scene. He liked scenes, and, if this one were properly manoeuvred, he ought to be its very interesting and satisfactory centre. That was why it was really a pity about the tie.

The door from the library swung slowly open, and Sir Jeremy Trojan, Robin's grandfather, was wheeled into the room.

He was very old indeed, and the only part of his face that seemed alive were his eyes; they were continually darting from one end of the room to the other, they were never still; but, for the rest, he scarcely moved. His skin was dried and brown like a mummy's, and even when he spoke, his lips hardly stirred. He was in evening dress, his legs wrapped tightly in rugs; his chair was wheeled by a servant who was evidently perfectly trained in all the Trojan ways of propriety and decorum.

"Well, grandfather," said Robin, turning back from the window with the look of annoyance still on his face, "how are you to-night?" Robin always shouted at his grandfather although he knew perfectly well that he was not deaf, but could, on the other hand, hear wonderfully well for his age. Nothing annoyed his grandfather so much as being shouted at, and of this Robin was continually reminded.

"Tut, tut, boy," said Sir Jeremy testily, "one would think that I was deaf. Better? Yes, of course. Close the windows!"

"I'll ring for Marchant," said Robin, moving to the bell, "he ought to have done it before." Sir Jeremy said nothing—it was impossible to guess at his thoughts from his face; only his eyes moved uneasily round the room.

He was wheeled to his accustomed corner by the big open stone fireplace, and he lay there, motionless in his chair, without further remark.

Marchant came in a moment later.

"The windows, Marchant," said Robin, still twisting uneasily at his tie, "I think you had forgotten."

"I am sorry, sir," Marchant answered, "but Mr. Garrett had spoken this morning of the room being rather close. I had thought that perhaps——"

He moved silently across the room and shut the window, barring out the fluttering yellow light, the sparkling silver of the stars, the orange of the fishing-boats, the murmured distance of the town.

A few moments later Clare Trojan came in. Although she had never been beautiful she had always been interesting, and indeed she was (even when in the company of women far more beautiful than herself) always one of the first to whom men looked. This may have been partly accounted for by her very obvious pride, the quality that struck the most casual observer at once, but there was also an air of indifference, a look in the eyes that seemed to pique men's curiosity and stir their interest. It was not for lack of opportunity that she was still unmarried, but she had never discovered the man who had virtue and merit sufficient to cover the obvious disadvantages of his not having been born a Trojan. Middle age suited the air of almost regal dignity with which she moved, and people who had known her for many years said that she had never looked so well as now. To-night, in a closely-fitting dress of black silk relieved by a string of pearls round her neck, and a superb white rose at her breast, she was almost handsome. Robin watched her with satisfaction as she moved towards him.

"Ah, it's cold," she said. "I know Marchant left those windows open till the last moment. Robin, your tie is shocking. It looks as if it were made-up."

"I know," said Robin, still struggling with it; "but there isn't time to get another. Father will be here at any moment. It's late as it is. Yes, I told Marchant to shut the windows, he said something about Uncle Garrett's saying it was stuffy or something."

"Harry's late." Clare moved across to her father and bent down and kissed him.

"How are you to-night, father?" but she was arranging the rose at her breast and was obviously thinking more of its position than of the answer to her question.

"Hungry—damned hungry," said Sir Jeremy.

"Oh, we'll have to wait," said Clare. "Harry's got to dress. Anyhow you've got no right to be hungry at a quarter to seven. Nobody's ever hungry till half-past seven at the earliest."

It was evident that she was ill at ease. Perhaps it was the prospect of meeting her brother after a separation of eighteen years; perhaps it was anxiety as to how this reclaimed son of the house of Trojan would behave in the face of the world. It was so very important that the house should not be in any way let down, that the dignity with which it had invariably conducted its affairs for the last twenty years should be, in no way, impaired. Harry had been anything but dignified in his early days, and sheep-farming in New Zealand—well, of course, one knew what kind of life that was.

But, as she looked across at Robin, it was easy to see that her anxiety was, in some way, connected with him. How was this invasion to affect her nephew? For eighteen years she had been the only father and mother that he had known, for eighteen years she had educated him in all the Trojan laws and traditions, the things that a Trojan must speak and do and think, and he had faithfully responded to her instruction. He was in every way everything that a Trojan should be; but there had been moments, rare indeed and swiftly passing, when Clare had fancied that there were other impulses, other ideas at work. She was afraid of those impulses, and she was afraid of what Henry Trojan might do with regard to them.

It was, indeed, hard, after reigning absolutely for eighteen years, to yield her place to another, but perhaps, after all, Robin would be true to his early training and she would not be altogether supplanted.

"Randal comes to-morrow," said Robin suddenly, after a few minutes' silence. "Unfortunately he can only stop for a few days. His paper on 'Pater' has been taken by the National. He's very much pleased, of course."

Robin spoke coldly and without any enthusiasm. It was not considered quite good form to be enthusiastic; it was apt to lead you into rather uncertain company with such people as Socialists and the Salvation Army.

"I'm glad he's coming—quite a nice fellow," said Clare, looking at the gold clock on the mantelpiece. "The train is shockingly late. On 'Pater' you said! I must try and get the National—Miss Ponsonby takes it, I think. It's unusual for Garrett to be unpunctual."

He entered at the same moment—a tall, thin man of forty years of age, clean shaven and rather bald, with a very slight squint in the right eye. He walked slowly, and always gave the impression that he saw nothing of his surroundings. For the rest, he was said to be extremely cynical and had more than a fair share of the Trojan pride.

"The train is late," he said, addressing no one in particular. "Father, how are you this evening?"

This third attack on Sir Jeremy was repelled by a snort, which Garrett accepted as an answer. "Robin, your tie is atrocious," he continued, picking up the Times and opening it slowly; "you had better change it."

Robin was prevented from answering by the sound of carriage-wheels on the drive. Clare rose and stood by the fireplace near Sir Jeremy; Garrett read to the end of the paragraph and folded the paper on his knee; Robin fingered his watch-chain nervously and moved to his aunt's side—only Sir Jeremy remained motionless and gave no sign that he had heard.

Perhaps he was thinking of that day twenty years before when, after a very heated interview, he had forbidden his son to see his face again until he had done something that definitely justified his existence. Harry had certainly done several things since then that justified his existence; he had, for one thing, made a fortune, and that was not so easily done nowadays. Harry was five-and-forty now; he must be very much changed; he had steadied down, of course ... he would be well able to take his place as head of the family when Sir Jeremy himself....

But he gave no sign. You could not tell that he had heard the carriage-wheels at all; he lay motionless in his chair with his eyes half closed.

There were voices in the hall. Beldam's superlatively courteous tones as of one who is ready to die to serve you, and then another voice—rather loud and sharp, but pleasant, with the sound of a laugh in it.

"They are in the blue drawing-room, sir—Mr. Henry," Beldam's voice was heard on the stairs, and, in a moment, Beldam himself appeared—"Mr. Henry, Sir Jeremy." Then he stood aside, and Henry Trojan entered the room.

Clare made a step forward.

"Harry—old boy—at last———"

Both her hands were outstretched, but he disregarded them, and, stepping forward, crushed her in his arms, crushed her dress, crushed the beautiful rose at her breast, and, bending down, kissed her again and again.

"Clare—after twenty years!"

He let her go and she stepped back, still smiling, but she touched the rose for a moment and her hair. He was very strong.

And then there was a little pause. Harry Trojan turned and faced his father. The old man made no movement and gave no sign, but he said, his lips stirring very slightly, "I am glad to see you here again, Harry."

The man flushed, and with a little stammer answered, "I am gladder to be back than you can know, father."

Sir Jeremy's wrinkled hand appeared from behind the rugs, and the two men shook in silence.

Then Garrett came forward. "You're not much changed, Harry," he said with a laugh, "in spite of the twenty years."

"Why, Garrie!" His brother stepped towards him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "It's splendid to see you again. I'd almost forgotten what you were like—I only had that old photo, you know—of us both at Rugby."

Robin had stood aside, in a corner by the fireplace, watching his father. It was very much as he had expected, only he couldn't, try as he might, think of him as his father at all. The man there who had kissed Aunt Clare and shaken hands with Sir Jeremy was, in some unexplained way, a little odd and out of place. He was big and strong; his hair curled a little and was dark brown, like Robin's, and his eyes were blue, but, in other respects, there was very little of the Trojan about him. His mouth was large, and he had a brown, slightly curling moustache. Indeed the general impression was brown in spite of the blue, badly fitting suit. He was deeply tanned by the sun and was slightly freckled.

He would have looked splendid in New Zealand or Klondyke, or, indeed, anywhere where you worked with your coat off and your shirt open at the neck; but here, in that drawing-room, it was a pity, Robin thought, that his father had not stopped for two or three days in town and gone to a West End tailor.

But, after all, it was a very nice little scene. It really had been quite moving to see him kiss Clare like that, but, at the same time, for his part, kissing...!

"And Robin?" said Harry.

"Here's the son and heir," said Garrett, laughing, and pushing Robin forward.

Now that the moment had really come, Robin was most unpleasantly embarrassed. How foolish of Uncle Garrett to try and be funny at a time like that, and what a pity it was that his tie was sticking out at one end so much farther than at the other. He felt his hand seized and crushed in the grip of a giant; he murmured something about his being pleased, and then, suddenly, his father bent down and kissed him on the forehead.

They were both blushing, Robin furiously. How he hated sentiment! He felt sure that Uncle Garrett was laughing at him.

"By Jove, you're splendid!" said Harry, holding him back with both his hands on his shoulders. "Pretty different from the nipper that I sent over to England eighteen years ago. Oh, you'll do, Robin."

"And now, Harry," said Clare, laughing, "you'll go and dress, won't you? Father's terribly hungry and the train was late."

"Right," said Harry; "I won't be long. It's good to be back again."

When the door had closed behind him, there was silence. He gave the impression of some one filled with overwhelming, rapturous joy. There was a light in his eyes that told of dreams at length fulfilled, and hopes, long and wearily postponed, at last realised. He had filled that stiff, solemn room with a spirit of life and strength and sheer animal good health—it was even, as Clare afterwards privately confessed, a little exhausting.

Now she stood by the fireplace, smiling a little. "My poor rose," she said, looking at some of the petals that had fallen to the ground. "Harry is strong!"

"He is looking well," said Garrett. It sounded almost sarcastic.

Robin went up to his room to change his tie—he had said nothing about his father.

As Harry Trojan passed down the well-remembered passages where the pictures hung in the same odd familiar places, past staircases vanishing into dark abysses that had frightened him as a child, windows deep-set in the thick stone walls, corners round which he had crept in the dark on his way to his room, it seemed to him that those long, dreary years of patient waiting in New Zealand were as nothing, and that it was only yesterday that he had passed down that same way, his heart full of rage against his father, his one longing to get out and away to other countries where he should be his own master and win his own freedom. And now that he was back again, now that he had seen what that freedom meant, now that he had tasted that same will-o'-the-wisp liberty, how thankful he was to rest here quietly, peacefully, for the remainder of his days; at last he knew what were the things that were alone, in this world, worth striving for—not money, ambition, success, but love for one's own little bit of country that one called home, the patient resting in the heritage of all those accumulating traditions that ancestors had been making, slowly, gradually, for centuries of years.

He had hoped that he would have the same old rooms at the top of the West Towers that he had had when a boy; he remembered the view of the sea from their windows—the great sweep of the Cornish coast far out to Land's End itself, and the gulls whirring with hoarse cries over his head as he leant out to view the little cove nestling at the foot of the Hall. That view, then, had meant to him distant wonderful lands in which he was to make his name and his fortune: now it spoke of home and peace, and, beyond all, of Cornwall.

They had put him in one of the big spare rooms that faced inland. As he entered the sense of its luxury filled him with a delicious feeling of comfort: the log-fire burning in the open brown-tiled fireplace, the softness of the carpets, the electric light, shaded to a soft glow—ah! these were the things for which he had waited, and they had, indeed, been worth waiting for.

His man was laying his dress-clothes on his bed.

"What is your name?" he said, feeling almost a little shy; it was so long since he had had things done for him.

"James Treduggan, sir," the man answered, smiling. "You won't remember me, sir, I expect. I was quite a youngster when you went away. But I've been in service here ever since I was ten."

When Harry was left alone, he stood by the fire, thinking. He had been preparing for this moment for so long that now that it was actually here he was frightened, nervous. He had so often imagined that first arrival in England, the first glimpse of London; then the first meeting and the first evening at home. Of course, all his thoughts had centred on Robin—everything else had been secondary, but he had, in some unaccountable way, never been able to realise exactly what Robin would be. He had had photographs, but they had been unsatisfactory and had told him nothing; and now that he had seen him, he was at rest; he was all that he had hoped—straight, strong, manly, with that clear steady look in the eyes that meant so much; yes, there was no doubt about his son. He remembered Robin's mother with affectionate tenderness; she had been the daughter of a doctor in Auckland—he had fallen in love with her at once and married her, although his prospects had been so bad. They had been very happy, and then, when Robin was two years old, she had died; the boy had been sent home, and he had been alone again—for eighteen years he had been alone. There had been other women, of course; he did not pretend to have been a saint, and women had liked him and been rather sorry for him in those early years; but they had none of them been very much to him, only episodes—the central fact of his existence had always been his son. He had had a friend there, a Colonel Durand, who had three sons of his own, and had given him much advice as to his treatment of Robin. He had talked a great deal about the young generation, about its impatience of older theories and manners, its dislike of authority and restraint; and Harry, remembering his own early hatred of restriction and longing for freedom, was determined that he would be no fetter on his son's liberty, that he would be to him a friend, a companion rather than a father. After all, he felt no more than twenty-five—there was really no space of years between them—he was as young to-day as he had been twenty years ago.

As to the others, he had never cared very much for Clare and Garrett in the old days; they had been stiff, cold, lacking all sense of family affection. But that had been twenty years ago. There had been a time, in New Zealand, when he had hated Garrett. When he had been away from home for some ten years, the longing to see his boy had grown too strong to be resisted, and he had written to his father asking for permission to return. He had received a cold answer from Garrett, saying that Sir Jeremy thought that, as he was so successful there, it would be perhaps better if he remained there a little while longer; that he would find little to do at home and would only weary of the monotony—four closely written pages to the same effect. So Harry had remained.

But that was ten years ago. At last, a letter had come, saying that Sir Jeremy was now very old and feeble, that he desired to see his son before he died, and that all the past was forgotten and forgiven. And now there was but one thought in his heart—love for all the world, one overwhelming desire to take his place amongst them decently, worthily, so that they might see that the wastrel of twenty years ago had developed into a man, able to take his place, in due time, at the head of the Trojan family. Oh! how he would try to please them all! how he would watch and study and work so that that long twenty years' exile might be forgotten both by himself and by them.

He bathed and dressed slowly by the fire. As he saw his clothes on the bed he fancied, for a moment, that they might be a little worn, a little old. They had seemed very good and smart in Auckland, but in England it was rather different. He almost wished that he had stayed in London for two days and been properly fitted by a tailor. But then he had been so eager to arrive, he had not thought of clothes; his one idea had been to rush down as soon as possible and see them all, and the place, and the town.

Then he remembered that Clare had asked him to be quick. He finished his dressing hurriedly, turned out the electric light, and left the room.

He was pleased to find that he had not forgotten the turns and twists of the house. He threaded the dark passages easily, humming a little tune, and smelling that same sweet scent of dried rose leaves that he had known so well when he was a small boy. He could see, in imagination, the great white-and-pink china pot-pourri bowls standing at the corner of the stairs—nothing was changed.

The blue drawing-room was deserted when he entered it—only the blaze of the electric light, the golden flame of the log-fire in the great open fireplace, and the solemn ticking of the gold clock that had stood there, in the same place of honour, for the last hundred years. He passed over to the windows and flung them open; the hum of the town came, with the cold night air, into the room. The stars were brilliant to-night and the golden haze of the lamplight hung over the streets like a magic curtain. Ah! how good it was! The peace of it, the comfort, the homeliness!

Above all, it was Cornwall—the lights of the herring fleet, the distant rhythmical beat of the mining-stamps, that peculiar scent as of precious spices coming with the wind of the sea, as though borne from distant magical lands, all told him that he was, at last, again in Cornwall.

He drank in the night air, bending his eyes on the town as though he were saluting it again, tenderly, joyously, with the greeting of an old familiar friend.

Robin closed the door behind him and shivered a little. The windows were open—how annoying when Aunt Clare had especially asked that they should be closed. Oh! it was his father! Of course, he did not know!

He had not been noticed, so he coughed. Harry turned round.

"Hullo, Robin, my boy!" He passed his arm through his son's and drew him to the window. "Isn't it splendid?" he said. "Oh! I don't suppose you see it now, after having been here all this time; you want to go away for twenty years, then you'd know how much it's worth. Oh! it's splendid—what times we'll have here, you and I!"

"Yes," said Robin, a little coldly. It was very chilly with the window open, and there was something in all that enthusiasm that was almost a little vulgar. Of course, it was natural, after being away so long ... but still.... Also his father's clothes were really very old—the back of the coat was quite shiny.

Sir Jeremy entered in his chair, followed by Clare and Garrett.

Clare gave a little scream.

"Oh! How cold!" she cried. "Now whoever——!"

"I'm afraid I was guilty," said Harry, laughing. "The town looked so splendid and I hadn't seen it for so long. I——"

"Of course, I forgot," said Clare. "I don't suppose you notice open windows in New Zealand, because you're always outside in the Bush or something. But here we're as shivery as you make them. Dinner's getting shivery too. The sooner we go down the better."

She passed back through the door and down the hall. There was no doubt that she was a magnificent woman.

As Sir Jeremy was wheeled through the doors he gripped Harry's hand. "I'm damned glad that you're back," he whispered.

Robin, who was the last to leave the room, closed the windows and turned out the lights. The room was in darkness save for the golden light of the leaping fire.

CHAPTER II

It had been called the "House of the Flutes" since the beginning of time. People had said that the name was absurd, and Harry's grandfather, a prosaic gentleman of rather violent radical opinions, had made a definite attempt at a change—but he had failed. Trojans had appeared from every part of the country, angry Trojans, tearful Trojans, indignant Trojans, important Trojans, poor-relation Trojans, and had, one and all, demanded that the name should remain, and that the headquarters of the Trojan tradition, of the Trojan power, should continue to be the "House of the Flutes."

Of course, it had its origin in tradition. In the early days when might was right, and the stronger seized the worldly goods of the weaker and nobody said him nay, there had been a Sir Jeremy Trojan whose wife had been the talk of the country-side both because of her beauty and also because of her easy morals. Sir Jeremy having departed on a journey, the lovely Lady Clare entertained a neighbouring baron at her husband's bed and board, and for two days all was well. But Sir Jeremy unexpectedly returned, and, being a gentleman of a pleasant fancy, walled up the room in which he had found the erring couple and left them inside. He then sat outside, and listened with a gentle pleasure to their cries, and, being a musician of no mean quality, played on the flute from time to time to prevent the hours from being wearisome. For three days he sat there, until there came no more sounds from that room; then he pursued his ordinary affairs, but sought no other wife—a grim little man with a certain sense of humour.

There are many other legends connected with the house; you will find them in Baedeker, where it also says: "Kind permission is accorded by Sir Henry Trojan to visitors who desire to see the rooms during the residence of the family in London. Special attention should be paid to the gold Drawing-room with its magnificent carving, the Library with its fine collection of old prints, and the Long Gallery with the family portraits, noticing especially the Vandyke of Sir Hilary Trojan (temp. Ch. I.), and a little sketch by Turner of the view from the West Tower. The gardens, too, are well worth a short inspection, special mention being made of the Long Terrace with its magnificent sea-view.

"A small charge is made by Sir Henry for admittance (adults sixpence, children half-price), with a view to benefiting the church, a building recently restored and sadly in need of funds."

So far Baedeker (Cornwall, new ed., 1908). The house is astonishingly beautiful, seen from any point of view. Added to from time to time, it has that air of surprise, as of a building containing endless secrets, only some of which it intends to reveal. It is full of corners and angles, and at the same time preserves a symmetry and grandeur of style that is surprising, if one considers its haphazard construction and random additions.

Part of its beauty is undoubtedly owing to its superb position. It rises from the rock, over the grey town at its feet, like a protecting deity, its two towers to west and east, raised like giant hands, its grey walls rising sheer from the steep, shelving rock; behind it the gentle rise of hills, bending towards the inland valleys; in front of it an unbroken stretch of sea.

It strikes the exact note that is in harmony with its colour and surroundings: the emblem of some wild survival from dark ages when that spot had been one of the most uncivilised in the whole of Britain—a land of wild, uncouth people, living in a state of perpetual watch and guard, fearing the sea, fearing the land, cringingly superstitious because of their crying need of supernatural defence; and, indeed, there is nothing more curious in the Cornwall of to-day than this perpetual reminder of past superstitions, dead gods, strange pathetic survival of heathen ancestry.

The town of Pendragon, lying at the foot of the "House of the Flutes," had little of this survival of former custom about it; it was rapidly developing into that temple of British middle-class mediocrity, a modern watering-place. It had, in the months of June, July, and August, nigger minstrels, a café chantant, and a promenade, with six bathing-machines and two donkeys; two new hotels had sprung up within the last two years, a sufficient sign of its prosperity. No, Pendragon was doing its best to forget its ancient superstitions, and even seemed to regard the "House of the Flutes" a little resentfully because of its reminder of a time when men scaled the rocks and stormed the walls, and fell back dying and cursing into their ships riding at anchor in the little bay.

Very different was Cullin's Cove, the little fishing-village that lay slightly to the right of the town. Here traditions were carefully guarded; a strict watch was kept on the outside world, and strangers were none too cheerfully received. Here, "down-along," was the old, the true Cornwall—a land that had changed scarcely at all since those early heathen days that to the rest of the world are dim, mysterious, mythological, but to a Cornishman are as the events of yesterday. High on the moor behind the Cove stand four great rocks—wild, wind-beaten, grimly permanent. It is under their guardianship that the Cove lies, and it is something more than a mere superstitious reverence that those inhabitants of "down-along" pay to those darkly mysterious figures. Seen in the fading light of the dying day, when Cornish mists are winding and twisting over the breast of the moor, these four rocks seem to take a living shape, to grow in size, and to whisper to those that care to hear old stories of the slaughter that had stained the soil at their feet on an earlier day.

From Harry's windows the town and the sea were hidden. Immediately below him lay the tennis-lawns and the rose-garden, and, gleaming in the distance, at the end of the Long Walk, two white statues that had fascinated him in his boyhood.

His first waking thought on the morning after his arrival was to look for those statues, and when he saw them gleaming in the sun just as they used to do, there swept over him a feeling of youth and vigour such as he had never known before. Those twenty years in New Zealand were, after all, to go for nothing; they were to be as though they had had no existence, and he was to be the young energetic man of twenty-five, able to enter into his son's point of view, able to share his life and vitality, and, at the same time, to give him the benefit of his riper experience.

Through his open window came the faint, distant beating of the sea; a bird flew past him, a white flash of light; some one was singing the refrain of a Cornish "chanty"—the swing of the tune came up to him from the garden, and some of the words beat like little bells upon his brain, calling up endless memories of his boyhood.

He looked at his watch and found that it was nine o'clock. He had no idea that it was so late; he had asked to be called at seven, but he had slept so soundly that he had not heard his man enter with his shaving water; it was quite cold now, and his razors were terribly blunt. He cut himself badly, a thing that he scarcely ever did. But it was really unfortunate, on this first morning when he had wanted everything to be at its best.

He came down to the breakfast-room humming. The house seemed a palace of gold on this wonderful September morning; the light came in floods through the great windows at the head of the stairs, and shafts of golden light struck the walls and the china potpourri bowls and flashed wonderful colours out of a great Venetian vase that stood by the hall door.

He found Garrett and Robin breakfasting alone; Clare and Sir Jeremy always had breakfast in their own rooms.

"I'm afraid I'm awfully late," said Harry cheerfully, clapping his brother on the back and putting his hand for a minute on Robin's shoulder; "things all cold?"

"Oh no," said Garrett, scarcely looking up from his morning paper. "Damned good kidneys!"

Robin said nothing. He was watching his father curiously. It was one of the Trojan rules that you never talked at breakfast; it was such an impossible meal altogether, and one was always at one's worst at that time of the morning. Robin wondered whether his father would recognise this elementary rule or whether he would talk, talk, talk, as he had done last night. They had had rather a bad time last night; Aunt Clare had had a headache, but his father had talked continuously—about sheep and Maories and the Pink Terraces. It had been just like a parish-room magic-lantern lecture—"Some hours with our friends the Maories"—it had been very tiring; poor Aunt Clare had grown whiter and whiter; it was quite a relief when dinner had come to an end.

Harry helped himself to kidneys and sat down by Robin, still humming the refrain of the Cornish song he had heard at his window. "By Jove, I'm late—mustard, Robin, my boy—can't think how I slept like that. Why, in New Zealand I was always up with the lark—had to be, you know, there was always such heaps to do—the bread, old boy, if you can get hold of it. I remember once getting up at three in the morning to go and play cricket somewhere—fearful hot day it was, but I knocked up fifty, I remember. Probably the bowling was awfully soft, although I remember one chap—Pulling, friend of Durand's—could fairly twist 'em down the pitch—made you damned well jump. Talking of cricket, I suppose you play, Robin? Did you get your cap or whatever they call it—College colours, you know?"

"Oh, cricket!" said Robin indifferently. "No, I didn't play. The chaps at King's who ran the games were rather outers—pretty thoroughly barred by the decent men. None of the 'Gracchi' went in for the sports."

"Oh!" said Harry, considerably surprised. "And who the deuce are the 'Gracchi'?"

"A society I was on," said Robin, a little wearily—it was so annoying to be forced to talk at breakfast. "A literary society—essays, with especial attention paid to the New Literature. We made it our boast that we never went back further than Meredith, except, of course, when one had to, for origins and comparisons. Randal, who's coming to stop for a few days, was president last year and read some awfully good papers."

Harry stared blankly. He had thought that every one played cricket and football, especially when they were strong and healthy like Robin. He had not quite understood about the society—and who was Meredith? "I shall be glad to meet your friend," he said. "Is he still at Cambridge?"

"Oh, Randal!" said Robin. "No, he came down the same time as I did. He only got a second in History, although he was worth a first any day of the week. But he had such lots of other things to do—his papers for the 'Gracchi' took up any amount of time—and then history rather bored him. He's very popular here, especially with all Fallacy Street people."

"The Fallacy Street people!" repeated Harry, still more bewildered. "Who are they?"

"Oh! I suppose you've forgotten," said Robin, mildly surprised. "They're all the people who're intellectual in Pendragon. If you live in Fallacy Street you're one of the wits. It's like belonging to the 'Mermaid' used to be, you know, in Shakespeare's time. They're really awfully clever—some of them—the Miss Ponsonbys and Mrs. le Terry—Aunt Clare thinks no end of Mrs. le Terry."

Robin's voice sounded a little awed. He had a great respect for Fallacy Street. "Oh, they won't have any room for me," said Harry, laughing. "I'm an awfully stupid old duffer. I haven't read anything at all, except a bit of Kipling—'Barrack-room Ballads'—seems a waste of time to read somehow."

That his father had very little interest in literature Robin had discovered some time before, but that he should boast of it—openly, laughingly—was really rather terrible.

Harry was silent for a few minutes; he had evidently made a blunder in his choice of a subject, but it was really difficult.

"Where are we going this morning, Robin?" he said at last.

"Oh! I say!" Robin looked a little unhappy. "I'm awfully sorry, father. I'm really afraid I can't come out this morning. There's a box of books that have positively got to get off to Randal's place to-night. I daren't keep them any longer. I'd do it this afternoon, only it's Aunt Clare's at-home day and she always likes me to help her. I'm really awfully sorry, but there are lots of other mornings, aren't there? I simply must get those books off this morning."

"Why, of course," said Harry cheerfully; "there's plenty of time."

He was dreadfully disappointed. He had often thought of that first stroll with Robin. They would discuss the changes since Harry's day; Robin would point out the new points of interest, and, perhaps, introduce him to some of his friends—it had been a favourite picture of his during some of those lonely days in New Zealand. And now Robin's aunt and college friend were to come before his father—it was rather hard.

But, then, on second thoughts, how unreasonable it was of him to expect to take up Robin's time like that. He must fall into the ways of the house, quietly, unobtrusively, with none of that jolting of other people's habits and regular customs; it had been thoughtless, of him and ridiculous. He must be more careful.

Breakfast ended, he found himself alone. Robin left the room with the preoccupied air of a man of fifty; the difficulty of choosing between Jefferies' "Story of my Heart" and Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," if there wasn't room in the box for both, was terrible! Of course Randal was coming himself in a few days, and it would have been simpler to let him choose for himself; but he had particularly asked for them to be sent by the fourth, and to-day was the third. Robin had quite forgotten his father.

Harry was alone. From the garden came the sound of doves, and, through the window that overlooked the lawn, the sun shone into the room. Harry lit a cigarette and went out. The garden was changed; there was a feeling of order and authority about it that it had never had before. Not a weed was to be seen on the paths: flowers stretched in perfect order and discipline; colours in harmony, shapes and patterns of a tutored symmetry—it was the perfection of a modern gardener's art. He passed gardeners, grave, serious men with eyes intent on their work, and he remembered the strange old man who had watched over the garden when he had been a boy; an old man with a wild ragged beard and a skinny hand like the Ancient Mariner's. The garden had not prospered under his care—it had been wild, undisciplined, tangled; but he had been a teller of wonderful tales, a seer of visions—it was to him that Harry had owed all the intimate knowledge of Cornish lore and mystery that he possessed.

The gardeners that were there now were probably not Cornishmen at all—strangers, Londoners perhaps. They could watch that wonderful, ever-changing view of sea and cliff and moor without any beating of the heart; to them the crooked, dusky windings of the Cove, the mighty grey rocks of Trelennan's Jump, the strange, solemn permanency of the four grey stones on the moor, were as nothing; their hearts were probably in Peckham.

He turned a little sadly from the ordered discipline of the garden; the shining green of the lawns, the blazing red and gold of its flowers almost annoyed him—it was not what he had expected. Then, suddenly, he came upon a little tangled wood—a strange, deserted place, with tall grasses and wild ferns and a little brook bubbling noisily over shining white and grey pebbles. He remembered it; how well he remembered it. He had often been there in those early days. He had tried to make a little mill in the brook. He had searched there for some of those strange creatures about whom Tony Tregoth, the old gardener, had told him—fauns and nymphs and the wild god Pan. He had never found anything; but its wild, disordered beauty had made a fitting setting for Tony's wild, disordered legends.

It was still almost exactly as it had been twenty years before; no one had attempted improvement. He stayed there for some time, thinking, regretting, dreaming—it was the only part of the garden that was real to him.

He passed down the avenue and out through the white stone gates as one in a dream. Something was stirring within him. It was not that during those years in New Zealand he had forgotten. He had longed again and again with a passionate, burning longing for the grey cliffs and the sea and the haunting loneliness of the moor; for the Cornwall that he had loved from the moment of his birth—no, he had never forgotten. But there was waking in him again that strange, half-inherited sense of the eternal presence of ancient days and old heathen ceremonies, and the manners of men who had lived in that place a thousand years before. He had known it when he was a boy; when he had chased rabbits over the moor, when he had seen the mist curling mysteriously from the sea and wrapping land and sky in a blinding curtain of grey, when he had stood on Trelennan's Jump and watched the white, savage tossing of the foam hundreds of feet below; he had sometimes fancied that he saw them, those wild bearded priests of cruelty, waiting smilingly on the silent twilit moor for victims—they had always been cruel; something terrible in the very vagueness of their outline.

Now the old thoughts came back to him, and he almost fancied that he could see the strange faces in the shadows of the garden and feel their hot breath upon his cheek.

His passage through the streets of Pendragon woke him from his dreams; its almost startling modernity and obtrusive up-to-dateness laughed at his fancies. It was very much changed since he had been there before—like the garden, it was the very apotheosis of order and modern methods. "The Pendragon Hotel" astonished him by its stone pillars, its glimpse of a wonderful, cool, softly carpeted hall, its official in gold buttons who stood solemnly magnificent on the steps, the admiration of several small boys who looked up into his face with wide-open eyes.

Harry remembered the old "Pendragon Hotel," a dirty, unmethodical place, with beds that were never clean. It had been something of a scandal, but its landlord had been an amusing fellow and a capital teller of stories.

The shops dazzled him by their brilliance. The hairdresser's displayed a wonderful assortment of wigs in the window; coloured bottles of every size and hue glittered in the chemist's; diamonds flashed in the jeweller's—the street seemed glorious to his colonial eyes.

The streets were not very crowded, and no one seemed to be in a hurry. Auckland had been rather a busy little town—no one had had very much time to spare—but here, under the mellow September sun, people lingered and talked, and the time and place seemed to stand still with the pleasant air of something restfully comfortable, and, above all, containing nothing that wasn't in the very best taste. It was this air of polite gentility that struck Harry so strongly. It had never been like that in the old days; a ragged unkempt place of uncertain manners and a very evident poverty. He rather resented its new polish, and he regretted once more that he had not sought a London tailor before coming down to Cornwall.

He suddenly recognised a face—a middle-aged, stout gentleman, with a white waistcoat and the air of one who had managed to lead a virtuous life and, nevertheless, accumulate money; he was evidently satisfied with both achievements. It was Barbour, Bunny Barbour. He had been rather a good chap at school, with some taste for adventure. He had had a wider horizon than most of them; Harry remembered how Bunny had envied him in New Zealand. He looked prosperous and sedate now, and the world must have treated him well. Harry spoke to him and was received with effusion. "Trojan, old man! Well, I never! I'm damned if I'd have recognised you. How you've changed! I heard you were coming back; your boy told me—fine chap that, Trojan, you've every reason to be proud. Well, to be sure! Come in and have a whisky and see the new club-rooms! Just been done up, and fairly knocks spots out of the old place."

He was extremely cordial, but Harry felt that he was under criticism. Barbour's eyes looked him up and down; there was almost a challenge in his glance, as though he said, "We are quite ready to receive you if you are one of us. But you must move with the times. It's no good for you to be the same as in the old days. We've all changed, and so must you!"

The club was magnificent. Harry stared in amazement at its luxury and comfort. Its wonderful armchairs and soft carpets, its decorations and splendid space astonished him. The old place had seemed rather fine to him as a boy, but he saw now how bad it had really been. He sank into one of the armchairs with that strange sense of angry resentment that he had felt before in the street gaining hotly upon him.

"It's good, isn't it?" said Barbour, smiling with an almost personal satisfaction, as though he had been largely responsible for the present improvements. "The membership's going up like anything, and we're thinking of raising subscriptions. Very decent set of fellows on it, too. Oh! we're getting along splendidly here. You must have noticed the change in the place!"

"I should think I have," said Harry—the tone of his voice was a little regretful; "but it's not only here—it's the whole town. It's smartened up beyond all knowing. But I must confess that, dirty and dingy as they were, I regret the old club-rooms. There was something extraordinarily homely and comfortable about them. Do you remember that old armchair with the hole in it? Gone long ago, of course, but I shall never sit in anything as nice again."

"Ah, sentiment," said Barbour, smiling; "you won't find much of it in Pendragon nowadays. It doesn't do. Sentimentalists are always Tories, you'll find; always wanting to keep the old things, and all against progress. We're all for progress now. We've got some capital men on the Town Council—Harding, Belfast, Rogers, Snaith—you won't remember them. There's some talk of pulling down the Cove and building new lodging-houses there. We're crowded out in the summer, and there are more people every year."

"Pull down the Cove?" said Harry, aghast; "but you can't. It's been there for hundreds of years; it's one of the most picturesque places in Cornwall."

"That's the only thing," said Barbour regretfully. "It acts rather well as a draw for painters and that sort of person, and it makes some pretty picture postcards that are certain to sell. Oh, I suppose they'll keep it for a bit, but it will have to go ultimately. Pendragon's changing."

There was no doubt that it was, and Harry left the club some quarter of an hour later with dismay in his heart. He had dreamed so long of the old times, the old beauties, the old quiet spirit of unprogressive content, that this new eagerness to be up-to-date and modern, this obvious determination to make Pendragon a watering-place of the most detestable kind, horrified him.

As he passed down the crooked, uneven stone steps that led to the Cove, he felt indignant, almost unhappy. It was as if a friend had been insulted in his presence and he had been unable to defend him. They said that the Cove must go, must make way for modern jerry-built lodging-houses, in order that middle-class families from London and Manchester might be sufficiently accommodated.

The Cove had meant a great deal to him when a boy—mystery, romance, pirates and smugglers, strange Cornish legends of saints and sinners, knights and men-at-arms. The little inn, "The Bended Thumb," with its irregular red-brick floor and its smoke-stained oaken rafters, had been the theatre of many a stirring drama—now it was to be pulled down. It was a wonderfully beautiful morning, and the little, twisting street of the Cove seemed to dance with its white shining cobbles in the light of the sun. It was mysterious as ever, but colours lingered in every corner. Purple mists seemed to hang about the dark alleys and twisting ways; golden shafts of light flashed through the open cottage doorways into rooms where motes of dust danced, like sprites, in the sun; smoke rose in little wreaths of pearl-grey blue into the cloudless sky; there was perfect stillness in the air, and from an overflowing pail that stood outside "The Bended Thumb," the clear drip, drip of the water could be heard falling slowly into the white cobbles, and close at hand was the gentle lap of the sea, as it ran up the little shingly beach and then dragged slowly back again with a soft, reluctant hiss.

It was the Cove in its gentlest mood. No one was about; the women were preparing the dinner and the men were away at work. No strange faces peered from inhospitable doorways; there was nothing to-day that could give the stranger a sense of outlawry, of almost savage avoidance of ordinary customs and manners. Harry's heart beat wildly as he walked down the street; there was no change here; it was as he had left it. He was at home here as he could never be in that new, strident Pendragon with its utter disregard of tradition and beauty.

He saw that it was late and hurried back. He had discovered a great deal during the morning.

At lunch he spoke of the changes that he had seen. Clare smiled. "Why, of course," she said. "Twenty years is a long time, and Pendragon has made great strides. For my part, I am very glad. It brings money to the shopkeepers, and the place will be quite fashionable in a few years' time. We're all on the side of progress up here," she added, laughing.

"But the Cove?" said Harry. "Barbour tells me that they are thinking of pulling it down to make way for lodging-houses or something."

"Well, why not?" said Clare. "It is really very much in the way where it is, and is, I am told, extremely insanitary. We must be practical nowadays or we are nothing; you have to pay heavily for being romantic."

Harry felt again that sensation of personal affront as though some close friend, bound to him by many ties, had been attacked violently in his presence. It was unreasonable, he knew, but it was very strong.

"And you, Robin," he said, "what do you think of it?"

"I agree with Aunt Clare," answered Robin lightly, as though it were a matter that interested him very little. "If the place is in the way, it ought to go. He's a sensible man, Barbour."

"The fact is, Harry," said Garrett, "you haven't changed quite as fast as the place has. You'll see the point of view in a few weeks' time."

He felt unreasonably, ridiculously angry. They were all treating him as a child, as some one who would grow up one day perhaps, but was, at present at any rate, immature in thought and word; even with Robin there was a half-implied superiority.

"But the Cove!" he cried vehemently. "Is it nothing to any of you? After all that it has been to us all our lives, to our people, to the whole place, are you going to root it out and destroy it simply because the town isn't quite big enough to put up all the trippers that burden it in the summer? Don't you see what you will lose if you do? I suppose you think that I am sentimental, romantic, but upon my word I can't see that you have improved Pendragon very much in all these twenty years. It was charming once—a place with individuality, independence; now it is like anywhere else—a miniature Brighton."

He knew that he was wasting his words. There was a pause, and he felt that they were all three laughing at him—yes, Robin as well. He had only made a fool of himself; they could not understand how much he had expected during those weary years of waiting—how much he had expected and how much he had missed.

Clare looked round the room and was relieved to find that only Beldam was present. If one of the family was bent on being absurd, it was as well that there should only be one of the servants to hear him.

"You know that you are to be on your trial this afternoon, Harry?" she said.

"My trial?" he repeated, bewildered.

"Yes—it's my at-home day, you know—first Thursdays—and, of course, they'll all come to see you. We shall have the whole town——" She looked at him a little anxiously; so much depended on how he behaved, and she wasn't completely reassured by his present manner.

If he astonished them all this afternoon by saying things about the Cove like that, it would be too terrible!

"How horrible!" he said, laughing. "I'm very much afraid that I shan't do you justice, Clare. I'm no good at small conversation."

His treating it so lightly made it worse, and she wondered how she could force him to realise the seriousness of it.

"All the nicest people in Pendragon," she said; "and they are rather ridiculously critical, and of course they talk."

He looked at her and laughed. "I wish they were Maories," he said, "I shouldn't be nearly so frightened!"

She leant over the table to emphasise her words. "But it really does make a difference, Harry. First impressions count a lot. You'll be nice to them, won't you?"

The laugh had left his eyes. It was serious, as he knew. He had had no idea that he would have, so to speak, "funked" it so. It was partly, of course, because of Robin. He did not want to make a fool of himself before the boy. He was already beginning to realise what were the things that counted with Robin.

The real pathos of the situation lay in his terrible anxiety to do the right thing. If he had taken it quietly, had trusted to his natural discretion and had left circumstances to develop of themselves, he would have, at any rate, been less self-conscious. But he could not let it alone. He had met Auckland society often enough and had, indeed, during his later years, been something of a society man, but there everything was straight-forward and simple. There was no tradition, no convention, no standard. Because other people did a thing was no reason why you should do it—originality was welcomed rather than otherwise. But here there were so many things that you must do, and so very, very many that you mustn't; and if you were a Trojan, matters were still more complicated.

It was after half-past four when he entered the drawing-room, and Clare was pouring out tea. Five or six ladies were already there, and a clergyman of ample proportions and quite beautifully brushed hair. He was introduced—"Mrs. le Terry—Miss Ponsonby—Miss Lucy Ponsonby—Miss Werrel—Miss Thisbe Werrel—Mr. Carrell—our rector, Harry."

He shook hands and was terribly embarrassed. He was conscious at once of that same sense of challenge that he had felt with Barbour in the morning. They were not obviously staring, but he knew that they were rapidly summing him up. He coloured foolishly, and stood for a moment awkwardly in the middle of the room.

"Tea, Harry?" said Clare. "Scones down by the fire. Everybody else is all right—so look after yourself."

He found himself by Mrs. le Terry, a small, rather pretty woman with wide-open blue eyes, and a mass of dark brown hair hidden beneath a large black hat that drooped over one ear. She talked rapidly and with few pauses. She was, he discovered, one of those persons whose conversation was a series of exclamation marks. She was perpetually astonished, delighted, and disappointed with an amount of emotion that left her no breath and gave her hearers a small opinion of her sincerity. "It's too terribly funny," she said, opening her eyes very wide indeed, "that you should have been in that amazing place, New Zealand—all sheep and Maories, isn't it?—and if there's one thing that I should be likely to detest more than mutton I'm sure it would be Maories. Too dreadful and terrible! But you look splendidly well, Mr. Trojan. I never, really never, saw any one with such a magnificent colour! I suppose that it's that gorgeous sun, and it never rains, does it? Too delightful! If there's one thing that I do adore, it's the sun!"

"Well, I don't know about that," said Harry, laughing; "we had rain pretty often in Auckland, and——"

"Oh," she said, breaking in upon him, "that's too curious, because, do you know, I thought you never had rain at all, and I do detest rain so. It's too distressing when one has a new frock or must go to some stupid place to see some one. But I'm too awfully glad that you've come here, Mr. Trojan. We do want waking up a little, you know, and I'm sure you're the very person to do it. It would be too funny if you were to wake us all up, you know."

Harry was pleased. There were no difficulties here, at any rate. Hadn't Robin mentioned Mrs. le Terry as one of the leaders of Fallacy Street? He suddenly lost his shyness and wanted to become confidential. He would tell her how glad he was to be back in England again; how anxious he was to enter into all the fun and to take his part in all the work. He wondered what she felt about the Cove, and he hoped that she would be an enemy to its proposed destruction.

But she yielded him no opportunity of speaking, and he speedily discovered her opinion on the Cove. "And such changes since you went away! Quite another place, I'm glad to say. Pendragon is the sweetest little town, and even the dear, dirty trippers in the summer are the most delightful and amusing people you ever saw. And now that they talk of pulling down that horrid, dirty old Cove, it will be too splendid, with lodging-houses and a bandstand; and they do talk of an Esplanade—that would be too delightful!"

While she was speaking, he watched the room curiously. Robin had come in and was standing by the fireplace talking to the Miss Werrels, two girls of the athletic type, with short skirts and their hair brushed tightly back over their foreheads. He was leaning with one arm on the mantelpiece, and was looking down on the ladies with an air of languid interest: his eyes were restless, and every now and again glanced towards his father. The two Miss Ponsonbys were massive ladies of any age over fifty. Clad in voluminous black silk, with several little reticules and iron chains, their black hair bound in tight coils at the back of their heads, each holding stiffly her teacup with a tenacity that was worthy of a better cause, they were awe-inspiring and militant. In spite of their motionless gravity, there was something aggressive in their frowning brows and cold, expressionless eyes. Harry thought that he had never seen two more terrifying persons. Clare was talking to the prosperous clergyman; he smiled continually, and now and again laughed in reply to some remark, but it was always something restrained and carefully guarded. He was obviously a man who laid great store by exterior circumstances. That the sepulchre should be filled with dead men's bones might cause him pain, but that it should be unwhitened would be, to him, a thing far more terrible.

Clare turned round and addressed the room generally.

"Mr. Carrell has just been telling me of the shocking state of the Cove," she said. "Insanitary isn't the word, apparently. Things have gone too far, and the only wise measure seems to be to root the place up completely. It is sad, of course—it was a pretty old place, but it has had its day."

"I've just been telling your brother about it, Miss Trojan," said Mrs. le Terry. "It's quite too terrible, and I'm sure it's very bad for all of us to have anything quite so horrible so close to our houses. There's no knowing what dreadful things we may not all of us be catching at this very moment——"

She was interrupted by two new arrivals—Mrs. and Miss Bethel. They were a curious contrast. The mother was the strangest old lady that Harry had ever seen. She was tiny in stature, with snow-white hair and cheeks that were obviously rouged; she wore a dress of curious shot silk decorated with much lace, and her fingers were thick with jewels; a large hat with great purple feathers waved above her head. It was a fantastic and gaudy impression that she made, and there was something rather pitiful in the contrast between her own obvious satisfaction with her personal appearance and the bizarre, almost vulgar, effect of such strangely contrasted colours. She came mincing into the room with her head a little on one side, but in spite of, or perhaps because of, her rather anxious smiles, it was obvious that she was not altogether at her ease.

The girl who followed her was very different. Tall and very dark, she was clothed quite simply in grey; her hair was wonderful, although it was at present hidden to some extent by her hat, but its coal-black darkness had something intent, almost luminous, about it, so that, paradoxically, its very blackness held hidden lights and colours. But it was her manner that Harry especially noticed. She followed her mother with a strange upright carriage of the head and flash of the eyes that were almost defiant. She was evidently expecting no very civil reception, and she seemed to face the room with hostility and no very ready eagerness to please.

The effect on the room was marked. Mrs. le Terry stopped speaking for a moment and rustled her skirts with a movement of displeasure, the Miss Ponsonbys clutched their teacups even tighter than before and their brows became more clouded, the Miss Werrels smiled confidentially at each other as though they shared some secret, and even Robin made a slight instinctive movement of displeasure.

Harry felt at once an impulse of sympathy towards the girl. It was almost as if this sudden hostility had made them friends: he liked that independence of her carriage, the pride in her eyes. Mrs. le Terry's voice broke upon his ears.

"Which must be, Mr. Trojan, extraordinarily provoking. To go there, I mean, and find absolutely no one in—all that way, too, and a horribly wet night, and no train until nine o'clock."

In his endeavours to pick up the thread of the conversation he lost sight of their meeting with Clare.

She, indeed, had greeted them with all the Trojan coldness; nothing could have been more sternly formal than her "Ah! Mrs. Bethel, I'm so glad that you were able to come. So good of you to trouble to call. Won't you have some tea? Do find a seat somewhere, Miss Bethel. I hope you won't mind our all having finished."

Harry was introduced and took them their tea. It was obvious that, for some reason unknown to him, their presence there was undesired by all the company present, including Clare herself. He also knew instinctively that their coming there had been some act of daring bravery, undertaken perhaps with the hope that, after all, it might not be as they had feared.

The old lady's hand trembled as she took her teacup; the colour had fled from her face, and she sat there white and shaking. As Harry bent over her with the scones, he saw to his horror that a tear was trembling on her eyelid; her throat was moving convulsively.

At the same instant he knew that the girl's eyes were fixed upon his; he saw them imploring, beseeching him to help them. It was a difficult situation, but he smiled back at the girl and turned to the old lady.

"Do try these scones, Mrs. Bethel," he said; "they are still hot and I can recommend them strongly. I'm so glad to meet you; my sister told me only this morning that she hoped you would come this afternoon, as she wanted us to become acquainted."

It was a lie, but he spoke it without hesitation, knowing that it would reach Clare's ears. The little lady smiled nervously and looked up at him.

"Ah, Mr. Trojan," she said, "it's very good of you, I'm sure. We are only too delighted. It's not much gaiety that we can offer you here, but such as it is——"

She was actually making eyes at him, the preposterous old person. It was really a little pitiful, with her gorgeous colours, and her trembling assumption of a coquettish youth that had left her long ago. Her attempt to storm a difficult position by the worst of all possible tactics made him extremely sorry for the daughter, who was forced to look on in silence. His thoughts, indeed, were with the girl—her splendid hair, her eyes, something wild, almost rebellious, that found a kindred note in himself; curiously, almost absurdly, they were to a certain degree allies although they had not spoken. He talked to her a little and she mentioned the Cove.

"It is a test of your Cornish ancestry," she said—"if you care for it, I mean. So many people here look on it as a kind of rubbish-heap—picturesque but untidy—and it is the most beautiful place in the world."

"I am glad that you feel like that," he said quietly; "it meant a lot to me as a boy. I have been sorry to find how unpopular it is now; but I see that it still has its supporters."

"Ah, you must talk to father," she said. "He is always there. We are a little old-fashioned, I'm afraid."

There was in her voice, in her smile, something that stirred him strangely. He felt as though he had met her before—a long while ago. He recognised little characteristics, the way that she pushed back her hair when she was excited, the beautiful curve of her neck when she raised her eyes to his, the rise and fall of her bosom—it was all strangely, individually familiar, as though he had often watched her do the same things in the same way before, in some other place....

He had forgotten the others—Clare, Robin, the Miss Ponsonbys, Mrs. le Terry; and when they had all gone, he did not realise that he had in any way neglected them.

After Miss Bethel had left the room, followed by the preposterous old mother, he stood at the window watching the lights of the town shining mistily through the black network of trees in the drive. He must meet her again.

Clare spoke to him and he turned round. "I'm afraid you have made the Miss Ponsonbys enemies for life," she said; "you never spoke to them once. I warned you that they were the most important people in the place."

"Oh! the Miss Ponsonbys!" said Harry carelessly, and Robin stood amazed.

CHAPTER III

Robin's rooms, charming as they were, with their wide windows opening on to tossing sea and the sharp bend of the grey cliffs stretching to distant horizons, suffered from overcrowding.

His sitting-room, with its dark red wallpaper and several good prints framed in dark oak—Burne-Jones' "Study for Cupid's Masque," Hunt's "Hireling Shepherd," and Whistler's "Battersea Bridge" were the best—might have been delightful had he learned to select; but at the present stage in his development he hated rejecting anything as long as it reached a certain standard. His appreciations were wide and generous, and his knowledge was just now too superficial to permit of discerning criticism. The room, again, suffered from a rather effeminate prettiness. There were too many essentially trivial knick-knacks—some fans, silver ornaments, a charming little ebony clock, and a generous assortment of gay, elegantly worked cushions. The books, too, were all in handsome editions—Meredith in green leather with a gold-worked monogram, Pater in red half-morocco, Swinburne in light-blue with red and gold tooling—rich and to some extent unobtrusive, but reiterating unmistakably the first impression that the room had given, the mark of something superficial.

Robin was there now, dressing for dinner. He often dressed in his sitting-room, because his books were there. He liked to open a book for a moment before fitting his studs into his shirt, and how charming to read a verse of Swinburne before brushing his hair—not so much because of the Swinburne, but rather because one went down to dinner with a pleasant feeling of culture and education. To-night he was in a hurry. People had stayed so late for tea (it was still the day after his father's arrival), and he had to be at the other end of the town by half-past seven. What a nuisance going out to dinner was, and how he wished he wasn't going to-night.

The fact that the dinner promised, in all probability, to afford something of a situation did not, as was often the case, give him very much satisfaction. Indeed it was the reverse. The situation was going to be extremely unpleasant, and there was every likelihood that Robin would look a fool. Robin's education had been a continuous insistence on the importance of superficiality. It had been enforced while he was still in the cradle, when a desire to kick and fight had been always checked by the quiet reiteration that it was not a thing that a Trojan did. Temper was not a fault of itself, but an exhibition of it was; simply because self-control was a Trojan virtue. At his private school he was taught the great code of brushing one's hair and leaving the bottom button of one's waistcoat undone. Robbery, murder, rape—well, they had all played their part in the Trojan history; but the art of shaking hands and the correct method of snubbing a poor relation, if properly acquired, covered the crimes of the Decalogue.

It was not that Robin, either then or afterwards, was a snob. He thought no more of a duke or a viscount than of a plain commoner, but he learnt at once the lesson of "Us—and the Others." If you were one of the others—if there was a hesitation about your aspirates, if you wore a tail-coat and brown boots—then you were non-existent, you simply did not count.

When he left Eton for Cambridge, this Code of the Quite Correct Thing advanced beyond the art of Perfect Manners; it extended to literature and politics, and, in fact, everything of any importance. He soon discovered what were the things for "Us" to read, whom were the painters for "Us" to admire, and what were the politics for "Us" to applaud. He read Pater and Swinburne and Meredith, Bernard Shaw and Galsworthy and Joseph Conrad, and had quite definite ideas about all of them. He admired Rickett's stage effects, and thought Sholto Douglas's portraits awfully clever, and, of course, Max's Caricatures were masterly. I'm not saying that he did not really admire these things—in many things his appreciation was genuine enough—but if it should happen that he cared for "The Christian" or "God's Good Man," he speedily smothered his admiration and wondered how he could be such a fool. To do him justice, he never had any doubt that those whose judgment he followed were absolutely right; but he followed them blindly, often praising books or pictures that he had never read or seen because it was the thing to do. He read quite clever papers to "The Gracchi" at Cambridge, but the most successful of all, "The Philosophy of Nine-pins according to Bernard Shaw," was written before he had either seen or read any of that gentleman's plays. He was, in fact, in great danger of developing into a kind of walking Rapid Review of other people's judgments and opinions. He examined nothing for himself; his standard of the things to be attained in this world was fixed and unalterable; to have an unalterable standard at twenty-one is to condemn oneself to folly for life.

And now, as he was dressing for dinner, two things occupied his mind: firstly, his father; in the second place, the situation that he was to face in half-an-hour's time.

With regard to his father, Robin was terribly afraid that he was one of the Others. He had had his suspicions from the first—that violent entry, the loud voice and the hearty laugh, the bad-fitting clothes, and the perpetual chatter at dinner; it had all been noisy, unusual, even a little vulgar. But his behaviour at tea that afternoon had grieved Robin very much. How could he be so rude to the light and leading of Fallacy Street? It could only have been through ignorance; it could only have been because he really did not know how truly great the Miss Ponsonbys were. But then, to spend all his time with the Bethels, strange, odd people, with the queerest manners and an uncertain history, whom Fallacy Street had decided to cut!

No, Robin was very much afraid that his father must be ranked with the Others. He had not expected very much after all; New Zealand must be a strange place on all accounts; but his father seemed to show no desire to improve, he seemed quite happy and contented, and scarcely realised, apparently, the seriousness of his mistakes.

But, after all, the question of his father was a very minor affair as compared with the real problem that he must answer that evening. Robin had met Dahlia Feverel in the summer of the preceding year at Cambridge. He had thought her extremely beautiful and very fascinating. Most of his college friends had ladies whom they adored; it was considered quite a thing to do—and so Robin adored Dahlia.

No one knew anything about the Feverels. The mother was kept in the background and the father was dead—there was really only Dahlia; and when Robin was with her he never thought of questioning her as to antecedents of earlier history. For two months he loved her passionately, chiefly because he saw her very seldom. When he went down at the end of the summer term he felt that she was the only thing in the world worth living for. He became Byronic, scowled at Aunt Clare, and treated Garrett's cynicism with contempt. He wrote letters to her every day full of the deepest sentiments and a great deal of amazingly bad poetry. Clare wondered what was the matter, but asked no questions, and was indeed far too firmly convinced of the efficacy of the Trojan system to have any fears of mental or moral danger.

Then Miss Feverel made a mistake; she came with her mother to stay at Pendragon. For the first week Robin was blissfully happy—then he began to wonder. The best people in Pendragon would have nothing to do with the Feverels. Aunt Clare, unaware that they were friends of Robin's, pronounced them "commonly vulgar." The mother was more in evidence than she had been at Cambridge, and Robin passed from dislike to horror and from horror to hatred. Dahlia, too, seemed to have changed. Robin had loved her too passionately hitherto to think of the great Division. But soon he began to wonder. There were certain things—little unimportant trifles, of course—that made him rather uneasy; he began to have a horrible suspicion that she was one of the Others; and then, once the suspicion was admitted, proof after proof came forward to turn it into certainty.

How horrible, and what an escape! His visits to the little lodging-house overlooking the sea where Dahlia played the piano so enchantingly, and Mrs. Feverel, a solemn, rather menacing figure, played silently and mournfully continuous Patience, were less and less frequent. He was determined to break the matter off; it haunted his dreams, it troubled him all day; he was forced to keep his acquaintanceship with them secret, and was in perpetual terror lest Aunt Clare should discover it. He had that most depressing of unwished-for possessions, a skeleton; its cupboard-door swung creakingly in the wind, and its bones rattled in his ears.

No, the thing must come to an end at once, and completely. They had invited him to dinner and he had accepted, meaning to use the occasion for the contemplated separation. He had thought often enough of what he would say—words that had served others many times before in similar situations. He would refer to their youth, the affair should be a midsummer episode, pleasant to look back upon when they were both older and married to more worthy partners; he would be a brother to her and she should be a sister to him—but, thank God for his escape!

He believed that the Trojan traditions would carry him through. He was not quite sure what she would do—cry probably, and remonstrate; but it would soon be over and he would be at peace once more.

He dressed slowly and with his usual care. It would be easier to speak with authority if there was no doubt about his appearance. He decided to walk, and he passed through the garden into the town, his head a buzzing repetition of the words that he meant to say. It was a beautiful evening; a soft mist hid the moon's sharper outline, but she shone, a vague circlet of light through a little fleet of fleecy white cloud. Although it was early in September, some of the trees were beginning to change their dark green into faint gold, and the sharp outline of their leaves stood out against the grey pearl light of the sky. As he passed into the principal street of Pendragon, Robin drew his coat closer about him, like some ancient conspirator. He had no wish to be stopped by an inquisitive friend; his destination demanded secrecy. Soon the lights and asphalt of the High Street gave place to dark, twisting paths and cobbled stones. These obscure and narrow ways were rather pathetic survivals of the old Pendragon. At night they had an almost sinister appearance; the lamps were at very long intervals and the old houses leaned over the road with a certain crazy picturesqueness that was, at the same time, exceedingly dangerous. There were few lights in the windows and very few pedestrians on the cobbles; the muffled roar of the sea sounded close at hand. And, indeed, it sprang upon you quite magnificently at a turn of the road. To-night it scarcely moved; a ripple as the waves licked the sand, a gentle rustle as of trees in the wind when the pebbles were dragged back with the ebb—that was all. It seemed strangely mysterious under the misty, uncertain light of the moon.

The houses facing the sea loomed up darkly against the horizon—a black contrast with the grey of sea and sky. It was No. 4 where the Feverels lived. There was a light in the upper window and some one was playing the piano. Robin hesitated for some minutes before ringing the bell. When it had rung he heard the piano stop. For a few seconds there was no sound; then there were steps in the passage and the door was opened by the very dowdy little maid-of-all-work whose hands were always dirty and whose eyes were always red, as though with perpetual weeping.

With what different eyes he saw the house now! On his first visit, the sun had dazzled his eyes; there had been flowers in the drawing-room and she had come to meet him in some charming dress; he had stood enraptured at the foot of the stairs, deeming it Paradise. Now the lamp in the hall flared with the wind from the door, and he was acutely conscious of a large rent in the dirty, faded carpet. The house was perfectly still—it might have been a place of ghosts, with the moon shining mistily through the window on the stairs and the strange, insistent murmur of the sea beating mysteriously through the closed doors!

There was no one in the drawing-room, and its appalling bad taste struck him as it had never done before. How could he have been blind to it? The glaring yellow carpet, the bright purple lamp-shades, the gilt looking-glass over the fireplace, and, above all, dusty, drooping paper flowers in bright china vases ranged in a row by the window. Of course, it might be merely the lodgings. Lodgings always were like that—but to live with them for months! To attempt no change, to leave the flowers, and the terrible oil-painting "Lost in the Snow"—an obvious British Public appeal to a pathos that simply shrieked at you, with its hideous colours and very material snow-storm. No, Robin could only repeat once more, What an escape!

But had he, after all, escaped? He was not quite sure, as he stood by the window waiting. It might be difficult, and he was unmistakably nervous.

Dahlia closed the door, and stood there for a moment before coming forward.

"Robin—at last!" and she held out both hands to him. They were the same words that his aunt had used to his father last night, he remembered foolishly, and at once they seemed strained, false, ridiculous!

He took her hand and said something about being in time; then, as she seemed to expect it, he bent down and kissed her.

She was pretty in a rather obvious way. If there had been less artificiality there would have been more charm; of middle height, she was slim and dark, and her hair, parted in the middle, fell in waves over her temples. She affected a rather simple, aesthetic manner that suited her dark eyes and rather pale complexion. You said that she was intense until you knew her. To-night she wore a rather pretty dress of some dark-brown stuff, cut low at the neck, and with her long white arms bare. She had obviously taken a good deal of trouble this evening, and had undoubtedly succeeded.

"And so Sir Robert has deigned to come and see his humble dependants at last!" she said, laughing. "A whole fortnight, Robin, and you've not been near us."

"I'm dreadfully sorry," he said, "but I've really been too terribly busy. The Governor coming home and one thing and another——"

He felt gauche and awkward, the consciousness of what he must say after dinner weighed on him heavily. He could hardly believe that there had ever been a time when he had talked eagerly, passionately—he cursed himself for a fool.

"Yes, we've been very lonely and you're a naughty boy," said Dahlia. "But now you are here I won't scold you if you promise to tell me everything you've done since last time——"

"Oh! done?" said Robin vaguely; "I really don't know—the usual sort of thing, I suppose—not much to do in Pendragon at any time."

She had been looking at him curiously while he was speaking. Now she suddenly changed her voice. "I've been so lonely without you, dear," she said, speaking almost in a whisper; "I fancied—of course it was silly of me—that perhaps there was some one else—that you were getting a little tired of me. I was—very unhappy. I nearly wrote, but I was afraid that—some one might see it. Letters are always dangerous. But it's very lonely here all day—with only mother. If you could come a little oftener, dear—it means everything to me."

Her voice was a little husky as though tears were not far away, and she spoke in little short sentences—she seemed to find it hard to say the words.

Robin suddenly felt a brute. How could he ever tell her of what was in his mind? If it was really so much to her he could never leave her—not at once like that; he must do it gradually.

She was sitting by him on the sofa and looked rather delightful. She had the pathetic expression that always attracted him, and he felt very sorry indeed. How blank her days would be without him! Part of the romance had always been his rôle of King Cophetua, and tears sprang to his eyes as he thought of the poor beggar-maid, alone, forlornly weeping, when he had finally withdrawn his presence.

"I think it is partly the sea," she said, putting her hand gently on his sleeve. "When one is sitting quite alone here in the evening with nothing to do and no one to talk to, one hears it so plainly—it is almost frightening. You know, Robin, old boy, I don't care for Pendragon very much. I only came here because of you—and now—if you never come to see us——"

She stopped with a little catch in her voice. Her hand fastened on his sleeve; their heads were very close together and her hair almost brushed his cheek.

He really was an awful brute, but at the same time it was rather nice—that she should care so much. It would be terrible for her when he told her what was in his mind. She might even get very ill—he had read of broken hearts often enough; and she was extraordinarily nice just now—he didn't want to hurt her. But still a fellow must think of his career, his future, and that sort of thing.

Mrs. Feverel entered—ponderous, solemn, dressed in a black silk that trails behind her in funereal folds. Her hands were clammy to the touch and her voice was a deep bass. She said very little, but sat down silently by the window, forming, as she always did, a dark and extremely solid background. Robin hated and feared her. There was something sinister in her silence—something ominous in her perpetual black. He had never heard her laugh.

Dahlia was laughing now. "I'm a selfish brute, Bobby," she said, "to bother you with my silly little complaints when we want to be cheerful. We'll have a good time this evening, won't we? We'll sing some of those Rubinstein's duets after dinner, and I've got a new song that I've been learning especially for you. And then there's your father; I do want to hear all about him so much—he must be so interesting, coming from New Zealand. Mother and I saw a gentleman in the town this morning that we thought must be him. Tall and brown, with a light brown moustache and a dark blue suit. It must be splendid to have a father again after twenty years without him."

Her voice dropped a little, as though to refer gently to her own fatherless condition.

Mrs. Feverel, a dark shadow in the window, sighed heavily.

"Oh! the Governor!" said Robin, a little irritably. "No! It's rather difficult—he doesn't seem to know what to do and say. I suppose it's being in New Zealand so long! It makes it rather difficult for me."

He spoke as one suffering under an unjust accusation. It was bad luck, and he wondered vaguely why Dahlia had been so interested; why should she care, unless, and the idea struck him with horror, she already regarded him as a prospective father-in-law?

Dinner was announced by the grimy little maid. Robin took the dark figure of Mrs. Feverel on his arm and made some hesitating remark about the weather—but he had the curious and unpleasant sensation of her seeing through him most thoroughly and clearly. He felt ridiculously like a captive, and his doubts as to his immediate escape increased. The gaudy drawing-room, the dingy stairs, the gas hissing in the hall, had been, in all conscience, depressing enough, but now this heavy, mute, ominous woman, trailing her black robes so funereally behind her, seemed, to his excited fancy, some implacable Frankenstein created by his own thrice-cursed folly.

The dinner was not a success. The food was bad, but that Robin had expected. As he faced the depression of it, he was more than ever determined to end it, conclusively, that evening, but Mrs. Feverel's gloom and Dahlia's little attempts at coquettish gaiety frightened him. The conversation, supported mainly by Dahlia, fell into terrible lapses, and the attempts to start it again had the unhappy air of desperate remedies doomed to failure. Dahlia's pathetic glances failed of their intent. Robin was too deeply engaged in his own gloomy reflections to notice them, but her eyes filled with tears, and at last her efforts ceased and a horrible, gloomy silence fell like a choking fog upon them.

"Will you smoke, Robin?" she said, when at last the dessert, in the shape of some melancholy oranges and one very attenuated banana, was on the table. "Egyptian or Turkish—or will you have a pipe?"

He took a cigarette clumsily from the box and his fingers trembled as he lit first hers and then his own—he was so terribly afraid of cutting a ridiculous figure. He sat down again and beat a tattoo on the tablecloth. Mrs. Feverel, with some grimly muttered excuse, left the room. She watched him a moment from the other side of the table and then she came over to him. She bent over his chair, leaning her hands on his shoulders.

"Robin, what is it?" she said. "What's happened?"

"Nothing," he said gloomily. "It's all right——"

"Oh! do you suppose I haven't seen?" She bent closer to him and pressed her cheek against his. "Robin, old boy—you're not getting tired of me? You're tired or cross to-night—I don't know. I've been very patient all this time—waiting for you—hoping that you would come—longing for you—and you never came—all these many weeks. Then I thought that, perhaps, you were too busy or were afraid of people talking—but, at last, there was to be to-night; and I've looked forward to it—oh! so much!—and now you're like this!"

She was nearly crying, and there was that miserable little catch in her voice. He did feel an awful cad—he hadn't thought that she would really care so much as this; but still it had to be done some time, and this seemed a very good opportunity.

He cleared his throat, and, beating the carpet with his foot, tried to speak with dignity as well as feeling—but he only succeeded in being patronising.

"You know," he said quickly, and without daring to look at her, "one's had time to think. I don't mean that I'm sorry it's all been as it has—we've had a ripping time—but I'm not sure—one can't be certain—that it's best for it to go on—quite like this. You see, old girl, it's so damned serious. Of course my people have ideas about my marrying—of course the Trojans have always had to be careful. People expect it of them——"

He stopped for a moment.

"You mean that I'm not good enough?"

She had stepped back from his chair and was standing with her back to the wall. He got up from his chair and turned round and faced her, leaning with his hands on the table. But he could not face her for long; his eyes dropped before the fury in hers.

"No, no, Dahlia—how stupid of you!—of course it's not that. It's really rather unkind of you to make it harder for me. It's difficult enough to explain. You're good enough for any one, but I'm not quite sure, dear, whether we'd be quite the people to marry! We'd be splendid friends, of course—we'll always be that—but we're both very young, and, after all, it's rather hard for one to know. It was splendid at Cambridge, but I don't think we quite realised——"

"You mean you didn't," she broke in quickly. "I know well enough. Some one's been speaking to you, Robin."

"No—nobody." He looked at her fiercely. She had hurt his pride. "As if I'd be weak enough to let that make any difference. No one has said a word—only——"

"Only—you've been thinking that we're not quite good enough for you—that we'd soil your Trojan carpets and chairs—that we'd stain your Trojan relations. I—I know—I——"

And then she broke down altogether. She was kneeling by the table with her head in her arms, sobbing as though her heart would break.

"Oh, I say, Dahlia, don't! I can't bear to see you cry—it will be all right, old girl, to-morrow—it will really—and then you will see that it was wiser. You will thank me for speaking about it. Of course we'll always be good friends. I——"

"Robin, you don't mean it. You can't!" She had risen from her knees and now stood by him, timidly, with one hand on his arm. "You have forgotten all those splendid times at Cambridge. Don't you remember that evening on the Backs? Just you and I alone when there was that man singing on the other side of the water, when you said that we would be like that always—together. Oh, Robin dear, it can't have been all nothing to you."

She looked very charming with her eyes a little wet and her hair a little dishevelled. But his resolution must not weaken—now that he had progressed so far, he must not go back. But he put his arm round her.

"Really, old girl, it is better—for both of us. We can wait. Perhaps in a few years' time it will seem different again. We can think about it then. I don't want to seem selfish, but you must think about me a little. You must see how hard it has been for me to say this, and that it has only been with the greatest difficulty that I've been strong enough. Believe me, dear, it is harder for me than it is for you—much harder."

He was really getting on very well. He had had no idea that he would do it so nicely. Poor girl! it was hard luck—perhaps he had led her to expect rather too much—those letters of his had been rather too warm, a little indiscreet. But no doubt she would marry some excellent man of her own class—in a few years she would look back and wonder how she had ever had the fortune to know so intimately a man of Robin's rank! Meanwhile, the scene had better end as soon as possible.

She had let him keep his arm round her waist, and now she suddenly leant back and looked up in his face.

"Robin, darling," she whispered, "you can't mean it—not that we should part like this. Why, think of the times that we have had—the splendid, glorious times—and all that we're going to have. Think of all that you've said to me, over and over again——"

She crept closer to him. "You love me really, dear, all the same. It's only that some one's been talking to you and telling you that it's foolish. But that mustn't make any difference. We're strong enough to face all the world. You know that you said you were in the summer, and I'm sure that you are now. Wait till to-morrow, dear, and you'll see it all differently."

"I tell you nobody's been talking," he said, drawing his arm away. "Besides, if they did, it wouldn't make any difference. No, Dahlia, it's got to stop. We're too young to know, and besides, it would be absurd anyway. I know it's bad luck on you. Perhaps I said rather too much in the summer. But of course we'll always be good friends. I know you'll see it as I do in a little time. We've both been indiscreet, and it's better to draw back now than later—really it is."

"Do you mean it, Robin?"

She stood facing him with her hands clenched; her face was white and her eyes were blazing with fury.

"Yes, of course," he said. "I think it's time this ended——"

"Not before I've told you what I think of you," she cried. "You're a thief and a coward—you've stolen a girl's love and then you're afraid to face the world—you're afraid of what people will say. If you don't love me, you're tied to me, over and over again. You've made me promises—you made me love you—and now when your summer amusement is over you fling me aside—you and your fine relations! Oh! you gentlemen! It would be a good thing for the world if we were rid of the whole lot of you! You coward! You coward!"

He was taken aback by her fury.

"I say—Dahlia—" he stammered, "it's unfair——"

"Oh! yes!" she broke in, "unfair, of course, to you! but nothing to me—nothing to me that you stole my love—robbed me of it like a common thief—pretended to love me, promised to marry me, and now—now—Oh! unfair! yes, always for the man, never for the girl—she doesn't count! She doesn't matter at all. Break her heart and fling it away and nobody minds—it's as good as a play!"

She burst into tears, and stood with her head in her hands, sobbing as though her heart would break. It was a most distressing scene!

"Really, really, Dahlia," said Robin, feeling extremely uncomfortable (it was such a very good thing, he thought, that none of his friends could see him), "it's no use your taking it like this. I had better go—we can't do any good by talking about it now. To-morrow, when we can look at it calmly, it will seem different."

He moved to the door, but she made another attempt and put her hand timidly on his arm to stop him.

"No, no, Robin, I didn't mean what I said—not like that. I didn't know what I was saying. Oh, I love you, dear, I love you! I can't let you go like that. You don't know what it means to me. You are taking everything from me—when you rob a girl of her love, of her heart, you leave her nothing. If you go now, I don't care what happens to me—death—or worse, That's how you make a bad woman, Robin. Taking her love from her and then letting her go. You are taking her soul!"

But he placed her gently aside. "Nonsense, Dahlia," he said. "You are excited to-night. You exaggerate. You will meet a man much worthier than myself, and then you will see that I was right."

He opened the door and was gone.

She sat down at the table. She heard him open and shut the hall door, and then his steps echoed down the street, and at last there was silence. She sat at the table with her head bent, her eyes gazing at the oranges and the bananas. The house was perfectly silent, and her very heart seemed to have ceased to beat. Of course she did not realise it; it seemed to her still as though he would come back in a moment and put his arms round her and tell her that it was all a game—just to see if she had really cared. But the silence of the street and the house was terrible. It choked her, and she pulled at her frock to loosen the tightness about her throat. It was cruel of him to have gone away like that—but of course he would come back. Only why was that cold misery at her heart? Why did she feel as if some one had placed a hand on her and drawn all her life away, and left her with no emotion or feeling—only a dull, blank, despair, like a cold fog through which no sun shone?

For she was beginning to realise it slowly. He had gone away, after telling her, brutally, frankly, that he was tired of her—that he had, indeed, never really cared for her. That was it—he had never cared for her—all those things that he had promised in the summer had been false, words without any meaning. All that idyll had been hollow, a sham, and she had made it the centre of her world.

She got up from the table and swayed a little as she stood. She pressed her hands against her forehead as though she would drive into her brain the fact that there would be no one now—no one at all—it was all a lie, a lie, a lie!

The door opened softly and Mrs. Feverel stole in. "Dahlia—what has he done?"

She looked at her as though she could not see her.

"Oh, nothing," she said slowly. "He did nothing. Only it's all over—there is not going to be any more."

And then, as though the full realisation of it had only just been borne in upon her, she sat down at the table again and burst into passionate crying.

Mrs. Feverel watched her. "I knew it was coming, my dear—weeks ago. You know I told you, only you wouldn't listen. Lord! it was plain enough. He'd only been playing the same game as all the rest of them."

Dahlia dried her eyes fiercely. "I'm a fool to make so much of it," she said. "I wasn't good enough—he said—not good enough. His people wouldn't like it and the rest—Oh! I've been a fool, a fool!"

Her mood changed to anger again. Even now she did not grasp it fully, but he had insulted her. He had flung back in her face all that she had given him. Injured pride was at work now, and for a moment she hated him so that she could have killed him gladly had he been there. But it was no good—she could not think about it clearly; she was tired, terribly tired.

"I'm tired to death, mother," she said. "I can't think to-night."

She stumbled a little as she turned to the door.

"At least," said Mrs. Feverel, "there are the letters."

But Dahlia had scarcely heard.

"The letters?" she said.

"That he wrote in the summer. You have them safe enough?"

But the girl did not reply. She only climbed heavily up the dark stairs.

CHAPTER IV

Clare Trojan was having her breakfast in her own room. It was ten o'clock, and a glorious September morning, and the sparrows were twittering on the terrace outside as though they considered it highly improper for any one to have breakfast between four walls when Nature had provided such a splendid feast on the lawn.

Clare was reading a violent article in the National Review concerning the inadequacy of our present solution of the housing problem; but it did not interest her.

If the world had only been one large Trojan family there would have been no problem. The trouble was that there were Greeks. She did dimly realise their existence, but the very thought of them terrified her. Troy must be defended, and there were moments when Clare was afraid that its defenders were few; but she blinded herself to the dangers of attack. "There are no Greeks, there are no Greeks." Clare stood alone on the Trojan walls and defied that world of superstition and pagan creeds. With the armour of tradition and an implicit belief in the watchword of all true Trojan leaders, "Qui dort garde," she warded the sacred hearths; but there were moments when her eyes were opened and signs were revealed to her of another world—something in which Troy could have no place; and then she was afraid.

She was considering Harry, his coming, and his probable bearing on present conditions, and she knew that once again the Trojan walls were in danger. It seemed to her, as she sat there, cruelly unfair that the son of the House, the man who in a little while would stand before the world as the head of the Trojan tradition, should be the chief instrument in the attempted destruction of the same. She had not liked Harry in the old days. She had always, even as a girl, a very stern idea of the dignity of the House. Harry had never fulfilled this idea, had never even attempted to. He had been wild, careless, undisciplined, accompanying strange uncouth persons on strange uncouth adventures; he had been almost a byword in the place. No, she had not liked him; she had almost hated him at one time. And then after he had gone away she had deliberately forgotten him; she had erased his name from the fair sheet of the Trojan record, and had hoped that the House would never more be burdened by his undisciplined history. Then she had heard that there was a son and heir, and her one thought had been of capture, deliverance of the new son of the House from his father's influence. She was not deliberately cruel in her determination; she saw that the separation must hurt the father, but she herself was ready to make sacrifice for the good of the House and she expected the same self-denial in others. Harry made no difficulties. New Zealand was no place for a lonely widower to bring up his boy, and Robin was sent home. From that moment he was the centre of Clare's world; much self-denial can make a woman good, only maternity can make her divine. To bring the boy up for the House, to tutor him in all the little and big things that a Trojan must know and do, to fit him to take his place at the head of the family on a later day; all these things she laboured for, day and night without ceasing, and without divided interests. She loved the boy, too, passionately, with more than a mother's love, and now she looked back over what had been her life-work with pride and satisfaction. She had tried to forget Harry. She hoped, although she never dared to face the thought in her heart, that he would die there, away in that foreign country, without coming back to them again. Robin was hers now; she had educated him, loved him, scolded him—he was all hers, she would brook no division. Then, when she had heard that Harry was to come home, it had been at first more than she could bear. She had burst into wild incoherent protests; she had prayed that an accident might happen to him and that he might never reach home. And then the Trojan pride and restraint had come to her aid. She was ashamed, bewildered, that she could have sunk to such depths; she prepared to meet him calmly and quietly; she even hoped that, perhaps, he might be so changed that she would welcome him. And, after all, he would in a little time be head of the House. Robin, too, was strongly under her influence, and it was unlikely that he would leave her for a man whom he had never known, for whom he could not possibly care.

It was this older claim of hers with regard to Robin that did, she felt, so obviously strengthen her position, and now that Harry had really returned, she thought that her fears need not trouble her much longer—he did all the things that Robin disliked most. His boisterousness, heartiness, and good-fellowship, dislike of everyday conventionality, would all, she knew, count against him with Robin. She had seen him shrink on several occasions, and each time she had been triumphantly glad. For she was frightened, terribly frightened. Harry was threatening to take from her the one great thing around which her life was centred; if he robbed her of Robin he robbed her of everything, and she must fight to keep him. That it would come to a duel between them she had long foreseen, she had governed for so long that she would not easily yield her place now; but she had not known that she would feel as she did about Robin, she had not known that she would be jealous—jealous of every look and word and motion. She had never known what jealousy was before, but now in the silence of the golden, sunlit room, with only the twittering of the birds on the lawn to disturb her thoughts, she faced the facts honestly without shrinking, and she knew that she hated her brother. Oh! why couldn't he go back again to his sheep-shearing! Why had he come to disturb them! It was not his environment, it was not his life at all! She felt that they could never lead again that same quiet, ordered existence; like a gale of wind he had burst their doors and broken their windows, and now the house was open, desolate, to the world.

She went up to her father's room, as was her custom every morning after breakfast. He was lying at his open window, watching, with those strange, restless eyes of his, the great expanse of sea and sky stretching before him. His room was full of light and air. Its white walls and ceiling, great bowls of some of the last of the summer's roses, made it seem young and vigorous and alive. It was almost a shock to see that huddled, dying old man with his bent head and trembling hands—but his eyes were young, and his heart.

As she looked at him, she wondered why she had never really cared for him. At first she had been afraid; then, as she grew older and a passionate love for and pride in the family as a conservative and ancient institution developed in her, that fear became respect, and she looked up to her father from a distance, admiring his reserve and pride but never loving him; and now that respect had become pity, and above all a great longing that he might live for many, many years, securing the household gods from shame and tending the fire on the Trojan hearth. For at the moment of his death would come the crisis—the question of the new rule. At one time it had seemed certain that Robin would be king, with herself a very vigilant queen-regent. But now that was all changed. Harry had come home, and it was into his hands that the power would fall.

She had often wondered that she knew her father so little. He had always been difficult to understand; a man of two moods strongly opposed—strangely taciturn for days together, and then brilliantly conversational, amusing, and a splendid companion. She had never known which of these attitudes was the real one, and now that he was old she had abandoned all hope of ever answering the question. His moods were more strongly contrasted than ever. He often passed quickly from one to the other. If she had only known which was the real one; she felt at times that his garrulity was a blind—that he watched her almost satirically whilst he talked. She feared his silences terribly, and she used often to feel that a moment was approaching when he would reveal to her definitely and finally some plot that he had during those many watchful years been forming. She knew that he had never let her see his heart—he had never taken her into his confidence. She had tried to establish some more intimate relationship, but she had failed; and now, for many years, she had left it at that.

But she wanted to know what he thought of Harry. She had waited for a sign, but he had given none; and although she had watched him carefully she had discovered nothing. He had not mentioned his son—a stranger might have thought that he had not noticed him. But Clare knew him too well to doubt that he had come to some definite conclusion in the matter.

She bustled cheerfully about the room, humming a little tune and talking to him, lightly and with no apparent purpose. He watched the gulls fly past the open window, his eyes rested on a golden flash of sun that struck some shining roof in the Cove, but his mind was back in the early days when he had played his game with the best and had seen the bright side of the world.

"He was a rake, Jack Crayle"—he seemed scarcely conscious that Clare was in the room—"a rake but a good heart, and an amusing fellow too. I remember meeting old Rendle and Hawdon Sallust—Hawdon of the eighties, you know—not the old man—he kept at home—all three of them at White's, Rendle and Sallust and Crayle; Jack bet Rendle he wouldn't stop the next man he met in the street and claim him as an old friend and bring him in—and, by Jove, he took it and brought him in, too—sort of tramp chap he was, too—dirty, untidy fellow—but Rendle was game serious—by Gad, he was. Said he was an old friend that had fallen on evil times—gave him a drink and won the bet—'63 that was—the year Bailey won that polo match against old Tom Radley—all the town was talking of it. By Gad, he could ride, Bailey could. Why——"

"It's time for your medicine, father," said Clare, breaking ruthlessly in upon the reminiscences.

"Eh, dear, yes," he said, looking at her curiously. "You're never late, Clare, always up to time. Yes, yes, well, well; in '63 that was. I remember it like yesterday—old Tom—particular friend he was of mine then, although we broke afterwards—my fault too, probably, about a horse it was. I——"

But Clare gave him his medicine, first tying a napkin round his neck lest she should spill the drops. He looked at her, smiling, over the napkin.

"You were always a girl for method," he said again; "not like Harry."

She looked at him quickly, but could guess nothing; she was suddenly frightened, as she so often was when he laughed like that. She always expected that some announcement would follow. It was almost as if he had threatened her.

"Harry?" she said. "No. But he is very like he used to be in some ways. It is nice to have him back again—but—well, he will find Pendragon rather different from Auckland, I'm afraid."

Sir Jeremy said nothing. He lay there without moving; Clare untied the napkin, and put back the medicine, and wheeled the chair into a sunnier part of the room and away from the window.

"You must get on with Harry, Clare," he said suddenly, sharply.

"Why, yes," she answered, laughing a little uneasily. "Of course we get on. Only his way of looking at things was always a little different—even, perhaps, a little difficult to understand"; and then, after a little pause, "I am stupid, I know. It was always hard for me to see like other people."

But he was not listening to her. He was smiling at the sun, and the birds on the lawn, and the flashing gold of the distant sand.

"No, you never saw like Harry," he said at last. "You want to be old to understand," and he would say no more.

He talked to her no more that morning, and she was vaguely uneasy. What was he thinking about Harry, and how did his opinion influence the situation?

She fancied that she saw signs of rebellion. For many years he had allowed her to do what she would, and although she had sometimes wondered whether he was quite as passive as she had fancied, she had had no fear of any disturbance. Now there was something vaguely menacing in his very silences. And, in some undefined way, the pleasure that he took in the cries of birds, the plunge and chatter of the sea as it rose and fell on the southern shore, the glint of the sun on the gold and green distances of rock and moor was alarming. She herself did not understand those things; indeed, she scarcely saw them, and was inclined to despise any one who loved any unpractical beauty, anything that was not at least traditional. And now this was a bond between her father and Harry. They had both loved wild, uncivilised things, and it was this very trait in their character that had made division between them before. But now what had been in those early years the cause of trouble was their common ground of sympathy.

They shared some secret of which she knew nothing, and she was afraid lest Robin should learn it too.

She went about her housekeeping duties that morning with an uneasy mind. The discipline below stairs was excellent because she was feared. It was not that she was hasty-tempered or unjust; indeed the cook, who had been there for many years, said that she had never seen Miss Clare angry, and her justice was a thing to marvel at. She always gave people their due, and exactly their due; she never over-praised or blamed, and that was why people said that she was cold; it was also, incidentally, responsible for her excellent discipline.

She was, as Sir Jeremy had said, a woman of amazing method. But the attitude of her actual household helped her; they were all, by education and environment, Trojans. Whatever they had been before they entered service at "The Flutes"—Radicals, Socialists, Dissenters, or Tones—at the moment of passing the threshold they were transformed into Trojans. Other things fell from them like a mantle, and in their serious devotion to traditional Conservatism they were examples of the true spirit of Feudalism. Beldam, the butler, had long ago graduated as Professor in the system. Coming as page-boy in earlier years, he had acquired the by no means easy art of Trojan diplomacy. It was now his duty to overhaul, as it were, every servant that passed the gates; an overhauling, moreover, done seriously and with much searching of the heart. Were you a Trojan? That is, do you consider that you are exceptionally fortunate in being chosen to perform menial but necessary duties in the Trojan household? Will you spend the rest of your days, not only in performing your duties worthily, but also in preaching to a blind and misguided world the doctrine of Trojan perfection and superiority? If the answer were honestly affirmative, you were accepted; otherwise, you were expelled with a fortnight's wages and eternal contempt.

Even the scullerymaid was not spared, but had to pass an examination in rites and rituals so severe that one unfortunate, Annie Grace Marks, after Beldam had spoken to her severely for half-an-hour, burst out with an impetuous, "Thank Gawd, she was a Marks, which was as good as the High and Mighty any day of the week, and better, for there wasn't no pride in the Marks and never 'ad been."

She received her dismissal that same evening.

But the case of Annie Marks was an isolated one. Rebellion was very occasional, and, for the most, the servants stayed at "The Flutes"—partly because the pay was good, and partly because the very reiteration of Trojan supremacy gave them a feeling of elevation very pleasant to their pride. In accordance with all true feudal law, you lost your own sense of birth and ancestry and became in a moment a Trojan; for Smith, Jones, and Robinson this was very comforting.

So Clare had very little trouble, and this morning she was able to finish her duties speedily, and devote her whole attention to the crisis that threatened the family.

She decided to see Garrett, and made her way to his room. He was writing, and seemed disturbed by her entry. He had been working for some years on a book to be entitled, "Our Aristocracy: its Threatened Supremacy." He was still engaged on the preliminary chapter, "Some aspects of historical aristocracy," and it had developed into a somewhat minute account of Trojan past history. He had no expectations of ever concluding the work, but it gave him a pleasant sense of importance and seemed in some vague way to be of value to the Trojan family.

He was always happy when at work, although he effected very little; but, after all, the great stylists always worked slowly. His style was, it is true, somewhat commonplace; but his rather minute output allowed him to rank, in his own estimation, with Pater and Omar Khayyám, and disdain the voluminous facility of Thackeray and Dickens. He was, he felt, one of the "precious" writers, and so long as no one saw his work he was able both to comfort himself and to impress others with the illusion.

It was said vaguely in Pendragon that "Garrett Trojan was a clever fellow—was writing a book—said to be brilliant, of great promise—no, he hadn't seen it, but——" etc.

So Garrett looked at his sister a little resentfully.

"I hope it's important, Clare," he said, "because—well, you know, the morning's one's time for work, and once one gets off the track it's difficult to get back; not that I've done much, you know, only half a page—but this kind of thing can't move quickly."

"I'm sorry, Garrie," she answered, "but you've got to talk to me. There are things about which I want your advice."

She did not really want it; she had decided on her line of conduct, and nothing that he could say would alter her decision—but it flattered him, and she needed his help.

"Well, of course," he said, pushing his chair back and coming to the fire, "if it's anything I can do— What is it, Clare? Household or something in the town?"

"Oh, nothing," she laughed at him. "Don't be worried, Garrie; I know it's horrid to disturb you, and there's really nothing—only—well, after all, there is only us, isn't there? for acting together I mean—and I want to know what line you're going on."

"Oh! about Harry?" He looked at her sharply for a moment. "You know that I object to lines, Clare. They are dangerous things." He implied that he was above them. "Of course there are times when it is necessary to—well, to be decisive; but at present it seems to me that we must wait for the situation to develop—it will, of course."

"I knew that you would say that," she said impatiently. "But it won't do; the situation has developed. You always preferred to look on—it is, as you say, less dangerous; but here I must have your help. Harry has been back a week; he is, for you and me, unchanged. The situation, as far as we go, is the same as it was twenty years ago. He is not one of us, he never was, and, to do him justice, never pretended to be. We, or at any rate I, imagined that he would be different now, after all that time. He is exactly the same." She paused.

"Well?" he said. "All that for granted, it's true enough. What's the trouble?"

"Things aren't the same though, now. There is father, and Robin. Father has taken to Harry strongly. He told me so just now. And for Robin——"

"Scarcely captivated," said Garrett drily. "Have you seen them together? Hardly domestic——"

Then he looked at her again and laughed. "And that pleases you, Clare."

"Of course," she answered him firmly. "There is no good in hedging. He is no brother of ours, Garrett. He is, what is more important still, no Trojan, and after all family counts for something. We don't like him, Garrett. Why be sentimental about it? He will follow father—and it will be soon—après, le déluge. For ourselves, it does not matter. It is hard, of course, but we have had our time, and there are other things and places. It is about Robin. I cannot bear to think what it would mean if he were alone here with Harry, after all these years."

"He would not stay."

"You think that?" Clare said eagerly. "It is so hard to know. He is still only a boy. Of course Harry shocks him now, shocks everything—his sense of decency, his culture, his pride—but that will wear off; he will get used to it—and then——"

It had been inevitable that the discussion should come, and Garrett had been waiting. He had no intention of going to find her, he would wait until she came to him, but he had been anxious to know her opinion. For himself the possibility of Harry's return had never presented itself. After all those years he would surely remain where he was. In yielding his son he had seemed to abandon all claim to any rights of inheritance, and Garrett had thought of him as one comfortably dead. He had contemplated his own ultimate succession with the pleasurable certainty that it was absolutely the right thing. In his love for a rather superficial tradition he was a perfect Trojan, and might be relied on to continue existing conditions without any attempt at radical changes. Clare, too, would be of great use.

But in a moment what had been, in his mind, certainty was changed into impossibility; instead of a certain successor he had become some one whose very existence was imperilled—his existence, that is, on the only terms that were in the least comfortable. Everything that made life worth living was threatened. Not that his brother would turn him out; he granted Harry the very un-Trojan virtues of generosity and affection for humanity in general—a rather foolish, gregarious open-handedness opposed obviously to all decent economy. But Harry would keep him—and the very thought stirred Garrett to a degree of anger that his sluggish nature seldom permitted him. Kept! and by Harry! Harry the outlaw! Harry the rebel! Harry the Greek! Garrett scarcely loved his brother when he thought of it.

But it was necessary that some line of action should be adopted, and he was glad that Clare had taken the first step.

"You don't think," he said doubtfully, "that he could be induced to go back?"

"What!" cried Clare, "after these years and the way he has waited! Why, remember that first evening! He will never leave this again. He has been dreaming about it too long!"

"I don't know," said Garrett. "He'll be at loggerheads with the town very soon. He has been saying curious things to a good many people. He objects to all improvement and says so. The place will soon be too hot for him."

But Clare shook her head. "No," she said. "He will soon find out about things—and then, in a little, when he takes father's place, what people think odd and unpleasant now will be original and strong. Besides, he would never go, whatever might happen, because of Robin."

"Ah, yes, there is Robin. It will be curious to watch developments there. Randal comes to-day, doesn't he?"

"Yes, this afternoon. A most delightful boy. I'm afraid that he may find Harry tiresome."

"We must wait," Garrett said finally; "in a week's time we shall see better. But, Clare, don't be rash. There is father—and, besides, it will scarcely help Robin."

"Oh! no melodrama," she said, laughing and moving towards the door. "Only, we understand each other, Garrie. Things won't do as they are—or, as they promise to be."

Garrett returned, with a sigh of relief, to his papers.

For Harry the week had been a series of bitter disappointments. He woke gradually from his dreams and saw that everything was changed. He was in a new world and he was out of place. Those dreams had been coloured, fantastically, beautifully. In the white pebbles, the golden sand, the curling grey smoke of the Cove, he had formed pictures that had lightened many dreary and lonely hours in Auckland. He was to come back; away from that huge unwieldy life in which comfort had no place and rest was impossible, back to all the old things, the wonderful glorious things that meant home and tradition and, above all, love. He was a sentimentalist, he knew that now. It had not been so in those old days; the life had been too adventurous and exciting, and he had despised the quiet comforts of a stay-at-home existence. But now he knew its value; he would come home and take his place as head of the family, as father, as citizen—he had learnt his lesson, and at last it was time for the reward.

But now that he had come home he found that the lesson was not learnt, or, perhaps, that the learning had been wasted; he must begin all over again. Garrett and Clare had not changed; they had made no advances and had shown him quite plainly, in the courteous Trojan fashion, that they considered his presence an intrusion, that they had no place in their ranks that he could fill. He was, he saw it plainly, no more in line with them than he had been twenty years before. Indeed, matters were worse. There was no possibility of agreement—they were poles apart.

With the town, too, he was an "outsider." The men at the Club thought him a bore—a person of strange enthusiasms and alarming heresies. By the ladies he was considered rough: as Mrs. le Terry had put it to Miss Ponsonby, he was a kind of too terrible bushranger without the romance! He was gauche, he knew, and he hated the tea-parties. They talked about things of which he knew nothing; he was too sincere to cover his convictions with the fatuous chatter that passed, in Fallacy Street society, for brilliant wit. That it was fatuous he was convinced, but his conviction made matters no easier for him.

But his attitude to the town had been, it must be confessed, from the very first a challenge. He had expected things that were not there; he had thought that his dreams were realities, and when he had demanded golden colours and had been shown stuff of sombre grey, there had been wild rebellion and impatient discontent with the world. He had thought Pendragon amazing in its utter disregard of the things that were to him necessities, but he had forgotten that he himself despised so completely things that were to Pendragon essentials. He had asked for beauty and they had given him an Esplanade; he had searched for romance and had discovered the new hotel; he dreamed of the sand and blue water of the Cove and had awaked to find the place despised and contemned—a site for future boarding-houses.

The town had thought him at first entertaining; they had made allowances for a certain rather picturesque absurdity consequent on backwoods and the friendship of Maories—men had laughed at the Club and detailed Harry Trojan's latest with added circumstances and incident, and for a while this was amusing. But his vehemence knew no pause, and he stated his disgust at the practical spirit of the new Pendragon with what seemed to the choice spirits at the Club effrontery. They smiled and then they sneered, and at last they left him alone.

So Harry found himself, at the end of the first week after his return, alone in Pendragon.

He had not, perhaps, cared for their rejection. He had come, like Gottwalt in Flegejahre, "loving every dog, and wishing that every dog should love him"—but he had seen, at once, that his way must be apart from theirs, and in that knowledge he had tried to find the comfort of a minority certain of its own strength and disdainful of common opinion. He had marvelled at their narrow vision and was unaware that his own point of view was equally narrow.

And, after all, there was Robin. Robin and he would defy Pendragon and laugh at its stupid little theories and short-sighted plans. And then, slowly, irresistibly, he had seen that he was alone—that Robin was on the side of Pendragon. He refused to admit it even now, and told himself again and again that the boy was naturally a little awkward at first—careless perhaps—certainly constrained. But gradually a wall had been built up between them; they were greater strangers now than they had been on that first evening of the return. Ah! how he had tried! He had thought that, perhaps, the boy hated sentiment and he had held himself back, watching eagerly for any sign of affection, ready humbly to take part in anything, to help in any difficulty, to laugh, to sympathise, to take his place as he had been waiting to do for so many years.

But Robin had made no advances, showed no sign. He had almost repulsed him—had at least been absolutely indifferent. They had had a walk together, and Harry had tried his best—but the attempt had been obvious, and at last there had come a terrible silence; they had walked back through the streets of Pendragon without a word.

Everything that Harry had said had been unfortunate. He had praised the Cove enthusiastically, and Robin had been contemptuous. He had never heard of Pater and had confounded Ibsen with Jerome K. Jerome. He had praised cricket and met with no reply. Twice he had seen Robin's mouth curl contemptuously, and it had cut him to the heart.

Poor Harry! he was very lonely. During the last two days he had been down in the Cove; he had found his way into the little inn and got in touch with some of the fishermen. But they scarcely solaced his loneliness. He had met Mary Bethel on the downs, and for a moment they had talked. There was no stiffness there; she had looked at him simply as a friend, with no hostility, and he had been grateful.

At last he had begun to look forward to the coming of Robin's friend, Randal. He was, evidently, a person to whom Robin looked up with great admiration. Perhaps he would form in some way a link, would understand the difficulties of both, and would help them. Harry waited, eagerly, and formed a picture of Randal in his mind that gave him much encouragement.

He was in his room now; it was half-past four, and the carriage had just passed up the drive. He looked anxiously at his ties and hesitated between light green, brown, and black. He had learnt the importance of these things in his son's eyes. He was going next week to London to buy clothes; meanwhile he must not offend their sense of decency, and he hesitated in front of his tie-box like a girl before her first dance. The green was terribly light. It was a good tie, but perhaps not quite the thing. Nothing seemed to go properly with his blue suit—the brown was dull and uninteresting—it lacked character; any one might have worn it, and he flung it back almost scornfully into the box. The black was really best, but how dismal! He seemed to see all his miserable loneliness and disappointment in its dark, sombre colour. No, that would never do! He must be bright, amusing, cheerful—anything but dull and dismal. So he put on the green again, and went down to the drawing-room. Randal was a young man of twenty-four—dark, tall, and slight, with a rather weary look in the eyes, as of one who had discovered the hollow mockery of the world and wondered at the pleasures of simple people. He was perfectly dressed, and had arrived, after much thought and a University education, at that excellent result when everything is right, as it were, by accident—as though no thought had been taken at all. As soon as a man appears to have laboured for effect, then he is badly dressed. Randal was good-looking. He had very dark eyes and thin, rather curling lips, and hair brushed straight back from his forehead.

The room was in twilight. It was Clare's morning-room, chosen because it was cosy and favoured intimacy. She was fond of Randal and liked to mother him; she also respected his opinions. The windows looked over the sea and the blinds were not drawn. The twilight, like a floating veil, hovered over sea and land; the last faint colours of the sunset, gold and rose and grey, trembled over the town.

Harry was introduced. Randal smiled, but his hand was limp; Harry felt a little ashamed of his own hearty grasp and wished that he had been less effusive. Randal's suit was dark blue and he wore a black tie; Harry became suddenly conscious of his daring green and, taking his tea, went and sat in the window and watched the town. The first white colours of the young moon, slipping from the rosy-grey cloud, touched faintly the towers of the ruined church on the moor; he fancied that he could just see the four stones shining darkly grey against the horizon, but it was difficult to tell in that mysterious half-light. Robin was sitting under the lamp by the door. The light caught his hair, but his face was in shadow. Harry watched him eagerly, hungrily. Oh! how he loved him, his son!

Randal was discussing some people with whom he had been staying—a little languidly and without any very active interest. "Rather a nice girl, though," he said. "Only such a dreadful mother. Young Page-Rellison would have had a shot, I do believe, if it hadn't been for the mother—wore a wig and talked Cockney, and fairly grabbed the shekels in bridge."

"And what about the book?" Clare asked.

"Oh! going on," said Randal. "I showed Cressel a chapter the other day—you know the New Argus man; and he was very nice about it. Of course, some of the older men won't like it, you know. It fairly goes for their methods, and I flatter myself hits them pretty hard once or twice. You know, Miss Trojan, it's the young school you've got to look to nowadays; it's no use going back to those mid-Victorians—all very well for the schoolroom—cause and effect and all that kind of thing—but we must look ahead—be modern and you will be progressive, Miss Trojan."

"That's just what I'm always saying, Mr. Randal," said Clare, smiling. "We're fighting a regular battle over it down here, but I think we will win the day."

Randal turned to Harry. "And you, sir," he said, "are with us, too?"

Harry laughed. He knew that Robin was looking at him. "I have been away," he said, "and perhaps I have been a little surprised at the strides that things have made. Twenty years is a long time, and I was romantic and perhaps foolish enough to expect that Pendragon would be very much the same when I came back. It has changed greatly, and I am a little disappointed."

Clare looked up. "My brother has lost touch a little, Mr. Randal," she said, "and I don't think quite sees what is good for the place—indeed, necessary. At any rate, he scarcely thinks with us."

"With us." There was emphasis on the word. That meant Robin too. Randal glanced at him for a moment and then he turned to Robin—father and son! A swift drawing of contrasts, perhaps with an inevitable conclusion in favour of his own kind. It was suddenly as though the elder man was shut out of the conversation; they had, in a moment, forgotten his very presence. He sat in the dusk by the window, his head in his hands, and terrible loneliness at his heart; it hurt as he had never known before that anything could hurt. He had never known that he was sensitive; in Auckland it had not been so. He had never felt things then, and had a little despised people that had minded. But there had been ever, in the back of his mind, the thought of those days that were coming when, with his son at his side, he could face all things. Well, now he had his son—there, with him in the room. The irony of it made him clench his hands, there in the dark, whilst they talked in the lighted room behind him.

"Oh! King's is going to pot," Randal was saying. "I was down in the Mays and they were actually running with the boats—they seemed quite keen on going up. The decent men seem to have all gone."

Robin was paying very little attention. He was looking worried, and Clare watched him a little anxiously. "I hope you will be able to stay with us some days, Mr. Randal," she said. "There are several new people in Pendragon whom I should like you to meet."

Randal was charmed. He would love to stop, but he must get back to London almost immediately. He was going over to Germany next week and there were many arrangements to be made.

"Germany!" It was Robin who spoke, but the voice was not his usual one. It was alive, vibrating, startling. "Germany! By Jove! Randal—are you really going?"

"Why, of course," a little wearily; "I have been before, you know. Rather a bore, but the Rainers—you remember them, Miss Trojan—are going over to the Beethoven Festival at Bonn and are keen on my going with them. I wasn't especially anxious, but one must do these things, you know."

"Robin was there a year ago—Germany, I mean—and loved it. Didn't you, Robin?"

"Germany? It was Paradise, Heaven—what you will. Rügen, the Harz, Heidelberg, Worms——" He stopped and his voice broke. "I'm a little absurd about it still," he said, as though in apology for such unnecessary enthusiasm.

"Oh! you're young, Robin," said Randal, laughing. "When you've seen as much as I have you'll be blasé. Not that one ought to be, but Germany—well, it hardly lasts, I think. Rügen—why, it rained and there were mists round the Studenkammer, and how those people eat at the Jagdschloss! Heidelberg! picture postcards and shocking hotels—Oh! No, Robin, you'll see all that later. I wish you were going instead of me, though."

Harry had looked up at the sound of Robin's voice. It had been a new note. There had been an eagerness, an enthusiasm, that meant life and something genuine.

Hope that had been slowly dying revived again. If Robin really cared for Germany like that, then they had something in common. With that spark a fire might be kindled. A red-gold haze as of fire burnt in the night sky, over the town. Stars danced overhead, a little wind, beating fitfully at the window, seemed to carry the light of the moon in its tempestuous track, blowing it lightly in silver mists and clouds over the moor. The Wise Men were there, strong and dark and sombre, watching over the lighted town and listening patiently to the ripple and murmur and life of the sea at their feet. In the little inn at the Cove men were sitting over the roaring fire, telling tales—strange, weird stories of a life that these others did not know. Harry had heard them when he was a boy—those stories—and he had felt the spell and the magic. There had been life in them and romance.

Perhaps they were there again to-night, just as they had been twenty years before. The stars called to him, the lighted town, the dusky, softly breathing sea, the loneliness of the moor. He must get out and away. He must have sympathy and warmth and friendship; he had come back to his own people with open arms and they had no place for him. His own son had repulsed him. But Cornwall, the country of his dreams, the mother of his faith, the guardian of his honour, was there—the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. He would search for her and would find her—even though it were on the red-brick floor of the tavern in the Cove.

He turned round and found that the room was empty. They had forgotten him and left him—without a word. The light of the lamp caught the silver of the tea-things, and flashed and sparkled like a flame.

Harry Trojan softly opened the door, passed into the dim twilight of the hall, picked up his hat, and stepped into the garden.

CHAPTER V

As he felt the crunch of the gravel beneath his feet he was possessed with the spirit of adventure. The dark house behind him had been holding him captive. It had held him against his will, imprisoning him, tormenting him, and the tortures that he had endured were many and severe. He had not known that he could have felt it so much—that absolute rejection of him by everything in which he had trusted; but he would mind these things no longer—he would even try not to mind Robin! That would be hard, and as he thought of it even now for a moment tears had filled his eyes. That, however, was cowardice. He must fling away the hopes of twenty years and start afresh, with the knowledge won of his experience and the strength that he had snatched from his wounds.

And after all a man was a fool to mope and whine when that wind from the sea was beating in his ears and the sea scents of clover and poppies and salt stinging foam were brought to his nostrils, and the trees rustled like the beating of birds' wings in the velvety star-lighted sky.

A garden was wonderful at night—a place of strange silences and yet stranger sound: trees darkly guarding mysterious paths that ran into caverns of darkness; the scents of flowers rising from damp earth heavy with dew; flowers that were weary with the dust and noise of the day and slept gently, gratefully, with their heads drooping to the soil, their petals closed by the tender hands of the spirits of the garden. The night-sounds were strangely musical. Cries that were discordant in the day mingled now with the running of distant water, the last notes of some bird before it slept, the measured harmony of a far-away bell, the gentle rustle of some arrival in the thickets; the voice that could not be heard in the noisy chatter of the day rose softly now in a little song of the night and the dark trees and the silver firelight of the stars.

And it was all very romantic, of course. Harry Trojan had flung his cares behind him and stepped over the soft turf of the lawns, a free adventurer. It was not really very late, and there was an hour before dinner; but he was not sure that he minded about that—they would be glad to dine without him. There crossed his mind the memory of a night in New Zealand. He had been walking down to the harbour in Auckland, and the moon had shone in the crooked water-side streets, its white, cold light crossed with dark black shadows of roofs and gables. Suddenly a woman's voice called for help across the silence, and he had turned and listened. It had called again, and, thinking that he might help some one in distress, he had burst a dark, silent door, stumbled up crooked wooden stairs, and entered an empty room. As he passed the door there was a sound of skirts, and a door at the other end of the room had closed. There was no one there, only a candle guttering on the table, the remains of a meal, a woman's hat on the back of a chair; he had waited for some time in silence, he had called and asked if there was any one there, he had tried the farther door and found it shut—and so, cursing himself for a fool, he had passed down into the street again and the episode had ended. There was really nothing in it—nothing at all; but it was the atmosphere, the atmosphere of romantic adventure shot suddenly across a rather drab and colourless existence, and he had liked to dwell on the possibilities of the affair and ask himself about it. Who was the woman, and why had she cried out? Why was there no one in the room? And why had no one answered him?

He did not know and really he did not care, and, indeed, it was better that the affair should be left in vague and incomplete outline. It was probably commonplace enough, had one only known, and sordid too, perhaps. But to-night was just such a night as that other. He would go to the Cove and find his romance where he had left it twenty years ago. It was the hour in Pendragon when shops are closing and young men and maidens walk out. There were a great many people in the street; girls with white, tired faces, young men with bright ties and a self-assertive air—a type of person new to Pendragon since Harry's day. The young man who served you respectfully, almost timidly, behind the counter was now self-assertive, taking the middle of the street with a flourish of his cane. Fragments of conversation came to Harry's ears—

"Mother being out I thought as 'ow I might venture—not but what she'd kick up a rare old fuss——"

"So I told 'er it weren't no business of 'ers and the sooner she caught on to the idea the better for all parties, seein' as 'ow——"

"Well, I never did! and you told 'im that, did yer? I always said you'd some pluck if you really wanted to——"

A gramophone from an open window up the street shrieked the alluring refrain of "She's a different girl again," and a man who had established himself at the corner under the protecting glare of two hissing gas-jets urged on the company present an immediate acceptance of his stupendous offer. "Gold watches for 'alf a crown—positively for one evening in order to clear—all above board. Solid gold and cheap at a sovereign."

The plunge into the cool depths of the winding little path that led down to the Cove was delicious. Oh! the contrast of it! The noise and ugly self-assertion of the town, flinging its gas-jets against the moon and covering the roll of the sea with the shriek of the gramophone. He crossed through the turnstile at the bend of the road and passed up the hill that led to the Cove. At a bend the view of the sea came to him, the white moonlight lying, a path of dancing shining silver, on the grey sweep of the sea. A wind was blowing, turning the grey into sudden points of white—like ghostly hands rising for a moment suddenly from immensity and then sinking silently again, their prayers unanswered.

As he passed up the hill he was aware of something pattering beside him; at first it was a little uncanny in that dim, uncertain light, and he stopped and bent down to the road. It was a dog, a fox-terrier of a kind, dirty, and even in that light most obviously a mongrel. But it jumped up at him and put its paws on his knee.

"Well, company's company," he said with a laugh. "I don't know where you've sprung from, but we'll travel together for a bit." The dog ran up the hill, and for a moment stood out against the moon—a shaggy, disreputable dog with a humorous stump of a tail. He stood there with one ear flapping back and the other cocked up—a most ridiculous figure.

Harry laughed again and the dog barked; they walked down the hill together.

The Cove was dark, but from behind shuttered windows lamps twinkled mysteriously, and the red glow from the inn flung a circle of light down the little cobbled street. The beat of the sea came solemnly like the tramp of invisible armies from the distance. There was no other sound save the tremble of the wind in the trees.

Harry pushed open the door of the inn and entered, followed by the dog. The place was the same; nothing had been changed. There was the old wooden gallery where the fiddle had played such merry tunes. The rough uneven floor had the same holes, the same hills and dales. The great settle by the fire was marked, as in former years, with mysterious crosses and initials cut by jack-knives in olden days. The two lamps shone in their accustomed places—one over the fire, another by the window. The door leading to the bar was half open, and in the distance voices could be heard, but the room itself seemed to be empty.

A great fire leapt in the fireplace and the gold light of it danced on the red-brick floor. The peculiar scent as of tobacco and ale and the salt of the sea, and, faintly, the breath of mignonette and geraniums, struck out the long intervals since Harry had been there before. Twenty years ago he had breathed the same air; and now he was back there again and nothing was changed. The dog had run to the fire and sat in front of it now, wagging his stump of a tail, his ear cocked. Harry laughed and sat down in the settle; the burden of the last week was flung off and he was a free man.

A long, lean man with a straggling beard stood in the doorway and watched him; then he came forward. "Mr. Harry," he said, and held out his hand.

Harry started up. "I'm sorry," he said, stammering, "I don't remember."

"We were wonderin'," said the long, thin man slowly, "when you was comin' down. Not that you'd remember faces—that's not to be expected—especially in foreign parts which is confusing and difficult for a man—but I'm Bill Tregarvis what have had you out fishin' many's the time—not that you'd remember faces," he said again, looking a little timidly at him.

But he did! Harry remembered him perfectly! Bill Tregarvis! Why, of course—many was the time they had seen life together—he had had a wife and two boys.

Harry wrung his hand and laughed.

"Remember, Bill! Why, of course! It was only for a moment. I had got the face all right but not the name. Yes, I have, as a matter of fact, come before, but there were things that have made it difficult at first, and of course there was a lot to do up there. But it's good to be down here! The other place is changed; I had been a bit disappointed, but here it is just the same—the same old lights and smells and sea, and the same old friends——"

"Yer think that?" Tregarvis looked at him. "Because we'd been fearing that all your travelling and sight-seeing might have harmed you—that you'd be thinking a bit like the folk up-along with their cars and gas and filth. Aye, it's a changed world up there, Mr. Harry; but down-along there's no difference. It's the sea keeps us steady."

And then they talked about the old adventurous days when Harry had been eighteen and the world had been a very wonderful place: the herring fishing, the bathing, the adventures on the moor, the tales at night by candlelight, the fun of it all. The room began to fill, and one after another men came forward and claimed friendship on the score of old days and perils shared. They received him quite simply—he was "Mr. Harry," but still one of themselves, taking his place with them, telling tales and hearing them in return.

There were nine or ten of them, and a wild company they made, crowding round the fire, with the flames leaping and flinging gigantic shadows on the walls. The landlord, a short, ruddy-faced man with white hair and a merry twinkle of the eye, was one of the best men that Harry had ever known.

He was a man whose modesty was only equalled by his charity; a man of great humour, wide knowledge of the most varied subjects, and above all a passionate faith in the country of his birth, Cornwall. He was, like most Cornishmen, superstitious, but his belief in Nature as a wise and beneficent mother, stern but never unjust, controlled his will and justified his actions. In those early days Harry had worshipped him with that whole-hearted adoration bestowed at times by young hero-worshippers on those that have travelled a little way along the path and have learnt their lesson wisely. Tony Newsome's influence had done more for Harry in those early years than he had realised, but he knew now what he owed to him as he sat by his side and recalled those other days. They had written once or twice, but Tony was no correspondent and hated to have a pen between his fingers.

"Drive a horse, pull a boat, shoot a gun, mind a net—but God help me if I write," he had said. Not that he objected to books; he had read a good deal and cared for it—but "God's air in the day and a merry fire at night leaves little room for pen and ink" was his justification.

He treated Harry now as his boy of twenty years ago, and laughed at him and scolded him as of old. He did not question him very closely on the incidents of those twenty years, and indeed, with them all, Harry noticed that there was very little curiosity as to those other countries. They welcomed him quietly, simply. They were glad that he was there again, sitting with them, taking his place naturally and easily—and again the twenty years seemed as nothing.

He sat with the dog at his feet. Newsome's hand was on his knee, and every once and again he gave a smothered chuckle. "I knew you'd come back, Mr. Harry," he said. "I just waited. Once the sea has got hold of you it doesn't loosen its grip so quick. I knew you'd come back."

They told wild stories as they had been telling them for many years at the same hour in the same place—strange things seen at sea, the lights and mists of the moor, survivals of smuggling days and fights on the beach under the moon; and it always was the sea. They might leave it for a moment perhaps, but they came back to it—the terror of it, the joy of it, the cruelty of it; the mistress that held them chained, that called their children and would not be denied, the god that they served.

They spoke of her softly with lowered voices and a strange reverence. They had learnt her moods and her dangers; they knew that she could caress them, and then, of a sudden, strike them down—but they loved her.

And she had claimed Harry again. Everything for which he had been longing during that past week had come to him at last; their friendship, their faith in an old god, and above all that sense of a great adventure, for the spirit of which he had so diligently been searching. "Up-along" life was an affair of measured rules and things foreseen. "Down-along" it was a game of unending surprises and a gossamer web shot with the golden light of romance. High-falutin perhaps, but to Harry, as he sat before the fire with the strange dog and those ten wild men, words and pictures came too speedily to admit of a sense of the absurd.

An old man, with a long white beard and a shaking hand, knew strange tales of the moor. When the mists creep up and blot out the land, then the four grey stones take life and are the giants of old, and strange sacrifices are grimly performed. Talse Carlyon had seen things late on a moonlit night with the mists swimming white and silvery-grey over the moor. He had lost his way and had met a man of mighty size who had led him by the hand. There had been spirits about, and at the foot of the grey stone a pool of blood—he had never been the same man since.

"There are spirits and spirits," said the old man solemnly, "and there 'm some good and some bad, for the proper edification of us mortals, and, for my part, it's not for the like of us to meddle."

He stroked his beard—a very gloomy old man with a blind eye. Harry remembered that he had had a wife twenty years before, so he inquired about her.

"Dead," said the old man fiercely, "dead—and, thank God, she went out like a candle."

He muttered this so fiercely that Harry said no more, and the white beard shone in the light of the fire, and his blind eye opened and shut like a box, and his wrinkled hand shook on his knee. The fishing had been bad of late, and here again they spoke as if some personal power had been at work. There were few there who had not lost some one during the years that they had served her, and the memory of what this had been and the foreshadowing of the dangerous future hung over them in the room. Songs were sung, jokes were made, but they were the songs and laughter of men on guard, with the enemy to be encountered, perhaps, in the morning.

Harry sat in his corner of the great seat, watching the leaping of the flames, his hand on Newsome's shoulder, listening to the murmuring voices at his side. He scarcely knew whether he were awake or sleeping; their laughter came to him dimly, and it seemed that he was alone there with only Newsome by his side and the dog sleeping at his feet. The tobacco smoke hung in grey-blue wreaths above his head and the gold light of the two lamps shone mistily, without shape or form. Perhaps it was really a dream. The old man with the white beard and the blind eye was sleeping, his head on his breast. A man with a vacant expression was telling a tale, heavily, slowly, gazing at the fire. The others were not listening—or at any rate not obviously so. They, too, gazed at the fire—it had, as it were, become personal and mesmerised the room. Perhaps it was a dream. He would wake and find himself at "The Flutes." There would be Clare and Garrett and—Robin! He would put all that away now; he would forget it for a moment, at least. He had failed them; they had not wanted him and had told him so,—but here they had known him and loved him; they had welcomed him back as though there had been no intervening space of years. They at least had known what life was. They had not played with it, like those others. They had not surrounded themselves with barricades of artificiality, and glanced through distorting mirrors at their own exaggerated reflection; they had seen life simply, fearlessly, accepting their peril like men and enjoying their fate with the greatness of soul that simplicity had given them. They were not like those others; those on the hill had invaded the sea with noisy clamour, had greeted her familiarly and offered her bathing-machines and boarding-houses; these others had reverenced her and learnt to know her, alone on the downs in the first grey of the dawn, or secretly, when the breakers had rolled in over the sand, carrying with them the red and gold of some gorgeous sunset.

He contrasted them in his mind—the Trojans and the Greeks. He turned round a little in his seat and listened to the story: "It were a man—a strange man with horns and hoofs, so he said—and a merry, deceiving eye; but he couldn't see him clear because of the mist that hung there, with the moon pushing through like a candle, he said. The man was laughing to himself and playing with leaves that danced at his feet under the wind. It can't have been far from the town, because Joe heard St. Elmo's bell ringin' and he could hear the sea quite plain. He ..."

The voice seemed to trail off again into the distance; Harry's thoughts were with his future. What was he to do? It seemed to him that his crisis had come and was now facing him. Should he stay or should he flee? Why should he not escape—away into the country, where he could live his life without fear, where there would be no contempt, no hampering family traditions? Should he stay and wait while Robin learnt to hate him? At the thought his face grew white and he clenched his hands. Robin ... Robin ... Robin ... it always came back to that—and there seemed no answer. That dream of love between father and son, the dream that he had cherished for twenty years, was shattered, and the bubble had burst....

"So Joe said he didn't know but he thought it was to the left and down through the Cove—to the old church he meant; and the man laughed and danced with the leaves through the mist; and once Joe thought he was gone, and there he was back again, laughin'."

No, he would face it. He would take his place as he had intended—he would show them of what stuff he was made—and Robin would see, at last. The boy was young, it would of course take time——

The door of the inn opened and some one came in. The lamps flared in the wind, and there was a cry from the fireplace. "Mr. Bethel! Well, I'm right glad!"

Harry started. Bethel—that had been the name of his friend—the girl who had come to tea. The new-comer was a large man, over six feet in height, and correspondingly broad. His head was bare, and his hair was a little long and curly. His eyes were blue and twinkled, and his face was pleasantly humorous and, in the mouth and chin, strong and determined. He wore a grey flannel suit with a flannel collar, and he was smoking a pipe of great size. Newsome, starting to his feet, went forward to meet him. Bethel came to the fire and talked to them all; there was obviously a free companionship between them that told of long acquaintance. He was introduced to Harry.

"I've heard of you, Mr. Trojan," he said, "and have been expecting to meet you. I think that we have interests in common—at least an affection for Cornwall."

Harry liked him. He looked at him frankly between the eyes—there was no hesitation or disguise; there had been no barrier or division; and Harry was grateful.

Bethel sat down by the fire, and a discussion followed about matters of which Harry knew nothing. There was talk of the fishing prospects, which were bad; a gloom fell upon them all, and they cursed the new Pendragon—the race had grown too fast for them and competition was too keen. But Harry noticed that they did not yet seem to have heard of the proposed destruction of the Cove. Then he got up to go. They asked him to come again, and he promised that he would. Bethel rose too.

"If you don't object, Mr. Trojan," he said, "I'll make one with you. I had only looked in for a moment and had never intended to stay. I was on my way back to the town."

They went out into the street together, and Harry shivered for a moment as the wind from the sea met them.

"Ah, that's good," Bethel said; "your fires are well enough, but that wind is worth a bag of gold."

They walked for a little in silence, and then Harry said: "Those are a fine lot of men. They know what life really is."

Bethel laughed. "I know what you feel about them. You are glad that there's no change. Twenty years has made little difference there. It is twenty years, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Harry. "One thinks that it is nothing until one comes back, and then one thinks that it's more than it really is."

"Yes, you're disappointed," Bethel said. "I know. Pendragon has become popular, and to your mind that has destroyed its beauty—or, at any rate, some of it."

"Well, I hate it," Harry said fiercely, "all this noise and show. Why couldn't they have left Pendragon alone? I don't hate it for big places that are, as it were, in the line of march. I suppose that they must move with the day. That is inevitable. But Pendragon! Why—when I was a boy, it was simply a little town by the sea. No one thought about it or worried about it: it was a place wonderfully quiet and simple. It was too quiet for me then; I should worship it now. But I have come back and it has no room for me."

"I haven't known it as long as you," Bethel answered, "but I confess that the very charm of it lies in its contrast. It is invasion, if you like, but for that very reason exciting—two forces at work and a battle in progress."

"With no doubt as to the ultimate victory," said Harry gloomily. "Yes, I see what you mean by the contrast. But I cannot stand there and see them dispassionately—you see I am bound up with so much of it. Those men to-night were my friends when I was a boy. Newsome is the best man that I have ever known, and there is the place; I love every stone of it, and they would pull it down."

They had left the Cove and were pressing up a steep path to the moor. The moon was struggling through a bank of clouds; the wind was whistling over their heads.

Bethel suddenly stopped and turned towards Harry. "Mr. Trojan," he said, "I'm going to be impulsive and perhaps imprudent. There's nothing an Englishman fears so much as impulse, and he is terribly ashamed of imprudence. But, after all, there is no time to waste, and if you think me impertinent you have only to say so, and the matter ends."

Harry laughed. "I am delighted," he began, but the other stopped him.

"No, wait a moment. You don't know. I'm afraid you'll think that I'm absurd—most people will tell you that I am worse. I want you to try to be a friend of mine, at any rate to give me a chance. I scarcely know you—you don't know me at all—but; one goes on first impressions, and I believe that you would understand a little better than most of these people here—for one thing you have gone farther and seen more——"

There was a little pause. Harry was surprised. Here was what he had been wanting—friendship; a week ago he would have seized it with both hands; now he was a little distrustful; a week ago it would have been natural, delightful; now it was unusual, even a little absurd.

"I should be very glad," he said gravely. "I—scarcely——"

"Oh," Bethel broke in, "we shall come together naturally—there's no fear of that. I could see at once that you know the mysteries of this place just as I do. Those others here are blind. I've been waiting for some one who would understand. But I don't want you to listen to those other people about me; they will tell you a good deal—and most of it's true. I don't blame 'em, but I'm curiously anxious for you not to think with them. It's ridiculous, I know, when I had never seen you before. If you only knew how long I'd been waiting—to talk to some one—about—all this."

He waved his hand and they stopped. They were standing on the moor. Above their head mighty grey clouds were driving like fleets before the wind, and the moon, a cold, lifeless thing, a moon of chiselled marble, appeared, and then, as though frightened at the wild flight of the clouds, vanished. The sea, pearl grey, lay like mist on the horizon, and its voice was gentle and tired, as though it were slowly dying into sleep. They were near the Four Stones—gaunt, grey, and old. The dog had followed Harry from the inn and now ran, a white shadow, in front of him.

"Let me tell you," Bethel said, "about myself. You know I was born in London—the son of a doctor with a very considerable practice. I received an excellent education, Rugby and Cambridge, and was trained for the law. I was, I believe, a rather ordinary person with a rather more than ordinary power of concentration, and I got on. I built up a business and was extremely and very conventionally happy. I married and we had a little girl. And then, one summer, we came down to Cornwall for our holiday. It was St. Ives. I remember that first morning as though it were yesterday. It was grey with the sea flinging great breakers. There was a smell of clover and cornflowers in the air, and great sheets of flaming poppies in the cornfields. But there was more than that. It was Cornwall, something magical, and that strange sense of old history and customs that you get nowhere else in quite the same way. Ah! but why analyse it?—you know as well as I do what I mean. A new man was born in me that day. I had been sociable and fond of little quite ordinary pleasures that came my way, now I wanted to be alone. Their conversation worried me; it seemed to be pointless and concerned with things that did not matter at all. I had done things like other men—now it was all to no purpose. I used to lie for hours on the cliffs watching the sea. I was often out all day, and I met all sorts of people, tramps, wasters, vagabonds, and they seemed the only people worth talking to. I met some strange fellows but excellent company—and they knew, all of them, the things that I knew; they had been out all night and seen the moon and the stars change and the first light of the dawn, and the little breeze that comes in those early hours from the sea, bringing the winds of other countries with it. And they were merry, they had a philosophy—they knew Cornwall and believed in her.

"Well—the holiday came to an end, and I had to go back! London. My God! After that I struggled—I went to my work every day with the sound of that sea in my ears and the vision of those moors always there with me. And the freedom! If you have tasted that once, if you have ever got really close so that you can hear strange voices and see beauties of which you had never dreamt, well, you will never get back to your old routine again. I don't care how strong you are—you can't do it, man. Once she's got hold of you, nothing counts. That was eighteen years ago. I kept my work for a year, but it was killing me. I got ill—I nearly died; once I ran away at night and tried to get to the sea. But I came back—there were my wife and girl. We had a little money, and I gave it all up and we came to live down here. I have done nothing since; rather shameful, isn't it, for a strong man? They have thought that here; they think that I am a waster—by their lights I am. But the things I have learnt! I didn't know what living was until I came here! I knew nothing, I did nothing, I was a dead man. What do I care for their thoughts of me! They are in the dark!"

He had spoken eagerly, almost breathlessly. He was defending his position, and Harry knew that he had been waiting for years to say these things to some one of his own kind who would understand. And he understood only too well! Had he not himself that very evening been tempted to escape, to flee his duty? He had resisted, but the temptation had been very strong—that very voice of Cornwall of which Bethel had spoken—and if it were to return he did not know what answer he might give. But he was not thinking of Bethel; his thoughts were with the wife and daughter. That poor pathetic little woman—and the girl——

"And your wife and daughter?" he said. "What of them?"

"They are happy," Bethel said eagerly. "They are indeed. I don't see them very often, but they have their own interests—and friends. My wife and I never had very much in common—Ah! you're going to scold," he said, laughing, "and say just what all these other horrid people say. But I know. I grant it you all. I'm a waster—through and through; it's damnably selfish—worst of all, in this energetic and pushing age, it's idle. Oh! I know and I'm sorry—but, do you know, I'm not ashamed. I can't see it seriously. I wouldn't harm a fly. Why can't they let me alone? At least I am happy."

They had reached the outskirts of the town by this time and Bethel stopped before a little dark house with red shutters and a tiny strip of garden.

"Here we are!" said he. "This is my place. Come in and smoke! It must be past your dinner hour up at 'The Flutes.' Come and have something with me."

Harry laughed. "They have already ceased wondering at my erratic habits," he said. "New Zealand is a bad place for method."

He followed Bethel in. It was a tiny hall, and on entering he stumbled over an umbrella-stand that lounged forward in a rickety position. Bethel apologised. "We're in a bit of a mess," he said. "In fact, to tell the truth, we always are!" He hung his coat in the hall and led the way into the dining-room. Mrs. Bethel and her daughter came forward. The little woman was amazing in a dress of bright red silk and an absurd little yellow lace cap. Only half the table was laid; for the rest a shabby green cloth, spotted with ink, formed a background for an incoherent litter of papers and needlework. The walls were lined with books and there were some piled on the floor.

A cold shoulder of mutton, baked potatoes in their skins, a melancholy glass dish containing celery, and a salad bowl startlingly empty, lay waiting on the table.

"Anne," said Bethel, "I've brought a guest—up with the family port and let's be festive."

His great body seemed to fill the room, and he brought with him the breath of the sea and the wind. He began to carve the mutton like Siegfried making battle with Fafner, and indeed again and again during the evening he reminded Harry of Siegfried's impetuous humour and rejoicing animal spirits.

Mrs. Bethel was delighted. Her little eyes twinkled with excitement, her yellow cap was pushed awry, and her hands trembled with pleasure. It was obvious that a visitor was an unusual event. Miss Bethel had said very little, but she had given Harry that same smile that he had seen before. She busied herself now with the salad, and he watched her white fingers shine under the lamplight and the white curve of her neck as she bent over the bowl. She was dressed in some dark stuff—quite simple and unassuming, but he thought that he had never seen anything so beautiful.

He said very little, but he was quietly happy. Bethel did not talk very much; he was eating furiously—not greedily, but with great pleasure and satisfaction. Mrs. Bethel talked continuously. Her eyes shone and her cap bobbed on her head like a live thing.

"I said, Mr. Trojan, after our meeting the other day, that you would be a friend. I said so to Mary coming back. I felt sure that first day. It is so nice to have some one new in Pendragon—one gets used, you know, to the same faces and tired of them. In my old home, Penlicott in Surrey, near Marlwood Beeches—you change at Grayling Junction—or you used to; I think you go straight through now. But there you know we knew everybody. You really couldn't help it. There was really only the Vicar and the Doctor, and he was so old. Of course there were the Draytons; you must have heard of Mr. Herbert Drayton—he paints things—I forget quite what, but I know he's good. They all lived there—such a lot of them and most peculiar in their habits; but one gets used to anything. They all lived together for some time, about fifteen there were. Mother and I dined there once or twice, and they had the funniest dining-room with pictures of Job all round the room that were most queer and rather disagreeable; and they all liked different things to drink, so they each had a bottle—of something—separately. It looked quite funny to see the fifteen bottles, and then 'Job' on the wall, you know."

But he really hadn't paid very much attention to her. He had been thinking and wondering. How was it that a man like Bethel had married such a wife? He supposed that things had been different twenty years ago, with them as with him. It was strange to think of the difference that twenty years could make. She had been, perhaps, a little pretty, dainty thing then—the style of girl that a strong man like Bethel would fall in love with. Then he thought of Miss Bethel—what was her life with a mother like that and a father who never thought about her at all? She must, he thought, be lonely. He almost hoped that she was. It gave them kinship, because he was lonely too. The conversation was not very animated; Mrs. Bethel was suddenly silent—she seemed to have collapsed with the effort, and sat huddled up in her chair, with her hands in her lap.

He realised that he had said nothing to Miss Bethel, and he turned to her. "You know London?" he said. He wondered whether she longed for it sometimes—its excitement and life.

"Oh yes," she said quickly; "we were there, you know, a long while ago, and I've been up once or twice since. But it makes one feel so dreadfully small, as if one simply didn't count, and no woman likes that."

"Pendragon makes one feel smaller," Harry said. "When one is of no account even in a small place, then one is small indeed."

He had not intended to speak bitterly, but she had caught the sound of it in his voice and she was suddenly sorry for him. She had been a little afraid of him before—even on that terrible afternoon at "The Flutes"; but now she saw that he was disappointed—he had expected something and it had failed him.

She said nothing then, and the meal came to an end. Bethel dragged Harry into his study to see the books. There was the same untidiness here. The table was littered with papers and pens, tobacco jars, numerous pipes, some photographs. From the floor to the ceiling were books—rows on rows—flung apparently into the shelves with no order or method.

"I'm no good as far as books go," said Harry, laughing. "There never was such a heathen. There have always been other things to do, and I must confess it is a mystery to me how men get time to read at all. If I do get time I'm generally done up, and a novel's the only thing I'm fit for."

"Ah, then, you don't know the book craze," Bethel Said. "It's worse than drink. I've seen it absolutely ruin a man. You can't stop—if you see a book you must get it, whether you really want it or no. You go on buying and buying and buying. You get far more than you can ever read. But you're a miser and you hate even lending them. You sit in your room and count the covers, and you're no fit company for man or beast."

Harry looked at him—"You've known it?"

"Oh yes! I've known it. I'm a bit better now—I'm out such a lot. But even now there's a great deal here that I've never read, and I add to it continually. The worst of it is," he said, laughing, "that we can't afford it. It's very hard on Mary and the wife, but I'm a rotten loafer, and that's the end of it."

He said it so gaily and with so little sense of responsibility that you couldn't possibly think that it weighed on him. But he looked such a boy, standing there with his hands in his pockets and that half-penitent, half-humorous look in his eyes, that you couldn't be angry. Harry laughed.

"Upon my word, you're amazing!"

"Oh! you'll get sick of me. It's all so selfish and slack, I know. But I struggled once—I'm in the grip now." He talked about Borrow and displayed a little grey-bound "Walden" with pride. He spoke of Richard Jefferies with an intimate affection as though he had known the man.

He gave Harry some of his enthusiasm, and he lent him "Lavengro." He described it and Harry compared mentally Isobel Berners with Mary Bethel.

Then they went up to the little drawing-room—an ugly room, but redeemed by a great window overlooking the sea, and a large photograph of Mary on the mantelpiece. Under the light of the lamp the silver frame glittered and sparkled.

He sat by the window and talked to her, and again he had that same curious sense of having known her before: he spoke of it.

"I expect it's in another existence then," she said; "as I've never been into New Zealand and you've never been out of it—at least, since I've been born. But, of course, I've talked about you to Robin. We speculated, you know. We hadn't any photographs much to help us, and it was quite a good game."

"Ah! Robin!"

"I want to speak to you about him," she said, turning round to him. "You won't think me interfering, will you? but I've meant to speak ever since the other day. I was afraid that, perhaps—don't think it dreadfully rude of me—you hadn't quite understood Robin. He's at a difficult age, you know, and there are a lot of things about him that are quite absurd. And I have been afraid that you might take those absurdities for the real things and fancy that that was all that was there. Cambridge—and other things—have made him think that a certain sort of attitude is essential if you're to get on. I don't think he even sincerely believes in it. But they have taught him that he must, at least, seem to believe. The other things are there all right, but he hides them—he is almost ashamed of any one suspecting their existence."

"Thank you!" Harry said quietly. "It is very kind of you and I'm deeply grateful. It's quite true that Robin and I haven't seemed to hit it off properly. I expect that it is my fault. I have tried to see his point of view and have the same interests, but every effort that I've made has seemed to make things worse. He distrusts me, I think, and—well—of course, that hurts. All the things in which I had hoped we would share have no interest for him."

"Don't you think, perhaps," she said, "that you've been a little too anxious—perhaps, a little too affectionate? I am speaking like this because I care for Robin so much. We have been such good friends for years now, and I think he has let me see a side of him that he has hidden from most people. He is curiously sensitive, and really, I think, very shy; and most of all, he has a perfect horror of being absurd. That is what I meant about your being affectionate. He would think, perhaps, that the rest were laughing at him. It's as if you were dragging something that was very sacred and precious out into the light before all those others. Boys are like that; they are terrified lest any one should know what good there is in them—it isn't quite good form."

They were silent for some time. Harry was throwing her words like a searchlight on the events of the past week, and they revealed much that had been very dark and confused. But he was thinking of her. Their acquaintance seemed to have grown into intimacy already.

"I can't thank you enough," he said again.

"It is so nice of you," she said laughing, "not to have thought it presumptuous of me. But Robin is a very good friend of mine. Of course you will find out what a sterling fellow he is—under all that superficiality. He is one of my best friends here!"

He got up to go. As he held out his hand, he said: "I will tell you frankly, Miss Bethel, that Pendragon hasn't received me with open arms. I don't know why it should—and twenty years in New Zealand knocks the polish off. But it has been delightful this evening—more than you know."

"It has been nice for us too," Mary answered. "I don't know that Pendragon is exactly thronging our door night and day—and a new friend is worth having. You see I've claimed you as a friend because you listened so patiently to my sermon—that's a sure test."

She had spoken lightly but he had felt the bitterness in her voice. Life was hard for her too, then? He knew that he was glad.

"I shall come back," he said.

"Please," she answered.

He said good-bye to Mrs. Bethel and she pressed his hand very warmly. "You are very kind to take pity on us," she said, ogling him under the gas in the hall; "I hope you will come often."

Bethel said very little. He walked with him to the gate and laughed. "We're absurd, aren't we, Trojan?" he said. "But don't neglect us altogether. Even absurdity is refreshing sometimes."

But Harry went up the hill with a happier heart than he had had since he entered Pendragon.

That promise of adventure had been fulfilled.

CHAPTER VI

Randal was only at "The Flutes" two days, but he effected a good deal in that time. He did nothing very active—called on Mrs. le Terry and rode over the Downs once with Robin—but he managed to leave a flock of very active impressions behind him. That, as he knew well, was his strong point. He could not be with you a day without vaguely, almost indistinctly, but nevertheless quite certainly, influencing your opinions. He never said anything very definite, and, on looking back, you could never assert that he had positively taken any one point of view; but he had left, as it were, atmosphere—an assurance that this was the really right thing to do, this the proper attitude for correct breeding to adopt. It was always, with him, a case of correct breeding, and that was why the Trojans liked him so very much. "Randal," as Clare said, "knew so precisely who were sheep and who were goats, and he showed you the difference so clearly."

Whenever he came to stay some former acquaintances were dropped as being, perhaps, not quite the right people. He never said that any one was not the right person, that would be bad breeding, but you realised, of your own accord, that they were not quite right. That was why the impression was so strong—it seemed to come from yourself; your eyes were suddenly opened and you wondered that you hadn't seen it before.

He said very little of Trojan people this time; the main result of his visit was its effect on Harry's position.

Had you been a stranger you would have noticed nothing; the motto of the gentleman of good breeding is, "The end and aim of all true opinions is the concealing of them from the wrong person."

Randal was exceedingly polite to Harry, so polite that Robin and Clare knew immediately that he disapproved, but Harry was pleased. Randal spoke warmly to Robin. "You are lucky to have such a father, Bob; it's what we all want, you and I especially, a little fresh air let into our Cambridge dust and confusion; it's most refreshing to find some one who cares nothing about all those things that have seemed to us, quite erroneously probably, so valuable. You should copy him, Robin."

But Robin made no reply. He understood perfectly. There had been some qualities in his father that he had, deep down in his nature, admired. He had seemed to be without doubt a man on whom one could rely in a tight corner, and in spite of himself he had liked his father's frankness. It was unusual. There was always another meaning in everything that Robin's friends said, but there was never any doubt about Harry. He missed the fine shades, of course, and was lamentably lacking in discrimination, but you did know where you were. Robin had, almost reluctantly, admired this before the coming of Randal. But now there could be no question. When Randal was there you had displayed before you the complete art of successful allusion. Nothing was ever directly stated, but everything was hinted, and you were compelled to believe that this really was the perfection of good breeding. Robin admired Randal exceedingly. He took his dicta very seriously and accepted his criticism. The judgment of his father completed the impression that he had begun to receive. He was impossible. Randal was going by the 10.45, and he would walk to the station.

"A whiff of fresh air, Robin, is absolutely essential. You must walk down with me. I hate to go, Miss Trojan."

"Very soon to return, I hope, Mr. Randal," answered Clare. She liked him, and thought him an excellent influence for Robin.

"Thank you—it's very kind—but one's busy, you know. It's been hard enough to snatch these few days. Besides, Robin isn't alone in the same way now. He has his father."

Clare made no reply, but her silence was eloquent.

"I'm sorry for him, Miss Trojan," he said. "He is, I'm afraid, a little out of it. Twenty years, you know, is a long time."

Clare smiled. "He is unchanged," she said. "What he was as a boy, he is now."

"He is fortunate," Randal said gravely. "For most of us experience has a jostling series of shocks ready. Life hurts."

He said good-bye with that air of courtly melancholy that Clare admired so much. He shook Harry warmly by the hand and expressed a hope of another meeting.

"I should be delighted," Harry said. "What sort of time am I likely to catch you in town?"

But Randal, alarmed at this serious acceptance of an entirely ironical proposal, was immediately vague and gave no definite promise. Harry watched them pass down the drive, then he turned back slowly into the house.

It was one of those blue and gold days that are only to be realised perfectly in Cornwall—blue of the sky and the sea, gold on the roofs and the rich background of red and brown in the autumn-tinted trees, whilst the deep green of the lawns in front of the house seemed to hold both blues and golds in its lights and shadows. The air was perfectly still and the smoke from a distant bonfire hung in strange wreaths of grey-blue in the light against the trees, as though carved delicately in marble.

Randal discussed his prospects. He spoke, as he invariably did with regard to his past and future, airily and yet impressively: "I don't like to make myself too cheap," he said. "There are things any sort of fellow can do, and I must say that I shrink from taking bread out of the mouths of some of them. But of course there are things that one must do—where special knowledge is wanted—not that I'm any good, you know, but I've had chances. Besides, one must work slowly. Style's the thing—Flaubert and Pater for ever—the doctrine of the one word."

Robin looked at him with admiration.

"By Jove, Randal, I wish I could write; I sometimes feel quite—well, it sounds silly—but inspired, you know—as if one saw things quite differently. It was very like that in Germany once or twice."

"Ah, we're all like that at times," Randal spoke encouragingly. "But don't you trust it—an ignis fatuus if ever there was one. That is why we have bank clerks at Peckham and governesses in Bloomsbury writing their reminiscences. It's those moments of inspiration that are responsible for all our over-crowded literature."

They had chosen the path over the fields to the station, and suddenly at the bend of the hill the sea sprang before them, a curving mirror that reflected the blue of the sky and was clouded mistily with the gold of the sun. That sudden springing forward of the sea was always very wonderful, even when it had been seen again and again, and Robin stopped and shaded his eyes with his hand.

"It's fine, isn't it, Randal?" he said. "One gets fond of the place."

He was a little ashamed to have betrayed such feeling and spoke apologetically. He went on hurriedly. "There was an old chap in Germany—at Worms—who was most awfully interesting. He kept a little bookshop, and I used to go down and talk to him, and he said once that the sea was the most beautiful dream that the world contained, but you must never get too near or the dream broke, and from that moment you had no peace."

Randal looked at Robin anxiously. "I say, old chap, this place is getting on your nerves; always being here is bad for you. Why don't you come up to town or go abroad? You're seedy."

"Oh, I'm all right," Robin said, rather irritably. "Only one wonders sometimes if—" he broke off suddenly. "I'm a bit worried about something," he said.

He was immediately aware that he had said nothing to Randal about the Feverel affair and he wondered why. Randal would have been the natural person to talk to about it; his advice would have been worth having. But Robin felt vaguely that it would be better not. For some strange reason, as yet unanalysed, he scarcely trusted him as he had done in the old days. He was still wondering why, when they arrived at the station.

They said good-bye affectionately—rather more affectionately than usual. There was a little sense of strain, and Robin felt relieved when the train had gone. As he hurried from the platform he puzzled over it. He could hold no clue, but he knew that their friendship had changed a little. He was sorry.

As he turned down the station road he decided that life was becoming very complicated. There was first his father; that oughtn't in the nature of things to have complicated matters at all—but it was complicated, because there was no knowing what a man like that would do. He might let the family down so badly; it was almost like having gunpowder in your cellar. Randal had thought him absurd. Robin saw that clearly, and Randal's opinion was that of all truly sensible people. But, after all, the real complication was the Feverel affair. It was now nearly ten days since that terrible evening and nothing had happened. Robin wasn't sure what could have happened, but he had expected something. He had waited for a note; she would most assuredly write and her letter would serve as a hint, he would know how to act; but there had been no sign. On the day following the interview he had felt, for the most part, relief. He was suddenly aware of the burden that the affair had been, he was a free man; but with this there had been compunction. He had acted like a brute; he was surprised that he could have been so hard, and he was a little ashamed of meeting the public gaze. If people only realised, he thought, what a cad he was, they would assuredly have nothing to do with him. As the days passed, this feeling increased and he was extremely uncomfortable. He had never before doubted that he was a very decent fellow—nothing, perhaps, exceptional in any way, but, judged by every standard, he passed muster. Now he wasn't so sure, he had done something that he would have entirely condemned in another man, and this showed him plainly and most painfully the importance that he placed on the other man's opinion. He was beginning to grow his crop of ideas and he was already afraid of the probable harvest.

That his affection for Dahlia was dead there could be no question, but that it was buried, either for himself or the public, was, most unfortunately, not the case. He was afraid of discovery for the first time in his life, and it was unpleasant. Dahlia herself would be quiet; at least, he was almost sure, although her outbreak the other evening had surprised him. But he was afraid of Mrs. Feverel. He felt now that she had never liked him; he saw her as some grim dragon waiting for his inevitable surrender. He did not know what she would do; he was beginning to realise his inexperience, but he knew that she would never allow the affair to pass quietly away. To do him justice, it was not so much the fear of personal exposure that frightened him; that, of course, would be unpleasant—he would have to face the derision of his enemies and the contempt of those people whom formerly he had himself despised. But it was not personal contempt, it was the disgrace to the family; the house was suddenly threatened on two sides—his father, the Feverels—and he was frightened. He saw his name in the papers; the Trojan name dragged through the mud because of his own folly—Oh! it must be stopped at all costs. But the uncertainty of it was worrying him. Ten days had passed and nothing was done. Ten days, and he had been able to speak of it to no one; it had haunted him all day and had spoiled his sleep; first, because he had done something of which he was ashamed, and secondly, because he was afraid that people might know.

There were the letters. He remembered some of the sentences now and bit his lip. How could he have been such a fool? She must give them back—of course she would; but there was Mrs. Feverel.

The uncertainty was torturing him—he must find out how matters were, and suddenly, on the inspiration of the moment, he decided to go and see Dahlia at once. Things could not be worse, and at least the uncertainty would be ended. The golden day irritated him, and he found the dark gloom of the Feverels' street a relief. A man was playing an organ at the corner, and three dirty, tattered children were dancing noisily in the middle of the road. He watched them for a moment before ringing the bell, and wondered how they could seem so unconcerned, and he thought them abandoned.

He found Dahlia alone in the gaudy drawing-room. She gave a little cry when she saw who it was, and her cheeks flushed red, and then the colour faded. He noticed that she was looking ill and rather untidy. There were dark lines under her eyes and her mouth was drawn. There was an awkward pause; he had sat down with his hat in his hand and he was painfully ill at ease.

"I knew you would come back, Robin," she began at last. "Only you have been a long time—ten days. I have never gone out, because I was afraid that I would miss you. But I knew that you would be sorry after the other night, because you know, dear, you hurt me terribly, and for a time I really thought you meant it."

"But I do mean it," Robin broke in. "I did and I do. I'm sorry, Dahlia, for having hurt you, but I thought that you would see it as I do—that it must, I mean, stop. I had hoped that you would understand."

But she came over and stood by him, smiling rather timidly. "I don't want to start it all over again," she said. "It was silly of me to have made such a fuss the other night. I have been thinking all these ten days, and it has been my fault all along. I have bothered you by coming here and interfering when I wasn't really wanted. Mother and I will go away again and then you shall come and stay, and we shall be all alone—like we were at Cambridge. I have learnt a good deal during these last few days, and if you will only be patient with me I will try very hard to improve."

She stood by his chair and laid her hand on his arm. He would have thrilled at her touch six months before—now he was merely impatient. It was so annoying that the affair should have to be reopened when they had decided it finally the other night. He felt again the blind, unreasoning fear of exposure. He had never before doubted his bravery, but there had never been any question of attack—the House had been, it seemed, founded on a rock, he had never doubted its stability before. Now, with all the cruelty of a man who was afraid for the first time, he had no mercy.

"It is over, Dahlia—there is no other possibility. We had both made a mistake; I am sorry and regret extremely if I had led you to think that it could ever have been otherwise. I see it more clearly than I saw it ten days ago—quite plainly now—and there's no purpose served in keeping the matter open; here's an end. We will both forget. Heroics are no good; after all, we are man and woman—it's better to leave it at that and accept the future quietly."

He spoke coldly and calmly, indeed he was surprised that he could face it like that, but his one thought was for peace, to put this spectre that had haunted him these ten days behind him and watch the world again with a straight gaze—he must have no secrets.

She had moved away and stood by the fireplace, looking straight before her. She was holding herself together with a terrible effort; she must quiet her brain and beat back her thoughts. If she thought for a moment she would break down, and during these ten days she had been schooling herself to face whatever might come—shame, exposure, anything—she would not cry and beg for pity as she had done before. But it was the end, the end, the end! The end of so much that had given her a new soul during the last few months. She must go back to those dreary years that had had no meaning in them, all those purposeless grey days that had stretched in endless succession on to a dismal future in which there shone no sun. Oh! he couldn't know what it had all meant to her—it could be flung aside by him without regret. For him it was a foolish memory, for her it was death.

The tears were coming, her lips were quivering, but she clenched her hands until the nails dug into the flesh. The sun poured in a great flood of colour through the window, and meanwhile her heart was broken. She had read of it often enough and had laughed—she had not known that it meant that terrible dull throbbing pain and no joy or hope or light anywhere. But she spoke to him quietly.

"I had thought that you were braver, Robin. That you had cared enough not to mind what they said. You are right: it has all been a mistake."

"Yes," he said doggedly, without looking at her. "We've been foolish. I hadn't thought enough about others. You see after all one owes something to one's people. It would never do, Dahlia, it wouldn't really. You'd never like it either—you see we're different. At Cambridge one couldn't see it so clearly, but here—well, there are things one owes to one's people, tradition, and, oh! lots of things! You have got your customs, we have ours—it doesn't do to mix."

He hadn't meant to put it so clearly. He scarcely realised what he had said because he was not thinking of her at all; it was only that one thing that he saw in front of him, how to get out, away, clear of the whole entanglement, where there was no question of suspicion and possible revelation of secrets. He was not thinking of her.

But the cruelty of it, the naked, unhesitating truth of it, stung her as nothing had ever hurt her before—it was as though he had struck her in the face. She was not good enough, she was not fit. He had said it before, but then he had been angry. She had not believed it; but now he was speaking calmly, coldly—she was not good enough!

And in a moment her idol had tumbled to the ground—her god was lying pitifully in the dust, and all the Creed that she had learnt so patiently and faithfully had crumbled into nothing. Her despair seemed, for the moment, to have gone; she only felt burning contempt—contempt for him, that he could seem so small—contempt for herself, that she could have worshipped at such altars.

She turned round and looked at him.

"That is rather unfair. You say that I am not your equal socially. Well, we will leave it at that—you are quite right—it is over."

He lowered his eyes before her steady gaze. At last he was ashamed; he had not meant to put it brutally. He had behaved like a cad and he knew it. Her white face, her hands clenched tightly at her side, the brave lift of her head as she faced him, moved him as her tears and emotions had never done.

He sprang up and stood by her.

"Dahlia, I've been a brute, a cad—I didn't know what I had said—I didn't mean it like that, as you thought. Only I've been so worried, I've not known where to turn and—oh, don't you see, I'm so young. I get driven, I can't stand up against them all."

Why, he was nearly crying. The position was suddenly reversed, and she could almost have laughed at the change. He was looking at her piteously, like a boy convicted of orchard-robbing—and she had loved him, worshipped him! Five minutes ago his helplessness would have stirred her, she would have wanted to take him and protect him and comfort him; but now all that was past—she felt only contempt and outraged pride: her eyes were hard and her hands unclenched.

"It is no good, Robin. You were quite right. There is an end of everything. It was a mistake for both of us, and perhaps it is as well that we should know it now. It will spare us later."

So that was the end. He felt little triumph or satisfaction; he was only ashamed.

He turned to go without a word. Then he remembered—"There are the letters?"

"Ah! you must let me keep them—for a memory." She was not looking at him, but out of the window on to the street. A cab was slowly crawling in the distance—she could see the end of the driver's whip as he flicked at his horses.

"You can't—you don't mean——?" Robin turned back to her.

"I mean nothing—only I am—tired. You had better go. We will write if there is anything more."

"Look here!" Robin was trembling from head to foot. "You must let me have them back. It's serious—more than you know. People might see them and—my God! you would ruin me!"

He was speaking melodramatically, and he looked melodramatic and very ridiculous. He was crushing his bowler in his hands.

"No. I will keep them!" She spoke slowly and quite calmly, as though she had thought it all out before. "They are valuable. Now you must go. This has been silly enough—Good-bye."

She turned to the window and he was dismissed. His pride came to the rescue; he would not let her see that he cared, so he went—without another word.

She stood in the same position, and watched him go down the street. He was walking quickly and at the same time a little furtively, as though he was afraid of meeting acquaintances. She turned away from the window, and then, suddenly, knelt on the floor with her head in her hands. She sobbed miserably, hopelessly, with her hands pressed against her face.

And Mrs. Feverel found her kneeling there in the sunlight an hour later.

"Dahlia," she said softly, "Dahlia!"

The girl looked up. "He has gone, mother," she said. "And he is never coming back. I sent him away."

And Mrs. Feverel said nothing.

CHAPTER VII

There were times when Harry felt curiously, impressively, the age of the house. It was not all of it old, it had been added to from time to time by successive Trojans; but there had, from the earliest days, been a stronghold on the hill overlooking the sea and keeping guard.

He had had a wonderful pride in it on his return, but now he began to feel as though he had no right in it. Surely if any one had a right to such a heritage it was he, but they had isolated him and told him that he had no place there. The gardens, the corners and battlements of the house, the great cliff falling sheer to the sea, had had no welcome for him, and when he had claimed his succession they had refused him. He was beginning to give the stocks and stones of the House a personal existence. Sometimes at night, when the moon gave the place grey shadows and white lights, or in the early morning when the first birds were crying in the trees and the sea was slowly taking colour from the rising sun, in the perfect stillness and beauty of those hours the house had seemed to speak to him with a new voice. He imagined, fantastically at times, that the white statues in the garden watched him with grave eyes, wondering what place he would take in the chronicles of the House.

It was Sunday afternoon, and he was alone in the library. That was a room that had always appealed to him, with its dark red walls covered from floor to ceiling with books, its wide stone fireplace, its soft, heavy carpets, its wonderfully comfortable armchairs. It seemed to him the very perfection of that spirit of orderly comfort and luxurious simplicity for which he had so earnestly longed in New Zealand. He sat in that room for hours, alone, thinking, wondering, puzzling, devising new plans for Robin's surrender and rejecting them as soon as they were formed.

He was sitting by the fire now, hearing the coals click as they fell into the golden furnace that awaited them. He was comparing the incidents of the morning with those of the preceding Sunday, and he knew that things were approaching a crisis. Clare had scarcely spoken to him for three days. Garrett and Robin had not said a word beyond a casual good-morning. They were ignoring him, continuing their daily life as though he did not exist at all. He remembered that he had felt his welcome a fortnight before a little cold—it seemed rapturous compared with the present state of things.

They had driven to church that morning in state. No one had exchanged a word during the whole drive. Clare had sat quietly, in solemn magnificence, without moving an eyelid. They had moved from the carriage to the church in majestic procession, watched by an admiring cluster of townspeople. He had liked Clare's fine bearing and Robin's carriage; there was no doubt that they supported family traditions worthily, but he felt that, in the eyes of the world, he scarcely counted at all. It was a cold and over-decorated church, with an air of wealth and lack of all warm emotions that was exactly characteristic of its congregation. Harry thought that he had never seen a gathering of more unresponsive people. An excellent choir sang Stainer in B flat with perfect precision and fitting respect, and the hymns and psalms were murmured with proper decorum. The clergyman who had come to tea on the day after Harry's arrival preached a carefully calculated and excellently worded sermon. Although his text was the publican's "Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner," it was evident that his address was tinged with the Pharisee's self-congratulations.

A little gathering was formed in the porch after the service, and Mrs. le Terry, magnificent in green silk and an enormous hat, was the only person who took any interest in Harry, and she was looking over his head during the conversation in order, apparently, to fix the attention of some gentleman moving in the opposite direction.

At lunch Harry had made a determined effort towards cheerfulness. He had learnt that heartiness was bad manners and effusion a crime, so he was quiet and restrained. But his efforts failed miserably; Robin seemed worried and his thoughts were evidently far away, Clare was occupied with the impertinence of some stranger who had thrust himself into the Trojan pew at the last moment, and Garrett was repeating complacently a story that he had heard at the Club tending to prove the unsanitary condition of the lower classes in general and the inhabitants of the Cove in particular. After lunch they had left him alone; he had not dared to petition Robin for a walk, so, sick at heart and miserably lonely, he had wandered disconsolately into the library. He had taken from one of the shelves the volume T-U of The Dictionary of National Biography, and had amused himself by searching for the names of heroes in Trojan annals.

There was only one who really mattered—a certain Humphrey Trojan, 1718-1771; a man apparently of poor circumstances and quite a distant cousin of the main branch, one who had been in all probability despised by the Sir Henry Trojan of that time. Nevertheless he had been a person of some account in history and had, from the towers of the House, watched the sea and the stars to some purpose. He had been admitted, Harry imagined, into the sacred precincts after his researches had made him a person of national importance, and it was amusing to picture Sir Henry's pride transformed into a rather obsequious familiarity when "My cousin, Humphrey, had been honoured by an interview with his Majesty and had received an Order at the royal hand"—amusing, yes, but not greatly to the glory of Sir Henry. Harry liked to picture Humphrey in his days of difficulty—sturdy, persevering, confident in his own ability, oblivious of the cuts dealt him by his cousin. Time would show.

He let the book fall and gazed at the fire, thinking. After all, he was a poor creature. He had none of that perseverance and belief in his own ultimate success, and it was better, perhaps, to get right out of it, to throw up the sponge, to turn tail, and again there floated before him that wonderful dream of liberty and the road—of a relationship with the world at large, and no constraint of family dignity and absurd grades of respectability. Off with the harness; he had worn it for a fortnight and he could bear it no longer. Bethel was right; he would follow the same path and find his soul by losing it in the eyes of the world. But after all, there was Robin. He had not given it a fair trial, and it was only cowardice that had spoken to him.

The clock struck half-past three and he went upstairs to see his father. The old man seldom left his bed now. He grew weaker every day and the end could not be far away. He had no longer any desire to live, and awaited with serene confidence the instant of departure, being firmly convinced that Death was too good a gentleman to treat a Trojan scurvily, and that, whatever the next world might contain, he would at least be assured of the respect and deference that the present world had shown him. His mind dwelt continually on his early days, and, even when there was no one present to listen, he repeated anecdotes and reminiscences for the benefit of the world at large. His face seemed to have dwindled considerably, but his eyes were always alive—twinkling over the bedclothes like lights in a dark room. His mouth never moved, only his hand, claw-like and yellow as parchment, clutched the bedclothes and sometimes waved feebly in the air to emphasise his meaning. He had grown strangely intolerant of Clare, and although he submitted to her offices as usual, did so reluctantly and with no good grace; she had served him faithfully and diligently for twenty years and this was her reward. She said nothing, but she laid it to Harry's charge.

Sir Jeremy's eyes twinkled when he saw his son. "Hey, Harry, my boy—all of 'em out, aren't they? Devilish good thing—no one to worry us. Just give the pillows a punch and pull that table nearer—that's right. Just pull that blind up—I can't see the sea."

The room had changed its character within the last week. It was a place of silences and noiseless tread, and the scent of flowers mingled with the intangible odour of medicine. A great fire burnt in the open fireplace, and heavy curtains had been hung over the door to prevent draughts.

Harry moved silently about the room, flung up the blind to let in the sun, propped up the pillows, and then sat down by the bed.

"You're looking better, father," he said; "you'll soon be up again."

"The devil I will," said Sir Jeremy. "No, it's not for me. I'm here for a month or two, and then I'm off. I've had my day, and a damned good one too. What do you think o' that girl now, Harry—she's fine—what?"

He produced from under the pillow a photograph, yellow with age, of a dancer—jet-black hair and black eyes, her body balanced on one leg, her hands on her hips. "Anonita Sendella—a devilish fine woman, by gad—sixty years ago that was—and Tom Buckley and I were in the running. He had the money and I had the looks, although you wouldn't think it now. She liked me until she got tired of me and she died o' drink—not many like that nowadays." He gazed at the photograph whilst his eyes twinkled. "Legs—by Heaven! what legs!" He chuckled. "Wouldn't do for Clare to see that; she was shaking my pillows this mornin' and I was in a deuce of a fright—thought the thing would tumble out."

He lay back on his pillows thinking, and Harry stared out of the window. The end would come in a month or two—perhaps sooner; and then, what would happen? He would take his place as head of the family. He laughed to himself—head of the family! when Clare and Garrett and Robin all hated him? Head of the family!

The sky was grey and the sea flecked with white horses. It was shifting colours to-day like a mother-of-pearl shell—a great band of dark grey on the horizon, and then a soft carpet of green turning to grey again by the shore. The grey hoofs [Transcriber's note: roofs?] of the Cove crowded down to the edge of the land, seeming to lean a little forward, as though listening to what the sea had to say; the sun, breaking mistily through the clouds, was a round ball of dull gold—a line of breakwater, far in the distance, seemed ever about to advance down the stretch of sea to the shore, as though it would hurl itself on the cluster of brown sails in the little bay, huddling there for protection. Head of the House! What was the use, when the House didn't want him?

His father was watching him and seemed to have read his thoughts. "You'll take my place, Harry?" he said. "They won't like it, you know. It was partly my fault. I sent you away and you grew up away, and they've always been here. I've been wanting you to come back all this time, and it wasn't because I was angry that I didn't ask you—but it was better for you. You don't see it yet; you came back thinking they'd welcome you and be glad to see you, and you're a bit hurt that they haven't. They've been hard to you, all of 'em—your boy as well. I've known, right enough. But it cuts both ways, you see. They can't see your point of view, and they're afraid of the open air you're letting in on to them. You're too soft, Harry; you've shown them that it hurts, and they've wanted it to hurt. Give 'em a stiff back, Harry, give 'em a stiff back. Then you'll have 'em. That's like us Trojans. We're devilish cruel because we're devilish proud; if you're kind we hurt, but if you do a bit of hurting on your own account we like it."

"I've made a mess of it," Harry said, "a hopeless mess of it. I've tried everything, and it's all failed. I'd better back out of it—" Then, after a pause, "Robin hates me——"

Sir Jeremy chuckled.

"Oh no, he doesn't. He's like the rest of us. You wanted him to give himself away at once, and of course he wouldn't. They're trying you and waiting to see what you'll do, and Robin's just following on. You'll be all right, only give 'em a stiff back, the whole crowd of 'em."

Suddenly his wrinkled yellow hand shot out from under the bedclothes and he grasped his son's. "You're a damned fine chap," he said, "and I'm proud of you—only you're a bit of a fool—sentimental, you know. But you'll make more of the place than I've ever done, God bless you—" after which he lay back on his pillows again, and was soon asleep.

Harry waited for a little, and then he stole out of the room. He told the nurse to take his place, and went downstairs.

It was four o'clock, and he was going to tea at the Bethels'. He had been there pretty frequently during the past week—that and the Cove were his only courts of welcome. He knew that his going there had only aggravated his offences in the eyes of his sister, but that he could not help. Why should they dictate his friends to him?

The little drawing-room was neat and clean. There were some flowers, and the chairs and sofa were not littered with books and needlework and strange fragments of feminine garments. Mrs. Bethel was gorgeous in a green silk dress and the paint was more obtrusive than ever. Her eyes were red as though she had been crying, and her hair as usual had escaped bounds.

Mary was making tea and smiled up at him. "Shout at father," she said. "He's downstairs in the study, browsing. He'll come up when he knows you are here."

Harry went to the head of the stairs and called, and Bethel came rushing up. Sunday made no difference to his clothes, and he wore the grey suit and flannel collar of their first meeting.

His greeting was, as ever, boisterous. "Hullo! Trojan! that's splendid! I was afraid they'd carry you off to that church of yours or you'd have a tea-party or something. I'm glad they've spared you."

"No, I went this morning," Harry answered, "all of us solemnly in the family coach. I thought that was enough for one day."

"We used to have a carriage when papa was alive," said Mrs. Bethel, "and we drove to church every Sunday. We were the only people beside the Porsons, and theirs was only a pony-cart."

"Well, for my part, I hate driving," said Mary. "It puts you in a bad temper for the sermon."

"Let's have tea," said Bethel. "I'm as hungry as though I'd listened to fifty parsons."

And, indeed, he always was. He ate as though he had had no meal for a month at least, and he had utterly demolished the tea-cake before he realised that no one else had had any.

"Oh, I say, I'm so sorry," he said ruefully. "Mary, why didn't you tell me? I'll never forgive myself——" and proceeded to finish the saffron buns.

"All the same," said Mary, "we're going to church to-night, all of us, and if you're very good, Mr. Trojan, you shall come too."

Harry paused for a moment. "I shall be delighted," he said; "but where do you go?"

"There's a little church called St. Sennan's. You haven't heard of it, probably. It's past the Cove—on a hill looking over the sea. It's the most tumble-down old place you ever saw, and nobody goes there except a few fishermen, but we know the clergyman and like him. I like the place too—you can listen to the sea if you're bored with the sermon."

"The parson is like one of the prophets," said Bethel. "Too strong for the Pendragon point of view. It's a place of ruins, Trojan, and the congregation are like a crowd of ancient Britons—but you'll like it."

Mrs. Bethel was unwontedly quiet—it was obvious that she was in distress; Mary, too, seemed to speak at random, and there was an air of constraint in the room.

When they set off for church the grey sky had changed to blue; the sun had just set, and little pink clouds like fairy cushions hung round the moon. As they passed out of the town, through the crooked path down to the Cove, Harry had again that strong sense of Cornwall that came to him sometimes so suddenly, so strangely, that it was almost mysterious, for it seemed to have no immediate cause, no absolute relation to surrounding sights or sounds. Perhaps to-night it was in the misty half-light of the shining moon and the dying sun, the curious stillness of the air so that the sounds and cries of the town came distinctly on the wind, the scent of some wild flowers, the faint smell of the chrysanthemums that Mary was wearing at her breast.

"By Jove, it's Cornwall," he said, drawing a great breath. He was walking a little ahead with Mary, and he turned to her as she spoke. She was walking with her head bent, and did not seem to hear him. "What's up?" he said.

"Nothing," she answered, trying to smile.

"But there is," he insisted. "I'm not blind. I've bored you with my worries. You might honour me with yours."

"There isn't anything really. One's foolish to mind, and, indeed, it's not for myself that I care—but it's mother."

"What have they done?"

"They don't like us—none of them do. I don't know why they should; we aren't, perhaps, very likeable. But it is cruel of them to show it. Mother, you see, likes meeting people—we had it in London, friends I mean, lots of them, and then when we came here we had none. We have never had any from the beginning. We tried, perhaps a little too hard, to have some. We gave little parties and they failed, and then people began to think us peculiar, and if they once do that here you're done for. Perhaps we didn't see it quite soon enough and we went on trying, and then they began to snub us."

"Snub you?"

"Yes, you know the kind of thing. You saw that first day we met you——"

"And it hurts?"

"Yes—for mother. She still tries; she doesn't see that it's no good, and each time that she goes and calls, something happens and she comes back like she did to-day. I don't suppose they mean to be unkind—it is only that we are, you see, peculiar, and that doesn't do here. Father wears funny clothes and never sees any one, and so they think there must be something wrong——"

"It's a shame," he said indignantly.

"No," she answered, "it isn't really. It's one's own fault—only sometimes I hate it all. Why couldn't we have stayed in London? We had friends there, and father's clothes didn't matter. Here such little things make such a big difference"—which was, Harry reflected, a complete epitome of the life of Pendragon.

"I'm not whining," she went on. "We all have things that we don't like, but when you're without a friend——"

"Not quite," he said; "you must count me." He stopped for a moment. "You will count me, won't you?"

"You realise what you are doing," she said. "You are entering into alliance with outcasts."

"You forget," he answered, "that I, also, am an outcast. We can at least be outcasts together."

"It is good of you," she said gravely; "I am selfish enough to accept it. If I was really worth anything, I would never let you see us again. It means ostracism."

"We will fight them," he answered gaily. "We will storm the camp"; but in his heart he knew that their stronghold, with "The Flutes" as the heart of the defence, would be hard to overcome.

They climbed up the hill to the little church with the sea roaring at their feet. A strong wind was blowing, and, for a moment, at a steep turn of the hill, she laid her hand on his arm; at the touch his heart beat furiously—in that moment he knew that he loved her, that he had loved her from the first moment that he had seen her, and he passed on into the church.

It was, as Bethel had said, almost in ruins—the little nave was complete, but ivy clambered in the aisles and birds had built their nests in the pillars. Three misty candles flickered on the altar, and some lights burnt over the pulpit, but there were strange half-lights and shadows so that it seemed a place of ghosts. Through the open door the night air blew, bringing with it the beating of the sea, and the breath of grass and flowers. The congregation was scanty; some fishermen and their wives, two or three old women, and a baby that made no sound but listened wonderingly with its finger in its mouth. The clergyman was a tall man with a long white beard and he did everything, even playing the little wheezy harmonium. His sermon was short and simple, but was listened to with rapt attention. There was something strangely intense about it all, and the hymns were sung with an eagerness that Harry had never heard elsewhere. This was a contrast with the church of the morning, just as the Cove was a contrast with Pendragon; the parting of the ways seemed to face Harry at every moment of his day—his choice was being urgently demanded and he had no longer any hesitation.

Newsome was there, and he spoke to him for a moment on coming out. "You'll be lonely 'up-along,'" he said; "you belong to us."

They all four walked back together.

"How do you like our ancient Britons?" said Bethel.

"It was wonderful," said Harry. "Thank you for taking me."

They were all very silent, but when they parted at the turning of the road Bethel laughed. "Now you are one of us, Trojan. We have claimed you."

As he shook Mary's hand he whispered, "This has been a great evening for me."

"I was wrong to grumble to you," she answered. "You have worries enough of your own. I release you from your pledge."

"I will not be released," he said.

That night Clare Trojan, before going to bed, went into Garrett's room. He was working at his book, and, as usual, hinted that to take such advantage of his good-nature by her interruption was unfair.

"I suppose to-morrow morning wouldn't do instead, Clare—it's a bit late."

"No, it wouldn't—I want you to listen to me. It's important."

"Well?" He seated himself in the most comfortable chair and sighed. "Don't be too long."

She was excited and stood over him as though she would force him to be interested.

"It's too much, Garrett. It's got to stop."

"What?"

"Harry. Some one must speak to him."

Garrett smiled. "That, of course, will be you, Clare—you always do; but if it's my permission that you want you may have it and welcome. But we've discussed all this before. What's the new turn of affairs?"

"No. I want more than your permission; we must take some measures together. It's no good unless we act at once. Miss Ponsonby told me this afternoon—it has become common talk—the things he does, I mean. She did not want to say anything, but I made her. He goes down continually to some low public-house in the Cove; he is with those Bethels all day, and will see nothing of any of the decent people in the place—he is becoming a common byword."

"It is a pity," Garrett said, "that he cannot choose his friends better."

"He must—something must be done. It is not for ourselves only, though of course that counts. But it is the House—our name. They laugh at him, and so at all of us. Besides, there is Robin."

Garrett looked at his sister curiously—he had never seen her so excited before. But she found it no laughing matter. Miss Ponsonby would not have spoken unless matters had gone pretty far. The Cove! The Bethels! Robin's father!

For, after all, it was for Robin that she cared. She felt that she was fighting his battles, and so subtly concealed from herself that she was, in reality, fighting her own. She was in a state of miserable uncertainty. She was not sure of her father, she was not sure of Robin, scarcely sure of Garrett—everything threatened disaster.

"What will you do?" Garrett had no desire that the responsibility should be shifted in his direction; he feared responsibility as the rock on which the ship of his carefully preserved proprieties might come to wreck.

"Do? Why, speak—it must be done. Think of him during the whole time that he has been here—not only to Pendragon, but to us. He has made no attempt whatever to fit in with our ways or thoughts; he has shown no desire to understand any of us; and now he must be pulled up, for his own sake as well as ours."

But Garrett offered her little assistance. He had no proposals to offer, and was barren of all definite efforts; he hated definite lines of any kind, but he promised to fall in with her plans.

"I will come down to breakfast," she said, "and will speak to him afterwards."

Garrett nodded wearily and went back to his work. On the next morning the crisis came.

Breakfast was a silent meal at all times. Harry had learnt to avoid the cheerful familiarity of his first morning—it would not do. But the heavy solemnity of the massive silver teapot, the ham and cold game on the sideboard, the racks of toast that were so needlessly numerous, drove him into himself, and, like his brother and son, he disappeared behind folds of newspaper until the meal was over.

Clare frequently came down to breakfast, and therefore he saw nothing unusual in her appearance. The meal was quite silent; Clare had her letters—and he was about to rise and leave the room, when she spoke.

"Wait a minute, Harry. I want to say something. No, Robin, don't go—what I'm going to say concerns us all."

Garrett remained behind his newspaper, which showed that he had received previous warning. Robin looked up in surprise, and then quickly at his father, who had moved to the fireplace.

"About me, Clare?" He tried to speak calmly, but his voice shook a little. He saw that it was a premeditated attack, but he wished that Robin hadn't been there. He was, on the whole, glad that the moment had come; the last week had been almost unbearable, and the situation was bound to arrive at a crisis—well, here it was, but he wished that Robin were not there. As he looked at the boy for a moment his face was white and his breath came sharply. He had never loved him quite so passionately as at that moment when he seemed about to lose him.

Clare had chosen her time and her audience well, and suddenly he felt that he hated her; he was immediately calm and awaited her attack almost nonchalantly, his hand resting on the mantelpiece, his legs crossed.

Clare was still sitting at the table, her face half turned to Harry, her glance resting on Robin. She tapped the table with her letters, but otherwise gave no sign of agitation.

"Yes—about you, Harry. It is only that I think we have reason—almost a right—to expect that you should yield a little more thoroughly to our wishes. Both Garrett"—this with emphasis—"and myself are sure that your failing to do so is only due to a misconception on your part, and it is because we are sure that you have only to realise them to give way a little to them, that I—we—are speaking."

"I certainly had not realised that I had failed in deference to your wishes, Clare."

"No, not failed—and it is absurd to talk of deference. It is only that I feel—we all feel"—this with another glance at Robin—"that it is naturally impossible for you to realise exactly what are the things required of us here. Things that would in New Zealand have been of no importance at all."

"Such as——?"

"Well, you must remember that we have, as it were, the eyes of all the town upon us. We occupy a position of some importance, and we are definitely expected to maintain that position without lack of dignity."

"Won't you come to the point, Clare? It is a little hard to see——"

"Oh, things are obvious enough—surely, Harry, you must see for yourself. People were ready to give you a warm welcome when you returned. I—we—all of us, were only too glad. But you repulsed us all. Why, on the very day after your arrival you were extremely—I am sorry, but there is no other word—discourteous to the Miss Ponsonbys. You have made your friends almost entirely amongst the fisher class, a strange thing, surely, for a Trojan to do, and you now, I believe, spend your evenings frequently in a low public-house resorted to by such persons—at any rate you have spent them neither here nor at the Club, the two obvious places. I am only mentioning these things because I think that you may not have seen that such matters—trivial as they may seem to you—reflect discredit, not only on yourself, but also, indirectly, on all of us."

"You forget, Clare, that I have many old friends down at the Cove. They were there when I was a boy. The people in Pendragon have changed very largely, almost entirely. There is scarcely any one whom I knew twenty years ago; it is, I should have thought, quite natural that I should go to see my old friends again after so long an absence."

He was trying to speak quietly and calmly. His heart was beating furiously, but he knew that if he once lost control, he would lose, too, his position. But, as he watched them, and saw their cold, unmoved attitude his anger rose; he had to keep it down with both hands clenched—it was only by remembering Robin that the effort was successful.

"Natural to go and see them on your return—of course. But to return, to go continually, no. I cannot help feeling, Harry, that you have been a little selfish. That you have scarcely seen our side of the question. Things have changed in the last twenty years—changed enormously. We have seen them, studied them, and, I think, understood them. You come back and face them without any preparation; surely you cannot expect to understand them quite as we do."

"This seems to me, I must confess, Clare, a great deal of concern about a very little matter. Surely I am not a person of such importance that a few visits to the Cove can ruin us socially?"

"Ah! that is what you don't understand! Little things matter here. People watch, and are, I am afraid, only too ready to fasten on matters that do not concern them. Besides, it is not only the Cove—there are other things—there are, for instance, the Bethels."

At the name Robin started. He liked Mary Bethel, had liked her very much indeed, but he had known that his aunt disapproved of them and had been careful to disguise his meetings. But the instant thought in his mind concerned the Feverels. If the Bethels were impossible socially, what about Dahlia and her mother? What would his aunt say if she knew of that little affair? And the question which had attacked him acutely during the last week in various forms hurt him now like a knife.

He watched his father curiously. He did not look as if he cared very greatly. Of course Aunt Clare was perfectly right. He had been selfishly indifferent, had cared nothing for their feelings. Randal had shown plainly enough how impossible he was. Indeed the shadow of Randal lurked in the room in a manner that would have pleased that young gentleman intensely had he known it. Clare had it continually before her, urging her, advising her, commanding her.

At the mention of the Bethels, Harry looked up sharply.

"I think we had better leave them out of the discussion." His voice trembled a little.

"Why? Are they so much to you? They have, however, a good deal to do with my argument. Do you think it was wise to neglect the whole of Pendragon for the society of the Bethels—people of whom one is an idler and loafer and the other a lunatic?" Clare was becoming excited.

"You forget, Clare, that I first met them in your drawing-room."

"They were there entirely against my will. I showed them that quite distinctly at the time. They will not come again."

"That may be. But they are, as you have said, my friends. I cannot, therefore, hear them insulted. They must be left out of the discussion."

On any other matter he could have heard her quietly, but the Bethels she must leave alone. He could see Mary, as he spoke, turning on the hill and laying her hand on his arm; her hair blew in the wind and the light in her eyes shone under the moon. He had for a moment forgotten Robin.

"At any rate, I have made my meaning clear. We wish you—out of regard for us, if for no other reason—to be a little more careful both of your company and of your statements. It is hard for you to see the position quite as we do, I know, but I cannot say that you have made any attempt whatsoever to see it with our eyes. It seems useless to appeal to you on behalf of the House, but that, too, is worth some consideration. We have been here for many hundreds of years; we should continue in the paths that our ancestors have marked out. I am only saying what you yourself feel, Garrett?"

"Absolutely." Garrett looked up from his paper. "I think you must see, Harry, that we are quite justified in our demands—Clare has put it quite plainly."

"Quite," said Harry. "And you, Robin?"

"I think that Aunt Clare is perfectly right," answered Robin coldly.

Harry's face was very white. He spoke rapidly and his hand gripped the marble of the mantelpiece; he did not want them to see that his legs were trembling.

"Yes. I am glad to know exactly where we stand. It is better for all of us. I might have taken it submissively, Clare, had you left out your last count against me. That was unworthy of you. But haven't you, perhaps, seen just a little too completely your own point of view and omitted mine? I came back a stranger. I was ready to do anything to win your regard. I was perhaps a little foolishly sentimental about it, but I am a very easy person to understand—it could not have been very difficult. I imagined, foolishly, that things would be quite easy—that there would be no complications. I soon found that I had made a mistake; you have taught me more during the last fortnight than I had ever learnt in all my twenty years abroad. I have learnt that to expect affection from your own relations, even from your son, is absurd—affection is bad form; that, of course, was rather a shock.

"You have had, all of you, your innings during the last fortnight. You have decided, with your friends, that I am impossible, and from that moment you have deliberately cut me. You have driven me to find friends of my own and then you have complained of the friends that I have chosen. That is completed—in a fortnight you have shown me, quite plainly, your position. Now I will show you mine. You have refused to have anything to do with me—for the future the position shall be reversed. I shall alter in no respect whatever, either my friendships or my habits. I shall go where I please, do what I please, see whom I please. We shall, of course, disguise our position from the world. I have learnt that disguise is a very important part of one's education. Our former relations from this moment cease entirely."

He was speaking apparently calmly, but his anger was at white-heat. All the veiled insults and disappointments of the last fortnight rose before him, but, above all, he saw Mary as though he were defending her, there, in the room. He would never forgive them.

Clare was surprised, but she did not show it. She got up from the table and walked to the door. "Very well, Harry," she said, "I think you will regret it."

Garrett rose too, his hand trembling a little as he folded his newspaper.

"That is, I suppose, an ultimatum," he said. "It is a piece of insolence that I shall not forget."

Robin was turning to leave the room. Harry suddenly saw him. He had forgotten him; he had thought only of Mary.

"Robin," he whispered, stepping towards him. "Robin—you don't think as they do?"

"I agree with my aunt," he said, and he left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

Harry's defiance had left him. For a moment the only thing that he saw clearly in a world that had suddenly grown dark and cold was his son. He had forgotten the rest—his sister, Mary, Pendragon—it all seemed to matter nothing.

He had come from New Zealand to love his son—for nothing else.

He had an impulse to run after him, to seize him, and hold him, and force him to come back.

Then he remembered—his pride stung him. He would fight it out to the end; he would, as his father said, "show them a stiff back."

He was very white, and for a moment he had to steady himself by the table. The silver teapot, the ham, the racks of toast were all there—how strange, when the rest of the world had changed; he was quite alone now—he must remember that—he had no son. And he, too, went out, closing the door quietly behind him.

CHAPTER VIII

Some letters during this week:—

23 SOUTHWICK CRESCENT, W.,
October 10, 1906.

My dear Robin—I should have written before, I am ashamed of my omission, but my approaching departure abroad has thrown a great many things on my hands; I have a paper to finish for Clarkson and an essay for the New Review, and letter-writing has been at a standstill. It was delightful—that little peep of you that I got—and it only made me regret the more that it is impossible to see much of you nowadays. I cannot help feeling that there is a danger of vegetation if one limits oneself too completely to a provincial life, and, charming though Cornwall is, its very fascination causes one to forget the importance of the outer world. I fancied that I discerned signs that you yourself felt this confinement and wished for something broader. Well, why not have it? I confess that I see no reason. Come up to London for a time—go abroad—your beloved Germany is waiting for you, and a year at one of the Universities would be both amusing and instructive. These are only suggestions; I should hesitate to offer them at all were it not that there has always been such sympathy between us that I know you will not resent them. Of course, the arrival of your father has made considerable difference. I must say, honestly, that I regretted to see that you had not more in common. The fault, I expect, has been on both sides; as I said to you before, it has been hard for him to realise exactly what it is that we consider important. We—quite mistakenly possibly—have come to feel that certain things, art, literature, music, are absolutely essential to us, morally and physically.

They are nothing at all to him, and I can quite understand that you have found it difficult—almost impossible—to grasp his standpoint. I must confess that he did not seem to me to attempt to consider yours; but it is easy, and indeed impertinent, to criticise, and I hope that, on the next occasion of your writing, I shall hear that things are going smoothly and that the first inevitable awkwardnesses have worn off.

I must stop. I have let my pen wander away with me. But do consider what I said about coming up to town; I am sure that it is bad for you in every way—this burial. Think of your friends, old chap, and let them see something of you.—Yours ever,

LANCELOT RANDAL.

"THE FLUTES," PENDRAGON,
October 12, 1906.

My dear Lance—Thanks very much for your letter. This mustn't pretend to be anything of a letter. I have a thousand things to do, and no time to do them. It was very delightful seeing you, and I, too, was extremely sorry we could not see more of you. My aunt enjoyed your visit enormously, and told me to remind you that you are expected here, for a long stay, on your return from Germany.

Yes, I was worried and am still. There are various things—"it never rains but it pours"—but I cannot feel that they are in the least due to my vegetating. I haven't the least intention of sticking here, but my grandfather is, as you know, very ill, and it is impossible for me to get away at present.

Resent what you said! Why, no, of course not. We are too good friends for resentment, and I am only too grateful for your advice. The situation here at this moment is peculiarly Meredithian—and, although one ought perhaps to be silent concerning it, I know that I can trust you absolutely and I need your advice badly. Besides, I must speak to some one about it; I have been thinking it over all day and am quite at a loss. There was battle royal this morning after breakfast, and my father was extremely rude to my aunt, acting apparently from quite selfish motives. I want to look at it fairly, but I can, honestly, see it in no other light. My aunt accused him of indifference with regard to the family good name. She, quite rightly, I think, pointed out that his behaviour from first to last had been the reverse of courteous to herself and her friends, and she suggested that he had, perhaps, scarcely realised the importance of maintaining the family dignity in the eyes of Pendragon. You remember his continual absences and the queer friendships that he formed. She suggested that he should modify these, and take a little more interest in the circle to which we, ourselves, belong. Surely there is nothing objectionable in all this; indeed, I should have thought that he would have been grateful for her advice. But no—he fired up in the most absurd manner, accused us of unfairness and prejudice, declared his intention of going his own way, and gave us all his congé. In fact, he was extremely rude to my aunt, and I cannot forgive him for some of the things that he said. His attitude has been absurd from the first, and I cannot see that we could have acted otherwise, but the situation is now peculiar, and what will come of it I don't know. I must dress for dinner—I am curious to see whether he will appear—he was out for lunch. Let me have a line if you have a spare moment. I scarcely know how to act.—Yours,

ROBERT TROJAN.

23 SOUTHWICK CRESCENT, W.,
October 14, 1906.

Dear Robin—In furious haste, am just off and have really no time for anything. I am more sorry than I can say to hear your news. I must confess that I had feared something of the kind; matters seemed working to a climax when I was with you. As to advice, it is almost impossible; I really don't know what to say, it is so hard for me to judge of all the circumstances. But it seems to me that your father can have had no warrant for the course that he took. One is naturally chary of delivering judgment in such a case, but it was, obviously, his duty to adapt himself to his environment. He cannot blame you for reminding him of that fact. Out of loyalty to your aunt, I do not see that you can do anything until he has apologised. But I will think of the matter further, and will write to you from abroad.—In great haste, your friend, LANCELOT RANDAL.

"THE FLUTES," PENDRAGON, CORNWALL,
October 13, 1906.

Dear Miss Feverel—I must apologise for forcing you to realise once more my existence. Any reminder must necessarily be painful after our last meeting, but I am writing this to request the return of all other reminders of our acquaintance that you may happen to possess; I enclose the locket, the ring, your letters, and the tie that you worked. We discussed this matter the other day, but I cannot believe that you will still hold to a determination that can serve no purpose, except perhaps to embitter feelings on both sides. From what I have known of you I cannot believe that you are indulging motives of revenge—but, otherwise, I must confess that I am at a loss.—Expecting to receive the letters by return, I am, yours truly,

ROBERT TROJAN.

9 SEA VIEW TERRACE, PENDRAGON, CORNWALL,
October 14, 1906.

Dear Mr. Trojan—Thank you for the locket, the ring, and the letters which I have received. I regret that I must decline to part with the letters; surely it is not strange that I should wish to keep them.—Yours truly, DAHLIA FEVEREL.

"THE FLUTES,"
October 15, 1906.

What do you mean? You have no right to them. They are mine. I wrote them. You serve no purpose by keeping them. Please return them at once—by return. I have done nothing to deserve this. Unless you return them, I shall know that you are merely an intriguing—; no, I don't mean that. Please send them back. Suppose they should be seen?—In haste, R. T.

9 SEA VIEW TERRACE, PENDRAGON, CORNWALL,
_October_ 15, 1906.

My decision is unalterable.

D. F.

But Dahlia sat in the dreary little drawing-room watching the grey sea with a white face and hard, staring eyes.

She had sat there all day. She thought that soon she would go mad. She had not slept since her last meeting with Robin; she had scarcely eaten—she was too tired to think.

The days had been interminable. At first she had waited, expecting that he would come back. A hundred impulses had been at work. At first she had thought that she would go and tell him that she had not meant what she said; she would persuade him to come back, She would offer him the letters and tell him that she had meant nothing—they had been idle words. But then she remembered some of the things that he had said, some of the stones that he had flung. She was not good enough for him or his family; she had no right to expect that an alliance was ever possible. His family despised her. And then her thoughts turned from Robin to his family. She had seen Clare often enough and had always disliked her. But now she hated her so that she could have gladly killed her. It was at her door that she laid all the change in Robin and her own misery. She felt that she would do anything in the world to cause her pain. She brooded over it in the shabby little room with her face turned to the sea. How could she hurt her? There were the others, too—the rest of the family—all except Robin's father, who was, she felt instinctively, different. She thought that he would not have acted in that way. And then her thoughts turned back to Robin, and for a moment she fancied that she hated him, and then she knew that she still loved him—and she stared at the grey sea with misery in her heart and a dull, sombre confusion in her brain. No, she did not hate Robin, she did not really want to hurt him. How could she, when they had had those wonderful months together? Those months that seemed such centuries and centuries away. But, nevertheless, she kept the letters. Her mother had talked about them, had advised her to keep them. She did not mean to do anything very definite with them—she could not look ahead very far—but she would keep them for a little.

When she had seen Robin's handwriting again it had been almost more than she could bear. For some time she had been unable to tear open the envelope and speculated, confusedly, on the contents. Perhaps he had repented. She judged him by her own days and nights of utter misery and knew that, had it been herself, they would have driven her back crying to his feet. Perhaps it was to ask for another interview. That she would refuse. She felt that she could not endure another such meeting as their last; if he were to come to her without warning, to surprise her suddenly—her heart beat furiously at the thought; but the deliberate meeting merely for the purpose of his own advantage—no!

She opened the letter, read the cold lines, and knew that it was utterly the end. She had fancied, at their last meeting, that her love, like a bird shot through the heart, had fallen at his feet, dead; then, after those days of his absence, his figure had grown in her sight, glorified, resplendent, and love had revived again—now, with this letter she knew that it was over. She did not cry, she scarcely moved. She watched the sea, with the letter on her lap, and felt that a new Dahlia Feverel, a woman who would traffic no longer with sentiment, who knew the world for what it was—a hard, merciless prison with fiends for its gaolers—had sprung to birth.

She replied to him and showed her mother her answer. She scarcely listened to Mrs. Feverel's comments and went about her daily affairs, quietly, without confusion. She saw herself and Robin like figures in a play—she applauded the comedy and the tragedy left her unmoved. Robin Trojan had much to answer for.

He read her second letter with dismay. He had spent the day in solitary confinement in his room, turning the situation round and round in his mind, lost in a perfect labyrinth of suggested remedies, none of which afforded him any outlet. The thought of exposure was horrible; anything must be done to avoid that—disgrace to himself was bad enough; to be held up for laughter before his Cambridge friends, Randal, his London acquaintances—but disgrace to the family! That was the awful thing!

From his cradle this creed of the family had been taught him; he had learnt it so thoroughly that he had grown to test everything by that standard; it was his father's disloyalty to that creed that had roused the son's anger—and now, behold, the son was sinning more than the father! It was truly ironic that, three days after his attacking a member of the family for betraying the family, he himself should be guilty of far greater betrayal! How topsy-turvy the world seemed, and what was to be done?

The brevity and conciseness of Dahlia's last letter left him in no doubt as to her intentions. Breach of Promise! The letters would be read in court, would be printed in the newspapers for all the world to see. With youth's easy grasping of eternity, it seemed to him that his disgrace would be for ever. Beddoes' "Death's Jest-book" was lying open on his knee. Wolfram's song—

Old Adam, the carrion crow,
The old crow of Cairo;
He sat in the shower, and let it flow
Under his tail and over his crest;
And through every feather
Leaked the wet weather;
And the bough swung under his nest;
For his beak it was heavy with marrow.
Is that the wind dying? Oh no;
It's only two devils, that blow
Through a murderer's bones, to and fro,
In the ghost's moonshine—

had always seemed to him the most madly sinister verse in English literature. It had been read to him by Randal at Cambridge and had had a curious fascination for him from the first. He had found that the little bookseller at Worms had known it and had indeed claimed Beddoes for a German—now it seemed to warn him vaguely of impending disaster.

He did not see that he himself could act any further in the matter; she would not see him and writing was useless. And yet to leave the matter uncertain, waiting for the blow to fall, with no knowledge of the movements in the other camp, was not to be thought of. He must do something.

The moment had arrived when advice must be taken—but from whom? His father was out of the question. It was three days since the explosion, and there was an armed truce. He had, in spite of himself, admired his father's conduct during the last three days, and he was surprised to find that it was his aunt and uncle rather than his father who had failed to carry off the situation. He refused as yet to admit it to himself, but the three of them, his aunt, his uncle, and himself, had seemed almost frightened. His father was another person; stern, cold, unfailingly polite, suddenly apparently possessed of those little courtesies in which he had seemed before so singularly lacking. There had been conversation of a kind at meals, and it had always been his father who had filled awkward pauses and avoided difficult moments. The knowledge, too, that his father would, in a few months' time, be head of the house, was borne in upon him with new force; it might be unpleasant, but it would not, as he had formerly fancied, be ludicrous. A sign of his changed attitude was the fact that he rather resented Randal's letter and wished a little that he had not taken him into his confidence.

Nevertheless, to ask advice of his father was impossible. He must speak to his uncle and aunt. How hard this would be only he himself knew. He had never in their eyes failed, in any degree, towards the family honour. From whatever side the House might be attacked, it would not be through him. There was nothing in his past life, they thought, at which they would not care to look.

He realised, too, Clare's love for him. He had known from very early days that he counted for everything in her life; that her faith in the family centred in his own honour and that her hopes for the family were founded completely in his own progress—and now he must tell her this.

He could not, he knew, have chosen a more unfortunate time. The House had already been threatened by the conduct of the father; it was now to totter under blows dealt by the son. The first crisis had been severe, this would be infinitely more so. He hated himself for the first time in his life, and, in doing so, began for the first time to realise himself a little.

Well, he must speak to them and ask them what was to be done, and the sooner it was over the better. He put the Beddoes back into the shelf, and went to the windows. It was already dark; light twinkled in the bay, and a line of white breakers flashed and vanished, keeping time, it seemed, with the changing gleam of the lighthouse far out to sea. His own room was dark, save for the glow of the fire. They would be at tea; probably his father would not be there—the present would be a good time to choose. He pulled his courage together and went downstairs.

As he had expected, Garrett was having tea with Clare in her own room—the Castle of Intimacy, as Randal had once called it. Garrett was reading; Clare was sitting by the fire, thinking.

"She will soon have more to think about," thought Robin wretchedly.

She looked up as he came in. "Ah, Robin, that's splendid! I was just going to send up for you. Come and sit here and talk to me. I've hardly seen you to-day."

She had been very affectionate during the last three days—rather too affectionate, Robin thought. He liked her better when she was less demonstrative.

"Where have you been all the afternoon?"

"In my room. I've been busy."

"Tea? You don't mind it strong, do you, because it's been here a good long time? Gingerbread cake especially for you."

But gingerbread cake wasn't in the least attractive. Beddoes suited him much better:—

Is that the wind dying? Oh no;
It's only two devils, that blow
Through a murderer's bones, to and fro,
In the ghost's moonshine.

"Do you know Beddoes, aunt?"

"No, dear. What kind of thing is it? Poetry?"

"Yes. You wouldn't like it, though——only I've been reading him this afternoon. He suited my mood."

"Boys of your age shouldn't have moods." This from Garrett. "I never had."

Robin took his tea without answering, and sat down on the opposite side of the fire to his aunt. How was he to begin? What was he to say? There followed an awful pause—life seemed to have been full of pauses lately.

Clare was watching him anxiously. How had his father's outbreak affected him? She was afraid, from little things that she had seen, that he had been influenced. Harry had been so different those last three days—she could not understand it. She watched him eagerly, hungrily. Why was he not still the baby that she could take on her knees and kiss and sentimentalise over? He, too, she fancied, had been different during these last days.

"More tea, Robin? You'd better—it's a long while before dinner."

"No, thanks, aunt. I—that is—well, I've something I wanted to say."

He turned round in his chair and faced the fire. He would rather not look at her whilst he was speaking. Garrett put down his book and looked up. Was there going to be more worry? What had happened lately to the world? It seemed to have lost all proper respect for the Trojan position. He could not understand it. Clare drew her breath sharply. Her fears thronged about her, like shadows in the firelight—what was it? ... Was it Harry?

"What about, Robin? Is anything the matter?"

"Why, no—nothing really—it's only—that is—Oh, dash it all—it's awfully difficult."

There was another silence. The ticking of the clock drove Robin into further speech.

"Well—I've made a bit of a mess. I've been rather a fool and I want your advice."

Another pause, but no assistance save a cold "Well?" from Garrett.

"You see it was at Cambridge, last summer. I was an awful fool, I know, but I really didn't know how far it was going until—well, until afterwards——"

"Until—after what?" said Garrett. "Would you mind being a little clearer, Robin?"

"Well, it was a girl." Robin stopped. It sounded so horrible, spoken like that in cold blood. He did not dare to look at his aunt, but he wondered what her face was like. He pulled desperately at his tie, and hurried on. "Nothing very bad, you know. I meant, at first, anyhow—I met her at another man's—Grant of Clare—quite a good chap, and he gave a picnic—canaders and things up the river. We had a jolly afternoon and she seemed awfully nice and—her mother wasn't there. Then—after that—I saw a lot of her. Every one does at Cambridge—I mean see girls and all that kind of thing—and I didn't think anything of it—and she really seemed awfully nice then. There isn't much to do at Cambridge, except that sort of thing—really. Then, after term, I came down here, and I began to write. I'm afraid I was a bit silly, but I didn't know it then, and I used to write her letters pretty often, and she answered them. And—well, you know the sort of thing, Uncle Garrett—I thought I loved her——"

At this climax, Robin came to a pause, and hoped that they would help him, but they said no word until, at last, Garrett said impatiently, "Go on."

"Well," continued Robin desperately, "that's really all—" knowing, however, that he had not yet arrived at the point of the story. "She—and her mother—came down to live here—and then, somehow, I didn't like her quite so much. It seemed different down here, and her mother was horrid. I began to see it differently, and at last, one night, I told her so. Of course, I thought, naturally, that she would understand. But she didn't—her mother was horrid—and she made a scene—it was all very unpleasant." Robin was dragging his handkerchief between his fingers, and looking imploringly at the fire. "Then I went and saw her again and asked her for—my letters—she said she'd keep them—and I'm afraid she may use them—and—well, that's all," he finished lamely.

He thought that hours of terrible silence followed his speech. He sat motionless in his chair waiting for their words. He was rather glad now that he had spoken. It had been a relief to unburden himself; for so many days he had only had his own thoughts and suggestions to apply to the situation. But he was afraid to look at his aunt.

"You young fool," at last from Garrett. "Who is the girl?"

"A Miss Feverel—she lives with her mother at Sea view Terrace—there is no father."

"Miss Feverel? What! That girl! You wrote to her! You——"

At last his aunt had spoken. He had never heard her speak like that before—the "You!" was a cry of horror. She suddenly got up and went over to him. She bent over him where he sat, with head lowered, and shook him by the shoulder.

"Robin! It can't be true—you haven't written to that girl! Not love-letters! It is incredible!"

"It is true—" he said, looking up. "Don't look at me like that, Aunt Clare. It isn't so bad—other fellows——" but then he was ashamed and stopped. He would leave his defence alone.

"Is that all?" said Garrett. "All you have done, I mean? You haven't injured the girl?"

"I swear that's all," Robin said eagerly. "I meant no harm by it. I wrote the letters without thinking I——"

Clare stood leaning on the mantelpiece, her head between her hands.

"I can't understand it. I can't understand it," she said. "It isn't like you—not a bit. That girl and you—why, it's incredible!"

"That's only because you had your fancy idea of him, Clare," said Garrett. "We'd better pass the lamentation stage and decide what's to be done."

For once Garrett seemed practical; he was pleased with himself for being so. It had suddenly occurred to him that he was the only person who could really deal with the situation. Clare was a woman, Harry was out of the question, Robin was a boy.

"Have you spoken to your father?" he asked.

"No. Of course not!" Robin answered, rather fiercely. "How could I?"

Clare went back to her chair. "That girl! But, Robin, she's plain—quite—and her manners, her mother—everything impossible!"

It was still incredible that Robin, the work of her hands as it were, into whom she had poured all things that were lovely and of good report, could have made love to an ordinary girl of the middle classes—a vulgar girl with a still more vulgar mother.

But in spite of her vulgarity she was jealous of her. "You don't care for her any longer, Robin?"

"Now?—oh no—not for a long time—I don't think I ever did really. I can't think how I was ever such a fool."

"She still threatens Breach of Promise," said Garrett, whose mind was slowly working as to the best means of proving his practical utility. "That's the point, of course. That the letters are there and that we have got to get them back. What kind of letters were they? Did you actually give her hopes?"

Robin blushed. "Yes, I'm afraid I did—as well as I can remember, and judging by her answers. I said the usual sort of things——" He paused. It was best, he felt, to leave it vague.

But Clare had scarcely arrived at the danger of it yet—the danger to the House. Her present thought was of Robin; that she must alter her feelings about him, take him from his pedestal—a Trojan who could make love to any kind of girl!

"I can't think of it now," she said; "it's confusing. We must see what's to be done. We'll talk about it some other time. It's hard to see just at present."

Garrett looked puzzled. "It's a bit of a mess," he said. "But we'll see——" and left the room with an air of importance.

Robin turned to go, and then walked over to his aunt, and put his hand on her sleeve.

"Don't think me such a rotter," he said. "I am awfully sorry—it's about you that I care most—but I've learnt a lesson; I'll never do anything like that again."

She smiled up at him, and took his hand in hers.

"Why, old boy, no. Of course I was a little surprised. But I don't mind very much if you care for me in the same way. That's all I have, Robin—your caring; and I don't think it matters very much what you do, if I still have that."

"Of course you have," he said, and bent down and kissed her. Then he left the room.

CHAPTER IX

"I'm worse to-day," said Sir Jeremy, looking at Harry, "and I'll be off under a month."

He seemed rather pathetic—the brave look had gone from his eyes, and his face and hands were more shrivelled than ever. He gave the impression of cowering in bed as though wishing to avoid a blow. Harry was with him continually now, and the old man was never happy if his son was not there. He rambled at times and fancied himself back in his youth again. Harry had found his father's room a refuge from the family, and he sat, hour after hour, watching the old man asleep, thinking of his own succession and puzzling over the hopeless tangle that seemed to surround him. How to get out of it! He had no longer any thought of turning his back; he had gone too far for that, and they would think it cowardice, but things couldn't remain as they were. What would come out of it?

He had, as Robin had said, changed. The effect of the explosion had been to reveal in him qualities whose very existence he had formerly never expected. He even found, strangely enough, a kind of joy in the affair. It was like playing a game. He had made, he felt, the right move and was in the stronger position. In earlier days he had never been able to quarrel with any one. Whenever such a thing had happened, he had been the first to make overtures; he hated the idea of an enemy, his happiness depended on his friends, and sometimes now, when he saw his own people's hostility, he was near surrender. But the memory of his sister's words had held him firm, and now he was beginning to feel in tune with the situation.

He watched Robin furtively at times and wondered how he was taking it all. Sometimes he fancied that he caught glances that pointed to Robin's own desire to see how he was taking it. Once they had passed on the stairs, and for a moment they had both paused as though they would speak. It had been all Harry could do to restrain himself from flinging his arms on to his son's shoulders and shaking him for a fool and then forcing him into surrender, but he had held himself back, and they had passed on without a word.

After all, what children they all were! That's what it came to—children playing a game that they did not understand!

"I wish it would end," said Sir Jeremy; "I'm getting damned sick of it. Why can't he take you out straight away, and be done with it? Do you know, Harry, my boy, I think I'm frightened. It's lying here thinking of it. I never had much imagination—it isn't a Trojan habit, but it grows on one. I fancy—well, what's the use o' talking?" and he sank back into his pillows again.

The room was dark save for the leaping light of the fire. It was almost time to dress for dinner, but Harry sat there, forgetting time and place in the unchanging question, How would it all work out?

"By Gad, it's Tom! Hullo, old man, I was just thinking of you. Comin' round to Horrocks' to-night for a game? Supper at Galiani's—but it's damned cold. I don't know where that sun's got to. I've been wandering up and down the street all day and I can't find the place. I've forgotten the number—I can't remember whether it was 23 or 33, and I keep getting into that passage. There I am again! Bring a light, old man—it's so dark. What's that? Who's there? Can't you answer? Darn you, come out, you——" He sat up in bed, quivering all over. Harry put his hand on his arm.

"It's all right, father," he said. "No one's here—only myself."

"Ugh! I was dreaming—" he answered, lying down again. "Let's have some light—not that electric glare. Candles!"

Harry was sitting in the corner by the bed away from the fire. He was about to rise and move the candles into a clump on the mantelpiece when there was a tap on the door and some one came in. It was Robin.

"Grandfather, are you awake? Aunt Clare told me to look in on my way up to dress and see if you wanted anything?"

The firelight was on his face. He looked very young as he stood there by the bed. His face was flushed in the light of the fire. Harry's heart beat furiously, but he made no movement and said no word.

Robin bent over the bed to catch his grandfather's answer, and he saw his father.

"I beg your pardon." he stammered. "I didn't know——" He waited for a moment as though he were going to say something, or expected his father to speak. Then he turned and left the room.

"Let's have the candles," said Sir Jeremy, as though he had not noticed the interruption, and Harry lit them.

The old man sank off to sleep again, and Harry fell back into his own gloomy thoughts once more. They were always meeting like that, and on each occasion there was need for the same severe self-control. He had to remind himself continually of their treatment of him, of Robin's coldness and reserve. At times he cursed himself for a fool, and then again it seemed the only way out of the labyrinth.

His love for his son had changed its character. He had no longer that desire for equality of which he had made, at first, so much. No, the two generations could never see in line; he must not expect that. But he thought of Robin as a boy—as a boy who had made blunders and would make others again, and would at last turn to his father as the only person who could help him. He had fancied once or twice that he had already begun to turn.

Well, he would be there if Robin wanted him. He had decided to speak to Mary about it. Her clear common-sense point of view seemed to drive, like the sun, through the mists of his obscurity; she always saw straight through things—never round them—and her practical mind arrived at a quicker solution than was possible for his rather romantic, quixotic sentiment.

"You are too fond of discerning pleasant motives," she had once said to him. "I daresay they are all right, but it takes such a time to see them."

He had not seen her since the outbreak, and he was rather anxious as to her opinion; but the main thing was to be with her. Since last Sunday he had been, he confessed to himself, absurd. He had behaved more in the manner of a boy of nineteen than a middle-aged widower of forty-five. He had been suddenly afraid of the Bethels—going to tea had seemed such an obvious advance on his part that he had shrunk from it, and he had even avoided Bethel lest that gentleman should imagine that he was on the edge of a proposal for his daughter's hand. He thought that all the world must know of it, and he blushed like a girl at the thought of its being laid bare for Pendragon to laugh and gibe it. It was so precious, so wonderful, that he kept it, like a rich piece of jewellery, deep in a secret drawer, over which he watched delightedly, almost humorously, secure in the delicious knowledge that he alone had the key. He wandered out at night, like a foolish schoolboy, to watch the lamp in her room—that dull circle of golden light against the blind seemed to draw him with it into the intimacy and security of her room.

On one of his solitary afternoon walks he suddenly came upon her. He had gone, as he so often did, over the moor to the Four Stones; he chose that place partly because of the Stones themselves and partly because of the wonderful view. It seemed to him that the whole heart of Cornwall—its mystery, its eternal sameness, its rejection of everything that was modern and ephemeral, the pathos of old deserted altars and past gods searching for their old-time worshippers—was centred there.

The Stones themselves stood on the hill, against the sky, gaunt, grey, menacing, a landmark for all the country-side. The moor ran here into a valley between two lines of hill, a cup bounded on three sides by the hills and on the fourth by the sea. In the spring it flamed, a bowl of fire, with the gorse; now it stood grim and naked to all the winds, blue in the distant hills, a deep red to the right, where the plough had been, brown and grey on the moor itself running down to the sea.

It was full of deserted things, as is ever the way with the true Cornwall. On the hill were the Stones sharp against the sky-line; lower down, in a bend of the valley, stood the ruins of a mine, the shaft and chimney, desolately solitary, looking like the pillars of some ancient temple that had been fashioned by uncouth worshippers. In the valley itself stood the stones of what was once a chapel—built, perhaps, for the men of the desolate mine, inhabited now by rabbits and birds, its windows spaces where the winds that swept the moor could play their eternal, restless games.

On a day of clouds there was no colour on the moor, but when the sun was out great bands of light swept its surface, playing on the Stones and changing them to marble, striking colour from the mine and filling the chapel with gold. But the sun did not reach that valley on many days when the rest of the world was alight—it was as if it respected the loneliness of its monuments and the pathos of them.

Harry sat on the side of the hill, below the Stones, and watched the sea. At times a mist came and hid it; on sunny days, when the sky was intensely blue, there hung a dazzling haze like a golden veil and he could only tell that the sea was there by the sudden gleam of tiny white horses, flashing for a moment on the mirror of blue and shining through the haze; sometimes a gull swerved through the air above his head as though a wave had lost its bounds and, for sheer joy of the beautiful day, had flung itself tossing and wheeling into the air.

But to-day was a day of wind and rapidly sailing clouds, and myriads of white horses curved and tossed and vanished over the shifting colours of the sea; there were wonderful shadows of dark blue and purple and green of such depth that they seemed unfathomable.

Suddenly he saw Mary coming towards him. A scarf—green like the green of the sea—was tied round her hat and under her chin and floated behind her. Her dress was blown against her body, and she walked as though she loved the battling with the wind. Her face was flushed with the struggle, and she had come up to him before she saw that he was there.

"Now, that's luck," she said, laughing, as she sat down beside him; "I've been wanting to see you ever since yesterday afternoon, but you seemed to have hidden yourself. It doesn't sound a very long time, does it? But I've something to tell you—rather important."

"What?" He looked at her and suddenly laughed. "What a splendid place for us to meet—its solitude is almost unreal."

"As to solitude," she said calmly, pointing down the valley. "There's Tracy Corridor; it will be all over the Club to-night—he's been watching us for some time"; a long thin youth, his head turned in their direction, had passed down the footpath towards its ruined chapel, and was rapidly vanishing in the direction of Pendragon.

"Well—let them," said Harry, shrugging his shoulders. "You don't mind, do you?"

"Not a bit," she answered lightly. "They've discussed the Bethel family so frequently and with such vigour that a little more or less makes no difference whatsoever. Pendragon taboo! we won't dishonour the sea by such a discussion in its sacred presence."

"What do you want to tell me?" he asked, watching delightedly the colour of her face, the stray curls that the wind dragged from discipline and played games with, the curve of her wrist as her hand lay idly in her lap.

"Oh, it'll keep," she said quickly. "Never mind just yet. Tell me about yourself—what's happened?"

"How did you know that anything had?" he asked.

"Oh, one can tell," she answered. "Besides, I have felt sure that it would, things couldn't go on just as they were——" she paused a moment and then added seriously, "I hope you don't mind my asking? It seems a little impertinent—but that was part of the compact, wasn't it?"

"Why, of course," he said.

"Because, you know," she went on, "it's really rather absurd. I'm only twenty-six, and you're—oh! I don't know how old!—anyhow an elderly widower with a grown-up son; but I'm every bit as old as you are, really. And I'm sure I shall give you lots of good advice, because you've no idea what a truly practical person I am. Only sometimes lately I've wondered whether you've been a little surprised at my—our flinging ourselves into your arms as we have done. It's like father—he always goes the whole way in the first minute; but it isn't, or at any rate it oughtn't to be, like me!"

"You are," he said quietly, "the best friend I have in the world. How much that means to me I will tell you one day."

"That's right," she said gaily, settling herself down with her hands folded behind her head. "Now for the situation. I'm all attention."

"Well," he answered, "the situation is simple enough—it's the next move that's puzzling me. There was, four days ago, an explosion—it was after breakfast—a family council—and I was in a minority of one. I was accused of a good many things—going down to the Cove, paying no attention to the Miss Ponsonbys, and so on. They attacked me as I thought unfairly, and I lost control—on the whole, I am sure, wisely. I wasn't very rude, but I said quite plainly that I should go my own way in the future and would be dictated to by no one. At any rate they understand that."

"And now?"

"Ah, now—well—it's as you would expect. We are quite polite but hostile. Robin and I don't speak. The new game—Father and Son; or how to cut your nearest relations with expedition and security." He laughed bitterly.

"Oh, I should like to shake him!" she cried, sitting up and flinging her arms wide, as though she were saluting the sea. "He doesn't know, he doesn't understand! Neither himself nor any one else. Oh, I will talk to him some day! But, do you know," she said, turning round to him, "it's been largely your fault from the beginning."

"Oh, I know," he answered. "If I had only seen then what I see now. But how could I? How could I tell? But I always have been that kind of man, all my days—finding out things when it's too late and wanting to mend things that are hopelessly broken. And then I have always been impulsive and enthusiastic about people. When I meet them first, I mean, I like them and credit them with all the virtues, and then, of course, there is an awakening. Oh, you don't know," he said, with a little laugh, "how enthusiastic I was when I first came back."

"Yes, I do," she answered; "that was one of the reasons I took to you."

"But it isn't right," he said, shaking his head. "I've always been like that. It's been the same with my friendships. I've rated them too highly. I've expected everything and then cried like a child because I've been disappointed. I can see now not only the folly of it, but the weakness. It is, I suppose, a mistake, caring too much for other people, one loses one's self-respect."

"Yes," she said, staring out to sea, "it's quite true—one does. The world's too hard; it doesn't give one credit for fine feelings—it takes a short cut and thinks one a fool."

"But the worst of it is," he went on ruefully, "that I never feel any older. I have those enthusiasms and that romance in the same way now at forty-five—just as I did at nineteen. I never could bear quarrelling with anybody. I used to go and apologise even when it wasn't my fault—so that, you see, the present situation is difficult."

"Ah, but you must keep your end up," she broke in quickly. "It's the only way—don't give in. Robin is just like that. He is self-centred, all shams now, and when he sees that you are taken in by them, just as he is himself, he despises you. But when he sees you laugh at them or cut them down, then he respects you. I'm the only person, I think, that knows him really here. The others haven't grasped him at all."

"My father grows worse every day," Harry went on, as though pursuing his own train of thought. "He can't last much longer, and when he goes I shall miss him terribly. We have understood each other during this fortnight as we never did in all those early years. Sometimes I funk it utterly—following him with all of them against me."

"Why, no," she cried. "It's splendid. You are in power. They can do nothing, and Robin will come round when he sees how you face it out. Why, I expect that he's coming already. I've faced things out here all these years, and you dare to say that you can't stand a few months of it."

"What have you faced?" he asked. "Tell me exactly. I want to know all about you; you've never told me very much, and it's only fair that I should know."

"Yes," she said gravely, "it is—well, you shall!—at least a part of it. A woman always keeps a little back," she said, looking at him with a smile. "As soon as she ceases to be a puzzle she ceases to interest."

She turned and watched the sea. Then, after a moment's pause, she said:

"What do you want to know? I can only give you bits of things—when, for instance, I ran away from my nurse, aged five, was picked up by an applewoman with a green umbrella who introduced me to three old ladies with black pipes and moustaches—I was found in a coal cellar. Then we lived in Bloomsbury—a little house looking out on to a little green park—all in miniature it seems on looking back. I don't think that I was a very good child, but they didn't look after me very much. Mother was always out, and father in business. Fancy," she said, laughing, "father in business! We were happy then, I think, all of us. Then came the terrible time when father ran away."

"Ah, yes," Harry said, "he told me."

"Poor mother! it was quite dreadful; I was only eight then, and I didn't understand. But she sat up all night waiting for him. She was persuaded that he was killed, and she was very ill. You see he had never left any word as to where he was. And then he suddenly turned up again, and ate an enormous breakfast, as though nothing had happened. I don't think he realised a bit that she had worried.

"It was so like him, the naked selfishness of it and the utter unresponsibility, as of a child.

"Then I went to school—in Bloomsbury somewhere. It was a Miss Pinker, and she was interested in me. Poor thing, her school failed afterwards. I don't know quite why, but she never could manage, and I don't think parents ever paid her. I had great ideas of myself then; I thought that I would be great, an actress or a novelist, but I got rid of all that soon enough. I was happy; we had friends, and luxuries were rare enough to make them valuable. Then—we came down here—this sea, this town, this moor—Oh! how I hate them!"

Her hands were clenched and her face was white. "It isn't fair; they have taken everything from me—leisure, brain, friends. I have had to slave ever since I came here to make both ends meet. Ah! you never knew that, did you? But father has never done a stroke of work since he has been here, and mother has never been the same since that night when he ran away; so I've had it all—and it has been scrape, scrape, scrape all the time. You don't know the tyranny of butter and eggs and vegetables, the perpetual struggle to turn twice two into five, the unending worry about keeping up appearances—although, for us, it mattered precious little, people never came to see if appearances were kept.

"They called at first; I think they meant to be kind, but father was sometimes rude and never seemed to know whether he had met a person before or no. Then he was idle, they thought, and they disliked him for that. We gave some little parties, but they failed miserably, and at last people always refused. And, really, it was rather a good thing, because we hadn't got the money. I suppose I'm a bad manager; at any rate, whatever it is, things have been getting worse and worse, and one day soon there'll be an explosion, and that will be the end. We're up to our eyes in debt. I try to talk to father about it, but he waves it away with his hand. They have, neither of them, the least idea of money. You see, father doesn't need very much himself, except for buying books. He had ten pounds last week—housekeeping money to be given to me; he saw an edition of something that he wanted, and the money was gone. We've been living on cabbages ever since. That's the kind of thing that's always happening. I wanted to talk to him about things this morning, but he said that he had an important engagement. Now he's out on the moor somewhere flying his kite——"

She was leaning forward, her chin on her hand, staring out to sea.

"It takes the beans out of life, doesn't it?" she said, laughing. "You must think me rather a poor thing for complaining like this, only it does some good sometimes to get rid of it, and really at times I'm frightened when I think of the end, the disgrace. If we are proclaimed bankrupts it will kill mother. Father, of course, will soon get over it."

"I say—I'm so sorry." Harry scarcely knew what to say. She was not asking for sympathy; he saw precisely her position—that she was too proud to ask for his help, but that she must speak. No, sympathy was not what she wanted. He suddenly hated Bethel—the selfishness of it, the hopeless egotism. It was, Harry decided, the fools and not the villains who spoilt life.

"I want you to do me a favour," he said. "I want you to promise me that, before the end actually comes, if it is going to come, you will ask me to help you. I won't offer to do anything now—I will stand aside until you want me; but you won't be proud if it comes to the worst, will you? Do you promise? You see," he added, trying to laugh lightly, "we are chums."

"Yes," she answered quietly, "I promise. Here's my hand on it."

As he took her hand in his it was all he could do to hold himself back. A great wave of passion seized him, his body trembled from head to foot, and he grew very white. He was crying, "I love you, I love you, I love you," but he kept the words from his lips—he would not speak yet.

"Thank you," was all that he said, and he stood up to hide his agitation.

For a little they did not speak. They both felt that, in that moment, they had touched on things that were too sacred for speech; he seemed so strong, so splendid in her eyes, as he stood there, facing the sea, that she was suddenly afraid.

"Let us go back," she said. They turned down the crooked path towards the ruined chapel.

"What was the news that you had for me?" he asked suddenly.

"Why, of course," she answered; "I meant to have told you before." Then, more gravely, "It's about Robin——"

"About Robin?"

"Yes. I don't know really whether I ought to tell you, because, after all, it's only chatter and mother never gets stories right—she manages to twist them into the most amazing shapes."

"No. Tell me," he insisted.

"Well—there's a person whom mother knows—Mrs. Feverel. Odious to my mind, but mother sees something of her."

"A lady?"

"No—by no means; a gloomy, forbidding person who would like to get a footing here if she could, and is discontented because people won't know her. You see," she added, "we can only know the people that other people don't know. This Mrs. Feverel has a daughter—rather a pretty girl, about eighteen—I should think she might be rather nice. I am a little sorry for her—there isn't a father.

"Well—these people have, in some way, entangled Robin. I don't quite know the right side of it, but mother was having tea with Mrs. Feverel yesterday afternoon and that good woman hinted a great deal at the power that she now had over your family. For some time she was mysterious, but at last she unburdened herself.

"Apparently, Master Robin had been making advances to the girl in the summer, and now wants to back out of it. He had, I gather, written letters, and it was to these that Mrs. Feverel was referring——"

Harry drew a long breath. "I'm damned," he said.

"Oh, of course, I don't know," she went on; "you see, it may have been garbled. Mrs. Feverel is, I should think, just the person to hint suspicions for which there's no ground at all. Only it won't do if she's going to whisper to every one in Pendragon—I thought you ought to be warned——"

Harry was thinking hard. "The young fool," he said. "But it's just what I've been wanting. This is just where I can come in. I knew something has been worrying him lately. I could see it. I believe he's been in two minds as to telling me—only he's been too proud. But, of course, he will have to tell some one. A youngster like that is no match for a girl and her mother of the class these people seem to be. He will confide in his aunt—" He stopped and burst into uncontrollable laughter. "Oh! The humour of it—don't you see? They'll be terrified—it will threaten the honour of the House. They will all go running round to get the letters back; that girl will have a good time—and that, of course, is just where I come in."

"I don't see," said Mary.

"Why, it's just what I've been watching for. Harry Trojan arrives—Harry Trojan is no good—Harry Trojan is despised—but suddenly he holds the key to the situation. Presto! The family on their knees——"

Mary looked at him in astonishment. It was, she thought, unlike him to exult like this over the misfortunes of his sister; she was a little disappointed. "It is really rather serious," she said, "for your sister, I mean. You know what Pendragon is. If they once get wind of the affair there will be a great deal of talk."

"Ah, yes!" he said gravely. "You mustn't think me a brute for laughing like that. But I'm thinking of Robin. If you knew how I cared for the boy—what this means. Why, it brings him to my feet—if I carry the thing out properly." Then quickly, "You don't think they've got back the letters already?"

"They haven't had time—unless they've gone to-day. Besides, the girl's not likely to give them up easily. But, of course, I don't really know if that's how the case lies—mother's account was very confused. Only I am certain that Mrs. Feverel thinks she has a pull somewhere; and she said something about letters."

"I will go at once," Harry said, walking quickly. "I can never be grateful enough to you. Where do they live?"

"10 Seaview Terrace," she answered. "A little dingy street past the church and Breadwater Place—it faces the sea."

"And the girl—what is she like?"

"I've only seen her about twice. I should say tall, thin, dark—rather wonderful eyes in a very pale face; dresses rather well in an aesthetic kind of way."

He said very little more, and she did not interrupt his thoughts. She was surprised to find that she was a little jealous of Robin, the interest in her own affairs had been very sweet to her, the remembrance of it now sent the blood to her cheeks, but this news seemed to have driven his thought for her entirely out of his head.

Suddenly, at the bend of the little lane leading up to the town, they came upon her father, flying a huge blue kite. The kite soared above his head; he watched it, his body bent back, his arm straining at the cord. He saw them and pulled it in.

"Hullo! Trojan, how are you? You ought to do this. It's the most splendid fun—you've no idea. This wind is glorious. I shan't be home till dark, Mary——" and they left him, laughing like a boy. She gave him further directions as to the house, and they parted. She felt a little lonely as she watched him hurrying down the street. He seemed to have forgotten her completely. "Mary Bethel, you're a selfish pig," she said, as she climbed the stairs to her room. "Of course, he cares more about his son—why not?" But nevertheless she sighed, and then went down to make tea for her mother, who was tired and on the verge of tears.

CHAPTER X

As he passed through the town all his thoughts were of his splendid fortune. This was the very thing for which he had been hoping, the key to all his difficulties.

The dusk was creeping down the streets. A silver star hung over the roofs silhouetted black against the faint blue of the night sky. The lamps seemed to wage war with the departing daylight; the after-glow of the setting sun fluttered valiantly for a little, and then, yielding its place to the stronger golden circles stretching like hanging moons down the street, vanished.

The shops were closing. Worthley's Hosiery was putting up the shutters and a boy stood in the doorway, yawning; there had been a sale and the shop was tired. Midgett's Bookshop at the corner of the High Street was still open and an old man with spectacles and a flowing beard stood poring over the odd-lot box at 2d. a volume by the door.

The young man who advised ladies as to the purchase of six-shilling novels waited impatiently. He had hoped to be off by six to-night. He had an appointment at seven—and now this old man.... "We close at six, sir," he said. But the old gentleman did not hear. He bent lower and lower until his beard almost swept the pavement. Harry passed on.

All these things passed like shadows before Harry; he noticed them, but they fitted into the pattern of his thoughts, forming a frame round his great central idea—that at last he had his chance.

There was no fear in his mind that he would not get the letters. There was, of course, the chance that Clare had been before him, but then, as Mary had said, she had scarcely had time, and it was not likely that the girl would give them up easily. It was just possible, too, that the whole affair was a mistake, that Mrs. Feverel had merely boasted for the sake of impressing old Mrs. Bethel, that there was little or nothing behind it, but that was unlikely.

He had formed no definite decision as to the method of his attack; he must wait and see how the land lay. A great deal depended on the presence of the mother—the girl, too, might be so many different things; he was not even certain of her age. If there was nothing in it, he would look a fool, but he must risk that. A wild idea came into his head that he might, perhaps, find Clare there—that would be amusing. He imagined them bidding for the letters, and that brought him to the point that money would be necessary—well, he was ready to pay a good deal, for it was Robin for whom he was bidding.

He found the street without any difficulty. Its dinginess was obvious, and now, with a little wind whistling round its corners and whirling eddies of dust in the road, its three lamps at long distances down the street, the monotonous beat of the sea beyond the walls, it was depressing and sad.

It reminded him of the street in Auckland where he had heard the strange voice; it was just such another moment now—the silence bred expectancy and the sea was menacing.

"I shall get the shivers if I don't move," he said, and rang the bell.

The slatternly servant that he had expected to see answered the bell, and the tap-tap of her down-at-heels slippers sounded along the passage as she departed to see if Mrs. Feverel would see him.

He waited in the draughty hall; it was so dark that coats and hats loomed, ghostly shapes, by the farther wall. A door opened, there was sound of voices—a moment's pause, then the door closed and the maid appeared at the head of the stairs.

"The missis says you can come up," she said ungraciously.

She eyed him curiously as he passed her, and scented drama in the set of his shoulders and the twitch of his fingers.

"A military!" she concluded, and tap-tapped down again into the kitchen.

A low fire was burning in the grate and the blind napped against the window. The draught blew the everlastings on the mantelpiece together with a little dry, dusty sound like the rustle of a breeze in dried twigs.

Mrs. Feverel sat bending over the fire, and he thought as he saw her that it would need a very great fire indeed to put any warmth into her. Her black hair, parted in the middle, was bound back tightly over her head and confined by a net.

She shook hands with him solemnly, and then waited as though she expected an explanation.

Harry smiled. "I'm afraid, Mrs. Feverel," he said, "that you may think this extraordinary. I can only offer as apology your acquaintance with my son."

"Ah yes—Mr. Robert Trojan."

Her mouth closed with a snap and she waited, with her hands folded on her lap, for him to say something further.

"You knew him, I think, at Cambridge in the summer?"

"Yes, my daughter and I were there in the summer."

Harry paused. It would be harder than he expected, and where was the daughter?

"Cambridge is very pleasant in the summer?" he asked, his resolution weakening rapidly before her impassivity.

"My daughter and I found it so. But, of course, it depends——"

It depended, he reflected, on such people as his son—boys whom they could cheat at their ease. He had no doubt at all now that the mother was an adventuress of the common, melodrama type. He suspected the girl of being the same. It made things in some ways much simpler, because money would, probably, settle everything; there would be no question of fine feelings. He knew exactly how to deal with such women, he had known them in New Zealand; but he was amused as he contemplated Clare's certain failure—such a woman was entirely outside her experience.

He came to the point at once.

"My being here is easily explained. I learn, Mrs. Feverel, that my son formed an attachment for your daughter during last summer. He wrote some letters now in your daughter's possession. His family are naturally anxious that those letters should be returned. I have come to see what can be done about the matter." He paused—but she said nothing, and remained motionless by the fire.

"Perhaps," he said slowly, "you would prefer, Mrs. Feverel, to name a possible price yourself?"

Afterwards, on looking back, he felt that his expectations had been perfectly justified; she had, up to that point, given him every reason to take the line that he adopted. She had listened to the first part of his speech without remark; she must, he reflected afterwards, have known what was coming, yet she had given no sign that she heard.

And so the change in her was startling and took him utterly by surprise.

She looked up at him from her chair, and the thin ghost of a smile that crept round the corners of her mouth, faced him for a moment, and then vanished suddenly, was the strangest thing that he had ever seen.

"Don't you think, Mr. Trojan, that that is a little insulting?"

It made him feel utterly ashamed. In her own house, in her drawing-room, he had offered her money.

"I beg your pardon," he stammered.

"Yes," she answered slowly. "You had rather misconceived the situation."

Harry felt that her silences were the most eloquent that he had ever known. He began to be very frightened, and, for the first time, conceived the possibility of not securing the letters at all. The thought that his hopes might be dashed to the ground, that he might be no nearer his goal at the end of the interview than before, sharpened his wits. It was to be a deal in subtlety rather than the obvious thing that he had expected—well, he would play it to the end.

"I beg your pardon," he said again. "I have been extremely rude. I am only recently returned from abroad, and my knowledge of the whole affair is necessarily very limited. I came here with a very vague idea both as to yourself and your intentions. In drawing the conclusions that I did I have done both you and your daughter a grave injustice, for which I humbly apologise. I may say that, before coming here, I had had no interview with my son. I am, therefore, quite ignorant as regards facts."

He did not feel that his apology had done much good. He felt that she had accepted both his insult and apology quite calmly, as though she had regarded them inevitably.

"The facts," she said, looking down again at the fire, "are quite simple. My daughter and your son became acquainted at Cambridge in May last. They saw a great deal of each other during the next few months. At the end of that time they were engaged. Mr. Robert Trojan gave us to understand that he was about to acquaint his family with the fact. They corresponded continually during the summer—letters, I believe, of the kind common to young people in love. Mr. Robert Trojan spoke continually of the marriage and suggested dates. We then came down here, and, soon after our arrival, I perceived a change in your son's attitude. He came to see us very rarely, and at last ceased his visits altogether. My daughter was naturally extremely upset, and there were several rather painful interviews. He then wrote returning her letters and demanding the return of his own. This she definitely refused. Those are the facts, Mr. Trojan."

She had spoken without any emotion, and evidently expected that he should do the same.

"I have come," he said, "on behalf of my son to demand the return of those letters."

"Demand?"

"Naturally. Letters, Mrs. Feverel, of that kind are dangerous things to leave about."

"Yes?" She smiled. "Dangerous for whom? I think you forget a little, Mr. Trojan, in your anxiety for your son's welfare, my daughter's side of the question. She naturally treasures what represents to her the happiest months of her existence. You must remember that your son's conduct—shall I call it desertion?—was a terrible blow. She loved him, Mr. Trojan, with all her heart. Is it not right that he should suffer a little as well?"

"I refuse to believe," he answered sharply, "that this is all a matter of sentiment. I regret extremely that my son should have behaved in such a cowardly and dastardly manner—it has hurt and surprised me more than I can say—but, were that all, it were surely better to bury the whole affair as soon as may be. I cannot believe that you are keeping the letters with no intention of making public use of them."

"Ah," said Mrs. Feverel, "I wonder."

"Hadn't we better come to a clear understanding, Mrs. Feverel?" he asked. "We are neither of us children, and this beating about the bush serves no purpose whatever. If you refuse to return the letters, I have at least the right to ask what you mean to do with them."

"Here is my daughter," she answered, "she shall speak for herself."

He turned round at the sound of the opening door, and watched her as she came in. She was very much as he had imagined—thin and tall, walking straight from the hips, giving a little the impression that she was standing on her toes. Her eyes seemed amazingly dark in the whiteness of her face. She seemed a little older than he had expected—perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six.

She looked at him sharply as she entered and then came forward to her mother. He could see that she was agitated—her breath came quickly, and her hands folded and unfolded as though she were tearing something to pieces.