The Wooden Horse Part 17

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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.sistance 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."