The Wooden Horse Part 27

It had come so suddenly that it took her by surprise. The colour flew into her cheeks and then ebbed away again, leaving her whiter than ever. That he should have actually said the words made her heart beat furiously, and there was a singing in her ears so that she scarcely heard what he said. He paused a moment and then went on. "Oh! I know it's absurd when we've only known each other such a little time, and I've been telling myself that again and again--but it's no good. I've tried to keep it back, but I simply couldn't help it--it's been too strong for me."

He paused again, but she said nothing and he went on. "I ought to tell you about myself, so that you should know, because I'm really a very rotten type of person. I've never done anything yet, and I don't suppose I ever shall; I've been a failure at most things, and I'm stupid. I never read the right sort of books, or look at the right sort of pictures, or like the right sort of music, and even at the sort of things that most men are good at I'm nothing unusual. I can't write, you know, a bit, and in my letters I express myself like a boy of fifteen. And then I'm old--quite middle-aged--although I feel young enough. So that all these things are against me, and it's really a shame to ask you."

He paused again, and then he said timidly, bending towards her--

"Could you ever, do you think, give me just a little hope--I wouldn't want you to right away at once--but, any time, after you'd thought about it?"

She looked up at him and saw that he was shaking from head to foot.

Her pride was nearly overcome and she wanted to fling herself at his feet, and kiss his hands, and never let him go, but she remembered that Pendragon had said that she was catching him for his money; so, by a great effort, she stayed where she was, and answered quietly, even coldly--

"I am more honoured, Mr. Trojan, than I can tell you by your asking me.

It is much, very much more than I deserve, and, indeed, I'm not in the least worthy of it. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid it's no good. You see I'm such a stupid sort of girl--I muddle things so. It would never do for me to attempt to manage a big place like 'The Flutes'--and then I don't think I shall ever marry. I don't think I am that sort of girl.

You have been an awfully good friend to me, and I'm more grateful to you than I can say. I can't tell you how much you have helped us all during these last weeks. But I'm afraid I must say no."

The light from the window fell on her hair and the blue of her dress--a little gold pin at her throat flashed and sparkled; his eye caught it, and was fixed there.

"No--don't say actually no." He was stammering. "Please--please.

Think about it after I have gone away. I will come again another day when you have thought about it. I'm so stupid in saying things--I can't express myself; but, Miss Bethel--Mary--I love you--I love you.

There isn't much to say about it--I can't express it any better--but, please--you mustn't say no like that. I would be as good a husband to you as I could, dear, always. I'm not the sort of fellow to change."

"No"--she was speaking quickly as though she meant it to be final--"no, really, I mean it. I can't, I can't. You see one has to feel certain about it, hasn't one?--and I don't--not quite like that. But you are the very best friend that I have ever had; don't let it spoil that."

"Perhaps," he said slowly, "it's my age. You don't feel that you could with a man old enough to be your father. But I'm young--younger than Robin. But I won't bother you about it. Of course, if you are certain----"

He rose and stumbled a moment over the chair as he pa.s.sed to the door.

"Oh! I'm so sorry!" she cried. "I----" and then she had to turn to hide her face. In her heart there was a struggle such as she had never faced before. Her love called her a fool and told her that she was flinging her life away--that the s.h.i.+p of her good fortune was sailing from her, and it would be soon beyond the horizon; but her pride reminded her of what they had said--that she had laid traps for him, for his money.

"I am sorry," she said again. "But it must be only friends.h.i.+p."

But she had forgotten that although her back was turned he was towards the mirror. He could see her--her white face and quivering lips.

He sprang towards her.

"Mary, try me. I will love you better than any man in G.o.d's world, always. I will live for you, and work for you, and die for you."

It was more than she could bear. She could not reason now. She was only resolved that she would not give way, and she pushed past him blindly, her head hanging.

The drawing-room door closed. He stared dully in front of him. Then he picked up his hat and left the house.

She had flung herself on her bed and lay there motionless. She heard the door close, his steps on the stairs, and then the outer door.

She sprang to the window, and then, moved by some blind impulse, rushed to the head of the stairs. There were steps, and Mrs. Bethel's voice penetrated the gloom. "Mary, Mary, where are you?"

She crept back to her room.

He walked back to "The Flutes" with the one fact ever before him--that she had refused him. He realised now that it had been his love for her that had kept him during these weeks sane and brave. Without it, he could not have faced his recent troubles and all the desolate sense of outlawry and desolation that had weighed on him so terribly. Now he must face it, alone, with the knowledge that she did not love him--that she had told him so. It was his second rejection--the second flinging to the ground of all his defences and walls of protection. Robin had rejected him, Mary had rejected him, and he was absolutely, horribly alone. He thought for a moment of Dahlia Feverel and of her desertion.

Well, she had faced it pluckily; he would do the same. Life could be hard, but he would not be beaten. His methods of consolation, his pulling of himself together--it was all extremely commonplace, but then he was an essentially commonplace man, and saw things unconfusedly, one at a time, with no entanglement of motives or complicated searching for origins. He had accepted the fact of his rejection by his family with the same clear-headed indifference to side-issues as he accepted now his rejection by Mary. He could not understand "those artist fellows with their complications"--life for him was perfectly straight-forward.

But the G.o.ds had not done with his day. On the way up to his room he was met by Clare.

"Father is worse," she said quickly. "He took a turn this morning, and now, perhaps, he will not live through the night. Dr. Turner and Dr.

Craile are both with him. He asked for you a little while ago."

She pa.s.sed down the stairs--the quiet, self-composed woman of every day. It was characteristic of a Trojan that the more agitated outside circ.u.mstances became the quieter he or she became. Harry was Trojan in this, and, as was customary with him, he put aside his own worries and dealt entirely with the matter in hand.

Already, over the house, a change was evident. In the absolute stillness there could be felt the presence of a crisis, and the monotonous flap of a blind against some distant window sounded clearly down the pa.s.sages.

In Sir Jeremy's room there was perfect stillness. The two doctors had gone downstairs and the nurse was alone. "He asked for you, sir," she whispered; "he is unconscious again now."

Harry sat down by the bed and waited. The air was heavy with scents of medicine, and the drawn blinds flung grey, ghost-like shadows over the bed. The old man seemed scarcely changed. The light had gone from his eyes and his hand lay motionless on the sheets, and his lips moved continually in a never-ceasing murmur.

Suddenly he turned and his eyes opened. The nurse moved forward.

"Where's Harry?" He waved his arm feebly in the air.

"I'm here, father," Harry said quietly.

"Ah, that's good"--he sank back on the pillows again. "I'm going to die, you know, and I'm lonely. It's d.a.m.ned gloomy--got to die--don't want to--but got to."

He felt for his son's hand, found it, and held it. Then he pa.s.sed off again into half-conscious sleep, and Harry watched, his hand in his father's and his thoughts with the girl and the boy who had rejected him rather than with the old man who had accepted him.

CHAPTER XIII

Meanwhile there was Robin--and he had been spending several very unhappy days. In the gloom of his room, alone and depressed, he had been pa.s.sing things in review. He had never hitherto felt any very burning desire to know how he stood with the world; at school and Cambridge he had not thought at all--he had just, as it were, slid into things; his surroundings had grouped themselves of their own accord, making a delicately appreciative circle with no disturbing element.

His friends had been of his own kind, the things that he had wished to do he had done, his thoughts had been dictated by set forms and customs. This had seemed to him, hitherto, an extraordinarily broad outlook; he had never doubted for a moment its splendid infallibility.

He applied the tests of his set to the world at large, and the world conformed. Life was very easy on such terms, and he had been happy and contented.

His meeting with Dahlia had merely lent a little colour to his pleasant complacency, and then, when it had threatened to become something more, he had ruthlessly cut it out. This should have been simple enough, and he had been at a loss to understand why the affair had left any traces.

Friends of his at college had had such episodes, and had been mildly amused at their rapid conclusion. He had tried to be mildly amused at the conclusion of his own affair, but had failed miserably. Why? ...

he did not know. He must be sensitive, he supposed; then, in that case, he had failed to reach the proper standard.... Randal was never sensitive. But there had been other things.

During the last week everything had seemed to be topsy-turvy. He dated it definitely from the arrival of his father. He recalled the day; his tie was badly made, he remembered, and he had been rather concerned about it. How curious it all was; he must have changed since then, because now--well, ties seemed scarcely to matter at all. He saw his father standing at the open window watching the lighted town....

"Robin, old boy, we'll have a good time, you and I..."--and then Aunt Clare with her little cry of horror, and his father's hurried apology.

That had been the beginning of things; one could see how it would go from the first. Had it, after all, been so greatly his father's fault?

He was surprised to find that he was regarding his uncle and aunt critically.... It had been their fault to a great extent--they had never given him a chance. Then he remembered the next morning and his own curt refusal to his father's invitation--"He had books to pack for Randal!" How absurd it was, and he wondered why he should have considered Randal so important. He could have waited for the books.

But these things depended entirely on his own sudden discovery that he had failed in a crisis--failed, and failed lamentably. He did not believe that Randal would have failed. Randal would not have worried about it for a moment. What, then, was precisely the difference? He had acted throughout according to the old set formula--he had applied all the rules of the game as he had learnt them, and nevertheless he had been beaten. And so there had crept over him gradually, slowly, and at last overwhelmingly, the knowledge that the world that he had imagined was not the world as it is, that the people he had admired were not the only admirable people in it, and that the laws that had governed him were only a small fragment of the laws that rule the world.

When this discovery first comes to a man the effect is deadening; like a s.h.i.+p that has lost its bearings he plunges in a sea of entangled, confused ideas with no a.s.surances as to his own ability to reach any safe port whatever. It is this crisis that marks the change from youth to manhood.

Three weeks ago Robin had been absolutely confident, not only in himself, but in his relations, his House and his future; now he trusted in nothing. But he had not yet arrived at the point when he could regard his own shortcomings as the cause of his unhappiness; he pointed to circ.u.mstances, his aunt, his uncle, Dahlia, even Randal, and he began a search for something more reliable.

Of course, his aunt and uncle might have solved the problem for him; he had not dared to question them and they had never mentioned the subject themselves, but they did not look as though they had succeeded--he fancied that they had avoided him during the last few days.

The serious illness of his grandfather still further complicated matters; he was not expected to live through the week. Robin was sorry, but he had never seen very much of his grandfather; and it was, after all, only fitting that such a very old man should die some time; no, the point really was that his father would in a week's time be Sir Henry Trojan and head of the House--that was what mattered.