The Wooden Horse Part 3

He pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sionate, 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 pa.s.sage 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 b.u.t.tons 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 a.s.sortment 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, acc.u.mulate 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 d.a.m.ned 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 s.p.a.ce 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 members.h.i.+p'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 pa.s.sed 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-cla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 s.h.i.+ngly 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 rea.s.sured 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 circ.u.mstances 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 embarra.s.sed. 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 ma.s.s 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!"