The Wooden Horse by Sir Hugh Walpole

Author:Sir Hugh Walpole [Walpole, Hugh, Sir]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

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

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