Cornwall (England : County) -- Fiction; Fathers and sons -- Fiction
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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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