As Martin climbed to the top of the black crooked staircase he was conscious, as though it had been shown him in a vision, that he was on the edge of some scene that might shape for him the whole course of his future life.He had been aware, once or twice before, of such a premonition, and, as with most men, half of him had rejected and half of him received the warning.To-day, however, there were reasons enough for thinking this no mere baseless superstition.With Maggie, with his father, with his sister, with his own life the decision had got to be taken, and it was with an abrupt determination that he would end, at all costs, the fears and uncertainties of these last weeks that he pushed back the hall-door and entered.He noticed at once strange garments hanging on the rack and a bright purple umbrella which belonged, as he knew, to a certain Mrs.Alweed, a friend of his mother's and a faithful servant of the Chapel, stiff and assertive in the umbrella-stand.There was a tea-party apparently.Well, he could not face that immediately.He would have to go in afterwards...meanwhile...
He turned down the passage, pushed back his father's door and entered.He paused abruptly in the doorway; there, standing in front of the window facing him, his pale chin in the air, his legs apart, supercilious and self-confident, stood Thurston.His father's desk was littered with papers, rustling and blowing a little in the breeze from the window that was never perfectly closed.
One candle, on the edge of the desk, its flame swaying in the air was the only light.Martin's first impulse was to turn abruptly back again and go up to his room.He could not speak to that fellow now, he could not! He half turned.Then something stopped him:
"Halloo!" he said."Where's father?"
"Don't know," said Thurston, sucking the words through his teeth.
"I've been wanting him too."
"Well, as he isn't here--" said Martin fiercely.
"No use me waiting? Quite so.All the same I'm going to wait."The two figures were strangely contrasted, Martin red-brown with health, thick and square, Thurston pale with a spotted complexion, dim and watery eyes, legs and arms like sticks, his black clothes shabby and his boots dusty.
Nevertheless at that moment it was Thurston who had the power.He moved forward from the window."Makes you fair sick to see me anywhere about the 'ouse, doesn't it? Oh, I know...You can't kid me.I've seen from the first.You fair loathe the sight of me.""That's nothing to do with it," said Martin uneasily."Whether we like one another or not, there's no need to discuss it.""Oh, isn't there?" said Thurston, coming a little closer so that he was standing now directly under the light of the candle."Why not?
Why shouldn't we? What's the 'arm? I believe in discussing things myself.I do really.I've said to myself a long way back.'Well, now, the first time I get 'im alone I'll ask him why 'e does dislike me.I've always been civil to him,' I says to myself, 'and yet Ican't please him--so I'll just ask him straight.'"Martin shrugged his shoulders; he wanted to leave the room, but something in Thurston held him there.
"I suppose we aren't the sort to get on together.We haven't got enough in common," he said clumsily.
"I don't know about that," Thurston said in a friendly conversational tone."I shouldn't wonder if we've got more in common than you'd fancy.Now I'll tell you right out, I like you.I've always liked you, and what's more I always shall.Whatever you do--""I don't care," broke in Martin angrily, "whether you like me or not.""No, I know you don't," Thurston continued quietly."And I know what you think of me, too.This is your idea of me, I reckon--that I'm a pushing, uneducated common bounder that's just using this religious business to shove himself along with; that's kidding all these poor old ladies that 'e believes in their bunkum, and is altogether about as low-down a fellow as you're likely to meet with.That's about the colour of it, isn't it?"Martin said nothing.That was exactly "the colour of it.""Yes, well," Thurston continued, a faint flush on his pale cheeks.
