Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/419

 you'll say I hate him. But I don't. I don't hate him. I've always known him for what he was—in those days at Dawson's when if you flattered him he was kind, and if you didn't he was contemptuous. At Cambridge it was the same. There was only one fellow there I ever saw him knock under to—a man called Dune—and he was out and away exceptional anyhow, at games and work and everything. Now he made Cards into a decent fellow for the time being, and if he'd had the running of him he might have turned all that brilliance into something worth having.

“But he vanished and Cards has never owned his master since. Everything was there, ready in him, to be turned one way or the other, and after he left Cambridge there was his silly mother and a sillier London waiting to finish him—now he's nothing but Vanity and Fascination—and soon there'll be nothing but Vanity.”

“You're unjust to him, Bobby, you always have been.”

“Well, perhaps I am. He's always treated me with such undisguised contempt that it's only human that I should be a little prejudiced. But that's neither here nor there—what is the point, Peter, is that he's too much up at your place. Too much for his own good, too much for yours, and—too much for—Clare's.”

“Bobby!”

“Oh yes—I know I'm saying a serious thing—but you asked me for my advice and I give it. I don't say that Cards means any harm but people will talk and it wouldn't do you any damage in Clare's eyes either, Peter, if you were to stand up to him a little.”

Peter smiled. “Dear old Bobby! If any one else in the world had said such a thing of course I should have been most awfully angry, but I've always known how unfair you were about Cards. You never liked him, even in the Dawson days. You just don't suit one another. But I tell you, Bobby, that I'd trust Cards more than I'd trust any one in the world. Of course Clare likes to be with him and of course he likes to be with her. They suit one another exactly. Why, he's splendid! The other day when I'd been a perfect beast—losing my temper like a boy of ten—you should have heard the way he took it. One day, Bobby, you'll see how splendid he is.”