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Eden Phillpotts
Published by Good Press, 2021
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He sat under the Parthenon presently and looked out upon the city beneath him. Having confessed to himself the disappointment that he must have been to the dead, William strove to dwell on a happier side of their relation and remembered that in some things he had satisfied Sir Porteus. He felt that a debt was owing to his father and burned with resolution to pay it. 'At least I'll follow in his footsteps as far as Stormbury is concerned,' thought the young man, 'and if he can watch from the other side of his grave, he shall see the old traditions held sacred and his rule maintained as long as the law of the land and the British Constitution last. And if we crash and the last shadows of feudal times are swept away by the next government, he'll be taken from the evil to come and the change won't hurt me as it would have hurt him.'
He grew tired presently and his mind turned to trifles. One trivial idea consoled him. Though a red man and, as such, unique in his family, William worthily maintained the family features which were marked and distinguished by ugliness. His father had often told him that there had never been a handsome Wolf in the history of the clan, and the family portraits at Stormbury supported this assurance. The women it seemed were presentable, but the men were of an unprepossessing exterior. The Wolf nose and the Wolf ear persisted from generation to generation, even as the Courtenay nose was said to do. An authentic Wolf displayed a long and pointed nose together with exceedingly prominent ears, and William, in addition to his carrot-red locks and ginger eyebrows, did not lack for the family excrescences. They had called him 'the Bat' at Eton, and when his father heard his nickname, he laughed and said that history repeated itself, for he also was called 'the Bat,' in his time.
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