To Peter's immediate world it was a matter of surprise that he should take Henry Galleon's death so hardly. It is a penalty of greatness that you should, to the majority of your fellow men, be an Idea rather than a human being. To his own family Henry Galleon had, of course, been real enough but to the outside world he was the author of “Henry Lessingham” and “The Roads,” whose face one saw in the papers as one saw the face of Royalty. Peter Westcott, moreover, had not appeared, at any time, to take more than a general interest in the great man, and it was even understood that old Mrs. Galleon and Millicent and Percival considered themselves somewhat affronted because the Master had “been exceedingly kind to the young man. Taken trouble about him, tried to know him, but young Westcott had allowed the thing to drop—had not been near him during the last year.”
Even Bobby and Alice Galleon were astonished at Peter's grief. To Bobby his father's death came as a fine ending to a fine career. He had died, full of honour and of years. Even Bobby, who thought that he knew his Peter pretty well by now, was puzzled.
“He takes it,” Bobby explained to Alice, “as though it were a kind of omen, sees ever so much more in it than any of us do. It seems that he was coming round the very evening that father died to talk to him, and that he suddenly saw the blinds down; it was a shock to him, of course. I think it's all been a kind of remorse working out, remorse not only for having neglected my father but for having left other things—his work, I suppose, rather to look after themselves. But he won't tell me,” Bobby almost desperately concluded, “he won't tell me anything—he really is the most extraordinary chap.”
And Peter found it difficult enough to tell himself, did not indeed try. He only knew that he felt an acute, passionate remorse and that it seemed to him that the denial of that last visit was an omen of the anger of all the Gods, and even—although to this last he gave no kind of expression—the malicious contrivance of an old man who waited for him down there in that house by the sea. It was as though gates had been clanged in his face, and that as he heard them close he heard also the jeering laughter behind them.... He had missed his chance.
He saw, instantly, that Clare understood none of this, and that, indeed, she took it all as rather an affectation on his part, something in him that belonged to that side of him that she tried to forget. She hated, quite frankly, that he should go about the house with a glum face because an old man, whom he had never taken the trouble to go and see when he was alive, was now dead. She showed him that she hated it.
He turned desperately to his work. There had been a hint, only the other day, from the newspaper for which he wrote, that his reviews had not, lately, been up to his usual standard. He knew that they seemed to him twice as difficult to do as they had seemed a year ago and that therefore he did them twice as badly.
He flung himself upon his book and swore that he would dissipate the shadows that hid it from him. One of the shadows he saw quite clearly was Cards' attitude to his work. It was strange, he thought almost pathetically, how closely his feeling for Cards now resembled the feeling that he had had, those years ago, at Dawson's. He still worshipped him—worship was the only possible word—worshipped him for all the things that he, Peter, was not. One could not be with him, Peter thought, one could not watch his movements, hear his voice without paying it all the most absolute reverence. The glamour about Cards was, to Peter, something almost from another world. Peter felt so clumsy, so rough and ugly and noisy and out-of-place when Cards was present that the fact that Cards was almost always present now made life a very difficult thing. How could Peter prevent himself from reverencing every word that Cards uttered when one reflected upon the number of things that Cards had done, the things that he had seen, the places to which he had been. And Cards' attitude to Peter's work was, if not actually contemptuous, at least something very like it. He did not, he professed, read novels. The novelists' trade at the best, he seemed to imply, was only a poor one, and that Peter's work was not altogether of the best he almost openly asserted. “What can old Peter know about life?” one could hear him saying—“Where's he been? Who's he known? Whatever in the world has he done?”
Against this, in spite of the glitter that shone about Cards' head, Peter might, perhaps, have stood. He reminded himself, a hundred times a day, that one must not care about the things that other people said, one must have one's eyes fixed upon the goal—one must be sure of oneself—what had Galleon said?...
But there was also the effect of it all upon Clare to be considered. Clare listened to Cards. She was, Peter gloomily considered, very largely of Cards' opinion. The two people for whom he cared most in the world after young Stephen who, as a critic, had not yet begun to count, thought that he was wasting his time.
Sometimes, as he sat at his deal table, fighting with a growing sense of disillusionment that was like nothing so much as a child's first discovery that its beautiful doll is stuffed with straw, he would wish passionately, vehemently for the return of those days when he had sat in his little bedroom writing “Reuben Hallard” with Norah Monogue, and dear Mr. Zanti and even taciturn little Gottfried, there to encourage him.
Thathad been Adventure—but this ...? And then he would remember young Stephen and Clare—moments even lately that she had shared with him—and he would be ashamed.
It was on an afternoon of furious wind and rain in early April that the inevitable occurred. All the afternoon the trees in the little orchard had been knocking their branches together as though they were in a furious temper with Somebody and were indignant at not being allowed to get at Him; they gave you the impression that it would be quite as much as your life would be worth to venture into their midst.
Peter had, during a number of hours, endeavoured to pierce the soul of Mortimer Stant—meanwhile as the wind howled, the rain lashed the windows of his room, and the personality of Mr. Stant faded farther and farther away into ultimate distance, Peter was increasingly conscious that he was listening for something.
He had felt himself surrounded by this strange sense of anticipation before. Sometimes it had stayed with him for a short period only, sometimes it had extended over days—always it brought with it an emotion of excitement and even, if he had analysed it sufficiently, fear.
He was suddenly conscious, in the naked spaces of his barely-furnished room, of the personality of his father. So conscious was he that he got up from his table and stood at the rain-swept window, looking out into the orchard, as though he expected to see a sinister figure creeping, stealthily, from behind the trees. In his thoughts of his father there was no compunction, no accusing scruples of neglect, only a perfectly concrete, active sense, in some vague way, of force pitted against force.
It might be summed up in the conviction that “the old man was not done with him yet”—and as Peter turned back from the window, almost relieved that he had, indeed, seen no creeping figure amongst the dark trees, he was aware that never since the days of his starvation in Bucket Lane, had he been so conscious of those threatening memories of Scaw House and its inhabitants.
At that, almost as he reached his table, there was a knock on his door.
“Come in,” he cried and, scorning himself for his fears, faced the maid with staring eyes.
“Two gentlemen to see you, sir,” she said. “I have shown them into the study.”
“Is Mrs. Westcott in?”
“No, sir. She told me that she would not be back until six o'clock, sir.”
“I will come down.”
In the hall, hanging amongst the other things as a Pirate might hang beside a company of Evangelist ministers, was Stephen Brant's hat....
As Peter's hand turned on the handle of the study door he knew that his heart was beating with so furious a clamour that he could not hear the lock turn.
He entered the room and found Stephen Brant and Mr. Zanti facing him. The little window between the dim rows of books showed him the pale light that was soon to succeed the storm. The two men seemed to fill the little room; their bodies were shadowy and mysterious against the pale colour, and Peter had the impression that the things in the room—the chairs, the books, the table—huddled against the wall, so crowded did the place seem.
For himself, at his first sight of them, he was compelled, instantly, to check a feeling of joy so overwhelming that he was himself astonished at the force of it. To them, as they stood there, smiling, feeling that same emotion to which he, also, was now succumbing! He checked himself. It was as though he were forced suddenly, by a supreme effort of will, to drive from the room a tumultuous crowd of pictures, enthusiasms and memories, that, for the sake of the present and of the future, must be forbidden to stay with him. It was absurd—he was a husband, a father, a responsible householder, almost a personage... and yet, as he looked at Stephen's eyes and Mr. Zanti's smile, he was the little boy back again in Tan's shop with the old suit of armour, the beads and silver and Eastern cloths, and out beyond the window, the sea was breaking upon the wooden jetty....
He put the picture away from him and rushed to greet the two of them. “Zanti!... Stephen!... Oh! how splendid! How perfectly, perfectly splendid!”
Mr. Zanti's enormous body was enclosed in a suit of bright blue, his broad nose stood out like a bridge, his wide mouth gaped. He wore white spats, three massive rings of twisted gold and in his blue tie a glittering emerald. He was a magnificent, a costly figure and in nothing was the geniality of his nature more plainly seen than in his obvious readiness to abandon, at any moment, these splendid riches for the sake of a valued attachment. “I love wearing these things,” you might hear him say, “but I love still better to do anything in the world that I can for you, my friend.”
Stephen presented a more moderate appearance, but he was brown with health and shining with strength. He was like the old Stephen of years and years ago, so different from the—man who had shared with Peter that room in Bucket Lane.
He carried himself with that air of strong, cautious reserve that Cornishmen have when they are in some other country than their own; his eyes, mild, gentle, but on the alert, ready at an instant to be hostile. Then, when Peter came in, the reserve instantly fled. They had, all three of them, perhaps, expected embarrassment, but at that cry of Peter's they were suddenly together, Mr. Zanti, waving his hands, almost shouting, Stephen, his eyes resting with delight on Peter, Peter himself another creature from the man who had pursued Mortimer Stant in the room upstairs, half an hour before.
“We thought that ze time 'ad come, dear boy... we know zat you are busy.” Mr. Zanti looked about him a little anxiously, as though he expected to find Mrs. Peter hiding under a chair or a sofa.
“Oh! Stephen, after all this long long while! Why didn't you come before when Mr. Zanti came?”
“Too many of us coming, Mr. Peter, and you so busy.”
“Nonsense. I'm not in the least busy. I'm sorry to say my wife's out but the baby's in, upstairs, and there's the most terrific woman up there too, the nurse—I'm frightened out of my life of her—but we'll get rid of her and have the place to ourselves... you know the kid's called after you, Stephen?”
“No, is he really?” Stephen's face shone with pleasure. “I'm keen to see him.”
“Oh, he's a trump! There never really was such a baby.”
“And your books, Mr. Peter?”
“Oh! the books!” Peter's voice dropped, “never mind them now. But what have you been doing, you two? Made heaps of money? Discovered treasure?...” He pulled himself up shortly. He remembered the bookshop, the girl leaning against the door looking into the street, then the boys crying the news....
If Mr. Zanti had been mixing himself up with that sort of thing again! And then the bright blue suit, the white spats, were reassuring. As if one could ever take such a child seriously about anything!
Mr. Zanti shook his head, ruefully. “No, not ezackly a fortune! There was a place I 'eard of, right up in the Basque country—'twas an old deserted garden, where zey 'ad buried treasure, centuries ago—I 'ad it quite certainly from a friend. We came up there for a time but we found nothing.” He sighed and then was instantly cheered again. “But it's all right. I've got a plan now—a wonderful plan.” He became very mysterious. “It's a certain thing—we're off to Cornwall, Mr. Brant and myself—”
“Cornwall?”
“Come too, Peter.”
“Ah! don't I wish that I could!” He suddenly saw his life, his books—everything in London holding him, tying him—“But I can't go now, my father being there makes it impossible. But in any case, I'm a family man now—you know.”
As he said the words he was conscious that, in Stephen's eyes at any rate, the family man was about the last thing that he looked. He was wondering, with intense curiosity, what were the things that Stephen was finding in him, for the things that Stephen found were most assuredly the things that he was. No one knew him as Stephen knew him. Against his will the thought of Clare came driving upon him. How little she knew him! or was it only that she knew another side of him?
But he pulled himself away from that. “Now for the nursery—Stephen Secundus. But you'll have to support me whilst I get rid of Mrs. Kant—perhaps three of us together—”
As he led the way upstairs he knew that Stephen was not entirely reassured about him.
Mrs. Kant was a large, busy woman, like a horse—a horse who dislikes other horses and sniffs an enemy in every wind. She very decidedly sniffed an enemy now, and Mr. Zanti's blue suit paled before her fierce eyes. He stepped back into the doorway again, treading upon Stephen. Peter, who was always conscious that Mrs. Kant looked upon himself and Clare as two entirely ridiculous and slightly impertinent children, stammered a little.
“You might go down and have your tea now, Mrs. Kant. I'll keep an eye upon Stephen.”
“I've had my tea, thank you, sir.”
“Well, I'll relieve you of the baby for a little.” She was sewing. She snapped off a piece of thread with a sharp click of her teeth, sat silently for a moment staring in front of her, then quietly got up. “Thank you, sir,” she said and left the room.
All three men breathed again as the door closed—then they were all conscious of young Stephen.
The thing was, of course, absurd, but to all three of them there came the conviction that the baby had been laughing at them for their terror of Mrs. Kant. He was curled up on a chair by the fire, looking at them with his wide eyes over his shoulder, and he seemed to say, “I don't care a snap for the woman—why should you?” The blue ball was on the floor at the foot of the chair, and the firelight leapt upon the frieze that Peter had so carefully chosen—giants and castles, dwarfs and princesses running round the room in red, and blue and gold.
Young Stephen looked at them, puzzled for an instant, then with a shout he would have acclaimed his father, but his gaze was suddenly arrested by the intense blueness of Mr. Zanti's clothes. He stared at it, fascinated. Into his life there had suddenly broken the revelation that you might have something far larger than the blue ball that moved and shone in so fascinating a manner. His eyes immediately glittered with the thought that he would presently have the joy of rolling something so big and shining along the floor. He could not bear to wait. His fat fingers curved in the air with the eager anticipation of it—words, actual words had not as yet come to him, but, crowing and gurgling, he informed the world that he wanted, he demanded, instantly, that he should roll Mr. Zanti.
“Well, old man, how are you?” said Peter. But he would not look at his father. His arms stretched toward Mr. Zanti.
“You've made a conquest right away, Zanti,” Peter said laughing.
It was indeed instantly to be perceived that Mr. Zanti was in his right element. Any pretence of any kind of age fell away from him, his arms curved towards young Stephen as young Stephen's curved towards him. He was making noises in his throat that exactly resembled the noises that the baby made.
He looked down gravely upon the chair—“'Ow do you do?” he said and he took young Stephen's fat fingers in his hand.
“'E says,” he remarked, looking at Peter and Stephen, “that 'e would like to roll me upon the floor—like that ball there—”
“Well, let him,” said Peter laughing.
The baby then dug his fingers into Mr. Zanti's hair and pulled down his head towards the chair, intense satisfaction flooding his face as he did so.
The baby seemed, for a moment, to whisper into Mr. Zanti's ear, then, chuckling it climbed down from the chair, and, on all fours, crawled, its eyes and mouth suddenly serious as though it were conscious that it was engaged upon a very desperate adventure. The three men watched it. Across the absolute silence of the room there came the sound of the rain driving upon the pane, of the tumbling chatter of the fire, of the baby's hands falling upon the carpet.
Mr. Zanti was suddenly upon his knees. “Here,” he cried, seizing the blue ball. He rolled it to young Stephen. It was caught, dropped and then the fat fingers had flung themselves upon Mr. Zanti's coat. He let himself go and was pulled back sprawling upon the floor, his huge body stretching from end to end of the rug.
Then, almost before they had realised it, the other two men were down upon their knees. The ball was picked up and tossed from hand to hand, the baby, sitting upon Mr. Zanti's stomach, watched with delight these extraordinary events.
Then they played Hunt the Slipper, sitting round in a ring upon the carpet, young Stephen trying to catch his own slipper, falling over upon his back, kicking his legs in the air, dashing now at Stephen the Elder's beard, now at his father's coat, now at Mr. Zanti's legs.
The noise of the laughter drowned the rain and the fire. Mr. Zanti had the slipper—he was sitting upon it. Peter made a dash for it, Mr. Zanti rolled over, they were all in a heap upon the floor.
“I've got it.” Mr. Zanti was off on all fours round the room, the baby on his back clutching on to his hair. A chair was over, then a box of bricks, the table rocked and then was suddenly down with a crash!
What had come to them all? Stephen, so grave, so solemn, had caught the baby into the air, had flung him up and caught him again. Peter and Mr. Zanti looking up from the floor saw him standing, his legs wide, his beard flowing, his arms stretched with young Stephen shouting between them.
Behind him, around him was a wrecked nursery....
The baby, surveying the world from this sudden height, wondered at this amazing glory. He had never before beheld from such a position the things that bounded his life. How strange the window seemed! Through it now he could see the tops of the trees, the grey sky, the driving lines of rain! Only a little way above him now were pictures that had always glowed before from so great a distance. Around him, above him, below him space—a thing to be frightened of were one not held so tightly, so safely.
He approved, most assuredly, of the banishment of Mrs. Kant, and the invasion of these splendid Things! He would have life always like this, with that great blue ball to roll upon the floor, with that brown beard, near now to his hand, to clutch, with none of that hideous soap-in-the-eyes-early-to-bed Philosophy that he was becoming now conscious enough to rebel against.
He dug his hands into the beard that was close to him and, like the sons of the morning, shouted with joy.
Peter, looking up at the two Stephens, felt his burdens roll off his back. If only things could be like this always! And already he saw himself, through these two, making everything right once more with Clare. They should prove to her that, after all, his past life had not been so terrible, that Cornwall could produce heroes if it liked. Through these two he would get fresh inspiration for his work. He felt already, through them, a wind blowing that cleared all the dust from his brain.
And how splendid for the boy! To have two such men for his friends! Already he was planning to persuade them to stay in London. He had thought of the very place for them in Chelsea, near the Roundabout, the very house....
“Of course you'll stay for dinner, you two—”
“But—” said Mr. Zanti, mopping his brow from which perspiration was dripping.
“No, nonsense. Of course you'll stop. We've got such heaps to talk about—”
Stephen had got the baby now on his shoulder. “Off to Cornwall,” he shouted and charged down the room.
It was at that instant that Peter was conscious that Clare had been standing, for some moments, in the room. She stood, quite silently, without moving, by the door, her eyes blazing at him....
His first thought was of that other time when she had found him in the nursery, of the quarrel that they had had. Then he noticed the state of the room, the overturned chairs and table. Then he saw Mr. Zanti still wiping his forehead, but confusedly, and staring at Clare in a shocked hushed way, as though he were a small boy who had been detected with his fingers in a jam-pot.
Stephen saw her at last. He put the baby down and came slowly across the floor. Peter spoke: “Why, Clare! You're back early. We've been having such a splendid time with Stephen—let me introduce my friends to you—Mr. Zanti and Mr. Brant... you've heard me speak of them—”
They came towards her. She shook hands with them, regarding them gravely.
“How do you do?”
There was silence. Then Mr. Zanti said—“We must be goin'—longer than we ought to stop—we 'ave business—”
Peter felt rising in him a cold and surging anger at her treatment of them. These two, the best friends that he had in the world—that she should dare!
“Oh! you'll stay to dinner, you two! You must—”
“I'm afraid, ver' afraid,” Mr. Zanti said bowing very low and still looking at Clare with apologetic, troubled eyes, “we 'ave no time. Immediate business.”
Still Clare said nothing.
There was another moment's silence, and then Peter said:
“I'll come down and see you off.” Still without moving from her place she shook hands with them.
“Good-bye.”
They all three went out.
Peter could say nothing. The words seemed to be choked in his throat by this tide of anger that was like nothing he had ever felt before.
He held their hands for a moment as they stood outside in the dusk.
“Where are you staying? I must see you again—”
“We go down to Cornwall to-morrow.”
Stephen caught Peter's shoulder:
“Come down to us, Peter, if you get a chance.” They all stared at one another; they were all, absolutely, entirely without words. Afterwards they would regret that they had said nothing, but now—!
They vanished into the dusk and Peter, stepping into the house again, closed very softly the hall door behind him.
As he climbed, once more, the stairs to the nursery, he was conscious of the necessity for a great restraint. Did he but relax for an instant his control he was aware that forces—often dimly perceived and shuddered at—would now, as never in his life before, burst into freedom.
It was as though a whole life of joy and happiness had been suddenly snatched from him and it was Clare who had robbed him—Clare who had never cared what the things might be that she demanded from him—Clare who gave him nothing.
But his rage now, he also felt, was beyond all reason, something that belonged to that other part of him, the part that Scaw House and its dark room understood and so terribly fostered.
He was afraid of what he might do.
On opening the nursery door he saw the straight, thin, shining back of Mrs. Kant as she bent to put things straight. Young Stephen was quietly asleep. He closed the door, and, turning in the narrow passage, found Clare coming out of her room. In the dim light they faced one another, hostility flaming between them. She looked at him for a moment, her breast heaving, her mouth so tight and sharp, her eyes so fierce that her little stature seemed to be raised by her anger to a great height.
At that moment Peter felt that he hated her as he had never hated any one in his life before.
She went back, without a word, into her room.
She did not come down again that night and he had his evening meal, miserably, alone.
He slept in his dressing-room. Long before morning his rage had gone. He looked at her locked door and wished, miserably, that he might die for her....
Later, as he sat, hopelessly, over the dim and sterile pages of “Mortimer Slant,” Mrs. Rossiter came, heavily, in to talk with him. Mrs. Rossiter always entered the room with an expression of stupid benignity that hid a good deal of rather sharp perception. The fact that she was not nearly so stupid as she looked enabled her to look all the stupider and she covered a multitude of brains with a quantity of hard black silk that she spread out around her with the air of one who is filling as much of the room as she can conveniently seize upon. Her plump arms, her broad and placid bosom, her flat smooth face, her hair, entirely negative in colour and arrangement, offered no clue whatever to her unsuspected sharpnesses. Smooth, broad, flat and motionless she carried, like the Wooden Horse of Troy, a thousand dangers in the depths of her placidity.
She had come now to assist her daughter, the only person for whom she may be said to have had the slightest genuine affection, for Dr. Rossiter she had long-despised and Mrs. Galleon was an ally and companion but never a friend. She had allowed Clare to marry Peter, chiefly because Clare would have married him in any case, but also, a little, because she thought that Peter had a great career in front of him. Now that Peter's career seemed already to be, for the most part, behind him, she disliked him and because he appeared to have made Clare unhappy suddenly hated him... but placidity was the shield that covered her attack and, for a symbol, one might take the large flat golden brooch that she wore on her bosom—flat, expressionless and shining, with the sharpest pin behind it that ever brooch possessed.
Peter, whose miseries had accumulated as the minutes passed, was ready to seize upon anything that promised a reconciliation. He did not like Mrs. Rossiter—he had never been able to get to close quarters with her, and he was conscious that his roughness and occasional outbursts displeased her. He felt, too, that the qualities that he had resented in Clare owed their origin to her mother. That brooch of hers was responsible for a great deal.
Fixing his eyes upon it he said, “You've come about Clare?”
“Yes, Peter.” Mrs. Rossiter settled herself more comfortably, spread her skirts, folded her hands. “She's very unhappy.”
The mild eyes baffled him.
“I'm terribly sorry. I will do anything I can, but I think—that I had a right”—he faltered a little; it was so like talking to an empty Dairy—“had a right to mind. Two old friends of mine—two of the best friends that I have in the world were here yesterday and Clare—”
“I don't think,” the soft voice broke in upon him whilst the eyes searched his body up and down, “that, even now, Peter, you quite understand Clare—”
“No,” he said eagerly, “I know. I'm blundering, stupid. Lots of times I've irritated her, and now again.” He paused, but then added, with a touch of his old stubbornness—“But they were friends of mine—she should have treated them so.”
Mrs. Rossiter felt that she did indeed hate the young man.
“Clare is very unhappy,” she repeated. “She tells me that she has been crying all night. You must remember, Peter, that her life has been very different to yours—”
He wished that she would not repeat herself; he wished that she would not always use the same level voice; he wanted insanely to tell her that she ought to say “different from”—he could not take his eyes from the brooch. But the thought of Clare came to him and he bowed himself once more humbly.
“I will see that things are better,” he said earnestly. “I don't know what has been the matter lately—my work and everything has been wrong, and I expect my temper has been horrible. You know,” he said with a little crooked smile, “that I've got to work to keep it all going, and when I'm writing badly then my temper goes to pieces.”
Mrs. Rossiter, with no appearance of having heard anything that he had said, continued—
“You know, Peter, that your temperament is very different to Clare's. You are, and I know you will forgive my putting it so plainly, a little wild still—doubtless owing to your earlier years. Clare is gentle, bright, happy. She has never given my husband or myself a moment's trouble, but that is because we understood her nature. We knew that she loved people about her to be happy—she flourished in the sun, she drooped under the clouds... under the clouds” Mrs. Rossiter repeated again softly, as she searched, with care, for her next words.
Irritation was rising within Peter. Why should it be concluded so inevitably that the fault was all on Peter's side and not at all on Clare's—after all, there were reasons... but he pulled himself up. He had behaved like a beast.
“I've tried very hard—” he began.
“Clouds—” said Mrs. Rossiter. “And you, Peter, are at times—I have seen it myself and I know that it is apparent to others—inclined to be morose—gloomy, a little gloomy—” Her fingers tapped the silk of her dress. “Dear Clare, considering what her own life has been, shrinks, I must confess it seems to me quite naturally, from any reminder of what your own earlier circumstances have been. Look at it, Peter, for an instant from the outside and you will see, at once, I am sure, what it must have been to her, yesterday, to come into her nursery, to find tables, chairs overturned, strange men shouting and flinging poor little Stephen towards the ceiling—some talk about Cornwall—really, Peter, I think you can understand...”
He abandoned all his defences. “I know—I ought to have realised... it was quite natural...”
In the back of his head he heard her words “You're morose—you're wild. Other people find you so—you're making a mess of everything and every one knows it—”
He was humbled to the dust. If only he might make it all right with Clare, then he would see to it—Oh! yes he would see to it—that nothing of this kind ever happened again. From Mrs. Rossiter's standpoint he looked back upon his life and found it all one ignoble, selfish muddle. Dear Clare!—so eager to be happy and he had made her miserable.
“Will she forgive me?”
“Dear Clare,” said Mrs. Rossiter, rising brightly and with a general air of benevolence towards all the sinners in existence, “is the most forgiving creature in the world.”
He went down to her bedroom and found her lying on a sofa and reading a novel.
He fell on his knees at her side—“Clare—darling—I'm a beast, a brute—”
She suddenly turned her face into the cushions and burst into passionate crying. “Oh! it's horrible—horrible—horrible—”
He kissed her hand and then getting on to his feet again, stood looking at her awkwardly, struggling for words with which to comfort her.
And then at luncheon, there was a little, pencilled feeble note for Peter from Norah Monogue. “Please, if you can spare half an hour come to me. In a day or two I am off to the country.”
Things had just been restored to peace and happiness—Clare had just proposed that they should go, that afternoon, to a Private View together—they might go and have tea with—
For an instant he was tempted to abandon Norah. Then his courage came:—
“Here's a note from Miss Monogue,” he said. “She's awfully ill I think, I ought—”
Clare's face hardened again. She got up from the table—
“Just as you please—” she said.
He climbed on to the omnibus that was to stumble with him down Piccadilly with a. hideous, numbing sense of being under the hand of Fate. Why, at this moment, in all time, should this letter of Norah Monogue's have made its unhappy appearance? With what difficulty and sorrow had he and Clare reached once more a reconciliation only, so wantonly, to be plucked away from it again! From the top of his omnibus he looked down upon a sinister London. It was a heavy, lowering day; thick clouds like damp cloths came down upon the towers and chimneys. The trees in the Green Park were black and chill and in and out of the Clubs figures slipped cautiously and it seemed furtively. Just beyond the Green Park they were building a vast hotel, climbing figures and twisting lines of scaffolding pierced the air, and behind the rolling and rattling of the traffic the sound of many hammers beat rhythmically, monotonously....
To Peter upon his omnibus, suddenly that sound that he had heard before—that sound of London stirring—came back to him, and now more clearly than he had ever known it. Tap-tap-tap-tap... Clamp-clamp-tap-tap-tap-tap—whir! whir!... Clamp-clamp....
It seemed to him that all the cabs and the buses and the little black figures were being hurried by some power straight, fast, along Piccadilly to be pitched, at the end of it, pell-mell, helter-skelter into some dark abysmal pit, there to perish miserably.
Yes, the beast was stirring! Ever so little the pavements, the houses were heaving. Perhaps if one could see already the soil was cracking beneath one's feet. “Look out! London will have you in a minute.” Tap-tap-tap-tap—clamp-clamp—tap-tap-tap-tap—whir-whir—clamp-clamp....
Anyhow it was a heavy, clammy day. The houses were ghosts and the people were ghosts, and grey shadows, soon perhaps to be a yellow fog, floated about the windows and the doors and muffled all human sounds.
He passed the great pile of scaffolding, saw iron girders shining, saw huge cranes swinging in mid-air, saw tiny, tiny black atoms perched above the noise and swallowed by the smoke... tap-tap-clamp-clamp....
Yes, the beast was moving... and, out and in, lost and then found again, crept that twisting chain of beggars to whose pallid army Peter himself had once so nearly belonged.
“I suppose I've got a headache after all that row with Clare,” Peter thought as he climbed off the omnibus.
He realised, as he came into the Bloomsbury square, and saw Mrs. Brockett gloomily waiting for him, that the adventures of his life were most strangely bound together. Not for an instant did he seem to be able to escape from any one of them. Now it would be Cornwall, now the Bookshop, now Stephen, now Mr. Zanti, now Bucket Lane, now Treliss—all of them interweaving, arresting his action at every moment. Because he had done that once now this must not be permitted him; he felt, as he rang the old heavy bell of Brockett's that his head would never think clearly again. As the door opened and he stepped into the hall he heard, faintly, across the flat spaces of the Square “Tap-tap-tap-tap-clamp-clamp....”
Even Mrs. Brockett, who might be considered if any one in the world, immune from morbid imaginations, felt the heaviness of the day, suggested a prevalence of thunder, and shook her head when Peter asked about Miss Monogue.
“She's bad, Mr. Peter, very bad, poor dear. There's no doubt about that. It's hard to see what can be done for her—but plucky! That's a small word for it!”
“I'm sure she is,” said Peter, feeling ashamed of having made so much of his own little troubles.
“She must get out of London if she's to improve at all. In a week or two I hope she'll be able to move.”
“How's every one else?”
“Oh, well enough.” Mrs. Brockett straightened her dress with her beautiful hands in the old familiar way—“But you're not looking very hearty yourself, Mr. Peter.”
“Oh! I'm all right,” he answered smiling; but she shook her head after him as she watched him go up the stairs.
And then he was surprised. He came into Norah Monogue's room and found her sitting up by her window, looking better than he had ever seen her. Her face was full of colour and her eyes bright and smiling. Only on her hands the blue veins stood out, and their touch, when she shook hands with him, was hot and burning.
But he was reassured; Mrs. Brockett had exaggerated and made the worst of it all.
“You're looking splendid—I'm so glad. I was afraid from your letter-”
“Oh! I really am getting on,” she broke in gaily, “and it's the nicest boy in the world that you are to come in and see me so quickly. Only on a day like this London does just lie heavily upon one doesn't it? and one just longs for the country—”
A little breath of a sigh escaped from her and she looked through her window at the dim chimneys, the clouds hanging like consolidated smoke, the fine, thin dust that filtered the air.
“You're looking tired yourself, Peter. Working too hard?”
“No,” he shook his head. “The work hasn't been coming easily at all. I suppose I've been too conscious, lately, of the criticisms every one made about 'The Stone House.' I don't believe one ought really to listen to anybody and yet it's so hard not to, and so difficult to know whose opinion one ought to take if one's going to take anybody's. I wish,” he suddenly brought out, “Henry Galleon were still alive. I could have followed him.”
“But why follow anybody?”
“Ah! that's just it. I'm beginning to doubt myself and that's why it's getting so difficult.”
Her eyes searched his face and she saw, at once, that he was in very real trouble. He looked younger, just then, she thought, than she had ever seen him, and she felt herself so immensely old that she could have taken him into her arms and mothered him as though he'd been her own son.
“There are a lot of things the matter,” she said. “Tell me what they all are.”
“Well,” he said slowly, “I suppose it's all been mostly my own fault—but the real difficulty is that I don't seem to be able to run the business of being married and the business of writing together. I don't think Clare in the least cares now about my writing—she almost resents it; she cared at first when she thought that I was going to make a huge success of it, but now—”
“But, of course,” said Miss Monogue, “that success comes slowly—it must if it's going to be any use at all—”
“Well, she doesn't see that. And she wants me to go out to parties and play about all the time—and then she doesn't want me to be any of the things that I was before I met her. All my earlier life frightens her—I suppose,” he suddenly ended, “I want her to be different and she wants me to be different and we can't make a compromise.”
Then Miss Monogue said: “Have any outside people interfered at all?”
Peter coloured. “Well, of course, Mrs. Rossiter stands up for Clare. She came and talked to me this morning and I think the things that she said were quite true. I suppose I am morose and morbid sometimes—more than I realise—and then,” he added slowly, “there's Cards—”
“Cards?”
“Cardillac—a man I was at school with. I'm very fond of him. He's the best friend I've got, and he's been all over the place and done everything and, of course, knows ever so much more about the world than I do. The fact is he thinks really that my novels are dreadful nonsense, only he's much too kind to say so—and, of course, Clare looks up to him a lot. Although he's only my own age he seems so much older than both Clare and myself. I don't believe she'd have lost interest in my work so quickly if he hadn't influenced her—and he's influenced me too—” Peter added sighing.
“Well—and is there anything else?”
“Yes. There's Stephen. I can't begin to tell you how I love that kid. There haven't been many people in my life that I've cared about and I've never realised anything so intensely before. Besides,” he went on laughing proudly, “he's such a splendid kid! I wish you could see him, Norah. He'll do something one day—”
“Well, what's the trouble about Stephen?”
“Clare's so odd about him. There are times when I don't believe she cares for him the least little bit. Then there are other times when she resents fiercely my interfering about him. Sometimes she seems to love him more than anything in the world, but it's always in an odd defiant way—just as though she were afraid that something would hurt her if she showed that she cared too much.”
There was silence between them for a minute and then Peter summed it all up with:—“The fact is, Norah, that every sort of thing's getting in between me and my work and worries me. It's as though I were tossing more balls in the air than I could possibly manage. At one moment I think it's Clare that I've got especially to hang on to—another time it's the book—and then it's Stephen. The moment I've settled down something turns up to remind me of Cornwall or the Bookshop. Fact is I'm getting battered at by something or other and I never can get my breath. I oughtn't ever to have married—I'm not up to it.”
Norah Monogue took his hand.
“You are up to it, Peter, but I expect you've got a lot to go through before you're clear of things. Now I'm going to be brutal. The fact is that you're too self-centred. People never do anything in the world so long as they are wondering whether the world's going to hurt them or no. Those early years of yours made you morbid. You've got a temper and one or two other things that want a lot of holding down and that takes up your attention—And then Clare isn't the woman to help you—”
Peter was about to break in but she went on:—'"Oh! I know my Clare through and through. She's just as anxious as you are not to be hurt by anything and so she's being hurt all the time. She's out for happiness at any cost and you're out for freedom—freedom from every kind of thing—and because both of you are denied it you are restive. But you and Clare are both people whose only salvation is in being hurt and knocked about and bruised to such an extent that they simply don't know where they are. Oh! I know—I'm exactly the same sort of person myself. We can thank the Gods if we are knocked about—”
Suddenly she paused and, falling back in her chair, put her hand to her breast, coughing. Something seized her, held her in its grip, tossed her from side to side, at last left her white, speechless, utterly exhausted. It had come so suddenly that it had taken Peter entirely by surprise. She lay back now, her eyes closed, her face a grey white.
He ran to the door and called Mrs. Brockett. She came and with an exclamation hurried away for remedies.
Peter suddenly felt his hand seized—a hoarse whisper was in his ear—“Peter—dear—go—at—once—I can't bear—you—to see me—like this. Come back—another day.”
He knelt, moved by an affection and tenderness that seemed stronger than any emotion he had ever known, and kissed her. She whispered:
“Dear boy—”
On his way back to Chelsea, the orange lamps, the white streets powdered with the evening glow, the rustling plane trees whispered to him, “You've got to be knocked about—you've got to be knocked about—you've got to be knocked about—” but the murmur was no longer sinister.
Still thinking of Norah, he went up to the nursery to see the boy in bed. He remembered that Clare was going out alone to a party and that he would have the evening to himself.
On entering the room, dark except for a nightlight by the boy's bed, some unknown fear assailed him. He was instantly, at the threshold, conscious of it. He stood for a moment in silence. Then realised what it was. The boy was moaning in his sleep.
He went quickly over to the cot and bent down. Stephen's cheeks were flaming, his hands very hot.
Peter rang the bell. Mrs. Kant appeared.
“Is there anything the matter with Stephen?”
Mrs. Kant looked at him, surprised, a little offended. “He's had a little cold all day, sir. I've kept him indoors.”
“Have you taken his temperature?”
“Yes, sir, nothing at all unusual. He often goes up and down.”
“Have you spoken to your mistress?”
“Yes, sir. She agrees with me that there is nothing unusual—”
He brushed past the woman and went to his wife's bedroom.
She was dressed and was putting on a string of pearls, a wedding present from her father. She smiled up at him—
“Clare, do you know Stephen's ill?”
“No, it's only a cold. I've been up to see him—”
He took her hand—she smiled up at him—“Did you enjoy your visit?” She fastened the necklace.
“Clare, stay in to-night. It may be nothing but if the boy got worse—”
“Do you want me to stay?”
“Yes.”
“I wanted you to go with me this afternoon—”
“That was different. The boy may be really ill—”
“You didn't do what I wanted this afternoon. Why should I do what you want now?”
“Clare, stay. Please, please—”
She took her hand gently out of his, and, as she went out of the door switched off the electric light.
He heard the opening of the hall door and, standing where she had left him in the dark bedroom, saw, shining, laughing at him, her eyes.