“Where is he?”

“Eating bread and cheese at an inn somewhere--on the road down to

Cornwall.”

IV

On the following Tuesday “Reuben Hallard” was published and on the

Thursday afternoon Henry Galleon and Clare Rossiter were to come to tea.

“Reuben Hallard” arrived in a dark red cover with a white paper label.

The six copies lay on the table and looked at Peter as though he had had

nothing whatever to do with their existence. He looked down upon them,

opened one of them very tenderly, read half a page and felt that it was

the best stuff he'd ever seen. He read the rest of the page and thought

that the author, whoever the creature might be, deserved, imprisonment

for writing such nonsense.

The feeling of strangeness towards it all was increased by the fact that

Bobby had, with the exception of the final proofs--these Peter had read

down by the sea--done most of the proof-correcting. It was a task for

which his practical common sense and lack of all imagination admirably

fitted him. There, at any rate, “Reuben Hallard” was, ready to face all

the world, to go, perhaps, to the farthest Hebrides, to be lost in all

probability, utterly lost, in the turgid flood of contemporary fiction.

There was a dedication “To Stephen”... How surprised Stephen would be!

He looked at the chapter headings--An Old Man with a Lantern--the Road

at Night.... Sun on the Western Moor--Stevenson--Tushery all of it! How

they'd tear it to bits, those papers!

He laughed to himself to think that there had once been a day when he

had thought that the thing would make his fortune! And yet--he turned

the pages over tenderly--there might be something to be said for it,

Miss Monogue had thought well of it. These publishers, blasé, cynical

fellows, surely believed in it.

It was fat and red and comfortable. It had a worldly, prosperous look.

“Reuben Hallard and His Adventures” ... Good Lord! What cheek.

There were five copies to give away. One between Bobby and Mrs. Galleon,

one for Stephen, one for Miss Monogue, one for Mrs. Brockett and one for

Mr. Zanti. “Reuben Hallard and His Adventures,” by Peter Westcott. They

would be getting it now at the newspaper offices. _The Mascot_ would

have a copy and the fat little chocolate consumer. It would stand with a

heap of others, and be ticked off with a heap of others, for some youth

to exercise his wit upon. As to any one buying the book? Who ever saw

any one buying a six-shilling novel? It was only within the last year or

so that the old three volumes with their thirty-one-and-six had departed

this life. The publishers had assured Peter that this new six-shilling

form was the thing. “Please have you got 'Reuben Hallard' by Peter

Westcott?... Thank you, I'll take it with me.”

No, it was inconceivable.

There poor Reuben would lie--deserted, still-born, ever dustier and

dustier whilst other stories came pouring, pouring from endless presses,

covering, crowding it down, stamping upon it, burying it.... “Here lies

'Reuben Hallard.'...”

Poor Peter!

On Thursday, however, there was the tea-party--a Thursday never to be

forgotten whilst Peter was alive. Bobby had told him the day before that

his father might be coming. “The rest of the family will turn up for

certain. They want to see you. They're always all agog for any new

thing--one of them's always playing Cabot to somebody else's Columbus.

But father's uncertain. He gets something into his head and then nothing

whatever will draw him out--but I expect he'll turn up.”

The other visitor was announced to Peter on the very day.

“By the way, Peter, somebody's coming to tea this afternoon who's

met you before--met you at that odd boarding-house of yours--a Miss

Rossiter. Clare's an old friend of ours. I told you down at the sea

about her and you said you remembered meeting her.”

“Remembered meeting her!” Did Dante remember meeting Beatrice--did

Petrarch remember Laura? Did Keats forget his Fanny Brawne? Did Richard

Feverel forget his Lucy?

On a level with these high-thinking gentlemen was Peter, disguising his

emotions from Alice's sharp eyes but silent, breathless, wanting some

other place than that high studio in which to breathe. “Yes--she came to

tea once with a Miss Monogue there--I liked her....”

He was not there, but rather on some height alone with her and their

hands touched over a photograph. “The Man on the Lion.” There was

something worthy of his feeling for her!

Meanwhile, for the first part of the afternoon one must put up with

the Galleon family. Had Peter been sufficiently calm and sensible these

appendages to a great author would have been worth his attention. Behold

them in relation to “Henry Lessingham,” soaked in the works, bearing

on their backs the whole Edition de Luxe, decking themselves with

the little odds and ends of literary finery that they had picked up,

bursting with the good-nature of assured self-consequence--harmless,

foolish, comfortable. Mrs. Galleon was massive with a large flat face

that jumped suddenly into expression when one least expected it. There

was a great deal of silk about her, much leisurely movement and her

tactics were silence and a slow, significant smile--these she always

contributed to any conversation that was really beyond her. Had she not,

during many years of her life, been married to a genius she would have

been an intensely slow-moving but adequate housekeeper--as it was, her

size and her silence enabled her to keep her place at many literary

dinners. Peter, watching her, was consumed with wonder that Henry

Galleon could ever have married her and understood that Bobby was the

child of both his parents. Bobby had a brother and sister--Percival and

Millicent. Percival was twenty-five and had written two novels that were

considered promising by those who did not know that he was the son of

his father. He was slim and dark with a black thread of a moustache

and rather fine white fingers. His clothes were very well cut but his

appearance was a little too elaborately simple. His sister, a girl of

about eighteen, was slim and dark also; she had the eager appearance of

one who has heard just enough to make her very anxious to hear a great

deal more.

One felt that she did not want to miss anything, but probably her

determination to be her father's daughter would prevent her from

becoming very valuable or intelligent.

Finally it was strange that Bobby had so completely escaped the shadow

of his father's mantle. These people were intended, of course, to be the

background of Peter's afternoon and it was therefore more than annoying

that that was the very last thing that they were. Millicent and Percival

made a ball and then flung it backwards and forwards throughout the

affair. Their mother watched them with appreciation and Alice Galleon,

who knew them, gave them tea and cake and let them have their way. Into

the midst of this Henry Galleon came--a little, round, fat man with a

face like a map, the body of Napoleon and a trot round the room like a

very amiable pony, eyes that saw everything, understood everything,

and forgave everything, a brown buff waistcoat with gilt buttons, white

spats and a voice that rolled and roared ... he was the tenderest,

most alarming person in any kind of a world. He was so gentle that any

sparrow would trust him implicitly and so terrific that an army would

most certainly fly from before him. He ate tea-cake, smiled and shook

hands with Peter, listened for half an hour to the spirited conversation

of his two children and trotted away again, leaving behind him an

atmosphere of gentle politeness and an amazing _savoir-faire_ that one

saw his children struggling to catch. They finally gave it up about

half-past five and retreated, pressing Peter to pay them a call at the

earliest opportunity.

This was positively all that Peter saw, on this occasion, of Henry

Galleon. It was quite enough to give him a great deal to think about,

but it could scarcely be called a meeting.

At quarter to six when Peter was in despair and Alice Galleon had

ordered the tea-things to be taken away Clare Rossiter rushed in. She

stood a whirlwind of flying colours in the middle of the Studio now

sinking into twilight. “Alice dear, I am most terribly sorry but mother

_would_ stay. I couldn't get her to leave and it was all so awkward. How

do you do, Mr. Westcott? Do you remember--we met at Treliss--and now

I must rush back this very minute. We are dining at seven before the

Opera, and father wants that music you promised him--the Brahms thing.

Oh! is it upstairs? Well, if you don't mind....”

Alice Galleon left them together. Peter could say nothing at all. He

stood there, shifting from foot to foot, white, absolutely tongue-tied.

She felt his embarrassment and struggled.

“I hear that you've been very ill, Mr. Westcott. I'm so dreadfully sorry

and I do hope that you're better?”

He muttered something.

“Your book is out, isn't it? 'Reuben Hallard' is the name. I must

get father to put it down on his list. One's first books must be

so dreadfully exciting--and so alarming ... the reviews and

everything--what is it about?”

He murmured “Cornwall.”

“Cornwall? How delightful! I was only there once. Mullion. Do you know

Mullion?” She struggled along. The pain that had begun in his heart

was now at his throat--his throat was full of spiders' webs. He could

scarcely see her in the dark but her pale blue dress and her dark eyes

and her beautiful white hands--her little figure danced against the

dark, shining floor like a fairy's.

He heard her sigh of relief at Alice Galleon's return.

“Oh! thank you, dear, so much. Good-bye, Mr. Westcott--I shall read the

book.”

She was gone.

“Lights! Lights!” cried Alice Galleon. “How provoking of her not to come

to tea properly. Well, Peter? How was it all?”

He was guilty of abominable rudeness.

He burst from the room without a word and banged, desperately, the door

behind him.

CHAPTER II

A CHAPTER ABOUT SUCCESS I HOW TO WIN IT, HOW TO KEEP IT--WITH A NOTE AT

THE END FROM HENRY GALLEON

I

The shout of applause with which “Reuben Hallard” was greeted still

remains one of the interesting cases in modern literary history. At this

time of day it all seems ancient and distant enough; the book has

been praised, blamed, lifted up, hurled down a thousand times, and has

finally been discovered to be a book of promise, of natural talent, with

a great deal of crudity and melodrama and a little beauty. It does not

stand of course in comparison with Peter Westcott's later period and yet

it has a note that his hand never captured afterwards. How incredibly

bad it is in places, the Datchett incidents, with their flames and

screams and murder in the dark, sufficiently betray: how fine it can be

such a delight as The Cherry Orchard chapter shows, and perhaps the very

badness of the crudities helped in its popularity, for there was nothing

more remarkable about it than the fashion in which it captured every

class of reader. But its success, in reality, was a result of the exact

moment of its appearance. Had Peter waited a thousand years he could

not possibly have chosen a time more favourable. It was that moment

in literary history, when the world had had enough of lilies and was

turning, with relief, to artichokes. There was a periodical of this time

entitled _The Green Volume_. This appeared somewhere about 1890 and

it brought with it a band of young men and women who were exceedingly

clever, saw the quaintness of life before its reality and stood on

tiptoe in order to observe things that were really growing quite close

to the ground. This quarterly produced some very admirable work; its

contributors were all, for a year or two, as clever as they were--young

and as cynical as either. The world was dressed in a powder puff and

danced beneath Chinese lanterns and was as wicked as it could be in

artificial rose-gardens. It was all great fun for a year or two....

Then _The Green Volume_ died, people began to whisper about slums and

drainage, and Swedish drill for ten minutes every morning was considered

an admirable thing. On the edge of this new wave came “Reuben Hallard,”

combining as it did a certain amount of affectation with a good deal of

naked truth, and having the rocks of Cornwall as well as its primroses

for its background. It also told a story with a beginning to it and an

end to it, and it contained the beautiful character of Mrs. Poveret, a

character that was undoubtedly inspired by that afternoon that Peter had

with his mother..

In addition to all this it must be remembered that the world was

entirely unprepared for the book's arrival. It had been in no fashion

heralded and until a long review appeared in _The Daily Globe_ no one

noticed it in any way. Then the thing really began. The reviewers were

glad to find something in a dead season, about which a column or two

might possibly be written; the general public was delighted to discover

a novel that was considered by good judges to be literature and that,

nevertheless, had as good a story as though it weren't--its faults

were many and some of its virtues accidental, but it certainly deserved

success as thoroughly as did most of its contemporaries. Edition

followed edition and “Reuben Hallard” was the novel of the spring of

1896.

The effect of all this upon Peter may easily be imagined. It came to

him first, with those early reviews and an encouraging letter from the

publishers, as something that did not belong to him at all, then after

a month or so it belonged to him so completely that he felt as though he

had been used to it all his life. Then slowly, as the weeks passed and

the success continued, he knew that the publication of this book had

changed the course of his life. Letters from agents and publishers

asking for his next novel, letters from America, letters from unknown

readers, all these things showed him that he could look now towards

countries that had not, hitherto, been enclosed by his horizon. He

breathed another air.

And yet he was astonishingly simple about it all--very young and very

naive. The two things that he felt about it were, first, that it would

please very much his friends--Bobby and his wife, Mrs. Brockett,

Norah Monogue, Mr. Zanti, Herr Gottfried and, above all, Stephen; and

secondly, that all those early years in Cornwall--the beatings, his

mother, Scaw House, even Dawson's--had been of use to him. One remembers

those extraordinary chapters concerning Reuben and his father--here

Peter had, for the first time, allowed some expression of his attitude

to it all to escape him.

He felt indeed as though the success of the book placed for a moment all

that other life in the background--really away from him. For the first

time since he left Brockett's he was free from a strange feeling of

apprehension.... Scaw House was hidden.

He gave himself up to glorious life. He plunged into it....

II

He stepped, at first timidly, into literary London. It was, at first

sight, alarming enough because it seemed to consist, so largely and so

stridently, of the opposite sex. Bobby would have had Peter avoid it

altogether. “There are some young idiots,” he said, “who go about to

these literary tea-parties. They've just written a line or two somewhere

or other, and they go curving and bending all over the place. Young Tony

Gale and young Robin Trojan and my young ass of a brother ... don't

want you to join that lot, Peter, my boy. The women like to have 'em of

course, they're useful for handing the cake about but that's all there

is to it ... keep out of it.”

But Peter had not had so many friends during the early part of his life

that he could afford to do without possible ones now. He wanted indeed

just as many as he could grasp. The comfort and happiness of his life

with Bobby, the success of the book, the opening of a career in front

of him, these things had made of him another creature. He had grown ten

years younger; his cheeks were bright, his eye clear, his step buoyant.

He moved now as though he loved his fellow creatures. One felt, on his

entrance into a room, that the air was clearer, and that one was in

the company of a human being who found the world, quite honestly and

naturally, a delightful place. This was the first effect that success

had upon Peter.

And indeed they met him--all of them--with open arms. They saw in him

that burning flame that those who have been for the first time admitted

into the freemasonry of their Art must ever show. Afterwards he would

be accustomed to that country, would know its roads and hills and cities

and would be perhaps disappointed that they were neither as holy nor as

eternal as he had once imagined them to be--now he stood on the hill's

edge and looked down into a golden landscape whose bounds he could not

discern. But they met him too on the personal side. The fact that he

had been found starving in a London garret was of itself a wonderful

thing--then he had in his manner a rough, awkward charm that flattered

them with his youth and inexperience. He was impetuous and confidential

and then suddenly reserved and constrained. But, above it all, it was

evident that he wanted friendliness and good fellowship. He took every

one at the value that they offered to him. He first encouraged them

to be at their most human and then convinced them that that was their

natural character. He lighted every one's lamp at the flame of his own

implicit faith.

These ladies and gentlemen put very plainly before him the business side

of his profession. Their conversation was all of agents, publishers, the

sums that one of their number obtained and how lucky to get so much so

soon, and the sums that another of their number did not obtain and what

a shame it was that such good work was rewarded by so little. It was

all--this conversation--in the most generous strain. Jealousy never

raised its head. They read--these precious people--the works of one

another with an eager praise and a tender condemnation delightful to

see. It was a warm bustling society that received Peter.

These tea-parties and fireside discussions had not, perhaps, been

always so friendly and large-hearted but in the time when Peter first

encountered them they were influenced and moulded by a very remarkable

woman--a woman who succeeded in combining humour, common sense and

imagination in admirably adjusted qualities. Her humour made her

tolerant, her common sense made her wise, and her imagination made her

tender--her name was Mrs. Launce.

She was short and broad, with large blue eyes that always, if one

watched them, showed her thoughts and dispositions. Some people make of

their faces a disguise, others use them as a revelation--the result to

the observer is very much the same in either case. But with Mrs. Launce

there was no definite attempt at either one thing or the other--she was

so busily engaged in the matter in hand, so absorbed and interested,

that the things that her face might be doing never occurred to her. Her

hair was drawn back and parted down the middle. She liked to wear little

straw coal-scuttle bonnets; she was very fond of blue silk, and her

frocks had an inclination to trail. On her mother's side she was French

and on her father's English; from her mother she got the technique of

her stories, the light-hearted boldness of her conversation and her

extraordinary devotion to her family. She was always something of a

puzzle to English women because she was a great deal more domestic than

most of them and yet bristled with theories about morals and life in

general that had nothing whatever in common with domesticity. Some one

once said of her that “she was a hot water bottle playing at being a

bomb....”

She belonged to all the London worlds, although she found perhaps

especial pleasure in the society of her fellow writers. This was largely

because she loved, beyond everything else, the business side of her

profession. There was nothing at all that she did not know about the

publishing and distribution of a novel. Her capacity for remembering

other people's prices was prodigious and she managed her agent and her

publisher with a deftness that left them gasping. There were very few

persons in her world who had not, at one time or another, poured their

troubles into her ear. She had that gift, valuable in life beyond all

others, of giving herself up entirely to the person with whom she was

talking. When the time came to give advice the combination of her common

sense and her tenderness made her invaluable. There was no crime black

enough, no desertion, no cruelty horrible enough to outspeed her pity.

She hated and understood the sin and loved and comforted the sinner.

With a wide and accurate knowledge of humanity she combined a deep

spiritual belief in the goodness of God.

Everything, however horrible, interested her ... she adored life.

This little person in the straw bonnet and the blue dress gave Peter

something that he had never known before--she mothered him. He sat next

to her at some dinner-party and she asked him to come and have tea with

her. She lived in a little street in Westminster in a tiny house that

had her children on the top floor, a beautiful copy of the Mona Lisa and

a very untidy writing-table on the second, and a little round hall and

a tiny dining-room on the ground floor. Her husband and her

family--including an adorable child of two--were all as amiable as

possible.

Peter told her most things on the first day that he had tea with her and

everything on the second. He told her about his boyhood--Treliss, Scaw

House, his father, Stephen. He told her about Brockett's and Bucket

Lane. He told her, finally, about Clare Rossiter.

He always remembered one thing that she said at this time. They were

sitting at her open window looking down into the blue evening that is in

Westminster quieter even than it is at Chelsea. Behind the faint green

cloud of trees the Abbey's huge black pile soared into space.

“You think you've made a tremendous break?” she said.

“Yes--this is an entirely new life--new in every way. I seem too to be

set amongst an entirely new crowd of people. The division seems to me

sharper every day. I believe I've left it all behind.”

She looked at him sharply. “You're afraid of all that earlier time,” she

said.

“Yes, I am.”

“It made you write 'Reuben Hallard.' Perhaps this life here in

London...”

“It's safer,” he caught her up.

“Don't,” she answered him very gravely, “play for safety. It's the most

dangerous thing in the world.” She paused for a moment and then added:

“But probably they won't let you alone.”

“I hope to God they will,” he cried.

III

He saw Clare Rossiter twice during this time and, on each occasion, it

seemed to him that she was trying to make up to him for his awkwardness

at their first meeting. On the first of these two occasions she had only

a few words with him, but there was a note in her voice that he fancied,

wildly, unreasonably, was different from the tone that she used to other

people. She looked so beautiful with her golden hair coiled above her

head. It was the most wonderful gold that he had ever seen. He could

only, in his excitement, think of marmalade and that was a sticky

comparison. “The Lady with the Marmalade Hair”--how monstrous! but that

did convey the colour. Her eyes seemed darker now than they had been

before and her cheeks whiter. The curve of her neck was so wonderful

that it hurt him physically. He wanted so terribly to kiss her just

beneath her ear. He saw how he would do it, and that he would have to

move away some of the shiny hair that strayed like sunlight across the

white skin.

She did not seem to him quite so tiny when she smiled; it was exactly

as water ripples when the sun suddenly bursts dark clouds. He had a

thousand comparisons for her, and then sometimes she would be, as it

were, caught up into a cloud and he would only see a general radiance

and be blinded by the light.

He wished very much that he could think of something else--something

other than marmalade--that had that quality of gold. He often imagined

what it would be like when she let it all down--like a forest of autumn

trees--no, that spoke of decay--like the sunlight on sand

towards evening--like the fires of Walhalla in the last act of

Gotterdämmerung--like the lights of some harbour seen from the farther

shore--like clouds that are ready to burst with evening sunlight.

Perhaps, after all, amber was the nearest....

“Peter, ask Miss Rossiter if she will have some more tea....” Oh! What a

fool he is! What an absolute ass!

On the second of these two meetings she had read “Reuben Hallard.” She

loved it! She thought it astounding! The most wonderful first novel she

had ever read. How had he been able to make one feel Cornwall so? She

had been once to Cornwall, to Mullion and it had been just like that!

Those rocks! it was like a poem! And then so exciting!

She had not been able to put it down for a single minute. “Mother was

furious with me because there I sat until I don't know how early in the

morning reading it! Oh! Mr. Westcott, how wonderful to write like that!”

Her praise inflamed him like wine. He looked at her with exultation.

“Oh! you feel like that!” he said, drawing a great breath, “I did want

you to like it so!” He was enraptured--the world was heaven! He did not

realise that some young woman at a tea-party the day before had said

precisely these same things and he had said: “Of all the affected

idiots!”...

IV

This might all be termed a period of preparation--that period was fixed

for Peter with its sign and seal on a certain evening of spring when

an enormous orange moon was in the sky, scents were in all the Chelsea

gardens, and the Chelsea streets were like glass in the silver luminous

light.

Peter was walking home after a party at the Rossiters'. It was the first

time that he had been invited to their house and it had been a great

success. Dr. Rossiter was a little round fat man with snow-white hair,

red cheeks and twinkling eyes. He cured his patients and irritated his

relations by his good temper. Mrs. Rossiter, Peter thought, had a great

resemblance to Bobby's mother, Mrs. Galleon, senior. They were, both of

them, massive and phlegmatic. They had both acquired that solemn dignity

that comes of living up to one's husband's reputation. They both looked

on their families--Mrs. Rossiter on Clare and Mrs. Galleon on Millicent,

Percival and Bobby--with curiosity, tolerance and a mild soft of wonder.

They were both massively happy and completely unimaginative. They were,

indeed, old friends, having been at school together, they were Emma

and Jane to one another and Mrs. Rossiter could never forget that Mrs.

Galleon came to school two years after herself and was therefore

junior still; whilst Mrs. Galleon had stayed two years longer than

Mrs. Rossiter, and was a power there when Mrs. Rossiter was completely

forgotten; they were fond of each other as long as they were allowed to

patronise one another.

Peter had spent a delicious evening. He had had half an hour in the

garden with Clare. They had spoken in an undertone. He had told her his

ambitions, she had told him her aspirations. Some one had sung in the

garden and there had been one wonderful moment when Peter had touched

her hand and she had not taken it away. At last they were both silent

and the garden flowed about them, on every side of them, with the notes

and threads that can only be heard at night.

Mrs. Rossiter, heavily and solemnly, brought her daughter a shawl. There

was some one to whom she would like to introduce Mr. Westcott. Would he

mind? Eden was robbed of its glories....

But he had had enough. He thought at one moment that already she was

beginning to care for him, and at another, that a lover's fancy made

signs out of the wind and portents out of the running water.

But he was happy with a mighty exultation, and then, as he turned down

on to the Embankment and felt the breeze from the river as it came

towards him, he met Henry Galleon.

The old man, in an enormous hat that was like a top hat only round

at the brim and brown in colour, was trotting home. He saw Peter and

stopped. He spoke to him in his slow tremendous voice and the words

seemed to go on after they had left him, rolling along the Embankment.

“I am glad to see you, Mr. Westcott. I have thought that I would like to

have a chat with you. I have just finished your book.”

This was indeed tremendous--that Henry Galleon should have read “Reuben

Hallard.” Peter trembled all over.

“I wonder whether you would care to come and have a chat with me. I have

some things you might care to see. What time like the present? It is

early hours yet and you will be doing an old man who sleeps only poorly

a kindness.”

What a night of nights! Peter, trembling with excitement, felt Henry

Galleon put his arm in his, felt the weight of the great man's body.

They walked slowly along and the moon and the stars and the lights on

the river and the early little leaves in the trees and the stones of the

houses and the little “tish-tish” of the water against the Embankment

seemed to say--“Oh! Peter Westcott's going to have a chat with Henry

Galleon! Did you ever hear such a thing!”

Peter was sorry that his Embankment was deserted and that there was no

one to see them go into the house together. He drew a great breath

as the door closed behind them. The house was large and dark and

mysterious. The rest of the family were still out at some party. Henry

Galleon drew Peter into his own especial quarters and soon they were

sitting in a lofty library, its walls covered with books that stretched

to the ceiling. Peter meanwhile buried in a huge arm-chair and feeling

that Henry Galleon's eyes were piercing him through and through.

The old man talked for some time about other things--talked wonderfully

about the great ones of the earth whom he had known, the great things

that he had seen. It was amazing to Peter to hear the gods of his world

alluded to as “poor old S---- poor fellow!... Yes, indeed. I remember

his coming into breakfast one day...” or “You were asking about T----

Old Wallie, as we used to call him--poor fellow, poor fellow--we

lived together in rooms for some time. That was before I married--and

perilously, dangerously--I might almost say magnificently near

starvation we were too....”

Peter already inflamed with that earlier half-hour in the garden

now breathed a portentous air. He was with the Gods ... there on the

Olympian heights he drank with them, he sang songs with them, with

mighty voices they applauded “Reuben Hallard.” He drank in his

excitement many whiskies and sodas and soon the white room with its

books was like the inside of a golden shell. The old man opposite him

grew in size--his face was ever larger and larger, his shirt front

bulged and bulged--his hand raised to emphasise some point was

tremendous as the hand of a God. Peter felt that he himself was growing

smaller and smaller, would soon, in the depths of that mighty arm-chair

disappear altogether but that opposite him two mighty burning eyes held

him. And always like thunder the voice rolled on.... “My son tells me

that this book of yours is a success ... that they are emptying their

purses to fill yours. That may be a dangerous thing for you. I have read

your book, it has many faults; it is not written at all--it is loose and

lacking in all construction. You know nothing, as yet, about life--you

do not know what to use or what to reject. But the Spirit is there, the

right Spirit. It is a little flame--it will be very easily quenched and

nothing can kill it so easily as success--guard it, my son, guard it.”

Peter felt as Siegfried must have felt when confronted by Wotan.

His poor little book was dwindling now before his eyes. He was conscious

of a great despair. How useless of him to attempt so impossible a

task....

The voice rolled on:

“I am an old man now and only twice before in my time nave I seen

that spirit in a young man's eyes. You may remember now an old man's

words--for I would urge you, I would implore you to keep nothing before

you but the one thing that can bring Life into Art. I will not speak to

you of the sacredness of your calling. Many will laugh at you and tell

you that it is pretentious to name it so. Others will come to you and

will advise how this is to be done and that is to be done. Others will

talk to you of schools, they will tell you that once it was in that

manner and that now it is in this manner. Some will tell you that you

have no style--others will tell you that you have too much. Some again

will tempt you with money and money is not to be despised. Again you

will be tested with photographs and paragraphs, with lectures and public

dinners.... Worst of all there will come to you terrible hours when you

yourself know of a sure certainty that your work is worthless. In your

middle age a great barrenness will come upon you. You have been a little

teller of little tales, and on every side of you there will be others

who have striven for other prizes and have won them. Sitting alone in

your room with your poor strands of coloured silk that had once been

intended to make so beautiful a pattern, poor boy, you will know that

you have failed. That will be a very dreadful hour--the only power that

can meet it is a blind and deaf courage. Courage is the only thing that

we are here to show ... the hour will pass.”

The old man paused. There was a silence. Then he said very slowly as

though he were drawing in front of him the earliest histories of his own

past life....

“Against all these temptations, against these voices of the World

and the Flesh, against the glory of power and the swinging hammer of

success, you, sitting quietly in your room, must remember that a great

charge has been given you, that you are here for one thing and one thing

only ... to listen. The whole duty of Art is listening for the voice of

God.

“I am not speaking in phrases. I am not pressing upon you any

sensational discoveries, but here at the end of my long life, I, with

all the things that I meant to do and have failed to do heavy upon me,

can give you only this one word. I have hurried, I have scrambled, I

have fought and cursed and striven, but as an Artist only those hours

that I have spent listening, waiting, have been my real life.

“So it must be with you. You are here to listen. Never mind if they tell

you that story-telling is a cheap thing, a popular thing, a mean thing.

It is the instrument that is given to you and if, when you come to die

you know that, for brief moments, you have heard, and that what you have

heard you have written, Life has been justified.

“Nothing else can console you, nothing else can comfort you. There must

be restraint, austerity, discipline--words must come to you easily but

only because life has come to you with so great a pain ... the Artist's

life is the harshest that God can give to a man. Make no mistake about

that. Fortitude is the artist's only weapon of defence....”

Henry Galleon came over to Peter's chair and put his hand upon the boy's

arm.

“I am at the end of my work. I have done what I can. You are at the

beginning of yours. You will do what you can. I wish you good fortune.”

A vision came to Peter. Through the open window, against the sheet of

stars, gigantic, was the Rider on the Lion.

He could not see the Rider's face.

A great exultation inflamed him.

At that instant he was stripped bare. His history, the people whom he

knew, the things that he had done, they were all as though they had

never been.

His soul was, for that great moment, naked and alone before God.

“The whole duty of Art is listening for the voice of God....”

A sound, as though it came to him from another world, broke into the

room.

There were voices and steps on the stairs.

“Ah, they are back from their party,” Henry Galleon said, trotting

happily to the door. “Come up and have a chat with my wife, Westcott,

before going to bed.”

CHAPTER III

THE ENCOUNTER

I

Peter was now the young man of the moment. He took this elevation with

frank delight, was encouraged by it, gave it all rather more, perhaps,

than its actual value, began a new novel, “The Stone House,” started

weekly reviewing on _The Interpreter_ and yielded himself up entirely to

Clare Rossiter.

He had been in love with her ever since that first day at Norah

Monogue's, but the way that she gradually now absorbed him was like

nothing so much as the slow covering of the rocks and the sand by the

incoming tide. At first, in those days at Brockett's, she had seemed to

him something mysterious, intangible, holy. But after that meeting in

Cheyne Walk he knew her for a prize that some fortunate man might, one

day, win. He did not, for an instant, suppose that he could ever be

that one, but the mere imagined picture of what some other would one day

have, sent the blood rushing through him. Her holiness for him was still

intact but for another there would be human, earthly wonders.

Then, curiously, as he met her more often and knew her better there came

a certain easy, almost casual, intercourse. One Clare Rossiter still

reigned amongst the clouds, but there was now too another easy,

fascinating, humorous creature who treated him almost like Alice Galleon

herself--laughed at him, teased him, provoked him ... suddenly, like a

shadow across a screen, would slip away; and he be on his knees again

before something that was only to be worshipped.

These two shapes of her crossed and were confused and again were parted.

His thoughts were first worshipping in heaven, then dwelling with

delight on witty, charming things that she had said.

For that man, when he came, there would be a most wonderful treasure.

Peter now lost his appetite. He could not sleep at night. He would slip

out of his room, cross the silent Chelsea streets and watch her dark

window. He cultivated Mrs. Rossiter and that massive and complacent

lady took it entirely to herself. Indeed, nothing, at this time was more

remarkable than the little stir that Peter's devotion caused. It was

perhaps that Clare had always had a cloud of young men about her,

perhaps that Peter was thought to be having too wonderful a time, just

now, to be falling in love as well--that would be piling Life on to

Life! ... no one could live under it.

Besides Mrs. Rossiter liked him ... he was amazing, you see ... people

said....

And the next stage arrived.

One May evening, at the Galleons' house, when some one was playing the

piano and all the world seemed to be sitting in corners Clare's hand lay

suddenly against his. The smooth outer curve of his hand lay against her

palm. Their little fingers touched. Sheets of fire rose, inflamed him

and fell ... rose again and fell. His hand began to shake, her hand

began to shake. He heard, a thousand miles away, some one singing about

“the morn.”

Their hands parted. She rose and slowly, her white dress and red-gold

hair flung against a background that seemed to him black and infinite,

crossed the room.

That trembling of her hand had maddened him. It suddenly showed him that

he--as well as another--might run the race for her. Everything that he

had ever done or been--his sentiments, his grossnesses, his restraints

and his rebellions--were now concerned in this pursuit. No other human

being--Stephen, Norah Monogue, Bobby, Alice--now had any interest for

him. His reviews were written he knew not how, the editions of “Reuben

Hallard” might run into the gross for all he cared, “The Stone House”

lay neglected.

And he avoided seeing her. He was afraid to spoil that moment when her

hand had shaken at the touch of his, and yet he was tormented by the

longing for a new meeting that might provide some new amazement. Perhaps

he would hold her hand and feel the shadow of her body bending towards

his own! And his heart stopped beating; and he was suddenly cold with a

splendid terror.

Then he did meet her again and had nothing to say. It seemed to him that

she was frightened. He came home that day in a cold fog of miserable

despair. A letter from his publishers informing him of a tenth edition

was of ironical unimportance. He lay awake all night restlessly unhappy.

For the first time for many months the old shadows stole out into

the room--the black bulk of Scaw House--the trees, the windows, his

father....

And to him, tossing on his bed there came thoughts of a certain house in

the town. He could get up and dress now--a cab would soon take him there

... in the early morning he could slink back.

Clare did not want him! A fool to fancy that she had ever cared.

He, Peter Westcott, nobody! Why then should he not have his adventures,

he still so young and vigorous? He would go to that house....

And then, almost reluctantly, as he sat up in bed and watched the grey,

shadowy walls, Stephen seemed to be visible to him--Stephen, walking the

road, starting early in the fresh air when the light was breaking and

the scent of the grass was cool and filled with dew.

He would write to Stephen in the morning--he lay down and went to sleep.

By this time, meanwhile, Alice and Bobby had noticed. Alice, indeed, had

a number of young men over whose emotions she kept guard and Peter had

become, during these weeks, very valuable to her....

She did not want him to marry anybody--especially she did not want him

to marry Clare. At breakfast, past Peter's ears, as though he were not

concerned at all, she talked to Bobby--

“Really, Dr. Rossiter spoils Clare beyond all bounds--”

“Um?”

“He's taking her with him up to Glasgow to that Congress thing. He knows

perfectly well that she ought to stay with Mrs. Rossiter--and so does

she.”

“Well, it's no business of ours--” Bobby's usual tolerant complacency.

“It is. Clare might be a fine creature if she didn't let herself be

spoiled in this way. She's perpetually selfish and she ought to be told

so.”

“We're all perpetually selfish,” said Bobby who began to be sorry for

Peter.

“Oh! no, we're not. I'm very fond of Clare but I don't envy the man who

marries her. There's no one in the world more delightful when she has

her own way and things go smoothly, but they've wrapped her up in cotton

wool to such an extent that she simply doesn't know how to live out of

it. She's positively terrified of _Life_.”

This, as Alice had intended, was too much for Peter. He burst out--

“I think Miss Rossiter's the pluckiest girl I've ever met. She's afraid

of nothing.”

“Except of being uncomfortable,” Alice retorted. “That frightens her

into fits. Make her uncomfortable, Peter, and you'll see--”

And, red in the face, Peter answered--“I don't think you ought to talk

of any one who's so fond of you behind her back in that way--”

“Oh! I say just the same to her face. I'm always telling her these

things and she always agrees and then's just as selfish as ever. That

absurd little father of hers has spoilt her!”

Spoilt! Clare spoilt! Peter smiled darkly. Alice Galleon--delightful

woman though she was, of course couldn't endure that another woman

should receive such praise--Jealousy! Ah!...

And the aged and weighty author of “Reuben Hallard,” to whom the world

was naturally an open book, and life known to its foundations, nodded

to himself. How people, intelligent enough in other ways, could be so

short-sighted!

Afterwards, when they were alone, Bobby took him in hand--

“You're in love with Clare Rossiter, Peter,” he said.

“Yes, I am,” Peter answered defiantly.

“But you've known her so short a time!”

“What's that to do with it?”

“Oh, nothing, of course. But do you think you're the sort of people

likely to get on?”

“Really, Bobby, I don't--”

“I know--none of my business--quite true. But you see I've known Clare

pretty well all my life and you're the best friend I've got, so you

might allow me to take an interest.”

“Well, say what you like.”

“Nothing to say except that Clare isn't altogether an easy problem.

You're like all the other fellows I know--think because Clare's got red

hair and laughs easily she's a goddess--she isn't, not a bit! She's got

magnificent qualities and one day perhaps, when she's had a thoroughly

bad time, she'll show one the kind of things she's made of. But she's an

only child, she's been spoilt all her life and the moment she begins to

be unhappy she's impossible.”

“She shan't ever be unhappy if I can help it!” muttered Peter fiercely.

Bobby laughed. “You'll do your best of course, but are you the sort of

man for her? She wants some one who'll give her every kind of comfort,

moral, physical and intellectual. She wants somebody who'll accept her

enthusiasms as genuine intelligence. You'll find her out intellectually

in a week. Then she wants some one who'll give her his whole attention.

You think now that you will but you won't--you can't--you're not made

that way. By temperament and trade you're an artist. She thinks, at the

moment, that an artist would suit her very well; but, in reality, my

boy, he's the very last sort of person she ought to marry.”

Peter caught at Bobby's words. “Do you really think she cares about me?”

“She's interested. Clare spends her days in successive enthusiasms.

She's always being enthusiastic--dreadful disillusions in between the

heights. Mind you, there's another side of Clare--a splendid side, but

it wants very careful management and I don't know, Peter, that you're

exactly the sort of person--”

“Thanks very much,” said Peter grimly.

“No, but you're not--you don't, in the least, see her as she is, and she

doesn't see you as you are--hence these misguided attempts on my part to

show you one another.”

But Peter had not been listening.

“Do you really think,” he muttered, “that she cares about me?”

Bobby looked at him, laughed and shrugged his shoulders in despair.

“Ah! I see--it's no use,” he said, “poor dear Peter--well, I wish you

luck!”

And that was the end as far as Alice and Bobby were concerned. They

never alluded to it again and indeed now seemed to favour meetings

between Clare and Peter.

And now, through these wonderful Spring weeks, these two were

continually together. The Galleons had, at first, been inclined to

consider Clare's obvious preference for Peter as the simplest desire

to be part of a general rather heady enthusiasm. “Clare loves little

movements....” And Peter, throughout this Spring was a little movement.

The weeks went on, and Clare was not herself--silent, absorbed, almost

morose. One day she asked Alice Galleon a number of questions about

Peter, and, after that, resolutely avoided speaking of him. “Of course,”

Alice said to Bobby--“Dr. Rossiter will let her marry any one she likes.

She'll have plenty of money and Peter's going to have a great career.

After all it may be the best thing.”

Bobby shook his head. “They're both egoists,” he said. “Peter because

he's never had anything he wanted and Clare because she's always had

everything ... it won't do.”

But, after all, when May gave place to burning June, Bobby and Alice

were inevitably drawn into that romance. They yielded to an atmosphere

that both, by temperament, were too sentimental to resist.

Nearer and nearer was coming that intoxicating moment of Peter's final

plunge, and Clare--beautiful, these weeks, with all the excitement

of the wonderful episode--saw him as a young god who had leapt upon a

submissive London and conquered it.

Mrs. Rossiter and Mrs. Galleon played waiting chorus. Mrs. Launce from

her little house in Westminster, was, as usual, glowing with a piece

of other people's happiness. Bobby and Alice had surrendered to the

atmosphere. All were, of course, silent--until the word is spoken no

movement must be made--the little god is so easily alarmed.

At last towards the close of this hot June, Mrs. Launce proposed to

Clare a week-end at her Sussex cottage by the sea. She also told Peter

that she could put him up if he chose to come down at the same time.

What could be more delightful in this weather?

“Dear Clare, only the tiniest cottage as you know--no one else unless

Peter Westcott happens to come down--I suggested it, and you can see the

sea from your window and there's a common and a donkey, and you can roll

in the sand--” Mrs. Launce, when she was very happy betrayed her French

descent by the delightful way that she rolled her r's.

“Not a soul anywhere near--we can bathe all day.”

Clare would love to come so strangely enough would Peter--“The 5.30

train then--Saturday....” Dear Mrs. Launce in her bonnet and blue silk!

Clare had never thought her so entirely delightful!

Peter, of course, plainly understood the things that dear Mrs. Launce

intended. His confidence in her had been, in no way, misplaced--she

loved a wedding and was the only person in the world who could bring to

its making so fine a compound of sentiment and common sense. She frankly

loved it all and though, at the moment, occupied with the work of at

least a dozen women, and with a family that needed her most earnest

care, she hastened to assist the Idyll.

Peter's own feelings were curiously confused. He was going to propose

to Clare; and now he seemed to face, suddenly, the change that this

must mean to him. Those earlier months, when it had been pursuit with no

certainty of capture had only shown him one thing desirable--Clare. But

now that he was face to face with it he was frightened--what did he know

of women?...

On the morning they were to go down, he sat in his room, this terrible

question confronting him. No, he knew nothing about women! He had left

his heroine very much alone in “Reuben Hallard” and those occasions

when he had been obliged to bring her on the stage had not been too

successful. He knew nothing about women!

There would be things--a great many--as a married man, he would have to

change. Sometimes he was moody for days together and wanted to see no

one. Sometimes he was so completely absorbed by his work that the real

people around him were shadows and wraiths. These moods must vanish.

Clare must always find him ready and cheerful and happy.

A dreadful sense of inadequacy weighed upon Peter. And then at the

concrete fact of her actual presence, at the thought of her standing

there, waiting for him, wanting him, his doubts left him and he was

wildly, madly happy.

And yet, before he left the room, his glance fell on his writing-table.

White against its shining surface lay a paper and on the top sheet,

written: “The Stone House”; a Novel; Chapter II. Months ago--he had not

touched it all these last weeks, and, at this moment he felt he would

never write anything again. He turned away with a little movement of

irritation....

That morning he went formally to Dr. Rossiter. The little man received

him, smiling.

“I want to marry your daughter, sir,” said Peter.

“You're very young,” said the Doctor.

“Twenty-six,” said Peter.

“Well, if she'll have you I won't stand in your way--”

Peter took the 5.30 train....

II

Mrs. Launce, on Sunday afternoon, from the door of her cottage, watched

them both strike across the common towards the sea--Peter, “stocky,”

walking as though no force on earth could upset his self-possession and

sturdy balance, Clare with her little body and easy movement meant

for this air and sea and springing turf. Mrs. Launce having three

magnificent children of her own believed in the science of Eugenics

heart and soul. Here, before her eyes, was the right and proper

Union--talk about souls and spirit and temperament--important enough for

the immediate Two--but give Nature flesh and bones, with cleanliness and

a good straight stock to work on, and see what She will do!

Mrs. Launce went into the cottage again and prepared herself for an

announcement at tea-time. She wiped her eyes before she settled down to

her work. Loving both of them the thought of their happiness hung about

her all the afternoon and made her very tender and forgiving when the

little parlourmaid arrived with a piece of the blue and white china

smashed to atoms. “I can't think 'ow it 'appened, Mum. I was just

standing....”

Peter and Clare, crossing the common, beheld the sea at their feet. It

was a hot misty afternoon and only the thin white line of tiny curling

waves crept out of the haze on to the gleaming yellow sand. Behind them,

on every side was common and the only habitation, a small cottage nearly

hidden by a black belt of trees, on their right. These black, painted

trees lay like a blot of ink against the blue sky.

Sitting down on the edge of the common they looked on to the yellow

sand. The air was remorselessly still as though the world were cased in

iron; somewhere deep within its silence, its heart might yet be beating,

but the depths hid its reverberation.

Peter lay flat on his back and instantly his world was full of clamour.

All about him insects were stirring, the thin stiff blades of grass were

very faintly rustling, a tiny blue butterfly flew up from the soil into

the bright air--some creature sang a little song that sounded like the

faint melody of a spinet.

“All praising the Lord, I suppose--” Peter listened. “Hymn and glory

songs and all the rest--” Then, clashing, out of the heart of the sky,

the thought followed. “There _must_ be a God”--the tinkling insect told

him so.

He gazed into the great sheet of blue above him, so remote, so cruel ...

and yet the tiny blue butterfly flew, without fear, into its very heart.

Peter's soul was drawn up. He swung, he flew, he fled.... Down below,

there on the hard, brown soil his body lay--dust to the dust--there,

dead amongst the singing insects.... He looked down, from his great

heights and saw his body, with its red face and its suit of blue and its

up-turned boots, and here, in freedom his Soul exulted!

“Of course there is a God!”

They are praising him down there--the ground is covered with creatures

that are praising Him. Peter buried his eyes and instantly his soul came

swinging down to him, found his body again, filled once more his veins

with life and sound. After a vast silence he could hear, once more,

the life amongst the grass, the faint rustle of the thin line of foam

beneath him, and could smell the earth and the scent of the seaweed

borne up to them from the sand.

“It's so still,” he said suddenly, “that it's almost like thunder.

There'll be a storm later. On a day like this in Cornwall you would hear

the sound of the Mining Stamps for miles--”

“Well,” she answered, “I am glad we're not in Cornwall--I hate it.”

“Hate it!”

“Yes. That sounds horrible to you, I suppose, and I'm quite ready to

admit that it's my cowardice. Cornwall frightens me. When I was there as

a tiny girl it was just the same. I always hated it.”

“I don't believe you're ever frightened at anything.”

“I am. I'm under such a disadvantage, you see. If I'd been white-faced

and haggard every one would have thought it quite natural that I should

scream if I were left in the dark or hate being left alone with those

horrible black rocks that Cornwall's so full of, but just because I'm

healthy and was taught to hold my back up at school I have to pretend to

a bravery that simply doesn't exist--” He rejected, for the moment the

last part of her sentence. “Oh, but I understand perfectly what you mean

by your fear of Cornwall. Of course I understand it although I love the

place with all my soul and body. But it is terrifying--almost the only

terrifying place that civilisation has left to us--Central Africa is

nothing to it--”

“Are you afraid of it?” she said, looking at him intently.

“Tremendously--because I suppose it won't let me alone. It's difficult

to put into words, but I think what I mean is that I want to go on now

in London, writing and seeing people and being happy and it's pulling at

me all the time.”

“What way pulling at you?”

“I can't get out of my head all the things I did when I was a boy there.

I wasn't very happy, you know. I've told you something about it....

I want to go back.... I want to go back. I mustn't, but I want to go

back--and it hurts--”

He seemed to have forgotten her--he stared out to sea, his hands holding

the grass on either side of him.

She moved and the sound suddenly brought him back. He turned to her

laughing.

“Sorry. I was thinking about things. That cottage over there with the

black trees reminded me of Scaw House a little.... But it's all right

really. I suppose every fellow has the wild side and the sober side, and

I've had such a rum life and been civilised so short a time....”

She said slowly: “I think I know what you mean, though. I know enough

of it to be frightened of it--I don't want life to be like that. I don't

suppose I've got imagination. I want it to be orderly and easy and no

one to be hurt or damaged. Oh!”--her voice was suddenly like a cry--“Why

can't we just go through life without any one being frightened or made

miserable? I _believe_ in cities and walls and fires and regulated

emotions--all those other things can only hurt.”

“They teach courage,” Peter answered gravely. “And that's about the only

thing we're here to learn, I expect. My mother died because she wasn't

brave enough and I want ... I want....”

He broke off--“There's only one thing I want and that's you, Clare. You

must have known all these weeks that I love you. I've loved you ever

since I met you that Good Friday afternoon years ago. Let me take care

of you, see that no one hurts you--love you ... love you--”

“Do you really want me, Peter?”

He didn't speak but his whole body turned towards her, answered her

question.

“Because I am yours entirely. I became yours that day when your hand

touched mine. I wasn't sure before--I knew then--”

He looked at her. He saw her, he thought for the first time. She sat

with her hands pressing on the grass, her body bent back a little.

The curve from her neck to her feet was like the shadow of some colour

against the brown earth because he saw her only dimly. Her hair burnt

against the blue sky but her eyes--her eyes! His gaze caught hers and he

surrendered himself to that tenderness, that mystery, that passion that

she flung about him. In her eyes he saw what only a lover can see--the

terror and the splendour of a soul surprised for the first time into

love. She was caught, she was trapped, she was gorgeously delivered. In

her eyes he saw that he had her in the hollow of his hand and that she

was glad to be there.

But even now they had not touched--they had not moved from their places.

They were urged towards one another by some fierce power but also some

great suspense still restrained them.

Then Clare spoke, hurriedly, almost pleadingly.

“But Peter, listen--before I say any more--you must know me better.

I think that it is just because I love you so much that I see myself

clearly to-day as I have never seen myself before--although I have, I

suppose really known ... things ... but I have denied them to myself.

But now I know that all that I say is true--”

“I am ready,” he said, smiling. But she did not smile back at him, she

was intensely serious, she spoke without moving her eyes from his face.

“It is not altogether my fault. I have been an only child and everything

that I have wanted I have always had. I have despised my mother and even

my father because they have given in to me--that is not a pleasant thing

to know. And now comfort, happiness, an absence of all misery, these

things are essential--”

“I will look after you,” said Peter. It was almost with irritation that

she brushed aside his assurance.

“Yes, yes, I know, but you must understand that it's more than that.

If I am unhappy I am another creature you haven't seen ... you don't

know.... If I am frightened--”

“But Clare, dear, we're all like that--”

“No, it's sheer wickedness with me. Oh! Peter I love you so much

that you _must_ listen. You mustn't think afterwards, ah, if I'd only

known--”

“Aren't you making too much of it all? We've all got these things and

it's just because we can help each other that we marry. We give each the

courage--”

“I've always been frightened,” she said slowly, “always when anything

big comes along--always. And this is the biggest thing I've ever met.

If only it had been some ordinary man ... but you, Peter, that I should

hurt _you_.”

“You won't hurt me,” he answered her, “and I'd rather be hurt by you

than helped by some one else--let's leave all this. If you love me,

there's nothing else to say.... Do you love me, Clare?”

“Yes, Peter.”

Then suddenly before he could move towards her a storm that had been

creeping upon them, burst over their heads. Five minutes ago there had

been no sign of anything but the finest weather, but, in a moment the

black clouds had rolled up and the thunder broke, clashing upon the

world. The sea had vanished.

“We must run for it,” cried Peter, raising his voice against the storm.

“That cottage over there--it's the only place.”

They ran. The common was black now--the rain drove hissing, against the

soil, the air was hot with the faint sulphur smell.

Peter flung himself upon the cottage door and Clare followed him in. For

a moment they stood, breathless. Then Peter, conscious only that Clare

was beside him, wild with the excitement of the storm, caught her, held

her for a moment away from him, breathed the thunder that was about them

all, and then kissed her mouth, wet with the rain.

She clung to him, white, breathless, her head on his shoulder.

“Why, you're not frightened?” The sense of her helplessness filled

him with a delicious vigour. The way that her hand pressed in upon his

shoulder exalted him. Her wet golden hair brushed his cheek. Then he

remembered that they had invaded the cottage. For the first time it

occurred to him that their first embrace might have been observed; he

turned around.

The room was filthy, a huge black fire-place occupied most of it,

the floor was littered with pieces of paper, of vegetables and a

disagreeable smell protested against the closed and dirty windows. At

first it seemed that this place was empty and then, with a start, he was

aware that two eyes were watching them. The thunder pealed above them,

the rain lashed the roof and ran streaming from the eaves; the cottage

was dark; but he saw in a chair, a bundle of rags from which those eyes

were staring.

Clare gave a little cry; an old woman with a fallen chin and a face like

yellow parchment sat huddled in the chair.

Peter spoke to her. “I hope you don't mind our taking shelter here,

whilst the storm passes.” She had seen them embrace; it made him

uncomfortable, but the storm was passing away, already the thunder was

more distant.

The old woman made no reply, only her eyes glared at them. Peter put his

hand in Clare's--“It's all right; I think the old thing's deaf and dumb

and blind--look, the storm's passing--there's a bit of blue sky. Isn't

it odd an old thing like that...”

Clare, shuddered a little. “I don't like it--she's horrid--this place is

so dirty. I believe the rain's stopped.”

They opened the door and the earth met them, good and sweet, after the

shower. The sky was breaking, the mists were leaving the sea and as the

storm vanished, the sun, dipping towards the horizon flung upon the blue

a fleet of tiny golden clouds.

Peter bent down to the old woman.

“Thank you,” he said, “for giving us shelter.” He placed a shilling on

her lap.

“She's quite deaf and blind,” he said. “Poor old thing!”

They closed the door behind them and passed down a little path to the

seashore. Here wonders met them. The sand, wet with the recent storm

catching all the colours of the sky shone with mother of pearl--here a

pool of blue, there the fleet of golden clouds.

It stretched on every side of them, blazing with colour. Behind them the

common, sinking now into the dull light of evening.

They stood, little pigmies, on that vast painted floor. Before them the

breeze, blowing back the waves into the sun again turned the spray to

gold.

Tiny figures, in all this glory, they embraced. In all the world they

seemed the only living thing....

III

They had their witness. The old woman who lived in the heart of those

black trees, was deaf and dumb indeed, but her eyes were alive in her

fading and wrinkled body.

When the door had closed she rose slowly from her chair, and her face

was wrinkled with the passion of the hatred that her old soul was

feeling.

What did they mean, those two, coming there and haunting her with their

youth and strength and love. Kissing there before her as though she were

already dead--she to whom kisses were only bitter memories.

Her face worked with fury--she hobbled, painfully, to the door and

opened it.

Below her, on a floor of gold, two black figures stood together.

Gazing at them she raised her thin and trembling hand; she flung with a

passionate, furious gesture, something from her.

A small silver coin glittered in the air, whistled for a moment and

fell.

CHAPTER IV

THE ROUNDABOUT

I

Mrs. Rossiter and Mrs. Galleon sat solemnly, with the majesty of

spreading skirts and Sunday Best hats, in the little drawing-room of The

Roundabout, awaiting the return from the honeymoon.

The Roundabout is the name that Peter has given to the little house in

Dorset Street, Chelsea, that he has chosen to live in with his bride.

High spirits lead to nicknames and Peter was in the very highest

of spirits when he took the house. The name alluded both to

the shape--round bow-windowed like--fat bulging little walls,

lemon-coloured, and to the kind of life that Peter intended to lead. All

was to be Happiness. Life is challenged with all the high spirits of a

truly happy ceremony.

It is indeed a tiny house--tiny hall, tiny stairs, tiny rooms but quaint

with a little tumble-down orchard behind it and that strange painted

house that old mad Miss Anderson lives in on the other side of the

orchard. Such a quiet little street too ... a line of the gravest trees,

cobbles with only the most occasional cart and a little church with a

sleepy bell at the farthest end ... all was to be Happiness.

Wedding presents--there had been six hundred or so--filled the rooms.

People had, on the whole, been sensible, had given the right thing. The

little drawing-room with its grey wall-paper, roses in blue jars,

its two pictures--Velasquez' Maria Theresa in an old silver frame

and Rembrandt's Night Watch--was pleasant, but overwhelmed now by the

presence of these two enormous ladies. The evening sun, flooding it

all with yellow light, was impertinent enough to blind the eyes of Mrs.

Rossiter. She rose and moved slowly to draw down the blinds. A little

silver clock struck half-past four.

“They must soon be here,” said Mrs. Galleon gloomily. Her gloom was

happy and comfortable. She was making the very most of a pleasant

business with the greatest satisfaction in the world. She had done

exactly the same at Bobby's wedding, and, in her heavy, determined way

she would do the same again before she died. Alice Galleon would be

there in a moment, meantime the two ladies, without moving in their

chairs, flung sentences across at one another and smoothed their silk

skirts with their white plump hands.

“It's not really a healthy house--”

“No--with the orchard--and it's much too small--”

“Poor dears, hope they'll be happy. But one can't help feeling, Jane

dear, that it was a little rash of you ... your only girl ... and one

knows so little about Mr. Westcott, really--”

“Well, your own Bobby vouched for him. He'd known him at school after

all, and we all know how cautious Bobby is about people--besides, Emma,

no one could have received him more warmly--”

“Yes--Oh! of course ... but still, having no family--coming out of

nowhere, so to speak--”

“Well, it's to be hoped they'll get on. I must say that Clare will miss

her home terribly. It takes a lot to make up for that--And her father so

devoted too....”

“Yes, we must make the best of it.”

The sun's light faded from the room--the clock and the pictures stood

out sharply against the gathering dusk. Two ladies filled the room

with their shadows and the little fire clicked and rattled behind the

murmuring voices.

II

Alice Galleon burst in upon them. “What! Not arrived yet! the train must

be dreadfully late. Lights! Lights! No, don't you move, mother!”

She returned with lamps and flooded the room with light. The ladies

displayed a feeble protest against her exultant happiness.

“I'm sure, my dear, I hope that nothing has happened.”

“My dear mother, what _could_ happen?”

“Well, you never know with these trains--and a honeymoon, too, is always

rather a dangerous time. I remember--”

“I hear them!” Alice cried and there indeed they were to be heard

bumping and banging in the little hall. The door opened and Peter and

Clare, radiant with happiness, appeared.

They stood in the doorway, side by side, Clare in a little white hat and

grey travelling dress and Peter browner and stronger and squarer than

ever.

All these people filled the little room. There was a crackling fire of

conversation.

“Oh! but we've had a splendid time--”

“No, I don't think Clare's in the least tired--”

“Yes, isn't the house a duck?”

“Don't we just love being back!”

“... hoping you hadn't caught colds--”

“... besides we had the easiest crossing--”

“... How's Bobby?”

“... were so afraid that something must have happened--”

Mrs. Rossiter took Clare upstairs to help her to take her hat off.

Mother and daughter faced one another--Clare flung herself into her

mother's arms.

“Oh! Mother dear, he's wonderful, wonderful!”

Downstairs Alice watched Peter critically. She had not realised until

this marriage, how fond she had grown of Peter. She had, for him,

very much the feeling that Bobby had--a sense of tolerance and even

indulgence for all tempers and morosities and morbidities. She had seen

him, on a day, like a boy of eighteen, loving the world and everything

in it, having, too, a curious inexperience of the things that life might

mean to people, unable, apparently, to see the sterner side of life at

all--and then suddenly that had gone and given place to a mood in which

no one could help him, nothing could cheer him... like Saul, he was

possessed with Spirits.

Now, as he stood there, he looked not a day more than eighteen.

Happiness filled him with colour--his eyes were shining--his mouth

smiling.

“Alice, old girl--she's splendid. I couldn't have believed that life

could be so good--”

A curious weight was lifted from her at his words. She did not know what

it was that she had dreaded. Perhaps it had been merely a sense

that Clare was too young and inexperienced to manage so difficult a

temperament as Peter's--and now, after all, it seemed that she had

managed it. But in realising the relief that she felt she realised too

the love that she had for Peter. When he was young and happy the risks

that he ran seemed just as heavy as when he was old and miserable.

“Oh, Peter! I'm so glad--I know she's splendid--Oh! I believe you are

going to be happy--”

“Yes!” he answered her confidently, “I believe we are--”

The ladies--Mrs. Galleon, Mrs. Rossiter and Alice--retired. Later on

Clare and Peter were coming into Bobby's for a short time.

Left alone in their little house, he drew her to the window that

overlooked the orchard and silently they gazed out at the old, friendly,

gnarled and knotted tree, and the old thick garden-wall that stretched

sharply against the night-sky.

Behind them the fire crackled and the lamps shed their pleasant glow and

that dear child with the great stiff dress that Velasquez painted smiled

at them from the wall.

Peter gave a deep sigh of happiness.

“Our House...” he said and drew her very close to him. The two of them,

as they stood there outlined against the window were so young and so

pleasant that surely the Gods would have pity!

III

In the days that followed he watched it all with incredulity. So swiftly

had he been tossed, it seemed, from fate to fate, and so easily, also,

did he leave behind him the things that had weighed him down. No sign

now of that Peter--evident enough in the Brockett days--morose, silent,

sometimes oppressed by a sense of unreasoned catastrophe, stepping into

his bookshop and out again as though all the world were his enemy.

Peter knew now that he was loved. He had felt that precious quality on

the day that his mother died, he had felt it sometimes when he had been

in Stephen's company, but against these isolated emotions what a world

of hate and bitterness.

Now he felt Clare's affection on every side of him. They had already

in so short a time a store of precious memories, intimacies, that they

shared. They had been through wild, passionate wonders together and

standing now, two human beings with casual words and laughing eyes, yet

they knew that perfect holy secrets bound them together.

He stood sometimes in the little house and wondered for an instant

whether it was all true. Where were all those half cloudy dreams, those

impulses, those dread inheritances that once he had known so well? Where

that other Peter Westcott? Not here in this dear delicious little house,

with Love and Home and great raging happiness in his heart.

He wrote to Stephen, to Mr. Zanti, to Norah Monogue and told them. He

received no answers--no word from the outer world had come to him. That

other life seemed cut off, separated--closed. Perhaps it had left him

for ever! Perhaps, as Clare said, walls and fires were better than wind

and loneliness--comfort more than danger.... Meanwhile, in his study

at the top of the house, “The Stone House” was still lying, waiting, at

Chapter II--

But it was Clare who was the eternal wonder. He could not think of her,

create her, pile up the offerings before her altar, sufficiently. That

he should have had the good fortune... It never ceased to amaze him.

As the weeks and months passed his life centred more and more round

Clare and the house that they shared together. He knew now many people

in London; they were invited continually to dinners, parties, theatres,

dances. Clare's set in London had been very different from Peter's

literary world, and they were therefore acclaimed citizens of two

very different circles. Peter, too, had his reviewing articles in many

papers--the whole whirligig of Fleet Street. (How little a time, by

the way, since that dreadful day when he had sat on that seat on the

Embankment and talked to the lady with the Hat!)

His days during this first year of married life were full, varied,

exciting as they could be--and yet, through it all, his eye was always

upon that little house, upon the moment when the door might be closed,

the fire blazing and they two were alone, alone--

He was, indeed, during this year, a charming Peter. He loved her with

the hero worship of a boy, but also with a humour, a consciousness of

success, a happy freedom that denied all mawkish sham sentiment. He

studied only to please her. He found that, after all, she did not care

very greatly for literature or music or pictures. Her enthusiasm

for these things was the enthusiasm of a child who is bathed in an

atmosphere of appreciation and would return it on to any object that she

could find.

He discovered that she loved compliments, that she cared about dress,

that she loved to have crowds of friends about her, and that parties

excited her as though these were the first that she had ever known. But

he found, too, that in those half-hours when she was alone with him

she showed her love for him with a passion and emphasis that was almost

terrifying. Sometimes when she clung to him it was as though she

was afraid that it was not going to last. He discovered in the very

beginning that below all her happy easy life, an undercurrent of

apprehension, sometimes only vaguely felt, sometimes springing into

sight like the eyes of some beast in the dark, kept company with her.

It was always the future--a perfectly vague, indefinite future that

terrified her. Every moment of her life had been sheltered and happy

and, by reason of that very shelter, her fears had grown upon her. He

remembered one evening when they had been present at some party and she

had been radiant, beautiful, in his eyes divine. Her little body had

been strung to its utmost energy, she had whirled through the evening

and at last as they returned in the cab, she had laid her head on his

shoulder and suddenly flung her arms about him and kissed him--his eyes,

his cheeks, his mouth--again and again. “Oh! I'm so safe with you, Peter

dear,” she had cried to him.

He loved those evenings when they were alone and she would sit on the

floor with her head on his knee and her hand against his. Then suddenly

she would lean back and pull his head down and kiss his eyes, and then

very slowly let him go. And the fierceness, the passion of her love

for him roused in him a strength of devotion that all the years of

unhappiness had been storing. He was still only a boy--the first married

year brought his twenty-seventh birthday--but his love for Clare had the

depth and reserve that belongs to a man.

Mrs. Launce, watching them both, was sometimes frightened. “God help

them both if anything interferes,” she said once to her husband. “I've

seen that boy look at Clare with a devotion that hurts. Peter's no

ordinary mortal--I wonder, now and again, whether Clare's worth it all.”

But this year seemed to silence all her fears. The happiness of that

little house shone through Chelsea. “Oh, we're dining with the Westcotts

to-night--they'll cheer us up--they're always so happy”--“Oh! did you

see Clare Westcott? I never saw any one so radiant.”

And once Bobby said to Alice: “We made a mistake, old girl, about that

marriage. It's made another man of Peter. He's joy personified.”

“If only,” Alice had answered, “destiny or whatever it is will let them

alone. I feel as though they were two precious pieces of china that

a housemaid might sweep off the chimney piece at any moment. If only

nobody will touch them--”

Meanwhile Peter had forgotten, utterly forgotten, the rest of the world.

Walls and fires--for a year they had held him. The Roundabout versus the

World.... What of old Frosted Moses, of the Sea Road, of Stephen, of

Mr. Zanti? What of those desperate days in Bucket Lane? All gone for

nothing?

Clare, perhaps, with this year behind her, hardly realised the forces

against which she was arrayed. Beware of the Gods after silence....

IV

And, after all, it was Clare herself who flung down the glove.

On a winter's evening she was engaged to some woman's party. Peter had

planned an evening, snug and industrious, alone with a book. “The Stone

House” awaited his attention--he had not worked at it for months. Also

he knew that he owed Henry Galleon a visit. Why he had not been to see

the old man lately he scarcely knew.

Clare, standing in the little hall, waiting for a cab, suggested an

alternative.

“Peter dear, why don't you go round to Brockett's if you've nothing to

do?”

“Brockett's!”

“Yes. You've never been since we married, and I had a letter from Norah

this morning--not at all cheerful--I'm afraid she's been ill for months.

They'd love to see you.”

“Brockett's!” He stood astounded. Well, why not? A strange

emotion--uncomfortable, alien, stirred him. He kissed her and saw her

go with a half-distracted gaze. What a world away Brockett's seemed! Old

Mrs. Lazarus, Norah (poor Norah!) Mrs. Brockett, young Robin Tressiter.

They would be glad to see him--it was a natural thing enough that he

should go--what was it that held him back? For the first time since his

marriage, as he slowly and thoughtfully put on his greatcoat, he was

distressed. He reproached himself--Norah, Stephen, Mr. Zanti!... he had

not given them a thought.

He felt, as he went out, as though he were going, with key and candle,

to unlock some old rusty door that led into secret rooms. It was a wet,

windy night. The branches of the little orchard rattled and groaned, and

doors and windows were creaking.

As he passed into the shadows and silence of Bloomsbury the impression

weighed with increasing heaviness upon him that the old Peter had come

back and that his married life with Clare had been a dream. He was still

at Brockett's, still silent, shy, awkward, still poring over pages

of “Reuben Hallard” and wondering whether any one would ever publish

it--still spending so many hours in the old musty bookshop with Herr

Gottfried's wild mop of hair coming so madly above the little counter.

The wind tugged at his umbrella, the rain lashed his face and at last,

breathless, with the sharp corner of his upturned collar digging into

his chin, he pulled the bell of the old grey remorseless door that he

knew so well. There was no one in Bennett Square, only the two lamps

dimly marked its desolation.

The door was opened by Mrs. Brockett herself and she stood there, stern

and black peering into his face.

“What is it? What do you want?” she asked grimly.

He brushed past her laughing and stood back under the gas in the hall

looking at her.

She gave a little cry. “No! It can't be! Why, Mr. Westcott!”

He had never, in all the seven years that he had been with her, seen her

so strongly moved.

“But Mr. Westcott! To think of it! And the times we've talked of you!

And you never coming near us all this while. You might have been dead

for all we knew, and indeed if it hadn't been for Miss Monogue the other

day we'd have heard no news since the day that wild man with the beard

came walking in,” she broke off suddenly--“and there you are, holding

your umbrella with the point down and making a great pool on the carpet

as though--” She took the umbrella from him but her hand rested for an

instant on his arm and she said gruffly--

“But all the same, Mr. Peter, I'm more glad to see you than I can say--”

She took him into her little room and looked at him. “But you've not

changed in the least,” she said, “not in the very least. And where,

pray, Mr. Peter, have you been all this time and come nowhere near us?”

He tried to explain; he was confused, he said something about marriage

and stopped. The room was filled with that subtle odour that brought his

other life back to him in a torrent. He was bathed in it, overwhelmed by

it--roast-beef, mutton, blacking, oil-cloth, decayed flowers, geraniums,

damp stone, bread being toasted--all these things were in it.

He filled his nostrils with the delicious pathos and intimacy of it.

She regarded him sternly. “Now, Mr. Peter, it's of no use. Oh, yes,

we've heard about your wedding. You wrote to Miss Monogue. But there

were days before that, many of them, and never so much as a postcard.

With some of, my boarders it would be natural enough, because what could

you expect? _We_ didn't want _them_, _they_ didn't want _us_--only habit

as you might say. But you, Mr. Peter--why just think of the way we were

fond of you--Mrs. Lazarus and little Robin and Miss Monogue--as well as

myself.”

She stopped and pulled out her handkerchief and blew her nose.

“I dare say you're a famous man,” she went on, “with your books and your

marriage and the rest of it, but that doesn't alter your old friends

being your old friends and it never will. There, I'm getting cross when

all I mean to say is that I'm more delighted to see you than words.”

He was humble before her. He felt, indeed, that he had been the most

unutterable brute. How could he have stayed away all this time with

these dear people waiting for him? He simply hadn't realised--

“And Miss Monogue?” he asked at last, “I'm afraid she's not been very

well?”

“She's been very ill indeed--for months. At one time we were afraid

that she would go. It's her heart. Poor dear, and she's been worrying

so about her work--but she's better now and she'll be truly glad to see

you, Mr. Peter--but you mustn't stay more than a few minutes. She's up

on the sofa but it's the excitement that's bad for her.”

But first Peter went to pay a visit to the Tressiter establishment. He

knew, from old custom, that this would be the hour when the family would

be getting itself, by slow and noisy degrees, to bed. So tremendous,

indeed, was the tumult that he was able to open the door and stand,

within the room, watching and un-noticed. Mrs. Tressiter was attempting

to bathe a fat and very strident baby. Two small boys were standing on a

bed and hitting one another with pillows; a little girl lay on her face

on the floor and howled for no apparent reason; Robin, but little older

than Peter's last impression of him had painted, was standing, naked

save for his shirt and looking down, gravely, at his screaming sister.

Every now and again, Mrs. Tressiter, without ceasing from her work on

the baby who slipped about in her hands like a stout eel, cried in a

shrill voice: “Children, if you don't be quiet,” or “Nicholas, in

a moment I'll give you such a beating,”--or “Agatha, for goodness'

sake!”...

Then suddenly Robin, looking up, caught sight of Peter, he gave a shout

and was across the room in an instant. There was never a moment's doubt

in his eyes. He flung himself upon Peter's body, he wound his arms round

Peter's leg, he beat upon his chest with his bullet head, he cried: “Oh!

Mr. Peter has come! Mr. Peter has come!”

Mrs. Tressiter let the baby fall into the bath with a splash and there

it lay howling. The other members of the family gathered round.

But Peter thought that he had known no joy so acute for years as

the welcome that the small boy gave him. He hoisted Robin on to his

shoulder, and there Robin sat with his naked little legs dangling over,

his hands in the big man's neck.

“Oh! Mr. Westcott, I'm sure...” said Mrs. Tressiter, smiling from ear to

ear and wiping her wet hands on her apron--Robin bent his head and bit

Peter's ear.

“Get on, horse,” he cried and for a quarter of an hour there was wild

riot in the Tressiter family. Then they were all put to bed, as good

as gold,--“you might have heard a pin drop,” said Mrs. Tressiter, “when

Agatha said her prayers”--and at last the lights were put out.

Peter bent down over Robin's bed and the boy flung his arms round his

neck.

“I dreamed of you--I knew you'd come,” he whispered.

“What shall I send you as a present to-morrow?” asked Peter.

“Soldiers--soldiers on horses. Those with cannons and shiny things on

their backs....” Robin was very explicit--“You'll be here to-morrow?” he

asked.

“No--not to-morrow,” Peter answered.

“Soon?”

“Yes, soon.”

“I love you, more than Agatha, more than Dick, more than any one 'cept

Daddy and Mummy.”

“You'll be a good boy until I come back?”

“Promise ... but come back soon.”

Peter gave him a long kiss and left him. Supposing, one day, he had a

boy like that? A little boy in a shirt like that? Wouldn't it be simply

too wonderful? A boy to give soldiers to....

He went across to Miss Monogue's door. A faint voice answered his knock

and, entering the room, the scent of medicine and flowers that he always

connected with his mother, met him. Norah Monogue, very white, with dark

shadows beneath her eyes, was lying on the sofa by the fire.

Mrs. Brockett had prepared her for Peter's coming and she smiled up at

him with her old smile and gave him her hand. How thin and white it was

with its long slender fingers! He sat down by her sofa and he knew by

the way that she looked at him that she was reproaching him--

“Naughty Peter,” she said, “all these months and you have been nowhere

near us.”

“I, too, have a bone--you never sent me a word about my wedding.”

She turned her head away. “I was frightfully ill just then. They didn't

think I'd pull through. I did write afterwards to Clare, I told her how

ill I'd been--”

“She never told me.”

Peter bent over the sofa. “But I am ashamed, Norah, more ashamed than I

can say. After I got well and went to live with the Galleons a new life

seemed to begin for me and I was so eager and excited about it all. And

then--” he hesitated for a moment--“there was Clare.”

“Yes, I know there was Clare and I am so delighted about it--I know that

you will both be so happy.... But, when one is lying here week after

week and is worried and tired things take such a different outline.

I thought that you and Clare--that you ... had given me up altogether

and--”

Suddenly hiding her face in her hands she began to cry. It was

inexpressibly desolate there in the dim bare little room, and the sharp

sense of his neglect and the remembrance of the good friend that she had

been to him for so many years overwhelmed Peter.

He knelt down and put his arms round her. “Norah--don't, please, I can't

bear it. It's all right. I've been a beast, a selfish cad. But it shan't

happen again. I'll come often--I'm ashamed.”

She cried for a little and then she smiled at him. “I'm a fool to cry

like that but you see I'm weak and ill--and seeing you again after all

this time and your being so successful and happy upset me I suppose.

Forgive it, Peter, and come again one day when I'm better and

stronger--and bring Clare too.”

She held tightly to his hand and her grasp was hot and feverish. He

reassured her, told her that he would come soon again, that he would

bring Clare and so left her.

He took a cab and drove back to Chelsea in a storm of agitation.

Suddenly, out of nothing as it were, all these people, this old life

had been thrust up in front of him--had demanded, made claims. About him

once again was the old atmosphere: figures were filling his brain, the

world was a wild tossing place ... one of those Roundabouts with the

hissing lights, the screaming music, the horses going up and down. Plain

enough now that the old life was not done with. Every moment of his past

life seemed to spring before him claiming recognition. He was drunk

with the desire for work. He flung the cabman something, dashed into the

little house, was in his room. The lamp was lighted, the door was shut,

there was silence, and in his brain figures, scenes, sentences were

racing--“The Stone House,” neglected for so long, had begun once more,

to climb.

The hours passed, the white sheets were covered and flung aside. Dimly

through a haze, he saw Clare standing in the doorway.

“Bad old boy!”

He scarcely glanced up. “I'm not coming yet--caught by work.”

“Don't be at it too late.”

He made no reply.

She closed the door softly behind her.

CHAPTER V

THE IN-BETWEENS

I

Then, out of the wind and rain, came Mr. Zanti.

II

Three days after Peter's visit to Brockett's he was finishing a letter

before dressing for dinner. He and Clare were going on to a party later

in the evening but were dining quietly alone together first. The storms

that had fallen upon London three days before were still pommelling and

buffeting the city, the trees outside the window groaned and creaked

with a mysterious importance as though they were trying to tell one

another secrets, and little branches tapped at the dripping panes. He

was writing in the little drawing-room--warm and comfortable--and the

Maria Theresa, so small a person in so much glory, looked down on him

from her silver frame and gave him company.

Then Sarah--a minute servant, who always entered a room as though swept

into it by a cyclone--breathlessly announced that there was a gentleman

to see Mr. Westcott.

“'E's drippin' in the 'all,” she gasped and handed Peter a very dirty

bit of paper.

Peter read:--“Dear Boy, Being about to leave this country on an

expedition of the utmost importance I feel that I must shake you by the

hand before I go. Emilio Zanti.”

Mr. Zanti, enormous, smiling from ear to ear, engulfed in a great coat

from which his huge head, buffeted by wind and rain--his red cheeks, his

rosy nose, his sparkling eyes--stood out like some strange and cheerful

flower--filled the doorway.

He enfolded Peter in his arms, pressed him against very wet garments,

kissed him on both cheeks and burst into a torrent of explanation.

He was only in London for a very few days--he must see his dearest

Peter--so often before he had wanted to see his Peter but he had thought

that it would be better to leave him--and then he had heard that his

Peter was married--well, he must see his lady--it was entirely necessary

that he should kiss her hand and wish her well and congratulate her on

having secured his “own, own Peter,” for a life partner. Yes, he had

found his address from that Pension where Peter used to live; they had

told him and he had come at once because at once, this very night,

he was away to Spain where there was a secret expedition--ah, very

secret--and soon--in a month, two months--he would return, a rich,

rich man. This was the adventure of Mr. Zanti's life and when he was

in England again he, Mr. Zanti, would see much of Peter and of his

beautiful wife--of course she was beautiful--and of the dear children

that were to come--

Here Peter interrupted him. He had listened to the torrent of words in

an odd confusion. The last time that he had seen Mr. Zanti he had left

him, sitting with his head in his hands sobbing in the little bookshop.

Since then everything had happened. He, Peter, had had success, love,

position, comfort--the Gods had poured everything into his hands--and

now, to his amazement as he sat there, in the little room opposite his

huge fantastic friend he was almost regretting all those glorious things

that had come to him and was wishing himself back in the dark little

bookshop--dark, but lighted with the fire of Mr. Zanti's amazing

adventures.

But there was more than this in his thoughts. As he looked at Mr. Zanti,

at his wild black locks, his flaming cheeks, his rolling eyes, his large

red hands, he was aware suddenly that Clare would not appreciate him. It

was the first time since his marriage that there had been any question

of Clare's criticism, but now he knew, with absolute certainty, that Mr.

Zanti was entirely outside Clare's range of possible persons. For the

first time, almost with a secret start of apprehension, he knew that

there were things that she did not understand.

“I'm afraid,” he said, “that my wife is dressing. But when you come back

you shall meet of course--that will be delightful.” And then he went

on--“But I simply can't tell you how splendid it is to look at you

again. Lots of things have happened to me since I saw you, of course,

but I'm just the same--”

Whilst he was speaking his voice had become eager, his eyes bright--he

began to pace the room excitedly--

“Oh, Zanti! ... the days we used to have. I suppose the times I've been

having lately had put it all out of my head, but now, with you here,

it's all as though it happened yesterday. The day we left Cornwall, you

and I--the fog when we got to London ... everything.” He drew a great

breath and stood in the middle of the room listening to the rain racing

down the pipes beyond the dark windows.

Mr. Zanti, getting up ponderously, placed his hands on Peter's

shoulders.

“Still the same Peter,” he said. “Now I know zat I go 'appy. Zat is all

I came for--I said I must zee my Peter because Stephen--”

“Stephen--” broke in Peter sharply.

“Yes, our Stephen. He goes with me now to Spain. He is now, until

to-night, in London but he will not come to you because 'e's afraid--”

“Afraid?”

“Yes 'e says you are married now and 'ave a lovely 'ouse and 'e says you

'ave not written for a ver' long time, and 'e just asked me to give you

'is love and say that when 'e comes back from Spain, per'aps--”

“Stephen!” Peter's voice was sharp with distress. “Zanti, where is he

now? I must go and see him at once.”

“No, 'e 'as gone already to the boat. I follow 'im.” Then Mr. Zanti

added in a softer voice--“So when he tell me that you 'ave not written

I say 'Ah! Mr. Peter forgets his old friends,' and I was zorry but I say

that I will go and make sure. And now I am glad, ver' glad, and Stephen

will be glad too. All is well--”

“Oh! I am ashamed. I don't know what has come over me all this time. But

wait--I will write a note that you shall take to him and then--when he

comes back from Spain--”

He went to his table and began to write eagerly. Mr. Zanti, meanwhile,

went round the room on tip-toe, examining everything, sometimes shaking

his huge head in disapproval, sometimes nodding his appreciation.

Peter wrote:

_Dear, Dear Stephen,--I am furious, I hate myself. What can I have been

doing all this time? I have thought of you often, but my marriage and

all the new life have made me selfish, and always I put off writing to

you because I thought the quiet hour would come to me--and it has never

come. But I have no excuse--except that in the real part of myself I

love you, just the same as ever--and it will be always the same. I have

been bewildered, I think, by all the things that have happened to me

during this last year--but I will never be bewildered again. Write to me

from Spain and then as soon as you come back I will make amends for my

wickedness. I am now and always, Your loving Peter._

Mr. Zanti took the letter.

“How is he?” asked Peter.

“I found 'im--down in Treliss. He wasn't 'appy. 'E was thinking of that

woman. And then 'e was all alone. 'E got some work at a farm out at

Pendragon and 'e was just goin' there when I came along and made 'im

come to Spain. 'E was thinkin' of you a lot, Peter.”

Mr. Zanti cast one more look round the room. “Pretty,” he said. “Pretty.

But not my sort of place. Too many walls--all too close in.”

In the hall he said once more--a little plaintively:--

“I _should_ like to see your lady, Peter,” and then he went on

hurriedly, “But don't you go and disturb her--not for anything--_I_

understand....”

And, with his finger on his lip, wrapt in the deepest mystery, he

departed into the rain.

As the door closed behind him, Peter felt a wave of chill, unhappy

loneliness. He turned back into the cheerful little hall and heard Clare

singing upstairs. He knew that they were going to have a delightful

little dinner, that, afterwards, they would be at a party where every

one would be pleased to see them--he knew that the evening in front of

him should be wholly charming ... and yet he was uneasy. He felt now as

though he ought to resign his evening, climb to his little room and work

at “The Stone House.” And yet what connection could that possibly have

with Mr. Zanti?

His uneasiness had begun, he thought, after his visit to Brockett's. It

seemed to him as he went upstairs to dress that the world was too full

of too many things and that his outlook on it all was confused.

Throughout dinner this uneasiness remained with him. Had he been less

occupied with his own thoughts he would have noticed that Clare was

not herself; at first she talked excitedly without waiting for his

answers--there were her usual enthusiasms and excitements. Everything

in the day's history had been “enchanting” or “horrible,” as a rule she

waited for him to act up to her ecstasies and abhorrencies; to-night

she talked as though she had no audience but were determined to fill up

time. Then suddenly she was silent; her eyes looked tired and into them

there crept a strange secret little shudder as though she were afraid of

some thought or mysterious knowledge. She looked now like a little girl

who knew, that to-morrow--the inevitable to-morrow--she must go to the

dentist's to be tortured.

The last part of the meal was passed in silence. Afterwards she came

into his study and sat curled upon the floor at his feet watching him

smoke.

She thought as she looked up at him, that something had happened to make

him younger. She had never seen him as young as he was to-night--and

then because his thoughts were far away and because her own troubled her

she made a diversion. She said:--

“Who _was_ that extraordinary man you were talking to this evening?”

He came back, with a jerk, from Stephen.

“What man?”

“Why the man with all the black hair and a funny squash hat. I saw Sarah

let him in.”

“Ah, that,” said Peter, looking down at her tenderly, “that was a great

friend of mine.”

She moved her head away.

“Don't touch my hair, Peter--it's all been arranged for the party. A

friend of yours? What! That horrible looking man? Oh! I suppose he was

one of those dreadful people you knew in the slums or in Cornwall.”

Peter saw Mr. Zanti's dear friendly face, like a moon, staring at him,

and heard his warm husky voice: “Peter, my boy....”

He moved a little impatiently.

“Look here, old girl, you mustn't call him that. He's one of the very

best friends I've ever had--and I've been rather pulled up lately--ever

since that night you sent me to Brockett's. I've felt ashamed of myself.

All my happiness and--you--and everything have made me forget my old

friends and that won't do.”

She laughed. “And now I suppose you're going to neglect me for them--for

horrid people like that man who came to-night.”

Her voice was shaking a little--he saw that her hands were clenched on

her lap. He looked down at her in astonishment.

“My dear Clare, what do you mean? How could you say a thing like that

even in jest? You know--”

She broke in upon him almost fiercely--“It wasn't jest. I meant what I

said. I hate all these earlier people you used to know--and now, after

our being so happy all this time, you're going to take them up again and

make the place impossible--”

“Look here, Clare, you mustn't speak of them like that--they're my

friends and they've got to be treated as such.” His voice was suddenly

stern. “And by the way as we are talking about it I don't think it was

very kind of you to tell me nothing at all about poor Norah's being so

ill. She asked you to tell me and you never said a word. That wasn't

very kind of you.”

“I did speak to you about it but you forgot--”

“I don't think you did--I am quite sure that I should not have

forgotten--”

“Oh, of course you contradict me. Anyhow there's no reason to drag Norah

Monogue into this. The matter is perfectly clear. I will not have dirty

old men like that coming into the house.”

“Clare, you shall not speak of my friends--”

“Oh, shan't I? When I married you I didn't marry all your old horrid

friends--”

“Drop it, Clare--or I shall be angry--”

She sprang to her feet, faced him. He had never in his life seen such

fury. She stood with her little body drawn to its full height, her hands

clenched, her breast heaving under her white evening dress, her eyes

glaring--

“You shan't! You shan't! I won't have any of them here. I hate Cornwall

and all its nasty people and I hate Brockett's and all those people you

knew there. When you married me you gave them all up--all of them. And

if you have them here I won't stay in the house--I'll leave you. All

that part of your life is nothing to do with me. _Nothing_--and I simply

won't have it. You can do what you like but you choose between them and

me--you can go back to your old life if you like but you go without me!”