exactly like a small child in the nursery. As he looked at the door he
was bewildered--whence suddenly had this figure sprung? It was some
one whom he did not know. He could not reconcile it with the dignified
Clare, proud as a queen, crossing a ball-room or the dear beloved Clare
nestling into a corner of his arm-chair, her face against his, or the
gentle friendly Clare listening to some story of distress.
The fury, the tempest of it! It was as though everything in the room had
been broken. And he, with his glorious, tragical youth felt that the end
of the world had come. This was the conclusion of life--no more cause
for living, no more friendship or comfort or help anywhere. Clare had
said those things to him. He stood, for ten minutes there, in the middle
of the room, without moving--his face white, his eyes full of pain.
Sarah came to tell him that the hansom was there. He moved into the hall
with the intention of sending it away; no party for him to-night--when,
to his amazement he saw Clare coming slowly down the stairs, her cloak
on, buttoning her gloves.
She passed him without a word and got into the hansom. He took his hat
and coat, gave the driver the address, and climbed in beside her.
Once as they drove he put out his hand, touched her dress and
said--“Clare dear--”
She made no reply, but sat looking, with her eyes large and black in her
little white face, steadfastly in front of her.
III
Lady Luncon was a rich, good-natured woman who had recently published
a novel and was anxious to hear it praised, therefore she gave a party.
Originally a manufacturer's daughter, she had conquered a penniless
baronet--spent twenty years in the besieging of certain drawing-rooms
and now, tired of more mundane worlds, fixed her attention upon the
Arts. She was a completely stupid woman, her novel had been exceedingly
vulgar, but her good heart and a habit of speaking vaguely in capital
letters secured her attention.
When Clare and Peter arrived people were filling her drawing-rooms,
overflowing on to the stairs and pouring into the supper room. Some one,
very far away, was singing “Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix,” a babel of
voices rose about Clare and Peter on every side, every one was flung
against every one; heat and scent, the crackle and rustle of clothes,
the soft voices of the men and sharp strident voices of the women gave
one the sensation of imminent suffocation; people with hot red faces,
unable to move at all, flung agonised glances at the door as though the
entrance of one more person must mean death and disaster.
There were, Peter soon discovered, three topics of conversation: one was
their hostess' novel and this was only discussed when Lady Luncon was
herself somewhere at hand--the second topic concerned the books
of somebody who had, most unjustly it appeared, been banned by the
libraries for impropriety, and here opinions were divided as to whether
the author would gain by the advertisement or lose by loss of library
circulation. Thirdly, there was a new young man who had written a
novel about the love affairs of a crocus and a violet--it was amazingly
improper, full of poetry--“right back,” as somebody said “to Nature.”
Moreover there was much talk about Form. “Here is the new thing in
fiction that we are looking for ...” also “Quite a young man--oh yes,
only about eighteen and so modest. You would never think....”
His name was Rondel and Peter saw him, for a moment, as the crowds
parted, standing, with a tall, grim, elderly woman, apparently his
mother, beside him. He was looking frightened and embarrassed and stood
up straight against the wall as though afraid lest some one should come
and snatch him away.
But Peter saw the world in a dream. He walked about, with Clare beside
him, and talked to many people; then she was stopped by some one whom
she knew and he went on alone. Now there had come back to him the old
terror. If he went back, after this was over, and Clare was still angry
with him, he did not know what he would do. He was afraid....
He smiled, talked, laughed and, in his chest, there was a sharp acute
pain like a knife. He had still with him that feeling that nothing in
life now was worth while and there followed on that a wild impulse to
let go, to fling off the restraints that he had retained now for so long
and with such bitter determination.
He wanted to cast aside this absurd party, to hurry home alone with
Clare, to sit alone with her in the little house and to reach the divine
moment when reconciliation came and they were closer to one another than
ever before--and then there was the horrible suggestion that there would
be no reconciliation, that Clare would make of this absurd quarrel an
eternal breach, that things would never be right again.
He looked back and saw Clare smiling gaily, happily, at some friend. He
saw her as she had faced him, furiously, an hour earlier ... oh God! If
she should never care for him again!
He recognised many friends. There were the two young Galleons, Millicent
and Percival, looking as important and mysterious as possible, taxing
their brains for something clever to say....
“Ah, that's Life!” Peter heard Percival say to some one. Young fools, he
thought to himself, let them have my trouble and then they may talk.
But they were nice to him when he came up to them. The author of “Reuben
Hallard,” even though he did look like a sailor on leave, was worth
respecting--moreover, father liked him and believed in him--nevertheless
he was just a tiny bit “last year's sensation.” “Have you read,” said
Percival eagerly, “'The Violet's Redemption'? It really is the most
tremendous thing--all about a violet. There's the fellow who wrote it
over there--young chap standing with his back to the wall....”
There was also with them young Tony Gale who was a friend of Alice
Galleon. He was nice-looking, eager and enthusiastic. Rather too
enthusiastic, Peter, who did not like him, considered. Full of the joy
of life; everything was “topping” and “ripping.” “I can't understand,”
he would say, “why people find life dull. I never find it dull. It's the
most wonderful glorious thing--”
“Ah, but then you're so young,” he always expected his companions to
say; and the thing that pleased him most of all was to hear some one
declare--“Tony Gale's such a puzzle--sometimes he seems only eighteen
and then suddenly he's fifty.”
It was rumoured that he had once been in love with Alice Galleon when
she had been Alice du Cane--and that they had nearly made a match of it;
but he was certainly now married to a charming girl whom he had seen
in Cornwall and the two young things were considered delightful by the
whole of Chelsea.
Tony Gale had with him a man called James Maradick whom Peter had met
before and liked. Maradick was forty-two or three, large, rather heavy
in build and expression and very taciturn. He was in business in the
city, but had been drawn, Peter knew not how, into the literary world
of London. He was often to be found at dinner parties and evening
“squashes” silent, observant and generally alone. Many people thought
him dull, but Peter liked him partly because of his reserve and partly
because of his enthusiasm for Cornwall. Cornwall seemed to be the only
subject that could stir Maradick into excitement, and when Cornwall was
under discussion the whole man woke into sudden stir and emotion.
To-night, with his almost cynical observance of the emotions and
excitement that surged about him, he seemed to Peter the one man
possible in the whole gathering.
“Look here, Maradick, let's get somewhere out of this crush and have a
cigarette.”
People were all pouring into supper now and Peter saw his wife in the
distance, on Bobby Galleon's arm. They found a little conservatory
deserted now and strangely quiet after the din of the other rooms: here
they sat down.
Maradick was capable of sitting, quite happily for hours, without saying
anything at all. For some time they were both silent.
At last Peter said: “By jove, Maradick, yours is a fortunate sort of
life--just going into the city every day, coming back to your wife in
the evening--no stupid troubles that come from imagining things that
aren't there--”
“How do you know I don't?” answered Maradick quietly. “Imagination
hasn't anything to do with one's profession. I expect there's as much
imagination amongst the Stock Exchange men as there is with you literary
people--only it's expressed differently.”
“What do you do,” said Peter, “if it ever gets too much for you?”
“Do? How do you mean?”
“Well suppose you're feeling all the time that one little thing more,
one little word or some one coming in or a window breaking--anything
will upset the equilibrium of everything? Supposing you're out with all
your might to keep things sane and to prevent your life from swinging
back into all the storm and uncertainty that it was in once before, and
supposing you feel that there are a whole lot of things trying to get
you to swing back, what's the best thing to do?”
“Why, hold on, hold on--”
“How do you mean?”
“Fortitude--Courage. Clinging on with your nails, setting your teeth.”
Peter was surprised at the man's earnestness. The two of them sitting
there in that lonely deserted little conservatory were instantly aware
of some common experience.
Maradick put his hand on Peter's knee.
“Westcott, you're young, but I know the kind of thing you mean. Believe
me that it's no silly nonsense to talk of the Devil--the Devil is as
real and personal as you and I, and he's got his agents in every sort
and kind of place. If he once gets his net out for you then you'll want
all your courage. I know,” he went on sinking his voice, “there was a
time I had once in Cornwall when I was brought pretty close to things
of that sort--it doesn't leave you the same afterwards. There's a place
down in Cornwall called Treliss....”
“Treliss!” Peter almost shouted. “Why that's where I come from. I was
born there--that's my town--”
Before Maradick could reply Bobby Galleon burst into the conservatory.
“Oh, there you are--I've been looking for you everywhere. How are you,
Maradick? Look here, Peter, you've got to come down to supper with us.
We've got a table--Alice, Clare, Millicent, Percival, Tony Gale and his
wife and you and I--and--one other--an old friend of yours, Peter.”
“An old friend?” said Peter, getting up from his chair and trying to
look as though he were not furious with Bobby for the interruption.
“Yes--you'll never guess, if I give you a hundred guesses--it's most
exciting--come along--”
Peter was led away. As he moved through the dazzling, noisy rooms he was
conscious that there, in the quiet, dark little conservatory, Maradick
was sitting, motionless, seeing Treliss.
IV
On his way down to the supper room he was filled with annoyance at
the thought of his interrupted conversation. He might never have his
opportunity again. Maradick was so reserved a fellow and took so few
into his confidence--also he would, in all probability, be ashamed
to-morrow of having spoken at all.
But to Peter at that moment the world about him was fantastic and
unreal. It seemed to him that at certain periods in his life he was
suddenly confronted with a fellow creature who perceived life as he
perceived it. There were certain persons who could not leave life
alone--they must always be seeing it as a key to something wider,
bigger altogether. This was nothing to do with Christianity or any creed
whatever, because Creeds implied Certainty and Definition of Knowledge,
whereas Peter and the others like him did not know for what they were
searching. Again, they were not Mystics because Mysticism needed a
definite removal from this world before any other world were possible.
No, they were simply Explorers and one traced a member of the order
on the instant. There had been already in Peter's life, Frosted Moses,
Stephen, Mr. Zanti, Noah Monogue, and now suddenly there was Maradick.
These were people who would not laugh at his terror of Scaw House, at
his odd belief that his father was always trying to draw him back to
Treliss....
As he entered the supper-room and saw Clare sitting at a distant table,
he knew that his wife would never be an Explorer. For her Fires and
Walls, for her no questions, no untidiness moral or physical--the
Explorer travelled ever with his life in his hands--Clare believed in
the Stay-at-homes.
The great dining-room was filled with Stay-at-homes. One saw it in their
eyes, in the flutter of useless and tired words that rose and fell; all
the souls in that room were cushioned and were happy that it was so. The
Rider on the Lion was beyond the Electric Lights--on the dark hill, over
the darker river, under the stars. Somebody pulled a cracker and put
on a paper cap. He was a stout man with a bald head and the back of his
neck rippled with fat. He had tiny eyes.
“Look at Mr. Horset,” cried the woman next to him--“Isn't he absurd?”
Peter found at the table in the corner Alice, Clare, Millicent and
Percival Galleon, Tony Gale and his wife, waiting. There was also a man
standing by Alice's chair and he watched Peter with amused eyes.
He held out his hand and smiled. “How do you do, Westcott?” he said.
Then, with the sound of his voice, the soft almost caressing tilt of it,
Peter knew who it was. His mind flew back to a day, years ago, when he
had flung himself on the ground and cried his soul out because some one
had gone away....
“Cards!” he cried. “Of all wonderful things!”
Cards of Dawson's--Cards, the magnetic, the brilliant, Cards with his
World and his Society and now slim and dark and romantic as ever, making
every one else in the room shabby beside him, so that Bobby's white
waistcoat was instantly seen to be hanging loosely above his shirt and
Peter's trousers were short, and even the elegant Percival had scarcely
covered with perfect equality the ends of his white tie.
Instantly as though the intervening years had never been, Bobby took his
second place beside Cards' glory--even Percival's intention of securing
the wonderful Mr. Rondel, author of “The Violet's Redemption,” for their
table, failed of its effect.
They were enough. They didn't want anybody else--Room for Mr. Cardillac!
And he seized it. Just as he would have seized it years ago at school so
he seized it now. Their table was caught into the most dazzling
series of adventures. Cards had been everywhere, seen everybody and
everything--seen it all, moreover, with the right kind of gaiety, with
an appreciation that was intelligent and also humorous. There was humour
one moment and pathos the next--deep feeling and the wittiest cynicism.
They were all swung about Europe and with Cards at their head pranced
through the cities of the world. Meanwhile Peter fancied that once
or twice Clare flung him a little glance of appeal to ask for
forgiveness--and once they looked up and smiled at one another. A tiny
smile but it meant everything.
“Oh! won't we have a reconciliation afterwards? How could I have said
those things? Don't we just love one another?”
When they went upstairs again Peter and Cards exchanged a word:
“You'll come and see us?”
“My dear old man, I should just think so. This is the first time I've
been properly in London for years and now I'm going to stay. Fancy you
married and successful and here am I still the rolling-stone!”
“You! Why you can do anything!”
“Can't write 'Reuben Hallard,' old boy....” and so, with a laugh, they
parted.
In the cab, afterwards, Clare's head was buried in Peter's coat, and
she sobbed her heart out. “How I _could_ have been such a beast, Peter,
Peter!”
“Darling, it was nothing.”
“Oh, but it was! It shall never, never happen again...but I was
frightened--”
“Frightened!”
“Yes, I always think some one's going to take you away. I don't
understand all those other people. They frighten me--I want you to
myself, just you and I--always.”
“But nobody can take me away--nobody--”
The cab jolted along--her hand was on his knee--and every now and again
a lamp lighted her face for him and then dropped it back into darkness.
By the sharp pressure of her hand he knew that she was moved by an
intensity of feeling, swayed now by one of those moods that came to her
so strangely that it seemed that they belonged to another personality.
“Look... Peter. I'm seeing clearly as I think I never have before. I'm
afraid--not because of you--but because of myself. If you knew--” here
his hand came down and found hers--“if you knew how I despise myself,
my real self. I've been spoilt always, always, always. I've always known
it. My real self is ashamed of it. But there's another side of me that
comes down suddenly and hides all that--and then--when that happens--I
just want to get what I want and not to be hurt and ...” she pressed
closer against him and went on in a whisper.
“Peter, I shall always care for you more than any one--always whatever
happens. But think, a time will come--I know it--when you'll have to
watch me, to keep me by you, and even let your work go--everything, just
for a time until I'm safe. I suppose that moment comes to most women in
their married lives. But to me, when it happens, it will be worse than
for most women because I've always had my way. You _mustn't_ let me have
my way then--simply clutch me, be cruel, brutal, anything only don't let
me go. Then, if you keep me through that, you'll always keep me.”
To Peter it was almost as though she were talking in her sleep,
something, there in the old, lumbering cab that was given to her by some
one else to say something to which she herself would not give credit.
“That's all right, you darling, you darling, you darling.” He covered
her face, her eyes with kisses. “I'll never let you go--never.” He felt
her quiver a little under his arms.
“Don't mind, Peter, my horrible, beastly character. Just keep me for a
little, train me--and then later I'll be such a wife to you, _such_ a
wife!”
Then she drew his head down. His lips touched her body just above her
dress, where her cloak parted.
She whispered:
“There's something else.”
She raised her face from his coat and looked up at him. Her cheeks were
stained with crying and her eyes, large and dark, held him furiously as
though he were the one place of safety.
He caught her very close.
“What is it?...”
* * * * *
That night, long after he, triumphant with the glory of her secret, had
fallen asleep, she lay, staring into the dark, with frightened eyes.
CHAPTER VI
BIRTH OF THE HEIR
I
Peter's child was born on a night of frost when the stars were hard and
fierce and a full moon, dull gold, flung high shadows upon the town.
During the afternoon the fear that had been in Clare's eyes for many
weeks suddenly flamed into terror--the doctor was sent for and Peter was
banished from the room.
Peter looked ludicrously, pitifully young as he sat, through the
evening, in his room at the top of the house, staring in front of him,
his face grey with anxiety, his broad shoulders set back as though ready
for a blow; his strong fingers clutched the things on his writing-table,
held them, dropped them, just like the hands of a blind man about the
shining surface, tapping the wood.
He saw her always as he had seen her last night when she had caught his
arm crying--“If I die, Peter.... Oh, Peter, if I die!”... and he had
comforted and stroked her hair, warming her cold fingers.
How young she was, how tiny for this suffering--and it was he, he who
had brought it upon her! Now, she was lying in her bed, as he had once
seen his mother lie, with her hair spread about the pillow, her hands
gripping the sheets, her eyes wide and black--the vast, hard bed-room
closing her in, shutting her down--
She who loved comfort, who feared any pain, who would have Life safe and
easy, that she should be forced--
The house was very still about him--no sound came up to him; it seemed
to him that the hush was deliberate. The top branches of the trees in
the little orchard touched his window and tapped ever and again; a fire
burnt brightly, he had drawn his curtains and beyond the windows the
great sheet of stars, the black houses, the white light of the moon.
And there, before him--what mockery! the neat pages of “The Stone House”
now almost completed.
He stared into the wall and saw her face, her red-gold hair upon the
pillow, her dark staring eyes--
Once the nurse came to him--Yes, she was suffering, but all went well
... it would be about midnight, perhaps. There was no cause for
alarm....
He thought that the nurse looked at him with compassion. He turned
fiercely upon Life that it should have brought this to them when they
were both so young.
At last, about ten o'clock, able no longer to endure the silence of the
house--so ominous--and the gentle tap-tap of the branches upon the pane
and the whispering crackle of the fire, he went out....
A cold hard unreal world received him. Down Sloane Street the lines of
yellow lamps, bending at last until they met in sharp blue distance,
were soft and misty against the outline of the street, the houses were
unreal in the moonlight, a few people passed quickly, their footsteps
sharp in the frosty air--all the little painted doors of Sloane Street
were blind and secret.
He passed through Knightsbridge, into the Park. As the black trees
closed him in the fear of London came, tumbling upon him. He remembered
that day when he had sat, shivering, on a seat on the Embankment,
and had heard that note, sinister, threatening, through the noise and
clattering traffic. He heard it again now. It came from the heart of the
black trees that lined the moonlit road, a whisper, a thread of sound
that accompanied him, pervaded him, threatened him. The scaly beast knew
that another victim was about to be born--another woman was to undergo
torture, so that when the day came and the scaly beast rose from its
sleep then there would be one more to be devoured.
He, Peter, was to have a child. He had longed for a child ever since
he could remember. He had always loved children--other people's
children--but to have one of his own!... To have something that was his
and Clare's and theirs alone, to have its love, to feel that it depended
Upon them both, to watch it, to tend it--Life could have no gift like
that.
But now the child was hidden from him. He thought of nothing but Clare,
of her suffering and terror, of her waiting there so helplessly for the
dreadful moment of supreme pain. The love that he had now for Clare was
something more tender, more devoted, than he had ever felt for any human
being. His mind flew back fiercely to that night of his first quarrel
when she had told him. Now he was to be punished for his heartlessness
and cruelty ... by her loss.
His agony and terror grew as he paced beneath the dark and bending
trees. He sat down on a seat, at the other end of which was a little man
with a bowler hat, spectacles and his coat collar turned up. He was
a shabby little man and his thin bony hands beat restlessly upon his
knees.
The little man said, “Good evening, sir.”
“Good evening,” said Peter, staring desperately in front of him.
“It's all this blasted government--”
“I beg your pardon--”
“This blasted government--This income tax and all--”
“It's more than that,” said Peter, wishing that the man would cease
beating his knees with his hands--
“It's them blasted stars--it's Gawd. That's what it is. Curse
Gawd--that's what I say--Curse Gawd!”
“What's He done?” said Peter.
“I've just broken in my wife's 'ead with a poker. Killed 'er I expect--I
dunno--going back to see in a minute--”
“Why did you do it?”
“'Ad to--always nagging--that's what she was--always nagging. Wanted
things--all sorts o' things--and there were always children coming--So
we 'ad a blasted argyment this evening and I broke 'er 'ead open--Gawd
did it--that's what I say--”
Peter said nothing.
“You can call a bloomin' copper if you want to,” the little man said.
“It's no business of mine,” said Peter and he got up and left him. All
shadows--only the sinister noise that London makes is real, that and
Clare's suffering.
He left the Park turned into Knightsbridge and came upon a toyshop. The
shutters had not been put up and the lights of a lamp shone full upon
its windows. Against the iron railings opposite and the high white road
these toys stood with sharp, distinct outline behind the slanting light
of the glass. There were dolls--a fine wedding doll, orange blossom,
lace and white silk, and from behind it all, the sharp pinched features
and black beady eyes stared out.... There was a Swiss doll with bright
red cheeks, red and green clothing and shoes with shining buckles. Then
there were the more ordinary dolls--and gradually down the length of
the window, their clothing was taken from them until at last some wooden
creatures with flaring cheeks and brazen eyes kicked their limbs and
defied the proprieties.
He would be a Boy ... he would not care about dolls....
There were soldiers--rows and rows of gleaming soldiers. They came from
a misty distance at the top of the shop window, came marching from the
gates of some dark, mediæval castle. Their swords caught the lamplight,
shining in a line of silver and the precision with which they marched,
the certainty with which they trod the little bridge ... ah, these were
the fellows! He would be a Boy ... soldiers would enchant him! He should
have boxes, boxes, boxes!
There were many other things in the window; teddy bears and animals
with soft woolly stomachs and fat comfortable legs--and there were ugly,
modern Horrors with fat bulging faces and black hair erect like wire;
there were little devils with red tails, there were rabbits that rode
bicycles and monkeys that climbed trees. There were drums--big drums and
little drums--trumpets with crimson tassels, and in one corner a pyramid
of balls, balls of every colour, and at the top of the pyramid a tiny
ball of peacock blue, hanging, balancing, daintily, supremely right in
pose and gesture.
It had gesture. It caught Peter's eye--Peter stood with his nose against
the pane, his heart hammering--“Oh! she is suffering--My God, how she
is suffering!”--and there the little blue ball caught him, held him,
encouraged him.
“I will belong to your boy one day” it seemed to say.
“It shall be the first thing I will buy for him--” thought Peter.
He turned now amongst the light and crowds of Piccadilly. He walked on
without seeing and hearing--always with that thought in his heart--“She
is in terrible pain. How can God be so cruel? And she was so
happy--before I came she was so happy--now--what have I done to her?”
Never, before to-night, had he felt so sharply, so irretrievably his
sense of responsibility. Here now, before him, at this birth of his
child, everything that he had done, thought, said--everything that he
had been--confronted him. He was only twenty-seven but his shoulders
were heavy with the confusion of his past. Looking back upon it, he saw
a helpless medley of indecisions, of sudden impulses, sudden refusals;
into the skeins of it, too, there seemed to be dragged the people that
had made up his life--they faced him, surrounded him, bewildered him!
What right had he, thus encompassed, to hand these things on to another?
His father, his grandfather ... he saw always that dark strain of
hatred, of madness, of evil working in their blood. Suppose that as his
boy grew he should see this in the young eyes? Suppose, most horrible
of all, that he should feel this hatred for his son that his grandfather
had felt for his father, that his father had felt for him.
What had he done?... He stopped, staring confusedly about him. The
people jostled him on every side. The old devils were at him--“Eat and
drink for to-morrow we die.... Give it up ... We're too strong for
you and we'll be too strong for your son. Who are you to defy us? Come
down--give it up--”
His white face caught attention. “Move along, guv'nor,” some one
shouted. A man took him by the arm and led up a dark side street. He
turned his eyes and saw that the man was Maradick.
II
The elder man felt that the boy was trembling from head to foot.
“What's the matter, Westcott? Anything I can do for you?”
Peter seemed to take him in slowly, and then, with a great effort, to
pull himself together.
“What, you--Maradick? Where was I? I'm afraid I've been making a fool of
myself....” A church clock struck somewhere in the distance. “Hullo,
I say, what's that? That's eleven. I must get back, I ought to be at
home--”
“I'll come with you--”
Maradick hailed a hansom and helped Peter into it.
For a moment there was silence--then Maradick said--
“I hope everything's all right, Westcott? Your wife?”
Peter spoke as though he were in a dream. “I've been waiting there all
the afternoon--she's been suffering--My God!... It got on my nerves....
She's so young--they oughtn't to hurt her like that.” He covered his
face with his hands.
“I know. I felt like that when my first child came. It's terrible,
awful. And then it's over--all the pain--and it's magnificent,
glorious--and then--later--it's so commonplace that you cannot believe
that it was ever either awful or magnificent. Fix your mind on the
glorious part of it, Westcott. Think of this time to-morrow when your
wife will be so proud, so happy--you'll both be so proud, so happy, that
you'll never know anything in life like it.”
“Yes, yes, I know--of course it's sure to be all right--but I suppose
this waiting's got on my nerves. There was a fellow in the Park just
broken his wife's head in--and then everything was so quiet. I could
almost hear her crying, right away in her room.”
He stopped a moment and then went on. “It's what I've always
wanted--always to have a boy. And, by Jove, he'll be wonderful! I
tell you he shall be--We'll be such pals!” He broke off suddenly--“You
haven't a boy?”
“No, mine are both girls. Getting on now--they'll soon be coming out. I
should like to have had a boy--” Maradick sighed.
“Are they an awful lot to you?”
“No--I don't suppose they are. I should have understood a boy
better,--but they're good girls. I'm proud of them in a way--but I'm out
so much, you see.”
Peter faced the contrast. Here this middle-aged man, with his two
girls--and here too he, Peter, with his agonising, flaming trial--to
slip, so soon, into dull commonplace?
“But didn't you--if you can look so far--didn't you, when the first
child came, funk it? Your responsibility I mean. All the things
one's--one's ancestors--it's frightening enough for oneself but to hand
it on--”
“It's nothing to do with oneself--one's used, that's all. The child will
be on its own legs, thrusting you away before you know where you are. It
_will_ want to claim its responsibilities--ancestors and all--”
Peter said nothing--Maradick went on:
“You know we were talking one night and were interrupted--you're in
danger of letting the things you imagine beat the things you know. Stick
to the thing you can grasp, touch--I know the dangers of the others--I
told you that once in Cornwall, I--the most unlikely person in the
world--was caught up by it. I've never laughed at morbidity, or nerves,
or insanity since. There's such a jolly thin wall between the sanest,
most level-headed beef-eating Squire in the country and the maddest poet
in Bedlam. _I_ know--I've been both in the same day. It's better to be
both, I believe, if you can keep one under the other, but you _must_
keep it under--”
Maradick talked on. He saw that the boy's nerves were jumping, that he
was holding himself in with the greatest difficulty.
Peter said: “You don't know, Maradick. I've had to fight all my life--my
father, grandfather, all of them have given in at last--and now this
child ... perhaps I shall see it growing, see him gradually learning
to hate me, see myself hating him ... at last, my God, see him go
under--drink, deviltry--I've fought it--I'm always fighting it--but
to-night--”
“Good heavens, man--you're not going to tell me that your father, your
grandfather--the rest of them--are stronger than you. What about your
soul, your own blessed soul that can't be touched by any living thing or
dead thing either if you stick to it? Why, every man's got power enough
in himself to ride heaven and earth and all eternity if he only believed
he'd got it! Ride your scruples, man--ride 'em, drive 'em--send 'em
scuttling. Believe in yourself and stick to it--Courage!...”
Maradick pulled himself in. They were driving now, down the King's Road.
The people were pouring in a thick, buzzing crowd, out of the Chelsea
Palace. Middle-aged stockbrokers in hansom cabs--talking like the third
act of a problem play!--but Maradick had done his work. As they drove
round the corner, past the mad lady's painted house, he saw that Peter
was calmer. He had regained his self-control. The little house where
Peter lived was very still--the trees in the orchard were stiff and dark
beneath the stars.
Peter spoke in a whisper--“Good-night, Maradick, you've done me a lot of
good--I shan't forget it.”
“Good luck to you,” Maradick whispered back. Peter stole into the house.
The little drawing-room looked very cosy; the fire was burning, the lamp
lighted, the thick curtains drawn. Maria Theresa smiled, with all her
finery, from the wall.
Peter sat down in front of the fire. Maradick was right. One must have
one's hand on the bridle--the Rider on the Lion again. It's better that
the beast under you should be a Lion rather than a Donkey, but let it
once fling you off its back and you're done for. And Maradick had said
these things! Maradick whom once Peter had considered the dullest of
his acquaintances. Well, one never knew about people--most of the
Stay-at-homes were Explorers and vice versa, if one only understood
them.
How still the house was! What was happening upstairs? He could not go
and see--he could not move. He was held by the stillness. The doctor
would come and tell him....
He thought of the toyshop--that blue ball--it would be the first thing
that he would buy for the boy--and then soldiers--soldiers that wouldn't
hurt him, that he couldn't lick the paint from--
Now the little silver clock ticked! He was so terribly tired--he had
never been tired like this before....
The stillness pressed upon the house. Every sound--the distant rattling
of some cab, the faint murmur of trams--was stifled, extinguished. The
orchard seemed to press in upon the house, darker and darker grew the
forest about it--The stars were shut out, the moon... the world was
dead.
Then into this sealed and hidden silence, a voice crying from an upper
room, suddenly fell--a woman in the abandonment of utter pain, pain
beyond all control, was screaming. Somewhere, above that dark forest
that pressed in upon the house, a bird of prey hovered. It hung for a
moment; it descended--its talons were fixed upon her flesh... then again
it ascended. Shriek after shriek, bursting the silence, chasing the
shadows, flooding the secrecy with horrible light, beat like blows upon
the walls of the house--rose, fell, rose again. Peter was standing, his
back against the wall, his hands spread out, his face grey.
“My God, my God... Oh! my God!”
The sweat poured from his forehead. Once more there was silence but now
it was ominous, awful....
The little silver clock ticked--Peter's body stood stretched against the
wall--he faced the door.
Hours, hours passed. He did not move. The screaming had, many years ago,
ceased. The doctor--a cheerful man with blue eyes and a little bristling
moustache--came in.
“A fine boy, Mr. Westcott--I congratulate you. You might see your wife
for a moment if you cared--stood it remarkably well--”
Slowly the forest, dark and terrible, moved away from the house. Very
faintly again could be heard the distant rattling of some cab, the
murmur of trams.
CHAPTER VII
DECLARATION OF HAPPINESS
I
Extracts from letters that Bobby Galleon wrote to Alice Galleon about
this time:
“... But, of course, I am sorrier than I can say that it's so dull.
That's due to charity, my dear, and if you will go and fling yourself
into the depths of Yorkshire because a girl like Ola Hunting chooses to
think she's unhappy and lonely you've only yourself to thank. Moreover
there's your husband to be considered. I don't suppose, for a single
instant, that he really prefers to be left alone, with his infant son,
mind you, howling at the present moment because his nurse won't let him
swallow the glass marbles, and you can picture to yourself--if you want
to make yourself thoroughly unhappy--your Robert sitting, melancholy
throughout the long evening, alone, desolate, creeping to bed somewhere
about ten o'clock.
“So there we are--you're bored to death and I've no one to growl at when
I come back from the City--all Ola Hunting's fault--wring the girl's
neck. Meanwhile here I sit and every evening I'll write whatever comes
into my head and never look back on it again but stick it into
an envelope and send it to you. You know me too well by now to be
disappointed at anything.
“I'm quite sure that, if you were here with me now, sitting in that
chair opposite me and sewing for all you were worth, that the thing that
we'd be talking about would be Peter. If, therefore, these scrawls
are full of Peter you won't mind, I know. He's immensely occupying my
attention just now and you love him as truly and deeply as I do, so that
if I go on at length about him you'll excuse it on that score. You who
know me better than any one else in the world know that, in my most
secret heart, I flatter myself on my ability as a psychologist. I
remember when I told you first how you laughed but I think since
then you've come round not a little, and although we both keep it to
ourselves, it's a little secret that you're a tiny bit proud of. I can
see how brother Percival, or young Tony Gale, or even dear Peter himself
would mock, if I told them of this ambition of mine. 'Good, dear,
stupid, old Bobby' is the way they think of me, and I know it's mother's
perpetual wonder (and also, I think, a little her comfort) that I should
be so lacking in brilliance when Percival and Millie are so full of it.
“You know Peter's attitude to me in these things--you've seen it often
enough. He's patronising--he can't help it. That isn't, he considers, my
line in the least, and, let me once begin to talk to him of stocks and
shares and he'll open all his ears. Well, I can't blame him--but I do
think these writers and people are inclined to draw their line a little
too sharply with their Philistines--great big gulf, please--and Artists.
At any rate, here goes for my psychology and good luck to it. Peter,
in fact, is so interesting a subject if one sees anything of him at
all that I believe he'd draw speculation out of any one. There was
old Maradick talking about him the other night--fascinated by him
and understanding him most amazingly well--another instance of your
Philistine and Artist mixed.
“But I knew him--and knew him jolly well too--when he was about twelve,
so that I really get a pull over the rest of you there, for it adds of
course immensely to the interest and if ever child was Father of the
Man, Peter was. You know how we both funked that marriage of his for
him--you because you knew Clare so well, I because I knew Peter. And
then for a time it really seemed that we were both entirely wrong.
Clare's is a far simpler personality than Peter's, and if you work along
one or two recognised lines--let her have her way, don't frighten her,
above all keep her conventional--it's all right. Clare was, and is,
awfully in love with him, and he madly with her of course--and that
helped everything along. You know how relieved we both were and indeed
it seemed, for a time, that it was going to be the making of both of
them--going to make Clare braver and Peter less morbid.
“Well, it's since you've been away that everything's happened. Although
the baby was born some weeks before you went, it's only lately that
Clare has been up and about. She's perfectly well and the baby's
splendid--promises to be a tremendous fellow and as healthy as possible.
You can imagine, a little, the effect of it all on Clare. I don't
suppose there's any girl in London been so wrapped in cotton wool all
her life, and that old ass of a father and still more irritating ass of
a mother would go on wrapping her still if they had their way. The
fuss they've both made about this whole business is simply
incredible--especially when the man's a doctor and brings Lord knows how
many children into the world every week of his life. But it's all been
awfully bad for Clare. Of course, she was frightened--frightened out of
her wits. It's the very first time life ever had its wrappings off for
her, and that in itself of course is a tremendously good thing. But you
can't, unfortunately, wrap any one up for all those years and then
take the wrappings off and not deliver a shock to the system. Of course
there's a shock, and it's just this shock that I'm so afraid of. I'm
afraid of it for one thing because Peter's so entirely oblivious of it.
He was in an agony of terror on the day that the baby was born, but once
it was there--well and healthy and promising--fear vanished. He could
only see room for glory--and glory he does. I cannot tell you what that
boy is like about the baby; at present he thinks, day and night, of
nothing else. It is the most terrific thing to watch his feeling about
it--and meanwhile he takes it for granted that Clare feels the same....
Well, she doesn't. I have been in a good deal during these last few days
and she's stranger than words can say--doesn't see the child if she can
help it--loves it, worships it, when it is there, and--is terrified of
it. I saw a look in her eyes when she was nursing it yesterday that was
sheer undiluted terror. She's been frightened out of her life, and if I
know her the least little bit she's absolutely made up her mind never
to be frightened like that again. She is going to hurl herself into a
perfect whirlpool of excitement and entertainment and drag Peter with
her if she can. Meanwhile, behind that hard little head of hers, she's
making plans just as fast as she can make them. I believe she looks on
life now as though it had broken the compact that she made with it--a
compact that things should always be easy, comfortable, above all, never
threatening. The present must be calm but the Future's absolutely got to
be--and I believe, although she loves him devotedly in the depths of
her strange little soul, that she half blames Peter for all of this
disturbance, and that there are a great many things about him--his
earlier life, his earlier friends, even his work--that she would strip
from him if she could.
“Well, enough for the present. I don't know _what_ nonsense there isn't
here. Into the envelope it all goes. I've been talking to you for an
hour and a half and that's something....”
II
“... I've just come in from dinner with Peter and Clare and feel
inclined to talk to you for hours ahead. However, that I can't do, so I
shall write to you instead and you're to regard it all as a continuation
of the things that I said in last night's letter. I am as interested as
ever and indeed, after this evening's dinner more interested. The odd
thing about it all is that Peter is so completely oblivious to any
change that may be going on in Clare. His whole mind is centred now on
the baby, he cannot have enough of it and it was he, and not Clare, who
took me up after dinner to see it sleeping.
“You remember that they had some kind of a dispute about the name of
the boy at the time of the christening. Peter insisted that it should
be Stephen, after, I suppose, that odd Cornish friend of his, and Clare,
weak and ill though she was, objected with all her might. I don't know
why she took this so much to heart but it was all, I suppose, part
of that odd hatred that she has of Peter's earlier life and earlier
friends. She has never met the man Brant, but I think that she fancies
that he is going to swoop down one of these days and carry Peter off
on a broomstick or something. She gave in about the name--indeed I have
never seen Peter more determined--but I think, nevertheless, that she
broods over it and remembers it. My dear, I am as sorry for her as I
can be. There she stands, loving Peter with all her heart and soul,
terrified out of her wits at the possibilities that life is presenting
to her, hating Peter's friends at one moment, his work the next, the
baby the next--exactly like some one, walking on a window-ledge in his
sleep and suddenly waking and discovering--
“Peter's a more difficult question. He's too riotously happy just at the
moment to listen to a word from any one. His relation to the child
is really the most touching thing you ever saw, and really the child,
considering that it has scarcely begun to exist, has a feeling for him
in the most wonderful way. It is as good as gold when he is there and
follows him with its eyes--it doesn't pay much attention to Clare.
I think it knows that she's frightened of it. Yes, Peter is quite
riotously happy. You know that 'The Stone House' is coming out next
week. There is to be a supper party at the Galleons'--myself, Mrs.
Launce. Maradick, the Gales, some woman he knew at that boarding-house,
Cardillac and Dr. and Mrs. Rossiter.
“By the way, Cardillac is there a great deal and I am both glad and
sorry. He is very good for Clare and not at all good for Peter. He seems
to understand Clare in the most wonderful way--far better than Peter
does. He brings her out, helps her to be broader and really I think
explains Peter to her and helps things along. His influence on Peter is
all the other way. Peter, of course, worships him, just as he used to do
in the old days at school, and Cards always liked being worshipped.
He has an elegance, a savoir-faire that dear, square-shouldered
rough-and-tumble Peter finds entrancing, but, of course, Peter's worth
the dozen of him any day of the week. He drags out all Peter's worst
side. I wonder whether you'll understand what I mean when I say that
Peter isn't _meant_ to be happy--at any rate not yet. He's got something
too big, too tremendous in him to be carved easily into any one of our
humdrum, conventional shapes. He takes things so hard that he isn't
intended to take more than one thing at a time, and here he is with
Clare and Cards both, as it seems to me, in a conspiracy to pull him
into a thousand little bits and to fling each little bit to a different
tea-party.
“He ought to be getting at his work and he isn't getting at it at all.
'The Stone House' is coming out next week and it may be all right, but I
don't mind betting that the next one suffers. If he weren't in a kind
of dream he'd see it all himself, and indeed I think that he'll wake
one day soon and see that a thousand ridiculous things are getting in
between him and his proper life.
“He was leading his proper life in those days at Dawson's when they
were beating him at home and hating him at school, and it was that
old bookshop and the queer people he met in it that produced 'Reuben
Hallard.'
“He's so amazingly young in the ways of the world, so eager to make
friends with everybody, so delighted with an entirely superficial
butterfly like Cards, so devotedly attached to his wife, that I
must confess that the outlook seems to me bad. There's going to be a
tremendous tug-of-war in a minute and it's not going to be easy for the
boy--nor, indeed for Clare.
“I hope that you don't feel so far removed from this in your Yorkshire
desert that it has no interest for you, but I know how devoted you are
to Peter and one doesn't want to see the boy turned into the society
novelist creature--the kind of creature, God forgive me, that brother
Percival is certain to become. You'll probably say when you read this
that I am trying to drag out all the morbid side of Peter and make him
the melancholy, introspective creature that he used to be, in fits and
starts, when you first knew him. Of course that's the last thing I want
to do, but work to a man of Peter's temperament is the one rock that can
save him. He has, I do believe, a touch of genius in him somewhere, and
I believe that if he's allowed to follow, devoutly and with pain and
anguish, maybe, his Art, he'll be a great creature--a great man and a
great writer. But he's in the making--too eager to please, too eager to
care for every one, too desperately down if he thinks things are going
badly with him. I notice that he hasn't been to see my father lately--I
think too that all this reviewing is bad for him--other people's novels
pouring upon him in an avalanche must take something from the freshness
of his own.
“Anyhow I, Robert Galleon, your clever and penetrating husband, scent
much danger and trouble ahead. Clare, simply out of love for him and
anxiety for herself, will I know, do all she can to drag him from the
thing that he should follow--and Cards will help her--out of sheer
mischief, I verily believe.
“On their own heads be it. As to the carpets you asked me to go and look
at....”
III
“... And now for the supper party. Although there's a whole day behind
me I'm still quivering under the excitement of it. As I tell you about
it it will in all probability, declare itself as a perfectly ordinary
affair, and, indeed, I think that you should have been there yourself to
have realised the emotion of it. But I'll try and give it you word for
word. I was kept in the city and arrived late and they were all there.
Mrs. Launce, twinkling all over with kindness, Maradick in his best
Stock Exchange manner, the Gales (Janet Gale perfectly lovely), the old
Rossiters, Cards, shining with a mixture of enterprise and knowledge
of the world and last of all a very pale, rather nervous, untidy Irish
woman, a Miss Monogue. Clare was so radiantly happy that I knew that she
wasn't happy at all, had obviously taken a great deal of trouble about
her hair and had it all piled up on the top of her head and looked
wonderful. I can't describe these things, but you know that when she's
bent on giving an impression she seems to stand on her toes all the
time--well, she was standing on every kind of toe, moral, physical,
emotional last night. Finally there was Peter, looking as though his
evening dress had been made for something quite different from social
dinner parties. It fitted all right, but it was too comfortable to be
smart--he looked, beside Cards, like a good serviceable cob up against
the smartest of hunters. Peter's rough, bullet head, the way that
he stands with his legs wide apart and his thick body holding itself
deliberately still with an effort as though he were on board ship--and
then that smile that won all our hearts ages ago right out of the centre
of his brown eyes first and then curving his mouth, at last seizing all
his body--but always, in spite of it, a little appealing, a little
sad somewhere--can't you see him? And Cards, slim, straight, dark,
beautifully clothed, beautifully witty and I am convinced, beautifully
insincere. Can't you see Cards say 'good evening' to me--with that same
charm, that same ease, that same contempt that he had when we were at
school together? Bobby Galleon--an honest good fellow--but dull--mon
Dieu--dull (he rather likes French phrases)--can't you hear him saying
it? Well from the very first, there was something in the air. We were
all excited, even old Mrs. Rossiter and the pale Irish creature whom
I remembered afterwards I had met that day when I went to that
boarding--house after Peter. Clare was quite extraordinary--I have never
seen her anything like it--she talked the whole time, laughed, almost
shouted. The only person she treated stiffly was Cards--I don't think
she likes him.
“He was at his most brilliant--really wonderful--and I liked him better
than I've ever liked him before. He seemed to have a genuine pleasure in
Peter's happiness, and I believe he's as fond of the boy as he's able
to be of any one. A copy of 'The Stone House' was given to each of us (I
haven't had time to look at mine yet) and I suppose the combination of
the baby and the book moved us all. Besides, Clare and Peter both looked
so absurdly young. Such children to have had so many adventures already.
You can imagine how riotous we got when I tell you that dessert found
Mrs. Rossiter with a paper cap on her head and Janet Gale was singing
some Cornish song or other to the delight of the company. Miss Monogue
and I were the quietest. I should think that she's one of the best, and
I saw her look at Peter once or twice in a way that showed how strongly
she felt about him.
“Well, old girl, I'm bothered if I can explain the kind of anxiety
that came over me after a time. You'll think me a regular professional
croaker but really I suppose, at bottom, it was some sort of feeling
that the whole thing, this shouting and cheering and thumping the
table--was premature. And then I suppose it was partly my knowledge
of Peter. It wasn't like him to behave in this sort of way. He wasn't
himself--excited, agitated by something altogether foreign to him. I
could have thought that he was drunk, if I hadn't known that he hadn't
touched any liquor whatever. But a man of Peter's temperament pays for
this sort of thing--it isn't the sort of way he's meant to take life.
“Whatever the reason may have been I know that I felt suddenly outside
the whole business and most awfully depressed. I think Miss Monogue felt
exactly the same. By the time the wine was on the table all I wanted
was to get right away. It was almost as though I had been looking on
at something that I was ashamed to see. There was a kind of deliberate
determination about their happiness and Clare's little body with her
hair on the verge, as it seemed, of a positive downfall, had something
quite pitiful in its deliberate rejoicing; such a child, my dear--I
never realised how young until last night. Such a child and needing some
one so much older and wiser than Peter to manage it all.
“Well, there I was hating it when the final moment came. Cards got up
and in one of the wittiest little speeches you ever heard in your life,
proposed Peter's health, alluded to 'Reuben Hallard,' then Clare, then
the Son and Heir, a kind of back fling at old Dawson's, and then last
of all, an apostrophe to 'The Stone House' all glory and honour,
&c.:--well, it was most neatly done and we all sat back, silent, for
Peter's reply.
“The dear boy stood there, all flushed and excited, with his hair pushed
back off his forehead and began the most extraordinary speech I've ever
heard. I can't possibly give you the effect of it at secondhand, in the
mere repetition of it there was little more than that he was wildly,
madly happy, that there was no one in the world as happy as he, that now
at last the gods had given him all that he had ever wanted, let them now
do their worst--and so crying, flung his glass over his shoulder, and
smashed it on to the wall behind him.
“I cannot possibly tell you how sinister, how ominous the whole thing
suddenly was. It swooped down upon all of us like a black cloud. Credit
me, if you will, with a highly--strung bundle of nerves (not so solid
matter-of-fact as I seem, _you_ know well enough) but it seemed to me,
at that moment, that Peter was defying, consciously, with his heart in
his mouth, a world of devils and that he was cognisant of all of them.
The thing was conscious--that was the awful thing about it, I could
swear that he was seeing far beyond all of us, that he was hurling his
happiness at something that he had there before him as clearly as I
have you before me now. It was defiance and I believe the minute after
uttering it he would have liked to have rushed upstairs to see that his
baby was safe....
“Be that as it may, we all felt it--every one of us. The party was
clouded. Cards and Clare did their best to brighten things up again, and
Peter and Tony and Janet Gale played silly games and made a great deal
of noise--but the spirit was gone.
“I left very early. Miss Monogue came away at the same time. She spoke
to me before she said good-night: 'I know that you are an old friend of
Peter's. I am so fond of him--we all are at Brockett's, it isn't often
that we see him--I know that you will be his true friend in every sense
of the word--and help him--as he ought to be helped. It is so little
that I can do....'
“Her voice was sad. I am afraid she suffers a great deal. She is
evidently greatly attached to Peter--I liked her.
“Well, you in your sober way will say that this is all a great deal of
nonsense. Why shouldn't Peter, if he wishes, say that he is happy? All I
can say is that if you yourself had been there....”
CHAPTER VIII
BLINDS DOWN
I
It was not until Stephen Westcott had rejoiced in the glories (so novel
and so thrilling) of his first birthday and “The Stone House” had been
six months before the public eye that the effect of this second book
could be properly estimated. Second books are the most surely foredoomed
creatures in all creation and there are many excellent reasons for this.
They will assuredly disappoint the expectations of those who enjoyed the
first work, and the author will, in all probability, have been tempted
by his earlier success to try his wings further than they are, as yet,
able to carry him.
Peter's failure was only partial. There was no question that “The Stone
House” was a remarkable book. Had it been Peter's first novel it must
have made an immense stir; it showed that he was, in no kind of way,
a man of one book, and it gave, in its London scenes, proof that its
author was not limited to one kind of life and one kind of background.
There were chapters that were fuller, wiser, in every way more mature
than anything in “Reuben Hallard.”
But it was amazingly unequal. There were places in it that had no kind
of life at all; at times Peter appeared to have beheld his scenes and
characters through a mist, to have been dragged right away from any kind
of vision of the book, to have written wildly, blindly.
The opinion of Mrs. Launce was perhaps the soundest that it was possible
to have because that good lady, in spite of her affection for Peter,
had a critical judgment that was partly literary, partly commercial, and
partly human. She always judged a book first with her brain, then with
her heart and lastly with her knowledge of her fellow creatures. “It may
pay better than 'Reuben Hallard,'” she said, “there's more love interest
and it ends happily. Some of it is beautifully written, some of it quite
unspeakably. But really, Peter, it's the most uneven thing I've ever
read. Again and again one is caught, held, stirred--then, suddenly, you
slip away altogether--you aren't there at all, nothing's there, I could
put my ringer on the places. Especially the first chapters and the last
chapters--the middle's splendid--what happened to you?... But it will
sell, I expect. Tell your banker to read it, go into lots of banks
and tell them. Bank clerks have subscriptions at circulating libraries
always given them ... but the wild bits are best, the wild bits are
splendid--that bit about the rocks at night ... you don't know much
about women yet--your girls are awfully bad. By the way, do you know
that Mary Hollins is only getting £100 advance next time? All she can
get, that last thing was so shocking. I hear that that book about an
immoral violet, by that new young man--Rondel, isn't it?--is still
having a most enormous success--I know that Barratt's got in a whole
batch of new copies last night--I hear....”
Mrs. Launce was disappointed--Peter could tell well enough. He received
some laudatory reviews, some letters from strangers, some adulation from
people who knew nothing whatever. He did not know what it was exactly
that he had expected--but whatever it was that he wanted, he did not get
it--he was dissatisfied.
He began to blame his publishers--they had not advertised him enough;
he even, secretly, cherished that most hopeless of all convictions--that
his book was above the heads of the public. He noticed, also, that
wherever he might be, this name of Rondel appeared before him, Mr.
Rondel with his foolish face and thin mother in black, was obviously the
young man of the moment--in the literary advertisements of any of the
weekly papers you might see The Violet novel in its tenth edition and
“The Stone House” by Peter Westcott, second edition selling rapidly.
He was again bewildered, as he had been after the publication of “Reuben
Hallard” by the extraordinary variance of opinions amongst reviewers and
amongst his own personal friends. One man told him that he had no style,
that he must learn the meaning and feeling of words, another told him
that his characters were weak but that his style was “splendid--a real
knowledge of the value and meaning of words.” Some one told him that he
knew nothing at all about women and some one else that his women were
by far the best part of his work. The variety was endless--amongst those
who had appeared to him giants there was the same uncertainty. He seemed
too to detect with the older men a desire to praise those parts of his
work that resembled their own productions and to blame anything that
gave promise of originality.
For himself it seemed to him that Mrs. Launce's opinion was nearest the
truth. There were parts of it that were good, chapters that were
better than anything in “Reuben Hallard” and then again there were many
chapters where he saw it all in a fog, groped dimly for his characters,
pushed, as it seemed to him, away from their lives and interests, by the
actual lives and interests of the real people about him. This led him
to think of Clare and here he was suddenly arrested by a perception,
now only dimly grasped, of a change in her attitude to his writings. He
dated it, thinking of it now for the first time, from the birth of young
Stephen--or was it not earlier than that, on that evening when they had
met Cards at that supper party, on that evening of their first quarrel?
In the early days how well he remembered Clare's enthusiasm--a little
extravagant, it seemed now. Then during the first year of their married
life she had wanted to know everything about the making of “The Stone
House.” It was almost as though it had been a cake or a pie, and he knew
that he had found her questions difficult to answer and that he had had
it driven in upon him that it was not really because she was interested
in the subtleties of his art that she enquired but because of her own
personal affection for him; if he had been making boots or a suit of
clothes it would have been just the same. Then when “The Stone House”
appeared her eagerness for its success had been tremendous--there
was nothing she would not do to help it along--but that, he somewhat
ironically discovered, was because she liked success and the things that
success brought.
Then when the book had not succeeded--or only so very little--her
interest had, of a sudden, subsided. “Oh! I suppose you've got to go and
do your silly old writing ... I think you might come out with me just
this afternoon. It isn't often that I ask anything of you....” He did
not believe that she had ever really finished “The Stone House.” She
pretended that she had--“the end was simply perfect,” but she was vague,
nebulous. He found the marker in her copy, some fifty pages before the
end.
She was so easily impressed by every one whom she met that perhaps the
laughing attitude of Cards to Peter's books had something to do with it
all. Cards affected to despise anything to do with work, here to-day,
gone to-morrow--let us eat and drink ... dear old Peter, grubbing away
upstairs--“I say, Mrs. Westcott, let's go and rag him....” And then they
had come and invaded his room at the top of the house, and sometimes
he had been glad and had flung his work down as though it were of no
account ... and then afterwards, in the middle of some tea-party he
had been suddenly ashamed, deeply, bitterly ashamed, as though he had
actually wounded those white pages lying up there in his quiet room.
He was at this time, like a man jostled and pushed and turned about
at some riotous fair; looking, now this way, now that, absorbed by a
thousand sights, a thousand sounds--and always through it all feeling,
bitterly in his heart, that something dear to him, somewhere in some
place of silence, was dying--
Well, hang it all, at any rate there was the Child!
II
At any rate there was the Child!
And what a child! Did any one ever have a baby like it, so fat and round
and white, with its head already covered with faint golden silk, its
eyes grey and wondering--with its sudden gravities, its amazing joys and
terrific humour, the beauty of its stepping away, as it did, suddenly
without any warning, behind a myriad mists and curtains, into some other
land that it knew of. How amazing to watch it as it slowly forgot all
the things that it had come into the world remembering, as it slowly
realised all the laws that this new order of things demanded of its
obedience. Could any one who had been present ever forget its crow of
ecstasy at the first shaft of sunlight that it ever beheld, at its first
realisation of the blue, shining ball that Peter bought, at its first
vision, through the window, of falling snow!
Peter was drunk with this amazing wonder. All the facts of life--even
Clare and his work--faded before this new presence for whose existence
he had been responsible. It had been one of the astonishing things about
Clare that she had taken the child so quietly. He had seen her thrilled
by musical comedy, by a dance at the Palace Music Hall, by the trumpery
pathos of a tenth-rate novel--before this marvel she stood, it seemed to
him, without any emotion.
Sometimes he thought that if it had not been for his reminder she would
not have gone to kiss the child goodnight. There were many occasions
when he knew--with wonder and almost dismay--that she was afraid of it;
and once, when they had been in the nursery together and young Stephen
had cried and kicked his heels in a tempest of rage, she had seemed
almost to cling to Peter for protection.
There were occasions when Peter fancied that the baby seemed the elder
of the two, it was at any rate certain that Stephen Westcott was not so
afraid of his mother as his mother was of him. And yet, Peter fancied,
that could Clare only get past this strange nervous fear she would
love the baby passionately--would love him with that same fierceness
of passion that she flung, curiously, now and again upon Peter himself.
“Let me be promised,” she seemed to say, “that I will never have any
trouble or sorrow with my son and I will love him devotedly.” Meanwhile
she went into every excitement that life could provide for her....
It was on a March afternoon of early Spring after a lonely tea (Clare
was out at one of her parties) that Peter went up to the nursery. He had
just finished reading the second novel by that Mr. Rondel whose Violet
sensation had occurred some two years before. This second book was
good--there was no doubt about it--and Peter was ashamed of a kind of
dim reluctance in his acknowledgment of its quality. The fellow had had
such reviews; the book, although less sensational than its predecessor
had hit the public straight in the middle of its susceptible heart. Had
young Rondel done it all with bad work-well, that was common enough--but
the book was good, uncommonly good.
He sent the nurse downstairs and began to build an elaborate fortress
on the nursery floor. The baby lay on his back on a rug by the fire
and contemplated his woollen shoe which he slowly dragged off and
disdainfully flung away. Then, crowing to himself, he watched his father
and the world in general.
He was amazingly like Peter--the grey eyes, the mouth a little stern, a
little sulky, the snub nose, the arms a little short and thick, and that
confident, happy smile.
He watched his father.
To him, lying on the rug, many, many miles away there was a coloured
glory that ran round the upper part of the wall--as yet, he only knew
that they gave him, those colours, something of the same pleasure that
his milk gave him, that the warm, glowing, noisy shapes beyond the
carpet gave him, that the happy, comfortable smell of the Thing playing
near him on the floor gave him. About the Thing he was eternally
perplexed. It was Something that made sounds that he liked, that pressed
his body in a way that he loved, that took his fingers and his toes and
made them warm and comfortable.
It was Something moreover from which delicious things hung--things that
he could clutch and hold and pull. He was perplexed but he knew that
when this Thing was near him he was warm and happy and contented and
generally went to sleep. His eyes slowly travelled round the room and
rested finally upon a round blue ball that hung turning a little from
side to side, on a nail above, his bed. This was, to him, the final
triumph of existence--to have it in his hand, to roll it round and
round, to bang it down upon the floor and watch it jump, this was the
reason why one was here, this the solution of all perplexities. He would
have liked to have it in his hands now, so crowing, he smiled pleasantly
at the Thing on the floor beside him and then looked at the ball.
Peter got up from his knees, fetched the ball down and rolled it along
the floor. As it came dancing, curving, laughing along young Stephen
shrieked with delight. Would he have it in his hands or would it escape
him and disappear altogether? Would it come to him?... It came and was
clutched and held and triumphed over.
Peter sat down by his son and began to tell him about Cornwall. He
often did this, partly because the mere mentioning of names and places
satisfied some longing in his heart, partly because he wanted Cornwall
to be the first thing that young Stephen would realise as soon as he
realised anything. “And you never can tell, you know, how soon a child
can begin....”
Stephen, turning the blue ball round and round in his fingers, gravely
listened. He was perfectly contented. He liked the sounds that circled
about him--his father's voice, the rustle of the fire, the murmur of
something beyond the walls that he could not understand.
“And then, you see, Stephen, if you go up the hill and round to the
right you come to the market-place, all covered with shiny cobbles and
once a week filled with stalls where people sell things. At the other
end of it, facing you, there's an old Tower that's been there for ages
and ages. It's got a fruit stall underneath it now, but once, years ago
there was fighting there and men were killed. Then, if you go past it,
and out to the right, you get into the road that leads out of the town.
It goes right above the sea and on a fine-day--”
“Peter!”
The voice broke like a stone shattering a sheet of glass. The ball
dropped from young Stephen's hands. He felt suddenly cold and hungry and
wanted his woollen shoe. He was not sure whether he would not cry. He
would wait a moment and see how matters developed.
Peter jumped to his feet and faced Clare: Clare in a fur cap from
beneath which her golden hair seemed to burn in anger, from beneath
which her eyes, furiously attacked his. Of course she had heard him
talking to the baby about Cornwall. They had quarrelled about it before
... he had thought that she was at her silly tea-party. His face that
had been, a few moments before, gentle, humorous, happy, now suddenly
wore the sullen defiance of a sulky boy.
Her breast was heaving, her little hands beat against her frock.
“He shan't,” she broke out at last, “hear about it.”
“Of all the nonsense,” Peter answered her slowly. “Really, Clare,
sometimes I think you're about two years old--”
“He shan't hear about it,” she repeated again. “You don't care--you
don't care what I think or what I say--I'm his mother--I have the
right--”
The baby looked at them both with wondering eyes and to any outside
observer would surely have seemed the eldest of the three. Clare's
breath came in little pants of rage--“You know--that I hate--all mention
of that place--those people. It doesn't matter to you--you never think
of me--”
“At any rate,” he retorted, “if you were up here in the nursery more
often you would be able to take care that Stephen's innocent ears
weren't insulted with my vulgar conversation--”
It was then that he saw, behind Clare, in the doorway, the dark smiling
face of Cards.
Cards came forward. “Really, you two,” he said, laughing. “Peter, old
man, don't be absurd--you too, Clare” (he called her Clare now).
The anger died out of Clare's eyes: “Well, he knows I hate him talking
about that nasty old town to the baby--” Then, in a moment, she was
smiling again--“I'm sorry, Peter. Cards is quite right, and anyhow the
baby doesn't understand--”
She stood smiling in front of him but the frown did not leave his face.
“Oh! it's all right,” he said sullenly, and he brushed past them up the
stairs, to his own room.
III
From the silence of his room he thought that he could hear them laughing
about it downstairs. “Silly old Peter--always getting into tempers--”
Well, was he? And after all hadn't it been, this time, her affair?
Stephen and he had been happy enough before the others had come in. What
was this senseless dislike of Clare's to Cornwall? What could it matter
to her? It was always cropping up now. He could think of a thousand
occasions, lately, when she had been roused by it.
But, as he paced, with frowning face, back and forwards across the room,
there was something more puzzling still that had to be thought about.
Why did they quarrel about such tiny things? In novels, in good,
reliable novels, it was always the big things about which people fought.
Whoever heard of two people quarrelling because one of them wanted to
talk about Cornwall? and yet it was precisely concerning things just as
trivial that they were always now disputing. Why need they quarrel at
all? In the first year there had always been peace. Why shouldn't there
be peace now? Where exactly lay Clare's altered attitude to himself, to
his opinions, to the world in general. If he yielded to her demands--and
he had yielded on many more occasions than was good either for her
or himself--she had, he fancied, laughed at him for being so easily
defeated. If he had not yielded then she had been, immediately,
impossible....
And yet, after their quarrels, there had been the most wonderful,
precious reconciliations, reconciliations that, even now at his thought
of them, made his heart beat faster. Now, soon, when he went downstairs
to dress for dinner, she would come to him, he knew, and beg most
beautifully, his pardon. But to-night it seemed suddenly that this kind
of thing had happened too often lately. He felt, poor Peter, bewildered.
There seemed to be, on every side of him, so many things that he was
called upon to manage and he was so unable to manage any of them.
He stopped in his treading to and fro and stared at the long deal
writing-table at which he always worked.
There, waiting for him, were the first chapters of his new novel,
“Mortimer Stant.” In the same way, two years ago, he had stared at the
early chapters of “The Stone House,” on that morning before he had gone
to propose to Clare. Now there flashed through his mind the wonderful
things that he intended “Mortimer Stant” to be. It was to concern a
man of forty (in his confident selection of that age he displayed, most
stridently, his own youth) and Mortimer was to be a stolid, reserved
Philistine, who was, against his will, by outside forces, dragged into
an emotional crisis.
At the back of his mind he had, perhaps, Maradick for his figure,
but that was almost unconscious. “Mortimer Stant” was to represent
a wonderful duel between the two camps--the Artists and the
Philistines--with ultimate victory, of course, for the Artists. It was
to be.... Well what was it to be? At present the stolid Mortimer was
hidden behind a phalanx of people--Clare, young Stephen, Cards, Bobby,
Mrs. Rossiter (tiresome woman), Alice Galleon--_That_ was it. It was
hidden, hidden just as parts of “The Stone House” had been hidden, but
hidden more deeply--a regular jungle of interests and occupations was
creeping, stealthily, stealthily upon him.
And then his eye fell upon an open letter that lay on his table, and, at
the sight of it, he was seized with a burning sense of shame. How could
he have forgotten?
The letter ran--
_My dear Mr. Westcott,
You have not been to see me for many months. Further opportunities may,
by the hand of God, be denied you.
Come if you can spare the time.
Henry Galleon._
The words were written, feebly almost illegibly, in pencil. Peter
knew that Bobby had been, for many weeks, very anxious concerning his
father's health, and during the last few days he had abandoned the City
and spent all his time at home. That letter had come this very morning
and Peter had intended to go at once and inquire. The fact that he had
left all these months without going to see the old man rose before him
now like an accusing hand. He deserved, indeed, whatever the Gods might
choose to send him, if he could so wilfully neglect his duty. But he
knew that there had been, in the back of his mind, shame. His work had
not, so he might have put it to himself, been good enough to justify his
presence. There would have been questions asked, questions that he might
have found it difficult, indeed, to answer.
But now the sight of that letter immediately encouraged him. Henry
Galleon, even though he was too ill to talk, would put him right with
all his perplexities, would give him courage to cut through all these
complications that had been gathering, lately, so thickly about him.
“This,” the room seemed to whisper to him, “is your chance. After all,
you are given this opportunity. See him once before he dies and your
fate will be shown you, clearly, honestly.”
He stepped out of the house unperceived and was immediately conscious
of the Spring night. Spring--with a precipitancy and extravagance that
seems to be--to own peculiar quality in London--had leapt upon the
streets.
The Embankment was bathed in the evening glow. Clouds, like bales of
golden wool, sailed down a sky so faintly blue that the white light of
a departed sun seemed to glow behind it. The lamps were crocus-coloured
against black barges that might have been loaded with yellow primroses
so did they hint, through their darkness, at the yellow haze around
them.
The silence was melodious; the long line of dark houses watched like
prisoners from behind their iron bars. They might expect, it seemed, the
Spring to burst through the flagstones at their feet.
Peter's heart was lightened of all its burden. He shared the glory, the
intoxication of the promise that was on every side of him. On such a
night great ambitions, great ideals, great lovers were created.
He saw Henry Galleon, from behind his window, watching the pageant. He
saw him gaining new life, getting up from his bed of sickness, writing
anew his great masterpieces. And he saw himself, Peter Westcott,
learning at last from the Master the rule and discipline of life. All
the muddle, the confusion of this lazy year should be healed. He and
Clare should see with the same eyes. She should understand his need for
work, he should understand her need for help. All should be happiness
and victory in this glorious world and he, by the Master's side,
should...
He stopped suddenly. The house that had been Henry Galleon's was blank
and dead.
At every window the blinds were down....
CHAPTER IX
WILD MEN
I
To Peter's immediate world it was a matter of surprise that he should
take Henry Galleon's death so hardly. It is a penalty of greatness that
you should, to the majority of your fellow men, be an Idea rather than
a human being. To his own family Henry Galleon had, of course, been real
enough but to the outside world he was the author of “Henry Lessingham”
and “The Roads,” whose face one saw in the papers as one saw the face
of Royalty. Peter Westcott, moreover, had not appeared, at any time,
to take more than a general interest in the great man, and it was even
understood that old Mrs. Galleon and Millicent and Percival considered
themselves somewhat affronted because the Master had “been exceedingly
kind to the young man. Taken trouble about him, tried to know him, but
young Westcott had allowed the thing to drop--had not been near him
during the last year.”
Even Bobby and Alice Galleon were astonished at Peter's grief. To Bobby
his father's death came as a fine ending to a fine career. He had died,
full of honour and of years. Even Bobby, who thought that he knew his
Peter pretty well by now, was puzzled.
“He takes it,” Bobby explained to Alice, “as though it were a kind of
omen, sees ever so much more in it than any of us do. It seems that he
was coming round the very evening that father died to talk to him, and
that he suddenly saw the blinds down; it was a shock to him, of course.
I think it's all been a kind of remorse working out, remorse not only
for having neglected my father but for having left other things--his
work, I suppose, rather to look after themselves. But he won't tell
me,” Bobby almost desperately concluded, “he won't tell me anything--he
really is the most extraordinary chap.”
And Peter found it difficult enough to tell himself, did not indeed
try. He only knew that he felt an acute, passionate remorse and that
it seemed to him that the denial of that last visit was an omen of the
anger of all the Gods, and even--although to this last he gave no kind
of expression--the malicious contrivance of an old man who waited for
him down there in that house by the sea. It was as though gates had been
clanged in his face, and that as he heard them close he heard also the
jeering laughter behind them.... He had missed his chance.
He saw, instantly, that Clare understood none of this, and that, indeed,
she took it all as rather an affectation on his part, something in him
that belonged to that side of him that she tried to forget. She hated,
quite frankly, that he should go about the house with a glum face
because an old man, whom he had never taken the trouble to go and see
when he was alive, was now dead. She showed him that she hated it.
He turned desperately to his work. There had been a hint, only the other
day, from the newspaper for which he wrote, that his reviews had not,
lately, been up to his usual standard. He knew that they seemed to
him twice as difficult to do as they had seemed a year ago and that
therefore he did them twice as badly.
He flung himself upon his book and swore that he would dissipate the
shadows that hid it from him. One of the shadows he saw quite clearly
was Cards' attitude to his work. It was strange, he thought almost
pathetically, how closely his feeling for Cards now resembled the
feeling that he had had, those years ago, at Dawson's. He still
worshipped him--worship was the only possible word--worshipped him for
all the things that he, Peter, was not. One could not be with him,
Peter thought, one could not watch his movements, hear his voice without
paying it all the most absolute reverence. The glamour about Cards was,
to Peter, something almost from another world. Peter felt so clumsy, so
rough and ugly and noisy and out-of-place when Cards was present that
the fact that Cards was almost always present now made life a very
difficult thing. How could Peter prevent himself from reverencing every
word that Cards uttered when one reflected upon the number of things
that Cards had done, the things that he had seen, the places to which
he had been. And Cards' attitude to Peter's work was, if not actually
contemptuous, at least something very like it. He did not, he professed,
read novels. The novelists' trade at the best, he seemed to imply, was
only a poor one, and that Peter's work was not altogether of the best he
almost openly asserted. “What can old Peter know about life?” one could
hear him saying--“Where's he been? Who's he known? Whatever in the world
has he done?”
Against this, in spite of the glitter that shone about Cards' head,
Peter might, perhaps, have stood. He reminded himself, a hundred times a
day, that one must not care about the things that other people said,
one must have one's eyes fixed upon the goal--one must be sure of
oneself--what had Galleon said?...
But there was also the effect of it all upon Clare to be considered.
Clare listened to Cards. She was, Peter gloomily considered, very
largely of Cards' opinion. The two people for whom he cared most in the
world after young Stephen who, as a critic, had not yet begun to count,
thought that he was wasting his time.
Sometimes, as he sat at his deal table, fighting with a growing sense
of disillusionment that was like nothing so much as a child's first
discovery that its beautiful doll is stuffed with straw, he would wish
passionately, vehemently for the return of those days when he had sat in
his little bedroom writing “Reuben Hallard” with Norah Monogue, and dear
Mr. Zanti and even taciturn little Gottfried, there to encourage him.
_That_ had been Adventure--but this ...? And then he would remember
young Stephen and Clare--moments even lately that she had shared with
him--and he would be ashamed.
II
It was on an afternoon of furious wind and rain in early April that the
inevitable occurred. All the afternoon the trees in the little orchard
had been knocking their branches together as though they were in a
furious temper with Somebody and were indignant at not being allowed to
get at Him; they gave you the impression that it would be quite as much
as your life would be worth to venture into their midst.
Peter had, during a number of hours, endeavoured to pierce the soul
of Mortimer Stant--meanwhile as the wind howled, the rain lashed the
windows of his room, and the personality of Mr. Stant faded farther and
farther away into ultimate distance, Peter was increasingly conscious
that he was listening for something.
He had felt himself surrounded by this strange sense of anticipation
before. Sometimes it had stayed with him for a short period only,
sometimes it had extended over days--always it brought with it an
emotion of excitement and even, if he had analysed it sufficiently,
fear.
He was suddenly conscious, in the naked spaces of his barely-furnished
room, of the personality of his father. So conscious was he that he got
up from his table and stood at the rain-swept window, looking out into
the orchard, as though he expected to see a sinister figure creeping,
stealthily, from behind the trees. In his thoughts of his father there
was no compunction, no accusing scruples of neglect, only a perfectly
concrete, active sense, in some vague way, of force pitted against
force.
It might be summed up in the conviction that “the old man was not done
with him yet”--and as Peter turned back from the window, almost relieved
that he had, indeed, seen no creeping figure amongst the dark trees, he
was aware that never since the days of his starvation in Bucket Lane,
had he been so conscious of those threatening memories of Scaw House and
its inhabitants.
At that, almost as he reached his table, there was a knock on his door.
“Come in,” he cried and, scorning himself for his fears, faced the maid
with staring eyes.
“Two gentlemen to see you, sir,” she said. “I have shown them into the
study.”
“Is Mrs. Westcott in?”
“No, sir. She told me that she would not be back until six o'clock,
sir.”
“I will come down.”
In the hall, hanging amongst the other things as a Pirate might hang
beside a company of Evangelist ministers, was Stephen Brant's hat....
As Peter's hand turned on the handle of the study door he knew that his
heart was beating with so furious a clamour that he could not hear the
lock turn.
III
He entered the room and found Stephen Brant and Mr. Zanti facing him.
The little window between the dim rows of books showed him the pale
light that was soon to succeed the storm. The two men seemed to fill the
little room; their bodies were shadowy and mysterious against the pale
colour, and Peter had the impression that the things in the room--the
chairs, the books, the table--huddled against the wall, so crowded did
the place seem.
For himself, at his first sight of them, he was compelled, instantly, to
check a feeling of joy so overwhelming that he was himself astonished
at the force of it. To them, as they stood there, smiling, feeling that
same emotion to which he, also, was now succumbing! He checked himself.
It was as though he were forced suddenly, by a supreme effort of will,
to drive from the room a tumultuous crowd of pictures, enthusiasms and
memories, that, for the sake of the present and of the future, must be
forbidden to stay with him. It was absurd--he was a husband, a father, a
responsible householder, almost a personage... and yet, as he looked at
Stephen's eyes and Mr. Zanti's smile, he was the little boy back again
in Tan's shop with the old suit of armour, the beads and silver and
Eastern cloths, and out beyond the window, the sea was breaking upon the
wooden jetty....
He put the picture away from him and rushed to greet the two of them.
“Zanti!... Stephen!... Oh! how splendid! How perfectly, perfectly
splendid!”
Mr. Zanti's enormous body was enclosed in a suit of bright blue, his
broad nose stood out like a bridge, his wide mouth gaped. He wore
white spats, three massive rings of twisted gold and in his blue tie a
glittering emerald. He was a magnificent, a costly figure and in nothing
was the geniality of his nature more plainly seen than in his obvious
readiness to abandon, at any moment, these splendid riches for the sake
of a valued attachment. “I love wearing these things,” you might hear
him say, “but I love still better to do anything in the world that I can
for you, my friend.”
Stephen presented a more moderate appearance, but he was brown with
health and shining with strength. He was like the old Stephen of years
and years ago, so different from the--man who had shared with Peter that
room in Bucket Lane.
He carried himself with that air of strong, cautious reserve that
Cornishmen have when they are in some other country than their own; his
eyes, mild, gentle, but on the alert, ready at an instant to be hostile.
Then, when Peter came in, the reserve instantly fled. They had, all
three of them, perhaps, expected embarrassment, but at that cry of
Peter's they were suddenly together, Mr. Zanti, waving his hands, almost
shouting, Stephen, his eyes resting with delight on Peter, Peter himself
another creature from the man who had pursued Mortimer Stant in the room
upstairs, half an hour before.
“We thought that ze time 'ad come, dear boy... we know zat you are
busy.” Mr. Zanti looked about him a little anxiously, as though he
expected to find Mrs. Peter hiding under a chair or a sofa.
“Oh! Stephen, after all this long long while! Why didn't you come before
when Mr. Zanti came?”
“Too many of us coming, Mr. Peter, and you so busy.”
“Nonsense. I'm not in the least busy. I'm sorry to say my wife's out but
the baby's in, upstairs, and there's the most terrific woman up there
too, the nurse--I'm frightened out of my life of her--but we'll get
rid of her and have the place to ourselves... you know the kid's called
after you, Stephen?”
“No, is he really?” Stephen's face shone with pleasure. “I'm keen to see
him.”
“Oh, he's a trump! There never really was such a baby.”
“And your books, Mr. Peter?”
“Oh! the books!” Peter's voice dropped, “never mind them now. But
what have you been doing, you two? Made heaps of money? Discovered
treasure?...” He pulled himself up shortly. He remembered the bookshop,
the girl leaning against the door looking into the street, then the boys
crying the news....
If Mr. Zanti had been mixing himself up with that sort of thing again!
And then the bright blue suit, the white spats, were reassuring. As if
one could ever take such a child seriously about anything!
Mr. Zanti shook his head, ruefully. “No, not ezackly a fortune! There
was a place I 'eard of, right up in the Basque country--'twas an old
deserted garden, where zey 'ad buried treasure, centuries ago--I 'ad it
quite certainly from a friend. We came up there for a time but we found
nothing.” He sighed and then was instantly cheered again. “But it's
all right. I've got a plan now--a wonderful plan.” He became very
mysterious. “It's a certain thing--we're off to Cornwall, Mr. Brant and
myself--”
“Cornwall?”
“Come too, Peter.”
“Ah! don't I wish that I could!” He suddenly saw his life, his
books--everything in London holding him, tying him--“But I can't go now,
my father being there makes it impossible. But in any case, I'm a family
man now--you know.”
As he said the words he was conscious that, in Stephen's eyes at any
rate, the family man was about the last thing that he looked. He was
wondering, with intense curiosity, what were the things that Stephen was
finding in him, for the things that Stephen found were most assuredly
the things that he was. No one knew him as Stephen knew him. Against
his will the thought of Clare came driving upon him. How little she knew
him! or was it only that she knew another side of him?
But he pulled himself away from that. “Now for the nursery--Stephen
Secundus. But you'll have to support me whilst I get rid of Mrs.
Kant--perhaps three of us together--”
As he led the way upstairs he knew that Stephen was not entirely
reassured about him.
Mrs. Kant was a large, busy woman, like a horse--a horse who dislikes
other horses and sniffs an enemy in every wind. She very decidedly
sniffed an enemy now, and Mr. Zanti's blue suit paled before her fierce
eyes. He stepped back into the doorway again, treading upon Stephen.
Peter, who was always conscious that Mrs. Kant looked upon himself and
Clare as two entirely ridiculous and slightly impertinent children,
stammered a little.
“You might go down and have your tea now, Mrs. Kant. I'll keep an eye
upon Stephen.”
“I've had my tea, thank you, sir.”
“Well, I'll relieve you of the baby for a little.” She was sewing.
She snapped off a piece of thread with a sharp click of her teeth, sat
silently for a moment staring in front of her, then quietly got up.
“Thank you, sir,” she said and left the room.
All three men breathed again as the door closed--then they were all
conscious of young Stephen.
The thing was, of course, absurd, but to all three of them there came
the conviction that the baby had been laughing at them for their terror
of Mrs. Kant. He was curled up on a chair by the fire, looking at them
with his wide eyes over his shoulder, and he seemed to say, “I don't
care a snap for the woman--why should you?” The blue ball was on the
floor at the foot of the chair, and the firelight leapt upon the frieze
that Peter had so carefully chosen--giants and castles, dwarfs and
princesses running round the room in red, and blue and gold.
Young Stephen looked at them, puzzled for an instant, then with a shout
he would have acclaimed his father, but his gaze was suddenly arrested
by the intense blueness of Mr. Zanti's clothes. He stared at it,
fascinated. Into his life there had suddenly broken the revelation that
you might have something far larger than the blue ball that moved and
shone in so fascinating a manner. His eyes immediately glittered with
the thought that he would presently have the joy of rolling something
so big and shining along the floor. He could not bear to wait. His fat
fingers curved in the air with the eager anticipation of it--words,
actual words had not as yet come to him, but, crowing and gurgling,
he informed the world that he wanted, he demanded, instantly, that he
should roll Mr. Zanti.
“Well, old man, how are you?” said Peter. But he would not look at his
father. His arms stretched toward Mr. Zanti.
“You've made a conquest right away, Zanti,” Peter said laughing.
It was indeed instantly to be perceived that Mr. Zanti was in his right
element. Any pretence of any kind of age fell away from him, his arms
curved towards young Stephen as young Stephen's curved towards him. He
was making noises in his throat that exactly resembled the noises that
the baby made.
He looked down gravely upon the chair--“'Ow do you do?” he said and he
took young Stephen's fat fingers in his hand.
“'E says,” he remarked, looking at Peter and Stephen, “that 'e would
like to roll me upon the floor--like that ball there--”
“Well, let him,” said Peter laughing.
The baby then dug his fingers into Mr. Zanti's hair and pulled down his
head towards the chair, intense satisfaction flooding his face as he did
so.
The baby seemed, for a moment, to whisper into Mr. Zanti's ear, then,
chuckling it climbed down from the chair, and, on all fours, crawled,
its eyes and mouth suddenly serious as though it were conscious that it
was engaged upon a very desperate adventure. The three men watched it.
Across the absolute silence of the room there came the sound of the
rain driving upon the pane, of the tumbling chatter of the fire, of the
baby's hands falling upon the carpet.
Mr. Zanti was suddenly upon his knees. “Here,” he cried, seizing the
blue ball. He rolled it to young Stephen. It was caught, dropped and
then the fat fingers had flung themselves upon Mr. Zanti's coat. He let
himself go and was pulled back sprawling upon the floor, his huge body
stretching from end to end of the rug.
Then, almost before they had realised it, the other two men were down
upon their knees. The ball was picked up and tossed from hand to hand,
the baby, sitting upon Mr. Zanti's stomach, watched with delight these
extraordinary events.
Then they played Hunt the Slipper, sitting round in a ring upon the
carpet, young Stephen trying to catch his own slipper, falling over
upon his back, kicking his legs in the air, dashing now at Stephen the
Elder's beard, now at his father's coat, now at Mr. Zanti's legs.
The noise of the laughter drowned the rain and the fire. Mr. Zanti had
the slipper--he was sitting upon it. Peter made a dash for it, Mr. Zanti
rolled over, they were all in a heap upon the floor.
“I've got it.” Mr. Zanti was off on all fours round the room, the baby
on his back clutching on to his hair. A chair was over, then a box of
bricks, the table rocked and then was suddenly down with a crash!
What had come to them all? Stephen, so grave, so solemn, had caught the
baby into the air, had flung him up and caught him again. Peter and Mr.
Zanti looking up from the floor saw him standing, his legs wide, his
beard flowing, his arms stretched with young Stephen shouting between
them.
Behind him, around him was a wrecked nursery....
The baby, surveying the world from this sudden height, wondered at
this amazing glory. He had never before beheld from such a position the
things that bounded his life. How strange the window seemed! Through it
now he could see the tops of the trees, the grey sky, the driving lines
of rain! Only a little way above him now were pictures that had always
glowed before from so great a distance. Around him, above him, below
him space--a thing to be frightened of were one not held so tightly, so
safely.
He approved, most assuredly, of the banishment of Mrs. Kant, and the
invasion of these splendid Things! He would have life always like this,
with that great blue ball to roll upon the floor, with that brown
beard, near now to his hand, to clutch, with none of that hideous
soap-in-the-eyes-early-to-bed Philosophy that he was becoming now
conscious enough to rebel against.
He dug his hands into the beard that was close to him and, like the sons
of the morning, shouted with joy.
Peter, looking up at the two Stephens, felt his burdens roll off his
back. If only things could be like this always! And already he saw
himself, through these two, making everything right once more with
Clare. They should prove to her that, after all, his past life had
not been so terrible, that Cornwall could produce heroes if it liked.
Through these two he would get fresh inspiration for his work. He felt
already, through them, a wind blowing that cleared all the dust from his
brain.
And how splendid for the boy! To have two such men for his friends!
Already he was planning to persuade them to stay in London. He had
thought of the very place for them in Chelsea, near the Roundabout, the
very house....
“Of course you'll stay for dinner, you two--”
“But--” said Mr. Zanti, mopping his brow from which perspiration was
dripping.
“No, nonsense. Of course you'll stop. We've got such heaps to talk
about--”
Stephen had got the baby now on his shoulder. “Off to Cornwall,” he
shouted and charged down the room.
It was at that instant that Peter was conscious that Clare had been
standing, for some moments, in the room. She stood, quite silently,
without moving, by the door, her eyes blazing at him....
His first thought was of that other time when she had found him in the
nursery, of the quarrel that they had had. Then he noticed the state of
the room, the overturned chairs and table. Then he saw Mr. Zanti still
wiping his forehead, but confusedly, and staring at Clare in a shocked
hushed way, as though he were a small boy who had been detected with his
fingers in a jam-pot.
Stephen saw her at last. He put the baby down and came slowly across the
floor. Peter spoke: “Why, Clare! You're back early. We've been having
such a splendid time with Stephen--let me introduce my friends to
you--Mr. Zanti and Mr. Brant... you've heard me speak of them--”
They came towards her. She shook hands with them, regarding them
gravely.
“How do you do?”
There was silence. Then Mr. Zanti said--“We must be goin'--longer than
we ought to stop--we 'ave business--”
Peter felt rising in him a cold and surging anger at her treatment of
them. These two, the best friends that he had in the world--that she
should dare!
“Oh! you'll stay to dinner, you two! You must--”
“I'm afraid, ver' afraid,” Mr. Zanti said bowing very low and still
looking at Clare with apologetic, troubled eyes, “we 'ave no time.
Immediate business.”
Still Clare said nothing.
There was another moment's silence, and then Peter said:
“I'll come down and see you off.” Still without moving from her place
she shook hands with them.
“Good-bye.”
They all three went out.
Peter could say nothing. The words seemed to be choked in his throat by
this tide of anger that was like nothing he had ever felt before.
He held their hands for a moment as they stood outside in the dusk.
“Where are you staying? I must see you again--”
“We go down to Cornwall to-morrow.”
Stephen caught Peter's shoulder:
“Come down to us, Peter, if you get a chance.” They all stared at one
another; they were all, absolutely, entirely without words. Afterwards
they would regret that they had said nothing, but now--!
They vanished into the dusk and Peter, stepping into the house again,
closed very softly the hall door behind him.
CHAPTER X
ROCKING THE ROUNDABOUT
I
As he climbed, once more, the stairs to the nursery, he was conscious of
the necessity for a great restraint. Did he but relax for an instant his
control he was aware that forces--often dimly perceived and shuddered
at--would now, as never in his life before, burst into freedom.
It was as though a whole life of joy and happiness had been suddenly
snatched from him and it was Clare who had robbed him--Clare who had
never cared what the things might be that she demanded from him--Clare
who gave him nothing.
But his rage now, he also felt, was beyond all reason, something that
belonged to that other part of him, the part that Scaw House and its
dark room understood and so terribly fostered.
He was afraid of what he might do.
II
On opening the nursery door he saw the straight, thin, shining back of
Mrs. Kant as she bent to put things straight. Young Stephen was quietly
asleep. He closed the door, and, turning in the narrow passage, found
Clare coming out of her room. In the dim light they faced one another,
hostility flaming between them. She looked at him for a moment, her
breast heaving, her mouth so tight and sharp, her eyes so fierce that
her little stature seemed to be raised by her anger to a great height.
At that moment Peter felt that he hated her as he had never hated any
one in his life before.
She went back, without a word, into her room.
She did not come down again that night and he had his evening meal,
miserably, alone.
He slept in his dressing-room. Long before morning his rage had gone. He
looked at her locked door and wished, miserably, that he might die for
her....
III
Later, as he sat, hopelessly, over the dim and sterile pages of
“Mortimer Slant,” Mrs. Rossiter came, heavily, in to talk with him. Mrs.
Rossiter always entered the room with an expression of stupid benignity
that hid a good deal of rather sharp perception. The fact that she was
not nearly so stupid as she looked enabled her to look all the stupider
and she covered a multitude of brains with a quantity of hard black silk
that she spread out around her with the air of one who is filling as
much of the room as she can conveniently seize upon. Her plump arms,
her broad and placid bosom, her flat smooth face, her hair, entirely
negative in colour and arrangement, offered no clue whatever to her
unsuspected sharpnesses. Smooth, broad, flat and motionless she carried,
like the Wooden Horse of Troy, a thousand dangers in the depths of her
placidity.
She had come now to assist her daughter, the only person for whom
she may be said to have had the slightest genuine affection, for
Dr. Rossiter she had long-despised and Mrs. Galleon was an ally and
companion but never a friend. She had allowed Clare to marry Peter,
chiefly because Clare would have married him in any case, but also, a
little, because she thought that Peter had a great career in front of
him. Now that Peter's career seemed already to be, for the most part,
behind him, she disliked him and because he appeared to have made Clare
unhappy suddenly hated him... but placidity was the shield that covered
her attack and, for a symbol, one might take the large flat golden
brooch that she wore on her bosom--flat, expressionless and shining,
with the sharpest pin behind it that ever brooch possessed.
Peter, whose miseries had accumulated as the minutes passed, was ready
to seize upon anything that promised a reconciliation. He did not like
Mrs. Rossiter--he had never been able to get to close quarters with
her, and he was conscious that his roughness and occasional outbursts
displeased her. He felt, too, that the qualities that he had resented
in Clare owed their origin to her mother. That brooch of hers was
responsible for a great deal.
Fixing his eyes upon it he said, “You've come about Clare?”
“Yes, Peter.” Mrs. Rossiter settled herself more comfortably, spread her
skirts, folded her hands. “She's very unhappy.”
The mild eyes baffled him.
“I'm terribly sorry. I will do anything I can, but I think--that I had
a right”--he faltered a little; it was so like talking to an empty
Dairy--“had a right to mind. Two old friends of mine--two of the best
friends that I have in the world were here yesterday and Clare--”
“I don't think,” the soft voice broke in upon him whilst the eyes
searched his body up and down, “that, even now, Peter, you quite
understand Clare--”
“No,” he said eagerly, “I know. I'm blundering, stupid. Lots of times
I've irritated her, and now again.” He paused, but then added, with
a touch of his old stubbornness--“But they were friends of mine--she
should have treated them so.”