It should sign and seal this new order....

He came downstairs. He looked into the little sitting-room. Clare was

standing there by the window looking at the gay trees in the orchard. On

the opposite wall the Velasquez danced....

She had not heard him come in and she was standing by the window with

her hands clasped tightly behind her, her body strung up, so it seemed,

by some height of determination. She wore a black dress with a little

white round her neck and at the sleeves. Her hair was rolled into a pile

on the top of her head and the sunlight from the orchard was shining

upon it.

When Peter called her name she turned round with a startled cry and put

her hand to her throat. Then she moved back against the window as though

she were afraid that he was going to touch her.

He noticed her movement and the words that he had intended to say were

checked on his lips. He stammered, instead, something about going out.

She nodded her head; she had pulled herself together and walked towards

him from the window.

“Won't you come, too? It is such a lovely day,” he asked her.

“I've got a headache.”

“It'll do your headache good.”

But she shook her head--“No, I'm going upstairs to lie down.”

She moved past him to the door. Then with her hand on it she turned back

to him:--

“Peter, I--” she said.

She seemed to appeal to him with her eyes beseeching, trying to say

something, but the rest of her face was dumb.

The appeal, the things that she would have said suddenly died, leaving

her face utterly without expression.

“Bobby and mother are coming to dinner to-night, aren't they?”

“Yes--”

She passed through the door across the sunlit hall, up the dark stairs.

She walked with that hesitating halting step that he knew so well:

her small, white hand lay, for a moment on the banisters--then she had

disappeared.

IV

Coming through the hall Peter noticed that there was a letter in the

box. He took it out and found, with delight, that it was from Stephen

Brant. He had had no word from him since the day when he and Mr. Zanti

had paid their fateful visit.

The letter said:--

_Dear Mr. Peter,

This is a hurried line to tell you that He is dead at last, died in

drink cursing and swearing and now her mother and she, poor dear, are

going to America and I'm going to look after her hoping that we'll be

marrying in a few months' time and so realise my heart's wish.

Dear Peter I sail on Thursday from Southampton and would be coming to

see you but would not like to inconvenience you as you now are, but my

heart is ever the same to you, Dear Boy, and the day will come when we

can talk over old times once again.

Your affectionate friend, sir,

Now about to be made the happiest man in all the world,

Stephen.

N.B. I hope the little kid is strong and happy.

N.B. Zanti goes with us to America having heard of gold in California

and is to be my best man when the day comes._

So Stephen's long wait was ended at last. Peter's eyes were dimmed as

he put the letter away in his pocket. What a selfish beast, to be sure,

must this same Peter Westcott, be, for here he was wishing--yes, almost

wishing--that Stephen's happiness had not come to him. Always at the

back of everything there had been the thought of Stephen Brant. Let all

the pits in the world gape and yawn, there was one person in the world

to whom Peter was precious. Now--in America--with a wife... some of the

sunlight had gone out of the air and Peter's heart was suddenly cold

with that old dread.

Another friend taken from him! Another link gone! Then he pulled

himself together, tried to rejoice with Stephen at his happiness, failed

dismally, walked down Piccadilly defiantly, with swinging shoulders and

a frowning face, like a sailor in a hostile country, and went into the

Bond Street jeweller's.

He had been there on several former occasions and a large stout man who

looked as though he must have been Lord Mayor several years running came

forward and gave Peter an audience. Precious stones were of no account

in such a place as this, and the ruby pendant looked quite small and

humble when it was brought to Peter--nevertheless it was beautiful and

would suit Clare exactly. It seemed to appeal personally to Peter, as

though it knew that he wanted it for a very especial occasion. This

wasn't one of those persons who would come in and buy you as though you

were dirt. It meant something to Peter. It meant something indeed--it

meant exactly sixty pounds--

“Isn't that rather a lot?” said Peter.

“It's as fine a ruby--” said the dignitary, looking over Peter's head

out of the window, as though he were tired of the affair and wanted to

see whether his car were there.

“I'll take it,” said Peter desperately.

Sixty Pounds! Did one ever hear of such a thing? Sixty pounds ... Never

mind, it marked an occasion. The ruby smiled at Peter as it was slipped

into its case; it was glad that it was going to somebody who hadn't very

many things.

He had several other matters to settle and it was nearly five o'clock

when he turned out of Knightsbridge down Sloane Street. The sun was

slipping behind the Hyde Park Hotel so that already the shadows were

lying along the lower parts of the houses although the roofs were bright

with sunshine.

It was the hour when all the dogs were taken for the last exercise

of the day. Every kind, of dog was there, but especially the fat and

pampered variety--Poms, King Charles, Pekinese, Dachshunds--a few

bigger dogs, and even one mournful-eyed Dane who walked with melancholy

superiority, as a king amongst his vassals.

The street stirred with the patterings of dogs. The light slid down the

sky--voices rang in the clear air softly as though the dying day had

besought them to be tender. The colours of the shops, of the green

trees, of slim and beautifully-dressed houses were powdered with

gold-dust; the church in Sloane Square began to ring its bells.

Peter, as he turned down the street, was cold--perhaps because

Knightsbridge had been blazing with sunshine and the light here was

hidden.... No, it was more than that....

“They say,” he thought, “that Cornishmen always know when a disaster's

coming. If that's true, something ought to be going to happen to me.”

And then, in a flash, that sound that he had been half-subconsciously

expecting, came--the sound of the sea. He could hear it quite

distinctly, a distant, half-determined movement that seemed so vast in

its roll and plunge, so sharp in the shock with which it met the shore,

and yet so subdued that it might be many thousands of miles away. It

was as though a vast tide were dragging back a million shells from an

endless shore--the dragging hiss, the hesitating suspense in mid-air,

and then the rattle of the returning wave.

As though hypnotised he closed his eyes. Yes, he was walking along

the Sea Road. There was that range of rock that lay out at sea like a

crouching dog. There was that white twisting circle of foam that

lay about the Ragged Stone--out there by itself, the rock with the

melancholy bell. Then through the plunging sea he could hear its

note--the moan of some one in pain. And ever that rattle, that hiss,

that suspense, that crash.

“I beg your pardon--” he had run into a lady's maid who was leading a

pompous King Charles. The spaniel eyed him with hatred, the maid with

distrust. He passed on--but the Sea had departed.

To chase away his gathering depression he thought that he would go in

and have tea with Bobby and Alice. It was quite late when he got there,

and stars were in a sky that was so delicate in colour that it seemed as

though it were exhausted by the glorious day that it had had; a little

sickle moon was poised above the Chelsea trees.

To his disgust he found that Percival and Millicent Galleon were having

tea with their brother. Their reception of him very quickly showed him

that “Mortimer Stant” had put a final end to any hopes that they might

have had of his career as an artist.

“How's the book doing, Westcott?” said Percival, looking upon Peter's

loose-fitting clothes, broad shoulders and square-toed shoes with

evident contempt.

“Not very well thank you, Galleon.”

“Ah, well, it didn't quite come off, did it, Westcott?--not quite. Can't

hit the nail every time. Now young Rondel in this Precipice of his has

done some splendid work. We had him to tea the other day and really he

seemed quite a nice unassuming fellow--”

“Oh! shut up,” Bobby growled. “You talk too much, Percival.”

Peter was growing. Quite a short time ago he would have been furious,

would have gone into his shell, refused to speak to anybody, been

depressed and glowering.

Now, smiling, he said:

“Alice, won't you consider it and come up and dine with us after all

to-night? It's only my mother-in-law beside ourselves--”

“No, thanks, Peter. I mustn't. The boy's not quite the thing.”

“Well, all right--if you must.”

Nevertheless, it hurt, although it was only that young ass of a Galleon.

That, though, was one of the pits into which one must not look.

He felt the little square box that contained the ruby, lying there so

snugly in his pocket. That cheered him.

“I must be getting back. Good-night, everybody. See you at dinner,

Bobby.”

He went.

After Percival and his sister had also gone Alice said:--

“Dear Peter's growing up.”

“Yes,” said Bobby. “My sweet young brother wants the most beautiful

kicking and he'll get it very soon.” Then he looked at the clock. “I

must go up and dress.”

“I'm rather glad,” said Alice, “I'm not coming. Clare gets considerably

on my nerves just at present.”

“Yes,” said Bobby, “but thank God Mr. Cardillac's in Paris--for the time

being.” Then he added, reflectively--

“Dear old Peter--bless him!”

CHAPTER XV

MR. WESTCOTT SENIOR CALLS CHECKMATE

I

Peter felt as he closed the hall door behind him that The Roundabout

was both cold and dark. The little hall drew dusk into its corners very

swiftly and now, as he switched on the electric light, he was conscious

almost of protest on the part of the place, as though it wished that it

might have been left to its empty dusk.

A maid passed him.

“Has your mistress gone upstairs?” he asked her.

“I don't think she has come in, sir.”

“Not come in?”

“No, sir, she went out about three o'clock. I don't think she's come

back, sir.”

She's running it pretty close, he thought as he looked at his

watch--then he went slowly up to dress.

He had been more irritated by the superiorities of young Percival

Galleon than he had cared to confess. Peter had, at the bottom of his

soul, a most real and even touching humility. He had no kind of opinion

of his abilities, of his work in comparison with the other workers

that counted. Moreover he would not, were his ultimate critical sense

aroused, fail to admit to himself some certain standard of achievement.

Nothing that young Galleon could say mattered from the critical

standpoint--nevertheless he seemed to represent, in this case, a

universal opinion; even in his rejection of Peter one could see, behind

him, a world of readers withdrawing their approval.

“Peter Westcott's no good.... Peter Westcott's no good.... Peter

Westcott's no good....”

In any case that was quite enough to account for the oppression that

he was feeling--feeling with increasing force as the minutes passed. He

undressed and dressed again slowly, wondering vaguely, loosely, in the

back of his mind, why it was that Clare had not come in. Perhaps she

had come in and the maid had not heard her. He took the ruby out of his

pocket, opened the little case, looked at the jewel shining there under

the electric light, thought of Clare with a sudden rush of passionate

affection. “Dear thing, won't she look lovely in it? Her neck's so white

and she's never worn much jewellery--she'll be pleased. She'll know why

I'm giving it to her now--a kind of seal on what we agreed to the other

night. A new life ... new altogether....”

He was conscious as he took his shirt off that his windows were open and

a strange scent of burning leaves was with him in the room. It was quite

strong, pungent--very pleasant, that sense of burning. Burning leaves

in the orchard.... But it was rather cold. Then he came back to his

looking-glass and, standing there, naked save for his dress trousers,

he saw that he was looking in much better health than he had looked for

weeks. The colour had returned to his face, his eyes were brighter and

more alert--the lines had gone. He was strong and vigorous as he stood

there, his body shining under the glow. He opened and shut his hands

feeling the strength, force, in his fingers. Thick-set, sturdy, with his

shoulders back again now, straight, not bent as they had been.

“Oh, I'm all right--I'm all right you know. I'll write some stuff one

day...” and even behind that his thought was--“that young Galleon, by

jove, I could jolly well break him if I wanted to--just snap him up.”

And then the odour of the burnt leaves filled his nostrils again; when

he had dressed he turned out the light, opened the windows more widely,

and stood for a moment there smelling the smoke, feeling the air on his

forehead, seeing the dark fluttering shadows of the trees, the silver

moon, the dim red haze of the London sky....

II

He went down to his study. Clare must be in now. Bobby would be here

in a few minutes. He took up the _Times_ but his mind wandered. “Mr.

Penning Bruce was at his best last night in the new musical Comedy

produced at the Apollo Theatre--the humour of his performance as

Lieutenant Pottle, a humour never exaggerated nor strained....”

But he couldn't attend. He looked up at the little clock and saw that it

was nearly dinner-time. Bobby ought to be here.

He stood up and listened. The house was profoundly silent. It was often

silent--but to-night it was as though everything in the house--the

furniture, the pictures--were listening--as though The Roundabout itself

listened.

He went into the hall--stood for a moment under the stairs--and then

called “Clare--Clare.” He waited and then again “Clare, Clare--I say,

it's late. Come along--”

There was no answer.

Then, crossing the hall, he opened the door of the little drawing-room

and looked in. It was black and empty--here, too, he could smell the

burning leaves.

He switched on the light and instantly, perched against the Velasquez

Infanta, saw the letter, white and still before the pink and grey of

the picture. At the sight of the letter the room that had been empty and

cold was suddenly burning hot and filled with a thousand voices. “Take

it--take it--why don't you take it? It's been waiting there for you a

long time and we've all been wondering when you were coming in for it.

It's waiting there for you. Take it--take it--take it!”

At the sight of it too, the floor of the room seemed instantly to pitch,

slanting downwards, like the deck of a sinking ship. He caught on to the

back of a chair in order that he might not slip with it. His hands shook

and there was a great pain at his heart, as though some one were pulling

it tight, then squeezing it in their fingers and letting it go again.

Then, as suddenly, all his agitation fled. The room was cold and empty

again, and his hands were steady. He took the letter and read it.

It was written in great agitation and almost illegible, and at the

bottom of the paper there was a dirty smudge that might have been a tear

stain or a finger mark. It ran:

_I must go. I have been so unhappy for so long and we don't get on

together, Peter, now. You don't understand me and I must be happy. I had

always been happy until I married you--perhaps it's partly my fault but

I only hinder your work and there is some one else who loves me. He has

always said so.

I would not have gone perhaps if it had not been for what you did on

April 12. I know because some one saw you getting into a cab at midnight

with that horrible woman. That shows that you don't care about me,

Peter. But perhaps I would have gone anyhow. Once, the night I told you

about baby coming, I told you there'd be a time when you'd have to hold

me. It came--and you didn't see it. You didn't care--you can't have

loved me or you would have seen.... But anything is better than staying

here like this. I am very unhappy now but you will not care. You are

cruel and hard, Peter. You have never understood what a woman wants.

I am going to Jerry in Paris. You can divorce me. I don't care about

anything now. I won't come back--I won't, I won't--Clare._

He read this all through, very carefully with a serious brow. He

finished it and then knew that he had not read a word of it. He went,

slowly, to the window and opened it because the room was of a stifling

heat. Then he took the letter again and read it. As he finished it again

he was conscious that the door-bell was ringing. He wondered why it was

ringing.

He was standing in the middle of the room and speaking to himself:

“The humour of his performance as Lieutenant Pottle, a humour never

exaggerated nor strained ...”

“The humour of his Lieutenant Pottle as a performer--never strained...

never exaggerated... never strained...”

Bobby came in and found him there. Peter's face was so white that his

collar and shirt seemed to be a continuation of his body--a sudden

gruesome nakedness. Both his hands were shaking and his eyes were

puzzled as though he were asking himself some question that he could not

solve.

Bobby started forward--

“God, Peter, what--”

“She's gone away, Bobby,” Peter said, in a voice that shook a little

but was otherwise grave and almost a whisper, so low was it. “She's gone

away--to Cardillac.” Then he added to himself--“Cardillac is my best

friend.”

Then he said “Listen,” and he read the letter straight through. He

repeated some of the phrases--“What you did on April 12.” “That shows

that you don't care.... You are cruel and hard, Peter.... I am going to

Jerry in Paris....”

“Jerry--that's Cardillac, you know, Bobby. He's in Paris and she's going

over to him because she can't stand me any more. She says I don't care

about her. Isn't that funny, when I love her so much?”

Bobby went to him, put his arm round his neck--

“Peter--dear--Peter--wait,” and then “Oh my God! we must stop her--”

He drew himself away from Bobby's arm and, very unsteadily, went

across the room and then stood against the farther wall, his head bent,

motionless.

“Stop her? Oh! no, Bobby. Stop her when she wants to go! I--” His voice

wasn't Peter's voice, it was a thin monotonous voice like some one

speaking at a great distance.

Then it seemed that intelligence was flashed upon him. He lurched

forward and with a great voice--as though he had been struck by some

sudden agonising, immortal pain--

“Bobby--Bobby--My wife--Clare--”

And at that instant Mrs. Rossiter was shown into the room.

III

The maid who opened the door had apparently some suspicion that “things

were odd,” because she waited for a moment before she closed the door

again, staring with wide eyes into the room, catching, perhaps, some

hint from her master's white face that something terrible had occurred.

It was obvious enough that Mrs. Rossiter had herself, during the last

week, been in no easy mind. From the first glances at Peter and Bobby

she seemed to understand everything, for, instantly, at that glimpse

of their faces she became, for the first time in her life, perhaps, a

personality, a figure, something defined and outlined.

Her face was suddenly grey. She hesitated back against the door and,

with her face on Peter, said in a whisper, to Bobby:

“What--what has happened?”

Bobby was not inclined to spare her. As an onlooker during these last

months he felt that she, perhaps, was more guiltily responsible for the

catastrophe than any other human being.

“Clare,” he said, trying to fix her eyes. “She's gone off to

Cardillac--to Paris.”

Then he was himself held by the tragedy of those two faces. They faced

each other across the room. Peter, with eyes and a mouth that were not

his, eyes not sane, the eyes of no human being, mouth smiling, drawn

tight like a razor's edge, with his hands spread out against the wall,

watched Mrs. Rossiter.

Mrs. Rossiter, at Bobby's words, had huddled up, suddenly broken, only

her eyes, in her great foolish expressionless face, stung to an agony to

which the rest of her body could not move.

Her little soul--a tiny scrap of a thing in that vague prison of dull

flesh--was suddenly wounded, desperately hurt by the only weapon that

could ever have found it.

“Clare!” that soul whispered, “not gone! It's not possible--it can't

be--it can't be!”

Peter, without moving, spoke to her.

“It's you that have sent her away. It's all your doing--all your

doing--”

She scarcely seemed to realise him, although her eyes never left his

face--she came up to Bobby, her hands out:

“Bobby--please, please--tell me. This is absurd--there's a mistake.

Clare, Clare would never do a thing like that--never leave me like

that--why--” and her voice rose--“I've loved her--I've loved her as

no mother ever loved her girl--she's been everything to me. She knows

it--why she often says that I'm the only one who loves her. She'd never

go--”

Then Peter came forward from the wall, muttering, waving his hands at

her--“It's you! You! You! You've driven her to this--you and your

cursed interference. You took her from me--you told her to deceive me

in everything. You taught her to lie and trick. She loved me before you

came into it. Now be proud, if you like--now be proud. God damn you,

for making your daughter into a whore--That's what you've done, you

with your flat face, your filthy flat face--you've made your daughter a

whore, I tell you--and it's nothing but you--you--you--!”

He lifted his hand as though he would strike her across the face. She

said nothing but started back with her hands up as though to protect

herself. He did not strike her. His hand fell. But she, as though she

had felt a blow had her hand held to her face.

He stood over her for a moment laughing, his head flung back. Then still

laughing he went away from them out into the hall.

Then, through the open door they heard him. He passed through the upper

rooms crying out as he went--“Clare! Clare! Where are you? Come down!

They're here for dinner! You're wanted! It's time, Clare!--where are

you? Clare! Clare!”

They heard him, knocking furniture over as he went. Then there was

silence. Mrs. Rossiter seemed, at that, to come to herself. She stood

up, feeling her cheek.

“It's sent him off his head, Bobby. Go after him. He'll hurt himself.”

Then as though to herself, she went on--“I must find Clare--she'll be in

Paris, I suppose. I must go and find her, Bobby. She'll want me badly.”

She went quietly from the room, still with her hand to her cheek. She

listened for a moment in the hall.

She turned round to Bobby:

“It doesn't say--the letter--where Clare's gone?”

“No--only Paris.”

He helped her on with her cloak and opened the front door for her. She

slipped away down the street.

Bobby turned back and saw that Peter was coming down the stairs. But now

the fury had all died from his face, only that look, as of some animal

wounded to death, a look that was so deep and terrible as almost to give

his white face no expression at all, was with him.

It had been with him at Stephen's death, it was with him far more

intensely now. He looked at Bobby.

“She's gone,” in a tired, dull voice as of some one nearly asleep, “gone

to Cardillac. I loved Cards--and all the time he loved Clare. I loved

Clare and all the time she loved Cards. It's damned funny isn't it,

Bobby, old man?”

He stood facing him in the hall, no part of him moving except his mouth.

“She says I treated her like a brute. I don't think I did. She says

there was something I did one night--I don't know. I've never done

anything--I've never been with another woman--something about a

cab--Perhaps it was poor Rose Bennett. Poor Rose Bennett--damned

unhappy--so am I--so am I. I'm a lonely fellow--I always have been!”

He went past Bobby, back into the little drawing-room. Bobby followed

him.

He turned round.

“You can go now, Bobby. I shan't want you any more.”

“No, I'm going to stay.”

“I don't want you--I don't want any one.”

“I'm going to stay.”

“I'd rather you went, please.”

“I'm going to stay.”

Peter paid no more attention. He went and sat down on a chair by the

window. Bobby sat down on a chair near him.

Once Peter said: “They took my baby. They took my work. They've taken my

wife. They're too much for me. I'm beaten.”

Then there was absolute silence in the house. The servants, who had

heard the tumbling of the furniture, crept, frightened to bed.

Thus The Roundabout, dark, utterly without sound, stayed through the

night. Once, from the chair by the window in the little drawing-room

a voice said, “I'm going back to Scaw House--to my father. I'm going

back--to all of them.”

During many hours the little silver clock ticked cheerfully, seeing

perhaps with its little bright eyes, the two dark figures and wondering

what they did there.

BOOK IV -- SCAW HOUSE

CHAPTER I

THE SEA

I

Peter Westcott was dead.

They put his body into the 11.50 from Paddington.

II

It was a day of high, swinging winds, of dappled skies, of shining

gleaming water. Bunches now and again of heavy black clouds clustered

on the horizon, the cows and horses in the fields were sharply defined,

standing out rigidly against a distant background. The sun came and was

gone, laughed and was instantly hidden, turned the world from light to

shadow and from shadow back to light again.

Peter's body was alone in the compartment. It was propped up against

red velvet that yielded with a hard, clenched resistance, something

uncomfortable, had the body minded. The eyes of the body were the high

blank windows of a deserted house. Behind them were rooms and passages,

but lately so gaily crowded, so eager, with their lights and fires,

for hustling life--now suddenly empty--swept of all its recent company,

waiting for new, for very different inhabitants.

The white hands motionless upon the knees, the eyes facing the light

but blind, the body still against the velvet, throughout the long, long

day....

III

There were occasions when some one came and asked for his ticket. Some

one came once and asked him whether “He would take lunch.” Once a woman,

flushed and excited, laden with parcels, tumbled into his carriage and

then, after a glance at the white face, tumbled out again.

Then, from very, very far away, came the first whispered breath of

returning consciousness. The afternoon sun now had banished the black

clouds--the wind had fallen--the sky was a quiet blue and birds rose and

fell, rivers shone and had passed, roads were white like ribbons, broad

and brown like crinkled paper, then ribbons again as the train flung

Devonshire, scornfully, behind its back. Peter was conscious that his

body was once more to be tenanted. But by whom?

Here was some one coming to him now, some one who, as the evening light

fell about the land, dark with his cloak to his face, came softly upon

the house and knocked at the door. Peter could hear his knock--it echoed

through the empty passages, the deserted rooms, it was a knock that

demanded, imperatively, admittance. The door swung back, the black

passages gaped upon the evening light and were closed again. The house

was once more silent--but no longer untenanted.

IV

Peter was now conscious of the world. That was Exeter that they had left

behind them and soon there would be Plymouth and then the crossing of

the bridge and then--Cornwall!

Cornwall! His lips were dry--he touched them with his tongue, and knew,

suddenly, that he was thirsty, more thirsty than he had ever been.

He would never be hungry again, but he would always be thirsty. An

attendant passed. What should he drink? The attendant suggested a whisky

and soda. Yes ... a large whisky....

It was very long indeed since he had been in Cornwall--he had not been

there since his boyhood. What had he been doing all the time in between?

He did not know--he had no idea. This new tenant of the house was

not aware of those intervening years, was only conscious that he was

returning after long exile, to his home--Scaw House, yes, that was the

name ... the house with the trees and the grey stone walls--yes, he

would be glad to be at home again with his father. His father would

welcome him after so long an absence.

The whisky and soda was brought to him and as he drank it they crossed

the border and were in Cornwall.

V

They were at Trewth, that little station where you must change for

Treliss. It stood open to all the winds of heaven, two lines of paling,

a little strip of platform, standing desolately, at wistful attention

in the heart of gently breathing fields, mild skies, dark trees bending

together as though whispering secrets ... all mysterious, and from

the earth there rose that breath--sea-wind, gorse, soil, saffron, grey

stone--that breath that is only Cornwall.

Peter--somewhere in some strange dim recesses of his soul--felt it about

his body. The wind, bringing all these scents, touched his cheek and his

hair and he was conscious that that dark traveller who now tenanted

his house closed the doors and windows upon that breath. It might

waken consciousness, and consciousness memory, and memory pain ... ah!

pain!--down with the shutters, bolt the doors--no vision of the outer

world must enter here.

The little station received gratefully the evening light that had

descended upon it. A few men and women, dim bundles of figures against

the pale blue, waited for the train, a crescent moon was stealing above

the hedges, from the chimneys of two little cottages grey smoke trembled

in the air.

Suddenly there came to Peter, waiting there, the determination to drive.

He could not stand there, surrounded by this happy silence any longer.

All those shadows that were creeping about the dark spaces beyond his

house were only waiting for their moment when they might leap. This

silence, this peace, would give them that moment. He must drive--he must

drive.

In the road outside the station a decrepit cab with a thin rake of a man

for driver was waiting for a possible customer. The cab was faded, the

wheels encrusted with ancient mud, the horse old and wheezy, but the

cabman, standing now thinner than ever against the sky, was, in spite of

a tattered top hat, filled with that cheerful optimism that belongs to

the Cornishman who sees an opportunity of “doing” a foreigner.

“I want to drive to Treliss,” said Peter.

They bargained. The battered optimist obtained the price that he

demanded and cocked his eye, derisively, at the rising moon.

Peter surveyed the cab.

“I'll sit with you on the box,” he said.

The thin driver made way for him. It was a high jolting cab of the

old-fashioned kind, a cab you might have sworn was Cornish had you

seen it anywhere, a cab that smelt of beer and ancient leather and salt

water, a cab that had once driven the fashion of Treliss to elegant

dances and now must rattle the roads with very little to see, for all

your trouble, at the end of it.

The sleeping fields, like grey cloths, stretched on every side of them

and the white road cut into the heart of the distance. It was a quarter

to eight and a blue dusk. The driver tilted the top hat over one ear and

they were off.

“I know this road as yer might say back'ards. Ask any one down along

Treliss way. Zachy Jackson they'll say--which is my name, sir, if yer

requirin' a good 'orse any time o' day. Zachy Jackson! which there ain't

no man,--tarkin' of 'orses, fit to touch 'im, they'll tell yer and not

far wrong either.”

But now with every stumbling step of that bony horse Peter was being

shaken into a more active consciousness, consciousness not of the

past, very slightly of the present, but rather of an eager, excited

anticipation of events shortly to befall him, of the acute sense--the

first that had, as yet, come to him--that, very shortly, he was to

plunge himself into an absolute abandonment of all the restraints and

discipline that had hitherto held him. He did not know, he could not

analyse to himself--for what purpose those restraints had been formerly

enforced upon his life. Only now--at this moment, his body was being

flooded with a warm, riotous satisfaction at the thought of the

indulgences that were to be his.

Still this fortress of his house was bare and desolated, but now in some

of the rooms there were lights, fire, whispers, half-hidden faces, eyes

behind curtains.

The wind struck him in the face. “Enough of this--you're done

for--you're beaten--you're broken... you're going back to your hovel.

You're creeping home--don't make a fine thing of it--” the wind said.

The top of the hill rolled up to them and suddenly with the gust

that came from every quarter there was borne some sound. It was very

delicate, very mysterious--the sound, one might fancy, that the earth

would make if all spring flowers were to pierce the soil at one common

instant--so fugitive a whisper.

“That's the sea,” said Mr. Jackson, waving his whip in the air, “down to

Dunotter Cove. There's a wind to-night. It'll blow rough presently.”

Now from their hilltop in the light of a baby moon puddles of water

shone like silk, hedges were bending lines of listeners, far on the

horizon a black wood, there in one of those precipitous valleys cottages

cowering, overhead the blue night sky suddenly chequered with solemn

pompous slowly moving clouds. But here on the hilltop at any rate, a

bustle of wind--such a noise amongst the hedges and the pools instantly

ruffled and then quiet again; and so precipitous a darkness when a cloud

swallowed the moon. In the daylight that landscape, to any who loved

not Cornwall, would seem ugly indeed, with a grey cottage stuck here and

there naked upon the moor, with a bare deserted engine house upon the

horizon, with trees, deep in the little valley, but scant and staggering

upon the hill--ugly by day but now packed with a mystery that contains

everything that human language has no name for, there is nothing to do,

on beholding it, but to kneel down and worship God. Mr. Jackson had seen

it often before and he went twice to chapel every Sunday, so he just

whipped up his horse and they stumbled down the road.

“Dirty weather coming,” he said.

Peter was disturbed. That whispering noise that had crept across the

country frightened him. If it went on much longer it would make him

remember--he must not remember.

They turned down into a deep, mysterious lane and the whisper was

hidden. Now there was about them only the urgent crowding of the hedges,

the wild-flowers flinging their scent on to the night air, and above and

below and on every side of the old cab there streamed into the air the

sweet smell of crushed grass, as though many fields had been pressed

between giant's fingers and so had been left.

Peter sat there and about him, like flames licking woodwork, evil

thoughts devoured his body. He was going now at last to do all those

things that, these many years, he had prevented himself from doing. That

at any rate he knew.... He would drink and drink and drink, until he

would never remember anything again ... never again.... Meanwhile as

the cab slowly began to climb the hill again Mr. Jackson was telling a

story.

He rolled his r's as though life were indeed a valuable and happy thing,

and now and again, waving his thin whip in the air, he would seem to

appeal to the moon.

“'Twas down to Dunotter Cove and I, a lad, my father bein' a fisherman,

and one night, I mind it as though it were yesterday, there was a mighty

wreck. Storm and wind and rain there was that night and there we were,

out in it, suddenly, all the village of us. I but a slip of a boy, you

must know, which it was thirty year back now and the rain sizzling on

the cobbles and the wind blawin' the chimneys crooked. Well--she were a

mighty wreck blawn right up against the Dunotter rocks, you understand,

and sendin' up rockets and we seein' her clear enough, black out to sea

which she seemed enormous in the night time and all. My father and

the rest of 'em went out in the boat--we waited and we waited and they

didn't come back.... They never come back--none of them only a crazed

luny, Bill Tregothny--'e was washed up against the rocks down to

Bosillian and 'e were just livin' ... And when it come daylight,”--Mr.

Jackson cleared his throat and paused--“when it come daylight there

wasn't no wreck--nothing--nor no bodies neither--nothing--only Bill

Tregothny the fool....”

Peter had heard no single word of this. His ears were straining for the

return of that whisper. They were nearly once again at the hilltop. Then

in front of them there would be the sea--at the top of the hill there

would be the sea.... He was seized with a great terror--frightened like

a child in the dark.... “Bill Tregothny, you must understand sir, 'ad

always been a idiot--always, born so. When 'e was all well again 'e told

strange tales about the lot of them havin' boarded the vessel and there

bein' gold all over the decks--bars of it with the rain fallin' all

about it--piled in 'eaps and 'e said the sailors weren't like common

sailors yer knew, but all in silks with cocked hats and the gold lyin'

all about--

“O course Bill was the idiot you must understand, but it's true enough

that there were no vessel in the marnin'--no vessel at all--and my

father and the rest were never seen again--nor no bodies neither.... And

they _do_ say--”

Here Mr. Jackson dropped his voice--

They were just at the top of the hill now. Peter was sitting with his

hands clenched, his body trembling.

“... They do say that up in the potato field over Dunotter they've seen

a man all in a cocked hat and red silk and gold lace--a ghost you must

understand, sir--which Bill Tregothny says ...”

The sea broke upon them with an instant, menacing roar. Between them

and this violence there was now only moorland, rough with gorse bushes,

uneven with little pits of sand, scented with sea pinks, with stony

tracks here and there where the moonlight touched it.

But across it, like a mob's menace, fell the thunder, flung up to them

from below, swelling from a menace to a sudden crash, then from crash to

echo, dying to murmur again. It had in it anger and power, also pity and

tenderness, also scorn and defiance. It cared for no one--it loved every

one. It was more intimate than any confidence ever made, and then it

shouted that intimacy to the whole world. It flung itself into Peter's

face, beat his body, lashed his soul--“Oh! you young fool--you've come

slinking back, have you? After all these years you've come slinking

back. Where are all your fine hopes now, where all those

early defiances, those vast ambitions?--Worthless, broken,

defeated--worthless, broken, defeated.”

And then it seemed to change:

“Peter--Peter--Hold out a little longer--the battle isn't over

yet--struggle on for a little, Peter--I'll help you--I'll bring your

courage back to you--Trust me, Peter--trust me....”

Through the rattle of the surf there came the sick melancholy lowing of

the Bell Rock; swinging over a space of waters it fell across fields,

unutterably, abominably sad.

And in the boy there instantly leapt to life his soul. Maimed and

bruised and stunned it had been--now alive, tearing him, bringing on

to his bending shoulders an awful tide of knowledge: “Everything is

gone--your wife, your boy, your friend, your work.... We have won,

Peter, we have won. The House is waiting for you....”

And above those dreadful voices the thundering echo, indifferent to his

agonies, despising his frailties, flinging him, sea-wreck of the most

miserable, to any insignificant end....

Peter suddenly stood up, rocking on his box. He seized the whip from the

driver's hands. He lashed the miserable horse.

“Get on, you devil, get on--leave this noise behind you--get out of it,

get out of it--”

The cab rocked and tossed, Mr. Jackson caught the boy about the

shoulders, held him down. The horse, tired and weary, paid no heed to

anything that might be happening but stumbled on.

“Good Lord, sir,” Mr. Jackson cried, “you might have had us over--What's

it all about, sir?”

But Peter now was huddled down with his coat about his ears and did not

move again.

“Catchin' the whip like that--might 'ave 'ad us right into the 'edge,”

muttered Mr. Jackson, wishing his journey well over.

As they turned the corner the lights of Treliss burst into view.

CHAPTER II

SCAW HOUSE

I

Mr. Jackson inquired as to the hotel that Peter preferred and was told

to drive anywhere, so he chose The Man at Arms.

The Man at Arms had been turned, by young Mr. Bannister, from a small

insignificant hostelry into the most important hotel in the West of

England. It stood above the town, looking over the bay, the roofs of the

new town, the cottages of the old one, the curving island to the right,

the lighthouse to the left--all Cornwall in those grey stones, that blue

sea, the grave fishing boats, the flocks of gulls, far, far below.

Mr. Bannister had spared no trouble over The Man at Arms, and now it

was luxuriously modern Elizabethan, with an old Minstrels' Gallery kept

studiously dusty, and the most splendid old oak and deep fire-places

with electric light cunningly arranged, and baths in every passage.

Of course you paid for this skilful and comfortable romance, but Mr.

Bannister always managed his bills so delicately that you expected to

find a poem by Suckling or Lovelace on the back of them. When Peter had

been last in Treliss The Man at Arms had scarcely existed, but he was

now utterly unconscious of it, and stood in the dim square hall talking

to Mr. Bannister like a man in a dream.

He was aware now that he was exhausted with a fatigue that was beyond

anything that he had ever experienced. It was a weariness that was

not, under any conditions, to be resisted. He must lie down--here,

anywhere--now, at once and sleep ... sleep ... sleep.

Mr. Bannister caught him by the arm as he swayed.

“You looked played out, sir.”

“Done up... done up!”

His eyes were closed. Then suddenly he had touched Mr. Bannister's

shoulder. He was looking at a wire letter rack, hanging by the

superintendent's little office. There were some telegrams and many

letters stretched behind the wire netting. One envelope was addressed--

_Miss Norah Monogue,

The Man at Arms Hotel.

Treliss,

Cornwall._

“Miss Monogue ... Miss Monogue ... have you any one here called Miss

Monogue?”

“Yes, sir--been here some weeks. Poor lady, she's very ill I'm afraid.

Something to do with her heart--strained it in some way. Seemed much

better ... but the last few days....”

Peter stumbled upstairs to his room.

II

Some clock was striking five when he awoke and looking vaguely about

his room saw, by the light, that it must be late afternoon. He must have

slept for a day and a night. As he lay back on his bed his first moments

of consciousness were filled with a pleasant sense of rest and ease. He

remembered nothing ... he only knew that in the air there was the breath

of flowers and that through the open window there floated up to him a

song, a murmur of the sea, a rattle of little carts.

He looked about his room. On a distant wall there was a

photograph--“Dunotter Rocks, from the East.” Then he remembered.

He flung the bed-clothes off him and hurried to dress. He must go up to

Scaw House at once, at once, at once. Not another moment must be wasted.

His hands trembled as he put on his clothes and when he came downstairs

he was dishevelled and untidy. He had eaten nothing for many hours but

food now would have choked him. He hurried out of the hotel.

The town must have had many recollections to offer him had he observed

it but he passed through it, looking neither to the right nor the left,

brushing people aside, striding with great steps up the steep cobbled

street that leads out of the town, on to the Sea Road.

Here on the Sea Road he paused. The wind, tearing, as it had always

done, round the corner met him and for a moment he had to pull himself

together and face it. He remembered, too, at that instant, Norah

Monogue. Where had he seen her? What had brought her to his mind

quite lately? What did she mean by interfering?--interfering? Then he

remembered. It was her name in the letter rack. She was at The Man at

Arms ill. Impatiently, he would have driven her from him, but all the

way down the Sea Road she kept pace with him.

“I'm done with her.... I'm done with everybody. Damn it all, one keeps

thinking....”

In the evening light the sea below the road was a pale blue and near

the shore a calm green. It was all very peaceful. The water lapped the

shore, the Bell Rock sighed its melancholy note across space; out a

little way, when some jagged stones sprang like shoulders from the blue,

gentle waves ringed them in foam like lace and broke with a whisper

against their sides.

Except for the sea there was absolute silence. Peter alone seemed to

walk the world. As he strode along his excitement increased and his

knees trembled and his eyes were burning. He did not think of the

earlier days when he had walked that same road. That was another

existence that had nothing to do with him as he was now. The

anticipation that possessed him was parallel with the eager demand of

the opium-smoker. “Soon I shall be drugged. I'm going to forget, to

forget, to forget. Just to let myself go--to sink, to drown.”

He had still with him the consciousness of keeping at bay an army of

thoughts that would leap upon him if he gave them an opportunity. But

soon that would be all over--no more battle, no more struggle. He turned

the corner and saw Scaw House standing amongst its dark trees, with its

black palings in front of its garden and the deserted barren patch of

field in front of that again. The sun was getting low and the sky above

the house was flaming but the trees were sombre and the house was cold.

It did not seem to him to have changed in any way since he had left it.

The windows had always been of a grim hideous glass, the stone shape of

the place always squat and ugly, and the short flight of steps that led

up to the heavy beetling door had always hinted, with their old hard

surface, at a surly welcome and a reluctant courtesy. It was all as it

had been.

The sky, now a burning red, looked down upon an utterly deserted

garden, and the silence that was over all the place seemed to rise, like

streaming mist, from the heart of the nettles that grew thick along the

crumbling wall.

The paint had faded from the door and the knocker was rusty; as Peter

hammered his arrival on to the flat silence a bird flew from the black

bunch of trees, whirred into the air and was gone....

For a long time after the echo of his knock had faded away there was

silence, and it seemed to him that this could be only another of those

dreams--those dreams when he had stood on the stone steps in the heart

of the deserted garden and woken the echoes through the empty house. At

last there were steps; some one came along the passage and halted on the

other side of the door and listened. They both waited on either side,

and Peter could hear heavy thick breathing. He caught the knocker again

and let it go with a clang that seemed to startle the house to its

foundations. Then he heard bolts, very slowly drawn back, again a pause

and then, stealthily the door swung open.

A scent of rotten apples met him as the door opened, a scent so strong

that it was confused at once with his vision of the woman who stood

there, she, with her gnarled and puckered face, her brown skin

and crooked nose standing, as it were, for an actual and visible

personification of all the rotten apples that had ever been in the

world.

He recognised also a sound, the drunken hesitating hiccough of the old

clock that had been there when he had come in that evening long ago

ready to receive his beating, that had kept pace with his grandfather's

snorings and mutterings and had seemed indeed, the only understanding

companion that the old man had ever had. The woman was, he saw, the

arms-akimbo ferocious cook of the old days, but now how wrinkled and

infirm!--separated by so many more years than the lapse of time allowed

her from the woman of his past appearance there. There was more in her

than the mere crumbling of her body, there was also the crumbling of

her spirit, and he saw in her old bleared eyes the sign of some fierce

battle fought by her, and fought to her own utter defeat.

In her eyes he saw the thing that his father had become....

What did he want, she asked him, coming disturbing them at that hour,

but in her face there was, he fancied, something more than the surly

question justified, some curiosity, some eagerness that seemed to show

that she did not have many visitors here and that their company might be

an eager relief.

“I'm Peter Westcott and I've come to see my father.”

She did not answer this, but only, with her hand to her breast stood

back a little and watched him with frightened eyes. She was wearing an

old, faded, green blouse, open at her scraggy neck and her skirt was a

kind of bed-quilt, odd bits of stuffs of many colours stuck together.

Her scanty hair was pulled into a bunch on the top of her head, her face

where it was not brown was purple, and her hands were always shaking

so that her fingers rattled together like twigs. But her alarmed and

startled eyes had some appeal that made one pity her poor battered old

body.

“You don't remember me,” he said, looking into her frightened eyes. But

she shook her head slowly.

“You'd much better have kept away,” she said.

“Where is he?” he asked her.

She shuffled in front of him down the dark hall. Except for this strange

smell of rotting apples it was all very much as it had been. The lamp

hanging at the foot of the stairs made the same spluttering noise and

there was the door of the room that had once been his grandfather's, and

Peter fancied that he could still see the old man swaying there in the

doorway, laughing at his son and his grandson as they struggled there on

the floor.

The woman pushed open the dining-room door and Peter went in.

Peter's first thought was that his father was not there. He saw standing

in front of the well-remembered fireplace a genial-looking gentleman

clothed in a crimson dressing-gown--a bald gentleman, rather fat, with a

piece of toast in one hand and a glass of something in the other. Peter

had expected he knew not what--something stern and terrible, something

that would have answered in one way or another to those early

recollections of terror and punishment that still dwelt with him. He had

remembered his father as short, spare, black-haired, grim, pale--this

gentleman, who was now watching him, bulged in the cheeks and the

stomach, was highly coloured with purple veins down the sides of his

nose and his rather podgy hands trembled. Nevertheless, it was his

father. When the red dressing-gown spoke it was in a kind of travesty

of that old sharp voice, those cutting icy words--a thickened and

degenerate relation:

“My boy! At last!” the gentleman said.

The room presented disorder. On the table were scattered playing cards,

a chair was overturned, under the cactus plant lay what looked like a

fiddle, and the only two pictures on the wall were very indecent old

drawings taken apparently from some Hogarthian prints.

Peter stared at all this in amazement. It was, after the grim approach

and the deserted garden, like finding an Easter egg in a strong box.

Peter saw that his father was wearing under the dressing-gown a white

waistcoat and blue trousers, both of them stained with dark stains and

smelling very strongly of whisky. He noticed also that his father seemed

to find it difficult to balance himself on both his legs at the same

time, and that he was continually shifting his feet in an indeterminate

kind of way, as though he would like to dance but felt that it might not

be quite the thing.

Mr. Westcott closed up both his eyes, opened his mouth and shut it again

and shook Peter excitedly by the hand. At the same time Peter felt that

his father was shaking his hand as much because he wanted to hold on to

something as for reasons of courtesy.

“Well, I am glad. I wondered when you would come to see your poor old

father again--after all these years. I've often thought of you and said

to myself, 'Well, he'll come back one day. You only be patient,' I've

said to myself, 'and your son will come back to you--your only son, and

it isn't likely that he's going to desert you altogether.'”

“Yes, father, I've come back,” said Peter, releasing his hand. “I've

come back to stay.”

He thought of the many times in London when he'd pictured his father,

stern and dark, pulling the wires, dragging his wicked son back to

him--he thought of that ... and now this. And yet....

“Well now, isn't that pleasant--you've come to stay! Could I have wanted

anything better? Come and sit down--yes, that chair--and have something

to drink. What, you won't? Well, perhaps later. So you've come to keep

your old father company, have you? I'm sure that's delightful. Just what

a son ought to do. We shall get along very well, I'm sure.”

All the while that his father talked, still holding the toast and

the glass of something, Peter was intensely conscious of the silent

listening house. After all that grimness, that desertion, the old

woman's warning had gone for something. And yet, in spite of a kind of

dread that hung about him, in spite of a kind of perception that there

was a great deal more in his father than he at present perceived, he

could not resist a kind of warm pleasure that here at any rate was some

sort of a haven, that no one else in the world might want him, but here

was some one who was glad to see him.

“Well, my boy, tell me all you've been doing these years.”

“I've been in London, writing--”

“Dear, dear--have you really now? And how's it all turned out?”

“Badly.”

“Dear me, I'm sorry for that. But there are better things in the world

than writing, believe me. I dare say, my boy, you thought me unkind in

those old days but it was all for your best--oh dear me, yes, entirely

for your best.”

Here, for an instant, his father's voice sounded so like his old

grandfather's that Peter jumped.

“Married?” said his father.

“My wife has left me--”

“Dear me, I am sorry to hear that.” Mr. Westcott finished the toast

and wiped his fingers on a very old and dirty red handkerchief.

“Women--bless them--angels for a time, but never to be depended on. Poor

boy, I'm sorry. Children?”

“I had a son. He died.”

“Well now, I am indeed sorry, I'd have liked a grandson too. Don't want

the old Westcott stock to die out. Dear me, that is a pity.”

It was at this point that Peter was aware, although he could not have

given any reasonable explanation of his certainty, that his father had

been perfectly assured beforehand of all the answers to these questions.

Peter looked at the man, but the eyes were almost closed, and the smile

that played about the weak lips--once so stern and strong--told one

nothing.

It was dark now. Mr. Westcott got, somewhat unsteadily, to his feet.

“Come,” he said, “I'll show you the house, my boy. Not changed much

since you were here, I'm sure. Wanted a woman's care since your dear

mother died of course--and your poor old grandfather--”

He whispered over again to himself as he shuffled across the room--“your

poor old grandfather--”

It had seemed to grow very suddenly dark. Outside in the hall, under the

spluttering lamp, Mr. Westcott found a candle. The house was intensely

silent.

As they climbed the stairs, lighted only by the flickering candle-light,

Peter's feelings were a curious mixture of uneasiness and a strange

unthinking somnolence. Some part of him, somewhere, was urging him to an

active unrest--“Norah ... what does she want interfering? I'll just go

and see her and come back.... No, I won't, I'll just stay here ... never

to bother again ... never to bother again....”

He was also, in some undefined way, expecting that at any moment

his father would change. The crimson dressing-gown swayed under the

flickering candle-light. Let it turn round and what would one see inside

it? His father never stopped talking for an instant--his thick wandering

voice was the only sound in the deserted house.

The rooms were all empty. They smelt as though the windows had not

been opened for years. It was in the little room that had once been his

bedroom that the apples were stored--piles upon piles of them and most

of them rotten. The smell was all over the house.

Mr. Westcott, standing with the apples on every side of him, flung

monstrous shadows upon the wall--“This used to be your room. I remember

I used to whip you here when you were disobedient. The only way to bring

up your child. The Westcotts have always believed in it. Dear me, how

long ago it all seems ... you can have this room again if you like.

Any room in the house you please. We'll be very good company for one

another....”

All about Peter there was an atmosphere of extraordinary languor--just

to sit here and let the days slip by, the years pass. Just to stay here

with no one to hurt one, no need for courage....

They were out in the long passage. Mr. Westcott came and placed his

hand upon Peter's arm. The whole house was a great cool place where one

slept. Mr. Westcott smiled into Peter's face ... the house was silent

and dark and oh! so restful. The candle swelled to an enormous size--the

red dressing-gown seemed to enfold Peter.

In another moment he would have fallen asleep there where he stood. With

the last struggle of a drowning man he pulled back his fading senses.

“I must go back to the hotel and fetch my things.” He could see his

father's eyes that had been wide open disappear.

“We can send for them.”

“No, I must go for them myself--”

For a moment they faced one another. He wondered what his father

intended to do. Then--with a genial laugh, Mr. Westcott said: “Well, my

boy, just as you please--just as you please. I know you'll come back to

your old father--I know you'll come back--”

He blew the candle out and put his arm through his son's and they went

downstairs together.

CHAPTER III

NORAH MONOGUE

I

Peter found, next morning, Miss Monogue sitting by her window. She gave

him at once the impression of something kept alive by a will-power so

determined that Death himself could only stand aside and wait until it

might waver.

She was so thin that sitting there in the clear white colours of the

sky beyond her window she seemed like fine silk, something that, at an

instant's breath, would be swept like a shadow, into the air. She wore

something loose and white and over her shoulders there was a grey shawl.

Her grey hair was as untidy as of old, escaping from the order that it

had been intended to keep and falling over her beautiful eyes, so that

continually she moved her hand--so thin and white with its deep purple

veins--to push it back. In this still white figure the eyes burnt with

an amazing fire. What eyes they were!

One seemed, in the old days, to have denied them their proper splendour,

but now in this swiftly fading body they had gathered more life and

vigour, showing the soul that triumphed over so slender a mortality.

She seemed to Peter, as he came into the room, to stand for so much

more than he had ever hitherto allowed her. Here, in her last furious

struggle to keep a life that had given to her nothing worth having, he

saw suddenly emblazoned about him, the part that she had played in his

life, always from the first moment that he had known her--a part that

had been, by him, so frequently neglected, so frequently denied.

As she turned and saw him he was ashamed at the joy that his coming

so obviously brought her. He felt her purity, her unselfishness, her

single-heartedness, her courage, her nobility in that triumphant

welcome that she gave him. That she should care so much for any one so

worthless, so fruitless as he had proved himself to be!

He had come to her with some dim sense that it was kind of him to visit

her; he advanced to her now across the room with a consciousness that

she was honouring him by receiving him at all.

That joy, with which she had at first greeted him, had in it also

something of surprise. He had forgotten how greatly these last terrible

days must have altered his appearance--he told much more than he knew,

and the little sad attempt that he made, as he came to her, to present

as careless and happy an appearance as he had presented in the old

Brockett days was more pathetic and betraying than anything he could

have done.

But she just closed both her burning hands about his cold one, made him

sit down in a chair by her side and, trembling with the excited joy of

having him with her, forced him to determine that, whatever came of it,

he would keep his troubles from her, would let her know nothing of his

old chuckling father and the shadowy welcome that Scaw House had flung

over him, would be still the Peter that he had been when he had seen her

last in London.

“Peter! How splendid to have you here! When Mr. Bannister told me last

night I could have cried for happiness, and he, dear little man, was

surely as pleased to see me happy as though I'd been his own sister.”

“I'd just come down--” Peter began, trying to smile and conscious with

an alarm that surprised him, of her fragility and the way that her hand

went now and again to her breast, as though to relieve some pain there.

“Are you sure--” he broke off, “that I'm not doing you harm coming like

this--not agitating you too much, not exciting you?”

“Harm! Why, Peter,” she was smiling but he noticed too that her eyes

were searching his face, as though to find some clue to the change that

they saw there--“Why it's all the good in the world. It's what I've been

wanting all this time. Some change, a little excitement, for I've been

here, you know, quite a number of weeks alone--and that it should be

you--you! of all people in this lovely exciting surprising world.”

“How did it happen?” he asked, “your coming down?”

“After I saw you last--I was very bad. My stupid old heart.... And the

doctor said that I must get away, to the sea or somewhere. Then--what

do you think?--the dears, all of them in Brockett's put their heads

together and got me quite a lot of money.... Oh! the darlings, and they

just as poor as church mice themselves. Of course I couldn't insult them

by not taking it. They'd have been hurt for ever--so I just pocketed my

pride and came down here.”

“Why Treliss?” asked Peter.

“Well, hadn't you so often talked about it? Always, I'd connected you

with it in my mind and thought that one day I'd come down and see it.

I suggested it to the doctor--he said it was the very place. I used

to hope that one day you'd be with me here to explain it, but I never

expected it... not so soon... not like this.”

Her voice faltered a little and her hand held his more tightly.

They were silent. The sounds of the world came, muffled, up to their

window, but they were only conscious of one another.

Peter knew that, in another instant, he would tell her everything. He

had always told her everything--that is what she had been there for,

some one, like an elder sister, to whom he might go and confess.

At last it came. Very softly she asked him:

“Peter, what's the matter? Why are you here? What's happened?”

Staring before him out of the window, seeing nothing but the high white

light of the upper sky, his heart, as it seemed to him, lying in his

hands like a stone to be tossed lightly out there into space, he told

her:

“Everything's happened. Clare has run off with my best friend.... It has

just happened like that. I don't blame her, she liked him better--but

I--didn't know--it was going... to happen.”

He didn't look at her, but he heard her catch her breath sharply and he

felt her hand tighten on his. They were silent for a long time and

he was dimly aware in some unanalysed way that this was what she had

expected ever since he had come into the room.

“Oh!” she said at last, holding his hand very tightly, “I'm sorry, I'm

sorry--”

He had seen, of course, from the beginning that this business must be

told her, but his one desire was to hurry through it, to get it done and

banished, once and for all, from their conversation.

“It happened,” he went on gruffly, “quite suddenly. I wasn't in any way

prepared for it. She just went off to Paris, after leaving a letter.

With the death of the boy and the failure of my book--it just seemed the

last blow--the end.”

“The end--at thirty?” she said softly, almost to herself, “surely,

no--with the pluck that you've got--and the health. What are you going

to do--about it all?”

“To do?” he smiled bitterly. “Do you suppose that I will ask her to come

back to me? Do you suppose that I want her back? No, that's all done

with. All that life's finished.” Then he added slowly, not looking at

her as he spoke--“I'm going to live with my father.”

He remembered, clearly enough, that he had told her many things about

his early life at Scaw House. He knew that she must now, as he flung

that piece of information at her, have recalled to herself all those

things that he had told her. He felt rather than perceived, the

agitation that seized her at those last words of his. Her hand slowly

withdrew from his, it fell back on to her lap and he felt her whole body

draw, as it were, into itself, as though it had come into contact with

some terror, some unexplained alarm.

But she only said:

“And what will you do at home, Peter?”

He answered her with a kind of bravado--“Oh, write, I suppose. I went up

to see the old man yesterday. Changed enormously since the old days. I

found him quite genial, seemed very anxious that I should come. I expect

he's a bit lonely.”

She did not answer this and there was a long awkward pause. He knew, as

they sat there, in troubled silence that his conscience was awake. It

had seemed to be so quiescent through his visit yesterday; it had been

drugged and dimmed all these last restless days. But now it was up

again. He was conscious that it was not, after all, going to be so

easy a thing to abandon all his energies, his militancies, the dominant

vigorous panoply of his soul. He knew as he sat there, that this sick

shadow of a woman would not let him go like that.

He said good-bye to her for the moment, but, as he left the room he knew

that Scaw House would not see him again until he had done everything for

her that there was to be done.

II

That evening he saw the doctor who attended on her. He was a nice young

fellow, intelligent, eager, with a very real individual liking for his

patient. “Ah! she's splendid--brave and plucky beyond anything I've ever

seen; so full of fun that you'd think that she'd an idea that another

three weeks would see her as well as ever again--whereas she knows as

well as I do that another three weeks may easily see her out of the

world altogether!”

“There's no hope then?” asked Peter.

“None whatever. There's every kind of complication. She must have always

had something the matter with her, and if she'd been cared for and

nursed when she was younger she might have pulled out of it. Instead of

that she's always worn herself to a thread--you can see that. She isn't

one of those who take life easily. She ought to have gone before this,

but she holds on with her pluck and her love of it all.... Lord! when

one thinks of the millions of people who just 'slug' through life--not

valuing it, doing nothing with it--one grudges the waste of their hours

when a woman like Miss Monogue could have done so much with them.”

“Am I doing her any harm, going in to see her?”

“No--doing her good. Don't excite her too much--otherwise the company's

the best thing in the world for her.”

The days then, were to be dedicated to her service. He knew, of course,

that at the end of it--and the end could not be far distant--he would

go to Scaw House and remain there; meanwhile the thing was postponed. He

would not think about it.

But on his second meeting with Norah Monogue he saw that he was not to

be allowed to dismiss it. He found her sitting still by her window;

she was flushed now with a little colour, her eyes burning with a more

determined fire than ever, her whole body expressing a dauntless energy.

The sight of her showed him that there was to be battle and, strangely

enough, he found that there was something in himself that almost

welcomed it. Before he knew where he was he found that he was “out” to

defend his whole life.

The first thing that she did was to draw from him a minute, particular

account of all that had happened during these last months. It developed

into a defence of his whole married life, as though he had been pleading

before a jury of Clare's friends and must fight to prove himself no

blackguard.

“Ah! don't I know that I've made a mess of it all? Do you think that I'm

proud of myself?” he pleaded with her. “Honestly I cannot see where,

as far as Clare is concerned, I'm to blame. She didn't understand--how

could she ever have understood?--the way that my work mattered to me. I

wanted to keep it and I wanted to keep her too, and every time I tried

to keep her it got in the way and every time I tried to keep it she got

in the way. I wasn't clever enough to run both together.”

Norah nodded her head.

“But there was more than that. Life has always been rough for me. Rough

from the beginning when my father used to whip me, rough at school,

rough when I starved in London, roughest of all when young Stephen died.

I'd wanted to make something out of it and I suppose the easiest way

seemed to me to make it romantic. This place, you know, was always in

my bones. That Tower down in the Market Place, old Tan's curiosity shop,

the sea--these were the things that kept me going. Afterwards in

London it was the same. Things were hard so I made them into a story--I

coloured them up. Nothing hurt when everything was romance. I made Clare

romance too--that was the way, you see, that all my life was bound up so

closely together. She was an adventure just as everything else had been.

And she didn't like it. She couldn't understand the Adventure point of

view. It was, to her, immoral, indecent. I went easily along and then,

one day, all the romance went out of it--clean--like a pricked bubble.

When young Stephen died I suddenly saw that life was real--naked--ugly,

not romantic a bit. Then it all fell to pieces like a house of

cards. It's easy enough to be brave when you're attacking a cardboard

castle--it's when you're up against iron that your courage is wanted. It

failed me. I've funked it. I'm going to run away.”

He could see that Norah Monogue's whole life was in the vigour with

which she opposed him--

“No, no, no. To give it up now. Why, you're only thirty--everything's in

front of you. Listen. I know you took Clare crookedly, I saw it in the

beginning. In the first place you loved her, but you loved her wrong.

You've been a boy, Peter, all the time, and you've always loved like a

boy. Don't you know that there's nothing drives a woman who loves a man

more to desperation than that that man should give her a boy's love?

She'd rather he hated her. Clare could have been dealt with. To begin

with she loved you--all the time. Oh! yes, I'm as certain of it as I

can be of anything. I know her so well. But the unhappiness, the

discomfort--all the things, the ugly things, that her mother was

emphasising to her all the time--frightened her. Knowing nothing about

life she just felt that things as they were were as bad as things could

be. It seems extraordinary that any one so timid as she should dare to

take so dangerous a plunge as running off to another man.

“But it was just because she knew so little about Life that she could

do it. This other man persuaded her that he could give her the peace

and comfort that you couldn't. She doesn't know--poor thing, poor

thing--what it will mean, that plunge. So, out of very terror, she took

it. And now--Oh! Peter, I'm as certain as though I could see her, she's

already longing for you--would give anything to get back to you. This

has taught her more than all the rest of her life put together. She was

difficult--selfish, frightened at any trouble, supersensitive--but a man

would have understood her. You wanted affection, Peter--from her, from

me, from a lot of people--but it was always because of the things that

it was going to bring to you, never because of the things that you were

going to give out. You'd never grown up--never. And now, when suddenly

the real world has come to you, you're going to give it up.”

“I don't give it up,” he said to her--“I shall write--I shall do

things--”

She shook her head. “You've told me. I know what that means.” Then

almost below her breath--“It's horrible--It's horrible. You mustn't do

it--you must go back to London--you must go back--”

But at that he rose and faced her.

“No,” he said, “I will not. I've given the other things a chance--all

these years I've given them a chance. I've stood everything and at the

end everything's taken away from me. What shall I go back to? Who wants

me? Who cares? God!” he cried, standing there, white-faced, dry-eyed,

almost defying her--“Why should I go? Just to fail again--to suffer all

that again--to have them take everything I love from me again--to be

broken again! No, let them break the others--I'm done with it....”

“And the others?” she answered him. “Is it to be always yourself? You've

fought for your own hand and they've beaten you to your knees--fight now

for something finer--”

She seemed as she appealed to him to be shining with some great

conquering purpose. Here, with her poor body broken and torn, her

spirit, the purer for her physical pain, confronted him, shamed him,

stretched like a flaming sword before the mean paths that his own soul

would follow.

But he beat her down. “I will not go back--you don't know--you don't

understand--I will not go.”

III

The little dusty Minstrels' Gallery saw a good deal of him during these

days. It was a lonely place at the top of the hotel, once intended to be

picturesque and romantic for London visitors, but ultimately left to its

own company with its magnificent view appreciated by no one.

Here Peter came. Every part of him now seemed to be at war with every

other part. Had he gone straight to Scaw House with bag and baggage and

never left it again, then the Westcott tradition might have caught him

when he was in that numbed condition--caught him and held him.

Now he had stayed away just long enough for all the old Peter to have

become alive and active again.

He looked back upon London with a great shuddering. The torment that he

had suffered there he must never undergo again. Norah was now the one

friend left to him in the world. He would cut himself into pieces to

make these last days of hers happy, and yet the one thing that could

give her happiness was that he should promise to go back.

She did not understand--no one could understand--the way that this

place, this life that he contemplated, pulled him. The slackness of it,

the lack of discipline in it, the absence of struggle in it. All the

strength, the fighting that had been in him during these past years,

was driven out of him now. He just wanted to let things drift--to wander

about the fields and roads, to find his clothes growing shabby upon him,

to grow old without knowing even that he was alive--all this had come to

him.

She, on the other side, would drive him back into the battle of it all

once more. To go back a failure--to be pointed out as the man whose wife

left him because she found him so dull--to hear men like young Percival

Galleon laughing at his book--to sell his soul for journalism in order

to make a living--to see, perhaps, Clare come back into the London

world--to break out, ultimately, when he was sick and tired of it all,

into every kind of debauch ... how much better to slip into nothing down

here where nobody knew nor cared!

And yet, on the other hand, he had never known until now the importance

that Norah Monogue had held in his life.

Always, in everything he had done, in his ambitions and despairs, his

triumphs and defeats, she had been behind him. He'd just do anything in

the world for her!--anything except this one thing. Up and down, up and

down he paced the little Minstrels' room, with its dusty green chair and

its shining floor--“I just can't stand it all over again!”

But every time that he went in to see her--and he was with her

continually--made his resistance harder. She didn't speak about it again

but he knew that she was always thinking about it.

“She's worrying over something, Westcott--do you happen to know what it

is?” the doctor asked him. “It's bad for her. If you can help her about

it in any way--”

The strain between them was becoming unbearable. Every day, when he

went in to sit with her, they would talk about other things--about

everything--but he knew that before her eyes there was that picture of

himself up at Scaw House, and of the years passing--and his soul and

everything that was fine in him, dying.

He saw her growing daily weaker. Sometimes he felt that he must run away

altogether, go up to Scaw House and leave her to die alone; then he knew

that that cruelty at any rate was not in him. One day he thought her

brutal and interfering, another day it seemed that it was he who was

the tyrant. He reminded himself of all the things that she had done for

him--all the things, and he could not grant her this one request.

Then he would ask himself what the devil her right was that she should

order his life in this way?... everyday the struggle grew harder.

The tension could not hold any longer--at last it broke.

IV

One evening they were sitting in silence beside her window. The room

was in dusk and he could just see her white shadow against the dim blue

light beyond the window.

Suddenly she broke down. He could hear her crying, behind her hands.

The sound in that grey, silent room was more than he could bear. He went

over to her and put his arms round her.

“Norah, Norah, please, please. It's so awfully bad for you. I oughtn't

to come if I--”

She pulled herself together. Her voice was quite calm and controlled.

“Sit over there, Peter. I've got to talk to you.”

He went back to his chair.

“I've only got a few more weeks to live. I know it. Perhaps only a few

more days. I must make the very utmost of my time. I've got to save

you....”

He said nothing.

“Oh! I know that it must all have seemed to you abominable--as though I

were making use of this illness of mine to extort a promise from you,

as though just because I'm weak and feeble I can hold an advantage over

you. Oh! I know it's all abominable!--but I'll use everything--yes,

simply everything--if I can get you to leave this place and go back!”

He could feel that she was pulling herself together for some tremendous

effort.

“Peter, I want you now just to think of me, to put yourself out of

everything, absolutely, just for this half-hour. After all as I've only

a few half-hours left I've got that right.”

Her laugh as she said it was one of the saddest things he'd ever heard.

“Now I'm going to tell you something--something that I'd never thought

I'd tell a soul.

“I've not had a very cheerful life. It hasn't had very much to make

it bright and interesting. I'm not complaining but it's just been that

way--” She broke off for a moment. “I don't want you to interrupt or say

anything. It'll make it easier for me if I can just talk out into the

night air, as it were--just as though no one were here.”

She went on: “The one thing that's made it possible, made it bearable,

made it alive, has been my love for you. Always from the first moment

I saw you I have loved you. Oh! I haven't been foolish about it. I knew

that you'd never care for me in that kind of way. I knew from the very

first that we should be pals but that you'd never dream of anything more

romantic. I've never had any one in love with me--I'm not the kind of

woman who draws the romance out of men.

“No, I knew you'd never love me, but I just determined that I'd make

you, your career, your success, the pivot, the centre of my life.

“I wasn't blind about you--not a bit. I knew that you were selfish,

weak, incredibly young about the world. I knew that you were the last

person in existence to marry Clare--all the more reason it seemed to me

why I should be behind you. I was behind you so much more than you ever

knew. I wonder if you've the least idea what most women's lives

are like. They come into the world with the finest ideals, the most

tremendous energies, with a desire for self-sacrifice that a man can't

even begin to understand. Then they discover slowly that none of those

things, those ideals, those energies, those sacrifices, are wanted. The

world just doesn't need them--they might as well never have been born.

Do you suppose I enjoyed slaving for my mother, day and night for years?

Do you suppose that I gladly yielded up all my best blood, my vitality,

to the pleasure of some one who never valued it, never even knew that

such things were being given her? Before you came I was slowly falling

into despair. Think of all the women who are haunted by the awful

thought--'The time will come when death will be facing me and I shall be

forced to own that for any place that I have ever filled in the world

I might never have been born.' How many women are there who do not

pray every day of their lives, 'God, give me something to do before I

die--some place to fill, some work to carry out, something to save my

self-respect.'

“I tell you that there is a time coming when women will force those

things that are in them upon the world. God help all poor women who are

not wanted!

“_I_ wasn't wanted. There was nothing for me to do, no place for me to

fill... then you came. At once I seized upon that-God seemed to have

sent it to me. I believed that if I turned all those energies, those

desires, those ambitions upon you that it would help you to do the

things that you were meant to do. I was with you always--I slaved for

you--you became the end in life to which I had been called.

“All the time you were only a boy--that was partly I think why I loved

you. You were so gauche, so ignorant, so violent, so confident one

moment, so plunged into despair the next. For a while everything seemed

to go well. I had thought that Clare was going to be good for you, was

going to make you unselfish. I thought that you'd got the better of all

that part of you that was your inheritance. Even when I came down here I

thought that all was well. I knew that I had come down to die and I had

thanked God because He _had_, after all, allowed me to make something

of my life, that I'd been able to see you lifted into success, that I'd

seen you start a splendid career.... Then you came and I knew that your

life was broken into pieces. I knew that what had happened to you might

be the most splendid thing in the world for you and might be the most

terrible. If you stay down here now with your father then you are done

for--you are done for and my life has, after all, gone for nothing.”

Her voice broke, then she leaned forward, catching his hands:

“Peter, I'm dying--I'm going. If you will only have it you can take

me, and when I am gone I shall still live on in you. Let me give you

everything that is best in me--let me feel that I have sent you back to

London, sent you with my dying breath--and that you go back, not because

of yourself but because of everything that you can do for every one

else.

“Believe me, Peter dear, it all matters so little, this trouble and

unhappiness that you've had, if you take it bravely. The courage that

you've wanted before is nothing to the courage that you want now if

you're going back. Let me die knowing that we're both going back.

“Think of what your life, if it's fine enough, can mean to other people.

Go back to be battered--never mind what happens to your body--any

one can stand that. There's London waiting for you, there's life and

adventure and hardship. There are people to be helped. You'll go, with

all that I can give you, behind you ... you'll go, Peter?”

He sat with his teeth set, staring out into the world. He had known from

the first sentence of her appeal to him that she had named the one thing

that could give him courage to fight his cowardice. Some one had once

said: “If any one soul of us is all the world, this world and the

next, to any other soul, then whoever it may be that thus loves us, the

inadequacy of our return, the hopeless debt of us, must strike us to our

knees with an utter humility.”

So did he feel now. Out of the wreck there had survived this one thing.

He remembered what Henry Galleon had once said about Fortitude, that the

hardest trial of all to bear was the consciousness of having missed the

Finest Thing. All these years she had been there by the side of him and

he had scarcely thought of her--now, even as he watched her, she

was slipping away from him, and soon he would be left alone with the

consciousness of missing the greatest chance of his life.

The one thing that he could do in return was to give her what she

asked. But it was hard--he was under no illusion as to the desperate

determination that it would demand. The supreme moment of his life

had come. For the first time he was going to fling away the old Peter

Westcott altogether. He could feel it clinging to him. About him, in the

air, spirits were fighting. He had never before needed Courage as he

was needing it now. It seemed to him that he had to stand up to all the

devils in the world--they were thick on every side of him.

Then, with a great uplifting of strength, with a courage that he had

never known before, he picked up Peter Westcott in his hands, held him,

that miserable figure, high in air, raised him, then flung him with

all his strength out, away, far into space, never to return, never to

encumber the earth again.

“I'll go back,” Peter said--and as he said it, there was no elation in

him, only a clear-sighted vision of a life of struggle, toil, torment,

defeat, in front of him, something so hard and arduous that the new

Peter Westcott that had now been born seemed small indeed to face it.

But nevertheless he knew that at the moment that he said those words

he had broken into pieces the spell that had been over him for so many

years. That Beast in him that had troubled him for so long, all the dark

shadows of Scaw House ... these were at an end.

He felt tired, discouraged, no fine creature, as he turned to her, but

he knew that, from that moment, a new life had begun for him.

He put his arms round Norah Monogue and kissed her.

V

He got up very early next morning and went down to the Harbour. The

fishing-boats were coming in; great flocks of gulls, waiting for the

spoil that was soon to be theirs, were wheeling in clouds about the

brown sails.

The boats stole, one after another, around the pier. The air was filled

with shrill cries--the only other sound was the lapping of the water as

it curled up the little beach.

As Peter stood there there crept upon him a sensation of awe. He took

off his hat. The gulls seemed to cease their cries.

As another brown sail stole round the white point, gleaming' now in the

sun, he knew, with absolute certainty, that Norah Monogue was dead.

CHAPTER IV

THE GREY HILL

I

The day of Norah Monogue's funeral was fine and clear. Peter and little

Mr. Bannister were the only mourners and it was Peter's wish that she

should be buried in the little windy graveyard of the church where his

mother had been buried.

There was always a wind on that little hill, but to-day it was gentler

than he had ever known it before. His mind went back to that other

funeral, now, as it seemed, such a lifetime ago. Out of all the world

these two women only now seemed to abide with him. As he stood beside

the grave he was conscious that there was about him a sense of peace and

rest such as he had never known before. Could it be true that some of

Norah Monogue's fine spirit had come to him? Were they, in sober fact to

go on together during the remainder of his days?

He lingered for a little looking down upon the grave. He was glad to

think that he had made her last hours happy.

Indeed she had not lived in vain.

II

Heavy black clouds were banking upon the horizon as he went down the

hill and struck the Sea Road in the direction of Scaw House. Except

in that far distance the sky was a relentless, changeless blue. Every

detail in the scene was marked with a hard outline, every sound, the

sea, the Bell Rock, the cries of sheep, the nestling trees, was doubly

insistent.

He banged the knocker upon the Scaw House door and when the old woman

came to open to him he saw that something had occurred. Her hair fell

about her neck, her face was puckered with distress and her whole

appearance was dismayed.

“Is my father in?” he asked.

“He is, but he's ill,” she answered him, eyeing him doubtfully. “He

won't know yer--I doubt he'll know any one. He's had a great set-back--”

Peter pushed past her into the hall--“Is he ill?”

“Indeed he is. He was suddenly took--the other evenin' I being in my

kitchen heard a great cry. I came runnin' and there in the dining-room I

found him, standing there in the midst, his hands up. His eyes, you must

understand, sir, were wide and staring--'They've beaten me,' he cried,

'They've beaten me'--just like that, sir, and then down he tumbled in a

living fit, foaming at the mouth and striking his poor head against the

fender. Yer may come up, sir, but he won't know yer which he doesn't me

either.”

Peter followed her up to the dreary room that his father inhabited. Even

here the paper was peeling off the walls, some of the window-glass was

broken and the carpet was torn. His father lay on his back in an

old high four-poster. His eyes stared before him, cheeks were ashen

white--his hands too were white like ivory.

His lips moved but he made no sound. He did not see Peter, nor did his

eyes turn from the blank stare that held them.

“Has he a doctor?” Peter asked the old woman.

“Ay--there's a young man been coming--” the old woman answered him.

She was, he noticed, more subservient than she had been on the former

occasion. She obviously turned to him now with her greedy old eyes as

the one who was likely soon to be in authority.

Peter turned back to the door. “This room must be made warmer and more

comfortable. I will send a doctor from the hotel this evening--I will

come in again to-night.”

As he looked about the poor room, as he saw the dust that the sunlight

made so visible, he wondered that the house of cards could so recently

have held him within its shadow. He felt as though he had passed

through some terrible nightmare that the light of day rendered not only

fantastic but incredible. That old Peter Westcott had indeed been flung

out of the high window of Norah Monogue's room.

Leaving Scaw House on his right he struck through the dark belt of trees

and came out at the foot of the Grey Hill. The dark belt of cloud was

spreading now fast across the blue--soon it would catch the sun--the

Tower itself was already swallowed by a cold grey shadow.

Peter began to climb the hill, and remembered that he had not been there

since that Easter morning when he had kissed an unknown lady and so

flung fine omens about his future.

Soon he had reached the little green mound that lay below the Giant's

Finger. Although the Grey Hill would have been small and insignificant

in hilly country here, by its isolation, it assumed importance. On every

side of it ran the sand-dunes--in front of it, almost as it seemed up to

its very feet, ran the sea. Treliss was completely hidden, not a house

could be seen. The black clouds now had caught the sea and only far away

to the right the waves still glittered, for the rest it was an inky

grey with a touch of white here and there where submerged rocks found

breakers. For one moment the sun had still evaded the cloud, then it was

caught and the world was instantly cold.

Peter, as he sat there, felt that if he were only still enough the

silence would soon be vocal. The Hill, the Sea, the Sky--these things

seemed to have summoned him there that they might speak to him.

He was utterly detached from life. He looked down from a height in air

and saw his little body sitting there as he had done on the day when he

had proposed to Clare. He might think now of the long journey that it

had come, he might watch the course of its little history, see the full

circle that it had travelled, wonder for what new business it was now to

prepare.

For full circle he had come. He, Peter Westcott, sat there, as naked, as

alone, as barren of all rewards, of all success, of all achievements as

he had been when, so many years ago he had watched that fight in the inn

on Christmas Eve. The scene passed before him again--he saw himself, a

tiny boy, swinging his legs from the high chair. He saw the room thick

with smoke, the fishermen, Dicky the Fool, the mistletoe swinging, the

snow blocking in from outside, the fight--it was all as though it passed

once more before his eyes.

His whole life came to him--the scenes at Scaw House, Dawson's, the

bookshop, Brockett's, Bucket Lane, Chelsea, that last awful scene there

... all the people that he had known passed before him--Stephen Brant,

his grandfather, his father, his mother, Bobby Galleon, Mr. Zanti,

Clare, Cards, Mrs. Brockett, Norah, Henry Galleon, Mrs. Rossiter,

dear Mrs. Launce ... these and many more. He could see them all

dispassionately now; how that other Peter Westcott had felt their

contact; how he had longed for their friendship, dreaded their anger,

missed them, wanted them, minded their desertion....

Now, behold, they were all gone. Alone on this Hill with the great sea

at his feet, with the storm rolling up to him, Peter Westcott thought of

his wife and his son, his friends and his career--thought of everything

that had been life to him, yes, even his sins, his temptations, his

desires for the beast in man, his surly temper, his furious anger, his

selfishness, his lack of understanding--all these things had been taken

away from him, every trail had been given to him--and now, naked, on a

hill, he knew the first peace of his life.

And as he knew, sitting there, that thus Peace had come to him, how odd

it seemed that only a few weeks ago he had been coming down to Cornwall

with his soul, as he had then thought, killed for ever.

The world had seemed, utterly, absolutely, for ever at an end; and

now here he was, sitting here, eager to go back into it all again,

wanting--it almost seemed--to be bruised and battered all over again.

And perceiving this showed him what was indeed the truth that all his

life had been only Boy's History. He had gone up--he had gone down--he

had loved and hated, exulted and despaired, but it was all with a boy's

intense realisation of the moment, with a boy's swift, easy transition

from one crisis to another.

It had been his education--and now his education was over. As he had

said those words to Norah Monogue, “I will go back,” he had become a

man. Never again would Life be so utterly over as it had been two months

ago--never again would he be so single-hearted in his reserved adoption

of it as he had been those days ago, at Norah Monogue's side.

He saw that always, through everything that boy, Peter Westcott had

been in the way. It was not until he had taken, on that day in Norah

Monogue's room, Peter Westcott in his hands and flung him to the four

winds that he had seen how terribly in the way he had been. “Go back,”

Norah had said to him; “you have done all these things for yourself and

you have been beaten to your knees--go back now and do something for

others. You have been brave for yourself--be brave now for others.”

And he was going back.

He was going back, as he had seen on that day, to no easy life. He was

going to take up all those links that had been so difficult for him

before--he was going to learn all over again that art that he had

fancied that he had conquered at the very first attempt--he was going

now with no expectations, no hopes, no ambitions. Life was still an

adventure, but now an adventure of a hard, cruel sort, something that

needed an answer grim and dark.

The storm was coming up apace. The wind had risen and was now rushing

over the short stiff grass, bellowing out to meet the sea, blowing back

to meet the clouds that raced behind the hill.

The sky was black with clouds. Peter could see the sand rising from the

dunes in a thin mist.

Peter flung himself upon his back. The first drops of rain fell, cold,

upon his face. Then he heard:

“Peter Westcott! Peter Westcott!”

“I'm here!”

“What have you brought to us here?”

“I have brought nothing.”

“What have you to offer us?”

“I can offer nothing.”

He got up from the ground and faced the wind. He put his back to the

Giant's Finger because of the force of the gale. The rain was coming

down now in torrents.

He felt a great exultation surge through his body.

Then the Voice--not in the rain, nor the wind, nor the sea, but yet all

of these, and coming as it seemed from the very heart of the Hill, came

swinging through the storm--

“Have you cast _This_ away, Peter Westcott?”

“And this?”

“That also--”

“And this?”

“This also?”

“And this?”

“I have flung this, too, away.”

“Have you anything now about you that you treasure?”

“I have nothing.”

“Friends, ties, ambitions?”

“They are all gone.”

Then out of the heart of the storm there came Voices:--

“Blessed be Pain and Torment and every torture of the Body ... Blessed

be Plague and Pestilence and the Illness of Nations....

“Blessed be all Loss and the Failure of Friends and the Sacrifice of

Love....

“Blessed be the Destruction of all Possessions, the Ruin of all

Property, Fine Cities, and Great Palaces....

“Blessed be the Disappointment of all Ambitions....

“Blessed be all Failure and the ruin of every Earthly Hope....

“Blessed be all Sorrows, Torments, Hardships, Endurances that demand

Courage....

“Blessed be these things--for of these things cometh the making of a

Man....”

Peter, clinging to the Giant's Finger, staggered in the wind. The world

was hidden now in a mist of rain. He was alone--and he was happy, happy,

as he had never known happiness, in any time, before.

The rain lashed his face and his body. His clothes clung heavily about

him.

He answered the storm:

“Make of me a man--to be afraid of nothing ... to be ready for

everything--love, friendship, success ... to take if it comes ... to

care nothing if these things are not for me--

“Make me brave! Make me brave!”

He fancied that once more against the wall of sea-mist he saw

tremendous, victorious, the Rider on the Lion. But now, for the first

time, the Rider's face was turned towards him--