Fortitude (Walpole)/Book 2/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
THE MAN ON THE LION
I
AFTER the storm, the Fog.
It came, a yellow, shrouded witch down upon the town, clinging, choking, writhing, and bringing in its train a thousand mysteries, a thousand visions. It was many years since so dense and cruel a fog had startled London—in his seven years' experience of the place Peter had known nothing like it, and his mind flew back to that afternoon of his arrival, seven years before, and it seemed to him that he was now moving straight on from that point and that there had been no intervening period at all. The Signor saw in a fog as a cat sees in the dark, and he led Peter to the bookshop without hesitation. He saw a good many other things beside his immediate direction and became comparatively cheerful and happy.
“It is such a good thing that people can't see me,” he said. “It relieves one of a lot of responsibility if one's plain to look at—one can act more freely.” Certainly the Signor acted with very considerable freedom, darting off suddenly into the fog, apparently with the intention of speaking to some one, and leaving Peter perfectly helpless and then suddenly darting back again, catching Peter in tow and tugging him forward once more.
To the bookshop itself the fog made very little difference. There were always the gas-jets burning over the two dark corners and the top shelves even in the brightest of weather, were mistily shrouded by dust and distance. The fog indeed seemed to bring the books out and, whilst the world outside was so dark, the little shop flickered away under the gas-jets with little spasmodic leaps into light and colour when the door opened and blew the quivering flame.
It was not of the books that Peter was thinking this morning. He sat at a little desk in one dark corner under one of the gas-jets, and Herr Gottfried, huddled up as usual, with his hair sticking out above the desk like a mop, sat under the other; an old brass clock, perched on a heap of books, ticked away the minutes. Otherwise there was silence save when a customer entered, bringing with him a trail of fog or some one who was not a customer passed solemnly, seriously through to the rooms beyond. The shop was, of course, full of fog, and the books seemed to form into lines and rows and curves in and out amongst the shelves of their own accord.
Peter meanwhile was most intently thinking. He knew as though he had seen it written down in large black letters in front of him, that a period was shortly to be put to his present occupation, but he could not have said how it was that he knew. The finishing of his book left the way clear for a number of things to attack his mind. Here in this misty shop he was beset with questions. Why was he here at all? Had he during these seven years been of such value, that the shop could not get on without him? . . . To that second question he must certainly answer, no. Why then had Mr. Zanti kept him all this time? Surely because Mr. Zanti was fond of him. Yes, that undoubtedly was a part of the reason. The relationship, all this time, had grown very strong and it was only now, when he set himself seriously to think about it, that he realised how glad he always was when Mr. Zanti returned from his travels and how happy he had been when it had been possible for them to spend an afternoon together. Yes, Mr. Zanti was attached to him; he had often said that he looked upon him as a son, and sometimes it seemed to Peter that the strange man was about to make some declaration, something that would clear the air, and explain the world—but he never did.
Peter had discovered strangely little about him. He knew now that Mr. Zanti's connection with the bookshop was of the very slenderest, that that was indeed entirely Herr Gottfried's affair, and that it was used by the large and smiling gentleman as a cloak and a covering. As a cloak and a covering to what? Well, at any rate, to some large and complicated game that a great number of gentlemen were engaged in playing. Peter knew a good many of them now by sight—untidy, dirty, many, foreigners most, all it seemed to Peter; with an air of attempting something that they could never hope to accomplish. Anything that they might do he was quite sure that they would bungle and, with the hearts of children, the dirty tatters of foreign countries, and the imaginations of exuberant story-tellers, he could see them go, ignorantly, to dreadful catastrophes,
Peter was even conscious that the shop was tolerantly watched by inspectors, detectives, and policemen, and that it was all too childish—whatever it was—for any one to take it in the least seriously. But nevertheless there were elements of very real danger in all those blundering mysteries that had been going on now for so many years, and it was at any rate of the greatest importance to Peter, because he earned his living by it, because of his love for Stephen and his affection for Mr. Zanti, and because if once anything were to happen his one resting-place in this wild sea of London would be swept away and he would be utterly resourceless and destitute.
This last fact bit him, as he sat there in the shop, with sudden and acute sharpness. What a fool he had been, all this time, to let things slide! He should have been making connections, having irons in the fire, bustling about—how could he have sat down thus happily and easily for seven years, as though such a condition of things could continue for ever? He had bad wild ideas of “Reuben Hallard” making his fortune! . . . that showed his ignorance of the world. Let him begin to bustle. He would not lose another moment. There were two things for him now to do, to beard editors (those mythical creatures!) in their caves and to find out where Stephen lived . . . both these things as soon as possible.
In the afternoon the fog became of an impenetrable thickness, and beyond the shop it seemed that there was pandemonium. Some fire, blazing at some street corner, flared as though it were the beating heart of all that darkness, and the cries of men and the slow, clumsy passing of the traffic filled the bookshop with sound.
No customers came; Herr Gottfried worked away at his desk, the brass clock ticked, Peter sat listening, waiting.
Herr Gottfried broke the silence once with: “Peter, my friend, at ten o'clock to-night there will be a little music in my room. Herr Dettzolter and his 'cello—a little Brahms—if the fog is not too much for you.”
Peter accepted. He loved the low-roofed attic, the clouds of tobacco, the dark corner where he sat and listened to Herr Gottfried's friends (German exiles like Herr Gottfried playing their beloved music). It was his only luxury.
Once two men whom Peter knew very well by sight came into the shop. They were, he believed, Russians—one of them was called Oblotzky—a tall, bearded fierce-looking creature who could speak no English.
Then suddenly, just as Peter was thinking of finding his way home to the boarding-house, Mr. Zanti appeared. He had been away for the last two months, but there he was, his huge body filling the shop, the fog circling his beard like a halo, beaming, calm, and unflustered as though he had just come from the next street.
“Damned fog,” he said, and then he went and put his hand on Peter's shoulder and looked down at him smiling.
“Well, 'ow goes the shop?” he said.
“Oh, well enough,” said Peter.
“What 'ave you been doing, boy? Finished the book?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, good. You'll be ze great man, Peter.” He looked down at him proudly as a father might look upon his son.
“Ze damnedest fog—” he began, then suddenly he stopped and Peter felt his hand on his shoulder tighten. “Ze damnedest—” Mr. Zanti said slowly.
Peter looked up into his face. He was listening. Herr Gottfried, standing in the middle of the shop, was also listening.
For a moment there was an intense breathless silence. The noise from the street seemed also, for the instant, to be hushed.
Very slowly, very quietly, Mr. Zanti went to the street door and opened it. A cloud of yellow fog blew into the shop.
“Ze damnedest fog . . .” repeated Mr, Zanti, still very slowly, as though he were thinking.
“Any one been?” he said at last to Herr Gottfried.
“Oblotzky.”
Mr. Zanti, after flinging a strange, half-affectionate, half-inquisitive look at Peter, went through into the room beyond.
“What . . .” said Peter.
“Often enough,” interrupted Herr Gottfried, shuffling back to his seat, “young boys want to know—too much . . . often enough.”
II
The Tressiter children, of whom there were eight, loved Peter with a devotion that was in fact idolatry. They loved him because he understood them so completely and from Anne Susan, aged one and a half, to Rupert Bernard, aged nine, there was no member of the family who did not repose complete trust and confidence in Peter's opinions, and rejoice in his wonderful grasp of the things in the world that really mattered. Other persons might be seen shifting, slowly and laboriously, their estimates and standards in order to bring them into line with the youthful Tressiter estimates and standards. . . Peter had his ready without any shifting.
First of all the family did Robin Tressiter, aged four, adore Peter. He was a fat, round child with brown eyes and brown hair, and an immense and overwhelming interest in the world and everything contained therein. He was a silent child, with a delightful fat chuckle when really amused and pleased, and he never cried. His interest in the world led him into strange and terrible catastrophes, and Mrs. Tressiter was always far too busy and too helpless to be of any real assistance. On this foggy afternoon, Peter, arriving at Brockett's after much difficulty and hesitation, found Robin Tressiter, on Miss Monogue's landing, with his head fastened between, the railings that overlooked the hall below. He was stuck very fast indeed, but appeared to be perfectly unperturbed—only every now and again he kicked a little with his legs.
“I've sticked my neck in these silly things,” he said, when he saw Peter. “You must pull at me.”
Peter tried to wriggle the child through, but he found that he must have some one to help him. Urging Robin not to move he knocked at Miss Monogue's door. She opened it, and he stepped back with an apology when he saw that some one else was there.
“It's a friend of mine,” Norah Monogue said. “Come in and be introduced, Peter.”
“It's only,” Peter explained, “that young Robin has got his head stuck in the bannisters and I want some one to help me—”
Between them they pulled the boy through to safety. He chuckled.
“I'll do it again,” he said.
“I'd rather you didn't,” said Peter.
“Then I won't,” said Robin. “I did it 'cause Rupert said I couldn't—Rupert's silly ass.”
“You mustn't call your brother names or I won't come and see you in bed.”
“You will come?” said Robin, very earnestly.
“I will,” said Peter, “to-night, if you don't call your brother names.”
“I think,” said Robin, reflectively, “that now I will hunt for the lion and the tigers on the stairs—”
“Bring him into my room until his bedtime,” said Miss Monogue, laughing. “It's safer. Mrs. Tressiter is busy and has quite enough children in with her already.”
So Peter brought Robin into Miss Norah Monogue's room and was introduced, at once, to Clare Elizabeth Rossiter—so easily and simply do the furious events of life occur.
She was standing with her back to the window, and the light from Miss Monogue's candles fell on her black dress and her red-gold hair. As he came towards her he knew at once that she was the little girl who had talked to him on a hill-top one Good Friday afternoon. He could almost hear her now as she spoke to Crumpet—the candle-light glow was dim and sacred in the foggy room; the colour of her hair was filled more wonderfully with light and fire. Her hands were so delicate and fine as they moved against her black dress that they seemed to have some harmony of their own like a piece of music or a running stream. She wore blue feathers in her black hat. She did not know him at all when he came forward, but she smiled down at Robin, who was clinging on to Peter's trousers.
“This is a friend of mine, Mr. Westcott,” Miss Monogue said.
She turned gravely and met him. They shook hands and then she sat down; suddenly she bent down and took Robin into her lap. He sat there sucking his thumb, and taking every now and again a sudden look at her hair and the light that the candles made on it, but he was very silent and quiet which was unlike him because he generally hated strangers.
Peter sat down and was filled with embarrassment; his heart also was beating very quickly.
“I have met you before,” he said suddenly. “You don't remember.”
“No—I'm afraid—”
“You had once, a great many years ago, a dog called Crumpet. Once in Cornwall . . . one Good Friday, he tumbled into a lime-pit. A boy—”
“Why, of course,” she broke in, “I remember you perfectly. Why of all the things! Norah, do you realise? Your friend and I have known each other for eight years. Isn't the world a small place! Why I remember perfectly now!”
She turned and talked to Norah Monogue, and whilst she talked he took her in. Although now she was grown up she was still strangely like that little girl in Cornwall. He realised that now, as he looked at her, he had still something of the same feeling about her as he had had then—that she was some one to be cared for, protected, something fragile that the world might break if she were not guarded.
She was porcelain but without anything of Meredith's “rogue.” Because Peter was strong and burly the contrast of her appealing fragility attracted him all the more. Had she not been so perfectly proportioned her size would have been a defect; but now it was simple that her delicacy of colour and feature demanded that slightness and slenderness of build. Her hair was of so burning a red-gold that its colour gave her precisely the setting that she required. She seemed, as she sat there, a little helpless, and Peter fancied that she was wishing him to understand that she wanted friends who should assist her in rather a rough-and-tumble world. Just as she had once appealed to him to save Crumpet, so now she seemed to appeal for some far greater assistance. Ah! how he could protect her! Peter thought.
Something in Peter's steady gaze seemed suddenly to surprise her. She stopped—the colour mounted into her cheeks—she bent down over the boy.
They were both of them supremely conscious of one another. There was a moment. . . . Then, as men feel, when some music that has held them ceases, they came, with a sense of breathlessness, back to Norah Monogue and her dim room.
Peter was conscious that Robin had watched them both. He almost, Peter thought, chuckled to himself, in his fat solemn way.
“Miss Rossiter,” Norah Monogue said—and her voice seemed a long way away—“has just come back from Germany and has brought some wonderful photographs with her. She was going to show them to me when you came in—”
“Let me see them too, please,” said Peter.
Robin was put on to the floor and he went slowly and with ceremony to an old brown china Toby that had his place on a little shelf by the door. This Toby—his name was Nathaniel—was an old friend of Robin's. Robin sat on the floor in a corner and told Nathaniel the things about the world that he had noticed. Every now and again he paused for Nathaniel's reply; he was always waiting for him to speak, and the continued silence of a now ancient acquaintance had not shaken Robin's faith. . . . Robin forgot the rest of the company.
“Photographs?” said Peter.
“Yes. Germany. I have just been there.” She looked up at him eagerly and then opened a portfolio that she had behind her chair and began to show them.
He bent gravely forward feeling that all of this was pretence of the most absurd kind and that she also knew that it was.
But they were very beautiful photographs—the most beautiful that he had ever seen, and as each, in its turn, was shown for a moment his eves met hers and his mouth almost against his will, smiled. His hand too was very near the silk of her dress. If he moved it a very little more then they would touch. He felt that if that happened the room would immediately burst into flame, the air was so charged with the breathless tension; but he watched the little space of air between his fingers and the black silk and his hand did not move.
They were all very silent as she turned the photographs over and there were no sounds but the sharp cracking of the fire as it burst into little spurts of flame, the noise that her hand made on the silk of her dress as she turned each picture and the little mutterings of Robin in his corner as he talked to his Toby.
Peter had never seen anything like this photography. The man had used his medium as delicately as though he had drawn every line. Things stood out—castles, a hill, trees, running water, a shining road—and behind them there was darkness and mystery.
Suddenly Peter cried out:
“Oh! that!” he said. It was the photograph of a great statue standing on a hill that overlooked a river. That was all that could be seen—the background was dark and vague, it was the statue of a man who rode a lion. The lion was of enormous size and struggling to be free, but the man, naked, with his utmost energy, his back set, his arms stiff, had it in control, but only just in control . . . his face was terrible in the agony of his struggle and that struggle had lasted for a great period of time . . . but at length, when all but defeated, he had mastered his beast.
“Ah that!” Miss Rossiter held it up that Norah Monogue might see it better. “That is on a hill outside a little town in Bavaria. They put it up to a Herr Drexter who had done something, saved their town from riot I think. It's a fine thing, isn't it, and I think it so clever of them to have made him middle-aged with all the marks of the struggle about him—those scars, his face—so that you can see that it's all been tremendous—”
Peter spoke very slowly—“I'd give anything to see that!” he said.
“Well, it's in Bavaria; I wonder that it isn't better known. But funnily enough the people that were with me at the time didn't like it; it was only afterwards, when I showed them the photograph that they saw that there might have been . . . aren't people funny?” she ended abruptly, appealing to him with a kind of freemasonry against the world.
But, still bending his brows upon it he said insistently—“Tell me more about it—the place—everything—”
“There isn't really anything to tell; it's only a very ordinary, very beautiful, little German town. There are many orchards and this forest at the back of it and the river running through it—little cobbled streets and bridges over the river. And then, outside, this great statue on the hill—”
“Ah, but it's wonderful, that man's face—I'd like to go to that town—” He felt perhaps that he was taking it all too seriously for he turned round and said laughing: “The boy's daft on lions—Robin, come and look at this lion—here's an animal for you.”
The boy put down the Toby and walked slowly and solemnly toward them. He climbed on to Peter's knee and looked at the photograph: “Oh! it is a lion!” he said at last, rubbing his fat finger on the surface of it to see of what material it was made. “Oh! for me!” he said at last in a shrill, excited voice and clutching on to it with one hand. “For me—to hang over my bed.”
“No, old man,” Peter answered, “it belongs to the lady here. She must take it away with her.”
“Oh! but I want it!” his eyes began to fill with tears.
Miss Rossiter bent down and kissed him. He looked at her distrustfully. “I know now I'm not to have it,” he said at last, eyeing her, “or you wouldn't have kissed me.”
“Come on,” said Peter, afraid of a scene, “the lady will show you the lion another day—meantime I think bed is the thing.”
He mounted the boy on to his shoulder and turned round to Miss Rossiter to say “Good-bye.” The photograph lay on the table between them—“I shan't forget that,” he said.
“Oh! but you must come and see us one day. My mother will be delighted. There are a lot more photographs at home. You must bring him out one day, Norah,” she said turning to Miss Monogue.
If he had been a primitive member of society in the Stone Age he would at this point, have placed Robin carefully on the floor and have picked Miss Rossiter up and she should never again have left his care.
As it was he said, “I shall be delighted to come one day.”
“We will talk about Cornwall—”
“And Germany.”
His hand was burning hot when he gave it her—he knew that she was looking at his eyes.
He was abruptly conscious of Miss Monogue's voice behind him.
“I've read a quarter of the book, Peter.”
He wondered as he turned to her how it could be possible to regard two women so differently. To be so sternly critical of one—her hair that was nearly down, a little ink on her thumb, her blouse that was unbuttoned—and of the other to see her all in a glory so that her whole body, for colour and light and beautiful silence, had no equal amongst the possessions of the earth or the wonders of heaven. Here there was a button undone, there there was a flaming fire.
“I won't say anything,” Miss Monogue said, “until I've read more, but it's going to be extraordinarily good I think.”
What did he care about “Reuben Hallard?” What did that matter when he had Clare Elizabeth Rossiter in front of him.
And then he pulled himself up. It must matter. How delighted an hour ago those words would have made him.
“Oh! you think there's something in it?” he said.
“We'll wait,” she answered, but her smile and the sparkle in her eyes showed what she thought. What a brick she was!
He turned round back to Miss Rossiter.
“My first book,” he said laughing. “Of course we're excited—”
And then he was out of the room in a moment with Robin clutching his hair. He did not want to look at her again . . . he had so wonderful a picture!
And as he left Robin in the heart of his family he heard him say—
“Such a lion, Mother, a lady's got—with a man on it—a 'normous lion, and the man hasn't any clothes on, and his legs are all scratched. . . .”