Fortitude (Walpole)/Book 2/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
A LITTLE DUST
I
THAT night Peter had one of his old dreams. In all the seven years that he had been in London the visions that had so often made his nights at Scaw House terrible had never come to him. Now, after so long an interval they returned.
He thought that he was once more back on the sea-road above Treliss, that the wind was blowing in a tempest and that the sea below him was foaming on to the rocks. He could see those rocks like sharp black teeth, stretching up to him—a grey sky was above his head and to his right stretched the grey and undulating moor.
Round the bend of the road, beyond the point that he could see, be thought that Clare Rossiter was waiting for him. He must get there before it struck eleven or something terrible would happen to him. Only a few minutes remained to him, and only a little stretch of the thin white road, but two things prevented his progress; first, the wind blew so fiercely in his face that it drove him back and for every step that he took forward, although his head was bent and his teeth set, he seemed to lose two. Also, across the moor voices cried to him and they seemed to him like the voices of Stephen and Bobby Galleon, and they were pleading to him to stop; he paused to listen but the cries mingled softly with the wind and he could hear bells from the town below the road begin to strike eleven. The sweat was pouring from him—she was waiting for him, and if he did not reach her all would be lost. He would never see her again; he began to cry, to beat against the wind with his hands. The voices grew louder, the wind more vehement, the jagged edges of the rocks sharper in their outline; the bells were still striking, but as, at last, breathless, a sharp terror at his heart, he turned the corner there fell suddenly a silence. At last he was there—only a few trees blowing a little, a little white dust curling over the road, as though there had been no rain, and then suddenly the laughing face of Cards, no longer now a boy, but a man;, more handsome than ever, laughing at him as he battled round the corner.
Cards shouted something to him, suddenly the road was gone and Peter was in the water, fighting for his life. He felt all the breathless terror of approaching death—he was sinking—black, silent water rose above and around him. For an instant he caught once more the sight of sky and land. Cards was still on the road and beside him was a woman whose face Peter could not see. Cards was still laughing. Then in the darkening light the Grey Hill was visible against the horizon and instead of the Giant's Finger there was that figure of the rider on the lion. . . . The waters closed.. . . Peter woke to a grey, stormy morning. The sweat was pouring down his face, his body was burning hot and his hands were trembling.
II
When he came down to breakfast his head was aching and heavy and Mrs. Brockett's boiled eggs and hard crackling toast were impossible. Miss Monogue had things to tell him about the book—it was wonderful, tremendous . . . beyond everything that she had believed possible. But strangely enough, he was scarcely interested. He was pleased of course, but he was weighted with the sense of overhanging catastrophe. The green bulging curtains, the row of black beads about Mrs. Brockett's thin neck, the untidy egg-shells—everything depressed him.
“I have had a rotten night,” he said, “nightmares. I suppose I ate something—anyhow it's a gloomy day.”
“Yes,” said Miss Monogue, pinning some of her hair in at the wrong place and unpinning other parts of it that happened by accident to be right. “I'm afraid it's a poor sort of day for the Procession. But Miss Black and I are going to do our best to see it. It may clear up later.” He had forgotten about the Procession and he wished that she would keep her hair tidier.
He wanted to ask her whether she had seen Miss Rossiter but had not the courage. A little misty rain made feathery noises against the window-pane.
“Well, I must go down to the shop,” he said, finding his umbrella in the hall.
“I think it's superb,” she said, referring back to the book. “You won't be having to go down to the shop much longer.”
It was really surprising that he cared so little. He banged the door behind him and did not see her eyes as she watched him go.
Processions be damned! He wished that the wet, shining street were not so strangely like the sea-road at Treliss, and that the omnibuses at a distance did not murmur like the sea. People, black and funereal, were filling stands down Oxford Street; soldiers were already lining the way, the music of bands could be heard some streets away.
He was in a thoroughly bad temper and scowled at the people who passed him. He hated Royal Processions, he hated the bookshop, he hated all his friends and he wished that he were dead. Here he had been seven years, he reflected, and nothing had been done. Where was his city paved with gold? Where his Fame, where his Glory?
He even found himself envying those old Treliss days. There at any rate things had happened. There had been an air, a spirit. Fighting his father—or at any rate, escaping from his father—had been something vital. And here he was now, an ill-tempered, useless youth, earning two pounds a week, in love with some one who was scarcely conscious of his existence. He cursed the futility of it all.
And so fuming, he crossed the threshold of the bookshop, and, unwitting, heedless, left for ever behind him the first period of his history.
“Programme of the Royal Procession,” a man was shouting—“Coloured 'Andkerchief with Programme of Royal Procession—”
Peter, stepping into the dark shop, was conscious of Mr. Zanti's white face and that behind him was standing Stephen.
III
At the sight of their faces, of their motionless bodies and at the solemn od4 expression of their eyes as they looked past him into the dark expanse of the door through which he had entered, he knew that something was very wrong.
He had known it, plainly enough, by the fact of Stephen's presence there, but it seemed to him that he had known it from his first awakening that morning and that he was only waiting to change into hard outline the misty shapelessness of his earlier fears, But, there and then, he was to know nothing—
Stephen greeted him with a great hand-shake as though he had met him only the day before, and Mr. Zanti with a smile gave him his accustomed greeting. In the doorway at the other end of the shop the Russian girl was standing, one arm on the door-post, staring, with her dark eyes, straight through into the gloomy street.
“What are you all waiting for?” Peter said to the motionless figures. With his words they seemed at once to spring to life. Mr. Zanti rolled his big body casually to the door and looked down the street, Stephen, smiling at Peter said:
“I was just passing, so I thought to myself I'd just look in,” his voice came from his beard like the roll of the sea from a cave. “Just for an hour, maybe. It's a long day since we've 'ad a bit of a chat, Mr. Peter.”
Peter could not take it on that casual scale. Here was Stephen vanished during all those years, returned now suddenly and with as little fuss as possible, as though indeed he had only been hiding no farther than behind the door of the shop and waiting merely to walk out when the right moment should have arrived. If he had been no farther than that then it was unkind of him—he might have known how badly Peter had wanted him; if, on the other hand, he had been farther afield, then he should show more excitement at his return.
But, Peter thought, it was impossible to recognise in the grave reserved figure at his side that Stephen who had once given him the most glorious evening of his life. The connection was there somewhere but many things must have happened between those years.
“Shall we go and have luncheon together?” Peter asked.
Stephen appeared to fling a troubled look in the direction of Mr. Zanti's broad back. He hesitated. “Well,” he said awkwardly, “I don't rightly know. I've got to be going out for an hour or two—I can't rightly say as I'll be back. This afternoon, maybe—”
Peter did not press it any farther. They must settle these things for themselves, but what was the matter with them all this morning was more than he could pretend to discover.
Stephen, still troubled, went out.
Fortunately there was this morning a good deal of work for Peter to do. A large number of second-hand books had arrived during the day before and they must be catalogued and arranged. Moreover there were several customers. A young lady wanted “something about Wagner, just a description of the plays, you know.”
“Of the Operas,” Peter corrected.
“Oh; well, the stories—that's what I want—something about two shillings, have you? I don't think it's really worth more—but so that one will know where one is, you know.”
She was bright and confidential. She had thought that everything would be closed because of the Procession . . . so lucky—
A short red-faced woman, dressed in bright colours, and carrying innumerable little parcels wanted “Under Two Flags,” by Mrs. Henry Wood.
“It's by Ouida, Madam,” Peter told her.
“Nonsense, don't tell me. As if I didn't know.”
Peter produced the volume and showed it to her. She dropped some of her parcels—they both went to pick them up.
Red in the face, she glared at him. “Really it's too provoking, I know it was Mrs. Henry Wood I wanted.”
“Perhaps ‘East Lynne,’ or ‘The Channings’—”
“Nonsense—don't tell me—it was ‘Under Two Flags.’”
Finally the woman put both “Under Two Flags” and “East Lynne” into her bag and departed. A silence fell upon the shop, Herr Gottfried was at his desk, Mr. Zanti at the street door, the girl at the door of the inner room, they were all motionless. Beyond the shop the murmur of the gathering crowd was like the confused, blundering hum of bees; a band was playing stridently in Oxford Street.
Once Peter said: “It passes about three-thirty, doesn't it? I think I'll just go out and have a look later. It'll be fine if only the sun comes.”
Mr. Zanti turned slowly round.
“I'm afraid, boy,” he said, “you'll be wanted in ze shop. At two Herr Gottfried must be going out for some business—zere will be no one—I am zo zorry.”
They wanted to keep him there, that was evident. Or, at any rate, they didn't want him to see the Procession.
“Very well,” he said cheerfully, “I'll stay. There'll be plenty more Processions before I die.” But why, why why? What was there that they wanted him to avoid?
He went on arranging the piles of dusty books, the sense of weighty expectation growing on him with every instant. The clock struck one, but he did not go out to luncheon; the others were still motionless in their places.
Once Herr Gottfried spoke: “The people will have been waiting a much-more-than-necessary long time,” he said.
“The police doubtless have frightened them, but there is still room to walk in the streets and there have been some unfortunates, since early in the morning—”
The street beyond the shop was now deserted because soldiers guarded its approach into Oxford Street; the shop seemed to be left high and dry, beyond the noise and confusion of the street.
Then there came into the silence a sharp sound that made Peter amongst his books, jump to his feet: the Russian girl was crying.
She stood there, leaning her thin dark body against the side of the door, surely the most desolate figure in the world. Her hands were about her face, her body heaved with her sobbing and the little sad noise came into the dusty tangled room and hung amongst the old broken books as though they only could sympathise and give it shelter. The band in Oxford Street was blazing with sound but it did not hide her crying.
Mr. Zanti crossed to her and spoke to her but she suddenly let her hands fall from her face and turned upon him, furiously, wildly—“You . . .” she said, “You . . .” and then as though the words choked her she turned back into the inner room. Peter saw Mr. Zanti's face and it was puckered with distress like a child's. It was almost laughable in its helpless dismay.
Two o'clock struck. “They'll be starting in half an hour,” Herr Gottfried said.
“Women,” Mr. Zanti said, still looking distressfully about him, “they are, in truth, very difficult.”
And now there was no pretence, any longer, of disguising the nervous tension that was with them in the room. They were all waiting for something—what it might be Peter did not know, but, with every tick of the old brass clock, some event crept more nearly towards them.
Then Stephen came back.
He came in very quietly as though he were trying to keep the note of agitation that he must have felt on every side of him as near the normal as possible.
His face above his beard was grey and streaky and his breath came rapidly as though he had been running. When he saw Mr. Zanti his hand went up suddenly in front of his face as though he would protect himself from the other's questioning.
“I've 'eard nothing—” he said almost sullenly and then he turned and looked at Peter.
“Why must 'e be 'ere?” he said sharply to Zanti.
“Why not? Where else?” the other answered and the two men watched each other with hostility across the floor.
“I wish we'd all bloomin' wull kept out of it,” Stephen murmured to himself it seemed.
Peter's eyes were upon Mr. Zanti. That gentleman looked more like a naughty child than ever. In his eyes there was the piteous appeal of a small boy about to be punished for some grievous fault. In some strange way Peter was, it appeared, his court of appeal because he glanced towards him again and again and then looked away.
Peter could stand it no longer. He got up from the place where he was and faced them all.
“What is it? What have you all done? What is the matter with you all?”
The Russian girl had come back. Her face was white and her hair fell untidily about her eyes. She came forward fiercely as though she would have answered Peter but Mr. Zanti motioned her back with his hand.
“No, no,” he said almost imploringly, “let the boy be—what has he to do with all this? Leave him. He has nothing to do with it. He knows nothing.”
“But I ought to know,” Peter burst in. “Why have I been kept in the dark all this time? What right have you—”
He broke off suddenly. Absolute silence fell amongst them all and they stood looking at the door, motionless, in their places. There was a new note in the murmuring of the crowd, and the swift steady passing of it came up the street to the shop and in at the door. Voices could be heard rising above others, and then the eager passing of some piece of news from one to another.
No one in the shop spoke. Outside in the deserted street there was silence and then the bands, as though driven by some common wave of feeling, seemed at the same moment to burst into a blare of music. Some voice, from the crowd, started “God save the Queen” and immediately it was taken up and flung into the air by a thousand voices. They must give vent to their feelings, some news had passed down the crowds like a flame setting fire to a chain of beacons.
“What is it?” Peter pressed forwards to the door. And at once he was answered. Men were running past the shop, crying out; one stopped for an instant and, wild with excitement, his hands gesticulating, stammering, the words tumbling from his lips, he shouted at them—“They've bin flinging bombs . . . dirty foreigners . . . up there by the Marble Arch—flinging them at the Old Lady. But it's all right, by Gawd—only blew 'imself up, dirty foreigner—little bits of 'im and no one else 'urt and now the Old Lady's comin' down the street—she'll be 'ere in quarter of an 'our and won't we show 'er . . . by Gawd . . . flingin' their dirty bombs up there by the Marble Arch and killin' nobody but 'imself—Gawd save the Old Lady—” he rushed on.
So that was it. Peter, standing in the middle of the room, looked at them all and understood at last amongst whom he had been working these seven years. They were murderers, the lot of them—all of them—Gottfried, Zanti . . . Stephen—Oh God! Stephen! He understood now for what they had been waiting.
He turned sick at the sudden realisation of it. It did not, at first, seem to touch himself in any way. At the first immediate knowledge of it he had been faced by its amazing incongruity. There by the Marble Arch, with bands flying, flags waving, in all the tumult of a Royal Progress some one had been blown into little pieces. Elsewhere there were people waiting, eating buns out of paper bags, and here in the shop the sun lighted the backs of rows of second-hand novels and down in Treliss the water was, very gently, lapping the little wooden jetty. Oh I the silly jumbling of things in this silly jumbling world!
And then he began to look more closely into it as it concerned himself. He saw with amazing clearness. He knew that it was Oblotzky the tall Russian who had been killed. He knew because Oblotzky was the lover of this Russian girl and he turned round to watch her, curiously, as one who was outside it all. She was standing with her back against the wall, her hands spread out flat, looking through the door into the bright street, seeing none of them. Then she turned and said something in Russian between her clenched teeth to Mr. Zanti. He would have answered her but very quietly and speaking now in English she flung at him, as though it had been a stone:
“God curse you! You drove him to it!” Then she turned round and left the room. But the tall man was blubbering like a child. He had turned round to them all, with his hands outstretched, appealing:
“But it's not true!” he cried between his sobs, “it's not true! I did all I could to stop them—I did not know that they would do things—not really—until now, this morning, when it was too late. It is the others, Sergius, Paslov, Odinsky—zey were always wild, desperate. But we, the rest of us, with us it was only tall words.”
Little Herr Gottfried, who had been silent behind them, came forward now and spoke:
“It is too late,” he said, “for this crying like a baby. We have no time—we must consider what must be done. If it is true, what that man says that Oblotzky has blown himself up and no other is touched then no harm is done. Why regret the Russian? He wanted a violent end and he has got it—and he has given it to no other. Often enough we are not so fortunate. He will have spoken to no one. We are safe.” Then he turned to Peter:
“Poor boy,” he said.
But Peter was not there to be pitied. He had only one thought, “Stephen, tell me—tell me. You did not know? You had nothing to do with this?”
Stephen turned and faced him. “No, Peter boy, nothing. I did not know what they were at. They—Zanti there—'ad 'elped me when I was in trouble years ago. They've given me jobs before now, but they've always been bunglers and now, thank the Lord, they've bungled again. You come with me, Mr. Peter—come along from it all. We'll manage something. I've only been waiting until you wanted me.”
Zanti turned furiously upon him but the words that he would have spoken were for the moment held. The Procession was passing. The roar of cheering came up against the walls of the shop like waves against the rocks; the windows shook. There she was, the little Old Lady in her black bonnet, sitting smiling and bowing, and somewhere behind her a little dust had been blown into the air, had hung for a moment about her and then had once more settled down into the other dust from which it had come.
That was all. In front of her were the Royal Personages, on every side of her her faithful subjects . . . only a cloud of dust had given occasion for a surer sign of her people's devotion. That, at any rate, Oblotzky had done.
The carriage passed.
Mr. Zanti now faced Peter.
“Peter—Boy—you must believe me. I did not know, believe me, I did not. They had talked and I had listened but there is so much talk and never anything is done. Peter, you must not go, you must not leave me. You would break my 'eart—”
“All these years,” Peter said, “you have let me be here while you have deceived me and blinded me. I am going now and I pray to God that I may never see you again.”
“No, Boy, listen. You must not go like this. 'Ave I not been good to you? 'We I ever made you do anything wrong? 'Have I not always kept you out of these tilings? You are the only person zat I 'ave ever loved. You 'ave become my son to me. I am not wicked. I was not one of these men—these anarchists—but it is only that all my life I 'ave wanted adventure, what you call Ro-mance. And I 'ave found it 'ere, there—one place, anuzzer place. But it 'as never been wicked—I 'ave never 'armed a soul. What zat girl says it is not true—I would 'ave done all to stop it if I could. But you—if you leave me now, I am all alone. There is no one in the world for me—a poor old man—but if you will be with me I will show you wonderful things.
“See,” he went on eagerly, almost breathlessly, “we 'ave been socialists 'ere, what you will. We 'ave talked and talked. It amuses me—to intrigue, to pretend, to 'ave games—one day it is Treason, another Brigands, another Travel—what you will. But never, never, never danger to a soul. Now only this morning did I 'ear that they were going to do this. Always it had been words before—but this morning I got a rumour. But it was only rumour. I 'ad not enough to be sure of my news. Stephen here and I—we could do nozzing—we 'ad no time—I did not know where Oblotzky was—this girl 'ere did not know—I could do nozzing—Peter, believe me, believe me—”
The man was no scoundrel. It was plain enough as he stood there, his eyes simple as a child's, pleading still like a small boy.
A minute ago Peter had hated him, now he crossed over and put his hand on his shoulder.
“You have been wonderfully good to me,” he said. “I owe you everything. But I must go—all this has only made sure what I have been knowing this long time that I ought to do. I can't—I mustn't—depend on your charity any longer—it has been too long as it is. I must be on my own and then one day, when I have proved myself, I will come back to you.”
“No—Peter, Boy—come with me now. I will show you wonderful things all over Europe; we will have adventures. There is gold in Cornwall in a place I know. There is a place in Germany where there is treasure—ze world is full of ze most wonderful things that I know and you and I—we two—Oh! ze times we all 'ave—”
“No,” . . . Peter drew back. “That is not my way. I am going to make my living here, in London—or die for it.”
“No—you must not. You will succeed—you will grow fat and sleepy and ze good things of the world and ze many friends will kill your soul. I know it . . . but come with me, first and we will 'ave adventures . . . and zen you shall write.”
But Peter's face was set. The time for the new life had come. Up to this moment he had been passive, he had used his life as an instrument on which others might play. From henceforward his should be the active part.
The crowds were pouring up the street on their homeward way. Bands were playing the soldiers back to the barracks. Soon the streets would have only the paper bags left to them for company. The little bookshop hung, with its misty shelves about the three men. . . . Somewhere in another room, a girl was staring with white set face and burning eyes in front of her, for her lover was dead and the world had died with him.
After a little time amongst the second-hand novels Mr. Zanti sat, his great head buried in his hands, the tears trickling down through his fingers, and Herr Gottfried, motionless from behind his counter watched him in silent sympathy.
Peter and Stephen had gone together.