Fortitude (Walpole)/Book 3/Chapter 10

CHAPTER X

ROCKING THE ROUNDABOUT

I

AS he climbed, once more, the stairs to the nursery, he was conscious of the necessity for a great restraint. Did he but relax for an instant his control he was aware that forces—often dimly perceived and shuddered at—would now, as never in his life before, burst into freedom.

It was as though a whole life of joy and happiness had been suddenly snatched from him and it was Clare who had robbed him—Clare who had never cared what the things might be that she demanded from him—Clare who gave him nothing.

But his rage now, he also felt, was beyond all reason, something that belonged to that other part of him, the part that Scaw House and its dark room understood and so terribly fostered.

He was afraid of what he might do.

II

On opening the nursery door he saw the straight, thin, shining back of Mrs. Kant as she bent to put things straight. Young Stephen was quietly asleep. He closed the door, and, turning in the narrow passage, found Clare coming out of her room. In the dim light they faced one another, hostility flaming between them. She looked at him for a moment, her breast heaving, her mouth so tight and sharp, her eyes so fierce that her little stature seemed to be raised by her anger to a great height.

At that moment Peter felt that he hated her as he had never hated any one in his life before.

She went back, without a word, into her room.

She did not come down again that night and he had his evening meal, miserably, alone.

He slept in his dressing-room. Long before morning his rage had gone. He looked at her locked door and wished, miserably, that he might die for her. . . .

III

Later, as he sat, hopelessly, over the dim and sterile pages of “Mortimer Stant,” Mrs. Rossiter came, heavily, in to talk with him. Mrs. Rossiter always entered the room with an expression of stupid benignity that hid a good deal of rather sharp perception. The fact that she was not nearly so stupid as she looked enabled her to look all the stupider and she covered a multitude of brains with a quantity of hard black silk that she spread out around her with the air of one who is filling as much of the room as she can conveniently seize upon. Her plump arms, her broad and placid bosom, her flat smooth face, her hair, entirely negative in colour and arrangement, offered no clue whatever to her unsuspected sharpnesses. Smooth, broad, flat and motionless she carried, like the Wooden Horse of Troy, a thousand dangers in the depths of her placidity.

She had come now to assist her daughter, the only person for whom she may be said to have had the slightest genuine affection, for Dr. Rossiter she had long despised and Mrs. Galleon was an ally and companion but never a friend. She had allowed Clare to marry Peter, chiefly because Clare would have married him in any case, but also, a little, because she thought that Peter had a great career in front of him. Now that Peter's career seemed already to be, for the most part, behind him, she disliked him and because he appeared to have made Clare unhappy suddenly hated him . . . but placidity was the shield that covered her attack and, for a symbol, one might take the large flat golden brooch that she wore on her bosom—flat, expressionless and shining, with the sharpest pin behind it that ever brooch possessed.

Peter, whose miseries had accumulated as the minutes passed, was ready to seize upon anything that promised a reconciliation. He did not like Mrs. Rossiter—he had never been able to get to close quarters with her, and he was conscious that his roughness and occasional outbursts displeased her. He felt, too, that the qualities that he had resented in Clare owed their origin to her mother. That brooch of hers was responsible for a great deal.

Fixing his eyes upon it he said, “You've come about Clare?”

“Yes, Peter.” Mrs. Rossiter settled herself more comfortably, spread her skirts, folded her hands. “She's very unhappy.”

The mild eyes baffled him.

“I'm terribly sorry. I will do anything I can, but I think—that I had a right”—he faltered a little; it was so like talking to an empty Dairy—“had a right to mind. Two old friends of mine—two of the best friends that I have in the world were here yesterday and Clare—”

“I don't think,” the soft voice broke in upon him whilst the eyes searched his body up and down, “that, even now, Peter, you quite understand Clare—”

“No,” he said eagerly, “I know. I'm blundering, stupid. Lots of times I've irritated her, and now again.” He paused, but then added, with a touch of his old stubbornness—“But they were friends of mine—she should have treated them so.”

Mrs. Rossiter felt that she did indeed hate the young man.

“Clare is very unhappy,” she repeated. “She tells me that she has been crying all night. You must remember, Peter, that her life has been very different to yours—”

He wished that she would not repeat herself; he wished that she would not always use the same level voice; he wanted insanely to tell her that she ought to say “different from”—he could not take his eyes from the brooch. But the thought of Clare came to him and he bowed himself once more humbly.

“I will see that things are better,” he said earnestly. “I don't know what has been the matter lately—my work and everything has been wrong, and I expect my temper has been horrible. You know,” he said with a little crooked smile, “that I've got to work to keep it all going, and when I'm writing badly then my temper goes to pieces.”

Mrs. Rossiter, with no appearance of having heard anything that he had said, continued—

“You know, Peter, that your temperament is very different to Clare's. You are, and I know you will forgive my putting it so plainly, a little wild still—doubtless owing to your earlier years. Clare is gentle, bright, happy. She has never given my husband or myself a moment's trouble, but that is because we understood her nature. We knew that she loved people about her to be happy—she flourished in the sun, she drooped under the clouds . . . under the clouds” Mrs. Rossiter repeated again softly, as she searched, with care, for her next words.

Irritation was rising within Peter. Why should it be concluded so inevitably that the fault was all on Peter's side and not at all on Clare's—after all, there were reasons . . . but he pulled himself up. He had behaved like a beast.

“I've tried very hard—” he began.

“Clouds—” said Mrs. Rossiter. “And you, Peter, are at times—I have seen it myself and I know that it is apparent to others—inclined to be morose—gloomy, a little gloomy—” Her fingers tapped the silk of her dress. “Dear Clare, considering what her own life has been, shrinks, I must confess it seems to me quite naturally, from any reminder of what your own earlier circumstances have been. Look at it, Peter, for an instant from the outside and you will see, at once, I am sure, what it must have been to her, yesterday, to come into her nursery, to find tables, chairs overturned, strange men shouting and flinging poor little Stephen towards the ceiling—some talk about Cornwall—really, Peter, I think you can understand . . .”

He abandoned all his defences. “I know—I ought to have realised . . . it was quite natural . . .”

In the back of his head he heard her words “You're morose—you're wild. Other people find you so—you're making a mess of everything and every one knows it—”

He was humbled to the dust. If only he might make it all right with Clare, then he would see to it—Oh! yes he would see to it—that nothing of this kind ever happened again. From Mrs. Rossiter's standpoint he looked back upon his life and found it all one ignoble, selfish muddle. Dear Clare!—so eager to be happy and he had made her miserable.

“Will she forgive me?”

“Dear Clare,” said Mrs. Rossiter, rising brightly and with a general air of benevolence towards all the sinners in existence, “is the most forgiving creature in the world.”

He went down to her bedroom and found her lying on a sofa and reading a novel.

He fell on his knees at her side—“Clare—darling—I'm a beast, a brute—”

She suddenly turned her face into the cushions and burst into passionate crying. “Oh! it's horrible—horrible—horrible—”

He kissed her hand and then getting on to his feet again, stood looking at her awkwardly, struggling for words with which to comfort her.

IV

And then at luncheon, there was a little, pencilled feeble note for Peter from Norah Monogue. “Please, if you can spare half an hour come to me. In a day or two I am off to the country.”

Things had just been restored to peace and happiness—Clare had just proposed that they should go, that afternoon, to a Private View together—they might go and have tea with—

For an instant he was tempted to abandon Norah. Then his courage came:—

“Here's a note from Miss Monogue,” he said. “She's awfully ill I think, I ought—”

Clare's face hardened again. She got up from the table—

“Just as you please—” she said.

He climbed on to the omnibus that was to stumble with him down Piccadilly with a hideous, numbing sense of being under the hand of Fate. Why, at this moment, in all time, should this letter of Norah Monogue's have made its unhappy appearance? With what difficulty and sorrow had he and Clare reached once more a reconciliation only, so wantonly, to be plucked away from it again! From the top of his omnibus he looked down upon a sinister London. It was a heavy, lowering day; thick clouds like damp cloths came down upon the towers and chimneys. The trees in the Green Park were black and chill and in and out of the Clubs figures slipped cautiously and it seemed furtively. Just beyond the Green Park they were building a vast hotels climbing figures and twisting lines of scaffolding pierced the air, and behind the rolling and rattling of the traffic the sound of many hammers beat rhythmically, monotonously. . . .

To Peter upon his omnibus, suddenly that sound that he had heard before—that sound of London stirring—came back to him, and now more clearly than he had ever known it. Tap-tap-tap-tap . . . Clamp-clamp-tap-tap-tap-tap—whir! whir I . . . Clamp-clamp. . . .

It seemed to him that all the cabs and the buses and the little black figures were being hurried by some power straight, fast, along Piccadilly to be pitched, at the end of it, pell-mell, helter-skelter into some dark abysmal pit, there to perish miserably.

Yes, the beast was stirring! Ever so little the pavements, the houses were heaving. Perhaps if one could see already the soil was cracking beneath one's feet. “Look out! London will have you in a minute,” Tap-tap-tap-tap—clamp-clamp—tap-tap-tap-tap—whir-whir—clamp-clamp. . . .

Anyhow it was a heavy, clammy day. The houses were ghosts and the people were ghosts, and grey shadows, soon perhaps to be a yellow fog, floated about the windows and the doors and muffled all human sounds.

He passed the great pile of scaffolding, saw iron girders shining, saw huge cranes swinging in mid-air, saw tiny, tiny black atoms perched above the noise and swallowed by the smoke . . . tap-tap—clamp-clamp. . .

Yes, the beast was moving . . . and, out and in, lost and then found again, crept that twisting chain of beggars to whose pallid army Peter himself had once so nearly belonged.

“I suppose I've got a headache after all that row with Clare,” Peter thought as he climbed off the omnibus.

V

He realised, as he came into the Bloomsbury square, and saw Mrs. Brockett gloomily waiting for him, that the adventures of his life were most strangely bound together. Not for an instant did he seem to be able to escape from any one of them. Now it would be Cornwall, now the Bookshop, now Stephen, now Mr. Zanti, now Bucket Lane, now Treliss—all of them interweaving, arresting his action at every moment. Because he had done that once now this must not be permitted him; he felt, as he rang the old heavy bell of Brockett's that his head would never think clearly again. As the door opened and he stepped into the hall he heard, faintly, across the flat spaces of the Square “Tap-tap-tap-tap—clamp-clamp. . . .”

Even Mrs. Brockett, who might be considered if any one in the world, immune from morbid imaginations, felt the heaviness of the day, suggested a prevalence of thunder, and shook her head when Peter asked about Miss Monogue.

“She's bad, Mr. Peter, very bad, poor dear. There's no doubt about that. It's hard to see what can be done for her—but plucky! That's a small word for it!”

“I'm sure she is,” said Peter, feeling ashamed of having made so much of his own little troubles.

“She must get out of London if she's to improve at all. In a week or two I hope she'll be able to move.”

“How's every one else?”

“Oh, well enough.” Mrs. Brockett straightened her dress with her beautiful hands in the old familiar way—“But you're not looking very hearty yourself, Mr. Peter.”

“Oh! I'm all right,” he answered smiling; but she shook her head after him as she watched him go up the stairs.

And then he was surprised. He came into Norah Monogue's room and found her sitting up by her window, looking better than he had ever seen her. Her face was full of colour and her eyes bright and smiling. Only on her hands the blue veins stood out, and their touch, when she shook hands with him, was hot and burning.

But he was reassured; Mrs. Brockett had exaggerated and made the worst of it all.

“You're looking splendid—I'm so glad. I was afraid from your letter—”

“Oh! I really am getting on,” she broke in gaily, “and its the nicest boy in the world that you are to come in and see me so quickly. Only on a day like this London does just lie heavily upon one doesn't it? and one just longs for the country—”

A little breath of a sigh escaped from her and she looked through her window at the dim chimneys, the clouds hanging like consolidated smoke, the fine, thin dust that filtered the air.

“You're looking tired yourself, Peter. Working too hard?”

“No,” he shook his head. “The work hasn't been coming easily at all. I suppose I've been too conscious, lately, of the criticisms every one made about ‘The Stone House.’ I don't believe one ought really to listen to anybody and yet it's so hard not to, and so difficult to know whose opinion one ought to take if one's going to take anybody's. I wish,” he suddenly brought out, “Henry Galleon were still alive. I could have followed him.”

“But why follow anybody?”

“Ah! that's just it. I'm beginning to doubt myself and that's why it's getting so difficult.”

Her eyes searched his face and she saw, at once, that he was in very real trouble. He looked younger, just then, she thought, than she had ever seen him, and she felt herself so immensely old that she could have taken him into her arms and mothered him as though he'd been her own son.

“There are a lot of things the matter,” she said. “Tell me what they all are.”

“Well,” he said slowly, “I suppose it's all been mostly my own fault—but the real difficulty is that I don't seem to be able to run the business of being married and the business of writing together. I don't think Clare in the least cares now about my writing—she almost resents it; she cared at first when she thought that I was going to make a huge success of it, but now—”

“But, of course,” said Miss Monogue, “that success comes slowly—it must if it's going to be any use at all—”

“Well, she doesn't see that. And she wants me to go out to parties and play about all the time—and then she doesn't want me to be any of the things that I was before I met her. All my earlier life frightens her—I suppose,” he suddenly ended, “I want her to be different and she wants me to be different and we can't make a compromise.”

Then Miss Monogue said: “Have any outside people interfered at all?”

Peter coloured. “Well, of course, Mrs. Rossiter stands up for Clare. She came and talked to me this morning and I think the things that she said were quite true. I suppose I am morose and morbid sometimes—more than I realise—and then,” he added slowly, “there's Cards—”

“Cards?”

“Cardillac—a man I was at school with. I'm very fond of him. He's the best friend I've got, and he's been all over the place and done everything and, of course, knows ever so much more about the world than I do. The fact is he thinks really that my novels are dreadful nonsense, only he's much too kind to say so—and, of course, Clare looks up to him a lot. Although he's only my own age he seems so much older than both Clare and myself. I don't believe she'd have lost interest in my work so quickly if he hadn't influenced her—and he's influenced me too—” Peter added sighing.

“Well—and is there anything else?”

“Yes. There's Stephen. I can't begin to tell you how I love that kid. There haven't been many people in my life that I've cared about and I've never realised anything so intensely before. Besides,” he went on laughing proudly, “he's such a splendid kid! I wish you could see him, Norah. He'll do something one day—”

“Well, what's the trouble about Stephen?”

“Clare's so odd about him. There are times when I don't believe she cares for him the least little bit. Then there are other times when she resents fiercely my interfering about him. Sometimes she seems to love him more than anything in the world, but it's always in an odd defiant way—just as though she were afraid that something would hurt her if she showed that she cared too much.”

There was silence between them for a minute and then Peter summed it all up with:—“The fact is, Norah, that every sort of thing's getting in between me and my work and worries me. It's as though I were tossing more balls in the air than I could possibly manage. At one moment I think it's Clare that I've got especially to hang on to— another time it's the book—and then it's Stephen. The moment I've settled down something turns up to remind me of Cornwall or the Bookshop. Fact is I'm getting battered at by something or other and I never can get my breath. I oughtn't ever to have married—I'm not up to it.”

Norah Monogue took his hand.

“You are up to it, Peter, but I expect you've got a lot to go through before you're clear of things. Now I'm going to be brutal. The fact is that you're too self-centred. People never do anything in the world so long as they are wondering whether the world's going to hurt them or no. Those early years of yours made you morbid. You've got a temper and one or two other things that want a lot of holding down and that takes up your attention—And then Clare isn't the woman to help you—”

Peter was about to break in but she went on:—“Oh! I know my Clare through and through. She's just as anxious as you are not to be hurt by anything and so she's being hurt all the time. She's out for happiness at any cost and you're out for freedom—freedom from every kind of thing—and because both of you are denied it you are restive. But you and Clare are both people whose only salvation is in being hurt and knocked about and bruised to such an extent that they simply don't know where they are. Oh! I know—I'm exactly the same sort of person myself. We can thank the Gods if we are knocked about—”

Suddenly she paused and, falling back in her chair, put her hand to her breast, coughing. Something seized her, held her in its grip, tossed her from side to side, at last left her white, speechless, utterly exhausted. It had come so suddenly that it had taken Peter entirely by surprise. She lay back now, her eyes closed, her face a grey white.

He ran to the door and called Mrs. Brockett. She came and with an exclamation hurried away for remedies.

Peter suddenly felt his hand seized—a hoarse whisper was in his ear—“Peter—dear—go—at—once—I can't bear—you—to see me—like this. Come back—another day.”

He knelt, moved by an affection and tenderness that seemed stronger than any emotion he had ever known, and kissed her. She whispered:

“Dear boy—”

On his way back to Chelsea, the orange lamps, the white streets powdered with the evening glow, the rustling plane trees whispered to him, “You've got to be knocked about—you've got to be knocked about—you've got to be knocked about—” but the murmur was no longer sinister.

Still thinking of Norah, he went up to the nursery to see the boy in bed. He remembered that Clare was going out alone to a party and that he would have the evening to himself.

On entering the room, dark except for a nightlight by the boy's bed, some unknown fear assailed him. He was instantly, at the threshold, conscious of it. He stood for a moment in silence. Then realised what it was. The boy was moaning in his sleep.

He went quickly over to the cot and bent down. Stephen's cheeks were flaming, his hands very hot.

Peter rang the bell. Mrs. Kant appeared.

“Is there anything the matter with Stephen?”

Mrs. Kant looked at him, surprised, a little offended.

“He's had a little cold all day, sir. I've kept him indoors.”

“Have you taken his temperature?”

“Yes, sir, nothing at all unusual. He often goes up and down.”

“Have you spoken to your mistress?”

“Yes, sir. She agrees with me that there is nothing unusual—”

He brushed past the woman and went to his wife's bedroom.

She was dressed and was putting on a string of pearls, a wedding present from her father. She smiled up at him—

“Clare, do you know Stephen's ill?”

“No, it's only a cold. I've been up to see him—”

He took her hand—she smiled up at him—” Did you enjoy your visit.” She fastened the necklace.

“Clare, stay in to-night. It may be nothing but if the boy got worse—”

“Do you want me to stay?”

“Yes.”

“I wanted you to go with me this afternoon—”

“That was different. The boy may be really ill—”

“You didn't do what I wanted this afternoon. Why should I do what you want now?”

“Clare, stay. Please, please—”

She took her hand gently out of his, and, as she went out of the door switched off the electric light.

He heard the opening of the hall door and, standing where she had left him in the dark bedroom, saw, shining, laughing at him, her eyes.