Fortitude (Walpole)/Book 3/Chapter 12

CHAPTER XII

A WOMAN CALLED ROSE BENNETT

I

THE days that followed were dead—dead in more than any ordinary sense of the word. But perhaps it was Peter who was dead. He moved, ate, drank, even wrote his reviews, slept—he thanked gravely all those who offered him condolences—wrote letters in answer to kind friends. . . .“Dear S——— It was just like you to write so kindly and sympathetically. . . .” And all this time he was without any kind of emotion. He was aware that there was something in the back of his brain that, were it once called upon to awake, might stir him into life again. What it would tell him he did not know, something about love, something intensely sorrowful, something that had occurred very probably to himself. He did not want to live—to think, to feel. Thinking meant pain, meant a sudden penetrating into that room shrouded now by heavy, black curtains but containing, were those curtains drawn, some great, phantasmal horror.

He was dimly aware that the people about him were frightened. Clare, Bobby Galleon, Cardillac. He knew that they would be glad for him to draw those curtains aside and penetrate into that farther room. That was unkind of them. He had no other emotion but that it was unkind of them. Beyond that unkindness, they did not exist.

He was thinner. His shoulders seemed to pierce sharply his clothes; his cheeks were white and hollow, there were dark lines beneath his eyes, dark, grey patches. His legs were not so straight, nor so strong. Moreover his eyes were as though they were covered with a film. Seeing everything they yet saw nothing at all. They passed through the world and were confronted by the heavy, veiling curtains. . . .

This condition lasted for many days. Of all about him none understood him so well as Bobby Galleon. Bobby had always understood him, and now he felt for him with a tenderness that had both the past and the future to heighten its poignancy. It seemed to Bobby that nothing more tragic than the death of this child could possibly have occurred. It filled him with anxiety for the future, it intensified to a depth that only so simple and affectionate a character as his could feel, the love that he had always had for Peter.

He was with him during these days continually, waiting for the relief to come.

“It's got to come soon,” he said, “or the boy'll go mad.”

At last it came.

One day about tea-time they were sitting in Peter's upstairs study. It had been a day of showers and now the curtains were not drawn and a green-grey dusk glimmered beyond the windows.

Peter was writing letters, and as Bobby watched him he seemed to him like some automaton, something wound into life by some clever inventor. The hand moved across the paper—the dead eyes encountered nothing in their gaze, the shoulders were the loosely drooping shoulders of an old man.

“Can you see, Peter?”

“Yes, thanks. Switch on the light if you like.”

Bobby got up and moved to the door. The dusk behind Peter's face flung it into sharp white outline.

Another shower! The rain at first in single drops, then more swiftly, fell with gentle, pattering fingers up and down the window. It was the only sound, except the scraping of Peter's pen. The pen stopped. Peter raised his head, listening.

Bobby switched on the light and as he did so Peter in a strangled breathless mutter whispered—

“The rain! The rain! It was like that that night. Stephen! Stephen!”

His head fell on to his hands and he burst into a storm of tears.

II

And now Peter was out to be hurt, hurt more horribly than he could have ever believed possible. It was like walking—as they did in the days of the Ordeal—on red-hot iron, every step an agony. Always there was something to remind him! He could go nowhere, see nobody, summon no kind of recollection out of the past without this coming to him. There were a thousand things that Stephen had done, that he, Peter, had never noticed at the time. He was haunted now with regrets, he had not made enough of him whilst he was there! Ah! had he only known that the time was to be so short! How he would have spent those precious, precious moments! It was as though he had flung away, wilfully, possessions of the utmost price—cast them off as though it had been his very intention to feel, afterwards, this burning regret. The things in the nursery were packed away, but there remained the room, the frieze with the dragons and princesses, the fire-place, the high broad window. Again and again he saw babies in the streets, in the parks and fancied that Stephen had come back again.

The thing had happened to him so swiftly that, behind reason, there lurked the thought that perhaps, with equal suddenness, Stephen would be restored. To come back one afternoon and to find him there! To find him lying there on his back in his cot looking up at the ceiling, to find him labouring unsteadily on his feet, clinging to the sides of his bed and shouting—to find him laughing at the jumping waves in the fire—to find him! . . . No, never to be found again—gone, hopelessly, cruelly, for no reason, for no one's good or benefit—simply for some one's sport.

But, strangely, more than the actual Stephen did he miss the imaginary future Stephen at school, hero of a thousand games, winner of a thousand prizes, the Stephen grown up, famous already at so young an age, loved by men and women, handsome, good. . . . Oh! the folly of it! No human being could carry all the glories that Peter had designed for his son—no human being, then how much less a Westcott. It might be best after all, young Stephen had been spared. Until every stone of Scaw House was level with the ground no Westcott could be termed safe—perhaps not then.

Now he realised how huge a place in his heart the boy had filled dimly, because as yet he refused to bring it to the open light he was conscious that, during these past two years he had been save for Stephen, a very lonely man. It was odd that Stephen the elder and Stephen the younger should have been the only two persons in his life to find the real inside of him—they, too, and perhaps Norah Monogue. But, otherwise, not Bobby, nor Cards, nor Alice Galleon, nor Mr. Zanti—nor Clare.

Not Clare. He faced the fact with a sudden shudder. Now that Stephen was gone he and Clare were face to face—face to face as they had never been since that first happy year of their marriage. That first year of their marriage—and now!

With an instant clenching of his teeth he pulled down the blinds upon that desolating view.

III

With teeth still clenched he set himself to build up his house again. Clare was very quiet and submissive during those first weeks. Her little figure looked helpless and appealing in its deep black; she was prettier than she had ever been in her life before. People said, “Poor Mrs. Westcott, she feels the loss of her baby so dreadfully”—and they didn't think about Peter. Indeed some people thought him callous. “Mr. Westcott seemed to be so fond of the child. Now I really believe he's forgotten all about him.” Bobby was the only person in the world who knew how Peter suffered.

Clare was, indeed, after a time, reassured. Peter, after all, seemed not to mind. Did he mind anything? He was so often glum and silent that really you couldn't tell. Clare herself had been frightened on that night when the baby had died. She had probably never in all her life felt a more genuine emotion than she had known when she knelt by Peter's side and went to sleep in his arms. She was quite ready to feel that emotion again would Peter but allow her. But no. He showed no emotion himself and expected no one else to show any, for he was ready to share it but in her heart of hearts she longed to fling away from her this emotional atmosphere. She had loved the baby—of course she had loved it. But she had always known that something would happen to it—always. If Peter would insist on having those horrid Cornishmen. . . . At heart she connected that dreadful day when those horrible men had played about in the nursery with baby's death. Of course it was enough to kill any baby.

So, ultimately, it all came back to Peter's fault. Clare found real satisfaction in the thought. Meanwhile she emphatically stated her desire to be happy again.

She stated it always in Peter's absence, feeling that he would, in no way, understand her. “It can't help poor dear little Stephen that we should go on being melancholy and doing nothing. That's only morbid, isn't it, mother?”

Mrs. Rossiter entirely agreed, as indeed she always agreed with anything that Clare suggested.

“The dear thing does look lovely in black, though,” she confided to Mrs. Galleon. “Mr. Cardillac couldn't take his eyes off her yesterday at luncheon.”

Mrs. Rossiter and Jerry Cardillac had, during the last year, become the very best of friends. Peter was glad to see that it was so. Peter couldn't pretend to care very deeply about his mother-in-law, but he felt that it would do her all the good in the world to see something of old Cards. It would broaden her understanding, give her perhaps some of that charity towards the whole world that was one of Cards' most charming features. Cards, in fact, had been so much in the house lately that he might be considered one of the family. No one could have been more tender, more sympathetic, more exactly right about young Stephen's death. He had become, during those weeks almost a necessity. He seemed to have no particular interest of his own in life. He dressed very perfectly, he went to a number of parties, he had delightful little gatherings in his own flat, but, with it all, he was something more—a great deal more—than the mere society idler. There was a hint at possible wildness, an almost sinister suggestion of possible lawlessness that made him infinitely attractive. He was such good company and yet one felt that one didn't know nearly the whole of him.

To Peter he was the most wonderful thing in the world, to Clare he was rapidly becoming so—no wonder then that the Roundabout saw him so often.

IV

It would need a very acute perception indeed to pursue precisely the train of cause and effect in Mrs. Rossiter's mind after young Stephen's death. Her black garments added, in the most astonishing fashion, to her placid flatness. If she had gloried before in an armour that was so negative that it became instantly exceedingly dangerous, her appearance now was terrifying beyond all words. Her black silk had apparently no creases, no folds—it almost eliminated terms and boundaries. Mrs. Rossiter could not now be said to come into a room—she was simply there. One was sitting, gazing it might be at the fire, a looking-glass, a picture or two, when suddenly there came a black shadow, something that changed the colour of things a little, something that obscured certain objects, but scarcely anything more definite. The yellow brooch was definite, cold, stony eyes hung a little above it, over those a high white forehead—otherwise merely a black shadow putting out the fire.

She was in the Roundabout now all the time. How poor Dr. Rossiter fared it was difficult to imagine, but he cared for Clare as deeply as his wife did and was quite ready for everything to be sacrificed to her at this crisis of her history.

Mrs. Rossiter, meanwhile, was entirely convinced that Peter was responsible for his son's death. Had you suddenly challenged her and demanded her reasoned argument with regard to this matter she would probably have failed you—she did not like reasoned arguments—but she would also have been most sincerely indignant had you called her a liar and would have sworn to her convictions before a court of law.

“Those Cornishmen” had frightened the poor little thing into fits and it was only to be expected. Moreover it followed from this that a man who murdered his only child would most assuredly take to beating his wife before very long. After that, anything might happen. Peter was on a swift road to being a “Perfect Devil.”

Indeed, allow Mrs. Rossiter two consecutive hours of peace and quiet, she, sitting like the personification of the English climate, alone before her fire, and she could make any one into anything—once made so they remained.

It mattered nothing to her that poor Peter was, during these weeks, the most subdued and gently courteous of husbands—that was as it might be (a favourite phrase of hers). She knew him . . . and, so knowing, waited for the inevitable end.

But the more certain she was of his villainous possibilities the more placid she became. She spread her placidity over everything. It lay, like an invisible glue, upon everything in the Roundabout—you could feel it on the door-handles, as you feel the jammy reminiscences of incautious servant-maids. Peter felt it but did not know what it was that he had to deal with.

He had determined, when the sharpest shock of Stephen's death had passed, and he was able to think of other things, that the supremely important thing for him now to do was to get back to his old relations with Clare. There was, he grimly reflected, “Mortimer Stant” to be finished within a month or two and he knew, perfectly well, with the assurance of past experience that whilst Clare held the stage, Mortimer had the poorest of chances—nevertheless Clare was, at this moment, the thing to struggle for.

He must get her back—he must get her back.

Behind his brain, all this time, was the horror of being left alone in the world and of what he might do—then.

To get Clare back he must have the assistance of two people—Mrs. Rossiter and Cards.

It was at this point that he perceived Mrs. Rossiter's placidity.

He could not get at her at all—he could not get near her. He tried in every way, during these weeks, to please her. She apparently noticed nothing. He could force no direct opinion about anything from her and yet he was conscious of opposition. He was conscious of opposition, increasingly, every day.

“I believe she wants Clare to hate me,” he suddenly revealed to himself, and, with that, all hope of her as an ally vanished.

Then he hated her—he hated her more bitterly every day.

He wanted to tell her not to call him “Peter dear”—she loved to put him in positions that showed him in the worst light to Clare.

At luncheon for instance: “Peter dear, it would be a nice thing for you and Clare to go to that Private View at the Carfax this afternoon. You've nothing to do, Clare, have you?”

Peter knew that Mrs. Rossiter had already ascertained that he was engaged. He knew also that Clare had had no thought of Peter's company before but that now she would very speedily feel herself injured.

“I'm afraid—” Peter would begin.

“Peter's too engaged to take you, Clare dear.”

“I dare say Jerry will come—” this from Clare.

“Ah! yes, Mr. Cardillac is always ready to take any trouble, Peter.”

“If you'd let me know earlier, Clare, that you wanted me.”

Mrs. Rossiter. “Oh! don't put yourself out, Peter. It would never do to break an engagement. Only it seems such a long time since you and Clare—”

Peter. “We'll go to-morrow afternoon, Clare.”

Clare. “You're so gloomy when you do come, Peter. It's like going out with a ghost.”

Mrs. Rossiter. “Ah! Peter has his work, dear—so much hangs on the next book, doesn't it, Peter.” Naturally the last one didn't quite—”

Peter. “Look here, Clare, I'll chuck this engagement.”

Clare. “No, thank you, Peter—Jerry and I will be all right. You can join us if you like—”

The fact was that Peter wasn't tactful. He showed Mrs. Rossiter much too plainly that he disliked her intensely. He had no idea that he showed it her. He thought, indeed, that he was very skilful in his disguise of his feelings but Mrs. Rossiter knew and soon Clare knew also.

Peter had no conception of subtlety in the matter. It was clear to him that he had once been devoted to Clare and she to him, it was clear also that that relationship had recently been dimmed. Now that Stephen was gone that early intimacy must be restored and the fact that he was willing on his side to do anything to bring it back seemed to him reason enough for its restoration. That the whole matter was composed of the most delicate and intricate threads never occurred to him for an instant. Clare had loved him once. Clare would love him again—and the sooner it happened the better for him.

Meanwhile Mrs. Rossiter being enemy rather than ally there remained Cards.

But Cards was strange. Peter could never claim to have been intimate with him—their relationship had been founded on an inequality, on a recognition from Peter of Cards' superiority. Cards had always laughed at Peter, always patronised him. But now, although Cards had been in the place so much of late, the distance seemed farther than ever before.

Cards was as kind as he could be—always in good spirits, always ready to do anything, but Peter noticed that it was only when Clare was present that Cards changed from jest to earnest. “He thinks Clare worth talking to seriously. . . .. I suppose it's because he was at Dawson's. . . but after all I'm not an imbecile.”

This attitude of Cards was in fact as vague and nebulous as all the other things that seemed now to stand between Peter and Clare.

Peter tried to talk to Cards—he was always prevented—held off with a laughing hand.

“What's the matter with me?” thought Peter, “What have I done? It's like being out in a fog.”

At last one evening, after dinner, when Clare and Mrs. Rossiter had gone upstairs he demanded an answer.

“Look here, Cards, what have I done? You profess to be a friend of mine. Tell me what crime I've committed?”

Cards' eyes had been laughing. Suddenly he was serious. His dark, clean-cut face was stern, almost accusing.

“Profess, Peter? I hope you don't doubt it?”

“No, of course not. You know you're the best friend I've got. Tell me—what have I done?”

“Done?”

“Yes—you and Clare and her mother—all of you keep me at arms' length—why?”

“Do you really want a straight talking?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I can only speak for myself—but—to tell the truth, old boy—I think you've been rather hard on poor little Clare.”

For the first time since his marriage Peter resented Cards' words. “Poor little Clare”—wasn't that a little too intimate?

“What do you mean?” he asked, his voice a little harder.

“Well—I don't think you understand her, Peter.”

“Explain.”

“She's a happy, merry person if ever there was one in this world. She wants all the happiness you can give her—”

“Well?”

“Well, you don't seem to see that. Of course young Stephen's death—”

“Let's leave that—” Peter's voice was harder again.

“Oh, all right—just as you please. But most men would have seen what a shock it must be to a girl, so young, who knew so little about the cruelty of life. You didn't—you don't mind, Peter, do you?—you didn't seem to think of that. Never tried to cheer her up, take her about, take her out of herself. You just wrapped yourself up—”

“You don't understand,” muttered Peter, his eyes lowered. “If I'd thought that she'd really minded Stephen's death—”

“Oh! come Peter—that's grossly unfair. Why, she felt it all most horribly. That shows how little you've understood her, how little you've appreciated her. You've always been a gloomy, morbid devil and—”

“All right. Cards—that'll do.”

Cards stood back from the table, his mouth smiling, his eyes hard and cold.

“Oh! no, it won't. You asked for it and now you're going to get it. You've not only been gloomy and morbid all your life, you've been selfish as well—always thinking of yourself and the books you were going to write, and then when they did come they weren't such great shakes. You oughtn't to have married at all—you've never considered Clare at all—your treatment of her—”

Peter stood up, his face white, so that his eyes and the lines of his mouth showed black in the shadow.

“Clear out—I've heard enough.”

“Oh! that's just like you—ask me for my opinion and then lose your temper over it. Really, Peter, you're like a boy of ten—you don't deserve to be treated as a grown-up person.”

Peter's voice shook. “Clear out—clear out or I'll do for you—get out of my house—”

“Certainly.”

Cards opened the door and was gone. Peter heard him hesitate for a moment in the hall, get his hat and coat and then close the hall-door after him.

The house was suddenly silent. Peter stood, his hands clenched. Then he went out into the hall.

He heard Mrs. Rossiter's voice from above—“Aren't you two men ever coming up?”

“Jerry's gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes—we've had a row.”

Mrs. Rossiter made no reply. He heard the drawing-room door close. Then he, too, took his coat and hat and went out.

V

The night was cool and sweet with a great silver haze of stars above the sharply outlined roofs and chimneys. The golden mist from the streets met the night air and mingled with it.

Peter walked furiously, without thinking of direction. Some clock struck half-past nine. His temper faded swiftly, leaving him cold, miserable, regretful. There went his damnable temper again, surging up suddenly so hot and fierce that it had control of him almost before he knew that it was there. How like him, too! Now when things were bad enough, when he must bend all his energies to bringing peace back into the house again, he must needs go and quarrel with the best friend he had in the world. He had never quarrelled with Cards before, never had there been the slightest word between them, and now he had insulted him so that, probably, he would never come into their house again.

And behind his immediate repentance at the quarrel there also bit into his heart the knowledge that there was truth in the accusation that Cardillac had flung at him. He had been morbid, he had been selfish. Absorbed by his own grief at Stephen's loss he had given no thought to any one else. He had expected Clare to be like himself, had made no allowance for differences of temperament, had. . . . Poor Peter had never before known an hour of such miserable self-condemnation. Had he known where to find him he would have gone that very instant to beg Cards' pardon.

Now, in comparison with his own black deeds, Mrs. Rossiter seemed an angel. He should show her in the future that he could mend his ways. Clare should make no further complaint of him. He found himself in Leicester Square and still wrapt in his own miserable thoughts went into the Empire. He walked up and down the Promenade wondering that so many people could take the world so lightly. Very far away a gentleman in evening dress was singing a song—his mouth could be seen to open and shut, sometimes his arms moved—no sound could be heard.

The Promenade was packed. Up and down ladies in enormous hats walked languidly. They all wore clothes that were gorgeous and a little soiled. They walked for the most part in couples and appeared to be absorbed in conversation, but every now and again they smiled mechanically, recognised a friend or saw somebody who was likely very shortly to become one.

There was a great deal of noise. There were numbers of men—old gentlemen who were there because they had always been there, young gentlemen who were there because they had never been there before and a few gentleman who had come to see the Ballet.

The lights blazed, the heat and noise steadily accumulated, corks were popped in the bar behind, promises were broken in the Promenade in front, and soon after eleven, when everything had become so uncomfortable that the very lights in the building protested, the doors were opened and the whole Bubble and Squeak was flung out into the cool and starlit improprieties of Leicester Square.

Peter could not have told you if he had been asked, that he had been there, felt a devouring thirst and entered a building close at hand where there were rows of little round tables and numbers of little round waiters.

Peter sat down at the first table that occurred to him and it was not until he looked round about him that he discovered that a lady in a huge black hat was sitting smiling opposite him. Her cheeks were rouged, her gloves were soiled and her hair looked as though it might fall into a thousand pieces at the slightest provocation, but her eyes were pathetic and tired. They didn't belong to her face.

“Hullo, dear, let's have a drink. Haven't had a drink to-night.”

He asked her what she would like and she told him. She studied him carefully for quite a long time.

“Down on your luck, old chum?” she said at last.

“Yes, I am,” Peter said, “a bit depressed.”

“I know. I'm often that way myself. We all catch it. Come home and have a bit of supper. That'll cheer you up.”

“No, thanks,” said Peter politely. “I must get back to my own place in a minute.”

“Well,” said the lady. “Please yourself, and I'll have another drink if you don't very much mind.”

It was whilst he was ordering another drink that he came out of his own thoughts and considered her.

“That's right,” she said smiling, “have a good look. My name's Rose Bennett. Here's my card. Perhaps you'd like to come and have tea with me one day.”

She gave him a very dirty card on which was written “Miss Rose Bennett, 4 Annton Street, Portland Place.”

“You're Cornish,” he suddenly said, looking at her.

She moved her soiled gloves up and down the little table—“Well, what if I am?” she said defiantly, not looking at him.

“I knew it,” said Peter triumphantly, “the way you rolled your r's—”

“Well, chuck it, dear,” said Miss Bennett, “and let's talk sense. What's Cornwall got to do with us anyhow?”

“I'm Cornish too,” said Peter, “it's got a good deal to do with us. You needn't tell me of course—but what part do you come from?”

Still sullenly she said: “Almost forgotten the name of it, so long ago. You wouldn't know it anyway, it's such a little place. They called it Portergwarra—”

“I know,” cried Peter, “near the Land's End. Of course I know it. There are holes in the rocks that they lift the boats through. There's a post-box on the wall. I've walked there many a time—”

“Well, stow it, old man,” Miss Bennett answered decisively. “I'm not thinking of that place any more and I don't suppose they've thought of me since. Why, it's years—”

She broke off and began hurriedly to drink. Peter's eyes sought her eyes—his eyes were miserable and so were hers—but her mouth was hard and laughing.

“It's funny talking of Cornwall,” she said at last. “No one's spoken of the place since I came up here. But it's, all right, I tell you—quite all right. You take it from me, chucky. I enjoy my life—have a jolly time. There's disadvantages in every profession, and when you've got a bit of a cold as I have now why—”

She stopped. Her eyes sought Peter's. He saw that she was nearly crying.

“Talking of Cornwall and all that,” she muttered, “silly rot! I'm tired—I'm going home.”

He paid for the drinks and got a hansom.

At that moment as he stood looking over the horse into the dimly-lit obscurities of the Square he thought with a sudden beating of the heart that he recognised Cardillac looking at him from the doorway of a neighbouring restaurant. Then the figure was gone. He had got Cardillac on the brain! Nevertheless the suggestion made him suddenly conscious of poor Miss Bennett's enormous hat, her rouge, her soiled finery that allowed no question as to her position in the world.

Rather hurriedly he asked her to get into the cab.

“Come that far—” she said.

He got in with her and she took off one glove and he held her hand and they didn't speak all the way.

When the hansom stopped at last he got down, helped her out and for a moment longer held her hand.

“We're both pretty unhappy,” he said. “Things have been going wrong with me too. But think of Cornwall sometimes and remember there's some one else thinking of it.”

“You're a funny kid,” she said, looking at him, “sentimental, I don't think!”

But it was her eyes—tired and regretful that said good bye.

She let herself in and the door closed behind her.

He turned and walked the streets; it was three o'clock before he reached his home.