Fortitude (Walpole)/Book 3/Chapter 14

CHAPTER XIV

PETER BUYS A PRESENT

I

PETER did not hesitate now. He should win Clare back with his strong right hand and he would rule The Roundabout with a rod of iron. Ruling The Roundabout meant ruling Mrs. Rossiter and he was surprised at the ease with which he won his victory over that lady. Had he considered it more deeply that easy victory might have seemed to him ominous.

At luncheon on the day after his talk with Clare they three sat together—Mrs. Rossiter silent, Clare silent, Peter silent.

Suddenly Peter said: “Oh by the way, Clare, I telephoned for seats this morning for the new thing at the Criterion. I got two stalls.”

They had not been to the theatre together since Stephen's death.

Clare lifted a white face—“I don't think I—”

“Oh yes,” said Peter, smiling across at her—“you'll enjoy it.”

Mrs. Rossiter stroking her large bosom with a flat white hand said, “I don't think Clare—”

“Oh yes,” said Peter again, “it will do her good.”

Mrs. Rossiter smiled. “Get another stall, Peter, and I will come too.”

“I'm afraid,” said Peter very politely, “that it's too late. The piece is a thumping success. I was very lucky to get any seats at all.”

And then Mrs. Rossiter subsided, absolutely subsided . . . very strange.

That was not a very happy evening. Clare scarcely spoke, she answered him with “Yes “and “No,” she sat in the stalls looking like a little unhappy ghost. She did not in any way repulse him—she let him take her hand coming home in the cab. She shivered and he asked whether she were cold and she said, Yes, she thought that she was. That night he came in, took her for a moment in his hands, kissed her very gently on the lips, and said—

“Clare, you're not angry with me for last night?”

“No” she answered him. Then she added slowly, as though she were repeating a part that she'd learnt, “Thank you for taking me to the play, Peter. I was rather tired. Bat thank you for taking me.”

He went to bed thanking God for this change in her. “I'll make her love me just as she used to, those days on our honeymoon. God bless her.”

Yes, Mrs. Rossiter was strangely altered. It all shows what one can do with a woman when one tries. Her hostile placidity had given place to something almost pathetic. One would have thought, had one not known that lady's invariable assurance of movement, that she was perplexed, almost distressed.

Peter was conscious that Clare was now as silent with her mother as she was with him. He perceived that Mrs. Rossiter was disturbed at Clare's reticence. He fancied that he sometimes interrupted little conversations between the mother and the daughter the intention of which was, on Mrs. Rossiter's part at any rate, that “Clare should tell her something.” There was no doubt at all, that Mrs. Rossiter was anxious. Even—although this seemed impossible—she appeared to be ready to accept Peter as a friend and ally now—now after these many weeks of hostility. Surely women are strange creatures. In any case, one may observe the yellow brooch agitated now and ill at ease.

Very soon, too. Cards came to make his farewells—he was going to Paris for the whole of May.

“What! Won't you be back for the beginning of the Season?” cried Peter astonished.

“No,” Cards answered, laughing. “For once the Season can commence without me.”

He was especially affectionate but seemed anxious to be gone. His dark eyes avoided Peter's gaze. He didn't look well—a little anxious: and Cards was generally the soul of light-hearted carelessness.

What a splendid fellow he was! Peter looked him up and down taking that same delight that he had always taken in his distinction, his good looks, his ease. “He ought to have been born king of somewhere,” Peter used to think, “he ought really—no wonder people spoil him.”

“There's another thing,” Peter said, “you're forgetting Clare's birthday next week. She'll be dreadfully disappointed at your not being here for it.”

“I'll have to remember it from Paris,” Cards said.

“Well—it's an awful pity that you're going for a whole month. I don't know what we shall do without you. And you cheer Clare up—she's rather depressed just now. Thinks of the kid a bit, I expect.”

“Well, I'll write,” said Cards, and was gone.

II

Peter received at this time a letter that showed him that he had, at any rate, one friend, in the world who believed in him. It was from James Maradick and it was strangely encouraging—now at this period of yawning pits from whose blackness he so resolutely turned away.

It asked him to go with Maradick as his guest to some Club dinner. Then it went on. . . . “You know, Westcott, we don't meet as often as we should. Like ships in the night, we signal every now and again and then pass. But I am quite sure that we have plenty to say to one another. Once or twice—you remember that party when I gassed about Cornwall?—we have nearly said it, but something has always prevented. I remember that you divided the world once in a fit of youthful confidence, into Explorers and Stay-at-homes. Well, those words will do as well as any others to describe the great dividing line. At any rate, you're an Explorer and you're trying to get on terms with the Stay-at-homes, and I'm a Stay-at-home and I'm trying to get on terms with the Explorers and that's why we're both so uncomfortable. The only happy people, take my word for it, are those who know the kind of thing they are—Explorers or Stay-at-homes, and just stick at that and shut their eyes tight to the other kind of people—il n'existe pas, that other world. Those are the happy people, and, after all most people are like that. But we, you and I, are uncomfortably conscious of the other Party—want to know them, in fact, want them to receive us.

“Well, I'm getting on and it's late days for me, but you've got all your life before you and will do great things, take my word for it. Only don t be discouraged because the Stay-at-homes don't come to you all at once. Give 'em time—they'll come. . . .”

This seemed to Peter, at this moment of a whole welter of doubt and confusion and misunderstanding of people's motives and positions, to explain a great deal. Was that the reason why he'd been so happy in old Zachary Tan's shop years ago? Why he'd been happy through all that existence at the bookshop, those absurd unreal conspirators—happy, yes, even when starving with Stephen in Bucket Lane.

He was then in his right company—explorers one and all. Whereas here?—Now? Had he ever been happy at The Roundabout except during that first year, and afterwards when Stephen came? And was not that, too, the explanation of young Stephen's happiness upon the arrival of Mr. Zanti and Brant? Did he not recognise them for what they were, explorers? He being a young explorer himself.

On the other side Mrs. Rossiter, Clare, Cards, old Bobby who in spite of his affection never understood half the things that Peter did or said, the Galleons, old Mrs. Galleon and Percival and his sister? . . . Had Henry Galleon known that dividing-line and suffered under it all his life, and borne it and perhaps conquered it?

And Peter suddenly, standing at his window watching London caught by the evening light, saw for an instant his work in front of him again. London with her towers, her roofs and chimneys—smoke and mist and haze weaving a web—and then beneath it, humming, buzzing, turning, all the lives, all the comedies, all the tragedies—Kings and princes, guttersnipes and duchesses, politicians and news-boys, criminals and saints—

Waiting, that golden top, for some hand to set it humming.

In that moment Peter Westcott, aged twenty-nine, with a book just behind him that had been counted on every side the most dismal of failures, saw himself the English Balzac, saw London open like a book at his feet, saw heaven and all its glories . . . himself the one and only begetter of a thousand masterpieces!

But the sun set—the towers and roofs and chimneys were coldly grey, a ragged wind rose through the branches of the orchard, dark clouds hid the risen moon, newsboys were crying a murder in Whitechapel.

“I hate this house,” Peter said, turning away from the window, into a room crowded now with dusk.

III

It was the first of May, and the day before Clare's birthday. It was one of the most beautiful days of the year, with a hint of summer in its light and shadow, a shimmer of golden sun shaking through the trees in the orchard, flung from there on to the windows of The Roundabout, to dance in twisting lines along the floors and across the walls.

All doors and windows seemed to be open; the scent of flowers—a prophecy of pinks and roses where as yet there were none—flooded the little Chelsea streets.

The Velasquez on the walls of The Roundabout danced in her stiff skirts, looking down upon a room bathed in green and gold shadow.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon and Peter was going out to buy Clare a present. He had seen a ruby pendant many months ago in a window in Bond Street. He had thought of it for Clare but he had known that, with young Stephen's education and the rest of the kid's expenses, he could not dare to afford it. Now . . . things were different.

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

He came downstairs. He looked into the little sitting-room. Clare was standing there by the window looking at the gay trees in the orchard. On the opposite wall the Velasquez danced. . . .

She had not heard him come in and she was standing by the window with her hands clasped tightly behind her, her body strung up, so it seemed, by some height of determination. She wore a black dress with a little white round her neck and at the sleeves. Her hair was rolled into a pile on the top of her head and the sunlight from the orchard was shining upon it.

When Peter called her name she turned round with a startled cry and put her hand to her throat. Then she moved back against the window as though she were afraid that he was going to touch her.

He noticed her movement and the words that he had intended to say were checked on his lips. He stammered, instead, something about going out. She nodded her head; she had pulled herself together and walked towards him from the window.

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

“I've got a headache.”

“It'll do your headache good.”

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

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

“Peter, I—” she said.

She seemed to appeal to him with her eyes beseeching, trying to say something, but the rest of her face was dumb.

The appeal, the things that she would have said suddenly died, leaving her face utterly without expression.

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

“Yes—”

She passed through the door across the sunlit hall, up the dark stairs. She walked with that hesitating halting step that he knew so well; her small, white hand lay, for a moment on the banisters—then she had disappeared.

IV

Coming through the hall Peter noticed that there was a letter in the box. He took it out and found, with delight, that it was from Stephen Brant. He had had no word from him since the day when he and Mr. Zanti had paid their fateful visit.

The letter said;—

Dear Mr. Peter,

This is a hurried line to tell you that He is dead at last, died in drink cursing and swearing and now her mother and she, poor dear, are going to America and I'm going to look after her hoping that we'll be marrying in a few months' time and so realise my heart's wish.

Dear Peter I sail on Thursday from Southampton and would he coming to see you but would not like to inconvenience you as you now are, but my heart is ever the same to you. Dear Boy, and the day will come when we can talk over old times once again.

Your affectionate friend, sir.

Now about to he made the happiest man in all the world, Stephen.

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

N.B. Zanti goes with us to America having heard of gold in California and is to he my best man when the day comes.

So Stephen's long wait was ended at last. Peter's eyes were dimmed as he put the letter away in his pocket. What a selfish beast, to be sure, must this same Peter Westcott, be, for here he was wishing—yes, almost wishing—that Stephen's happiness had not come to him. Always at the back of everything there had been the thought or Stephen Brant. Let all the pits in the world gape and yawn, there was one person in the world to whom Peter was precious. Now—in America—with a wife . . . some of the sunlight had gone out of the air and Peter's heart was suddenly cold with that old dread.

Another friend taken from him! Another link gone! Then he pulled himself together, tried to rejoice with Stephen at his happiness, failed dismally, walked down Piccadilly defiantly, with swinging shoulders and a frowning face, like a sailor in a hostile country, and went into the Bond Street jeweller's.

He had been there on several former occasions and a large stout man who looked as though he must have been Lord Mayor several years running came forward and gave Peter an audience. Precious stones were of no account in such a place as this, and the ruby pendant looked quite small and humble when it was brought to Peter—nevertheless it was beautiful and would suit Clare exactly. It seemed to appeal personally to Peter, as though it knew that he wanted it for a very especial occasion. This wasn't one of those persons who would come in and buy you as though you were dirt. It meant something to Peter. It meant something indeed—it meant exactly sixty pounds—

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

“It's as fine a ruby—” said the dignitary, looking over Peter's head out of the window, as though he were tired of the affair and wanted to see whether his car were there.

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

Sixty Pounds! Did one ever hear of such a thing? Sixty pounds . . . Never mind, it marked an occasion. The ruby smiled at Peter as it was slipped into its case; it was glad that it was going to somebody who hadn't very many things.

He had several other matters to settle and it was nearly five o'clock when he turned out of Knightsbridge down Sloane Street. The sun was slipping behind the Hyde Park Hotel so that already the shadows were lying along the lower parts of the houses although the roofs were bright with sunshine.

It was the hour when all the dogs were taken for the last exercise of the day. Every kind of dog was there, but especially the fat and pampered variety—Poms, King Charles, Pekinese, Dachshunds—a few bigger dogs, and even one mournful-eyed Dane who walked with melancholy superiority, as a king amongst his vassals.

The street stirred with the patterings of dogs. The light slid down the sky—voices rang in the clear air softly as though the dying day had besought them to be tender. The colours of the shops, of the green trees, of slim and beautifully-dressed houses were powdered with gold-dust; the church in Sloane Square began to ring its bells.

Peter, as he turned down the street, was cold—perhaps because Knightsbridge had been blazing with sunshine and the light here was hidden. . . . No, it was more than that. . . .

“They say,” he thought. “that Cornishman always know when a disaster's coming. If that's true, something ought to be going to happen to me.”

And then, in a flash, that sound that he had been half-subconsciously expecting, came—the sound of the sea. He could hear it quite distinctly, a distant, half-determined movement that seemed so vast in its roll and plunge, so sharp in the shock with which it met the shore, and yet so subdued that it might be many thousands of miles away. It was as though a vast tide were dragging back a million shells from an endless shore—the dragging hiss, the hesitating suspense in mid-air, and then the rattle of the returning wave.

As though hypnotised he closed his eyes. Yes, he was walking along the Sea Road. There was that range of rock that lay out at sea like a crouching dog. There was that white twisting circle of foam that lay about the Ragged Stone—out there by itself, the rock with the melancholy bell. Then through the plunging sea he could hear its note—the moan of some one in pain. And ever that rattle, that hiss, that suspense, that crash.

“I beg your pardon—” he had run into a lady's maid who was leading a pompous King Charles. The spaniel eyed him with hatred, the maid with distrust. He passed on—but the Sea had departed.

To chase away his gathering depression he thought that he would go in and have tea with Bobby and Alice. It was quite late when he got there, and stars were in a sky that was so delicate in colour that it seemed as though it were exhausted by the glorious day that it had had; a little sickle moon was poised above the Chelsea trees.

To his disgust he found that Percival and Millicent Galleon were having tea with their brother. Their reception of him very quickly showed him that “Mortimer Stant” had put a final end to any hopes that they might have had of his career as an artist.

“How's the book doing, Westcott?” said Percival, looking upon Peter's loose-fitting clothes, broad shoulders and square-toed shoes with evident contempt.

“Not very well thank you. Galleon.”

“Ah, well, it didn't quite come off, did it, Westcott?—not quite. Can't hit the nail every time. Now young Rondel in this Precipice of his has done some splendid work. We had him to tea the other day and really he seemed quite a nice unassuming fellow—”

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

Peter was growing. Quite a short time ago he would have been furious, would have gone into his shell, refused to speak to anybody, been depressed and glowering.

Now, smiling, he said:

“Alice, won't you consider it and come up and dine with us after all to-night? It's only my mother-in-law beside ourselves—”

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

“Well, all right—if you must.”

Nevertheless, it hurt, although it was only that young ass of a Galleon. That, though, was one of the pits into which one must not look.

He felt the little square box that contained the ruby, lying there so snugly in his pocket. That cheered him.

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

He went.

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

“Dear Peter's growing up.”

“Yes,” said Bobby. “My sweet young brother wants the most beautiful kicking and he'll get it very soon.” Then he looked at the clock. “I must go up and dress.”

“I'm rather glad,” said Alice, “I'm not coming. Clare gets considerably on my nerves just at present.”

“Yes,” said Bobby, “but thank God Mr. Cardillac's in Paris—for the time being.” Then he added, reflectively—

“Dear old Peter—bless him!”