Fortitude

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The Distributed Proofreading Team

FORTITUDE

by

Hugh Walpole

To

Charles Maude

The best of friends and the most honest of critics

CONTENTS

BOOK I: SCAW HOUSE

I INTRODUCTION TO COURAGE

II HOW THE WESTCOTT FAMILY SAT UP FOR PETER

III OF THE DARK SHOP OF ZACHARY TAN, AND OF THE DECISIONS THAT THE
PEOPLE IN SCAW HOUSE CAME TO CONCERNING PETER

IV IN WHICH "DAWSON'S," AS THE GATE OF LIFE, IS PROVED A DISAPPOINTMENT

V DAWSON'S, THE GATE INTO HELL

VI A LOOKING-GLASS, A SILVER MATCH-BOX, A GLASS OF WHISKY, AND
VOX POPULI

VII PRIDE OF LIFE

VIII PETER AND HIS MOTHER

IX THE THREE WESTCOTTS

X SUNLIGHT, LIMELIGHT, DAYLIGHT

XI ALL KINDS OF FOG IN THE CHARING CROSS ROAD

XII BROCKETT'S: ITS CHARACTERS AND ESPECIALLY MRS. BROCKETT

BOOK II: THE BOOKSHOP

I "REUBEN HALLARD"

II THE MAN ON THE LION

III ROYAL PERSONAGES ARE COMING

IV A LITTLE DUST

V A NARROW STREET

VI THE WORLD AND BUCKET LANE

VII DEVIL'S MARCH

VIII STEPHEN'S CHAPTER

BOOK III: THE ROUNDABOUT

I NO. 72, CHEYNE WALK

II A CHAPTER ABOUT SUCCESS: HOW TO WIN IT, HOW TO KEEP IT--WITH A
NOTE AT THE END FROM HENRY GALLEON

III THE ENCOUNTER

IV THE ROUNDABOUT

V THE IN-BETWEENS

VI BIRTH OF THE HEIR

VII DECLARATION OF HAPPINESS

VIII BLINDS DOWN

IX WILD MEN

X ROCKING THE ROUNDABOUT

XI WHY?

XII A WOMAN CALLED ROSE BENNETT

XIII "MORTIMER STANT"

XIV PETER BUYS A PRESENT

XV MR. WESTCOTT SENIOR CALLS CHECKMATE

BOOK IV: SCAW HOUSE

I THE SEA

II SCAW HOUSE

III NORAH MONOGUE

IV THE GREY HILL

BOOK I

SCAW HOUSE

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION TO COURAGE

I

"'Tisn't life that matters! 'Tis the courage you bring to it" ... this from
old Frosted Moses in the warm corner by the door. There might have been an
answer, but Dicky Tasset, the Town Idiot, filled in the pause with the tale
that he was telling Mother Figgis. "And I ran--a mile or more with the
stars dotted all over the ground for yer pickin', as yer might say...."

A little boy, Peter Westcott, heard what old Frosted Moses had said, and
turned it over in his mind. He was twelve years old, was short and
thick-necked, and just now looked very small because he was perched on so
high a chair. It was one of the four ancient chairs that Sam Figgis always
kept in the great kitchen behind the taproom. He kept them there partly
because they were so very old and partly because they fell in so pleasantly
with the ancient colour and strength of the black smoky rafters. The four
ancient chairs were carved up the legs with faces and arms and strange
crawling animals and their backs were twisted into the oddest shapes and
were uncomfortable to lean against, but Peter Westcott sat up very straight
with his little legs dangling in front of him and his grey eyes all over
the room at once. He could not see all of the room because there were
depths that the darkness seized and filled, and the great fiery place, with
its black-stained settle, was full of mysterious shadows. A huge fire was
burning and leaping in the fastnesses of that stone cavity, and it was by
the light of this alone that the room was illumined--and this had the
effect as Peter noticed, of making certain people, like Mother Figgis and
Jane Clewer, quite monstrous, and fantastic with their skirts and hair and
their shadows on the wall. Before Frosted Moses had said that sentence
about Courage, Peter had been taking the room in. Because he had been there
very often before he knew every flagstone in the floor and every rafter in
the roof and all the sporting pictures on the walls, and the long shining
row of mugs and coloured plates by the fire-place and the cured hams
hanging from the ceiling ... but to-night was Christmas Eve and a very
especial occasion, and he was sure to be beaten when he got home, and so
must make the very most of his time. He watched the door also for Stephen
Brant, who was late, but might arrive at any moment. Had it not been for
Stephen Brant Peter knew that he would not have been allowed there at
all. The Order of the Kitchen was jealously guarded and Sam Figgis, the
Inn-keeper, would have considered so small a child a nuisance, but Stephen
was the most popular man in the county, and he had promised that Peter
would be quiet--and he _was_ quiet, even at that age; no one could be so
quiet as Peter when he chose. And then they liked the boy after a time. He
was never in the way, and he was wonderfully wise for his years: he was a
strong kid, too, and had muscles....

So Peter crept there when he could, although it very often meant a beating
afterwards, but the Kitchen was worth a good many beatings, and he would
have gone through Hell--and did indeed go through his own special Hell on
many occasions--to be in Stephen's company. They were all nice to him even
when Stephen wasn't there, but there were other reasons, besides the
people, that drew Peter to the place.

It was partly perhaps because The Bending Mule was built right out into the
sea, being surrounded on three sides by water. This was all twenty years
ago, and I believe that now the Inn has been turned into an Arts Club, and
there are tea-parties and weekly fashion papers where there had once been
those bloody fights and Mother Figgis sitting like some witch over the
fire; but it is no matter. Treliss is changed, of course, and so is the
world, and there are politeness and sentiment where once there were oaths
and ferocity, and there is much soap instead of grimy hands and unwashen
faces ... and the fishing is sadly on the decline, but there are good
drapers' shops in the town.

For Peter the charm of the place was that "he was out at sea." One could
hear quite distinctly the lap of the waves against the walls and on stormy
nights the water screamed and fought and raged outside and rolled in
thundering echoes along the shore. To-night everything was still, and the
snow was falling heavily, solemnly over the town.

The snow, and the black sea, and the lights that rose tier on tier like
crowds at a circus, could be seen through the uncurtained windows.

The snow and quiet of the world "out-along" made the lights and warmth of
the room the more comforting and exciting, and Sam Figgis had hung holly
about the walls and dangled a huge bunch of mistletoe from the middle beam
and poor Jane Clewer was always walking under it accidentally and waiting a
little, but nobody kissed her. These things Peter noticed; he also noticed
that Dicky the Idiot was allowed to be present as a very great favour
because it was Christmas Eve and snowing so hard, that the room was more
crowded than he had ever seen it, and that Mother Figgis, with her round
face and her gnarled and knotted hands, was at her very merriest and in the
best of tempers. All these things Peter had noticed before Frosted Moses
(so called because of his long white beard and wonderful age) made his
remark about Courage, but as soon as that remark was made Peter's thoughts
were on to it as the hounds are on to a fox.

"'Tisn't life that matters, but the Courage yer bring to it...."

That, of course, at once explained everything. It explained his own father
and his home, it explained poor Mrs. Prothero and her two sons who were
drowned, it explained Stephen's cousin who was never free from the most
painful rheumatics, and it explained Stephen himself who was never afraid
of any one or anything. Peter stared at Frosted Moses, whose white beard
was shining in the fire-place and his boots were like large black boats;
but the old man was drawing at his pipe, and had made his remark apparently
in connection with nothing at all. Peter was also disappointed to see that
the room at large had paid no attention to the declaration.

Courage. That was what they were all there for, and soon, later in the
evening, he would take his beating like a man, and would not cry out as
he had done the last time. And then, at the thought of the beating, he
shivered a little on his tall chair and his two short legs in their black
stockings beat against the wooden bars, and wished that he might have
stayed in some dark corner of The Bending Mule during the rest of the night
and not go home until the morning--or, indeed, a very much better and
happier thing, never go home again at all. He would get a worse beating for
staying out so late, but it was something of a comfort to reflect that
he would have been beaten in any case; old Simon Parlow, who taught him
mathematics and Latin, with a little geography and history during six days
of the week, had given him that morning a letter to his father directed in
the old man's most beautiful handwriting to the effect that Master Westcott
had made no progress at all in his sums during the last fortnight, had
indeed made no attempt at progress, and had given William Daffoll, the
rector's son, a bleeding nose last Wednesday when he ought to have been
adding, dividing, and subtracting. Old Parlow had shown him the letter so
that Peter knew that there was no escape, unless indeed Peter destroyed the
paper, and that only meant that punishment was deferred.

Yes, it meant a beating, and Peter had hung about the town and the shore
all the afternoon and evening because he was afraid. This fact of his fear
puzzled him and he had often considered the matter. He was not, in any
other way, a coward, and he had done, on many occasions, things that other
friends of his own age had hung back from, but the thought of his father
made him quite sick with fear somewhere in the middle of his stomach. He
considered the matter very carefully and he decided at last (and he was
very young for so terrible a discovery) that it was because his father
liked beating him that he was afraid. He knew that his father liked it
because he had watched his mouth and had heard the noise that came through
his lips. And this, again, was rather strange because his father did not
look as though he would like it; he had a cold face like a stone and was
always in black clothes, but he did not, as a rule, show that he was
pleased or angry or sorry--he never showed things.

Now these words of Frosted Moses explained everything. It was because his
father knew that it was Courage that mattered that he liked to beat Peter
... it was good for Peter to learn Courage.

"'Tisn't life that matters" ... it isn't a beating that matters....

Frosted Moses was a great deal wiser than old Simon Parlow, who, in spite
of his knowing so much about sums, knew nothing whatever about life. He
knew nothing whatever about Courage either and shook like a leaf when his
sister, Miss Jessel Parlow, was angry with him, as she very often had
reason to be. Peter despised the old man with his long yellow tooth that
hung over his lower lip, and his dirty grey hair that strayed from under
his greasy black velvet cap (like wisps of hay). Peter never cared anything
for the words or the deeds of old Parlow.... But Frosted Moses! ... he had
lived for ever, and people said that he could never die. Peter had heard
that he had been in the Ark with Noah, and he had often wished to ask him
questions about that interesting period, about Ham, Shem and Japheth, and
about the animals. Of course, therefore, he knew everything about Life, and
this remark of his about Courage was worth considering. Peter watched him
very solemnly and noticed how his white beard shone in the fire-light, how
there was a red handkerchief falling out of one enormous pocket, and how
there was a big silver ring on one brown and bony finger ... and then the
crowd of sailors at the door parted, and Stephen Brant came in.

II

Stephen Brant, the most wonderful person in the world! Always, through
life, Peter must have his most wonderful person, and sometimes those Heroes
knew of it and lived up to his worshipping and sometimes they knew of it
and could not live up to it, but most frequently they never knew because
Peter did not let them see. This Hero worship is at the back of a great
deal that happened to Peter, of a great deal of his sorrow, and of all of
his joy, and he would not have been Peter without it; very often these
Heroes, poor things, came tumbling from their pedestals, often they came,
in very shame, down of their own accord, and perhaps of them all Stephen
only was worthy of his elevation, and he never knew that he was elevated.

He knew now, of course, that Peter loved him; but Peter was a little boy,
and was taken by persons who were strong and liked a laugh and were kind in
little ways. Stephen knew that when Peter grew older he must love other and
wiser people. He was a very large man, six foot three and broad, with a
brown beard, and grey eyes like Peter's. He had been a fisherman, but now
he was a farmer, because it paid better--he had an old mother, one enemy,
and very many friends; he had loved a girl, and she had been engaged to him
for two years, but another man had taken her away and married her--and that
is why he had an enemy. He greeted his friends and kissed poor Jane Clewer
under the mistletoe, and then kissed old Mother Figgis, who pushed him away
with a laugh and "Coom up there--where are yer at?"--and Peter watched him
until his turn also should come. His legs were beating the wooden bars
again with excitement, but he would not say anything. He saw Stephen
as something very much larger and more stupendous than any one else in
the room. There were men there bigger of body perhaps, and men who were
richer--Stephen had only four cows on his farm and he never did much with
his hay--but there was no one who could change a room simply by entering it
as Stephen could.

At last the moment came--Stephen turned round--"Why, boy!"

Peter was glad that the rest of the room was busied once more with its
talking, laughing, and drinking, and some old man (sitting on a table and
his nose coming through the tobacco-smoke like a rat through a hole in the
wall) had struck up a tune on a fiddle. Peter was glad, because no one
watched them together. He liked to meet Stephen in private. He buried his
small hand in the brown depths of Stephen's large one, and then as Stephen
looked uncertainly round the room, he whispered: "Steve--my chair, and me
sitting on you--please."

It was a piece of impertinence to call him "Steve," of course, and when
other people were there it was "Mr. Brant," but in their own privacy it was
their own affair. Peter slipped down from his chair, and Stephen sat down
on it, and then Peter was lifted up and leant his head back somewhere
against the middle button of Stephen's waistcoat, just where his heart was
noisiest, and he could feel the hard outline of Stephen's enormous silver
watch that his family had had, so Stephen said, for a hundred years. Now
was the blissful time, the perfect moment. The rest of the world was busied
with life--the window showed the dull and then suddenly shining flakes of
snow, the lights and the limitless sea--the room showed the sanded floor,
the crowd of fishermen drinking, their feet moving already to the tune
of the fiddle, the fisher girls with their coloured shawls, the great,
swinging smoky lamp, the huge fire, Dicky the fool, Mother Figgis, fat Sam
the host, old Frosted Moses ... the gay romantic world--and these two
in their corner, and Peter so happy that no beatings in the world could
terrify.

"But, boy," says Stephen, bending down so that the end of his beard tickles
Peter's neck, "what are yer doing here so late? Your father ...?"

"I'm going back to be beaten, of course."

"If yer go now perhaps yer won't be beaten so bad?"

"Oh, Steve! ... I'm staying ... like this ... always."

But Peter knew, in spite of the way that the big brown hand pressed his
white one in sympathy, that Stephen was worried and that he was thinking
of something. He knew, although he could not see, that Stephen's eyes were
staring right across the room and that they were looking, in the way that
they had, past walls and windows and streets--somewhere for something....

Peter knew a little about Stephen's trouble. He did not understand it
altogether, but he had seen the change in Stephen, and he knew that he was
often very sad, and that moods came upon him when he could do nothing but
think and watch and wait--and then his face grew very grey and his eyes
very hard, and his hands were clenched. Peter knew that Stephen had an
enemy, and that one day he would meet him.

Some of the men and girls were dancing now in the middle of the room. The
floor and the walls shook a little with the noise that the heavy boots of
the fishermen made and the smoky lamp swung from side to side. The heat was
great and some one opened the window and the snow came swirling, in little
waves and eddies, in and out, blown by the breeze--dark and heavy outside
against the clouded sky, white and delicate and swiftly vanishing in the
room. Dicky the Fool came across the floor and talked to Stephen in his
smiling, rambling way. People pitied Dicky and shook their heads when his
name was mentioned, but Peter never could understand this because the Fool
seemed always to be happy and cheerful, and he saw so many things that
other people never saw at all. It was only when he was drunk that he was
unhappy, and he was pleased with such very little things, and he told such
_wonderful_ stories.

Stephen was always kind to the Fool, and the Fool worshipped him, but
to-night Peter saw that he was paying no heed to the Fool's talk. The Fool
had a story about three stars that he had seen rolling down the Grey Hill,
and behold, when they got to the bottom--"little bright nickety things,
like new saxpennies--it was suddenly so dark that Dicky had to light his
lantern and grope his way home with that, and all the frogs began croaking
down in the marsh 'something terrible'--now what was the meaning of that?"

But Stephen was paying no attention. His eyes were set on the open window
and the drifting snow. Men came in stamping their great boots on the floor
and rubbing their hands together--the fiddle was playing more madly than
ever--and at every moment some couple would stop under the mistletoe and
the girl would scream and laugh, and the man's kiss could be heard all over
the room; through the open window came the sound of church bells.

Stephen bent down and whispered in the boy's ear: "Yer'd best be going now,
Peter, lad. 'Tis half-past nine and, chance, if yer go back now yer lickin'
'ull not be so bad."

But Peter whispered back: "Not yet, Stephen--a little while longer."

Peter was tremendously excited. He could never remember being quite so
excited before. It was all very thrilling, of course, with the dancing and
the music and the lights, but there was more than that in it. Stephen was
so unlike himself, but then possibly Christmas made him sad, because he
would be thinking of last Christmas and the happy time that he had had
because his girl had been with him--but there was more than that in it.
Then, suddenly, a curious thing happened to Peter. He was not asleep, he
was not even drowsy--he was sitting with his eyes wide open, staring at the
window. He saw the window with its dark frame, and he saw the snow .. and
then, in an instant, the room, the people, the music, the tramping of feet,
the roar of voices, these things were all swept away, and instead there
was absolute stillness, only the noise that a little wind makes when it
rustles through the blades of grass, and above him rose the Grey Hill
with its funny sugar-loaf top and against it heavy black clouds were
driving--outlined sharply against the sky was the straight stone pillar
that stood in the summit of the Grey Hill and was called by the people the
Giant's Finger. He could hear some sheep crying in the distance and the
tinkling of their bells. Then suddenly the picture was swept away, and the
room and the people and the dancing were before him and around him once
more. He was not surprised by this--it had happened to him before at the
most curious times, he had seen, in the same way, the Grey Hill and the
Giant's Finger and he had felt the cold wind about his neck, and always
something had happened.

"Stephen," he whispered, "Stephen--"

But Stephen's hand was crushing his hand like an iron glove, and Stephen's
eyes were staring, like the eyes of a wild animal, at the door. A man, a
short, square man with a muffler round his throat, and a little mouth and
little ears, had come in and was standing by the door, looking round the
room.

Stephen whispered gently in Peter's ear: "Run home, Peter boy," and he
kissed him very softly on the cheek--then he put him down on the floor.

Stephen rose from his chair and stood for an instant staring at the door.
Then he walked across the room, brushing the people aside, and tapped the
little man with the muffler on the shoulder:

"Samuel Burstead," he said, "good evenin' to yer."

III

All the room seemed to cease moving and talking at the moment when Stephen
Brant said that. They stood where they were like the people in the
_Sleeping Beauty_, and Peter climbed up on to his chair again to see what
was going to happen. He pulled up his stockings, and then sat forward
in his chair with his eyes gazing at Stephen and his hands very tightly
clenched. When, afterwards, he grew up and thought at all about his
childhood, this scene always remained, over and beyond all the others. He
wondered sometimes why it was that he remembered it all so clearly, that
he had it so dramatically and forcibly before him, when many more recent
happenings were clouded and dull, but when he was older he knew that it was
because it stood for so much of his life, it was because that Christmas Eve
in those dim days was really the beginning of everything, and in the later
interpretation of it so much might be understood.

But, to a boy of that age, the things that stood out were not, of
necessity, the right things and any unreality that it might have had was
due perhaps to his fastening on the incidental, fantastic things that a
small child notices, always more vividly than a grown person. In the very
first instant of Stephen's speaking to the man with the muffler it was
Dicky the Fool's open mouth and staring eyes that showed Peter how
important it was. The Fool had risen from his chair and was standing
leaning forward, his back black against the blazing fire, his silly mouth
agape and great terror in his eyes. Being odd in his mind, he felt perhaps
something in the air that the others did not feel, and Peter seemed to
catch fright from his staring eyes.

The man at the door had turned round when Stephen Brant spoke to him, and
had pushed his way out of the crowd of men and stood alone fingering his
neck.

"I'm here, Stephen Brant, if yer want me."

Sam Figgis came forward then and said something to Stephen, and then
shrugged his shoulders and went back to his wife. He seemed to feel that no
one could interfere between the two men--it was too late for interference.
Then things happened very quickly. Peter saw that they had all--men and
women--crowded back against the benches and the wall and were watching,
very silently and with great excitement. He found it very difficult to see,
but he bent his head and peered through the legs of a big fisherman in
front of him. He was shaking all over his body. Stephen had never before
appeared so terrible to him; he had seen him when he was very angry and
when he was cross and ill-tempered, but now he was very ominous in his
quiet way, and his eyes seemed to have changed colour. The small boy
could only see the middle of the floor and pieces of legs and skirts and
trousers, but he knew by the feeling in the room that Stephen and the
little man were going to fight. Then he moved his head round and saw
between two shoulders, and he saw that the two men were stripping to the
waist. The centre of the room was cleared, and Sam Figgis came forward to
speak to Stephen again, and this time there was more noise, and the people
began to shout out loud and the men grew more and more excited. There had
often been fights in that room before, and Peter had witnessed one or two,
but there had never been this solemnity and ceremony--every one was very
grave. It did not occur to Peter that it was odd that it should be allowed;
no one thought of policemen twenty years ago in Treliss and Sam Figgis was
more of a monarch in The Bending Mule than Queen Victoria. And now two of
the famous old chairs were placed at opposite corners, and quite silently
two men, with serious faces, as though this were the most important hour of
their life, stood behind them. Stephen and the other man, stripped to their
short woollen drawers, came into the middle of the room. Stephen had hair
all over his chest, and his arms and his neck were tremendous; and Peter as
he looked at him thought that he must be the strongest man in the world.
His enemy was smooth and shiny, but he seemed very strong, and you could
see the muscles of his arms and legs move under his skin. Some one had
marked a circle with chalk, and all the men and women, quite silent now,
made a dark line along the wall. The lamp in the middle of the room was
still swinging a little, and they had forgotten to close the window, so
that the snow, which was falling more lightly now, came in little clouds
with breaths of wind, into the room--and the bells were yet pealing and
could be heard very plainly against the silence.

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