Fortitude

H >> Hugh Walpole >> Fortitude

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Peter had discovered strangely little about him. He knew now that Mr.
Zanti's connection with the bookshop was of the very slenderest, that that
was indeed entirely Herr Gottfried's affair, and that it was used by the
large and smiling gentleman as a cloak and a covering. As a cloak and a
covering to what? Well, at any rate, to some large and complicated game
that a great number of gentlemen were engaged in playing. Peter knew a good
many of them now by sight--untidy, dirty, many, foreigners most, all it
seemed to Peter, with an air of attempting something that they could never
hope to accomplish. Anything that they might do he was quite sure that they
would bungle and, with the hearts of children, the dirty tatters of foreign
countries, and the imaginations of exuberant story-tellers, he could see
them go, ignorantly, to dreadful catastrophes.

Peter was even conscious that the shop was tolerantly watched by
inspectors, detectives, and policemen, and that it was all too
childish--whatever it was--for any one to take it in the least seriously.
But nevertheless there were elements of very real danger in all those
blundering mysteries that had been going on now for so many years, and it
was at any rate of the greatest importance to Peter, because he earned his
living by it, because of his love for Stephen and his affection for Mr.
Zanti, and because if once anything were to happen his one resting-place in
this wild sea of London would be swept away and he would be utterly
resourceless and destitute.

This last fact bit him, as he sat there in the shop, with sudden and acute
sharpness. What a fool he had been, all this time, to let things slide! He
should have been making connections, having irons in the fire, bustling
about--how could he have sat down thus happily and easily for seven years,
as though such a condition of things could continue for ever? He had had
wild ideas of "Reuben Hallard" making his fortune!... that showed his
ignorance of the world. Let him begin to bustle. He would not lose another
moment. There were two things for him now to do, to beard editors (those
mythical creatures!) in their caves and to find out where Stephen lived ...
both these things as soon as possible.

In the afternoon the fog became of an impenetrable thickness, and beyond
the shop it seemed that there was pandemonium. Some fire, blazing at some
street corner, flared as though it were the beating heart of all that
darkness, and the cries of men and the slow, clumsy passing of the
traffic filled the bookshop with sound.

No customers came; Herr Gottfried worked away at his desk, the brass clock
ticked, Peter sat listening, waiting.

Herr Gottfried broke the silence once with: "Peter, my friend, at ten
o'clock to-night there will be a little music in my room. Herr Dettzolter
and his 'cello--a little Brahms--if the fog is not too much for you."

Peter accepted. He loved the low-roofed attic, the clouds of tobacco, the
dark corner where he sat and listened to Herr Gottfried's friends (German
exiles like Herr Gottfried playing their beloved music). It was his only
luxury.

Once two men whom Peter knew very well by sight came into the shop. They
were, he believed, Russians--one of them was called Oblotzky--a tall,
bearded fierce-looking creature who could speak no English.

Then suddenly, just as Peter was thinking of finding his way home to the
boarding-house, Mr. Zanti appeared. He had been away for the last two
months, but there he was, his huge body filling the shop, the fog circling
his beard like a halo, beaming, calm, and unflustered as though he had just
come from the next street.

"Damned fog," he said, and then he went and put his hand on Peter's
shoulder and looked down at him smiling.

"Well, 'ow goes the shop?" he said.

"Oh, well enough," said Peter.

"What 'ave you been doing, boy? Finished the book?"

"Yes."

"Ah, good. You'll be ze great man, Peter." He looked down at him proudly as
a father might look upon his son.

"Ze damnedest fog--" he began, then suddenly he stopped and Peter felt his
hand on his shoulder tighten. "Ze damnedest--" Mr. Zanti said slowly.

Peter looked up into his face. He was listening. Herr Gottfried, standing
in the middle of the shop, was also listening.

For a moment there was an intense breathless silence. The noise from the
street seemed also, for the instant, to be hushed.

Very slowly, very quietly, Mr. Zanti went to the street door and opened it.
A cloud of yellow fog blew into the shop.

"Ze damnedest fog ..." repeated Mr. Zanti, still very slowly, as though he
were thinking.

"Any one been?" he said at last to Herr Gottfried.

"Oblotzky."

Mr. Zanti, after flinging a strange, half-affectionate, half-inquisitive
look at Peter, went through into the room beyond.

"What ..." said Peter.

"Often enough," interrupted Herr Gottfried, shuffling back to his seat,
"young boys want to know--too much ... often enough."

II

The Tressiter children, of whom there were eight, loved Peter with a
devotion that was in fact idolatry. They loved him because he understood
them so completely and from Anne Susan, aged one and a half, to Rupert
Bernard, aged nine, there was no member of the family who did not repose
complete trust and confidence in Peter's opinions, and rejoice in his
wonderful grasp of the things in the world that really mattered. Other
persons might be seen shifting, slowly and laboriously, their estimates
and standards in order to bring them into line with the youthful Tressiter
estimates and standards.... Peter had his ready without any shifting.

First of all the family did Robin Tressiter, aged four, adore Peter. He
was a fat, round child with brown eyes and brown hair, and an immense and
overwhelming interest in the world and everything contained therein. He
was a silent child, with a delightful fat chuckle when really amused and
pleased, and he never cried. His interest in the world led him into strange
and terrible catastrophes, and Mrs. Tressiter was always far too busy and
too helpless to be of any real assistance. On this foggy afternoon, Peter,
arriving at Brockett's after much difficulty and hesitation, found Robin
Tressiter, on Miss Monogue's landing, with his head fastened between the
railings that overlooked the hall below. He was stuck very fast indeed, but
appeared to be perfectly unperturbed--only every now and again he kicked a
little with his legs.

"I've sticked my neck in these silly things," he said, when he saw Peter.
"You must pull at me."

Peter tried to wriggle the child through, but he found that he must have
some one to help him. Urging Robin not to move he knocked at Miss Monogue's
door. She opened it, and he stepped back with an apology when he saw that
some one else was there.

"It's a friend of mine," Norah Monogue said, "Come in and be introduced,
Peter."

"It's only," Peter explained, "that young Robin has got his head stuck in
the banisters and I want some one to help me--"

Between them they pulled the boy through to safety. He chuckled.

"I'll do it again," he said.

"I'd rather you didn't," said Peter.

"Then I won't," said Robin. "I did it 'cause Rupert said I
couldn't--Rupert's silly ass."

"You mustn't call your brother names or I won't come and see you in bed."

"You will come?" said Robin, very earnestly.

"I will," said Peter, "to-night, if you don't call your brother names."

"I think," said Robin, reflectively, "that now I will hunt for the lion and
the tigers on the stairs--"

"Bring him into my room until his bedtime," said Miss Monogue, laughing.
"It's safer. Mrs. Tressiter is busy and has quite enough children in with
her already."

So Peter brought Robin into Miss Norah Monogue's room and was introduced,
at once, to Clare Elizabeth Rossiter--so easily and simply do the furious
events of life occur.

She was standing with her back to the window, and the light from Miss
Monogue's candles fell on her black dress and her red-gold hair. As he came
towards her he knew at once that she was the little girl who had talked to
him on a hill-top one Good Friday afternoon. He could almost hear her now
as she spoke to Crumpet--the candle-light glow was dim and sacred in the
foggy room; the colour of her hair was filled more wonderfully with light
and fire. Her hands were so delicate and fine as they moved against her
black dress that they seemed to have some harmony of their own like a piece
of music or a running stream. She wore blue feathers in her black hat. She
did not know him at all when he came forward, but she smiled down at Robin,
who was clinging on to Peter's trousers.

"This is a friend of mine, Mr. Westcott," Miss Monogue said.

She turned gravely and met him. They shook hands and then she sat down;
suddenly she bent down and took Robin into her lap. He sat there sucking
his thumb, and taking every now and again a sudden look at her hair and the
light that the candles made on it, but he was very silent and quiet which
was unlike him because he generally hated strangers.

Peter sat down and was filled with embarrassment; his heart also was
beating very quickly.

"I have met you before," he said suddenly. "You don't remember."

"No--I'm afraid--"

"You had once, a great many years ago, a dog called Crumpet. Once in
Cornwall ... one Good Friday, he tumbled into a lime-pit. A boy--"

"Why, of course," she broke in, "I remember you perfectly. Why of all the
things! Norah, do you realise? Your friend and I have known each other for
eight years. Isn't the world a small place! Why I remember perfectly now!"

She turned and talked to Norah Monogue, and whilst she talked he took her
in. Although now she was grown up she was still strangely like that little
girl in Cornwall. He realised that now, as he looked at her, he had still
something of the same feeling about her as he had had then--that she was
some one to be cared for, protected, something fragile that the world might
break if she were not guarded.

She was porcelain but without anything of Meredith's "rogue." Because Peter
was strong and burly the contrast of her appealing fragility attracted him
all the more. Had she not been so perfectly proportioned her size would
have been a defect; but now it was simple that her delicacy of colour and
feature demanded that slightness and slenderness of build. Her hair was of
so burning a red-gold that its colour gave her precisely the setting that
she required. She seemed, as she sat there, a little helpless, and Peter
fancied that she was wishing him to understand that she wanted friends who
should assist her in rather a rough-and-tumble world. Just as she had once
appealed to him to save Crumpet, so now she seemed to appeal for some far
greater assistance. Ah! how he could protect her! Peter thought.

Something in Peter's steady gaze seemed suddenly to surprise her. She
stopped--the colour mounted into her cheeks--she bent down over the boy.

They were both of them supremely conscious of one another. There was a
moment.... Then, as men feel, when some music that has held them ceases,
they came, with a sense of breathlessness, back to Norah Monogue and her
dim room.

Peter was conscious that Robin had watched them both. He almost, Peter
thought, chuckled to himself, in his fat solemn way.

"Miss Rossiter," Norah Monogue said--and her voice seemed a long way
away--"has just come back from Germany and has brought some wonderful
photographs with her. She was going to show them to me when you came in--"

"Let me see them too, please," said Peter.

Robin was put on to the floor and he went slowly and with ceremony to an
old brown china Toby that had his place on a little shelf by the door. This
Toby--his name was Nathaniel--was an old friend of Robin's. Robin sat on
the floor in a corner and told Nathaniel the things about the world that he
had noticed. Every now and again he paused for Nathaniel's reply; he was
always waiting for him to speak, and the continued silence of a now ancient
acquaintance had not shaken Robin's faith.... Robin forgot the rest of the
company.

"Photographs?" said Peter.

"Yes. Germany. I have just been there." She looked up at him eagerly and
then opened a portfolio that she had behind her chair and began to show
them.

He bent gravely forward feeling that all of this was pretence of the most
absurd kind and that she also knew that it was.

But they were very beautiful photographs--the most beautiful that he had
ever seen, and as each, in its turn, was shown for a moment his eyes met
hers and his mouth almost against his will, smiled. His hand too was very
near the silk of her dress. If he moved it a very little more then they
would touch. He felt that if that happened the room would immediately burst
into flame, the air was so charged with the breathless tension; but he
watched the little space of air between his fingers and the black silk and
his hand did not move.

They were all very silent as she turned the photographs over and there were
no sounds but the sharp crackling of the fire as it burst into little
spurts of flame, the noise that her hand made on the silk of her dress as
she turned each picture and the little mutterings of Robin in his corner as
he talked to his Toby.

Peter had never seen anything like this photography. The man had used
his medium as delicately as though he had drawn every line. Things stood
out--castles, a hill, trees, running water, a shining road--and behind them
there was darkness and mystery.

Suddenly Peter cried out:

"Oh! that!" he said. It was the photograph of a great statue standing
on a hill that overlooked a river. That was all that could be seen--the
background was dark and vague, it was the statue of a man who rode a lion.
The lion was of enormous size and struggling to be free, but the man,
naked, with his utmost energy, his back set, his arms stiff, had it in
control, but only just in control ... his face was terrible in the agony of
his struggle and that struggle had lasted for a great period of time ...
but at length, when all but defeated, he had mastered his beast.

"Ah that!" Miss Rossiter held it up that Norah Monogue might see it better.
"That is on a hill outside a little town in Bavaria. They put it up to a
Herr Drexter who had done something, saved their town from riot I think.
It's a fine thing, isn't it, and I think it so clever of them to have made
him middle-aged with all the marks of the struggle about him--those scars,
his face--so that you can see that it's all been tremendous--"

Peter spoke very slowly--"I'd give anything to see that!" he said.

"Well, it's in Bavaria; I wonder that it isn't better known. But funnily
enough the people that were with me at the time didn't like it; it was only
afterwards, when I showed them the photograph that they saw that there
might have been ... aren't people funny?" she ended abruptly, appealing to
him with a kind of freemasonry against the world.

But, still bending his brows upon it he said insistently--

"Tell me more about it--the place--everything--"

"There isn't really anything to tell; it's only a very ordinary, very
beautiful, little German town. There are many orchards and this forest at
the back of it and the river running through it--little cobbled streets and
bridges over the river. And then, outside, this great statue on the hill--"

"Ah, but it's wonderful, that man's face--I'd like to go to that town--" He
felt perhaps that he was taking it all too seriously for he turned round
and said laughing: "The boy's daft on lions--Robin, come and look at this
lion--here's an animal for you."

The boy put down the Toby and walked slowly and solemnly toward them. He
climbed on to Peter's knee and looked at the photograph: "Oh! it _is_ a
lion!" he said at last, rubbing his fat finger on the surface of it to see
of what material it was made. "Oh! for me!" he said at last in a shrill,
excited voice and clutching on to it with one hand. "For me--to hang over
my bed."

"No, old man," Peter answered, "it belongs to the lady here. She must take
it away with her."

"Oh! but _I_ want it!" his eyes began to fill with tears.

Miss Rossiter bent down and kissed him. He looked at her distrustfully. "I
know now I'm not to have it," he said at last, eyeing her, "or you wouldn't
have kissed me."

"Come on," said Peter, afraid of a scene, "the lady will show you the lion
another day--meantime I think bed is the thing."

He mounted the boy on to his shoulder and turned round to Miss Rossiter to
say "Good-bye." The photograph lay on the table between them--"I shan't
forget that," he said.

"Oh! but you must come and see us one day. My mother will be delighted.
There are a lot more photographs at home. You must bring him out one day,
Norah," she said turning to Miss Monogue.

If he had been a primitive member of society in the Stone Age he would at
this point, have placed Robin carefully on the floor and have picked Miss
Rossiter up and she should never again have left his care.

As it was he said, "I shall be delighted to come one day."

"We will talk about Cornwall--"

"And Germany."

His hand was burning hot when he gave it her--he knew that she was looking
at his eyes.

He was abruptly conscious of Miss Monogue's voice behind him.

"I've read a quarter of the book, Peter."

He wondered as he turned to her how it could be possible to regard two
women so differently. To be so sternly critical of one--her hair that was
nearly down, a little ink on her thumb, her blouse that was unbuttoned--and
of the other to see her all in a glory so that her whole body, for colour
and light and beautiful silence, had no equal amongst the possessions of
the earth or the wonders of heaven. Here there was a button undone, there
there was a flaming fire.

"I won't say anything," Miss Monogue said, "until I've read more, but it's
going to be extraordinarily good I think." What did he care about "Reuben
Hallard?" What did that matter when he had Claire Elizabeth Rossiter in
front of him.

And then he pulled himself up. It must matter. How delighted an hour ago
those words would have made him.

"Oh! you think there's something in it?" he said.

"We'll wait," she answered, but her smile and the sparkle in her eyes
showed what she thought. What a brick she was!

He turned round back to Miss Rossiter.

"My first book," he said laughing. "Of course we're excited--"

And then he was out of the room in a moment with Robin clutching his hair.
He did not want to look at her again ... he had so wonderful a picture!

And as he left Robin in the heart of his family he heard him say--

"_Such_ a lion, Mother, a lady's got--with a man on it--a 'normous lion,
and the man hasn't any clothes on, and his legs are all scratched...."

CHAPTER III

ROYAL PERSONAGES ARE COMING

I

Peter, sitting obscurely in a corner of Herr Gottfried's attic on the
evening of this eventful day and listening to that string sextette that was
written by Brahms when he was nineteen years of age (and it came straight
from the heights of Olympus if any piece of music ever did), was conscious
of the eyes of Herr Lutz.

Herr Lutz was Herr Gottfried's greatest friend and was notable for three
things, his enormous size, his surpassing skill on the violoncello and his
devoted attachment to the veriest shrew of a little sharp-boned wife that
ever crossed from Germany into England. For all these things Peter loved
him, but Herr Lutz was never very actively conscious of Peter because from
the moment that he entered Herr Gottfried's attic to the moment he left it
his soul was wrapped in the music and in nothing else whatever. To-night
as usual he was absorbed and after the second movement of the sextette
had come to a most rapturous conclusion he was violently dissatisfied and
pulled them back over it again, because they had been ragged and their
enthusiasm had got the better of their time and they were altogether
disgraceful villains, but through all of this his grey eyes were upon
Peter.

Peter, watching from his dark corner even felt that the 'cello was being
played especially for his benefit and that Herr Lutz was talking all the
time to him through the medium of his instrument. It may have been that he
himself was in a state of most exalted emotion, and never until the end
of all things mortal and possibly all things eternal will he forget that
sextette by Brahms; he may perhaps have put more into Herr Lutz than was
really there, but it is certain that he was conscious of the German's
attention.

As is common to all persons of his age and condition he was amazed at the
glorified vision of everyday things. In Herr Gottfried's flat there was a
model of Beethoven in plaster of Paris, a bed, and a tin wash-hand stand,
a tiny bookshelf containing some tattered volumes of Reclame's Universal
Bibliothek, a piano and six cane-bottomed chairs covered at the moment by
the stout bodies of the six musicians--nothing here to light the world with
wonder!--and yet to-night, Peter, sitting on a cushion in a dark corner
watched the glories of Olympus; the music of heaven was in his ear and
before him, laughing at him, smiling, vanishing only to reappear more
rapturous and beautiful than ever was the lady, the wonderful and only
lady.

His cheeks were hot and his heart was beating so loudly that it was surely
no wonder that Herr Lutz had discovered his malady. The sextette came to an
end and the six musicians sat, for a moment, silent on their chairs whilst
they dragged themselves into the world that they had for a moment forsaken.
That was a great instant of silence when every one in the room was
concerned entirely with their souls and had forgotten that they so much as
had bodies at all. Then Herr Lutz gathered his huge frame together, stuck
his hand into his beard and cried aloud for drink.

Beer was provided--conversation was, for the next two hours, volcanic. When
twelve o'clock struck in the church round the corner the meeting was broken
up.

Herr Lutz said to Peter, "There is still the 'verdammte' fog. Together we
will go part of the way."

So they went together. But on the top of the dark and crooked staircase
Herr Gottfried stopped Peter.

"Boy," he said and he rubbed his nose with his finger as he always did when
he was nervous and embarrassed, "I shouldn't go to the shop for a week or
two if I were you."

"Not go?" said Peter astonished.

"No--for reason why--well--who knows? The days come and they go, and again
it will be all right for you. I should rub up the Editors, I should--"

"Rub up the Editors?" repeated Peter still confused.

"Yes--have other irons, you know--often enough other irons are handy--"

"Did Zanti tell you to say this to me?"

"No, he says nothing. It is only I--as a friend, you understand--"

"Well, thank you very much," said Peter at last. Herr Gottfried, he
reflected, must think that he, Peter, had mints of money if he could so
lightly and on so slender a warning propose his abandoning his precious two
pounds a week. Moreover there was loyalty to Mr. Zanti to be considered....
Anyway, what did it all mean?

"I can't go," he said at last, "unless Zanti says something to me. But what
are they all up to?"

"Seven years," said Herr Gottfried darkly, "has the Boy been in the
shop--of so little enquiring a mind is he."

And he would say nothing further. Peter followed Herr Lutz' huge body into
the street. They took arms when they encountered the fog and went stumbling
along together.

"You are in lof," said Herr Lutz, breathlessly avoiding a lamp post.

"Yes," said Peter, "I am."

"Ah," said Herr Lutz giving Peter's arm a squeeze. "It is the only
thing--The--Only--Thing.... However it may be for you--bad or ill--whether
she scold or smile, it is a most blessed state."

He spoke when under stress of emotion, in capitals with a pause before the
important word.

"It won't come to anything," said Peter. "It can't possibly. I haven't got
anything to offer anybody--an uncertain two pounds a week."

"You have a--Career," said Herr Lutz solemnly, "I know--I have often
watched you. You have written a--Book. Karl Gottfried has told me. But all
that does not matter," he went on impetuously. "It does not matter what you
get--It is--Being--in--Love--The--divine--never--to--be--equalled--State--"

The enormous German stopped on an island in the middle of the road and
waved his arms. On every side of him through the darkness the traffic
rolled and thundered. He waved his arms and exulted because he had been
married to a shrew of a wife for thirty years. During that time she had
never given him a kind word, not a loving look, but Peter knew that out of
all the fog and obscurity that life might bring to him that Word, sprung
though it might be out of Teutonic sentiment and Heller's beer, that word,
at any rate, was true.

II

London, in the morning, recovered from the fog and prepared to receive
Foreign Personages. They were not to arrive for another week, but it was
some while since anything of the kind had occurred and London meant to
carry it out well. The newspapers were crowded with details; personal
anecdotes about the Personages abounded--a Procession was to take place,
stands began to climb into the air and the Queen and her visitors were to
have addresses presented to them at intervals during the Progress.

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