Fortitude

H >> Hugh Walpole >> Fortitude

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37

To Peter this all seemed supremely unimportant. At the same moment, to
confuse little things with big ones, Mrs. Lazarus suddenly decided to die.
She had been unwell for many months and her brain had been very clouded
and temper uncertain--but now suddenly she felt perfectly well, her
intelligence was as sharp and bright as it had ever been and the doctor
gave her a week at the utmost. She would like, she said, to have seen the
dear Queen ride through the streets amidst the plaudits of the populace,
but she supposed it was not to be. So with a lace cap on her head and her
nose sharp and shiny she sat up in bed, flicked imaginary bread pellets
along the counterpane, talked happily to the boarding-house and made ready
to die.

The boarding-house was immensely moved, and Peter, during these days came
back early from the bookshop in order to sit with her. He was surprised
that he cared as he did. The old lady had been for so long a part of his
daily background that he could no more believe in her departure than he
could in the sudden disappearance of the dark green curtains and the marble
pillars in the dining-room. She had had, from the first, a great liking
for Peter. He had never known how much of that affection was an incoherent
madness and he had never in any way analysed his own feeling for her, but
now he was surprised at the acute sharpness of his regret.

On a bright evening of sunshine, about six o'clock, she died--Mrs.
Brockett, the Tressiters, Norah Monogue also were with her at the time.
Peter had been with her alone during the earlier afternoon and although she
had been very weak she had talked to him in her trembling voice (it was
like the noise that two needles knocking against one another would make),
and she had told him how she believed in him.

She made him ashamed with the things that she said about him. He had paid
her little enough attention, he thought, during these seven years. There
were so many things that he might have done. As the afternoon sun streamed
into the room and the old lady, her hands like ivory upon the counterpane,
fell into a quiet sleep he wondered--Was he bad or good? Was he strong or
weak? These things that people said, the affection that people gave him ...
he deserved none of it. Surely never were two so opposite presences bound
together in one body--he was profoundly selfish, profoundly unselfish,
loving, hard, kind, cruel, proud, humble, generous, mean, completely
possessed, entirely uncontrolled, old beyond his years, young beyond
belief--

As he sat there beside the sleeping old lady he felt a contempt of himself
that was beyond all expression, and also he felt a pride at the things that
he knew that he might do, a pride that brought the blood to his cheeks.

The Man on the Lion? The Man under the Lion's Paw?... The years would show.
A quiet happy serenity passed over Mrs. Lazarus' face and he called the
others into the room.

Stern Mrs. Brockett was crying. Mrs. Lazarus woke for a moment and smiled
upon them all. She took Peter's hand.

"Be good to old people," she breathed very faintly--then she closed her
eyes and so died.

Below in the street a boy was calling the evening papers. "Arrival of the
Prince and Princess of Schloss.... Arrival of the Prince and--"

They closed the windows and pulled down the blinds.

II

Thursday was to be the day of Royal Processions, and on Friday old Mrs.
Lazarus was to be buried.

To Peter, Wednesday was a day of extravagant confusion--extravagant because
it was a day on which nothing was done. Customers were not served in the
shop. Editors were not attacked in their lairs. Nothing was done, every one
hung about.

Peter could not name any one as directly responsible for this state of
things, nor could he define his own condition of mind; only he knew that he
could not leave the shop. About its doors and passages there fell all day
an air of suspense. Mr. Zanti was himself a little responsible for this; it
was so unusual for that large and smiling gentleman to waste the day idly;
and yet there he was, starting every now and again for the door, looking
into the empty yard from the windows at the back of the house, disappearing
sometimes into the rooms above, reappearing suddenly with an air of
unconcern a little too elaborately contrived.

Peter felt that Mr. Zanti had a great deal that he would like to say to
him, and once or twice he came to him and began "Oh, I say, boy," and then
stopped with an air of confusion as though he had recollected something,
suddenly.

There was a Russian girl, too, who was about the shop, uneasily on this
day. She was thin, slight, very dark; fierce eyes and hands that seemed
to be always curving. Her name was Maria Notroska and she was engaged to
the big Russian, Oblotzky, whom Peter had seen, on other days up and down
through the shop. She spoke to no one. She knew but little English--but she
would stand for hours at the door looking out into the street. It was a
long uneasy day and Peter was glad when the evening, in slow straight lines
of golden light, came in through the black door. The evening too seemed to
bring forward a renewed hope of seeing Stephen again--enquiries could bring
nothing from either Zanti or Herr Gottfried; they had never heard of the
man, oh no!... Stephen Brant? Stephen ...? No! Never--

That sudden springing out of the darkness had meant something however.
Peter could still feel his wet clothes and see his shining beard. Yes, if
there were any trouble Stephen would be there. What were they all about?
Peter closed the shutters of the shop that night without having any
explanation to offer. Mr. Zanti was indeed a strange man; when Peter turned
to go he stopped him with his hand on his shoulder: "Peter, boy," he said,
whispering, "come upstairs--I have something to tell you."

Peter was about to follow him back into the shop when suddenly the man
shook his head. "No, not to-night," he said and almost pushed him into the
street.

Peter, looking back, saw that he was talking to the Russian girl.

But the day was not over with that. Wondering about Mr. Zanti, thinking
that the boarding-house would be gloomy now after Mrs. Lazarus' death,
recalling, above all, to himself every slightest incident of his meeting
with Miss Rossiter, Peter, crossing Oxford Street, flung his broad body
against a fat and soft one. There was nearly a collapse.

The other man and Peter grasped arms to steady themselves, and then behold!
the fat body was Bobby Galleon's. Bobby Galleon, after all these years! But
there could be no possible doubt about it. There he stood, standing back a
little from the shock, his bowler hat knocked to one side of his head, a
deprecating, apologetic smile on his dear fat face! A man of course now,
but very little altered in spite of all the years; a little fatter perhaps,
his body seemed rather shapeless--but those same kind eyes, that large
mouth and the clear straight look in all his face that spoke him to all
the world for what he was. Peter felt exactly as though, after a long and
tiring journey, he had tumbled at last into a large arm-chair. He was
excited, he waved his arms:

"Bobby, Bobby," he cried, so loudly that two old women in bonnets, crossing
the road like a couple of hens turned to look at him.

"I'm sorry--" Bobby said vaguely, and then slowly recognition came into his
eyes.

"Peter!" he said in a voice lost in amazement, the colour flooding his
cheeks.

It was all absurdly moving; they were quite ridiculously stirred, both of
them. The lamps were coming out down Oxford Street, a pale saffron sky
outlined the dark bulk of the Church that is opposite Mudie's shop and
stands back from the street, a little as though it wondered at all the
noise and clamour, a limpid and watery blue still lingered, wavering, in
the evening sky.

They turned into an A.B.C. shop and ordered glasses of milk and they sat
and looked at one another. They had altered remarkably little and to both
of them, although the roar of the Oxford Street traffic was outside the
window, it might have been, easily enough, that a clanging bell would soon
summon them back to ink-stained desks and Latin exercises.

"Why, in heaven's name, did you ever get out of my sight so completely?
I wrote to Treliss again and again but I don't suppose anything was
forwarded."

"They don't know where I am."

"But why did you never write to me?"

"Why should I? I wanted to do something first--to show you-"

"What rot! Is that friendship? I call that the most selfish thing I've ever
known." No, obviously enough, Bobby could never understand that kind of
thing. With him, once a friend always a friend, that is what life is for.
With Peter, once an adventure always an adventure--_that_ is what life
is for--but as soon as a friend ceases to be an adventure, why then--

But Bobby had not ceased to be an adventure. He was, as he sat there, more
of one than he had ever been before.

"What have you been doing all these years?"

"Been in a bookshop."

"In a bookshop?"

"Yes, selling second-hand books."

"What else?"

"Oh reading a lot... seeing one or two people... and some music." Peter was
vague; what after all had he been doing?

Bobby looked at him tenderly and affectionately. "You want seeing
after--you look fierce, as you used to when you'd been having a bad time
at school. The day they all hissed you."

"But I haven't been having a bad time. I've had a jolly good one. By the
way," Peter leant forward, "have you seen or heard anything of Cards?"

Bobby coloured a little. "No, not for a long time. His mother died. He's a
great swell now with heaps of money, I believe. I'm not his sort a bit."

They drank milk and beamed upon one another. Peter wanted to tell Bobby
everything. That was one of his invaluable qualities, that one did like
telling him everything. Talking to him eagerly now, Peter wondered how it
could be that he'd ever managed to get through these many years without
him. Bobby simply existed to help his friends and that was the kind of
person that Peter had so often wanted.

But in it all--in their talking, their laughing together, their remembering
certain catchwords that they had used together, there was nothing more
remarkable than their finding each other exactly as they had been during
those years before at Dawson's. Not even Bobby's tremendous statement could
alter that.

"I'm married," he said.

"Married?"

Bobby blushed. "Yes--two years now--got a baby. She's quite splendid!"

"Oh!" Peter was a little blank. Somehow this did remove Bobby a little--it
also made him, suddenly, strangely old.

"But it doesn't make any difference," Bobby said, leaning forward eagerly
and putting his hand on Peter's arm--"not the least difference. You two
will simply get on famously. I've so often told her about you and we've
always been hoping that you'd turn up again--and now she'll be simply
delighted."

But it made a difference to Peter, nevertheless. He went back a little into
his shell; Bobby with a home and a wife and a baby couldn't spare time, of
course, for ordinary friends. But even here his conscience pricked him. Did
he not know Bobby well enough to be assured that he was as firm and solid
as a rock, that nothing at all could move or change him? And after all, was
not he, Peter, wishing to be engaged and married and the father of a family
and the owner of a respectable mansion?

Clare Elizabeth Rossiter! How glorious for an instant were the thin,
sharp-faced waitresses, the little marble-topped tables, the glass windows
filled with sponge-cakes and hard-boiled eggs!

Peter came out of his shell again. "I shall just love to come and see her,"
he said.

"Well, just as soon as you can. By Jove, old man, I'll never let you go
again. Now tell me, everything--all that you have done since I saw you."

Peter told him a great deal--not quite everything. He told him nothing, for
instance, about meeting a certain young lady on a Good Friday afternoon and
he passed over some of the Scaw House incidents as speedily as possible.

"And since I came up to London," he went on, "the whole of my time has been
spent either in the bookshop or the boarding-house. They're awfully good
sorts at both, but it's all very uncertain of course and instead of writing
a novel that no one will want to read I ought to have been getting on to
editors. I've a kind of feeling that the bookshop's going to end very
shortly."

"Let me see the book," said Bobby.

"Yes, certainly," said Peter.

"Anyhow, we go on together from this time forth--72 Cheyne Walk is my
little house. When will you come--to-morrow?"

"Oh! To-morrow! I don't think I can. There are these Processions and
things--I think I ought to be in the shop. But I'll come very soon. This is
the name of my boarding-house--"

Bobby, as he saw his friend, broad-shouldered, swinging along, pass down
the street with the orange lamps throwing chains of light about him, was
confronted again by that old elusive spirit that he had known so well at
school. Peter liked him, Peter was glad to see him again, but there were so
many other Peters, so many doors closed against intruders.... Bobby would
always, to the end, be for Peter, outside these doors. He knew it quite
certainly, a little sadly, as he climbed on to his bus. What was there
about Peter? Something hard, fierce, wildly hostile ... a devil, a God.
Something that Bobby going quietly home to his comfortable dinner, might
watch and guard and even love but something that he could never share.

Now, in the cool and quiet of the Chelsea Embankment as he walked to his
door, Bobby sighed a little because life was so comfortable.

CHAPTER IV

A LITTLE DUST

I

That night Peter had one of his old dreams. In all the seven years that he
had been in London the visions that had so often made his nights at Scaw
House terrible had never come to him. Now, after so long an interval they
returned.

He thought that he was once more back on the sea-road above Treliss, that
the wind was blowing in a tempest and that the sea below him was foaming on
to the rocks. He could see those rocks like sharp black teeth, stretching
up to him--a grey sky was above his head and to his right stretched the
grey and undulating moor.

Round the bend of the road, beyond the point that he could see, he thought
that Clare Rossiter was waiting for him. He must get there before it struck
eleven or something terrible would happen to him. Only a few minutes
remained to him, and only a little stretch of the thin white road, but two
things prevented his progress; first, the wind blew so fiercely in his face
that it drove him back and for every step that he took forward, although
his head was bent and his teeth set, he seemed to lose two. Also, across
the moor voices cried to him and they seemed to him like the voices of
Stephen and Bobby Galleon, and they were pleading to him to stop; he paused
to listen but the cries mingled softly with the wind and he could hear
bells from the town below the road begin to strike eleven. The sweat was
pouring from him--she was waiting for him, and if he did not reach her
all would be lost. He would never see her again; he began to cry, to beat
against the wind with his hands. The voices grew louder, the wind more
vehement, the jagged edges of the rocks sharper in their outline; the bells
were still striking, but as, at last, breathless, a sharp terror at his
heart, he turned the corner there fell suddenly a silence. At last he was
there--only a few trees blowing a little, a little white dust curling over
the road, as though there had been no rain, and then suddenly the laughing
face of Cards, no longer now a boy, but a man, more handsome than ever,
laughing at him as he battled round the corner.

Cards shouted something to him, suddenly the road was gone and Peter was in
the water, fighting for his life. He felt all the breathless terror of
approaching death--he was sinking--black, silent water rose above and
around him. For an instant he caught once more the sight of sky and land.
Cards was still on the road and beside him was a woman whose face Peter
could not see. Cards was still laughing. Then in the darkening light the
Grey Hill was visible against the horizon and instead of the Giant's Finger
there was that figure of the rider on the lion.... The waters closed....
Peter woke to a grey, stormy morning. The sweat was pouring down his face,
his body was burning hot and his hands were trembling.

II

When he came down to breakfast his head was aching and heavy and Mrs.
Brockett's boiled egg and hard crackling toast were impossible. Miss
Monogue had things to tell him about the book--it was wonderful, tremendous
... beyond everything that she had believed possible. But strangely enough,
he was scarcely interested. He was pleased of course, but he was weighted
with the sense of overhanging catastrophe. The green bulging curtains,
the row of black beads about Mrs. Brockett's thin neck, the untidy
egg-shells--everything depressed him.

"I have had a rotten night," he said, "nightmares. I suppose I ate
something--anyhow it's a gloomy day."

"Yes," said Miss Monogue, pinning some of her hair in at the wrong place
and unpinning other parts of it that happened by accident to be right. "I'm
afraid it's a poor sort of day for the Procession. But Miss Black and I are
going to do our best to see it. It may clear up later." He had forgotten
about the Procession and he wished that she would keep her hair tidier.

He wanted to ask her whether she had seen Miss Rossiter but had not the
courage. A little misty rain made feathery noises against the window-pane.

"Well, I must go down to the shop," he said, finding his umbrella in the
hall.

"I think it's superb," she said, referring back to the book. "You won't be
having to go down to the shop much longer."

It was really surprising that he cared so little. He banged the door behind
him and did not see her eyes as she watched him go.

Processions be damned! He wished that the wet, shining street were not so
strangely like the sea-road at Treliss, and that the omnibuses at a
distance did not murmur like the sea. People, black and funereal, were
filling stands down Oxford Street; soldiers were already lining the way,
the music of bands could be heard some streets away.

He was in a thoroughly bad temper and scowled at the people who passed him.
He hated Royal Processions, he hated the bookshop, he hated all his friends
and he wished that he were dead. Here he had been seven years, he
reflected, and nothing had been done. Where was his city paved with gold?
Where his Fame, where his Glory?

He even found himself envying those old Treliss days. There at any rate
things had happened. There had been an air, a spirit. Fighting his
father--or at any rate, escaping from his father--had been something vital.
And here he was now, an ill-tempered, useless youth, earning two pounds a
week, in love with some one who was scarcely conscious of his existence. He
cursed the futility of it all.

And so fuming, he crossed the threshold of the bookshop, and, unwitting,
heedless, left for ever behind him the first period of his history.

"Programme of the Royal Procession," a man was shouting--"Coloured
'Andkerchief with Programme of Royal Procession--"

Peter, stepping into the dark shop, was conscious of Mr. Zanti's white face
and that behind him was standing Stephen.

III

At the sight of their faces, of their motionless bodies and at the solemn
odd expression of their eyes as they looked past him into the dark expanse
of the door through which he had entered, he knew that something was very
wrong.

He had known it, plainly enough, by the fact of Stephen's presence there,
but it seemed to him that he had known it from his first awakening that
morning and that he was only waiting to change into hard outline the misty
shapelessness of his earlier fears. But, there and then, he was to know
nothing--

Stephen greeted him with a great hand-shake as though he had met him
only the day before, and Mr. Zanti with a smile gave him his accustomed
greeting. In the doorway at the other end of the shop the Russian girl was
standing, one arm on the door-post, staring, with her dark eyes, straight
through into the gloomy street.

"What are you all waiting for?" Peter said to the motionless figures. With
his words they seemed at once to spring to life. Mr. Zanti rolled his big
body casually to the door and looked down the street, Stephen, smiling at
Peter said:

"I was just passing, so I thought to myself I'd just look in," his voice
came from his beard like the roll of the sea from a cave. "Just for an
hour, maybe. It's a long day since we've 'ad a bit of a chat, Mr. Peter."

Peter could not take it on that casual scale. Here was Stephen vanished
during all those years, returned now suddenly and with as little fuss as
possible, as though indeed he had only been hiding no farther than behind
the door of the shop and waiting merely to walk out when the right moment
should have arrived. If he had been no farther than that then it was unkind
of him--he might have known how badly Peter had wanted him; if, on the
other hand, he had been farther afield, then he should show more excitement
at his return.

But, Peter thought, it was impossible to recognise in the grave reserved
figure at his side that Stephen who had once given him the most glorious
evening of his life. The connection was there somewhere but many things
must have happened between those years.

"Shall we go and have luncheon together?" Peter asked.

Stephen appeared to fling a troubled look in the direction of Mr. Zanti's
broad back. He hesitated. "Well," he said awkwardly, "I don't rightly know.
I've got to be going out for an hour or two--I can't rightly say as I'll be
back. This afternoon, maybe--"

Peter did not press it any farther. They must settle these things for
themselves, but what was the matter with them all this morning was more
than he could pretend to discover.

Stephen, still troubled, went out.

Fortunately there was this morning a good deal of work for Peter to do.
A large number of second-hand books had arrived during the day before
and they must be catalogued and arranged. Moreover there were several
customers. A young lady wanted "something about Wagner, just a description
of the plays, you know."

"Of the Operas," Peter corrected.

"Oh, well, the stories--that's what I want--something about two shillings,
have you? I don't think it's really worth more--but so that one will know
where one is, you know."

She was bright and confidential. She had thought that everything would be
closed because of the Procession... _so_ lucky--

A short red-faced woman, dressed in bright colours, and carrying
innumerable little parcels wanted "Under Two Flags," by Mrs. Henry Wood.

"It's by Ouida, Madam," Peter told her.

"Nonsense, don't tell me. As if I didn't know."

Peter produced the volume and showed it to her. She dropped some of her
parcels--they both went to pick them up.

Red in the face, she glared at him. "Really it's too provoking, I know it
was Mrs. Henry Wood I wanted."

"Perhaps 'East Lynne,' or 'The Channings'--"

"Nonsense--don't tell me--it was 'Under Two Flags.'"

Finally the woman put both "Under Two Flags" and "East Lynne" into her bag
and departed. A silence fell upon the shop. Herr Gottfried was at his desk,
Mr. Zanti at the street door, the girl at the door of the inner room, they
were all motionless. Beyond the shop the murmur of the gathering crowd was
like the confused, blundering hum of bees; a band was playing stridently in
Oxford Street.

Once Peter said: "It passes about three-thirty, doesn't it? I think I'll
just go out and have a look later. It'll be fine if only the sun comes."

Mr. Zanti turned slowly round.

"I'm afraid, boy," he said, "you'll be wanted in ze shop. At two Herr
Gottfried must be going out for some business--zere will be no one--I am
zo zorry."

They wanted to keep him there, that was evident. Or, at any rate, they
didn't want him to see the Procession.

"Very well," he said cheerfully, "I'll stay. There'll be plenty more
Processions before I die." But why, why, why? What was there that they
wanted him to avoid?

He went on arranging the piles of dusty books, the sense of weighty
expectation growing on him with every instant. The clock struck one, but he
did not go out to luncheon; the others were still motionless in their
places.

Once Herr Gottfried spoke: "The people will have been waiting a
much-more-than-necessary long time," he said. "The police doubtless have
frightened them, but there is still room to walk in the streets and there
have been some unfortunates, since early in the morning--"

The street beyond the shop was now deserted because soldiers guarded its
approach into Oxford Street; the shop seemed to be left high and dry,
beyond the noise and confusion of the street.

Then there came into the silence a sharp sound that made Peter amongst his
books, jump to his feet: the Russian girl was crying.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37