Fortitude

H >> Hugh Walpole >> Fortitude

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She stood there, leaning her thin dark body against the side of the door,
surely the most desolate figure in the world. Her hands were about her
face, her body heaved with her sobbing and the little sad noise came into
the dusty tangled room and hung amongst the old broken books as though they
only could sympathise and give it shelter. The band in Oxford Street was
blazing with sound but it did not hide her crying.

Mr. Zanti crossed to her and spoke to her but she suddenly let her hands
fall from her face and turned upon him, furiously, wildly--"You ..." she
said, "You ..." and then as though the words choked her she turned back
into the inner room. Peter saw Mr. Zanti's face and it was puckered with
distress like a child's. It was almost laughable in its helpless dismay.

Two o'clock struck. "They'll be starting in half an hour," Herr Gottfried
said.

"Women," Mr. Zanti said, still looking distressfully about him, "they are,
in truth, very difficult."

And now there was no pretence, any longer, of disguising the nervous
tension that was with them in the room. They were all waiting for
something--what it might be Peter did not know, but, with every tick of
the old brass clock, some event crept more nearly towards them.

Then Stephen came back.

He came in very quietly as though he were trying to keep the note of
agitation that he must have felt on every side of him as near the normal
as possible.

His face above his beard was grey and streaky and his breath came rapidly
as though he had been running. When he saw Mr. Zanti his hand went up
suddenly in front of his face as though he would protect himself from the
other's questioning.

"I've 'eard nothing--" he said almost sullenly and then he turned and
looked at Peter.

"Why must 'e be 'ere?" he said sharply to Zanti.

"Why not? Where else?" the other answered and the two men watched each
other with hostility across the floor.

"I wish we'd all bloomin' wull kept out of it," Stephen murmured to himself
it seemed.

Peter's eyes were upon Mr. Zanti. That gentleman looked more like a naughty
child than ever. In his eyes there was the piteous appeal of a small boy
about to be punished for some grievous fault. In some strange way Peter
was, it appeared, his court of appeal because he glanced towards him again
and again and then looked away.

Peter could stand it no longer. He got up from the place where he was and
faced them all.

"What is it? What have you all done? What is the matter with you all?"

The Russian girl had come back. Her face was white and her hair fell
untidily about her eyes. She came forward fiercely as though she would have
answered Peter, but Mr. Zanti motioned her back with his hand.

"No, no," he said almost imploringly, "let the boy be--what has he to do
with all this? Leave him. He has nothing to do with it. He knows nothing."

"But I ought to know," Peter burst in. "Why have I been kept in the dark
all this time? What right have you--"

He broke off suddenly. Absolute silence fell amongst them all and they
stood looking at the door, motionless, in their places. There was a new
note in the murmuring of the crowd, and the swift steady passing of it came
up the street to the shop and in at the door. Voices could be heard rising
above others, and then the eager passing of some piece of news from one to
another.

No one in the shop spoke. Outside in the deserted street there was silence
and then the bands, as though driven by some common wave of feeling, seemed
at the same moment to burst into a blare of music. Some voice, from the
crowd, started "God save the Queen" and immediately it was taken up and
flung into the air by a thousand voices. They must give vent to their
feelings, some news had passed down the crowds like a flame setting fire to
a chain of beacons.

"What is it?" Peter pressed forwards to the door. And at once he was
answered. Men were running past the shop, crying out; one stopped for an
instant and, wild with excitement, his hands gesticulating, stammering, the
words tumbling from his lips, he shouted at them--"They've bin flinging
bombs ... dirty foreigners ... up there by the Marble Arch--flinging them
at the Old Lady. But it's all right, by Gawd--only blew 'imself up, dirty
foreigner--little bits of 'im and no one else 'urt and now the Old Lady's
comin' down the street--she'll be 'ere in quarter of an 'our and won't we
show 'er ... by Gawd ... flingin' their dirty bombs up there by the Marble
Arch and killin' nobody but 'imself--Gawd save the Old Lady--" he rushed
on.

So that was it. Peter, standing in the middle of the room, looked at them
all and understood at last amongst whom he had been working these seven
years. They were murderers, the lot of them--all of them--Gottfried, Zanti
... Stephen--Oh God! Stephen! He understood now for what they had been
waiting.

He turned sick at the sudden realisation of it. It did not, at first, seem
to touch himself in any way. At the first immediate knowledge of it he had
been faced by its amazing incongruity. There by the Marble Arch, with bands
flying, flags waving, in all the tumult of a Royal Progress some one had
been blown into little pieces. Elsewhere there were people waiting, eating
buns out of paper bags, and here in the shop the sun lighted the backs of
rows of second-hand novels and down in Treliss the water was, very gently,
lapping the little wooden jetty. Oh! the silly jumbling of things in this
silly jumbling world!

And then he began to look more closely into it as it concerned himself. He
saw with amazing clearness. He knew that it was Oblotzky the tall Russian
who had been killed. He knew because Oblotzky was the lover of this Russian
girl and he turned round to watch her, curiously, as one who was outside it
all. She was standing with her back against the wall, her hands spread out
flat, looking through the door into the bright street, seeing none of them.
Then she turned and said something in Russian between her clenched teeth to
Mr. Zanti. He would have answered her but very quietly and speaking now in
English she flung at him, as though it had been a stone:

"God curse you! You drove him to it!" Then she turned round and left the
room. But the tall man was blubbering like a child. He had turned round to
them all, with his hands outstretched, appealing:

"But it's not true!" he cried between his sobs, "it's not true! I did
all I could to stop them--I did not know that they would do things--not
really--until now, this morning, when it was too late. It is the others,
Sergius, Paslov, Odinsky--zey were always wild, desperate. But we, the rest
of us, with us it was only tall words."

Little Herr Gottfried, who had been silent behind them, came forward now
and spoke:

"It is too late," he said, "for this crying like a baby. We have no
time--we must consider what must be done. If it is true, what that man says
that Oblotzky has blown himself up and no other is touched then no harm
is done. Why regret the Russian? He wanted a violent end and he has got
it--and he has given it to no other. Often enough we are not so fortunate.
He will have spoken to no one. We are safe." Then he turned to Peter:

"Poor boy," he said.

But Peter was not there to be pitied. He had only one thought, "Stephen,
tell me--tell me. You did not know? You had nothing to do with this?"

Stephen turned and faced him. "No, Peter boy, nothing. I did not know what
they were at. They--Zanti there--'ad 'elped me when I was in trouble years
ago. They've given me jobs before now, but they've always been bunglers
and now, thank the Lord, they've bungled again. You come with me, Mr.
Peter--come along from it all. We'll manage something. I've only been
waiting until you wanted me."

Zanti turned furiously upon him but the words that he would have spoken
were for the moment held. The Procession was passing. The roar of cheering
came up against the walls of the shop like waves against the rocks; the
windows shook. There she was, the little Old Lady in her black bonnet,
sitting smiling and bowing, and somewhere behind her a little dust had been
blown into the air, had hung for a moment about her and then had once more
settled down into the other dust from which it had come.

That was all. In front of her were the Royal Personages, on every side of
her her faithful subjects ... only a cloud of dust had given occasion for a
surer sign of her people's devotion. That, at any rate, Oblotzky had done.

The carriage passed.

Mr. Zanti now faced Peter.

"Peter--Boy--you must believe me. I did not know, believe me, I did not.
They had talked and I had listened but there is so much talk and never
anything is done. Peter, you must not go, you must not leave me. You would
break my 'eart--"

"All these years," Peter said, "you have let me be here while you have
deceived me and blinded me. I am going now and I pray to God that I may
never see you again."

"No, Boy, listen. You must not go like this. 'Ave I not been good to you?
'Ave I ever made you do anything wrong? 'Ave I not always kept you out of
these things? You are the only person zat I 'ave ever loved. You 'ave
become my son to me. I am not wicked. I was not one of these men--these
anarchists--but it is only that all my life I 'ave wanted adventure, what
you call Ro-mance. And I 'ave found it 'ere, there--one place, anuzzer
place. But it 'as never been wicked--I 'ave never 'armed a soul. What zat
girl says it is not true--I would 'ave done all to stop it if I could. But
you--if you leave me now, I am all alone. There is no one in the world for
me--a poor old man--but if you will be with me I will show you wonderful
things.

"See," he went on eagerly, almost breathlessly, "we 'ave been socialists
'ere, what you will. We 'ave talked and talked. It amuses me--to intrigue,
to pretend, to 'ave games--one day it is Treason, another Brigands, another
Travel--what you will. But never, never, never danger to a soul. Now only
this morning did I 'ear that they were going to do this. Always it had been
words before--but this morning I got a rumour. But it was only rumour.
I 'ad not enough to be sure of my news. Stephen here and I--we could do
nozzing--we 'ad no time--I did not know where Oblotzky was--this girl 'ere
did not know--I could do nozzing--Peter, believe me, believe me--"

The man was no scoundrel. It was plain enough as he stood there, his eyes
simple as a child's, pleading still like a small boy.

A minute ago Peter had hated him, now he crossed over and put his hand on
his shoulder.

"You have been wonderfully good to me," he said. "I owe you everything. But
I must go--all this has only made sure what I have been knowing this long
time that I ought to do. I can't--I mustn't--depend on your charity any
longer--it has been too long as it is. I must be on my own and then one
day, when I have proved myself, I will come back to you."

"No--Peter, Boy--come with me now. I will show you wonderful things all
over Europe; we will have adventures. There is gold in Cornwall in a place
I know. There is a place in Germany where there is treasure--ze world is
full of ze most wonderful things that I know and you and I--we two--Oh! ze
times we all 'ave--"

"No," ... Peter drew back. "That is not my way. I am going to make my
living here, in London--or die for it."

"No--you must not. You will succeed--you will grow fat and sleepy and ze
good things of the world and ze many friends will kill your soul. I know it
... but come with me, first and we will 'ave adventures ... and _zen_ you
shall write."

But Peter's face was set. The time for the new life had come. Up to this
moment he had been passive, he had used his life as an instrument on which
others might play. From henceforward his should be the active part.

The crowds were pouring up the street on their homeward way. Bands were
playing the soldiers back to the barracks. Soon the streets would have only
the paper bags left to them for company. The little bookshop hung, with its
misty shelves about the three men.... Somewhere in another room, a girl was
staring with white set face and burning eyes in front of her, for her lover
was dead and the world had died with him.

After a little time amongst the second-hand novels Mr. Zanti sat, his great
head buried in his hands, the tears trickling down through his fingers, and
Herr Gottfried, motionless from behind his counter watched him in silent
sympathy.

Peter and Stephen had gone together.

CHAPTER V

A NARROW STREET

I

The bomb was, that evening, the dominant note of the occasion. Through the
illuminated streets, the slowly surging crowds--inhuman in their abandon to
the monotonous ebb and flow as of a sweeping river--the cries and laughter
and shouting of songs, that note was above all. An eye-witness--a Mr. Frank
Harris, butcher of 82 Cheapside--had his veracious account journalistically
doctored.

* * * * *

"I was standing quite close to the man, a foreigner of course, with a dirty
hanging black moustache--tall, big fellow, with coat up over his ears--I
must say that I wasn't looking at him. I had Mrs. Harris with me and was
trying to get her a place where she could see better, you understand. Then
suddenly--before one was expecting it--the Procession began and I forgot
the man, the foreigner, although he was quite up close against me. One
was excited of course--a most moving sight--and then suddenly, when by
the distant shouting we understood that the Queen was approaching, I saw
the man break through. I was conscious of the man's vigour as he rushed
past--he must have been immensely strong--because there he was, through the
soldiers and everybody--out in the middle of the street. It all happened so
quickly of course. I heard vaguely that some one was shouting and I think a
policeman started forward, but anyhow the man raised his arm and in an
instant there was the explosion. It went off before he was ready I suppose,
but the ground rocked under one's feet. Two soldiers fell, unhurt, I have
learnt since. There was a hideous dust, horses plunging and men shouting
and then suddenly silence. The dust cleared and there was a hole in the
ground, stones rooted up ... no sign of the man but some pieces of cloth
and men had rushed forward and covered something up--a limb I suppose.... I
was only anxious of course that my wife should see nothing ... she was
considerably affected...."

So Mr. Harris of Cheapside, with the assistance of an eager and talented
young journalist. But the fact remained in the heart of the crowd--blasted
foreigner had had a shot at the Old Lady and missed her, therefore whatever
gaiety may have been originally intended let it now be redoubled, shouted
into frenzy--and frenzy it was.

"There was no clue," an evening paper added to the criminal's identity....
The police were blamed, of course.... Such a thing must never be allowed to
occur again. It was reported that the Queen had in no way suffered from the
shock--was in capital health.

Outside the bookshop Stephen and Peter had parted.

"I'll meet you about half-past ten, Trafalgar Square by the lion that faces
Whitehall; I must go back to Brockett's, have supper and get my things, and
say good-bye. Then I'll join you ... half-past ten."

"Peter boy, we'll have to rough it--"

"Oh! at last! Life's beginning. We'll soon get work, both of us--where do
you mean to go?"

"There's a place I been before--down East End--not much of a place for your
sort, but just for a bit...."

For a moment Peter's thoughts swept back to the shop.

"Poor Zanti!" He half turned. "After so many years ... the good old chap."
Then he pulled himself up and set his shoulders. "Well, half-past ten--"

The streets were, at the instant, almost deserted. It was about five
o'clock now and at seven o'clock they would be closed to all traffic. Then
the surging crowds would come sweeping down.

Peter, furiously excited, hurried through the grimy deserts of Bloomsbury,
to Brockett's. To his singing, beating heart the thin ribbon of the grey
street with the faint dim blue of the evening sky was out of place,
ill-judged as a setting to his exultations. He had swept in the tempestuous
way that was natural to him, the shop and all that it had been to him,
behind him. Even Brockett's must go with the rest. Of course he could not
stay there now that the weekly two pounds had stopped. He quite savagely
desired to be free from all business. These seven years had been well
enough as a preparation; now at last he was to be flung, head foremost,
into life.

He could have sung, he could have shouted. He burst through the heavy doors
of Brockett's. But there, inside the quiet and solemn building, another
mood seized him. He crept quietly, on tiptoe, up to his room because he did
not want to see any of them before supper. After all, he was leaving the
best friends that he had ever had, the only home that he had ever really
known. Mrs. Brockett, Norah Monogue, Robin, the Signor.... Seven years is a
long time and one gets fond of a place. He closed his bedroom door softly
behind him. The little room had been very much to him during all these
years, and that view over the London roofs would never be forgotten by
him. But he wondered, as he looked at it, how he had ever been able to sit
there so quietly and write "Reuben Hallard." Now, between his writing and
himself, a thousand things were sweeping. Far away he saw it like the
height of some inaccessible hill--his emotions, his adventures, the
excitement of life made his thoughts, his ideas, thinner than smoke. He
even, standing there in his little room and looking over the London roofs,
despised the writer's inaction.... Often again he was to know that rivalry.

A quarter of an hour before supper he went down to say good-bye to Miss
Monogue. She was sitting quietly reading and he thought suddenly, as he
came upon her, there under the light of her candles in the grey room, that
she did not look well. He had never during their seven years' friendship,
noticed anything before, and now he could not have said what it was that he
saw except perhaps that her cheeks were flushed and that there were heavy
dark lines beneath her eyes. But she seemed to him, as he took her, thus
unprepared, with her untidy hair and her white cheap evening dress that
showed her thin fragile arms, to be something that he was leaving to face
the world alone, something very delicate that he ought not to leave.

Then she looked up and saw him and put her book down and smiled at him and
was the old cheerful Norah Monogue whom he had always known.

He stood with his legs apart facing her and told her:

"I've come to say good-bye."

"Good-bye?"

"Yes--I'm going to-night. What I've been expecting for so long has happened
at last. There's been a blow up at the bookshop and I've got to go."

For an instant the colour left her face; her book fell to the ground and
she put her hand back on the arm of the chair to steady herself.

"Oh! how silly of me ... never mind picking it up.... Oh thank you, Peter.
You gave me quite a shock, telling me like that. We shall all miss you
dreadfully."

His affection for her was strong enough to break in upon the great
overwhelming excited exultation that had held him all the evening. He was
dreadfully sorry to leave her!... dear Norah Monogue, what a pal she'd
been!

"I shall miss you horribly," he said with that note in his voice that
showed that, above all things, he wished to avoid a scene. "We've been such
tremendous pals all this time--you've been such a brick--I don't know what
I should have done...." He pulled himself up. "But it's got to be. I've
felt it coming you know and it's time I really lashed out for myself."

"Where are you going?"

"Ah! I must keep that dark for a bit. There's been trouble at the bookshop.
It'll be all right I expect but I don't want Mother Brockett to stand any
chance of being mixed up in it. I shall just disappear for a week or two
and then I'll be back again."

She smiled at him bravely: "Well, I won't ask what's happened, if you don't
want to tell me, but of course--I shall miss you. After seven years it
seems so abrupt. And, Peter, do take care of yourself."

"Oh, I shall be all right." He was very gruff. He felt now a furious angry
reluctance at leaving her behind. He stormed at himself as a fool; one of
the things that the strong man must learn of life is to be ruthless in
these partings and breaking of relations. He stood further away from her
and spoke as though he hated being there.

She understood him with wonderful tenderness.

"Well," she said cheerfully, "I daresay it will be better for you to try
for a little and see what you can make of it all. And then if you want
anything you'll come back to us, won't you?... You promise that?"

"Of course."

"And then there's the book. I know that man in Heriot and Lord's that I
told you about. I'll send it to them right away, if you like."

"Aren't they rather tremendous people for me to begin with? Oughtn't I to
begin with some one smaller?"

"Oh! there's no harm in starting at the top. They can't do more than refuse
it. But I don't think they will. I believe in it. But how shall I let you
know what they say?"

"Oh, I'll come in a week or two and see what's happening--I'll be on a
paper by then probably. I say, I don't want the others to know. I'll have
supper with them as usual and just tell Mother Brockett afterwards. I don't
want to have to say good-bye lots of times. Well"--he moved off awkwardly
towards the door--"You've been most tremendously good to me."

"Rot, Peter: Don't forget me!"

"Forget you! The best pal I've ever had." They clasped hands for a moment.
There was a pause and then Peter said: "I say--there _is_ a thing you can
do if you like--"

"Yes?--anything--"

"Well--about Miss Rossiter--you'll be seeing her I suppose?"

"Oh yes, often--"

"Well, you might just keep her in mind of me. I know it sounds silly
but--just a word or two, sometimes."

He felt that he was blushing--their hands separated. She moved back from
him and pushed at her hair in the nervous way that she had.

"Why, of course--she was awfully interested. She won't forget you. Well,
we'll meet at supper." She moved back with a last little nod at him and he
went awkwardly out of the room with a curious little sense of sudden
dismissal. Would she rather he didn't know Miss Rossiter, he vaguely
wondered. Women were such queer creatures.

As he went downstairs he wondered with a sudden almost shameful confusion
whether he was responsible in some way for the awkwardness that the scene
had had. He had noticed lately that she had not been quite herself when he
had been with her--that she would stop in the middle of a sentence, that
she would be, for instance, vexed at something he said, that she would look
at him sometimes as though ...

He pulled himself up. He was angry with himself for imagining such a
thing--as though ... Well, women _were_ strange creatures....

And then supper was more difficult than he had expected. They would show
him, the silly things, that they were fond of him just when he would much
rather have persuaded himself that they hated him. It was almost, as he
told himself furiously, as though they knew that he was going; Norah
Monogue was the only person who chattered and laughed in a natural way; he
was rather relieved that after all she seemed to care so little.

He found that he couldn't eat. There was a silly lump in his throat and he
looked at the marble pillars and the heavy curtains through a kind of
mist.... Especially was there Robin....

Mrs. Tressiter told him that Robin had something very important to say to
him and that he was going to stay awake until he, Peter, came up to him.

"I told him," she said, "that he must lie down and go to sleep like a good
boy and that his father would punish him if he didn't. But there! What's
the use of it? He isn't afraid of his father the slightest. He would go
on--something about a lion...."

At any rate this gave Peter an excuse to escape from the table and it was,
indeed, time, for they had all settled, like a clatter of hens, on to the
subject of the bomb, and they all had a great deal to say about it and a
great many questions to ask Peter.

"It's these Foreigners... of course our Police are entirely inadequate."

"Yes--that's what I say--the Police are really absurdly inadequate--"

"If they will allow these foreigners--"

"Yes, what can you expect--and the Police really can't--"

Peter escaped to Robin. He glowered down at the child who was sitting up in
his cot counting the flowers on the old wall-paper to keep himself awake.

"I always am so muddled after fourteen," he said. "Never mind, I'm _not_
sleeping--"

Peter frowned at him. "You ought to have been asleep long ago," he said. He
wished the boy hadn't got his hair tousled in that absurdly fascinating way
and that his cheeks weren't flushed so beautiful a red--also his nightgown
had lost a button at the top and showed a very white little neck. Peter
blinked his eyes--"Look here, kid, you must go to sleep right away at once.
What do you want?"

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