Fortitude
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Hugh Walpole >> Fortitude
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As he sat there listening there seemed to come up to him, straight out of
the river, strange impersonal noises that had to do with no definite
sounds. He was reminded of a story that he had once read, a story
concerning a nice young man who caught the disease known as the Horror of
London. Peter thought that in the air, coming from nowhere, intangible,
floating between the river and the sky something stirred....
Big Ben struck quarter to four and he turned once more into the Strand.
The editor of _The Saturday Illustrated_ was a very different person from
Mr. Boset. At a desk piled with papers, stern, gaunt and sharp-chinned, his
words rattled out of his mouth like peas onto a plate. But Peter saw that
he had humorous twinkling eyes.
"Well, what can you do?"
"I've never tried anything--but I feel that I should learn--"
"Learn! Do you suppose this office is a nursery shop for teaching sucklings
how to draw their milk? Are you ready for anything?"
"Anything--"
"Yes--they all say that. Journalism isn't any fun, you know."
"I'm not looking for fun."
"Well, it's the damnedest trade out. Anything's better. But you want to
write?"
"I must."
"Yes--exactly. Well, I like the look of you. More blood and bones than most
of the rotten puppies that come into this office. I've no job for you at
the moment though. Go back to your digs and write something--anything you
like--and send it along--leave me your address. Oh, ho! Bucket Lane--hard
up?"
"I'm all right, thank you."
"All right, I wasn't offering you charity--no need to put your pride up. I
shan't forget you ... but send me something."
The clouds had now enveloped the sun. As Peter, a little encouraged by this
last experience but tired with a dull, listless fatigue, crept into the
dark channels of Bucket Lane, the rain began to fall with heavy solemn
drops.
CHAPTER VII
DEVIL'S MARCH
I
There could be nothing odder than the picture that Brockett's and Bennett
Square presented from the vantage ground of Bucket Lane. How peaceful and
happy those evenings (once considered a little dreary perhaps and
monotonous) now seemed! Those mornings in the dusty bookshop, Mr. Zanti,
Herr Gottfried, Mrs. Brockett, then Brockett's with its strange
kind-hearted company--the dining-room, the marble pillars, the green
curtains--Norah Monogue!
Not only did it seem another lifetime when he had been there but also
inevitably, one was threatened with never getting back. Bucket Lane was
another world--from its grimy windows one looked upon every tragedy that
life had to offer. Into its back courts were born muddled indecent little
lives, there blindly to wallow until the earth called them back to itself
again.
But it was in the attitude of Bucket Lane to the Great Inevitable that the
essential difference was to be observed. In Bennett Square things had been
expected and, for the most part, obtained. Catastrophes came lumbering into
their midst at times but rising in the morning one might decently expect to
go to rest at night in safety. In Bucket Lane there was no safety but
defiance--fierce, bitterly humorous, truculent defiance. Bucket Lane was a
beleaguered army that stood behind the grime and dirty walls on guard. From
the earliest moment there the faces of all the babies born into Bucket Lane
caught the strain of cautious resistance that was always to remain with
them. Life in Bucket Lane, for every one from the youngest infant to the
oldest idiot, was War. War against Order and Civilised Force. War also
against that great unseen Hand that might at any moment swoop down upon any
one of them and bestow fire, death and imprisonment upon its victims. To
the ladies and gentlemen from the Mission the citizens of Bucket Lane
presented an amused and cynical tolerance. If those poor, meek, frightened
creatures chose some faint-hearted attempts at flattery and submission
before this abominable Deity--well, they did no harm.
Mrs. Williams said to Miss Connacher, a bright-faced young woman from St.
Matthew's Mission--"And I'm sure we're always delighted to see you, Miss.
But you can't 'ave us goin' and being grateful on our bended knees to the
sort of person as according to your account of it gave me my first 'usband
'oo was a blackguard if ever there was one, and my last child wot 'ad
rickets and so 'andsomely arranged me to go breakin' my leg one night
coming back from a party and sliding on the stairs, and in losin' my little
bit o' charin' and as near the workus as ever yer see--no--it ain't common
sense."
To which Miss Connacher vaguely looking around for a list of Mrs. Williams'
blessings and finding none to speak of, had no reply.
But the astonishing thing was that Peter seemed at once to be seized with
the Bucket Lane position. He was now, he understood, in a world of
earthquake--wise citizens lived from minute to minute and counted on no
longer safety. He began also to eliminate everything that was not
absolutely essential. At Brockett's he had never consciously done without
anything that he wanted--in Bucket Lane he discarded to the last possible
shred of possession.
He had returned from his first day's hunting with the resolve that before
he ventured out again he would have something to show. With a precious
sixpence he bought a copy of _The Mascot_ and studied it--there was a short
story entitled "Mrs. Adair's Co."--and an article on "What Society
Drinks"--the remaining pages of the number were filled with pictures and
"Chatter from Day to Day." This gaily-coloured production lying on one of
the beds in the dark room in Bucket Lane seemed singularly out of place.
Its pages fluttered in the breeze that came through the window
cracks--"Maison Tep" it cried feebly to the screaming children in the court
below, "is a very favourite place for supper just now, with Maitre Savori
as its popular chef and its admirably stocked cellars...."
Peter gave himself a fortnight in which to produce something that he could
"show." Stephen meanwhile had found work as a waiter in one of the small
Soho restaurants; it was only a temporary engagement but he hoped to get
something better within a week or two.
For the moment all was well. At the end of his fortnight, with four things
written Peter meant to advance once more to the attack. Meanwhile he sat
with a pen, a penny bottle of ink and an exercise book and did what he
could. At the end of the fortnight he had written "The Sea Road," an essay
for which Robert Louis Stevenson was largely responsible, "The Redgate
Mill," a story of the fantastic, terrible kind, "Stones for Bread,"
moralising on Bucket Lane, and the "Red-Haired Boy," a somewhat bitter
reminiscence of Dawson's. Of this the best was undoubtedly "The Sea Road,"
but in his heart of hearts Peter knew that there was something the matter
with all of them. "Reuben Hallard" he had written because he had to write
it, these four things he had written because he ought to write them ...
difference sufficient. Nevertheless, he put them into halfpenny wrappes and
sent them away.
In the struggle to produce these things he had not found that fortnight
wearisome. Before him, every day, there was the evening when Stephen would
return, to which he might look forward. Stephen was always very late--often
it was two o'clock before he came in, but they had a talk before going to
sleep. And here in these evenings Stephen developed in the most wonderful
way, developed because Peter had really never known him before.
Stephen had never appeared to Peter as a character at all. In the early
days Peter had been too young. Stephen had, at that time, been simply
something to be worshipped, without any question or statement. Now that
worshipping had gone and the space that it left had to be filled by some
new relationship, something that could only come slowly, out of the close
juxtaposition that living together in Bucket Lane had provided.
And it was Stephen who found, unconsciously and quite simply, the shape and
colour of Peter's idea of him. Peter had in reality, nothing at all to do
with it, and had Stephen been a whit more self-conscious the effect would
have been spoiled.
In the first place Peter came quite freshly to the way that Stephen looked.
Stephen expressed nothing, consciously, with his body; it was wonderful
indeed considering its size and strength, the little that he managed to do
with it. His eyes were mild and amiable, his face largely covered with a
deep brown beard, once wildly flowing, now sharply pointed. He was at least
six foot four in height, the breadth of shoulder was tremendous, but
although he knew admirably what to do with it as a means of conveyance, of
sheer physical habit, he had no conception of the possibilities that it
held as the expression of his soul. That soul was to be found, by those who
cared to look for it, glancing from his eyes, struggling sometimes through
the swift friendliness of his smile--but he gave it no invitation. It all
came, perhaps, from the fact that he treated himself--if anything so
unconscious may be called treatment--as the very simplest creature alive.
The word introspection meant nothing to him whatever, there were in life
certain direct sharp motives and on these he acted. He never thought of
himself or of any one else in terms of complexity; the body acted simply
through certain clear and direct physical laws ... so the spirit. He loved
the woman who had dominated his whole life and one day he would find her
and marry her. He loved Peter as he would love a son of his own if he
possessed one, and he would be at Peter's side so long as Peter needed him,
and would rather be there than anywhere else. For the rest life was a
matter of birth and death, of loving one man and hating another, of food
and drink, and--but this last uncertainly--of some strange thrill that was
stirred in him, at times, by certain sights and sounds.
He was glad to have been born ... he would be quite ready to die. He did
not question the reason of the one state or the other. For the very fact
that life was so simple and unentangled he clung, with the tenacity and
dumb force of an animal to the things that he had. Peter felt, vaguely,
from time to time, the strength with which Stephen held to him. It was
never expressed in word nor in action but it came leaping sometimes, like
fire, into the midst of their conversation--it was never tangible--always
illusive.
To Peter's progress this simplicity of Stephen was of vast importance. The
boy had now reached an age and a period where emotions, judgments,
partialities, conclusions and surmises were fighting furiously for
dominion. His seven years at Brockett's had been, introspectively, of
little moment. He had been too busy discovering the things that other
people had discovered and written down to think very much about himself.
Now released from the domination of books, he plunged into a whirlpool of
surmise about himself. During the fortnight that he sat writing his
articles in Bucket Lane he flew, he sank, according to his moods. It seemed
to him that as soon as he had decided on one path and set out eagerly to
follow it others crossed it and bewildered him.
He was now on that unwholesome, absorbing, thrilling, dangerous path of
self-discovery. Opposed to this was the inarticulate, friendly soul of
Stephen. Stephen understood nothing and at the same time understood
everything. Against the testing of his few simple laws Peter's complexities
often vanished ... but vanished only to recur again, unsatisfied, demanding
a subtler answer. It was during those days, through all the trouble and
even horror that so shortly came upon them both, that Stephen realised with
a dull, unreasoned pain, like lead at the heart, that Peter was passing
inevitably from him into a country whither Stephen could not follow--to
deal with issues that Stephen could not, in any kind of way, understand.
Stephen realised this many days before Peter even dimly perceived it, and
the older man by the love that he had for the boy whom he had known from
the very first period of his growth was enabled, although dimly, to see
beyond, above all these complexities, to a day when Peter would once more,
having learnt and suffered much in the meanwhile, come back to that first
simplicity.
But that day was far distant.
II
On the evening of the day on which Peter finished the last of his five
attempts to take the London journals by storm Stephen returned from his
restaurant earlier than usual--so early indeed, that Peter, had he not been
so bent on his own immediate affairs, must have noticed and questioned it.
He might, too, have observed that Stephen, now and again, shot an anxious,
troubled glance at him as though he were uneasy about something.
But Peter, since six o'clock that evening, at which moment he had written
the concluding sentence of "The Sea Road," had been in deep and troubled
thought concerning himself, and broke from that introspection, on Stephen's
arrival, in a state of unhappy morbidity and entire self-absorption.
Their supper was beer, sardines and cheese.
"It's been pretty awful here this evening," Peter said. "Old Trubbit on the
floor below's been beating his wife and she's been screaming like anything.
I couldn't stand it, after a bit, and went down to see what I could do. The
family was mopping her head with water and he was sitting on a chair,
crying. Drunk again, of course, but he was turned off his job apparently
this afternoon. They're closing down."
"'Ard luck," said Stephen, looking at the floor.
"Yes--it hasn't been altogether cheerful--and his getting the chuck like
that set me thinking. It's awfully lucky you've got your job all right and
of course now I've written these things and have got 'something to show,'
I'll be all right." Peter paused for a moment a little uncertainly. "But it
does, you know, make one a bit frightened, this place, seeing the way
people get suddenly bowled over. There were the Gambits--a fortnight ago he
was in work and they were as fit as anything ... they haven't had any food
now for three days."
"There ain't anything to be frightened about," Stephen said slowly.
"No, I know. But Stephen, suppose I _don't_ get work, after all. I've been
so confident all this time, but I mightn't be able to do the job a bit....
I suppose this place is getting on my nerves but--I could get awfully
frightened if I let myself."
"Oh, you'll be all right. Of course you'll be getting something--"
"Yes, but I hate spending your money like this. Do you know, Stephen, I'd
almost rather you were out of work too. That sounds a rotten thing to say
but I hate being given it all like this, especially when you haven't got
much of your own either--"
"Between friends," said Stephen slowly, swinging his leg backwards and
forwards and making the bed creak under his weight, "there aren't any
giving or taking--it's just common."
"Oh, yes, I know," said Peter hurriedly, frightened lest he should have
hurt his feelings, "of course it's all right between you and me. But all
the same I'm rather eager to be earning part of it."
They were silent for a time. Bucket Lane too seemed silent and through
their little window, between the black roofs and chimneys, a cluster of
stars twinkled as though they had found their way, by accident, into a very
dirty neighbourhood and were trying to get out of it again.
Peter was busy fishing for his thoughts; at last he caught one and held it
out to Stephen's innocent gaze.
"It isn't," he said, "like anything so much as catching a disease from an
infectious neighbourhood. I think if I lived here with five thousand a year
I should still be frightened. It's in the air."
"Being frightened," said Stephen rather hurriedly and speaking with a kind
of shame, as though he had done something to which he would rather not own
up, "is a kind of 'abit. Very soon, Peter, you'll know what it's like and
take it as it comes."
"Oh," said Peter, "if it's that kind of being frightened--seeing I mean
quite clearly the things you're frightened of--why, that's pretty easy. One
of the first books I ever read--'Henry Lessingham,' by Galleon, you know,
I've talked about him to you--had a long bit about it--courage I mean. He
made it a kind of parable, countries you'd got to go through before you'd
learnt to be really brave; and the first, and by far the easiest courage is
the sort that you want when you haven't got things--the sort the Gambits
want--when you're starving or out of a job. Well, that's I suppose the
easiest kind and yet I'm funking it. So what on earth am I going to do when
the harder business comes along? ... Stephen, I'm beginning to have a
secret and uncomfortable suspicion that your friend, Peter Westcott, is a
poor creature."
"Thank the Lord," said Stephen furiously and kicking out with his leg as
though he had got some especial enemy's back directly in front of him,
"that you've finished them damned articles. You've been sittin' here
thinkin' and writin' till you've given yerself blue devils--down-along,
too, with all them poor creatures hittin' each other and drinkin'--I
oughtn't to have left yer up here so much alone--"
"No--you couldn't help it, Stephen--it's nothing to do with you. It's all
more than you can manage and nobody in the world can help me. It's seven
years and a bit now since I left Cornwall, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Stephen, looking across at him.
"All that time I've never had a word nor a sign from any one there. Well,
you might have thought that that would be long enough to break right away
from it.... Well, it isn't--"
"Don't you go thinking about all that time. You've cleared it right away--"
"No, I haven't cleared it--that's just the point. I don't suppose one ever
clears anything. All the time I was with Zanti I was reading so hard and
living so safely that it was only at moments, when I was alone, that I
thought about Treliss at all. But these last weeks it's been coming on me
full tide."
"What's been coming on you?"
"Well, Scaw House, I suppose ... and my father and grandfather. My
grandfather told me once that I couldn't escape from the family and I
can't--it's the most extraordinary thing--"
Stephen saw that Peter was growing agitated; his hands were clenched and
his face was white.
"Mind you, I've seen my grandfather and father both go under it. My father
went down all in a moment. It isn't any one thing--you can call it drink if
you like--but it's simply three parts of us aching to go to the bad ...
aching, that's the word. Anything rotten--women or drink or anything you
like--as long as we lose control and let the devil get the upper hand. Let
him get it once--_really_ get it--and we're really done--"
Peter paused for a moment and then went on hurriedly as though he were
telling a story and had only a little time in which to tell it.
"But that isn't all--it's worse than that. I've been feeling these last
weeks as though my father were sitting there in that beastly house with
that filthy woman--and willing me--absolutely with all his might--to go
under--"
"But what is it," said Stephen, going, as always, to the simplest aspect of
the case, "that you exactly want to do?"
"Oh, I don't know ... just to let loose the whole thing--I did break out
once at Brockett's--I've never told anybody, but I got badly drunk one
night and then went back with some woman.... Oh! it was all filthy--but I
was mad, wild, for hours ... insane--and that night, in the middle of it
all, sitting there as plainly as you please, there in Scaw House, I saw my
father--as plainly as I see you--"
"All young men," said Stephen, "'ave got to go through a bit of filth. You
aren't the sort of fellow, Peter, that stays there. Your wanting not to
shows that you'll come out of it all right."
Here was a case where Stephen's simplicities were obviously of little
avail.
"Ah, but don't you see," said Peter impatiently, "it's not the thing itself
that I feel matters so much, although that's rotten enough, but it's the
beastly devil--real, personal--I tell you I saw him catch my grandfather as
tight as though he'd been there in the room ... and my father, too. I tell
you, this last week or two I've been almost mad ... wanting to chuck it
all, this fighting and the rest and just go down and grovel..."
"I expect it's regular work you're wanting," said Stephen, "keeping your
mind busy. It's bad to 'ave your sort of brain wandering round with nothing
to feed on. It'll be all right, boy, in a day or two when you've got some
work."
Peter's head dropped forward on to his hands. "I don't know--it's like
going round in a circle. You see, Stephen, what makes it all so difficult
is--well, I don't know ... why I haven't told you before ... but the fact
is--I'm in love--"
"I knew it a while back," said Stephen quietly, "watching your face when
you didn't know I was lookin'--"
"Well, it's all hopeless, of course. I don't suppose I shall ever see her
again ... but that's what's made this looking for work so difficult--I've
been wanting to get on--and every day seems to place her further away. And
then when I get hopeless these other devils come round and say 'Oh well,
you can't get her, you know. That's as impossible as anything--so you'd
better have your fling while you can....' My God! I'm a beast!"
The cry broke from him with a bitterness that filled the bare little room.
Stephen, after a little, got up and put his hand on the boy's shoulder.
"Nobody ain't going to touch you while I'm here," he said simply as though
he were challenging devils and men alike.
Peter looked up and smiled. "What an old brick you are," he said. "Do you
remember that fight Christmas time, years ago? ... You're always like
that.... I've been an ass to bother you with it all and while we've got
each other things can't be so bad." He got up and stretched his arms.
"Well, it's bedtime, especially as you've got to be off early to that old
restaurant--"
Stephen stepped back from him.
"I've been meaning to tell you," he said, "that's off. The place ain't
paying and the boss shut four of us down to-night ... I'm not to go back
... Peter, boy," he finished, almost triumphantly. "We're up against it ...
I've got a quid in my pocket and that's all there is to it."
They faced one another whilst the candle behind them guttered and blew in
the window cracks, and the cluster of stars, still caught in the dirty
roofs and chimneys of Bucket Lane, twinkled, desperately--in vain.
CHAPTER VIII
STEPHEN'S CHAPTER
I
No knight--the hero of any chronicle--ever went forward to his battle with
a braver heart than did Peter now in his desperate adventure against the
world. His morbidity, his introspection, his irritation with Stephen's
simplicities fled from him... he was gay, filled with the glamour of
showing what one could do... he did not doubt but that a fortnight would
see him in a magnificent position. And then--the fortnight passed and he
and Stephen had still their positions to discover--the money moreover was
almost at an end... another fortnight would behold them penniless.
It was absurd--it was monstrous, incredible. Life was not like that--Peter
bit his lip and set out again. Editors had not, on most occasions,
vouchsafed him even an interview. Then had come no answer to the four
halfpenny wrappers. The world, like a wall of shining steel, closed him in
with impenetrable silence.
It was absurd--it was monstrous. Peter fought desperately, as a bird beats
with its wings on the bars of its cage. They were having the worst of luck.
On several occasions he had been just too late and some one had got the
position before him. Stephen too found that the places where he had worked
before had now no job for him. "It was the worst time in the world... a
month ago now or possibly in a month's time...."
Stephen did not tell the boy that away from London there were many things
that he could do--the boy was not up to tramping. Indeed, nothing was more
remarkable than the way in which Peter's strength seemed to strain, like a
flood, away. It was, perhaps, a matter of nerves as much as physical
strength--the boy was burning with the anxiety of it, whereas to Stephen
this was no new experience. Peter saw it in the light of some horrible
disaster that belonged, in all the world's history, to him alone. He came
back at the end of one of his days, white, his eyes almost closed, his
fingers twitching, his head hanging a little ... very silent.
He seemed to feel bitterly the ignominy of it as though he were realising,
for the first time, that nobody wanted him. He had come now to be ready to
do anything, anything in the world, and he had the look of one who was
ready to do anything. His blue coat was shiny, his boots had been patched
by Stephen--there were deep black hollows under his eyes and his mouth had
become thin and hard.
Stephen--having himself his own distresses to support--watched the boy with
acute anxiety. He felt with increasing unhappiness, that here was an
organism, a temperament, that was new to him, that was beyond his grasp.
Peter saw things in it all--this position of a desperate cry for work--that
he, Stephen, had never seen at all. Peter would sit in the evening, in his
chair, staring in front of him, silent, and hearing nothing that Stephen
said to him. With Stephen life was a case of having money or not having
it--if one had not money one went without everything possible and waited
until the money came again ... the tide was sure to turn. But, with Peter,
this was all a fight against his father who sat, apparently, in the dark
rooms at Scaw House, willing disaster. Now, as Stephen and all the sensible
world knew, this was nonsense--
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