Fortitude

H >> Hugh Walpole >> Fortitude

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III

They were having dinner now--Bobby, Mrs. Galleon and Peter--in the studio
of the Cheyne Walk House. Outside, a sheet of stars, a dark river and the
pale lamps of the street. The curtains of the studio were still undrawn and
the glow from the night beyond fell softly along the gleaming black boards
of the floor that stretched into shadow by the farther wall, over the round
mahogany table--without a cloth and shining with its own colour--deep and
liquid brown,--and out to the pictures that hung in their dull gold frames
along the wall.

About Peter was a sense of ease and rest, of space that was as new to him
as America was to Columbus. He was not even now completely recovered from
his Bucket Lane experiences and there was still about him that uncertainty
of life--when one sees it as though through gauze curtains--that gives
reality to the quality of dreams. Life was behind him, Life was ahead of
him, but meantime let him rest in this uncertain and beautiful country
until it was time for him to go forward again. This intangibility--walking
as it were in a fog round and round the Nelson monument, knowing it was
there but never seeing it--remained with him even when practical matters
were discussed. For instance, "Reuben Hallard" was to be published in a
week's time and Peter was to receive fifty pounds in advance on the day of
publication (unusually good terms for a first novel Bobby assured him);
also Bobby, through his father, thought that he could secure Peter regular
reviewing. The intention then was that Peter should remain with the
Galleons as a kind of paying guest, and so his pride would not be hurt and
they could have an eye upon him during this launching of him into London.
It was fortunate, perhaps, that Alice Galleon had liked him down there at
the sea, because she was a lady who had her own way at No. 72, and she by
no means liked every one. But perhaps the Galleon baby had had more to do
with everything than any one knew, and Mrs. Galleon assured her friends
that the baby's heart would most certainly be broken if "the wild young
guest" as she called Peter, were carried off.

And wild he was--of that seeing him now at dinner there in the studio there
could be no doubt. He was wearing Bobby's clothes and there was still a
look of suffering in his eyes and around his mouth, but the difference--his
difference from the things about him--went deeper than that. The large high
windows of the studio with the expanse of wild and burning stars between
their black frames answered Peter's eyes as he faced them. Mrs. Galleon, as
she watched him, was reminded of other things, of other persons, of other
events, that had marked his earlier life. She glanced from Peter's eyes
to Bobby's. She smiled, for on an earlier day, she had seen that same
antithesis--the gulf that is fixed between Imagination and Reality--and had
known its meaning.

But for Peter, all he asked now was that he might be allowed to rest in the
midst of this glorious comfort. His evil dreams were very far away from him
to-night. The food, the colour--the fruit piled high in the silver dishes,
the glittering of the great silver candelabra that stood on the middle of
the table, the deep red of the roses in the bowl at his side, the deeper
red of the Port that shone in front of Bobby and then, beneath all this, as
though the table were a coloured ship sailing on a solemn sea, the dark,
deep shining floor that faded into shadow--all this excited him so that his
hands trembled.

He spoke to Mrs. Galleon:

"I wonder if you will do me a favour," he said very earnestly.

"Anything in reason," she answered, laughing back at his gravity.

"Well, don't call me Mr. Westcott any more. Because I'm going to live here
and because I'm too old a friend of Bobby's and because, finally, I hate
being called Mr. Westcott by anybody, might it be Peter?"

"Joseph calls him Peter as it is," said Bobby quite earnestly looking at
his wife.

They were both so grave about it that Alice Galleon couldn't be anything
but grave too. She knew that it was really a definite appeal on behalf
of both of them that she should here and now, solemnly put her sign of
approval on Peter. It was almost in the way that they waited for her to
answer, a ceremony. She was even, as she looked at them, surprised into a
sudden burst of tenderness towards them both. Bobby so solemn, such a dear,
really quite an age and yet as young as any infant in arms. Peter with
forces and impulses that might lead to anything or wreck him altogether,
and yet, through it all younger even than Bobby. Oh! what an age she, Alice
Galleon, seemed to muster at the sight of their innocent trust! Did every
woman feel as old, as protecting, as tenderly indulgent, towards every
man?...

"Why, of course," she answered quietly, "Peter it shall be--"

Bobby raised his port. "Here's to Peter--to Peter and 'Reuben
Hallard'--overwhelming success to both of them."

Emotion, for an instant, held them. Then quietly, they stepped back
again. It was almost too good to be true that, after all the turnings and
twistings, life should have brought Peter to this. He did not look very far
ahead, he did not ask himself whether the book were likely to be a success,
whether his career would justify this beginning. If only they would let him
alone.... He did not, even to himself, name those powers. He was wrapped
about with comfort, he had friends, above all (and this he had discovered
at the sea) the Galleons knew Miss Rossiter ... this last thought seemed,
by the glorious clamour of it, to draw that sheet of stars down through the
window into the room, the air crackled with their splendour.

He was drawn back, down into the world again, by hearing Bobby's voice:

"The evening post and a letter for you. Peter."

He looked down and, with a sudden pang of accusing shame because he had
forgotten so easily, with also a sure knowledge that that easy escape from
his other life was already forbidden him, saw that the letter was from
Stephen. He felt that their eyes were upon him as he took the letter up
and he also felt that in Alice Galleon's gaze there was a wise and tender
understanding of the things that he must be feeling. The roughness of the
envelope, the rudeness of the hand-writing, a stain in one corner that
might be beer, the stamp set crookedly--these things seemed to him like so
many voices that called him back. Five minutes ago those days in Bucket
Lane had belonged to another life, now he was still there and to-morrow he
must tramp out again, to-morrow....

The letter said:

_Writing here dear Peter at twelve o'clock noon, the Red Crown Inn,
Druttledge, on the road to Exeter, a little house where thiccy
bandy-legged man you've heard me tell about is Keeper and a good
fellow and there's queer enough company in kitchen now to please you.
A rough lot of fellows: and a storm coming up black over high woods
that'll make walkin' no easy matter on a slimy road, and, dear boy,
I've been thinkin' strange about you and 'ow you'll pull along with
your kind friends. That nice gentleman sent a telegram as he promised
to and says you pull finely along. Hopin' you really are better. But
dear boy, if you find you can give me just a word on paper sayin' that
hear there is no course for worryin' about your health, then I'm happy
because, dear boy, you'm always in my thoughts and I love you fine and
wish to God I could have made everything easier up along in thiccy
Bucket Lane. I go from hear by road to Cornwall and Treliss. I'm
expecting to find work there. Dear boy, don't forget me and see me
again one day and write a letter. They are getting too much into their
bellies and making the devil's own noise. There is Thunder coming the
air is that still over the roof of the barn and the road's dead white.
Dear Boy, I am your friend,_

STEPHEN BRANT.

The candles blew a little in the breeze from the open window and the
lighted shadows ran flickering in silver lines, along the dark floor. Peter
stood holding the letter in his hand, looking out on to the black square of
sky; the lights of the barges swung down the river and he could hear, very
faintly, the straining of ropes and the turning of some mysterious wheel.

He saw Stephen--the great head, the flowing beard, the huge body--and
then the inn with the thunder coming over the hill, and then, beyond that
Treliss gleaming with its tiers of lights, above the breast of the sea. And
from here, from this wide Embankment, down to that sea, there stretched,
riding over hills, bending into valleys, always white and hard and stony,
the road....

For an instant he felt as though the studio, the lights, the comforts were
holding him like a prison--

"It's a letter from Stephen Brant," he said, turning back from the window.
"He seems well and happy--"

"Where is he?"

"Eating bread and cheese at an inn somewhere--on the road down to
Cornwall."

IV

On the following Tuesday "Reuben Hallard" was published and on the Thursday
afternoon Henry Galleon and Clare Rossiter were to come to tea. "Reuben
Hallard" arrived in a dark red cover with a white paper label. The six
copies lay on the table and looked at Peter as though he had had nothing
whatever to do with their existence. He looked down upon them, opened one
of them very tenderly, read half a page and felt that it was the best stuff
he'd ever seen. He read the rest of the page and thought that the author,
whoever the creature might be, deserved, imprisonment for writing such
nonsense.

The feeling of strangeness towards it all was increased by the fact that
Bobby had, with the exception of the final proofs--these Peter had read
down by the sea--done most of the proof-correcting. It was a task for which
his practical common sense and lack of all imagination admirably fitted
him. There, at any rate, "Reuben Hallard" was, ready to face all the world,
to go, perhaps, to the farthest Hebrides, to be lost in all probability,
utterly lost, in the turgid flood of contemporary fiction.

There was a dedication "To Stephen"... How surprised Stephen would be! He
looked at the chapter headings--An Old Man with a Lantern--the Road at
Night.... Sun on the Western Moor--Stevenson--Tushery all of it! How they'd
tear it to bits, those papers!

He laughed to himself to think that there had once been a day when he had
thought that the thing would make his fortune! And yet--he turned the pages
over tenderly--there might be something to be said for it, Miss Monogue had
thought well of it. These publishers, blase, cynical fellows, surely
believed in it.

It was fat and red and comfortable. It had a worldly, prosperous look.
"Reuben Hallard and His Adventures" ... Good Lord! What cheek.

There were five copies to give away. One between Bobby and Mrs. Galleon,
one for Stephen, one for Miss Monogue, one for Mrs. Brockett and one for
Mr. Zanti. "Reuben Hallard and His Adventures," by Peter Westcott. They
would be getting it now at the newspaper offices. _The Mascot_ would have a
copy and the fat little chocolate consumer. It would stand with a heap of
others, and be ticked off with a heap of others, for some youth to exercise
his wit upon. As to any one buying the book? Who ever saw any one buying a
six-shilling novel? It was only within the last year or so that the old
three volumes with their thirty-one-and-six had departed this life. The
publishers had assured Peter that this new six-shilling form was the thing.
"Please have you got 'Reuben Hallard' by Peter Westcott?... Thank you, I'll
take it with me."

No, it was inconceivable.

There poor Reuben would lie--deserted, still-born, ever dustier and dustier
whilst other stories came pouring, pouring from endless presses, covering,
crowding it down, stamping upon it, burying it.... "Here lies 'Reuben
Hallard.'..."

Poor Peter!

On Thursday, however, there was the tea-party--a Thursday never to be
forgotten whilst Peter was alive. Bobby had told him the day before
that his father might be coming. "The rest of the family will turn up
for certain. They want to see you. They're always all agog for any new
thing--one of them's always playing Cabot to somebody else's Columbus.
But father's uncertain. He gets something into his head and then nothing
whatever will draw him out--but I expect he'll turn up."

The other visitor was announced to Peter on the very day.

"By the way, Peter, somebody's coming to tea this afternoon who's met you
before--met you at that odd boarding-house of yours--a Miss Rossiter.
Clare's an old friend of ours. I told you down at the sea about her and you
said you remembered meeting her."

"Remembered meeting her!" Did Dante remember meeting Beatrice--did Petrarch
remember Laura? Did Keats forget his Fanny Brawne? Did Richard Feverel
forget his Lucy?

On a level with these high-thinking gentlemen was Peter, disguising his
emotions from Alice's sharp eyes but silent, breathless, wanting some other
place than that high studio in which to breathe. "Yes--she came to tea once
with a Miss Monogue there--I liked her...."

He was not there, but rather on some height alone with her and their hands
touched over a photograph. "The Man on the Lion." There was something
worthy of his feeling for her!

Meanwhile, for the first part of the afternoon one must put up with the
Galleon family. Had Peter been sufficiently calm and sensible these
appendages to a great author would have been worth his attention. Behold
them in relation to "Henry Lessingham," soaked in the works, bearing on
their backs the whole Edition de Luxe, decking themselves with the little
odds and ends of literary finery that they had picked up, bursting with the
good-nature of assured self-consequence--harmless, foolish, comfortable.
Mrs. Galleon was massive with a large flat face that jumped suddenly into
expression when one least expected it. There was a great deal of silk about
her, much leisurely movement and her tactics were silence and a slow,
significant smile--these she always contributed to any conversation that
was really beyond her. Had she not, during many years of her life, been
married to a genius she would have been an intensely slow-moving but
adequate housekeeper--as it was, her size and her silence enabled her to
keep her place at many literary dinners. Peter, watching her, was consumed
with wonder that Henry Galleon could ever have married her and understood
that Bobby was the child of both his parents. Bobby had a brother and
sister--Percival and Millicent. Percival was twenty-five and had written
two novels that were considered promising by those who did not know that he
was the son of his father. He was slim and dark with a black thread of a
moustache and rather fine white fingers. His clothes were very well cut but
his appearance was a little too elaborately simple. His sister, a girl of
about eighteen, was slim and dark also; she had the eager appearance of one
who has heard just enough to make her very anxious to hear a great deal
more.

One felt that she did not want to miss anything, but probably her
determination to be her father's daughter would prevent her from becoming
very valuable or intelligent.

Finally it was strange that Bobby had so completely escaped the shadow of
his father's mantle. These people were intended, of course, to be the
background of Peter's afternoon and it was therefore more than annoying
that that was the very last thing that they were. Millicent and Percival
made a ball and then flung it backwards and forwards throughout the affair.
Their mother watched them with appreciation and Alice Galleon, who knew
them, gave them tea and cake and let them have their way. Into the midst of
this Henry Galleon came--a little, round, fat man with a face like a map,
the body of Napoleon and a trot round the room like a very amiable pony,
eyes that saw everything, understood everything, and forgave everything, a
brown buff waistcoat with gilt buttons, white spats and a voice that rolled
and roared ... he was the tenderest, most alarming person in any kind of
a world. He was so gentle that any sparrow would trust him implicitly and
so terrific that an army would most certainly fly from before him. He ate
tea-cake, smiled and shook hands with Peter, listened for half an hour
to the spirited conversation of his two children and trotted away again,
leaving behind him an atmosphere of gentle politeness and an amazing
_savoir-faire_ that one saw his children struggling to catch. They finally
gave it up about half-past five and retreated, pressing Peter to pay them a
call at the earliest opportunity.

This was positively all that Peter saw, on this occasion, of Henry Galleon.
It was quite enough to give him a great deal to think about, but it could
scarcely be called a meeting.

At quarter to six when Peter was in despair and Alice Galleon had ordered
the tea-things to be taken away Clare Rossiter rushed in. She stood a
whirlwind of flying colours in the middle of the Studio now sinking into
twilight. "Alice dear, I am most terribly sorry but mother _would_ stay. I
couldn't get her to leave and it was all so awkward. How do you do, Mr.
Westcott? Do you remember--we met at Treliss--and now I must rush back this
very minute. We are dining at seven before the Opera, and father wants that
music you promised him--the Brahms thing. Oh! is it upstairs? Well, if you
don't mind...."

Alice Galleon left them together. Peter could say nothing at all. He stood
there, shifting from foot to foot, white, absolutely tongue-tied.

She felt his embarrassment and struggled.

"I hear that you've been very ill, Mr. Westcott. I'm so dreadfully sorry
and I do hope that you're better?"

He muttered something.

"Your book is out, isn't it? 'Reuben Hallard' is the name. I must get
father to put it down on his list. One's first books must be so dreadfully
exciting--and so alarming ... the reviews and everything--what is it
about?"

He murmured "Cornwall."

"Cornwall? How delightful! I was only there once. Mullion. Do you know
Mullion?" She struggled along. The pain that had begun in his heart was now
at his throat--his throat was full of spiders' webs. He could scarcely see
her in the dark but her pale blue dress and her dark eyes and her beautiful
white hands--her little figure danced against the dark, shining floor like
a fairy's.

He heard her sigh of relief at Alice Galleon's return.

"Oh! thank you, dear, so much. Good-bye, Mr. Westcott--I shall read the
book."

She was gone.

"Lights! Lights!" cried Alice Galleon. "How provoking of her not to come to
tea properly. Well, Peter? How was it all?"

He was guilty of abominable rudeness.

He burst from the room without a word and banged, desperately, the door
behind him.

CHAPTER II

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

I

The shout of applause with which "Reuben Hallard" was greeted still remains
one of the interesting cases in modern literary history. At this time of
day it all seems ancient and distant enough; the book has been praised,
blamed, lifted up, hurled down a thousand times, and has finally been
discovered to be a book of promise, of natural talent, with a great deal of
crudity and melodrama and a little beauty. It does not stand of course in
comparison with Peter Westcott's later period and yet it has a note that
his hand never captured afterwards. How incredibly bad it is in places,
the Datchett incidents, with their flames and screams and murder in the
dark, sufficiently betray: how fine it can be such a delight as The Cherry
Orchard chapter shows, and perhaps the very badness of the crudities helped
in its popularity, for there was nothing more remarkable about it than the
fashion in which it captured every class of reader. But its success, in
reality, was a result of the exact moment of its appearance. Had Peter
waited a thousand years he could not possibly have chosen a time more
favourable. It was that moment in literary history, when the world had had
enough of lilies and was turning, with relief, to artichokes. There was a
periodical of this time entitled _The Green Volume_. This appeared
somewhere about 1890 and it brought with it a band of young men and women
who were exceedingly clever, saw the quaintness of life before its reality
and stood on tiptoe in order to observe things that were really growing
quite close to the ground. This quarterly produced some very admirable
work; its contributors were all, for a year or two, as clever as they
were--young and as cynical as either. The world was dressed in a powder
puff and danced beneath Chinese lanterns and was as wicked as it could be
in artificial rose-gardens. It was all great fun for a year or two....

Then _The Green Volume_ died, people began to whisper about slums and
drainage, and Swedish drill for ten minutes every morning was considered an
admirable thing. On the edge of this new wave came "Reuben Hallard,"
combining as it did a certain amount of affectation with a good deal of
naked truth, and having the rocks of Cornwall as well as its primroses for
its background. It also told a story with a beginning to it and an end to
it, and it contained the beautiful character of Mrs. Poveret, a character
that was undoubtedly inspired by that afternoon that Peter had with his
mother..

In addition to all this it must be remembered that the world was entirely
unprepared for the book's arrival. It had been in no fashion heralded and
until a long review appeared in _The Daily Globe_ no one noticed it in any
way. Then the thing really began. The reviewers were glad to find something
in a dead season, about which a column or two might possibly be written;
the general public was delighted to discover a novel that was considered by
good judges to be literature and that, nevertheless, had as good a story as
though it weren't--its faults were many and some of its virtues accidental,
but it certainly deserved success as thoroughly as did most of its
contemporaries. Edition followed edition and "Reuben Hallard" was the novel
of the spring of 1896.

The effect of all this upon Peter may easily be imagined. It came to
him first, with those early reviews and an encouraging letter from the
publishers, as something that did not belong to him at all, then after a
month or so it belonged to him so completely that he felt as though he had
been used to it all his life. Then slowly, as the weeks passed and the
success continued, he knew that the publication of this book had changed
the course of his life. Letters from agents and publishers asking for his
next novel, letters from America, letters from unknown readers, all these
things showed him that he could look now towards countries that had not,
hitherto, been enclosed by his horizon. He breathed another air.

And yet he was astonishingly simple about it all--very young and very
naive. The two things that he felt about it were, first, that it would
please very much his friends--Bobby and his wife, Mrs. Brockett, Norah
Monogue, Mr. Zanti, Herr Gottfried and, above all, Stephen; and secondly,
that all those early years in Cornwall--the beatings, his mother, Scaw
House, even Dawson's--had been of use to him. One remembers those
extraordinary chapters concerning Reuben and his father--here Peter had,
for the first time, allowed some expression of his attitude to it all to
escape him.

He felt indeed as though the success of the book placed for a moment all
that other life in the background--really away from him. For the first time
since he left Brockett's he was free from a strange feeling of
apprehension.... Scaw House was hidden.

He gave himself up to glorious life. He plunged into it....

II

He stepped, at first timidly, into literary London. It was, at first sight,
alarming enough because it seemed to consist, so largely and so stridently,
of the opposite sex. Bobby would have had Peter avoid it altogether.
"There are some young idiots," he said, "who go about to these literary
tea-parties. They've just written a line or two somewhere or other, and
they go curving and bending all over the place. Young Tony Gale and young
Robin Trojan and my young ass of a brother ... don't want you to join that
lot, Peter, my boy. The women like to have 'em of course, they're useful
for handing the cake about but that's all there is to it ... keep out of
it."

But Peter had not had so many friends during the early part of his life
that he could afford to do without possible ones now. He wanted indeed
just as many as he could grasp. The comfort and happiness of his life with
Bobby, the success of the book, the opening of a career in front of him,
these things had made of him another creature. He had grown ten years
younger; his cheeks were bright, his eye clear, his step buoyant. He moved
now as though he loved his fellow creatures. One felt, on his entrance into
a room, that the air was clearer, and that one was in the company of a
human being who found the world, quite honestly and naturally, a delightful
place. This was the first effect that success had upon Peter.

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