Fortitude

H >> Hugh Walpole >> Fortitude

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And indeed they met him--all of them--with open arms. They saw in him that
burning flame that those who have been for the first time admitted into the
freemasonry of their Art must ever show. Afterwards he would be accustomed
to that country, would know its roads and hills and cities and would be
perhaps disappointed that they were neither as holy nor as eternal as he
had once imagined them to be--now he stood on the hill's edge and looked
down into a golden landscape whose bounds he could not discern. But
they met him too on the personal side. The fact that he had been found
starving in a London garret was of itself a wonderful thing--then he had
in his manner a rough, awkward charm that flattered them with his youth
and inexperience. He was impetuous and confidential and then suddenly
reserved and constrained. But, above it all, it was evident that he wanted
friendliness and good fellowship. He took every one at the value that they
offered to him. He first encouraged them to be at their most human and then
convinced them that that was their natural character. He lighted every
one's lamp at the flame of his own implicit faith.

These ladies and gentlemen put very plainly before him the business side of
his profession. Their conversation was all of agents, publishers, the sums
that one of their number obtained and how lucky to get so much so soon,
and the sums that another of their number did not obtain and what a shame
it was that such good work was rewarded by so little. It was all--this
conversation--in the most generous strain. Jealousy never raised its head.
They read--these precious people--the works of one another with an eager
praise and a tender condemnation delightful to see. It was a warm bustling
society that received Peter.

These tea-parties and fireside discussions had not, perhaps, been always
so friendly and large-hearted but in the time when Peter first encountered
them they were influenced and moulded by a very remarkable woman--a
woman who succeeded in combining humour, common sense and imagination in
admirably adjusted qualities. Her humour made her tolerant, her common
sense made her wise, and her imagination made her tender--her name was Mrs.
Launce.

She was short and broad, with large blue eyes that always, if one watched
them, showed her thoughts and dispositions. Some people make of their faces
a disguise, others use them as a revelation--the result to the observer
is very much the same in either case. But with Mrs. Launce there was no
definite attempt at either one thing or the other--she was so busily
engaged in the matter in hand, so absorbed and interested, that the things
that her face might be doing never occurred to her. Her hair was drawn back
and parted down the middle. She liked to wear little straw coal-scuttle
bonnets; she was very fond of blue silk, and her frocks had an inclination
to trail. On her mother's side she was French and on her father's English;
from her mother she got the technique of her stories, the light-hearted
boldness of her conversation and her extraordinary devotion to her family.
She was always something of a puzzle to English women because she was a
great deal more domestic than most of them and yet bristled with theories
about morals and life in general that had nothing whatever in common with
domesticity. Some one once said of her that "she was a hot water bottle
playing at being a bomb...."

She belonged to all the London worlds, although she found perhaps especial
pleasure in the society of her fellow writers. This was largely because
she loved, beyond everything else, the business side of her profession.
There was nothing at all that she did not know about the publishing and
distribution of a novel. Her capacity for remembering other people's prices
was prodigious and she managed her agent and her publisher with a deftness
that left them gasping. There were very few persons in her world who had
not, at one time or another, poured their troubles into her ear. She
had that gift, valuable in life beyond all others, of giving herself up
entirely to the person with whom she was talking. When the time came to
give advice the combination of her common sense and her tenderness made
her invaluable. There was no crime black enough, no desertion, no cruelty
horrible enough to outspeed her pity. She hated and understood the sin
and loved and comforted the sinner. With a wide and accurate knowledge of
humanity she combined a deep spiritual belief in the goodness of God.

Everything, however horrible, interested her ... she adored life.

This little person in the straw bonnet and the blue dress gave Peter
something that he had never known before--she mothered him. He sat next to
her at some dinner-party and she asked him to come and have tea with her.
She lived in a little street in Westminster in a tiny house that had her
children on the top floor, a beautiful copy of the Mona Lisa and a very
untidy writing-table on the second, and a little round hall and a tiny
dining-room on the ground floor. Her husband and her family--including an
adorable child of two--were all as amiable as possible.

Peter told her most things on the first day that he had tea with her and
everything on the second. He told her about his boyhood--Treliss, Scaw
House, his father, Stephen. He told her about Brockett's and Bucket Lane.
He told her, finally, about Clare Rossiter.

He always remembered one thing that she said at this time. They were
sitting at her open window looking down into the blue evening that is in
Westminster quieter even than it is at Chelsea. Behind the faint green
cloud of trees the Abbey's huge black pile soared into space.

"You think you've made a tremendous break?" she said.

"Yes--this is an entirely new life--new in every way. I seem too to be set
amongst an entirely new crowd of people. The division seems to me sharper
every day. I believe I've left it all behind."

She looked at him sharply. "You're afraid of all that earlier time," she
said.

"Yes, I am."

"It made you write 'Reuben Hallard.' Perhaps this life here in London..."

"It's safer," he caught her up.

"Don't," she answered him very gravely, "play for safety. It's the most
dangerous thing in the world." She paused for a moment and then added: "But
probably they won't let you alone."

"I hope to God they will," he cried.

III

He saw Clare Rossiter twice during this time and, on each occasion, it
seemed to him that she was trying to make up to him for his awkwardness at
their first meeting. On the first of these two occasions she had only a few
words with him, but there was a note in her voice that he fancied, wildly,
unreasonably, was different from the tone that she used to other people.
She looked so beautiful with her golden hair coiled above her head. It
was the most wonderful gold that he had ever seen. He could only, in his
excitement, think of marmalade and that was a sticky comparison. "The Lady
with the Marmalade Hair"--how monstrous! but that did convey the colour.
Her eyes seemed darker now than they had been before and her cheeks whiter.
The curve of her neck was so wonderful that it hurt him physically. He
wanted so terribly to kiss her just beneath her ear. He saw how he would do
it, and that he would have to move away some of the shiny hair that strayed
like sunlight across the white skin.

She did not seem to him quite so tiny when she smiled; it was exactly as
water ripples when the sun suddenly bursts dark clouds. He had a thousand
comparisons for her, and then sometimes she would be, as it were, caught up
into a cloud and he would only see a general radiance and be blinded by the
light.

He wished very much that he could think of something else--something other
than marmalade--that had that quality of gold. He often imagined what it
would be like when she let it all down--like a forest of autumn trees--no,
that spoke of decay--like the sunlight on sand towards evening--like the
fires of Walhalla in the last act of Gotterdaemmerung--like the lights of
some harbour seen from the farther shore--like clouds that are ready to
burst with evening sunlight. Perhaps, after all, amber was the nearest....

"Peter, ask Miss Rossiter if she will have some more tea...." Oh! What a
fool he is! What an absolute ass!

On the second of these two meetings she had read "Reuben Hallard." She
loved it! She thought it astounding! The most wonderful first novel she had
ever read. How had he been able to make one feel Cornwall so? She had been
once to Cornwall, to Mullion and it had been just like that! Those rocks!
it was like a poem! And then so exciting!

She had not been able to put it down for a single minute. "Mother was
furious with me because there I sat until I don't know how early in the
morning reading it! Oh! Mr. Westcott, how wonderful to write like that !"

Her praise inflamed him like wine. He looked at her with exultation.

"Oh! you feel like that!" he said, drawing a great breath, "I did want you
to like it so!" He was enraptured--the world was heaven! He did not realise
that some young woman at a tea-party the day before had said precisely
these same things and he had said: "Of all the affected idiots!"...

IV

This might all be termed a period of preparation--that period was fixed for
Peter with its sign and seal on a certain evening of spring when an
enormous orange moon was in the sky, scents were in all the Chelsea
gardens, and the Chelsea streets were like glass in the silver luminous
light.

Peter was walking home after a party at the Rossiters'. It was the first
time that he had been invited to their house and it had been a great
success. Dr. Rossiter was a little round fat man with snow-white hair,
red cheeks and twinkling eyes. He cured his patients and irritated his
relations by his good temper. Mrs. Rossiter, Peter thought, had a great
resemblance to Bobby's mother, Mrs. Galleon, senior. They were, both of
them, massive and phlegmatic. They had both acquired that solemn dignity
that comes of living up to one's husband's reputation. They both looked
on their families--Mrs. Rossiter on Clare and Mrs. Galleon on Millicent,
Percival and Bobby--with curiosity, tolerance and a mild soft of wonder.
They were both massively happy and completely unimaginative. They were,
indeed, old friends, having been at school together, they were Emma and
Jane to one another and Mrs. Rossiter could never forget that Mrs. Galleon
came to school two years after herself and was therefore junior still;
whilst Mrs. Galleon had stayed two years longer than Mrs. Rossiter, and was
a power there when Mrs. Rossiter was completely forgotten; they were fond
of each other as long as they were allowed to patronise one another.

Peter had spent a delicious evening. He had had half an hour in the garden
with Clare. They had spoken in an undertone. He had told her his ambitions,
she had told him her aspirations. Some one had sung in the garden and there
had been one wonderful moment when Peter had touched her hand and she had
not taken it away. At last they were both silent and the garden flowed
about them, on every side of them, with the notes and threads that can only
be heard at night.

Mrs. Rossiter, heavily and solemnly, brought her daughter a shawl. There
was some one to whom she would like to introduce Mr. Westcott. Would he
mind? Eden was robbed of its glories....

But he had had enough. He thought at one moment that already she was
beginning to care for him, and at another, that a lover's fancy made signs
out of the wind and portents out of the running water.

But he was happy with a mighty exultation, and then, as he turned down on
to the Embankment and felt the breeze from the river as it came towards
him, he met Henry Galleon.

The old man, in an enormous hat that was like a top hat only round at the
brim and brown in colour, was trotting home. He saw Peter and stopped. He
spoke to him in his slow tremendous voice and the words seemed to go on
after they had left him, rolling along the Embankment.

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Westcott. I have thought that I would like to
have a chat with you. I have just finished your book."

This was indeed tremendous--that Henry Galleon should have read "Reuben
Hallard." Peter trembled all over.

"I wonder whether you would care to come and have a chat with me. I have
some things you might care to see. What time like the present? It is early
hours yet and you will be doing an old man who sleeps only poorly a
kindness."

What a night of nights! Peter, trembling with excitement, felt Henry
Galleon put his arm in his, felt the weight of the great man's body. They
walked slowly along and the moon and the stars and the lights on the river
and the early little leaves in the trees and the stones of the houses
and the little "tish-tish" of the water against the Embankment seemed to
say--"Oh! Peter Westcott's going to have a chat with Henry Galleon! Did you
ever hear such a thing!"

Peter was sorry that his Embankment was deserted and that there was no one
to see them go into the house together. He drew a great breath as the door
closed behind them. The house was large and dark and mysterious. The rest
of the family were still out at some party. Henry Galleon drew Peter into
his own especial quarters and soon they were sitting in a lofty library,
its walls covered with books that stretched to the ceiling. Peter meanwhile
buried in a huge arm-chair and feeling that Henry Galleon's eyes were
piercing him through and through.

The old man talked for some time about other things--talked wonderfully
about the great ones of the earth whom he had known, the great things that
he had seen. It was amazing to Peter to hear the gods of his world alluded
to as "poor old S---- poor fellow!... Yes, indeed. I remember his coming
into breakfast one day..." or "You were asking about T---- Old Wallie, as
we used to call him--poor fellow, poor fellow--we lived together in rooms
for some time. That was before I married--and perilously, dangerously--I
might almost say magnificently near starvation we were too...."

Peter already inflamed with that earlier half-hour in the garden now
breathed a portentous air. He was with the Gods ... there on the Olympian
heights he drank with them, he sang songs with them, with mighty voices
they applauded "Reuben Hallard." He drank in his excitement many whiskies
and sodas and soon the white room with its books was like the inside of a
golden shell. The old man opposite him grew in size--his face was ever
larger and larger, his shirt front bulged and bulged--his hand raised to
emphasise some point was tremendous as the hand of a God. Peter felt that
he himself was growing smaller and smaller, would soon, in the depths of
that mighty arm-chair disappear altogether but that opposite him two mighty
burning eyes held him. And always like thunder the voice rolled on....
"My son tells me that this book of yours is a success ... that they are
emptying their purses to fill yours. That may be a dangerous thing for you.
I have read your book, it has many faults; it is not written at all--it
is loose and lacking in all construction. You know nothing, as yet, about
life--you do not know what to use or what to reject. But the Spirit is
there, the right Spirit. It is a little flame--it will be very easily
quenched and nothing can kill it so easily as success--guard it, my son,
guard it."

Peter felt as Siegfried must have felt when confronted by Wotan.

His poor little book was dwindling now before his eyes. He was conscious of
a great despair. How useless of him to attempt so impossible a task....

The voice rolled on:

"I am an old man now and only twice before in my time nave I seen that
spirit in a young man's eyes. You may remember now an old man's words--for
I would urge you, I would implore you to keep nothing before you but the
one thing that can bring Life into Art. I will not speak to you of the
sacredness of your calling. Many will laugh at you and tell you that it is
pretentious to name it so. Others will come to you and will advise how this
is to be done and that is to be done. Others will talk to you of schools,
they will tell you that once it was in that manner and that now it is in
this manner. Some will tell you that you have no style--others will tell
you that you have too much. Some again will tempt you with money and money
is not to be despised. Again you will be tested with photographs and
paragraphs, with lectures and public dinners.... Worst of all there will
come to you terrible hours when you yourself know of a sure certainty that
your work is worthless. In your middle age a great barrenness will come
upon you. You have been a little teller of little tales, and on every side
of you there will be others who have striven for other prizes and have won
them. Sitting alone in your room with your poor strands of coloured silk
that had once been intended to make so beautiful a pattern, poor boy, you
will know that you have failed. That will be a very dreadful hour--the only
power that can meet it is a blind and deaf courage. Courage is the only
thing that we are here to show ... the hour will pass."

The old man paused. There was a silence. Then he said very slowly as though
he were drawing in front of him the earliest histories of his own past
life....

"Against all these temptations, against these voices of the World and the
Flesh, against the glory of power and the swinging hammer of success, you,
sitting quietly in your room, must remember that a great charge has been
given you, that you are here for one thing and one thing only ... to
listen. The whole duty of Art is listening for the voice of God.

"I am not speaking in phrases. I am not pressing upon you any sensational
discoveries, but here at the end of my long life, I, with all the things
that I meant to do and have failed to do heavy upon me, can give you only
this one word. I have hurried, I have scrambled, I have fought and cursed
and striven, but as an Artist only those hours that I have spent listening,
waiting, have been my real life.

"So it must be with you. You are here to listen. Never mind if they tell
you that story-telling is a cheap thing, a popular thing, a mean thing. It
is the instrument that is given to you and if, when you come to die you
know that, for brief moments, you have heard, and that what you have heard
you have written, Life has been justified.

"Nothing else can console you, nothing else can comfort you. There must be
restraint, austerity, discipline--words must come to you easily but only
because life has come to you with so great a pain ... the Artist's life is
the harshest that God can give to a man. Make no mistake about that.
Fortitude is the artist's only weapon of defence...."

Henry Galleon came over to Peter's chair and put his hand upon the boy's
arm.

"I am at the end of my work. I have done what I can. You are at the
beginning of yours. You will do what you can. I wish you good fortune."

A vision came to Peter. Through the open window, against the sheet of
stars, gigantic, was the Rider on the Lion.

He could not see the Rider's face.

A great exultation inflamed him.

At that instant he was stripped bare. His history, the people whom he knew,
the things that he had done, they were all as though they had never been.

His soul was, for that great moment, naked and alone before God.

"The whole duty of Art is listening for the voice of God...."

A sound, as though it came to him from another world, broke into the room.

There were voices and steps on the stairs.

"Ah, they are back from their party," Henry Galleon said, trotting happily
to the door. "Come up and have a chat with my wife, Westcott, before going
to bed."

CHAPTER III

THE ENCOUNTER

I

Peter was now the young man of the moment. He took this elevation with
frank delight, was encouraged by it, gave it all rather more, perhaps, than
its actual value, began a new novel, "The Stone House," started weekly
reviewing on _The Interpreter_ and yielded himself up entirely to Clare
Rossiter.

He had been in love with her ever since that first day at Norah Monogue's,
but the way that she gradually now absorbed him was like nothing so much as
the slow covering of the rocks and the sand by the incoming tide. At first,
in those days at Brockett's, she had seemed to him something mysterious,
intangible, holy. But after that meeting in Cheyne Walk he knew her for
a prize that some fortunate man might, one day, win. He did not, for an
instant, suppose that he could ever be that one, but the mere imagined
picture of what some other would one day have, sent the blood rushing
through him. Her holiness for him was still intact but for another there
would be human, earthly wonders.

Then, curiously, as he met her more often and knew her better there
came a certain easy, almost casual, intercourse. One Clare Rossiter
still reigned amongst the clouds, but there was now too another easy,
fascinating, humorous creature who treated him almost like Alice Galleon
herself--laughed at him, teased him, provoked him ... suddenly, like a
shadow across a screen, would slip away; and he be on his knees again
before something that was only to be worshipped.

These two shapes of her crossed and were confused and again were parted.
His thoughts were first worshipping in heaven, then dwelling with delight
on witty, charming things that she had said.

For that man, when he came, there would be a most wonderful treasure.

Peter now lost his appetite. He could not sleep at night. He would slip out
of his room, cross the silent Chelsea streets and watch her dark window.
He cultivated Mrs. Rossiter and that massive and complacent lady took it
entirely to herself. Indeed, nothing, at this time was more remarkable than
the little stir that Peter's devotion caused. It was perhaps that Clare had
always had a cloud of young men about her, perhaps that Peter was thought
to be having too wonderful a time, just now, to be falling in love as
well--that would be piling Life on to Life! ... no one could live under it.

Besides Mrs. Rossiter liked him ... he was amazing, you see ... people
said....

And the next stage arrived.

One May evening, at the Galleons' house, when some one was playing the
piano and all the world seemed to be sitting in corners Clare's hand lay
suddenly against his. The smooth outer curve of his hand lay against her
palm. Their little fingers touched. Sheets of fire rose, inflamed him and
fell ... rose again and fell. His hand began to shake, her hand began to
shake. He heard, a thousand miles away, some one singing about "the morn."

Their hands parted. She rose and slowly, her white dress and red-gold hair
flung against a background that seemed to him black and infinite, crossed
the room.

That trembling of her hand had maddened him. It suddenly showed him that
he--as well as another--might run the race for her. Everything that he had
ever done or been--his sentiments, his grossnesses, his restraints and his
rebellions--were now concerned in this pursuit. No other human
being--Stephen, Norah Monogue, Bobby, Alice--now had any interest for him.
His reviews were written he knew not how, the editions of "Reuben Hallard"
might run into the gross for all he cared, "The Stone House" lay neglected.

And he avoided seeing her. He was afraid to spoil that moment when her hand
had shaken at the touch of his, and yet he was tormented by the longing for
a new meeting that might provide some new amazement. Perhaps he would hold
her hand and feel the shadow of her body bending towards his own! And his
heart stopped beating; and he was suddenly cold with a splendid terror.

Then he did meet her again and had nothing to say. It seemed to him that
she was frightened. He came home that day in a cold fog of miserable
despair. A letter from his publishers informing him of a tenth edition was
of ironical unimportance. He lay awake all night restlessly unhappy.

For the first time for many months the old shadows stole out into the
room--the black bulk of Scaw House--the trees, the windows, his father....

And to him, tossing on his bed there came thoughts of a certain house in
the town. He could get up and dress now--a cab would soon take him there
... in the early morning he could slink back.

Clare did not want him! A fool to fancy that she had ever cared.

He, Peter Westcott, nobody! Why then should he not have his adventures, he
still so young and vigorous? He would go to that house....

And then, almost reluctantly, as he sat up in bed and watched the grey,
shadowy walls, Stephen seemed to be visible to him--Stephen, walking the
road, starting early in the fresh air when the light was breaking and the
scent of the grass was cool and filled with dew.

He would write to Stephen in the morning--he lay down and went to sleep.

By this time, meanwhile, Alice and Bobby had noticed. Alice, indeed, had
a number of young men over whose emotions she kept guard and Peter had
become, during these weeks, very valuable to her....

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