Friedrich Hebbel - "Agnes Bernauer"

John Trowbridge - "The Drummer Boy"

Wilhelm Hauff - "Maerchen Almanach auf das Jahr 1827"

Benjamin Disraeli - "Alroy"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Fortitude

H >> Hugh Walpole >> Fortitude




Instantly as though the intervening years had never been, Bobby took his
second place beside Cards' glory--even Percival's intention of securing the
wonderful Mr. Rondel, author of "The Violet's Redemption," for their table,
failed of its effect.

They were enough. They didn't want anybody else--Room for Mr. Cardillac!

And he seized it. Just as he would have seized it years ago at school so
he seized it now. Their table was caught into the most dazzling series of
adventures. Cards had been everywhere, seen everybody and everything--seen
it all, moreover, with the right kind of gaiety, with an appreciation that
was intelligent and also humorous. There was humour one moment and pathos
the next--deep feeling and the wittiest cynicism.

They were all swung about Europe and with Cards at their head pranced
through the cities of the world. Meanwhile Peter fancied that once or twice
Clare flung him a little glance of appeal to ask for forgiveness--and once
they looked up and smiled at one another. A tiny smile but it meant
everything.

"Oh! won't we have a reconciliation afterwards? How could I have said those
things? Don't we just love one another?"

When they went upstairs again Peter and Cards exchanged a word:

"You'll come and see us?"

"My dear old man, I should just think so. This is the first time I've been
properly in London for years and now I'm going to stay. Fancy you married
and successful and here am I still the rolling-stone!"

"You! Why you can do anything!"

"Can't write 'Reuben Hallard,' old boy...." and so, with a laugh, they
parted.

In the cab, afterwards, Clare's head was buried in Peter's coat, and she
sobbed her heart out. "How I _could_ have been such a beast, Peter, Peter!"

"Darling, it was nothing."

"Oh, but it was! It shall never, never happen again...but I was
frightened--"

"Frightened!"

"Yes, I always think some one's going to take you away. I don't understand
all those other people. They frighten me--I want you to myself, just you
and I--always."

"But nobody can take me away--nobody--"

The cab jolted along--her hand was on his knee--and every now and again a
lamp lighted her face for him and then dropped it back into darkness.

By the sharp pressure of her hand he knew that she was moved by an
intensity of feeling, swayed now by one of those moods that came to her so
strangely that it seemed that they belonged to another personality.

"Look... Peter. I'm seeing clearly as I think I never have before. I'm
afraid--not because of you--but because of myself. If you knew--" here his
hand came down and found hers--"if you knew how I despise myself, my real
self. I've been spoilt always, always, always. I've always known it. My
real self is ashamed of it. But there's another side of me that comes down
suddenly and hides all that--and then--when that happens--I just want to
get what I want and not to be hurt and ..." she pressed closer against him
and went on in a whisper.

"Peter, I shall always care for you more than any one--always whatever
happens. But think, a time will come--I know it--when you'll have to watch
me, to keep me by you, and even let your work go--everything, just for a
time until I'm safe. I suppose that moment comes to most women in their
married lives. But to me, when it happens, it will be worse than for most
women because I've always had my way. You _mustn't_ let me have my way
then--simply clutch me, be cruel, brutal, anything only don't let me go.
Then, if you keep me through that, you'll always keep me."

To Peter it was almost as though she were talking in her sleep, something,
there in the old, lumbering cab that was given to her by some one else to
say something to which she herself would not give credit.

"That's all right, you darling, you darling, you darling." He covered her
face, her eyes with kisses. "I'll never let you go--never." He felt her
quiver a little under his arms.

"Don't mind, Peter, my horrible, beastly character. Just keep me for a
little, train me--and then later I'll be such a wife to you, _such_ a
wife!"

Then she drew his head down. His lips touched her body just above her
dress, where her cloak parted.

She whispered:

"There's something else."

She raised her face from his coat and looked up at him. Her cheeks were
stained with crying and her eyes, large and dark, held him furiously as
though he were the one place of safety.

He caught her very close.

"What is it?..."

* * * * *

That night, long after he, triumphant with the glory of her secret, had
fallen asleep, she lay, staring into the dark, with frightened eyes.




CHAPTER VI

BIRTH OF THE HEIR


I

Peter's child was born on a night of frost when the stars were hard and
fierce and a full moon, dull gold, flung high shadows upon the town.

During the afternoon the fear that had been in Clare's eyes for many weeks
suddenly flamed into terror--the doctor was sent for and Peter was banished
from the room.

Peter looked ludicrously, pitifully young as he sat, through the evening,
in his room at the top of the house, staring in front of him, his face grey
with anxiety, his broad shoulders set back as though ready for a blow; his
strong fingers clutched the things on his writing-table, held them, dropped
them, just like the hands of a blind man about the shining surface, tapping
the wood.

He saw her always as he had seen her last night when she had caught his arm
crying--"If I die, Peter.... Oh, Peter, if I die!"... and he had comforted
and stroked her hair, warming her cold fingers.

How young she was, how tiny for this suffering--and it was he, he who had
brought it upon her! Now, she was lying in her bed, as he had once seen his
mother lie, with her hair spread about the pillow, her hands gripping the
sheets, her eyes wide and black--the vast, hard bed-room closing her in,
shutting her down--

She who loved comfort, who feared any pain, who would have Life safe and
easy, that she should be forced--

The house was very still about him--no sound came up to him; it seemed to
him that the hush was deliberate. The top branches of the trees in the
little orchard touched his window and tapped ever and again; a fire burnt
brightly, he had drawn his curtains and beyond the windows the great sheet
of stars, the black houses, the white light of the moon.

And there, before him--what mockery! the neat pages of "The Stone House"
now almost completed.

He stared into the wall and saw her face, her red-gold hair upon the
pillow, her dark staring eyes--

Once the nurse came to him--Yes, she was suffering, but all went well ...
it would be about midnight, perhaps. There was no cause for alarm ....

He thought that the nurse looked at him with compassion. He turned fiercely
upon Life that it should have brought this to them when they were both so
young.

At last, about ten o'clock, able no longer to endure the silence of the
house--so ominous--and the gentle tap-tap of the branches upon the pane and
the whispering crackle of the fire, he went out....

A cold hard unreal world received him. Down Sloane Street the lines of
yellow lamps, bending at last until they met in sharp blue distance, were
soft and misty against the outline of the street, the houses were unreal in
the moonlight, a few people passed quickly, their footsteps sharp in the
frosty air--all the little painted doors of Sloane Street were blind and
secret.

He passed through Knightsbridge, into the Park. As the black trees closed
him in the fear of London came, tumbling upon him. He remembered that day
when he had sat, shivering, on a seat on the Embankment, and had heard that
note, sinister, threatening, through the noise and clattering traffic. He
heard it again now. It came from the heart of the black trees that lined
the moonlit road, a whisper, a thread of sound that accompanied him,
pervaded him, threatened him. The scaly beast knew that another victim was
about to be born--another woman was to undergo torture, so that when the
day came and the scaly beast rose from its sleep then there would be one
more to be devoured.

He, Peter, was to have a child. He had longed for a child ever since he
could remember. He had always loved children--other people's children--but
to have one of his own!... To have something that was his and Clare's and
theirs alone, to have its love, to feel that it depended Upon them both, to
watch it, to tend it--Life could have no gift like that.

But now the child was hidden from him. He thought of nothing but Clare,
of her suffering and terror, of her waiting there so helplessly for the
dreadful moment of supreme pain. The love that he had now for Clare was
something more tender, more devoted, than he had ever felt for any human
being. His mind flew back fiercely to that night of his first quarrel when
she had told him. Now he was to be punished for his heartlessness and
cruelty ... by her loss.

His agony and terror grew as he paced beneath the dark and bending trees.
He sat down on a seat, at the other end of which was a little man with
a bowler hat, spectacles and his coat collar turned up. He was a shabby
little man and his thin bony hands beat restlessly upon his knees.

The little man said, "Good evening, sir."

"Good evening," said Peter, staring desperately in front of him.

"It's all this blasted government--"

"I beg your pardon--"

"This blasted government--This income tax and all--"

"It's more than that," said Peter, wishing that the man would cease beating
his knees with his hands--

"It's them blasted stars--it's Gawd. That's what it is. Curse Gawd--that's
what I say--Curse Gawd!"

"What's He done?" said Peter.

"I've just broken in my wife's 'ead with a poker. Killed 'er I expect--I
dunno--going back to see in a minute--"

"Why did you do it?"

"'Ad to--always nagging--that's what she was--always nagging. Wanted
things--all sorts o' things--and there were always children coming--So we
'ad a blasted argyment this evening and I broke 'er 'ead open--Gawd did
it--that's what I say--"

Peter said nothing.

"You can call a bloomin' copper if you want to," the little man said.

"It's no business of mine," said Peter and he got up and left him. All
shadows--only the sinister noise that London makes is real, that and
Clare's suffering.

He left the Park turned into Knightsbridge and came upon a toyshop. The
shutters had not been put up and the lights of a lamp shone full upon its
windows. Against the iron railings opposite and the high white road these
toys stood with sharp, distinct outline behind the slanting light of the
glass. There were dolls--a fine wedding doll, orange blossom, lace and
white silk, and from behind it all, the sharp pinched features and black
beady eyes stared out.... There was a Swiss doll with bright red cheeks,
red and green clothing and shoes with shining buckles. Then there were the
more ordinary dolls--and gradually down the length of the window, their
clothing was taken from them until at last some wooden creatures with
flaring cheeks and brazen eyes kicked their limbs and defied the
proprieties.

He would be a Boy ... he would not care about dolls....

There were soldiers--rows and rows of gleaming soldiers. They came from a
misty distance at the top of the shop window, came marching from the gates
of some dark, mediaeval castle. Their swords caught the lamplight, shining
in a line of silver and the precision with which they marched, the
certainty with which they trod the little bridge ... ah, these were the
fellows! He would be a Boy ... soldiers would enchant him! He should have
boxes, boxes, boxes!

There were many other things in the window; teddy bears and animals with
soft woolly stomachs and fat comfortable legs--and there were ugly, modern
Horrors with fat bulging faces and black hair erect like wire; there
were little devils with red tails, there were rabbits that rode bicycles
and monkeys that climbed trees. There were drums--big drums and little
drums--trumpets with crimson tassels, and in one corner a pyramid of balls,
balls of every colour, and at the top of the pyramid a tiny ball of peacock
blue, hanging, balancing, daintily, supremely right in pose and gesture.

It had gesture. It caught Peter's eye--Peter stood with his nose against
the pane, his heart hammering--"Oh! she is suffering--My God, how she is
suffering!"--and there the little blue ball caught him, held him,
encouraged him.

"I will belong to your boy one day" it seemed to say.

"It shall be the first thing I will buy for him--" thought Peter.

He turned now amongst the light and crowds of Piccadilly. He walked on
without seeing and hearing--always with that thought in his heart--"She is
in terrible pain. How can God be so cruel? And she was so happy--before I
came she was so happy--now--what have I done to her?"

Never, before to-night, had he felt so sharply, so irretrievably his
sense of responsibility. Here now, before him, at this birth of his
child, everything that he had done, thought, said--everything that he had
been--confronted him. He was only twenty-seven but his shoulders were heavy
with the confusion of his past. Looking back upon it, he saw a helpless
medley of indecisions, of sudden impulses, sudden refusals; into the skeins
of it, too, there seemed to be dragged the people that had made up his
life--they faced him, surrounded him, bewildered him!

What right had he, thus encompassed, to hand these things on to another?
His father, his grandfather ... he saw always that dark strain of hatred,
of madness, of evil working in their blood. Suppose that as his boy grew he
should see this in the young eyes? Suppose, most horrible of all, that he
should feel this hatred for his son that his grandfather had felt for his
father, that his father had felt for him.

What had he done?... He stopped, staring confusedly about him. The people
jostled him on every side. The old devils were at him--"Eat and drink for
to-morrow we die.... Give it up ... We're too strong for you and we'll be
too strong for your son. Who are you to defy us? Come down--give it up--"

His white face caught attention. "Move along, guv'nor," some one shouted. A
man took him by the arm and led up a dark side street. He turned his eyes
and saw that the man was Maradick.


II

The elder man felt that the boy was trembling from head to foot.

"What's the matter, Westcott? Anything I can do for you?"

Peter seemed to take him in slowly, and then, with a great effort, to pull
himself together.

"What, you--Maradick? Where was I? I'm afraid I've been making a fool of
myself...." A church clock struck somewhere in the distance. "Hullo, I say,
what's that? That's eleven. I must get back, I ought to be at home--"

"I'll come with you--"

Maradick hailed a hansom and helped Peter into it.

For a moment there was silence--then Maradick said--

"I hope everything's all right, Westcott? Your wife?"

Peter spoke as though he were in a dream. "I've been waiting there all the
afternoon--she's been suffering--My God!... It got on my nerves.... She's
so young--they oughtn't to hurt her like that." He covered his face with
his hands.

"I know. I felt like that when my first child came. It's terrible, awful.
And then it's over--all the pain--and it's magnificent, glorious--and
then--later--it's so commonplace that you cannot believe that it was ever
either awful or magnificent. Fix your mind on the glorious part of it,
Westcott. Think of this time to-morrow when your wife will be so proud, so
happy--you'll both be so proud, so happy, that you'll never know anything
in life like it."

"Yes, yes, I know--of course it's sure to be all right--but I suppose this
waiting's got on my nerves. There was a fellow in the Park just broken his
wife's head in--and then everything was so quiet. I could almost hear her
crying, right away in her room."

He stopped a moment and then went on. "It's what I've always wanted--always
to have a boy. And, by Jove, he'll be wonderful! I tell you he shall
be--We'll be such pals!" He broke off suddenly--"You haven't a boy?"

"No, mine are both girls. Getting on now--they'll soon be coming out. I
should like to have had a boy--" Maradick sighed.

"Are they an awful lot to you?"

"No--I don't suppose they are. I should have understood a boy better,--but
they're good girls. I'm proud of them in a way--but I'm out so much, you
see."

Peter faced the contrast. Here this middle-aged man, with his two
girls--and here too he, Peter, with his agonising, flaming trial--to slip,
so soon, into dull commonplace?

"But didn't you--if you can look so far--didn't you, when the first child
came, funk it? Your responsibility I mean. All the things one's--one's
ancestors--it's frightening enough for oneself but to hand it on--"

"It's nothing to do with oneself--one's used, that's all. The child will be
on its own legs, thrusting you away before you know where you are. It
_will_ want to claim its responsibilities--ancestors and all--"

Peter said nothing--Maradick went on:

"You know we were talking one night and were interrupted--you're in danger
of letting the things you imagine beat the things you know. Stick to the
thing you can grasp, touch--I know the dangers of the others--I told you
that once in Cornwall, I--the most unlikely person in the world--was caught
up by it. I've never laughed at morbidity, or nerves, or insanity since.
There's such a jolly thin wall between the sanest, most level-headed
beef-eating Squire in the country and the maddest poet in Bedlam. _I_
know--I've been both in the same day. It's better to be both, I believe, if
you can keep one under the other, but you _must_ keep it under--"

Maradick talked on. He saw that the boy's nerves were jumping, that he was
holding himself in with the greatest difficulty.

Peter said: "You don't know, Maradick. I've had to fight all my life--my
father, grandfather, all of them have given in at last--and now this child
... perhaps I shall see it growing, see him gradually learning to hate me,
see myself hating him ... at last, my God, see him go under--drink,
deviltry--I've fought it--I'm always fighting it--but to-night--"

"Good heavens, man--you're not going to tell me that your father, your
grandfather--the rest of them--are stronger than you. What about your soul,
your own blessed soul that can't be touched by any living thing or dead
thing either if you stick to it? Why, every man's got power enough in
himself to ride heaven and earth and all eternity if he only believed he'd
got it! Ride your scruples, man--ride 'em, drive 'em--send 'em scuttling.
Believe in yourself and stick to it--Courage!..."

Maradick pulled himself in. They were driving now, down the King's Road.
The people were pouring in a thick, buzzing crowd, out of the Chelsea
Palace. Middle-aged stockbrokers in hansom cabs--talking like the third act
of a problem play!--but Maradick had done his work. As they drove round the
corner, past the mad lady's painted house, he saw that Peter was calmer. He
had regained his self-control. The little house where Peter lived was very
still--the trees in the orchard were stiff and dark beneath the stars.

Peter spoke in a whisper--"Good-night, Maradick, you've done me a lot of
good--I shan't forget it."

"Good luck to you," Maradick whispered back. Peter stole into the house.

The little drawing-room looked very cosy; the fire was burning, the lamp
lighted, the thick curtains drawn. Maria Theresa smiled, with all her
finery, from the wall.

Peter sat down in front of the fire. Maradick was right. One must have
one's hand on the bridle--the Rider on the Lion again. It's better that
the beast under you should be a Lion rather than a Donkey, but let it
once fling you off its back and you're done for. And Maradick had said
these things! Maradick whom once Peter had considered the dullest of his
acquaintances. Well, one never knew about people--most of the Stay-at-homes
were Explorers and vice versa, if one only understood them.

How still the house was! What was happening upstairs? He could not go and
see--he could not move. He was held by the stillness. The doctor would come
and tell him....

He thought of the toyshop--that blue ball--it would be the first thing that
he would buy for the boy--and then soldiers--soldiers that wouldn't hurt
him, that he couldn't lick the paint from--

Now the little silver clock ticked! He was so terribly tired--he had never
been tired like this before....

The stillness pressed upon the house. Every sound--the distant rattling of
some cab, the faint murmur of trams--was stifled, extinguished. The orchard
seemed to press in upon the house, darker and darker grew the forest about
it--The stars were shut out, the moon... the world was dead.

Then into this sealed and hidden silence, a voice crying from an upper
room, suddenly fell--a woman in the abandonment of utter pain, pain beyond
all control, was screaming. Somewhere, above that dark forest that pressed
in upon the house, a bird of prey hovered. It hung for a moment; it
descended--its talons were fixed upon her flesh... then again it ascended.
Shriek after shriek, bursting the silence, chasing the shadows, flooding
the secrecy with horrible light, beat like blows upon the walls of the
house--rose, fell, rose again. Peter was standing, his back against the
wall, his hands spread out, his face grey.

"My God, my God... Oh! my God!"

The sweat poured from his forehead. Once more there was silence but now it
was ominous, awful....

The little silver clock ticked--Peter's body stood stretched against the
wall--he faced the door.

Hours, hours passed. He did not move. The screaming had, many years ago,
ceased. The doctor--a cheerful man with blue eyes and a little bristling
moustache--came in.

"A fine boy, Mr. Westcott--I congratulate you. You might see your wife for
a moment if you cared--stood it remarkably well--"

Slowly the forest, dark and terrible, moved away from the house. Very
faintly again could be heard the distant rattling of some cab, the murmur
of trams.




CHAPTER VII

DECLARATION OF HAPPINESS


I

Extracts from letters that Bobby Galleon wrote to Alice Galleon about this
time:

"... But, of course, I am sorrier than I can say that it's so dull. That's
due to charity, my dear, and if you will go and fling yourself into the
depths of Yorkshire because a girl like Ola Hunting chooses to think she's
unhappy and lonely you've only yourself to thank. Moreover there's your
husband to be considered. I don't suppose, for a single instant, that he
really prefers to be left alone, with his infant son, mind you, howling
at the present moment because his nurse won't let him swallow the glass
marbles, and you can picture to yourself--if you want to make yourself
thoroughly unhappy--your Robert sitting, melancholy throughout the long
evening, alone, desolate, creeping to bed somewhere about ten o'clock.

"So there we are--you're bored to death and I've no one to growl at when I
come back from the City--all Ola Hunting's fault--wring the girl's neck.
Meanwhile here I sit and every evening I'll write whatever comes into my
head and never look back on it again but stick it into an envelope and send
it to you. You know me too well by now to be disappointed at anything.

"I'm quite sure that, if you were here with me now, sitting in that chair
opposite me and sewing for all you were worth, that the thing that we'd be
talking about would be Peter. If, therefore, these scrawls are full of
Peter you won't mind, I know. He's immensely occupying my attention just
now and you love him as truly and deeply as I do, so that if I go on at
length about him you'll excuse it on that score. You who know me better
than any one else in the world know that, in my most secret heart, I
flatter myself on my ability as a psychologist. I remember when I told
you first how you laughed but I think since then you've come round not a
little, and although we both keep it to ourselves, it's a little secret
that you're a tiny bit proud of. I can see how brother Percival, or young
Tony Gale, or even dear Peter himself would mock, if I told them of this
ambition of mine. 'Good, dear, stupid, old Bobby' is the way they think of
me, and I know it's mother's perpetual wonder (and also, I think, a little
her comfort) that I should be so lacking in brilliance when Percival and
Millie are so full of it.

"You know Peter's attitude to me in these things--you've seen it often
enough. He's patronising--he can't help it. That isn't, he considers, my
line in the least, and, let me once begin to talk to him of stocks and
shares and he'll open all his ears. Well, I can't blame him--but I do think
these writers and people are inclined to draw their line a little too
sharply with their Philistines--great big gulf, please--and Artists. At any
rate, here goes for my psychology and good luck to it. Peter, in fact, is
so interesting a subject if one sees anything of him at all that I believe
he'd draw speculation out of any one. There was old Maradick talking about
him the other night--fascinated by him and understanding him most amazingly
well--another instance of your Philistine and Artist mixed.

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