Jeffery Farnol et al - "The Amateur Gentleman"

Pierre Louys - "Les chansons de Bilitis"

Various - "Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853"

Angela Brazil - "The Jolliest School of All"

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




He put the picture away from him and rushed to greet the two of them.
"Zanti!... Stephen!... Oh! how splendid! How perfectly, perfectly
splendid!"

Mr. Zanti's enormous body was enclosed in a suit of bright blue, his broad
nose stood out like a bridge, his wide mouth gaped. He wore white spats,
three massive rings of twisted gold and in his blue tie a glittering
emerald. He was a magnificent, a costly figure and in nothing was the
geniality of his nature more plainly seen than in his obvious readiness
to abandon, at any moment, these splendid riches for the sake of a valued
attachment. "I love wearing these things," you might hear him say, "but
I love still better to do anything in the world that I can for you, my
friend."

Stephen presented a more moderate appearance, but he was brown with health
and shining with strength. He was like the old Stephen of years and years
ago, so different from the--man who had shared with Peter that room in
Bucket Lane.

He carried himself with that air of strong, cautious reserve that
Cornishmen have when they are in some other country than their own; his
eyes, mild, gentle, but on the alert, ready at an instant to be hostile.
Then, when Peter came in, the reserve instantly fled. They had, all three
of them, perhaps, expected embarrassment, but at that cry of Peter's they
were suddenly together, Mr. Zanti, waving his hands, almost shouting,
Stephen, his eyes resting with delight on Peter, Peter himself another
creature from the man who had pursued Mortimer Stant in the room upstairs,
half an hour before.

"We thought that ze time 'ad come, dear boy... we know zat you are busy."
Mr. Zanti looked about him a little anxiously, as though he expected to
find Mrs. Peter hiding under a chair or a sofa.

"Oh! Stephen, after all this long long while! Why didn't you come before
when Mr. Zanti came?"

"Too many of us coming, Mr. Peter, and you so busy."

"Nonsense. I'm not in the least busy. I'm sorry to say my wife's out but
the baby's in, upstairs, and there's the most terrific woman up there too,
the nurse--I'm frightened out of my life of her--but we'll get rid of her
and have the place to ourselves... you know the kid's called after you,
Stephen?"

"No, is he really?" Stephen's face shone with pleasure. "I'm keen to see
him."

"Oh, he's a trump! There never really was such a baby."

"And your books, Mr. Peter?"

"Oh! the books!" Peter's voice dropped, "never mind them now. But what have
you been doing, you two? Made heaps of money? Discovered treasure?..." He
pulled himself up shortly. He remembered the bookshop, the girl leaning
against the door looking into the street, then the boys crying the news....

If Mr. Zanti had been mixing himself up with that sort of thing again! And
then the bright blue suit, the white spats, were reassuring. As if one
could ever take such a child seriously about anything!

Mr. Zanti shook his head, ruefully. "No, not ezackly a fortune! There was
a place I 'eard of, right up in the Basque country--'twas an old deserted
garden, where zey 'ad buried treasure, centuries ago--I 'ad it quite
certainly from a friend. We came up there for a time but we found nothing."
He sighed and then was instantly cheered again. "But it's all right. I've
got a plan now--a wonderful plan." He became very mysterious. "It's a
certain thing--we're off to Cornwall, Mr. Brant and myself--"

"Cornwall?"

"Come too, Peter."

"Ah! don't I wish that I could!" He suddenly saw his life, his
books--everything in London holding him, tying him--"But I can't go now, my
father being there makes it impossible. But in any case, I'm a family man
now--you know."

As he said the words he was conscious that, in Stephen's eyes at any rate,
the family man was about the last thing that he looked. He was wondering,
with intense curiosity, what were the things that Stephen was finding in
him, for the things that Stephen found were most assuredly the things that
he was. No one knew him as Stephen knew him. Against his will the thought
of Clare came driving upon him. How little she knew him! or was it only
that she knew another side of him?

But he pulled himself away from that. "Now for the nursery--Stephen
Secundus. But you'll have to support me whilst I get rid of Mrs.
Kant--perhaps three of us together--"

As he led the way upstairs he knew that Stephen was not entirely reassured
about him.

Mrs. Kant was a large, busy woman, like a horse--a horse who dislikes other
horses and sniffs an enemy in every wind. She very decidedly sniffed an
enemy now, and Mr. Zanti's blue suit paled before her fierce eyes. He
stepped back into the doorway again, treading upon Stephen. Peter, who was
always conscious that Mrs. Kant looked upon himself and Clare as two
entirely ridiculous and slightly impertinent children, stammered a little.

"You might go down and have your tea now, Mrs. Kant. I'll keep an eye upon
Stephen."

"I've had my tea, thank you, sir."

"Well, I'll relieve you of the baby for a little." She was sewing. She
snapped off a piece of thread with a sharp click of her teeth, sat silently
for a moment staring in front of her, then quietly got up. "Thank you,
sir," she said and left the room.

All three men breathed again as the door closed--then they were all
conscious of young Stephen.

The thing was, of course, absurd, but to all three of them there came the
conviction that the baby had been laughing at them for their terror of Mrs.
Kant. He was curled up on a chair by the fire, looking at them with his
wide eyes over his shoulder, and he seemed to say, "I don't care a snap
for the woman--why should you?" The blue ball was on the floor at the foot
of the chair, and the firelight leapt upon the frieze that Peter had so
carefully chosen--giants and castles, dwarfs and princesses running round
the room in red, and blue and gold.

Young Stephen looked at them, puzzled for an instant, then with a shout
he would have acclaimed his father, but his gaze was suddenly arrested by
the intense blueness of Mr. Zanti's clothes. He stared at it, fascinated.
Into his life there had suddenly broken the revelation that you might
have something far larger than the blue ball that moved and shone in so
fascinating a manner. His eyes immediately glittered with the thought that
he would presently have the joy of rolling something so big and shining
along the floor. He could not bear to wait. His fat fingers curved in the
air with the eager anticipation of it--words, actual words had not as yet
come to him, but, crowing and gurgling, he informed the world that he
wanted, he demanded, instantly, that he should roll Mr. Zanti.

"Well, old man, how are you?" said Peter. But he would not look at his
father. His arms stretched toward Mr. Zanti.

"You've made a conquest right away, Zanti," Peter said laughing.

It was indeed instantly to be perceived that Mr. Zanti was in his right
element. Any pretence of any kind of age fell away from him, his arms
curved towards young Stephen as young Stephen's curved towards him. He was
making noises in his throat that exactly resembled the noises that the baby
made.

He looked down gravely upon the chair--"'Ow do you do?" he said and he took
young Stephen's fat fingers in his hand.

"'E says," he remarked, looking at Peter and Stephen, "that 'e would like
to roll me upon the floor--like that ball there--"

"Well, let him," said Peter laughing.

The baby then dug his fingers into Mr. Zanti's hair and pulled down his
head towards the chair, intense satisfaction flooding his face as he did
so.

The baby seemed, for a moment, to whisper into Mr. Zanti's ear, then,
chuckling it climbed down from the chair, and, on all fours, crawled, its
eyes and mouth suddenly serious as though it were conscious that it was
engaged upon a very desperate adventure. The three men watched it. Across
the absolute silence of the room there came the sound of the rain driving
upon the pane, of the tumbling chatter of the fire, of the baby's hands
falling upon the carpet.

Mr. Zanti was suddenly upon his knees. "Here," he cried, seizing the blue
ball. He rolled it to young Stephen. It was caught, dropped and then the
fat fingers had flung themselves upon Mr. Zanti's coat. He let himself go
and was pulled back sprawling upon the floor, his huge body stretching from
end to end of the rug.

Then, almost before they had realised it, the other two men were down upon
their knees. The ball was picked up and tossed from hand to hand, the baby,
sitting upon Mr. Zanti's stomach, watched with delight these extraordinary
events.

Then they played Hunt the Slipper, sitting round in a ring upon the carpet,
young Stephen trying to catch his own slipper, falling over upon his back,
kicking his legs in the air, dashing now at Stephen the Elder's beard, now
at his father's coat, now at Mr. Zanti's legs.

The noise of the laughter drowned the rain and the fire. Mr. Zanti had the
slipper--he was sitting upon it. Peter made a dash for it, Mr. Zanti rolled
over, they were all in a heap upon the floor.

"I've got it." Mr. Zanti was off on all fours round the room, the baby on
his back clutching on to his hair. A chair was over, then a box of bricks,
the table rocked and then was suddenly down with a crash!

What had come to them all? Stephen, so grave, so solemn, had caught the
baby into the air, had flung him up and caught him again. Peter and Mr.
Zanti looking up from the floor saw him standing, his legs wide, his beard
flowing, his arms stretched with young Stephen shouting between them.

Behind him, around him was a wrecked nursery....

The baby, surveying the world from this sudden height, wondered at this
amazing glory. He had never before beheld from such a position the things
that bounded his life. How strange the window seemed! Through it now he
could see the tops of the trees, the grey sky, the driving lines of rain!
Only a little way above him now were pictures that had always glowed before
from so great a distance. Around him, above him, below him space--a thing
to be frightened of were one not held so tightly, so safely.

He approved, most assuredly, of the banishment of Mrs. Kant, and the
invasion of these splendid Things! He would have life always like this,
with that great blue ball to roll upon the floor, with that brown
beard, near now to his hand, to clutch, with none of that hideous
soap-in-the-eyes-early-to-bed Philosophy that he was becoming now conscious
enough to rebel against.

He dug his hands into the beard that was close to him and, like the sons of
the morning, shouted with joy.

Peter, looking up at the two Stephens, felt his burdens roll off his back.
If only things could be like this always! And already he saw himself,
through these two, making everything right once more with Clare. They
should prove to her that, after all, his past life had not been so
terrible, that Cornwall could produce heroes if it liked. Through these two
he would get fresh inspiration for his work. He felt already, through them,
a wind blowing that cleared all the dust from his brain.

And how splendid for the boy! To have two such men for his friends! Already
he was planning to persuade them to stay in London. He had thought of the
very place for them in Chelsea, near the Roundabout, the very house....

"Of course you'll stay for dinner, you two--"

"But--" said Mr. Zanti, mopping his brow from which perspiration was
dripping.

"No, nonsense. Of course you'll stop. We've got such heaps to talk about--"

Stephen had got the baby now on his shoulder. "Off to Cornwall," he shouted
and charged down the room.

It was at that instant that Peter was conscious that Clare had been
standing, for some moments, in the room. She stood, quite silently, without
moving, by the door, her eyes blazing at him....

His first thought was of that other time when she had found him in the
nursery, of the quarrel that they had had. Then he noticed the state of the
room, the overturned chairs and table. Then he saw Mr. Zanti still wiping
his forehead, but confusedly, and staring at Clare in a shocked hushed way,
as though he were a small boy who had been detected with his fingers in a
jam-pot.

Stephen saw her at last. He put the baby down and came slowly across the
floor. Peter spoke: "Why, Clare! You're back early. We've been having such
a splendid time with Stephen--let me introduce my friends to you--Mr. Zanti
and Mr. Brant... you've heard me speak of them--"

They came towards her. She shook hands with them, regarding them gravely.

"How do you do?"

There was silence. Then Mr. Zanti said--"We must be goin'--longer than we
ought to stop--we 'ave business--"

Peter felt rising in him a cold and surging anger at her treatment of them.
These two, the best friends that he had in the world--that she should dare!

"Oh! you'll stay to dinner, you two! You must--"

"I'm afraid, ver' afraid," Mr. Zanti said bowing very low and still looking
at Clare with apologetic, troubled eyes, "we 'ave no time. Immediate
business."

Still Clare said nothing.

There was another moment's silence, and then Peter said:

"I'll come down and see you off." Still without moving from her place she
shook hands with them.

"Good-bye."

They all three went out.

Peter could say nothing. The words seemed to be choked in his throat by
this tide of anger that was like nothing he had ever felt before.

He held their hands for a moment as they stood outside in the dusk.

"Where are you staying? I must see you again--"

"We go down to Cornwall to-morrow."

Stephen caught Peter's shoulder:

"Come down to us, Peter, if you get a chance." They all stared at one
another; they were all, absolutely, entirely without words. Afterwards they
would regret that they had said nothing, but now--!

They vanished into the dusk and Peter, stepping into the house again,
closed very softly the hall door behind him.




CHAPTER X

ROCKING THE ROUNDABOUT


I

As he climbed, once more, the stairs to the nursery, he was conscious of
the necessity for a great restraint. Did he but relax for an instant his
control he was aware that forces--often dimly perceived and shuddered
at--would now, as never in his life before, burst into freedom.

It was as though a whole life of joy and happiness had been suddenly
snatched from him and it was Clare who had robbed him--Clare who had never
cared what the things might be that she demanded from him--Clare who gave
him nothing.

But his rage now, he also felt, was beyond all reason, something that
belonged to that other part of him, the part that Scaw House and its dark
room understood and so terribly fostered.

He was afraid of what he might do.


II

On opening the nursery door he saw the straight, thin, shining back of Mrs.
Kant as she bent to put things straight. Young Stephen was quietly asleep.
He closed the door, and, turning in the narrow passage, found Clare coming
out of her room. In the dim light they faced one another, hostility flaming
between them. She looked at him for a moment, her breast heaving, her mouth
so tight and sharp, her eyes so fierce that her little stature seemed to be
raised by her anger to a great height.

At that moment Peter felt that he hated her as he had never hated any one
in his life before.

She went back, without a word, into her room.

She did not come down again that night and he had his evening meal,
miserably, alone.

He slept in his dressing-room. Long before morning his rage had gone. He
looked at her locked door and wished, miserably, that he might die for
her....


III

Later, as he sat, hopelessly, over the dim and sterile pages of "Mortimer
Slant," Mrs. Rossiter came, heavily, in to talk with him. Mrs. Rossiter
always entered the room with an expression of stupid benignity that hid a
good deal of rather sharp perception. The fact that she was not nearly so
stupid as she looked enabled her to look all the stupider and she covered
a multitude of brains with a quantity of hard black silk that she spread
out around her with the air of one who is filling as much of the room as
she can conveniently seize upon. Her plump arms, her broad and placid
bosom, her flat smooth face, her hair, entirely negative in colour and
arrangement, offered no clue whatever to her unsuspected sharpnesses.
Smooth, broad, flat and motionless she carried, like the Wooden Horse of
Troy, a thousand dangers in the depths of her placidity.

She had come now to assist her daughter, the only person for whom she may
be said to have had the slightest genuine affection, for Dr. Rossiter she
had long-despised and Mrs. Galleon was an ally and companion but never a
friend. She had allowed Clare to marry Peter, chiefly because Clare would
have married him in any case, but also, a little, because she thought that
Peter had a great career in front of him. Now that Peter's career seemed
already to be, for the most part, behind him, she disliked him and because
he appeared to have made Clare unhappy suddenly hated him... but placidity
was the shield that covered her attack and, for a symbol, one might
take the large flat golden brooch that she wore on her bosom--flat,
expressionless and shining, with the sharpest pin behind it that ever
brooch possessed.

Peter, whose miseries had accumulated as the minutes passed, was ready to
seize upon anything that promised a reconciliation. He did not like Mrs.
Rossiter--he had never been able to get to close quarters with her, and he
was conscious that his roughness and occasional outbursts displeased her.
He felt, too, that the qualities that he had resented in Clare owed their
origin to her mother. That brooch of hers was responsible for a great deal.

Fixing his eyes upon it he said, "You've come about Clare?"

"Yes, Peter." Mrs. Rossiter settled herself more comfortably, spread her
skirts, folded her hands. "She's very unhappy."

The mild eyes baffled him.

"I'm terribly sorry. I will do anything I can, but I think--that I had
a right"--he faltered a little; it was so like talking to an empty
Dairy--"had a right to mind. Two old friends of mine--two of the best
friends that I have in the world were here yesterday and Clare--"

"I don't think," the soft voice broke in upon him whilst the eyes searched
his body up and down, "that, even now, Peter, you quite understand Clare--"

"No," he said eagerly, "I know. I'm blundering, stupid. Lots of times I've
irritated her, and now again." He paused, but then added, with a touch of
his old stubbornness--"But they were friends of mine--she should have
treated them so."

Mrs. Rossiter felt that she did indeed hate the young man.

"Clare is very unhappy," she repeated. "She tells me that she has been
crying all night. You must remember, Peter, that her life has been very
different to yours--"

He wished that she would not repeat herself; he wished that she would not
always use the same level voice; he wanted insanely to tell her that she
ought to say "different from"--he could not take his eyes from the brooch.
But the thought of Clare came to him and he bowed himself once more humbly.

"I will see that things are better," he said earnestly. "I don't know what
has been the matter lately--my work and everything has been wrong, and
I expect my temper has been horrible. You know," he said with a little
crooked smile, "that I've got to work to keep it all going, and when I'm
writing badly then my temper goes to pieces."

Mrs. Rossiter, with no appearance of having heard anything that he had
said, continued--

"You know, Peter, that your temperament is very different to Clare's. You
are, and I know you will forgive my putting it so plainly, a little wild
still--doubtless owing to your earlier years. Clare is gentle, bright,
happy. She has never given my husband or myself a moment's trouble, but
that is because we understood her nature. We knew that she loved people
about her to be happy--she flourished in the sun, she drooped under the
clouds... under the clouds" Mrs. Rossiter repeated again softly, as she
searched, with care, for her next words.

Irritation was rising within Peter. Why should it be concluded so
inevitably that the fault was all on Peter's side and not at all on
Clare's--after all, there were reasons... but he pulled himself up. He
had behaved like a beast.

"I've tried very hard--" he began.

"Clouds--" said Mrs. Rossiter. "And you, Peter, are at times--I have
seen it myself and I know that it is apparent to others--inclined to be
morose--gloomy, a little gloomy--" Her fingers tapped the silk of her
dress. "Dear Clare, considering what her own life has been, shrinks, I must
confess it seems to me quite naturally, from any reminder of what your
own earlier circumstances have been. Look at it, Peter, for an instant
from the outside and you will see, at once, I am sure, what it must have
been to her, yesterday, to come into her nursery, to find tables, chairs
overturned, strange men shouting and flinging poor little Stephen towards
the ceiling--some talk about Cornwall--really, Peter, I think you can
understand..."

He abandoned all his defences. "I know--I ought to have realised... it was
quite natural..."

In the back of his head he heard her words "You're morose--you're wild.
Other people find you so--you're making a mess of everything and every one
knows it--"

He was humbled to the dust. If only he might make it all right with Clare,
then he would see to it--Oh! yes he would see to it--that nothing of this
kind ever happened again. From Mrs. Rossiter's standpoint he looked back
upon his life and found it all one ignoble, selfish muddle. Dear Clare!--so
eager to be happy and he had made her miserable.

"Will she forgive me?"

"Dear Clare," said Mrs. Rossiter, rising brightly and with a general air of
benevolence towards all the sinners in existence, "is the most forgiving
creature in the world."

He went down to her bedroom and found her lying on a sofa and reading a
novel.

He fell on his knees at her side--"Clare--darling--I'm a beast, a brute--"

She suddenly turned her face into the cushions and burst into passionate
crying. "Oh! it's horrible--horrible--horrible--"

He kissed her hand and then getting on to his feet again, stood looking at
her awkwardly, struggling for words with which to comfort her.


IV

And then at luncheon, there was a little, pencilled feeble note for Peter
from Norah Monogue. "Please, if you can spare half an hour come to me. In a
day or two I am off to the country."

Things had just been restored to peace and happiness--Clare had just
proposed that they should go, that afternoon, to a Private View
together--they might go and have tea with--

For an instant he was tempted to abandon Norah. Then his courage came:--

"Here's a note from Miss Monogue," he said. "She's awfully ill I think, I
ought--"

Clare's face hardened again. She got up from the table--

"Just as you please--" she said.

He climbed on to the omnibus that was to stumble with him down Piccadilly
with a. hideous, numbing sense of being under the hand of Fate. Why, at
this moment, in all time, should this letter of Norah Monogue's have made
its unhappy appearance? With what difficulty and sorrow had he and Clare
reached once more a reconciliation only, so wantonly, to be plucked away
from it again! From the top of his omnibus he looked down upon a sinister
London. It was a heavy, lowering day; thick clouds like damp cloths came
down upon the towers and chimneys. The trees in the Green Park were black
and chill and in and out of the Clubs figures slipped cautiously and it
seemed furtively. Just beyond the Green Park they were building a vast
hotel, climbing figures and twisting lines of scaffolding pierced the air,
and behind the rolling and rattling of the traffic the sound of many
hammers beat rhythmically, monotonously....

To Peter upon his omnibus, suddenly that sound that he had heard
before--that sound of London stirring--came back to him, and now more
clearly than he had ever known it. Tap-tap-tap-tap...
Clamp-clamp-tap-tap-tap-tap--whir! whir!... Clamp-clamp....

It seemed to him that all the cabs and the buses and the little black
figures were being hurried by some power straight, fast, along Piccadilly
to be pitched, at the end of it, pell-mell, helter-skelter into some dark
abysmal pit, there to perish miserably.

Yes, the beast was stirring! Ever so little the pavements, the houses were
heaving. Perhaps if one could see already the soil was cracking beneath
one's feet. "Look out! London will have you in a minute."
Tap-tap-tap-tap--clamp-clamp--tap-tap-tap-tap--whir-whir--clamp-clamp....

Anyhow it was a heavy, clammy day. The houses were ghosts and the people
were ghosts, and grey shadows, soon perhaps to be a yellow fog, floated
about the windows and the doors and muffled all human sounds.

He passed the great pile of scaffolding, saw iron girders shining, saw huge
cranes swinging in mid-air, saw tiny, tiny black atoms perched above the
noise and swallowed by the smoke... tap-tap-clamp-clamp....

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