Fortitude

H >> Hugh Walpole >> Fortitude

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How light and tiny she was!

He was conscious of his own immense fatigue. Mitchell had told him that he
would wake him; good fellow, Mitchell! He lay down on the bed in his
dressing-room and was instantly asleep.

He was outside Scaw House. He was mother-naked and the howling wind and
rain buffeted his body and the stones cut his feet. The windows of the
house were dark and barred. He could just reach the lower windows with his
hands if he stood on tiptoe.

He tapped again and again.

He was tired, exhausted. He had come a long, long way and the rain hurt his
bare flesh. At last a candle shone dimly behind the dark window. Some one
was there, and instantly at the moment of his realising that aid had come
he was conscious also that he must, on all accounts, refuse it. He knew
that if he entered the house Stephen would die. It depended on him to save
Stephen. He turned to flee but his father had unbarred the door and was
drawing him in. He struggled, he cried out, he fought, but his father was
stronger than he. He was on the threshold--he could see through the dark
ill-smelling hall to the door beyond. His father's hand fastened on his arm
like a vice. His body was bathed in sweat, he screamed ... and woke to find
the room dim in the morning light and Mitchell shaking him by the arm.

IV

He was still dreaming. Now he was in the nursery. Clare was kneeling by
Stephen's bed. One doctor was bending down--the nurse was crying very
softly.

He looked down on his son. As he looked the little face was, for an
instant, puckered with pain. The mouth, the eyes, the throat struggled.

The tiny hands lifted for a moment, hung, and then like fluttering leaves,
fell down on to the counterpane. Then the body was suddenly quiet, the face
was peaceful and the head had fallen gently, sideways against the pillow.

At that moment of time, throughout the house, the Presences departed. The
passages, the rooms were freed, the air was no longer cold.

At that moment also Peter awoke. Mitchell said: "The boy's gone, Westcott."

Peter, turning his back upon them all, drove from him, so softly that they
could scarcely hear, but in a voice of agony that Mitchell never afterwards
forgot:--

"I wanted him so--I wanted him so."

CHAPTER XII

A WOMAN CALLED ROSE BENNETT

I

The days that followed were dead--dead in more than any ordinary sense of
the word. But perhaps it was Peter who was dead. He moved, ate, drank, even
wrote his reviews, slept--he thanked gravely all those who offered him
condolences--wrote letters in answer to kind friends.... "Dear S---- It was
just like you to write so kindly and sympathetically...." And all this time
he was without any kind of emotion. He was aware that there was something
in the back of his brain that, were it once called upon to awake, might
stir him into life again. What it would tell him he did not know, something
about love, something intensely sorrowful, something that had occurred very
probably to himself. He did not want to live--to think, to feel. Thinking
meant pain, meant a sudden penetrating into that room shrouded now by
heavy, black curtains but containing, were those curtains drawn, some
great, phantasmal horror.

He was dimly aware that the people about him were frightened. Clare, Bobby
Galleon, Cardillac. He knew that they would be glad for him to draw those
curtains aside and penetrate into that farther room. That was unkind of
them. He had no other emotion but that it was unkind of them. Beyond that
unkindness, they did not exist.

He was thinner. His shoulders seemed to pierce sharply his clothes; his
cheeks were white and hollow, there were dark lines beneath his eyes, dark,
grey patches. His legs were not so straight, nor so strong. Moreover his
eyes were as though they were covered with a film. Seeing everything they
yet saw nothing at all. They passed through the world and were confronted
by the heavy, veiling curtains....

This condition lasted for many days. Of all about him none understood him
so well as Bobby Galleon. Bobby had always understood him, and now he felt
for him with a tenderness that had both the past and the future to heighten
its poignancy. It seemed to Bobby that nothing more tragic than the death
of this child could possibly have occurred. It filled him with anxiety for
the future, it intensified to a depth that only so simple and affectionate
a character as his could feel, the love that he had always had for Peter.

He was with him during these days continually, waiting for the relief to
come.

"It's got to come soon," he said, "or the boy'll go mad."

At last it came.

One day about tea-time they were sitting in Peter's upstairs study. It had
been a day of showers and now the curtains were not drawn and a green-grey
dusk glimmered beyond the windows.

Peter was writing letters, and as Bobby watched him he seemed to him like
some automaton, something wound into life by some clever inventor. The hand
moved across the paper--the dead eyes encountered nothing in their gaze,
the shoulders were the loosely drooping shoulders of an old man.

"Can you see, Peter?"

"Yes, thanks. Switch on the light if you like."

Bobby got up and moved to the door. The dusk behind Peter's face flung it
into sharp white outline.

Another shower! The rain at first in single drops, then more swiftly, fell
with gentle, pattering fingers up and down the window. It was the only
sound, except the scraping of Peter's pen. The pen stopped. Peter raised
his head, listening.

Bobby switched on the light and as he did so Peter in a strangled
breathless mutter whispered--

"The rain! The rain! It was like that that night. Stephen! Stephen!"

His head fell on to his hands and he burst into a storm of tears.

II

And now Peter was out to be hurt, hurt more horribly than he could have
ever believed possible. It was like walking--as they did in the days of the
Ordeal--on red-hot iron, every step an agony. Always there was something to
remind him! He could go nowhere, see nobody, summon no kind of recollection
out of the past without this coming to him. There were a thousand things
that Stephen had done, that he, Peter, had never noticed at the time. He
was haunted now with regrets, he had not made enough of him whilst he was
there! Ah! had he only known that the time was to be so short! How he would
have spent those precious, precious moments! It was as though he had flung
away, wilfully, possessions of the utmost price--cast them off as though it
had been his very intention to feel, afterwards, this burning regret. The
things in the nursery were packed away, but there remained the room, the
frieze with the dragons and princesses, the fire-place, the high broad
window. Again and again he saw babies in the streets, in the parks and
fancied that Stephen had come back again.

The thing had happened to him so swiftly that, behind reason, there lurked
the thought that perhaps, with equal suddenness, Stephen would be restored.
To come back one afternoon and to find him there! To find him lying there
on his back in his cot looking up at the ceiling, to find him labouring
unsteadily on his feet, clinging to the sides of his bed and shouting--to
find him laughing at the jumping waves in the fire--to find him!... No,
never to be found again--gone, hopelessly, cruelly, for no reason, for no
one's good or benefit--simply for some one's sport.

But, strangely, more than the actual Stephen did he miss the imaginary
future Stephen at school, hero of a thousand games, winner of a thousand
prizes, the Stephen grown up, famous already at so young an age, loved by
men and women, handsome, good.... Oh! the folly of it! No human being could
carry all the glories that Peter had designed for his son--no human being,
then how much less a Westcott. It might be best after all, young Stephen
had been spared. Until every stone of Scaw House was level with the ground
no Westcott could be termed safe--perhaps not then.

Now he realised how huge a place in his heart the boy had filled dimly,
because as yet he refused to bring it to the open light he was conscious
that, during these past two years he had been save for Stephen, a very
lonely man. It was odd that Stephen the elder and Stephen the younger
should have been the only two persons in his life to find the real inside
of him--they, too, and perhaps Norah Monogue. But, otherwise, not Bobby,
nor Cards, nor Alice Galleon, nor Mr. Zanti--nor Clare.

Not Clare. He faced the fact with a sudden shudder. Now that Stephen was
gone he and Clare were face to face--face to face as they had never been
since that first happy year of their marriage. That first year of their
marriage--and now!

With an instant clenching of his teeth he pulled down the blinds upon that
desolating view.

III

With teeth still clenched he set himself to build up his house again. Clare
was very quiet and submissive during those first weeks. Her little figure
looked helpless and appealing in its deep black; she was prettier than she
had ever been in her life before. People said, "Poor Mrs. Westcott, she
feels the loss of her baby so dreadfully"--and they didn't think about
Peter. Indeed some people thought him callous. "Mr. Westcott seemed to be
so fond of the child. Now I really believe he's forgotten all about him."
Bobby was the only person in the world who knew how Peter suffered.

Clare was, indeed, after a time, reassured. Peter, after all, seemed not to
mind. Did he mind anything? He was so often glum and silent that really you
couldn't tell. Clare herself had been frightened on that night when the
baby had died. She had probably never in all her life felt a more genuine
emotion than she had known when she knelt by Peter's side and went to sleep
in his arms. She was quite ready to feel that emotion again would Peter but
allow her. But no. He showed no emotion himself and expected no one else to
show any, for he was ready to share it but in her heart of hearts she
longed to fling away from her this emotional atmosphere. She had loved the
baby--of course she had loved it. But she had always known that something
would happen to it--always. If Peter would insist on having those horrid
Cornishmen.... At heart she connected that dreadful day when those horrible
men had played about in the nursery with baby's death. Of course it was
enough to kill any baby.

So, ultimately, it all came back to Peter's fault. Clare found real
satisfaction in the thought. Meanwhile she emphatically stated her desire
to be happy again.

She stated it always in Peter's absence, feeling that he would, in no way,
understand her. "It can't help poor dear little Stephen that we should go
on being melancholy and doing nothing. That's only morbid, isn't it,
mother?"

Mrs. Rossiter entirely agreed, as indeed she always agreed with anything
that Clare suggested.

"The dear thing does look lovely in black, though," she confided to Mrs.
Galleon. "Mr. Cardillac couldn't take his eyes off her yesterday at
luncheon."

Mrs. Rossiter and Jerry Cardillac had, during the last year, become the
very best of friends. Peter was glad to see that it was so. Peter couldn't
pretend to care very deeply about his mother-in-law, but he felt that it
would do her all the good in the world to see something of old Cards. It
would broaden her understanding, give her perhaps some of that charity
towards the whole world that was one of Cards' most charming features.
Cards, in fact, had been so much in the house lately that he might be
considered one of the family. No one could have been more tender, more
sympathetic, more exactly right about young Stephen's death. He had become,
during those weeks almost a necessity. He seemed to have no particular
interest of his own in life. He dressed very perfectly, he went to a number
of parties, he had delightful little gatherings in his own flat, but, with
it all, he was something more--a great deal more--than the mere society
idler. There was a hint at possible wildness, an almost sinister suggestion
of possible lawlessness that made him infinitely attractive. He was such
good company and yet one felt that one didn't know nearly the whole of him.

To Peter he was the most wonderful thing in the world, to Clare he was
rapidly becoming so--no wonder then that the Roundabout saw him so often.

IV

It would need a very acute perception indeed to pursue precisely the train
of cause and effect in Mrs. Rossiter's mind after young Stephen's death.
Her black garments added, in the most astonishing fashion, to her placid
flatness. If she had gloried before in an armour that was so negative that
it became instantly exceedingly dangerous, her appearance now was
terrifying beyond all words. Her black silk had apparently no creases, no
folds--it almost eliminated terms and boundaries. Mrs. Rossiter could not
now be said to come into a room--she was simply there. One was sitting,
gazing it might be at the fire, a looking-glass, a picture or two, when
suddenly there came a black shadow, something that changed the colour of
things a little, something that obscured certain objects, but scarcely
anything more definite. The yellow brooch was definite, cold, stony eyes
hung a little above it, over those a high white forehead--otherwise merely
a black shadow putting out the fire.

She was in the Roundabout now all the time. How poor Dr. Rossiter fared it
was difficult to imagine, but he cared for Clare as deeply as his wife did
and was quite ready for everything to be sacrificed to her at this crisis
of her history.

Mrs. Rossiter, meanwhile, was entirely convinced that Peter was responsible
for his son's death. Had you suddenly challenged her and demanded her
reasoned argument with regard to this matter she would probably have failed
you--she did not like reasoned arguments--but she would also have been most
sincerely indignant had you called her a liar and would have sworn to her
convictions before a court of law.

"Those Cornishmen" had frightened the poor little thing into fits and it
was only to be expected. Moreover it followed from this that a man who
murdered his only child would most assuredly take to beating his wife
before very long. After that, anything might happen. Peter was on a swift
road to being a "Perfect Devil."

Indeed, allow Mrs. Rossiter two consecutive hours of peace and quiet, she,
sitting like the personification of the English climate, alone before her
fire, and she could make any one into anything--once made so they remained.

It mattered nothing to her that poor Peter was, during these weeks, the
most subdued and gently courteous of husbands--that was as it might be (a
favourite phrase of hers). She knew him ... and, so knowing, waited for the
inevitable end.

But the more certain she was of his villainous possibilities the more
placid she became. She spread her placidity over everything. It lay, like
an invisible glue, upon everything in the Roundabout--you could feel it on
the door-handles, as you feel the jammy reminiscences of incautious
servant-maids. Peter felt it but did not know what it was that he had to
deal with.

He had determined, when the sharpest shock of Stephen's death had passed,
and he was able to think of other things, that the supremely important
thing for him now to do was to get back to his old relations with Clare.
There was, he grimly reflected, "Mortimer Stant" to be finished within a
month or two and he knew, perfectly well, with the assurance of past
experience that whilst Clare held the stage, Mortimer had the poorest of
chances--nevertheless Clare was, at this moment, the thing to struggle
for.

He _must_ get her back--he _must_ get her back.

Behind his brain, all this time, was the horror of being left alone in the
world and of what he might do--then.

To get Clare back he must have the assistance of two people--Mrs. Rossiter
and Cards.

It was at this point that he perceived Mrs. Rossiter's placidity.

He could not get at her at all--he could not get near her. He tried in
every way, during these weeks, to please her. She apparently noticed
nothing. He could force no direct opinion about anything from her and yet
he was conscious of opposition. He was conscious of opposition,
increasingly, every day.

"I believe she _wants_ Clare to hate me," he suddenly revealed to himself,
and, with that, all hope of her as an ally vanished.

Then he hated her--he hated her more bitterly every day.

He wanted to tell her not to call him "Peter dear"--she loved to put him in
positions that showed him in the worst light to Clare.

At luncheon for instance: "Peter dear, it would be a nice thing for you and
Clare to go to that Private View at the Carfax this afternoon. You've
nothing to do, Clare, have you?"

Peter knew that Mrs. Rossiter had already ascertained that he was engaged.
He knew also that Clare had had no thought of Peter's company before but
that now she would very speedily feel herself injured.

"I'm afraid--" Peter would begin.

"Peter's too engaged to take you, Clare dear."

"I dare say Jerry will come--" this from Clare.

"Ah! yes, Mr. Cardillac is always ready to take any trouble, Peter."

"If you'd let me know earlier, Clare, that you wanted me."

Mrs. Rossiter. "Oh! don't put yourself out, Peter. It would never do to
break an engagement. Only it seems such a long time since you and Clare--"

Peter. "We'll go to-morrow afternoon, Clare."

Clare. "You're so gloomy when you do come, Peter. It's like going out with
a ghost."

Mrs. Rossiter. "Ah! Peter has his work, dear--so much hangs on the next
book, doesn't it, Peter? Naturally the last one didn't quite--"

Peter. "Look here, Clare, I'll chuck this engagement."

Clare. "No, thank you, Peter--Jerry and I will be all right. You can join
us if you like--"

The fact was that Peter wasn't tactful. He showed Mrs. Rossiter much too
plainly that he disliked her intensely. He had no idea that he showed it
her. He thought, indeed, that he was very skilful in his disguise of his
feelings but Mrs. Rossiter knew and soon Clare knew also.

Peter had no conception of subtlety in the matter. It was clear to him that
he had once been devoted to Clare and she to him, it was clear also that
that relationship had recently been dimmed. Now that Stephen was gone that
early intimacy must be restored and the fact that he was willing on his
side to do anything to bring it back seemed to him reason enough for its
restoration. That the whole matter was composed of the most delicate and
intricate threads never occurred to him for an instant. Clare had loved him
once. Clare would love him again--and the sooner it happened the better for
him.

Meanwhile Mrs. Rossiter being enemy rather than ally there remained Cards.

But Cards was strange. Peter could never claim to have been intimate with
him--their relationship had been founded on an inequality, on a recognition
from Peter of Cards' superiority. Cards had always laughed at Peter, always
patronised him. But now, although Cards had been in the place so much of
late, the distance seemed farther than ever before.

Cards was as kind as he could be--always in good spirits, always ready to
do anything, but Peter noticed that it was only when Clare was present that
Cards changed from jest to earnest. "He thinks Clare worth talking to
seriously.... I suppose it's because he was at Dawson's ... but after all
I'm not an imbecile."

This attitude of Cards was in fact as vague and nebulous as all the other
things that seemed now to stand between Peter and Clare.

Peter tried to talk to Cards--he was always prevented--held off with a
laughing hand.

"What's the matter with me?" thought Peter. "What have I done? It's like
being out in a fog."

At last one evening, after dinner, when Clare and Mrs. Rossiter had gone
upstairs he demanded an answer.

"Look here, Cards, what have I done? You profess to be a friend of mine.
Tell me what crime I've committed?"

Cards' eyes had been laughing. Suddenly he was serious. His dark, clean-cut
face was stern, almost accusing.

"Profess, Peter? I hope you don't doubt it?"

"No, of course not. You know you're the best friend I've got. Tell me--what
have I done?"

"Done?"

"Yes--you and Clare and her mother--all of you keep me at arms'
length--why?"

"Do you really want a straight talking?"

"Of course."

"Well, I can only speak for myself--but--to tell the truth, old boy--I
think you've been rather hard on poor little Clare."

For the first time since his marriage Peter resented Cards' words. "Poor
little Clare"--wasn't that a little too intimate?

"What do you mean?" he asked, his voice a little harder.

"Well--I don't think you understand her, Peter."

"Explain."

"She's a happy, merry person if ever there was one in this world. She wants
all the happiness you can give her--"

"Well?"

"Well, you don't seem to see that. Of course young Stephen's death--"

"Let's leave that--" Peter's voice was harder again.

"Oh, all right--just as you please. But most men would have seen what a
shock it must be to a girl, so young, who knew so little about the cruelty
of life. You didn't--you don't mind, Peter, do you?--you didn't seem to
think of that. Never tried to cheer her up, take her about, take her out of
herself. You just wrapped yourself up--"

"You don't understand," muttered Peter, his eyes lowered. "If I'd thought
that she'd really minded Stephen's death--"

"Oh! come Peter--that's grossly unfair. Why, she felt it all most horribly.
That shows how little you've understood her, how little you've appreciated
her. You've always been a gloomy, morbid devil and--"

"All right, Cards--that'll do."

Cards stood back from the table, his mouth smiling, his eyes hard and cold.

"Oh! no, it won't. You asked for it and now you're going to get it. You've
not only been gloomy and morbid all your life, you've been selfish as
well--always thinking of yourself and the books you were going to write,
and then when they did come they weren't such great shakes. You oughtn't to
have married at all--you've never considered Clare at all--your treatment
of her--"

Peter stood up, his face white, so that his eyes and the lines of his mouth
showed black in the shadow.

"Clear out--I've heard enough."

"Oh! that's just like you--ask me for my opinion and then lose your temper
over it. Really, Peter, you're like a boy of ten--you don't deserve to be
treated as a grown-up person."

Peter's voice shook. "Clear out--clear out or I'll do for you--get out of
my house--"

"Certainly."

Cards opened the door and was gone. Peter heard him hesitate for a moment
in the hall, get his hat and coat and then close the hall-door after him.

The house was suddenly silent. Peter stood, his hands clenched. Then he
went out into the hall.

He heard Mrs. Rossiter's voice from above--"Aren't you two men ever coming
up?"

"Jerry's gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes--we've had a row."

Mrs. Rossiter made no reply. He heard the drawing-room door close. Then he,
too, took his coat and hat and went out.

V

The night was cool and sweet with a great silver haze of stars above the
sharply outlined roofs and chimneys. The golden mist from the streets met
the night air and mingled with it.

Peter walked furiously, without thinking of direction. Some clock struck
half-past nine. His temper faded swiftly, leaving him cold, miserable,
regretful. There went his damnable temper again, surging up suddenly so hot
and fierce that it had control of him almost before he knew that it was
there. How like him, too! Now when things were bad enough, when he must
bend all his energies to bringing peace back into the house again, he must
needs go and quarrel with the best friend he had in the world. He had never
quarrelled with Cards before, never had there been the slightest word
between them, and now he had insulted him so that, probably, he would never
come into their house again.

And behind his immediate repentance at the quarrel there also bit into his
heart the knowledge that there was truth in the accusation that Cardillac
had flung at him. He _had_ been morbid, he _had_ been selfish. Absorbed by
his own grief at Stephen's loss he had given no thought to any one else. He
had expected Clare to be like himself, had made no allowance for
differences of temperament, had.... Poor Peter had never before known an
hour of such miserable self-condemnation. Had he known where to find him he
would have gone that very instant to beg Cards' pardon.

Now, in comparison with his own black deeds, Mrs. Rossiter seemed an angel.
He should show her in the future that he could mend his ways. Clare should
make no further complaint of him. He found himself in Leicester Square and
still wrapt in his own miserable thoughts went into the Empire. He walked
up and down the Promenade wondering that so many people could take the
world so lightly. Very far away a gentleman in evening dress was singing
a song--his mouth could be seen to open and shut, sometimes his arms
moved--no sound could be heard.

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