Fortitude

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The Promenade was packed. Up and down ladies in enormous hats walked
languidly. They all wore clothes that were gorgeous and a little soiled.
They walked for the most part in couples and appeared to be absorbed in
conversation, but every now and again they smiled mechanically, recognised
a friend or saw somebody who was likely very shortly to become one.

There was a great deal of noise. There were numbers of men--old gentlemen
who were there because they had always been there, young gentlemen who were
there because they had never been there before and a few gentlemen who had
come to see the Ballet.

The lights blazed, the heat and noise steadily accumulated, corks were
popped in the bar behind, promises were broken in the Promenade in front,
and soon after eleven, when everything had become so uncomfortable that the
very lights in the building protested, the doors were opened and the whole
Bubble and Squeak was flung out into the cool and starlit improprieties of
Leicester Square.

Peter could not have told you if he had been asked, that he had been there,
felt a devouring thirst and entered a building close at hand where there
were rows of little round tables and numbers of little round waiters.

Peter sat down at the first table that occurred to him and it was not until
he looked round about him that he discovered that a lady in a huge black
hat was sitting smiling opposite him. Her cheeks were rouged, her gloves
were soiled and her hair looked as though it might fall into a thousand
pieces at the slightest provocation, but her eyes were pathetic and tired.
They didn't belong to her face.

"Hullo, dear, let's have a drink. Haven't had a drink to-night."

He asked her what she would like and she told him. She studied him
carefully for quite a long time.

"Down on your luck, old chum?" she said at last."

"Yes, I am," Peter said, "a bit depressed."

"I know. I'm often that way myself. We all catch it. Come home and have a
bit of supper. That'll cheer you up."

"No, thanks," said Peter politely. "I must get back to my own place in a
minute."

"Well," said the lady. "Please yourself, and I'll have another drink if you
don't very much mind."

It was whilst he was ordering another drink that he came out of his own
thoughts and considered her.

"That's right," she said smiling, "have a good look. My name's Rose
Bennett. Here's my card. Perhaps you'd like to come and have tea with me
one day."

She gave him a very dirty card on which was written "Miss Rose Bennett, 4
Annton Street, Portland Place."

"You're Cornish," he suddenly said, looking at her.

She moved her soiled gloves up and down the little table--"Well, what if I
am?" she said defiantly, not looking at him.

"I knew it," said Peter triumphantly, "the way you rolled your r's--"

"Well, chuck it, dear," said Miss Bennett, "and let's talk sense. What's
Cornwall got to do with us anyhow?"

"I'm Cornish too," said Peter, "it's got a good deal to do with us. You
needn't tell me of course--but what part do you come from?"

Still sullenly she said: "Almost forgotten the name of it, so long ago. You
wouldn't know it anyway, it's such a little place. They called it
Portergwarra--"

"I know," cried Peter, "near the Land's End. Of course I know it. There are
holes in the rocks that they lift the boats through. There's a post-box on
the wall. I've walked there many a time--"

"Well, stow it, old man," Miss Bennett answered decisively. "I'm not
thinking of that place any more and I don't suppose they've thought of me
since. Why, it's years--"

She broke off and began hurriedly to drink. Peter's eyes sought her
eyes--his eyes were miserable and so were hers--but her mouth was hard and
laughing.

"It's funny talking of Cornwall," she said at last. "No one's spoken of the
place since I came up here. But it's all right, I tell you--quite all
right. You take it from me, chucky. I enjoy my life--have a jolly time.
There's disadvantages in every profession, and when you've got a bit of a
cold as I have now why--"

She stopped. Her eyes sought Peter's. He saw that she was nearly crying.

"Talking of Cornwall and all that," she muttered, "silly rot! I'm
tired--I'm going home."

He paid for the drinks and got a hansom.

At that moment as he stood looking over the horse into the dimly-lit
obscurities of the Square he thought with a sudden beating of the heart
that he recognised Cardillac looking at him from the doorway of a
neighbouring restaurant. Then the figure was gone. He had got Cardillac on
the brain! Nevertheless the suggestion made him suddenly conscious of poor
Miss Bennett's enormous hat, her rouge, her soiled finery that allowed no
question as to her position in the world.

Rather hurriedly he asked her to get into the cab.

"Come that far--" she said.

He got in with her and she took off one glove and he held her hand and they
didn't speak all the way.

When the hansom stopped at last he got down, helped her out and for a
moment longer held her hand.

"We're both pretty unhappy," he said. "Things have been going wrong with me
too. But think of Cornwall sometimes and remember there's some one else
thinking of it."

"You're a funny kid," she said, looking at him, "sentimental, I _don't_
think!"

But it was her eyes--tired and regretful that said goodbye.

She let herself in and the door closed behind her.

He turned and walked the streets; it was three o'clock before he reached
his home.

CHAPTER XIII

"MORTIMER STANT"

I

Next morning Peter went round to Cardillac's flat and made his apologies.
Cardillac accepted them at once with the frankest expressions of
friendship.

"My dear old Peter, of course," he said, taking both Peter's hands in his,
"I was horribly blunt and unpleasant about the whole thing. I didn't mean
half what I said, but the fact is that you got angry and then I suppose I
got angry--and then we both said more than we meant."

"No," said Peter slowly, "for you were quite right. I have been selfish and
morbid. I see it all quite clearly. I'm going to be very different now,
Cards, old man."

Cards' flat was splendid--everything in it from its grey Ascot trouserings
kind of wall paper to its beautiful old chairs and its beautiful old china
was of the very best--and Cards himself, in a dark blue suit with a black
tie and a while pearl and white spats on his shining gleaming shoes, just
ready to go out and startle Piccadilly was of the very best. He had never,
Peter thought, looked so handsome.

At the door Cards put a hand on Peter's shoulder.

"Get in late this morning, Peter?"

"Why?" said Peter, turning round.

"Oh, nothing," Cards regarded him, smiling. "I'll see you to-night at the
Lesters. Until then, old man--"

Neither Mrs. Rossiter nor Clare made any allusion to the quarrel but it had
nevertheless, Peter felt, made reconciliation all the more difficult. Mrs.
Rossiter now seemed to imply in her additional kindnesses to Cardillac that
she felt for him deeply and was sorry that he, too, should have been made
to suffer under Peter's bear-like nature.

There was even an implied atmosphere of alliance in the attitude of the
three to Peter, an alliance fostered and cemented by Mrs. Rossiter and
spread by her, up and down, in and out about the house.

It was obvious indeed now that Mrs. Rossiter was, never again, under any
terms, to be won over. She had decided in her own slow mind that Peter was
an objectionable person, that he neglected his wife, quarrelled with his
best friends and refused to fulfil the career that he had promised to
fulfil. She saw herself now in the role of protectress of her daughter, and
that role she would play to the very end. Clare must, at all costs, be
happy and, in spite of her odious husband, happy she should be.

Peter discerned Mrs. Rossiter's state of mind on the whole clearly enough,
but with regard to Clare he was entirely in the dark. He devoted his days
now to her service. He studied her every want, was ready to abandon his
work at any moment to be with her, and was careful also to avoid too great
a pestering of her with attentions.

"I know women hate that," he said to himself, "if you go down on your knees
to them and hang around them they simply can't stand it. I won't show her
that I care."

And he cared, poor fellow, as he had never cared for her before during
their married life. The love that he had had for Stephen he would now give
to Stephen's mother would she but let him.

But it was a difficult business. When Mrs. Rossiter was present he could do
nothing right. If he were silent she would talk to Clare about people being
morose; and what a pity it was that some people didn't think of other
people a little instead of being miserable about things for which they had
nobody to thank but themselves, and if he tried to be light-hearted and
amusing Mrs. Rossiter bore with his humour in so patient and self-denying a
spirit that his efforts failed lamentably and only made the situation worse
than it had been before.

Clare seemed to be now entirely in her mother's hands; she put her mother's
large flat body between herself and Peter and, through that, they were
compelled to talk.

Peter also knew now that Clare was exceedingly uncomfortable in his
presence--it was almost as though she had something to conceal. On several
occasions he had noticed that his sudden entrance into a room had confused
her; once he had caught her hurriedly pushing a letter out of sight. She
was now strangely timid when he was there; sometimes with a sudden furious
beating of the heart he fancied that she was coming back to him again
because she would make little half movements towards him and then draw
back. Once he found her crying.

The impulse to beg her to confide in him was almost stronger than he could
resist, and yet he was terrified lest by some sudden move he should
frighten her and drive her back and so lose the little ground that he had
gained. The strangest thing of all was that Mrs. Rossiter herself did not
know what Clare's trouble was. She, of course, put it all down to Peter,
but she could accuse him of nothing specific. Clare had not confided in
her.

Did Cards know? Peter suddenly asked himself with a strange pang of
jealousy. That he should be jealous of Cards, the most splendid, most
honourable fellow in the world! That, of course, was absurd. And yet they
were together so often, and it was with Jerry Cardillac alone that Clare
seemed now at ease.

But Peter put all such thoughts at once away from him. Had it been any
other man but Cards he might have wondered... but he would trust Cards
alone with his wife in the wilderness and know that no ill could come of
it. With--other women Cards might have few scruples--Peter had heard such
stories--but with Peter's wife, no.

Peter wondered whether perhaps Clare did not miss young Stephen more than
they knew! Oh, if that were the reason how he could take her into his arms
and comfort her and love her! Poor little Clare... the time would come when
she would show him that she wanted him.

Meanwhile the months passed, the proofs of "Mortimer Stant" had been
corrected and the book was about to appear. To Peter now everything seemed
to hang upon this event. It became with him, during the weeks before its
appearance, a monomania. If this book were a success why then dare and Mrs.
Rossiter and all of them would come round to him. It was the third book
which was always so decisive, and there was ground to recover after the
comparative failure of the second novel. As he corrected the proofs he
persuaded himself that "Mortimer Stant" wasn't, after all, so bad. It had
been ambitious of him, of course, to write about the emotions and
experiences of a man of forty and there was perhaps rather an overloaded
and crude attempt at atmosphere, but there was life in the book. It had, he
thought, more swing in the telling of it than the other two.

It is possible, when one is correcting proofs to persuade oneself of
anything. The book appeared and was, from the first moment, loaded with
mishap. On the day of publication there was that terrible fire at the
Casino theatre--people talked of nothing else for a fortnight. Moreover by
an unlucky chance young Rondel's novel, "The Precipice," was published on
the very same day, and as the precipice was a novel one and there were no
less than three young ladies prepared to fall over it at the same moment,
it of course commanded instant attention. It was incidentally written with
an admirable sense of style and a keen sense of character.

But Peter was now in a fever that saw an enemy round every corner. The
English News Supplement only gave him a line:--"'Mortimer Stant.' A new
novel by the author of 'Reuben Hallard,' depicting agreeably enough the
amorous adventures of a stockbroker of middle-age." To this had all his
fine dreams, his moments of exultation, his fevered inspiration come! He
searched the London booksellers but could find no traces of "Mortimer
Stant" at any of them. His publishers told him that it was only the
libraries that bought any fiction, with the exception of volumes by certain
popular authors--and yet he saw at these booksellers novels by numbers of
people who could not lay claim to the success that "Reuben Hallard" had
secured for its writer.

The reviews came in slowly, and, excepting for the smaller provincial
papers, treated him with an indifference that was worse than neglect. "This
interesting novel by Mr. Westcott"--"A pleasant tale of country life by the
author of 'Reuben Hallard.' Will please those who like a quiet agreeable
book without too much incident."

One London weekly review--a paper of considerable importance--took him
severely to task, pointed out a number of incoherences of fact, commented
on carelessness of style and finally advised Mr. Westcott, "if he is ever
to write a book of real importance to work with greater care and to be less
easily contented with a superficial facility."

But worse than these were the opinions of his friends. Henry Galleon was
indeed gone, but there were a few--Mrs. Launce, Alfred Lester, William
Trent, Alfred Hext--who had taken a real and encouraging interest in him
from the beginning. They took him seriously enough to tell him the truth,
and tell him the truth they did. Dear Mrs. Launce, who couldn't bear to
hurt anybody and saw perhaps that he was taking the book a great deal more
hardly than he had taken the others, veiled it as well as she could:--"I do
think it's got splendid things in it, Peter dear--splendid things. That bit
about the swimming and the character of Mrs. Mumps. But it doesn't hang
together. There's a great deal of repetition. It's as though you'd written
it with your mind on something else all the time."

And so he had--oh! so he had! What cruel irony that because his mind was
set to winning Clare back to him the chief means for gaining her should be
ruined by his very care for her.

What to do when all the things of life--the bustle and hurry, the marriages
and births and deaths--came in between him and his work so that he could
scarcely see it, so many things obscured the way. Poor Mortimer! Lost
indeed behind a shifting, whirring cloud of real life--never to emerge,
poor man, into anything better than a middle-aged clothes' prop.

For six weeks the book lingered in the advertisements. A second edition,
composed for the most part of an edition for America, was announced, there
were a belated review or two ... and then the end. The end of two years'
hopes, ambitions, struggles, sweat and tears--and the end, too, of how much
else?

From the beginning, so far back as he could remember, he had believed that
he would one day write great books; had believed it from no conceit in him
but simply because he clung so tenaciously to ambition that it had become,
again and again, almost realised in the intensity of his dreams of it. He
had known that this achievement of his would take a long time, that he must
meet with many rebuffs, that he must starve and despair and be born again,
but, never at any moment, until now, had he, in his heart of hearts,
doubted that that great book was in front of him.

He had seen his work, in his dreams, derided, flouted, misunderstood. That
was the way with most good work, but what he had never seen was its
acceptance amongst the ranks of the "Pretty Good," its place given it
beside that rising and falling tide of fiction that covered every year the
greedy rocks of the circulating libraries and ebbed out again leaving no
trace behind it.

Now, after the failure of "Mortimer Stant" for the first time, this awful
question--"What if, after all, you should be an Ordinary Creature? What if
you are no better than that army who fights happily, contentedly, with
mediocrity for its daily bread and butter? That army, upon whose serried
ranks you have perhaps, unconsciously, but nevertheless with pity, looked
down?... What if you are never to write a word that will be remembered,
never even to cause a decent attention, amongst your own generation?"

What if after all this stir and fluster, this pain and agony and striving,
there should be nothing exceptional about Peter? What rock to stand on
then?

He had never, perhaps, analysed his feelings about it all. He had certainly
never thought himself an exceptional person ... but always in his heart
there had been that belief that, one day, he would write an exceptional
book.

He was very young, not yet thirty, but he had had his chance. It seemed to
him, in these weeks following the death of "Mortimer Stant," that his
career was already over. There was also the question of ways and means.
Just enough to live on with the reviewing and a column for an American
paper and Clare's income, but if the books were all of them to fail as this
one had failed--why then it was a dreary future for them both.

In fact there were now, at his feet, pits of so dismal and impenetrable a
blackness that he refused to look down, but clung rather to his
determination to make all things right with Clare again, and then things
would come round.

If that failed him--why then, old black-faced father in Scaw House with
your drunken cook and your company of ghosts, you shall have your merry
way!

II

Henry Galleon was dead. Mrs. Launce was, unfortunately, during the whole of
this period of Peter's career, away in the country, being burdened with
work, children and ill-health. He turned then once again to Bobby.

He had seen very little of Bobby and Alice Galleon lately; he was as fond
of Bobby as he had ever been, but Bobby had always been a background, some
one who was there, one liked to think, if one wanted him--but if there was
any one more exciting, then Bobby vanished. Lately--for quite a long time
now--there had been Cardillac--and somehow Cards and Bobby did not get on
together and it was impossible to have them both at the same time. But now
Peter turned to Bobby with the eagerness of a return to some comfortable
old arm-chair after the brilliant new furniture of a friend's palace. Bobby
was there waiting for him. It is not to be denied that the occasional
nature of Peter's appearances had hurt them both--wounded Bobby and made
Alice angry.

"He's given us up, Bobby, now that he's found so many new friends. I
shouldn't have expected him to do that. I'm disappointed."

But Bobby nodded his head. "The boy's all right," he said, "he's just
trying to forget young Stephen and he forgets things better in Cardillac's
company than he does in mine--I'm not lively enough for that kind of thing.
He'll come back--"

But, at the same time, Bobby was anxious. Things were wrong up there at The
Roundabout, very wrong. He knew Clare and Cards and Peter and Mrs.
Rossiter, in all probability better than any one alive knew them--and he
was no fool.

Then Peter came back to him and was received as though he had never left
him; and Alice, who had intended to tell Mr. Peter what she thought of his
disloyalty, had no word to say when she saw his white drawn face and his
tired eyes.

"There's something awfully wrong up there," said Alice to Bobby that night.
"Bobby, look after him."

But Bobby who had heard by that time what Peter had to say shut his mouth
tight. Then at last:

"Our friend Cardillac has a good deal to answer for," and left Alice to
make what she could out of it.

Meanwhile up in Bobby's dusty old room, called by courtesy "The Study" but
having little evidence of literature about it save an edition of
Whyte-Melville and a miscellaneous collection of Yellow-backs, Peter had
poured out his soul:

"Bobby, I feel as though I'd just been set up with my back against the wall
for every one to make shies at. Everything's going wrong--everything. The
ground's crumbling from under my feet. First it's young Stephen, then it's
Clare, then my book fails (don't let's humbug--you know it's an utter
failure) then I quarrel with Cards, then that damned woman--" he stopped at
the thought of Mrs. Rossiter and drove his hands together. Then he went on
more quietly. "It's like fighting in a fog, Bobby. There's the thing I want
somewhere, just beside me--I want Clare, Clare as she used to be when we
were first married--but I can't get at her and yet, through it all, I don't
know what it is that stops me.

"I know I hadn't thought of her enough--with the book and Stephen and
everything. Cards told me that pretty straight--but now I've seen all that
and I'm ready to do anything--anything if she'll only love me again."

"Go directly to her and tell her," said Bobby; "have it all out in the open
with her,"

"That's just it," Peter answered, "I never seem to get her alone. There's
always either her mother or Cards there. Cards sees her alone much more
than I do, but, of course, she likes his company better than mine just now.
I'm such a gloomy beggar--"

"Nonsense," said Bobby roughly. "You believe anything that any one tells
you. They tell you that you're gloomy and depressing and so you think you
are. They didn't find you gloomy at Brockett's did they? And Alice and I
have never found you depressing. Don't listen to that woman. Clare's always
been under her influence and it's for you to take her out of it--not to lie
down quietly and say she's too much for you--but there's another thing," he
added slowly and awkwardly, after a moment's pause.

"What's that?" asked Peter.

"Well--Cards," said Bobby at last. "Oh! I know you'll say I hate him. But I
don't. I don't hate him. I've always known him for what he was--in those
days at Dawson's when if you flattered him he was kind, and if you didn't
he was contemptuous. At Cambridge it was the same. There was only one
fellow there I ever saw him knock under to--a man called Dune--and he was
out and away exceptional anyhow, at games and work and everything. Now _he_
made Cards into a decent fellow for the time being, and if he'd had the
running of him he might have turned all that brilliance into something
worth having.

"But he vanished and Cards has never owned his master since. Everything was
there, ready in him, to be turned one way or the other, and after he left
Cambridge there was his silly mother and a sillier London waiting to finish
him--now he's nothing but Vanity and Fascination--and soon there'll be
nothing but Vanity."

"You're unjust to him, Bobby, you always have been.

"Well, perhaps I am. He's always treated me with such undisguised contempt
that it's only human that I should be a little prejudiced. But that's
neither here nor there--what is the point, Peter, is that he's too much up
at your place. Too much for his own good, too much for yours, and--too much
for--Clare's."

"Bobby!"

"Oh yes--I know I'm saying a serious thing--but you asked me for my advice
and I give it. I don't say that Cards means any harm but people will talk
and it wouldn't do you any damage in Clare's eyes either, Peter, if you
were to stand up to him a little."

Peter smiled. "Dear old Bobby! If any one else in the world had said such a
thing of course I should have been most awfully angry, but I've always
known how unfair you were about Cards. You never liked him, even in the
Dawson days. You just don't suit one another. But I tell you, Bobby, that
I'd trust Cards more than I'd trust any one in the world. Of course Clare
likes to be with him and of course he likes to be with her. They suit one
another exactly. Why, he's splendid! The other day when I'd been a perfect
beast--losing my temper like a boy of ten--you should have heard the way he
took it. One day, Bobby, you'll see how splendid he is."

Bobby said no more.

Peter went on again: "No, it's my mother-in-law's done the damage. You're
right, the thing to do is to get Clare alone and have it right out with
her. We'll clear the mists away."

Bobby said: "You know Peter, both Alice and I would do anything in the
world to make you happy--anything."

Peter gripped his hand.

"I know you would. If I could forget young Stephen," he caught his
breath--"Bobby, I see him everywhere, all the time. I lie awake hours at
night thinking about him. I see him in my sleep, see him sometimes
grown-up--splendid, famous.... Sometimes I think he comes back. I can see
him, lying on his back and looking up at the ceiling, and I say to myself,
'Now if you don't move he'll stay there' ... and then I move and he's gone.
And I haven't any one to talk about him to. I never know whether Clare
thinks of him or not. He was so splendid, Bobby, so strong. And he loved me
in the most extraordinary way. We'd have been tremendous pals if he'd
lived.

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