Fortitude

H >> Hugh Walpole >> Fortitude

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Nevertheless, it hurt, although it was only that young ass of a Galleon.
That, though, was one of the pits into which one must not look.

He felt the little square box that contained the ruby, lying there so
snugly in his pocket. That cheered him.

"I must be getting back. Good-night, everybody. See you at dinner, Bobby."

He went.

After Percival and his sister had also gone Alice said:--

"Dear Peter's growing up."

"Yes," said Bobby. "My sweet young brother wants the most beautiful kicking
and he'll get it very soon." Then he looked at the clock. "I must go up and
dress."

"I'm rather glad," said Alice, "I'm not coming. Clare gets considerably on
my nerves just at present."

"Yes," said Bobby, "but thank God Mr. Cardillac's in Paris--for the time
being." Then he added, reflectively--

"Dear old Peter--bless him!"

CHAPTER XV

MR. WESTCOTT SENIOR CALLS CHECKMATE

I

Peter felt as he closed the hall door behind him that The Roundabout was
both cold and dark. The little hall drew dusk into its corners very swiftly
and now, as he switched on the electric light, he was conscious almost of
protest on the part of the place, as though it wished that it might have
been left to its empty dusk.

A maid passed him.

"Has your mistress gone upstairs?" he asked her.

"I don't think she has come in, sir."

"Not come in?"

"No, sir, she went out about three o'clock. I don't think she's come back,
sir."

She's running it pretty close, he thought as he looked at his watch--then
he went slowly up to dress.

He had been more irritated by the superiorities of young Percival Galleon
than he had cared to confess. Peter had, at the bottom of his soul, a most
real and even touching humility. He had no kind of opinion of his
abilities, of his work in comparison with the other workers that counted.
Moreover he would not, were his ultimate critical sense aroused, fail to
admit to himself some certain standard of achievement. Nothing that young
Galleon could say mattered from the critical standpoint--nevertheless he
seemed to represent, in this case, a universal opinion; even in his
rejection of Peter one could see, behind him, a world of readers
withdrawing their approval.

"Peter Westcott's no good.... Peter Westcott's no good.... Peter Westcott's
no good...."

In any case that was quite enough to account for the oppression that he was
feeling--feeling with increasing force as the minutes passed. He undressed
and dressed again slowly, wondering vaguely, loosely, in the back of his
mind, why it was that Clare had not come in. Perhaps she had come in and
the maid had not heard her. He took the ruby out of his pocket, opened the
little case, looked at the jewel shining there under the electric light,
thought of Clare with a sudden rush of passionate affection. "Dear thing,
won't she look lovely in it? Her neck's so white and she's never worn much
jewellery--she'll be pleased. She'll know why I'm giving it to her now--a
kind of seal on what we agreed to the other night. A new life ... new
altogether...."

He was conscious as he took his shirt off that his windows were open and a
strange scent of burning leaves was with him in the room. It was quite
strong, pungent--very pleasant, that sense of burning. Burning leaves in
the orchard.... But it was rather cold. Then he came back to his
looking-glass and, standing there, naked save for his dress trousers, he
saw that he was looking in much better health than he had looked for weeks.
The colour had returned to his face, his eyes were brighter and more
alert--the lines had gone. He was strong and vigorous as he stood there,
his body shining under the glow. He opened and shut his hands feeling the
strength, force, in his fingers. Thick-set, sturdy, with his shoulders back
again now, straight, not bent as they had been.

"Oh, I'm all right--I'm all right you know. I'll write some stuff one
day..." and even behind that his thought was--"that young Galleon, by jove,
I could jolly well break him if I wanted to--just snap him up."

And then the odour of the burnt leaves filled his nostrils again; when he
had dressed he turned out the light, opened the windows more widely, and
stood for a moment there smelling the smoke, feeling the air on his
forehead, seeing the dark fluttering shadows of the trees, the silver moon,
the dim red haze of the London sky....

II

He went down to his study. Clare must be in now. Bobby would be here in a
few minutes. He took up the _Times_ but his mind wandered. "Mr. Penning
Bruce was at his best last night in the new musical Comedy produced at the
Apollo Theatre--the humour of his performance as Lieutenant Pottle, a
humour never exaggerated nor strained...."

But he couldn't attend. He looked up at the little clock and saw that it
was nearly dinner-time. Bobby ought to be here.

He stood up and listened. The house was profoundly silent. It was often
silent--but to-night it was as though everything in the house--the
furniture, the pictures--were listening--as though The Roundabout itself
listened.

He went into the hall--stood for a moment under the stairs--and then called
"Clare--Clare." He waited and then again "Clare, Clare--I say, it's late.
Come along--"

There was no answer.

Then, crossing the hall, he opened the door of the little drawing-room and
looked in. It was black and empty--here, too, he could smell the burning
leaves.

He switched on the light and instantly, perched against the Velasquez
Infanta, saw the letter, white and still before the pink and grey of the
picture. At the sight of the letter the room that had been empty and cold
was suddenly burning hot and filled with a thousand voices. "Take it--take
it--why don't you take it? It's been waiting there for you a long time and
we've all been wondering when you were coming in for it. It's waiting there
for you. Take it--take it--take it!"

At the sight of it too, the floor of the room seemed instantly to pitch,
slanting downwards, like the deck of a sinking ship. He caught on to the
back of a chair in order that he might not slip with it. His hands shook
and there was a great pain at his heart, as though some one were pulling it
tight, then squeezing it in their fingers and letting it go again.

Then, as suddenly, all his agitation fled. The room was cold and empty
again, and his hands were steady. He took the letter and read it.

It was written in great agitation and almost illegible, and at the bottom
of the paper there was a dirty smudge that might have been a tear stain or
a finger mark. It ran:

_I must go. I have been so unhappy for so long and we don't get on
together, Peter, now. You don't understand me and I must be happy. I had
always been happy until I married you--perhaps it's partly my fault but I
only hinder your work and there is some one else who loves me. He has
always said so.

I would not have gone perhaps if it had not been for what you did on April
12. I know because some one saw you getting into a cab at midnight with
that horrible woman. That shows that you don't care about me, Peter. But
perhaps I would have gone anyhow. Once, the night I told you about baby
coming, I told you there'd be a time when you'd have to hold me. It
came--and you didn't see it. You didn't care--you can't have loved me or
you would have seen.... But anything is better than staying here like this.
I am very unhappy now but you will not care. You are cruel and hard, Peter.
You have never understood what a woman wants.

I am going to Jerry in Paris. You can divorce me. I don't care about
anything now. I won't come back--I won't, I won't--Clare._

He read this all through, very carefully with a serious brow. He finished
it and then knew that he had not read a word of it. He went, slowly, to the
window and opened it because the room was of a stifling heat. Then he took
the letter again and read it. As he finished it again he was conscious that
the door-bell was ringing. He wondered why it was ringing.

He was standing in the middle of the room and speaking to himself: "The
humour of his performance as Lieutenant Pottle, a humour never exaggerated
nor strained ..."

"The humour of his Lieutenant Pottle as a performer--never strained...
never exaggerated... never strained..."

Bobby came in and found him there. Peter's face was so white that his
collar and shirt seemed to be a continuation of his body--a sudden gruesome
nakedness. Both his hands were shaking and his eyes were puzzled as though
he were asking himself some question that he could not solve.

Bobby started forward--

"God, Peter, what--"

"She's gone away, Bobby," Peter said, in a voice that shook a little but
was otherwise grave and almost a whisper, so low was it. "She's gone
away--to Cardillac." Then he added to himself--"Cardillac is my best
friend."

Then he said "Listen," and he read the letter straight through. He repeated
some of the phrases--"What you did on April 12." "That shows that you don't
care.... You are cruel and hard, Peter.... I am going to Jerry in
Paris...."

"Jerry--that's Cardillac, you know, Bobby. He's in Paris and she's going
over to him because she can't stand me any more. She says I don't care
about her. Isn't that funny, when I love her so much?"

Bobby went to him, put his arm round his neck--

"Peter--dear--Peter--wait," and then "Oh my God! we must stop her--"

He drew himself away from Bobby's arm and, very unsteadily, went across the
room and then stood against the farther wall, his head bent, motionless.

"Stop her? Oh! no, Bobby. Stop her when she wants to go! I--" His voice
wasn't Peter's voice, it was a thin monotonous voice like some one speaking
at a great distance.

Then it seemed that intelligence was flashed upon him. He lurched forward
and with a great voice--as though he had been struck by some sudden
agonising, immortal pain--

"Bobby--Bobby--My wife--Clare--"

And at that instant Mrs. Rossiter was shown into the room.

III

The maid who opened the door had apparently some suspicion that "things
were odd," because she waited for a moment before she closed the door
again, staring with wide eyes into the room, catching, perhaps, some hint
from her master's white face that something terrible had occurred.

It was obvious enough that Mrs. Rossiter had herself, during the last week,
been in no easy mind. From the first glances at Peter and Bobby she seemed
to understand everything, for, instantly, at that glimpse of their faces
she became, for the first time in her life, perhaps, a personality, a
figure, something defined and outlined.

Her face was suddenly grey. She hesitated back against the door and, with
her face on Peter, said in a whisper, to Bobby:

"What--what has happened?"

Bobby was not inclined to spare her. As an onlooker during these last
months he felt that she, perhaps, was more guiltily responsible for the
catastrophe than any other human being.

"Clare," he said, trying to fix her eyes. "She's gone off to Cardillac--to
Paris."

Then he was himself held by the tragedy of those two faces. They faced each
other across the room. Peter, with eyes and a mouth that were not his, eyes
not sane, the eyes of no human being, mouth smiling, drawn tight like a
razor's edge, with his hands spread out against the wall, watched Mrs.
Rossiter.

Mrs. Rossiter, at Bobby's words, had huddled up, suddenly broken, only her
eyes, in her great foolish expressionless face, stung to an agony to which
the rest of her body could not move.

Her little soul--a tiny scrap of a thing in that vague prison of dull
flesh--was suddenly wounded, desperately hurt by the only weapon that could
ever have found it.

"Clare!" that soul whispered, "not gone! It's not possible--it can't be--it
can't be!"

Peter, without moving, spoke to her.

"It's you that have sent her away. It's all your doing--all your doing--"

She scarcely seemed to realise him, although her eyes never left his
face--she came up to Bobby, her hands out:

"Bobby--please, please--tell me. This is absurd--there's a mistake. Clare,
Clare would never do a thing like that--never leave me like that--why--"
and her voice rose--"I've loved her--I've loved her as no mother ever loved
her girl--she's been everything to me. She knows it--why she often says
that I'm the only one who loves her. She'd never go--"

Then Peter came forward from the wall, muttering, waving his hands at
her--"It's you! You! You! You've driven her to this--you and your cursed
interference. You took her from me--you told her to deceive me in
everything. You taught her to lie and trick. She loved me before you came
into it. Now be proud, if you like--now be proud. God damn you, for making
your daughter into a whore--That's what you've done, you with your flat
face, your filthy flat face--you've made your daughter a whore, I tell
you--and it's nothing but you--you--you--!"

He lifted his hand as though he would strike her across the face. She said
nothing but started back with her hands up as though to protect herself. He
did not strike her. His hand fell. But she, as though she had felt a blow
had her hand held to her face.

He stood over her for a moment laughing, his head flung back. Then still
laughing he went away from them out into the hall.

Then, through the open door they heard him. He passed through the upper
rooms crying out as he went--"Clare! Clare! Where are you? Come down!
They're here for dinner! You're wanted! It's time, Clare!--where are you?
Clare! Clare!"

They heard him, knocking furniture over as he went. Then there was silence.
Mrs. Rossiter seemed, at that, to come to herself. She stood up, feeling
her cheek.

"It's sent him off his head, Bobby. Go after him. He'll hurt himself." Then
as though to herself, she went on--"I must find Clare--she'll be in Paris,
I suppose. I must go and find her, Bobby. She'll want me badly."

She went quietly from the room, still with her hand to her cheek. She
listened for a moment in the hall.

She turned round to Bobby:

"It doesn't say--the letter--where Clare's gone?"

"No--only Paris."

He helped her on with her cloak and opened the front door for her. She
slipped away down the street.

Bobby turned back and saw that Peter was coming down the stairs. But now
the fury had all died from his face, only that look, as of some animal
wounded to death, a look that was so deep and terrible as almost to give
his white face no expression at all, was with him.

It had been with him at Stephen's death, it was with him far more intensely
now. He looked at Bobby.

"She's gone," in a tired, dull voice as of some one nearly asleep, "gone to
Cardillac. I loved Cards--and all the time he loved Clare. I loved Clare
and all the time she loved Cards. It's damned funny isn't it, Bobby, old
man?"

He stood facing him in the hall, no part of him moving except his mouth.
"She says I treated her like a brute. I don't think I did. She says there
was something I did one night--I don't know. I've never done anything--I've
never been with another woman--something about a cab--Perhaps it was poor
Rose Bennett. Poor Rose Bennett--damned unhappy--so am I--so am I. I'm a
lonely fellow--I always have been!"

He went past Bobby, back into the little drawing-room. Bobby followed him.

He turned round.

"You can go now, Bobby. I shan't want you any more."

"No, I'm going to stay."

"I don't want you--I don't want any one."

"I'm going to stay."

"I'd rather you went, please."

"I'm going to stay."

Peter paid no more attention. He went and sat down on a chair by the
window. Bobby sat down on a chair near him.

Once Peter said: "They took my baby. They took my work. They've taken my
wife. They're too much for me. I'm beaten."

Then there was absolute silence in the house. The servants, who had heard
the tumbling of the furniture, crept, frightened to bed.

Thus The Roundabout, dark, utterly without sound, stayed through the night.
Once, from the chair by the window in the little drawing-room a voice said,
"I'm going back to Scaw House--to my father. I'm going back--to all of
them."

During many hours the little silver clock ticked cheerfully, seeing perhaps
with its little bright eyes, the two dark figures and wondering what they
did there.

BOOK IV

SCAW HOUSE

CHAPTER I

THE SEA

I

Peter Westcott was dead.

They put his body into the 11.50 from Paddington.

II

It was a day of high, swinging winds, of dappled skies, of shining gleaming
water. Bunches now and again of heavy black clouds clustered on the
horizon, the cows and horses in the fields were sharply defined, standing
out rigidly against a distant background. The sun came and was gone,
laughed and was instantly hidden, turned the world from light to shadow and
from shadow back to light again.

Peter's body was alone in the compartment. It was propped up against red
velvet that yielded with a hard, clenched resistance, something
uncomfortable, had the body minded. The eyes of the body were the high
blank windows of a deserted house. Behind them were rooms and passages, but
lately so gaily crowded, so eager, with their lights and fires, for
hustling life--now suddenly empty--swept of all its recent company, waiting
for new, for very different inhabitants.

The white hands motionless upon the knees, the eyes facing the light but
blind, the body still against the velvet, throughout the long, long day....

III

There were occasions when some one came and asked for his ticket. Some one
came once and asked him whether "He would take lunch." Once a woman,
flushed and excited, laden with parcels, tumbled into his carriage and
then, after a glance at the white face, tumbled out again.

Then, from very, very far away, came the first whispered breath of
returning consciousness. The afternoon sun now had banished the black
clouds--the wind had fallen--the sky was a quiet blue and birds rose and
fell, rivers shone and had passed, roads were white like ribbons, broad and
brown like crinkled paper, then ribbons again as the train flung
Devonshire, scornfully, behind its back. Peter was conscious that his body
was once more to be tenanted. But by whom?

Here was some one coming to him now, some one who, as the evening light
fell about the land, dark with his cloak to his face, came softly upon the
house and knocked at the door. Peter could hear his knock--it echoed
through the empty passages, the deserted rooms, it was a knock that
demanded, imperatively, admittance. The door swung back, the black passages
gaped upon the evening light and were closed again. The house was once more
silent--but no longer untenanted.

IV

Peter was now conscious of the world. That was Exeter that they had left
behind them and soon there would be Plymouth and then the crossing of the
bridge and then--Cornwall!

Cornwall! His lips were dry--he touched them with his tongue, and knew,
suddenly, that he was thirsty, more thirsty than he had ever been. He would
never be hungry again, but he would always be thirsty. An attendant passed.
What should he drink? The attendant suggested a whisky and soda. Yes ... a
large whisky....

It was very long indeed since he had been in Cornwall--he had not been
there since his boyhood. What had he been doing all the time in between? He
did not know--he had no idea. This new tenant of the house was not aware
of those intervening years, was only conscious that he was returning after
long exile, to his home--Scaw House, yes, that was the name ... the house
with the trees and the grey stone walls--yes, he would be glad to be at
home again with his father. His father would welcome him after so long an
absence.

The whisky and soda was brought to him and as he drank it they crossed the
border and were in Cornwall.

V

They were at Trewth, that little station where you must change for Treliss.
It stood open to all the winds of heaven, two lines of paling, a little
strip of platform, standing desolately, at wistful attention in the heart
of gently breathing fields, mild skies, dark trees bending together as
though whispering secrets ... all mysterious, and from the earth there rose
that breath--sea-wind, gorse, soil, saffron, grey stone--that breath that
is only Cornwall.

Peter--somewhere in some strange dim recesses of his soul--felt it about
his body. The wind, bringing all these scents, touched his cheek and his
hair and he was conscious that that dark traveller who now tenanted his
house closed the doors and windows upon that breath. It might waken
consciousness, and consciousness memory, and memory pain ... ah!
pain!--down with the shutters, bolt the doors--no vision of the outer world
must enter here.

The little station received gratefully the evening light that had descended
upon it. A few men and women, dim bundles of figures against the pale blue,
waited for the train, a crescent moon was stealing above the hedges, from
the chimneys of two little cottages grey smoke trembled in the air.

Suddenly there came to Peter, waiting there, the determination to drive. He
could not stand there, surrounded by this happy silence any longer. All
those shadows that were creeping about the dark spaces beyond his house
were only waiting for their moment when they might leap. This silence, this
peace, would give them that moment. He must drive--he must drive.

In the road outside the station a decrepit cab with a thin rake of a man
for driver was waiting for a possible customer. The cab was faded, the
wheels encrusted with ancient mud, the horse old and wheezy, but the
cabman, standing now thinner than ever against the sky, was, in spite of a
tattered top hat, filled with that cheerful optimism that belongs to the
Cornishman who sees an opportunity of "doing" a foreigner.

"I want to drive to Treliss," said Peter.

They bargained. The battered optimist obtained the price that he demanded
and cocked his eye, derisively, at the rising moon.

Peter surveyed the cab.

"I'll sit with you on the box," he said.

The thin driver made way for him. It was a high jolting cab of the
old-fashioned kind, a cab you might have sworn was Cornish had you seen it
anywhere, a cab that smelt of beer and ancient leather and salt water, a
cab that had once driven the fashion of Treliss to elegant dances and now
must rattle the roads with very little to see, for all your trouble, at the
end of it.

The sleeping fields, like grey cloths, stretched on every side of them and
the white road cut into the heart of the distance. It was a quarter to
eight and a blue dusk. The driver tilted the top hat over one ear and they
were off.

"I know this road as yer might say back'ards. Ask any one down along
Treliss way. Zachy Jackson they'll say--which is my name, sir, if yer
requirin' a good 'orse any time o' day. Zachy Jackson! which there ain't
no man,--tarkin' of 'orses, fit to touch 'im, they'll tell yer and not far
wrong either."

But now with every stumbling step of that bony horse Peter was being shaken
into a more active consciousness, consciousness not of the past, very
slightly of the present, but rather of an eager, excited anticipation of
events shortly to befall him, of the acute sense--the first that had, as
yet, come to him--that, very shortly, he was to plunge himself into an
absolute abandonment of all the restraints and discipline that had hitherto
held him. He did not know, he could not analyse to himself--for what
purpose those restraints had been formerly enforced upon his life. Only
now--at this moment, his body was being flooded with a warm, riotous
satisfaction at the thought of the indulgences that were to be his.

Still this fortress of his house was bare and desolated, but now in some of
the rooms there were lights, fire, whispers, half-hidden faces, eyes behind
curtains.

The wind struck him in the face. "Enough of this--you're done for--you're
beaten--you're broken... you're going back to your hovel. You're creeping
home--don't make a fine thing of it--" the wind said.

The top of the hill rolled up to them and suddenly with the gust that came
from every quarter there was borne some sound. It was very delicate, very
mysterious--the sound, one might fancy, that the earth would make if all
spring flowers were to pierce the soil at one common instant--so fugitive a
whisper.

"That's the sea," said Mr. Jackson, waving his whip in the air, "down to
Dunotter Cove. There's a wind to-night. It'll blow rough presently."

Now from their hilltop in the light of a baby moon puddles of water shone
like silk, hedges were bending lines of listeners, far on the horizon a
black wood, there in one of those precipitous valleys cottages cowering,
overhead the blue night sky suddenly chequered with solemn pompous slowly
moving clouds. But here on the hilltop at any rate, a bustle of wind--such
a noise amongst the hedges and the pools instantly ruffled and then quiet
again; and so precipitous a darkness when a cloud swallowed the moon. In
the daylight that landscape, to any who loved not Cornwall, would seem ugly
indeed, with a grey cottage stuck here and there naked upon the moor, with
a bare deserted engine house upon the horizon, with trees, deep in the
little valley, but scant and staggering upon the hill--ugly by day but now
packed with a mystery that contains everything that human language has no
name for, there is nothing to do, on beholding it, but to kneel down and
worship God. Mr. Jackson had seen it often before and he went twice to
chapel every Sunday, so he just whipped up his horse and they stumbled down
the road.

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