Sewell Ford - "Torchy and Vee"

Edward Gibbon - "The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 5"

Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof - "Dua Libro de l' Lingvo Internacia"

Edward S. Ellis - "Two Boys in Wyoming"

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 sat with his teeth set, staring out into the world. He had known from
the first sentence of her appeal to him that she had named the one thing
that could give him courage to fight his cowardice. Some one had once said:
"If any one soul of us is all the world, this world and the next, to any
other soul, then whoever it may be that thus loves us, the inadequacy of
our return, the hopeless debt of us, must strike us to our knees with an
utter humility."

So did he feel now. Out of the wreck there had survived this one thing.
He remembered what Henry Galleon had once said about Fortitude, that the
hardest trial of all to bear was the consciousness of having missed the
Finest Thing. All these years she had been there by the side of him and he
had scarcely thought of her--now, even as he watched her, she was slipping
away from him, and soon he would be left alone with the consciousness of
missing the greatest chance of his life.

The one thing that he could do in return was to give her what she asked.
But it was hard--he was under no illusion as to the desperate determination
that it would demand. The supreme moment of his life had come. For the
first time he was going to fling away the old Peter Westcott altogether.
He could feel it clinging to him. About him, in the air, spirits were
fighting. He had never before needed Courage as he was needing it now. It
seemed to him that he had to stand up to all the devils in the world--they
were thick on every side of him.

Then, with a great uplifting of strength, with a courage that he had never
known before, he picked up Peter Westcott in his hands, held him, that
miserable figure, high in air, raised him, then flung him with all his
strength out, away, far into space, never to return, never to encumber the
earth again.

"I'll go back," Peter said--and as he said it, there was no elation in him,
only a clear-sighted vision of a life of struggle, toil, torment, defeat,
in front of him, something so hard and arduous that the new Peter Westcott
that had now been born seemed small indeed to face it.

But nevertheless he knew that at the moment that he said those words he had
broken into pieces the spell that had been over him for so many years. That
Beast in him that had troubled him for so long, all the dark shadows of
Scaw House ... these were at an end.

He felt tired, discouraged, no fine creature, as he turned to her, but he
knew that, from that moment, a new life had begun for him.

He put his arms round Norah Monogue and kissed her.


V

He got up very early next morning and went down to the Harbour. The
fishing-boats were coming in; great flocks of gulls, waiting for the spoil
that was soon to be theirs, were wheeling in clouds about the brown sails.

The boats stole, one after another, around the pier. The air was filled
with shrill cries--the only other sound was the lapping of the water as it
curled up the little beach.

As Peter stood there there crept upon him a sensation of awe. He took off
his hat. The gulls seemed to cease their cries.

As another brown sail stole round the white point, gleaming' now in the
sun, he knew, with absolute certainty, that Norah Monogue was dead.




CHAPTER IV

THE GREY HILL


I

The day of Norah Monogue's funeral was fine and clear. Peter and little Mr.
Bannister were the only mourners and it was Peter's wish that she should be
buried in the little windy graveyard of the church where his mother had
been buried.

There was always a wind on that little hill, but to-day it was gentler than
he had ever known it before. His mind went back to that other funeral, now,
as it seemed, such a lifetime ago. Out of all the world these two women
only now seemed to abide with him. As he stood beside the grave he was
conscious that there was about him a sense of peace and rest such as he
had never known before. Could it be true that some of Norah Monogue's fine
spirit had come to him? Were they, in sober fact to go on together during
the remainder of his days?

He lingered for a little looking down upon the grave. He was glad to think
that he had made her last hours happy.

Indeed she had not lived in vain.


II

Heavy black clouds were banking upon the horizon as he went down the hill
and struck the Sea Road in the direction of Scaw House. Except in that far
distance the sky was a relentless, changeless blue. Every detail in the
scene was marked with a hard outline, every sound, the sea, the Bell Rock,
the cries of sheep, the nestling trees, was doubly insistent.

He banged the knocker upon the Scaw House door and when the old woman came
to open to him he saw that something had occurred. Her hair fell about her
neck, her face was puckered with distress and her whole appearance was
dismayed.

"Is my father in?" he asked.

"He is, but he's ill," she answered him, eyeing him doubtfully. "He won't
know yer--I doubt he'll know any one. He's had a great set-back--"

Peter pushed past her into the hall--"Is he ill?"

"Indeed he is. He was suddenly took--the other evenin' I being in my
kitchen heard a great cry. I came runnin' and there in the dining-room I
found him, standing there in the midst, his hands up. His eyes, you must
understand, sir, were wide and staring--'They've beaten me,' he cried,
'They've beaten me'--just like that, sir, and then down he tumbled in a
living fit, foaming at the mouth and striking his poor head against the
fender. Yer may come up, sir, but he won't know yer which he doesn't me
either."

Peter followed her up to the dreary room that his father inhabited. Even
here the paper was peeling off the walls, some of the window-glass was
broken and the carpet was torn. His father lay on his back in an old high
four-poster. His eyes stared before him, cheeks were ashen white--his hands
too were white like ivory.

His lips moved but he made no sound. He did not see Peter, nor did his eyes
turn from the blank stare that held them.

"Has he a doctor?" Peter asked the old woman.

"Ay--there's a young man been coming--" the old woman answered him. She
was, he noticed, more subservient than she had been on the former occasion.
She obviously turned to him now with her greedy old eyes as the one who was
likely soon to be in authority.

Peter turned back to the door. "This room must be made warmer and more
comfortable. I will send a doctor from the hotel this evening--I will come
in again to-night."

As he looked about the poor room, as he saw the dust that the sunlight made
so visible, he wondered that the house of cards could so recently have
held him within its shadow. He felt as though he had passed through some
terrible nightmare that the light of day rendered not only fantastic but
incredible. That old Peter Westcott had indeed been flung out of the high
window of Norah Monogue's room.

Leaving Scaw House on his right he struck through the dark belt of trees
and came out at the foot of the Grey Hill. The dark belt of cloud was
spreading now fast across the blue--soon it would catch the sun--the Tower
itself was already swallowed by a cold grey shadow.

Peter began to climb the hill, and remembered that he had not been there
since that Easter morning when he had kissed an unknown lady and so flung
fine omens about his future.

Soon he had reached the little green mound that lay below the Giant's
Finger. Although the Grey Hill would have been small and insignificant in
hilly country here, by its isolation, it assumed importance. On every side
of it ran the sand-dunes--in front of it, almost as it seemed up to its
very feet, ran the sea. Treliss was completely hidden, not a house could
be seen. The black clouds now had caught the sea and only far away to the
right the waves still glittered, for the rest it was an inky grey with a
touch of white here and there where submerged rocks found breakers. For one
moment the sun had still evaded the cloud, then it was caught and the world
was instantly cold.

Peter, as he sat there, felt that if he were only still enough the silence
would soon be vocal. The Hill, the Sea, the Sky--these things seemed to
have summoned him there that they might speak to him.

He was utterly detached from life. He looked down from a height in air and
saw his little body sitting there as he had done on the day when he had
proposed to Clare. He might think now of the long journey that it had come,
he might watch the course of its little history, see the full circle that
it had travelled, wonder for what new business it was now to prepare.

For full circle he had come. He, Peter Westcott, sat there, as naked, as
alone, as barren of all rewards, of all success, of all achievements as he
had been when, so many years ago he had watched that fight in the inn on
Christmas Eve. The scene passed before him again--he saw himself, a tiny
boy, swinging his legs from the high chair. He saw the room thick with
smoke, the fishermen, Dicky the Fool, the mistletoe swinging, the snow
blocking in from outside, the fight--it was all as though it passed once
more before his eyes.

His whole life came to him--the scenes at Scaw House, Dawson's, the
bookshop, Brockett's, Bucket Lane, Chelsea, that last awful scene there ...
all the people that he had known passed before him--Stephen Brant, his
grandfather, his father, his mother, Bobby Galleon, Mr. Zanti, Clare,
Cards, Mrs. Brockett, Norah, Henry Galleon, Mrs. Rossiter, dear Mrs. Launce
... these and many more. He could see them all dispassionately now; how
that other Peter Westcott had felt their contact; how he had longed for
their friendship, dreaded their anger, missed them, wanted them, minded
their desertion....

Now, behold, they were all gone. Alone on this Hill with the great sea at
his feet, with the storm rolling up to him, Peter Westcott thought of his
wife and his son, his friends and his career--thought of everything that
had been life to him, yes, even his sins, his temptations, his desires for
the beast in man, his surly temper, his furious anger, his selfishness, his
lack of understanding--all these things had been taken away from him, every
trail had been given to him--and now, naked, on a hill, he knew the first
peace of his life.

And as he knew, sitting there, that thus Peace had come to him, how odd it
seemed that only a few weeks ago he had been coming down to Cornwall with
his soul, as he had then thought, killed for ever.

The world had seemed, utterly, absolutely, for ever at an end; and now
here he was, sitting here, eager to go back into it all again, wanting--it
almost seemed--to be bruised and battered all over again.

And perceiving this showed him what was indeed the truth that all his life
had been only Boy's History. He had gone up--he had gone down--he had loved
and hated, exulted and despaired, but it was all with a boy's intense
realisation of the moment, with a boy's swift, easy transition from one
crisis to another.

It had been his education--and now his education was over. As he had said
those words to Norah Monogue, "I will go back," he had become a man. Never
again would Life be so utterly over as it had been two months ago--never
again would he be so single-hearted in his reserved adoption of it as he
had been those days ago, at Norah Monogue's side.

He saw that always, through everything that boy, Peter Westcott had been
in the way. It was not until he had taken, on that day in Norah Monogue's
room, Peter Westcott in his hands and flung him to the four winds that he
had seen how terribly in the way he had been. "Go back," Norah had said to
him; "you have done all these things for yourself and you have been beaten
to your knees--go back now and do something for others. You have been brave
for yourself--be brave now for others."

And he was going back.

He was going back, as he had seen on that day, to no easy life. He was
going to take up all those links that had been so difficult for him
before--he was going to learn all over again that art that he had fancied
that he had conquered at the very first attempt--he was going now with no
expectations, no hopes, no ambitions. Life was still an adventure, but now
an adventure of a hard, cruel sort, something that needed an answer grim
and dark.

The storm was coming up apace. The wind had risen and was now rushing over
the short stiff grass, bellowing out to meet the sea, blowing back to meet
the clouds that raced behind the hill.

The sky was black with clouds. Peter could see the sand rising from the
dunes in a thin mist.

Peter flung himself upon his back. The first drops of rain fell, cold, upon
his face. Then he heard:

"Peter Westcott! Peter Westcott!"

"I'm here!"

"What have you brought to us here?"

"I have brought nothing."

"What have you to offer us?"

"I can offer nothing."

He got up from the ground and faced the wind. He put his back to the
Giant's Finger because of the force of the gale. The rain was coming down
now in torrents.

He felt a great exultation surge through his body.

Then the Voice--not in the rain, nor the wind, nor the sea, but yet all
of these, and coming as it seemed from the very heart of the Hill, came
swinging through the storm--

"Have you cast _This_ away, Peter Westcott?"

"And this?"

"That also--"

"And this?"

"This also?"

"And this?"

"I have flung this, too, away."

"Have you anything now about you that you treasure?"

"I have nothing."

"Friends, ties, ambitions?"

"They are all gone."

Then out of the heart of the storm there came Voices:--

"Blessed be Pain and Torment and every torture of the Body ... Blessed be
Plague and Pestilence and the Illness of Nations....

"Blessed be all Loss and the Failure of Friends and the Sacrifice of
Love....

"Blessed be the Destruction of all Possessions, the Ruin of all Property,
Fine Cities, and Great Palaces....

"Blessed be the Disappointment of all Ambitions....

"Blessed be all Failure and the ruin of every Earthly Hope....

"Blessed be all Sorrows, Torments, Hardships, Endurances that demand
Courage....

"Blessed be these things--for of these things cometh the making of a
Man...."

Peter, clinging to the Giant's Finger, staggered in the wind. The world was
hidden now in a mist of rain. He was alone--and he was happy, happy, as he
had never known happiness, in any time, before.

The rain lashed his face and his body. His clothes clung heavily about him.

He answered the storm:

"Make of me a man--to be afraid of nothing ... to be ready for
everything--love, friendship, success ... to take if it comes ... to care
nothing if these things are not for me--

"Make me brave! Make me brave!"

He fancied that once more against the wall of sea-mist he saw tremendous,
victorious, the Rider on the Lion. But now, for the first time, the Rider's
face was turned towards him--

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