Ivan Turgenev - "A Desperate Character and Other Stories"

Andrew Lang, Ed. - "The Green Fairy Book"

New York Times - "Current History, A Monthly Magazine"

H. Belloc - "First and Last"

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




It was a fierce night and the wind rushed up the high road as though it
would tear Peter off his feet and fling him into the sea, but he walked
sturdily, no cap on his head and the wind streaming through his hair. Some
way along the road he found a child crying in a ditch. He loved children,
and, picking the small boy up, he found that he had been sent for beer to
the Cap and Feathers, at the turn of the road, and been blown by the wind
into the ditch and was almost dead with terror. At first at the sight of
Peter the child had cried out, but at the touch of his warm hand and at the
sound of his laugh he had been suddenly comforted, and trotted down the
road with his hand in Peter's and his tears dried.

Peter's way with the children of the place was sharp and entirely lacking
in sentiment--"Little idiot, to fall into the ditch like that--not much of
the man about you, young Thomas."

"Isn't Thomas," said the small boy with a chuckle, "I be Jan Proteroe, and
I beant afeart only gert beast come out of hedge down along with eyes and a
tail--gum!"

He would have told Peter a great deal more but he was suddenly frightened
again by the dark hedges and began to whimper, so Peter picked him up and
carried him to his cottage at the end of the road and kissed him and pushed
him in at the lighted door. He was cheered by the little incident and felt
less lonely. At the thought of making Stephen once more his friend his
heart warmed. Stephen had been wanting him, perhaps, all this time to come
to him but had been afraid that he might be interfering if he asked
him--and how glad they would be to see one another!

After all, they needed one another. They had both had hard times, they were
both lonely and no distance nor circumstances could lessen that early bond
that there had been between them. Happier than he had been for many weeks,
he struck off the road and started across the fields, stumbling over the
rough soil and plunging sometimes into ditches and pools of water. The rain
had begun to fall and the whispering hiss that it made as it struck the
earth drowned the more distant noise of the sea that solemnly broke beyond
the bending fields. Stephen's farm stood away from all other houses, and
Peter as he pressed forward seemed to be leaving all civilisation behind
him. He was cold and his boots were heavy with thick wet mud and his hair
was soaked.

Beyond the fields was a wood through which he must pass before he reached
Stephen's farm, and as the trees closed about him and he heard the rain
driving through the bare branches the world seemed to be full of chattering
noises. The confidence that he had had in Stephen's reception of him
suddenly deserted him and a cold miserable unhappiness crept about him in
this wet, heaving world of wind and rain and bare naked trees. Like a great
cry there seemed to come suddenly to him through the wood his mother's
voice appealing for help, so that he nearly turned, running back. It was a
hard, cruel place this world--and all the little ditches and hollows of the
wood were running with brown, stealthy water.

He broke through it at last and saw at the bottom of the hill Stephen's
house, and he saw that there were no lights in the windows. He stood on the
breast of the little hill for a moment and thought that he would turn back,
but it was raining now with great heaviness and the wind at his back seemed
to beat him down the hill. Suddenly seized with terror at the wood behind
him, he ran stumbling down the slope. He undid the gate and pitched into
the yard, plunging into great pools of water and seeing on every side of
him the uncertain shapes of the barns and sheds and opposite him the great
dark front of the house, so black in its unfriendliness, sharing in the
night's rough hostility.

He shouted "Stephen," but his voice was drowned by the storm and the gate
behind him, creaking on its hinges, answered him with shrill cries. He
found the little wicket that led into the garden, and, stepping over the
heavy wet grass, he banged loudly with the knocker on the door and called
again "Stephen." The noise echoed through the house and then the silence
seemed to be redoubled. Then pushing the great knocker, he found to his
surprise that the door was unfastened and swung back before him. He felt
his way into the dark hall and struck a match. He shouted "Stephen" once
more and his voice came echoing back to him. The place seemed to be
entirely deserted--the walls were wet with damp, there were no carpets
on the floor, a window at the end of the passage showed its uncurtained
square.

He passed into the kitchen, and here he found two candles and lighted
them. Here also he found signs of life. On the bare deal table was a
half-finished meal--a loaf of bread, cheese, butter, an empty whisky bottle
lying on its side. Near these things there was a table, and on the floor,
beside an overturned chair, there was a gun. Peter picked it up and saw
that it was unloaded. There was something terribly desolate about these
things; the room was very bare, a grandfather clock ticked solemnly in the
corner, there were a few plates and cups on the dresser, an old calendar
hung from a dusty nail and, blown by the wind from the cracked window,
tip-tapped like a stealthy footstep against the wall. But Peter felt
curiously certain that Stephen was going to return; something held him in
his chair and he sat there, with his hands on the deal table, facing the
clock and listening. The wind howled beyond the house, the rain lashed the
panes, and suddenly--so suddenly that his heart leapt to his mouth--there
was a scratching on the door. He went to the door and opened it and found
outside a wretched sheep-dog, so starved that the bones showed through the
skin, and so weak that he could scarcely drag himself along. Peter let
him in and the animal came up to him and looked up in his eyes and, very
faintly, wagged his tail. Peter gave him the bread, which the dog devoured,
and then they both remained silent, without moving, the dog's head between
Peter's knees.

The boy must have slept, because he woke suddenly to all the clocks in the
house striking midnight, and in the silence the house seemed to be full of
clocks. They came running down the stairs and up and down the passages and
then, with a whir and a clatter, ceased as instantly as they had begun.

The house was silent again--the storm had died down--and then the dog that
had been sleeping suddenly raised its head and barked. Somewhere in the
distance a door was banged to, and then Peter heard a voice, a tremendous
voice, singing.

There were heavy steps along the passage, then the kitchen door was banged
open and Stephen stood in the doorway. Stephen's shirt was open at the
neck, his hair waved wildly over his forehead, he stood, enormous, with his
legs apart, his eyes shining, blood coming from a cut in his cheek, and
in one of his hands was a thick cudgel. Standing there in the doorway, he
might have been some ancient Hercules, some mighty Achilles.

He saw Peter, recognised him, but continued a kind of triumphal hymn that
he was singing.

"Ho, Master Peter, I've beat him! I've battered his bloody carcass! I came
along and I looked in at the winder and I saw 'im a ill-treatin' of 'er.

"I left the winder, I broke the glass, I was down upon 'im, the dirty
'ound, and"--(chorus)--"I've battered 'is bloody carcass! Praise be the
Lord, I got 'im one between the eyes--"

"Praise be, I 'it him square in the jaw and the blood came a-pourin' out of
his mouth and down 'e went, and--

(Chorus) "I've battered 'is bloody carcass--

"There she was, cryin' in the corner of the room, my lovely girl, and there
'e was, blast 'is bones, with 'is 'and on her lovely 'air, and--

(Chorus) "I've battered 'is bloody carcass.

"I got 'im one on the neck and I got 'im one between 'is lovely eyes and I
got 'im one on 'is lovely nose, and 'e went down straight afore me, and--

(Chorus) "I've battered 'is bloody carcass!"

Peter knew that it must be Mr. Samuel Burstead to whom Stephen was
referring, and he too, as he listened, was suddenly filled with a sense of
glory and exultation. Here after all was a way out of all trouble, all this
half-seen, half-imagined terror of the past weeks. Here too was an end to
all Stephen's morbid condition, sitting alone by himself, drinking, seeing
no one--now that he'd got Burstead between the eyes life would be a
vigorous, decent thing once more.

Stephen stopped his hymn and came and put his arm round Peter's neck.
"Well, boy, to think of you coming round this evening. All these months
I've been sittin' 'ere thinking of you--but I've been in a nasty, black
state, Master Peter, doing nothing but just brood. And the devils got
thicker and thicker about me and I was just going off my head thinking of
my girl in the 'ands of that beast up along. At last to-night I suddenly
says, 'Stephen, my fine feller, you've 'ad enough of this,' I says. 'You go
up and 'ave a good knock at 'im,' I says, 'and to-morrer marnin' you just
go off to another bit o' country and start doin' something different.' Up I
got and I caught hold of this stick here and out up along I walked. Sure
enough there 'e was, through the winder, bullyin' her and she crying. So I
just jumped through the winder and was up on to 'im. Lord, you should 'ave
seen 'im jump.

"'Fair fight, Sam Burstead,' I says.

"'Yer bloody pirate!' says 'e.

"'Pirate, is it?' says I, landing him one--and at that first feel of my
'and along o' 'is cheek all these devils that I've been sufferin' from just
turned tail and fled.

"Lord, I give it 'im! Lord, I give it 'im!

"He's living, I reckon, but that's about all 'e is doing. And then, without
a word to 'er, I come away, and here I am, a free man ... and to-morrer
marning I go out to tramp the world a bit--and to come back one day when
she wants me."

And then in Peter there suddenly leapt to life a sense of battle, of
glorious combat and conflict.

As he stood there in the bare kitchen--he and Stephen there under the light
of the jumping candle--with the rain beating on the panes, the trees of the
wood bending to the wind, he was seized, exalted, transformed with a sense
of the vigour, the adventure, the surprising energy of life.

"Stephen! Stephen!" he cried. "It's glorious! By God! I wish I'd been
there!"

Stephen caught him by the arm and held him. The old dog came from under the
table and wagged his tail.

"Bless my soul," said Stephen, looking at him, "all these weeks I've been
forgetting him. I've been in a kind of dream, boy--a kind o' dream. Why
didn't I 'it 'im before? Lord, why didn't I 'it 'im before!"

Peter at the word thought of his mother.

"Yes," he thought, with clenched teeth, "I'll go for them!"




CHAPTER VIII

PETER AND HIS MOTHER


I

He had returned over the heavy fields, singing to a round-faced moon. In
the morning, when he woke after a night of glorious fantastic dreams, and
saw the sun beating very brightly across his carpet and birds singing
beyond his window, he felt still that same exultation.

It seemed to him, as he sat on his bed, with the sun striking his face,
that last night he had been brought into touch with a vigour that
challenged all the mists and vapours by which he had felt himself
surrounded. That was the way that now he would face them.

Looking back afterwards, he was to see that that evening with Stephen flung
him on to all the events that so rapidly followed.

Moreover, above all the sensation of the evening there was also a
triumphant recognition of the fact that Stephen had now been restored to
him. He might never see him again, but they were friends once more, he
could not be lonely now as he had been....

And then, coming out of the town into the dark street and the starlight, he
thought that he recognised a square form walking before him. He puzzled his
brain to recall the connection and then, as he passed Zachary Tan's shop,
the figure turned in and showed, for a moment, his face.

It was that strange man from London, Mr. Emilio Zanti....


II

It seemed to Peter that now at Scaw House the sense of expectation that had
been with them all during the last weeks was charged with suspense--at
supper that night his aunt burst suddenly into tears and left the room.
Shortly afterwards his father also, without a word, got up from the table
and went upstairs....

Peter was left alone with his grandfather. The old man, sunk beneath his
pile of cushions, his brown skinny hand clenching and unclenching above the
rugs, was muttering to himself. In Peter himself, as he stood there by the
fire, looking down on the old man, there was tremendous pity. He had never
felt so tenderly towards his grandfather before; it was, perhaps, because
he had himself grown up all in a day. Last night had proved that one was
grown up indeed, although one was but seventeen. But it proved to him still
more that the time had come for him to deal with the situation all about
him, to discover the thing that was occupying them all so deeply.

Peter bent down to the cushions.

"Grandfather, what's the matter with the house?"

He could hear, faintly, beneath the rugs something about "hell" and "fire"
and "poor old man."

"Grandfather, what's the matter with the house?" but still only "Poor old
man ... poor old man ... nobody loves him ... nobody loves him ... to hell
with the lot of 'em ... let 'em grizzle in hell fire ... oh! such nasty
pains for a poor old man."

"Grandfather, what's the matter with the house?"

The old brown hand suddenly stopped clenching and unclenching, and out from
the cushions the old brown head with its few hairs and its parchment face
poked like a withered jack-in-the-box.

"Hullo, boy, you here?"

"Grandfather, what's the matter with the house?"

The old man's fingers, sharp like pins, drew Peter close to him.

"Boy, I'm terribly frightened. I've been having such dreams. I thought I
was dead--in a coffin...."

But Peter whispered in his ear:

"Grandfather--tell me--what's the matter with every one here?"

The old man's eyes were suddenly sharp, like needles.

"Ah, he wants to know that, does he? He's found out something at last, has
he? _I_ know what they were about. They've been at it in here, boy, too.
Oh, yes! for weeks and weeks--killing your mother, that's what my son's
been doing ... frightening her to death.... He's cruel, my son. I had the
Devil once, and now he's got hold of me and that's why I'm here. Mind you,
boy," and the old man's ringers clutched him very tightly--"if you don't
get the better of the Devil you'll be just like me one of these days. So'll
he be, my son, one day. Just like me--and then it'll be your turn, my boy.
Oh, they Westcotts!... Oh! my pains! Oh! my pains!... Oh! I'm a poor old
man!--poor old man!"

His head sunk beneath the cushions again and his muttering died away like
a kettle when the lid has been put on to it.

Peter had been kneeling so as to catch his grandfather's words. Now he drew
himself up and with frowning brows faced the room. Had he but known it he
was at that moment exactly like his father.

He went slowly up to his attic.

His little book-case had gained in the last two years--there were now
three of Henry Galleon's novels there. Bobby had given him one, "Henry
Lessingham," shining bravely in its red and gold; he had bought another,
"The Downs," second hand, and it was rather tattered and well thumbed.
Another, "The Roads," was a shilling paper copy. He had read these three
again and again until he knew them by heart, almost word by word. He took
down "Henry Lessingham" now and opened it at a page that was turned down.
It is Book III, chapter VI, and there is this passage:

_But, concerning the Traveller who would enter the House of
Courage there are many lands that must be passed on the road
before he rest there. There is, first, the Land of Lacking All
Things--that is hard to cross. There is, Secondly, the Land of
Having All Things. There is the Traveller's Fortitude most hardly
tested. There is, Thirdly, The Land of Losing All Those Things
that One Hath Possessed. That is a hard country indeed for the
memory of the pleasantness of those earlier joys redoubleth the
agony of lacking them. But at the end there is a Land of ice and
snow that few travellers have compassed, and that is the Land of
Knowing What One Hath Missed.... The Bird was in the hand and one
let it go ... that is the hardest agony of all the journey ... but
if these lands be encountered and surpassed then doth the Traveller
at length possess his soul and is master of it ... this is the
Meaning and Purpose of Life._

Peter read on through those pages where Lessingham, having found these
words in some old book, takes courage after his many misadventures and
starts again life--an old man, seventy years of age, but full of hope ...
and then there is his wonderful death in the Plague City, closing it all
like a Triumph.

The night had come down upon the house. Over the moor some twinkling light
broke the black darkness and his candle blew in the wind. Everything was
very still and as he clutched his book in his hand he knew that he was
frightened. His grandfather's words had filled him with terror. He felt not
only that his father was cruel and had been torturing his mother for many
years because he loved to hurt, but he felt also that it was something in
the blood, and that it would come upon him also, in later years, and that
he might not be able to beat it down. He could understand definite things
when they were tangible before his eyes but here was something that one
could not catch hold of, something....

After all, he was very young--But he remembered, with bated breath, times
at school when he had suddenly wanted to twist arms, to break things, to
hurt, when suddenly a fierce hot pleasure had come upon him, when a boy had
had his leg broken at football.

Dropping the book, shuddering, he fell upon his knees and prayed to what
God he knew not.... "Then doth the Traveller at length possess his soul and
is master of it ... this is the meaning and purpose of life."

At last he rose from his knees, physically tired, as though it had been
some physical struggle. But he was quiet again ... the terror had left him,
but he knew now with what beasts he had got to wrestle....

At supper that night he watched his father. Curiously, after his struggle
of the afternoon, all terror had left him and he felt as though he was of
his father's age and strength.

In the middle of the meal he spoke:

"How is mother to-night, father?"

He had never asked about his mother before, but his voice was quite even
and steady. His aunt dropped her knife clattering on to her plate.

His father answered him:

"Why do you wish to know?"

"It is natural, isn't it? I am afraid that she is not so well."

"She is as well as can be expected."

They said no more, but once his father suddenly looked at him, as though he
had noticed some new note in his voice.


III

On the next afternoon his father went into Truro. A doctor came
occasionally to the house--a little man like a beaver--but Peter felt that
he was under his father's hand and he despised him.

It was a clear Autumn afternoon with a scent of burning leaves in the air
and heavy massive white clouds were piled in ramparts beyond the brown
hills. It was so still a day that the sea seemed to be murmuring just
beyond the garden-wall. The house was very silent; Mrs. Trussit was in the
housekeeper's room, his grandfather was sleeping in the dining-room. The
voices of some children laughing in the road came to him so clearly that
it seemed to Peter impossible that his father ... and, at that, he knew
instantly that his chance had come. He must see his mother now--there might
not be another opportunity for many weeks.

He left his room and stood at the head of the stairs listening. There was
no sound.

He stole down very softly and then waited again at the end of the long
passage. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall drove him down
the passage. He listened again outside his mother's door--there was no
sound from within and very slowly he turned the handle.

As the door opened his senses were invaded by that air of medicine and
flowers that he had remembered as a very small boy--he seemed to be
surrounded by it and great white vases on the mantelpiece filled his eyes,
and the white curtains at the window blew in the breeze of the opening
door.

His aunt was sitting, with her eternal sewing, by the fire and she rose as
he entered. She gave a little startled cry, like a twittering bird, as she
saw that it was he and she came towards him with her hand out. He did not
look at the bed at all, but bent his eyes gravely upon his aunt.

"Please, aunt--you must leave us--I want to speak to my mother."

"No--Peter--how could you? I daren't--I mustn't--your father--your mother
is asleep," and then, from behind them, there came a very soft voice--

"No--let us be alone--please, Jessie."

Peter did not, even then, turn round to the bed, but fixed his eyes on his
aunt.

"The doctor--" she gasped, and then, with frightened eyes, she picked up
her sewing and crept out.

Then he turned round and faced the bed, and was suddenly smitten with great
shyness at the sight of that white, tired face, and the black hair about
the pillow.

"Well, mother," he said, stupidly.

But she smiled back at him, and although her voice was very small and
faint, she spoke cheerfully and as though this were an ordinary event.

"Well, you've come to see me at last, Peter," she said.

"I mustn't stay long," he answered, gruffly, as he moved awkwardly towards
the bed.

"Bring your chair close up to the bed--so--like that. You have never come
to sit in here before. Peter, do you know that?"

"Yes, mother." He turned his eyes away and looked on to the floor.

"You have come in before because you have been told to. To-day you were not
told--why did you come?"

"I don't know.... Father's in Truro."

"Yes, I know." He thought he caught, for an instant, a strange note in her
voice. "But he will not be back yet."

There was a pause--a vast golden cloud hung like some mountain boulder
beyond the window and some of its golden light seemed to steal over the
white room.

"Is it bad for you talking to me?" at last he said, gruffly, "ought I to go
away?"

Suddenly she clutched his strong brown hand with her thin wasted fingers,
with so convulsive a grasp that his heart began to beat furiously.

"No--don't go--not until it is time for your father to come back. Isn't it
strange that after all these years this is the first time that we should
have a talk. Oh! so many times I've wanted you to come--and when you _did_
come--when you were very little--you were always so frightened that you
would not let me touch you--"

"_They_ frightened me...."

"Yes--I know--but now, at last, we've got a little time
together--and we must talk--quickly. I want you to tell me
everything--everything--everything.... First, let me look at you...."

She took his head between her pale, slender hands and looked at him. "Oh,
you are like him!--your father--wonderfully like." She lay back on the
pillows with a little sigh. "You are very strong."

"Yes, I am going to be strong for you now. I am going to look after you.
They shan't keep us apart any more."

"Oh, Peter, dear," she shook her head almost gaily at him. "It's too late."

"Too late?"

"Yes, I'm dying--at last it's come, after all these years when I've wanted
it so much. But now I'm not sorry--now that we've had this talk--at last.
Oh! Peter dear, I've wanted you so dreadfully and I was never strong enough
to say that you must come ... and they said that you were noisy and it
would be bad for me. But I believe if you had come earlier I might have
lived."

"But you mustn't die--you mustn't die--I'll see that they have another
doctor from Truro. This silly old fool here doesn't know what he's
about--I'll go myself."

"Oh! how strong your hands are, Peter! How splendidly strong! No, no one
can do anything now. But oh! I am happy at last..." She stroked his cheek
with her hand--the golden light from the great cloud filled the room and
touched the white vases with its colour.

"But quick, quick--tell me. There are so many things and there is so little
time. I want to know everything--your school? Here when you were
little?--all of it--"

But he was gripping the bed with his hands, his chest was heaving. Suddenly
he broke down and burying his head in the bed-clothes began to sob as
though his heart would break. "Oh! now ... after all this time ... you've
wanted me ... and I never came ... and now to find you like this!"

She stroked his hair very softly and waited until the sobs ceased. He sat
up and fiercely brushed his eyes.

"I won't be a fool--any more. It shan't be too late. I'll make you live.
We'll never leave one another again."

"Dear boy, it can't be like that. Think how splendid it is that we have had
this time now. Think what it might have been if I had gone and we had never
known one another. But tell me, Peter, what are you going to do with your
life afterwards--what are you going to be?"

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