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.