V
He realised, as he came into the Bloomsbury square, and saw Mrs. Brockett gloomily waiting for him, that the adventures of his life were most strangely bound together. Not for an instant did he seem to be able to escape from any one of them. Now it would be Cornwall, now the Bookshop, now Stephen, now Mr. Zanti, now Bucket Lane, now Treliss—all of them interweaving, arresting his action at every moment. Because he had done that once now this must not be permitted him; he felt, as he rang the old heavy bell of Brockett's that his head would never think clearly again. As the door opened and he stepped into the hall he heard, faintly, across the flat spaces of the Square “Tap-tap-tap-tap-clamp-clamp....”
Even Mrs. Brockett, who might be considered if any one in the world, immune from morbid imaginations, felt the heaviness of the day, suggested a prevalence of thunder, and shook her head when Peter asked about Miss Monogue.
“She's bad, Mr. Peter, very bad, poor dear. There's no doubt about that. It's hard to see what can be done for her—but plucky! That's a small word for it!”
“I'm sure she is,” said Peter, feeling ashamed of having made so much of his own little troubles.
“She must get out of London if she's to improve at all. In a week or two I hope she'll be able to move.”
“How's every one else?”
“Oh, well enough.” Mrs. Brockett straightened her dress with her beautiful hands in the old familiar way—“But you're not looking very hearty yourself, Mr. Peter.”
“Oh! I'm all right,” he answered smiling; but she shook her head after him as she watched him go up the stairs.
And then he was surprised. He came into Norah Monogue's room and found her sitting up by her window, looking better than he had ever seen her. Her face was full of colour and her eyes bright and smiling. Only on her hands the blue veins stood out, and their touch, when she shook hands with him, was hot and burning.
But he was reassured; Mrs. Brockett had exaggerated and made the worst of it all.
“You're looking splendid—I'm so glad. I was afraid from your letter-”
“Oh! I really am getting on,” she broke in gaily, “and it's the nicest boy in the world that you are to come in and see me so quickly. Only on a day like this London does just lie heavily upon one doesn't it? and one just longs for the country—”
A little breath of a sigh escaped from her and she looked through her window at the dim chimneys, the clouds hanging like consolidated smoke, the fine, thin dust that filtered the air.
“You're looking tired yourself, Peter. Working too hard?”
“No,” he shook his head. “The work hasn't been coming easily at all. I suppose I've been too conscious, lately, of the criticisms every one made about 'The Stone House.' I don't believe one ought really to listen to anybody and yet it's so hard not to, and so difficult to know whose opinion one ought to take if one's going to take anybody's. I wish,” he suddenly brought out, “Henry Galleon were still alive. I could have followed him.”
“But why follow anybody?”
“Ah! that's just it. I'm beginning to doubt myself and that's why it's getting so difficult.”
Her eyes searched his face and she saw, at once, that he was in very real trouble. He looked younger, just then, she thought, than she had ever seen him, and she felt herself so immensely old that she could have taken him into her arms and mothered him as though he'd been her own son.
“There are a lot of things the matter,” she said. “Tell me what they all are.”
“Well,” he said slowly, “I suppose it's all been mostly my own fault—but the real difficulty is that I don't seem to be able to run the business of being married and the business of writing together. I don't think Clare in the least cares now about my writing—she almost resents it; she cared at first when she thought that I was going to make a huge success of it, but now—”
“But, of course,” said Miss Monogue, “that success comes slowly—it must if it's going to be any use at all—”
“Well, she doesn't see that. And she wants me to go out to parties and play about all the time—and then she doesn't want me to be any of the things that I was before I met her. All my earlier life frightens her—I suppose,” he suddenly ended, “I want her to be different and she wants me to be different and we can't make a compromise.”
Then Miss Monogue said: “Have any outside people interfered at all?”
Peter coloured. “Well, of course, Mrs. Rossiter stands up for Clare. She came and talked to me this morning and I think the things that she said were quite true. I suppose I am morose and morbid sometimes—more than I realise—and then,” he added slowly, “there's Cards—”
“Cards?”
“Cardillac—a man I was at school with. I'm very fond of him. He's the best friend I've got, and he's been all over the place and done everything and, of course, knows ever so much more about the world than I do. The fact is he thinks really that my novels are dreadful nonsense, only he's much too kind to say so—and, of course, Clare looks up to him a lot. Although he's only my own age he seems so much older than both Clare and myself. I don't believe she'd have lost interest in my work so quickly if he hadn't influenced her—and he's influenced me too—” Peter added sighing.
“Well—and is there anything else?”
“Yes. There's Stephen. I can't begin to tell you how I love that kid. There haven't been many people in my life that I've cared about and I've never realised anything so intensely before. Besides,” he went on laughing proudly, “he's such a splendid kid! I wish you could see him, Norah. He'll do something one day—”
“Well, what's the trouble about Stephen?”
“Clare's so odd about him. There are times when I don't believe she cares for him the least little bit. Then there are other times when she resents fiercely my interfering about him. Sometimes she seems to love him more than anything in the world, but it's always in an odd defiant way—just as though she were afraid that something would hurt her if she showed that she cared too much.”
There was silence between them for a minute and then Peter summed it all up with:—“The fact is, Norah, that every sort of thing's getting in between me and my work and worries me. It's as though I were tossing more balls in the air than I could possibly manage. At one moment I think it's Clare that I've got especially to hang on to—another time it's the book—and then it's Stephen. The moment I've settled down something turns up to remind me of Cornwall or the Bookshop. Fact is I'm getting battered at by something or other and I never can get my breath. I oughtn't ever to have married—I'm not up to it.”
Norah Monogue took his hand.
“You are up to it, Peter, but I expect you've got a lot to go through before you're clear of things. Now I'm going to be brutal. The fact is that you're too self-centred. People never do anything in the world so long as they are wondering whether the world's going to hurt them or no. Those early years of yours made you morbid. You've got a temper and one or two other things that want a lot of holding down and that takes up your attention—And then Clare isn't the woman to help you—”
Peter was about to break in but she went on:—'"Oh! I know my Clare through and through. She's just as anxious as you are not to be hurt by anything and so she's being hurt all the time. She's out for happiness at any cost and you're out for freedom—freedom from every kind of thing—and because both of you are denied it you are restive. But you and Clare are both people whose only salvation is in being hurt and knocked about and bruised to such an extent that they simply don't know where they are. Oh! I know—I'm exactly the same sort of person myself. We can thank the Gods if we are knocked about—”
Suddenly she paused and, falling back in her chair, put her hand to her breast, coughing. Something seized her, held her in its grip, tossed her from side to side, at last left her white, speechless, utterly exhausted. It had come so suddenly that it had taken Peter entirely by surprise. She lay back now, her eyes closed, her face a grey white.
He ran to the door and called Mrs. Brockett. She came and with an exclamation hurried away for remedies.
Peter suddenly felt his hand seized—a hoarse whisper was in his ear—“Peter—dear—go—at—once—I can't bear—you—to see me—like this. Come back—another day.”
He knelt, moved by an affection and tenderness that seemed stronger than any emotion he had ever known, and kissed her. She whispered:
“Dear boy—”
On his way back to Chelsea, the orange lamps, the white streets powdered with the evening glow, the rustling plane trees whispered to him, “You've got to be knocked about—you've got to be knocked about—you've got to be knocked about—” but the murmur was no longer sinister.
Still thinking of Norah, he went up to the nursery to see the boy in bed. He remembered that Clare was going out alone to a party and that he would have the evening to himself.
On entering the room, dark except for a nightlight by the boy's bed, some unknown fear assailed him. He was instantly, at the threshold, conscious of it. He stood for a moment in silence. Then realised what it was. The boy was moaning in his sleep.
He went quickly over to the cot and bent down. Stephen's cheeks were flaming, his hands very hot.
Peter rang the bell. Mrs. Kant appeared.
“Is there anything the matter with Stephen?”
Mrs. Kant looked at him, surprised, a little offended. “He's had a little cold all day, sir. I've kept him indoors.”
“Have you taken his temperature?”
“Yes, sir, nothing at all unusual. He often goes up and down.”
“Have you spoken to your mistress?”
“Yes, sir. She agrees with me that there is nothing unusual—”
He brushed past the woman and went to his wife's bedroom.
She was dressed and was putting on a string of pearls, a wedding present from her father. She smiled up at him—
“Clare, do you know Stephen's ill?”
“No, it's only a cold. I've been up to see him—”
He took her hand—she smiled up at him—“Did you enjoy your visit?” She fastened the necklace.
“Clare, stay in to-night. It may be nothing but if the boy got worse—”
“Do you want me to stay?”
“Yes.”
“I wanted you to go with me this afternoon—”
“That was different. The boy may be really ill—”
“You didn't do what I wanted this afternoon. Why should I do what you want now?”
“Clare, stay. Please, please—”
She took her hand gently out of his, and, as she went out of the door switched off the electric light.
He heard the opening of the hall door and, standing where she had left him in the dark bedroom, saw, shining, laughing at him, her eyes.