Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  The cry broke from him with a bitterness that filled the bare little room.

  Stephen, after a little, got up and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  “Nobody ain’t going to touch you while I’m here,” he said simply as though he were challenging devils and men alike.

  Peter looked up and smiled. “What an old brick you are,” he said. “Do you remember that fight Christmas time, years ago? ... You’re always like that.... I’ve been an ass to bother you with it all and while we’ve got each other things can’t be so bad.” He got up and stretched his arms.

  “Well, it’s bedtime, especially as you’ve got to be off early to that old restaurant—”

  Stephen stepped back from him.

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said, “that’s off. The place ain’t paying and the boss shut four of us down to-night ... I’m not to go back ... Peter, boy,” he finished, almost triumphantly. “We’re up against it ... I’ve got a quid in my pocket and that’s all there is to it.”

  They faced one another whilst the candle behind them guttered and blew in the window cracks, and the cluster of stars, still caught in the dirty roofs and chimneys of Bucket Lane, twinkled, desperately — in vain.

  CHAPTER VIII

  STEPHEN’S CHAPTER

  I

  No knight — the hero of any chronicle — ever went forward to his battle with a braver heart than did Peter now in his desperate adventure against the world. His morbidity, his introspection, his irritation with Stephen’s simplicities fled from him... he was gay, filled with the glamour of showing what one could do... he did not doubt but that a fortnight would see him in a magnificent position. And then — the fortnight passed and he and Stephen had still their positions to discover — the money moreover was almost at an end... another fortnight would behold them penniless.

  It was absurd — it was monstrous, incredible. Life was not like that — Peter bit his lip and set out again. Editors had not, on most occasions, vouchsafed him even an interview. Then had come no answer to the four halfpenny wrappers. The world, like a wall of shining steel, closed him in with impenetrable silence.

  It was absurd — it was monstrous. Peter fought desperately, as a bird beats with its wings on the bars of its cage. They were having the worst of luck. On several occasions he had been just too late and some one had got the position before him. Stephen too found that the places where he had worked before had now no job for him. “It was the worst time in the world... a month ago now or possibly in a month’s time....”

  Stephen did not tell the boy that away from London there were many things that he could do — the boy was not up to tramping. Indeed, nothing was more remarkable than the way in which Peter’s strength seemed to strain, like a flood, away. It was, perhaps, a matter of nerves as much as physical strength — the boy was burning with the anxiety of it, whereas to Stephen this was no new experience. Peter saw it in the light of some horrible disaster that belonged, in all the world’s history, to him alone. He came back at the end of one of his days, white, his eyes almost closed, his fingers twitching, his head hanging a little ... very silent.

  He seemed to feel bitterly the ignominy of it as though he were realising, for the first time, that nobody wanted him. He had come now to be ready to do anything, anything in the world, and he had the look of one who was ready to do anything. His blue coat was shiny, his boots had been patched by Stephen — there were deep black hollows under his eyes and his mouth had become thin and hard.

  Stephen — having himself his own distresses to support — watched the boy with acute anxiety. He felt with increasing unhappiness, that here was an organism, a temperament, that was new to him, that was beyond his grasp. Peter saw things in it all — this position of a desperate cry for work — that he, Stephen, had never seen at all. Peter would sit in the evening, in his chair, staring in front of him, silent, and hearing nothing that Stephen said to him. With Stephen life was a case of having money or not having it — if one had not money one went without everything possible and waited until the money came again ... the tide was sure to turn. But, with Peter, this was all a fight against his father who sat, apparently, in the dark rooms at Scaw House, willing disaster. Now, as Stephen and all the sensible world knew, this was nonsense —

  It was also, in some still stranger way, a fight against London itself — not London, a place of streets and houses, of Oxford Street and Piccadilly Circus but London, an animal — a kind of dragon as far as Stephen could make it out with scales and a tail —

  Now what was one to make of this except that the boy’s head was being turned and that he ought to see a doctor.

  There was also the further question of an appeal to Brockett’s or Mr. Zanti. Stephen knew that Herr Gottfried or Mr. Zanti would lend help eagerly did they but know, and he supposed, from the things that Peter had told him, that there were also warm friends at Brockett’s; but the boy had made him swear, with the last order of solemnity, that he would send no word to either place. Peter had said that he would never speak to him again should he do such a thing. He had said that should he once obtain an independent position then he would go back ... but not before.

  Stephen did not know what to do nor where to go. In another month’s time the rent could not be paid and then they must go into the street and Peter was in no condition for that — he should rather be in bed. Mrs. Williams, it is true, would not be hard upon them, for she was a kind woman and had formed a great liking for Peter, but she had only enough herself to keep her family alive and she must, for her children’s sake, let the room.

  To Stephen, puzzling in vain and going round and round in a hopeless circle, it seemed as though Peter’s brains were locked in an iron box and they could not find a key. For himself, well, it was natural enough! But Peter, with that genius, that no one should want him!

  And yet through it all, at the back of the misery and distress of it, there was a wild pride, a fierce joy that he had the key with him, that he was all in the world to whom the boy might look, that to him and to him alone, in this wild, cold world Peter now belonged.

  It was his moment....

  II

  At the end of a terrible day of disastrous rejections Peter, stumbling down the Strand, was conscious of a little public-house, with a neat bow-window, that stood back from the street. At the bottom of his trouser pocket a tiny threepenny piece that Stephen had, that morning, thrust upon him, turned round and round in his fingers. He had not spent it — he had intended to restore it to Stephen in the evening. He had meant, too, to walk back all the way to Bucket Lane but now he felt that he could not do that unless he were first to take something. This little inn with its bow-windows.... Down the Strand in the light of the setting sun, he saw again that which he had often seen during these last weeks — that chain of gaunt figures that moved with bending backs and twisted fingers, on and out of the crowds and the carriages — The beggars!... He felt, already, that they knew that he was soon to be one of their number, that every day, every hour brought him nearer to their ranks. An old man, dirty, in rags, stepped with an eager eye past him and stooped for a moment into the gutter. He rose again, slipping something into his pocket of his tattered coat. He gave Peter a glance — to the boy it seemed a glance of triumphant recognition and then he had slipped away.

  Peter had had very little to eat during these last days and to-night, for the first time, things began to take an uncertain shape. As he stood on the kerb and looked, it seemed to him that the Strand was the sea-road at Treliss, that the roar of the traffic was the noise that the sea made, far below them. If one could see round the corner, there where the sun flung a patch of red light, one would come upon Scaw House in its dark clump of trees — and through the window of that front room, Peter could see his father and that old woman, one on each side of the fire-place, drinking.

  But the sea-road was stormy to-night, its noise was loud in Peter’s ears. And then the way that people brushed against him
as they passed recalled him to himself and he slipped back almost into the bow-window of the little inn. He was feeling very unwell and there was a burning pain in his chest that hurt him when he drew a deep breath ... and then too he was very cold and his teeth chattered in fits as though he had suddenly lost control of them and they had become some other person’s teeth.

  Well, why not go into the little inn and have a drink? Then he would go back to Bucket Lane and lie down and never wake again. For he was so tired that he had never known before what it was to be tired at all — only Stephen would not let him sleep.... Stephen was cruel and would not let him alone. No one would let him alone — the world had treated him very evilly — what did he owe the world?

  He would go now and surrender to these things, these things that were stronger than he ... he would drink and he would sleep and that should be the end of everything ... the blessed end.

  He swayed a little on his feet and he put his hand to his forehead in order that he might think more clearly.

  Some one had said once to him a great many years ago— “It is not life that matters but the Courage that you bring to it.” Well, that was untrue. He would like to tell the man who had said that that he was a liar. No Courage could be enough if life chose to be hard. No Courage —

  Nevertheless, the thought of somewhere a long time ago when some one had said that to him, slowly filled his tired brain with a distaste for the little inn with the bow-windows. He would not go there yet, just a little while and then he would go.

  Almost dreaming — certainly seeing nothing about him that he recognised — he stumbled confusedly down to the Embankment. Here there was at any rate air, he drew his shabby blue coat more closely about him and sat down on a wooden bench, in company with a lady who wore a large damaged feather in her hat and a red stained blouse with torn lace upon it and a skirt of a bright and tarnished blue.

  The lady gave him a nod.

  “Cheer, chucky,” she said.

  Peter made no reply.

  “Down on your uppers? My word, you look bad — Poor Kid! Well, never say die — strike me blimy but there’s a good day coming—”

  “I sat here once before,” said Peter, leaning forward and addressing her very earnestly, “and it was the first time that I ever heard the noise that London makes. If you listen you can hear it now — London’s a beast you know—”

  But the lady had paid very little attention. “Men are beasts, beasts,” she said, scowling at a gap in the side of her boots, “beasts, that’s what they are. ‘Aven’t ‘ad any luck the last few nights. Suppose I’m losin’ my looks sittin’ out ’ere in the mud and rain. There was a time, young feller, my lad, when I ‘ad my carriage, not ‘arf!” She spat in front of her—”’E was a good sort, ’e was — give me no end of a time ... but the lot of men I’ve been meetin’ lately ain’t fit to be called men — they ain’t — mean devils — leavin’ me like this, curse ’em!” She coughed. The sun had set now and the lights were coming out, like glass beads on a string on the other side of the river. “Stoppin’ out all night, ducky? Stayin’ ’ere? ‘Cause I got a bit of a cough! — disturbs fellers a bit ... last feller said as ‘ow ’e couldn’t get a bit o’ sleep because of it — damned rot I call it. ‘Owever it isn’t out of doors you ought to be sittin’, chucky. Feelin’ bad?”

  Peter looked at her out of his half-closed eyes.

  “I can’t bother any more,” he said to her sleepily. “They’re so cruel — they won’t let me go to sleep. I’ve got a pain here — in my chest you know. Have you got a pain in your chest?”

  “My leg’s sore,” she answered, “where a chap kicked me last week — just because — oh well,” she paused modestly and spat again— “It’s comin’ on cold.”

  A cold little wind was coming up the river, ruffling the tips of the trees and turning the leaves of the plane-trees back as though it wanted to clean the other sides of them.

  Peter got up unsteadily. “I’m going home to sleep,” he said, “I’m dreadfully tired. Good-night.”

  “So long, chucky,” the lady with the damaged feather said to him. He left her eyeing discontentedly the hole in her boot and trying to fasten, with confused fingers, the buttons of the red blouse.

  Peter mechanically, as one walking in a dream, crept into an omnibus. Mechanically he left it and mechanically climbed the stairs of the house in Bucket Lane. There were two fixed thoughts in his brain — one was that no one in the world had ever before been as thirsty as he was, and that he would willingly commit murder or any violence if thereby he might obtain drink, and the other thought was that Stephen was his enemy, that he hated Stephen because Stephen never left him alone and would not let him sleep — also in the back of his mind distantly, as though it concerned some one else, that he was very unhappy....

  Stephen was sitting on one of the beds, looking in front of him. Peter moved forward heavily and sat on the other bed. They looked at one another.

  “No luck,” said Stephen, “Armstrong’s hadn’t room for a man. Ricroft wouldn’t see me. Peter, I’m thinking we’ll have to take to the roads—”

  Peter made no answer.

  “Yer not lookin’ a bit well, lad. I doubt if yer can stand much more of it.”

  Peter looked across at him sullenly.

  “Why can’t you leave me alone?” he said. “You’re always worrying—”

  A slow flush mounted into Stephen’s cheeks but he said nothing.

  “Well, why don’t you say something? Nothing to say — it isn’t bad enough that you’ve brought me into this—”

  “Come, Mr. Peter,” Stephen answered slowly. “That ain’t fair. I never brought you into this. I’ve done my best.”

  “Oh, blame me, of course. That’s natural enough. If it hadn’t been for you—”

  Stephen came into the middle of the floor.

  “Come, Peter boy, yer tired. Yer don’t know what yer saying. Best go to bed. Don’t be saying anything that yer’d be regretting afterwards—”

  Peter’s eyes that had been closed, suddenly opened, blazing. “Oh, damn you and your talk — I hate you. I wish I’d never seen you — a rotten kind of friendship—” his voice died off into muttering.

  Stephen went back to his bed. “This ain’t fair, Mr. Peter,” he said in a low voice. “You’ll be sorry afterwards. I ain’t ‘ad any very ‘appy time myself these last weeks and now—”

  Their nerves were like hot, jangling wires. Suddenly into the midst of that bare room there had sprung between them hatred. They faced each other ... they could have leapt at one another’s throats and fought....

  Suddenly Peter gave a little cry that seemed to fill the room. His head fell forward —

  “Oh, Stephen, Stephen, I’m so damned ill, I’m so damnably ill.”

  He caught for a moment at his chest as though he would tear his shirt open. Then he stumbled from the bed and lay in a heap on the floor with his hands spread out —

  Stephen picked him up in his arms and carried him on to his bed.

  III

  The little doctor who attended to the wants of Bucket Lane was discovered at his supper. He was a dirty little man, with large dusty spectacles, a red nose and a bald head. He wore an old, faded velveteen jacket out of the pockets of which stuck innumerable papers. He was very often drunk and had a shrew of a wife who made the sober parts of his life a misery, but he was kind-hearted and generous and had a very real knowledge of his business.

  Mrs. Williams volubly could not conceal her concern at Peter’s condition— “and ’im such a nice-spoken young genelman as I was saying only yesterday tea-time, there’s nothin’ I said, as I wouldn’t be willin’ to do for that there poor Mr. Westcott and that there poor Mr. Brant ‘oo are as like two ‘elpless children in their fightin’ the world as ever I see and ‘ow ever can I help ’em I said—”

  “Well, my good woman,” the little doctor finally interrupted, “you can help here and now by getting some hot water and the othe
r things I’ve put down here.”

  When she was gone he turned slowly to Stephen who stood, the picture of despair, looking down upon Peter.

  “‘E’s goin’ to die?” he asked.

  “That depends,” the little doctor answered. “The boy’s been starved — ought never to have been allowed to get into this condition. Both of you hard up, I suppose?”

  “As ‘ard up as we very well could be—” Stephen answered grimly.

  “Well — has he no friends?”

  There — the question at last. Stephen took it as he would have taken a blow between the eyes. He saw very clearly that the end of his reign had come. He had done what he could and he had failed. But in him was the fierce furious desire to fight for the boy. Why should he give him up, now, when they had spent all these weeks together, when they had struggled for their very existence side by side. What right had any of these others to Peter compared with his right? He knew very well that if he gave him up now the boy would never be his again. He might see him — yes — but that passing of Peter that he had already begun to realise would be accomplished. He might look at him but only as a wanderer may look from the valley up to the hill. The doctor broke in upon him as he stood hesitating there —

  “Come,” he said roughly, “we have not much time. The boy may die. Has he no friends?”

  Stephen turned his back to Peter. “Yes,” he said, “I know where they are. I will fetch them myself.”

  The doctor had not lived in Bucket Lane all these years for nothing. He put his hand on Stephen’s arm and said: “You’re a good fellow, by God. It’ll be all right.”

  Stephen went.

  On his way to Bennett Square a thousand thoughts filled his mind. He knew, as though he had been told it by some higher power, that Peter was leaving him now never to return. He had done what he could for Peter — now the boy must pass on to others who might be able, more fittingly, to help him. He cursed the Gods that they had not allowed him to obtain work during these weeks, for then Peter and he might have gone on, working, prospering and the parting might have been far distant.