Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/108

 heaving. Suddenly he broke down and burring 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?”

“I want to write books”—he stared at the golden cloud—“to be a novelist. I daresay I can't—I don't know—but I'd rather do that than anything Father wants me to be a solicitor. I'm with Aitchinson now—I shall never be a good one.”

Then he turned almost fiercely away from the window.

“But never mind about me, mother. It's you I want to hear about. I'm going to take this on now. It's my responsibility. I want to know about you.”

“There's nothing to know, dear. I've been ill for a great many years now. It's more nerves than anything, I suppose. I think I've never had the courage to stand up against it—a stronger woman would have got the better of it, I expect. But I wasn't always like this,” she added laughing a little far away ghost of a laugh—“Go and look in that drawer—there, in that cupboard—amongst my handkerchiefs—there where those old fans are—you'll find some old programmes there—Those old yellow papers”

He brought them to her, three old yellow programmes of a “Concert Given at the Town Hall, Truro.” “There, do you see? Miss Minnie Trenowth, In the Gloaming—There, I sang in those days. Oh! Truro was fun when I was a girl! There was always something going on! You see I wasn't always on my back!”

He crushed the papers in his hand.

“But, mother! If you were like that then—what's made you like this now?”