Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/121

 All this had in it the element of suspense, of preparation. During these weeks one day slipped into another. No incidents marked their preparation—but up at Scaw House they were marching to no mean climax—every hour hurried the issue—and Peter, meanwhile, as February came whistling and storming upon the world, grew, with every chiming of the town clock, more morose, more sullen, more silent there were times when he thought of ending it all. An instant and he would be free of all his troubles—but after all that was the weakling's way; he had not altogether forgotten those words spoken so long ago by old Moses So much for the pause. Suddenly, one dark February afternoon the curtain was rung up outside Zachary Tan's shop and Peter was whirled into the centre of the stage.

Peter had not seen Zachary Tan for a long time. He had grown into a morbid way of avoiding everybody and would slink up side streets or go round on leaving the office by the sea road. When he did meet people who had once been kind to him he said as little as possible to them and left them abruptly.

But on this afternoon Zachary was not to be denied. He was standing at the door of his shop and shouted to Peter:

“Come away in, Mr. Peter. I haven't see you this long time. There's an old acquaintance of yours inside and a cup of tea for you.”

The wind was whistling up the street, the first drops of a rain storm starred the pavement, and there was a pleasant glow behind Mr. Tan's window-panes. But there was something stronger yet that drove Peter into the shop. He knew with some strange knowledge who that old acquaintance was he felt no surprise when he saw in the little back room, laughing with all his white teeth shining in a row, the stout and cheerful figure of Mr. Emilio Zanti. Peter was a very different person now from that little boy who had once followed Stephen's broad figure into that little green room and stared at Mr. Zanti's cheerful countenance, but it all seemed a very little time ago. Outside in the shop there was the same suit of armour—on the shelves, the silver candlesticks, the old coins, the little Indian images, the pieces of tapestry—within the little room the same sense