Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/251

 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.