Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/281

 invaluable. There was no crime black enough, no desertion, no cruelty horrible enough to outspeed her pity. She hated and understood the sin and loved and comforted the sinner. With a wide and accurate knowledge of humanity she combined a deep spiritual belief in the goodness of God.

Everything, however horrible, interested her she adored life.

This little person in the straw bonnet and the blue dress gave Peter something that he had never known before—she mothered him. He sat next to her at some dinner-party and she asked him to come and have tea with her. She lived in a little street in Westminster in a tiny house that had her children on the top floor, a beautiful copy of the Monna Lisa and a very untidy writing-table on the second, and a little round hall and a tiny dining-room on the ground floor. Her husband and her family—including an adorable child of two—were all as amiable as possible.

Peter told her most things on the first day that he had tea with her and everything on the second. He told her about his boyhood—Treliss, Scaw House, his father, Stephen. He told her about Brockett's and Bucket Lane. He told her, finally, about Clare Rossiter.

He always remembered one thing that she said at this time. They were sitting at her open window looking down into the blue evening that is in Westminster quieter even than it is at Chelsea. Behind the faint green cloud of trees the Abbey's huge black pile soared into space.

“You think you've made a tremendous break?” she said.

“Yes—this is an entirely new life—new in every way. I seem too to be set amongst an entirely new crowd of people. The division seems to me sharper every day. I believe I've left it all behind.”

She looked at him sharply. “You're afraid of all that earlier time,” she said.

“Yes, I am.”

“It made you write ‘Reuben Hallard.’ Perhaps this life here in London ”

“It's safer,” he caught her up.

“Don't,” she answered him very gravely, “play for safety. It's the most dangerous thing in the world.” She