Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/411



EXT morning Peter went round to Cardillac's flat and made his apologies. Cardillac accepted them at once with the frankest expressions of friendship.

“My dear old Peter, of course,” he said, taking both Peter's hands in his, “I was horribly blunt and unpleasant about the whole thing. I didn't mean half what I said, but the fact is that you got angry and then I suppose I got angry—and then we both said more than we meant.”

“No,” said Peter slowly, “for you were quite right. I have been selfish and morbid. I see it all quite clearly. I'm going to be very different now. Cards, old man.”

Cards' flat was splendid—everything in it from its grey Ascot trouserings kind of wall paper to its beautiful old chairs and its beautiful old china was of the very best—and Cards himself, in a dark blue suit with a black tie and a white pearl and white spats on his shining gleaming shoes, just ready to go out and startle Piccadilly was of the very best. He had never, Peter thought, looked so handsome.

At the door Cards put a hand on Peter's shoulder.

“Get in late this morning, Peter?”

“Why?” “said Peter, turning round.

“Oh, nothing,” Cards regarded him, smiling. “I'll see you to-night at the Lesters. Until then, old man—”

Neither Mrs. Rossiter nor Clare made any allusion to the quarrel but it had nevertheless, Peter felt, made reconciliation all the more difficult. Mrs. Rossiter now seemed to imply in her additional kindnesses to Cardillac that she felt for him deeply and was sorry that he, too, should have been made to suffer under Peter's bear-like nature.

There was even an implied atmosphere of alliance in the attitude of the three to Peter, an alliance fostered and cemented by Mrs. Rossiter and spread by her, up and down, in and out about the house.