Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/420

 Bobby said no more.

Peter went on again: “No, it's my mother-in-law's done the damage. You're right, the thing to do is to get Clare alone and have it right out with her. We'll clear the mists away.”

Bobby said: “You know Peter, both Alice and I would do anything in the world to make you happy—anything.”

Peter gripped his hand.

“I know you would. If I could forget young Stephen,” he caught his breath—“Bobby, I see him everywhere, all the time. I lie awake hours at night thinking about him. I see him in my sleep, see him sometimes grown-up—splendid, famous Sometimes I think he comes back. I can see him, lying on his back and looking up at the ceiling, and I say to myself, ‘Now if you don't move he'll stay there’ and then I move and he's gone. And I haven't any one to talk about him to. I never know whether Clare thinks of him or not. He was so splendid, Bobby, so strong. And he loved me in the most extraordinary way. We'd have been tremendous pals if he'd lived.

“I could have stood anything if I'd been able to see him growing up, had him to care about I'm so lonely, Bobby—and if I don't make Clare come back to me, now that the book's failed, I—I—I'll go back to Scaw House and just drink myself to the devil there with my old father; he'll be glad enough.”

“You once told me,” Bobby said, “about an old man in your place when you were a kid, who said once, ‘It isn't life that matters but the courage you bring to it—’ Well, that's what you're proving now, Peter.”

“Yes, but why me? I've had a bad time all my life—always been knocked about and cursed and kicked. Why should it go on all the time—all the time?”

“Because They think you're worth it, I suppose,” said Bobby.

And the result of that conversation was that on that very night Peter made his appeal. They had had a silent evening (Mrs. Rossiter was staying in the house at this