Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/427

 we, you and I, are uncomfortably conscious of the other Party—want to know them, in fact, want them to receive us.

“Well, I'm getting on and it's late days for me, but you've got all your life before you and will do great things, take my word for it. Only don t be discouraged because the Stay-at-homes don't come to you all at once. Give 'em time—they'll come”

This seemed to Peter, at this moment of a whole welter of doubt and confusion and misunderstanding of people's motives and positions, to explain a great deal. Was that the reason why he'd been so happy in old Zachary Tan's shop years ago? Why he'd been happy through all that existence at the bookshop, those absurd unreal conspirators—happy, yes, even when starving with Stephen in Bucket Lane.

He was then in his right company—explorers one and all. Whereas here?—Now? Had he ever been happy at The Roundabout except during that first year, and afterwards when Stephen came? And was not that, too, the explanation of young Stephen's happiness upon the arrival of Mr. Zanti and Brant? Did he not recognise them for what they were, explorers? He being a young explorer himself.

On the other side Mrs. Rossiter, Clare, Cards, old Bobby who in spite of his affection never understood half the things that Peter did or said, the Galleons, old Mrs. Galleon and Percival and his sister? Had Henry Galleon known that dividing-line and suffered under it all his life, and borne it and perhaps conquered it?

And Peter suddenly, standing at his window watching London caught by the evening light, saw for an instant his work in front of him again. London with her towers, her roofs and chimneys—smoke and mist and haze weaving a web—and then beneath it, humming, buzzing, turning, all the lives, all the comedies, all the tragedies—Kings and princes, guttersnipes and duchesses, politicians and news-boys, criminals and saints—

Waiting, that golden top, for some hand to set it humming.

In that moment Peter Westcott, aged twenty-nine, with a book just behind him that had been counted on every