Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/441

 a look that was so deep and terrible as almost to give his white face no expression at all, was with him.

It had been with him at Stephen's death, it was with him far more intensely now. He looked at Bobby.

“She's gone,” in a tired, dull voice as of some one nearly asleep, “gone to Cardillac. I loved Cards—and all the time he loved Clare. I loved Clare and all the time she loved Cards. It's damned funny isn't it, Bobby, old man?”

He stood facing him in the hall, no part of him moving except his mouth. “She says I treated her like a brute. I don't think I did. She says there was something I did one night—I don't know. I've never done anything—I've never been with another woman—something about a cab—Perhaps it was poor Rose Bennett. Poor Rose Bennett—damned unhappy—so am I—so am I. I'm a lonely fellow—I always have been!”

He went past Bobby, back into the little drawing-room. Bobby followed him.

He turned round.

“You can go now Bobby. I shan't want you any more.”

“No, I'm going to stay,”

“I don't want you—I don't want any one.”

“I'm going to stay.”

“I'd rather you went, please.”

“I'm going to stay.”

Peter paid no more attention. He went and sat down on a chair by the window. Bobby sat down on a chair near him.

Once Peter said: “They took my baby. They took my work. They've taken my wife. They're too much for me. I'm beaten.”

Then there was absolute silence in the house. The servants, who had heard the tumbling of the furniture, crept, frightened to bed.

Thus The Roundabout, dark, utterly without sound, stayed through the night. Once, from the chair by the window in the little drawing-room a voice said, “I'm going back to Scaw House—to my father, I'm going back—to all of them.”

During many hours the little silver clock ticked cheerfully, seeing perhaps with its little bright eyes, the two dark figures and wondering what they did there.