Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/459

 son, and it isn't likely that he's going to desert you altogether.’”

“Yes, father, I've come back,” said Peter, releasing his hand. “I've come back to stay.”

He thought of the many times in London when he'd pictured his father, stern and dark, pulling the wires, dragging his wicked son back to him—he thought of that and now this. And yet

“Well now, isn't that pleasant—you've come to stay! Could I have wanted anything better? Come and sit down—yes, that chair—and have something to drink. What, you won't? Well, perhaps later. So you've come to keep your old father company, have you? I'm sure that's delightful. Just what a son ought to do. We shall get along very well, I'm sure.”

All the while that his father talked, still holding the toast and the glass of something, Peter was intensely conscious of the silent listening house. After all that grimness, that desertion, the old woman's warning had gone for something. And yet, in spite of a kind of dread that hung about him, in spite of a kind of perception that there was a great deal more in his father than he at present perceived, he could not resist a kind of warm pleasure that here at any rate was some sort of a haven, that no one else in the world might want him, but here was some one who was glad to see him.

“Well, my boy, tell me all you've been doing these years.”

“I've been in London, writing—”

“Dear, dear—have you really now? And how's it all turned out?”

“Badly.”

“Dear me, I'm sorry for that. But there are better things in the world than writing, believe me. I dare say, my boy, you thought me unkind in those old days but it was all for your best—oh dear me, yes, entirely for your best.”

Here, for an instant, his father's voice sounded so like his old grandfather's that Peter jumped.

“Married?” said his father.

“My wife has left me—”