Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/481

 He saw that always, through everything that boy, Peter Westcott had been in the way. It was not until he had taken, on that day in Norah Monogue's room, Peter Westcott in his hands and flung him to the four winds that he had seen how terribly in the way he had been. “Go back,” Norah had said to him; “you have done all these things for yourself and you have been beaten to your knees—go back now and do something for others. You have been brave for yourself—be brave now for others.”

And he was going back.

He was going back, as he had seen on that day, to no easy life. He was going to take up all those links that had been so difficult for him before—he was going to learn all over again that art that he had fancied that he had conquered at the very first attempt—he was going now with no expectations, no hopes, no ambitions. Life was still an adventure, but now an adventure of a hard, cruel sort, something that needed an answer grim and dark.

The storm was coming up apace. The wind had risen and was now rushing over the short stiff grass, bellowing out to meet the sea, blowing back to meet the clouds that raced behind the hill.

The sky was black with clouds. Peter could see the sand rising from the dunes in a thin mist.

Peter flung himself upon his back. The first drops of rain fell, cold, upon his face. Then he heard:

“Peter Westcott! Peter Westcott!”

“I'm here!”

“What have you brought to us here?”

“I have brought nothing.”

“What have you to offer us?”

“I can offer nothing.”

He got up from the ground and faced the wind. He put his back to the Giant's Finger because of the force of the gale. The rain was coming down now in torrents.

He felt a great exultation surge through his body.

Then the Voice—not in the rain, nor the wind, nor the sea, but yet all of these, and coming as it seemed from the very heart of the Hill, came swinging through the storm—

"Have you cast This away, Peter Westcott?”

“And this?”