"Oh, you'll be all right. Of course you'll be getting something--"

"Yes, but I hate spending your money like this. Do you know, Stephen, I'd almost rather you were out of work too. That sounds a rotten thing to say but I hate being given it all like this, especially when you haven't got much of your own either--"

"Between friends," said Stephen slowly, swinging his leg backwards and forwards and making the bed creak under his weight, "there aren't any giving or taking--it's just common."

"Oh, yes, I know," said Peter hurriedly, frightened lest he should have hurt his feelings, "of course it's all right between you and me. But all the same I'm rather eager to be earning part of it."

They were silent for a time. Bucket Lane too seemed silent and through their little window, between the black roofs and chimneys, a cluster of stars twinkled as though they had found their way, by accident, into a very dirty neighbourhood and were trying to get out of it again.

Peter was busy fishing for his thoughts; at last he caught one and held it out to Stephen's innocent gaze.

"It isn't," he said, "like anything so much as catching a disease from an infectious neighbourhood. I think if I lived here with five thousand a year I should still be frightened. It's in the air."

"Being frightened," said Stephen rather hurriedly and speaking with a kind of shame, as though he had done something to which he would rather not own up, "is a kind of 'abit. Very soon, Peter, you'll know what it's like and take it as it comes."

"Oh," said Peter, "if it's that kind of being frightened--seeing I mean quite clearly the things you're frightened of--why, that's pretty easy.

One of the first books I ever read--'Henry Lessingham,' by Galleon, you know, I've talked about him to you--had a long bit about it--courage I mean. He made it a kind of parable, countries you'd got to go through before you'd learnt to be really brave; and the first, and by far the easiest courage is the sort that you want when you haven't got things--the sort the Gambits want--when you're starving or out of a job.

Well, that's I suppose the easiest kind and yet I'm funking it. So what on earth am I going to do when the harder business comes along? ...

Stephen, I'm beginning to have a secret and uncomfortable suspicion that your friend, Peter Westcott, is a poor creature."

"Thank the Lord," said Stephen furiously and kicking out with his leg as though he had got some especial enemy's back directly in front of him, "that you've finished them damned articles. You've been sittin' here thinkin' and writin' till you've given yerself blue devils--down-along, too, with all them poor creatures hittin' each other and drinkin'--I oughtn't to have left yer up here so much alone--"

"No--you couldn't help it, Stephen--it's nothing to do with you. It's all more than you can manage and nobody in the world can help me. It's seven years and a bit now since I left Cornwall, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Stephen, looking across at him.

"All that time I've never had a word nor a sign from any one there.

Well, you might have thought that that would be long enough to break right away from it.... Well, it isn't--"

"Don't you go thinking about all that time. You've cleared it right away--"

"No, I haven't cleared it--that's just the point. I don't suppose one ever clears anything. All the time I was with Zanti I was reading so hard and living so safely that it was only at moments, when I was alone, that I thought about Treliss at all. But these last weeks it's been coming on me full tide."

"What's been coming on you?"

"Well, Scaw House, I suppose ... and my father and grandfather. My grandfather told me once that I couldn't escape from the family and I can't--it's the most extraordinary thing--"

Stephen saw that Peter was growing agitated; his hands were clenched and his face was white.

"Mind you, I've seen my grandfather and father both go under it. My father went down all in a moment. It isn't any one thing--you can call it drink if you like--but it's simply three parts of us aching to go to the bad ... aching, that's the word. Anything rotten--women or drink or anything you like--as long as we lose control and let the devil get the upper hand. Let him get it once--_really_ get it--and we're really done--"

Peter paused for a moment and then went on hurriedly as though he were telling a story and had only a little time in which to tell it.

"But that isn't all--it's worse than that. I've been feeling these last weeks as though my father were sitting there in that beastly house with that filthy woman--and willing me--absolutely with all his might--to go under--"

"But what is it," said Stephen, going, as always, to the simplest aspect of the case, "that you exactly want to do?"

"Oh, I don't know ... just to let loose the whole thing--I did break out once at Brockett's--I've never told anybody, but I got badly drunk one night and then went back with some woman.... Oh! it was all filthy--but I was mad, wild, for hours ... insane--and that night, in the middle of it all, sitting there as plainly as you please, there in Scaw House, I saw my father--as plainly as I see you--"

"All young men," said Stephen, "'ave got to go through a bit of filth.

You aren't the sort of fellow, Peter, that stays there. Your wanting not to shows that you'll come out of it all right."

Here was a case where Stephen's simplicities were obviously of little avail.

"Ah, but don't you see," said Peter impatiently, "it's not the thing itself that I feel matters so much, although that's rotten enough, but it's the beastly devil--real, personal--I tell you I saw him catch my grandfather as tight as though he'd been there in the room ... and my father, too. I tell you, this last week or two I've been almost mad ...

wanting to chuck it all, this fighting and the rest and just go down and grovel..."

"I expect it's regular work you're wanting," said Stephen, "keeping your mind busy. It's bad to 'ave your sort of brain wandering round with nothing to feed on. It'll be all right, boy, in a day or two when you've got some work."

Peter's head dropped forward on to his hands. "I don't know--it's like going round in a circle. You see, Stephen, what makes it all so difficult is--well, I don't know ... why I haven't told you before ...

but the fact is--I'm in love--"

"I knew it a while back," said Stephen quietly, "watching your face when you didn't know I was lookin'--"

"Well, it's all hopeless, of course. I don't suppose I shall ever see her again ... but that's what's made this looking for work so difficult--I've been wanting to get on--and every day seems to place her further away. And then when I get hopeless these other devils come round and say 'Oh well, you can't get her, you know. That's as impossible as anything--so you'd better have your fling while you can....' My God! I'm a beast!"

The cry broke from him with a bitterness that filled the bare little room.

Stephen, after a little, got up and put his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Nobody ain't going to touch you while I'm here," he said simply as though he were challenging devils and men alike.

Peter looked up and smiled. "What an old brick you are," he said. "Do you remember that fight Christmas time, years ago? ... You're always like that.... I've been an ass to bother you with it all and while we've got each other things can't be so bad." He got up and stretched his arms.

"Well, it's bedtime, especially as you've got to be off early to that old restaurant--"

Stephen stepped back from him.

"I've been meaning to tell you," he said, "that's off. The place ain't paying and the boss shut four of us down to-night ... I'm not to go back ... Peter, boy," he finished, almost triumphantly. "We're up against it ... I've got a quid in my pocket and that's all there is to it."

They faced one another whilst the candle behind them guttered and blew in the window cracks, and the cluster of stars, still caught in the dirty roofs and chimneys of Bucket Lane, twinkled, desperately--in vain.

CHAPTER VIII

STEPHEN'S CHAPTER

I

No knight--the hero of any chronicle--ever went forward to his battle with a braver heart than did Peter now in his desperate adventure against the world. His morbidity, his introspection, his irritation with Stephen's simplicities fled from him... he was gay, filled with the glamour of showing what one could do... he did not doubt but that a fortnight would see him in a magnificent position. And then--the fortnight passed and he and Stephen had still their positions to discover--the money moreover was almost at an end... another fortnight would behold them penniless.

It was absurd--it was monstrous, incredible. Life was not like that--Peter bit his lip and set out again. Editors had not, on most occasions, vouchsafed him even an interview. Then had come no answer to the four halfpenny wrappers. The world, like a wall of shining steel, closed him in with impenetrable silence.

It was absurd--it was monstrous. Peter fought desperately, as a bird beats with its wings on the bars of its cage. They were having the worst of luck. On several occasions he had been just too late and some one had got the position before him. Stephen too found that the places where he had worked before had now no job for him. "It was the worst time in the world... a month ago now or possibly in a month's time...."

Stephen did not tell the boy that away from London there were many things that he could do--the boy was not up to tramping. Indeed, nothing was more remarkable than the way in which Peter's strength seemed to strain, like a flood, away. It was, perhaps, a matter of nerves as much as physical strength--the boy was burning with the anxiety of it, whereas to Stephen this was no new experience. Peter saw it in the light of some horrible disaster that belonged, in all the world's history, to him alone. He came back at the end of one of his days, white, his eyes almost closed, his fingers twitching, his head hanging a little ... very silent.