"He shan't," she broke out at last, "hear about it."

"Of all the nonsense," Peter answered her slowly. "Really, Clare, sometimes I think you're about two years old--"

"He shan't hear about it," she repeated again. "You don't care--you don't care what I think or what I say--I'm his mother--I have the right--"

The baby looked at them both with wondering eyes and to any outside observer would surely have seemed the eldest of the three. Clare's breath came in little pants of rage--"You know--that I hate--all mention of that place--those people. It doesn't matter to you--you never think of me--"

"At any rate," he retorted, "if you were up here in the nursery more often you would be able to take care that Stephen's innocent ears weren't insulted with my vulgar conversation--"

It was then that he saw, behind Clare, in the doorway, the dark smiling face of Cards.

Cards came forward. "Really, you two," he said, laughing. "Peter, old man, don't be absurd--you too, Clare" (he called her Clare now).

The anger died out of Clare's eyes: "Well, he knows I hate him talking about that nasty old town to the baby--" Then, in a moment, she was smiling again--"I'm sorry, Peter. Cards is quite right, and anyhow the baby doesn't understand--"

She stood smiling in front of him but the frown did not leave his face.

"Oh! it's all right," he said sullenly, and he brushed past them up the stairs, to his own room.

III

From the silence of his room he thought that he could hear them laughing about it downstairs. "Silly old Peter--always getting into tempers--"

Well, was he? And after all hadn't it been, this time, her affair?

Stephen and he had been happy enough before the others had come in. What was this senseless dislike of Clare's to Cornwall? What could it matter to her? It was always cropping up now. He could think of a thousand occasions, lately, when she had been roused by it.

But, as he paced, with frowning face, back and forwards across the room, there was something more puzzling still that had to be thought about.

Why did they quarrel about such tiny things? In novels, in good, reliable novels, it was always the big things about which people fought.

Whoever heard of two people quarrelling because one of them wanted to talk about Cornwall? and yet it was precisely concerning things just as trivial that they were always now disputing. Why need they quarrel at all? In the first year there had always been peace. Why shouldn't there be peace now? Where exactly lay Clare's altered attitude to himself, to his opinions, to the world in general. If he yielded to her demands--and he had yielded on many more occasions than was good either for her or himself--she had, he fancied, laughed at him for being so easily defeated. If he had not yielded then she had been, immediately, impossible....

And yet, after their quarrels, there had been the most wonderful, precious reconciliations, reconciliations that, even now at his thought of them, made his heart beat faster. Now, soon, when he went downstairs to dress for dinner, she would come to him, he knew, and beg most beautifully, his pardon. But to-night it seemed suddenly that this kind of thing had happened too often lately. He felt, poor Peter, bewildered.

There seemed to be, on every side of him, so many things that he was called upon to manage and he was so unable to manage any of them.

He stopped in his treading to and fro and stared at the long deal writing-table at which he always worked.

There, waiting for him, were the first chapters of his new novel, "Mortimer Stant." In the same way, two years ago, he had stared at the early chapters of "The Stone House," on that morning before he had gone to propose to Clare. Now there flashed through his mind the wonderful things that he intended "Mortimer Stant" to be. It was to concern a man of forty (in his confident selection of that age he displayed, most stridently, his own youth) and Mortimer was to be a stolid, reserved Philistine, who was, against his will, by outside forces, dragged into an emotional crisis.

At the back of his mind he had, perhaps, Maradick for his figure, but that was almost unconscious. "Mortimer Stant" was to represent a wonderful duel between the two camps--the Artists and the Philistines--with ultimate victory, of course, for the Artists. It was to be.... Well what was it to be? At present the stolid Mortimer was hidden behind a phalanx of people--Clare, young Stephen, Cards, Bobby, Mrs. Rossiter (tiresome woman), Alice Galleon--_That_ was it. It was hidden, hidden just as parts of "The Stone House" had been hidden, but hidden more deeply--a regular jungle of interests and occupations was creeping, stealthily, stealthily upon him.

And then his eye fell upon an open letter that lay on his table, and, at the sight of it, he was seized with a burning sense of shame. How could he have forgotten?

The letter ran--

_My dear Mr. Westcott,

You have not been to see me for many months. Further opportunities may, by the hand of God, be denied you.

Come if you can spare the time.

Henry Galleon._

The words were written, feebly almost illegibly, in pencil. Peter knew that Bobby had been, for many weeks, very anxious concerning his father's health, and during the last few days he had abandoned the City and spent all his time at home. That letter had come this very morning and Peter had intended to go at once and inquire. The fact that he had left all these months without going to see the old man rose before him now like an accusing hand. He deserved, indeed, whatever the Gods might choose to send him, if he could so wilfully neglect his duty. But he knew that there had been, in the back of his mind, shame. His work had not, so he might have put it to himself, been good enough to justify his presence. There would have been questions asked, questions that he might have found it difficult, indeed, to answer.

But now the sight of that letter immediately encouraged him. Henry Galleon, even though he was too ill to talk, would put him right with all his perplexities, would give him courage to cut through all these complications that had been gathering, lately, so thickly about him.

"This," the room seemed to whisper to him, "is your chance. After all, you are given this opportunity. See him once before he dies and your fate will be shown you, clearly, honestly."

He stepped out of the house unperceived and was immediately conscious of the Spring night. Spring--with a precipitancy and extravagance that seems to be--to own peculiar quality in London--had leapt upon the streets.

The Embankment was bathed in the evening glow. Clouds, like bales of golden wool, sailed down a sky so faintly blue that the white light of a departed sun seemed to glow behind it. The lamps were crocus-coloured against black barges that might have been loaded with yellow primroses so did they hint, through their darkness, at the yellow haze around them.

The silence was melodious; the long line of dark houses watched like prisoners from behind their iron bars. They might expect, it seemed, the Spring to burst through the flagstones at their feet.

Peter's heart was lightened of all its burden. He shared the glory, the intoxication of the promise that was on every side of him. On such a night great ambitions, great ideals, great lovers were created.

He saw Henry Galleon, from behind his window, watching the pageant. He saw him gaining new life, getting up from his bed of sickness, writing anew his great masterpieces. And he saw himself, Peter Westcott, learning at last from the Master the rule and discipline of life. All the muddle, the confusion of this lazy year should be healed. He and Clare should see with the same eyes. She should understand his need for work, he should understand her need for help. All should be happiness and victory in this glorious world and he, by the Master's side, should...

He stopped suddenly. The house that had been Henry Galleon's was blank and dead.

At every window the blinds were down....

CHAPTER IX

WILD MEN

I

To Peter's immediate world it was a matter of surprise that he should take Henry Galleon's death so hardly. It is a penalty of greatness that you should, to the majority of your fellow men, be an Idea rather than a human being. To his own family Henry Galleon had, of course, been real enough but to the outside world he was the author of "Henry Lessingham"

and "The Roads," whose face one saw in the papers as one saw the face of Royalty. Peter Westcott, moreover, had not appeared, at any time, to take more than a general interest in the great man, and it was even understood that old Mrs. Galleon and Millicent and Percival considered themselves somewhat affronted because the Master had "been exceedingly kind to the young man. Taken trouble about him, tried to know him, but young Westcott had allowed the thing to drop--had not been near him during the last year."

Even Bobby and Alice Galleon were astonished at Peter's grief. To Bobby his father's death came as a fine ending to a fine career. He had died, full of honour and of years. Even Bobby, who thought that he knew his Peter pretty well by now, was puzzled.

"He takes it," Bobby explained to Alice, "as though it were a kind of omen, sees ever so much more in it than any of us do. It seems that he was coming round the very evening that father died to talk to him, and that he suddenly saw the blinds down; it was a shock to him, of course.

I think it's all been a kind of remorse working out, remorse not only for having neglected my father but for having left other things--his work, I suppose, rather to look after themselves. But he won't tell me," Bobby almost desperately concluded, "he won't tell me anything--he really is the most extraordinary chap."

And Peter found it difficult enough to tell himself, did not indeed try. He only knew that he felt an acute, passionate remorse and that it seemed to him that the denial of that last visit was an omen of the anger of all the Gods, and even--although to this last he gave no kind of expression--the malicious contrivance of an old man who waited for him down there in that house by the sea. It was as though gates had been clanged in his face, and that as he heard them close he heard also the jeering laughter behind them.... He had missed his chance.

He saw, instantly, that Clare understood none of this, and that, indeed, she took it all as rather an affectation on his part, something in him that belonged to that side of him that she tried to forget. She hated, quite frankly, that he should go about the house with a glum face because an old man, whom he had never taken the trouble to go and see when he was alive, was now dead. She showed him that she hated it.

He turned desperately to his work. There had been a hint, only the other day, from the newspaper for which he wrote, that his reviews had not, lately, been up to his usual standard. He knew that they seemed to him twice as difficult to do as they had seemed a year ago and that therefore he did them twice as badly.

He flung himself upon his book and swore that he would dissipate the shadows that hid it from him. One of the shadows he saw quite clearly was Cards' attitude to his work. It was strange, he thought almost pathetically, how closely his feeling for Cards now resembled the feeling that he had had, those years ago, at Dawson's. He still worshipped him--worship was the only possible word--worshipped him for all the things that he, Peter, was not. One could not be with him, Peter thought, one could not watch his movements, hear his voice without paying it all the most absolute reverence. The glamour about Cards was, to Peter, something almost from another world. Peter felt so clumsy, so rough and ugly and noisy and out-of-place when Cards was present that the fact that Cards was almost always present now made life a very difficult thing. How could Peter prevent himself from reverencing every word that Cards uttered when one reflected upon the number of things that Cards had done, the things that he had seen, the places to which he had been. And Cards' attitude to Peter's work was, if not actually contemptuous, at least something very like it. He did not, he professed, read novels. The novelists' trade at the best, he seemed to imply, was only a poor one, and that Peter's work was not altogether of the best he almost openly asserted. "What can old Peter know about life?" one could hear him saying--"Where's he been? Who's he known? Whatever in the world has he done?"

Against this, in spite of the glitter that shone about Cards' head, Peter might, perhaps, have stood. He reminded himself, a hundred times a day, that one must not care about the things that other people said, one must have one's eyes fixed upon the goal--one must be sure of oneself--what had Galleon said?...

But there was also the effect of it all upon Clare to be considered.

Clare listened to Cards. She was, Peter gloomily considered, very largely of Cards' opinion. The two people for whom he cared most in the world after young Stephen who, as a critic, had not yet begun to count, thought that he was wasting his time.