CHAPTER X

ROCKING THE ROUNDABOUT

I

As he climbed, once more, the stairs to the nursery, he was conscious of the necessity for a great restraint. Did he but relax for an instant his control he was aware that forces--often dimly perceived and shuddered at--would now, as never in his life before, burst into freedom.

It was as though a whole life of joy and happiness had been suddenly snatched from him and it was Clare who had robbed him--Clare who had never cared what the things might be that she demanded from him--Clare who gave him nothing.

But his rage now, he also felt, was beyond all reason, something that belonged to that other part of him, the part that Scaw House and its dark room understood and so terribly fostered.

He was afraid of what he might do.

II

On opening the nursery door he saw the straight, thin, shining back of Mrs. Kant as she bent to put things straight. Young Stephen was quietly asleep. He closed the door, and, turning in the narrow passage, found Clare coming out of her room. In the dim light they faced one another, hostility flaming between them. She looked at him for a moment, her breast heaving, her mouth so tight and sharp, her eyes so fierce that her little stature seemed to be raised by her anger to a great height.

At that moment Peter felt that he hated her as he had never hated any one in his life before.

She went back, without a word, into her room.

She did not come down again that night and he had his evening meal, miserably, alone.

He slept in his dressing-room. Long before morning his rage had gone. He looked at her locked door and wished, miserably, that he might die for her....

III

Later, as he sat, hopelessly, over the dim and sterile pages of "Mortimer Slant," Mrs. Rossiter came, heavily, in to talk with him. Mrs.

Rossiter always entered the room with an expression of stupid benignity that hid a good deal of rather sharp perception. The fact that she was not nearly so stupid as she looked enabled her to look all the stupider and she covered a multitude of brains with a quantity of hard black silk that she spread out around her with the air of one who is filling as much of the room as she can conveniently seize upon. Her plump arms, her broad and placid bosom, her flat smooth face, her hair, entirely negative in colour and arrangement, offered no clue whatever to her unsuspected sharpnesses. Smooth, broad, flat and motionless she carried, like the Wooden Horse of Troy, a thousand dangers in the depths of her placidity.

She had come now to assist her daughter, the only person for whom she may be said to have had the slightest genuine affection, for Dr. Rossiter she had long-despised and Mrs. Galleon was an ally and companion but never a friend. She had allowed Clare to marry Peter, chiefly because Clare would have married him in any case, but also, a little, because she thought that Peter had a great career in front of him. Now that Peter's career seemed already to be, for the most part, behind him, she disliked him and because he appeared to have made Clare unhappy suddenly hated him... but placidity was the shield that covered her attack and, for a symbol, one might take the large flat golden brooch that she wore on her bosom--flat, expressionless and shining, with the sharpest pin behind it that ever brooch possessed.

Peter, whose miseries had accumulated as the minutes passed, was ready to seize upon anything that promised a reconciliation. He did not like Mrs. Rossiter--he had never been able to get to close quarters with her, and he was conscious that his roughness and occasional outbursts displeased her. He felt, too, that the qualities that he had resented in Clare owed their origin to her mother. That brooch of hers was responsible for a great deal.

Fixing his eyes upon it he said, "You've come about Clare?"

"Yes, Peter." Mrs. Rossiter settled herself more comfortably, spread her skirts, folded her hands. "She's very unhappy."

The mild eyes baffled him.

"I'm terribly sorry. I will do anything I can, but I think--that I had a right"--he faltered a little; it was so like talking to an empty Dairy--"had a right to mind. Two old friends of mine--two of the best friends that I have in the world were here yesterday and Clare--"

"I don't think," the soft voice broke in upon him whilst the eyes searched his body up and down, "that, even now, Peter, you quite understand Clare--"

"No," he said eagerly, "I know. I'm blundering, stupid. Lots of times I've irritated her, and now again." He paused, but then added, with a touch of his old stubbornness--"But they were friends of mine--she should have treated them so."

Mrs. Rossiter felt that she did indeed hate the young man.

"Clare is very unhappy," she repeated. "She tells me that she has been crying all night. You must remember, Peter, that her life has been very different to yours--"

He wished that she would not repeat herself; he wished that she would not always use the same level voice; he wanted insanely to tell her that she ought to say "different from"--he could not take his eyes from the brooch. But the thought of Clare came to him and he bowed himself once more humbly.

"I will see that things are better," he said earnestly. "I don't know what has been the matter lately--my work and everything has been wrong, and I expect my temper has been horrible. You know," he said with a little crooked smile, "that I've got to work to keep it all going, and when I'm writing badly then my temper goes to pieces."

Mrs. Rossiter, with no appearance of having heard anything that he had said, continued--

"You know, Peter, that your temperament is very different to Clare's.

You are, and I know you will forgive my putting it so plainly, a little wild still--doubtless owing to your earlier years. Clare is gentle, bright, happy. She has never given my husband or myself a moment's trouble, but that is because we understood her nature. We knew that she loved people about her to be happy--she flourished in the sun, she drooped under the clouds... under the clouds" Mrs. Rossiter repeated again softly, as she searched, with care, for her next words.

Irritation was rising within Peter. Why should it be concluded so inevitably that the fault was all on Peter's side and not at all on Clare's--after all, there were reasons... but he pulled himself up. He had behaved like a beast.

"I've tried very hard--" he began.

"Clouds--" said Mrs. Rossiter. "And you, Peter, are at times--I have seen it myself and I know that it is apparent to others--inclined to be morose--gloomy, a little gloomy--" Her fingers tapped the silk of her dress. "Dear Clare, considering what her own life has been, shrinks, I must confess it seems to me quite naturally, from any reminder of what your own earlier circumstances have been. Look at it, Peter, for an instant from the outside and you will see, at once, I am sure, what it must have been to her, yesterday, to come into her nursery, to find tables, chairs overturned, strange men shouting and flinging poor little Stephen towards the ceiling--some talk about Cornwall--really, Peter, I think you can understand..."

He abandoned all his defences. "I know--I ought to have realised... it was quite natural..."

In the back of his head he heard her words "You're morose--you're wild.

Other people find you so--you're making a mess of everything and every one knows it--"

He was humbled to the dust. If only he might make it all right with Clare, then he would see to it--Oh! yes he would see to it--that nothing of this kind ever happened again. From Mrs. Rossiter's standpoint he looked back upon his life and found it all one ignoble, selfish muddle.

Dear Clare!--so eager to be happy and he had made her miserable.

"Will she forgive me?"

"Dear Clare," said Mrs. Rossiter, rising brightly and with a general air of benevolence towards all the sinners in existence, "is the most forgiving creature in the world."

He went down to her bedroom and found her lying on a sofa and reading a novel.

He fell on his knees at her side--"Clare--darling--I'm a beast, a brute--"

She suddenly turned her face into the cushions and burst into passionate crying. "Oh! it's horrible--horrible--horrible--"

He kissed her hand and then getting on to his feet again, stood looking at her awkwardly, struggling for words with which to comfort her.

IV

And then at luncheon, there was a little, pencilled feeble note for Peter from Norah Monogue. "Please, if you can spare half an hour come to me. In a day or two I am off to the country."

Things had just been restored to peace and happiness--Clare had just proposed that they should go, that afternoon, to a Private View together--they might go and have tea with--

For an instant he was tempted to abandon Norah. Then his courage came:--