The hand moved across the paper--the dead eyes encountered nothing in their gaze, the shoulders were the loosely drooping shoulders of an old man.

"Can you see, Peter?"

"Yes, thanks. Switch on the light if you like."

Bobby got up and moved to the door. The dusk behind Peter's face flung it into sharp white outline.

Another shower! The rain at first in single drops, then more swiftly, fell with gentle, pattering fingers up and down the window. It was the only sound, except the scraping of Peter's pen. The pen stopped. Peter raised his head, listening.

Bobby switched on the light and as he did so Peter in a strangled breathless mutter whispered--

"The rain! The rain! It was like that that night. Stephen! Stephen!"

His head fell on to his hands and he burst into a storm of tears.

II

And now Peter was out to be hurt, hurt more horribly than he could have ever believed possible. It was like walking--as they did in the days of the Ordeal--on red-hot iron, every step an agony. Always there was something to remind him! He could go nowhere, see nobody, summon no kind of recollection out of the past without this coming to him. There were a thousand things that Stephen had done, that he, Peter, had never noticed at the time. He was haunted now with regrets, he had not made enough of him whilst he was there! Ah! had he only known that the time was to be so short! How he would have spent those precious, precious moments! It was as though he had flung away, wilfully, possessions of the utmost price--cast them off as though it had been his very intention to feel, afterwards, this burning regret. The things in the nursery were packed away, but there remained the room, the frieze with the dragons and princesses, the fire-place, the high broad window. Again and again he saw babies in the streets, in the parks and fancied that Stephen had come back again.

The thing had happened to him so swiftly that, behind reason, there lurked the thought that perhaps, with equal suddenness, Stephen would be restored. To come back one afternoon and to find him there! To find him lying there on his back in his cot looking up at the ceiling, to find him labouring unsteadily on his feet, clinging to the sides of his bed and shouting--to find him laughing at the jumping waves in the fire--to find him!... No, never to be found again--gone, hopelessly, cruelly, for no reason, for no one's good or benefit--simply for some one's sport.

But, strangely, more than the actual Stephen did he miss the imaginary future Stephen at school, hero of a thousand games, winner of a thousand prizes, the Stephen grown up, famous already at so young an age, loved by men and women, handsome, good.... Oh! the folly of it! No human being could carry all the glories that Peter had designed for his son--no human being, then how much less a Westcott. It might be best after all, young Stephen had been spared. Until every stone of Scaw House was level with the ground no Westcott could be termed safe--perhaps not then.

Now he realised how huge a place in his heart the boy had filled dimly, because as yet he refused to bring it to the open light he was conscious that, during these past two years he had been save for Stephen, a very lonely man. It was odd that Stephen the elder and Stephen the younger should have been the only two persons in his life to find the real inside of him--they, too, and perhaps Norah Monogue. But, otherwise, not Bobby, nor Cards, nor Alice Galleon, nor Mr. Zanti--nor Clare.

Not Clare. He faced the fact with a sudden shudder. Now that Stephen was gone he and Clare were face to face--face to face as they had never been since that first happy year of their marriage. That first year of their marriage--and now!

With an instant clenching of his teeth he pulled down the blinds upon that desolating view.

III

With teeth still clenched he set himself to build up his house again.

Clare was very quiet and submissive during those first weeks. Her little figure looked helpless and appealing in its deep black; she was prettier than she had ever been in her life before. People said, "Poor Mrs.

Westcott, she feels the loss of her baby so dreadfully"--and they didn't think about Peter. Indeed some people thought him callous. "Mr. Westcott seemed to be so fond of the child. Now I really believe he's forgotten all about him." Bobby was the only person in the world who knew how Peter suffered.

Clare was, indeed, after a time, reassured. Peter, after all, seemed not to mind. Did he mind anything? He was so often glum and silent that really you couldn't tell. Clare herself had been frightened on that night when the baby had died. She had probably never in all her life felt a more genuine emotion than she had known when she knelt by Peter's side and went to sleep in his arms. She was quite ready to feel that emotion again would Peter but allow her. But no. He showed no emotion himself and expected no one else to show any, for he was ready to share it but in her heart of hearts she longed to fling away from her this emotional atmosphere. She had loved the baby--of course she had loved it. But she had always known that something would happen to it--always.

If Peter would insist on having those horrid Cornishmen.... At heart she connected that dreadful day when those horrible men had played about in the nursery with baby's death. Of course it was enough to kill any baby.

So, ultimately, it all came back to Peter's fault. Clare found real satisfaction in the thought. Meanwhile she emphatically stated her desire to be happy again.

She stated it always in Peter's absence, feeling that he would, in no way, understand her. "It can't help poor dear little Stephen that we should go on being melancholy and doing nothing. That's only morbid, isn't it, mother?"

Mrs. Rossiter entirely agreed, as indeed she always agreed with anything that Clare suggested.

"The dear thing does look lovely in black, though," she confided to Mrs. Galleon. "Mr. Cardillac couldn't take his eyes off her yesterday at luncheon."

Mrs. Rossiter and Jerry Cardillac had, during the last year, become the very best of friends. Peter was glad to see that it was so. Peter couldn't pretend to care very deeply about his mother-in-law, but he felt that it would do her all the good in the world to see something of old Cards. It would broaden her understanding, give her perhaps some of that charity towards the whole world that was one of Cards' most charming features. Cards, in fact, had been so much in the house lately that he might be considered one of the family. No one could have been more tender, more sympathetic, more exactly right about young Stephen's death. He had become, during those weeks almost a necessity. He seemed to have no particular interest of his own in life. He dressed very perfectly, he went to a number of parties, he had delightful little gatherings in his own flat, but, with it all, he was something more--a great deal more--than the mere society idler. There was a hint at possible wildness, an almost sinister suggestion of possible lawlessness that made him infinitely attractive. He was such good company and yet one felt that one didn't know nearly the whole of him.

To Peter he was the most wonderful thing in the world, to Clare he was rapidly becoming so--no wonder then that the Roundabout saw him so often.

IV

It would need a very acute perception indeed to pursue precisely the train of cause and effect in Mrs. Rossiter's mind after young Stephen's death. Her black garments added, in the most astonishing fashion, to her placid flatness. If she had gloried before in an armour that was so negative that it became instantly exceedingly dangerous, her appearance now was terrifying beyond all words. Her black silk had apparently no creases, no folds--it almost eliminated terms and boundaries. Mrs.

Rossiter could not now be said to come into a room--she was simply there. One was sitting, gazing it might be at the fire, a looking-glass, a picture or two, when suddenly there came a black shadow, something that changed the colour of things a little, something that obscured certain objects, but scarcely anything more definite. The yellow brooch was definite, cold, stony eyes hung a little above it, over those a high white forehead--otherwise merely a black shadow putting out the fire.

She was in the Roundabout now all the time. How poor Dr. Rossiter fared it was difficult to imagine, but he cared for Clare as deeply as his wife did and was quite ready for everything to be sacrificed to her at this crisis of her history.

Mrs. Rossiter, meanwhile, was entirely convinced that Peter was responsible for his son's death. Had you suddenly challenged her and demanded her reasoned argument with regard to this matter she would probably have failed you--she did not like reasoned arguments--but she would also have been most sincerely indignant had you called her a liar and would have sworn to her convictions before a court of law.

"Those Cornishmen" had frightened the poor little thing into fits and it was only to be expected. Moreover it followed from this that a man who murdered his only child would most assuredly take to beating his wife before very long. After that, anything might happen. Peter was on a swift road to being a "Perfect Devil."

Indeed, allow Mrs. Rossiter two consecutive hours of peace and quiet, she, sitting like the personification of the English climate, alone before her fire, and she could make any one into anything--once made so they remained.

It mattered nothing to her that poor Peter was, during these weeks, the most subdued and gently courteous of husbands--that was as it might be (a favourite phrase of hers). She knew him ... and, so knowing, waited for the inevitable end.

But the more certain she was of his villainous possibilities the more placid she became. She spread her placidity over everything. It lay, like an invisible glue, upon everything in the Roundabout--you could feel it on the door-handles, as you feel the jammy reminiscences of incautious servant-maids. Peter felt it but did not know what it was that he had to deal with.

He had determined, when the sharpest shock of Stephen's death had passed, and he was able to think of other things, that the supremely important thing for him now to do was to get back to his old relations with Clare. There was, he grimly reflected, "Mortimer Stant" to be finished within a month or two and he knew, perfectly well, with the assurance of past experience that whilst Clare held the stage, Mortimer had the poorest of chances--nevertheless Clare was, at this moment, the thing to struggle for.

He _must_ get her back--he _must_ get her back.

Behind his brain, all this time, was the horror of being left alone in the world and of what he might do--then.

To get Clare back he must have the assistance of two people--Mrs.

Rossiter and Cards.

It was at this point that he perceived Mrs. Rossiter's placidity.

He could not get at her at all--he could not get near her. He tried in every way, during these weeks, to please her. She apparently noticed nothing. He could force no direct opinion about anything from her and yet he was conscious of opposition. He was conscious of opposition, increasingly, every day.

"I believe she _wants_ Clare to hate me," he suddenly revealed to himself, and, with that, all hope of her as an ally vanished.

Then he hated her--he hated her more bitterly every day.

He wanted to tell her not to call him "Peter dear"--she loved to put him in positions that showed him in the worst light to Clare.

At luncheon for instance: "Peter dear, it would be a nice thing for you and Clare to go to that Private View at the Carfax this afternoon.

You've nothing to do, Clare, have you?"

Peter knew that Mrs. Rossiter had already ascertained that he was engaged. He knew also that Clare had had no thought of Peter's company before but that now she would very speedily feel herself injured.

"I'm afraid--" Peter would begin.

"Peter's too engaged to take you, Clare dear."

"I dare say Jerry will come--" this from Clare.