Fortitude. Hugh Walpole
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greatest curiosity. Stephen was silent, and Frosted Moses very rarely said anything at all, so that the conversation speedily became a dialogue between Zachary and the foreign gentleman, with occasional appeals to Mr. Brant for his unbiassed opinion. Peter's whole memory of the incident was vague and uncertain, although in after years he often tried very hard to recall it all to mind. He was excited by the mere atmosphere of the place, by the silver candlesticks, the dancing ladies on the walls, Zachary's blue coat, and the sense of all the wonderful things in the shop beyond. He had no instinct that it was all important beyond the knowledge that it roused a great many things in him that the rest of his life left untouched and anything to do with “London,” a city, as he knew from Tom Jones and David Copperfield, of extraordinary excitement and adventure, was an event. He watched Mr. Emilio Zanti closely, and he decided that his smile was not real, and that it must be very unpleasant to have a bald head. He also noticed that he said things in a funny way: like “ze beautiful country zat you 'ave 'ere with its sea and its woods” and “I 'ave the greatest re-spect for ze Englishman”—also his hands were very fat and he wore rings like Zachary.
Sometimes Peter fancied that his words meant a great deal more than they seemed to mean. He laughed when there was really nothing to laugh at and he tried to make Stephen talk, but Stephen was very silent. On the whole the conversation was dull, Peter thought, and once he nodded and was very nearly asleep, and fancied that the gentleman from London was spreading like a balloon and filling all the room. There was no mention of London at all.
Peter wondered for what purpose Stephen had come there, because he sat looking at the fire with his brown hands spread out over his great knees, thinking apparently all his own thoughts.
Then suddenly there came a moment. The London gentleman, Mr. Emilio Zanti, turned round quite quickly and said, like a shot out of a gun: “And what does our little friend think of it?”
Peter did not know to what he was referring, and looked embarrassed. He was also conscious that Zachary was watching him keenly.
“Ah, 'e does not understand, our little friend. But with life, what is it that you will do when you are grown up, my boy?” and he put his fat hand on Peter's knee. Peter disliked him more than ever, but he answered:
“I don't know—I haven't settled yet.”
“Ah, it is early days,” said Mr. Zanti, nodding his head, “there is much time, of course. But what is the thing that our little friend would care, most of all, to do?”
“To go to school,” said Peter, without any hesitation, and both Zachary and Mr. Zanti laughed a great deal more than was in the least necessary.
“And then—afterwards?” said Mr. Zanti.
“To go to London,” said Peter, stiffly, feeling in some undefined way that they were laughing at him and that something was going on that he did not understand.
“Ho! that is good,” said Mr. Emilio, slapping his knees and rocking in his chair with merriment. “Ho! that is very good. He knows a thing or two, our young friend here. Ho, yes! don't you mistake!” For a little while he could not speak for laughing, and the tears rolled down his fat cheeks. “And what is it that you will do when you are there, my friend?” he said at last.
“I will have adventures,” said Peter, growing a little bolder at the thought of London and its golden streets. And then, suddenly, when he heard this, curious Mr. Zanti grew very grave indeed, and his eyes were very large, and he put a finger mysteriously to his nose. Then he leant right over Peter and almost whispered in his ear.
“And you shall—of course you shall. You shall come to London and 'ave adventures—'eaps and 'eaps and 'eaps. Oh, yes, bless my soul, shan't he, Mr. Tan? Dear me, yes—London, my young friend, is the most wonderful place. In one week, if you are clever, you 'ave made thousands of pounds—thousands and thousands. Is it not so, Mr. Tan? When you are just a little bit older, a few years—then you shall come. And you ask for your friend, Mr. Emilio Zanti—because I like you. We will be friends, is not that so?”
And he held out his large fat hand and grasped Peter's small and rather damp one. Then he bent even closer, still holding Peter's hand: “Do you know one thing?” he whispered.
“No,” replied Peter, husky with awe.
“It is this, that when you think of Mr. Zanti and of London and of adventures, you will look in a looking-glass—any looking-glass, and you will see—what you will see,” and he nodded all over his fat face.
Peter was entirely overcome by this last astonishing statement, and was very relieved to hear numbers of clocks in the curiosity shop strike five o'clock. He got off his chair, said good-bye very politely indeed, and hurried up the dark street.
For the moment even his beloved Stephen was forgotten, and looking-glasses, the face of Mr. Emilio Zanti, London streets, and Zachary's silver candlesticks were mingled confusedly in his brain.
III
And indeed throughout the dreary supper Peter's brain was in a whirl. It often happened that supper passed without a word of conversation from first to last. His father very rarely said anything, Peter never said anything at all, and if Aunt Jessie did venture on a little conversation she received so slender an encouragement that she always forsook the attempt after a very short time. It was a miserable meal.
It was cold beef and beetroot and blanc-mange with a very, very little strawberry jam round the edges of the glass dish, and there was a hard red cheese and little stiff woolly biscuits.
But old grandfather Westcott was always hungry, and his querulous complaints were as regular an accompaniment to the evening meal as the ticking of the marble clock. But his beef had to be cut up for him into very tiny pieces and that gave Aunt Jessie a great deal of work, so that his appeals for a second helping were considered abominable selfishness.
“Oh, my dear, just a leetle piece of beef” (this from the very heart of the cushions). “Just the leetlest piece of beef for a poor old man—such a leetle piece he had, and he's had such a hunger.” No answer to this and at last a strange noise from the cushions like the sound of dogs quarrelling. At last again, “Oh, just the leetlest piece of beef for a poor old man—” and then whimpering and “poor old man” repeated at intervals that lengthened gradually into sleep.
At last the meal was over, the things had been cleared away, and Peter was bending over a sum in preparation for lessons on Monday. Such a sum—add this and this and this and this and then divide it by that and multiply the result by this! … and the figures (bad ill-written figures) crept over the page and there were smudgy finger marks, and always between every other line “London, looking-glasses, and fat Mr. Zanti laughing until the tears ran down his face.” Such a strange world where all these things could be so curiously confused, all of them, one supposed, having their purpose and meaning—even grandfather—and even 2469 X 2312 X 6201, and ever so many more until they ran races round the page and up and down and in and out.
And then suddenly into the middle of the silence his father's voice:
“What are you doing there?”
“Sums, father—for Monday.”
“You won't go back on Monday” (and this without the Cornish Times moving an inch).
“Not go back?”
“No. You are going away to school—to Devonshire—on Tuesday week.”
And Peter's pencil fell clattering on to the paper, and the answer to that sum is still an open question.
CHAPTER IV