# Fortitude (Walpole)/Book 4/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV
THE GREY HILL
I
THE day of Norah Monogue's funeral was fine and clear. Peter and little Mr. Bannister were the only mourners and it was Peter's wish that she should be buried in the little windy graveyard of the church where his mother had been buried.
There was always a wind on that little hill, but to-day it was gentler than he had ever known it before. His mind went back to that other funeral, now, as it seemed, such a lifetime ago. Out of all the world these two women only now seemed to abide with him. As he stood beside the grave he was conscious that there was about him a sense of peace and rest such as he had never known before. Could it be true that some of Norah Monogue's fine spirit had come to him. Were they, in sober fact to go on together during the remainder of his days?
He lingered for a little looking down upon the grave. He was glad to think that he had made her last hours happy.
Indeed she had not lived in vain.
II
Heavy black clouds were banking upon the horizon as he went down the hill and struck the Sea Road in the direction of Scaw House. Except in that far distance the sky was a relentless, changeless blue. Every detail in the scene was marked with a hard outline, every sound, the sea, the Bell Rock, the cries of sheep, the nestling trees, was doubly insistent.
He banged the knocker upon the Scaw House door and when the old woman came to open to him he saw that something had occurred. Her hair fell about her neck, her face was puckered with distress and her whole appearance was dismayed.
​“Is my father in?” he asked.
“He is, but he's ill,” she answered him, eyeing him doubtfully. “He won't know yer—I doubt he'll know any one. He's had a great set-back—”
Peter pushed past her into the hall—“Is he ill?”
“Indeed he is. He was suddenly took—the other evenin' I being in my kitchen heard a great cry. I come runnin' and there in the dining-room I found him, standing there in the midst, his hands up. His eyes, you must understand, sir, were wide and staring—‘They've beaten me,’ he cried, ‘They've beaten me’—just like that, sir, and then down he tumbled in a living fit, foaming at the mouth and striking his poor head against the fender. Yer may come up, sir, but he won't know yer which he doesn't me either.”
Peter followed her up to the dreary room that his father inhabited. Even here the paper was peeling off the walls, some of the window-glass was broken and the carpet was torn. His father lay on his back in an old high four-poster. His eyes stared before him, cheeks were ashen white—his hands too were white like ivory.
His lips moved but he made no sound. He did not see Peter, nor did his eyes turn from the blank stare that held them.
“Has he a doctor?” Peter asked the old woman.
“Ay—there's a young man been coming—” the old woman answered him. She was, he noticed, more subservient than she had been on the former occasion. She obviously turned to him now with her greedy old eyes as the one who was likely soon to be in authority.
Peter turned back to the door. “This room must be made warmer and more comfortable. I will send a doctor from the hotel this evening—I will come in again to-night.”
As he looked about the poor room, as he saw the dust that the sunlight made so visible, he wondered that the house of cards could so recently have held him within its shadow. He felt as though he had passed through some terrible nightmare that the light of day rendered not only fantastic but incredible. That old Peter Westcott had indeed been flung out of the high window of Norah Monogue's room.
Leaving Scaw House on his right he struck through the dark belt of trees and came out at the foot of the Grey Hill. ​The dark belt of cloud was spreading now fast across the blue—soon it would catch the sun—the Tower itself was already swallowed by a cold grey shadow.
Peter began to climb the hill, and remembered that he had not been there since that Easter morning when he had kissed an unknown lady and so flung fine omens about his future.
Soon he had reached the little green mound that lay below the Giant's Finger. Although the Grey Hill would have been small and insignificant in hilly country here, by its isolation, it assumed importance. On every side of it ran the sand-dunes—in front of it, almost as it seemed up to its very feet, ran the sea. Treliss was completely hidden, not a house could be seen. The black clouds now had caught the sea and only far away to the right the waves still glittered, for the rest it was an inky grey with a touch of white here and there where submerged rocks found breakers. For one moment the sun had still evaded the cloud, then it was caught and the world was instantly cold.
Peter, as he sat there, felt that if he were only still enough the silence would soon be vocal. The Hill, the Sea, the Sky—these things seemed to have summoned him there that they might speak to him.
He was utterly detached from life. He looked down from a height in air and saw his little body sitting there as he had done on the day when he had proposed to Clare. He might think now of the long journey that it had come, he might watch the course of its little history, see the full circle that it had travelled, wonder for what new business it was now to prepare.
For full circle he had come. He, Peter Westcott, sat there, as naked, as alone, as barren of all rewards, of all success, of all achievements as he had been when, so many years ago he had watched that fight in the inn on Christmas Eve. The scene passed before him again—he saw himself, a tiny boy, swinging his legs from the high chair. He saw the room thick with smoke, the fishermen, Dicky the Fool, the mistletoe swinging, the snow blocking in from outside, the fight—it was all as though it passed once more before his eyes. His whole life came to him—the scenes at Scaw House ​Dawson's, the bookshop, Brockett's, Bucket Lane, Chelsea, that last awful scene there . . . all the people that he had known passed before him—Stephen Brant, his grandfather, his father, his mother, Bobby Galleon, Mr. Zanti, Clare, Cards, Mrs. Brockett, Norah, Henry Galleon, Mrs. Rossiter, dear Mrs. Launce . . . these and many more. He could see them all dispassionately now; how that other Peter Westcott had felt their contact; how he had longed for their friendship, dreaded their anger, missed them, wanted them, minded their desertion. . . .
Now, behold, they were all gone. Alone on this Hill with the great sea at his feet, with the storm rolling up to him, Peter Westcott thought of his wife and his son, his friends and his career—thought of everything that had been life to him, yes, even his sins, his temptations, his desires for the beast in man, his surly temper, his furious anger, his selfishness, his lack of understanding—all these things had been taken away from him, every trail had been given to him—and now, naked, on a hill, he knew the first peace of his life.
And as he knew, sitting there, that thus Peace had come to him, how odd it seemed that only a few weeks ago he had been coming down to Cornwall with his soul, as he had then thought, killed for ever.
The world had seemed, utterly, absolutely, for ever at an end; and now here he was, sitting here, eager to go back into it all again, wanting—it almost seemed—to be bruised and battered all over again.
And perceiving this showed him what was indeed the truth that all his life had been only Boy's History. He had gone up—he had gone down—he had loved and hated, exulted and despaired, but it was all with a boy's intense realisation of the moment, with a boy's swift, easy transition from one crisis to another.
It had been his education—and now his education was over. As he had said those words to Norah Monogue, “I will go back,” he had become a man. Never again would Life be so utterly over as it had been two months ago—never again would he be so single-hearted in his reserved adoption of it as he had been those days ago, at Norah Monogue's side.
​He saw that always, through everything that boy, Peter Westcott had been in the way. It was not until he had taken, on that day in Norah Monogue's room, Peter Westcott in his hands and flung him to the four winds that he had seen how terribly in the way he had been. “Go back,” Norah had said to him; “you have done all these things for yourself and you have been beaten to your knees—go back now and do something for others. You have been brave for yourself—be brave now for others.”
And he was going back.
He was going back, as he had seen on that day, to no easy life. He was going to take up all those links that had been so difficult for him before—he was going to learn all over again that art that he had fancied that he had conquered at the very first attempt—he was going now with no expectations, no hopes, no ambitions. Life was still an adventure, but now an adventure of a hard, cruel sort, something that needed an answer grim and dark.
The storm was coming up apace. The wind had risen and was now rushing over the short stiff grass, bellowing out to meet the sea, blowing back to meet the clouds that raced behind the hill.
The sky was black with clouds. Peter could see the sand rising from the dunes in a thin mist.
Peter flung himself upon his back. The first drops of rain fell, cold, upon his face. Then he heard:
“Peter Westcott! Peter Westcott!”
“I'm here!”
“What have you brought to us here?”
“I have brought nothing.”
“What have you to offer us?”
“I can offer nothing.”
He got up from the ground and faced the wind. He put his back to the Giant's Finger because of the force of the gale. The rain was coming down now in torrents.
He felt a great exultation surge through his body.
Then the Voice—not in the rain, nor the wind, nor the sea, but yet all of these, and coming as it seemed from the very heart of the Hill, came swinging through the storm—
"Have you cast This away, Peter Westcott?”
“And this?”
​“That also—”
“And this?”
"This also?”
"And this?”
“I have flung this, too, away.”
“Have you anything now about you that you treasure?”
“I have nothing.”
“Friends, ties, ambitions?”
“They are all gone.”
Then out of the heart of the storm there came Voices:—
“Blessed be Pain and Torment and every torture of the Body . . . Blessed be Plague and Pestilence and the Illness of Nations. . .
“Blessed be all Loss and the Failure of Friends and the Sacrifice of Love. . .
“Blessed be the Destruction of all Possessions, the Ruin of all Property, Fine Cities, and Great Palaces. . .
“Blessed be the Disappointment of all Ambitions. . .
“Blessed be all Failure and the ruin of every Earthly Hope. . .
“Blessed be all Sorrows, Torments, Hardships, Endurances that demand Courage. . .
“Blessed be these things—for of these things cometh the making of a Man. . .”
Peter, clinging to the Giant's Finger, staggered in the wind. The world was hidden now in a mist of rain. He was alone—and he was happy, happy, as he had never known happiness, in any time, before.
The rain lashed his face and his body. His clothes clung heavily about him.
He answered the storm:
“Make of me a man—to be afraid of nothing . . . to be ready for everything—love, friendship, success . . . to take if it comes . . . to care nothing if these things are not for me—
“Make me brave! Make me brave!”
He fancied that once more against the wall of sea-mist he saw tremendous, victorious, the Rider on the Lion. But now, for the first time, the Rider's face was turned towards him—
And Behold—he was the Rider!