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Brockett straightened her dress with her beautiful hands in the old familiar way "But you're not looking very hearty yourself, Mr. Peter." "Oh! I'm all right," he answered smiling; but she shook her head after him as she watched him go up the stairs. And then he was surprised. He came into Norah Monogue's room and found her sitting up by her window, looking better than he had ever seen her.
So Peter brought Robin into Miss Norah Monogue's room and was introduced, at once, to Clare Elizabeth Rossiter so easily and simply do the furious events of life occur. She was standing with her back to the window, and the light from Miss Monogue's candles fell on her black dress and her red-gold hair.
"Promise ... but come back soon." Peter gave him a long kiss and left him. Supposing, one day, he had a boy like that? A little boy in a shirt like that? Wouldn't it be simply too wonderful? A boy to give soldiers to.... He went across to Miss Monogue's door.
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.
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."
Then it all fell to pieces like a house of cards. It's easy enough to be brave when you're attacking a cardboard castle it's when you're up against iron that your courage is wanted. It failed me. I've funked it. I'm going to run away." He could see that Norah Monogue's whole life was in the vigour with which she opposed him "No, no, no. To give it up now.
He had been in love with her ever since that first day at Norah Monogue's, but the way that she gradually now absorbed him was like nothing so much as the slow covering of the rocks and the sand by the incoming tide. At first, in those days at Brockett's, she had seemed to him something mysterious, intangible, holy.
He was stuck very fast indeed, but appeared to be perfectly unperturbed only every now and again he kicked a little with his legs. "I've sticked my neck in these silly things," he said, when he saw Peter. "You must pull at me." Peter tried to wriggle the child through, but he found that he must have some one to help him. Urging Robin not to move he knocked at Miss Monogue's door.
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?
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.
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