He had said that should he once obtain an
independent position then he would go back ... but not before.
Stephen did not know what to do nor where to go. In another month's time
the rent could not be paid and then they must go into the street and Peter
was in no condition for that--he should rather be in bed. Mrs. Williams,
it is true, would not be hard upon them, for she was a kind woman and had
formed a great liking for Peter, but she had only enough herself to keep
her family alive and she must, for her children's sake, let the room.
To Stephen, puzzling in vain and going round and round in a hopeless
circle, it seemed as though Peter's brains were locked in an iron box and
they could not find a key. For himself, well, it was natural enough! But
Peter, with that genius, that no one should want him!
And yet through it all, at the back of the misery and distress of it, there
was a wild pride, a fierce joy that he had the key with him, that he was
all in the world to whom the boy might look, that to him and to him alone,
in this wild, cold world Peter now belonged.
It was his moment....
II
At the end of a terrible day of disastrous rejections Peter, stumbling down
the Strand, was conscious of a little public-house, with a neat bow-window,
that stood back from the street. At the bottom of his trouser pocket a tiny
threepenny piece that Stephen had, that morning, thrust upon him, turned
round and round in his fingers.
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