At first she had made him angry and that had delighted her,
so he had been angry no longer; it seemed to him, during these days of
convalescence, that the solemn melodramatic young man of Bucket Lane was
an incredibility.
And yet, although he felt that that episode had been definitely
closed--shut off as it were by wide doors that held back at a distance,
every sound, the noise, the confusion, the terror, was nevertheless there,
but for the moment, the doors were closed. Only in his dreams they rolled
back arid, night after night he awoke, screaming, bathed in sweat,
trembling from head to foot. Sometimes he thought that he saw an army of
rats advancing across the floor of their Bucket Lane room and Stephen and
he beat them off, but ever they returned....
Once he thought that their room was invaded by a number of old toothless
hags who came in at the door and the window, and these creatures, with
taloned fingers fought, screeching and rolling their eyes....
Twice he dreamt that he saw on a hill, high uplifted against a stormy
sky, the statue of the Man on the Lion, gigantic. He struggled to see the
Rider's face and it seemed to him that multitudes of other persons--men
and women--were pleading, with hands uplifted, that they too might see
the face. But always it was denied them, and Peter woke with a strange
oppression of crushing disappointment.
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