Sometimes he dreamt of Scaw House
and it was always the same dream. He saw the old room with the marble clock
and the cactus plant, but about it all now there was dust and neglect. In
the arm-chair, by the fire, facing the window, his father, old now and
bent, was sitting, listening and waiting. The wind howled about the place,
old boards creaked, casements rattled and his father never moved but
leaning forward in his chair, watched, waited, eagerly, passionately, for
some news....
III
They were having dinner now--Bobby, Mrs. Galleon and Peter--in the studio
of the Cheyne Walk House. Outside, a sheet of stars, a dark river and the
pale lamps of the street. The curtains of the studio were still undrawn and
the glow from the night beyond fell softly along the gleaming black boards
of the floor that stretched into shadow by the farther wall, over the round
mahogany table--without a cloth and shining with its own colour--deep and
liquid brown,--and out to the pictures that hung in their dull gold frames
along the wall.
About Peter was a sense of ease and rest, of space that was as new to him
as America was to Columbus. He was not even now completely recovered from
his Bucket Lane experiences and there was still about him that uncertainty
of life--when one sees it as though through gauze curtains--that gives
reality to the quality of dreams.
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