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 .
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