CHAPTER XV
MR. WESTCOTT SENIOR CALLS CHECKMATE
I
PETER felt as he closed the hall door behind him that The Roundabout was both cold and dark. The little hall drew dusk into its corners very swiftly and now, as he switched on the electric light, he was conscious almost of protest on the part of the place, as though it wished that it might have been left to its empty dusk.
A maid passed him.
“Has your mistress gone upstairs?” he asked her.
“I don't think she has come in, sir.”
“Not come in?”
“No, sir, she went out about three o'clock. I don't think she's come back, sir.”
She's running it pretty close, he thought as he looked at his watch—then he went slowly up to dress.
He had been more irritated by the superiorities of young Percival Galleon than he had cared to confess. Peter had, at the bottom of his soul, a most real and even touching humility. He had no kind of opinion of his abilities, of his work in comparison with the other workers that counted. Moreover he would not, were his ultimate critical sense aroused, fail to admit to himself some certain standard of achievement. Nothing that young Galleon could say mattered from the critical standpoint—nevertheless he seemed to represent, in this case, a universal opinion; even in his rejection of Peter one could see, behind him, a world of readers withdrawing their approval.
“Peter Westcott's no good. . . . Peter Westcott's no good.. . . Peter Westcott's no good. . . .”
In any case that was quite enough to account for the oppression that he was feeling—feeling with increasing force as the minutes passed. He undressed and dressed again slowly, wondering vaguely, loosely, in the back of
