Fortitude / Walpole, Hugh, Sir, 1884-1941

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Title: Fortitude

Author: Hugh Walpole

Release Date: April, 2005  [EBook #7887]
[This file was first posted on May 31, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, FORTITUDE ***




The Distributed Proofreading Team



FORTITUDE

by

Hugh Walpole







To

Charles Maude

The best of friends and the most honest of critics




CONTENTS


BOOK I: SCAW HOUSE

    I  INTRODUCTION TO COURAGE

   II  HOW THE WESTCOTT FAMILY SAT UP FOR PETER

  III  OF THE DARK SHOP OF ZACHARY TAN, AND OF THE DECISIONS THAT THE
         PEOPLE IN SCAW HOUSE CAME TO CONCERNING PETER

   IV  IN WHICH "DAWSON'S," AS THE GATE OF LIFE, IS PROVED A DISAPPOINTMENT

    V  DAWSON'S, THE GATE INTO HELL

   VI  A LOOKING-GLASS, A SILVER MATCH-BOX, A GLASS OF WHISKY, AND
         VOX POPULI

  VII  PRIDE OF LIFE

 VIII  PETER AND HIS MOTHER

   IX  THE THREE WESTCOTTS

    X  SUNLIGHT, LIMELIGHT, DAYLIGHT

   XI  ALL KINDS OF FOG IN THE CHARING CROSS ROAD

  XII  BROCKETT'S: ITS CHARACTERS AND ESPECIALLY MRS. BROCKETT


BOOK II: THE BOOKSHOP

    I  "REUBEN HALLARD"

   II  THE MAN ON THE LION

  III  ROYAL PERSONAGES ARE COMING

   IV  A LITTLE DUST

    V  A NARROW STREET

   VI  THE WORLD AND BUCKET LANE

  VII  DEVIL'S MARCH

 VIII  STEPHEN'S CHAPTER


BOOK III: THE ROUNDABOUT

    I  NO. 72, CHEYNE WALK

   II  A CHAPTER ABOUT SUCCESS: HOW TO WIN IT, HOW TO KEEP IT--WITH A
         NOTE AT THE END FROM HENRY GALLEON

  III  THE ENCOUNTER

   IV  THE ROUNDABOUT

    V  THE IN-BETWEENS

   VI  BIRTH OF THE HEIR

  VII  DECLARATION OF HAPPINESS

 VIII  BLINDS DOWN

   IX  WILD MEN

    X  ROCKING THE ROUNDABOUT

   XI  WHY?

  XII  A WOMAN CALLED ROSE BENNETT

 XIII  "MORTIMER STANT"

  XIV  PETER BUYS A PRESENT

   XV  MR. WESTCOTT SENIOR CALLS CHECKMATE


BOOK IV: SCAW HOUSE

    I  THE SEA

   II  SCAW HOUSE

  III  NORAH MONOGUE

   IV  THE GREY HILL




BOOK I

SCAW HOUSE




CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION TO COURAGE


I

"'Tisn't life that matters! 'Tis the courage you bring to it" ... this from
old Frosted Moses in the warm corner by the door. There might have been an
answer, but Dicky Tasset, the Town Idiot, filled in the pause with the tale
that he was telling Mother Figgis. "And I ran--a mile or more with the
stars dotted all over the ground for yer pickin', as yer might say...."

A little boy, Peter Westcott, heard what old Frosted Moses had said, and
turned it over in his mind. He was twelve years old, was short and
thick-necked, and just now looked very small because he was perched on so
high a chair. It was one of the four ancient chairs that Sam Figgis always
kept in the great kitchen behind the taproom. He kept them there partly
because they were so very old and partly because they fell in so pleasantly
with the ancient colour and strength of the black smoky rafters. The four
ancient chairs were carved up the legs with faces and arms and strange
crawling animals and their backs were twisted into the oddest shapes and
were uncomfortable to lean against, but Peter Westcott sat up very straight
with his little legs dangling in front of him and his grey eyes all over
the room at once. He could not see all of the room because there were
depths that the darkness seized and filled, and the great fiery place, with
its black-stained settle, was full of mysterious shadows. A huge fire was
burning and leaping in the fastnesses of that stone cavity, and it was by
the light of this alone that the room was illumined--and this had the
effect as Peter noticed, of making certain people, like Mother Figgis and
Jane Clewer, quite monstrous, and fantastic with their skirts and hair and
their shadows on the wall. Before Frosted Moses had said that sentence
about Courage, Peter had been taking the room in. Because he had been there
very often before he knew every flagstone in the floor and every rafter in
the roof and all the sporting pictures on the walls, and the long shining
row of mugs and coloured plates by the fire-place and the cured hams
hanging from the ceiling ... but to-night was Christmas Eve and a very
especial occasion, and he was sure to be beaten when he got home, and so
must make the very most of his time. He watched the door also for Stephen
Brant, who was late, but might arrive at any moment. Had it not been for
Stephen Brant Peter knew that he would not have been allowed there at
all. The Order of the Kitchen was jealously guarded and Sam Figgis, the
Inn-keeper, would have considered so small a child a nuisance, but Stephen
was the most popular man in the county, and he had promised that Peter
would be quiet--and he _was_ quiet, even at that age; no one could be so
quiet as Peter when he chose. And then they liked the boy after a time. He
was never in the way, and he was wonderfully wise for his years: he was a
strong kid, too, and had muscles....

So Peter crept there when he could, although it very often meant a beating
afterwards, but the Kitchen was worth a good many beatings, and he would
have gone through Hell--and did indeed go through his own special Hell on
many occasions--to be in Stephen's company. They were all nice to him even
when Stephen wasn't there, but there were other reasons, besides the
people, that drew Peter to the place.

It was partly perhaps because The Bending Mule was built right out into the
sea, being surrounded on three sides by water. This was all twenty years
ago, and I believe that now the Inn has been turned into an Arts Club, and
there are tea-parties and weekly fashion papers where there had once been
those bloody fights and Mother Figgis sitting like some witch over the
fire; but it is no matter. Treliss is changed, of course, and so is the
world, and there are politeness and sentiment where once there were oaths
and ferocity, and there is much soap instead of grimy hands and unwashen
faces ... and the fishing is sadly on the decline, but there are good
drapers' shops in the town.

For Peter the charm of the place was that "he was out at sea." One could
hear quite distinctly the lap of the waves against the walls and on stormy
nights the water screamed and fought and raged outside and rolled in
thundering echoes along the shore. To-night everything was still, and the
snow was falling heavily, solemnly over the town.

The snow, and the black sea, and the lights that rose tier on tier like
crowds at a circus, could be seen through the uncurtained windows.

The snow and quiet of the world "out-along" made the lights and warmth of
the room the more comforting and exciting, and Sam Figgis had hung holly
about the walls and dangled a huge bunch of mistletoe from the middle beam
and poor Jane Clewer was always walking under it accidentally and waiting a
little, but nobody kissed her. These things Peter noticed; he also noticed
that Dicky the Idiot was allowed to be present as a very great favour
because it was Christmas Eve and snowing so hard, that the room was more
crowded than he had ever seen it, and that Mother Figgis, with her round
face and her gnarled and knotted hands, was at her very merriest and in the
best of tempers. All these things Peter had noticed before Frosted Moses
(so called because of his long white beard and wonderful age) made his
remark about Courage, but as soon as that remark was made Peter's thoughts
were on to it as the hounds are on to a fox.

"'Tisn't life that matters, but the Courage yer bring to it...."

That, of course, at once explained everything. It explained his own father
and his home, it explained poor Mrs. Prothero and her two sons who were
drowned, it explained Stephen's cousin who was never free from the most
painful rheumatics, and it explained Stephen himself who was never afraid
of any one or anything. Peter stared at Frosted Moses, whose white beard
was shining in the fire-place and his boots were like large black boats;
but the old man was drawing at his pipe, and had made his remark apparently
in connection with nothing at all. Peter was also disappointed to see that
the room at large had paid no attention to the declaration.

Courage. That was what they were all there for, and soon, later in the
evening, he would take his beating like a man, and would not cry out as
he had done the last time. And then, at the thought of the beating, he
shivered a little on his tall chair and his two short legs in their black
stockings beat against the wooden bars, and wished that he might have
stayed in some dark corner of The Bending Mule during the rest of the night
and not go home until the morning--or, indeed, a very much better and
happier thing, never go home again at all. He would get a worse beating for
staying out so late, but it was something of a comfort to reflect that
he would have been beaten in any case; old Simon Parlow, who taught him
mathematics and Latin, with a little geography and history during six days
of the week, had given him that morning a letter to his father directed in
the old man's most beautiful handwriting to the effect that Master Westcott
had made no progress at all in his sums during the last fortnight, had
indeed made no attempt at progress, and had given William Daffoll, the
rector's son, a bleeding nose last Wednesday when he ought to have been
adding, dividing, and subtracting. Old Parlow had shown him the letter so
that Peter knew that there was no escape, unless indeed Peter destroyed the
paper, and that only meant that punishment was deferred.

Yes, it meant a beating, and Peter had hung about the town and the shore
all the afternoon and evening because he was afraid. This fact of his fear
puzzled him and he had often considered the matter. He was not, in any
other way, a coward, and he had done, on many occasions, things that other
friends of his own age had hung back from, but the thought of his father
made him quite sick with fear somewhere in the middle of his stomach. He
considered the matter very carefully and he decided at last (and he was
very young for so terrible a discovery) that it was because his father
liked beating him that he was afraid. He knew that his father liked it
because he had watched his mouth and had heard the noise that came through
his lips. And this, again, was rather strange because his father did not
look as though he would like it; he had a cold face like a stone and was
always in black clothes, but he did not, as a rule, show that he was
pleased or angry or sorry--he never showed things.

Now these words of Frosted Moses explained everything. It was because his
father knew that it was Courage that mattered that he liked to beat Peter
... it was good for Peter to learn Courage.

"'Tisn't life that matters" ... it isn't a beating that matters....

Frosted Moses was a great deal wiser than old Simon Parlow, who, in spite
of his knowing so much about sums, knew nothing whatever about life. He
knew nothing whatever about Courage either and shook like a leaf when his
sister, Miss Jessel Parlow, was angry with him, as she very often had
reason to be. Peter despised the old man with his long yellow tooth that
hung over his lower lip, and his dirty grey hair that strayed from under
his greasy black velvet cap (like wisps of hay). Peter never cared anything
for the words or the deeds of old Parlow.... But Frosted Moses! ... he had
lived for ever, and people said that he could never die. Peter had heard
that he had been in the Ark with Noah, and he had often wished to ask him
questions about that interesting period, about Ham, Shem and Japheth, and
about the animals. Of course, therefore, he knew everything about Life, and
this remark of his about Courage was worth considering. Peter watched him
very solemnly and noticed how his white beard shone in the fire-light, how
there was a red handkerchief falling out of one enormous pocket, and how
there was a big silver ring on one brown and bony finger ... and then the
crowd of sailors at the door parted, and Stephen Brant came in.


II

Stephen Brant, the most wonderful person in the world! Always, through
life, Peter must have his most wonderful person, and sometimes those Heroes
knew of it and lived up to his worshipping and sometimes they knew of it
and could not live up to it, but most frequently they never knew because
Peter did not let them see. This Hero worship is at the back of a great
deal that happened to Peter, of a great deal of his sorrow, and of all of
his joy, and he would not have been Peter without it; very often these
Heroes, poor things, came tumbling from their pedestals, often they came,
in very shame, down of their own accord, and perhaps of them all Stephen
only was worthy of his elevation, and he never knew that he was elevated.

He knew now, of course, that Peter loved him; but Peter was a little boy,
and was taken by persons who were strong and liked a laugh and were kind in
little ways. Stephen knew that when Peter grew older he must love other and
wiser people. He was a very large man, six foot three and broad, with a
brown beard, and grey eyes like Peter's. He had been a fisherman, but now
he was a farmer, because it paid better--he had an old mother, one enemy,
and very many friends; he had loved a girl, and she had been engaged to him
for two years, but another man had taken her away and married her--and that
is why he had an enemy. He greeted his friends and kissed poor Jane Clewer
under the mistletoe, and then kissed old Mother Figgis, who pushed him away
with a laugh and "Coom up there--where are yer at?"--and Peter watched him
until his turn also should come. His legs were beating the wooden bars
again with excitement, but he would not say anything. He saw Stephen
as something very much larger and more stupendous than any one else in
the room. There were men there bigger of body perhaps, and men who were
richer--Stephen had only four cows on his farm and he never did much with
his hay--but there was no one who could change a room simply by entering it
as Stephen could.

At last the moment came--Stephen turned round--"Why, boy!"

Peter was glad that the rest of the room was busied once more with its
talking, laughing, and drinking, and some old man (sitting on a table and
his nose coming through the tobacco-smoke like a rat through a hole in the
wall) had struck up a tune on a fiddle. Peter was glad, because no one
watched them together. He liked to meet Stephen in private. He buried his
small hand in the brown depths of Stephen's large one, and then as Stephen
looked uncertainly round the room, he whispered: "Steve--my chair, and me
sitting on you--please."

It was a piece of impertinence to call him "Steve," of course, and when
other people were there it was "Mr. Brant," but in their own privacy it was
their own affair. Peter slipped down from his chair, and Stephen sat down
on it, and then Peter was lifted up and leant his head back somewhere
against the middle button of Stephen's waistcoat, just where his heart was
noisiest, and he could feel the hard outline of Stephen's enormous silver
watch that his family had had, so Stephen said, for a hundred years. Now
was the blissful time, the perfect moment. The rest of the world was busied
with life--the window showed the dull and then suddenly shining flakes of
snow, the lights and the limitless sea--the room showed the sanded floor,
the crowd of fishermen drinking, their feet moving already to the tune
of the fiddle, the fisher girls with their coloured shawls, the great,
swinging smoky lamp, the huge fire, Dicky the fool, Mother Figgis, fat Sam
the host, old Frosted Moses ... the gay romantic world--and these two
in their corner, and Peter so happy that no beatings in the world could
terrify.

"But, boy," says Stephen, bending down so that the end of his beard tickles
Peter's neck, "what are yer doing here so late? Your father ...?"

"I'm going back to be beaten, of course."

"If yer go now perhaps yer won't be beaten so bad?"

"Oh, Steve! ... I'm staying ... like this ... always."

But Peter knew, in spite of the way that the big brown hand pressed his
white one in sympathy, that Stephen was worried and that he was thinking
of something. He knew, although he could not see, that Stephen's eyes were
staring right across the room and that they were looking, in the way that
they had, past walls and windows and streets--somewhere for something....

Peter knew a little about Stephen's trouble. He did not understand it
altogether, but he had seen the change in Stephen, and he knew that he was
often very sad, and that moods came upon him when he could do nothing but
think and watch and wait--and then his face grew very grey and his eyes
very hard, and his hands were clenched. Peter knew that Stephen had an
enemy, and that one day he would meet him.

Some of the men and girls were dancing now in the middle of the room. The
floor and the walls shook a little with the noise that the heavy boots of
the fishermen made and the smoky lamp swung from side to side. The heat was
great and some one opened the window and the snow came swirling, in little
waves and eddies, in and out, blown by the breeze--dark and heavy outside
against the clouded sky, white and delicate and swiftly vanishing in the
room. Dicky the Fool came across the floor and talked to Stephen in his
smiling, rambling way. People pitied Dicky and shook their heads when his
name was mentioned, but Peter never could understand this because the Fool
seemed always to be happy and cheerful, and he saw so many things that
other people never saw at all. It was only when he was drunk that he was
unhappy, and he was pleased with such very little things, and he told such
_wonderful_ stories.

Stephen was always kind to the Fool, and the Fool worshipped him, but
to-night Peter saw that he was paying no heed to the Fool's talk. The Fool
had a story about three stars that he had seen rolling down the Grey Hill,
and behold, when they got to the bottom--"little bright nickety things,
like new saxpennies--it was suddenly so dark that Dicky had to light his
lantern and grope his way home with that, and all the frogs began croaking
down in the marsh 'something terrible'--now what was the meaning of that?"

But Stephen was paying no attention. His eyes were set on the open window
and the drifting snow. Men came in stamping their great boots on the floor
and rubbing their hands together--the fiddle was playing more madly than
ever--and at every moment some couple would stop under the mistletoe and
the girl would scream and laugh, and the man's kiss could be heard all over
the room; through the open window came the sound of church bells.

Stephen bent down and whispered in the boy's ear: "Yer'd best be going now,
Peter, lad. 'Tis half-past nine and, chance, if yer go back now yer lickin'
'ull not be so bad."

But Peter whispered back: "Not yet, Stephen--a little while longer."

Peter was tremendously excited. He could never remember being quite so
excited before. It was all very thrilling, of course, with the dancing and
the music and the lights, but there was more than that in it. Stephen was
so unlike himself, but then possibly Christmas made him sad, because he
would be thinking of last Christmas and the happy time that he had had
because his girl had been with him--but there was more than that in it.
Then, suddenly, a curious thing happened to Peter. He was not asleep, he
was not even drowsy--he was sitting with his eyes wide open, staring at the
window. He saw the window with its dark frame, and he saw the snow .. and
then, in an instant, the room, the people, the music, the tramping of feet,
the roar of voices, these things were all swept away, and instead there
was absolute stillness, only the noise that a little wind makes when it
rustles through the blades of grass, and above him rose the Grey Hill
with its funny sugar-loaf top and against it heavy black clouds were
driving--outlined sharply against the sky was the straight stone pillar
that stood in the summit of the Grey Hill and was called by the people the
Giant's Finger. He could hear some sheep crying in the distance and the
tinkling of their bells. Then suddenly the picture was swept away, and the
room and the people and the dancing were before him and around him once
more. He was not surprised by this--it had happened to him before at the
most curious times, he had seen, in the same way, the Grey Hill and the
Giant's Finger and he had felt the cold wind about his neck, and always
something had happened.

"Stephen," he whispered, "Stephen--"

But Stephen's hand was crushing his hand like an iron glove, and Stephen's
eyes were staring, like the eyes of a wild animal, at the door. A man, a
short, square man with a muffler round his throat, and a little mouth and
little ears, had come in and was standing by the door, looking round the
room.

Stephen whispered gently in Peter's ear: "Run home, Peter boy," and he
kissed him very softly on the cheek--then he put him down on the floor.

Stephen rose from his chair and stood for an instant staring at the door.
Then he walked across the room, brushing the people aside, and tapped the
little man with the muffler on the shoulder:

"Samuel Burstead," he said, "good evenin' to yer."


III

All the room seemed to cease moving and talking at the moment when Stephen
Brant said that. They stood where they were like the people in the
_Sleeping Beauty_, and Peter climbed up on to his chair again to see what
was going to happen. He pulled up his stockings, and then sat forward
in his chair with his eyes gazing at Stephen and his hands very tightly
clenched. When, afterwards, he grew up and thought at all about his
childhood, this scene always remained, over and beyond all the others. He
wondered sometimes why it was that he remembered it all so clearly, that
he had it so dramatically and forcibly before him, when many more recent
happenings were clouded and dull, but when he was older he knew that it was
because it stood for so much of his life, it was because that Christmas Eve
in those dim days was really the beginning of everything, and in the later
interpretation of it so much might be understood.

But, to a boy of that age, the things that stood out were not, of
necessity, the right things and any unreality that it might have had was
due perhaps to his fastening on the incidental, fantastic things that a
small child notices, always more vividly than a grown person. In the very
first instant of Stephen's speaking to the man with the muffler it was
Dicky the Fool's open mouth and staring eyes that showed Peter how
important it was. The Fool had risen from his chair and was standing
leaning forward, his back black against the blazing fire, his silly mouth
agape and great terror in his eyes. Being odd in his mind, he felt perhaps
something in the air that the others did not feel, and Peter seemed to
catch fright from his staring eyes.

The man at the door had turned round when Stephen Brant spoke to him, and
had pushed his way out of the crowd of men and stood alone fingering his
neck.

"I'm here, Stephen Brant, if yer want me."

Sam Figgis came forward then and said something to Stephen, and then
shrugged his shoulders and went back to his wife. He seemed to feel that no
one could interfere between the two men--it was too late for interference.
Then things happened very quickly. Peter saw that they had all--men and
women--crowded back against the benches and the wall and were watching,
very silently and with great excitement. He found it very difficult to see,
but he bent his head and peered through the legs of a big fisherman in
front of him. He was shaking all over his body. Stephen had never before
appeared so terrible to him; he had seen him when he was very angry and
when he was cross and ill-tempered, but now he was very ominous in his
quiet way, and his eyes seemed to have changed colour. The small boy
could only see the middle of the floor and pieces of legs and skirts and
trousers, but he knew by the feeling in the room that Stephen and the
little man were going to fight. Then he moved his head round and saw
between two shoulders, and he saw that the two men were stripping to the
waist. The centre of the room was cleared, and Sam Figgis came forward to
speak to Stephen again, and this time there was more noise, and the people
began to shout out loud and the men grew more and more excited. There had
often been fights in that room before, and Peter had witnessed one or two,
but there had never been this solemnity and ceremony--every one was very
grave. It did not occur to Peter that it was odd that it should be allowed;
no one thought of policemen twenty years ago in Treliss and Sam Figgis was
more of a monarch in The Bending Mule than Queen Victoria. And now two of
the famous old chairs were placed at opposite corners, and quite silently
two men, with serious faces, as though this were the most important hour of
their life, stood behind them. Stephen and the other man, stripped to their
short woollen drawers, came into the middle of the room. Stephen had hair
all over his chest, and his arms and his neck were tremendous; and Peter as
he looked at him thought that he must be the strongest man in the world.
His enemy was smooth and shiny, but he seemed very strong, and you could
see the muscles of his arms and legs move under his skin. Some one had
marked a circle with chalk, and all the men and women, quite silent now,
made a dark line along the wall. The lamp in the middle of the room was
still swinging a little, and they had forgotten to close the window, so
that the snow, which was falling more lightly now, came in little clouds
with breaths of wind, into the room--and the bells were yet pealing and
could be heard very plainly against the silence.

Then Sam Figgis, who was standing with his legs wide apart, said something
that Peter could not catch, and a little sigh of excitement went up all
round the room. Peter, who was clutching his chair with both hands, and
choking, very painfully, in his throat, knew, although he had no reason for
his knowledge, that the little man with the shining chest meant to kill
Stephen if he could.

The two men moved round the circle very slowly with their fists clenched
and their eyes watching every movement--then, suddenly, they closed. At
once Peter saw that the little man was very clever, cleverer than Stephen.
He moved with amazing quickness. Stephen's blows came like sledge-hammers,
and sometimes they fell with a dull heavy sound on the other man's face and
on his chest, but more often they missed altogether. The man seemed to be
everywhere at once, and although the blows that he gave Stephen seemed to
have little effect yet he got past the other's defence again and again.

Then, again, the figures in front of Peter closed in and he saw nothing. He
stood on his chair--no one noticed him now--but he could not see. His face
was very white, and his stockings had fallen down over his boots, but with
every movement he was growing more afraid. He caught an instant's vision
of Stephen's face, and he saw that it was white and that he was breathing
hard. The room seemed to be ominously silent, and then men would break out
into strange threatening sounds, and Peter could see one woman--a young
girl--with a red shawl about her shoulders, her back against the wall,
staring with a white face.

He could not see--he could not see....

He murmured once very politely--he thought he said it aloud but it was
really under his breath: "Please, please--would you mind--if you stood
aside--just a little...." but the man in front of him was absorbed and
heard nothing. Then he knew that there was a pause, he caught a glimpse of
the brick floor and he saw that Stephen was sitting back in his chair--his
face was white, and blood was trickling out from the corner of his mouth on
to his beard. Then Peter remembered old Frosted Moses' words: "The courage
you bring to it...." and he sat back in his chair again and, with hands
clenched, waited. He would be brave, braver than he had ever been before,
and perhaps in some strange way his bravery would help Stephen. He
determined with all the power that he had to be brave. They had begun
again, he heard the sound of the blows, the movement of the men's feet on
the rough brick of the floor; people cried out, the man in front of him
pressed forward and he had a sudden view. Stephen was on one knee and
his head was down and the other man was standing over him. It was all
over--Stephen was beaten--Stephen would be killed, and in another minute
Peter would have pushed past the people and run into the middle of the
room, but Sam Figgis had again come forward, and the two men were in their
chairs again. There followed another terrible time when Peter could see
nothing. He waited--he could hear them moving again, the noise of their
breathing and of their feet, the men in the crowd were pressing nearer, but
there was no word spoken.

He must see--at all costs he must see. And he climbed down from his chair,
and crept unnoticed towards the front. Nobody saw him or realised him....
Stephen was bending back, he seemed to be slowly sinking down. The other
man, from whose face blood was now streaming, was pressing on to him. Peter
knew that it was all over and that there was no hope; there was a dreadful
cold, hard pain in his throat, and he could scarcely see. Courage! he must
have it for Stephen. With every bit of his soul and his mind and his body
he was brave. He stood taut--his little legs stiff beneath him and flung
defiance at the world. He and Stephen were fighting that shiny man
together--both of them--now. Courage! Stephen's head lifted a little, and
then slowly Peter saw him pulling his body together--he grew rigid, he
raised his head, and, as a tree falls, his fist crashed into his enemy's
face. The man dropped without a word and lay motionless. It was over.
Stephen gravely watched for a moment the senseless body and then sat back
in his chair, his head bowed on his chest.

The fight had not, perhaps, been like that--there must have been many other
things that happened, but that was always how Peter remembered it. And now
there was confusion--a great deal of noise and people talking very loudly,
but Stephen said nothing at all. He did not look at the body again, but
when he had recovered a little, still without a word to any one and with
his eyes grave and without expression, he moved to the corner where his
clothes lay.

"'E's not dead."

"No--give 'im room there, he's moving," and from the back of the crowd the
Fool's silly face, peering over...

Peter crept unnoticed to the door. The clocks were striking ten, and some
one in the street was singing. He pulled up his stockings and fastened his
garters, then he slipped out into the snow and saw that the sky was full of
stars and that the storm had passed.




CHAPTER II

HOW THE WESTCOTT FAMILY SAT UP FOR PETER


I

The boy always reckoned that, walking one's quickest, it took half an hour
from the door of The Bending Mule to Scaw House, where his father lived. If
a person ran all the way twenty minutes would perhaps cover it, but, most
of the time, the road went up hill and that made running difficult; he had
certainly no intention of running to-night, there were too many things to
think about. That meant, then, that he would arrive home about half-past
ten, and there would be his aunt and his grandfather and his father sitting
up waiting for him.

The world was very silent, and the snow lay on the round cobbles of the
steep street with a bright shining whiteness against the black houses and
the dark night sky. Treliss' principal street was deserted; all down the
hill red lights showed in the windows and voices could be heard, singing
and laughing, because on Christmas Eve there would be parties and
merrymakings. Peter looked a tiny and rather desolate figure against the
snow as he climbed the hill. There was a long way to go. There would be
Green Street at the top, past the post office, then down again into the
Square where the Tower was, then through winding turnings up the hill past
the gates and dark trees of The Man at Arms, then past the old wall of the
town and along the wide high road that runs above the sea until at last one
struck the common, and, hidden in a black clump of trees (so black on a
night like this), the grim grey stones of Scaw House.

Peter was not afraid of being alone, although when snow had fallen
everything seemed strange and monstrous, the trees were like animals,
and the paths of all the world were swept away. But he was not afraid of
ghosts; he was too accustomed to their perpetual company; old Frosted Moses
and Dicky, and even men like Stephen, had seen ghosts so often, and Peter
himself could tell odd stories about the Grey Hill--no, ghosts held no
terror. But, very slowly, the shadow of all that he must very soon go
through was creeping about him. When he first came out of The Bending Mule
he still was as though he were in a dream. Everything that had happened
there that evening had been so strange, so amazing, that it belonged to
the world of dreams--it was of the very stuff of them, and that vision of
Stephen, naked, bleeding, so huge and so terrible, was not to be easily
forgotten.

But, as he climbed the steep street, Peter knew that however great a dream
that might be, there was to be no dreaming at all about his meeting with
his father, and old Frosted Moses' philosophy would be very sadly needed.
As he climbed the hill the reaction from the excitement of his late
adventure suddenly made him very miserable indeed, so that he had an
immediate impulse to cry, but he stood still in the middle of the street
and made fists with his hands and called himself "a damned gawky idiot,"
words that he had admired in the mouth of Sam Figgis some days before.
"Gawky" was certainly the last thing that he was, but it was a nice queer
word, and it helped him a great deal.

The worst of everything was that he had had a number of beatings lately and
the world could not possibly go on, as far as he was concerned, if he had
many more. Every beating made matters worse and his own desperate attempts
to be good and to merit rewards rather than chastisement met with no
success. The hopeless fact of it all was that it had very little to do with
his own actions; his father behaved in the same way to every one, and Mrs.
Trussit, the housekeeper, old Curtis the gardener, Aunt Jessie, and all
the servants, shook under his tongue and the cold glitter of his eyes, and
certainly the maids would long ago have given notice and departed were it
not that they were all afraid to face him. Peter knew that that was true,
because Mrs. Trussit had told him so. It was this hopeless feeling of
indiscriminate punishment that made everything so bad. Until he was eight
years old Peter had not been beaten at all, but when he was very young
indeed he had learnt to crawl away when he heard his father's step, and
he had never cried as a baby because his nurse's white scared face had
frightened him so. And then, of course, there was his mother, his poor
mother--that was another reason for silence. He never saw his mother for
more than a minute at a time because she was ill, had been ill for as long
as he could remember. When he was younger he had been taken into his
mother's room once or twice a week by Mrs. Trussit, and he had bent down
and kissed that white tired face, and he had smelt the curious smell in the
room of flowers and medicine, and he had heard his mother's voice, very far
away and very soft, and he had crept out again. When he was older his aunt
told him sometimes to go and see his mother, and he would creep in alone,
but he never could say anything because of the whiteness of the room and
the sense of something sacred like church froze his speech. He had never
seen his father and mother together.

His mornings were always spent with old Parlow, and in the afternoon he was
allowed to ramble about by himself, so that it was only at mealtimes and
during the horrible half-hour after supper before he went up to bed that he
saw his father.

He really saw more of old Curtis the gardener, but half an hour with his
father could seem a very long time. Throughout the rest of his life that
half-hour after supper remained at the back of his mind--and he never
forgot its slightest detail. The hideous dining-room with the large
photographs of old grandfather and grandmother Westcott in ill-fitting
clothes and heavy gilt frames, the white marble clock on the mantelpiece, a
clock that would tick solemnly for twenty minutes and then give a little
run and a jump for no reason at all, the straight horsehair sofa so black
and uncomfortable with its hard wooden back, the big dining-room table with
its green cloth (faded a little in the middle where a pot with a fern in it
always stood) and his aunt with her frizzy yellow hair, her black mittens
and her long bony fingers playing her interminable Patience, and then two
arm-chairs by the fire, in one of them old grandfather Westcott, almost
invisible beneath a load of rugs and cushions and only the white hairs on
the top of his head sticking out like some strange plant, and in the other
chair his father, motionless, reading the _Cornish Times_--last of all,
sitting up straight with his work in front of him, afraid to move, afraid
to cough, sometimes with pins and needles, sometimes with a maddening
impulse to sneeze, always with fascinated glances out of the corner of his
eye at his father--Peter himself. How happy he was when the marble clock
struck nine, and he was released! How snug and friendly his little attic
bedroom was with its funny diamond-paned window under the shelving roof
with all the view of the common and the distant hills that covered Truro!
There, at any rate, he was free!

He was passing now through the Square, and he stopped for an instant and
looked up at the old weather-beaten Tower that guarded one side of it, and
looked so fine and stately now with the white snow at its foot and the
gleaming sheet of stars at its back. That old Tower had stood a good number
of beatings in its day--it knew well enough what courage was--and so Peter,
as he turned up the hill, squared his shoulders and set his teeth. But in
some way that he was too young to understand he felt that it was not the
beating itself that frightened him most, but rather all the circumstances
that attended it--it was even the dark house, the band of trees about it,
that first dreadful moment when he would hear his knock echo through the
passages, and then the patter of Mrs. Trussit's slippers as she came to
open the door for him--then Mrs. Trussit's fat arm and the candle raised
above her head, and "Oh, it's you, Mr. Peter," and then the opening of the
dining-room door and "It's Master Peter, sir," and then that vision of the
marble clock and his father's face behind the paper. These things were
unfair and more than any one deserved. He had had beatings on several
occasions when he had merited no punishment at all, but it did not make
things any better that on this occasion he did deserve it; it only made
that feeling inside his chest that everything was so hopeless that nothing
whatever mattered, and that it was always more fun to be beaten for a sheep
than a lamb, stronger than ever.

But the world--or at any rate the Scaw House portion of it--could not
move in this same round eternally. Something would happen, and the vague,
half-confessed intention that had been in his mind for some time now was
a little more defined. One day, like his three companions, Tom Jones,
Peregrine Pickle and David Copperfield, he would run into the world
and seek his fortune, and then, afterwards, he would write his book of
adventures as they had done. His heart beat at the thought, and he passed
the high gates and dark trees of The Man at Arms with quick step and head
high. He was growing old--twelve was an age--and there would soon be a time
when beatings must no longer be endured. He shivered when he thought of
what would happen then--the mere idea of defying his father sent shudders
down his back, but he was twelve, he would soon be thirteen....

But this Scaw House, with its strange silence and distresses, was only half
his life. There was the other existence that he had down in the town, out
at Stephen's farm, wandering alone on the Grey Hill, roaming about along
the beach and in amongst the caves, tramping out to The Hearty Cow, a
little inn amongst the gorse, ten miles away, or looking for the lost
church among the sand-dunes at Porthperran. All these things had nothing
whatever to do with his father and old Parlow and his lessons--and it was
undoubtedly this other sort of life that he would lead, with the gipsies
and the tramps, when the time came for him to run away. He knew no other
children of his own age, but he did not want them; he liked best to talk
to old Curtis the gardener, to Dicky the Idiot, to Sam Figgis when that
splendid person would permit it--and, of course, to Stephen.

He passed the old town wall and stepped out into the high road. Far below
him was the sea, above him a sky scattered with shining stars and around
him a white dim world. Turning a corner the road lay straight before him
and to the right along the common was the black clump of trees that hid his
home. He discovered that he was very tired, it had been a most exhausting
day with old Parlow so cross in the morning and the scene in the inn at
night--and now--!

His steps fell slower and slower as he passed along the road. One hot hand
was clutching Parlow's note and in his throat there was a sharp pain that
made it difficult to swallow, and his eyes were burning. Suppose he never
went home at all! Supposing he went off to Stephen's farm!--it was a long
way and he might lose his way in the snow, but his heart beat like a hammer
when he thought of Stephen coming to the door and of the little spare room
where Stephen put his guests to sleep. But no--Stephen would not want him
to-night; he would be very tired and would rather be alone; and then there
would be the morning, when it would be every bit as bad, and perhaps worse.
But if he ran away altogether? ... He stopped in the middle of the road and
thought about it--the noise of the sea came up to him like the march of men
and with it the sick melancholy moan of the Bell Rock, but the rest of the
world was holding its breath, so still it seemed. But whither should he
run? He could not run so far away that his father could not find him--his
father's arm stretched to everywhere in the world. And then it was cowardly
to run away. Where was that courage of which he had been thinking so much?
So he shook his little shoulders and pulled up those stockings again and
turned up the little side road, usually so full of ruts and stones and now
so level and white with the hard snow. Now that his mind was made up, he
marched forward with unfaltering step and clanged the iron gates behind him
so that they made a horrible noise, and stepped through the desolate garden
up the gravel path.

The house looked black and grim, but there were lights behind the
dining-room windows--it was there that they were sitting, of course.

As he stood on his toes to reach the knocker a shooting star flashed past
above his head, and he could hear the bare branches of the trees knocking
against one another in the wind that always seemed to be whistling round
the house. The noise echoed terribly through the building, and then there
was a silence that was even more terrible. He could fancy how his aunt
would start and put down her Patience cards for a moment and look, in
her scared way, at the window--he knew that his father would not move
from behind his paper, and that there would be no other sound unless his
grandfather awoke. He heard Mrs. Trussit's steps down the passage, then
locks were turned, the great door swung slowly open, and he saw her, as he
had pictured it, with a candle in her hand raised above her head, peering
into the dark.

"Oh! it's you, Master Peter," and she stood aside, without another word,
to let him in. He slipped past her, silently, into the hall and, after a
second's pause, she followed him in, banging the hall door behind her. Then
she opened the dining-room door announcing, grimly, "It's Master Peter come
in, sir." The marble clock struck half-past ten as she spoke.

He stood just inside the door blinking a little at the sudden light and
twisting his cloth cap round and round in his hands. He couldn't see
anything at first, and he could not collect his thoughts. At last he said,
in a very little voice:

"I've come back, father."

The lights settled before his eyes, and he saw them all exactly as he had
thought they would be. His father had not looked up from his paper, and
Peter could see the round bald patch on the top of his head. Aunt Jessie
was talking to herself about her cards in a very agitated whisper--"Now
it's the King I want--how provoking! Ah, there's the seven of spades, _and
the six and the five_--oh dear! it's a club," and not looking up at all.

No one answered his remark, and the silence was broken by his grandfather
waking up; a shrill piping voice came from out of the rugs. "Oh! dear, what
a doze I've had! It must be eight o'clock! What a doze for an old man to
have! on such a cold night too," and then fell asleep again immediately.

At last Peter spoke again in a voice that seemed to come from quite another
person.

"Father--I've come back!"

His father very slowly put down his newspaper and looked at him as though
he were conscious of him for the first time. When he spoke it was as
though his voice came out of the ceiling or the floor because his face did
not seem to move at all.

"Where have you been?"

"In the town, father."

"Come here."

He crossed the room and stood in front of the fire between his father and
grandfather. He was tremendously conscious of the grim and dusty cactus
plant that stood on a little table by the window.

"What have you been doing in the town?"

"I have been in The Bending Mule, father."

"Why did you not come home before?"

There was no answer.

"You knew that you ought to come home?"

"Yes, father. I have a letter for you from Mr. Parlow. He said that I was
to tell you that I have done my sums very badly this week and that I gave
Willie Daffoll a bleeding nose on Wednesday--"

"Yes--have you any excuse for these things?"

"No, father."

"Very well. You may go up to your room. I will come up to you there."

"Yes, father."

He crossed the room very slowly, closed the door softly behind him, and
then climbed the dark stairs to his attic.


II

He went trembling up to his room, and the match-box shook in his hand as he
lit his candle. It was only the very worst beatings that happened in his
bedroom, his father's gloomy and solemn study serving as a background on
more unimportant occasions. He could only remember two other beatings in
the attics, and they had both been very bad ones. He closed his door and
then stood in the middle of the room; the little diamond-paned window was
open and the glittering of the myriad stars flung a light over his room and
shone on the little bracket of books above his bed (a Bible, an "Arabian
Nights," and tattered copies of "David Copperfield," "Vanity Fair,"
"Peregrine Pickle," "Tom Jones," and "Harry Lorrequer"), on the little
washing stand, a chest of drawers, a cane-bottomed chair, and the little
bed. There were no pictures on the walls because of the sloping roof, but
there were two china vases on the mantelpiece, and they were painted a very
bright blue with yellow flowers on them.

They had been given to Peter by Mrs. Flanders, the Rector's wife, who
had rather a kind feeling for Peter, and would have been friendly to him
had he allowed her. He took off his jacket and put it on again, he stood
uncertainly in the middle of the floor, and wondered whether he ought
to undress or no. There was no question about it now, he was horribly,
dreadfully afraid. That wisdom of old Frosted Moses seemed a very long ago,
and it was of very little use. If it had all happened at once after he
had come in then he might have endured it, but this waiting and listening
with the candle guttering was too much for him. His father was so very
strong--he had Peter's figure and was not very tall and was very broad in
the back; Peter had seen him once when he was stripped, and the thought of
it always frightened him.

His face was white and his teeth would chatter although he bit his lips and
his fingers shook as he undressed, and his stud slipped and he could not
undo his braces--and always his ears were open for the sound of the step on
the stairs.

At last he was in his night-shirt, and a very melancholy figure he looked
as he stood shivering in the middle of the floor. It was not only that he
was going to be beaten, it was also that he was so lonely. Stephen seemed
so dreadfully far away and he had other things to think about; he wondered
whether his mother in that strange white room ever thought of him, his
teeth were chattering, so that his whole head shook, but he was afraid
to get into bed because then he might go to sleep and it would be so
frightening to be woken by his father.

The clock downstairs struck eleven, and he heard his father's footstep. The
door opened, and his father came in holding in his hand the cane that Peter
knew so well.

"Are you there?" the voice was very cold.

"Yes, father."

"Do you know that you ought to be home before six?"

"Yes, father."

"And that I dislike your going to The Bending Mule?"

"Yes, father."

"And that I insist on your doing your work for Mr. Parlow?"

"Yes, father."

"And that you are not to fight the other boys in the town?"

"Yes, father."

"Why do you disobey me like this?"

"I don't know. I try to be good."

"You are growing into an idle, wicked boy. You are a great trouble to your
mother and myself."

"Yes, father. I want to be better."

Even now he could admire his father's strength, the bull-neck, the dark
close-cropped hair, but he was cold, and the blood had come where he bit
his lip--because he must not cry.

"You must learn obedience. Take off your nightshirt."

He took it off, and was a very small naked figure in the starlight, but his
head was up now and he faced his father.

"Bend over the bed."

He bent over the bed, and the air from the window cut his naked back. He
buried his head in the counterpane and fastened his teeth in it so that he
should not cry out....

During the first three cuts he did not stir, then an intolerable pain
seemed to move through his body--it was as though a knife were cutting his
body in half. But it was more than that--there was terror with him now in
the room; he heard that little singing noise that came through his father's
lips--he knew that his father was smiling.

At the succeeding strokes his flesh quivered and shrank together and then
opened again--the pain was intolerable; his teeth met through the coverlet
and grated on one another; but before his eyes was the picture of Stephen
slowly straightening himself before his enemy and then that swinging
blow--he would not cry. He seemed to be sharing his punishment with
Stephen, and they were marching, hand in hand, down a road lined with
red-hot pokers.

His back was on fire, and his head was bursting and the soles of his feet
were very, very cold.

Then he heard, from a long way away, his father's voice:

"Now you will not disobey me again."

The door closed. Very slowly he raised himself, but moving was torture; he
put on his night-shirt and then quickly caught back a scream as it touched
his back. He moved to the window and closed it, then he climbed very slowly
on to his bed, and the tears that he had held back came, slowly at first,
and then more rapidly, at last in torrents. It was not the pain, although
that was bad, but it was the misery and the desolation and the great
heaviness of a world that held out no hope, no comfort, but only a great
cloud of unrelieved unhappiness.

At last, sick with crying, he fell asleep.


III

The first shadow of light was stealing across the white undulating common
and creeping through the bare trees of the desolate garden when four dark
figures, one tall, two fat, and one small, stole softly up the garden path.
They halted beneath the windows of the house; the snow had ceased falling,
and their breath rose in clouds above their heads. They danced a little in
the snow and drove their hands together, and then the tall figure said:

"Now, Tom Prother, out with thy musick." One of the fat figures felt in his
coat and produced four papers, and these were handed round.

"Bill, my son, it's for thee to lead off at thy brightest, mind ye. Let 'em
have it praper."

The small figure came forward and began; at first his voice was thin and
quavering, but in the second line it gathered courage and rang out full and
bold:

  _As oi sat under a sicymore tree
    A sicymore tree, a sicymore tree,
  Oi looked me out upon the sea
    On Christ's Sunday at morn._

"Well for thee, lad," said the tall figure approvingly, "but the cold is
creepin' from the tips o' my fingers till my singin' voice is most frozen.
Now, altogether."

And the birds in the silent garden woke amongst the ivy on the distant wall
and listened:

  _Oi saw three ships a-sailin' there--
    A sailin' there, a-sailin' there,
  Jesu, Mary, and Joseph they bare
    On Christ's Sunday at morn._

A small boy curled up, like the birds, under the roof stirred uneasily in
his sleep and then slowly woke. He moved, and gave a little cry because his
back hurt him, then he remembered everything. The voices came up to him
from the garden:

  _Joseph did whistle and Mary did sing,
    Mary did sing, Mary did sing,
  And all the bells on earth did ring
    For joy our Lord was born._

  _O they sail'd in to Bethlehem,
    To Bethlehem, to Bethlehem;
  Saint Michael was the steersman,
    Saint John sate in the horn._

  _And all the bells on earth did ring,
    On earth did ring, on earth did ring;
  "Welcome be thou Heaven's King,
    On Christ's Sunday at morn."_

He got slowly out of bed and went to the window. The light was coming in
broad bands from the East and he could hear the birds in the ivy. The four
black figures stood out against the white shadowy garden and their heads
were bent together. He opened his window, and the fresh morning air swept
about his face.

He could hear the whispers of the singers as they chose another carol and
suddenly above the dark iron gates of the garden appeared the broad red
face of the sun.




CHAPTER III

OF THE DARK SHOP OF ZACHARY TAN, AND OF THE DECISIONS THAT THE PEOPLE IN
SCAW HOUSE CAME TO CONCERNING PETER


I

But it was of the nature of the whole of life that these things should
pass. "Look back on this bitterness a year hence and see how trivial it
seems" was one of the little wisdoms that helped Peter's courage in after
years. And to a boy of twelve years a beating is forgotten with amazing
quickness, especially if it is a week of holiday and there have been other
beatings not so very long before.

It left things behind it, of course. It was the worst beating that Peter
had ever had, and that was something, but its occurrence marked more than a
mere crescendo of pain, and that evening stood for some new resolution that
he did not rightly understand yet--something that was in its beginning the
mere planting of a seed. But he had certainly met the affair in a new way
and, although in the week that followed he saw his father very seldom and
spoke to him not at all beyond "Good morning" and "Good night," he fancied
that he was in greater favour with him than he had ever been before.

There were always days of silence after a beating, and that was more
markedly the case now when it was a week of holidays and no Parlow to go
to. Peter did not mind the silence--it was perhaps safer--and so long as
he was home by six o'clock he could spend the day where he pleased. He
asked Mrs. Trussit about the carol-singers. There was a little room, the
housekeeper's room, to which he crept when he thought that it was safe
to do so. She was a different Mrs. Trussit within the boundary of her
kingdom--a very cosy kingdom with pink wall-paper, a dark red sofa, a
canary in a cage, and a fire very lively in the grate. From the depths of a
big arm-chair, her black silk dress rustling a little every now and then,
her knitting needles clinking in the firelight, Mrs. Trussit held many
conversations in a subdued voice with Peter, who sat on the table and swung
his legs. She was valuable from two points of view--as an Historian and
an Encyclopaedia. She had been, in the first place, in the most wonderful
houses--The Earl of Twinkerton's, Bambary House, Wiltshire, was the
greatest of these, and she had been there for ten years; there were
also Lady Mettlesham, the Duchess of Cranburn, and, to Peter, the most
interesting of all, Mr. Henry Galleon, the famous novelist who was so
famous that American ladies used to creep into his garden and pick leaves
off his laurels.

Peter had from her a dazzling picture of wonderful houses--of staircases
and garden walks, of thousands and thousands of shining rooms, of family
portraits, and footmen with beautiful legs. Above it all was "my lady" who
was always beautiful and stately and, of course, devoted to Mrs. Trussit.
Why that good woman left these noble mansions for so dreary a place as Scaw
House Peter never could understand, and for many years that remained a
mystery to him--but in awed whispers he asked her questions about the lords
and ladies of the land and especially about the famous novelist and, from
the answers given to him, constructed a complete and most romantic picture
of the Peerage.

But, as an Encyclopaedia, Mrs. Trussit was even more interesting. She had
apparently discovered at an early age that the golden rule of life was
never to confess yourself defeated by any question whatever, and there was
therefore nothing that he could ask her for which she had not an immediate
answer ready. Her brow was always unruffled, her black shining hair brushed
neatly back and parted down the middle, her large flat face always composed
and placid, and her voice never raised above a whisper. The only sign that
she ever gave of disturbance was a little clucking noise that she made in
her mouth like an aroused hen. Peter's time in the little pink sitting-room
was sometimes exceedingly short and he used to make the most of it by
shooting questions at the good lady at an astonishing rate, and he was
sometimes irritated by her slow and placid replies:

"What kind of stockings did Mr. Galleon wear?"

"He didn't wear stockings unless, as you might say, in country attire, and
then, if I remember correctly, they were grey."

"Had he any children?"

"There was one little dear when I had the honour of being in the house--and
since then I have heard that there are two more."

"Mrs. Trussit, where do children come from?"

"They are brought by God's good angels when we are all asleep in the night
time."

"Oh!" (this rather doubtfully). A pause--then "Did the Earl of Twinkerton
have hot or cold baths?"

"Cold in the morning, I believe, with the chill off and hot at night before
dressing for dinner. He was a very cleanly gentleman."

"Mrs. Trussit, where _is_ Patagonia? It came in the history this morning."

"North of the Caribbean Sea, I believe, my dear."

And so on, and Peter never forgot any of her answers. About the
carol-singers she was a little irritable. They had woken her it seemed from
a very delightful sleep, and she considered the whole affair "savoured of
Paganism." And then Peter found suddenly that he didn't wish to talk about
the carol-singers at all because the things that he felt about them were,
in some curious way, not the things that he could say to Mrs. Trussit.

She was very kind to him during that Christmas week and gave him mixed
biscuits out of a brightly shining tin that she kept in a cupboard in her
room. But outside the gates of her citadel she was a very different person,
spoke to Peter but rarely, and then always with majesty and from a long way
away. Her attitude to the little maid-of-all-work was something very
wonderful indeed, and even to Aunt Jessie her tone might be considered
patronising.

But indeed to Aunt Jessie it was very difficult to be anything else. Aunt
Jessie was a poor creature, as Peter discovered very early in life. He
found that she never had any answers ready to the questions that he asked
her and that she hesitated when he wished to know whether he might do a
thing or no. She was always trembling and shaking, and no strong-minded
person ever wore mittens. He had a great contempt for his aunt....

On New Year's Eve, the last day but one of release from old Parlow, Mr.
Westcott spent the day doing business in Truro, and at once the atmosphere
over Scaw House seemed to lighten. The snow had melted away, and there was
a ridiculous feeling of spring in the air; ridiculous because it was still
December, but Cornwall is often surprisingly warm in the heart of winter,
and the sun was shining as ardently as though it were the middle of June.
The sunlight flooded the dining-room and roused old grandfather Westcott
to unwonted life, so that he stirred in his chair and was quite unusually
talkative.

He stopped Peter after breakfast, as he was going out of the room and
called him to his side:

"Is that the sun, boy?"

"Yes, grandfather."

"Deary me, to think of that and me a poor, broken, old man not able to move
an arm or foot."

He raised himself amongst his cushions, and Peter saw an old yellow
wrinkled face with the skin drawn tight over the cheekbones and little
black shining eyes like drops of ink. A wrinkled claw shot out and clutched
Peter's hand.

"Do you love your grandfather, boy?"

"Of course, grandfather."

"That's right, that's right--on a nice sunny morning, too. Do you love your
father, boy?"

"Of course, grandfather."

"He, he--oh, yes--all the Westcotts love their fathers. _He_ loved his
father when he was young, didn't he? Oh, yes, I should rather think so."

And his voice rose into a shrill scream so that Peter jumped. Then he began
to look Peter up and down.

"You'll be strong, boy, when you're a man--oh, yes, I should rather think
so--I was strong once.... Do you hear that?... I was strong once, he, he!"

And here grandfather Westcott, overcome by his chuckling, began to cough so
badly that Peter was afraid that he was going to be ill, and considered
running for Aunt Jessie.

"Hit my back, boy--huh, huh! Ugh, ugh! That's right, hit it hard--that's
better--ugh, ugh! Oh! deary me! that's better--_what_ a nasty cough, oh,
deary me, what a nasty cough! I was strong once, boy, hegh, hegh! Indeed
I was, just like your father--and he'll be just like me, one day! Oh! yes,
he will--blast his bones! He, he! We all come to it--all of us strong men,
and we're cruel and hard, and won't give a poor old man enough for his
breakfast--and then suddenly we're old ourselves, and what fun that is! Oh!
Yes, your father will be old one day!" and suddenly, delighted with the
thought, the old man slipped down beneath his cushions and was fast asleep.

And Peter went out into the sunlight.


II

Peter looked very different at different times. When he was happy his
cheeks were flooded with colour, his eyes shone, and his mouth smiled. He
was happy now, and he forgot as he came out into the garden that he had
promised his aunt that he would go in and see his mother for a few minutes.
Old Curtis, wearing the enormous sun-hat that he always had flapping about
his head and his trousers tied below his knees with string in the most
ridiculous way, was sweeping the garden path. He never did very much work,
and the garden was in a shocking state of neglect, but he told delightful
stories. To-day, however, he was in a bad temper and would pay no attention
to Peter at all, and so Peter left him and went out into the high road.

It was two miles across the common to Stephen's farm and it took the boy
nearly an hour, because the ground was uneven and there were walls to
climb, and also because he was thinking of what his grandfather had said.
Would his father one day be old and silly like his grandfather? Did every
one get old and silly like that? and, if so, what was the use of being born
at all? But what happened to all his father's strength? Where did it all go
to? In some curious undefined way he resented his grandfather's remarks. He
could have loved and admired his father immensely had he been allowed to,
but even if that were not permitted he could stand up for him when he was
attacked. What right had his silly old grandfather to talk like that?...
His father would one day be old? And Stephen, would he be old, too? Did all
strength go?

Peter was crossing a ploughed field, and the rich brown earth heaved in a
great circle against the sky and in the depth of its furrows there were
mysterious velvet shadows--the brown hedges stood back against the sky
line. The world was so fresh and clean and strong this morning that the
figure and voice of his grandfather hung unpleasantly about him and
depressed him. There were so many things that he wanted to know and so few
people to tell him, and he turned through the white gates of Stephen's farm
with a consciousness that since Christmas Eve the world had begun to be a
new place.

Stephen was sitting in the upstairs room scratching his head over his
accounts, whilst his old mother sat dozing, with her knitting fallen on
to her lap by the fire. The window was open, and all the sound and smells
of the farm came into the room. The room was an old one with brown oaken
rafters and whitewashed walls, a long oaken table down the middle of it,
and a view over the farmyard and the sweeping fields beyond it, lost at
last, in the distant purple hills. Peter was given a chair opposite the old
lady, who was nearly eighty, and wore a beautiful white cap, and she woke
up and talked incessantly, because she was very garrulous by nature and
didn't care in the least to whom she talked. Peter politely listened to
what she had to say, although he understood little of it, and his eyes were
watching for the moment when the accounts should be finished and Stephen
free.

"Ay," said the old lady, "and it were good Mr. Tenement were the rector
in those days, I remember, and he gave us a roaring discourse many's the
Sunday. Church is not what it was, with all this singing and what not and
the clothes the young women wear--I remember..."

But Stephen had closed his books with a bang and given his figures up in
despair. "I don't know how it is, boy," he said, "but they're at something
different every time yer look at 'em--they're one too many for me, that's
certain."

One of Stephen's eyes was still nearly closed, and both eyes were black and
blue, and his right cheek had a bad bruise on it, but Peter thought it was
wiser not to allude to the encounter. The farm was exceedingly interesting,
and then there was dinner, and it was not until the meal had been cleared
away that Peter remembered that he wanted to ask some questions, and then
Stephen interrupted him with:

"Like to go to Zachary Tan's with me this afternoon, boy? I've got to be
lookin' in."

Peter jumped to his feet with excitement.

"Oh! Steve! This afternoon--this _very_ afternoon?"

It was the most exciting thing possible. Zachary Tan's was the curiosity
shop of Treliss and famous even twenty years ago throughout the south
country. It is still there, I believe, although Zachary himself is dead and
with him has departed most of the atmosphere of the place, and it is now
smart and prosperous, although in those days it was dark and dingy enough.
No one knew whence Zachary had come, and he was one of the mysteries of a
place that deals, even now, in mysteries. He had arrived as a young man
with a basket over his back thirty years before Peter saw the light, when
Treliss was a little fishing village and Mr. Bannister, Junior, had not
cast his enterprising eye over The Man at Arms. Zachary had beads and
silks, and little silver images in his basket, and he had stayed there
in a little room over the shop, and things had prospered with him. The
inhabitants of the place had never trusted him, but they were always
interested. "Thiccy Zachary be a poor trade," they had said at first, "poor
trade" signifying anything or anybody not entirely approved of--but they
had hung about his shop, had bought his silks and little ornaments, and had
talked to him sometimes with eyes open and mouth agape at the things that
he could tell them. And then people had come from Truro and Pendragon and
even Bodmin and, finally, Exeter, because they had heard of the things
that he had for sale. No one knew where he found his treasures, for he was
always in his shop, smiling and amiable, but sometimes gentlemen would
come from London, and he had strange friends like Mr. Andreas Morelli,
concerning whose life a book has already been written. Zachary Tan's
shop became at last the word in Treliss for all that was strange and
unusual--the strongest link with London and other curious places. He had a
little back room behind his shop, where he would welcome his friends, give
them something to drink and talk about the world. He was always so friendly
that people thought that he must wish for things in return, but he never
asked for anything, nor did he speak about himself at all. As for his
portrait, he had a pale face, a big beak nose, very black hair that hung
over his forehead and was always untidy, a blue velvet jacket, black
trousers, green slippers, and small feet.

He also wore two rings and blew his long nose in silk handkerchiefs of
the most wonderful colours. All these things may seem of the slenderest
importance, but they are not insignificant if one considers their
effect upon Peter. Zachary was the most romantic figure that he had yet
encountered; to walk through the shop with its gold and its silver, its
dust and its jewels, into the dark little room beyond; to hear this
wonderful person talk, to meet men who lived in London, to listen by the
light of flickering candles and with one's eyes fixed upon portraits of
ladies dancing in the slenderest attire, this was indeed Life, and Life
such as The Bending Mule, Scaw House, and even Stephen's farm itself could
not offer.

Peter often wondered why Stephen and Zachary were friends, because they
seemed to have little enough in common, but Stephen was a silent man, who
liked all kinds of company, and Peter noticed that Zachary was always very
polite and obliging to Stephen.

Stephen was very silent going across the Common and down the high road
into the town, but Peter knew him too well by this time to interrupt his
thoughts. He was thinking perhaps about his accounts that would not come
right or about the fight and Burstead his enemy.

Everybody had their troubles that they thought about and every one had
their secrets, the things that they kept to themselves--even Aunt Jessie
and old Curtis the gardener--one must either be as clever as Zachary Tan
or as foolish as Dicky the Idiot to know very much about people. Zachary,
Peter had noticed, was one of the persons who always listened to everything
that Dicky had to say, and treated him with the greatest seriousness, even
when he seemed to be talking about the wildest things--and it was a great
many years after this that Peter discovered that it was only the wisest
people who knew how very important fools were. Zachary's shop was at the
very bottom of Poppero Street, the steep and cobbled street that goes
straight down to the little wooden jetty where the fishing boats lie, and
you could see the sea like a square handkerchief between the houses on
either side. Many of the houses in Poppero Street are built a little below
the level of the pathway, and you must go down steps to reach the door.
Zachary's shop was like this, and it had a green door with a bright
brass knocker. There were always many things jumbled together in the
window--candlesticks, china shepherds and shepherdesses, rings and
necklaces, cups and saucers, little brass figures, coins, snuff-boxes,
match-boxes, charms, and old blue china plates, and at the back a complete
suit of armour that had been there ever since Zachary had first opened his
shop.

Of course, inside there were a thousand and one things of the most exciting
kind, but Stephen, an enormous figure in the low-roofed shop, brushed past
the pale-faced youth whom Zachary now hired to assist with the customers
and passed into the dark room beyond, Peter close at his heels.

There were two silver candlesticks lighted on the mantelpiece, and there
were two more in the centre of the green baize table and round the fire
were seated four men. One of them Zachary himself, another was pleasant
little Mr. Bannister, host of The Man at Arms, another was old Frosted
Moses, sucking as usual at his great pipe, and the fourth was a stranger.

Zachary rose and came forward smiling. "Ah, Mr. Brant, delighted to
see you, I'm sure. Brought the boy with you? Excellent, excellent. Mr.
Bannister and Mr. Tathero (old Moses' society name) you know, of course;
this is Mr. Emilio Zanti, a friend of mine from London."

The stranger, who was an enormous fat man with a bald head and an eager
smile rose and shook hands with Stephen, he also shook hands with Peter as
though it had been the ambition of his life to meet that small and rather
defiant person.

He also embarrassed Peter very much by addressing him as though he were
grown up, and listening courteously to everything that he had to say. Peter
decided that he did not like him--but "a gentleman from London" was always
an exciting introduction. The boy was able very quickly to obliterate
himself by sitting down somewhere in a corner and remaining absolutely
silent and perhaps that was the reason that he was admitted to so many
elderly gatherings--he was never in the way. He slipped quickly into a
chair, hidden in the shadow of the wall, but close to the elbow of "the
gentleman from London," whose face he watched with the greatest curiosity.
Stephen was silent, and Frosted Moses very rarely said anything at all, so
that the conversation speedily became a dialogue between Zachary and the
foreign gentleman, with occasional appeals to Mr. Brant for his unbiassed
opinion. Peter's whole memory of the incident was vague and uncertain,
although in after years he often tried very hard to recall it all to
mind. He was excited by the mere atmosphere of the place, by the silver
candlesticks, the dancing ladies on the walls, Zachary's blue coat, and the
sense of all the wonderful things in the shop beyond. He had no instinct
that it was all important beyond the knowledge that it roused a great many
things in him that the rest of his life left untouched and anything to do
with "London," a city, as he knew from Tom Jones and David Copperfield, of
extraordinary excitement and adventure, was an event. He watched Mr. Emilio
Zanti closely, and he decided that his smile was not real, and that it must
be very unpleasant to have a bald head. He also noticed that he said things
in a funny way: like "ze beautiful country zat you 'ave 'ere with its sea
and its woods" and "I 'ave the greatest re-spect for ze Englishman"--also
his hands were very fat and he wore rings like Zachary.

Sometimes Peter fancied that his words meant a great deal more than they
seemed to mean. He laughed when there was really nothing to laugh at and
he tried to make Stephen talk, but Stephen was very silent. On the whole
the conversation was dull, Peter thought, and once he nodded and was very
nearly asleep, and fancied that the gentleman from London was spreading
like a balloon and filling all the room. There was no mention of London at
all.

Peter wondered for what purpose Stephen had come there, because he sat
looking at the fire with his brown hands spread out over his great knees,
thinking apparently all his own thoughts.

Then suddenly there came a moment. The London gentleman, Mr. Emilio Zanti,
turned round quite quickly and said, like a shot out of a gun: "And what
does our little friend think of it?"

Peter did not know to what he was referring, and looked embarrassed. He was
also conscious that Zachary was watching him keenly.

"Ah, 'e does not understand, our little friend. But with life, what is it
that you will do when you are grown up, my boy?" and he put his fat hand on
Peter's knee. Peter disliked him more than ever, but he answered:

"I don't know--I haven't settled yet."

"Ah, it is early days," said Mr. Zanti, nodding his head, "there is much
time, of course. But what is the thing that our little friend would care,
most of all, to do?"

"To go to school," said Peter, without any hesitation, and both Zachary and
Mr. Zanti laughed a great deal more than was in the least necessary.

"And then--afterwards?" said Mr. Zanti.

"To go to London," said Peter, stiffly, feeling in some undefined way that
they were laughing at him and that something was going on that he did not
understand.

"Ho! that is good," said Mr. Emilio, slapping his knees and rocking in his
chair with merriment. "Ho! that is very good. He knows a thing or two, our
young friend here. Ho, yes! don't you mistake!" For a little while he could
not speak for laughing, and the tears rolled down his fat cheeks. "And what
is it that you will do when you are there, my friend?" he said at last.

"I will have adventures," said Peter, growing a little bolder at the
thought of London and its golden streets. And then, suddenly, when he heard
this, curious Mr. Zanti grew very grave indeed, and his eyes were very
large, and he put a finger mysteriously to his nose. Then he leant right
over Peter and almost whispered in his ear.

"And you shall--of course you shall. You shall come to London and 'ave
adventures--'eaps and 'eaps and 'eaps. Oh, yes, bless my soul, shan't he,
Mr. Tan? Dear me, yes--London, my young friend, is the most wonderful
place. In one week, if you are clever, you 'ave made thousands of
pounds--thousands and thousands. Is it not so, Mr. Tan? When you are just
a little bit older, a few years--then you shall come. And you ask for your
friend, Mr. Emilio Zanti--because I like you. We will be friends, is not
that so?"

And he held out his large fat hand and grasped Peter's small and rather
damp one. Then he bent even closer, still holding Peter's hand: "Do you
know one thing?" he whispered.

"No," replied Peter, husky with awe.

"It is this, that when you think of Mr. Zanti and of London and of
adventures, you will look in a looking-glass--any looking-glass, and you
will see--what you will see," and he nodded all over his fat face.

Peter was entirely overcome by this last astonishing statement, and was
very relieved to hear numbers of clocks in the curiosity shop strike five
o'clock. He got off his chair, said good-bye very politely indeed, and
hurried up the dark street.

For the moment even his beloved Stephen was forgotten, and looking-glasses,
the face of Mr. Emilio Zanti, London streets, and Zachary's silver
candlesticks were mingled confusedly in his brain.


III

And indeed throughout the dreary supper Peter's brain was in a whirl. It
often happened that supper passed without a word of conversation from first
to last. His father very rarely said anything, Peter never said anything at
all, and if Aunt Jessie did venture on a little conversation she received
so slender an encouragement that she always forsook the attempt after a
very short time. It was a miserable meal.

It was cold beef and beetroot and blanc-mange with a very, very little
strawberry jam round the edges of the glass dish, and there was a hard red
cheese and little stiff woolly biscuits.

But old grandfather Westcott was always hungry, and his querulous
complaints were as regular an accompaniment to the evening meal as the
ticking of the marble clock. But his beef had to be cut up for him into
very tiny pieces and that gave Aunt Jessie a great deal of work, so that
his appeals for a second helping were considered abominable selfishness.

"Oh, my dear, just a leetle piece of beef" (this from the very heart of
the cushions). "Just the leetlest piece of beef for a poor old man--such a
leetle piece he had, and he's had such a hunger." No answer to this and at
last a strange noise from the cushions like the sound of dogs quarrelling.
At last again, "Oh, just the leetlest piece of beef for a poor old man--"
and then whimpering and "poor old man" repeated at intervals that
lengthened gradually into sleep.

At last the meal was over, the things had been cleared away, and Peter was
bending over a sum in preparation for lessons on Monday. Such a sum--add
this and this and this and this and then divide it by that and multiply the
result by this!... and the figures (bad ill-written figures) crept over
the page and there were smudgy finger marks, and always between every other
line "London, looking-glasses, and fat Mr. Zanti laughing until the tears
ran down his face." Such a strange world where all these things could be
so curiously confused, all of them, one supposed, having their purpose and
meaning--even grandfather--and even 2469 X 2312 X 6201, and ever so many
more until they ran races round the page and up and down and in and out.

And then suddenly into the middle of the silence his father's voice:

"What are you doing there?"

"Sums, father--for Monday."

"You won't go back on Monday" (and this without the _Cornish Times_ moving
an inch).

"Not go back?"

"No. You are going away to school--to Devonshire--on Tuesday week."

And Peter's pencil fell clattering on to the paper, and the answer to that
sum is still an open question.




CHAPTER IV

IN WHICH "DAWSON'S," AS THE GATE OF LIFE, IS PROVED A DISAPPOINTMENT


I

It was, of course, very strange that this should come so swiftly after the
meeting with the London gentleman--it was almost as though he had known
about it, because it was a first step towards that London that he had so
confidently promised. To Peter school meant the immediate supply of the
two things that he wanted more than anything in the world--Friendship
and Knowledge; not knowledge of the tiresome kind, Knowledge that had
to do with the Kings of Israel and the capital of Italy, but rather the
experience that other gentlemen of his own age had already gathered during
their journey through the world. Stephen, Zachary, Moses, Dicky, Mrs.
Trussit, old Curtis, even Aunt Jessie--all these people had knowledge,
of course, but they would not give it you--they would not talk to you as
though they were at your stage of the journey, they could not exchange
opinions with you, they could not share in your wild surmises, they
could not sympathise with your hatred of addition, multiplication, and
subtraction. The fellow victims at old Parlow's might have been expected
to do these things, but they were too young, too uninterested, too
unenterprising. One wanted real boys--boys with excitement and sympathy...
_real_ boys.

He had wanted it, far, far more terribly than any one had known. He had
sat, sometimes, in the dark, in his bedroom, and thought about it until
he had very nearly cried, because he wanted it so badly, and now it had
suddenly come out of the clouds... bang!


II

That last week went with a rattling speed and provided a number of most
interesting situations. In the first place there was the joy--a simple but
delightful one--on Monday morning, of thinking of those "others" who were
entering, with laggard foot, into old Parlow's study--that study with
the shining map of Europe on the wall, a bust of Julius Caesar (conquered
Britain? B.C.), and the worn red carpet. They would all be there. They
would wonder where he was, and on discovering that he would never come
again, Willie Daffoll, of recent tragic memory, would be pleased because
now he would be chief and leader. Well, let him!... Yes, that was all very
pleasant to think of.

There was further the thought that school might not, after all, be exactly
what Peter imagined it. The pictures in his mind were evolved from his
reading of "David Copperfield." There would be people like Steerforth and
dear Traddles, there would be a master who played the flute, there would be
rebellions and riots--would there?

Mrs. Trussit was of little value on this occasion:

"Mrs. Trussit, were you ever at school?"

"No, Master Peter, I was never at school. My good mother, who died at the
ripe old age of ninety-two with all her faculties, gave me a liberal and
handsome education with her own hands."

"Do you think it will be like 'David Copperfield'?"

Mrs. Trussit was ignorant of the work in question. "Of course, Master
Peter. How can you ask such a thing? They are all like that, I believe.
But, there, run away now. It's time for me to be looking after your
mother's supper," &c. &c.

Mrs. Trussit obviously knew nothing whatever about it, although Peter heard
her once murmuring "Poor lamb" as she gave him mixed biscuits out of her
tin.

Stephen also was of little use, and he didn't seem especially glad when he
heard about it.

"And it's a good school, do you think?" he said.

"Of course," said Peter valiantly, "one of the very best. It's in
Devonshire, and I leave by the eight o'clock train" (this very
importantly).

The fact of the matter was that Peter was so greatly excited by it all
that abandoning even Stephen was a minor sorrow. It was a dreadful pity of
course, but Peter intended to write most wonderful letters, and there would
be the joyful meeting when the holidays came round, and he would be a more
sensible person for Stephen to have for a friend after he'd seen the world.

"Dear Stephen--I shall write every week--every Friday I expect. That will
be a good day to choose."

"Yes--that'll be a good day. Well, 'ere's the end of yer as yer are. It'll
be another Peter coming back, maybe. Up along they'll change yer."

"But never me and you, Steve. I shall love you always."

The man seized him almost fiercely by the shoulders and looked him in the
face. "Promise me that, boy," he said, "promise me that. Yer most all
I've got now. But I'm a fool to ask yer--of course yer'll change. I'm an
ignorant fool."

They were standing in the middle of one of Stephen's brown ploughed fields,
and the cold, sharp day was drawing to a close as the mist stole up from
the ground and the dim sun sank behind the hedgerows.

Peter in the school years that followed always had this picture of Stephen
standing in the middle of his field--Stephen's rough, red brown clothes,
his beard that curled a little, his brown corduroys that smelt of sheep and
hay, the shining brass buttons of his coat, his broad back and large brown
hands, his mild blue eyes and nose suddenly square at the end where it
ought to have been round--this Stephen Brant raised from the very heart
of the land, something as strong and primitive as the oaks and corn and
running stream that made his background.

Stephen suddenly caught up Peter and kissed him so that the boy cried out.
Then he turned abruptly and left him, and Peter did not see him again.

He said his farewells to the town, tenderly and gravely--the cobbled
streets, the dear market-place, and the Tower, The Bending Mule (here there
were farewells to be said to Mr. and Mrs. Figgis and old Moses); the wooden
jetty, and the fishing-boats--then the beach and the caves and the sea....

Last of all, the Grey Hill. Peter climbed it on the last afternoon of all.
He was quite alone, and the world was very still; he could not hear the sea
at all. At last he was at the top and leant his back against the Giant's
Finger. Looking round there are the hills that guard Truro, there are the
woods where the rabbits are, there is the sea, and a wonderful view of
Treliss rising into a peak which is The Man at Arms--and the smoke of the
town mingled with the grey uncertain clouds, and the clouds mingled with
the sea, and the only certain and assured thing was the strength of the
Giant's Finger. That at least he could feel cold and hard against his
hands. He felt curiously solemn and grave, and even a little tearful--and
he stole down, through the dusk, softly as though his finger were on his
lips.

And then after this a multitude of hurrying sensations with their climax
in a very, very early morning, when one dressed with a candle, when one's
box was corded and one's attic looked strangely bare, when there was a
surprising amount to eat at breakfast, when one stole downstairs softly. He
had said good-bye to his mother on the previous evening, and she had kissed
him, and he had felt uncomfortable and shy.

Then there were Mrs. Trussit and his aunt to see him off, there was a cab
and, most wonderful of all, there was his father coming in the cab. That
was a dreadful thing and the journey to the station seemed endless because
of it. His father was perfectly silent, and any thrill that Peter might
have snatched from the engines, the porters, the whistles, and his own
especial carriage were negatived by this paralysing occurrence. He would
have liked to have said something himself, but he could only think of
things that were quite impossible like "How funny Mrs. Trussit's nose is
early in the morning," "I wonder what old Parlow's doing."

It was terrible.

He was in his carriage--they were hurrying, every one was hurrying.

His father suddenly spoke.

"The guard will see to you. You change at Exeter. Your aunt has given you
sandwiches." A little pause, and then: "You've got pluck. You stood that
beating well." Then the stern face passed, and the grave awful figure faded
slowly down the platform.

Peter felt suddenly, utterly, completely miserable, and alone. Two tears
rolled slowly down his cheeks. He blew his nose, and the train started.


III

And so this first run into liberty begins with tears and a choke in the
throat and a sudden panting desire to be back in the dark passages of
Scaw House. Nor did the fleeting swiftness of the new country please him.
Suddenly one was leaving behind all those known paths and views, so dimly
commonplace in the having of them, so rosily romantic in the tragic wanting
of them!

How curious that Mrs. Trussit, his aunt, and his father should appear now
pathetically affectionate in their farewells of him! They were not--to that
he could swear--and yet back he would run did Honour and Destiny allow him.
Above all, how he would have run now to Stephen.

He felt like a sharp wound the horrible selfishness and indifference of his
parting when Stephen's beard had been pressed so roughly against his face
that it had hurt him--and he had had nothing to say. He would write that
very night if They--the unknown Gods to whose kingdom he journeyed--would
allow him. This comforted him a little and the spirit of adventure stirred
in him anew. He wiped his eyes for the last time with the crumpled ball of
his handkerchief, sniffed three times defiantly, and settled to a summary
of the passing country, cows, and hills and hedges, presently the pleasing
bustle of Truro station, and then again the cows and hills and hedges. On
parting from Cornwall he discovered a new sensation, and was surprised
that he should feel it. He did not know, as a definite fact, the exact
moment when that merging of Cornwall into Devon came, and yet, strangely in
his spirit, he was conscious of it. Now he was in a foreign country, and
it was almost as though his own land had cast him out so that the sharp
appealing farewell to the Grey Hill, Treliss, and the sea was even more
poignant than his farewell to his friends had been. Once more, at the
thought of all the ways that he loved Cornwall, the choking sob was in his
throat and the hot tears were in his eyes, and his hands were clenched. And
then he remembered that London was not in Cornwall, and if he were ever
going to get there at all he must not mind this parting.

"What the devil are you crying about?" came suddenly from the other side of
the carriage. He looked up, and saw that there was an old gentleman sitting
in the opposite corner. He had a red fat face and beautiful white hair.

"I'm not crying," said Peter, rather defiantly.

"Oh! yes, you are--or you were. Supposing you share my lunch and see
whether that will make things any better."

"Thank you very much, but I have some sandwiches," said Peter, feeling for
the paper packet and finding it.

"Well, supposing you come over here and eat yours with me. And if you could
manage to help me with any of mine I should be greatly indebted. I can't
bear having my meals alone, you know."

How can one possibly resist it when the Olympians come down so amiably from
their heights and offer us their hospitality? Moreover the Old Gentleman
had, from his bag, produced the most wonderfully shaped parcels. There was
certainly a meal, and Aunt Jessie's sandwiches would assuredly be thick and
probably no mustard!

So Peter slipped across and sat next to the Old Gentleman, and even shared
a rug. He ultimately shared a great many other things, like chicken and
tongue, apples and pears and plum cake.

"Of course," said the Old Gentleman, "you are going to school and probably
for the first time--and therefore your legs are as weak as pins, you have
a cold pain in the middle of your chest, and you have an intense desire to
see your mother again."

Peter admitted that this was true, although it wasn't his mother whom he
wished to see so much as a friend of his called Stephen, and, one or two
places like the Grey Hill and The Bending Mule. All this interested the Old
Gentleman very much.

"You, too, were at school?" Peter inquired politely.

"I was," said the Old Gentleman.

"And was it like David Copperfield?" said Peter.

"Parts of it--the nice parts. School was the best, the very best time of my
life, my boy, and so you'll find it."

This was immensely reassuring, and Peter felt very much cheered. "You
will make all the friends of your life there. You will learn to be a man.
Dear me!" The Old Gentleman coughed. "I don't know what I would have done
without school. You must have courage, you know," he added.

"I heard some one say once," said Peter, "that courage is the most
important thing to have. It isn't life that matters, but courage, this man
said."

"Bless my soul," the Old Gentleman said, "how old are you, boy?"

"Twelve--nearly thirteen," answered Peter.

"Well, the more you see of boys the better. You might be forty by the way
you talk. You want games and fellows of your own age, that's what you want.
Why I never heard of such a thing, talking about life at your age."

Peter felt that he had done something very wrong, although he hadn't the
least idea of his crime, so he turned the conversation.

"I should like very much," he said, "to hear about your school if you
wouldn't mind."

Then the Old Gentleman began in the most wonderful way, and to hear him
talk you would imagine that school was the paradise to which all good boys
were sent--a deliriously delightful place, with a shop full of sweets,
games without end, friends galore, and a little work now and then to
prevent one's being bored.

Peter listened most attentively with his head against the Old Gentleman's
very warm coat, and then the warmth and the movement of the train caused
the voice to swim further and further away into distance.

"Bless my soul!" Peter heard as though it had been whispered at the end of
the train.

"Here's Exeter, young man. Your father said you were to change here."

A rubbing of eyes, and behold a stout guard in front of the door and no
sign of the Old Gentleman whatever, but when he felt for his ticket in his
side pocket he found also a glittering sovereign that had certainly not
been there when he went asleep.

All this was very encouraging, and Peter followed the guard across the
Exeter platform hopefully and expectantly. Right down the platform, on a
side line, was a little train that reminded Peter of the Treliss to Truro
one, so helpless and incapable did it look. The guard put him and his
luggage into a carriage and then left him with a last word as to Salton
being his destination. He waited here a very long time and nothing
happened. He must have slept again, because when he next looked out of
the window the platform was full of people.

He realised with terror that they were, many of them, boys--boys with
friends and boys without. He watched them with a great feeling of
desolation and homesickness as they flung themselves into carriages and
shouted at one another.

A small boy with a very red face and a round fat body, attended by a tall,
thin lady in black, got into the carriage, and behaving as if Peter weren't
there at all, leaned out of the window.

"All right, mater. That's all right. I'll tell 'em about the socks--old
Mother Gill will look after that."

"You won't forget to send me a post card to-night, Will, dear, will you?"

"No, mater, that's all right. I say, don't you bother to wait if you want
to be off."

"No, dear, I'd like to wait. Don't forget to give father's letter to Mr.
Raggett."

"All right. I say it's rotten for you waiting about, really. Give my love
to Floss!"

"Well, perhaps I had better go. This train seems to be late. Good-bye,
dearest boy."

An interval, during which the stout boy leaned out of the window and was
embraced. Soon his bowler hat was flung wildly on to the rack and he was
leaning out of the window, screaming:

"Cocker! I say, Cocker! Cocker! Oh! dash it, he's going in there. Cocker!
Cocker! Hullo, Bisket! going strong? Cocker! Oh! there he is! Hullo, old
man! Thought I should miss you. Come on in here! Thought I'd never get rid
of the mater. They do hang about!"

A small boy with his hat on one side got into the carriage, stepped on
Peter's feet without apologising, and then the two gentlemen sat down at
the other end of the carriage and exchanged experiences.

"What sort of hols.?"

"Oh, pretty rotten! Got nothing for Christmas at all except a measly knife
or two--governor played it awfully low down."

"I rather scored because my sister had a ripping writing case sent to her,
and I gave her a rotten old book in exchange, and she jolly well had to."

And so it continued. To Peter it was completely unintelligible. The boys
at old Parlow's had never talked like this. He was suddenly flung into a
foreign country. The dismay in his heart grew as he remembered that he was
going into this life entirely alone and without a friend in the world. He
felt that he would, had it been possible, gladly have exchanged this
dreadful plunge for a beating from his father.

At any rate, after that there were friends to whom one might go--after
this?...

As the train dragged slowly and painfully along the dreariness and the
loneliness increased. The dusk fell, and they stopped, as it seemed, every
other minute, and always Peter thought that it must be Salton and prepared
to get out. The two boys in his carriage paid no attention to him whatever,
and their voices continued incessantly, and always the little train jolted
along sleepily wandering through the dark country and carrying him to
unknown terrors. But he set his teeth hard and remembered what the Old
Gentleman had told him. He would fight it out and see it through.

"'Tisn't Life that matters, but the Courage--"

And then suddenly the train stopped, the two boys flung themselves at the
window, and the porter outside, like a magician who kept a rabbit in a bag,
suddenly shouted "Salton!" After that there were mixed impressions. He
stood alone on the dark, windy platform whilst dark figures passed and
repassed him. Then a tall, thin Somebody said "Are you Westcott?" and Peter
said "Yes," and he was conveyed to a large wagonette already crowded with
boys. Then there was a great deal of squeezing, a great deal of noise, and
some one in authority said from somewhere, "Less noise, please."

The wagonette started in a jolting uncertain way, and then they seemed
to go on for ever and ever between dark sweet-smelling hedges with black
trees that swept their heads, and the faint blue of the evening sky on the
horizon. Every one was very quiet now, and Peter fell asleep once more and
dreamed of the Old Gentleman, plum cake, and Stephen.

A sudden pause--the sound of an iron gate being swung back, and Peter was
awake again to see that they were driving up to a dark heavy building that
looked like a hospital or a prison.

"The new boys please follow me," and he found himself, still struggling
with sleep, blinded by the sudden light, following, with some ten others,
a long and thin gentleman who wore a pince-nez. His strongest feeling was
that he was very cold and that he hated everybody and everything. He heard
many voices somewhere in the distance, doors were being continually opened
and shut, and little winds blew down the dismal passages. They were
suddenly in a study lined with books and a stout rubicund gentleman with a
gold watch chain and a habit (as Peter at once discovered) of whistling
through his teeth was writing at a table.

He turned round when he heard them enter and watched them for a moment as
they stood by the door.

"Well, boys" (his voice came from somewhere near his watch chain), "come
and shake hands. How are you all?"

Some eager boy in the front row, with a pleasant smile and a shrill piping
voice said, "Very well, thank you, sir," and Peter immediately hated him.

Then they shook hands and their names were written in a book. The stout
gentleman said, "Well, boys, here you all are. Your first term, you
know--very important. Work and play--work and play. Work first and play
afterwards, and then we'll be friends. Oh, yes! Supper at nine. Prayers at
nine-thirty."

They were all bundled out, and the tall man with pince-nez said: "Now,
boys, you have an hour before supper," and left them without another word
in a long dark passage. The passage was hung with greatcoats and down each
side of it were play-boxes. At the other end, mistily and vaguely, figures
passed.

Peter sat down on one of the play-boxes and saw, to his disgust, that the
eager boy with the piping voice sat down also.

"I say," said the piping boy, "don't you like school awfully?"

"No, I hate it," said Peter.

"Oh, I say! What's your name?"

"Peter."

"Peter! Oh! but your other name. The fellows will rag you most awfully if
you tell them your Christian name."

"Westcott, then."

"Mine's Cheeseman. I'm going to like everybody here and get on. I say,
shall we be chums?"

"No."

"Oh, I say! Why not?"

"Because I don't like you."

"Oh, I say!"

"In another minute I'll break your neck."

"Oh! I say!" The piping boy sprang up from the play-box and stood away.
"All right, you needn't be ratty about it! I'll tell the fellows you said
your name was Peter! They'll give it you."

And the piping boy moved down the passage whistling casually.

After this, silence, and only all the greatcoats swaying a little in the
draught and bulging out and then thinning again as though there were two
persons inside them. Peter sat quite motionless for a long time with his
face in his hands. He was very tired and very cold and very hungry.

A crowd advanced towards him--five or six boys, and one large fat boy was
holding the piping one by the ear.

"Oh, I say! Let me go! Let me go! I'll do your boots up, really I will.
I'll do whatever you like! Oh! I say! There's a new boy. He says his name
is Peter!"

So did the wretched piping one endeavour to divert attention from his own
person. The fat boy, accompanied by a complacent satellite, approached
Peter.

"Hullo, you. What's your name?"

"Westcott."

"'Tisn't. It's Peter."

"Peter Westcott."

"Well, Mr. Peter Westcott, stand up when you're spoken to by your betters.
I say, hack him up, you fellows."

Peter was "hacked" up.

"Now, what do you mean by not speaking when you're spoken to?"

Peter stood square and faced him.

"Oh! you won't speak, won't you? See if this will do it."

Peter's arm and ear were twisted; he was also hit in the mouth.

He was still silent.

Some one in the back of the crowd said, "Oh, come on, you chaps--let's
leave this kid, the other fellow's more fun."

And they passed on bearing the piping one with them.

Peter sat down again; he was feeling sick and his head ached. He buried his
head in the greatcoat that hung above him, and cried quite silently for a
very long time.

A bell rang, and boys ran past him, and he ran with them. He found that it
was supper and that he was sitting with the other new boys at the bottom of
the table, but he could not eat and his head was swimming. Then there were
prayers and, as he knelt on the hard floor with his head against the form,
some one stuck a pin into the soft part of his leg and gave him great pain.

Then at last, and all this time he had spoken to no one, upstairs to bed. A
tall, thin woman in shining black was at the head of the stairs--she read
out to the new boys the numbers of their dormitories in a harsh, metallic
voice. Peter went to his, and found it a long room with twenty beds, twenty
washing basins, and twenty chairs.

One last incident.

He slept and was dreaming. He was climbing the Grey Hill and Stephen was
following him, calling on him. He remembered in his dream that he had not
written Stephen the letter that he had promised, and he turned back down
the hill. Then suddenly the ground began to toss under his feet, he cried
for Stephen, he was flung into the air, he was falling....

He woke and found that he was lying on the floor amongst the tumbled sheets
and blankets. In the distance he could hear stifled laughter. The terror of
that awful wakening was still upon him, and he thought for a moment that he
would die because his heart would never beat again.

Then slowly he gathered his clothes together and tried to arrange them on
the bed. He was dreadfully cold and his toes stuck out at the end of the
bed. He could not cover them.

But, tired as he was, he dared not fall asleep again, lest there should
come once more that dreadful wakening.




CHAPTER V

DAWSON'S, THE GATE INTO HELL


I

A letter from Peter to Stephen:

_Dear, dear Steve,

There's a noise going on and boys are throwing paper and things and there's
another boy jogging my elbows so that I can't hold my pen. Dear Steve, I
hope that you are very, very happy as I am. I am very happy here. I am in
the bottom form because my sums are so awful and my master beat me for
them yesterday but he is nothing to father. I was top in the essay. I like
football--I have a friend who is called Galion (I don't think that is the
right way to spell it. He says that it is like a treasure-ship). He is a
nice boy and Mrs. Trussit was his father's housekeeper once; his father
writes stories. There is a boy I hate called Cheeseman, and one called
Pollock. Please give my love to Mrs. Brant, the cows, Mollie and the pigs,
Mr. and Mrs. Figgis, Mr. Tan and all my friends. Dear Steve, I love you
very, very, very much. I am very happy.

Your loving friend,

Peter Westcott._

A letter from Stephen to Peter:

_Dear Mr. Peter,

I have thought every day of you and I was mighty glad to get your bit of a
letter fearing that, maybe, thiccy place in Devon might have driven your
old friends out of your head. I am no hand with a pen and it is taking me a
time to write this so I will just say that I'm right glad you're happy and
that I'll greet the day I see you again, and that's it's poor trade here
without you.

I am always, your friend,

Stephen Brant._

But Peter had lied in his letter. He was not in any way happy at all. He
had lied because he knew that it would have hurt Stephen if he had told him
the truth--and the truth was something that must be met with clenched teeth
and shoulders set back.

Taking him at the end of the first week one finds simple bewilderment and
also a conviction that silence is the best policy. He was placed in the
lowest form because of his ignorance of Latin and Mathematics, and here
every one was younger and weaker. During school hours there was comparative
peace, and he sat with perplexed brow and inky fingers, or was sent down to
the bottom for inattention. It was not inattention but rather a complete
incapacity for grasping the system on which everything worked. Meanwhile
in this first week he had earned a reputation and made three friends, and
although he did not know it that was not a bad beginning.

On the day after his arrival Peter, after midday dinner, standing
desolately in the playground and feeling certain that he ought to be
playing football somewhere but completely ignorant as to the place where
lists commonly hung, saw another new boy and hailed him. This boy he had
noticed before--he was shapeless of body, with big, round, good-tempered
eyes, and he moved more slowly than any one whom Peter had ever seen.
Nothing stirred him; he did not mind it when his ears were pulled or his
arms twisted, but only said slowly, "Oh, drop it!" To this wonderful boy
Peter made approach.

"Can you tell me where the lists are for football? I ought to have been
playing yesterday only I didn't know where to look."

The slow boy smiled. "I'm going to look myself," he said, "come on."

And then two things happened. First sauntering down the playground there
came a boy whom Peter had noticed on that first morning in school--some one
very little older than Peter and not very much bigger, but with a grace,
a dignity, an air that was very wonderful indeed. He was a dark boy with
his hair carelessly tossed over his forehead; he was very clean and he had
beautiful hands. To Peter's rough and clumsy figure he seemed everything
that a boy should be, and, in his mind, he had called him "Steerforth." As
this boy approached there suddenly burst into view a discordant crowd with
some one in their midst. They were shouting and laughing, and Peter could
hear that some one was crying. The crowd separated and formed a ring and
danced shouting round a very small and chubby boy who was standing crying
quite desperately, with his head buried in his arm. Every now and then the
infant was knocked by one boy in the ring into another boy's arms, and so
was tossed from side to side.

The hopeless sound of the chubby one's crying caused Peter suddenly to
go red hot somewhere inside his chest, and like a bullet from a gun he
was into the middle of the circle. "You beasts! You beasts," he sobbed
hysterically. He began to hit wildly, with his head down, at any one
near him, and very soon there was a glorious melee. The crowd roared
with laughter as they flung the two small boys against one another, then
suddenly one of the circle got a wild blow in the eye from Peter's fist and
went staggering back, another was kicked in the shins, a third was badly
winded. Peter had lost all sense of place or time, of reason or sanity; he
was wild with excitement, and the pent-up emotions of the last five days
found magnificent overwhelming freedom. He did not know whether he were hit
or no, once he was down and in an instant up again--once a face was close
to his and he drove hard at the mouth--but he was small and his arms and
legs were short. Indeed it would have gone badly with him had there not
been heard, in all the roar of battle, the mystic whisper "Binns," and in
an instant, as the snow flies before the sun, so had that gallant crowd
disappeared. Only the small cause of the disturbance and Peter remained.
The tall form of a master passed slowly down the playground, but it
appeared that he had seen nothing, and he did not speak. The small boy was
gazing at Peter with wide-opened eyes, large in a white face on which were
many tear stains. Peter, who was conscious now that blood was pouring from
a cut in his cheek, that one of his teeth was missing and that one of his
eyes was fast closing, was about to speak to him when he was aware that his
"Steerforth" had sprung from nowhere and was advancing gracefully to meet
him. Peter's heart beat very fast.

The boy smiled at him and held out his hand.

"I say, shake hands. You've got pluck--my eye! I never saw such a rag!"

Peter shook hands and was speechless.

"What's your name?"

"Westcott."

"Mine's Cardillac. It isn't spelt as it's spoken, you know.
C-a-r-d-i-l-l-a-c. I'm in White's--what do you say to places next each
other at table?"

"Rather." Peter's face was crimson. "Thanks most awfully." He stammered in
his eagerness.

"Right you are--see you after chapel." The boy moved away.

Peter said something to the infant whom he had delivered, and was
considering where he might most unobtrusively wash when he was once more
conscious of some one at his elbow. It was the slow boy who was smiling at
him.

"I say, you're a sight. You'd better wash, you know."

"Yes, I was just thinking of that only I didn't quite know where to go."

"Come with me--I'll get round Mother Gill all right. She likes me. You've
got some cheek. Prester and Banks Mi, and all sorts of fellows were in that
crowd. You landed Prester nicely." He chuckled. "What's your name?"

"Westcott."

"Mine's Galleon."

"Galleon?" Peter's eyes shone. "I say, you didn't ever have a housekeeper
called Mrs. Trussit?"

"Trussit? Yes, rather, of course I remember, when I was awfully small."

"Why, she's ours now! Then it must be your father who writes books!"

"Yes, rather. He's most awfully famous!"

Peter stopped still, his mouth open with excitement.

Of all the amazing things! What doesn't life give you if you trust it!


II

But before it became a question of individuals there is the place to be
considered. This Dawson's of twenty years ago does not exist now nor, let
us pray the Fates, are there others like it. It is not only with bitterness
that a boy whom Dawson's had formed would look back on it but also with
a dim, confused wonder that he had escaped with a straight soul and a
straight body from that Place. There were many, very many indeed, who did
not escape, and it would indeed have been better for them all had they died
before they were old enough to test its hospitality. If any of those into
whose hands this story of Peter may fall were, by the design of God,
themselves trained by the place of which I speak, they will understand that
all were not as fortunate as Peter--and for those others there should be
sympathy....

To Peter indeed it all came very slowly because he had known so little
before. He had not been a week in the place before there were very many
things that he was told--there were other things that he saw for himself.

There is, for instance, at the end of the third week, the incident of
Ferris, the Captain of the School. He was as a God in Peter's eyes, he was
greater, more wonderful than Stephen, than any one in the world. His word
was law....

One late afternoon Peter cleaned plates for him in his study, and Ferris
watched him. Ferris was kind and talked about many things out of his great
wisdom, and then he asked Peter whether he would always like to be his fag,
and Peter, delighted, said "Yes."

Then Ferris smiled and spoke, dropping his voice. Three weeks earlier Peter
would not have understood, but now he understood quite well and he went
very white and broke from the room, leaving the plates where they were--and
Cheeseman became Ferris' fag--

This was all very puzzling and perplexing to Peter.

But after that first evening when he had hidden his head in the greatcoat
and cried, he had shown no sign of fear and he soon found that, on that
side of Life, things became easy. He was speedily left alone, and indeed he
must have been, in spite of his small size, something of a figure even
then.

His head was so very firm on his shoulders, his grey eyes were so very
straight, and his lip curled in a disagreeable way when he was displeased;
he was something of the bulldog, and even at this early period the First
and Second forms showed signs of meek surrender to his leadership. But he
was, of course, not happy--he was entirely miserable. He would be happier
later on when he had been able to arrange all these puzzling certainties so
different from those dazzling imaginations that he had painted. How strange
of him to have been so glad to leave Stephen and the others--even old
Curtis! What could he have thought was coming!

He remembered as though it had been another life that Christmas Eve, the
fight, the beating, the carols....

And yet, with it all, with the dreariness and greyness and fierceness and
dirtiness of it all, he would not change it for those earlier things--this
was growing, this was growing up!

He was certainly happier after his meeting with Cardillac--"Cards" as he
was always called. Here was a hero indeed! Not to displace, of course,
Stephen, who remained as a stained-glass window remains, to be looked at
and treasured and remembered--but here was a living wonder! Every movement
that Cards made was astounding, and not only Peter felt it. Even the
masters seemed to suggest that he was different from the rest and watched
him admiringly. Cards was only fourteen, but he had seen the world. He had
been with his mother (his father was dead) about Europe, he knew London, he
had been to the theatres; school, he gave them all to understand, was an
interim in the social round. He took Peter's worship very easily and went
for walks with him and talked in a wonderful way. He admired Peter's
strength.

Peter found that Galleon--Bobby Galleon--was disappointing, not very
interesting. He had never read his father's books, and he couldn't tell
Peter very much about the great man; he was proud of him but rather
reserved. He had not many ideas about anything and indeed when he went
for a walk with Peter was usually very silent, although always in a good
temper. Cards thought Galleon very dull and never spoke to him if he could
avoid doing so, and Peter was sometimes quite angry with Galleon because he
would "turn up so" when one might have had Cards to oneself.

Peter's main feeling about it all when half term arrived was that one must
just stand with one's back to the wall if one was to avoid being hurt. He
did not now plunge into broils to help other people; he found that it did
not in reality help them and that it only meant that he got kicked as well
as the other boy. One's life was a diligent watchfulness with the end in
view of avoiding the enemy. The enemy was to be found in any shape and
form; there was no security by night or day, but on the whole life was
safer if one spoke as little as possible and stuck to the wall. There were
Devils--most certainly Devils--roaming the world, and as he watched the
Torture and the Terror and then the very dreadful submission, he vowed with
clenched lips that he would never Submit...and so gradually he was learning
the truth of that which Frosted Moses had spoken...

Cornwall, meanwhile--the Grey Hill, Scaw House, the hills above
Truro--remained to him during these weeks, securely hidden.


III

There remains to be chronicled of that first term only the Comber Fight
and, a little conversation, one windy day, with Galleon. The small boy, by
name Beech Minimus, whom Peter had defended on that earlier occasion, had
attached himself with unswerving fidelity to his preserver. He was round
and fat, and on his arrival had had red cheeks and sparkling eyes--now he
was pale and there were lines under his eyes; he started if any one spoke
to him, and was always eager to hide when possible. Peter was very sorry
for him, but, after a month of the term had passed he had, himself,
acquired the indifference of those that stand with their backs to the wall.
Beech would go on any kind of errand for him and would willingly have died
for him had it been required of him--he did indeed during the hours that he
was left in peace in his dormitory, picture to himself wonderful scenes in
which he saved Peter from horrible deaths and for his own part perished.

It may have been that he clung to Peter partly because there was more
safety in his neighbourhood, for amongst the lower school boys at any rate,
very considerable fear of Peter was to be noticed, but Beech's large eyes
raised to the other boy's face or his eager smile as he did something that
Peter required of him, spoke devotion.

Beech Minimus was forced, however, for the good of his soul, to suffer
especial torture between the hours of eight and nine in the evening. It was
the custom that the Lower School should retire from preparation at eight
o'clock, it being supposed that at that hour the Lower School went to bed.
But Authority, blinded by trustful good nature and being engaged at that
hour with its wine and dinner, left the issue to chance and the Gods, and
human nature being what it is, the Lower School triumphed in freedom. There
was a large, empty class room at the back of the building where much noise
might safely be made, and in this place and at this hour followed the
nightly torture of Beech and his minute companions--that torture named by
the Gods, "Discipline," by the Authorities, "Boys will be Boys," by the
Parent, "Learning to be a Man," and by the Lower School "A Rag." Beech and
his companions had not as yet a name for it. Peter was, as a rule, left to
his own thoughts and spent the hours amongst the greatcoats in the passage
reading David Copperfield or talking in whispers to Bobby Galleon. But
nevertheless he was not really indifferent, he was horribly conscious even
in his sleep, of Beech's shrill "Oh! Comber, don't! Please, Comber, oh!"
and Beech being in the same dormitory as himself he noticed, almost against
his will, that shivering little mortal as he crept into bed and cowered
beneath the sheets wondering whether before morning he would be tossed in
sheets or would find his bed drenched in water or would be beaten with hair
brushes. Peter's philosophy of standing it in silence and hitting back if
he were himself attacked was scarcely satisfactory in Beech's case, and,
again and again, his attention would be dragged away from his book to that
other room where some small boys were learning lessons in life.

The head of this pleasant sport was one Comber, a large, pale-faced boy,
some years older than his place in the school justified, but of a crass
stupidity, a greedy stomach and a vicious cruelty. Peter had already met
him in football and had annoyed him by collaring him violently on one
occasion, it being the boy's habit, owing to his size and reputation, to
run down the field in the Lower School game, unattacked. Peter's hatred
of him grew more intense week by week; some days after Mid-Term, it had
swollen into a passion. He finally told Bobby Galleon one day at luncheon
that on that very evening he was going to defy this Comber. Galleon
besought him not to do this, pointing out Comber's greater strength and the
natural tendency of the Lower School to follow their leader blindly. Peter
said nothing in reply but watched, when eight o'clock had struck and the
Lower School had assembled in the class room, for his moment. It was a
somewhat piteous spectacle. Comber and some half a dozen friends in the
middle of the room, and forty boys ranging in years from eight to twelve,
waiting with white faces and propitiatory smiles, eager to assist in the
Torture if they only might themselves be spared.

"Now you chaps," this from Comber--"we'll have a Gauntlet. I votes we make
young Beech run first."

"Rather! Come on, Beech--you've jolly well got to."

"Buck up, you funk!" from those relieved that they were themselves, for the
instant, safe.

Peter was sitting on a bench at the back of the room--he stood on the bench
and shouted, "You're a beast. Comber."

There was immediate silence--every one turned first to Comber, and then
back to Peter. Comber paused in the preparation of the string whip that he
was making, and his face was crimson.

"Oh, it's you, you young skunk, is it? Bring him here some of you fellows."

Eager movements were made in his direction, but Peter, still standing on
his bench, shouted: "I claim a fight."

There was silence again--a silence now of incredulity and amazement. But
there was nothing to be done; if any one claimed a fight, by all the rules
and traditions of Dawson's he must have it. But that Westcott, a new boy
and in the bottom form should challenge Comber! Slowly, and as it were
against their will, hearts beat a little faster, faces brightened. Of
course Westcott would be most hopelessly beaten, but might not this prove
the beginning of the end of their tyrant?

Meanwhile, Comber between his teeth: "All right, you young devil, I'll give
you such a hiding as you damned well won't forget. Then we'll treat you
properly afterwards."

A ring was made, and there was silence, so that the prefects might not
be attracted, because fighting in the Lower School was forbidden. Coats
were taken off and Peter faced Comber with the sensation of attacking a
mountain. Peter knew nothing about fighting at all, but Comber had long
subsisted on an easy reputation and he was a coward at heart. There swung
into Peter's brain the picture of The Bending Mule, the crowding faces, the
swinging lamp, Stephen with the sledge-hammer blow...it was the first time
for weeks that he had thought of Treliss.

He was indifferent--he did not care; things could not be worse, and he did
not mind what happened to him, and Comber minded very much indeed, and he
had not been hit in the face for a long time. His arms went round like
windmills, and the things that he would like to have done were to