The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fortitude, by Hugh Walpole
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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 pull
Peter's hair from its roots and to bite him on the arm. As the fight
proceeded and he knew that his face was bleeding and that the end of
his nose had no sensation in it at all he kicked with his feet and was
conscious of cries that he was not playing the game. Infuriated that his
recent supporters should so easily desert him, he now flung himself upon
Peter, who at once gave way beneath the bigger boy's weight. Comber then
began to bite and tear and scratch, uttering shrill screams of rage and
kicking on the floor with his feet. He was at once pulled away, assured
by those dearest friends who had so recently and merrily assisted him in
his "rags" that he was not playing the game and was no sportsman. He was
moreover a ludicrous sight, his trousers being torn, one blue-black eye
staring from a confused outline of dust and blood, his hair amazingly on
end.
There were also many cries of "Shame, Comber," "Dirty game," and even "Well
played young Westcott!"
He knew as he wept bitter tears into his blood-stained hands that his reign
was at an end.
There were indeed, for the time at any rate, no more "rags," and Peter
might, an he would, have reigned magnificently over the Lower School. But
he was as silent and aloof as ever, and was considered "a sidey devil, but
jolly plucky, by Gad."
And for himself he got at any rate the more continued companionship of
Cards, who languidly, and, perhaps a younger Sir Willoughby Patterne "with
a leg," admired his muscle.
IV
Finally, towards the end of the term, Peter and Bobby Galleon may be seen
sitting on a high hill. It is a Sunday afternoon in spring, and far away
there is a thin line of faintly blue hills. Nearer to view there are grey
heights more sharply outlined and rough, like drawing paper--painted with
a green wood, a red-roofed farm, a black church spire, and a brown ploughed
field. Immediately below them a green hedge hanging over a running stream
that has caught the blue of the sky. Above them vast swollen clouds
flooding slowly with the faint yellow of the coming sunset, hanging
stationary above the stream and seeming to have flung to earth some patches
of their colour in the first primroses below the hedge. A rabbit watches,
his head out of his hole.
The boys' voices cut the air.
"I say, Bobby, don't you ever wonder about things--you never seem to want
to ask questions."
"No, I don't suppose I do. I'm awfully stupid. Father says so."
"It's funny your being stupid when your father's so clever."
"Do you mind my being stupid?"
"No--only I'd like you to want to know things--things like what people are
like inside--their thinking part I mean, not their real insides. People
like Mother Gill and old Binns and Prester Ma: and then what one's going to
do when one's grown up--you never want to know that."
"No, it'll just come I suppose. Of course, I shan't be clever like the
governor."
"No, I don't think you will."
Once again: "Do you mind my being so stupid, Peter?"
"No--I'm awfully stupid too. But I like to wonder about things. There was
once a man I met at home with rings and things who lived in London...."
Peter stops, Galleon wouldn't be interested in that.
"Anyhow, you know, you've got Cards--he's an awfully clever chap."
"Yes, he's wonderful," Peter sighs, "and he's seen such a lot of things."
"Yes, but you know I don't think Cards really cares for you as much as I
do." This is an approach to sentiment, and Peter brushes it hastily aside:
"I like you both awfully. But I say, won't it be splendid to be grown up in
London?"
"I don't know--lots of fellows don't like it."
"That's nothing," Peter says slowly, "to do with its not being splendid!"
And the rabbit, tired of listening to such tiresome stuff, thinks that they
must be very young boys indeed.
CHAPTER VI
A LOOKING-GLASS, A SILVER MATCH-BOX, A GLASS OF WHISKY, AND--VOX POPULI
I
Peter, thirteen to sixteen!--and left, so it appears, very much the same,
as far as actual possessions go, at the end of it as at the poverty-struck
commencement. Friendship, Honour, Glory--how these things came and went
with him during these years might have a book to themselves were it not
that our business is with a wider stage and more lasting issues--and there
is but little room for a full-fledged chronicle. Though Dawson's--and to
take the history of Miss Gill only--of her love affair with the curate, of
her final desperate appeal to him and of his ultimate confession that he
was married already--provides a story quite sufficient for three excellent
volumes. Or there is the history of Benbow, that bucolic gentleman into
whose study we led Peter a chapter or two ago, Head for this year or two of
Dawson's--soon to be head of nothing but the dung-heap and there to crow
only dismally--with a childlike Mrs. Benbow, led unwittingly to Dawson's
as a lamb to the slaughter-house--later to flee, crying, back to her
hearth and home, her life smashed to the tiniest pieces and no brain nor
strength to put it together again. Or there is the natural and interesting
progression, on the part of any child, behind whose back those iron gates
of Dawson's have swung, from innocence to knowledge, from knowledge to
practice, from practice to miserable Submission, Concealment, and a merry
prospective Hell--this is a diverting study with which it would be easy to
fill these pages....
But the theme is Peter's education, and Dawson's is only an incident to
that history--an incident that may be taken by the percipient reader, for
a most admirable Symbol--even an early rehearsal of a Comedy entitled
"How to Learn to be a Man, or The World as a Prancing Ground."...
But with Peter, if you take him from that first asking Mrs. Trussit
(swinging his short legs from the table and diving into the mixed biscuit
tin). "Is it, Mrs. Trussit, like David Copperfield?"... to his meeting
of her again, he still rather short-legged but no longer caring over
much for mixed biscuits, in his sixteenth year, with Dawson's over and
done with--"No, Mrs. Trussit, not in the least like," and grimly said in
addition, the changes, alterations and general growing-up Development may
be said to be inside him rather than out, and there they are vital enough.
With those three and a half years it is a case of Things sticking out, like
hillocks in a flat country, and it is retrospection rather than impressions
at the time that show what mattered and what did not. But, on the whole,
the vital things at Dawson's are pretty plain to the eye and must be
squeezed into a chapter as best they can.
Treliss, as it appeared in the holidays, seemed to Peter to change very
little. His relations with his father were curiously passive during this
time, and suggested, in their hint of future developments, something
ominous and uneasy. They scarcely ever spoke to one another, and it was
Peter's object to avoid the house as often as possible, but in his father's
silence now (Peter himself being older and intuitively sharper as to the
reason of things) he saw active dislike, and even, at times, a suggested
fear. Outwardly they--his father, his grandfather, his aunt, Mrs.
Trussit--had changed not at all; his grandfather the same old creature of
grey hairs and cushions and rugs, his father broad and square and white in
the face with his black hair carefully brushed, his aunt with her mittens
and trembling hands and silly voice, Mrs. Trussit with her black silk gown
and stout prosperous face--Oh! they were all there, but he fancied--and
this might easily be imagination--that they, like the portraits of the old
Westcotts about the walls, watched him, as he grew, knowing that ever, as
the months passed, the day came nearer when father and son must come to
terms. And beyond this he had, even at this early time, a consciousness
that it was round his mother's room that the whole matter hung--his mother
whom he saw once or twice a week for a very little time in the morning,
when that old terror of the white silent room would creep upon him and hold
him tongue-tied.
And yet, with it all, he knew, as every holiday came, more clearly, that
again and again they, his mother and himself, were on the verge of speech
or action. He could see it in her eyes, her beautiful grey eyes that moved
him so curiously. There were days when he was on the edge of a rush of
questions, and then something held him back--perhaps the unconscious
certainty that his mother's answers would precipitate his relations with
his father--and he was not, as yet, ready.
Anyhow a grim place, Scaw House, grimmer with every return to it, and
not a brightly coloured interlude to Dawson's, grim enough in its own
conditions. The silence that was gradually growing with Peter--the fixed
assurance, whether at home or at school, that life was easier if one said
nothing--might have found an outlet in Stephen's company, but here again
there was no cheerful chronicle.
Each holiday showed Peter less of Stephen than the last had done, and he
was afraid to ask himself why this was. Perhaps in reality he did not know,
but at any rate he was sure that the change was in Stephen. He cared for
Stephen as devotedly as ever, and, indeed, in that perhaps he needed him
more than ever and saw him so little, his affection was even stronger than
it had been. But Stephen had changed, not, Peter knew, in any affection
towards himself, but in his own habits and person. Burstead--his old
enemy--had taken a farm near his own farm, in order, so they said at The
Bending Mule, that he might flaunt Mrs. Burstead (once Stephen's
sweetheart) in Stephen's face.
They also said that Burstead beat his wife and ill-used her horribly, and
that she would give all her soul now that she was Stephen Brant's wife, but
that she was a weak, silly young woman, poor thing. They said that Stephen
knew all this, and that he could hear her crying at nights, and that it was
sending him off his head--and that he was drinking. And they shook their
heads, down at The Bending Mule, and foreboded ill. Moreover, that old
lady, Mrs. Brant, had died during Peter's first year at Dawson's, and
Stephen was alone now. He had changed in his appearance, his beard tangled
and untidy, his clothes unbrushed and his eyes wild and bloodshot, and once
Peter had ventured up to Stephen's farm and had climbed the stairs and
had opened the door and had seen Stephen (although it was early evening)
sitting all naked on his bed, very drunk and shouting wildly--and he had
not recognised Peter. But the boy knew when he met him again, sober this
time, by the sad look in his eyes, that Stephen must go his way alone now,
lead him where it would.... A boy of fifteen could not help.
And so those holidays were more and more lonely, as the days passed and
Peter's heart was very heavy. He did not go often to The Bending Mule now
because Stephen was not there. He went once or twice to Zachary Tan's shop,
but he did not see Mr. Zanti again nor any one who spoke of London. He had
not, however, forgotten Mr. Zanti's talk of looking-glasses. As he grew and
his mind distinguished more clearly between fact and fancy, he saw that it
was foolish to suppose that one saw anything in looking-glasses but the
immediate view. Tables and chairs, walls and windows, dust and fire-places,
there was the furniture of a looking-glass. Nevertheless during his first
year at school he had, on occasions, climbed to his dormitory, seen that he
was alone and then gazed into his glass and thought of London ... London
in his young brain, being a place of romantic fog, pantomime, oranges,
fat, chivalrous old gentlemen, Queen Victoria and Punch and Judy. Nothing
had happened--of course nothing had happened--it was only very cold and
unpleasant up there all alone, and, at the end of it, a silly thing to do.
And then one night something did happen. He woke suddenly and heard in the
distance beyond the deep breathing of twenty-four sleepers, a clock strike
three. He turned and lay on his back; he was very sleepy and he did not
know why he had wakened. The long high room was dark, but directly opposite
him beyond the end of his bed, the light seemed to shine full on to the
face of his looking-glass. As he sat up in bed and looked at it seemed
to stand out like a sheet of silver.
He gripped the sides of the bed and stared. He rubbed his eyes. He could
see no reflection in the glass at all but only this shining expanse, and
then, as he looked at it, that too seemed to pass away, and in its place
at first confusedly, like smoke across the face of the glass, and then,
settling into shape and form, there appeared the interior of a room--a
small low-roofed dark room. There was a large fire burning, and in front
of it, kneeling on the floor, with their backs to Peter, were two men, and
they were thrusting papers into the fire. The glass seemed to stretch and
broaden out so that the whole of the room was visible, and suddenly Peter
saw a little window high in the top of the wall, and behind that window was
a face that watched the two men.
He wanted to warn them--he suddenly cried out aloud "Look out!" and with
that he was wide awake and saw that his glass could be only dimly discerned
in the grey of the advancing morning--and yet he had heard that clock
strike three!... So much for confusing dreams, and so vivid was it that in
the morning he remembered the face at the window and knew that he would
recognise it again if he saw it.
II
But out of the three years there stand his relations with Cards and young
Galleon, a symbol of so much that was to come to him later. As he grew in
position in the school Cards saw him continually. Cards undoubtedly admired
his stocky, determined strength, his grey eyes, his brusque speech, his
ability at games. He did not pretend also that he was not flattered by
Peter's attentions. Curiously, for so young a boy, he had a satirical
irony that showed him the world very much in the light that he was always
afterwards to see it. To Cards the world was a show, a Vanity Fair--a place
where manner, _savoir-faire_, dignity, humour and ease, mattered
everything; he saw also that there was nothing by which people are so
easily deceived.
Peter had none of these things; he would always be rough, he would never be
elegant, and afterwards, in life, Cards did not suppose that he would see
very much of Peter, their lives would be along different paths; but now,
more genuinely perhaps than ever again, Cards was to admire that honest
bedrock of feeling, of sentiment, of criticism, of love and anger, that
gave Peter his immense value.
"There is a fellow here," wrote Cards to his mother, "whom I like very
much. He's got a most awful lot of stuff in him although he doesn't say
much and he looks like nothing on earth sometimes. He's very good at
football, although he's only been here a year. His name is Westcott--Peter
Westcott. I expect I'll bring him back one holiday."
But, of course, he never did. Peter, when it came to actuality, wouldn't
look right at home. It was during Peter's second year that these things
were happening, and, all this time, Peter was climbing slowly to a very
real popularity. Cards was leaving at the end of this second year--had he
stayed until the end of the third his superficialities would have been most
severely tested.
To him Peter gave all that whole-hearted love and devotion that only
Stephen had known before. He gave it with a very considerable sense of
humour and with no sentiment at all. He saw Cards quite clearly, he watched
his poses and his elaborate pretences, and he laughed at him sometimes and
called him names.
Cards' pride was, on several occasions, distinctly hurt by this laughter,
but his certain conviction of his own superiority always comforted him.
Nor was Peter ever sentimental in his attitude. He never told Cards that
he cared for him, and he even hung back a little when Cards was in a
demonstrative mood and wanted to be told that he was "wonderful." Cards
sometimes wondered whether Peter cared for him at all and whether he wasn't
really fonder of that "stupid ass Galleon" who never had a word to say
for himself. Peter's grey eyes would have told Cards a great deal if
he had cared to examine them, but he did not know anything about eyes.
Peter noticed, a little against his will, that as he advanced up the
school so Cards cared increasingly about him. He grasped this discovery
philosophically; after all, there were many fellows who took their colour
from the world's opinion, and it was natural enough that they should.
He himself regarded his growing popularity as a thing of no importance
whatever; it did not touch him anywhere at all because he despised and
hated the place. "When the time does come," he said once to Cards, "and
one is allowed to do things, I'll stop a lot of this filth."
"You'll have your work cut out," Cards told him. "What does it all matter
to us? Let 'em wallow--and they'll only hate you."
Cards added this because he knew that Peter had a curious passion for being
liked. Cards wanted to be admired, but to be liked!... what was the gain?
But that second year was, in spite of it all, the best time that Peter had
ever had. There was warmth of a kind in their appreciation of him. He was
only fifteen and small for his age, but his uncompromising attitude about
things, his silence, his football, gave him a surprising importance--but
even now it was respect rather than popularity. He was growing more like a
bull-dog than ever, his hair was stiff and short, rather shaggy eyebrows, a
square jaw, his short legs rather far apart, a broad back and thick strong
arms.
Now that Stephen had slipped so sadly into the background he built up his
life about Cards. He put everything into that room--not the old room that
had held Stephen, but a new shining place that gained some added brilliance
from the fact that its guest realised so little the honour that was done
him. He would lie awake at night and think about Cards, of the things that
he would do for him, of the way that he would serve him, of the guardian
that he would be.
And then, as that summer term, at the end of the second year, wore on the
pain of Cards' departure grew daily more terrible. He didn't know, as the
days advanced, how he would be able to bear that place without Cards. There
would be no life, no interest, and all the disorganisation, the immorality,
the cruelty would oppress him as they had never oppressed him before.
Besides next year he would be a person of some importance--he would
probably be Captain of the Football and a Monitor...everything would be
terribly hard. Of course there was old Bobby Galleon, who was a very good
chap and really fond of Peter, but there was no excitement about _that_
relationship. Bobby was quite ready to play servant to Peter's master, and
Peter could never respect any one very much who did that. Beside Cards, so
brilliant, so handsome, with such an "air," old Bobby really didn't come
off very well.
Bobby also at times was inclined to be a little sentimental. He used to ask
Peter whether he liked him--whether he would miss him if he died--and he
used to tell Peter that he would very gladly die for him. There were things
that one didn't--if one had self-respect--say.
That year the summer was of a blazing heat. Every morning saw a sky of
steely blue, the corn stood like a golden band about the hills, and little
clouds like the softest feathers were blown by the Gods about the world. A
mist clung about the distant hills and clothed them in purple grey. As the
term grew to its close Peter felt that the world was a prison of coloured
steel, and that Dawson's was a true Hell...he would escape from it with
Cards. And then when he saw that such an escape would be running away and
a confession of defeat--he turned back and held his will in command.
Cards looked upon his approaching departure as a great deliverance. He was
to be a man immediately; not for him that absurdly dilatory condition of
pimples and hobbledehoy boots that mark a transition period. Dawson's had
been the most insignificant sojourn in the tent of the enemy, and the
world, it was implied, had lamented his enforced absence. But, as the end
of term flung its shadows in front of it in the form of examinations, and
that especial quality of excited expectancy hovering about the corridors,
Cards felt, for the first time in his existence, a genuine emotion. He
minded, curiously, leaving Peter. He felt, although in this he wrongly
anticipated the gods, that he would never see him again, and he calculated
perhaps at the little piece of real affection and friendship that stood out
from the Continental Tour that he wished Life to be, like a palm tree on
the limitless desert. And yet it was characteristic of them both that on
the last day when, seated under a hedge at the top of the playing fields,
the school buildings a grey mist below them and the air tensely rigid with
heat, they said good-bye to one another, it was Cards who found all the
words.
Peter had nothing to say at all; he only clutched at tufts of grass, lugged
them from the earth and flung them before him. But Cards, as usual, rose to
the occasion.
"You know, Peter, it's been most splendid knowing you here. I don't think
I'd ever have got through Dawson's if it hadn't been for you. It's a hell
of a place and I suppose if the mater hadn't been abroad so much I should
never have stayed on. But it's no use making a fuss. Besides, it's only for
a little while--one will have forgotten all about it in a year's time."
Peter smiled. "You will, I shan't."
"Why, of course you will. And you must come and stay with us often. My
mother's most awfully anxious to know you. Won't it be splendid going out
to join her in Italy? It'll be a bit hot this time of year I expect."
Peter seemed to struggle with his words. "I say--Cards--you
won't--altogether--forget me?"
"Forget you! Why, good Lord, I'll be always writing. I'll have such lots to
tell you. I've never liked any one in all my life (this said with a great
sense of age) as I've liked you!"
He stood up and fumbled in his coat. Peter always remembered him, his dark
slim body against the sky, his hair tumbled about his forehead, the grace
and ease with which his body was balanced, the trick that he had of swaying
a little from the hips. He felt in his pocket.
"I say--I've got something for you. I bought it down in the town the other
day and I made them put your name on it." He produced it, wrapped in tissue
paper, out of his pocket, and Peter took it without a word. It was a silver
match-box with "Peter Westcott from his friend Cardillac," and the month
and the year printed on it.
"Thanks most awfully," Peter said gruffly. "Jolly decent of you. Good-bye
old man."
They shook hands and avoided each other's eyes, and Cardillac had a sudden
desire to fling the Grand Tour and the rest of it to the dogs and to come
back for another year to Dawson's.
"Well, I must get back, got to be in library at four," he said.
"I'm going to stop here a bit," said Peter.
He watched Cards walk slowly down the hill and then he flung himself on his
face and pursued with a vacant eye the efforts of an ant to climb a swaying
blade of grass ... he was there for a long time.
III
And so he entered into his third year at Dawson's with a dogged
determination to get through with it as well as possible and not to miss
Cards more than he could help. He did, as an actual fact, miss Cards
terribly. There were so many places, so many things that were connected
with him, but he found, as a kind of reward, that Bobby Galleon was more of
a friend than before. Now that Cards had departed Galleon came a little out
of his shell. He anticipated, obviously with very considerable enjoyment,
that year when he would have Peter all to himself. Bobby Galleon's virtue
was, at any rate, that one was not conscious of him, and during the time of
Peter's popularity he was useful without being in the very least evident.
When that year was over and he had seen the last shining twinkle of Cards'
charms and fascinations he looked at Peter a little wistfully, "Peter,
old man, next year will be topping...." and Peter, the pleasant warmth
of popularity about him, felt that there was a great deal to be said for
Galleon after all.
* * * * *
But with the first week of that third year trouble began. Things lifted
between the terms, into so different an air; at the end of the summer with
Peter's authority in prospect and his splendid popularity (confined by no
jailer-like insistence on rules) around him that immediate year seemed
simple enough. But in the holidays that preceded the autumn term something
had occurred; Peter returned in the mists and damp of September with every
eye upon him. Although only fifteen and a half he was a Monitor and Captain
of the Football ... far too young for both these posts, with fellows
of a great size and a greater age in the school, but Barbour (his nose
providing, daily, a more lively guide to his festal evenings) was seized
by Peter's silence and imperturbability in the midst of danger, "That
kid's got guts" (this a vinous confidence amongst friends) "and will
pull the place up--gettin' a bit slack, yer know--Young? Lord bless yer,
no--wonderful for his age and Captain of the Football--that's always
popular."
So upon Peter the burden of "pulling things up" descended. How far Cards
might have helped him here it is difficult to say. Cards had, in his
apparently casual contempt of that school world, a remarkably competent
sense of the direction in which straws were blowing. That most certainly
Peter had not, being inclined, at this stage of things, to go straight for
the thing that he saw and to leave the outskirts of the subject to look
after themselves. And here Bobby Galleon was of no use to him, being
as blundering and near-sighted and simple as a boy could very well be.
Moreover his implicit trust in the perfection of that hero, Peter, did not
help clarity of vision. He was never aware of the causes of things and only
dimly noticed effects, but he was unflinchingly faithful.
"The primrose path" was, of course, open to Peter. He was popular enough,
at the beginning of that Autumn term, to do anything, and, had he followed
the "closed-eyes" policy of his predecessor, smiling pleasantly upon all
crime and even gently with his own authority "lending a hand," all would
have been well. There were boys with strangely simple names, simple
for such criminals--Barton, Jerrard, Watson, West, Underbill--who were
old-established hands at their own especial games, and they saw no reason
at all for disturbance. "Young Westcott had better not come meddling
here," they muttered darkly, having discerned already a tendency on his
part to show disapproval. Nothing happened during the first term--no
concrete incident--but Peter had stepped, by the end of it, from an
exultant popularity to an actual distrust and suspicion. The football
season had not been very successful and Peter had not the graces and charm
of a leader. He distrusted the revelation of enthusiasm because he was
himself so enthusiastic and his silence was mistaken for coldness. He hated
the criminals with the simple names and showed them that he hated them and
they in their turn, skilfully and with some very genuine humour, persuaded
the school that he cut a very poor figure.
At the absurd concert that closed the Autumn term (Mr. Barbour, red-nosed
and bulging shirt-front, hilariously in the chair) Peter knew that he had
lost his throne. He had Bobby--there was no one else--and in a sudden
bitterness and scorn at the fickle colour of that esteem that he had valued
so highly he almost wished that he were altogether alone.... Bobby only
accentuated things.
Nothing to go home to--nothing to come back to. The Christmas holidays over
he returned to the Easter term with an eager determination to improve
matters.
It was geniality that he lacked: he knew that that was the matter with him,
and he felt a kind of despair about it because he seemed to return at the
end of every holiday from Cornwall with that old conviction in his head
that the easiest way to get through the world was to stand with your back
to the wall and say nothing ... and if these fellows, who thought him so
pleasant last year, thought him pleasant no longer, well, then he must put
up with it. He had not changed--there he was, as ever.
But the Easter term was a chronicle of mistakes. He could not be genial to
people who defied and mocked him; he found, dangerously, that they could
all be afraid of him. When his face was white and his voice very quiet and
his whole body tense like a bow, then they feared him--the biggest and
strongest of those criminals obeyed. He was sixteen now and he could when
he liked rule them all, and gradually, as the term advanced, he used his
strength more and more and was more and more alone. Days would come when he
would hate his loneliness and would rush out of it with friendly advances
and always he would be beaten back into his reserve again. Had only Cards
been there!... But what side would Cards have taken? Perhaps Peter was
fortunate in that the test was not demanded. Poor Bobby simply did not
understand it at all. Peter! the most splendid fellow in the world! What
were they all up to? But that point of view did not help matters. No other
monitor spoke to Peter now if he could help it, and even the masters,
judging that where there was smoke there must be fire, passed him coldly.
That Easter term, in the late winds and rains of March, closed hideously.
The Easter holidays, although perhaps he did not realise it, were a
deliberate backing for the ordeal that was, he knew, to come.
He faced it on his return almost humorously, prepared, with a
self-consciousness that was unusual in him, for all the worst things, and
it is true enough that they were as bad as they could be. Bobby Galleon
shared in it all, of course, but he had never been a popular person and he
did not miss anything so long as there was Peter. Once he said, as Cards
had said before:
"Leave 'em alone, Peter. After all, we can't do anything. They're too many
for us, and, most important thing of all, they aren't worth it."
"Not much," said Peter, "things have got to be different."
Things were not different. They _were_ too many for him, but he struggled
on. The more open bullying he stopped, and there were other things that he
drove into dark corners. But they remained there--in those corners. There
were so many dark places at Dawson's, and it began to get on his brain so
that he heard whispers and suspicions and marked the trail of the beast at
every minute of the day. He could find nothing now in the open--they were
too clever for him. The Captain of the Citadel--Ellershaw--was as he knew
the worst fellow in the school, but there was nothing to be done, nothing
unless something were caught in the open. As the term advanced the whispers
grew and he felt that there were plots in the air. He was obeyed, Ellershaw
and some of the others were politer than they had ever been, and for many
weeks now there had been no disturbance--then suddenly the storm broke.
One hot afternoon he was sitting in his study alone, trying to read. Things
seemed to him that day at their very worst, there was no place to which he
might turn. People were playing cricket beyond his window. Some fly buzzed
on his window pane, the sunlight was golden about his room and little
ladders of dust twisted and curved against the glare--the house was very
still. Then suddenly, from a neighbouring study, there were sounds. At
first they did not penetrate his day dream, then they caught his ear and he
put his book down and listened. The sounds were muffled; there was laughter
and then some one cried out.
He knew that it was Jerrard's study and he hated Jerrard more than any one
in the school. The fellow was a huge stupid oaf, low down in the middle
fourth, but the best bowler that the school had; yes, he hated him. He
opened his study door and listened. The passage was deserted, and, for a
moment, there was no sound save some one shouting down in the cricket field
and the buzzing of the fly on the pane. Then he heard voices from behind
Jerrard's door.
"No, I say--Jerrard--don't give me any more--please ... please don't."
"There I say--hold his mouth open; that's right, pour it down. We'll have
him singing in a moment."
"Oh I say--" there were sounds of a struggle and then silence again. At
last there began the most horrible laughter that Peter had ever known;
weak, silly, giggling, and little excited cries.
Then Jerrard's voice: "There, that will do; he's merry enough now."
Peter waited for no more, but strode across the passage and flung open the
door. Some chairs were overturned; Jerrard and a friend, hearing the door
open, had turned round. Leaning against the table, very flushed, his eyes
shining, his hair covered with dust, waving his arms and singing in a
quivering voice, was a small boy, very drunk. A glass and a whisky bottle
were on the table.
"You damned hound!" Peter was trembling from head to foot. "You shall get
kicked out for this."
Peter closed the door quietly behind him, and went back to his study. Here
at last was the moment for which he had been waiting. Jerrard should be
expelled if he, Peter, died in the attempt. Jerrard was the school's best
bowler; he was immensely popular ... it would, indeed, be a matter of life
and death. On that same evening he called a meeting of the Monitors; they
were bound to meet if one of their number had anything of sufficient
importance to declare, but they came reluctantly and showed Peter that they
resented his action. When they heard what Peter had to say their attitude
was even more mutinous. Jerrard, the school's best bowler, was their one
thought. The end of the term was at hand, and the great match of the
year against Radford, a neighbouring school, approached. Without Jerrard
Dawson's would be hopelessly defeated. If Barbour heard of the incident
Jerrard would be expelled; Barbour might be reluctant to act, but act he
must. They were not, by an absurd and ancient rule, allowed to punish any
grave offence without reporting it to the head-master. If, therefore, they
took any action at all, it must be reported, Jerrard would be expelled, a
boon companion and the great cricket match of the year, would be lost. And
all this through that interfering prig of a Westcott! Any ordinary fellow
would have shut his eyes to the whole affair. After all what is there to
make a fuss about in having a rag with a kid? What are kids for? Thus the
conclave sourly regarding Peter who watched them in turn, and sat sternly,
ominously militant. They approached him with courtesy; Ellershaw showed him
what this might mean to the school were it persisted in. After all, Jerrard
was, in all probability, sorry enough ... it was a rotten thing to do--he
should apologise to them. No, Peter would have none of it, they must 'act;
it must be reported to the Head. He would, if necessary, report it himself.
Then they turned and cursed him, asking him whom he thought that he was,
warned him about the way that the school would take his interference when
the school knew, advised him for his own good to drop the matter; Peter was
unmoved.
Barbour was informed; Jerrard was expelled--the school was beaten in the
cricket match by an innings.
Then the storm broke. Peter moved, with Bobby Galleon, through a cloud of
enemies. It was a hostility that cut like a knife, silent, motionless, but
so bitter that every boy from Ellershaw to the tiniest infant at the bottom
of the first took it as the _motif_ of his day. That beast Westcott was the
song that rang through the last fortnight.
Bobby Galleon was cowed by it; he did not mind his own ostracism, and
he was proud that he could give practical effect to his devotion for
his friend, but deep down in his loyalty, there was an unconfessed
suspicion as to whether Peter, after all, hadn't been a little unwise and
interfering--what was the good of making all this trouble? He even wondered
whether Peter didn't rather enjoy it?
And Peter, for the first time in his school life, was happy. There was
something after all in being up against all these people. He was a general
fighting against tremendous odds. He would show them next year that they
must obey.
On the last afternoon of the term he sat alone in his study. Bobby was with
the matron, packing. He was conscious, as he sat there, of the sound of
many feet shuffling. There were many whispers beyond his door, and yet a
great silence.
He waited for a little, and then he opened his door and looked out. As he
did so the bell for roll-call rang through the building, and he knew that
it was his roll.
Afternoon roll-call was always taken in the gymnasium, a large empty room
beyond the study passage, and it was the custom for boys to come up as
their name was about to be called and thus to pass on.
But to-day he saw that the whole of the school was gathered there, along
the dusky passage and packed, in a silent motionless throng, into the
gymnasium.
He knew that they were all there with a purpose, and suddenly as he
realised the insult that they intended, that spirit of exultation came upon
him again. Ah! it was worth while, this battle!
They made way in silence as he passed quietly to the other end of the
gymnasium and stood, a little above them, on the steps that led to the
gallery. He started the roll-call with the head of the school and the sixth
form ... there was no answer to any name; only perfect silence and every
eye fixed upon him. For a wild moment he wished to burst out upon them, to
crash their heads together, to hurt--then his self-control returned. Very
quietly and clearly he read through the school list, a faint smile on his
lips. Bobby Galleon was the only boy, out of three hundred, who answered.
When he had finished he called out as was the custom, "Roll is over," then
for a brief instant, with the list in his hand, smiling, he faced them all.
Every eye was upon him--Ellershaw, West, Barton smiling a little, some
faces nervous, some excited, all bitterly, intensely hostile ... and he
must return next year!
He came down from the steps and walked very slowly to the door, and then as
his fingers touched the handle there was a sound--a whisper, very soft and
then louder; it grew about his ear like a shot ... the whole school,
motionless as before, was hissing him.
There was no word spoken, and he closed the door behind him.
IV
That same night he walked, before chapel, with Bobby to the top of the
playing fields. The night was dark and heavy, with no moon nor stars--but
there was a cool wind that touched his cheek.
"Well, I've been a pretty good failure, Bobby. You've stuck to me like a
brick. I shall never forget it.... But you know never in all my life have I
been as happy as I was this afternoon. The devils! I'll have 'em under next
year."
"That's not the way--" Bobby tried timorously to explain.
"Oh, yes, it is.... Anyhow it's my way. I wonder what there is about me
that makes people hate me so."
"People don't."
"Yes, they do. At home, here--it's all the same. I'm always having to fight
about something, always coming up against things."
"I suppose it's your destiny," said Bobby. "You always say it's to teach
you pluck."
"That's what an old chap I knew in Cornwall said. But why can't I be let
alone? How I loved that bit last year when the fellows liked me--only the
decent things never last."
"It'll be all right later," Bobby answered, thinking that he had never seen
anything finer than the way Peter had taken that afternoon. "In a way," he
went on, "you fellows are lucky to get a chance of standing up against that
sort of thing; it's damned good practice. Nobody ever thinks I'm worth
while."
"Well," said Peter, throwing a clod of dark, scented earth into the air
and losing sight of it in the black wall about him--"Here's to next year's
battle!"
CHAPTER VII
PRIDE OF LIFE
I
Peter never saw Dawson's again. When the summer holidays had run some three
weeks a letter arrived stating, quite simply and tersely that, owing to
the non-payment by evading parents of bills long overdue and to many other
depressing and unavoidable circumstances Mr. Barbour and that House of
Cards, his school, had fallen to pieces. There at any rate was an end
to that disastrous accumulation of brick and mortar, and the harm that,
living, it had wrought upon the souls and bodies of its victims its dying
could not excuse. No tears were shed for Dawson's.
Peter, at the news, knew that now his battle never could be won. That
battle at any rate must be left behind him with his defeat written large
upon the plain of it, and this made in some unrealised way the penalty of
the future months harder to bear. He had, behind him, defeat. Look at it
as he might, he had been a failure at Dawson's--he had not done the things
that he had been put there to do--and yet through the disaster he knew
that in so far as he had refused to bend to the storm so far there had
been victory; of that at any rate he was sure.
So he turned resolutely from the past and faced the future. It was
as though suddenly Dawson's had never existed--a dream, a fantasy, a
delirium--something that had left no external things behind it and had only
in the effect that it had worked upon himself spiritually made its mark. He
faced his House....
Scaw House had seemed to him, during these last three years, merely an
interlude at Dawson's. There had been hurried holidays that had been spent
in recovering from and preparing for the term and the House had scarcely,
and only very quietly, raised its head to disturb him. He had not been
disturbed--he had had other things to think about--and now he was very
greatly disturbed indeed; that was the first difference that he consciously
realised. The disturbance lay, of course, partly in the presence of his
father and in the sense that he had had growing upon him, during the last
two years, that their relationship, the one to the other, would, suddenly,
one fine day, spring into acute emotion. They were approaching one another
gradually as in a room whose walls were slowly closing. "Face to face--and
then body to body--at last, soul to soul!"
He did not, he thought, actively hate his father; his father did not
actively hate him, but hate might spring up at any moment between them, and
Peter, although he was only sixteen, was no longer a child. But the feeling
of apprehension that Scaw House gave him was caused by wider influences
than his father. Three years at Dawson's had given Peter an acute sense of
expecting things, it might be defined as "the glance over the shoulder to
see who followed"--some one was always following at Scaw House. He saw
in this how closely life was bound together, because every little moment
at Dawson's contributed to his present active fear. Dawson's explained
Scaw House to Peter. And yet this was all morbidity and Peter, square,
broad-shouldered, had no scrap of morbidity in his clean body. He did not
await the future with the shaking candle of the suddenly awakened coward,
but rather with the planted feet and the bared teeth of the bull-dog....
He watched the faces of his father, his aunt and Mrs. Trussit. He observed
the frightened dreams of his grandfather, the way that old Curtis the
gardener would suddenly cease his fugitive digging and glance with furtive
eyes at the windows of the house; about them were the dark shadows of the
long passages, the sharp note of some banging door in a distant room, the
wail of that endless wind beyond the walls. He felt too that Mrs. Trussit
and his aunt were furtively watching him. He never caught them in anything
tangible but he knew that, when his back was turned, their eyes followed
him--questioning, wondering.
Something must be done or he could not answer for his control. If he were
not to return to Dawson's, what then?
It was his seventeenth birthday one hot day towards the end of August, and
at breakfast his father, without looking up from his paper, said:
"I have made arrangements for you with Mr. Aitchinson to enter his office
next week. You'll have to work--you've been idling long enough."
The windows were wide open, the lawn was burning in the sun, bees carried
the scent of the flowers with them into the air that hung like shining
metal about the earth, a cart rattled as though it were a giant clattering
his pleasure at the day down the road. It was a wonderful day and somewhere
streams were flowing under dark protecting trees, and the grass was thick
in cool hollows and the woods were so dense that no blue sky reached the
moss, but only the softest twilight ... and old Aitchinson, the town's
solicitor, with his nutcracker face, his snuffling nose, his false
teeth--and the tightly-closed office, the piles of paper, the ink, the
silly view from the dusty windows of Treliss High Street--and life always
in the future to be like that until he died.
But Peter showed no emotion.
"Very well, father--What day do I go?"
"Monday--nine o'clock."
Nothing more was said. At any rate Aitchinson and his red tape and his
moral dust would fill the day--no time then to dwell on these dark passages
and Mrs. Trussit's frightened eyes and the startled jump of the marble
clock in the dining-room just before it struck the hour....
II
And so for weeks it proved. Aitchinson demanded no serious consideration.
He was a hideous little man with eyes like pins, shaggy eyebrows, a nose
that swelled at the end and was pinched by the sharpest of pince-nez,
cheeks that hung white and loose except when he was hungry or angry, and
then they were tight and red, a little body rather dandily dressed with
a flowered waistcoat, a white stock, a skirted coat and pepper-and-salt
trousers--and last of all, tiny feet, of which he was inordinately proud
and with which, like Agag, he always walked delicately. He had a high
falsetto voice, fingers that were always picking, like eager hens, at the
buttons on his waistcoat or the little waxed moustache above his mouth, and
hair that occupied its time in covering a bald patch that always escaped
every design upon it. So much for Mr. Aitchinson. Let him be flattered
sufficiently and Peter saw that his way would be easy. The wizened little
creature had, moreover, a certain admiration for Peter's strength and
broad shoulders and used sometimes in the middle of the morning's work
to ask Peter how much he weighed, whether he'd ever considered taking up
prize-fighting as a profession, and how much he measured across the chest.
There were two other youths, articled like Peter, stupid sons of honest
Treliss householders, with high collars, faces that shone with soap and
hair that glistened with oil, languid voices and a perpetual fund of small
talk about the ladies of the town, moral and otherwise. Peter did not
like them and they did not like Peter. One day, because he was tired and
unhappy, he knocked their heads together, and they plotted to destroy him,
but they were afraid, and secretly admired what they called his coarse
habits.
The Summer stole away and Autumn crept into its place, and at the end of
October something occurred. Something suddenly happened at Scaw House that
made action imperative, and filled his brain all day so that Aitchinson's
office and his work there was only a dream and the people in it were
shadows. He had heard his mother crying from behind her closed door....
He had been coming, on a wet autumnal afternoon, down the dark stairs from
his attic and suddenly at the other end of the long passage there had been
this sound, so sudden and so pitiful coming upon that dreary stillness that
he had stopped with his hands clenched and his face white and his heart
beating like a knock on a door. Instantly all those many little moments
that he had had in that white room with that heavy-scented air crowded
upon him and he remembered the smile that she had always given him and the
way that her hair lay so tragically about the pillow. He had always been
frightened and eager to escape; he felt suddenly so deeply ashamed that
the crimson flooded his face there in the dark passage. She had wanted him
all these years and he had allowed those other people to prevent him from
going to her. What had been happening to her in that room? The sound of her
crying came to him as though beseeching him to come and help her. He put
his hands to his ears and went desperately into the dark wet garden. He
knew now when he thought of it, that his behaviour to his mother had been,
during these months since he had left Dawson's, an unconscious cowardice.
Whilst he had been yet at school those little five minutes' visits to his
mother's room might have been excused, but during these last months there
had been, with regard to her, in his conscience, if he had cared to examine
it, sharp accusation.
The defence that she did not really want to see him, that his presence
might bring on some bad attack, might excite her, was no real defence. He
had postponed an interview with her from day to day because he realised
that that interview would strike into flame all the slumbering relations
that that household held. It would fling them all, as though from a
preconcerted signal, into war....
But now there could be only one thought in his mind. He must see his
mother--if he could still help her he must be at her service. There was no
one whom he could ask about her. Mrs. Trussit now never spoke to him (and
indeed never spoke to any one if she could help it), and went up and down
the stairs in her rustling black and flat white face and jingling keys as
though she was no human being at all but only a walking automaton that you
wound up in the morning and put away in the cupboard at night--Mrs. Trussit
was of no use.
There remained Stephen, and this decided Peter to break through that
barrier that there was between them and to find out why it had ever
existed. He had not seen Stephen that summer at all--no one saw
Stephen--only at The Bending Mule they shook their heads over him and spoke
of the wild devil that had come upon him because the woman he loved was
being tortured to death by her husband only a mile away. He was drinking,
they said, and his farm was going to ruin, and he would speak to
nobody--and they shook their heads. It was not through cowardice that Peter
had avoided him, but since those three years at Dawson's he had been lonely
and silent himself, and Stephen had never sent for him as he would have
done, Peter thought, if he had wanted him. Now the time had come when he
could stand alone no longer....
He slipped away one night after supper, leaving that quiet room with his
aunt playing Patience at the table, his old grandfather mumbling in his
sleep, his father like a stone, staring at his paper but not, Peter was
sure, reading any of it.
Mrs. Trussit, silent before the fire in her room, his aunt not seeing the
cards that she laid upon the table, his father not reading his paper--for
what were they all listening?
It was a fierce night and the wind rushed up the high road as though it
would tear Peter off his feet and fling him into the sea, but he walked
sturdily, no cap on his head and the wind streaming through his hair. Some
way along the road he found a child crying in a ditch. He loved children,
and, picking the small boy up, he found that he had been sent for beer to
the Cap and Feathers, at the turn of the road, and been blown by the wind
into the ditch and was almost dead with terror. At first at the sight of
Peter the child had cried out, but at the touch of his warm hand and at the
sound of his laugh he had been suddenly comforted, and trotted down the
road with his hand in Peter's and his tears dried.
Peter's way with the children of the place was sharp and entirely lacking
in sentiment--"Little idiot, to fall into the ditch like that--not much of
the man about you, young Thomas."
"Isn't Thomas," said the small boy with a chuckle, "I be Jan Proteroe, and
I beant afeart only gert beast come out of hedge down along with eyes and a
tail--gum!"
He would have told Peter a great deal more but he was suddenly frightened
again by the dark hedges and began to whimper, so Peter picked him up and
carried him to his cottage at the end of the road and kissed him and pushed
him in at the lighted door. He was cheered by the little incident and felt
less lonely. At the thought of making Stephen once more his friend his
heart warmed. Stephen had been wanting him, perhaps, all this time to come
to him but had been afraid that he might be interfering if he asked
him--and how glad they would be to see one another!
After all, they needed one another. They had both had hard times, they were
both lonely and no distance nor circumstances could lessen that early bond
that there had been between them. Happier than he had been for many weeks,
he struck off the road and started across the fields, stumbling over the
rough soil and plunging sometimes into ditches and pools of water. The rain
had begun to fall and the whispering hiss that it made as it struck the
earth drowned the more distant noise of the sea that solemnly broke beyond
the bending fields. Stephen's farm stood away from all other houses, and
Peter as he pressed forward seemed to be leaving all civilisation behind
him. He was cold and his boots were heavy with thick wet mud and his hair
was soaked.
Beyond the fields was a wood through which he must pass before he reached
Stephen's farm, and as the trees closed about him and he heard the rain
driving through the bare branches the world seemed to be full of chattering
noises. The confidence that he had had in Stephen's reception of him
suddenly deserted him and a cold miserable unhappiness crept about him in
this wet, heaving world of wind and rain and bare naked trees. Like a great
cry there seemed to come suddenly to him through the wood his mother's
voice appealing for help, so that he nearly turned, running back. It was a
hard, cruel place this world--and all the little ditches and hollows of the
wood were running with brown, stealthy water.
He broke through it at last and saw at the bottom of the hill Stephen's
house, and he saw that there were no lights in the windows. He stood on the
breast of the little hill for a moment and thought that he would turn back,
but it was raining now with great heaviness and the wind at his back seemed
to beat him down the hill. Suddenly seized with terror at the wood behind
him, he ran stumbling down the slope. He undid the gate and pitched into
the yard, plunging into great pools of water and seeing on every side of
him the uncertain shapes of the barns and sheds and opposite him the great
dark front of the house, so black in its unfriendliness, sharing in the
night's rough hostility.
He shouted "Stephen," but his voice was drowned by the storm and the gate
behind him, creaking on its hinges, answered him with shrill cries. He
found the little wicket that led into the garden, and, stepping over the
heavy wet grass, he banged loudly with the knocker on the door and called
again "Stephen." The noise echoed through the house and then the silence
seemed to be redoubled. Then pushing the great knocker, he found to his
surprise that the door was unfastened and swung back before him. He felt
his way into the dark hall and struck a match. He shouted "Stephen" once
more and his voice came echoing back to him. The place seemed to be
entirely deserted--the walls were wet with damp, there were no carpets
on the floor, a window at the end of the passage showed its uncurtained
square.
He passed into the kitchen, and here he found two candles and lighted
them. Here also he found signs of life. On the bare deal table was a
half-finished meal--a loaf of bread, cheese, butter, an empty whisky bottle
lying on its side. Near these things there was a table, and on the floor,
beside an overturned chair, there was a gun. Peter picked it up and saw
that it was unloaded. There was something terribly desolate about these
things; the room was very bare, a grandfather clock ticked solemnly in the
corner, there were a few plates and cups on the dresser, an old calendar
hung from a dusty nail and, blown by the wind from the cracked window,
tip-tapped like a stealthy footstep against the wall. But Peter felt
curiously certain that Stephen was going to return; something held him in
his chair and he sat there, with his hands on the deal table, facing the
clock and listening. The wind howled beyond the house, the rain lashed the
panes, and suddenly--so suddenly that his heart leapt to his mouth--there
was a scratching on the door. He went to the door and opened it and found
outside a wretched sheep-dog, so starved that the bones showed through the
skin, and so weak that he could scarcely drag himself along. Peter let
him in and the animal came up to him and looked up in his eyes and, very
faintly, wagged his tail. Peter gave him the bread, which the dog devoured,
and then they both remained silent, without moving, the dog's head between
Peter's knees.
The boy must have slept, because he woke suddenly to all the clocks in the
house striking midnight, and in the silence the house seemed to be full of
clocks. They came running down the stairs and up and down the passages and
then, with a whir and a clatter, ceased as instantly as they had begun.
The house was silent again--the storm had died down--and then the dog that
had been sleeping suddenly raised its head and barked. Somewhere in the
distance a door was banged to, and then Peter heard a voice, a tremendous
voice, singing.
There were heavy steps along the passage, then the kitchen door was banged
open and Stephen stood in the doorway. Stephen's shirt was open at the
neck, his hair waved wildly over his forehead, he stood, enormous, with his
legs apart, his eyes shining, blood coming from a cut in his cheek, and
in one of his hands was a thick cudgel. Standing there in the doorway, he
might have been some ancient Hercules, some mighty Achilles.
He saw Peter, recognised him, but continued a kind of triumphal hymn that
he was singing.
"Ho, Master Peter, I've beat him! I've battered his bloody carcass! I came
along and I looked in at the winder and I saw 'im a ill-treatin' of 'er.
"I left the winder, I broke the glass, I was down upon 'im, the dirty
'ound, and"--(chorus)--"I've battered 'is bloody carcass! Praise be the
Lord, I got 'im one between the eyes--"
"Praise be, I 'it him square in the jaw and the blood came a-pourin' out of
his mouth and down 'e went, and--
(Chorus) "I've battered 'is bloody carcass--
"There she was, cryin' in the corner of the room, my lovely girl, and there
'e was, blast 'is bones, with 'is 'and on her lovely 'air, and--
(Chorus) "I've battered 'is bloody carcass.
"I got 'im one on the neck and I got 'im one between 'is lovely eyes and I
got 'im one on 'is lovely nose, and 'e went down straight afore me, and--
(Chorus) "I've battered 'is bloody carcass!"
Peter knew that it must be Mr. Samuel Burstead to whom Stephen was
referring, and he too, as he listened, was suddenly filled with a sense of
glory and exultation. Here after all was a way out of all trouble, all this
half-seen, half-imagined terror of the past weeks. Here too was an end to
all Stephen's morbid condition, sitting alone by himself, drinking, seeing
no one--now that he'd got Burstead between the eyes life would be a
vigorous, decent thing once more.
Stephen stopped his hymn and came and put his arm round Peter's neck.
"Well, boy, to think of you coming round this evening. All these months
I've been sittin' 'ere thinking of you--but I've been in a nasty, black
state, Master Peter, doing nothing but just brood. And the devils got
thicker and thicker about me and I was just going off my head thinking of
my girl in the 'ands of that beast up along. At last to-night I suddenly
says, 'Stephen, my fine feller, you've 'ad enough of this,' I says. 'You go
up and 'ave a good knock at 'im,' I says, 'and to-morrer marnin' you just
go off to another bit o' country and start doin' something different.' Up I
got and I caught hold of this stick here and out up along I walked. Sure
enough there 'e was, through the winder, bullyin' her and she crying. So I
just jumped through the winder and was up on to 'im. Lord, you should 'ave
seen 'im jump.
"'Fair fight, Sam Burstead,' I says.
"'Yer bloody pirate!' says 'e.
"'Pirate, is it?' says I, landing him one--and at that first feel of my
'and along o' 'is cheek all these devils that I've been sufferin' from just
turned tail and fled.
"Lord, I give it 'im! Lord, I give it 'im!
"He's living, I reckon, but that's about all 'e is doing. And then, without
a word to 'er, I come away, and here I am, a free man ... and to-morrer
marning I go out to tramp the world a bit--and to come back one day when
she wants me."
And then in Peter there suddenly leapt to life a sense of battle, of
glorious combat and conflict.
As he stood there in the bare kitchen--he and Stephen there under the light
of the jumping candle--with the rain beating on the panes, the trees of the
wood bending to the wind, he was seized, exalted, transformed with a sense
of the vigour, the adventure, the surprising energy of life.
"Stephen! Stephen!" he cried. "It's glorious! By God! I wish I'd been
there!"
Stephen caught him by the arm and held him. The old dog came from under the
table and wagged his tail.
"Bless my soul," said Stephen, looking at him, "all these weeks I've been
forgetting him. I've been in a kind of dream, boy--a kind o' dream. Why
didn't I 'it 'im before? Lord, why didn't I 'it 'im before!"
Peter at the word thought of his mother.
"Yes," he thought, with clenched teeth, "I'll go for them!"
CHAPTER VIII
PETER AND HIS MOTHER
I
He had returned over the heavy fields, singing to a round-faced moon. In
the morning, when he woke after a night of glorious fantastic dreams, and
saw the sun beating very brightly across his carpet and birds singing
beyond his window, he felt still that same exultation.
It seemed to him, as he sat on his bed, with the sun striking his face,
that last night he had been brought into touch with a vigour that
challenged all the mists and vapours by which he had felt himself
surrounded. That was the way that now he would face them.
Looking back afterwards, he was to see that that evening with Stephen flung
him on to all the events that so rapidly followed.
Moreover, above all the sensation of the evening there was also a
triumphant recognition of the fact that Stephen had now been restored to
him. He might never see him again, but they were friends once more, he
could not be lonely now as he had been....
And then, coming out of the town into the dark street and the starlight, he
thought that he recognised a square form walking before him. He puzzled his
brain to recall the connection and then, as he passed Zachary Tan's shop,
the figure turned in and showed, for a moment, his face.
It was that strange man from London, Mr. Emilio Zanti....
II
It seemed to Peter that now at Scaw House the sense of expectation that had
been with them all during the last weeks was charged with suspense--at
supper that night his aunt burst suddenly into tears and left the room.
Shortly afterwards his father also, without a word, got up from the table
and went upstairs....
Peter was left alone with his grandfather. The old man, sunk beneath his
pile of cushions, his brown skinny hand clenching and unclenching above the
rugs, was muttering to himself. In Peter himself, as he stood there by the
fire, looking down on the old man, there was tremendous pity. He had never
felt so tenderly towards his grandfather before; it was, perhaps, because
he had himself grown up all in a day. Last night had proved that one was
grown up indeed, although one was but seventeen. But it proved to him still
more that the time had come for him to deal with the situation all about
him, to discover the thing that was occupying them all so deeply.
Peter bent down to the cushions.
"Grandfather, what's the matter with the house?"
He could hear, faintly, beneath the rugs something about "hell" and "fire"
and "poor old man."
"Grandfather, what's the matter with the house?" but still only "Poor old
man ... poor old man ... nobody loves him ... nobody loves him ... to hell
with the lot of 'em ... let 'em grizzle in hell fire ... oh! such nasty
pains for a poor old man."
"Grandfather, what's the matter with the house?"
The old brown hand suddenly stopped clenching and unclenching, and out from
the cushions the old brown head with its few hairs and its parchment face
poked like a withered jack-in-the-box.
"Hullo, boy, you here?"
"Grandfather, what's the matter with the house?"
The old man's fingers, sharp like pins, drew Peter close to him.
"Boy, I'm terribly frightened. I've been having such dreams. I thought I
was dead--in a coffin...."
But Peter whispered in his ear:
"Grandfather--tell me--what's the matter with every one here?"
The old man's eyes were suddenly sharp, like needles.
"Ah, he wants to know that, does he? He's found out something at last, has
he? _I_ know what they were about. They've been at it in here, boy, too.
Oh, yes! for weeks and weeks--killing your mother, that's what my son's
been doing ... frightening her to death.... He's cruel, my son. I had the
Devil once, and now he's got hold of me and that's why I'm here. Mind you,
boy," and the old man's ringers clutched him very tightly--"if you don't
get the better of the Devil you'll be just like me one of these days. So'll
he be, my son, one day. Just like me--and then it'll be your turn, my boy.
Oh, they Westcotts!... Oh! my pains! Oh! my pains!... Oh! I'm a poor old
man!--poor old man!"
His head sunk beneath the cushions again and his muttering died away like
a kettle when the lid has been put on to it.
Peter had been kneeling so as to catch his grandfather's words. Now he drew
himself up and with frowning brows faced the room. Had he but known it he
was at that moment exactly like his father.
He went slowly up to his attic.
His little book-case had gained in the last two years--there were now
three of Henry Galleon's novels there. Bobby had given him one, "Henry
Lessingham," shining bravely in its red and gold; he had bought another,
"The Downs," second hand, and it was rather tattered and well thumbed.
Another, "The Roads," was a shilling paper copy. He had read these three
again and again until he knew them by heart, almost word by word. He took
down "Henry Lessingham" now and opened it at a page that was turned down.
It is Book III, chapter VI, and there is this passage:
_But, concerning the Traveller who would enter the House of
Courage there are many lands that must be passed on the road
before he rest there. There is, first, the Land of Lacking All
Things--that is hard to cross. There is, Secondly, the Land of
Having All Things. There is the Traveller's Fortitude most hardly
tested. There is, Thirdly, The Land of Losing All Those Things
that One Hath Possessed. That is a hard country indeed for the
memory of the pleasantness of those earlier joys redoubleth the
agony of lacking them. But at the end there is a Land of ice and
snow that few travellers have compassed, and that is the Land of
Knowing What One Hath Missed.... The Bird was in the hand and one
let it go ... that is the hardest agony of all the journey ... but
if these lands be encountered and surpassed then doth the Traveller
at length possess his soul and is master of it ... this is the
Meaning and Purpose of Life._
Peter read on through those pages where Lessingham, having found these
words in some old book, takes courage after his many misadventures and
starts again life--an old man, seventy years of age, but full of hope ...
and then there is his wonderful death in the Plague City, closing it all
like a Triumph.
The night had come down upon the house. Over the moor some twinkling light
broke the black darkness and his candle blew in the wind. Everything was
very still and as he clutched his book in his hand he knew that he was
frightened. His grandfather's words had filled him with terror. He felt not
only that his father was cruel and had been torturing his mother for many
years because he loved to hurt, but he felt also that it was something in
the blood, and that it would come upon him also, in later years, and that
he might not be able to beat it down. He could understand definite things
when they were tangible before his eyes but here was something that one
could not catch hold of, something....
After all, he was very young--But he remembered, with bated breath, times
at school when he had suddenly wanted to twist arms, to break things, to
hurt, when suddenly a fierce hot pleasure had come upon him, when a boy had
had his leg broken at football.
Dropping the book, shuddering, he fell upon his knees and prayed to what
God he knew not.... "Then doth the Traveller at length possess his soul and
is master of it ... this is the meaning and purpose of life."
At last he rose from his knees, physically tired, as though it had been
some physical struggle. But he was quiet again ... the terror had left him,
but he knew now with what beasts he had got to wrestle....
At supper that night he watched his father. Curiously, after his struggle
of the afternoon, all terror had left him and he felt as though he was of
his father's age and strength.
In the middle of the meal he spoke:
"How is mother to-night, father?"
He had never asked about his mother before, but his voice was quite even
and steady. His aunt dropped her knife clattering on to her plate.
His father answered him:
"Why do you wish to know?"
"It is natural, isn't it? I am afraid that she is not so well."
"She is as well as can be expected."
They said no more, but once his father suddenly looked at him, as though he
had noticed some new note in his voice.
III
On the next afternoon his father went into Truro. A doctor came
occasionally to the house--a little man like a beaver--but Peter felt that
he was under his father's hand and he despised him.
It was a clear Autumn afternoon with a scent of burning leaves in the air
and heavy massive white clouds were piled in ramparts beyond the brown
hills. It was so still a day that the sea seemed to be murmuring just
beyond the garden-wall. The house was very silent; Mrs. Trussit was in the
housekeeper's room, his grandfather was sleeping in the dining-room. The
voices of some children laughing in the road came to him so clearly that
it seemed to Peter impossible that his father ... and, at that, he knew
instantly that his chance had come. He must see his mother now--there might
not be another opportunity for many weeks.
He left his room and stood at the head of the stairs listening. There was
no sound.
He stole down very softly and then waited again at the end of the long
passage. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall drove him down
the passage. He listened again outside his mother's door--there was no
sound from within and very slowly he turned the handle.
As the door opened his senses were invaded by that air of medicine and
flowers that he had remembered as a very small boy--he seemed to be
surrounded by it and great white vases on the mantelpiece filled his eyes,
and the white curtains at the window blew in the breeze of the opening
door.
His aunt was sitting, with her eternal sewing, by the fire and she rose as
he entered. She gave a little startled cry, like a twittering bird, as she
saw that it was he and she came towards him with her hand out. He did not
look at the bed at all, but bent his eyes gravely upon his aunt.
"Please, aunt--you must leave us--I want to speak to my mother."
"No--Peter--how could you? I daren't--I mustn't--your father--your mother
is asleep," and then, from behind them, there came a very soft voice--
"No--let us be alone--please, Jessie."
Peter did not, even then, turn round to the bed, but fixed his eyes on his
aunt.
"The doctor--" she gasped, and then, with frightened eyes, she picked up
her sewing and crept out.
Then he turned round and faced the bed, and was suddenly smitten with great
shyness at the sight of that white, tired face, and the black hair about
the pillow.
"Well, mother," he said, stupidly.
But she smiled back at him, and although her voice was very small and
faint, she spoke cheerfully and as though this were an ordinary event.
"Well, you've come to see me at last, Peter," she said.
"I mustn't stay long," he answered, gruffly, as he moved awkwardly towards
the bed.
"Bring your chair close up to the bed--so--like that. You have never come
to sit in here before. Peter, do you know that?"
"Yes, mother." He turned his eyes away and looked on to the floor.
"You have come in before because you have been told to. To-day you were not
told--why did you come?"
"I don't know.... Father's in Truro."
"Yes, I know." He thought he caught, for an instant, a strange note in her
voice. "But he will not be back yet."
There was a pause--a vast golden cloud hung like some mountain boulder
beyond the window and some of its golden light seemed to steal over the
white room.
"Is it bad for you talking to me?" at last he said, gruffly, "ought I to go
away?"
Suddenly she clutched his strong brown hand with her thin wasted fingers,
with so convulsive a grasp that his heart began to beat furiously.
"No--don't go--not until it is time for your father to come back. Isn't it
strange that after all these years this is the first time that we should
have a talk. Oh! so many times I've wanted you to come--and when you _did_
come--when you were very little--you were always so frightened that you
would not let me touch you--"
"_They_ frightened me...."
"Yes--I know--but now, at last, we've got a little time
together--and we must talk--quickly. I want you to tell me
everything--everything--everything.... First, let me look at you...."
She took his head between her pale, slender hands and looked at him. "Oh,
you are like him!--your father--wonderfully like." She lay back on the
pillows with a little sigh. "You are very strong."
"Yes, I am going to be strong for you now. I am going to look after you.
They shan't keep us apart any more."
"Oh, Peter, dear," she shook her head almost gaily at him. "It's too late."
"Too late?"
"Yes, I'm dying--at last it's come, after all these years when I've wanted
it so much. But now I'm not sorry--now that we've had this talk--at last.
Oh! Peter dear, I've wanted you so dreadfully and I was never strong enough
to say that you must come ... and they said that you were noisy and it
would be bad for me. But I believe if you had come earlier I might have
lived."
"But you mustn't die--you mustn't die--I'll see that they have another
doctor from Truro. This silly old fool here doesn't know what he's
about--I'll go myself."
"Oh! how strong your hands are, Peter! How splendidly strong! No, no one
can do anything now. But oh! I am happy at last..." She stroked his cheek
with her hand--the golden light from the great cloud filled the room and
touched the white vases with its colour.
"But quick, quick--tell me. There are so many things and there is so little
time. I want to know everything--your school? Here when you were
little?--all of it--"
But he was gripping the bed with his hands, his chest was heaving. Suddenly
he broke down and burying his head in the bed-clothes began to sob as
though his heart would break. "Oh! now ... after all this time ... you've
wanted me ... and I never came ... and now to find you like this!"
She stroked his hair very softly and waited until the sobs ceased. He sat
up and fiercely brushed his eyes.
"I won't be a fool--any more. It shan't be too late. I'll make you live.
We'll never leave one another again."
"Dear boy, it can't be like that. Think how splendid it is that we have had
this time now. Think what it might have been if I had gone and we had never
known one another. But tell me, Peter, what are you going to do with your
life afterwards--what are you going to be?"
"I want to write books"--he stared at the golden cloud--"to be a novelist.
I daresay I can't--I don't know--but I'd rather do that than anything....
Father wants me to be a solicitor. I'm with Aitchinson now--I shall never
be a good one."
Then he turned almost fiercely away from the window.
"But never mind about me, mother. It's you I want to hear about. I'm going
to take this on now. It's my responsibility. I want to know about you."
"There's nothing to know, dear. I've been ill for a great many years now.
It's more nerves than anything, I suppose. I think I've never had the
courage to stand up against it--a stronger woman would have got the better
of it, I expect. But I wasn't always like this," she added laughing a
little far away ghost of a laugh--"Go and look in that drawer--there,
in that cupboard--amongst my handkerchiefs--there where those old fans
are--you'll find some old programmes there--Those old yellow papers...."
He brought them to her, three old yellow programmes of a "Concert Given at
the Town Hall, Truro." "There, do you see? Miss Minnie Trenowth, In the
Gloaming--There, I sang in those days. Oh! Truro was fun when I was a girl!
There was always something going on! You see I wasn't always on my back!"
He crushed the papers in his hand.
"But, mother! If you were like that then--what's made you like this now?"
"It's nerves, dear--I've been stupid about it."
"And father, how has he treated you these years?"
"Your father has always been very kind."
"Mother, tell me the truth! I _must_ know. Has he been kind to you?"
"Yes, dear--always."
But her voice was very faint and that look that Peter had noticed before
was again in her eyes.
"Mother--you must tell me. That's not true."
"Yes, Peter. He's done his best. I have been annoying, sometimes--foolish."
"Mother, I know. I know because I know father and I know myself. I'm like
him--I've just found it out. I've got those same things in me, and they'll
do for me if I don't get the better of them. Grandfather told me--he was
the same. All the Westcotts--"
He bent over the bed and took her hand and kissed it.
"Mother, dear--I know--father has been frightening you all this
time--terrifying you. And you were all alone. If only I had been there--if
only there had been some one--"
Her voice was very faint. "Yes ... he has frightened me all these years. At
first I used to think that he didn't mean it. I was a bright, merry sort of
a girl then--careless and knowing nothing about the world. And then I began
to see--that he liked it--that it gave him pleasure to have something there
that he could hurt. And then I began to be frightened. It was very lonely
here for a girl who had had a gay time, and he usen't to like my going to
Truro--and at last he even stopped my seeing people in Treliss. And then I
began to be really frightened--and used to wake in the night and see him
standing by the door watching me. Then I thought that when you were born
that would draw us together, but it didn't, and I was always ill after
that. He would do things--Oh!" her hand pressed her mouth. "Peter, dear,
you mustn't think about it, only when I am dead I don't want you to think
that I was quite a fool--if they tell you so. I don't want you to think
it was all his fault either because it wasn't--I was silly and didn't
understand sometimes ... but it's killed me, that dreadful waiting for
him to do something, I never knew what it would be, and sometimes it
was nothing ... but I knew that he liked to hurt ... and it was the
expectation."
In that white room, now flaming with the fires of the setting sun, Peter
caught his mother to his breast and held her there and her white hands
clutched his knees.
Then his eyes, softened and he turned to her and arranged her head on the
pillow and drew the sheets closely about her.
"I must go now. It has been bad for you this talking, but it had to be. I'm
never, never going to leave you again--you shall not be alone any more--"
"Oh, Peter! I'm so happy! I have never been so happy... but it all comes
of being a coward. If I had only been brave--never be afraid of anybody or
anything. Promise me, Peter--"
"Except of myself," he answered, kissing her.
"Kiss me again.... And again..."
"To-morrow..." he looked back at her, smiling. He saw her, for an instant,
as he left the room, with her cheek against the pillow and her black hair
like a cloud about her; the twilight was already in the room.
An hour later, as he stood in the dining-room, the door opened and his
father came in.
"You have been with your mother?"
"Yes."
"You have done her much harm. She is dying."
"I know everything," Peter answered, looking him in the face.
IV
He would never, until his own end had come, forget that evening. The golden
sunset gave place to a cold and windy night, and the dark clouds rolled up
along the grey sky, hiding and then revealing the thin and pallid moon.
Peter stayed there in the dining-room, waiting. His grandfather slept in
his chair. Once his aunt came crying into the room and wandered aimlessly
about.
"Aunt, how is she?"
"Oh, dear! oh, dear! Whatever shall I do? She is going ... she is going....
I can do nothing!"
Her thin body in the dusk flitted like a ghost about the room and then she
was gone. The doctor's pony cart came rattling up to the door. The fussy
little man got out and stamped in the hall, and then disappeared upstairs.
There was a long pause during which there was no sound.
Then the door was opened and his aunt was there.
"You must come at once ... she wants you."
The doctor, his father, and Mrs. Trussit were there in the room, but he was
only conscious of the great white bed with the candles about it and the
white vases, like eyes, watching him.
As he entered the room there was a faint cry, "Peter." He had crossed to
her, and her arms were about his shoulders and her mouth was pressed
against his; she fell back, with a little sigh, dead.
V
In the darkened dining-room, later, his father stood in the doorway with a
candle in his hand, and above it his white face and short black hair shone
as though carved from marble.
Peter came from the window towards him. His father said: "You killed her by
going to her."
Peter answered: "All these years you have been killing her!"
CHAPTER IX
THE THREE WESTCOTTS
I
The day crept, strangely and mysteriously, to its close. Peter, dulled by
misery, sat opposite his grandfather in the dining-room without moving,
conscious of the heavy twilight that the dark blinds flung about the room,
feeling the silence that was only accentuated by the old man's uneasy
"clack-clack" in his sleep and the clock's regular ticking. The unhappiness
that had been gradually growing about him since his last term at Dawson's,
was now all about him with the strength and horrible appearance of some
unholy giant. It was indeed with some consciousness of Things that were
flinging their shadows on the horizon and were not as yet fully visible
to him that he sat there. That evening at Stephen's farm, realised only
faintly at the time, hung before him now as a vivid induction or prologue
to the later terrors. He was doomed--so he felt in that darkened and
mysterious room--to a terrible time and horrors were creeping upon him from
every side. "Clack-clack" went his grandfather beneath the rugs, as the
cactus plant rattled in the window and the silence through the stairs and
passages of the house crept in folds about the room.
Peter shivered; the coals fell from a dull gold into grey and crumbling
ashes. He shut everything in the surrounding world from his mind and
thought of his dead mother. There indeed there was strangeness enough, for
it seemed now that that wonderful afternoon had filled also all the earlier
years of his life. It seemed to him now that there had never been a time
when he had not known her and talked with her, and yet with this was also
a consciousness of all the joys that he had missed because he had not
known her before. As he thought of it the hard irretrievable fact of
those earlier empty years struck him physically with a sharp agonising
pain--toothache, and no possible way of healing it. The irony of her
proximity, of her desire for him as he, all unwittingly, had in reality
desired her, hit him like a blow. The picture of her waiting, told that
he did not wish to come, looking so sadly and lonely in that white room,
whilst he, on the other side of that door, had not the courage to burst
through those others and go to her, broke suddenly the hard dry passivity
that had held him during so many weeks.
He was very young, he was very tired, he was very lonely. He sobbed with
his hands pressed against his eyes.
Then his tears were quickly dried. There was this other thing to be
considered--his father. He hated his father. He was terrified, as he sat
there, at the fury with which he hated him. The sudden assurance of his
hatred reminded him of the thing that his grandfather had said about the
Westcotts ... was that true? and was this intensity of emotion that filled
all the veins in his body a sign that he too was a Westcott? and were his
father and grandfather mirrors of his own future years?... He did not know.
That was another question....
He wondered what they were about in the room where his mother lay and
it was curious that the house could remain silent during so many long
hours. It seemed held by the command of some strong power, and his mind,
overstrained and abnormal, waited for some outbreak of noise--many noises,
clattering, banging, whistling through the house. But his grandfather slept
on, no step was on the stairs, the room was very dark and evening fell
beyond the long windows and over the sea.
His youth made of a day eternity--there was no end nor term to his love,
to his hatred, to his loneliness, to his utter misery ... and also he was
afraid. He would have given his world for Stephen, but Stephen was already
off on his travels.
Very softly and stealthily the door opened and, holding a quivering
candle, with her finger to her mouth, there appeared his aunt. He looked
at her coldly as she came across the room towards him. He had never felt
any affection for her because she had always seemed to him weak and
useless--a frightened, miserable, vacillating, negative person--even when
he had been a very small boy he had despised her. Her eyes were red and
swollen with crying, her grey and scanty hair had fallen about her collar,
her old black blouse was unbuttoned at the top showing her bony neck and
her thin crooked hands were trembling in the candle-light. Her eyes were
large and frightened and her back was bent as though she was cowering from
a blow. She had never taken very much notice of her nephew--of late she had
been afraid of him; he was surprised now that she should come to speak to
him.
"Peter," she said in a whisper, looking back over her shoulder at the door.
"Yes," he answered, staring at her.
"Oh, Peter!" she said again and began to cry--a whimpering noise and her
hands shaking so that the candle rocked in its stick.
"Well," he said more softly, "you'd better put that candle down."
She put it on the table and then stood beside him, crying pitifully,
jerking out little sentences--"I can't bear it.... I don't know what to
do.... I can't bear it."
He got up from his chair and made her sit down on it and then he stood
by her and waited until she should recover a little. He felt suddenly
strangely tender towards her; she was his mother's sister, she had known
his mother all her life and perhaps in her weak silly way she had loved
her.
"No, aunt, don't cry.... It will be all right. I too am very unhappy. I
have missed so much. If I had only known earlier--"
The poor woman flung little distracted glances at the old man asleep on the
other side of the fire-place--
"Oh, dear, I had to come and talk to some one.... I was so frightened
upstairs. Your father's there with your mother. He sits looking at her ...
and she was always so quiet and good and never did him any harm or indeed
any one ... and now he sits looking at her--but she's happy now--he will be
coming downstairs at any moment and I am afraid of what he'll do if he sees
me talking to you like this. But I feel as though I must talk a little ...
it's so quiet."
"It's all right, aunt. There's no one to be frightened of. I am very
unhappy too. I'd like to talk about her to you."
"No, no--your poor mother--I mustn't say anything. They'll be down upon me
if I say anything. They're very sharp. He's sitting up with her now."
Peter drew another chair up close to her and took her thin hand in his. She
allowed him to do what he would and seemed to have no active knowledge of
her surroundings.
"We'll talk about her," he said, "often. You shall tell me all about her
early life. I want to know everything."
"Oh, no. I'm going away. Directly after the funeral. Directly after the
funeral I'm going away."
Suddenly this frightened him. Was he to be left here entirely alone with
his father and grandfather?
"You're going away?" he said.
"Oh, yes--your Uncle Jeremy will come for the funeral. I shall go away with
him afterwards. I don't like your Aunt Agatha, but they always said I could
come to them when your mother died. I don't like your Aunt Agatha but she
means to be kind. Oh! I couldn't stay here after all that has happened. I
was only staying for your mother's sake and I'm sure I've never gone to bed
without wondering what would happen before the morning--Oh, yes, your Uncle
Jeremy's coming and I shall go away with him after the funeral. I don't
like your Aunt Agatha but I couldn't stay after all that has happened."
All this was said in a hurried frightened whisper. The poor lady shook
from head to foot and the little bracelets on her trembling wrists jangled
together.
"Then I shall be all alone here," Peter said suddenly, staring at the
candle that was guttering in the breeze that came from behind the heavy
blinds.
"Oh, dear," said his aunt, "I'm sure Uncle Jeremy will be kind if you have
to leave here, you know."
"Why should I have to leave here?" asked Peter.
His aunt sunk her voice very low indeed--so low that it seemed to come from
the heart of the cactus plant by the window.
"He hasn't got your mother now, you know. He'll want to have somebody...."
But she said nothing more--only gazed at the old man opposite her with
staring eyes, and cried in a little desolate whimper and jangled her
bracelets until at last Peter crept softly, miserably to bed.
II
The day of the funeral was a day of high wind and a furious sea. The
Westcotts lived in the parish of the strange wild clergyman whose church
looked over the sea; strange and wild in the eyes of Treliss because he was
a giant in size and had a long flowing beard, because he kept a perfect
menagerie of animals in his little house by the church, and because he
talked in such an odd wild way about God being in the sea and the earth
rather than in the hearts of the Treliss citizens--all these things odd
enough and sometimes, early in the morning, he might be seen, mother-naked,
going down the path to the sea to bathe, which was hardly decent
considering his great size and the immediate neighbourhood of the high
road. To those who remonstrated he had said that he was not ashamed of his
body and that God was worshipped the better for there being no clothing
to keep the wind away ... all mad enough, and there were never many
parishioners in the little hill church of a Sunday. However, it was in the
little windy churchyard that Mrs. Westcott was buried and it was up the
steep and stony road to the little church that the hearse and its nodding
plumes, followed by the two old and decrepit hackney carriages, slowly
climbed.
Peter's impressions of the day were vague and uncertain. There were things
that always remained in his memory but strangely his general conviction was
that his mother had had nothing to do with it. The black coffin conveyed
nothing to him of her presence: he saw her as he had seen her on that day
when he had talked to her, and now she was, as Stephen was, somewhere away.
That was his impression, that she had escaped....
Putting on his black clothes in the morning brought Dawson's back to his
mind, and especially Bobby Galleon and Cards. He had not thought of them
since the day of his return--first Stephen and then his mother had driven
them from his mind. But now, with the old school black clothing upon him,
he stood for a long time by his window, wondering, sorrowfully enough,
where they were and what they were doing, whether they had forgotten him,
whether he would ever see them again. He seemed to be surrounded by a
wall of loneliness--some one was cutting everything off from him ... from
maliciousness! For pleasure!... Oh! if one only knew about that God!
Meanwhile Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Agatha had arrived the night before. Uncle
Jeremy was big and stout and he wore clothes that were very black and
extremely bright. His face was crimson in colour and his eyes, large and
bulging, wore a look of perpetual surprise. He was bald and an enormous
gold watch chain crossed his stomach like a bridge. He had obviously never
cared for either of his sisters and he always shouted when he spoke. Aunt
Agatha was round and fat and comfortable, wore gold-rimmed spectacles and a
black silk dress, and obviously considered that Uncle Jeremy had made the
world.
Peter watched his father's attitude to these visitors. He realised that
he had never seen his father with any stranger or visitor--no one came to
the house and he had never been into the town with his father. With this
realisation came a knowledge of other things--of things half heard at the
office, of half looks in the street, of a deliberate avoidance of his
father's name--the Westcotts of Scaw House! There were clouds about the
name.
But his father, in contact with Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Agatha, was strangely
impressive. His square, thick-set body clothed in black--his dark eyes, his
short stiff hair, his high white forehead, his long beautiful hands--this
was no ordinary man, moving so silently with a reserve that seemed nobly
fitting on this sad occasion. The dark figure filled the house, touching in
its restrained grief, admirable in its dignity, a fine spirit against the
common clay of Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Agatha.
Mr. Westcott was courteous but sparing of words--a strong man, you would
say, bowed down with a grief that demanded, in its intensity, silence.
Uncle Jeremy hated and feared his brother-in-law. His hatred he concealed
with difficulty but his fear was betrayed by his loud and nervous laugh. He
was obviously interested in Peter and stared at him, throughout breakfast,
with his large, surprised eyes. Peter felt that this interest was a
speculation as to his future and it made him uncomfortable ... he hated his
uncle but the black suit that the stout gentleman wore on the day of the
funeral was so black, so tight and so shiny that he was an occasion for
laughter rather than hatred.
The black coffin was brought down the long stairs, through the hall
and into the desolate garden. The sight of it roused no emotion in
Peter--_that_ was not his mother. The two aunts, Uncle Jeremy and his
father rode in the first carriage; Peter and Mrs. Trussit in the second.
Mrs. Trussit's bonnet and black silk dress were very fine and she wept
bitterly throughout the journey.
Peter only dismally wished that he could arrange his knees so that they
would not rub against her black silk. He did not think of his mother at all
but only of the great age of the cab, of the furious wind that whistled
about the road, and the roar that the sea, grey and furious far below them,
flung against their windows.
He would have liked to talk to her but her sobbing seemed to surround her
with a barrier. It was all inexpressibly dreary with the driving wind, the
rustling of the black silk dress, the jolting and clattering of the old
carriage. But he had no desire to cry--he was too miserable for that.
On the hill in the little churchyard, a tempest of wind swept across the
graves. From the bending ground the cliff fell sheer to the sea and behold!
it was a tossing, furious carpet of white and grey. The wind blew the spray
up to the graveyard and stung the faces of the mourners and in the roar of
the waves it was hard to hear the voice of the preacher. It was a picture
that they made out there in the graveyard. Poor Aunt Jessie, trembling and
shaking, Mrs. Trussit, stout and stiff with her handkerchief to her eyes,
Uncle Jeremy with his legs apart, his face redder than ever, obviously
wishing the thing over, Aunt Agatha concerned for her clothes in the
streaming wind, Mr. Westcott unmoved by the storm, cold, stern, of a piece
with the grey stone at the gravehead--all these figures interesting enough.
But towering above them and dominating the scene was the clergyman--his
great beard streaming, his surplice blowing behind him in a cloud, his
great voice dominating the tumult, to Peter he was a part of the day--the
storm, the earth, the flying, scudding clouds. All big things there, and
somewhere sailing with those clouds, on the storm, the spirit of his mother
... that little black coffin standing, surely, for nothing that mattered.
But, strangely enough, when the black box had been lowered, at the sharp
rattling of the sods upon the lid, his sorrow leapt to his eyes. Suddenly
the sense of his loss drove down upon him. The place, the people were swept
away--he could hear her voice again, see her thin white hands ... he wanted
her so badly ... if he could only have his chance again ... he could have
flung himself there upon the coffin, not caring whether he lived or died...
his whole being, soul and body, ached for her....
He knew that it was all over; he broke away from them all and he never,
afterwards, could tell where it was that he wandered during the rest of
that day. At last, when it was dark, he crept back to the house, utterly,
absolutely exhausted in every part of his body ... worn out.
III
On the following day Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Agatha departed and took Aunt
Jessie with them. She had the air of being led away into captivity and
seemed to be fastened to the buttons of Uncle Jeremy's tight black suit.
She said nothing further to Peter and showed no sense of having, at any
time, been confidential--she avoided him, he thought.
He of course returned to his office and tried to bury himself in the
work that he found there--but his attention wandered; he was overstrung,
excited abnormally, so that the whole world stood to him as a strange,
unnatural picture, something seen dimly and in exaggerated shapes through
coloured glass. That evening with Stephen shone upon him now with all
the vigour of colour of a real fact in a multitude of vague shadows. The
reality of that night was now of the utmost value.
Meanwhile there were changes at Scaw House. Mrs. Trussit had vanished a few
days after the funeral, no one said anything about her departure and Peter
did not see her go. He was vaguely sorry because she represented in his
memory all the earlier years, and because her absence left the house even
darker and more gloomy than it had been before. The cook, a stout and
slatternly person, given, Peter thought, to excessive drinking, shared,
with a small and noisy maid, the duties of the house--they were most
inefficiently performed.
But, with this clearing of the platform, the hatred between Peter and his
father became a definite and terrible thing. It expressed itself silently.
At present they very rarely spoke and except on Sundays met only at
breakfast and in the evening. But the air was charged with the violence of
their relationship; the boy, growing in body so strangely like the man,
expressed a sullen and dogged defiance in his every movement ... the man
watched him as a snake might watch the bird held by its power. They stood,
as wrestlers stand before the moment for their meeting has arrived. The
house, always too large for their needs, seemed now to stretch into an
infinity of echoing passages and empty rooms; the many windows gathered the
dust thick upon their sills. The old grandfather stayed in his chair by the
fire--only at night he was wheeled out into his dreary bedroom by the cook
who, now, washed and tidied him with a vigour that called forth shrill
screams and oaths from her victim. He hated this woman with the most bitter
loathing and sometimes frightened her with the violence of his curses.
Christmas came and went and there followed a number of those wonderful
crisp and shining days that a Cornish winter gives to its worshippers.
Treliss sparkled and glittered--the stones of the market-place held the
heat of the sun as though it had been midsummer and the Grey Tower lifted
its old head proudly to the blue sky--the sea was so warm that bathing was
possible and in the heart of the brown fields there was a whisper of early
spring.
But all of this touched Scaw House not at all. Grey and hard in its
bundle of dark trees it stood apart and refused the sun. Peter, in spite
of himself, rejoiced in this brave weather. As the days slipped past,
curiously aloof and reserved though he was, making no friends and seeking
for none, nevertheless he began to look about him and considered the
future.
All this had in it the element of suspense, of preparation. During
these weeks one day slipped into another. No incidents marked their
preparation--but up at Scaw House they were marching to no mean
climax--every hour hurried the issue--and Peter, meanwhile, as February
came whistling and storming upon the world, grew, with every chiming of the
town clock, more morose, more sullen, more silent ... there were times when
he thought of ending it all. An instant and he would be free of all his
troubles--but after all that was the weakling's way; he had not altogether
forgotten those words spoken so long ago by old Moses.... So much for
the pause. Suddenly, one dark February afternoon the curtain was rung up
outside Zachary Tan's shop and Peter was whirled into the centre of the
stage.
Peter had not seen Zachary Tan for a long time. He had grown into a morbid
way of avoiding everybody and would slink up side streets or go round on
leaving the office by the sea road. When he did meet people who had once
been kind to him he said as little as possible to them and left them
abruptly.
But on this afternoon Zachary was not to be denied. He was standing at the
door of his shop and shouted to Peter:
"Come away in, Mr. Peter. I haven't see you this long time. There's an old
acquaintance of yours inside and a cup of tea for you."
The wind was whistling up the street, the first drops of a rain storm
starred the pavement, and there was a pleasant glow behind Mr. Tan's
window-panes. But there was something stronger yet that drove Peter into
the shop. He knew with some strange knowledge who that old acquaintance was
... he felt no surprise when he saw in the little back room, laughing with
all his white teeth shining in a row, the stout and cheerful figure of Mr.
Emilio Zanti. Peter was a very different person now from that little boy
who had once followed Stephen's broad figure into that little green room
and stared at Mr. Zanti's cheerful countenance, but it all seemed a very
little time ago. Outside in the shop there was the same suit of armour--on
the shelves, the silver candlesticks, the old coins, the little Indian
images, the pieces of tapestry--within the little room the same sense of
mystery, the same intimate seclusion from the outer world.... On the other
occasion of seeing him Mr. Zanti had been dimmed by a small boy's wonder.
Now Peter was old enough to see him very clearly indeed.
Mr. Zanti seemed fat only because his clothes were so tight. He was bigly
made and his legs and arms were round, bolster fashion--huge thighs and
small ankles, thick arms and slender wrists. His clothes were so tight that
they seemed in a jolly kind of way to protest. "Oh! come now, must you
really put us on to anything quite so big? We shall burst in a minute--we
really shall."
The face was large and flat and shining like a sun, with a small nose
like a door knocker and a large mouth, the very essence of good-humoured
surprise. The cheeks and the chin were soft and rounded and looked as
though they might be very fat one day--a double chin just peeped round the
corner.
He was a little bald on the top of his head and round this bald patch his
black hair clustered protectingly. He gave you the impression that every
part of his body was anxious that every other part of his body should have
a good time. His suit was a very bright blue and his waistcoat had little
brass buttons that met a friend with all the twinkling geniality of good
wishes and numberless little hospitalities.
He had in his blue silk tie a pearl so large and so white that
sophisticated citizens might have doubted that it was a pearl at all--but
Peter swallowed Mr. Zanti whole, pearl and suit and all.
"Oh! it is ze little friend--my friend--'ow are you, young gentleman? It is
a real delight to be with you again."
Mr. Zanti swung Peter's hand up and down as he would a pump handle and
laughed as though it were all the best joke in the world. Curiously enough
Peter did not resent this rapturous greeting. It moved him strongly. It
was such a long time now since any one had shown any interest in him or
expressed any pleasure at the sight of him that he was foolishly moved by
Mr. Zanti's warmth.
He blushed and stammered something but his eyes were shining and his lip
trembling.
Mr. Zanti fixed his gaze on the boy. "Oh! but you have grown--yes, indeed.
You were a little slip before--but now--not so 'igh no--not 'igh--but
broad, strong. Oh! ze arms and legs--there's a back!"
Zachary interrupted his enthusiasm with some general remark, and they had
a pleasant little tea-party. Every now and again the shop bell tinkled and
Zachary went out to attend to it, and then Mr. Zanti drew near to Peter as
though he were going to confide in him but he never said anything, only
laughed.
Once he mentioned Stephen.
"You know where he is?" Peter broke in with an eager whisper.
"Ah, ha--that would be telling," and Mr. Zanti winked his eye.
Peter's heart warmed under the friendliness of it all. There was very much
of the boy still in him and he began to look back upon the days that he had
spent with no other company than his own thoughts as cold and friendless.
Zachary Tan had been always ready to receive him warmly. Why had he passed
him so churlishly by and refused his outstretched hand? But there was
more in it than that. Mr. Zanti attracted him most compellingly. The
gaily-dressed genial man spoke to him of all the glitter and adventure of
the outside world. Back, crowding upon him, came all those adventurous
thoughts and desires that he had known before in Mr. Zanti's company--but
tinged now by that grey threatening background of Scaw House and its
melancholy inhabitants! What would he not give to escape? Perhaps Mr.
Zanti!... The little green room began to extend its narrow walls and
to include in its boundaries flashing rivers, shining cities, wide and
bounteous plains. Beyond the shop--dark now with its treasures mysteriously
gleaming--the steep little street held up its lamps to be transformed into
yellow flame, and at its foot by the wooden jetty, as the night fell, the
sea crept ever more secretly with its white fingers gleaming below the
shingles of the beach.
Here was wonder and glory enough with the wind tearing and beating outside
the windows, blowing the young flowers of the lamps up and down inside
their glass houses and screaming down the chimneys for sheer zest of
life.... But here it all had its centre in this little room "with Mr.
Emilio Zanti's chuckling for no reason at all and spreading his broad fat
hand over Peter Westcott's knee.
"Well, Mr. Peter, and 'ave you been to London in all these years? Or
perhaps you 'ave forgotten that you ever wanted to go there?"
No, Peter was still of the same mind but Treliss and a few miles up and
down the road were as much of the world as he'd had the pleasure of
seeing--except for school in Devonshire--
"And you'd still go, my leetle friend?"
"Yes--I want to go--I hate being in an office here."
"And what is it zat you will do when you are there?"
Suddenly, in a flash, illuminating the little room, shining over the whole
world, Peter knew what it was that he would do.
"I will write."
"Write what?"
"Stories."
With that word muttered, his head hanging, his cheeks flushing, as though
it were something of which he was most mightily ashamed, he knew what it
was he had been wanting all these months. The desire had been there, the
impulse had been there ... now with the spoken word the blind faltering
impulse was changed into definite certainty.
Mr. Zanti thought it a tremendous joke. He roared, shouted with riotous
laughter. "Oh, ze boy--he will be the death of me--'I will write
stories'--Oh yes, so easy, so very simple. 'I will write stories'--Oh yes."
But Peter was very solemn. He did not like his great intention to be
laughed at.
"I mean it," he said rather gruffly.
"Oh yes, that's of course--but that is enough. Oh dear, yes ... well, my
friend, I like you. You are very strong, you are brave I can see--you have
a fine spirit. One thing you lack--with all you English it is the same."
He paused interrogatively but Peter did not seem to wish to know what this
quality was.
"Yes, it is ze Humour--you do not see how funny life is--always--always
funny. Death, murder, robberies, violences--always funny--you are. Oh!
so solemn and per'aps you will be annoyed, think it tiresome, because I
laugh--"
"No," said Peter gravely, "I like your laughing."
"Ah! That is well." Suddenly he jerked his body forward and stared into
Peter's face.
"Well!... Will you come?"
Peter hung back, his face white. He was only conscious that Zachary, quiet
and smiling in the background, watched him intently.
"What!... with you ... to London!"
"Yes ... wiz me--what of your father? Will he be furious, hey?"
"He won't like it--" Peter continued slowly. "But I don't care. I'll leave
him--But I should have no money--nothing!"
"An', no matter--I will take you to London for nothing and then--if you
like it--you may work for me. Two pounds a week--you would be useful."
"What should I do?"
"I have a bookshop--you would look after ze books and also ze customers."
This seemed to amuse Mr. Zanti very much. "Two pounds a week is a lot of
money for ze work--and you will have time--ho yes--much time for your
stories."
Peter's eyes burned. London--a bookshop--freedom. Oh! wonderful world! His
heart was beating so that words would not come.
"Oh!" he murmured. "Oh!"
"Ah, that's well!" Mr. Zanti clapped him on the shoulder. "There is no need
for you to say now. On ze Wednesday in Easter week I go--before then you
will tell me. We shall get on together, I know it. If you will 'ave a
leetle more of ze Humour you will be a very pleasant boy--and useful--Ho,
yes!"
To Peter then the shop was not visible--a mist hung about his eyes. "Much
time for your stories"... said Mr. Zanti, and he shouted with laughter as
his big form hung before Peter. The large white hand with the flashing
rings enclosed Peter's.
For a moment the hands were on his shoulders and in his nostrils was the
pungent scent of the hair-oil that Mr. Zanti affected--afterwards silence.
Peter said farewell to Zachary and promised to come soon and see him again.
The little bell tinkled behind him and he was in the street. The great wind
caught him and blew him along the cobbles. The flying mountains of cloud
swept like galleons across the moor, and in Peter's heart was overwhelming
triumph ... the lights of London lit the black darkness of the high sea
road.
IV
The doors of Scaw House clanged behind him and at once he was aware that
his father had to be faced. Supper was eaten in silence. Peter watched his
father and his grandfather. Here were the three of them alone. What his
grandfather was his father would one day be, what his father was, he ...
yes, he must escape. He stared at the room's dreary furniture, he listened
to the driving rain and he was conscious that, from the other side of the
table, his father's eyes were upon him.
"Father," he said, "I want to go away." His heart was thumping.
Mr. Westcott got up from his place at the table and stood, with his legs a
little apart, looking down at his son.
"Why?"
"I'm doing no good here. That office is no use to me. I shall never be a
solicitor. I'm nearly eighteen and I shall never get on here. I remember
things... my mother..." his voice choked.
His father smiled. "And where do you want to go?"
"To London."
"Oh! and what will you do there?"
"I have a friend--he has a bookshop there. He will give me two pounds a
week at first so that I should be quite independent--"
"All very nice," Mr. Westcott was grave again. "And so you are tired of
Treliss?"
"Not only Treliss--this house--everything. I hate it."
"You have no regret at leaving me?"
"You know--father--that..."
"Yes?"
Peter rose suddenly from the table--they faced one another.
"I want you to let me go. You have never cared in the least for me and you
do not want me here. I shall go mad if I stay in this place. I must go."
"Oh, you must go? Well, that's plain enough at any rate--and when do you
propose leaving us?"
"After Easter--the Wednesday after Easter," he said. "Oh, father, please.
Give me a chance. I can do things in London--I feel it. Here I shall never
do anything."
Peter raised his eyes to his father's and then dropped them. Mr. Westcott
senior was not pleasant to look at.
"Let us have no more of this--you will stay here because I wish it. I like
to have you here--father and son--father and son."
He placed his hand on the boy's shoulder--"Never mention this again for
your own sake--you will stay here until I wish you to go."
But Peter broke free.
"I _will_ go," he shouted--"I _will_ go--you _shall_ not keep me here. I
have a right to my freedom--what have you ever done for me that I should
obey you? I want to leave you and never see you again. I ..." And then his
eyes fell--his legs were shaking. His father was watching him, no movement
in his short thick body--Peter's voice faltered--"I _will_ go," he said
sullenly, his eyes on the ground.
His grandfather stirred in his sleep. "Oh, what a noise," he muttered,
"with the rain and all."
But Mr. Westcott removed with a careful hand the melodrama that his young
son had flung about the room.
"That's enough noise," he said, "you will _not_ go to London--nor indeed
anywhere else--and for your own peace of mind I should advise you not to
mention the subject again. The hour is a little early but I recommend your
bedroom."
Peter went. He was trembling from head to foot. Why? He undressed and
prepared himself for battle. Battle it was to be, for the Wednesday in
Easter week would find him in the London train--of that there was to be no
question.
Meanwhile, with the candle blown out, and no moon across the floor, it was
quite certain that courage would be necessary. He was fighting more than
his father.
V
He woke suddenly. A little wind, blowing through the open door flickered
the light of a candle that flung a dim circle about the floor. Within the
circle was his father--black clothes and white face, he was looking with
the candle held high, across the room to the bed.
He drew back the candle and closed the door softly behind him. His feet
made no sound as they passed away down the passage.
Peter lay quaking, wide eyed in his bed, until full morning and time for
getting up.
The opening, certainly, of a campaign.
CHAPTER X
SUNLIGHT, LIMELIGHT, DAYLIGHT
I
Easter fell early that year; the last days of March held its festival and
the winds and rains of that blustering month attended the birth of its
primroses.
Young Peter spent his days in preparation for the swift coming of Easter
Wednesday and in varying moods of exultation, terror, industry and
idleness. He did not see Mr. Zanti during this period--that gentleman was,
he was informed, away on business--and it was characteristic of him that
he asked Zachary Tan no questions whether of the mysterious bookshop,
of London generally, or of any possible news about Stephen, the latter
a secret that he was convinced the dark little curiosity shop somewhere
contained.
But he had an amazing number of things to think about and the solicitor's
office was the barest background for his chasing thoughts. He spoke to no
one of his approaching freedom--but the thought of it hung in rich and
burning colour ever at the back of his thoughts.
Meanwhile the changing developments at Scaw House were of a nature to
frighten any boy who was compelled to share in them. It could not be denied
that Mr. Westcott had altered very strangely since his wife's death.
The grim place with its deserted garden had never seen many callers nor
friendly faces but the man with the milk, the boy with the butcher's meat,
the old postman with the letters stayed now as brief a time over their
business as might be and hurried down the grass-grown paths with eager
haste. Since the departure of the invaluable Mrs. Trussit a new order
reigned--red-faced Mrs. Pascoe, her dress unfastened, her hair astray, her
shoes at heel, her speech thick and uncertain, was queen of the kitchen,
and indeed of other things had they but known all. But to Peter there was
more in this than the arrival of Mrs. Pascoe. With every day his father was
changing--changing so swiftly that when Peter's mother had been buried only
a month, that earlier Mr. Westcott, cold, stern, reserved, terrible, seemed
incredible; he was terrible now but with how different a terror.
To Peter this new figure was a thing of the utmost horror. He had known
how to brace himself for that other authority--there had, at any rate,
been consistency and even a kind of chiselled magnificence in that stiff
brutality--now there was degradation, crawling devilry, things
unmentionable....
This new terror broke upon him at supper two nights after he had first
spoken about London. The meal had not been passed, as usual, in silence.
His father had talked strangely to himself--his voice was thick, and
uncertain--his hand shook as he cut the bread. Mrs. Pascoe had come, in
the middle of the meal, to give food to the old grandfather who displayed
his usual trembling greed. She stood with arms akimbo, watching them as
they sat at table and smiling, her coarse face flushed.
"Pudding," said Mr. Westcott.
"Ye'll be 'aving the pudding when it's ready," says she.
"Damn" from Mr. Westcott but he sits still looking at the table-cloth and
his hand shaking.
To Peter this new thing was beyond all possibility horrible. This new
shaking creature--
"I didn't kill her, you know, Peter," Mr. Westcott says quite smoothly,
when the cloth had been cleared and they are alone. And then suddenly,
"Stay where you are--I have stories to tell you."
Peter, white to the lips, was held in his place. He could not move or
speak. Then during the following two hours, his father, without moving from
his place, poured forth a stream of stories--foul, filthy, horrible beyond
all telling. He related them with no joy or humour or bestial gloating over
their obscenities--only with a staring eye and his fingers twisting and
untwisting on the table-cloth. At last Peter, his head hanging, his cheeks
flaming, crept to his attic.
At breakfast his father was again that other man--stern, immovable, a
rock-where was that trembling shadow of the night before?
And Mrs. Pascoe--once more in her red-faced way, submissive--in her place.
The most abiding impression with Peter, thinking of it afterwards in the
dark lanes that run towards the sea, when the evening was creeping along
the hill, was of a fiery eye gleaming from old grandfather Westcott's pile
of rugs. Was it imagined or was there indeed a triumph there--a triumph
that no age nor weakness could obscure?
And from the induction of that first terrible evening Peter stepped into a
blind terror that gave the promised deliverance of that approaching Easter
Wednesday an air of blind necessity. Also about the house the dust and
neglect crept and increased as though it had been, in its menace and evil
omen, a veritable beast of prey. Doors were off their hinges, windows
screamed to their clanging shutters, the grime lay, like sand, about the
sills and corners of the rooms. At night the house was astir with sound but
with no human voices.
II
But it was only at night that Terror crept from its cupboard and leapt
on to Peter's shoulders. He defied it even then with set lips and the
beginning of a conception of the duties that Courage demands of its
worshippers. He would fight it, let it develop as it would--but, during
these weeks, in the sunlight, he thought nothing of it at all, but only
with eager eyes watched his father.
His reading had, in these latter years, been slender enough. It was seldom
that he had any money, there was no circulating library in Treliss at that
time and he knew no one who could lend him books. He fell back, perforce,
on the few that he had and especially on the three "Henry Galleons." But
he had in his head--and he had known it without putting it into words,
for a very long time--"The Thousand and One Nights of Peter Westcott,
Esq."--stories that would go on night after night before he went to sleep,
stories that were concerned with enormous families whose genealogies had
to be worked out on paper (here was incipient Realism)--or again, stories
concerning Treasure and Masses of it--banks of diamonds, mountains of
pearls, columns of rubies, white marble temples, processions of white
elephants, cloth of gold (here was incipient Romance). Never, be it
noticed, at this time, incipient Humour; life had been too heavy a thing
for that.
But these stories, formerly racing through his brain because they must,
because indeed they were there against his own will or any one else's, had
now a most definite place and purpose in their existence. They were there
now because they were to be trained, to be educated, to be developed, until
they were fit to appear in public. He had, even in these early days, no
false idea of the agonies and tortures of this gift of his. Was it not in
"Henry Lessingham"?... "and so with this task before him he knew that words
were of many orders and regiments and armies, and those that were hard of
purchase and difficult of discipline were the possessions of value, for
nothing that is light and easy in its production is of any duration or
lasting merit."
And so, during these weeks, when he should have attended to the duties of
a solicitor his mind was hunting far away in those forests where very many
had hunted before him. And, behold, he was out for Fame....
Spring was blown across the country by the wildest storms that the
sea-coast had known for very many years. For days the seas rose against the
rocks in a cursing fury--the battle of rock and wave gave pretty spectacle
to the surrounding country and suddenly the warriors, having proved the
mettle of their hardihood, turned once again to good fellowship. But the
wind and the rain had done their work. In the week before Easter, with the
first broadening sweep of the sun across the rich brown earth and down into
the depths of the twisting lanes the spring was there--there in the sweet
smell of the roots as they stirred towards the light, there in the watery
gleam of the grass as it caught diamonds from the sun, but there, above
all, in the primrose clump hidden in the clefts of the little Cornish
woods--so with a cry of delight Spring had leapt from the shoulders of
that roaring wind and danced across the Cornish hills.
On Good Friday there was an incident. Peter was free of the office for the
day and had walked towards Truro. There was a little hill that stood above
the town. It was marked by a tree clump black against the blue sky--at its
side was a chalk pit, naked white--beyond was Truro huddled, with the Fal a
silver ribbon in the sun. Peter stood and watched and sat down because he
liked the view. He had walked a very long way and was tired and it was an
afternoon as hot as Summer.
Suddenly there was a cry: "Help, please--oh--help to get Crumpet."
He looked up and saw standing in front of him a little girl in a black hat
and a short black frock--she had red hair that the sun was transforming
into gold. Her face was white with terror, and tears were making muddy
marks on it and her hands were black with dirt. She was a very little girl.
She appealed to him between her sobs, and he understood that Crumpet was a
dog, that it had fallen some way down the chalk-pit and that "Miss Jackson
was reading her Bible under a tree."
He jumped up immediately and went to find Crumpet. A little way down the
chalk-pit a fox-terrier puppy was balancing its fat body on a ledge of
chalk and looking piteously up and down. Peter clambered down, caught the
little struggling animal in his arms, and restored it to its mistress. And
now followed an immense deal of kissing and embracing. The dog was buried
in red hair and only once and again a wriggling paw might be observed--also
these exclamations--"Oh, the umpty-rumpty--was it nearly falling down
the great horrid pit, the darling--oh, the little darling, and was it
scratched, the pet? But it was a wicked little dog--yes, it was, to go down
that nasty place when it was told not to"--more murmurings, and then the
back was straightened, the red, gold hair flung back, and a flushed face
turned to the rather awkward Peter who stood at attention.
"Thank you--thanks, most awfully--oh, you darling" (this to the puppy).
"You see, Miss Jackson was reading her Bible aloud to herself, and I can't
stand that, neither can Crumpet, and she always forgets all about us, and
so we go away by ourselves--and reading the Bible makes her sleep--she's
asleep now--and then Crumpet wouldn't stay at heel although I was telling
him ever so hard, and he would go over the cliff--and if you hadn't
been there..." at the thought of the awful disaster the puppy was again
embraced. Apparently Crumpet was no sentimentalist, and had had enough of
feminine emotion--he wriggled out of his mistress' arms, flopped to the
ground, shook himself, and, advancing to Peter, smelt his boots.
"He likes you. I'm so glad--he only does that to people he likes, and he's
very particular." The small girl flung her hair back, smiled at Peter, and
sat down on the grass.
"It may be rather damp," Peter said, feeling very old and cautious and
thinking that she really was the oddest child he'd even seen in his life.
"It's only March you know."
"It's nothing to do with months, it's whether it's rained or not--and it
hasn't--sit down with me. Old Jackson won't be here for ages."
Peter sat down. The puppy was a charming specimen of its kind--it had
enormous ears, huge flat feet, and a round fat body like a very small
barrel. It was very fond of Peter, and licked his cheek and his hands, and
finally dragged off his cap, imagined it a rabbit, and bit it with a great
deal of savagery and good-humour.
There followed conversation.
"I like you most awfully. I like your neck and your eyes and your
hair--it's stiff, like my father's. My name is Clare Elizabeth Rossiter.
What's yours?"
"Peter Westcott."
"Do you live here?"
"No--a good long way away--by the sea."
"Oh, I'm staying at Kenwyn--my uncle lives at Kenwyn, but I live in London
with father and mother and Aunt Grace--it's nice here. I think you're such
a nice boy. Will you come and see father and mother in London?"
Peter smiled. It would not be the thing for some one in a bookshop to
go and call on the parents of any one who could afford Crumpet and Miss
Jackson, but the thought of London, the very name of it, sent his blood
tingling to his face.
"Perhaps we shall meet," he said. "I'm going to London soon."
"Oh! are you? Oh! How nice! Then, of course, you will come to tea. Every
one comes to tea."
Crumpet, tired of the rabbit, worn out with adventure and peril, struggled
into Peter's lap and slumbered with one ear lying back across his eyes. The
sun slipped down upon the town and touched the black cathedral with flame,
and turned the silver of the river into burning gold. On the bend of the
hill against the sky came a black gaunt figure.
"Miss Jackson!" Clare Elizabeth Rossiter leapt to her feet, clutched
Crumpet, held him upside down, and turned to go.
But for an instant she stayed, and Peter was rewarded with a very wonderful
smile.
"I am so glad you were here--she generally sleeps longer, but perhaps it
was New Testament to-day, and that's more exciting. It is a pity, because
there were such lots of things--I like you most awfully."
She gave him a very dirty hand, and then her black stockings vanished over
the hill.
Peter turned, through a flaming sunset, towards his home ... the end of the
incident.
III
But he came home, on that Good Friday evening with an idea that that
afternoon on the hill had given him. It was an idea that came to him from
the little piece of superstition that he carried about with him--every
Cornishman carries it. Treliss was always a place of many customs, and,
although now these ceremonies drag themselves along with all the mercenary
self-consciousness that America and cheap trips from Manchester have given
to the place, at this stage of Peter's history they were genuine and honest
enough. To see from the top of the Grey Hill, the rising of the sun on
Easter morning was one of them--a charm that brought the most infallible
good luck until next Easter Day came round again, and, good for you, if you
could watch that sunrise with the lad or lass of your choice, for to pass
round the Giant's Finger as the beams caught the stone made the success
of your union beyond all question. There was risk about it, for if mists
veiled the light or if clouds dimmed the rising then were your prospects
but gloomy--but a fine Easter morning had decided many a wedding in
Treliss.
Peter had known of this for many years, but, in earlier times, he had not
been at liberty, and of late there had been other things to think about.
But here was a fine chance! Was he not flinging himself into the world
under the very hazardous patronage of Mr. Zanti on Easter Wednesday, and
would he not therefore need every blessing that he could get? And who knew,
after all, whether these things were such nonsense? They were old enough,
these customs, and many wise people believed in them. Moreover, one had not
been brought up in the company of Frosted Moses and Dicky the Fool without
catching some of their fever! "There was a little star rolling down hill
like a button," says Dicky, with his eyes staring....' Well, and why not?
And indeed here was Peter at this stage of things, a mad I bundle of
contradictions--old as a judge when up against the Realities, young as
Crumpet the puppy when staring at Romance. Give him bread and you have
him of cast-iron--stern, cold, hard of muscle, grim frown, stiff back,
no smiles. Give him jam and you have credulity, simplicity, longing for
friendship, tenderness, devotion to a small girl in a black frock, a heart
big as the world. See him on Good Friday afternoon, laughing, eagerly
questioning, a boy--see him on Good Friday night, grim, legs stiff, eyes
cold as stones, a man--no easy thing for Mrs. Pascoe's blowzy thunderings
to conquer, but something vastly amusing apparently to grandfather Westcott
to watch.
He discovered that the sun rose about six o'clock, and therefore five
o'clock on Easter morning found him shivering, in the desolate garden with
his nose pressed to the little wooden gate. The High Road crossed the moor
at no great distance from him, but the faint grey light that hung like
gauze about him was not yet strong enough to reveal it. He would hear them
as they passed and they must all go up that road on the way to the hill.
In the garden there was darkness, and beyond it in the high shadow of the
house and the surrounding trees, blackness. He could smell the soil, and
his cheeks were wet with beads of moisture; very faintly the recurrent
boom of the sea came through the mist, dimmed as though by thick folds of
hanging carpet.
Suddenly the dark trees by the house, moved by a secret wind, would
shudder. The little black gate slowly revealed its bars against the sky as
the grey shadows lightened. Then there were voices, coming through the dark
shut off, like the sea, by the mist--strange voices, not human, but sharing
with the soil and the trees the mysterious quality of the night. The voices
passed up the road--silence and then more voices.
Peter unlatched the gate and stole out to the road, stumbling over the
rough moorland path and clambering across the ditch to safer ground.
Figures were moving like shadows and voices fell echoing and re-echoing
like notes of music--this was dissociated from all human feeling, and the
mists curled up like smoke and faded into the air. Peter, in silence,
followed these shadows and knew that there were other shadows behind him.
It would not take long to climb the Grey Hill--they would be at the top by
half-past five.
There was a voice in his ear:
"Hallo! You--Westcott! Why, who would have thought it?"
He turned round and found at his side the peaked face of Willie Daffoll,
now a young man of eighteen, with an affection for bright ties and socks,
once the small child who had fought with Peter at old Parlow's years ago.
Peter had not seen very much of him during those years. They had met in
the streets of Treliss, had spoken a word or two, but no friendship or
intimacy. But this early hour, this mysterious dawn, bred confidence, and
Peter having grown, under the approaching glitter of London, more human,
during the last few weeks than he had been in all his life before, was glad
to talk to him.
"Oh, I've often wanted to go," he said. "It brings good luck, you know."
"Well, fancy your believing that. I never thought you'd believe in rot like
that."
"Why are you going, then?"
The young man of ties and waistcoats dropped his voice. "Oh--a girl. She's
here somewhere--she said she'd come--thinks there's something in it. Anyhow
she wants it--she's stunning...."
A girl! Peter's mind flew absurdly back to a small child in a short black
frock. "Oh! Crumpet!" ... A girl! Young Daffoll had spoken as though it
were indeed something to get up at four in the morning for! Peter wanted to
hear more. Young Daffoll was quite ready to tell him. No names, of course,
but they were going to be married one day. His governor would be furious,
of course, and they might have to run away, but she was game for anything.
No, he'd only known her a fortnight, but it had been a matter of love at
first sight--extraordinary thing--he'd thought he'd been head over ears
before, but never anything like this--yes, as a matter of fact she was in a
flower-shop--Trunter's in the High Street--her people had come down in the
world--and so the golden picture unfolded as the gauze curtains were drawn
back from the world, and the shoulder of the Grey Hill rose, like a cloud,
before them.
Peter's heart beat faster as he listened to this story. Here was one of his
dreams translated into actual fact. Would he one day also have some one for
whom he would be ready to run to the end of the world, if furious parents
demanded it? She would have, he was sure, red-gold hair and a wonderful
smile.
They climbed the Grey Hill. There was with them now quite a company of
persons--still shadow-shapes, for the mists were thick about the road, but
soon all the butchers and bakers of the world--and, let it be remembered,
all the lovers, would be revealed. Now, as they climbed the hill, silence
fell--even young Daffoll was quiet; that, too, it seemed, was part of the
ceremony.
The hill top was swiftly gained. The Giant's Finger, black and straight,
like a needle, stood through the shadows. Beyond there would be the sea,
and that was where the sun would rise, at present darkness. They all sat
down on the stones that covered the summit--on either side of Peter there
were figures, but Daffoll had vanished--it seemed that he had discovered
his lady.
Peter, sitting meditating on the story that he had heard and feeling,
suddenly, lonely and deserted, was conscious of a small shoe that touched
his boot. It was, beyond argument, a friendly shoe--he could feel that in
the inviting tap that it gave to him. He was aware also that his shoulder
was touching another shoulder, and that that shoulder was soft and warm.
Finally his hand touched another hand--fingers were intertwined.
There was much conversation out of the mist:
"Law, chrisy! Well, it's the last Easter morning for me--thiccy sun hides
himself right enough--it's poor trade sitting shivering your toes."
"Not that I care for the woman, mind ye, Mr. Tregothan, sir--with her
haverings talking--all I'm saying is that if she's to come wastin' my
time--
"Thiccy man sitting there stormin' like an old owl in a tree."
"Oh, get along with ye--No, I won't be sitting by ye--There's--"
Now the sea, like a young web stretched at the foot of the hill, stole out
of the darkness. On the horizon a thin line of dull yellow--wouldn't it be
a fine sunrise?--the figures on the hill were gathering shape and form, and
many of them now were standing, their bodies sharp against the grey sky.
Peter had not turned; his eyes were staring out to sea, but his body was
pressed closely against the girl at his side. He did not turn nor look at
her--she was staring at him with wonder in her eyes and a smile on her
lips. She was a very common girl with black hair and over-red cheeks, and
she was one of the dairymaids from Tregothan Farm. She did not know whom
this strange young man might be, and it was not yet light enough to see.
She did not care--such things had happened often enough before, and she
leant her fat body against his shoulder. She could feel his heart thumping
and his hands were very hot, but she thought that it was strange that he
did not turn and look at her....
There was a stir and murmur among the crowd on the hill for behold it would
be a fine sunrise! The dull yellow had brightened to gold and was speeding
like a herald across the grey. Black on the hill, gold on the sky, a
trembling whispering blue across the sea--in a moment there would be the
sun! What gods were there hiding, at that instant, on the hill, watching,
with scornful eyes this crowd of moderns? Hidden there behind the stones,
what mysteries? Screening with their delicate bodies the faint colours of
the true dawn, playing on their pipes tunes that these citizens with their
coarse voices and dull hearing could not understand, what ancient watchers
of the hill pass and repass!
Behold the butchers and bakers! Behold Mr. Winneren, hosier and outfitter,
young Robert Trefusis, farmer, Miss Bessie Waddell from the sweet-shop!...
These others fade away as the sun rises--the grey mists pass with them.
The sun is about to leap above the rim of the sea. Peter turns and crushes
the poor dairymaid in his arms and stifles the little scream with the first
kiss of his life. His whole body burns in that kiss--and then, as the sun
streams across the sea he has sprung to his feet and vanishes over the brow
of the hill.
The dairymaid wipes her lips with the back of her hand. They have joined
hands and are already dancing round the Giant's Finger. It is black now,
but in a moment the flames of the sun will leap upon it, and good omens
will send them all singing down the hill.
IV
On Tuesday evening Peter slipped for a moment into Zachary Tan's shop
and told Mr. Zanti that he would be on the station platform at half-past
seven on the following morning. He could scarcely speak for excitement. He
was also filled with a penetrating sadness. Above all, he wished only to
exchange the briefest word with his future master. He did not understand
altogether but it was perhaps because Mr. Zanti and all his world belonged
to to-morrow.... Mr. Zanti's fat, jolly body, his laugh, his huge soft
hands ... Peter could not do more to this gentleman than remember that
he meant so much that he would be overwhelmed by him if he did not leave
him alone. So he darted in and gave his message and darted out again. The
little street was shining in the sun and the gentlest waves were lapping
the wooden jetty--Oh, this dear town! These houses, these cobbles--all the
smells and colours of the place--he was leaving it all so easily on so
perilous an adventure. Poor Peter was moved by so many things that he could
only gulp the tears back and hurry home. There was at any rate work to be
done there about which there could be no uncertain intention.
His father had been drinking all the afternoon. Mrs. Pascoe with red arms
akimbo, watched them as they ate their supper.
When the meal was finished Peter, standing by his father, his face very
white, said:
"I am going to London to-morrow."
Mr. Westcott had aged a great deal during the last month. His hair was
touched with grey, there were dark lines under his eyes, his cheeks were
sunken, his lip trembled. He was looking moodily at the cloth, crumbling
his bread. He did not hear Peter's remark, but continued his argument with
Mrs. Pascoe:
"It wasn't cooked, I tell you--you're growing as slack as Hell."
"Your precious son 'as got something as 'e would like to say to yer,"
remarked that pleasant woman grimly.
Peter repeated his remark. His father grasped it but slowly--at last he
said:
"Damn you, what are you talking about?"
"I'm leaving here and going to London to-morrow."
Mr. Westcott turned his bloodshot eyes in the direction of the
fire-place--"Curse it, I can't see straight. You young devil--I'll do for
you--" all this said rather sullenly and as though he were speaking to
himself.
Peter, having delivered his news, passed Mrs. Pascoe's broad body, and
moved to the doorway. He turned with his hand on the door.
"I'm glad I'm going," he said, "you've always bullied me, and I've always
hated you. You killed my mother and she was a good woman. You can have
this house to yourself--you and grandfather--and that woman--" he nodded
contemptuously at Mrs. Pascoe, who was staring at him fiercely. His
grandfather was fast asleep beneath the cushions.
"Damn you," said Mr. Westcott very quietly. "You've always been
ungrateful--I didn't kill your mother, but she was always a tiresome,
crying woman."
He stopped crumbling the bread and suddenly picked up a table knife and
hurled it at Peter. His hand was trembling, and the knife quivering, was
fastened to the door.
Mrs. Pascoe gasped, "Gawd 'elp us!"
Peter quietly closed the door behind him and went up to his room.
He was in no way disturbed by this interview. His relations with his
father were not of the things that now mattered. They had mattered before
his mother died. They had mattered whilst his father had been somebody
strong and terrible. Even at the funeral how splendid he had seemed! But
this trembling creature who drank whisky with the cook was some one who
concerned Peter not at all--something like the house, to be left behind.
There was an old black bag that had held his things in the Dawson's
days--it held his things now. Not a vast number--only the black suit beside
the blue serge one that he was going to wear, some under-linen, a sponge,
and a toothbrush, the books and an old faded photograph of his mother as a
girl. Nothing like that white face that he had seen, this photograph, old,
yellow, and faded, but a girl laughing and beautiful--after all, his most
precious possession.
Then, when the bag was packed, he sat on the bed, swung his legs, and
thought about everything. He was nearly eighteen, nearly a man, and as hard
as rock. He could feel the muscles swelling, there was no fat about him, he
was sound all over.
He looked back and saw the things that stood out like hills above the
plain--that night, years ago, when he was whipped, the day that he first
met Mr. Zanti, the first day at school, the day when he said good-bye to
Cards, the hour, at the end of it all, when they hissed him, that last
evening with Stephen, the day with his mother ... and then, quite lately,
that afternoon when Mr. Zanti asked him to go to London, the little girl
with the black frock on the hill ... last of all, that kiss (never mind
with whom) on Easter morning--all these things had made him what he
was--yes, and all the people--Frosted Moses, Stephen, his father, his
mother, Bobby Galleon, Cards, Mr. Zanti, the little girl. As he swung his
legs he knew that everything that he did afterwards would be, in some way,
attached to these earlier things and these earlier people.
He had brave hopes and brave ambitions and a warm heart as he flung himself
into bed; it speaks well for him that, on the night before he set out on
his adventure, he slept like the child that he really was.
But he knew that he would wake at six o'clock. He had determined that
it should be so, and the clocks were striking as he opened his eyes. It
was very dark and the cocks crowed beyond his open window, and the misty
morning swept in and blew his lighted candle up and down. He dressed in
the blue serge suit with a blue tie fastened in a sailor's knot. He leaned
out of his window and tried to imagine, out of the darkness, the beloved
moor--then he took his black bag and crept downstairs; it was striking
half-past six as he came softly into the hall.
There he saw that the gas was flaring and that his father was standing in
his night-shirt.
"I think I'm in front of you," he said, smiling.
"Let me go, father," Peter said, very white, and putting down the bag.
"Be damned to you," said his father. "You don't get through this door."
It was all so ludicrous, so utterly absurd, that his father should be
standing, in his night-shirt, on this very cold morning, under the flaring
gas. It occurred to Peter that as he wanted to laugh at this Mr. Zanti
could not have been right about his lack of humour. Peter walked up to his
father, and his father caught him by the throat. Mr. Westcott was still, in
spite of recent excesses, sufficiently strong.
"I very much want to choke you," he said.
Peter, however, was stronger.
His father dropped the hold of his throat, and had him, by the waist, but
his hands slipped amongst his clothes. For a moment they swayed together,
and Peter could feel the heat of his father's body beneath the night-shirt
and the violent beating of his heart. It was immensely ludicrous; moreover
there now appeared on the stairs Mrs. Pascoe, in a flannel jacket over a
night-gown, and untidy hair about her ample shoulders.
"The Lord be kind!" she cried, and stood, staring. Mr. Westcott was
breathing very heavily in Peter's face, and their eyes were so close
together that Peter could notice how bloodshot his father's were.
"God damn you!" said his father and slipped, and they came down on to
the wood floor together. Peter rose, but his father lay there, breathing
heavily.
"God damn you," he said again, but he did not move.
"You'd better look after him," Peter said, turning to the astounded Mrs.
Pascoe. As he moved he saw a surprising sight, his grandfather's door was
opened and his grandfather (who had not been on his feet for a great many
years) was standing in the middle of it, cackling with laughter, dressed
in a very ugly yellow dressing-gown, his old knotted hands clutching the
sides of the door, his shrivelled body shaking, and his feet in large red
slippers.
"Dear me, that was a nasty knock," he chattered.
And so Peter left them.
The high road was cool and fresh and dark. The sea sung somewhere below
amongst the rocks, and Peter immediately was aware that he was leaving
Cornwall.
Now he had no other thought. The streets of the town were deserted, clean,
smelling of the fields, hay-carts, and primroses, with the darkness broken
by dim lamps, and a very slender moon. His heart was full, his throat
burning. He crossed the market-place and suddenly bent down and kissed the
worn stones of the Tower. There was no one to see.
He was in the station at twenty minutes past seven. The platform was long
and cold and deserted, but in the waiting-room was Mr. Zanti enveloped in
an enormous black coat.
"Ah, my dear boy, this is indeed splendid. And 'ave you said farewell to
your father?"
"Yes, I've said good-bye to every one," he answered slowly. Suddenly he
would have given all the wide world and his prospects in it not to be
going. The terrors of Scaw House were as nothing beside that little grey
town with the waves breaking on the jetty, the Grey Hill above it, the
twisted cobbled streets.
The morning wind blew up the platform, the train rolled in; there were
porters, but Mr. Zanti had only a big brown bag which he kept with him.
Soon they were in corners facing one another. As the train swept past the
Tower the grey dawn was breaking into blue over the houses that rose, tier
by tier, to the sky over the grey rolling breakers, over the hills beyond
... Cornwall!
Poor Peter stared with passionate eyes as the vision passed.
"London soon," said Mr. Zanti, gaily.
CHAPTER XI
ALL KINDS OF FOG IN THE CHARING CROSS ROAD
I
Towards the middle of the dim afternoon as the first straight pale houses
began to close in upon the train, a lady and gentleman on the opposite
side to Peter were discovered by him, as he awoke from a long sleep, to be
talking:
"Well, my dear Lucy, how we are ever to get on if you want to do these
absurd things I don't know. In London one must do as London does. In the
country of course..."
He was short, breathless and a little bald. The lady was young and very
upset.
"But, Henry, what does it matter?"
"What does it matter? My dear Lucy, in London everything matters--"
She was excited. "In Kensington perhaps, but in London--"
"Allow me, my dear Lucy, to decide for you. When you are my age--"
Peter went to sleep again.
II
The vast iron-girdled station was very dark and Mr. Zanti explained that
this was because, outside, there was a Fog--
"The Fog," he added, as though it had been a huge and ferocious animal, "is
very yellow and has eaten up London. It will take us a very long time to
find our home."
To Peter, short and square, in his rough suit shouldering his bag, this
was all as the infernal regions. The vast place towered high, into misty
distances above him. Trains, like huge beasts, stretched their limbs into
infinity; screams, piercing and angry, broke suddenly the voices and busy
movement that flooded the place with sounds. He was jostled and pushed
aside and people turned and swore at him and a heated porter ran a truck
into his legs. And through it and above it all the yellow fog came twisting
in coils from the dark street beyond and every one coughed and choked and
cursed England.
Mr. Zanti, after five minutes' angry pursuit, caught a reluctant and very
shabby four-wheeler, and they both climbed into its cavernous depths and
Peter's nose was filled with something that had leather and oranges and
paper bags and whisky in it; he felt exactly as though Mr. Zanti (looking
very like an ogre in the mysterious yellow light with his bowler on the
back of his head and mopping his face with a huge crimson handkerchief)
were decoying him away to some terrible fastness where it was always dark
and smelly.
And indeed that first vision of London, seen through the grimy windows of
the cab, was terrible enough. The cab moved a little, stopped, moved again;
it seemed that they would be there for ever and they exchanged no word.
There were no buildings to be seen; a vast wall of darkness surrounded him
and ever and again, out of the heart of it, a great cauldron of fire flamed
and by the side of it there were wild, agitated faces--and again darkness.
On every side of the stumbling cab there was noise--voices shouting, women
screaming, the rumbling of wheels, the plunging of horses' hoofs; sometimes
things brushed against their cab--once Peter thought that they were down
because they were jerked right forward against the opposite seats. And then
suddenly, in the most wonderful way, they would plunge into silence, a
silence so deep and cavernous that it was more fearful than those other
noises had been, and the yellow darkness seemed to crowd upon them with a
closer eagerness and it was as though they were driving over the edge of
the world. Then the noises returned, for a moment the fog lifted showing
houses, rising like rocks from the sea sheer about them on every side, then
darkness again and the cab stopped with a jerk.
"Ah, good," said Mr. Zanti, rolling his red handkerchief into a ball. "'Ere
we are, my young friend--Mr. Peter, after you, please."
Before him a light faintly glimmered and towards this, after stumbling on
the slippery pavement, he made his way. He found himself in a bookshop
lighted with gas that hissed and spit like an angry cat; the shop was low
and stuffy but its walls were covered with books that stretched into misty
fog near the ceiling. Behind a dingy counter a man was sitting. This man
struck Peter's attention at once because of the enormous size of his head
and the amount of hair that covered it--starting out of the mist and
obscurity of the shop, this head looked like some strange fungus, and from
the heart of it there glittered two very bright eyes.
Peter, standing awkwardly in the middle of the shop, gazed at this head and
was speechless.
Outside, Mr. Zanti could be heard disputing with the cabman.
"You can go and be damned--ze bags were not on ze outside--Zat is plenty
for your pay and you be damned--"
The shop door closed with a bang shutting out the fog and Mr. Zanti filled
the little bookshop. He seemed taller and larger than he had been in
Cornwall and his voice was sharper. The head removed itself from the
counter and Peter saw that it belonged to a small man with a hump who came
forward to Mr. Zanti very humbly.
"Ah, Gottfried," said Zanti, "you well?"
"Very, sir," answered the little man, bowing a little and smiling; his
voice was guttural with a very slight accent.
"This is Mr. Peter Westcott. 'E will work here and 'elp you with ze books.
'E is a friend of mine and you will be kind to him. Mr. Peter, zis is Herr
Gottfried Hanz--I owe 'im much--ver' clever man."
They shook hands and Peter liked the pair of eyes that gazed into his.
Then Mr. Zanti said, "Come, I will show you ze rest of ze place. It is not
a mansion, you will find."
Indeed it was not. Behind the shop there was a room, brown and green, with
two windows that looked on to a yard, so Mr. Zanti said. There was no
furniture in it save a table and some chairs; a woman was spreading a cloth
on the table as they came in. This woman had grey hair that escaped its
pins and fell untidily about her shoulders. She was very pale, tall and
thin and her most striking features were her piercing black eyes and with
these she stared at Peter.
"Zis is Mrs. Dantzig," said Mr. Zanti, "an old friend--Mr. Peter Westcott,
Mrs. Dantzig. 'E will work wiz us."
The woman said nothing but nodded her head and continued her work. They
passed out of the room. Stairs ran both up and down.
"What is down there?" asked Peter.
"Ah, zat is ze kitchen," said Mr. Zanti, laughing. Upstairs there was a
clean and neat bedroom with a large bed in it, an old sofa and two chairs.
"Zis is where I sleep," said Mr. Zanti. "For a night or two until you 'ave
discovered a lodging you shall sleep on zat sofa. Zay will make it whilst
we 'ave supper."
It was now late and Peter was very very tired. Downstairs there was much
bread and butter and bacon and eggs, and beer. The woman waited upon them
but they were all very silent and Peter was too sleepy to be hungry.
The table was cleared and Mr. Zanti sat smoking his pipe and talking to the
woman. Peter sat there, nodding, and he thought that their conversation was
in a foreign tongue and he thought that they looked at him and that the
woman was angry about something--but the sleep always gained upon him--he
could not keep it away.
At last a hand was upon his shoulder and he was led up to bed.
He tumbled out of his clothes and his last impression was of Mr. Zanti
standing in front of him, looking vast and very solemn in a blue cotton
night-shirt.
"Peter," Mr. Zanti seemed to be saying, "you see in me, one, two, a hundred
men.... All my life I seek adventure--fun--and I find it--but there 'as not
been room for ze affections. Then I find you--I love you as my son and I
say 'Come to my bookshop'--But only ze bookshop mind you--you are there for
ze books and because I care for you--I care for you ver' much, Peter, and
zere 'as not been room in my life for ze affections ... but I will be a
ver' good friend to you--and you shall only be in ze shop--with ze books--I
will be a good friend--"
Then it seemed that Mr. Zanti kissed Peter on both cheeks, blew out the
candle, and climbed into his huge bed; soon he was snoring.
But Peter could not be sure of these things because he was so very tired
that he did not know whether he were standing on his head or his heels and
he was asleep on his sofa and dreaming about the strangest and most
confused events in less than no time at all.
III
And then how wonderful to discover, on waking up the next morning, that it
was a beautiful day, as beautiful a day as any that Cornwall could give
him. It was indeed odd, after the great darkness of the afternoon before
to find now a burning blue sky, bright shining pavements and the pieces of
iron and metal on the cabs glittering as they rolled along. The streets
were doubtless delightful but Peter was not, on this day at any rate, to
see very much of them; he was handed over to the care of Herr Gottfried
Hanz, who had obviously not brushed his hair when he got up in the morning;
he also wore large blue slippers that were too big for his feet and
clattered behind him as he walked. Whatever light there might be in the
street outside only chinks of it found their way into the shop and the
gas-jet hissed and flared as it had done on the day before. The books
seemed mistier and dustier than ever and Peter wondered, in a kind of
despair, how in the world if any one did come in and ask for anything he
was going to tell them whether it were there or not.
But here Herr Gottfried came to the rescue. "See you," he said with an air
of pride, "it is thus that they are arranged. Here you have the
Novel--Bronte, Bulwer, Bunyan ("The Pilgrim's Progress," that is not a
novel but it is near enough). Here you have History, and here the Poets,
and here Philosophy and here Travel--it will all be simple in time--"
Peter's eyes spun dizzily to the heights.
"There is a little ladder," said Herr Gottfried.
"And," at last said Peter timidly, "May I--read--when there is no one
here?"
Herr Gottfried looked at him with a new interest. "You like reading?"
"Like!" Peter's voice was an ecstasy.
"Why of course, often." Herr Gottfried smiled. "And then see! (he opened
the shop door) there is a small boy, James, who is supposed to look after
these (these were the 1_d_., 2_d_. and 3_d_. boxes outside the window, on
the pavement) but he is an idle boy and often enough he is not there and
then we must have the door open and you must watch them. Often enough (this
seemed a favourite phrase of his) these gentlemen (this with great scorn)
will turn the books over and over and they will look up the street once and
they will look down the street once, and then into the pocket a book will
go--often enough," he added, looking beyond the door savagely at a very
tired and tattered lady who was turning the 1_d_. lot over and over.
Then, this introductory lesson concluded, Herr Gottfried suddenly withdrew
into the tangles of his hair and retreated behind his counter. Through the
open door there came the most entrancing sound and the bustle of the street
was loud and startling--bells ringing, boys shouting, wheels rattling, and
beyond these immediate notes a steady hum like the murmur of an orchestra
heard through closed doors. All this was wonderful enough but it was
nothing at all to the superlative fascination of that multitude of books.
Peter found a hard little chair in a dark corner and sat down upon it. Here
he was in the very heart of his kingdom! He could never read all the books
in this place if he lived for two hundred years... and so he had better not
try. He made a blind dash at the volumes nearest him (quietly lest he
should disturb Herr Gottfried who seemed very busy at his counter) and
secured something and read it as well as he could, for the light was very
bad. It was called "The True and Faithful Experiences of the Reverend James
Scott in the Other World Being a Veracious History of his Experiences of
the Life after Death"--the dust rose from its pages in little clouds and
tempted him to sneeze but he bit his lip and counted forty and saved the
situation.
Herr Gottfried dealt with the customers that morning and Peter stood
nervously watching him. The customers were not very many--an old lady who
"wanted something to read" caused many volumes to be laid before her, and
finally left the shop without buying anything--a young man with spectacles
purchased some tattered science and a clergyman some Sermons. A thin and
very hungry looking man entered, clutching a badly-tied paper parcel. These
were books he wanted to sell. They were obviously treasured possessions
because he touched them, when they were laid upon the counter, with a
loving hand.
"They are very good books," he said plaintively.
"Three shillings," said Herr Gottfried.
The hungry man sighed.
"Five shillings," he said, "they are worth more."
"Three shillings for the lot," said Herr Gottfried.
"It is very little," said the hungry man, but he took the money and went
out sadly.
Once their came a magnificent gentleman--that is, he looked magnificent in
the distance away from the gas jet. He was tall with a high hat, a fine
moustache and a tailcoat; he had melancholy eyes and a languid air. Peter
was sorry to observe on a closer view that his tail-coat was frayed and his
collar not very clean.
He gave Herr Gottfried a languid bow and passed through the shop into the
room beyond.
"Guten Tag, Herr Signer," said Herr Gottfried with deference, but the
gentleman had already disappeared.
Then, after a time, one o'clock struck and Peter understood that if he
would place himself under Herr Gottfried's protection he should be led to
an establishment where for a small sum meat-pies were to be had... all
this very novel and delightful, and Peter laid down "The Experiences of
the Reverend James Scott," which were not at present very thrilling and
followed his guide into the street. Peter was still wondering where Herr
Gottfried had put his blue slippers and whence had come the large flat
boots and the brown and faded squash hat when he was suddenly in a little
dark street with the houses hanging forward as though they were listening
and any number of clothes dangling from the window sills and waving about
as though their owners were still inside them and kicking vigorously.
Although the street was dark it was full of noise, and a blaze of light at
the other end of it proclaimed more civilised quarters (Trafalgar Square in
fact) at no great distance.
"Gerade aus," said Herr Gottfried and pushed open a swinging door. Peter
followed him into the most amazing babel of voices, a confusion and a
roaring, an atmosphere thick with smoke and steam and a scent in the air as
though ten thousand meat-pies were cooking there before his eyes. By the
door a neat stout little woman, hung all over with lockets and medallions
as though she were wearing all the prizes that the famous meat-pies had
ever won, was sitting in a little box with a glass front to it.
"Bon jour, Monsieur Hanz."
"Tag, Meine Gnaedige Frau."
All down the room, by the wall, ran long tables black with age and grime.
Men of every age and nationality were eating, drinking, smoking and
talking. Some of them knew Herr Gottfried, some did not.
"Wie gehts, Gottfried?"
And Herr Gottfried, planting his flat feet like dead weights in front of
him, taking off his hat and running his fingers through his hair, smiled at
some, spoke to others, and at last found a little corner at the end of the
room, a corner comparatively quiet but most astoundingly smelly.
Peter sat down and recovered his breath. How far away now was Treliss with
its cobbled street, and the Grey Hill with the Giant's Finger pointing
solemnly to the sky.
"I have no money," he said.
"The Master has given me this for you," Herr Gottfried said, handing him
two sovereigns, "he says it is in advance for the week."
The meat-pies, beer and bread were ordered and then for a time they sat in
silence. Peter was turning in his mind a thousand questions that he would
like to ask but he was still afraid of his strange companion and he felt a
little as though he were some human volcano that might at any moment burst
forth and cover him with furious disaster.
Then Herr Gottfried said:
"And so you care for reading?"
"Yes."
"What do you read?"
What had Peter read? He mentioned timidly "David Copperfield," "Don
Quixote," and "Henry Lessingham."
"Ah, that's the way--novels, novels, novels--always sugar ... Greek,
Latin?"
"No, just a little at school."
"Ah, yes, your schools. I know them. Homer?"
"No, I'm afraid not."
"Ah, well you shall read Homer. He is the greatest, he is the Master. There
is Pope for a beginning. I will teach you Greek.... Goethe?"
"I--beg your pardon."
"Goethe, Goethe, Goethe--he has never heard of him--never. Ah, these
schools--I know them. Teach them nonsense--often enough--but any
wisdom--never--"
"I'm very sorry--" said Peter humbly.
"And music?"
"I've had no opportunity--"
"But you would love it? Yes, I see that you would love it--it is in your
eyes. Beethoven? No--later perhaps--then often enough--but Schubert! Ah,
Schubert!" (Here the meat-pies arrived but Herr Gottfried did not see
them). "Ah, the Unfinished! He shall hear that and he will have a new
soul--And the songs! Gott in Himmel, the songs! There is a man I know,
he will sing them to you. Die Mullerlieder. It is always water, the
Flowers, the Sun and all the roses in the world ... ach! 'Dir Spinnerin'
'Meersstille' ... 'Meersstille'--yah, Homer, Schubert--meat and
drink--Homer the meat-pie, Schubert the beer, but not this beer--no,
Helles, beautiful Helles with the sun in it...."
He had forgotten Peter and Peter did not understand anything that he said,
but he sat there with his eyes wide open and felt assured that it was all
very useful to him and very important. The inferno continued around them,
the air grew thicker with smoke, a barrel-organ began to play at the door,
draughts and dominoes rattled against the long wooden tables....
Ah! this was, indeed, London.
Peter was so greatly moved that his hunger left him and it was with
difficulty that the meat-pie was finished.
IV
During the three days that followed Peter learnt a very great deal about
the bookshop. At night he still slept in Mr. Zanti's bedroom, but it was
only a temporary pitching of tents during these days whilst he was a
stranger and baffled by the noise and confusion.
Already his immediate surroundings had ceased to be a mystery. He had as
it were taken them to himself and seated himself in the midst of them with
surprising ease. Treliss, Scaw House, his father, had slipped back into an
unintelligible distance. He felt that they still mattered to him and that
the time would most certainly come when they would matter to him even more,
but they were not of immediate concern. The memory of his mother was closer
to him....
But in this discovery of London he was amazingly happy--happier than he had
ever been in all his life, and younger too. There were a great many things
that he wished to know, a great many questions that he wished to ask--but
for the moment he was content to rest and to grasp what he could see.
In a day he seemed to understand the way that the books went, and not only
that but even the places where the individual books were lodged. He did
not, of course, know anything about the contents of the books, but their
titles gave them, in his mind, human existence so that he thought of
them as actual persons living in different parts of the shop. There was,
for instance, the triumph of "Lady Audley's Secret." An old lady with a
trembling voice and a very sharp pair of eyes wished for a secondhand copy.
"I've very sorry, Madame," began Herr Gottfried, "but I'm afraid we
haven't..."
"I think--" said Peter timidly, and he climbed the little ladder and
brought the book down from a misty corner. Herr Gottfried was indeed amazed
at him--he said very little but he was certainly amazed. Indeed, with the
exception of the "meat-pie" interval he scarcely spoke throughout the day.
Peter began to look forward to one o'clock for then the German, in the
midst of the babel and the smoke, continued the educating progress, and
even read Goethe's poetry aloud (translating it into the strangest English)
and developed Peter's conception of Homer into an alluring and fascinating
picture.
Of London itself during these days Peter saw nothing. At eight o'clock
in the evening the shutters were put up by the disobedient James and the
shop retired for the night. Herr Gottfried shuffled away to some hidden
resting-place of his own and Peter found supper waiting for him in the room
at the back. He ate this alone, for Mr. Zanti was not there and during
these three days he was hardly visible at all. He was up in the morning
before Peter was and he came to bed when Peter was already asleep. The boy
was not, however, certain that his master was always away when he seemed
to be. He appeared suddenly at the most surprising moments, smiling and
cheerful as ever and with no sign of hurry about him. He always gave Peter
a nod and a kind word and asked him how the books were going and patted him
on the shoulder, but he was away almost as soon as he was there.
One strange thing was the number of people that came into the bookshop with
no intention whatever of having anything to do with the books. Indeed they
paid no heed to the bookshop, and after flinging a word at Herr Gottfried,
they would pass straight into the room beyond and as far as Peter could
see, never came out again.
The magnificently-dressed gentleman, called by Herr Gottfried "Herr
Signor," was one of these persons.
However, Peter, happy enough in the excitement of the present, asking no
questions and only at night, before he fell asleep, lying on his sofa,
listening to the sounds in the street below him, watching the reflections
of the gas light flung up by the street lamps on to the walls of his room,
he would wonder ... and, so wondering, he was asleep.
And then, on the fourth day, something happened.
It was growing late, and Peter underneath the gas jet was buried in Mr.
Pope's Homer. A knock on the door and the postman entered with the letters.
As a rule Herr Gottfried took them, but on this afternoon he had left the
shop in Peter's hands for half an hour whilst he went out to see a friend.
Peter took the letters and immediately the letter on the top of the pile
(Mr. Zanti's post was always a large one) set his heart thumping. The
handwriting was the handwriting of Stephen. There could be no doubt about
it, no possible doubt. Peter had seen that writing many times and he had
always kept the letter that Stephen had written to him when he first went
to Dawson's. To other eyes it might seem an ordinary enough hand--rough and
uneducated and sprawling--anybody's hand, but Peter knew that there could
be no mistake.
The sight of the letter as it lay there on the counter swept away the shop,
the books, London--he sat looking at it with a longing, stronger than any
longing that he had ever known, to see the writer again. He lived once more
through that night on the farm--perhaps at that moment he felt suddenly his
loneliness, here in this huge and tempestuous London, here in this dark
bookshop with so many people going in or out. He rubbed the sleeves of his
blue serge suit because they made him feel like Treliss, and he sat, with
eyes staring into the dark, thinking of Stephen.
That evening, just as he was going up to bed, Mr. Zanti came in and greeted
him with his accustomed cheerfulness.
"Going to bed, Peter? Ah, good boy."
Peter stopped, hesitating, by the door.
"Oh, I wonder--" he said and stopped.
"Yes?" said Mr. Zanti, looking at him.
"Oh--well--it's nothing--" Then he blurted out--"I saw a letter--I couldn't
help it--a letter from Stephen this afternoon. They came when Herr
Gottfried was out--and I wanted--I want dreadfully--to hear about him--if
you could tell me--"
For an instant Mr. Zanti's large eyes closed until they seemed to be no
larger than pin-points--then they opened again.
"Stephen--Stephen? Stephen what? What is it that the boy talks of?"
"You know--Stephen Brant--the man who first brought me to see you when I
was quite a kid. I was--I always have been very fond of him. I should be so
very glad--"
"Surely the boy is mad--what has come to you? Stephen Brant--yes I remember
the man--but I have heard nothing for years and years--no, nothing. See,
here are my afternoon's letters."
He took a bundle of letters out of his pocket and showed them to Peter. The
boy found the one in Stephen's handwriting.
"You may read it," said Mr. Zanti smiling. Peter read it. He could not
understand it and it was signed "John Simmons" ... but it was certainly in
Stephen's handwriting.
"Thank you," said Peter in rather a quivering voice and he turned away,
gulping down his disappointment.
Mr. Zanti patted him on the shoulder.
"That's right, my boy. Ah, I expect you miss your friend. You will be
lonely here, yes? Well--see--now that you have been here a few days perhaps
it is time for you to find a place to live--and I have talked wiz a friend
of mine, a ver' good friend who 'as lived for many years in a 'ouse where
'e says there is a room that will just do for you--cheap, pleasant people
... yes? To-morrow 'e will show you the place. There you will 'ave
friends--"
Peter smiled, thanked Mr. Zanti and went to bed. But his dreams were
confused that night. It seemed to him that London was a huge room with
closing walls, and that ever they came closer and closer and that he
screamed for Stephen and they would not let Stephen come to him.
And bells were ringing, and Mr. Zanti, with a lighted candle in his hands,
was creeping down those dark stairs that led to the kitchen, and he might
have stopped those closing walls but he would not. Then suddenly Peter
was running down the Sea Road above Treliss and the waves were sounding
furiously below him--his father was there waiting for him sternly, at the
road's end and Herr Gottfried with a Homer in one hand and his blue shoes
in the other sat watching them out of his bright eyes. His father was
waiting to kill him and Mrs. Pascoe was at his elbow. Peter screamed, the
sweat was pouring off his forehead, his throat was tight with agony when
suddenly by his side was old Frosted Moses, with his flowing beard. "It
isn't life that matters," he was whispering in his old cracked voice, "but
the courage that you bring to it."
The figures faded, the light grew broader and broader, and Peter woke to
find Mr. Zanti, by the aid of a candle, climbing into bed.
But some time passed before he had courage to fall asleep again.
CHAPTER XII
BROCKETTS: ITS CHARACTER, AND ESPECIALLY MRS. BROCKETT
I
On the next afternoon about six o'clock, Mr. Zanti, accompanied by the
languid and shabby gentleman whom Peter had noticed before, appeared in the
shop.
"Signor Rastelli," said Mr. Zanti, and the languid gentleman shook hands
with Peter as though he were conferring a great benefit upon him and he
hoped Peter wouldn't forget it.
"Zis," said Mr. Zanti, "is my young friend, Peter Westcott, whom I love as
if 'e were my own son--Signor Rastelli," he continued, turning to Peter,
"I've known him for very many years and I can only say zat ze longer I 'ave
known him ze more admirable I 'ave thought 'im."
The gentleman took off his tall hat, stroked it, put it on again and
looked, with his languid eyes, at Peter.
"And," continued Mr. Zanti, cheerfully, conscious perhaps that he was
carrying all the conversation on his own shoulders, "'e will take you to a
'ouse where 'e has been for--'ow many years, Signor?"
"Ten," said that gentleman.
"For ten years--every comfort. Zere's a little room 'e tells me where you
will be 'appy--and all your food and friendship for one pound a week.
There!" he ended triumphantly.
"Thank you very much," said Peter, but he did not altogether like the look
of the seedily dressed gentleman, and would much rather have stayed with
Mr. Zanti.
He had packed his black bag in readiness, and now he fetched it and, after
promising to be in the shop at half-past eight the next morning, started
off with his melancholy guide.
The lamps were coming out, and a silence that often falls upon London just
before sunset had come down upon the traffic and the people. Windows caught
the departing flame, held it for an instant, and sank into grey twilight.
"I know what you're thinking about me," Peter's companion suddenly said (he
was walking very fast as though trying to catch something), "I know you
don't like me. I could see it at once--I never make a mistake about those
things. You were saying to yourself: 'What does that horrible, over-dressed
stranger want to come interfering with me for?'"
"Indeed, I wasn't," said Peter, breathlessly, because the bag was so heavy
and they were walking so fast.
"Oh, yes, you were. Never mind. I'm not a popular man, and when you know me
better you'll like me still less. That's always the way I affect people.
And always with the best intentions. And you were thinking, too, that you
never saw anything less Italian than I am, and you're sure my name's Brown
or Smith, and indeed it's true that I was born in Clapham, but my parents
were Italians--refugees, you know, although I'm sure I don't know what
from--and every one calls me the Signor, and so there you are--and I don't
see how I'm to help it. But that's just me all over--always fighting
against the tide but I don't complain, I'm sure." All this said very
rapidly and in a melancholy way as though tears were not very far off. Then
he suddenly added:
"Let me carry your bag for you."
"No, thank you," said Peter, laughing, "I can manage it."
"Ah, well, you look strong," said the Signor appreciatively. "I envy you,
I'm sure--never had a day's health myself--but I don't complain."
By this time they had passed the British Museum and were entering into
the shadows of Bloomsbury. At this hour, when the lamps and the stars are
coming out, and the sun is going in, Bloomsbury has an air of melancholy
that is peculiarly its own. The dark grey houses stand as a perpetual
witness of those people that have found life too hard for them and have
been compelled to give in. The streets of those melancholy squares seen
beneath flickering lamp light and a wan moon protest against all gaiety of
spirit and urge resignation and a mournful acquiescence. Bloomsbury is Life
on Thirty Shillings a week without the drama of starvation or the tragedy
of the Embankment, but with all the ignominy of making ends meet under the
stern and relentless eye of a boarding-house keeper.
But of all the sad and unhappy squares in Bloomsbury the saddest is Bennett
Square. It is shut in by all the other Bloomsbury Squares and is further
than any of them from the lights and traffic of popular streets. There are
only four lamp posts there--one at each corner--and between these patches
of light everything is darkness and desolation.
Every house in Bennett Square is a boarding-house, and No. 72 is
Brockett's.
"Mrs. Brockett is a very terrifying but lovable woman," said the Signor
darkly, and Peter, whose spirits had sunk lower and ever lower as he
stumbled through the dark streets, felt, at the sound of this threatening
prophecy, entirely miserable.
No. 72 is certainly the grimiest of the houses in Bennett Square. It is
tall and built of that grey stone that takes the mind of the observer back
to those school precincts of his youth. It is a thin house, not broad and
fat and comfortably bulging, but rather flinging a spiteful glance at the
house that squeezed it in on either side. It is like a soured, elderly
caustic old maid, unhappy in its own experiences and determined to make
every one else unhappy in theirs. Peter, of course, did not see these
things, because it was very dark, but he wished he had not come.
The Signor had a key of his own and Peter was soon inside a hall that smelt
of oilcloth and the cooking of beef; the gas was burning, but the only
things that really benefited from its light were a long row of mournful
black coats that hung against the wall.
Peter sneezed, and was suddenly conscious of an enormous woman whom he knew
by instinct to be Mrs. Brockett. She was truly enormous--she stood facing
him like some avenging Fate. She had the body of a man--flat, straight,
broad. Her black hair, carefully parted down the middle, was brushed back
and bound into hard black coils low down over the neck. She stood there,
looking down on them, her arms akimbo, her legs apart. Her eyes were black
and deep set, her cheek bones very prominent, her nose thin and sharp; her
black dress caught in a little at the waist, fell otherwise in straight
folds to her feet. There was a faint moustache on her upper lip, her hands,
with long white slender fingers, were beautiful, lying straight by her
side, against the stuff of her dress.
"Well?" she said--and her voice was deep like a man's. "Good evening,
Signor."
"Good evening, Madame." He took off his hat and gave her a deep bow. "This
is the young gentleman, Mr. Westcott, of whom I spoke to you this morning."
"Well--how are you, Mr. Westcott?" Her words were sharply clipped and had
the resonance of coins as they rang in the air.
"Quite well, thank you," said Peter, and he noticed, in spite of his dismay
at her appearance, that the clasp of her hand was strong and friendly.
"Florence will show you your room, Mr. Westcott. It is a pound a
week including your meals and attendance and the use of the general
sitting-room. If you do not like it you must tell me and we will wish one
another good evening. If you do like it I shall do my best to make you
comfortable."
Peter found afterwards that this was her invariable manner of addressing
a new-comer. It could scarcely be called a warm welcome. She turned and
called, "Florence!" and a maid-servant, diminutive in size but spotless in
appearance, suddenly appeared from nowhere at all, as it seemed to Peter.
He followed this girl up many flights of stairs. On every side of him were
doors and, once and again, gas flared above him. It was all very cold, and
gusts of wind passed up and down, whisking in and out of the oilcloth, and
Peter thought that he had never seen so many closed doors in his life.
At last they came to an end of the stairs and there with a skylight
covering the passage outside was his room. It was certainly small and the
window looked out on a dismal little piece of garden far below and a great
number of roofs and chimneys and at last a high dome rising like a black
cloud in the farther distance. It was spotlessly clean.
"I think it will do very well, thank you," said Peter and he put down his
black bag.
"Do you?" said the maid. "There's a bell," she said, pointing, "and the
meal's at seving sharp." She disappeared.
He spent the time, very cheerfully, taking the things out of the black bag
and arranging them. He had suddenly, as was natural in him, forgotten the
dismal approach to the house, the overwhelming appearance of Mrs. Brockett,
his recent loneliness. Here, at last, was a little spot that he could,
for a time, at any rate, call his own. He could come, at any time of the
evening and shut his door, and be alone here, master of everything that he
surveyed. Perhaps--and the thought sent the blood to his cheeks--it was
here that he would write! He looked about the room lovingly. It was quite
bare except for the bed, the washing stand and a chair, and there was no
fire-place. But he arranged the books, David Copperfield, Don Quixote,
Henry Lessingham, The Roads, The Downs, on the window sill, and the little
faded photograph of his mother on the ledge above the washing basin. He had
scarcely finished doing these things when there was a tap on his door. He
opened it, and found the Signor, no longer in a tail-coat, but in a short,
faded blue jacket that made him look shabbier than ever.
"Excuse--not intruding, I hope?" He looked gloomily round the room.
"Everything all right?"
"Very nice," said Peter.
"Ah, you'll like it at first--but never mind. Wonderful woman, Mrs.
Brockett. I expect you were alarmed just now."
"I was, a little," admitted Peter.
"Ah, well, we all are at first. But you'll get over that, you'll love
her--every one loves her. By the way," he pushed his hand through his hair,
"what I came about was to tell you that we all foregather--as you might
say--in the sitting-room before dinner--yes--and I'd like to introduce you
to my wife, the Signora--not Italian, you know--but you'll like her better
than me--every one's agreed that hers is a nicer character."
Peter, trembling a little at the thought of more strangers, followed the
Signer downstairs and found, in the middle of one of the dark landings,
looking as though she had been left there by some one and completely
forgotten, a little wisp of a woman with bright yellow hair and a straw
coloured dress, and this was the Signora. This lady shook hands with him in
a frightened tearful way and made choking noises all the way downstairs,
and this distressed Peter very much until he discovered that she had a
passion for cough drops, which she kept in her pocket in a little tin box
and sucked perpetually. The Signor drove his wife and Peter before him into
the sitting-room. This was a very brightly-coloured room with any number
of brilliant purple vases on the mantelpiece, a pink wall-paper, a great
number of shining pictures in the most splendid gilt frames, and in the
middle of the room a bright green settee with red cushions on it. On this
settee, which was round, with a space in the middle of it, like a circus,
several persons were seated, but there was apparently no conversation. They
all looked up at the opening of the door, and Peter was so dazzled by the
bright colour of the room that it was some time before he could collect his
thoughts.
But the Signor beckoned to him, and he followed.
"Allow me, Mrs. Monogue," said the Signor, "to introduce to you Mr. Peter
Westcott." The lady in question was stout, red-faced, and muffled in
shawls. She extended him a haughty finger.
There followed then Miss Norah Monogue, a girl with a pleasant smile and
untidy hair, Miss Dall, a lady with a very stiff back, a face like an
interrogation mark, because her eyebrows went up in a point and a very
tight black dress, Mr. Herbert Crumley, and Mr. Peter Crumley, two short,
thin gentlemen with wizened and anxious faces (they were obviously
brothers, because they were exactly alike), and Mrs. and Mr. Tressiter, two
pleasant-faced, cheerful people, who sat very close together as though they
were cold.
All these people shook hands agreeably with Peter, but made no remarks, and
he stood awkwardly looking at the purple vases and wishing that something
would happen.
Something _did_ happen. The door was very softly and slowly opened,
and a little woman came hurrying in. She had white hair, and glasses were
dangling on the end of her nose, and she wore a very old and shabby black
silk dress. She looked round with an agitated air.
"I don't know why it is," she said, with a little chirrup, like a bird's,
"but I'm _always_ late--always!"
Then she did an amazing thing. She walked to the green settee and sat down
between Miss Dall, the lady with the tight dress, and Mrs. Monogue. She
then took out of one pocket an orange and out of another a piece of
newspaper.
"I must have my orange, you know," she said, looking gaily round on every
one.
She spread the newspaper on her knee, and then peeled the orange very
slowly and with great care. The silence was maintained--no one spoke. Then
suddenly the Signor darted forward: "Oh, Mrs. Lazarus I must introduce you
to Madame's new guest, Mr. Westcott."
"How do you do?" the old lady chirruped. "Oh! but my fingers are all over
orange--never mind, we'll smile at one another. I hope you'll like the
place, I'm sure. I always have an orange before dinner. They've got used to
me, you know. We've all got our little habits."
Peter did not know what to say, and was wondering whether he ought to
relieve the old lady of her orange peel (at which she was gazing rather
helplessly), when a bell rang and Florence appeared at the door.
"Dinner!" she said, laconically.
A procession was formed, Mrs. Monogue, with her shawls sweeping behind her,
sailed in front, and Peter brought up the rear. Mrs. Lazarus put the orange
peel into the newspaper and placed it all carefully in her pocket.
Mrs. Brockett was sitting, more like a soldier than ever, at the head of
the table. Mutton was in front of her, and there seemed to be nothing on
the table cloth but cruets and three dusty and melancholic palms. Peter
found that he was sitting between Mrs. Lazarus and Miss Dall, and that he
was not expected to talk. It was apparent indeed that the regularity with
which every one met every one at this hour of the day, during months and
months of the year negatived any polite necessity of cordiality or genial
spirits. When any one spoke it was crossly and in considerable irritation,
and although the food was consumed with great eagerness on everybody's
part, the faces of the company were obviously anxious to express the fact
that the food was worse than ever, and they wouldn't stand it another
minute. They all did stand it, however, and Peter thought that they were
all, secretly, rather happy and contented. During most of the meal no one
spoke to him, and as he was very hungry this did not matter. Opposite him,
all down the side of the room, were dusty grey pillars, and between these
pillars heavy dark green curtains were hanging. This had the effect of
muffling and crushing the conversation and quite forbidding anybody to
be cheerful in any circumstances. Mrs. Lazarus indeed chirruped along
comfortably and happily for the most part to herself--as, for instance, "I
am orangy, but then I was late and couldn't finish it. Dear me, it's mutton
again. I really must tell Madame about it and there's nothing so nice as
beef and Yorkshire pudding, is there? Dear me, would you mind, young man,
just asking Dear Miss Dall to pass the salt spoon. She's left that behind.
I _have_ the salt-cellar, thank you."
She also hummed to herself at times and made her bread into little hard
pellets, which she flicked across the table with her thumb at no one in
particular and in sheer absence of mind. The two Mr. Crumleys were sitting
opposite to her, and they accepted the little charge of shot with all the
placid equanimity bred of ancient custom.
Peter noticed other things. He noticed that Mrs. Monogue was an
exceedingly ill-tempered and selfish woman, and that she bullied the
pleasant girl with the untidy hair throughout the meal, and that the girl
took it all in the easiest possible way. He noticed that Mrs. Brockett
dealt with each of her company in turn--one remark apiece, and always in
that stern, deep voice with the strangely beautiful musical note in it.
To himself she said: "Well, Mr. Westcott, I'm pleased, I'm sure, that
everything is to your satisfaction," and listened gravely to his assurance.
To Miss Dall: "Well, Miss Ball, I looked at the book you lent me and
couldn't find any sense in it, I'm afraid." To Mrs. Tressiter: "I had
little Minnie with me for half an hour this evening, and I'm sure a better
behaved child never breathed" ... and so on.
Once Miss Dall turned upon him sharply with: "I suppose you never go and
hear the Rev. Mr. M. J. Valdwell?" and Peter had to confess ignorance.
"Really! Well, it 'ud do you young men a world of good."
He assured her that he would go.
"I will lend you a volume of his sermons if you would care to read them."
Peter said that he would be delighted. The meal was soon over, and every
one returned to the sitting-room. They sat about in a desolate way, and
Peter discovered afterwards that Mrs. Brockett liked every one to be there
together for half an hour to encourage friendly relations. That object
could scarcely be said to be achieved, because there was very little
conversation and many anxious glances were flung at the clocks. Mrs.
Brockett, however, sat sternly in a chair and sewed, and no one ventured to
leave the room.
One pleasant thing happened. Peter was standing by the window turning over
some fashion papers of an ancient date, when he saw that Miss Monogue was
at his elbow. Now that she was close to him he observed that she looked
thin and delicate; her dress was worn and old-fashioned, she looked as
though she ought to be wrapped up warmly and taken care of--but her eyes
were large and soft and grey, and although her wrists looked strangely
white and sharp through her black dress her hands were beautiful. Her voice
was soft with an Irish brogue lingering pleasantly amongst her words:
"I hope that you will like being here."
"I'm sure I shall," he said, smiling. He felt grateful to her for talking
to him.
"You're very fortunate to have come to Mrs. Brockett's straight away. You
mayn't think so now, because Mrs. Brockett is alarming at first, and we
none of us--" she looked round her with a little laugh--"can strike the
on-looker as very cheerful company. But really Madame has a heart of
gold--you'll find that out in time. She's had a terribly hard time of it
herself, and I believe it's a great struggle to keep things going now. But
she's helped all kinds of people in her time."
Peter looked, with new eyes, at the lady so sternly sewing.
"You don't know," Miss Monogue went on in her soft, pleasant voice, "how
horrible these boarding-houses can be. Mother and I have tried a good many.
But here people stay for ever--a pretty good testimony to it, I think ...
and then, you know, she never lets any one stay here if she doesn't like
them--so that prevents scoundrels. There've been one or two, but she's
always found them out ... and I believe she keeps old Mrs. Lazarus quite
free of charge."
She paused, and then she added:
"And there's no one here who hasn't found life pretty hard. That gives us
a kind of freemasonry, you know. The Tressiters, for instance, they have
three children, and he has been out of work for months--sometimes there's
such a frightened look in her eyes ... but you mustn't think that we're
melancholy here," she went on more happily. "We get a lot of happiness out
of it all."
He looked at her, and remembering Mrs. Monogue at dinner and seeing now how
delicate the girl looked, thought that she must have a very considerable
amount of pluck on her own account.
"And you?" she said. "Have you only just come up to London?"
"Yes," he answered, "I'm in a bookseller's shop--a second-hand
bookseller's. I've only been in London a few days--it's all very exciting
for me--and a little confusing at present."
"I'm sure you'll get on," she said. "You look so strong and confident and
happy. I envy you your strength--one can do so much if one's got that."
He felt almost ashamed of his rough suit, his ragged build. "Well, I've
always been in the country," he said, a little apologetically. "I expect
London will change that."
Then there came across the room Mrs. Monogue's sharp voice. "Norah! Norah!
I want you."
She left him.
That night in his little room, he looked from his window at the sea of
black roofs that stretched into the sky and found in their ultimate
distance the wonderful sweep of stars that domed them; a great moon,
full-rounded, dull gold, staring like a huge eye, above them. His heart was
full. A God there must be somewhere to have given him all this splendour--a
splendour surely for him to work upon. He felt as a craftsman feels, when
some new and wonderful tools have been given to him; as a woman feels the
child in her womb, stirring mysteriously, moving her to deep and glad
thankfulness, so now, with the night wind blowing about him, and all London
lying, dark and motionless, below him, he felt the first stirring of his
power. This was his to work with, this was his to praise and glorify and
make beautiful--now crude and formless--a seed dark and without form or
colour--one day to make one more flower in that garden that God has given
his servants to work in.
He did not, at this instant, doubt that some God was there, crying to him,
and that he must answer. Of that moon, of those stars, of that mighty city,
he would make one little stone that might be added to that Eternal Temple
of Beauty....
He turned from his window and thought of other things. He thought of his
father and Scaw House, of the windy day when his mother was buried, of Mr.
Zanti and Stephen's letter, of Herr Gottfried and his blue slippers, of
this house and its people, of the friendly girl and her grey eyes ...
finally, for a little, of himself--of his temper and his ambitions and his
selfishness. Here, indeed, suddenly jumping out at him, was the truth.
He felt, as he got into bed, that he would have to change a great deal if
he were to write that great book that he thought of: "Little Peter
Westcott," London seemed to say, "there's lots to be done to you first
before you're worth anything ... I'll batter at you."
Well, let it, he thought, sleepily. There was nothing that he would like
better. He tumbled into sleep, with London after him, and Fame in front of
him, and a soft and resonant murmur, as of a slumbering giant, rising to
his open window.
BOOK II
THE BOOKSHOP
CHAPTER I
"REUBEN HALLARD"
I
There is a story in an early volume of Henry Galleon's about a man who
caught--as he may have caught other sicknesses in his time--the disease of
the Terror of London. Eating his breakfast cheerfully in his luxurious
chambers in Mayfair, in the act of pouring his coffee out of his handsome
silver coffee-pot, he paused. It was the very slightest thing that held his
attention--the noise of the rumbling of the traffic down Piccadilly--but he
was startled and, on that morning, he left his breakfast unfinished. He
had, of course, heard that rumbling traffic on many other occasions--it may
be said to have been the musical accompaniment to his breakfast for many
years past. But on this morning it was different; as one has a headache
before scarlet fever so did this young man hear the rumble of the traffic
down Piccadilly. He listened to it very attentively, and it was, he told
himself, very like the noise of some huge animal breathing in its sleep.
There was a regularity, a monotony about it ... and also perhaps a sense
of great force, quiescent now and held in restraint. He was a very normal,
well-balanced young man and thoughts of this kind were unlike him.
Then he heard other things--the trees rustling in the park, bells ringing
on every side of him, builders knocking and hammering, windows rattling,
doors opening and shutting. In the Club one evening he confided in a
friend. "I say, it's damned funny--but what would you say to this old place
being alive, taking on a regular existence of its own, don't you know? You
might draw it--a great beast like some old alligator, all curled up, with
its teeth and things--making a noise a bit as it moves about ... and then,
one day when it's got us nicely all on top of it, down it will bring us
all, houses and the rest. Damned funny idea, what? Do for a cartoon-fellow
or some one--"
The disease developed; he had it very badly, but at first his friends did
not know. He lay awake at night hearing things--one heard much more at
night--sometimes he fancied that the ground shook under his feet--but most
terrible of all was it when there was perfect silence. The traffic ceased,
the trees and windows and doors were still ... the Creature was listening.
Sometimes he read in papers that buildings had suddenly collapsed. He
smiled to himself. "When we are all nicely gathered together," he said,
"when there are enough people ... then--"
His friends said that he had a nervous breakdown; they sent him to a
rest-cure. He came back. The Creature was fascinating--he was terrified,
but he could not leave it.
He knew more and more about it; he knew now what it was like, and he saw
its eyes and he sometimes could picture its grey scaly back with churches
and theatres and government buildings and the little houses of Mr. Smith
and Mr. Jones perched upon it--and the noises that it made now were so
many and so threatening that he never slept at all. Then he began to run,
shouting, down Piccadilly, so they put him--very reluctantly--into a nice
Private Asylum, and there he died, screaming. This story is a prologue to
Peter's life in London.... The story struck his fancy; he thought of it
sometimes.
II
On a late stormy afternoon in November, 1895, Peter finished his book,
"Reuben Hallard." It had been raining all day, and now the windows were
blurred and the sea of shining roofs that stretched into the mist
emphasised the dark and gloom of the heavy overhanging sky.
Peter's little room was very cold, but his body was burning--he was
in a state of overpowering excitement; his hands trembled so that he
could scarcely hold his pen ... "So died Reuben Hallard, a fool and a
gentleman"--and then "Finis" with a hard straight line underneath it.... He
had been working at it for three years, and he had been in London seven.
He walked up and down his little room, he was so hot that he flung up his
window and leaned out and let the rain, that was coming down fiercely now,
lash his face. Mud! London was full of mud. He could see it, he fancied,
gathering in thick brown layers upon the pavement, shining and glistening
as it mounted, slipping in streams into the gutter, sweeping about the
foundations of the houses, climbing perhaps, one day, to the very windows.
That was London. And yet he loved it, London and its dirt and darkness.
Had he not written "Reuben Hallard" here! Had the place not taken him into
its arms, given him books and leisure out of its hospitality, treated him
kindly during these years so that they had fled like an instant of time,
and here he was, Peter Westcott, aged twenty-five, with a book written,
four friends made, and the best health possible to man. The book was
"Reuben Hallard," the friends were Mrs. Brockett, Mr. Zanti, Herr
Gottfried, and Norah Monogue, and for his health one had only to look at
him!
"So died Reuben Hallard, a fool and a gentleman!" His excitement was
tremendous; his cheeks were flaming, his eyes glittering, his heart
beating. Here was a book written!--so many pages covered with so much
writing, his claim to be somebody, to have done something, justified
and, most wonderful of all, live, exciting people created by him, Peter
Westcott. He did not think now of publication, of money, of fame--only,
after sharing for three years in the trials and adventures of dear, beloved
souls, now, suddenly, he emerged cold, breathless ... alone ... into the
world again.
Exciting! Why, furiously, of course. He could have sung and shouted and
walked, right over the tops of the roofs, with the rain beating and cooling
his body, out into the mist of the horizon. _His_ book, "Reuben Hallard!"
London was swimming in thick brown mud, and the four lamps coming out in
Bennett Square in a dim, sickly fashion and he, Peter Westcott, had written
a book....
The Signor--the same Signor, some seven years older, a little shabbier, but
nevertheless the same Signor--came to summon him to supper.
"I have finished it!"
"What! The book?"
"Yes!"
Their voices were awed whispers. The whole house had during the last three
years shared in the fortunes of the book. Peter had come to dinner with a
cloud upon his brow--the book therefore has gone badly--even Mrs. Brockett
is disturbed and Mrs. Lazarus is less chirpy than usual. Peter comes
to dinner with a smile--the book therefore has gone well and even Mrs.
Monogue is a little less selfish than ordinary. The Signor now gazed round
the little room as though he might find there the secret of so great an
achievement. On Peter's dressing-table the manuscript was piled--"You'll
miss it," the Signor said, gloomily. "You'll miss it very much--you're
bound to. You'll have to get it typewritten, and that'll cost money."
"Never mind, it's done," said Peter, shaking his head as a dog shakes
himself when he leaves the water. "There they are, those people--and now
I'm going to wash."
He stripped to the waist, and the Signor watched his broad back and strong
arms with a sigh for his own feeble proportions. He wondered how it was
that being in a stuffy bookshop for seven years had done Peter no harm, he
wondered how he could keep the back of his neck so brown as that in London
and his cheeks as healthy a colour and his eyes as clear.
"I'm amazingly unpleasant to look at," the Signor said at last. "I often
wonder why my wife married me. I'm not surprised that every one finds me
uninteresting. I am uninteresting."
"Well, you are not uninteresting to me, I can tell you," said Peter. He had
put on a soft white shirt, a black tie, and a black coat and trousers, the
last of these a little shiny perhaps in places, but neat and well brushed,
and you would really not guess when you saw him, that he only possessed two
suits in the wide world.
"_I_ think you're absorbing," Peter said, a little patronisingly perhaps.
"Ah, that proves nothing," the Signer retorted. "You only care for fools
and children--Mrs. Brockett always says so."
They went downstairs--Peter was, of course, not hungry at all, but the
conventions had to be observed. In the sitting-room, round about the green
settee, the company was waiting as it had waited seven years ago; there
were one or two unimportant additions and Mrs. Monogue had died the year
before and Mrs. Lazarus was now very old and trembling, but in effect there
was very little change.
"He has finished it," the Signor announced in a wondering whisper. A little
buzz rose, filled the air for a moment and then sank into silence again.
Mrs. Lazarus was without her orange because she had to wear mittens now,
and that made peeling the thing difficult. "I'm sure," she said, in a voice
like that of a very excited cricket, "that Mr. Westcott will feel better
after he's had something to eat. _I_ always do."
This remark left conversation at a standstill. The rain drove against
the panes, the mud rose ever higher against the walls, and dinner was
announced. Mrs. Brockett made her remarks to each member of the company
in turn as usual. To Peter she said:
"I hear that you have finished your book, Mr. Westcott. We shall all watch
eagerly for its appearance, I'm sure."
He felt his excitement slipping away from him as the moments passed.
Suddenly he was tired. Instead of elation there was wonder, doubt. What if,
after all, the book should be very bad? During all these years in London he
had thought of it, during all these years he had known that it was going to
succeed. What, if now he should discover suddenly that it was bad?... Could
he endure it? The people of his book seemed now to stand very far away from
him--they were unreal--he could remember scenes, things that they had said
and done, absurd, ignorant things.
He began to feel panic. Why should he imagine that he was able to write?
Of course it was all crude, worthless stuff. He looked at the dingy white
pillars and heavy green curtains with a kind of despair ... of course it
was all bad. He had been hypnotised by the thing for the time being. Then
he caught Norah Monogue's eyes and smiled. He would show it to her, and she
would tell him what it was worth.
Poor Mrs. Tressiter's baby had died last week and now, suddenly, she
burst out crying and had to leave the room. There was a little twitter of
sympathy. How good they all were to one another, these people, stupid and
odd perhaps in some ways, but so brave for themselves and so generous to
one another. It was no mean gathering of souls that Mrs. Brockett's dingy
gas illuminated.
Every now and again the heavy curtains blew forward in the wind and the gas
flared. There was no conversation, and the wind could be heard driving the
rain past the windows.
III
Peter, that evening, took the manuscript of "Reuben Hallard" into Miss
Monogue's room. Since her mother died Norah Monogue had had a bed
sitting-room to herself. The bed was hidden by a high screen, the wall
paper was a dark green, and low bookshelves, painted white, ran round the
room. There were no pictures (she always said that until she could have
good ones she wouldn't have any at all). There were some brown pots and
vases on the shelves and a writing-table with a typewriter by the window.
When Peter came in, Norah Monogue was sitting in a low chair over a rather
miserable fire; a little pool of light above her head came from two candles
on the mantelpiece--otherwise the room was in darkness.
"Shall I turn on the gas?" she said, when she saw who it was.
"No, leave it as it is, I like it." He sat down in a chair near her and put
a pile of manuscript on the floor beside him. "I've brought it for you to
read," he said, "I'm frightened about it. I suddenly think it is the most
rotten thing that ever was written." He had become very intimate with her
during these seven years. At first he had admired her because she behaved
so splendidly to her abominable mother--then she had obviously been
interested in him, had talked about the things that he was reading and his
life at the bookshop. They had speedily become the very best of friends,
and she understood friendship he thought in the right way--as though she
had herself been a man. And yet she was with that completely feminine, a
woman who had known struggle from the beginning and would know it to the
end; but her personality--humorous, pathetic, understanding--was felt in
her presence so strongly that no one ever forgot her after meeting her.
Some one once said of her, "She's the nicest ugly woman to look at I've
ever seen."
She cared immensely about her appearance. She saved, through blood and
tears, to buy clothes and then always bought the wrong ones. She had
perfect taste about everything except herself, and as soon as it touched
her it was villainous. She was untidy; her hair--streaked already with
grey--was never in its place; her dress was generally undone at the back,
her gloves had holes.
Her mother's death had left her some fifty pounds a year and she earned
another fifty pounds by typewriting. Untidy in everything else, in her work
she was scrupulously neat. She had had a story taken by _The Green Volume_.
Her friends belonged (as indeed just at this time so many people belonged)
to the Cult of the Lily, repeated the witticisms of Oscar Wilde and
treasured the art of Mr. Aubrey Beardsley. Miss Monogue believed in the
movement and rejected the affectations. In 1895, when the reaction began,
she defended her old giants, but looked forward eagerly to new ones. She
worked too hard to have very many friends, and Peter saved her from hours
of loneliness. To him she was the last word in Criticism, in Literature. He
would have liked to have fashioned "Reuben Hallard" after the manner of
_The Green Volume_, but now thought sadly that it was as unlike that manner
as possible; that is why he was afraid to bring it to her.
"You won't like it," he said. "I thought for a moment I had done something
fine when I finished it this afternoon, but now I know that it's bad. It's
all rough and crude. It's terribly disappointing."
"That's all right," she answered quietly. "We won't say any more about it
until I have read it--then we'll talk."
They were silent for a little. He was feeling unhappy and, curiously
enough, frightened. He would have liked to jump up suddenly and shout,
"Well, what's going to happen now?"--not only to Norah Monogue, but to
London, to all the world. The work at the book had, during these years,
upheld him with a sense of purpose and aim. Now, feeling that that work was
bad, his aim seemed wasted, his purpose gone. Here were seven years gone
and he had done nothing--seen nothing, become nothing. What was his future
to be? Where was he to go? What to do? He had reasoned blindly to himself
during these years, that "Reuben Hallard" would make his fortune--now that
seemed the very last thing it would do.
"I knew what you're feeling," she said, "now that the book's done, you're
wondering what's coming next."
"It's more than that. I've been in London seven years. Instead of writing a
novel that no one will want to read I might have been getting my foot in. I
might at any rate have been learning London, finding my way about. Why," he
went on, excitedly, "do you know that, except for a walk or two and going
into the gallery at Covent Garden once or twice and the Proms sometimes and
meeting some people at Herr Gottfried's once or twice I've spent the whole
of my seven years between here and the bookshop--"
"You mustn't worry about that. It was quite the right thing to do. You must
remember that there are two ways of learning things. First through all that
every one has written, then through all that every one is doing. Up to now
you've been studying the first of those two. Now you're ready to take part
in all the hurly-burly, and you will. London will fling you into it as soon
as you're ready, you can be sure."
"I've been awfully happy all this time," he went on, reflectively. "Too
happy I expect. I never thought about anything except reading and writing
the book, and talking to you and Gottfried. Now things will begin I
suppose."
"What kind of things?"
"Oh, well, it isn't likely that I'm going to be let alone for ever. I've
never told you, have I, about my life before I came up to London?"
She hesitated a little before she answered. "No, you've never told me
anything. I could see, of course, that it hadn't been easy."
"How could you see that?"
"Well, it hadn't been easy for either of us. That made us friends. And then
you don't look like a person who would take things easily--ever. Tell me
about your early life before you came here," Norah Monogue said.
She watched his face as he told her. She had found him exceedingly good
company during the seven years that she had known him. They had slipped
into their friendship so easily and so naturally that she had never taken
herself to task about it in any way; it existed as a very delightful
accompaniment to the day's worries and disappointments. She suddenly
realised now with a little surprised shock how bitterly she would miss it
all were it to cease. In the darkened room, with the storm blowing outside,
she felt her loneliness with an acute wave of emotion and self-pity that
was very unlike her. If Peter were to go, she felt, she could scarcely
endure to live on in the dreary building.
Part of his charm from the beginning had been that he was so astoundingly
young, part of his interest that he could be, at times, so amazingly old.
She felt that she herself could be equal neither to his youth nor his
age. She was herself so ordinary a person, but watching him made the most
fascinating occupation, and speculating over his future made the most
wonderful dreams. That he was a personality, that he might do anything, she
had always believed, but there had, until now, been no proof of it in any
work that he had done ... he had had nothing to show ... now at last there
lay there, with her in the room, the evidence of her belief--his book.
But the book seemed now, at this moment, of small account and, as she
watched him, with the candle-light and the last flicker of the fire-light
upon his face, she saw that he had forgotten her and was back again, soul
and spirit, amongst the things of which he was speaking.
His voice was low and monotonous, his eyes staring straight in front of
him, his hands, spread on his knees, gripped the cloth of his trousers.
She would not admit to herself that she was frightened, but her heart was
beating very fast and it was as though some stranger were with her in the
room. It may have been the effect of the candlelight, blowing now in the
wind that came through the cracks in the window panes, but it seemed to her
that Peter's face was changed. His face had lines that had not been there
before, his mouth was thinner and harder and his eyes were old and tired
... she had never seen the man before, that was her impression.
But she had never known anything so vivid. Quietly, as though he were
reciting the story to himself and were not sure whether he were telling it
aloud or no, he began. As he continued she could see the place as though it
was there with her in the room, the little Inn that ran out into the water,
the high-cobbled street, the sea road, the grim stone house standing back
amongst its belt of trees, the Grey Hill, the coast, the fields ... and
then the story--the night of the fight, the beating, the school-days, that
day with his mother (here he gave her actual dialogue as though there
was no word of it that he had forgotten), the funeral--and then at last,
gradually, climbing to its climax breathlessly, the relation of father and
son, its hatred, then its degradation, and last of all that ludicrous scene
in the early morning ... he told her everything.
When he had finished, there was a long silence between them: the fire was
out and the room very cold. The storm had fallen now in a fury about the
house, and the rain lashed the windows and then fell in gurgling stuttering
torrents through the pipes and along the leads. Miss Monogue could not
move; the scene, the place, the incidents were slowly fading away, and the
room slowly coming back again. The face opposite her, also, gradually
seemed to drop, as though it had been a mask, the expression that it had
worn. Peter Westcott, the Peter that she knew, sat before her again; she
could have believed as she looked at him, that the impressions of the last
half-hour had been entirely false. And yet the things that he had told her
were not altogether a surprise; she had not known him for seven years
without seeing signs of some other temper and spirit--controlled indeed,
but nevertheless there, and very different from the pleasant, happy Peter
who played with the Tressiter children and dared to chaff Mrs. Brockett.
"You've paid me a great compliment, telling me this," she said at last.
"Remember we're friends; you've proved that we are by coming like this
to-night. I shan't forget it. At any rate," she added, softly, "it's all
right now, Peter--it's all over now."
"Over! No, indeed," he answered her. "Do you suppose that one can grow up
like that and then shake it off? Sometimes I think ... I'm afraid ..." he
stopped, abruptly biting his lips. "Oh, well," he went on suddenly in a
brighter tone, "there's no need to bother you with all that. It's nothing.
I'm a bit done up over this book, I expect. But that's really why I told
you that little piece of autobiography--because it will help you to
understand the book. The book's come out of all that, and you mightn't have
believed that it was me at all--unless I'd told you these things."
He stood facing her and a sudden awkwardness came over both of them. The
fire was dead (save for one red coal), and the windows rattled like
pistol-shots. He was feeling perhaps that he had told her too much, and the
reserve of his age, the fear of being indiscreet, had come upon him. And
with her there was the difficulty of not knowing exactly what comfort it
was that he wanted, or whether, indeed, any kind of comfort would not be an
insult to him. And, with all that awkwardness, there was also a knowledge
that they had never been so near together before, an intimacy had been
established that night that would never again be broken.
Into their silence there came a knock on the door. When Miss Monogue opened
it the stern figure of Mrs. Brockett confronted her.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Monogue, but is Mr. Westcott here?"
Peter stepped forward.
"Oh, I'm sure I'm sorry to have to disturb you, Mr. Westcott, but there's a
man outside on the steps who insists on seeing you."
"Seeing me?"
"Yes--he won't come in or go away. He won't move until he's seen you. Very
obstinate I'm sure--and such a night! Rather late, too--"
Mrs. Brockett was obviously displeased. Her tall black figure was drawn up
outside the door, as a sentry might guard Buckingham Palace. There was a
confusion of regality, displeasure, and grim humour in her attitude. But
Peter was a favourite of hers. With a hurried goodnight to Miss Monogue he
left the two women standing on the stairs and went to the hall-door.
When he opened it the wind was blowing up the steps so furiously that it
flung him back into the hall again. Outside in the square the world was a
wild tempestuous black, only, a little to the right, the feeble glow of the
lamp blew hither and thither in the wind. The rain had stopped but all the
pipes and funnels of the city were roaring with water. The noise was that
of a thousand chattering voices, and very faintly through the tumult the
bells of St. Matthews in Euston Square tinkled the hour.
On the steps a figure was standing bending beneath the wind. The light from
the hall shone out on to the black slabs of stone, bright with the shining
rain, but his cape covered the man's head. Nevertheless Peter knew at once
who it was.
"Stephen," he said, quietly.
The hall door was flung to with a crash; the wind hurled Peter against
Stephen's body.
"At last! Oh, Stephen! Why didn't you come before?"
"I couldn't, Master Peter. I oughtn't to of come now, but I 'ad to see yer
face a minute. Not more than a minute though--"
"But you must come in now, and get dry things on at once. I'll see Mrs.
Brockett, she'll get you a room. I'm not going to let you go now that--"
"No, Master Peter, I can't stop. I mustn't. I 'aven't been so far away all
this time as you might have thought. But I mustn't see yer unless I can be
of use to yer. And that's what I've come about."
He pressed close up to Peter, held both his hands in his and said: "Look
'ere, Peter boy, yer may be wanting me soon--no, I can't say more than
that. But I want yer--to be on the look-out. Down there at the bookshop
be ready, and then if any sort o' thing should 'appen down along--why I'm
there, d'ye see? I'll be with yer when you want me--"
"Well, but Stephen, what do you mean? What _could_ happen? Anyhow you
mustn't go now, like this. I won't let you go--"
"Ah, but I must now--I must. Maybe we shall be meeting soon enough. Only
I'm there, boy, if yer wants me. And--keep yer eye open--"
In an instant that warm pressure of the hand was gone; the darker black of
Stephen's body no longer silhouetted against the lighter black of the night
sky.
Still in Peter's nose there was that scent of wet clothes and the deep,
husky voice was in his ears. But, save for the faint yellow flickering
lamp, struggling against the tempest, he was alone in the square.
The rain had begun to fall again.
CHAPTER II
THE MAN ON THE LION
I
After the storm, the Fog.
It came, a yellow, shrouded witch down upon the town, clinging, choking,
writhing, and bringing in its train a thousand mysteries, a thousand
visions. It was many years since so dense and cruel a fog had startled
London--in his seven years' experience of the place Peter had known
nothing like it, and his mind flew back to that afternoon of his arrival,
seven years before, and it seemed to him that he was now moving straight on
from that point and that there had been no intervening period at all. The
Signer saw in a fog as a cat sees in the dark, and he led Peter to the
bookshop without hesitation. He saw a good many other things beside his
immediate direction and became comparatively cheerful and happy.
"It is such a good thing that people can't see me," he said. "It relieves
one of a lot of responsibility if one's plain to look at--one can act more
freely." Certainly the Signor acted with very considerable freedom, darting
off suddenly into the fog, apparently with the intention of speaking to
some one, and leaving Peter perfectly helpless and then suddenly darting
back again, catching Peter in tow and tugging him forward once more.
To the bookshop itself the fog made very little difference. There were
always the gas-jets burning over the two dark corners and the top shelves
even in the brightest of weather, were mistily shrouded by dust and
distance. The fog indeed seemed to bring the books out and, whilst the
world outside was so dark, the little shop flickered away under the
gas-jets with little spasmodic leaps into light and colour when the door
opened and blew the quivering flame.
It was not of the books that Peter was thinking this morning. He sat
at a little desk in one dark corner under one of the gas-jets, and Herr
Gottfried, huddled up as usual, with his hair sticking out above the desk
like a mop, sat under the other; an old brass clock, perched on a heap of
books, ticked away the minutes. Otherwise there was silence save when a
customer entered, bringing with him a trail of fog, or some one who was not
a customer passed solemnly, seriously through to the rooms beyond. The shop
was, of course, full of fog, and the books seemed to form into lines and
rows and curves in and out amongst the shelves of their own accord.
Peter meanwhile was most intently thinking. He knew as though he had seen
it written down in large black letters in front of him, that a period was
shortly to be put to his present occupation, but he could not have said how
it was that he knew. The finishing of his book left the way clear for a
number of things to attack his mind. Here in this misty shop he was beset
with questions. Why was he here at all? Had he during these seven years
been of such value, that the shop could not get on without him?... To that
second question he must certainly answer, no. Why then had Mr. Zanti kept
him all this time? Surely because Mr. Zanti was fond of him. Yes, that
undoubtedly was a part of the reason. The relationship, all this time, had
grown very strong and it was only now, when he set himself seriously to
think about it, that he realised how glad he always was when Mr. Zanti
returned from his travels and how happy he had been when it had been
possible for them to spend an afternoon together. Yes, Mr. Zanti was
attached to him; he had often said that he looked upon him as a son, and
sometimes it seemed to Peter that the strange man was about to make some
declaration, something that would clear the air, and explain the world--but
he never did.
Peter had discovered strangely little about him. He knew now that Mr.
Zanti's connection with the bookshop was of the very slenderest, that that
was indeed entirely Herr Gottfried's affair, and that it was used by the
large and smiling gentleman as a cloak and a covering. As a cloak and a
covering to what? Well, at any rate, to some large and complicated game
that a great number of gentlemen were engaged in playing. Peter knew a good
many of them now by sight--untidy, dirty, many, foreigners most, all it
seemed to Peter, with an air of attempting something that they could never
hope to accomplish. Anything that they might do he was quite sure that they
would bungle and, with the hearts of children, the dirty tatters of foreign
countries, and the imaginations of exuberant story-tellers, he could see
them go, ignorantly, to dreadful catastrophes.
Peter was even conscious that the shop was tolerantly watched by
inspectors, detectives, and policemen, and that it was all too
childish--whatever it was--for any one to take it in the least seriously.
But nevertheless there were elements of very real danger in all those
blundering mysteries that had been going on now for so many years, and it
was at any rate of the greatest importance to Peter, because he earned his
living by it, because of his love for Stephen and his affection for Mr.
Zanti, and because if once anything were to happen his one resting-place in
this wild sea of London would be swept away and he would be utterly
resourceless and destitute.
This last fact bit him, as he sat there in the shop, with sudden and acute
sharpness. What a fool he had been, all this time, to let things slide! He
should have been making connections, having irons in the fire, bustling
about--how could he have sat down thus happily and easily for seven years,
as though such a condition of things could continue for ever? He had had
wild ideas of "Reuben Hallard" making his fortune!... that showed his
ignorance of the world. Let him begin to bustle. He would not lose another
moment. There were two things for him now to do, to beard editors (those
mythical creatures!) in their caves and to find out where Stephen lived ...
both these things as soon as possible.
In the afternoon the fog became of an impenetrable thickness, and beyond
the shop it seemed that there was pandemonium. Some fire, blazing at some
street corner, flared as though it were the beating heart of all that
darkness, and the cries of men and the slow, clumsy passing of the
traffic filled the bookshop with sound.
No customers came; Herr Gottfried worked away at his desk, the brass clock
ticked, Peter sat listening, waiting.
Herr Gottfried broke the silence once with: "Peter, my friend, at ten
o'clock to-night there will be a little music in my room. Herr Dettzolter
and his 'cello--a little Brahms--if the fog is not too much for you."
Peter accepted. He loved the low-roofed attic, the clouds of tobacco, the
dark corner where he sat and listened to Herr Gottfried's friends (German
exiles like Herr Gottfried playing their beloved music). It was his only
luxury.
Once two men whom Peter knew very well by sight came into the shop. They
were, he believed, Russians--one of them was called Oblotzky--a tall,
bearded fierce-looking creature who could speak no English.
Then suddenly, just as Peter was thinking of finding his way home to the
boarding-house, Mr. Zanti appeared. He had been away for the last two
months, but there he was, his huge body filling the shop, the fog circling
his beard like a halo, beaming, calm, and unflustered as though he had just
come from the next street.
"Damned fog," he said, and then he went and put his hand on Peter's
shoulder and looked down at him smiling.
"Well, 'ow goes the shop?" he said.
"Oh, well enough," said Peter.
"What 'ave you been doing, boy? Finished the book?"
"Yes."
"Ah, good. You'll be ze great man, Peter." He looked down at him proudly as
a father might look upon his son.
"Ze damnedest fog--" he began, then suddenly he stopped and Peter felt his
hand on his shoulder tighten. "Ze damnedest--" Mr. Zanti said slowly.
Peter looked up into his face. He was listening. Herr Gottfried, standing
in the middle of the shop, was also listening.
For a moment there was an intense breathless silence. The noise from the
street seemed also, for the instant, to be hushed.
Very slowly, very quietly, Mr. Zanti went to the street door and opened it.
A cloud of yellow fog blew into the shop.
"Ze damnedest fog ..." repeated Mr. Zanti, still very slowly, as though he
were thinking.
"Any one been?" he said at last to Herr Gottfried.
"Oblotzky."
Mr. Zanti, after flinging a strange, half-affectionate, half-inquisitive
look at Peter, went through into the room beyond.
"What ..." said Peter.
"Often enough," interrupted Herr Gottfried, shuffling back to his seat,
"young boys want to know--too much ... often enough."
II
The Tressiter children, of whom there were eight, loved Peter with a
devotion that was in fact idolatry. They loved him because he understood
them so completely and from Anne Susan, aged one and a half, to Rupert
Bernard, aged nine, there was no member of the family who did not repose
complete trust and confidence in Peter's opinions, and rejoice in his
wonderful grasp of the things in the world that really mattered. Other
persons might be seen shifting, slowly and laboriously, their estimates
and standards in order to bring them into line with the youthful Tressiter
estimates and standards.... Peter had his ready without any shifting.
First of all the family did Robin Tressiter, aged four, adore Peter. He
was a fat, round child with brown eyes and brown hair, and an immense and
overwhelming interest in the world and everything contained therein. He
was a silent child, with a delightful fat chuckle when really amused and
pleased, and he never cried. His interest in the world led him into strange
and terrible catastrophes, and Mrs. Tressiter was always far too busy and
too helpless to be of any real assistance. On this foggy afternoon, Peter,
arriving at Brockett's after much difficulty and hesitation, found Robin
Tressiter, on Miss Monogue's landing, with his head fastened between the
railings that overlooked the hall below. He was stuck very fast indeed, but
appeared to be perfectly unperturbed--only every now and again he kicked a
little with his legs.
"I've sticked my neck in these silly things," he said, when he saw Peter.
"You must pull at me."
Peter tried to wriggle the child through, but he found that he must have
some one to help him. Urging Robin not to move he knocked at Miss Monogue's
door. She opened it, and he stepped back with an apology when he saw that
some one else was there.
"It's a friend of mine," Norah Monogue said, "Come in and be introduced,
Peter."
"It's only," Peter explained, "that young Robin has got his head stuck in
the banisters and I want some one to help me--"
Between them they pulled the boy through to safety. He chuckled.
"I'll do it again," he said.
"I'd rather you didn't," said Peter.
"Then I won't," said Robin. "I did it 'cause Rupert said I
couldn't--Rupert's silly ass."
"You mustn't call your brother names or I won't come and see you in bed."
"You will come?" said Robin, very earnestly.
"I will," said Peter, "to-night, if you don't call your brother names."
"I think," said Robin, reflectively, "that now I will hunt for the lion and
the tigers on the stairs--"
"Bring him into my room until his bedtime," said Miss Monogue, laughing.
"It's safer. Mrs. Tressiter is busy and has quite enough children in with
her already."
So Peter brought Robin into Miss Norah Monogue's room and was introduced,
at once, to Clare Elizabeth Rossiter--so easily and simply do the furious
events of life occur.
She was standing with her back to the window, and the light from Miss
Monogue's candles fell on her black dress and her red-gold hair. As he came
towards her he knew at once that she was the little girl who had talked to
him on a hill-top one Good Friday afternoon. He could almost hear her now
as she spoke to Crumpet--the candle-light glow was dim and sacred in the
foggy room; the colour of her hair was filled more wonderfully with light
and fire. Her hands were so delicate and fine as they moved against her
black dress that they seemed to have some harmony of their own like a piece
of music or a running stream. She wore blue feathers in her black hat. She
did not know him at all when he came forward, but she smiled down at Robin,
who was clinging on to Peter's trousers.
"This is a friend of mine, Mr. Westcott," Miss Monogue said.
She turned gravely and met him. They shook hands and then she sat down;
suddenly she bent down and took Robin into her lap. He sat there sucking
his thumb, and taking every now and again a sudden look at her hair and the
light that the candles made on it, but he was very silent and quiet which
was unlike him because he generally hated strangers.
Peter sat down and was filled with embarrassment; his heart also was
beating very quickly.
"I have met you before," he said suddenly. "You don't remember."
"No--I'm afraid--"
"You had once, a great many years ago, a dog called Crumpet. Once in
Cornwall ... one Good Friday, he tumbled into a lime-pit. A boy--"
"Why, of course," she broke in, "I remember you perfectly. Why of all the
things! Norah, do you realise? Your friend and I have known each other for
eight years. Isn't the world a small place! Why I remember perfectly now!"
She turned and talked to Norah Monogue, and whilst she talked he took her
in. Although now she was grown up she was still strangely like that little
girl in Cornwall. He realised that now, as he looked at her, he had still
something of the same feeling about her as he had had then--that she was
some one to be cared for, protected, something fragile that the world might
break if she were not guarded.
She was porcelain but without anything of Meredith's "rogue." Because Peter
was strong and burly the contrast of her appealing fragility attracted him
all the more. Had she not been so perfectly proportioned her size would
have been a defect; but now it was simple that her delicacy of colour and
feature demanded that slightness and slenderness of build. Her hair was of
so burning a red-gold that its colour gave her precisely the setting that
she required. She seemed, as she sat there, a little helpless, and Peter
fancied that she was wishing him to understand that she wanted friends who
should assist her in rather a rough-and-tumble world. Just as she had once
appealed to him to save Crumpet, so now she seemed to appeal for some far
greater assistance. Ah! how he could protect her! Peter thought.
Something in Peter's steady gaze seemed suddenly to surprise her. She
stopped--the colour mounted into her cheeks--she bent down over the boy.
They were both of them supremely conscious of one another. There was a
moment.... Then, as men feel, when some music that has held them ceases,
they came, with a sense of breathlessness, back to Norah Monogue and her
dim room.
Peter was conscious that Robin had watched them both. He almost, Peter
thought, chuckled to himself, in his fat solemn way.
"Miss Rossiter," Norah Monogue said--and her voice seemed a long way
away--"has just come back from Germany and has brought some wonderful
photographs with her. She was going to show them to me when you came in--"
"Let me see them too, please," said Peter.
Robin was put on to the floor and he went slowly and with ceremony to an
old brown china Toby that had his place on a little shelf by the door. This
Toby--his name was Nathaniel--was an old friend of Robin's. Robin sat on
the floor in a corner and told Nathaniel the things about the world that he
had noticed. Every now and again he paused for Nathaniel's reply; he was
always waiting for him to speak, and the continued silence of a now ancient
acquaintance had not shaken Robin's faith.... Robin forgot the rest of the
company.
"Photographs?" said Peter.
"Yes. Germany. I have just been there." She looked up at him eagerly and
then opened a portfolio that she had behind her chair and began to show
them.
He bent gravely forward feeling that all of this was pretence of the most
absurd kind and that she also knew that it was.
But they were very beautiful photographs--the most beautiful that he had
ever seen, and as each, in its turn, was shown for a moment his eyes met
hers and his mouth almost against his will, smiled. His hand too was very
near the silk of her dress. If he moved it a very little more then they
would touch. He felt that if that happened the room would immediately burst
into flame, the air was so charged with the breathless tension; but he
watched the little space of air between his fingers and the black silk and
his hand did not move.
They were all very silent as she turned the photographs over and there were
no sounds but the sharp crackling of the fire as it burst into little
spurts of flame, the noise that her hand made on the silk of her dress as
she turned each picture and the little mutterings of Robin in his corner as
he talked to his Toby.
Peter had never seen anything like this photography. The man had used
his medium as delicately as though he had drawn every line. Things stood
out--castles, a hill, trees, running water, a shining road--and behind them
there was darkness and mystery.
Suddenly Peter cried out:
"Oh! that!" he said. It was the photograph of a great statue standing
on a hill that overlooked a river. That was all that could be seen--the
background was dark and vague, it was the statue of a man who rode a lion.
The lion was of enormous size and struggling to be free, but the man,
naked, with his utmost energy, his back set, his arms stiff, had it in
control, but only just in control ... his face was terrible in the agony of
his struggle and that struggle had lasted for a great period of time ...
but at length, when all but defeated, he had mastered his beast.
"Ah that!" Miss Rossiter held it up that Norah Monogue might see it better.
"That is on a hill outside a little town in Bavaria. They put it up to a
Herr Drexter who had done something, saved their town from riot I think.
It's a fine thing, isn't it, and I think it so clever of them to have made
him middle-aged with all the marks of the struggle about him--those scars,
his face--so that you can see that it's all been tremendous--"
Peter spoke very slowly--"I'd give anything to see that!" he said.
"Well, it's in Bavaria; I wonder that it isn't better known. But funnily
enough the people that were with me at the time didn't like it; it was only
afterwards, when I showed them the photograph that they saw that there
might have been ... aren't people funny?" she ended abruptly, appealing to
him with a kind of freemasonry against the world.
But, still bending his brows upon it he said insistently--
"Tell me more about it--the place--everything--"
"There isn't really anything to tell; it's only a very ordinary, very
beautiful, little German town. There are many orchards and this forest at
the back of it and the river running through it--little cobbled streets and
bridges over the river. And then, outside, this great statue on the hill--"
"Ah, but it's wonderful, that man's face--I'd like to go to that town--" He
felt perhaps that he was taking it all too seriously for he turned round
and said laughing: "The boy's daft on lions--Robin, come and look at this
lion--here's an animal for you."
The boy put down the Toby and walked slowly and solemnly toward them. He
climbed on to Peter's knee and looked at the photograph: "Oh! it _is_ a
lion!" he said at last, rubbing his fat finger on the surface of it to see
of what material it was made. "Oh! for me!" he said at last in a shrill,
excited voice and clutching on to it with one hand. "For me--to hang over
my bed."
"No, old man," Peter answered, "it belongs to the lady here. She must take
it away with her."
"Oh! but _I_ want it!" his eyes began to fill with tears.
Miss Rossiter bent down and kissed him. He looked at her distrustfully. "I
know now I'm not to have it," he said at last, eyeing her, "or you wouldn't
have kissed me."
"Come on," said Peter, afraid of a scene, "the lady will show you the lion
another day--meantime I think bed is the thing."
He mounted the boy on to his shoulder and turned round to Miss Rossiter to
say "Good-bye." The photograph lay on the table between them--"I shan't
forget that," he said.
"Oh! but you must come and see us one day. My mother will be delighted.
There are a lot more photographs at home. You must bring him out one day,
Norah," she said turning to Miss Monogue.
If he had been a primitive member of society in the Stone Age he would at
this point, have placed Robin carefully on the floor and have picked Miss
Rossiter up and she should never again have left his care.
As it was he said, "I shall be delighted to come one day."
"We will talk about Cornwall--"
"And Germany."
His hand was burning hot when he gave it her--he knew that she was looking
at his eyes.
He was abruptly conscious of Miss Monogue's voice behind him.
"I've read a quarter of the book, Peter."
He wondered as he turned to her how it could be possible to regard two
women so differently. To be so sternly critical of one--her hair that was
nearly down, a little ink on her thumb, her blouse that was unbuttoned--and
of the other to see her all in a glory so that her whole body, for colour
and light and beautiful silence, had no equal amongst the possessions of
the earth or the wonders of heaven. Here there was a button undone, there
there was a flaming fire.
"I won't say anything," Miss Monogue said, "until I've read more, but it's
going to be extraordinarily good I think." What did he care about "Reuben
Hallard?" What did that matter when he had Claire Elizabeth Rossiter in
front of him.
And then he pulled himself up. It must matter. How delighted an hour ago
those words would have made him.
"Oh! you think there's something in it?" he said.
"We'll wait," she answered, but her smile and the sparkle in her eyes
showed what she thought. What a brick she was!
He turned round back to Miss Rossiter.
"My first book," he said laughing. "Of course we're excited--"
And then he was out of the room in a moment with Robin clutching his hair.
He did not want to look at her again ... he had so wonderful a picture!
And as he left Robin in the heart of his family he heard him say--
"_Such_ a lion, Mother, a lady's got--with a man on it--a 'normous lion,
and the man hasn't any clothes on, and his legs are all scratched...."
CHAPTER III
ROYAL PERSONAGES ARE COMING
I
Peter, sitting obscurely in a corner of Herr Gottfried's attic on the
evening of this eventful day and listening to that string sextette that was
written by Brahms when he was nineteen years of age (and it came straight
from the heights of Olympus if any piece of music ever did), was conscious
of the eyes of Herr Lutz.
Herr Lutz was Herr Gottfried's greatest friend and was notable for three
things, his enormous size, his surpassing skill on the violoncello and his
devoted attachment to the veriest shrew of a little sharp-boned wife that
ever crossed from Germany into England. For all these things Peter loved
him, but Herr Lutz was never very actively conscious of Peter because from
the moment that he entered Herr Gottfried's attic to the moment he left it
his soul was wrapped in the music and in nothing else whatever. To-night
as usual he was absorbed and after the second movement of the sextette
had come to a most rapturous conclusion he was violently dissatisfied and
pulled them back over it again, because they had been ragged and their
enthusiasm had got the better of their time and they were altogether
disgraceful villains, but through all of this his grey eyes were upon
Peter.
Peter, watching from his dark corner even felt that the 'cello was being
played especially for his benefit and that Herr Lutz was talking all the
time to him through the medium of his instrument. It may have been that he
himself was in a state of most exalted emotion, and never until the end
of all things mortal and possibly all things eternal will he forget that
sextette by Brahms; he may perhaps have put more into Herr Lutz than was
really there, but it is certain that he was conscious of the German's
attention.
As is common to all persons of his age and condition he was amazed at the
glorified vision of everyday things. In Herr Gottfried's flat there was a
model of Beethoven in plaster of Paris, a bed, and a tin wash-hand stand,
a tiny bookshelf containing some tattered volumes of Reclame's Universal
Bibliothek, a piano and six cane-bottomed chairs covered at the moment by
the stout bodies of the six musicians--nothing here to light the world with
wonder!--and yet to-night, Peter, sitting on a cushion in a dark corner
watched the glories of Olympus; the music of heaven was in his ear and
before him, laughing at him, smiling, vanishing only to reappear more
rapturous and beautiful than ever was the lady, the wonderful and only
lady.
His cheeks were hot and his heart was beating so loudly that it was surely
no wonder that Herr Lutz had discovered his malady. The sextette came to an
end and the six musicians sat, for a moment, silent on their chairs whilst
they dragged themselves into the world that they had for a moment forsaken.
That was a great instant of silence when every one in the room was
concerned entirely with their souls and had forgotten that they so much as
had bodies at all. Then Herr Lutz gathered his huge frame together, stuck
his hand into his beard and cried aloud for drink.
Beer was provided--conversation was, for the next two hours, volcanic. When
twelve o'clock struck in the church round the corner the meeting was broken
up.
Herr Lutz said to Peter, "There is still the 'verdammte' fog. Together we
will go part of the way."
So they went together. But on the top of the dark and crooked staircase
Herr Gottfried stopped Peter.
"Boy," he said and he rubbed his nose with his finger as he always did when
he was nervous and embarrassed, "I shouldn't go to the shop for a week or
two if I were you."
"Not go?" said Peter astonished.
"No--for reason why--well--who knows? The days come and they go, and again
it will be all right for you. I should rub up the Editors, I should--"
"Rub up the Editors?" repeated Peter still confused.
"Yes--have other irons, you know--often enough other irons are handy--"
"Did Zanti tell you to say this to me?"
"No, he says nothing. It is only I--as a friend, you understand--"
"Well, thank you very much," said Peter at last. Herr Gottfried, he
reflected, must think that he, Peter, had mints of money if he could so
lightly and on so slender a warning propose his abandoning his precious two
pounds a week. Moreover there was loyalty to Mr. Zanti to be considered....
Anyway, what did it all mean?
"I can't go," he said at last, "unless Zanti says something to me. But what
are they all up to?"
"Seven years," said Herr Gottfried darkly, "has the Boy been in the
shop--of so little enquiring a mind is he."
And he would say nothing further. Peter followed Herr Lutz' huge body into
the street. They took arms when they encountered the fog and went stumbling
along together.
"You are in lof," said Herr Lutz, breathlessly avoiding a lamp post.
"Yes," said Peter, "I am."
"Ah," said Herr Lutz giving Peter's arm a squeeze. "It is the only
thing--The--Only--Thing.... However it may be for you--bad or ill--whether
she scold or smile, it is a most blessed state."
He spoke when under stress of emotion, in capitals with a pause before the
important word.
"It won't come to anything," said Peter. "It can't possibly. I haven't got
anything to offer anybody--an uncertain two pounds a week."
"You have a--Career," said Herr Lutz solemnly, "I know--I have often
watched you. You have written a--Book. Karl Gottfried has told me. But all
that does not matter," he went on impetuously. "It does not matter what you
get--It is--Being--in--Love--The--divine--never--to--be--equalled--State--"
The enormous German stopped on an island in the middle of the road and
waved his arms. On every side of him through the darkness the traffic
rolled and thundered. He waved his arms and exulted because he had been
married to a shrew of a wife for thirty years. During that time she had
never given him a kind word, not a loving look, but Peter knew that out of
all the fog and obscurity that life might bring to him that Word, sprung
though it might be out of Teutonic sentiment and Heller's beer, that word,
at any rate, was true.
II
London, in the morning, recovered from the fog and prepared to receive
Foreign Personages. They were not to arrive for another week, but it was
some while since anything of the kind had occurred and London meant to
carry it out well. The newspapers were crowded with details; personal
anecdotes about the Personages abounded--a Procession was to take place,
stands began to climb into the air and the Queen and her visitors were to
have addresses presented to them at intervals during the Progress.
To Peter this all seemed supremely unimportant. At the same moment, to
confuse little things with big ones, Mrs. Lazarus suddenly decided to die.
She had been unwell for many months and her brain had been very clouded
and temper uncertain--but now suddenly she felt perfectly well, her
intelligence was as sharp and bright as it had ever been and the doctor
gave her a week at the utmost. She would like, she said, to have seen the
dear Queen ride through the streets amidst the plaudits of the populace,
but she supposed it was not to be. So with a lace cap on her head and her
nose sharp and shiny she sat up in bed, flicked imaginary bread pellets
along the counterpane, talked happily to the boarding-house and made ready
to die.
The boarding-house was immensely moved, and Peter, during these days came
back early from the bookshop in order to sit with her. He was surprised
that he cared as he did. The old lady had been for so long a part of his
daily background that he could no more believe in her departure than he
could in the sudden disappearance of the dark green curtains and the marble
pillars in the dining-room. She had had, from the first, a great liking
for Peter. He had never known how much of that affection was an incoherent
madness and he had never in any way analysed his own feeling for her, but
now he was surprised at the acute sharpness of his regret.
On a bright evening of sunshine, about six o'clock, she died--Mrs.
Brockett, the Tressiters, Norah Monogue also were with her at the time.
Peter had been with her alone during the earlier afternoon and although she
had been very weak she had talked to him in her trembling voice (it was
like the noise that two needles knocking against one another would make),
and she had told him how she believed in him.
She made him ashamed with the things that she said about him. He had paid
her little enough attention, he thought, during these seven years. There
were so many things that he might have done. As the afternoon sun streamed
into the room and the old lady, her hands like ivory upon the counterpane,
fell into a quiet sleep he wondered--Was he bad or good? Was he strong or
weak? These things that people said, the affection that people gave him ...
he deserved none of it. Surely never were two so opposite presences bound
together in one body--he was profoundly selfish, profoundly unselfish,
loving, hard, kind, cruel, proud, humble, generous, mean, completely
possessed, entirely uncontrolled, old beyond his years, young beyond
belief--
As he sat there beside the sleeping old lady he felt a contempt of himself
that was beyond all expression, and also he felt a pride at the things that
he knew that he might do, a pride that brought the blood to his cheeks.
The Man on the Lion? The Man under the Lion's Paw?... The years would show.
A quiet happy serenity passed over Mrs. Lazarus' face and he called the
others into the room.
Stern Mrs. Brockett was crying. Mrs. Lazarus woke for a moment and smiled
upon them all. She took Peter's hand.
"Be good to old people," she breathed very faintly--then she closed her
eyes and so died.
Below in the street a boy was calling the evening papers. "Arrival of the
Prince and Princess of Schloss.... Arrival of the Prince and--"
They closed the windows and pulled down the blinds.
II
Thursday was to be the day of Royal Processions, and on Friday old Mrs.
Lazarus was to be buried.
To Peter, Wednesday was a day of extravagant confusion--extravagant because
it was a day on which nothing was done. Customers were not served in the
shop. Editors were not attacked in their lairs. Nothing was done, every one
hung about.
Peter could not name any one as directly responsible for this state of
things, nor could he define his own condition of mind; only he knew that he
could not leave the shop. About its doors and passages there fell all day
an air of suspense. Mr. Zanti was himself a little responsible for this; it
was so unusual for that large and smiling gentleman to waste the day idly;
and yet there he was, starting every now and again for the door, looking
into the empty yard from the windows at the back of the house, disappearing
sometimes into the rooms above, reappearing suddenly with an air of
unconcern a little too elaborately contrived.
Peter felt that Mr. Zanti had a great deal that he would like to say to
him, and once or twice he came to him and began "Oh, I say, boy," and then
stopped with an air of confusion as though he had recollected something,
suddenly.
There was a Russian girl, too, who was about the shop, uneasily on this
day. She was thin, slight, very dark; fierce eyes and hands that seemed
to be always curving. Her name was Maria Notroska and she was engaged to
the big Russian, Oblotzky, whom Peter had seen, on other days up and down
through the shop. She spoke to no one. She knew but little English--but she
would stand for hours at the door looking out into the street. It was a
long uneasy day and Peter was glad when the evening, in slow straight lines
of golden light, came in through the black door. The evening too seemed to
bring forward a renewed hope of seeing Stephen again--enquiries could bring
nothing from either Zanti or Herr Gottfried; they had never heard of the
man, oh no!... Stephen Brant? Stephen ...? No! Never--
That sudden springing out of the darkness had meant something however.
Peter could still feel his wet clothes and see his shining beard. Yes, if
there were any trouble Stephen would be there. What were they all about?
Peter closed the shutters of the shop that night without having any
explanation to offer. Mr. Zanti was indeed a strange man; when Peter turned
to go he stopped him with his hand on his shoulder: "Peter, boy," he said,
whispering, "come upstairs--I have something to tell you."
Peter was about to follow him back into the shop when suddenly the man
shook his head. "No, not to-night," he said and almost pushed him into the
street.
Peter, looking back, saw that he was talking to the Russian girl.
But the day was not over with that. Wondering about Mr. Zanti, thinking
that the boarding-house would be gloomy now after Mrs. Lazarus' death,
recalling, above all, to himself every slightest incident of his meeting
with Miss Rossiter, Peter, crossing Oxford Street, flung his broad body
against a fat and soft one. There was nearly a collapse.
The other man and Peter grasped arms to steady themselves, and then behold!
the fat body was Bobby Galleon's. Bobby Galleon, after all these years! But
there could be no possible doubt about it. There he stood, standing back a
little from the shock, his bowler hat knocked to one side of his head, a
deprecating, apologetic smile on his dear fat face! A man of course now,
but very little altered in spite of all the years; a little fatter perhaps,
his body seemed rather shapeless--but those same kind eyes, that large
mouth and the clear straight look in all his face that spoke him to all
the world for what he was. Peter felt exactly as though, after a long and
tiring journey, he had tumbled at last into a large arm-chair. He was
excited, he waved his arms:
"Bobby, Bobby," he cried, so loudly that two old women in bonnets, crossing
the road like a couple of hens turned to look at him.
"I'm sorry--" Bobby said vaguely, and then slowly recognition came into his
eyes.
"Peter!" he said in a voice lost in amazement, the colour flooding his
cheeks.
It was all absurdly moving; they were quite ridiculously stirred, both of
them. The lamps were coming out down Oxford Street, a pale saffron sky
outlined the dark bulk of the Church that is opposite Mudie's shop and
stands back from the street, a little as though it wondered at all the
noise and clamour, a limpid and watery blue still lingered, wavering, in
the evening sky.
They turned into an A.B.C. shop and ordered glasses of milk and they sat
and looked at one another. They had altered remarkably little and to both
of them, although the roar of the Oxford Street traffic was outside the
window, it might have been, easily enough, that a clanging bell would soon
summon them back to ink-stained desks and Latin exercises.
"Why, in heaven's name, did you ever get out of my sight so completely?
I wrote to Treliss again and again but I don't suppose anything was
forwarded."
"They don't know where I am."
"But why did you never write to me?"
"Why should I? I wanted to do something first--to show you-"
"What rot! Is that friendship? I call that the most selfish thing I've ever
known." No, obviously enough, Bobby could never understand that kind of
thing. With him, once a friend always a friend, that is what life is for.
With Peter, once an adventure always an adventure--_that_ is what life
is for--but as soon as a friend ceases to be an adventure, why then--
But Bobby had not ceased to be an adventure. He was, as he sat there, more
of one than he had ever been before.
"What have you been doing all these years?"
"Been in a bookshop."
"In a bookshop?"
"Yes, selling second-hand books."
"What else?"
"Oh reading a lot... seeing one or two people... and some music." Peter was
vague; what after all had he been doing?
Bobby looked at him tenderly and affectionately. "You want seeing
after--you look fierce, as you used to when you'd been having a bad time
at school. The day they all hissed you."
"But I haven't been having a bad time. I've had a jolly good one. By the
way," Peter leant forward, "have you seen or heard anything of Cards?"
Bobby coloured a little. "No, not for a long time. His mother died. He's a
great swell now with heaps of money, I believe. I'm not his sort a bit."
They drank milk and beamed upon one another. Peter wanted to tell Bobby
everything. That was one of his invaluable qualities, that one did like
telling him everything. Talking to him eagerly now, Peter wondered how it
could be that he'd ever managed to get through these many years without
him. Bobby simply existed to help his friends and that was the kind of
person that Peter had so often wanted.
But in it all--in their talking, their laughing together, their remembering
certain catchwords that they had used together, there was nothing more
remarkable than their finding each other exactly as they had been during
those years before at Dawson's. Not even Bobby's tremendous statement could
alter that.
"I'm married," he said.
"Married?"
Bobby blushed. "Yes--two years now--got a baby. She's quite splendid!"
"Oh!" Peter was a little blank. Somehow this did remove Bobby a little--it
also made him, suddenly, strangely old.
"But it doesn't make any difference," Bobby said, leaning forward eagerly
and putting his hand on Peter's arm--"not the least difference. You two
will simply get on famously. I've so often told her about you and we've
always been hoping that you'd turn up again--and now she'll be simply
delighted."
But it made a difference to Peter, nevertheless. He went back a little into
his shell; Bobby with a home and a wife and a baby couldn't spare time, of
course, for ordinary friends. But even here his conscience pricked him. Did
he not know Bobby well enough to be assured that he was as firm and solid
as a rock, that nothing at all could move or change him? And after all, was
not he, Peter, wishing to be engaged and married and the father of a family
and the owner of a respectable mansion?
Clare Elizabeth Rossiter! How glorious for an instant were the thin,
sharp-faced waitresses, the little marble-topped tables, the glass windows
filled with sponge-cakes and hard-boiled eggs!
Peter came out of his shell again. "I shall just love to come and see her,"
he said.
"Well, just as soon as you can. By Jove, old man, I'll never let you go
again. Now tell me, everything--all that you have done since I saw you."
Peter told him a great deal--not quite everything. He told him nothing, for
instance, about meeting a certain young lady on a Good Friday afternoon and
he passed over some of the Scaw House incidents as speedily as possible.
"And since I came up to London," he went on, "the whole of my time has been
spent either in the bookshop or the boarding-house. They're awfully good
sorts at both, but it's all very uncertain of course and instead of writing
a novel that no one will want to read I ought to have been getting on to
editors. I've a kind of feeling that the bookshop's going to end very
shortly."
"Let me see the book," said Bobby.
"Yes, certainly," said Peter.
"Anyhow, we go on together from this time forth--72 Cheyne Walk is my
little house. When will you come--to-morrow?"
"Oh! To-morrow! I don't think I can. There are these Processions and
things--I think I ought to be in the shop. But I'll come very soon. This is
the name of my boarding-house--"
Bobby, as he saw his friend, broad-shouldered, swinging along, pass down
the street with the orange lamps throwing chains of light about him, was
confronted again by that old elusive spirit that he had known so well at
school. Peter liked him, Peter was glad to see him again, but there were so
many other Peters, so many doors closed against intruders.... Bobby would
always, to the end, be for Peter, outside these doors. He knew it quite
certainly, a little sadly, as he climbed on to his bus. What was there
about Peter? Something hard, fierce, wildly hostile ... a devil, a God.
Something that Bobby going quietly home to his comfortable dinner, might
watch and guard and even love but something that he could never share.
Now, in the cool and quiet of the Chelsea Embankment as he walked to his
door, Bobby sighed a little because life was so comfortable.
CHAPTER IV
A LITTLE DUST
I
That night Peter had one of his old dreams. In all the seven years that he
had been in London the visions that had so often made his nights at Scaw
House terrible had never come to him. Now, after so long an interval they
returned.
He thought that he was once more back on the sea-road above Treliss, that
the wind was blowing in a tempest and that the sea below him was foaming on
to the rocks. He could see those rocks like sharp black teeth, stretching
up to him--a grey sky was above his head and to his right stretched the
grey and undulating moor.
Round the bend of the road, beyond the point that he could see, he thought
that Clare Rossiter was waiting for him. He must get there before it struck
eleven or something terrible would happen to him. Only a few minutes
remained to him, and only a little stretch of the thin white road, but two
things prevented his progress; first, the wind blew so fiercely in his face
that it drove him back and for every step that he took forward, although
his head was bent and his teeth set, he seemed to lose two. Also, across
the moor voices cried to him and they seemed to him like the voices of
Stephen and Bobby Galleon, and they were pleading to him to stop; he paused
to listen but the cries mingled softly with the wind and he could hear
bells from the town below the road begin to strike eleven. The sweat was
pouring from him--she was waiting for him, and if he did not reach her
all would be lost. He would never see her again; he began to cry, to beat
against the wind with his hands. The voices grew louder, the wind more
vehement, the jagged edges of the rocks sharper in their outline; the bells
were still striking, but as, at last, breathless, a sharp terror at his
heart, he turned the corner there fell suddenly a silence. At last he was
there--only a few trees blowing a little, a little white dust curling over
the road, as though there had been no rain, and then suddenly the laughing
face of Cards, no longer now a boy, but a man, more handsome than ever,
laughing at him as he battled round the corner.
Cards shouted something to him, suddenly the road was gone and Peter was in
the water, fighting for his life. He felt all the breathless terror of
approaching death--he was sinking--black, silent water rose above and
around him. For an instant he caught once more the sight of sky and land.
Cards was still on the road and beside him was a woman whose face Peter
could not see. Cards was still laughing. Then in the darkening light the
Grey Hill was visible against the horizon and instead of the Giant's Finger
there was that figure of the rider on the lion.... The waters closed....
Peter woke to a grey, stormy morning. The sweat was pouring down his face,
his body was burning hot and his hands were trembling.
II
When he came down to breakfast his head was aching and heavy and Mrs.
Brockett's boiled egg and hard crackling toast were impossible. Miss
Monogue had things to tell him about the book--it was wonderful, tremendous
... beyond everything that she had believed possible. But strangely enough,
he was scarcely interested. He was pleased of course, but he was weighted
with the sense of overhanging catastrophe. The green bulging curtains,
the row of black beads about Mrs. Brockett's thin neck, the untidy
egg-shells--everything depressed him.
"I have had a rotten night," he said, "nightmares. I suppose I ate
something--anyhow it's a gloomy day."
"Yes," said Miss Monogue, pinning some of her hair in at the wrong place
and unpinning other parts of it that happened by accident to be right. "I'm
afraid it's a poor sort of day for the Procession. But Miss Black and I are
going to do our best to see it. It may clear up later." He had forgotten
about the Procession and he wished that she would keep her hair tidier.
He wanted to ask her whether she had seen Miss Rossiter but had not the
courage. A little misty rain made feathery noises against the window-pane.
"Well, I must go down to the shop," he said, finding his umbrella in the
hall.
"I think it's superb," she said, referring back to the book. "You won't be
having to go down to the shop much longer."
It was really surprising that he cared so little. He banged the door behind
him and did not see her eyes as she watched him go.
Processions be damned! He wished that the wet, shining street were not so
strangely like the sea-road at Treliss, and that the omnibuses at a
distance did not murmur like the sea. People, black and funereal, were
filling stands down Oxford Street; soldiers were already lining the way,
the music of bands could be heard some streets away.
He was in a thoroughly bad temper and scowled at the people who passed him.
He hated Royal Processions, he hated the bookshop, he hated all his friends
and he wished that he were dead. Here he had been seven years, he
reflected, and nothing had been done. Where was his city paved with gold?
Where his Fame, where his Glory?
He even found himself envying those old Treliss days. There at any rate
things had happened. There had been an air, a spirit. Fighting his
father--or at any rate, escaping from his father--had been something vital.
And here he was now, an ill-tempered, useless youth, earning two pounds a
week, in love with some one who was scarcely conscious of his existence. He
cursed the futility of it all.
And so fuming, he crossed the threshold of the bookshop, and, unwitting,
heedless, left for ever behind him the first period of his history.
"Programme of the Royal Procession," a man was shouting--"Coloured
'Andkerchief with Programme of Royal Procession--"
Peter, stepping into the dark shop, was conscious of Mr. Zanti's white face
and that behind him was standing Stephen.
III
At the sight of their faces, of their motionless bodies and at the solemn
odd expression of their eyes as they looked past him into the dark expanse
of the door through which he had entered, he knew that something was very
wrong.
He had known it, plainly enough, by the fact of Stephen's presence there,
but it seemed to him that he had known it from his first awakening that
morning and that he was only waiting to change into hard outline the misty
shapelessness of his earlier fears. But, there and then, he was to know
nothing--
Stephen greeted him with a great hand-shake as though he had met him
only the day before, and Mr. Zanti with a smile gave him his accustomed
greeting. In the doorway at the other end of the shop the Russian girl was
standing, one arm on the door-post, staring, with her dark eyes, straight
through into the gloomy street.
"What are you all waiting for?" Peter said to the motionless figures. With
his words they seemed at once to spring to life. Mr. Zanti rolled his big
body casually to the door and looked down the street, Stephen, smiling at
Peter said:
"I was just passing, so I thought to myself I'd just look in," his voice
came from his beard like the roll of the sea from a cave. "Just for an
hour, maybe. It's a long day since we've 'ad a bit of a chat, Mr. Peter."
Peter could not take it on that casual scale. Here was Stephen vanished
during all those years, returned now suddenly and with as little fuss as
possible, as though indeed he had only been hiding no farther than behind
the door of the shop and waiting merely to walk out when the right moment
should have arrived. If he had been no farther than that then it was unkind
of him--he might have known how badly Peter had wanted him; if, on the
other hand, he had been farther afield, then he should show more excitement
at his return.
But, Peter thought, it was impossible to recognise in the grave reserved
figure at his side that Stephen who had once given him the most glorious
evening of his life. The connection was there somewhere but many things
must have happened between those years.
"Shall we go and have luncheon together?" Peter asked.
Stephen appeared to fling a troubled look in the direction of Mr. Zanti's
broad back. He hesitated. "Well," he said awkwardly, "I don't rightly know.
I've got to be going out for an hour or two--I can't rightly say as I'll be
back. This afternoon, maybe--"
Peter did not press it any farther. They must settle these things for
themselves, but what was the matter with them all this morning was more
than he could pretend to discover.
Stephen, still troubled, went out.
Fortunately there was this morning a good deal of work for Peter to do.
A large number of second-hand books had arrived during the day before
and they must be catalogued and arranged. Moreover there were several
customers. A young lady wanted "something about Wagner, just a description
of the plays, you know."
"Of the Operas," Peter corrected.
"Oh, well, the stories--that's what I want--something about two shillings,
have you? I don't think it's really worth more--but so that one will know
where one is, you know."
She was bright and confidential. She had thought that everything would be
closed because of the Procession... _so_ lucky--
A short red-faced woman, dressed in bright colours, and carrying
innumerable little parcels wanted "Under Two Flags," by Mrs. Henry Wood.
"It's by Ouida, Madam," Peter told her.
"Nonsense, don't tell me. As if I didn't know."
Peter produced the volume and showed it to her. She dropped some of her
parcels--they both went to pick them up.
Red in the face, she glared at him. "Really it's too provoking, I know it
was Mrs. Henry Wood I wanted."
"Perhaps 'East Lynne,' or 'The Channings'--"
"Nonsense--don't tell me--it was 'Under Two Flags.'"
Finally the woman put both "Under Two Flags" and "East Lynne" into her bag
and departed. A silence fell upon the shop. Herr Gottfried was at his desk,
Mr. Zanti at the street door, the girl at the door of the inner room, they
were all motionless. Beyond the shop the murmur of the gathering crowd was
like the confused, blundering hum of bees; a band was playing stridently in
Oxford Street.
Once Peter said: "It passes about three-thirty, doesn't it? I think I'll
just go out and have a look later. It'll be fine if only the sun comes."
Mr. Zanti turned slowly round.
"I'm afraid, boy," he said, "you'll be wanted in ze shop. At two Herr
Gottfried must be going out for some business--zere will be no one--I am
zo zorry."
They wanted to keep him there, that was evident. Or, at any rate, they
didn't want him to see the Procession.
"Very well," he said cheerfully, "I'll stay. There'll be plenty more
Processions before I die." But why, why, why? What was there that they
wanted him to avoid?
He went on arranging the piles of dusty books, the sense of weighty
expectation growing on him with every instant. The clock struck one, but he
did not go out to luncheon; the others were still motionless in their
places.
Once Herr Gottfried spoke: "The people will have been waiting a
much-more-than-necessary long time," he said. "The police doubtless have
frightened them, but there is still room to walk in the streets and there
have been some unfortunates, since early in the morning--"
The street beyond the shop was now deserted because soldiers guarded its
approach into Oxford Street; the shop seemed to be left high and dry,
beyond the noise and confusion of the street.
Then there came into the silence a sharp sound that made Peter amongst his
books, jump to his feet: the Russian girl was crying.
She stood there, leaning her thin dark body against the side of the door,
surely the most desolate figure in the world. Her hands were about her
face, her body heaved with her sobbing and the little sad noise came into
the dusty tangled room and hung amongst the old broken books as though they
only could sympathise and give it shelter. The band in Oxford Street was
blazing with sound but it did not hide her crying.
Mr. Zanti crossed to her and spoke to her but she suddenly let her hands
fall from her face and turned upon him, furiously, wildly--"You ..." she
said, "You ..." and then as though the words choked her she turned back
into the inner room. Peter saw Mr. Zanti's face and it was puckered with
distress like a child's. It was almost laughable in its helpless dismay.
Two o'clock struck. "They'll be starting in half an hour," Herr Gottfried
said.
"Women," Mr. Zanti said, still looking distressfully about him, "they are,
in truth, very difficult."
And now there was no pretence, any longer, of disguising the nervous
tension that was with them in the room. They were all waiting for
something--what it might be Peter did not know, but, with every tick of
the old brass clock, some event crept more nearly towards them.
Then Stephen came back.
He came in very quietly as though he were trying to keep the note of
agitation that he must have felt on every side of him as near the normal
as possible.
His face above his beard was grey and streaky and his breath came rapidly
as though he had been running. When he saw Mr. Zanti his hand went up
suddenly in front of his face as though he would protect himself from the
other's questioning.
"I've 'eard nothing--" he said almost sullenly and then he turned and
looked at Peter.
"Why must 'e be 'ere?" he said sharply to Zanti.
"Why not? Where else?" the other answered and the two men watched each
other with hostility across the floor.
"I wish we'd all bloomin' wull kept out of it," Stephen murmured to himself
it seemed.
Peter's eyes were upon Mr. Zanti. That gentleman looked more like a naughty
child than ever. In his eyes there was the piteous appeal of a small boy
about to be punished for some grievous fault. In some strange way Peter
was, it appeared, his court of appeal because he glanced towards him again
and again and then looked away.
Peter could stand it no longer. He got up from the place where he was and
faced them all.
"What is it? What have you all done? What is the matter with you all?"
The Russian girl had come back. Her face was white and her hair fell
untidily about her eyes. She came forward fiercely as though she would have
answered Peter, but Mr. Zanti motioned her back with his hand.
"No, no," he said almost imploringly, "let the boy be--what has he to do
with all this? Leave him. He has nothing to do with it. He knows nothing."
"But I ought to know," Peter burst in. "Why have I been kept in the dark
all this time? What right have you--"
He broke off suddenly. Absolute silence fell amongst them all and they
stood looking at the door, motionless, in their places. There was a new
note in the murmuring of the crowd, and the swift steady passing of it came
up the street to the shop and in at the door. Voices could be heard rising
above others, and then the eager passing of some piece of news from one to
another.
No one in the shop spoke. Outside in the deserted street there was silence
and then the bands, as though driven by some common wave of feeling, seemed
at the same moment to burst into a blare of music. Some voice, from the
crowd, started "God save the Queen" and immediately it was taken up and
flung into the air by a thousand voices. They must give vent to their
feelings, some news had passed down the crowds like a flame setting fire to
a chain of beacons.
"What is it?" Peter pressed forwards to the door. And at once he was
answered. Men were running past the shop, crying out; one stopped for an
instant and, wild with excitement, his hands gesticulating, stammering, the
words tumbling from his lips, he shouted at them--"They've bin flinging
bombs ... dirty foreigners ... up there by the Marble Arch--flinging them
at the Old Lady. But it's all right, by Gawd--only blew 'imself up, dirty
foreigner--little bits of 'im and no one else 'urt and now the Old Lady's
comin' down the street--she'll be 'ere in quarter of an 'our and won't we
show 'er ... by Gawd ... flingin' their dirty bombs up there by the Marble
Arch and killin' nobody but 'imself--Gawd save the Old Lady--" he rushed
on.
So that was it. Peter, standing in the middle of the room, looked at them
all and understood at last amongst whom he had been working these seven
years. They were murderers, the lot of them--all of them--Gottfried, Zanti
... Stephen--Oh God! Stephen! He understood now for what they had been
waiting.
He turned sick at the sudden realisation of it. It did not, at first, seem
to touch himself in any way. At the first immediate knowledge of it he had
been faced by its amazing incongruity. There by the Marble Arch, with bands
flying, flags waving, in all the tumult of a Royal Progress some one had
been blown into little pieces. Elsewhere there were people waiting, eating
buns out of paper bags, and here in the shop the sun lighted the backs of
rows of second-hand novels and down in Treliss the water was, very gently,
lapping the little wooden jetty. Oh! the silly jumbling of things in this
silly jumbling world!
And then he began to look more closely into it as it concerned himself. He
saw with amazing clearness. He knew that it was Oblotzky the tall Russian
who had been killed. He knew because Oblotzky was the lover of this Russian
girl and he turned round to watch her, curiously, as one who was outside it
all. She was standing with her back against the wall, her hands spread out
flat, looking through the door into the bright street, seeing none of them.
Then she turned and said something in Russian between her clenched teeth to
Mr. Zanti. He would have answered her but very quietly and speaking now in
English she flung at him, as though it had been a stone:
"God curse you! You drove him to it!" Then she turned round and left the
room. But the tall man was blubbering like a child. He had turned round to
them all, with his hands outstretched, appealing:
"But it's not true!" he cried between his sobs, "it's not true! I did
all I could to stop them--I did not know that they would do things--not
really--until now, this morning, when it was too late. It is the others,
Sergius, Paslov, Odinsky--zey were always wild, desperate. But we, the rest
of us, with us it was only tall words."
Little Herr Gottfried, who had been silent behind them, came forward now
and spoke:
"It is too late," he said, "for this crying like a baby. We have no
time--we must consider what must be done. If it is true, what that man says
that Oblotzky has blown himself up and no other is touched then no harm
is done. Why regret the Russian? He wanted a violent end and he has got
it--and he has given it to no other. Often enough we are not so fortunate.
He will have spoken to no one. We are safe." Then he turned to Peter:
"Poor boy," he said.
But Peter was not there to be pitied. He had only one thought, "Stephen,
tell me--tell me. You did not know? You had nothing to do with this?"
Stephen turned and faced him. "No, Peter boy, nothing. I did not know what
they were at. They--Zanti there--'ad 'elped me when I was in trouble years
ago. They've given me jobs before now, but they've always been bunglers
and now, thank the Lord, they've bungled again. You come with me, Mr.
Peter--come along from it all. We'll manage something. I've only been
waiting until you wanted me."
Zanti turned furiously upon him but the words that he would have spoken
were for the moment held. The Procession was passing. The roar of cheering
came up against the walls of the shop like waves against the rocks; the
windows shook. There she was, the little Old Lady in her black bonnet,
sitting smiling and bowing, and somewhere behind her a little dust had been
blown into the air, had hung for a moment about her and then had once more
settled down into the other dust from which it had come.
That was all. In front of her were the Royal Personages, on every side of
her her faithful subjects ... only a cloud of dust had given occasion for a
surer sign of her people's devotion. That, at any rate, Oblotzky had done.
The carriage passed.
Mr. Zanti now faced Peter.
"Peter--Boy--you must believe me. I did not know, believe me, I did not.
They had talked and I had listened but there is so much talk and never
anything is done. Peter, you must not go, you must not leave me. You would
break my 'eart--"
"All these years," Peter said, "you have let me be here while you have
deceived me and blinded me. I am going now and I pray to God that I may
never see you again."
"No, Boy, listen. You must not go like this. 'Ave I not been good to you?
'Ave I ever made you do anything wrong? 'Ave I not always kept you out of
these things? You are the only person zat I 'ave ever loved. You 'ave
become my son to me. I am not wicked. I was not one of these men--these
anarchists--but it is only that all my life I 'ave wanted adventure, what
you call Ro-mance. And I 'ave found it 'ere, there--one place, anuzzer
place. But it 'as never been wicked--I 'ave never 'armed a soul. What zat
girl says it is not true--I would 'ave done all to stop it if I could. But
you--if you leave me now, I am all alone. There is no one in the world for
me--a poor old man--but if you will be with me I will show you wonderful
things.
"See," he went on eagerly, almost breathlessly, "we 'ave been socialists
'ere, what you will. We 'ave talked and talked. It amuses me--to intrigue,
to pretend, to 'ave games--one day it is Treason, another Brigands, another
Travel--what you will. But never, never, never danger to a soul. Now only
this morning did I 'ear that they were going to do this. Always it had been
words before--but this morning I got a rumour. But it was only rumour.
I 'ad not enough to be sure of my news. Stephen here and I--we could do
nozzing--we 'ad no time--I did not know where Oblotzky was--this girl 'ere
did not know--I could do nozzing--Peter, believe me, believe me--"
The man was no scoundrel. It was plain enough as he stood there, his eyes
simple as a child's, pleading still like a small boy.
A minute ago Peter had hated him, now he crossed over and put his hand on
his shoulder.
"You have been wonderfully good to me," he said. "I owe you everything. But
I must go--all this has only made sure what I have been knowing this long
time that I ought to do. I can't--I mustn't--depend on your charity any
longer--it has been too long as it is. I must be on my own and then one
day, when I have proved myself, I will come back to you."
"No--Peter, Boy--come with me now. I will show you wonderful things all
over Europe; we will have adventures. There is gold in Cornwall in a place
I know. There is a place in Germany where there is treasure--ze world is
full of ze most wonderful things that I know and you and I--we two--Oh! ze
times we all 'ave--"
"No," ... Peter drew back. "That is not my way. I am going to make my
living here, in London--or die for it."
"No--you must not. You will succeed--you will grow fat and sleepy and ze
good things of the world and ze many friends will kill your soul. I know it
... but come with me, first and we will 'ave adventures ... and _zen_ you
shall write."
But Peter's face was set. The time for the new life had come. Up to this
moment he had been passive, he had used his life as an instrument on which
others might play. From henceforward his should be the active part.
The crowds were pouring up the street on their homeward way. Bands were
playing the soldiers back to the barracks. Soon the streets would have only
the paper bags left to them for company. The little bookshop hung, with its
misty shelves about the three men.... Somewhere in another room, a girl was
staring with white set face and burning eyes in front of her, for her lover
was dead and the world had died with him.
After a little time amongst the second-hand novels Mr. Zanti sat, his great
head buried in his hands, the tears trickling down through his fingers, and
Herr Gottfried, motionless from behind his counter watched him in silent
sympathy.
Peter and Stephen had gone together.
CHAPTER V
A NARROW STREET
I
The bomb was, that evening, the dominant note of the occasion. Through the
illuminated streets, the slowly surging crowds--inhuman in their abandon to
the monotonous ebb and flow as of a sweeping river--the cries and laughter
and shouting of songs, that note was above all. An eye-witness--a Mr. Frank
Harris, butcher of 82 Cheapside--had his veracious account journalistically
doctored.
* * * * *
"I was standing quite close to the man, a foreigner of course, with a dirty
hanging black moustache--tall, big fellow, with coat up over his ears--I
must say that I wasn't looking at him. I had Mrs. Harris with me and was
trying to get her a place where she could see better, you understand. Then
suddenly--before one was expecting it--the Procession began and I forgot
the man, the foreigner, although he was quite up close against me. One
was excited of course--a most moving sight--and then suddenly, when by
the distant shouting we understood that the Queen was approaching, I saw
the man break through. I was conscious of the man's vigour as he rushed
past--he must have been immensely strong--because there he was, through the
soldiers and everybody--out in the middle of the street. It all happened so
quickly of course. I heard vaguely that some one was shouting and I think a
policeman started forward, but anyhow the man raised his arm and in an
instant there was the explosion. It went off before he was ready I suppose,
but the ground rocked under one's feet. Two soldiers fell, unhurt, I have
learnt since. There was a hideous dust, horses plunging and men shouting
and then suddenly silence. The dust cleared and there was a hole in the
ground, stones rooted up ... no sign of the man but some pieces of cloth
and men had rushed forward and covered something up--a limb I suppose.... I
was only anxious of course that my wife should see nothing ... she was
considerably affected...."
So Mr. Harris of Cheapside, with the assistance of an eager and talented
young journalist. But the fact remained in the heart of the crowd--blasted
foreigner had had a shot at the Old Lady and missed her, therefore whatever
gaiety may have been originally intended let it now be redoubled, shouted
into frenzy--and frenzy it was.
"There was no clue," an evening paper added to the criminal's identity....
The police were blamed, of course.... Such a thing must never be allowed to
occur again. It was reported that the Queen had in no way suffered from the
shock--was in capital health.
Outside the bookshop Stephen and Peter had parted.
"I'll meet you about half-past ten, Trafalgar Square by the lion that faces
Whitehall; I must go back to Brockett's, have supper and get my things, and
say good-bye. Then I'll join you ... half-past ten."
"Peter boy, we'll have to rough it--"
"Oh! at last! Life's beginning. We'll soon get work, both of us--where do
you mean to go?"
"There's a place I been before--down East End--not much of a place for your
sort, but just for a bit...."
For a moment Peter's thoughts swept back to the shop.
"Poor Zanti!" He half turned. "After so many years ... the good old chap."
Then he pulled himself up and set his shoulders. "Well, half-past ten--"
The streets were, at the instant, almost deserted. It was about five
o'clock now and at seven o'clock they would be closed to all traffic. Then
the surging crowds would come sweeping down.
Peter, furiously excited, hurried through the grimy deserts of Bloomsbury,
to Brockett's. To his singing, beating heart the thin ribbon of the grey
street with the faint dim blue of the evening sky was out of place,
ill-judged as a setting to his exultations. He had swept in the tempestuous
way that was natural to him, the shop and all that it had been to him,
behind him. Even Brockett's must go with the rest. Of course he could not
stay there now that the weekly two pounds had stopped. He quite savagely
desired to be free from all business. These seven years had been well
enough as a preparation; now at last he was to be flung, head foremost,
into life.
He could have sung, he could have shouted. He burst through the heavy doors
of Brockett's. But there, inside the quiet and solemn building, another
mood seized him. He crept quietly, on tiptoe, up to his room because he did
not want to see any of them before supper. After all, he was leaving the
best friends that he had ever had, the only home that he had ever really
known. Mrs. Brockett, Norah Monogue, Robin, the Signor.... Seven years is a
long time and one gets fond of a place. He closed his bedroom door softly
behind him. The little room had been very much to him during all these
years, and that view over the London roofs would never be forgotten by
him. But he wondered, as he looked at it, how he had ever been able to sit
there so quietly and write "Reuben Hallard." Now, between his writing and
himself, a thousand things were sweeping. Far away he saw it like the
height of some inaccessible hill--his emotions, his adventures, the
excitement of life made his thoughts, his ideas, thinner than smoke. He
even, standing there in his little room and looking over the London roofs,
despised the writer's inaction.... Often again he was to know that rivalry.
A quarter of an hour before supper he went down to say good-bye to Miss
Monogue. She was sitting quietly reading and he thought suddenly, as he
came upon her, there under the light of her candles in the grey room, that
she did not look well. He had never during their seven years' friendship,
noticed anything before, and now he could not have said what it was that he
saw except perhaps that her cheeks were flushed and that there were heavy
dark lines beneath her eyes. But she seemed to him, as he took her, thus
unprepared, with her untidy hair and her white cheap evening dress that
showed her thin fragile arms, to be something that he was leaving to face
the world alone, something very delicate that he ought not to leave.
Then she looked up and saw him and put her book down and smiled at him and
was the old cheerful Norah Monogue whom he had always known.
He stood with his legs apart facing her and told her:
"I've come to say good-bye."
"Good-bye?"
"Yes--I'm going to-night. What I've been expecting for so long has happened
at last. There's been a blow up at the bookshop and I've got to go."
For an instant the colour left her face; her book fell to the ground and
she put her hand back on the arm of the chair to steady herself.
"Oh! how silly of me ... never mind picking it up.... Oh thank you, Peter.
You gave me quite a shock, telling me like that. We shall all miss you
dreadfully."
His affection for her was strong enough to break in upon the great
overwhelming excited exultation that had held him all the evening. He was
dreadfully sorry to leave her!... dear Norah Monogue, what a pal she'd
been!
"I shall miss you horribly," he said with that note in his voice that
showed that, above all things, he wished to avoid a scene. "We've been such
tremendous pals all this time--you've been such a brick--I don't know what
I should have done...." He pulled himself up. "But it's got to be. I've
felt it coming you know and it's time I really lashed out for myself."
"Where are you going?"
"Ah! I must keep that dark for a bit. There's been trouble at the bookshop.
It'll be all right I expect but I don't want Mother Brockett to stand any
chance of being mixed up in it. I shall just disappear for a week or two
and then I'll be back again."
She smiled at him bravely: "Well, I won't ask what's happened, if you don't
want to tell me, but of course--I shall miss you. After seven years it
seems so abrupt. And, Peter, do take care of yourself."
"Oh, I shall be all right." He was very gruff. He felt now a furious angry
reluctance at leaving her behind. He stormed at himself as a fool; one of
the things that the strong man must learn of life is to be ruthless in
these partings and breaking of relations. He stood further away from her
and spoke as though he hated being there.
She understood him with wonderful tenderness.
"Well," she said cheerfully, "I daresay it will be better for you to try
for a little and see what you can make of it all. And then if you want
anything you'll come back to us, won't you?... You promise that?"
"Of course."
"And then there's the book. I know that man in Heriot and Lord's that I
told you about. I'll send it to them right away, if you like."
"Aren't they rather tremendous people for me to begin with? Oughtn't I to
begin with some one smaller?"
"Oh! there's no harm in starting at the top. They can't do more than refuse
it. But I don't think they will. I believe in it. But how shall I let you
know what they say?"
"Oh, I'll come in a week or two and see what's happening--I'll be on a
paper by then probably. I say, I don't want the others to know. I'll have
supper with them as usual and just tell Mother Brockett afterwards. I don't
want to have to say good-bye lots of times. Well"--he moved off awkwardly
towards the door--"You've been most tremendously good to me."
"Rot, Peter: Don't forget me!"
"Forget you! The best pal I've ever had." They clasped hands for a moment.
There was a pause and then Peter said: "I say--there _is_ a thing you can
do if you like--"
"Yes?--anything--"
"Well--about Miss Rossiter--you'll be seeing her I suppose?"
"Oh yes, often--"
"Well, you might just keep her in mind of me. I know it sounds silly
but--just a word or two, sometimes."
He felt that he was blushing--their hands separated. She moved back from
him and pushed at her hair in the nervous way that she had.
"Why, of course--she was awfully interested. She won't forget you. Well,
we'll meet at supper." She moved back with a last little nod at him and he
went awkwardly out of the room with a curious little sense of sudden
dismissal. Would she rather he didn't know Miss Rossiter, he vaguely
wondered. Women were such queer creatures.
As he went downstairs he wondered with a sudden almost shameful confusion
whether he was responsible in some way for the awkwardness that the scene
had had. He had noticed lately that she had not been quite herself when he
had been with her--that she would stop in the middle of a sentence, that
she would be, for instance, vexed at something he said, that she would look
at him sometimes as though ...
He pulled himself up. He was angry with himself for imagining such a
thing--as though ... Well, women _were_ strange creatures....
And then supper was more difficult than he had expected. They would show
him, the silly things, that they were fond of him just when he would much
rather have persuaded himself that they hated him. It was almost, as he
told himself furiously, as though they knew that he was going; Norah
Monogue was the only person who chattered and laughed in a natural way; he
was rather relieved that after all she seemed to care so little.
He found that he couldn't eat. There was a silly lump in his throat and he
looked at the marble pillars and the heavy curtains through a kind of
mist.... Especially was there Robin....
Mrs. Tressiter told him that Robin had something very important to say to
him and that he was going to stay awake until he, Peter, came up to him.
"I told him," she said, "that he must lie down and go to sleep like a good
boy and that his father would punish him if he didn't. But there! What's
the use of it? He isn't afraid of his father the slightest. He would go
on--something about a lion...."
At any rate this gave Peter an excuse to escape from the table and it was,
indeed, time, for they had all settled, like a clatter of hens, on to the
subject of the bomb, and they all had a great deal to say about it and a
great many questions to ask Peter.
"It's these Foreigners... of course our Police are entirely inadequate."
"Yes--that's what I say--the Police are really absurdly inadequate--"
"If they will allow these foreigners--"
"Yes, what can you expect--and the Police really can't--"
Peter escaped to Robin. He glowered down at the child who was sitting up in
his cot counting the flowers on the old wall-paper to keep himself awake.
"I always am so muddled after fourteen," he said. "Never mind, I'm _not_
sleeping--"
Peter frowned at him. "You ought to have been asleep long ago," he said. He
wished the boy hadn't got his hair tousled in that absurdly fascinating way
and that his cheeks weren't flushed so beautiful a red--also his nightgown
had lost a button at the top and showed a very white little neck. Peter
blinked his eyes--"Look here, kid, you must go to sleep right away at once.
What do you want?"
"It's that lion--the one the lady had--I want it."
"You can't have it--the lady's got it."
"Well--take me to see them--the real ones--there are lots somewhere Mother
says." Robin inserted his very small hand into Peter's large one.
"All right, one day--we'll go to the 'Zoo."
Robin sighed with satisfaction--he lay down and murmured sleepily to
himself, "I love Mister Peter and lions and Mother and God," and was
suddenly asleep.
Peter bent down over the cot and kissed him. He felt miserably wretched.
He had known nothing like it since that day when he had said good-bye to
his mother. He wondered that he could ever have felt any exultation; he
wondered that writing and glory and ambition could ever have seemed worth
anything to him at all. Could he have had his prayer granted he would have
prayed that he might always stay in Brockett's, always have these same
friends, watch over Robin as he grew up, talk to Norah Monogue--and then
all the others ... and Mr. Zanti. He felt fourteen years old ... more
miserable than he had ever been.
He kissed Robin again--then he went down to find Mrs. Brockett. Here, too,
he was faced with an unexpected difficulty. The good lady, listening to him
sternly in her grim little sitting-room, refused to hear of his departure.
She sat upright in her stiff chair, her thin black dress in folds about
her, the gas-light shining on her neatly parted hair.
"You see, Mrs. Brockett," he explained to her, "I'm no longer in the same
position. I can't be sure of my two pounds a week any more and so it
wouldn't be right for me to live in a place like this."
"If it's expense that you're thinking about," she answered him grimly,
"you're perfectly welcome to stay on here and pay me when you can. I'm sure
that one day with so clever a young man--"
"That's awfully good of you, Mrs. Brockett, but of course I couldn't hear
of anything like that." For the third time that evening he had to fight
against a disposition to blow his nose and be absurd. They were, both of
them, increasingly grim with every word that they spoke and any outside
observer would have supposed that they were the deadliest of enemies.
"Of course," she began again, "there's a room that I could let you have at
the back of the house that's only four shillings a week and really you'd be
doing me a kindness in taking it off my hands. I'm sure--"
"No, there's more in it than that," he answered. "I've got to go
away--right away. It's time I had a change of scene. It's good for me to
get along a bit by myself. You've all been too kind to me, spoilt me--"
She stood up and faced him sternly. "In all my years," she said, "I've
never spoilt anybody yet and I'm not likely to be going to begin now.
Spoilt you! Bah!" She almost snorted at him--but there were tears in her
eyes.
"I'm not a philanthropist," she went on more dryly than ever, "but I like
to have you about the house--you keep the lodgers contented and the babies
quiet. I'm sure," and the little break in her voice was the first sign of
submission, "that we've been very good friends these seven years and it
isn't everywhere that one can pick up friends for the asking--"
"You've been splendid to me," he answered. "But it isn't as though I were
going away altogether--you'll see me back in a week or two. And--and--I say
I shall make a fool of myself if I go on talking like this--"
He suddenly gripped her hand and wrung it again and again--then he burst
away from her, leaving her standing there in the middle of the room.
The old black bag was very soon packed, his possessions had not greatly
increased during these seven years, and soon he was creeping down the
stairs softly so that no one should hear.
The hall was empty. He gave it one last friendly look, the door had closed
behind him and he was in the street.
II
In its exuberance and high spirits and general lack of self-control London
was similar to a small child taken to the Drury Lane Pantomime for the
first time. Of the numbers of young men who, with hats on the back of their
heads, passed arm-in-arm down the main thoroughfares announcing it as their
definite opinion that "Britons never shall be slaves," of the numbers of
young women who, armed with feathers and the sharpest of tongues, showed
conclusively the superiority of their sex and personal attractions, of the
numbers of old men and old women who had no right whatever to be out on
a night like this but couldn't help themselves, and enjoyed it just as
much as their sons and daughters did, there is here no room to tell. The
houses were ablaze with light, the very lamp-posts seemed to rock up and
down with delight at the spirit of the whole affair and the Feast of the
Glorification of the Bomb that Didn't Come Off was being celebrated with
all the honours.
Peter was very soon in the thick of it. The grey silences of Bennett Square
and Bloomsbury were left behind and with them the emotions of those tender
partings. After all, it would only be a very few weeks before he would be
back again among them all, telling them of his success on some paper and
going back perhaps to live with them all when his income was assured.
And, anyhow, here he was, out to seek his fortune and with Stephen to help
him! He battled with the crowd dragging the black bag with him and shouting
sometimes in sheer excitement and good spirits. Young women tickled him
with feathers, once some one linked arms with him and dragged him along,
always he was surrounded with this sea of shouting, exultant humanity--this
was life!
By the lion Stephen was waiting for him, standing huge and solemn as the
crowd surged past. He pressed Peter's arm to show that he was pleased to
see him and then, without speaking, they pushed through, past Charing Cross
station, and down the hill to the Underground.
Here, once again, there was startling silence. No one seemed to be using
the trains at all.
"I'm afraid it ain't much of a place that I'm taking yer to," Stephen said.
"We can't pick and choose yer know and I was there before and she's a good
woman."
A chill seemed to come with them into the carriage. Suddenly to Peter the
comforts of Brockett's stretched out alluring arms, then he pulled himself
together.
"I'm sure it will be splendid," he said, "and it will be just lovely being
with you after all this time."
They got out and plunged into a city of black night. Around them, on every
side there was silence--even the broad central thoroughfare seemed to be
deserted and on either side of it, to right and left, black grim roads like
open mouths, lay waiting for the unwary traveller.
Down one of these they plunged; Peter was conscious of faces watching them.
"Bucket Lane" was the street's title to fame. Windows showed dim candles,
in the distance a sharp cry broke the silence and then fell away again. The
street was very narrow and from the running gutters there stole into the
air the odour of stale cabbage.
"This is the 'ouse." Stephen stopped. Somewhere, above their heads, a child
was crying.
CHAPTER VI
THE WORLD AND BUCKET LANE
I
A light flashed in the upper windows, stayed for a moment, and disappeared.
There was a pause and then the door slowly opened and a woman's head
protruded.
She stared at them without speaking.
"Mr. Brant," Stephen said. "I'm come back, Mrs. Williams 'oping you might
'ave that same room me and my friend might use if it's agreeable."
She stepped forward then and looked at them more carefully. She was a stout
red-faced woman, her hair hanging about her face, her dirty bodice drawn
tightly over her enormous bosom and her skirt pulled up in front and
hanging, draggled behind her. Her long, dirty fingers went up to her face
continually; she had a way of pushing at her teeth with them.
She seemed, however, pleased to see Stephen.
"Well, Mr. Brant," she said, "come in. It's a surprise I must say but Lord!
as I'm always telling Mrs. Griggs oo's on the bottom floor when she can
afford 'er rent which 'asn't been often lately, poor thing, owing to 'aving
'er tenth only three weeks back, quite unexpected, and 'er man being turned
off 'is 'ouse-painting business what 'e's been at this ten year and
more--well come along in, I'm sure--"
They _were_ in by this time having been urged by their hostess into
the very narrowest, darkest and smelliest passage that Peter had ever
encountered. Somewhere behind the walls, the world was moving. On every
side of him above and below, children were crying, voices swearing,
murmuring, complaining, arguing; Peter could feel Mrs. Williams' breath hot
against his cheek. Up the wheezy stairs she panted, they following her.
Peter had never heard such loquacity. It poured from her as though she
meant nothing whatever by it and was scarcely aware indeed of the things
that she was saying. "And it's a long time, Mr. Brant, since we 'ad
the pleasure of seeing you. My last 'usband's left me since yer was
'ere--indeed 'e 'av--all along of a fight 'e 'ad with old Colly Moles
down Three Barrer walk--penal servitude, poor feller and all along of 'is
nasty temper as I was always tellin' 'im. Why the very morning before it
'appened I remember sayin' to 'im when 'e up and threw a knife at me for
contradictin' 'is words I remember sayin' to 'im that 'is temper would be
the settlin' of me but 'e wouldn't listen, not 'e. Obstinate! Lord! that
simply isn't the word for it ... but 'ere's the room and nobody been in it
since Sairy Grace and she was always bringin' men along with 'er, dirty
slut and that's a month since she's been and gone and I always like 'aving
yer, Mr. Brant, for you're quiet enough and no trouble at all--and your
friend looks pleasant I must say."
The room was, indeed, remarkably respectable--not blessed with much
furniture in addition to two beds and two chairs but roomy and with a large
and moderately clean window.
"Now what about terms for me and my friend?" said Stephen.
Now followed friendly argument in which the lady and Stephen seemed
perfectly to understand one another. After asserting that under no
circumstances whatever could she possibly take less than at least double
the price that Stephen offered her she suddenly, at the sound of a child's
shrill crying from below, shrugged her shoulders with: "There's young
'Lisbeth Anne again ... well, Mr. Brant, 'ave it your own way--I'm
contented enough I'm sure," and vanished.
But the little discussion had brought Peter to a sharp realisation of the
immediate business of ways and means. Sitting on one of the beds afterwards
with Stephen beside him he inquired--
"How much have we got, Stephen? I've got thirty bob."
"Never you mind, Peter. We'll soon be gettin' work."
"Why, of course. I'll force 'em to take me. That's all you want in
these things--to look fierce and say you won't go until they give you
something--a trial anyhow."
And sitting there on the bed with Stephen beside him he felt immensely
confident. There was nothing that he could not do. With one swift movement
he seemed to have flung from him all the things that were beginning to
crowd in between him and his work. He must never, never allow that to
happen again--how could one ever be expected to work if one were always
thinking of other people, interested in them and their doings, involved
with anarchists and bombs and romantic adventures. Why here he was with
nothing in the world to hold him or to interfere and no one except dear
old Stephen with whom he must talk. Ambition crept very close to him
that night--ambition with its glittering, shining rewards, its music and
colours--close to him as he sat in that bare, naked room.
"I'd rather be with you than any one in the world--we'll have such times,
you and I."
Perhaps Stephen knew more about the world; perhaps during the years that he
had been tumbled and knocked about he had realised that the world was no
easy nut to crack and that loaves and fishes don't come to the hungry for
the asking. But Peter that night was to be appalled by nothing.
They sat up into the early morning, talking. The noises in the house and in
the streets about them rose and fell. Some distant cry would climb into the
silence and draw from it other cries set like notes of music to tumble back
into a common scheme together.
"Steve, tell me about Zanti. Is he really a scoundrel?"
"A scoundrel? No, poor feller. Why, Mr. Peter, you ought to know better
than that. 'E ain't got a spark of malice in him but 'e's always after
adventure. 'E knows all the queer people in Europe--and more'n Europe
too. There's nothin' 'e don't put 'is nose into in a clumsy, childish way
but always, you understand, Mr. Peter, because 'e's after 'is romantic
fancies. It was when 'e was after gold down in Cornwall--some old
treasure story--that I came across 'im and 'e was kind to me.... 'E was a
kind-'earted man, Mr. Zanti, and never meant 'arm to a soul. And 'e's very
fond of you, Mr. Peter."
"Yes, I know." Peter was vaguely troubled. "I hope I haven't been unkind
about him. I suppose it was the shock of the whole thing. But it was time I
went anyway. But tell me, Stephen, what you've been doing all these years.
And why you let me be all that time without seeing you--"
"Well, Mr. Peter, I didn't think it would be good for you--I was knowing
lots o' strange people time and again and then you might have been mixed up
with me. I'm safe enough now, I'm thinking, and I'd have been safe enough
all the time the way Cornwall was then and every one sympathising with
me--"
"But what have you been doing all the time?"
"I was in America a bit and there are few things I haven't worked at in my
time--always waiting for 'er to come--and she will come some time--it's
only patience that's wanted."
"Have you ever heard from her?"
"There was a line once--just a line--_she's_ all right." His great body
seemed to glow with confidence.
Peter would like then to have spoken about Clare Rossiter. But no--some
shyness held him--one day he would tell Stephen.
He unpacked his few possessions carefully and then, on a very hard bed,
dreaming of bombs, of Mrs. Brockett dressed as a ballet dancer, of Mr.
Zanti digging for treasure beneath the grey flags of Bennett Square, of
Clare Elizabeth Rossiter riding down Oxford Street amidst the shouts of the
populace, of the world as a coloured globe on which he, Peter Westcott,
the author of that masterpiece, "Reuben Hallard," had set his foot ... so,
triumphant, he slept.
II
On the next morning the Attack on London began. The house in Bucket Lane
was dark and grim when he left it--the street was hidden from the light
and hung like a strip of black ribbon between the sunshine of the broader
highways that lay at each end of it. It was a Jewish quarter-notices in
Yiddish were in all the little grimy shop windows, in the bakers and the
sweetshops and the laundries. But it was not, this Bucket Lane, a street
without its dignity and its own personal little cleanliness. It had its
attempts at such things. His own room and Mrs. Williams' tea and bread and
butter had been clean.
But as he came down out of these strange murmuring places with their sense
of hiding from the world at large the things that they were occupied in
doing, Bucket Lane stuck in his head as a dark little quarry into which
he must at the day's end, whatever gorgeous places he had meanwhile
encountered, creep. "Creeping" was the only way to get into such a place.
Meanwhile he had put on his best, had blackened his shoes until they shone
like little mirrors, had brushed his bowler hat again and again and looked
finally like a sailor on shore for a holiday. Seven years in Charing Cross
Road had not taken the brown from his cheeks, nor bent his broad shoulders.
At the Mansion House he climbed on to the top of a lumbering omnibus and
sailed down through the City. It was now that he discovered how seldom
during his seven years he had ventured beyond his little square of country.
Below him, on either side of him, black swarms stirred and moved, now
forming ahead of him patterns, squares, circles, then suddenly rising
it appeared like insects and in a cloud surging against the high stone
buildings. All men--men moving with eyes straight ahead of them, bent
furiously upon some business, but assembling, retreating, advancing, it
seemed, by the order of some giant hand that in the air above them played a
game. Imagine that, in some moment of boredom, the Hand were to brush the
little pieces aside, were to close the board and put it away, then, with
what ignominy and feeble helplessness would these little black figures
topple clumsily into heaps.
Down through the midst of them the omnibus, like a man with an impediment
in his speech, surrounded by the chatter of cabs and carts and bicycles,
stammered its way. The streets opened and shut, shouts came up to them and
fell away. Peter's heart danced--London was here at last and the silence of
Bennett Square, the dark omens of Bucket Lane and the clamour of the city
had together been the key for the unlocking of its gates.
Ludgate Hill caught them into its heart, held them for an instant, and then
flung them down in the confusion of Fleet Street.
Here it was at last then with its typewriters and its telephones and its
printing machines hurling with a whir and clatter the news of the world
into the air, and above it brooding, like an immense brain--the God of its
restless activity--the Dome of St. Paul's.
Peter climbed down from his omnibus because he saw on his right a Public
Reading Room. Here in tattered and anxious company, he studied the papers
and took down addresses in a note book. He was frightened for an instant by
the feet that shuffled up and down the floor from paper to paper. There was
something most hopeless in the sound of that shuffle.
"'Ave yer a cigarette on yer, Mister, that yer wouldn't mind--"
He turned round and at once, like blows, two fierce gaunt eyes struck him
in the face. Two eyes staring from some dirty brown pieces of cloth on end,
it seemed, by reason of their own pathetic striving for notice, rather than
because of any life inside them.
Peter murmured something and hurried away. Supposing that editors ... but
no, this was not the proper beginning of a successful day. But the place,
down steps under the earth, with its miserable shadows was not pleasant to
remember.
His first visit was to the office of _The Morning World_. He remembered his
remark to Stephen about self-assertion, but his heart sank as he entered
the large high room with its railed counter running round the centre of
it--a barrier cold, impassable. Already several people were sitting on
chairs that were ranged along the wall.
Peter went up boldly to the counter and a very thin young man with a stone
hatchet instead of a face and his hair very wonderfully parted in the
middle--so accurately parted that Peter could think of nothing
else--watched him coldly over the barrier.
"What can I do for you?" he said.
"I want to see the Editor."
"Have you an appointment?"
"No."
"Oh, I'm afraid that it would be impossible without an appointment."
"Is there any one whom I could see?"
"If you could tell me your business, perhaps--"
Peter began to be infuriated with this young man with the hatchet face.
"I want to know if there's any place for me on this paper. If I can--"
"Oh!" The voice was very cold indeed and the iron barrier seemed to
multiply itself over and over again all round the room.
"I'm afraid in that case you had better write to the Editor and make an
appointment. No, I'm afraid there is no one..."
Peter melted away. The faces on the chairs were all very glad. The stone
building echoed with some voice that called some one a long way away. Peter
was in the street. He stood outside the great offices of _The Morning
World_ and looked across the valley at the great dome that squatted above
the moving threads of living figures. He was absurdly upset by this
unfortunate interview. What could he have expected? Of what use was it that
he should fling his insignificance against that kind of wall? Moreover he
must try many times before his chance would be given him. It was absurd
that he should mind that rebuff. But the hatchet-faced young man pursued
him. He seemed to see now as he looked up and down the street, a hostility
in the faces of those that passed him. Moreover he saw, here and there
figures, wretched figures, moving in and out of the crowd, bending into the
gutter for something that had been dropped--lean, haggard faces, burning
eyes ... he began to see them as a chain that wound, up and down, amongst
the people and the carriages along the street.
He pulled himself together--If he was feeling these things at the very
beginning of his battle why then defeat was certain. He was ashamed and,
looking at his paper, chose the offices of _The Mascot_, a very popular
society journal that brightened the world with its cheerful good-tempered
smile, every Friday morning. Here the room in which he found himself was
small and cosy, it had a bright pink wall-paper, and behind a little
shining table a shining young woman beamed upon him. The shining young
woman was, however, very busy at her typewriter and Peter was examined by a
tiny office boy who seemed to be made entirely of shining brass buttons and
shining little boots and shining hair.
"And what can I do for you, sir?" he said.
"I should like to see the Editor," Peter explained.
"Your name?" said the Shining One.
Peter had no cards. He blamed himself for the omission and stammered in his
reply.
The Boy gave the lady at the typewriter a very knowing look and
disappeared. He swiftly returned and said that Mr. Boset could see Mr.
Westcott for a few minutes, but for a few minutes only.
Mr. Boset sat resplendent in a room that was coloured a bright green. He
was himself stout and red-faced and of a surpassing smartness, his light
blue suit was very tight at the waist and very broad over the hips, his
white spats gleamed, his pearl pin stared like an eye across the room, his
neck bulged in red folds over his collar. Mr. Boset was eating chocolates
out of a little cardboard box and his attention was continually held by the
telephone that summoned him to its side at frequent intervals. He was
however exceedingly pleasant. He begged Peter to take a chair.
"Just a minute, Mr. Westcott, will you? Yes--hullo--yes--This is 6140
Strand. Hullo! Hullo! Oh--is that you, Mrs. Wyman? Good morning--yes,
splendid, thank you--never fitter--Very busy yes, of course--what--Lunch
Thursday?... Oh, but delighted. Just let me look at my book a moment?
Yes--quite free--Who? The Frasers and Pigots? Oh! delightful! 1.30,
delightful!"
Mr. Boset, settled once more in his chair, was as charming as possible. You
would suppose that the whole day was at Peter's service. He wanted to know
a great many things. Peter's hopes ran high.
"Well--what have you got to show? What have you written?"
Peter had written a novel.
"Published?"
"No."
"Well ... got anything else?"
"No--not just at present."
"Oh well--must have something to show you know--"
"Yes." Peter's hopes were in his boots.
"Yes--must have something to show--" Mr. Boset's eyes were peering into the
cardboard box on a voyage of selection.
"Yes--well--when you've written something send it along--"
"I suppose there isn't anything I can do--"
"Well, our staff, you know, is filled up to the eyes as it is--fellows
waiting--lots of 'em--yes, you show us what you can do. Write an article or
two. Buy _The Mascot_ and see the kind of thing we like. Yes--Excuse me,
the telephone--Yes--Yes 6140 Strand...."
Peter found himself once more in the outer room and then ushered forth by
the Shining Boy he was in the street.
He was hungry now and sought an A.B.C. shop and there over the cold
marble-topped tables consulted his list. The next attempt should be _The
Saturday Illustrated_, one of the leading illustrated weeklies, and perhaps
there he would be more successful. As he sat in the A.B.C. shop and watched
the squares of street opposite the window he felt suddenly that no effort
of his would enable him to struggle successfully against those indifferent
crowds.
Above the houses in the patch of blue sky that filled the window-pane soft
bundles of cloud streamed like flags before the wind. Into these soft grey
meshes the sun was swept and with a cold shudder Fleet Street fell into
shadow; beyond it and above it the great dome burned; a company of sandwich
men, advertising on their stooping bodies the latest musical comedy, crept
along the gutter.
III
At the offices of _The Saturday Illustrated_ they told him that if he
returned at four o'clock he would be able to see the Editor. He walked
about and at last sat down on the Embankment and watched the barges slide
down the river. The water was feathery and sometimes streamed into lines
like spun silk reflecting many colours, and above the water the clouds
turned and wheeled and changed against the limpid blue. The little slap
that the motion of the river gave to the stone embankment reminded him of
the wooden jetty at Treliss--the place was strangely sweet--the roar of the
Strand was far away and muffled.
As he sat there listening there seemed to come up to him, straight out of
the river, strange impersonal noises that had to do with no definite
sounds. He was reminded of a story that he had once read, a story
concerning a nice young man who caught the disease known as the Horror of
London. Peter thought that in the air, coming from nowhere, intangible,
floating between the river and the sky something stirred....
Big Ben struck quarter to four and he turned once more into the Strand.
The editor of _The Saturday Illustrated_ was a very different person from
Mr. Boset. At a desk piled with papers, stern, gaunt and sharp-chinned, his
words rattled out of his mouth like peas onto a plate. But Peter saw that
he had humorous twinkling eyes.
"Well, what can you do?"
"I've never tried anything--but I feel that I should learn--"
"Learn! Do you suppose this office is a nursery shop for teaching sucklings
how to draw their milk? Are you ready for anything?"
"Anything--"
"Yes--they all say that. Journalism isn't any fun, you know."
"I'm not looking for fun."
"Well, it's the damnedest trade out. Anything's better. But you want to
write?"
"I must."
"Yes--exactly. Well, I like the look of you. More blood and bones than most
of the rotten puppies that come into this office. I've no job for you at
the moment though. Go back to your digs and write something--anything you
like--and send it along--leave me your address. Oh, ho! Bucket Lane--hard
up?"
"I'm all right, thank you."
"All right, I wasn't offering you charity--no need to put your pride up. I
shan't forget you ... but send me something."
The clouds had now enveloped the sun. As Peter, a little encouraged by this
last experience but tired with a dull, listless fatigue, crept into the
dark channels of Bucket Lane, the rain began to fall with heavy solemn
drops.
CHAPTER VII
DEVIL'S MARCH
I
There could be nothing odder than the picture that Brockett's and Bennett
Square presented from the vantage ground of Bucket Lane. How peaceful and
happy those evenings (once considered a little dreary perhaps and
monotonous) now seemed! Those mornings in the dusty bookshop, Mr. Zanti,
Herr Gottfried, Mrs. Brockett, then Brockett's with its strange
kind-hearted company--the dining-room, the marble pillars, the green
curtains--Norah Monogue!
Not only did it seem another lifetime when he had been there but also
inevitably, one was threatened with never getting back. Bucket Lane was
another world--from its grimy windows one looked upon every tragedy that
life had to offer. Into its back courts were born muddled indecent little
lives, there blindly to wallow until the earth called them back to itself
again.
But it was in the attitude of Bucket Lane to the Great Inevitable that the
essential difference was to be observed. In Bennett Square things had been
expected and, for the most part, obtained. Catastrophes came lumbering into
their midst at times but rising in the morning one might decently expect to
go to rest at night in safety. In Bucket Lane there was no safety but
defiance--fierce, bitterly humorous, truculent defiance. Bucket Lane was a
beleaguered army that stood behind the grime and dirty walls on guard. From
the earliest moment there the faces of all the babies born into Bucket Lane
caught the strain of cautious resistance that was always to remain with
them. Life in Bucket Lane, for every one from the youngest infant to the
oldest idiot, was War. War against Order and Civilised Force. War also
against that great unseen Hand that might at any moment swoop down upon any
one of them and bestow fire, death and imprisonment upon its victims. To
the ladies and gentlemen from the Mission the citizens of Bucket Lane
presented an amused and cynical tolerance. If those poor, meek, frightened
creatures chose some faint-hearted attempts at flattery and submission
before this abominable Deity--well, they did no harm.
Mrs. Williams said to Miss Connacher, a bright-faced young woman from St.
Matthew's Mission--"And I'm sure we're always delighted to see you, Miss.
But you can't 'ave us goin' and being grateful on our bended knees to the
sort of person as according to your account of it gave me my first 'usband
'oo was a blackguard if ever there was one, and my last child wot 'ad
rickets and so 'andsomely arranged me to go breakin' my leg one night
coming back from a party and sliding on the stairs, and in losin' my little
bit o' charin' and as near the workus as ever yer see--no--it ain't common
sense."
To which Miss Connacher vaguely looking around for a list of Mrs. Williams'
blessings and finding none to speak of, had no reply.
But the astonishing thing was that Peter seemed at once to be seized with
the Bucket Lane position. He was now, he understood, in a world of
earthquake--wise citizens lived from minute to minute and counted on no
longer safety. He began also to eliminate everything that was not
absolutely essential. At Brockett's he had never consciously done without
anything that he wanted--in Bucket Lane he discarded to the last possible
shred of possession.
He had returned from his first day's hunting with the resolve that before
he ventured out again he would have something to show. With a precious
sixpence he bought a copy of _The Mascot_ and studied it--there was a short
story entitled "Mrs. Adair's Co."--and an article on "What Society
Drinks"--the remaining pages of the number were filled with pictures and
"Chatter from Day to Day." This gaily-coloured production lying on one of
the beds in the dark room in Bucket Lane seemed singularly out of place.
Its pages fluttered in the breeze that came through the window
cracks--"Maison Tep" it cried feebly to the screaming children in the court
below, "is a very favourite place for supper just now, with Maitre Savori
as its popular chef and its admirably stocked cellars...."
Peter gave himself a fortnight in which to produce something that he could
"show." Stephen meanwhile had found work as a waiter in one of the small
Soho restaurants; it was only a temporary engagement but he hoped to get
something better within a week or two.
For the moment all was well. At the end of his fortnight, with four things
written Peter meant to advance once more to the attack. Meanwhile he sat
with a pen, a penny bottle of ink and an exercise book and did what he
could. At the end of the fortnight he had written "The Sea Road," an essay
for which Robert Louis Stevenson was largely responsible, "The Redgate
Mill," a story of the fantastic, terrible kind, "Stones for Bread,"
moralising on Bucket Lane, and the "Red-Haired Boy," a somewhat bitter
reminiscence of Dawson's. Of this the best was undoubtedly "The Sea Road,"
but in his heart of hearts Peter knew that there was something the matter
with all of them. "Reuben Hallard" he had written because he had to write
it, these four things he had written because he ought to write them ...
difference sufficient. Nevertheless, he put them into halfpenny wrappes and
sent them away.
In the struggle to produce these things he had not found that fortnight
wearisome. Before him, every day, there was the evening when Stephen would
return, to which he might look forward. Stephen was always very late--often
it was two o'clock before he came in, but they had a talk before going to
sleep. And here in these evenings Stephen developed in the most wonderful
way, developed because Peter had really never known him before.
Stephen had never appeared to Peter as a character at all. In the early
days Peter had been too young. Stephen had, at that time, been simply
something to be worshipped, without any question or statement. Now that
worshipping had gone and the space that it left had to be filled by some
new relationship, something that could only come slowly, out of the close
juxtaposition that living together in Bucket Lane had provided.
And it was Stephen who found, unconsciously and quite simply, the shape and
colour of Peter's idea of him. Peter had in reality, nothing at all to do
with it, and had Stephen been a whit more self-conscious the effect would
have been spoiled.
In the first place Peter came quite freshly to the way that Stephen looked.
Stephen expressed nothing, consciously, with his body; it was wonderful
indeed considering its size and strength, the little that he managed to do
with it. His eyes were mild and amiable, his face largely covered with a
deep brown beard, once wildly flowing, now sharply pointed. He was at least
six foot four in height, the breadth of shoulder was tremendous, but
although he knew admirably what to do with it as a means of conveyance, of
sheer physical habit, he had no conception of the possibilities that it
held as the expression of his soul. That soul was to be found, by those who
cared to look for it, glancing from his eyes, struggling sometimes through
the swift friendliness of his smile--but he gave it no invitation. It all
came, perhaps, from the fact that he treated himself--if anything so
unconscious may be called treatment--as the very simplest creature alive.
The word introspection meant nothing to him whatever, there were in life
certain direct sharp motives and on these he acted. He never thought of
himself or of any one else in terms of complexity; the body acted simply
through certain clear and direct physical laws ... so the spirit. He loved
the woman who had dominated his whole life and one day he would find her
and marry her. He loved Peter as he would love a son of his own if he
possessed one, and he would be at Peter's side so long as Peter needed him,
and would rather be there than anywhere else. For the rest life was a
matter of birth and death, of loving one man and hating another, of food
and drink, and--but this last uncertainly--of some strange thrill that was
stirred in him, at times, by certain sights and sounds.
He was glad to have been born ... he would be quite ready to die. He did
not question the reason of the one state or the other. For the very fact
that life was so simple and unentangled he clung, with the tenacity and
dumb force of an animal to the things that he had. Peter felt, vaguely,
from time to time, the strength with which Stephen held to him. It was
never expressed in word nor in action but it came leaping sometimes, like
fire, into the midst of their conversation--it was never tangible--always
illusive.
To Peter's progress this simplicity of Stephen was of vast importance. The
boy had now reached an age and a period where emotions, judgments,
partialities, conclusions and surmises were fighting furiously for
dominion. His seven years at Brockett's had been, introspectively, of
little moment. He had been too busy discovering the things that other
people had discovered and written down to think very much about himself.
Now released from the domination of books, he plunged into a whirlpool of
surmise about himself. During the fortnight that he sat writing his
articles in Bucket Lane he flew, he sank, according to his moods. It seemed
to him that as soon as he had decided on one path and set out eagerly to
follow it others crossed it and bewildered him.
He was now on that unwholesome, absorbing, thrilling, dangerous path of
self-discovery. Opposed to this was the inarticulate, friendly soul of
Stephen. Stephen understood nothing and at the same time understood
everything. Against the testing of his few simple laws Peter's complexities
often vanished ... but vanished only to recur again, unsatisfied, demanding
a subtler answer. It was during those days, through all the trouble and
even horror that so shortly came upon them both, that Stephen realised with
a dull, unreasoned pain, like lead at the heart, that Peter was passing
inevitably from him into a country whither Stephen could not follow--to
deal with issues that Stephen could not, in any kind of way, understand.
Stephen realised this many days before Peter even dimly perceived it, and
the older man by the love that he had for the boy whom he had known from
the very first period of his growth was enabled, although dimly, to see
beyond, above all these complexities, to a day when Peter would once more,
having learnt and suffered much in the meanwhile, come back to that first
simplicity.
But that day was far distant.
II
On the evening of the day on which Peter finished the last of his five
attempts to take the London journals by storm Stephen returned from his
restaurant earlier than usual--so early indeed, that Peter, had he not been
so bent on his own immediate affairs, must have noticed and questioned it.
He might, too, have observed that Stephen, now and again, shot an anxious,
troubled glance at him as though he were uneasy about something.
But Peter, since six o'clock that evening, at which moment he had written
the concluding sentence of "The Sea Road," had been in deep and troubled
thought concerning himself, and broke from that introspection, on Stephen's
arrival, in a state of unhappy morbidity and entire self-absorption.
Their supper was beer, sardines and cheese.
"It's been pretty awful here this evening," Peter said. "Old Trubbit on the
floor below's been beating his wife and she's been screaming like anything.
I couldn't stand it, after a bit, and went down to see what I could do. The
family was mopping her head with water and he was sitting on a chair,
crying. Drunk again, of course, but he was turned off his job apparently
this afternoon. They're closing down."
"'Ard luck," said Stephen, looking at the floor.
"Yes--it hasn't been altogether cheerful--and his getting the chuck like
that set me thinking. It's awfully lucky you've got your job all right and
of course now I've written these things and have got 'something to show,'
I'll be all right." Peter paused for a moment a little uncertainly. "But it
does, you know, make one a bit frightened, this place, seeing the way
people get suddenly bowled over. There were the Gambits--a fortnight ago he
was in work and they were as fit as anything ... they haven't had any food
now for three days."
"There ain't anything to be frightened about," Stephen said slowly.
"No, I know. But Stephen, suppose I _don't_ get work, after all. I've been
so confident all this time, but I mightn't be able to do the job a bit....
I suppose this place is getting on my nerves but--I could get awfully
frightened if I let myself."
"Oh, you'll be all right. Of course you'll be getting something--"
"Yes, but I hate spending your money like this. Do you know, Stephen, I'd
almost rather you were out of work too. That sounds a rotten thing to say
but I hate being given it all like this, especially when you haven't got
much of your own either--"
"Between friends," said Stephen slowly, swinging his leg backwards and
forwards and making the bed creak under his weight, "there aren't any
giving or taking--it's just common."
"Oh, yes, I know," said Peter hurriedly, frightened lest he should have
hurt his feelings, "of course it's all right between you and me. But all
the same I'm rather eager to be earning part of it."
They were silent for a time. Bucket Lane too seemed silent and through
their little window, between the black roofs and chimneys, a cluster of
stars twinkled as though they had found their way, by accident, into a very
dirty neighbourhood and were trying to get out of it again.
Peter was busy fishing for his thoughts; at last he caught one and held it
out to Stephen's innocent gaze.
"It isn't," he said, "like anything so much as catching a disease from an
infectious neighbourhood. I think if I lived here with five thousand a year
I should still be frightened. It's in the air."
"Being frightened," said Stephen rather hurriedly and speaking with a kind
of shame, as though he had done something to which he would rather not own
up, "is a kind of 'abit. Very soon, Peter, you'll know what it's like and
take it as it comes."
"Oh," said Peter, "if it's that kind of being frightened--seeing I mean
quite clearly the things you're frightened of--why, that's pretty easy. One
of the first books I ever read--'Henry Lessingham,' by Galleon, you know,
I've talked about him to you--had a long bit about it--courage I mean. He
made it a kind of parable, countries you'd got to go through before you'd
learnt to be really brave; and the first, and by far the easiest courage is
the sort that you want when you haven't got things--the sort the Gambits
want--when you're starving or out of a job. Well, that's I suppose the
easiest kind and yet I'm funking it. So what on earth am I going to do when
the harder business comes along? ... Stephen, I'm beginning to have a
secret and uncomfortable suspicion that your friend, Peter Westcott, is a
poor creature."
"Thank the Lord," said Stephen furiously and kicking out with his leg as
though he had got some especial enemy's back directly in front of him,
"that you've finished them damned articles. You've been sittin' here
thinkin' and writin' till you've given yerself blue devils--down-along,
too, with all them poor creatures hittin' each other and drinkin'--I
oughtn't to have left yer up here so much alone--"
"No--you couldn't help it, Stephen--it's nothing to do with you. It's all
more than you can manage and nobody in the world can help me. It's seven
years and a bit now since I left Cornwall, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Stephen, looking across at him.
"All that time I've never had a word nor a sign from any one there. Well,
you might have thought that that would be long enough to break right away
from it.... Well, it isn't--"
"Don't you go thinking about all that time. You've cleared it right away--"
"No, I haven't cleared it--that's just the point. I don't suppose one ever
clears anything. All the time I was with Zanti I was reading so hard and
living so safely that it was only at moments, when I was alone, that I
thought about Treliss at all. But these last weeks it's been coming on me
full tide."
"What's been coming on you?"
"Well, Scaw House, I suppose ... and my father and grandfather. My
grandfather told me once that I couldn't escape from the family and I
can't--it's the most extraordinary thing--"
Stephen saw that Peter was growing agitated; his hands were clenched and
his face was white.
"Mind you, I've seen my grandfather and father both go under it. My father
went down all in a moment. It isn't any one thing--you can call it drink if
you like--but it's simply three parts of us aching to go to the bad ...
aching, that's the word. Anything rotten--women or drink or anything you
like--as long as we lose control and let the devil get the upper hand. Let
him get it once--_really_ get it--and we're really done--"
Peter paused for a moment and then went on hurriedly as though he were
telling a story and had only a little time in which to tell it.
"But that isn't all--it's worse than that. I've been feeling these last
weeks as though my father were sitting there in that beastly house with
that filthy woman--and willing me--absolutely with all his might--to go
under--"
"But what is it," said Stephen, going, as always, to the simplest aspect of
the case, "that you exactly want to do?"
"Oh, I don't know ... just to let loose the whole thing--I did break out
once at Brockett's--I've never told anybody, but I got badly drunk one
night and then went back with some woman.... Oh! it was all filthy--but I
was mad, wild, for hours ... insane--and that night, in the middle of it
all, sitting there as plainly as you please, there in Scaw House, I saw my
father--as plainly as I see you--"
"All young men," said Stephen, "'ave got to go through a bit of filth. You
aren't the sort of fellow, Peter, that stays there. Your wanting not to
shows that you'll come out of it all right."
Here was a case where Stephen's simplicities were obviously of little
avail.
"Ah, but don't you see," said Peter impatiently, "it's not the thing itself
that I feel matters so much, although that's rotten enough, but it's the
beastly devil--real, personal--I tell you I saw him catch my grandfather as
tight as though he'd been there in the room ... and my father, too. I tell
you, this last week or two I've been almost mad ... wanting to chuck it
all, this fighting and the rest and just go down and grovel..."
"I expect it's regular work you're wanting," said Stephen, "keeping your
mind busy. It's bad to 'ave your sort of brain wandering round with nothing
to feed on. It'll be all right, boy, in a day or two when you've got some
work."
Peter's head dropped forward on to his hands. "I don't know--it's like
going round in a circle. You see, Stephen, what makes it all so difficult
is--well, I don't know ... why I haven't told you before ... but the fact
is--I'm in love--"
"I knew it a while back," said Stephen quietly, "watching your face when
you didn't know I was lookin'--"
"Well, it's all hopeless, of course. I don't suppose I shall ever see her
again ... but that's what's made this looking for work so difficult--I've
been wanting to get on--and every day seems to place her further away. And
then when I get hopeless these other devils come round and say 'Oh well,
you can't get her, you know. That's as impossible as anything--so you'd
better have your fling while you can....' My God! I'm a beast!"
The cry broke from him with a bitterness that filled the bare little room.
Stephen, after a little, got up and put his hand on the boy's shoulder.
"Nobody ain't going to touch you while I'm here," he said simply as though
he were challenging devils and men alike.
Peter looked up and smiled. "What an old brick you are," he said. "Do you
remember that fight Christmas time, years ago? ... You're always like
that.... I've been an ass to bother you with it all and while we've got
each other things can't be so bad." He got up and stretched his arms.
"Well, it's bedtime, especially as you've got to be off early to that old
restaurant--"
Stephen stepped back from him.
"I've been meaning to tell you," he said, "that's off. The place ain't
paying and the boss shut four of us down to-night ... I'm not to go back
... Peter, boy," he finished, almost triumphantly. "We're up against it ...
I've got a quid in my pocket and that's all there is to it."
They faced one another whilst the candle behind them guttered and blew in
the window cracks, and the cluster of stars, still caught in the dirty
roofs and chimneys of Bucket Lane, twinkled, desperately--in vain.
CHAPTER VIII
STEPHEN'S CHAPTER
I
No knight--the hero of any chronicle--ever went forward to his battle with
a braver heart than did Peter now in his desperate adventure against the
world. His morbidity, his introspection, his irritation with Stephen's
simplicities fled from him... he was gay, filled with the glamour of
showing what one could do... he did not doubt but that a fortnight would
see him in a magnificent position. And then--the fortnight passed and he
and Stephen had still their positions to discover--the money moreover was
almost at an end... another fortnight would behold them penniless.
It was absurd--it was monstrous, incredible. Life was not like that--Peter
bit his lip and set out again. Editors had not, on most occasions,
vouchsafed him even an interview. Then had come no answer to the four
halfpenny wrappers. The world, like a wall of shining steel, closed him in
with impenetrable silence.
It was absurd--it was monstrous. Peter fought desperately, as a bird beats
with its wings on the bars of its cage. They were having the worst of luck.
On several occasions he had been just too late and some one had got the
position before him. Stephen too found that the places where he had worked
before had now no job for him. "It was the worst time in the world... a
month ago now or possibly in a month's time...."
Stephen did not tell the boy that away from London there were many things
that he could do--the boy was not up to tramping. Indeed, nothing was more
remarkable than the way in which Peter's strength seemed to strain, like a
flood, away. It was, perhaps, a matter of nerves as much as physical
strength--the boy was burning with the anxiety of it, whereas to Stephen
this was no new experience. Peter saw it in the light of some horrible
disaster that belonged, in all the world's history, to him alone. He came
back at the end of one of his days, white, his eyes almost closed, his
fingers twitching, his head hanging a little ... very silent.
He seemed to feel bitterly the ignominy of it as though he were realising,
for the first time, that nobody wanted him. He had come now to be ready to
do anything, anything in the world, and he had the look of one who was
ready to do anything. His blue coat was shiny, his boots had been patched
by Stephen--there were deep black hollows under his eyes and his mouth had
become thin and hard.
Stephen--having himself his own distresses to support--watched the boy with
acute anxiety. He felt with increasing unhappiness, that here was an
organism, a temperament, that was new to him, that was beyond his grasp.
Peter saw things in it all--this position of a desperate cry for work--that
he, Stephen, had never seen at all. Peter would sit in the evening, in his
chair, staring in front of him, silent, and hearing nothing that Stephen
said to him. With Stephen life was a case of having money or not having
it--if one had not money one went without everything possible and waited
until the money came again ... the tide was sure to turn. But, with Peter,
this was all a fight against his father who sat, apparently, in the dark
rooms at Scaw House, willing disaster. Now, as Stephen and all the sensible
world knew, this was nonsense--
It was also, in some still stranger way, a fight against London itself--not
London, a place of streets and houses, of Oxford Street and Piccadilly
Circus but London, an animal--a kind of dragon as far as Stephen could make
it out with scales and a tail--
Now what was one to make of this except that the boy's head was being
turned and that he ought to see a doctor.
There was also the further question of an appeal to Brockett's or Mr.
Zanti. Stephen knew that Herr Gottfried or Mr. Zanti would lend help
eagerly did they but know, and he supposed, from the things that Peter had
told him, that there were also warm friends at Brockett's; but the boy had
made him swear, with the last order of solemnity, that he would send no
word to either place. Peter had said that he would never speak to him
again should he do such a thing. He had said that should he once obtain an
independent position then he would go back ... but not before.
Stephen did not know what to do nor where to go. In another month's time
the rent could not be paid and then they must go into the street and Peter
was in no condition for that--he should rather be in bed. Mrs. Williams,
it is true, would not be hard upon them, for she was a kind woman and had
formed a great liking for Peter, but she had only enough herself to keep
her family alive and she must, for her children's sake, let the room.
To Stephen, puzzling in vain and going round and round in a hopeless
circle, it seemed as though Peter's brains were locked in an iron box and
they could not find a key. For himself, well, it was natural enough! But
Peter, with that genius, that no one should want him!
And yet through it all, at the back of the misery and distress of it, there
was a wild pride, a fierce joy that he had the key with him, that he was
all in the world to whom the boy might look, that to him and to him alone,
in this wild, cold world Peter now belonged.
It was his moment....
II
At the end of a terrible day of disastrous rejections Peter, stumbling down
the Strand, was conscious of a little public-house, with a neat bow-window,
that stood back from the street. At the bottom of his trouser pocket a tiny
threepenny piece that Stephen had, that morning, thrust upon him, turned
round and round in his fingers. He had not spent it--he had intended to
restore it to Stephen in the evening. He had meant, too, to walk back all
the way to Bucket Lane but now he felt that he could not do that unless he
were first to take something. This little inn with its bow-windows.... Down
the Strand in the light of the setting sun, he saw again that which he had
often seen during these last weeks--that chain of gaunt figures that moved
with bending backs and twisted fingers, on and out of the crowds and the
carriages--The beggars!... He felt, already, that they knew that he was
soon to be one of their number, that every day, every hour brought him
nearer to their ranks. An old man, dirty, in rags, stepped with an eager
eye past him and stooped for a moment into the gutter. He rose again,
slipping something into his pocket of his tattered coat. He gave Peter a
glance--to the boy it seemed a glance of triumphant recognition and then he
had slipped away.
Peter had had very little to eat during these last days and to-night, for
the first time, things began to take an uncertain shape. As he stood on
the kerb and looked, it seemed to him that the Strand was the sea-road at
Treliss, that the roar of the traffic was the noise that the sea made, far
below them. If one could see round the corner, there where the sun flung
a patch of red light, one would come upon Scaw House in its dark clump of
trees--and through the window of that front room, Peter could see his
father and that old woman, one on each side of the fire-place, drinking.
But the sea-road was stormy to-night, its noise was loud in Peter's ears.
And then the way that people brushed against him as they passed recalled
him to himself and he slipped back almost into the bow-window of the little
inn. He was feeling very unwell and there was a burning pain in his chest
that hurt him when he drew a deep breath ... and then too he was very cold
and his teeth chattered in fits as though he had suddenly lost control of
them and they had become some other person's teeth.
Well, why not go into the little inn and have a drink? Then he would go
back to Bucket Lane and lie down and never wake again. For he was so tired
that he had never known before what it was to be tired at all--only Stephen
would not let him sleep.... Stephen was cruel and would not let him alone.
No one would let him alone--the world had treated him very evilly--what did
he owe the world?
He would go now and surrender to these things, these things that were
stronger than he ... he would drink and he would sleep and that should be
the end of everything ... the blessed end.
He swayed a little on his feet and he put his hand to his forehead in order
that he might think more clearly.
Some one had said once to him a great many years ago--"It is not life that
matters but the Courage that you bring to it." Well, that was untrue. He
would like to tell the man who had said that that he was a liar. No Courage
could be enough if life chose to be hard. No Courage--
Nevertheless, the thought of somewhere a long time ago when some one had
said that to him, slowly filled his tired brain with a distaste for the
little inn with the bow-windows. He would not go there yet, just a little
while and then he would go.
Almost dreaming--certainly seeing nothing about him that he recognised--he
stumbled confusedly down to the Embankment. Here there was at any rate
air, he drew his shabby blue coat more closely about him and sat down on a
wooden bench, in company with a lady who wore a large damaged feather in
her hat and a red stained blouse with torn lace upon it and a skirt of a
bright and tarnished blue.
The lady gave him a nod.
"Cheer, chucky," she said.
Peter made no reply.
"Down on your uppers? My word, you look bad-- Poor Kid! Well, never say
die--strike me blimy but there's a good day coming--"
"I sat here once before," said Peter, leaning forward and addressing her
very earnestly, "and it was the first time that I ever heard the noise that
London makes. If you listen you can hear it now--London's a beast you
know--"
But the lady had paid very little attention. "Men are beasts, beasts," she
said, scowling at a gap in the side of her boots, "beasts, that's what they
are. 'Aven't 'ad any luck the last few nights. Suppose I'm losin' my looks
sittin' out 'ere in the mud and rain. There was a time, young feller, my
lad, when I 'ad my carriage, not 'arf!" She spat in front of her--"'E
was a good sort, 'e was--give me no end of a time ... but the lot of men
I've been meetin' lately ain't fit to be called men--they ain't--mean
devils--leavin' me like this, curse 'em!" She coughed. The sun had set now
and the lights were coming out, like glass beads on a string on the other
side of the river. "Stoppin' out all night, ducky? Stayin' 'ere? 'Cause I
got a bit of a cough!--disturbs fellers a bit ... last feller said as 'ow
'e couldn't get a bit o' sleep because of it--damned rot I call it. 'Owever
it isn't out of doors you ought to be sittin', chucky. Feelin' bad?"
Peter looked at her out of his half-closed eyes.
"I can't bother any more," he said to her sleepily. "They're so cruel--they
won't let me go to sleep. I've got a pain here--in my chest you know. Have
you got a pain in your chest?"
"My leg's sore," she answered, "where a chap kicked me last week--just
because--oh well," she paused modestly and spat again--"It's comin' on
cold."
A cold little wind was coining up the river, ruffling the tips of the trees
and turning the leaves of the plane-trees back as though it wanted to clean
the other sides of them.
Peter got up unsteadily. "I'm going home to sleep," he said, "I'm
dreadfully tired. Good-night."
"So long, chucky," the lady with the damaged feather said to him. He left
her eyeing discontentedly the hole in her boot and trying to fasten, with
confused fingers, the buttons of the red blouse.
Peter mechanically, as one walking in a dream, crept into an omnibus.
Mechanically he left it and mechanically climbed the stairs of the house
in Bucket Lane. There were two fixed thoughts in his brain--one was that
no one in the world had ever before been as thirsty as he was, and that he
would willingly commit murder or any violence if thereby he might obtain
drink, and the other thought was that Stephen was his enemy, that he hated
Stephen because Stephen never left him alone and would not let him
sleep--also in the back of his mind distantly, as though it concerned some
one else, that he was very unhappy....
Stephen was sitting on one of the beds, looking in front of him. Peter
moved forward heavily and sat on the other bed. They looked at one another.
"No luck," said Stephen, "Armstrong's hadn't room for a man. Ricroft
wouldn't see me. Peter, I'm thinking we'll have to take to the roads--"
Peter made no answer.
"Yer not lookin' a bit well, lad. I doubt if yer can stand much more of
it."
Peter looked across at him sullenly.
"Why can't you leave me alone?" he said. "You're always worrying--"
A slow flush mounted into Stephen's cheeks but he said nothing.
"Well, why don't you say something? Nothing to say--it isn't bad enough
that you've brought me into this--"
"Come, Mr. Peter," Stephen answered slowly. "That ain't fair. I never
brought you into this. I've done my best."
"Oh, blame me, of course. That's natural enough. If it hadn't been for
you--"
Stephen came into the middle of the floor.
"Come, Peter boy, yer tired. Yer don't know what yer saying. Best go to
bed. Don't be saying anything that yer'd be regretting afterwards--"
Peter's eyes that had been closed, suddenly opened, blazing. "Oh, damn you
and your talk--I hate you. I wish I'd never seen you--a rotten kind of
friendship--" his voice died off into muttering.
Stephen went back to his bed. "This ain't fair, Mr. Peter," he said in a
low voice. "You'll be sorry afterwards. I ain't 'ad any very 'appy time
myself these last weeks and now--"
Their nerves were like hot, jangling wires. Suddenly into the midst of that
bare room there had sprung between them hatred. They faced each other ...
they could have leapt at one another's throats and fought....
Suddenly Peter gave a little cry that seemed to fill the room. His head
fell forward--
"Oh, Stephen, Stephen, I'm so damned ill, I'm so damnably ill."
He caught for a moment at his chest as though he would tear his shirt open.
Then he stumbled from the bed and lay in a heap on the floor with his hands
spread out--
Stephen picked him up in his arms and carried him on to his bed.
III
The little doctor who attended to the wants of Bucket Lane was discovered
at his supper. He was a dirty little man, with large dusty spectacles, a
red nose and a bald head. He wore an old, faded velveteen jacket out of the
pockets of which stuck innumerable papers. He was very often drunk and had
a shrew of a wife who made the sober parts of his life a misery, but he was
kind-hearted and generous and had a very real knowledge of his business.
Mrs. Williams volubly could not conceal her concern at Peter's
condition--"and 'im such a nice-spoken young genelman as I was saying only
yesterday tea-time, there's nothin' I said, as I wouldn't be willin' to do
for that there poor Mr. Westcott and that there poor Mr. Brant 'oo are as
like two 'elpless children in their fightin' the world as ever I see and
'ow ever can I help 'em I said--"
"Well, my good woman," the little doctor finally interrupted, "you can help
here and now by getting some hot water and the other things I've put down
here."
When she was gone he turned slowly to Stephen who stood, the picture of
despair, looking down upon Peter.
"'E's goin' to die?" he asked.
"That depends," the little doctor answered. "The boy's been starved--ought
never to have been allowed to get into this condition. Both of you hard up,
I suppose?"
"As 'ard up as we very well could be--" Stephen answered grimly.
"Well--has he no friends?"
There--the question at last. Stephen took it as he would have taken a blow
between the eyes. He saw very clearly that the end of his reign had come.
He had done what he could and he had failed. But in him was the fierce
furious desire to fight for the boy. Why should he give him up, now, when
they had spent all these weeks together, when they had struggled for their
very existence side by side. What right had any of these others to Peter
compared with his right? He knew very well that if he gave him up now the
boy would never be his again. He might see him--yes--but that passing of
Peter that he had already begun to realise would be accomplished. He might
look at him but only as a wanderer may look from the valley up to the hill.
The doctor broke in upon him as he stood hesitating there--
"Come," he said roughly, "we have not much time. The boy may die. Has he no
friends?"
Stephen turned his back to Peter. "Yes," he said, "I know where they are. I
will fetch them myself."
The doctor had not lived in Bucket Lane all these years for nothing. He put
his hand on Stephen's arm and said: "You're a good fellow, by God. It'll be
all right."
Stephen went.
On his way to Bennett Square a thousand thoughts filled his mind. He knew,
as though he had been told it by some higher power, that Peter was leaving
him now never to return. He had done what he could for Peter--now the boy
must pass on to others who might be able, more fittingly, to help him. He
cursed the Gods that they had not allowed him to obtain work during these
weeks, for then Peter and he might have gone on, working, prospering and
the parting might have been far distant.
But he felt also that Peter's destiny was something higher and larger than
anything that he could ever compass--it must be Peter's life that he should
always be leaving people behind him--stages on his road--until he had
attained his place. But for Stephen, a loneliness swept down upon him
that seemed to turn the world to stone. Never, in all the years of his
wandering, had he known anything like this. It is very hard that a man
should care for only two creatures in the world and that he should be held,
by God's hand, from reaching either of them.
The door of Brockett's was opened to him by a servant and he asked for Mrs.
Brockett. In the cold and dark hall the lady sternly awaited him, but the
sternness fell from her like a cloak when he told her the reason of his
coming--
"Dear me, and the poor boy so ill," she said. "We have all been very
anxious indeed about poor Mr. Peter. We had tried every clue but could hear
nothing of him. We were especially eager to find him because Miss Monogue
had some good news for him about his book. There is a gentleman--a friend
of Mr. Peter's--who has been doing everything to find him--who is with Miss
Monogue now. He will be delighted. Perhaps you will go up."
Stephen can have looked no agreeable object at this time, worn out by the
struggle of the last weeks, haggard and gaunt, his beard unkempt--but Norah
Monogue came forward to him with both her hands outstretched.
"Oh, you know something of Peter--tell us, please," she said.
A stout, pleasant-faced gentleman behind her was introduced as Mr. Galleon.
Stephen explained. "But why, why," said the gentleman, "didn't you let us
know before, my good fellow?"
Stephen's brow darkened. "Peter didn't wish it," he said.
But Norah Monogue came forward and put her hand on his arm. "You must
be the Mr. Brant about whom he has so often talked," she said. "I am so
glad to meet you at last. Peter owes so much to you. We have been trying
everywhere to get word of him because some publishers have taken his novel
and think very well of it indeed. But come--do let us go at once. There is
no time to lose--"
So they had taken his novel, had they? All these days--all these terrible
hours--that starving, that ghastly anxiety, the boy's terror--all these
things had been unnecessary. Had they only known, this separation now might
have been avoided.
He could not trust himself to speak to Bobby Galleon and Norah Monogue.
These were the people who were going to take Peter away.
He turned and went, in silence, down the stairs.
At Bucket Lane Bobby Galleon took affairs into his own hands. At once Peter
should be removed to his house in Chelsea--it would not apparently harm him
to be moved that night.
Peter was still unconscious. Stephen stood in the back of the room and
watched them make their preparations. They had all forgotten him. For a
moment as they passed down the stairs Stephen had his last glimpse of
Peter. He saw the high white forehead, the long black eyelashes, the white
drawn cheeks.... At this parting Peter had no eye for him.
Bobby Galleon and Miss Monogue both spoke to Stephen pleasantly before they
went away. Stephen did not hear what they said. Bobby took Stephen's name
down on a piece of paper.... Then they were gone. They were all gone.
Mrs. Williams looked through the door at him for a moment but something in
the man's face drove her away. Very slowly he put his few clothes together.
He must tramp the roads again--the hard roads, the glaring sun, cold
moon--always going on, always alone--
He shouldered his bag and went out....
BOOK III
THE ROUNDABOUT
CHAPTER I
NO. 72, CHEYNE WALK
I
Burnished clouds--swollen with golden light and soft and changing in their
outline--were sailing, against a pale green autumn evening sky, over
Chelsea.
It was nearly six o'clock and at the Knightsbridge end of Sloane Street a
cloud of black towers quivered against the pale green.
The yellow light that the golden clouds shed upon the earth bathed the neat
and demure houses of Sloane Street in a brief bewildered unreality. Sloane
Street, not accustomed to unreality, regretted amiably and with its gentle
smile that Nature should insist, once every day, for some half-hour or
so, on these mists and enchantments. The neat little houses called their
masters and mistresses within doors and advised them to rest before
dressing for dinner and so insured these many comfortable souls that they
should not be disturbed by any unwelcome violence on their emotions.
Soon, before looking-glasses and tables shining with silver hair-brushes
bodies would be tied and twisted and faces would be powdered and
painted--meanwhile, for that dying moment, Sloane Street was lifted into
the hearts of those burnished clouds and held for an instant in glory.
Then to the relief of the neat and shining houses the electric lights came
out, one by one, and the world was itself again....
Beyond Sloane Square, however, the King's Road chattered and rattled and
minded not at all whether the sky were yellow or blue. This was the hour
when shopping must be done and barrows shone beneath their flaring gas, and
many ladies, with the appearance of having left their homes for the merest
minute, hurried from stall to stall. The King's Road stands like a noisy
Cheap Jack outside the sanctities of Chelsea. Behind its chatter are the
quietest streets in the world, streets that are silent because they prefer
rest to noise and not at all because they have nothing to say. The King's
Road has been hired by Chelsea to keep foreigners away, and the faint smile
that the streets wear is a smile of relief because that noisy road so
admirably achieves its purpose. In this mellow evening light the little
houses glow, through the river mists, across the cobbles. The stranger, on
leaving the King's Road behind him, is swept into a quiet intimacy that
has nothing of any town about it; he is refreshed as he might be were he
to leave the noisy train behind him and plunge into the dark, scented
hedge-rows and see before him the twinkling lights of some friendly inn.
As the burnished clouds fade from the sky on the dark surface of the river
the black barges hang their lights and in Cheyne Row and Glebe Place, down
Oakley Street, and along the wide spaces of Cheyne Walk, lamps burn mildly
in a hundred windows. Guarded on one side by the sweeping murmur of the
river, on the other by the loud grimaces of the King's Road Chelsea sinks,
with a sound like a whisper of its own name, into evening....
As the last trailing fingers of the golden clouds die before the
approaching army of the stars, as the yellow above the horizon gives way to
a cold and iron blue, lights come out in that house with the green door and
the white stone steps--No. 72, Cheyne Walk--that is now Peter Westcott's
home.
II
Peter had, on the very afternoon of that beautiful evening, returned
from the sea; there, during the last three weeks, he had passed his
convalescence and now, once again, he faced the world. Mrs. Galleon and
the Galleon baby had been with him and Bobby had come down to them for the
week-ends. In this manner Peter had had an opportunity of getting to know
Mrs. Galleon with a certainty and speed that nothing else could have given
him. During the first weeks after his removal from Bucket Lane, he had been
too ill to take any account of his neighbours or surroundings. He had been
sent down to the sea as soon as it was possible and it was here, watching
her quietly or listening to her as she read to him, walking a little with
her, playing with her baby, that he grew to know her and to love her. She
had been a Miss Alice du Cane, at first an intelligent, cynical and rather
trivial person. Then suddenly, for no very sure reason that any one could
discover, her character changed. She had known Bobby during many years and
had always laughed at him for a solemn, rather-priggish young man--then she
fell in love with him and, to his own wild and delirious surprise, married
him. The companions of her earlier girlhood missed her cynicism and
complained that brilliance had given way to commonplace but you could not
find, in the whole of London, a happier marriage.
To Peter she was something entirely new. Norah Monogue was the only woman
with whom, as yet, he had come into any close contact, and she, by her very
humility, had allowed him to assume to her a superior, rather patronising
attitude. The brief vision of Clare Rossiter had been altogether of the
opposite kind, partaking too furiously of heaven to have any earthly
quality. But here in Alice Galleon he discovered a woman who gave him
something--companionship, a lively and critical intelligence, some
indefinable quality of charm--that was entirely new to him.
She chaffed him, criticised him, admired him, absorbed him and nattered him
in a breath. She told him that he had a "degree" of talent, that he was the
youngest and most ignorant person for his age that she had ever met, that
he was conceited, that he was rough and he had no manners, that he was too
humble, that he was a "flopper" because he was so anxious to please, that
he was a boy and an old man at the same time and finally that the Galleon
baby--a solemn child--had taken to him as it had never taken to any one
during the eventful three years of its life.
Behind these contradictory criticisms Peter knew that there was a friend,
and he was sensible enough also to realise that many of the things that
she said to him were perfectly true and that he would do well to take them
to heart. At first she had made him angry and that had delighted her,
so he had been angry no longer; it seemed to him, during these days of
convalescence, that the solemn melodramatic young man of Bucket Lane was
an incredibility.
And yet, although he felt that that episode had been definitely
closed--shut off as it were by wide doors that held back at a distance,
every sound, the noise, the confusion, the terror, was nevertheless there,
but for the moment, the doors were closed. Only in his dreams they rolled
back arid, night after night he awoke, screaming, bathed in sweat,
trembling from head to foot. Sometimes he thought that he saw an army of
rats advancing across the floor of their Bucket Lane room and Stephen and
he beat them off, but ever they returned....
Once he thought that their room was invaded by a number of old toothless
hags who came in at the door and the window, and these creatures, with
taloned fingers fought, screeching and rolling their eyes....
Twice he dreamt that he saw on a hill, high uplifted against a stormy
sky, the statue of the Man on the Lion, gigantic. He struggled to see the
Rider's face and it seemed to him that multitudes of other persons--men
and women--were pleading, with hands uplifted, that they too might see
the face. But always it was denied them, and Peter woke with a strange
oppression of crushing disappointment. Sometimes he dreamt of Scaw House
and it was always the same dream. He saw the old room with the marble clock
and the cactus plant, but about it all now there was dust and neglect. In
the arm-chair, by the fire, facing the window, his father, old now and
bent, was sitting, listening and waiting. The wind howled about the place,
old boards creaked, casements rattled and his father never moved but
leaning forward in his chair, watched, waited, eagerly, passionately, for
some news....
III
They were having dinner now--Bobby, Mrs. Galleon and Peter--in the studio
of the Cheyne Walk House. Outside, a sheet of stars, a dark river and the
pale lamps of the street. The curtains of the studio were still undrawn and
the glow from the night beyond fell softly along the gleaming black boards
of the floor that stretched into shadow by the farther wall, over the round
mahogany table--without a cloth and shining with its own colour--deep and
liquid brown,--and out to the pictures that hung in their dull gold frames
along the wall.
About Peter was a sense of ease and rest, of space that was as new to him
as America was to Columbus. He was not even now completely recovered from
his Bucket Lane experiences and there was still about him that uncertainty
of life--when one sees it as though through gauze curtains--that gives
reality to the quality of dreams. Life was behind him, Life was ahead of
him, but meantime let him rest in this uncertain and beautiful country
until it was time for him to go forward again. This intangibility--walking
as it were in a fog round and round the Nelson monument, knowing it was
there but never seeing it--remained with him even when practical matters
were discussed. For instance, "Reuben Hallard" was to be published in a
week's time and Peter was to receive fifty pounds in advance on the day of
publication (unusually good terms for a first novel Bobby assured him);
also Bobby, through his father, thought that he could secure Peter regular
reviewing. The intention then was that Peter should remain with the
Galleons as a kind of paying guest, and so his pride would not be hurt and
they could have an eye upon him during this launching of him into London.
It was fortunate, perhaps, that Alice Galleon had liked him down there at
the sea, because she was a lady who had her own way at No. 72, and she by
no means liked every one. But perhaps the Galleon baby had had more to do
with everything than any one knew, and Mrs. Galleon assured her friends
that the baby's heart would most certainly be broken if "the wild young
guest" as she called Peter, were carried off.
And wild he was--of that seeing him now at dinner there in the studio there
could be no doubt. He was wearing Bobby's clothes and there was still a
look of suffering in his eyes and around his mouth, but the difference--his
difference from the things about him--went deeper than that. The large high
windows of the studio with the expanse of wild and burning stars between
their black frames answered Peter's eyes as he faced them. Mrs. Galleon, as
she watched him, was reminded of other things, of other persons, of other
events, that had marked his earlier life. She glanced from Peter's eyes
to Bobby's. She smiled, for on an earlier day, she had seen that same
antithesis--the gulf that is fixed between Imagination and Reality--and had
known its meaning.
But for Peter, all he asked now was that he might be allowed to rest in the
midst of this glorious comfort. His evil dreams were very far away from him
to-night. The food, the colour--the fruit piled high in the silver dishes,
the glittering of the great silver candelabra that stood on the middle of
the table, the deep red of the roses in the bowl at his side, the deeper
red of the Port that shone in front of Bobby and then, beneath all this, as
though the table were a coloured ship sailing on a solemn sea, the dark,
deep shining floor that faded into shadow--all this excited him so that his
hands trembled.
He spoke to Mrs. Galleon:
"I wonder if you will do me a favour," he said very earnestly.
"Anything in reason," she answered, laughing back at his gravity.
"Well, don't call me Mr. Westcott any more. Because I'm going to live here
and because I'm too old a friend of Bobby's and because, finally, I hate
being called Mr. Westcott by anybody, might it be Peter?"
"Joseph calls him Peter as it is," said Bobby quite earnestly looking at
his wife.
They were both so grave about it that Alice Galleon couldn't be anything
but grave too. She knew that it was really a definite appeal on behalf
of both of them that she should here and now, solemnly put her sign of
approval on Peter. It was almost in the way that they waited for her to
answer, a ceremony. She was even, as she looked at them, surprised into a
sudden burst of tenderness towards them both. Bobby so solemn, such a dear,
really quite an age and yet as young as any infant in arms. Peter with
forces and impulses that might lead to anything or wreck him altogether,
and yet, through it all younger even than Bobby. Oh! what an age she, Alice
Galleon, seemed to muster at the sight of their innocent trust! Did every
woman feel as old, as protecting, as tenderly indulgent, towards every
man?...
"Why, of course," she answered quietly, "Peter it shall be--"
Bobby raised his port. "Here's to Peter--to Peter and 'Reuben
Hallard'--overwhelming success to both of them."
Emotion, for an instant, held them. Then quietly, they stepped back
again. It was almost too good to be true that, after all the turnings and
twistings, life should have brought Peter to this. He did not look very far
ahead, he did not ask himself whether the book were likely to be a success,
whether his career would justify this beginning. If only they would let him
alone.... He did not, even to himself, name those powers. He was wrapped
about with comfort, he had friends, above all (and this he had discovered
at the sea) the Galleons knew Miss Rossiter ... this last thought seemed,
by the glorious clamour of it, to draw that sheet of stars down through the
window into the room, the air crackled with their splendour.
He was drawn back, down into the world again, by hearing Bobby's voice:
"The evening post and a letter for you. Peter."
He looked down and, with a sudden pang of accusing shame because he had
forgotten so easily, with also a sure knowledge that that easy escape from
his other life was already forbidden him, saw that the letter was from
Stephen. He felt that their eyes were upon him as he took the letter up
and he also felt that in Alice Galleon's gaze there was a wise and tender
understanding of the things that he must be feeling. The roughness of the
envelope, the rudeness of the hand-writing, a stain in one corner that
might be beer, the stamp set crookedly--th 
Fortitude / Walpole, Hugh, Sir, 1884-1941