by Hugh Walpole
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 Cæsar (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.