by Hugh Walpole
“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:
&n
bsp; “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, back 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, calli
ng 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.