by Hugh Walpole
“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!”
&nbs
p; 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 a
nd 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!