by Hugh Walpole
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. H
e 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 y
ou 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.