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....
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!”
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....
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?Iknow 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 ofCourage there are many lands that must be passed on the roadbefore he rest there. There is, first, the Land of Lacking AllThings—that is hard to cross. There is, Secondly, the Land ofHaving All Things. There is the Traveller's Fortitude most hardlytested. There is, Thirdly, The Land of Losing All Those Thingsthat One Hath Possessed. That is a hard country indeed for thememory of the pleasantness of those earlier joys redoubleth theagony of lacking them. But at the end there is a Land of ice andsnow that few travellers have compassed, and that is the Land ofKnowing What One Hath Missed.... The Bird was in the hand and onelet it go ... that is the hardest agony of all the journey ... butif these lands be encountered and surpassed then doth the Travellerat length possess his soul and is master of it ... this is theMeaning 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.
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 youdidcome—when you were very little—you were always so frightened that you would not let me touch you—”
“Theyfrightened 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! Imustknow. 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.
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.
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!”