Peter felt as he closed the hall door behind him that The Roundabout was both cold and dark. The little hall drew dusk into its corners very swiftly and now, as he switched on the electric light, he was conscious almost of protest on the part of the place, as though it wished that it might have been left to its empty dusk.
A maid passed him.
“Has your mistress gone upstairs?” he asked her.
“I don't think she has come in, sir.”
“Not come in?”
“No, sir, she went out about three o'clock. I don't think she's come back, sir.”
She's running it pretty close, he thought as he looked at his watch—then he went slowly up to dress.
He had been more irritated by the superiorities of young Percival Galleon than he had cared to confess. Peter had, at the bottom of his soul, a most real and even touching humility. He had no kind of opinion of his abilities, of his work in comparison with the other workers that counted. Moreover he would not, were his ultimate critical sense aroused, fail to admit to himself some certain standard of achievement. Nothing that young Galleon could say mattered from the critical standpoint—nevertheless he seemed to represent, in this case, a universal opinion; even in his rejection of Peter one could see, behind him, a world of readers withdrawing their approval.
“Peter Westcott's no good.... Peter Westcott's no good.... Peter Westcott's no good....”
In any case that was quite enough to account for the oppression that he was feeling—feeling with increasing force as the minutes passed. He undressed and dressed again slowly, wondering vaguely, loosely, in the back of his mind, why it was that Clare had not come in. Perhaps she had come in and the maid had not heard her. He took the ruby out of his pocket, opened the little case, looked at the jewel shining there under the electric light, thought of Clare with a sudden rush of passionate affection. “Dear thing, won't she look lovely in it? Her neck's so white and she's never worn much jewellery—she'll be pleased. She'll know why I'm giving it to her now—a kind of seal on what we agreed to the other night. A new life ... new altogether....”
He was conscious as he took his shirt off that his windows were open and a strange scent of burning leaves was with him in the room. It was quite strong, pungent—very pleasant, that sense of burning. Burning leaves in the orchard.... But it was rather cold. Then he came back to his looking-glass and, standing there, naked save for his dress trousers, he saw that he was looking in much better health than he had looked for weeks. The colour had returned to his face, his eyes were brighter and more alert—the lines had gone. He was strong and vigorous as he stood there, his body shining under the glow. He opened and shut his hands feeling the strength, force, in his fingers. Thick-set, sturdy, with his shoulders back again now, straight, not bent as they had been.
“Oh, I'm all right—I'm all right you know. I'll write some stuff one day...” and even behind that his thought was—“that young Galleon, by jove, I could jolly well break him if I wanted to—just snap him up.”
And then the odour of the burnt leaves filled his nostrils again; when he had dressed he turned out the light, opened the windows more widely, and stood for a moment there smelling the smoke, feeling the air on his forehead, seeing the dark fluttering shadows of the trees, the silver moon, the dim red haze of the London sky....
He went down to his study. Clare must be in now. Bobby would be here in a few minutes. He took up theTimesbut his mind wandered. “Mr. Penning Bruce was at his best last night in the new musical Comedy produced at the Apollo Theatre—the humour of his performance as Lieutenant Pottle, a humour never exaggerated nor strained....”
But he couldn't attend. He looked up at the little clock and saw that it was nearly dinner-time. Bobby ought to be here.
He stood up and listened. The house was profoundly silent. It was often silent—but to-night it was as though everything in the house—the furniture, the pictures—were listening—as though The Roundabout itself listened.
He went into the hall—stood for a moment under the stairs—and then called “Clare—Clare.” He waited and then again “Clare, Clare—I say, it's late. Come along—”
There was no answer.
Then, crossing the hall, he opened the door of the little drawing-room and looked in. It was black and empty—here, too, he could smell the burning leaves.
He switched on the light and instantly, perched against the Velasquez Infanta, saw the letter, white and still before the pink and grey of the picture. At the sight of the letter the room that had been empty and cold was suddenly burning hot and filled with a thousand voices. “Take it—take it—why don't you take it? It's been waiting there for you a long time and we've all been wondering when you were coming in for it. It's waiting there for you. Take it—take it—take it!”
At the sight of it too, the floor of the room seemed instantly to pitch, slanting downwards, like the deck of a sinking ship. He caught on to the back of a chair in order that he might not slip with it. His hands shook and there was a great pain at his heart, as though some one were pulling it tight, then squeezing it in their fingers and letting it go again.
Then, as suddenly, all his agitation fled. The room was cold and empty again, and his hands were steady. He took the letter and read it.
It was written in great agitation and almost illegible, and at the bottom of the paper there was a dirty smudge that might have been a tear stain or a finger mark. It ran:
I must go. I have been so unhappy for so long and we don't get on together, Peter, now. You don't understand me and I must be happy. I had always been happy until I married you—perhaps it's partly my fault but I only hinder your work and there is some one else who loves me. He has always said so.
I would not have gone perhaps if it had not been for what you did on April 12. I know because some one saw you getting into a cab at midnight with that horrible woman. That shows that you don't care about me, Peter. But perhaps I would have gone anyhow. Once, the night I told you about baby coming, I told you there'd be a time when you'd have to hold me. It came—and you didn't see it. You didn't care—you can't have loved me or you would have seen.... But anything is better than staying here like this. I am very unhappy now but you will not care. You are cruel and hard, Peter. You have never understood what a woman wants.
I am going to Jerry in Paris. You can divorce me. I don't care about anything now. I won't come back—I won't, I won't—Clare.
He read this all through, very carefully with a serious brow. He finished it and then knew that he had not read a word of it. He went, slowly, to the window and opened it because the room was of a stifling heat. Then he took the letter again and read it. As he finished it again he was conscious that the door-bell was ringing. He wondered why it was ringing.
He was standing in the middle of the room and speaking to himself: “The humour of his performance as Lieutenant Pottle, a humour never exaggerated nor strained ...”
“The humour of his Lieutenant Pottle as a performer—never strained... never exaggerated... never strained...”
Bobby came in and found him there. Peter's face was so white that his collar and shirt seemed to be a continuation of his body—a sudden gruesome nakedness. Both his hands were shaking and his eyes were puzzled as though he were asking himself some question that he could not solve.
Bobby started forward—
“God, Peter, what—”
“She's gone away, Bobby,” Peter said, in a voice that shook a little but was otherwise grave and almost a whisper, so low was it. “She's gone away—to Cardillac.” Then he added to himself—“Cardillac is my best friend.”
Then he said “Listen,” and he read the letter straight through. He repeated some of the phrases—“What you did on April 12.” “That shows that you don't care.... You are cruel and hard, Peter.... I am going to Jerry in Paris....”
“Jerry—that's Cardillac, you know, Bobby. He's in Paris and she's going over to him because she can't stand me any more. She says I don't care about her. Isn't that funny, when I love her so much?”
Bobby went to him, put his arm round his neck—
“Peter—dear—Peter—wait,” and then “Oh my God! we must stop her—”
He drew himself away from Bobby's arm and, very unsteadily, went across the room and then stood against the farther wall, his head bent, motionless.
“Stop her? Oh! no, Bobby. Stop her when she wants to go! I—” His voice wasn't Peter's voice, it was a thin monotonous voice like some one speaking at a great distance.
Then it seemed that intelligence was flashed upon him. He lurched forward and with a great voice—as though he had been struck by some sudden agonising, immortal pain—
“Bobby—Bobby—My wife—Clare—”
And at that instant Mrs. Rossiter was shown into the room.
The maid who opened the door had apparently some suspicion that “things were odd,” because she waited for a moment before she closed the door again, staring with wide eyes into the room, catching, perhaps, some hint from her master's white face that something terrible had occurred.
It was obvious enough that Mrs. Rossiter had herself, during the last week, been in no easy mind. From the first glances at Peter and Bobby she seemed to understand everything, for, instantly, at that glimpse of their faces she became, for the first time in her life, perhaps, a personality, a figure, something defined and outlined.
Her face was suddenly grey. She hesitated back against the door and, with her face on Peter, said in a whisper, to Bobby:
“What—what has happened?”
Bobby was not inclined to spare her. As an onlooker during these last months he felt that she, perhaps, was more guiltily responsible for the catastrophe than any other human being.
“Clare,” he said, trying to fix her eyes. “She's gone off to Cardillac—to Paris.”
Then he was himself held by the tragedy of those two faces. They faced each other across the room. Peter, with eyes and a mouth that were not his, eyes not sane, the eyes of no human being, mouth smiling, drawn tight like a razor's edge, with his hands spread out against the wall, watched Mrs. Rossiter.
Mrs. Rossiter, at Bobby's words, had huddled up, suddenly broken, only her eyes, in her great foolish expressionless face, stung to an agony to which the rest of her body could not move.
Her little soul—a tiny scrap of a thing in that vague prison of dull flesh—was suddenly wounded, desperately hurt by the only weapon that could ever have found it.
“Clare!” that soul whispered, “not gone! It's not possible—it can't be—it can't be!”
Peter, without moving, spoke to her.
“It's you that have sent her away. It's all your doing—all your doing—”
She scarcely seemed to realise him, although her eyes never left his face—she came up to Bobby, her hands out:
“Bobby—please, please—tell me. This is absurd—there's a mistake. Clare, Clare would never do a thing like that—never leave me like that—why—” and her voice rose—“I've loved her—I've loved her as no mother ever loved her girl—she's been everything to me. She knows it—why she often says that I'm the only one who loves her. She'd never go—”
Then Peter came forward from the wall, muttering, waving his hands at her—“It's you! You! You! You've driven her to this—you and your cursed interference. You took her from me—you told her to deceive me in everything. You taught her to lie and trick. She loved me before you came into it. Now be proud, if you like—now be proud. God damn you, for making your daughter into a whore—That's what you've done, you with your flat face, your filthy flat face—you've made your daughter a whore, I tell you—and it's nothing but you—you—you—!”
He lifted his hand as though he would strike her across the face. She said nothing but started back with her hands up as though to protect herself. He did not strike her. His hand fell. But she, as though she had felt a blow had her hand held to her face.
He stood over her for a moment laughing, his head flung back. Then still laughing he went away from them out into the hall.
Then, through the open door they heard him. He passed through the upper rooms crying out as he went—“Clare! Clare! Where are you? Come down! They're here for dinner! You're wanted! It's time, Clare!—where are you? Clare! Clare!”
They heard him, knocking furniture over as he went. Then there was silence. Mrs. Rossiter seemed, at that, to come to herself. She stood up, feeling her cheek.
“It's sent him off his head, Bobby. Go after him. He'll hurt himself.” Then as though to herself, she went on—“I must find Clare—she'll be in Paris, I suppose. I must go and find her, Bobby. She'll want me badly.”
She went quietly from the room, still with her hand to her cheek. She listened for a moment in the hall.
She turned round to Bobby:
“It doesn't say—the letter—where Clare's gone?”
“No—only Paris.”
He helped her on with her cloak and opened the front door for her. She slipped away down the street.
Bobby turned back and saw that Peter was coming down the stairs. But now the fury had all died from his face, only that look, as of some animal wounded to death, a look that was so deep and terrible as almost to give his white face no expression at all, was with him.
It had been with him at Stephen's death, it was with him far more intensely now. He looked at Bobby.
“She's gone,” in a tired, dull voice as of some one nearly asleep, “gone to Cardillac. I loved Cards—and all the time he loved Clare. I loved Clare and all the time she loved Cards. It's damned funny isn't it, Bobby, old man?”
He stood facing him in the hall, no part of him moving except his mouth. “She says I treated her like a brute. I don't think I did. She says there was something I did one night—I don't know. I've never done anything—I've never been with another woman—something about a cab—Perhaps it was poor Rose Bennett. Poor Rose Bennett—damned unhappy—so am I—so am I. I'm a lonely fellow—I always have been!”
He went past Bobby, back into the little drawing-room. Bobby followed him.
He turned round.
“You can go now, Bobby. I shan't want you any more.”
“No, I'm going to stay.”
“I don't want you—I don't want any one.”
“I'm going to stay.”
“I'd rather you went, please.”
“I'm going to stay.”
Peter paid no more attention. He went and sat down on a chair by the window. Bobby sat down on a chair near him.
Once Peter said: “They took my baby. They took my work. They've taken my wife. They're too much for me. I'm beaten.”
Then there was absolute silence in the house. The servants, who had heard the tumbling of the furniture, crept, frightened to bed.
Thus The Roundabout, dark, utterly without sound, stayed through the night. Once, from the chair by the window in the little drawing-room a voice said, “I'm going back to Scaw House—to my father. I'm going back—to all of them.”
During many hours the little silver clock ticked cheerfully, seeing perhaps with its little bright eyes, the two dark figures and wondering what they did there.
Peter Westcott was dead.
They put his body into the 11.50 from Paddington.
It was a day of high, swinging winds, of dappled skies, of shining gleaming water. Bunches now and again of heavy black clouds clustered on the horizon, the cows and horses in the fields were sharply defined, standing out rigidly against a distant background. The sun came and was gone, laughed and was instantly hidden, turned the world from light to shadow and from shadow back to light again.
Peter's body was alone in the compartment. It was propped up against red velvet that yielded with a hard, clenched resistance, something uncomfortable, had the body minded. The eyes of the body were the high blank windows of a deserted house. Behind them were rooms and passages, but lately so gaily crowded, so eager, with their lights and fires, for hustling life—now suddenly empty—swept of all its recent company, waiting for new, for very different inhabitants.
The white hands motionless upon the knees, the eyes facing the light but blind, the body still against the velvet, throughout the long, long day....
There were occasions when some one came and asked for his ticket. Some one came once and asked him whether “He would take lunch.” Once a woman, flushed and excited, laden with parcels, tumbled into his carriage and then, after a glance at the white face, tumbled out again.
Then, from very, very far away, came the first whispered breath of returning consciousness. The afternoon sun now had banished the black clouds—the wind had fallen—the sky was a quiet blue and birds rose and fell, rivers shone and had passed, roads were white like ribbons, broad and brown like crinkled paper, then ribbons again as the train flung Devonshire, scornfully, behind its back. Peter was conscious that his body was once more to be tenanted. But by whom?
Here was some one coming to him now, some one who, as the evening light fell about the land, dark with his cloak to his face, came softly upon the house and knocked at the door. Peter could hear his knock—it echoed through the empty passages, the deserted rooms, it was a knock that demanded, imperatively, admittance. The door swung back, the black passages gaped upon the evening light and were closed again. The house was once more silent—but no longer untenanted.
Peter was now conscious of the world. That was Exeter that they had left behind them and soon there would be Plymouth and then the crossing of the bridge and then—Cornwall!
Cornwall! His lips were dry—he touched them with his tongue, and knew, suddenly, that he was thirsty, more thirsty than he had ever been. He would never be hungry again, but he would always be thirsty. An attendant passed. What should he drink? The attendant suggested a whisky and soda. Yes ... a large whisky....
It was very long indeed since he had been in Cornwall—he had not been there since his boyhood. What had he been doing all the time in between? He did not know—he had no idea. This new tenant of the house was not aware of those intervening years, was only conscious that he was returning after long exile, to his home—Scaw House, yes, that was the name ... the house with the trees and the grey stone walls—yes, he would be glad to be at home again with his father. His father would welcome him after so long an absence.
The whisky and soda was brought to him and as he drank it they crossed the border and were in Cornwall.
They were at Trewth, that little station where you must change for Treliss. It stood open to all the winds of heaven, two lines of paling, a little strip of platform, standing desolately, at wistful attention in the heart of gently breathing fields, mild skies, dark trees bending together as though whispering secrets ... all mysterious, and from the earth there rose that breath—sea-wind, gorse, soil, saffron, grey stone—that breath that is only Cornwall.
Peter—somewhere in some strange dim recesses of his soul—felt it about his body. The wind, bringing all these scents, touched his cheek and his hair and he was conscious that that dark traveller who now tenanted his house closed the doors and windows upon that breath. It might waken consciousness, and consciousness memory, and memory pain ... ah! pain!—down with the shutters, bolt the doors—no vision of the outer world must enter here.
The little station received gratefully the evening light that had descended upon it. A few men and women, dim bundles of figures against the pale blue, waited for the train, a crescent moon was stealing above the hedges, from the chimneys of two little cottages grey smoke trembled in the air.
Suddenly there came to Peter, waiting there, the determination to drive. He could not stand there, surrounded by this happy silence any longer. All those shadows that were creeping about the dark spaces beyond his house were only waiting for their moment when they might leap. This silence, this peace, would give them that moment. He must drive—he must drive.
In the road outside the station a decrepit cab with a thin rake of a man for driver was waiting for a possible customer. The cab was faded, the wheels encrusted with ancient mud, the horse old and wheezy, but the cabman, standing now thinner than ever against the sky, was, in spite of a tattered top hat, filled with that cheerful optimism that belongs to the Cornishman who sees an opportunity of “doing” a foreigner.
“I want to drive to Treliss,” said Peter.
They bargained. The battered optimist obtained the price that he demanded and cocked his eye, derisively, at the rising moon.
Peter surveyed the cab.
“I'll sit with you on the box,” he said.
The thin driver made way for him. It was a high jolting cab of the old-fashioned kind, a cab you might have sworn was Cornish had you seen it anywhere, a cab that smelt of beer and ancient leather and salt water, a cab that had once driven the fashion of Treliss to elegant dances and now must rattle the roads with very little to see, for all your trouble, at the end of it.
The sleeping fields, like grey cloths, stretched on every side of them and the white road cut into the heart of the distance. It was a quarter to eight and a blue dusk. The driver tilted the top hat over one ear and they were off.
“I know this road as yer might say back'ards. Ask any one down along Treliss way. Zachy Jackson they'll say—which is my name, sir, if yer requirin' a good 'orse any time o' day. Zachy Jackson! which there ain't no man,—tarkin' of 'orses, fit to touch 'im, they'll tell yer and not far wrong either.”
But now with every stumbling step of that bony horse Peter was being shaken into a more active consciousness, consciousness not of the past, very slightly of the present, but rather of an eager, excited anticipation of events shortly to befall him, of the acute sense—the first that had, as yet, come to him—that, very shortly, he was to plunge himself into an absolute abandonment of all the restraints and discipline that had hitherto held him. He did not know, he could not analyse to himself—for what purpose those restraints had been formerly enforced upon his life. Only now—at this moment, his body was being flooded with a warm, riotous satisfaction at the thought of the indulgences that were to be his.
Still this fortress of his house was bare and desolated, but now in some of the rooms there were lights, fire, whispers, half-hidden faces, eyes behind curtains.
The wind struck him in the face. “Enough of this—you're done for—you're beaten—you're broken... you're going back to your hovel. You're creeping home—don't make a fine thing of it—” the wind said.
The top of the hill rolled up to them and suddenly with the gust that came from every quarter there was borne some sound. It was very delicate, very mysterious—the sound, one might fancy, that the earth would make if all spring flowers were to pierce the soil at one common instant—so fugitive a whisper.
“That's the sea,” said Mr. Jackson, waving his whip in the air, “down to Dunotter Cove. There's a wind to-night. It'll blow rough presently.”
Now from their hilltop in the light of a baby moon puddles of water shone like silk, hedges were bending lines of listeners, far on the horizon a black wood, there in one of those precipitous valleys cottages cowering, overhead the blue night sky suddenly chequered with solemn pompous slowly moving clouds. But here on the hilltop at any rate, a bustle of wind—such a noise amongst the hedges and the pools instantly ruffled and then quiet again; and so precipitous a darkness when a cloud swallowed the moon. In the daylight that landscape, to any who loved not Cornwall, would seem ugly indeed, with a grey cottage stuck here and there naked upon the moor, with a bare deserted engine house upon the horizon, with trees, deep in the little valley, but scant and staggering upon the hill—ugly by day but now packed with a mystery that contains everything that human language has no name for, there is nothing to do, on beholding it, but to kneel down and worship God. Mr. Jackson had seen it often before and he went twice to chapel every Sunday, so he just whipped up his horse and they stumbled down the road.
“Dirty weather coming,” he said.
Peter was disturbed. That whispering noise that had crept across the country frightened him. If it went on much longer it would make him remember—he must not remember.
They turned down into a deep, mysterious lane and the whisper was hidden. Now there was about them only the urgent crowding of the hedges, the wild-flowers flinging their scent on to the night air, and above and below and on every side of the old cab there streamed into the air the sweet smell of crushed grass, as though many fields had been pressed between giant's fingers and so had been left.
Peter sat there and about him, like flames licking woodwork, evil thoughts devoured his body. He was going now at last to do all those things that, these many years, he had prevented himself from doing. That at any rate he knew.... He would drink and drink and drink, until he would never remember anything again ... never again.... Meanwhile as the cab slowly began to climb the hill again Mr. Jackson was telling a story.
He rolled his r's as though life were indeed a valuable and happy thing, and now and again, waving his thin whip in the air, he would seem to appeal to the moon.
“'Twas down to Dunotter Cove and I, a lad, my father bein' a fisherman, and one night, I mind it as though it were yesterday, there was a mighty wreck. Storm and wind and rain there was that night and there we were, out in it, suddenly, all the village of us. I but a slip of a boy, you must know, which it was thirty year back now and the rain sizzling on the cobbles and the wind blawin' the chimneys crooked. Well—she were a mighty wreck blawn right up against the Dunotter rocks, you understand, and sendin' up rockets and we seein' her clear enough, black out to sea which she seemed enormous in the night time and all. My father and the rest of 'em went out in the boat—we waited and we waited and they didn't come back.... They never come back—none of them only a crazed luny, Bill Tregothny—'e was washed up against the rocks down to Bosillian and 'e were just livin' ... And when it come daylight,”—Mr. Jackson cleared his throat and paused—“when it come daylight there wasn't no wreck—nothing—nor no bodies neither—nothing—only Bill Tregothny the fool....”
Peter had heard no single word of this. His ears were straining for the return of that whisper. They were nearly once again at the hilltop. Then in front of them there would be the sea—at the top of the hill there would be the sea.... He was seized with a great terror—frightened like a child in the dark.... “Bill Tregothny, you must understand sir, 'ad always been a idiot—always, born so. When 'e was all well again 'e told strange tales about the lot of them havin' boarded the vessel and there bein' gold all over the decks—bars of it with the rain fallin' all about it—piled in 'eaps and 'e said the sailors weren't like common sailors yer knew, but all in silks with cocked hats and the gold lyin' all about—
“O course Bill was the idiot you must understand, but it's true enough that there were no vessel in the marnin'—no vessel at all—and my father and the rest were never seen again—nor no bodies neither.... And theydosay—”
Here Mr. Jackson dropped his voice—
They were just at the top of the hill now. Peter was sitting with his hands clenched, his body trembling.
“... They do say that up in the potato field over Dunotter they've seen a man all in a cocked hat and red silk and gold lace—a ghost you must understand, sir—which Bill Tregothny says ...”
The sea broke upon them with an instant, menacing roar. Between them and this violence there was now only moorland, rough with gorse bushes, uneven with little pits of sand, scented with sea pinks, with stony tracks here and there where the moonlight touched it.
But across it, like a mob's menace, fell the thunder, flung up to them from below, swelling from a menace to a sudden crash, then from crash to echo, dying to murmur again. It had in it anger and power, also pity and tenderness, also scorn and defiance. It cared for no one—it loved every one. It was more intimate than any confidence ever made, and then it shouted that intimacy to the whole world. It flung itself into Peter's face, beat his body, lashed his soul—“Oh! you young fool—you've come slinking back, have you? After all these years you've come slinking back. Where are all your fine hopes now, where all those early defiances, those vast ambitions?—Worthless, broken, defeated—worthless, broken, defeated.”
And then it seemed to change:
“Peter—Peter—Hold out a little longer—the battle isn't over yet—struggle on for a little, Peter—I'll help you—I'll bring your courage back to you—Trust me, Peter—trust me....”
Through the rattle of the surf there came the sick melancholy lowing of the Bell Rock; swinging over a space of waters it fell across fields, unutterably, abominably sad.
And in the boy there instantly leapt to life his soul. Maimed and bruised and stunned it had been—now alive, tearing him, bringing on to his bending shoulders an awful tide of knowledge: “Everything is gone—your wife, your boy, your friend, your work.... We have won, Peter, we have won. The House is waiting for you....”
And above those dreadful voices the thundering echo, indifferent to his agonies, despising his frailties, flinging him, sea-wreck of the most miserable, to any insignificant end....
Peter suddenly stood up, rocking on his box. He seized the whip from the driver's hands. He lashed the miserable horse.
“Get on, you devil, get on—leave this noise behind you—get out of it, get out of it—”
The cab rocked and tossed, Mr. Jackson caught the boy about the shoulders, held him down. The horse, tired and weary, paid no heed to anything that might be happening but stumbled on.
“Good Lord, sir,” Mr. Jackson cried, “you might have had us over—What's it all about, sir?”
But Peter now was huddled down with his coat about his ears and did not move again.
“Catchin' the whip like that—might 'ave 'ad us right into the 'edge,” muttered Mr. Jackson, wishing his journey well over.
As they turned the corner the lights of Treliss burst into view.
Mr. Jackson inquired as to the hotel that Peter preferred and was told to drive anywhere, so he chose The Man at Arms.
The Man at Arms had been turned, by young Mr. Bannister, from a small insignificant hostelry into the most important hotel in the West of England. It stood above the town, looking over the bay, the roofs of the new town, the cottages of the old one, the curving island to the right, the lighthouse to the left—all Cornwall in those grey stones, that blue sea, the grave fishing boats, the flocks of gulls, far, far below.
Mr. Bannister had spared no trouble over The Man at Arms, and now it was luxuriously modern Elizabethan, with an old Minstrels' Gallery kept studiously dusty, and the most splendid old oak and deep fire-places with electric light cunningly arranged, and baths in every passage. Of course you paid for this skilful and comfortable romance, but Mr. Bannister always managed his bills so delicately that you expected to find a poem by Suckling or Lovelace on the back of them. When Peter had been last in Treliss The Man at Arms had scarcely existed, but he was now utterly unconscious of it, and stood in the dim square hall talking to Mr. Bannister like a man in a dream.
He was aware now that he was exhausted with a fatigue that was beyond anything that he had ever experienced. It was a weariness that was not, under any conditions, to be resisted. He must lie down—here, anywhere—now, at once and sleep ... sleep ... sleep.
Mr. Bannister caught him by the arm as he swayed.
“You looked played out, sir.”
“Done up... done up!”
His eyes were closed. Then suddenly he had touched Mr. Bannister's shoulder. He was looking at a wire letter rack, hanging by the superintendent's little office. There were some telegrams and many letters stretched behind the wire netting. One envelope was addressed—
Miss Norah Monogue,The Man at Arms Hotel.Treliss,Cornwall.
“Miss Monogue ... Miss Monogue ... have you any one here called Miss Monogue?”
“Yes, sir—been here some weeks. Poor lady, she's very ill I'm afraid. Something to do with her heart—strained it in some way. Seemed much better ... but the last few days....”
Peter stumbled upstairs to his room.
Some clock was striking five when he awoke and looking vaguely about his room saw, by the light, that it must be late afternoon. He must have slept for a day and a night. As he lay back on his bed his first moments of consciousness were filled with a pleasant sense of rest and ease. He remembered nothing ... he only knew that in the air there was the breath of flowers and that through the open window there floated up to him a song, a murmur of the sea, a rattle of little carts.
He looked about his room. On a distant wall there was a photograph—“Dunotter Rocks, from the East.” Then he remembered.
He flung the bed-clothes off him and hurried to dress. He must go up to Scaw House at once, at once, at once. Not another moment must be wasted. His hands trembled as he put on his clothes and when he came downstairs he was dishevelled and untidy. He had eaten nothing for many hours but food now would have choked him. He hurried out of the hotel.
The town must have had many recollections to offer him had he observed it but he passed through it, looking neither to the right nor the left, brushing people aside, striding with great steps up the steep cobbled street that leads out of the town, on to the Sea Road.
Here on the Sea Road he paused. The wind, tearing, as it had always done, round the corner met him and for a moment he had to pull himself together and face it. He remembered, too, at that instant, Norah Monogue. Where had he seen her? What had brought her to his mind quite lately? What did she mean by interfering?—interfering? Then he remembered. It was her name in the letter rack. She was at The Man at Arms ill. Impatiently, he would have driven her from him, but all the way down the Sea Road she kept pace with him.
“I'm done with her.... I'm done with everybody. Damn it all, one keeps thinking....”
In the evening light the sea below the road was a pale blue and near the shore a calm green. It was all very peaceful. The water lapped the shore, the Bell Rock sighed its melancholy note across space; out a little way, when some jagged stones sprang like shoulders from the blue, gentle waves ringed them in foam like lace and broke with a whisper against their sides.
Except for the sea there was absolute silence. Peter alone seemed to walk the world. As he strode along his excitement increased and his knees trembled and his eyes were burning. He did not think of the earlier days when he had walked that same road. That was another existence that had nothing to do with him as he was now. The anticipation that possessed him was parallel with the eager demand of the opium-smoker. “Soon I shall be drugged. I'm going to forget, to forget, to forget. Just to let myself go—to sink, to drown.”
He had still with him the consciousness of keeping at bay an army of thoughts that would leap upon him if he gave them an opportunity. But soon that would be all over—no more battle, no more struggle. He turned the corner and saw Scaw House standing amongst its dark trees, with its black palings in front of its garden and the deserted barren patch of field in front of that again. The sun was getting low and the sky above the house was flaming but the trees were sombre and the house was cold.
It did not seem to him to have changed in any way since he had left it. The windows had always been of a grim hideous glass, the stone shape of the place always squat and ugly, and the short flight of steps that led up to the heavy beetling door had always hinted, with their old hard surface, at a surly welcome and a reluctant courtesy. It was all as it had been.
The sky, now a burning red, looked down upon an utterly deserted garden, and the silence that was over all the place seemed to rise, like streaming mist, from the heart of the nettles that grew thick along the crumbling wall.
The paint had faded from the door and the knocker was rusty; as Peter hammered his arrival on to the flat silence a bird flew from the black bunch of trees, whirred into the air and was gone....
For a long time after the echo of his knock had faded away there was silence, and it seemed to him that this could be only another of those dreams—those dreams when he had stood on the stone steps in the heart of the deserted garden and woken the echoes through the empty house. At last there were steps; some one came along the passage and halted on the other side of the door and listened. They both waited on either side, and Peter could hear heavy thick breathing. He caught the knocker again and let it go with a clang that seemed to startle the house to its foundations. Then he heard bolts, very slowly drawn back, again a pause and then, stealthily the door swung open.
A scent of rotten apples met him as the door opened, a scent so strong that it was confused at once with his vision of the woman who stood there, she, with her gnarled and puckered face, her brown skin and crooked nose standing, as it were, for an actual and visible personification of all the rotten apples that had ever been in the world.
He recognised also a sound, the drunken hesitating hiccough of the old clock that had been there when he had come in that evening long ago ready to receive his beating, that had kept pace with his grandfather's snorings and mutterings and had seemed indeed, the only understanding companion that the old man had ever had. The woman was, he saw, the arms-akimbo ferocious cook of the old days, but now how wrinkled and infirm!—separated by so many more years than the lapse of time allowed her from the woman of his past appearance there. There was more in her than the mere crumbling of her body, there was also the crumbling of her spirit, and he saw in her old bleared eyes the sign of some fierce battle fought by her, and fought to her own utter defeat.
In her eyes he saw the thing that his father had become....
What did he want, she asked him, coming disturbing them at that hour, but in her face there was, he fancied, something more than the surly question justified, some curiosity, some eagerness that seemed to show that she did not have many visitors here and that their company might be an eager relief.
“I'm Peter Westcott and I've come to see my father.”
She did not answer this, but only, with her hand to her breast stood back a little and watched him with frightened eyes. She was wearing an old, faded, green blouse, open at her scraggy neck and her skirt was a kind of bed-quilt, odd bits of stuffs of many colours stuck together. Her scanty hair was pulled into a bunch on the top of her head, her face where it was not brown was purple, and her hands were always shaking so that her fingers rattled together like twigs. But her alarmed and startled eyes had some appeal that made one pity her poor battered old body.
“You don't remember me,” he said, looking into her frightened eyes. But she shook her head slowly.
“You'd much better have kept away,” she said.
“Where is he?” he asked her.
She shuffled in front of him down the dark hall. Except for this strange smell of rotting apples it was all very much as it had been. The lamp hanging at the foot of the stairs made the same spluttering noise and there was the door of the room that had once been his grandfather's, and Peter fancied that he could still see the old man swaying there in the doorway, laughing at his son and his grandson as they struggled there on the floor.
The woman pushed open the dining-room door and Peter went in.
Peter's first thought was that his father was not there. He saw standing in front of the well-remembered fireplace a genial-looking gentleman clothed in a crimson dressing-gown—a bald gentleman, rather fat, with a piece of toast in one hand and a glass of something in the other. Peter had expected he knew not what—something stern and terrible, something that would have answered in one way or another to those early recollections of terror and punishment that still dwelt with him. He had remembered his father as short, spare, black-haired, grim, pale—this gentleman, who was now watching him, bulged in the cheeks and the stomach, was highly coloured with purple veins down the sides of his nose and his rather podgy hands trembled. Nevertheless, it was his father. When the red dressing-gown spoke it was in a kind of travesty of that old sharp voice, those cutting icy words—a thickened and degenerate relation:
“My boy! At last!” the gentleman said.
The room presented disorder. On the table were scattered playing cards, a chair was overturned, under the cactus plant lay what looked like a fiddle, and the only two pictures on the wall were very indecent old drawings taken apparently from some Hogarthian prints.
Peter stared at all this in amazement. It was, after the grim approach and the deserted garden, like finding an Easter egg in a strong box. Peter saw that his father was wearing under the dressing-gown a white waistcoat and blue trousers, both of them stained with dark stains and smelling very strongly of whisky. He noticed also that his father seemed to find it difficult to balance himself on both his legs at the same time, and that he was continually shifting his feet in an indeterminate kind of way, as though he would like to dance but felt that it might not be quite the thing.
Mr. Westcott closed up both his eyes, opened his mouth and shut it again and shook Peter excitedly by the hand. At the same time Peter felt that his father was shaking his hand as much because he wanted to hold on to something as for reasons of courtesy.
“Well, I am glad. I wondered when you would come to see your poor old father again—after all these years. I've often thought of you and said to myself, 'Well, he'll come back one day. You only be patient,' I've said to myself, 'and your son will come back to you—your only son, and it isn't likely that he's going to desert you altogether.'”
“Yes, father, I've come back,” said Peter, releasing his hand. “I've come back to stay.”
He thought of the many times in London when he'd pictured his father, stern and dark, pulling the wires, dragging his wicked son back to him—he thought of that ... and now this. And yet....
“Well now, isn't that pleasant—you've come to stay! Could I have wanted anything better? Come and sit down—yes, that chair—and have something to drink. What, you won't? Well, perhaps later. So you've come to keep your old father company, have you? I'm sure that's delightful. Just what a son ought to do. We shall get along very well, I'm sure.”
All the while that his father talked, still holding the toast and the glass of something, Peter was intensely conscious of the silent listening house. After all that grimness, that desertion, the old woman's warning had gone for something. And yet, in spite of a kind of dread that hung about him, in spite of a kind of perception that there was a great deal more in his father than he at present perceived, he could not resist a kind of warm pleasure that here at any rate was some sort of a haven, that no one else in the world might want him, but here was some one who was glad to see him.
“Well, my boy, tell me all you've been doing these years.”
“I've been in London, writing—”
“Dear, dear—have you really now? And how's it all turned out?”
“Badly.”
“Dear me, I'm sorry for that. But there are better things in the world than writing, believe me. I dare say, my boy, you thought me unkind in those old days but it was all for your best—oh dear me, yes, entirely for your best.”
Here, for an instant, his father's voice sounded so like his old grandfather's that Peter jumped.
“Married?” said his father.
“My wife has left me—”
“Dear me, I am sorry to hear that.” Mr. Westcott finished the toast and wiped his fingers on a very old and dirty red handkerchief. “Women—bless them—angels for a time, but never to be depended on. Poor boy, I'm sorry. Children?”
“I had a son. He died.”
“Well now, I am indeed sorry, I'd have liked a grandson too. Don't want the old Westcott stock to die out. Dear me, that is a pity.”
It was at this point that Peter was aware, although he could not have given any reasonable explanation of his certainty, that his father had been perfectly assured beforehand of all the answers to these questions. Peter looked at the man, but the eyes were almost closed, and the smile that played about the weak lips—once so stern and strong—told one nothing.
It was dark now. Mr. Westcott got, somewhat unsteadily, to his feet.
“Come,” he said, “I'll show you the house, my boy. Not changed much since you were here, I'm sure. Wanted a woman's care since your dear mother died of course—and your poor old grandfather—”
He whispered over again to himself as he shuffled across the room—“your poor old grandfather—”
It had seemed to grow very suddenly dark. Outside in the hall, under the spluttering lamp, Mr. Westcott found a candle. The house was intensely silent.
As they climbed the stairs, lighted only by the flickering candle-light, Peter's feelings were a curious mixture of uneasiness and a strange unthinking somnolence. Some part of him, somewhere, was urging him to an active unrest—“Norah ... what does she want interfering? I'll just go and see her and come back.... No, I won't, I'll just stay here ... never to bother again ... never to bother again....”
He was also, in some undefined way, expecting that at any moment his father would change. The crimson dressing-gown swayed under the flickering candle-light. Let it turn round and what would one see inside it? His father never stopped talking for an instant—his thick wandering voice was the only sound in the deserted house.
The rooms were all empty. They smelt as though the windows had not been opened for years. It was in the little room that had once been his bedroom that the apples were stored—piles upon piles of them and most of them rotten. The smell was all over the house.
Mr. Westcott, standing with the apples on every side of him, flung monstrous shadows upon the wall—“This used to be your room. I remember I used to whip you here when you were disobedient. The only way to bring up your child. The Westcotts have always believed in it. Dear me, how long ago it all seems ... you can have this room again if you like. Any room in the house you please. We'll be very good company for one another....”
All about Peter there was an atmosphere of extraordinary languor—just to sit here and let the days slip by, the years pass. Just to stay here with no one to hurt one, no need for courage....
They were out in the long passage. Mr. Westcott came and placed his hand upon Peter's arm. The whole house was a great cool place where one slept. Mr. Westcott smiled into Peter's face ... the house was silent and dark and oh! so restful. The candle swelled to an enormous size—the red dressing-gown seemed to enfold Peter.
In another moment he would have fallen asleep there where he stood. With the last struggle of a drowning man he pulled back his fading senses.
“I must go back to the hotel and fetch my things.” He could see his father's eyes that had been wide open disappear.
“We can send for them.”
“No, I must go for them myself—”
For a moment they faced one another. He wondered what his father intended to do. Then—with a genial laugh, Mr. Westcott said: “Well, my boy, just as you please—just as you please. I know you'll come back to your old father—I know you'll come back—”
He blew the candle out and put his arm through his son's and they went downstairs together.