# Fortitude (Walpole)/Book 1/Chapter 10

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. He 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 ever 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 you 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.
Peter had known of this for many years, but, in earlier times, he had not been at liberty, and of late there had been other things to think about. But here was a fine chance! Was he not flinging himself into the world under the very ​hazardous patronage of Mr. Zanti on Easter Wednesday, and would he not therefore need every blessing that he could get? And who knew, after all, whether these things were such nonsense? They were old enough, these customs, and many wise people believed in them. Moreover, one had not been brought up in the company of Frosted Moses and Dicky the Fool without catching some of their fever! “There was a little star rolling down hill like a button,” says Dicky, with his eyes staring. . . . Well, and why not?
And indeed here was Peter at this stage of things, a mad bundle of contradictions—old as a judge when up against the Realities, young as Crumpet the puppy when staring at Romance. Give him bread and you have him of cast-iron—stern, cold, hard of muscle, grim frown, stiff back, no smiles. Give him jam and you have credulity, simplicity, longing for friendship, tenderness, devotion to a small girl in a black frock, a heart big as the world. See him on Good Friday afternoon, laughing, eagerly questioning, a boy—see him on Good Friday night, grim, legs stiff, eyes cold as stones, a man—no easy thing for Mrs. Pascoe's blowzy thunderings to conquer, but something vastly amusing apparently to grandfather Westcott to watch.
He discovered that the sun rose about six o'clock, and therefore five o'clock on Easter morning found him shivering, in the desolate garden with his nose pressed to the little wooden gate. The High Road crossed the moor at no great distance from him, but the faint grey light that hung like gauze about him was not yet strong enough to reveal it. He would hear them as they passed and they must all go up that road on the way to the hill. In the garden there was darkness, and beyond it in the high shadow of the house and the surrounding trees, blackness. He could smell the soil, and his cheeks were wet with beads of moisture; very faintly the recurrent boom of the sea came through the mist, dimmed as though by thick folds of hanging carpet.
Suddenly the dark trees by the house, moved by a secret wind, would shudder. The little black gate slowly revealed its bars against the sky as the grey shadows lightened. Then there were voices, coming through the dark shut off, like the sea, by the mist—strange voices, not human, but ​sharing with the soil and the trees the mysterious quality of the night. The voices passed up the road—silence and then more voices.
Peter unlatched the gate and stole out to the road, stumbling over the rough moorland path and clambering across the ditch to safer ground. Figures were moving like shadows and voices fell echoing and re-echoing like notes of music—this was dissociated from all human feeling, and the mists curled up like smoke and faded into the air. Peter, in silence, followed these shadows and knew that there were other shadows behind him. It would not take long to climb the Grey Hill—they would be at the top by half-past five.
There was a voice in his ear:
“Hallo! You—Westcott! Why, who would have thought it?”
He turned round and found at his side the peaked face of Willie Daffoll, now a young man of eighteen, with an affection for bright ties and socks, once the small child who had fought with Peter at old Parlow's years ago. Peter had not seen very much of him during those years. They had met in the streets of Treliss, had spoken a word or two, but no friendship or intimacy. But this early hour, this mysterious dawn, bred confidence, and Peter having grown, under the approaching glitter of London, more human, during the last few weeks than he had been in all his life before, was glad to talk to him.
“Oh, I've often wanted to go,” he said. “It brings good luck, you know,”
“Well, fancy your believing that. I never thought you'd believe in rot like that.”
“Why are you going, then?”
The young man of ties and waistcoats dropped his voice. “Oh—a girl. She's here somewhere—she said she'd come—thinks there's something in it. Anyhow she wants it—she's stunning . . .”
A girl! Peter's mind flew absurdly back to a small child in a short black frock. “Oh! Crumpet!” . . . A girl! Young Daffoll had spoken as though it were indeed something to get up at four in the morning for! Peter wanted to hear more. Young Daffoll was quite ready to tell him. No names, of course, but they were going to be married ​one day. His governor would be furious, of course, and they might have to run away, but she was game for anything. No, he'd only known her a fortnight, but it had been a matter of love at first sight—extraordinary thing—he'd thought he'd been head over ears before, but never anything like this—yes, as a matter of fact she was in a flower-shop—Trunter's in the High Street—her people had come down in the world—and so the golden picture unfolded as the gauze curtains were drawn back from the world, and the shoulder of the Grey Hill rose, like a cloud, before them.
Peter's heart beat faster as he listened to this story. Here was one of his dreams translated into actual fact. Would he one day also have some one for whom he would be ready to run to the end of the world, if furious parents demanded it? She would have, he was sure, red-gold hair and a wonderful smile.
They climbed the Grey Hill. There was with them now quite a company of persons—still shadow-shapes, for the mists were thick about the road, but soon all the butchers and bakers of the world—and, let it be remembered, all the lovers, would be revealed. Now, as they climbed the hill, silence fell—even young Daffoll was quiet; that, too, it seemed, was part of the ceremony.
The hill top was swiftly gained. The Giant's Finger, black and straight, like a needle, stood through the shadows. Beyond there would be the sea, and that was where the sun would rise, at present darkness. They all sat down on the stones that covered the summit—on either side of Peter there were figures, but Daffoll had vanished—it seemed that he had discovered his lady.
Peter, sitting meditating on the story that he had heard and feeling, suddenly, lonely and deserted, was conscious of a small shoe that touched his boot. It was, beyond argument, a friendly shoe—he could feel that in the inviting tap that it gave to him. He was aware also that his shoulder was touching another shoulder, and that that shoulder was soft and warm. Finally his hand touched another hand—fingers were intertwined.
There was much conversation cut of the mist:
“Law, chrisy! Well, it's the last Easter morning for ​me—thiccy sun hides himself right enough—it's poor trade sitting shivering your toes.”
“Not that I care for the woman, mind ye, Mr. Tregothan, sir—with her haverings talking—all I'm saying is that if she's to come wastin' my time—
“Thiccy man sitting there stormin' like an old owl in a tree.”
“Oh, get along with ye—No, I won't be sitting by ye—There's—”
Now the sea, like a young web stretched at the foot of the hill, stole out of the darkness. On the horizon a thin line of dull yellow—wouldn't it be a fine sunrise?—the figures on the hill were gathering shape and form, and many of them now were standing, their bodies sharp against the grey sky.
Peter had not turned; his eyes were staring out to sea, but his body was pressed closely against the girl at his side. He did not turn nor look at her—she was staring at him with wonder in her eyes and a smile on her lips. She was a very common girl with black hair and over-red cheeks, and she was one of the dairymaids from Tregothan Farm. She did not know whom this strange young man might be, and it was not yet light enough to see. She did not care—such things had happened often enough before, and she leant her fat body against his shoulder. She could feel his heart thumping and his hands were very hot, but she thought that it was strange that he did not turn and look at her. . . .
There was a stir and murmur among the crowd on the hill for behold it would be a fine sunrise! The dull yellow had brightened to gold and was speeding like a herald across the grey. Black on the hill, gold on the sky, a trembling whispering blue across the sea—in a moment there would be the sun! What gods were there hiding, at that instant, on the hill, watching, with scornful eyes this crowd of moderns? Hidden there behind the stones, what mysteries? Screening with their delicate bodies the faint colours of the true dawn, playing on their pipes tunes that these citizens with their coarse voices and dull hearing could not understand, what ancient watchers of the hill pass and repass!
​Behold the butchers and bakers! Behold Mr, Winneren, hosier and outfitter, young Robert Trefusis, farmer. Miss Bessie Waddell from the sweet-shop! . . . These others fade away as the sun rises—the grey mists pass with them.
The sun is about to leap above the rim of the sea. Peter turns and crushes the poor dairymaid in his arms and stifles the little scream with the first kiss of his life. His whole body burns in that kiss—and then, as the sun streams across the sea he has sprung to his feet and vanishes over the brow of the hill.
The dairymaid wipes her lips with the back of her hand. They have joined hands and are already dancing round the Giant's Finger. It is black now, but in a moment the flames of the sun will leap upon it, and good omens will send them all singing down the hill.
IV
On Tuesday evening Peter slipped for a moment into Zachary Tan's shop and told Mr. Zanti that he would be on the station platform at half-past seven on the following morning. He could scarcely speak for excitement. He was also filled with a penetrating sadness. Above all, he wished only to exchange the briefest word with his future master. He did not understand altogether but it was perhaps because Mr. Zanti and all his world belonged to tomorrow. . . . Mr. Zanti's fat, jolly body, his laugh, his huge soft hands . . . Peter could not do more to this gentleman than remember that he meant so much that he would be overwhelmed by him if he did not leave him alone. So he darted in and gave his message and darted out again. The little street was shining in the sun and the gentlest waves were lapping the wooden jetty—Oh, this dear town! These houses, these cobbles—all the smells and colours of the place—he was leaving it all so easily on so perilous an adventure. Poor Peter was moved by so many things that he could only gulp the tears back and hurry home. There was at any rate work to be done there about which there could be no uncertain intention.
His father had been drinking all the afternoon. Mrs. Pascoe with red arms akimbo, watched them as they ate their supper.
​When the meal was finished Peter, standing by his father, his face very white, said:
“I am going to London to-morrow.”
Mr. Westcott had aged a great deal during the last month. His hair was touched with grey, there were dark lines under his eyes, his cheeks were sunken, his lip trembled. He was looking moodily at the cloth, crumbling his bread. He did not hear Peter's remark, but continued his argument with Mrs. Pascoe:
“It wasn't cooked, I tell you—you're growing as slack as Hell.”
“Your precious son 'as got something as 'e would like to say to yer,” remarked that pleasant woman grimly.
Peter repeated his remark. His father grasped it but slowly—at last he said:
“Damn you, what are you talking about?”
“I'm leaving here and going to London to-morrow.”
Mr. Westcott turned his bloodshot eyes in the direction of the fire-place—“Curse it, I can't see straight. You young devil—I'll do for you—” all this said rather sullenly and as though he were speaking to himself.
Peter, having delivered his news, passed Mrs. Pascoe's broad body, and moved to the doorway. He turned with his hand on the door.
“I'm glad I'm going,” he said, “you've always bullied me, and I've always hated you. You killed my mother and she was a good woman. You can have this house to yourself—you and grandfather—and that woman—” he nodded contemptuously at Mrs. Pascoe, who was staring at him fiercely. His grandfather was fast asleep beneath the cushions.
“Damn you,” said Mr. Westcott very quietly. “You've always been ungrateful—I didn't kill your mother, but she was always a tiresome, crying woman.”
He stopped crumbling the bread and suddenly picked up a table knife and hurled it at Peter. His hand was trembling, and the knife quivering, was fastened to the door.
Mrs. Pascoe gasped, “Gawd 'elp us!”
Peter quietly closed the door behind him and went up to his room.
He was in no way disturbed by this interview. His relations with his father were not of the things that ​now mattered. They had mattered before his mother died. They had mattered whilst his father had been somebody strong and terrible. Even at the funeral how splendid he had seemed! But this trembling creature who drank whisky with the cook was some one who concerned Peter not at all—something like the house, to be left behind.
There was an old black bag that had held his things in the Dawson's days—it held his things now. Not a vast number—only the black suit beside the blue serge one that he was going to wear, some under-linen, a sponge, and a tooth-brush, the books and an old faded photograph of his mother as a girl. Nothing like that white face that he had seen this photograph, old, yellow, and faded, but a girl laughing and beautiful—after all, his most precious possession.
Then, when the bag was packed, he sat or the bed, swung his legs, and thought about everything. He was nearly eighteen, nearly a man, and as hard as rock. He could feel the muscles swelling, there was no fat about him, he was sound all over.
He looked back and saw the things that stood out like hills above the plain—that night, years ago, when he was whipped, the day that he first met Mr. Zanti, the first day at school, the day when he said good-bye to Cards, the hour, at the end of it all, when they hissed him, that last evening with Stephen, the day with his mother . . . and then, quite lately, that afternoon when Mr. Zanti asked him to go to London, the little girl with the black frock on the hill . . . last of all, that kiss (never mind with whom) on Easter morning—all these things had made him what he was—yes, and all the people—Frosted Moses, Stephen, his father, his mother, Bobby Galleon, Cards, Mr. Zanti, the little girl. As he swung his legs he knew that everything that he did afterwards would be, in some way, attached to these earlier things and these earlier people.
He had brave hopes and brave ambitions and a warm heart as he flung himself into bed; it speaks well for him that, on the night before he set out on his adventure, he slept like the child that he really was.
But he knew that he would wake at six o'clock. He had determined that it should be so, and the clocks were striking as he opened his eyes. It was very dark and the ​cocks crowed beyond his open window, and the misty morning swept in and blew his lighted candle up and down. He dressed in the blue serge suit with a blue tie fastened in a sailor's knot. He leaned out of his window and tried to imagine, out of the darkness, the beloved moor—then he took his black bag and crept downstairs; it was striking half-past six as he came softly into the hall.
There he saw that the gas was flaring and that his father was standing in his night-shirt.
“I think I'm in front of you,” he said, smiling.
“Let me go, father,” Peter said, very white, and putting down the bag.
“Be damned to you,” said his father. “You don't get through this door.”
It was all so ludicrous, so utterly absurd, that his father should be standing, in his night-shirt, on this very cold morning, under the flaring gas. It occurred to Peter that as he wanted to laugh at this Mr. Zanti could not have been right about his lack of humour. Peter walked up to his father, and his father caught him by the throat. Mr. Westcott was still, in spite of recent excesses, sufficiently strong.
“I very much want to choke you,” he said.
Peter, however, was stronger.
His father dropped the hold of his throat, and had him, by the waist, but his hands slipped amongst his clothes. For a moment they swayed together, and Peter could feel the heat of his father's body beneath the night-shirt and the violent beating of his heart. It was immensely ludicrous; moreover there now appeared on the stairs Mrs. Pascoe, in a flannel jacket over a night-gown, and untidy hair about her ample shoulders.
“The Lord be kind!” she cried, and stood, staring. Mr. Westcott was breathing very heavily in Peter's face, and their eyes were so close together that Peter could notice how bloodshot his father's were.
“God damn you!” said his father and slipped, and they came down on to the wood floor together. Peter rose, but his father lay there, breathing heavily.
“God damn you,” he said again, but he did not move.
“You'd better look after him,” Peter said, turning to ​the astounded Mrs. Pascoe. As he moved he saw a surprising sight, his grandfather's door was opened and his grandfather (who had not been on his feet for a great many years) was standing in the middle of it, cackling with laughter, dressed in a very ugly yellow dressing-gown, his old knotted hands clutching the sides of the door, his shrivelled body shaking, and his feet in large red slippers.
“Dear me, that was a nasty knock,” he chattered.
And so Peter left them.
The high road was cool and fresh and dark. The sea sung somewhere below amongst the rocks, and Peter immediately was aware that he was leaving Cornwall.
Now he had no other thought. The streets of the town were deserted, clean, smelling of the fields, hay-carts, and primroses, with the darkness broken by dim lamps, and a very slender moon. His heart was full, his throat burning. He crossed the market-place and suddenly bent down and kissed the worn stones of the Tower. There was no one to see.
He was in the station at twenty minutes past seven. The platform was long and cold and deserted, but in the waiting-room was Mr. Zanti enveloped in an enormous black coat.
“Ah, my dear boy, this is indeed splendid. And 'ave you said farewell to your father?”
“Yes, I've said good-bye to every one,” he answered slowly. Suddenly he would have given all the wide world and his prospects in it not to be going. The terrors of Scaw House were as nothing beside that little grey town with the waves breaking on the jetty, the Grey Hill above it, the twisted cobbled streets.
The morning wind blew up the platform, the train rolled in; there were porters, but Mr. Zanti had only a big brown bag which he kept with him.
Soon they were in corners facing one another. As the train swept past the Tower the grey dawn was breaking into blue over the houses that rose, tier by tier, to the sky over the grey rolling breakers, over the hills beyond . . . Cornwall!
Poor Peter stared with passionate eyes as the vision passed.
“London soon,” said Mr. Zanti, gaily.