Fortitude (Walpole)/Book 1/Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX

THE THREE WESTCOTTS

I

THE day crept, strangely and mysteriously, to its close. Peter, dulled by misery, sat opposite his grandfather in the dining-room without moving, conscious of the heavy twilight that the dark blinds flung about the room, feeling the silence that was only accentuated by the old man's uneasy “clack-clack” in his sleep and the clock's regular ticking. The unhappiness that had been gradually growing about him since his last term at Dawson's, was now all about him with the strength and horrible appearance of some unholy giant. It was indeed with some consciousness of Things that were flinging their shadows on the horizon and were not as yet fully visible to him that he sat there. That evening at Stephen's farm, realised only faintly at the time, hung before him now as a vivid induction or prologue to the later terrors. He was doomed—so he felt in that darkened and mysterious room—to a terrible time and horrors were creeping upon him from every side. “Clack-clack” went his grandfather beneath the rugs, as the cactus plant rattled in the window and the silence through the stairs and passages of the house crept in folds about the room.

Peter shivered; the coals fell from a dull gold into grey and crumbling ashes. He shut everything in the surrounding world from his mind and thought of his dead mother. There indeed there was strangeness enough, for it seemed now that that wonderful afternoon had filled also all the earlier years of his life. It seemed to him now that there had never been a time when he had not known her and talked with her, and yet with this was also a consciousness of all the joys that he had missed because he had not known her before. As he thought of it the hard irretrievable fact of those earlier empty years struck him physically with a sharp agonising pain—toothache, and no possible way of healing it. The irony of her proximity, of her desire for him as he, all unwittingly, had in reality desired her, hit him like a blow. The picture of her waiting, told that he did not wish to come, looking so sadly and lonely in that white room, whilst he, on the other side of that door, had not the courage to burst through those others and go to her, broke suddenly the hard dry passivity that had held him during so many weeks.

He was very young, he was very tired, he was very lonely. He sobbed with his hands pressed against his eyes.

Then his tears were quickly dried. There was this other thing to be considered—his father. He hated his father. He was terrified, as he sat there, at the fury with which he hated him. The sudden assurance of his hatred reminded him of the thing that his grandfather had said about the Westcotts . . . was that true? and was this intensity of emotion that filled all the veins in his body a sign that he too was a Westcott? and were his father and grandfather mirrors of his own future years? . . . He did not know. That was another question. . . .

He wondered what they were about in the room where his mother lay and it was curious that the house could remain silent during so many long hours. It seemed held by the command of some strong power, and his mind, overstrained and abnormal, waited for some outbreak of noise—many noises, clattering, banging, whistling through the house. But his grandfather slept on, no step was on the stairs, the room was very dark and evening fell beyond the long windows and over the sea.

His youth made of a day eternity—there was no end nor term to his love, to his hatred, to his loneliness, to his utter misery . . . and also he was afraid. He would have given his world for Stephen, but Stephen was already off on his travels.

Very softly and stealthily the door opened and, holding a quivering candle, with her finger to her mouth, there appeared his aunt. He looked at her coldly as she came across the room towards him. He had never felt any affection for her because she had always seemed to him weak and useless—a frightened, miserable, vacillating, negative person—even when he had been a very small boy he had despised her. Her eyes were red and swollen with crying, her grey and scanty hair had fallen about her collar, her old black blouse was unbuttoned at the top showing her bony neck and her thin crooked hands were trembling in the candle-light. Her eyes were large and frightened and her back was bent as though she was cowering from a blow. She had never taken very much notice of her nephew—of late she had been afraid of him; he was surprised now that she should come to speak to him.

“Peter,” she said in a whisper, looking back over her shoulder at the door.

“Yes,” he answered, staring at her.

“Oh, Peter!” she said again and began to cry—a whimpering noise and her hands shaking so that the candle rocked in its stick.

“Well,” he said more softly, “you'd better put that candle down.”

She put it on the table and then stood beside him, crying pitifully, jerking out little sentences—“I can't bear it . . . I don't know what to do . . . I can't bear it.”

He got up from his chair and made her sit down on it and then he stood by her and waited until she should recover a little. He felt suddenly strangely tender towards her; she was his mother's sister, she had known his mother all her life and perhaps in her weak silly way she had loved her.

“No, aunt, don't cry. . . . It will be all right. I too am very unhappy. I have missed so much. If I had only known earlier—”

The poor woman flung little distracted glances at the old man asleep on the other side of the fire-place—

“Oh, dear, I had to come and talk to some one . . . I was so frightened upstairs. Your father's there—with your mother. He sits looking at her . . . and she was always so quiet and good and never did him any harm or indeed any one . . . and now he sits looking at her—but she's happy now—he will be coming downstairs at any moment and I am afraid of what he'll do if he sees me talking to you like this. But I feel as though I must talk a little . . . it's so quiet.”

“It's all right, aunt. There's no one to be frightened of. I am very unhappy too. I'd like to talk about her to you.”

“No, no—your poor mother—I mustn't say anything. They'll be down upon me if I say anything. They're very sharp. He's sitting up with her now.”

Peter drew another chair up close to her and took her thin hand in his. She allowed him to do what he would and seemed to have no active knowledge of her surroundings.

“We'll talk about her,” he said, “often. You shall tell me all about her early life. I want to know everything.”

“Oh, no. I'm going away. Directly after the funeral Directly after the funeral I'm going away.”

Suddenly this frightened him. Was he to be left here entirely alone with his father and grandfather?

"You're going away?” he said.

“Oh, yes—your Uncle Jeremy will come for the funeral. I shall go away with him afterwards. I don't like your Aunt Agatha, but they always said I could come to them when your mother died. I don't like your Aunt Agatha but she means to be kind. Oh! I couldn't stay here after all that has happened. I was only staying for your mother's sake and I'm sure I've never gone to bed without wondering what would happen before the morning—Oh, yes, your Uncle Jeremy's coming and I shall go away with him after the funeral. I don't like your Aunt Agatha but I couldn't stay after all that has happened.”

AH this was said in a hurried frightened whisper. The poor lady shook from head to foot and the little bracelets on her trembling wrists jangled together.

“Then I shall be all alone here,” Peter said suddenly, staring at the candle that was guttering in the breeze that came from behind the heavy blinds.

“Oh, dear,” said his aunt, “I'm sure Uncle Jeremy will be kind if you have to leave here, you know.”

“Why should I have to leave here?” asked Peter.

His aunt sunk her voice very low indeed—so low that it seemed to come from the heart of the cactus plant by the window.

“He hasn't got your mother now, you know. He'll want to have somebody. . . .”

But she said nothing more—only gazed at the old man opposite her with staring eyes, and cried in a little desolate whimper and jangled her bracelets until at last Peter crept softly, miserably to bed.

II

The day of the funeral was a day of high wind and a furious sea. The Westcotts lived in the parish of the strange wild clergyman whose church looked over the sea; strange and wild in the eyes of Treliss because he was a giant in size and had a long flowing beard, because he kept a perfect menagerie of animals in his little house by the church, and because he talked in such an odd wild way about God being in the sea and the earth rather than in the hearts of the Treliss citizens—all these things odd enough and sometimes, early in the morning, he might be seen, mother-naked, going down the path to the sea to bathe, which was hardly decent considering his great size and the immediate neighbourhood of the high road. To those who remonstrated he had said that he was not ashamed of his body and that God was worshipped the better for there being no clothing to keep the wind away . . . all mad enough, and there were never many parishioners in the little hill church of a Sunday. However, it was in the little windy churchyard that Mrs. Westcott was buried and it was up the steep and stony road to the little church that the hearse and its nodding plumes, followed by the two old and decrepit hackney carriages, slowly climbed.

Peter's impressions of the day were vague and uncertain. There were things that always remained in his memory but strangely his general conviction was that his mother had had nothing to do with it. The black coffin conveyed nothing to him of her presence; he saw her as he had seen her on that day when he had talked to her, and now she was, as Stephen was, somewhere away. That was his impression, that she had escaped. . . .

Putting on his black clothes in the morning brought Dawson's back to his mind, and especially Bobby Galleon and Cards. He had not thought of them since the day of his return—first Stephen and then his mother had driven them from his mind. But now, with the old school black clothing upon him, he stood for a long time by his window, wondering, sorrowfully enough, where they were and what they were doing, whether they had forgotten him, whether he would ever see them again. He seemed to be surrounded by a wall of loneliness—some one was cutting everything off from him . . . from maliciousness! For pleasure! . . . Oh! if one only knew about that God!

Meanwhile Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Agatha had arrived the night before. Uncle Jeremy was big and stout and he wore clothes that were very black and extremely bright. His face was crimson in colour and his eyes, large and bulging, wore a look of perpetual surprise. He was bald and an enormous gold watch chain crossed his stomach like a bridge. He had obviously never cared for either of his sisters and he always shouted when he spoke. Aunt Agatha was round and fat and comfortable, wore gold-rimmed spectacles and a black silk dress, and obviously considered that Uncle Jeremy had made the world.

Peter watched his father's attitude to these visitors. He realised that he had never seen his father with any stranger or visitor—no one came to the house and he had never been into the town with his father. With this realisation came a knowledge of other things—of things half heard at the office, of half looks in the street, of a deliberate avoidance of his father's name—the Westcotts of Scaw House! There were clouds about the name.

But his father, in contact with Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Agatha, was strangely impressive. His square, thick-set body clothed in black—his dark eyes, his short stiff hair, his high white forehead, his long beautiful hands—this was no ordinary man, moving so silently with a reserve that seemed nobly fitting on this sad occasion. The dark figure filled the house, touching in its restrained grief, admirable in its dignity, a fine spirit against the common clay of Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Agatha.

Mr. Westcott was courteous but sparing of words—a strong man, you would say, bowed down with a grief that demanded, in its intensity, silence.

Uncle Jeremy hated and feared his brother-in-law. His hatred he concealed with difficulty but his fear was betrayed by his loud and nervous laugh. He was obviously interested in Peter and stared at him, throughout breakfast, with his large, surprised eyes. Peter felt that this interest was a speculation as to his future and it made him uncomfortable . . . he hated his uncle but the black suit that the stout gentleman wore on the day of the funeral was so black, so tight and so shiny that he was an occasion for laughter rather than hatred.

The black coffin was brought down the long stairs, through the hall and into the desolate garden. The sight of it roused no emotion in Peter—that was not his mother. The two aunts. Uncle Jeremy and his father rode in the first carriage; Peter and Mrs. Trussit in the second. Mrs, Trussit's bonnet and black silk dress were very fine and she wept bitterly throughout the journey.

Peter only dismally wished that he could arrange his knees so that they would not rub against her black silk. He did not think of his mother at all but only of the great age of the cab, of the furious wind that whistled about the road, and the roar that the sea, grey and furious far below them, flung against their windows.

He would have liked to talk to her but her sobbing seemed to surround her with a barrier. It was all inexpressibly dreary with the driving wind, the rustling of the black silk dress, the jolting and clattering of the old carriage. But he had no desire to cry—he was too miserable for that.

On the hill in the little churchyard, a tempest of wind swept across the graves. From the bending ground the cliff fell sheer to the sea and behold! it was a tossing, furious carpet of white and grey. The wind blew the spray up to the graveyard and stung the faces of the mourners and in the roar of the waves it was hard to hear the voice of the preacher. It was a picture that they made out there in the graveyard. Poor Aunt Jessie, trembling and shaking, Mrs. Trussit, stout and stiff with her handkerchief to her eyes, Uncle Jeremy with his legs apart, his face redder than ever, obviously wishing the thing over. Aunt Agatha concerned for her clothes in the streaming wind, Mr. Westcott unmoved by the storm, cold, stern, of a piece with the grey stone at the gravehead—all these figures interesting enough. But towering above them and dominating the scene was the clergyman—his great beard streaming, his surplice blowing behind him in a cloud, his great voice dominating the tumult, to Peter he was a part of the day—the storm, the earth, the flying, scudding clouds. All big things there, and somewhere sailing with those clouds, on the storm, the spirit of his mother . . . that little black coffin standing, surely, for nothing that mattered.

But, strangely enough, when the black box had been lowered, at the sharp rattling of the sods upon the lid, his sorrow leapt to his eyes. Suddenly the sense of his loss drove down upon him. The place, the people were swept away—he could hear her voice again, see her thin white hands . . . he wanted her so badly . . . if he could only have his chance again . . . he could have flung himself there upon the coffin, not caring whether he lived or died . . . his whole being, soul and body, ached for her. . . .

He knew that it was all over; he broke away from them all and he never, afterwards, could tell where it was that he wandered during the rest of that day. At last, when it was dark, he crept back to the house, utterly, absolutely exhausted in every part of his body . . . worn out.

III

On the following day Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Agatha departed and took Aunt Jessie with them. She had the air of being led away into captivity and seemed to be fastened to the buttons of Uncle Jeremy's tight black suit. She said nothing further to Peter and showed no sense of having, at any time, been confidential—she avoided him, he thought.

He of course returned to his office and tried to bury himself in the work that he found there—but his attention wandered; he was overstrung, excited abnormally, so that the whole world stood to him as a strange, unnatural picture, something seen dimly and in exaggerated shapes through coloured glass. That evening with Stephen shone upon him now with all the vigour of colour of a real fact in a multitude of vague shadows. The reality of that night was now of the utmost value.

Meanwhile there were changes at Scaw House. Mrs. Trussit had vanished a few days after the funeral, no one said anything about her departure and Peter did not see her go. He was vaguely sorry because she represented in his memory all the earlier years, and because her absence left the house even darker and more gloomy than it had been before. The cook, a stout and slatternly person, given, Peter thought, to excessive drinking, shared, with a small and noisy maid, the duties of the house—they were most inefficiently performed.

But, with this clearing of the platform, the hatred between Peter and his father became a definite and terrible thing. It expressed itself silently. At present they very rarely spoke and except on Sundays met only at breakfast and in the evening. But the air was charged with the violence of their relationship; the boy, growing in body so strangely like the man, expressed a sullen and dogged defiance in his every movement . . . the man watched him as a snake might watch the bird held by its power. They stood, as wrestlers stand before the moment for their meeting has arrived. The house, always too large for their needs, seemed now to stretch into an infinity of echoing passages and empty rooms; the many windows gathered the dust thick upon their sills. The old grandfather stayed in his chair by the fire—only at night he was wheeled out into his dreary bedroom by the cook who, now, washed and tidied him with a vigour that called forth shrill screams and oaths from her victim. He hated this woman with the most bitter loathing and sometimes frightened her with the violence of his curses.

Christmas came and went and there followed a number of those wonderful crisp and shining days that a Cornish winter gives to its worshippers. Treliss sparkled and glittered—the stones of the market-place held the heat of the sun as though it had been midsummer and the Grey Tower lifted its old head proudly to the blue sky—the sea was so warm that bathing was possible and in the heart of the brown fields there was a whisper of early spring.

But all of this touched Scaw House not at all. Grey and hard in its bundle of dark trees it stood apart and refused the sun. Peter, in spite of himself, rejoiced in this brave weather. As the days slipped past, curiously aloof and reserved though he was, making no friends and seeking for none, nevertheless he began to look about him and considered the future.

All this had in it the element of suspense, of preparation. During these weeks one day slipped into another. No incidents marked their preparation—but up at Scaw House they were marching to no mean climax—every hour hurried the issue—and Peter, meanwhile, as February came whistling and storming upon the world, grew, with every chiming of the town clock, more morose, more sullen, more silent . . . there were times when he thought of ending it all. An instant and he would be free of all his troubles—but after all that was the weakling's way; he had not altogether forgotten those words spoken so long ago by old Moses. . . . So much for the pause. Suddenly, one dark February afternoon the curtain was rung up outside Zachary Tan's shop and Peter was whirled into the centre of the stage.

Peter had not seen Zachary Tan for a long time. He had grown into a morbid way of avoiding everybody and would slink up side streets or go round on leaving the office by the sea road. When he did meet people who had once been kind to him he said as little as possible to them and left them abruptly.

But on this afternoon Zachary was not to be denied. He was standing at the door of his shop and shouted to Peter:

“Come away in, Mr. Peter. I haven't see you this long time. There's an old acquaintance of yours inside and a cup of tea for you.”

The wind was whistling up the street, the first drops of a rain storm starred the pavement, and there was a pleasant glow behind Mr. Tan's window-panes. But there was something stronger yet that drove Peter into the shop. He knew with some strange knowledge who that old acquaintance was . . . he felt no surprise when he saw in the little back room, laughing with all his white teeth shining in a row, the stout and cheerful figure of Mr. Emilio Zanti. Peter was a very different person now from that little boy who had once followed Stephen's broad figure into that little green room and stared at Mr. Zanti's cheerful countenance, but it all seemed a very little time ago. Outside in the shop there was the same suit of armour—on the shelves, the silver candlesticks, the old coins, the little Indian images, the pieces of tapestry—within the little room the same sense of mystery, the same intimate seclusion from the outer world. . . . On the other occasion of seeing him Mr. Zanti had been dimmed by a small boy's wonder. Now Peter was old enough to see him very clearly indeed.

Mr. Zanti seemed fat only because his clothes were so tight. He was bigly made and his legs and arms were round, bolster fashion—huge thighs and small ankles, thick arms and slender wrists. His clothes were so tight that they seemed in a jolly kind of way to protest. “Oh! come now, must you really put us on to anything quite so big? We shall burst in a minute—we really shall.”

The face was large and flat and shining like a sun, with a small nose like a door knocker and a large mouth, the very essence of good-humoured surprise. The cheeks and the chin were soft and rounded and looked as though they might be very fat one day—a double chin just peeped round the corner.

He was a little bald on the top of his head and round this bald patch his black hair clustered protectingly. He gave you the impression that every part of his body was anxious that every other part of his body should have a good time. His suit was a very bright blue and his waistcoat had little brass buttons that met a friend with all the twinkling geniality of good wishes and numberless little hospitalities.

He had in his blue silk tie a pearl so large and so white that sophisticated citizens might have doubted that it was a pearl at all—but Peter swallowed Mr. Zanti whole, pearl and suit and all.

“Oh! it is ze little friend—my friend—'ow are you, young gentleman? It is a real delight to be with you again.”

Mr. Zanti swung Peter's hand up and down as he would a pump handle and laughed as though it were all the best joke in the world. Curiously enough Peter did not resent this rapturous greeting. It moved him strongly. It was such a long time now since any one had shown any interest in him or expressed any pleasure at the sight of him that he was foolishly moved by Mr. Zanti's warmth.

He blushed and stammered something but his eyes were shining and his lip trembling.

Mr. Zanti fixed his gaze on the boy. “Oh! but you have grown—yes, indeed. You were a little slip before—but now—not so 'igh no—not 'igh—but broad, strong. Oh! ze arms and legs—there's a back!”

Zachary interrupted his enthusiasm with some general remark, and they had a pleasant little tea-party. Every now and again the shop bell tinkled and Zachary went out to attend to it, and then Mr. Zanti drew near to Peter as though he were going to confide in him but he never said anything, only laughed.

Once he mentioned Stephen.

“You know where he is?” Peter broke in with an eager whisper.

“Ah, ha—that would be telling,” and Mr. Zanti winked his eye.

Peter's heart warmed under the friendliness of it all. There was very much of the boy still in him and he began to look back upon the days that he had spent with no other company than his own thoughts as cold and friendless. Zachary Tan had been always ready to receive him warmly. Why had he passed him so churlishly by and refused his outstretched hand? But there was more in it than that. Mr. Zanti attracted him most compellingly. The gaily-dressed genial man spoke to him of all the glitter and adventure of the outside world. Back, crowding upon him, came all those adventurous thoughts and desires that he had known before in Mr. Zanti's company—but tinged now by that grey threatening background of Scaw House and its melancholy inhabitants! What would he not give to escape? Perhaps Mr. Zanti! . . . The little green room began to extend its narrow walls and to include in its boundaries flashing rivers, shining cities, wide and bounteous plains. Beyond the shop—dark now with its treasures mysteriously gleaming—the steep little street held up its lamps to be transformed into yellow flame, and at its foot by the wooden jetty, as the night fell, the sea crept ever more secretly with its white fingers gleaming below the shingles of the beach.

Here was wonder and glory enough with the wind tearing and beating outside the windows, blowing the young flowers of the lamps up and down inside their glass houses and screaming down the chimneys for sheer zest of life. . . . But here it all had its centre in this little room with Mr. Emilio Zanti's chuckling for no reason at all and spreading his broad fat hand over Peter Westcott's knee.

“Well, Mr. Peter, and 'ave you been to London in all these years? Or perhaps you 'ave forgotten that you ever wanted to go there?”

No, Peter was still of the same mind but Treliss and a few miles up and down the road were as much of the world as he'd had the pleasure of seeing—except for school in Devonshire—

“And you'd still go, my leetle friend?”

“Yes—I want to go—I hate being in an office here.”

“And what is it zat you will do when you are there?”

Suddenly, in a flash, illuminating the little room, shining over the whole world, Peter knew what it was that he would do.

“I will write.”

“Write what?”

“Stories.”

With that word muttered, his head hanging, his cheeks flushing, as though it were something of which he was most mightily ashamed, he knew what it was he had been wanting all these months. The desire had been there, the impulse had been there . . . now with the spoken word the blind faltering impulse was changed into definite certainty.

Mr. Zanti thought it a tremendous joke. He roared, shouted with riotous laughter. “Oh, ze boy—he will be the death of me—‘I will write stories’—Oh yes, so easy, so very simple. ‘I will write stories’—Oh yes.”

But Peter was very solemn. He did not like his great intention to be laughed at.

“I mean it,” he said rather gruffly.

“Oh yes, that's of course—but that is enough. Oh dear, yes . . . well, my friend, I like you. You are very strong, you are brave I can see—you have a fine spirit. One thing you lack—with all you English it is the same.”

He paused interrogatively but Peter did not seem to wish to know what this quality was.

“Yes, it is ze Humour—you do not see how funny life is—always—always funny. Death, murder, robberies, violences—always funny—you are. Oh! so solemn and per'aps you will be annoyed, think it tiresome, because I laugh—”

“No,” said Peter gravely, “I like your laughing.”

“Ah! That is well.” Suddenly he jerked his body forward and stared into Peter's face.

“Well! . . . Will you come?”

Peter hung back, his face white. He was only conscious that Zachary, quiet and smiling in the background, watched him intently.

“What! . . . with you . . . to London!”

“Yes . . . wiz me—what of your father? Will he be furious, hey?”

“He won't like it—” Peter continued slowly. “But I don't care. I'll leave him—But I should have no money—nothing!”

“An', no matter—I will take you to London for nothing and then—if you like it—you may work for me. Two pounds a week—you would be useful.”

“What should I do?”

“I have a bookshop—you would look after ze books and also ze customers.” This seemed to amuse Mr. Zanti very much. “Two pounds a week is a lot of money for ze work—and you will have time—ho yes—much time for your stories.”

Peter's eyes burned. London—a bookshop—freedom. Oh! wonderful world! His heart was beating so that words would not come.

“Oh!” he murmured. “Oh!”

“Ah, that's well!” Mr. Zanti clapped him on the shoulder. “There is no need for you to say now. On ze Wednesday in Easter week I go—before then you will tell me. We shall get on together, I know it. If you will 'ave a leetle more of ze Humour you will be a very pleasant boy—and useful—Ho, yes!”

To Peter then the shop was not visible—a mist hung about his eyes. “Much time for your stories” . . . said Mr. Zanti, and he shouted with laughter as his big form hung before Peter. The large white hand with the flashing rings enclosed Peter's.

For a moment the hands were on his shoulders and in his nostrils was the pungent scent of the hair-oil that Mr. Zanti affected—afterwards silence.

Peter said farewell to Zachary and promised to come soon and see him again. The little bell tinkled behind him and he was in the street. The great wind caught him and blew him along the cobbles. The flying mountains of cloud swept like galleons across the moor, and in Peter's heart was overwhelming triumph . . . the lights of London lit the black darkness of the high sea road.

IV

The doors of Scaw House clanged behind him and at once he was aware that his father had to be faced. Supper was eaten in silence. Peter watched his father and his grandfather. Here were the three of them alone. What his grandfather was his father would one day be, what his father was, he . . . yes, he must escape. He stared at the room's dreary furniture, he listened to the driving rain and he was conscious that, from the other side of the table, his father's eyes were upon him.

“Father,” he said, “I want to go away.” His heart was thumping.

Mr. Westcott got up from his place at the table and stood, with his legs a little apart, looking down at his son.

“Why?”

“I'm doing no good here. That office is no use to me. I shall never be a solicitor. I'm nearly eighteen and I shall never get on here. I remember things . . . my mother . . .” his voice choked.

His father smiled. “And where do you want to go?”

“To London.”

“Oh! and what will you do there?”

“I have a friend—he has a bookshop there. He will give me two pounds a week at first so that I should be quite independent—”

“All very nice,” Mr. Westcott was grave again. “And so you are tired of Treliss?”

“Not only Treliss—this house—everything. I hate it.”

“You have no regret at leaving me?”

“You know—father—that . . .”

“Yes?”

Peter rose suddenly from the table—they faced one another.

“I want you to let me go. You have never cared in the least for me and you do not want me here. I shall go mad if I stay in this place. I must go.”

“Oh, you must go? Well, that's plain enough at any rate—and when do you propose leaving us?”

“After Easter—the Wednesday after Easter,” he said. “Oh, father, please. Give me a chance. I can do things in London—I feel it. Here I shall never do anything.”

Peter raised his eyes to his father's and then dropped them. Mr. Westcott senior was not pleasant to look at.

“Let us have no more of this—you will stay here because I wish it. I like to have you here—father and son—father and son.”

He placed his hand on the boy's shoulder—“Never mention this again for your own sake—you will stay here until I wish you to go.”

But Peter broke free.

“I will go,” he shouted—“I will go—you shall not keep me here. I have a right to my freedom—what have you ever done for me that I should obey you? I want to leave you and never see you again. I . . .” And then his eyes fell—his legs were shaking. His father was watching him, no movement in his short thick body—Peter's voice faltered—“I will go,” he said sullenly, his eyes on the ground.

His grandfather stirred in his sleep. “Oh, what a noise,” he muttered, “with the rain and all.”

But Mr. Westcott removed with a careful hand the melodrama that his young son had flung about the room.

“That's enough noise,” he said, “you will not go to London—nor indeed anywhere else—and for your own peace of mind I should advise you not to mention the subject again. The hour is a little early but I recommend your bedroom.”

Peter went. He was trembling from head to foot. Why? He undressed and prepared himself for battle. Battle it was to be, for the Wednesday in Easter week would find him in the London train—of that there was to be no question.

Meanwhile, with the candle blown out, and no moon across the floor, it was quite certain that courage would be necessary. He was fighting more than his father.

V

He woke suddenly, A little wind, blowing through the open door flickered the light of a candle that flung a dim circle about the floor. Within the circle was his father—black clothes and white face, he was looking with the candle held high, across the room to the bed.

He drew back the candle and closed the door softly behind him. His feet made no sound as they passed away down the passage,

Peter lay quaking, wide eyed in his bed, until full morning and time for getting up.

The opening, certainly, of a campaign.