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.