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 to-morrow.... 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 toothbrush, 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 on 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.