HOW THE WESTCOTT FAMILY SAT UP FOR PETER
I
The boy always reckoned that, walking one's quickest, it took half an
hour from the door of The Bending Mule to Scaw House, where his father
lived. If a person ran all the way twenty minutes would perhaps cover
it, but, most of the time, the road went up hill and that made running
difficult; he had certainly no intention of running to-night, there were
too many things to think about. That meant, then, that he would
arrive home about half-past ten, and there would be his aunt and his
grandfather and his father sitting up waiting for him.
The world was very silent, and the snow lay on the round cobbles of the
steep street with a bright shining whiteness against the black houses
and the dark night sky. Treliss' principal street was deserted; all down
the hill red lights showed in the windows and voices could be heard,
singing and laughing, because on Christmas Eve there would be parties
and merrymakings. Peter looked a tiny and rather desolate figure against
the snow as he climbed the hill. There was a long way to go. There would
be Green Street at the top, past the post office, then down again into
the Square where the Tower was, then through winding turnings up the
hill past the gates and dark trees of The Man at Arms, then past the old
wall of the town and along the wide high road that runs above the sea
until at last one struck the common, and, hidden in a black clump of
trees (so black on a night like this), the grim grey stones of Scaw
House.
Peter was not afraid of being alone, although when snow had fallen
everything seemed strange and monstrous, the trees were like animals,
and the paths of all the world were swept away. But he was not afraid
of ghosts; he was too accustomed to their perpetual company; old Frosted
Moses and Dicky, and even men like Stephen, had seen ghosts so often,
and Peter himself could tell odd stories about the Grey Hill--no, ghosts
held no terror. But, very slowly, the shadow of all that he must very
soon go through was creeping about him. When he first came out of The
Bending Mule he still was as though he were in a dream. Everything that
had happened there that evening had been so strange, so amazing, that it
belonged to the world of dreams--it was of the very stuff of them, and
that vision of Stephen, naked, bleeding, so huge and so terrible, was
not to be easily forgotten.
But, as he climbed the steep street, Peter knew that however great
a dream that might be, there was to be no dreaming at all about his
meeting with his father, and old Frosted Moses' philosophy would be very
sadly needed. As he climbed the hill the reaction from the excitement of
his late adventure suddenly made him very miserable indeed, so that he
had an immediate impulse to cry, but he stood still in the middle of the
street and made fists with his hands and called himself “a damned gawky
idiot,” words that he had admired in the mouth of Sam Figgis some days
before. “Gawky” was certainly the last thing that he was, but it was a
nice queer word, and it helped him a great deal.
The worst of everything was that he had had a number of beatings lately
and the world could not possibly go on, as far as he was concerned, if
he had many more. Every beating made matters worse and his own desperate
attempts to be good and to merit rewards rather than chastisement met
with no success. The hopeless fact of it all was that it had very little
to do with his own actions; his father behaved in the same way to every
one, and Mrs. Trussit, the housekeeper, old Curtis the gardener, Aunt
Jessie, and all the servants, shook under his tongue and the cold
glitter of his eyes, and certainly the maids would long ago have given
notice and departed were it not that they were all afraid to face him.
Peter knew that that was true, because Mrs. Trussit had told him so.
It was this hopeless feeling of indiscriminate punishment that made
everything so bad. Until he was eight years old Peter had not been
beaten at all, but when he was very young indeed he had learnt to crawl
away when he heard his father's step, and he had never cried as a baby
because his nurse's white scared face had frightened him so. And then,
of course, there was his mother, his poor mother--that was another
reason for silence. He never saw his mother for more than a minute at a
time because she was ill, had been ill for as long as he could remember.
When he was younger he had been taken into his mother's room once or
twice a week by Mrs. Trussit, and he had bent down and kissed that white
tired face, and he had smelt the curious smell in the room of flowers
and medicine, and he had heard his mother's voice, very far away and
very soft, and he had crept out again. When he was older his aunt told
him sometimes to go and see his mother, and he would creep in alone, but
he never could say anything because of the whiteness of the room and
the sense of something sacred like church froze his speech. He had never
seen his father and mother together.
His mornings were always spent with old Parlow, and in the afternoon he
was allowed to ramble about by himself, so that it was only at mealtimes
and during the horrible half-hour after supper before he went up to bed
that he saw his father.
He really saw more of old Curtis the gardener, but half an hour with his
father could seem a very long time. Throughout the rest of his life that
half-hour after supper remained at the back of his mind--and he never
forgot its slightest detail. The hideous dining-room with the large
photographs of old grandfather and grandmother Westcott in ill-fitting
clothes and heavy gilt frames, the white marble clock on the
mantelpiece, a clock that would tick solemnly for twenty minutes and
then give a little run and a jump for no reason at all, the straight
horsehair sofa so black and uncomfortable with its hard wooden back, the
big dining-room table with its green cloth (faded a little in the middle
where a pot with a fern in it always stood) and his aunt with her frizzy
yellow hair, her black mittens and her long bony fingers playing her
interminable Patience, and then two arm-chairs by the fire, in one of
them old grandfather Westcott, almost invisible beneath a load of rugs
and cushions and only the white hairs on the top of his head sticking
out like some strange plant, and in the other chair his father,
motionless, reading the _Cornish Times_--last of all, sitting up
straight with his work in front of him, afraid to move, afraid to cough,
sometimes with pins and needles, sometimes with a maddening impulse to
sneeze, always with fascinated glances out of the corner of his eye at
his father--Peter himself. How happy he was when the marble clock
struck nine, and he was released! How snug and friendly his little attic
bedroom was with its funny diamond-paned window under the shelving
roof with all the view of the common and the distant hills that covered
Truro! There, at any rate, he was free!
He was passing now through the Square, and he stopped for an instant and
looked up at the old weather-beaten Tower that guarded one side of it,
and looked so fine and stately now with the white snow at its foot and
the gleaming sheet of stars at its back. That old Tower had stood a good
number of beatings in its day--it knew well enough what courage was--and
so Peter, as he turned up the hill, squared his shoulders and set his
teeth. But in some way that he was too young to understand he felt that
it was not the beating itself that frightened him most, but rather all
the circumstances that attended it--it was even the dark house, the band
of trees about it, that first dreadful moment when he would hear his
knock echo through the passages, and then the patter of Mrs. Trussit's
slippers as she came to open the door for him--then Mrs. Trussit's fat
arm and the candle raised above her head, and “Oh, it's you, Mr. Peter,”
and then the opening of the dining-room door and “It's Master Peter,
sir,” and then that vision of the marble clock and his father's face
behind the paper. These things were unfair and more than any one
deserved. He had had beatings on several occasions when he had merited
no punishment at all, but it did not make things any better that on this
occasion he did deserve it; it only made that feeling inside his chest
that everything was so hopeless that nothing whatever mattered, and that
it was always more fun to be beaten for a sheep than a lamb, stronger
than ever.
But the world--or at any rate the Scaw House portion of it--could not
move in this same round eternally. Something would happen, and the
vague, half-confessed intention that had been in his mind for some time
now was a little more defined. One day, like his three companions, Tom
Jones, Peregrine Pickle and David Copperfield, he would run into the
world and seek his fortune, and then, afterwards, he would write his
book of adventures as they had done. His heart beat at the thought, and
he passed the high gates and dark trees of The Man at Arms with quick
step and head high. He was growing old--twelve was an age--and there
would soon be a time when beatings must no longer be endured. He
shivered when he thought of what would happen then--the mere idea of
defying his father sent shudders down his back, but he was twelve, he
would soon be thirteen....
But this Scaw House, with its strange silence and distresses, was only
half his life. There was the other existence that he had down in the
town, out at Stephen's farm, wandering alone on the Grey Hill, roaming
about along the beach and in amongst the caves, tramping out to The
Hearty Cow, a little inn amongst the gorse, ten miles away, or looking
for the lost church among the sand-dunes at Porthperran. All these
things had nothing whatever to do with his father and old Parlow and his
lessons--and it was undoubtedly this other sort of life that he would
lead, with the gipsies and the tramps, when the time came for him to
run away. He knew no other children of his own age, but he did not want
them; he liked best to talk to old Curtis the gardener, to Dicky the
Idiot, to Sam Figgis when that splendid person would permit it--and, of
course, to Stephen.
He passed the old town wall and stepped out into the high road. Far
below him was the sea, above him a sky scattered with shining stars and
around him a white dim world. Turning a corner the road lay straight
before him and to the right along the common was the black clump of
trees that hid his home. He discovered that he was very tired, it had
been a most exhausting day with old Parlow so cross in the morning and
the scene in the inn at night--and now--!
His steps fell slower and slower as he passed along the road. One hot
hand was clutching Parlow's note and in his throat there was a sharp
pain that made it difficult to swallow, and his eyes were burning.
Suppose he never went home at all! Supposing he went off to Stephen's
farm!--it was a long way and he might lose his way in the snow, but his
heart beat like a hammer when he thought of Stephen coming to the door
and of the little spare room where Stephen put his guests to sleep.
But no--Stephen would not want him to-night; he would be very tired
and would rather be alone; and then there would be the morning, when
it would be every bit as bad, and perhaps worse. But if he ran away
altogether? ... He stopped in the middle of the road and thought about
it--the noise of the sea came up to him like the march of men and with
it the sick melancholy moan of the Bell Rock, but the rest of the world
was holding its breath, so still it seemed. But whither should he run?
He could not run so far away that his father could not find him--his
father's arm stretched to everywhere in the world. And then it was
cowardly to run away. Where was that courage of which he had been
thinking so much? So he shook his little shoulders and pulled up those
stockings again and turned up the little side road, usually so full of
ruts and stones and now so level and white with the hard snow. Now
that his mind was made up, he marched forward with unfaltering step and
clanged the iron gates behind him so that they made a horrible noise,
and stepped through the desolate garden up the gravel path.
The house looked black and grim, but there were lights behind the
dining-room windows--it was there that they were sitting, of course.
As he stood on his toes to reach the knocker a shooting star flashed
past above his head, and he could hear the bare branches of the trees
knocking against one another in the wind that always seemed to be
whistling round the house. The noise echoed terribly through the
building, and then there was a silence that was even more terrible. He
could fancy how his aunt would start and put down her Patience cards for
a moment and look, in her scared way, at the window--he knew that his
father would not move from behind his paper, and that there would be no
other sound unless his grandfather awoke. He heard Mrs. Trussit's steps
down the passage, then locks were turned, the great door swung slowly
open, and he saw her, as he had pictured it, with a candle in her hand
raised above her head, peering into the dark.
“Oh! it's you, Master Peter,” and she stood aside, without another word,
to let him in. He slipped past her, silently, into the hall and, after
a second's pause, she followed him in, banging the hall door behind her.
Then she opened the dining-room door announcing, grimly, “It's Master
Peter come in, sir.” The marble clock struck half-past ten as she spoke.
He stood just inside the door blinking a little at the sudden light and
twisting his cloth cap round and round in his hands. He couldn't see
anything at first, and he could not collect his thoughts. At last he
said, in a very little voice:
“I've come back, father.”
The lights settled before his eyes, and he saw them all exactly as he
had thought they would be. His father had not looked up from his paper,
and Peter could see the round bald patch on the top of his head.
Aunt Jessie was talking to herself about her cards in a very agitated
whisper--“Now it's the King I want--how provoking! Ah, there's the seven
of spades, _and the six and the five_--oh dear! it's a club,” and not
looking up at all.
No one answered his remark, and the silence was broken by his
grandfather waking up; a shrill piping voice came from out of the rugs.
“Oh! dear, what a doze I've had! It must be eight o'clock! What a doze
for an old man to have! on such a cold night too,” and then fell asleep
again immediately.
At last Peter spoke again in a voice that seemed to come from quite
another person.
“Father--I've come back!”
His father very slowly put down his newspaper and looked at him as
though he were conscious of him for the first time. When he spoke it
was as though his voice came out of the ceiling or the floor because his
face did not seem to move at all.
“Where have you been?”
“In the town, father.”
“Come here.”
He crossed the room and stood in front of the fire between his father
and grandfather. He was tremendously conscious of the grim and dusty
cactus plant that stood on a little table by the window.
“What have you been doing in the town?”
“I have been in The Bending Mule, father.”
“Why did you not come home before?”
There was no answer.
“You knew that you ought to come home?”
“Yes, father. I have a letter for you from Mr. Parlow. He said that I
was to tell you that I have done my sums very badly this week and that I
gave Willie Daffoll a bleeding nose on Wednesday--”
“Yes--have you any excuse for these things?”
“No, father.”
“Very well. You may go up to your room. I will come up to you there.”
“Yes, father.”
He crossed the room very slowly, closed the door softly behind him, and
then climbed the dark stairs to his attic.
II
He went trembling up to his room, and the match-box shook in his hand as
he lit his candle. It was only the very worst beatings that happened
in his bedroom, his father's gloomy and solemn study serving as a
background on more unimportant occasions. He could only remember two
other beatings in the attics, and they had both been very bad ones. He
closed his door and then stood in the middle of the room; the little
diamond-paned window was open and the glittering of the myriad stars
flung a light over his room and shone on the little bracket of books
above his bed (a Bible, an “Arabian Nights,” and tattered copies of
“David Copperfield,” “Vanity Fair,” “Peregrine Pickle,” “Tom Jones,” and
“Harry Lorrequer”), on the little washing stand, a chest of drawers, a
cane-bottomed chair, and the little bed. There were no pictures on the
walls because of the sloping roof, but there were two china vases on
the mantelpiece, and they were painted a very bright blue with yellow
flowers on them.
They had been given to Peter by Mrs. Flanders, the Rector's wife, who
had rather a kind feeling for Peter, and would have been friendly to him
had he allowed her. He took off his jacket and put it on again, he stood
uncertainly in the middle of the floor, and wondered whether he ought
to undress or no. There was no question about it now, he was horribly,
dreadfully afraid. That wisdom of old Frosted Moses seemed a very long
ago, and it was of very little use. If it had all happened at once
after he had come in then he might have endured it, but this waiting and
listening with the candle guttering was too much for him. His father was
so very strong--he had Peter's figure and was not very tall and was very
broad in the back; Peter had seen him once when he was stripped, and the
thought of it always frightened him.
His face was white and his teeth would chatter although he bit his lips
and his fingers shook as he undressed, and his stud slipped and he could
not undo his braces--and always his ears were open for the sound of the
step on the stairs.
At last he was in his night-shirt, and a very melancholy figure he
looked as he stood shivering in the middle of the floor. It was not
only that he was going to be beaten, it was also that he was so lonely.
Stephen seemed so dreadfully far away and he had other things to think
about; he wondered whether his mother in that strange white room ever
thought of him, his teeth were chattering, so that his whole head shook,
but he was afraid to get into bed because then he might go to sleep and
it would be so frightening to be woken by his father.
The clock downstairs struck eleven, and he heard his father's footstep.
The door opened, and his father came in holding in his hand the cane
that Peter knew so well.
“Are you there?” the voice was very cold.
“Yes, father.”
“Do you know that you ought to be home before six?”
“Yes, father.”
“And that I dislike your going to The Bending Mule?”
“Yes, father.”
“And that I insist on your doing your work for Mr. Parlow?”
“Yes, father.”
“And that you are not to fight the other boys in the town?”
“Yes, father.”
“Why do you disobey me like this?”
“I don't know. I try to be good.”
“You are growing into an idle, wicked boy. You are a great trouble to
your mother and myself.”
“Yes, father. I want to be better.”
Even now he could admire his father's strength, the bull-neck, the dark
close-cropped hair, but he was cold, and the blood had come where he bit
his lip--because he must not cry.
“You must learn obedience. Take off your nightshirt.”
He took it off, and was a very small naked figure in the starlight, but
his head was up now and he faced his father.
“Bend over the bed.”
He bent over the bed, and the air from the window cut his naked back. He
buried his head in the counterpane and fastened his teeth in it so that
he should not cry out....
During the first three cuts he did not stir, then an intolerable pain
seemed to move through his body--it was as though a knife were cutting
his body in half. But it was more than that--there was terror with him
now in the room; he heard that little singing noise that came through
his father's lips--he knew that his father was smiling.
At the succeeding strokes his flesh quivered and shrank together and
then opened again--the pain was intolerable; his teeth met through the
coverlet and grated on one another; but before his eyes was the picture
of Stephen slowly straightening himself before his enemy and then that
swinging blow--he would not cry. He seemed to be sharing his punishment
with Stephen, and they were marching, hand in hand, down a road lined
with red-hot pokers.
His back was on fire, and his head was bursting and the soles of his
feet were very, very cold.
Then he heard, from a long way away, his father's voice:
“Now you will not disobey me again.”
The door closed. Very slowly he raised himself, but moving was torture;
he put on his night-shirt and then quickly caught back a scream as it
touched his back. He moved to the window and closed it, then he climbed
very slowly on to his bed, and the tears that he had held back came,
slowly at first, and then more rapidly, at last in torrents. It was
not the pain, although that was bad, but it was the misery and the
desolation and the great heaviness of a world that held out no hope, no
comfort, but only a great cloud of unrelieved unhappiness.
At last, sick with crying, he fell asleep.
III
The first shadow of light was stealing across the white undulating
common and creeping through the bare trees of the desolate garden when
four dark figures, one tall, two fat, and one small, stole softly up the
garden path. They halted beneath the windows of the house; the snow had
ceased falling, and their breath rose in clouds above their heads. They
danced a little in the snow and drove their hands together, and then the
tall figure said:
“Now, Tom Prother, out with thy musick.” One of the fat figures felt in
his coat and produced four papers, and these were handed round.
“Bill, my son, it's for thee to lead off at thy brightest, mind ye. Let
'em have it praper.”
The small figure came forward and began; at first his voice was thin and
quavering, but in the second line it gathered courage and rang out full
and bold:
_As oi sat under a sicymore tree
A sicymore tree, a sicymore tree,
Oi looked me out upon the sea
On Christ's Sunday at morn._
“Well for thee, lad,” said the tall figure approvingly, “but the cold
is creepin' from the tips o' my fingers till my singin' voice is most
frozen. Now, altogether.”
And the birds in the silent garden woke amongst the ivy on the distant
wall and listened:
_Oi saw three ships a-sailin' there--
A sailin' there, a-sailin' there,
Jesu, Mary, and Joseph they bare
On Christ's Sunday at morn._
A small boy curled up, like the birds, under the roof stirred uneasily
in his sleep and then slowly woke. He moved, and gave a little cry
because his back hurt him, then he remembered everything. The voices
came up to him from the garden:
_Joseph did whistle and Mary did sing,
Mary did sing, Mary did sing,
And all the bells on earth did ring
For joy our Lord was born._
_O they sail'd in to Bethlehem,
To Bethlehem, to Bethlehem;
Saint Michael was the steersman,
Saint John sate in the horn._
_And all the bells on earth did ring,
On earth did ring, on earth did ring;
“Welcome be thou Heaven's King,
On Christ's Sunday at morn.”_
He got slowly out of bed and went to the window. The light was coming
in broad bands from the East and he could hear the birds in the ivy. The
four black figures stood out against the white shadowy garden and their
heads were bent together. He opened his window, and the fresh morning
air swept about his face.
He could hear the whispers of the singers as they chose another carol
and suddenly above the dark iron gates of the garden appeared the broad
red face of the sun.