LITMIR.BIZ

CHAPTER VIII

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PETER AND HIS MOTHER

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I

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      He had returned over the heavy fields, singing to a round-faced moon. In the morning, when he woke after a night of glorious fantastic dreams, and saw the sun beating very brightly across his carpet and birds singing beyond his window, he felt still that same exultation.

      It seemed to him, as he sat on his bed, with the sun striking his face, that last night he had been brought into touch with a vigour that challenged all the mists and vapours by which he had felt himself surrounded. That was the way that now he would face them.

      Looking back afterwards, he was to see that that evening with Stephen flung him on to all the events that so rapidly followed.

      Moreover, above all the sensation of the evening there was also a triumphant recognition of the fact that Stephen had now been restored to him. He might never see him again, but they were friends once more, he could not be lonely now as he had been. …

      And then, coming out of the town into the dark street and the starlight, he thought that he recognised a square form walking before him. He puzzled his brain to recall the connection and then, as he passed Zachary Tan's shop, the figure turned in and showed, for a moment, his face.

      It was that strange man from London, Mr. Emilio Zanti. …

II

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      It seemed to Peter that now at Scaw House the sense of expectation that had been with them all during the last weeks was charged with suspense—at supper that night his aunt burst suddenly into tears and left the room. Shortly afterwards his father also, without a word, got up from the table and went upstairs. …

      Peter was left alone with his grandfather. The old man, sunk beneath his pile of cushions, his brown skinny hand clenching and unclenching above the rugs, was muttering to himself. In Peter himself, as he stood there by the fire, looking down on the old man, there was tremendous pity. He had never felt so tenderly towards his grandfather before; it was, perhaps, because he had himself grown up all in a day. Last night had proved that one was grown up indeed, although one was but seventeen. But it proved to him still more that the time had come for him to deal with the situation all about him, to discover the thing that was occupying them all so deeply.

      Peter bent down to the cushions.

      “Grandfather, what's the matter with the house?”

      He could hear, faintly, beneath the rugs something about “hell” and “fire” and “poor old man.”

      “Grandfather, what's the matter with the house?” but still only “Poor old man … poor old man … nobody loves him … nobody loves him … to hell with the lot of 'em … let 'em grizzle in hell fire … oh! such nasty pains for a poor old man.”

      “Grandfather, what's the matter with the house?”

      The old brown hand suddenly stopped clenching and unclenching, and out from the cushions the old brown head with its few hairs and its parchment face poked like a withered jack-in-the-box.

      “Hullo, boy, you here?”

      “Grandfather, what's the matter with the house?”

      The old man's fingers, sharp like pins, drew Peter close to him.

      “Boy, I'm terribly frightened. I've been having such dreams. I thought I was dead—in a coffin. …”

      But Peter whispered in his ear:

      “Grandfather—tell me—what's the matter with every one here?”

      The old man's eyes were suddenly sharp, like needles.

      “Ah, he wants to know that, does he? He's found out something at last, has he? I know what they were about. They've been at it in here, boy, too. Oh, yes! for weeks and weeks—killing your mother, that's what my son's been doing … frightening her to death. … He's cruel, my son. I had the Devil once, and now he's got hold of me and that's why I'm here. Mind you, boy,” and the old man's ringers clutched him very tightly—“if you don't get the better of the Devil you'll be just like me one of these days. So'll he be, my son, one day. Just like me—and then it'll be your turn, my boy. Oh, they Westcotts! … Oh! my pains! Oh! my pains! … Oh! I'm a poor old man!—poor old man!”

      His head sunk beneath the cushions again and his muttering died away like a kettle when the lid has been put on to it.

      Peter had been kneeling so as to catch his grandfather's words. Now he drew himself up and with frowning brows faced the room. Had he but known it he was at that moment exactly like his father.

      He went slowly up to his attic.

      His little book-case had gained in the last two years—there were now three of Henry Galleon's novels there. Bobby had given him one, “Henry Lessingham,” shining bravely in its red and gold; he had bought another, “The Downs,” second hand, and it was rather tattered and well thumbed. Another, “The Roads,” was a shilling paper copy. He had read these three again and again until he knew them by heart, almost word by word. He took down “Henry Lessingham” now and opened it at a page that was turned down. It is Book III, chapter VI, and there is this passage:

       But, concerning the Traveller who would enter the House of Courage there are many lands that must be passed on the road before he rest there. There is, first, the Land of Lacking All Things—that is hard to cross. There is, Secondly, the Land of Having All Things. There is the Traveller's Fortitude most hardly tested. There is, Thirdly, The Land of Losing All Those Things that One Hath Possessed. That is a hard country indeed for the memory of the pleasantness of those earlier joys redoubleth the agony of lacking them. But at the end there is a Land of ice and snow that few travellers have compassed, and that is the Land of Knowing What One Hath Missed. … The Bird was in the hand and one let it go … that is the hardest agony of all the journey … but if these lands be encountered and surpassed then doth the Traveller at length possess his soul and is master of it … this is the Meaning and Purpose of Life.

      Peter read on through those pages where Lessingham, having found these words in some old book, takes courage after his many misadventures and starts again life—an old man, seventy years of age, but full of hope … and then there is his wonderful death in the Plague City, closing it all like a Triumph.

      The night had come down upon the house. Over the moor some twinkling light broke the black darkness and his candle blew in the wind. Everything was very still and as he clutched his book in his hand he knew that he was frightened. His grandfather's words had filled him with terror. He felt not only that his father was cruel and had been torturing his mother for many years because he loved to hurt, but he felt also that it was something in the blood, and that it would come upon him also, in later years, and that he might not be able to beat it down. He could understand definite things when they were tangible before his eyes but here was something that one could not catch hold of, something. …

      After all, he was very young—But he remembered,

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