“But you mustn't die—you mustn't die—I'll see that they have another doctor from Truro. This silly old fool here doesn't know what he's about—I'll go myself.”
“Oh! how strong your hands are, Peter! How splendidly strong! No, no one can do anything now. But oh! I am happy at last …” She stroked his cheek with her hand—the golden light from the great cloud filled the room and touched the white vases with its colour.
“But quick, quick—tell me. There are so many things and there is so little time. I want to know everything—your school? Here when you were little?—all of it—”
But he was gripping the bed with his hands, his chest was heaving. Suddenly he broke down and burying his head in the bed-clothes began to sob as though his heart would break. “Oh! now … after all this time … you've wanted me … and I never came … and now to find you like this!”
She stroked his hair very softly and waited until the sobs ceased. He sat up and fiercely brushed his eyes.
“I won't be a fool—any more. It shan't be too late. I'll make you live. We'll never leave one another again.”
“Dear boy, it can't be like that. Think how splendid it is that we have had this time now. Think what it might have been if I had gone and we had never known one another. But tell me, Peter, what are you going to do with your life afterwards—what are you going to be?”
“I want to write books”—he stared at the golden cloud—“to be a novelist. I daresay I can't—I don't know—but I'd rather do that than anything. … Father wants me to be a solicitor. I'm with Aitchinson now—I shall never be a good one.”
Then he turned almost fiercely away from the window.
“But never mind about me, mother. It's you I want to hear about. I'm going to take this on now. It's my responsibility. I want to know about you.”
“There's nothing to know, dear. I've been ill for a great many years now. It's more nerves than anything, I suppose. I think I've never had the courage to stand up against it—a stronger woman would have got the better of it, I expect. But I wasn't always like this,” she added laughing a little far away ghost of a laugh—“Go and look in that drawer—there, in that cupboard—amongst my handkerchiefs—there where those old fans are—you'll find some old programmes there—Those old yellow papers. …”
He brought them to her, three old yellow programmes of a “Concert Given at the Town Hall, Truro.” “There, do you see? Miss Minnie Trenowth, In the Gloaming—There, I sang in those days. Oh! Truro was fun when I was a girl! There was always something going on! You see I wasn't always on my back!”
He crushed the papers in his hand.
“But, mother! If you were like that then—what's made you like this now?”
“It's nerves, dear—I've been stupid about it.”
“And father, how has he treated you these years?”
“Your father has always been very kind.”
“Mother, tell me the truth! I must know. Has he been kind to you?”
“Yes, dear—always.”
But her voice was very faint and that look that Peter had noticed before was again in her eyes.
“Mother—you must tell me. That's not true.”
“Yes, Peter. He's done his best. I have been annoying, sometimes—foolish.”
“Mother, I know. I know because I know father and I know myself. I'm like him—I've just found it out. I've got those same things in me, and they'll do for me if I don't get the better of them. Grandfather told me—he was the same. All the Westcotts—”
He bent over the bed and took her hand and kissed it.
“Mother, dear—I know—father has been frightening you all this time—terrifying you. And you were all alone. If only I had been there—if only there had been some one—”
Her voice was very faint. “Yes … he has frightened me all these years. At first I used to think that he didn't mean it. I was a bright, merry sort of a girl then—careless and knowing nothing about the world. And then I began to see—that he liked it—that it gave him pleasure to have something there that he could hurt. And then I began to be frightened. It was very lonely here for a girl who had had a gay time, and he usen't to like my going to Truro—and at last he even stopped my seeing people in Treliss. And then I began to be really frightened—and used to wake in the night and see him standing by the door watching me. Then I thought that when you were born that would draw us together, but it didn't, and I was always ill after that. He would do things—Oh!” her hand pressed her mouth. “Peter, dear, you mustn't think about it, only when I am dead I don't want you to think that I was quite a fool—if they tell you so. I don't want you to think it was all his fault either because it wasn't—I was silly and didn't understand sometimes … but it's killed me, that dreadful waiting for him to do something, I never knew what it would be, and sometimes it was nothing … but I knew that he liked to hurt … and it was the expectation.”
In that white room, now flaming with the fires of the setting sun, Peter caught his mother to his breast and held her there and her white hands clutched his knees.
Then his eyes, softened and he turned to her and arranged her head on the pillow and drew the sheets closely about her.
“I must go now. It has been bad for you this talking, but it had to be. I'm never, never going to leave you again—you shall not be alone any more—”
“Oh, Peter! I'm so happy! I have never been so happy … but it all comes of being a coward. If I had only been brave—never be afraid of anybody or anything. Promise me, Peter—”
“Except of myself,” he answered, kissing her.
“Kiss me again. … And again …”
“To-morrow …” he looked back at her, smiling. He saw her, for an instant, as he left the room, with her cheek against the pillow and her black hair like a cloud about her; the twilight was already in the room.
An hour later, as he stood in the dining-room, the door opened and his father came in.
“You have been with your mother?”
“Yes.”
“You have done her much harm. She is dying.”
“I know everything,” Peter answered, looking him in the face.
IV
He would never, until his own end had come, forget that evening. The golden sunset gave place to a cold and windy night, and the dark clouds rolled up along the grey sky, hiding and then revealing the thin and pallid moon.
Peter stayed there in the dining-room,
