There was once a man I met at home with rings and things who lived in London...." Peter stops, Galleon wouldn't be interested in that.

"Anyhow, you know, you've got Cards--he's an awfully clever chap."

"Yes, he's wonderful," Peter sighs, "and he's seen such a lot of things."

"Yes, but you know I don't think Cards really cares for you as much as I do." This is an approach to sentiment, and Peter brushes it hastily aside:

"I like you both awfully. But I say, won't it be splendid to be grown up in London?"

"I don't know--lots of fellows don't like it."

"That's nothing," Peter says slowly, "to do with its not being splendid!"

And the rabbit, tired of listening to such tiresome stuff, thinks that they must be very young boys indeed.

CHAPTER VI

A LOOKING-GLASS, A SILVER MATCH-BOX, A GLASS OF WHISKY, AND--VOX POPULI

I

Peter, thirteen to sixteen!--and left, so it appears, very much the same, as far as actual possessions go, at the end of it as at the poverty-struck commencement. Friendship, Honour, Glory--how these things came and went with him during these years might have a book to themselves were it not that our business is with a wider stage and more lasting issues--and there is but little room for a full-fledged chronicle. Though Dawson's--and to take the history of Miss Gill only--of her love affair with the curate, of her final desperate appeal to him and of his ultimate confession that he was married already--provides a story quite sufficient for three excellent volumes.

Or there is the history of Benbow, that bucolic gentleman into whose study we led Peter a chapter or two ago, Head for this year or two of Dawson's--soon to be head of nothing but the dung-heap and there to crow only dismally--with a childlike Mrs. Benbow, led unwittingly to Dawson's as a lamb to the slaughter-house--later to flee, crying, back to her hearth and home, her life smashed to the tiniest pieces and no brain nor strength to put it together again. Or there is the natural and interesting progression, on the part of any child, behind whose back those iron gates of Dawson's have swung, from innocence to knowledge, from knowledge to practice, from practice to miserable Submission, Concealment, and a merry prospective Hell--this is a diverting study with which it would be easy to fill these pages....

But the theme is Peter's education, and Dawson's is only an incident to that history--an incident that may be taken by the percipient reader, for a most admirable Symbol--even an early rehearsal of a Comedy entitled "How to Learn to be a Man, or The World as a Prancing Ground."...

But with Peter, if you take him from that first asking Mrs. Trussit (swinging his short legs from the table and diving into the mixed biscuit tin). "Is it, Mrs. Trussit, like David Copperfield?"... to his meeting of her again, he still rather short-legged but no longer caring over much for mixed biscuits, in his sixteenth year, with Dawson's over and done with--"No, Mrs. Trussit, not in the least like," and grimly said in addition, the changes, alterations and general growing-up Development may be said to be inside him rather than out, and there they are vital enough.

With those three and a half years it is a case of Things sticking out, like hillocks in a flat country, and it is retrospection rather than impressions at the time that show what mattered and what did not. But, on the whole, the vital things at Dawson's are pretty plain to the eye and must be squeezed into a chapter as best they can.

Treliss, as it appeared in the holidays, seemed to Peter to change very little. His relations with his father were curiously passive during this time, and suggested, in their hint of future developments, something ominous and uneasy. They scarcely ever spoke to one another, and it was Peter's object to avoid the house as often as possible, but in his father's silence now (Peter himself being older and intuitively sharper as to the reason of things) he saw active dislike, and even, at times, a suggested fear. Outwardly they--his father, his grandfather, his aunt, Mrs. Trussit--had changed not at all; his grandfather the same old creature of grey hairs and cushions and rugs, his father broad and square and white in the face with his black hair carefully brushed, his aunt with her mittens and trembling hands and silly voice, Mrs. Trussit with her black silk gown and stout prosperous face--Oh! they were all there, but he fancied--and this might easily be imagination--that they, like the portraits of the old Westcotts about the walls, watched him, as he grew, knowing that ever, as the months passed, the day came nearer when father and son must come to terms. And beyond this he had, even at this early time, a consciousness that it was round his mother's room that the whole matter hung--his mother whom he saw once or twice a week for a very little time in the morning, when that old terror of the white silent room would creep upon him and hold him tongue-tied.

And yet, with it all, he knew, as every holiday came, more clearly, that again and again they, his mother and himself, were on the verge of speech or action. He could see it in her eyes, her beautiful grey eyes that moved him so curiously. There were days when he was on the edge of a rush of questions, and then something held him back--perhaps the unconscious certainty that his mother's answers would precipitate his relations with his father--and he was not, as yet, ready.

Anyhow a grim place, Scaw House, grimmer with every return to it, and not a brightly coloured interlude to Dawson's, grim enough in its own conditions. The silence that was gradually growing with Peter--the fixed assurance, whether at home or at school, that life was easier if one said nothing--might have found an outlet in Stephen's company, but here again there was no cheerful chronicle.

Each holiday showed Peter less of Stephen than the last had done, and he was afraid to ask himself why this was. Perhaps in reality he did not know, but at any rate he was sure that the change was in Stephen. He cared for Stephen as devotedly as ever, and, indeed, in that perhaps he needed him more than ever and saw him so little, his affection was even stronger than it had been. But Stephen had changed, not, Peter knew, in any affection towards himself, but in his own habits and person.

Burstead--his old enemy--had taken a farm near his own farm, in order, so they said at The Bending Mule, that he might flaunt Mrs. Burstead (once Stephen's sweetheart) in Stephen's face.

They also said that Burstead beat his wife and ill-used her horribly, and that she would give all her soul now that she was Stephen Brant's wife, but that she was a weak, silly young woman, poor thing. They said that Stephen knew all this, and that he could hear her crying at nights, and that it was sending him off his head--and that he was drinking. And they shook their heads, down at The Bending Mule, and foreboded ill.

Moreover, that old lady, Mrs. Brant, had died during Peter's first year at Dawson's, and Stephen was alone now. He had changed in his appearance, his beard tangled and untidy, his clothes unbrushed and his eyes wild and bloodshot, and once Peter had ventured up to Stephen's farm and had climbed the stairs and had opened the door and had seen Stephen (although it was early evening) sitting all naked on his bed, very drunk and shouting wildly--and he had not recognised Peter. But the boy knew when he met him again, sober this time, by the sad look in his eyes, that Stephen must go his way alone now, lead him where it would.... A boy of fifteen could not help.

And so those holidays were more and more lonely, as the days passed and Peter's heart was very heavy. He did not go often to The Bending Mule now because Stephen was not there. He went once or twice to Zachary Tan's shop, but he did not see Mr. Zanti again nor any one who spoke of London. He had not, however, forgotten Mr. Zanti's talk of looking-glasses. As he grew and his mind distinguished more clearly between fact and fancy, he saw that it was foolish to suppose that one saw anything in looking-glasses but the immediate view. Tables and chairs, walls and windows, dust and fire-places, there was the furniture of a looking-glass. Nevertheless during his first year at school he had, on occasions, climbed to his dormitory, seen that he was alone and then gazed into his glass and thought of London ... London in his young brain, being a place of romantic fog, pantomime, oranges, fat, chivalrous old gentlemen, Queen Victoria and Punch and Judy. Nothing had happened--of course nothing had happened--it was only very cold and unpleasant up there all alone, and, at the end of it, a silly thing to do.

And then one night something did happen. He woke suddenly and heard in the distance beyond the deep breathing of twenty-four sleepers, a clock strike three. He turned and lay on his back; he was very sleepy and he did not know why he had wakened. The long high room was dark, but directly opposite him beyond the end of his bed, the light seemed to shine full on to the face of his looking-glass. As he sat up in bed and looked at it seemed to stand out like a sheet of silver.

He gripped the sides of the bed and stared. He rubbed his eyes. He could see no reflection in the glass at all but only this shining expanse, and then, as he looked at it, that too seemed to pass away, and in its place at first confusedly, like smoke across the face of the glass, and then, settling into shape and form, there appeared the interior of a room--a small low-roofed dark room. There was a large fire burning, and in front of it, kneeling on the floor, with their backs to Peter, were two men, and they were thrusting papers into the fire. The glass seemed to stretch and broaden out so that the whole of the room was visible, and suddenly Peter saw a little window high in the top of the wall, and behind that window was a face that watched the two men.

He wanted to warn them--he suddenly cried out aloud "Look out!" and with that he was wide awake and saw that his glass could be only dimly discerned in the grey of the advancing morning--and yet he had heard that clock strike three!... So much for confusing dreams, and so vivid was it that in the morning he remembered the face at the window and knew that he would recognise it again if he saw it.

II

But out of the three years there stand his relations with Cards and young Galleon, a symbol of so much that was to come to him later. As he grew in position in the school Cards saw him continually. Cards undoubtedly admired his stocky, determined strength, his grey eyes, his brusque speech, his ability at games. He did not pretend also that he was not flattered by Peter's attentions. Curiously, for so young a boy, he had a satirical irony that showed him the world very much in the light that he was always afterwards to see it. To Cards the world was a show, a Vanity Fair--a place where manner, _savoir-faire_, dignity, humour and ease, mattered everything; he saw also that there was nothing by which people are so easily deceived.

Peter had none of these things; he would always be rough, he would never be elegant, and afterwards, in life, Cards did not suppose that he would see very much of Peter, their lives would be along different paths; but now, more genuinely perhaps than ever again, Cards was to admire that honest bedrock of feeling, of sentiment, of criticism, of love and anger, that gave Peter his immense value.

"There is a fellow here," wrote Cards to his mother, "whom I like very much. He's got a most awful lot of stuff in him although he doesn't say much and he looks like nothing on earth sometimes. He's very good at football, although he's only been here a year. His name is Westcott--Peter Westcott. I expect I'll bring him back one holiday."

But, of course, he never did. Peter, when it came to actuality, wouldn't look right at home. It was during Peter's second year that these things were happening, and, all this time, Peter was climbing slowly to a very real popularity. Cards was leaving at the end of this second year--had he stayed until the end of the third his superficialities would have been most severely tested.

To him Peter gave all that whole-hearted love and devotion that only Stephen had known before. He gave it with a very considerable sense of humour and with no sentiment at all. He saw Cards quite clearly, he watched his poses and his elaborate pretences, and he laughed at him sometimes and called him names.

Cards' pride was, on several occasions, distinctly hurt by this laughter, but his certain conviction of his own superiority always comforted him. Nor was Peter ever sentimental in his attitude. He never told Cards that he cared for him, and he even hung back a little when Cards was in a demonstrative mood and wanted to be told that he was "wonderful." Cards sometimes wondered whether Peter cared for him at all and whether he wasn't really fonder of that "stupid ass Galleon" who never had a word to say for himself. Peter's grey eyes would have told Cards a great deal if he had cared to examine them, but he did not know anything about eyes. Peter noticed, a little against his will, that as he advanced up the school so Cards cared increasingly about him.

He grasped this discovery philosophically; after all, there were many fellows who took their colour from the world's opinion, and it was natural enough that they should. He himself regarded his growing popularity as a thing of no importance whatever; it did not touch him anywhere at all because he despised and hated the place. "When the time does come," he said once to Cards, "and one is allowed to do things, I'll stop a lot of this filth."

"You'll have your work cut out," Cards told him. "What does it all matter to us? Let 'em wallow--and they'll only hate you."

Cards added this because he knew that Peter had a curious passion for being liked. Cards wanted to be admired, but to be liked!... what was the gain? But that second year was, in spite of it all, the best time that Peter had ever had. There was warmth of a kind in their appreciation of him. He was only fifteen and small for his age, but his uncompromising attitude about things, his silence, his football, gave him a surprising importance--but even now it was respect rather than popularity. He was growing more like a bull-dog than ever, his hair was stiff and short, rather shaggy eyebrows, a square jaw, his short legs rather far apart, a broad back and thick strong arms.

Now that Stephen had slipped so sadly into the background he built up his life about Cards. He put everything into that room--not the old room that had held Stephen, but a new shining place that gained some added brilliance from the fact that its guest realised so little the honour that was done him. He would lie awake at night and think about Cards, of the things that he would do for him, of the way that he would serve him, of the guardian that he would be.

And then, as that summer term, at the end of the second year, wore on the pain of Cards' departure grew daily more terrible. He didn't know, as the days advanced, how he would be able to bear that place without Cards. There would be no life, no interest, and all the disorganisation, the immorality, the cruelty would oppress him as they had never oppressed him before. Besides next year he would be a person of some importance--he would probably be Captain of the Football and a Monitor...everything would be terribly hard. Of course there was old Bobby Galleon, who was a very good chap and really fond of Peter, but there was no excitement about _that_ relationship. Bobby was quite ready to play servant to Peter's master, and Peter could never respect any one very much who did that. Beside Cards, so brilliant, so handsome, with such an "air," old Bobby really didn't come off very well.

Bobby also at times was inclined to be a little sentimental. He used to ask Peter whether he liked him--whether he would miss him if he died--and he used to tell Peter that he would very gladly die for him.

There were things that one didn't--if one had self-respect--say.

That year the summer was of a blazing heat. Every morning saw a sky of steely blue, the corn stood like a golden band about the hills, and little clouds like the softest feathers were blown by the Gods about the world. A mist clung about the distant hills and clothed them in purple grey. As the term grew to its close Peter felt that the world was a prison of coloured steel, and that Dawson's was a true Hell...he would escape from it with Cards. And then when he saw that such an escape would be running away and a confession of defeat--he turned back and held his will in command.

Cards looked upon his approaching departure as a great deliverance.

He was to be a man immediately; not for him that absurdly dilatory condition of pimples and hobbledehoy boots that mark a transition period. Dawson's had been the most insignificant sojourn in the tent of the enemy, and the world, it was implied, had lamented his enforced absence. But, as the end of term flung its shadows in front of it in the form of examinations, and that especial quality of excited expectancy hovering about the corridors, Cards felt, for the first time in his existence, a genuine emotion. He minded, curiously, leaving Peter. He felt, although in this he wrongly anticipated the gods, that he would never see him again, and he calculated perhaps at the little piece of real affection and friendship that stood out from the Continental Tour that he wished Life to be, like a palm tree on the limitless desert. And yet it was characteristic of them both that on the last day when, seated under a hedge at the top of the playing fields, the school buildings a grey mist below them and the air tensely rigid with heat, they said good-bye to one another, it was Cards who found all the words.

Peter had nothing to say at all; he only clutched at tufts of grass, lugged them from the earth and flung them before him. But Cards, as usual, rose to the occasion.

"You know, Peter, it's been most splendid knowing you here. I don't think I'd ever have got through Dawson's if it hadn't been for you. It's a hell of a place and I suppose if the mater hadn't been abroad so much I should never have stayed on. But it's no use making a fuss. Besides, it's only for a little while--one will have forgotten all about it in a year's time."

Peter smiled. "You will, I shan't."

"Why, of course you will. And you must come and stay with us often. My mother's most awfully anxious to know you. Won't it be splendid going out to join her in Italy? It'll be a bit hot this time of year I expect."

Peter seemed to struggle with his words. "I say--Cards--you won't--altogether--forget me?"

"Forget you! Why, good Lord, I'll be always writing. I'll have such lots to tell you. I've never liked any one in all my life (this said with a great sense of age) as I've liked you!"

He stood up and fumbled in his coat. Peter always remembered him, his dark slim body against the sky, his hair tumbled about his forehead, the grace and ease with which his body was balanced, the trick that he had of swaying a little from the hips. He felt in his pocket.