"You don't remember me," he said, looking into her frightened eyes. But she shook her head slowly.

"You'd much better have kept away," she said.

"Where is he?" he asked her.

She shuffled in front of him down the dark hall. Except for this strange smell of rotting apples it was all very much as it had been. The lamp hanging at the foot of the stairs made the same spluttering noise and there was the door of the room that had once been his grandfather's, and Peter fancied that he could still see the old man swaying there in the doorway, laughing at his son and his grandson as they struggled there on the floor.

The woman pushed open the dining-room door and Peter went in.

Peter's first thought was that his father was not there. He saw standing in front of the well-remembered fireplace a genial-looking gentleman clothed in a crimson dressing-gown--a bald gentleman, rather fat, with a piece of toast in one hand and a glass of something in the other. Peter had expected he knew not what--something stern and terrible, something that would have answered in one way or another to those early recollections of terror and punishment that still dwelt with him. He had remembered his father as short, spare, black-haired, grim, pale--this gentleman, who was now watching him, bulged in the cheeks and the stomach, was highly coloured with purple veins down the sides of his nose and his rather podgy hands trembled. Nevertheless, it was his father. When the red dressing-gown spoke it was in a kind of travesty of that old sharp voice, those cutting icy words--a thickened and degenerate relation:

"My boy! At last!" the gentleman said.

The room presented disorder. On the table were scattered playing cards, a chair was overturned, under the cactus plant lay what looked like a fiddle, and the only two pictures on the wall were very indecent old drawings taken apparently from some Hogarthian prints.

Peter stared at all this in amazement. It was, after the grim approach and the deserted garden, like finding an Easter egg in a strong box.

Peter saw that his father was wearing under the dressing-gown a white waistcoat and blue trousers, both of them stained with dark stains and smelling very strongly of whisky. He noticed also that his father seemed to find it difficult to balance himself on both his legs at the same time, and that he was continually shifting his feet in an indeterminate kind of way, as though he would like to dance but felt that it might not be quite the thing.

Mr. Westcott closed up both his eyes, opened his mouth and shut it again and shook Peter excitedly by the hand. At the same time Peter felt that his father was shaking his hand as much because he wanted to hold on to something as for reasons of courtesy.

"Well, I am glad. I wondered when you would come to see your poor old father again--after all these years. I've often thought of you and said to myself, 'Well, he'll come back one day. You only be patient,' I've said to myself, 'and your son will come back to you--your only son, and it isn't likely that he's going to desert you altogether.'"

"Yes, father, I've come back," said Peter, releasing his hand. "I've come back to stay."

He thought of the many times in London when he'd pictured his father, stern and dark, pulling the wires, dragging his wicked son back to him--he thought of that ... and now this. And yet....

"Well now, isn't that pleasant--you've come to stay! Could I have wanted anything better? Come and sit down--yes, that chair--and have something to drink. What, you won't? Well, perhaps later. So you've come to keep your old father company, have you? I'm sure that's delightful. Just what a son ought to do. We shall get along very well, I'm sure."

All the while that his father talked, still holding the toast and the glass of something, Peter was intensely conscious of the silent listening house. After all that grimness, that desertion, the old woman's warning had gone for something. And yet, in spite of a kind of dread that hung about him, in spite of a kind of perception that there was a great deal more in his father than he at present perceived, he could not resist a kind of warm pleasure that here at any rate was some sort of a haven, that no one else in the world might want him, but here was some one who was glad to see him.

"Well, my boy, tell me all you've been doing these years."

"I've been in London, writing--"

"Dear, dear--have you really now? And how's it all turned out?"

"Badly."

"Dear me, I'm sorry for that. But there are better things in the world than writing, believe me. I dare say, my boy, you thought me unkind in those old days but it was all for your best--oh dear me, yes, entirely for your best."

Here, for an instant, his father's voice sounded so like his old grandfather's that Peter jumped.

"Married?" said his father.

"My wife has left me--"

"Dear me, I am sorry to hear that." Mr. Westcott finished the toast and wiped his fingers on a very old and dirty red handkerchief.

"Women--bless them--angels for a time, but never to be depended on. Poor boy, I'm sorry. Children?"

"I had a son. He died."

"Well now, I am indeed sorry, I'd have liked a grandson too. Don't want the old Westcott stock to die out. Dear me, that is a pity."

It was at this point that Peter was aware, although he could not have given any reasonable explanation of his certainty, that his father had been perfectly assured beforehand of all the answers to these questions.

Peter looked at the man, but the eyes were almost closed, and the smile that played about the weak lips--once so stern and strong--told one nothing.

It was dark now. Mr. Westcott got, somewhat unsteadily, to his feet.

"Come," he said, "I'll show you the house, my boy. Not changed much since you were here, I'm sure. Wanted a woman's care since your dear mother died of course--and your poor old grandfather--"

He whispered over again to himself as he shuffled across the room--"your poor old grandfather--"

It had seemed to grow very suddenly dark. Outside in the hall, under the spluttering lamp, Mr. Westcott found a candle. The house was intensely silent.

As they climbed the stairs, lighted only by the flickering candle-light, Peter's feelings were a curious mixture of uneasiness and a strange unthinking somnolence. Some part of him, somewhere, was urging him to an active unrest--"Norah ... what does she want interfering? I'll just go and see her and come back.... No, I won't, I'll just stay here ... never to bother again ... never to bother again...."

He was also, in some undefined way, expecting that at any moment his father would change. The crimson dressing-gown swayed under the flickering candle-light. Let it turn round and what would one see inside it? His father never stopped talking for an instant--his thick wandering voice was the only sound in the deserted house.

The rooms were all empty. They smelt as though the windows had not been opened for years. It was in the little room that had once been his bedroom that the apples were stored--piles upon piles of them and most of them rotten. The smell was all over the house.

Mr. Westcott, standing with the apples on every side of him, flung monstrous shadows upon the wall--"This used to be your room. I remember I used to whip you here when you were disobedient. The only way to bring up your child. The Westcotts have always believed in it. Dear me, how long ago it all seems ... you can have this room again if you like.

Any room in the house you please. We'll be very good company for one another...."

All about Peter there was an atmosphere of extraordinary languor--just to sit here and let the days slip by, the years pass. Just to stay here with no one to hurt one, no need for courage....

They were out in the long passage. Mr. Westcott came and placed his hand upon Peter's arm. The whole house was a great cool place where one slept. Mr. Westcott smiled into Peter's face ... the house was silent and dark and oh! so restful. The candle swelled to an enormous size--the red dressing-gown seemed to enfold Peter.

In another moment he would have fallen asleep there where he stood. With the last struggle of a drowning man he pulled back his fading senses.

"I must go back to the hotel and fetch my things." He could see his father's eyes that had been wide open disappear.

"We can send for them."

"No, I must go for them myself--"

For a moment they faced one another. He wondered what his father intended to do. Then--with a genial laugh, Mr. Westcott said: "Well, my boy, just as you please--just as you please. I know you'll come back to your old father--I know you'll come back--"

He blew the candle out and put his arm through his son's and they went downstairs together.

CHAPTER III

NORAH MONOGUE

I