Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/127

 least for me and you do not want me here. I shall go mad if I stay in this place. I must go.”

“Oh, you must go? Well, that's plain enough at any rate—and when do you propose leaving us?”

“After Easter—the Wednesday after Easter,” he said. “Oh, father, please. Give me a chance. I can do things in London—I feel it. Here I shall never do anything.”

Peter raised his eyes to his father's and then dropped them. Mr. Westcott senior was not pleasant to look at.

“Let us have no more of this—you will stay here because I wish it. I like to have you here—father and son—father and son.”

He placed his hand on the boy's shoulder—“Never mention this again for your own sake—you will stay here until I wish you to go.”

But Peter broke free.

“I will go,” he shouted—“I will go—you shall not keep me here. I have a right to my freedom—what have you ever done for me that I should obey you? I want to leave you and never see you again. I ” And then his eyes fell—his legs were shaking. His father was watching him, no movement in his short thick body—Peter's voice faltered—“I will go,” he said sullenly, his eyes on the ground.

His grandfather stirred in his sleep. “Oh, what a noise,” he muttered, “with the rain and all.”

But Mr. Westcott removed with a careful hand the melodrama that his young son had flung about the room.

“That's enough noise,” he said, “you will not go to London—nor indeed anywhere else—and for your own peace of mind I should advise you not to mention the subject again. The hour is a little early but I recommend your bedroom.”

Peter went. He was trembling from head to foot. Why? He undressed and prepared himself for battle. Battle it was to be, for the Wednesday in Easter week would find him in the London train—of that there was to be no question.

Meanwhile, with the candle blown out, and no moon across the floor, it was quite certain that courage would be necessary. He was fighting more than his father.