Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/143

 cocks crowed beyond his open window, and the misty morning swept in and blew his lighted candle up and down. He dressed in the blue serge suit with a blue tie fastened in a sailor's knot. He leaned out of his window and tried to imagine, out of the darkness, the beloved moor—then he took his black bag and crept downstairs; it was striking half-past six as he came softly into the hall.

There he saw that the gas was flaring and that his father was standing in his night-shirt.

“I think I'm in front of you,” he said, smiling.

“Let me go, father,” Peter said, very white, and putting down the bag.

“Be damned to you,” said his father. “You don't get through this door.”

It was all so ludicrous, so utterly absurd, that his father should be standing, in his night-shirt, on this very cold morning, under the flaring gas. It occurred to Peter that as he wanted to laugh at this Mr. Zanti could not have been right about his lack of humour. Peter walked up to his father, and his father caught him by the throat. Mr. Westcott was still, in spite of recent excesses, sufficiently strong.

“I very much want to choke you,” he said.

Peter, however, was stronger.

His father dropped the hold of his throat, and had him, by the waist, but his hands slipped amongst his clothes. For a moment they swayed together, and Peter could feel the heat of his father's body beneath the night-shirt and the violent beating of his heart. It was immensely ludicrous; moreover there now appeared on the stairs Mrs. Pascoe, in a flannel jacket over a night-gown, and untidy hair about her ample shoulders.

“The Lord be kind!” she cried, and stood, staring. Mr. Westcott was breathing very heavily in Peter's face, and their eyes were so close together that Peter could notice how bloodshot his father's were.

“God damn you!” said his father and slipped, and they came down on to the wood floor together. Peter rose, but his father lay there, breathing heavily.

“God damn you,” he said again, but he did not move.

“You'd better look after him,” Peter said, turning to