Fortitude. Hugh Walpole
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will see to you. You change at Exeter. Your aunt has given you sandwiches.” A little pause, and then: “You've got pluck. You stood that beating well.” Then the stern face passed, and the grave awful figure faded slowly down the platform.
Peter felt suddenly, utterly, completely miserable, and alone. Two tears rolled slowly down his cheeks. He blew his nose, and the train started.
III
And so this first run into liberty begins with tears and a choke in the throat and a sudden panting desire to be back in the dark passages of Scaw House. Nor did the fleeting swiftness of the new country please him. Suddenly one was leaving behind all those known paths and views, so dimly commonplace in the having of them, so rosily romantic in the tragic wanting of them!
How curious that Mrs. Trussit, his aunt, and his father should appear now pathetically affectionate in their farewells of him! They were not—to that he could swear—and yet back he would run did Honour and Destiny allow him. Above all, how he would have run now to Stephen.
He felt like a sharp wound the horrible selfishness and indifference of his parting when Stephen's beard had been pressed so roughly against his face that it had hurt him—and he had had nothing to say. He would write that very night if They—the unknown Gods to whose kingdom he journeyed—would allow him. This comforted him a little and the spirit of adventure stirred in him anew. He wiped his eyes for the last time with the crumpled ball of his handkerchief, sniffed three times defiantly, and settled to a summary of the passing country, cows, and hills and hedges, presently the pleasing bustle of Truro station, and then again the cows and hills and hedges. On parting from Cornwall he discovered a new sensation, and was surprised that he should feel it. He did not know, as a definite fact, the exact moment when that merging of Cornwall into Devon came, and yet, strangely in his spirit, he was conscious of it. Now he was in a foreign country, and it was almost as though his own land had cast him out so that the sharp appealing farewell to the Grey Hill, Treliss, and the sea was even more poignant than his farewell to his friends had been. Once more, at the thought of all the ways that he loved Cornwall, the choking sob was in his throat and the hot tears were in his eyes, and his hands were clenched. And then he remembered that London was not in Cornwall, and if he were ever going to get there at all he must not mind this parting.
“What the devil are you crying about?” came suddenly from the other side of the carriage. He looked up, and saw that there was an old gentleman sitting in the opposite corner. He had a red fat face and beautiful white hair.
“I'm not crying,” said Peter, rather defiantly.
“Oh! yes, you are—or you were. Supposing you share my lunch and see whether that will make things any better.”
“Thank you very much, but I have some sandwiches,” said Peter, feeling for the paper packet and finding it.
“Well, supposing you come over here and eat yours with me. And if you could manage to help me with any of mine I should be greatly indebted. I can't bear having my meals alone, you know.”
How can one possibly resist it when the Olympians come down so amiably from their heights and offer us their hospitality? Moreover the Old Gentleman had, from his bag, produced the most wonderfully shaped parcels. There was certainly a meal, and Aunt Jessie's sandwiches would assuredly be thick and probably no mustard!
So Peter slipped across and sat next to the Old Gentleman, and even shared a rug. He ultimately shared a great many other things, like chicken and tongue, apples and pears and plum cake.
“Of course,” said the Old Gentleman, “you are going to school and probably for the first time—and therefore your legs are as weak as pins, you have a cold pain in the middle of your chest, and you have an intense desire to see your mother again.”
Peter admitted that this was true, although it wasn't his mother whom he wished to see so much as a friend of his called Stephen, and, one or two places like the Grey Hill and The Bending Mule. All this interested the Old Gentleman very much.
“You, too, were at school?” Peter inquired politely.
“I was,” said the Old Gentleman.
“And was it like David Copperfield?” said Peter.
“Parts of it—the nice parts. School was the best, the very best time of my life, my boy, and so you'll find it.”
This was immensely reassuring, and Peter felt very much cheered. “You will make all the friends of your life there. You will learn to be a man. Dear me!” The Old Gentleman coughed. “I don't know what I would have done without school. You must have courage, you know,” he added.
“I heard some one say once,” said Peter, “that courage is the most important thing to have. It isn't life that matters, but courage, this man said.”
“Bless my soul,” the Old Gentleman said, “how old are you, boy?”
“Twelve—nearly thirteen,” answered Peter.
“Well, the more you see of boys the better. You might be forty by the way you talk. You want games and fellows of your own age, that's what you want. Why I never heard of such a thing, talking about life at your age.”
Peter felt that he had done something very wrong, although he hadn't the least idea of his crime, so he turned the conversation.
“I should like very much,” he said, “to hear about your school if you wouldn't mind.”
Then the Old Gentleman began in the most wonderful way, and to hear him talk you would imagine that school was the paradise to which all good boys were sent—a deliriously delightful place, with a shop full of sweets, games without end, friends galore, and a little work now and then to prevent one's being bored.
Peter listened most attentively with his head against the Old Gentleman's very warm coat, and then the warmth and the movement of the train caused the voice to swim further and further away into distance.
“Bless my soul!” Peter heard as though it had been whispered at the end of the train.
“Here's Exeter, young man. Your father said you were to change here.”
A rubbing of eyes, and behold a stout guard in front of the door and no sign of the Old Gentleman whatever, but when he felt for his ticket in his side pocket he found also a glittering sovereign that had certainly not been there when he went asleep.
All this was very encouraging, and Peter followed the guard across the Exeter platform hopefully and expectantly. Right down the platform, on a side line, was a little train that reminded Peter of the Treliss to Truro one, so helpless and incapable did it look. The guard put him and his luggage into a carriage and then left him with a last word as to Salton being his destination. He waited here a very long time and nothing happened. He must have slept again, because when he next looked out of the window the platform was full of people.
He realised with terror that they were, many of them, boys—boys with friends and boys without. He watched them with a great feeling of desolation and homesickness as they flung themselves into carriages and shouted at one another.
A small boy with a very red face and a round fat body, attended by a tall, thin lady in black, got into the carriage, and behaving as if Peter weren't there at all, leaned out of the window.
“All right, mater. That's all right. I'll tell 'em about the socks—old Mother Gill will look after that.”
“You won't forget to send me a post card to-night, Will, dear, will you?”
“No, mater, that's all right. I say, don't you bother to wait if you want to be off.”
“No, dear, I'd like to wait. Don't forget to give father's letter to Mr. Raggett.”
“All