That evening with Stephen shone upon him now with all
the vigour of colour of a real fact in a multitude of vague shadows. The
reality of that night was now of the utmost value.
Meanwhile there were changes at Scaw House. Mrs. Trussit had vanished a few
days after the funeral, no one said anything about her departure and Peter
did not see her go. He was vaguely sorry because she represented in his
memory all the earlier years, and because her absence left the house even
darker and more gloomy than it had been before. The cook, a stout and
slatternly person, given, Peter thought, to excessive drinking, shared,
with a small and noisy maid, the duties of the house--they were most
inefficiently performed.
But, with this clearing of the platform, the hatred between Peter and his
father became a definite and terrible thing. It expressed itself silently.
At present they very rarely spoke and except on Sundays met only at
breakfast and in the evening. But the air was charged with the violence of
their relationship; the boy, growing in body so strangely like the man,
expressed a sullen and dogged defiance in his every movement ... the man
watched him as a snake might watch the bird held by its power. They stood,
as wrestlers stand before the moment for their meeting has arrived. The
house, always too large for their needs, seemed now to stretch into an
infinity of echoing passages and empty rooms; the many windows gathered the
dust thick upon their sills.
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