"I beg your pardon--"

"This blasted government--This income tax and all--"

"It's more than that," said Peter, wishing that the man would cease beating his knees with his hands--

"It's them blasted stars--it's Gawd. That's what it is. Curse Gawd--that's what I say--Curse Gawd!"

"What's He done?" said Peter.

"I've just broken in my wife's 'ead with a poker. Killed 'er I expect--I dunno--going back to see in a minute--"

"Why did you do it?"

"'Ad to--always nagging--that's what she was--always nagging. Wanted things--all sorts o' things--and there were always children coming--So we 'ad a blasted argyment this evening and I broke 'er 'ead open--Gawd did it--that's what I say--"

Peter said nothing.

"You can call a bloomin' copper if you want to," the little man said.

"It's no business of mine," said Peter and he got up and left him. All shadows--only the sinister noise that London makes is real, that and Clare's suffering.

He left the Park turned into Knightsbridge and came upon a toyshop. The shutters had not been put up and the lights of a lamp shone full upon its windows. Against the iron railings opposite and the high white road these toys stood with sharp, distinct outline behind the slanting light of the glass. There were dolls--a fine wedding doll, orange blossom, lace and white silk, and from behind it all, the sharp pinched features and black beady eyes stared out.... There was a Swiss doll with bright red cheeks, red and green clothing and shoes with shining buckles. Then there were the more ordinary dolls--and gradually down the length of the window, their clothing was taken from them until at last some wooden creatures with flaring cheeks and brazen eyes kicked their limbs and defied the proprieties.

He would be a Boy ... he would not care about dolls....

There were soldiers--rows and rows of gleaming soldiers. They came from a misty distance at the top of the shop window, came marching from the gates of some dark, mediaeval castle. Their swords caught the lamplight, shining in a line of silver and the precision with which they marched, the certainty with which they trod the little bridge ... ah, these were the fellows! He would be a Boy ... soldiers would enchant him! He should have boxes, boxes, boxes!

There were many other things in the window; teddy bears and animals with soft woolly stomachs and fat comfortable legs--and there were ugly, modern Horrors with fat bulging faces and black hair erect like wire; there were little devils with red tails, there were rabbits that rode bicycles and monkeys that climbed trees. There were drums--big drums and little drums--trumpets with crimson tassels, and in one corner a pyramid of balls, balls of every colour, and at the top of the pyramid a tiny ball of peacock blue, hanging, balancing, daintily, supremely right in pose and gesture.

It had gesture. It caught Peter's eye--Peter stood with his nose against the pane, his heart hammering--"Oh! she is suffering--My God, how she is suffering!"--and there the little blue ball caught him, held him, encouraged him.

"I will belong to your boy one day" it seemed to say.

"It shall be the first thing I will buy for him--" thought Peter.

He turned now amongst the light and crowds of Piccadilly. He walked on without seeing and hearing--always with that thought in his heart--"She is in terrible pain. How can God be so cruel? And she was so happy--before I came she was so happy--now--what have I done to her?"

Never, before to-night, had he felt so sharply, so irretrievably his sense of responsibility. Here now, before him, at this birth of his child, everything that he had done, thought, said--everything that he had been--confronted him. He was only twenty-seven but his shoulders were heavy with the confusion of his past. Looking back upon it, he saw a helpless medley of indecisions, of sudden impulses, sudden refusals; into the skeins of it, too, there seemed to be dragged the people that had made up his life--they faced him, surrounded him, bewildered him!

What right had he, thus encompassed, to hand these things on to another?

His father, his grandfather ... he saw always that dark strain of hatred, of madness, of evil working in their blood. Suppose that as his boy grew he should see this in the young eyes? Suppose, most horrible of all, that he should feel this hatred for his son that his grandfather had felt for his father, that his father had felt for him.

What had he done?... He stopped, staring confusedly about him. The people jostled him on every side. The old devils were at him--"Eat and drink for to-morrow we die.... Give it up ... We're too strong for you and we'll be too strong for your son. Who are you to defy us? Come down--give it up--"

His white face caught attention. "Move along, guv'nor," some one shouted. A man took him by the arm and led up a dark side street. He turned his eyes and saw that the man was Maradick.

II

The elder man felt that the boy was trembling from head to foot.

"What's the matter, Westcott? Anything I can do for you?"

Peter seemed to take him in slowly, and then, with a great effort, to pull himself together.

"What, you--Maradick? Where was I? I'm afraid I've been making a fool of myself...." A church clock struck somewhere in the distance. "Hullo, I say, what's that? That's eleven. I must get back, I ought to be at home--"

"I'll come with you--"

Maradick hailed a hansom and helped Peter into it.

For a moment there was silence--then Maradick said--

"I hope everything's all right, Westcott? Your wife?"

Peter spoke as though he were in a dream. "I've been waiting there all the afternoon--she's been suffering--My God!... It got on my nerves....

She's so young--they oughtn't to hurt her like that." He covered his face with his hands.

"I know. I felt like that when my first child came. It's terrible, awful. And then it's over--all the pain--and it's magnificent, glorious--and then--later--it's so commonplace that you cannot believe that it was ever either awful or magnificent. Fix your mind on the glorious part of it, Westcott. Think of this time to-morrow when your wife will be so proud, so happy--you'll both be so proud, so happy, that you'll never know anything in life like it."

"Yes, yes, I know--of course it's sure to be all right--but I suppose this waiting's got on my nerves. There was a fellow in the Park just broken his wife's head in--and then everything was so quiet. I could almost hear her crying, right away in her room."

He stopped a moment and then went on. "It's what I've always wanted--always to have a boy. And, by Jove, he'll be wonderful! I tell you he shall be--We'll be such pals!" He broke off suddenly--"You haven't a boy?"

"No, mine are both girls. Getting on now--they'll soon be coming out. I should like to have had a boy--" Maradick sighed.

"Are they an awful lot to you?"

"No--I don't suppose they are. I should have understood a boy better,--but they're good girls. I'm proud of them in a way--but I'm out so much, you see."

Peter faced the contrast. Here this middle-aged man, with his two girls--and here too he, Peter, with his agonising, flaming trial--to slip, so soon, into dull commonplace?

"But didn't you--if you can look so far--didn't you, when the first child came, funk it? Your responsibility I mean. All the things one's--one's ancestors--it's frightening enough for oneself but to hand it on--"

"It's nothing to do with oneself--one's used, that's all. The child will be on its own legs, thrusting you away before you know where you are. It _will_ want to claim its responsibilities--ancestors and all--"

Peter said nothing--Maradick went on:

"You know we were talking one night and were interrupted--you're in danger of letting the things you imagine beat the things you know. Stick to the thing you can grasp, touch--I know the dangers of the others--I told you that once in Cornwall, I--the most unlikely person in the world--was caught up by it. I've never laughed at morbidity, or nerves, or insanity since. There's such a jolly thin wall between the sanest, most level-headed beef-eating Squire in the country and the maddest poet in Bedlam. _I_ know--I've been both in the same day. It's better to be both, I believe, if you can keep one under the other, but you _must_ keep it under--"

Maradick talked on. He saw that the boy's nerves were jumping, that he was holding himself in with the greatest difficulty.

Peter said: "You don't know, Maradick. I've had to fight all my life--my father, grandfather, all of them have given in at last--and now this child ... perhaps I shall see it growing, see him gradually learning to hate me, see myself hating him ... at last, my God, see him go under--drink, deviltry--I've fought it--I'm always fighting it--but to-night--"

"Good heavens, man--you're not going to tell me that your father, your grandfather--the rest of them--are stronger than you. What about your soul, your own blessed soul that can't be touched by any living thing or dead thing either if you stick to it? Why, every man's got power enough in himself to ride heaven and earth and all eternity if he only believed he'd got it! Ride your scruples, man--ride 'em, drive 'em--send 'em scuttling. Believe in yourself and stick to it--Courage!..."

Maradick pulled himself in. They were driving now, down the King's Road.

The people were pouring in a thick, buzzing crowd, out of the Chelsea Palace. Middle-aged stockbrokers in hansom cabs--talking like the third act of a problem play!--but Maradick had done his work. As they drove round the corner, past the mad lady's painted house, he saw that Peter was calmer. He had regained his self-control. The little house where Peter lived was very still--the trees in the orchard were stiff and dark beneath the stars.