"Very well, sir."

He hated the woman. He would like to take her thin, bony neck and wring it.

He went over to the cot and looked down. The little body outlined under the clothes was so helpless, the little hands, clenched now, were so tiny; he was breathing very fast and little sounds came from between his teeth, little struggling cries.

Peter saw that moment when Stephen the Elder had held Stephen the younger aloft in his arms. The Gods appear to us only when we claim to challenge their exultation. They had been challenged at that moment....

Young Stephen against the Gods! Surely an unequal contest!

II

Dr. Mitchell came and instantly the struggle was at its height.

Appendicitis. As they stood over the cot the boy awoke and began to cry a little, turned his head from side to side as though to avoid the light, beating with his hands on the counterpane.

"I must send for a nurse at once," Dr. Mitchell said.

"Everything is in your hands," Peter answered.

"You'd better go down and have something to eat."

The little cry came trembling and pitiful, driving straight into Peter's heart.

"Temperature 105--pretty bad." Mitchell, who was a stout, short man with red cheeks, grey eyes and the air of an amiable Robin, was transformed now into something sharp, alert, official.

Peter caught his arm--

"It's all right?... you don't think--?"

The man turned and looked at him with eyes so kind that Peter trembled.

"Look here, we've got to fight it, Westcott. I ought to have been called hours ago. But keep your head and we'll pull the child through....

Better go down and have something to eat. You'll need it."

Outside the door Peter faced a trembling Mrs. Kant.

"Look here, you lied just now. You never took the boy's temperature."

"Well, sir--"

"Did you or not?"

"Well, sir, Mrs. Westcott said there was no need. I'm sure I thought--"

"You leave the house now--at once. Go up and pack your things and clear out. If I see you here in an hour's time the police shall turn you out."

The woman began to cry. Peter went downstairs. To his own surprise he found that he could eat and drink. Of so fundamental an importance was young Stephen in his life that the idea that he could ever lose him was of an absurd and monstrous incredibility. No, of that there was no question--but he was conscious nevertheless of the supreme urgency of the occasion. That young Stephen had ever been delicate or in any way a weakling was a monstrous suggestion. Always when one thought of him it was a baby laughing, tumbling--or thoughtfully, with his hand rolled tightly inside his father's, taking in the world.

Just think of all the tottering creatures who go on and on and snap their fingers at death. The grotesque old men and women! Or think of the feeble miserables who never know what a day's health means--crowding into Davos or shuddering on the Riviera!

And young Stephen, the strongest, most vital thing in the world!

Nevertheless, suddenly, Peter found that he could eat and drink no more.

He put the food aside and went upstairs again.

In the darkened nursery he sat in a chair by the fire and waited for the hours to pass. The new nurse had arrived and moved quietly about the room. There was no sound at all save the monotonous whispering beseeching little cries that came from the bed. One had heard that concentration of will might do so much in the directing of such a battle, and surely great love must help. Peter, as he sat in the half-darkness thought that he had never before realised his love for the boy--how immense it was--how all-pervading, so that if it were taken from him life would be instantly broken, without colour, without any rhythm or force.

As he sat there he thought confusedly of a great number of things of his own childhood--of his mother--of a boy at Dawson's who had asked him once as they gazed up at a great mass of apple blossoms in bloom, "Do you think there is anything in all that stuff about God anyway, Westcott?"--of a night when he had gone with some loose woman of the town and of the wet miry street that they had left behind them as she had closed the door--of that night at the party when he had seen Cardillac again--of the things that Maradick had said to him that night when young Stephen was born--and so from that to his own life, his own birth, his father, Scaw House, the struggle that it had all been.

He remembered a sentence out of a strange novel of Dostoieffsky's that he had once read, "The Brothers Karamazoff": "It's a feature of the Karamazoffs ... that thirst for life regardless of everything--" and the Karamazoffs were of a sensual, debased stock--rotten at the base of them with an old drunken buffoon of a father--yes, that was like the Westcotts. All his life, struggle ... and young Stephen--all _his_ life, struggle... and yet, even in the depths of degradation, if the fight were to go that way there would still be that lust for life.

So many times he had been almost under. First Stephen Brant had saved him, then at Brockett's Norah Monogue, then in Bucket Lane his illness, then in Chelsea his marriage, lately young Stephen... always, always something had been there to keep him on his feet. But if everything were taken from him, if he were absolutely, nakedly alone--what then? Ah, what then!

He buried his head in his hands. "God, you don't know what young Stephen is to me--or, yes, of course you do know, God--and because you do know, you will not take him from me."

The little tearing pain at his heart held him--every now and again it turned like some grinding key.

Mitchell entered with another doctor. Peter went over to the window, and whilst they made their examination, stared through the glass at the fretwork of trees, the golden haze of London beyond, two stars that now, when the storm had spent itself, showed in a dark dim sky. Very faintly the clanging note of trams, the clatter of a hansom cab, the imperative call of some bell came to him.

The world could thus go on! Mitchell crossed to him and put his hand on his shoulder--

"He's pretty bad, Westcott. An operation's out of the question I'm afraid. But if you'd like another opinion--"

"No thanks. I trust you and Hunt." The doctor could feel the boy's body trembling beneath his touch.

"It's all right, Westcott. Don't be frightened. We'll do all mortals can. We'll know in the early morning how things are going to be. The child's got a splendid constitution."

He was interrupted by the opening of the nursery door and, turning, the men saw Clare with the light of the passage at her back, standing in the doorway. Her cloak was trailing on the floor--around her her pink filmy dress hung like shadows from the light behind her. Her face was white, her eyes wide.

"What--?" she whispered in the voice of a frightened child.

Peter crossed the room, and took her with him into the passage, closing the door behind him.

She clung to him, looking up into his face.

"Stephen's very bad, dear. No, it's something internal--"

"And I went out to a party?" her voice was trembling, she was very near to tears. "But I was miserable, wretched all the time. I wanted to come back, I knew I oughtn't to have gone.... Oh Peter, will he die? Oh! poor little thing! Poor little thing!"

Even at that moment, Peter noticed, she spoke as though it were somebody else's baby.

"No, no, dear. It'll be all right. Of course it will. Mitchell's here, he'll pull him through. But you'd better go and lie down, dear. I promise to come and tell you if anything's the matter. You can't do any good--there's an excellent nurse!"

"Where's Mrs. Kant?"

"I dismissed her this evening for lying to me. Go to bed. Clare--really it's the best thing."

She began to cry with her hands up to her face, but she went, slowly, with her cloak still trailing after her, to her room.

She had not, he noticed, entered the nursery.