III

He went back and sat down again in the arm-chair by the fire. Poor Clare! he felt only a great protecting pity for her--a strange feeling, compounded of emotions that were unexpectedly confused. A feeling that was akin to what he would have felt had she been his sister and been insulted by some drunken blackguard in the street. Poor Clare! She was so young--simply not up to these big grown-up troubles.

Those little cries had ceased--only every now and again an echo of a moan--so slight was the sound that broke the silence. The hours advanced and there settled about the house that chilly ominous sense of anticipation that the early morning brings in its grey melancholy hands. It was a little house but it was full, now, of expectancy. Up the stairs, through the passages, pressing against the windows there were many presences waiting for the moment when the issue of this struggle would be decided. The air was filled with their chill breath. The struggle round the bed was at its height. On one side doctors, nurses, the father, the mother--on the other that still, ironic Figure, in His very aloofness so strong, in His indifference so terrible.

With Peter, as the grey dawn grew nearer, confidence fled. He was suddenly conscious of the strength and invisibility of the thing that he was fighting. He must do something. If he were compelled to sit, silently, quietly, with his hands folded, much longer, he would go mad. But it was absurd--Stephen, about whom he had made so many plans, Stephen, concerning whom there had been that struggle to bring about his very existence ... surely all that was not now to go for nothing at all.

If he could do something--if he could do something!

There were drops of sweat on his forehead--inside his clothes his body was hot and dry and had shrunk, it seemed, into some tiny shape, like a nut, so that his things hung loosely all about him.

He could not bear that dark cavernous nursery, with the faint lights and the stairs and passages beyond it so crowded with urgent silence!

He caught Mitchell on the shoulder.

"How is it?"

"Oh! we're fighting it. It's the most rapid thing I've ever known. If we only could have operated! Look here, go and lie down for a bit--I'll let you know if there's any change!"

He went to his dressing-room, all ghostly now with the first struggling light of dawn. He closed the door behind him and then fell down on his knees by the bed, pressing his face into his hands.

He prayed: "Oh! God, God, God. I have never wanted anything like this before but Stephen is more to me, much, much more to me than anything that I have ever had--more, far more than my own life. I haven't much to offer but if you will let me keep Stephen you can have all the rest.

You can send me back to Bucket Lane, take my work, anything ... I want Stephen ... I want Stephen. God, he is such a good boy. He has always been good and he will make such a fine man. There won't be many men so fine as he. He's good as gold. God I will die myself if he may live, I'm no use. I've made a mess of things--but let him live and take me. Oh!

God I want him, I want him!"

He broke into sobs and was bowed down there on the floor, his body quivering, his face pressed against the bed.

He was conscious that Clare had joined him. She must have heard him from her room. He tried as he felt her body pressed against his, to pull himself together, but the crying now had mastered him and he could only feel her pushing with her hand to find his--and at last he let her take his hand and hold it.

He heard her whisper in his ear.

"Peter dear, don't--don't cry like that. I can't bear to hear you like that. I'm so miserable, Peter. I've been so wicked--so cross and selfish. I've hurt you so often--I'm going to be better, Peter. I am really."

At that moment they might have come together with a reality, an honesty that no after-events could have shaken. But to Peter Clare was very far away. He was not so conscious of her as he was of those presences that thronged the house. What could she do for him now? Afterwards perhaps.

But now it was Stephen--Stephen--Stephen--

But he let her hold his hand and he felt her hair against his cheek, and at last he put his arm around her and held her close to him, and she, with her face against his, went fast asleep. He looked down at her. She looked so young and helpless that the sight of her leaning, tired and beaten, against him, touched him and he picked her up, carried her into her room and laid her on her bed.

How light and tiny she was!

He was conscious of his own immense fatigue. Mitchell had told him that he would wake him; good fellow, Mitchell! He lay down on the bed in his dressing-room and was instantly asleep.

He was outside Scaw House. He was mother-naked and the howling wind and rain buffeted his body and the stones cut his feet. The windows of the house were dark and barred. He could just reach the lower windows with his hands if he stood on tiptoe.

He tapped again and again.

He was tired, exhausted. He had come a long, long way and the rain hurt his bare flesh. At last a candle shone dimly behind the dark window.

Some one was there, and instantly at the moment of his realising that aid had come he was conscious also that he must, on all accounts, refuse it. He knew that if he entered the house Stephen would die. It depended on him to save Stephen. He turned to flee but his father had unbarred the door and was drawing him in. He struggled, he cried out, he fought, but his father was stronger than he. He was on the threshold--he could see through the dark ill-smelling hall to the door beyond. His father's hand fastened on his arm like a vice. His body was bathed in sweat, he screamed ... and woke to find the room dim in the morning light and Mitchell shaking him by the arm.

IV

He was still dreaming. Now he was in the nursery. Clare was kneeling by Stephen's bed. One doctor was bending down--the nurse was crying very softly.

He looked down on his son. As he looked the little face was, for an instant, puckered with pain. The mouth, the eyes, the throat struggled.

The tiny hands lifted for a moment, hung, and then like fluttering leaves, fell down on to the counterpane. Then the body was suddenly quiet, the face was peaceful and the head had fallen gently, sideways against the pillow.

At that moment of time, throughout the house, the Presences departed.

The passages, the rooms were freed, the air was no longer cold.

At that moment also Peter awoke. Mitchell said: "The boy's gone, Westcott."

Peter, turning his back upon them all, drove from him, so softly that they could scarcely hear, but in a voice of agony that Mitchell never afterwards forgot:--

"I wanted him so--I wanted him so."

CHAPTER XII

A WOMAN CALLED ROSE BENNETT

I

The days that followed were dead--dead in more than any ordinary sense of the word. But perhaps it was Peter who was dead. He moved, ate, drank, even wrote his reviews, slept--he thanked gravely all those who offered him condolences--wrote letters in answer to kind friends.... "Dear S---- It was just like you to write so kindly and sympathetically...." And all this time he was without any kind of emotion. He was aware that there was something in the back of his brain that, were it once called upon to awake, might stir him into life again.

What it would tell him he did not know, something about love, something intensely sorrowful, something that had occurred very probably to himself. He did not want to live--to think, to feel. Thinking meant pain, meant a sudden penetrating into that room shrouded now by heavy, black curtains but containing, were those curtains drawn, some great, phantasmal horror.

He was dimly aware that the people about him were frightened. Clare, Bobby Galleon, Cardillac. He knew that they would be glad for him to draw those curtains aside and penetrate into that farther room. That was unkind of them. He had no other emotion but that it was unkind of them.

Beyond that unkindness, they did not exist.

He was thinner. His shoulders seemed to pierce sharply his clothes; his cheeks were white and hollow, there were dark lines beneath his eyes, dark, grey patches. His legs were not so straight, nor so strong.

Moreover his eyes were as though they were covered with a film. Seeing everything they yet saw nothing at all. They passed through the world and were confronted by the heavy, veiling curtains....

This condition lasted for many days. Of all about him none understood him so well as Bobby Galleon. Bobby had always understood him, and now he felt for him with a tenderness that had both the past and the future to heighten its poignancy. It seemed to Bobby that nothing more tragic than the death of this child could possibly have occurred. It filled him with anxiety for the future, it intensified to a depth that only so simple and affectionate a character as his could feel, the love that he had always had for Peter.

He was with him during these days continually, waiting for the relief to come.

"It's got to come soon," he said, "or the boy'll go mad."

At last it came.

One day about tea-time they were sitting in Peter's upstairs study.

It had been a day of showers and now the curtains were not drawn and a green-grey dusk glimmered beyond the windows.

Peter was writing letters, and as Bobby watched him he seemed to him like some automaton, something wound into life by some clever inventor.