III.

Pete was sitting at the foot of the stairs, unwashed, uncombed, with his clothes half b.u.t.toned and his shoes unlaced.

"Phil!" he cried, and leaping up he took Philip by both hands and fell to sobbing like a child.

They went upstairs together. The bedroom was dense with steam, and the forms of two women were floating like figures in a fog.

"There she is, the bogh," cried Pete in a pitiful wail.

The child lay outstretched on Grannie's lap, with no sign of consciousness, and hardly any sign of life, except the hollow breathing of bronchitis.

Philip felt a strange emotion come over him. He sat on the end of the bed and looked down. The little face, with its twitching mouth and pinched nostrils, beating with every breath, was the face of Kate. The little head, with its round forehead and the silvery hair brushed back from the temples, was his own head. A mysterious throb surprised him, a great tenderness, a deep yearning, something new to him, and born as it were in his breast at that instant. He had an impulse, never felt before, to go down on his knees where the child lay, to take it in his arms, to draw it to him, to fondle it, to call it his own, and to pour over it the inarticulate babble of pain and love that was bursting from his tongue. But some one was kneeling there already, and in his jealous longing he realised that his pa.s.sionate sorrow could have no voice.

Pete, at Grannie's lap, was stroking the child's arm and her forehead with the tenderness of a woman.

"The bogh millish! Seems aisier now, doesn't she, Grannie? Quieter, anyway? Not coughing so much, is she?"

The doctor came at the moment, and Caesar entered the room behind him with a face of funereal resignation.

"See," cried Pete; "there's your lil patient, doctor. She's lying as quiet as quiet, and hasn't coughed to spake of for better than an hour."

"H'm!" said the doctor ominously. He looked at the child, made some inquiries of Grannie, gave certain instructions to Nancy, and then lifted his head with a sigh.

"Well, we've done all we can for her," he said. "If the child lives through the night she may get over it."

The women threw up their hands with "Aw, dear, aw, dear!" Philip gave a low, sharp cry of pain; but Pete, who had been breathing heavily, watching intently, and holding his arms about the little one as if he would save it from disease and death and heaven itself, now lost himself in the immensity of his woe.

"Tut, doctor, what are you saying?" he said. "You were always took for a knowledgable man, doctor; but you're talking nonsense now. Don't you see the child's only sleeping comfortable? And haven't I told you she hasn't coughed anything worth for an hour? Do you think a poor fellow's got no sense at all?"

The doctor was a patient man as well as a wise one--he left the room without a word. But, thinking to pour oil on Pete's wounds, and not minding that his oil was vitriol, Caesar said--

"If it's the Lord's will, it's His will, sir. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children--yes, and the mothers, too, G.o.d forgive them."

At that Pete leapt to his feet in a flame of wrath.

"You lie! you lie!" he cried. "G.o.d doesn't punish the innocent for the guilty. If He does, He's not a good G.o.d but a bad one. Why should this child be made to suffer and die for the sin of its mother? Aye, or its father either? Show me the _man_ that would make it do the like, and I'll smash his head against the wall. Blaspheming, am I? No, but it's you that's blaspheming. G.o.d is good, G.o.d is just, G.o.d is in heaven, and you are making Him out no G.o.d at all, but worse than the blackest devil that's in h.e.l.l."

Caesar went off in horror of Pete's profanities. "If the Lord keep not the city," he said, "the watchman waketh in vain."

Pete's loud voice had aroused the child. It made a little cry, and he was all softness in an instant. The women moistened its lips with barley-water, and hushed its fretful whimper.

"Come," said Philip, taking Pete's arm.

"Let me lean on you, Philip," said Pete, and the stalwart fellow went tottering down the stairs.

They sat on opposite sides of the fireplace, and kept the staircase door open that they might hear all that happened in the room above.

"Get thee to bed, Nancy," said the voice of Grannie. "Dear knows how soon you'll be wanted."

"You'll be calling me for twelve, then, Grannie--now, mind, you'll be calling me."

"Poor Pete! He's not so far wrong, though. What's it saying? 'Suffer lil childers'----"

"But Caesar's right enough this time, Grannie. The bogh is took for death as sure as sure. I saw the crow that was at the wedding going crossing the child's head the very last time she was out of doors." Pete was listening intently. Philip was gazing pa.s.sively into the fire.

"I couldn't help it, sir--I couldn't really," whispered Pete across the hearth. "When a man's got a child that's ill, they may talk about saving souls, but what's the constilation in that? It's not the soul he's wanting saving at all, it's the child--now, isn't it, now?"

Philip made some confused response.

"Coorse, I can't expect you to understand that, Philip. You're a grand man, and a clever man, and a feeling man, but I can't expect you to understand that--now, is it likely? The greenest gall's egg of a father that isn't half wise has the pull of you there, Phil. 'Deed he has, though. When a man has a child of his own he's knowing what it manes, the Lord help him. Something calls to him--it's like blood calling to blood--it's like... I don't know that I'm understanding it myself, neither--not to say _understand_ exactly."

Every word that Pete spoke was like a sword turning both ways. Philip drew his breath heavily.

"You can feel for another, Phil--the Lord forbid you should ever feel for yourself. Books are _your_ children, and they're best off that's never having no better. But the lil ones--G.o.d help them--to see them fail, and suffer, and sink--and you not able to do nothing--and themselves calling to you--calling still--calling reg'lar--calling out of mercy--the way I am telling of, any way--O G.o.d! O G.o.d!"

Philip's throat rose. He felt as if he must betray himself the next instant.

"Perhaps the doctor was right for all. Maybe the child isn't willing to stay with us now the mother is gone; maybe it's wanting away, poor thing. And who knows? Wouldn't trust but the mother is waiting for the lil bogh yonder--waiting and waiting on the sh.o.r.e there, and 'ticing and 'ticing---I've heard of the like, anyway."

Philip groaned. His brain reeled; his legs grew cold as stones. A great awe came over him. It was not Pete alone that he was encountering.

In these searchings and rendings of the heart, which uncovered every thought and tore open every wound, he was entering the lists with G.o.d himself.

The church bell began to ring.

"What's that?" cried Philip. It had struck upon his ear like a knell.

"_Oiel Verree_," said Pete. The bell was ringing for the old Manx service for the singing of Christmas carols. The fibres of Pete's memory were touched by it. He told of his Christmases abroad--how it was summer instead of winter, and fruits were on the trees instead of snow on the ground--how people who had never spoken to him before would shake hands and wish him a merry Christmas. Then from sheer weariness and a sense of utter desolation, broken by the comfort of Philip's company, he fell asleep in his chair.

The night wore on; the house was quiet; only the husky rasping of the child's hurried breathing came from the floor above.

An evil thought in the guise of a pious one took possession of Philip.

"G.o.d is wise," he told himself. "G.o.d is merciful. He knows what is best for all of us. What are we poor impotent gra.s.shoppers, that we dare pray to Him to change His great purposes? It is idle. It is impious.... While the child lives there will be security for no one. If it dies, there will be peace and rest and the beginning of content. The mother must be gone already, so the dark chapter of our lives will be closed at last G.o.d is all wise. G.o.d is all good."

The child made a feeble cry, and Philip crept upstairs to look. Grannie had dozed off in her seat, and little Katherine was on the bed. A disregarded doll lay with inverted head on the counterpane. The fire had slid and died down to a lifeless glow, and the kettle had ceased to steam. There was no noise in the room save the child's galloping breathing, which seemed to sc.r.a.pe the walls as with a file. Sometimes there was a cough that came like a voice through a fog.

Philip crept in noiselessly, knelt down by the bed-head, and leaned over the pillow. A candle which burned on the mantelpiece cast its light on the head that lay there. The little face was drawn, the little pinched nostrils were beating like a pulse, the little lip beneath was beaded with perspiration, the beautiful round forehead was damp, and the silken silvery hair was matted.

Philip thought the child must be dying, and his ugly piety gave way.

There was a movement on the bed. One little hand that had been clenched hard on the breast came over the counterpane and fell, outstretched and open before him. He took it for an appeal, a dumb and piteous appeal, and the smothered tenderness of the father's heart came uppermost. _Her_ child, his child, dying, and he there, yet not daring to claim her!

A new fear took hold of him. He had been wrong--there could be no security in the child's death, no peace, no rest, no content. As surely as the child died he would betray himself. He would blurt it all out; he would tell everything. "My child! my darling! my Kate's Kate!" The cry would burst from him. He could not help it. And to reveal the black secret at the mouth of an open grave would be terrible, it would be horrible, it would be awful, "Spare her, O Lord, spare her!"

In a fear bordering on delirium he went downstairs and shook Pete by the shoulders to awaken him. "Come quickly," he said.

Pete opened his eyes with a bewildered look "She's better, isn't she?"

he asked.

"Courage," said Philip.