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.
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