Fortitude (Walpole)/Book 3/Chapter 11

CHAPTER XI

WHY?

I

THERE are occasions in our life when the great Wave so abruptly overwhelms us that before we have recovered our dazed senses it has passed and the water on every side of us is calm again.

There are other occasions when we stand, it may seem through a lifetime of anticipation bracing our backs for the inevitable moment. Every hour before it comes is darkened, every light is dimmed by its implacable shadow. Then when at last it is upon us we meet it with an indifference, almost with a relief, because it has come at last.

So was it now with Peter. During many weeks he had been miserable, apprehensive, seeing an enemy in every wind. Now, behold, his adversary in the open.

“This,” he might cry to that old man, down in Scaw House, “this is what you have been preparing for me, is it? At last you've shown me—well, I'll fight you.”

Young Stephen was very ill. Peter was strangely assured that it was to be a bad business. Well, it rested with him, Peter, to pull the boy through. If he chose to put his back into it and give the kid some of his own vigour and strength then it was bound to be all right.

Standing there in the dark, he stripped his mind naked; he flung from it every other thought, every other interest—his work, Clare, everything must go. Only Stephen mattered and Stephen should be pulled through.

For an instant, a little cold trembling fear struck his heart. Supposing.. . .? Then fiercely, flinging the thought from him he trampled it down.

He went to the telephone and called up a doctor who lived in Cheyne Walk. The man could be with him in a quarter of an hour.

Then he went back into the nursery. Mrs. Kant was there.

“I've sent for Dr. Mitchell.”

“Very well, sir.”

“He'll be here in quarter of an hour.”

“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.

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 cheeky 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.”