Part 102 (1/2)

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 millis.h.!.+ 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'----”