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.
