XX

For three weeks Peter's bedroom was the one room in the house to which

the eyes of all the family were wholly turned. There, in the dark, he

lay a victim to an attack of brain fever. Never in a condition of great

danger, poor old Peter was ill and the Doctor, who, better than the

rest, knew that death has many doors through which life goes out, eyed

the specialist who had been called in with pathetic eagerness.

The little mother and Belle were joined at once by Betty, and the three

women sat very close together, speaking and even thinking in whispers

during the first two days. To the one whose first child he was and the

one who waited to be his wife, Peter meant everything good that life had

for them, and in their terror that he might be taken away their

imaginations ran ahead, as they always do in moments of such poignant

anxiety, and they were afraid to look out of the window in case they

should see Death, the black camel, kneeling at the gate.

While the shadow seemed to rest on his house, Dr. Guthrie did many

things. First of all he went over all the terrible words that Peter had

said to him that bad and unforgettable night. With great humbleness and

deep emotion he accepted them as the truth. He sat for hours at his desk

with his hands over his face and tears leaking through his fingers.

Metaphorically he placed his old hard-working, concentrated self in the

criminal stand and his new startled, humbled and ashamed self in the

Judge's seat and summed up his life as a father. It was very plain that

he had failed in his duty to his boys. He had made no great effort to

conquer that queer shyness which had affected him from the beginning. He

had allowed his children to grow up to regard him as Bluebeard. He had

thrown upon his wife's slight shoulders all the onus of the

responsibility for the human development of their characters, and

because she had succeeded while they were young he had, like a coward,

neglected to step in and take upon himself his obvious duty when they

had grown old enough to need more--much more--than the soft guiding hand

of a mother. He had allowed them to make an early start,--the girls, as

well as the boys,--without understanding the vital necessity of duty and

discipline which he alone could inspire in them, because no man or woman

in all the country, in any school or college, gave a single thought to

either. He had hidden behind a hundred weak and foolish excuses in order

to avoid the so-called difficulties of speaking manfully to these two

embryo men. He had permitted them to grow out of boyhood without giving

them the benefit of his own uninitiated struggles, or the simple

warnings and facts which take the glamour away from temptation and make

straight ways easy. He "took chances," and hoped that some one else

might by accident give them the facts of sex or that they would find

them out themselves, as other young men were obliged to do,--never mind

how.

Remorse and regret made Hell for this man in those honest hours,--this

good, exemplary, distinguished, self-made man whose name would live by

his professional efforts and scientific discoveries and who had

succeeded in everything except as a father.

And then he called Graham into his room, and sitting knee to knee with

his second son, was brave enough to tell him wherein he now knew that he

had failed and asked of him, as he had asked of Peter, for another

chance. It was a pathetic and emotional talk that these two had, during

which both told the truth, hiding nothing, reserving nothing. The

outcome of it was good for them both, as well as for Peter. They went

together to see Nellie Pope and heard from her lips, to the Doctor's

unspeakable thankfulness, that Peter was in no danger from her. From

that time onwards that little, kind, wretched girl became one of the

Doctor's patients in the proper hospital, eventually to be placed by

him at work which rendered the need for her following her chosen

profession unnecessary.

And finally the day came when Peter was able to receive visitors, and a

very good day it was. The little mother went in first--she had the

right. Peter was sitting in his dressing-gown by the window. To his

intense relief he had just passed through the hands of a barber, whom he

had asked to make him look a little less like a poet. He turned his head

quickly towards the door as his mother went in. His old high spirits had

returned. The sun was shining and life looked very good. His imagination

made him as well aware of the fact that his mother had been through some

of the most anxious hours of her life as though he had seen her sitting

in her room below with a drawn white face and her hands clasped

together. He got up and went to meet her. He took her in his arms and

held her very tight. What they said to each other was far too sacred to

put into cold print. They spoke in undertone, because the trained nurse

kept a jealous eye upon her patient and moved in and out of the

dressing-room adjoining. The interview was not allowed to be a long one.

The last thing that Peter said to his mother made her very happy. "I

think that the Governor and I are pals," he said. "I think we've found

each other at last. Isn't that just about the best thing you ever

heard?"

In the afternoon Belle was allowed in. To his great relief she told him

in her characteristic, concise way, how she felt about Kenyon. He caught

her young, she said--marvellously young, "and if he should ever come

back to New York all he'll get from me will be two fingers. I've quite

recovered. So you may take that line out of your forehead, old boy. One

of these days when you're out and about again we'll walk about four

times round the reservoir and I'll tell you something of what's been

going through my mind while you've been ill. In fact, we'll have a very

substantial pow-wow about Nicholas Kenyon, and I don't think we shall

leave him quite as immaculate as he usually is by the time we've

finished, do you?"

"No," said Peter, "I don't. All the same, I'm grateful to him for one

thing. He has brought father out of his shell,--that's about the best

thing he ever did in his life."

There was something amusing as well as touching in the way in which the

two brothers met again. It was the next morning early. Peter was still

in bed, with his hair all frowzled and the remains of sleep still in the

corners of his eyes. Graham had ten minutes before he was obliged to

leave the house to go downtown.

"Hello, old sport!" said Graham.

"Hello, sonnie! Rather a hot thing in ties, that, eh?"

Graham cleared his throat and put his hand rather self-consciously to

the black-and-white effect newly designed by his pet firm of

haberdashers. "I think it'll make the senior partner blink all right,"

he said. "How d'you feel this morning?"

Peter showed his teeth. "I'm sitting up and taking nourishment. Probably

before the end of the week you'll see me in shorts and a zephyr

sprinting round the park before breakfast."

"I'd like to," said Graham, and he held out his hand.

Peter took it and gave it a scrunch which had in it nothing of the

invalid. "Give my love to the subway," he said, "and my kind regards to

Wall Street."

Graham grinned, waved his hand and left the room. He found it necessary

to blow his nose rather hard on his way down-stairs. "Oh, Gee!" he said

to himself. "Oh, Gee! Only think if Peter had--" He didn't allow himself

to finish the thought.

And then came Betty, and the way in which she and Peter came

together--the way in which they stood only a step or two from the door,

inarticulate in their love and thankfulness, was too much even for the

trained nurse, to whom love and death and the great hereafter were mere

commonplaces. She withdrew to the dressing-room and stayed there for a

whole solid quarter-of-an-hour, eliminating herself with a tactfulness

for which Peter blessed her and Betty became her friend for all time.

"My baby!" said Peter. "We shall have to begin all over again. We're

almost strangers."

But Betty shook her head. "No," she said. "No. There hasn't been one

moment during all this time that I haven't been with you."

And Peter nodded. "That's dead true," he said.

And then they sat down very close together and the things they said to

each other are lost to the world, because we joined the nurse in the

next room and shut the door.