But he did
not beg to be taken into the salon, as he once had done. There
was a sort of mental confusion also. He liked Marie to read his
father's letters; but as he grew weaker the occasional confusing
of Peter with his dead father became a fixed idea. Peter was
Daddy.
Peter took care of him at night. He had moved into Harmony's
adjacent room and dressed there. But he had never slept in the
bed. At night he put on his shabby dressing-gown and worn
slippers and lay on a haircloth sofa at the foot of Jimmy's
bed--lay but hardly slept, so afraid was he that the slender
thread of life might snap when it was drawn out to its slenderest
during the darkest hours before the dawn. More than once in every
night Peter rose and stood, hardly breathing, with the tiny lamp
in his hand, watching for the rise and fall of the boy's thin
little chest. Peter grew old these days. He turned gray over the
ears and developed lines about his mouth that never left him
again. He felt gray and old, and sometimes bitter and hard also.
The boy's condition could not be helped: it was inevitable,
hopeless. But the thing that was eating his heart out had been
unnecessary and cruel.
Where was Harmony? When it stormed, as it did almost steadily, he
wondered how she was sheltered; when the occasional sun shone he
hoped it was bringing her a bit of cheer. Now and then, in the
night, when the lamp burned low and gusts of wind shook the old
house, fearful thoughts came to him--the canal, with its filthy
depths.
Pages:
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245