Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/32

 “Yes, father.”

“And that you are not to fight the other boys in the town?”

“Yes, father.”

“Why do you disobey me like this?”

“I don't know. I try to be good.”

“You are growing into an idle, wicked boy. You are a great trouble to your mother and myself.”

“Yes, father. I want to be better.”

Even now he could admire his father's strength, the bull-neck, the dark close-cropped hair, but he was cold, and the blood had come where he bit his lip—because he must not cry.

“You must learn obedience. Take off your night-shirt.”

He took it off, and was a very small naked figure in the starlight, but his head was up now and he faced his father.

“Bend over the bed.”

He bent over the bed, and the air from the window cut his naked back. He buried his head in the counterpane and fastened his teeth in it so that he should not cry out

During the first three cuts he did not stir, then an intolerable pain seemed to move through his body—it was as though a knife were cutting his body in half. But it was more than that—there was terror with him now in the room; he heard that little singing noise that came through his father's lips—he knew that his father was smiling.

At the succeeding strokes his flesh quivered and shrank together and then opened again—the pain was intolerable; his teeth met through the coverlet and grated on one another; but before his eyes was the picture of Stephen slowly straightening himself before his enemy and then that swinging blow—he would not cry. He seemed to be sharing his punishment with Stephen, and they were marching, hand in hand, down a road lined with red-hot pokers.

His back was on fire, and his head was bursting and the soles of his feet were very, very cold.

Then he heard, from a long way away, his father's voice:

“Now you will not disobey me again.”