Lester found the child’s relief shocking. It made him sick to think what a dread must have preceded it, what a fathomless blackness of uncertainty in Stephen’s life it must represent. He spoke roughly, almost as he would to another man, “You don’t have to thank me, Stevie,” he said. “Great Scott, old boy, it’s none of my business, what you do with your own Teddy, is it?”
Even as he spoke—like a lurid side-glimpse—was it possible that there were people who would enjoy thanks extorted on those infamous terms? Were they ever set over children?
His insistence seemed to have penetrated a little way through Stephen’s life-long experience of the nature of things. The little boy stood looking at him, his face serious and receptive, as if a new idea were dawning on him. It was so new that he did not seem to know what to do with it, and in a moment turned away and sat down on the floor again. He reached for his Teddy and sat clasping him in his lap.
The two were silent, father and son.
Lester said to himself, shivering, “What a ghastly thing to have sensitive, helpless human beings absolutely in the power of other human beings! Absolute, unquestioned power! Nobody can stand that. It’s cold poison. How many wardens of prisons are driven sadistically mad with it!”
He recoiled from it with terror. “You have to be a superman to be equal to it.”
In the silent room he heard it echoing solemnly, “That’s what it is to be a parent.”
He had been a parent for thirteen years before he thought of it. He looked over the edge of his bed at Stephen and abased himself silently.
The child sat motionless, clasping Teddy, his face bent and turned away so that Lester could not see its expression. His attitude was that of some one thinking deeply.
Well, reflected Lester, there was certainly good reason for the taking of thought by everybody concerned! He let his head fall back on the pillow and, staring up, began for the first time since his fall to think connectedly about something other than his own wretchedness. For the first time the ugly blemishes on the ceiling were not like blotches in his own brain. Presently he forgot them altogether.