Pop had evidently reached the upper hall, when the ruling passion
burning even through his fever had led him to grope about for the
electric switch. His last remaining energy had been expended for an
economy and he had collapsed.
They switched the light on again; they were always switching on currents
that he switched off--and paid for. They found him lying in a crumpled
sprawl that was awkward, even for Pop.
They stared at him in bewilderment. They would have said he was drunk;
but Pop never drank--nor smoked--nor played cards. Perhaps he was dead!
This thought was like a thunderbolt. There was a great thumping in the
breasts of the Grouts.
Suddenly _Mere_ strode forward, dropped to her knees and put her hand on
Pop's heart. It was not still--far from that. She placed her cold palm
on his forehead. His brow was clammy, hot and cold and wet.
"He has a high fever!" she said.
Then, with a curious emotion, she brushed back the scant wet hair;
closed her eyes and felt in her bosom a sudden ache like the turning of
a rusty iron. She felt young and afraid--a young wife who finds her man
wounded.
She looked up and saw standing about her a number of tall ladies and
gentlemen--important-looking strangers. Then she remembered that they
had once been nobodies. She felt ashamed before them and she said,
quickly:
"He's going to be ill. Telephone for the doctor to come right away. And
you girls get his bed ready. No, you'd better put him in my room--it
gets the sunlight. And you boys fill the ice-cap--and the hot-water bag
and--hurry! Hurry!"
The specters vanished. She was alone with her lover. She was drying his
forehead with her best lace handkerchief and murmuring:
"John honey, what's the matter! Why, honey--why didn't you tell me?"
Then a tall gentleman or two returned and one of them said:
"Better let us get him off the floor, Mere."
And the big sons of the frail little man picked him up and carried him
into the room and pulled off his elastic congress gaiters, and his coat
and vest, and his detached cuffs, and his permanently tied tie, and his
ridiculous collar.
Then _Mere_ put them out, and when the doctor arrived Pop was in bed in
his best nightshirt.
The doctor made his way up through the little mob of terrified children.
He found Mrs. Grout vastly agitated and much ashamed of herself. She did
not wish to look sentimental. She had reached the Indian-summer modesty
of old married couples.
The doctor went through the usual ritual of pulse-feeling and
tongue-examining and question-asking, while Pop lay inert, with a little
thermometer protruding from his mouth like a most inappropriate
cigarette.
The doctor was uncertain yet whether it were one of the big fevers or
pneumonia or just a bilious attack. Blood-tests would show; and he
scraped the lobe of the ear of the unresisting, indifferent old man, and
took a drop of thin pink fluid on a bit of glass. The doctor tried to
reassure the panicky family, but his voice was low and important.