When he woke, the first thing he remembered was the fact of having
cried.
He could not think how he had come to be such a fool. He hoped to heaven
no one had seen him. He supposed he must have been worrying about the
unfinished piece of work at the office: where was it, by the way, he
wondered? Why--where he had left it the day before, of course! What a
ridiculous thing to worry about--but it seemed to follow him about like
a dog...
He said to himself that he must get up presently and go down to the
office. Presently--when he could open his eyes. Just now there was a
dead weight on them; he tried one after another in vain. The effort set
him weakly trembling, and he wanted to cry again. Nonsense! He must get
out of bed.
He stretched his arms out, trying to reach something to pull himself up
by; but everything slipped away and evaded him. It was like trying
to catch at bright short waves. Then suddenly his fingers clasped
themselves about something firm and warm. A hand: a hand that gave back
his pressure! The relief was inexpressible. He lay still and let the
hand hold him, while mentally he went through the motions of getting
up and beginning to dress. So indistinct were the boundaries between
thought and action that he really felt himself moving about the room, in
a queer disembodied way, as one treads the air in sleep. Then he felt
the bedclothes over him and the pillows under his head.
"I MUST get up," he said, and pulled at the hand.
It pressed him down again: down into a dim deep pool of sleep. He lay
there for a long time, in a silent blackness far below light and sound;
then he gradually floated to the surface with the buoyancy of a dead
body. But his body had never been more alive. Jagged strokes of pain
tore through it, hands dragged at it with nails that bit like teeth.
They wound thongs about him, bound him, tied weights to him, tried to
pull him down with them; but still he floated, floated, danced on the
fiery waves of pain, with barbed light pouring down on him from an
arrowy sky.
Charmed intervals of rest, blue sailings on melodious seas, alternated
with the anguish. He became a leaf on the air, a feather on a current, a
straw on the tide, the spray of the wave spinning itself to sunshine as
the wave toppled over into gulfs of blue...
He woke on a stony beach, his legs and arms still lashed to his sides
and the thongs cutting into him; but the fierce sky was hidden, and
hidden by his own languid lids. He felt the ecstasy of decreasing pain,
and courage came to him to open his eyes and look about him...
The beach was his own bed; the tempered light lay on familiar things,
and some one was moving about in a shadowy way between bed and window.
He was thirsty and some one gave him a drink. His pillow burned, and
some one turned the cool side out. His brain was clear enough now for
him to understand that he was ill, and to want to talk about it; but his
tongue hung in his throat like a clapper in a bell. He must wait till
the rope was pulled...
So time and life stole back on him, and his thoughts laboured weakly
with dim fears. Slowly he cleared a way through them, adjusted himself
to his strange state, and found out that he was in his own room, in his
grandfather's house, that alternating with the white-capped faces about
him were those of his mother and sister, and that in a few days--if he
took his beef-tea and didn't fret--Paul would be brought up from Long
Island, whither, on account of the great heat, he had been carried off
by Clare Van Degen.
No one named Undine to him, and he did not speak of her. But one day,
as he lay in bed in the summer twilight, he had a vision of a moment,
a long way behind him--at the beginning of his illness, it must have
been--when he had called out for her in his anguish, and some one had
said: "She's coming: she'll be here next week."
Could it be that next week was not yet here? He supposed that illness
robbed one of all sense of time, and he lay still, as if in ambush,
watching his scattered memories come out one by one and join themselves
together. If he watched long enough he was sure he should recognize one
that fitted into his picture of the day when he had asked for Undine.
And at length a face came out of the twilight: a freckled face,
benevolently bent over him under a starched cap. He had not seen the
face for a long time, but suddenly it took shape and fitted itself into
the picture...
Laura Fairford sat near by, a book on her knee. At the sound of his
voice she looked up.
"What was the name of the first nurse?"
"The first--?"
"The one that went away."
"Oh--Miss Hicks, you mean?"
"How long is it since she went?"
"It must be three weeks. She had another case."