Darius was extremely ill. Every part of his physical organism was
deranged and wearied out. His features combined the expression of
intense fatigue with the sinister liveliness of an acute tragic
apprehension. His failing faculties were kept horribly alert by the
fear of what was going to happen to him next. So much that was
appalling had already happened to him! He wanted repose; he wanted
surcease; he wanted nothingness. He was too tired to move, but he was
also too tired to lie still. And thus he writhed faintly on the bed;
his body seemed to have that vague appearance of general movement which
a multitude of insects will give to a piece of decaying matter. His
skin was sick, and his hair, and his pale lips. The bed could not be
kept tidy for five minutes.
"He's bad, no mistake!" thought Edwin, as he met his father's anxious
and intimidated gaze. He had never seen anyone so ill. He knew now
what disease could do.
"Where's Nurse?" the old man murmured, with excessive feebleness, his
voice captiously rising to a shrill complaint.
"She's not well. She's lying down. I'm going to sit with you to-night.
Have a drink?" As Edwin said these words in his ordinary voice, it
seemed to him that in comparison with his father he was a god of
miraculous proud strength and domination.
Darius nodded.
"Her's a Tartar!" Darius muttered. "But her's just! Her will have her
own way!" He often spoke thus of the nurse, giving people to understand
that during the long nights, when he was left utterly helpless to the
harsh mercy of the nurse, he had to accept many humiliations. He seemed
to fear and love her as a dog its master. Edwin, using his imagination
to realise the absoluteness of the power which the nurse had over Darius
during ten hours in every twenty-four, was almost frightened by it. "By
Jove!" he thought, "I wouldn't be in his place with any woman on earth!"
The old man's lips closed clumsily round the funnel of the invalid's
cup that Edwin offered. Then he sank back, and shut his eyes, and
appeared calmer.
Edwin smoothed the clothes, stared at him a long time, and finally sat
down in the arm-chair by the fire. He wound up his watch. It was not
yet midnight. He took off his boots and put on the slippers which now
Darius had not worn for over a week and would not wear again. He yawned
heavily. The yawn surprised him. He perceived that his head was
throbbing and his mouth dry, and that the meats and liquors of the
banquet, having ceased to stimulate, were incommoding him. His mind and
body were in reaction. He reflected cynically upon the facile
self-satisfactions of those successful men in whose company he had been.
The whole dinner grew unreal. Nothing was real except imprisonment on
a bed night and day, day and night for weeks. Every one could have
change and rest save his father. For his father there was no relief,
not a moment's. He was always there, in the same recess, prone, in
subjection, helpless, hopeless, and suffering. Politics! What were
they?
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