After having been to business and breakfasted as usual, Edwin returned
to the shop at ten o'clock. He did not feel tired, but his manner was
very curt, even with Stifford, and melancholy had taken the place of his
joy. The whole town was gloomy, and seemed to savour its gloom
luxuriously. But Edwin wondered why he should be melancholy. There was
no reason for it. There was less reason for it than there had been for
ten years. Yet he was; and, like the town, he found pleasure in his
state. He had no real desire to change it. At noon he suddenly went
off home, thus upsetting Stifford's arrangements for the dinner-hour.
"I shall lie down for a bit," he said to Maggie. He slept till a little
after one o'clock, and he could have slept longer, but dinner was ready.
He said to himself, with an extraordinary sense of satisfaction, "_I
have had a sleep._" After dinner he lay down again, and slept till
nearly three o'clock. It was with the most agreeable sensations that he
awakened. His melancholy was passing; it had not entirely gone, but he
could foresee the end of it as of an eclipse. He made the discovery
that he had only been tired. Now he was somewhat reposed. And as he
lay in repose he was aware of an intensified perception of himself as a
physical organism. He thought calmly, "_What a fine thing life is!_"
"I was just going to bring you some tea up," said Maggie, who met him on
the stairs as he came down. "I heard you moving. Will you have some?"
He rubbed his eyes. His head seemed still to be distended with sleep,
and this was a part of his well-being. "Aye!" he replied, with lazy
satisfaction. "That'll just put me right."
"George is much better," said Maggie.
"Good!" he said heartily.
Joy, wild and exulting, surged through him once more; and it was of such
a turbulent nature that it would not suffer any examination of its
origin. It possessed him by its might. As he drank the admirable tea
he felt that he still needed a lot more sleep. There were two points of
pressure at the top of his head. But he knew that he could sleep, and
sleep well, whenever he chose; and that on the morrow his body would be
perfectly restored.
He walked briskly back to the shop, intending to work, and he was a
little perturbed to find that he could not work. His head refused. He
sat in the cubicle vaguely staring. Then he was startled by a
tremendous yawn, which seemed to have its inception in the very centre
of his being, and which by the pang of its escape almost broke him in
pieces. "I've never yawned like that before," he thought, apprehensive.
Another yawn of the same seismic kind succeeded immediately, and these
frightful yawns continued one after another for several minutes, each
leaving him weaker than the one before. "I'd better go home while I
can," he thought, intimidated by the suddenness and the mysteriousness
of the attack. He went home. Maggie at once said that he would be
better in bed, and to his own astonishment he agreed. He could not eat
the meal that Maggie brought to his room.
"There's something the matter with you," said Maggie.
"No. I'm only tired." He knew it was a lie.
"You're simply burning," she said, but she refrained from any argument,
and left him.
He could not sleep. His anticipations in that respect were painfully
falsified.
Later, Maggie came back.
"Here's Dr Heve," she said briefly, in the doorway. She was
silhouetted against the light from the landing. The doctor, in
mourning, stood behind her.
"Dr Heve? What the devil--" But he did not continue the protest.
Maggie advanced into the room and turned up the gas, and the glare
wounded his eyes.
"Yes," said Dr Heve, at the end of three minutes. "You've got it. Not
badly, I hope. But you've got it all right."
Humiliating! For the instinct of the Clayhangers was always to assume
that by virtue of some special prudence, or immunity, or resisting
power, peculiar to them alone, they would escape any popular affliction
such as an epidemic. In the middle of the night, amid feverish tossings
and crises of thirst, and horrible malaise, it was more than
humiliating! Supposing he died? People did die of influenza. The
strangest, the most monstrous things did happen. For the first time in
his life he lay in the genuine fear of death. He had never been ill
before. And now he was ill. He knew what it was to be ill. The
stupid, blundering clumsiness of death aroused his angry resentment.
No! It was impossible that he should die! People did not die of
influenza.
The next day the doctor laughed. But Edwin said to himself: "He may
have laughed only to cheer me up. They never tell their patients the
truth." And every cell of his body was vitiated, poisoned, inefficient,
profoundly demoralised. Ordinary health seemed the most precious and
the least attainable boon.
------------------------------------------------------------------------