Part 68 (2/2)

A curious instinct drove him out of the room for a s.p.a.ce on to the landing. He shut the door on the human animal in its lonely struggle.

The gas was burning on the landing and also in the hall, for this was not a night on which to extinguish lights. The clock below ticked quietly, and then struck three. He had pa.s.sed more than three hours with his father. The time had gone quickly. He crept to Maggie's door.

No sound! Utter silence! He crept upstairs to the second storey. No sound there! Coming down again to the first floor he noticed that the door of his own bedroom was open. He crept in there, and started violently to see a dim form on the bed. It was Maggie, dressed, but fast asleep under a rug. He left her. The whole world was asleep, and he was awake with his father.

”What an awful shame!” he thought savagely. ”Why couldn't we have let him grow his mushrooms if he wanted to? What harm would it have done us? Supposing it had been a nuisance, supposing he had tried to kiss Jane, supposing he had hurt himself, what then? Why couldn't we let him do what he wanted?”

And he pa.s.sionately resented his own harshness and that of Maggie as he might have resented the cruelty of some national injustice.

He listened. Nothing but the ticking of the clock disturbed the calm of the night. Could his father have expired in one of those frantic bouts with his enemy? Brusquely, with false valiance, he re-entered the chamber, and saw again the white square of the blind and the expanse of carpet and the tables littered with nursing apparatus, and saw the bed and his father on it, panting in a new and unsurpa.s.sable despair, but still unbeaten, under the thin gas-flame. The crisis eased as he went in. He picked up the arm-chair and carried it to the bedside and sat down facing his father, and once more took his father's intolerably pathetic hand.

”All right!” he murmured, and never before had he spoken with such tenderness. ”All right! I'm here. I'm not leaving you.”

The victim grew quieter.

”Is it Edwin?” he whispered, scarcely articulate, out of a bottomless depth of weakness.

”Yes,” said Edwin cheerfully; ”you're a bit better now, aren't you?”

”Aye!” sighed Darius in hope.

And almost immediately the rumour of struggle recommenced, and in a minute the crisis was at its fiercest.

Edwin became hardened to the spectacle. He reasoned with himself about suffering. After all, what was its importance? Up to a point it could be borne, and when it could not be borne it ceased to be suffering. The characteristic grimness of those lat.i.tudes showed itself in him. There was nothing to be done. They who were destined to suffer had to suffer, must suffer; and no more could be said. The fight must come to an end sooner or later. Fort.i.tude alone could meet the situation.

Nevertheless, the night seemed eternal, and at intervals fort.i.tude lacked.

”By Jove!” he would mutter aloud, under the old man's constant appeals to Clara, ”I shan't be sorry when this is over.”

Then he would interest himself in the periodicity of the attacks, timing them by his watch with care. Then he would smooth the bed. Once he looked at the fire. It was out. He had forgotten it. He immediately began to feel chilly, and then he put on his father's patched dressing-gown and went to the window, and, drawing aside the blind, glanced forth. All was black and utterly silent. He thought with disdain of Maggie and the others unconscious in sleep. He returned to the chair.

SIX.

He was startled, at a side glance, by something peculiar in the appearance of the window. It was the first messenger of the dawn. Yes, a faint greyness, very slowly working in secret against the power of the gaslight: timid, delicate, but brightening by imperceptible degrees into strength.

”Some of them will be getting up soon, now,” he said to himself. The hour was between four and half-past. He looked forward to release.

Maggie was sure to come and release him shortly. And even as he held the sick man's arm, comforting him, he yawned.

But no one came. Five o'clock, half-past five! The first car rumbled down. And still the victim, unbroken, went through his agony every two minutes or oftener, with the most frightful regularity.

He extinguished the gas, and lo! there was enough daylight to see clearly. He pulled up the blind. The night had gone. He had been through the night. The entire surface of his head was tingling. Now he would look at the martyrdom of the victim as at a natural curiosity, having no capacity left for feeling. And now his sympathy would gush forth anew, and he would cover with attentions his father, who, fiercely preoccupied with the business of obtaining breath, gave no heed to them.

And now he would stand impressed, staggered, by the magnificence of the struggle.

The suspense from six to seven was the longest. When would somebody come? Had the entire household taken laudanum? He would go and rouse Maggie. No, he would not. He was too proud.

At a quarter-past seven the k.n.o.b of the door clicked softly. He could scarcely believe his ears. Maggie entered. Darius was easier between two crises.

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