Save for a physical pain when his heart beat, and the fact that his fingers were icy cold, he did not realise that he was anxious about anything. Within his mind he seemed to feel nothing about Rachel or about any one or anything in the world. He went on giving orders, arranging with Mrs. Chailey, writing out lists, and every now and then he went upstairs and put something quietly on the table outside Rachel's door. That night Dr. Lesage seemed to be less sulky than usual.
He stayed voluntarily for a few moments, and, addressing St. John and Terence equally, as if he did not remember which of them was engaged to the young lady, said, "I consider that her condition to-night is very grave."
Neither of them went to bed or suggested that the other should go to bed.
They sat in the drawing-room playing picquet with the door open.
St. John made up a bed upon the sofa, and when it was ready insisted that Terence should lie upon it. They began to quarrel as to who should lie on the sofa and who should lie upon a couple of chairs covered with rugs. St. John forced Terence at last to lie down upon the sofa.
"Don't be a fool, Terence," he said. "You'll only get ill if you don't sleep."
"Old fellow," he began, as Terence still refused, and stopped abruptly, fearing sentimentality; he found that he was on the verge of tears.
He began to say what he had long been wanting to say, that he was sorry for Terence, that he cared for him, that he cared for Rachel.
Did she know how much he cared for her--had she said anything, asked perhaps? He was very anxious to say this, but he refrained, thinking that it was a selfish question after all, and what was the use of bothering Terence to talk about such things?
He was already half asleep. But St. John could not sleep at once.
If only, he thought to himself, as he lay in the darkness, something would happen--if only this strain would come to an end.
He did not mind what happened, so long as the succession of these hard and dreary days was broken; he did not mind if she died.
He felt himself disloyal in not minding it, but it seemed to him that he had no feelings left.
All night long there was no call or movement, except the opening and shutting of the bedroom door once. By degrees the light returned into the untidy room. At six the servants began to move; at seven they crept downstairs into the kitchen; and half an hour later the day began again.
Nevertheless it was not the same as the days that had gone before, although it would have been hard to say in what the difference consisted.
Perhaps it was that they seemed to be waiting for something.
There were certainly fewer things to be done than usual. People drifted through the drawing-room--Mr. Flushing, Mr. and Mrs. Thornbury.
They spoke very apologetically in low tones, refusing to sit down, but remaining for a considerable time standing up, although the only thing they had to say was, "Is there anything we can do?" and there was nothing they could do.
Feeling oddly detached from it all, Terence remembered how Helen had said that whenever anything happened to you this was how people behaved.
Was she right, or was she wrong? He was too little interested to frame an opinion of his own. He put things away in his mind, as if one of these days he would think about them, but not now.
The mist of unreality had deepened and deepened until it had produced a feeling of numbness all over his body. Was it his body?
Were those really his own hands?
This morning also for the first time Ridley found it impossible to sit alone in his room. He was very uncomfortable downstairs, and, as he did not know what was going on, constantly in the way; but he would not leave the drawing-room. Too restless to read, and having nothing to do, he began to pace up and down reciting poetry in an undertone. Occupied in various ways--now in undoing parcels, now in uncorking bottles, now in writing directions, the sound of Ridley's song and the beat of his pacing worked into the minds of Terence and St. John all the morning as a half comprehended refrain.
They wrestled up, they wrestled down, They wrestled sore and still:
The fiend who blinds the eyes of men, That night he had his will.
Like stags full spent, among the bent They dropped awhile to rest--
"Oh, it's intolerable!" Hirst exclaimed, and then checked himself, as if it were a breach of their agreement. Again and again Terence would creep half-way up the stairs in case he might be able to glean news of Rachel. But the only news now was of a very fragmentary kind; she had drunk something; she had slept a little; she seemed quieter.
In the same way, Dr. Lesage confined himself to talking about details, save once when he volunteered the information that he had just been called in to ascertain, by severing a vein in the wrist, that an old lady of eighty-five was really dead. She had a horror of being buried alive.
"It is a horror," he remarked, "that we generally find in the very old, and seldom in the young." They both expressed their interest in what he told them; it seemed to them very strange. Another strange thing about the day was that the luncheon was forgotten by all of them until it was late in the afternoon, and then Mrs. Chailey waited on them, and looked strange too, because she wore a stiff print dress, and her sleeves were rolled up above her elbows. She seemed as oblivious of her appearance, however, as if she had been called out of her bed by a midnight alarm of fire, and she had forgotten, too, her reserve and her composure; she talked to them quite familiarly as if she had nursed them and held them naked on her knee.
She assured them over and over again that it was their duty to eat.
