"Oh! I was in the Army once," said Val. "You go to sleep."
He had his wish. The heavy eyelids closed, the great chest rose and fell evenly, and some—not all—of the deep lines of pain were smoothed away from Bernard's lips. Even in sleep it was a restless, suffering head, but it was no longer so devil-ridden as when he was talking of his wife. Val played on softly: once when he desisted Bernard stirred and muttered something which sounded like "Go on, damn you," a proof that his mind was not far from his body, only the thinnest of veils lying over its terrible activity. David would have played the clock round, if Saul would have slept on.
Saul did not. He woke—with a tremendous start, sure sign of broken nerves: a start that shook him like a fall and shook the couch too. "Hallo!" he came instantly into full possession of his faculties: "you still here? What's the time? I feel as if I'd been asleep for years. Why, it's daylight!" He dragged out his watch. "What the devil is the time?"
Val rose and pulled back a curtain. The morning sky was full of grey light, and long pale shadows fell over frost-silvered turf: mists were steaming up like pale smoke from the river, over whose surface they swept in fantastic shapes like ghosts taking hands in an evanescent arabesque: the clouds, the birds, the flowers were all awake. The house was awake too, and in fact it was the clatter of a housemaid's brush on the staircase that had roused Bernard. "It's nearly six o'clock," said Val. "You've had a long sleep, Berns. I'm afraid the others have missed their train."
"Missed their train!"
"First night performances are often slow, and they mayn't have been able to get a cab at once. It's tiresome, but there's no cause for anxiety."
"Missed their train!"
"Well, they can't all have been swallowed up by an earthquake! Of course fire or a railway smash is on the cards, but the less thrilling explanation is more probable, don't you think, old man?"
"Missed the last train and were obliged to stay in town?"
"And a rotten time they'll have of it. It's no joke, trying to get rooms in a London hotel when you've ladies with you and no luggage."