On coming out of the bathroom he discovered Albert on the landing, waiting.
“The missis would have me come up and see how he was,” said Albert. “So I’ve run in between school and chapel. When I told her what a doing he gave us, getting him upstairs, she was quite in a way, and she would have me come up. The kid’s better.” He was exceedingly and quite genuinely fraternal, not having his wife’s faculty for nourishing a feud.
Two.
The spectacular developments were rapid. In the afternoon Auntie Hamps, Clara, Maggie, and Edwin were grouped around the bed of Darius. A fire burned in the grate; flowers were on the dressing-table. An extra table had been placed at the foot of the bed. The room was a sick-room.
Dr Heve had called, and had said that the patient’s desire not to be left alone was a symptom of gravity. He suggested a nurse, and when Maggie, startled, said that perhaps they could manage without a nurse, he inquired how. And as he talked he seemed to be more persuaded that a nurse was necessary, if only for night duty, and in the end he went himself to the new Telephone Exchange and ordered a nurse from the Pirehill Infirmary Nursing Home. And the dramatic thing was that within two hours and a half the nurse had arrived. And in ten minutes after that it had been arranged that she should have Maggie’s bedroom and that she should take night duty, and in order that she might be fresh for the night she had gone straight off to bed.
Then Clara had arrived, in spite of the illness of her baby, and Auntie Hamps had forced herself up Trafalgar Road, in spite of her rheumatism. And a lengthy confabulation between the women had occurred in the dining-room, not about the invalid, but about what ‘she’ had said, and about the etiquette of treating ‘her,’ and about what ‘she’ looked like and shaped like; ‘her’ and ‘she’ being the professional nurse. With a professional nurse in it, each woman sincerely felt that the house was no longer itself, that it had become the house of the enemy.
Darius lay supine before them, physically and spiritually abased, accepting, like a victim who is too weak even to be ashamed, the cooings and strokings and prayers and optimistic mendacities of Auntie Hamps, and the tearful tendernesses of Clara.
“I’ve made my will,” he whimpered.
“Yes, yes,” said Auntie Hamps. “Of course you have!”