“He’s bad, no mistake!” thought Edwin, as he met his father’s anxious and intimidated gaze. He had never seen anyone so ill. He knew now what disease could do.
“Where’s Nurse?” the old man murmured, with excessive feebleness, his voice captiously rising to a shrill complaint.
“She’s not well. She’s lying down. I’m going to sit with you to-night. Have a drink?” As Edwin said these words in his ordinary voice, it seemed to him that in comparison with his father he was a god of miraculous proud strength and domination.
Darius nodded.
“Her’s a Tartar!” Darius muttered. “But her’s just! Her will have her own way!” He often spoke thus of the nurse, giving people to understand that during the long nights, when he was left utterly helpless to the harsh mercy of the nurse, he had to accept many humiliations. He seemed to fear and love her as a dog its master. Edwin, using his imagination to realise the absoluteness of the power which the nurse had over Darius during ten hours in every twenty-four, was almost frightened by it. “By Jove!” he thought, “I wouldn’t be in his place with any woman on earth!” The old man’s lips closed clumsily round the funnel of the invalid’s cup that Edwin offered. Then he sank back, and shut his eyes, and appeared calmer.
Edwin smoothed the clothes, stared at him a long time, and finally sat down in the arm-chair by the fire. He wound up his watch. It was not yet midnight. He took off his boots and put on the slippers which now Darius had not worn for over a week and would not wear again. He yawned heavily. The yawn surprised him. He perceived that his head was throbbing and his mouth dry, and that the meats and liquors of the banquet, having ceased to stimulate, were incommoding him. His mind and body were in reaction. He reflected cynically upon the facile self-satisfactions of those successful men in whose company he had been. The whole dinner grew unreal. Nothing was real except imprisonment on a bed night and day, day and night for weeks. Every one could have change and rest save his father. For his father there was no relief, not a moment’s. He was always there, in the same recess, prone, in subjection, helpless, hopeless, and suffering. Politics! What were they?
Three.
He closed his eyes, because it occurred to him that to do so would be agreeable. And he was awakened from a doze by a formidable stir on the bed. Darius’s breathing was quick and shallow, and growing more so. He lifted his head from the pillow in order to breathe, and leaned on one elbow. Edwin sprang up and went to him.
“Clara! Clara! Don’t leave me!” the old man cried in tones of agonised apprehension.