Volume Four--Chapter Thirteen.
Her Heart.
After having been to business and breakfasted as usual, Edwin returned to the shop at ten o’clock. He did not feel tired, but his manner was very curt, even with Stifford, and melancholy had taken the place of his joy. The whole town was gloomy, and seemed to savour its gloom luxuriously. But Edwin wondered why he should be melancholy. There was no reason for it. There was less reason for it than there had been for ten years. Yet he was; and, like the town, he found pleasure in his state. He had no real desire to change it. At noon he suddenly went off home, thus upsetting Stifford’s arrangements for the dinner-hour. “I shall lie down for a bit,” he said to Maggie. He slept till a little after one o’clock, and he could have slept longer, but dinner was ready. He said to himself, with an extraordinary sense of satisfaction, “I have had a sleep.” After dinner he lay down again, and slept till nearly three o’clock. It was with the most agreeable sensations that he awakened. His melancholy was passing; it had not entirely gone, but he could foresee the end of it as of an eclipse. He made the discovery that he had only been tired. Now he was somewhat reposed. And as he lay in repose he was aware of an intensified perception of himself as a physical organism. He thought calmly, “What a fine thing life is!”
“I was just going to bring you some tea up,” said Maggie, who met him on the stairs as he came down. “I heard you moving. Will you have some?”
He rubbed his eyes. His head seemed still to be distended with sleep, and this was a part of his well-being. “Aye!” he replied, with lazy satisfaction. “That’ll just put me right.”
“George is much better,” said Maggie.
“Good!” he said heartily.
Joy, wild and exulting, surged through him once more; and it was of such a turbulent nature that it would not suffer any examination of its origin. It possessed him by its might. As he drank the admirable tea he felt that he still needed a lot more sleep. There were two points of pressure at the top of his head. But he knew that he could sleep, and sleep well, whenever he chose; and that on the morrow his body would be perfectly restored.
He walked briskly back to the shop, intending to work, and he was a little perturbed to find that he could not work. His head refused. He sat in the cubicle vaguely staring. Then he was startled by a tremendous yawn, which seemed to have its inception in the very centre of his being, and which by the pang of its escape almost broke him in pieces. “I’ve never yawned like that before,” he thought, apprehensive. Another yawn of the same seismic kind succeeded immediately, and these frightful yawns continued one after another for several minutes, each leaving him weaker than the one before. “I’d better go home while I can,” he thought, intimidated by the suddenness and the mysteriousness of the attack. He went home. Maggie at once said that he would be better in bed, and to his own astonishment he agreed. He could not eat the meal that Maggie brought to his room.
“There’s something the matter with you,” said Maggie.