“No. I’m only tired.” He knew it was a lie.
“You’re simply burning,” she said, but she refrained from any argument, and left him.
He could not sleep. His anticipations in that respect were painfully falsified.
Later, Maggie came back.
“Here’s Dr Heve,” she said briefly, in the doorway. She was silhouetted against the light from the landing. The doctor, in mourning, stood behind her.
“Dr Heve? What the devil—” But he did not continue the protest.
Maggie advanced into the room and turned up the gas, and the glare wounded his eyes.
“Yes,” said Dr Heve, at the end of three minutes. “You’ve got it. Not badly, I hope. But you’ve got it all right.”
Humiliating! For the instinct of the Clayhangers was always to assume that by virtue of some special prudence, or immunity, or resisting power, peculiar to them alone, they would escape any popular affliction such as an epidemic. In the middle of the night, amid feverish tossings and crises of thirst, and horrible malaise, it was more than humiliating! Supposing he died? People did die of influenza. The strangest, the most monstrous things did happen. For the first time in his life he lay in the genuine fear of death. He had never been ill before. And now he was ill. He knew what it was to be ill. The stupid, blundering clumsiness of death aroused his angry resentment. No! It was impossible that he should die! People did not die of influenza.
The next day the doctor laughed. But Edwin said to himself: “He may have laughed only to cheer me up. They never tell their patients the truth.” And every cell of his body was vitiated, poisoned, inefficient, profoundly demoralised. Ordinary health seemed the most precious and the least attainable boon.