But he could not be sure. He kept dozing off to sleep, without seeming to be able to move. There were noises like the shiver of beaten gongs. Somebody was arranging a prickly blanket about his neck, though.he felt too hot already. At the touch of the hands he felt terrified, and again he tried to lift his arms without success; the gong-noises and the swing of phantom rooms dissolved in a jerk of pain which ran through him as though it were flowing along his veins. He smelt medicine. He was a boy on a football field, under a dinning of shouts; he was winding clocks and measuring port from a decanter; and then the portrait of old Anthony, from its frame in the gallery at the Hall, leapt out at him. Old Anthony wore a white gardener's glove….
Even as he retreated, he knew that it was not old Anthony. Who was it? Somebody he had seen on the motion picture screen, associated with fighting and gunplay; and a whole genie-bottle of shadowy faces floated past. Nor yet was it any of these, but some person he had known a long time. A familiar face — .
It was bending over him now, in his bed. His scream became a croak.
Impossible that it should be there. He was unhurt, and this was a fancy coloured with the smell of iodoform. The linen of the pillow felt cool and faintly rough to his cheek. A clock struck. Something was shaken and flashing, thin glass in lamplight, and there were tiptoeing footfalls. Distinctly he heard a voice say:
"He'll live."
Budge slept. It was as though some subconscious nerve had been waiting for those words, so that afterwards sleep descended, and wound him rigid as in a soft dark ball of yarn.
When at length he awoke, he did not know at first how weak he was, nor had the morphine quite worn off. But he did know that a low sun was streaming in at the window. Bewildered and a little frightened, he tried to make a move; he knew with ghastly certainty that he had slept into the afternoon, a thing unheard-of at the Hall…. Then he saw that Sir Benjamin Arnold, a smile on his long face, was bending over the bed. Behind him was a person whom he did not at first recognize, a young man….
"Feeling better?" asked Sir Benjamin.
Budge tried to speak, and only croaked. He felt humiliated. A bit of remembrance swirled down into his consciousness, like a rope….
Yes. He remembered now. It swept in such vivid colours that he closed his eyes. The young Yankee, the white gloves, the pistol. What had he done? — it rushed over him that he had been a coward, as he had always felt, and the taste of that thought was like nauseous medicine.