“Fine!” said the doctor, when he came. “He’ll get well now. Just a question of time.”
The next morning, when Mrs. Burnham opened the door to Stacey, he observed that she was wearing a clean dress and had done her hair quite prettily.
“Then Jim’s a lot better, isn’t he?” he asked, with a smile.
She flushed. “Yes,” she said. “He slept right through the night. Only woke up once for just a minute, then went back to sleep again. Oh, I’m so glad, Captain Carroll!” Her eyes filled. “And so grateful to you, sir!”
“Oh, please!” said Stacey, embarrassed.
Late in the morning Burnham opened his eyes slowly and let them wander curiously about the room. They rested on Stacey, and a puzzled expression came into them, then, after a moment, recognition, and the man tried to raise his hand in salute.
“Where’s the devil, sir?” he asked, in a thin voice. Then he smiled. “Funny!” he said. “I thought I was in hell.” And he began to laugh weakly.
“Shut up, Burnham!” Stacey commanded sternly, “and lie still!”
“Oh, all right, Captain, all right!” Burnham returned, still laughing, and went to sleep again at once.
Stacey was rather tired in the evenings now from sitting so monotonously still all day. He resented the excitement that he felt throbbing in the streets and the nervous buzz of the groups through which he had to elbow his way in the hotel lobby. His one recreation consisted in changing to civilian clothes for dinner; for he always wore his uniform when he went to the Burnhams’. It happened that the regiment in which he had commanded a battalion had been recruited from this part of the country, so that there were perhaps twenty-five of his men living right here in Omaha, among them a first lieutenant whom he had sincerely liked. And, ignorant though he was and knew himself to be of these men’s real personalities, he was bound to each of them—worst as well as best—by a closer bond than that which held him to Philip Blair or to Marian or to Mrs. Latimer. He would have given lavishly of his money or his time—nonsense! of something real! his freedom or his strength!—to any of these men who needed it; and not in the least from a sense of duty,—inevitably, as a matter of course. Yet he had no companionable desire to see them. He made no attempt to look them up. He spent his evenings in bed, reading “War and Peace,” which in former days he had not cared for but now found singularly satisfying—more satisfying than any book by his old idol, Dostoieffsky.