‘Stop that infernal cackle, whoever you are, and let me sleep. Don’t you know better than to make a row like that in a hospital?’
Once more Polson—this time wide awake—was conscious of the voice of his enemy.
‘It’s all right,’ his father whispered. ‘I’ll come back next time you’ve got to be fed, old chap, but he doesn’t like me, and he’s been down on me a hundred times already.’
The sick man stared at the ceiling where the oil lamp in its sconce on the wall had made a smoky semi-circle, and where the yellow light now slept upon the whitewash within the limits of the smoked half-ring. He was too weak to think very deeply, and too weak to feel very strongly; but the sense of home within his mind, and the father was the father, and the voice and the hand had never been unkind since he could remember, and the scorn and passion of his heart had somehow worn away, and he was not angry or contemptuous or full of hatred as he had been.
Jervase leaned over him in a momentary farewell, and Polson saw that the old man’s eyes were full of tears. One dropped plump and warm on the tip of his own nose, and there was something comic and touching in the fact, and he giggled and snuffled over it to the verge of a weak hysteria.
‘I wasn’t to disturb you, Polly,’ said Jervase, ‘and I’m misbehaving myself. I’ve got to go, and you’ve got to go to sleep; but I’ll be back as soon as ever they’ll let me, and in a day or two’s time you’ll be strong enough for you and me to have a talk together.’
‘I wish,’ said the feeble, drawling voice from the neighbouring bed, ‘that you would hold your tongue or go. I want to sleep.’
John Jervase stooped to kiss Polson on the forehead, and went his way down the silent ward, with his boots creaking with a fainter and fainter sound, until he reached the folding doors at the far end of the dormitory.
The lad lay quiet. He had parted with his father in bitter disdain and anger, but somehow these emotions had all departed from him by this time, and had left him as if they had been an evil spirit, banished by some better influence. He did not know—he was too weak and tired to think about things—but at his side there was an angry stirring and a peevish voice spoke to him.
‘That’s you, is it?’