Half an hour afterward the house was dark and quiet. Harry had drained his dose, and was sleeping deeply and dreamlessly; Mr. Francis was not more wakeful. The night was warm and mellow after the heavy rain, and Dr. Armytage sat long at his window looking out with fixed, undeviating eyes into the blackness. At intervals, some real or fancied stir from the sick room would make him rise mechanically, and, crossing the floor, look in on his patient; once Mr. Francis in his sleep called out, "Harry, Harry! take care!" in a strangling, agonized voice. But even then he did not wake, and the doctor returned again to his seat in the window and still gazed out into the night. The rain had ceased soon after sunset, and now the sky was nearly clear, and star in-wrought; in the east the moon would soon be rising. But he regarded not nor saw either stars or the climbing crescent.
At length a striking clock aroused him, and he got up.
"No, no, and a thousand times no!" he said to himself.
[CHAPTER XXI]
GEOFFREY MEETS THE DOCTOR
Dr. Armytage, despite Lady Oxted's round and uncompromising definition of him as a dexterous surgeon of sinister repute, proved himself during the next day or two to be far more intimately acquainted with the vital structure of the animal called man than is at all necessary for one who only concerns himself with dissection of artery and muscle, and the severing of bones. Under his wise and beneficent care Mr. Francis rapidly rose again to his accustomed surface, and, no less testimony to his skill, Harry once more looked the world squarely and courageously in the face. These inner and spiritual lesions require for their healing not only a skilful diagnosis, but a mind of delicate and certain touch, and of his two patients the doctor was inclined to think that Harry made the more flattering recovery. During these days he kept uncle and nephew studiously apart; he would allow no visits to the sick room, and communication was limited to messages passed to and fro by the doctor himself. Mr. Francis, on the one hand, was bidden to keep his bed for three days, and quiet was insisted on; quiet, on the other hand, was sternly forbidden to Harry. For him the prescription was to go out as much as possible, and busy himself with any employment—all were good—which he found congenial, and when indoors to apply himself slavishly to all the businesses which Mr. Francis had hitherto managed for him.
"Oh, you have plenty to do," said the doctor to this harassed young gentleman; "go and do some of it."
But among these things which had to be done was an affair of difficulty, the letter which must be written to Geoffrey. This, when he put his hand to it, Harry found to be a black, bitter business, and sheet after sheet was begun and abandoned. Had he realized it, he was attempting the impossible, for he had set himself to write a letter which should at once be thoroughly friendly, and yet spit on the allegations which his friend had made. The writer alone did not see that such a letter could not be written even by Solomon, Shakespeare, and the original serpent in conjunction. Thus, for a couple of hours one evening Harry wrote and tore, reducing wooden penholders to match wood, and quires of fair white paper to grist for the housemaid in her fire-lighting, yet still the envelope was no nearer to its postage stamp; and the dressing bell indeed showed him only a brimming waste-paper basket. He could not write this letter; here was the flat truth.