He was broad awake. There were truly voices in the next room; they were those of Mr Barnett and of his son. So much was real, but the marsh and the monsters had vanished....
Cosmo’s voice, rapid and low, he could not easily follow, but he caught the words “You can’t.... How can you possibly? ... must manage my father.”
Then a protesting series of earnest appeals and an exhortation: “Not that way ... not that way.”
His son’s voice and manner were so familiar to him, that Mr Burden almost saw the shake of the head as he listened. But he could understand nothing. Then again came Mr Barnett’s voice, very deep and regular and slow.
“All that I cannot onderstand....” It thus interrupted Cosmo twice, and came at last impatiently and steadily. “So it most be settled! So!” And he heard a heavy hand come down by weight, and without violence, upon the arm of a chair.
It occurred to Mr Burden suddenly that, though he was listening to gibberish, yet he was listening unseen. To a character of his simplicity, the thought was odious. I do not say it to ridicule him. In a way it does him honour that he did not wish to be an eavesdropper; and his desire to reveal himself was the more laudable and just from the fact that he could make no use, and indeed no sense, of what he overheard.
He shifted awkwardly and wearily from his invalid’s chair, stood up, somewhat dizzy for the moment, and coughed as men do purposely on the stage; he was not heard. Mr Barnett had just repeated with emphasis the phrase: “This fellow Âppott,” when, with that reminiscence of his trouble full in his ears, Mr Burden stood in the open archway which led from the conservatory to the room.
He held to a curtain, as though for support. Mr Barnett stared at him, and Cosmo seeing such a look in his companion’s eyes, swung round sharply and, in his turn, saw his father. He leapt at once to his feet and caught the old man’s arm.
“Where have you been?” he cried. Then he remembered his duty, and said, more gently, “Where’s the nurse?”
Twenty surmises ran through his head. He thought perhaps the old man was wandering—and he thought of many other things. And, during this very awkward pause, Mr Barnett, whose great energies could ill brook interruption, stared at the father and the son in the doorway: the lower part of his strong face was thrust forward, his eyes vivid with protest. But he did not say a word, and Cosmo was glad he did not.