She had often seen such sights before, and was quite accustomed to them. She was not anxious about her father either: he never interfered in such matters.
But why did he not come out? Every one else had come out.
A faint, slanting gleam of evening light had fallen in through the empty square of window. Her father generally sat at the table just inside; he always kept the same place. And she went up and peered in between the flower-pots,—some half-stifled, dirty geraniums and hydrangeas, saturated with public-house effluvia.
Who was that—that man who was lying on the dirty counter, with his necktie and shirt unfastened and one arm hanging down—was it her father?
"If only some one had a lancet!—he moved just now—a lancet!"
What more they said on the steps she did not notice, except that some wanted to deny her entrance, and others again said that she was Holman's daughter.
She awoke, as if after a fall from a great height during which she had lost consciousness, to find herself sitting by the counter supporting her father's head. She thought she remembered clinging to his neck and begging him to answer her: but there was no rattling in his throat now.
They had placed an old, worn sofa-pillow and the seat of a chair under his head. Behind stood quart and pint measures, dram-glasses, tin funnels and beer-bottles pushed right up to the wall to make room. His wide-open eyes stared up at the once white-washed beams of the ceiling, and one side of his face was drawn up into a grin, which made him look as if he were unspeakably disgusted with the dirty ceiling.
A big man sat at the door. Silla knew him: he was the public-house bear, as he was called; he who turned people out for Mrs. Selvig. He was sitting silent on the bench.
There was perfect stillness in the room; she heard only the drip from the tap of the brandy-cask down into the dish beneath, and saw, through the half-open door to the inner room, Mrs. Selvig and her two daughters bustling about on tiptoe.