At three in the morning the physician in charge, who had been sitting for some time beside the bed, rose and moved away. He nodded his head to his fellow. Hagar caught the satisfaction in the gesture even before, in passing her chair, he paused to say just audibly, "I think your father will recover." A short time passed, and then the Colonel touched her arm. "They think it safe for us to go. He is stronger. Come! They'll call if there is any need, but they don't think there will be."
Going, she stopped for a moment close beside the bed. She had not been this near before. Medway lay there, with his head swathed in bandages, with his lips and chin unshorn, with no colour now in his cheeks, with his eyes closed. Hagar felt the sudden smart of tears between her own lids. The gold thread of the dandelion day tied itself to the natural human pity and awe. Her lips trembled. "Father!" she said, in the lowest of whispers. Her hand moved falteringly until, for the lightest moment, it rested upon his.
In the outer room the physician joined them. "He'll still have to fight for it, and there may be setbacks. It's going to be a weary, long, painful siege for him, but I don't believe he's going to die. Indeed, I think that, except in the one respect, we'll get him back to being a well man with a long life before him."
"And that respect?"
"I'm afraid, Colonel Ashendyne, that he'll never walk again. If he does, it will be with crutches and with great difficulty."
When, half an hour later, Hagar opened the door of her own room, the dawn was coming. It was a comfortable bedroom, large, cool, and high-pitched, and it, too, had a balcony. The bed invited; she was deadly tired; and yet she doubted if she could sleep. She stood in the middle of the room, her hands over her eyes, then, a little stumblingly, she went out upon the balcony. It was a small place, commanding the east. There was a chair and a little table on which you could rest your arms, and your head upon them, sideways so that you could see the sky. It was just grey light; there were three palm trees rustling, rustling. After a while purple came into the sky, and then pale, pale gold. The wind fell, the palms stood still, the gold widened until all the east was gold. She saw distant, strange, flat roofs, a distant dome and slender towers, all against the pale, pale gold. The air was cool and unearthly still. Her head upon her arm, her face very quiet, her eyes open upon the deepening light, she stayed until the gardeners came into the garden below.
CHAPTER XX
MEDWAY
Five days later, Medway, one morning, recognized the Colonel. "Why, my dear father, what are you doing here?... What's it all about?" His feeble voice died away; without waiting for an answer, he lapsed into a kind of semi-consciousness. Out of this, day by day, though, he came more strongly. Directly he appeared to accept, without further curiosity, his father's occasional presence in the room. Another interval, and he began to question the physician and nurses. "Back, eh?—and leg, and this thing on my head. I don't remember.—A kind of crash.... What happened?"