Madame E—— and Dr. Bird have shown me what to do, and what not to do. I must keep him all the time in the same position. I must give him sips of iced broth, and little pieces of ice to suck every now and then. I must not let him try to raise himself in bed. I must not try to lift him myself. If we do lift him we must keep his body tilted at the same angle. I must not give him any hot drinks and not too much cold drink.
And he is six foot high, so tall that his feet come through the blankets at the bottom of the bed; and he keeps sinking down in it all the time and wanting to raise himself up again. And his fever makes him restless. And he is always thirsty and he longs for hot tea more than iced water, and for more iced water than is good for him. The iced broth that is his only nourishment he does not want at all.
And then he must be kept very quiet. I must not let him talk more than is necessary to tell me what he wants, or he will die of exhaustion. And what he wants is to talk every minute that he is awake.
He drops off to sleep, breathing in jerks and with a terrible rapidity. And I think it will be all right as long as he sleeps. But his sleep only lasts for a few minutes. I hear the rhythm of his breathing alter; it slackens and goes slow; then it jerks again, and I know that he is awake.
And then he begins. He says things that tear at your heart. He has looks and gestures that break it—the adorable, wilful smile of a child that knows that it is being watched when you find his hand groping too often for the glass of iced water that stands beside his bed; a still more adorable and utterly gentle submission when you take the glass from him; when you tell him not to say anything more just yet but to go to sleep again. You feel as if you were guilty of act after act of nameless and abominable cruelty.
He sticks to it that he has seen me before, that he has heard of me, that his people know me. And he wants to know what I do and where I live and where it was that he saw me. Once, when I thought he had gone to sleep, I heard him begin again: "Where did you say you lived?"
I tell him. And I tell him to go to sleep again.
He closes his eyes obediently and opens them the next instant.
"I say, may I come and call on you when we get back to England?"
You can only say: "Yes. Of course," and tell him to go to sleep.