“You are awake, man, and I repeat the danger is at an end. Now go and rest.”
Wondering to whom it was the doctor spoke, whose was that raucous, weary voice that questioned him, she slowly turned her head, and beheld a gaunt, hollow-eyed ghost of a man, whose pallid, sunken cheeks were overgrown with a course stubble of unshaven beard, standing between the bedposts, clutching at one of them as if for support. Meeting her gaze, he recoiled a step and loosed his hold. Then he swung half-round, a hand to his brow.
“Naught ails me, doctor,” he mumbled, and now she knew who he was and remembered. “I would sooner....”
His voice abruptly ceased in mid-period; he reeled, steadied himself for an instant, and then toppled slowly forward and crashed at full length upon the floor. Instantly Mrs. Dallows, with a little outcry of alarm, was on her knees beside him; she turned him over, raised his head, by an effort, and pillowed it in her lap as Dr. Beamish came hastening up. The same thought was in the mind of both nurse and physician.
Nancy sought painfully—for she was very weak—to raise herself, that she might see what was taking place there on the floor, beyond the foot of the bed.
Swiftly the doctor tore open the breast of the Colonel’s doublet; but not even so much was necessary. At once he perceived what had happened. It was as if the assurance that she was out of danger, and so no longer in need of his ministrations, had snapped the reins of will by which Holles had held his lassitude in subjection. Instantly Nature had claimed from him the dues which he had so long withheld.
“He is asleep,” said Dr. Beamish; and he almost chuckled. “That is all. Help me to lift him to that couch, Mrs. Dallows. No need to carry him farther or to do more for him at present. Never fear, you’ll not rouse him—not until the clock has gone round once, at least.”
They laid him there, a pillow under his head, and Beamish returned to his patient’s side. She had sunk back again, but her eyes, looking enormous now in her wasted cheeks, were still upon the figure of Holles where he lay inert as stone, just within the orbit of her vision.
“Sleep?” she questioned the doctor, wonderingly. “Is that sleep?”
Never had she—nor, indeed, have many—seen slumber fell a man as if he had been shot.