“The Albanian, who was splashing cold water from a bucket over the tiled floor of our little sitting-room when we arrived, stared at us in astonishment. MacPherson, his face faded to the colour of wood-ashes, had his arm round my neck for support, and already the terrible cramps of the disease were beginning to twist his body as he dragged one leaden foot after the other. I called to Marco, and between us we half carried him upstairs and laid him on his bed, where he lay, silent, but drawing his breath in with the long gasps of pain, and with his arm flung across his eyes so that we should not observe his face.
“I drew Marco out on to the landing. I bade him saddle the mule and ride straight to the station, where he must take the train for Smyrna and return without delay with the English doctor. I did not think, in my private mind, that the doctor could arrive in time, or that he could do more than I could, who had some experience of cholera, but still I was bound to send for him. Marco nodded violently all the time I was speaking. I knew I could trust him; he was an honest man. I went back to MacPherson.
“I had never been into his bedroom before. The Venetian blinds were lowered outside the windows, and the floor and walls were barred with the resulting stripes of shade and sun. A plaid rug lay neatly folded across the foot of the bed. On the dressing-table were two wooden hair-brushes and a comb, on the wash-stand were sponges, but no possessions of a more personal nature could I discover anywhere. The man, it seemed, had no personal life at all.
“He was lying where I had left him, still breathing heavily; his skin was icy cold, so I covered him over with the quilt from my own room, knowing that it was no use attempting to get him into bed, and feeling, in a sympathetic way, that he would prefer to be left alone. I went to get what remedies I could from our medicine-chest downstairs, and as I was doing this my eye fell on his little cupboard where behind glass doors he kept his precious shards, all labelled and docketed in his inhumanly neat handwriting, and I wondered whether, in a week or so, I should see him sitting down there, fingering his treasures with hands that, always thin, would surely be shrunken then to the claws of a skeleton.
“It’s bad enough to see any man in extreme agonies of pain, but when the man is an uncommunicative, efficient, self-reliant creature like MacPherson it becomes ten times worse. I felt that a devil had deliberately set himself to tear the seals from that sternly repressed personality. MacPherson, who had always assumed a mask to disguise any human feelings he may have had, was here forced, driven, tortured into the revelation of ordinary mortal weakness. I believe that, even through the suffering which robs most men of all vestiges of their self-respect, he felt himself to be bitterly humiliated. I believe that he would almost have preferred to fight his disease alone in the wilderness. Yet I could not leave him. He was crying constantly for water, which I provided, and besides this there were many services to render, details of which I will spare you. I sat by the window with my back turned to him whenever he did not need me, glad to spare him what observation I could, and glad also, I confess, to spare myself the sight of that blue, shrivelled face, tormented eyes, and of the long form that knotted and bent itself in contortions like the man-snake of a circus.... His courage was marvellous. He resolutely stifled the cries which rose to his throat, hiding his face and holding his indrawn breath until the spasm had passed.
“I knew that this stage of the disease would probably continue for two or three hours, when the man would collapse, and when the pain might or might not be relieved. The sun was high in the heavens when I noticed the first signs of exhaustion. MacPherson sank rapidly, and the deadly cold for which I was watching overcame him; I covered him with blankets—this he feebly resisted—and banked him round with hot water bottles, of which we always kept a supply in case of emergency. It was now midday, and I had continually to wipe the sweat from my face, but I could not succeed in bringing much warmth to poor MacPherson. He lay quiet and silent now, save when the fearful sickness returned, as it did at short intervals. I sat beside him, ready with the water for which he was continually asking.
“He was, as I have said, always thin, but by this time his face was cavernous; I could have hidden my knuckles in the depression over his temples, and my fist in the hollow under his cheek-bones. His scant, reddish hair, always carefully smoothed, lay about his forehead in tragic wisps. His pale blue eyes showed as two smears of colour in their great sockets. His interminable legs and arms stirred at unexpected distances under the pile of blankets. He was very weak. I feared that he would not pull through.
“When the merciless sun was beginning to disappear round the corner of the house, MacPherson, who had been lying for the last hour or so in a state of coma, spoke to me in a low voice. I was staring in a melancholy way from my chair by his side, across the bed, between a chink of the Venetian blind; I don’t know what I was thinking of, probably my mind was a blank. I started when I heard him whisper my name, and bent towards him. He whispered,—
“‘I don’t think I’m going to recover.’
“Neither did I, and seeing that he had made the remark as a statement of fact, in his usual tone, though low-pitched, I waited for what he should say next. He said,—