All this last part of his appeal had seemed to them worse than delirium, grotesque and terrible in its nearness to a kind of perverted impossible logic. Now he seemed suddenly to collapse on the sofa in a fit of profound dejection. His back stooped, his hands dangled down between his knees, his head subsided almost upon his chest, and he sighed at brief intervals. They watched him, as if spellbound.
He changed his attitude, and sat now with an elbow on the back of the sofa and his head leaning on his hand; and he sighed, as if sick with emotion.
Then there occurred what was perhaps the most astounding incident of the night. The colonel had launched his last word; now he darted round behind the sofa, bent over Dyke, seized his shoulder, and shook him. What was it? Some deep invincible instinct of remote antiquity—the instinct that compels the tame animal to take all risks and fly at and worry the wild beast when it lies prostrate and in pain? Or was it just frenzy and disgust aroused in the colonel by the sight and the sound of something so devastatingly un-English. But Dyke, plainly supposing that the action was prompted by compassionate sympathy, spoke to the colonel for the first time, and in tones of grateful affection.
“Thanks, old boy,” said Dyke; and then, as the colonel continued to shake his shoulder, “Don’t trouble, dear old chap. I shall be all right directly.”
The colonel dropped his hands and tottered away from the sofa. To him the thing had become like the fourth dimension, or the fifth; beyond the range of intellect, brain-destroying. He thought vaguely that if it went on he should faint.
Mr. Verinder was running his fingers round the open neck of his shirt. He felt that his universe had crumbled. He felt that the only sane thing for him to do would be to speak as if to a child, and say, “Mr. Dyke, stop making these afflicted noises; get up, go home to bed, and don’t be so ridiculous.” He would have said it perhaps, if he could. But strangely, inexplicably, Mr. Dyke was not ridiculous; he was still awe-inspiring—dreadful. Yes, that was the word. In the language of the locality, the man had made a dreadful exhibition.
He got up presently, without being told to do so.
“It’s not a bit of good my making promises that I can’t keep. I’ve made one promise about it already—to my father—and I’ll keep that. My father’s a clergyman—in Devonshire.”
He shook hands with Mr. Verinder, gave the colonel a wan smile, and went. Eustace let him out, watched by Gussie; the butler standing by, looking very anxious.