"Just had a telephone message to say that your father is at the T——Railway Station, lying senseless. He has evidently had an apoplectic fit."
(How those brutal words, "lying senseless," banged and bullied and knocked me down. Mother was waiting for me at the door in a dreadful state and expecting the worst.)
Met the train with the Doctor, and took him home in the cab—still alive, thank God, but helpless. He was brave enough to smile and shake me by the hand—with his left, though he was speechless and the right side of his body helpless. A porter discovered him at the railway terminus lying on the floor of a second-class carriage.
December 10.
He is a trifle better. It is fifteen years since he had the first paralytic stroke.
Am taking over all his work and have written at once resigning the Plymouth appointment.
December 23.
It really did require an effort to go upstairs to-day to his bedroom and say cheerfully I was not going to P. after all, and that the matter was of no consequence to me. I laughed gaily and Dad was relieved. A thundering good joke. What annoys me is that other folk—the brainless, heartless mob, as Schopenhauer remarks, still continue to regard me as one of themselves.... I had nearly escaped into a seaside laboratory, and now suddenly to be flung back into the dirt and sweat of the newspaper world seems very hard, and it is very hard.
December 26.
Windy Ash