‘Certainly, certainly, by no means,’ he began, listening vaguely to the glib patter that seemed to come from another mouth. ‘Your father, my dear young lady, I venture to think is now really on the road to recovery. Dr Simon makes excellent progress. But, of course—two heads, we know, are so much better than one when there’s the least—the least difficulty. The great thing is quiet, rest, isolation, no possibility of a shock, else—’ His voice fell away, his eloquence failed.
For Alice stood gazing stirlessly on and on into this infinitely strange, infinitely familiar shadowy, phantasmal face. ‘Oh yes,’ she replied, ‘I quite understand, of course; but if I might just peep even, it would—I should be so much, much happier. Do let me just see him, Dr Ferguson, if only his head on the pillow! I wouldn’t even breathe. Couldn’t it possibly help—even a faith-cure?’ She leant forward impulsively, her voice trembling, and her eyes still shining beneath their faint, melancholy smile.
‘I fear, my dear...it cannot be. He longs to see you. But with his mind, you know, in this state, it might—?’
‘But mother never told me,’ broke in the girl desperately, ‘there was anything wrong with his mind. Oh, but that was quite unfair. You don’t mean, you don’t mean—that—?’
Lawford scanned swiftly the little square beloved and memoried room that fate had suddenly converted for him into a cage of unspeakable pain and longing. ‘Oh no; believe me, no! Not his brain, not that, not even wandering; really: but always thinking, always longing on and on for you, dear, only. Quite, quite master of himself, but—’
‘You talk,’ she broke in again angrily, ‘only in pretence! You are treating me like a child; and so does mother, and so it has been ever since I came home. Why, if mother can, and you can, why may not I? Why, if he can walk and talk in the night....’
‘But who—who “can walk and talk in the night?”’ inquired a low stealthy voice out of the quietness behind her.
Alice turned swiftly. Her mother was standing at a little distance, with all the calm and moveless concentration of a waxwork figure, looking up at her from the staircase.
‘I was—I was talking to Dr Ferguson, mother.’
‘But as I came up the stairs I understood you to be inquiring something of Dr Ferguson, “if,” you were saying, “he can walk and talk in the night”: you surely were not referring to your father, child? That could not possibly be, in his state. Dr Ferguson, I know, will bear me out in that at least. And besides, I really must insist on following out medical directions to the letter. Dr Ferguson I know, will fully concur. Do, pray, Dr Ferguson,’ continued Sheila, raising her voice even now scarcely above a rapid murmur—‘do pray assure my daughter that she must have patience; that however much even he himself may desire it, it is impossible that she should see her father yet. And now, my dear child, come down, I want to have a moment’s talk with Dr Ferguson. I feared from his beckoning at the window that something was amiss.’