Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/65

Rh come to this—a poor, old, feeble, helpless, worn-out man, lying there where he had been born, but with all those who had loved him carried long ago to the grave: with the few who might have protected him still, his son, his cousin, his old friend Le Lievre, as powerless to save him as the silent dead.

Renouf opened his eyes, looked in turn at the four faces before him, and read as much pity in them as in masks of stone. He turned himself to the pillow again and to his miserable thoughts.

Owen took out his watch, went round to count the pulse, and in the hush the tick of the big silver timepiece could be heard.

"There is extreme weakness," came his quiet verdict.

"Sinking?" whispered Tourtel loudly.

"No; care and constant nourishment are all that are required; strong beef-tea, port wine jelly, cream beaten up with a little brandy at short intervals, every hour say. And of course no excitement; nothing to irritate, or alarm him" (Owen's eye met Margot's); "absolute quiet and rest." He came back to the foot of the bed and spoke in a lower tone. "It's just one of the usual cases of senile decay," said he, "which I observe every one comes to here in the Islands (unless he has previously killed himself by drink), the results of breeding in. But Mr. Rennuf may last months, years longer. In fact, if you follow out my directions there is every probability that he will."

Tourtel and his wife shifted their gaze from Owen to look into each other's eyes; Margot's loose mouth lapsed into a smile. Owen felt cold water running down his back. The atmosphere of the room seemed to stifle him; reminiscences of his student days crowded on him: the horror of an unperverted mind, at its first spectacle of cruelty, again seized hold of him, as though no twelve callous years were wedged in between. At all costs he must get out into the open air. Rh