Page:The Yellow Book - 03.djvu/215

 All night he lay feverishly tossing, turning his pillow aglow with heat, from side to side; anxiously reiterating whole incoherent conversations and jumbled incidents.

At intervals, he was dimly conscious of the hiss of wind-swept leaves outside, and of rain-gusts rattling the window-panes; and later, of the sickly light of early morning streaking the ceiling with curious patterns. By-and-bye, he dropped into a fitful sleep, and forgot the stifling heat of his bed.

Then the room had grown half full of daylight, and Mrs. Parkin was there, fidgetting with the curtains. She said something which he did not hear, and he mumbled that he had slept badly, and that his head was aching.

Some time later—how long he did not know—she appeared again, and a man, whom he presently understood to be a doctor, and who put a thermometer, the touch of which was deliciously cool, under his armpit, and sat down at the table to write. Mrs. Parkin and he talked in whispers at the foot of the bed: they went away; Mrs. Parkin brought him a cup of beef-tea and some toast; and then he remembered only the blurred memories of queer, unfinished dreams.

Consciousness seemed to return to him all of a sudden; and, when it was come, he understood dimly that, somehow, the fatigue of long pain was over, and he tasted the peaceful calm of utter lassitude.

He lay quite still, his gaze following Mrs. Parkin, as she moved to and fro across the room, till it fell on a basket-full of grapes that stood by the bedside. They were unfamiliar, inexplicable; they puzzled him; and for awhile he feebly turned the matter over in his mind. Presently she glanced at him, and he lifted his hand towards the basket.

"Would ye fancy a morsel o' fruit noo? 'Twas Mrs. Fulton that sent 'em," she said.