All
that night the woman watched by Rickman's bedside, heedless of her
luck. She kept life in him by feeding him with warm milk and gin, a
teaspoonful at a time. Rickman, aware of footsteps in the room,
fancied himself back again in Rankin's dressing-room. The whole scene
of that evening floated before him all night long. He had a sense of
presences hostile and offended, of being irretrievably disgraced. In
the recurring nightmare he saw Lucia Harden instead of Mrs. Rankin. So
persistently did he see her that when he woke he could not shake off
the impression that she had been actually, if unaccountably, present,
a spectator of his uttermost disgrace. He could never look her in the
face again. No, for he was disgraced; absolutely, irredeemably,
atrociously disgraced. Beyond all possibility of explanation and
defence; though he sometimes caught himself explaining and pleading
against those offended phantoms of his brain. Why should he suffer so?
Just because of his inability to deal with Rankin's never-ending
dinner, or to pay a debt of millions, many millions of figures that
climbed up the wall. He was not sure which of these two obligations
was laid upon him.
He became by turns delirious and drowsy, and the woman fetched a
doctor early the next day. He found enteric and blood-poisoning also,
of which Rickman's illness at the Rankins' must have been the first
warning symptoms.
"He'll have to go to the hospital; but you'd better send word to his
friends.
Pages:
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778