And then quite suddenly his eyes were open, looking at her. The
pupils were enormously enlarged, giving him an unfamiliar look.
But at sight of her, a quick smile flashed across his face--his old
glad smile of welcome, and she knew him again. "Hullo--darling!"
he said.
She could not speak in answer. She could only lay her hand over
his and hold it fast.
He went on, his speech rapid, slightly incoherent. Guy had been
like that, she remembered, in moments of any excitement or stress.
"I've had a beastly bad dream, sweetheart. Thought I'd lost
you--somehow I was messing about in a filthy fog, and there were
beastly precipices about. And you--you were calling
somewhere--telling me not to forget something. What was it? I'm
dashed if I can remember now."
"It--doesn't matter," she managed to say, though her voice was
barely audible.
He opened his eyes a little wider. "Are you crying, I say? What's
the matter? What, darling? You're not crying for me? Eh? I
shall get over it. I always come up again. Ask Kelly! Ask Kieff!"
"Yes, you always come up again," Kieff said, in his brief,
mechanical voice.
Guy threw him a look that was a curious blend of respect and
disgust. "Hullo, Lucifer!" he said. "What are you doing here?
Come to show us the quickest way to hell? He's an authority on
that, Sylvia. He knows all the shortest cuts."
He broke off with a sudden hard breath, and Sylvia saw again that
awful shadow gather in his eyes. She made way for Kieff, though
not consciously at his behest, and there followed a dreadful
struggling upon which she could not look. Kieff spoke once or
twice briefly, authoritatively, and was answered by a sound more
anguished than any words. Then at the end of several unspeakable
seconds she heard Burke's footstep outside the door. She turned to
him as he entered, with a thankfulness beyond all expression.
"Oh, Burke, he is suffering--so terribly. Do see if you can help!"
He passed her swiftly and went to the other side of the bed.
Somehow his presence braced her. She looked again upon Guy in his
extremity.
He was propped against Kieff's shoulder, his face quite livid, his
eyes roaming wildly round the room, till suddenly they found and
rested upon her own. All her life Sylvia was to remember the
appeal those eyes held for her. It was as if his soul were crying
aloud to her for freedom.
She came to the foot of the bed. The anguish had entered into her
also, and it was more than she could bear.
She turned from Burke to Kieff. "Oh, do anything--anything--to
help him!" she implored him. "Don't let him suffer--like this!"
Kieff's hand went to his pocket. "There is only one thing," he
said.
Burke, his arm behind Guy's convulsed body, made an abrupt gesture
with his free hand. "Wait! He'll come through it. He did before."
And still those tortured eyes besought Sylvia, urged her, entreated
her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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