He found it increasingly difficult to make decisions; he would
correct and alter back and then repeat the correction, perhaps half a
dozen times. On the evening of the second day his lungs became painful
and his breathing difficult. His head ached and a sense of some great
impending evil came upon him. His skin was suddenly a detestable garment
to wear. He took his temperature with a little clinical thermometer he
kept by him and found it was a hundred and one. He telephoned hastily
for Dr. Martineau and without waiting for his arrival took a hot bath
and got into bed. He was already thoroughly ill when the doctor arrived.
"Forgive my sending for you," he said. "Not your line. I know.... My
wife's G.P.--an exasperating sort of ass. Can't stand him. No one else."
He was lying on a narrow little bed with a hard pillow that the doctor
replaced by one from Lady Hardy's room. He had twisted the bed-clothes
into a hopeless muddle, the sheet was on the floor.
Sir Richmond's bedroom was a large apartment in which sleep seemed to
have been an admitted necessity rather than a principal purpose. On one
hand it opened into a business-like dressing and bath room, on the other
into the day study. It bore witness to the nocturnal habits of a man who
had long lived a life of irregular impulses to activity and dislocated
hours and habits.
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