On the last terrace the carriage was stopped by two men who detached
themselves from a sullen group on the lawn and stood in the driveway
with their hands upraised. Thane recognized them. The two who halted
the carriage were puddlers with whom he had worked side by side in the
mill. The others, to the number of six, were heaters and rollers, all
men of long service under the tyrant.
“Want a word with you, Thane,” said the taller one of the two puddlers.
He got out of the carriage and stood for an instant hesitating whether
to let Agnes go on to the house alone or have her wait. Suddenly a
scream of mindless, futile fury canted through the air. Everybody
shuddered.
“Him,” said the puddler, answering Thane’s startled look.
Deciding then not to let Agnes go on alone he took her out, led her to
an iron bench in the shade, and returned to hear what the men were so
anxious to tell him.
“You heard him,” said the tall puddler. “That’s at us. We ain’t a going
to do it. Nary if nor and about it, we ain’t. It’s against God, man and
nature. It’s irreligious. What’s moreover the men won’t have it. They
got to work there, don’t they? No sir. They won’t have it.”
“What does he want?” Thane asked.
“He takes on that a way and says as he can’t die until’s we promise.
But we ain’t a going to promise.”
“What does he want you to promise?” Thane asked, patiently.
“No sir,” the puddler went on. “Nobody’s a going to. Not so as you
could notice it. Ain’t it bad enough to have him always on our necks
alive?”
“You ain’t told him yet,” said the second puddler.
“’Tain’t Christian,” said the tall one, walking off by himself. “It’s
heathen,” he mumbled. “It’s unbelieving. It’s....”
“You tell me,” said Thane to the second puddler. “What does Enoch want?”
“Wants us to burn him up in a puddlin’ furnace,” said the second
puddler. Trying to say it calmly, even lightly, and all at once, he
lost control of his voice. It squeaked with horror on the last word.
“Is that all?”
The puddler recoiled. The group behind him fell back a step.
“Is that all he wants?” Thane asked again.
“That’s what he’s a screaming at us for,” said the puddler, sharply.
Thane went back to Agnes. He had time to tell her before they reached
the mansion.
“If he wants it, and you have no will to the contrary, I’ll promise to
do it,” he concluded.
“It strikes one with terror,” she said. “If he wants it that’s enough.”
Just as they were admitted they heard the dreadful scream again. The
door, closing, seemed to cut it off. Inside there was no sound of it.
The family doctor anxiously received them. He talked rapidly,
addressing Agnes in a manner tactfully to include Thane, whom he had
never seen before. The two best consulting physicians in Wilkes-Barre
were present, he said. There had arrived within the hour also an
eminent alienist from Philadelphia. Four men nurses had been provided.
Everything possible to be done had been thought of almost at once.
“But what is it?” Agnes asked. “What has happened?”
The doctor was sympathetic. Naturally she would want to know what it
was and how it happened. Those were questions anyone would ask. Alas!
who could answer them? He, the doctor, had attended the late Mrs. Gib;
it had been his happiness to know Agnes before she could possibly know
herself; but Mr. Gib, as they all knew, lived to himself. He had, so
to speak, no pathological history. Three days before it happened he
had begun to behave strangely at the mill. The men noticed it. He
interfered with their work by having them hold the furnace doors open
while he committed papers, bundles and various unidentified objects to
the fire, thereby spoiling several heats of good iron. It was not a
doctor’s business to know these things. He had taken it upon himself,
nevertheless, to make inquiries.
On the third day there had been a conference between Mr. Gib and his
lawyers. What took place at this conference a doctor would probably not
understand if he were told; however, he had not been told. The lawyers
were reticent to the point of being rude, not knowing, of course, how
important it was for a doctor to be able to reconstruct the events that
have immediately preceded the seizure. Mr. Gib, he had learned, never
returned to the mill from that conference with his lawyers. The notice
of the mill’s closing was posted by the lawyers; it was signed by them
with power of attorney. Mr. Gib went straight home and was next seen
in a state of frenzy. When the doctor arrived he was in a paroxysm of
rage, very dangerous to himself but otherwise harmless, since it seemed
to vent itself upon imaginary objects. This state was followed by
others, in rapid, alarming alternation--despair, exultation, terror. It
had been necessary, as they could realize, to put him under restraint.
Two men nurses were by him constantly.
What was it? The Wilkes-Barre consultants had agreed upon one
diagnosis. The patient, they said, had been attacked by delusional
mania. If the attack subsided he would recover; if not he would die of
exhaustion. That might be a matter of weeks. The Philadelphia alienist
had only just now seen the patient; yet his mind was made up. He
pronounced it a kind of progressive disintegration of the brain matter,
with sudden, catastrophic lesions. Death would take place in a few
hours. And it certainly was true that all the symptoms grew worse.
“What is your opinion?” Agnes asked.
“My own?” said the doctor, casting glances around. He lowered his voice
to a nonprofessional tone. “We have different names for it,” he said.
“That is scientific. No matter. We are all talking about the same
thing.... He ... is ... possessed.”
Agnes shuddered.
“What does he want from these mill workers outside?” Thane asked.
Yes, yes. The doctor was just coming to that. Mr. Gib had lucid,
coherent intervals. They were decreasing in frequency and duration
and that was an ominous sign. In the very first of these intervals he
seemed to be facing the thought of death and revealed an extreme horror
of natural interment. He had in one such interval either conceived a
way or remembered one of cheating the earth, which was to be cremated
in one of his own furnaces. Thereupon he began to call for certain old
puddlers and heaters by name and when they were brought up to him he
demanded of them a promise to dispose of his body in that extraordinary
way. While he looked at them they had not the strength to say outright
they would not; but he could not make them promise, and each time he
failed it was very bad for him. The state of terror returned, and if
this continued the consequences would be fatal.
“Would it relieve him if I promised?” Thane asked.
“Promised what?” the doctor asked moving uneasily.
“To do what he wants done with his body,” said Thane.
“But who would do it?” the doctor asked.
“I would,” said Thane.
The doctor looked away in all four directions. “Certainly it would
relieve him now,” he said, vaguely, as if that were not the point.
Thane suggested that Agnes be permitted to see him in the next lucid
interval, and that afterward, in the same interval if possible, and if
not, then in the next one, they should try letting him promise to carry
out the old man’s cremation wish.
The doctor agreed. However, he was not to be held responsible for the
consequences. He had been responsible until now for everything because
there was no one else. He could not be unaware of the fact that there
had been an unfortunate family episode. No one could tell how Mr. Gib
would be affected by the unexpected sight of his own daughter. He had
not asked to see her. However, she _was_ his daughter and there was no
one else,--no one. How extraordinary!
He left them to ascertain and report.
Agnes, putting off her hat and gloves, sat facing the window. Thane
took several turns about the room, came up behind her chair, laid his
hand gently on her head. She sat quite still and reached over her
shoulder for his other hand. They did not speak. The doctor returned in
haste, saying: “If Mrs. Thane will come now, at once, very softly, we
may try.” Agnes and the doctor walked up the staircase together, Thane
following. Her feet were as steady as his own. He was suddenly swept
with a feeling of great tenderness for her.
The Philadelphia alienist and the Wilkes-Barre consultants made a group
in the front hall window. They had been arguing technically and stopped
to stare a little at Agnes and then at Thane, who fell back and stood
leaning against the wall as Agnes and the doctor went on. The doctor
opened the door carefully and peered in. Standing aside he motioned
Agnes to enter.
Her father lay in a great four-poster on his back, extended to his
full length, his feet together and vertical, his head slightly raised
on pillows,--and their eyes met as she crossed the threshold. He
recognized her instantly. She was sure of it,--sure he was in his right
mind. Yet he gave not the slightest sign of his feelings. She was
surprised that he was not more shrunken. His bulk was intact. But he
was the color of sand. His aspect was sepulchral. She advanced slowly,
holding his gaze, hardly aware of two men standing alert at the head of
the bed, just outside the line of vision, ready to seize him.
When she was half way to him he began to sit up, lifting his whole
trunk from the hips without the use of his arms, his feet at the same
time rising a little, under the lower part of the sheet.
“Go away!” he said hoarsely, and she stopped. “Go away!” he meant
to say again, but as his voice rose he became inarticulate and made
guttural sounds. He began to repel her with excited gestures. The
doctor interfered. “Come,” he whispered. She half turned to go, but
faced her father again. In a clear, loud voice, she uttered the three
words he had once with all his strength demanded and could not make
her say. “I am sorry.” Their effect was to excite him all the more.
He continued to wave her away. When the door had closed behind her he
collapsed.
Thane was waiting outside the door. She leaned on him heavily and
seemed about to go under. He took her in his arms and bore her
downstairs. She revived at once and sharply declined to be made about,
even by the doctor, whose smelling salts she put aside. Thane walked
with her in the air.
Presently the doctor joined them. The idea of bringing Mr. Thane to
Mr. Gib’s notice as one who would promise to do the strange thing he
desired,--this idea, he said, had been discussed with the alienist;
and it was the alienist’s notion first to put the patient under the
suggestion that a puddler named Thane had been sent for, the point
being that Mr. Gib might remember Mr. Thane as a puddler and forget
him as a son-in-law. This seemed to the doctor too subtle altogether;
still, as it couldn’t do any harm he had consented. It had in fact been
done with such success that Mr. Gib now lay in a fever of hope. Would
Mr. Thane, the puddler, please come at once?
Thane had never been in a sick room. He had never seen death
transacting. He had known two idiots and had an idea of imbecility;
insanity he could not imagine. The doctor’s long medical discourse on
Enoch’s disorder had filled him with a vague sense of resentment; and
the doctor’s private conviction that Enoch was possessed had made him
angry. He did not believe in devils. That flash of superstition threw
the professional manner into grotesque relief and he was contemptuous
of it. His feelings went over and stood with Enoch against these
self-important outsiders who by some law of their own had established
themselves above him in his own house, were permitted to restrain him
in his own bed, who stood about in his hallway disputing as to how and
why he should die.
As Thane entered the room the two nurses were leaning over the old man
from opposite sides of the bed, and the sight of them deepened his
antagonism. They stood back as he approached. Enoch, slowly opening
his eyes, gazed at Thane with a look of tense recognition. Otherwise
he lay perfectly inert until Thane stood looking down at him. Then his
lips began to move as if he were talking. No sound was audible. Thane,
bending lower and lower, dropped on his knees and put his ear very
close. Enoch was whispering. His words, though faint, were distinct,
almost fluent, and dramatically intentional.
What he said was that worse puddlers and lesser men than Thane, men
he had known all his life, had refused to do for him that service
one cannot perform for oneself and must therefore be permitted to
ask as a favor. This service was to dispose of his remains agreeably
to a certain wish, which was to be cremated. There was no physical
difficulty whatever. It was feasible to be done in a puddling
furnace!--his own furnace!--his own mill!--his own body! Why not?
“I will do it,” said Thane, removing his ear and meeting the old man’s
eyes. Enoch’s lips continued to move. Thane returned his ear.
It was to be done in Number One Furnace.
Thane met his eyes again, saying: “All right. In Number One. I
understand.”
Enoch’s lips were still moving. Thane listened.
There was one thing more, Enoch said. He had no right to ask it except
as a favor for which he would be deeply grateful. Would Thane listen
very carefully? In that walnut secretary by the door, in a secret
drawer of it that would come open when the moulding above the pen rack
was pressed downward--there he would find the key to a room upstairs,
directly above the one they were in. He wished to die in that room
upstairs,--_by himself_. He knew better than to ask the nurses or the
doctors. They already thought him mad. Anyhow they would ask questions
and he couldn’t tell them why he wished to die in that room alone. He
had been saving his strength against an opportunity to give them the
slip, intending to lock himself into it. Once in it he would be safe.
But his strength had suddenly departed forever. No one knew this yet.
It had just happened. The nurses supposed he was resting. The fact was
he could not move foot, hand or finger. So now he was utterly helpless
and hopeless except for Thane,--and the end was so near.
Would Thane get the key?--carry him over all obstacles to that room
above?--set him in a certain chair, taking care not to move it?--then
retire and lock the door and keep them all off for an hour? An hour
would do it. In one hour he would be out of their reach.
Thane did not pause to reflect. The old man’s appeal to be permitted
to die as he would in his own house was irresistible. It moved him
dynamically. He strode to the walnut secretary, discovered the key,
dropped it in his pocket and returned to the bedside.
The nurses were dumfounded! scandalized! to see him suddenly take the
old man up in his arms, sheet and all, and start off with him toward
the door.
They followed, exclaiming and chattering. They were too amazed to act.
At the door occurred a scene of pure confusion. As Thane pulled it open
the four doctors, having heard the commotion within, were there in a
group on the momentum of entry. At sight of Enoch in Thane’s arms they
recoiled and stood blankly aghast. The two nurses behind Thane became
hysterically vocal, trying all in one breath to exculpate themselves
and explain an inconceivable thing.
Thane was pushing through.
“He wants to die upstairs,” he said.
Instantly on speaking of it he became aware that the situation had an
irrational aspect; and he wondered how he should clear them out of the
room in which Enoch wished to die and keep them out,--for of course
they would follow. He could not help that. With a resolve if necessary
to throw them all downstairs he crossed the threshold. The alienist
from Philadelphia and the two Wilkes-Barre consultants fell back. It
was not their case. The family doctor barred Thane’s way at the foot of
the staircase.
“You must be crazy,” he shouted, waving his arms. “This simply cannot
be permitted. As his physician I order you to take him back.”
“Stand aside,” said Thane.
“You will kill him,” said the doctor. “Do you hear that? This will kill
him. I forbid it.”
Thane seemed not at all impressed. Probably he would have pursued
his purpose in a straight line but that his mind was arrested by a
startling change in the heft and feeling of his burden.
It became suddenly so much heavier that he almost lost his balance.
And as he looked to see what this could mean there rose out of Enoch
a groan unlike any sound concerned with life. With that the body
underwent a violent muscular commotion and threw itself into a state of
rigid extension. Thane needed all his strength to hold it. Immediately
there was another change. The body began slowly to go limp.
“It’s over,” said the Philadelphia alienist.
What Thane held in his arms was no longer Enoch, but a distasteful
object, fallen in one breath from the first person _I_, from the second
person _you_, to the state of a pronominal third thing which is spoken
of--_that_!
Thane carried it back to the bed.
All of this had taken place in less than half an hour. Thane found
Agnes as he had left her, on an iron bench in the maple shade.
“He is dead,” she said, on looking at him.
He answered by sitting by her side in silence.
She asked him nothing about the end, and he was glad, for it had been
extremely harrowing. Still, he was surprised at her want of curiosity,
and had a moment of thinking her callous. He had somehow mysteriously
arrived at an understanding of Enoch, was shaken by a sense of loss,
even grief, and yearned to share his emotion with Agnes.
Having been for some time withdrawn in thought she started slightly.
“Did you promise?” she asked. “Was there time for that?”
“Yes,” he said. “Don’t let it upset you,” he continued gently. “You
won’t have to think about it. I’ve got it worked out in my mind. There
can be funeral services here like they have sometimes when nobody goes
to the grave or when there ain’t going to be any burial. Then I can go
alone with him to the mill. There’s nobody at the mill, you know. It’s
shut.”
She regarded him with a troubled, unbelieving expression.
“Alone!” she said.
“I’d rather to,” he said, “with everybody being so superstitious about
it.”
“But I shall go,” she said.
“May take a long time,” he said uneasily. “I’ll have the furnace going,
of course, but it’s got to be kept going and watched I don’t know how
long.”
She met these difficulties with a scornful gesture.
“All right,” he said. “He’ll be pleased you feel that way.”