_Sunday._--The way it beats! Sometimes very fast and heavy and emphatic,
like a bad barrage of 5.9's. Fortunately my watch has a second-hand, so
that I can time it--forty-five to the half-minute, ninety-five to the full
minute. Then I know that the end is very near; everyone knows that the
normal rate for a healthy adult heart is seventy-two. Then sometimes it
goes very slow, very dignified and faint, as when some great steamer glides
in at slow speed to her anchorage, and the engines thump in a subdued and
profound manner very far away, or as when at night the solemn tread of some
huge policeman is heard, remote and soft and dilated--I mean dilatory, or
as when--But you see what I mean.
_Monday._--How was it, I wonder, that all this was hidden from me for so
long? And now what am I to do? I am a doomed man. With a heart like this I
cannot last long. I have resigned my clubs; I have given up my work. I can
think of nothing but this dull pain, this heavy throbbing at my side. My
work--ha! Yesterday I met another young doctor at tea. He asked me if there
was any "murmur." I said I did not know--no one had told me. But after tea
I went away and listened. Yes, there was a murmur; I could hear it plainly.
I told the young doctor. He said that murmurs were not considered so
important nowadays. What matters is "the reaction of the heart to work." By
that test I am doomed indeed. But the murmur is better.
_Tuesday._--I have told Anton Gregorovitch Gregorski. He says he has a
heart too.
_Wednesday._--I have been learning things to-day. I am worse even than the
doctor thought. In a reference book in the dining-room there is a medical
dictionary. It says: "Dilatation leads to dropsy, shortness of breath and
blueness of the face." I have got some of those already. I have never seen
a face so blue. It is like the sea in the early morning.
_Thursday._--The heart is bigger again to-day--about an inch each way. The
weight of it is terrible to carry.... I have to take taxis.... This evening
it was going at thirty-two to the minute....
_Friday._--Last night, when I tried to count the beats, I could not find
it.... It must have stopped.... Anton Gregorovitch says it is the end....
This is my last entry....
_Saturday._--My face is very blue. It is like a forget-me-not ... it is
like a volume of _Hansard_....
I shall go to see the doctor as I promised ... he can do nothing, but it
will interest him to see how much bigger the heart has grown in the last
few days....
No more....
_Sunday._--The doctor said it was much better.... It is undilated again....
After all I am not going to die. But the reaction to work is still bad.
This evening I make it sixty to the minute....
_Monday._--This morning's count was seventy-two. It is terrible....