IT was Saturday night, Bay Street was thronged, the stores brilliantly
lit. He saw in the distance the red and blue jars of illuminated water
that advertised Doctor Allhop's drugstore, and turned abruptly on his
heel. In the seclusion of his room he once more read Eliza's letter: it
was a superlative document of sweet commonsense, the soul of nobility,
of wisdom, of tenderness, of divine generosity. In its light all other
suggestions, considerations, courses, seemed tawdry and ignoble. The
boasted wisdom of a world of old men, of material experience, seemed
only the mean makeshifts for base and unworthy ends. The ecstasy
sweeping from his heart to his brain, the delicious fancies, the
rare harmonies, that haunted him, the ineffable perfume of invisible
lilacs--these were the true material from which to fashion life, these
were the high things, the important. And youth was the time to grasp
them: a swift premonition seized him of the coldness, the ineptitude,
the disease, of old age.
For the first time in his life he thought of death in definite
connection with himself: he was turning out the gas, preparatory for
sleep; and, at the instantaneous darkness, he thought, with a gasp of
fear, it would be like that. He stood trembling as a full realization of
disillusion mastered him; all his hot, swinging blood, the instinctive
longing for perpetuation aroused in him by Eliza, in sick revolt.
Fearsome images filled his mind... the hole in the clay--closed;
putrefaction; the linked mass of worms. In feverish haste he lit the
gas; his body was wet with sweat; his heart pounding unsteadily.
The familiar aspect of his room somewhat reassured him; the thought
dimmed, slowly conquered by the flooding tide of his living. Then he
realized that Eliza too must die, and his terrors vanished before a
loving pity for her earthly fragility. Finally, death itself assumed
a less threatening guise; peace stole imperceptibly into his heart. A
vague belief, new born of his passion, that dying was not the end of
all, rose within him--there must be a struggle, heights to win, gulfs
to cross, a faith to keep. With steady fingers he turned out the
gas.--Eliza was his faith: he fell into a sound slumber.