I
When I was dying I had no fear. I was simply indifferent, partly, no
doubt, through exhaustion caused by my long illness. It was a warm
evening in August. We ought to have been at Blackpool, of course, but we
were in my house in Trafalgar Road, and the tramcars between Hanley and
Bursley were shaking the house just as usual. Perhaps not quite as
usual; for during my illness I had noticed that a sort of tiredness, a
soft, nice feeling, seems to come over everything at sunset of a hot
summer's day. This universal change affected even the tramcars, so that
they rolled up and down the hill more gently. Or it may have been merely
my imagination. Through the open windows I could see, dimly, the smoke
of the Cauldon Bar Iron Works slowly crossing the sky in front of the
sunset. Margaret sat in my grandfather's oak chair by the gas-stove.
There was only Margaret, besides the servant, in the house; the nurse
had been obliged to go back to Pirehill Infirmary for the night. I don't
know why. Moreover, it didn't matter.
[Footnote A: Some years ago the editor of _Black and White_ commissioned
me to write a story for his Christmas Number. I wrote this story. He
expressed a deep personal admiration for it, but said positively that he
would not dare to offer it to his readers. I withdrew the story, and
gave him instead a frolic tale about a dentist. (See page 136.)
Afterwards, I was glad that I had withdrawn the story, for I perceived
that its theme could only be treated adequately in a novel, I
accordingly wrote the novel, which was duly published under the same
title.--A.B.]
I began running my extraordinarily white fingers along the edge of the
sheet. I was doing this quite mechanically when I noticed a look of
alarm in Margaret's face, and I vaguely remembered that playing with the
edge of the sheet was supposed to be a trick of the dying. So I stopped,
more for Margaret's sake than for anything else. I could not move my
head much, in fact scarcely at all; hence it was difficult for me to
keep my eyes on objects that were not in my line of vision as I lay
straight on my pillows. Thus my eyes soon left Margaret's. I forgot her.
I thought about nothing. Then she came over to the bed, and looked at
me, and I smiled at her, very feebly. She smiled in return. She appeared
to me to be exceedingly strong and healthy. Six weeks before I had been
the strong and healthy one--I was in my prime, forty, and had a
tremendous appetite for business--and I had always regarded her as
fragile and delicate; and now she could have crushed me without effort!
I had an unreasonable, instinctive feeling of shame at being so weak
compared to her. I knew that I was leaving her badly off; we were both
good spenders, and all my spare profits had gone into the manufactory;
but I did not trouble about that. I was almost quite callous about that.
I thought to myself, in a confused way: "Anyhow, I shan't be here to see
it, and she'll worry through somehow!" Nor did I object to dying. It may
be imagined that I resented death at so early an age, and being cut off
in my career, and prevented from getting the full benefit of the new
china-firing oven that I had patented. Not at all! It may be imagined
that I was preoccupied with a future life, and thinking that possibly we
had given up going to chapel without sufficient reason. No! I just lay
there, submitting like a person without will or desires to the nursing
of my wife, which was all of it accurately timed by the clock.
I just lay there and watched the gradual changing of the sky, and,
faintly, heard clocks striking and the quiet swish of my wife's dress.
Once my ear would have caught the ticking of our black marble clock on
the mantelpiece; but not now--it was lost to me. I watched the gradual
changing of the sky, until the blue of the sky had darkened so that the
blackness of the smoke was merged in it. But to the left there appeared
a faint reddish glare, which showed where the furnaces were; this glare
had been invisible in daylight. I watched all that, and I waited
patiently for the last trace of silver to vanish from a high part of the
sky above where the sunset had been--and it would not. I would shut my
eyes for an age, and then open them again, and the silver was always in
the sky. The cars kept rumbling up the hill and bumping down the hill.
And there was still that soft, languid feeling over everything. And all
the heat of the day remained. Sometimes a waft of hot air moved the
white curtains. Margaret ate something off a plate. The servant stole
in. Margaret gave a gesture as though to indicate that I was asleep. But
I was not asleep. The servant went off. Twice I restrained my thin,
moist hands from playing with the edge of the sheet. Then I closed my
eyes with a kind of definite closing, as if finally admitting that I was
too exhausted to keep them open.