The doctor came in at this moment and begged me to go and rest. “You
are only distressing yourself, Mrs. Blair,” he said, “and needlessly,
for he is absolutely unconscious and suffers nothing.” A pause. “My
God! why do you look at me like that?” he exclaimed, frightened out
of his wits. I think my face had caught something of that devil’s,
something of that sneer, that loathing, that mire of contempt and stark
despair.
I sank back into myself, ashamed already that mere knowledge--and such
mean vile knowledge--should so puff one up with hideous pride. No
wonder Satan fell! I began to understand all the old legends, and far
more----
I told Doctor Kershaw that I was carrying out Arthur’s last wishes. He
raised no further opposition; but I saw him sign to the male nurse to
keep an eye on me.
The sick man’s finger beckoned us. He could not speak; he traced
circles on the counterpane. The doctor (with characteristic
intelligence) having counted the circles, nodded, and said: “Yes it is
nearly seven o’clock. Time for your medicine, eh?”
“No,” I explained, “he means that he is in the seventh circle of
Dante’s Hell.”
At that instant he entered on a period of noisy delirium. Wild and
prolonged howls burst from his throat; he was being chewed unceasingly
by “Dis”; each howl signalled the meeting of the monster’s teeth.
I explained this to the doctor. “No,” said he, “he is perfectly
unconscious.”
“Well,” said I, “he will howl about eighty times more.”
Doctor Kershaw looked at me curiously, but began to count.
My calculation was correct.
He turned to me, “Are you a woman?”
“No,” said I. “I am my husband’s colleague.”
“I think it is suggestion. You have hypnotized him?”
“Never; but I can read his thoughts.”
“Yes, I remember now; I read a very remarkable paper on Mind, two years
ago.”
“That was child’s play. But let me go on with my work.”
He gave some final instructions to the nurse, and went out.
The suffering of Arthur was at this time unspeakable. Chewed as he was
into a mere pulp that passed over the tongue of “Dis,” each bleeding
fragment kept its own identity and his.
The papillae of the tongue were serpents, and each one gnashed its
poisoned teeth upon that fodder.
And yet, though the sensorium of Arthur was absolutely unimpaired,
indeed hyperaesthetic, his consciousness of pain seemed to depend
upon the opening of the mouth. As it closed in mastication, oblivion
fell upon him like a thunderbolt. A merciful oblivion? Oh! what a
master stroke of cruelty! Again and again he woke from nothing to a
hell of agony, of pure ecstasy of agony, until he understood that
this would continue for all his life, the alternation was but systole
and diastole; the throb of his envenomed pulse, the reflection in
consciousness of his blood-beat. I became conscious of his intense
longing for death to end the torture.
The blood circulated ever slower and more painfully; I could feel him
hoping for the end.
This dreadful rose-dawn suddenly greyed and sickened with doubt.
Hope sank to its nadir; fear rose like a dragon, with leaden wings.
Suppose, thought he, that after all death does not end me!
I cannot express this conception. It is not that the heart sank, it had
no whither to sink; it knew itself immortal, and immortal in a realm of
unimagined pain and terror, unlighted by one glimpse of any other light
than that pale glare of hate and of pestilence. This thought took shape
in these words:--