IV

Arthur, stung by the venomous chyle, was tossing in that vast arched

belly, which resembled the dome of hell, churned in its bubbling slime.

I felt that he was not only disintegrated mechanically, but chemically,

that his being was loosened more and more into its parts, that these

were being absorbed into new and hateful things, but that (worst of

all) Arthur stood immune from all, behind it, unimpaired, memory and

reason ever more acute as ever new and ghastlier experience informed

them. It seemed to me as if some mystic state were super-added to the

torment; for while he was not, emphatically not, this tortured mass of

consciousness, yet that was he. There are always at least two of us!

The one who feels and the one who knows are not radically one person.

This double personality is enormously accentuated at death.

Another point was that the time-sense, which with men is usually so

reliable--especially in my own case--was decidedly deranged, if not

abrogated altogether.

We all judge of the lapse of time in relation to our daily habits or

some similar standard. The conviction of immortality must naturally

destroy all values for this sense. If I am immortal, what is the

difference between a long time and a short time? A thousand years and a

day are obviously the same thing from the point of view of “for ever.”

There is a sub-conscious clock in us, a clock wound up by the

experience of the race to go for seventy years or so. Five minutes is

a very long time to us if we are waiting for an omnibus, an age if we

are waiting for a lover, nothing at all if we are pleasantly engaged or

sleeping.[1]

[1] It is one of the greatest cruelties of nature that all painful

or depressing emotions seem to lengthen time; pleasant thoughts and

exalted moods make time fly. Thus, in summing up a life from an

outside standpoint, it would seem that, supposing pleasure and pain

to have occupied equal periods, the impression would be that pain

was enormously greater than pleasure. This may be controverted.

Virgil writes: “Forsitan haec olim meminisse juvabit,” and there is

at least one modern writer thoroughly conversant with pessimism who

is very optimistic. But the new facts which I here submit overthrow

the whole argument; they cast a sword of infinite weight on that

petty trembling scale.

We think of seven years as a long time in connection with penal

servitude; as a negligibly small period in dealing with geology.

But, given immortality, the age of the stellar system itself is nothing.

This conviction had not fully impregnated the consciousness of Arthur;

it hung over him like a threat, while the intensification of that

consciousness, its liberation from the sense of time natural to life,

caused each act of the demon to appear of vast duration, although the

intervals between the howls of the body on the bed were very short.

Each pang of torture or suspense was born, rose to its crest, and died

to be reborn again through what seemed countless aeons.

Still more was this the case in the process of his assimilation by the

“demon.” The coma of the dying man was a phenomenon altogether out

of time. The conditions of “digestion” were new to Arthur, he had no

reason to suppose, no data from which to calculate the distance of, an

end. It is impossible to do more than sketch this process; as he was

absorbed, so did his consciousness expand into that of the “demon”;

he became one with all its hunger and corruption. Yet always did he

suffer as himself in his own person the tearing asunder of his finest

molecules; and this was confirmed by a most filthy humiliation of that

part of him that was rejected.

I shall not attempt to describe the final process; suffice it that

the demoniac consciousness drew away; he was but the excrement of the

demon, and as that excrement he was flung filthily further into the

abyss of blackness and of night whose name is death.

I rose with ashen cheeks. I stammered; “He is dead.” The male nurse

bent over the body. “Yes!” he echoed, “he is dead.” And it seemed as

if the whole Universe gathered itself into one ghastly laugh of hate

and horror. “Dead!”

V

I resumed my seat. I felt that I must know that all was well, that

death had ended all. Woe to humanity! The consciousness of Arthur was

more alive than ever. It was the black fear of falling, a dumb ecstasy

of changeless fear. There were no waves upon that sea of shame, no

troubling of those accursed waters by any thought. There was no hope of

any ground to that abyss, no thought that it might stop. So tireless

was that fall that even acceleration was absent; it was constant and

level as the fall of a star. There was not even a feeling of pace;

infinitely fast as it must be, judging from the peculiar dread which it

inspired, it was yet infinitely slow, having regard to the infinitude

of the abyss.

I took measures not to be disturbed by the duties that men--oh how

foolishly!--pay to the dead; and I took refuge in a cigarette.

It was now for the first time, strangely enough, that I began to

consider the possibility of helping him.

I analysed the position. It must be his thought, or I could not read

it. I had no reason to conjecture that any other thoughts could reach

me. He must be alive in the true sense of the word; it was he and not

another that was the prey of this fear ineffable. Of this fear it

was evident that there must be a physical basis in the constitution

of his brain and body. All the other phenomena had been shown to

correspond exactly with a physical condition; it was the reflection in

a consciousness from which human limitation had fallen away, of things

actually taking place in the body.

It was a false interpretation perhaps; but it was his interpretation;

and it was that which caused suffering so beyond all that poets have

ever dreamt of the infernal.

I am ashamed to say that my first thought was of the Catholic Church

and its masses for the repose of the dead. I went to the Cathedral,

revolving as I went all that had ever been said--the superstitions of

a hundred savage tribes. At bottom I could find no difference between

their barbarous rites and those of Christianity.

However that might be, I was baffled. The priests refused to pray for

the soul of a heretic.

I hurried back to the house, resumed my vigil. There was no change,

except a deepening of the fear, an intensification of the loneliness,

a more utter absorption in the shame. I could but hope that in the

ultimate stagnation of all vital forces, death would become final, hell

merged into annihilation.

This started a train of thought which ended in a determination to

hasten the process. I thought of blowing out the brains, remembered

that I had no means of doing so. I thought of freezing the body,

imagined a story for the nurse, reflected that no cold could excite in

his soul aught icier than that illimitable void of black.

I thought of telling the doctor that he had wished to bequeath his

body to the surgeons, that he had been afraid of being buried alive,

anything that might induce him to remove the brain. At that moment I

looked into the mirror. I saw that I must not speak. My hair was white,

my face drawn, my eyes wild and bloodshot.

In utter helplessness and misery I flung myself on the couch in the

study, and puffed greedily at cigarettes. The relief was so immense

that my sense of loyalty and duty had a hard fight to get me to resume

the task. The mingling of horror, curiosity, and excitement must have

aided.