I don’t know if, in my note to you, I explained exactly what had
happened. It was in this way. I was anxious to be done with my world
very early and, as soon as eight o’clock struck, I set out for the
post-office at the corner to register that parcel of letters for you.
Till the task was accomplished--the last I was to perform on earth--I
noticed nothing: I was simply in a hurry. But, having given the little
fagot into the hands of a sleepy girl, I said to myself suddenly:
“Now I _am_ dead!” I began suddenly as they say of young children, to
“notice.” A weight that I had never felt before seemed to fall away
from me. I noticed, precisely, that the girl clerk was sleepy, that, as
she reached up one hand to take the parcel over the brass caging, she
placed the other over her mouth to hide a yawn.
And out on the pavement it was most curious what had befallen the
world. It had lost all interest: but it had become fascinating, vivid.
I had not, you see, any senses left, but my eyesight and hearing.
Vivid: that is the word. I watched a newsboy throw his papers down an
area, and it appeared wonderfully interesting to discover that _that_
was how one’s papers got into the house. I watched a milkman go up
some doorsteps to put a can of milk beside a boot-scraper and I was
wonderfully interested to see a black cat follow him. They were the
clearest moments I have ever spent upon the earth--those when I was
dead. They were so clear because nothing else weighed on my attention
but just those little things. It was an extraordinary, a luxuriant
feeling. That, I imagine, must have been how Adam and Eve felt before
they had eaten of the fruit of knowledge.
Supposing I had tacitly arranged with myself that I would die in the
street, I think I should still have walked home simply to dally longer
with that delightful feeling of sheer curiosity. For it was sheer
curiosity to see how this world, which I had never looked at, really
performed before utterly unbiassed eyes.
That was why, when I got home, I sent away the messenger that brought
to me Edward Burden’s letter; there was to be no answer. Whatever
Burden’s query might be I was not going to commit myself to any other
act. My last was that of sending off the parcel to you.
My opening Burden’s letter when the messenger had gone was simply a
part of my general curiosity. I wanted to see how a Burden letter would
look when it no longer had any bearings at all for me. It was as if I
were going to read a letter from that dear Edward to a man I did not
know upon a subject of which I had never heard.
And then I was reprieved!
The good Edward, imagining that I was seriously hurt at his
having proposed to allow his wife’s solicitors to superintend my
stewardship--the good Edward in his concern had positively insisted
that all the deeds should be returned to me absolutely unchecked. He
said that he had had a hard fight for it and that the few thousands he
had borrowed from me had represented his settlement, which he had thus
paid in specie....
It chimed in wonderfully with his character, when I come to think of
it. Of course he was disciplining Miss Averies’ representatives just as
he had disciplined herself in the matter of China tea of which I have
written to you. And he had imagined that I was seriously hurt! Can you
figure to yourself such an imbecile?
But, if you permit me to continue to live, you will be saving the poor
fool from the great shock I had prepared for him--the avalanche of
discovery, the earthquake of uncertainty. For he says in that so kind
way of his that, having thus shown his entire confidence in me--in
the fact, that is, that Providence is on the side of all Burdens--he
will choose a time in the future, convenient for me, when he will go
thoroughly with me into his accounts. And inasmuch as his wedding-tour
will take him all round the world I have at least a year in which
to set things straight. And of course I can put off his scrutiny
indefinitely or deceive him for ever.
I did not think all these things at once. In fact, when I had read
his letter, so strong within me was the feeling that it was only a
mental phenomenon, a thing that had no relation with me--the feeling of
finality was so strong upon me that I actually found myself sitting in
that chair before I realized what had occurred.
What had occurred was that I had become utterly and for good your
property.
In that sense only am I reprieved. As far as Edward Burden is concerned
I am entirely saved. I stand before you and ask you to turn your thumb
up or down. For, having spoken as I have to you, I have given you a
right over me. Now that the pressing necessity for my death is over I
have to ask you whether I shall plunge into new adventures that will
lead me to death or whether I am to find some medium in which we may
lead a life of our own, in some way together. I was about to take my
life to avoid prison: now prison is no more a part of my scheme of
existence. But I must now have some means of working towards you or
I must run some new and wild risk to push you out of my thoughts. I
don’t, as you know, ask you to be my secret mistress, I don’t ask you
to elope with me. But I say that you _must_ belong to me as much in
thought as I have, in this parcel of letters, been revealed and given
over to you. Otherwise, I must once more gamble--and having tasted of
gambling in the shadow of death, I must gamble for ever in that way. I
must, I mean, feel that I am coming towards you or committing crimes
that I may forget you.
My dear, I am a very tired man. If you know what it was to long for
you as I have longed for you all these years, you would wonder that I
did not, sitting in that chair, put the ring up to my teeth, in spite
of Burden’s letter, and end it. I have an irresistible longing for
rest--or perhaps it is only your support. To think that I must face
for ever--or for as long as it lasts--this troublesome excitement
of avoiding thoughts of you--that was almost unbearable. I resisted
because I had written these letters to you. I love you and I know you
love me--yet without them I would have inflicted upon you the wound of
my death. Having written them I cannot face the cruelty to you. I mean
that, if I had died without your knowing why, it would have been only
a death grievous to you--still it is the duty of humanity and of you
with humanity to bear and to forget deaths. But now that you must know,
I could not face the cruelty of filling you with the pain of unmerited
remorse. For I know that you would have felt remorse, and it would have
been unmerited since I gave you no chance or any time to stretch out
your hands to me. Now I give it you and wait for your verdict.
For the definite alternatives are these: I will put Burden’s estate
absolutely clear within the year and work out, in order to make safe
money, the new and comparatively sober scheme of which I have written
to you: that I will do if you will consent to be mine to the extent of
sharing our thoughts alone. Or, if you will not, I will continue to
gamble more wildly than ever with the Burden money. And that in the
end means death and a refuge from you.
So then, I stand reprieved--and the final verdict is in your hands.