THE DYING LIPS
There in Eulalia’s chamber lay the ray ready for Oyone to enter and
take; but, as to finding Chinnery, at the time of her start from France
Chinnery was where she would never find him.
Chinnery had made the scanty funds which she had left him last to
within two days of her liberation; then had been breadless; the little
servant had deserted him; and he had pottered forlorn.
Now, he had an income of his own, which, however, he had lost the habit
of drawing upon ever since the air-boat raid, for Oyone had found means
to prevent him, because, if he had, that would have been to reveal that
he was not dead.
But now, poverty-struck, his Oyone flown, the lone man, after one
day’s want, resolved to walk to his bankers in Fleet Street, get a
cheque-book, and draw money.
Well, it proved a terrible walk. He had known that he was living
somewhere near London, but not quite where, did not think it would be
far, and set out about eleven in the morning, hatless, for he could see
no hat, asked his way, and walked and walked, anon resting on walls.
When he got to the populous parts, he began to fancy himself
crack-brained, for the drama of humanity had been transacting itself
almost without any knowledge or concern of his, and now for the first
time his eyes lighted upon the turmoil of a London quite unlike the
London he had known. At any rate, he was very unfitted to make his way
through it; was pushed about and sandwiched; the beams of a hot and
hazy day beat into his brain that reeled for hunger, for fatigue, for
feebleness, and for burning thirst; and twice he fainted on the way.
But he knew that he must be at the bank before four, so with the
remnants of that strength of soul which had been his, he trudged
insistently, and found himself in Fleet Street about ten minutes to
four.
But the bank-doors were closed. An Englishman told him that he thought
that it had long since failed....
By this time he had a kind of sunstroke, his forehead branded red,
he hardly any more in his right mind. Dementedly he set out to make
back to his bed at Epping, and now he muttered as he trudged, and now
he chuckled, his eyes glaring wild, his gait wandering, staggery. At
the third street-corner eastward of Commercial Street he fell all his
length in the centre of the street.
This was no uncommon thing, and there he lay unaided ten, twenty
minutes amid the _mêlée_ of footsteps, until Eulalia, making homewards,
almost stepped upon him. When she bent over, she started, recognising
him.
Now, she assumed that he, in collusion with Oyone, had stolen the
Six Millions, but still moaned for him, stretched there so wrecked;
wondered what she could do; remembered the underground den of a gay
Hungarian girl whom she had nursed in Grayson Street near; and with her
begging grace, by saying “he is my brother!” got some help.
He was taken down a narrow stair into a back-room twelve foot square,
where it was difficult to see, and was put on the stupid bed, he
breathing sterterously, she searching his pockets, and on finding not
one farthing, thought, “The Six Millions did not do him much good.”
She then loosened his collar, took off his boots, covered him up, left
a note for the girl on his chest, and went away to her lodging.
It was then, while she was attending to her canary, that the cage was
shaken, and there was thunder, then a thump, then rougher thundering....
An hour later she went back with digitalis and gruel, to find the
Hungarian standing arms akimbo over him, inclined to grumble: but
Eulalia gained her, making an arrangement to share her bed with her.
Chinnery was still unconscious, and though, when he had been fed, his
eyes opened and presently recognised Eulalia, she understood that he
was dying.
She sat an hour with him, he grasping her hand, as the drowning do, and
the next day thrice came with nourishment and brandy, and sat by him.
Near seven in the evening she decided to say: “I think you will die.”
“To-night, I think,” said he.
“You are not afraid?” said she.
“Why, no,” said he: “of what?”
“Of dying,” said she.
“Why, no, dear,” said he: “I shall die almost painlessly.”
“But,” said she, still thinking of the Six Millions, “have you never
committed any sins?”
“_Sins?_” said he, with a look of alarm: “why, dear one, no. Such a
thing as a ‘sin’ is not possible in the cosmos. Everything is just-so
for the time being, don’t you know? or it would not be a cosmos, but a
disorder.”
“Oh, well, no doubt you know more about that than I. But tell me this:
would you not like to see your friend?”
“The Prince of Wales?”
“Yes.”
“I should much. But I must not ask him, dear, for I have asked him
before in vain.”
“That is strange.... He thinks so highly of no one else, I know. And he
is at home, just back from crushing the Chinese power on the sea. If
you had been conscious yesterday evening you would have felt it: there
never was half such an awful thing on earth, they say——”
“Then, he must be busy.”
“No, he will rush to you, if you can write. I have a pencil, and this
notebook—only, you won’t say that you’ve seen me, will you?”
He shrank with alarm when she presented the pencil, but when she
pressed him, partly for herself, that she might listen to the visitor’s
voice from the front apartment, he caught at the pencil, and with the
scrawl of an old man, she holding the candle, wrote.
“+Dear Teddy+: I am dying. Are you interested physiologically?
+Richard Chinnery.+”
She added the address in print-letters, folded, directed it, wrote over
the address: “_From Mr Chinnery_,” ran to find the Hungarian, sent her
in a cab, and came back to see Chinnery now asleep.
Now not twenty seconds could she sit still, but was up and down, making
snug, tugging the bed-clothes, snuffing the taper, as pale as its
paleness.
And all at once, long, long before she expected him, he was upon her,
his voice suddenly on the stair, addressing the Hungarian, her escape
utterly cut off! “_Oh, God!_” she gasped distractedly, her frocks
darting frantically about the little apartment, filling it—for one
second; in the next she was on her face under the bed—there was nowhere
else!—and, as her dress disappeared under, he entered.
Chinnery slept.
The Prince, in pea-jacket and cap, sat on the chair, which lacked a
back, and, taking up the candlestick from a box, held it over the face
on the bed—a bed very begrimed, the pillow greasy, Chinnery’s cheeks
very hollow, his forehead blanched as alabaster, like a young prophet,
and son of the prophets, prostrate in poverties and sorrows. The
Prince’s face suddenly convulsed....
“_Girl!_” he called low, and when the Hungarian looked in: “where is
this nurse you spoke of.”
That heart beneath the bed was beating quick as cats’ feet twinkling.
“She must be gone, sir,” the girl said.
“Heygate!”—one of two gentlemen looked in—“Have Sir Arthur Lloyd
(King’s Physician) quickly here.”
When he again looked down Chinnery was smiling with him, and his bent
ear, deaf since the battle, could hear: “Well, Teddy.”
“Well, Richard,” he said.
“Thanks, Teddy.”
“Richard, why have you kept so dark from me?”
“Who has? I wrote you twice.”
“Ah! I did not know.”
“Well, here you are now.... I have been much darkened and afflicted....”
“Richard, listen: you have to collect yourself. The girl who has your
air-boat, who was my prisoner, has escaped, and the Orientals are
likely to overwhelm us in it: you have to tell me its structure, and of
your ray.”
“Which ray?”
“Ah, Richard, you _must_——”
“There’s some brandy under the pillow....”
The Prince held it to the dying lips, saying: “Now, Richard, while you
can. The air-boat—I have made a model, and it wouldn’t budge——”
“Why wouldn’t it? A magnet, a keeper, the lower lines through the
keeper ‘doing work’ on a little armature, whose current goes to the
magnet-coils—have you a pencil?”
The Prince’s palm lifted toward his forehead as a sudden half-light
struck him. He quickly produced pencil and paper; Chinnery drew a few
lines; and suddenly was anew asleep.
At the same time the candle began to flicker, so the Prince stole to
the door to send off his second gentleman for candles and brandy; then
sat again; and presently again Chinnery said: “Well, Teddy.”
“Now, Richard, the ray,” said the Prince....
“Ray?”
“Richard, your Redlike Ray.”
“Ah, my Redlike Ray! Did I tell you of it? There are still far more
X-rays than known rays in nature, I think—still half of even the solar
spectrum unknown. I got a ray with only 397 millions of millions of
vibrations a second—almost hot with Herschellian rays—resembling the
two lines of rubidium, but quite faint, and paralysing to the optic
nerve-ends. It is in a black box in the Horseferry Road—or was: I think
my Oyone told me.... She has left me! she is gone. I have had much
religious joy of her, though, I confess, she has not been invariably
gentle to me. But one should be careful of the cap and wear violet
goggles, for its dropping switches on the little flame-arc that has
salts of yttrium and erbium mixed with the silvers. Then the rays are
decomposed by a lens of ruby of high refractive index, and are then
passed, polarised, through three lævo-rotatory—Have you a pencil?
Perhaps....”
His breath was at present puffing very bluffly at his lips; but
instantly the pencil was in his fingers, the Prince bringing the
flickering candle to bear with one hand, supporting the paper on his
other palm; and the drawing began, with letterings, cyphers, chemical
signs, here and there, the Prince a breathless thing in the momentous
dumbness of those moments, broken only by the breath of death and the
remote drone of London. Suddenly the candle-light darted away, and left
darkness behind it.
Chinnery sighed and dropped back; the Prince groaned.
He had no matches; none in the candlestick. He went groaning, groping.
“_Girl!_” he groaned. There was no answer. “Oh, no matches,” he moaned.
Eulalia carefully pushed forth a box of matches beyond the bed-clothes;
but he did not know.
Anyway, he felt, it was too late now; and, hearing Chinnery speaking to
himself, he moved to him, stumbling with a moan against the soap-box
before he could discover the chair.
Now his near ear could just hear Chinnery’s dreamy speech, who seemed
to be wandering a little, his tongue thick, half paralysed....
“Anæsthesia is merely a first step.... I believed that I should be able
to change each pain, as an amputation, or travail, into a corresponding
transport.... But my Megosme interfered, and that, too, I neglected....
I have been flighty, self-pleasing, ill-mixed.... But soon, I think,
God will give birth to good men ... blessed be His name.... It was to
be to smell what the microscope is to sight.... Drunken dancings to
God.... When men of much light shall come ... blessed be His name....
He teaching dances to their heart ... step-dances to their heart’s
heart.... I prophesy ... for though He slays _me_, yet do I trust in
Him.... Teddy, is it you....”
After this he said nothing audible to his friend’s deafness, and just
as a gentleman was dashing down the stair with candles and brandy, his
breathing ceased.