The winter of the year that saw the opening of the East Haven Refuge was
one of the most severe that New England had known for generations. It
was early in January that there came the great snowstorm that spread its
two or three feet of white covering all the way from Maine to Virginia,
and East Haven, looking directly in the teeth of the blast that came
swirling and raging across the open harbor, felt the full force of the
icy tempest. The streets of the town lay a silent desert of drifting
whiteness, for no one who could help it was abroad from home that bitter
morning.
The hail and snow spat venomously against the windows of Dr. Hunt's
office in one of those fine old houses on Bay Street overlooking the
harbor. The wind roared sonorously through the naked, tortured branches
of the great elm-trees, and the snow piled sharp and smooth in fence
corners and around north gables of the house.
Dr. Hunt shuddered as he looked out of the window, for while all his
neighbors sat snug and warm around their hearths, he had to face the
raging of the icy blast upon the dull routine of his business of
mercy--the dull routine of bread-getting by comforting the afflictions
of others. Then the sleigh drew up to the gate, the driver already
powdered with the gathering whiteness, and Dr. Hunt struggled into his
overcoat, tied the ribbons of his fur cap under his chin, and drew on
his beaver gloves. Then, with one final shudder, he opened his office
door, and stepped out into the drift upon the step.
Instantly he started back with a cry: he had trodden upon a man covered
and hidden by the snow.
It was Sandy Graff. How long he had been lying there, no one might tell;
a few moments more, and the last flicker of life would have twinkled
mercifully out. The doctor had him out of the snow in a moment, and in
the next had satisfied himself that Sandy was not dead.
Even as he leaned over the still white figure, feeling the slow faint
beating of the failing heart, the doctor was considering whether he
should take Sandy into the house or not. The decision was almost
instantaneous: it would be most inconvenient, and the Refuge was only a
stone's-throw away. So the doctor did not even disturb the household
with the news of what had happened. He and the driver wrapped the
unconscious figure in a buffalo-robe and laid it in the sleigh.
As the doctor was about to step into the sleigh, some one suddenly laid
a heavy hand upon his shoulder. He turned sharply, for he had not heard
the approaching footsteps, muffled by the thick snow, and he had been
too engrossed with attention to Sandy Graff to notice anything else.
It was young Harold Singelsby; his face was very white and drawn, and
in the absorption of his own suppressed agitation he did not even look
at Sandy. "Doctor," said he, in a hoarse, constrained voice, "for God's
sake, come home with me as quickly as you can: father's very sick!"
* * * * *
_I had often wondered how it is with a man when he closes his life to
this world. Looking upon the struggling efforts of a dying man to retain
his hold upon his body, I had often wondered whether his sliding to
unconsciousness was like the dissolving of the mind to sleep in this
life._
_That death was not like sleep was at such times patent enough--it was
patent enough that it was the antithesis of sleep. Sleep is peaceful;
death is convulsed--sleep is rest; death is separation._
_That which I here following read in the book as it lay open upon the
man's knees seemed in a way dark, broken, indistinct with a certain grim
obscurity; yet if I read truly therein I distinguished this great
difference between death and sleep: Sleep is the cessation of
consciousness from an interior life to exterior thought; death is the
cessation of consciousness from the exterior mind to an interior life._
* * * * *
When Sandy Graff opened his eyes once more, it was to find himself again
within the sheltering arms of the Refuge. That awakening was almost to a
full and clear consciousness. It was with no confusion of thought and
but little confusion of sight, except for a white mist that seemed to
blur the things he saw.
He knew, instantly and vividly, where he was. Instantly and vividly
everything found its fit place in his mind--the long rows of cots; the
bald, garishly white walls, cold and unbeautiful in their immaculate
cleanliness; the range of curtainless windows looking out upon the
chill, thin gray of the winter day. He was not surprised to find himself
in the Refuge; it did not seem strange to him, and he did not wonder. He
dimly remembered stumbling through the snow-drifts and then falling
asleep, overpowered by an irresistible and leaden drowsiness. But just
where it was he fell, he could not recall.
He saw with dim sight that three or four people were gathered about his
bed. Two of them were rubbing his legs and feet, but he could not feel
them. It was this senselessness of feeling that first brought the
jarring of the truth to him. The house-steward stood near by, and Sandy
turned his face weakly toward him. "Mr. Jackson," said he, faintly, "I
think I'm going to die."
* * * * *
He turned his face again (now toward the opened window), and was staring
unwinkingly at a white square of light, and it seemed to him to grow
darker and darker. At first he thought that it was the gathering of
night, but faint and flickering as were his senses, there was something
beneath his outer self that dreaded it--that dreaded beyond measure the
coming of that darkness. After one or two efforts, in which his stiff
tongue refused to form the words he desired to speak, he said, at last,
"I can't see; it's--getting--dark."
* * * * *
He was dimly, darkly conscious of hurry and bustle around him, of voices
calling to send for the doctor, of hurrying hither and thither, but it
all seemed faint and distant. Everything was now dark to his sight, and
it was as though all this concerned another; but as outer things slipped
further and further from him, the more that inner life struggled,
tenaciously, dumbly, hopelessly, to retain its grip upon the outer
world. Sometimes, now and then, to this inner consciousness, it seemed
almost as though it were rising again out of the gathering blackness.
But it was only the recurrent vibrations of ebbing powers, for still
again, and even before it knew it, that life found itself quickly deeper
and more hopelessly in the tremendous shadow into which it was being
inexorably engulfed.
He himself knew nothing now of those who stood about the bed, awe-struck
and silent, looking down upon him; he himself sensed nothing of the
harsh convulsive breathing, and of all the other grim outer signs of the
struggle. But still, deep within, that combat of resistance to death
waged as desperately, as vividly, as ever.
* * * * *
A door opened, and at the sudden noise the dissolving life
recrystallized for one brief instant, and in that instant the dying man
knew that Dr. Hunt was standing beside his bed, and heard him say, in a
slow, solemn voice, sounding muffled and hollow, as though from far away
and through an empty space, "Colonel Singelsby has just died."
Then the cord, momentarily drawn tense, was relaxed with a snap, and
the last smoky spark was quenched in blackness.
Dr. Hunt's fingers were resting lightly upon the wrist. As the last deep
quivering breath expired with a quavering sigh, he laid the limp hand
back upon the bed, and then, before he arose, gently closed the stiff
eyelids over the staring glassy eyes, and set the gaping jaws back again
into a more seemly repose.