"He's dying, I do believe," thought Edwin, and the wonder of this
nocturnal adventure sent tremors down his spine. He faced the
probability that at the next bout his father would be worsted. Should
he fetch Maggie and then go for the doctor? Heve had told him that it
would be `pretty bad,' and that nothing on earth could be done. No! He
would not fetch Maggie, and he would not go for the doctor. What use?
He would see the thing through. In the solemnity of the night he was
glad that an experience tremendous and supreme had been vouchsafed to
him. He knew now what the will to live was. He saw life naked,
stripped of everything unessential. He saw life and death together.
What caused his lip to curl when the thought of the Felons' dinner
flashed through his mind was the damned complacency of the Felons. Did
any of them ever surmise that they had never come within ten miles of
life itself, that they were attaching importance to the most futile
trifles? Let them see a human animal in a crisis of Cheyne-Stokes
breathing, and they would know something about reality! ... So this was
Cheyne-Stokes breathing, that rare and awful affliction! What was it?
What caused it? What controlled its frequency? No answer! Not only
could he do naught, he knew naught! He was equally useless and ignorant
before the affrighting mystery.
Darius no longer sat up and twisted himself in the agony of the
struggles. He lay flat, resigned but still obstinate, fighting with the
only muscles that could fight now, those of his chest and throat. The
enemy had got him down, but he would not surrender. Time after time he
won a brief armistice in the ruthless altercation, and breathed deep and
long, and sighed as if he would doze, and then his enemy was at him
again, and Darius, aroused afresh to the same terror, summoned Clara in
the extremity of his anguish.
Edwin moved away, and surveyed the bed from afar. The old man was
perfectly oblivious of him. He looked at his watch, and timed the
crises. They recurred fairly regularly about every hundred seconds.
Thirty-six times an hour Darius, growing feebler, fought unaided and
without hope of aid an enemy growing stronger, and would not yield. He
was dragged to his death thirty-six times every hour, and thirty-six
times managed to scramble back from the edge of the chasm. Occasionally
his voice, demanding that Clara should not desert him, made a shriek
which seemed loud enough to wake the street. Edwin listened for any
noise in the house, but heard nothing.
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