In all Protestant countries I have noticed a certain hush about death,
an uncomfortable secrecy, and a fear as if of blasphemy whenever the
subject threatens to come up. Is it that hell is still felt to lie, for
the vast majority, immediately behind the curtain? Or is it that people
have encouraged themselves to live and love as if they were immortal,
and to this lifelong bluff of theirs death brings a contradiction which
they have not the courage to face? Or is it simply that death is too
painful, too sacred, or too unseemly for polite ears? That a desire
to ignore everything unpleasant is at the bottom of this convention
seems to be confirmed by an opposite attitude towards death which I
have observed among English people during this war. Some of them speak
of death quite glibly, quite cheerfully, as if it were a sort of trip
to Brighton. "Oh yes, our two sons went down in the _Black Prince_.
They were such nice boys. Never heard a word about them, of course;
but probably the magazine blew up and they were all killed quite
_instantly_, so that we don't mind half so much as if they had had any
of those bad lingering wounds. They wouldn't have liked it at all being
crippled, you know; and we all think it is probably much better as it
is. Just _blown to atoms_! It is _such_ a blessing!"
Of course, the poor parents feel their hearts sink within them in
private; but their affectation of cheerfulness has its logic. Death
is a fact; and we had better accept it as such as we do the weather;
perhaps, if we pretend not to care, we really shan't care so much. The
men in the trenches and hospitals have often been bitterly unreconciled
and rebellious, and haunted by the cruel futility of their sufferings:
but the nursing everywhere has been devoted and heroic: and my
impression of the mourning at home is, that it has been philosophical.
English manners are sensible and conducive to comfort even at a
death-bed. No summoning of priests, no great concourse of friends
and relations, no loud grief, no passionate embraces and poignant
farewells; no endless confabulations in the antechamber, no gossip
about the symptoms, the remedies, or the doctors' quarrels and
blunders; no breathless enumeration of distinguished visitors, letters,
and telegrams; no tearful reconciliation of old family feuds nor
whisperings about the division of the property. Instead, either silence
and closed doors, if there is real sorrow, or more commonly only a
little physical weariness in the mourners, a little sigh or glance
at one another, as if to say: We are simply waiting for events; the
doctors and nurses, are attending to everything, and no doubt, when
the end comes, it will be for the best. In the departing soul, too,
probably dulness and indifference. No repentance, no anxiety, no
definite hopes or desires either for this life or for the next. Perhaps
old memories returning, old loves automatically reviving; possibly a
vision, by anticipation, of some reunion in the other world: but how
pale, how ghostly, how impotent this death-dream is! I seem to overhear
the last words, the last thoughts of a mother: "Dear children, you know
I love you. Provision has been made. I should be of little use to you
any longer. How pleasant to look out of that window into the park! Be
sure they don't forget to give Pup some meat with his dog-biscuit." It
is all very simple, very much repressed, the pattering echo of daily
words. Death, it is felt, is not important. What matters is the part
we have played in the world, or may still play there by our influence.
We are not going to a melodramatic Last Judgement. We are shrinking
into ourselves, into the seed we came from, into a long winter's sleep.
Perhaps in another springtime we may revive and come again to the light
somewhere, among those sweet flowers, those dear ones we have lost.
That is God's secret. We have tried to do right here. If there is any
Beyond, we shall try to do right there also.
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