Death

This morning my landlord ran into my room in great agitation, telling me that his cousin, who lived a hundred yards away, had been seized with some kind of convulsions and lay dying. The doctor had been sent for, and the priest — for the man was a Catholic; but neither was yet come, and the women were terrified.

I took my hat and ran back with him, and on the very doorstep encountered the doctor; and we w^ent upstairs together.

The sick man had been got to bed, and lay there deatlily pale, with open eyes, staring out senselessly through the window opposite, which none had thought to screen: his hands were hidden, his lips were parted, and his face twitched from time to time. A woman stood by him, helpless and

IU9 anxious, nearly as pale as he; she gave a great sob of relief as we came in together.

While the doctor was at his work, I went and stood by the window looking out, wondering at the swiftness with which tragedy had suddenly dropped upon the sordid house. I wondered, too, as to a great many other things — as to the man's mind as he stared into eternity, the horror of the whole affair, the Supreme Mind which, apparently, plans such an exit from this life, and gives us all an hour of terror to which we must look forward. Why, too, I asked myself, is all so elaborate; why do we all do our utmost to prolong a life such as this, which has crept along suffering from internal pain, as I knew, for more than ten years? And my answer was that it was instinct, not reason, that inspired us; death was so shocking that there was no question but that it must be resisted with might and main as by a kind of reflex action: our efforts were scarcely defensible, but entirely necessary and natural. I thought this, and a great deal more, as I looked out on to the woods in the valley beneath. It was a windless morning, mellow and sweet; the ground fell away rapidly below, and the meadow merged presently in a slope of undergrowth that rose up into saplings and birches, and deep woods beyond. The air was like warm wine this morning, soft and invigorating: over the leafless branches there lay a velvet softness as of coming spring, and over all rose up the tender vault of blue skeined with clouds. I must confess that it was chiefly ironical horror that prevailed in my mind. It was terrible to think that a Lord of Love was supposed to be transcendent beyond that sky and immanent in this lower air and life — a Lord of Love that was Almighty, too, and could so easily have arranged all otherwise, or explained it a little to reassure us that there w^as some plan behind this apparent carelessness and brutality. Here was a chess-board of black and white — of suffering and sweetness, the dying man and the kindling woods; and what right have I to choose to say that the board is essentially white and only accidentally black? If it were I who were dying, should I not feel that agony was the truth of it all, and peace no more than an occasional incident? So far as I remember pain, it seems to me to be so.

This Lord of Love, too — what was He doing at this time, and His Mother and the saints and the hosts of impassible spirits? Were they aware of what was happening? They watch and give no sign, and the horror goes on, ruthless and inevitable.

When I turned round at a sound. Father Thorpe was at the doorway.

Now I cannot describe, except very briefly, what took place next, for I am quite unskilful in ecclesiastical matters and should no doubt blunder.

First of all, the priest came across to the table near me, drew out a little bag, all without a word, set down two doll's candles and lighted them. He spread a little linen square, put up a little crucifix; and then drew from round his neck another bag with cords. lie opened this, and set down a tiny silver thing like a watch.

Then I saw that the others were kneeling, and I knelt down too.

Presently, he was across again by the bed, kneeling by it, and telling the sick man that he was come to give him the Last Sacraments. He said that Jesus Christ had died on the Cross for his sake; that God did not ask us to do what we could not, and that He understood that confession was impossible. He must make an act of contrition, then; let him say in his heart, "My God, I am sorry for my sins because I love Thee with my whole heart."

He spoke like this for a moment or two, with a kind of brisk, but not untender, earnestness, looking steadily at the white face that stared back at him with scarcely more than a glimmer of sense; then he stood up, and pronounced, I suppose, the Absolution. Then he was back again at the table, opening the silver watch-case.

I did not like to observe very closely; but

I was aware presently that the priest was holding up the little white disc and repeating some words: then he was back again at the bedside, leaning over the dying man, and there was something resembling a tiny struggle, as the man was heaved up by his cousin and the priest bent forward....

Then the anointing began; his hands, his eyes, his ears, his nostrils, and his mouth. All, one by one, were signed by the priest's thumb; finally, the bed-clothes, already loosened, were drawn up at the end of the bed, and his feet, too, were signed and covered again.

Then, after a few more prayers and ceremonies, to which I did not attend very closely, the priest blew out the candles and went out of the room to whisper with the doctor.

Now, written down badly like this, I am aware that all this sounds most unimpressive, distinctly "vain," and probably rather superstitious. Yet all that I can say is that these ceremonies and words, the bearing of the priest, the half-intelHgent response of the sick man, who was by now clasping a crucifix and looking upon it, the sudden frozen stillness of those who assisted — in fact, the effect of the entire performance — produced an extraordinary change in me.

As I sit now in the evening writing this in my study, it appears to me that my first reflections on the tragedy and heartlessness of death were those of a stupid savage. I cannot tell what it was exactly that wrought the change; I can only say that when all was done, the change was there.

Death no longer seemed to me a sicken-ins: horror; it had turned into a warm and soothing presence; it was awful still, but with the mysterious awfulness of a great and quiet forest rather than that of a slaughter-house or a w^ind-swept icy peak with howling precipices. It was as if, after a couple of harsh notes had been struck on some instrument — notes of brutal irreconcilable contrasts, another had been added to them which resulted in a solemn sweet chord. There was no longer that shocking inconsistency between the mellow day outside and the death-sweat and mortal pains within; it was no longer true that a Lord of Love held Himself apart in some sunny Heaven and tossed this heart-breaking problem down into a venomously cruel world; it was all one now: He held both in the hollow of His Arms against His quiet Heart, in a span so vast that I could not follow it, but in an embrace so warm that I was no longer chilled.

Ah! it is not possible to say how all this came about, nor how real it was to me. I can only tell myself again that it was like a chord of music, struck without a stroke, sounding without vibration, welling out in the stillness as of an orchestra of strings and mellow horns held long to one great harmony that reconciled good and evil, pain and joy, life and death, God and nature.

I do not think that I am either heartless or sentimental. I know that there were tears on my face just now as I was told that the sick man died an hour ago, and I do not think that they would have been there if he had died in my presence before the comin<^ of the priest. Tt was that which resolved the discord and made me understand — that series of actions and incomprehensible words; the sense benealli them all that told me that God cared and had provided, and that if He allowed the death, He furnished strength to meet it. Without that 1 should have been hard and resentful and agonized; with it I was able to weep instead.

What a religion this is in which to die!

I wish that I could explain all that I mean by that, or even the effect upon me of what I witnessed. Those ceremonies were as the sliding of a key into an intricate lock; w^e cannot grasp the mysteries of the words, yet the door is open and we can look within for a few minutes. We cannot even remember or tell what it is that we have seen. I cannot even tell mvself what I saw there, except that it was not a black and empty room into which I looked. Death is not Hke that; it is sweet and friendly, as a fire-lit hall into which men may see from the darkness outside. There are, too, no doubt, other doors through which we may look; but I am sure that the same view is not seen through these. That is the least of what I mean when I say that this is the religion in which to die.

The first paper of this kind which I ever wrote was, I remember, on the Requiem on All Souls' day; and here I am back again at the same heart-shaking point, death, and what is behind death, and beneath it, and, above all, supreme over it. I wonder, as I sit here and write, whether this is possibly the conclusion of my circle; whether I have been led from death to death, as from strength to strength, looking at this and that, and making my poor little comments and drawing my cheap conclusions, and airing my sickly sentiment or my distressing humour? After all it does not matter very much. No man can do more than is in his power, as Father Thorpe said this morning, and though I am well aware of my own subhme inadequacy, there is this one hole into which 1 can creep from the wrath of the Lamb, and that is my own sorrow that I have ever offended Ilim....

Yes: this is a reHgion in which it is possible to die properly. What else but this would have served that unimaginative, middle-aged man whom I saw alive eight hours ago? He did not want sentiment, or exhortations to an emotion of which he was incapable, or adulation from friends who seek to make death easy by an insincere flattery of a life that was far from stainless. He did not even want appointments to be made with Him in Heaven, reminders that they would all meet, good, bad, and indifferent alike, at the foot of an improbable throne. He wanted a great deal more than that, and a great deal less.

He was a sinner, and he knew it, and he wished to be dealt with on that understanding. He wished to be as clean as possible, and so he was absolved; to be accompanied by God on that mysterious journey, and so he received Viaticum; to be strengthened and cleansed once more, so he was anointed; to escape — as was but natural — all pains that could be avoided, and so he received the Last Blessing. Finally, he wished to have his failing eyes cheered, and his nerveless hands supported, so the image of his Saviour was put into his grasp.

We have lived so long by our senses, counting that real which we can touch and handle, that God in His mercy allows us in all reality to do so to the end. He takes oil and bread and water and metal, and makes them, not only the symbols, but the very vehicles of what we require. "Look on that," cries the Church, as she holds up her crucifix, "there is the image of your Lord; kiss it for His sake. Look on this," as she lifts the Host, "This is He Himself — Ecce Agnus Dei 1 Taste and see that He is gracious.... Turn your hands over and feel the soft oil.... That is His mighty loving-kindness. Abandon yourself to these tliinpjs; throw your weight on thoin, and they will bear you up. Seize them, and you have hold on eternal life."

Please God, that she may say these things to me!...