The Clean Heart

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

Taking the packet, the doctor flushes. He had judged these people by the rooms they occupy—a clumsy thing to do at the seaside where frequently people must take what accommodation they can find. This man's educated bearing, perceptible despite the grief that scarcely enables him to speak, should have informed him of his mistake. Very well, he will telegraph. He cannot hold out much hope. But convey hope to those poor old folk up-stairs. Indeed, of course one knows of cases.... In these days of aeroplanes one hears of cases where terrible falls, long periods of unconsciousness, have been survived. Eh? Still—and though he is alone in the sitting-room with this the poor girl's brother he drops his voice and tells him....

She lies in her room, Mother and Dad with her. She lies there unconscious and only, under God, to wake to die. He that had stumbled before her bier, directing those who bore her, stumbles now from the house. "Kill me! Kill me!" Ah, cry that pulses as a wound within him; that he desires to cry aloud, and would cry aloud, and does wordlessly groan with his breathing. But there is agony that he endures that of speech bereaves him, of power of movement wherewith to carry out what now alone remains, numbs and denies him. There is a seat without the house upon the parade. He drops upon it, and there endures ... and there endures....

Endures! It is as if there had been discovered to him within him some vital core, some spot, some nucleus of life, some living soul and centre of him, capable of receiving the very quick and apotheosis of torture, such as all his normal body and all his normal mind delivered over to rack and irons could not have felt. There is a point in human pain where pain, numbing the centres of the mind, mercifully defeats itself and can no more. There is discovered to him within him a core, a quick, an essence of him, capable of agony to infinity, down into which, as a blunted knife, drives every thought in writhing agony. In physical agony he writhes beneath them, twisting his legs, driving his nails within his palms, bleeding with his teeth his lips.

In that flash while she fell, and falling saved him: "She has given her life for mine!" In that hour, that age, that all eternity of time while, prone and powerless, rescued upon the cliff he lay: "Twice, twice, I look upon a body lifeless to let mine live!" In that stumbling progression before her bier: "Kill me! Kill me! O vile, O worst, O foulest, unnameable thing, betake thyself to hell, if any hell be vile enough to hold thee!"

Revelation! Revelation! As she fell, as he lay, as he stumbled, as here he writhes in agony—revelation—and all his life in terrible review beneath it. "Kill me! Kill me!" he groans. "O vile, O worst, O foulest, unnameable thing, betake thyself to hell, if any hell be vile enough to hold thee!"

"Not so. Not yet," there answers him. It is as though there speak to him his thoughts with voice that peals imperatively through all his being, reverberating through him in tremendous majesty of doom, as through the aisles reverberates and makes to tremble all the air an organ's swelling thunder.

"Not so! Not yet! Thou hast not strength to move to find thy hell. Rise if thou canst. Stay, for thou must. Revelation is here. Behold thy life beneath it!"

He crouches there. Enormously it thunders all about him. "Revelation! O blind, O purblind miserable! Have not a thousand lights been thrust before thee to proclaim thee this that only now thou seest? Thou seeker after happiness! Thou greatly-to-be-pitied! Thou sufferer! Thou victim of affliction! Thou innocent! Thou greatly wronged! Is it thus thou hast seen thyself? Ah, whining wretch that thou hast been! Ah, blind, ah, purblind fool, that could not see! That first must have a life to show thee! That first must send to death he that in daily sacrifices of thy companionship had shown thee happiness was sacrifice! Blind, blind! Thou must demand death of him to try to rend thy blindness, and still wast blind, still cried to heaven of thy misery, still wast of all men most to be pitied, most oppressed! Ah, whining wretch! To her for more revelation thou must come. By her, daily, hourly revelation is thrust before thee—she, that gay, that sweet, that joyous life, whose every single, smallest thought was thought for others, and still, O soul enmired, enmeshed in blindness, thou couldst not see!—still thou must have the deeper sacrifice! One life doth not suffice thee. Another thou must have. And now thou criest: 'Revelation! Revelation!' What cost? Look, look, thou vilest, now that thine eyes are clear, now that thy soul is stirred at last from all the slime of self, self, self, where thou hast kept it—look now, and count the cost of this thy revelation. Look now! Hold up thy shuddering soul, new from its slime, to look how all thy life is strewed with sacrifices made for thee, how at each step, blind, thou hast demanded more; how two whose every slightest breath was more of beauty than all thy years have made, how two were given thee; how in thy blindness thou rebukedst them both in each devotion, in every act of love, of care, and must press on to have their lives, their broken bodies—he by the sea, she by the cliff—for this thy revelation."

Day comes to evening, evening reaches into night. "Kill me! Kill me!" he moans. "O vile, O worst, O foulest thing, O blind, let me betake myself to hell, if any hell be vile enough to hold me!"

There answers him in dreadful summons, in final roll and crash of sound: "Look back. Look back. Thou hast purchased this thy revelation. Thou hast recovered from its slime thy soul. Two lives and boundless love thou hast demanded for it. Thy price is paid. Look back, look back. Hold up that soul of thine and see the way that thou hast come. Then seek thy hell, if hell will have thee. Hold up thy soul!"