"This is my dear, my darling, lying here.... I have looked back. I have looked back upon such pitiless review of all my blindness, that to look forward, to live and not destroy myself, is almost heavier than I can bear.... I will bear it.... I see. I understand. I accept. Self has been the cause of all my wreckage—thought of myself, always of myself and of no other. I see that now—clearly, bitterly, I see it. And yet—and yet, O God—in the very moment of seeing it, I still thought to kill myself. That was self again. I am so rooted in self that, in the very hour of my revelation, still only of myself I thought—only of saving myself by death from these my torments, only of ending them because I could not bear to let myself endure them. All my life I have lived in self. Ah, with my eyes open—deeper shame! deeper shame!—I almost had died in self. Ah, even realising that, still I cannot tear self out of me, still I kneel here dreading to live, fearing to live, crying that it is heavier than I can bear, heavier than I can bear! Oh, what a thing is self that with such cunning can prevail, how deeply hidden, in what myriad forms disguised! Help me to see it. Keep my eyes open. Keep my eyes open....
"Well, I accept then. I will not kill myself.... Lord, since I have accepted, use this my dear, my darling, no longer for me.... This is my dear, my darling, lying here beneath thy hand. She has offered her life for mine. Let it suffice, O God. Judge me apart from her. Judge me apart from her. Judge me apart from my darling. One life came to me to open my eyes. I remained blind. He gave the deeper sacrifice—blind in my blindness I remained. Then Essie. Thy servant. My jolly little Essie. If I had killed myself, if by destroying myself I had mocked her sacrifice, mocked Thee, O God, then mightest Thou by closing Thy hand upon her have pursued me even into hell. But I accept—but I accept, O God. Therefore relieve her—therefore relieve her—therefore let suffice that which she has done....
"Am I daring to bargain? Am I stipulating, making terms, advancing a price? Remember, remember that I am new before Thee, long out of prayer, long unaccustomed to Thy ways. It is no bargain, O God. It is only confusion of these my thoughts. All that I ask is this—judge me apart from her, use her no longer for me, judge me no more through her, let that which she has done suffice. Look, I will go away from her and leave her. Whether, beneath Thy wisdom, she lives or dies shall nothing prevail with me. If she may live it shall not strengthen me—no bargain there, O God. If she must die it shall not shake me—O God, no bargain there. Judge me apart from her. I will go out of her life. I will go out from every knowledge of Thy will towards her. I will not even pray for her. I will not even pray for her lest in my heart, beneath my words, beneath my thoughts, it is in cunning that actually I am here—agreeable to forego destruction of myself if I may know that she is spared; resolved to kill myself if I be guilty of her death. Enough—enough. Let me end with that while I have clearness of vision to see it. This is my dear, my darling, lying here. I will go out from all knowledge of her. Judge me apart from her. Let that which she has done suffice."
He withdrew his hands from her hand as though in evidence of detaching himself from her. He thrust them out again to touch her and cried "Essie! Essie!" He then took them to his face.
He said: "Let me speak as a man. I will go out from her. I will live. Let me speak as a man. Let me not make vain promises, offer false protests. This is not religion. Religion, as it is lived, is nothing to me. Let me not delude myself nor seek in cunning to delude Thee. Let me not try to pretend that this that I have suffered converts me suddenly from that which I was to that which Essie is. Let me speak as a man. That is not of a moment. I am not one man in one moment, a new man in the next. I am the same. All my infirmities the same—rooted in me as my bones: bones of my spirit and no more changed than bones of my body that are rooted in my flesh. I am the same. Ay, even as I say it, I am tempted to say that I am not the same but am changed. Rescue me from that cunning. Keep me from that. Let me not even in cunning pretend, in self-delusion believe, that this hour, these thoughts, these torments I have endured will all my life remain with me. I have known penitence before. I have knelt in presence of death before. I have wept. I have vowed. Where are my tears? Where my promises? Let me speak as a man. Time swings on. That which is all the world to-day is less than dust to-morrow, That which is laid, beneath death's shadow, in penitence before Thy feet, is there in ashes, when death has winged away, to mock Thy mercy. Time swings on. Vows made in penitence—they are no more than to the drunkard his drink: delusion, forgetfulness, anodyne, courage until the spirit that has tricked the brain has gone, until the travail that has worn the soul has ebbed. Back then to fear, to baseness, as surely as night succeeds to day....
"What then? What do I purpose? What have I to offer? Lord, there is only this in me that is different: that my eyes are opened to that to which all my life they have been sealed. I have nothing to promise, nothing to vow. I have only to ask: Keep my eyes open; help me to remember this that my eyes have seen; help me to know what is self; help me to rid me of it. All my life—all my life from the beginning it has been self. Back in the London days when I was working day and night, when I was longing to be free, when I thought I was giving up my life to others, it was all self, self that was destroying me. It was not ceaseless work that wrought upon my peace of mind, robbed me of my youth; it was pitying myself, thinking of myself, contrasting my lot with that of others. It is not work nor trouble that kills a man, robs him of sleep, loses him his happiness—it is turning the stress of it inwards upon himself, never forgetting himself when occupied with it, always keeping himself before his eyes, watching himself, pitying himself. Brida knew it. 'You think too much about yourself, Phil,' she used to tell me. That old Puddlebox had the secret of it and told it me plainly. 'You think too much about yourself, boy, and that is what's the matter with you and with most of us.' He told it to me plainly. 'I don't believe a word of it,' he told me when he had heard my story. 'Your story is the same as my story and the same as everybody else's story in this way: that you've never done any thing wrong in all your life, and that all that's happened to you is what other folk have put upon you.' Ay, that was it! I thought I was sacrificing my life; I was grudging every thought of it, every moment of it given away from my own pursuits. How could I be sacrificing when in doing so I was unhappy? That is negation in terms. To sacrifice is happiness. Old Puddlebox showed it me. This my Essie showed it me. To give—to give time, money, life itself, and have compassion for oneself in giving them, that is the very pit of self, worse than self open and wilful. That is the selfishness that all my life has been my curse, my wreckage. All that ever has happened to me I have seen in terms of myself and of no other. Every trouble, every irritation that in those London days those poor things about me brought to me, I at once turned upon myself—looked at with my eyes, not with theirs; thought instantly and always, even while I helped them, how it affected me, not how it affected them. Ah, that is the heart of misery and that is the secret of happiness! To see only with one's own eyes, to judge only from one's own point, to estimate life in terms of self and of no other: that is to goad oneself on from trial to trial, from misery to misery. To see with others' eyes, to judge from their outlook upon life, to estimate life in terms of those upon whom life presses and not in terms of self: that is the secret of happiness, that is the thing in life that I have missed....
"Try me not, O God, in great things. Help me in small. In the small things, in the small, the everyday things, O God, that is where self comes—that is where I shall not see it, that is where, disguised, it will deceive me. To quarrel, to complain, to be impatient—what is it but self? Help me to put myself where each one stands that comes about me. Help me to look with their eyes—how have vexation then? There is no vexation, there is no unhappiness in all this world but what through self a man brings into it. All happiness, this world—in every hour happiness, in every remotest corner happiness. But man lives not in it but in his own world—the world that he himself creates; of which he is the centre; that, however little he be, revolves about him. That is whence is his unhappiness. Others come into his world. Ah, if he can but watch them in it with their own eyes, not with his! God! what a world this world would be if under Thy hand it were governed as man governs the world which he himself creates—as I have governed mine! Tolerance for none but self, pity for none but self, all within it judged, measured, watched in terms of self! Rid me of that! Rid me of self. Help me to see self. Help me to see with others' eyes, not with my own...."
So ends his prayer—so ends his vigil. Mr. Bickers returns, and it is towards daybreak. He looks once more at her, smiling, smiling there. He will not even pray for her. Let that which she has done suffice. Let him be judged apart from her—not strengthened if she may live, not shaken if she must die. He goes down the stairs; out into young morning spreading across the sea.