I had no home, no shelter, no place in the world, no share in life. I was cast out. The changeless purposes of nature had ejected me from humanity. It was as though humanity had been a fortified city and the gates had been shut on me, and I was wandering round and round the unscalable smooth walls, and beating against their stone with my hands. That is a good simile, except that I could not move. Of course if I could have moved I should have gone to my wife. But I could not move. To be quite exact, I could move very slightly, perhaps about an inch or two inches, and in any direction, up or down, to left or right, backwards or forwards; this by a great straining, fatiguing effort. I was stuck there on the surface of the world, desolate and undone. It was the most cruel situation that you can imagine; far worse, I think, than any conceivable physical torture. I am perfectly sure that I would have exchanged my state, then, for the state of no matter what human being, the most agonized martyr, the foulest criminal. I would have given anything, made any sacrifice, to be once more within the human pale, to feel once more that human life was not going on without me.
There was a knocking below. My wife left that body on the bed, and came to the window and put her head out into the nocturnal, gas-lit silence of Trafalgar Road. She was within a foot of me—and I could do nothing.
She whispered: "Is that you, Mary?"
The voice of the servant came: "Yes, mum. The doctor's been called away to a case. He's not likely to be back before five o'clock."
My wife said, with sad indifference: "It doesn't matter now. I'll let you in."
She went from the room. I heard the opening and shutting of the door. Then both women returned into the room, and talked in low voices.
My wife said: "As soon as it's light you must ..." She stopped and corrected herself. "No, the nurse will be back at seven o'clock. She said she would. She will attend to all that. Mary, go and get a little rest, if you can."
"Aren't you going to put the pennies on his eyes, mum?" the servant asked.
"Ought I?" said my wife. "I don't know much about these things."
"Oh, yes, mum. And tie his jaw up," the servant said.