He sat that morning after breakfast with me, smoking, and complaining that the pain was very severe. But he did not look ill; and the pain suddenly left him. "Oh what bliss!" he said. "It's gone, suddenly and entirely—and now I must go out and finish my sketch."
The only two things that made me feel anxious were that he had given up smoking to a considerable extent, and that he said he meant to consult our family doctor; but he was so lively and animated—I remember one night the immense zest and intensity with which he played a game of throwing an old pack of cards across the room into the grate—that it was impossible to think that his condition was serious.
Indeed, I said good-bye to him when he went off, without the least anticipation of evil. My real hope was that he would be told he had been overdoing it, and ordered to rest; and a few days later, when I heard that this was what the doctor advised, I wrote to him suggesting that he should come and settle at Cambridge for a couple of months, do exactly what he liked, and see as much or as little of people as he liked. It seems that he showed this letter to one of the priests at Manchester, and said, "There, that is what I call a real invitation—that is what I shall do!"
Dr. Ross-Todd saw him, and told him that it was a neuralgic affection, "false angina," and that his heart was sound, but that he must diminish his work. He pleaded to be allowed to finish his imminent engagements; the doctor said that he might do that, if he would put off all subsequent ones. This was wisely done, in order to reassure him, as he was an excitable though not a timid patient. He was at Hare Street for a day or two, and his trusted servant, Mr. Reeman, tells me that he seemed ill and out of spirits. The last words he said as he drove away, looking round the lime-encircled lawn, were, "Ah! the leaves will all be gone when I come home again."
He preached at Salford on October 4, and went to Ulverston on October 5, where he conducted a mission. On October 10 he returned, and Canon Sharrock says that he arrived in great pain, and had to move very slowly. But he preached again on October 11, though he used none of the familiar gestures, but stood still in the pulpit. He suffered much after the sermon, and rested long in a chair in the sacristy. He started to go to London on the Monday morning, but had to return in the taxi, feeling too ill to travel. Then followed days of acute pain, during which he no doubt caught a severe chill. He could not sleep, and he could only obtain relief by standing up. He wandered restlessly one night about the corridors, very lightly clad, and even went out into the court. He stood for two or three hours leaning on the mantelpiece of his room, with Father Gorman sitting near him, and trying in vain to persuade him to retire to bed.
When he was not suffering he was full of life, and even of gaiety. He went one of these afternoons, at his own suggestion, to a cinema show with one of the priests, but though he enjoyed it, and even laughed heartily, he said later that it had exhausted him.
He wrote some letters, putting off many of his autumn and winter engagements. But he grew worse; a specialist was called in, and, though the diagnosis was entirely confirmed, it was found that pneumonia had set in.