I revived a little, and the faint flow of life brought back with it, as upon a creeping tide, a regret that I had opened my eyes upon the world again—that was my first thought. I had been so near the dark passage—the one terrible thing that lies in front of all living things—why had I not been permitted to cross it once and for all; why was I recalled to hope, to suffering, to fear? Then, as I grew stronger, came a fuller regret for the good, peaceful days. I had asked, I thought, so little of life, and that little had been denied. Then as I grew stronger still, there came the thought of the great treasure that had been within my grasp, and my spirit faintly cried out against the fierce injustice of the doom. But I soon fell into a kind of dimness of thought, from which even now I can hardly extricate myself—a numbness of heart, an indifference to all but the fact that from moment to moment I am free from pain.
37
Sep. 21, 1900.
I am climbing, climbing, hour by hour, slowly and cautiously, out of the darkness, as a man climbs up some dizzy crag, never turning his head—yet not back to life! I shall not achieve that.
How strange it would seem to others that I can care to write thus—it seems strange even to myself. If ever, in life, I looked on to these twilight hours, with the end coming slowly nearer, I thought I should lie in a kind of stupor of mind and body, indifferent to everything. I am indifferent, with the indifference of one in whom desire seems to be dead; but my mind is, or seems, almost preternaturally clear; and the old habit, of trying to analyse, to describe, anything that I see or realise distinctly is too strong for me. I have asked for pencil and paper; they demur, but yield; and so I write a little, which relieves the occasional physical restlessness I feel; it induces a power of tranquil reverie, and the hours pass, I hardly know how. The light changes; the morning freshness becomes the grave and solid afternoon, and so dies into twilight; till out of the dark alleys steals the gentle evening, dark-eyed and with the evening star tangled in her hair, full of shy sweet virginal thoughts and mysteries ... and then the night, and the day again.
Do I grieve, do I repine, do I fear? No, I can truthfully say, I do not. I hardly seem to feel. Almost the only feeling left me is the old childlike trustfulness in mother and nurse. I do not seem to need to tell them anything. One or other sits near me. I feel my mother’s eyes dwell upon me, till I look up and smile; but between our very minds there runs, as it were, an airy bridge, on which the swift thoughts, the messengers of love, speed to and fro. I seem, in the loss of all the superstructure and fabric of life, to have nothing left to tie me to the world, but this sense of unity with my mother—that inseparable, elemental tie that nothing can break. And she, I know, feels this too; and it gives her, though she could not describe it, a strange elation in the midst of her sorrow, the joy that a man is born into the world, and that I am hers.
A Mother’s Heart