Kate Hatteras, resolute and exact, left the boy to watch, called a messenger by telephone, sent him to a nursing home near by, and, finding a cab, directed it to fetch, not this or that celebrity, but a doctor of the place in whom she had some confidence. Within an hour, she had in the house a nurse of some age and experience, but insufficiently refreshed with sleep; there came next all manner of appliances, and, soon after, the young doctor, nervous and smiling rhythmically, who went up to the room and gave Death a long particular name.
But Death could have no need of definition here. He was present with his most ancient titles, dominant upon a throne, ordering that infinite vast wherein the narrow walls of one poor human habitation were not seen, so tenuous were they. His armies at a summons filled the place all around: He was in his court and power.
The servants were bidden by Kate Hatteras to go and sleep. The doctor wrote some useless thing, and left it for the morning. It was past midnight. Kate Hatteras lay down in the dressing-room near by, where, some few days before, the consultation had been held; she lay down dressed, and slept, and dreamt of a lonely shore where twilight stretched out endlessly along dull sands by a silent sea. But next door, in his bed (and above him some text or other in a frame) lay Mr Burden, her good master, in the agony of that last steep beyond which, they say, is an horizon.
He muttered incoherently, with pauses of silence between, and the nurse, though lacking sleep, yet thought it her duty to watch. The September night was chilly; a fire was lit. She sat rigid and staring at the fire, till, in a longer spell of silence, her head drooped; and she living, her living body in spite of her will, fell unconscious into repose. But round the dying man were other companions.
Now this, now that, out of the long past was with him; persons and things all trivial. He spoke twice of an order—then he would bid a clerk write something ... to whom? He forgot the name ... he forgot the name. He complained of his memory; then he sighed a little, and was still.
In a moment he turned, and began his muttering again. To many friends, long dead, he spoke of the key and of his honour, and of ... of ... he sought for a name that would fit at once a traitor and a lost friend, something evil in the world;—some spirit or other. Perhaps a son. The effort strained him; he groaned again and was silent. One fixed and harassing perplexity recurred. There was something being done against his will at home; some quarrel of judgment: the children surely—or was it a servant? His wife was there by the bedside, renewing some ancient domestic difference: ... but there! he was willing to yield. Anything, anything to cool the press of fever that was gaining upon the turmoil within him: yet he wished her nearer to him and understanding more, for he was very ill; and he kept on whispering: “As you will, my dear, as you will.” Then, almost aloud: “Don’t go! ... don’t go without settling it, my heart!” But she was gone.
Mr Burden opened his eyes: he knew that he was awake: he saw the ceiling plainly, and the stucco pattern of it, above the dull light of the falling fire. His wife, the real picture of her, rushed into his mind; he knew that she had gone that very moment, shutting the door and leaving him. He could not move, for something had snapped, and all was changing; he felt himself utterly alone.
Loneliness caught him suddenly, overwhelming him; wave upon wave of increasing vastness, the boundaries leaping, more and more remote, immeasurably outwards with every slackening pulse at the temples. Then it was dark; and the Infinite wherein he sank was filled with that primeval Fear which has no name among living men: for the moment of his passage had come.
Sanctus Fortis, Sanctus Deus,
De profundis oro Te.