"I suppose I shall recover in time from Jim's death. I wish I could have been with him when he died. During his last half-unconscious moments the nurse proposed to send for a priest. Jim's soul must have made a last effort, for raising himself erect, he flung these words: 'I hire no spiritual nurse,' and then asked his daughter of fourteen to bring him a volume of Emerson and read to him. When she returned with the book, he was gone.
"Of course, the doctor and all the wise ones have diagnosed Jim's case. But I think he sized up his case in that letter I sent you. He died of that great loneliness of soul which made of his wasted body a battered barricade against the stupidity which finally engulphed him. The soul of social and individual honour and commercial integrity, he had the misfortune to find few like himself. He yearned for the ideal; and I am sure he went down with that hope for humanity. Let us trust that there is an ever increasing number of human beings who have Jim's malady—'seekers after something in this world, that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all.' If this letter seems boisterously blue, remember it is only the sullen marching of the black sap preceding the unfurling of the emerald banners of spring, when all things break into a 'shrill green.'"
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Terry's letter, like Marie's, I give verbatim.—H. H.
CHAPTER VII
The Meeting
The mood of rebellious idealism sometimes expresses itself in actual anti-social conduct and life. So it was with Terry. He is the most consistent anarchist I have known, in the sense that he more nearly rejects, practically, all social institutions and forms of conduct and morality. He is very sweet, and very gentle, loves children and is tender to every felt relation. There is a wistful look always in his eyes. He is tall, thin, and gaunt, his hair is turning grey; but there is nothing of the let-down of middle age in his nature, always tense, intense; scrupulously, deeply rebellious.