At that time, too, I was in a strange condition of mind. All I had told her was true; although I felt strong and full of life, I knew that the Angel of Death had spread his wings over me; that, in spite of my power to walk and act quickly, death was even then undermining the citadels of life. In a sense life was not real to me at all; everything was intangible, visionary. I was like a man in a dream.
It is now early in May, and, as I said to Isabella Lethbridge this morning, it is within a fortnight of the end of the year which Dr. Rhomboid gave me to live. I commenced writing this narrative last autumn, when the days were shortening and the long evenings were dreary and lonely. I feel now that I have got to the end of my story, and that I shall never tell of what may yet happen to me. I don't think I am a nervous or fanciful man, and, as far as I can remember in what I have written, there is nothing in my history to suggest that I am superstitious or carried away by old wives' tales. And yet I have a conviction that I have come to the end of my life; that I shall soon learn the great secret—if there is any secret in death. I don't feel ill, rather my body seems instinct with life; I am buoyed up by an unnatural strength; I am capable of thinking, of acting—yet something tells me that I am near the end.
I have been writing for hours, so as to bring my records up to this point. Why I have done so I cannot tell, except that I have obeyed an overmastering impulse.
At six o'clock this evening I arranged my wireless apparatus, so as to be ready for any news that should come to me. I have also sent Simpson to St. Issey with certain instructions which seem to be necessary, and I have taken all precautions of which I can think to render what I am going to try and do effective.
What will the future bring forth, I wonder? What will be the result of my plans? Will everything come to nothing, or will my dreams be realized? I know that if I acted according to the dictates of common sense, I should at once send Simpson with a long telegram to the authorities at Falmouth or Penzance. But with that strange obstinacy which possesses me I refuse to do this; I am acting according to impulse or intuition, rather than in obedience to reason.
Concerning the deeper things of life and death, I am almost as much in the dark as I was when I came here nearly a year ago; and yet not altogether. The subtle change which has come over the life of the village has affected me. The faith which has been renewed in the lives of so many people has created an atmosphere which I cannot help but breathe. Even now, although I feel death to be so near, I have a kind of intuition that I cannot die. I cannot say that I believe in God, but there is only a thin line of partition between me and that belief. Life is the same as it has been, and yet it is not the same. A new element has appeared, a new force has made itself felt, but what that force is I cannot tell.
During the last few weeks, although I have said nothing about it, I have been reading the New Testament, a book I had not looked at since I left Oxford. Especially have I studied the Gospels. They are very wonderful, in some parts sublime. But I have not learnt the secret of the Man Jesus. I cannot rid my mind of the thought that He was a visionary. And yet I don't know; there are times when I cannot get away from the belief that His words were founded on the Rock of Truth. When I came back from the prayer-meeting the other night, I felt as though Jesus said to me what He said to the man in olden times who asked Him questions, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." But everything was transitory and passed away in a moment, and I was left dull and unconvinced.
And here I leave it. I am a young man, little over thirty years of age, with life's work undone and life's problems unsolved. If this life is all, then it is a mockery, a haggard failure, an unfulfilled promise, an uncompleted plan. And yet I don't know; even although I were certain that there is nothing beyond, I am still glad that I have had my life. But if there be a Supreme Being, would He give me life and hope, and volition and possibilities, only to destroy that life? I felt as I never felt before—that my body is not my real self; that the essential I is distinct from the body. These premonitions of mine, what do they signify? Certainly they prove a sensitiveness to something which is beyond my power of understanding; but is that all?
Never did I feel as I feel now the utter uselessness of mere intellectuality, of material advancement, of scientific discovery, and the thousand other things which men strive after when divorced from faith, divorced from God. I feel that Science, Philosophy, have no answer to give me, and the wisdom of men is but as the voice of the wandering wind. If I believed in God, if I were sure of God, sure of the message which Jesus proclaimed, I could laugh at death; for I should know that out of discord would come harmony, and that out of incompleteness would come completeness. But that secret is not mine. I only dimly hope.