and trembling I stare into a dark void—and now there are wings about me,—wings of fiery scarlet!—they fill the space,—they enfold me,—they propel me,—they rush past and whirl around me, stinging me as with flying arrows and showers of hail!
· · · · ·
Let me write on,—write on, with this dead fleshly hand, ... one moment more time, dread God! ... one moment more to write the truth,—the terrible truth of Death whose darkest secret, Life, is unknown to men! I live!—a new, strong, impetuous vitality possesses me, though my mortal body is nearly dead. Faint gasps and weak shudderings affect it still,—and I, outside it and no longer of it, propel its perishing hand to write these final words—I live! To my despair and horror,—to my remorse and agony, I live!—oh the unspeakable misery of this new life! And worst of all,—God whom I doubted, God whom I was taught to deny, this wronged, blasphemed, and outraged God EXISTS! And I could have found Him had I chosen,—this knowledge is forced upon me as I am torn from hence,—it is shouted at me by a thousand wailing voices! ... too late!—too late!—the scarlet wings beat me downward,—these strange half-shapeless forms close round and drive me onward ... to a further darkness, ... amid wind and fire!
· · · · ·
Serve me, dead hand, once more ere I depart, ... my tortured spirit must seize and compel you to write down this thing unnameable, that earthly eyes may read, and earthly souls take timely warning! ... I know at last WHOM I have loved!—whom I have chosen, whom I have worshipped! ... Oh God, have mercy! ... I know WHO claims my worship now, and drags me into yonder rolling world of flame!... his name is ”
Here the manuscript ended,
—incomplete and broken off [p 424] abruptly,—and there was a blot on the last sentence as though the pen had been violently wrenched from the dying fingers and hastily flung down.
The clock in the west room again chimed the hour. I rose stiffly from my chair, trembling,—my self-possession was giving way, and I began to feel at last unnerved. I looked askance at my dead wife,—she, who with a superhuman dying effort had declared herself to be yet alive,—who, in some imaginable strange way had seemingly written after death, in a frantic desire to make some appalling declaration which nevertheless remained undeclared. The rigid figure of the corpse had now real terrors for me,—I dared not touch it,—I scarcely dared look at it, ... in some dim inscrutable fashion I felt as if “scarlet wings” environed it, beating me down, yet pressing me on,—me too, in my turn! With the manuscript gathered close in my hand, I bent nervously forward to blow out the wax lights on the toilet table, ... I saw on the floor the handkerchief odorous with the French perfume the dead woman had written of,—I picked it up and placed it near her where she sat, grinning hideously at her own mirrored ghastliness. The flash of the jewelled serpent round her waist caught my eyes anew as I did this, and I stared for a moment at its green glitter, dumbly fascinated,—then, moving stealthily, with the cold sweat pouring down my back and every pulse in me rendered feeble by sheer horror, I turned to leave the room. As I reached the portiére and lifted it, some instinct made me look back at the dread picture of the leading “society” beauty sitting stark and livid pale before her own stark and livid-pale image in the glass,—what a “fashion-plate” she would make now, I thought, for a frivolous and hypocritical “ladies’ paper!”
“You say you are not dead, Sibyl!” I muttered aloud—“Not dead, but living! Then, if you are alive, where are you, Sibyl?——where are you?”
The heavy silence seemed fraught with fearful meaning,—the light of the electric lamps on the corpse and on the shimmering silk garment wrapped round it appeared unearthly,—and [p 425] the perfume in the room had a grave-like earthy smell. A panic seized me, and dragging frantically at the portiére till all its velvet folds were drawn thickly together, I made haste to shut out from my sight the horrible figure of the woman whose bodily fairness I had loved in the customary way of sensual men,—and left her without so much as a pardoning or pitying kiss of farewell on the cold brow. For, ... after all I had Myself to think of, ... and She was dead!