"How much we have had to learn since those days," Mr. Saltus remarked the last time we sat there. "It's taken bludgeoning blows, but, after all, we have absorbed something, don't you think?" He sighed.
"Yes," I said. "Our personalities thought they wanted so many things, but our egos knew we wanted only to grow, and so gave us the chance."
The mysteries and beauties of Infinity seemed to fall from the stars like blessings. Sometimes we sat there till midnight chatting over the splendors of space, cause and cosmos, kalpas of time, and creations yet to be cradled. However far we wandered in dimensional space, greater and vaster became the vistas beyond.
It is possible that these intimate talks on the abstract gave Mr. Saltus the interior poise to greet the liberating angel who even then was knocking at our door.
The end came suddenly and unexpectedly, and from a cause long supposed to be dormant. It began with a severe chill. Anything can begin that way, and I was not alarmed. Neither was the physician, who, in the absence of Dr. Darlington, was called in. Other chills, however, of greater intensity, followed in rapid succession. They were frightful, each one seeming as if it would be the last. Septic poisoning, super-induced by an internal abscess, developed into acute Bright's disease. Unable at any time to stand intense pain, he found this agony. Opiates were given, but owing to his absorption being so slow they failed to make it endurable. A hospital was the place to have taken Mr. Saltus, and St. Luke's was at the corner of our street. He could have been moved without much distress and I could have been near him. Though he fought to his utmost against crying out under his pain, at the suggestion of a hospital he shrieked:—
"I won't go to St. Luke's, and if you bring a nurse in my room I will kill her. When Toto died and you were almost out of your mind, I kept you beside me and nursed you. You cannot force me to go."
Much as it would have added to his comfort, and necessary as it was in his case to have specific care, the idea of a hospital had to be abandoned. It was hysteria, but in his condition he had to be humored. Had I brought in a nurse against his will, he, she, or both, would have been found dashed to pieces on the pavement outside; and our apartment being on the top floor, the risk was too great.
Mr. Saltus was not an easy man to take care of, for from no other hand than mine would he take food or medicine, nor would he let me leave his side for a moment. The responsibility of turning into a nurse one with such limited knowledge was not the best thing for him, but it was impossible to do otherwise. To keep his chart, give his medicine and hypodermics, and try to make him believe that he was getting better every moment, was difficult.
Though Mr. Saltus spoke of death as if he were playing hide-and-seek with it, it was offset by his lament:—
"Poor child, poor child! I am killing you, but I cannot help it, for you are the only one I can let touch me. When Snippsy gets well he will be so good that you will not like him. I'm paying a frightful karma. The Masters of Wisdom must be hastening my evolution."