The Professor lingered longer than the doctor had expected. He was very weak, and could not bear the fatigue of seeing many people. But he was perfectly cheerful, and when feeling a little better at times, he would laugh and joke in his old kindly way, and seemed to enjoy the fragment of life that still remained to him.
“I am so glad I have seen the spring again,” he said, “and that I am here, in the old home.”
He liked to have the window thrown wide open, when the day was warm. Then his bed would be wheeled closer to it, so that the sunshine often lay across it, and the scent of the flowering shrubs and the odour of growth, as he called it, floated in upon him. He looked out into a world of exquisite greenery and of serene sky. The room was above the drawing-room, and if the drawing-room windows were open, he could hear Hadria playing. He often used to ask for music.
The request would come generally after an exhausting turn of pain, when he could not bear the fatigue of seeing people.
“I can’t tell you what pleasure and comfort your music is to me,” he used to say, again and again. “It has been so ever since I knew you. When I think of the thousands of poor devils who have to end their lives in some wretched, lonely, sordid fashion, after hardships and struggles and very little hope, I can’t help feeling that I am fortunate indeed, now and all through my life. I have grumbled at times, and there have been sharp experiences—few escape those—but take it all round, I have had my share of good things.”
He had one great satisfaction: that he had discovered, before the end of his days, the means which he had so long been seeking, of saving the death-agony of animals that are killed for food. Some day perhaps, he said, men might cease to be numbered among the beasts of prey, but till then, at least their victims might be spared as much pain as possible. He had overcome the difficulty of expense, which had always been the main obstacle to a practical solution of the problem. Henceforth there was no need for any creature to suffer, in dying for man’s use. If people only knew and realized how much needless agony is inflicted on these helpless creatures, in order to supply the daily demands of a vast flesh-eating population, they would feel that, as a matter of fact, he had been doing the human race a good turn as well as their more friendless fellow-beings. It was impossible to imagine that men and women would not suffer at the thought of causing suffering to the helpless, if once they realized that suffering clearly. Men and women were not devils! Theobald had always laughed at him for this part of his work, but he felt now, at the close of his life, that he could dwell upon that effort with more pleasure than on any other, although others had won him far more applause, and this had often brought him contempt. If only he could be sure that the discovery would not be wasted.
“It shall be our business to see that it is not,” said Valeria, in a voice tremulous with unshed tears.
The Professor heaved a sigh of relief, at this assurance.
“My earlier work is safe; what I have done in other directions, is already a part of human knowledge and resource, but this is just the sort of thing that might be so easily lost and forgotten. These sufferings are hidden, and when people do not see a wrong, they do not think of it; make them think, make them think!”