So life. Except, perhaps, for pain! His own pain never ceased. The only eternity that seemed conceivable, therefore, was an eternity of pain. It had become to him the last reality. What a horrible quickening had come to him of that sense for misery, that intolerable compassion, which in life he had always held to be the death of a man's natural energy! Again and again, as consciousness still fought against the last surrender, it seemed to him that he heard voices and hammerings in the mine. And while he painfully listened, from the eternal darkness about him, dim tragic forms would break in a faltering procession—men or young boys, burnt and marred and slain like himself—turning to him faces he remembered. It was as though the scorn for pity he had once flung at Marcella Maxwell had been but the fruit of some obscure and shrinking foresight that he himself should die drowned and lost in pity; for as he waited for death his soul seemed to sink into the suffering of the world, as a spent swimmer sinks into the wave.
One perception, indeed, that was not a perception of pain, this piteous submission to the human lot brought with it. The accusing looks of hungry men, the puzzles of his own wavering heart, all social qualms and compunctions—these things troubled him no more. In the wanderings of death he was not without the solemn sense that, after all, he, George Tressady, a man of no professions, and no enthusiasms, had yet paid his share and done his part.
Was there something in this thought that softened the dolorous way?
Once—nearly at the last—he opened his eyes with a start.
"What is it? Something watches me. There is a sense of something that supports—that reconciles. If—if—how little would it all matter! Oh! what is this that knows the road I came—the flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame—the lifted, shifted steeps, and all the way!" His dying thought clung to words long familiar, as that of other men might have clung to a prayer. There was a momentary sense of ecstasy, of something ineffable.
And with that sense came a rending of all barriers, a breaking of long tension, a flooding of the soul with joy. Was it a passing under new laws, into a new spiritual polity? He knew not; but as he lifted his sightless eyes he saw the dark roadway of the mine expand, and a woman, stepping with an exquisite lightness and freedom, came towards him. Neither shrank nor hesitated. She came to him, knelt by him, and took his hands. He saw the pity in her dark eyes. "Is it so bad, my friend? Have courage—the end is near." "Care for her—and keep me, too, in your heart," he cried to her, piteously. She smiled. Then light—blinding, featureless light—poured over the vision, and George Tressady had ceased to live.
End of Project Gutenberg's Sir George Tressady, Vol. II, by Mrs. Humphry Ward