"The clothes," he thought, "of the figure must have in some way or other come in contact with the gas-jet. If they once caught fire the wax would burn--the wax of the head, and then there would be plenty of material for a blaze.
"Ah, me; the clock is gone! Even if that survived, I should not mind. I was so jealous of it. I never let anyone examine it, and the things it could do will not be credited when I am dead, for I often, very often, exaggerated, and even invented, a little.
"Ay, ay, ay, the clock is gone, and the Miracle Gold, too. I am glad I never had anything really to do with it. I am sorry I was not always of the mind I was yesterday--my last day at my bench. All the time I was burying in my own grave my own small capital of life, I was missing the real gold of existence. I sought to build up fame in my clock and in that gold. Fame is for the dead. What are the dead to us? What shall I be when they bury me to myself, who walked in the sunlight and saw the trees and the flowers, and the clouds and the sea, where there were no men to remind me of my own unshapeliness? Nothing. Why should a man care for fame among people he has never seen, among the dim myriads of faces yet to come out of the womb of time, when he could have had an abiding place in the heart's ingle among those whom he knows and whose hands he can touch? What good to us will the voices of the strange men of the hereafter be? What a fool I was to think of buying the applause of strange, unborn men out of gold rent from living men, whose friend I might have been.
"I told Hanbury I was making a dying confession to him. I suppose this is a death-bed repentance. Very well. But I sinned only in thought. In order to show other men I was better than they, I was willing to be worse. Shaw is right. I am much easier here. I feel rested. I feel quiet. I have really done nothing harmful to any man. It will be a relief to get out of this husk. I will try to sleep. My poor old mother! But we cannot be separated long. It is easier to die in a body like this than to live in it."
He was very weak, and life fluttered feebly in his veins. He closed his eyes and ceased to think. The calm that comes with the knowledge that one is near the end was upon him. He did not think, he did not sleep. He lay simply gathering quiet for the great sleep. He was learning how to rest, how to lie still, how to want not, how to wait the sliding aside of the mysterious panel that the flesh keeps shut against the eyes of the spirit while the two are partners in life.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
[PATIENT AND NURSE.]
Mrs. Hanbury was greatly shocked by the news her son had given her that day about his relations with Dora. She had a conviction that it would be to John's advantage to be married. She held that, all other things being reasonably taken care of, a young man of twenty-six ought to marry and settle down to face the world in the relations and surroundings which would govern the remainder of his life. There had never been any consideration of John's sowing wild oats. He had always been studious, serious, domestic. He was the very man to marry and, in the cheerful phrase of the story book, live happy ever after.
And where could he find a wife better suited to him than in Curzon Street? Dora had every single quality a most exacting mother could desire in the wife of an only son, and Mrs. Hanbury was anything but an exacting mother. Dora's family was excellent. She was one of the most beautiful girls in London, she was extremely clever, and although she and he did not seem fully in accord in their views of some things, they agreed in the main. She was extremely clever and accomplished, and amiable, and by-and-by she should be rich. In fact, Mrs. Hanbury might have doubled this list without nearly exhausting the advantages possessed by Miss Ashton, and now it was all over between the pair. This really was too bad.
She idolized her son, and thought there were few such good young men in the world; but she was no fool about him. She had watched his growth with yearning interest from infancy to this day. She knew as well, perhaps better than anyone, that he was not perfect. She knew he was too enthusiastic, that sometimes his temper was not to be relied on. She knew he was haughty, and at rare times even scornful. She knew he had no mean estimate of his own merits, and was restive under control. But what were these faults? Surely nothing to affright any gentle and skilful woman from uniting herself with him for life. Most of his faults were those of youth and inexperience. When he was properly launched, and met other men and measured himself against them, much of his haughty self-satisfaction would disappear. Most young men who had anything in them were discontented, for they had only vague premonitions of their powers, and they felt aggrieved that the world would not take them on their own mere word at their own estimate.