For a long while he lay back dreamily enjoying the thought—of his readiness to die. At last he had been able to wring from life the privilege to die.
The faces of his creditors came back to him with a positive beauty, haloed, so to speak, with this last shining achievement. Honest, true-hearted men, he felt that he should care a little to look in their faces once more and shake their hands. Indeed, he almost regretted that he had to die when he thought of their honest faces. What a beautiful world—when to the eyes of a dying poet his creditors even seem beautiful!
Presently he sent for his lawyer—who had helped him through many a difficult pass—and when the lawyer had come, he stretched out his hands to him.
“Old friend,” he cried, “congratulate me. At last the bankrupt has his discharge. The court allows me to die....”
“Rubbish!” answered the lawyer; “none of your death’s-head humour. But you really mean that you have finished your book? I do indeed congratulate you....”
“Yes! My last book. Unless I should be expected to write for my living in some other world, I have written my last word, dipped my pen in ink for the last time....”
The lawyer gently bantered him. “If only it were true,” he said, “what good news for your readers!...”
“Laugh as much as you like ... but you will see. A very few days will show.”
“You fantastic fellow ... what do you mean? You know there is nothing whatever the matter with you. You cannot die without some disease, or by some accident—unless you intend to be so commonplace as to commit suicide....”
“No! none of those,” answered Wasteneys, with his odd smile; “I am going to die—out of sheer weariness; and, by the way, I want you to insist upon this epitaph being engraved upon my urn: ‘Pagan Wasteneys. Born 1866; bored to death—1905.’”