“No? That’s a purely professional prejudice of yours. Look at it from my point of view. Am I to wait to be strangled by invisible hands, rather than make an easy and graceful exit? Suicide! The word has no meaning for a man in my condition. If you’ll tell me there’s a chance, one mere, remote human chance—” He paused, turning to me with what was almost appeal in his glance. How I longed to lie to him! But Ned Worth was the kind that you can’t lie to. I looked at him standing there so strong and fine, with all the mirthful zest of living in his veins, sentenced beyond hope, and I thought of those terrible lines of another man under doom:
“I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.”
We medical men learn to throw a protective film over our feelings, like the veil over the eagle’s eye. We have to. But I give you my word, I could not trust my voice to answer him.
“You see,” he said; “you can’t.” His hand fell on my arm. “I’m sorry, Chris,” he said in that winning voice of his; “I shouldn’t plague you for something that you can’t give me.”
“I can tell you this, anyway,” said I: “that it’s something less than courage to give up until the time comes. You didn’t give your life. You haven’t the right to take it; anyway, not until its last usefulness is over.”
He made a movement of impatience.
“Oh, I’m not asking you to endure torture. I’d release you myself from that, if it comes to it, in spite of man-made laws. But how can you tell that being alive instead of dead next week or next month may not make an eternal difference to some other life? Your part isn’t played out yet. Who are you to say how much good you may yet do before the curtain is rung down?”
“Or how much evil! Well, as a suitable finish, suppose I go down into that garden and kill Ely Crouch,” he suggested, smiling. “That would be a beneficial enough act to entitle me to a prompt and peaceful death, wouldn’t it?”
“Theoretically sound, but unfortunately impracticable,” I answered, relieved at his change of tone.
“I suppose it is.” He looked at me, still smiling, but intent. “Chris, what do you believe comes after?”