“Yes,” said Montague. “He’s under the car.”
The old man’s eyes had started wild with fright; and he caught Montague by the arm. “Dead!” he said. “O my God—and it might have been me!”
There was a moment’s pause. The stranger caught his breath, and whispered again: “I’m done for! I can’t stand it! it’s too much!”
Montague had noticed when he lifted the man that he was very frail and slight of build. Now he could feel that the hand that held his arm was trembling violently. It occurred to him that perhaps the man was not really hurt, but that his nerves had been upset by the shock.
And he felt certain of this a moment later, when the stranger suddenly leaned forward, clutching him with redoubled intensity, and staring at him with wide, horror-stricken eyes.
“Do you know what it means to be afraid of death?” he panted. “Do you know what it means to be afraid of death?”
Then, without waiting for a reply, he rushed on—“No, no! You can’t! you can’t! I don’t believe any man knows it as I do! Think of it—for ten years I’ve never known a minute when I wasn’t afraid of death! It follows me around—it won’t let me be! It leaps out at me in places, like this! And when I escape it, I can hear it laughing at me—for it knows I can’t get away!”
The old man caught his breath with a choking sob. He was clinging to Montague like a frightened child, and staring with a wild, hunted look upon his face. Montague sat transfixed.
“Yes,” the other rushed on, “that’s the truth, as God hears me! And it’s the first time I’ve ever spoken it in my life! I have to hide it—because men would laugh at me—they pretend they’re not afraid! But I lie awake all night, and it’s like a fiend that sits by my bedside! I lie and listen to my own heart—I feel it beating, and I think how weak it is, and what thin walls it has, and what a wretched, helpless thing it is to have your life depend on that!—You don’t know what that is, I suppose.”
Montague shook his head.