The Glimpse
IWhen I was dying I had no fear. I was simply indifferent, partly, nodoubt, through exhaustion caused by my long illness. It was a warmevening in August. We ought to have been at Blackpool, of course, but wewere in my house in Trafalgar Road, and the tramcars between Hanley andBursley were shaking the house just as usual. Perhaps not quite asusual; for during my illness I had noticed that a sort of tiredness, asoft, nice feeling, seems to come over everything at sunset of a hotsummer's day. This universal change affected even the tramcars, so thatthey rolled up and down the hill more gently. Or it may have been merelymy imagination. Through the open windows I could see, dimly, the smokeof the Cauldon Bar Iron Works slowly crossing the sky in front of thesunset. Margaret sat in my grandfather's oak chair by the gas-stove.There was only Margaret, besides the servant, in the house; the nursehad been obliged to go back to Pirehill Infirmary for the night. I don'tknow why. Moreover, it didn't matter.I began running my extraordinarily white fingers along the edge of thesheet. I was doing this quite mechanically when I noticed a look ofalarm in Margaret's face, and I vaguely remembered that playing with theedge of the sheet was supposed to be a trick of the dying. So I stopped,more for Margaret's sake than for anything else. I could not move myhead much, in fact scarcely at all; hence it was difficult for me tokeep my eyes on objects that were not in my line of vision as I laystraight on my pillows. Thus my eyes soon left Margaret's. I forgot her.I thought about nothing. Then she came over to the bed, and looked atme, and I smiled at her, very feebly. She smiled in return. She appearedto me to be exceedingly strong and healthy. Six weeks before I had beenthe strong and healthy one--I was in my prime, forty, and had atremendous appetite for business--and I had always regarded her asfragile and delicate; and now she could have crushed me without effort!I had an unreasonable, instinctive feeling of shame at being so weakcompared to her. I knew that I was leaving her badly off; we were bothgood spenders, and all my spare profits had gone into the manufactory;but I did not trouble about that. I was almost quite callous about that.I thought to myself, in a confused way: "Anyhow, I shan't be here to seeit, and she'll worry through somehow!" Nor did I object to dying. It maybe imagined that I resented death at so early an age, and being cut offin my career, and prevented from getting the full benefit of the newchina-firing oven that I had patented. Not at all! It may be imaginedthat I was preoccupied with a future life, and thinking that possibly wehad given up going to chapel without sufficient reason. No! I just laythere, submitting like a person without will or desires to the nursingof my wife, which was all of it accurately timed by the clock.I just lay there and watched the gradual changing of the sky, and,faintly, heard clocks striking and the quiet swish of my wife's dress.Once my ear would have caught the ticking of our black marble clock onthe mantelpiece; but not now--it was lost to me. I watched the gradualchanging of the sky, until the blue of the sky had darkened so that theblackness of the smoke was merged in it. But to the left there appeareda faint reddish glare, which showed where the furnaces were; this glarehad been invisible in daylight. I watched all that, and I waitedpatiently for the last trace of silver to vanish from a high part of thesky above where the sunset had been--and it would not. I would shut myeyes for an age, and then open them again, and the silver was always inthe sky. The cars kept rumbling up the hill and bumping down the hill.And there was still that soft, languid feeling over everything. And allthe heat of the day remained. Sometimes a waft of hot air moved thewhite curtains. Margaret ate something off a plate. The servant stolein. Margaret gave a gesture as though to indicate that I was asleep. ButI was not asleep. The servant went off. Twice I restrained my thin,moist hands from playing with the edge of the sheet. Then I closed myeyes with a kind of definite closing, as if finally admitting that I wastoo exhausted to keep them open.
IIDifficult to describe my next conscious sensations, when I found I wasnot in the bed! I have never described them before. You will understandwhy I've never described them to my wife. I meant never to describe themto anyone. But as you came all the way from London, Mr Myers, and seemto understand all this sort of thing, I've made up my mind to tell youfor what it's worth. Yes, what you say about the difficulty of stickingto the exact truth is quite correct. I feel it. Still, I don't think Iover-flatter myself in saying that I am a more than ordinarily truthfulman.Well, I was looking at the bed. I was not in the bed. I can't beprecisely sure where I was standing, but I think it was between the twowindows, half behind the crimson curtains. Anyhow, I must have been nearthe windows, or I couldn't have seen the foot of the bed and the couchthat is there. I could most distinctly hear Cauldon Church clock, morethan two miles away, strike two. I was cold. Margaret was leaning overthe bed, and staring at a face that lay on the pillows. At first it didnot occur to me that this face on the pillows was my face. I had toreason out that fact. When I had reasoned it out I tried to speak toMargaret and tell her that she was making a mistake, gazing at thatthing there on the pillows, and that the real one was standing in thecold by the windows. I could not speak. Then I tried to attract herattention in other ways; but I could do nothing. Once she turnedsharply, as if startled, and looked straight at me. I strove morefrantically than ever to make signs to her; but no, I could not.Seemingly she did not see.Then I thought: "I'm dead! This is being dead! I've died!"Margaret ran to the dressing-table and picked up her hand-mirror. Sherubbed it carefully on the counterpane, and then held it to the mouthand nostrils of that face on the pillows, and then examined it under thegas. She was very agitated; the whole of her demeanour had changed; Iscarcely recognized her. I could not help thinking that she was mad. Sheput down the mirror, glanced at the clock, even glanced out of thewindow (she was much closer to me than I am now to you), and then flewback to the bed. She seized the scissors that were hanging from hergirdle, and cut a hole in the top pillow, and drew from it a flock ofdown, which she carefully placed on the lips of that face. The down didnot even tremble. Then she bared the breast of the body on the bed, andlaid her ear upon the region of the heart; I could see her eyes blinkingas she listened intensely. After she had listened some time she raisedher head, with a little sob, and frantically pulled the bell-rope. Icould hear the bell; we could both hear it. There was no response;nothing but a fearful silence. Margaret, catching her breath, rushed outof the room. I was sick with the most awful disgust that I could notforce her to see where I was. I had been helpless before, when I lay inthe bed, but I was far more completely helpless now. Talk about the babeunborn!She came back with the servant, and the two women stood on either sideof the bed, gazing at that body. The servant whispered:"They do say that if you put a full glass of water on the chest you cantell for sure."Margaret hesitated. However, the servant began to fill a glass of wateron the washstand, and they poised it on the chest of that body. Not theslightest vibration troubled its surface. I was--not angry; no,tremendously disgusted is the only term I can use--at all this flummerywith that body on the bed. It was shocking to me that they shouldconfuse that body with me. I thought them silly, wilfully silly. Ithought their behaviour monstrously blind. There was I, the master ofthe house, standing chilled between the windows, and neither Margaretnor the servant would take the least notice of me!The servant said:"I'd better run for the doctor, ma'am." And she lifted off the glass."What use can the doctor be?" Margaret asked. "Only spoil the poor man'snight for nothing. And he's had a lot of bad nights lately. He told meto be--prepared."The servant said:"Yes, mum.. But I'd better run for him. That's what doctors is for."As soon as the front-door banged on the excited servant, my wife fell onthat body with a loud cry, and stroked it passionately, and I could seeher tears dropping on it. She wept without any restraint. She loved mevery much; I knew that. But the fact that she loved me only increased myhorror that she should be caressing that body, which was not me at all,which had nothing whatever to do with me, which was loathsome, vile, andas insensible as a log to the expressions of her love. She was notweeping over me. She was weeping over an abomination. She was all wrong,all tragically wrong, and I could not set her right. Her woe desolatedme. We had been happy together for sixteen years. Her error desolatedme, as a painful farce. But a slow, horrible change in my ownconsciousness made me forget her grief in my own increasing misery.
IIII do not suppose that the feeling which came over me is capable of beingdescribed in human language. It can only be hinted at, not trulyconveyed. If I say that I was utterly overcome by the sensation of beingcut off from everything, I shall perhaps not impress you very muchwith a notion of my terror. But I do not see how I can better expressmyself. No one who has not been through what I have been through--it isa pretty awful thought that all who die do probably go through it--canpossibly understand the feeling of acute and frightful loneliness thatpossessed me as I stood near the windows, that wrapped me up andenveloped me, as it were, in an icy sheet. A few people in England arepossibly in my case--they have been, and they have returned, like me.They will understand, and only they. I was solitary in the universe. Iwas invisible, and I was forgotten. There was my poor wife lavishing herimmense sorrow on that body on the bed, which had ceased to have anyconnection with me, which was emphatically not me, and to which I feltthe strongest repugnance. I was even jealous of that lifeless,unresponsive, decaying mass. You cannot guess how I tried to yell to mywife to come to me and warm me with her companionship and hersympathy--and I could accomplish nothing, not the faintest whisper.I had no home, no shelter, no place in the world, no share in life. Iwas cast out. The changeless purposes of nature had ejected me fromhumanity. It was as though humanity had been a fortified city and thegates had been shut on me, and I was wandering round and round theunscalable smooth walls, and beating against their stone with my hands.That is a good simile, except that I could not move. Of course if Icould have moved I should have gone to my wife. But I could not move. Tobe quite exact, I could move very slightly, perhaps about an inch or twoinches, and in any direction, up or down, to left or right, backwards orforwards; this by a great straining, fatiguing effort. I was stuck thereon the surface of the world, desolate and undone. It was the most cruelsituation that you can imagine; far worse, I think, than any conceivablephysical torture. I am perfectly sure that I would have exchanged mystate, then, for the state of no matter what human being, the mostagonized martyr, the foulest criminal. I would have given anything, madeany sacrifice, to be once more within the human pale, to feel once morethat human life was not going on without me.There was a knocking below. My wife left that body on the bed, and cameto the window and put her head out into the nocturnal, gas-lit silenceof Trafalgar Road. She was within a foot of me--and I could do nothing.She whispered: "Is that you, Mary?"The voice of the servant came: "Yes, mum. The doctor's been called awayto a case. He's not likely to be back before five o'clock."My wife said, with sad indifference: "It doesn't matter now. I'll letyou in."She went from the room. I heard the opening and shutting of the door.Then both women returned into the room, and talked in low voices.My wife said: "As soon as it's light you must ..." She stopped andcorrected herself. "No, the nurse will be back at seven o'clock. Shesaid she would. She will attend to all that. Mary, go and get a littlerest, if you can.""Aren't you going to put the pennies on his eyes, mum?" the servantasked."Ought I?" said my wife. "I don't know much about these things.""Oh, yes, mum. And tie his jaw up," the servant said.His eyes! His jaw! I was terribly angry, in my desolation. But itwas a futile anger, though it raged through me like a storm. Could theynot understand, would they never understand, that they were grotesquelydeceived? How much longer would they continue to fuss over that body onthe bed while I, I, the person whom they were supposed to be sorryfor, suffered and trembled in dire need just behind them?A ridiculous bother over pennies! There was only one penny in the house,they decided, after searching. I knew the exact whereabouts of twoshillings worth of copper, rolled in paper in my desk in thedining-room. It had been there for many weeks; I had brought it homeone day from the works. But they did not know. I wanted to tell them, soas to end the awful exacerbation of my nerves. But of course I couldnot. In spite of Mary's superstitious protest, my wife put a penny onone eye and half-a-crown on the other. Mary seemed to regard this as adesecration, or at best as unlucky. Then they bound up the jaw of thatbody with one of my handkerchiefs. I thought I had never seen anythingmore wantonly absurd. Their trouble in straightening the arms--the legswere quite straight--infuriated me. I wanted to weep in my tragicvexation. It seemed as though tears would ease me. But I could not weep.The servant said: "You'd better come away now, mum, and rest on the sofain the drawing-room."Margaret, with red-bordered, glittering eyes, answered, staring all thewhile at that body: "No, Mary. It's no use. I can't leave him. I won'tleave him!"But she wasn't thinking about me at all. There I was, neglected andshivering, near the windows; and she would not look at me!After an interminable palaver Margaret induced the servant to leave theroom. And she sat down on the chair nearest the bed, and began to cryagain, not troubling to wipe her eyes. She sobbed, more and more loudly,and kept touching that body. She seized my gold watch, which hung overthe bed, and which she wound up every night, and kissed it and put itback. Her sobs continued to increase. Then the door opened quietly, andthe servant, half-undressed, crept in, and without saying a word gentlyled Margaret out of the room. Margaret's last glance was at that body.In a moment the servant returned and extinguished the gas, and departedagain, very carefully closing the door. I was now utterly abandoned.
IVAll that had happened to me up to now was strange; but what followed wasstill more strange and still less capable of being described in humanlanguage.I became aware that I was gradually losing the sensation of being cutoff from intercourse, at any-rate that the sensation was losing itspainfulness. I didn't seem to care, now, whether I was neglected or not.And to be cast out from humanity grew into a matter of indifference tome. I became aware, too, of the approach of a mysterious freedom. I wasnot free, I could still move only an inch or so in any direction; but Ifelt that a process of dissolving of bonds had begun. What manner ofbonds? I don't know. I felt--that was all. My indifference slowly passedinto a sad and deep pity for the world. The world seemed to me sopathetic, so awry, so obstinate in its honest illusions, so silly in itsdishonest pretences. "Have I been content with that?" I thought,staggered. And I was sorry for what I had been. I perceived that theideals of my life were tawdry, that even the best were poor littlethings. And I perceived that it was the same with everyone, and thateven the greatest men, those men that I had so profoundly admired as ofanother clay than mine, were as like the worst as one sheep was likeanother sheep. Weep--because nature had ejected me from that pettylittle world, with its ridiculous and conceited wrongness? What an idea!Why, I said to myself, that world spends nearly the whole of its time inmoving physical things from one place to another. Change the position ofmatter--that is all it does, all it thinks of. I remembered a statesmanwho had referred to the London and North-Western Railway as being one ofthe glories of England! Parcels! Parcels! Parcels, human, brute,insensate! Nothing but parcel-moving! I smiled. And then I perceivedthat I could understand and solve problems which had defied thousands ofyears of human philosophy, problems which we on earth calledfundamental. And lo! They were not in the least fundamental, but weretrifles, as simple as Euclid. It was surprising that the solution ofthem had not presented itself to me before! I thought: With one word,one single word, I could enlighten the human race beyond all that it hasever learned. Feeble-bodied, feeble-minded humanity!And then I had a glimpse.... I was in the bedroom, near the windows, allthe time, but nevertheless I was nowhere, nowhere in space. I could feelthe roll of the earth as it turned lumberingly on its axis--a faintshaking which did not affect me. Still, I was in the bedroom, near thewindows. And I had a glimpse.... The heralds of a new vitality swepttrumpeting through me, and a calm, intense, ineffable joy followed intheir train. I had a glimpse.... And my eyes were not dazzled. I yearnedand strained towards what I saw, towards the exceeding brightness ofundreamt companionships, hopes, perceptions, activities, and sorrows.Yes, sorrows! But what noble sorrows they were that I felt awaited methere! I strained at my mysterious bonds. It seemed that they were aboutto break and that I should be winged away into other dimensions....And then, I knew that they were tightening again, and the brightnessvery slowly faded, and I lost faith in the gift of vision whichmomentarily had enabled me to see the illusions and the littleness ofthe world. And I was slowly, slowly drawn away from the window.... Andthen I felt heavy weights on my eyes, and I could not move my jaw. Ishuddered convulsively, and a coin struck the floor and ran till it fellflat. And the door swiftly opened....
VYes, my whole character is changed, within; though externally it mayseem the same. Externally I may seem to have resumed the affections andthe interests which occupied me before my illness and my remarkablerecovery. Yet I am different. Certainly I have lost again the strangetranscendental knowledge which was mine for a few instants. Certainly Ihave descended again to the earthly level. All those magic things haveslipped away, except hope. In a sure hope, in a positive faith, I amwaiting. I am waiting for all that magic to happen to me again. I knowthat the pain of loneliness, when again I shall see my own body from theoutside, will be exquisite, but--the reward! The reward! That is what isalways at the back of my mind, the source of the calm joy in which Iwait. Externally I am the successful earthenware manufacturer, happilymarried, getting rich on a china-firing oven, employing a couple ofhundred workmen, etcetera, who was once given up for dead. But I am morethan that. I have seen God.
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