comes upon me with tremendous impetus; mechanically, almost
unconsciously, I take up a pen and write. Space opens before me and
I see a hospital ward. A blaze of light floods it. Rows of narrow
beds are there, and on one I see Tomkins--dying. I make my way to
him: now I am by his bed. I see him stretched beneath my eyes. I see
the pillow dark with the sweat of his death agony--the night-shirt
torn at his throat to get air. Have I time to consider then whether
the British public like the word night-shirt, and whether it would
not be safer to put Tomkins into a dressing-gown? The man is there
before me, dying, and he is in his night-shirt, and I must write it.
Besides, my pen is tearing on. I cannot stop--he is dying. Will he
speak before he dies? I do not know yet. His eyelids quiver, the
black veins in his throat knot up, he gasps. I bend lower: 'his
breath comes hurriedly: his eyes open and fix upon me: they are red,
vitreous but conscious: then I know he will speak, he is going to--
the next moment his half-strangled voice reaches my ear. He is
speaking, and that which I hear him say, I write: no more, no less,
no different. His voice dies away, inarticulate. I see his lips
whiten and draw back upon his teeth. His hands clutch me as a
convulsive spasm wrenches his muscles. There is a tense, rigid
silence, and then one deep-drawn groan. Nerve, limb, muscle, and
flesh collapse as the Life is set loose. The damp body sinks back,
leaving its death sweat on my arms, its gasp in my ears. Tomkins is
dead. But the impulse is not done with me yet. I cannot get out of
that hospital ward till I have done everything, passed through all
the circumstances that crop up naturally from the death of Tomkins.
There is no ' making up.' The scene is being enacted before me. It
is. It exists. It is the truth for the time being, and, as the
truth, I write it. There is the miserable girl, sobbing
convulsively, with her arms out-stretched in the bed-clothes. Can I