HE poet lay dying. He was not a good gray poet. Indeed, some of those who pass judgments upon complex lives, with the spontaneity of simple ignorance, would no doubt have called him the bad gray poet. Though he was hardly forty, there were already snow-drifts here and there among his thick locks.
For a long while he had known that he was soon to die. Dreams had told him, and he had seen it written on the faces that looked at him in the street. The foreknowledge did not in the least trouble him. Indeed, while he was far from being a lachrymose sentimentalist, and life had for him even more zest than when he was a boy, yet he had for some time been weary of the long battle, and the news was less the threat of death than the promise of rest.
And now the rest was coming. There was only one consideration that made him cling to life; or rather, suddenly rouse himself to wrest a short reprieve. It was the last sentiment his numerous detractors would have believed of him. Like all really great poets, he was much in debt. Debt, indeed, had hovered like a raven, or rather a cloud of ravens, croaking over the whole course of his life. In his secret heart, and even in occasional outspoken utterance, he held that the world owed him far more than he owed it; yet it should not be said of him that he died in debt! Therefore he had girded himself up to one last tremendous orgy of creation, so that his creditors should be paid to the uttermost farthing. His friends, who knew nothing of the summons that had come to him, for he looked like living for years, marvelled at the sudden outburst of his energy. Sometimes, in a mood of fantastic irony, he would say to them, "Do you know what keeps me alive?" And he would answer, "My creditors"—to their shouts of derisive laughter. Imagine Pagan Wasteneys giving a thought to his creditors! But it was true for all that, as Wasteneys's familiar doctor could attest; for on one occasion Wasteneys, being taken with a sudden attack of the heart and apparently near death, had burst into tears—not at the thought of his wife, not at the thought of his two little girls, but at the thought of his creditors. After all, he was to die in debt! That thought alone obsessed him, leaving room for no other—tenderness. However, oxygen granted him still another reprieve, and once more he worked like a madman, till at last he had written enough.
Then, laying down his pen upon the desk for the last time, he said, "I am ready to die."
Thereon his valet undressed him, taking away the clothes he had worn for the last time, and the poet luxuriously stretched himself in the white bed, from which no duty would ever call him to rise again.
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 humor. 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.
"Of course I will promise no such thing," answered the lawyer.