Hugh, Arthur Christopher Benson [beach books TXT] 📗

lived with them in brotherly simplicity.

I did not then think he was going to die, and I certainly expected no sudden change. I ought, no doubt, to have realised that the doctors had done their best to prepare me for his death; but the mind has an instinctive way of holding out the shield of hope against such fears.

I was told at this time that he was to be left quiet, so I merely slipped in at ten o'clock. Hugh was drowsy and resting quietly; he just gave me a nod and a smile.

The one thing which made me anxious, on thinking over our interviews in the course of the day was this--that he seemed to have a preoccupation in his mind, though he had spoken cheerfully enough about various matters. It did not seem either a fear or an anxiety. It was rather that he knew that he might die, I now believe, and that he desired to live, and was thinking about all the things he had to do and wished to do, and that his trains of thought continually ended in the thought--"Perhaps I may not live to do them." He wished too, I thought, to reassure himself, and was pleased at feeling better, and at seeing that I thought him better than I had expected. He was a sensitive patient, the doctor said, and often suggested means of keeping up his strength. But he showed no fear at any time, though he seemed like one who was facing a foe; like a soldier in the trenches with an enemy opposite him whom he could not quite discern.

However, I went off to bed, feeling suddenly very tired--I had been for thirty-six hours almost without sleep, and it seemed to me as if whole days had passed since I left Cambridge. My room was far away, a little plain cell in a distant corridor high up. I slept a little; when suddenly, through the glass window above my door, I saw the gleam of a light, and became aware that someone was rapidly drawing near in the corridor. In a moment Canon Sharrock tapped and entered. He said "Mr. Benson, your brother is sinking fast--he has asked for you; he said, 'Is my brother anywhere near at hand?' and when I said yes, that you were in the house, he said, 'Thank God!' Do not lose any time; I will leave the nurse on the stairs to light you." He went out, and I put on a few things and went down the great dark arches of the staircase, with a glimmering light below, and through the throne-room with the nurse. When I came in I saw Hugh sitting up in bed; they had put a chair beside him, covered with cushions, for him to lean against. He was pale and breathing very fast, with the nurse sponging his brow. Canon Sharrock was standing at the foot of the bed, with his stole on, reading the last prayers from a little book. When I entered, Hugh fixed his eyes on me with a strange smile, with something triumphant in it, and said in a clear, natural voice, "Arthur, this is the end!" I knelt down near the bed. He looked at me, and I knew somehow that we understood each other well, that he wanted no word or demonstration, but was just glad I was with him. The prayers began again. Hugh crossed himself faintly once or twice, made a response or two. Then he said: "I beg your pardon--one moment--my love to them all." The big room was brightly lit; something on the hearth boiled over, and the nurse went across the room. Hugh said to me: "You will make certain I am dead, won't you?" I said "Yes," and then the prayers went on. Suddenly he said to the nurse: "Nurse, is it any good my resisting death--making any effort?" The nurse said: "No, Monsignor; just be as quiet as you can." He closed his eyes at this, and his breath came quicker. Presently he opened his eyes again and looked at me, and said in a low voice: "Arthur, don't look at me! Nurse, stand between my brother and me!" He moved his hand to indicate where she should stand. I knew well what was in his mind; we had talked not long before of the shock of certain sights, and how a dreadful experience could pierce through the reason and wound the inner spirit; and I knew that he wished to spare me the pain of seeing him die. Once or twice he drew up his hands as though trying to draw breath, and sighed a little; but there was no struggle or apparent pain. He spoke once more and said: "I commit my soul to God, to Mary, and to Joseph." The nurse had her hand upon his pulse, and presently laid his hand down, saying: "It is all over." He looked very pale and boyish then, with wide open eyes and parted lips. I kissed his hand, which was warm and firm, and went out with Canon Sharrock, who said to me: "It was wonderful! I have seen many people die, but no one ever so easily and quickly."

It was wonderful indeed! It seemed to me then, in that moment, strange rather than sad. He had been _himself_ to the very end, no diminution of vigour, no yielding, no humiliation, with all his old courtesy and thoughtfulness and collectedness, and at the same time, I felt, with a real adventurousness--that is the only word I can use. I recognised that we were only the spectators, and that he was in command of the scene. He had made haste to die, and he had gone, as he was always used to do, straight from one finished task to another that waited for him. It was not like an end; it was as though he had turned a corner, and was passing on, out of sight but still unquestionably there. It seemed to me like the death of a soldier or a knight, in its calmness of courage, its splendid facing of the last extremity, its magnificent determination to experience, open-eyed and vigilant, the dark crossing.


XVII


BURIAL

We had thought that he should be buried at Manchester; but a paper of directions was found saying that he wished to be buried at Hare Street, in his own orchard, at the foot of his Calvary. My mother arrived on the Monday evening, and in the course of Tuesday we saw his body for the last time, in biretta and cassock, with a rosary in his hands. He looked strangely young, like a statue carved in alabaster, with no trace of pain or weariness about him, simply asleep.

His coffin was taken to the midnight train by the clergy of the Salford Cathedral and from Buntingford station by my brother Fred to his own little chapel, where it rested all the Thursday. On the Friday the Cardinal came down, with Canons from Westminster and the choir. A solemn Requiem was sung. The Cardinal consecrated a grave, and he was laid there, in the sight of a large concourse of mourners. It was very wonderful to see them. There were many friends and neighbours, but there were also many others, unknown to me and even to each other, whom Hugh had helped and comforted in different ways, and whose deep and visible grief testified to the sorrow of their loss and to the loyalty of their affection.

I spent some strange solitary days at Hare Street in the week which followed, going over from Cambridge and returning, working through papers and letters. There were all Hugh's manuscripts and notes, his books of sermons, all the written evidences of his ceaseless energy. It was an astonishing record of diligence and patient effort. It seemed impossible to believe that in a life of perpetual travelling and endless engagements he yet had been able to accomplish all this mass of work. His correspondence too--though he had evidently destroyed all private spiritual confidences--was of wide and varied range, and it was difficult to grasp that it yet represented the work of so comparatively few years. The accumulation also of little, unknown, unnamed gifts was very great, while the letters of grief and sympathy which I received from friends of his, whose very names were unknown to me, showed how intricate and wide his personal relations had been. And yet he had carried all this burden very lightly and easily. I realised how wonderful his power must have been of storing away in his mind the secrets of many hearts, always ready to serve them, and yet able to concentrate himself upon any work of his own.

In his directions he spoke of his great desire to keep his house and chapel as much as possible in their present state. "I have spent an immense amount of time and care on these things," he said. It seemed that he had nearly realised his wish, by careful economy, to live at Hare Street quietly and without anxiety, even if his powers had failed him; and it was strange to walk as I did, one day when I had nearly finished my task, round about the whole garden, which had been so tangled and weed-choked a wilderness, and the house at first so ruinous and bare, and to realise that it was all complete and perfect, a setting of order and peace. How insecure and frail the beautiful hopes of permanence and quiet enjoyment all seemed! I passed over the smooth lawn, under the leafless limes, through the yew-tree walk to the orchard, where the grave lay, with the fading wreaths, and little paths trodden in the grass; by the hazel hedge and the rose-garden, and the ranked vegetable rows with their dying flower-borders; into the chapel with its fantasy of ornament, where the lamp burned before the shrine; through the house, with its silent panelled rooms all so finely ordered, all prepared for daily use and tranquil delight. It seemed impossible that he should not be returning soon in joyful haste, as he used to return, pleased to show his new designs and additions. But I could not think of him as having any shadow of regret about it all, or as coming back, a pathetic _revenant_, to the scene of his eager inventiveness. That was never his way, to brood over what had been done. It was always the new, the untouched, the untried, that he was in search of. Hugh never wished that he had done otherwise, nor did he indulge in the passion of the past, or in the half-sad, half-luxurious retrospect of the days that are no more. "Ah," I could fancy him saying, "that was all delightful while it lasted--it was the greatest fun in the world! But now!"--and I knew as well in my heart and mind as if he had come behind me and spoken to me, that he was moving rapturously in some new experience of life and beauty. He loved indeed to speak of old days, to recall them vividly and ecstatically, as though they were actually present to him; and I could think of him as even delighting to go over with me those last hours of his life that we spent together, not with any shadow of dread or shrinking, but just as it pleased Odysseus to tell the tale of how he sped down the whirlpool, with death beneath and death above, facing it all, taking it all in, not cherishing any delusion of hope, and yet enjoying it as an adventure of real experience which it was good to have tasted even so.

And when I came to look at some of his letters, and saw the sweet and