Death and Love

Thomas Crich died slowly, terribly slowly. It seemed impossible to
everybody that the thread of life could be drawn out so thin, and yet
not break. The sick man lay unutterably weak and spent, kept alive by
morphia and by drinks, which he sipped slowly. He was only half
conscious--a thin strand of consciousness linking the darkness of death
with the light of day. Yet his will was unbroken, he was integral,
complete. Only he must have perfect stillness about him.

Any presence but that of the nurses was a strain and an effort to him
now. Every morning Gerald went into the room, hoping to find his father
passed away at last. Yet always he saw the same transparent face, the
same dread dark hair on the waxen forehead, and the awful, inchoate
dark eyes, which seemed to be decomposing into formless darkness,
having only a tiny grain of vision within them.

And always, as the dark, inchoate eyes turned to him, there passed
through Gerald's bowels a burning stroke of revolt, that seemed to
resound through his whole being, threatening to break his mind with its
clangour, and making him mad.

Every morning, the son stood there, erect and taut with life, gleaming
in his blondness. The gleaming blondness of his strange, imminent being
put the father into a fever of fretful irritation. He could not bear to
meet the uncanny, downward look of Gerald's blue eyes. But it was only
for a moment. Each on the brink of departure, the father and son looked
at each other, then parted.