Edgar Saltus: The Man Part 24

Though Mr. Saltus spoke of death as if he were playing hide-and-seek with it, it was offset by his lament:--

"Poor child, poor child! I am killing you, but I cannot help it, for you are the only one I can let touch me. When Snippsy gets well he will be so good that you will not like him. I'm paying a frightful karma. The Masters of Wisdom must be hastening my evolution."

Though he spoke of recovery, it was only while I sat beside him. Upon an occasion when, anxious to be sure of an important prescription being filled accurately, I suggested going to the chemist's at the corner and leaving him with my mother, with whom Mr. Saltus was perfectly at home, he screamed so loudly that people in a neighboring apartment rushed in to offer a.s.sistance.

"Don't leave me! Don't leave me! I might die while you are away," he called out.

His illness lasted but eight days. On July 30th at three in the afternoon I saw death in his face, although neither the physician nor my mother expected it so soon. To keep him cheered and comforted was all that could be done. His horror of disagreeable things was such that, although he asked me many times a day if I thought he might die, I persistently told him that he was getting better.

It was my desire to send for Mr. Saltus' daughter, that she might see him again before the end, but fearing his reaction I did not.

At nine that night he was a little easier. The morphine was then for the first time able to deaden his agony.

"For G.o.d's sake lie down on the sofa and rest," he urged, looking at my haggard face.

Long accustomed to insomnia, I was able, as one can under great excitement, to go without sleep and almost without food for a week, but it was beginning to tell, and my hands and lips quivered.

"Do lie down. You look as if you were going to die, poor child," he urged again.

Shaking my head, for speech was beyond me, I sat still. The clock, set in the middle of bottles, pills and restoratives which had to be given at intervals during the night, ticked on.

"What of the morphine?" Mr. Saltus asked. "I am easier now; but for the morning? Have you enough?"

Again I smiled and nodded. That he could speak of a morrow was tragic.

The end came at three a. m., July 31st, while it was still dark, and was quite painless. Conscious until the last, it is doubtful if until then Mr.

Saltus realized that he was pa.s.sing out of the body. Efforts to give him nitroglycerin were futile.

Grasping the tiny Rosicrucian cross he always wore about his neck, which symbolized all that he aspired to, he put his other hand in mine.

"Mowgy!" He could say no more. It was his last word, as, casting off the fetters of the flesh, he pa.s.sed onward into the larger life, where "even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea."