Vol. VI No. 1 - Modernist Magazines Project

THE BERMONDSEY BOOK
He was light-hearted enough in all the common toil and endeavour,
and being a sensitive man, he was fortunate to be spared the humiliation
of being pitied by his fellows if they had seen into the dark caverns
of his mind.
At the end of the war, having survived the conflict with no more
injury than a slightly damaged arm, Robinson returned to the round
of civilian life still subject to moments of intense preoccupation concerning
the End. Sometimes in the stillness of the night hours he
would be seized with a sudden panic, and the vision of his childhood,
with himself as now a mature corpse mildly lamented by the curious
neighbours, would return to him.
As the years passed on, his anxiety to know the manner and time
of his passing increased, until each day became a leaf torn from that
brief calendar of existence which always confronted him. He never
mentioned to his wife the shadow that was in his heart. He knew
that he would look a fool in her eyes, even if she did not regard him
as suddenly mentally unbalanced, for he realised acutely the absurdity
of his own fears.
Nevertheless, he did once speak of them to his associates in the
office. Said he to a group of them in the lunch-interval one day, in
an offhand manner:
"Have any of you ever wondered what your end will be? It's a
very funny thing, don't you think, that none of us ever bother our
heads in the least how long remains to us? We know we've got to
come to a full-stop, but it doesn't trouble us very much."
The general laughter that greeted these jesting remarks revealed
clearly to Robinson that he was not as other men, and the talk would
have turned to sport or women at once if he had not taken another
plunge.
"Yes, but it is rather strange, isn't it? What do the majority of
people die of, I wonder?"
"Heart failure," laughed one.
"Shortage of breath," said another, and moved off.
Robinson was bitterly disappointed. The fact that he was alone in
the shadow was not comforting, and neither was the thought that he
shared his colleagues' laughter at the idea of immortality. He often
joked with them at the old idea of Heaven and Hell, and though
the belief that he would one day walk in line with his deceased
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