Page:Prophets of dissent essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche and Tolstoy (1918).djvu/53

 alone knows that Death is entering the house, he alone can feel his daughter's life withering away under the breath of the King of Terror: the sightless have a keener sensitiveness than the seeing for what is screened from the physical eye.

It would hardly be possible to name within the whole range of dramatic literature another work so thoroughly pervaded with the chilling horror of approaching calamity. The talk at the table is of the most commonplace,—that the door will not shut properly, and they must send for the carpenter to-morrow. But from the mechanism of the environment there comes cumulative and incremental warning that something extraordinary and fatal is about to happen. The wind rises, the trees shiver, the nightingales break off their singing, the fishes in the pond grow restive, the dogs cower in fear,—an unseen Presence walks through the garden. Then the clanging of a scythe is heard. A cold current of air rushes into the room. Nearer and nearer come the steps. The grandfather insists that a stranger has seated himself in the midst of the family. The lamp goes out. The bell strikes midnight. The old man is sure that somebody is rising from the table. Then suddenly the baby whose voice has never been