With this terrible affliction upon me I returned to London with Dick
Doyle, who came out to Florence to fetch me home. For me, life had no
further charm. The beauties of the world which had given me so much
pleasure and happiness were blotted out for me for ever. I lived now
only in an eternal darkness which by day, when the sun shone upon my
eyes, seemed to assume a dull dark red. At first it struck me that
because my sight had been destroyed my personal appearance must have
altered, but Dick assured me that it had not. No one, he declared,
could tell by looking at my eyes that they were actually sightless.
And so I, Wilford Heaton, lived in those dull old chambers in Essex
Street, in rooms that I had never seen.
You, who have sight to read these lines, can you imagine what it is to
be suddenly struck blind? Close your eyes for a brief five minutes and
see how utterly helpless you become, how entirely dependent you are upon
others, how blank would be your life if you were always thus.
Dick gave to me all the time he could spare from his work, and would
come and sit with me to chat, for conversation with him was all that was
now left to me. He described my rooms and my surroundings with the same
minuteness with which he wrote, and tried to interest me by relating
scraps of the day's news. Yet when he was absent, away or at work in
his rooms above, I sat alone thinking for hours and hours, counting time
by the chiming of the clock of St Clement Danes.
So heavily did time hang upon my hands that at last I engaged a teacher
from the Blind School over in Lambeth, and with his books of raised
letters he used to visit me each day and teach me to read. I was an apt
pupil, I suppose, yet there was something strangely grotesque about a
man who had already graduated recommencing to learn his alphabet like a
child. Still, it saved me from being driven mad by melancholy, and it
was not long before I found that, by the exercise of pains, I could read
slowly the various embossed books, standard works manufactured for the
recreation of those unfortunates like myself, who would otherwise sit
eternally idle with their hands before them. And not only did I learn
to read, but also to make small fancy baskets, work very intricate at
first, but which, on account of the highly developed sense of touch that
I had acquired in reading, soon became quite easy.
The long months of winter darkness went by; but to me, who could not see
the sun, what mattered whether the days were brilliant August or black
December? Sometimes I went out, but not often. I had not become
proficient in finding my way by aid of a stick. I had practised a good
deal in my rooms; but for a blind man to go forth into the busy Strand
he must have perfect confidence, and be able to guide himself among the
bustling throng. Therefore, on my airings I usually went forth upon
Dick's arm, and the extent of our wanderings was the end of the
Embankment at Westminster Bridge, or around those small ornamental
gardens which extend from the Charing Cross station of the Underground
Railway up to Waterloo Bridge. Sometimes, on rare occasions, he would
take me to dine with him at the Savage Club, in Adelphi Terrace; and
men, easy-going Bohemians, whom I could not see, would warmly shake my
hand. I heard their voices--voices of artists and _litterateurs_ whose
names were as household words--sat charmed by their merry gossip of
artistic "shop," laughed at their droll stories, or listened to one or
other of the members who would recite or sing for the benefit of his
"brother Savages." Those evenings, spent amid the tobacco-smoke and
glass-jingling of the only Bohemia still existing in London, were the
happiest in all that dull, colourless, dismal life of sound and touch.
They were the only recreations left to me. Truly mine was a tristful
life.
In April, after I had lived in that dingy den six months or more, Dick
came into my room one morning and made an announcement. It was that he
had been commissioned by his paper to go as its correspondent with a
British punitive expedition on the North-West Frontier of India.
"You'll go, of course," I said, reflecting that such an offer meant both
advancement and profit. He had long ago told me that a commission as
war correspondent was his greatest ambition.
"No, my dear old fellow," his deep voice answered in a tone more grave
than usual. "I can't leave you alone."
"Nonsense!" I ejaculated. "I'm not going to allow you to fling away
such a good offer to remain with me. No, you must go, Dick. You'll be
back in three months at most, won't you?"
"Perhaps before," and his voice sounded low and strange. "But really,
old fellow, I can't go and leave you helpless, like this."
"You'll go," I said decisively. "Mrs Parker will look after me, and
three months will soon pass."
"No," he said. "It's all very well, but you can't sit here month after
month, helpless as you are. It's impossible."
"I shall amuse myself with my books and my basket-making," I answered.
Truth to tell, this announcement of his had utterly crushed me. His
society was the only bright spot in my life. If he left me I should be
entirely alone, cheerless and melancholy. Nevertheless, when the sight
is destroyed the mind is quickened, and I reflected all that this offer
meant to him, and admired his self-denial and readiness to refuse it on
my account.
Therefore I insisted that he should go. In the end he was persuaded,
and three days later left Charing Cross for India.
When he had gone I became hopelessly depressed. In vain did I try to
interest myself in the embossed books, but they were mostly works which
I had read long ago, and in vain I toiled at basket-making until my
finger-tips were sore and aching. Sometimes at evening Mrs Parker,
herself a sad scholar, would try and read a few of what she considered
the choicest morsels of the "extra special." She read very slowly and
inaccurately, poor old soul, and many were the words she was compelled
to spell and leave me to solve their meaning. Indeed, in those long
hours I spent by myself I sank lower and lower in dejection. No longer
I heard Dick's merry voice saying--
"Come, cheer up, old chap. Let me tell you all I heard to-day over at
the club."
No longer could I lean upon his arm as we descended that steep flight of
steps leading from the end of Essex Street to the Embankment; no longer
did I hear those playful words of his on such occasions--
"Take care, darling, or you'll fall."
Dear old Dick! Now, when I reflected upon it all, I saw how in my great
affliction he treated me as tenderly as he could a woman. Forlorn,
hypped, and heart-sick, I lived on from day to day, taking interest in
nothing, moping doleful and unmanned.
A single letter came from him, posted at some outlandish place in the
North-West. It was read to me by old Mrs Parker, but as Dick was a sad
scribbler, its translation was not a very brilliant success.
Nevertheless, from it I gathered how deep were his thoughts of me, and
how eager he was to complete his work and return. Truly no man had a
more devoted friend, and certainly no man was more in need of one.
As the days grew warmer, and I sat ever with the _taedium vitae_ upon
me, joyless and dispirited in that narrow world of darkness, I felt
stifled, and longed for air. Essex Street is terribly close in July,
therefore, finding the heat intolerable, I went forth at evening upon
the Embankment with Mrs Parker, and, with my stick, practised walking
alone upon that long, rather unfrequented stretch of pavement between
the railings of the Temple Gardens and the corner of Savoy Street.
Try to walk a dozen paces as one blind. Close your eyes, and tap
lightly with your stick before you as you walk, and see how utterly
helpless you feel, and how erratic are your footsteps. Then you will
know how extremely difficult I found my first essays alone. I walked
full of fear, as a child walks, stumbling, colliding, halting, and
afterwards waiting for my pitying old woman-servant to take my arm and
guide me in safety.
Yet evening after evening I went forth and steadily persevered. I had,
in the days before the world became shut out from my gaze, seen men who
were blind guiding themselves fearlessly hither and thither among the
London crowds, and I was determined, in Dick's absence, to master the
means of visionless locomotion, so that I might walk alone for health's
sake, if for nothing else. And so I continued, striving and striving.
When Mrs Parker had served my dinner, cutting it up for me just as one
places meat before a helpless infant, we went forth together, and for an
hour each evening I went out upon that wide expanse of the Embankment
pavement which formed my practice-ground.
Gradually, by slow degrees, I became proficient in guiding myself with
that constant tapping that marks a blind man's progress through the
black void which constitutes his own narrow joyless world. At last,
after several weeks of constant practice, I found to my great delight
that I could actually walk alone the whole length of the pavement,
guiding myself by intuition when encountering passers-by, and continuing
straight on without stumbling or colliding with any object, a fact which
gave me the utmost satisfaction, for it seemed to place me beyond, the
need of a constant guide. With this progress I intended to astound Dick
upon his return, and so gradually persevered towards proficiency.