To emerge from a great illness is sometimes dreadful, sometimes divine.
To one man the return from the gates of death is a progress of despair.
He feels that he cannot face the wild contrasts of the surprising world
again, that his courage has been broken upon the wheel, that energy is
desolation, and sleep true beauty. To another this return is a
marvellous and superb experience. It is like the vivid re-awakening of
youth in one who is old, a rapture of the past committing an act of
brigandage upon the weariness of the present, a glorious substitution of
Eden for the outer courts where is weeping and gnashing of teeth. It
will be supposed that I found myself in the first category, a
terror-stricken and rebellious mortal when the fever gave me up to the
world again. For the world had always been cruel to me, because I was
afraid of it, and was a puny thing in it. Yet this was not so. My
convalescence was like a beautiful dream of rest underneath which riot
stirred. A simile will explain best exactly what I mean. Let me liken
the calm of my convalescence to the calm of earth on the edge of Spring.
What a riot of form, of scent, of colour, of movement, is preparing
beneath that enigmatic, and apparently profound, repose. In the simile
you have my exact state. And I alone felt that, within this womb of
inaction, the child, action, lay hid, developing silently, but
inexorably, day by day. This knowledge was my strange secret. It came
upon me one night when I lay awake in the faint twilight, shed by a
carefully shaded lamp over my bed. Rain drummed gently against the
windows. There was no other sound. By the fire, in a great armchair, the
trained nurse, Kate Walters, was sitting with a book--"Jane Eyre" it
was--upon her knees. I had been sleeping and now awoke thirsty. I put
out my hand to get at a tumbler of lemonade that stood on a table by my
pillow. And suddenly a thought, a curious thought, was with me. My hand
had grasped the tumbler and lifted it from the table; but, instead of
bringing my hand to my mouth I kept my arm rigidly extended, the tumbler
poised on my palm as upon the palm of a juggler.
"How long my arm is!" that was my thought, "and how strong!" Formerly it
had been short, weak, awkward. Now, surely, after my illness, my arms
would naturally be nerveless, useless things. The odd fact was that now,
for the first time in my life, I felt joy in a physical act. An absurd
and puny act, you will say, I daresay. What of that? With it came a
sudden stirring of triumph. I lay there on my back and kept my arm
extended for full five minutes by the watch that ticked by my bed-head.
And with each second that passed joy blossomed more fully within my
heart. I drank the lemonade as one who drinks a glad toast. Yet I was
puzzled. "Is this--can this be a remnant of delirium?" I asked myself.
And beneath the clothes drawn up to my chin I fingered my arm above the
elbow. It was the limb of a big, strong man. Surprise, supreme
astonishment forced an exclamation from my lips. Kate got up softly and
came towards me; but I feigned to be asleep, and she returned to the
fire. Yet, peering under my lowered eyelids, I noticed an expression of
amazement upon her young and pretty face. I knew afterwards that it was
the sound of my voice--my new voice--that drew it there. After that
night my convalescence was more than a joy to me, it was a rapture,
touched by, and mingled with something that was almost awe. Is not the
earth awe-struck when she considers that Spring and Summer nestle
silently in her bosom? With each day the secret which I kept grew more
mysterious, more profound. Soon I knew it could be a secret no longer.
The fever--it must be that!--had wrought magic within my body, driving
out weakness, impotence, lassitude, developing my physical powers to an
extent that was nothing less than astounding. Lying there in my bed, I
felt the dwarf expand into the giant. Think of it! Did ever living man
know such an experience before? A bodily spring came about within me.
And I was already twenty-two years old before the fever took me. My
limbs grew large and strong; the muscles of my chest and back were
tensely strung and knit as firmly as the muscles of an athlete. I lay
still, it is true, and felt much of the peculiar vagueness that follows
fever; but I was conscious of a supine, latent energy never known
before. I was conscious that when I rose, and went out into the world
again, it would be as a man, capable of holding his own against other
strong, straight men. That was a wonder. But it was succeeded by a
greater marvel yet.
One afternoon, while I was still in bed, Doctor Wedderburn came to see
me and to sit with me. He had been away on a holiday, and,
consequently, had not visited me before, except once when I had been
delirious. The doctor was a short, spare man, with a sharply cut
brick-red face, lively and daring dark eyes, and straight hair already
on the road to grey. His self-possession bordered on self-satisfaction;
and, despite his good heart and the real and anxious sanctity of his
life, he could seldom entirely banish from his manner the contempt he
felt for those less intellectual, less swift-minded than himself. Often
had I experienced the stinging lash of his sarcasm. Often had I withered
beneath one of his keen glances that dismissed me from an argument as a
profound sage might kick an urchin from the study into the street. Often
had I hated him with a sick hatred and ground my teeth because my mind
was so clouded and so helpless, while his was so lucent and so adroit.
So now, when I heard his tap on the door, his deep voice asking to come
in, a rage of self-contempt seized me, as in the days before my illness.
The doctor entered with an elaborate softness, and walked, flat-footed,
to my bed, pursing his large lips gently as men do when filled with
cautious thoughts. I could see he desired to moderate his habitual voice
and manner; but, arrived close to me, he suddenly cried aloud, with a
singularly full-throated amazement.
"Boy--boy, what's come to you?" he called. Then, abruptly putting his
finger to his lips, he sank down in a chair, his bright eyes fixed upon
me.
"It's a miracle," he said slowly.
"What is?" I asked with an invalid's pettishness.
"The voice, too--the voice!"