One day, in the second hour of the afternoon, a few moments after
leaving home, there will come to you a sensation such as you have never
known before: a sudden weird fear of the light.
It seems to you that the blue sky-fire is burning down into your
brain,--that the flare of the white pavements and yellow walls is
piercing somehow into your life,--creating an unfamiliar mental
confusion,--blurring out thought.... Is the whole world taking
fire?... The flaming azure of the sea dazzles and pains like a
crucible-glow;--the green of the mornes flickers and blazes in some
amazing way.... Then dizziness inexpressible: you grope with eyes shut
fast--afraid to open them again in that stupefying torrefaction,--moving
automatically,--vaguely knowing you must get out of the flaring and
flashing,--somewhere, anywhere away from the white wrath of the sun,
and the green fire of the hills, and the monstrous color of the
sea.... Then, remembering nothing, you find yourself in bed,--with an
insupportable sense of weight at the back of the head,--a pulse beating
furiously,--and a strange sharp pain at intervals stinging through your
eyes.... And the pain grows, expands,--fills all the skull,--forces you
to cry out, replaces all other sensations except a weak consciousness,
vanishing and recurring, that you are very sick, more sick than ever
before in all your life.
... And with the tedious ebbing of the long fierce fever, all the heat
seems to pass from your veins. You can no longer imagine, as before,
that it would be delicious to die of cold;--you shiver even with all the
windows closed;--you feel currents of air,--imperceptible to nerves in
a natural condition,--which shock like a dash of cold water, whenever
doors are opened and closed; the very moisture upon your forehead is
icy. What you now wish for are stimulants and warmth. Your blood has
been changed;--tropic Nature has been good to you: she is preparing you
to dwell with her.
... Gradually, under the kind nursing of those colored people,--among
whom, as a stranger, your lot will probably be cast,--you recover
strength; and perhaps it will seem to you that the pain of lying a
while in the Shadow of Death is more than compensated by this rare and
touching experience of human goodness. How tirelessly watchful,--how
naïvely sympathetic,--how utterly self-sacrificing these women-natures
are! Patiently, through weeks of stifling days and sleepless
nights,--cruelly unnatural to them, for their life is in the open
air,--they struggle to save without one murmur of fatigue, without
heed of their most ordinary physical wants, without a thought of
recompense;--trusting to their own skill when the physician abandons
hope,--climbing to the woods for herbs when medicines prove, without
avail. The dream of angels holds nothing sweeter than this reality of
woman's tenderness.
And simultaneously with the return of force, you may wonder whether
this sickness has not sharpened your senses in some extraordinary
way,--especially hearing, sight, and smell. Once well enough to
be removed without danger, you will be taken up into the mountains
somewhere,--for change of air; and there it will seem to you, perhaps,
that never before did you feel so acutely the pleasure of perfumes,--of
color-tones,--of the timbre of voices. You have simply been
acclimated.... And suddenly the old fascination of tropic Nature seizes
you again,--more strongly than in the first days;--the _frisson_ of
delight returns; the joy of it thrills through all your blood,--making a
great fulness at your heart as of unutterable desire to give thanks....