CHAPTER V
I awoke in broad sunlight. The room was full of it, and the scent of flowers floated in through the open windows and mingled with the faint smell of drugs. For some time I lay there quietly, too languid to make a movement or to speak. Then the door softly opened, and I saw Mrs. Carroll come in and stand beside my bed. "Is he asleep?" I heard her ask, for I had closed my eyes. I opened them and looked up at her.
"No," I answered, smiling.
She smiled, too. "It's time for you to take your medicine," and the nurse came forward to give it to me. When I had swallowed it, I lay back among the soft pillows deliciously. . . . .
The memory of my convalescence is a strange one, for it came at a time when certain physical changes were taking place within me, and I seemed to myself to be somehow different from what I had been before I fell ill. My voice had altered; my mind was coloured by vague and happy dreams. Sometimes when I turned in bed or stretched myself, the contact of the fine linen sheets against my skin gave me a peculiar thrill, which ran all down my spine. It appeared I had been very ill, that it had been a touch-and-go matter whether I should manage to pull through; yet now I did not feel that I wanted to get well too quickly. The flowers, the fruit, the brightness, the big delightful room—so different from my room at home—the care everybody took of me, the books that were read to me, the sense of being here so securely, with everything just as I liked it, and with Mrs. Carroll to look after me—all that was delicious. The one jarring note was my father's letter, which I read, and then put back in its envelope. It was about my escape, how near to death I had been, and how he hoped the mercy that had been shown me would make me think seriously. I did not want to think seriously: I wanted to bask in the sunshine of these pleasant days while they lasted. If I had died it would have been all over by this time, and since I hadn't, why should I be different? It seemed to me hardly the time to talk of God's mercy, seeing that I had barely scraped through a severe illness. It was like thanking a man, who has just broken your head with a stick, for not killing you outright. My father talked of a miracle, but I had slender faith in miracles, and I regret to say his entire letter struck me as amazingly unintelligent. In a kind of lazy and sublime egotism I began to ponder on the oddity of a man like my father having a son such as I was; and while I was engaged with these speculations Mrs. Carroll sat beside me, playing "patience." She told me my father could not come to see me for fear of carrying the infection to school, and I received these tidings with an immense relief, for I had been dreading that he would want to talk to me about death, and perhaps make me join in returning thanks for my recovery. I watched her as she sat there, her plump hands drawing out the cards, her eyes seriously scanning the faces of those already turned up. She was a large, placid lady, stout and ruddy. She must always, even in her earliest youth, have been plain, but her face was filled with an extraordinary kindness that made it infinitely pleasant. It was not the sort of kindness which can be simulated; it was something that was a natural part of her, and was reflected in all she did and said. It had moulded the expression of her continuance, just as time and weather will alter the features of a statue. Her eyes were small and gray, and she wore gold-rimmed spectacles, which, somehow, were becoming to her. I never saw her dressed in anything but black, and with a light lace cap on her gray hair. She was extremely fond of mc, and I knew it, and I'm afraid imposed upon it, though I loved her sincerely. At that time it appeared to mc perfectly natural that she should be fond of me; it was simply a part of the order of things ; it had always been so, and I couldn't have imagined anything else. It never even occurred to me that I had no claim upon her, except that which she herself had established; it never occurred to me that I might, in my relation to her, have been just like any of the other boys in the village. On the contrary, I looked upon Derryaghy quite as if it were a second, and certainly much my best-loved, home.
The "patience" failed, and Mrs. Carroll swept up the cards. "Shall I read to you?" she asked me, and, I having graciously given my permission, she took up "Huckleberry Finn." It was a book I rejoiced in, but I don't think Mrs. Carroll cared for it, I don't think she even found it funny. She spoke rather slowly, and it amused me infinitely to hear her gentle voice reproduce the talk of Huck, or Pap, or the King. . . .
That same day, after lunch, the nurse left. I was getting on very well, and was to be allowed up toward the end of the week. In the afternoon Mrs. Carroll had gone out, and I found myself alone. I went on with "Huck," but a chapter or two brought me to the end. I began another book, "Bevis," but my eyes grew tired, and I let it drop on the bed beside me. As I lay idle I was seized by a desire to get up. I resisted it for a few minutes, and then I slid into a sitting posture, with my legs hanging over the side of the bed. It struck me that they had grown absurdly thill and long, and I felt wretchedly shaky. I stood up, all the same, holding on to the bedpost till I got accustomed to being on my feet, when I put on my dressing-gown, and walked somewhat uncertainly as far as the door. I turned the handle and looked out with a strange curiosity into the passage. It was as if I had been ill for months, it all somehow seemed so queer and new. The long high corridor, of! which the rooms opened, was hung with tall portraits that appeared, in the mellow sunlight of high far windows, to watch me stiffly yet furtively. I liked them, I liked everything about the place, I liked to look down the passage with its long row of closed doors, which seemed so mysterious, reaching right on to the head of the staircase. I listened for footsteps, but heard nothing. Miss Dick probably was out, and the servants' quarters were far away. I had a feeling that I was really the son of the house, that everything about it, its pictures, its ghosts, were mine. I went to my favourite picture and stood beneath it. It was a portrait of a lady with dark hair and dark blue eyes, and it was partly this peculiar contrast, I think, this contrast of blue eyes and black hair, that had originally pleased me. She was young and she had a strange quaint name—Prudence Carroll. The artist had painted her as if she were just come in from the garden, for she held still a bunch of flowers in her hand. She was standing by a queer little piano—or was it a spinet? the spinet I had now in my room? It was open, and in a minute or two she would lay down her flowers and play some air on it, or the accompaniment of some forgotten ballad. Did the painter intend to show that these were the things she was fondest of—music and flowers? Poor Prudence Carroll had been dust these hundred years, the notes of her spinet were either cracked or dumb, and her tardy lover had arrived a century too late, for she had died unmarried, and but a year after this portrait was painted! Why had no one cared for her? Perhaps someday, between twilight and dusk, she would slip into my room and sing to me, "Rose softly Blooming," or "Voi che sapete! " A rustle of muslin, a ghostly scent of ghostly flowers, the twangling notes of the spinet, and a voice singing a song that would sound thin and far off, like the sound of wind—that is how it would happen.
I was charmed with these fancies, but I stood there only a few minutes, for there was something odd in that silence of closed doors and listening portraits, and I returned to the sunshine of my room. I went to the window and leaned my forehead against the pane and looked out. Far away I could see a stretch of sand, streaked with streams and pools of water, for the tide was out: and beyond the sand, clear in the sunlight, was the sea, blue-green under the soft blue sky, marked with indigo and purple where the bottom was formed of rocks and seaweed. At the water's edge some children—from this distance I could not make out who they were—were sailing toy boats. With trousers and petticoats well rolled up from bare brown legs, with their scarlet jerseys and caps and striped cotton dresses, they formed a bright note of colour, and brought me into touch again with life out of doors. On the left horn of the bay's crescent the sand-hills, with their sparse covering of bleached, wan grass, were pale and iridescent in the sun.
A gardener was mowing the grass just below my window, and the sleepy sound of the mowing-machine was delightful, and the smell of the fresh green grass, turned over in bright cool heaps. I got back into bed again, and took up "Bevis."
I read for half an hour, when my eyes once more grew tired. The sound of the mowing-machine had ceased, and a deep silence filled the afternoon. I lay listening to the silence, half-asleep, half-awake, when all at once I heard a sound of scraping under my window. It flashed across my mind that I was alone here in this part of the house, and that burglars were taking the opportunity to break in, and perhaps they would murder me. The thing was utterly nonsensical, and would never have occurred to me had I been in my normal health, but it had hardly entered my head when I saw a ladder shoot up past the window, and strike with a grating sound against the wall. My heart began to thump. I heard steps on the ladder; somebody was mounting it. The next moment Jim's face, brown and ruddy and grinning, popped in, and I gasped with relief. Jim was a boy who worked in the garden, and was about the same age as I was. He smiled broadly, and his bright, brown eyes gazed at me with evident pleasure. " How are you. Master Peter? "he grinned. " They're nobody about, so I thought I'd look in."
"Oh, I'm all right," I answered, " but you mustn't stay there, or you'll be catching the infection."
"I wanted to see the skin peeling off you. What like is it underneath?"
I felt disappointed at this callous explanation of what I had imagined to be sympathy." You can't see it," I answered crossly. "You'd better clear out before somebody catches you,"
Jim disappeared, but I called after him, "I say . . . Jim"
"Will you do something for me?" I asked. "Ay." "Will you play something to me. I'm sick of lying here, doing nothing."
"I darn't. Oul Thomas 'd stop me, an' I'd get in a row. I be to red up all the grass, an' rake the walk."
"All right."
I took no further interest in Jim, and he again vanished. There was a further scraping noise, and the ladder, too. disappeared. I lay on in a kind of waking-slumber till Mrs. Carroll came in, bringing me my tea. When I had finished I once more fell into a doze, but opened my eyes in the dusk, when I heard the notes of Jim's flute under my window, in a slow melancholy tune, with an occasional pause, as if the musician was not very certain of his music. I recognised the air—the Lorelei. It had a curious effect in the gathering twilight, as if the music and the fading light were in some subtle way mingled. I knew that the unseen musician was Jim, yet none the less the mournful notes, coming slowly in a minor key, seemed the very soul of the deepening darkness, and called up before me a world of imaginary sorrows, a passionate regret for I knew not what, a kind of homesickness for my dream-land. Tears gathered in my eyes and ran down my cheeks. Fortunately nobody could see them, but I was ashamed of them myself, though I knew they were partly the result of my physical weakness. Still, it was ridiculous that I should cry over Jim's playing. Jim really couldn't play at all. It was stupid, idiotic; and the other day I had cried just in this same senseless fashion over a book I had been reading; I had wept my soul out in an ecstasy of love and misery.
When Jim's serenade was ended I lay on in the darkness, my tears drying on my cheeks, and thought what a fool I was. Why should I have cried? What was the matter with me? It was not that I was unhappy; on the contrary, I was extremely happy. Yet somehow I felt dimly that there was a greater happiness than any I had ever experienced or probably ever should experience. The meaning of my emotions and desires never became quite clear, though I seemed on the verge of discovery. It was as if there were something stirring within me to which I could not give freedom, something which remained unsatisfied even in the midst of my keenest pleasures. . . . .
On a bright morning early in June I was allowed out for the first time since my illness, and I insisted on going alone. As I came out into the warmth of the sun I felt a charm as of a mysterious new birth. I went straight to the woods. The green alleys winding in front of me amid tall old trees, in all the vivid richness of early summer, seemed exquisitely beautiful. It was as if I had never realized before how lovely the world was. I lay down on my back on the warm,dry moss and listened to a skylark singing as it mounted up from the fields near the sea into the dark clear sky. No other music ever gave me the same pleasure as that passionately joyous singing. It was a kind of leaping, exultant ecstasy, a bright, flame-like sound, rejoicing in itself. And then a curious experience befell me. It was as if everything that had seemed to me external and around me were suddenly within me. The whole world seemed to be within me. It was within me that the trees waved their green branches, it was within me that the skylark was singing, it was within me that the hot sun shone, and that the shade was cool. A cloud rose in the sky, and passed in a light shower that pattered on the leaves, and I felt its freshness dropping into my soul, and I felt in all my being the delicious fragrance of the earth and the grass and the plants and the rich brown soil. I could have sobbed with joy, but in the midst of it I heard the sound of footsteps, and looked behind me quickly, to see the figure of one of the two idiots, who lived in a hovel outside the village, approaching. This was the man; there was a woman also, his sister. He was perfectly harmless, and he drew near now with smiles meant to be ingratiating. He held an empty pipe in his hand, and made guttural noises that I knew were asking me for tobacco. I told him I had none, but he would not go away. He stood right over me, a grin on his deformed face. The big, misshapen head, the horrible, slobbering mouth, the stupid persistence, all filled me with a cold rage. He had spoiled everything; I hated him, and I could have killed him, for it. But he still stood there and jibbered with his ugly, dripping mouth. It was only when I struck at him savagely with my stick that he moved off, glancing back at every step. And when he was gone I felt nothing but a kind of cold disgust and animosity, mingled with shame at my own conduct. All the beauty had gone out of the woods, and I got up and went home.