VI.
—BUT if you believe this disillusion perpetual,—if you fancy
the old bewitchment has spent all its force upon you,—you do not
know this Nature. She is not done with you yet: she has only
torpefied your energies a little. Of your willingness to obey
her, she takes no
cognizance;—she ignores human purposes, knows
only molecules and their combinations; and the blind blood in
your veins,—thick with Northern heat and habit,—is still in
dumb desperate rebellion against her.
Perhaps she will quell this revolt forever,—thus:—
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. …