Thereafter For A
Fortnight I Spent The Time Moping About The House; Then There Was A
Spell Of Frosty Weather With A Bleak Cutting Wind To Tell Us That It
Was Winter, Which Even In Those Latitudes Can Be Very Cold.
One day
after early dinner my mother and sisters went in the carriage to pay a
visit to a neighbouring estancia, and my brothers being out or absent
from home I was left alone.
The verandah appeared to me the warmest
place I could find, as the sun shone on it warm and bright, and there
I settled down on a chair placed against the wall at the side of a
heap of sacks of meal or something which had been left there, and
formed a nice shelter from the wind.
The house was strangely quiet, and the westering sun shining full on
me made me feel quite comfortable, and in a little while I fell
asleep. The sun set and it grew bitterly cold, but I did not wake, and
when my mother returned and inquired for me I could not be found.
Finally the whole household turned out with lanterns and searched for
me up and down through the plantation, and the hunt was still going on
when, about ten o'clock at night, some one hurrying along the verandah
stumbled on me in my sheltered corner by the sacks, still in my chair
but unconscious and in a burning fever. It was the dread typhus, an
almost obsolete malady in Europe, and in fact in all civilized
countries, but not uncommon at that date in the pestilential city. It
was wonderful that I lived through it in a place where we were out of
reach of doctors and apothecaries, with only my mother's skill in
nursing and her knowledge of such drugs as were kept in the house to
save me. She nursed me day and night for the three weeks during which
the fever lasted, and when it left me, a mere shadow of my former
self, I was dumb-not even a little Yes or No could I articulate
however hard I tried, and it was at last concluded that I would never
speak again. However, after about a fortnight, the lost faculty came
back, to my mother's inexpressible joy.
Winter was nearing its end when one morning in late July I ventured
out of doors for the first time, though still but a skeleton, a shadow
of my former self. It was a windy day of brilliant sunshine, a day I
shall never forget, and the effect of the air and the sun and smell of
earth and early flowers, and the sounds of wild birds, with the sight
of the intensely green young grass and the vast crystal dome of heaven
above, was like deep draughts of some potent liquor that made the
blood dance in my veins. Oh what an inexpressible, immeasurable joy to
be alive and not dead, to have my feet still on the earth, and drink
in the wind and sunshine once more!
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