I have not been suffering; merely feverish and weak
and unable to use my mind for anything but a daily
hour or two of the lightest reading. The weather
has not favoured my recovery, wet winds often blowing,
and not much sun. Lying in bed, I have watched
the sky, studied the clouds, which—so long
as they are clouds indeed, and not a mere waste of
grey vapour—always have their beauty.
Inability to read has always been my horror; once,
a trouble of the eyes all but drove me mad with fear
of blindness; but I find that in my present circumstances,
in my own still house, with no intrusion to be dreaded,
with no task or care to worry me, I can fleet the
time not unpleasantly even without help of books.
Reverie, unknown to me in the days of bondage, has
brought me solace; I hope it has a little advanced
me in wisdom.
For not, surely, by deliberate effort of thought does
a man grow wise. The truths of life are not discovered
by us. At moments unforeseen, some gracious
influence descends upon the soul, touching it to an
emotion which, we know not how, the mind transmutes
into thought. This can happen only in a calm
of the senses, a surrender of the whole being to passionless
contemplation. I understand, now, the intellectual
mood of the quietist.
Of course my good housekeeper has tended me perfectly,
with the minimum of needless talk. Wonderful
woman!
If the evidence of a well-spent life is necessarily
seen in “honour, love, obedience, troops of
friends,” mine, it is clear, has fallen short
of a moderate ideal. Friends I have had, and
have; but very few. Honour and obedience—why,
by a stretch, Mrs. M—– may perchance
represent these blessings. As for love—?
Let me tell myself the truth. Do I really believe
that at any time of my life I have been the kind of
man who merits affection? I think not.
I have always been much too self-absorbed; too critical
of all about me; too unreasonably proud. Such
men as I live and die alone, however much in appearance
accompanied. I do not repine at it; nay, lying
day after day in solitude and silence, I have felt
glad that it was so. At least I give no one
trouble, and that is much. Most solemnly do I
hope that in the latter days no long illness awaits
me. May I pass quickly from this life of quiet
enjoyment to the final peace. So shall no one
think of me with pained sympathy or with weariness.
One—two—even three may possibly
feel regret, come the end how it may, but I do not
flatter myself that to them I am more than an object
of kindly thought at long intervals. It is enough;
it signifies that I have not erred wholly. And
when I think that my daily life testifies to an act
of kindness such as I could never have dreamt of meriting
from the man who performed it, may I not be much more
than content?
VI.
Copyrights
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
