I went to-day to see an old friend whom I had not met for ten years. Some time ago he had a bad fall which for a time crippled him, but from which it was hoped he would recover; but he must have received some obscure and deep-seated injury, because after improving for a time, he began to go backwards, and has now to a great extent lost the use of his limbs. He was formerly a very active man, both intellectually and physically. He had a prosperous business in the country town on the outskirts of which he lives. He was one of those tall spare men, black-haired and black-eyed, capable of bearing great fatigue, full to the brim of vitality. He was a great reader, fond of music and art; married to a no less cultivated and active wife, but childless. There never was a man who had a keener enjoyment of existence in all its aspects. It used to be a marvel to me to see at how many points a man could touch life, and the almost child-like zest which he threw into everything which he did.
On arriving at the house, a pleasant old-fashioned place with a big shady garden, I was shown into a large book-lined study, and there presently crept and tottered into the room, leaning on two sticks, a figure which I can only say in no respect recalled to me the recollection of my friend. He was bent and wasted, his hair was white; and there was that sunken look about the temples, that tracery of lines about the eyes that tells of constant suffering. But the voice was unaltered, full, resonant, and distinct as ever. He sat down and was silent for a moment. I think that the motion even from one room into another caused him great pain. Then he began to talk; first he told me of the accident, and his journeys in search of health. "But the comfort is," he added, "that the doctors have now decided that they can do no more for me, and I need leave home no more." He told me that he still went to his business every day--and I found that it was prospering greatly--and that though he could not drive, he could get out in a wheeled chair; he said nothing of his sufferings, and presently began to talk of books and politics. Gradually I realised that I was in the company of a thoroughly cheerful man. It was not the cheerfulness that comes of effort, of a determined attempt to be interested in old pursuits, but the abundant and overflowing cheerfulness of a man who has still a firm grasp on life. He argued, he discussed with the same eager liveliness; and his laugh had the careless and good-humoured ring of a man whose mind was entirely content.
His wife soon entered; and we sat for a long time talking. I was keenly moved by the relations between them; she displayed none of that minute attention to his needs, none of that watchful anxiety which I have often thought, tenderly lavished as it is upon invalids, must bring home to them a painful sense of their dependence and helplessness; and he too showed no trace of that fretful exigence which is too often the characteristic of those who cannot assist themselves, and which almost invariably arises in the case of eager and active temperaments thus afflicted, those whose minds range quickly from subject to subject, and who feel their disabilities at every turn. At one moment he wanted his glasses to read something from a book that lay beside him. He asked his wife with a gentle courtesy to find them. They were discovered in his own breast-pocket, into which he could not even put his feeble hand, and he apologised for his stupidity with an affectionate humility which made me feel inclined to tears, especially when I saw the pleasure which the performance of this trifling service obviously caused her. It was just the same, I afterwards noticed, with a young attendant who waited on him at luncheon, an occasion which revealed to me the full extent of his helplessness.
I gathered from his wife in the course of the afternoon that though his life was not threatened, yet that there was no doubt that his helplessness was increasing. He could still hold a book and turn the pages; but it was improbable that he could do so for long, and he was amusing himself by inventing a mechanical device for doing this. But she too talked of the prospect with a quiet tranquillity. She said that he was making arrangements to direct his business from his house, as it was becoming difficult for him to enter the office.
He himself showed the same unabated cheerfulness during the whole of my visit, and spoke of the enjoyment it had brought him. There was not the slightest touch of self-pity about his talk.
I should have admired and wondered at the fortitude of this gallant pair, if I had seen signs of repression and self-conquest about them; if they had relapsed even momentarily into repining, if they had shown signs of a faithful determination to make the best of a bad business. But I could discern no trace of such a mood about either of them. Whether this kindly and sweet patience has been acquired, after hard and miserable wrestlings with despair and wretchedness, I cannot say, but I am inclined to think that it is not so. It seems to me rather to be the display of perfect manliness and womanliness in the presence of an irreparable calamity, a wonderful and amazing compensation, sent quietly from the deepest fortress of Love to these simple and generous natures, who live in each other's lives. I tried to picture to myself what my own thoughts would be if condemned to this sad condition; I could only foresee a fretful irritability, a wild anguish, alternating with a torpid stupefaction. "I seem to love the old books better than ever," my friend had said, smiling softly, in the course of the afternoon; "I used to read them hurriedly and greedily in the old days, but now I have time to think over them--to reflect--I never knew what a pleasure reflection was." I could not help feeling as he said the words that with me such a stroke as he had suffered would have dashed the life, the colour, out of books, and left them faded and withered husks. Half the charm of books, I have always thought, is the inter-play of the commentary of life and experience. I ventured to ask him if this was not the case. "No," he said, "I don't think it is--I seem more interested in people, in events, in thoughts than ever; and one gets them from a purer spring--I don't know if I can explain," he added, "but I think that one sees it all from a different perspective, in a truer light, when one's own desires and possibilities are so much more limited." When I said good-bye to him, he smiled at me and hoped that I should repeat my visit. "Don't think of me as unhappy," he added, and his wife, who was standing by him, said, "Indeed you need not;" and the two smiled at each other in a way which made me feel that they were speaking the simple truth, and that they had found an interpretation of life, a serene region to abide in, which I, with all my activities, hopes, fears, businesses, had somehow missed. The pity of it! and yet the beauty of it! as I went away I felt that I had indeed trodden on holy ground, and seen the transfiguration of humanity and pain into something august, tranquil, and divine.
[The end]
Arthur C. Benson's essay: Cripple