I lay back in bed and enjoyed
the exquisite luxury of thinking of the evils that I had escaped. For
once my morbid sense of atmosphere was a desirable possession and
helpful to my happiness. It was delightful to pull the bedclothes
over my shoulders and conceive the feelings of a small boy who should
ride to town in a jolting train, walk through a hundred kinds of dirt
and a hundred disgusting smells to win to prison at last, where he
should perform meaningless tasks in the distressing society of five
hundred mocking apes. It was pleasant to see the morning sun and feel
no sickness in my stomach, no sense of depression in my tired brain. Across the room my brother gurgled and choked in his sleep, and in
some subtle way contributed to my ecstasy of tranquillity. I was no
longer concerned for the duration of my happiness. I felt that this
peace that I had desired so long must surely last for ever. To the grown-up folk who came to see us during the day--the
doctor, certain germ-proof unmarried aunts, truculently maternal,
and the family itself--my brother's case was far more interesting
than mine because he had caught the measles really badly. I just
had them comfortably; enough to be infectious, but not enough to
feel ill, so I was left in pleasant solitude while the women
competed for the honour of smoothing my brother's pillow and
tiptoeing in a fidgeting manner round his bed. I lay on my back
and looked with placid interest at the cracks in the ceiling. They
were like the main roads in a map, and I amused myself by building
little houses beside them--houses full of books and warm
hearthrugs, and with a nice pond lively with tadpoles in the
garden of each. From the windows of the houses you could watch all
the traffic that went along the road, men and women and horses,
and best of all, the boys going to school in the morning--boys who
had not done their homework and who would be late for prayers. When I talked about the cracks to my brother he said that perhaps
the ceiling would give way and fall on our heads. I thought about
this too, and found it quite easy to picture myself lying in the
bed with a smashed head, and blood all over the pillow. Then it
occurred to me that the plaster might smash me all over, and my
impressions of Farringdon Meat Market added a gruesome vividness
to my conception of the consequences. I always found it pleasant
to imagine horrible things; it was only the reality that made me
sick. Towards nightfall I became a little feverish, and I heard the
grown-ups say that they would give me some medicine later on. Medicine for me signified the nauseous powders of Dr. Gregory,
so I pretended to be asleep every time anyone came into the
room, in order to escape my destiny, until at last some one
stood by my bedside so long that I became cramped and had to
pretend to wake up. Then I was given the medicine, and found to
my surprise that it was delicious and tasted of oranges. I felt
that there had been a mistake somewhere, but my head sat a
little heavily on my shoulders, and I would not trouble to fix
the responsibility. This time I fell asleep in earnest, and woke
in the middle of the night to find my brother standing by my
bed, making noises with his mouth. I thought that he had gone
mad, and would kill me perhaps, but after a time he went back to
bed saying all the bad words he knew. The excitement had made me
wide awake, and I tossed about thinking of the cracked ceiling
above my head. The room was quite dark, and I could see nothing,
so that it might be bulging over me without my knowing it. I
stood up in bed and stretched up my arm, but I could not reach
the ceiling; yet when I lay down again I felt as though it had
sunk so far, that it was touching my hair, and I found it
difficult to breathe in such a small space. I was afraid to move
for fear of bringing it down upon me, and in a short while the
pressure upon my body became unbearable, and I shrieked out for
help. Some one came in and lit the gas, and found me looking
very foolish and my brother delirious. I fell asleep almost
immediately, but was conscious through my dreams that the gas
was still alight and that they were watching by my brother's
bedside. In the morning he was very ill and I was no longer feverish, so it
was decided to move me back into my own bedroom. I was wrapped up in
the bedclothes and told to sit still while the bed was moved. I sat
in an armchair, feeling like a bundle of old clothes, and looking at
the cracks in the ceiling which seemed to me like roads. I knew that
I had already lost all importance as an invalid, but I was very
happy nevertheless. For from the window of one of my little houses I
was watching the boys going to school, and my heart was warm with
the knowledge of my own emancipation. As my legs hung down from the
chair I found it hard to keep my slippers on my stockingless feet. III

There followed for me a period of deep and unbroken
satisfaction. I was soon considered well enough to get up, and I
lived pleasantly between the sofa and the fireside waiting on my
brother's convalescence, for it had been settled that I should
go away with him to the country for a change of air. I read
Dickens and Dumas in English, and made up long stories in which
I myself played important but not always heroic parts. By means
of intellectual exercises of this kind I achieved a tranquillity
like that of an old man, fearing nothing, desiring nothing,
regretting nothing. I no longer reckoned the days or the hours,
I content to enjoy a passionless condition of being that asked
no questions and sought none of me, nor did I trouble to number
my journeys in the world of infinite shadows. But in that long
hour of peace I realised that in some inexplicable way I was
interested in the body of a little boy, whose hands obeyed my
unspoken wishes, whose legs sprawled before me on the sofa. I
knew that before I met him, this boy, whose littleness surprised
me, had suffered ill dreams in a nameless world, and now, worn
out with tears and humiliation and dread of life, he slept, and
while he slept I watched him dispassionately, as I would have
looked at a crippled daddy-long-legs. To have felt compassion
for him would have disturbed the tranquillity that was a
necessary condition of my existence, so I contented myself with
noticing his presence and giving him a small part in the pageant
of my dreams. He was not so beautiful as I wished all my
comrades to be, and he was besides very small; but shadows are
amiable play-friends, and they did not blame him because he
cried when he was teased and did not cry when he was beaten, or
because the wild unreason of his sorrow made him find cause for
tears in the very fullness of his rare enjoyment. For the first
time in my life it seems to me I saw this little boy as he was,
squat-bodied, big-headed, thick-lipped, and with a face swept
clean of all emotions save where his two great eyes glowed with
a sulky fire under exaggerated eyebrows.