UNCLE JOHN PARALYZED

"Come in! Come on! Well, don't you hear? Can't you understand any—Oh, it's you, child. I thought it was one of those darned waiters.

"Sit down; pull up a chair by the bed. It's so long since I sent for you that I just about thought that you were not coming. I suppose you were surprised at my sending for you; but it was the only way to do. It's a hard thing to break to you, Yvonne; but you'd have to know in the course of the day, and I always do everything right off that I've not decided to wait and see about. Now don't look frightened, my dear; nobody's dead—it's only that I'm paralyzed!

"There, what do you think of that? Yes, it's true for a fact. My legs! I had some premonitory symptoms yesterday going up that cursed old tower, and I had some very advanced ones coming down from it; and this morning, when I started to shave, the truth just burst in my face. Now, don't try to say anything, for I've read too many patent-medicine advertisements not to recognize paralysis when I feel it up and down the back of my own legs. I'm not the man not to know my own feelings, and I want to tell you that when I got up this morning I couldn't stand up, and then, after I stood up, I couldn't sit down; and if that isn't a clear case of having completely given out, I don't know what you would call it.

"Now, my dear, the question is, what's to be done? Of course our travels have come to a full stop, for I shall probably never walk again. The curious thing is that I don't feel any particular inclination ever to walk again. You've no conception of the sentiments that I feel in my legs; but if you roll the fatigue of a lifetime into either the left or the right, you can get some faint inkling of the first freshness of paralysis. I tell you, Yvonne, it is awful. Every cobblestone I've gone over seems to be singing in my calves; but that's neither here nor there. What I want you to do is to go to the pocket of my valise get out the cable-code book and look out a word that means 'Both legs paralyzed. What shall I do with the girls?' You'll find a word that means it, if you look long enough. They've got forty pages of words that mean every fool thing on earth from 'It's a boy' to 'Impossible to lend you ten dollars.' I was reading it over in Paris the other day while I waited for my money at the bank.

"Well, ain't you going to get the code-book? I don't want to be impatient, but I want some one to be doing something. You don't know how restless it makes me to think of lying still for the rest of my life. While I was waiting for you, I was thinking that probably I shall live right here in Caen till I die. I'm very glad we got here too late to see anything, because now I can take it bit by bit and drag it out through my remaining days. I shall have a wheeling-chair and a man to push me around, and—well, maybe it's in the little outside pocket. I know I had it in Paris, anyhow; I remember I was just reading that 'salsify' means 'Your mother-in-law left by the ten o'clock train,' and that 'salsifry' means that she didn't, when they brought me my money, and I was free to go.

"Well, now you've got it. I thought maybe it would be in the little valise all the time. Seems to me the sicknesses begin with 'Salt.' I remember 'Saltfish' means 'have got smallpox; keep away,' and 'Saltpetre' means 'have got a cold; come at once.' You look along there and find 'paralysis.' I'll just keep quiet while you're looking. I'd better be learning to keep quiet. Keeping quiet must be the long suit of the paralyzed, I should fancy. But you see what it is now to be an optimist. Here's my life practically over all of a sudden, and, instead of being blue, I'm as cheerful as a cricket. No need of fussing over the candle-grease on my hat now, for I shall never wear a hat again, I shall wear a soft felt tied over my ears with a plaid shawl as they always do in rolling-chairs; as for the umbrella, I'm actually glad I left it. It would only have been an aggravation to have seen it lying around. But all the same I can't see why you didn't notice it lying down there. It must have been in plain sight,—I remember pointing over at Mont Mirat with it, and saying the rock looked as if it had been dropped there from above. Yvonne, I tell you when I think of all we did these last two days I feel perfectly content to be paralyzed. I'm glad to think that I've got such a good excuse to stay right in bed; I'm happy that it will be out of the question for me ever to travel again. I feel as if I've traveled enough to last me forever; I actually don't want to see anything more. No more catching trains and climbing castles for your Uncle John—not in his life. You can put the Baedeker in the fire right now—I never want to see a red cover or a green string or an index again as long as I live. What's that? No, I sha'n't want it to look over and recall things by; I can recall more than I want to just by the way I feel. I don't need any guide-book to remember what I've been through since I left Paris. I remember too much. I remember so much that I am rejoiced to think that muscles over which I have no control will prevent my having to go out to-day and see anything else. It seems a little hard to think of having sight-seen so hard that you never want to see another sight, but I'm perfectly content. And I don't want a doctor, either; I've no faith in French doctors. It would be just like one to hypnotize me and set me going again, and I don't want to go. I want to lie right here, and I thank the Lord that I have money enough to allow me to lie here forever, if I feel like it. I was thinking this morning what a horrible existence a tramp must lead—always going on to new places. Thank Heaven, I can just settle down in this old one and stay on indefinitely. I want you to go down to the office and ask what rate they'll make for this room by the year. I want this same room right along. It's the first restful spot I've struck since my trunk went smash into that ship. Yvonne, did you notice the way they handled those trunks when we landed—as if they were eggs? I tell you, the baggage system at home is a burning disgrace. That's one reason I like Europe so—it's quiet and peaceful. I heard some goats go by this morning; I'd like to know a hotel in America where you can listen to a goat. And then that wallpaper, what a tranquil pattern—a basket of sunflowers upside down alternately with a single palm upside up! What a contrast to the paper on that room I sailed from! It looked more like snakes doing physical culture than anything else.

"Yvonne, I was thinking it all over as I lay here this morning waiting for you, and the truth is, we've been traveling too fast. I wanted you to see all there was to see, and I overlooked myself completely. Don't feel badly, child, because I know you never meant it; but it is the truth, and, as a consequence, here I lie paralyzed. Yes, we've been traveling too fast. It's the vice of the American abroad; it's the terrible secret drain upon the strength of our better classes. We come over to rest, and if we don't do two countries a week we feel we've wasted our money. The idea of leaving Paris in the morning and doing Chartres and Dreux and getting to Argentan that night! Why, Hercules himself would have been used up. And then that castle at Falaise. But I'm not sorry that I went to Falaise. No, I'm not sorry. Yvonne, there was something about that castle that I'll never get over. I tell you those were the days to live in! I was thinking about it while I was waiting for you this morning. Will you consider what it must have been to put on a suit that you couldn't be punched through, and then get out with an ax that faced two ways and have full freedom to hack at people you hated. I tell you, child, I should have been one of those who barricaded themselves behind the dead bodies they had killed and kept right on firing over the top. And to-day my armor would be hanging up somewhere all full of dents and rusty blood-stains, and I'd be a sight in some cathedral with your Aunt Jane wearing a funnel and an accordion beside me. We'd both be in marble, of course, some worn by time and some chipped by tourists—ah, well!

"Can't you find anything suitable in that code-book? Here, I've been waiting a quarter of an hour for you to hunt—hand me the book. I remember 'Shell' is 'have broken my left leg,' and 'Shell-fish' is 'have broken my right leg,' and 'Shawl' is—wait a bit—keep still, Yvonne; no one in the wide world can study a code and listen at the—

"Oh, well, I'll leave it till to-night. Not that I'm irritated at your interruption, for I never let anything ruffle me, and when you write home the first thing I want you to tell your mother is that being paralyzed has not changed me one particle. Same even disposition, same calm outlook on life, same disinclination to ever bother anyone. I want you to make them understand in particular how cheerful I am. Some men would turn cynical at waking up paralyzed, but not me. I feel as if I might get about quite a little in Caen, maybe even get to Falaise again some time; but you can bank on one thing, and that is that if I ever go back to Falaise I won't go up that tower again. I was wondering this morning as I lay here waiting for you how in thunder you were holding that candle to spill so much grease on my hat. You can't say that you didn't know I was there, for every second step you took your foot hit me in the small of the back. You ought to have gone first, anyhow. I know the rule is for a man to go first going down a staircase, but I don't call that business we were on any staircase; it was more like a series of cascades with us forming the merry, leaping, part. I tell you what, Yvonne, the next time it's up to your Uncle John to play the chamois that springs from crag to crag over an old middle-aged staircase while his niece pours candle-grease on his hat, you can excuse me.

"What I like is clean, open-to-the-day-light ruins like that old one at JumiÈges! No peril, no anxiety—all on a level, and time to look up at what wasn't. I tell you, I wouldn't have missed seeing JumiÈges for anything. I was thinking this morning as I lay here waiting for you that I have a good mind to write a book about my travels, and that when I do I shall have the frontispiece, me in front of JumiÈges. I could take an artist down there on purpose, and while he wasn't doing me, I could look it all over again. Maybe I could go there alone with a kodak and get a satisfactory frontispiece, only those rocks were so thick that most people would think it was a defective plate. I shouldn't like to have them think that, for if I was going to have a book at all, I should have it in good style—gold edges, bevel-plate, and so forth, don't you know. I'd like to write a book about Europe, I vow. I haven't been here very long, but I'll swear I know ten times more than any book ever tells. It never said a word in Baedeker about there not being any cabs at Dreux, or about the condition of those steps in Talbot's Tower, and such things ought to be known. It's all right to make light of perils past, but those steps were too dark for me to ever make light of in this world. Up toward the top where we had to sit down and stretch for the next one—you remember?—I must own that I was honestly sorry I came.

"Well, my child, it must be nearing noon, and I feel like taking a nap before dinner. Suppose you go in and write to your mother and Mrs. Clary. After your mother gets the cable, she'll naturally be anxious for details, and she won't want to wait longer than ten days to know all. I wish you'd ring and tell them to bring me some hot water before you go; tell them I want it in a pitcher. Make them understand a pitcher. They brought it last night in a sort of brass cylinder, and I couldn't get the thing open anyway—had to use it for a hot-water-bag in bed in the end. It worked fine for that. Never cooled off all night, in fact, I couldn't put my feet against it till morning.

"There, now, you go on and leave me to sleep. You haven't the faintest idea of how used-up I feel. Don't forget to write your mother how cheerful I am; don't forget the hot water. I'll send for you when I want you. There—there—I'm all right, child, don't you worry. Just pull the curtains and let me sleep."