At this very moment, I was being set by a happy little accident upon my legs, as well as enjoying a delight which no money (at the finest compound interest) can insure. In the corner of the room which my aunt had so decried, and where I had passed so many miserable weeks, an old wooden bracket with three little shelves was nailed against the yellow-ochred wall. I had often cast my weary eyes in that direction, and vaguely watched a spider, who was in a doleful plight, with his legs drawn together, and no stomach left between them; such a time was it since he had tasted a good fly. On the bottom shelf were bottles of a loathsome disposition, pill-boxes and galley-pots, and measures no less repulsive to good taste; on the middle shelf lay my mother’s Prayer-book, and some papers of directions, and orders, and powders and the like; but what was on the top shelf I could not tell, and had often wondered languidly in the wanderings of hazy speculation. And I might have been content to wonder still, without any guide-post of interest, if I had not heard Miss Parslow say—“Ah, that would do him a lot more good than those,” as she pointed to the top shelf, and then to the others.
For a time I forgot all about it, and fell into a little sleep of indifference; but being aroused by the sound of plates and dishes and the clinking of glasses down below, I longed to know what they were having for dinner, and what was the joke they were laughing at. Then a lovely smell of something came into the room, and my head went round with the effort of searching itself for the name of that fragrance, although it was nothing but fried calf’s liver, with which Mrs. Tapscott was skilful. “Shall I ever have that again, instead of filthy nastiness?” was all that I had sense enough to want to know; and then I thought somehow of the starving spider, and looked to ask whether he was dead yet.
Not only was he not dead, but clearly (after seeing rain once more upon the window-panes) he had made up his mind that life was worth living, and a little activity might make it more so. Where he got his stuff from is more than I can tell, for any man would have vowed that his meagre body could never have supplied him with the hundredth part of the dreamiest film of a gossamer. However, he knew his own business best, and he was at it, as if he were paid by the piece.
Being hungry myself, I could sympathize with him, while detesting his bloodthirstiness, as every man must who lives on beef and mutton. And I saw that he was scheming to attach his tent cords to a coign of great vantage on the top shelf of the bracket.
“When spiders go thrumming, there is wild weather coming,” came clumsily into my half-saved mind; and then floated into it, like a gossamer adrift, those mysterious words of Aunt Parslow. Like the spider, I desired to be on the move, and partly perhaps through the very same cause—the yearning for a wholesome bit of flesh. At any rate, being left all alone, for the resources of the establishment were at full pressure upon hospitality, I resolved to know what was on that shelf, though it might be my destiny to perish in the attempt.
This was not at all an easy job for a fellow who had spent two months on his back; and my weakness amazed me, when I tried to walk, and I seemed to be twice my own proper length. Then I burst into a laugh at my own condition, and tried to move a little chair to help me get along, but found it made of lead, and had to coast around it. My sense of distance also was entirely thrown out, for the room was quite a little one, and yet it seemed a gallery. At last by some process of sprawling and crawling I laid hold of the corner bracket, and lifting myself with some difficulty, contrived to grasp all that was on the top shelf. A little pile of letters was in my right hand, and a light shot into my eyes, and a gleam of soft warmth flowed into my heart.
Then I crawled back to my narrow bed, so nearly exchanged for a narrower, and laid my treasure on my shrunken breast, and turned on my side, that it might not slide away. I felt as if there were two Kits now—one who knew nothing about it, and the other who wanted it all to himself. And perhaps that other Kit was Kitty.
How long I continued in this crazed condition, it is impossible for me to say; but as sure as the goodness of God is with us, it saved my reason and my life. For by-and-by, a warmth of blood flowed through me, and a sense of being in a large sweet world; then memory awoke, and pain was gone, and I was like a little child looking at its mother. I did not read a word, nor care to read; but I knew whose hand was on my heart, and I would not disturb it by a stir of thought, but was satisfied with it, for it was everything. And so I fell into a long deep sleep; and when I awoke, I was a man again.