In the very same room where Peter was born, no sound could be heard save the wailing cry of an infant. A few days had passed since its birth, and Evelyn was rapidly recovering. But Peter still seemed depressed, as though weighed down by the presentiment of some impending misfortune.
The doctor taking the child in his arms carried him to the window. Quickly drawing aside the curtain and admitting a bright sunbeam into the room, he took his instruments and bent at once over the boy. Peter was also in the room, apathetic and depressed, with his head drooping low. He seemed to attach no importance whatever to the investigations of the doctor; his bearing was that of one who feels quite sure of the result.
“The child must be blind,” he kept repeating. “Better for it, too, had it never been born.”
The young doctor made no reply, but continued his observations in silence. At last he laid aside the ophthalmoscope, and his calm, encouraging voice echoed through the room: “The pupil contracts; the child sees!”
Peter started, and rose instantly to his feet. But although the act gave proof that he heard the doctor’s words, the expression of his face showed no comprehension of their significance. Resting his trembling hands upon the window-seat, and with his pale face and set features uplifted, he looked like one petrified. Until the present moment he had been in a state of unusual excitement, apparently unconscious of himself, and yet every nerve quivering with expectation. The darkness that surrounded him was an actual object, which he realized in all its immensity as something apart from himself, enveloping him as it were, while he strove to gain by an effort of imagination some adequate idea of its relation to himself. He threw himself before it as if he would shield his child from that illimitable tossing sea of impenetrable darkness.
Such had been Peter’s state of mind while the doctor was silently carrying on his preparations. He had wavered between hope and fear; but now the latter, rising to its highest pitch, had won entire control of his excited nerves, while hope withdrew to the innermost recesses of his heart. Then came the words, “The child sees!” and his feelings underwent a sudden transformation; his fears vanished, and assurance took the place of hope, illuminating the inner world of imagination in which the blind man dwelt. Like a stroke of lightning it burst upon the darkness of his soul, effecting a complete revolution. Now he knew the meaning of the words, “sound possessing the attribute of light.” The doctor’s words were like a pillar of fire in his brain; it was as if an electric spark had suddenly kindled in the secret recesses of his soul. Everything vibrated within him, and he himself quivered, as a tightly strung chord quivers under a sudden touch.