HILE my child lives and I am here to teach him, he will not know the meaning of the words light, color, and darkness. He will grow up ignorant of his condition and will be educated from expurgated books for the blind. I shall be his teacher, and as far as in my power I shall lighten his curse." Thus spoke the father to the physicians who had examined the expressionless blue eyes of his infant son. "No hope," they had said. The trouble was with the optic nerve or the inner connection with the brain. He would never know light from darkness, though the eye, being well nourished, would grow with the body and retain its color.
The wife and mother had died in giving birth to the little one, and as there were no solicitous relatives on either side to interfere, the doubly afflicted man was free to educate his child as he wished. He erected a high wall around his property, gave emphatic notice to the villagers to keep out, and retired into the darkened world of his son. While none approved of his plan, few cared to question or openly criticise the stern, iron-faced man who occasionally appeared on the streets, and in time, as they died off or moved away, the strange existence unfolding within those high walls was forgotten.
The child grew, healthy and strong. With his father for teacher and a few trusted servants his only companions, he passed his childhood and early youth, and was educated as are the blind—with this difference: nothing was taught him that in his father's judgment would lead him into inquiry as to his true condition. His four remaining senses became abnormally keen; he heard distant sounds that others could not detect, could taste an odor in the air, and could feel, besides colors, the faintest of shadows on the wall—which latter changing phenomenon was described to him as an uncertain attribute of heat.
In him, too, developed to a remarkable degree what has been called the magnetic sense, which enables the blind to distinguish the proximity of a solid object or an open space. So strong was this perception that he needed no cane to traverse at a run the rooms and passages of the house or the winding paths of the garden. And, to reduce the list of embargoed words, and because in a measure it did the work of his missing sense, to this faculty was given the name sight. Hence he would say that he "saw" something, when he merely meant that he felt its presence.
To the extent that he was influenced by external impressions, he was happy; but instincts within him, aided by maturing reasoning power, tended, as he neared manhood, to arouse his suspicion. The sounds beyond the garden wall, the making of his clothes by some one unknown to him, the occasional presence of silent men who worked quickly with tools and made changes in doors and passages, the continuous supply of food from without, and the great front door, locked from his earliest remembrance, were problems to his now logical mind that he would solve. They indicated the existence of a sphere of action far beyond his present environment; so he tortured his father with speculations, and his education stopped.
"I have taught him too much," said the unhappy man. "I started wrong. I should have made him deaf and dumb before I began."
The father took refuge in direct deceit, ascribing some of the phenomena which troubled the boy to the great unknown, others to the wisdom and experience of other men, which would come to him in time. He thus temporarily eliminated all factors but one—that of the locked front door; and could only meet the boy's demand to be allowed passage through by a downright refusal. The result was a stormy scene.
The father retired to his study sorrowing over the first harsh words he had given his son, and the boy went out into the evening and sought the extreme corner of the garden, where, sitting on a rustic bench and brooding rebelliously over the sudden appearance of boundaries to his investigations, he heard among the strange yet familiar sounds from beyond the wall a new one, and felt the presence of some one near and above him. Not needing to raise his head to assist his consciousness, he asked: "Who is it?"
"Me," came a musical voice.
"Who?" he asked again, with a puzzled face.
"Oh, auntie says I'm a tomboy. Do you live here? My! what a pretty garden. May I come down?"
"Yes, come," he answered, understanding the request.
"Look out! No. I'll get the ladder. I couldn't climb back if I jumped."
A black-eyed, dark-haired sprite of fifteen on top of the wall pulled up a ladder, lowered it, and clambered down.