Part 2
Uncle Maxim was right. The exquisite organization of the child manifested itself in an extraordinary susceptibility of the senses of hearing and touch, by means of which he verified to a certain extent the correctness of his impressions. All who saw him were amazed at the wonderful delicacy of his touch. Occasionally it even seemed as if he were able to distinguish colors; for when, as sometimes happened, bits of bright-colored cloth fell into his hands, his slender fingers would linger over them, while a look half of perplexity, half of interest, would flash across his face. As time went on, however, it grew more and more evident that his susceptibility was principally developed in the sense of hearing. He quickly learned to distinguish the different rooms in the house by sound; he recognized the steps of the members of the household, the creaking of his invalid uncle’s chair, the dry and measured whiz of the thread in his mother’s hands, or the regular ticking of the clock. Sometimes, as he felt his way along the side of the room, he would hear a slight rustle inaudible to others, and put out his hand to catch a fly crawling on the wall. When the startled insect rose and flew away, an expression of painful surprise would come over the face of the blind boy. He could not account for the mysterious disappearance of the fly. But the next moment, in spite of his perplexity, his face assumed an expression of intelligent interest; he turned his head in the direction taken by the fly,—his acute sense of hearing having caught in the air the scarcely perceptible sound of the insect’s wings.
Of all the glittering, murmuring, bustling world without, the blind child could form no conception save by its sounds. That peculiar expression characteristic of an intense concentration of the sense of hearing had become habitual to his face: the lower jaw was a little depressed, the brows contracted, and the head inclined slightly forward on its slender neck. But the beautiful eyes, with their unchanging gaze, imparted to the face of the blind child a stern and at the same time a touching aspect.
V.
The second winter of the boy’s life was drawing to a close. The snow outside had begun to thaw, and the streamlets to sing their spring songs. At the same time the boy’s health changed for the better. He had been rather delicate during the winter, and had in consequence been kept in the house, and never permitted to breathe the outdoor air. The double windows were now removed, and spring with all the vigor of new life burst into the rooms. The cheerful sun shone in at the glittering windows; the leafless branches of the beech-trees swayed to and fro; the distant fields were black, save for the white patches of melting snow still lying here and there, and the spots where the young grass had begun to look green. On every side the stimulating influence of the spring imparted new vigor and life. One seemed to breathe more freely.
To the blind boy within the room spring manifested its presence only by the swiftness of its sounds. He could hear the rushing of the floods running a race, as it were, leaping over the stones, and sinking deep into the moistened soil; the faint resonance of the whispering birch-trees as their tossing branches beat against the windows, and the rapid dripping of the icicles that hung from the roof, which since the sun had set them free from the chill embrace of the night frost were hurrying away, their ringing footsteps followed by a thousand echoes. All these sounds made their way into the room like a storm of pebble-stones beating a hurried tattoo upon the ground. Above all these harmonies of Nature could be heard from time to time the calls of the storks echoing softly from the distant heights, and dying gradually away as if melting in air.
This new birth of Nature was reflected upon the boy’s face in the form of distress and perplexity. He would knit his brows, listen for a while, then suddenly, as though alarmed by the mysterious hurrying of the sounds, he would stretch forth his arms, seeking his mother, and rushing to her would nestle in her bosom.
“What can be the matter with him?” the mother cried, questioning herself and others.
Uncle Maxim carefully scanning the boy’s face, could in no way explain his strange alarm.
“I suppose he cannot understand,” suggested the mother, thus construing the expression of mute surprise and distressed inquiry upon her son’s face.
The child indeed was frightened and uneasy. At first he had seemed to catch eagerly at the unaccustomed sounds, but soon he showed his surprise that the noises already familiar to his ear were all at once hushed and gone.
VI.
Soon the chaotic sounds of spring-time died away. Encouraged by the burning rays of the sun, Nature fell into her ancient grooves, and gradually settled down to work. The newly springing life did its utmost; its rate of speed increased like a swiftly rushing steam-train. The tender grass was springing in the fields, and the odor of the birch-buds filled the air.
It was proposed to take the boy out into the meadows to the bank of the nearest river. The mother led him by the hand, Uncle Maxim, leaning on his crutch and cane, walked by her side, and thus the three started for the little hill near the river, where the sun and the wind had already dried the ground. It was thickly carpeted with green grass, and its summit commanded quite a broad view. The brilliant daylight dazzled the eyes of Maxim and the mother; and when the sunbeams burned their faces, the spring breeze came with its invisible wings, dispelling the warmth by a refreshing coolness. There was a sense of enchantment, of intoxication, in the air.
The mother felt the child’s tiny hand clinging fast to her own, but so transported was she by the exhilarating influence of the spring-time that she was less keenly observant than usual of this sign of childish alarm. She breathed in long and full respirations, and walked along without once turning her head. Had she looked down at her boy, she would have discovered a strange expression on his face. He turned his wide-open eyes toward the sun with a sense of surprise. His lips were parted; inhaling the air, he gasped like a fish that has just been taken out of the water; an expression of mingled pain and delight was depicted on his bewildered face, which passing over it like a nerve-wave illumined the face for a moment, yielding directly however to the former expression of surprise, that might almost be called alarm. The eyes alone constantly preserved their steady, unchanging, and sightless gaze.
Having reached the hill, all three seated themselves. As the mother was lifting the boy to place him in a more comfortable position, he caught nervously at her dress like one who is on the point of falling, almost as if he no longer felt the ground beneath his feet. Again the mother took no heed of his alarm, because both her own eyes and attention were absorbed in the charming spring landscape.
It was noonday. Slowly the sun sailed across the blue sky. From the elevation where they sat could be seen the wide-spreading river. Its ice had already floated down the current, save a few occasional fragments dotting the surface here and there, which were fast melting away. On the low meadows the water was still standing in broad lagoons, which reflected the blue dome of the heavens and the snowy clouds that slowly passed and vanished like the melting ice. A gentle breeze rippled the glistening surface of the river. Looking across to the opposite shore one could see the dark grain-fields, whose steaming vapor rising wave after wave veiled the thatched huts far away in the distance, and obscured the vague blue outline of the forest. It was as if the earth sent up its clouds of incense to the sky.
All this, however, was visible only to those who had eyes. The boy saw nothing of this picture; he could not look upon that festival of Nature, nor on her marvellous temple; his sensations were vague and broken; his childish heart was troubled. When he had first started, with the sun’s rays falling full upon his face, warming his delicate skin, he instinctively turned his sightless eyes in its direction, as if he realized the central force in the invisible picture before him. The transparent distance, the blue dome overhead, the wide horizon, had no existence so far as he was concerned. The sole effect produced on him was a sense of some material substance, warming his face with its soft caress. Then something both cool and light, although less tangible than the warmth of the sun, lifted from his face this sensation of tender caressing languor, and left behind a delicious coolness. Within the house the boy had become accustomed to move freely, conscious of the space surrounding him. Here he was encompassed by pursuing waves, which now caressed and now excited and intoxicated him. The sun’s warm touch was suddenly brushed away; a gust of wind began to ring in his ears and to blow about his face and temples,—indeed all over his head, down to the very nape of his neck, whirling around him as though it were trying to bear him away, or to entice him somewhere into the invisible space, benumbing his consciousness, and lulling him into a languor of forgetfulness. Then the boy’s hand would cling more closely to his mother’s, and it seemed to him as though his heart must cease to beat. However, after he was seated he appeared to grow calmer. Already, notwithstanding the strange sensation that pervaded his whole being, he had begun to distinguish the separate sounds. The atmospheric waves were still dashing tumultuously about him; and as the throbbings of his quickened pulse beat time to the music of these waves, it seemed to him that they were entering his very body. From time to time they brought to him the lark’s sharp trill, the soft whisper of the budding birch, or the gentle splash of the flowing river. The lark, whizzing by on its light wings, paused just overhead to describe its capricious circles; the gnats buzzed; and over all, sad and prolonged, rose the occasional cry of the ploughman, urging his horses over a half-ploughed strip of land.
The boy failed to grasp these sounds in their entirety; he could neither unite them nor group them in any satisfactory sequence. One by one they seemed to project themselves into his dark little head, now soft and vague; now loud, sharp, and deafening. At times they came crowding confusedly on each other, jumbled in meaningless discord. Faster and faster ran the waves; now it seemed to the boy as if above all this tumult of sounds he could hear muffled echoes, like memories of the past, coming to him from another world. When the sounds grew fainter, a sense of dreamy languor came over him; a convulsive twitching betrayed the successive waves of feeling that swept across his face; he closed his eyes, then opened them, and every feature seemed to ask a question, striving to grasp the situation. His childish sense of appreciation, as yet but feeble,—overwhelmed as it was with new impressions, although it still struggled against the tide, making an effort to hold its own, to combine them into something like unity, and thus to gain the victory over them,—showed signs of giving away. The task was too great for the brain of a blind child, destitute of the necessary images by means of which he might have achieved it.
All these sounds rose into the air, flying to and fro, and falling one by one, all too varied, too resonant. The waves that had taken possession of the boy rose with greater force from the darkness that encompassed him with its reverberating echoes, and were again resolved into the same darkness, only to be replaced by other waves and other sounds more and more hurried, soaring above him, filling his soul with anguish; again they seemed to lift him up, as if lulling him to repose with gentle rocking motion. Suddenly above this vague confusion arose the long-drawn note of a human call; then all at once everything became still. With a faint moan the boy rolled over backward on the grass. The mother turned instantly, and she in her turn uttered a cry: he was lying on the grass in a deep swoon.
VII.
Uncle Maxim was very much disturbed by this occurrence. He had of late ordered a number of physiological, psychological, and educational works, and with his habitual energy had devoted himself to the study of all that science has revealed concerning the mysterious growth and development of a child’s soul. The delight of these studies had so charmed him that all brooding fancies concerning his own uselessness in the battle of life, “the worm grovelling in the dust,” and “the hospital ambulance,” had long since vanished from the invalid’s square head, and in their stead appeared a deep and thoughtful absorption; rose-colored hopes even came from time to time to warm the veteran’s heart. Uncle Maxim grew more and more convinced that Nature, although she had deprived the boy of his sight, had not in other respects dealt unjustly with him. He was a creature who responded with remarkable activity and completeness to the exterior impressions accessible to him. Uncle Maxim conceived it to be his duty to develop the latent capabilities of the boy, so that the injustice of his doom might be counterbalanced by the efforts of his own mind and influence, and that he might be enabled to send as a substitute into the battle of life another and a younger combatant, who without his influence would be lost to the service.
“Who knows,” thought the old Garibaldian, “but there may be a fight in which neither lance nor sword are needed? Perchance he with whom fate has dealt so hardly may sometime employ the weapons that he is capable of wielding in the defence of others, victims of fate like himself; and then my life will not have been spent in vain, old crippled soldier that I am!”
Even the free-thinkers during the forties and fifties of the present century were not free from superstitious ideas regarding the “mysterious designs of Nature.” Therefore it was not surprising that with the gradual development of the child, who showed unusual gifts, Uncle Maxim should have arrived at the firm conviction that his very blindness was only one of the manifestations of those mysterious designs. “One unfortunate for another,”—this was the motto which Uncle Maxim had already inscribed on his pupil’s standard.
VIII.
After that first excursion in the spring, the boy was delirious for several days. He either lay quiet and motionless upon his bed, or kept up a constant muttering, as if he were listening to something. Meanwhile the peculiar expression of wonder never left his face.
“He really looks as if he were trying in vain to understand something,” said the young mother.
Maxim had grown thoughtful; he merely nodded. He had suspected that the boy’s strange alarm, as well as his swoon, might be attributed to the numerous impressions which the boy’s perceptive faculties had been unable to grasp; and he decided to allow these impressions to find their way into the mind of the convalescent child by degrees, disintegrated, so to speak, into their component parts. The windows of the invalid’s room had been closed, but when he began to recover, they were occasionally opened. Some member of the family used to lead him about the rooms, and into the vestibule, the yard, and the garden. Every time his mother observed a look of alarm upon his face, she would explain to him the nature of the sounds that perplexed him. “That is the shepherd’s horn you hear beyond the wood,” she explained; “and that sound which you hear above the twittering of the sparrows is the note of the red-wing. Listen to the stork gurgling on his wheel.[5] He has just arrived from distant lands, and is now building his nest on the old spot.”
As the mother spoke thus, the boy turned toward her, his face beaming with gratitude, and seized her hand and nodded, as with a thoughtful and intelligent expression he continued to listen.
IX.
Now, when anything attracted his attention he always asked what it meant; and his mother, or more frequently Uncle Maxim, would explain to him the nature of the objects or of the creatures that caused these various sounds. His mother’s explanations, more lively and graphic, impressed the boy with greater force; but sometimes this impression would be too painful. Upon the features of the young woman, herself suffering, could be read the expression of her inmost feelings, and in her eyes a silent protest or a look of pain, as she strove to convey to the child an idea of form and color. With contracted brow and wrinkled forehead the boy concentrated his whole attention. Evidently his brain was at work struggling with difficult problems; his unpractised imagination strove to shape from the descriptions given him a new image,—a feat which it was unable to perform. At such times Uncle Maxim always frowned with displeasure; and when the tears appeared in the mother’s eyes, and the child’s face grew pale from the effect of his intense effort, Maxim would interfere, and taking his sister’s place would tell his nephew stories, in the invention of which he would try to use only such ideas as related to sound and space. Then the face of the blind boy would grow calmer.
“And is he big?” the child asked about the stork, who seemed to be beating in his nest a slow tattoo. Saying this he began to spread out his arms; for this was his custom whenever he asked such questions, and Uncle Maxim would always tell him when he had extended them far enough. But this time he had stretched out his little arms to their utmost limit, and Uncle Maxim said,—
“No, he is still larger. If he were brought into this room and put upon the floor, his head would reach above the back of the chair.”
“He _is_ large,” said the boy thoughtfully; “and the red-wing is like this,” slightly parting his folded palms.
“Yes, the red-wing is like this. But the large birds never sing so well as little ones. The red-wing tries to make everybody pleased to hear him, but the stork is a serious bird; he stands on one leg in his nest, and looks about like an angry master watching his workmen, and mutters aloud, heeding not that his voice is hoarse, and that he can be overheard by outsiders.”
The boy laughed merrily while he listened to these descriptions, and for a time forgot his painful efforts to understand his mother’s words. Yet her stories possessed a greater charm for him, and he preferred to question her rather than Uncle Maxim.
II.
The Sources of Musical Feeling. The Blind Boy and the Melody.
Thus the dark mind of the child was gradually enriched by new images. By means of his abnormally keen sense of hearing he was enabled to penetrate deeper and deeper into the secrets of Nature. The dense, impenetrable gloom that veiled his brain like a heavy cloud still enfolded him, and although he had felt this from his birth, and one might suppose that he would have become accustomed to his misfortune, yet such was the temperament of the child that he instinctively strove to free himself from this dark curtain. His perpetual though unconscious efforts to gain that light of which he knew not, had left upon his face the impress of his vague and painful struggle.
Yet the blind boy enjoyed moments of quiet satisfaction, even of childish delight, which came to him whenever he received a keen sensation from certain outward impressions, revealing unfamiliar manifestations of the unseen world. Nature in all her grandeur and power was not wholly inaccessible to him. Once, for instance, when he was led to a high cliff above the river, he listened with a peculiar expression to the far-away splashing of the water below, and when he heard the stones slipping from beneath his feet he seized his mother’s dress and held his breath in fear. From that time depth was represented to him by the gentle murmuring of water at the foot of a cliff, or by the startling sound of stones falling.
A remote and indistinct song conveyed to the mind of the boy the idea of distance; but when during a storm in the spring-time the pealing thunder rang out, filling all the air with its reverberations and angry mutterings, gradually dying away amid the clouds, he listened with awe, his heart swelling with emotion, and in his mind arose a grand conception of the magnitude of the firmament. Thus sound embodied for the child the immediate expression of the outside world; all other impressions were merely supplementary to that of hearing, by whose aid his ideas took form as if poured into a mould.
Sometimes during the heat of noonday, when all around was quiet, when human life seemed at a standstill, and Nature had lapsed into that peculiar repose beneath which the noiseless current of life is felt rather than seen, the face of the blind boy likewise assumed an expression peculiar to himself. He seemed like one absorbed in listening to sounds inaudible to all the world beside,—sounds issuing from the depths of his own soul, impelled to utterance by the universal calm. One who observed him at such moments might fancy that his vague thoughts had found an echo in his heart, like the uncertain melody of a song.
II.
The blind boy was already five years old. Slender and frail he was, it is true, but still he could walk and even run with ease and freedom around the house. No stranger on seeing him walk with such entire confidence from room to room, always turning at the right place and finding what he sought, would for one moment have suspected that the boy was blind; he would simply have been taken for a child intensely in earnest, ever with a far-away look in his eyes. But in the yard he moved with less confidence, feeling his way by the aid of his cane. If it so chanced that he had no cane in his hand, he chose rather to creep upon the ground, passing his hands rapidly over every object that came in his way.
III.
It was a calm summer evening. Uncle Maxim was sitting in the garden. The father as usual was occupied in some distant field. Everything was quiet in the yard and around the house; the hamlet was to all appearances going to sleep, and the hum of the servants’ and workmen’s voices had likewise ceased.
The boy had already been in bed for half an hour. He lay between sleeping and waking. For a certain length of time this peaceful hour had seemed to arouse strange memories within him. Of course he could see neither the dusky blue sky, nor the dark waving tree-tops, outlined sharp and clear against the starry heavens, nor the frowning peaks of the courtyard buildings, nor the blue haze overspreading the ground, mingling with the pale golden light of the moon and the stars. For several days he had fallen asleep under the charm of a spell of which he could render no account the following day. When drowsiness had benumbed his senses, when he could no longer hear the rustle of the beech-trees, or the distant barking of the village dogs, or the voice of the nightingale beyond the river, or the melancholy tinkling of the bells attached to the colt browsing in the neighboring field,—when all these varied sounds grew faint and indistinct, it seemed to the blind boy that they were all merged in one harmonious melody, which made its way quietly into the room, and hovering over his bed brought in its train vague but enticing dreams. The next morning when he woke he still felt their influence, and asked his mother: “What was that—yesterday? What was it?”