Low fever followed the long prostration to which the fear of outer
darkness had reduced my jaded nerves. This fever probably redeemed my
sight, by generalizing the local inflammation, to which object the
doctor's efforts had been directed. Tossing on my weary bed, without a
glimpse of anything, how I longed for the soft caresses and cool lips of
Isola! But since that one visit, she had been sternly excluded. The
Professor had no chance of delivering his therapeutic lecture. In fact
he did not come. "Once for all," said Dr. Franks, when he heard of that
proposal, "choose, Miss Valence, between my services, and the maundering
of some pansophist. If you prefer the former, I will do my utmost, and
can almost promise you success; but I must and will be obeyed. None
shall enter your room, except Mrs. Shelfer and myself. As to your
lovely friend, of whom Mrs. Shelfer is so full, if she truly loves you,
she will keep away. She has done you already more harm than I can undo
in a week. I am deeply interested in this case, and feel for you
sincerely; but unless you promise me to see--I mean to receive--no one
without my permission, I will come no more."
It sounded very hard, but I felt that he was right.
"No crying, my dear child, no crying! Dear me, I have heard so much of
your courage. Too much inflammation already. Whatever you do, you must
not cry. That is one reason why I will not have your friend here. When
two young ladies get together in trouble, I know by my own daughters
what they do. You may laugh as much as you like, in a quiet way; and I
am sure Mrs. Shelfer can make any one laugh, under almost any
circumstances. Can't you now?"
"To be sure, my good friend, I have seen such a many rogues. That is,
when I know Charley's a-coming home."
"Now good bye, Miss Valence. But I would recommend you not to play with
your paints so. There is an effluvium from them."
"Oh, what can I do, what am I to do to pass the endless night? I was
only trying to build a house in the dark."
"Sleep as much as you can. I am giving you gentle opiates. When you
can sleep no longer, let Mrs. Shelfer talk or read to you, and have a
little music. I will lend you my musical box, which plays twenty-four
tunes: have it in the next room, not to be too loud. And then play on
the musical glasses, not too long at a time: you will soon find out how
to do that in the dark."
He most kindly sent us both the boxes that very day; and many a weary
hour they lightened of its load. Poor Isola came every day to inquire,
and several times she had her brother with her. She made an entire
conquest of Mrs. Shelfer, who even gave her a choice canary bird. I was
never tired of hearing the little woman's description of her beauty, and
her visit to the kitchen formed the chief event of the day. Mrs.
Shelfer (who had Irish blood in her veins) used to declare that the
ground was not good enough for them to walk on.
"Such a pair, Miss! To see her so light, and soft, and loving, tripping
along, and such eyes and such fur; and him walking so straight, and
brave, and noble. I am sure you'd go a mile, Miss, to see him walk."
"You forget, Mrs. Shelfer, I may never enjoy that pleasure."
"No, no. Quite true, my good friend. But then we may, all the same."
Exactly so. There lay all the difference to me, but none to any other.
This set me moralising in my shallow way, a thing by no means natural to
me, who was so concentrated and subjective. But loss of sight had done
me good, had turned the mind's eye inward into the darkness of myself.
I think the blind, as a general rule, are less narrow-minded than those
endowed with sight. Less inclined, I mean, to judge their neighbours
harshly, less arrogant in exacting that every pulse keep time with their
own. If eyes are but the chinks through which we focus on our brain
censoriousness and bigotry, if rays of light are shafts and lances of
ill will; then better is it to have no crystalline lens. Far better to
be blind, than print the world-distorted puppets of myself. I, that
smallest speck of dust, blown upon the shore of time, blown off when my
puff shall come; a speck ignored by moon and stars; too small (however
my ambition leap) for earth to itch, whate'er I suck; and yet a speck
that is a mountain in the telescope of God; shall I never learn that His
is my only magnitude; shall I wriggle to be all in all to my own
corpuscle?