Part 21 (1/2)
”You have picked up baby. You have on a dress with light and dark stripes. I can see--I can see.”
Her voice rose exultantly on the last word. Hollister looked at Myra; she held the boy pressed close to her breast. Her lips were parted, her pansy-purple eyes were wide and full of alarm as she looked at Hollister.
He felt his scarred face grow white. And when Doris turned toward him to bend forward and look at him with that strange, peering gaze, he covered his face with his hands.
CHAPTER XVII
”Everything is indistinct, just blurred outlines. I can't see colors only as light and dark,” Doris went on, looking at Hollister with that straining effort to see. ”I can only see you now as a vague form without any detail.”
Hollister pulled himself together. After all, it was no catastrophe, no thunderbolt of fate striking him a fatal blow. If, with growing clarity of vision, catastrophe ensued, then was time enough to shrink and cower. That resiliency which had kept him from going before under terrific stress stood him in good stead now.
”It seems almost too good to be true,” he forced himself to say, and the irony of his words twisted his lips into what with him pa.s.sed for a smile.
”It's been coming on for weeks,” Doris continued. ”And I haven't been able to persuade myself it was real. I have always been able to distinguish dark from daylight. But I never knew whether that was pure instinct or because some faint bit of sight was left me. I have looked and looked at things lately, wondering if imagination could play such tricks. I couldn't believe I was seeing even a little, because I've always been able to see things in my mind, sometimes clearly, sometimes in a fog--as I see now--so I couldn't tell whether the things I have seen lately were realities or mental images. I have wanted so to see, and it didn't seem possible.”
Asking about the stump had been a test, she told Hollister. She did not know till then whether she saw or only thought she saw. And she continued to make these tests happily, exulting like a child when it first walks alone. She made them leave her and she followed them among a clump of alders, avoiding the trunks when she came within a few feet, instead of by touch. She had Hollister lead her a short distance away from Myra and the baby. She groped her way back, peering at the ground, until at close range she saw the broad blue and white stripes of Myra's dress.
”I wonder if I shall continue to see more and more?” she sighed at last, ”or if I shall go on peering and groping in this uncertain, fantastic way. I wish I knew.”
”I know one thing,” Myra put in quickly. ”And that is you won't do your eyes any good by trying so hard to see. You mustn't get excited about this and overdo it. If it's a natural recovery, you won't help it any by trying so hard to see.”
”Do I seem excited?” Doris smiled. ”Perhaps I am. If you had been shut up for three years in a room without windows, I fancy you'd be excited at even the barest chance of finding yourself free to walk in the sun.
My G.o.d, no one with sight knows the despair that the blind sometimes feel. And the promise of seeing--you can't possibly imagine what a glorious thing it is. Every one has always been good to me. I've been lucky in so many ways. But there have been times--you know, don't you, Bob?--when it has been simply h.e.l.l, when I struggled in a black abyss, afraid to die and yet full of bitter protest against the futility of living.”
The tears stood in her eyes and she reached for Hollister's hand, and squeezed it tightly between her own.
”What a lot of good times we shall have when I get so that I can see just a little better,” she said affectionately. ”Your blind woman may not prove such a bad bargain, after all, Bob.”
”Have I ever thought that?” he demanded.
”Oh, no,” she said smiling, ”but _I_ know. Give me the baby, Myra.”
She cuddled young Robert in her arms.
”Little, fat, soft thing,” she murmured. ”By and by his mother will be able to see the color of his dear eyes. Bless its little heart--him and his daddy are the bestest things in this old world--this old world that was black so long.”
Myra turned her back on them, walked away and stood on the river bank.
Hollister stared at his wife. He struggled with an old sensation, one that he had thought long put by,--a sense of the intolerable burden of existence in which nothing was sure but sorrow. And he was aware that he must dissemble all such feelings. He must not let Doris know how he dreaded that hour in which she should first see clearly his mutilated face.
”You ought to see an oculist,” he said at last.
”An oculist? Eye specialists--I saw a dozen of them,” she replied.
”They were never able to do anything--except to tell me I would never see again. A fig for the doctors. They were wrong when they said my sight was wholly destroyed. They'd probably be wrong again in the diagnosis and treatment. Nature seems to be doing the job. Let her have her way.”
They discussed that after Myra was gone, sitting on a log together in the warm sun, with the baby kicking his heels on the spread quilt.
They continued the discussion after they went back to the house.