She turned over the pen-wiper and the hat, and looked round at me. Grosse, waiting to try another experiment, left it to me to answer. The result, in both cases, was the same as in the cases of the sheet of paper and the handkerchief. Scarlet was not half as red--black, not one-hundredth part as black--as her imagination had figured them to her, in the days when she was blind. Still, as to this last color--as to black--she could feel some little encouragement. It had affected her disagreeably (just as poor Oscar's face had affected her), though she had not actually known it for the color that she disliked. She made an effort, poor child, to assert herself, against her merciless surgeon-teacher. "I didn't know it was black," she said. "But I hated the sight of it, for all that."
She tried, as she spoke, to toss the hat on to a chair, standing close by her--and threw it instead, high above the back of the chair, against the wall, at least six feet away from the object at which she had aimed. "I am a helpless fool!" she burst out; her face flushing crimson with mortification. "Don't let Oscar see me! I can't bear the thought of making myself ridiculous before him! He is coming here," she added, turning to me entreatingly. "Manage to make some excuse for his not seeing me till later in the day."
I promised to find the excuse--all the more readily, that I now saw an unexpected chance of reconciling her in some degree (so long as she was learning to see) to the blank produced in her life by Oscar's absence.
She addressed herself again to Grosse.
"Go on!" she said impatiently. "Teach me to be something better than an idiot--or put the bandage on, and blind me again. My eyes are of no use to me! Do you hear?" she cried furiously, taking him by his broad shoulders and shaking him with all her might--"my eyes are of no use to me!"
"Now! now! now!" cried Grosse. "If you don't keep your tempers, you little spitfire, I will teach you nothing." He took up the sheet of paper and the pen-wiper; and, forcing her to sit down, placed them together before her, in her lap.
"Do you know one thing?" he went on. "Do you know what is meant by an objects which is square? Do you know what is meant by an objects which is round?"
Instead of answering him, she appealed indignantly to my opinion.
"Is it not monstrous," she asked, "to hear him put such a question to me as that? Do I know round from square? Oh, how cruelly humiliating! Don't tell Oscar! don't tell Oscar!"
"If you know," persisted Grosse, "you can tell me. Look at those two things in your lap. Are they both round? or both square? or is one round? and the odder square? Look now, and tell me."
She looked--and said nothing.
"Well?" continued Grosse.
"You put me out, standing there staring at me through your horrid spectacles!" she said irritably. "Don't look at me, and I will tell you directly."
Grosse turned his head my way, with his diabolical grin; and signed to me to keep watch on her, in his place.
The instant his back was turned, she shut her eyes, and ran over the paper and the pen-wiper with the tips of her fingers!
"One is round and one is square," she answered, cunningly opening her eyes again, just in time to bear critical inspection when Grosse turned round towards her once more.
He took the paper and the pen-wiper out of her hands; and (thoroughly understanding the trick she had played him) changed them for a bronze saucer and a book. "Which is round? and which is square of these?" he asked, holding them up before her.
She looked first at one, and then at the other--plainly incapable (with only her eyes to help her) of answering the question.
"I put you out--don't I?" said Grosse. "You can't shut your eyes, my lofely Feench, while I am looking--can you?"
She turned red--then pale again. I began to be afraid she would burst out crying. Grosse managed her to perfection. The tact of this rough, ugly, eccentric old man was the most perfect tact I have ever met with.
"Shut your eyes," he said soothingly. "It is the right ways to learn. Shut your eyes, and take them in your hands, and tell me which is round and which is square in that way first."
She told him directly.
"Goot! now open your eyes, and see for yourself it is the saucers you have got in your right hand, and the books you have got in your left. You see? Goot again! Put them back on the table now. What shall we do next?"
"May I try if I can write?" she asked eagerly. "I do so want to see if I can write with my eyes instead of my finger."
"No! Ten thausand times no! I forbid reading; I forbid writing, yet. Come with me to the window. How do these most troublesome eyes of yours do at a distance?"
While we had been trying our experiment with Lucilla, the weather had brightened again. The clouds were parting; the sun was coming out; the bright gaps of blue in the sky were widening every moment; the shadows were traveling grandly over the windy slopes of the hills. Lucilla lifted her hands in speechless admiration as the German threw open the window, and placed her face to face with the view.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, "don't speak to me! don't touch me!--let me enjoy it! There is no disappointment here. I have never thought, I have never dreamed, of anything half so beautiful as this!"
Grosse looked at me, and silently pointed to her. She had turned pale--she was trembling in every limb, overwhelmed by her own ecstatic sense of the glory of the sky and the beauty of the earth, as they now met her view for the first time. I penetrated the surgeon's object in directing my attention to her. "See" (he meant to say), "what a delicately-organized creature we have to deal with! Is it possible to be too careful in handling such a sensitive temperament as that?" Understanding him only too well, I also trembled when I thought of the future. Everything now depended on Nugent. And Nugent's own lips had told me that he could not depend on himself!
It was a relief to me when Grosse interrupted her.
She pleaded hard to be allowed to stay at the window a little longer. He refused to allow it. Upon that she flew instantly into the opposite extreme. "I am in my own room, and I am my own mistress," she said angrily. "I insist on having my own way." Grosse was ready with his answer.
"Take your own ways; fatigue those weak new eyes of yours--and to-morrow, when you try to look out of window, you will not be able to see at all." This reply terrified her into instant submission. She assisted in replacing the bandage with her own hands. "May I go away to my own room?" she asked, with the simplicity of a child. "I have seen such beautiful sights--and I do so want to think of them by myself."
The medical adviser instantly granted the patient's request. Any proceeding which tended to compose her, was a proceeding of which he highly approved.
"If Oscar comes," she whispered, as she passed me on her way to the door, "mind I hear of it! and mind you don't tell him of the mistakes I have made!" She paused for a moment, thinking.