IX.
The ice was broken. On the following day the boy with timid curiosity came into the drawing-room, where he had not been since the new city guest—that angry, loud-voiced creature—had taken possession of the room. But yesterday he heard the guest sing a song that pleased his ear, and gave him cause to change his opinion of the instrument. With the last lingering traces of his former timidity he drew near the spot where the piano stood, and stopping at a short distance from it, he listened. There was no one in the drawing-room. His mother sat on a sofa in the adjoining room, sewing; she held her breath as she watched him, admiring every movement, every change of expression on his sensitive face.
Putting out his hand, the blind boy touched the polished surface of the piano; then overcome by bashfulness, he immediately withdrew it. Having twice repeated this experiment he drew nearer, and began a careful examination of the instrument, stooping to the floor to pass his hand over the legs, and feeling his way as far around its sides as he could go. At last his hand touched the smooth key-board: the soft reverberation of the string vibrated uncertainly on the air. The boy listened to this vibration long after it had ceased to be audible to his mother; then with a look of intense interest he touched another key. Presently, as he drew his hand along the key-board, he happened to touch a note of the upper register; then he touched every note, one after the other, and paused to listen as they vibrated in trembling cadence and were lost in the air. The face of the blind boy wore an expression of mingled attention and delight; he evidently enjoyed every separate tone, and by this sensitive observation of each elementary sound as component parts of melodies yet unborn, the future artist might be divined.
But it seemed as if each note possessed for the blind boy an attribute peculiar to itself. When beneath the pressure of his finger a brilliant note of the upper register rang out, a glow would come upon his face, uplifted as if to follow the ringing note in its upward flight; but when he touched a deep bass-note, he stooped to listen,—seeming to feel sure that the heavy note must be rolling along the ground, scattering itself all over the floor, to be finally lost in the corners.