O’Connell called twice every day during the first week, not because it was necessary for him to visit his two patients, but because the infant fascinated him. He would wait for it to open its eyes, and then would get up and leave the room hurriedly. Always he intended to return the infant’s stare, but when the opportunity was given to him, he always rose and left the room—no matter how long and deliberately he had braced himself to another course of action.
It was on a Thursday that the baby was born, and it was on the following Thursday that the circumstance of the household was reshaped.
O’Connell came in the morning, full of resolution. After he had pronounced Mrs. Stott well on the way to recovery, he paid the usual visit to his younger patient. The child lay, relaxed, at full length, in the little cot which had been provided for him. His eyes were, as usual, closed, and he had all the appearance of the ordinary hydrocephalic idiot.
O’Connell sat down by the cot, listened to the child’s breathing and heart-beat, lifted and let fall again the lax wrist, turned back the eyelid, revealing only the white of the upturned eyeball, and then composed himself to await the natural waking of the child, if it were asleep—always a matter of uncertainty.
The nurse stood near him, silent, but she looked away from the cot.
“Hydrocephalus!” murmured O’Connell, staring at his tiny patient, “hydrocephalus, without a doubt. Eh? nurse!”
“Yes, perhaps! I don’t know, doctor.”
“Oh, not a doubt of it, not a doubt,” repeated O’Connell, and then came a flicker of the child’s eyelids and a weak crumpling of the tiny hand.
O’Connell caught his breath and clawed at his beard; “Hydrocephalus,” he muttered with set jaw and drawn eyebrows.
The tiny hand straightened with a movement that suggested the recovery of crushed grass, the mouth opened with a microscopic yawn, and then the eyelids were slowly raised and a steady unwavering stare of profoundest intelligence met O’Connell’s gaze.