The Open Window: Tales of the Months

by Mabel Osgood Wright

The fever itself had taken but a slight hold on Ernest; it was the other spectres, worse than death, that threatened him, Deafness and Blindness; his parched throat and tongue refused to form coherent sound, as he lay there with bandaged eyes and ears, that surgery had rendered wholly deaf in the one hope that Nature might repair the necessary wounds.

As the fever left, and consciousness returned to stay, loneliness possessed him, entire and complete; except through the sense of touch, he was utterly isolated from his kind.

The days went by, until one came, after the pain had left his eyes, when they removed the bandages cautiously, and he saw the chintz figures of the wall-paper in the partly darkened room, and heaven itself could not have seemed a fairer vision.

Presently they let him read, a few words at a time, and the nurse wrote answers to his various questions on a pad that she kept upon the bed; but oftentimes, when he thought that he was speaking, he had in reality made no sound, for he could not hear his own voice.

They brought the Boy, now fast gaining colour and strength, in to reassure him, and Asa, who smiled and puffed out his cheeks to show how he was gaining, left in his hand a little bunch of pansies and hardy English violets. The Man pressed them to his face, but scent was as dead as sound. Would he never again hear the wind in the grass, or Eileen’s voice laughing as they went fishing and the fish slipped the hook? Then it came to him, who for a moment had forgotten more recent events, remembering only the past, that hearing had nothing to do with this.

May fluttered past the Man as though on the wings of many birds. The sight of the lilacs under the window, and the apple blossoms scattered through the valley, were his portion of it, and the blood in his veins seemed to grow warm again and his heart began to take courage. The horses were plodding to and fro, ploughing the river meadow, but he did not ask who was guiding the work, or whether the men at the wagon shop were idle or busy; his head was still tired, so tired that he had scarcely the strength to think.

“You must try to rouse him now,” said the specialist, who was watching the unresponsive ears, to father; “with bodily health the hearing will return.”

It was June when he first crawled down the narrow stairs and took the Boy’s seat in the sunny porch, near which his dinner was spread by Aunt Louisa, who bustled about him affectionately, trying by gesture, as well as by written words, to raise his curiosity to the point of questioning how they were managing without him.

Every few days the Boy came with the doctor, now bringing him some little thing that he had made, or a bunch of wayside flowers. One day he brought a knot of white musk roses fastened together with grass. The Man caught at them eagerly, for such grew in the old garden at Eileen’s. Burying his nose in them, their fragrance penetrated the awakening sense, the same moment that a high-pitched peal of the Boy’s laughter, as he made the young dogs do their tricks, reached his ears. Ah! blessed Mother Nature, who had day and night been knitting, knitting, to rejoin the severed nerves and tissues that they might carry the messages to the brain once more!

Strawberries were ripe and passing, and the blush rose on the kitchen porch was shedding its satin petals when the Man said abruptly to father, who had this day come without the Boy: “When may Asa come home, Dr. Russell? It is a shame to trouble your daughter any longer, and besides, I need his company. I’ve been over the farm to-day, and to-morrow I shall go outside to the wagon shop; yes, to-morrow I must take up life again.”