“Is that you, mamma?” he asked.
“Yes, it is I.”
He rose on his elbow. It was as if his consciousness were still obscured by a sort of haze. The next moment he said: “I was dreaming again. I often dream now, but I can remember nothing.”
III.
More than a year passed thus; periods of gloom alternating in the young man’s nature with a nervous irritability; and at the same time his senses, especially that of hearing, grew more and more acute. That his entire organism was susceptible to the light was evident even by night; he always knew when the moon was shining, and would often remain out of doors, sitting motionless and sad, when all the others in the house were sleeping,—giving himself up to the influence of that dreamy and fantastic light, his pale face meanwhile turned ever in the direction of the luminous globe that was traversing the dark-blue sky, and his eyes reflecting the lustre of its cold rays. But when the globe, growing larger and larger as it drew near the earth, became veiled by a heavy red mist and finally disappeared below the horizon line, the face of the blind man would soften and grow calm, and he would rise and go to his room.
As to his thoughts during these long nights, it would not be easy to describe them. Every one who has experienced the joys and sorrows of self-consciousness is familiar with the crisis that occurs at a certain period of life, when a man, still pausing on the threshold strives to define to himself the place he occupies in Nature, his object in life, and his relations to the surrounding world. This is, so to speak, a “dead point;” and fortunate is the man whom the impetus of life’s power carries through it unharmed. In Peter’s case this crisis was seriously complicated. To the question, “What is the object of one’s life?” he added another: “What is the object of a blind man’s life?” Finally, into this travail of sad thoughts entered another element,—an almost physical pressure of unsatisfied desire, which re-acted on his disposition; he grew more and more nervous and irritable, without an apparent cause.
“I long to see,” he said when this mood had so far relaxed that he could speak of it with Evelyn,—“I long to see, and I cannot overcome this desire. Could I but once, even in a dream, see heaven and earth and the bright sunlight, and remember it all,—could I but thus see my father and mother, you and Uncle Maxim,—I should be satisfied, and never be distressed again.”
And he persistently clung to that idea. When alone he would take up different objects, feel of them with unusual attention, and then putting them aside try to recall their familiar outlines. In the same way he studied the difference between bright-colored surfaces, which the abnormally keen perceptions of his nervous system enabled him to distinguish quite readily by the touch. But all this simply conveyed to Peter’s mind information in regard to his own relations to things, without giving him a clearly defined idea of their intrinsic properties. He could distinguish the difference between day and night from the fact that the sunbeams, in some mysterious way, penetrated his brain, irritating still more keenly his agonizing queries.