I.
The Blind Infant. The Family.
At the hour of midnight, in a wealthy family living in the southwestern part of Russia, a child was born. As the first faint, pitiful cry of the baby echoed through the room, the young mother, who had been lying with closed eyes, unconscious to all appearances, stirred uneasily in the bed. She murmured a word or two in a low whispering tone, while her pallid face, with its sweet and almost childlike features, was disfigured by an expression of impatience,—like that of a spoiled child, who resents the unwonted suffering as something new to her experience. The nurse bent low to catch the inarticulate sounds that fell from her whispering lips.
“Why, why does he—?” murmured the invalid in the same impatient whisper.
The nurse did not understand the question. Again the child cried out, and again the same shadow of sharp pain darkened the face of the mother, while large tears rolled down from her closed eyes.
“Why, why,” she repeated in a whisper.
At last the meaning of her question seemed to occur to the nurse, who answered quite calmly,—
“Oh, you mean why does the child cry? Babies always do. You must not agitate yourself.”
But the mother was not to be pacified. She started every time the little one cried, and kept repeating in tones of angry impatience, “Why—why—so dreadfully?”
To the nurse there seemed nothing unusual in the cries of the infant; and supposing the mother to be either unconscious or simply delirious, she left her, and busied herself with the child.