"In these cataracts-cases, it is constantly scarlets that they almost see," muttered Grosse to himself. "There must be reason for this--and I must find him." He went on with his questions to Lucilla. "And the colors you hate most--which is _he?_"
"Black."
Grosse nodded his head approvingly. "I thought so," he said. "It is always black that they hate. For this also there must be reason--and I must find _him._"
Having expressed that resolution, he approached the writing-table, and took a sheet of paper out of the case, and a circular pen-wiper of scarlet cloth out of the inkstand. After that, he looked about him; waddled back to the other end of the room; and fetched the black felt hat in which he had traveled from London. He ranged the hat, the paper, and the pen-wiper in a row. Before he could put his next question to her, she pointed to the hat with a gesture of disapproval.
"Take it away," she said. "I don't like that."
Grosse stopped me before I could speak.
"Wait a little," he whispered in my ear. "It is not quite so wonderful as you think. These blind peoples, when they first see, have all alike the same hatred of anything what is dark." He turned to Lucilla. "Say," he asked. "Is your favorite colors among these things here?"
She passed by the hat in contempt; looked at the pen-wiper, and put it down; looked at the sheet of paper, and put it down; hesitated--and again shut her eyes.
"No!" cried Grosse. "I won't have it! How dare you blind yourself, in the presence of Me? What! I give you back your sights, and you go shut your eyes. Open them--or I will put you in the corner like a naughty girls.
Your favorite colors? Now, now, now!"
She opened her eyes (very unwillingly), and looked once more at the pen-wiper and the paper.
"I see nothing as bright as my favorite colors here," she said.
Grosse held up the sheet of paper, and pressed the question without mercy.
"What! is white, whiter than this?"
"Fifty thousand times whiter than that!"
"Goot. Now mind! This paper is white," (he snatched her handkerchief out of her apron-pocket). "This handkerchief is white, too; whitest of white, both of them. First lesson, my lofe! Here in my hands is your favorite colors, in the time when you were blind."
"_Those!_"she exclaimed, pointing to the paper and the handkerchief, with a look of blank disappointment as he dropped them on the table. She turned over the pen-wiper and the hat, and looked round at me. Grosse, waiting to try another experiment, left it to me to answer. The result, in both cases, was the same as in the cases of the sheet of paper and the handkerchief. Scarlet was not half as red--black, not one-hundredth part as black--as her imagination had figured them to her, in the days when she was blind. Still, as to this last color--as to black--she could feel some little encouragement. It had affected her disagreeably (just as poor Oscar's face had affected her), though she had not actually known it for the color that she disliked. She made an effort, poor child, to assert herself, against her merciless surgeon-teacher. "I didn't know it was black," she said. "But I hated the sight of it, for all that."
She tried, as she spoke, to toss the hat on to a chair, standing close by her--and threw it instead, high above the back of the chair, against the wall, at least six feet away from the object at which she had aimed.
"I am a helpless fool!" she burst out; her face flushing crimson with mortification. "Don't let Oscar see me! I can't bear the thought of making myself ridiculous before _him!_ He is coming here," she added, turning to me entreatingly. "Manage to make some excuse for his not seeing me till later in the day."
I promised to find the excuse--all the more readily, that I now saw an unexpected chance of reconciling her in some degree (so long as she was learning to see) to the blank produced in her life by Oscar's absence.
She addressed herself again to Grosse.
"Go on!" she said impatiently. "Teach me to be something better than an idiot--or put the bandage on, and blind me again. My eyes are of no use to me! Do you hear?" she cried furiously, taking him by his broad shoulders and shaking him with all her might--"my eyes are of no use to me!"
"Now! now! now!" cried Grosse. "If you don't keep your tempers, you little spitfire, I will teach you nothing." He took up the sheet of paper and the pen-wiper; and, forcing her to sit down, placed them together before her, in her lap.
"Do you know one thing?" he went on. "Do you know what is meant by an objects which is square? Do you know what is meant by an objects which is round?"
Instead of answering him, she appealed indignantly to my opinion.
"Is it not monstrous," she asked, "to hear him put such a question to me as that? Do I know round from square? Oh, how cruelly humiliating! Don't tell Oscar! don't tell Oscar!"