It was cold and
hard, and like nothing else in his black universe. He went back to its
mouth, began at one end of the keyboard and felt his way down into the
mellow thunder, as far as he could go. He seemed to know that it must be
done with the fingers, not with the fists or the feet. He approached this
highly artificial instrument through a mere instinct, and coupled himself
to it, as if he knew it was to piece him out and make a whole creature of
him. After he had tried over all the sounds, he began to finger out
passages from things Miss Nellie had been practising, passages that were
already his, that lay under the bone of his pinched, conical little skull,
definite as animal desires.
The door opened; Miss Nellie and her music-master stood behind it, but
blind Samson, who was so sensitive to presences, did not know they were
there. He was feeling out the pattern that lay all ready-made on the big
and little keys. When he paused for a moment, because the sound was wrong
and he wanted another, Miss Nellie spoke softly. He whirled about in a
spasm of terror, leaped forward in the dark, struck his head on the open
window, and fell screaming and bleeding to the floor. He had what his
mother called a fit. The doctor came and gave him opium.
When Samson was well again, his young mistress led him back to the piano.
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