Darkness and Daylight | Page 6

brought to mind a second time the object of her
being there now, and she began to devise the best plan for delivering
the bouquet. "I don't believe he cares for the compliments," she said to
herself, "any way, I'll keep them till another time," but the flowers; how
should she give those to him? She was beginning to be very much
afraid of the figure sitting there so silently, and at last mustering all her
courage, she gave a preliminary cough, which started him to his feet,
and as his tall form towered above her she felt her fears come back, and
scarcely knowing what she was doing she thrust the bouquet into his
hand, saying as she did so, "POOR blind man, I am so sorry and I've
brought you some nice flowers."
The next moment she was gone, and Richard heard the patter of her

feet far up the gravelled walk ere he had recovered from his surprise.
Who was she, and why had she remembered him? The voice was very,
very sweet, thrilling him with a strange melody, which carried him
back to a summer sunset years ago, when on the banks of the blue
Rhine he had listened to a beautiful, dark-eyed Swede singing her
infant daughter to sleep. Then the river itself appeared before him, cold
and grey with the November frosts, and on its agitated surface he saw a
little dimpled hand disappearing from view, while the shriek of the
dark-eyed Swede told that her child was gone. A plunge--a fearful
struggle--and he held the limp, white object in his arms; he bore it to
the shore; he heard them say that he had saved its life, and then he
turned aside to change his dripping garments and warm his icy limbs.
This was the first picture brought to his mind by Edith Hastings' voice.
The second was a sadder one, and he groaned aloud as he remembered
how from the time of the terrible cold taken then, and the severe illness
which followed, his eyesight had begun to fail--slowly, very slowly, it
is true--and for years he could not believe that Heaven had in store for
him so sad a fate. But it had come at last--daylight had faded out and
the night was dark around him. Once, in his hour of bitterest agony, he
had cursed that Swedish baby, wishing it had perished in the waters of
the Rhine, ere he saved it at so fearful a sacrifice. But he had repented
of the wicked thought; he was glad he saved the pretty Petrea's child,
even though be should never see her face again. He knew not where she
was, that girlish wife, speaking her broken English for the sake of her
American husband, who was not always as kind to her as he should
have been. He had heard no tidings of her since that fatal autumn. He
had scarcely thought of her for months, but she came back to him now,
and it was Edith's voice which brought her.
"Poor blind man," he whispered aloud. "How like that was to Petrea,
when she said of my father, 'Poor, soft old man;'" and then he wondered
again who his visitor had been, and why she had left him so abruptly.
It was a child, he knew, and he prized her gift the more for that, for
Richard Harrington was a dear lover of children and he kissed the fair
bouquet as he would not have kissed it had he known from whom it
came. Rising at last from his seat, he groped his way back to the house,

and ordering one of the costly vases in his room to be filled with water,
he placed the flowers therein, and thought how carefully he would
preserve them for the sake of his unknown friend.
Meantime Edith kept on her way, pausing once and looking back just in
time to see Mr. Harrington kiss the flowers she had brought.
"I'm glad they please him," she said; "but how awful it is to be blind;"
and by way of trying the experiment, she shut her eyes, and stretching
out her arms, walked just as Richard, succeeding so well that she was
beginning to consider it rather agreeable than otherwise, when she
unfortunately ran into a tall rose-bush, scratching her forehead, tangling
her hair, and stubbing her toes against its gnarled roots. "'Taint so jolly
to be blind after all," she said, "I do believe I've broken my toe," and
extricating herself as best she could from the sharp thorns, she ran on as
fast as her feet could carry her, wondering what Mrs. Atherton would
say when she heard Richard was blind, and feeling a kind of natural
delight in knowing she should be the