Читать книгу A Vendetta of the Desert - W. C. Scully - Страница 9

Stephanus had two children, both daughters. Sons had been born to him but they died in infancy. His elder daughter, Sara, was seventeen years of age at the time of the encounter at the spring; Elsie, the younger, was eight. She had been blind from her birth.

Sara was comely to look upon. Tall and dark, with strongly marked features, she resembled her father in appearance to a remarkable degree. Little Elsie took after her mother; she was of fair complexion, with long locks of dead-gold hair which took a wonderful depth of colour in certain half-lights. Her eyes were very strange and in no way suggested blindness. They were of a deep steel-blue colour, but in the lights which made her hair wonderful an amber tone would shimmer up through the blue and give forth startling gleams and flashes. This peculiarity was especially noticeable when the child was under the influence of strong excitement.

Elsie was a silent child and possessed a calm and happy nature. Her faculty for finding her way about in the utter darkness in which Fate had hopelessly placed her was almost miraculous. Strangers, seeing her eyes and noticing the sure and fearless way in which she went abroad, would often doubt the fact of her blindness, but, as a matter of fact, she was incapable of perceiving even the faintest glimmer of light.

The soul of this blind child with the sweet inscrutable face, expressed itself in a passionate love for her father, and from the day upon which it came home to the strong, dour, hate-preoccupied man that this being who seemed the very incarnation of sunlight was doomed to walk in darkness all her days, he had wrapped her in a protecting love which was almost the only influence that kept him human, and which was the salvation of his better nature.

Her touch—the mere flicker of her fragile, pink fingers upon his rugged forehead or his brown hand—would cool, for the time being, his hottest resentment; the renewed hatred born of an encounter with his brother would sink abashed before the unconscious glance of her deep, sightless eyes. When she crept upon his knee and laid her yellow head against his breast it was as though the Peace of God were knocking at the door of his heart.

Elsie possessed intelligence far in advance of her age and circumstances. It seemed as though she never forgot anything that befel her or that she had heard. With a strange, uncanny intuition she would piece together with extraordinary correctness such fragments of disjointed information as she acquired, and thus gain an understanding of matters almost as soon as she became aware of their existence. The blind child’s position in the household was a peculiar one. Over her father, neither her mother nor her sister had any influence. Of late years an almost hopeless estrangement had grownup between Stephanus and his wife. Sara loved her mother, but for her father she felt little else than fear. He was passionate and violent with all except Elsie; with her he was invariably gentle and reasonable.

Thus it came to pass that Elsie became, as it were, the arbiter of the domestic destinies; neither her mother nor her sister ever attempting to direct her. For several years she had been a law unto herself as well as to the household. Few children could have stood this and remained unspoilt; in Elsie’s case strength seemed to come with the strain.

When Stephanus returned home after the encounter with Gideon he found the blind child waiting for him under a large mulberry tree. This was her accustomed trysting-place; here Elsie would sit for hours when her father was away, waiting, with the pathetic patience of the blind, for his return.

She advanced to meet him, guided by the sound of his footsteps, and took his hand.

“Father,—why are you so late—and where is your horse?”

“Late,” he repeated, musingly—“yes, it is late, but not too late.”

The child’s intuitive sense prevented her from questioning further. The two walked silently towards the house. Elsie was puzzled; for the first time she was conscious of something in her father which she not only could not understand—but which filled her with wonder and dread.

At supper Stephanus, contrary to his wont, ate but little. None of the others spoke to him. It was the custom of the household for all to refrain from speech in Stephanus’ presence whenever the feud reached one of its crises. Supper over Stephanus arose and left the room. Elsie followed him; she took his hand and led him to the mulberry tree, at the foot of which a rough bench had been made out of the débris of a superannuated wagon. Stephanus sat down and Elsie seated herself upon his knee. Then she passed her hands softly over his face, as though reading his features with her finger tips.

“Father—you are not angry—but what has happened? I cannot read your face.”

“Angry—no, my child; I shall never more be angry.”

“Strange—you seemed to have changed to-day; your voice has got so soft and your hand throbs. Your face”—here she again passed her hands softly over his features—“feels happy—although you are not smiling.”

“My child,—one does not smile when one is happiest. Yes I am happy, for God has forgiven me my sins and whitened my heart.”

“Do you no longer hate Uncle Gideon?”

“No, my child—all that is past.” Elsie sat silently nestled against her father’s side until long after the others had gone to rest. The soft touch of the night wind made the leaves of the mulberry tree whisper as with a thousand tongues. To Stephanus they seemed as the tongues of angels welcoming him to his place among the saved. To blind Elsie they sang that the feud which had made her father’s life full of trouble was at an end; that he and she were happy together under the stars which she had never seen. Happiness seemed to descend upon her like a dove. Its poignancy fatigued her so that she sank to sleep.