University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.
EDITH HASTINGS GOES TO COLLINGWOOD.

The question Edith had asked herself, standing by her
chamber window, was answered by Grace Atherton sitting
near her own. “Yes, the bride of Richard Harrington
must be perfectly happy, if bride indeed there were.”
She was beginning to feel some doubt upon this point,
for strain her eyes as she might, she had not been able to
detect the least signs of femininity in the passing carriage,
and hope whispered that the brightest dream she
had ever dreamed might yet be realized.

“I'll let him know to-morrow, that I'm here,” she said,
as she shook out her wavy auburn hair, and thought, with
a glow of pride, how beautiful it was. “I'll send Edith
with my compliments and a bouquet of flowers to the
bride. She'll deliver them better than any one else, if I
can once make her understand what I wish her to do.”

Accordingly, the next morning, as Edith sat upon the
steps of the kitchen door, talking to herself, Grace appeared
before her with a tastefully arranged bouquet,

which she bade her take with her compliments to Mrs.
Richard Harrington, if there was such a body, and to Mr.
Richard Harrington if there were not.

“Do you understand?” she asked, and Edith far more
interested in her visit to Collingwood than in what she
was to do when she reached there, replied,

“Of course I do; I'm to give your compliments;” and
she jammed her hand into the pocket of her gingham
apron, as if to make sure the compliments were there.
“I'm to give them to Mr. Richard, if there is one, and the
flowers to Mrs. Richard, if there ain't!”

Grace groaned aloud, while old Rachel, the colored
cook, who on all occasions was Edith's champion, removed
her hands from the dough she was kneading and coming
towards them, chimed in, “She ain't fairly got it
through her har, Miss Grace. She's such a substracted
way with her that you mostly has to tell her twicet,” and
in her own peculiar style Rachel succeeded in making the
“substracted” child comprehend the nature of her errand.

“Now don't go to blunderin',” was Rachel's parting injunction,
as Edith left the yard and turned in the direction
of Collingwood.

It was a mellow September morning, and after leaving
the main road and entering the gate of Collingwood, the
young girl lingered by the way, admiring the beauty of
the grounds, and gazing with feelings of admiration upon
the massive building, surrounded by majestic maples, and
basking so quietly in the warm sunlight. At the marble
fountain she paused for a long, long time, talking to the
golden fishes which darted so swiftly past each other, and
wishing she could take them in her hand “just to see
them squirm.”

“I mean to catch one any way,” she said, and glancing
nervously at the windows to make sure no Mrs. Richard
was watching her, she bared her round, plump arm, and
thrust it into the water, just as a footstep sounded near.

Quickly withdrawing her hand and gathering up her
bouquet, she turned about and saw approaching her one
of Collingwood's ghosts. She knew him in a moment,
for she had heard him described too often to mistake that
white-haired, bent old man for other than Capt. Harrington.
He did not chide her as she supposed he would,
neither did he seem in the least surprised to see her there.
On the contrary, his withered, wrinkled face brightened
with a look of eager expectancy, as he said to her, “Little
girl, can you tell me where Charlie is?”

“Charlie?” she repeated, retreating a step or two as he
approached nearer and seemed about to lay his hand upon
her hair, for her bonnet was hanging down her back, and
her wild gipsy locks fell in rich profusion about her face.
“I don't know any boy by that name. I'm nobody but
Edith Hastings, Mrs. Atherton's waiting maid, and she
don't let me play with boys. Only Tim Doolittle and I
went huckleberrying once, but I hate him, he has such
great warts on his hands,” and having thus given her
opinion of Tim Doolittle, Edith snatched up her bonnet
and placed it upon her head, for the old man was evidently
determined to touch her crow-black hair.

Her answer, however, changed the current of his
thoughts, and while a look of intense pain flitted across
his face, he whispered mournfully, “The same old story
they all tell. I might have known it, but this one looked
so fresh, so truthful, that I thought maybe she'd seen him.
Mrs. Atherton's waiting maid,” and he turned toward
Edith — “Charlie's dead, and we all walk in darkness now,
Richard and all.”

This allusion to Richard reminded Edith of her errand,
and thinking to herself, “I'll ask the crazy old thing if
there's a lady here,” she ran after him as he walked slowly
away and catching him by the arm, said, “Tell me, please,
is there any Mrs. Richard Harrington?”

“Not that I know of. They've kept it from me if there

is, but there's Richard, he can tell you,” and he pointed
toward a man in a distant part of the grounds.

Curtesying to her companion, Edith ran off in the direction
of the figure moving so slowly down the gravelled
walk.

“I wonder what makes him set his feet down so carefully,”
she thought, as she came nearer to him. “Maybe
there are pegs in his shoes, just as there were in mine last
winter,” and the barefoot little girl glanced at her naked
toes, feeling glad they were for the present out of torture.

By this time she was within a few rods of the strange
acting man, who, hearing her rapid steps, stopped, and
turning round with a wistful, questioning look, said,

“Who's there? Who is it?”

The tone of his voice was rather sharp, and Edith
paused suddenly, while he made an uncertain movement
toward her, still keeping his ear turned in the attitude of
intense listening.

“I wonder what he thinks of me?” was Edith's mental
comment as the keen black eyes appeared to scan her
closely.

Alas, he was not thinking of her at all, and soon resuming
his walk, he whispered to himself, “They must
have gone some other way.”

Slowly, cautiously he moved on, never dreaming of the
little sprite behind him, who, imitating his gait and manner,
put down her chubby bare feet just when his went
down, looking occasionally over her shoulder to see if her
clothes swung from side to side just like Mrs. Atherton's,
and treading so softly that he did not hear her until he
reached the summer-house, when the cracking of a twig
betrayed the presence of some one, and again that sad,
troubled voice demanded, “Who is here?” while the
arms were stretched out as if to grasp the intruder, whoever
it might be.

Edith was growing excited. It reminded her of blind

man's buff, and she bent her head to elude the hand
which came so near entangling itself in her hair. Again
a profound silence ensued, and thinking it might have
been a fancy of his brain that some one was there with
him, poor blind Richard Harrington sat down within the
arbor, where the pleasant September sunshine, stealing
through the thick vine leaves, fell in dancing circles upon
his broad white brow, above which his jet black hair lay
in rings. He was a tall, dark, handsome man, with a singular
cast of countenance, and Edith felt that she had
never seen anything so grand, so noble, and yet so helpless
as the man sitting there before her. She knew now
that he was blind, and she was almost glad that it was so,
for had it been otherwise she would never have dared to
scan him as she was doing now. She would not for the
world have met the flash of those keen black eyes, had
they not been sightless, and she quailed even now, when
they were bent upon her, although she knew their glance
was meaningless. It seemed to her so terrible to be blind,
and she wondered why he should care to have his house
and grounds so handsome when he could not see them.
Still she was pleased that they were so, for there was a
singular fitness, she thought, between this splendid man
and his surroundings.

“I wish he had a little girl like me to lead him and be
good to him,” was her next mental comment, and the wild
idea crossed her brain that possibly Mrs. Atherton would
let her come up to Collingwood and be his waiting maid.
This 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 he 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 Harringson 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 begining
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 first to communicate the bad news.