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 debris 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.