"Is he--is he _all right_?" he asked breathlessly, and the doctor laughed.

"Go upstairs and look at him, my dear fellow! Pine little chap as you could wish to see."

In truth he was a healthy nine-pounder of a son, guaranteed by nurse and mother to be the finest baby ever born, and seated by his wife's bedside, Francis gave vent to his jubilation.

"Now," he said triumphantly, "I have everything I want. I really am a lucky fellow. Jolly little beggar, eh? Seems to me--I don't know if I'm right--but I do think he looks different from the rest!"

The wife smiled, but Francis was right; everybody said he was right.

The longed-for boy was in truth an extraordinarily comely infant, and each week of his life he blossomed into fuller charm. His well-shaped head was covered with golden curls and when he lay asleep (and he obligingly slept most of his time) it was a pleasure to observe the delicate promise of his features. He had obviously elected to resemble his handsome father, and the father was complacently grateful for the fact.--

Mrs Manning observed with amazement that Francis nursed this baby, positively nursed him in his arms, and was quite disappointed when, on returning from the city, he failed to find him awake.

"Are his eyes changing colour yet?" he would ask. "I want them to be blue. Blue eyes would look so well with his yellow hair." But the baby's eyes remained a dull, clouded grey. "Not blue yet!" Francis would repeat. "How long is it before they begin to change? Fine big eyes, aren't they? I want to make the little beggar look at me, but he won't. Why does he stare at the ceiling?"

"It's the electric light," said his wife; but the next morning, when the lights were turned off, the baby still stared blankly upward.

"Why the d.i.c.kens does he stare at the ceiling?" Francis asked again.

Gradually, imperceptibly, a growing anxiety began to mingle with his joy, and the anxiety was connected with those staring eyes. He would not put his thoughts into words; but he watched his wife's face, and saw in it no reflection of his own fears. Then for a time he would banish the dread; and anon it would recur.

_Were_ the boy's eyes all right? Was it really natural that he should be always staring up? Ridiculous nonsense! Of _course_ it was all right. Things had come to a pretty pa.s.s when he took to worrying himself, while his wife, who knew a thousand times more about babies, remained untroubled and serene. Bother the child's eyes! ... He would think about them no more.

All his life Francis had been a sworn opponent of worry. When anything disagreeable threatened, his mode of procedure was to shrug his shoulders, and immediately divert his thoughts. "Leave the thing alone; don't bother about it; it will probably come all right in the end!"

Such was his theory, and experience had proved that as often as not it was correct. He endeavoured to cultivate the same att.i.tude towards his boy, but in vain. The anxiety recurred.

He told himself that he would have the eyes tested, and satisfy himself once for all; but once and again his courage failed, and the days pa.s.sed on, and nothing was done. Then there came an evening when suddenly fear engulfed him, and made anything seem easier than a continuation of suspense.

He was holding the child in his arms, and he rose and carried it across the room, to where a powerful light hung from the wall. He pushed aside the shade, and held the tiny face closely approaching the gla.s.s. The eyes stared on, unblinking and still. A great cry burst from Francis'

throat:

"My G.o.d!" he cried. "The boy is blind!"

The boy was blind, and there was no hope that he would ever possess his sight. Mrs Manning wept herself ill, but even in the depths of her distress she realised that her husband's sufferings were keener than her own. It gave an added touch of misery to those black days, to feel a strange new distance between her husband and herself. She could not comfort him; she could not understand him; after ten years of married life it appeared as if the man she had known had disappeared, and a stranger had taken his place. Yet there was nothing unmanly in his grief; he was quiet and self-restrained as she had never seen him before, gentler, and more considerate of others.

The poor woman noticed the change with awe, and wondered if Francis were going to die.

"I have never seen you feel anything as you are feeling this," she said to him one night. They were sitting by the dying fire, and Francis raised his head and stared at her with sombre eyes.

"But I have felt nothing," he said flatly. "I am finding that out. I did not know what it meant to feel!"

From the moment of his discovery of the blindness of his son, Francis Manning became a man possessed of but one aim--to lighten and alleviate, so far as was humanly possible, the child's sad lot. He taught himself Braille, so that in time to come he might teach it to the boy, and be able to translate for his benefit appropriate pieces of literature. He visited every famous inst.i.tute for the blind at home and abroad, and made an exhaustive study of their systems. He searched for a girl of intelligence and charm, and sent her to be trained in readiness to undertake the boy's education; he schooled himself to be a playmate and companion; he denied himself every luxury, so that the boy's future might be a.s.sured. As Francis the man, he ceased to exist; he lived on only as Francis the father.

During the first three years of his life the young Francis remained blissfully unconscious of his infirmity. A strong, healthy child surrounded by the tenderest of care, the sun of his happiness never set.

His little feet raced up and down; his sweet, shrill voice chanted merry strains; his small, strong hands seemed gifted with sight as well as touch, so surely did they guide him to and fro. Nature, having withheld the greatest gift, had remorsefully essayed compensation in the shape of a finer touch, a finer hearing. The blind child was the sunshine of the home; but the father knew that the hour must dawn when that sunshine would be clouded. He held himself in readiness for that hour, training himself as an athlete trains for a race.

He would need courage: therefore it behoved him to be brave now, to harden himself against the ills of life, and cultivate a resolute composure. All the influences which had tended to keep him soft must be thrown aside as weights which would hinder the race. He must be wise, therefore it behoved him to think, and to train his mind. A light reason, a light excuse, would no longer be sufficient; he must learn to judge and to reflect. He must be tender; and to be tender it was necessary to bury self, and to put other interests before his own. More weights had to be thrown aside. And he must be patient! Hitherto he had considered patience a feeble, almost unmanly, virtue; but he perceived that it would be needed, and must be cultivated with the rest.

Mrs Manning confided in her neighbours that Francis had never been the same since the discovery of Baby's blindness. He never complained, she said. Oh, no; and he was most kind--gave no trouble in the house, _but_--Then she sighed, and the neighbours sympathised, and prophesied that he would "come round." In truth the good, commonplace woman was ill at ease in the rarefied atmosphere of the home, and sincerely regretted the comfortable, easy-going husband of yore.

For three whole years Frank lived untroubled, and then the questions began to come.

"Am I blind, father? Why am I blind? Is it naughty to be blind?"

The baby child was easily appeased. Later on the questions would become more insistent. Francis prepared himself for that hour. At four years fleeting shadows began to pa.s.s over the boy's radiance. Alone with his father, his face would pucker in thought.

"Shall I always be blind, father? I don't like to be blind. Was you blind when you was a little boy?"

The knife turned in the father's heart at the sound of the innocent words; but always the cloud loomed darker ahead. He trained himself more zealously, in preparation for the hour when the boy would rebel!

But there were happy hours between, hours when the natural joy of childhood filled the house with laughter, and father and son were supremely happy in each other's society. No companion of his own age was half as dear to the boy; no living creature stood for so much in the father's heart. They read and studied together; they held long, intimate conversation. They played games from which blind people are usually debarred. Standing behind a hoop on the croquet lawn the father would cry in a brisk, staccato voice, "Prank!" and on the instant the boy's mallet would hit the ball, and send it in the direction indicated, and proud and glad was Frankie to know that his aim was surer than that of his sighted sisters. And every hour of contentment, every added interest and occupation bestowed upon the boy, was as a salve to the sore father heart. But at six years the inevitable rebellion began.

"Is he blind?" the boy would ask of a new acquaintance. "Can _he_ see, too? _Everyone_ can see but me! ... _I_ want to run about like the other fellows, and play cricket, and have some fun. It's dull all alone in the dark. Can't you have me made better, father?"

At times he would cry; piteous, pitiful tears, but the sensitive ear was quick to catch the distress in his father's voice, and he would offer consolation in the midst of his grief. "Don't be sorry, father. I don't want you to be sorry. It doesn't matter; really it doesn't. I have a ripping time!"

Never for a moment did the boy hold his parents responsible for his infirmity; but there came a day when he blamed his G.o.d.

"If G.o.d can do everything He likes, He could have made me quite right, and well. Why didn't He, father?"

"I don't know, my son."

"_You_ would make me better if you could! You said yourself you'd pay the doctor all your money. You are kinder than Him. I don't think G.o.d _is_ kind to me, father. It would have been so easy for Him--"

The wisdom for which Francis had prayed and struggled seemed a poor thing at that moment. He was dumb, and yet he dared not be dumb.

"Frankie," he said, "I'll tell you a secret--a secret between you and me... G.o.d sent me a great many blessings when I was young, and they did me no good. I was selfish, and careless, and blind, too, Frankie, though my eyes could see, and then after He had tried me with happiness and it had failed, He sent me"--the man's voice trembled ominously--"_a great grief_! ... Frankie, old man, when I come to die, I believe I am going to thank G.o.d for that grief, more than for all the blessings which went before."

The child sat silent, struggling for comprehension.

"What did the great grief _do_ to you, father?"

Francis paused for a moment, struggling for composure. Then he spoke:

"_It stabbed my dead heart wide awake_!"

He stooped and kissed the child's blind eyes.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE GIRL WHO ASKED FOR HAPPINESS.

Fate is a sorry trickster, and a study of life leads one to the conclusion that the less that is asked of her the less does she bestow.

Meriel, on her part, had made few demands--riches and power had for her no allure; her highest ambition was to attain that quiet domestic happiness enjoyed by thousands of her sister women. She wanted to be loved and to love in return; to transform some trivial villa into a home, and reign therein over her little kingdom; and on her twenty-eighth birthday fate had so wrought the tangled skein that she found herself in the position of unpaid attendant to an old school friend, while her heart was racked by a hopeless pa.s.sion for the same friend's husband.

The way of it was this. Meriel and Flora had been school friends, between whom existed the affection which often develops between a strong and a weak character when they are thrown into intimate companionship.