“He will not know it, unless you break your word,” said Miss Thusa, setting her wheel in motion, and wetting her fingers in the gourd. “You may go, now, if you will not talk of something else. I must go and get some more flax. I can see all the ribs of my distaff.”
Louis knew that this was an excuse to escape his thanks, and giving her hand a reverent and silent pressure, he left the cabin. Heavy as lead lay the purse in his pocket—heavy as lead lay the heart in his bosom.
Helen met him at the door, with a radiant countenance.
“Who do you think is come, brother?” she asked.
“Is it Clinton?” said he.
“Oh! no—it is Alice. A friend of her brother was coming directly here, and she accompanied him. Come and see her.”
“Thank God! she cannot see!” exclaimed Louis, as he passed into the presence of the blind girl.
Though no beam of pleasure irradiated her sightless eyes, her bright and heightening color, the eager yet tremulous tones of her voice assured him of a joyous welcome. Alice remembered the thousand acts of kindness by which he had endeared to her the very helplessness which had called them forth. His was the hand every ready to guide her, the arm offered for her support. His were the cheering accents most welcome to her ears, and his steps had a music which belonged to no steps but his. His image, reflected on the retina of the soul, was beautiful as the dream of imagination, an image on which time could cast no shadow, being without variableness or change.
“Thank God,” again repeated Louis to himself, “that she cannot see. I can read no reproach in those blue and silent orbs. I can drink in her pure and holy loveliness, till my spirit grows purer and holier as I gaze. Blessings on thee for coming, sweet and gentle Alice. As David charmed the evil spirit in the haunted breast of Saul, so shall thy divine strains lull to rest the fiends of remorse that are wrestling and gnawing in my bosom. The time has been when I dreamed of being thy guide through life, a lamp to thy blindness, and a stay and support to thy helpless innocence. The dream is past—I wake to the dread reality of my own utter unworthiness.”
These thoughts rose tumultuously in the breast of the young man, in the moment of greeting, while the soft hand of the blind girl lingered tremblingly in his. Without thinking of the influence it might have on her feelings, he sought her presence as a balm to his chafed and tortured heart, as a repose to his worn and weary spirit, as an anodyne to the agonies of remorse. The grave, sad glance of his father; the serious, yet tender and pitying look of his step-mother; and the pensive, melting, sympathizing eye of Helen, were all daggers to his conscience. But Alice could not see. No daggers of reproach were sheathed in those reposing eyes. Oh! how remorse and shame shrink from being arraigned before that throne of light where the immortal spirit sits enthroned—the human eye! If thus conscious guilt recoils from the gaze of man, weak, fallible, erring man, how can it stand the consuming fire of that Eternal Eye, in whose sight the heavens are not clean, and before which archangels bend, veiling their brows with their refulgent wings!