Mr. Cardus, "and blind!"
"Do you think that he will be much disfigured, Reginald?"
"I don't know, dear; your brother said nothing about it."
"I can hardly believe it; it seems so strange to think that he and Jeremy should have been spared out of all those people. How good God is!"
"A cynic," replied Mr. Cardus with a smile, "or the relations of the sixty other people who died might draw a different conclusion."
But Dorothy was thinking how good God was to /her/. She was dressed in pink that morning, and
"Oh, she looked sweet, As the little pink flower that grows in the wheat."
Dorothy neither was, nor ever would be, a pretty woman, but she was essentially a charming one. Her kindly puzzled face (and, to judge from the little wrinkles on it, she had never got to the bottom of the questions which contracted her forehead as a child), her steady blue eyes, her diminutive rounded form, and, above all, the indescribable light of goodness which shone round her like a halo, all made her charming. What did it matter if the mouth was a little too wide, or the nose somewhat "tip-tilted"? Those who can look so sweet are able to dispense with such fleshly attributes as a Grecian nose or chiselled lips. At the least, they will have the best of it after youth is past; and let me remind you, my young and lovely reader, that the longer and dustier portion of life's road winds away towards the pale horizon of our path on the farther side of the grim mile-post marked "30."
But what made her chiefly attractive was her piquante taking manner and the /chic/ of her presence. She was such a perfect lady.
"All aboard, if you please," broke in the agent. "Run in the gangway!" and they were off towards the great grey vessel with a blue pennant at the top.
It was a short run, but it seemed long to Dorothy and the old gentleman with her. Bigger and bigger grew the great vessel, till at last it seemed to swallow up their tiny steamer.
"Ease her! Look out for the line there! Now haul away! Make fast?"
It was all done in an instant, and next moment they stood upon the broad white deck, amid the crowd of passengers, and were looking round for Ernest and Jeremy.
But they were not to be seen.
"I hope they are here," faltered Dorothy.
Mr. Cardus took his hat off, and wiped his bald head. He too hoped that they were there.
At that moment Dorothy became aware of a black man, clad in a white smock pulled on over a great-coat, and carrying a big spear and a kerrie in his hand, who was pushing his way towards them. Next moment he stood before them saluting vigorously.
"Koos!" he said, thrusting his spear into the air before Mr. Cardus's astonished nose.
"Inkosikaas!" (chieftainess) he repeated, going through the same process before Dorothy. "This way, master; this way, missie. The chief without eyes send me to you. This way; the lion bring him now."
They followed him through the press towards the after part of the ship, while, giving up the unfamiliar language, he vociferated in Zulu (it might have been Sanskrit, for all they knew):
"Make way, you low people, make way for the old man with the shining head, on whose brow sits wisdom, and the fair young maiden, the sweet rosebud, who comes," &c.
At that moment Dorothy's quick eye saw a great man issuing from a cabin, leading another man by the hand. And then she forgot everything, and ran forward.
"O Ernest, Ernest!" she cried.
The blind man's cheek flushed at the music of her voice. He drew his hand from Jeremy's, and stretched out his arms towards the voice. It would have been easy to avoid them--one never need be kissed by a blind man--but she did not avoid them. On the contrary, she placed herself so that the groping arms closed round her, while a voice said: "Dorothy, where are you?"
"Here, Ernest, here!" and in another moment he had drawn her to him, and kissed her on the face, and she had returned the kiss.
Next she kissed Jeremy too, or rather Jeremy lifted her up two or three feet and kissed her--it came to the same thing. Then, Mr. Cardus wrung them both by the hand, wringing Ernest's the hardest; and Mazooku stood by, and, Zulu fashion, chanted a little song of his own improvising, about how the chiefs came back to their kraal after a long expedition, in which they had, &c.; and how Wisdom, in the shape of a shining headed and ancient one, the husband without any doubt of many wives, and the father of at least a hundred children, &c.; and Beauty, in the shape of a sweet and small one, &c.; and finally they all went very near to crying, and dancing a fling on the quarter-deck together.
After these things they all talked at once, and set about collecting their goods in a muddle-headed fashion. When these had been put in a pile, and Mazooku was seated, assegai and all, upon the top of them, as a solemn warning to thieves (and ill would it have gone with the thief who dared to meddle with that pile), they started off to inspect Ernest's great black horse, "The Devil."
Behold! Dorothy stroked "The Devil's" nose, and he recognising how sweet and good she was, abandoned his usual habits, and did not bite her, but only whinnied and asked for sugar. Then Ernest, going into the box with the horse, which nobody but he and Mazooku were fond of taking liberties with, felt down his flank till he came to a scar inflicted by an assegai in that mad charge through the Undi, and showed it to them. And Dorothy's eyes filled with tears of thankfulness, as she thought of what that horse and its rider had gone through, and of the bleaching bones of those who had galloped by their side; and she would have liked to kiss Ernest again, only there was no excuse. So she only pressed his hand, feeling that the sorrow of the empty years which were gone was almost atoned for by this hour of joy.
Then they went ashore to the hotel, and sat together in the pleasant sitting-room, which Dorothy had chosen, and made sweet with great bunches of violets (for she remembered that Ernest loved violets), and talked. At length Mr. Cardus and Jeremy went off to see about getting the things through the Custom House, where they arrived to find Mazooku keeping half a dozen gorgeous officials, who wanted to open a box, at bay with his knobsticks, and plastering them with offensive epithets, which fortunately they did not understand.
"Doll," said Ernest, presently, "it is a beautiful day, is it not? Will you take me for a walk, dear? I should like to go for a walk."
"Yes, Ernest, of course I will."
"You are sure you do not mind being seen with a blind man? You must give me your hand to hold, you know."
"Ernest, how can you?"
Mind giving him her hand to hold, indeed! thought Dorothy to herself, as she ran to put her bonnet on. O, that she could give it to him for always! And in her heart she blessed the accident of his blindness, because it brought him so much nearer to her. He would be helpless without her, this tall strong man, and she would be ever at his side to help him. He would not be able to read a book, or write a letter, or to move from room to room without her. Surely she would soon be able so to weave herself into his life that she would become indispensable to it.
And then, perhaps--perhaps--and her heart pulsed with a joy so intense at the mere thought of what might follow that it became a pain, and she caught her breath and leaned against a wall. For every fibre of her frame was thrilled with a passionate love for this blind man whom she had lost for so many years, and now had found again; and in her breast she vowed that if she could help it she would lose him no more. Why should she? When he had been engaged to Eva, she had done her best for him and her, and bitterly had she felt the way in which he had been treated. But Eva had taken her own course, and was now no longer in the outward and visible running, whatever place she might still hold in the inward and spiritual side of Ernest's nature. Dorothy did not underrate that place; she knew well that the image of her rival had sunk too deep into his heart to be altogether dislodged by her. But she was prepared to put up with that.
"One can't have everything, you know," she said, shaking her wise little head at her own reflection in the glass, as she tied her bonnet-strings.
Dorothy was an eminently