The Blind Man's Eyes Part 22

At nine he awoke with a start; then, recollecting everything, he jumped up and shut his windows. There was a respectful, apologetic knock at the door; evidently a servant had been waiting in the hall for some sound within the room.

"May I come in, sir?"

"Come in."

The man who had attended him the evening before entered.

"Your bath, sir; hot or cold in the morning, sir?"

"Hot," Eaton answered.

"Of course, sir; I'd forgotten you'd just come from the Orient, sir.

Do you wish anything first, sir?"

"Anything?"

"Anything to drink, sir."

"Oh, no."

The man again prepared the bath. When Eaton returned to his dressing-room, he found the servant awaiting him with shaving mug, razor and ap.r.o.n. The man shaved him and trimmed his hair.

"I shall tell them to bring breakfast up, sir; or will you go down?"

the man asked then.

Eaton considered. The manners of servants are modeled on the feelings of their masters, and the man's deference told plainly that, although Eaton might be a prisoner, he was not to be treated openly as such.

"I think I can go down," Eaton replied, when the man had finished dressing him. He found the hall and the rooms below bright and open but unoccupied; a servant showed him to a blue Delft breakfast room to the east, where a fire was burning in an old-fas.h.i.+oned Dutch fireplace.

A cloth was spread on the table, but no places were set; a number of covered dishes, steaming above electric discs, were on the sideboard.

The servant in attendance there took covers off these dishes as Eaton approached; he chose his breakfast and sat down, the man laying one place for him. This manner of serving gave Eaton no hint as to how many others were in the house or might be expected to breakfast. He had half finished his bacon and greens before any one else appeared.

This was a tall, carefully dressed man of more than fifty, with handsome, well-bred features--plainly a man of position and wealth but without experience in affairs, and without power. He was dark haired and wore a mustache which, like his hair, was beginning to gray. As he appeared in the hall without hat or overcoat, Eaton understood that he lived in the house; he came directly into the breakfast room and evidently had not breakfasted. He observed Eaton and gave him the impersonal nod of a man meeting another whom he may have met but has forgotten.

"Good morning, Stiles," he greeted the servant.

"Good morning, sir," the man returned.

The newcomer sat down at the table opposite Eaton, and the servant, without inquiring his tastes, brought pineapple, rolls and coffee.

"I am Wallace Blatchford," the stranger volunteered as Eaton looked up.

He gave the name in a manner which seemed to a.s.sume that he now must be recalled; Eaton therefore feigned recognition as he gave him his name in return.

"Basil Santoine is better this morning," Blatchford announced.

"I understood he was very comfortable last evening," Eaton said. "I have not seen either Miss Santoine or Mr. Avery this morning."

"I saw Basil Santoine the last thing last night," the other boasted.

"He was very tired; but when he was home, of course he wished me to be beside him for a time."

"Of course," Eaton replied, as the other halted. There was a humility in the boast of this man's friends.h.i.+p for Santoine which stirred sympathy, almost pity.

"I believe with the doctors that Basil Santoine is to be spared," the tall man continued. "The nation is to be congratulated. He is certainly one of the most useful men in America. The President--much as he is to be admired for unusual qualities--cannot compare in service. Suppose the President were a.s.sa.s.sinated; instantly the Vice President would take his place; the visible government of the country would go on; there would be no chaos, scarcely any confusion. But suppose Basil Santoine had died--particularly at this juncture!"

Eaton finished his breakfast but remained at the table while Blatchford, who scarcely touched his food, continued to boast, in his queer humility, of the blind man and of the blind man's friends.h.i.+p for him. He checked himself only when Harriet Santoine appeared in the doorway. He and Eaton at once were on their feet.

"My dear! He wants to see me now?" the tall man almost pleaded. "He wants me to be with him this morning?"

"Of course, Cousin Wallace," the girl said gently, almost with compa.s.sion.

"You will excuse me then, sir," Blatchford said hastily to Eaton and hurried off. The girl gazed after him, and when she turned the next instant to Eaton her eyes were wet.

"Good morning!"

"Good morning, Miss Santoine. You are coming to breakfast?"

"Oh, no; I've had my breakfast; I was going out to see that things outside the house have been going on well since we have been away."

"May I go with you while you do that?" Eaton tried to ask casually.

Important to him as was the plan of the house, it was scarcely less essential for him to know the grounds.

She hesitated.

"I understand it's my duty at present to stay wherever I may be put; but I'd hardly run away from you while inside your own grounds."

This did not seem to be the question troubling her. "Very well," she said at last. The renewed friendliness--or the reservation of judgment of him--which she had let him see again after the interview with her father in the car the morning before, was not absent; it seemed only covered over with responsibilities which came upon her now that she was at home. She was abstracted as they pa.s.sed through the hall and a man brought Eaton's overcoat and hat and a maid her coat. Harriet led the way out to the terrace. The day was crisp, but the breeze had lost the chill it had had earlier in the morning; the lake was free from ice; only along the little projecting breakwaters which guarded the bluff against the was.h.i.+ng of the waves, some ice still clung, and this was rapidly melting. A graveled path led them around the south end of the house.

"Your father is still better this morning?" Eaton asked.

"What did you say?" she asked.

He repeated his question. Was her constraint, he wondered, due to her feeling, somehow, that for the first time in their short acquaintance he was consciously "using" her, if only for the purpose of gaining an immediate view of the grounds? He felt that; but he told himself he was not doing the sort of thing he had refused to do when, on the train, he had avoided her invitation to present him to her father.

Circ.u.mstances now were entirely different. And as he shook off the reproach to himself, she also came from her abstraction.

"Yes; Father's improving steadily and--Dr. Sinclair says--much more rapidly than it would have been right to expect. Dr. Sinclair is going to remain only to-day; then he is to turn Father over to the village doctor, who is very good. We will keep the same nurses at present."

"Mr. Blatchford told me that might be the arrangement."

"Oh, you had some talk with Mr. Blatchford, then?"

"We introduced ourselves."

Harriet was silent for a moment, evidently expecting some comment from him; when he offered none, she said, "Father would not like you to accept the estimate of him which Mr. Blatchford must have given you."

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't Mr. Blatchford argue with you that Father must be the greatest man living?"

"He certainly expressed great admiration for your father," Eaton said.