"Should you care to leave England?"
"Care, sir!--it is my great ambition to do good--to make amends for the evil of my early life."
"Ah!--yes."
Sidney had become absent in his manner--Mr. Gray, who had become voluble, discoursed at great length on his peculiar principle of doing good, but Sidney heard but little of his argument, and was engrossed by thoughts of the change coming unto him again, and to which he could not offer opposition. Discoursing thus, and thinking thus, when Mattie returned, and stood in the doorway, looking from father to friend.
"Father," she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed at last.
"Don"t say that you are sorry to see me, after this long parting!" he exclaimed, as he rose in an excited manner, and went towards her with both hands outstretched.
"Not sorry--no--but very, very glad!"
She held his hands, and leaned forward to kiss him. He caught her to his heart then, and the tears welled into his eyes at this evidence of the past parting having been forgotten and forgiven.
"Mattie," he said, "I have been thinking of all this again--over and over again, patiently, and not in anger--and I still think that it is wrong to stay here."
"And he--what does he think?" looking towards Sidney.
Sidney answered for himself.
"That, perhaps, we are both too young--blind though I am, and pure as you are, Mattie--to keep house together after this fashion. For your sake, I will ask you to go back with your father. I have been wrong and selfish."
"I said that I would go when you wished it, Mr. Sidney."
"I wish it, then!"
"Very well."
"Go--to return again very frequently with your father, and see that I am well, and likely to do well. Mattie, for ever after this understand that I cannot do utterly without you. Wrong and selfish also in that wish, perhaps, but I am sure of you forgiving me!"
"Yes--yes," she said, hurriedly. "It is strange that we three should all have been thinking of going away to-day--and perhaps," with a blush, "it was scarcely right to come. But," evincing here her old rebellious spirit, with a suddenness that made her father and Sidney leap again, "if he were the same man I found here first, I would have stopped--mark that!"
"Yes, but he isn"t, my dear!" said Mr. Gray, cowed into submission, and afraid of Mattie talking herself into a change of mind; "so it"s all happened for the best, and we are all thankful, and--all friends!"
"I will be ready when you wish, then."
"I have ordered a cab to come round at twelve. You see I was sure that you would not turn against me ever again."
"I never turned against you--don"t think that."
Mattie went out of the room--was a long while gone--returned with her eyes red and swollen, as though she had been weeping. The cab at the same time rattled up to the door, and Ann Packet--with red and swollen eyes also, if she could have been seen just then--was heard struggling down-stairs with Mattie"s box, which she had not allowed Mattie to touch.
"Go and talk to Mr. Sidney again, gal. You mayn"t have another chance,"
she had said, and Mattie had started and glared at her as at a phantom.
Surely it was time for her to go, when this faithful but dull-witted woman saw through the veil which she believed had hidden her true heart from every one on earth. But that must be fancy, she thought, and she went back to the room to bid Sidney good-bye, and to check the thanks with which he would have overwhelmed her.
"No thanks, sir--only my duty to one whose last thoughts were of your happiness, and how it was best to promote it. _He_ had faith in me, and I have endeavoured to deserve it, as though he had been watching every action of my own from heaven. Good-bye, Mr. Sidney."
"Good-bye--best of friends. You will not desert me wholly?--your father is on my side now."
"Yes. I shall look in upon you very often, I hope--and you must keep strong, and make up your mind about that business--and--and not think yourself into that low estate ever again. Now I am ready to go."
Mattie and her father left the house the former had brightened by her presence. In the cab she struggled for awhile with her forced composure, and then burst forth into irrepressible tears.
"Patience, Mattie. I see the end to this. All"s well."
"You see the end to this? No, you cannot!"
"Oh! yes--I can."
Mr. Gray uttered not a syllable more during the remainder of the journey; and Mattie, ashamed of her tears, dried her eyes, and asked no further questions.
CHAPTER V.
ANN PACKET EXPRESSES AN OPINION.
Sidney Hinchford knew that he should miss Mattie, and accordingly made up his mind, as he thought, to the loss. But there is no making up one"s mind entirely to the absence of those we love, and upon whom we have been dependent, and Sidney found himself no exception to the rule.
In great things he had expected to miss her, but in the thousand minor ones, wherein she had reigned dominant without his knowledge, he made no calculation for, and a hundred times a day they suggested the absence of the ruling genius. The house a.s.sumed an unnatural and depressing stillness; he felt wholly shut from the world again--no one to whom he could speak, or who, in reply, could a.s.sure him that his lot was not worse than other people"s, and that there lay before him many methods for its amelioration.
He became more dull and thoughtful; but he did not sink back to his past estate--that was a promise which he had made Mattie, before she went away. When she came again--he prayed it might be soon--she should not find him the despondent, morbid being, from which her efforts had transformed him. He tried to think the time away by dwelling upon that business in which he intended to embark; but there came the grave perplexity of the general management--and whom to trust, now Mattie had returned to her father"s home! Meanwhile, he was wasting money by inaction, and he had always known the value of money, and money"s fugitive properties, if not carefully studied.
We say that he tried to think of his new business life, for other thoughts would force their way to the front, and take pre-eminence. He could not keep the past ever in the background; before him would flit, despite his efforts to escape it, the figure of his lost love, to whom he had looked forward once as his solace in his blindness. Blindness, with her at his side, had not appeared a life to be deplored, and it was ever pleasant to picture what might have been, had the ties between them never been sundered by his will. For he loved her still--the stern interdict upon her name was even a part of his affection; and there were times when he did not care to shut her from his mind--on the contrary, loved to think of her as he had known her once. In these latter days, he thought of both Harriet and Mattie--drew, as was natural to one in his condition, the comparison between them--saw which was the truer, firmer, better character, but loved the weaker for all that! That Harriet had not loved him truly and firmly, did not matter; he had given her up for his pride"s sake, even for her own sake, but he loved her none the less.
She would have been unhappy with him after a while--she could not have endured the place of nurse and comforter--she, who was made for the brightness of life, and to be comforted herself when that brightness was shut from her; she was not like Mattie, a woman of rare character and energy.
Mattie troubled him. She had awakened his grat.i.tude; the last day her father had aroused in him his fears that she had rendered herself open to the suspicions of the world by her efforts in his service--he had not thought of _that_ before! Mattie"s character was worth studying--it was so far apart from the common run of womankind--she had treasured every past action that stood as evidence of kindness to her, and made return for it a thousandfold. Who would have dreamed of all this years ago, when he tracked her with the police to the Kent Street lodging-house, and was moved to pity by her earnest eyes? Hers had been a strange life; his had been exceptional--his had ended in blank monotony, that nothing could change--what was in store for her? He thought of the mistake that he had committed on the day that Harriet had personated her unwillingly, and blushed for the error of the act. He had been moved too much by grat.i.tude, and had almost offered his blank life to Mattie, as he thought; Mattie who would have shrunk from him like the rest, had she believed that he had had such thoughts of _her_. His blindness had affected his mind; he had grown heedless, foolish, wilful. Then his thoughts revolved to Harriet Wesden again--to the girl who had not lost her interest in him with her love, but had stolen to his solitary house, to ask about him, and to note the change in him. She had been always a generous-hearted girl--moved at any trouble, and anxious to take her part in its alleviation--there was nothing remarkable in it. He was still the old friend and playfellow, after all, and in the future days, when their engagement lay further back from the present, he should be glad to hear her voice of sympathy again.
These thoughts, or thoughts akin to these, travelled in a circle round the blind man"s brain, hour after hour, day after day. Thoughts of business, Mattie, Harriet Wesden--varied occasionally by the reminiscences of the dead father, and the relations who had sought him out, whom he had sought, and then turned away from.
Mattie and her father came to see him three days after their formal withdrawal from his home; that was a fair evening, which changed the aspect of things, and which he remembered kindly afterwards, notwithstanding a prayer of some duration, that Mr. Gray contrived to introduce. Something new to think of was always Sidney Hinchford"s craving, and the day that followed any fresh incidents bore less heavily upon him, as he rehea.r.s.ed those incidents in his mind.
Still they had said nothing of the business; they had been more anxious to know how he had spent his time since their departure, and whether Mattie"s absence had made much difference to him. Sidney spoke the truth, and Mattie was pleased at the confession. It was an evidence of the good she had done by resisting her father"s will, and she was woman enough not to be sorry for the result.
That evening, Ann Packet, bringing in the supper to her master, was startled by the question which he put to her.
"How is Mattie looking, Ann?"
"Looking, sir!"
"Has all this watching, studying my eccentricities, affected her?"
"She"s a little pale mayhap--but she has allus been pale since her last illness."
"I never gave a thought as to the effect which the constant study of a monomaniac might produce upon her," he said half abruptly; "but she"s quit of me now, and will improve."