"My dear sir, I never said a satirical thing in my life."
"The best of company, then--for you and Mattie are the only friends left me, save that honest girl down-stairs."
"Ah! Ann Packet--we must not forget her, or we shall have Mattie scolding us."
"I asked if it were satire, because you are doing me a great service, and saving me from much anxiety. I have been thinking lately that it would be better for me to find my way into some asylum or other, and settle down there apart from the busy world without. You come forward to save me from the streets I have been fearing."
"As Mattie was saved," said Mr. Gray, solemnly; "remember that!"
Mr. Gray shortly afterwards took his leave. The same night he communicated the details of his scheme to his daughter; he could easily read in her face that it was a plan that had her full concurrence.
Sidney at home again--Sidney to take care of, and screen from all those ills to which his position was liable!
In a short while a shop in the suburbs of London--not a great distance from Peckham Rye--was found to let. It stood in a new neighbourhood, with houses rising round it at every turn. A building mania had set in that direction, and a populous district was springing up there.
"I have always heard that to pitch one"s camp in a new neighbourhood, if one has the patience to wait, will always succeed. We three have patience, and I think we"ll try it."
This was said to Mattie, after she and her father had inspected the premises, and were walking by cross roads towards Camberwell, to gladden Sidney with the latest news.
"We"ll try it--we"ll begin home there, father."
"Home in earnest--eh?"
Mattie did not notice the meaning in his tones; she was full of other thoughts.
"It must be a home, that you and I will try to render happy for him--for his own sake--for his dead father"s," she said.
"To be sure. And if he be not happy then, it will not be our fault."
"I hope not!"
"Hope not," said her father; "do you think we may fail in the attempt?"
"If we be not careful. We must remember that he is weak and requires support--that he is blind, and cannot escape us if we weary him too much."
"Oh! I see--I see," he said, a little aggrieved; "you are afraid that I shall tire him with the Word of G.o.d. Mattie, he"s not exactly a Christian man yet, and I should certainly like to make him one. There will be plenty of time for preaching the truth unto him."
"And for leaving it alone."
"Bless my soul!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, as though Mattie had fired a pistol in his ear.
"You will believe that I understand him best, and I think that it will not do to attack him too often with our creed. His first disappointment is over--he is teaching himself resignation--he will come round to a great extent without our help--with our help, judiciously applied, he will come round altogether."
"You think a man may be told too often of the error of his ways?"
"Yes."
"Then we shall never agree upon that point."
And they never did. Notwithstanding this, Mr. Gray remembered Mattie"s hint, and often curbed a rising attempt to preach to Sidney. When his rigour carried him to preaching point, Sidney listened patiently; when Sidney knew that Mr. Gray"s energy was real, and that not one atom of hypocrisy actuated his motives, he respected the preacher, and paid attention to him.
He altered rapidly for the better; he became again almost the Sidney Hinchford of old times--the smile returned more frequently, the brightness of his face was something new; it was pleasant to think that he was not isolated from the world, and that there were friends in it yet to care for him.
He went to church every Sunday in lieu of chapel, somewhat to Mr. Gray"s dissatisfaction. He had gone in old days twice every Sunday with his father, and he preferred adopting the old habits to frequenting the chapel whither Mr. Gray desired to conduct him. Sometimes Mattie accompanied him; more often, when he knew his ground, he went by himself, leaving Mattie to her father"s escort.
Meanwhile business slowly but surely increased; the connection extended--all went well with these three watchers--each watching for a different purpose, with an equal degree of earnestness.
END OF THE SIXTH BOOK.
BOOK VII.
SIDNEY"S GRAt.i.tUDE.
CHAPTER I.
MAURICE HINCHFORD IN SEARCH OF HIS COUSIN.
Nearly a year had pa.s.sed away since the firm of Hinchford and Gray started in business and astonished the suburbs. In search of that rising firm, a young man, fresh from foreign travel, was wandering in the outskirts of Peckham one February night. A man who had crossed deserts, climbed mountains, and threaded mountain pa.s.ses with comparative ease, but who was quickly lost in the brick and mortar wilderness into which he had ventured.
This man, we may say at once, was Maurice Hinchford, a man who had seen life and spent a fortune in an attempt to enjoy it. A Sybarite, who had wandered from place to place, from kingdom to kingdom, until even novelty had palled upon him, and he had returned back to his father and his father"s business. During this long holiday he had thought much of his cousin Sidney, the man to whom he had taken no pa.s.sing fancy, and whose life he had helped to blight--whom, by way of atonement, he had once wished to advance in the world.
Sidney Hinchford had been constantly before him during his pilgrimage; before him that indignant figure which had repelled all excuse, on the night he reached his one and thirtieth year; he could see it hastening away in the night shadows from the house to which it had been unsuspiciously lured.
On his return, not before, for he had wandered from place to place, and many letters had miscarried--amongst them the missive which had told him of his uncle"s death and cousin"s blindness--he heard of the calamity which had befallen Sidney in his absence.
He had been ever a feeling man, and forgetting the past rebuff he had received--thinking, perhaps, that his cousin was in distress, he started at once in search of him. To do Maurice Hinchford justice, it was on the very day on which he had reached London, and before he had seen his mother and sisters. No a.s.surance of his father that Sidney was in good hands contented him; he must judge for himself. He had the Hinchford impetus to proceed at once straightforwardly to work; he was a man who was sorry for the harm he had done in his life--one of those comfortable souls, who are always sorry _afterwards_!--a loose liver, with a conscience that would not keep quiet and let events flow on smoothly by him. He had sobered down during his travels, too; he had met with many acquaintances, but no friends--in all his life he had not found one true friend who would have stood by him in adversity, and shared his troubles, even his purse, with him.
Fortunately Maurice Hinchford had not known adversity, and had shared his purse with others instead. A rich man, an extravagant one, but a man of observation, who knew tinsel from pure gold, and sighed very often when he found himself compelled, perforce, to put up with the tinsel.
Life such as his had wearied him of late; men of his own cla.s.s had sworn eternal amity, and then laughed at him when his back was turned; men of a grade inferior had toadied him, cringed to him, sponged upon him; women had flattered him for his wealth"s sake, not loved him for his own--all had acknowledged him one of those good fellows, of which society is always proud; but for _himself_ n.o.body cared save his own flesh and blood--he could read that fact well enough, and its constant reiteration on the faces of "his set" annoyed him more than he could have believed.
This favourite of fortune, then, annoyed with society"s behaviour, had started forth in search of Sidney an hour after the news was learned from his father"s lips. He had a great deal to say to Sidney; he had not entered into any explanations in that letter which Sidney had coolly responded to--he could say more _viva voce_; and now the storm was more than a year old, his cousin would surely put up with more, and listen to him.
But firstly, Maurice Hinchford had to find his cousin; and having wandered from the right track, it became a matter of some difficulty. He had strayed into a "new neighbourhood"--a place always famous for its intricacies--and he floundered about new streets, and half-finished streets, asking manifold questions of the aborigines, and receiving manifold directions, which he followed implicitly, and got lost anew in consequence.
The stragglers were few and far between, and Maurice waited patiently for the next arrival--standing under a lamp-post at the corner of a street. He had given up all hope in his own resources, and had resolved to enlist the next nondescript in his service, be his terms whatever his rapacity dictated. But the next nondescript was a woman, and he was baffled again. A young woman in a great hurry, to whom he could not offer money, and whose progress he scarcely liked to arrest, until the horror of another vigil under that melancholy gas-lamp overcame his reluctance to intrude.
"I beg pardon," he said, hastily; "I am looking for Park Place. Will you oblige me, Miss, by indicating in which direction it may lie _now_?"
"As straight as you can go, sir."
"Ah! but, confound it, I can"t go straight. Not that I"m intoxicated,"
he said quickly, seeing his auditor recoil, and make preparations for a hasty retreat, "but these streets are incomprehensibly tortuous."