CHAPTER XIII.
Mary was gone; Jane, had come in but to go up to her room. Rachel sat alone in the little parlour, reading by candle-light.
And did she read, indeed! Alas no! Her will fixed her eyes on the page, but her mind received not the impressions it conveyed. The sentences were vague and broken as images in a dream; the words had no meaning.
Outwardly, calm as ever did Rachel seem, but there was a strange sorrow-- a strange tumult in her heart.
That day the hope of years had been wrecked, that day she had offered herself, and been finally rejected. In vain she said to herself: "I must submit--it is the will of G.o.d, I must submit." A voice within her ever seemed to say: "Father, Father why hast thou forsaken me!" until, at length, Rachel felt as if she could bear no more.
Sorrows endured in silence are ever doubly felt. The nature of Rachel Gray was silent; she had never asked for sympathy; she had early been taught to expect and accept in its stead, its bitter step-sister Ridicule. Derided, laughed at, she had learned to dread that the look of a human being should catch a glimpse of her sorrows. If her little troubles were thus treated--how would her heavier griefs fare?
And now no more than ever did Rachel trouble any with her burden. Why should she? Who, what was she that others should care whether or not her father loved her! That he did not sufficiently, condemned her to solitude. The pitying eye of G.o.d might, indeed, look down upon her with tenderness and love, but from her brethren Rachel expected nothing.
And thus it was that, on this night, after consoling the idle sorrows of an indulged child, Rachel, sitting in solitude, found the weight of her own grief almost intolerable. Like all shy and nervous persons, she was deeply excitable. Anger she knew not; but emotions as vehement, though more pure, could trouble her heart. And now she was moved, and deeply moved, by a sense of injustice and of wrong. Her father wronged her-- perhaps he knew it not; but he wronged her. "G.o.d Almighty had not given him a child, she felt, to treat it thus, with mingled dislike and contempt Were there none to receive his slights and his scorn, but his own daughter?"
She rose, and walked up and down the room with some agitation. Then came calmer and gentler thoughts, moving her heart until her tears flowed freely. Had she not failed that day--had she not been too cold in her entreaties, too easily daunted by the first rejection? Had she but allowed her father to see the love, deep and fervent, which burned in his daughter"s heart--he would not, he could not so coldly have repelled and cast her from him.
"And why not try again?" murmured an inner voice; "the kingdom of Heaven is taken by storm--and what is the kingdom of Heaven, but the realm of love?"
At first, this seemed a thought so wild, that Rachel drew back from it in alarm, as from an abyss yawning at her feet. But even as our looks soon become familiar with images of the wildest danger, so the thought returned; and she shrank not back from it. Besides, what had she to lose?
Nothing! With a sort of despair, she resolved to go and seek Thomas Gray, and attempt once more to move him. "If he rejects me now," she added, inwardly, "I shall submit, and trouble him no more."
The hour was not late; besides, in her present mood, the timid Rachel felt above fear. She was soon dressed--soon on her road. This time neither annoyance nor evil befell her. She pa.s.sed like a shadow through crowds, and like a shadow was unheeded. The night was dark and dreary; a keen wind whistled along the streets--but for either cold or darkness Rachel cared not. Her thoughts flowed full and free in her brain; for once, she felt that she could speak; and a joyful presentiment in her heart told her that she would, and should be heard--and not in vain.
Absorbed in those thoughts, Rachel scarcely knew what speed she had made, until, with the mechanical impulse of habit, she found herself stopping before the second hand ironmonger"s shop. Wakening as from a dream, and smiling at herself, she went on. Rachel had expected to find the shop of Thomas Gray closed, and himself absent; but the light that burned from his dwelling, and shed its glow on the opposite houses, made her heart beat with joy and hope. Timidly, she looked in through the gla.s.s panes; the shop was vacant; her father was, no doubt, in the back parlour.
Rachel entered; the door-bell rang. She paused on the threshold, expecting to see him appear from within, nerving herself to bear his cold look, and severe aspect; but he came not He was either up-stairs, or in some other part of the house, or next door with a neighbour.
There was a chair in the shop; Rachel took it, sat down, and waited--how long, she herself never knew; for seconds seemed hours, and all true consciousness of time had left her. At length, she wondered; then she feared--why was her father"s house so silent and so deserted? She went to the door, and looked down the street. It was still and lonely; every house was shot up; and even from the neighbouring thoroughfare, all sounds of motion and life seemed gone.
Suddenly Rachel remembered the little public-house to which her father had once sent her. She had often seen him going to it in the evening; perhaps he was there now. In the shadow of the houses, she glided up to the tavern door--it stood half open--she cautiously looked in; and standing, as she did in the gloom of the street, she could do so unseen.
The landlord sat dozing in the bar--not a soul was with him. Rachel glanced at the clock above his head; it marked a quarter to twelve.
Dismayed and alarmed, she returned to her father"s house. It so chanced, that as she walked on the opposite side of the narrow street, a circ.u.mstance that had before escaped her notice, now struck her. In the room above the shop of Thomas Gray, there burned a light. She stopped short, and looked at it with a beating heart. She felt sure her father was there.
Rachel re-entered the shop, and again sat down, resolved to be patient; but her nervous restlessness soon became intolerable. Seized with an indefinite fear, she rose, took the light, and entered the parlour: it was vacant. Pa.s.sing under a low door which she found ajar, she went up a dark staircase. It ended with a narrow landing, and a solitary door; she knocked, and got no reply; she tried it, it yielded to her hand, and opened; but Rachel did not cross the threshold; she paused upon it, awe-struck at the sight she saw. The room was a small one, poorly famished, with a low and narrow bed, a table and a few chairs. On the mantle-shelf burned a tallow light, dim and lurid for want of snuffing; its dull glow fell on the motionless figure of Thomas Gray. He sat straight and stiff in a wooden chair, with a hand resting on each arm.
His face was ghastly pale, and rigid as death; his eyes stared on the blank wall before him, and seemed void of sight.
"My father is dead," thought Rachel. She entered the room and went up to him. But when she laid her hand on his arm, a slight convulsive motion showed her that he still lived. Ay, he lived, of that living death, which is worse than the true. Paralysis had fallen upon him without warning.
Like a thief in the night it had come; and in a few brief seconds it had laid low the proud man"s strength. Of that strength he had boasted in the morning; twelve hours had not gone round--where was it now?
Rachel did not lose her presence of mind. How she went out, found a doctor, and brought him back, she never exactly knew; but she did it.
The medical man looked at Thomas Gray, then at Rachel.
"You are his daughter," he said, kindly.
"Yes, sir, I am."
"Well, then, my poor girl, I am very sorry for you--very sorry. Your father may live years but I can hold out no prospect of recovery."
"None, sir?" faltered Rachel, looking wistfully in his face.
"Not the least. Better I should tell you so at once, than deceive you."
But Rachel would not--could not believe him. The sentence was too hard, too pitiless to be true.
"Father, father! do you know me?" she cried.
He stared vacantly in her face. Did he know her? Perhaps he did. Who can tell how far the spirit lived in that dead body? But if know her he did, gone was the time when he could hold intercourse with that long slighted, and now bitterly avenged daughter.
In vain she clung weeping around his neck, in vain she called on him to reply. He merely looked at her in the same vacant way, and said childishly, "Never mind."
"But you know me--you know me, father!" said Rachel.
Again, he looked at her vacantly, and still the only words he uttered were, "Never mind."
"His mind is gone for ever," said the doctor.
Rachel did not answer. She clasped her hands, and looked with wistful sadness on the old man"s blank face. With a pang she felt and saw that now, indeed, her dream was over--that never, never upon earth, should she win that long hoped-for treasure--her father"s love.
CHAPTER XIV.
In the grey of the morning, Rachel brought her father to the humble little home which he had voluntarily forsaken years before.
Thomas Gray was not merely a paralyzed and helpless old man, he was also dest.i.tute. Little more than what sufficed to cover his current expenses did Rachel find in his dwelling; his furniture was old and worthless; and the good-will of the business scarcely paid the arrears of rent.
But the world rarely gives us credit for good motives. It was currently reported that Thomas Gray was a wealthy man, and that if Rachel Gray did not let him go to the workhouse, she knew why. "As if she couldn"t let him go, and keep his money too," indignantly exclaimed Jane, when she heard this slander; and, as discretion was not Jane"s virtue, she repeated all to Rachel Gray. Poor Rachel coloured slightly. It seemed strange, and somewhat hard too, that her conduct should be judged thus.
But the flush pa.s.sed from her pale face, and the momentary emotion from her heart. "Let the world think, and say what it likes," she thought, "I need not, and I will not care."
Not long after Rachel brought home her father, Jane left her. The time of her apprenticeship was out; besides, she was going to marry. She showed more emotion on their parting, than might have been expected from her.
"G.o.d bless you. Miss Gray," she said several times; "G.o.d bless you--you are a good one, whatever the world may think."
The praise was qualified, and, perhaps, Rachel felt it to be so, for she smiled; but she took it as Jane meant it--kindly. Amity and peace marked their separation.
Rachel now remained alone with her father and Mary. The young girl was not observant. She saw but a quiet woman, and a helpless old man, with grey hair, and stern features blank of meaning, who sat the whole day long by the fire-side, waited on by his patient daughter. Sometimes, indeed, when Rachel Gray attended on her father with more than usual tenderness, when she lingered near his chair, looking wistfully in his face, or with timid and tender hand gently smoothed away his whitened hair from his rugged brow, sometimes, then, Mary looked and wondered, and felt vaguely moved, but she was too childish to know why.
And, indeed, the story of Rachel"s life at this time cannot be told. It was beautiful; but its beauty was not of earth, and to earthly glance cannot be revealed. It lay, a divine secret, between her heart and G.o.d.
This peace was not destined to last Rachel and her father sat alone one morning in the parlour, when Mrs. Brown, who had found the street door ajar, burst in without preliminary warning. She was scarlet, and looked in a towering pa.s.sion.
"You audacious creatur," she screamed; "you audacious hussey, how dare you bring that man in this house--in my house! How dare you?"
"He is my father," said Rachel, confounded, both at the accusation, and at the unexpected appearance of Mrs. Brown.
The reply exasperated Mrs. Brown. She had never felt any extraordinary friendship or affection for her deceased cousin; but she had always entertained a very acute sense of her cousin"s wrongs, and had accordingly honoured Thomas Gray with no small share of hatred and vituperation, and that Rachel should not feel as she did on the subject, or should presume to remember that the sinner was her father, was, in Mrs. Brown"s eyes, an offence of the deepest dye. She gave her feelings free vent. She was a vulgar woman, and had a flow of vulgar eloquence at her command. She overwhelmed Rachel and Thomas Gray with sarcasm, scorn and abuse, and Rachel answered not one word, but heard her out, still as a statue, and pale as death. Mrs. Brown, too, was pale, but it was with wrath.
"Do you know," she added, trembling from head to foot with that pa.s.sion, "do you know that I could turn you out on the streets, you and your beggarly father--do you know that?"