"The child"s only growing," he said to Rachel, "only growing; a little rest and a little medicine, and she"ll be all right again."
But scarcely was Rachel out of the door, when she burst into tears. "My poor little Mary," she thought, "my poor little Mary!"
CHAPTER XVIII.
It was rather late when Rachel knocked timidly at the door, Mrs. Brown opened to her, and there was a storm on her brow.
"Well, ma"am," she began; "well, ma"am!"
"Oh! pray do not--do not!" imploringly exclaimed Rachel, clasping her hands.
For her excessive patience had of late rendered Mrs. Brown"s violent temper wholly ungovernable. Irritated by the very meekness which met her wrath, she had, with the instinct of aggression, found the only vulnerable point of Rachel--her father. This was, indeed, the heel of Achilles. All the shafts of the enemy"s railing that fell harmless on the childish old man, rebounded on his daughter with double force: deep and keen they sank in her hearty and every one inflicted its wound. And thus it was that Rachel had learned to look with terror to Mrs. Brown"s wrath --that she now shrank from it with fear and trembling, and implored for mercy.
But there is no arguing with ill-temper. Mrs. Brown would neither give mercy, nor hear reason. Had she not lent twenty pound three and six to Rachel? Was not Rachel beholden to her for food, shelter, chemist"s bill, and physician"s fees? and should not, therefore, her will be Rachel"s law, and her pleasure be Rachel"s pleasure?
Poor Rachel, her patience was great, but now she felt as if it must fail; as if she could not, even for the sake of a roof"s shelter, endure more from one to whom no tie of love or regard bound her--nothing but the burdening sense of an obligation which she had not sought, and for which she had already paid so dearly. She clasped her thin hands--she looked with her mild brown eyes in the face of her tormentor, and her lips quivered with the intensity of the feelings that moved her to reply, and repel insult and contumely, and with the strength of will that kept her silent.
At length, Mrs. Brown grew tired, for her ill-temper had this quality-- it was vehement, not slow and irritating, the infliction ceased--Rachel remained alone.
Mrs. Brown had taken possession of the room that had once been Rachel"s.
Thomas Gray slept in the back parlour; and in order to remain within reach of aid, Rachel slept on the floor of the front room. In this room it was that Mrs. Brown had left her. Softly Rachel went and opened the door of her father"s room; it was dark and quiet; but in its stillness, she heard his regular breathing--he slept, and little, did he know how much that calm sleep of his cost his daughter. She closed the door, and sat down in her own room; but she thought not of sleep; the tempter was with her in that hour. Her heart was full of bitterness--full even to overflowing. On a dark and dreary sea, her lot seemed cast; she saw not the guiding star of faith over her head. She saw not before her the haven of blessed peace.
The words "Thy will be done," fell from her lips; they were not in her heart. Nothing was there, nothing but wounded pride, resentment, and the sense of unmerited wrong.
In vain, thinking of her tyrant, Rachel said to herself, "I forgive that woman--I forgive her freely." She felt that she did not; that anger against this pitiless tormentor of her life smouldered in her heart like the red coal living beneath pale ashes; and Rachel was startled, and justly, to feel that so strange and unusual an emotion, anger against another, had found place in her bosom, and that though she bade it go, it stayed, and would not depart.
To be gentle is not to be pa.s.sionless. The spirit of Rachel had been early subdued, too much subdued for her happiness; but it was too n.o.ble ever to have been quenched. It still burned within her, a flame pure and free, though invisible. But now, alas! the vapours of earthly pa.s.sion dimmed its brightness: and it was darkened with human wrath.
Through such moments of temptation and trial all have pa.s.sed; and then it is, indeed, when we are not blinded by pride, that we feel our miserable weakness, a weakness for which there is but one remedy, but then it is a divine one--the strength of G.o.d.
That strength Rachel now invoked. _De Profundis_, from the depths of her sorrow she cried out to the Lord, not that her burden might grow less, but that her strength to bear it, to endure and forgive, might increase eyen with it And strength was granted unto her. It came, not at once, not like the living waters that flowed from the arid rock, when the prophet spoke, but slowly, like the heavenly manna that fell softly in the silence of the night, and was gathered ere the sun rose above the desert.
Rachel felt--oh, pure and blessed feeling!--that her heart was free from bitterness and gall; that she could forgive the offender, to seventy times seven; that she could pray for her--not with the lip-prayer of the self-righteous Pharisee, but with the heartfelt orisons of the poor, sinning, and penitent publican; and again and again, and until the tears flowed down her cheek, she blessed G.o.d, the sole Giver of so mighty and superhuman a grace.
And well it was for Rachel Gray, that she forgave her enemy that night.
Well it was, indeed, that the next sun beheld not her wrath. Before that sun rose, the poor, erring woman had given in her account of every deed, and every word uttered in the heat of anger:--Mrs. Brown had gone to her room strong and well. She was found dead and cold in her bed the next morning.
A coroner"s inquest was held, and a verdict of "sudden death" recorded.
And a will, too, was found in a tea-caddy, by which Mrs. Brown formally bequeathed all her property to Rachel Gray, "as a proof," said the will, "of her admiration and respect."
On hearing the words, Rachel burst into tears.
"Thank G.o.d! That I forgave her!" she exclaimed, "thank G.o.d!"
Well indeed might she thank the Divine bestower of all forgiveness. The legacy was not after all a large one. Mrs. Brown"s annuity died with her; she left little more money than buried her decently; the ground lease of the house in which she had originally resided was almost out, and the bequest was in reality limited to the present abode of Rachel; but invaluable to her indeed, was the shelter of that humble home, now her own for ever.
And when all was over; when the grave had closed on one, who not being at peace herself, could not give peace to others, when Rachel and her father remained alone in the little house, now hushed and silenced from all rude and jarring sounds, safe from all tyrannical interference, Rachel felt, with secret thankfulness, that if her lot was not happy, according to human weakness, it was blest with peace and quiet, and all the good that from them spring. If a cloud still lingered over it, it was only because, looking at her father, she remembered the unfulfilled desire of her heart; and if on days otherwise now marked with peace, there sometimes fell the darkness of a pa.s.sing shadow, it was only when she saw and felt too keenly the sorrows of others.
CHAPTER XIX.
Richard Jones still hoped: "Mary was so young!" He would hope. But it was not to be; he had but tasted the cup of his sorrows; to the dregs was he to drink it; the earthly idol on which he had set his heart was to be s.n.a.t.c.hed from him; he was to waken one day to the bitter knowledge: "there is no hope!"
How he felt we know not, and cannot tell: none have a right to describe that grief save they who have pa.s.sed through it; we dare not unveil the father"s heart: we deal but with the external aspect of things, and sad and bitter enough it was.
In a silent shop, where the sugar seemed to shrink away in the casks, where the tea-chests looked hollow, where dust gathered on the counter, on the shelves, in the corners, everywhere; where all looked blasted and withered by the deadly upas tree opposite, you might have seen a haggard man who stood there day after day, waiting for customers that came not, and who from behind his shop windows drearily watched the opposite shop, always full; thriving, fattening on his ruin; or who, sadder sight to his eyes and heart, looked at the little back parlour, where on her sick bed his dying daughter lay.
Mary, as her illness drew towards its close, became fanciful, she insisted on having her bed brought down to the back parlour, and would leave her door open, "in order to mind the shop," she said. If anything could hasten her father"s ruin, this did it: the few customers whom he had left, gradually dropped off, scared away by that sick girl, looking at them with her eager, glittering eyes.
He sat by her one evening in a sad and very bitter mood. She was ill, very ill, and for three days not a soul had crossed the threshold of his shop. His love and his ambition were pa.s.sing away together from his life.
"Father," querulously said Mary, "why did you shut the shop so early?"
For since her illness the young girl"s mind was always running on the shop.
"Where"s the use of leaving it open?" huskily answered Jones, "unless it"s to see them all going to the two Teapots opposite."
"Well, but I wish you had not," she resumed, "it looks so dull and so dark."
It is very likely that to please her, Richard Jones would have gone and taken the shutters down; but for a knock at the private door.
"There"s Miss Gray," said Mary, her face lighting.
Richard Jones went and opened it; it was Rachel Gray. The light of the candle which he held fell full on his face; Rachel was struck with its haggard expression.
"You do not look well, Mr. Jones," she said.
"Don"t I, Miss Gray," he replied, with a dreary smile, "well, that"s a wonder! Look here!" he added, leading her into the shop where his tallow candle shed but a dim, dull light, "look here," he continued, raising it high, and turning it round so that it cast its faint gleam over the whole place, "look here; there"s a shop for you, Miss Gray. How long ago is it since you, and your mother, and Mary and I we settled that shop? Look at it now, I say--look at it now. Look here!" and he thrust the light down a cask, "empty! Look there!" and he raised the lid of a tea-chest, "empty! Do you wish to try the drawers? Oh! they are all labelled, but what"s in "em. Miss Gray? nothing! It"s well the customers have left off coming; for I couldn"t serve them; couldn"t accommodate them, I am sorry to say," and he laughed very bitterly. "I was happy when I came here," he resumed, "I had hope; I thought there was an opening; I thought there was room for me. I set up this shop; I did it all up myself, as you know-- every inch of it; I painted it; I put the fixtures in; I drove every nail in with my own hand, and what"s been the upshot of it all, Miss Gray?"
Rachel raised her soft brown eyes to his:
"It is the will of G.o.d," she said, "and G.o.d knows best, for He is good."
Richard Jones looked at her and smiled almost sternly, for suffering gives dignity to the meanest, and no man, when he feels deeply, is the same man as when his feelings are unstirred.
"Miss Gray," he said, "I have worked from my youth--slaved some would say; I hoped to make out something for myself and my child, and it was more of her than of myself I thought I wronged none; I did my best; a rich man steps in, and I am bewared--and you tell me G.o.d is good--mind, I don"t say he aint--but is he good to me?"
Rachel Gray shook with nervous emotion from head to foot She was pained-- she was distressed at the question. Still more distressed because her mind was so bewildered, because her ideas were in such strange tumult, that with the most ardent wish to speak, she could not. As when in a dream we struggle to move and cannot, our will being fettered by the slumber of the body, so Rachel felt then, so alas! for her torment she felt almost always; conscious of truths sublime, beautiful and consoling, but unable to express them in speech.
"G.o.d is good," she said again, clinging to that truth as to her anchor of safety.
Again Richard Jones smiled.
"And my child, Miss Gray," he said, lowering his voice so that his words could not reach the next room, "going by inches before my very eyes; yet I must look on and not go mad. I must be beggared, and I must bear it; I must become childless, and I must bear it. And the wicked thrive, and the wicked"s children outlive them, for G.o.d is good to them, Miss Gray."
The eyes of Rachel filled with tears; her brow became clouded.