"I am sorry if it has," meekly said Jones.
"And I don't care a button," frankly declared Saunders, "but as I was saying, that's your belief, your impression; and to be sure it's true enough in one sense, but then, Mr. Jones, you should not look at your side of the question only. Mr. Smithson meant to set up a grocer's shop long before you opened yours; he spoke to me about it, and if I had only agreed then, it was done; you came, to be sure, but what of that? the street was as free to us as to you; that I lodged in your house was an accident; I did not know when I took your room that I should supplant you some day. I did not know Smithson had still kept that idea in his head, and that finding no situation I should be glad to consent at last. Well, I did consent, and I did compete with you, and knocked you over, as it were, but Mr. Jones, would not another have done it? And was it not all honourable, fair play?"
"Well, I suppose it was," sadly replied Jones, "and since it was a settled thing that I was to be a ruined man, I suppose I ought not to care who did it."
"Come, that's talking sense," said Saunders, with a nod of approbation, "and now, Mr. Jones, we'll come to business, for I need not tell you nor Miss Gray either, that I did not come in here to rip up old sores. You must know that the young fellow who used to serve in my shop has taken himself off, he's going to Australia, he says, but that's neither here nor there; I have a regard for you, Mr. Jones, and having injured you without malice, I should like to do you a good turn of my own free will; and then there's my wife, who was quite cut up when she heard you had lost your little daughter, and who has such a regard for Miss Gray, but that's neither here nor there; the long and short of it is, will you serve in my shop, and have a good berth and moderate wages, and perhaps an increase if the business prospers?"
Poor Richard Jones! This was the end of all his dreams, his schemes, his anger, his threatened revenge! And yet, strange to say, he felt it very little. Every strong and living feeling lay buried in a grave. His soul was as a thing dead within him; his pride had crumbled into dust, as Mary would have said: his spirit was gone.
The humiliation of accepting Joseph Saunders proposal,—and, however strange, it was certainly well and kindly meant—Richard Jones did not consider. He looked at the advantages, and found them manifest; there lay the means of paying Rachel, of covering his few debts, and of securing to his wearied life the last and dearly-bought boon of repose. Awhile he reflected, then said aloud: "I shall be very glad of it, lam very much obliged to you, Mr. Saunders."
"Well, then, it's done," said Mr. Saunders, rising, "good night, Jones, cheer up, old fellow. Good night, Miss Gray; Jane sends her love, you know. Sorry the old gentleman's no better." And away he departed, very well satisfied with the success of his errand.
"Oh! Mr. Jones!" exclaimed Rachel, when she returned to the parlour.
"Don't mention it," he said with a faint smile, "I don't mind it, MissGray."
"But could you not have stayed here?" she asked.
"And be a burden upon you I that's what I have done too long, Miss Gray."
"But until you found employment elsewhere, you might have remained."
"His house is as good as any; his bread is not more bitter than another's," replied Jones, in a subdued voice, "besides, now that my Mary is gone, what need I care, Miss Gray?" And as he saw that her eyes were dim, he added: "You need not pity me, Miss Gray, the bitterness of my trouble is, and has long been over. My Mary is not dead for me. She is, and ever will be, living for her old father, until the day of meeting. And whilst I am waiting for that day, you do not think I care about what befalls me."
Once more Rachel was alone. Once more solitude and the silence of the quiet street, shrouded her in.
A new life now began for Rachel Gray. Like a plant long bent by adverse winds, she slowly recovered elasticity of spirit, and lightness of heart. What she might have been, but for the gloom of her youth, Rachel never was; but as the dark cloud, which had long hung over her, rolled away, as she could move, speak, eat, and think unquestioned in her little home, a gleam of sunshine, pale but pure, shone over her life with that late-won liberty. Her speech became more free, her smile was more frequent, her whole manner more open and cheerful.
Rachel lived, however, both by taste and by long habit, in great retirement, and saw but few people. Indeed, almost her only visitors were Richard Jones and Madame Rose. The little Frenchwoman now and then dropped in, looked piteously at Thomas Gray, shrugged her shoulders, nodded, winked, and did everything to make herself understood, but talk English; and Rachel listened to her, and laughed gaily at the strange speech and strange ways of her little friend.
Richard Jones was a still more frequent visitor. He came to receive, not to give sympathy. The society of Rachel Gray was to him a want of his life, for to her alone he could talk of Mary; he spoke and she listened, and in listening gave the best and truest consolation. Now and then, not often, for Rachel felt and knew that such language frequently repeated wearies the ear of weak humanity, she ventured to soothe his grief with such ailments as she could think of. And her favorite one, one which she often applied to herself and her own troubles was: "We receive blessings from the hand of God, shall we not also take sorrow when it pleases Him to inflict it?"
"Very true. Miss Gray, very true," humbly assented Richard Jones.
Of his present position he never spoke, unless when questioned by Rachel, and when he did so, it was to say that "Saunders and his wife were very kind to him, very kind. And I am quite happy, Miss Gray," he would add, "quite happy."
And thus like a hidden stream flowed on the life of Rachel Gray, silent, peaceful and very still. It slept in the shadow of the old grey street, in the quiet shelter of a quiet home, within the narrow circle of plain duties. Prayer, Love, Meditation and Thought graced it daily. It was humble and lowly in the eyes of man; beautiful and lovely in the sight of God.
And thus quiet and happy years had passed away, and nothing had arrested their monotonous flow.
It was evening, Rachel and her father were alone in the little parlour. Thomas Gray was still a childish old man, bereft of knowledge and of sense. Yet now, as Rachel helped him to his chair, and settled him in it, something, a sort of light seemed to her to pass athwart the old man's face, and linger in his dull eyes.
"Father!" she cried, "do you know me?"
In speech he answered not, but it seemed to her that in his look she read conscious kindness. She pressed his hand, and it appeared to press hers in return; she laid her cheek to his, and it did not seem lifeless or cold. Then, again she withdrew from him and said:
"Father, do you know me?"
He looked at her searchingly and was long silent: at length he spoke, and in a low but distinct voice, said: "Rachel."
In a transport of joy, Rachel sank at his feet and sobbing clasped her arms around him.
"Never mind, Rachel," he said, "never mind."
"Father, father," she cried, "you know me, say you know me."
But she asked too much, it was but a dawn of intelligence that had returned; never was the full day to shine upon earth.
"Never mind, Rachel," he said again, "never mind."
But though the first ardour of her hopes was damped, her joy was exquisite and deep. Her father knew her, he had uttered her name with kindness, in his feeble and imperfect and childish way, he loved her! What more then was needed by one who like the humble lover recorded by the Italian poet, had ever
"Desired much, hoped little, nothing asked."
Somewhat late that same evening, Richard Jones knocked at Rachel's door. As she opened to him the light she held shone on her face, and though he was not an observant man, he was struck with her aspect. There was a flush on her cheek, a light in her eyes, a smile on her lips, a radiance and a joy in Rachel's face which Richard Jones had never seen there before. He looked at her inquiringly, but she only smiled and showed him in.
And now, reader, one last picture before we part.
It is evening, as you know, and three are sitting in the little parlour of Rachel Gray. An autumn evening it is, somewhat chill with a bright fire burning in the grate, and lighting up with flickering flame the brown furniture and narrow room. And of these three who sit there, one is a grey, childish old man in an arm-chair; another, a man who is not old, but whose hair has turned prematurely white with trouble and sorrow; the third is a meek, thoughtful woman with a book on her knees, who sits silently brooding over the words her lips have uttered; for she has been reading how the Lord gives and how the Lord takes away, and how we yet must bless the name of the Lord.
The good seed of these words has not been shed on a barren soil. As Richard Jones sits and dreams of his lost darling, he also dreams of their joyful meeting some day on the happier shore, and perhaps now that time has passed over his loss and that its first bitterness has faded away, perhaps he confesses with humble and chastened heart, that meet and just was the doom which snatched from him his earthly idol, and, for a while, took away the too dearly loved treasure of his heart.
And Rachel Gray, too, has her thoughts. As she looks at her father, and whilst thankful for what she has obtained, as she yet longs, perhaps, for the full gift she never can possess; if her heart feels a pang, if repining it questions and says: "Oh! why have I not too a father to love and know me, not imperfectly, but fully—completely," a sweet and secret voice replies: "You had set your heart on human love, and because you had set your heart upon it, it was not granted to you. Complain not, murmur not, Rachel, if thou hast not thy father upon earth, remember that thou hast thy Father in Heaven!"