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Rachel Gray

<h4 id="id01011" style="margin-top: 2em">CHAPTER XIX.</h4> 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 snatched 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 passed 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 passing 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 God," she said, "and God 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 God 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. "God 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 God is good to them, Miss Gray." The eyes of Rachel filled with tears; her brow became clouded. "Ah! Mr. Jones," she said, "do not complain; you have loved your child." "What are you keeping Miss Gray there for?" pettishly said the voice of Mary, "I want her." "And here I am, dear," said Rachel, going in to her, "I am come to sit a while with you; for I am sure your poor father wants rest, does he not?" "I don't want any one to sit with me," impatiently replied Mary, "I am not so ill as all that." "But do you sleep at night?" "No, I can't—I am so feverish." "Well, then, we sit up with you to keep you company," said her father. This explanation apparently satisfied Mary, who began to talk of other things. She knew not she was dying; whence should the knowledge have come to a mere child like her. None had told her the truth. And she was passing away into eternity, unconscious—her heart, her thoughts, her soul full of the shadows of life. Rachel saw and knew it, and it grieved her. She remembered her little sister's happy and smiling death-bed, and from her heart she prayed that a similar blessing might crown the last hours of little Mary; that she might go to her God like a child to her father. And when Richard Jones, after sitting up with them until twelve, went upstairs to rest awhile, and Rachel heard Mary talk of her recovery, and of projects and hopes, vain to her as a dream, she could not help feeling that it was her duty to speak. They were alone, "yes, now," thought Rachel, "now is the time to speak." Oh! hard and bitter task: to tell the young of death; the hoping that they must not hope; to tell those who would so fondly delay and linger in this valley, that they must depart for the land that is so near, and that seems so far. Rachel knew not how to begin. Mary opened the subject. "I shall be glad when I am well again," she said, "I am tired of this little room; it seems so dull when I see the sun shine in the street, don't it, Miss Gray?" "I dare say it does: you remind me of a little story I once read; shall I tell it to you?" "Oh! yes you may," carelessly replied Mary, yawning slightly; she thought Miss Gray prosy at times. "It is not a long story," said Rachel timidly, "and here it is; a king was once hunting alone in a wood, when he heard a very beautiful voice singing very sweetly; he went on and saw a poor leper." "What's a leper?" interrupted Mary. "Don't you remember the lepers in the Gospel, who were made clean by our Saviour? they were poor things, who had a bad and loathsome complaint, and this man, whom the king heard singing, was one; and the king could not help saying to him, 'how can you sing when you seem in so wretched a condition?' But the leper replied, 'it is because I am in this state that I sing, for as my body decays, I know that the hour of my deliverance draws nigh, that I shall leave this miserable world, and go to my Lord and my God.'" Mary looked at Rachel surprised at the impressive and earnest tone with which she spoke. "Well but, Miss Gray," she said, at length, "what is there like me in this story; I am not a leper, am I?" "We are all lepers," gently said Rachel, "for we are all sinners, and sin is to the soul what leprosy is to the body; it defiles it, and we all should be glad to die; for Christ has conquered death, and with death sin ends, and our true life, the life in God begins." Mary raised herself on one elbow. She looked at Rachel fixedly, earnestly; "Miss Gray," she said; "what do you mean?" Rachel did not reply—she could not. "Why do you tell me all these things?" continued Mary. And still Rachel could not speak. "Miss Gray," said Mary, "am I going to die?" She looked wistfully in Rachel's face, and the beseeching tone of her young childish voice seemed to pierce Rachel's heart; but she had began; could not, she dared not go back. She rose, she clasped her hands, she trembled from head to foot, tears streamed down her cheek; her voice faltered so that she could scarcely speak, but she mastered it, clear and distinct the words came out. "Mary, we must all obey the will of God; we came into this world at His will, at His will we must leave it." "And must I leave it, Miss Gray?" asked Mary, persisting in her questioning like a child. Rachel stooped over her; the fast tears poured from her face on Mary's pale brow, "yes, my darling," she said softly, "yes, you must leave this miserable earth of trouble and sorrow, and go to God your friend and your father." The weakest, the frailest creatures often rise to heroic courage. This fretful, pettish child heard her sentence with some wonder, but apparently without sorrow. "Don't cry, Miss Gray," she said, "I don't cry; but do you know, it seems so odd that I should die, doesn't it now?" Rachel did not reply, nor did she attempt it; her very heart was wrung. Mary guessed, or saw it. "I wish you would not fret," she said, "I wish you would not. Miss Gray. I don't, you see." "Ay," thought Rachel, "you do not, my poor child, for what do you know of death?" And a little while after this, Mary, who felt heavy, fell asleep with her hand in that of Rachel Gray. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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