Rachel Gray Part 4

"Not much fear of that," drily said Jane, as the door closed on Mary.

No one answered. Rachel worked; her mother read the paper, and for an hour there was deep silence in the parlour. As the church clock struck nine, a knock came at the door. Jane opened, and a rosy, good-humoured looking man entered the parlour. He was about forty, short, stout, with rather a low forehead, and stubby hair; altogether, he seemed more remarkable for good-nature than for intelligence. At once his look went round the room.

"Mary is gone to bed, Mr. Jones," said Rachel, smiling.

"To bed!--She ain't ill, I hope. Miss Gray," he exclaimed, with an alarmed start.

"Ill! Oh, no! but she felt tired. I am sorry you have had this long walk for nothing."

"Never mind, Miss Gray," he replied cheerfully; then sitting down, and wiping his moist brow, he added--"the walk does me good, and then I hear how she is, and I've the pleasure of seeing you all. And so she's quite well, is she?"

He leaned his two hands on the head of his walking-stick, and looking over it, smiled abstractedly at his own thoughts. Mrs. Gray roused him with the query--

"And what do you think of the state of the nation, Mr. Jones?"

Mr. Jones scratched his head, looked puzzled, hemmed, and at length came out with the candid confession:

"Mrs. Gray, I ain't no politician. For all I see, politics only brings a poor man into trouble. Look at the Chartists, and the tenth of April."

"Ah! poor things!" sighed Rachel, "I saw them--they pa.s.sed by here. How thin they were--bow careworn they looked!"

Mrs. Gray remained aghast. Rachel had actually had the audacity to give an opinion on any subject unconnected with dress-making--and even on that, poor girl! she was not always allowed to speak.

"Now, Rachel," she said, rallying, "_will_ you hold _your_ tongue, and speak of what you know, and not meddle with politics."

We must apologize for using italics, but without their aid we never could convey to our readers a proper idea of the awful solemnity with which Mrs. Gray emphasized her address. Rachel was rather bewildered, for she was not conscious of having said a word on politics, a subject she did not understand, and never spoke on; but she had long learned the virtue of silence. She did not reply.

"As to the Chartists?" resumed Mrs. Gray, turning to Mr. Jones.

"Law bless you, Mrs. Gray, _I_ ain't one of them!" he hastily replied. "I mind my own business--that's what I do, Mrs. Gray. The world must go round, you know."

"So it must," gravely replied that lady. "You never said a truer thing, Mr. Jones."

And very likely Mr. Jones had not.

"And I must go off," said Mr. Jones, rising with a half-stifled sigh, "for it's getting late, and I have five miles to walk."

And, undetained by Mrs. Gray's slow but honest entreaty to stay and share their supper, he left Rachel lighted him out. As she closed the parlour door, he looked at her, and lowering his voice, he said hesitatingly:

"I couldn't see her, could I, Miss Gray?"

Poor Rachel hesitated. She knew that she should get scolded if she complied; but then, he looked at her with such beseeching eyes--he wished for it so very much. Kindness prevailed over fear; she smiled, and treading softly, led the way up-stairs. As softly, he followed her up into the little back room.

Mary was fast asleep; her hands were folded over the coverlet of variegated patchwork; her head lay slightly turned on the white pillow; the frill of her cap softly shaded her pale young face, now slightly flushed with sleep. Her father bent over her with fond love, keeping in his breath. Rachel held the light; she turned her head away, that Mr.

Jones might not see her eyes, fest filling with tears. "Oh! my father-- my father!" she thought, "never have you looked so at your child--never --never!"

On tip-toe, Mr. Jones softly withdrew, and stole downstairs.

"I'd have kissed her," he whispered to Rachel, as she opened the door for him, "but it might have woke her out of that sweet sleep."

And away he went, happy to have purchased, by a ten miles walk after a day's hard labour, that look at his sleeping child.

"Oh, Lord! how beautiful is the love Thou hast put into the hearts of Thy creature!" thought Rachel Gray; and though it had not been her lot to win that love, the thought was to her so sweet and so lovely, that she bore without repining her expected scolding.

"Mrs. Gray had never heard of such a think--never."

CHAPTER V.

The rich man has his intellect, and its pleasures; he has his books, his studies, his club, his lectures, his excursions; he has foreign lands, splendid cities, galleries, museums, ancient and modern art: the poor man has his child, solitary delight of his hard tasked life, only solace of his cheerless home.

Richard Jones had but that one child, that peevish, sickly, fretful little daughter; but she was his all. He was twenty-one, when the grocer in whose shop his youth had been spent, died a bankrupt, leaving one child, a daughter, a pale, sickly young creature of seventeen, called Mary Smith.

Richard Jones had veneration large. He had always felt for this young lady an awful degree of respect, quite sufficient of itself to preclude love, had he been one to know this beautiful feeling by more than hearsay --which he was not. Indeed, he never could or would have thought of Mary Smith as something less than a G.o.ddess, if, calling at the house of the relative to whom she had gone, and finding her in tears, and, on her own confession, very miserable, he had not felt moved to offer himself, most hesitatingly, poor fellow I for her acceptance.

Miss Smith gave gracious consent. They were married, and lived most happily together. Poor little Mary's temper was none of the best; but Richard made every allowance: "Breaking down of the business--other's death--having to marry a poor fellow like him, &c." In short, he proved the most humble and devoted of husbands, toiled like a slave to keep his wife like a lady, and never forgot the honour she had conferred upon him; to this honour Mrs. Jones added, after three years, by presenting him with a sickly baby, which, to its mother's name of Mary, proudly added that of its maternal grandfather Smith.

A year after the birth of Mary Smith Jones, her mother died. The affections of the widower centred on his child; he had, indeed, felt more awe than fondness for his deceased wife--love had never entered his heart; he earned it with him, pure and virgin, to the grave, impressed with but one image--that of his daughter.

He reared his little baby alone and unaided. Once, indeed, a female friend insisted on relieving him from the charge; but, after surrendering his treasure to her, after spending a sleepless night, he rose with dawn, and went and fetched back his darling. During his wife's lifetime, he had been employed in a large warehouse; but now, in order to stay at home, he turned basket-maker. His child slept with him, cradled in his arms; he washed, combed, dressed it himself every morning, and made a woman of himself for its sake.

When Mary grew up, her father sent her to school, and resumed his more profitable out-door occupation. After a long search and much deliberation, he prenticed her to Rachel Gray, and with her Mary Jones had now been about a month.

"How pretty she looked, with that bit of pink on her cheek," soliloquized Richard Jones, as he turned round the corner of the street on his way homewards; and fairer than his mistress's image to the lover's fancy, young Mary's face rose before her father on the gloom of the dark night.

A woman's voice suddenly broke on his reverie. She asked him to direct her to the nearest grocer's shop.

"I am a stranger to the neighbourhood," he replied; "but I dare say this young person can tell us;" and he stopped a servant-girl, and put the question to her.

"A grocer's shop?" she said, "there's not one within a mile. You must go down the next street on your right-hand, turn into the alley on your left, then turn to your right again, and if you take the fifth street after that, it will take you to the Teapot."

She had to repeat her directions twice before the woman fairly understood them.

"What a chance!" thought Jones, as he again walked on; "not a grocer's shop within a mile. Now, suppose I had, say fifty pounds, just to open with, how soon the thing would do for itself. And then I'd have my little Mary at home with me. Yes, that would be something!"

Ay; the shop and Mary!--ambition and love! Ever since he had dealt tea and sugar in Mr. Smith's establishment, Richard Jones had been haunted with the desire to become a tradesman, and do the same thing in a shop of his own. But, conscious of the extravagant futility of this wish, Jones generally consoled himself with the thought that grocer's shops were as thick as mushrooms, and that, capital or no capital, there was no room for him.

And now, as he walked home, dreaming, he could not but sigh, for there was room, he could not doubt it--but where was the capital? He was still vaguely wondering in his own mind, by what magical process the said capital could possibly be called up, when he reached his own home. There he found that, in his absence, a rudely scrawled sc.r.a.p of paper had been slipped under his room door; it was to the following purport:

"Dear J.,

"Als up; farm broke. Weral inn for it.

"Yours,

"S. S."