AS A HIRED SERVANT.
From a profound and dreamless sleep Jean Merle awoke early the next
morning, with the blessed feeling of being at home again in his
father's house. The heavy cross-beams of black oak dividing the ceiling
into panels; the low broad lattice window with a few upper panes of old
stained glass; the faded familiar pictures on the wall; these all awoke
in him memories of his earliest years. In the corner of the room, hardly
to be distinguished from the wainscot, was the high narrow door
communicating with his mother's chamber, through which he had often, how
often! seen her come in softly, on tiptoe, to take a look at him. His
own children, too, had slept there; and it was here that he had last
seen his little son and daughter before fleeing from his home a
self-accused criminal. All the happy, prosperous life of Roland Sefton
had been encompassed round by these walls.
But the dead past must bury the dead. If there had ever been a deep,
buried, hidden hope, that a possible return to something of the old life
lay in the unknown future, it was now utterly uprooted. Such a return
was only possible over the ruined lives and broken hearts of Felicita
and his children. If he made himself known, though he was secure against
prosecution, the story of his former crime would revive, and spread
wider, joined with the fair name of Felicita, than it would have done
when he was merely a fraudulent banker in a country town. However true
it might be what Phebe maintained, that he might have suffered the
penalty of his sin, and afterwards retrieved the past, whilst his
children were too young to feel the full bitterness of the shame, it was
too late to do it now. The name he had dishonored was forever forfeited.
His return to his former life was hedged up on every hand.
But a new courage was awaking in him, which helped him to grapple with
his despair. He would bury the dead past, and go on into the future
making the best of his life, maimed and marred as it was by his own
folly. He was still in the prime of his age, thirty years younger than
Mr. Clifford, whose intellect was as keen and clear as ever; there was a
long span of time stretching before him, to be used or misused.
"Come unto Me all ye that be weary, and heavy laden, and I will give
you rest." He seemed to see the words in the quaint upright characters
in which old Marlowe had carved them under the crucifix. He had fancied
he knew what coming to Christ meant in those old days of his, when he
was reputed a religious man, and was first and foremost in all religious
and philanthropic schemes, making his trespass more terrible and
pernicious than if it had been the transgression of a worldly man. But
it was not so when he came to Christ this morning. He was a
broken-hearted man, who had cut himself off from all human ties and
affections, and who was longing to feel that he was not forsaken of the
universal Brother and Saviour. His cry was, "My soul thirsteth for thee;
my flesh longeth for thee, in a dry and weary land, where no water is."
It was his own fault that he was in the dry and weary wilderness; but
oh! if Christ would not forsake him then, would dwell with him, even in
this desert made desolate by himself, then at last he might find peace
to his soul.
There was a deep inner consciousness, the forgotten but not obliterated
faith of his boyhood and youth, before the world with its pomps and
ambitions had laid its iron hand upon him, that Christ was with him,
leading him day by day, if he would but follow nearer to God. Was it
impossible to follow His guidance now? Could he not, even yet, take up
his cross, and be willing to fill any place which he could yet fill
worthily and humbly; expiating his sins against his fellow-men by truer
devotion to their service, as Jean Merle, the working-man; not as Roland
Sefton, the prosperous and fraudulent banker?
This return to his father's house, and all its associations, solemn and
sacred with a peculiar sacredness and solemnity, seemed to him a pledge
that he could once more be admitted into the great brotherhood and home
of Christ's disciples. Every object on which his eye rested smote him,
but it was with the stroke of a friend. A clear and sweet light from the
past shed its penetrating rays into the darkest corners of his soul.
Forgiven! God had forgiven him; and man had forgiven him. Before him lay
an obscure and humble path; but the heaviest part of his burden was
gone. He must go heavy-laden to the end of his days, treading in rough
paths; but despair had fled, and with it the sense of being separated
from God and man.
He heard the feeble yet deep old voice of Mr. Clifford outside his door
inquiring from Mrs. Nixey if Mr. Merle was gone down-stairs yet. He made
haste to go down, treading the old staircase with something of the
alacrity of former days. Phebe was in the dining-room, and the servants
came in to prayer as they had been used to do forty years ago when he
was a child. An old-world tranquillity and peacefulness was in the
familiar scene which breathed a deep calm over his tempest-tossed
spirit.
"Phebe has been telling me all," said Mr. Clifford, when breakfast was
over; "tell me what can be done to save Felicita and the children."
"I am Jean Merle," he answered with a melancholy smile, "Jean Merle, and
no one else. I come back with no claims, and they must never know me.
Why should I cross their path and blight it? I cannot atone for the
past in any way, except by keeping away forever from them. I shall
injure no one by continuing to be Jean Merle."
"No," said Phebe, "it is too late now, and it would kill Felicita."
"This morning a thought struck me," he continued, "a project for my
future life, which you can help me to put into execution, Phebe. I have
an intolerable dread of losing sight of you all again; let me be at
least somewhere in England, when you can now and then give me tidings of
my children and Felicita."
"I will do anything in the world to help you," cried Phebe eagerly.
"Then let me go to your little farm," he answered, "and take up your
father's life, at least for a time, until I can see how to make myself
of greater use to my fellow-men. I will till the fields as he did, and
finish the carvings he has left undone, and live his simple, silent
life. It will be good for me, and I shall not be banished from my own
country. I shall be a happier man then than I have any right to be."
"Have you no fear of being recognized?" she asked.
"None," he replied. "Look at me, Phebe. Should you have known me again
if I had not betrayed myself to you?"
"I should have known you again anywhere," she exclaimed. But it was her
heart that cried out that no change could have concealed him from her;
there was a dread lying deep down in her conscience that she might have
passed him by with no suspicion. He shook his head in answer to her
assertion.
"I will go out into the town," he continued, "and speak to half-a-dozen
men who knew me best, and there will be no gleam of recognition in their
eyes. Recollect Roland Sefton is dead, and has been dead so long that
there will be no clear memory left of him as he was then to compare with
me. And any dim resemblance to him will be fully accounted for by my
relationship to Madame Sefton. No, I am not afraid of the keenest eyes."
He went out as he had said, and met his old townsmen, many of whom were
themselves so changed that he could barely recognize them. The memory of
Roland Sefton was blotted out, he was utterly forgotten as a dead man
out of mind.
As Jean Merle strayed through the streets crowded with market-people
come in from the country, his new scheme grew stronger and brighter to
him. It would keep him in England, within reach of all he had loved and
had lost. The little place was dear to him, and the laborious, secluded
peasant life had a charm for him who had so long lived as a Swiss
peasant. By-and-by, he thought, the chance resemblance in the names
would merge that of Merle into the more familiar name of Marlowe; and
the identity of his pursuits with those of the deaf and dumb old man
would hasten such a change. So the years to come would pass by in labor
and obscurity; and an obscure grave in the little churchyard, where all
the Marlowes lay, would shelter him at last. A quiet haven after many
storms; but oh! what a shipwreck had he made of his life!
All the morning Mr. Clifford sat in his arm-chair lost in thought, only
looking up sometimes to ply Phebe with questions. When Jean Merle
returned, his gray, meditative face grew bright, with a faint smile
shining through his dim eyes.
"You are no phantom then!" he said. "I've been so used to your company
as a ghost that when you are out of sight I fancy myself dreaming. I
could not let Phebe go away lest I should feel that all this is not
real. Did any one know you again?"
"Not a soul," he answered; "how could they? Mrs. Nixey herself has no
remembrance of me. There is no fear of my being known."
"Then I want you to stay with me," said old Mr. Clifford eagerly; "I'm a
lonely man, seventy-seven years old, with neither kith nor kin, and it
seems a long and dreary road to the grave. I want one to sit beside me
in these long evenings, and to take care of me as a son takes care of
his old father. Could you do it, Jean Merle? I beseech you, if it is
possible, give me your services in my old age."
"It will be hard for you," pleaded Phebe in a low voice, "harder than
going out alone to my little home. But you would do more good here; you
could save us from anxiety, for we are often very anxious and sorrowful
about Mr. Clifford. I can take care that you should always know before
Felix and Hilda come down. Felicita never comes."
How much harder it would be for him even Phebe could not guess. To dwell
within reach of his old home was altogether different from living in it,
with its countless memories, and the unremitting stings of conscience.
To have about him all that he had lost and made desolate; the empty
home, from which all the familiar faces and beloved voices had vanished;
this lot surely was harder than the humble, laborious life of old
Marlowe on the hills. Yet if any one living had a claim upon him for
such self-sacrifice, it was this feeble, tottering old man, who was
gazing up into his face with urgent and imploring eyes.
"I will stay here and be your servant," he answered, "if there appears
no reason against it when we have given it more thought."