Rachel went on; but she did not turn homewards. She left the broad and
airy strait, where Mrs. Moxton lived. She entered a narrow one, long and
gloomy. It led her into a large and gas-lit square. She crossed it
without looking right or left: a thought led her on like a spell. Through
streets and alleys, by lanes and courts--on she went, until at length
she stood in the heart of a populous neighbourhood. Cars were dashing
along the pavement; night vendors were screaming at their stalls, where
tallow lights flared in the night wind. Drunken men were shouting in gin
palaces, wretched looking women were coming out of pawnbroker's shops,
and precocious London children were pouring into a theatre, where their
morals were to be improved, and their understandings were to be
enlightened, at the moderate rate of a penny a head.
Rachel sighed at all she saw, and divined. "Poor things!" she thought,
"if they only knew better." But this compassionate feeling did not
exclude a sort of fear. Rachel kept as much as she could in the gloomy
part of the streets; she shrank back nervously from every rude group, and
thus she at length succeeded in attracting the very thing she most wished
to shun--observation. Three or four women, rushing out of a
public-house, caught sight of her timid figure. At once, one of
them--she was more than half-intoxicated--burst out into a loud shouting
laugh, and, seizing Rachel's arm, swung her round on the pavement.
"Let me go!" said Rachel "I am in a hurry." She trembled from head to
foot, and vainly tried to put on the appearance of a courage she felt
not.
"Give me something for drink then," insolently said the woman.
Rachel's momentary fear was already over; she had said to herself, "and
what can happen to me without God's will?" and the thought had nerved
her. She looked very quietly at the woman's flushed and bloated face, and
as quietly she said:
"You have drunk too much already; let me go."
"No I won't," hoarsely replied her tormentor, and she used language
which, though it could not stain the pure heart of her who heard it,
brought the blush of anger and shame to her cheek.
"Let me go!" she said, trembling this time with indignation.
"Yes--yes, let the young woman go, Molly," observed one of the woman's
companions who had hitherto looked on apathetically. She officiously
disengaged Rachel's arm, whispering as she did so: "You'd better cut
now--I'll hold her. Molly's awful when she's got them fits on."
Rachel hastened away, followed by the derisive shout of the whole group.
She turned down the first street she found; it was dark and silent, yet
Rachel did not stop until she reached the very end of it; then she paused
to breathe a while, but when she put her hand in her pocket for her
handkerchief it was gone; with it had disappeared her purse, and two or
three shillings. Rachel saw and understood it all--the friend of Molly,
her officious deliverer, was a pick-pocket She hung down her head and
sighed, dismayed and astonished, not at her loss, but at the sin. "Ah!
dear Lord Jesus," she thought, full of sorrow, "that thou shouldst thus
be crucified anew by the sins of thy people!" Then followed the
perplexing inward question: "Oh! why is there so much sin?" "God knows
best," was the inward reply, and once more calm and serene, Rachel went
on. At first, she hardly knew where she was. She stood in a dark
thoroughfare where three streets met--three narrow streets that scarcely
broke on the surrounding gloom. Hesitatingly she took the first. It
happened to be that which she wanted. When Rachel recognized it, her pace
slackened, her heart beat, her colour came and went, she was much moved;
she prayed too--she prayed with her whole heart, but she walked very
slowly. And thus she reached at length a lonely little street not quite
so gloomy as that which she had been following.
She paused at the corner shop for a moment. It was a second-hand
ironmonger's; rusty iron locks, and rusty tongs and shovels, and rusty
goods of every description kept grim company to tattered books and a few
old pictures, that had contracted an iron look in their vicinity. A
solitary gas-light lit the whole.
Rachel stopped and looked at the books, and at the pictures, but only for
a few seconds. If she stood there, it was not to gaze with passing
curiosity on those objects; she knew them all of old, as she knew every
stone of that street; it was to wait until the flush of her cheek had
subsided, and the beating of her heart had grown still.
At length she went on. When she reached the middle of the street she
paused; she stood near a dark house, shrouded within the gloom of its
doorway. Opposite her, on the other side of the way, was a small shop lit
from within. From where she stood, Rachel could see everything that
passed in that abode. A carpenter lived there, for the place was full of
rough deal boards standing erect against the wall, and the floor was
heaped high with shavings. Presently a door within opened, the master of
the shop entered it, and set himself to work by the light of a tallow
candle. He was a tall, thin man, grey-headed and deeply wrinkled, but
strong and hale for his years. As he bent over his work, the light of the
candle vividly defined his angular figure and sharp features. Rachel
looked at him; her eyes filled with tears, she brushed them away with her
hand, for they prevented her from seeing, but they returned thicker and
faster.
"Oh! my father, my father!" she cried within her heart, "why must I stand
here in darkness looking at you? why cannot I go in to you, like other
daughters to their father? why do you not love your child?" Her heart
seemed full to bursting; her eyes overflowed, her breathing was broken by
sobs, and in the simple and pathetic words of Scripture, she turned away
her head, and raised her voice and wept aloud.
Rachel Gray was the daughter of the grey-headed carpenter by a first
wife; soon after whose death he had married again. Mrs. Gray was his
second wife, and the mother of his youngest daughter. She was kind in her
way, but that was at the best a harsh one. Rachel was a timid, retiring
child, plain, awkward, and sallow, with nothing to attract the eye, and
little to please the fancy. Mrs. Gray did not use her ill certainly, but
neither did she give her any great share in her affections. And why and
how should a step-mother have loved Rachel when her own father did not?
when almost from her birth she had been to him as though she did not
exist--as a being who, uncalled for and unwanted, had come athwart his
life. Never had he, to her knowledge, taken her in his arms, or on his
knee; never had he kissed or caressed her; never addressed to her one
word of fondness, or even of common kindness. Neither, it is true, had he
ill-used nor ill-treated her; he felt no unnatural aversion for his own
flesh and blood, nothing beyond a deep and incurable indifference. For
her, his heart remained as a barren and arid soil on which the sweet
flower of love could never bloom.
There was but one being in this narrow circle who really and fondly loved
Rachel Gray. And this was Jane, her little half-sister. Rachel was her
elder by full five years. When she was told one morning that Jane was
born, she heard the tidings with silent awe, then with eager curiosity,
climbed up on a chair to peep at the rosy baby fast asleep in its cradle.
From that day, she had but one thought--her little sister. How describe
the mingled love and pride with which Rachel received the baby, when it
was first confided to her care, and when to her was allotted the
delightful task of dragging about in her arms a heavy, screaming child?
And who but Rachel found Jane's first tooth? Who but Rachel taught Jane
to speak; and taught her how to walk? Who else fulfilled for the helpless
infant and wilful child every little office of kindness and of love,
until at length there woke in her own childish heart some of that
maternal fondness born with woman, the feeling whence her deepest woes
and her highest happiness alike must spring. When her father was unkind,
when her step-mother was hasty, Rachel turned for comfort to her little
sister. In her childish caresses, and words, and ways, she found solace
and consolation. She did not feel it hard that she was to be the slave of
a spoiled child, to wash, comb, and dress her, to work for her, to carry
her, to sing to her, to play with her, and that, not when she liked, but
when it pleased Jane. All this Rachel did not mind--Jane loved her. She
knew it, she was sure of it; and where there is love, there cannot be
tyranny.
Thus the two sisters grew up together, until one day, without previous
warning, Thomas Gray went off to America, and coolly left his wife and
children behind. Mrs. Gray was a good and an upright woman; she reared
her husband's child like her own, and worked for both, without ever
repining at the double burden. When her husband returned to England,
after three years' absence, Mrs. Gray lost no time in compelling him to
grant her a weekly allowance for herself, and for the support of her
children. Thomas Gray could not resist the claim; but he gave what the
law compelled him to give, and no more. He never returned to live with
his wife; he never expressed a wish to see either of his daughters.
He had been back some years when little Jane died at thirteen. She died,
dreaming of heaven, with her hand in that of Rachel, and her head on
Rachel's bosom. She died, blessing her eldest sister with her last
breath, with love for her in the last look of her blue eyes, in the last
smile of her wan lips. It was a happy death-bed--one to waken hope, not
to call forth sorrow; and yet what became of the life of Rachel when Jane
was gone? For a long time it was a dreary void--a melancholy succession
of days and weeks and months, from which the happy light had fled--from
which something sweet and delightful was gone for ever.
For, though it may be sweeter to love, than to be loved, yet it is hard
always to give and never to receive in return; and when Jane died, Rachel
knew well enough that all the love she had to receive upon earth, had
been given unto her. Like the lost Pleiad, "seen no more below," the
bright star of her life had left the sky. It burned in other heavens with
more celestial light; but it shone no longer over her path--to cheer, to
comfort, to illume.
Mrs. Gray was kind; after her own fashion, she loved Rachel. They had
grieved and suffered together from the same sorrows, and kindred griefs
can bind the farthest hearts; but beyond this there was no sympathy
between them, and Mrs. Gray's affection, such as it was, was free from a
particle of tenderness.
She was not naturally a patient or an amiable woman; and she had endured
great and unmerited wrongs from Rachel's father. Perhaps, she would have
been more than human, had she not occasionally reminded her step-daughter
of Mr. Thomas Gray's misdeeds, and now and then taunted her with a "He
never cared about you--you know."
Aye--Rachel knew it well enough. She knew that her own father loved her
not--that though he had cared little for Jane, not being a
tender-hearted man, still that he had cared somewhat, for that younger,
and more favoured child. That before he left England, he would
occasionally caress her; that when she died, tears had flowed down his
stern cheek on hearing the tidings, and that the words had escaped him:
"I am sorry I was not there."
All this Rachel knew. Her mind was too noble, and too firm for jealousy;
her heart too pious, and too humble for rebellious sorrow; but yet she
found it hard to bear, and very hard to be reminded of it as a reproach
and a shame.
Was it not enough that she could not win the affection she most longed
for? She was devoted to her step-mother; she had fondly loved her younger
sister; but earlier born in her heart than these two loves, deeper, and
more solemn, was the love Rachel felt for her father. That instinct of
nature, which in him was silent, in her spoke strongly. That share of
love which he denied her, she silently added to her own, and united both
in one fervent offering. Harshness and indifference had no power to
quench a feeling, to which love in kindness had not given birth. She
loved because it was her destiny; because, as she once said herself, when
speaking of another: "A daughter's heart clings to her father with
boundless charity."
Young as she was when Thomas Gray left his home, Rachel remembered him
well. His looks, the very tones of his voice, were present to her. Not
once, during the years of his absence, did the thought of her father
cease to haunt her heart. When, from the bitter remarks of her
step-mother, she learned that he had returned, and where he had taken up
his home, she had no peace until she succeeded in obtaining a glimpse of
him. Free, as are all the children of the poor, she made her way to the
street where he lived, and many a day walked for weary miles in order to
pass by her father's door. But she never crossed the threshold, never
spoke to him, never let him know who she was, until the sad day when she
bore to him the news of her sister's death.
He received her with his usual coldness--in such emotion as he showed,
she had no share, like strangers they had met--like strangers they
parted. But, though his coldness and her own timidity prevented nearer
advances, they did not prevent Rachel from often seeking the remote
neighbourhood and gloomy street where her father dwelt.
It was a pleasure, though a sad one, to look on his face, even if she
went not near him; and thus it happened, that on this dark night she
stood in the sheltering obscurity of the well-known doorway, gazing on
the solitary old man, yet venturing not to cross the narrow street.
The wind blew from the east. It was cold and piercing; yet it could not
draw Rachel from her vigil of love. Still she looked and lingered,
wishing she knew not what; and hoping against hope. Thus she stayed,
until Thomas Gray left his work, put up the shutters, then left the house
by the private door, and slowly walked away to the nearest public-house.
The shop was once more a blank in the dark street. Rachel looked at the
deserted dwelling and sighed; than softly and silently she stole away.