Mary was gone; Jane, had come in but to go up to her room. Rachel sat
alone in the little parlour, reading by candle-light.
And did she read, indeed! Alas no! Her will fixed her eyes on the page,
but her mind received not the impressions it conveyed. The sentences were
vague and broken as images in a dream; the words had no meaning.
Outwardly, calm as ever did Rachel seem, but there was a strange sorrow--
a strange tumult in her heart.
That day the hope of years had been wrecked, that day she had offered
herself, and been finally rejected. In vain she said to herself: "I must
submit--it is the will of God, I must submit." A voice within her ever
seemed to say: "Father, Father why hast thou forsaken me!" until, at
length, Rachel felt as if she could bear no more.
Sorrows endured in silence are ever doubly felt. The nature of Rachel
Gray was silent; she had never asked for sympathy; she had early been
taught to expect and accept in its stead, its bitter step-sister
Ridicule. Derided, laughed at, she had learned to dread that the look of
a human being should catch a glimpse of her sorrows. If her little
troubles were thus treated--how would her heavier griefs fare?
And now no more than ever did Rachel trouble any with her burden. Why
should she? Who, what was she that others should care whether or not her
father loved her! That he did not sufficiently, condemned her to
solitude. The pitying eye of God might, indeed, look down upon her with
tenderness and love, but from her brethren Rachel expected nothing.
And thus it was that, on this night, after consoling the idle sorrows of
an indulged child, Rachel, sitting in solitude, found the weight of her
own grief almost intolerable. Like all shy and nervous persons, she was
deeply excitable. Anger she knew not; but emotions as vehement, though
more pure, could trouble her heart. And now she was moved, and deeply
moved, by a sense of injustice and of wrong. Her father wronged her--
perhaps he knew it not; but he wronged her. "God Almighty had not given
him a child, she felt, to treat it thus, with mingled dislike and
contempt Were there none to receive his slights and his scorn, but his
own daughter?"
She rose, and walked up and down the room with some agitation. Then came
calmer and gentler thoughts, moving her heart until her tears flowed
freely. Had she not failed that day--had she not been too cold in her
entreaties, too easily daunted by the first rejection? Had she but
allowed her father to see the love, deep and fervent, which burned in his
daughter's heart--he would not, he could not so coldly have repelled and
cast her from him.
"And why not try again?" murmured an inner voice; "the kingdom of Heaven
is taken by storm--and what is the kingdom of Heaven, but the realm of
love?"
At first, this seemed a thought so wild, that Rachel drew back from it in
alarm, as from an abyss yawning at her feet. But even as our looks soon
become familiar with images of the wildest danger, so the thought
returned; and she shrank not back from it. Besides, what had she to lose?
Nothing! With a sort of despair, she resolved to go and seek Thomas Gray,
and attempt once more to move him. "If he rejects me now," she added,
inwardly, "I shall submit, and trouble him no more."
The hour was not late; besides, in her present mood, the timid Rachel
felt above fear. She was soon dressed--soon on her road. This time
neither annoyance nor evil befell her. She passed like a shadow through
crowds, and like a shadow was unheeded. The night was dark and dreary; a
keen wind whistled along the streets--but for either cold or darkness
Rachel cared not. Her thoughts flowed full and free in her brain; for
once, she felt that she could speak; and a joyful presentiment in her
heart told her that she would, and should be heard--and not in vain.
Absorbed in those thoughts, Rachel scarcely knew what speed she had made,
until, with the mechanical impulse of habit, she found herself stopping
before the second hand ironmonger's shop. Wakening as from a dream, and
smiling at herself, she went on. Rachel had expected to find the shop of
Thomas Gray closed, and himself absent; but the light that burned from
his dwelling, and shed its glow on the opposite houses, made her heart
beat with joy and hope. Timidly, she looked in through the glass panes;
the shop was vacant; her father was, no doubt, in the back parlour.
Rachel entered; the door-bell rang. She paused on the threshold,
expecting to see him appear from within, nerving herself to bear his cold
look, and severe aspect; but he came not He was either up-stairs, or in
some other part of the house, or next door with a neighbour.
There was a chair in the shop; Rachel took it, sat down, and waited--how
long, she herself never knew; for seconds seemed hours, and all true
consciousness of time had left her. At length, she wondered; then she
feared--why was her father's house so silent and so deserted? She went
to the door, and looked down the street. It was still and lonely; every
house was shot up; and even from the neighbouring thoroughfare, all
sounds of motion and life seemed gone.
Suddenly Rachel remembered the little public-house to which her father
had once sent her. She had often seen him going to it in the evening;
perhaps he was there now. In the shadow of the houses, she glided up to
the tavern door--it stood half open--she cautiously looked in; and
standing, as she did in the gloom of the street, she could do so unseen.
The landlord sat dozing in the bar--not a soul was with him. Rachel
glanced at the clock above his head; it marked a quarter to twelve.
Dismayed and alarmed, she returned to her father's house. It so chanced,
that as she walked on the opposite side of the narrow street, a
circumstance that had before escaped her notice, now struck her. In the
room above the shop of Thomas Gray, there burned a light. She stopped
short, and looked at it with a beating heart. She felt sure her father
was there.
Rachel re-entered the shop, and again sat down, resolved to be patient;
but her nervous restlessness soon became intolerable. Seized with an
indefinite fear, she rose, took the light, and entered the parlour: it
was vacant. Passing under a low door which she found ajar, she went up a
dark staircase. It ended with a narrow landing, and a solitary door; she
knocked, and got no reply; she tried it, it yielded to her hand, and
opened; but Rachel did not cross the threshold; she paused upon it,
awe-struck at the sight she saw. The room was a small one, poorly
famished, with a low and narrow bed, a table and a few chairs. On the
mantle-shelf burned a tallow light, dim and lurid for want of snuffing;
its dull glow fell on the motionless figure of Thomas Gray. He sat
straight and stiff in a wooden chair, with a hand resting on each arm.
His face was ghastly pale, and rigid as death; his eyes stared on the
blank wall before him, and seemed void of sight.
"My father is dead," thought Rachel. She entered the room and went up to
him. But when she laid her hand on his arm, a slight convulsive motion
showed her that he still lived. Ay, he lived, of that living death, which
is worse than the true. Paralysis had fallen upon him without warning.
Like a thief in the night it had come; and in a few brief seconds it had
laid low the proud man's strength. Of that strength he had boasted in the
morning; twelve hours had not gone round--where was it now?
Rachel did not lose her presence of mind. How she went out, found a
doctor, and brought him back, she never exactly knew; but she did it.
The medical man looked at Thomas Gray, then at Rachel.
"You are his daughter," he said, kindly.
"Yes, sir, I am."
"Well, then, my poor girl, I am very sorry for you--very sorry. Your
father may live years but I can hold out no prospect of recovery."
"None, sir?" faltered Rachel, looking wistfully in his face.
"Not the least. Better I should tell you so at once, than deceive you."
But Rachel would not--could not believe him. The sentence was too hard,
too pitiless to be true.
"Father, father! do you know me?" she cried.
He stared vacantly in her face. Did he know her? Perhaps he did. Who can
tell how far the spirit lived in that dead body? But if know her he did,
gone was the time when he could hold intercourse with that long slighted,
and now bitterly avenged daughter.
In vain she clung weeping around his neck, in vain she called on him to
reply. He merely looked at her in the same vacant way, and said
childishly, "Never mind."
"But you know me--you know me, father!" said Rachel.
Again, he looked at her vacantly, and still the only words he uttered
were, "Never mind."
"His mind is gone for ever," said the doctor.
Rachel did not answer. She clasped her hands, and looked with wistful
sadness on the old man's blank face. With a pang she felt and saw that
now, indeed, her dream was over--that never, never upon earth, should
she win that long hoped-for treasure--her father's love.