A time may come when the London churchyard shall be remembered as a thing
that has been and is no more; but now who knows it not? Who need describe
the serried gravestones that mark the resting places in this sad field of
death; who need tell how they stare at busy passers by through their iron
grating--how they look ghastly, like the guest of the Egyptian feast,
dead in the midst of tumult and riotous life.
Dreary are they when the sun shines on them, and their rank weeds, the
sun which those beneath feel not, but more dreary by far when the
drizzling rain pours down the dark church walls and filters into the
sodden earth. And in such a place, and on such a day did they make the
grave of Mary Jones.
Two mourners stood by: a woman and a man. When all was over, when earth
had closed over the grave and its contents, the man sat down on a
neighbouring gravestone, and looked at that red mound which held his all,
with a dreary stolid gaze of misery and woe.
Rachel bent over him, and gently laid her hand on his shoulder.
"Mr. Jones, you must come!" she said.
He made no reply, he did not rise, and when she took his hand to lead him
away, he yielded without resistance. She took him to her own house.
Kindly and tenderly she led him, like a little child, and a child he
seemed to have become, helpless, inert--without will, without power.
His own home was a wreck, the prey of creditors, who found but little
there, yet sufficient, for their claims were few, to save him from
disgrace. Rachel Gray gave him the room where his child once had slept,
where he had come in to look at her in her sleep, and fondly bent over
her pillow: he burst into tears as he entered it; and those tears
relieved him, and did him good.
At the end of two days he rallied from his torpor; he awoke, he
remembered he was a man born to work, to earn his daily bread, and bear
the burden of life.
He went out one morning, and looked for employment. Something he found to
do; but what it was he told not Rachel. When she gently asked, he shook
his head and smiled bitterly.
"It don't matter. Miss Gray," he said; "it don't matter."
No doubt it was some miserable, poorly paid task. Yet he only spoke the
truth, when he said it mattered little. He lived and laboured, like
thousands; but he cared not for to-day, and thought not of to-morrow; the
Time of Promise and of Hope had for ever departed. What though he should
feel want, so long as he could pay his weekly rent to Rachel Gray, he
cared not. There is an end to all things; and as for his old age, should
he grow old, had he not the parish and the workhouse? And so Richard
Jones could drag on through life, of all hopes, save the heavenly hope,
forsaken.
But Heaven chose to chastise and humble still further, this already
chastised and sorely humbled man. He fell ill, and remained for weeks on
his sick bed, a burden cast on the slender means of Rachel Gray. In vain
he begged and prayed to be sent to the workhouse or some hospital; Rachel
would not hear of it. She kept him, she attended on him with all the
devotedness of a daughter; between him and her father she divided her
time. Earnestly Jones prayed for death: the boon was not granted; he
recovered.
They sat together and alone one evening in the quiet little parlour--
alone, for Thomas Gray was no one, when there came a knock at the door,
and the visitor admitted by Rachel, proved to be Joseph Saunders.
"Mr. Jones is within," hesitatingly said Rachel
"And I just want to speak to him," briefly replied Saunders, "so that's
lucky."
He walked into the parlour as he spoke; Rachel followed, wondering what
was to be the issue. On seeing his enemy, poor Jones reddened slightly
but the flush soon died away, and in a meek, subdued voice, he was the
first to say "good evening."
"Sorry to hear you have been ill," said Saunders sitting down, "but you
are coming round, ain't you?"
"I am much better," was the quiet reply.
"Got anything to do?" bluntly asked Saunders.
"Nothing as yet," answered Jones with a subdued groan, for he thought of
Rachel, so poor herself, and the burden he was to her.
"Well then, Mr. Jones; just listen to me!" said Saunders, drawing his
chair near, "I know you have a grudge against me."
"You have ruined me," said Jones.
"Pshaw, man, 'twas all fair, all in the way of business," exclaimed
Saunders a little impatiently.
"You have ruined me," said Jones again; "but I forgive you, I have long
ago forgiven you, and the shadow of a grudge against you, or living man,
I have not, thank God!"
"That's all right enough," emphatically said Saunders; "still, Mr. Jones,
you say I have ruined you. It isn't the first time either that you have
said so, and with some people, I may as well tell you it has injured me."
"I am sorry if it has," meekly said Jones.
"And I don't care a button," frankly declared Saunders, "but as I was
saying, that's your belief, your impression; and to be sure it's true
enough in one sense, but then, Mr. Jones, you should not look at your
side of the question only. Mr. Smithson meant to set up a grocer's shop
long before you opened yours; he spoke to me about it, and if I had only
agreed then, it was done; you came, to be sure, but what of that? the
street was as free to us as to you; that I lodged in your house was an
accident; I did not know when I took your room that I should supplant you
some day. I did not know Smithson had still kept that idea in his head,
and that finding no situation I should be glad to consent at last. Well,
I did consent, and I did compete with you, and knocked you over, as it
were, but Mr. Jones, would not another have done it? And was it not all
honourable, fair play?"
"Well, I suppose it was," sadly replied Jones, "and since it was a
settled thing that I was to be a ruined man, I suppose I ought not to
care who did it."
"Come, that's talking sense," said Saunders, with a nod of approbation,
"and now, Mr. Jones, we'll come to business, for I need not tell you nor
Miss Gray either, that I did not come in here to rip up old sores. You
must know that the young fellow who used to serve in my shop has taken
himself off, he's going to Australia, he says, but that's neither here
nor there; I have a regard for you, Mr. Jones, and having injured you
without malice, I should like to do you a good turn of my own free will;
and then there's my wife, who was quite cut up when she heard you had
lost your little daughter, and who has such a regard for Miss Gray, but
that's neither here nor there; the long and short of it is, will you
serve in my shop, and have a good berth and moderate wages, and perhaps
an increase if the business prospers?"
Poor Richard Jones! This was the end of all his dreams, his schemes, his
anger, his threatened revenge! And yet, strange to say, he felt it very
little. Every strong and living feeling lay buried in a grave. His soul
was as a thing dead within him; his pride had crumbled into dust, as Mary
would have said: his spirit was gone.
The humiliation of accepting Joseph Saunders proposal,--and, however
strange, it was certainly well and kindly meant--Richard Jones did not
consider. He looked at the advantages, and found them manifest; there lay
the means of paying Rachel, of covering his few debts, and of securing to
his wearied life the last and dearly-bought boon of repose. Awhile he
reflected, then said aloud: "I shall be very glad of it, lam very much
obliged to you, Mr. Saunders."
"Well, then, it's done," said Mr. Saunders, rising, "good night, Jones,
cheer up, old fellow. Good night, Miss Gray; Jane sends her love, you
know. Sorry the old gentleman's no better." And away he departed, very
well satisfied with the success of his errand.
"Oh! Mr. Jones!" exclaimed Rachel, when she returned to the parlour.
"Don't mention it," he said with a faint smile, "I don't mind it, Miss
Gray."
"But could you not have stayed here?" she asked.
"And be a burden upon you I that's what I have done too long, Miss Gray."
"But until you found employment elsewhere, you might have remained."
"His house is as good as any; his bread is not more bitter than
another's," replied Jones, in a subdued voice, "besides, now that my Mary
is gone, what need I care, Miss Gray?" And as he saw that her eyes were
dim, he added: "You need not pity me, Miss Gray, the bitterness of my
trouble is, and has long been over. My Mary is not dead for me. She is,
and ever will be, living for her old father, until the day of meeting.
And whilst I am waiting for that day, you do not think I care about what
befalls me."