ANDREW GOLDSMITH, SADDLER.
The little town of Apley consisted mainly of one long, narrow,
straggling street of old-fashioned houses, called the High Street,
which was silent and deserted on every day except market-days and
Sundays. It was out of the direct line of any railway, and there was
not business enough to make a branch line pay. In the small
old-fashioned shops the tradespeople conducted their own business,
requiring little aid from paid assistants. There were none rich enough
to live away from their shops, and their intercourse with one another
was primitive and unconventional. The population of the immediate
neighborhood consisted of the gentry and the townsfolk, with no
connecting links.
About the middle of the High Street stood Andrew Goldsmith's little
shop, which Sidney passed every time he drove to and from the railway
station two miles off. Three stone steps, hollowed by the tread of
feet through many years, led up to the shop; and a small bow window
hung over the pavement, behind which there sat a paid workman pursuing
his work fitfully at his own pleasure. Before Sophy's mysterious
disappearance Andrew had always occupied the post himself, seldom
glancing away from the work in hand to notice what was going on in the
street; but he never sat there now. He had, almost unintentionally,
hidden himself from his neighbors' gossiping curiosity, until his love
of seclusion had grown morbid.
Margaret could not recollect the time when this shop had not been a
favorite haunt of hers. Andrew had made the first saddle for the first
pony her father gave to her; and her mother's affection for and trust
in Andrew's sister Rachel had brought all the household into close
connection with her. The romance and mystery of Sophy's fate had been
the deepest interest of Margaret's girlhood, and was still occasionally
the subject of perplexed conjecture. Rachel's almost hopeless searches
and inquiries, made whenever they were in London, kept this interest
alive, though it naturally lost its intensity. Still there was no
household in Apley to which she felt so many ties of mutual cares and
memories.
As soon then as she was allowed to take so long a drive, she felt that
Andrew's house was the first to which she must carry her little boy,
for the sad and sorrow-stricken father to see. She had not seen him
herself yet, since her return to Apley a few weeks ago; she had never
seen him since Sophy was lost. There would be pain for him in their
meeting; but Rachel said it would be well to get the pain over.
A large kitchen lay behind the shop with a floor of rich, deep-red
tiles, spotlessly clean. The big grate, with brass knobs about it
shining like gold, was filled with gleeds of burning coal from the
lowest bar to the highest; and the old oak chairs with leathern seats,
standing in the full glow and warmth of the hearth, were polished to an
extraordinary degree of brightness. Beyond the kitchen was a small,
dark parlor, with all the chairs and the one sofa carefully swathed in
white covers; but there was no fire in it, and Rachel would not let her
sister Mary take Margaret into it.
Margaret leaned back in one of the comfortable old chairs, with a happy
light in her dark eyes, as she listened to the two older women admiring
her child. It was in this exquisitely clean and pretty kitchen that
she had caught her first glimpse of the happiness of a life far below
the level of her own. As a child she had sometimes watched Mary
Goldsmith busy herself in getting ready a meal for her brother, giving
thought and affection to her work, while he sat at his saddler's bench
in the shop, humming some tune to himself in great peace of heart. It
seemed to Margaret as she sat now on the cozy hearth, and glanced round
at the willow-pattern plates shining on the dresser-shelves, and the
polished surface of the copper warming-pan hanging against the wall,
and the tall old Chippendale clock in the corner, and the little
collection of well-read books lying on the broad window-sill, that she
could make life very dear and pleasant to Sidney with no other
materials than those about her.
But under all the chatter of Rachel and Mary Goldsmith her ear caught
the sound of a voice half-hushed, yet lamenting with sobs and muffled
cries of pain, as of one who was passing through some sharp access of
suffering. It was quite close at hand; not in the little parlor, the
door of which was close to her seat, and for some time she said
nothing. But as the cries and moans grew more distinct to her ear she
could bear to listen no longer in silence.
"It's my poor brother," answered Rachel sadly, "he's away in his room,
mourning and crying for Sophy. His heart's broken, if one may say so,
and him alive and strong. He has never smiled since Sophy went away."
"I'd forgotten," said Margaret, with a rash of compassion in her heart
toward the unhappy father. "O, Rachel, tell him I am here, and want to
see him so much. You know I have not seen him since we left Apley
eight years ago."
"Just before Sophy was lost," remarked Mary.
In a few minutes Andrew Goldsmith came slowly down the stairs. He was
a tall, spare man with a vigorous frame and almost a military bearing;
for he had belonged to the cavalry of the county from his earliest
manhood. He was not over fifty years of age, but his hair was white,
and his shoulders bowed like those of a man of seventy. So changed he
was, and wore such expression of intense and bitter suffering, that
Margaret would not have recognized him if he had not been in his own
house.
"Andrew," she said, rising hastily and taking her baby into her arms
with a young mother's instinctive feeling that the child will interest
and comfort everyone, "see, I have brought my boy to make friends with
you, as I did when I was a little girl."
A gleam of light came into the man's dull, sad eyes, as he laid his
fingers gently on the baby's sleeping face.
"He favors you, Miss Margaret," he said, "ay! and your father, the
colonel."
"We call him Philip, after my father," replied Margaret, with a
sorrowful inflection of her sweet voice.
"May God Almighty bless him and keep him from bringing you to sorrow!"
said Andrew.
"I am willing to bear sorrow for him," answered Margaret.
"But not from him," he said.
"Yes; from him if that must be so," she replied, "he will grieve me
sometimes, just as we also grieve God. But if God bears with us, we
must bear with one another's faults, however hard it may be."
The stern, grave face of Andrew Goldsmith unbent a little and quivered,
and his strong frame trembled as if shaken by some invisible force. He
sank down on a chair, looking up into the pitying faces of the three
women, whose eyes were so gently bent upon him.
"I haven't seen you since I lost my daughter," he said with a groan,
"and oh! my God, she might have been standing as you are, come home to
show me her baby."
It was true. If any stranger could have looked in on the little
circle, he would have taken Margaret, in her plain black dress, with
her child in her arms, for a young mother come back to the old fireside
to
... tell them all they would have told,
And bring her babe, and make her boast,
Till even those that miss'd her most
Shall count new things as dear as old.
Margaret felt the sadness of it herself, with a profound and keen
sympathy. She hastened to give the child back to Rachel, and laid her
hand, with a gentle and friendly pressure, on Andrew's shoulder.
"You know I was fond of Sophy," she said, "and how could I help but
grieve over her, when I saw Rachel so often troubled? But why do you
give up hope? She may yet come home any day; and perhaps bring a dear
child with her. God may have given to her a child to be a comfort to
her. Only God knows."
"Ay! He knows," answered Andrew, "if He didn't know it otherwise, I
tell Him every day; every hour of every day, for the cry after her is
always in my heart. But it could never be the same again. If it was
all right with her, would she have kept silence over eight years? I
had only one daughter, like your father; and she has brought me to
grief and shame."
"But in one sense it must be right with her," said Margaret, "for God
is with her. He has not lost sight of her; and though it may possibly
be that she has sinned, and is still sinning, yet that way also leads
to God, when sin is repented of."
"But to think that God sees her in all her degradation!" he cried
passionately. "Oh, if I could only find her, and hide her away from
all the world! hide her away from God Himself. No, no, Miss Margaret;
it's no comfort to think that God Almighty sees my daughter in her sin
and shame. And that man who robbed me of my only child--O Lord, set
Thou a wicked man over him, and let Satan stand at his right hand.
When he shall be judged, let him be condemned; and let his prayer be
turned into sin. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
Let his children be continually vagabonds. Let the iniquity of his
fathers be remembered by the Lord, and let not the sin of his mother be
blotted out. As he loved cursing, let it come----"
"Oh, hush, hush!" cried Margaret, breaking in upon his rapid and
vehement utterance with difficulty, while the tears streamed down her
face, "oh, be silent! It is a terrible thing to utter these words as a
prayer to God. For God loves us all; even him whom you are cursing.
Some day you will say, 'Father, forgive him; he did not know what he
was doing.'"
"Never!" he exclaimed, lifting up his haggard face, and fastening his
bloodshot eyes upon her; "but I oughtn't to trouble you. It was only
because the sight of you made me think so keen of her that's lost. All
the town is glad to have you back again, Miss Margaret, for your own
sake and the colonel's sake. But it will be different from the old
days."
"You'll be as fond of my boy as you were of me?" she asked.
"Ay, may be," he answered.
"And my husband?" she added.
"Andrew's never seen Mr. Martin," put in Mary Goldsmith; "he's never
crossed the church door since Sophy ran away; and he never sits in the
shop now, where folks can see him at his work. He spends his time
mostly seeking after her, anywhere that he can find a clew; and he sits
up half his nights with the sick and dying."
"Because my nights are sleepless, or full of terror," he interrupted,
"and my heart is sorer by night than by day. And poor folks that
cannot pay for nurses are glad to have me near at hand; and the dying
know I'm not afraid of death, but seek it as one seeks after hidden
treasure, so they hold my hand in theirs till they step into the outer
darkness, knowing I would gladly take that step for them. I tell them
it is better to die than to live; and they half believe me. They take
messages for me into the next world!"
"Messages!" repeated Margaret.
"Ay," he continued, "to tell Sophy, if she's there, to send me some
sign; but no sign comes. So she must be living still; and I shall know
what has become of her, and where she is, some day."
Margaret did not feel it possible to combat this notion of Andrew's,
though she looked anxiously from him to his sisters. George Martin had
recently settled in at the Rectory, and begun his pastoral care of his
country parish; and she wondered if he could not in any way turn the
deep current of this man's grief, which was threatening him, she
feared, with insanity.
"Has our cousin, the new rector, been to see you yet?" she inquired of
Mary.
"Yes," she answered; "and Andrew's promised to go to church again next
Sunday."
"I shall be there," said Margaret gladly, "and I shall look to see you
in your pew, Andrew. I shall miss you if you are not there."
"I will be there, Miss Margaret," he answered.
The parish church of Apley was a small Norman edifice built near the
park gates. A square pew in the chancel belonged to the Hall, and a
long narrow aisle with small pews on each side led down to the western
door. When Sidney took his place, with Margaret, in the Hall pew on
the following Monday, he saw, just beyond the reading desk, a
white-headed man, who was evidently still in the prime of manhood, with
a strong and muscular frame, but with a face expressive of heart-broken
sadness. It was an ominous face, dark and despondent, with a fire
burning in the deep-set eyes that seemed almost like the glow of
madness. So striking was this man's appearance that, before the
service began, Sidney whispered to Margaret:
"Who is that man in the pew by the reading-desk?"
"Rachel's brother," she answered, "the father of the girl that is lost."
It was the 22d day of the month; and Sidney, whose thoughts were
wandering, suddenly found himself reading, with mechanical exactness,
the terrible curses of the Psalms for the day, which Andrew Goldsmith
was uttering with intense earnestness, as if the sacredness of the
place added force to their vindictiveness. Margaret's head was bent,
and the tears were dropping slowly on her open book; but Sidney
scarcely noticed her emotion. There was an indescribable horror to him
in this sight of the despairing face of Sophy's father; and in the
penetrating distinctness of his deep voice, as he called upon God to
pour down curses upon his enemy.