Produced by Louise Davies, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
book was produced from scanned images of public domain
material from the Google Print project.)
MATTIE:--A STRAY.
BY F. W. ROBINSON
THE AUTHOR OF "HIGH CHURCH," "NO CHURCH," "OWEN:-A WAIF," &c., &c.
"By bestowing blessings upon others, we entail them on ourselves."
HORACE SMITH.
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. III.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,
18, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1864.
_The right of Translation is reserved._
LONDON:
PRINTED BY MACDONALD AND TUGWELL, BLENHEIM HOUSE,
BLENHEIM STREET, OXFORD STREET.
CONTENTS OF THE THIRD VOLUME.
BOOK VI. SIDNEY'S FRIENDS.
I. MATTIE'S CHOICE
II. MATTIE'S ADVISER
III. THE OLD LOVERS
IV. A NEW DECISION
V. ANN PACKET EXPRESSES AN OPINION
VI. MR. GRAY'S SCHEME
BOOK VII. SIDNEY'S GRATITUDE.
I. MAURICE HINCHFORD IN SEARCH OF HIS COUSIN
II. MAURICE RECEIVES PLENTY OF ADVICE
III. A DECLARATION
IV. MORE TALK OF MARRIAGE AND GIVING IN MARRIAGE
V. MATTIE'S ANSWER
BOOK VIII. MORE LIGHT.
I. A NEW HOPE
II. MATTIE IS TAKEN INTO CONFIDENCE
III. HALF THE TRUTH
IV. ALL THE TRUTH
V. STRUGGLING
VI. SIGNS OF CHANGE
VII. RETURNED
VIII. DECLINED WITH THANKS
IX. MATTIE, MEDIATRIX
X. CONCLUSION
BOOK VI.
SIDNEY'S FRIENDS.
CHAPTER I.
MATTIE'S CHOICE.
There are epochs in some lives when the heart cracks or hardens. When
humanity, wrung to its utmost, gives way, or ossifies. Both are
dangerous crises, and require more than ordinary care; the physician
must be skilful and understand human nature, or his efforts at cure will
only kill the patient who submits to his remedies.
Man--we speak literally of the masculine gender at this point--though
born unto trouble, finds it hard to support in a philosophical way. A
great trouble that in nine cases out of ten shows woman at her best,
transforms man to his worst; if he be a man of the world, worldly, he is
dumbfounded by the calamity which has fallen upon him. It is
incomprehensible why _he_ should suffer--he of all men--and he wraps
himself in his egotism--his wounded self-love--and thinks of the
injustice and hardness that have shut him out from his labours.
Such men, heavily oppressed, do not give in to the axiom, that it is
well for them to be afflicted; they will not bow to God's will, or
resign themselves to it--their outward calmness is assumed, and they
chafe at the Great Hand which has arrested them midway. Such men will
turn misanthropes and atheists, at times.
Sidney Hinchford after all was a man of the world. In the world he had
lived and fought upwards. There had been a charm in making his way in
it, and the obstacles ahead had but nerved his arm to resist, and his
heart to endure. He had talents for success in the commercial
world--even a genius for making money. With time before him, possibly
Sidney Hinchford would have risen to greatness.
To make money--and to keep it when made--requires as much genius as to
make poetry, rather more, perhaps. A genius of a different order, but a
very fine one notwithstanding, and one which we can admire at a
distance--on the kerb stones with our manuscripts under our arms,
waiting for the genius's carriage to pass, before we cross to our
publishers'. Is not that man a genius who in these latter days rises to
wealth by his own exertions, in lieu of having wealth thrust upon him? A
genius, with wondrous powers of discrimination, not to be led into a bad
thing, but seeing before other people the advantages to accrue from a
good one, and making his investments accordingly. A man who peers into
the future and beholds his own advancement, not the step before him, but
the apex in the clouds, lost to less keen-sighted folk fighting away at
the base--therefore, a wonderful man.
We believe that Sidney Hinchford, like his uncle before him, would have
risen in the world; he believed it also, and throughout his past
career--though we have seen him anxious--he never lost his hope of
ultimate success. When he knew that there must come a period of
tribulation and darkness for him, he had trusted to have time left him
for position; and not till time was denied him, and the darkness set in
suddenly, did he give up the battle. And then he did not give way; he
hardened.
Sidney had never been a religious man, therefore he sought no
consolation in his affliction, and believed not in the power of religion
to console. He had been pure-minded, honourable, earnest, everything
that makes the good worldly man, but he had never been grateful to God
for his endowments, and he bore God's affliction badly in consequence.
He felt balked in his endeavour to prosper, therefore, aggrieved, and
the darkness that had stolen over his senses seemed to find its way to
his heart and transform him.
The clergyman, who had attended his father, attempted consolation with
him, but he would have "none of it." He did not complain, he said; he
had faced the worst--it was with him, and there was an end of it. Do not
weary him with trite bible-texts, but leave him to himself.
And by himself he sat down to brood over the inevitable wrong that had
been done him; he, in the vigour of life and thought, shut apart from
action! Once he had looked forward to a consolation even in distress,
but that was to have been a long day hence. Now his day had been
shortened, and the consolation was denied him. He knew that _that_ was
lost, and he had thought of a fight with the world to benumb the
thoughts of the future; and then the world was shut away from him also,
and he was broken down, inactive and lost.
He and his uncle were the only attendants at the funeral; he was
informed afterwards that Mattie had stood at the grave's edge, and seen
the last of her old friend and first patron; then his uncle had left
him, failing in all efforts to console him. Geoffry Hinchford offered
his nephew money, all the influence at his disposal in any way or shape,
but Sidney declined all coldly. He did not require help yet awhile, he
had saved money; he preferred being left to himself in that desolate
home; presently, when he had grown reconciled to these changes, he
should find courage to think what was best; meanwhile, those who loved
him--he even told Mattie that--would leave him to himself.
Mattie made no effort to intrude upon him in the early days following
the double loss; she was perplexed as to her future course, her method
of fulfilling that promise made to Sidney's father on his death-bed. Her
common sense assured her that in the first moments of sorrow, intrusion
would be not only unavailing, but irritating--and her belief in becoming
of service to Sidney was but a small one at the best. In the good,
far-away time she might be a humble agent in bringing Harriet Wesden and
him together; Harriet who must love him out of very pity now, and forget
that wounded pride which had followed the annulment of engagement.
Meanwhile, she remained quiet and watchful; busy at her dress-making,
busy in her father's home, attentive to that new father whom she had
found, and who was very kind to her, though he scarcely seemed to
understand her. Still, they agreed well together, for Mattie was
submissive, and Mr. Gray had more than a fair share of his own way; and
he was a man who liked his own way, and with whom it agreed vastly. But
we have seen that he was a jealous man, and that Mattie's interest in
Mr. Wesden had discomfited him. He was a good man we know, but jealousy
got the upper hand of him at times, when he was scarcely aware of it
himself, for he attributed his excitement, perhaps his envy, to very
different feelings. He was even jealous of a local preacher of his own
denomination, a man who had made a convert of a most vicious article--an
article that he had been seeking all his life, and had never found in
full perfection.
Mr. Gray over his work said little concerning Ann Packet's occasional
visits to his domicile, but he objected to them notwithstanding, for
they drew his daughter's attention away from himself. He liked still
less Mattie's visits to Chesterfield Terrace--flying visits, when she
saw Ann Packet for an hour and Sidney Hinchford for a minute, looking in
at the last moment, and heralded by Ann exclaiming,
"Here's Mattie come to see you, sir."
"Ah, Mattie!" Sid would answer, turning his face towards the door whence
the voice issued, and attempting the feeblest of smiles.
"Is there anything that I can do, sir, for you?"
"No, girl, thank you."
He would quickly relapse into that thought again, from which her
presence had aroused him--and it was a depth of thought upon which the
fugitive efforts of Mattie had no effect. Standing in the shadowy
doorway she would watch him for awhile, then draw the door to after her
and go away grieving at the change in him.
The thought occurred to her that Harriet Wesden might even at that early
stage work some amount of good until she heard from Ann Packet that
Harriet and her father had called one day, and that Sidney had refused
an interview. He was unwell; some other day when he was better; it was
kind to call, but he could not be seen then, had been his excuses sent
out by the servant maid. Mattie, who had always found time do good, and
work many changes, left the result to time, until honest Ann one
evening, when Mr. Gray was at work at his old post, asserted her fears
that Sidney was getting worse instead of better.
"I think he'll go melancholic mad like, poor dear," she said; "and it's
no good my trying to brighten him a bit--he's wus at that, which is
nat'ral, not being in my line, and wanting brightening up myself. He
does nothing but brood, brood, brood, sitting of a heap all day in that
chair!"
"A month since his father died now," said Mattie, musing.
"To the very day, Mattie."
"He goes to church--you read the Bible to him?" asked Mr. Gray,
suddenly.
"He can't go by hisself--he's not very handy with his blindness, like
those who have been brought up to it with a dog and a tin mug," said Ann
in reply; "but let's hope he'll get used to it, and find it a comfort to
him, sir."
"I asked you also, young woman, if you ever read the Bible to him?"
"Lor bless you, sir! I can't read fit enough for him--I take a blessed
lot of spelling with it, and it aggravates him. All the larning I've
ever had, has come from this dear gal of ours, and _he_ taught her first
of all!"
"I think that I could do this young man good," said Mr. Gray, suddenly;
"I might impress him with the force of the truth--_convert him_."
"I would not attempt to preach to him yet," suggested Mattie; "besides,
his is a strange character--you will never understand it."
"You cannot tell what I may be able to understand," he replied, "and I
see that my duty lies in that direction. I have been seeking amongst the
poor and wretched for a convert, and perhaps it is nearer home--your
friend!"
"I would not worry him in his distress," suggested Mattie anew.
"Worry him!--Mattie, you shock me! Where's my Bible?--I'll go at once!"
"We've got Bibles in the house, sir--we're not cannibals," snapped Ann.
Cannibals and heathens were of the same species to Ann Packet.
"Come on, then!"
Mattie half rose, as if with the intention of accompanying her father,
but he checked the movement.
"I hope you will remain at home to-night, Mattie," he said; "I never
like the house entirely left. It's not business."
Mattie sat down again. She was fidgety at the result of this impromptu
movement on her father's part, but saw no way to hinder it. Her father
was a man who meant well, but well-meaning men would not do for Sidney
Hinchford. Sidney had been well educated; his father was self-taught,
and brusque, and Sidney had grown very irritable. In her own little
conceited heart she believed that no one could manage Sidney Hinchford
save herself. Late in the evening, Mr. Gray returned in excellent
spirits, rubbing one hand over the other complacently. He had found a
new specimen worthy of his powers of conversion.
"Have you seen him?" asked Mattie.
"To be sure--I went to see him, and he could not keep me out of the
room, if I chose to enter. An obstinate young man--as obstinate a young
man as I ever remember to have met with in all my life!"
"Did he speak to you?"
"Only twice, once to ask how you were. The second time to tell me that
he did not require any preaching to. After that, I read the Bible to him
for an hour, locking the door first, to make sure that he did not run
for it, blind as he was. Then I gave him the best advice in my power,
bade him good night, and came away. He is as hard as the nether
millstone; it will be a glorious victory over the devil to touch his
heart and soften it!"
"You are going the wrong way to work. You do not know him!"
"My dear, I know that he's a miserable sinner."
Mattie said no more on the question; she was not a good hand at
argument. At argument, sword's point to sword's point, possibly Mr. Gray
would have beaten most men; his ideas were always in order, and he could
pounce upon the right word, reason, or text, in an instant; but Mattie
was certain that her father's zeal very often outran his discretion. She
shuddered as she pictured Sidney Hinchford a victim to her father's
obtrusiveness--her father, oblivious to suffering, and full of belief in
the conversion he was attempting. She knew that her father was wrong,
and she felt vexed that Sidney had been intruded upon at a time wherein
she had not found the courage to face him herself. Things must be
altered, and her promise to Sid's father must not become a dead letter.
In all the world her heart told her she loved Sidney Hinchford best, and
that she could make any sacrifice for his sake; and yet Sidney was not
getting better, but worse, and her own father would make her hateful to
him. The next evening, Mr. Gray came home later than usual. He had been
sent for by his employers, had received their commissions, and then,
fraught with his new idea, had started for Chesterfield Terrace, to
strike a second moral blow at his new specimen.
He came home late, as we have intimated, and began arranging his chimney
ornaments, and putting things a little straight, in his usual nervous
fashion.
"Mattie, I shall have a job with that young man. He has forbidden me the
house; he actually--actually swore at me this evening, for praying for
his better heart and moral regeneration."
Mattie compressed her lips, and looked thoughtfully before her for a
while. Then the dark eyes turned suddenly and unflinchingly upon her
father.
"I have been thinking lately that if I were with him in that house--I,
who know him so well--I might do much good."
"You, Mattie!--you?"
"He is without a friend in the world. I knew his father, who was my
first friend, and I feel that I am neglecting the son."
"You call there often enough, goodness knows!" Mr. Gray said, a little
sharply.
"He is alone--he is blind. What are a few minutes in a long day to him?"
"All this is very ridiculous, Mattie--speaks well for your kind heart,
and so on, but, of course, can't be----"
"Of course, must be!"
Mattie had a will of her own when it was needed. A little did not
disturb her, but a great deal of opposition could never shake that will
when once made up. She had resolved upon her next step, and would
proceed with it; we do not say that she was in the right; we will not
profess to constitute her a model heroine in the sight of our readers,
who have had enough of model heroines for awhile, and may accept our
stray for a change. We are even inclined to believe that Mattie was, in
this instance, just a little in the wrong--but then her early training
had been defective, and allowance must be made for it. All the evil
seeds that neglect has sown in the soil are never entirely
eradicated--ask the farmers of land, and the _farmers of souls_.
"Must be!" repeated Mr. Gray, looking in a dreamy manner at his
daughter.
"I promised his father to think of him--to study him by all the means in
my power. I see that no one understands him but me, and I hear that he
is sinking away from all that made him good and noble. I will do my best
for him, and there is no one who can stop me here."
"Your father!"
"--Is a new friend, who has been kind to me, and whom I love--but he
hasn't the power to make me break my promise to the dead. That man is
desolate, and heavily afflicted, and I will go to him!"
"Against MY wish?"
"Yes--against the wishes of all in the world--if they were uttered in
opposition to me!" cried Mattie.
"Then," looking very firm and white, "you will choose between him and
me. He will be a friend the more, and I a daughter the less."
"It cannot be helped."
"You never loved me, or you would never thus defy me. Girl, you are
going into danger--the world will talk, and rob you of your good name."
"Let it," said Mattie, proudly. "It has spoken ill before of me, and I
have lived it down. I shall not study it, when the interest and
happiness of a dear friend are at stake. He is being killed by all you!"
she cried, with a comprehensive gesture of her hand; "now let me try!"
"Mattie, you are mad--wrong--wicked!--I have no patience with you--I
have done with you, if you defy me thus."
"I am doing right--you cannot stop me. I have done wrong to remain idle
here so long; I will go at once."
"At once!--breaking up this home--you will, then?"
"If I remain here longer, you will set him against me--me, who would
have him look upon me as his sister, his one friend left to pray for
him, slave for him, and keep his enemies away!"
"I won't hear any more of this rhodomontade--this voice of the devil on
the lips of my child," he said, snatching up his hat again. "Stay here
till I return, or go away for ever."
Mr. Gray was in a passion, and, like most men in a passion, went the
wrong way to work. He was jealous of this new rival to his daughter's
love that had sprung up, and angered with Mattie's attempt to justify
her new determination. He believed in Mattie's obedience, and his own
power over her yet; and he was an obstinate man, whom it took a long
while to subdue. He went out of the room wildly gesticulating, and
Mattie sat panting for awhile, and trying to still the heaving of her
bosom. She had gone beyond herself--perhaps betrayed herself--but she
had expressed her intention, and nothing that had happened since had
induced her to swerve. If it were a choice between her father and
Sidney, why, it must be Sidney, if he would have her for his friend and
companion in the future.
"I must go--I must go at once!" she whispered to herself; and then
hurriedly put on her bonnet and shawl, and made for the staircase. She
thought that she was doing right, and that good would come of it; and
she did not hesitate. Before her, in the distance, sat the solitary
figure of him she loved, friendless, alone, and benighted; and her
woman's heart yearned to go to him, and forgot all else.
Thus forgetting, thus yearning to do good, Mattie made a false step, and
turned her back upon her father's home.
CHAPTER II.
MATTIE'S ADVISER.
Mattie reached Chesterfield Terrace as the clock was striking nine. Ann
Packet almost shouted with alarm at the sight of the new visitor, and
then looked intently over Mattie's shoulder.
"_He_ hasn't come back again, has he? Mr. Sidney's been in such a
dreadful way about him, Mattie. Blind as he is, I think he'll try to
murder him."
"I have come instead. He will see me, I hope."
She did not wait to be announced, but turned the handle of the
parlour-door and entered. Sidney Hinchford, in a harsh voice, cried out,
"Who's there?"
"Only Mattie. May I come in?"
"Mattie here at this hour! Come in, if you will. What is it?"
He was seated in the great leathern arm-chair, that had been his
father's favourite seat, in the old attitude that Mattie knew so well
now. She shuddered at the change in him--the wreck of manhood that one
affliction had reduced him to, and the impulse that had brought her
there was strengthened.
"Mr. Sidney," she said, approaching, "I have come to ask a favour of
you."
"I am past dispensing favours, Mattie. Unless--unless it's to listen
patiently to that horrible father of yours. Then I say No--for he drives
me mad with his monotony."
"I have come to defend you from him, if he call again--to live here, and
take care of you as a dear brother who requires care, and must not be
left entirely to strangers."
"I am better by myself, Mattie--fit company only for myself."
"No, the worst of company for that."
"It must not be."
"I can earn my own living; I shall be no burden to you; I have a
hope--such a grand hope, sir!--of making this home a different place to
you. Why, I can always make the best of it, I think--_he_ thought so,
too, before he died."
"Who--my father?" asked Sidney, wondering.
"Yes--he wished that I should come here, and I promised him. Oh! Mr.
Sidney, for a little while, before you have become resigned to this
great trouble, let me stay!"
He might have read the truth--the whole truth--in that urgent pleading,
but he was shut away from light, and sceptical of any love for him
abiding anywhere throughout the world.
"If he wished it, Mattie--stay. If your father says not No to this, why,
stay until you tire of me, and the utter wretchedness of such a life as
mine."
"Why utterly wretched?"
"I don't know--don't ask again."
"Others have been afflicted like you before, sir, and borne their heavy
burden well."
"Why do you 'sir' me? That's new."
"I called your father sir,--you take your father's place," said Mattie,
hastily.
"A strange reason--I wonder if it's true."
Mattie coloured, but he could not see her blushes, and whether true or
false, mattered little to him then. A new suspicion seized him after
awhile, when he had thought more deeply of Mattie's presence there.
"If this is a new trick of your father's to preach to me through you, I
warn you, Mattie."
"I have told you why I am here."
"No other reason but that promise to my father?"
"Yes, one promise more--to myself. Mr. Hinchford," she said, noticing
his sudden start, "I promised my heart, when I was very young--when I
was a stray!--that it should never swerve from those who had befriended
me. It will not--it beats the faster with the hope of doing service to
all who helped me in my wilful girlhood."
"I told a lie, and said you did not steal my brooch!"
"That was not all, but that taught me gratitude. Say a lie, but it was a
lie that saved me from the prison--from the new life, worse, a thousand
times worse than the first."
"You are a strange girl--you were always strange. I am curious to know
how soon you will tire of me, or I shall tire of you and this new freak.
When I confess you weary me--you will go?"
"Yes."
"Then stay--and God help you with your charge."
His lip curled again, but it was with an effort. He was no true stoic,
and Mattie's earnestness had moved him more than he cared to evince. He
was curious to note the effect of Mattie's efforts to make the dull
world anything better than it was--he who knew how simple-minded and
ingenuous Mattie was, and how little she could fathom his thoughts, or
understand them. He had spent a month of horrible isolation, and it had
seemed long years to him--years in which he had aged and grown grey
perhaps, it was more likely than not. He felt like an old man, with whom
the world was a weary resting-place; and he was despondent enough to
wish to die, and end the tragedy that had befallen him. He had not
believed in any sacrifice for his sake, and Mattie had surprised him by
stealing in upon his solitude, and offering her help. He was more
surprised to think that he had accepted her services in lieu of turning
contemptuously away. It was something new to think of, and it did him
good.
The next day life began anew under Mattie's supervision. She was the old
Mattie of Great Suffolk Street days--a brisk step and a cheerful voice,
an air of bustle and business about her, which it was pleasant to hear
in the distance. When the house duties were arranged for the day, Mattie
began her needlework in the parlour where Sidney sat; and though Sidney
spoke but little, and replied only in monosyllables to her, yet she
could see the change was telling upon him, and she felt that there would
come a time when he would be his dear old self again. When the day was
over, her own troubles began. In her own room, she thought of the father
whom she had abandoned--of _his_ loneliness, left behind at his work in
that front top room, which had been home to her. She was not sorry that
she had left him, for there was an old promise, an old love for Sidney,
to buoy her up; but she was very, very sorry that they had parted in
anger, and that her father had resented a step in which his Christian
charity should have at once encouraged her. By and bye it would all come
right; her father would understand her and her motives; by and bye, when
Sidney had become reconciled to his lot in life, and there were no more
duties to fulfil, she would return home, unasked even, and offer to be
again the daughter whom her father had professed to love. For the
present, life in Sidney's home, doing her duty by him whom she loved
best in the world; she could not let him suffer, and not do her best to
work a change in him.
Mattie worked a change--a great one. The instinct that assured her she
possessed that power had not deceived her; and Sidney, though he became
never again his former self, altered for the better. This change
strengthened Mattie in her resolves, and made amends for her father's
silence. She had written to Mr. Gray a long letter a few days after she
had left his home, explaining her conduct more fully, entering more
completely into the details of her former relations to the Hinchfords
and the friends she had found in them; trusting that her father would
believe that she loved him none the less for the step which she had
taken--she who would have been more happy had he consented thereto--and
hoping for the better days when she could return and take once more her
place beside him. She had also asked in her letter that her box might be
sent her, and he had considered that request as the one object of her
writing, and responded to it by the transmission of the box and its
contents, keeping back all evidence of his own trouble and anger. She
had chosen her lot in life, he thought; she had preferred a stranger's
home to her own flesh and blood; in the face of the world's opinion she
had gone to nurse a man of three and twenty years of age. After all, she
had never loved her father; he had come too late in life before her, and
it was his fate never to gain affection from those on whose kind
feelings he had a claim. He had been unlucky in his loves, and he must
think no more of them. His troubles were earthly, and on earthly
affections he must not dwell too much--he must teach himself to soar
above them all.
He read the Bible more frequently than ever, attended less to his work,
and more to his district society and local preaching; by all the means
in his power he turned his thoughts away from Mattie. When the thought
was too strong for him, he connected her with the wrong that she had
done him, and so thought uncharitably of her, as good men have done
before and since his time--good people being fallible and liable to err.
Mattie knew nothing of her father's trouble, and judged him as she
had seen him last--angry and uncharitable and jealous! That is a bad
habit of connecting friends whom we have given up with the stormy
scene which cut the friendship adrift; of stereotyping the last
impression--generally the false one--and connecting _that_ with him and
her for ever afterwards. Think of the virtues that first drew us towards
them, and not of the angry frown and the bitter word that set us apart;
in the long run we shall find it answered, and have less wherewith to
accuse ourselves.
Sidney Hinchford, whom we are forgetting, altered then for the better
slowly but surely--even imperceptibly to himself. Still, when Mattie had
been a month with him, and he looked back upon the feelings which had
beset him before she took her place in his home, the change struck him
at last. He could appreciate the kindness and self-denial that had
brought her there, gladdened his home, and made his heart lighter. He
could take pleasure in speaking with her of the old times, of his
father, of his early days in Suffolk Street--in hearing her read to him,
in being led into an argument with her, which promoted a healthy
excitation of the mind, in walking with her when the days were fine. He
was grateful for her services, and touched by them--she was his sister,
whom he loved very dearly, and whom to part with would be another trial
in store for him some day--and he had thought his trials were at an end
long since!
Sidney Hinchford, be it observed here, made but a clumsy blind man; he
had little of that concentrativeness of the remaining senses, which make
amends for the deprivation of one faculty. He neither heard better, nor
was more sensitive to touch--and of this he complained a little
peevishly, as though he had been unfairly dealt with.
"I haven't even been served like other blind folk," he said; "your voice
startles me at times as though it were strange to me."
On one topic he would never dwell upon--the Wesdens. Mattie, true to the
dying wish of the old man, attempted to bring the subject round to
Harriet--Harriet, who was true to him yet, she believed--but the subject
vexed him, and evinced at once all that new irritability which had been
born with his affliction.
"Let the past die--it is a bitter memory, and I dislike it," he would
say; "now let us talk of the business which you think of setting me up
in, and seeing me off in, before all the money is spent on
housekeeping."
Mattie turned to that subject at his request--it was one that pleased
and diverted him. He was glad to speak of business; it sounded as if he
were not quite dead yet. Mattie and he had spent many an hour in
dilating upon the chances of opening a shop with the residue of the
money which Sidney had saved before his illness--what shop it should be,
and how it should be attended! He had only one reason for delaying the
prosecution of the scheme--Mattie had implied more than once that when a
shopkeeper was found, she should give up constant attendance upon him,
and only call now and then to make sure that he was well, and not being
imposed upon.
"To think of turning shopkeeper in my old age!" he said one day, with
quite a cheerful laugh at his downfall; "I, Sidney Hinchford, bank
clerk, who had hoped to make a great name in the city. Well, it is
commerce still, and I shall have a fair claim to respectability, as the
wholesalers say, if I don't give short weight, or false measure,
Mattie."
"To be sure you will. But why do you not settle your mind to one
business? Every day, Mr. Sidney, you think of a new one!"
"You must not blame me for that, Mattie," he replied; "I want to make
sure of the most suitable, to find one in which I could take part
myself."
"What do you think of the old business in which Mr. Wesden made
money?--think of that whilst I am gone."
"Where are you going now?" he asked a little irritably.
"To scold the butcher for yesterday's tough joint," said Mattie.
"Butchers make money, but how the deuce could I chop up a sheep without
personal damage?" he said, rambling off to a new idea.
Mattie hurried to the door. The butcher was certainly there; but,
crossing the road in the direction of the house, Mattie had seen Harriet
Wesden. The butcher was dismissed, and Harriet admitted silently into
the passage.
"How long have _you_ been here?" Harriet exclaimed.
"A month now. I promised his father that I would do my best for _him_
left behind in trouble. You--you don't blame me?"
"Blame you!--no. Why should I?"
"My father thought that I was wrong to come here--exceeding my duty to
my neighbour, and outraging my duty towards him. But I am not sorry."
"And Sid--how is he now? Why does he bear so much malice in his heart
against me, as to refuse me admittance to his house?" she asked.
"He bears no malice, Harriet; but the past is painful to him. Presently
he will come round, and judge all things truly. Every day he is less
morbid--more resigned."
"I am glad of that."
"After all, everything has turned out for the best, Harriet," said
Mattie.
"Prove that," was her quick answer.
Mattie was attempting the difficult task of deciphering the real
thoughts of Harriet Wesden;--what she regretted, and what she rejoiced
at, now the picture was finished, and all its deep shadowing elaborated.
"For the best that the engagement was ended, Harriet. Think of the
affliction that has befallen him, and which would have parted him and
you at last."
"Why parted us?--do you think, had it befallen me, that he would have
turned away with horror--that he would not have loved me all the better,
and striven all the harder to render my trouble less heavy to be borne?
Mattie, I knew that this would come upon him years ago, and I did not
shrink from my engagement."
"You could never have married him--he is a poor man, and may be poorer
yet; it is impossible to say."
"It is all over now, and this is idle talk, Mattie. I have given up all
thought of him, as he has given up all thought of me--and perhaps it is
for the best," she added.
"We will hope so, Harriet."
"I was always a foolish and vain girl, prone to change my mind, and
scarcely knowing what that mind was," she said bitterly. "It is easy
enough to forget."
Mattie scarcely understood her. She shook her head in dissent, and would
have turned the conversation by asking after her father's
health--Harriet's own health, which was not very evident on her pale
cheeks just then. Harriet darted away from the subject.
"Well--all well," she said; "and how is Sidney in health, you have not
told me that?"
"Better in health. I have said that his mind is more at ease."
"Mattie, though I have given him up for ever, though I know that I am
nothing to him now, and deserve to be nothing, let me see him again! I
am going into the country with father for a week or two, and should like
to see him once more before I go."
"Harriet, you love him still! You are not glad that it is all ended
between you!"
"I should have been here in your place--I have a right to be here!" she
said, evasively.
"Tell him so."
Mattie had turned pale, but she pointed to the parlour with an imperious
hand. Harriet shrank from the boldness of the step, and turned pale
also.
"I--I--"
"This is no time for false delicacy between you and him," said Mattie;
"he loves you in his heart--he is only saddened by the past belief that
you loved Maurice Darcy--if you do not shrink to unite your fate with
his, and make his life new and bright again, ask him to be your husband.
In his night of life he dare not ask you now."
"I cannot do that," murmured Harriet; "that is beyond my strength."
"You and your father with him in his affliction, taking care of him and
rendering him happy! All in your hands, and you shrink back from him!"
"Not from him, but from the bitterness of his reply to me," said
Harriet. "Would you dare so much in my place?"
"I--I think so. But then," she added, "I do not understand what true
love is--you said so once, if you remember."
Harriet detected something strange and new in Mattie's reply; she looked
at Mattie, who was flushed and agitated. For the first time in her life,
a vague far-off suspicion seemed to be approaching her.
"I will go in and see him--I will be ruled by what he says to me. Leave
me with him, Mattie."
With her own impulsiveness, which had led her right and wrong, she
turned the handle of the parlour door, and entered the room, where the
old lover, blind and helpless, sat.
CHAPTER III.
THE OLD LOVERS.
Yes, there he was, the old lover! The man whom she had once believed she
should marry and make happy--whom she had valued at his just worth when
he cast her off as unworthy of the love he had borne her. She had not
seen him since that time; he had held himself aloof from her, although
he had talked of remaining still her friend, and the change in him was
pitiable to witness.
It was the same handsome face, for all its pallor, and deep intensity of
thought; the same intellectuality expressed therein, for all the
blindness which had come there, and given that strange unearthly look to
eyes still clear and bright, and which turned towards her, and startled
her with their expression yet. But he was thin and wasted, and his hand,
which rested on the table by his side, was an old man's hand, seared by
age, and trembling as with palsy.
"What a time you have been, Mattie! Ah! you are growing tired of me at
last," he said, with the querulousness characteristic of illness, but
before then ever so uncharacteristic of him.
"Miss--Miss Wesden called to ask how you were," said Harriet, in a low
voice.
"Indeed!" he said, after a moment's deliberation of that piece of
information; "and you answered her, and let her go away, sparing me the
pain of replying for myself. That's well and kind of you, Mattie. We are
better by ourselves now."
"Yes."
Harriet dropped into a chair by the door, and clasped her hands
together; he spoke firmly; he spoke the truth as he thought, and she
accepted it for truth, and said no more.
Sidney Hinchford, oblivious of the visitor facing him, and composed in
his blindness, detected no difference in the voice. Mattie's voice, we
have remarked at an earlier stage of this narrative, closely resembled
Harriet's, and acuteness of ear had not been acquired yet by the old
lover.
"Mattie, I have been thinking of a new business for us, since you have
been gone."
"For us?" gasped Harriet.
"Ah! for us, if I can persuade you to remain my housekeeper, and induce
your father to extend his consent. I have no other friend--I look to
you, girl--you must not desert me yet!"
"No."
"I fancy the stationery business, with you to help me, Mattie, would be
best, after all. You are used to it, and I could sit in the parlour and
take stock, and help you with the figures in the accounts. I was always
clever at mental arithmetic, and it don't strike me that I shall be
quite a dummy. And then when I am used to the place--when I can find the
drawers, and know what is in them, I shall be an able custodian of the
new home, capable of minding shop while you go to your friends for
awhile. Upon my honour, Mattie, I'm quite high-spirited about this--say
it's a bargain, girl?"
Harriet answered in the affirmative for Mattie. She had assumed her
character and could not escape. She had resolved to go away, and make no
sign to him of her propinquity; he cared not for her now; he dismissed
her with a passing nod; it was all Mattie--Mattie in whom he believed
and trusted, and on whose support in the future he built upon from that
day! She knew how the story would end for him and Mattie--a peaceful and
happy ending, and what both had already thought of, perhaps--let it be
so, she was powerless to act, and it was not her place to interfere.
Mattie had deceived her; it was natural--but she saw no longer darkly
through the glass; beyond there was the successful rival, whom Sidney
Hinchford would marry out of gratitude!
Sidney continued to dilate upon the prospects in life before him.
Harriet had risen, and was standing with her hand upon the door,
watching her opportunity to escape.
"Who would have dreamed of a man becoming resigned to an utter darkness,
Mattie? Who would have thought of me in particular, cut out for a man of
action, with no great love for books, or for anything that fastened me
down to the domesticities?"
"You are resigned, then?"
"Well--almost."
"I am very glad."
"Why are you standing by the door, Mattie? Why don't you sit down and
talk a little of this business of ours?"
"Presently."
"Now--just for a little while. Leave Ann Packet to the lower
regions--I'm as talkative to-day as an old woman of sixty. Why, you will
not balk me, Mattie?"
"No."
"Read this for me--I have been trying if I can write in the dark--my
first attempt at a benighted penmanship."
He held a paper towards her, and Harriet left her post by the door to
receive it from his hands.
The writing was large and irregular, but distinct. She shivered as she
read the words. The story she had seen so plainly, was more evident than
ever.
"_Sidney Hinchford_," she read, "_saved from shipwreck by Mattie Gray!_"
"And Mattie Gray here at my side accounts for my resignation," said he,
laying his hand upon Harriet's. "Mattie, the old friend--after all, the
best and truest!"
Harriet did not reply; she shrank more and more, cowering from him as
though he saw her there, the unwelcome guest who had forced herself upon
him.
"You are going out," he said, noticing the glove upon the hand he had
relinquished now.
"Yes, for a little while."
"Don't be long. Where are you going that I cannot accompany you?"
"On business--I shall be back in an instant."
"Very well," he said, with a half-sigh; "but remember that you have
chosen yourself to be my protector, sister, friend, and that I cannot
bear you too long away from me. I wish I were more worthy of your
notice--that I could return it in some way or fashion not distasteful to
you. Sometimes I wish----"
"Say no more!" cried Harriet, with a vehemence that startled him; "I am
going away."
The door clanged to and left him alone. She had hurried from the room,
shocked at the folly, the mockery of affection which had risen to his
lips. Ah! he was a fool still, he thought; he had frightened Mattie by
hovering on the verge of that proposal, which he had considered himself
bound to make perhaps, out of gratitude for the life of servitude Mattie
had chosen for herself. He had been wrong; he had taken a mean
advantage, and rendered Mattie's presence there embarrassing; his desire
to be grateful had scared her from him, as well it might--he, a blind
man, prating of affection! He had been a fool and coward; he would seal
his lips from that day forth, and be all that was wished of him--nothing
more. Harriet had made her escape into the narrow passage, had contrived
to open the street-door, and was preparing to hurry away, when Mattie
came towards her.
"Going away without a good-bye, Harriet!"
"I had forgotten," she said coldly.
"What have you said to him?--have you--have you----"
"I have said nothing at which you have reason to feel alarmed," said
Harriet; "I have not taken your advice. He thinks and speaks only of
you, and I did not break upon his thoughts by any harsh reminiscences."
"You are excited, Harriet; don't go away yet, with that look. What does
it mean?"
"Nothing."
"Has he offended you?"
"No."
"Have I?"
"No," was the cold reiteration. "I am not well. I ought not to have
intruded here. I see my mistake, and will not come again."
"I hope you will, many, many times. I build upon you assisting me in the
good work I have begun here. You and I together, in the future, striving
for the old friend, Sidney Hinchford."
"I am going away to-morrow--it is doubtful when I shall return, or what
use I shall be to either you or him. You understand him better than I."
"I do not understand you this afternoon," said Mattie, surveying her
more intently; "what have I done? Don't you," she added, as a new
thought of hers seemed to give a clue to Harriet's, "think it right that
I should be here!"
"If you think so, Mattie, it cannot matter what my opinion is."
"Yes--to me."
"You came hither with the hope of befriending him, as a sister might
come? On your honour, with no other motive?"
"On my honour, with none other."
"Why deceive him, then?" was the quick rejoinder; "why tell him that
your father gave his consent for your stay here, when he was so opposed
to it?"
"He thought so from the first, and I did not undeceive him, lest he
should send me away. Have you seen my father?"
"He called last night at our house. He is anxious and distressed about
you."
"I am sorry."
"He thinks that you have no right to be here--I think you have now."
"Oh! Harriet, you do not think----"
"Hush! say nothing. You are your own mistress, and I am not angry with
you. You have been too good a friend of mine, for me to envy any act of
kindness towards him I loved once. I don't love him now."
"You said you did."
"A romantic fancy--I have been romantic from a child. It is all passed
away now--remember that when he----"
"When he--_what_?"
"Asks you to be his wife, to become his natural protector; you alone can
save him now from desolation--never my task--never now my wish.
Good-bye."
She swept away coldly and proudly, leaving the amazed Mattie watching
her departure. What did she mean?--what had Sidney said to her that she
should go away like that, distrusting her and the motives which had
brought her there--she, of all women in the world!
Mattie went back to Sidney's room excited and trembling. Close to his
side before she startled him by her voice.
"Mr. Sidney, long ago you were proud of being straightforward in your
speech--of telling the plain truth, without prevarication."
"Time has not changed me, I hope, Mattie."
"What have you said to Harriet Wesden?"
"To whom!"
The horror on his face expressed the facts of the case at once, before
the next words escaped him.
"It was--Harriet Wesden then!"
"Yes."
"And she came in to see me, and assumed your character, Mattie?" he
said; "why did you let her in?"
"I don't know," murmured Mattie; "she was anxious about you, and she had
come hither to make inquiries without intruding upon you, until I--I
advised her to come."
"For what reason?" he asked in a low tone.
"I thought that you two might become better friends again, and----"
"Ah! no more of that," he interrupted; "that was like my good sister
Mattie, striving for everybody's happiness, except her own, perhaps.
Mattie, you talk as if I had my sight, and were strong enough to win my
way in life yet. You so quick of perception, and with such a knowledge
of the world--you!" he reiterated.
"Misfortune will never turn Harriet Wesden away from any one whom she
has loved--it would not stand in the way of any true woman. And oh! sir,
if I may speak of her once again--just this once--"
"You may not," was his fierce outcry; "Mattie, I ask you not, in mercy
to me!"
"Why?" persisted Mattie.
"I don't know--let me be in peace."
It was his old sullenness--his old gloom. Back from the past, into which
Mattie's efforts had driven it, stole forth that morbid despondency
which had kept him weak and hopeless. The remainder of that day the old
enemy was too strong for any effort of Sidney's strange companion, and
Mattie felt disheartened by her ill success.
CHAPTER IV.
A NEW DECISION.
Sidney Hinchford rose the next morning in better spirits, and Mattie in
worse. Half the night in his own room Sidney had reflected on his
vexatious sullenness of the preceding day, and on the effect it most
have had on Mattie; half the night, Mattie in her room had pondered on
the strangeness of the incidents of the last four-and-twenty hours--on
that new demeanour of Harriet Wesden, which implied so much, and yet
explained so little.
After all, Mattie thought, was she right in staying there? Had she
treated her father well in leaving him without a fair confession of that
truth which she had breathed into the ears of a dying man, and scarcely
owned till then unto herself? She had not come there with any sinister
design of winning, by force as it were, a place in Sidney Hinchford's
heart; she had never dreamed for an instant--she did not dream then!--of
ever becoming his wife, with a right to take her place at his side and
fight his battles for him.
She had been actuated by motives the purest and the best--but who
believed her? Had not her father mistrusted her? Had not Harriet, who
understood her so well she thought, regarded her as one scheming for
herself?--she whose only scheme was to bring two lovers together once
more, and see them happy at each other's side. For an instant she had
not thought that she was "good enough" for Sidney Hinchford; she who had
been an outcast from society, an object of suspicion to the police, a
beggar, and a thief! No matter that she had been saved from destruction
and was now living an exemplary life, or that misfortune had altered
Sidney and rendered him dependent on another's help, he was still the
being above her by birth, education, position, and she could but offer
him disgrace.
With that conviction impressed upon her, conscious that Sidney had
improved and would continue to improve, an object of distrust to her
best friends--why not to the neighbours who watched them about the
streets and talked about them?--only judged fairly and honourably by him
she served, was it right to stop--was there any need for further stay
there?
She was thinking of this over breakfast--afterwards in her little
business round, during which period another visitor had forced himself
into Sidney's presence, without exercising much courtesy in the effort.
Ann Packet had opened the street-door, and looked inclined to shut it
again, had not the visitor forestalled her--she was never very quick in
her movements--by springing on to the mat, and thence with a bound to
the parlour door.
"Oh, my goodness! you mustn't go in there. Master left word that you
were never to be shown into him again on any pertence."
"Where's Mattie?"
"Gone out for orders," said Ann. "Just step in this room, sir, and wait
a bit."
"Young woman, I shall do nothing of the kind. When my daughter comes in,
tell her where I am. That's your business; mind it, if you please."
Mr. Gray turned the handle of the door, and walked into the room.
"Good morning, Mr. Hinchford."
Sidney recognized that voice at least--the voice of a man who had
worried him to death with his religious opinions--and his face
lengthened.
"You here?"
"Yes, I have come again," he answered, drawing a chair close to the
table, and confronting Sidney. "I suppose you thought that I had given
you up as irreclaimable."
"I had hoped so," was the dry answer.
"Given my daughter up, too."
"No; that wasn't likely."
"Indeed--why not?"
"We don't give up our best friends, those who have won upon our hearts
most, in a hurry."
"Do you mean that for me, or is that another side to your confounded
obstinacy? Won't you give her up to me, her father?"
"If you wish it. I cannot set myself in opposition to you. The
remembrance of a dear father of my own would not lead me, did I possess
the power, to stand in opposition to you."
"You--will side with me, then, in telling her that it is not right to
stay here?"
"Not right! You thought so once?"
"Not for an instant."
"She is here with your consent?"
"Did she tell you that? Don't please say that my Mattie ever told you
that?"
Sidney considered. No, she had not said so, he remembered.
"She came against my will, full of a foolish idea of doing you good, and
no power of mine could stop her," said Gray.
"Against your will?"
"I said she did," said Mr. Gray, sharply; "don't you believe me?"
"Yes--I believe you. But this is very singular."
Sidney bit his nails, and reflected on this new discovery. After a few
moments he said, "Mr. Gray, I have been forgiving you all the past
torture for the sake of your kindness in allowing Mattie to constitute
herself my guardian."
"Rubbish!"
"My guardian angel, I might say; for she has saved me from despair, and
turned my thoughts away from many deep and bitter things. I was turning
against myself, my life, my God, in the very despair of being of use in
the world, and she saved me. Do you blame her coming now?"
Mr. Gray took time to consider that question. He bit his nails in his
turn, and looked steadily at the young man, who had altered very much
for the better.
"I don't find fault with the result--there!" and Mr. Gray looked as
though he had made a great concession.
"You would not be a true minister if you did," said Sidney; "and you are
not a true father if you don't value the sterling gold in Mattie's
character. Pure gold, with no dross in the crucible--not an atom's
worth, as I'm a living sinner!"
"We're all living sinners, young man," said he, getting up and beginning
to pace the room, as he had paced it, preaching meanwhile, a month ago,
and nearly driven Sidney Hinchford out of his mind.
"Do you object to sitting down?" asked Sidney, after bearing with these
heavy perambulations for a time.
"Presently; I am going to speak to you in a minute."
"Not in the old fashion, please," said Sidney, quite plaintively;
"although I can put up with more now; for Mattie's sake I'll even listen
to a sermon, if you'll give me fair warning when you're going to begin,
and how long it is likely to last."
"For your soul's sake, as well as Mattie's, you mean, I hope?"
"Anything--anything you like!"
"As careless of heavenly matters as ever, I believe. The task of
reformation still unperformed--perhaps left for me, unworthy instrument
that I am."
"Exactly."
"Eh?"
"We are all unworthy instruments as well as living sinners, you know,"
said Sidney, drily.
"And flippant, too--and on such a subject! But we shall change you in
good time."
"And this morning, now, you will let me off with a small sermon?"
"I haven't come to sermonize to-day," replied Mr. Gray, severely,
"therefore do not give way to any groundless fears of torturing on my
part."
"Thank you--thank you!"
"I have come to test your sense of justice--fairness of what is due to
me from you, and Mattie."
"Test it, friend."
"Give me back my daughter!"
"Why, that's what Brabantio says in the play; but I'll give you a more
gracious answer than he got. If you wish her to return with you--why,
she must. I would not stop her," he added, with a sigh, "if it were in
my power."
"You will persuade her to return with me."
"Was she happy with you?"
"Until your father died--yes."
"I will tell her," said Sidney; "that there is right on your
side--Mattie will see that. There was right on hers, too, for she had
made a solemn promise to a dying man, and she knew well enough that I
was desolate. I will persuade her even, if you wish it, but----"
"Go on."
"But what harm is she doing here?"
"What harm!" echoed Mr. Gray, with an elevated voice; "why, harm to that
good name which she has kept for years. What do you fancy people think
of her being in this house?--her a stranger to you by blood, and you so
young! Sir, she has risked her character by staying here--and I very
much doubt if the world is likely to believe her own version of this
extraordinary freak."
"Do you believe it?" asked Sidney.
"Well--I do."
"And I also--that makes two out of a very few for whose good opinion
Mattie Gray cares."
"Whilst we are in the world we should care for the world's opinion, Mr.
Hinchford."
"I think not, when it's a false one. You, a minister, telling me to
study the world!"
"I never said that--how aggravating you are, to be sure!"
"Pardon me," said Sidney, quickly; "a misinterpretation, Mr. Gray. And
we must study the world after all--you're right enough. Poor Mattie,
what would she think of this hiss of slander in her ears?"
"I warned her of it--and she braved me."
"Ah! a brave girl, whose reward will come in a brighter world than this.
Well," he added, sadly, "go she must. I agree with you."
"I am very much obliged to you--I am going to shake hands with you."
Mr. Gray and Sidney Hinchford shook hands. Sidney held the minister's
tightly in his grip whilst he uttered the next words.
"You will bring her with you now and then, to hinder me from wholly
sinking back," he said; "remember that she is but the one old friend of
the past whom I care to know is by my side, and in whom I can trust.
Remember what she found me, what she leaves me, and if you are not
wholly selfish, you will not always keep her away."
Mr. Gray was touched by this appeal--his old jealousy vanished
completely--he was proud in his heart of this young man's interest in
Mattie.
"I promise that--until we go away, that is, of course."
"Go away!--whither?"
"Oh! nothing is settled--there was a little talk of appointing me a
missionary abroad some time ago--a preacher at a foreign station, where
the benighted require stirring words, and the preacher is expected to be
continually stirring--preaching, I mean. But it is only talk,
perhaps--they may have found a better man," he added, a little tetchily.
"Should you care to leave England?"
"Care, sir!--it is my great ambition to do good--to make amends for the
evil of my early life."
"Ah!--yes."
Sidney had become absent in his manner--Mr. Gray, who had become
voluble, discoursed at great length on his peculiar principle of doing
good, but Sidney heard but little of his argument, and was engrossed by
thoughts of the change coming unto him again, and to which he could not
offer opposition. Discoursing thus, and thinking thus, when Mattie
returned, and stood in the doorway, looking from father to friend.
"Father," she ejaculated at last.
"Don't say that you are sorry to see me, after this long parting!" he
exclaimed, as he rose in an excited manner, and went towards her with
both hands outstretched.
"Not sorry--no--but very, very glad!"
She held his hands, and leaned forward to kiss him. He caught her to his
heart then, and the tears welled into his eyes at this evidence of the
past parting having been forgotten and forgiven.
"Mattie," he said, "I have been thinking of all this again--over and
over again, patiently, and not in anger--and I still think that it is
wrong to stay here."
"And he--what does he think?" looking towards Sidney.
Sidney answered for himself.
"That, perhaps, we are both too young--blind though I am, and pure as
you are, Mattie--to keep house together after this fashion. For your
sake, I will ask you to go back with your father. I have been wrong and
selfish."
"I said that I would go when you wished it, Mr. Sidney."
"I wish it, then!"
"Very well."
"Go--to return again very frequently with your father, and see that I am
well, and likely to do well. Mattie, for ever after this understand that
I cannot do utterly without you. Wrong and selfish also in that wish,
perhaps, but I am sure of you forgiving me!"
"Yes--yes," she said, hurriedly. "It is strange that we three should all
have been thinking of going away to-day--and perhaps," with a blush, "it
was scarcely right to come. But," evincing here her old rebellious
spirit, with a suddenness that made her father and Sidney leap again,
"if he were the same man I found here first, I would have stopped--mark
that!"
"Yes, but he isn't, my dear!" said Mr. Gray, cowed into submission, and
afraid of Mattie talking herself into a change of mind; "so it's all
happened for the best, and we are all thankful, and--all friends!"
"I will be ready when you wish, then."
"I have ordered a cab to come round at twelve. You see I was sure that
you would not turn against me ever again."
"I never turned against you--don't think that."
Mattie went out of the room--was a long while gone--returned with her
eyes red and swollen, as though she had been weeping. The cab at the
same time rattled up to the door, and Ann Packet--with red and swollen
eyes also, if she could have been seen just then--was heard struggling
down-stairs with Mattie's box, which she had not allowed Mattie to
touch.
"Go and talk to Mr. Sidney again, gal. You mayn't have another chance,"
she had said, and Mattie had started and glared at her as at a phantom.
Surely it was time for her to go, when this faithful but dull-witted
woman saw through the veil which she believed had hidden her true heart
from every one on earth. But that must be fancy, she thought, and she
went back to the room to bid Sidney good-bye, and to check the thanks
with which he would have overwhelmed her.
"No thanks, sir--only my duty to one whose last thoughts were of your
happiness, and how it was best to promote it. _He_ had faith in me, and
I have endeavoured to deserve it, as though he had been watching every
action of my own from heaven. Good-bye, Mr. Sidney."
"Good-bye--best of friends. You will not desert me wholly?--your father
is on my side now."
"Yes. I shall look in upon you very often, I hope--and you must keep
strong, and make up your mind about that business--and--and not think
yourself into that low estate ever again. Now I am ready to go."
Mattie and her father left the house the former had brightened by her
presence. In the cab she struggled for awhile with her forced composure,
and then burst forth into irrepressible tears.
"Patience, Mattie. I see the end to this. All's well."
"You see the end to this? No, you cannot!"
"Oh! yes--I can."
Mr. Gray uttered not a syllable more during the remainder of the
journey; and Mattie, ashamed of her tears, dried her eyes, and asked no
further questions.
CHAPTER V.
ANN PACKET EXPRESSES AN OPINION.
Sidney Hinchford knew that he should miss Mattie, and accordingly made
up his mind, as he thought, to the loss. But there is no making up one's
mind entirely to the absence of those we love, and upon whom we have
been dependent, and Sidney found himself no exception to the rule.
In great things he had expected to miss her, but in the thousand minor
ones, wherein she had reigned dominant without his knowledge, he made no
calculation for, and a hundred times a day they suggested the absence of
the ruling genius. The house assumed an unnatural and depressing
stillness; he felt wholly shut from the world again--no one to whom he
could speak, or who, in reply, could assure him that his lot was not
worse than other people's, and that there lay before him many methods
for its amelioration.
He became more dull and thoughtful; but he did not sink back to his past
estate--that was a promise which he had made Mattie, before she went
away. When she came again--he prayed it might be soon--she should not
find him the despondent, morbid being, from which her efforts had
transformed him. He tried to think the time away by dwelling upon that
business in which he intended to embark; but there came the grave
perplexity of the general management--and whom to trust, now Mattie had
returned to her father's home! Meanwhile, he was wasting money by
inaction, and he had always known the value of money, and money's
fugitive properties, if not carefully studied.
We say that he tried to think of his new business life, for other
thoughts would force their way to the front, and take pre-eminence. He
could not keep the past ever in the background; before him would flit,
despite his efforts to escape it, the figure of his lost love, to whom
he had looked forward once as his solace in his blindness. Blindness,
with her at his side, had not appeared a life to be deplored, and it was
ever pleasant to picture what might have been, had the ties between them
never been sundered by his will. For he loved her still--the stern
interdict upon her name was even a part of his affection; and there were
times when he did not care to shut her from his mind--on the contrary,
loved to think of her as he had known her once. In these latter days, he
thought of both Harriet and Mattie--drew, as was natural to one in his
condition, the comparison between them--saw which was the truer, firmer,
better character, but loved the weaker for all that! That Harriet had
not loved him truly and firmly, did not matter; he had given her up for
his pride's sake, even for her own sake, but he loved her none the less.
She would have been unhappy with him after a while--she could not have
endured the place of nurse and comforter--she, who was made for the
brightness of life, and to be comforted herself when that brightness was
shut from her; she was not like Mattie, a woman of rare character and
energy.
Mattie troubled him. She had awakened his gratitude; the last day her
father had aroused in him his fears that she had rendered herself open
to the suspicions of the world by her efforts in his service--he had not
thought of _that_ before! Mattie's character was worth studying--it was
so far apart from the common run of womankind--she had treasured every
past action that stood as evidence of kindness to her, and made return
for it a thousandfold. Who would have dreamed of all this years ago,
when he tracked her with the police to the Kent Street lodging-house,
and was moved to pity by her earnest eyes? Hers had been a strange life;
his had been exceptional--his had ended in blank monotony, that nothing
could change--what was in store for her? He thought of the mistake that
he had committed on the day that Harriet had personated her unwillingly,
and blushed for the error of the act. He had been moved too much by
gratitude, and had almost offered his blank life to Mattie, as he
thought; Mattie who would have shrunk from him like the rest, had she
believed that he had had such thoughts of _her_. His blindness had
affected his mind; he had grown heedless, foolish, wilful. Then his
thoughts revolved to Harriet Wesden again--to the girl who had not lost
her interest in him with her love, but had stolen to his solitary house,
to ask about him, and to note the change in him. She had been always a
generous-hearted girl--moved at any trouble, and anxious to take her
part in its alleviation--there was nothing remarkable in it. He was
still the old friend and playfellow, after all, and in the future days,
when their engagement lay further back from the present, he should be
glad to hear her voice of sympathy again.
These thoughts, or thoughts akin to these, travelled in a circle round
the blind man's brain, hour after hour, day after day. Thoughts of
business, Mattie, Harriet Wesden--varied occasionally by the
reminiscences of the dead father, and the relations who had sought him
out, whom he had sought, and then turned away from.
Mattie and her father came to see him three days after their formal
withdrawal from his home; that was a fair evening, which changed the
aspect of things, and which he remembered kindly afterwards,
notwithstanding a prayer of some duration, that Mr. Gray contrived to
introduce. Something new to think of was always Sidney Hinchford's
craving, and the day that followed any fresh incidents bore less heavily
upon him, as he rehearsed those incidents in his mind.
Still they had said nothing of the business; they had been more anxious
to know how he had spent his time since their departure, and whether
Mattie's absence had made much difference to him. Sidney spoke the
truth, and Mattie was pleased at the confession. It was an evidence of
the good she had done by resisting her father's will, and she was woman
enough not to be sorry for the result.
That evening, Ann Packet, bringing in the supper to her master, was
startled by the question which he put to her.
"How is Mattie looking, Ann?"
"Looking, sir!"
"Has all this watching, studying my eccentricities, affected her?"
"She's a little pale mayhap--but she has allus been pale since her last
illness."
"I never gave a thought as to the effect which the constant study of a
monomaniac might produce upon her," he said half abruptly; "but she's
quit of me now, and will improve."
"Oh! she was well enough here--like a bird chirping about the
house--Mattie likes something to do for some one. An extrornary girl,
Master Sidney, as was ever sent to be a blessing unto all she took to."
"Yes--an extraordinary girl. Sit down."
"No--it isn't for the likes of me to do that here, sir."
"Sit down, and tell me what you think of her. We don't study appearances
in trouble--and a blind man loves the sound of a woman's voice."
"Then you have altered werry much, sir."
"Yes--thanks to Mattie again."
"And to think that she was a little ragged gal about the streets, sir.
Many and many a time have I crept to the door after shop was shut, and
given her the odd pieces I could find, and she was allus grateful for
'em."
"Always grateful--who can doubt that?"
"She was waiting for the pieces when you came home and lost that
brooch--poor ignorant thing, then, sir!"
"Through you then, Ann, we first knew Mattie Gray. Strangely things come
round!"
"Ah! you don't know half her goodness, sir--she's just as kind to
anybody who wants kindness--_just_."
"Yes, it is like her!"
"It's a pity her father isn't less of a fidget--she ought to have had a
better un than that, or have never lighted on him, I think."
"Is she not happy with him, then?"
"She may be, she mayn't--but he _is_ a fidget, and Mattie ought to have
some one to take care of her now, and make her happy--like."
"A husband, you mean?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Sit down, Ann. Perhaps you know of some one who is likely to take care
of Mattie in the way you think?"
"I don't know."
"Some one who calls and sees her, and in whom she is interested?"
"Oh! no--no one calls to see _her_," said Ann, "her father's jealous of
her liking anybody save himself. I saw that long ago."
"I should like to see--ah, ha! _to see!_" he cried--"Mattie happy. She
deserves it."
"Those who think so little of theirselves seldom find happiness
though--do they, sir?"
Sidney started at the axiom--it was deeper than Ann Packet's general run
of observations.
"There are so few of those good folk in the world, Ann."
"Mattie's one."
"Yes--Mattie's one!" he repeated.
"I've often wondered and a-wondered what would make her happy; do you
know, sir, sometimes I think that--that _you_ might, if you'll excuse an
ignorant woman saying so."
"That I might!--what has made you think that? Sit down--why _don't_ you
sit down!"
"Well, just to talk this over, and for my darling's sake, I will for
once demean myself;" and Ann Packet, red in the face with excitement,
seated herself on the verge of the horsehair chair.
Ann Packet had broken through the ice at last; it had been a trouble of
long duration; she who knew Mattie's secret, guessed where Mattie's
chance of happiness rested, she thought. But it is delicate work to
strive for the happiness of other people, and leads to woful failures,
as a rule.
Ann Packet was nervous; the plunge had been made, and the truth must
escape--she dashed into the subject, for "her gal's sake."
"Lookee here, sir--it's no good my keeping back my 'pinion, that our
Mattie is really fond of you! When she was a girl in Suffolk Street, and
you a bit of a boy, she used to worry me about you, and yet I never
guessed it! When she growed bigger and you growed bigger, she showed her
liking less, but it peeped out at times unbeknown to herself, and yet I
never guessed it! But when she was ill in Tenchester Street, and I left
here to nus her, the truth came on me all of a heap, and mazed me
drefful!"
"What made you think of this--this nonsense, then?" he asked.
"She spoke about you in her fever, when her head was gone," said Ann;
"of how your happiness hadn't come, and yet she'd worked so hard for it.
And somehow I guessed it then--and when she came here, and was, for the
fust time, happy in her way--I knowed it!"
"Folly! folly!" murmured Sidney.
"And they who says that she had no right to come here, don't know the
rights of things--she liked you best of all, sir, and she comes here,
duty bound, to do her best. If they says a word aginst her in MY hearing
for her coming here, let 'em look out, that's all!"
Sidney sat, with his fingers interlaced, thoughtful and grave.
"You may go now, Ann--I'm sorry that you have put this into my head. It
can't be true."
"True or not, just ask her some day when you feel that you can't do
without her help, and see who's wrong of us two. And you'll have to ask
her, mind that!"
Ann rose and bustled towards the door. At the door a new form of
argument suggested itself, and she came back again.
"You're blind enough not to care for good looks so much now--if you can
get a good heart think yourself lucky, sir. You've just the chance of
making one woman happy in your life, and in finding your life very
different to what it is now, with a blundering gal like me to worry you.
She won't think any the wus of you for being blind and helpless--she's
much too good for you!"
"Well, that's true enough, Ann."
"I don't say that I'm saying this for your sake, young man," said Ann
Packet in quite a maternal manner, "for you're no great catch to
anybody, and will be a sight of trouble. But I do think that Mattie took
a fancy to you ever so long ago, and that it didn't die away like other
people's because you came to grief. And if my opinion has discumfrumpled
you more than I expected, why, you asked for it, and I haven't many
words to pick and choose from, when I've made up my mind to speak. And
I'm not sorry now that I've spoke it any-ways."
"I fear Mattie would not thank you, Ann."
"Mattie never knowed what was good for herself so well as for t'other
people--I looks after her good like her mother--I don't know that any
one else would. And though I'm your servant, I'm her friend--and so I
asks you, if you've any intentions, to speak out like a gentleman!"
Still suffering from nervous excitement, Ann Packet closed the door, and
ran down-stairs to indulge in an hysterical kind of croaking, with her
head in the dresser-drawer. It had been a great effort, but Ann had
succeeded in it. Her young master knew the whole truth now, and there
was no excuse for him. He must give up Mattie or marry her, she
thought--either way her girl would not be "worrited" out of her life any
longer!
Meanwhile the young master left his supper untouched, and dwelt upon the
revelation. Something new to think of!--something to stir afresh the
sluggish current of his life.
Was it true?--was it likely?--was it to be helped, if true or likely?
Could it be possible that it lay in his power to promote the happiness
of any living being still? Could he make happy, above all, the girl whom
he had known so long, and who had served him so faithfully? He did not
think of himself, or ask if it were possible to love her; possibly for
the first time in his life, he was wholly unselfish, and thought only of
a return for all the sacrifices _she_ had made. He could remember now
that hers had been a life of abnegation--that she had risked her good
name once for Harriet Wesden--once, and in the latter days, for himself.
All this simply Mattie's gratitude for the kindness extended in the old
days--nothing more. It was not likely that that ignorant woman below
could know all that had been unfathomable to brighter, keener
intellects.
But if true, what better act on his part than to gladden her heart, and
add to the content of his own? He began a new existence with his loss of
sight--the old world vanished away completely, and left him but one
friend from it--let him not lose that one by his perversity or pride.
Still, let him do nothing hastily and shame both him and her. He would
wait!
CHAPTER VI.
MR. GRAY'S SCHEME.
Mr. Gray and his daughter Mattie re-commenced housekeeping together on a
different principle. Mattie's flitting had impressed Mr. Gray with the
consciousness of his daughter possessing a will a trifle more inflexible
than his own, and he respected her opinions in consequence. He treated
her less like a child, and more like a woman whose remarks were worth
listening to. In plain truth, he had become a little afraid of Mattie.
He had learned to love her, and was afraid of losing her. Her stern
determination to keep her promise--even part with him, rather than break
it--had won his respect; for he was a firm man himself, and in his heart
admired firmness in others.
Father and daughter settled down to home-matters, and worked together in
many things; if the daughter had one secret from her father, it was the
woman's natural aversion to confess to an attachment not likely to be
returned, and was scarcely a secret, considering that Mr. Gray had more
than an inkling of the truth.
The father did not care to solve the problem that was so easy of
solution; he objected to showing any interest in such trivial mundane
matters as love-making. He had a soul himself above love-making; which
he considered vain, frivolous, and worldly, leading the thoughts astray
from things divine. He saw Mattie's perplexity, and even hoped in the
good time to alter it, if separation did not have its proper effect.
"Presently--we shall see," was Mr. Gray's motto; and though he had
spoken hopefully to Mattie, as Mattie had fancied, yet when they were at
home again--two prosaic home figures--he kept the subject in the
background.
Still he was watchful, and when Mattie began to alter, to become more
grave and downcast, as though his home was not exactly the place where
she experienced happiness--when she brightened up at any suggestion to
visit Sidney Hinchford, he thought less of his own comfort, and more of
his daughter's, like a good father as he was, after all.
One afternoon, without apprising that daughter of his intentions, he
walked over to Camberwell, to see Sidney Hinchford. That young gentleman
had ventured forth into the street, and therefore Mr. Gray had leisure
to put things in order during his absence; arrange the mantel-piece, and
wheel the table into the exact centre of the room. Anything out of order
always put him in an ill temper, and he wanted to discuss business
matters in an equable way, and with as little to disturb him as
possible. If anything besides business leaked forth in the course of
conversation, he should not be sorry; but he would take no mean
advantage of Sidney Hinchford's position. He had a scheme to propose,
which might be accepted or declined--what that scheme might end in, he
would not say just then. It might end in his daughter marrying Sidney,
or it might only tend to that singular young man's comfort and peace of
mind--at all events, harm could not evolve from it, and possibly some
personal advantage to himself, though he considered that _that_ need not
be taken into account.
Sidney Hinchford returned, and his face lit up at the brisk "Good
afternoon" of Mr. Gray. He turned a little aside from him, as if
expecting a smaller, softer hand in his, a voice more musical, asking if
he were well, and then his face lost a great deal of its brightness with
his disappointment.
"Alone?" he said.
"This time, Mattie is very busy--has a large dress-making order to
fulfil."
"She'll kill herself with that needlework," he remarked; "it is a
miserable profession, at the best."
"You're quite right, Mr. Sidney. And talking about professions, have you
thought of yours lately?"
"Oh! I have thought of a hundred things. I must invest my capital--such
as it is--in something."
"Will you listen patiently to a little plan of mine? I am of the world,
worldly to-day, God forgive me!" he ejaculated, piously.
"What plan is that? Let us sit down and talk it over."
The local preacher, lithographer, &c., sat down facing Sidney, on whose
face was visible an expression of keen interest. In matters of religion,
Mr. Gray was long and prosy; in matters of business, quick and terse, a
man after Sidney's own heart. Two "straightforward" men like them got
through a deal of business in a little time.
"How much money have you at command?"
"A hundred pounds, perhaps."
"So have I."
"What's that to do with it?"
"A great deal, if you like my scheme--nothing, if you don't."
"Go on."
"A hundred pounds might start a business, but it's a risk--two hundred
is better. How does Gray and Hinchford sound, now?"
"A partnership?"
"Why not? You're not fit to manage a business by yourself--I'm inclined
to think the two of us might make a success of it--the three of us, if
Mattie has to assist. I don't see why we should go on like this any
longer--you can't stand at this rent--one house may as well hold all of
us--why not?"
"You are very kind. I shall be a great trouble to you."
"I hope not. If you are--I like trouble. I shall make a bright light of
you in good time!"
Sidney thought of the sermons in store for him, but hazarded no comment.
Beyond them, and before all, was the preacher's daughter--the woman who
understood him, and who had even rendered blindness endurable.
"You were speaking a short while since of going abroad. Have you changed
your mind?"
"They changed theirs at the chapel. Bless you! they thought they could
pitch upon a man so much more suitable! You hear that--so much more
suitable!"
"Ah!--a good joke."
"I don't see where the joke lies," he said quickly.
"I beg pardon. No, not exactly a joke--was it?"
"I should say not."
"Well--and this business--what is it to be?"
"I fancy the old idea of a bookseller and stationer's. I can bring a
little connection from our chapel together--and there's your friends at
the bank."
"No--don't build on them--I have done with them."
"Ah! I had forgotten. But we must not bear enmity in our hearts against
our fellow-men."
"True--and this business--where is it to be?"
"We'll look out, Mattie and I, at once."
"Nothing settled yet, then?" said Sidney, with a sigh, who was anxious
to be stirring in life once more.
"Nothing yet, of course. I did not know whether you would approve of the
scheme. Whether Mattie and I would be exactly fitting company for you."
"Is that satire?"
"My dear sir, I never said a satirical thing in my life."
"The best of company, then--for you and Mattie are the only friends left
me, save that honest girl down-stairs."
"Ah! Ann Packet--we must not forget her, or we shall have Mattie
scolding us."
"I asked if it were satire, because you are doing me a great service,
and saving me from much anxiety. I have been thinking lately that it
would be better for me to find my way into some asylum or other, and
settle down there apart from the busy world without. You come forward to
save me from the streets I have been fearing."
"As Mattie was saved," said Mr. Gray, solemnly; "remember that!"
Mr. Gray shortly afterwards took his leave. The same night he
communicated the details of his scheme to his daughter; he could easily
read in her face that it was a plan that had her full concurrence.
Sidney at home again--Sidney to take care of, and screen from all those
ills to which his position was liable!
In a short while a shop in the suburbs of London--not a great distance
from Peckham Rye--was found to let. It stood in a new neighbourhood,
with houses rising round it at every turn. A building mania had set in
that direction, and a populous district was springing up there.
"I have always heard that to pitch one's camp in a new neighbourhood, if
one has the patience to wait, will always succeed. We three have
patience, and I think we'll try it."
This was said to Mattie, after she and her father had inspected the
premises, and were walking by cross roads towards Camberwell, to gladden
Sidney with the latest news.
"We'll try it--we'll begin home there, father."
"Home in earnest--eh?"
Mattie did not notice the meaning in his tones; she was full of other
thoughts.
"It must be a home, that you and I will try to render happy for him--for
his own sake--for his dead father's," she said.
"To be sure. And if he be not happy then, it will not be our fault."
"I hope not!"
"Hope not," said her father; "do you think we may fail in the attempt?"
"If we be not careful. We must remember that he is weak and requires
support--that he is blind, and cannot escape us if we weary him too
much."
"Oh! I see--I see," he said, a little aggrieved; "you are afraid that I
shall tire him with the Word of God. Mattie, he's not exactly a
Christian man yet, and I should certainly like to make him one. There
will be plenty of time for preaching the truth unto him."
"And for leaving it alone."
"Bless my soul!" he ejaculated, as though Mattie had fired a pistol in
his ear.
"You will believe that I understand him best, and I think that it will
not do to attack him too often with our creed. His first disappointment
is over--he is teaching himself resignation--he will come round to a
great extent without our help--with our help, judiciously applied, he
will come round altogether."
"You think a man may be told too often of the error of his ways?"
"Yes."
"Then we shall never agree upon that point."
And they never did. Notwithstanding this, Mr. Gray remembered Mattie's
hint, and often curbed a rising attempt to preach to Sidney. When his
rigour carried him to preaching point, Sidney listened patiently; when
Sidney knew that Mr. Gray's energy was real, and that not one atom of
hypocrisy actuated his motives, he respected the preacher, and paid
attention to him.
He altered rapidly for the better; he became again almost the Sidney
Hinchford of old times--the smile returned more frequently, the
brightness of his face was something new; it was pleasant to think that
he was not isolated from the world, and that there were friends in it
yet to care for him.
He went to church every Sunday in lieu of chapel, somewhat to Mr. Gray's
dissatisfaction. He had gone in old days twice every Sunday with his
father, and he preferred adopting the old habits to frequenting the
chapel whither Mr. Gray desired to conduct him. Sometimes Mattie
accompanied him; more often, when he knew his ground, he went by
himself, leaving Mattie to her father's escort.
Meanwhile business slowly but surely increased; the connection
extended--all went well with these three watchers--each watching for a
different purpose, with an equal degree of earnestness.
END OF THE SIXTH BOOK.
BOOK VII.
SIDNEY'S GRATITUDE.
CHAPTER I.
MAURICE HINCHFORD IN SEARCH OF HIS COUSIN.
Nearly a year had passed away since the firm of Hinchford and Gray
started in business and astonished the suburbs. In search of that rising
firm, a young man, fresh from foreign travel, was wandering in the
outskirts of Peckham one February night. A man who had crossed deserts,
climbed mountains, and threaded mountain passes with comparative ease,
but who was quickly lost in the brick and mortar wilderness into which
he had ventured.
This man, we may say at once, was Maurice Hinchford, a man who had seen
life and spent a fortune in an attempt to enjoy it. A Sybarite, who had
wandered from place to place, from kingdom to kingdom, until even
novelty had palled upon him, and he had returned back to his father and
his father's business. During this long holiday he had thought much of
his cousin Sidney, the man to whom he had taken no passing fancy, and
whose life he had helped to blight--whom, by way of atonement, he had
once wished to advance in the world.
Sidney Hinchford had been constantly before him during his pilgrimage;
before him that indignant figure which had repelled all excuse, on the
night he reached his one and thirtieth year; he could see it hastening
away in the night shadows from the house to which it had been
unsuspiciously lured.
On his return, not before, for he had wandered from place to place, and
many letters had miscarried--amongst them the missive which had told him
of his uncle's death and cousin's blindness--he heard of the calamity
which had befallen Sidney in his absence.
He had been ever a feeling man, and forgetting the past rebuff he had
received--thinking, perhaps, that his cousin was in distress, he started
at once in search of him. To do Maurice Hinchford justice, it was on the
very day on which he had reached London, and before he had seen his
mother and sisters. No assurance of his father that Sidney was in good
hands contented him; he must judge for himself. He had the Hinchford
impetus to proceed at once straightforwardly to work; he was a man who
was sorry for the harm he had done in his life--one of those comfortable
souls, who are always sorry _afterwards_!--a loose liver, with a
conscience that would not keep quiet and let events flow on smoothly by
him. He had sobered down during his travels, too; he had met with many
acquaintances, but no friends--in all his life he had not found one true
friend who would have stood by him in adversity, and shared his
troubles, even his purse, with him.
Fortunately Maurice Hinchford had not known adversity, and had shared
his purse with others instead. A rich man, an extravagant one, but a man
of observation, who knew tinsel from pure gold, and sighed very often
when he found himself compelled, perforce, to put up with the tinsel.
Life such as his had wearied him of late; men of his own class had sworn
eternal amity, and then laughed at him when his back was turned; men of
a grade inferior had toadied him, cringed to him, sponged upon him;
women had flattered him for his wealth's sake, not loved him for his
own--all had acknowledged him one of those good fellows, of which
society is always proud; but for _himself_ nobody cared save his own
flesh and blood--he could read that fact well enough, and its constant
reiteration on the faces of "his set" annoyed him more than he could
have believed.
This favourite of fortune, then, annoyed with society's behaviour, had
started forth in search of Sidney an hour after the news was learned
from his father's lips. He had a great deal to say to Sidney; he had not
entered into any explanations in that letter which Sidney had coolly
responded to--he could say more _viva voce_; and now the storm was more
than a year old, his cousin would surely put up with more, and listen to
him.
But firstly, Maurice Hinchford had to find his cousin; and having
wandered from the right track, it became a matter of some difficulty. He
had strayed into a "new neighbourhood"--a place always famous for its
intricacies--and he floundered about new streets, and half-finished
streets, asking manifold questions of the aborigines, and receiving
manifold directions, which he followed implicitly, and got lost anew in
consequence.
The stragglers were few and far between, and Maurice waited patiently
for the next arrival--standing under a lamp-post at the corner of a
street. He had given up all hope in his own resources, and had resolved
to enlist the next nondescript in his service, be his terms whatever his
rapacity dictated. But the next nondescript was a woman, and he was
baffled again. A young woman in a great hurry, to whom he could not
offer money, and whose progress he scarcely liked to arrest, until the
horror of another vigil under that melancholy gas-lamp overcame his
reluctance to intrude.
"I beg pardon," he said, hastily; "I am looking for Park Place. Will you
oblige me, Miss, by indicating in which direction it may lie _now_?"
"As straight as you can go, sir."
"Ah! but, confound it, I can't go straight. Not that I'm intoxicated,"
he said quickly, seeing his auditor recoil, and make preparations for a
hasty retreat, "but these streets are incomprehensibly tortuous."
The listener seemed to look very intently towards him for an instant.
The voice appeared to strike her.
"Whom do you want in Park Place?" was the quick answer.
"A Mr. Hinchford, of the business of Gray and Hinchford."
"You are his cousin Maurice?"
"By George!--yes. How did you know that?"
"I guessed it--that's all."
"You are a shrewd guesser, Miss," he said. "Yes, I am his cousin
Maurice, and you are----"
"Mattie Gray, his partner's daughter."
"Oh! indeed!"
"I have seen you once before--you brought your father, some years ago,
to a stationer's shop in Great Suffolk Street."
"Right--a retentive memory."
"I seldom forget faces--it is not likely that I should have forgotten
yours."
"Why not?"
"I have heard so much of you since then," was the answer, cold and
cutting as the east wind that was swooping down the street that night.
"Oh! have you?"
Maurice walked on by her side; after a few moments Mattie said to him,
"What do _you_ want with Sidney?"
"Many things. I am anxious to see him--very anxious."
"Your presence can but give him pain--why expose him to needless
suffering by this intrusion?"
"I have a hope that it will not be considered an intrusion, Miss Gray,"
said Maurice, stiffly.
"I can see no reason why you should hope that."
"I am his relation--his----"
"Sir, I know what you are," said Mattie, sharply; "I know all your
history, and all the harm you have done to him, and Harriet Wesden, and
me."
"And you!--_and you_, Miss!" he repeated harshly.
"An evil action spreads evil in its turn, and there is no knowing where
it may end, Mr. Hinchford," said Mattie; "yours affected my character."
"I don't see that--how was that possible?"
"Whilst you were playing your villain's trick on Harriet Wesden, I was
searching the streets for her. I kept her secret after her return, and,
therefore, could not give my employer a fitting reason for my absence
from the business left in trust to me. I was discharged."
"I am very sorry," said Maurice, energetically; "upon my soul, I had no
idea of all the harm my folly--my villainy, if you will--had caused till
now! Miss Gray, you don't know how sorry I am!"
"I don't care."
"Is that merciful or womanly?"
"Perhaps not. But I will believe that you are sorry, if you will not
accompany me further."
"Miss Gray, I must come. More than ever, I am resolved to see him
to-night."
"Very well."
They went on together, both walking at a brisk pace, Maurice a little
discomfited, and with his head bent down and his hands behind him.
"May I ask," he said after some moments' silence, "if he be well?"
"He is well."
"Blind still?"
"Yes."
"May I ask you, as his friend, let me say, if his means be adequate to
his support?"
"Ah! you have come to ask him that--to see that for yourself?"
"Not exactly--it is one of many reasons."
"Keep that from him, then," cried Mattie; "spare him that humiliation."
"Why humiliation, Miss?"
"It is humiliation, it is an insult, to offer help to the man whose life
you have embittered. You that have known Sidney, worked with him in your
office, professed to be his friend, should have fathomed that part of
his character, at least, which is based upon his pride. Sir, I doubt if
he esteem you very much, but he will certainly hate you if you talk of
money."
"Then I'll not talk of it."
"And you'll not go back?"
"I never go back," said Maurice; "I'm a Hinchford."
"All the Hinchfords whom I have known have been honest, earnest men,
striving to do good, and detesting cunning and disguise. I hope that you
are the first that has disgraced the name."
"I hope so. Phew! how hot it is!"
Maurice Hinchford felt exceedingly uncomfortable under these continued
attacks; still there was a novelty in all this dispraise and
plain-speaking. A brusque young woman this, whose character interested
him, and whose warmth in his cousin's service he respected, despite the
darts with which she transfixed him.
He did not flinch from the purpose he had formed, however. He _was_
anxious to see his cousin, to receive the attack in full, and defend
himself; to prove to Sidney, if it were possible, that he was not quite
the unprincipled villain that was generally supposed. So he kept on his
way, and this first little dash of the waters of opposition against him
did not affect him much. Mattie's energetic advice puzzled him,
certainly; she spoke warmly in Sidney's cause--as if she were interested
in him, and had a right to take his part--was there any reason for that
brisk attack upon him, save her own outraged dignity at the slander
which, by his means, had indirectly fallen upon her? He kept pace with
her, but did not speak again. She was not inclined to reply with any
"graciousness" to his questions; he saw that he had annoyed her already
by the object of his mission, and that it was the better policy, the
truer act of courtesy, to maintain a rigid silence.
Mattie spoke first.
"This is the house," she said, stopping before a shop already closed for
the night. "You are still of the same mind?"
"Yes."
"You cannot do good here--you may do harm."
"Your pardon, but I am of a different opinion."
"Very well then."
Mattie gave a little impetuous tug to the bell; Ann Packet opened the
door, and Mattie and her unwilling escort passed into the shop, the
latter the object of immense attraction from the round-eyed,
open-mouthed serving-maid. Events flowed on so regularly and
monotonously in that quarter of the world, that the advent of a tall,
well-dressed stranger, was a thing to be remarked, and, Ann Packet
hoped, to be explained.
Mattie ran at once into the parlour, where her father was sitting over
his work. He looked up with a bright smile as she entered.
"Where's Sidney, father?"
"In his own room."
"Here is his cousin. Sidney must be prepared to see him, or to deny
himself to him."
"What cousin is that?" Mr. Gray asked, a little irrelevantly, being
taken aback by the news.
Mattie explained, and ran up-stairs. Mr. Gray pushed aside the stone
upon which he had been writing, turned up his coat-cuffs, and buttoned
his black coat to the chin. He knew the story in which that cousin had
played his part perfectly well; had he forgotten it, his remembrance of
old faces would not have betrayed him in this instance. Here was the man
to whom he had administered a fugitive lecture in the dead of night at
Ashford railway station, once more before him; here was a chance of
touching the heart of a most incorrigible sinner--a sinner worthy of
_his_ powers of conversion. He would tackle him at once; he would warn
him of the errors of his ways, and of the infallible results of them, if
he did not listen to the warning voice. He was just in the mood for
delivering a sermon, and there was no time like the present. Now for it!
Mr. Gray turned the handle of the parlour door and skipped into the
shop.
CHAPTER II.
MAURICE RECEIVES PLENTY OF ADVICE.
Maurice Hinchford had been told by Mattie to wait in the shop until she
returned; and, obedient to her mandate, he had taken his seat on a very
tall, uncomfortable stool, on which he could have remained perched more
at his ease had a balance-pole been provided. Here he had remained,
looking round the shop, and taking stock of its manifold
contents--glancing askance now and then at Ann Packet, whose curiosity
was not entirely satiated until Mr. Gray intruded on the scene.
At the first click of the door-handle, Maurice looked round expecting to
see his cousin, but was disappointed by the presence of a small and
agile man in black, who leaped on to a second chair beside him, and
commenced nodding his head vigorously.
"Good evening, sir," said Maurice. "Mr. Gray, I presume?"
"We have met before, sir--my name is Gray."
"Really!--I do not remember----"
"Possibly not, sir; there are many unpleasant reminiscences we are
always glad to escape from," said Mr. Gray. "I am connected with one.
You and I met on the platform of the Ashford railway station, one
winter's night, when Miss Wesden claimed my protection from a snare that
had been laid for her."
"Oh!"
Maurice had dropped into a hornet's nest. Whom next was he to confront
before his cousin Sidney came upon the scene?--from whom else was he to
hear a sharp criticism on those actions of the past, which no one
regretted more than he. Luck was against him that night.
"You remember me?" said Mr. Gray. "Before the train departed I gave you
a little counsel for your future course in life--a warning as to whither
a persistence in your evil habits would lead you--you remember?"
"Oh! yes--I remember."
"Have you taken that warning to heart?--I fear not. Have you been any
wiser, better, or more honest from that day?--I fear not. Have you not
rather proceeded on your evil course, despising the preaching of good
men, the warning of God's word, and gone on, on--down, down, without a
thought of the day when all your actions in this life would have to be
accounted for?"
Bang came Mr. Gray's hard hand on the counter, startling Maurice
Hinchford's nerves somewhat, and causing innumerable articles in the
glass cases thereon to jump spasmodically with the shock.
"I--" began Maurice.
"Don't interrupt me, sir--I will not be interrupted!--you have come
hither of your own free will, seeking us out, and fearing not the
evidence of our displeasure, and now, sir, you must hear what is wrong
in your acts, and what will be good for your soul. Do you know, oh!
sinner, that that soul is in deadly peril?"
"I know--"
"Sir, I will not be interrupted!" cried Mr. Gray again; "I am not
accustomed to be interrupted when I am endeavouring to awaken a hardened
conscience to a sense of its condition, and I will not be now. And I
call upon you at this time--now is the accepted time, sir, now is the
day of salvation--to amend, amend, amend! You have been a spendthrift,
profligate, everything that is bad; you have studied yourself in every
action of life, and neglected the common duties due to your neighbour as
well as to your Maker. You have gone on smiling in your sinful course,
heeding not the outcry of religious men against your hideous career,
recking not of the abyss into which you must plunge, and on the brink of
which, you--a man, with an immortal soul committed to your charge--are
standing now! One step more, perhaps, one wilful step forward, and you
are lost for ever. _Lost!_" he shouted, with the frenzy of a fanatic, as
well as the vehemence of a good man carried away by his subject; and the
shrill cry made the glasses round the gas lamps ring again, and vibrated
unpleasantly through Maurice's system. This was becoming unendurable.
"If you will allow me--" began Maurice.
"Sir, I will not be interrupted!" shouted Mr. Gray, with more hammering
upon the counter; "I know what is good for you, and I insist upon a
patient hearing. You are a man in danger of destruction, and I cannot
let you go blindfold into danger, without bidding you stop whilst time
is mercifully before you. Let me divide the subject, in the first place,
into three heads."
Maurice groaned inwardly, and stared at the preacher. There was no help
for it; there was no escape. He might jump to the floor and fly for his
life; or he might tip up Mr. Gray's chair, upset that gentleman, and
then gag him; but neither method would bring him nearer to that purpose
for which he had ventured thither; and until Sidney appeared there was
nothing to do but sit patiently under the infliction and listen to the
full particulars of his dangerous state. He put his hands on his knees,
surveyed the speaker, and submitted; in all his life he had never heard
such a bad opinion of himself, or listened to so sweeping a condemnation
of all his little infirmities. Mr. Gray ran on with great volubility,
pitching his voice unpleasantly high; Maurice's blood curdled, once he
was sure his hair rose upon his head, and more than once cold water
running down the curve of his back bone could not have more forcibly
expressed the sensations of the moment. And then those horrid bangs upon
the counter--always coming when least expected, and going off like
cannon shots in his ears; and the gesticulatory flourishes, and the
falsetto notes when more than usually excited, and, above all, the
unceasing flow of invective and persuasion--an unintermittent
shower-bath of the best advice, powerful enough to swamp a congregation.
Maurice's head ached; his eyes watered; the shop grew dizzy; the books
and prints revolved slowly round him; the ceiling might be the floor,
and the floor the ceiling, with the gas branch screwed upside down in
it, for what he knew of the matter; he lost the thread of the discourse,
and found the heads thereof inextricably confused; he understood that he
was a miserable sinner--the worst of sinners--or he should not be
sitting there with all those horrible noises in his ears; the figure in
the chair before him, heaved up and down, moved its arms right and left,
possibly threw double summersaults; it was all over with the
listener--he was going silly, he scarcely knew now with what object he
had come thither--oh! his head!--oh! this never-ending, awfully rapid
Niagara of words!
He made one feeble effort at resistance.
"Look here, old fellow--if you'll let me off--I'll--I'll build a
tabernacle," he burst forth; and again that terrible "Sir, I will not be
interrupted!" stopped all further intrusion upon the subject of
discourse.
Mr. Gray was delighted with that subject, with that listener--one of the
finest specimens of iniquity he had encountered for many years!--and he
did not think of stopping yet awhile. Where was the hurry?--time,
although valuable, could not be better spent than on that occasion--his
heart was in the task he had set himself, and he would do his very best!
Mattie came to the rescue at last; she had been watching the delivery of
the sermon for some time over the parlour blind, informing Sidney, who
had entered the parlour, of the energy of the father, and the patient
endurance of his cousin.
Disturbed as he had been by his cousin's arrival, and undecided for some
time as to the expediency of granting him an interview or not, Sid could
not refrain from a smile at Maurice's unenviable position. He remembered
Mr. Gray's first charge upon his sins, and the unsparing length to which
he had extended his remarks upon them; he could imagine the position of
Maurice Hinchford at that juncture, and realize the feelings with which
that gentleman heard and suffered.
"I think I'll go to him now, Sidney," said Mattie.
It had been Sidney and Mattie--as between brother and sister--for a long
time now.
"Will your father admire the intrusion?" asked Sid, drily.
"Perhaps he _is_ doing good," said Mattie, who regarded matters akin to
this more seriously than the blind man; "I'll wait a while."
And all this time Maurice was praying for help. It had not been a very
pleasant idea, that of facing his cousin for the first time; but now the
thought occurred to him that he would rather face the very worst--even
that obnoxious being, of whom the preacher earnestly warned him--than
hear this man inveigh against his sins any more.
Mattie quietly entered the shop. The spell was broken; Mr. Gray paused
with his right arm above his head--he was just coming down with another
bang on the counter--and Maurice leaped off his stool, to which he had
been transfixed, and shook hands violently with Mattie in his
bewilderment.
"He will see me, Miss Gray?"
"Yes. If you wish it."
"Thank you--thank you! Is he in the parlour?"
"Yes."
"And so be warned, young man--there is no excuse left you--not one, now.
You have been warned of all the evils which a guilty life incurs upon
those who go on their way defiantly!"
"Oh! yes--I have been warned, sir; there's not a doubt of it--I'm afraid
I have put you to a great deal of trouble?" said Maurice, not yet
recovered from his confusion.
"In a good cause, I don't mind trouble."
"Very kind of you, I'm sure. In the parlour, you said, Miss Gray?--then
I'll go to him at once. It must be getting very late."
Mr. Gray was proceeding to follow Maurice, when Mattie touched him on
the arm and arrested his progress.
"I think we had better leave them together. Their business is scarcely
ours."
"What?--ah! exactly so, my dear. But I wish you had not interrupted me
quite so unceremoniously--the impression I was making upon that young
man was wonderful! Great heaven! if it is left for me to work his
regeneration at the last, how proud I shall be! Mattie, I think I have
moved him--he has already said something about building a tabernacle, a
chapel, or something; but I scarcely caught the words at the
moment--think of that man, so wicked, and perverse, and designing,
proceeding after all, in the straight and narrow way! It's wonderful!"
In the meantime, Maurice Hinchford had entered the parlour, closed the
door behind him, and advanced towards the figure at the table, sitting
in the full light of the gas above his head. Maurice paused and looked
at him.
Sidney had changed; he was looking older; there was a thread or two of
silver in the dark waving hair; and the eyes, which blindness had not
dimmed, had that melancholy vagueness of expression, by which such eyes
are always characterized.
"Well, Sidney--I am here at last."
"I am sorry that you have taken the trouble to call."
"Indeed!--why?"
"I think you and I are best apart. We know each other far too well, by
this time."
"Have patience with me, Sidney. I think not."
He drew a chair nearer his cousin, and sat down. He had not offered to
shake hands with Sidney; he felt that his cousin would have resented
that attempt; that he was regarded as a man who had done a grievous
wrong, and from whom no professions of friendship or cousinly regard
would be received. He had come with a faint hope of doing good--in some
way or other, he scarcely knew himself; of extenuating in some
way--almost as indefinite to him--the past conduct which had placed him
in so sinister a light.
"Sidney," he said, "I wish that you had accepted that invitation to meet
me which I made you. I could have explained much."
"No explanation, Maurice, would have been satisfactory to me at that
time."
"Will it be now, then?" he asked, eagerly catching at the words which
implied possibly more than his cousin had wished to convey.
"I would prefer dismissing the subject altogether," Sid replied. "If you
will tell me candidly and honestly that you are sorry for the past, I
will be glad to hear it--and believe it."
"You bear me no malice, then?"
"No--I have outlived it."
"Then you will----"
"I will do nothing, but remain with those good friends who have taken
pity on my helplessness," he said, sternly.
"Sidney, pray understand me. I don't wish you to think me a wholly bad
man--God knows I am not that--I have never been that. I have had bad
friends, evil counsellors, if you will--mine was never a resolute
nature, but one easily led away from the first. I was an only son,
spoiled by an indulgent father, spoiled by the money which was lavished
on me, spoiled by the crowd which the spending of that money brought
about me--nothing more."
"That is bad enough," said Sid.
"I own that. I own that I was flattered to my moral ruin, Sidney--that
they, who called themselves my friends, cheered on that downfall, and
made it easy to me--scoffing at all worlds purer than their own. I was
young, vain, impressionable, and far from high-principled when I first
met Harriet Wesden at Brighton."
"I would rather not hear the story," said Sidney, uneasily.
Maurice paid no heed to the remark, but went on hastily; and Sidney,
suppressing his intention to arrest the narrative, sat still and
listened to its weaknesses, its mystery, and yet its truth.
"Harriet Wesden was a romantic school-girl--a young woman who knew
little of life, or had read the fictions, highly-coloured, concerning
it, till she might have belonged to dream-land for the realities about
her. She was led away by a senior scholar, too, as romantic as herself,
and more designing; and she and I met, talked, corresponded--fell in
love with each other."
"I deny that."
"Patience, Sidney; on my soul we did! I was not a villain, but a man led
away by my vanity and this girl's preference for me, and I loved her. I
don't say that it was a very true or passionate love; but it _was_ a
love, which burned fiercely enough for a time--which would have been
purer and better, but for the evil counsellor and false friend who was
always with me, to treat life, and love, and honour as a jest."
"The man I met at your house?"
"No. A man who has died since then--thank God, I was almost adding, for
he worked me much evil, and death only freed me from him."
"Go on."
"When Harriet Wesden and I parted, I believe we truly loved each other.
I had assumed a false name at the outset, and had maintained it
throughout our strange courtship--fearing the discovery of governesses,
and not knowing the character of her to whom my folly had lured me. I
was to go abroad at my father's wish, and I left, fully resolving to
write to her, and own all, and ask her if she would wait for me. Then
came long absence, fresh scenes, new friends, new dissipations, a belief
that she would easily forget me, being but a child when I had seen her
last; and so the old, old story, varied scarcely from the many that have
gone before it. Sidney, she did forget me--did discover that, after all,
it was but a fleeting fancy of her own."
"No."
"I think the next part of my story proves that. I met her again after an
absence of a few years, in the streets, near her house in Suffolk
Street, whither I had conducted my father to see yours. All my old
passion for her revived--but it was a struggle with her to endure my
presence at first. Still I was from the old days; I revived in her
memory the one romance that had been hers--I had not played a false part
therein, and could easily excuse my long silence. I found out the
friends whom she visited in the neighbourhood of New Cross; I formed
their acquaintance, and met Harriet Wesden more frequently. Her old
assertion that she never wished to see me again--that she loved another,
whose name she would never confess to me--wavered. I saw it, and,
carried away by the impression created, I did my best to win her."
"Away from me?--well, you succeeded. She wrote to me at that time,
confessing her inability to think of me longer as a lover."
"She wrote, not knowing her own mind, I believe. At that time she was
disturbed in thought concerning us--she was often cold and repellent to
me, and it was difficult to understand her. Well, Sid, throughout all
this, I loved her."
"Why keep to your false name, then?"
"I was ready to confess the truth, at every interview; then I put off
the avowal, after my old fashion. I knew by that time that your father
and yourself were lodging at the stationer's shop, and I formed a shrewd
guess as to the rival I had in her affections. Finally, Sid, there came
that night at New Cross, when she was carried away to Ashford. As I hope
to be saved, I had no design against her then; in good faith, I was her
escort to the railway station; it was only as we approached that
station, that the ruse suggested itself--that the devil whispered in my
ear his temptation. I knew the time of the mail-train; I had been by it
_en route_ to Paris only a few weeks since; I led her along,
unsuspecting of evil, to the other side of the railway station. She was
with me in the carriage before I became conscious of the heinousness of
the act I had committed. Even then I intended her no harm; I trusted all
to circumstance; I was even prepared to marry her, rather than lose her;
I was under a spell, Sidney!"
"Yes--the spell of the devil."
"When she discovered the truth, I found that I had secured her hate,
rather than her love; at Ashford station she faced me like a tigress,
and, full of the honest indignation that possessed her, held me up to
the shame I deserved before a host of people--pointed me out as a coward
and knave who had sought to cruelly deceive her. She claimed the
protection of that--that terrible man in the shop there--he was at
Ashford as you know--and I was glad to hide my head in the railway
carriage, and be borne away from his withering contempt. That's the
story. I will not tell you of the sorrow which I experienced for the
harm that I had done her--of the shame that has remained with me since
then--of the turn which she even gave to my character. Sidney, I would
have made any reparation in my power--but I was baffled and degraded,
and dared not look upon her any more."
"That man I met at your house--he knew the story?"
"He knew the beginning of it; and for Harriet Wesden's sake--and to
redeem her character in the mind of a man who has not a high estimate of
women--I told the end."
Sidney sat and thought for a while. Then he pronounced his verdict.
"All this assures me that you are easily led away--that it is only
chance that has kept you from being wholly a bad man. You are weak,
vacillating, and unprincipled--you are no Hinchford."
"I have tried to do my best all my life, but somehow failed," said
Maurice, ruefully; "impulse has led me wrong when my heart has meant
right--candidly, cousin, I have been a fool more than once. But you
cannot believe that I would do harm to any human being in cold blood?"
"Possibly not. But what virtue is there in that?"
"Let me add, Sidney, that I honestly believe that I have been altering
for the better for the last two years. I have seen the emptiness of all
my friends' professions; their greed of gain and love of self; have
turned heart-sick at their evil-speaking, lying, and slandering. I feel
that I haven't a friend; that I have 'used up' all the pleasures in the
world, and that there is nothing I care for in it."
"Yours is a bad state, that leads to worse, as a rule, Maurice."
"I know it--I feel it."
"And you are truly sorry for all the harm that you have done us in
life--Harriet, I, and others?"
"With all my heart--truly sorry."
"I can forgive you, then. I have been taught by good friends to be more
charitable in my heart towards men's motives. A year ago, I thought I
should have hated you all my life."
He held forth his hand, which Maurice took and shook heartily in his.
"Understand me," said Sidney, still coldly, "I forgive you, but I do not
need your help, and your presence, under any circumstances, will always
give me pain. We shall never be true friends--we shall respect each
other better apart."
"Is it fair to think that? You who have heard me declaim against my vain
and objectless life."
"Yours is a life to rejoice at, and to do good with, not to mourn over.
Seek a wife, man, and settle down in your sphere, honoured by good men,
and honouring good things."
"Ah! fair advice; but the wife will come for my money's sake, for the
good things which _I_ possess, and which she and her relations will
honour in their way, with all their heart, and soul, and strength!"
"Timon of Athens!" said Sidney, almost satirically.
"Sidney, I would give up all my chances for one or two true friends. You
don't know what a miserable wretch I am!"
"You will be better presently. You have seen too much life lately, and
the reaction has rendered you _blase_. Patience and wait. As for the
wife----"
"Well?"
"Seek out Harriet Wesden again, and do her justice."
"But you----"
"She never loved me, Maurice; you were her first love, and her last. She
is leading a life that is unfit for her, and you can make amends for all
the shadows you have cast upon it."
"I could never face her."
"Then you are a greater coward than I thought."
"It's odd advice," he muttered; "seek out Harriet Wesden again! Oh! I
know how that will end, and what 'good' will result from that. But _you_
wish it?"
"Yes," said Sidney, after a moment's further reflection.
"And her address?"
Sidney repeated it; he took it down in his pocket-book, and then rose to
depart.
"I am going now. I may trouble you once again, Sidney, if you will allow
me."
"As you will--if you think it necessary."
Maurice Hinchford shuffled with his feet uneasily, keeping his eyes
fixed on his blind cousin.
"May I ask," he said at last, "if--if you are happy here?"
"Yes, as happy as it is possible for one in my condition to be."
"They are kind to you?"
"Very kind."
"They are a sharp couple--father and daughter--they----"
"Oh! don't speak ill of them, Maurice; you do not know them, and cannot
estimate them at their just worth."
"I might endure the daughter, for hers is a pleasant sharpness that one
doesn't object to; but, oh! that dreadful vigorous little parson, or
whatever he is."
"Good night," said Sidney, meaningly.
"One moment--I'm off in a minute now, Sid. There's one thing I did wish
just to allude to--nothing about money, mind," he added hastily,
noticing Sidney's heightened colour and proud face, and remembering
Mattie's previous caution.
"What is it?" asked Sidney.
"I did wish to say how sorry I was to hear of the calamity, that had
befallen you--that the bad news, which was told me to-day for the first
time, has shocked me very much. But you'll not believe me--you still
think I'm hard, cruel, and indifferent."
"No, I don't think that. But I don't care to dwell upon a painful
topic."
"And about advice--what medical advice have you had, may I ask?"
"Not any."
"No advice!--why not?"
"I was told long ago that when blindness seized me, it would be
irretrievable. I was warned of its approach by an eminent man, who was
not likely to make a mistake."
"We are all liable to mistakes in life," said Maurice, "and it might
happen----"
"Pray dismiss the subject, Maurice."
"I met with a foreign oculist in Paris--he was an Italian, I
think--who----"
"Good night--good night," said Sidney, hastily; "when a man has been
trying hard to teach himself resignation, it is not fair to disturb him
with ideas like these."
"Your pardon, Sid--I am going at once. Good night."
"Good night."
Sidney did not extend his hand again, and Maurice made no attempt to
part in a more friendly manner than they had met; profuse civilities
could do no good, and though Maurice had gained his cousin's
forgiveness, he had not roused his respect, or won upon his sympathy.
He passed into the shop, and took up his hat that he had left there on
the counter. Mr. Gray looked at him, as at a fine subject which adverse
fate was to snatch away from his experiments.
"You are going, young man?"
"Yes, sir--I hope I have not put you or your daughter to any
inconvenience."
"No, sir," was his reply, beginning to turn up the collar of his coat
above his ears, "no inconvenience. You are a stranger to this
neighbourhood, and I'll just see you in the straight way, if you'll
allow me."
"Oh! dear no, thank you," said the alarmed Maurice; "I'm well up in the
way now--I could not think of taking you away from home at this time of
night--thank you, thank you!"
He seized his hat, dashed at the lock, wrenched open the door, and flew
for his life down the dark streets--no matter whither, or how far out of
his route, so that he escaped Mr. Gray's companionship.
Half an hour afterwards, he was at New Cross railway station--the scene
of his old duplicity--arranging for a telegraphic message to a Dr.
Bario, resident in Paris.
CHAPTER III.
A DECLARATION.
Harriet Wesden had settled down like the rest of the world, that is,
this little world wherein live and breathe--at least we hope so--these
characters of ours.
She had settled down! Life had taken its sombre side with her; the force
of circumstances had set her apart from those for whom her heart
yearned; she became bound more to this dull home; disappointment had
wondrously sobered her; when her heart had been at its truest and best,
it had seemed as though the whole world had turned against her, and
misjudged her.
There was no romance in her after that; her romance had begun early and
died early--for her share in it, she was heartily ashamed. To look back
upon that past, note her weakness, and whither it had led her, was to
make her cheeks flush, and her bosom heave; in those sober after-days
that had come to her, she could scarcely comprehend the past.
Women change occasionally like this--more especially women whose hearts
are sound, but whose judgments have not always been correct. She had met
deceit face to face; her own presence of mind had only saved her perhaps
from betrayal; she had passed through a vortex--and, escaping it, the
shock had sobered her for life.
Harriet Wesden turned "serious"--a very good turn for her, and for all
of us, if we could only think so. Still, serious people--more especially
serious young people--are inclined to dash headlong at religion, and
even neglect home duties, duties to friends, and neighbours, and
themselves, for religious ones. They verge on the extremes even in
sanctity, and extremes verge on the ridiculous.
Harriet Wesden gave up life's frivolities, and became a trifle austere
in her manner; she had found a church to her taste, and a minister to
her taste--a minister who verged on extremes, too, and yet was one of
the best-meaning, purest-minded men in the world.
Harriet Wesden became his model member of the flock, as he became her
model shepherd. She lived for him, and his services, and the bran span
new church he had built for himself in the square at the back. She
missed never a service, week-days or Sundays; early prayers, at
uncomfortable hours, when the curates were sleeping, and the pew-opener
audibly snored--daily sermons, evening services, special services for
special out-of-the-way saints, and Sunday services innumerable.
Let it be written here, lest our meaning be misinterpreted, that Harriet
Wesden had improved vastly with all this--was a better, more energetic,
and devout woman. If she went _too often_ to church--that is quite
possible--if she were a trifle "high" and pinned her faith on
decorations, if she thought the world all vanity and vexation of spirit,
if she were a little proud of carrying outward and visible signs of her
own inward and spiritual grace, if she even neglected her father, at
times--poor old Wesden, who sadly needed cheerful society now--still the
end was good, and she was at her best then. Serious people _will_ appear
a little disagreeable to people who are not serious--but then what do
serious people think of their mundane critics, or care for them?
Harriet Wesden fancied that she had set herself apart from the
world--that its vanities and belongings scarcely had power to arrest her
steady upward progress. It did not strike her that whilst she remained
in the world, the sorrows, joys, and histories of its denizens must have
power to affect her.
Sidney Hinchford had mistrusted her--the man for whom she had been
anxious to make sacrifices, had refused them, and discredited their
genuineness; her only friend, in whom she thought there could not be a
possibility of guile, had supplanted her. From that hour let her set
herself apart from them; bear no ill-feeling towards them, but keep to
her new world. Her life was not their lives, and they were best away
from her. After that set in more strongly the seriousness to which we
have alluded, and all former trace of Harriet Wesden's old self
submerged for good--and all.
Mattie and Harriet met at times; Mattie would not give up the old
friend, the girl she had loved so long and faithfully. Despite the new
reserve--even austerity--that had suddenly sprung up, Mattie called at
regular intervals, took her place between Harriet and Mr. Wesden, and
spoke for a while of the old times. Harriet's manner puzzled her, but
there seemed no chance of an explanation of it. Her quick observation
detected Harriet's new ideas of life's duties, and she did not intrude
upon them, or utter one word by way of argument, or in opposition. It
happened, sometimes, that Harriet would be absent during Mattie's
visits--"gone to church," old Wesden would say, ruefully--and Mattie
would take her place by the deserted father's side, and play the part of
daughter to him till Harriet's return.
Harriet seldom spoke of Sidney Hinchford to our heroine--he did not
belong to her diminished world; she flattered herself that there was no
thought of him, or of what might have been, to perplex her with new
vanities. When the name of Sidney Hinchford intruded upon the subject of
discourse, she heard it coldly enough. She was always glad to learn that
Sidney was well, and doing well; it had even been a relief to her to
know that the business, after a stand-still of some months, had taken a
turn in the right direction; but, when all was well, what was there to
agitate _her_? If Sidney were ill, and needed her help, she would have
taken her place at his side, perhaps; if Mattie were ill even--though in
her heart she felt that she did not love Mattie so well as formerly--she
would have devoted herself to her service; but they were both well,
living under the same roof with Mattie's father, and all things had
changed so since Suffolk Street times.
Harriet was from home at her usual devotions, and her father was
endeavouring to amuse himself, as he best might under the circumstances,
when a stranger, who preferred not to give his name, requested an
audience of Miss Wesden. Miss Wesden not being at home, Mr. Wesden would
do for the nonce, and the stranger was, therefore, shown into the
parlour.
The _ci-devant_ stationer put on his spectacles, and looked suspiciously
at the new comer. Mr. Wesden was a man of the world, and hard to be
imposed upon. A man more nervous and irritable with every day, but
having his wits about him, as the phrase runs.
"Good evening," said the stranger.
"Good evening," responded Mr. Wesden. "Ahem--if it's a subscription for
anything, I don't think that I have anything to give away."
"My name is Hinchford--Maurice Hinchford--possibly better known to you
by the unenviable _alias_ of Maurice Darcy."
"Oh! you're that vagabond, are you?--well, what do you want? You haven't
come to torment my daughter again?" he said, in an excited manner;
"you've done enough mischief in your day."
"I am aware of it, sir--I come to offer every reparation in my power."
"We don't want any of that sort of stuff, Mr. Hinchford."
"It's late in the day to offer an apology--to attempt an explanation of
my conduct in the past; but if you would favour me with a patient
hearing, I should be obliged, sir."
"I've nothing better to do," said Mr. Wesden; "take a seat, sir."
Maurice Hinchford seated himself opposite Mr. Wesden, and commenced his
narrative, disguising and extenuating nothing, but attempting to analyze
the real motives which had actuated his past conduct--motives which had
been a little incomprehensible, taken altogether, and were therefore
difficult to make clear before an auditor, as we have seen in our
preceding chapter.
Mr. Wesden rubbed the back of his ear, stared hard over Maurice's head
at the opposite wall, till Maurice looked behind him to see what was
nailed up there; wound up by an emphatic "Humph!" when Maurice had
concluded.
"Therefore, you see I was not so very much to blame, sir--that is, that
there were at least extenuating circumstances."
"Were they, though?"
"Why, surely I have proved that?"
"Can't say you have--can't say that I plainly see it at all. But, then,
I haven't so clear a head as I used to have--oh! not by a long way!"
"I hope at least you understand that I am heartily ashamed of my past
conduct?"
"I am glad to hear that, sir."
"I have become a different man."
"Been in a reformatory, perhaps?" suggested Mr. Wesden.
"I have found my reformatory in the world."
"Lucky for you."
"And the fact is, that as I have always loved your daughter--as only my
own wicked impulse turned your daughter's heart away from me, I have
come from abroad with the hope of making all the restitution in my
power, by offering her my hand and fortune!"
"Have you, though?"
Mr. Wesden stared harder than ever at this piece of information. Maurice
took another glance over his shoulder, and then commenced a second
series of explanations, speaking of his position and means, two things
to which Mr. Wesden had been never indifferent.
"I don't know that it would be a bad thing for her," said Mr. Wesden;
"she never talked to me about her love affairs--girls never do to their
fathers--and very likely I haven't understood her all this time."
"Very likely not."
"Perhaps it is about you, and not the other one that has altered her so
much. Any nonsense alters a woman, if she dwells upon it."
"Ahem!--exactly so."
"You may as well wait till she comes in now," said Mr. Wesden; "that's
business."
"Sir, I am obliged to you."
"If you don't mind a pipe, I'll think it over myself, and you need not
talk any more just at present. We don't have much talk in this house,
and you've rather _gallied_ me, Mr. Hinchford."
"Any commands I will attend to with pleasure."
Maurice Hinchford crossed his arms and sat back in his chair to reflect
upon all this; for a lover he was sad and gloomy--scarcely satisfied
with the step which he had taken, and yet brought to it by his own
conscience, that had been roused from its inaction by his cousin Sidney.
Here a life had been shadowed by his means, and he thought that it was
in his power to brighten it; here was good to be done, and he felt that
it was his duty at least to attempt the performance of it. Mr. Wesden
sat and smoked his pipe at a little distance from him, and revolved in
his own mind the strange incident which had flashed athwart the monotony
of daily life, and scared him with its suddenness. In Harriet he had
probably been deceived, and it was this young man whom she had loved,
and whose eccentric courses had rendered her so difficult to comprehend.
All the past morbidity, the past variable moods, the fluctuations in her
health, were to be laid to this man's charge, and it was well that he
had come at last, perhaps. Harriet was a good daughter, an estimable
girl, who loved her Bible, and did good to others, but she was not a
happy girl. Sorrowful as well as serious, the holiness of her life had
not brightened her thoughts or lightened her heart, and was not
therefore true holiness, this old man felt assured. Behind the veil
there had been something hidden, and it was rather Maurice Hinchford
than his blind cousin who stood between her and the light.
"I think you have done right to come," said Mr. Wesden, after half an
hour's deliberation.
"I think so, too," was the response.
At the same moment, a summons at the door announced Harriet Wesden's
return.
"I'll open the door myself, and leave you to explain," he said; "don't
move."
Maurice felt tight about the waistcoat now; the romance was coming back
again to the latter days; the heroine of it was at the threshold waiting
for him. This was a sensation romance, or the roots of his hair would
not have tingled so!
Mr. Wesden opened the door for his daughter, and allowed her to proceed
half-way down the narrow passage before he gave utterance to the news.
"There has been a visitor waiting for you these last two hours,
Harriet."
"For me!" said Harriet, listlessly; and, dreaming not of so strange an
intrusion on her home, she turned the handle of the door and entered the
parlour. Then she stopped transfixed, scarcely believing her sight,
scarcely realizing the idea that it was Maurice Darcy standing there
before her in her father's house.
Maurice had risen.
"I fear that I have surprised you very much, Miss Wesden," said he,
hoarsely; "that possibly this was not the best method of once again
seeking a meeting with you. This time with your father's consent, at
least."
"Sir, I do not comprehend; I cannot see that any valid reason has
brought you to this house."
"I think it has--I hope it has."
"Impossible!"
"Miss Wesden, I have been relating a long story to your father--may I
beg you to listen to me in your turn?"
"If it relate to the past, I must ask you to excuse me," was the cold
reply.
"My guilty past it certainly relates to--I pray you for an honest
hearing. Ah! Miss Wesden, you are afraid of me, still."
"Afraid!--no, sir."
Harriet Wesden looked at him scornfully, with a quick, almost an
impatient hand removed her bonnet and shawl, and then passed to her
father's seat by the table, standing thereat still, by way of hint as to
the length of the interview. She was more beautiful than ever; more
grave and statuesque, perhaps, but very beautiful. It was the face that
he had loved in the days of his wild youth, and it shone before him once
again, a guiding star for the future stretching away beyond that little
room.
He would have spoken, but she interrupted him.
"Understand me, Mr. Darcy--Mr. Hinchford, I may say now, I presume--I
wish to hear no excuses for the past, no explanations of your wilful
conduct therein--I have done with that and you. If you be here to
apologize, I accept that apology, and request you to withdraw. If
matters foreign to the past have brought you hither, pray be speedy, and
spare me the pain of any longer interview than necessary."
"Miss Wesden, I must, in the first place, speak of the past."
"I will not have it!" cried Harriet, imperiously; "have I not said so?"
The minister round the corner would have rubbed his eyes with amazement
at the fire in those of his neophyte. He would have thought the change
savoured too strongly of the earth from which he and her, and other
high-pressure members of his flock, had soared just a little above--say
a foot and a half, or thereabouts.
"It is the past that brings me back to you, Harriet--the past which I
would atone for by giving you my name and calling you my wife. I have
been a miserable and guilty wretch--I ask you to raise me from my
self-abasement by your mercy and your love?"
He moved towards her with all the fire of the old love in his
eyes--those eyes which had bewildered her like a serpent's, in the old
days. But the spell was at an end, and there was no power to bring her
once more to his arms. She recoiled from him with a suppressed scream;
her colour went and came upon her cheeks; she fought twice with her
utterance before she could reply to him.
"Mr. Hinchford, you insult me!"
"No, not that."
"You insult me by your shameless presence here. I told you half a minute
ago that I forgave you all the evil in the past. _I don't forgive
it_--no true woman ever forgave it yet in her heart. I hate you!"
The minister round the corner would have collapsed at this, as well he
might have done. Only that evening had he begged his congregation to
love their enemies, and return good for evil, and Harriet Wesden had
thought how irresistible his words were, and how apposite his
illustrations. And fresh from good counsel, this young woman who had
been unmoved for twelve long months, and during that time been about as
animate as the Medicean Venus, now told her listener there that she
hated him with all her heart!
"Enough, Miss Wesden. I have but to express my sorrow for the past, and
take my leave. Forgive at least the motive which has led me to seek you
out again."
"One moment--one moment!" said Harriet.
She fought with her excitement for an instant, and then with a hand
pressed heavily upon her bosom, to still the passionate throbbing there,
she said:
"You must not go till I have explained also; you have sought out a girl
whose young life you cruelly embittered by your perfidy--let her explain
something in defence. Mr. Hinchford, I never loved you--as I stand here,
and as this may be my last moment upon earth, I swear that I never loved
you in my life! There was a girl's vanity, in the first place--almost a
child's vanity, fostered by pernicious teaching of frivolous
companions--afterwards there was a foolish romantic incertitude--vanity
still perhaps--that led me to trust in you, and to give up one who loved
me, and for whom I ought to have died rather than have deserted--but
there was no love! I knew it directly that I guessed your cowardice, for
I despised you utterly then, and understood the value of the prize, my
own misconduct had nearly forfeited. I was a weak woman, and you saw my
weakness, and hastened to mislead me; but the wrong you would have done
me taught me what was right, and, thank God! I was strong enough to save
myself! There, sir, if only to have told you this, I am glad that you
have sought an interview. Now, if you are a gentleman--go!"
He hesitated for an instant, as though he could have wished, even in the
face of her defiance, to tell his story for the third time; then he
turned away, and went slowly out of the room, defeated at all points,
his colours lowered and trailing in the dust. Outside he found Mr.
Wesden, standing with his back to the street door, smoking his pipe, and
regarding the hall mat abstractedly. He looked up eagerly as Maurice
Hinchford advanced.
"Well?--well?" he asked feverishly.
"Yes, it is well," was the enigmatic and gloomy answer; "I see what a
fool I have been, Mr. Wesden. I know myself for the first time--good
evening."
Mr. Wesden opened the door for him, and he passed out; the old man
watched him for a while, and then returned to his favourite chair in the
back parlour.
Harriet ran to him as he entered, and flung her arms round his neck.
"I have you to love, and look to still. Not quite alone--even yet!"
CHAPTER IV.
MORE TALK OF MARRIAGE AND GIVING IN MARRIAGE.
Maurice Hinchford passed away from this story's scene of action.
Suddenly and completely he disappeared once more, and they in the humble
ranks of life knew nothing of his whereabouts. From Paris his father had
received a letter that perplexed and even irritated him, for it was
mysterious, and the head of the house of Hinchford detested mystery.
"I have run over here for a week or two--perhaps longer, perhaps less,
according to circumstances," Maurice wrote; "you who are ever indulgent
will excuse this flitting, which I will account for on my return. If
anything calls for my especial attention at the bank, telegraph to me,
and I will come back."
No especial business was likely to demand Maurice's return; the bank
went on well without him, good man of business as he was when he set his
mind to it. His father's indulgence excused the flitting, though he
shook his head over his son's eccentricity, after the receipt of the
incomprehensible epistle. "Another of those little weaknesses to which
Maurice had been subject," thought the indulgent father; "time he grew
out of them now, and married and settled, like other young men of his
age. If he would only sow his wild oats, what an estimable man and
honoured member of society he would be. Poor Maurice!"
Sidney Hinchford, who, from his cousin's hints, had anticipated a second
visit from Maurice, felt even a little disappointed at his
non-appearance. Sidney was curious; he would have liked to know the
result of Maurice's proposal to Harriet Wesden, but he kept his
curiosity to himself, and did not even mention to Mattie the advice
which he had bestowed upon his cousin. He knew how the matter had ended
well enough; Maurice was in earnest, and would beat down all doubts of
his better nature developing itself at last; the old love-story would be
resumed, and all would go merry as a marriage bell with those two. He
congratulated himself upon having done some good even at the eleventh
hour, in having helped to promote the true happiness of the girl he had
once loved.
Once loved!--yes, he was sure that passion belonged to the past; that it
had died out of inaction, and left him free to act. He was not happy in
his freedom; his heart was growing heavier than ever, but he kept _that_
fact back for his friends' sakes, and was, to them, a faint reflex of
the Sidney Hinchford whom they had known in better days.
He fell no longer into gloomy reveries; he took part in the conversation
of the hour; there came, now and then, a pleasant turn of speech to his
lips, a laugh with him--the old rich, hearty laugh--was not a very rare
occurrence; he believed himself resigned to his affliction, content with
his position, and, for many mercies that had been vouchsafed unto him,
he was truly grateful.
How to show his gratitude did not perplex him; he had made up his mind
after Ann Packet had given him a piece of hers--he had watched for
words, signs, sighs--he was only biding his time to speak. But he
remained in doubt; it was difficult to probe to the depths; he was a
blind man, and far from a clever one; he could only guess by sounds, and
test all by Mattie's voice, and he was, therefore, still unsettled.
He resolved to end all, at last, in a quiet and methodical manner,
befitting a man like him. He was probably mistaken; he had no power to
make any one happy; his confession might dissolve the partnership
between Mr. Gray and himself--for how could Mattie and he live in the
same house together after his avowal and rejection?
But he had made up his mind, and he went to work in his old
straightforward way one evening when Mattie was absent, and Mr. Gray was
busy at his work beside him.
"Mr. Gray," said he, "I want to bespeak your sole attention for a few
minutes."
"Certainly, Sidney," was the reply. "Shall I put my work away?"
"If you do not mind, for awhile."
"There, then!"
Sidney was some time beginning, and Mr. Gray said--
"It's about the business--you're tired of it?"
"On the contrary, I am pleased with it, and the work it throws in _my_
way. But don't you find me a little bit of a nuisance always here?"
"You know better than that. Next to my daughter, do you hold a place in
my heart."
"Thank you. Now, have you ever thought of me marrying?"
"Of _you_ marrying!" he echoed, in a surprised tone, that was somewhat
feigned. "Why, whom are you to marry, Sid?"
"Mattie, if she'll have me."
The lithographer rubbed his hands softly together--it was coming true at
last, this dream of Mattie and his own!
"If she'll have you!" he echoed, again. "Well, you must ask her that."
"Do you think she'll have me--a blind fellow like me? Is it quite right
that she should, even?"
"I don't know--I have often thought about that," said Mr. Grey,
forgetting his previous expression of astonishment. "I don't see where
the objection is, exactly, Sidney. You're not like most blind men,
dulled by your affliction--and Mattie is very different from most girls.
If she thought that she could do more good by marrying you, make you
more happy, she would do it."
"I don't want a sacrifice--I want to make her happy," said Sidney, a
little peevishly. "If she could not love me, as well as pity me, I
wouldn't marry her for all the world."
"You must ask her, young friend--not me, then."
"But you do not refuse your consent?"
"No. My best wishes, young man, for your success with the dearest, best
of girls. I," laying his hand on Sidney's shoulder for a moment, "don't
wish her any better husband."
Sidney had not exhibited any warmth of demeanour in breaking the news to
Mr. Gray; many men might have remarked his quiet way of entering upon
the subject. But Mr. Gray was of a quiet, unworldly sort himself, and
took Sidney's love for granted. How was it possible to know Mattie, to
live beneath the same roof with her, and not love her very passionately?
"I think--mind, I only think--that Mattie will not refuse you, Sidney,"
said Mr. Gray; "she understands you well, and knows thoroughly your
character. It's an unequal match, remembering all the bye-gones,
perhaps--but you are not likely to taunt her with them, or to think her
any the worse for them, knowing what she really is in these days, thanks
to God!"
"Taunt her!--good heaven!"
"Hush! that's profane. And the match is not very unequal, considering
the help you need--and what a true comforter she will be to you. We
Grays are of an origin lost in obscurity; you Hinchfords come of a grand
old stock--you don't consider this?"
"Not a bit."
"Nor I; but then, men who don't spring from old families are sure to say
so. I'm not particularly struck with the advantages of having possessed
a forefather who came over with the Conqueror. William the Norman
brought over a terrible gang of cut-throats and robbers, and there's not
a great deal to one's credit in being connected with that lot."
Sidney laughed.
"I never regarded it in that light before. What an attack on our old
gentility!"
"Gentility will not be much affected, Sidney. Have you anything more to
tell me?"
"Nothing now."
"Not that if you marry Mattie, the crabbed, disputatious local preacher
may stop with you?"
"I hope he will. He has been a good friend to me, and will keep so, for
his daughter's sake."
"And for your own, young man. I'll go back to my work now."
But the work was in his way after that, and all the effects of his
strong will could not make it endurable. Sidney's revelation had
disturbed his work; he would try a little silent praying to himself--a
selfish prayer he felt it was, and therefore no sound escaped him--that
this choice of Sidney's might bring comfort and happiness to his
daughter and himself.
He was sitting with his large-veined hands spread before his face, and
Sidney was wrapt in thoughts of the change that might be in store for
him, when Mattie knocked at the door.
"Sit here--I shan't come back yet awhile. We may as well end this part
of the business at once."
Mattie entered, found her father busy behind the counter with his stock,
said a few words, and passed into the parlour.
It was a second version of the proceedings at Camberwell. The father
holding aloof, and giving suitor and maiden fair play.
CHAPTER V.
MATTIE'S ANSWER.
Sidney Hinchford heard the door open, and knew that the end was come. In
a few minutes was to be decided the tenor of his after-life. He did not
move, but remained with his hands clasped upon the table--a grave and
silent figure in the lamp-light.
"What makes you so thoughtful to-night, Sid?"
The more formal Mr. Sidney had been dropped long since; Mattie had
resisted the encroachment as long as it was in her power, but the
friendship between them had been increased as well as their intimacy,
and the more familiar designation was the more natural of the two.
"Am I looking very thoughtful, then, Mattie?"
"Oh! so cross and black!"
"Black?--eh!" he repeated; "that's a singular colour to seize upon a
man's countenance, when he is agitated and hopeful. Come and sit here by
my side, Mattie, and hear what news I have wherewith to startle you."
"Not bad news?" she asked.
"You shall judge."
Mattie guessed the purport of the news, and there had been no necessity
for her last query. She knew all that was coming now, and so prepared
herself for a revelation that she had seen advancing months ago. Months
ago, she had wondered how she should act on this occasion, what manner
she should adopt, and in what way reply to him? She had rehearsed it in
her mind, with fear and trembling, and tear-dimmed eyes; she had dreamed
of it, and been very happy in her dreams; and now at last she was at
fault, and her resources not to be relied on. Very pale, with her mind
disturbed, and her heart throbbing, she took her place by his side,
shawled and bonneted as she was, and waited for the end.
Sidney broke the ice. The first few words faltered somewhat on his lip,
but he gathered nerve as he proceeded, and finally related very
calmly--almost too calmly--and plainly, the state of his feelings
towards her.
"Your father and I have been speaking of you during your absence; I have
suggested to him a change of life for myself and you--if you will only
consent to sacrifice a life for my sake! A selfish, and an inconsiderate
request, Mattie, which I should not have thought of, had I not fancied
that it was in my power to make you a good husband, a true and faithful
husband, and to love you more dearly as a wife than friend. But always
understand, Mattie, that on your side it will be a sacrifice--that no
after-repentance, only my death, can relieve you from the incubus--that
for life you are tied to a blind man, and that all natural positions of
life are reversed, when I ask you to be my guide, protector, comforter!
Always remember, too, Mattie, that without me you will be free, and your
own mistress; you, a young woman, to whom will come fairer and brighter
chances!"
It was an odd manner of proposing; possibly Mattie thought so herself,
for she raised her eyes from the ground, and looked at him long and
steadily.
"Sidney, have you well reflected on this step?" she asked.
"I have."
"Thought well of the sacrifice of all the past hopes you have had?--of
the _incubus_ that I may be to you some day--that without me you will be
free, and your own master--you, to whom the fairer, brighter chance may
come, when too late! Sidney, we know not what a day may bring forth!"
"My fate is in your hands, Mattie."
"What I have been, you know--you must have thought of lately. What I am
now, a poor, plain girl, self-taught and homely, who may shame you with
her ignorance--you know too. Sidney, I have dwelt upon this
lately--until this night, now I am face to face with the truth, I
thought that I had made up my mind."
"To refuse me?"
"No--to accept you. To be your loving wife through life, aiding you, and
keeping you from harm; but, now I shrink back from my answer!"
"Ah!" he said, mournfully; "it is natural."
"Not for my own sake," she added, quickly, "but for yours! For your
happiness, not mine! Sidney, you have _not_ settled down; you are not
resigned to this present lot in life; there is a restlessness which you
subdue now you are well and strong, but which may defeat you in the days
to come. Years hence, I may be a trouble to you, a regret--you, a
gentleman's son, and I--a stray! I may have made amends for my past
life, but I cannot forget it; there will come times when to you and me
the memory may be very bitter yet!"
"No, no!"
"Sidney, when I was that neglected child, I think I had a grateful
heart; for I appreciated all the kindness that helped me upwards, and
turned me from the dangerous path I was pursuing. I did not forget one
friend who stretched his helping hand towards me--I have remembered them
all in my progress, the agents of that good God, whose will it was that
I should not be lost! Sidney, I would marry you out of gratitude for
that past, if I honestly believed you built your happiness upon me; but
I could not let you marry _me_ out of gratitude, or think to make me
happy by a share of affection that had no real existence. I would do all
for you!" she said, vehemently; "but you must make no effort to raise
_me_ from any motives but your love!"
Sidney started--coloured. Had he misunderstood Mattie until that
day?--was he the victim of his own treacherous thoughts after all?--the
dupe of an illusion which he had hoped to foster by believing in
himself?
"Sidney, I will be patient and wait for the love--hope in it advancing
nearer and nearer every day--strive for it even, if you will, and it
lies in my power. But I am above all charity."
"Mattie, you are not romantic? You do not anticipate from me, in my
desolate position, all the passionate protestations of a lover? You will
believe that I look forward to you as the wife in whom alone rests the
last chance of happiness for me?"
"We cannot tell what is our last chance," said Mattie; "it is beyond our
foresight--God will give us many chances in life, and the best may not
have fallen to your share or mine. Sidney, there _was_ a chance of
happiness for you once--on which you built, and in which you never
thought of me--do you regret that now?" she asked, with a woman's
instinctive fear that the old love still lingered in his heart.
"Mattie, I regret nothing in the past. And in the future, I am hopeful
of your aid and love. Can I say more?"
"Sidney," said Mattie, after a second pause, "I will not give you my
answer to-night--I will not say that I will be your wife, for better for
worse, until this day month. It is a grave question, and I ought not to
decide this hastily. I must think--I _must_ think!"
"Ah! Mattie, you don't love me, or it would be easy enough to say
'Yes,'" said Sidney.
"No, not easy."
"I can read my fate--eternal isolation!" he said gloomily.
"Patience--you can trust me; let me think for a while if I can trust in
you. You do not wish my unhappiness, Sid?"
"God forbid!"
"We have been good friends hitherto--brother and sister. For one more
month, let us keep brother and sister still; there is no danger of our
teaching ourselves to love one another less in that period. In that
month will you think seriously of me--not of what will make me
happy--but what will render _you_ happy, as the fairy books say, for
ever afterwards? Remember that it is for ever in this life, and that I
am to sit by your side and take that place in your heart which you had
once reserved for another--think of all this, and be honest and fair
with me."
"I see. You distrust my love. You have no faith in my stability."
"I say nothing, Sidney, but that I feel it would be wrong to answer
hastily. Are you offended with my caution?"
"No--God bless you, Mattie!--you are right enough."
"This day month I will take my place at your side, and give you truly
and faithfully my answer. It is not a long while to wait--we shall have
both thought more intently of this change."
She left him, to begin his thoughts anew; her reply had disturbed his
equanimity; he neither understood Mattie nor himself just then. What had
perplexed him?--what had come over the spirit of his dream to trouble
his mind, or conscience, in so strange a manner?
Mattie went to her room and locked the door upon her thoughts, upon that
new wild sense of happiness which she had never known before, and which,
despite the character she had assumed--yes, assumed!--she could not keep
in the background of that matter-of-fact life, now vanishing away from
her. She knew that she had acted for the best in giving him time to
think again of the nature of his proposition--in restraining that
impulse to weep upon his shoulder, and feel those strong arms enfolding
her to his breast. The old days had startled her when he had spoken in
so firm and hard a manner; that figure of the past which had been all to
him flitted there still, and held her back, and stood between herself
and him, despite the new happiness she felt, and which no past could
wholly scare away.
She believed in her own coming happiness; that he would love her better
for the delay--understand more fully why she hesitated. When the time
came to answer "Yes!" she would explain all that had perplexed her,
arrested her assent midway, and filled her with the fears of his want of
love for her, his future discontent when irrevocably bound to her. Twice
in life now he had offered his hand in marriage; twice had the answer
been deferred, for reasons unakin to each other. It was singular; but
this time all would end happily. He would love her with his whole heart,
as he had loved Harriet Wesden, and she would be his proud and happy
wife, cheering his prospects, elevating his thoughts, doing her best to
throw across his darkened life a gleam or two of sunshine, in which he
might rejoice.
She was very happy--for the doubts that had kept her answer back, went
farther and farther away as she dwelt upon all this. There was a
restless beating at her heart, which robbed her of calmness for awhile,
but it was not fear that precipitated its action, and the noises in her
ears might be the distant clash of marriage bells, which she had never
dreamed would ring for him and her!
END OF BOOK THE SEVENTH.
BOOK VIII.
MORE LIGHT.
CHAPTER I.
A NEW HOPE.
Whether Sidney Hinchford gave much ulterior thought to his proposal, is
a matter of some doubt. He had made up his mind before his conversation
with Mr. Gray and daughter, and had there been no real love in his
heart, he would not have drawn back from his offer. His life apart from
business was akin to his business life in _that_; reflection on what was
best, just and honourable, and then his decision, which no adverse fate
was ever afterwards to shake. He did not believe in any motive force
that could keep him from a purpose--it was a vain delusion, unworthy of
a Hinchford!
On the morning of the following day, the cousin of whom he had thought
more than once entered again upon the scene of action; at an early hour,
when Mattie was busy in the shop, and Mr. Gray was absent on a preaching
expedition. Maurice Hinchford's first inquiry was if Mr. Gray were
within, and very much relieved in mind he appeared to be upon receiving
the information that that formidable Christian was not likely to be at
home till nightfall. Maurice did not come unattended; he brought a
friend with him, whom he asked to wait in the shop for awhile, whilst he
exchanged a few words with Sidney.
Mattie looked at the stranger, a tall, lank man, with an olive face, and
long black hair, which he tucked in at the back between his coat and
waistcoat in a highly original manner. He was a man who took no interest
in passing events, but sat "all of a heap" on that high chair which had
been Maurice Hinchford's stool of repentance, carefully counting his
fingers, to make sure that he had not lost any coming along.
"Good morning, Sidney," said Maurice, on entering. "Not lost yet, old
fellow!"
"Good morning, Maurice."
"I have brought the latest news--I have been abroad since my last visit
here."
"Abroad again?"
"I'll tell you about that presently. If you're not too busy this
morning, and I'm not too unwelcome an intruder, I should be glad to
inform you how I fared by following your advice."
"You are not unwelcome, Maurice, though I cannot say that there is any
great amount of pleasure experienced by your visit to me."
"Still cold--still unapproachable, after forgiving all the past!"
"But not forgetting, Maurice. You bring the past in with you--I hear it
in every accent of your voice; all the figures belonging to it start
forth like spectres to dismay me."
"Your past has no reproaches--what is it to mine?"
"A regret is as keen as a reproach."
"Ah! you regret the past!--some act in it, perhaps?" said Maurice, with
curiosity.
"We should scarcely be mortal if we could look back without regrets, I
think."
"Ah! but what is the keenest--bitterest?"
"That is a leading question, as the lawyers say."
"Then I'll not press it--I'll speak of my own regrets instead. I regret
having followed your advice, Sidney."
"We are all liable to err--I meant it for the best."
"I called the following evening on Harriet Wesden--I offered her my
hand, as an earnest of that affection which only needed her presence to
revive again--I asked pardon for my past, and spoke of my atonement in
the future. Could I do more?"
"No."
Sidney was nervously anxious to learn the result, but he merely
compressed his lips, and waited for the sequel. He would not ask how
this had ended--his pride held back his curiosity.
"And she refused me, as you and I might have expected, had we more
seriously considered the matter. By George, I shall never forget her
fiery eyes, her angry gestures, her contempt, which seemed withering me
up--I knew that it was all over with every shadow of hope, then."
"A man should never despair."
"It would be difficult to help it in the face of that clincher, Sidney.
Well, it served me right; I might have expected it; I might have guessed
the truth, had I given it a moment's thought; but I put my trust in you,
Sidney, and a nice mess I have made of it! Upon my honour, I would
rather bear two--say three--of Mr. Gray's sermons, than face Harriet
Wesden again."
"Still, you should not be sorry at having offered all the reparation in
your power."
"Well, now I come to think of it, Sidney, I'm not sorry. To confess the
real plain truth, I'm glad."
"Indeed!"
"Because I have made a discovery, and if you're half a Hinchford, you'll
profit by the hint. Harriet Wesden loves _you_."
Sidney's hands grappled the arms of his chair, in which he half rose,
and then set down again. The red blood mounted to his face, even those
dreamy eyes flashed fire again--the avowal was too decided and
uncompromising not to affect him.
"I do not wish to dwell upon this topic."
"Ah! but I do. It has been bothering me all the way to Paris--all the
way back. I have been building fancy castles concerning it. I have been
one gigantic, unmitigated schemer since I saw you last, planning for a
happiness which is yours by a word, and which you deserve, Sid
Hinchford. I feel that your life might be greatly changed, and that it
is in your power to effect it."
"Were it my wish, it is too late. As it is not my wish--as I do not
believe you," he added, bluntly--"as I have outlived my youthful
follies, and am sober, serious, and unromantic--as I have made my
choice, and know where my happiness lies, I will ask you not to pain
me--not to torture me, by a continuance of this subject."
"Let me just give you a sketch of what she said to me."
"I will hear no more!" he cried, with an impatient stamp of his foot.
"I have done," said Maurice; "subject deferred _sine die_--or tied round
the neck with a big stone, and sunk for ever in the waters of oblivion.
By George, Sid, that's a neat phrase, isn't it?--only it reminds one of
drowning a puppy. And now to business."
"What more?" asked Sidney, curtly.
His cousin had annoyed him; stirred up the acrimony of his nature, and
destroyed all that placidity of demeanour which he had fostered lately.
He felt that he rather hated Maurice Hinchford again; that his cousin
was ever a dark blot in the landscape, with his robust health, loud
voice, and self-sufficiency. This man paraded his own knowledge of human
nature too obtrusively, and spoke as if his listener was a child; he
professed to have discerned in Harriet Wesden an affection for the old
lover to whom she had been engaged--as if he, Sidney Hinchford, had been
blind all his life, or was morally blind then! Sidney would be glad to
hear the last of him--to be left to himself once more; his cousin was an
intrusion--he desired no further speech with him, and he implied as much
by his last impatient query.
"It's something entirely new, Sidney, and therefore you need not fear
any old topics being intruded on your notice. I have brought a friend to
see you."
"Take him away again."
"No, I'd rather not, thank you," was the aggravating response; "I made
my mind up to bring him, and he's waiting in the shop."
"Maurice--you insult me!"
"Pardon me, cousin, but the end must justify the means. He has come from
Paris to see you; he would have been here before, had not illness
prevented him."
"Who is this man?"
"The cleverest man in Europe, I'm told--an eccentric being, with a
wonderful mine of cleverness beneath his eccentricity. A man who has
made the defects of vision his one study, and has become great in
consequence. Sidney, you must see him!"
"You bring him here at your own expense, to inspect a hopeless case; you
will shame me by being beholden to you--to you, of all men in the
world!"
"I thought we had got over the past--forgiven it?"
"Yes, but----"
"But it can't be forgiven, Sid Hinchford, if you hinder me making an
effort to atone to you in my way."
"With your purse?" was the cold reply.
"No; with my respect for you--my regret for a friend whom I have lost."
"A strange friend!"
"And I have faith in this man. I remember a case similar to yours,
which----"
"Stop! in the name of mercy, Maurice--this cannot be borne at least. I
am resigned to despair, but not to such a hope as yours. Let him come
in, and laugh at you for your folly in bringing him hither."
"Bario!" called Maurice.
The lank man came into the parlour, set his hat on a chair, and looked
at Sidney very intently. His vacuity of expression vanished, and a keen
intelligence took its place.
"Good morning, sir," he said, in fair English; "you are the blind
gentleman Mr. Hinchford has requested me to see?"
"The same, sir."
"You are sure you're blind?"
"Maurice, this man is a----"
"Yes, very clever. You have heard of Dr. Bario--he has been resident in
Paris some years now."
"Ah!" said Sidney, listlessly.
"There is a blindness that be not blindness, sir--that's my theory,"
said the Italian; "a something that comes suddenly like a blight--the
off-spring of much excitement, very often."
"Mine had been growing upon me for years--I was prepared for it by a man
as skilful as yourself."
"May I put to you his name."
Sidney told him, and Dr. Bario gave his shoulders that odious French
shrug which implies so much. Such is the jealousy of all
professions--extending even to the disciples of the healing art. A never
thinks much of B, if he be jumping at the same prize on the
bay-tree--Dr. Bario had his weakness.
"He might have mistaken the disease, and into this have half frightened
you. People, odd mistakes do make at times--I myself have not been
infallible."
"Possibly not," said Sidney, drily.
"In my youth of course," said the vain man, "when I listened a leetle
too much to the opinions of others--it was once my way."
Sidney thought the speaker had altered considerably since then, but kept
his idea to himself. He was endeavouring to be cool, and uninfluenced by
this man's remarks; but they had set his heart beating, and his temples
painfully throbbing. He was a fool to feel unnerved at this; it was a
false step of his cousin's, and had given him much pain--but Maurice had
meant well, and he forgave him even then.
"Do you mind turning just one piece more to the light?" asked the
doctor.
Sidney turned like an automaton. Maurice drew up the back parlour blind;
the doctor bent over his patient, and there was a long silence--an
anxious pause in the action of three lives, for the doctor's interest
was as acute as the cousin's.
"Well?" Maurice ejaculated at last,
"There's a chance, I think."
"A chance of sight!" cried Sidney; "do you mean that?--is it possible
that you can give me hope of that--now?"
"I don't give hope, sir," said Dr. Bario; "it's a chance, that's
all--everything. It's one nice case for _me_--not you, young man."
"What do you mean?"
"There's danger in it--it's light, death, or madness! I do not you
advise to risk this--but there's one chance if you do!"
"_I will chance it!_"
He was not content with the present, then; it had been a false
placidity--he would risk his life for light; life without it, even with
Mattie, did not seem for an instant worth considering!
"Very good. To-morrow I will you send for--you will have to place
yourself entire under my direction for more weeks than one, before the
final operation be attempted."
"I agree to everything--may I accompany you now?"
"To-morrow," was the answer again.
"Oh! it will never come. Maurice," he said, offering his hand, "however
this ends, I am indebted to you."
"Yes--but--but if it end badly?"
"It will be God's will."
"And if it end as I hope and trust--as I fancy it will, Sid--then you
must pay that debt, or I'll never forgive you."
"In what way can I ever repay it?"
"By taking your old place at the banker's desk, and showing me that the
past is really forgiven."
"I will do that if--ah! what a mighty If this is!"
"Keep hopeful--not nervous, above all the things," said the doctor; "if
you fear, it must not be attempted."
With this final warning, the doctor and Maurice withdrew. Maurice left
the doctor to whisper confidentially to Mattie.
"Miss Gray, I have brought a skilful oculist to look at my cousin Sid.
He reports not altogether unfavourably--he gives us hope--Sid will go
away with us to-morrow."
"Go away!"
"Yes, to submit himself for a week or two to Dr. Bario's treatment; he
says that he will chance the danger, and I think he's right. Keep him
strong and hopeful, Miss Gray--much depends upon that."
"Yes--yes," gasped Mattie.
She had not recovered her astonishment when the visitor had left the
shop; "hope for Sidney"--"going away!"--"keep him strong!"--was all this
a dream?
"Mattie," called Sidney from the parlour, and our heroine rushed in at
once and found our hero walking up and down the room with a freer step
than she had witnessed in him since his blindness.
"Mattie," he said in an agitated voice, "he tells me that there is a
chance of the light coming back to me--a chance that entails danger, but
which is surely worth the risk. Think of the daylight streaming in upon
my darkened senses, and my waking up once more to life!"
"I am so glad!--I am so very glad!" cried Mattie; adding the instant
afterwards, "but the--the danger? What is that?"
"A danger of death, or of my going mad, he left it doubtful which--I
don't care which--I can risk all for the one chance ahead of me. I will
keep strong, praying for the brightness of the new life."
"Yes!" was the mournful response. In that brightness, one figure might
at least grow dim--in the darkness he had learned to love her, he said!
But he was not thinking of love then, or of her whose love he had
sought;--a new hope was bewildering him, and he could not escape it.
"Keep him strong and hopeful," had been the caution given Mattie; there
was no need for it. He _was_ hopeful--far too hopeful--of the sunshine;
he thought nothing of the danger, or of a world a hundred times worse
than that of his benighted one--and he was strong in faith. He could
talk of nothing else, and Mattie made no effort to distract his mind
away from it. It was natural enough that he should forget her for
awhile; the time had not come for her to answer him, or to judge him; he
had said that his mind was made up, and that she possessed his
love--surely they were earnest words enough, to keep her hopeful in her
turn?
And if the change in Sidney did result in Sidney's cure, she would
rejoice in it with all her heart--as his father would have rejoiced, had
he lived and known the troubles of his boy.
The next day, Maurice Hinchford arrived in his father's carriage to take
Sidney away. Sidney was equipped for departure, and had been waiting for
his cousin the last two hours--agitating his mind with a hundred reasons
for the delay.
The carriage at the door, and the evidence of wealth in Sidney's
relations, made Mattie's heart sink somewhat--his would be a world so
different from hers for ever after this!
Mattie faced Maurice before he entered the parlour. She had been
watching for him also that day, and now arrested his progress.
"Mr. Hinchford, you did me harm once; you were sorry at a later day that
it was not in your power, to make amends. Will you now?"
"Willingly."
"Let me know when Sidney runs his greatest risk--give me fair warning of
it, that his friends may be near him. If there be a risk of death, he
must not die without me there. You promise?"
"I promise, Miss Gray."
Mattie had no further request to urge, and he, after avoiding Mr. Gray
by a strategic movement, and a hurried "Good day, sir--hope you're
well!" entered the parlour with the words--
"Ready, Sid?"
Sidney Hinchford took his friend's arm, Maurice signed to the footman at
the door to carry Sidney's portmanteau, and then the two cousins entered
the shop--both looking strangely alike, arm-in-arm, and shoulder to
shoulder thus.
"One moment, Maurice."
Sidney thought of Mattie at the last; in his own anxiety for self, he
did not forget her, as she had feared he would.
"Where's Mattie?"
"Here, Sidney."
He drew her aside--away out of hearing, where neither Mr. Gray nor his
cousin could listen to his grateful words.
"Mattie, dear," he said, "I know that I shall have your prayers for my
success--you, who have fought my battles, and been always ready at my
side. Pray for our bright future together; it will come now. Whatever
happens you and I together in life, my girl, unless, with that month's
reflection that I granted you, comes the want of trust in my sincerity!"
"Never that, Sidney."
"Good-bye."
He stooped and kissed her, and Mattie shrank not away from him, though
it was the first time in his life that his lips had touched hers. He was
going away from that house for ever, perhaps; they might never know each
other again; and she loved him too dearly, and felt too happy in those
fleeting moments, to feel abashed at this evidence of his affection.
So they parted, and Ann Packet, who had heard the story, rushed from the
side door to fling a shoe for luck, after the receding carriage. A
maniacal act, that the footman--who had _not_ heard the story--was
unable to account for, save as a personal insult to himself.
"He had gone out of his spear to a place called Peckham," he said
afterwards in the servants' hall, "and had had old boots flung at him by
the lower horders!"