Julia Kavanagh (1824-1877), Rachel Gray (1855), 1856 Tauchnitz edition

Produced by Daniel FROMONT

COLLECTION OF BRITISH AUTHORS.

VOL. CCCXLIV.

RACHEL GRAY BY JULIA KAVANAGH.

IN ONE VOLUME.

RACHEL GRAY.

A TALE

FOUNDED ON FACT.

BY JULIA KAVANAGH,

AUTHOR or "NATHALIE," "DAISY BURNS," "GRACE LEE."

COPYRIGHT EDITION.

LEIPZIG

BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ

1856

PREFACE.

This tale, as the title-page implies, is founded on fact. Its truth is its chief merit, and the Author claims no other share in it, than that of telling it to the best of her power.

I do not mean to aver that every word is a positive and literal truth, that every incident occurred exactly as I have related it, and in no other fashion, but this I mean to say: that I have invented nothing in the character of Rachel Gray, and that the sorrows of Richard Jones are not imaginary sorrows.

My purpose in giving this story to the world is twofold. I have found that my first, and in many respects, most imperfect work "Madeleine," is nevertheless that which has won the greatest share of interest and sympathy; a result which I may, I think, safely attribute to its truth, and which has induced me to believe that on similar grounds, a similar distinction might be awarded to a heroine very different indeed from "Madeleine," but whose silent virtues have perhaps as strong a claim to admiration and respect.

I had also another purpose, and though I mention it last, it was that which mainly contributed to make me intrude on public attention; I wished to show the intellectual, the educated, the fortunate, that minds which they are apt to slight as narrow, that lives which they pity as moving in the straight and gloomy paths of mediocrity, are often blessed and graced beyond the usual lot, with those lovely aspirations towards better deeds and immortal things, without which life is indeed a thing of little worth; cold and dull as a sunless day.

JULIA KAVANAGH.

LONDON: DECEMBER 1855.

RACHEL GRAY.

CHAPTER I.

In one of the many little suburbs which cling to the outskirts of London, there is a silent and grass-grown street, of aspect both quiet and quaint. The houses are crazy, old, and brown, of every height and every size; many are untenanted. Some years ago one was internally destroyed by fire. It was not thought worth rebuilding. There it still stands, gaunt and grim, looking for all the world, with its broken or dust-stained windows, like a town deserted after a sacking.

This street is surrounded by populous courts and alleys, by stirring thoroughfares, by roads full of activity and commerce; yet somehow or other, all the noise of life, all its tumult and agitation, here seem to die away to silence and repose. Few people, even amongst the poor, and the neighbourhood is a poor one, care to reside in it, while they can be lodged as cheaply close by, and more to their taste. Some think that the old square at the end, with its ancient, nodding trees, is close and gloomy; others have heard strange noises in the house that has suffered from fire, and are sure it is haunted; and some again do not like the silent, deserted look of the place, and cannot get over the fancy that, if no one will live in it, it must be because it is unlucky. And thus it daily decays more and more, and daily seems to grow more silent.

The appearance of the few houses that are inhabited, says little in favour of this unfortunate street. In one, a tailor has taken up his abode. He is a pale, serious man, who stitches at his board in the window the whole day long, cheered by the occasional song of a thrush, hopping in its osier cage. This tailor, Samuel Hopkins yclept, lives by repairing damaged vestments. He once made a coat, and boasts—with how much truth is known to his own heart—that he likewise cut out, fashioned, and fitted, a pair of blue nether garments. Further on, at the corner of the square, stands the house of Mrs. Adams, an aged widow, who keeps a small school, which, on her brass board, she emphatically denominates her "Establishment for Young Ladies." This house has an unmistakeable air of literary dirt and neglect; the area and kitchen windows are encumbered with the accumulated mud and dust of years; from the attic casement, a little red-haired servant-girl is ever gaping; and on hot summer afternoons, when the parlour windows are left open, there is a glimpse within of a dingy school-mistress, and still more dingy school-room, with a few pupils who sit straggling on half-a-dozen benches, conning their lessons with a murmuring hum.

With one exception, there is no other sign of commerce, trade, or profession in the whole street. For all an outward glance can reveal to the contrary, the people who live there are so very rich that they do not need to work at all, or so very genteel in their decay, that if they do work, they must do it in a hidden, skulking, invisible sort of fashion, or else be irretrievably disgraced.

The solitary exception to which we have alluded, exists, or rather existed, for though we speak in the present, we write in the past by some years, in one of the smallest houses in the street. A little six-roomed house it was, exactly facing the dreary haunted mansion, and exposed to all the noises aforesaid. It was, also, to say the truth, an abode of poor and mean aspect. In the window hung a dress-maker's board, on which was modestly inscribed, with a list of prices, the name of—

"RACHEL GRAY."

It was accompanied with patterns of yellow paper sleeves, trimmed in every colour, an old book of fashions, and beautiful and bright, as if reared in wood or meadow, a pot of yellow crocuses in bloom. They were closing now, for evening was drawing in, and they knew the hour.

They had opened to light in the dingy parlour within, and which we will now enter. It was but a little room, and the soft gloom of a spring twilight half-filled it. The furniture though poor and old-fashioned, was scrupulously clean; and it shone again in the flickering fire-light. A few discoloured prints in black frames hung against the walls; two or three broken china ornaments adorned the wooden mantel-shelf, which was, moreover, decorated with a little dark-looking mirror in a rim of tarnished gold.

By the fire an elderly woman of grave and stern aspect, but who had once been handsome, sat reading the newspaper. Near the window, two apprentices sewed, under the superintendence of Rachel Gray.

A mild ray of light fell on her pale face, and bending figure. She sewed on, serious and still, and the calm gravity of her aspect harmonized with the silence of the little parlour which nothing disturbed, save the ticking of an old clock behind the door, the occasional rustling of Mrs. Gray's newspaper, and the continuous and monotonous sound of stitching.

Rachel Gray looked upwards of thirty, yet she was younger by some years. She was a tall, thin, and awkward woman, sallow and faded before her time. She was not, and had never been handsome, yet there was a patient seriousness in the lines of her face, which, when it caught the eye, arrested it at once, and kept it long. Her brow, too, was broad and intellectual; her eyes were very fine, though their look was dreamy and abstracted; and her smile, when she did smile, which was not often, for she was slightly deaf and spoke little, was pleasant and very sweet.

She sewed on, as we have said, abstracted and serious, when gradually, for even in observation she was slow, the yellow crocuses attracted her attention. She looked at them meditatively, and watched them closing, with the decline of day. And, at length, as if she had not understood, until then, what was going on before her, she smiled and admiringly exclaimed:

"Now do look at the creatures, mother!"

Mrs. Gray glanced up from her newspaper, and snuffed rather disdainfully.

"Lawk, Rachel!" she said, "you don't mean to call crocuses creatures—do you? I'll tell you what though," she added, with a doleful shake of the head, "I don't know what Her Majesty thinks; but I say the country can't stand it much longer."

Mrs. Gray had been cook in a Prime Minister's household, and this had naturally given her a political turn.

"The Lord has taught you," murmured Rachel, bending over the flowers with something like awe, and a glow spread over her sallow cheek, and there came a light to her large brown eyes.

Of the two apprentices—one a sickly, fretful girl of sixteen, heard her not; she went on sewing, and the very way in which she drew her needle and thread was peevish. The other apprentice did hear Rachel, and she looked, or rather stared at the dress-maker, with grim wonder. Indeed, there was something particularly grim about this young maiden—a drear stolidity that defies describing. A pure Saxon she was—no infusion of Celtic, or Danish, or Norman blood had lightened the native weight of her nature. She was young, yet she already went through life settling everything, and living in a moral tower of most uninviting aspect. But though Jane settled everything, she did not profess to understand everything; and when, as happened every now and then, Rachel Gray came out with such remarks as that above recorded, Jane felt confounded. "She couldn't make out Miss Gray—that she couldn't."

"I'm so tired!" peevishly said Mary, the fretful apprentice.

At once Rachel kindly observed: "Put by your work, dear."

Again Mrs. Gray snuffed, and came out with: "Lawk! she's always grummy!"

Mary tossed away her work, folded her arms, and looked sullen. Jane, the grim apprentice, drew her needle and thread twice as fast as before. "Thank Heaven!" she piously thought, "I am not lazy, nor sickly, and I can't see much difference between the two—that I can't."

Rachel's work lay in her lap; she sat looking at the crocuses until she fell in a dream far in the past.

For the past is our realm, free to all, high or low, who wish to dwell in it. There we may set aside the bitterness and the sorrow; there we may choose none but the pleasing visions, the bright, sunny spots where it is sweet to linger. The Future, fair as Hope may make it, is a dream, we claim it in vain. The Present, harsh or delightful, must be endured, yet it flies from us before we can say "it is gone." But the Past is ours to call up at our will. It is vivid and distinct as truth. In good and in evil, it is irrevocable; the divine seal has been set upon it for evermore.

In that Book—a pure and holy one was hers—though not without a few dark and sad pages—Rachel Gray often read. And now, the sight of the yellow flower of spring took her back, to a happy day of her childhood. She saw herself a little girl again, with her younger sister Jane, and the whole school to which they belonged, out on a holiday treat in a green forest. Near that forest there was a breezy field; and there it was that Rachel first saw the yellow crocuses bloom. She remembered her joy, her delight at the wonderful beauty of the wild field flowers—how she and Jane heaped their laps with them, and sat down at the task; and how, when tired with the pleasant labour, they rested, as many yellow crocuses as before seemed to blow and play in the breeze around them. And she remembered, too, how, even then, there passed across her childish mind, a silent wonder at their multitude, an undefined awe for the power of the Almighty Hand who made the little flower, and bade it bloom in the green fields, beneath the misty azure of a soft spring sky.

And then swiftly followed other thoughts. Where was little, blue-eyed Jane, her younger sister, her little companion and friend? Sleeping in a London grave, far from the pleasant and sunny spots where God's wild flowers bloom. And she—why she was pursuing her path in life, doing the will of God Almighty.

"And what more," thought Rachel, "can I hope or wish for?"

"Now, Rachel, what are you moping about?" tartly asked her mother, who, though half blind, had a quick eye for her daughter's meditative fits.

Abruptly fled the dream. The childish memories, the holy remembrance of the dead, sank back once more to their quiet resting-place in Rachel's heart. Wakening up with a half-lightened start, she hastily resumed her work.

"I don't think there ever was such a moper as that girl," grumbled Mrs.
Gray to herself.

Rachel smiled cheerfully in her mother's face. But as to telling her that she had been thinking of the yellow crocuses, and of the spots they grew in, and of the power and greatness and glory of Him who made them, Rachel did not dream of it.

"There's Mrs. Brown," said Mrs. Gray, as a dark figure passed by the window. "Go, and open the door, Mary."

Mary did not stir, upon which Jane officiously rose and said, "I'll go." She went, and in came, or rather bounced, Mrs. Brown—a short, stout, vulgar-looking woman of fifty or so, who at once filled the room with noise.

"La, Mrs. Gray!" she began breathlessly, "What do you think? There's a new one. I have brought you the paper; third column, second page, first article, 'The Church in a Mess.' I thought you'd like to see it. Well, Rachel, and how are you getting on? Mrs. James's dress don't fit her a bit, and she says she'll not give you another stitch of work: but la! you don't care—do you? Why, Mary, how yellow you look to day. I declare you're as yellow as the crocuses in the pot. Ain't she now, Jane? And so you're not married yet—are you, my girl?" she added, giving the grim apprentice a slap on the back.

Jane eyed her quietly.

"You'd better not do that again, Mrs. Brown," she said, with some sternness, "and as to getting married: why, s'pose you mind your own business!"

Mrs. Brown threw herself back in her chair, and laughed until the tears ran down her face. When she recovered, it was to address Mrs. Gray.

"La, Mrs. Gray! can't you find it?" she said. "Why, I told you, third column, second page, 'The Church in a Mess.' You can't miss. I have put a pin in it."

Spite of this kind attention, Mrs. Gray had not found "The Church in a
Mess."

"Lawk, Mrs. Brown!" she said, impatiently, "where's the use of always raking up them sort of things! The badness of others don't make us good— does it? It's the taxes I think of, Mrs. Brown; it's the taxes! Now, Rachel, where are you going?"

"I am going to take home this work, mother."

Unable to find fault with this, Mrs. Gray muttered to herself. She was not ill-natured, but fault-finding was with her an inveterate habit.

"La! what a muff that girl of yours is, Mrs. Gray!" charitably observed Mrs. Brown, as Rachel left the room. For Mrs. Brown being Mrs. Gray's cousin, landlady, and neighbour, took the right to say everything she pleased.

"She ain't particlerly bright," confessed Mrs. Gray, poking the fire, "but you see, Mrs. Brown—"

Rachel closed the door, and heard no more. Whilst Mrs. Brown was talking, she had been tying up her parcel. She now put on her bonnet and cloak, and went out.

It is sweet, after the toil of a day, to breathe fresh air, London air even though it should be. It is sweet, after the long closeness of the work-room, to walk out and feel the sense of life and liberty. A new being seemed poured into Rachel as she went on.

"I wonder people do not like this street," she thought, pausing at the corner to look back on the grey, quiet line she was leaving behind. "They call it dull, and to me it is so calm and sweet." And she sighed to enter the noisy and populous world before her. She hastily crossed it, and only slackened her pace when she reached the wide streets, the mansions with gardens to them, the broad and silent squares of the west end. She stopped before a handsome house, the abode of a rich lady who occasionally employed her, because she worked cheaper than a fashionable dress-maker, and as well.

Mrs. Moxton was engaged—visitors were with her—Rachel had to wait— she sat in the hall. A stylish footman, who quickly detected that she was shy and nervous, entertained himself and his companions, by making her ten times more so. His speech was rude—his jests were insolent. Rachel was meek and humble; but she could feel insult; and that pride, from which few of God's creatures are free, rose within her, and flushed her pale cheek with involuntary displeasure.

At length, the infliction ceased. Mrs. Moxton's visitors left; Rachel was called in. Her first impulse had been to complain of the footman to his mistress; but mercy checked the temptation; it might make him lose his place. Poor Rachel! she little knew that this footman could have been insolent to his mistress herself, had he so chosen. He was six foot three, and, in his livery of brown and gold, looked splendid. In short, he was invaluable, and not to be parted with on any account.

Mrs. Moxton was habitually a well-bred, good-natured woman; but every rule has its exceptions. Rachel found her very much out of temper. To say the truth, one of her recent visitors was in the Mrs. Brown style; Mrs. Moxton had been provoked and irritated; and Rachel paid for it.

"Now, Miss Gray," she said, with solemn indignation, "what do you mean by bringing back work in this style? That flounce is at least an inch too high! I thought you an intelligent young person—but really, really!"

"It's very easily altered, ma'am," said Rachel, submissively.

"You need, not trouble," gravely replied Mrs. Moxton. "I owe you something; you may call with your bill to-morrow."

"I shall not be able to call to-morrow, ma'am; and if it were convenient now—"

"It is not convenient now!" said Mrs. Morton, rather haughtily. She thought Rachel the most impertinent creature she had ever met with—that is to say, next to that irritating Mrs. Maberly, who had repeated that provoking thing about Mr. So-and-So. Rachel sighed and left the house like all shy persons, she was easily depressed. It was night when she stood once more in the street. Above the pale outline of the houses spread a sky of dark azure. A star shone in it, a little star; but it burned with as brilliant a light as any great planet. Rachel gazed at it earnestly, and the shadow passed away. "What matter!" she thought, "even though a man in livery made a jest of me—even though a lady in silk was scornful. What matter! God made that star for me as well as for her! Besides," she added, checking a thought which might, she feared, be too proud, "besides, who, and what am I, that I should repine?"

CHAPTER II.

Rachel went on; but she did not turn homewards. She left the broad and airy strait, where Mrs. Moxton lived. She entered a narrow one, long and gloomy. It led her into a large and gas-lit square. She crossed it without looking right or left: a thought led her on like a spell. Through streets and alleys, by lanes and courts—on she went, until at length she stood in the heart of a populous neighbourhood. Cars were dashing along the pavement; night vendors were screaming at their stalls, where tallow lights flared in the night wind. Drunken men were shouting in gin palaces, wretched looking women were coming out of pawnbroker's shops, and precocious London children were pouring into a theatre, where their morals were to be improved, and their understandings were to be enlightened, at the moderate rate of a penny a head.

Rachel sighed at all she saw, and divined. "Poor things!" she thought, "if they only knew better." But this compassionate feeling did not exclude a sort of fear. Rachel kept as much as she could in the gloomy part of the streets; she shrank back nervously from every rude group, and thus she at length succeeded in attracting the very thing she most wished to shun—observation. Three or four women, rushing out of a public-house, caught sight of her timid figure. At once, one of them—she was more than half-intoxicated—burst out into a loud shouting laugh, and, seizing Rachel's arm, swung her round on the pavement.

"Let me go!" said Rachel "I am in a hurry." She trembled from head to foot, and vainly tried to put on the appearance of a courage she felt not.

"Give me something for drink then," insolently said the woman.

Rachel's momentary fear was already over; she had said to herself, "and what can happen to me without God's will?" and the thought had nerved her. She looked very quietly at the woman's flushed and bloated face, and as quietly she said:

"You have drunk too much already; let me go."

"No I won't," hoarsely replied her tormentor, and she used language which, though it could not stain the pure heart of her who heard it, brought the blush of anger and shame to her cheek.

"Let me go!" she said, trembling this time with indignation.

"Yes—yes, let the young woman go, Molly," observed one of the woman's companions who had hitherto looked on apathetically. She officiously disengaged Rachel's arm, whispering as she did so: "You'd better cut now—I'll hold her. Molly's awful when she's got them fits on."

Rachel hastened away, followed by the derisive shout of the whole group. She turned down the first street she found; it was dark and silent, yet Rachel did not stop until she reached the very end of it; then she paused to breathe a while, but when she put her hand in her pocket for her handkerchief it was gone; with it had disappeared her purse, and two or three shillings. Rachel saw and understood it all—the friend of Molly, her officious deliverer, was a pick-pocket She hung down her head and sighed, dismayed and astonished, not at her loss, but at the sin. "Ah! dear Lord Jesus," she thought, full of sorrow, "that thou shouldst thus be crucified anew by the sins of thy people!" Then followed the perplexing inward question: "Oh! why is there so much sin?" "God knows best," was the inward reply, and once more calm and serene, Rachel went on. At first, she hardly knew where she was. She stood in a dark thoroughfare where three streets met—three narrow streets that scarcely broke on the surrounding gloom. Hesitatingly she took the first. It happened to be that which she wanted. When Rachel recognized it, her pace slackened, her heart beat, her colour came and went, she was much moved; she prayed too—she prayed with her whole heart, but she walked very slowly. And thus she reached at length a lonely little street not quite so gloomy as that which she had been following.

She paused at the corner shop for a moment. It was a second-hand ironmonger's; rusty iron locks, and rusty tongs and shovels, and rusty goods of every description kept grim company to tattered books and a few old pictures, that had contracted an iron look in their vicinity. A solitary gas-light lit the whole.

Rachel stopped and looked at the books, and at the pictures, but only for a few seconds. If she stood there, it was not to gaze with passing curiosity on those objects; she knew them all of old, as she knew every stone of that street; it was to wait until the flush of her cheek had subsided, and the beating of her heart had grown still.

At length she went on. When she reached the middle of the street she paused; she stood near a dark house, shrouded within the gloom of its doorway. Opposite her, on the other side of the way, was a small shop lit from within. From where she stood, Rachel could see everything that passed in that abode. A carpenter lived there, for the place was full of rough deal boards standing erect against the wall, and the floor was heaped high with shavings. Presently a door within opened, the master of the shop entered it, and set himself to work by the light of a tallow candle. He was a tall, thin man, grey-headed and deeply wrinkled, but strong and hale for his years. As he bent over his work, the light of the candle vividly defined his angular figure and sharp features. Rachel looked at him; her eyes filled with tears, she brushed them away with her hand, for they prevented her from seeing, but they returned thicker and faster.

"Oh! my father, my father!" she cried within her heart, "why must I stand here in darkness looking at you? why cannot I go in to you, like other daughters to their father? why do you not love your child?" Her heart seemed full to bursting; her eyes overflowed, her breathing was broken by sobs, and in the simple and pathetic words of Scripture, she turned away her head, and raised her voice and wept aloud.

Rachel Gray was the daughter of the grey-headed carpenter by a first wife; soon after whose death he had married again. Mrs. Gray was his second wife, and the mother of his youngest daughter. She was kind in her way, but that was at the best a harsh one. Rachel was a timid, retiring child, plain, awkward, and sallow, with nothing to attract the eye, and little to please the fancy. Mrs. Gray did not use her ill certainly, but neither did she give her any great share in her affections. And why and how should a step-mother have loved Rachel when her own father did not? when almost from her birth she had been to him as though she did not exist—as a being who, uncalled for and unwanted, had come athwart his life. Never had he, to her knowledge, taken her in his arms, or on his knee; never had he kissed or caressed her; never addressed to her one word of fondness, or even of common kindness. Neither, it is true, had he ill-used nor ill-treated her; he felt no unnatural aversion for his own flesh and blood, nothing beyond a deep and incurable indifference. For her, his heart remained as a barren and arid soil on which the sweet flower of love could never bloom.

There was but one being in this narrow circle who really and fondly loved Rachel Gray. And this was Jane, her little half-sister. Rachel was her elder by full five years. When she was told one morning that Jane was born, she heard the tidings with silent awe, then with eager curiosity, climbed up on a chair to peep at the rosy baby fast asleep in its cradle. From that day, she had but one thought—her little sister. How describe the mingled love and pride with which Rachel received the baby, when it was first confided to her care, and when to her was allotted the delightful task of dragging about in her arms a heavy, screaming child? And who but Rachel found Jane's first tooth? Who but Rachel taught Jane to speak; and taught her how to walk? Who else fulfilled for the helpless infant and wilful child every little office of kindness and of love, until at length there woke in her own childish heart some of that maternal fondness born with woman, the feeling whence her deepest woes and her highest happiness alike must spring. When her father was unkind, when her step-mother was hasty, Rachel turned for comfort to her little sister. In her childish caresses, and words, and ways, she found solace and consolation. She did not feel it hard that she was to be the slave of a spoiled child, to wash, comb, and dress her, to work for her, to carry her, to sing to her, to play with her, and that, not when she liked, but when it pleased Jane. All this Rachel did not mind—Jane loved her. She knew it, she was sure of it; and where there is love, there cannot be tyranny.

Thus the two sisters grew up together, until one day, without previous warning, Thomas Gray went off to America, and coolly left his wife and children behind. Mrs. Gray was a good and an upright woman; she reared her husband's child like her own, and worked for both, without ever repining at the double burden. When her husband returned to England, after three years' absence, Mrs. Gray lost no time in compelling him to grant her a weekly allowance for herself, and for the support of her children. Thomas Gray could not resist the claim; but he gave what the law compelled him to give, and no more. He never returned to live with his wife; he never expressed a wish to see either of his daughters.

He had been back some years when little Jane died at thirteen. She died, dreaming of heaven, with her hand in that of Rachel, and her head on Rachel's bosom. She died, blessing her eldest sister with her last breath, with love for her in the last look of her blue eyes, in the last smile of her wan lips. It was a happy death-bed—one to waken hope, not to call forth sorrow; and yet what became of the life of Rachel when Jane was gone? For a long time it was a dreary void—a melancholy succession of days and weeks and months, from which the happy light had fled—from which something sweet and delightful was gone for ever.

For, though it may be sweeter to love, than to be loved, yet it is hard always to give and never to receive in return; and when Jane died, Rachel knew well enough that all the love she had to receive upon earth, had been given unto her. Like the lost Pleiad, "seen no more below," the bright star of her life had left the sky. It burned in other heavens with more celestial light; but it shone no longer over her path—to cheer, to comfort, to illume.

Mrs. Gray was kind; after her own fashion, she loved Rachel. They had grieved and suffered together from the same sorrows, and kindred griefs can bind the farthest hearts; but beyond this there was no sympathy between them, and Mrs. Gray's affection, such as it was, was free from a particle of tenderness.

She was not naturally a patient or an amiable woman; and she had endured great and unmerited wrongs from Rachel's father. Perhaps, she would have been more than human, had she not occasionally reminded her step-daughter of Mr. Thomas Gray's misdeeds, and now and then taunted her with a "He never cared about you—you know."

Aye—Rachel knew it well enough. She knew that her own father loved her not—that though he had cared little for Jane, not being a tender-hearted man, still that he had cared somewhat, for that younger, and more favoured child. That before he left England, he would occasionally caress her; that when she died, tears had flowed down his stern cheek on hearing the tidings, and that the words had escaped him: "I am sorry I was not there."

All this Rachel knew. Her mind was too noble, and too firm for jealousy; her heart too pious, and too humble for rebellious sorrow; but yet she found it hard to bear, and very hard to be reminded of it as a reproach and a shame.

Was it not enough that she could not win the affection she most longed for? She was devoted to her step-mother; she had fondly loved her younger sister; but earlier born in her heart than these two loves, deeper, and more solemn, was the love Rachel felt for her father. That instinct of nature, which in him was silent, in her spoke strongly. That share of love which he denied her, she silently added to her own, and united both in one fervent offering. Harshness and indifference had no power to quench a feeling, to which love in kindness had not given birth. She loved because it was her destiny; because, as she once said herself, when speaking of another: "A daughter's heart clings to her father with boundless charity."

Young as she was when Thomas Gray left his home, Rachel remembered him well. His looks, the very tones of his voice, were present to her. Not once, during the years of his absence, did the thought of her father cease to haunt her heart. When, from the bitter remarks of her step-mother, she learned that he had returned, and where he had taken up his home, she had no peace until she succeeded in obtaining a glimpse of him. Free, as are all the children of the poor, she made her way to the street where he lived, and many a day walked for weary miles in order to pass by her father's door. But she never crossed the threshold, never spoke to him, never let him know who she was, until the sad day when she bore to him the news of her sister's death.

He received her with his usual coldness—in such emotion as he showed, she had no share, like strangers they had met—like strangers they parted. But, though his coldness and her own timidity prevented nearer advances, they did not prevent Rachel from often seeking the remote neighbourhood and gloomy street where her father dwelt.

It was a pleasure, though a sad one, to look on his face, even if she went not near him; and thus it happened, that on this dark night she stood in the sheltering obscurity of the well-known doorway, gazing on the solitary old man, yet venturing not to cross the narrow street.

The wind blew from the east. It was cold and piercing; yet it could not draw Rachel from her vigil of love. Still she looked and lingered, wishing she knew not what; and hoping against hope. Thus she stayed, until Thomas Gray left his work, put up the shutters, then left the house by the private door, and slowly walked away to the nearest public-house.

The shop was once more a blank in the dark street. Rachel looked at the deserted dwelling and sighed; than softly and silently she stole away.

CHAPTER III.

It was late when Rachel reached home. She found her step-mother sitting up for her, rigid, amazed y indignant—so indignant, indeed, that though she rated Rachel soundly for her audacity in presuming to stay out so long without previous leave obtained, she quite forgot to inquire particularly why she had not come home earlier. A series of disasters had been occasioned by Rachel's absence; Jane and Mary had quarrelled, Mrs. Gray had been kept an hour waiting for her supper, the beer had naturally become flat and worthless, and whilst Mrs. Gray was sleeping—and how could she help sleeping, being quite faint and exhausted with her long vigil—puss had got up on the table and walked off with Rachel's polony.

There was a touch of quiet humour in Rachel, and with a demure smile, she internally wondered why it was precisely her polony that had been selected by puss, but aloud she merely declared that she could make an excellent supper on bread and beer. Mrs. Gray, who held the reins of domestic management in their little household, assured her that she had better, for that nothing else was she going to get; she sat down heroically determined to eat the whole of her polony in order to punish and provoke her step-daughter; but somehow or other the half of that dainty had, before the end of the meal, found its way to the plate of Rachel, who, when she protested against this act of generosity, was imperiously ordered to hold her tongue, which order she did not dare to resist; for if Mrs. Gray's heart was mellow, her temper was sufficiently tart.

The apprentices had long been gone to bed; as soon as supper was over,
Mrs. Gray intimated to Rachel the propriety of following their example.
Rachel ventured to demur meekly.

"I cannot, mother—I have work to finish."

"Then better have sat at home and finished it, than have gone gadding about, and nearly got a pitch plaster on your mouth," grumbled Mrs. Gray, who was a firm believer in pitch plasters, and abductions, and highway robberies, and all sorts of horrors. "Mind you don't set the house a fire," she added, retiring.

"Why, mother," said Rachel, smiling, "you treat me like a child, and I am twenty-six."

"What about that? when you aint got no more sense than a baby."

Rachel did not venture to dispute, a proposition so distinctly stated. She remained up, and sat sewing until her work was finished; she then took out from some secret repository a small end of candle, lit it, and extinguished the long candle, by the light of which she had been working. From her pocket she took a small key; it opened a work-box, whence she drew a shirt collar finely stitched; she worked until her eyes ached, but she heeded it not, until they closed with involuntary fatigue and sleep, and still she would not obey the voice of wearied nature; still she stitched for love, like the poor shirtmaker for bread, until, without previous warning, her candle end suddenly flickered, then expired in its socket, and left her in darkness. Rachel gently opened the window, and partly unclosed the shutter; the moon was riding in the sky above the old house opposite, her pale clear light glided over its brown walls and the quiet street, down into the silent parlour of Rachel. She looked around her, moved at seeing familiar objects under an unusual aspect. In that old chair she had often seen her father sitting; on such a moonlight night as this she and Jane, then already declining, had sat by the window, and looking at that same sky, had talked with youthful fervour of high and eternal things. And now Jane knew the divine secrets she had guessed from afar, and Thomas Gray, alas! was a stranger and an alien in his own home.

"Who knows," thought Rachel, "but he will return some day? Who knows— who can tell? Life is long, and hope is eternal. Ah! if he should come back, even though he never looked at me, never spoke, blessed, thrice blessed, should ever be held the day…" And a prayer, not framed in words, but in deep feelings, gushed like a pure spring from her inmost heart. But, indeed, when did she not pray? When was God divided from her thoughts? When did prayer fail to prompt the kind, gentle words that fell from her lips, or to lend its daily grace to a pure and blameless life?

For to her, God was not what He, alas! is to so many—an unapproachable Deity, to be worshipped from afar, in fear and trembling, or a cold though sublime abstraction. No, Jesus was her friend, her counsellor, her refuge. There was familiarity and tenderness in her very love for Him; and, though she scarcely knew it herself, a deep and fervent sense of His divine humanity of those thirty-three years of earthly life, of toil, of poverty, of trouble, and of sorrow which move our very hearts within us, when we look from Bethlehem to Calvary, from the lowly birth in the Manger to the bitter death on the Cross.

We might ask, were these the pages to raise such questions, why Jesus is not more loved thus—as a friend, and a dear one, rather than as a cold master to be served, not for love, but for wages. But let it rest. Sufficient is it for us to know that not thus did Rachel Gray love him, but with a love in which humility and tenderness equally blended.

After a meditative pause, she quietly put away her things by moonlight, then again closed shutter and window, and softly stole up to the room which she shared with her step-mother. She soon fell asleep, and dreamed that she had gone to live with her father, who said to her, "Rachel! Rachel!" So great was her joy, that she awoke. She found her mother already up, and scolding her because she still slept.

"Mother," asked Rachel, leaning up on one elbow, "was it you who called me, Rachel?"

"Why aint I been a calling of you this last hour?" asked Mrs. Gray, with much asperity.

Rachel checked a sigh, and rose.

"Get up Jane—get up Mary," said Mrs. Gray, rapping soundly at the room door of the two apprentices.

"Let them sleep a little longer, poor young things!" implored Rachel.

"No, that I won't," replied her mother, with great determination, "lazy little creatures."

And to the imminent danger of her own knuckles, she rapped so pertinaciously, that Jane and Mary were unable to feign deafness, and replied, the former acting as spokeswoman, that Mrs. Gray needn't be making all that noise; for that they heard her, and were getting up. "I thought I'd make them hear me," muttered Mrs. Gray, hobbling down stairs.

There are some beings who lead lives so calm, that when they look back on years, they seem to read the story of a few days; and of these was Rachel Gray. Life for her flowed dull, monotonous and quiet, as that of a nun in her cloister. The story of one day was the story of the next. A few hopes, a few precious thoughts she treasured in her heart; but outwardly, to work, to hear idle gossip, to eat, drink, and sleep, seemed her whole portion, her destiny from mom till night, from birth to the grave.

Like every day passed this day. When it grew so dark that she could see no more to work, she put her task by, and softly stole away to a little back room up-stairs.

It was a very small room indeed, with a bed, where the apprentices slept; a chest of drawers, a table, and two chairs:—many a closet is larger. Its solitary window looked out on the little yard below; low walls, against which grew Rachel's stocks and wall-flowers, enclosed it. From the next house, there came the laughter and the screams too of children, and of babies; and from a neighbouring forge, a loud, yet not unmusical clanking, with which now and then, blended the rude voices of the men, singing snatches of popular songs. Dimmed by the smoke of the forge, and by the natural heaviness of a London atmosphere, the sky enclosed all; yet, even through the smoke and haze, fair rosy gleams of the setting sun shone in that London sky, and at the zenith there was a space of pure, ethereal blue—soft, and very far from sinful and suffering earth, where glittered in calm beauty a large and tranquil star.

Rachel sat by the window. She listened to earth: she looked at Heaven. Her heart swelled with love, and prayer, and tenderness, and hope. Tears of delight filled her eyes; she murmured to herself verses from psalms and hymns—all praising God, all telling the beauty of God's creation. Oh! pure and beautiful, indeed, would be the story of these your evening musings, if we could lightly tell it here, Rachel Gray.

Reader, if to learn how a fine nature found its way through darkness and mist, and some suffering to the highest, and to the noblest of the delights God has granted to man—the religious and the intellectual; if, we say, to learn this give you pleasure, you may read on to the end of the chapter; if not, pass on at once to the next. These pages were not written for you; and even though you should read them, feel and understand them, you never will.

Our life is twofold; and of that double life, which, like all of us, Rachel bore within her, we have as yet said but little. She was now twenty six; a tall, thin, sallow woman, ungraceful, of shy manners, and but little speech; but with a gentle face, a broad forehead, and large brown eyes. By trade, she was a dress-maker, of small pretensions; her father had forsaken her early, and her step-mother had reared her. This much, knew the little world in which moved Rachel Gray, this much, and no more. We may add, that this some little world had, in its wisdom, pronounced Rachel Gray a fool.

Her education had been very limited. She knew how to read, and she could write, but neither easily nor well. For though God had bestowed on her the rare dower of a fine mind, He had not added to it the much more common, though infinitely less precious gift, of a quick intellect. She learned slowly, with great difficulty, with sore pain and trouble. Her teachers, one and all, pronounced her dull; her step-mother was ashamed of her, and to her dying day thought Rachel no better than a simpleton.

Rachel felt this keenly; but she had no means of self-defence. She had not the least idea of how she could prove that she was not an idiot. One of the characteristics of childhood and of youth is a painful inability, an entire powerlessness of giving the form of speech to its deepest and most fervent feelings. The infirmity generally dies off with years, perhaps because also dies off the very strength of those feelings; but even as they were to last for ever with Rachel Gray, so was that infirmity destined to endure. Shy, sensitive, and nervous, she was a noble book, sealed to all save God.

At eleven, her education, such as it was, was over. Rachel had to work, and earn her bread. She was reared religiously, and hers was a deeply religious nature. The misapplication of religion narrows still more a narrow mind, but religion, taken in its true sense, enlarges a noble one. Yet, not without strife, not without suffering, did Rachel make her way. She was ignorant, and she was alone; how to ask advice she knew not, for she could not explain herself. Sometimes she seemed to see the most sublime truths, plain as in a book; at other times, they floated dark and clouded before her gaze, or vanished in deep obscurity, and left her alone and cast down. She suffered years, until, from her very sufferings, perfect faith was born, and from faith unbounded trust in God, after which her soul sank in deep and blessed peace.

And now, when rest was won, there came the want for more. Religion is love. Rachel wanted thought, that child of the intellect, as love is the child of the heart. She did not know herself what it was that she needed, until she discovered and possessed it—until she could read a book, a pamphlet, a scrap of verse, and brood over it, like a bird over her young, not for hours, not for days, but for weeks—blest in that silent meditation. Her mind was tenacious, but slow; she read few books—many would have disturbed her. Sweeter and pleasanter was it to Rachel to think over what she did read, and to treasure it up in the chambers of her mind, than to fill those chambers with heaps of knowledge. Indeed for knowledge Rachel cared comparatively little. In such as displayed more clearly the glories of God's creation she delighted; but man's learning, man's science, touched her not. To think was her delight; a silent, solitary, forbidden pleasure, in which Rachel had to indulge by stealth.

For all this time, and especially since the death of her sister, she suffered keenly from home troubles, from a little domestic persecution, painful, pertinacious, and irritating. Mrs. Gray vaguely felt that her daughter was not like other girls, and not knowing that she was in reality very far beyond most; feeling, too, that Rachel was wholly unlike herself, and jealously resenting the fact, she teased her unceasingly, and did her best to interrupt the fits of meditation, which she did not scruple to term "moping." When her mind was most haunted with some fine thought, Rachel had to talk to her step-mother, to listen to her, and to take care not to reply at random; if she failed in any of these obligations, half-an-hour's lecture was the least penalty she could expect. Dear to her, for this reason; were the few moments of solitude she could call her own; dear to her was that little room, where she could steal away at twilight time and think in peace.

Very unlike her age was this ignorant dress-maker of the nineteenth century. Ask the men and women of the day to read volumes; why, there is not a season but they go through the Herculean labour of swallowing down histories written faster than time flies, novels by the dozen, essays, philosophic and political, books of travels, of science, of statistics, besides the nameless host of reviews, magazines, and papers, daily and weekly. Ask them to study: why, what is there they do not know, from the most futile accomplishment to the most abstruse science? Ask them too, if you like, to enter life, to view it under all its aspects; why, they have travelled over the whole earth; and life, they know from the palace down to the hovel; but bid them think! They stare aghast: it is the task of Sisyphus—the labour of the Danaide; as fast as thought enters their mind, it goes out again. Bid them commune, one day with God and their own hearts—they reply dejectedly that they cannot; for their intellect is quick and brilliant, but their heart is cold. And thought springs from the heart, and in her heart had Rachel Gray found it.

The task impossible to them was to her easy and delightful. Time wore on; deeper and more exquisite grew what Rachel quaintly termed to herself "the pleasure of thinking." And oh! she thought sometimes, and it was a thought that made her heart bum, "Oh! that people only knew the pleasures of thinking! Oh! if people would only think!" And mom, and noon, and night, and bending over her work, or sitting at peaceful twilight time in the little back room, Rachel thought; and thus she went on through life, between those two fair sisters, Thought and Prayer.

Reader, hare you known many thinkers? We confess that we hare known many men and women of keen and great intellect, some geniuses; but only one real thinker have we known, only one who really thought for thought's own sake, and that one was Rachel Gray.

And now, if she moves through this story, thinking much and doing little, you know why.

CHAPTER IV.

It was not merely in meditation that Rachel indulged, when she sought the little room. The divine did not banish the human from her heart; and she had friends known to her, but from that back room window; but friends they were, and, in their way and degree, valued ones.

First, came the neighbour's children. By standing up on an old wooden stool in the yard, they could see Rachel at her window, and Rachel could see them. They were rude and ignorant little things enough, and no better than young heathens, in rearing and knowledge; yet they liked to hear Rachel singing hymns in a low voice; they even caught from her, scraps of verses, and sang them in their own fashion; and when Rachel, hearing this, took courage to open a conversation with them, and to teach them as well as she could, she found in them voluntary and sufficiently docile pupils. Their intercourse, indeed, was brief, and limited to a few minutes every evening that Rachel could steal up to her little room, but it was cordial and free.

Another friend had Rachel, yet one with whom she had never exchanged speech. There existed, at the back of Mrs. Gray's house, a narrow court, inhabited by the poorest of the poor. Over part of this court, Mrs. Gray's back windows commanded a prospect which few would have envied— yet it had proved to Rachel the source of the truest and the keenest pleasure.

From her window, Rachel could look clearly into a low damp cellar opposite, the abode of a little old Frenchwoman, known in the neighbourhood, as "mad Madame Rose."

Madame Rose, as she called herself, was a very diminutive old woman— unusually so, but small and neat in all her limbs, and brisk in all her movements. She was dry, too, and brown as a nut, with a restless black eye, and a voluble tongue, which she exercised mostly in her native language—not that Madame Rose could not speak English; she had resided some fifteen years in London, and could say 'yes' and 'no,' &c., quite fluently. Her attire looked peculiar, in this country, but it suited her person excellently well; it was simply that of a French peasant woman, with high peaked cap, and kerchief, both snow-white, short petticoats, and full, a wide apron, clattering wooden shoes, and blue stockings.

What wind of fortune had wafted this little French fairy to a London cellar, no one ever knew. How she lived, was almost as great a mystery. Every Sunday morning, she went forth, with a little wooden stool, and planted herself at the door of the French chapel; she asked for nothing, but took what she got. Indeed, her business there did not seem to be to get anything, but to make herself busy. She nodded to every one who went in or out, gave unasked-for information, and assisted the policeman in keeping the carriages in order. She darted in and out, among wheels and horses, with reckless audacity; and once, to the infinite wrath of a fat liveried coachman, she suspended herself—she was rather short—from the aristocratic reins he held, and boldly attempted to turn the heads of his horses. On week days, Madame Rose stayed in her cellar, and knitted. It was this part of her life which Rachel knew, and it was the most beautiful; for this little, laughed-at being, who lived upon charity, was, herself, all charity. Never yet, for five years that Rachel had watched her, had she seen Madame Rose alone in her cellar. Poor girls, who looked very much like out-casts, old and infirm women, helpless children, had successively shared the home, the bed, and the board of Madame Rose. For her seemed written the beautiful record, "I was naked, and ye clothed me; I was hungry, and ye fed me: athirst, and ye gave me drink; and I was houseless, and you sheltered me."

With humble admiration, Rachel saw a charity and a zeal which she could not imitate. Like Mary, she could sit at the feet of the Lord, and, looking up, listen, rapt and absorbed, to the divine teaching. But the spirit of Martha, the holy zeal and fervour with which she bade welcome to her heavenly guest, were not among the gifts of Rachel Gray.

Yet, the pleasure with which she stood in the corner of her own window, and looked down into the cellar of Madame Rose, was not merely that of religious sympathy or admiration. As she saw it this evening, with the tallow light that burned on the table, rendering every object minutely distinct, Rachel looked with another feeling than that of mere curiosity. She looked with the artistic pleasure we feel, when we gaze at some clearly-painted Dutch picture, with its back-ground of soft gloom, and its homely details of domestic life, relieved by touches of brilliant light. Poor as this cellar was, a painter would have liked it well; he would surely have delighted in the brown and crazy clothes-press, that stood at the further end, massive and dark; in the shining kitchen utensils that decorated the walls; in the low and many-coloured bed; in the clean, white deal table; in the smouldering fire, that burned in that dark grate, like a red eye; especially would he have gloried in the quaint little figure of Madame Rose.

She had been cooking her supper, and she now sat down to it. In doing so, she caught sight of Rachel's figure; they were acquainted—that is to say, that Madame Rose, partly aware of the interest Rachel took in such glimpses as she obtained of her own daily life, favoured her with tokens of recognition, whenever she caught sight of her, far or near. She now nodded in friendly style, laughed, nodded again, and with that communicativeness which formed part of her character, successively displayed every article of her supper for Rachel's inspection. First, came a dishful of dark liquid—onion soup it was—then, a piece of bread, not a large one; then, two apples; then a small bit of cheese— for Madame Rose was a Frenchwoman, and she would have her soup, and her dish, and her dessert, no matter on what scale, or in what quantity.

But the supper of Madame Rose did not alone attract the attention and interest of Rachel. For a week, Madame Rose had enjoyed her cellar to herself; her last guest, an old and infirm woman, having died of old age; but, since the preceding day, she had taken in a new tenant—an idiot girl, of some fourteen years of age, whom her father, an inhabitant of the court, had lately forsaken, and whom society, that negligent step-mother of man, had left to her fate.

And now, with tears of emotion and admiration, Rachel watched the little Frenchwoman feeding her adopted child; having first girt its neck with a sort of bib, Madame Rose armed herself with a long handled spoon, and standing before it—she was too short to sit—she deliberately poured a sufficient quantity of onion soup down its throat a proceeding which the idiot girl received with great equanimity, opening and shutting her mouth with exemplary regularity and seriousness.

So absorbed was Rachel in looking, that she never heard her mother calling her from below, until the summons was, for a third time, angrily repeated.

"Now, Rachel, what are you doing up there?" asked the sharp voice of Mrs.
Gray, at the foot of the staircase; "moping, as usual! Eh?"

Rachel started, and hastened down stairs, a little frightened. She had remained unusually long. What if her mother should suspect that she had gone up for the purpose of thinking? Mrs. Gray had no such suspicion, fortunately; else she would surely have been horror-struck at the monstrous idea, that Rachel should actually dare to think! The very extravagance of the supposition saved Rachel It was not to be thought of.

The candle was lit. Mrs. Brown and another neighbour had looked in. Gossip, flavoured with scandal—else it would have been tasteless—was at full galop.

"La! but didn't I always say so?" exclaimed Mrs. Brown, who had always said everything.

"I couldn't have believed it, that I couldn't!" emphatically observed
Mrs. Gray.

"La, bless you, Mrs. Gray! I could," sneered the neighbour, who was sharp, thin, and irritable.

Even Jane had her word:

"I never liked her," she said, giving her thread a pull.

"Who is she?" languidly asked Mary, letting her work fall on her knees.

"Never you mind, Miss," tartly replied Jane. "Just stitch on, will you?"

Mrs. Brown was again down on the unlucky absent one.

"Serve her right," she said, benevolently. "Serve her right—the set up thing! Oh! there's Rachel. Lawk, Rachel! what a pity you ain't been here! You never heard such a story as has come out about that little staymaker, Humpy, as I call her. Why, she's been a making love to—la! but I can't help laughing, when I think of it; and it's all true, every word of it; aint it, Mrs. Smith?"

Mrs. Smith loftily acquiesced.

"Oh! my little room—my little room!" inwardly sighed Rachel, as she sat down to her work. She hoped that the story was, at least, finished and over; but if it was, the commentaries upon it were only beginning, and Heaven knows if they were not various and abundant.

Rachel did her best to abstract herself; to hear, and not listen. She succeeded so well that she only awoke from her dream when Mrs. Brown said to her,

"Well, Rachel, why don't you answer, then?"

Rachel looked up, with a start, and said, in some trepidation,

"Answer! I didn't hear you speak, ma'am."

"Didn't you now!" knowingly observed Mrs. Brown, winking on the rest of the company.

"No, ma'am, I did not, indeed," replied Rachel, earnestly.

"Bless the girl!" said Mrs. Brown, laughing outright; "why, you must be growing deaf."

"I hope not," said Rachel, rather perplexed; "yet, perhaps, I am; for, indeed, I did not hear you."

"La, Miss Gray! don't you see they are making fun of you?" impatiently observed Jane. "Why, Mrs. Brown hadn't been a saying anything at all."

Rachel reddened a little, and there was a general laugh at her expense. The joke was certainly a witty one. But Mrs. Gray, who was a touchy woman, was not pleased; and no sooner were her amiable visitors gone, than she gave it to Rachel for having been laughed at with insolent rudeness.

"If you were not sich a simpleton," she said, in great anger, "people wouldn't dare to laugh at you. They wouldn't take the liberty. No one ever laughed at me, I can tell you. No Mrs. Brown; no, nor no Mrs. Smith either. But you! why, they'll do anythink to you."

Rachel looked up from her work into her mother's face. It rose to her lips to say—"If you were not the first to make little of me, would others dare to do so?" but she remembered her lonely forsaken childhood, and bending once more over her task, Rachel held her peace.

"I want to go to bed," peevishly said Mary.

"Then go, my dear," gently replied Rachel.

"You'll spoil that girl," observed Mrs. Gray, with great asperity.

"She is not strong," answered Rachel; "and I promised Mr. Jones she should not work too much."

"Not much fear of that," drily said Jane, as the door closed on Mary.

No one answered. Rachel worked; her mother read the paper, and for an hour there was deep silence in the parlour. As the church clock struck nine, a knock came at the door. Jane opened, and a rosy, good-humoured looking man entered the parlour. He was about forty, short, stout, with rather a low forehead, and stubby hair; altogether, he seemed more remarkable for good-nature than for intelligence. At once his look went round the room.

"Mary is gone to bed, Mr. Jones," said Rachel, smiling.

"To bed!—She ain't ill, I hope. Miss Gray," he exclaimed, with an alarmed start.

"Ill! Oh, no! but she felt tired. I am sorry you have had this long walk for nothing."

"Never mind, Miss Gray," he replied cheerfully; then sitting down, and wiping his moist brow, he added—"the walk does me good, and then I hear how she is, and I've the pleasure of seeing you all. And so she's quite well, is she?"

He leaned his two hands on the head of his walking-stick, and looking over it, smiled abstractedly at his own thoughts. Mrs. Gray roused him with the query—

"And what do you think of the state of the nation, Mr. Jones?"

Mr. Jones scratched his head, looked puzzled, hemmed, and at length came out with the candid confession:

"Mrs. Gray, I ain't no politician. For all I see, politics only brings a poor man into trouble. Look at the Chartists, and the tenth of April."

"Ah! poor things!" sighed Rachel, "I saw them—they passed by here. How thin they were—bow careworn they looked!"

Mrs. Gray remained aghast. Rachel had actually had the audacity to give an opinion on any subject unconnected with dress-making—and even on that, poor girl! she was not always allowed to speak.

"Now, Rachel," she said, rallying, "will you hold your tongue, and speak of what you know, and not meddle with politics."

We must apologize for using italics, but without their aid we never could convey to our readers a proper idea of the awful solemnity with which Mrs. Gray emphasized her address. Rachel was rather bewildered, for she was not conscious of having said a word on politics, a subject she did not understand, and never spoke on; but she had long learned the virtue of silence. She did not reply.

"As to the Chartists?" resumed Mrs. Gray, turning to Mr. Jones.

"Law bless you, Mrs. Gray, I ain't one of them!" he hastily replied. "I mind my own business—that's what I do, Mrs. Gray. The world must go round, you know."

"So it must," gravely replied that lady. "You never said a truer thing,
Mr. Jones."

And very likely Mr. Jones had not.

"And I must go off," said Mr. Jones, rising with a half-stifled sigh, "for it's getting late, and I have five miles to walk."

And, undetained by Mrs. Gray's slow but honest entreaty to stay and share their supper, he left Rachel lighted him out. As she closed the parlour door, he looked at her, and lowering his voice, he said hesitatingly:

"I couldn't see her, could I, Miss Gray?"

Poor Rachel hesitated. She knew that she should get scolded if she complied; but then, he looked at her with such beseeching eyes—he wished for it so very much. Kindness prevailed over fear; she smiled, and treading softly, led the way up-stairs. As softly, he followed her up into the little back room.

Mary was fast asleep; her hands were folded over the coverlet of variegated patchwork; her head lay slightly turned on the white pillow; the frill of her cap softly shaded her pale young face, now slightly flushed with sleep. Her father bent over her with fond love, keeping in his breath. Rachel held the light; she turned her head away, that Mr. Jones might not see her eyes, fest filling with tears. "Oh! my father— my father!" she thought, "never have you looked so at your child—never —never!"

On tip-toe, Mr. Jones softly withdrew, and stole downstairs.

"I'd have kissed her," he whispered to Rachel, as she opened the door for him, "but it might have woke her out of that sweet sleep."

And away he went, happy to have purchased, by a ten miles walk after a day's hard labour, that look at his sleeping child.

"Oh, Lord! how beautiful is the love Thou hast put into the hearts of Thy creature!" thought Rachel Gray; and though it had not been her lot to win that love, the thought was to her so sweet and so lovely, that she bore without repining her expected scolding.

"Mrs. Gray had never heard of such a think—never."

CHAPTER V.

The rich man has his intellect, and its pleasures; he has his books, his studies, his club, his lectures, his excursions; he has foreign lands, splendid cities, galleries, museums, ancient and modern art: the poor man has his child, solitary delight of his hard tasked life, only solace of his cheerless home.

Richard Jones had but that one child, that peevish, sickly, fretful little daughter; but she was his all. He was twenty-one, when the grocer in whose shop his youth had been spent, died a bankrupt, leaving one child, a daughter, a pale, sickly young creature of seventeen, called Mary Smith.

Richard Jones had veneration large. He had always felt for this young lady an awful degree of respect, quite sufficient of itself to preclude love, had he been one to know this beautiful feeling by more than hearsay —which he was not. Indeed, he never could or would have thought of Mary Smith as something less than a goddess, if, calling at the house of the relative to whom she had gone, and finding her in tears, and, on her own confession, very miserable, he had not felt moved to offer himself, most hesitatingly, poor fellow I for her acceptance.

Miss Smith gave gracious consent. They were married, and lived most happily together. Poor little Mary's temper was none of the best; but Richard made every allowance: "Breaking down of the business—other's death—having to marry a poor fellow like him, &c." In short, he proved the most humble and devoted of husbands, toiled like a slave to keep his wife like a lady, and never forgot the honour she had conferred upon him; to this honour Mrs. Jones added, after three years, by presenting him with a sickly baby, which, to its mother's name of Mary, proudly added that of its maternal grandfather Smith.

A year after the birth of Mary Smith Jones, her mother died. The affections of the widower centred on his child; he had, indeed, felt more awe than fondness for his deceased wife—love had never entered his heart; he earned it with him, pure and virgin, to the grave, impressed with but one image—that of his daughter.

He reared his little baby alone and unaided. Once, indeed, a female friend insisted on relieving him from the charge; but, after surrendering his treasure to her, after spending a sleepless night, he rose with dawn, and went and fetched back his darling. During his wife's lifetime, he had been employed in a large warehouse; but now, in order to stay at home, he turned basket-maker. His child slept with him, cradled in his arms; he washed, combed, dressed it himself every morning, and made a woman of himself for its sake.

When Mary grew up, her father sent her to school, and resumed his more profitable out-door occupation. After a long search and much deliberation, he prenticed her to Rachel Gray, and with her Mary Jones had now been about a month.

"How pretty she looked, with that bit of pink on her cheek," soliloquized Richard Jones, as he turned round the corner of the street on his way homewards; and fairer than his mistress's image to the lover's fancy, young Mary's face rose before her father on the gloom of the dark night. A woman's voice suddenly broke on his reverie. She asked him to direct her to the nearest grocer's shop.

"I am a stranger to the neighbourhood," he replied; "but I dare say this young person can tell us;" and he stopped a servant-girl, and put the question to her.

"A grocer's shop?" she said, "there's not one within a mile. You must go down the next street on your right-hand, turn into the alley on your left, then turn to your right again, and if you take the fifth street after that, it will take you to the Teapot."

She had to repeat her directions twice before the woman fairly understood them.

"What a chance!" thought Jones, as he again walked on; "not a grocer's shop within a mile. Now, suppose I had, say fifty pounds, just to open with, how soon the thing would do for itself. And then I'd have my little Mary at home with me. Yes, that would be something!"

Ay; the shop and Mary!—ambition and love! Ever since he had dealt tea and sugar in Mr. Smith's establishment, Richard Jones had been haunted with the desire to become a tradesman, and do the same thing in a shop of his own. But, conscious of the extravagant futility of this wish, Jones generally consoled himself with the thought that grocer's shops were as thick as mushrooms, and that, capital or no capital, there was no room for him.

And now, as he walked home, dreaming, he could not but sigh, for there was room, he could not doubt it—but where was the capital? He was still vaguely wondering in his own mind, by what magical process the said capital could possibly be called up, when he reached his own home. There he found that, in his absence, a rudely scrawled scrap of paper had been slipped under his room door; it was to the following purport:

"Dear J.,

"Als up; farm broke. Weral inn for it.

"Yours,

"S. S."

This laconic epistle signified that the firm in whose warehouse Richard Jones was employed, had stopped payment Rich men lost their thousands, and eat none the worse a dinner; Richard Jones lost his week's wages, his future employment, and remained stunned with the magnitude of the blow.

His first thought flew to his child.

"How shall I pay Miss Gray for my little Mary's keep?" he exclaimed, inwardly.

He cast his look round the room to see what he could pledge or sell.
Alas! there was little enough there. His next feeling was,

"My darling must know nothing about it Thank God, she is not with me now!
Thank God!"

But, though this was some sort of comfort, the future still looked so dark and threatening, that Jones spent a sleepless night, tossing in his bed, and groaning so loudly, that his landlady forsook her couch to knock at his door, and inquire, to his infinite confusion, "if Mr. Jones felt poorly, and if there was anything she could do for him, and if he would like some hot ginger?" To which Mr. Jones replied, with thanks, "that he was quite well, much obliged to her all the same."

After this significant hint, he managed to keep quiet. Towards morning, he fell asleep, and dreamed he had found a purse full of guineas, and that he was going to open a grocer's shop, to be called the Teapot.

Richard Jones was sober, intelligent enough for what he had to do, and not too intelligent—which is a great disadvantage; he bore an excellent character; and yet, somehow or other, when he searched for employment, there seemed to be no zoom for him; and had he been a philosopher, which, most fortunately for his peace of mind, he was not, he must inevitably hare come to the conclusion, that in this world he was not wanted.

We are not called upon to enter into the history of his struggles. He maintained a sort of precarious existence, now working at this, now working at that; for he was a Jack of all trades, and could torn his hand to anything, but certain of no continual employment. How he went through it all, still paying Miss Gray, still keeping up a decent appearance, contracting no debts, the pitying eye which alone looks down on the bitter trials of the poor, also alone knows.

The poorer a man gets, the more he thinks of wealth and money; the narrower does the world close around him, and all the wider grows the world of his charms. The shop, which had only been a dormant idea in Richard Jones's mind, now became a living phantom; day and night, mom and noon it haunted him. When he had nothing to do—and this was, unfortunately, too often the case—he sought intuitively the suburb where Rachel Gray dwelt; ascertained, over and over, that within the mile circuit of that central point there did not exist one grocer's shop, and finally determined that the precise spot where, for public benefit and its own advantage, a grocer's shop should be, was just round the corner of the street next to that of Rachel Gray, in a dirty little house, now occupied by a rag and bottle establishment, with very dirty windows, and a shabby black doll dangling like a thief, over the doorway; spite of which enticing prospect, the rag and bottle people seemed to thrive but indifferently, if one might judge from the sulky, ill-tempered looking woman, whom Jones always saw within, sorting old rags, and scowling at him whenever she caught him in the act of peering in.

It was, therefore, with no surprise, though with some uneasiness, that coming one day to linger as usual near the place, James found the rag and bottle shop closed, the black doll gone, and the words, "To let" scrawled, in white chalk, on the shutters. Convinced that none but a grocer could take such a desirable shop, and desirous, at least, to know when this fated consummation was to take place, Jones took courage, and went on as far as Rachel Gray's.

Jane, the grim apprentice, opened to him,

"There's no one at home," she said.

Mr. Jones pleaded fatigue, and asked to be permitted to rest awhile. She did not oppose his entrance, but grimly repelled all his attempts at opening a conversation. He entered on that most innocent topic, the weather, and praised it.

"It has been raining," was Jane's emphatic reply.

"Oh! has it? What's them bells ringing for, I wonder."

"They aint a ringing; they're a tolling."

Mr. Jones, rather confused at being thus put down by a girl of sixteen, coughed behind his hand, and looked round the room for a subject. He found none, save a general inquiry after the health of Mary, Mrs. Gray, and Miss Gray.

"They're all well enough," disdainfully replied Jane.

"Oh, are they! I see the rag and bottle shop is shut," he added, plunging desperately into the subject.

"S'pose it is!" answered Jane, eyeing him rather defiantly; for the rag and bottle woman was her own aunt; and she thought the observation of a personal nature.

Though much taken aback, Jones, spurred on by the irresistible wish to know, ventured on another question.

"You don't know who is going to take it next, do you?"

"Oh! you want to take it, do you?" said Jane.

"I—I!" exclaimed Jones, flurried and disconcerted. "La, bless the young woman! I aint in the rag and bottle line, am I?"

He thought by this artful turn to throw his young enemy off the scent; but her rejoinder showed him the futility of the attempt.

"I didn't say you was, did I?" she replied, drily.

Jones rose precipitately, and hastily desiring his love to Mrs. Gray, and his respects to Mary, he retreated most shamefully beaten. He did not breathe freely until he reached the end of the street, and once more found himself opposite the closed rag shop. How he had come there, he did not rightly know; for it was not his way home. But, being there, he naturally gave it another look. He stood gazing at it very attentively, and absorbed in thought, when he was roused by a sharp voice, which said,

"P'raps you'd like to see it within."

The voice came from above. Richard looked up. The first floor window was open, and a man's head was just thrust out of it. It looked down at him in the street, and apparently belonged to a little old man, to whom one very sharp eye—the other was closed up quite tight—and a long nose, which went all of one side, gave a rather remarkable appearance.

"Thank you, sir," replied Jones, rather confused. "I—I—"

Before he had got to the end of his speech, the old man vanished from the window, and suddenly appeared at the private door, beckoning him in.

"Come in," he said, coaxingly, like an ogre luring in an unwary little boy.

And, drawn as by a magnet, Jones entered.

"Dark passage, but good shop," said the old man. He opened a door, and in the shop suddenly stepped Richard Jones. It was small, dirty, and smelt of grease and old rags.

"Good shop," said the old man, rubbing his hands, in seeming great glee; "neat back parlour;" he opened a glass door, and Jones saw a triangular room, not much larger than a good-sized cupboard.

"More rooms up stairs," briskly said the old man; he nimbly darted up an old wooden staircase, that creaked under him. Mechanically Jones followed. There were two rooms on the upper and only storey; one of moderate size; the other, a little larger than the back parlour.

"Good shop," began the old man, reckoning on his fingers, "ca-pital shop; neat parlour—very neat; upper storey, two rooms; one splendid; cosy bed-room; rent of the whole, only thirty-five pounds a-year—only thirty-five pounds a-year!"

The repetition was uttered impressively.

"Thank you—much obliged to you," began Richard Jones, wishing himself fairly out of the place; "but you see—"

"Stop a bit," eagerly interrupted the old man, catching Jones by the button-hole, and fixing him, as the 'Ancient Mariner' fixed the wedding guest, with his glittering eye, "stop a bit; you take the house, keep shop, parlour, and bedroom for yourself and family—plenty; furnish front room, let it at five shillings a week; fifty-two weeks in the year; five times two, ten—put down naught, carry one; five times five, twenty-five, and one, twenty-six—two hundred and sixty shillings, make thirteen pounds; take thirteen pounds from thirty-five—"

"Law bless you, Sir!" hastily interrupted Jones, getting frightened at the practical landlord view the one-eyed and one-sided-nosed old man seemed to take of his presence in the house. "Law bless you, Sir! it's all a mistake, every bit of it."

"A mistake!" interrupted the old man, his voice rising shrill and loud.
"A mistake! five times two, ten—"

"Well, but I couldn't think of such a thing," in his turn interrupted
Jones. "I—"

"Well then, say thirty pound," pertinaciously resumed the old man; "take thirteen from thirty—"

"No, I can't then—really, I can't," desperately exclaimed Jones; "on my word I can't."

"Well, then, say twenty-five; from twenty-five take thirteen—"

"I tell you, 'tain't a bit of use your taking away thirteen at that rate," interrupted Jones, rather warmly.

"And what will you give, then?" asked the old man, with a sort of screech.

"Why, nothing!" impatiently replied Jones. "Who ever said I would give anything? I didn't—did I?"

"Then what do you come creeping and crawling about the place for?" hissed the old man, his one eye glaring defiance on Jones, "eh! just tell me that. Why, these two months you've crept and crept, and crawled, and crawled, till you've sent the rag and bottle people away. 'Sir,' says the rag and bottle woman to me, 'Sir, we can't stand it no longer. There's a man, Sir, and he prowls around the shop. Sir, and he jist looks in, and darts off agin, and he won't buy no rags, and he hasn't no bottles to sell; and my husband and me, Sir, we can't stand it—that's all.' Well, and what have you got to say to that, I should like to know?"

Jones, who never had a very ready tongue, and who was quite confounded at the accusation, remained dumb.

"I'll tell you what you are, though," cried the old man, his voice rising still higher with his wrath; "you are a crawling, creeping, low, sneaking fellow!"

"Now, old gentleman!" cried Jones, in his turn losing his temper, "just keep a civil tongue in your head, will you? I didn't ask to come in, did I? And if I did look at the shop at times, why, a cat can look at a king, can't he?"

Spite of the excellence of the reasoning thus popularly expressed, Jones perceived that the old man was going to renew his offensive language, and as he wisely mistrusted his own somewhat hasty temper, he prudently walked downstairs, and let himself out. But then he reached the street, the old man's head was already out of the first-floor window, and Jones turned the corner pursued with the words "creeping," "crawling." He lost the rest.

CHAPTER VI.

Rachel sat alone, working and thinking. The dull street was silent; the sound and stir of morning, alive elsewhere, reached it not; but the sky was clear and blue, and on that azure field mounted the burning sun, gladdening the very house-roofs as he went, and filling with light and life the quiet parlour of Rachel Gray.

Mrs. Gray was an ignorant woman, and she spoke bad English; but her literary tastes were superior to her education and to her language. Her few books were good—they were priceless; they included the poetical works of one John Milton. Whether Mrs. Gray understood him in all his beauty and sublimity, we know not, but at least, she read him, seriously, conscientiously—and many a fine lady cannot say as much. Rachel, too, read Milton, and loved him as a fine mind must ever love that noble poet. That very morning, she had been reading one of his sonnets, too little read, and too little known. We will give it here, for though, of course, all our readers are already acquainted with it, it might not be present to their memory.

"When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent,
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he, returning, chide;
'Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?'
I fondly ask: but Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, 'God doth not need
Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve, who only stand and wait'"

"'They also serve who only stand and wait,'"

thought Rachel, brooding over the words, as was her wont, "and that is my case. Oh, God! I stand and wait, and alas! I do nothing, for I am blind, and ignorant, and helpless, and what am I that the Lord should make use of me; yet, in His goodness, my simple readiness to do His will, He takes as good service. Oh, Rachel! happy Rachel! to serve so kind a master."

Her work dropt on her lap; and so deep was her abstraction, that she heard not the door opening, and saw not Richard Jones, until he stood within a few paces of her chair. She gave a slight start on perceiving him; and her nervous emotion was not lessened, by remarking that he was rather pale and looked excited.

"Mary is very well," she said, hastily, and half smiling at the supposed alarm which had, she thought, brought him so suddenly in upon her.

"Of course she is—of course she is," he replied, nodding; then, drawing a chair near to Rachel's, he sat down upon it, and, bending forward, with his two hands resting on his knees, he said, in a deep, impressive whisper,

"Miss Gray, may I speak to you? I want you to advise me," he added, after a slight pause.

"To advise you, Mr. Jones!" echoed Rachel, looking up at him, with mild astonishment.