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.