The Late Miss Hollingford

by Rosa M. Gilbert

"Mary Hollingford," she said; "come home. Your father is dying, and he wants to see you."

Mr. and Mrs. Hill came to the window to see what it was. We were all silent from surprise for about a minute. Then Rachel rose trembling.

"Sit still, my love," said Arthur; "it is only a mad gipsy girl." And Jane was not unlike a gipsy.

"Come, come!" cried Jane, stamping her foot with impatience, not vouchsafing even a look at Arthur. "Come, or you will be too late; there is not a moment to lose."

I think Mrs. Hill's voice piped shrill exclamations at my ear, but I remember nothing that she said. Mr. Hill, who knew Jane by appearance, was speechless. Arthur had risen, and stood by Rachel, looking amazedly from her to Jane, and from Jane to her. Rachel turned on him a grievous look which I have never forgotten, and pushed him from her with both her hands back into the room. Then she glanced at me with a mute entreaty, and I stepped with her out of the window, and we went across the lawn and through the trees, and away along all the old tracks to the farm, following Jane, who, knowing we were behind her, flew like the wind, without once looking back. We soon lost her, for we often paused to pant and lean against one another for a moment's respite in this strange memorable race. We did not speak, but I looked at Rachel, and she was like a poor lily soiled and crushed by the storm, with her white dress trailing through the dust, and her satin shoes torn on her feet. But that was nothing. We reached the farmhouse. There was some one moving to meet white dishevelled, quivering Rachel. There was a cry, smothered at once in the awful hush of the place, and Rachel fell, clasping her mother's knees. I left them alone. What sobbings and whisperings, what confession and forgiveness followed, God and his angels heard.

I went blindly into the hall, knowing nothing of what I did. I met John coming to me. I had no words. I stretched out my hands to him. He took them, took me in his arms, and that was our reconciliation.

That night we were all present at a death-bed. It was only bit by bit that I learned the story of how the dying man came to be there. The poor erring father, reduced to want, and smitten by disease, had crept back in the disguise of a beggar to ask the charity of his deserted wife and children, and to breathe his last sigh among loving forgiving hearts. It was Jane, stern Jane, who had denounced him so cruelly, cherished such bitter resentment against him; it was Jane, who had happened, of a summer evening in her mother's absence, to open the door to his knock, had taken him into her arms and into her heart, had nursed him, caressed him, watched and prayed with him. So that was the end of poor Jane's hardness of heart. It was all washed away in tears at her father's death-bed. The last trace of it vanished at sight of Rachel's remorse.

My dear Mrs. Hollingford, my sweet old mother! These two shocks well nigh caused her death; but when she had nobly weathered the storm she found a daughter whom she had mourned as lost, living and breathing and loving in her arms, and her brave heart accepted much comfort.

And what about those three kind souls whom we left in such sudden consternation by the open window in the drawing-room at the Hall? Why, of course, they came to inquire into the mystery. I was the one who had to tell them Rachel's story, as kindly and delicately as I might. You will be glad, my children, to know that they made very little of their darling's fault. Mr. Hill was somewhat grave over the matter, but Mrs. Hill would not allow a word of blame to be uttered against her pet. She urged, she invented a hundred excuses; good, kind soul. As for Arthur Noble, he readily discerned love for himself as the cause of her unwilling desertion of others. His nature was large enough to appreciate the worth of my John and his mother. As he had been willing, he said, to wed Rachel friendless, so was he now more willing to wed Rachel with friends whom he could love. So the beloved culprit was tried and acquitted, and after many days had passed, and the poor father had been laid in the earth, a chastened Rachel was coaxed back to her lover's side, and, I have no doubt, told him her own story in her own way.

But old Mr. Hill was, to my mind, the most sensible of them all, who said to his wife: "They may say what they please, sweetheart, but, to my thinking, the lad, John, is by far the flower of the Hollingford flock!" And the fine old gentleman proved his good-will after years had passed that were then to come. When called upon to follow his wife, who died before him, he bequeathed the Hillsbro' estate to my husband.