Mrs. Richardson was a great gardener, and on warm days she spent most of her time in the open air; they breakfasted under a spreading chestnut, and often dined in foreign fashion on the terrace facing the sunset.
When Malcolm went down to the Manor House in August before he started for Norway, he walked across to Sandy Hollow with Mrs. Godfrey. They found Mrs. Richardson sitting in a shady retreat, with all her various pets round her. Leah was gathering flowers in the lower garden, she said. She received Malcolm very kindly, for he was one of her favourites, and talked to him a great deal about the girl—of her sweet temper, her docility, and her patience.
"She has heard nothing of that wretched brother of hers," she continued. Then Malcolm shrugged his shoulders; he could give her information on that subject, he said drily—at least a score of begging letters had reached him and Cedric from New York, and had been consigned to the flames. Saul Jacobi was evidently playing his old tricks and living on his wits; he was utterly irredeemable. Hugh Rossiter always prophesied that he would never die in his bed; and this prediction was unfortunately verified some three years later, when, in a drunken brawl, a tipsy sailor lurched up against him one dark night and pushed him over the quay. No one heard his cry for help for the oaths and curses that were filling the air; neither was his body found until the next day. Strange to say, it was Hugh Rossiter who identified it; and it was he who later on brought Leah a pathetic little proof that Saul had not wholly forgotten his sister.
In the pocket of his shabby old coat—how shabby and how ragged it was Hugh never ventured to tell her—there was a cheap little photo of Leah, taken when she was eighteen, and in the first bloom of her young beauty; and on the soiled envelope was written, "My little sister Leah," and the date of her birth. For no nature is wholly evil and irreclaimable, and perhaps, in spite of his tyranny and cruel tempers, there was a spark of affection in the man's heart for the young sister dependent on him. Leah always believed this, and she wept the saddest, tenderest tears over the little photo. "My poor Saul," she said, "his nature was strangely warped, and he did not know how to speak the truth, and he could be hard and cruel—as I know to my cost—but there were times when he was very good to me;" and so even Saul Jacobi had one human being to mourn for him.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE NEW CURATE-IN-CHARGE
While I? I sat alone and watched;
My lot in life, to live alone
In my own world of interests,
Much felt but little shown.
Yet sometimes, when I feel my strength
Most weak, and life most burdensome,
I lift mine eyes up to the hills,
From whence my help shall come.
—CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
Malcolm sat for some time talking to the two ladies; then he made
an excuse and set off in search of Leah. He was well acquainted with the grounds of Sandy Hollow, and could have found his way blindfolded to the lower garden.