Aunt Hilary fixed her honest eyes on the lad's face—the lad, so little younger than herself, and yet who at tunes, when he let out sayings such as this, seemed so awfully, so pitifully old; and she felt thankful that, at all risks and costs, they had come to London to be beside him, to help him, to save him, if he needed saving, as women only can. For, after all, he was but a boy. And though as he walked by her side, stalwart and manly, the thought smote her painfully that many a young fellow of his age was the stay and bread winner of some widowed mother or sister, nay even of wife and child, still she repeated cheerfully. "What can one expect from him? He is only a boy."
God help the women who, for those belonging to them—husbands, fathers, brothers, lovers, sons—have ever so tenderly to apologize.
When they came in sight of St. Pancras's Church, Ascott said, suddenly, "I think you'll knew your way now, Aunt Hilary."
Certainly. Why?
Because—you wouldn't be vexed if I left you? I have an engagement; some fellows that I dine with, out at Hampstead, or Richmond, or Blackwell, every Sunday. Nothing wicked, I assure you. And you know it's capital for one's health to get a Sunday in fresh air.
Yes; but Aunt Johanna will be sorry to miss you.
Will she? Oh, you'll smooth her down. Stay! Tell her I shall be back to tea.
We shall be having tea directly.
I declare I had quite forgotten. Aunt Hilary, you must change your hours. They don't suit me at all. No men can ever stand early dinners. By, by! You are the very prettiest auntie. Be sure you get home safe. Hollo, there! That's my omnibus.
He jumped on the top of it, and was off.
Aunt Hilary stood quite confounded, and with one of those strange sinkings of the heart which had come over her several times this day. It was not that Ascott showed any unkindness—that there was any actual badness in his bright and handsome young face. Still there was a want there—want of earnestness, steadfastness, truthfulness, a something more discoverable as the lack of something else than as aught in itself tangibly and perceptibly wrong. It made her sad; it caused her to look forward to his future with an anxious heart. It was so different from the kind of anxiety, and yet settled repose, with which she thought of the only other man in whose future she felt the smallest interest. Of Robert Lyon, she was certain that whatever misfortune visited him he would bear it in the best way it could be borne; whatever temptation assailed him he would fight against it as a brave and good Christian should fight. But Ascott?
Ascott's life was as yet an unanswered query. She could but leave it in Omnipotent hands.
So she found her way home, asking it once or twice of civil policemen, and going a little distance round—dare I make this romantic confession about so sensible and practical a little woman?—that she might walk once up Burton Street and down again. But nobody knew the fact, and it did nobody any harm.
Meantime at No 15 the afternoon had passed heavily enough. Miss Selina had gone to lie down; she always did of Sundays, and Elizabeth, after making her comfortable, by the little attentions the lady always required, had descended to the dreary wash house, which had been appropriated to herself, under the name of a "private kitchen," in the which, after all the cleanings and improvements she could achieve, sat like Marius among the rains of Carthage, and sighed for the tidy bright house place at Stowbury. Already, from her brief experience, she had decided that London people were horrid shams, because they did not in the least care to have their kitchens comfortable. She wondered how she should ever exist in this one, and might have carried her sad and sullen face up stairs, if Miss Leaf had not come down stairs, and glancing about with that ever gentle smile of hers, said kindly, "Well, it is not very pleasant, but you have made the best of it, Elizabeth. We must all put up with something, you know. Now, as my eyes are not very good to-day, suppose you come up and read me a chapter."
So, in the quiet parlor, the maid sat down opposite her mistress, and read aloud out of that Book which says distinctly: "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as unto Christ: knowing, that whatsoever good thing a man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free."
And yet says immediately after: "Ye masters, to the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him."
And I think that Master whom Paul served, not in preaching only, but also in practice, when he sent back the slave Onesimus to Philemon, praying that he might be received, "no' now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved," that Divine Master must have looked tenderly upon these two women—both women, though of such different age and position, and taught them through His Spirit in His word, as only He can teach.
The reading was disturbed by a carriage driving up to the door, and a knock, a tremendously grand and forcible footman's knock, which made Miss Leaf start in her easy chair.
"
But it can't be visitors to us. We know nobody. Sit still, Elizabeth.
"It was a visitor, however, though by what ingenuity he found them out remained, when they came to think of it, a great puzzle. A card was sent in by the dirty servant of Mrs. Jones, speedily followed by a stout, bald headed, round faced man—I suppose I ought to write "gentleman"—in whom, though she had not seen him for years, Miss Leaf found no difficulty in recognizing the grocer's prentice boy, now Mr. Peter Ascott, of Russell Square.
She rose to receive him: there was always a stateliness in Miss Leaf's reception of strangers; a slight formality belonging to her own past generation, and to the time when the Leafs were a "county family." Perhaps this extra dignity, graceful as it was, overpowered the little man; or else, being a bachelor, he was unaccustomed to ladies' society: but he grew red in the face, twiddled his hat, and then cast a sharp inquisitive glance toward her.
Miss Leaf, I presume, ma'am. The eldest?
I am the eldest Miss Leaf, and very glad to have an opportunity of thanking you for your long kindness to my nephew. Elizabeth, give Mr. Ascott a chair.
While doing so, and before her disappearance, Elizabeth took a rapid observation of the visitor, whose name and history were perfectly familiar to her. Most small towns have their hero, and Stowbury's was Peter Ascott, the grocer's boy, the little fellow who had gone up to London to seek his fortune, and had, strange to say, found it. Whether by industry or luck—except that industry is luck, and luck is only another word for industry—he had gradually risen to be a large city merchant, a dry-salter I conclude it would be called, with a handsome house, carriage, etc. He had never revisited his native place, which indeed could not be expected of him, as he had no relations, but, when asked, as was not seldom of course, he subscribed liberally to its charities.
Altogether he was a decided hero in the place, and though people really knew very little about him, the less they knew the more they gossiped, holding him up to the rising generation as a modern Dick Whittington, and reverencing him extremely as one who had shed glory on his native town. Even Elizabeth had conceived a great idea of Mr. Ascott. When she saw this little fat man, coarse and common looking in spite of his good clothes and diamond ring, and in manner a curious mixture of pomposity and awkwardness, she laughed to herself, thinking what a very uninteresting individual it was about whom Stowbury had told so many interesting stories. However, she went up to inform Miss Selina, and prevent her making her appearance before him in the usual Sunday dishabille in which she indulged when no visitors were expected.
After his first awkwardness, Mr. Peter Ascott became quite at his ease with Miss Leaf. He began to talk—not of Stowbury, that was tacitly ignored by both—but of London, and then of "my house in Russell Square," "my carriage," "my servants"—the inconvenience of keeping coachmen who would drink, and footmen who would not clean the plate properly; ending by what was a favorite moral axiom of his, that "wealth and position are heavy responsibilities."
He himself seemed, however, not to have been quite overwhelmed by them; he was fat and flourishing—with an acuteness and power in the upper half of his face which accounted for his having attained his present position. The lower half, somehow Miss Leaf did not like it, she hardly knew why, though a physiognomist might have known. For Peter Ascott had the underhanging, obstinate, sensual lip, the large throat—bull-necked, as it has been called—indications of that essentially animal nature which may be born with the nobleman as with the clown; which no education can refine, and no talent, though it may co-exist with it, can ever entirely remove. He reminded one, perforce, of the rough old proverb; "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."
Still, Mr. Ascott was not a bad man, though something deeper than his glorious indifference to grammar, and his dropped h's—which, to steal some one's joke, might have been swept up in bushels from Miss Leaf's parlor—made it impossible for him ever to be, by any culture whatever, a gentleman.
They talked of Ascott, as being the most convenient mutual subject; and Miss Leaf expressed the gratitude which her nephew felt, and she earnestly hoped would ever show, toward his kind godfather.
Mr. Ascott looked pleased.
Um—yes, Ascott's not a bad fellow—believe he means well: but weak, ma'am, I'm afraid he's weak. Knows nothing of business—has no business habits whatever. However, we must make the best of him; I don't repent any thing I've done for him.
I hope not, said Miss Leaf, gravely.
And then there ensued an uncomfortable pause, which was happily broken by the opening of the door, and the sweeping in of a large, goodly figure.
My sister, Mr. Ascott; my sister Selina.
The little stout man actually started, and, as he bowed, blushed up to the eyes.
Miss Selina was, as I have stated, the beauty of the family, and had once been an acknowledged Stowbury belle. Even now, though nigh upon forty, when carefully and becomingly dressed, her tall figure, and her well featured, fair complexioned, unwrinkled face, made her still appear a very personable woman. At any rate, she was not faded enough, nor the city magnate's heart cold enough to prevent a sudden revival of the vision which—in what now seemed an almost antediluvian stage of existence—had dazzled, Sunday after Sunday, the eyes of the grocer's lad. If there is one pure spot in a man's heart—oven the very worldliest of men—it is usually his boyish first love.
So Peter Ascott looked hard at Miss Selina, then into his hat, then, as good luck would have it, out of the window, where he caught sight of his carriage and horses. These revived his spirits, and made him recognize what he was—Mr. Ascott, of Russell Square, addressing himself in the character of a benevolent patron to the Leaf family.
Glad to see you, Miss. Long time since we met—neither of us so young as we have been—but you do wear well, I must say.
Miss Selina drew back; she was within an inch of being highly offended, when she too happened to catch a glimpse of the carriage and horses. So she sat down and entered into conversation with him; and when she liked, nobody could be more polite and agreeable than Miss Selina. So it happened that the handsome equipage crawled round and round the Crescent, or stood pawing the silent Sunday street before No. 15, for very nearly an hour, even till Hilary came home. It was vexatious to have to make excuses for Ascott: particularly as his godfather said with a laugh, that "young fellows would be young fellows," they needn't expect to see the lad till midnight, or till to-morrow morning.
But though in this, and other things, he somewhat annoyed the ladies from Stowbury, no one could say he was not civil to them—exceedingly civil. He offered them Botanical Garden tickets—Zoological Garden tickets; he even, after some meditation and knitting of his shaggy grey eyebrows, bolted out with an invitation for the whole family to dinner at Russell Square the following Sunday.
I always give my dinners on Sunday. I've no time any other day, said he, when Miss Leaf gently hesitated. "Come or not, just as you like."
Miss Selina, to whom the remark was chiefly addressed, bowed the most gracious acceptance. The visitor took very little notice of Miss Hilary. Probably, if asked, he would have described her as a small, shabbily-dressed person, looking very like a governess. Indeed, the fact of her governess-ship seemed suddenly to recur to him; he asked her if she meant to set up another school, and being informed that she rather wished private pupils, promised largely that she should have the full benefit of his "patronage" among his friends. Then he departed, leaving a message for Ascott to call next day, as he wished to speak to him.
For you must be aware, Miss Leaf, that though your nephew's allowance is nothing—a mere drop in the bucket out of my large income—still, when it comes year after year, and no chance of his shifting for himself, the most benevolent man in the world feels inclined to stop the supplies. Not that I shall do that—at least not immediately: he is a fine young fellow, whom I'm rather proud to have helped a step up the ladder, and I've a great respect—here he bowed to Miss Selina—"a great respect for your family. Still there must come a time when I shall be obliged to shut up my purse-strings. You understand, ma'am."
I do, Miss Leaf answered, trying to speak with dignity, and yet with patience, for she saw Hilary's face beginning to flame. "And I trust, Mr. Ascott, my nephew will soon cease to be an expense to you. It was your own voluntary kindness that brought it upon yourself, and I hope you have not found, never will find, either him or us ungrateful."
Oh, as to that, ma'am, I don't look for gratitude. Still, if Ascott does work his way into a good position—and he'll be the first of his family that ever did, I reckon—but I beg your pardon, Miss Leaf. Ladies, I'll bid you good day. Will your servant call my carriage?
The instant he was gone Hilary burst forth—
If I were Ascott, I'd rather starve in a garret, break stones in the high road, or buy a broom and sweep a crossing, than I'd be dependent on this man, this pompous, purse-proud, illiterate fool!
No, not a fool, reproved Johanna. "An acute, clear-headed, nor, I think, bad-hearted man. Coarse and common, certainly; but if we were to hate every thing coarse or common, we should find plenty to hate. Besides, though he does his kindness in an unpleasant way, think how very, very kind he has been to Ascott."
Johanna, I think you would find a good word for the de'il himself, as we used to say, cried Hilary, laughing. "Well, Selina; and what is your opinion of our stout friend?"
Miss Selina, bridling a little, declared that she did not see so much to complain of in Mr. Ascott. He was not educated, certainly, but he was a most respectable person. And his calling upon them so soon was most civil and attentive. She thought, considering his present position, they should forget—indeed, as Christians they were bound to forget—that he was once their grocer's boy, and go to dine with him next Sunday.
For my part, I shall go, though it is Sunday. I consider it quite a religious duty—my duty towards my neighbor.
Which is to love him as yourself. I am sure, Selina, I have no objection. It would be a grand romantic wind-up to the story which Stowbury used to tell—of how the 'prentice boy stared his eyes out at the beautiful young lady; and you would get the advantage of 'my house in Russell Square,' 'my carriage and servants,' and be able to elevate your whole family. Do, now! set your cap at Peter Ascott. Here Hilary, breaking out into one of her childish fits of irrepressible laughter, was startled to see Selina's face in one blaze of indignation.
Hold your tongue, you silly chit, and don't chatter about things you don't understand.
And she swept majestically out of the room.
What have I done? Why she is really vexed. If I had thought she would have taken it in earnest I would never have said a word. Who would have thought it!
But Miss Selina's fits of annoyance were so common that the sisters rarely troubled themselves long on the matter. And when at tea-time she came down in the best of spirits, they met her half-way, as they always did, thankful for these brief calms in the family atmosphere, which never lasted too long. It was a somewhat heavy evening. They waited supper till after ten; and yet Ascott did not appear. Miss Leaf read the chapter as usual; and Elizabeth was sent to bed, but still no sign of the absentee.
I will sit up for him. He cannot be many minutes new, said his Aunt Hilary, and settled herself in the solitary parlor, which one candle and no fire made as cheerless as could possibly be. There she waited till midnight before the young man came in. Perhaps he was struck with compunction by her weary white face—by her silent lighting of his candle, for he made her a thousand apologies.
'Pon my honor, Aunt Hilary, I'll never keep you up so late again. Poor dear auntie, how tired she looks! and he kissed her affectionately. "But if you were a young fellow, and got among other young fellows, and they over-persuaded you."
You should learn to say, No.
Ah—with a sigh—"so I ought, if I were as good as my Aunt Hilary."
Months slipped by; the trees in Burton Crescent had long been all bare; the summer cries of itinerant vegetable dealers and flower sellers had vanished out of the quiet street.—The three sisters almost missed them, sitting in that one dull parlor from morning till night, in the intense solitude of people who, having neither heart nor money to spend in gayeties, live forlorn in London lodgings, and knowing nobody, have nobody to visit, nobody to visit them.
Except Mr. Ascott, who still called, and occasionally stayed to tea. The hospitalities, however, were all on their side. The first entertainment—to which Selina insisted upon going, and Johanna thought Hilary and Ascott had better go too—was splendid enough, but they were the only ladies present; and though Mr. Ascott did the honors with great magnificence, putting Miss Selina at the head of his table, where she looked exceedingly well, still the sisters agreed it was better that all further invitations to Russell Square should be declined. Miss Selina herself said it would be more dignified and decorous.
Other visitors they had none. Ascott never offered to bring any of his friends; and gradually they saw very little of him. He was frequently out, especially at meal times, so that his aunts gave up the struggle to make the humble dinners better and more to his liking, and would even have hesitated to take the money which he was understood to pay for his board, had he ever offered it, which he did not. Yet still whenever he did happen to remain with them a day, or an evening, he was good and affectionate, and always entertained them with descriptions of all he would do as soon as he got into practice.
Meantime they kept house as economically as possible upon the little ready money they had, hoping that more would come in—that Hilary would get pupils.
But Hilary never did. To any body who knows London this will not be surprising.—The wonder was in the Misses Leaf being so simple as to imagine that a young country lady, settling herself in lodgings in an obscure metropolitan street, without friends or introduction, could ever expect such a thing. No thing but her own daring, and the irrepressible well-spring of hope that was in her healthy youth, could have sustained her in what, ten years after, would have appeared to her, as it certainty was, downright insanity. But Heaven takes care of the mad, the righteously and unselfishly mad, and Heaven took care of poor Hilary.
The hundred labors she went through—weariness of body and travail of soul, the risks she ran, the pitfalls she escaped—what need to record here? Many have recorded the like, many more have known them, and acknowledged that when such histories are reproduced in books how utterly imagination fades before reality. Hilary never looked back-upon that time herself without a shuddering wonder how she could have dared all and gone through all. Possibly she never could, but for the sweet old face, growing older yet sweeter every day, which smiled upon her the minute she opened the door of that dull parlor, and made even No. 15 look like home.
When she told, sometimes gayly, sometimes with burning, bursting tears, the tale of her day's efforts and day's failures, it was always comfort to feel Johanna's hand on her hair Johanna's voice whispering over her, "Never mind, my child, all will come right in time All happens for good."
And the face, withered and worn, yet calm as a summer sea, full of the "peace which passeth all understanding," was a living comment on the truth of these words.
Another comfort Hilary had—Elizabeth.—During her long days of absence, wandering from one end of London to the other, after advertisements that she had answered, or governess institutions that she had applied to the domestic affairs fell almost entirely into the hands of Elizabeth. It was she who bought in, and kept a jealous eye, not unneeded, over provisions; she who cooked and waited, and sometimes even put a helping hand, coarse, but willing, into the family sewing and mending. This had now become so vital a necessity that it was fortunate Miss Leaf had no other occupation, and Miss Selina no other entertainment, than stitch, stitch, stitch, at the ever-beginning, never-ending wardrobe wants which assail decent poverty every where, especially in London.
Clothes seem to wear out frightfully fast, said Hilary one day, when she was putting on her oldest gown, to suit a damp, foggy day, when the streets were slippery with the mud of settled rain.
I saw such beautiful merino dresses in a shop in Southampton Row, insinuated Elizabeth; but her mistress shook her head.
No, no; my old black silk will do capitally, and I can easily put on two shawls. Nobody knows me; and people may wear what they like in London. Don't look so grave, Elizabeth. What does it signify if I can but keep myself warm? Now, run away.
Elizabeth obeyed, but shortly reappeared with a bundle—a large, old fashioned thick shawl.
Mother gave it me; her mistress gave it her; but we've never worn it, and never shall. If only you didn't mind putting it on, just this once—this terrible soaking day!
The scarlet face, the entreating tones—there was no resisting them. One natural pang Hilary felt—that in her sharp poverty she had fallen so low as to be indebted to her servant, and then she too blushed, less for shame at accepting the kindness than for her own pride that could not at once receive it as such.
Thank you, Elizabeth, she said, gravely and gently, and let herself be wrapped in the thick shawl. Its gorgeous reds and yellows would, she knew, make her noticeable, even though "people might wear any thing in London." Still, she put it on with a good grace, and all through her peregrinations that day it warmed not only her shoulders, but her heart.
Coming home, she paused wistfully before a glittering shoe shop; her poor little feet were so soaked and cold. Could she possibly afford a new pair of boots? It was not a matter of vanity—she had passed that. She did not care now how ugly and shabby looked the "wee feet" that had once been praised; but she felt it might be a matter of health and prudence. Suppose she caught cold—fell ill—died: died, leaving Johanna to struggle alone; died before Robert Lyon came home. Both thoughts struck sharp. She was too young still, or had not suffered enough, calmly to think of death and dying.
It will do no harm to inquire the price. I might stop it out in omnibuses.
For this was the way that every new article of dress had to be procured—"stopping it cut" of something else.
After trying several pairs-with a fierce, bitter blush at a small hole which the day's walking had worn in her well darned stockings, and which she was sure the shopman saw, as well as an old lady who sat opposite—Hilary bought the plainest and stoutest of boots. The bill overstepped her purse by six pence, but she promised that sum on delivery, and paid the rest. She had got into a nervous horror of letting any account stand over for a single day.
Look tenderly, reader, on this picture of struggles so small, of sufferings so uninteresting and mean. I paint it not because it is original, but because it is so awfully true. Thousands of women, well born, well reared, know it to be true—burned into them by the cruel conflict of their youth; happy they if it ended in their youth, while mind and body had still enough vitality and elasticity to endure! I paint it, because it accounts for the accusation sometimes made—especially by men—that women are naturally stingy. Possibly so: but in many instances may it not have been this petty struggle with petty wants this pitiful calculating of penny against penny, how best to save here and spend there, which narrows a woman's nature in spite of herself? It sometimes takes years of comparative ease and freedom from pecuniary cares to counteract the grinding, lowering effects of a youth of poverty.
And I paint this picture, too, literally, and not on its picturesque side—it, indeed, poverty has a picturesque side—in order to show another side which it really has—high, heroic, made up of dauntless endurance, self sacrifice, and self control Also, to indicate that blessing which narrow circumstances alone bestow, the habit of looking more to the realities than to the shows of things, and of finding pleasure in enjoyments mental rather than sensuous, inward rather than external. When people can truly recognize this they cease either to be afraid or ashamed of poverty.
Hilary was not ashamed:—not even now, when hers smote sharper and harder than it had ever done at Stowbury. She felt it a sore thing enough; but it never humiliated nor angered her. Either she was too proud or not proud enough; but her low estate always seemed to her too simply external a thing to affect her relations with the world outside. She never thought of being annoyed with the shopkeeper, who, though he trusted her with the sixpence, carefully took down her name and address: still less to suspecting the old lady opposite, who sat and listened to the transaction—apparently a well-to-do customer, clad in a rich black silk and handsome sable furs—of looking down upon her and despising her. She herself never despised any body, except for wickedness.
So she waited contentedly, neither thinking of herself, nor of what others thought of her; but with her mind quietly occupied by the two thoughts, which in any brief space of rest always recurred, calming down all annoyances, and raising her above the level of petty pains—Johanna and Robert Lyon. Under the influence of these her tired face grew composed, and there was a wishful, far away, fond look in her eyes, which made it not wonderful that the said old lady—apparently an acute old soul in her way—should watch her, as we do occasionally watch strangers in whom we have become suddenly interested.
There is no accounting for these interests, or to the events to which they give rise. Sometimes they are pooh-pooh-ed as "romantic," "unnatural," "like a bit in a novel;" and yet they are facts continually occurring, especially to people of quick intuition, observation, and sympathy. Nay, even the most ordinary people have known or heard of such, resulting in mysterious, life-long loves; firm friendships; strange yet often wonderful happy marriages; sudden revolutions of fortune and destiny: things utterly unaccountable for, except by the belief in the inscrutable Providence which
"Shapes our ends,
Rough-how them as we will."
When Hilary left the shop she was startled by a voice at her elbow.
I beg your pardon, but if your way lies up Southampton Row, would you object to give an old woman a share of that capital umbrella of yours?
With pleasure, Hilary answered, though the oddness of the request amused her. And it was granted really with pleasure; for the old lady spoke with those "accents of the mountain tongue" which this foolish Hilary never recognized without a thrill at the heart.
May be you think an old woman ought to take a cab, and not be intruding upon strangers; but I am hale and hearty, and being only a streets length from my own door, I dislike to waste unnecessary shillings.
Certainly, acquiesced Hilary, with a half sigh: shillings were only too precious to her.
I saw you in the boot shop, and you seemed the sort of young lady who would do a kindness to an old body like me; so I said to myself, 'Ill ask her.'
I am glad you did. Poor girl! she felt unconsciously pleased at finding herself still able to show a kindness to any body.
They walked on and on—it was certainly a long street's length—to the stranger's door, and it took Hilary a good way round from hers; but she said nothing of this, concluding, of course, that her companion was unaware of where she lived; in which she was mistaken. They stopped at last before a respectable house near Brunswick Square, bearing a brass plate, with the words "Miss Balquidder."
That is my name, and very much obliged to you, my dear. How it rains! Ye're just drenched.
Hilary smiled and shook her damp shawl. "I shall take no harm. I am used to go out in all weathers."
Are you a governess? The question was so direct and kindly, that it hardly seemed an impertinence.
Yes; but I have no pupils, and I fear I shall never get any.
Why not?
I suppose, because I know nobody here. It seems so very hard to get teaching in London. But I beg your pardon.
I beg yours, said Miss Balquidder—not without a certain dignity—"for asking questions of a stranger. But I was once a stranger here myself, and had a 'sair fecht,' as we say in Scotland, before I could earn even my daily bread. Though I wasn't a governess, still I know pretty well what the sort of life is, and if I had daughters who must work for their bread, the one thing I would urge upon them should be—'Never become a governess.' "
Indeed. For what reason?
I'll not tell you now, my dear, standing with all your wet clothes on; but as I said, if you will do me the favor to call.
Thank you! said Hilary, not sufficiently initiated in London caution to dread making a new acquaintance. Besides, she liked the rough hewn, good natured face; and the Scotch accent was sweet to her ear.
Yet when she reached home she was half shy of telling her sisters the engagement she had made. Selina was extremely shocked, and considered it quite necessary that the London Directory, the nearest clergyman, or, perhaps, Mr. Ascott, who living in the parish, must know—should be consulted as to Miss Balquidder's respectability.
She has much more reason to question ours, recollected Hilary, with some amusement; for I never told her my name or address. She does not know a single thing about me.
Which fact, arguing the matter energetic ally two days after, the young lady might not have been so sure of, could she have penetrated the ceiling overhead. In truth, Miss Balquidder, a prudent person, who never did things by halves, and, like most truly generous people, was cautious even in her extremist fits of generosity, at that very moment was sitting in Mrs. Jones's first floor, deliberately discovering every single thing possible to be learned about the Leaf family.
Nevertheless, owing to Selina's indignant pertinacity, Hilary's own hesitation, and a dim hope of a pupil which rose up and faded like the rest, the possible acquaintance lay dormant for two or three weeks; till, alas! the fabulous wolf actually came to the door; and the sisters, after paying their week's rent, looked aghast at one another, not knowing where in the wide world the next week's rent was to come from.
Thank God, we don't owe any thing: not a penny! gasped Hilary.
No; there is comfort in that, said Johanna. And the expression of her folded hands and upward face was not despairing, even though that of the poor widow, when her barrel of meal was gone, and her cruse of oil spent, would hardly have been sadder.
I am sure we have wasted nothing, and cheated nobody;—surely God will help us.
I know He will, my child.
And the two sisters, elder and younger, kissed one another, cried a little, and then sat down to consider what was to be done.
Ascott must be told how things were with them. Hitherto they had not troubled him much with their affairs: indeed, he was so little at home. And after some private consultation, both Johanna and Hilary decided that it was wisest to let the lad come and go as he liked; not attempting—as he once indignantly expressed it—"to tie him to their apron strings." For instinctively these maiden ladies felt that with men, and, above all, young men, the only way to bind the wandering heart was to leave it free, except by trying their utmost that home should be always a pleasant home.
It was touching to see their efforts, when Ascott came in of evenings, to enliven for his sake the dull parlor at No. 15. How Johanna put away her mending, and Selina ceased to grumble, and Hilary began her lively chat, that never failed to brighten and amuse the household. Her nephew even sometimes acknowledged that wherever he went, he met nobody so "clever" as Aunt Hilary.
So, presuming upon her influence with him, on this night, after the rest were gone to bed, she, being always the boldest to do any unpleasant thing, said to him.
Ascott, how are your business affairs progressing? When do you think you will be able to get into practice?
Oh, presently. There's no hurry.
I am not so sure of that. Do you know, my dear boy—and she opened her purse, which contained a few shillings—"this is all the money we have in the world."
Nonsense, said Ascott, laughing. "I beg your pardon," he added, seeing it was with her no laughing matter; "but I am so accustomed to be hard up that I don't seem to care. It always comes right somehow—at least with me."
How?
Oh, I don't exactly know; but it does. Don't fret, Aunt Hilary. I'll lend you a pound or two.
She drew back. These poor, proud, fond women, who, if their boy, instead of a fine gentleman, had been a helpless invalid, would have tended him, worked for him, nay, begged for him—cheerfully, oh, how cheerfully! wanting nothing in the whole world but his love—they could not ask him for his money. Even now, offered thus, Hilary felt as if to take it would be intolerable.
Still the thing must be done.
I wish, Ascott—and she nerved herself to say what somebody ought to say to him—"I would you would not lend but pay us the pound a week you said you could so easily spare."
To be sure I will. What a thoughtless fellow I have been! But—but—I fancied you would have asked me if you wanted it. Never mind, you'll get it all in a lump. Let me see—how much will it come to? You are the best head going for arithmetic, Aunt Hilary. Do reckon it all up? She did so; and the sum total made Ascott open his eyes wide.
Upon my soul I had no idea it was so much. I'm very sorry, but I seem fairly cleaned out this quarter—only a few sovereigns left to keep the mill going. You shall have them, or half of them, and I'll owe you the rest. Here!
He emptied on the table, without counting, four or five pounds. Hilary took two, asking him gravely "If he was sure he could spare so much? She did not wish to inconvenience him."
Oh, not at all; and I wouldn't mind if it did; you have been good aunts to me.
He kissed her, with a sudden fit of compunction, and bade her good-night, looking as if he did not care to be "bothered" any more.
Hilary retired, more sad, more hopeless about him than if he had slammed the door in her face, or scolded her like a trooper. Had he met her seriousness in the same spirit, even though it had been a sullen or angry spirit—and little as she said he must have felt she wished him to feel—that his aunts were displeased with him; but that utterly unrepressible light-heartedness of his—there was no doing any thing with it. There was so to speak, "no catching hold" of Ascott. He meant no harm. She repeated over and over again that the lad meant no harm. He had no evil ways; was always pleasant, good-natured, and affectionate, in his own careless fashion; but was no more to be relied on than a straw that every wind blows hither and thither; or, to use a common simile, a butterfly that never sees any thing farther than the nearest flower. His was, in short, the pleasure-loving temperament, not positively sinful or sensual, but still holding pleasure as the greatest good; and regarding what deeper natures call "duty," and find therein their strong-hold and consolation, as a mere bugbear or a sentimental theory, or an impossible folly.
Poor lad! and he had the world to fight with; how would it use him? Even if no heavy sorrows for himself or others smote him, his handsome face would have to grow old, his strong frame to meet sickness—death.—How would he do it? That is the thought which always recurs. What is the end of such men as these? Alas! the answer would come from hospital wards, alms-houses and work-houses, debtors' prisons and lunatic asylums.
To apprehensions like this—except the last, happily it was as yet too far off—Hilary had been slowly and sadly arriving about Ascott for weeks past; and her conversation with him to-night seemed to make them darken down upon her with added gloom. As she went up stairs she set her lips together hard.
"
I see there is nobody to do any thing except me. But I must not tell Johanna.
"She lay long awake, planning every conceivable scheme for saving money; till at length, her wits sharpened by the desperation of the circumstances, there flashed upon her an idea that came out of a talk she had had with Elizabeth that morning. True, it was a perfectly new and untried chance—and a mere chance; still it was right to overlook nothing. She would not have ventured to tell Selina of it for the world, and even to Johanna, she only said—finding her as wakeful as herself—said it in a careless manner, as if it had relation to nothing, and she expected nothing from it— "I think, as I have nothing else to do, I will go and see Miss Balquidder to-morrow morning."
Miss Balquidder's house was a handsome one, handsomely furnished, and a neat little to aid-servant showed Hilary at once into the dining-parlor, where the mistress sat before a business-like writing-table, covered with letters, papers, etc., all arranged with that careful order in disorder which indicates, even in the smallest things, the possession of an accurate, methodical mind, than which there are few greater possessions, either to its owner or to the world at large.
Miss Balquidder was not a personable woman; she had never been so even in youth; and age had told its tale upon those large, strong features—"thoroughly Scotch features," they would have been called by those who think all Scotchwomen are necessarily big, raw-boned, and ugly; and have never seen that wonderfully noble beauty—not prettiness, but actual beauty in its highest physical as well as spiritual development—which is not seldom found across the Tweed.
But while there was nothing lovely, there was nothing unpleasant or uncomely in Miss Balquidder. Her large figure, in its plain black silk dress; her neat white cap, from under which peeped the little round curls of flaxen hair, neither gray nor snowy, but real "lint-white locks" still; and her good-humored, motherly look—motherly rather than old-maidish—gave an impression which may be best described by the word "comfortable."—She was a "comfortable" woman. She had that quality—too rarely, alas! in all people, and rarest in women going solitary down the hill of life—of being able, out of the deep content of her own nature, to make other people the same.
Hilary was cheered in spite of herself: it always conveys hope to the young, when in sore trouble, if they see the old looking happy.
Welcome, my dear! I was afraid you had forgotten your promise.
Oh no, said Hilary, responding heartily to the hearty clasp of a hand large as a man's, but soft as a woman's.
Why did you not come sooner?
More than one possible excuse flashed thro' Hilary's mind, but she was too honest to give it. She gave none at all. Nor did she like to leave the impression that this was merely a visit, when she knew she had only come from secondary and personal motives.
May I tell you why I came to-day?—Because I want advice and help, and I think you can give it, from something I heard about you yesterday.
Indeed! From whom?
In rather a roundabout way; from Mrs. Jones, who told our maid-servant.
The same girl I met on the staircase at your bones? I beg your pardon, but I know where you live, Miss Leaf; your landlady happens to be an acquaintance of mine.
So she said: and she told our Elizabeth that you were a rich and benevolent woman, who took a great interest in helping other women; not in money—blushing scarlet at be idea—"I don't mean that, but in procuring them work. I want work—oh! so terribly. If you only knew—"
Sit down, my dear; for Hilary was rambling much, her voice breaking, and her eyes filling, in spite of all her self-command.
Miss Balquidder—who seemed accustomed to wait upon herself—went out of the room, and returned with cake and glasses; then she took the wine from the side-board, poured some oat for herself and Hilary, and began to talk.
It is nearly my luncheon-time, and I am a great friend to regular eating and drinking. I never let any thing interfere with my own meals, or other folks' either, if I can help it. I would as soon expect that fire to keep itself up without coals, as my mind to go on working if I don't look after my body. You understand? You seem to have good health, Miss Leaf. I hope you are a prudent girl, and take care of it.
I think I do; and Hilary smiled. "At any rate my sister does for me, and also Elizabeth."
Ah, I liked the look of that girl. If families did but know that the most useful patent of respectability they can carry about with them is their maid-servant! That is how I always judge my new acquaintances.
There's reason in it, too, said Hilary, amused and drawn out of herself by the frank manner and the cordial voice—I use the adjective advisedly; none the less sweet because its good terse English had a decided Scotch accent, with here and there a Scotch word. Also there was about Miss Balquidder a certain dry humor essentially Scotch—neither Irish "wit" nor English "fun," but Scotch humor; a little ponderous perhaps, yet sparkling: like the sparkles from a large lump of coal, red-warm at the heart, and capable of warming a whole household. As many a time it had warmed the little household at Stowbury—for Robert Lyon had it in perfection. Like a waft as from old times, it made Hilary at once feel at home with Miss Balquidder. Equally, Miss Balquidder might have seen something in this girl's patient, heroic, forlorn youth which reminded her of her own. Unreasoning as these sudden attractions appear, there is often a hidden something beneath which in reality makes them both natural and probable, as was the case here. In half an hour these two women were sitting talking like old friends; and Hilary had explained her present position, needs and desires. They ended in the one cry—familiar to how many thousands more of helpless young women!—"I want work!"
Miss Balquidder listened thoughtfully. Not that it was a new story—alas! she heard it every day; but there was something new in the telling of it; such extreme directness and simplicity, such utter want of either false pride or false shame, No asking of favors, and yet no shrinking from well-means kindness; the poor woman speaking freely to the rich one, recognizing the common womanhood of both, and never supposing for an instant that mere money or position could make any difference between them.
The story ended, both turned, as was the character of both, to the practical application of it—what it was exactly that Hilary needed, and what Miss Balquidder could supply.
The latter said, after a turn or two up and down the room, with her hands behind her—the only masculine trick she had—
My dear, before going further, I ought to tell you one thing—I am not a lady.
Hilary looked at her in no little bewilderment.
That is, explained Miss Balquidder, laughing, "not an educated gentlewoman like you. I made my money myself—in trade. I kept an outfitter's shop."
You must have kept it uncommonly well, was the involuntary reply, which, in its extreme honesty and naivete, was perhaps the best thing that Hilary could have said.
Well, perhaps I did, and Miss Balquidder laughed her hearty laugh, betraying one of her few weaknesses—a consciousness of her own capabilities as a woman of business, and a pleasure at her own deserved success.
Therefore, you see. I can not help you as a governess. Perhaps I would not if I could, for, so far as I see, a good clearance of one half the governesses into honest trades would be for their own benefit, and greatly to the benefit of the other half. But that's not my affair. I only meddle with things I understand. Miss Leaf, would you be ashamed of keeping a shop?
It is no reflection upon Hilary to confess that this point-blank question startled her.—Her bringing up had been strictly among the professional class; and in the provinces sharper than even in London is drawn the line between the richest tradesman who "keeps a shop," and the poorest lawyer, doctor, or clergyman who ever starved in decent gentility. It had been often a struggle for Hilary Leaf's girlish pride to have to teach A B C to little boys and girls whose parents stood behind counters; but as she grew older she grew wiser, and intercourse with Robert Lyon had taught her much. She never forgot, one day, when Selina asked him something about his grandfather or great-grandfather, and he answered quickly, smiling, "Well, I suppose I had one, but I really never heard." Nevertheless it takes long to conquer entirely the class prejudices of years, nay, more, of generations. In spite of her will Hilary felt herself wince, and the color rush all over her face, at Miss Balquidder's question.
Take time to answer, and speak out, my dear. Don't be afraid. You'll not offend me.
The kindly cheerful tone made Hilary recover her balance immediately.
I never thought of it before; the possibility of such a thing did not occur to me; but I hope I should not be ashamed of any honest work for which I was competent. Only—to serve in a shop—to want upon strangers—I am so horribly shy of strangers. And again the sensitive color rushed in a perfect tide over checks and forehead.
Miss Balquidder looked, half amused, compassionately at her.
No, my dear, you would not make a good shop-woman, at least there are many who are better fitted for it than you; and it is my maxim that people should try to find out, and to do, only that which they are best fitted for. If they did we might not have so many cases of proud despair and ambitious failure in the world. It looks very grand and interesting sometimes to try and do what you can't de, and then tear your hair, and think the world has ill-used you—very grand, but very silly: when all the while, perhaps, there is something else you can do thoroughly well; and the world will be exceedingly obliged to you for doing it, and not doing the other thing.—As doubtless the world was to me, when, instead of being a mediocre musician, as I once wished to be—it's true, my dear—I took to keeping one of the best ladies' outfitting warehouses in London.
While she talked her companion had quite recovered herself, and Miss Balquidder then went on to explain, what I will tell more briefly, if less graphically, than the good Scotchwoman, who, like all who have had a hard struggle in their youth, liked a little to dilate upon it in easy old age. Hard as it was, however, it had ended early, for at fifty she found herself a woman of independent property, without kith or kin, still active, energetic, and capable of enjoying life. She applied her mind to find out what she could best do with herself and her money.
I might have bought a landed estate to be inherited by—nobody; or a house in Belgravia, and an opera-box, to be shared by—nobody. We all have our pet luxuries; none of these were exactly mine.
No, assented Hilary, somewhat abstractedly. She was thinking—if she could make a fortune, and—and give it away!—if, by any means, any honorable, upright heart could be made to understand that it did not signify, in reality, which side the money came from; that it sometimes showed deeper, the very deepest attachment, when a proud, poor man had self-respect and courage enough to say to a woman, "I love you, and I will marry you; I am not such a coward as to be afraid of your gold."
But, oh! what a ridiculous dream!—and she sat there, the penniless Hilary Leaf, listening to Miss Balquidder, the rich lady, whose life seemed so easy. For the moment, perhaps, her own appeared hard. But she had hope, and she was young. She knew nothing of the years and years that had had to be lived through before those kind eyes looked as clear and cloudless as now; before the voice had gained the sweet evenness of tone which she liked to listen to, and felt that it made her quiet and "good," almost like Johanna's.
You see, my dear, said Miss Balquidder, "when one has no duties, one must just make them; when we have nobody to care for us, we must take to caring for every body. I suppose"—here a slight pause indicated that this life, like all women's lives, had had its tale, now long, long told—"I suppose I was not meant to be a wife; but I am quite certain I was meant to be a mother. And"—with her peculiar, bright, humorous look—"you'd be astonished, Miss Leaf, if you knew what lots of 'children' I have in all parts of the world."
Miss Balquidder then went on to explain, that finding, from her own experience, how great was the number, and how sore the trial of young women who nowadays are obliged to work—obliged to forget that there is such a thing as the blessed privilege of being worked for—she had set herself, in her small way, to try and help them. Her pet project was to induce educated women to quit the genteel starvation of governesships for some good trade thereby bringing higher intelligence into a class which needed, not the elevation of the work itself, which was comparatively easy and refined, but of the workers. She had therefore invested sum after sum of her capital in setting up various small shops in the environs of London, in her own former line, and others—stationers, lace-shops, etc.—trades which could be well carried on by women.—Into the management of these she put as many young girls as she could find really fitted for it, or willing to learn, paying them regular salaries, large or small, according to their deserts.
Fair work, fair pay; not one penny more or less; I never do it; it would not be honest. I overlook each business myself, and it is carried on in my name. Sometimes it brings me in a little profit; sometimes not. Of course, she added, smiling. "I would rather have profits than losses; still, I balance one against the other, and it leaves me generally a small interest for my money—two or three per cent., which is all I care about. Thus, you see. I and my young people make a fair bargain on both sides; it's no charity. I don't believe in charity."
No, said Hilary, feeling her spirit rise. She was yet young enough, yet enough unworn by the fight to feel the deliciousness of work—honest work for honest pay. "I think I could do it," she added. "I think, with a little practice, I really could keep a shop."
At all events, perhaps you could do what I find more difficult to get done, and well done, for it requires a far higher class of women than generally apply: you could keep the accounts of a shop; you should be the head, and it would be easy to find the hands, Let me see; there is a young lady, she has managed my stationer's business at Kensington these two years, and now she is going to be married. Are you good at figures; do you understand book-keeping?
And suddenly changing into the woman of business, and one who was evidently quite accustomed both to arrange and command, Miss Balquidder put Hilary through a sort of extempore arithmetical catechism, from which she came off with flying colors.
I only wish there were more like you. I wish there were more young ladies brought up like—
Like boys! said Hilary, laughing, "for I always used to say that was my case."
No, I never desire to see young women made into men. And Miss Balquidder seemed a little scandalized. "But I do wish girls were taught fewer accomplishments, and more reading, writing, and arithmetic; were made as accurate, orderly, and able to help themselves as boys are. But to business. Will you take the management of my stationer's shop?"
Hilary's breath came hard and fast. Much as she had longed for work, to get this sort of work—to keep a stationer's shop? What would her sisters say? what would he say! But she dared not think of that just now.
How much should I be able to earn, do you think?
Miss Balquidder considered a moment, and then said, rather shortly, for it was not exactly acting on her own principles; she knew the pay was above the work. "I will give you a hundred a year."
A hundred a year! actually certain, and over and above any other income. It seemed a fortune to poor Hilary.
Will you give me a day or two to think about it and consult my sisters?
She spoke quietly, but Miss Balquidder could see how agitated she was; how she evidently struggled with many feelings that would be best struggled with alone. The good old lady rose.
Take your own time, my dear; I will keep the situation open for you for one week from this date. And now I must send you away, for I have a great deal to do.
They parted quite like friends; and Hilary went out, walking quickly, feeling neither the wind nor the rain. Yet when she reached No. 15 she could not bring herself to enter, but took another turn or two round the Crescent, trying to be quite sure of her own mind before she opened the matter to her sisters.—
And there was one little battle to be fought which the sisters did know.
It was perhaps foolish, seeing she did not belong to him in any open way, and he had no external right over her life or her actions, that she should go back and back to the question, "What would Robert Lyon say?"
He knew she earned her daily bread; sometimes this had seemed to vex and annoy him, but it must be done; and when a thing was inevitable, it was not Mr. Lyon's way to say much about it. But being a governess was an accredited and customary mode of a young lady's earning her livelihood. This was different. If he should think it too public, too unfeminine: he had such a horror of a woman's being any thing but a woman, as strong and brave as she could, but in a womanly way; doing any thing, however painful, that she was obliged to do, but never out of choice or bravado, or the excitement of stepping out of her own sphere into man's. Would Robert Lyon think less of her, Hilary, because she had to earn to take care of herself, to protect herself, and to act in so many ways for herself, contrary to the natural and right order of things? That old order—God forbid it should ever change!—which ordained that the women should be "keepers at home;" happy rulers of that happy little world, which seemed as far off as the next world from this poor Hilary.
What if he should look down upon me? What if he should return and find me different from what he expected?
And bitter tears burned in her eyes, as she walked rapidly and passionately along the deserted street. Then a revulsion came.
No; love is worth nothing that is not worth every thing, and to be trusted through every thing. If he could forget me—could love any one better than me—me myself, no matter what I was—ugly or pretty, old or young, rich or poor—I would not care for his love. It would not be worth my having; I'd let it go. Robert, though it broke my heart, I'd let you go.
Her eyes flashed; her poor little hand clenched itself under her shawl; and then, as a half reproach, she heard in fancy the steady loving voice—which could have calmed her wildest paroxysm of passion and pain—"You must trust me, Hilary."
Yes, he was a man to be trusted. No doubt very much like other men, and by no means such a hero to the world at large as this fond girl made him out to be; but Robert Lyon had, with all people, and under all circumstances, the character of reliableness. He had also—you might read it in his face—a quality equally rare, faithfulness. Not merely sincerity, but faithfulness; the power of conceiving one clear purpose, or one strong love—in unity of strength—and of not only keeping true to it at the time, but of holding fast to it with a single-minded persistency that never even takes in the idea of voluntary change, as long as persistency is right or possible.
Robert, Robert! sobbed this forlorn girl, as if slowly waking up to a sense of her forlorness, and of the almost universal fickleness, not actual falseness, but fickleness, which prevails in the world and among mankind. "O Robert, be faithful! faithful to yourself—faithful to me!"
When Miss Hilary reached home Elizabeth opened the door to her; the parlor was deserted.
Miss Leaf had gone to lie down, and Miss Selina was away to see the
Lord Mayor's Show with Mr. Peter Ascott.
With Mr. Peter Ascott! Hilary was a little surprised; but on second thoughts she found it natural; Selina was glad of any amusement—to her, not only the narrowness but the dullness of their poverty was inexpressibly galling. "She will be back to dinner, I suppose?"
I don't know, said Elizabeth briefly.
Had Miss Hilary been less preoccupied, she would have noticed something not quite right about the girl—something that at any other time would have aroused the direct question, "What is the matter, Elizabeth?" For Miss Hilary did not consider it beneath her dignity to observe that things might occasionally go wrong with this solitary young woman, away from her friends, and exposed to all the annoyances of London lodgings; that many trifles might happen to worry and perplex her. If the mistress could not set them right, she could at least give the word of kindly sympathy, as precious to "a poor servant" as to the Queen on her throne.
This time, however, it came not, and Elizabeth disappeared below stairs immediately.
The girl was revolving in her own mind a difficult ethical question. To-day, for the first time in her life, she had not "told Miss Hilary every thing." Two things had happened, and she could not make up her mind as to whether she ought to communicate them.
Now Elizabeth had a conscience, by nature a very tender one, and which, from circumstances, had been cultivated into a much higher sensitiveness than, alas! is common among her class, or, indeed, in any class. This, if an error, was Miss Hilary's doing; it probably caused Elizabeth a few more miseries, and vexations, and painful shocks in the world than she would have had had she imbibed only the ordinary tone of morality, especially the morality of ordinary domestic servants; but it was an error upon which, in summing up her life, the Recording Angel would gravely smile.
The first trial had happened at breakfast time. Ascott, descending earlier than his wont, had asked her. Did any gentleman, short and dirty, with a hooked nose, inquire for him yesterday?
Elizabeth thought a minute, and recollected that some person answering the above not too flattering description had called, but refused to leave his name, saying he did not know the ladies, but was a particular friend of Mr. Leaf's.
Ascott laughed. "So he is—a very particular friend; but my aunts would not fancy him, and I don't want him to come here. Say, if he calls, that I'm gone out of town."
Very well, sir. Shall you start before dinner? said Elizabeth, whose practical mind immediately recurred to that meal, and to the joint, always contrived to be hot on the days that Ascott dined at home.
He seemed excessively tickled. "Bless you, you are the greatest innocent! Just say what I tell you, and never mind—hush! here's Aunt Hilary."
And Miss Hilary's anxious face, white with long wakefulness, had put out of Elizabeth's head the answer that was coming; indeed the matter slipped from her mind altogether, in consequence of another circumstance which gave her much more perplexity.
During her young mistress's absence, supposing Miss Selina out too, and Miss Leaf up stairs, she had come suddenly into the parlor without knocking. There, to her amazement, she saw Miss Selina and Mr. Ascott standing, in close conversation, over the fire. They were so engrossed that they did not notice her, and she shut door again immediately. But what confounded her was, that she was certain, absolutely certain, Mr. Ascott had his arm round Miss Selina's waist!
Now that was no business of hers, and yet the faithful domestic was a good deal troubled; still more so, when, by Miss Leaf's excessive surprise at hearing of the visitor who had come and gone, carrying Miss Selina away to the city, she was certain the elder sister was completely in the dark as to any thing going to happen in the family.
Could it be a wedding? Could Miss Selina really love, and be intending to marry, that horrid little man? For strange to say, this young servant had, what many a young beauty of rank and fashion has not, or has lost forever—the true, pure, womanly creed, that loving and marrying are synonymous terms; that to let a man put his arm round your waist when you do not intend to marry him, or to intend to marry him for money or any thing else when you do not really love him, are things quite impossible and incredible to any womanly mind. A creed somewhat out of date, and perhaps existing only in stray nooks of the world; but thank God! it does exist. Hilary had it, and she had taught it to Elizabeth.
I wonder whether Miss Hilary knows of this? I wonder what she would say to it?
And now arose the perplexing ethical question aforesaid, as to whether Elizabeth ought to tell her.
It was one of Miss Hilary's doctrines—the same for the kitchen as for the parlor, nay, preached strongest in the kitchen, where the mysteries of the parlor are often so cruelly exposed—that a secret accidentally found out should be kept as sacred as if actually confided; also, that the secret of an enemy should no more be betrayed than that of a beloved and trusting friend.
Miss Selina isn't my enemy, smiled Elizabeth: "but I'm not overfond of her, and so I'd rather not tell of her, or vex her if I can help it. Any how, I'll keep it to myself for a bit."
But the secret weighed heavily upon her, and besides, her honest heart felt a certain diminution of respect for Miss Selina. What could she see to like in that common looking, commonplace man, whom she could not have met a dozen times, of whose domestic life she knew nothing, and whose personality Elizabeth, with the sharp observation often found in her class, probably because coarse people do not care to hide their coarseness from servants, had speedily set down at her own valuation—
Neither carriage nor horses, nor nothing, will ever make him a gentleman?
He, however, sent Miss Selina home magnificently in the said carriage; Ascott with her, who had been picked up somewhere in the City and who came in to his dinner, without the slightest reference to going "out of town."
But in spite of her Lord Mayor's Show, and the great attention which she said she had received from "various members of the Common Council of the City of London," Miss Selina was, for her, meditative, and did not talk quite so much as usual. There was in the little parlor an uncomfortable atmosphere, as if all of them had something on their minds. Hilary felt the ice must be broken, and if she did not do it nobody else would. So she said, stealing her hand into Johanna's under shelter of the dim fire-light, "Selina, I wanted to have a little family consultation. I have just received an offer."
An offer! repeated Miss Selina, with a visible start. "Oh, I forgot; you went to see your friend, Miss Balquidder, this morning. Did you get any thing out of her? Has she any nephews and nieces wanting a governess?"
She has no relations at all. But I will just tell you the story of my visit.
I hope it's interesting, said Ascott, who was lying on the sofa, half asleep, his general habit after dinner. He woke, however, during his Aunt Hilary's relation, and when she reached its climax, that the offer was for her to manage a stationer's shop, he burst out heartily laughing:
Well, that is a rich idea. I'll come and buy of you. You'll look so pretty standing behind a counter.
But Selina said, angrily, "You cannot even think of such a thing. It would be a disgrace to the family."
No, said Hilary, clasping tightly her eldest sister's hand—they two had already talked the matter over: "I can not see any disgrace. If our family is so poor that the women must earn their living as well as the men, all we have to see is that it should be honestly earned. What do you say, Ascott?"
She looked earnestly at him; she wanted sorely to find out what he really thought.
But Ascott took it, as he did every thing, very easily. "I don't see why Aunt Selina should make such a fuss. Why need you do anything, Aunt Hilary? Can't we hold out a little longer, and live upon tick till I get into practice? Of course, I shall then take care of you all; I'm the head of the family. How horribly dark this room is!"
He started up, and gave the fire a fierce poke, which consumed in five minutes a large lump of coal that Hilary had hoped—oh, cruel, sordid economy—would have lasted half the evening.
She broke the uneasy silence which followed by asking Johanna to give her opinion.
Johanna roused herself and spoke:
Ascott says right; he is the head of the family, and, by-and-by. I trust will take care of us all. But he is not able to do it now, and meantime we must live.
To be sure, we must Auntie.
I mean, my boy, we must live honestly; we must not run into debt: and her voice sharpened as with the reflected horror of her young days—if, alas! there ever had been any youth for Henry Leaf's eldest daughter. "No, Ascott, out of debt out of danger. For myself"—she laid her thin old fingers on his arm, and looked up at him with a pitiful mixture of reliance and hopelessness—"I would rather see you breaking stones in the road than living like a gentleman, as you call it, and a swindler, as I call it, upon other people's money."
Ascott sprang up, coloring violently. "You use strong language, Aunt Johanna. Never mind. I dare say you are right. However, it's no business of mine. Good-night, for I have an engagement."
Hilary said, gravely, she wished he would stay and join in the family consultation.
Oh no; I bate talking over things. Settle it among yourselves. As I said, it isn't my business.
You don't care, then, what becomes of us all? I sometimes begin to think so.
Struck by the tone, Ascott stopped in the act of putting on his lilac kid gloves. "What have I done? I may be a very bad fellow, but I'm not quite so bad as that. Aunt Hilary."
She didn't mean it, my boy, said Aunt Johanna, tenderly.
He was moved, more by the tenderness than the reproach. He came and kissed his eldest aunt in that warm-hearted, impulsive way, which had won him forgiveness for many a boyish fault. It did so now.
I know I'm not half good enough to you, Auntie, but I mean to be. I mean to work hard, and be a rich man some day; and then you may be sure I shall not let my Aunt Hilary keep a shop. Now, good-night, for I must meet a fellow on business—really business—that may turn out good for us all, I assure you.
He went away whistling, with that air of untroubled, good-natured liveliness peculiar to Ascott Leaf, which made them say continually that he was "only a boy," living a boy's life, as thoughtless and as free. When his handsome face disappeared the three women sat down again round the fire.
They made no comments on him whatever; they were women, and he was their own. But—passing him over as if he had never existed—Hilary began to explain to her sisters all particulars of her new scheme for maintaining the family. She told these details in a matter of-fact way, as already arranged; and finally hoped Selina would make no more objections.
It is a thing quite impossible, said Selina, with dignity.
Why impossible? I can certainly do the work; and it can not make me less of a lady. Besides, we had better not be ladies if we can not be honest ones. And, Selina, where is the money to come from? We have none in the house; we can not get any till Christmas.
Opportunities might occur. We have friends.
Not one in London; except, perhaps, Mr. Ascott, and I would not ask him for a farthing. You don't see, Selina, how horrible it would be to be helped, unless by some one dearly loved. I couldn't bear it! I'd rather beg, starve: almost steal!
Don't be violent, child.
Oh, but it's hard! and the cry of long-smothered pain burst out. "Hard enough to have to earn one's bread in a way one doesn't like; harder still to have to be parted from Johanna from Monday morning till Saturday night. But it must be, I'll go. It's a case between hunger, debt, and work: the first is unpleasant, the second impossible, the third is my only alternative. You must consent, Selina, for I will do it."
Don't! Selina spoke more gently, and not without some natural emotion. "Don't disgrace me, child; for I may as well tell you—I meant to do so to-night—Mr. Ascott has made me an offer of marriage, and I—I have accepted it." Had a thunder-bolt fallen in the middle of the parlor at No. 15, its inmates—that is, two of them—could not have been more astounded.
No doubt this surprise was a great instance of simplicity on their part. Many women would have prognosticated, planned the thing from the first; thought it a most excellent match; seen glorious visions of the house in Russell Square, of the wealth and luxury that would be the portion of "dear Selina," and the general benefit that the marriage would be to the whole Leaf family.
But these two were different from others. They only saw their sister Selina, a woman no longer young, and not without her peculiarities, going to be married to a man she knew little or nothing about—a man whom they themselves had endured rather than liked, and for the sake of gratitude. He was trying enough merely as a chance visitor; but to look upon Mr. Ascott as a brother-in-law, as a husband— "Oh, Selina! you can not be in earnest?"
Why not? Why should I not be married as well as my neighbors? said she, sharply.
Nobody arguing that point, both being indeed too bewildered to argue at all, she continued, majestically,
I assure you, sisters, there could not be a more unexceptionable offer. It is true, Mr. Ascott's origin was rather humble; but I can overlook that. In his present wealth, and with his position and character, he will make the best of husbands.
Not a word was answered; what could be answered? Selina was free to marry if she liked, and whom she liked. Perhaps, from her nature, it was idle to expect her to marry in any other way than this; one of the thousand and one unions where the man desires a handsome, lady-like wife for the head of his establishment, and the woman wishes an elegant establishment to be mistress of; so they strike a bargain—possibly as good as most other bargains.
Still, with one faint lingering of hope, Hilary asked if she had quite decided.
Quite. He wrote to me last night, and I gave him his answer this morning.
Selina certainly had not troubled any body with her "love affairs."
It was entirely a matter of business.
The sisters saw at once that she had made up her mind. Henceforward there could be no criticism of Mr. Peter Ascott.
Now all was told, she talked freely of her excellent prospects.
He had behaved handsomely—very much so. He makes a good settlement on me, and says how happy he will be to help my family, so as to enable you always to make a respectable appearance.
We are exceedingly obliged to him.
Don't be sharp, Hilary. He means well. And he must feel that this marriage is a sort of—ahem! condescension on my part, which I never should have dreamed of twenty years ago.
Selina sighed; could it be at the thought of that twenty years ago? Perhaps, shallow as she seemed, this woman might once have had some fancy, some ideal man whom she expected to meet and marry; possibly a very different sort of man from Mr. Peter Ascott. However, the sigh was but momentary; she plunged back again into all the arrangements of her wedding, every one of which, down to the wedding-dress, she had evidently decided.
And therefore you see, she added, as it the unimportant, almost forgotten item of discussion had suddenly occurred to her, "it's quite impossible that my sister should keep a shop. I shall tell Mr. Ascott, and you will see what he says to it."
But when Mr. Ascott appeared next day in solemn state as an accepted lover he seemed to care very little about the matter. He thought it was a good thing for every body to be independent; did not see why young women—he begged pardon, young ladies—should not earn their own bread if they liked. He only wished that the shop were a little further off than Kensington, and hoped the name of Leaf would not be put over the door.
But the bride-elect, indignant and annoyed, begged her lover to interfere, and prevent the scheme from being carried out.
Don't vex yourself, my dear Selina, said he, dryly—how Hilary started to hear the stranger use the household name—"but I can't see that it's my business to interfere. I marry you, I don't marry your whole family."
Mr. Ascott is quite right; we will end the subject, said Johanna, with grave dignity while Hilary sat with burning cheeks, thinking that, miserable as the family had been, it had never till now known real degradation.
But her heart was very sore that day. It the morning had come the letter from India never omitted, never delayed; Robert Lyon was punctual as clock-work in every thing he did. It came, but this month it was a short and somewhat sad letter—hinting of failing health, uncertain prospects; full of a bitter longing to come home, and a dread that it would be years before that longing was realized.
My only consolation is, he wrote, for once betraying himself a little, "that however hard my life out here may be, I bear it alone."
But that consolation was not so easy to Hilary. That they two should be wasting their youth apart, when just a little heap of yellow coins—of which men like Mr. Ascott had such profusion—would bring them together; and, let trials be many or poverty hard, give them the unutterable joy of being once more face to face and heart to heart—oh, it was sore, sore!
Yet when she went up from the parlor, where the newly-affianced couple sat together, "making-believe" a passion that did not exist, and acting out the sham courtship, proper for the gentleman to pay and the lady to receive—when she shut her bedroom door, and there, sitting in the cold, read again and again Robert Lyon's letter to Johanna, so good, so honest; so sad, yet so bravely enduring—Hilary was comforted. She felt that true love, in its most unsatisfied longings, its most cruel delays, nay, even its sharpest agonies of hopeless separation, is sweeter ten thousand times than the most "respectable" of loveless marriages such as this.
So, at the week's end, Hilary went patiently to her work at
Kensington, and Selina began the preparations for her wedding.
In relating so much about her mistresses, I have lately seemed to overlook Elizabeth Hand.
She was a person easy enough to be overlooked. She never put herself forward, not even now, when Miss Hilary's absence caused the weight of housekeeping and domestic management to fall chiefly upon her. She went about her duties as soberly and silently as she had done in her girlhood; even Miss Leaf could not draw her into much demonstrativeness: she was one of those people who never "come out" till they are strongly needed, and then— But it remained to be proved what this girl would be.
Years afterward Hilary remembered with what a curious reticence Elizabeth used to go about in those days: how she remained as old-fashioned as ever; acquired no London ways, no fripperies of dress or flippancies of manner. Also, that she never complained of anything; though the discomforts of her lodging-house life must have been great—greater than her mistresses had any idea of at the time. Slowly, out of her rough, unpliant girlhood, was forming that character of self-reliance and self-control, which, in all ranks, makes of some women the helpers rather than the helped, the laborers rather than the pleasure-seekers; women whose constant lot it seems to be to walk on the shadowed side of life, to endure rather than to enjoy.
Elizabeth had very little actual enjoyment. She made no acquaintances, and never asked for holidays. Indeed she did not seem to care for any. Her great treat was when, on a Sunday afternoon, Miss Hilary sometimes took her to Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's; when her pleasure and gratitude always struck her mistress—may, even soothed her, and won her from her own many anxieties. It is such a blessing to be able to make any other human being, even for an hour or two, entirely happy.
Except these bright Sundays, Elizabeth's whole time was spent in waiting upon Miss Leaf, who had seemed to grow suddenly frail and old. It might be that living without her child six days out of the seven was a greater trial than had at first appeared to the elder sister, who until now had never parted with her since she was born; or it was perhaps a more commonplace and yet natural cause, the living in London lodgings, without even a change of air from room to room; and the want of little comforts and luxuries, which, with all Hilary's care, were as impossible as ever to their limited means.
For Selina's engagement, which, as a matter of decorum, she had insisted should last six months, did not lessen expenses. Old gowns were shabby, and omnibuses impossible to the future Mrs. Ascott of Russell Square; and though, to do her justice, she spent as little as to her self-pleasing nature was possible, still she spent something.
It's the last; I shall never cost you any more, she would say, complacently; and revert to that question of absorbing interest, her trousseau, an extremely handsome one, provided liberally by Mr. Ascott. Sorely had this arrangement jarred upon the pride of the Leaf family; yet it was inevitable. But no personal favors would the other two sisters have accepted from Mr. Ascott, even had he offered them—which he did not—save a dress each for the marriage, and a card for the marriage breakfast, which, he also arranged, was to take place at a hotel.
So, in spite of the expected wedding, there was little change in the dull life that went on at No. 15. Its only brightness was when Miss Hilary came home from Saturday to Monday. And in those brief glimpses, when, as was natural, she on her side, and they on theirs, put on their best face, so to speak, each trying to hide from the other any special care, it so fell out that Miss Hilary never discovered a thing which, week by week, Elizabeth resolved to speak to her about, and yet never could. For it was not her own affair; it seemed like presumptuously middling in the affairs of the family. Above all, it involved the necessity of something which looked like tale-bearing and backbiting of a person she disliked, and there was in Elizabeth—servant as she was—an instinctive chivalrous honor which made her especially anxious to be just to her enemies.
Enemy, however, is a large word to use; and yet day by day her feelings grew more bitter toward the person concerned—namely. Mr. Ascott Leaf. It was not from any badness in him: he was the sort of young man always likely to be a favorite with what would be termed his "inferiors;" easy, good-tempered, and gentlemanly, giving a good deal of trouble certainly, but giving it so agreeably that few servants would have grumbled, and paying for it—as he apparently thought every thing could be paid for—with a pleasant word and a handful of silver.
But Elizabeth's distaste for him had deeper roots. The principal one was his exceeding indifference to his aunts' affairs, great and small, from the marriage, which he briefly designated as a "jolly lark," to the sharp economies which, even with the addition of Miss Hilary's salary, were still requisite.—None of these latter did he ever seem to notice, except when they pressed upon himself; when he neither scolded nor argued, but simply went out and avoided them.
He was now absent from home more than ever, and apparently tried as much as possible to keep the household in the dark as to his movements—leaving at uncertain times, never saying what hour he would be back, or if he said so, never keeping to his word. This was the more annoying as there were a number of people continually inquiring for him, hanging about the house, and waiting to see him "on business;" and some of these occasionally commented on the young gentleman in such unflattering terms that Elizabeth was afraid they would reach the ear of Mrs. Jones, and henceforward tried always to attend to the door herself.
But Mrs. Jones was a wide awake woman. She had not let lodgings for thirty years for nothing. Ere long she discovered, and took good care to inform Elizabeth of her discovery, that Mr. Ascott Leaf was what is euphuistically termed "in difficulties."
And here one word, lest in telling this poor lad's story I may be supposed to tell it harshly or uncharitably, as if there was no crime greater than that which a large portion of society seems to count as none; as if, at the merest mention of the ugly word debt, this rabid author flew out, and made all the ultra virtuous persons whose history is here told fly out, like turkeys, after a bit of red cloth which is a very harmless scrap of red cloth after all.
Most true, some kind of debt deserves only compassion. The merchant suddenly failing; the tenderly reared family who by some strange blunder or unkind kindness have been kept in ignorance of their real circumstances, and been spending pounds for which there was only pence to pay; the individuals, men or women, who, without any laxity of principle, are such utter children in practice, that they have to learn the value and use of money by hard experience, much as a child does, and are little better than children in all that concerns L. S. D. to the end of their days.
But these are debtors by accident, not error. The deliberate debtor, who orders what he knows he has no means of paying for; the pleasure loving debtor, who can not renounce one single luxury for conscience' sake; the well-meaning, lazy debtor, who might make "ends meet," but does not, simply because he will not take the trouble; upon such as these it is right to have no mercy—they deserve none.
To which of these classes young Ascott Leaf belonged his story will show. I tell it, or rather let it tell itself, and point its own moral; it is the story of hundreds and thousands.
That a young fellow should not enjoy his youth would be hard; that it should not be pleasant to him to dress well, live well, and spend with open hand upon himself as well as others, no one will question. No one would ever wish it otherwise. Many a kindly spendthrift of twenty-one makes a prudent paterfamilias at forty, while a man who in his twenties showed a purposeless niggardliness, would at sixty grow into the most contemptible miser alive. There is something even in the thoughtless liberality of youth to which one's heart warms, even while one's wisdom reproves.—But what struck Elizabeth was that Ascott's liberalities were always toward himself, and himself only.
Sometimes when she took in a parcel of new clothes, while others yet unpaid for were tossing in wasteful disorder about his room, or when she cleaned indefinite pairs of handsome boots, and washed dozens of the finest cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, her spirit grew hot within her to remember Miss Hilary's countless wants and contrivances in the matter of dress, and all the little domestic comforts which Miss Leaf's frail health required—things which never once seemed to cross the nephew's imagination. Of course not, it will be said; how could a young man be expected to trouble himself about these things?
But they do though. Answer, many a widow's son; many a heedful brother of orphan sisters; many a solitary clerk living and paying his way upon the merest pittance; is it not better to think of others than one's self? Can a man, even a young man, find his highest happiness in mere personal enjoyment?
However, let me cease throwing these pebbles of preaching under the wheels of my story; as it moves on it will preach enough for itself.
Elizabeth's annoyances, suspicions, and conscience-pricks as to whether she ought or ought not to communicate both, came to an end at last. Gradually she made up her mind that, even if it did look like tale bearing, on the following Saturday night Miss Hilary must know all.
It was an anxious week; for Miss Leaf had fallen ill. Not seriously; and she never complained until her sister had left, when she returned to her bed and did not again rise. She would not have Miss Hilary sent for, nor Miss Selina, who was away paying a ceremonious prenuptial visit to Mr. Ascott's partner's wife at Dulwich.
I don't want any thing that you can not do for me. You are becoming a first rate nurse. Elizabeth, she said, with that passive, peaceful smile which almost frightened the girl; it seemed as if she were slipping away from this world and all its cares into another existence. Elizabeth felt that to tell her any thing about her nephew's affairs was perfectly impossible. How thankful she was that in the quiet of the sick-room her mistress was kept in ignorance of the knocks and inquiries at the door, and especially of a certain ominous paper which had fallen into Mrs. Jones's hands, and informed her, as she took good care to inform Elizabeth, that any day "the bailiffs" might be after her young master.
And the sooner the whole set of you clear out of my house the better; I am a decent respectable woman, said Mrs. Jones, that very morning; and Elizabeth had had to beg her as a favor not to disturb her sick mistress, but to wait one day, till Miss Hilary came home.
Also, when Ascott, ending with a cheerful and careless countenance his ten minutes' after breakfast chat in his aunt's room, had met Elizabeth on the staircase, he had stopped to bid her say if any body wanted him he was gone to Birmingham, and would not be home till Monday. And on Elizabeth's hesitating, she having determined to tell no more of these involuntary lies, he had been very angry, and then stooped to entreaties, begging her to do as he asked, or it would be the ruin of him. Which she understood well enough when, all the day, she—grown painfully wise, poor girl!—watched a Jewish-looking man hanging about the house, and noticing every body that went in or out of it.
Now, sitting at Miss Leaf's window, she fancied she saw this man disappear into the gin-palace opposite, and at the same moment a figure darted hurriedly round the street corner, and into the door of No. 15. Elizabeth looked to see if her mistress were asleep, and then crept quietly out of the room, shutting the door after her. Listening, she heard the sound of the latch-key, and of some one coming stealthily up stairs.
Hollo!—Oh, it's only you, Elizabeth.
Shall I light your candle, sir?
But when she did the sight was not pleasant. Drenched with rain, his collar pulled up, and his hat slouched, so as in some measure to act as a disguise, breathless and trembling—hardly any body would have recognized in this discreditable object that gentlemanly young man, Mr. Ascott Leaf.
He staggered into his room and threw himself across the bed.
Do you want anything, Sir? said Elizabeth, from the door.
No—yes—stay a minute. Elizabeth, are you to be trusted?
I hope I am, Sir.
The bailiffs are after me. I've just dodged them. If they know I'm here the game's all up—and it will kill my aunt.
Shocked as she was, Elizabeth was glad to hear him say that—glad to see the burst of real emotion with which he flung himself down on the pillow, muttering all sorts of hopeless self-accusations.
Come, Sir, 'tis no use taking on so, said she, much as she would have spoken to a child, for there was something childish rather than man like in Ascott's distress. Nevertheless, she pitied him, with the unreasoning pity a kind heart gives to any creature, who, blameworthy or not, has fallen into trouble. "What do you mean to do?"
Nothing. I'm cleaned out. And I haven't a friend in the world.
He turned his face to the wall in perfect despair.
Elizabeth tried hard not to sit in judgment upon what the catechism would call her "betters;" and yet her own strong instinct of almost indefinite endurance turned with something approaching contempt from this weak, lightsome nature, broken by the first touch of calamity.
Come, it's no use making things worse than they are. If no body knows that you are here, lock your door and keep quiet. I'll bring you some dinner when I bring up Missis' tea, and not even Mrs. Jones will be any the wiser.
You're a brick, Elizabeth—a regular brick! cried the young fellow, brightening up at the least relief. "That will be capital.—Get me a good slice of beef, or ham, or something. And mind you, don't forget!—a regular stunning bottle of pale ale."
Very well, Sir.
The acquiescence was somewhat sullen, and had he watched Elizabeth's face he might have seen there an expression not too flattering. But she faithfully brought him his dinner, and kept his secret, even though, hearing from over the staircase Mrs. Jones resolutely deny that Mr. Leaf had been at home since morning, she felt very much as if she were conniving at a lie. With a painful, half-guilty consciousness she waited for her mistress's usual question. "Is my nephew come home?" but fortunately it was not asked.—
Miss Leaf lay quiet and passive, and her faithful nurse settled her for the night with a strangely solemn feeling, as if she were leaving her to her last rest, safe and at peace before the overhanging storm broke upon the family.
But all shadow of this storm seemed to have passed away from him who was its cause. As soon as the house was still Ascott crept down and fell to his supper with as good an appetite as possible. He even became free and conversational.
"
Don't look so glum, Elizabeth. I shall soon weather through. Old Ascott will fork out; he couldn't help it. I'm to be his nephew you know. Oh, that was a clever catch of Aunt Selina's. If only Aunt Hilary would try another like it.
"If you please, Sir, I'm going to bed.
Off with you, then, and I'll not forget the gown at Christmas. You're a sharp young woman, and I'm much obliged to you. And for a moment he looked as if he were about to make the usual unmannerly acknowledgment of civility from a young gentleman to a servant maid, viz., kissing her, but he pulled a face and drew back. He really couldn't; she was so very plain. At this moment there came a violent ring, and "Fire!" was shouted through the key-hole of the door. Terrified, Elizabeth opened it, when, with a burst of laughter, a man rushed in and laid hands upon Ascott.
It was the sheriff's officer.
When his trouble came upon him Ascott's manliness returned. He turned very white, but he made no opposition; had even enough of his wits about him—or something better than wits—to stop Mrs. Jones from rushing up in alarm and indignation to arouse Miss Leaf.
No; she'll know it quite soon enough.—Let her sleep till morning. Elizabeth, look here. He wrote upon a card the address of the place he was to be taken to. "Give Aunt Hilary this. Say if she can think of a way to get me out of this horrid mess; but I don't deserve—Never mind. Come on, you fellows."
He pulled his hat over his eyes, jumped into the cab, and was gone.
The whole thing had not occupied five minutes.
Stupefied, Elizabeth stood and considered what was best to be done. Miss Hilary must be told; but how to get at her in the middle of the night, thereby leaving her mistress to the mercy of Mrs. Jones. It would never do. Suddenly she thought of Miss Balquidder.—She might send a message. No, not a message—for the family misery and disgrace must not be betrayed to a stranger—but a letter to Kensington. With an effort Elizabeth composed herself sufficiently to write one—her first—to her dear Miss Hilary.
HONORED MADAM,—Mr. Leaf has got himself into trouble, and is taken away somewhere; and I dare not tell missis; and I wish you was at home, as she is not well, but better than she has been, and she shall know nothing about it till you come.—Your obedient and affectionate servant, ELIZABETH HAND.
Taking Ascott's latch-key she quitted the house and slipped out into the dark night, almost losing her way among the gloomy squares, where she met not a creature except the solitary policeman, plashing steadily along the wet pavement. When he turned the glimmer of his bull's eye upon her she started like a guilty creature, till she remembered that she really was doing nothing wrong, and so need not be afraid of any thing. This was her simple creed, which Miss Hilary had taught her, and it upheld her, even till she knocked at Miss Balquidder's door. There, poor girl, her heart sank, especially when Miss Balquidder, in an anomalous costume and a severe voice, opened the door herself, and asked who was there, disturbing a respectable family at this late hour?
Elizabeth answered, what she had before determined to say, as sufficiently explaining her errand, and yet betraying nothing that her mistress might wish concealed.
Please, ma'am, I'm Miss Leaf's servant. My missis is ill, and I want a letter sent at once to Miss Hilary.
Oh! come in, then. Elizabeth, I think, your name is?
Yes, ma'am.
What made you leave home at this hour of the night? Did your mistress send you?
No.
Is she so very ill? It seems sudden. I saw Miss Hilary to-day, and she knew nothing at all about it.
Elizabeth shrank a little before the keen eye that seemed to read her through.
There's more amiss than you have told me, young woman. Is it because your mistress is in serious danger that you want to send for her sister?
No.
What is it then? You had better tell me at once. I hate concealment.
It was a trial; but Elizabeth held her ground.
I beg your pardon, ma'am; but I don't think missis would like any body to know, and therefore I'd rather not tell you.
Now the honest Scotswoman, as she said, hated any thing underhand, but she respected the right of every human being to maintain silence if necessary. She looked sharply in Elizabeth's face, which apparently re-assured her, for she said, not unkindly,
Very well, child, keep your mistress's secrets by all means. Only tell me what you want. Shall I take a cab and fetch Miss Hilary at once?
Elizabeth thanked her, but said she thought that would not do; it would be better just to send the note the first thing to-morrow morning, and then Miss Hilary would come home just as if nothing had happened, and Miss Leaf would not be frighted by her sudden appearance.
You are a good, mindful girl, said Miss Balquidder. "How did you learn to be so sensible?"
At the kindly word and manner, Elizabeth, bewildered and exhausted with the excitement she had gone through, and agitated by the feeling of having, for the first time in her life, to act on her own responsibility, gave way a little. She did not exactly cry, but she was very near it.
Miss Balquidder called over the stair-head, in her quick, imperative voice—
David, is your wife away to her bed yet?
No, ma'am.
Then tell her to fetch this young woman to the kitchen and give her some supper. And afterward, will you see her safe home, poor lassie? She's awfully tired, you see.
Yes, ma'am.
And following David's gray head, Elizabeth, for the first time since she came to London, took a comfortable meal in a comfortable kitchen, seasoned with such stories of Miss Balquidder's goodness and generosity, that when, an hour after, she went home and to sleep, it was with a quieter and more hopeful than she could have believed possible under the circumstances.
Next morning, while with that cheerful, unanxious countenance which those about an invalid must learn continually to wear, Elizabeth was trying to persuade her mistress not to rise, she heard a knock, and made some excuse for escaping. She well knew what it was and who had come.
There, in the parlor, sat Miss Hilary, Mrs. Jones talking at her rather than to her, for she hardly seemed to hear. But that she had heard every thing was clear enough. Her drawn white face, the tight clasp of her hands, showed that the ill tidings had struck her hard.
Go away, Mrs. Jones, cried Elizabeth, fiercely. "Miss Hilary will call when she wants you."
And with an ingenious movement that just fell short of a push, somehow the woman was got on the other side of the parlor door, which Elizabeth immediately shut. Then Miss Hilary stretched her hands across the table and looked up piteously in her servant's face.
Only a servant; only that poor servant to whom she could look for any comfort in this sore trouble, this bitter humiliation. There was no attempt at disguise or concealment between mistress and maid.
Mrs. Jones has told me every thing, Elizabeth. How is my sister? She does not know?
No; and I think she is a good deal better this morning. She has been very bad all week; only she would not let me send for you. She is really getting well now; I'm sure of that!
Thank God! And then Miss Hilary began to weep.
Elizabeth also was thankful, even for those tears, for she had been perplexed by the hard, dry-eyed look of misery, deeper than anything she could comprehend, or than the circumstances seemed to warrant.
It was deeper. The misery was not only Ascott's arrest; many a lad has got into debt and got out again—the first taste of the law proving a warning to him for life; but it was this ominous "beginning of the end." The fatal end—which seemed to overhang like a hereditary cloud, to taint as with hereditary disease, the Leaf family.
Another bitterness (and who shall blame it, for when love is really love, have not the lovers a right to be one another's first thought?)—what would Robert Lyon say? To his honest Scotch nature poverty was nothing; honor every thing. She knew his horror of debt was even equal to her own. This, and her belief in his freedom from all false pride, had sustained her against many doubts lest he might think the less of her because of her present position—might feel ashamed could he see her sitting at her ledger in that high desk, or even occasionally serving in the shop.
Many a time things she would have passed over lightly on her own account she had felt on his; felt how they would annoy and vex him. The exquisitely natural thought which Tennyson has put into poetry—
"If I am dear to some one else,
Then I should be to myself more dear"—
had often come, prosaically enough perhaps, into her head, and prevented her from spoiling her little hands with unnecessarily rough work, or carelessly passing down ill streets and by-ways, where she knew Robert Lyon, had he been in London, would never have allowed her to go. Now what did such things signify? What need of taking care of herself? These were all superficial, external disgraces, the real disgrace was within. The plague-spot had burst out anew; it seemed as if this day were the recommencement of that bitter life of penury, misery, and humiliation, familiar through three generations to the women of the Leaf family.
It appeared like a fate. No use to try and struggle out of it, stretching her arms up to Robert Lyon's tender, honest, steadfast heart, there to be sheltered, taken care of, and made happy. No happiness for her! Nothing but to go on enduring and enduring to the end.
Such was Hilary's first emotion; morbid perhaps, yet excusable. It might have lasted longer—though in her healthy nature it could not have lasted very long—had not the reaction come, suddenly and completely, by the opening of the parlor door, and the appearance of Miss Leaf.
Miss Leaf—pale, indeed; but neither alarmed nor agitated, who hearing somehow that her child had arrived, had hastily dressed herself, and come down stairs, in order not to frighten Hilary. And as she took her in her arms, and kissed her with those mother-like kisses, which were the sweetest Hilary had as yet ever known—the sharp anguish went out of the poor girl's heart.
Oh, Johanna! I can bear any thing as long as I have you
And so in this simple and natural way the miserable secret about
Ascott came out.
Being once out, it did not seem half so dreadful; nor was its effect nearly so serious as Miss Hilary and Elizabeth had feared.—Miss Leaf bore it wonderfully; she might almost have known it beforehand; they would have thought she had, but that she said decidedly she had not.
Still you need not have minded telling me; though it was very good and thoughtful of you Elizabeth. You have gone through a great deal for our sakes, my poor girl.
Elizabeth burst into one smothered sob the first and the last.
Nay, said Miss Leaf, very kindly; for this unwonted emotion in their servant moved them both. "You shall tell me the rest another time. Go down now, and get Miss Hilary some breakfast."
When Elizabeth had departed the sisters turned to one another. They did not talk much; where was the use of it? They both knew the worst, both as to facts and fears.
What must be done. Johanna?
Johanna, after a long pause, said, "I see but one thing—to get him home."
Hilary started up, and walked to and fro along the room.
No, not that. I will never agree to it.—We can not help him. He does not deserve helping. If the debts were for food now, or any necessaries; but for mere luxuries, mere fine clothes; it is his tailor who has arrested him, you know. I would rather have gone in rags! I would rather see us all in rags!—It's mean, selfish, cowardly, and I despise him for it. Though he is my own flesh and blood, I despise him.
Hilary!
No. and the tears burst from her angry eyes, "I don't mean that I despise him. I'm sorry for him: there is good in him, poor dear lad; but I despise his weakness; I feel fierce to think how much it will cost us all, and especially you, Johanna. Only think what comforts of all sorts that thirty pounds would have brought to you!"
God will provide, said Johanna, earnestly. "But I know, my dear, this is sharper to you than to me. Besides, I have been more used to it."
She closed her eyes, with a half shudder, as if living over again the old days—when Henry Leaf's wife and eldest daughter used to have to give dinner parties upon food that stuck in their throats, as if every morsel had been stolen; which in truth it was, and yet they were helpless, innocent thieves; when they and the children had to wear clothes that seemed to poison them like the shirt of Dejanira; when they durst not walk along special streets, nor pass particular shops, for the feeling that the shop people must be staring, and pointing, and jibing at them, "Pay me what thou owest!"
But things can not again be so bad as those days, Hilary. Ascott is young; he may mend. People can mend, my child; and he had such a different bringing up from what his father had, and his grandfather, too. We must not be hopeless yet. You see, and making Hilary kneel down before her, she took her by both hands, as if to impart something of her own quietness to this poor heart, struggling as young, honest, upright hearts do struggle with something which their whole nature revolts against, and loathes, and scorns—"you see, the boy is our boy; our own flesh and blood. We were very foolish to let him away from us for so long. We might have made him better if we had kept him at Stowbury. But he is young; that is my hope of him; and he was always fond of his aunts, and is still, I think."
Hilary smiled sadly. "Deeds, not words I don't believe in words."
Well, let us put aside believing, and only act. Let us give him another chance.
Hilary shook her head. "Another, and another, and another—it will be always the same. I know it will. I can't tell how it is, Johanna; but whenever I look at you, I feel so stern and hard to Ascott. It seems as if there were circumstances when pity to some, to one, was wicked injustice to others: as if there were times when it is right and needful to lop off, at once and forever, a rotten branch rather than let the whole tree go to rack and ruin. I would do it! I should think myself justified in doing it."
But not just yet. He is only a boy—our own boy.
And the two women, in both of whom the maternal passion existed strong and deep, yet in the one never had found, and in the other never might find, its natural channel, wept together over this lad, almost as mothers weep.
But what can we do? said Hilary at last.
Thirty pounds, and not a halfpenny to pay it with; must we borrow?
Oh no—no, was the answer, with a shrinking gesture; "no borrowing.
There is the diamond ring."
This was a sort of heir-loom from eldest daughter to eldest daughter of the Leaf family which had been kept even as a sort of superstition, through all temptations of poverty.—The last time Miss Leaf looked at it she had remarked, jestingly, it should be given some day to that important personage talked of for many a year among the three aunts—Mrs. Ascott Leaf.
Who must do without it now, said Johanna, looking regretfully at the ring; "that is, if he ever takes to himself a wife, poor boy."
Hilary answered, beneath her breath, "Unless he alters, I earnestly hope he never may." And there came over her involuntarily a wild, despairing thought, Would it not be better that neither Ascott nor herself should ever be married, that the family might die out, and trouble the world no more?
Nevertheless she rose up to do what she knew had to be done, and what there was nobody to do but herself.
Don't mind it, Johanna; for indeed I do not. I shall go to a first rate, respectable jeweler, and he will not cheat me; and then I shall find my way to the sponging-house—isn't that what they call it? I dare say many a poor woman has been there before me. I am not the first, and shall not be the last, and no body will harm me. I think I look honest, though my name is Leaf.
She laughed—a bitter laugh; but Johanna silenced it in a close embrace; and when Hilary rose up again she was quite her natural self. She summoned Elizabeth, and began giving her all domestic directions, just as usual; finally, bade her sister good by in a tone as like her usual tone as possible, and left her settled on the sofa in content and peace.
Elizabeth followed to the door. Miss Hilary had asked her for the card on which Ascott had written the address of the place where he had been taken to; and though the girl said not a word, her anxious eyes made piteous inquiry.
Her mistress patted her on the shoulder.
Never mind about me; I shall come to no harm, Elizabeth.
It's a bad place; such a dreadful place, Mrs. Jones says.
Is it? Elizabeth guessed part, not the whole of the feelings that made Hilary hesitate, shrink even, from the duty before her, turning first so hot, and then so pale. Only as a duty could she have done it at all. "No matter, I must go. Take care of my sister."
She ran down the door steps, and walked quickly through the Crescent. It was a clear, sunshiny, frosty day—such a day as always both cheered and calmed her. She had, despite all her cares, youth, health, energy; and a holy and constant love lay like a sleeping angel in her heart. Must I tell the truth, and own that before she had gone two streets' length Hilary ceased to feel so very, very miserable?
Love—this kind of love of which I speak—is a wonderful thing, the most wonderful thing in all the world. The strength it gives, the brightness, the actual happiness, even in hardest times, is often quite miraculous. When Hilary sat waiting in the jeweler's shop, she watched a little episode of high life—two wealthy people choosing their marriage plate; the bride, so careless and haughty; the bridegroom, so unutterably mean to look at, stamped with that innate smallness and coarseness of soul which his fine clothes only made more apparent. And she thought—oh, how fondly she thought!—of that honest, manly mein; of that true, untainted heart, which she felt sure, had never loved any woman but herself; of the warm, firm hand, carving its way thro' the world for her sake, and waiting patiently till it could openly clasp hers, and give her every thing it had won. She would not have exchanged him. Robert Lyon, with his penniless love, his half-hopeless fortunes, or maybe his lot of never ending care, for the "brawest bridegroom" under the sun.
Under this sun—the common, everyday winter sun of Regent and Oxford streets—she walked now as brightly and bravely as if there were no trouble before her, no painful meeting with Ascott, no horrid humiliation from which every womanly feeling in her nature shrunk with acute pain. "Robert, my Robert!" she whispered in her heart, and felt him so near to her that she was at rest, she hardly knew why.
Possibly grand, or clever, or happy people who condescend to read this story may despise it, think it unideal, uninteresting; treating of small things and common people—"poor persons," in short. I can not help it. I write for the poor; not to excite the compassion of the rich toward them, but to show them their own dignity and the bright side of their poverty. For it has its bright side; and its very darkest, when no sin is mixed up therewith, is brighter than many an outwardly prosperous life.
Better is a dinner of herbs, where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than a house full of sacrifices and strife.
With these two sage proverbs—which all acknowledge and scarcely any really believe, or surely they would act a little more as if they did—I leave Johanna Leaf sitting silently in her solitary parlor, knitting stockings for her child; weaving many a mingled web of thought withal, yet never letting a stitch go down; and Hilary Leaf walking cheerily and fearlessly up one strange street and down another to find out the "bad" place, where she once had no idea it would ever have been her lot to go.—One thing she knew, and gloried in the knowledge, that if Robert Lyon had known she was going, or known half the cares she had to meet, he would have recrossed the Indian seas—have risked fortune, competence, hope of the future, which was the only cheer of his hard present—in order to save her from them all.
The minute history of this painful day I do not mean to tell. Hilary never told it till, years after, she wept it out upon a bosom that could understand the whole, and would take good care that while the life beat in his she never should go through the like again.
Ascott came home—that is, was brought home—very humbled, contrite, and grateful. There was no one to meet him but his Aunt Johanna, and she just kissed him quietly, and bade him come over to the fire; he was shivering, and somewhat pale. He had even two tears in his handsome eyes, the first Ascott had been known to shed since he was a boy. That he felt a good deal, perhaps as much as was in his nature to feel, there could be no doubt. So his two aunts were glad and comforted; gave him his tea and the warmest seat at the hearth; said not a harsh word to him, but talked to him about indifferent things.—Tea being over, Hilary was anxious to get every thing painful ended before Selina came home—Selina, who, they felt by instinct, had now a separate interest from themselves, and had better not be told this sad story if possible; so she asked her nephew "if he remembered what they had to do this evening?"
"
Had to do? Oh, Aunt Hilary, I'm so tired! can't you let me be quiet? Only this one night. I promise to bring you everything on Monday.
"Monday will be too late. I shall be away. And you know you can't do without my excellent arithmetic, she added with a faint smile. "Now, Ascott, be a good boy—fetch down all those bills and let us go over them together."
His debts came to more than the thirty pounds then? said his Aunt
Johanna, when he was gone.
Yes. But the ring sold for fifty. And Hilary drew to the table, got writing materials, and sat waiting, with a dull, silent patience in her look, at which Johanna sighed and said no more.
The aunt and nephew spent some time in going over that handful of papers, and approximating to the sum total, in that kind of awful arithmetic when figures cease to be mere figures, but grow into avenging monsters, bearing with them life or death.
Is that all! You are quite sure it is all? said Hilary at last, pointing to the whole amount, and looking steadily into Ascott's eyes.
He flushed up, and asked what she meant by doubting his word?
Not that, but you might easily have made a mistake; you are so careless about money matters.
Ah, that's it. I'm just careless, and so I come to grief. But I never mean to be careless any more. I'll be as precise as you. I'll balance my books every week—every day if you like—exactly as you do at that horrid shop, Aunt Hilary.
So he was rattling on, but Hilary stopped him by pointing to the figures.
"
You see, this sum is more than we expected. How is it to be met? Think for yourself. You are a man now.
"I know that, said Ascott, sullenly; "but what's the use of it?—money only makes the man, and I have none. If the ancient Peter would but die now and leave me his heir, though to be sure Aunt Selina might be putting her oar in. Perhaps—considering I'm Aunt Selina's nephew—if I were to walk into the old chap now he might be induced to fork out! Hurrah! that's a splendid idea."
What idea?
I'll borrow the money from old Ascott.
That means, because he has already given, you would have him keep on giving—and you would take and take and take—Ascott, I'm ashamed of you.
But Ascott only burst out laughing. "Nonsence!—he has money and I have none; why shouldn't he give it me?"
Why?—she repeated, her eyes flashing and her little feminine figure seeming to grow taller as she spoke—"I'll tell you, since you don't seem yourself to understand it. Because a young man, with health and strength in him, should blush to eat any bread but what he himself earns. Because he should work at any thing and every thing, stint himself of every luxury and pleasure, rather than ask or borrow, or, except under rare circumstances, rather than be indebted to any living soul for a single half-penny. I would not, if I were a young man."
What a nice young man you would make, Aunt Hilary!
There was something in the lad's imperturbable good humor at once irritating and disarming. Whatever his faults, they were more negative than positive; there was no malice prepense about him, no absolute personal wickedness. And he had the strange charm of manner and speech which keeps up one's outer surface of habitual affection toward a person long after all its foundations of trust and respect have hopelessly crumbled away.
Come now, my pretty aunt must go with me. She will manage the old ogre much better than I. And he must be managed somehow. It's all very fine talking of independence, but isn't it hard that a poor fellow should be living in constant dread of being carried off to that horrid, uncleanly, beastly den—bah! I don't like thinking of it—and all for the want of twenty pounds? You must go to him, Aunt Hilary.
She saw they must—there was no help for it. Even Johanna said so. It was after all only asking for Ascott's quarterly allowance three days in advance, for it was due on Tuesday. But what jarred against her proud, honest spirit was the implication that such a request gave of taking as a right that which had been so long bestowed as a favor. Nothing but the great strait they were in could ever have driven her to consent that Mr. Ascott should be applied to at all; but since it must be done, she felt that she had better do it herself. Was it from some lurking doubt or dread that Ascott might not speak the entire truth, as she had insisted upon its being spoken, before Mr. Ascott was asked for any thing? since whatever he gave must be given with a full knowledge on his part of the whole pitiable state of affairs.
It was with a strange, sad feeling—the sadder because he never seemed to suspect it, but talked and laughed with her as usual—that she took her nephew's arm and walked silently through the dark squares, perfectly well aware that he only asked her to go with him in order to do an unpleasant thing which he did not like to do himself, and that she only went with him in the character of watch, or supervisor, to try and save him from doing something which she herself would be ashamed should be done.
Yet he was ostensibly the head, hope, and stay of the family. Alas! many a family has to submit to, and smile under an equally melancholy and fatal sham.
Mr. Ascott was sitting half asleep in his solitary dining room, his face rosy with wine, his heart warmed also, probably from the same cause. Not that he was in the least "tipsy"—that low-word applicable only to low people, and not men of property, who have a right to enjoy all the good things of this life. He was scarcely even "merry," merely "comfortable," in that cozy, benevolent state which middle aged or elderly gentlemen are apt to fall into after a good dinner and good wine, when they have no mental resources, and the said good dinner and good wine constitutes their best notion of felicity.
Yet wealth and comfort are not things to be despised. Hilary herself was not insensible to the pleasantness of this warm, well-lit, crimson-atmosphered apartment. She as well as her neighbors liked pretty things about her, soft, harmonious colors to look at and wear, well-cooked food to eat, cheerful rooms to live in. If she could have had all these luxuries with those she loved to share them, no doubt she would have been much happier. But yet she felt to the full that solemn truth that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things that he possesses;" and though hers was outwardly so dark, so full of poverty, anxiety, and pain, still she knew that inwardly it owned many things, one thing especially, which no money could buy, and without which fine houses, fine furniture, and fine clothes—indeed, all the comforts and splendors of existence, would be worse that valueless, actual torment. So as she looked around her she felt not the slightest envy of her sister Selina.
Nor of honest Peter, who rose up from his arm-chair, pulling the yellow silk handkerchief from his sleepy face, and, it must be confessed, receiving his future connections very willingly, and even kindly.
Now how was he to be told? How when she and Ascott sat over the wine and desert he had ordered for them, listening to the rich man's complaisant pomposities, were they to explain that they had come a begging, asking him, as the climax to his liberalities, to advance a few pounds in order to keep the young man whom he had for years generously and sufficiently maintained out of prison? This, smooth it over as one might, was, Hilary felt, the plain English of the matter, and as minute after minute lengthened, and nothing was said of their errand, she sat upon thorns.
But Ascott drank his wine and ate his walnuts quite composedly.
At last Hilary said, in a sort of desperation, "Mr. Ascott, I want to speak to you."
With pleasure, my dear young lady. Will you come to my study?—I have a most elegantly furnished study, I assure you. And any affair of yours—
Thank you, but it is not mine; it concerns my nephew here.
And then she braced up all her courage, and while Ascott busied himself over his walnuts—he had the grace to look excessively uncomfortable—she told, as briefly as possible, the bitter truth.
Mr. Ascott listened, apparently without surprise, and any how, without comment. His self-important loquacity ceased, and his condescending smile passed into a sharp, reticent, business look. He knitted his shaggy brows, contracted that coarsely-hung, but resolute mouth, in which lay the secret of his success in life, buttoned up his coat, and stuck his hands behind him over his coat-tails. As he stood there on his own hearth, with all his comfortable splendors about him—a man who had made his own money, hardly and honestly, who from the days when he was a poor errand-lad had had no one to trust to but himself, yet had managed always to help himself, ay, and others too—Hilary's stern sense of justice contrasted him with the graceful young man who sat opposite to him, so much his inferior, and so much his debtor. She owned that Peter Ascott had a right to look both contemptuously and displeased.
A very pretty story, but I almost expected it, said he.
And there he stopped. In his business capacity he was too acute a man to be a man of many words, and his feelings, if they existed, were kept to himself.
It all comes to this, young man, he continued, after an uncomfortable pause, in which Hilary could have counted every beat of her heart, and even Ascott played with his wine glass in a nervous kind of way—"you want money, and you think I'm sure to give it, because it wouldn't be pleasant just now to have discreditable stories going about concerning the future Mrs. Ascott's relatives. You're quite right, it wouldn't. But I'm too old a bird to be caught with chaff for all that. You must rise very early in the morning to take me in."
Hilary started up in an agony of shame. "That's not fair, Mr. Ascott. We do not take you in. Have we not told you the whole truth? I was determined you should know it before we asked you for one farthing of your money. If there were the smallest shadow of a chance for Ascott in any other way, we never would have come to you at all. It is a horrible, horrible humiliation!"
It might be that Peter Ascott had a soft place in his heart, or that this time, just before his marriage, was the one crisis which sometimes occurs in a hard man's life, when, if the right touch comes, he becomes malleable ever after; but he looked kindly at the poor girl, and said, in quite a gentle way, "Don't vex yourself, my dear. I shall give the young fellow what he wants: nobody ever called Peter Ascott stingy. But he has cost me enough already: he must shift for himself now. Hand me over that check-book, Ascott; but remember this is the last you'll ever see of my money."
He wrote the memorandum of the check inside the page, then tore off the check itself, and proceeded to write the words "Twenty pounds," date it, and sign it, lingering over the signature, as if he had a certain pride in the honest name "Peter Ascott," and was well aware of its monetary value on Change and elsewhere.
There, Miss Halary, I flatter myself that's not a bad signature, nor would be easily forged. One can not be too careful over— What's that? a letter, John?
By his extreme eagerness, almost snatching it from his footman's hands, it was one of importance. He made some sort of rough apology, drew the writing materials to him, wrote one or two business-looking letters, and made out one or two more checks.
Here's yours Ascott; take it, and let me have done with it, said he, throwing it across the table folded up. "Can't waste time on such small transactions. Ma'am, excuse me, but five thousand pounds depends on my getting these letters written and sent off within a quarter of an hour."
Hilary bent her head, and sat watching the pen scratch, and the clock tick on the mantle-piece; thinking if this really was to be the last of his godfather's allowance, what on earth would become of Ascott? For Ascott himself, he said not a word. Not even when, the letters dispatched, Mr. Ascott rose, and administering a short, sharp homily, tacitly dismissed his visitors: Whether this silence was sullenness, cowardice, or shame, Hilary could not guess.
She quitted the house with a sense of grinding humiliation almost intolerable. But still the worst was over; the money had been begged and given—there was no fear of a prison. And spite of every thing, Hilary felt a certain relief that this was the last time Ascott would be indebted to his godfather. Perhaps this total cessation of extraneous help might force the young man upon his own resources, compel his easy temperament into active energy, and bring out in him those dormant qualities that his aunts still fondly hoped existed in him.
Don't be down-hearted, Ascott, she said: "we will manage to get on somehow till you bear of a practice, and then you must work—work like a 'brick,' as you call it. You will, I know."
He answered nothing.
I won't let you give in, my boy, she went on, kindly. "Who would ever dream of giving in at your age, with health and strength, a good education, and no encumbrances whatever—not even aunts! for we will not stand in your way, be sure of that. If you can not settle here, you shall try to get out abroad, as you have sometimes wished, as an army surgeon or a ship's doctor; you say these appointments are easy enough to be had. Why not try? Any thing; we will consent to any thing, if only we can see your life busy and useful and happy."
Thus she talked, feeling far more tenderly to him in his forlorn despondency than when they had quitted the house two hours before. But Ascott took not the slightest notice. A strange fit of sullenness or depression seemed to have come over him, which, when they reached home and met Aunt Johanna's silently-questioning face, changed into devil-may-care indifference.
Oh yes, aunt, we've done it; we've got the money, and now I may go to the dogs as soon as I like.
No, said Aunt Hilary, "it is nothing of the sort: it is only that Ascott must now depend upon himself, and not upon his godfather. Take courage," she added, and went up to him and kissed him on the forehead; "we'll never let our boy go to the dogs! and as for this disappointment, or any disappointment, why it's just like a cold bath, it takes away your breath for the time, and then you rise up out of it brisker and fresher than ever."
But Ascott shook his head with a fierce denial. "Why should that old fellow be as rich as Croesus and I as poor as a rat? Why should I be put into the world to enjoy myself, and can't? Why was I made like what I am, and then punished for it? Whose fault is it?"
Ay, whose? The eternal, unsolvable problem rose up before Hilary's imagination. The ghastly spectre of that everlasting doubt, which haunts even the firmest faith sometimes—and which all the nonsense written about that mystery which,
"Binding nature fate to fate,
Leaves free the human will,"
only makes darker than before—oppressed her for the time being with an inexpressible dread.
Ay, why was it that the boy was what he was? From his inherited nature, his temperament, or his circumstances? What, or more awful question still, who was to blame?
But as Hilary's thoughts went deeper down the question answered itself—at least as far as it ever can be answered in this narrow, finite stage of being. Whose will—we dare not say whose blame—is it that evil must inevitably generate evil? that the smallest wrong-doing in any human being rouses a chain of results which may fatally involve other human beings in an almost incalculable circle of misery? The wages of sin is death. Were it not so sin would cease to be sin, and holiness, holiness. If He, the All-holy, who for some inscrutable purpose saw fit to allow the existence of evil, allowed any other law than this, in either the spiritual or material world, would He not be denying Himself, counteracting the necessities of His own righteous essence, to which evil is so antagonistic, that we can not doubt it must be in the end cast into total annihilation—into the allegorical lake of fire and brimstone, which is the "second death?" Nay, do they not in reality deny Him and His holiness almost as much as Atheists do, who preach that the one great salvation which He has sent into the world is a salvation from punishment—a keeping out of hell and getting into heaven—instead of a salvation from sin, from the power and love of sin, through the love of God in Christ?
I tell these thoughts, because like lighting they passed through Hilary's mind, as sometimes a whole chain of thoughts do, link after link, and because they helped her to answer her nephew quietly and briefly, for she saw he was in no state of mind to be argued with.
I can not explain, Ascott, why it is that any of us are what we are, and why things happen to us as they do; it is a question we none of us understand, and in this world never shall. But if we know what we ought to be, and how we may make the best of every thing, good or bad, that happens to us, surely that is enough without perplexing ourselves about any thing more.
Ascott smiled, half contemptuously, half carelessly: he was not a young fellow likely to perplex himself long or deeply about these sort of things.
Any how, I've got £20 in my pocket, so I can't starve for a day or two. Let's see; where is it to be cashed? Hillo! who would have thought the old fellow would have been so stupid? Look there, Aunt Hilary!
She was so unfamiliar with checks for £20, poor little woman! that she did not at first recognize the omission of the figures "£20" at the left-hand corner. Otherwise the check was correct.
Ho, ho! laughed Ascott, exceedingly amused, so easily was the current of his mind changed. "It must have been the £5000 pending that muddled the 'cute old fellow's brains. I wonder whether he will remember it afterward, and come posting up to see that I've taken no ill-advantage of his blunder; changed this 'Twenty' into 'Seventy.' I easily could, and put the figures £70 here. What a good joke!"
Had ye not better go to him at once, and have the matter put right?
Rubbish! I can put it right myself. It makes no difference who fills up a check, so that it is signed all correct. A deal you women know of business!
But still Hilary, with a certain womanish uneasiness about money matters, and an anxiety to have the thing settled beyond doubt, urged him to go.
Very well; just as you like. I do believe you are afraid of my turning forger.
He buttoned his coat with a half sulky, half defiant air, left his supper untasted, and disappeared.
It was midnight before he returned. His aunts were still sitting up, imagining all sorts of horrors, in an anxiety too great for words; but when Hilary ran to the door, with the natural "Oh, Ascott, where have you been?" he pushed her aside with a gesture that was almost fierce in its repulsion.
Where have I been? taking a walk round the Park; that's all. Can't I come and go as I like, without being pestered by women? I'm horribly tired. Let me alone—do!
They did let him alone. Deeply wounded, Aunt Johanna took no further notice of him than to set his chair a little closer to the fire, and Aunt Hilary slipped down stairs for more coals. There she found Elizabeth, who they thought had long since gone to bed, sitting on the stairs, very sleepy, but watching still.
Is he come in? she asked; "because there are more bailiffs after him. I'm sure of it; I saw them."
This, then, might account for his keeping out of the way till after twelve o'clock, and also for his wild, haggard look. Hilary put aside her vague dread of some new misfortune; assured Elizabeth that all was right; he had got wherewithal to pay every body on Monday morning, and would be safe till then. All debtors were safe on Sunday.
Go to bed now—there's a good girl; it is hard that you should be troubled with our troubles.
Elizabeth looked up with those fond gray eyes of hers. She was but a servant, and yet looks like these engraved themselves ineffaceably on her mistress's heart, imparting the comfort that all pure love gives from any one human being to another.
And love has its wonderful rights and rewards. Perhaps Elizabeth, who thought herself nothing at all to her mistress, would have marveled to know how much closer her mistress felt to this poor, honest, loving girl, whose truth she believed in, and on whose faithfulness she implicitly depended, than toward her own flesh and blood, who sat there moodily over the hearth; deeply pitied, sedulously cared for, but as for being confided in relied on, in great matters or small, his own concerns or theirs—the thing was impossible.
They could not even ask him—they dared not, in such a strange mood was he—the simple question, Had he seen Mr. Ascott, and had Mr. Ascott been annoyed about the check? It would not have been referred to at all had not Hilary, in holding his coat to dry, taken his pocket book out of the breast pocket, when he snatched at it angrily.
What are you meddling with my things for? Do you want to get at the check, and be peering at it to see if it's all right? But you can't; I've paid it away. Perhaps you'd like to know who to? Then you shan't. I'll not be accountable to you for all my proceedings. I'll not be treated like a baby. You'd better mind what you are about, Aunt Hilary.
Never, in all his childish naughtiness, or boyish impertinence, had Ascott spoken to her in such a tone. She regarded him at first with simple astonishment, then hot indignation, which spurred her on to stand up for her dignity, and not submit to be insulted by her own nephew. But then came back upon her her own doctrine, taught by her own experience, that character and conduct alone constitutes real dignity or authority. She had, in point of fact, no authority over him; no one can have, not even parents, over a young man of his age, except that personal influence which is the strongest sway of all.
She said only, with a quietness that surprised herself—"You mistake, Ascott; I have no wish to interfere with you whatever; you are your own master, and must take your own course. I only expect from you the ordinary respect that a gentleman shows to a lady. You must be very tired and ill, or you would not have forgotten that."
I didn't; or, if I did, I beg your pardon, said he, half subdued.
When are you going to bed?
Directly. Shall I light your candle also?
Oh no; not for the world; I couldn't sleep a wink. I'd go mad if I went to bed. I think I'll turn out and have a cigar.
His whole manner was so strange that his Aunt Johanna, who had sat aloof, terribly grieved, but afraid to interfere, was moved to rise up and go over to him.
Ascott, my dear, you are looking quite ill. Be advised by your old auntie. Go to bed at once, and forget every thing till morning.
I wish I could; I wish I could. Oh, Auntie, Auntie!
He caught hold of her hand, which she had laid upon his head, looked up a minute into her kind, fond face, and burst into a flood of boyish tears.
Evidently his troubles had been too much for him; he was in a state of great excitement. For some minutes his sobs were almost hysterical: then by a struggle he recovered him-self, seemed exceedingly annoyed and ashamed, took up his candle, bade them a hurried goodnight, and went to bed.
That is, he went to his room; but they heard him moving about overhead for a long while after: nor were they surprised that he refused to rise next morning, but lay most of the time with his door locked, until late in the afternoon, when he went out for a long walk, and did not return till supper, which he ate almost in silence. Then, after going up to his room, and coming down again, complaining bitterly how very cold it was, he crept in to the fireside with a book in his hand, of which Hilary noticed he scarcely read a line.
His aunts said nothing to him; they had determined not: they felt that further interference would be not only useless but dangerous.
He will come to himself by-and by; his moods, good or bad, never last long, you know, said Hilary, somewhat bitterly. "But, in the mean time, I think we had better just do as he says—let him alone."
And in that sad, hopeless state they passed the last hours of that dreary Sunday—afraid either to comfort him or reason with him; afraid, above all, to blame him lest it might drive him altogether astray. That he was in a state of great misery, halt sullen, half defiant, they saw, and were scarcely surprised at it; it was very hard not to be able to open their loving hearts to him, as those of one family should always do, making every trouble a common care, and every joy a universal blessing. But in his present state of mind—the sudden obstinacy of a weak nature conscious of its weakness, and dreading control—it seemed impossible either to break upon his silence or to force his confidence.
They might have been right in this, or wrong; afterward Hilary thought the latter. Many a time she wished and wished, with a bitter regret, that instead of the quiet "Good night, Ascott!" and the one rather cold kiss on his forehead, she had flung her arms round his neck, and insisted on his telling out his whole mind to her, his nearest kinswoman, who had been half aunt and half sister to him all his life. But it was not done: she parted from him, as she did Sunday after Sunday, with a sore sick feeling of how much he might be to her, to them all, and how little he really was.
If this silence of hers was a mistake—one of those mistakes which sensitive people sometimes make—it was, like all similar errors, only too sorrowfully remembered and atoned for.
The week passed by, and Hilary received no ill tidings from home. Incessant occupation kept her from dwelling too much on anxious subjects: besides, she would not have thought it exactly right, while her time and her mental powers were for so many hours per diem legally Miss Balquidder's, to waste the one and weaken the other by what is commonly called "fretting." Nor, carrying this conscientious duty to a higher degree, and toward a higher Master, would she have dared to sit grieving overmuch over their dark future. And yet it was very dark. She pondered over what was to be done with Ascott, or whether he was still to be left to the hopeless hope of doing something for himself: how long the little establishment at No. 15 could be kept together, or if, after Selina's marriage, it would not be advisable to make some change that should contract expenses, and prevent this hard separation, from Monday to Saturday, between Johanna and herself.
These, with equally anxious thoughts, attacked her in crowds every day and every hour; but she had generally sufficient will to put them aside: at least till after work was done, and they could neither stupefy nor paralyze her. Trouble had to her been long enough familiar to have taught her its own best lesson—that the mind can, in degree, rule itself, even as it rules the body.
Thus, in her business duties, which were principally keeping accounts; in her management of the two young people under her, and of the small domestic establishment connected with the shop, Hilary went steadily on, day after day; made no blunders in her arithmetic, no mistakes in her housekeeping. Being new to all her responsibilities, she had to give her whole mind to them; and she did it: and it was a blessing to her—the sanctified blessing which rests upon labor, almost seeming to neutralize its primeval curse.
But night after night, when work was over, she sat alone at her sewing—the only time she had for it—and her thoughts went faster than her needle. She turned over plan after plan, and went back upon hope after hope, that had risen and broken like waves of the sea—nothing happening that she had expected; the only thing which had happened, or which seemed to have any permanence or reality, being two things which she had never expected at all—Selina's marriage, and her own engagement with Miss Balquidder. It often happens so, in most people's lives, until at last they learn to live on from day to day, doing each day's duty within the day, and believing that it is a righteous as well as a tender hand which keeps the next day's page safely folded down.
So Hilary sat, glad to have a quiet hour, not to grieve in, but to lay out the details of a plan which had been maturing in her mind all week, and which she meant definitely to propose to Johanna when she went home next day. It would cost her something to do so, and she had had some hesitations as to the scheme itself, until at last she threw them all to the winds, as an honest-hearted, faithful and faithfully-trusting woman would. Her plan was, that they should write to the only real friend the family had—the only good man she believed in—stating plainly their troubles and difficulties about their nephew; asking his advice, & possibly his help. He might know of something—some opening for a young surgeon in India, or some temporary appointment for the voyage out and home, which might catch Ascott's erratic and easily attracted fancy: give him occupation for the time being, and at least detach him from his present life, with all its temptations and dangers.
Also, it might result in bringing the boy again under that influence which had been so beneficial to him while it lasted, and which Hilary devoutly believed was the best influence in the world. Was it unnatural, if, mingled with an earnest desire for Ascott's good, was an under-lying delight that that good should be done to him by Robert Lyon?
So when her plan was made, even to the very words in which she meant to unfold it to Johanna, and the very form in which Johanna should write the letter, she allowed herself a few brief minutes to think of him—Robert Lyon—to call up his eyes, his voice, his smile; to count, for the hundreth time, how many months—one less than twenty-four, so she could not say years now—it would be before he returned to England. Also, to speculate when and where they would first meet, and how he would speak the one word—all that was needful to change "liking" into "love," and "friend" into "wife."
They had so grown together during so many years not the less so during these years of absence, that it seemed as if such a change would hardly make any difference. And yet—and yet—as she sat and sewed, wearied with her day's labors, sad and perplexed, she thought—if only, by some strange magic, Robert Lyon were standing opposite, holding open his arms, ready and glad to take her and all her cares to his heart, how she would cling there! how closely she would creep to him, weeping with joy and content, neither afraid nor ashamed to let him see how dearly she loved him!
Only a dream! ah, only a dream! and she started from it at the sharp sound of the doorbell—started, blushing and trembling, as if it had been Robert Lyon himself, when she knew it was only her two young assistants whom she had allowed to go out to tea in the neighborhood. So she settled herself to her work again; put all her own thoughts by in their little private corners, and waited for the entrance and the harmless gossip of these two orphan girls, who were already beginning to love her, and make a friend of her, and toward whom she felt herself quite an elderly and responsible person. Poor little Hilary! It seemed to be her lot always to take care of somebody or other. Would it ever be that any body should take care of her?
So she cleared away some of her needlework, stirred the fire, which was dropping hollow and dull, and looked up pleasantly to the opening door. But it was not the girls: it was a man's foot and a man's voice.
Any person of the name of Leaf living here? I wish to see her, on business.
At another time she would have laughed at the manner and words, as if it were impossible so great a gentleman as Mr. Ascott could want to see so small a person as the "person of the name of Leaf," except on business. But now she was startled by his appearance at all. She sprang up only able to articulate "My sister—"
Don't be frightened; your sisters are quite well. I called at No. 15 an hour ago.
You saw them?
No; I thought it unadvisable, under the circumstances.
What circumstances?
I will explain, if you will allow me to sit down; bah! I've brought in sticking to me a straw out of that confounded shaky old cab. One ought never to be so stupid as to go any where except in one's own carriage. This is rather a small room, Miss Hilary.
He eyed it curiously round; and, lastly, with his most acute look he eyed herself, as if he wished to find out something from her manner, before going into further explanations.
But she stood before him a little uneasy, and yet not very much so.
The utmost she expected was some quarrel with her sister Selina;
perhaps the breaking off of the match, which would not have broken
Hilary's heart at all events.
So you have really no idea what I'm come about!
Not the slightest.
Well! said Peter Ascott. "I hardly thought it; but when one has been taken in as I have been, and this isn't the first time by your family—"
Mr. Ascott! will you explain yourself?
I will, ma'am. It's a very unpleasant business I come about; any other gentleman but me would have come with a police officer at his back. Look here, Miss Hilary Leaf—did you ever set eyes on this before?
He took out his check book, turned deliberately over the small memorandum halves of the page, till he came to one in particular, then hunted in his pocket book for something.
My banker sent in to-day my canceled checks, which I don't usually go over oftener than three months; he knew that, the scamp.
Hilary looked up.
Your nephew, to be sure. See!
He spread before her a check, the very one she had watched him write seven days before, made payable to "Ascott Leaf, or bearer," and signed with the bold, peculiar signature. "Peter Ascott." Only instead of being a check for twenty pounds it was for seventy.
Instantly the whole truth flashed upon Hilary: Ascott's remark about how easily the T could be made into an S, and what a "good joke" it would be; his long absence that night; his strange manner: his refusal to let her see the check again; all was clear as daylight.
Unfortunate boy! the temptation had been too strong for him. Under what sudden, insane impulse he had acted—under what delusion of being able to repay in time; or of Mr. Ascott's not detecting the fraud; or if discovered, of its being discovered after the marriage, when to prosecute his wife's nephew would be a disgrace to himself, could never be known. But there unmistakable was the altered check, which had been presented and paid, the banker of course not having the slightest suspicion of any thing amiss.
Well, isn't this a nice return for all my kindness? So cleverly done, too. But for the merest chance I might not have found it out for three months. Oh, he's a precious young rascal, this nephew of yours. His father was only a fool, but he— Do you know that this is a matter of forgery—forgery, ma'am, added Mr. Ascott, waxing hot in his indignation.
Hilary uttered a bitter groan.
Yes, it was quite true. Their Ascott, their own boy, was no longer merely idle, extravagant, thoughtless—faults bad enough, but capable of being mended as he grew older: he had done that which to the end of his days he could never blot out. He was a swindler and a forger.
She clasped her hands tightly together, as one struggling with sharp physical pain, trying to read the expression of Mr. Ascott's face. At last she put her question into words.
What do you mean to do? Shall you prosecute him?
Mr. Ascott crossed his legs, and settled his neckcloth with a self-satisfied air. He evidently rather enjoyed the importance of his position. To be dictator, almost of life and death, to this unfortunate family was worth certainly fifty pounds.
Well, I haven't exactly determined. The money, you see, is of no moment to me, and I couldn't get it back any how. He'll never be worth a half-penny, that rascal. I might prosecute, and nobody would blame me; indeed, if I were to decline marrying your sister, and cut the whole set of you, I don't see, and he drew himself up, "that any thing could be said against me. But—"
Perhaps, hard man as he was, he was touched by the agony of suspense in Hilary's face, for he added.
Come, come, I won't disgrace your family; I won't do any thing to harm the fellow.
Thank you! said Hilary, in a mechanical, unnatural voice.
As for my money, he's welcome to it, and much good may it do him. 'Set a beggar on horseback, and he'll ride to the devil,' and in double quick time too. I won't hinder him. I wash my hands of the young scape-grace. But he'd better not come near me again.
No, acquiesced Hilary, absently.
In fact, said Mr. Ascott, with a twinkle of his sharp eye, "I have already taken measures to frighten him away, so that he may make himself scarce, and give neither you nor me any farther trouble. I drove up to your door with a policeman, asked to see Mr. Leaf, and when I heard that he was out—a lie, of course I left word I'd be back in half an hour. Depend upon it," and he winked confidentially, "he will smell a rat, and make a moonlight flitting of it, and we shall never hear of him any more."
Never hear of Ascott any more? repeated Hilary; and for an instant she ceased to think of him as what he was—swindler, forger, ungrateful to his benefactors, a disgrace to his home and family. She saw only the boy Ascott, with his bright looks and pleasant ways, whom his aunts had brought up from his cradle, and loved with all his faults—perhaps loved still. "Oh, I must go home. This will break Johanna's heart!"
Mr. Peter Ascott possibly never had a heart, or it had been so stunted in its growth that it had never reached its fair development. Yet he felt sorry in his way for the "young person," who looked so deadly white, yet tried so hard not to make a scene, nay, when her two assistants came into the one little parlor, deported herself with steady composure; told them that she was obliged suddenly to go home, but would be back, if possible, the next morning. Then, in that orderly, accurate way which Peter Ascott could both understand and appreciate, she proceeded to arrange with them about the shop and the house in case she might be detained till Monday.
You're not a bad woman of business, said he, with a patronizing air. "This seems a tidy little shop; I dare say you'll get on in it."
She looked at him with a bewildered air, and went on speaking to the young woman at the door.
How much might your weekly receipts be in a place like this? And what salary does Miss—Miss What's-her-name give to each of you? You're the head shop-woman, I suppose?
Hilary made no answer: she scarcely heard. All her mind was full of but one thing: "Never see Ascott any more!"
There came back upon her all the dreadful stories she had ever heard of lads who had committed forgery or some similar offense, and, in dread of punishment, had run away in despair, and never been heard of for years—come to every kind of misery, perhaps even destroyed themselves. The impression was so horribly vivid, that when, pausing an instant in putting her books in their places, she heard the door bell ring Hilary with difficulty repressed a scream.
But it was no messenger of dreadful tidings, it was only Elizabeth Hand; and the quiet fashion in which she entered showed Hilary at once that nothing dreadful had happened at home.
Oh no, nothing has happened, confirmed the girl. "Only Miss Leaf sent me to see if you could come home to night instead of tomorrow. She is quite well, that is, pretty well; but Mr. Leaf—"
Here, catching sight of Miss Hilary's visitor, Elizabeth stopped short. Peter Ascott was one of her prejudices. She determined in his presence to let out no more of the family affairs.
On his part, Mr. Ascott had always treated Elizabeth as people like him usually do treat servants, afraid to lose an inch of their dignity, lest it should be an acknowledgment of equal birth and breeding with the class from which they are so terribly ashamed to have sprung. He regarded her now with a lordly air.
Young woman—I believe you are the young woman who this afternoon told me that Mr. Leaf was out. It was a fib, of course.
Elizabeth turned round indignantly. "No, Sir; I don't tell fibs. He was out."
Did you give him my message when he came in?
Yes, Sir.
And what did he say, oh?
Nothing.
This was the literal fact; but there was something behind which Elizabeth had not the slightest intention of communicating. In fact, she set herself, physically and mentally, in an attitude of dogged resistance to any pumping of Mr. Ascott: for though, as she had truly said, nothing special had happened, she felt sure that he was at the bottom of something which had gone wrong in the household that afternoon.
It was this. When Ascott returned, and she told him of his godfather's visit, the young man had suddenly turned so ghastly pale that she had to fetch him a glass of water; and his Aunt Johanna—Miss Selina was out—had to tend him and soothe him for several minutes before he was right again. When at last he seemed returning to his natural self, he looked wildly up at his aunt, and clung to her in such an outburst of feeling, that Elizabeth had thought it best to slip out of the room. It was tea time, but still she waited outside for a half hour or longer, when she gently knocked, and after a minute or two Miss Leaf came out. There seemed nothing wrong, at least not much—not more than Elizabeth had noticed many and many a time after talks between Ascott and his aunts.
I'll take the tea in myself, she said; "for I want you to start at once for Kensington to fetch Miss Hilary. Don't frighten her—mind that Elizabeth. Say I am much as usual myself; but that Mr. Leaf is not quite well, and I think she might do him good. Remember the exact words."
Elizabeth did, and would have delivered them accurately, it Mr. Ascott had not been present, and addressed her in that authoritative manner. Now, she resolutely held her tongue.
Mr. Ascott might in his time have been accustomed to cringing, frightened, or impertinent servants, but this was a phase of the species with which he was totally unfamiliar. The girl was neither sullen nor rude, yet evidently quite independent; afraid neither of her mistress, nor of himself. He was sharp enough to see that whatever he wanted to get out of Elizabeth must be got in another way.
Come, my wench, you'd better tell; it'll be none the worse for you, and it shan't harm the young fellow, though I dare say he has paid you well for holding your tongue.
About what, sir?
"
Oh! you know what happened when you told him I had called, eh? Servants get to know all about their master's affairs.
"Mr. Leaf isn't my master, and his affairs are nothing to me; I don't pry into 'em, replied Elizabeth. "If you want to know any thing, Sir, hadn't you better ask himself! He's at home to-night. I left him and my missus going to their tea."
Left them at home, and at tea?
Yes, Miss Hilary.
It was an inexpressible relief. For the discovery must have come. Ascott must have known or guessed that Mr. Ascott had found him out; he must have confessed all to his Aunt, or Johanna would never have done two things which her sister knew she strongly disliked—sending Elizabeth wandering through London at night, and fetching Hilary home before the time. Yet they had been left sitting quietly at their tea!
Perhaps, after all, the blow had not been so dreadful. Johanna saw comfort through it all. Vague hopes arose in Hilary also; visions of the poor sinner sitting "clothed and in his right mind," contrite and humbled; comforted by them all, with the inexpressible tenderness with which we yearn over one who "was dead and is alive again, was lost, and is found;" helped by them all in the way that women—some women especially, and these were of them—seem formed to help the erring and unfortunate; for, erring as he was, he had also been unfortunate.
Many an excuse for him suggested itself. How foolish of them, ignorant women that they were, to suppose that seventeen years of the most careful bringing up could, with his temperament, stand against the countless dangers of London life; of any life where a young man is left to himself in a great town, with his temptations so many, and his power of resistance so small.
And this might not, could not be a deliberate act. It must have been committed under a sudden impulse, to be repented of for the rest of his days. Nay, in the strange way in which our sins and mistakes are made not only the whips to scourge us, but the sicknesses out of which we often come—suffering and weak indeed, but yet relieved, and fresh, and sound—who could tell but that this grave fault, this actual guilt, the climax of so many lesser errors, might not work out in the end Ascott's complete reformation?
So in the strange way in which, after a great shock, we begin to revive a little, to hope against hope, to see a slender ray breaking through the darkness, Hilary composed herself, at least so far as to enable her to bid Elizabeth go down stairs, and she would be ready directly.
I think it is the best thing I can do—to go home at once, said she.
Certainly, my dear. replied Mr. Ascott, rather flattered by her involuntary appeal, and by an inward consciousness of his own exceeding generosity. "And pray don't disturb yourselves. Tell your sister from me—your sister Selina, I mean—that I overlook every thing, on condition that you keep him out of my sight, that young blackguard!"
Don't, don't! cried Hilary, piteously.
Well, I won't, though it's his right name—a fellow who could— Look you, Miss Hilary, when his father sent to me to beg ten pounds to bury his mother with. I did bury her, and him also, a month after, very respectably too, though he had no claim upon me, except that he came from Stowbury. And I stood godfather to the child, and I've done my duty by him. But mark my words, what's bred in the bone will come in the flesh. He was born in a prison, and he'll die in a prison.
God forbid! said Hilary, solemnly. And again she felt the strong conviction, that whatever his father had been, or his mother, of whom they had heard nothing till she was dead, Ascott could not have lived all these years of his childhood and early boyhood with his three aunts at Stowbury without gaining at least some good, which might counteract the hereditary evil; as such evil can be counteracted, even as hereditary disease can be gradually removed by wholesome and careful rearing in a new generation.
Well, I'll not say any more, continued Peter Ascott: "only the sooner the young fellow takes himself off the better. He'll only plague you all. Now, can you send out for a cab for me?"
Hilary mechanically rang the bell, and gave the order.
I'll take you to town with me if you like. It'll save you the expense of the omnibus. I suppose you always travel by omnibus?
Hilary answered something, she hardly knew what, except that it was a declining of all these benevolent attentions. At last she got Mr. Ascott outside the street door, and returning, put her hand to her head with a moan.
Oh, Miss Hilary, don't look like that.
Elizabeth, do you know what has happened?
No.
Then I don't want you to know. And you must never try to find it out; for it is a secret that ought to be kept strictly within the family. Are you to be trusted?
Yes, Miss Hilary.
Now, get me my bonnet, and let us make haste and go home.
They walked down the gas-lit Kensington High Street, Hilary taking her servant's arm; for she felt strangely weak. As she sat in the dark corner of the omnibus she tried to look things in the face, and form some definite plan; but the noisy rumble at once dulled and confused her faculties. She felt capable of no consecutive thought, but found herself stupidly watching the two lines of faces, wondering, absently, what sort of people they were; what were their lives and histories; and whether they all had, like herself, their own personal burden of woe. Which was, alas! the one fact that never need be doubted in this world.
It was nigh upon eleven o'clock when Hilary knocked at the door of
No. 15.
Miss Leaf opened it; but for the first time in her life she had no welcome for her child.
Is it Ascott? I thought it was Ascott, she cried, peering eagerly up and down the street.
He is gone out, then? When did he go? asked Hilary, feeling her heart turn stone-cold.
Just after Selina came in. She—she vexed him. But he can not be long? Is not that man he?
And just as she was, without shawl or bonnet, Johanna stepped out into the cold, damp night, and strained her eyes into the darkness; but in vain.
I'll walk round the Crescent once, and may be I shall find him. Only go in, Johanna.
And Hilary was away again into the dark, walking rapidly, less with the hope of finding Ascott than to get time to calm herself, so as to meet, and help her sisters to meet, this worst depth of their calamity. For something warned her that this last desperation of a weak nature is more to be dreaded than any overt obstinacy of a strong one. She had a conviction that Ascott never would come home.
After a while they gave up waiting and watching at the front door, and shut themselves up in the parlor. The first explanation past, even Selina ceased talking; and they sat together, the three women, doing nothing, attempting to do nothing, only listening; thinking every sound was a step on the pavement or a knock at the door. Alas! what would they not have given for the fiercest knock, the most impatient, angry footstep, if only it had been their boy's?
About one o'clock, Selina had to be put to bed in strong hysterics. She had lashed her nephew with her bitter tongue till he had rushed out of the house, declaring that none of them should ever see his face again. Now she reproached herself as being the cause of all, and fell into an agony of remorse, which engrossed her sisters' whole care; until her violent emotion having worn itself out, she went to sleep, the only one who did sleep in that miserable family.
For Elizabeth also, having been sent to bed hours before, was found by Miss Hilary sitting on the kitchen stairs, about four in the morning. Her mistress made no attempt at reproach, but brought her into the parlor to share the silent watch, never broken except to make up the fire or light a fresh candle; till candles burned up, and shutters were opened, and upon their great calamity stared the broad unwelcome day.
"Missing"—"Lost"—"To—"—all the initials of the alphabet—we read these sort of advertisements in the newspapers; and unless there happens to be in them something intensely pathetic, comical, or horrible, we think very little about them. Only those who have undergone all that such an advertisement implies can understand its depth of misery: the sudden missing of the person out of the home circle, whether going away in anger or driven away by terror or disgrace; the hour after hour and day after day of agonized suspense; the self-reproach, real or imaginary, lest any thing might have been said or done that was not said or done—any thing prevented that was not prevented; the gnawing remorse for some cruel, or careless, or bitter word, that could so easily have been avoided.
Alas! if people could only be made to feel that every word, every action carries with it the weight of an eternity; that the merest chance may make something said or done quite unpremeditatedly, in vexation, sullenness, or spite, the last action, the last word; which may grow into an awful remembrance, rising up between them and the irredeemable past, and blackening the future for years!
Selina was quite sure her unhappy nephew had committed suicide, and that she had been the cause of it. This conviction she impressed incessantly on her two sisters as they waited upon her, or sat talking by her bedside during that long Saturday, when there was nothing else to be done.
That was the misery of it. There was nothing to be done. They had not the slightest clew to Ascott's haunts or associates. With the last fingering of honest shame, or honest respect for his aunts, he had kept all these things to himself. To search for him in wide London was altogether impossible.
Two courses suggested themselves to Hilary—one, to go and consult Miss Balquidder; the other—which came into her mind from some similar case she had heard of—to set on foot inquiries at all police stations. But the first idea was soon rejected: only at the last extremity could she make patent the family misery—the family disgrace. To the second, similar and even stronger reasons applied. There was something about the cool, matter-of-fact, business-like act of setting a detective officer to hunt out their nephew, from which these poor women recoiled. Besides, impressed as he was—he had told his Aunt Johanna so—with the relentlessness of Mr. Ascott, might not the chance of his discovering that he was hunted drive him to desperation?
Hardly to suicide. Hilary steadfastly disbelieved in that. When Selina painted horrible pictures of his throwing himself off Waterloo Bridge: or being found hanging to a tree in one of the parks; or locking himself in a hotel bed chamber and blowing out his brains, her younger sister only laughed—laughed as much as she could—if only to keep Johanna quiet.
Yet she herself had few fears. For she knew that Ascott was, in a sense, too cowardly to kill himself. He so disliked physical pain, physical unpleasantness of all kinds. She felt sure he would stop short, even with the razor or the pistol in his hand, rather than do a thing so very disagreeable.
Nevertheless, in spite of herself, while she and her sisters sat together, hour after hour, in a stillness almost like that when there is a death in the house, these morbid terrors took a double size. Hilary ceased to treat them as ridiculous impossibilities, but began to argue them out rationally. The mere act of doing so made her recoil; for it seemed an acknowledgment that she was fighting not with chimeras but realities.
It is twenty-four hours since he went, she reasoned. "If he had done anything desperate he would have done it at once, and we should have heard of it long before now; ill news always travels fast. Besides, his name was marked on all his clothes in full. I did it myself. And his coat pockets were always stuffed with letters; he used to cram them in as soon as he got them, you know."
And at this small remembrance of one of his "ways," even though it was an unkind way, and had caused them many a pain, from the want of confidence it showed, his poor, fond aunts turned aside to hide their starting tears. The very phrase "he used to," seemed such an unconscious admission that his life with them was over and done; that he never would either please them or vex them any more.
Yet they took care that during the whole day every thing should be done as if he were expected minute by minute; that Elizabeth should lay the fourth knife and fork at dinner, the fourth cup and saucer at tea. Elizabeth, who throughout had faithfully kept her pledge; who went about silently and unobservantly, and by every means in her power put aside the curiosity of Mrs. Jones as to what could be the reason that her lodgers had sat up all night, and what on earth had become of young Mr. Leaf.
After tea, Johanna, quite worn out, consented to go to bed; and then Hilary, left to her own responsibility, set herself to consider how long this dreadful quietness was to last, whether nothing could be done. She could endure whatever was inevitable, but it was against her nature as well as her conscience to sit down tamely to endure any thing whatsoever till it did become inevitable.
In the first place, she determined on that which a certain sense of honor, as well as the fear of vexing him should he come home, had hitherto prevented the examining of Ascott's room, drawers, clothes, and papers. It was a very dreary business—almost like doing the like to a person who was dead, only without the sad sanctity that belongs to the dead, whose very errors are forgotten and forgiven, who can neither suffer nor make others suffer any more.
Many things she found, and more she guessed at—things which stabbed her to the heart, things that she never told, not even to Johanna; but she found no clew whatever to Ascott's whereabouts, intentions, or connections. One thing, however, struck her—that most of his clothes, and all his somewhat extensive stock of jewelry were gone; every thing, in short, that could be convertible into money. It was evident that his flight, sudden as it was, had been premeditated as at least a possibility.
This so far was satisfactory. It took away the one haunting fear of his committing suicide; and made it likely that he was still lingering about, hiding from justice and Mr. Ascott, or perhaps waiting for an opportunity to escape from England—from the fear that his godfather, even if not prosecuting him, had the power and doubtless the will completely to crush his future, wherever he was known.
Where could he go? His Aunt tried to think over every word he had ever let fall about America, Australia, or any other place to which the hopeless outlaws of this country fly; but she could recollect nothing to enable her to form any conclusion. One thing only she was sure of—that if once he went away, his own words would come true; they would never see his face again. The last tie, the last constraint that bound him to home and a steady, righteous life would be broken; he would go all adrift, be tossed hither and thither on every wave of circumstance—what he called circumstance—till Heaven only knew what a total wreck he might speedily become, or in what forlorn and far off seas his ruined life might go down. He, Ascott Leaf, the last of the name and family.
It can not be; it shall not be! cried Hilary. A sharp, bitter cry of resistance to the death; and her heart seemed to go out to the wretched boy and her hands to clutch at him, as if he were drowning, and she were the only one to save him. How could she do it?
If she could only get at him, by word or letter! But that seemed impossible, until, turning over scheme after scheme, she suddenly thought of the one which so many people had tried in similar circumstances, and which she remembered they had talked over and laughed over, they and Ascott, one Sunday evening not so very long ago. This was—a Times advertisement.
The difficulty how to word it, so as to catch his attention and yet escape publicity, was very great, especially as his initials were so common. Hundreds of "A. L.'s" might be wandering away from home, to whom all that she dared say to call Ascott back would equally apply. At last a bright thought struck her.
A. leaf (will a small l) "will be quite safe wherever found. Come.
Saturday. 15."
As she wrote it—this wretched double-entendre—she was seized with that sudden sense of the ludicrous which sometimes intrudes in such a ghastly fashion in the very midst of great misery. She burst into uncontrollable laughter, fit after fit; so violent that Elizabeth, who came in by chance, was terrified out of her wits, and kneeling beside her mistress, implored her to be quiet. At last the paroxysm ended in complete exhaustion. The tension of the last twenty-four hours had given way, and Hilary knew her strength was gone. Yet the advertisement ought to be taken to the Times office that very night, in order to be inserted without fail on Monday morning.
There was but one person whom she could trust—Elizabeth.
She looked at the girl, who was kneeling beside the sofa, rubbing her feet, and sometimes casting a glance round, in the quiet way of one well used to nursing, who can find out how the sufferer is without "fussing" with questions. She noticed, probably because she had seen little of her of late, a curious change in Elizabeth. It must have been gradual, but yet its result had never been so apparent before. Her brusqueness had softened down, and there had come into her and shone out of her, spite of all her natural uncomeliness of person, that beautiful, intangible something, common alike to peasant and queen, as clear to see and as sad to miss in both—womanliness. Added thereto was the gentle composure of mein which almost invariably accompanied it, which instinctively makes you fell that in great things or small, whatever the woman has to do, she will do it in the womanliest, wisest, and best way.
So thought Miss Hilary as she lay watching her servant, and then explained to her the errand upon which she wished to send her.
Not much explanation, for she merely gave her the advertisement to read, and told her what she wished done with it. And Elizabeth, on her part, asked no questions, but simply listened and obeyed.
After she was gone Hilary lay on the sofa, passive and motionless. Her strength and activity seemed to have collapsed at once into that heavy quietness which comes when one has endured to the utmost limit of endurance when one feels as if to speak a word or to lift a finger would be as much as life was worth.
Oh, if I could only go to sleep! was all she thought.
By-and-by sleep did come, and she was taken far away out of these miseries. By the strange peculiarity of dreams that we so seldom dream about any grief that oppresses us at the time but generally of something quite different, she thought she was in some known unknown land, lovely and beautiful, with blue hills rising in the distance, and blue seas creeping and curling on to the shore. On this shore she was walking with Robert Lyon, just as he used to be, with his true face and honest voice. He did not talk to her much; but she felt him there, and knew they had but "one heart between them." A heart which had never once swerved, either from the other; a heart whole and sound, into which the least unfaith had never come—that had never known, or recognized even as a possibility, the one first doubt, the ominous —
"Little rift within the lute,
That by-and-by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all."
Is it ever so in this world? Does God ever bring the faithful man to the faithful woman, and make them love one another with a righteous, holy, persistent tenderness, which dare look in His face, nor be ashamed; which sees in this life only the beginning of the life to come; and in the closest, most passionate human love something to be held with a loose hand, something frail as glass and brittle as straw, unless it is perfected and sanctified by the love divine?
Hilary at least believed so. And when at Elizabeth's knock she woke with a start, and saw—not the sweet sea-shore and Robert Lyon, but the dull parlor, and the last flicker of the fire, she thanked God that her dream was not all a dream—that, sharp as her misery was, it did not touch this—the love of her heart: she believed in Robert Lyon still.
And so she rose and spoke quite cheerfully, asking Elizabeth how she had managed, and whether the advertisement would be sure to be in on Monday morning.
Yes, Miss Hilary; it is sure to be all right.
And then the girl hung about the room in an uneasy way, as if she had something to tell, which was the fact.
Elizabeth had had an adventure. It was a new thing in her monotonous life; it brightened her eyes, and flushed her cheeks, and made her old nervousness of manner return. More especially as she was somewhat perplexed, being divided in her mind between the wish she had to tell her mistress every thing, and the fear to trouble her, at this troublous time, with any small matter that merely concerned herself.
The matter was this. When she had given in her advertisement at the Times office, and was standing behind the counter waiting for her change and receipt, there stood beside her a young man, also waiting. She had hardly noticed him, till on his talking to the clerk about some misprint in his advertisement, apparently one of the great column of "Want Places," her ear was caught by the unmistakable Stowbury accent.
It was the first time she had heard it since she left home, and to Elizabeth's tenacious nature home in absence had gained an additional charm, had grown to be the one place in the world about which her affections clung. In these dreary wilds of London, to hear a Stowbury tongue, to catch sight of a Stowbury person, or even one who might know Stowbury, made her heart leap up with a bound of joy. She turned suddenly, and looked intently at the young man, or rather the lad, for he seemed a mere lad, small, slight, and whiskerless.
Well, Miss. I hope you'll know me again next time. said the young fellow. At which remark Elizabeth saw that he was neither so young nor so simple as she had at first thought. She drew back, very much ashamed, and coloring deeply.
Now, if Elizabeth ever looked any thing like comely, it was when she blushed; for she had the delicate skin peculiar to the young women of her district; and when the blood rushed through it, no cheek of lady fair ever assumed a brighter rose. That, or the natural vanity of man in being noticed by woman, caught the youth's attention.
Come now, Miss, don't be shy or offended. Perhaps I'm going your way? Would you like company home?
No, thank you, said Elizabeth, with great dignity.
"
Well, won't you even tell a fellow your name? Mine's Tom Cliffe, and I live—
"Cliffe! Are you little Tommy Cliffe, and do you come from Stowbury?
And all Elizabeth's heart was in her eyes.
As has been said, she was of a specially tenacious nature. She liked few people, but those she did like she held very fast. Almost the only strong interest of her life, except Miss Hilary, had been the little boy whom she had snatched from under the horse's heels; and though he was rather a scape-grace, and cared little for her, and his mother was a decidedly objectionable woman, she had clung to them both firmly till she lost sight of them.
Now it was not to be expected that she should recognize in this London stranger the little lad whose life she had saved—a lad, too, from her beloved Stowbury—without a certain amount of emotion, at which the individual in question broadly stared.
Bless your heart, I am Tommy Cliffe from Stowbury, sure enough. Who are you?
Elizabeth Hand.
Whereupon ensued a most friendly greeting. Tom declared he should have known her any where, and had never forgotten her—never! How far that was true or not, he certainly looked as if it were; and two great tears of pleasure dimmed Elizabeth's kind eyes.
You've grown a man now, Tommy, said she, looking at him with a sort of half-maternal pride, and noticing his remarkably hand some and intelligent face, so intelligent that it would have attracted notice, though it was set upon broad, stooping shoulders, and a small, slight body. "Let me see; how old are you?"
I'm nineteen, I think.
And I'm two-and-twenty. How aged we are growing! said Elizabeth, with a smile.
Then she asked after Mrs. Cliffe, but got only the brief answer, "Mother's dead," given in a tone as if no more inquiries would be welcome. His two sisters, also, had died of typhus in one week, and Tom had been "on his own hook," as he expressed it, for the last three years.
He was extremely frank and confidential; told how he had begun life as a printer's "devil," afterward become a compositor, and his health failing, had left the trade, and gone as servant to a literary gentleman.
An uncommon clever fellow is master; keeps his carriage, and has dukes to dinner, all out of his books. Maybe you've heard of them, Elizabeth? and he named a few, in a patronizing way; at which Elizabeth smiled, for she knew them well. But she nevertheless regarded with a certain awe the servant of so great a man, and "little Tommy Cliffe" took a new importance in her eyes.
Also, as he walked with her along the street to find an omnibus, she could not help perceiving what a sharp little fellow he had grown into; how, like many another printer's boy, he had caught the influence of the atmosphere of letters, and was educated, self-educated, of course, to a degree far beyond his position. When she looked at him, and listened to him, Elizabeth involuntarily thought of Benjamin Franklin, and of many more who had raised themselves from the ink-pot and the compositor's desk to fame and eminence, and she fancied that such might be the lot of "little Tommy Cliffe." Why not? If so, how excessively proud she should be!
For the moment she had forgotten her errand; forgotten even Miss Hilary. It was not till Tom Cliffe asked her where she lived, that she suddenly recollected her mistress might not like, under present circumstances, that their abode or any thing concerning them should be known to a Stowbury person.
It was a struggle. She would have liked to see the lad again; have liked to talk over with him Stowbury things and Stowbury people; but she felt she ought not, and she would not.
Tell me where you live, Tom, and that will do just as well; at least till I speak to my mistress. I never had a visitor before, and my mistress might not like it.
No followers allowed, eh?
Elizabeth laughed. The idea of little Tommy Clifie as her "follower," seemed so very funny.
So she bade him good-by; having, thanks to his gay frankness, been made acquainted with all about him, but leaving him in perfect ignorance concerning herself and her mistress. She only smiled when he declared contemptuously, and with rather a romantic emphasis, that he would hunt her out, though it were half over London.
This was all her adventure. When she came to tell it, it seemed very little to tell, and Miss Hilary listened to it rather indifferently, trying hard to remember who Tommy Cliffe was, and to take an interest in him because he came from Stowbury. But Stowbury days were so far off now—with such a gulf or pain between.
Suddenly the same fear occurred to her that had occurred to
Elizabeth.
The lad did not see the advertisement, I hope? You did not tell him about us?
I told him nothing. said Elizabeth. speaking softly, and looking down. "I did not even mention any body's name."
That was right; thank you.
But oh, the bitterness of knowing, and feeling sure Elizabeth knew too, the thing for which she thanked her; and that not to mention Ascott's name was the greatest kindness the faithful servant could show toward the family.
Ascott Leaf never came home.
Day after day appeared the advertisement, sometimes slightly altered, as hope or fear suggested; but no word, no letter, no answer of any kind reached the anxious women.
By-and-by, moved by their distress, or perhaps feeling that the scape-grace would be safer got rid of if found and dispatched abroad in some decent manner, Mr. Ascott himself took measures for privately continuing the search. Every outward-bound ship was examined; every hospital visited; every case of suicide investigated: but in vain. The unhappy young man had disappeared, suddenly and completely, as many another has disappeared, out of the home circle, and been never heard of more.
It is difficult to understand how a family can possibly hear such a sorrow, did we not know that many have had to bear it, and have borne it, with all its load of agonizing suspense, slowly dying hope,
The hope that keeps alive despair, settling down into a permanent grief, compared to which the grief for loss by death is light and endurable.
The Leaf family went through all this. Was it better or worse for them that their anguish had to be secret? that there were no friends to pity, inquire, or console? that Johanna had to sit hour by hour and day by day in the solitary parlor, Selina having soon gone back to her old ways of "gadding about," and her marriage preparations; and that, hardest of all, Hilary had on the Monday morning to return to Kensington and work, work, work, as nothing were amiss?
But it was natural that all this should tell upon her; and one day Miss Balquidder said, after a long covert observation of her face, "My dear, you look ill. Is there any thing troubling you? My young people always tell me their troubles, bodily or mental. I doctor both."
I am sure of it, said Hilary, with a sad smile, but entered into no explanation, and Miss Balquidder had the wise kindliness to inquire no further. Nevertheless, on some errand or other she came to Kensington nearly every evening and took Hilary back with her to sleep at No. 15.
Your sister Selina must wish to have you with her as much as possible till she is married. she said, as a reason for doing this.
And Hilary acquiesced, but silently, as we often do acquiesce in what ought to be a truth, but which we know to be the saddest, most painful falsehood.
For Selina, it became plain to see, was one of the family no more. After her first burst of self-reproachful grief she took Mr. Ascott's view of her nephew's loss—that it was a good riddance; went on calmly with her bridal preparations, and seemed only afraid lest any thing should interfere to prevent her marriage.
But the danger was apparently tided over. No news of Ascott came. Even the daily inquiries for him by his creditors had ceased. His Aunt Selina was beginning to breathe freely, when, the morning before the wedding day, as they were all sitting in the midst of white finery, but as sadly and silently as if it were a funeral, a person was suddenly shown in "on business."
It was a detective officer sent to find out from Ascott Leaf's aunts whether a certain description of him, in a printed hand-bill, was correct. For his principal creditor, exasperated, had determined on thus advertising him in the public papers as having "absconded."
Had a thunder-bolt fallen in the little parlor the three aunts could not have been more utterly overwhelmed. They made no "scene"—a certain sense of pride kept these poor gentlewomen from betraying their misery to a strange man; though he was a very civil man, and having delivered himself of his errand, like an automaton, sat looking into his hat, and taking no notice of aught around him. He was accustomed to this sort of thing.
Hilary was the first to recover herself. She glanced round at her sisters, but they had not a word to say. In any crisis of family difficulty they always left her to take the helm.
Rapidly she ran over in her mind all the consequences that would arise from this new trouble—the public disgrace; Mr. Ascott's anger and annoyance, not that she cared much for this, except so far as it would affect Selina; lastly, the death-blow it was to any possible hope of reclaiming the poor prodigal. Who she did not believe was dead, but still, fondly trusted he would return one day from his wanderings and his swine's husks, to have the fatted calf killed for him and glad tears shed over him. But after being advertised as "absconded," Ascott never would, never could, come home any home.
Taking as cool and business-like a tone as she could, she returned the paper to the detective.
This is a summary proceeding. Is there no way of avoiding it?
One, Miss, replied the man, very respectfully. "If the family would pay the debt."
Do you know how much it is?
Eighty pounds.
Ah!
That hopeless sigh of Johanna's was sufficient answer, though no one spoke.
But in desperate cases some women acquire a desperate courage, or rather it is less courage than faith—the faith which is said to "remove mountains"—the belief that to the very last there must be something to be done, and, if it can be done, they will have strength to do it. True, the mountain may not be removed, but the mere act of faith, or courage sometimes teaches how to climb over it.
Very well. Take this paper back to your employer. He must be aware that his only chance of payment is by suppressing it. If he will do that, in two days he shall hear from us, and we will make arrangements about paying the debt.
Hilary said this, to her sisters' utter astonishment; so utter that they let her say it, and let the detective go away with a civil "Good morning," before they could interfere or contradict by a word.
Paying the debt! Hilary, what have you promised? It is an impossibility.
Like the Frenchman's answer to his mistress—'Madame, if it had been possible it would have been done already; if it is impossible, it shall be done.' It shall, I say.
I wonder you can jest about our misfortunes, said Selina, in her most querulous voice.
I'm not jesting. But where is the use of sitting down to moan! I mean what I say. The thing must be done.
Her eyes glittered—her small, red lips were set tightly together.
If it is not done, sisters—if his public disgrace is not prevented, don't you see the result? Not as regards your marriage, Selina—the man must be a coward who would refuse to marry a woman he cared for, even though her nearest kinsman had been hanged at the Old Bailey—but Ascott himself. The boy is not a bad boy, though he has done wickedly; but there is a difference between a wicked act and a wicked nature. I mean to save him if I can.
How?
By saving his good name; by paying the debt.
And where on earth shall you get the money?
I will go to Miss Balquidder and—
Borrow it?
No, never! I would as soon think of stealing it.
Then controlling herself, Hilary explained that she meant to ask Miss Balquidder to arrange for her with the creditor to pay the eighty pounds by certain weekly or monthly installments, to be deducted from her salary at Kensington.
It is not a very great favor to ask of her: merely that she should say, 'This young woman is employed by me: I believe her to be honest, respectable, and so forth; also, that when she makes a promise to pay, she will to the best of her power perform it.' A character which is at present rather a novelty in the Leaf family.
Hilary!
I am growing bitter, Johanna; I know I am. Why should we suffer so much! Why should we be always dragged down—down—in this way? Why should we never have had any one to cherish and take care of us, like other women! Why—
Miss Leaf laid her finger on her child's lips—
Because it is the will of God.
Hilary flung herself on her dear old sister's neck and burst into tears.
Selina too cried a little, and said that she should like to help in paying the debt, if Mr. Ascott had no objection. And then she turned back to her white splendors, and became absorbed in the annoyance of there being far too much clematis and far too little orange blossom in the bridal bonnet—which it was now too late to change. A little, also, she vexed herself about the risk of confiding in Miss Balquidder, lest by any chance the story might get round to Russell Square; and was urgent that at least nothing should be said or done until after to-morrow. She was determined to be married, and dreaded any slip between the cup and lip.
But Hilary was resolute. "I said that in two days the matter should be arranged, and so it must be, or the man will think we too break our promises."
You can assure him to the contrary, said Selina, with dignity. "In fact, why can't you arrange with him without going at all to Miss Balquidder?"
Again the fierce, bitter expression returned to Hilary's face.
You forget, Miss Balquidder's honest name is his only guarantee against the dishonesty of ours.
Hilary, you disgrace us—disgrace me—speaking in such a way. Are we not gentle women?
I don't know, Selina. I don't seem to know or to feel any thing, except that I would live on bread and water in order to live peaceably and honestly. Oh, will it ever, ever be?
She walked up and down the parlor, disarranging the white draperies which lay about, feeling unutterable contempt for them and for her sister. Angry and miserable, with every nerve quivering, she was at war with the whole world.
This feeling lasted even when, after some discussion, she gained her point and was on her way to call on Miss Balquidder. She went round and round the Square many times, trying to fix in her mind word for word what she meant to say; revealing no more of the family history than was absolutely necessary, and stating her business in the briefest, hardest, most matter-of-fact way—putting it as a transaction between employer and employed, in which there was no more favor asked or bestowed than could possibly be avoided. And as the sharp east wind blew across her at every corner, minute by minute she felt herself growing more fierce, and hard, and cold.
This will never do. I shall be wicked by-and-by. I must go in and get it over.
Perhaps it was as well. Well for her, morally as physically, that there should have been that sudden change from the blighting weather outside to the warm, well-lighted room where the good rich woman sat at her early and solitary tea.
Very solitary it looked—the little table in the centre of that large handsome parlor, with the one cup and saucer, the one easy-chair. And as Hilary entered she noticed, amidst all this comfort and luxury, the still, grave, almost sad expression which solitary people always get to wear.
But the next minute Miss Balquidder had turned round, and risen, smiling.
Miss Leaf, how very kind of you to come and see me! Just the day before the wedding, too, when you must be so busy! Sit down and tell me all about it. But first, my dear, how wet your boots are! Let me take them off at once.
Which she did, sending for her own big slippers, and putting them on the tiny feet with her own hands.
Hilary submitted—in truth she was too much surprised to resist.
Miss Balquidder had, like most folk, her opinions or "crotchets"—as they might be—and one of them was, to keep her business and friendly relations entirely distinct and apart. Whenever she went to Kensington or her other establishments she was always emphatically "the mistress"—a kindly and even motherly mistress, certainly, but still authoritative, decided. Moreover, it was her invariable rule to treat all her employees alike—"making no step-bairns" among them. Thus for some time it had happened that Hilary had been, and felt herself to be, just Miss Leaf, the book keeper, doing her duty to Miss Balquidder, her employer, and neither expecting nor attaining any closer relation.
But in her own house, or it might be from the sudden apparition of that young face at her lonely fireside, Miss Balquidder appeared quite different.
A small thing touches a heart that is sore with trouble. When the good woman rose up—after patting the little feet, and approving loudly of the woolen stockings—she saw that Hilary's whole face was quivering with the effort to keep back her tears.
There are some woman of whom one feels by instinct that they were, as Miss Balquidder had once jokingly said of herself, specially meant to be mothers. And though, in its strange providence, Heaven often denies the maternity, it can not and does not mean to shut up the well-spring of that maternal passion—truly a passion to such women as these, almost as strong as the passion of love—but lets the stream, which might otherwise have blessed one child or one family, flow out wide and far, blessing wherever it goes.
In a tone that somehow touched every fibre of Hilary's heart, Miss
Balquidder said, placing her on a low chair beside her own.
My dear, you are in trouble. I saw it a week or two ago, but did not like to speak. Couldn't you say it out, and let me help you? You need not be afraid. I never tell any thing, and every body tells every thing to me.
That was true. Added to this said mother-liness of hers, Miss Balquidder, possessed that faculty, which some people have in a remarkable degree, and some—very good people too—are totally deficient in, of attracting confidence. The secrets she had been trusted with, the romances she had been mixed up in, the Quixotic acts she had been called upon to perform during her long life, would have made a novel—or several novels—such as no novelist could dare to write, for the public would condemn them as impossible and unnatural. But all this experience—though happily it could never be put into a book—had given to the woman herself a view of human nature at once so large, lenient, and just, that she was the best person possible to hear the strange and pitiful story of young Ascott Leaf.
How it came out Hilary hardly knew; she seemed to have told very little, and yet Miss Balquidder guessed it all. It did not appear to surprise or shock her. She neither began to question nor preach; she only laid her hand, her large, motherly, protecting hand, on the bowed head, saying.
How much you must have suffered, my poor bairn!
The soft Scotch tone and word—the grave, quiet Scotch manner, implying more than it even expressed—was it wonderful if underlying as well as outside influences made Hilary completely give way?
Robert Lyon had had a mother, who died when he was seventeen, but of whom he kept the tenderest remembrance, often saying that of all the ladies he had met with in the world there was none equal to her—the strong, tender, womanly peasant woman—refined in mind and word and ways—though to the last day of her life she spoke broad Scotch, and did the work of her cottage with her own hands. It seems as if that mother—toward whom Hilary's fancy had clung, lovingly as a woman ought to cling, above all others, to the mother of the man she loves—were speaking to her now, comforting her and helping her—comfort and help that it would have been sweeter to receive from her than from any woman living.
A mere fancy; but in her state of long uncontrolled excitement it took such possession of her that Hilary fell on her knees and hid her face in Miss Balquidder's lap, sobbing aloud.
The other was a little surprised; it was not her Scotch way to yield to emotion before folk; but she was a wise woman she asked no questions, merely held the quivering hands and smoothed the throbbing head, till composure returned. Some people have a magical, mesmeric power of soothing and controlling; it was hers. When she took the poor face between her hands, and looked straight into the eyes, with, "There, you are better now," Hilary returned the gaze as steadily, nay, smilingly, and rose.
Now, may I tell you my business?
Certainly, my dear. When one's friends are in trouble, the last thing one ought to do is to sit down beside them and moan. Did you come to ask my advice, or had you any definite plan of your own?
I had. And Hilary told it.
A very good plan, and very generous in you to think of it. But I see two strong objections: first, whether it can be carried out; secondly, whether it ought.
Hilary shrank, sensitively.
Not on my account, my dear, but your own. I often see people making martyrs of themselves for some worthless character on whom the sacrifice is utterly wasted. I object to this, as I would object to throwing myself or my friend into a blazing house, unless I were morally certain there was a life to be saved. Is there in this case?
I think there is! I trust in Heaven there is! said Hilary, earnestly.
There was both pleasure and pity expressed in Miss Balquidder's countenance as she replied, "Be it so: that is a matter on which no one can judge except yourself. But on the other matter you ask my advice, and I must give it. To maintain two ladies and pay a debt of eighty pounds out of one hundred a year is simply impossible."
With Johanna's income and mine it will be a hundred and twenty pounds and some odd shillings a year.
You accurate girl! But even with this it can not be done, unless you were to live in a manner so restricted in the commonest comforts that at your sister's age she would be sure to suffer. You must look on the question from all sides, my dear. You must be just to others as well as to that young man, who seems never to— But I will leave him unjudged.
They were both silent for a minute, and then Miss Balquidder said: "I feel certain there is but one rational way of accomplishing the thing if you are bent upon doing it, if your own judgment and conscience tell you it ought to be done. Is it so?"
Yes, said Hilary, firmly.
The old Scotswoman took her hand with a warm pressure. "Very well. I don't blame you. I might have done the same myself. Now to my plan. Miss Leaf, have you known me long enough to confer on me the benediction—one of the few that we rich folk possess 'It is more blessed to give than to receive?' "
I don't quite understand.
Then allow me to explain. I happen to know this creditor of your nephew's. He being a tailor and outfitter, we have had dealings together in former times, and I know him to be a hard man, an unprincipled man, such a one as no young woman should have to do with, even in business relations. To be in his power, as you would be for some years if your scheme of gradual payment were carried out, is the last thing I should desire for you. Let me suggest another way. Take me for your creditor instead of him. Pay him at once, and I will write you a check for the amount.
The thing was put so delicately, in such an ordinary manner, as if it were a mere business arrangement, that at first Hilary hardly perceived all it implied. When she did—when she found that it was in plain terms a gift or loan of eighty pounds offered by a person almost a stranger, she was at first quite bewildered. Then (ah! let us not blame her if she carried to a morbid excess that noble independence which is the foundation of all true dignity in man or woman) she shrunk back into herself, overcome with annoyance and shame. At last she forced herself to say, though the words came out rather coldly.
You are very good, and I am exceedingly obliged to you; but I never borrowed money in my life. It is quite impossible.
Very well; I can understand your feelings. I beg your pardon, replied Miss Balquidder, also somewhat coldly.
They sat silent and awkward, and then the elderly lady took out a pencil and began to make calculations in her memorandum book.
I am reckoning what is the largest sum per month that you could reasonably be expected to spare, and how you may make the most of what remains. Are you aware that London lodgings are very expensive? I am thinking that if you were to exchange out of the Kensington shop into another I have at Richmond, I could offer you the first floor above it for much less rent than you pay Mrs. Jones; and you could have your sister living with you.
Ah! that would make us both so much happier! How good you are!
You will see I only wish to help you to help yourself; not to put you under any obligation. Though I can not see any thing so very terrible in your being slightly indebted to an old woman, who has neither chick nor child, and is at perfect liberty to do what she likes with her own.
There was a pathos in the tone which smote Hilary into quick contrition.
Forgive me! But I have such a horror of borrowing money—you must know why after what I have told you of our family. You must surely understand—
I do fully; but there are limits even to independence. A person who, for his own pleasure, is ready to take money from any body and every body, without the slightest prospect or intention of returning it, is quite different from a friend who in a case of emergency accepts help from another friend, being ready and willing to take every means of repayment, as I knew you were, and meant you to be. I meant, as you suggested, to stop out of your salary so much per month, till I had my eighty pounds sate back again.
But suppose you never had it back? I am young and strong; still I might fall ill—I might die, and you never be repaid.
Yes, I should, said Miss Balquidder, with a serious smile. "You forget, my dear bairn, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of these little ones, ye have done it unto ME.' 'He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the LORD.' I have lent Him a good deal at different times, and He has always paid me back with usury."
There was something at once solemn and a little sad in the way the old lady spoke. Hilary forgot her own side of the subject; her pride, her humiliation.
But do you not think, Miss Balquidder, that one ought to work on, struggle on, to the last extremity, before one accepts an obligation, most of all a money obligation?
I do, as a general principle. Yet money is not the greatest thing in this world, that a pecuniary debt should be the worst to bear. And sometimes one of the kindest acts you can do to a fellow-creature—one that touches and softens his heart, nay, perhaps wins it to you for life, is to accept a favor from him.
Hilary made no reply.
I speak a little from experience. I have not had a very happy life myself; at least most people would say so if they knew it; but the Lord has made it up to me by giving me the means of bringing happiness, in money as well as other ways, to other people. Most of us have our favorite luxuries; this is mine. I like to do people good; I like, also—though maybe that is a mean weakness—to feel that I do it. If all whom I have been made instrumental in helping had said to me, as you have done, 'I will not be helped, I will not be made happy,' it would have been rather hard for me.
And a smile, half humorous, half sad, came over the hard-featured face, spiritualizing its whole expression.
Hilary wavered. She compared her own life, happy still, and hopeful, for all its cares, with that of this lonely woman, whose only blessing was her riches, except the generous heart which sanctified them, and made them such. Humbled, nay, ashamed, she took and kissed the kindly hand which has succored so many, yet which, in the inscrutable mystery of Providence, had been left to go down to the grave alone; missing all that is personal, dear, and precious to a woman's heart, and getting instead only what Hilary now gave her—the half-sweet, half-bitter payment of gratitude.
Well, my bairn, what is to be done?
I will do whatever you think right, murmured Hilary.