While her anxious mistresses were thus talking her over the servant lay on her humble bed and slept. They knew she did, for they heard her heavy breathing through the thin partition wall. Whether, as Hilary suggested, she was too ignorant to notice the days of the week, or month, or, as Selina thought, too stupid to care for any thing beyond eating, drinking, and sleeping. Elizabeth manifested no anxiety about herself or her destiny.
She went about her work just as usual; a little quicker and readier, now she was becoming familiarized to it; but she said nothing. She was undoubtedly a girl of silent and undemonstrative nature.
"Sometimes still waters run deep," said Miss Hilary.
"Nevertheless. there are such things as canals," replied Johanna."When do you mean to have your little talk with her?"
Hilary did not know. She was sitting, rather more tired than usual, by the school-room fire, the little people having just departed for their Saturday half-holiday. Before clearing off the debris which they always left behind, she stood a minute at the window, refreshing her eyes with the green field opposite, and the far-away wood, crowned by a dim white monument, visible in fair weather, on which those bright brown eyes had a trick of lingering, even in the middle of school hours. For the wood and the hill beyond belonged to a nobleman's "show" estate, five miles off—the only bit of real landscape beauty that Hilary had ever beheld. There, during the last holidays but one, she, her sisters, her nephew, and, by his own special request, Mr. Lyon, had spent a whole long, merry, midsummer day. She wondered whether such a day would ever come again!
But spring was coming again, any how; the field looked smiling and green, specked here and there with white dots which, she opined. might possibly be daisies. She half wished she was not too old and dignified to dart across the road, leap the sunk fence, and run to see.
"I think, Johanna—Hark, what can that be?"
For at this instant somebody came tearing down the stairs, opened the front door, and did—exactly what Hilary had just been wishing to do.
"It's Elizabeth, without her bonnet or shawl, with something white flying behind her. How she is dashing across the field! What can she be after? Just look."
But loud screams from Selina's room, the front, one, where she had been lying in bed all morning, quite obliterated the little servant from their minds. The two sisters ran hastily up stairs.
Selina was sitting up, in undisguised terror and agitation.
"Stop her! Hold her! I'm sure she has gone mad. Lock the door, or she'll come back and murder us all."
"Who? Elizabeth! Was she here? What has been the matter?"
But it was some time before they could make out any thing. At last they gathered that Elizabeth had been waiting upon Miss Selina, putting vinegar cloths on her head, and doing various things about the room. "She is very handy when one is ill." even Selina allowed.
"And I assure you I was talking most kindly to her; about the duties of her position, and how she ought to dress better, and be more civil behaved, or else she never could except to keep any place. And she stood in her usual sulky way of listening, never answering a word—with her back to me, staring right out of window. And I had just said, Elizabeth, my girl'—indeed, Hilary, I was talking to her in my very kindest way—"
"I've no doubt of it—but do get on."
"When she suddenly turned round, snatched a clean towel from a chair back, and another from my head—actually from my very head, Johanna—and out she ran. I called after her, but she took no more notice than if I had been a stone. And she left the door wide open—blowing upon me. Oh, dear; she has given me my death of cold." And Selina broke out into piteous complainings.
Her elder sister soothed her as well as she could, while Hilary ran down to the front door and looked, and enquired every where for Elizabeth. She was not to be seen on field or road; and along that quiet terrace not a soul had even perceived her quit the house.
"It's a very odd thing." said Hilary, returning. "What can have come over the girl? You are sure, Selina, that you said nothing which—"
"Now I know what you are going to say, You are going to blame me. Whatever happens in this house you always blame me. And perhaps you're right. Perhaps I am a nuisance—a burden—would be far better dead and buried. I wish I were!"
When Selina took this tack, of course her sisters were silenced. They quited her a little, and then went down and searched the house all over.
All was in order; at least in as much order as was to be expected the hour before dinner. The bowl of half-peeled potatoes stood on the back kitchen "sink;" the roast was down before the fire; the knives were ready for cleaning. Evidently Elizabeth flight had not been premeditated.
"It's all nonsense about her going mad. She has as sound a head as I have," said Hilary to Johanna, who began to look seriously uneasy. "She might have run away in a fit of passion, certainly; and yet that is improbable; her temper is more sullen than furious. And having no lack of common sense she must know that doing a thing like this is enough to make her lose her place at once."
"Yes," said Johanna, mournfully, "I'm afraid after this she must go."
"Wait and see what she has to say for herself." pleaded Hilary. "She will surely be back in two or three minutes."
But she was not, nor even in two or three hours.
Her mistresses' annoyance became displeasure, and that again subsided into serious apprehension. Even Selina ceased talking over and over the incident which gave the sole information to be arrived at; rose, dressed, and came down to the kitchen. There, after long and anxious consultation, Hilary, observing that "Somebody had better do something," began to prepare the dinner as in pre-Elizabethan days; but the three ladies' appetites were small.
About three in the afternoon, Hilary, giving utterance to the hidden alarm of all, said—
"I think, sisters, I had better go down as quickly as I can to Mrs.Hand's."
This agreed, she stood consulting with Johanna as to what could possibly be said to the mother in case that unfortunate child had not gone home, when the kitchen door opened, and the culprit appeared.
Not, however, with the least look of a culprit. Hot she was, and breathless; and with her hair down about her ears, and her apron rolled up round her waist, presented a most forlorn and untidy aspect; but her eyes were bright, and her countenance glowing.
She took a towel from under her arm.—"There's one on 'em—and you'll get back—the other—when it's washed."
Having blurted out this, she leaned against the wall, trying to recover her breath.
"Elizabeth! Where have you been? How dared you go? Your behavior is disgraceful—most disgraceful, I say. Johanna, why don't you speak to your servant?" (When, for remissness in reproving others, the elder sister herself fell under reproof, it was always emphatically "your sister—"your nephew"—"your servant.")
But, for once, Miss Selina's sharp voice failed to bring the customary sullen look to Elizabeth's face, and when Miss Leaf, in her milder tones, asked where she had been, she answered unhesitatingly—
"I've been down the town."
"Down the town!" the three ladies cried, in one chorus of astonishment.
"I've been as quick as I could, missis. I runned all the way there and back; but it was a good step, and he was some'at heavy, though he is but a little'un,"
"He! who on earth is he?"
"Deary me! I never thought of axing; but his mother lives in Hall street. Somebody saw me carrying him to the doctor, and went and told her. Oh! he was welly killed, Miss Leaf—the doctor said so; but he'll do now, and you'll get your towel clean washed tomorrow."
While Elizabeth spoke so incoherently, and with such unwonted energy and excitement, Johanna looked as if she thought her sister's fears were true, and the girl had really gone mad; but Hilary's quicker perceptions jumped at a different conclusion.
"Quiet yourself, Elizabeth," said she, taking a firm hold of her shoulder, and making her sit down, when the rolled-up apron dropped, and showed itself all covered with blood spots. Selina screamed outright.
Then Elizabeth seemed to become half conscious that she had done something blamable, or was at least a suspected character. Her warmth of manner faded; the sullen cloud of dogged resistance to authority was rising in her poor dirty face, when Hilary, beginning with, "Now, we are not going to scold you; but we must hear the reason of this," contrived by adroit questions, and not a few of them, to elicit the whole story.
It appeared that, while standing at Miss Selina's window, Elizabeth had watched three little boys, apparently engaged in a very favorite amusement of little boys in that field, going quickly behind a horse, and pulling out the longest and handsomest hairs in his tail to make fishing lines of. She saw the animal give a kick, and two of the boys ran away; the other did not stir. For a minute or so she noticed a black lump lying in the grass; then, with the quick instinct for which nobody had ever given her credit, she guessed what had happened, and did immediately the wisest and only thing possible under the circumstances, namely, to snatch up a towel, run across the field, bind up the child's head as well as she could, and carry it, bleeding and insensible, to the nearest doctor, who lived nearly a mile off.
She did not tell—and they only found it out afterward—how she had held the boy while under the doctor's hands, the skull being so badly fractured that the frightened mother fainted at the sight; how she had finally carried him home, and left him comfortably settled in bed, his senses returned, and his life saved.
"Ay, my arms do ache above a bit," she said, in answer to Miss Leaf's questions. "He wasn't quite a baby—nigh upon twelve, I reckon; but then he was very small of his age. And he looked just as if he was dead—and he bled so."
Here, just for a second or two, the color left the big girl's lips, and she trembled a little. Miss Leaf went to the kitchen cupboard, and took out their only bottle of wine—administered in rare doses, exclusively as medicine.
"Drink this, Elizabeth; and then go and wash your face and eat your dinner. We will talk to you by-and-by."
Elizabeth looked up with a long, wistfull stare of intense surprise, and then added, "Have I done any thing wrong, missis?"
"I did not say so. But drink this; and don't talk, child."
She was obeyed. By-and-by Elizabeth disappeared into the back kitchen, emerged thence with a clean face, hands, and apron; and went about her afternoon business as if nothing had happened.
Her mistresses' threatened "talk" with her never came about. What, indeed, could they say? No doubt the little servant had broken the strict letter of domestic law by running off in that highly eccentric and inconvenient way; but, as Hilary tried to explain by a series of most ingenious ratiocinations, she had fulfilled, in the spirit of it, the very highest law—that of charity. She had also shown prompt courage, decision, practical and prudent forethought, and above all, entire self-forgetfulness.
"And I should like to know," said Miss Hilary, warming with her subject, "if those are not the very qualities that go to constitute a hero."
"But we don't want a hero; we want a maid-of-all-work."
"I'll tell you what we want, Selina. We want a woman; that is, a girl with the making of a good woman in her. If we can find that, all the rest will follow. For my part, I would rather take this child, rough as she is, but with her truthfulness, conscientiousness, kindliness of heart, and evident capability of both self-control and self-devotedness, than the most finished servant we could find. My advice is—keep her."
This settled the matter, since it was a curious fact that the "advice" of the youngest Miss Leaf was, whether they knew it or not, almost equivalent to a family ukase.
When Elizabeth had brought in the tea-things, which she did with especial care, apparently wishing to blot out the memory of the morning's escapade by astonishingly good behavior for the rest of the day, Miss Leaf called her, and asked if she knew that her month of trial ended this day?
"Yes, ma'am," with the strict normal courtesy, something between that of the old-world family domestic—as her mother might have been to the Miss Elizabeth Something she was named after—and the abrupt "dip" of the modern National school girl; which constituted Elizabeth Hand's sole experience of manners.
"If you had not been absent I should have gone to speak with your mother to-day. Indeed Miss Hilary was going when you came in; but it would have been with a very different intention from what we had in the morning. However, that is not likely to happen again."
"Eh?" said Elizabeth, inquiringly.
Miss Leaf hesitated, and looked uneasily at her two sisters. It was always a trial to her shy nature to find herself the mouth-piece of the family; and this same shyness made it still more difficult to break through the stiff barriers which seemed to rise up between her, a gentlewoman well on in years, and this coarse working girl. She felt, as she often complained, that with the-kindest intentions, she did not quite know how to talk to Elizabeth.
"My sister means," said Hilary, "that as we are not likely to have little boys half killed in the field every day, she trusts you will not be running away again as you did this morning. She feels sure that you would not do such a thing, putting us all to so great annoyance and uneasiness, for any less cause than such as happened to-day. You promise that?"
"Yes, Miss Hilary."
"Then we quite forgive you as regards ourselves. Nay"—feeling in spite of Selina's warning nudge, that she had hardly been kind enough—"we rather praise than blame you, Elizabeth. And if you like to stay with us and will do your best to improve, we are willing to keep you as our servant."
"Thank you ma'am. Thank you, Miss Hilary. Yes, I'll stop."
She said no more—but sighed a great sigh, as if her mind were relieved—("So," thought Hilary, "she was not so indifferent to us as we imagined")—and bustled back into her kitchen.
"Now for the clothing of her," observed Miss Leaf, also looking much relieved that the decision was over. "You know what we agreed upon; and there is certainly no time to be lost. Hilary, my dear, suppose you bring down your brown merino?" Hilary went without a word.
People who inhabit the same house, eat, sit, and sleep together—loving one another and sympathizing with one another, ever so deeply and dearly—nevertheless inevitably have momentary seasons when the intense solitude in which we all live, and must expect ever to live, at the depth of our being, forces itself painfully upon the heart. Johanna must have had many such seasons when Hilary was a child; Hilary had one now.
She unfolded the old frock, and took out of its pocket, a hiding place at once little likely to be searched, and harmless if discovered, a poor little memento of that happy midsummer day.
"Dear Miss Hilary. To-morrow, then, I shall come.Yours truly, Robert Lyon."
The only scrap of note she had ever received; he always wrote to Johanna; as regularly as ever, or more so, now Ascott was gone; but only to Johanna. She read over the two lines, wondered where she should keep them now that Johanna might not notice them; and then recoiled, as if the secret were a wrong to that dear sister who loved her so well.
"But nothing makes me love her less; nothing ever could. She thinks me quite happy, as I am; and yet—oh, if I did not miss him so!"
And the aching, aching want which sometimes came over began again. Let us not blame her. God made all our human needs. God made love. Not merely affection but actual love—the necessity to seek and find out some other being, not another but the complement of one's self—the "other half," who brings rest and strength for weakness, sympathy in aspiration, and tenderness for tenderness, as no other person ever can. Perhaps, even in marriage, this love is seldom found, and it is possible in all lives to do without it. Johanna had done so. But then she had been young, and was now growing old; and Hilary was only twenty, with a long life before her. Poor child, let us not blame her!
She was not in the least sentimental, her natural disposition inclining her to be more than cheerful, actually gay. She soon recovered herself, and when, a short time after, she stood, scissors in hand, demonstrating how very easy it was to make something out of nothing, her sisters never suspected how very near tears had lately been to those bright eyes, which were always the sunshine of the house.
"You are giving yourself a world of trouble," said Selina. "If I were you, I would just make over the dress to Elizabeth, and let her do what she could with it."
"My dear, I always find I give myself twice the trouble by expecting people to do what they can't do. I have to do it myself afterward. Prove how a child who can't even handle a needle and thread is competent to make a gown for herself, and I shall be most happy to secede in her favor."
"Nay," put in the eldest sister, afraid of a collision of words, "Selina is right; if you do not teach Elizabeth to make her own gowns how can she learn?"
"Johanna, you are the brilliantest of women! and you know you don't like the parlor littered with rags and cuttings. You wish to get rid of me for the evening? Well, I'll go! Hand me the work basket and the bundle, and I'll give my first lesson in dress making to our South Sea Islander."
But Fate stood in the way of Miss Hilary's good intentions.
She found Elizabeth not as was her wont, always busy, over the perpetual toil of those who have not yet learned the mysterious art of arrangement and order, nor, as sometimes, hanging sleepily over the kitchen fire, waiting for bedtime; but actually sitting, sitting down at the table. Her candle was flaring on one side of her; on the other was the school room inkstand, a scrap of waste paper, and a pen But she was not writing; she sat with her head on her hands, in an attitude of disconsolate idleness, so absorbed that she seemed not to hear Hilary's approach.
"I did not know you could write, Elizabeth."
"No more I can," was the answer, in the most doleful of voices. "It bean't no good. I've forgotten all about it. T' letters wonna join."
"Let me look at them." And Hilary tried to contemplate gravely the scrawled and blotted page, which looked very much as if a large spider had walked into the ink bottle, and then walked out again on a tour of investigation. "What did you want to write?" asked she, suddenly.
Elizabeth blushed violently. "It was the woman, Mrs. Cliffe, t' little lad's mother, you know; she wanted somebody to write to her husband as is at work at Birmingham, and I said I would. I'd learned at the National, but I've forgotten it all. I'm just as Miss Selina says—I'm good for nowt."
"Come, come, never fret;" for there was a sort of choke in the girl's voice. "There's many a good person who never learned to write. But I don't see why you should not learn. Shall I teach you?"
Utter amazement, beaming gratitude, succeeded one another, plain as light, in Elizabeth's eyes, but she only said, "Thank you, Miss Hilary."
"Very well. I have brought you an old gown of mine, and was going to show you how to make it up for yourself, but I'll look over your writing instead. Sit down and let me see what you can do."
In a state of nervous trepidation, pitiful to behold, Elizabeth took the pen. Terrible scratches resulted; blots innumerable; and one fatal deluge of ink, which startled from their seats both mistress and maid, and made Hilary thankful that she had taken off her better gown for a common one, as, with sad thriftiness, the Misses Leaf always did of evenings.
When Elizabeth saw the mischief she had done, her contrition and humility were unbounded. "No, Miss Hilary, you can't make nothin' of me. I be too stupid, I'll give it up."
"Nonsense!" And the bright active little lady looked steadily into the heavy face of this undeveloped girl, half child, half woman, until some of her own spirit seemed to be reflected there. Whether the excitement of the morning had roused her, or her mistresses' kindness had touched Elizabeth's heart, and—as in most women—the heart was the key to the intellect; or whether the gradual daily influence of her changed life during the last month had been taking effect, now for the first time to appear—certain it is that Hilary had never perceived before what an extremely intelligent face it was; what good sense was indicated in the well shaped head and forehead; what tenderness and feeling in the deep-set grey eyes.
"Nonsense," repeated she. "Never give up any thing; I never would. We'll try a different plan, and begin from the beginning, as I do with my little scholars. Wait, while I fetch a copy book out of the parlor press."
She highly amused her sisters with a description of what she called her "newly instituted Polynesian Academy;" returned, and set to work to guide the rough, coarse hand through the mysteries of calligraphy.
To say this was an easy task would not be true. Nature's own laws and limits make the using of faculties which have been unused for generations very difficult at first. To suppose that a working man, the son of working men, who applies himself to study, does it with as little trouble as your upper-class children, who have been unconsciously undergoing education ever since the cradle, is a great mistake. All honor, therefore, to those who do attempt, and to ever so small a degree succeed in, the best and wisest culture of all, self-culture.
Of this honor Elizabeth deserved her share.
"She is stupid enough," Hilary confessed, after the lesson was over; "but there is a dogged perseverance about the girl which I actually admire. She blots her fingers, her nose, her apron, but she never gives in; and she sticks to the grand principle of one thing at a time. I think she did two whole pages of a's, and really performed them satisfactorily, before she asked to go on to b's. Yes! I believe she will do."
"I hope she will do her work, any how," said Selina, breaking into the conversation rather crossly. "I'm sure I don't see the good of wasting time over teaching Elizabeth to write, when there's so much to be done in the house by one and all of us, from Monday morning till Saturday night."
"Ay, that's it," answered Hilary, meditatively. "I don't see how I ever shall get time to teach her, and she is so tired of nights when the work is all done; she'll be dropping asleep with the pen in her hand—I have done it myself before now."
Ay, in those days when, trying so hard to "improve her mind," and make herself a little more equal and companionable to another mind she knew, she had, after her daily house cares and her six hours of school teaching, attempted at nine P. M. to begin close study on her own account. And though with her strong will she succeeded tolerably, still, as she told Johanna, she could well understand how slow was the, "march of intellect" (a phrase which had just then come up) among day laborers and the like; and how difficult it was for these Mechanics Institutions, which were now talked so much of, to put any new ideas into the poor tired heads, rendered sluggish and stupid with hard bodily labor, "Suppose I were to hold my Polynesian Academy on a Sunday?" and she looked inquiringly at her sisters, especially Johanna.
Now the Misses Leaf were old fashioned country folk, who lived before the words Sabbatarian and un-Sabbatarian had ever got into the English language. They simply "remembered the Sabbath day to keep it holy;" they arranged so as to make it for all the household a day of rest: and they went regularly to church once—sometimes Selina and Hilary went twice. For the intervening hours, their usual custom was to take an afternoon walk in the fields; begun chiefly for Ascott's sake, to keep the lad out of mischief, and put into his mind better thoughts than he was likely to get from his favorite Sunday recreation of sitting on the wall throwing stones. After he left for London there was Elizabeth to be thought of; and they decided that the best Sabbath duty for the little servant was to go and see her mother. So they gave her every Sunday afternoon free; only requiring that she should be at home punctually after church time, at eight o'clock. But from thence till bedtime was a blank two hours, which, Hilary had noticed, Elizabeth not infrequently spent in dozing over the fire.
"And I wonder," said she, giving the end of her long meditation out loud, "whether going to sleep is not as much Sabbath breaking as learning to write? What do you say, Johanna?"
Johanna, simple, God-fearing woman as she was, to whom faith and love came as natural as the breath she drew, had never perplexed herself with the question. She only smiled acquiescence. But Selina was greatly shocked. Teaching to write on a Sunday! Bringing the week day work into the day of rest! Doing one's own pleasure on the holy day! She thought it exceedingly wrong. Such a thing had never been heard of in their house. Whatever else might be said of them, the Leafs were always a respectable family as to keeping Sunday. Nobody could say that even poor Henry—
But here Selina's torrent of words stopped.
When conversation revived, Hilary, who had been at first half annoyed and half amused, resumed her point seriously.
"I might say that writing isn't Elizabeth's week-day work, and that teaching her is not exactly doing my own pleasure; but I won't creep out of the argument by a quibble. The question is, What is keeping the Sabbath day 'holy?' I say—and I stick to my opinion—that it is by making it a day of worship, a rest day—a cheerful and happy day—and by doing as much good in it as we can. And therefore I mean to teach Elizabeth on a Sunday."
"She'll never understand it. She'll consider it work."
"And if she did, work is a more religious thing than idleness. I am sure I often feel that, of the two, I should be less sinful in digging potatoes in my garden, or sitting mending stockings in my parlor, than in keeping Sunday as some people do—going to church genteelly in my best clothes, eating a huge Sunday dinner, and then nodding over a good book, or taking a regular Sunday nap till bedtime."
"Hush, child!" said Johanna, reprovingly; for Hilary's cheeks were red, and her voice angry. She was taking the hot, youthful part which in its hatred of forms and shams, sometimes leads—and not seldom led poor Hilary—a little too far on the other side. "I think," Miss Leaf added, "that our business is with ourselves, and not with our neighbors. Let us keep the Sabbath according to our conscience. Only, I would take care never to do any thing which jarred against my neighbor's feelings. I would, like Paul, 'eat no meat while the world standeth' rather than 'make my brother to offend.' "
Hilary looked in her sister's sweet, calm face, and the anger died out of her own.
"Shall I give up my academy?" she said, softly.
"No, my love. It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath day, and teaching a poor ignorant girl to write is an absolute good. Make her understand that, and you need not be afraid of any harm ensuing."
"You never will make her understand," said Selina, sullenly. "She is only a servant."
"Nevertheless I'll try."
Hilary could not tell how far she succeeded in simplifying to the young servant's comprehension this great question, involving so many points—such as the following of the spirit and the letter, the law of duty and the compulsion of love, which, as she spoke, seemed opening out so widely and awfully that she herself involuntarily shrank from it, and wondered that poor finite creatures should, ever presume to squabble about it at all.
But one thing the girl did understand—her young mistress's kindness. She stood watching the delicate little hand that had so patiently guided hers, and now wrote copy after copy for her future benefit. At last she said—
"You're taking a deal o' trouble wi' a poor wench, and it's very kind in a lady like you."
Miss Hilary was puzzled what answer to make. True enough it was "kind," and she was "a lady;" and between her and Mrs. Hand's rough daughter was an unmistakable difference and distinction. That Elizabeth perceived it was proved by her growing respectfulness of manner—the more respectful, it seemed, the more she herself improved. Yet Hilary could not bear to make her feel more sharply than was unavoidable the great gulf that lies and ever must lie—not so much between mistress and servant, in their abstract relation—(and yet that is right, for the relation and authority are ordained of God)—but between the educated and the ignorant, the coarse and the refined.
"Well," she said, after a pause of consideration, "you always have it in your power to repay my 'kindness,' as you call it. The cleverer you become the more useful you will be to me; and the more good you grow the better I shall like you."
Elizabeth smiled—that wonderfully bright, sudden smile which seemed to cover over all her plainness of feature.
"Once upon a time," Hilary resumed by-and-by, "when England was very different from what it is now, English ladies used to have what they call 'bower-women,' whom they took as girls, and brought up in their service; teaching them all sorts of things—cooking, sewing, spinning, singing, and, probably, except that the ladies of that time were very ill-educated themselves, to read and write also. They used to spend part of every day among their bower-women; and as people can only enjoy the company of those with whom they have some sympathies in common, we must conclude that—"
Here Hilary stopped, recollecting she must be discoursing miles above the head of her little bower-maiden, and that, perhaps, after all, her theory would be best kept to herself, and only demonstrated practically.
"So, Elizabeth, if I spend a little of my time in teaching you, you must grow up my faithful and attached bower-maiden?"
"I'll grow up any thing, Miss Hilary, if it's to please you," was the answer, given with a smothered intensity that quite startled the young mistress.
"I do believe the girl is getting fond of me," said she, half touched, half laughing to Johanna. "If so, we shall get on. It is just as with our school children, you know. We have to seize hold of their hearts first, and their heads afterward. Now, Elizabeth's head may be uncommonly tough, but I do believe she likes me."
Johanna smiled; but she would not for the world have said—never encouraging the smallest vanity in her child—that she did not think this circumstance so very remarkable.
A household exclusively composed of women has its advantages and its disadvantages. It is apt to become somewhat narrow in judgment, morbid in feeling, absorbed in petty interests, and bounding its vision of outside things to the small horizon which it sees from its own fireside. But, on the other hand, by this fireside often abides a settled peace and purity, a long-suffering, generous forbearance, and an enduring affectionateness which the other sex can hardly comprehend or credit. Men will not believe, what is nevertheless the truth, that we can "stand alone" better than they can; that we can do without them far easier, and with less deterioration of character, than they can do without us; that we are better able to provide for ourselves interests, duties, and pleasures; in short, strange as it may appear, that we have more real self-sustaining independence than they.
Of course, that the true life, the highest life, is that of man and woman united, no one will be insane enough to deny; I am speaking of the substitute for it, which poor humanity has so often to fall back upon and make the best of—a better best very frequently than what appears best in the eyes of the world. In truth, many a troubled, care ridden, wealthy family, torn with dissensions, or frozen up in splendid formalities, might have envied that quiet, humble, maiden household of the Misses Leaf, where their only trial was poverty, and their only grief the one which they knew the worst of, and had met patiently for many a year—poor Selina's "way."
I doubt not it was good for Elizabeth Hand that her first place—the home in which she received her first impressions—was this feminine establishment, simple and regular, in which was neither waste nor disorder allowed. Good, too, that while her mistresses' narrow means restricted her in many things enjoyed by servants in richer families, their interests, equally narrow, caused to be concentrated upon herself a double measure of thought and care. She became absolutely "one of the family," sharing in all its concerns. From its small and few carnal luxuries—such as the cake, fruit, or pot of preserve, votive offerings from pupils' parents—up to the newspaper and the borrowed book, nothing was either literally or metaphorically "locked" up from Elizabeth.
This grand question of locking up had been discussed in full conclave the day after her month of preparation ended, the sisters taking opposite sides, as might have been expected. Selina was for the immediate introduction of a locksmith and a key basket.
"While she was only on trial, it did not so much signify; besides, if it did, we had only buttons on the press doors; but now she is our regular servant we ought to institute a regular system of authority. How can she respect a family that never locks up any thing?"
"How can we respect a servant from whom we lock up every thing!"
"Respect a servant! What do you mean, Hilary?"
"I mean that if I did not respect a servant I would be very sorry to keep her one day in any house of mine."
"Wait till you've a house of your own to keep, Miss," said Selina, crossly. "I never heard such nonsense. Is that the way you mean to behave to Elizabeth? leave every thing open to her—clothes, books, money; trust her with all your secrets; treat her as your most particular friend?"
"A girl of fifteen would be rather an inconvenient particular friend! And I have happily few secrets to trust her with. But if I could not trust her with our coffee, tea, sugar, and so on, and bring her up from the very first in the habit of being trusted, I would recommend her being sent away to-morrow."
"Very fine talking; and what do you say, Johanna?—if that is not an unnecessary question after Hilary has given her opinion."
"I think," replied the elder sister, taking no notice of the long familiar innuendo, "that in this case Hilary is right. How people ought to manage in great houses I can not say; but in our small house it will be easier and better not to alter our simple ways. Trusting the girl—if she is a good girl—will only make her more trustworthy; if she is bad, we shall the sooner find it out and let her go."
But Elizabeth did not go. A year passed; two years; her wages were raised, and with them her domestic position. From a "girl" she was converted into a regular servant; her pinafores gave place to grown-up gowns and aprons; and her rough head, at Miss Selina's incessant instance, was concealed by a cap—caps being considered by that lady as the proper and indispensable badge of servant-hood.
To say that during her transition state, or even now that she had reached the cap era, Elizabeth gave her mistresses no trouble, would be stating a self-evident improbability. What young lass under seventeen, of any rank, does not cause plenty of trouble to her natural guardians? Who can "put an old head on young shoulders?" or expect from girls at the most unformed and unsatisfactory period of life that complete moral and mental discipline, that unfailing self-control, that perfection of temper, and every thing else which, of course, all mistresses always have?
I am obliged to confess that Elizabeth had a few—nay, not a few—most obstinate faults; that no child tries its parents, no pupil its school teachers, more than she tried her three mistresses at intervals. She was often thoughtless and careless, brusque in her manner, slovenly, in her dress; sometimes she was down-right "bad," filled full—as some of her elders and betters are, at all ages—with absolute naughtiness; when she would sulk for hours and days together, and make the whole family uncomfortable, as many a servant can make many a family small as that of the Misses Leaf.
But still they never lost what Hilary termed their "respect" for Elizabeth; they never found her out in a lie, a meanness, or an act of deception or dishonesty. They took her faults as we must take the surface faults of all connected with us—patiently rather than resentfully, seeking to correct rather than to punish. And though there were difficult elements in the household, such as their being three mistresses to be obeyed the youngest mistress a thought too lax and the second one undoubtedly too severe, still no girl could live with these high-principled, much-enduring women without being impressed with two things which the serving class are slowest to understand—the dignity of poverty, and the beauty of that which is the only effectual law to bring out good and restrain evil—the law of loving-kindness.
Two fracas, however, must be chronicled, for after both, the girl's dismissal hung on a thread. The first was when Mrs. Cliffe, mother of Tommy Cliffe, who was nearly killed in the field, being discovered to be an ill sort of woman, and in the habit of borrowing from Elizabeth stray shillings, which were never returned, was forbidden the house, Elizabeth resented it so fiercely that she sulked for a whole week afterward.
The other and still more dangerous crisis in Elizabeth's destiny was when a volume of Scott's novels, having been missing for some days, was found hidden in her bed, and she lying awake reading it was thus ignominiously discovered at eleven P. M. by Miss Selina, in consequence of the gleam of candle light from under her door.
It was true neither of these errors were actual moral crimes. Hilary even roused a volley of sharp words upon herself by declaring they had their source in actual virtues; that a girl who would stint herself of shillings, and hold resolutely to any liking she had, even if unworthy, had a creditable amount of both self-denial and fidelity in her disposition. Also that a tired out maid-of all-work, who was kept awake of nights by her ardent appreciation of the "Heart of Mid-Lothian," must possess a degree of both intellectual and moral capacity which deserved cultivation rather than blame. And though this surreptitious pursuit of literature under difficulties could not of course be allowed, I grieve to say that Miss Hilary took every opportunity of not only giving the young servant books to read, but of talking to her about them. And also that a large proportion of these books were—to Miss Selina's unmitigated horror—absolutely fiction! stories, novels, even poetry—books that Hilary liked herself—books that had built up in her own passionate dream of life; wherein all the women were faithful, tender, heroic, self-devoted; and all the men were—something not unlike Robert Lyon.
Did she do harm? Was it; as Selina and even Johanna said sometimes, "dangerous" thus to put before Elizabeth a standard of ideal perfection, a Quixotic notion of life—life in its full purpose power, and beauty—such as otherwise never could have crossed the mind of this working girl, born of parents who, though respectable and worthy, were in no respect higher than the common working class? I will not argue the point: I am not making Elizabeth a text for a sermon; I am simply writing her story.
One thing was certain, that by degrees the young woman's faults lessened; even that worst of them, the unmistakable bad temper, not aggressive, but obstinately sullen, which made her and Miss Selina sometimes not on speaking terms for a week together. But she simply "sulked;" she never grumbled or was pert; and she did her work just as usual—with a kind of dogged struggle not only against the superior powers but against something within herself much harder to fight with.
"She makes me feel more sorry for her than angry with her," Miss Leaf would sometimes say, coming out of the kitchen with that grieved face, which was the chief sign of displeasure her sweet nature ever betrayed. "She will have up-hill work through life, like us all, and more than many of us, poor child!"
But gradually Elizabeth, too, copying involuntarily the rest of the family, learned to put up with Miss Selina; who, on her part, kept a sort of armed neutrality. And once, when a short but sharp illness of Johanna's shook the house from its even tenor, startled every body out of their little tempers, and made them cling together and work together in a sort of fear-stricken union against one common grief, Selina allowed that they might have gone farther and fared worse on the day they engaged Elizabeth.
After this illness of his Aunt. Ascott came home. It was his first visit since he had gone to London: Mr. Ascott, he said, objected to holidays. But now, from some unexplained feeling, Johanna in her convalescence longed after the boy—no longer a boy, however, but nearly twenty, and looking fully his age. How proud his aunts were to march him up the town, and hear every body's congratulations on his good looks and polished manners! It was the old story—old as the hills! I do not pretend to invent any thing new. Women, especially maiden aunts, will repeat the tale till the end of time, so long as they have youths belonging to them on whom to expend their natural tendency to clinging fondness, and ignorant, innocent hero worship. The Misses Leaf—ay, even Selina, whose irritation against the provoking boy was quite mollified by the elegant young man—were no wiser than their neighbors.
But there was one person in the household who still obstinately refused to bow the knee to Ascott. Whether it was, as psychologists might explain, some instinctive polarity in their natures; or whether, having once conceived a prejudice, Elizabeth held on to it like grim death; still there was the same unspoken antagonism between them. The young fellow took little notice of her except to observe "that she hadn't grown any handsomer;' but Elizabeth watched him with a keen severity that overlooked nothing, and resisted, with a passive pertinacity that was quite irresistible, all his encroachments on the family habits, all the little self-pleasing ways which Ascott had been so used to of old, that neither he nor his aunts apparently recognized them as selfish.
"I canna bear to see him" ("can not," suggested her mistress, who not seeing any reason why Elizabeth should not speak the Queen's English as well as herself, had instituted h's, and stopped a few more glaring provincialisms.) "I cannot bear to see him, Miss Hilary, lolling on the arm-chair, when Missis looks so tired and pale, and sitting up o' nights, burning double fires, and going up stairs at last with his boots on, and waking every body. I dunnot like it, I say."
"You forget; Mr. Ascott has his studies. He must work for the next examination."
"Why doesn't he get up of a morning then instead of lying in bed, and keeping the break-fast about till ten? Why can't he do his learning by daylight? Daylight's cheaper than mould candles, and a deal better for the eyes."
Hilary was puzzled. A truth was a truth, and to try and make it out otherwise, even for the dignity of the family, was something from which her honest nature revolted. Besides, the sharp-sighted servant would be the first to detect the inconsistency of one law of right for the parlor and another for the kitchen. So she took-refuge in silence and in the apple-pudding she was making.
But she resolved to seize the first opportunity of giving Ascott, by way of novelty, the severest lecture that tongue of aunt could bestow. And this chance occurred the same afternoon, when the other two aunts had gone out to tea, to a house which Ascott voted "slow," and declined going to. She remained to make tea for him, and in the mean time took him for a constitutional up and down the public walks hard by.
Ascott listened at first very good humoredly; once or twice calling her "a dear little prig," in his patronizing way—he was rather fond of patronizing his Aunt Hilary. But when she seriously spoke of his duties, as no longer a boy but a man, who ought now to assume the true, manly right of thinking for and taking care of other people, especially his aunts, Ascott began to flush up angrily.
"Now stop that, Aunt Hilary: I'll not have you coming Mr. Lyon over me."
"What do you mean?"
For of late Ascott had said very little about Mr. Lyon—not half so much as Mr. Lyon, in his steadily persistent letters to Miss Leaf, told her about her nephew Ascott.
"I mean that I'll not be preached to like that by a woman. It's bad enough to stand it from a man; but then Lyon's a real sharp fellow, who knows the world, which women don't, Aunt Hilary. Besides, he coaches me in my Latin and Greek; so I let him pitch into me now and then. But I won't let you; so just stop it; will you."
Something new in Ascott's tone—speaking more of the resentful fierceness of the man than the pettishness of the boy—frightened his little aunt, and silenced her. By-and-by she took comfort from the reflection that, as the lad had in his anger betrayed, he had beside him in London a monitor whose preaching would be so much wiser and more effectual than her own that she determined to say no more.
The rare hearing of Mr. Lyon's name—for, time and absence having produced their natural effect, except when his letter came, he was seldom talked about now—set Hilary thinking.
"Do you go to see him often?" she said, at last.
"Who? Mr. Lyon?" And Ascott, delighted' to escape into a fresh subject, became quite cheerful and communicative. "Oh, bless you! He wouldn't care for my going to him. He lives in a two-pair back, only one room, 'which serves him for kitchen and parlor and all:' dines at a cook shop for nine-pence a day, and makes his own porridge night and morning. He told me so once, for he isn't a bit ashamed of it. But he must be precious hard up sometimes. However, as he contrives to keep a decent coat on his back, and pay his classes at the University, and carry off the very first honors going there, nobody asks any questions. That's the good of London life, Aunt Hilary," said the young fellow, drawing himself up with great wisdom. "Only look like a gentleman, behave yourself as such, and nobody asks any questions."
"Yes," acquiesced vaguely Aunt Hilary. And then her mind wandered yearningly to the solitary student in the two-pair back. He might labor and suffer; he might be ill; he might die, equally solitary, and "nobody would ask any questions." This phase of London life let a new light in upon her mind. The letters to Johanna had been chiefly filled with whatever he thought would interest them. With his characteristic Scotch reserve, he had said very little about himself, except in the last, wherein he mentioned that he had "done pretty well" at the college this term, and meant to "go in for more work" immediately.
What this work entailed—how much more toil, how much more poverty—Hilary knew not. Perhaps even his successes, which Ascott went on to talk of, had less place in her thoughts than the picture of the face she knew, sharpened with illness, wasted with hard work and solitary care.
"And I can not help him—I can not help him!" was her bitter cry; until, passing from the dream-land of fancy, the womanly nature asserted itself. She thought if it had been, or if it were to be, her blessed lot to be chosen by Robert Lyon, how she would take care of him! what an utter slave she would be to him! How no penury would frighten her, no household care oppress or humble her, if done for him and for his comfort. To her brave heart no battle of life seemed too long or too sore, if only it were fought for him and at his side. And as the early falling leaves were blown in gusts across her path, and the misty autumn night began to close in, nature herself seemed to plead in unison with the craving of her heart, which sighed that youth and summer last not always; and that, "be it ever so humble," as the song says, there is no place so bright and beautiful as the fireside of a loveful home.
While the aunt and nephew were strolling thus, thinking of very different things, their own fire newly lit—Ascott liked a fire—was blazing away in solitary glory, for the benefit of all passers-by. At length one—a gentleman—stopped at the gate, and looked in, then took a turn to the end of the terrace, and stood gazing in once more. The solitude of the room apparently troubled him; twice his hand was on the latch before he opened it and knocked at the front door.
Elizabeth appeared, which seemed to surprise him.
"Is Miss Leaf at home?"
"No, Sir."
"Is she well? Are all the family well?" and he stepped right into the passage, with the freedom of a familiar foot.
("I should ha' slammed the door in his face," was Elizabeth's comment afterward; "only, you see, Miss Hilary, he looked a real gentleman.")
The stranger and she mutually examined one another.
"I think I have heard of you," said he, smiling. "You are Miss Leaf's servant—Elizabeth Hand."
"Yes, Sir," still grimly, and with a determined grasp of the door handle.
"If your mistresses are likely to be home soon, will you allow me to wait for them? I am an old friend of theirs. My name is Lyon."
Now Elizabeth was far too much one of the family not to have heard of such a person. And his knowing her was a tolerable proof of his identity; besides, unconsciously, the girl was influenced by that look and mien of true gentlemanhood, as courteous to the poor maid-of-all-work as he would have been to any duchess born; and by that bright, sudden smile, which came like sunshine over his face, and like sunshine warmed and opened the heart of every one that met it.
It opened that of Elizabeth. She relaxed her Cerberus keeping of the door, and even went so far as to inform him that Miss Leaf and Miss Selina were out to tea, but Miss Hilary and Mr. Ascott would be at home shortly. He was welcome to wait in the parlor if he liked.
Afterward, seized with mingled curiosity and misgiving, she made various errands to go in and look at him; but she had not courage to address him, and he never spoke to her. He sat by the window, gazing out into the gloaming. Except just turning his head at her entrance; she did not think he had once stirred the whole time.
Elizabeth went back to her kitchen, and stood listening for her young mistress's familiar knock. Mr. Lyon seemed to have listened too, for before she could reach it the door was already opened.
There was a warm greeting—to her great relief: for she knew she had broken the domestic laws in admitting a stranger unawares—and then Elizabeth heard them all three go into the parlor, where they remained talking, without ringing for either tea or candles, a full quarter of an hour.
Miss Hilary at last came out, but much to Elizabeth's surprise, went straight up into her bedroom without entering the kitchen at all.
It was some minutes more before she descended; and then, after giving her orders for tea, and seeing that all was arranged with special neatness, she stood absently by the kitchen fire. Elizabeth noticed how wonderfully bright her eyes were, and what a soft, happy smile she had. She noticed it, because she had never seen Miss Hilary look exactly like that before; and she never did again.
"Don't you be troubling yourself with waiting about here," she said; and her mistress seemed to start at being spoken to. "I'll get the tea all right, Miss Hilary. Please go back into the parlor."
Hilary went in.
Elizabeth got tea ready with unwonted diligence and considerable excitement. Any visitor was a rare occurrence in this very quiet family; but a gentleman visitor—a young gentleman too—was a remarkable fact, arousing both interest and curiosity. For in the latter quality this girl of seventeen could scarcely be expected to be deficient; and as to the former, she had so completely identified herself with the family she served, that all their concerns were her concerns also. Her acute comments on their few guests, and on their little scholars, sometimes amused Hilary as much as her criticisms on the books she read. But as neither were ever put forward intrusively or impertinently, she let them pass, and only laughed over them with Johanna in private.
In speaking of these said books, and the questions they led to, it was not likely but that mistress and maid—one aged twenty-two, and the other seventeen—should occasionally light upon a subject rather interesting to women of their ages, though not commonly discussed between mistresses and maids. Nevertheless, when it did come in the way, Miss Hilary never shirked it, but talked it out, frankly and freely, as she would to any other person.
"The girl has feelings and notions on the matter, like all other girls, I suppose," reasoned she to herself; "so it is important that her notions should be kept clear, and her feelings right. It may do her some good, and save her from much harm."
And so it befell that Elizabeth Hand, whose blunt ways, unlovely person, and temperament so oddly nervous and reserved, kept her from attracting any "sweetheart" of her own class, had unconsciously imbibed her mistress's theory of love. Love, pure and simple, the very deepest and highest, sweetest and most solemn thing in life: to be believed in devoutly until it came, and when it did come, to be held to, firmly, faithfully, with a single-minded, settled constancy, till death. A creed, quite impossible, many will say, in this ordinary world, and most dangerous to be put into the head of a poor servant. Yet a woman is but a woman, be she maid-servant or queen; and if, from queens to maid-servants, girls were taught thus to think of love, there might be a few more "broken" hearts perhaps, but there would certainly be fewer wicked hearts; far fewer corrupted lives of men, and degraded lives of women; far fewer unholy marriages, and desolated, dreary, homeless homes.
Elizabeth, having cleared away her tea-things, stood listening to the voices in the parlor, and pondering. She had sometimes wondered in her own mind that no knight ever came to carry off her charming princess—her admired and beloved Miss Hilary. Miss Hilary, on her part, seemed totally indifferent to the youths at Stowbury; who indeed were, Elizabeth allowed, quite unworthy her regard. The only suitable lover for her young mistress must be somebody exceedingly grand and noble—a compound of the best heroes of Shakespeare, Scott, Fenimore Cooper, Maria Edgeworth, and Harriet Martineau. When this strange gentleman appeared—in ordinary coat and hat, or rather Glengary bonnet, neither particularly handsome nor particularly tall, yet whose coming had evidently given Miss Hilary so much pleasure, and who, once or twice while waiting at tea, Elizabeth fancied she had seen looking at Miss Hilary as nobody ever looked before—when Mr. Robert Lyon appeared on the horizon, the faithful "bower maiden" was a good deal disappointed.
She had expected something better; at all events, something different. Her first brilliant castle in the air fell, poor lass! but she quickly built it up again, and, with the vivid imagination of her age, she mapped out the whole future, ending by a vision of Miss Hilary, all in white, sweeping down the Terrace in a carriage and pair—to fortune and happiness; leaving herself, though with a sore want at her heart, and a great longing to follow, to devote the remainder of her natural life to Miss Johanna.
"Her couldna do without somebody to see to her—and Miss Selina doworrit her so." muttered Elizabeth, in the excitement of thisAlmaschar vision, relapsing into her old provincialisms. "So, even ifMiss Hilary axes me to come, I'll stop, I reckon. Ay, I'll stop wi'Miss Leaf."
This valorous determination taken, the poor maid servant's dream was broken by the opening of the parlor door, and an outcry of Ascott's for his coat and gloves, he having to fetch his aunts home at nine o'clock, Mr. Lyon accompanying him. And as they all stood together at the front door, Elizabeth overheard Mr. Lyon say something about what a beautiful night it was.
"It would do you no harm, Miss Hilary; will you walk with us?"
"If you like."
Hilary went up stairs for her bonnet and shawl; but when, a minute or two after, Elizabeth followed her with a candle, she found her standing in the centre of the room, all in the dark, her face white and her hands trembling.
"Thank you, thank you!" she said mechanically, as Elizabeth folded and fastened her shawl for her—and descended immediately. Elizabeth watched her take, not Ascott's arm, but Mr. Lyon's, and walk down the terrace in the starlight.
"Some'at's wrong. I'd like to know who's been a-vexin' of her," thought fiercely the young servant.
No, nobody had been "a-vexing" her mistress. There was nobody to blame; only there had happened to Hilary one of those things which strike like a sword through a young and happy heart, taking all the life and youth out of it.
Robert Lyon had, half an hour ago, told her—and she had had to hear it as a piece of simple news, to which she had only to say, "Indeed!"—that to day and to-morrow were his two last days at Stowbury—almost his last in England. Within a week he was to sail for India.
There had befallen him what most people would have considered a piece of rare good fortune. At the London University, a fellow student, whom he had been gratuitously "coaching" in Hindostanee, fell ill, and was "thrown upon his hands." as he briefly defined services which must have been great, since they had resulted in this end. The young man's father—a Liverpool and Bombay merchant—made him an offer to go out there, to their house, at a rising salary of 300 rupees a month for three years; after the third year to become a junior partner; remaining at Bombay in that capacity for two years more.
This he told to Hilary and Ascott in almost as few words as I have here put it—for brevity seemed a refuge to him. It was also to one of them. But Ascott asked so many questions that his aunt needed to ask none. She only listened, and tried to take all in, and understand it, that is, in a consecutive, intelligent, business shape, without feeling it. She dared not let herself feel it, not for a second, till they were out, arm-in-arm, under the quiet winter stars. Then she heard his voice asking her, "So you think I was right?"
"Right?" she echoed mechanically.
"I mean in accepting that sudden chance, and changing my whole plan of life. I did not do it—believe me—without a motive."
"What motive?" she would once unhesitatingly have asked; now she could not.
Robert Lyon continued speaking, distinctly and yet in an undertone, that though Ascott was walking a few yards off, Hilary felt was meant for her alone to hear.
"The change is, you perceive, from the life of a student to that of a man of business. I do not deny that I preferred the first. Once upon a time to be a fellow in a college, or a professor, or the like, was my utmost aim and I would have half killed myself to attain it. Now, I think differently."
He paused, but did not seem to require an answer, and it did not come.
"I want, not to be rich but to get a decent competence, and to get it as soon as I can. I want not to ruin my health with incessant study. I have already injured it a good deal."
"Have you been ill? You never said so."
"Oh no, it was hardly worth while. And I knew an active life would soon set me right again. No fear! there's life in the old dog yet. He does not wish to die. But," Mr. Lyon pursued, "I have had a 'sair fecht' the last year or two. I would not go through it again, nor see any one dear to me go through it. It is over, but it has left its scars. Strange! I have been poor all my life, yet I never till now felt an actual terror of poverty."
Hilary shrank within herself; less even at the words than at something in their tone—something hard, nay fierce; something at once despairing and aggressive.
"It is strange," she said; "such a terror is not like you. I feel none; I can not even understand it."
"No, I knew you could not," he muttered; and was silent.
So was Hilary. A vague trouble came over her. Could it be that he, Robert Lyon, had been seized with theauri sacra fames, which he had so often inveighed against and despised? that his long battle with poverty had caused in him such an overweening desire for riches that, to obtain them, he would sacrifice every thing else, exile himself to a far country for years, selling his very life and soul for gold?
Such a thought of him was so terrible—that is, would have been were it tenable—that Hilary for an instant felt herself shiver all over. The next she spoke out—in justice to him she forced herself to speak out—all her honest soul.
"I do believe that this going abroad to make a fortune, which young men so delight in, is often a most fatal mistake. They give up far more than they gain—country, home, health. I think a man has no right to sell his life any more than his soul for so many thousands a year."
Robert Lyon smiled—"No, and I am not selling mine. With my temperate habits I have as good a chance of health at Bombay as in London—perhaps better. And the years I must be absent I would have been absent almost as much from you—I mean they would have been spent in work as engrossing and as hard. They will soon pass, and then I shall come home rich—rich. Do you think I am growing mercenary?"
"No."
"Tell me what you do think about me?"
"I—can not quite understand."
"And I cannot make you understand. Perhaps I will, some day when I come back again. Till then, you must trust me, Hilary."
It happens occasionally, in moments of all but tolerable pain, that some small thing, a word, a look, a touch of a hand, lets in such a gleam of peace that nothing ever extinguishes the light of it: it burns on for years and years, sometimes clear, sometimes obscured, but as ineffaceable from life and memory as a star from its place in the heavens. Such, both then, and through the lonely years to come, were those five words, "You must trust me. Hilary."
She did; and in the perfection of that trust her own separate identity, with all its consciousness of pain, seemed annihilated; she did not think of herself at all, only of him, and with him, and for him. So, for the time being, she lost all sense of personal suffering, and their walk that night was as cheerful and happy as if they were to walk together for weeks and months and years, in undivided confidence and content, instead of its being the last—the very last.
Some one has said that all lovers have, soon or late, to learn to be only friends: happiest and safest are those in whom the friendship is the foundation—always firm and ready to fall back upon, long after the fascination of passion dies. It may take a little from the romance of these two if I own that Robert Lyon talked to Hilary not a word about love, and a good deal about pure business, telling her all his affairs and arrangements, and giving her as clear an idea of his future life as it was possible to do within the limits of one brief half hour.
Then casting a glance round, and seeing that Ascott was quite out of ear-shot, he said, with that tender fall of the voice that felt, as some poet hath it,
"Like a still embrace,"
"Now tell me as much as you can about yourself."
At first there seemed nothing to tell; but gradually he drew from Hilary a good deal. Johanna's feeble health, which caused her continuing to teach to be very unadvisable; and the gradual diminishing of the school—from what cause they could not account—which made it very doubtful whether some change would not soon or late be necessary.
What this change should be she and Mr. Lyon discussed a little—as far as in the utterly indefinite position of affairs was possible. Also, from some other questions of his, she spoke to him about another dread which had lurked in her mind, and yet to which she could give no tangible shape, about Ascott. He could not remove it, he did not attempt; but he soothed it a little, advising with her as to the best way of managing the willful lad. His strong, clear sense, just judgment, and, above all, a certain unspoken sense of union, as if all that concerned her and hers he took naturally upon himself as his own, gave Hilary such comfort that, even on this night, with a full consciousness of all that was to follow, she was happy—nay, she had not been so happy for years. Perhaps (let the truth be told), the glorious truth of true love, that its recognition, spoken or silent, constitutes the only perfect joy of life that of two made perhaps she had never been so really happy since she was born.
The last thing he did was to make her give him an assurance that in any and all difficulty she would apply to him.
"To me, and to no one else, remember. No one but myself must help you. And I will, so, long as I am alive. Do you believe this?"
She looked up at him by the lamp light, and said, "I do."
"And you promise?"
"Yes."
Then they loosed arms, and Hilary knew that they should never walk together again till—when and how?
Returning, of course, he walked with Miss Leaf; and throughout the next day, a terribly wet Sunday, spent by them entirely in the little parlor, they had not a minute of special or private talk together. He did not seem to wish it; indeed, almost avoided it.
Thus slipped away the strange, still day—a Sunday never to be forgotten. At night, after prayers were, over, Mr. Lyon rose suddenly, saying he must leave them now; he was obliged to start from Stowbury at daybreak.
"Shall we not see you again?" asked Johanna.
"No. This will be my last Sunday in England. Good-by!"
He turned excessively pale, shook hands silently with them all—Hilary last—and almost before they recognized the fact, he was gone.
With him departed, not all Hilary's peace or faith or courage of heart, for to all who love truly, while the best beloved lives, and lives worthily, no parting is hopeless and no grief overwhelming; but all the brightness of her youth, all the sense of joy that young people have in loving, and in being beloved again, in fond meetings and fonder partings, in endless walks and talks, in sweet kisses and clinging arms. Such happiness was not for her: when she saw it the lot of others, she said to herself sometimes with a natural sharp sting of pain, but oftener with a solemn acquiescence, "It is the will of God; it is the will of God."
Johanna, too, who would have given her life almost to bring some color back to the white face of her darling, of whom she asked no questions, and who never complained nor confessed any thing, many and many a night when Hilary either lay awake by her side, or tossed and moaned in her sleep, till the elder sister took her in her arms like a baby—Johanna, too, said to herself, "This is the will of God."