Let us linger a little over this chapter of happy love: so sweet, so rare a thing. Aye, most rare: though hundreds continually meet, love, or fancy they do, engage themselves, and marry; and hundreds more go through the same proceeding, with the slight difference of the love omitted—Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet left out. But the real love, steady and true: tried in the balance, and not found wanting: tested by time, silence, separation; by good and ill fortune; by the natural and inevitable change which years make in every character—this is the rarest thing to be found on earth, and the most precious.
I do not say that all love is worthless which is not exactly this sort of love. There have been people who have succumbed instantly and permanently to some mysterious attraction, higher than all reasoning; the same which made Hilary "take an interest" in Robert Lyon's face at church, and made him, he afterward confessed, the very first time he gave Ascott a lesson in the parlor at Stowbury, say to himself, "If I did marry, I think I should like such a wife as that brown-eyed bit lassie." And there have been other people, who choosing their partners from accidental circumstances, or from mean worldly motives, have found Providence kinder to them than they deserved, and settled down into happy, affectionate husbands and wives.
But none of these loves can possibly have the sweetness, the completeness of such a love as that between Hilary Leaf and Robert Lyon.
There was nothing very romantic about it. From the moment when Johanna entered the parlor, found them standing hand-in-hand at the fireside, and Hilary came forward and kissed her, and after a slight hesitation Robert did the same, the affair proceeded in most millpond fashion:
"Unruffled by those cataracts and breaks,That humor interposed too often makes.':
There were no lovers' quarrels; Robert Lyon had chosen that best blessing next to a good woman, a sweet tempered woman; and there was no reason why they should quarrel more as lovers than they had done as friends. And, let it be said to the eternal honor of both, now, no more than in their friendship days, was there any of that hungry engrossment of each other's society, which is only another form of selfishness, and by which lovers so often make their own happy courting time a season of never-to-be-forgotten bitterness to every body connected with them.
Johanna suffered a little: all people do when the new rights clash with the old ones; but she rarely betrayed it. She was exceedingly good: she saw her child happy, and she loved Robert Lyon dearly. He was very mindful of her, very tender; and as Hilary still persisted in doing her daily duty in the shop, he spent more of his time with the elder sister than he did with the younger, and sometimes declared solemnly that if Hilary did not treat him well he intended to make an offer to Johanna!
Oh, the innumerable little jokes of those happy days! Oh, the long, quiet walks by the river side, through the park, across Ham Common—any where—it did not matter; the whole world looked lovely, even on the dullest winter day! Oh, the endless talks; the renewed mingling of two lives, which, though divided, had never been really apart, for neither had any thing to conceal; neither had ever loved any but the other.
Robert Lyon was, as I have said, a good deal changed, outwardly and inwardly. He had mixed much in society, taken an excellent position therein, and this had given him not only a more polished manner, but an air of decision and command, as of one used to be obeyed. There could not be the slightest doubt, as Johanna once laughingly told him, that he would always be "master in his own house."
But he was very gentle with his "little woman" as he called her. He would sit for hours at the "ingle-neuk"—how he did luxuriate in the English fires!—with Hilary on a footstool beside him, her arm resting on his knee, or her hand fast clasped in his. And sometimes, when Johanna went out of the room, he would stoop and gather her close to his heart. But I shall tell no tales; the world has no business with these sort of things.
Hilary was very shy of parading her happiness; she disliked any demonstrations thereof, even before Johanna. And when Miss Balquidder, who had, of course, been told of the engagement, came down one day expressly to see her "fortunate fellow countryman," this Machiavellian little woman actually persuaded her lover to have an important engagement in London! She could not bear him to be "looked at."
"Ah, well, you must leave me, and I will miss you terribly, my deal," said the old Scotch woman. But it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and I have another young lady quite ready to step into your shoes. When shall you be married?"
"I don't know—hush: we'll talk another time," said Hilary, glancing at Johanna.
Miss Balquidder took the hint and was silent.
That important question was indeed beginning to weigh heavily on Hilary's mind. She was fully aware of what Mr. Lyon wished, and indeed, expected; that when, the business of the firm being settled, in six months hence he returned to India, he should not return alone. When he said this, she had never dared to answer, hardly even to think. She let the peaceful present float on, day by day, without recognizing such a thing as the future.
But this could not be always. It came to an end one January afternoon, when he had returned from a second absence in Liverpool. They were walking up Richmond Hill. The sun had set frostily and red over the silver curve of the Thames, and Venus, large and bright, was shining like a great eye in the western sky. Hilary long remembered exactly how every thing looked, even to the very tree they stood under, when Robert Lyon asked her to fix definitely the day that she would marry him. Would she consent—there seemed no special reason to the contrary—that it should be immediately? Or would she like to remain with Johanna as she was, till just before they sailed? He wished to be as good as possible to Johanna—still.
And something in his manner impressed Hilary more than ever before with the conviction of all she was to him; likewise, all he was to her. More, much more than even a few short weeks since. Then, intense as it was, the love had a dream like unreality; now it was close, home-like, familiar. Instinctively she clung to his arm; she had become so used to being Robert's darling now. She shivered as she thought of the wide seas rolling between them; of the time when she should look for him at the daily meal and daily fireside, and find him no more.
"Robert, I want to talk to you about Johanna."
"I guess what it is," said he, smiling; "you would like her to go out to India with us. Certainly, if she chooses. I hope you did not suppose I should object."
"No; but it is not that. She would not live six months in a hot climate; the doctor tells me so."
"You consulted him?"
"Yes, confidentially, without her knowing it. But I thought it right.I wanted to make quite sure before—before— Oh, Robert—."
The grief of her tone caused him to suspect what was coming, He started.
"You don't mean that? Oh no, you can not! My little woman, my own little woman—she could not be so unkind."
Hilary turned sick at heart. The dim landscape, the bright sky, seemed to mingle and dance before her, and Venus to stare at her with a piercing, threatening, baleful lustre.
"Robert, let me sit down on the bench, and sit you beside me. It is too dark for people to notice us, and we shall not be very cold."
"No, my darling;" and he slipped his plaid round her shoulders, and his arm with it.
She looked up pitifully. "Don't be vexed with me, Robert, dear; I have thought it all over; weighed it on every side; nights and nights I have been awake pondering what was right to do. And it always comes to the same thing."
"What?"
"It's the old story," she answered with a feeble smile. "'I canna leave my minnie.' There is nobody in the world to take care of Johanna but me, not even Elizabeth, who is engrossed in little Henry. If I left her, I am sure it would kill her. And she can not come with me. Dear!" (the only fond name she ever called him) "for these three years—you say it need only be three years—you will have to go back to India alone."
Robert Lyon was a very good man; but he was only a man, not an angle; and though he made comparatively little show of it, he was a man very deeply in love. With that jealous tenacity over his treasure, hardly blamable, since the love is worth little which does not wish to have its object "all to itself," he had, I am afraid, contemplated not without pleasure the carrying off of Hilary to his Indian home; and it had cost him something to propose that Johanna should go too. He was very fond of Johanna; still—
If I tell what followed will it forever lower Robert Lyon in the estimation of all readers? He said, coldly, "As you please, Hilary;" rose up, and never spoke another word till they reached home.
It was the first dull tea table they had ever known; the first time Hilary had ever looked at that dear face, and seen an expression there which made her look away again. He did not sulk; he was too gentlemanly for that; he even exerted himself to make the meal pass pleasantly as usual; but he was evidently deeply wounded; nay, more, displeased. The strong, stern man's nature within him had rebelled; the sweetness had gone out of his face, and something had come into it which the very best of men have sometimes: alas for the woman who cannot understand and put up with it!
I am not going to preach the doctrine of tyrants and slaves; but when two walk together they must be agreed, or if by any chance they are not agreed, one must yield. It may not always be the weaker, or in weakness may lie the chiefest strength; but it must be one or other of the two who has to be the first to give way; and, save in very exceptional cases, it is, and it ought to be, the woman. God's law and nature's which is also God's, ordains this; instinct teaches it; Christianity enforces it.
Will it inflict a death blow upon any admiration she may have excited, this brave little Hilary, who fought through the world by herself; who did not shrink from traversing London streets alone at seemly and unseemly hours; from going into sponging houses and debtor's prisons; from earning her own livelihood, even in a shop—if I confess that Robert Lyon, being angry with her, justly or unjustly, and she, looking upon him as her future husband, her "lord and master" if you will, whom she would one day promise, and intended, literally "to obey"—she thought it her duty, not only her pleasure but her duty, to be the first to make reconciliation between them? ay, and at every sacrifice, except that of principle.
And I am afraid, in spite of all that "strong-minded" women may preach to the contrary, that all good women will have to do this to all men who stand in any close relation toward them, whether fathers, husbands, brothers, or lovers, if they wish to preserve peace, and love, and holy domestic influence; and that so it must be to the end of time.
Miss Leaf might have discovered that something was amiss; but she was too wise to take any notice, and being more than usually feeble that day, immediately after tea she went to lie down. When Hilary followed her, arranged her pillows, and covered her up, Johanna drew her child's face close to her and whispered,
"That will do, love. Don't stay with me. I would not keep you fromRobert on any account."
Hilary all but broke down; and yet the words made her stronger firmer; set more clearly before her the solemn duty which young folks in love are so apt to forget, that there can be no blessing on the new tie, if for any thing short of inevitable necessity they let go one link of the old.
Yet, Robert— It was such a new and dreadful feeling to be standing outside the door and shrink from going in to him; to see him rise up formally, saying, "Perhaps he had better leave;" and have to answer with equal formality, "Not unless you are obliged;" and for him then, with a shallow pretence of being at ease, to take up a book and offer to read aloud to her while she worked. He—who used always to set his face strongly against all sewing of evenings—because it deprived him temporarily of the sweet eyes, and the little soft hand. Oh, it was hard, hard!
Nevertheless, she sat still and tried to listen; but the words went in at one ear and out at the other; she retained nothing. By-and-by her throat began to swell, and she could not see her needle and thread. Yet still he went on reading. It was only when, by some blessed chance, turning to reach a paper cutter, he caught sight of her, that he closed the book and looked discomposed; not softened, only discomposed.
Who shall be first to speak? Who shall catch the passing angel's wing? One minute, and it may have passed over. I am not apologizing for Hilary the least in the world. I do not know even if she considered whether it was her place or Robert's to make the first advance. Indeed, I fear she did not consider it at all, but just acted upon impulse, because it was so cruel, so heart breaking, to be at variance with him. But if she had considered it I doubt not she would have done from duty exactly what she did by instinct—crept up to him as he sat at the fireside, and laid her little hand on his.
"Robert, what makes you so angry with me still?"
"Not angry; I have no right to be."
"Yes, you would have if I had really done wrong. Have I?"
"You must judge for yourself. For me—I thought you loved me better than I find you do, and I made a mistake; that is all."
Ay, he had made a mistake, but it was not that one. It was the other mistake that men continually make about women; they can not understand that love is not worth having, that it is not love at all, but merely a selfish carrying out of selfish desires, if it blinds us to any other duty, or blunts in us any other sacred tenderness. They can not see how she who is false in one relation may be false in another; and that, true as human nature's truth, ay, and often fulfilling itself, is Brabantio's ominous warning to Othello—
"Look to her, Moor! have a good eye to see;She has deceived her father, and may thee."
Perhaps as soon as he had said the bitter word Mr. Lyon was sorry, any how, the soft answer which followed it thrilled through every nerve of the strong willed man—a man not easily made angry, but when he was, very hard to move.
"Robert, will you listen to me for two minutes?"
"For as long as you like, only you must not expect me to agree with you. You can not suppose I shall say it is right for you to forsake me."
"I forsake you? Oh, Robert!"
Words are not always the wisest arguments. His "little woman" crept closer, and laid her head on his breast: he clasped convulsively.
"Oh, Hilary, how could you wound me so?"
And in lieu of the discussion, a long silence brooded over the fireside—the silence of exceeding love.
"Now, Robert, may I talk to you?"
"Yes. Preach away, my little conscience."
"It shall not be preaching, and it is not altogether for conscience," said she smiling. "You would not like me to tell you I did not love Johanna?"
"Certainly not. I love her very much myself, only I prefer you, as is natural. Apparently you do not prefer me, which may also be natural."
"Robert!"
There are times when a laugh is better than a reproach; and something else, which need not be more particularly explained, is safer than either. It is possible Hilary tried the experiment, and then resumed her "say."
"Now, Robert put yourself in my place, and try to think for me. I have been Johanna's child for thirty years; she is entirely dependent upon me. Her health is feeble; every year of her life is at least doubtful. If she lost me I think she would never live out the next three years. You would not like that?"
"No."
"In all divided duties like this somebody must suffer; the question is, which can suffer best? She is old and frail, we are young; she is alone, we are two; she never had any happiness in her life, except, perhaps me; and we—oh how happy we are! I think, Robert, it would be better for us to suffer than poor Johanna."
"You little Jesuit," he said: but the higher nature of the man was roused; he was no longer angry.
"It is only for a short time, remember—only three years."
"And how can I do without you for three years?"
"Yes, Robert, you can." And she put her arms round his neck, and looked at him, eye to eye. "You know I am your very own, a piece of yourself, as it were; that when I let you go it is like tearing myself from myself; yet I can bear it, rather than do, or let you do, in the smallest degree, a thing which is not right."
Robert Lyon was not a man of many words; but he had the rare faculty of seeing a case clearly, without reference to himself, and of putting it clearly also, when necessary.
"It seems to me, Hilary, that this is hardly a matter of abstract right or wrong, or a good deal might be argued on my side of the subject. It is more a case of personal conscience. The two are not always identical, though they look so at first; but they both come to the same result."
"And that is—"
"If my little woman thinks it right to act as she does, I also think it right to let her. And let this be the law of our married life, if we ever are married," and he sighed, "that when we differ each should respect the other's conscience, and do right in the truest sense, by allowing the other to do the same."
"Oh, Robert! how good you are."
So these two, an hour after, met Johanna with cheerful faces; and she never knew how much both had sacrificed for her sake. Once only, when she was for a few minutes absent from the parlor, did Robert Lyon renew the subject, to suggest a medium course.
But Hilary resolutely refused. Not that she doubted him—she doubted herself. She knew quite well by the pang that darted through her like a shaft of ice, as she felt his warm arm round her, and thought of the time when she would feel it no more, that, after she had been Robert Lyon's happy wife for three months, to let him go to India without her would be simply and utterly impossible.
Fast fled the months; they dwindled into weeks, and then into days. I shall not enlarge upon this time. Now, when the ends of the world have been drawn together, and every family has one or more relatives abroad, a grief like Hilary's has become so common that nearly every one can, in degree, understand it. How bitter such partings are, how much they take out of the brief span of mortal life, and, therefore, how far they are justifiable, for any thing short of absolute necessity, Heaven knows.
In this case it was an absolutely necessity. Robert Lyon's position in "our firm," with which he identified himself with the natural pride of a man who has diligently worked his way up to fortune, was such that he could not, without sacrificing his future prospects, and likewise what he felt to be a point of honor, refuse to go back to Bombay until such time as his senior partner's son, the young fellow whom he had "coached" in Hindostanee, and nursed through a fever years ago, could conveniently take his place abroad.
"Of course," he said, explaining this to Hilary and her sister, "accidental circumstances might occur to cause my return home before the three years were out, but the act must be none of mine; I must do my duty."
"Yes, you must," answered Hilary, with a gleam lighting up her eyes. She loved so in him this one great principle of his life—the back-bone of it, as it were—duty before all things.
Johanna asked no questions. Once she had inquired, with a tremulous, hardly concealed alarm, whether Robert wished to take Hilary back with him, and Hilary had kissed her, smilingly, saying, "No, that was impossible." Afterward the subject was never revived.
And so these two lovers, both stern in what they thought their duty, went on silently together to the last day of parting.
It was almost as quiet a day as that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday at Stowbury. They went a long walk together, in the course of which Mr. Lyon forced her to agree to what hitherto she had steadfastly resisted, that she and Johanna should accept from him enough, in addition to their own fifty pounds a year, to enable them to live comfortably without her working any more.
"Are you ashamed of my working?" she asked, with something between a tear and a smile. "Sometimes I used to be afraid you would think the less of me because circumstances made me an independent woman, earning my own bread. Do you?"
"My darling, no. I am proud of her. But she must never work any more. Johanna says right; it is a man's place, and not a woman's. I will not allow it."
When he spoke in that tone Hilary always submitted.
He told her another thing while arranging with her all the business part of their concerns, and to reconcile her to this partial dependence upon him, which, he urged, was only forestalling his rights; that before he first quitted England, seven years ago, he had made his will, leaving her, if still unmarried, his sole heir and legatee, indeed in exactly the position that she would have been had she been his wife.
"This will exists still; so that in any case you are safe. No further poverty can ever befall my Hilary."
His—his own—Robert Lyon's own. Her sense of this was so strong that it took away the sharpness of the parting, made her feel, up to the very last minute, when she clung to him—was pressed close to him—heart to heart and lip to lip—for a space that seemed half a life-time of mixed anguish and joy—that he was not really going; that somehow or other, next day or next week he would be back again, as in his frequent re-appearances, exactly as before.
When he was really gone—when, as she sat with her tearless eyes fixed on the closed door—Johanna softly touched her, saying, "My child" then Hilary learned it all.
The next twenty-four hours will hardly bear being written about. Most people know what it is to miss the face out of the house—the life out of the heart. To come and go, to eat and drink, to lie down and rise, and find all thing the same, and gradually to recognize that it must be the same, indefinitely, perhaps always. To be met continually by small trifles—a dropped glove, a book, a scrap of handwriting that yesterday would have been thrown into the fire, but to-day is picked up and kept as a relic; and at times, bursting through the quietness which must be gained, or at least assumed, the cruel craving for one word more—one kiss more—for only one five minutes of the eternally ended yesterday!
All this hundreds have gone through; so did Hilary. She said afterward it was good for her that she did; it would make her feel for others in a way she had never felt before. Also, because it taught her that such a heart-break can be borne and lived through when help is sought where only real help can be found; and where, when reason fails, and those who, striving to do right irrespective of the consequences, cry out against their torments and wonder why they should be made so to suffer, childlike faith comes to their rescue. For, let us have all the philosophy at our fingers' ends, what are we but children? We know not what a day may bring forth. All wisdom resolves itself into the simple hymn which we learned when we were young:
"Deep in unfathomable minesOf never-failing skill.He treasures up His vast designs,And works His sovereign will.
"Blind unbelief is sure to err.And scan His work in vain:God is His own interpreter.And He will make it plain."
The night after Robert Lyon left, Hilary and Johanna were sitting together in their parlor. Hilary had been writing a long letter to Miss Balquidder, explaining that she would now give up in favor of the other young lady, or any other of the many to whom it would be a blessing, her position in the shop; but that she hoped still to help her—Miss Balquidder—in any way she could point out that would be useful to others. She wished, in her humble way, as a sort of thank offering from one who had passed through the waves and been landed safe ashore, to help those who were still struggling, as she herself had struggled once. She desired, as far as in her lay, to be Miss Balquidder's "right hand" till Mr. Lyon came home.
This letter she read aloud to Johanna, whose failing eye sight refused all candle light occupation, and then came and sat beside her in silence. She felt terribly worn and weary, but she was very quiet now.
"We must go to bed early," was all she said.
"Yes, my child."
And Johanna smoothed her hair in the old, fond way, making no attempt to console her, but only to love her—always the safest consolation. And Hilary was thankful that never, even in her sharpest agonies of grief, had she betrayed that secret which would have made her sister's life miserable, have blotted out the thirty years of motherly love, and caused the other love to rise up like a cloud between her and it, never to be lifted until Johanna sank into the possibly not far-off grave.
"No, no," she thought to herself, as she looked on that frail, old face, which even the secondary, grief of this last week seemed to have made frailer and older. "No, it is better as it is; I believe I did right. The end will show."
The end was nearer than she thought. So, sometimes—not often, lest self-sacrifice should become a less holy thing than it is—Providence accepts the will for the act, and makes the latter needless.
There was a sudden knock at the hall door. "It is the young people coming in to supper."
"It's not," said Hilary, starting up—"it's not their knock. It is—"
She never finished the sentence, for she was sobbing in Robert Lyon's arms.
"What does it all mean?" cried the bewildered Johanna, of whom, I must confess, for once nobody took the least notice.
It meant that, by one of these strange accidents, as we call them, which in a moment alter the whole current of things, the senior partner had suddenly died, and his son, not being qualified to take his place in the Liverpool house, had to go out to India instead of Robert Lyon, who would now remain permanently, as the third senior partner, in England.
This news had met him at Southampton. He had gone thence direct to Liverpool, arranged affairs so far as was possible, and returned, traveling without an hour's intermission, to tell his own tidings, as was best—or as he thought it was.
Perhaps at the core of his heart lurked the desire to come suddenly back, as, it is said, if the absent or the dead should come, they would find all things changed; the place filled up in home and hearth—no face of welcome—no heart leaping to heart in the ecstasy of reunion.
Well, if Robert Lyon had any misgivings—and being a man, and in love, perhaps he had—they were ended now.
"Is she glad to see me?" was all he could find to say when, Johanna having considerately vanished, he might have talked as much as he pleased.
Hilary's only answer was a little, low laugh of inexpressible content.
He lifted up between his bands the sweet face, neither so young nor so pretty as it had been, but oh! so sweet, with the sweetness that long outlives beauty—a face that a man might look on all his life time and never tire of—so infinitely loving, so infinitely true! And he knew it was his wife's face, to shine upon him day by day, and year by year, till it faded into old age—beautiful and beloved even then. All the strong nature of the man gave way; he wept almost like a child in his "little woman's" arms.
Let us leave them there, by that peaceful fireside—these two, who are to sit by one fire-side as long as they live. Of their further fortune we know nothing—nor do they themselves—except the one fact, in itself joy enough for any mortal cup to hold, that it will be shared together. Two at the hearth, two abroad; two to labor, two to rejoice; or, if so it must be, two to weep, and two to comfort one another; the man to be the head of the woman, and the woman the heart of the man. This is the ordination of God; this is the perfect life; none the less perfect that so many fall short of it.
So let us bid them good-by: Robert Lyon and Hilary Leaf, "Good-by;God be with ye!" for we shall see them no more.
Elizabeth stood at the nursery window, pointing out to little Henry how the lilacs and laburnums were coming into flower in the square below, and speculating with him whether the tribe of sparrows which they had fed all the winter from the mignonette boxes on the window sill would be building nests in the tall trees of Russell Square; for she wished, with her great aversion to London, to make her nursling as far as possible "a country child."
Master Henry Leaf Ascott was by no means little now. He would run about on his tottering fat legs, and he could say, "Mammy Lizzie," also, "Pa-pa," as had been carefully taught him by his conscientious nurse. At which papa had been at first excessively surprised, then gratified, and had at last taken kindly to the appellation as a matter of course.
It inaugurated a new era in Peter Ascott's life. At first twice a week, and then every day, he sent up for "Master Ascott" to keep him company at dessert; he then changed his dinner hour from half past six to five, because Elizabeth, with her stern sacrifice of every thing to the child's good, had suggested to him, humbly but firmly, that late hours kept little Henry too long out of his bed. He gave up his bottle of port and his after-dinner sleep, and took to making water-lilies and caterpillars out of oranges and boats out of walnut shells, for his boy's special edification. Sometimes when, at half past six, Elizabeth, punctual as clock-work, knocked at the dining room door, she heard father and son laughing together in a most jovial manner, though the decanters were in their places and the wine glasses untouched.
And even after the child disappeared, the butler declared that master usually took quietly to his newspaper, or rang for his tea, or perhaps dozed harmlessly in his chair till bedtime.
I do not allege that Peter Ascott was miraculously changed; people do not change, especially at his age; externally he was still the same pompous, overbearing, coarse man, with whom, no doubt, his son would have a tolerably sore bargain in years to come. But still the child had touched a soft corner in his heart, the one soft corner which in his youth had yielded to the beauty of Miss Selina Leaf; and the old fellow was a better fellow than he had once been. Probably, with care, he might be for the rest of his life at least manageable.
Elizabeth hoped so for his boy's sake, and little as she liked him, she tried to conquer her antipathy as much as she could. She always ways took care to treat him with extreme respect, and to bring up little Henry to do the same. And, as often happens, Mr. Ascott began gradually to comport himself in a manner deserving of respect. He ceased his oaths and his coarse language; seldom flew into a passion; and last, not least, the butler avouched that master hardly ever went to bed "muzzy" now. Toward all his domestics, and especially his son's nurse, he behaved himself more like a master and less like a tyrant; so that the establishment at Russell Square went on in a way more peaceful than had ever been known before.
There was no talk of his giving it a new mistress; he seemed to have had enough of matrimony. Of his late wife he never spoke; whether he loved her or not, whether he had regretted her or not, the love and regret were now alike ended.
Poor Selina! It was Elizabeth only, who, with a sacred sense of duty, occasionally talked to little Henry about "mamma up there"—pointing to the blank bit of blue sky over the trees of Russell Square, and hoped in time to make him understand something about her, and how she had loved him, her "baby." This love, the only beautiful emotion her life had known, was the one fragment that remained of it after her death; the one remembrance she left to her child.
Little Henry was not in the least like her, nor yet like his father. He took after some forgotten type, some past generation of either family, which reappeared in this as something new. To Elizabeth he was a perfect revelation of beauty and infantile fascination. He filled up every corner of her heart. She grew fat and flourishing, even cheerful; so cheerful that she bore with equanimity the parting with her dear Miss Hilary, who went away in glory and happiness as Mrs. Robert Lyon, to live in Liverpool, and Miss Leaf with her. Thus both Elizabeth's youthful dreams ended in nothing, and it was more than probable that for the future their lives and hers being so widely apart, she would see very little of her beloved mistresses any more. But they had done their work in her and for her; and it had borne fruit a hundred fold, and would still.
"I know you will take care of this child—he is the hope of the family," said Miss Leaf, when she was giving her last kiss to little Henry. "I could not bear to leave him, if I were not leaving him with you."
And Elizabeth had taken her charge proudly in her arms, knowing she was trusted, and in vowing to be worthy of that trust.
Another dream was likewise ended; so completely that she sometimes wondered if it was ever real, whether she had ever been a happy girl, looking forward as girls do to wifehood and motherhood; or whether she had not been always the staid middle aged person she was now, whom nobody ever suspected of any such things.
She had been once back to her old home, to settle her mother comfortably upon a weekly allowance, to 'prentice her little brother, to see one sister married, and the other sent off to Liverpool, to be servant to Mrs. Lyon. While at Stowbury, she had heard by chance of Tom Cliffe's passing through the town as a Chartist lecturer, or something of the sort, with his pretty, showy London wife, who, when he brought her there, had looked down rather contemptuously upon the street where Tom was born.
This was all Elizabeth knew about them. They, too, had passed from her life as phases of keen joy and keener sorrow do pass, like a dream and the shadows of a dream. It may be, life itself will seem at the end to be nothing more.
But Elizabeth Hand's love story was not so to end.
One morning, the same morning when she had been pointing out the lilacs to little Henry, and now came in from the square with a branch of them in her hand, the postman gave her a letter; the handwriting of which made her start as if it had been a visitation from the dead.
"Mammy Lizzie, mammy Lizzie!" cried little Henry, plucking at her gown, but for once his nurse did not notice him. She stood on the door-step, trembling violently; at length she put the letter into her pocket, lifted the child, and got up stairs somehow. When she had settled her charge to his mid-day sleep, then, and not till then, did she take out and read the few lines, which, though written on shabby paper, and with more than one blot, were so like—yet so terribly unlike—Tom's calligraphy of old:
"DEAR ELIZABETH,—I have no right to ask any kindness of you; but if you would like to see an old friend alive, I wish you would come and see me. I have been long of asking you, lest you might fancy I wanted to get something out of you; for I'm as poor as a rat; and once lately I saw you, looking so well and well-to-do. But it was the same kind old face, and I should like to get one kind look from it before I go where I sha'n't want any kindness from any body. However, do just as you choose.
"Yours affectionately,T. CLIFFE.
"Underneath is my address."
It was in one of those wretched nooks in Westminster, now swept away by Victoria Street and other improvements. Elizabeth happened to have read about it in one of the many charitable pamphlets, reports, etc., which were sent continually to the wealthy Mr. Ascott, and which he sent down stairs to light fires with. What must not poor Tom have sunk to before he had come to live there? His letter was like a cry out of the depths, and the voice was that of her youth, her first love.
Is any woman ever deaf to that? The love may have died a natural death; many first loves do: a riper, completer, happier love may have come in its place; but there must be something unnatural about the woman and man likewise, who can ever quite forget it—the dew of their youth—the beauty of their dawn.
"Poor Tom, poor Tom!" sighed Elizabeth, "my own poor Tom!"
She forgot Esther; either from Tom's not mentioning her, or in the strong return to old times which his letter produced; forgot her for the time being as completely as if she had never existed. Even when the recollection came it made little difference. The sharp jealousy, the dislike and contempt had all calmed down: she thought she could now see Tom's wife as any other woman. Especially if, as the letter indicated, they were so very poor and miserable.
Possibly Esther had suggested writing it? Perhaps, though Tom did not, Esther did "want to get something out of her"—Elizabeth Hand, who was known to have large wages, and to be altogether a thriving person? Well, it mattered little. The one fact remained: Tom was in distress; Tom needed her; she must go.
Her only leisure time was of an evening, after Henry was in bed. The intervening hours, especially the last one, when the child was down stairs with his father, calmed her; subdued the tumult of old remembrances that came surging up and beating at the long shut door of her heart. When her boy returned, leaping and laughing, and playing all sorts of tricks as she put him to bed, she could smile too. And when kneeling beside her in his pretty white night gown, he stammered through the prayer she had thought it right to begin to teach him, though of course he was too young to understand it—the words "Thy will be done;" "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us;" and lastly, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil," struck home to his nurse's in most soul.
"Mammy, mammy Lizzie's 'tying."
Yes, she was crying, but it did her good. She was able to kiss her little boy, who slept like a top in five minutes: then she took off her good silk gown, and dressed herself; soberly and decently, but so that people should not suspect, in that low and dangerous neighborhood, the sovereigns that she carried in an under pocket, ready to use as occasion required. Thus equipped, without a minute's delay, she started for Tom's lodging.
It was poorer than even she expected. One attic room, bate almost as when it was built. No chimney or grate, no furniture except a box which served as both table and chair; and a heap of straw, with a blanket thrown over it. The only comfort about it was that it was clean; Tom's innate sense of refinement had abided with him to the last.
Elizabeth had time to make all these observations, for Tom was out—gone, the landlady said, to the druggist's shop, round the corner.
"He's very bad, ma'am," added the woman, civilly, probably led thereto by Elizabeth's respectable appearance, and the cab in which she had come—lest she should lose a minute's time. "Can't last long, and Lord knows who's to bury him."
With that sentence knelling in her ears, Elizabeth waited till she heard the short cough and the hard breathing of some one toiling heavily up the stair. Tom, Tom himself. But oh, so altered! with every bit of youth gone out of him; with death written on every line of his haggard face, the death he had once prognosticated with a sentimental pleasure, but which now had come upon him in all its ghastly reality.
He was in the last stage of consumption. The disease was latent in his family, Elizabeth knew: she had known it when she belonged to him, and fondly thought that, as his wife, her incessant care might save him from it; but nothing could save him now.
"Who's that?" said he, in his own sharp, fretful voice.
"Me, Tom. But don't speak. Sit down till your cough's over."
Tom grasped her hand as she stood by him, but he made no further demonstration, nor used any expression of gratitude. He seemed far too ill. Sick people are always absorbed in the sad present; they seldom trouble themselves much about the past. Only there was something in the way Tom clung to her hand, helplessly, imploringly, that moved the inmost heart of Elizabeth.
"I'm very bad, you see. This cough; oh, it shakes me dreadfully; especially of nights."
"Have you any doctor?"
"The druggist close by, or rather, the druggist's shopman. He's a very kind young fellow, from our county, I fancy, for he asked me once if I wasn't a Stowbury man; and ever since he has doctored me for nothing, and given me a shilling too, now and then, when I've been a'most clemmed to death in the winter."
"Oh, Tom, why didn't you write to me before. Have you actually wanted food?"
"Yes, many a time. I've been out of work this twelvemonth."
"But Esther?"
"Who?" screamed Tom.
"Your wife?"
"My wife? I've got none? She spent every thing till I fell ill, and then she met a fellow with lots of money. Curse her!"
The fury with which he spoke shook him all over, and sent him into another violent fit of coughing, out of which he revived by degrees, but in a state of such complete exhaustion that Elizabeth hazarded no more questions. He must evidently be dealt with exactly like a child.
She made up her mind in her own silent way, as indeed she had done ever since she came into the room.
"Lie down, Tom, and keep yourself quiet for a little. I'll be back as soon as I can—back with something to do you good. You won't object."
"No, no; you can do any thing you like with me. You always could."
Elizabeth groped her way down stairs strangely calm and self-possessed. There was need. Tom, dying, had come to her as his sole support and consolation—throwing himself helplessly upon her, never doubting either her will or her power to help him. Neither must fail. The inexplicable woman's strength, sometimes found in the very gentlest, quietest, and apparently the weakest character, nerved her now.
She went up and down, street after street, looking for lodgings, till the evening darkened, and the Abbey towers rose grimly against the summer sky. Then she crossed over Westminster Bridge, and in a little street on the Surrey side she found what she wanted—a decent room, half sitting, half bedroom, with what looked like a decent landlady. There was no time to make many inquiries; any thing was better than to leave Tom an other night where he was.
She paid a week's rent in advance; bought firing and provisions; every thing she could think of to make him comfortable; and then she went to fetch him in a cab.
The sick man offered no resistance; indeed, he hardly seemed to know what she was doing with him. She discovered the cause of this half insensibility when, in making a bundle of his few clothes, she found a package labeled "opium."
"Don't take it from me," he said pitifully, "it's the only comfort I have."
But when he found himself in the cheerful room, with the fire blazing and the tea laid out, he woke up like a person out of a bad dream.
"Oh, Elizabeth, I'm so comfortable!"
Elizabeth could have wept.
Whether the wholesome food and drink revived him, or whether it was one of the sudden flashes of life that often occur in consumptive patients, but he seemed really better, and began to talk, telling Elizabeth about his long illness, and saying over again how very kind the druggist's young man had been to him.
"I'm sure he's a gentleman, though he has come down in the world; for, as he says, 'misery makes a man acquainted with strange bedfellows, and takes the nonsense out of him.' I think so too, and if ever I get better, I don't mean to go about the country speaking against born gentlefolks any more. They're much of a muchness with ourselves—bad and good; a little of all sorts; the same flesh and blood as we are. Aren't they, Elizabeth?"
"I suppose so."
"And there's another thing I mean to do. I mean to try and be good like you. Many a night, when I've lain on that straw, and thought I was dying, I've remembered you and all the things you used to say to me. You are a good woman; there never was a better."
Elizabeth smiled, a faint rather sad smile. For, as she was washing up the tea things, she had noticed Tom's voice grow feebler, and his features sharper and more wan.
"I'm very tired," he said. "I'm afraid to go to bed, I get such wretched nights; but I think, if I lay down in my clothes, I could go to sleep."
Elizabeth helped him to the small pallet, shook his pillow, and covered him up as if he had been a child.
"You're very good to me," he said, and looked up at her—Tom's bright, fond look of years ago. But it passed away in a moment, and he closed his eyes, saying he was so terribly tired.
"Then I'll bid you good-by, for I ought to have been at home by now. You'll take care of yourself, Tom, and I'll come and see you again the very first hour I can be spared. And if you want me you'll send to me at once? You know where?"
"I will," said Tom. "Its the same house, isn't it, in RussellSquare?"
"Yes." And they were both silent.
After a minute, Tom asked, in a troubled voice.
"Have you forgiven me?"
"Yes, Tom, quite."
"Won't you give me one kiss, Elizabeth?"
She turned away. She did not mean to be hard, but somehow she could not kiss Esther's husband.
"Ah, well; it's all the same! good-by!"
"Good-by, Tom."
But as she stood at the door, and looked back at him lying with his eyes shut, and as white as if he were dead, Elizabeth's heart melted. He was her Tom, her own Tom, of whom she had been so fond, so proud; whose future she had joyfully anticipated long before she thought of herself as mixed up with it; and he was dying, dying at four-and-twenty; passing away to the other world, where, perhaps, she might meet him yet, with no cruel Esther between.
"Tom," she said, and knelt beside him, "Tom, I didn't mean to vex you. I'll try to be as good as a sister to you. I'll never forsake you as long as you live."
"I know you never will."
"Good-by, then for to-night."
And she did kiss him, mouth to mouth, quietly and tenderly. She was so glad of it afterward.
It was late enough when she reached Russell Square; but nobody ever questioned the proceedings of Mrs. Hand, who was a privileged person. She crept in beside her little Henry, and as the child turned in his sleep and put his arms about her neck, she clasped him tight, and thought there was still something to live for in this weary world.
All night she thought over what best could be done for Tom. Though she never deceived herself for a moment as to his state, still she thought, with care and proper nursing, he might live a few months. Especially if she could get him into the Consumption Hospital, newly started in Chelsea, of which she was aware Mr. Ascott—who dearly loved to see his name in a charity list—was one of the governors.
There was no time to be lost; she determined to speak to her master at once.
The time she chose was when she brought down little Henry, who was now always expected to appear, and say, "Dood morning, papa," before Mr. Ascott went into the city.
As they stood, the boy laughing in his father's face, and the father beaming all over with delight, the bitter, almost fierce thought, smote Elizabeth, Why should Peter Ascott be standing there fat and flourishing, and poor Tom dying? It made her bold to ask the only favor she ever had asked of the master whom she did not care for, and to whom she had done her duty simply as duty, without, until lately, one fragment of respect.
"Sir, if you please, might I speak with you a minute before you go out?"
"Certainly, Mrs. Hand. Any thing about Master Henry? Or perhaps yourself? You want more wages? Very well. I shall be glad, in any reasonable way, to show my satisfaction at the manner in which you bring up my son."
"Thank you, Sir," said Elizabeth, curtseying. "But it is not that."
And in the briefest language she could find she explained what it was.
Mr. Ascott knitted his brows and looked important. He never scattered his benefits with a silent hand, and he dearly liked to create difficulties, if only to show how he could smooth them down.
"To get a patient admitted at the Consumption Hospital, is, you should be aware, no easy matter, until the building at Queen's Elm is complete. But I flatter myself I have influence. I have subscribed a deal of money. Possibly the person may be got in in time. Who did you say he was?"
"Thomas Cliffe. He married one of the servants here, Esther—"
"Oh, don't trouble yourself about the name; I shouldn't recollect it.The housekeeper might. Why didn't his wife apply to the housekeeper?"
The careless question seemed hardly to expect an answer, and Elizabeth gave none. She could not bear to make public Tom's misery and Esther's shame.
"And you say he is a Stowbury man? That is certainly a claim. I always feel bound, somewhat as a member of Parliament might be, to do my best for any one belonging to my native town. So be satisfied, Mrs. Hand; consider the thing settled."
And he was going away; but time being of such great moment, Elizabeth ventured to detain him till he had written the letter of recommendation, and found out what days the application for admission could be received. He did it very patiently, and even took out his purse and laid a sovereign on the top of the letter.
"I suppose the man is poor; you can use this for his benefit."
"There is no need, thank you, Sir," said Elizabeth, putting it gently aside. She could not bear that Tom should accept any body's money but her own.
At her first spare moment she wrote him a long letter explaining what she had done, and appointing the next day but one, the earliest possible, for taking him out to Chelsea herself. If he objected to the plan, he was to write and say so; but she urged him as strongly as she could not to let slip this opportunity of obtaining good nursing and first rate medical care.
Many times during the day the thought of Tom alone in his one room—comfortable though it was, and though she had begged the landlady to see that he wanted nothing—came across her with a sudden pang. His face, feebly lifted up from the pillow, with its last affectionate smile, the sound of his cough as she stood listening outside on the stair head, haunted her all through that sunshiny June day; and, mingled with it, came ghostly visions of that other day in June—her happy Whitsun holiday—her first and her last.
No letter coming from Tom on the appointed morning, she left MasterHenry in the charge of the house-maid, who was very fond of him—asindeed he bade fair to be spoiled by the whole establishment atRussell Square—and went down to Westminster.
There was a long day before her, so she took a minute's breathing space on Westminster Bridge, and watched the great current of London life ebbing and flowing—life on the river and life on the shore; every body so busy and active and bright.
"Poor Tom, poor Tom!" she sighed, and wondered whether his ruined life would ever come to any happy ending, except death.
She hurried on, and soon found the street where she had taken his lodging. At the corner of it was, as is too usual in London streets, a public house, about which more than the usual number of disreputable idlers were hanging. There were also one or two policemen, who were ordering the little crowd to give way to a group of twelve men, coming out.
"What is that?" asked Elizabeth.
"Coroner's inquest; jury proceeding to view the body."
Elizabeth, who had never come into contact with any thing of the sort, stood aside with a sense of awe, to let the little procession pass, and then followed up the street.
It stopped; oh no! not at that door! But it was; there was no mistaking the number, nor the drawn-down blind in the upper room—Tom's room.
"Who is dead?" she asked, in a whisper that made the policeman stare.
"Oh! nobody particular; a young man, found dead in his bed; supposed to be a case of consumption; verdict will probably be, 'Died by the visitation of God!' "
Ay, that familiar phrase, our English law's solemn recognition of our national religious feeling, was true. God had "visited" poor Tom; he suffered no more.
Elizabeth leaned against the door-way, and saw the twelve jurymen go up stairs with a clatter of feet, and come down again, one after the other, less noisily, and some of them looking grave. Nobody took any notice of her, until the lodging house mistress appeared.
"Oh, here she is, gentlemen. This is the young woman as saw him last alive. She'll give her evidence. She'll tell you I'm not a bit to blame."
And pulling Elizabeth after her, the landlady burst into a torrent of explanation; how she had done her very best for the poor fellow; how she listened at his door several times during the first day, and heard him cough, that is, she thought she had, but toward night all was so very quiet; and there having come a letter by post, she thought she would take it up to him.
"And I went in, gentlemen, and I declare, upon my oath, I found him lying just as he is now, and as cold as a stone."
"Let me pass; I'm a doctor," said somebody behind; a young man, very shabbily dressed, with a large beard. He pushed aside the landlady and Elizabeth, till he saw the latter's face.
"Give that young woman a chair and a glass of water, will you?" he called out; and his authoritative manner impressed the jurymen, who gathered around him, ready and eager to hear any thing he could say.
He gave his name as John Smith, druggist's assistant; said that the young man who lodged up stairs, whose death he had only just heard of, had been his patient for some months, and was in the last stage of consumption. He had no doubt the death had ensued from perfectly natural causes, as he explained in such technical language as completely to overpower the jury, and satisfy them accordingly. They quitted the parlor, and proceeded to the public house, where, after a brief consultation, they delivered their verdict, as the astute policeman had foretold, "Died by the visitation of God;" took pipes and brandy all round at the bar, and then adjourned to their several homes, gratified at having done their duty to their country.
Meantime, Elizabeth crept up stairs. Nobody hindered or followed her; nobody cared any thing for the solitary dead.
There he lay—poor Tom! almost as she had left him; the counterpane was hardly disturbed, the candle she had placed on the chair had burned down to a bit of wick, which still lay in the socket. Nobody had touched him, or any thing about him, as, in all cases of "Found dead," English law exacts.
Whether he had died soon after she quitted him that night, or whether he had lingered through the long hours of darkness, or of day-light following, alive and conscious perhaps, yet too weak to call any one, even had there been any one he cared to call—when, or how, the spirit had passed away unto Him who gave it, were mysteries that could never be known.
But it was all over now; he lay at rest with the death smile on his face. Elizabeth, as she stood and looked at him, could not, dared not weep.
"My poor Tom, my own dear Tom," was all she thought, and knew that he was all her own now; that she had loved him through every thing, and loved him to the end.
Elizabeth spent the greatest part of her holiday in that house, in that room. Nobody interfered with her; nobody asked in what relation she stood to the deceased, or what right she had to take upon herself the arrangements for his funeral. Every body was only too glad to let her assume a responsibility which would otherwise have fallen on the parish.
The only person who appeared to remember either her or the dead man was the druggist's assistant, who sent in the necessary medical certificate as to the cause of death. Elizabeth took it to the Registrar, and thence proceeded to an undertaker hard by, with whom she arranged all about the funeral, and that it should took place in the new cemetery at Kensal Green. She thought she should like that better than a close, noisy London church yard.
Before she left the house she saw poor Tom laid in his coffin, and covered up forever from mortal eyes. Then, and not till then, she sat herself down beside him and wept.
Nobody contested with her the possession of the few things that had belonged to him, which were scarcely more than the clothes he had on when he died; so she made them up into a parcel and took them away with her. In his waistcoat pocket she found one book, a little Testament, which she had given him herself. It looked as if it had been a good deal read. If all his studies, all his worship of "pure intellect," as the one supreme good, had ended in that, it was a blessed ending.
When she reached home Elizabeth went at once to her master, returned him his letter of recommendation, and explained to him that his kindness was not needed now.
Mr. Ascott seemed a good deal shocked, inquired from her a few particulars, and again took out his purse, his one panacea for all mortal woes. But Elizabeth declined; she said she would only ask him for an advance of her next half-year's wages. She preferred burying her old friend herself.
She buried him, herself the only mourner, on a bright summer's day, with the sun shining dazzlingly on the white grave stones in Kensal Green. The clergyman appeared, read the service, and went away again. A few minutes ended it all. When the undertaker and his men had also departed, she sat down on a bench near to watch the sexton filling up the grave—Tom's grave. She was very quiet, and none but a closely observant person watching her face could have penetrated into the truth of what your impulsive characters, always in the extremes of mirth or misery, never understand about quiet people, that "still waters run deep."
While she sat there some one came past her, and turned round. It was the shabby-looking chemist's assistant, who had a appeared at the inquest, and given the satisfactory evidence which had prevented the necessity of her giving-hers.
Elizabeth rose and acknowledged him with a respectable courtesy; for under his threadbare clothes was the bearing of a gentleman, and he had been so kind to Tom.
"I am too late," he said; "the funeral is over. I meant to have attended it, and seen the last of the poor fellow."
"Thank you, Sir," replied Elizabeth, gratefully.
The young man stood before her, looking at her earnestly for a minute or two, and then exclaimed, with a complete change of voice and manner.
"Elizabeth, don't you know me? What has become of my aunt Johanna?"
It was Ascott Leaf.
But no wonder Elizabeth had not recognized him. His close cropped hair, his large beard hiding half his face, and a pair of spectacles which he had assumed, were a sufficient disguise. Besides, the great change from his former "dandy" appearance to the extreme of shabbiness; his clothes being evidently worn as long as they could possibly hold together, and his generally depressed air, giving the effect of one who had gone down in the world, made him, even without the misleading "John Smith," most unlikely to be identified with the Ascott Leaf of old.
"I never should have known you, Sir!" said Elizabeth truthfully, when her astonishment had a little subsided; "but I am very glad to see you. Oh how thankful your aunts will be!"
"Do you think so? I thought it was quite the contrary. But it does not matter; they will never hear of me unless you tell them—and I believe I may trust you. You would not betray me, if only for the sake of that poor fellow yonder?"
"No, Sir."
"Now, tell me something about my aunts, especially my aunt Johanna."
And sitting down in the sunshine, with his arms upon the back of the bench, and his hand hiding his eyes, the poor prodigal listened in silence to every thing Elizabeth told him; of his Aunt Selina's marriage and death, and of Mr. Lyon's return, and of the happy home at Liverpool.
"They are all quite happy, then?" said he, at length; "they seem to have begun to prosper ever since they got rid of me. Well, I'm glad of it. I only wanted to hear of them from you. I shall never trouble them any more. You'll keep my secret, I know. And now I must go, for I have not a minute more to spare. Good-by, Elizabeth."
With a humility and friendliness, strange enough in Ascott Leaf, he held out his hand—empty, for he had nothing to give now—to his aunt's old servant. But Elizabeth detained him.
"Don't go, Sir, please, don't; not just yet." And then she added, with an earnest respectfulness that touched the heart of the poor, shabby man, "I hope you'll pardon the liberty I take. I'm only a servant, but I knew you when you were a boy, Mr. Leaf: and if you would trust me, if you would let me be of use to you in any way—if only because you were so good to him there."
"Poor Tom Cliffe; he was not a bad fellow; he liked me rather, I think; and I was able to doctor him and help him a little. Heigh-ho; it's a comfort to think I ever did any good to any body."
Ascott sighed, drew his rusty coat sleeves across his eyes, and sat contemplating his boots, which were any thing but dandy boots now.
"Elizabeth, what relation was Tom to you? If I had known you were acquainted with him I should have been afraid to go near him; but I felt sure, though he came from Stowbury, he did not guess who I was; he only knew me as Mr. Smith; and he never once mentioned you. Was he your cousin, or what?"
Elizabeth considered a moment, and then told the simple fact; it could not matter now.
"I was once going to be married to him, but he saw somebody he liked better, and married her."
"Poor girl; poor Elizabeth?"
Perhaps nothing could have shown the great change in Ascott more than the tone in which he uttered these words; a tone of entire respect and kindly pity, from which he never once departed during that conversation, and many, many others, so long as their confidential relations lasted.
"Now, Sir, would you be so kind as to tell me something about yourself? I'll not repeat any thing to your aunts, if you don't wish it."
Ascott yielded. He had been so long, so utterly forlorn. He sat down beside Elizabeth, and then, with eyes often averted, and with many breaks between, which she had to fill up as best as she could, he told her all his story, even to the sad secret of all, which had caused him to run away from home, and hide himself in the last place where they would have thought he was, the safe wilderness of London. There, carefully disguised, he had lived decently while his money lasted, and then, driven step by step to the brink of destitution, he had offered himself for employment in the lowest grade of his own profession, and been taken as assistant by the not over scrupulous chemist and druggist in that not too respectable neighborhood of Westminster, with a salary of twenty pounds a year.
"And I actually live upon it!" added he, with a bitter smile. "I can't run into debt; for who would trust me? And I dress in rags almost, as you see. And I get my meals how and where I can; and I sleep under the shop counter. A pretty life for Mr. Ascott Leaf, isn't it now? What would my aunts say if they knew it?"
"They would say that it was an honest life, and that they were not a bit ashamed of you."
Ascott drew himself up a little, and his chest heaved visibly under the close buttoned, thread bare coat.
"Well, at least, it is a life that makes nobody else miserable."
Ay, that wonderful teacher, Adversity,
"Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,Wears yet a precious jewel in its head,"
had left behind this jewel in the young man's heart. A disguised, beggared outcast, he had found out the value of an honest name; forsaken, unfriended, he had learned the preciousness of home and love; made a servant of, tyrannized over, and held in low esteem, he had been taught by hard experience the secret of true humility and charity—the esteeming of others better than himself.
Not with all natures does misfortune so work, but it did with his. He had sinned; he had paid the cost of his sin in bitter suffering; but the result was cheaply bought, and he already began to feel that it was so.
"Yes," said he, in answer to a question of Elizabeth's, "I really am, for some things, happier than I used to be. I feel more like what I was in the old days, when I was a little chap at Stowbury. Poor old Stowbury! I often think of the place in a way that's perfectly ridiculous. Still, if any thing happened to me, I should like my aunts to know it, and that I didn't forget them."
"But, Sir," asked Elizabeth earnestly, "do you never mean to go near your aunts again?"
"I can't say; it all depends upon circumstances. I suppose," he added, "if, as is said, one's sin is sure to find one out, the same rule goes by contraries. It seems poor Cliffe once spoke of me to a district visitor, the only visitor he ever had; and this gentleman, hearing of the inquest, came yesterday to inquire about him of me; and the end was that he offered me a situation with a person he knew, a very respectable chemist in Tottenham Court Road."