"Very well; just as you like. I do believe you are afraid of my turning forger."
He b.u.t.toned his coat with a half sulky, half defiant air, left his supper untasted, and disappeared.
It was midnight before he returned. His aunts were still sitting up, imagining all sorts of horrors, in an anxiety too great for words; but when Hilary ran to the door, with the natural "Oh, Ascott, where have you been?" he pushed her aside with a gesture that was almost fierce in its repulsion.
"Where have I been? taking a walk round the Park; that"s all. Can"t I come and go as I like, without being pestered by women? I"m horribly tired. Let me alone--do!"
They did let him alone. Deeply wounded, Aunt Johanna took no further notice of him than to set his chair a little closer to the fire, and Aunt Hilary slipped down stairs for more coals. There she found Elizabeth, who they thought had long since gone to bed, sitting on the stairs, very sleepy, but watching still.
"Is he come in?" she asked; "because there are more bailiffs after him. I"m sure of it; I saw them."
This, then, might account for his keeping out of the way till after twelve o"clock, and also for his wild, haggard look. Hilary put aside her vague dread of some new misfortune; a.s.sured Elizabeth that all was right; he had got wherewithal to pay every body on Monday morning, and would be safe till then. All debtors were safe on Sunday.
"Go to bed now--there"s a good girl; it is hard that you should be troubled with our troubles."
Elizabeth looked up with those fond gray eyes of hers. She was but a servant, and yet looks like these engraved themselves ineffaceably on her mistress"s heart, imparting the comfort that all pure love gives from any one human being to another.
And love has its wonderful rights and rewards. Perhaps Elizabeth, who thought herself nothing at all to her mistress, would have marveled to know how much closer her mistress felt to this poor, honest, loving girl, whose truth she believed in, and on whose faithfulness she implicitly depended, than toward her own flesh and blood, who sat there moodily over the hearth; deeply pitied, sedulously cared for, but as for being confided in relied on, in great matters or small, his own concerns or theirs--the thing was impossible.
They could not even ask him--they dared not, in such a strange mood was he--the simple question, Had he seen Mr. Ascott, and had Mr.
Ascott been annoyed about the check? It would not have been referred to at all had not Hilary, in holding his coat to dry, taken his pocket book out of the breast pocket, when he s.n.a.t.c.hed at it angrily.
"What are you meddling with my things for? Do you want to get at the check, and be peering at it to see if it"s all right? But you can"t; I"ve paid it away. Perhaps you"d like to know who to? Then you shan"t. I"ll not be accountable to you for all my proceedings. I"ll not be treated like a baby. You"d better mind what you are about, Aunt Hilary."
Never, in all his childish naughtiness, or boyish impertinence, had Ascott spoken to her in such a tone. She regarded him at first with simple astonishment, then hot indignation, which spurred her on to stand up for her dignity, and not submit to be insulted by her own nephew. But then came back upon her her own doctrine, taught by her own experience, that character and conduct alone const.i.tutes real dignity or authority. She had, in point of fact, no authority over him; no one can have, not even parents, over a young man of his age, except that personal influence which is the strongest sway of all.
She said only, with a quietness that surprised herself--"You mistake, Ascott; I have no wish to interfere with you whatever; you are your own master, and must take your own course. I only expect from you the ordinary respect that a gentleman shows to a lady. You must be very tired and ill, or you would not have forgotten that."
"I didn"t; or, if I did, I beg your pardon," said he, half subdued.
"When are you going to bed?"
"Directly. Shall I light your candle also?"
"Oh no; not for the world; I couldn"t sleep a wink. I"d go mad if I went to bed. I think I"ll turn out and have a cigar."
His whole manner was so strange that his Aunt Johanna, who had sat aloof, terribly grieved, but afraid to interfere, was moved to rise up and go over to him.
"Ascott, my dear, you are looking quite ill. Be advised by your old auntie. Go to bed at once, and forget every thing till morning."
"I wish I could; I wish I could. Oh, Auntie, Auntie!"
He caught hold of her hand, which she had laid upon his head, looked up a minute into her kind, fond face, and burst into a flood of boyish tears.
Evidently his troubles had been too much for him; he was in a state of great excitement. For some minutes his sobs were almost hysterical: then by a struggle he recovered him-self, seemed exceedingly annoyed and ashamed, took up his candle, bade them a hurried goodnight, and went to bed.
That is, he went to his room; but they heard him moving about overhead for a long while after: nor were they surprised that he refused to rise next morning, but lay most of the time with his door locked, until late in the afternoon, when he went out for a long walk, and did not return till supper, which he ate almost in silence.
Then, after going up to his room, and coming down again, complaining bitterly how very cold it was, he crept in to the fireside with a book in his hand, of which Hilary noticed he scarcely read a line.
His aunts said nothing to him; they had determined not: they felt that further interference would be not only useless but dangerous.
"He will come to himself by-and by; his moods, good or bad, never last long, you know," said Hilary, somewhat bitterly. "But, in the mean time, I think we had better just do as he says--let him alone."
And in that sad, hopeless state they pa.s.sed the last hours of that dreary Sunday--afraid either to comfort him or reason with him; afraid, above all, to blame him lest it might drive him altogether astray. That he was in a state of great misery, halt sullen, half defiant, they saw, and were scarcely surprised at it; it was very hard not to be able to open their loving hearts to him, as those of one family should always do, making every trouble a common care, and every joy a universal blessing. But in his present state of mind--the sudden obstinacy of a weak nature conscious of its weakness, and dreading control--it seemed impossible either to break upon his silence or to force his confidence.
They might have been right in this, or wrong; afterward Hilary thought the latter. Many a time she wished and wished, with a bitter regret, that instead of the quiet "Good night, Ascott!" and the one rather cold kiss on his forehead, she had flung her arms round his neck, and insisted on his telling out his whole mind to her, his nearest kinswoman, who had been half aunt and half sister to him all his life. But it was not done: she parted from him, as she did Sunday after Sunday, with a sore sick feeling of how much he might be to her, to them all, and how little he really was.
If this silence of hers was a mistake--one of those mistakes which sensitive people sometimes make--it was, like all similar errors, only too sorrowfully remembered and atoned for.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The week pa.s.sed by, and Hilary received no ill tidings from home.
Incessant occupation kept her from dwelling too much on anxious subjects: besides, she would not have thought it exactly right, while her time and her mental powers were for so many hours per diem legally Miss Balquidder"s, to waste the one and weaken the other by what is commonly called "fretting." Nor, carrying this conscientious duty to a higher degree, and toward a higher Master, would she have dared to sit grieving overmuch over their dark future. And yet it was very dark. She pondered over what was to be done with Ascott, or whether he was still to be left to the hopeless hope of doing something for himself: how long the little establishment at No. 15 could be kept together, or if, after Selina"s marriage, it would not be advisable to make some change that should contract expenses, and prevent this hard separation, from Monday to Sat.u.r.day, between Johanna and herself.
These, with equally anxious thoughts, attacked her in crowds every day and every hour; but she had generally sufficient will to put them aside: at least till after work was done, and they could neither stupefy nor paralyze her. Trouble had to her been long enough familiar to have taught her its own best lesson--that the mind can, in degree, rule itself, even as it rules the body.
Thus, in her business duties, which were princ.i.p.ally keeping accounts; in her management of the two young people under her, and of the small domestic establishment connected with the shop, Hilary went steadily on, day after day; made no blunders in her arithmetic, no mistakes in her housekeeping. Being new to all her responsibilities, she had to give her whole mind to them; and she did it: and it was a blessing to her--the sanctified blessing which rests upon labor, almost seeming to neutralize its primeval curse.
But night after night, when work was over, she sat alone at her sewing--the only time she had for it--and her thoughts went faster than her needle. She turned over plan after plan, and went back upon hope after hope, that had risen and broken like waves of the sea--nothing happening that she had expected; the only thing which had happened, or which seemed to have any permanence or reality, being two things which she had never expected at all--Selina"s marriage, and her own engagement with Miss Balquidder. It often happens so, in most people"s lives, until at last they learn to live on from day to day, doing each day"s duty within the day, and believing that it is a righteous as well as a tender hand which keeps the next day"s page safely folded down.
So Hilary sat, glad to have a quiet hour, not to grieve in, but to lay out the details of a plan which had been maturing in her mind all week, and which she meant definitely to propose to Johanna when she went home next day. It would cost her something to do so, and she had had some hesitations as to the scheme itself, until at last she threw them all to the winds, as an honest-hearted, faithful and faithfully-trusting woman would. Her plan was, that they should write to the only real friend the family had--the only good man she believed in--stating plainly their troubles and difficulties about their nephew; asking his advice, & possibly his help. He might know of something--some opening for a young surgeon in India, or some temporary appointment for the voyage out and home, which might catch Ascott"s erratic and easily attracted fancy: give him occupation for the time being, and at least detach him from his present life, with all its temptations and dangers.
Also, it might result in bringing the boy again under that influence which had been so beneficial to him while it lasted, and which Hilary devoutly believed was the best influence in the world. Was it unnatural, if, mingled with an earnest desire for Ascott"s good, was an under-lying delight that that good should be done to him by Robert Lyon?
So when her plan was made, even to the very words in which she meant to unfold it to Johanna, and the very form in which Johanna should write the letter, she allowed herself a few brief minutes to think of him--Robert Lyon--to call up his eyes, his voice, his smile; to count, for the hundreth time, how many months--one less than twenty-four, so she could not say years now--it would be before he returned to England. Also, to speculate when and where they would first meet, and how he would speak the one word--all that was needful to change "liking" into "love," and "friend" into "wife."
They had so grown together during so many years not the less so during these years of absence, that it seemed as if such a change would hardly make any difference. And yet--and yet--as she sat and sewed, wearied with her day"s labors, sad and perplexed, she thought--if only, by some strange magic, Robert Lyon were standing opposite, holding open his arms, ready and glad to take her and all her cares to his heart, how she would cling there! how closely she would creep to him, weeping with joy and content, neither afraid nor ashamed to let him see how dearly she loved him!
Only a dream! ah, only a dream! and she started from it at the sharp sound of the doorbell--started, blushing and trembling, as if it had been Robert Lyon himself, when she knew it was only her two young a.s.sistants whom she had allowed to go out to tea in the neighborhood.
So she settled herself to her work again; put all her own thoughts by in their little private corners, and waited for the entrance and the harmless gossip of these two orphan girls, who were already beginning to love her, and make a friend of her, and toward whom she felt herself quite an elderly and responsible person. Poor little Hilary!
It seemed to be her lot always to take care of somebody or other.
Would it ever be that any body should take care of her?
So she cleared away some of her needlework, stirred the fire, which was dropping hollow and dull, and looked up pleasantly to the opening door. But it was not the girls: it was a man"s foot and a man"s voice.
"Any person of the name of Leaf living here? I wish to see her, on business."
At another time she would have laughed at the manner and words, as if it were impossible so great a gentleman as Mr. Ascott could want to see so small a person as the "person of the name of Leaf," except on business. But now she was startled by his appearance at all. She sprang up only able to articulate "My sister--"
"Don"t be frightened; your sisters are quite well. I called at No. 15 an hour ago."
"You saw them?"
"No; I thought it unadvisable, under the circ.u.mstances."
"What circ.u.mstances?"
"I will explain, if you will allow me to sit down; bah! I"ve brought in sticking to me a straw out of that confounded shaky old cab. One ought never to be so stupid as to go any where except in one"s own carriage. This is rather a small room, Miss Hilary."