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, const.i.tutes 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 a.s.surance 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 s...o...b..ry 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 G.o.d; it is the will of G.o.d."
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 G.o.d."
I have told thus much in detail the brief sad story of Hilary"s youth, to show how impossible it was that Elizabeth Hand could live in the house with these two women without being strongly influenced by them, as every person--especially every woman--influences for good or for evil every other person connected with her, or dependent upon her. Elizabeth was a girl of close observation and keen perception.
Besides, to most people, whether or not their sympathy be universal, so far as the individual is concerned, any deep affection generally lends eyes, tact, and delicacy.
Thus when on the Monday morning at breakfast Miss Selina observed, "What a fine day Mr. Lyon was having for his journey; what a lucky fellow he was; how he would be sure to make a fortune, and if so, she wondered whether they should ever see or hear any thing of him again"--Elizabeth, from the glimpse she caught of Miss Hilary"s face, and from the quiet way in which Miss Leaf merely answered, "Time will show;" and began talking to Selina about some other subject--Elizabeth resolved never in any way to make the smallest allusion to Mr. Robert Lyon. Something had happened, she did not know what; and it was not her business to find out; the family affairs, so far as she was trusted with them, were warmly her own, but into the family secrets she had no right to pry.
Yet, long after Miss Selina had ceased to "wonder" about him, or even to name him--his presence or absence did not touch her personally, and she was always the centre of her own small world of interest--the little maidservant kept in her mind, and pondered over at odd times every possible solution of the mystery of this gentleman"s sudden visit; of the long wet Sunday when he sat all day talking with her mistresses in the parlor; of the evening prayer, when Miss Leaf had twice to stop, her voice faltered so; and of the night when, long after all the others had gone to bed, Elizabeth, coming suddenly into the parlor, had found Miss Hilary sitting alone over the embers of the fire, with the saddest, saddest look! so that the girl had softly shut the door again without ever speaking to "Missis."
Elizabeth did more; which, strange as it may appear, a servant who is supposed to know nothing of any thing that has happened can often do better than a member of the family who knows every thing, and this knowledge is sometimes the most irritating consciousness a sufferer has. She followed her young mistress with a steady watchfulness, so quiet and silent that Hilary never found it out; saved her every little household care, gave her every little household treat. Not much to do, and less to be chronicled; but the way in which she did it was all.
During the long dull winter days, to come in and find the parlor fire always bright, the hearth clean swept, and the room tidy; never to enter the kitchen without the servant"s face clearing up into a smile; when her restless irritability made her forget things and grow quite vexed in the search after them, to see that somehow her shoes were never misplaced, and her gloves always came to hand in some mysterious manner--these trifles; in her first heavy days of darkness, soothed Hilary more than words could tell.
And the sight of Miss Hilary going about the house and school room as usual, with that poor white face of hers; nay, gradually bringing to the family fireside, as usual, her harmless little joke, and her merry laugh at it and herself--who shall say what lessons may not have been taught by this to the humble servant, dropping deep sown into her heart, to germinate and fructify, as her future life"s needs required?
It might have been so--G.o.d knows! He alone can know, who, through what (to us) seem the infinite littleness of our mortal existence, is educating us into the infinite greatness of His and our immortality.
CHAPTER VII.
Autumn soon lapsed into winter: Christmas came and went, bringing, not Ascott, as they hoped and he had promised, but a very serious evil in the shape of sundry bills of his, which, he confessed in a most piteous letter to his Aunt Hilary, were absolutely unpayable out of his G.o.dfather"s allowance. They were not large--or would not have seemed so to rich people--and they were for no more blamable luxuries than horse hire, and a dinner or two to friends out in the country; but they looked serious to a household which rarely was more than five pounds beforehand with the world.
He had begged Aunt Hilary to keep his secret, but that was evidently impossible; so on the day the school accounts were being written out and sent in, and their amount anxiously reckoned, she laid before her sisters the lad"s letter, full of penitence and promises: "I will be careful--I will indeed--if you will help me out this once, dear Aunt Hilary; and don"t think too ill of me. I have done nothing wicked.
And you don"t know London; you don"t know, with a lot of young fellows about one, how very hard it is to say no."
At that unlucky postscript the Misses Leaf sorrowfully exchanged looks. Little the lad thought about it; but these few words were the very sharpest pang Ascott had ever given to his aunts.
"What"s bred in the bone will come out in the flesh." "Like father like son." "The sins of the parents shall be visited on the children." So runs many a proverb: so confirms the unerring decree of a just G.o.d, who would not be a just G.o.d did He allow Himself to break His own righteous laws for the government of the universe; did He falsify the requirements of His own holy and pure being, by permitting any other wages for sin than death. And though, through His mercy, sin forsaken escapes sin"s penalty, and every human being has it in his own power to modify, if not to conquer, any hereditary moral as well as physical disease, thereby avoiding the doom and alleviating the curse, still the original law remains in force, and ought to remain, an example and a warning. As true as that every individual sin that a man commits breeds mult.i.tudes more, is it that every individual sin may transmit his own peculiar type of weakness or wickedness to a whole race, disappearing in one generation, re-appearing in another, exactly the same as physical peculiarities do, requiring the utmost caution of education to counteract the terrible tendencies of nature--the "something in the blood" which is so difficult to eradicate: which may even make the third and fourth generation execrate the memory of him or her who was its origin.
The long life-curse of Henry Leaf the elder, and Henry Leaf the younger, had been--the women of the family well knew--that they were men who "couldn"t say No." So keenly were the three sisters alive to this fault--it could hardly be called a crime, and yet in its consequences it was so--so sickening the terror of it which their own wretched experience had implanted in their minds, that during Ascott"s childhood and youth his very fractiousness and roughness, his little selfishness, and his persistence in his own will against theirs, had been hailed by his aunts as a good omen that he would grow up "so unlike his poor father."
If the two unhappy Henry Leafs--father and son--could have come out of their graves that night and beheld these three women, daughters and sisters, sitting with Ascott"s letter on the table, planning how the household"s small expenses could be contracted, its still smaller luxuries relinquished, in order that the boy might honorably pay for pleasures he might so easily have done without! If they could have seen the weight of apprehension which then sank like a stone on these long-tried hearts, never to be afterward removed: lightened sometimes, but always--however Ascott might promise and amend--always there! On such a discovery, surely, these two "poor ghosts" would have fled away moaning, wishing they had died childless, or that during their mortal lives any amount of self restraint and self compulsion had purged from their natures the accursed thing; the sin which had worked itself out in sorrow upon every one belonging to them, years after their own heads were laid in the quiet dust.
"We must do it," was the conclusion the Misses Leaf unanimously came to; even Selina; who with all her faults, had a fair share of good feeling and of that close clinging to kindred which is found in fallen households, or households whom the sacred bond of common poverty, has drawn together in a way that large, well-to-do home circles can never quite understand.
"We must not let the boy remain in debt; it would be such a disgrace to the family."
"It is not the remaining in debt, but the incurring of it, which is the real disgrace to Ascott and the family."
"Hush Hilary," said Johanna, pointing to the opening door; but it was too late.
Elizabeth, coming suddenly in--or else the ladies had been so engrossed with their conversation that they had not noticed her--had evidently heard every word of the last sentence. Her conscious face showed it; more especially the bright scarlet which covered both her cheeks when Miss Leaf said "Hush!" She stood, apparently irresolute as to whether she should run away again; and then her native honesty got the upper hand, and she advanced into the room.
"If you please, missis, I didn"t mean to--but I"ve heard--"
"What have you heard; that is, how much?"
"Just what Miss Hilary said. Don"t be afeared. I shan"t tell. I never chatter about the family. Mother told me not."
"You owe a great deal, Elizabeth, to your good mother. Now go away."
"And another time." said Miss Selina, "knock at the door."
This was Elizabeth"s first initiation into what many a servant has to share--the secret burden of the family. After that day, though they did not actually confide in her, her mistresses used no effort to conceal that they had cares; that the domestic economies must, this winter, be especially studied; there must be no extra fires, no candles left burning to waste; and once a week or so, a few b.u.t.terless breakfasts or meatless dinners must be partaken of cheerfully, in both parlor and kitchen. The Misses Leaf never stinted their servant in any thing in which they did not stint themselves.
Strange to say, in spite of Miss Selina"s prophecies, the girl"s respectful conduct did not abate: on the contrary, it seemed to increase. The nearer she was lifted to her mistress"s level, the more her mind grew, so that she could better understand her mistresses cares, and the deeper her consciousness of the only thing which gives one human being any real authority over another--personal character.
Therefore, though the family means were narrowed, and the family luxuries few, Elizabeth cheerfully put up with all; she even felt a sort of pride in wasting nothing and in making the best of every thing, as the others did. Perhaps, it may be said she was an exceptional servant; and yet I would not do her cla.s.s the wrong to believe so-I would rather believe that there are many such among it; many good, honest, faithful girls, who only need good mistresses unto whom to be honest and faithful, and they would be no less so than Elizabeth Hand.
The months went by--heavy and anxious months; for the school gradually dwindled away, and Ascott"s letter--now almost the only connection his aunts had with the outer world, for poverty necessarily diminished even their small s...o...b..ry society--became more and more unsatisfactory; and the want of information in them was not supplied by those other letters which had once kept Johanna"s heart easy concerning the boy.
Mr. Lyon had written once before sailing, nay, after sailing, for he had sent it home by the pilot from the English Channel; then there was, of course, silence. October, November, December, January, February, March--how often did Hilary count the months, and wonder how soon a letter would come, whether a letter ever would come again.
And sometimes--the sharp present stinging her with its small daily pains, the future looking dark before her and them all--she felt so forlorn, so forsaken, that but for a certain tiny well-spring of hope, which rarely dries up till long after three-and twenty, she could have sat down and sighed, "My good days are done."