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 s.e.xton 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 a.s.sistant, 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 a.s.sumed, 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 s...o...b..ry, 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 dest.i.tution, he had offered himself for employment in the lowest grade of his own profession, and been taken as a.s.sistant 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 b.u.t.toned, thread bare coat.
"Well, at least, it is a life that makes n.o.body 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 s...o...b..ry. Poor old s...o...b..ry! 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 circ.u.mstances. 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."
"And shall you go?"
"To be sure. I"ve learned to be thankful for small mercies. n.o.body will find me out or recognize me. You didn"t. Who knows? I may even have the honor of dispensing drugs to Uncle Ascott of Russell Square."
"But," said Elizabeth, after a pause, "you will not always remain as John Smith, druggist"s shopman, throwing away all your good education, position, and name?"
"Elizabeth," said he, in a humbled tone, "how dare I ever resume my own name and get back my rightful position while Peter Ascott lives?
Can you or any body point out a way?"
She thought the question over in her clear head; clear still, even at this hour, when she had to think for others, though all personal feeling and interest were buried in that grave over which the s.e.xton was now laying the turf that would soon grow smoothly green.
"If I might advise, Mr. Leaf, I should say, save up all your money, and then go, just as you are, with an honest, bold front, right into my master"s house, with the fifty pounds in your hand--"
"By Jove, you"ve hit it!" cried Ascott, starting up. "What a thing a woman"s head is! I"ve turned over scheme after scheme, but I never once thought of any thing so simple as that. Bravo, Elizabeth! You"re a remarkable woman."
She smiled--a very sad smile--but still she felt glad. Any thing that she could possibly do for any creature belonging to her dear mistresses seemed to this faithful servant the natural and bounden duty of her life.
Long after the young man, whose mercurial temperament no trouble could repress, had gone away in excellent spirits, leaving her an address where she could always find him, and give him regular news of his aunts, though he made her promise to give them, as yet, no tidings in return, Elizabeth sat still, watching the sun decline and the shadows lengthen over the field of graves. In the calmness and beauty of this solitary place an equal calm seemed to come over her; a sense of how wonderfully events had linked themselves together and worked themselves out; how even poor Tom"s mournful death had brought about this meeting, which might end in restoring to her beloved mistresses their lost sheep, their outcast, miserable boy. She did not reason the matter out, but she felt it, and felt that in making her in some degree His instrument G.o.d had been very good to her in the midst of her desolation.
It seemed Elizabeth"s lot always to have to put aside her own troubles for the trouble of somebody else. Almost immediately after Tom Cliffe"s death her little Henry fell ill with scarlatina and remained for many months in a state of health so fragile as to engross all her thought and care. It was with difficulty that she contrived a few times to go for Henry"s medicines to the shop where "John Smith" served.
She noticed that every time he looked healthier, brighter, freer from that aspect of broken-down respectability which had touched her so much. He did not dress any better, but still "the gentleman" in him could never be hidden or lost, and he said his master treated him "like a gentleman," which was apparently a pleasant novelty.
"I have some time to myself also. Shop shuts at nine, and I get up at 5 A. M.--bless us! what would my Aunt Hilary say? And it"s not for nothing. There are more ways than one of turning an honest penny, when a young fellow really sets about it. Elizabeth, you used to be a literary character yourself; look into the ---- and the ----,"
(naming two popular magazines), "and if you find a series of especially clever papers on sanitary reform, and so on, I did "em:"