Mistress and Maid Part 12

"I dunnot--mean--to leave."

Elizabeth threw out the words like pellets, in a choked fashion, and disappeared suddenly from the parlor.

"Who would have thought it!" exclaimed Selina; "I declare the girl was crying."

No mistake about that; though when, a few minutes after, Miss Hilary entered the kitchen, Elizabeth tried in a hurried, shamefaced way to hide her tears by being very busy over something. Her mistress took no notice, but began, as usual on washing days, to a.s.sist in various domestic matters, in the midst of which she said, quietly, "And so, Elizabeth, you would really like to go to London?"

"No! I shouldn't like it at all; never said I should. But if you go, I shall go too; though Missis is so ready to get shut o' me."

"It was for your own good, you know."

"You always said it was for a girl's good to stop in one place; and if you think I'm going to another. I aren't that's all."

Rude as the form of the speech was--almost the first rude speech that Elizabeth had ever made to Miss Hilary, and which, under other circ.u.mstances she would have felt bound severely to reprove--the mistress pa.s.sed it over. That which lay beneath it, the sharpness of wounded love, touched her heart. She felt that, for all the girl's rough manner, it would have been hard to go into her London kitchen and meet a strange London face, instead of that fond homely one of Elizabeth Hand's.

Still, she thought it right to explain to her that London life might have many difficulties, that; for the present at least, her wages could not be raised, and the family might at first be in even more straitened circ.u.mstances than they were at s...o...b..ry.

"Only at first, though, for I hope to find plenty of pupils, and by-and-by our nephew will get into practice."

"Is it on account of him you're going, Miss Hilary?"

"Chiefly."

Elizabeth gave a grunt which said as plainly as words could say, "I thought so;" and relapsed into what she, no doubt, believed to be virtuous indignation, but which, as it was testified against the wrong parties, was open to the less favorable interpretation of ill humor--a small injustice not uncommon with us all.

I do not pretend to paint this young woman as a perfect character.

She had her fierce dislikes as well as her strong fidelities; her faults within and without, which had to be struggled with, as all of us have to struggle to the very end of our days. Oftentimes not till the battle is high over--sometimes not till it is quite over--does G.o.d give us the victory.

Without more discussion on either side, it was agreed that Elizabeth should accompany her mistresses. Even Mrs. Hand seemed to be pleased thereat, her only doubt being lest her daughter should meet and be led astray by that bad woman, Mrs. Cliffe, Tommy Cliffe's mother, who was reported to have gone to London. But Miss Hilary explained that this meeting was about as probable as the rencontre of two needles in a hay-rick; and besides, Elizabeth was not the sort of girl to be easily "led astray" by any body.

"No, no; her's a good wench, though I says it," replied the mother, who was too hard worked to have much sentiment to spare. "I wish the little 'uns may take pattern by our Elizabeth. You'll send her home, may be, in two or three years' time, to let us have a look at her?"

Miss Hilary promised, and then took her way back through the familiar old town--so soon to be familiar no more--thinking anxiously, in spite of herself, upon those two or three years, and what they might bring.

It happened to be a notable day--that sunshiny 28th of June--when the little, round-cheeked damsel, who is a grandmother now, had the crown of three kingdoms first set upon her youthful head; and s...o...b..ry, like every other town in the land, was a perfect bower of green arches, garlands, banners; white covered tables were spread in the open air down almost every street, where poor men dined, or poor women drank tea; and every body was out and abroad, looking at or sharing in the holiday' making, wild with merriment, and br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with pa.s.sionate loyalty to the Maiden Queen.

That day is now twenty-four years ago; but all those who remember it must own there never has been a day like it, when, all over the country, every man's heart throbbed with chivalrous devotion, every woman's with womanly tenderness, toward this one royal girl, who, G.o.d bless her! has lived to retain and deserve it all.

Hilary called for, and protected through the crowd, the little, timid, widow lady who had taken off the Misses Leaf's hands their house and furniture, and whom they had made very happy--as the poor often can make those still poorer than themselves--by refusing to accept any thing for the "good will" of the school. Then she was fetched by Elizabeth, who had been given a whole afternoon's holiday; and mistress and maid went together home, watching the last of the festivities, the chattering groups that still lingered in the twilight streets, and listening to the merry notes of the "Triumph"

which came down through the lighted windows of the Town Hall, where the open-air tea drinkers had adjourned to dance country dances, by civic permission, and in perfectly respectable jollity.

"I wonder," said Hilary--while, despite some natural regret, her spirit stretched itself out eagerly from the narrowness of the place where she was born into the great wide world; the world where so many grand things were thought and written and done; the world Robert Lyon had so long fought with, and was fighting bravely still--"I wonder, Elizabeth, what sort of place London is, and what our life will be in it?"

Elizabeth said nothing. For the moment her face seemed to catch the reflected glow of her mistress's, and then it settled down into that look of mingled resistance and resolution which was habitual to her.

For the life that was to be, which neither knew--oh, if they had known!--she also was prepared.

CHAPTER IX.

The day of the Grand Hegira came.

"I remember," said Miss Leaf, as they rumbled for the last time through the empty morning streets of poor old s...o...b..ry: "I remember my grandmother telling me that when my grandfather was courting her, and she out of coquetry refused him, he set off on horseback to London, and she was so wretched to think of all the dangers he ran on the journey, and in London itself, that she never rested till she got him back, and then immediately married him."

"No such catastrophe is likely to happen to any of us, except, perhaps, to Elizabeth," said Miss Hilary, trying to get up, a little feeble mirth, any thing to pa.s.s away the time and lessen the pain of parting, which was almost too much for Johanna. "What do you say? Do you mean to get married in London, Elizabeth?"

But Elizabeth could make no answer, even to kind Miss Hilary. They had not imagined she felt the leaving her native place so much. She had watched intently the last glimpse of s...o...b..ry church tower, and now sat with reddened eyes, staring blankly out of the carriage window,

"Silent as a stone."

Once or twice a large slow tear gathered on each of her eyes, but it was shaken off angrily from the high check bones, and never settled into absolute crying. They thought it best to take no notice of her.

Only, when reaching the new small station, where the "resonant steam eagles" were, for the first time, beheld by the innocent s...o...b..ry ladies, there arose a discussion as to the manner of traveling. Miss Leaf said, decidedly "Second cla.s.s; and then we can keep Elizabeth with us." Upon which Elizabeth's mouth melted into something between a quiver and a smile.

Soon it was all over, and the little house-hold was compressed into the humble second cla.s.s carriage, cheerless and cushionless, whirling through indefinite England in a way that confounded all their geography and topography. Gradually as the day darkened into heavy, chilly July rain, the scarcely kept up spirits of the four pa.s.sengers began to sink. Johanna grew very white and worn, Selina became, to use Ascott's phrase, "as cross as two sticks," and even Hilary, turning her eyes from the gray sodden looking landscape without, could find no spot of comfort to rest on within the carriage, except that round rosy face of Elizabeth Hand's.

Whether it was from the spirit of contradiction existing in most such natures, which, especially in youth, are more strong than sweet, or from a better feeling, the fact was noticeable, that when every one else's spirits went down Elizabeth's went up. Nothing could bring her out of a "grumpy" fit so satisfactorily as her mistresses falling into one. When Miss Selina now began to fidget hither and thither, each tone of her fretful voice seeming to go through her eldest sister's every nerve, till even Hilary said, impatiently, "Oh, Selina, can't you be quiet?" then Elizabeth rose from the depth of her gloomy discontent up to the surface immediately.

She was only a servant; but Nature bestows that strange vague thing that we term "force of character" independently of position. Hilary often remembered afterward, how much more comfortable the end of the journey was than she had expected--how Johanna lay at ease, with her feet in Elizabeth's lap, wrapped in Elizabeth's best woolen shawl; and how, when Selina's whole attention was turned to an ingenious contrivance with a towel and fork and Elizabeth's basket, for stopping the rain out of the carriage roof--she became far less disagreeable, and even a little proud of her own cleverness. And so there was a temporary lull in Hilary's cares, and she could sit quiet, with her eyes fixed on the rainy landscape, which she did not see, and her thoughts wandering toward that unknown place and unknown life into which they were sweeping, as we all sweep, ignorantly, unresistingly, almost unconsciously, into new destinies. Hilary, for the first time, began to doubt of theirs. Anxious as she had been to go to London, and wise as the proceeding appeared, now that the die was cast and the cable cut, the old simple, peaceful life at s...o...b..ry grew strangely dear.

"I wonder if we shall ever go back again, or what is to happen to us before we do go back," she thought, and turned, with a half defined fear, toward her eldest sister, who looked so old and fragile beside that st.u.r.dy, healthful servant girl. "Elizabeth!" Elizabeth, rubbing Miss Leaf's feet, started at the unwonted sharpness of Miss Hilary's tone.

"There; I'll do that for my sister. Go and look out of the window at London."

For the great smoky cloud which began to rise in the rainy horizon was indeed London. Soon through the thickening nebula of houses they converged to what was then the nucleus of all railway traveling, the Euston Terminus, and were hustled on to the platform, and jostled helplessly to and fro these poor country ladies! Anxiously they scanned the crowd of strange faces for the one only face they knew in the great metropolis--which did not appear.

"It is very strange; very wrong of Ascott. Hilary, you surely told him the hour correctly. For once, at least, he might have been in time"

So chafed Miss Selina, while Elizabeth, who by some miraculous effort of intuitive genius, had succeeded in collecting the luggage, was now engaged in defending it from all comers, especially porters, and making of it a comfort able seat for Miss Leaf.

"Nay, have patience, Selina. We will give him just five minutes more, Hilary."

And Johanna sat down, with her sweet, calm, long suffering face turned upward to that younger one, which was, as youth is apt to be, hot, and worried, and angry. And so they waited till the terminus was almost deserted, and the last cab had driven off, when, suddenly, dashing up the station yard out of another, came Ascott.

He was so sorry, so very sorry, downright grieved, at having kept his aunts waiting. But his watch was wrong--some fellows at dinner detained him--the train was before its time surely. In fact, his aunts never quite made out what the excuse was; but they looked into his bright handsome face, and their wrath melted like clouds before the sun. He was so gentlemanly, so well dressed--much better dressed than even at s...o...b..ry--and he seemed so unfeignedly glad to see them.

He handed them all into the cab--even Elizabeth. though whispering meanwhile to his Aunt Hilary, "What on earth did you bring her for?"

and their was just going to leap on to the box himself, when he stopped to ask "Where he should tell cabby to drive to?"

"Where to?" repeated his aunts in undisguised astonishment. They had never thought of any thing but of being taken home at once by their boy.

"You see," Ascott said, in a little confusion, "you wouldn't be comfortable with me. A young fellow's lodgings are not like a house of one's own, and, besides--"

"Besides, when a young fellow is ashamed of his old aunts, he can easily find reasons."

"Hush, Selina!" interposed Miss Leaf. "My dear boy, your old aunts would never let you inconvenience yourself for them. Take us to an inn for the night, and to morrow we will find lodgings for ourselves."

Ascott looked greatly relieved.

"And you are not vexed with me, Aunt Johanna?" said he, with something of his old childish tone of compunction, as he saw--he could not help seeing--the utter weariness which Johanna tried so hard to hide.