Mistress and Maid Part 15

"Confound you! no! Yes; stop." And the young man took a furtive investigation of the plain, honest face, and not over-graceful, ultra-provincial figure, which still characterized his aunt's "South Sea Islander."

"I say, Elizabeth, I want you to do something for me." He spoke so civilly, almost coaxingly, that Elizabeth turned round surprised.

"Would you just go and ask the landlady if she has got such thing as a latch key?"

"A what, Sir?"

"A latch-key--a--oh, she knows. Every London house has it. Tell her I'll take care of it, and lock the front door all right. She needn't be afraid of thieves."

"Very well, Sir."

Elizabeth went, but shortly reappeared with the information that Mrs.

Jones had gone to bed: in the kitchen, she supposed, as she could not get in. But she laid on the table the large street door key.

"Perhaps that's what you wanted, Mr. Leaf. Though I think you needn't be the least afraid of robbers, for there's three bolts, and a chain besides."

"All right!" cried Ascott, smothering down a laugh. "Thank you!

That's for you," throwing a half-crown across the table.

Elizabeth took it up demurely, and put it down again. Perhaps she did not like him enough to receive presents from him; perhaps she thought, being an honest minded girl, that a young man who could not pay his rent had no business to be giving away half-crowns; or else she herself had not been so much as many servants are, in the habit of taking them. For Miss Hilary had put into Elizabeth some of her own feeling as to this habit of paying an inferior with money for any little civility or kindness which, from an equal, would be accepted simply as kindness, and only requited with thanks. Any how, the coin remained on the table, and the door was just shutting upon Elizabeth, when the young gentleman turned round again.

"I say, since my aunts are so horridly timid of robbers and such like, you'd better not tell them any thing about the latch-key."

Elizabeth stood a minute perplexed, and then replied briefly: "Miss Hilary isn't a bit timid; and I always tells Miss Hilary every thing."

Nevertheless, though she was so ignorant as never to have heard of a latch-key, she had the wit to see that all was not right. She even lay awake, in her closet off Miss Leaf's room, whence she could hear the murmur of her two mistresses talking together, long after they retired--lay broad awake for an hour or more, trying to put things together--the sad things that she felt certain must have happened that day, and wondering what Mr. Ascott could possibly want with the key. Also, why he had asked her about it, instead of telling his aunts at once; and why he had treated her in the matter with such astonishing civility.

It may be said a servant had no business to think about these things, to criticize her young master's proceedings, or wonder why her mistresses were sad: that she had only to go about her work like an automaton, and take no interest in any thing. I can only answer to those who like such service, let them have it: and as they sow they will a.s.suredly reap. But long after Elizabeth, young and hearty, was soundly snoring on her hard, cramped bed, Johanna and Hilary Leaf, after a brief mutual pretence of sleep, soon discovered by both, lay consulting together over ways and means. How could the family expenses, beginning with twenty-five shillings per week as rent, possibly be met by the only actual certain family income, their 50 per annum from a mortgage? For the Misses Leaf were or that old-fashioned stamp which believed that to reckon an income by mere probabilities is either insanity or dishonesty.

Common arithmetic soon proved that this 50 a year could not maintain them; in fact they must soon draw on the little sum--already dipped into to-day, for Ascott--which had been produced by the sale of the s...o...b..ry furniture. That sale, they now found had been a mistake; and they half feared whether the whole change from s...o...b..ry to London had not been a mistake--one of those sad errors in judgment which we all commit sometimes, and have to abide by, and make the best of, and learn from if we can. Happy those who "Dinna greet ower spilt milk"--a proverb wise as cheerful, which Hilary, knowing well who it came from, repeated to Johanna to comfort her--teaches a second brave lesson, how to avoid spilling the milk a second time. And then they consulted anxiously about what was to be done to earn money.

Teaching presented itself as the only resource. In those days women's work and women's rights had not been discussed so freely as at present. There was a strong feeling that the princ.i.p.al thing required was our duties--owed to ourselves, our home, our family and friends.

There was a deep conviction--now, alas! slowly disappearing--that a woman, single or married, should never throw herself out of the safe circle of domestic life till the last extremity of necessity; that it is wiser to keep or help to keep a home, by learning how to expend its income, cook its dinners, make and mend its clothes, and, by the law that "prevention is better than cure," studying all those preservative means of holding a family together--as women, and women alone, can--than to dash into men's sphere of trades and professions, thereby, in most instances, fighting an unequal battle, and coming out of it maimed, broken, uns.e.xed; turned into beings that are neither men nor women, with the faults and corresponding sufferings of both, and the compensations of neither.

"I don't see," said poor Hilary, "what I can do but teach. And oh, if I could only get daily pupils, so that I might come home or nights, and creep into the fireside; and have time to mend the stockings and look after Ascott's linen, that he need not be so awfully extravagant."

CHAPTER XI.

Aunt Hilary fixed her honest eyes on the lad's face--the lad, so little younger than herself, and yet who at tunes, when he let out sayings such as this, seemed so awfully, so pitifully old; and she felt thankful that, at all risks and costs, they had come to London to be beside him, to help him, to save him, if he needed saving, as women only can. For, after all, he was but a boy. And though as he walked by her side, stalwart and manly, the thought smote her painfully that many a young fellow of his age was the stay and bread winner of some widowed mother or sister, nay even of wife and child, still she repeated cheerfully. "What can one expect from him? He is only a boy."

G.o.d help the women who, for those belonging to them--husbands, fathers, brothers, lovers, sons--have ever so tenderly to apologize.

When they came in sight of St. Pancras's Church, Ascott said, suddenly, "I think you'll knew your way now, Aunt Hilary."

"Certainly. Why?"

"Because--you wouldn't be vexed if I left you? I have an engagement; some fellows that I dine with, out at Hampstead, or Richmond, or Blackwell, every Sunday. Nothing wicked, I a.s.sure you. And you know it's capital for one's health to get a Sunday in fresh air."

"Yes; but Aunt Johanna will be sorry to miss you."

"Will she? Oh, you'll smooth her down. Stay! Tell her I shall be back to tea."

"We shall be having tea directly."

"I declare I had quite forgotten. Aunt Hilary, you must change your hours. They don't suit me at all. No men can ever stand early dinners. By, by! You are the very prettiest auntie. Be sure you get home safe. Hollo, there! That's my omnibus."

He jumped on the top of it, and was off.

Aunt Hilary stood quite confounded, and with one of those strange sinkings of the heart which had come over her several times this day.

It was not that Ascott showed any unkindness--that there was any actual badness in his bright and handsome young face. Still there was a want there--want of earnestness, steadfastness, truthfulness, a something more discoverable as the lack of something else than as aught in itself tangibly and perceptibly wrong. It made her sad; it caused her to look forward to his future with an anxious heart. It was so different from the kind of anxiety, and yet settled repose, with which she thought of the only other man in whose future she felt the smallest interest. Of Robert Lyon, she was certain that whatever misfortune visited him he would bear it in the best way it could be borne; whatever temptation a.s.sailed him he would fight against it as a brave and good Christian should fight. But Ascott?

Ascott's life was as yet an unanswered query. She could but leave it in Omnipotent hands.

So she found her way home, asking it once or twice of civil policemen, and going a little distance round--dare I make this romantic confession about so sensible and practical a little woman?--that she might walk once up Burton Street and down again. But n.o.body knew the fact, and it did n.o.body any harm.

Meantime at No 15 the afternoon had pa.s.sed heavily enough. Miss Selina had gone to lie down; she always did of Sundays, and Elizabeth, after making her comfortable, by the little attentions the lady always required, had descended to the dreary wash house, which had been appropriated to herself, under the name of a "private kitchen," in the which, after all the cleanings and improvements she could achieve, sat like Marius among the rains of Carthage, and sighed for the tidy bright house place at s...o...b..ry. Already, from her brief experience, she had decided that London people were horrid shams, because they did not in the least care to have their kitchens comfortable. She wondered how she should ever exist in this one, and might have carried her sad and sullen face up stairs, if Miss Leaf had not come down stairs, and glancing about with that ever gentle smile of hers, said kindly, "Well, it is not very pleasant, but you have made the best of it, Elizabeth. We must all put up with something, you know. Now, as my eyes are not very good to-day, suppose you come up and read me a chapter."

So, in the quiet parlor, the maid sat down opposite her mistress, and read aloud out of that Book which says distinctly: "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as unto Christ: knowing, that whatsoever good thing a man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free."

And yet says immediately after: "Ye masters, to the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him."

And I think that Master whom Paul served, not in preaching only, but also in practice, when he sent back the slave Onesimus to Philemon, praying that he might be received, "no' now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved," that Divine Master must have looked tenderly upon these two women--both women, though of such different age and position, and taught them through His Spirit in His word, as only He can teach.

The reading was disturbed by a carriage driving up to the door, and a knock, a tremendously grand and forcible footman's knock, which made Miss Leaf start in her easy chair.

"But it can't be visitors to us. We know n.o.body. Sit still, Elizabeth."

It was a visitor, however, though by what ingenuity he found them out remained, when they came to think of it, a great puzzle. A card was sent in by the dirty servant of Mrs. Jones, speedily followed by a stout, bald headed, round faced man--I suppose I ought to write "gentleman"--in whom, though she had not seen him for years, Miss Leaf found no difficulty in recognizing the grocer's prentice boy, now Mr. Peter Ascott, of Russell Square.

She rose to receive him: there was always a stateliness in Miss Leaf's reception of strangers; a slight formality belonging to her own past generation, and to the time when the Leafs were a "county family." Perhaps this extra dignity, graceful as it was, overpowered the little man; or else, being a bachelor, he was unaccustomed to ladies' society: but he grew red in the face, twiddled his hat, and then cast a sharp inquisitive glance toward her.

"Miss Leaf, I presume, ma'am. The eldest?"

"I am the eldest Miss Leaf, and very glad to have an opportunity of thanking you for your long kindness to my nephew. Elizabeth, give Mr.

Ascott a chair."

While doing so, and before her disappearance, Elizabeth took a rapid observation of the visitor, whose name and history were perfectly familiar to her. Most small towns have their hero, and s...o...b..ry's was Peter Ascott, the grocer's boy, the little fellow who had gone up to London to seek his fortune, and had, strange to say, found it.

Whether by industry or luck--except that industry is luck, and luck is only another word for industry--he had gradually risen to be a large city merchant, a dry-salter I conclude it would be called, with a handsome house, carriage, etc. He had never revisited his native place, which indeed could not be expected of him, as he had no relations, but, when asked, as was not seldom of course, he subscribed liberally to its charities.

Altogether he was a decided hero in the place, and though people really knew very little about him, the less they knew the more they gossiped, holding him up to the rising generation as a modern d.i.c.k Whittington, and reverencing him extremely as one who had shed glory on his native town. Even Elizabeth had conceived a great idea of Mr.

Ascott. When she saw this little fat man, coa.r.s.e and common looking in spite of his good clothes and diamond ring, and in manner a curious mixture of pomposity and awkwardness, she laughed to herself, thinking what a very uninteresting individual it was about whom s...o...b..ry had told so many interesting stories. However, she went up to inform Miss Selina, and prevent her making her appearance before him in the usual Sunday dishabille in which she indulged when no visitors were expected.

After his first awkwardness, Mr. Peter Ascott became quite at his ease with Miss Leaf. He began to talk--not of s...o...b..ry, that was tacitly ignored by both--but of London, and then of "my house in Russell Square," "my carriage," "my servants"--the inconvenience of keeping coachmen who would drink, and footmen who would not clean the plate properly; ending by what was a favorite moral axiom of his, that "wealth and position are heavy responsibilities."

He himself seemed, however, not to have been quite overwhelmed by them; he was fat and flourishing--with an acuteness and power in the upper half of his face which accounted for his having attained his present position. The lower half, somehow Miss Leaf did not like it, she hardly knew why, though a physiognomist might have known. For Peter Ascott had the underhanging, obstinate, sensual lip, the large throat--bull-necked, as it has been called--indications of that essentially animal nature which may be born with the n.o.bleman as with the clown; which no education can refine, and no talent, though it may co-exist with it, can ever entirely remove. He reminded one, perforce, of the rough old proverb; "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

Still, Mr. Ascott was not a bad man, though something deeper than his glorious indifference to grammar, and his dropped h's--which, to steal some one's joke, might have been swept up in bushels from Miss Leaf's parlor--made it impossible for him ever to be, by any culture whatever, a gentleman.