Mistress and Maid Part 20

Ascott laughed. "So he is--a very particular friend; but my aunts would not fancy him, and I don't want him to come here. Say, if he calls, that I'm gone out of town."

"Very well, sir. Shall you start before dinner?" said Elizabeth, whose practical mind immediately recurred to that meal, and to the joint, always contrived to be hot on the days that Ascott dined at home.

He seemed excessively tickled. "Bless you, you are the greatest innocent! Just say what I tell you, and never mind--hush! here's Aunt Hilary."

And Miss Hilary's anxious face, white with long wakefulness, had put out of Elizabeth's head the answer that was coming; indeed the matter slipped from her mind altogether, in consequence of another circ.u.mstance which gave her much more perplexity.

During her young mistress's absence, supposing Miss Selina out too, and Miss Leaf up stairs, she had come suddenly into the parlor without knocking. There, to her amazement, she saw Miss Selina and Mr. Ascott standing, in close conversation, over the fire. They were so engrossed that they did not notice her, and she shut door again immediately. But what confounded her was, that she was certain, absolutely certain, Mr. Ascott had his arm round Miss Selina's waist!

Now that was no business of hers, and yet the faithful domestic was a good deal troubled; still more so, when, by Miss Leaf's excessive surprise at hearing of the visitor who had come and gone, carrying Miss Selina away to the city, she was certain the elder sister was completely in the dark as to any thing going to happen in the family.

Could it be a wedding? Could Miss Selina really love, and be intending to marry, that horrid little man? For strange to say, this young servant had, what many a young beauty of rank and fashion has not, or has lost forever--the true, pure, womanly creed, that loving and marrying are synonymous terms; that to let a man put his arm round your waist when you do not intend to marry him, or to intend to marry him for money or any thing else when you do not really love him, are things quite impossible and incredible to any womanly mind.

A creed somewhat out of date, and perhaps existing only in stray nooks of the world; but thank G.o.d! it does exist. Hilary had it, and she had taught it to Elizabeth.

"I wonder whether Miss Hilary knows of this? I wonder what she would say to it?"

And now arose the perplexing ethical question aforesaid, as to whether Elizabeth ought to tell her.

It was one of Miss Hilary's doctrines--the same for the kitchen as for the parlor, nay, preached strongest in the kitchen, where the mysteries of the parlor are often so cruelly exposed--that a secret accidentally found out should be kept as sacred as if actually confided; also, that the secret of an enemy should no more be betrayed than that of a beloved and trusting friend.

"Miss Selina isn't my enemy," smiled Elizabeth: "but I'm not overfond of her, and so I'd rather not tell of her, or vex her if I can help it. Any how, I'll keep it to myself for a bit."

But the secret weighed heavily upon her, and besides, her honest heart felt a certain diminution of respect for Miss Selina. What could she see to like in that common looking, commonplace man, whom she could not have met a dozen times, of whose domestic life she knew nothing, and whose personality Elizabeth, with the sharp observation often found in her cla.s.s, probably because coa.r.s.e people do not care to hide their coa.r.s.eness from servants, had speedily set down at her own valuation--

"Neither carriage nor horses, nor nothing, will ever make him a gentleman?"

He, however, sent Miss Selina home magnificently in the said carriage; Ascott with her, who had been picked up somewhere in the City and who came in to his dinner, without the slightest reference to going "out of town."

But in spite of her Lord Mayor's Show, and the great attention which she said she had received from "various members of the Common Council of the City of London," Miss Selina was, for her, meditative, and did not talk quite so much as usual. There was in the little parlor an uncomfortable atmosphere, as if all of them had something on their minds. Hilary felt the ice must be broken, and if she did not do it n.o.body else would. So she said, stealing her hand into Johanna's under shelter of the dim fire-light, "Selina, I wanted to have a little family consultation. I have just received an offer."

"An offer!" repeated Miss Selina, with a visible start. "Oh, I forgot; you went to see your friend, Miss Balquidder, this morning.

Did you get any thing out of her? Has she any nephews and nieces wanting a governess?"

"She has no relations at all. But I will just tell you the story of my visit."

"I hope it's interesting," said Ascott, who was lying on the sofa, half asleep, his general habit after dinner. He woke, however, during his Aunt Hilary's relation, and when she reached its climax, that the offer was for her to manage a stationer's shop, he burst out heartily laughing:

"Well, that is a rich idea. I'll come and buy of you. You'll look so pretty standing behind a counter."

But Selina said, angrily, "You cannot even think of such a thing. It would be a disgrace to the family."

"No," said Hilary, clasping tightly her eldest sister's hand--they two had already talked the matter over: "I can not see any disgrace.

If our family is so poor that the women must earn their living as well as the men, all we have to see is that it should be honestly earned. What do you say, Ascott?"

She looked earnestly at him; she wanted sorely to find out what he really thought.

But Ascott took it, as he did every thing, very easily. "I don't see why Aunt Selina should make such a fuss. Why need you do anything, Aunt Hilary? Can't we hold out a little longer, and live upon tick till I get into practice? Of course, I shall then take care of you all; I'm the head of the family. How horribly dark this room is!"

He started up, and gave the fire a fierce poke, which consumed in five minutes a large lump of coal that Hilary had hoped--oh, cruel, sordid economy--would have lasted half the evening.

She broke the uneasy silence which followed by asking Johanna to give her opinion.

Johanna roused herself and spoke:

"Ascott says right; he is the head of the family, and, by-and-by. I trust will take care of us all. But he is not able to do it now, and meantime we must live."

"To be sure, we must Auntie."

"I mean, my boy, we must live honestly; we must not run into debt:"

and her voice sharpened as with the reflected horror of her young days--if, alas! there ever had been any youth for Henry Leaf's eldest daughter. "No, Ascott, out of debt out of danger. For myself"--she laid her thin old fingers on his arm, and looked up at him with a pitiful mixture of reliance and hopelessness--"I would rather see you breaking stones in the road than living like a gentleman, as you call it, and a swindler, as I call it, upon other people's money."

Ascott sprang up, coloring violently. "You use strong language, Aunt Johanna. Never mind. I dare say you are right. However, it's no business of mine. Good-night, for I have an engagement."

Hilary said, gravely, she wished he would stay and join in the family consultation.

"Oh no; I bate talking over things. Settle it among yourselves. As I said, it isn't my business."

"You don't care, then, what becomes of us all? I sometimes begin to think so."

Struck by the tone, Ascott stopped in the act of putting on his lilac kid gloves. "What have I done? I may be a very bad fellow, but I'm not quite so bad as that. Aunt Hilary."

"She didn't mean it, my boy," said Aunt Johanna, tenderly.

He was moved, more by the tenderness than the reproach. He came and kissed his eldest aunt in that warm-hearted, impulsive way, which had won him forgiveness for many a boyish fault. It did so now.

"I know I'm not half good enough to you, Auntie, but I mean to be. I mean to work hard, and be a rich man some day; and then you may be sure I shall not let my Aunt Hilary keep a shop. Now, good-night, for I must meet a fellow on business--really business--that may turn out good for us all, I a.s.sure you."

He went away whistling, with that air of untroubled, good-natured liveliness peculiar to Ascott Leaf, which made them say continually that he was "only a boy," living a boy's life, as thoughtless and as free. When his handsome face disappeared the three women sat down again round the fire.

They made no comments on him whatever; they were women, and he was their own. But--pa.s.sing him over as if he had never existed--Hilary began to explain to her sisters all particulars of her new scheme for maintaining the family. She told these details in a matter of-fact way, as already arranged; and finally hoped Selina would make no more objections.

"It is a thing quite impossible," said Selina, with dignity.

"Why impossible? I can certainly do the work; and it can not make me less of a lady. Besides, we had better not be ladies if we can not be honest ones. And, Selina, where is the money to come from? We have none in the house; we can not get any till Christmas."

"Opportunities might occur. We have friends."

"Not one in London; except, perhaps, Mr. Ascott, and I would not ask him for a farthing. You don't see, Selina, how horrible it would be to be helped, unless by some one dearly loved. I couldn't bear it!

I'd rather beg, starve: almost steal!"

"Don't be violent, child."

"Oh, but it's hard!" and the cry of long-smothered pain burst out.

"Hard enough to have to earn one's bread in a way one doesn't like; harder still to have to be parted from Johanna from Monday morning till Sat.u.r.day night. But it must be, I'll go. It's a case between hunger, debt, and work: the first is unpleasant, the second impossible, the third is my only alternative. You must consent, Selina, for I will do it."

"Don't!" Selina spoke more gently, and not without some natural emotion. "Don't disgrace me, child; for I may as well tell you--I meant to do so to-night--Mr. Ascott has made me an offer of marriage, and I--I have accepted it." Had a thunder-bolt fallen in the middle of the parlor at No. 15, its inmates--that is, two of them--could not have been more astounded.

No doubt this surprise was a great instance of simplicity on their part. Many women would have prognosticated, planned the thing from the first; thought it a most excellent match; seen glorious visions of the house in Russell Square, of the wealth and luxury that would be the portion of "dear Selina," and the general benefit that the marriage would be to the whole Leaf family.