Mistress and Maid Part 32

Hilary shrank, sensitively.

"Not on my account, my dear, but your own. I often see people making martyrs of themselves for some worthless character on whom the sacrifice is utterly wasted. I object to this, as I would object to throwing myself or my friend into a blazing house, unless I were morally certain there was a life to be saved. Is there in this case?"

"I think there is! I trust in Heaven there is!" said Hilary, earnestly.

There was both pleasure and pity expressed in Miss Balquidder's countenance as she replied, "Be it so: that is a matter on which no one can judge except yourself. But on the other matter you ask my advice, and I must give it. To maintain two ladies and pay a debt of eighty pounds out of one hundred a year is simply impossible."

"With Johanna's income and mine it will be a hundred and twenty pounds and some odd shillings a year."

"You accurate girl! But even with this it can not be done, unless you were to live in a manner so restricted in the commonest comforts that at your sister's age she would be sure to suffer. You must look on the question from all sides, my dear. You must be just to others as well as to that young man, who seems never to-- But I will leave him unjudged."

They were both silent for a minute, and then Miss Balquidder said: "I feel certain there is but one rational way of accomplishing the thing if you are bent upon doing it, if your own judgment and conscience tell you it ought to be done. Is it so?"

"Yes," said Hilary, firmly.

The old Scotswoman took her hand with a warm pressure. "Very well. I don't blame you. I might have done the same myself. Now to my plan.

Miss Leaf, have you known me long enough to confer on me the benediction--one of the few that we rich folk possess 'It is more blessed to give than to receive?' "

"I don't quite understand."

"Then allow me to explain. I happen to know this creditor of your nephew's. He being a tailor and outfitter, we have had dealings together in former times, and I know him to be a hard man, an unprincipled man, such a one as no young woman should have to do with, even in business relations. To be in his power, as you would be for some years if your scheme of gradual payment were carried out, is the last thing I should desire for you. Let me suggest another way.

Take me for your creditor instead of him. Pay him at once, and I will write you a check for the amount."

The thing was put so delicately, in such an ordinary manner, as if it were a mere business arrangement, that at first Hilary hardly perceived all it implied. When she did--when she found that it was in plain terms a gift or loan of eighty pounds offered by a person almost a stranger, she was at first quite bewildered. Then (ah! let us not blame her if she carried to a morbid excess that n.o.ble independence which is the foundation of all true dignity in man or woman) she shrunk back into herself, overcome with annoyance and shame. At last she forced herself to say, though the words came out rather coldly.

"You are very good, and I am exceedingly obliged to you; but I never borrowed money in my life. It is quite impossible."

"Very well; I can understand your feelings. I beg your pardon,"

replied Miss Balquidder, also somewhat coldly.

They sat silent and awkward, and then the elderly lady took out a pencil and began to make calculations in her memorandum book.

"I am reckoning what is the largest sum per month that you could reasonably be expected to spare, and how you may make the most of what remains. Are you aware that London lodgings are very expensive?

I am thinking that if you were to exchange out of the Kensington shop into another I have at Richmond, I could offer you the first floor above it for much less rent than you pay Mrs. Jones; and you could have your sister living with you."

"Ah! that would make us both so much happier! How good you are!"

"You will see I only wish to help you to help yourself; not to put you under any obligation. Though I can not see any thing so very terrible in your being slightly indebted to an old woman, who has neither chick nor child, and is at perfect liberty to do what she likes with her own."

There was a pathos in the tone which smote Hilary into quick contrition.

"Forgive me! But I have such a horror of borrowing money--you must know why after what I have told you of our family. You must surely understand--"

"I do fully; but there are limits even to independence. A person who, for his own pleasure, is ready to take money from any body and every body, without the slightest prospect or intention of returning it, is quite different from a friend who in a case of emergency accepts help from another friend, being ready and willing to take every means of repayment, as I knew you were, and meant you to be. I meant, as you suggested, to stop out of your salary so much per month, till I had my eighty pounds sate back again."

"But suppose you never had it back? I am young and strong; still I might fall ill--I might die, and you never be repaid."

"Yes, I should," said Miss Balquidder, with a serious smile. "You forget, my dear bairn, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of these little ones, ye have done it unto ME.' 'He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the LORD.' I have lent Him a good deal at different times, and He has always paid me back with usury."

There was something at once solemn and a little sad in the way the old lady spoke. Hilary forgot her own side of the subject; her pride, her humiliation.

"But do you not think, Miss Balquidder, that one ought to work on, struggle on, to the last extremity, before one accepts an obligation, most of all a money obligation?"

"I do, as a general principle. Yet money is not the greatest thing in this world, that a pecuniary debt should be the worst to bear. And sometimes one of the kindest acts you can do to a fellow-creature--one that touches and softens his heart, nay, perhaps wins it to you for life, is to accept a favor from him."

Hilary made no reply.

"I speak a little from experience. I have not had a very happy life myself; at least most people would say so if they knew it; but the Lord has made it up to me by giving me the means of bringing happiness, in money as well as other ways, to other people. Most of us have our favorite luxuries; this is mine. I like to do people good; I like, also--though maybe that is a mean weakness--to feel that I do it. If all whom I have been made instrumental in helping had said to me, as you have done, 'I will not be helped, I will not be made happy,' it would have been rather hard for me."

And a smile, half humorous, half sad, came over the hard-featured face, spiritualizing its whole expression.

Hilary wavered. She compared her own life, happy still, and hopeful, for all its cares, with that of this lonely woman, whose only blessing was her riches, except the generous heart which sanctified them, and made them such. Humbled, nay, ashamed, she took and kissed the kindly hand which has succored so many, yet which, in the inscrutable mystery of Providence, had been left to go down to the grave alone; missing all that is personal, dear, and precious to a woman's heart, and getting instead only what Hilary now gave her--the half-sweet, half-bitter payment of grat.i.tude.

"Well, my bairn, what is to be done?"

"I will do whatever you think right," murmured Hilary.

CHAPTER XXI.

It was not a cheerful morning on which to be married. A dense, yellow, London fog, the like of which the Misses Leaf had never yet seen, penetrated into every corner of the parlor at No. 15, where they were breakfasting drearily by candle-light, all in their wedding attire. They had been up since six in morning, and Elizabeth had dressed her three mistresses one after the other, taking exceeding pleasure in the performance. For she was still little more than a girl, to whom a wedding was a wedding, and this was the first she had ever had to do with in her life.

True, it disappointed her in some things. She was a little surprised that last evening had pa.s.sed off just like all other evenings. The interest and bustle of packing soon subsided--the packing consisting only of the traveling trunk, for the rest of the trousseau went straight to Russell Square, every means having been taken to ignore the very existence of No. 15; and then the three ladies had supper as usual, and went to bed at their customary hour without any special demonstrations of emotion of affection. To Elizabeth this was strange. She had not yet learned the unspeakable bitterness of a parting where no body has any grief to restrain.

On a wedding morning, of course, there is no time to be spared for sentiment. The princ.i.p.al business appeared to be--dressing. Mr.

Ascott had insisted on doing his part in making his new connections appear "respectable" at his marriage, and for Selina's sake they had consented. Indeed, it was inevitable: they had no money whatever to clothe themselves withal. They must either have accepted Mr. Ascott's gifts--in which, to do him justice, he was both thoughtful and liberal--or they must have staid away from the wedding altogether, which they did not like to do "for the sake of the family."

So, with a sense of doing their last duty by the sister, who would be, they felt, henceforward a sister no more, Miss Leaf attired herself in her violet silk and white China shawl, and Miss Hilary put on her silver-grey poplin, with a cardinal cape, as was then in fashion, trimmed with white swan's-down. It was rather an elderly costume for a bridemaid; but she was determined to dress warmly, and not risk, in muslins and laces, the health which to her now was money, life--nay, honor.

For Ascott's creditor had been already paid: Miss Balquidder never let gra.s.s grow under her feet. When Hilary returned to her sisters that day there was no longer any fear of public exposure; she had the receipted bill in her hand, and she was Miss Balquidder's debtor to the extent of eighty pounds.

But it was no debt of disgrace or humiliation, nor did she feel it as such. She had learned the lesson which the large hearted rich can always teach the poor, that, while there is sometimes, to some people, no more galling chain, there is to others--and these are the highest natures, too--no more firm and sacred bond than grat.i.tude.

But still the debt was there; and Hilary would never feel quite easy till it was paid--in money, at least. The generosity she never wished to repay. She would rather feel it wrapping her round, like an arm that was heavy only through its exceeding tenderness, to the end of her days.

Nevertheless she had arranged that there was to be a regular monthly deduction from her salary; and how, by retrenchment, to make this monthly payment as large as she could, was a question which had occupied herself and Johanna for a good while after they had retired to rest. For there was no time to be lost. Mrs. Jones must be given notice to; and there was another notice to be given, if the Richmond plan were carried out; another sad retrenchment, foreboding which, when Elizabeth brought up supper, Miss Hilary could hardly look the girl in the face, and, when she bade her good night, had felt almost like a secret conspirator.

For she knew that, if the money to clear this debt was to be saved, they must part with Elizabeth.

No doubt the personal sacrifice would be considerable, for Hilary would have to do the work of their two rooms with her own hands, and give up a hundred little comforts in which Elizabeth, now become a most clever and efficient servant, had made herself necessary to them both. But the two ladies did not think of that at the moment; they only thought of the pain of parting with her. They thought of it sorely, even though she was but a servant, and there was a family parting close at hand. Alas! people must take what they earn. It was a melancholy fact that, of the two impending losses, the person they should miss most would be, not their sister, but Elizabeth.

Both regrets combined made them sit at the breakfast table--the last meal they should ever take together as a family--sad and sorry, speaking about little else than the subject which presented itself as easiest and uppermost, namely, clothes.

Finally, they stood all completely arrayed, even to bonnets; Hilary looking wonderfully bewitching in hers, which was the very pattern of one that may still be seen in a youthful portrait of our gracious Queen--a large round brim, with a wreath of roses inside; while Miss Leaf's was somewhat like it, only with little bunches of white ribbon: "for," she said, "my time of roses has gone by." But her sweet faded face had a peace that was not in the other two--not even in Hilary's.

But the time arrived; the carriage drew up at the door. Then nature and sisterly feeling a.s.serted themselves for a minute. Miss Selina "gave way," not to any loud or indecorous extent, to nothing that could in the least harm her white satin, or crumple her laces and ribbons; but she did shed a tear or two--real honest tears--kissed her sisters affectionately, hoped they would be very happy at Richmond, and that they would often come to see her at Russell Square.

"You know," said she, half apologetically, "it is a great deal better for one of us at least to be married and settled. Indeed I a.s.sure you. I have done it all for the good of my family."