Mistress and Maid Part 35

Tom did not comprehend this at all. He only laughed at her for feeling so "nesh" (that means tender, sensitive--but the word is almost unexplainable to other than s...o...b..ry ears) on the subject. He liked the romance and excitement of secret courtship--men often do; rarely women, unless there is something in them not quite right, not entirely womanly.

But Tom was very considerate, and though he called it "silly," and took a little fit of crossness on the occasion, he allowed Elizabeth to write to mother about him, and consented that on her next holiday she should go to Richmond, in order to speak to Miss Hilary on the same subject, and ask her also to write to Mrs. Hand, stating how good and clever Tom was, and how exceedingly happy was Tom's Elizabeth.

"And won't you come and fetch me, Tom?" asked she, shyly. "I am sure Miss Hilary would not object, nor Miss Leaf neither."

Tom, protested he did not care two straws whether they objected or not; he was a man of twenty, in a good trade--he had lately gone back to the printing, and being a clever workman, earned capital wages. He had a right to choose whom he liked, and marry when he pleased. If Elizabeth didn't care for him, she might leave him alone.

"Oh, Tom!" was all she answered, with a strange gentleness that no one could have believed would ever have come into the manner of South Sea Islander. And quitting the subject then, she afterward persuaded him, and not for the first time, into consenting to what she thought right. There is something rather touching in a servant's holiday. It comes so seldom. She must count on it for so long beforehand, and remember it for so long afterward. This present writer owns to a strong sympathy with the holiday-makers on the grand gala-days of the English calendar. It is a pleasure to watch the innumerable groups of family folk, little, children, and prentice lands.

--"Dressed in all their best, To walk abroad with Sally."

And the various "Sallys" and their corresponding swains can hardly feel more regret than she when it happens to be wet weather on Easter week or at Whitsuntide.

Whit-Monday, the day when Tom escaped from the printing-office, and Elizabeth got leave of absence for six hours, was as glorious a June day as well could be. As the two young people perched themselves on the top of the Richmond omnibus and drove through Kensington, Hammersmith, Turnham Green, and over Kew Bridge--Tom pointing out all the places, and giving much curious information about them--Elizabeth thought there never was a more beautiful country, or a more lovely summer day: she was, she truly said, "as happy as a Queen."

Neverthless, when the omnibus stopped, she, with great self-denial, insisted on getting rid of Tom for anytime. She thought Miss Hilary might not quite like Tom's knowing where she lived, or what her occupation was, lest he might gossip about it to s...o...b..ry people; so she determined to pay her visit by herself, and appointed to meet him at a certain hour on Richmond Bridge, over which bridge she watched him march sulkily, not without a natural pleasure that he should be so much vexed at losing her company for an hour or two. But she knew he would soon come to himself--as he did, before he had been half a mile on the road to Hampton Court, meeting a young fellow he knew, and going with him over that grand old palace, which furnished them with a subject at their next debating society, where they both came out very strong on the question of hypocritical priests and obnoxious kings, with especial reference to Henry VIII, and Cardinal Wolsey.

Meanwhile Elizabeth went in search of the little shop--which n.o.body need expect to find at Richmond now--bearing the well-known name "Janet Balquidder." Entering it, for there was no private door, she saw, in the far corner above the curtained desk, the pretty curls of her dear Miss Hilary. Elizabeth had long known that her mistress "kept a shop," and with the notions of gentility which are just as rife in her cla.s.s as in any other, had mourned bitterly over this fact. But when she saw how fresh and well the young lady looked, how busily and cheerfully she seemed to work with her great books before her, and with what a composed grace and dignity she came forward when asked for, Elizabeth secretly confessed that not even keeping a shop had made or could make the smallest difference in Miss Hilary.

She herself was much more changed.

"Why, Elizabeth, I should hardly have known you!" was the involuntary exclamation of her late mistress.

She certainly did look very nice; not smart--for her sober taste preferred quiet colors--but excessively neat and well-dressed. In her new gown of gray "coburg," her one handsome shawl, which had been honored several times by Miss Hilary's wearing, her white straw bonnet and white ribbons, underneath which the smooth black hair and soft eyes showed to great advantage, she appeared, not "like a lady"--a servant can seldom do that let her dress be ever so fine--but like a thoroughly respectable, intelligent, and pleasant-faced young woman.

And her blushes came and went so fast, she was so nervous and yet so beamingly happy, that Miss Hilary soon suspected there was more in this visit than at first appeared. Knowing that with Elizabeth's great shyness the mystery would never come out in public, she took an opportunity of asking her to help her in the bedroom, and there, with the folding-doors safely shut, discovered the whole secret. Miss Hilary was a good deal surprised at first. She had never thought of Elizabeth as likely to get married at all--and to Tom Cliffe.

"Why, isn't he a mere boy; ever so much younger than you are?"

"Three years."

"That is a pity--a great pity: women grow old so much faster than men."

"I know that," said Elizabeth, somewhat sorrowfully.

"Besides, did you not tell me he was very handsome and clever?"

"Yes: and I'm neither the one nor the other. I have thought all that over too, many a time; indeed I have, Miss Hilary. But Tom likes me--or fancies he does. Do you think"--and the intense humility which true love always has, struck into Miss Hilary's own conscious heart a conviction of how very true this poor girl's love must be. "Do you think he is mistaken? that his liking me--I mean in that sort of way--is quite impossible?"

"No, indeed, and I never said it; never thought it," was the earnest reply. "But consider; three years younger than yourself; handsomer and cleverer than you are--".

Miss Hilary stopped; it seemed so cruel to say such things, and yet she felt bound to say them. She knew her former "bower-maiden" well enough to be convinced that if Elizabeth were not happy in marriage she would be worse than unhappy--might grow actually bad.

"He loves you now; you are sure of that; but are you sure that he is a thoroughly stable and reliable character? Do you believe he will love you always?"

"I can't tell. Perhaps--if I deserved it," said poor Elizabeth.

And, looking at the downcast eyes, at the thorough womanly sweetness and tenderness which suffused the whole face, Hilary's doubts began to melt away. She thought how sometimes men, captivated by inward rather than outward graces, have fallen in love with plain women, or women older than themselves, and actually kept to their attachment through life, with a fidelity rare as beautiful. Perhaps this young fellow, who seemed by all accounts superior to his cla.s.s--having had the sense to choose that pearl in an oyster-sh.e.l.l, Elizabeth Hand--might also have the sense so appreciate her, and go on loving her to the end of his days, Anyhow, he loved her now, and she loved him; and it was useless reasoning any more about it.

"Come, Elizabeth," cried her mistress, cheerfully, "I have said all my say, and now I have only to give my good wishes. If Tom Cliffe deserves you, I am sure you deserve him, and I should like to tell him so."

"Should you, Miss Hilary?" and with a visible brightening up Elizabeth betrayed Tom's whereabouts, and her little conspiracy to bring him here, and her hesitation lest it might be "intruding."

"Not at all. Tell him to come at once. I am not like my sister; we always allow 'followers.' I think a mistress stands in the relation of a parent, for the time being; and that can not be a right or good love which is concealed from her, as if it were a thing to be ashamed of."

"I think so too. And I'm not a bit ashamed of Tom, nor he of me,"

said Elizabeth, so energetically that Miss Hilary smiled.

"Very well; take him to have his tea in the kitchen, and then bring him up stairs to speak to my sister and me."

At that interview, which of course was rather trying, Tom acquitted himself to every body's satisfaction. He was manly, modest, self-possessed; did not say much--his usual talkativeness being restrained by the circ.u.mstances of the case, and the great impression made upon him by Miss Hilary, who, he afterward admitted to Elizabeth, "was a real angel, and he should write a poem upon her."

But the little he did say gave the ladies a very good impression of the intelligence and even refinement of Elizabeth's sweet-heart. And though they were sorry to see him look so delicate, still there was a something better than handsomeness in his handsome face, which made them not altogether surprised at Elizabeth's being so fond of him. As she watched the young couple down Richmond Street, in the soft summer twilight--Elizabeth taking Tom's arm, and Tom drawing up his stooping figure to its utmost extent, both a little ill-matched in height as they were in some other things, but walking with that air of perfect confidence and perfect contentedness in each other which always betrays, to a quick eye, those who have agreed to walk through the world together--Miss Hilary turned from the window and sighed.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Following Miss Hilary's earnest advice that every thing should be fair and open, Elizabeth, on the very next day after that happy Whit-Monday, mustered up her courage, asked permission to speak to her mistress, and told her she was going to be married to Tom Cliffe: not immediately, but in a year's time or so, if all went well.

Mrs. Ascott replied sharply that it was no affair of hers, and she could not be troubled about it. For her part she thought, if servants knew their own advantages, they would keep a good place when they had it, and never get married at all. And then, saying she had heard a good character of her from the housekeeper, she offered Elizabeth the place of upper house-maid, a young girl, a protegee of the housekeeper's, being subst.i.tuted in hers.

"And when you have sixteen pounds a year, and somebody to do all your hard work for you, I dare say you'll think better of it, and not be so foolish as to go and get married."

But Elizabeth had her own private opinion on that matter. She was but a woman, poor thing! and two tiny rooms of her own, with Tom to care for and look after, seemed a far happier home than that great house, where she had not only her own work to do, but the responsibility of teaching and taking charge of that careless, stupid, pretty Esther, who had all the forwardness, untidiness, and unconscientiousness of a regular London maid-servant, and was a sore trial to the staid, steady Elizabeth.

Tom consoled her, in his careless but affectionate way; and another silent consolation was the "little bits of things," bought out of her additional wages, which she began to put by in her box--sticks and straws for the new sweet nest that was a-building: a metal teapot, two neat gla.s.s salt-cellars, and, awful extravagance!--two real second-hand silver spoons--Tom did so like having things nice about him! These purchases, picked up at stray times, were solid, substantial and useful; domestic rather than personal; and all with a view to Tom rather than herself. She hid them with a magpie-like closeness, for Esther and she shared the same room; but sometimes when Esther was asleep she would peep at them with an anxious, lingering tenderness, as if they made more of an a.s.sured reality what even now seemed so very like a dream.

--Except, indeed, on those Sunday nights when Tom and she went to church together and afterward took a walk, but always parted at the corner of the square. She never brought him in to the house, nor spoke of him to her fellow servants. How much they guessed of her engagement she neither knew nor cared.

Mrs. Ascott, too, had apparently quite forgotten it. She seemed to take as little interest in her servants' affairs as they in hers.

Nevertheless, ignorant as the lower regions were in general of what was pa.s.sing in the upper, occasionally rumors began to reach the kitchen that "Master had been a-blowing up Missis, rather!" And once, after the solemn dinner, with three footmen to wait on two people, was over, Elizabeth, pa.s.sing through the hall, caught the said domestics laughing together, and saying it was "as good as a play; cat and dog was nothing to it." After which "the rows up stairs"

became a favorite joke in the servants' hall.

But still Mr. Ascott went out daily after breakfast, and came home to dinner; and Mrs. Ascott spent the morning in her private sitting room, or "boudoir," as she called it; lunched, and drove out in her handsome carriage, with her footman behind; dressed elegantly for dinner, and presided at her own table with an air of magnificent satisfaction in all things. She had perfectly accommodated herself to her new position; and if under her satins and laces beat a solitary, dissatisfied, or aching heart, it was n.o.body's business but her own.

At least, she kept up the splendid sham with a most creditable persistency.

But all shams are dangerous things. Be the surface ever so smooth and green, it will crack sometimes, and a faint wreath of smoke betray the inward volcano. The like had happened once or twice, as on the day when the men-servants were so intensely amused. Also Elizabeth, when putting in order her mistress's bedroom, which was about the hour Mr. Ascott left for the city, had several times seen Mrs. Ascott come in there suddenly, white and trembling. Once, so agitated was she, that Elizabeth had brought her a gla.s.s of water; and instead of being angry or treating her with the distant dignity which she had always kept up her mistress had said, almost in the old s...o...b..ry tone, "Thank you, Elizabeth."

However, Elizabeth had the wisdom to take no notice, but to slip from the room, and keep her own counsel.

At last one day the smouldering domestic earthquake broke out. There was "a precious good row," the footman suspected, at the breakfast-table; and after breakfast, Master, without waiting for the usual attendance of that functionary, with his hat and gloves and a Hansom cab had flung himself out at the hall door, slamming it after him with a noise that startled the whole house. Shortly afterward "Missis's" bell had rung violently, and she had been found lying on the floor of her bedroom in a dead faint, her maid, a foolish little Frenchwoman, screaming over her.

The frightened servants gathered round in a cl.u.s.ter, but n.o.body attempted to touch the poor lady, who lay rigid and helpless, hearing none of the comments that were freely made upon her, or the conjectures as to what Master had done or said that produced this state of things. Mistress she was, and these four or five woman, her servants, had lived in her house for months, but n.o.body loved her; n.o.body knew any thing about her; n.o.body thought of doing aught for her, till a kitchen-maid, probably out of former experience in some domestic emergency, suggested, "Fetch Elizabeth."

The advice was eagerly caught at, every body being so thankful to have the responsibility shifted to some other body's shoulders; so in five minutes Elizabeth had the room cleared, and her mistress laid upon the bed, with n.o.body near except herself and the French maid.

By-and-by Mrs. Ascott opened her eyes.