Mistress and Maid Part 38

"It was, for I saw you."

"The devil you did!" muttered Tom.

"Don't be angry, only tell me the plain truth. The young woman that was with you was our Esther here, wasn't she?"

For a moment Tom looked altogether confounded. Then he tried to recover himself, and said crossly, "Well, and if it was, where's the harm? Can't a man be civil to a pretty girl without being called over the coals in this way?"

Elizabeth made no answer, at least not immediately. At last she said, in a very gentle, subdued voice,

"Tom, are you fond of Esther? You would not kiss her if you were not fond of her. Do you like her as--as you used to like me?"

And she looked right up into his eyes. Hers had no reproach in them, only a piteous entreaty, the last clinging to a hope which she knew to be false.

"Like Esther? Of course I do? She's a nice sort of girl, and we're very good friends."

"Tom, a man can't be 'friends,' in that sort of way, with a pretty girl of eighteen, when he is going to be married to somebody else. At least, in my mind, he ought not."

Tom laughed in a confused manner. "I say, you're jealous, and you'd better get over it."

Was she jealous? was it all fancy, folly? Did Tom stand there, true as steel, without a feeling in his heart that she did not share, without a hope in which she was not united, holding her, and preferring her, with that individuality and unity of love which true love ever gives and exacts, as it has a right to exact?

Not that poor Elizabeth reasoned in this way, but she felt the thing by instinct without reasoning.

"Tom," she said, "tell me outright, just as if I was somebody else, and had never belonged to you at all, do you love Esther Martin."

Truthful people enforce truth. Tom might be fickle, but he was not deceitful; he could not look into Elizabeth's eyes and tell her a deliberate lie; somehow he dared not.

"Well, then--since you will have it out of me--I think I do."

So Elizabeth's "ship went down." It might have been a very frail vessel, that n.o.body in their right senses would have trusted any treasure with, still she did; and it was all she had, and it went down to the bottom like a stone.

It is astonishing how soon the sea closes over this sort of wreck; and how quietly people take--when they must take, and there is no more disbelieving it--the truth which they would have given their lives to prove was an impossible lie.

For some minutes Tom stood facing the fire, and Elizabeth sat on her chair opposite without speaking. Then she took off her brooch, the only love-token he had given her, and put it into his hand.

"What's this for?" asked he, suddenly.

"You know. You'd better give it to Esther. It's Esther, not me, you must marry now."

And the thought of Esther, giddy, flirting, useless Esther, as Tom's wife, was almost more than she could bear. The sting of it put even into her crushed humility a certain honest self-a.s.sertion.

"I'm not going to blame you, Tom; but I think I'm as good as she. I'm not pretty, I know, nor lively, nor young, at least I'm old for my age; but I was worth something. You should not have served me so."

Tom said, the usual excuse, that he "couldn't help it." And suddenly turning round, he begged her to forgive him, and not forsake him.

She forsake Tom! Elizabeth almost smiled.

"I do forgive you: I'm not a bit angry with you. If I ever was I have got over it."

"That's right. You're a dear soul. Do you think that I don't like you, Elizabeth?"

"Oh yes," she said, sadly, "I dare say you do, a little, in spite of Esther Martin. But that's not my way of liking, and I couldn't stand it."

"What couldn't you stand?"

"Your kissing me to-day, and another girl to-morrow: your telling me I was every thing to you one week, and saying exactly the same thing to another girl the next. It would be hard enough to bear if we were only friends, but as sweet-hearts, as husband and wife, it would be impossible. No Tom, I tell you the truth, I could not stand it."

She spoke strongly, unhesitatingly, and for an instant there flowed out of her soft eyes that wild fierce spark, latent even in these quiet humble natures, which is dangerous to meddle with.

Tom did not attempt it. He felt all was over. Whether he had lost or gained: whether he was glad or sorry, he hardly knew.

"I'm not going to take this back, any how," he said, "fiddling" with the brooch; and then going up to her, he attempted, with trembling hands, to refasten it in her collar.

The familiar action, his contrite look, were too much. People who have once loved one another, though the love is dead (for love can die), are not able to bury it all at once, or if they do, its pale ghost will still come knocking at the door of their hearts, "Let me in, let me in!"

Elizabeth ought, I know, in proper feminine dignity, to have bade Tom farewell without a glance or a touch. But she did not. When he had fastened her brooch she looked up in his familiar face a sorrowful, wistful, hungering look, and then clung about his neck:

"O Tom, Tom, I was so fond of you!"

And Tom mingled his tears with hers, and kissed her many times, and even felt his old affection returning, making him half oblivious of Esther; but mercifully--for love rebuilt upon lost faith is like a house founded upon sands--the door opened, and Esther herself came in.

Laughing, smirking, pretty Esther, who, thoughtless as she was, had yet the sense to draw back when she saw them.

"Come here, Esther!" Elizabeth called, imperatively; and she came.

"Esther, I've given up Tom; you may take him if he wants you. Make him a good wife, and I'll forgive you. If not--"

She could not say another word. She shut the door upon them, and crept up stairs, conscious only of one thought--if she only could get away from them, and never see either of their faces any more!

And in this fate was kind to her, though in that awful way in which fate--say rather Providence--often works; cutting, with one sharp blow, some knot that our poor, feeble, mortal fingers have been long laboring at in vain, or making that which seemed impossible to do the most natural, easy, and only thing to be done.

How strangely often in human life "one woe doth tread upon the other's heel!" How continually, while one of those small private tragedies that I have spoken of is being enacted within, the actors are called upon to meet some other tragedy from without, so that external energy counteracts inward emotion, and holy sympathy with another's sufferings stifles all personal pain. That truth about sorrows coming "in battalions" may have a divine meaning in it--may be one of those mysterious laws which guide the universe--laws that we can only trace in fragments, and guess at the rest, believing, in deep humility, that one day we shall "know even as we are known."

Therefore I ask no pity for Elizabeth, because ere she had time to collect herself, and realize in her poor confused mind that she had indeed said good by to Tom, given him up and parted from him forever, she was summoned to her mistress's room, there to hold a colloquy outside the door with the seriously-perplexed nurse.

One of those sudden changes had come which sometimes, after all seems safe, strike terror into a rejoicing household, and end by carrying away, remorseless, the young wife from her scarcely tasted bliss, the mother of many children from her close circle of happy duties and yearning loves.

Mrs. Ascott was ill. Either she had taken cold or been too much excited, or, in the overconfidence of her recovery, some slight neglect had occurred--some trifle which n.o.body thinks of till afterward, and which yet proves the fatal cause, "the little pin"

that

"Bores through the castle wall"

of mortal hope, and King Death enters in all his awful state.

n.o.body knew it or dreaded it; for though Mrs. Ascott was certainly ill, she was not at first very ill; and there being no telegraphs in those days no one thought of sending for either her husband or her sisters. But that very hour, when Elizabeth went up to her mistress, and saw the flush on her cheek and the rest-less expression of her eye, King Death had secretly crept in at the door of the mansion in Russell Square.

The patient was carefully removed back into her bed. She said little, except once, looking up uneasily--