Mistress and Maid Part 6

Then Elizabeth seemed to become half conscious that she had done something blamable, or was at least a suspected character. Her warmth of manner faded; the sullen cloud of dogged resistance to authority was rising in her poor dirty face, when Hilary, beginning with, "Now, we are not going to scold you; but we must hear the reason of this,"

contrived by adroit questions, and not a few of them, to elicit the whole story.

It appeared that, while standing at Miss Selina's window, Elizabeth had watched three little boys, apparently engaged in a very favorite amus.e.m.e.nt of little boys in that field, going quickly behind a horse, and pulling out the longest and handsomest hairs in his tail to make fishing lines of. She saw the animal give a kick, and two of the boys ran away; the other did not stir. For a minute or so she noticed a black lump lying in the gra.s.s; then, with the quick instinct for which n.o.body had ever given her credit, she guessed what had happened, and did immediately the wisest and only thing possible under the circ.u.mstances, namely, to s.n.a.t.c.h up a towel, run across the field, bind up the child's head as well as she could, and carry it, bleeding and insensible, to the nearest doctor, who lived nearly a mile off.

She did not tell--and they only found it out afterward--how she had held the boy while under the doctor's hands, the skull being so badly fractured that the frightened mother fainted at the sight; how she had finally carried him home, and left him comfortably settled in bed, his senses returned, and his life saved.

"Ay, my arms do ache above a bit," she said, in answer to Miss Leaf's questions. "He wasn't quite a baby--nigh upon twelve, I reckon; but then he was very small of his age. And he looked just as if he was dead--and he bled so."

Here, just for a second or two, the color left the big girl's lips, and she trembled a little. Miss Leaf went to the kitchen cupboard, and took out their only bottle of wine--administered in rare doses, exclusively as medicine.

"Drink this, Elizabeth; and then go and wash your face and eat your dinner. We will talk to you by-and-by."

Elizabeth looked up with a long, wistfull stare of intense surprise, and then added, "Have I done any thing wrong, missis?"

"I did not say so. But drink this; and don't talk, child."

She was obeyed. By-and-by Elizabeth disappeared into the back kitchen, emerged thence with a clean face, hands, and ap.r.o.n; and went about her afternoon business as if nothing had happened.

Her mistresses' threatened "talk" with her never came about. What, indeed, could they say? No doubt the little servant had broken the strict letter of domestic law by running off in that highly eccentric and inconvenient way; but, as Hilary tried to explain by a series of most ingenious ratiocinations, she had fulfilled, in the spirit of it, the very highest law--that of charity. She had also shown prompt courage, decision, practical and prudent forethought, and above all, entire self-forgetfulness.

"And I should like to know," said Miss Hilary, warming with her subject, "if those are not the very qualities that go to const.i.tute a hero."

"But we don't want a hero; we want a maid-of-all-work."

"I'll tell you what we want, Selina. We want a woman; that is, a girl with the making of a good woman in her. If we can find that, all the rest will follow. For my part, I would rather take this child, rough as she is, but with her truthfulness, conscientiousness, kindliness of heart, and evident capability of both self-control and self-devotedness, than the most finished servant we could find. My advice is--keep her."

This settled the matter, since it was a curious fact that the "advice" of the youngest Miss Leaf was, whether they knew it or not, almost equivalent to a family ukase.

When Elizabeth had brought in the tea-things, which she did with especial care, apparently wishing to blot out the memory of the morning's escapade by astonishingly good behavior for the rest of the day, Miss Leaf called her, and asked if she knew that her month of trial ended this day?

"Yes, ma'am," with the strict normal courtesy, something between that of the old-world family domestic--as her mother might have been to the Miss Elizabeth Something she was named after--and the abrupt "dip" of the modern National school girl; which const.i.tuted Elizabeth Hand's sole experience of manners.

"If you had not been absent I should have gone to speak with your mother to-day. Indeed Miss Hilary was going when you came in; but it would have been with a very different intention from what we had in the morning. However, that is not likely to happen again."

"Eh?" said Elizabeth, inquiringly.

Miss Leaf hesitated, and looked uneasily at her two sisters. It was always a trial to her shy nature to find herself the mouth-piece of the family; and this same shyness made it still more difficult to break through the stiff barriers which seemed to rise up between her, a gentlewoman well on in years, and this coa.r.s.e working girl. She felt, as she often complained, that with the-kindest intentions, she did not quite know how to talk to Elizabeth.

"My sister means," said Hilary, "that as we are not likely to have little boys half killed in the field every day, she trusts you will not be running away again as you did this morning. She feels sure that you would not do such a thing, putting us all to so great annoyance and uneasiness, for any less cause than such as happened to-day. You promise that?"

"Yes, Miss Hilary."

"Then we quite forgive you as regards ourselves. Nay"--feeling in spite of Selina's warning nudge, that she had hardly been kind enough--"we rather praise than blame you, Elizabeth. And if you like to stay with us and will do your best to improve, we are willing to keep you as our servant."

"Thank you ma'am. Thank you, Miss Hilary. Yes, I'll stop."

She said no more--but sighed a great sigh, as if her mind were relieved--("So," thought Hilary, "she was not so indifferent to us as we imagined")--and bustled back into her kitchen.

"Now for the clothing of her," observed Miss Leaf, also looking much relieved that the decision was over. "You know what we agreed upon; and there is certainly no time to be lost. Hilary, my dear, suppose you bring down your brown merino?" Hilary went without a word.

People who inhabit the same house, eat, sit, and sleep together--loving one another and sympathizing with one another, ever so deeply and dearly--nevertheless inevitably have momentary seasons when the intense solitude in which we all live, and must expect ever to live, at the depth of our being, forces itself painfully upon the heart. Johanna must have had many such seasons when Hilary was a child; Hilary had one now.

She unfolded the old frock, and took out of its pocket, a hiding place at once little likely to be searched, and harmless if discovered, a poor little memento of that happy midsummer day.

"Dear Miss Hilary. To-morrow, then, I shall come.

Yours truly, Robert Lyon."

The only sc.r.a.p of note she had ever received; he always wrote to Johanna; as regularly as ever, or more so, now Ascott was gone; but only to Johanna. She read over the two lines, wondered where she should keep them now that Johanna might not notice them; and then recoiled, as if the secret were a wrong to that dear sister who loved her so well.

"But nothing makes me love her less; nothing ever could. She thinks me quite happy, as I am; and yet--oh, if I did not miss him so!"

And the aching, aching want which sometimes came over began again.

Let us not blame her. G.o.d made all our human needs. G.o.d made love.

Not merely affection but actual love--the necessity to seek and find out some other being, not another but the complement of one's self--the "other half," who brings rest and strength for weakness, sympathy in aspiration, and tenderness for tenderness, as no other person ever can. Perhaps, even in marriage, this love is seldom found, and it is possible in all lives to do without it. Johanna had done so. But then she had been young, and was now growing old; and Hilary was only twenty, with a long life before her. Poor child, let us not blame her!

She was not in the least sentimental, her natural disposition inclining her to be more than cheerful, actually gay. She soon recovered herself, and when, a short time after, she stood, scissors in hand, demonstrating how very easy it was to make something out of nothing, her sisters never suspected how very near tears had lately been to those bright eyes, which were always the sunshine of the house.

"You are giving yourself a world of trouble," said Selina. "If I were you, I would just make over the dress to Elizabeth, and let her do what she could with it."

"My dear, I always find I give myself twice the trouble by expecting people to do what they can't do. I have to do it myself afterward.

Prove how a child who can't even handle a needle and thread is competent to make a gown for herself, and I shall be most happy to secede in her favor."

"Nay," put in the eldest sister, afraid of a collision of words, "Selina is right; if you do not teach Elizabeth to make her own gowns how can she learn?"

"Johanna, you are the brilliantest of women! and you know you don't like the parlor littered with rags and cuttings. You wish to get rid of me for the evening? Well, I'll go! Hand me the work basket and the bundle, and I'll give my first lesson in dress making to our South Sea Islander."

But Fate stood in the way of Miss Hilary's good intentions.

She found Elizabeth not as was her wont, always busy, over the perpetual toil of those who have not yet learned the mysterious art of arrangement and order, nor, as sometimes, hanging sleepily over the kitchen fire, waiting for bedtime; but actually sitting, sitting down at the table. Her candle was flaring on one side of her; on the other was the school room inkstand, a sc.r.a.p of waste paper, and a pen But she was not writing; she sat with her head on her hands, in an att.i.tude of disconsolate idleness, so absorbed that she seemed not to hear Hilary's approach.

"I did not know you could write, Elizabeth."

"No more I can," was the answer, in the most doleful of voices. "It bean't no good. I've forgotten all about it. T' letters wonna join."

"Let me look at them." And Hilary tried to contemplate gravely the scrawled and blotted page, which looked very much as if a large spider had walked into the ink bottle, and then walked out again on a tour of investigation. "What did you want to write?" asked she, suddenly.

Elizabeth blushed violently. "It was the woman, Mrs. Cliffe, t'

little lad's mother, you know; she wanted somebody to write to her husband as is at work at Birmingham, and I said I would. I'd learned at the National, but I've forgotten it all. I'm just as Miss Selina says--I'm good for nowt."

"Come, come, never fret;" for there was a sort of choke in the girl's voice. "There's many a good person who never learned to write. But I don't see why you should not learn. Shall I teach you?"

Utter amazement, beaming grat.i.tude, succeeded one another, plain as light, in Elizabeth's eyes, but she only said, "Thank you, Miss Hilary."

"Very well. I have brought you an old gown of mine, and was going to show you how to make it up for yourself, but I'll look over your writing instead. Sit down and let me see what you can do."

In a state of nervous trepidation, pitiful to behold, Elizabeth took the pen. Terrible scratches resulted; blots innumerable; and one fatal deluge of ink, which startled from their seats both mistress and maid, and made Hilary thankful that she had taken off her better gown for a common one, as, with sad thriftiness, the Misses Leaf always did of evenings.

When Elizabeth saw the mischief she had done, her contrition and humility were unbounded. "No, Miss Hilary, you can't make nothin' of me. I be too stupid, I'll give it up."