Chapter 18

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_ CHAPTER XVIII

The week passed by, and Hilary received no ill tidings from home. Incessant occupation kept her from dwelling too much on anxious subjects: besides, she would not have thought it exactly right, while her time and her mental powers were for so many hours per diem legally Miss Balquidder's, to waste the one and weaken the other by what is commonly called "fretting." Nor, carrying this conscientious duty to a higher degree, and toward a higher Master, would she have dared to sit grieving overmuch over their dark future. And yet it was very dark. She pondered over what was to be done with Ascott, or whether he was still to be left to the hopeless hope of doing something for himself: how long the little establishment at No. 15 could be kept together, or if, after Selina's marriage, it would not be advisable to make some change that should contract expenses, and prevent this hard separation, from Monday to Saturday, between Johanna and herself.

These, with equally anxious thoughts, attacked her in crowds every day and every hour; but she had generally sufficient will to put them aside: at least till after work was done, and they could neither stupefy nor paralyze her. Trouble had to her been long enough familiar to have taught her its own best lesson--that the mind can, in degree, rule itself, even as it rules the body.

Thus, in her business duties, which were principally keeping accounts; in her management of the two young people under her, and of the small domestic establishment connected with the shop, Hilary went steadily on, day after day; made no blunders in her arithmetic, no mistakes in her housekeeping. Being new to all her responsibilities, she had to give her whole mind to them; and she did it: and it was a blessing to her--the sanctified blessing which rests upon labor, almost seeming to neutralize its primeval curse.

But night after night, when work was over, she sat alone at her sewing--the only time she had for it--and her thoughts went faster than her needle. She turned over plan after plan, and went back upon hope after hope, that had risen and broken like waves of the sea--nothing happening that she had expected; the only thing which had happened, or which seemed to have any permanence or reality, being two things which she had never expected at all--Selina's marriage, and her own engagement with Miss Balquidder. It often happens so, in most people's lives, until at last they learn to live on from day to day, doing each day's duty within the day, and believing that it is a righteous as well as a tender hand which keeps the next day's page safely folded down.

So Hilary sat, glad to have a quiet hour, not to grieve in, but to lay out the details of a plan which had been maturing in her mind all week, and which she meant definitely to propose to Johanna when she went home next day. It would cost her something to do so, and she had had some hesitations as to the scheme itself, until at last she threw them all to the winds, as an honest-hearted, faithful and faithfully-trusting woman would. Her plan was, that they should write to the only real friend the family had--the only good man she believed in--stating plainly their troubles and difficulties about their nephew; asking his advice, & possibly his help. He might know of something--some opening for a young surgeon in India, or some temporary appointment for the voyage out and home, which might catch Ascott's erratic and easily attracted fancy: give him occupation for the time being, and at least detach him from his present life, with all its temptations and dangers.

Also, it might result in bringing the boy again under that influence which had been so beneficial to him while it lasted, and which Hilary devoutly believed was the best influence in the world. Was it unnatural, if, mingled with an earnest desire for Ascott's good, was an under-lying delight that that good should be done to him by Robert Lyon?

So when her plan was made, even to the very words in which she meant to unfold it to Johanna, and the very form in which Johanna should write the letter, she allowed herself a few brief minutes to think of him--Robert Lyon--to call up his eyes, his voice, his smile; to count, for the hundreth time, how many months--one less than twenty-four, so she could not say years now--it would be before he returned to England. Also, to speculate when and where they would first meet, and how he would speak the one word--all that was needful to change "liking" into "love," and "friend" into "wife."

They had so grown together during so many years not the less so during these years of absence, that it seemed as if such a change would hardly make any difference. And yet--and yet--as she sat and sewed, wearied with her day's labors, sad and perplexed, she thought--if only, by some strange magic, Robert Lyon were standing opposite, holding open his arms, ready and glad to take her and all her cares to his heart, how she would cling there! how closely she would creep to him, weeping with joy and content, neither afraid nor ashamed to let him see how dearly she loved him!

Only a dream! ah, only a dream! and she started from it at the sharp sound of the doorbell--started, blushing and trembling, as if it had been Robert Lyon himself, when she knew it was only her two young assistants whom she had allowed to go out to tea in the neighborhood. So she settled herself to her work again; put all her own thoughts by in their little private corners, and waited for the entrance and the harmless gossip of these two orphan girls, who were already beginning to love her, and make a friend of her, and toward whom she felt herself quite an elderly and responsible person. Poor little Hilary! It seemed to be her lot always to take care of somebody or other. Would it ever be that any body should take care of her?

So she cleared away some of her needlework, stirred the fire, which was dropping hollow and dull, and looked up pleasantly to the opening door. But it was not the girls: it was a man's foot and a man's voice.

"Any person of the name of Leaf living here? I wish to see her, on business."

At another time she would have laughed at the manner and words, as if it were impossible so great a gentleman as Mr. Ascott could want to see so small a person as the "person of the name of Leaf," except on business. But now she was startled by his appearance at all. She sprang up only able to articulate "My sister--"

"Don't be frightened; your sisters are quite well. I called at No. 15 an hour ago."

"You saw them?"

"No; I thought it unadvisable, under the circumstances."

"What circumstances?"

"I will explain, if you will allow me to sit down; bah! I've brought in sticking to me a straw out of that confounded shaky old cab. One ought never to be so stupid as to go any where except in one's own carriage. This is rather a small room, Miss Hilary."

He eyed it curiously round; and, lastly, with his most acute look he eyed herself, as if he wished to find out something from her manner, before going into further explanations.

But she stood before him a little uneasy, and yet not very much so. The utmost she expected was some quarrel with her sister Selina; perhaps the breaking off of the match, which would not have broken Hilary's heart at all events.

"So you have really no idea what I'm come about!"

"Not the slightest."

"Well!" said Peter Ascott. "I hardly thought it; but when one has been taken in as I have been, and this isn't the first time by your family--"

"Mr. Ascott! will you explain yourself?"

"I will, ma'am. It's a very unpleasant business I come about; any other gentleman but me would have come with a police officer at his back. Look here, Miss Hilary Leaf--did you ever set eyes on this before?"

He took out his check book, turned deliberately over the small memorandum halves of the page, till he came to one in particular, then hunted in his pocket book for something.

"My banker sent in to-day my canceled checks, which I don't usually go over oftener than three months; he knew that, the scamp."

Hilary looked up.

"Your nephew, to be sure. See!"

He spread before her a check, the very one she had watched him write seven days before, made payable to "Ascott Leaf, or bearer," and signed with the bold, peculiar signature. "Peter Ascott." Only instead of being a check for twenty pounds it was for seventy.

Instantly the whole truth flashed upon Hilary: Ascott's remark about how easily the T could be made into an S, and what a "good joke" it would be; his long absence that night; his strange manner: his refusal to let her see the check again; all was clear as daylight.

Unfortunate boy! the temptation had been too strong for him. Under what sudden, insane impulse he had acted--under what delusion of being able to repay in time; or of Mr. Ascott's not detecting the fraud; or if discovered, of its being discovered after the marriage, when to prosecute his wife's nephew would be a disgrace to himself, could never be known. But there unmistakable was the altered check, which had been presented and paid, the banker of course not having the slightest suspicion of any thing amiss.

"Well, isn't this a nice return for all my kindness? So cleverly done, too. But for the merest chance I might not have found it out for three months. Oh, he's a precious young rascal, this nephew of yours. His father was only a fool, but he-- Do you know that this is a matter of forgery--forgery, ma'am," added Mr. Ascott, waxing hot in his indignation.

Hilary uttered a bitter groan.

Yes, it was quite true. Their Ascott, their own boy, was no longer merely idle, extravagant, thoughtless--faults bad enough, but capable of being mended as he grew older: he had done that which to the end of his days he could never blot out. He was a swindler and a forger.

She clasped her hands tightly together, as one struggling with sharp physical pain, trying to read the expression of Mr. Ascott's face. At last she put her question into words.

"What do you mean to do? Shall you prosecute him?"

Mr. Ascott crossed his legs, and settled his neckcloth with a self-satisfied air. He evidently rather enjoyed the importance of his position. To be dictator, almost of life and death, to this unfortunate family was worth certainly fifty pounds.

"Well, I haven't exactly determined. The money, you see, is of no moment to me, and I couldn't get it back any how. He'll never be worth a half-penny, that rascal. I might prosecute, and nobody would blame me; indeed, if I were to decline marrying your sister, and cut the whole set of you, I don't see," and he drew himself up, "that any thing could be said against me. But--"

Perhaps, hard man as he was, he was touched by the agony of suspense in Hilary's face, for he added.

"Come, come, I won't disgrace your family; I won't do any thing to harm the fellow."

"Thank you!" said Hilary, in a mechanical, unnatural voice.

"As for my money, he's welcome to it, and much good may it do him. 'Set a beggar on horseback, and he'll ride to the devil,' and in double quick time too. I won't hinder him. I wash my hands of the young scape-grace. But he'd better not come near me again."

"No," acquiesced Hilary, absently.

"In fact," said Mr. Ascott, with a twinkle of his sharp eye, "I have already taken measures to frighten him away, so that he may make himself scarce, and give neither you nor me any farther trouble. I drove up to your door with a policeman, asked to see Mr. Leaf, and when I heard that he was out--a lie, of course I left word I'd be back in half an hour. Depend upon it," and he winked confidentially, "he will smell a rat, and make a moonlight flitting of it, and we shall never hear of him any more."

"Never hear of Ascott any more?" repeated Hilary; and for an instant she ceased to think of him as what he was--swindler, forger, ungrateful to his benefactors, a disgrace to his home and family. She saw only the boy Ascott, with his bright looks and pleasant ways, whom his aunts had brought up from his cradle, and loved with all his faults--perhaps loved still. "Oh, I must go home. This will break Johanna's heart!"

Mr. Peter Ascott possibly never had a heart, or it had been so stunted in its growth that it had never reached its fair development. Yet he felt sorry in his way for the "young person," who looked so deadly white, yet tried so hard not to make a scene, nay, when her two assistants came into the one little parlor, deported herself with steady composure; told them that she was obliged suddenly to go home, but would be back, if possible, the next morning. Then, in that orderly, accurate way which Peter Ascott could both understand and appreciate, she proceeded to arrange with them about the shop and the house in case she might be detained till Monday.

"You're not a bad woman of business," said he, with a patronizing air. "This seems a tidy little shop; I dare say you'll get on in it."

She looked at him with a bewildered air, and went on speaking to the young woman at the door.

"How much might your weekly receipts be in a place like this? And what salary does Miss--Miss What's-her-name give to each of you? You're the head shop-woman, I suppose?"

Hilary made no answer: she scarcely heard. All her mind was full of but one thing: "Never see Ascott any more!"

There came back upon her all the dreadful stories she had ever heard of lads who had committed forgery or some similar offense, and, in dread of punishment, had run away in despair, and never been heard of for years--come to every kind of misery, perhaps even destroyed themselves. The impression was so horribly vivid, that when, pausing an instant in putting her books in their places, she heard the door bell ring Hilary with difficulty repressed a scream.

But it was no messenger of dreadful tidings, it was only Elizabeth Hand; and the quiet fashion in which she entered showed Hilary at once that nothing dreadful had happened at home.

"Oh no, nothing has happened," confirmed the girl. "Only Miss Leaf sent me to see if you could come home to night instead of tomorrow. She is quite well, that is, pretty well; but Mr. Leaf--"

Here, catching sight of Miss Hilary's visitor, Elizabeth stopped short. Peter Ascott was one of her prejudices. She determined in his presence to let out no more of the family affairs.

On his part, Mr. Ascott had always treated Elizabeth as people like him usually do treat servants, afraid to lose an inch of their dignity, lest it should be an acknowledgment of equal birth and breeding with the class from which they are so terribly ashamed to have sprung. He regarded her now with a lordly air.

"Young woman--I believe you are the young woman who this afternoon told me that Mr. Leaf was out. It was a fib, of course."

Elizabeth turned round indignantly. "No, Sir; I don't tell fibs. He was out."

"Did you give him my message when he came in?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And what did he say, oh?"

"Nothing."

This was the literal fact; but there was something behind which Elizabeth had not the slightest intention of communicating. In fact, she set herself, physically and mentally, in an attitude of dogged resistance to any pumping of Mr. Ascott: for though, as she had truly said, nothing special had happened, she felt sure that he was at the bottom of something which had gone wrong in the household that afternoon.

It was this. When Ascott returned, and she told him of his godfather's visit, the young man had suddenly turned so ghastly pale that she had to fetch him a glass of water; and his Aunt Johanna--Miss Selina was out--had to tend him and soothe him for several minutes before he was right again. When at last he seemed returning to his natural self, he looked wildly up at his aunt, and clung to her in such an outburst of feeling, that Elizabeth had thought it best to slip out of the room. It was tea time, but still she waited outside for a half hour or longer, when she gently knocked, and after a minute or two Miss Leaf came out. There seemed nothing wrong, at least not much--not more than Elizabeth had noticed many and many a time after talks between Ascott and his aunts.

"I'll take the tea in myself," she said; "for I want you to start at once for Kensington to fetch Miss Hilary. Don't frighten her--mind that Elizabeth. Say I am much as usual myself; but that Mr. Leaf is not quite well, and I think she might do him good. Remember the exact words."

Elizabeth did, and would have delivered them accurately, it Mr. Ascott had not been present, and addressed her in that authoritative manner. Now, she resolutely held her tongue.

Mr. Ascott might in his time have been accustomed to cringing, frightened, or impertinent servants, but this was a phase of the species with which he was totally unfamiliar. The girl was neither sullen nor rude, yet evidently quite independent; afraid neither of her mistress, nor of himself. He was sharp enough to see that whatever he wanted to get out of Elizabeth must be got in another way.

"Come, my wench, you'd better tell; it'll be none the worse for you, and it shan't harm the young fellow, though I dare say he has paid you well for holding your tongue."

"About what, sir?"

"Oh! you know what happened when you told him I had called, eh? Servants get to know all about their master's affairs."

"Mr. Leaf isn't my master, and his affairs are nothing to me; I don't pry into 'em," replied Elizabeth. "If you want to know any thing, Sir, hadn't you better ask himself! He's at home to-night. I left him and my missus going to their tea."

"Left them at home, and at tea?"

"Yes, Miss Hilary."

It was an inexpressible relief. For the discovery must have come. Ascott must have known or guessed that Mr. Ascott had found him out; he must have confessed all to his Aunt, or Johanna would never have done two things which her sister knew she strongly disliked--sending Elizabeth wandering through London at night, and fetching Hilary home before the time. Yet they had been left sitting quietly at their tea!

Perhaps, after all, the blow had not been so dreadful. Johanna saw comfort through it all. Vague hopes arose in Hilary also; visions of the poor sinner sitting "clothed and in his right mind," contrite and humbled; comforted by them all, with the inexpressible tenderness with which we yearn over one who "was dead and is alive again, was lost, and is found;" helped by them all in the way that women--some women especially, and these were of them--seem formed to help the erring and unfortunate; for, erring as he was, he had also been unfortunate.

Many an excuse for him suggested itself. How foolish of them, ignorant women that they were, to suppose that seventeen years of the most careful bringing up could, with his temperament, stand against the countless dangers of London life; of any life where a young man is left to himself in a great town, with his temptations so many, and his power of resistance so small.

And this might not, could not be a deliberate act. It must have been committed under a sudden impulse, to be repented of for the rest of his days. Nay, in the strange way in which our sins and mistakes are made not only the whips to scourge us, but the sicknesses out of which we often come--suffering and weak indeed, but yet relieved, and fresh, and sound--who could tell but that this grave fault, this actual guilt, the climax of so many lesser errors, might not work out in the end Ascott's complete reformation?

So in the strange way in which, after a great shock, we begin to revive a little, to hope against hope, to see a slender ray breaking through the darkness, Hilary composed herself, at least so far as to enable her to bid Elizabeth go down stairs, and she would be ready directly.

"I think it is the best thing I can do--to go home at once," said she.

"Certainly, my dear." replied Mr. Ascott, rather flattered by her involuntary appeal, and by an inward consciousness of his own exceeding generosity. "And pray don't disturb yourselves. Tell your sister from me--your sister Selina, I mean--that I overlook every thing, on condition that you keep him out of my sight, that young blackguard!"

"Don't, don't!" cried Hilary, piteously.

"Well, I won't, though it's his right name--a fellow who could-- Look you, Miss Hilary, when his father sent to me to beg ten pounds to bury his mother with. I did bury her, and him also, a month after, very respectably too, though he had no claim upon me, except that he came from Stowbury. And I stood godfather to the child, and I've done my duty by him. But mark my words, what's bred in the bone will come in the flesh. He was born in a prison, and he'll die in a prison."

"God forbid!" said Hilary, solemnly. And again she felt the strong conviction, that whatever his father had been, or his mother, of whom they had heard nothing till she was dead, Ascott could not have lived all these years of his childhood and early boyhood with his three aunts at Stowbury without gaining at least some good, which might counteract the hereditary evil; as such evil can be counteracted, even as hereditary disease can be gradually removed by wholesome and careful rearing in a new generation.

"Well, I'll not say any more," continued Peter Ascott: "only the sooner the young fellow takes himself off the better. He'll only plague you all. Now, can you send out for a cab for me?"

Hilary mechanically rang the bell, and gave the order.

"I'll take you to town with me if you like. It'll save you the expense of the omnibus. I suppose you always travel by omnibus?"

Hilary answered something, she hardly knew what, except that it was a declining of all these benevolent attentions. At last she got Mr. Ascott outside the street door, and returning, put her hand to her head with a moan.

"Oh, Miss Hilary, don't look like that."

"Elizabeth, do you know what has happened?"

"No."

"Then I don't want you to know. And you must never try to find it out; for it is a secret that ought to be kept strictly within the family. Are you to be trusted?"

"Yes, Miss Hilary."

"Now, get me my bonnet, and let us make haste and go home."

They walked down the gas-lit Kensington High Street, Hilary taking her servant's arm; for she felt strangely weak. As she sat in the dark corner of the omnibus she tried to look things in the face, and form some definite plan; but the noisy rumble at once dulled and confused her faculties. She felt capable of no consecutive thought, but found herself stupidly watching the two lines of faces, wondering, absently, what sort of people they were; what were their lives and histories; and whether they all had, like herself, their own personal burden of woe. Which was, alas! the one fact that never need be doubted in this world.

It was nigh upon eleven o'clock when Hilary knocked at the door of No. 15.

Miss Leaf opened it; but for the first time in her life she had no welcome for her child.

"Is it Ascott? I thought it was Ascott," she cried, peering eagerly up and down the street.

"He is gone out, then? When did he go?" asked Hilary, feeling her heart turn stone-cold.

"Just after Selina came in. She--she vexed him. But he can not be long? Is not that man he?"

And just as she was, without shawl or bonnet, Johanna stepped out into the cold, damp night, and strained her eyes into the darkness; but in vain.

"I'll walk round the Crescent once, and may be I shall find him. Only go in, Johanna."

And Hilary was away again into the dark, walking rapidly, less with the hope of finding Ascott than to get time to calm herself, so as to meet, and help her sisters to meet, this worst depth of their calamity. For something warned her that this last desperation of a weak nature is more to be dreaded than any overt obstinacy of a strong one. She had a conviction that Ascott never would come home.

After a while they gave up waiting and watching at the front door, and shut themselves up in the parlor. The first explanation past, even Selina ceased talking; and they sat together, the three women, doing nothing, attempting to do nothing, only listening; thinking every sound was a step on the pavement or a knock at the door. Alas! what would they not have given for the fiercest knock, the most impatient, angry footstep, if only it had been their boy's?

About one o'clock, Selina had to be put to bed in strong hysterics. She had lashed her nephew with her bitter tongue till he had rushed out of the house, declaring that none of them should ever see his face again. Now she reproached herself as being the cause of all, and fell into an agony of remorse, which engrossed her sisters' whole care; until her violent emotion having worn itself out, she went to sleep, the only one who did sleep in that miserable family.

For Elizabeth also, having been sent to bed hours before, was found by Miss Hilary sitting on the kitchen stairs, about four in the morning. Her mistress made no attempt at reproach, but brought her into the parlor to share the silent watch, never broken except to make up the fire or light a fresh candle; till candles burned up, and shutters were opened, and upon their great calamity stared the broad unwelcome day. _

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