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Mistress and Maid, a novel by Dinah M. Mulock Craik |
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Chapter 28 |
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_ CHAPTER XXVIII Elizabeth spent the greatest part of her holiday in that house, in that room. Nobody interfered with her; nobody asked in what relation she stood to the deceased, or what right she had to take upon herself the arrangements for his funeral. Every body was only too glad to let her assume a responsibility which would otherwise have fallen on the parish. The only person who appeared to remember either her or the dead man was the druggist's assistant, who sent in the necessary medical certificate as to the cause of death. Elizabeth took it to the Registrar, and thence proceeded to an undertaker hard by, with whom she arranged all about the funeral, and that it should took place in the new cemetery at Kensal Green. She thought she should like that better than a close, noisy London church yard. Before she left the house she saw poor Tom laid in his coffin, and covered up forever from mortal eyes. Then, and not till then, she sat herself down beside him and wept. Nobody contested with her the possession of the few things that had belonged to him, which were scarcely more than the clothes he had on when he died; so she made them up into a parcel and took them away with her. In his waistcoat pocket she found one book, a little Testament, which she had given him herself. It looked as if it had been a good deal read. If all his studies, all his worship of "pure intellect," as the one supreme good, had ended in that, it was a blessed ending. When she reached home Elizabeth went at once to her master, returned him his letter of recommendation, and explained to him that his kindness was not needed now. Mr. Ascott seemed a good deal shocked, inquired from her a few particulars, and again took out his purse, his one panacea for all mortal woes. But Elizabeth declined; she said she would only ask him for an advance of her next half-year's wages. She preferred burying her old friend herself. She buried him, herself the only mourner, on a bright summer's day, with the sun shining dazzlingly on the white grave stones in Kensal Green. The clergyman appeared, read the service, and went away again. A few minutes ended it all. When the undertaker and his men had also departed, she sat down on a bench near to watch the sexton filling up the grave--Tom's grave. She was very quiet, and none but a closely observant person watching her face could have penetrated into the truth of what your impulsive characters, always in the extremes of mirth or misery, never understand about quiet people, that "still waters run deep." While she sat there some one came past her, and turned round. It was the shabby-looking chemist's assistant, who had a appeared at the inquest, and given the satisfactory evidence which had prevented the necessity of her giving-hers. Elizabeth rose and acknowledged him with a respectable courtesy; for under his threadbare clothes was the bearing of a gentleman, and he had been so kind to Tom. "I am too late," he said; "the funeral is over. I meant to have attended it, and seen the last of the poor fellow." "Thank you, Sir," replied Elizabeth, gratefully. The young man stood before her, looking at her earnestly for a minute or two, and then exclaimed, with a complete change of voice and manner. "Elizabeth, don't you know me? What has become of my aunt Johanna?" It was Ascott Leaf. But no wonder Elizabeth had not recognized him. His close cropped hair, his large beard hiding half his face, and a pair of spectacles which he had assumed, were a sufficient disguise. Besides, the great change from his former "dandy" appearance to the extreme of shabbiness; his clothes being evidently worn as long as they could possibly hold together, and his generally depressed air, giving the effect of one who had gone down in the world, made him, even without the misleading "John Smith," most unlikely to be identified with the Ascott Leaf of old. "I never should have known you, Sir!" said Elizabeth truthfully, when her astonishment had a little subsided; "but I am very glad to see you. Oh how thankful your aunts will be!" "Do you think so? I thought it was quite the contrary. But it does not matter; they will never hear of me unless you tell them--and I believe I may trust you. You would not betray me, if only for the sake of that poor fellow yonder?" "No, Sir." "Now, tell me something about my aunts, especially my aunt Johanna." And sitting down in the sunshine, with his arms upon the back of the bench, and his hand hiding his eyes, the poor prodigal listened in silence to every thing Elizabeth told him; of his Aunt Selina's marriage and death, and of Mr. Lyon's return, and of the happy home at Liverpool. "They are all quite happy, then?" said he, at length; "they seem to have begun to prosper ever since they got rid of me. Well, I'm glad of it. I only wanted to hear of them from you. I shall never trouble them any more. You'll keep my secret, I know. And now I must go, for I have not a minute more to spare. Good-by, Elizabeth." With a humility and friendliness, strange enough in Ascott Leaf, he held out his hand--empty, for he had nothing to give now--to his aunt's old servant. But Elizabeth detained him. "Don't go, Sir, please, don't; not just yet." And then she added, with an earnest respectfulness that touched the heart of the poor, shabby man, "I hope you'll pardon the liberty I take. I'm only a servant, but I knew you when you were a boy, Mr. Leaf: and if you would trust me, if you would let me be of use to you in any way--if only because you were so good to him there." "Poor Tom Cliffe; he was not a bad fellow; he liked me rather, I think; and I was able to doctor him and help him a little. Heigh-ho; it's a comfort to think I ever did any good to any body." Ascott sighed, drew his rusty coat sleeves across his eyes, and sat contemplating his boots, which were any thing but dandy boots now. "Elizabeth, what relation was Tom to you? If I had known you were acquainted with him I should have been afraid to go near him; but I felt sure, though he came from Stowbury, he did not guess who I was; he only knew me as Mr. Smith; and he never once mentioned you. Was he your cousin, or what?" Elizabeth considered a moment, and then told the simple fact; it could not matter now. "I was once going to be married to him, but he saw somebody he liked better, and married her." "Poor girl; poor Elizabeth?" Perhaps nothing could have shown the great change in Ascott more than the tone in which he uttered these words; a tone of entire respect and kindly pity, from which he never once departed during that conversation, and many, many others, so long as their confidential relations lasted. "Now, Sir, would you be so kind as to tell me something about yourself? I'll not repeat any thing to your aunts, if you don't wish it." Ascott yielded. He had been so long, so utterly forlorn. He sat down beside Elizabeth, and then, with eyes often averted, and with many breaks between, which she had to fill up as best as she could, he told her all his story, even to the sad secret of all, which had caused him to run away from home, and hide himself in the last place where they would have thought he was, the safe wilderness of London. There, carefully disguised, he had lived decently while his money lasted, and then, driven step by step to the brink of destitution, he had offered himself for employment in the lowest grade of his own profession, and been taken as assistant by the not over scrupulous chemist and druggist in that not too respectable neighborhood of Westminster, with a salary of twenty pounds a year. "And I actually live upon it!" added he, with a bitter smile. "I can't run into debt; for who would trust me? And I dress in rags almost, as you see. And I get my meals how and where I can; and I sleep under the shop counter. A pretty life for Mr. Ascott Leaf, isn't it now? What would my aunts say if they knew it?" "They would say that it was an honest life, and that they were not a bit ashamed of you." Ascott drew himself up a little, and his chest heaved visibly under the close buttoned, thread bare coat. "Well, at least, it is a life that makes nobody else miserable." Ay, that wonderful teacher, Adversity,
Not with all natures does misfortune so work, but it did with his. He had sinned; he had paid the cost of his sin in bitter suffering; but the result was cheaply bought, and he already began to feel that it was so. "Yes," said he, in answer to a question of Elizabeth's, "I really am, for some things, happier than I used to be. I feel more like what I was in the old days, when I was a little chap at Stowbury. Poor old Stowbury! I often think of the place in a way that's perfectly ridiculous. Still, if any thing happened to me, I should like my aunts to know it, and that I didn't forget them." "But, Sir," asked Elizabeth earnestly, "do you never mean to go near your aunts again?" "I can't say; it all depends upon circumstances. I suppose," he added, "if, as is said, one's sin is sure to find one out, the same rule goes by contraries. It seems poor Cliffe once spoke of me to a district visitor, the only visitor he ever had; and this gentleman, hearing of the inquest, came yesterday to inquire about him of me; and the end was that he offered me a situation with a person he knew, a very respectable chemist in Tottenham Court Road." "And shall you go?" "To be sure. I've learned to be thankful for small mercies. Nobody will find me out or recognize me. You didn't. Who knows? I may even have the honor of dispensing drugs to Uncle Ascott of Russell Square." "But," said Elizabeth, after a pause, "you will not always remain as John Smith, druggist's shopman, throwing away all your good education, position, and name?" "Elizabeth," said he, in a humbled tone, "how dare I ever resume my own name and get back my rightful position while Peter Ascott lives? Can you or any body point out a way?" She thought the question over in her clear head; clear still, even at this hour, when she had to think for others, though all personal feeling and interest were buried in that grave over which the sexton was now laying the turf that would soon grow smoothly green. "If I might advise, Mr. Leaf, I should say, save up all your money, and then go, just as you are, with an honest, bold front, right into my master's house, with the fifty pounds in your hand--" "By Jove, you've hit it!" cried Ascott, starting up. "What a thing a woman's head is! I've turned over scheme after scheme, but I never once thought of any thing so simple as that. Bravo, Elizabeth! You're a remarkable woman." She smiled--a very sad smile--but still she felt glad. Any thing that she could possibly do for any creature belonging to her dear mistresses seemed to this faithful servant the natural and bounden duty of her life. Long after the young man, whose mercurial temperament no trouble could repress, had gone away in excellent spirits, leaving her an address where she could always find him, and give him regular news of his aunts, though he made her promise to give them, as yet, no tidings in return, Elizabeth sat still, watching the sun decline and the shadows lengthen over the field of graves. In the calmness and beauty of this solitary place an equal calm seemed to come over her; a sense of how wonderfully events had linked themselves together and worked themselves out; how even poor Tom's mournful death had brought about this meeting, which might end in restoring to her beloved mistresses their lost sheep, their outcast, miserable boy. She did not reason the matter out, but she felt it, and felt that in making her in some degree His instrument God had been very good to her in the midst of her desolation. It seemed Elizabeth's lot always to have to put aside her own troubles for the trouble of somebody else. Almost immediately after Tom Cliffe's death her little Henry fell ill with scarlatina and remained for many months in a state of health so fragile as to engross all her thought and care. It was with difficulty that she contrived a few times to go for Henry's medicines to the shop where "John Smith" served. She noticed that every time he looked healthier, brighter, freer from that aspect of broken-down respectability which had touched her so much. He did not dress any better, but still "the gentleman" in him could never be hidden or lost, and he said his master treated him "like a gentleman," which was apparently a pleasant novelty. "I have some time to myself also. Shop shuts at nine, and I get up at 5 A. M.--bless us! what would my Aunt Hilary say? And it's not for nothing. There are more ways than one of turning an honest penny, when a young fellow really sets about it. Elizabeth, you used to be a literary character yourself; look into the ---- and the ----," (naming two popular magazines), "and if you find a series of especially clever papers on sanitary reform, and so on, I did 'em:" He slapped his chest with Ascott's merry laugh of old. It cheered Elizabeth for a long while afterward. By-and-by she had to take little Henry to Brighton, and lost sight of "John Smith" for some time longer. It was on a snowy February day, when, having brought the child home quite strong, and received unlimited gratitude and guineas from the delighted father, Master Henry's faithful nurse stood in her usual place at the dining-room door, waiting for the interminable grace of "only five minutes more" to be over, and her boy carried ignominiously but contentedly to bed. The footman knocked at the door. "A young man wanting to speak to master on particular business. "Let him send in his name." "He says you wouldn't know it, Sir." "Show him in, then. Probably a case of charity, as usual. Oh!" And Mr. Ascott's opinion was confirmed by the appearance of the shabby young man with the long beard, whom Elizabeth did not wonder he never recognized in the least. She ought to have retired, and yet she could not. She hid herself partly behind the door, afraid of passing Ascott; dreading alike to wound him by recognition or non-recognition. But he took no notice. He seemed excessively agitated. "Come a-begging, young man, I suppose? Wants a situation, as hundreds do, and think that I have half the clerkships in the city at my disposal, and that I am made of money besides. But it's no good, I tell you, Sir; I never give nothing to strangers, except--Here, Henry, my son, take that person there this half crown." And the little boy, in his pretty purple velvet frock and his prettier face, trotted across the room and put the money into poor Ascott's hand. He took it; and then to the astonishment of Master Henry, and the still greater astonishment of his father, lifted up the child and kissed him. "Young man, young fellow--" "I see you don't know me, Mr. Ascott, and it's not surprising. But I have come to repay you this--" he laid a fifty pound note down on the table. "Also, to thank you earnestly for not prosecuting me, and to say--" "Good God!"--the sole expletive Peter Ascott had been heard to use for long. "Ascott Leaf, is that you? I thought you were in Australia, or dead, or something." "No, I'm alive and here, more's the pity perhaps. Except that I have lived to pay you back what I cheated you out of. What you generously gave me I can't pay, though I may sometime. Meantime, I have brought you this. It's honestly earned. Yes." observing the keen doubtful look, "though I have hardly a coat to my back, I assure you it's honestly earned." Mr. Ascott made no reply. He stooped over the bank-note, examined it, folded it, and put it into his pocket-book; then, after another puzzled investigation of Ascott, cleared his throat. "Mrs. Hand, you had better take Master Henry up stairs." An hour after, when little Henry had long been sound asleep, and she was sitting at her usual evening sewing in her solitary nursery, Elizabeth learned that the "shabby young man" was still in the dining-room with Mr. Ascott, who had rung for tea, and some cold meat with it. And the footman stated, with undisguised amazement, that the shabby young man was actually sitting at the same table with master! Elizabeth smiled to herself and held her tongue. Now, as ever, she always kept the secrets of the family. About ten o'clock she was summoned to the dining-room. There stood Peter Ascott, pompous as ever, but with a certain kindly good-humor lightening up his heavy face, looking condescendingly around him, and occasionally rubbing his hands slowly together, as if he were exceedingly well pleased with himself. There stood Ascott Leaf, looking bright and handsome, in spite of his shabbiness, and quite at his ease--which small peculiarity was never likely to be knocked out of him under the most depressing circumstances. He shook hands with Elizabeth warmly. "I wanted to ask you if you have any message for Liverpool. I go there to-morrow on business for Mr. Ascott, and afterward I shall probably go and see my aunts." He faltered a moment, but quickly shook the emotion off. "Of course, I shall tell them all about you, Elizabeth. Any special message, eh?" "Only my duty, Sir, and Master Henry is quite well again," said Elizabeth, formally, and dropping her old-fashioned courtesy; after which, as quickly as she could, she slipped out of the dining-room. But, long, long after, when all the house was gone to bed, she stood at the nurser window, looking down upon the trees of the square, that stretched their motionless arms up into the moonlight sky--just such a moonlight as it was once, more than three years ago, the night little Henry was born. And she recalled all the past, from the day when Miss Hilary hung up her bonnet for her in the house-place at Stowbury; the dreary life at No. 15; the Sunday nights when she and Tom Cliffe used to go wandering round and round the square. "Poor Tom," said she to herself, thinking of Ascott Leaf, and how happy he had looked, and how happy his aunts would be to-morrow. "Well, Tom would be glad too, if he knew all." But, happy as every body was, there was nothing so close to Elizabeth's heart as the one grave over which the snow was now lying, white and peaceful, out at Kensal Green. Elizabeth is still living--which is a great blessing, for nobody could well do without her. She will probably attain a good old age; being healthy and strong, very equable in temper now, and very cheerful too, in her quiet way. Doubtless, she will yet have Master Henry's children climbing her knees, and calling her "Mammy Lizzie." But she will never marry--She never loved any body but Tom. [THE END] _ |
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