Next morning, while with that cheerful, unanxious countenance1 which those about an invalid2 must learn continually to wear, Elizabeth was trying to persuade her mistress not to rise, she heard a knock, and made some excuse for escaping. She well knew what it was and who had come.
There, in the parlor3, sat Miss Hilary, Mrs. Jones talking at her rather than to her, for she hardly seemed to hear. But that she had heard every thing was clear enough. Her drawn4 white face, the tight clasp of her hands, showed that the ill tidings had struck her hard.
"Go away, Mrs. Jones," cried Elizabeth, fiercely. "Miss Hilary will call when she wants you."
And with an ingenious movement that just fell short of a push, somehow the woman was got on the other side of the parlor door, which Elizabeth immediately shut. Then Miss Hilary stretched her hands across the table and looked up piteously in her servant's face.
Only a servant; only that poor servant to whom she could look for any comfort in this sore trouble, this bitter humiliation5. There was no attempt at disguise or concealment6 between mistress and maid.
"Mrs. Jones has told me every thing, Elizabeth. How is my sister? She does not know?"
"No; and I think she is a good deal better this morning. She has been very bad all week; only she would not let me send for you. She is really getting well now; I'm sure of that!"
"Thank God!" And then Miss Hilary began to weep.
Elizabeth also was thankful, even for those tears, for she had been perplexed7 by the hard, dry-eyed look of misery8, deeper than anything she could comprehend, or than the circumstances seemed to warrant.
It was deeper. The misery was not only Ascott's arrest; many a lad has got into debt and got out again—the first taste of the law proving a warning to him for life; but it was this ominous9 "beginning of the end." The fatal end—which seemed to overhang like a hereditary10 cloud, to taint11 as with hereditary disease, the Leaf family.
Another bitterness (and who shall blame it, for when love is really love, have not the lovers a right to be one another's first thought?)—what would Robert Lyon say? To his honest Scotch12 nature poverty was nothing; honor every thing. She knew his horror of debt was even equal to her own. This, and her belief in his freedom from all false pride, had sustained her against many doubts lest he might think the less of her because of her present position—might feel ashamed could he see her sitting at her ledger14 in that high desk, or even occasionally serving in the shop.
Many a time things she would have passed over lightly on her own account she had felt on his; felt how they would annoy and vex15 him. The exquisitely16 natural thought which Tennyson has put into poetry—
"If I am dear to some one else,
Then I should be to myself more dear"—
had often come, prosaically17 enough perhaps, into her head, and prevented her from spoiling her little hands with unnecessarily rough work, or carelessly passing down ill streets and by-ways, where she knew Robert Lyon, had he been in London, would never have allowed her to go. Now what did such things signify? What need of taking care of herself? These were all superficial, external disgraces, the real disgrace was within. The plague-spot had burst out anew; it seemed as if this day were the recommencement of that bitter life of penury18, misery, and humiliation, familiar through three generations to the women of the Leaf family.
It appeared like a fate. No use to try and struggle out of it, stretching her arms up to Robert Lyon's tender, honest, steadfast19 heart, there to be sheltered, taken care of, and made happy. No happiness for her! Nothing but to go on enduring and enduring to the end.
Such was Hilary's first emotion; morbid20 perhaps, yet excusable. It might have lasted longer—though in her healthy nature it could not have lasted very long—had not the reaction come, suddenly and completely, by the opening of the parlor door, and the appearance of Miss Leaf.
Miss Leaf—pale, indeed; but neither alarmed nor agitated21, who hearing somehow that her child had arrived, had hastily dressed herself, and come down stairs, in order not to frighten Hilary. And as she took her in her arms, and kissed her with those mother-like kisses, which were the sweetest Hilary had as yet ever known—the sharp anguish22 went out of the poor girl's heart.
"Oh, Johanna! I can bear any thing as long as I have you"
And so in this simple and natural way the miserable23 secret about
Ascott came out.
Being once out, it did not seem half so dreadful; nor was its effect nearly so serious as Miss Hilary and Elizabeth had feared.—Miss Leaf bore it wonderfully; she might almost have known it beforehand; they would have thought she had, but that she said decidedly she had not.
"Still you need not have minded telling me; though it was very good and thoughtful of you Elizabeth. You have gone through a great deal for our sakes, my poor girl."
Elizabeth burst into one smothered25 sob26 the first and the last.
"Nay," said Miss Leaf, very kindly27; for this unwonted emotion in their servant moved them both. "You shall tell me the rest another time. Go down now, and get Miss Hilary some breakfast."
When Elizabeth had departed the sisters turned to one another. They did not talk much; where was the use of it? They both knew the worst, both as to facts and fears.
"What must be done. Johanna?"
Johanna, after a long pause, said, "I see but one thing—to get him home."
Hilary started up, and walked to and fro along the room.
"No, not that. I will never agree to it.—We can not help him. He does not deserve helping28. If the debts were for food now, or any necessaries; but for mere29 luxuries, mere fine clothes; it is his tailor who has arrested him, you know. I would rather have gone in rags! I would rather see us all in rags!—It's mean, selfish, cowardly, and I despise him for it. Though he is my own flesh and blood, I despise him."
"Hilary!"
"No." and the tears burst from her angry eyes, "I don't mean that I despise him. I'm sorry for him: there is good in him, poor dear lad; but I despise his weakness; I feel fierce to think how much it will cost us all, and especially you, Johanna. Only think what comforts of all sorts that thirty pounds would have brought to you!"
"God will provide," said Johanna, earnestly. "But I know, my dear, this is sharper to you than to me. Besides, I have been more used to it."
She closed her eyes, with a half shudder30, as if living over again the old days—when Henry Leaf's wife and eldest31 daughter used to have to give dinner parties upon food that stuck in their throats, as if every morsel32 had been stolen; which in truth it was, and yet they were helpless, innocent thieves; when they and the children had to wear clothes that seemed to poison them like the shirt of Dejanira; when they durst not walk along special streets, nor pass particular shops, for the feeling that the shop people must be staring, and pointing, and jibing33 at them, "Pay me what thou owest!"
"But things can not again be so bad as those days, Hilary. Ascott is young; he may mend. People can mend, my child; and he had such a different bringing up from what his father had, and his grandfather, too. We must not be hopeless yet. You see," and making Hilary kneel down before her, she took her by both hands, as if to impart something of her own quietness to this poor heart, struggling as young, honest, upright hearts do struggle with something which their whole nature revolts against, and loathes34, and scorns—"you see, the boy is our boy; our own flesh and blood. We were very foolish to let him away from us for so long. We might have made him better if we had kept him at Stowbury. But he is young; that is my hope of him; and he was always fond of his aunts, and is still, I think."
Hilary smiled sadly. "Deeds, not words I don't believe in words."
"Well, let us put aside believing, and only act. Let us give him another chance."
Hilary shook her head. "Another, and another, and another—it will be always the same. I know it will. I can't tell how it is, Johanna; but whenever I look at you, I feel so stern and hard to Ascott. It seems as if there were circumstances when pity to some, to one, was wicked injustice35 to others: as if there were times when it is right and needful to lop off, at once and forever, a rotten branch rather than let the whole tree go to rack and ruin. I would do it! I should think myself justified36 in doing it."
"But not just yet. He is only a boy—our own boy."
And the two women, in both of whom the maternal37 passion existed strong and deep, yet in the one never had found, and in the other never might find, its natural channel, wept together over this lad, almost as mothers weep.
"But what can we do?" said Hilary at last.
"Thirty pounds, and not a halfpenny to pay it with; must we borrow?"
"Oh no—no," was the answer, with a shrinking gesture; "no borrowing.
There is the diamond ring."
This was a sort of heir-loom from eldest daughter to eldest daughter of the Leaf family which had been kept even as a sort of superstition38, through all temptations of poverty.—The last time Miss Leaf looked at it she had remarked, jestingly, it should be given some day to that important personage talked of for many a year among the three aunts—Mrs. Ascott Leaf.
"Who must do without it now," said Johanna, looking regretfully at the ring; "that is, if he ever takes to himself a wife, poor boy."
Hilary answered, beneath her breath, "Unless he alters, I earnestly hope he never may." And there came over her involuntarily a wild, despairing thought, Would it not be better that neither Ascott nor herself should ever be married, that the family might die out, and trouble the world no more?
Nevertheless she rose up to do what she knew had to be done, and what there was nobody to do but herself.
"Don't mind it, Johanna; for indeed I do not. I shall go to a first rate, respectable jeweler, and he will not cheat me; and then I shall find my way to the sponging-house—isn't that what they call it? I dare say many a poor woman has been there before me. I am not the first, and shall not be the last, and no body will harm me. I think I look honest, though my name is Leaf."
She laughed—a bitter laugh; but Johanna silenced it in a close embrace; and when Hilary rose up again she was quite her natural self. She summoned Elizabeth, and began giving her all domestic directions, just as usual; finally, bade her sister good by in a tone as like her usual tone as possible, and left her settled on the sofa in content and peace.
Elizabeth followed to the door. Miss Hilary had asked her for the card on which Ascott had written the address of the place where he had been taken to; and though the girl said not a word, her anxious eyes ............