The Christmas holidays ended, and Ascott left for London. It was the
greatest household change the Misses Leaf had known for years, and
they missed him sorely. Ascott was not exactly a lovable boy, and
yet, after the fashion of womankind, his aunts were both fond and
proud of him; fond, in their childless old maidenhood, of any sort of
nephew, and proud, unconsciously, that the said nephew was a big
fellow, who could look over all their heads, besides being handsome
and pleasant mannered, and though not clever enough to set the Thames
on fire, still sufficiently bright to make them hope that in his
future the family star might again rise.
There was something pathetic in these three women's idealization of
him--even Selina's who though quarrelling with him to his face always
praised him behind his back,--that great, good-looking, lazy lad;
who, every body else saw clearly enough, thought more of his own
noble self than of all his aunts put together.
The only person he stood in awe of was Mr. Lyon--for whom he always
protested unbounded respect and admiration. How far Robert Lyon liked
Ascott even Hilary could never quite find out; but he was always very
kind to him.
There was one person in the house who, strange to say, did not
succumb to the all-dominating youth. From the very first there was a
smouldering feud between him and Elizabeth. Whether she overheard,
and slowly began to comprehend his mocking gibes about the "South Sea
Islander," or whether her sullen and dogged spirit resisted the first
attempts the lad made to "put upon her"--as he did upon his aunts, in
small daily tyrannies--was never found out; but certainly Ascott, the
general favorite, found little favor with the new servant. She never
answered when he "hollo'd" for her; she resisted blacking his boots
more than once a day; and she obstinately cleared the kitchen
fire-place of his "messes," as she ignominiously termed various pots
and pans belonging to what he called his "medical studies."
Although the war was passive rather than aggressive, and sometimes a
source of private amusement to the aunts, still, on the whole, it was
a relief when the exciting cause of it departed; his new and most
gentlemanly port manteau being carried down stairs by Elizabeth
herself, of her own accord, with an air of cheerful alacrity, foreign
to her mien for some weeks past, and which, even in the midst of the
dolorous parting, amused Hilary extremely.
"I think that girl is a character," she said afterward to Johanna.
"Any how she has curiously strong likes and dislikes."
"You may say that, my dear; for she brightens up whenever she looks
at you."
"Does she? Oh, that must be because I have most to do with her. It is
wonderful how friendly one gets over sauce pans and brooms; and what
reverence one inspires in the domestic mind when one really knows how
to make a bed or a pudding."
"How I wish you had to do neither!" sighed Johanna, looking fondly at
the bright face and light little figure that was flitting about
putting the school-room to rights before the pupils came in.
"Nonsense--I don't wish any such thing. Doing it makes me not a whit
less charming and lovely." She often applied these adjectives to
herself, with the most perfect conviction that she was uttering a
fiction patent to every body. I must be very juvenile also, for I'm
certain the fellow-passenger at the station to-day took me for
Ascott's sweetheart. When we were saying good by an old gentleman who
sat next him was particularly sympathetic, and you should have seen
how indignantly Ascott replied, "It's only my aunt!"
Miss Leaf laughed, and the shadow vanished from her face, as Hilary
had meant it should. She only said, caressing her, "Well, my pet,
never mind. I hope you will have a real sweetheart some day."
"I'm in no hurry, thank you, Johanna."
But now was heard the knock after knock of the little boys and girls,
and there began that monotonous daily round of school labor, rising
from the simplicities of c, a, t, cat, and d, o, g, dog--to the
sublime heights of Pinnock and Lennie, Telemaque and Latin Delectus.
No loftier; Stowbury being well supplied with first class schools,
and having a vague impression that the Misses Leaf, born ladies and
not brought up as governesses, were not competent educators except of
very small children.
Which was true enough until lately. So Miss Leaf kept contentedly to
the c, a, t, cat, and d, o, g, dog, of the little butchers and
bakers, as Miss Selina, who taught only sewing, and came into the
school-room but little during the day, scornfully termed them. The
higher branches such as they were, she left gradually to Hilary, who,
of late, possibly out of sympathy with a friend of hers, had begun to
show an actual gift for teaching school.
It is a gift--all will allow; and chiefly those who have it not,
among which was poor Johanna Leaf. The admiring envy with which she
watched Hilary, moving briskly about from class to class, with a word
of praise to one and rebuke to another, keeping every one's attention
alive, spurring on the dull, controlling the unruly, and exercising
over every member in this little world that influence, at once the
strongest and most intangible and inexplicable--personal
influence--was only equaled by the way in which, at pauses in the
day's work, when it grew dull and monotonous or when the stupidity of
the children ruffled her own quick temper beyond endurance, Hilary
watched Johanna.
The time I am telling of now is long ago.
The Stowbury children, who were then little boys and girls, are now
fathers and mothers--doubtless a large proportion being decent
tradesfolk in Stowbury still; though, in this locomotive quarter,
many must have drifted elsewhere--where, Heaven knows. But not a few
of them may still call to mind Miss Leaf, who first taught them their
letters--sitting in her corner between the fire and the window, while
the blind was drawn down to keep out, first the light from her own
fading eyes, and, secondly, the distracting view of green fields and
trees from the youthful eyes by her side. They may remember still her
dark plain dress and her white apron, on which the primers, torn and
dirty, looked half ashamed to lie; and above all, her sweet face and
sweeter voice, never heard in any thing sharper than that grieved
tone which signified their being "naughty children." They may recall
her unwearied patience with the very dullest and most wayward of
them; her unfailing sympathy with every infantile pleasure and pain.
And I think they will acknowledge that whether she taught them much
or little--in this advancing age it might be thought little--Miss
Leaf taught them one thing--to love her. Which, as Ben Johnson said
of the Countess of Pembroke, was in itself a "liberal education."
Hilary, too. Often when Hilary's younger and more restless spirit
chafed against the monotony of her life; when, instead of wasting her
days in teaching small children, she would have liked to be learning,
learning--every day growing wiser and cleverer, and stretching out
into that busy, bright, active world of which Robert Lyon had told
her--then the sight of Johanna's meek face bent over those dirty
spelling books would at once rebuke and comfort her. She felt, after
all, that she would not mind working on forever, so long as Johanna
still sat there.
Nevertheless, that winter seemed to her very long--especially after
Ascott was gone. For Johanna, partly for money, and partly for
kindness, had added to her day's work four evenings a week when a
half educated mother of one of her little pupils came to be taught to
write a decent hand, and to keep the accounts of her shop. Upon which
Selina, highly indignant, had taken to spending her evenings in the
school room, interrupting Hilary's solitary studies there by many a
lamentation over the peaceful days when they all sat in the kitchen
together and kept no servant. For Selina was one of those who never
saw the bright side of any thing till it had gone by.
"I'm sure I don't know how we are to manage with Elizabeth. That
greedy--"
"And growing," suggested Hilary.
"I say that greedy girl eats as much as any two of us. And as for her
clothes--her mother does not keep her even decent."
"She would find it difficult upon three pounds a year."
"Hilary, how dare you contradict me! I am only stating a plain fact."
"And I another. But, indeed, I don't want to talk Selina."
"You never do except when you are wished to be silent; and then your
tongue goes like any race horse."
"Does it? Well, like Gilpin's,
'It carries weight: it rides a race,
'Tis for a thousand pound?'
--and I only wish it were. Heigh ho! if I could but earn a thousand
pounds!"
Selina was too vexed to reply and for five quiet minutes Hilary bent
over her Homer which Mr. Lyon had taken such pleasure in teaching
her, because he said, she learned it faster than any of his grammar
school boys. She had forgotten all domestic grievances in a vision of
Thetis and the water nymphs; and was repeating to herself, first in
the sonorous Greek and then in Pope's small but sweet English, that
catalogue of oceanic beauties ending with
"Black Janira and Janassa fair,
And Amatheia with her amber hair."
"Black, did you say? I'm sure she was as black as a chimney sweep all
to-day. And her pinafore"
"Her what? Oh, Elizabeth, you mean--"
"Her pinafore had three rents in it, which she never thinks of
mending though I gave her needles and thread myself a week ago. But
she does not know how to use them any more than a baby."
"Possibly, nobody ever taught her."
"Yes; she went for a year to the National School, she says, and
learned both marking and sewing."
"Perhaps she has never practiced them since. She could hardly have
had time, with all the little Hands to look after, as her mother says
she did. All the better for us. It makes her wonderfully patient with
our troublesome brats. It was only to day, when that horrid little
Jacky Smith hurt himself so, that I saw Elizabeth take him into the
kitchen, wash his face and hands, and cuddle him up and comfort him,
quite motherly. Her forte is certainly children."
"You always find something to say for her."
"I should be ashamed if I could not find something to say for any
body who is always abused."
Another pause--and then Selina returned to the charge.
"Have you ever observed, my dear, the extraordinary way she has of
fastening, or rather, not fastening her gown behind? She just hooks
it together at the top and at the waist, while between there is a--"
"Hiatus valde deflendus. Oh dear me! what shall I do? Selina, how can
I help it if a girl of fifteen years old is not a paragon of
perfection? as of course we all are, if we only could find it out."
And Hilary, in despair, rose to carry her candle and books into the
chilly but quiet bedroom, biting her lips the while lest she should
be tempted to say something which Selina called "impertinent," which
perhaps it was, from a younger sister to an elder. I do not set
Hilary up as a perfect character. Through sorrow only do people go on
to perfection; and sorrow, in its true meaning, the cherished girl
had never known.
But that night, talking to Johanna before they went to sleep--they
had always slept together since the time when the elder sister used
to walk the room of nights with that pulling, motherless infant in
her arms--Hilary anxiously started the question of the little
servant.
"I am afraid I vexed Selina greatly about her to-night, and yet what
can one do? Selina is so very unjust--always expecting
impossibilities. She would like to have Elizabeth at once a first
rate cook, a finished house-maid, and an attentive lady's maid, and
all without being taught! She gives her things to do, neither waiting
to see if they are comprehended by her, nor showing her how to do
them. Of course the girl stands gaping and staring and does not do
them, or does them so badly, that she gets a thorough scolding."
"Is she very stupid, do you think?" asked Johanna, in unconscious
appeal to her pet's stronger judgment.
"No, I don't. Far from stupid; only very ignorant, and--you would
hardly believe it--very nervous. Selina frightens her. She gets on
extremely well with me."
"Any one would, my dear. That is," added the conscientious elder
sister, still afraid of making the "child" vain, "any one whom you
took pain with. But do you think you can ever make any thing out of
Elizabeth? Her month ends to-morrow. Shall we let her go?"
"And perhaps get in her place a story-teller--a tale-bearer--even a
thief. No, no; let us
'Rather bear the ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of;'
and a thief would be worse than even a South Sea Islander."
"Oh yes, my dear," said Johanna, with a shiver.
"By-the-by, the first step in the civilization of the Polynesians was
giving them clothes. And I have heard say that crime and rags often
go together; that a man unconsciously feels that he owes something to
himself and society in the way of virtue when he has a clean face and
clean shirt, and a decent coat on. Suppose we try the experiment of
dressing Elizabeth. How many old gowns have we?"
The number was few. Nothing in the Leaf family was ever cast off till
its very last extremity of decay; the talent that
"Gars auld claes look amaist as gude's the new"
being specially possessed by Hilary. She counted over her own
wardrobe and Johanna's but found nothing that could be spared.
"Yes, my love, there is one thing. You certainly shall never put on
that old brown merino again; though you have laid it so carefully by,
as if you meant it to come out as fresh as ever next winter. No,
Hilary, you must have a new gown, and you must give Elizabeth your
brown merino."
Hilary laughed, and replied not.
Now it might be a pathetic indication of a girl who had very few
clothes, but Hilary had a superstitious weakness concerning
hers.--Every dress had its own peculiar chronicle of the scenes where
it had been, the enjoyments she had shared in it. Particular dresses
were special memorials of her loves, her pleasures, her little
passing pains; as long as a bit remained of the poor old fabric the
sight of it recalled them all.
This brown merino--in which she had sat two whole winters over her
Greek and Latin by Robert Lyon's side, which he had once stopped to
touch and notice, saying what a pretty color it was, and how he liked
soft-feeling dresses for women--to cut up this old brown merino
seemed to hurt her so she could almost have cried.
Yet what would Johanna think if the refused? And there was Elizabeth
absolutely in want of clothes. "I must be growing very wicked,"
thought poor Hilary.
She lay a good while silent in the dark, while Johanna planned and
replanned--calculating how, even with the addition of an old cape of
her own, which was out of the same piece, this hapless gown could be
made to fit the gaunt frame of Elizabeth Hand.--Her poor kindly brain
was in the last extremity of muddle, when Hilary, with a desperate
effort, dashed in to the rescue, and soon made all clear, contriving
body, skirt, sleeves and all.
"You have the best head in the world, my love. I don't know whatever
I should do without you."
"Luckily you are never likely to be tried. So give me a kiss; and
good night, Johanna."
I misdoubt many will say I am writing about small, ridiculously
small, things. Yet is not the whole of life made up of
infinitesimally small things? And in its strange and solemn mosaic,
the full pattern of which we never see clearly till looking back on
it from far away, dare we say of any thing which the hand of Eternal
Wisdom has put together, that it is too common or too small?