A household exclusively composed of women has its advantages and its
disadvantages. It is apt to become somewhat narrow in judgment,
morbid in feeling, absorbed in petty interests, and bounding its
vision of outside things to the small horizon which it sees from its
own fireside. But, on the other hand, by this fireside often abides a
settled peace and purity, a long-suffering, generous forbearance, and
an enduring affectionateness which the other sex can hardly
comprehend or credit. Men will not believe, what is nevertheless the
truth, that we can "stand alone" better than they can; that we can do
without them far easier, and with less deterioration of character,
than they can do without us; that we are better able to provide for
ourselves interests, duties, and pleasures; in short, strange as it
may appear, that we have more real self-sustaining independence than
they.
Of course, that the true life, the highest life, is that of man and
woman united, no one will be insane enough to deny; I am speaking of
the substitute for it, which poor humanity has so often to fall back
upon and make the best of--a better best very frequently than what
appears best in the eyes of the world. In truth, many a troubled,
care ridden, wealthy family, torn with dissensions, or frozen up in
splendid formalities, might have envied that quiet, humble, maiden
household of the Misses Leaf, where their only trial was poverty, and
their only grief the one which they knew the worst of, and had met
patiently for many a year--poor Selina's "way."
I doubt not it was good for Elizabeth Hand that her first place--the
home in which she received her first impressions--was this feminine
establishment, simple and regular, in which was neither waste nor
disorder allowed. Good, too, that while her mistresses' narrow means
restricted her in many things enjoyed by servants in richer families,
their interests, equally narrow, caused to be concentrated upon
herself a double measure of thought and care. She became absolutely
"one of the family," sharing in all its concerns. From its small and
few carnal luxuries--such as the cake, fruit, or pot of preserve,
votive offerings from pupils' parents--up to the newspaper and the
borrowed book, nothing was either literally or metaphorically
"locked" up from Elizabeth.
This grand question of locking up had been discussed in full conclave
the day after her month of preparation ended, the sisters taking
opposite sides, as might have been expected. Selina was for the
immediate introduction of a locksmith and a key basket.
"While she was only on trial, it did not so much signify; besides, if
it did, we had only buttons on the press doors; but now she is our
regular servant we ought to institute a regular system of authority.
How can she respect a family that never locks up any thing?"
"How can we respect a servant from whom we lock up every thing!"
"Respect a servant! What do you mean, Hilary?"
"I mean that if I did not respect a servant I would be very sorry to
keep her one day in any house of mine."
"Wait till you've a house of your own to keep, Miss," said Selina,
crossly. "I never heard such nonsense. Is that the way you mean to
behave to Elizabeth? leave every thing open to her--clothes, books,
money; trust her with all your secrets; treat her as your most
particular friend?"
"A girl of fifteen would be rather an inconvenient particular friend!
And I have happily few secrets to trust her with. But if I could not
trust her with our coffee, tea, sugar, and so on, and bring her up
from the very first in the habit of being trusted, I would recommend
her being sent away to-morrow."
"Very fine talking; and what do you say, Johanna?--if that is not an
unnecessary question after Hilary has given her opinion."
"I think," replied the elder sister, taking no notice of the long
familiar innuendo, "that in this case Hilary is right. How people
ought to manage in great houses I can not say; but in our small house
it will be easier and better not to alter our simple ways. Trusting
the girl--if she is a good girl--will only make her more trustworthy;
if she is bad, we shall the sooner find it out and let her go."
But Elizabeth did not go. A year passed; two years; her wages were
raised, and with them her domestic position. From a "girl" she was
converted into a regular servant; her pinafores gave place to
grown-up gowns and aprons; and her rough head, at Miss Selina's
incessant instance, was concealed by a cap--caps being considered by
that lady as the proper and indispensable badge of servant-hood.
To say that during her transition state, or even now that she had
reached the cap era, Elizabeth gave her mistresses no trouble, would
be stating a self-evident improbability. What young lass under
seventeen, of any rank, does not cause plenty of trouble to her
natural guardians? Who can "put an old head on young shoulders?" or
expect from girls at the most unformed and unsatisfactory period of
life that complete moral and mental discipline, that unfailing
self-control, that perfection of temper, and every thing else which,
of course, all mistresses always have?
I am obliged to confess that Elizabeth had a few--nay, not a
few--most obstinate faults; that no child tries its parents, no pupil
its school teachers, more than she tried her three mistresses at
intervals. She was often thoughtless and careless, brusque in her
manner, slovenly, in her dress; sometimes she was down-right "bad,"
filled full--as some of her elders and betters are, at all ages--with
absolute naughtiness; when she would sulk for hours and days
together, and make the whole family uncomfortable, as many a servant
can make many a family small as that of the Misses Leaf.
But still they never lost what Hilary termed their "respect" for
Elizabeth; they never found her out in a lie, a meanness, or an act
of deception or dishonesty. They took her faults as we must take the
surface faults of all connected with us--patiently rather than
resentfully, seeking to correct rather than to punish. And though
there were difficult elements in the household, such as their being
three mistresses to be obeyed the youngest mistress a thought too lax
and the second one undoubtedly too severe, still no girl could live
with these high-principled, much-enduring women without being
impressed with two things which the serving class are slowest to
understand--the dignity of poverty, and the beauty of that which is
the only effectual law to bring out good and restrain evil--the law
of loving-kindness.
Two fracas, however, must be chronicled, for after both, the girl's
dismissal hung on a thread. The first was when Mrs. Cliffe, mother of
Tommy Cliffe, who was nearly killed in the field, being discovered to
be an ill sort of woman, and in the habit of borrowing from Elizabeth
stray shillings, which were never returned, was forbidden the house,
Elizabeth resented it so fiercely that she sulked for a whole week
afterward.
The other and still more dangerous crisis in Elizabeth's destiny was
when a volume of Scott's novels, having been missing for some days,
was found hidden in her bed, and she lying awake reading it was thus
ignominiously discovered at eleven P. M. by Miss Selina, in
consequence of the gleam of candle light from under her door.
It was true neither of these errors were actual moral crimes. Hilary
even roused a volley of sharp words upon herself by declaring they
had their source in actual virtues; that a girl who would stint
herself of shillings, and hold resolutely to any liking she had, even
if unworthy, had a creditable amount of both self-denial and fidelity
in her disposition. Also that a tired out maid-of all-work, who was
kept awake of nights by her ardent appreciation of the "Heart of
Mid-Lothian," must possess a degree of both intellectual and moral
capacity which deserved cultivation rather than blame. And though
this surreptitious pursuit of literature under difficulties could not
of course be allowed, I grieve to say that Miss Hilary took every
opportunity of not only giving the young servant books to read, but
of talking to her about them. And also that a large proportion of
these books were--to Miss Selina's unmitigated horror--absolutely
fiction! stories, novels, even poetry--books that Hilary liked
herself--books that had built up in her own passionate dream of life;
wherein all the women were faithful, tender, heroic, self-devoted;
and all the men were--something not unlike Robert Lyon.
Did she do harm? Was it; as Selina and even Johanna said sometimes,
"dangerous" thus to put before Elizabeth a standard of ideal
perfection, a Quixotic notion of life--life in its full purpose
power, and beauty--such as otherwise never could have crossed the
mind of this working girl, born of parents who, though respectable
and worthy, were in no respect higher than the common working class?
I will not argue the point: I am not making Elizabeth a text for a
sermon; I am simply writing her story.
One thing was certain, that by degrees the young woman's faults
lessened; even that worst of them, the unmistakable bad temper, not
aggressive, but obstinately sullen, which made her and Miss Selina
sometimes not on speaking terms for a week together. But she simply
"sulked;" she never grumbled or was pert; and she did her work just
as usual--with a kind of dogged struggle not only against the
superior powers but against something within herself much harder to
fight with.
"She makes me feel more sorry for her than angry with her," Miss Leaf
would sometimes say, coming out of the kitchen with that grieved
face, which was the chief sign of displeasure her sweet nature ever
betrayed. "She will have up-hill work through life, like us all, and
more than many of us, poor child!"
But gradually Elizabeth, too, copying involuntarily the rest of the
family, learned to put up with Miss Selina; who, on her part, kept a
sort of armed neutrality. And once, when a short but sharp illness of
Johanna's shook the house from its even tenor, startled every body
out of their little tempers, and made them cling together and work
together in a sort of fear-stricken union against one common grief,
Selina allowed that they might have gone farther and fared worse on
the day they engaged Elizabeth.
After this illness of his Aunt. Ascott came home. It was his first
visit since he had gone to London: Mr. Ascott, he said, objected to
holidays. But now, from some unexplained feeling, Johanna in her
convalescence longed after the boy--no longer a boy, however, but
nearly twenty, and looking fully his age. How proud his aunts were to
march him up the town, and hear every body's congratulations on his
good looks and polished manners! It was the old story--old as the
hills! I do not pretend to invent any thing new. Women, especially
maiden aunts, will repeat the tale till the end of time, so long as
they have youths belonging to them on whom to expend their natural
tendency to clinging fondness, and ignorant, innocent hero worship.
The Misses Leaf--ay, even Selina, whose irritation against the
provoking boy was quite mollified by the elegant young man--were no
wiser than their neighbors.
But there was one person in the household who still obstinately
refused to bow the knee to Ascott. Whether it was, as psychologists
might explain, some instinctive polarity in their natures; or
whether, having once conceived a prejudice, Elizabeth held on to it
like grim death; still there was the same unspoken antagonism between
them. The young fellow took little notice of her except to observe
"that she hadn't grown any handsomer;' but Elizabeth watched him with
a keen severity that overlooked nothing, and resisted, with a passive
pertinacity that was quite irresistible, all his encroachments on the
family habits, all the little self-pleasing ways which Ascott had
been so used to of old, that neither he nor his aunts apparently
recognized them as selfish.
"I canna bear to see him" ("can not," suggested her mistress, who not
seeing any reason why Elizabeth should not speak the Queen's English
as well as herself, had instituted h's, and stopped a few more
glaring provincialisms.) "I cannot bear to see him, Miss Hilary,
lolling on the arm-chair, when Missis looks so tired and pale, and
sitting up o' nights, burning double fires, and going up stairs at
last with his boots on, and waking every body. I dunnot like it, I
say."
"You forget; Mr. Ascott has his studies. He must work for the next
examination."
"Why doesn't he get up of a morning then instead of lying in bed, and
keeping the break-fast about till ten? Why can't he do his learning
by daylight? Daylight's cheaper than mould candles, and a deal better
for the eyes."
Hilary was puzzled. A truth was a truth, and to try and make it out
otherwise, even for the dignity of the family, was something from
which her honest nature revolted. Besides, the sharp-sighted servant
would be the first to detect the inconsistency of one law of right
for the parlor and another for the kitchen. So she took-refuge in
silence and in the apple-pudding she was making.
But she resolved to seize the first opportunity of giving Ascott, by
way of novelty, the severest lecture that tongue of aunt could
bestow. And this chance occurred the same afternoon, when the other
two aunts had gone out to tea, to a house which Ascott voted "slow,"
and declined going to. She remained to make tea for him, and in the
mean time took him for a constitutional up and down the public walks
hard by.
Ascott listened at first very good humoredly; once or twice calling
her "a dear little prig," in his patronizing way--he was rather fond
of patronizing his Aunt Hilary. But when she seriously spoke of his
duties, as no longer a boy but a man, who ought now to assume the
true, manly right of thinking for and taking care of other people,
especially his aunts, Ascott began to flush up angrily.
"Now stop that, Aunt Hilary: I'll not have you coming Mr. Lyon over
me."
"What do you mean?"
For of late Ascott had said very little about Mr. Lyon--not half so
much as Mr. Lyon, in his steadily persistent letters to Miss Leaf,
told her about her nephew Ascott.
"I mean that I'll not be preached to like that by a woman. It's bad
enough to stand it from a man; but then Lyon's a real sharp fellow,
who knows the world, which women don't, Aunt Hilary. Besides, he
coaches me in my Latin and Greek; so I let him pitch into me now and
then. But I won't let you; so just stop it; will you."
Something new in Ascott's tone--speaking more of the resentful
fierceness of the man than the pettishness of the boy--frightened his
little aunt, and silenced her. By-and-by she took comfort from the
reflection that, as the lad had in his anger betrayed, he had beside
him in London a monitor whose preaching would be so much wiser and
more effectual than her own that she determined to say no more.
The rare hearing of Mr. Lyon's name--for, time and absence having
produced their natural effect, except when his letter came, he was
seldom talked about now--set Hilary thinking.
"Do you go to see him often?" she said, at last.
"Who? Mr. Lyon?" And Ascott, delighted' to escape into a fresh
subject, became quite cheerful and communicative. "Oh, bless you! He
wouldn't care for my going to him. He lives in a two-pair back, only
one room, 'which serves him for kitchen and parlor and all:' dines at
a cook shop for nine-pence a day, and makes his own porridge night
and morning. He told me so once, for he isn't a bit ashamed of it.
But he must be precious hard up sometimes. However, as he contrives
to keep a decent coat on his back, and pay his classes at the
University, and carry off the very first honors going there, nobody
asks any questions. That's the good of London life, Aunt Hilary,"
said the young fellow, drawing himself up with great wisdom. "Only
look like a gentleman, behave yourself as such, and nobody asks any
questions."
"Yes," acquiesced vaguely Aunt Hilary. And then her mind wandered
yearningly to the solitary student in the two-pair back. He might
labor and suffer; he might be ill; he might die, equally solitary,
and "nobody would ask any questions." This phase of London life let a
new light in upon her mind. The letters to Johanna had been chiefly
filled with whatever he thought would interest them. With his
characteristic Scotch reserve, he had said very little about himself,
except in the last, wherein he mentioned that he had "done pretty
well" at the college this term, and meant to "go in for more work"
immediately.
What this work entailed--how much more toil, how much more
poverty--Hilary knew not. Perhaps even his successes, which Ascott
went on to talk of, had less place in her thoughts than the picture
of the face she knew, sharpened with illness, wasted with hard work
and solitary care.
"And I can not help him--I can not help him!" was her bitter cry;
until, passing from the dream-land of fancy, the womanly nature
asserted itself. She thought if it had been, or if it were to be, her
blessed lot to be chosen by Robert Lyon, how she would take care of
him! what an utter slave she would be to him! How no penury would
frighten her, no household care oppress or humble her, if done for
him and for his comfort. To her brave heart no battle of life seemed
too long or too sore, if only it were fought for him and at his side.
And as the early falling leaves were blown in gusts across her path,
and the misty autumn night began to close in, nature herself seemed
to plead in unison with the craving of her heart, which sighed that
youth and summer last not always; and that, "be it ever so humble,"
as the song says, there is no place so bright and beautiful as the
fireside of a loveful home.
While the aunt and nephew were strolling thus, thinking of very
different things, their own fire newly lit--Ascott liked a fire--was
blazing away in solitary glory, for the benefit of all passers-by. At
length one--a gentleman--stopped at the gate, and looked in, then
took a turn to the end of the terrace, and stood gazing in once more.
The solitude of the room apparently troubled him; twice his hand was
on the latch before he opened it and knocked at the front door.
Elizabeth appeared, which seemed to surprise him.
"Is Miss Leaf at home?"
"No, Sir."
"Is she well? Are all the family well?" and he stepped right into the
passage, with the freedom of a familiar foot.
("I should ha' slammed the door in his face," was Elizabeth's comment
afterward; "only, you see, Miss Hilary, he looked a real gentleman.")
The stranger and she mutually examined one another.
"I think I have heard of you," said he, smiling. "You are Miss Leaf's
servant--Elizabeth Hand."
"Yes, Sir," still grimly, and with a determined grasp of the door
handle.
"If your mistresses are likely to be home soon, will you allow me to
wait for them? I am an old friend of theirs. My name is Lyon."
Now Elizabeth was far too much one of the family not to have heard of
such a person. And his knowing her was a tolerable proof of his
identity; besides, unconsciously, the girl was influenced by that
look and mien of true gentlemanhood, as courteous to the poor
maid-of-all-work as he would have been to any duchess born; and by
that bright, sudden smile, which came like sunshine over his face,
and like sunshine warmed and opened the heart of every one that met
it.
It opened that of Elizabeth. She relaxed her Cerberus keeping of the
door, and even went so far as to inform him that Miss Leaf and Miss
Selina were out to tea, but Miss Hilary and Mr. Ascott would be at
home shortly. He was welcome to wait in the parlor if he liked.
Afterward, seized with mingled curiosity and misgiving, she made
various errands to go in and look at him; but she had not courage to
address him, and he never spoke to her. He sat by the window, gazing
out into the gloaming. Except just turning his head at her entrance;
she did not think he had once stirred the whole time.
Elizabeth went back to her kitchen, and stood listening for her young
mistress's familiar knock. Mr. Lyon seemed to have listened too, for
before she could reach it the door was already opened.
There was a warm greeting--to her great relief: for she knew she had
broken the domestic laws in admitting a stranger unawares--and then
Elizabeth heard them all three go into the parlor, where they
remained talking, without ringing for either tea or candles, a full
quarter of an hour.
Miss Hilary at last came out, but much to Elizabeth's surprise, went
straight up into her bedroom without entering the kitchen at all.
It was some minutes more before she descended; and then, after giving
her orders for tea, and seeing that all was arranged with special
neatness, she stood absently by the kitchen fire. Elizabeth noticed
how wonderfully bright her eyes were, and what a soft, happy smile
she had. She noticed it, because she had never seen Miss Hilary look
exactly like that before; and she never did again.
"Don't you be troubling yourself with waiting about here," she said;
and her mistress seemed to start at being spoken to. "I'll get the
tea all right, Miss Hilary. Please go back into the parlor."
Hilary went in.