Months slipped by; the trees in Burton Crescent had long been all
bare; the summer cries of itinerant vegetable dealers and flower
sellers had vanished out of the quiet street.--The three sisters
almost missed them, sitting in that one dull parlor from morning till
night, in the intense solitude of people who, having neither heart
nor money to spend in gayeties, live forlorn in London lodgings, and
knowing nobody, have nobody to visit, nobody to visit them.
Except Mr. Ascott, who still called, and occasionally stayed to tea.
The hospitalities, however, were all on their side. The first
entertainment--to which Selina insisted upon going, and Johanna
thought Hilary and Ascott had better go too--was splendid enough, but
they were the only ladies present; and though Mr. Ascott did the
honors with great magnificence, putting Miss Selina at the head of
his table, where she looked exceedingly well, still the sisters
agreed it was better that all further invitations to Russell Square
should be declined. Miss Selina herself said it would be more
dignified and decorous.
Other visitors they had none. Ascott never offered to bring any of
his friends; and gradually they saw very little of him. He was
frequently out, especially at meal times, so that his aunts gave up
the struggle to make the humble dinners better and more to his
liking, and would even have hesitated to take the money which he was
understood to pay for his board, had he ever offered it, which he did
not. Yet still whenever he did happen to remain with them a day, or
an evening, he was good and affectionate, and always entertained them
with descriptions of all he would do as soon as he got into practice.
Meantime they kept house as economically as possible upon the little
ready money they had, hoping that more would come in--that Hilary
would get pupils.
But Hilary never did. To any body who knows London this will not be
surprising.--The wonder was in the Misses Leaf being so simple as to
imagine that a young country lady, settling herself in lodgings in an
obscure metropolitan street, without friends or introduction, could
ever expect such a thing. No thing but her own daring, and the
irrepressible well-spring of hope that was in her healthy youth,
could have sustained her in what, ten years after, would have
appeared to her, as it certainty was, downright insanity. But Heaven
takes care of the mad, the righteously and unselfishly mad, and
Heaven took care of poor Hilary.
The hundred labors she went through--weariness of body and travail of
soul, the risks she ran, the pitfalls she escaped--what need to
record here? Many have recorded the like, many more have known them,
and acknowledged that when such histories are reproduced in books how
utterly imagination fades before reality. Hilary never looked
back-upon that time herself without a shuddering wonder how she could
have dared all and gone through all. Possibly she never could, but
for the sweet old face, growing older yet sweeter every day, which
smiled upon her the minute she opened the door of that dull parlor,
and made even No. 15 look like home.
When she told, sometimes gayly, sometimes with burning, bursting
tears, the tale of her day's efforts and day's failures, it was
always comfort to feel Johanna's hand on her hair Johanna's voice
whispering over her, "Never mind, my child, all will come right in
time All happens for good."
And the face, withered and worn, yet calm as a summer sea, full of
the "peace which passeth all understanding," was a living comment on
the truth of these words.
Another comfort Hilary had--Elizabeth.--During her long days of
absence, wandering from one end of London to the other, after
advertisements that she had answered, or governess institutions that
she had applied to the domestic affairs fell almost entirely into the
hands of Elizabeth. It was she who bought in, and kept a jealous eye,
not unneeded, over provisions; she who cooked and waited, and
sometimes even put a helping hand, coarse, but willing, into the
family sewing and mending. This had now become so vital a necessity
that it was fortunate Miss Leaf had no other occupation, and Miss
Selina no other entertainment, than stitch, stitch, stitch, at the
ever-beginning, never-ending wardrobe wants which assail decent
poverty every where, especially in London.
"Clothes seem to wear out frightfully fast," said Hilary one day,
when she was putting on her oldest gown, to suit a damp, foggy day,
when the streets were slippery with the mud of settled rain.
"I saw such beautiful merino dresses in a shop in Southampton Row,"
insinuated Elizabeth; but her mistress shook her head.
"No, no; my old black silk will do capitally, and I can easily put on
two shawls. Nobody knows me; and people may wear what they like in
London. Don't look so grave, Elizabeth. What does it signify if I can
but keep myself warm? Now, run away."
Elizabeth obeyed, but shortly reappeared with a bundle--a large, old
fashioned thick shawl.
"Mother gave it me; her mistress gave it her; but we've never worn
it, and never shall. If only you didn't mind putting it on, just this
once--this terrible soaking day!"
The scarlet face, the entreating tones--there was no resisting them.
One natural pang Hilary felt--that in her sharp poverty she had
fallen so low as to be indebted to her servant, and then she too
blushed, less for shame at accepting the kindness than for her own
pride that could not at once receive it as such.
"Thank you, Elizabeth," she said, gravely and gently, and let herself
be wrapped in the thick shawl. Its gorgeous reds and yellows would,
she knew, make her noticeable, even though "people might wear any
thing in London." Still, she put it on with a good grace, and all
through her peregrinations that day it warmed not only her shoulders,
but her heart.
Coming home, she paused wistfully before a glittering shoe shop; her
poor little feet were so soaked and cold. Could she possibly afford a
new pair of boots? It was not a matter of vanity--she had passed
that. She did not care now how ugly and shabby looked the "wee feet"
that had once been praised; but she felt it might be a matter of
health and prudence. Suppose she caught cold--fell ill--died: died,
leaving Johanna to struggle alone; died before Robert Lyon came home.
Both thoughts struck sharp. She was too young still, or had not
suffered enough, calmly to think of death and dying.
"It will do no harm to inquire the price. I might stop it out in
omnibuses."
For this was the way that every new article of dress had to be
procured--"stopping it cut" of something else.
After trying several pairs-with a fierce, bitter blush at a small
hole which the day's walking had worn in her well darned stockings,
and which she was sure the shopman saw, as well as an old lady who
sat opposite--Hilary bought the plainest and stoutest of boots. The
bill overstepped her purse by six pence, but she promised that sum on
delivery, and paid the rest. She had got into a nervous horror of
letting any account stand over for a single day.
Look tenderly, reader, on this picture of struggles so small, of
sufferings so uninteresting and mean. I paint it not because it is
original, but because it is so awfully true. Thousands of women, well
born, well reared, know it to be true--burned into them by the cruel
conflict of their youth; happy they if it ended in their youth, while
mind and body had still enough vitality and elasticity to endure! I
paint it, because it accounts for the accusation sometimes
made--especially by men--that women are naturally stingy. Possibly
so: but in many instances may it not have been this petty struggle
with petty wants this pitiful calculating of penny against penny, how
best to save here and spend there, which narrows a woman's nature in
spite of herself? It sometimes takes years of comparative ease and
freedom from pecuniary cares to counteract the grinding, lowering
effects of a youth of poverty.
And I paint this picture, too, literally, and not on its picturesque
side--it, indeed, poverty has a picturesque side--in order to show
another side which it really has--high, heroic, made up of dauntless
endurance, self sacrifice, and self control Also, to indicate that
blessing which narrow circumstances alone bestow, the habit of
looking more to the realities than to the shows of things, and of
finding pleasure in enjoyments mental rather than sensuous, inward
rather than external. When people can truly recognize this they cease
either to be afraid or ashamed of poverty.
Hilary was not ashamed:--not even now, when hers smote sharper and
harder than it had ever done at Stowbury. She felt it a sore thing
enough; but it never humiliated nor angered her. Either she was too
proud or not proud enough; but her low estate always seemed to her
too simply external a thing to affect her relations with the world
outside. She never thought of being annoyed with the shopkeeper, who,
though he trusted her with the sixpence, carefully took down her name
and address: still less to suspecting the old lady opposite, who sat
and listened to the transaction--apparently a well-to-do customer,
clad in a rich black silk and handsome sable furs--of looking down
upon her and despising her. She herself never despised any body,
except for wickedness.
So she waited contentedly, neither thinking of herself, nor of what
others thought of her; but with her mind quietly occupied by the two
thoughts, which in any brief space of rest always recurred, calming
down all annoyances, and raising her above the level of petty
pains--Johanna and Robert Lyon. Under the influence of these her
tired face grew composed, and there was a wishful, far away, fond
look in her eyes, which made it not wonderful that the said old
lady--apparently an acute old soul in her way--should watch her, as
we do occasionally watch strangers in whom we have become suddenly
interested.
There is no accounting for these interests, or to the events to which
they give rise. Sometimes they are pooh-pooh-ed as "romantic,"
"unnatural," "like a bit in a novel;" and yet they are facts
continually occurring, especially to people of quick intuition,
observation, and sympathy. Nay, even the most ordinary people have
known or heard of such, resulting in mysterious, life-long loves;
firm friendships; strange yet often wonderful happy marriages; sudden
revolutions of fortune and destiny: things utterly unaccountable for,
except by the belief in the inscrutable Providence which
"Shapes our ends,
Rough-how them as we will."
When Hilary left the shop she was startled by a voice at her elbow.
"I beg your pardon, but if your way lies up Southampton Row, would
you object to give an old woman a share of that capital umbrella of
yours?"
"With pleasure," Hilary answered, though the oddness of the request
amused her. And it was granted really with pleasure; for the old lady
spoke with those "accents of the mountain tongue" which this foolish
Hilary never recognized without a thrill at the heart.
"May be you think an old woman ought to take a cab, and not be
intruding upon strangers; but I am hale and hearty, and being only a
streets length from my own door, I dislike to waste unnecessary
shillings."
"Certainly," acquiesced Hilary, with a half sigh: shillings were only
too precious to her.
"I saw you in the boot shop, and you seemed the sort of young lady
who would do a kindness to an old body like me; so I said to myself,
'Ill ask her.'"
"I am glad you did." Poor girl! she felt unconsciously pleased at
finding herself still able to show a kindness to any body.
They walked on and on--it was certainly a long street's length--to
the stranger's door, and it took Hilary a good way round from hers;
but she said nothing of this, concluding, of course, that her
companion was unaware of where she lived; in which she was mistaken.
They stopped at last before a respectable house near Brunswick
Square, bearing a brass plate, with the words "Miss Balquidder."
"That is my name, and very much obliged to you, my dear. How it
rains! Ye're just drenched."
Hilary smiled and shook her damp shawl. "I shall take no harm. I am
used to go out in all weathers."
"Are you a governess?" The question was so direct and kindly, that it
hardly seemed an impertinence.
"Yes; but I have no pupils, and I fear I shall never get any."
"Why not?"
"I suppose, because I know nobody here. It seems so very hard to get
teaching in London. But I beg your pardon."
"I beg yours," said Miss Balquidder--not without a certain
dignity--"for asking questions of a stranger. But I was once a
stranger here myself, and had a 'sair fecht,' as we say in Scotland,
before I could earn even my daily bread. Though I wasn't a governess,
still I know pretty well what the sort of life is, and if I had
daughters who must work for their bread, the one thing I would urge
upon them should be--'Never become a governess.' "
"Indeed. For what reason?"
"I'll not tell you now, my dear, standing with all your wet clothes
on; but as I said, if you will do me the favor to call."
"Thank you!" said Hilary, not sufficiently initiated in London
caution to dread making a new acquaintance. Besides, she liked the
rough hewn, good natured face; and the Scotch accent was sweet to her
ear.
Yet when she reached home she was half shy of telling her sisters the
engagement she had made. Selina was extremely shocked, and considered
it quite necessary that the London Directory, the nearest clergyman,
or, perhaps, Mr. Ascott, who living in the parish, must know--should
be consulted as to Miss Balquidder's respectability.
"She has much more reason to question ours," recollected Hilary, with
some amusement; for I never told her my name or address. She does not
know a single thing about me.
Which fact, arguing the matter energetic ally two days after, the
young lady might not have been so sure of, could she have penetrated
the ceiling overhead. In truth, Miss Balquidder, a prudent person,
who never did things by halves, and, like most truly generous people,
was cautious even in her extremist fits of generosity, at that very
moment was sitting in Mrs. Jones's first floor, deliberately
discovering every single thing possible to be learned about the Leaf
family.
Nevertheless, owing to Selina's indignant pertinacity, Hilary's own
hesitation, and a dim hope of a pupil which rose up and faded like
the rest, the possible acquaintance lay dormant for two or three
weeks; till, alas! the fabulous wolf actually came to the door; and
the sisters, after paying their week's rent, looked aghast at one
another, not knowing where in the wide world the next week's rent was
to come from.
"Thank God, we don't owe any thing: not a penny!" gasped Hilary.
"No; there is comfort in that," said Johanna. And the expression of
her folded hands and upward face was not despairing, even though that
of the poor widow, when her barrel of meal was gone, and her cruse of
oil spent, would hardly have been sadder.
"I am sure we have wasted nothing, and cheated nobody;--surely God
will help us."
"I know He will, my child."
And the two sisters, elder and younger, kissed one another, cried a
little, and then sat down to consider what was to be done.
Ascott must be told how things were with them. Hitherto they had not
troubled him much with their affairs: indeed, he was so little at
home. And after some private consultation, both Johanna and Hilary
decided that it was wisest to let the lad come and go as he liked;
not attempting--as he once indignantly expressed it--"to tie him to
their apron strings." For instinctively these maiden ladies felt that
with men, and, above all, young men, the only way to bind the
wandering heart was to leave it free, except by trying their utmost
that home should be always a pleasant home.
It was touching to see their efforts, when Ascott came in of
evenings, to enliven for his sake the dull parlor at No. 15. How
Johanna put away her mending, and Selina ceased to grumble, and
Hilary began her lively chat, that never failed to brighten and amuse
the household. Her nephew even sometimes acknowledged that wherever
he went, he met nobody so "clever" as Aunt Hilary.
So, presuming upon her influence with him, on this night, after the
rest were gone to bed, she, being always the boldest to do any
unpleasant thing, said to him.
"Ascott, how are your business affairs progressing? When do you think
you will be able to get into practice?"
"Oh, presently. There's no hurry."
"I am not so sure of that. Do you know, my dear boy"--and she opened
her purse, which contained a few shillings--"this is all the money we
have in the world."
"Nonsense," said Ascott, laughing. "I beg your pardon," he added,
seeing it was with her no laughing matter; "but I am so accustomed to
be hard up that I don't seem to care. It always comes right
somehow--at least with me."
"How?"
"Oh, I don't exactly know; but it does. Don't fret, Aunt Hilary. I'll
lend you a pound or two."
She drew back. These poor, proud, fond women, who, if their boy,
instead of a fine gentleman, had been a helpless invalid, would have
tended him, worked for him, nay, begged for him--cheerfully, oh, how
cheerfully! wanting nothing in the whole world but his love--they
could not ask him for his money. Even now, offered thus, Hilary felt
as if to take it would be intolerable.
Still the thing must be done.
"I wish, Ascott"--and she nerved herself to say what somebody ought
to say to him--"I would you would not lend but pay us the pound a
week you said you could so easily spare."
"To be sure I will. What a thoughtless fellow I have been!
But--but--I fancied you would have asked me if you wanted it. Never
mind, you'll get it all in a lump. Let me see--how much will it come
to? You are the best head going for arithmetic, Aunt Hilary. Do
reckon it all up?" She did so; and the sum total made Ascott open his
eyes wide.
"Upon my soul I had no idea it was so much. I'm very sorry, but I
seem fairly cleaned out this quarter--only a few sovereigns left to
keep the mill going. You shall have them, or half of them, and I'll
owe you the rest. Here!"
He emptied on the table, without counting, four or five pounds.
Hilary took two, asking him gravely "If he was sure he could spare so
much? She did not wish to inconvenience him."
"Oh, not at all; and I wouldn't mind if it did; you have been good
aunts to me."
He kissed her, with a sudden fit of compunction, and bade her
good-night, looking as if he did not care to be "bothered" any more.
Hilary retired, more sad, more hopeless about him than if he had
slammed the door in her face, or scolded her like a trooper. Had he
met her seriousness in the same spirit, even though it had been a
sullen or angry spirit--and little as she said he must have felt she
wished him to feel--that his aunts were displeased with him; but that
utterly unrepressible light-heartedness of his--there was no doing
any thing with it. There was so to speak, "no catching hold" of
Ascott. He meant no harm. She repeated over and over again that the
lad meant no harm. He had no evil ways; was always pleasant,
good-natured, and affectionate, in his own careless fashion; but was
no more to be relied on than a straw that every wind blows hither and
thither; or, to use a common simile, a butterfly that never sees any
thing farther than the nearest flower. His was, in short, the
pleasure-loving temperament, not positively sinful or sensual, but
still holding pleasure as the greatest good; and regarding what
deeper natures call "duty," and find therein their strong-hold and
consolation, as a mere bugbear or a sentimental theory, or an
impossible folly.
Poor lad! and he had the world to fight with; how would it use him?
Even if no heavy sorrows for himself or others smote him, his
handsome face would have to grow old, his strong frame to meet
sickness--death.--How would he do it? That is the thought which
always recurs. What is the end of such men as these? Alas! the answer
would come from hospital wards, alms-houses and work-houses, debtors'
prisons and lunatic asylums.
To apprehensions like this--except the last, happily it was as yet
too far off--Hilary had been slowly and sadly arriving about Ascott
for weeks past; and her conversation with him to-night seemed to make
them darken down upon her with added gloom. As she went up stairs she
set her lips together hard.
"I see there is nobody to do any thing except me. But I must not tell
Johanna."
She lay long awake, planning every conceivable scheme for saving
money; till at length, her wits sharpened by the desperation of the
circumstances, there flashed upon her an idea that came out of a talk
she had had with Elizabeth that morning. True, it was a perfectly new
and untried chance--and a mere chance; still it was right to overlook
nothing. She would not have ventured to tell Selina of it for the
world, and even to Johanna, she only said--finding her as wakeful as
herself--said it in a careless manner, as if it had relation to
nothing, and she expected nothing from it-- "I think, as I have
nothing else to do, I will go and see Miss Balquidder to-morrow
morning."