Following Miss Hilary's earnest advice that every thing should be
fair and open, Elizabeth, on the very next day after that happy
Whit-Monday, mustered up her courage, asked permission to speak to
her mistress, and told her she was going to be married to Tom Cliffe:
not immediately, but in a year's time or so, if all went well.
Mrs. Ascott replied sharply that it was no affair of hers, and she
could not be troubled about it. For her part she thought, if servants
knew their own advantages, they would keep a good place when they had
it, and never get married at all. And then, saying she had heard a
good character of her from the housekeeper, she offered Elizabeth the
place of upper house-maid, a young girl, a protegee of the
housekeeper's, being substituted in hers.
"And when you have sixteen pounds a year, and somebody to do all your
hard work for you, I dare say you'll think better of it, and not be
so foolish as to go and get married."
But Elizabeth had her own private opinion on that matter. She was but
a woman, poor thing! and two tiny rooms of her own, with Tom to care
for and look after, seemed a far happier home than that great house,
where she had not only her own work to do, but the responsibility of
teaching and taking charge of that careless, stupid, pretty Esther,
who had all the forwardness, untidiness, and unconscientiousness of a
regular London maid-servant, and was a sore trial to the staid,
steady Elizabeth.
Tom consoled her, in his careless but affectionate way; and another
silent consolation was the "little bits of things," bought out of her
additional wages, which she began to put by in her box--sticks and
straws for the new sweet nest that was a-building: a metal teapot,
two neat glass salt-cellars, and, awful extravagance!--two real
second-hand silver spoons--Tom did so like having things nice about
him! These purchases, picked up at stray times, were solid,
substantial and useful; domestic rather than personal; and all with a
view to Tom rather than herself. She hid them with a magpie-like
closeness, for Esther and she shared the same room; but sometimes
when Esther was asleep she would peep at them with an anxious,
lingering tenderness, as if they made more of an assured reality what
even now seemed so very like a dream.
--Except, indeed, on those Sunday nights when Tom and she went to
church together and afterward took a walk, but always parted at the
corner of the square. She never brought him in to the house, nor
spoke of him to her fellow servants. How much they guessed of her
engagement she neither knew nor cared.
Mrs. Ascott, too, had apparently quite forgotten it. She seemed to
take as little interest in her servants' affairs as they in hers.
Nevertheless, ignorant as the lower regions were in general of what
was passing in the upper, occasionally rumors began to reach the
kitchen that "Master had been a-blowing up Missis, rather!" And once,
after the solemn dinner, with three footmen to wait on two people,
was over, Elizabeth, passing through the hall, caught the said
domestics laughing together, and saying it was "as good as a play;
cat and dog was nothing to it." After which "the rows up stairs"
became a favorite joke in the servants' hall.
But still Mr. Ascott went out daily after breakfast, and came home to
dinner; and Mrs. Ascott spent the morning in her private sitting
room, or "boudoir," as she called it; lunched, and drove out in her
handsome carriage, with her footman behind; dressed elegantly for
dinner, and presided at her own table with an air of magnificent
satisfaction in all things. She had perfectly accommodated herself to
her new position; and if under her satins and laces beat a solitary,
dissatisfied, or aching heart, it was nobody's business but her own.
At least, she kept up the splendid sham with a most creditable
persistency.
But all shams are dangerous things. Be the surface ever so smooth and
green, it will crack sometimes, and a faint wreath of smoke betray
the inward volcano. The like had happened once or twice, as on the
day when the men-servants were so intensely amused. Also Elizabeth,
when putting in order her mistress's bedroom, which was about the
hour Mr. Ascott left for the city, had several times seen Mrs. Ascott
come in there suddenly, white and trembling. Once, so agitated was
she, that Elizabeth had brought her a glass of water; and instead of
being angry or treating her with the distant dignity which she had
always kept up her mistress had said, almost in the old Stowbury
tone, "Thank you, Elizabeth."
However, Elizabeth had the wisdom to take no notice, but to slip from
the room, and keep her own counsel.
At last one day the smouldering domestic earthquake broke out. There
was "a precious good row," the footman suspected, at the
breakfast-table; and after breakfast, Master, without waiting for the
usual attendance of that functionary, with his hat and gloves and a
Hansom cab had flung himself out at the hall door, slamming it after
him with a noise that startled the whole house. Shortly afterward
"Missis's" bell had rung violently, and she had been found lying on
the floor of her bedroom in a dead faint, her maid, a foolish little
Frenchwoman, screaming over her.
The frightened servants gathered round in a cluster, but nobody
attempted to touch the poor lady, who lay rigid and helpless, hearing
none of the comments that were freely made upon her, or the
conjectures as to what Master had done or said that produced this
state of things. Mistress she was, and these four or five woman, her
servants, had lived in her house for months, but nobody loved her;
nobody knew any thing about her; nobody thought of doing aught for
her, till a kitchen-maid, probably out of former experience in some
domestic emergency, suggested, "Fetch Elizabeth."
The advice was eagerly caught at, every body being so thankful to
have the responsibility shifted to some other body's shoulders; so in
five minutes Elizabeth had the room cleared, and her mistress laid
upon the bed, with nobody near except herself and the French maid.
By-and-by Mrs. Ascott opened her eyes.
"Who's that? What are you doing to me?"
"Nothing, ma'am. It's only me--Elizabeth."
At the familiar soothing voice the poor woman--a poor, wretched,
forlorn woman she looked, lying there, in spite of all her
grandeur--turned feebly round.
"Oh, Elizabeth, I'm so ill! take care of me." And she fainted away
once more.
It was some time before she came quite to herself, and then the first
thing she said was to bid Elizabeth bolt the door and keep every body
out.
"The doctor, ma'am if he comes?"
"I'll not see him. I don't want him. I know what it is. I--"
She pulled Elizabeth closer to her, whispered something in her ear,
and then burst into a violent fit of hysterical weeping.
Amazed, shocked, Elizabeth at first did not know what to do; then she
took her mistress's head on her shoulder, and quieted her by degrees
almost as she would a child. The sobbing ceased, and Mrs. Ascott lay
still a minute, till suddenly she clutched Elizabeth's arm.
"Mind you don't tell. He doesn't know, and he shall not; it would
please him so. It does not please me. Sometimes I almost think I
shall hate it because it is his child."
She spoke with a fierceness that was hardly credible either in the
dignified Mrs. Peter Ascott or the languid Miss Selina. To think of
Miss Selina expecting a baby! The idea perfectly confounded poor
Elizabeth.
"I don't know very much about such matters," said she, deprecatingly;
"but I'm sure, ma'am, you ought to keep yourself quiet, and I
wouldn't hate the poor little baby if I were you. It may be a very
nice little thing, and turn out a great comfort to you."
Mrs. Ascott lifted her heavy eyes to the kindly, sympathetic, womanly
face--thorough woman, for, as Elizabeth went on, her heart warmed
with the strong instinct which comes almost of itself.
"Think, to have a tiny little creature lying here beside you;
something your very own, with its pretty face looking so innocent and
sweet at you, and its pretty fingers touching you." Here Elizabeth's
voice quite faltered over the picture she had drawn. "Oh, ma'am, I'm
sure you would be so fond of it."
Human nature is strong. This cold, selfish woman, living her forty
years without any strong emotion, marrying without love, and reaping,
not in contrition, but angry bitterness, the certain punishment of
such a marriage, even this woman was not proof against the glorious
mystery of maternity, which should make every daughter of Eve feel
the first sure hope of her first born child to be a sort of Divine
annunciation.
Mrs. Ascott lay listening to Elizabeth. Gradually through her shut
eyelids a few quiet tears began to flow.
"Do you mind me talking to you this way, ma'am?"
"No, no! Say what you like. I'm glad to have any body to speak to.
Oh, I am a very miserable woman!"
Strange that Selina Ascott should come to betray, and to Elizabeth
Hand, of all people, that she was a "miserable woman." But
circumstances bring about unforeseen confidences; and the confidence
once given is not easily recalled. Apparently the lady did not wish
to recall it. In the solitude of her splendid house, in her total
want of all female companionship--for she refused to have her sisters
sent for--"he would only insult them, and I'll not have my family
insulted"--poor Selina clung to her old servant as the only comfort
she had.
During the dreary months that followed, when, during the long, close
summer days, the sick lady scarcely stirred from her bedroom, and,
fretful, peevish, made the very most of what to women in general are
such patiently borne and sacred sufferings, Elizabeth was her
constant attendant. She humored all her whims, endured all her
ill-tempers, cheered her in her low spirits, and was, in fact, her
mistress's sole companion and friend.
This position no one disputed with her. It is not every woman who
has, as Miss Leaf used to say of Elizabeth, "a genius for nursing;"
and very few patients make nursing a labor of love. The whole
household were considerably relieved by her taking a responsibility
for which she was so well fitted and so little envied. Even Mr.
Ascott, who, when his approaching honors could no longer be concealed
from him, became for the nonce a most attentive husband, and
succumbed dutifully to every fancy his wife entertained, openly
expressed his satisfaction in Elizabeth, and gave her one or two
bright golden guineas in earnest of his gratitude.
How far she herself appreciated her new and important position;
whether her duties were done from duty, or pity, or that determined
self-devotedness which some women are always ready to carry out
toward any helpless thing that needs them, I can not say, for she
never told. Not even to Miss Hilary, who at last was permitted to
come and pay a formal visit; nor to Tom Cliffe, whom she now saw very
rarely, for her mistress, with characteristic selfishness, would
hardly let her out of her sight for half an hour.
Tom at first was exceedingly savage at this: by degrees he got more
reconciled, and met his sweet-heart now and then for a few minutes at
the area gate or wrote her long poetical letters, which he confided
to some of her fellow-servants, who thereby got acquainted with their
secret. But it mattered little, as Elizabeth had faithfully promised
that, when her mistress's trial was over, and every thing smooth and
happy, she would marry Tom at once. So she took the jokes below
stairs with great composure; feeling, indeed, too proud and content
to perplex herself much about any thing.
Nevertheless, her life was not easy, for Mrs. Ascott was very
difficult to manage. She resisted angrily all the personal sacrifices
entailed by impending motherhood, and its terrors and forebodings
used to come over her--poor weak woman that she was!--in a way that
required all Elizabeth's reasonings to counteract, and all her
self-control to hide the presentiment of evil, not unnatural under
the circumstances.
Yet sometimes poor Mrs. Ascott would take fits of pathetic happiness;
when she busied herself eagerly over the preparations for the
new-comer; would make Elizabeth take out, over and over again, the
little clothes, and examine them with childish delight. Sometimes she
would gossip for hours over the blessing that was sent to her so late
in life--half-regretting that it had come so late; that she should be
almost an old woman before her little son or daughter was grown up.
"Still, I may live to see it, you know: to have a pretty girl to take
on my arm into a ball-room, or a big fellow to send to College: the
Leafs always went to College in old times. He shall be Henry Leaf
Ascott, that I am determined on; and if it's a girl, perhaps I may
call her Johanna. My sister would like it; wouldn't she?"
For more and more, in the strange softening of her nature, did Selina
go back to the old ties.
"I am not older than my mother was when Hilary was born. She died,
but that was because of trouble. Women do not necessarily die in
childbirth even at forty; and in twenty years more I shall only be
sixty--not such a very old woman. Besides, mothers never are old; at
least not to their children. Don't you think so, Elizabeth?"
And Elizabeth answered as she best could. She too, out of sympathy or
instinct, was becoming wondrous wise.
But I am aware all this will be thought very uninteresting, except by
women and mothers. Let me hasten on.
By degrees, as Mrs. Ascott's hour approached, a curious tranquility
and even gentleness came over her. Her fretful dislike of seeing any
face about her but Elizabeth's became less. She even endured her
husband's company for an hour of an evening; and at last humbled her
pride enough to beg him to invite her sisters to Russell Square from
Saturday to Monday, the only time when Hilary could be spared.
"For we don't know what may happen," said she to him, rather
seriously.
And though he answered, "Oh, nonsense!" and desired her to get such
ridiculous fancies out, of her head, still he consented, and himself
wrote to Miss Leaf, giving the formal invitation.
The three sisters spent a happy time together, and Hilary made some
highly appreciated family jokes about the handsome Christmas box that
Selina was going to be so kind as to give them, and the small
probability that she would have much enjoyment of the Christmas
dinner to which Mr. Ascott, in the superabundance of his good
feeling, had invited his sisters-in-law. The baby, blessed innocent!
seemed to have softened down all things--as babies often do.
Altogether, it was with great cheerfulness, affectionateness, and
hope that they took leave of Selina: she, with unwonted
consideration, insisting that the carriage should convey them all the
way to Richmond.
"And," she said, "perhaps some of these days my son, if he is a son,
may have the pleasure of escorting his aunts home. I shall certainly
call him 'Henry Leaf,' and bring him up to be in every way a credit
to our family."
When the ladies were away, and Mrs. Ascott had retired to bed, it was
still only nine o'clock, and a bright moonlight night. Elizabeth
thought she could steal down stairs and try to get a breath of fresh
air round the square. Her long confinement made her almost sick
sometimes for a sight of the outer world, a sight of--let me tell the
entire truth--her own faithful Tom.
She had not seen him now for fourteen days, and though his letters
were very nice and exceedingly clever, still she craved for a look at
his face, a grasp of his hand, perhaps even a kiss, long and close
and tender, such as he would sometimes insist upon giving her, in
spite of all policemen. His love for her, demonstrative as was his
nature, had become to this still, quiet girl inexpressibly sweet, far
sweeter than she knew.
It was a clear winter night, and the moon went climbing over the
fleecy white clouds in a way that made beauty even in Russell Square.
Elizabeth looked up at the sky, and thought how Tom would have
enjoyed it, and wished he were beside her, and was so glad to think
he would soon be beside her always, with all his humors and
weaknesses, all his little cross-selfishness, and complainings; she
could put up with all, and be happy through all, if only she had him
with her and loving her.
His love for her, though fitful and fanciful, was yet so warm and
real that it had become a necessity of her life. As he always told
her--especially after he had had one of his little quarrels with
her--hers was to him.
"Poor Tom, I wonder how he gets on without me! Well, it won't be for
long."
And she wished she could have let him know she was out here, that
they might have had a chat for just ten minutes.
Unconsciously she walked toward their usual trysting place, a large
overhanging plane-tree on the Keppel Street corner of the square.
Surely, surely, that could not be Tom! Quite impossible, for he was
not alone. Two people, a young man and a young woman, stood at the
tryst, absorbed in conversation: evidently sweethearts, for he had
one arm round her, and he kissed her unresisted several times.
Elizabeth gazed, fascinated, almost doubting the evidence of her own
senses. For the young men's figure was so excessively like Tom's. At
length, with the sort of feeling that makes one go steadily up to a
shadow by the roadside, some ugly spectre that we feel sure, if we
stare it out, will prove to be a mere imagination, she walked
deliberately up to and past these "sweethearts."
They did not see her; they were far too much occupied with one
another; but she saw them, and saw at once that it was Tom, Tom's own
self, and with him her fellow-servant, Esther.
People may write volumes on jealousy, and volumes will still remain
to be written. It is next to remorse for guilt, the sharpest, sorest,
most maddening torment that human nature can endure.
We may sit and gaze from the boxes at our Othellos and Biancas; we
may laugh at the silly heart-burnings between Cousin Kate and Cousin
Lucy in the ball-room, or the squabbles of Mary and Sally in the
kitchen over the gardener's lad; but there the thing remains. A man
can not make love to two women, a woman can not coquet with two men,
without causing in degree that horrible agony, cruel as death, which
is at the root of half the tragedies, and the cause of half the
crimes of this world.
The complaint comes in different forms: sometimes it is a case of
slow poisoning or of ordeal by red-hot irons, which though not fatal,
undermines the whole character, and burns ineffaceable scars into the
soul. And people take it in various ways--some fiercely, stung by a
sense of wounded self-love; others haughtily:
"Pride's a safe robe, I'll wear it; but no rags."
Others, again, humble, self-distrustful natures, whose only pride
came through love, have nothing left them except rags. In a moment
all their thin robes of happiness are torn off; they stand shivering,
naked and helpless before the blasts of the bitter world.
This was Elizabeth's case. After the first instant of stunned
bewilderment and despair she took it all quite naturally, as if it
were a thing which she ought all along to have known was sure to
happen, and which was no more than she expected and deserved.
She passed the couple, still unobserved by them, and then walked
round the other side of the square, deliberately home.
I am not going to make a tragic heroine of this poor servant girl.
Perhaps, people may say, there is nothing tragic about the incident.
Merely a plain, quiet, old-fashioned woman, who is so foolish as to
like a handsome young swain, and to believe in him, and to be
surprised when he deserts her for a pretty girl of eighteen. All
quite after the way things go on in the world, especially in the
servant-world; and the best she can do is to get over it, or take
another sweetheart as quickly as possible. A very common story after
all, and more of a farce than a tragedy.
But there are some farces which, if you look underneath the surface,
have a good many of the elements of tragedy.
I shall neither paint Elizabeth tearing her own hair nor Esther's,
nor going raging about the square in moonlight in an insane fit of
jealousy. She was not given to "fits" under any circumstances, or
about any thing. All she felt went deep down into her heart, rooted
itself, and either blossomed or cankered there.
On this night she, as I said, walked round the square to her home:
then quietly went up stairs to her garret, locked the door, and sat
down upon her bed.
She might have sat there for an hour or more, her bonnet and shawl
still on, without stirring, without crying, altogether cold and hard
like a stone, when she fancied she heard her mistress's bell ring,
and mechanically rose up and went down stairs to listen. Nothing was
wanted, so she returned to her garret and crept to bed in the dark.
When soon afterward Esther likewise came up to bed, Elizabeth
pretended to be asleep. Only once, taking a stealthy glance at the
pretty girl who stood combing her hair at the looking-glass, she was
conscious of a sick sense of repulsion, a pain like a knife running
thro' her, at sight of the red young lips which Tom had just been
kissing, of the light figure which he had clasped as he used to clasp
her. But she never spoke, not one word.
Half an hour after she was roused by the nurse coming to her bedside.
Mrs. Ascott was very ill, and was calling for Elizabeth. Soon the
whole establishment was in confusion, and in the sharp struggle
between birth and death Elizabeth had no time to think of any thing
but her mistress.
Contrary to every expectation, all ended speedily and happily; and
before he went off to the City next day the master of the house, who,
in the midst of his anxiety and felicity, had managed to secure a
good night's sleep and a good breakfast, had the pleasure of sending
off a special messenger to the Times office with the notification,
"The Lady of Peter Ascott, Esq., of a son and heir."