A fortnight's time rather increased than diminished the excitement
incident on the event at Russell Square.
Never was there such a wonderful baby, and never was there such a
fuss made over it. Unprejudiced persons might have called it an ugly,
weakly little thing; indeed, at first there were such apprehensions
of its dying that it had been baptized in a great hurry, "Henry Leaf
Ascott," according to the mother's desire, which in her critical
position nobody dared to thwart. Even at the end of fourteen days the
"son and heir" was still a puling, sickly, yellow-faced baby. But to
the mother it was every thing.
From the moment she heard its first cry Mrs. Ascott's whole nature
seemed to undergo a change. Her very eyes--those cold blue eyes of
Miss Selina's--took a depth and tenderness whenever she turned to
look at the little bundle that lay beside her. She never wearied of
touching the tiny hands and feet, and wondering at them, and
showing--to every one of the household who was favored with a sight
of it--"my baby," as if it had been a miracle of the universe. She
was so unutterably happy and proud.
Elizabeth, too, seemed not a little proud of the baby. To her arms it
had first been committed; she had stood by at its first washing and
dressing, and had scarcely left it or her mistress since. Nurse, a
very grand personage, had been a little jealous of her at first, but
soon grew condescending, and made great use of her in the sick room,
alleging that such an exceedingly sensible young person, so quiet and
steady, was almost as good as a middle-aged married woman. Indeed,
she once asked Elizabeth if she was a widow, since she looked as if
she had "seen trouble:" and was very much surprised to learn she was
single and only twenty-three years old.
Nobody else took any notice of her. Even Miss Hilary was so engrossed
by her excitement and delight over the baby that she only observed,
"Elizabeth, you look rather worn-out; this has been a trying time for
you." And Elizabeth had just answered, "Yes"-no more.
During the fortnight she had seen nothing of Tom. He had written her
a short note or two, and the cook told her he had been to the kitchen
door several times asking for her, but being answered that she was
with her mistress up stairs, had gone away.
"In the sulks, most like, though he didn't look it. He's a pleasant
spoken young man and I'm sure I wish you luck with him," said Cookie,
who, like all the other servants, was now exceedingly civil to
Elizabeth.
Her star had risen; she was considered in the household a most
fortunate woman. It was shortly understood that nurse--majestic
nurse, had spoken so highly of her, that at the month's end the baby
was to be given entirely into her charge, with, of course, an almost
fabulous amount of wages.
"Unless," said Mrs. Ascott, when this proposition was made, suddenly
recurring to the fact which seemed hitherto to have quite slipped
from her mind--"unless you are still willing to get married, and
think you would be happier married. In that case I won't hinder you.
But it would be such a comfort to me to keep you a little longer."
"Thank you, ma'am," answered Elizabeth, softly, and busied herself
with walking baby up and down the room, hushing it on her shoulder.
If in the dim light tears fell on its puny face, God help her, poor
Elizabeth!
Mrs. Ascott made such an excellent recovery that in three weeks' time
nobody was the least anxious about her, and Mr. Ascott arranged to
start on a business journey to Edinburgh; promising, however, to be
back in three days for the Christmas dinner, which was to be a grand
celebration. Miss Leaf and Miss Hilary were to appear thereat in
their wedding dresses; and Mrs. Ascott herself took the most vital
interest in Johanna's having a new cap for the occasion. Nay, she
insisted upon ordering it from her own milliner, and having it made
of the most beautiful lace--the "sweetest" old lady's cap that could
possibly be invented.
Evidently this wonderful baby had opened all hearts, and drawn every
natural tie closer. Selina, lying on the sofa, in her graceful white
wrapper, and her neat close cap, looked so young, so pretty, and,
above all, so exceedingly gentle and motherly, that her sisters'
hearts were full to overflowing. They acknowledged that happiness,
like misery, was often brought about in a fashion totally unforeseen
and incredible. Who would have thought, for instance, on that
wretched night when Mr. Ascott came to Hilary at Kensington, or on
that dreary heartless wedding-day, that they should ever have been
sitting in Selina's room so merry and comfortable, admiring the baby,
and on the friendliest terms with baby's papa?
"Papa" is a magical word, and let married people have fallen ever so
wide asunder, the thought, "my child's mother," "my baby's father,"
must in some degree bridge the gulf between them. When Peter Ascott
was seen stooping, awkwardly enough, over his son's cradle, poking
his dumpy fingers into each tiny cheek in a half-alarmed,
half-investigating manner, as if he wondered how it had all come
about, but, on the whole, was rather pleased than otherwise--the good
angel of the household might have stood by and smiled, trusting that
the ghastly skeleton therein might in time crumble away into harmless
dust, under the sacred touch of infant fingers.
The husband and wife took a kindly, even affectionate leave of one
another. Mrs. Ascott called him "Peter," and begged him to take care
of himself, and wrap up well that cold night. And when he was gone,
and her sisters also, she lay on her sofa with her eyes open,
thinking. What sort of thoughts they were, whether repentant or
hopeful, solemn or tender, whether they might have passed away and
been forgotten, or how far they might have influenced her life to
come, none knew, and none ever did know.
When there came a knock at the door, and a message for Elizabeth,
Mrs. Ascott suddenly overheard it and turned round.
"Who is wanting you? Tom Cliffe? Isn't that the young man you are to
be married to? Go down to him at once. And stay, Elizabeth, as it's
such a bitter night, take him for half an hour into the housekeeper's
room. Send her up stairs, and tell her I wished it, though I don't
allow 'followers.' "
"Thank you, ma'am," said Elizabeth once more, and obeyed. She must
speak to Tom some time, it might as well be done to-night as not.
Without pausing to think, she went down with dull heavy steps to the
housekeeper's room.
Tom stood there alone. He looked so exactly his own old self, he came
forward to meet her so completely in his old familiar way, that for
the instant she thought she must be under some dreadful delusion;
that the moonlight night in the square must have been all a dream;
Esther, still the silly little Esther, whom Tom had often heard of
and laughed at; and Tom, her own Tom, who loved nobody but her.
"Elizabeth, what an age it is since I've had a sight of you!"
But though the manner was warm as ever,
"In his tone
A something smote her, as if Duty tried
To mock the voice of Love, how long since flown,"
and quiet as she stood, Elizabeth shivered in his arms.
"Why, what's the matter? Aren't you glad to see me? Give me another
kiss, my girl, do!"
He took it; and she crept away from him and sat down.
"Tom, I've got something to say to you, and I'd better say it at
once."
"To be sure. 'Tisn't any bad news from home, is it? Or"--looking
uneasily at her--"I haven't vexed you, have I?"
"Vexed me," she repeated, thinking what a small foolish word it was
to express what had happened, and what she had been suffering. "No,
Tom, not vexed me exactly. But I want to ask you a question. Who was
it that you stood talking with, under our tree in the square, between
nine and ten o'clock, this night three weeks ago?"
Though there was no anger in the voice it was so serious and
deliberate that it made Tom start.
"Three weeks ago; how can I possibly tell?"
"Yes, you can; for it was a fine moonlight night, and you stood there
a long time."
"Under the tree, talking to somebody? What nonsense! Perhaps it
wasn't me at all."
"It was, for I saw you."
"The devil you did!" muttered Tom.
"Don't be angry, only tell me the plain truth. The young woman that
was with you was our Esther here, wasn't she?"
For a moment Tom looked altogether confounded. Then he tried to
recover himself, and said crossly, "Well, and if it was, where's the
harm? Can't a man be civil to a pretty girl without being called over
the coals in this way?"
Elizabeth made no answer, at least not immediately. At last she said,
in a very gentle, subdued voice,
"Tom, are you fond of Esther? You would not kiss her if you were not
fond of her. Do you like her as--as you used to like me?"
And she looked right up into his eyes. Hers had no reproach in them,
only a piteous entreaty, the last clinging to a hope which she knew
to be false.
"Like Esther? Of course I do? She's a nice sort of girl, and we're
very good friends."
"Tom, a man can't be 'friends,' in that sort of way, with a pretty
girl of eighteen, when he is going to be married to somebody else. At
least, in my mind, he ought not."
Tom laughed in a confused manner. "I say, you're jealous, and you'd
better get over it."
Was she jealous? was it all fancy, folly? Did Tom stand there, true
as steel, without a feeling in his heart that she did not share,
without a hope in which she was not united, holding her, and
preferring her, with that individuality and unity of love which true
love ever gives and exacts, as it has a right to exact?
Not that poor Elizabeth reasoned in this way, but she felt the thing
by instinct without reasoning.
"Tom," she said, "tell me outright, just as if I was somebody else,
and had never belonged to you at all, do you love Esther Martin."
Truthful people enforce truth. Tom might be fickle, but he was not
deceitful; he could not look into Elizabeth's eyes and tell her a
deliberate lie; somehow he dared not.
"Well, then--since you will have it out of me--I think I do."
So Elizabeth's "ship went down." It might have been a very frail
vessel, that nobody in their right senses would have trusted any
treasure with, still she did; and it was all she had, and it went
down to the bottom like a stone.
It is astonishing how soon the sea closes over this sort of wreck;
and how quietly people take--when they must take, and there is no
more disbelieving it--the truth which they would have given their
lives to prove was an impossible lie.
For some minutes Tom stood facing the fire, and Elizabeth sat on her
chair opposite without speaking. Then she took off her brooch, the
only love-token he had given her, and put it into his hand.
"What's this for?" asked he, suddenly.
"You know. You'd better give it to Esther. It's Esther, not me, you
must marry now."
And the thought of Esther, giddy, flirting, useless Esther, as Tom's
wife, was almost more than she could bear. The sting of it put even
into her crushed humility a certain honest self-assertion.
"I'm not going to blame you, Tom; but I think I'm as good as she. I'm
not pretty, I know, nor lively, nor young, at least I'm old for my
age; but I was worth something. You should not have served me so."
Tom said, the usual excuse, that he "couldn't help it." And suddenly
turning round, he begged her to forgive him, and not forsake him.
She forsake Tom! Elizabeth almost smiled.
"I do forgive you: I'm not a bit angry with you. If I ever was I have
got over it."
"That's right. You're a dear soul. Do you think that I don't like
you, Elizabeth?"
"Oh yes," she said, sadly, "I dare say you do, a little, in spite of
Esther Martin. But that's not my way of liking, and I couldn't stand
it."
"What couldn't you stand?"
"Your kissing me to-day, and another girl to-morrow: your telling me
I was every thing to you one week, and saying exactly the same thing
to another girl the next. It would be hard enough to bear if we were
only friends, but as sweet-hearts, as husband and wife, it would be
impossible. No Tom, I tell you the truth, I could not stand it."
She spoke strongly, unhesitatingly, and for an instant there flowed
out of her soft eyes that wild fierce spark, latent even in these
quiet humble natures, which is dangerous to meddle with.
Tom did not attempt it. He felt all was over. Whether he had lost or
gained: whether he was glad or sorry, he hardly knew.
"I'm not going to take this back, any how," he said, "fiddling" with
the brooch; and then going up to her, he attempted, with trembling
hands, to refasten it in her collar.
The familiar action, his contrite look, were too much. People who
have once loved one another, though the love is dead (for love can
die), are not able to bury it all at once, or if they do, its pale
ghost will still come knocking at the door of their hearts, "Let me
in, let me in!"
Elizabeth ought, I know, in proper feminine dignity, to have bade Tom
farewell without a glance or a touch. But she did not. When he had
fastened her brooch she looked up in his familiar face a sorrowful,
wistful, hungering look, and then clung about his neck:
"O Tom, Tom, I was so fond of you!"
And Tom mingled his tears with hers, and kissed her many times, and
even felt his old affection returning, making him half oblivious of
Esther; but mercifully--for love rebuilt upon lost faith is like a
house founded upon sands--the door opened, and Esther herself came
in.
Laughing, smirking, pretty Esther, who, thoughtless as she was, had
yet the sense to draw back when she saw them.
"Come here, Esther!" Elizabeth called, imperatively; and she came.
"Esther, I've given up Tom; you may take him if he wants you. Make
him a good wife, and I'll forgive you. If not--"
She could not say another word. She shut the door upon them, and
crept up stairs, conscious only of one thought--if she only could get
away from them, and never see either of their faces any more!
And in this fate was kind to her, though in that awful way in which
fate--say rather Providence--often works; cutting, with one sharp
blow, some knot that our poor, feeble, mortal fingers have been long
laboring at in vain, or making that which seemed impossible to do the
most natural, easy, and only thing to be done.
How strangely often in human life "one woe doth tread upon the
other's heel!" How continually, while one of those small private
tragedies that I have spoken of is being enacted within, the actors
are called upon to meet some other tragedy from without, so that
external energy counteracts inward emotion, and holy sympathy with
another's sufferings stifles all personal pain. That truth about
sorrows coming "in battalions" may have a divine meaning in it--may
be one of those mysterious laws which guide the universe--laws that
we can only trace in fragments, and guess at the rest, believing, in
deep humility, that one day we shall "know even as we are known."
Therefore I ask no pity for Elizabeth, because ere she had time to
collect herself, and realize in her poor confused mind that she had
indeed said good by to Tom, given him up and parted from him forever,
she was summoned to her mistress's room, there to hold a colloquy
outside the door with the seriously-perplexed nurse.
One of those sudden changes had come which sometimes, after all seems
safe, strike terror into a rejoicing household, and end by carrying
away, remorseless, the young wife from her scarcely tasted bliss, the
mother of many children from her close circle of happy duties and
yearning loves.
Mrs. Ascott was ill. Either she had taken cold or been too much
excited, or, in the overconfidence of her recovery, some slight
neglect had occurred--some trifle which nobody thinks of till
afterward, and which yet proves the fatal cause, "the little pin"
that
"Bores through the castle wall"
of mortal hope, and King Death enters in all his awful state.
Nobody knew it or dreaded it; for though Mrs. Ascott was certainly
ill, she was not at first very ill; and there being no telegraphs in
those days no one thought of sending for either her husband or her
sisters. But that very hour, when Elizabeth went up to her mistress,
and saw the flush on her cheek and the rest-less expression of her
eye, King Death had secretly crept in at the door of the mansion in
Russell Square.
The patient was carefully removed back into her bed. She said little,
except once, looking up uneasily--
"I don't feel quite myself, Elizabeth."
And when her servant soothed her in the long-familiar way, telling
her she would be better in the morning, she smiled contentedly, and
turned to go to sleep.
Nevertheless, Elizabeth did not go to her bed, but sat behind the
curtain, motionless, for an hour or more.
Toward the middle of the night, when her baby was brought to her, and
the child instinctively refused its natural food, and began screaming
violently, Mrs. Ascott's troubled look returned.
"What is the matter? What are you doing, nurse? I won't be parted
from my baby--I won't, I say!"
And when, to sooth her, the little thing was again put into her arms,
and again turned from her, a frightened expression came into the
mother's face.
"Am I going to be ill?--is baby--"
She stopped; and as nurse determinately carried it away, she
attempted no resistance, only followed it across the room with eager
eyes. It was the last glimmer of reason there. From that time her,
mind began to wander, and before morning she was slightly delirious.
Still nobody apprehended danger. Nobody really knew any thing about
the matter except nurse, and she, with a selfish fear of being blamed
for carelessness, resisted sending for the doctor till his usual hour
of calling. In that large house, as in many other large houses, every
body's business was nobody's business, and a member of the family,
even the mistress, might easily be sick or dying in some room
therein, while all things else went on just as usual, and no one was
any the wiser.
About noon even Elizabeth's ignorance was roused up to the conviction
that something was very wrong with Mrs. Ascott, and that nurse's
skill could not counteract it. On her own responsibility she sent, or
rather she went to fetch the doctor. He came; and his fiat threw the
whole household into consternation.
Now they knew that the poor lady whose happiness had touched the very
stoniest hearts in the establishment hovered upon the brink of the
grave. Now all the women-servants, down to the little kitchen-maid
with her dirty apron at her eyes, crept up stairs, one after the
other, to the door of what had been such a silent, mysterious room,
and listened, unhindered, to the ravings that issued thence. "Poor
Missis," and the "poor little baby," were spoken of softly at the
kitchen dinner table, and confidentially sympathized over with
inquiring tradespeople at the area gate. A sense of awe and suspense
stole over the whole house, gathering thicker hour by hour of that
dark December day.
When her mistress was first pronounced "in danger," Elizabeth, aware
that there was no one to act but herself, had taken a brief
opportunity to slip from the room and write two letters, one to her
master in Edinburgh, and the other to Miss Hilary. The first she gave
to the footman to post; the second she charged him to send by special
messenger to Richmond. But he, being lazily inclined, or else
thinking that, as the order was only given by Elizabeth, it was of
comparatively little moment, posted them both. So vainly did the poor
girl watch and wait; neither Miss Leaf nor Miss Hilary came.
By night Mrs. Ascott's delirium began to subside, but her strength
was ebbing fast. Two physicians--three--stood by the unconscious
woman, and pronounced that all hope was gone, if, indeed, the case
had not been hopeless from the beginning.
"Where is her husband? Has she no relations--no mother or sisters?"
asked the fashionable physician, Sir ---- ----, touched by the slight
or this poor lady dying alone, with only a nurse and a servant about
her. "If she has, they ought to be sent for immediately."
Elizabeth ran down stairs, and rousing the old butler from his bed,
prevailed on him to start immediately in the carriage to bring back
Miss Leaf and Miss Hilary. It would be midnight before he reached
Richmond; still it must be done.
"I'll do it, my girl," said he, kindly; "and I'll tell them as gently
as I can. Never fear."
When Elizabeth returned to her mistress's room the doctors were all
gone, and nurse, standing at the foot of Mrs. Ascott's bed, was
watching her with the serious look which even a hireling or a
stranger wears in the presence of that sight which, however familiar,
never grows less awful--a fellow creature slowly passing from this
life into the life unknown. Elizabeth crept up to the other side. The
change, indescribable yet unmistakable, which comes over a human face
when the warrant for its dissolution has gone forth, struck her at
once. Never yet had Elizabeth seen death. Her father's she did not
remember, and among her few friends and connections none other had
occurred. At twenty-three years of age she was still ignorant of that
solemn experience which every woman must go through some time, often
many times during her life. For it is to women that all look in their
extreme hour. Very few men, even the tenderest hearted, are able to
watch by the last struggle and close the eyes of the dying.
For the moment, as she glanced round the darkened room, and then at
the still figure on the bed, Elizabeth's courage failed. Strong love
might have overcome this fear--the natural recoil of youth and life
from coming into contact with death and mortality; but love was not
exactly the bond between her and Mrs. Ascott. It was rather duty,
pity, the tenderness that would have sprung up in her heart toward
any body she had watched and tended so long.
"If she should die, die in the night, before Miss Hilary comes!"
thought the poor girl, and glanced once more around the shadowy room,
where she was now left quite alone. For nurse, thinking with true
worldly wisdom of the preservation of the "son and heir," which was
decidedly the most important question now, had stolen away, and was
busy in the next room, seeing various young women whom the doctors
had sent, one of whom was to supply to the infant the place of the
poor mother whom it would never know. There was nobody left but
herself to watch this dying mother, so Elizabeth took her lot upon
her, smothered down her fears, and sat by the bedside waiting for the
least expression of returning reason in the sunken face, which was
very quiet now. Consciousness did return at last, as the doctors had
said it would. Mrs. Ascott opened her eyes; they wandered from side
to side, and then she said, feebly, "Elizabeth, where's my baby?"
What Elizabeth answered she never could remember; perhaps nothing, or
her agitation betrayed her, for Mrs. Ascott said again, "Elizabeth,
am I going to--to leave my baby?"
Some people might have considered it best to reply with a lie--the
frightened, cowardly lie that is so often told at death-beds to the
soul passing direct to its God. But this girl could not and dared
not.
Leaning over her mistress, she whispered as softly as she could,
choking down the tears that might have disturbed the peace which,
mercifully, seemed to have come with dying,
"Yes, you are going very soon--to God. He will watch over baby, and
give him back to you again some day quite safe."
"Will He?"
The tone was submissive, half-inquiring; like that of a child
learning something it had never learned before--as Selina was now
learning. Perhaps even those three short weeks of motherhood had
power so to raise her whole nature that she now gained the composure
with which even the weakest soul can sometimes meet death, and had
grown not unworthy of the dignity of a Christian's dying.
Suddenly she shivered. "I am afraid; I never thought of--this. Will
nobody come and speak to me?"
Oh, how Elizabeth longed for Miss Hilary, for any body, who would
have known what to say to the dying woman; who perhaps, as her look
and words implied, till this hour had never thought of dying. Once it
crossed the servant's mind to send for some clergyman; but she knew
none, and was aware that Mrs. Ascott did not either. She had no
superstitious feeling that any clergyman would do; just to give a
sort of spiritual extreme unction to the departing soul. Her own
religious faith was of such an intensely personal silent kind, that
she did not believe in any good to be derived from a strange
gentleman coming and praying by the bedside of a stranger, repeating
set sayings with a set countenance, and going away again. And yet
with that instinct which comes to almost every human soul, fast
departing, Mrs. Ascott's white lips whispered, "Pray."
Elizabeth had no words, except those which Miss Leaf used to say
night after night in the little parlor at Stowbury. She knelt down,
and in a trembling voice repeated in her mistress's ear--"Our Father
which art in heaven"--to the end.
After it Mrs. Ascott lay very quiet. At length she said,
"Please--bring--my--baby." It had been from the first, and was to the
last, "my" baby. The small face was laid close to hers that she might
kiss it.
"He looks well; he does not miss me much yet, poor little fellow!"
And the strong natural agony came upon her, conquering even the
weakness of her last hour. "Oh, it's hard, hard! Will nobody teach my
baby to remember me?"
And then lifting herself up on her elbow she caught hold of nurse.
"Tell Mr. Ascott that Elizabeth is to take care of baby. Promise,
Elizabeth. Johanna is old--Hilary may be married; you will take care
of my baby?"
"I will--as long as I live," said Elizabeth Hand.
She took the child in her arms, and for almost another hour stood
beside the bed thus, until nurse whispered, "Carry it away; its
mother doesn't know it now."
But she did; for she feebly moved her fingers as if in search of
something. Baby was still asleep, but Elizabeth contrived, by
kneeling down close to the bed, to put the tiny hand under those cold
fingers; they closed immediately upon it, and so remained till the
last. When Miss Leaf and Miss Hilary came in, Elizabeth was still
kneeling there, trying softly to take the little hand away; for the
baby had wakened and began its piteous wail. But it did not disturb
the mother now.
"Poor Selina" was no more. Nothing of her was left to her child
except the name of a mother. It may have been better so.