Elizabeth spent the greatest part of her holiday in that house, in
that room. Nobody interfered with her; nobody asked in what relation
she stood to the deceased, or what right she had to take upon herself
the arrangements for his funeral. Every body was only too glad to let
her assume a responsibility which would otherwise have fallen on the
parish.
The only person who appeared to remember either her or the dead man
was the druggist's assistant, who sent in the necessary medical
certificate as to the cause of death. Elizabeth took it to the
Registrar, and thence proceeded to an undertaker hard by, with whom
she arranged all about the funeral, and that it should took place in
the new cemetery at Kensal Green. She thought she should like that
better than a close, noisy London church yard.
Before she left the house she saw poor Tom laid in his coffin, and
covered up forever from mortal eyes. Then, and not till then, she sat
herself down beside him and wept.
Nobody contested with her the possession of the few things that had
belonged to him, which were scarcely more than the clothes he had on
when he died; so she made them up into a parcel and took them away
with her. In his waistcoat pocket she found one book, a little
Testament, which she had given him herself. It looked as if it had
been a good deal read. If all his studies, all his worship of "pure
intellect," as the one supreme good, had ended in that, it was a
blessed ending.
When she reached home Elizabeth went at once to her master, returned
him his letter of recommendation, and explained to him that his
kindness was not needed now.
Mr. Ascott seemed a good deal shocked, inquired from her a few
particulars, and again took out his purse, his one panacea for all
mortal woes. But Elizabeth declined; she said she would only ask him
for an advance of her next half-year's wages. She preferred burying
her old friend herself.
She buried him, herself the only mourner, on a bright summer's day,
with the sun shining dazzlingly on the white grave stones in Kensal
Green. The clergyman appeared, read the service, and went away again.
A few minutes ended it all. When the undertaker and his men had also
departed, she sat down on a bench near to watch the sexton filling up
the grave--Tom's grave. She was very quiet, and none but a closely
observant person watching her face could have penetrated into the
truth of what your impulsive characters, always in the extremes of
mirth or misery, never understand about quiet people, that "still
waters run deep."
While she sat there some one came past her, and turned round. It was
the shabby-looking chemist's assistant, who had a appeared at the
inquest, and given the satisfactory evidence which had prevented the
necessity of her giving-hers.
Elizabeth rose and acknowledged him with a respectable courtesy; for
under his threadbare clothes was the bearing of a gentleman, and he
had been so kind to Tom.
"I am too late," he said; "the funeral is over. I meant to have
attended it, and seen the last of the poor fellow."
"Thank you, Sir," replied Elizabeth, gratefully.
The young man stood before her, looking at her earnestly for a minute
or two, and then exclaimed, with a complete change of voice and
manner.
"Elizabeth, don't you know me? What has become of my aunt Johanna?"
It was Ascott Leaf.
But no wonder Elizabeth had not recognized him. His close cropped
hair, his large beard hiding half his face, and a pair of spectacles
which he had assumed, were a sufficient disguise. Besides, the great
change from his former "dandy" appearance to the extreme of
shabbiness; his clothes being evidently worn as long as they could
possibly hold together, and his generally depressed air, giving the
effect of one who had gone down in the world, made him, even without
the misleading "John Smith," most unlikely to be identified with the
Ascott Leaf of old.
"I never should have known you, Sir!" said Elizabeth truthfully, when
her astonishment had a little subsided; "but I am very glad to see
you. Oh how thankful your aunts will be!"
"Do you think so? I thought it was quite the contrary. But it does
not matter; they will never hear of me unless you tell them--and I
believe I may trust you. You would not betray me, if only for the
sake of that poor fellow yonder?"
"No, Sir."
"Now, tell me something about my aunts, especially my aunt Johanna."
And sitting down in the sunshine, with his arms upon the back of the
bench, and his hand hiding his eyes, the poor prodigal listened in
silence to every thing Elizabeth told him; of his Aunt Selina's
marriage and death, and of Mr. Lyon's return, and of the happy home
at Liverpool.
"They are all quite happy, then?" said he, at length; "they seem to
have begun to prosper ever since they got rid of me. Well, I'm glad
of it. I only wanted to hear of them from you. I shall never trouble
them any more. You'll keep my secret, I know. And now I must go, for
I have not a minute more to spare. Good-by, Elizabeth."
With a humility and friendliness, strange enough in Ascott Leaf, he
held out his hand--empty, for he had nothing to give now--to his
aunt's old servant. But Elizabeth detained him.
"Don't go, Sir, please, don't; not just yet." And then she added,
with an earnest respectfulness that touched the heart of the poor,
shabby man, "I hope you'll pardon the liberty I take. I'm only a
servant, but I knew you when you were a boy, Mr. Leaf: and if you
would trust me, if you would let me be of use to you in any way--if
only because you were so good to him there."
"Poor Tom Cliffe; he was not a bad fellow; he liked me rather, I
think; and I was able to doctor him and help him a little. Heigh-ho;
it's a comfort to think I ever did any good to any body."
Ascott sighed, drew his rusty coat sleeves across his eyes, and sat
contemplating his boots, which were any thing but dandy boots now.
"Elizabeth, what relation was Tom to you? If I had known you were
acquainted with him I should have been afraid to go near him; but I
felt sure, though he came from Stowbury, he did not guess who I was;
he only knew me as Mr. Smith; and he never once mentioned you. Was he
your cousin, or what?"
Elizabeth considered a moment, and then told the simple fact; it
could not matter now.
"I was once going to be married to him, but he saw somebody he liked
better, and married her."
"Poor girl; poor Elizabeth?"
Perhaps nothing could have shown the great change in Ascott more than
the tone in which he uttered these words; a tone of entire respect
and kindly pity, from which he never once departed during that
conversation, and many, many others, so long as their confidential
relations lasted.
"Now, Sir, would you be so kind as to tell me something about
yourself? I'll not repeat any thing to your aunts, if you don't wish
it."
Ascott yielded. He had been so long, so utterly forlorn. He sat down
beside Elizabeth, and then, with eyes often averted, and with many
breaks between, which she had to fill up as best as she could, he
told her all his story, even to the sad secret of all, which had
caused him to run away from home, and hide himself in the last place
where they would have thought he was, the safe wilderness of London.
There, carefully disguised, he had lived decently while his money
lasted, and then, driven step by step to the brink of destitution, he
had offered himself for employment in the lowest grade of his own
profession, and been taken as assistant by the not over scrupulous
chemist and druggist in that not too respectable neighborhood of
Westminster, with a salary of twenty pounds a year.
"And I actually live upon it!" added he, with a bitter smile. "I
can't run into debt; for who would trust me? And I dress in rags
almost, as you see. And I get my meals how and where I can; and I
sleep under the shop counter. A pretty life for Mr. Ascott Leaf,
isn't it now? What would my aunts say if they knew it?"
"They would say that it was an honest life, and that they were not a
bit ashamed of you."
Ascott drew himself up a little, and his chest heaved visibly under
the close buttoned, thread bare coat.
"Well, at least, it is a life that makes nobody else miserable."
Ay, that wonderful teacher, Adversity,
"Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in its head,"
had left behind this jewel in the young man's heart. A disguised,
beggared outcast, he had found out the value of an honest name;
forsaken, unfriended, he had learned the preciousness of home and
love; made a servant of, tyrannized over, and held in low esteem, he
had been taught by hard experience the secret of true humility and
charity--the esteeming of others better than himself.
Not with all natures does misfortune so work, but it did with his. He
had sinned; he had paid the cost of his sin in bitter suffering; but
the result was cheaply bought, and he already began to feel that it
was so.
"Yes," said he, in answer to a question of Elizabeth's, "I really am,
for some things, happier than I used to be. I feel more like what I
was in the old days, when I was a little chap at Stowbury. Poor old
Stowbury! I often think of the place in a way that's perfectly
ridiculous. Still, if any thing happened to me, I should like my
aunts to know it, and that I didn't forget them."
"But, Sir," asked Elizabeth earnestly, "do you never mean to go near
your aunts again?"
"I can't say; it all depends upon circumstances. I suppose," he
added, "if, as is said, one's sin is sure to find one out, the same
rule goes by contraries. It seems poor Cliffe once spoke of me to a
district visitor, the only visitor he ever had; and this gentleman,
hearing of the inquest, came yesterday to inquire about him of me;
and the end was that he offered me a situation with a person he knew,
a very respectable chemist in Tottenham Court Road."
"And shall you go?"
"To be sure. I've learned to be thankful for small mercies. Nobody
will find me out or recognize me. You didn't. Who knows? I may even
have the honor of dispensing drugs to Uncle Ascott of Russell
Square."
"But," said Elizabeth, after a pause, "you will not always remain as
John Smith, druggist's shopman, throwing away all your good
education, position, and name?"
"Elizabeth," said he, in a humbled tone, "how dare I ever resume my
own name and get back my rightful position while Peter Ascott lives?
Can you or any body point out a way?"
She thought the question over in her clear head; clear still, even at
this hour, when she had to think for others, though all personal
feeling and interest were buried in that grave over which the sexton
was now laying the turf that would soon grow smoothly green.
"If I might advise, Mr. Leaf, I should say, save up all your money,
and then go, just as you are, with an honest, bold front, right into
my master's house, with the fifty pounds in your hand--"
"By Jove, you've hit it!" cried Ascott, starting up. "What a thing a
woman's head is! I've turned over scheme after scheme, but I never
once thought of any thing so simple as that. Bravo, Elizabeth! You're
a remarkable woman."
She smiled--a very sad smile--but still she felt glad. Any thing that
she could possibly do for any creature belonging to her dear
mistresses seemed to this faithful servant the natural and bounden
duty of her life.
Long after the young man, whose mercurial temperament no trouble
could repress, had gone away in excellent spirits, leaving her an
address where she could always find him, and give him regular news of
his aunts, though he made her promise to give them, as yet, no
tidings in return, Elizabeth sat still, watching the sun decline and
the shadows lengthen over the field of graves. In the calmness and
beauty of this solitary place an equal calm seemed to come over her;
a sense of how wonderfully events had linked themselves together and
worked themselves out; how even poor Tom's mournful death had brought
about this meeting, which might end in restoring to her beloved
mistresses their lost sheep, their outcast, miserable boy. She did
not reason the matter out, but she felt it, and felt that in making
her in some degree His instrument God had been very good to her in
the midst of her desolation.
It seemed Elizabeth's lot always to have to put aside her own
troubles for the trouble of somebody else. Almost immediately after
Tom Cliffe's death her little Henry fell ill with scarlatina and
remained for many months in a state of health so fragile as to
engross all her thought and care. It was with difficulty that she
contrived a few times to go for Henry's medicines to the shop where
"John Smith" served.
She noticed that every time he looked healthier, brighter, freer from
that aspect of broken-down respectability which had touched her so
much. He did not dress any better, but still "the gentleman" in him
could never be hidden or lost, and he said his master treated him
"like a gentleman," which was apparently a pleasant novelty.
"I have some time to myself also. Shop shuts at nine, and I get up at
5 A. M.--bless us! what would my Aunt Hilary say? And it's not for
nothing. There are more ways than one of turning an honest penny,
when a young fellow really sets about it. Elizabeth, you used to be a
literary character yourself; look into the ---- and the ----,"
(naming two popular magazines), "and if you find a series of
especially clever papers on sanitary reform, and so on, I did 'em:"
He slapped his chest with Ascott's merry laugh of old. It cheered
Elizabeth for a long while afterward.
By-and-by she had to take little Henry to Brighton, and lost sight of
"John Smith" for some time longer.
It was on a snowy February day, when, having brought the child home
quite strong, and received unlimited gratitude and guineas from the
delighted father, Master Henry's faithful nurse stood in her usual
place at the dining-room door, waiting for the interminable grace of
"only five minutes more" to be over, and her boy carried
ignominiously but contentedly to bed.
The footman knocked at the door. "A young man wanting to speak to
master on particular business.
"Let him send in his name."
"He says you wouldn't know it, Sir."
"Show him in, then. Probably a case of charity, as usual. Oh!"
And Mr. Ascott's opinion was confirmed by the appearance of the
shabby young man with the long beard, whom Elizabeth did not wonder
he never recognized in the least. She ought to have retired, and yet
she could not. She hid herself partly behind the door, afraid of
passing Ascott; dreading alike to wound him by recognition or
non-recognition. But he took no notice. He seemed excessively
agitated.
"Come a-begging, young man, I suppose? Wants a situation, as hundreds
do, and think that I have half the clerkships in the city at my
disposal, and that I am made of money besides. But it's no good, I
tell you, Sir; I never give nothing to strangers, except--Here,
Henry, my son, take that person there this half crown."
And the little boy, in his pretty purple velvet frock and his
prettier face, trotted across the room and put the money into poor
Ascott's hand. He took it; and then to the astonishment of Master
Henry, and the still greater astonishment of his father, lifted up
the child and kissed him.
"Young man, young fellow--"
"I see you don't know me, Mr. Ascott, and it's not surprising. But I
have come to repay you this--" he laid a fifty pound note down on the
table. "Also, to thank you earnestly for not prosecuting me, and to
say--"
"Good God!"--the sole expletive Peter Ascott had been heard to use
for long. "Ascott Leaf, is that you? I thought you were in Australia,
or dead, or something."
"No, I'm alive and here, more's the pity perhaps. Except that I have
lived to pay you back what I cheated you out of. What you generously
gave me I can't pay, though I may sometime. Meantime, I have brought
you this. It's honestly earned. Yes." observing the keen doubtful
look, "though I have hardly a coat to my back, I assure you it's
honestly earned."
Mr. Ascott made no reply. He stooped over the bank-note, examined it,
folded it, and put it into his pocket-book; then, after another
puzzled investigation of Ascott, cleared his throat.
"Mrs. Hand, you had better take Master Henry up stairs."
An hour after, when little Henry had long been sound asleep, and she
was sitting at her usual evening sewing in her solitary nursery,
Elizabeth learned that the "shabby young man" was still in the
dining-room with Mr. Ascott, who had rung for tea, and some cold meat
with it. And the footman stated, with undisguised amazement, that the
shabby young man was actually sitting at the same table with master!
Elizabeth smiled to herself and held her tongue. Now, as ever, she
always kept the secrets of the family.
About ten o'clock she was summoned to the dining-room.
There stood Peter Ascott, pompous as ever, but with a certain kindly
good-humor lightening up his heavy face, looking condescendingly
around him, and occasionally rubbing his hands slowly together, as if
he were exceedingly well pleased with himself. There stood Ascott
Leaf, looking bright and handsome, in spite of his shabbiness, and
quite at his ease--which small peculiarity was never likely to be
knocked out of him under the most depressing circumstances.
He shook hands with Elizabeth warmly.
"I wanted to ask you if you have any message for Liverpool. I go
there to-morrow on business for Mr. Ascott, and afterward I shall
probably go and see my aunts." He faltered a moment, but quickly
shook the emotion off. "Of course, I shall tell them all about you,
Elizabeth. Any special message, eh?"
"Only my duty, Sir, and Master Henry is quite well again," said
Elizabeth, formally, and dropping her old-fashioned courtesy; after
which, as quickly as she could, she slipped out of the dining-room.
But, long, long after, when all the house was gone to bed, she stood
at the nurser window, looking down upon the trees of the square, that
stretched their motionless arms up into the moonlight sky--just such
a moonlight as it was once, more than three years ago, the night
little Henry was born. And she recalled all the past, from the day
when Miss Hilary hung up her bonnet for her in the house-place at
Stowbury; the dreary life at No. 15; the Sunday nights when she and
Tom Cliffe used to go wandering round and round the square.
"Poor Tom," said she to herself, thinking of Ascott Leaf, and how
happy he had looked, and how happy his aunts would be to-morrow.
"Well, Tom would be glad too, if he knew all."
But, happy as every body was, there was nothing so close to
Elizabeth's heart as the one grave over which the snow was now lying,
white and peaceful, out at Kensal Green.
Elizabeth is still living--which is a great blessing, for nobody
could well do without her. She will probably attain a good old age;
being healthy and strong, very equable in temper now, and very
cheerful too, in her quiet way.
Doubtless, she will yet have Master Henry's children climbing her
knees, and calling her "Mammy Lizzie."
But she will never marry--She never loved any body but Tom.
THE END.