Chapter 6

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_ CHAPTER VI

Elizabeth got tea ready with unwonted diligence and considerable excitement. Any visitor was a rare occurrence in this very quiet family; but a gentleman visitor--a young gentleman too--was a remarkable fact, arousing both interest and curiosity. For in the latter quality this girl of seventeen could scarcely be expected to be deficient; and as to the former, she had so completely identified herself with the family she served, that all their concerns were her concerns also. Her acute comments on their few guests, and on their little scholars, sometimes amused Hilary as much as her criticisms on the books she read. But as neither were ever put forward intrusively or impertinently, she let them pass, and only laughed over them with Johanna in private.

In speaking of these said books, and the questions they led to, it was not likely but that mistress and maid--one aged twenty-two, and the other seventeen--should occasionally light upon a subject rather interesting to women of their ages, though not commonly discussed between mistresses and maids. Nevertheless, when it did come in the way, Miss Hilary never shirked it, but talked it out, frankly and freely, as she would to any other person.

"The girl has feelings and notions on the matter, like all other girls, I suppose," reasoned she to herself; "so it is important that her notions should be kept clear, and her feelings right. It may do her some good, and save her from much harm."

And so it befell that Elizabeth Hand, whose blunt ways, unlovely person, and temperament so oddly nervous and reserved, kept her from attracting any "sweetheart" of her own class, had unconsciously imbibed her mistress's theory of love. Love, pure and simple, the very deepest and highest, sweetest and most solemn thing in life: to be believed in devoutly until it came, and when it did come, to be held to, firmly, faithfully, with a single-minded, settled constancy, till death. A creed, quite impossible, many will say, in this ordinary world, and most dangerous to be put into the head of a poor servant. Yet a woman is but a woman, be she maid-servant or queen; and if, from queens to maid-servants, girls were taught thus to think of love, there might be a few more "broken" hearts perhaps, but there would certainly be fewer wicked hearts; far fewer corrupted lives of men, and degraded lives of women; far fewer unholy marriages, and desolated, dreary, homeless homes.

Elizabeth, having cleared away her tea-things, stood listening to the voices in the parlor, and pondering. She had sometimes wondered in her own mind that no knight ever came to carry off her charming princess--her admired and beloved Miss Hilary. Miss Hilary, on her part, seemed totally indifferent to the youths at Stowbury; who indeed were, Elizabeth allowed, quite unworthy her regard. The only suitable lover for her young mistress must be somebody exceedingly grand and noble--a compound of the best heroes of Shakespeare, Scott, Fenimore Cooper, Maria Edgeworth, and Harriet Martineau. When this strange gentleman appeared--in ordinary coat and hat, or rather Glengary bonnet, neither particularly handsome nor particularly tall, yet whose coming had evidently given Miss Hilary so much pleasure, and who, once or twice while waiting at tea, Elizabeth fancied she had seen looking at Miss Hilary as nobody ever looked before--when Mr. Robert Lyon appeared on the horizon, the faithful "bower maiden" was a good deal disappointed.

She had expected something better; at all events, something different. Her first brilliant castle in the air fell, poor lass! but she quickly built it up again, and, with the vivid imagination of her age, she mapped out the whole future, ending by a vision of Miss Hilary, all in white, sweeping down the Terrace in a carriage and pair--to fortune and happiness; leaving herself, though with a sore want at her heart, and a great longing to follow, to devote the remainder of her natural life to Miss Johanna.

"Her couldna do without somebody to see to her--and Miss Selina do worrit her so." muttered Elizabeth, in the excitement of this Almaschar vision, relapsing into her old provincialisms. "So, even if Miss Hilary axes me to come, I'll stop, I reckon. Ay, I'll stop wi' Miss Leaf."

This valorous determination taken, the poor maid servant's dream was broken by the opening of the parlor door, and an outcry of Ascott's for his coat and gloves, he having to fetch his aunts home at nine o'clock, Mr. Lyon accompanying him. And as they all stood together at the front door, Elizabeth overheard Mr. Lyon say something about what a beautiful night it was.

"It would do you no harm, Miss Hilary; will you walk with us?"

"If you like."

Hilary went up stairs for her bonnet and shawl; but when, a minute or two after, Elizabeth followed her with a candle, she found her standing in the centre of the room, all in the dark, her face white and her hands trembling.

"Thank you, thank you!" she said mechanically, as Elizabeth folded and fastened her shawl for her--and descended immediately. Elizabeth watched her take, not Ascott's arm, but Mr. Lyon's, and walk down the terrace in the starlight.

"Some'at's wrong. I'd like to know who's been a-vexin' of her," thought fiercely the young servant.

No, nobody had been "a-vexing" her mistress. There was nobody to blame; only there had happened to Hilary one of those things which strike like a sword through a young and happy heart, taking all the life and youth out of it.

Robert Lyon had, half an hour ago, told her--and she had had to hear it as a piece of simple news, to which she had only to say, "Indeed!"--that to day and to-morrow were his two last days at Stowbury--almost his last in England. Within a week he was to sail for India.

There had befallen him what most people would have considered a piece of rare good fortune. At the London University, a fellow student, whom he had been gratuitously "coaching" in Hindostanee, fell ill, and was "thrown upon his hands." as he briefly defined services which must have been great, since they had resulted in this end. The young man's father--a Liverpool and Bombay merchant--made him an offer to go out there, to their house, at a rising salary of 300 rupees a month for three years; after the third year to become a junior partner; remaining at Bombay in that capacity for two years more.

This he told to Hilary and Ascott in almost as few words as I have here put it--for brevity seemed a refuge to him. It was also to one of them. But Ascott asked so many questions that his aunt needed to ask none. She only listened, and tried to take all in, and understand it, that is, in a consecutive, intelligent, business shape, without feeling it. She dared not let herself feel it, not for a second, till they were out, arm-in-arm, under the quiet winter stars. Then she heard his voice asking her, "So you think I was right?"

"Right?" she echoed mechanically.

"I mean in accepting that sudden chance, and changing my whole plan of life. I did not do it--believe me--without a motive."

"What motive?" she would once unhesitatingly have asked; now she could not.

Robert Lyon continued speaking, distinctly and yet in an undertone, that though Ascott was walking a few yards off, Hilary felt was meant for her alone to hear.

"The change is, you perceive, from the life of a student to that of a man of business. I do not deny that I preferred the first. Once upon a time to be a fellow in a college, or a professor, or the like, was my utmost aim and I would have half killed myself to attain it. Now, I think differently."

He paused, but did not seem to require an answer, and it did not come.

"I want, not to be rich but to get a decent competence, and to get it as soon as I can. I want not to ruin my health with incessant study. I have already injured it a good deal."

"Have you been ill? You never said so."

"Oh no, it was hardly worth while. And I knew an active life would soon set me right again. No fear! there's life in the old dog yet. He does not wish to die. But," Mr. Lyon pursued, "I have had a 'sair fecht' the last year or two. I would not go through it again, nor see any one dear to me go through it. It is over, but it has left its scars. Strange! I have been poor all my life, yet I never till now felt an actual terror of poverty."

Hilary shrank within herself; less even at the words than at something in their tone--something hard, nay fierce; something at once despairing and aggressive.

"It is strange," she said; "such a terror is not like you. I feel none; I can not even understand it."

"No, I knew you could not," he muttered; and was silent.

So was Hilary. A vague trouble came over her. Could it be that he, Robert Lyon, had been seized with the _auri sacra fames_, which he had so often inveighed against and despised? that his long battle with poverty had caused in him such an overweening desire for riches that, to obtain them, he would sacrifice every thing else, exile himself to a far country for years, selling his very life and soul for gold?

Such a thought of him was so terrible--that is, would have been were it tenable--that Hilary for an instant felt herself shiver all over. The next she spoke out--in justice to him she forced herself to speak out--all her honest soul.

"I do believe that this going abroad to make a fortune, which young men so delight in, is often a most fatal mistake. They give up far more than they gain--country, home, health. I think a man has no right to sell his life any more than his soul for so many thousands a year."

Robert Lyon smiled--"No, and I am not selling mine. With my temperate habits I have as good a chance of health at Bombay as in London--perhaps better. And the years I must be absent I would have been absent almost as much from you--I mean they would have been spent in work as engrossing and as hard. They will soon pass, and then I shall come home rich--rich. Do you think I am growing mercenary?"

"No."

"Tell me what you do think about me?"

"I--can not quite understand."

"And I cannot make you understand. Perhaps I will, some day when I come back again. Till then, you must trust me, Hilary."

It happens occasionally, in moments of all but tolerable pain, that some small thing, a word, a look, a touch of a hand, lets in such a gleam of peace that nothing ever extinguishes the light of it: it burns on for years and years, sometimes clear, sometimes obscured, but as ineffaceable from life and memory as a star from its place in the heavens. Such, both then, and through the lonely years to come, were those five words, "You must trust me. Hilary."

She did; and in the perfection of that trust her own separate identity, with all its consciousness of pain, seemed annihilated; she did not think of herself at all, only of him, and with him, and for him. So, for the time being, she lost all sense of personal suffering, and their walk that night was as cheerful and happy as if they were to walk together for weeks and months and years, in undivided confidence and content, instead of its being the last--the very last.

Some one has said that all lovers have, soon or late, to learn to be only friends: happiest and safest are those in whom the friendship is the foundation--always firm and ready to fall back upon, long after the fascination of passion dies. It may take a little from the romance of these two if I own that Robert Lyon talked to Hilary not a word about love, and a good deal about pure business, telling her all his affairs and arrangements, and giving her as clear an idea of his future life as it was possible to do within the limits of one brief half hour.

Then casting a glance round, and seeing that Ascott was quite out of ear-shot, he said, with that tender fall of the voice that felt, as some poet hath it,

"Like a still embrace,"

"Now tell me as much as you can about yourself."

At first there seemed nothing to tell; but gradually he drew from Hilary a good deal. Johanna's feeble health, which caused her continuing to teach to be very unadvisable; and the gradual diminishing of the school--from what cause they could not account--which made it very doubtful whether some change would not soon or late be necessary.

What this change should be she and Mr. Lyon discussed a little--as far as in the utterly indefinite position of affairs was possible. Also, from some other questions of his, she spoke to him about another dread which had lurked in her mind, and yet to which she could give no tangible shape, about Ascott. He could not remove it, he did not attempt; but he soothed it a little, advising with her as to the best way of managing the willful lad. His strong, clear sense, just judgment, and, above all, a certain unspoken sense of union, as if all that concerned her and hers he took naturally upon himself as his own, gave Hilary such comfort that, even on this night, with a full consciousness of all that was to follow, she was happy--nay, she had not been so happy for years. Perhaps (let the truth be told), the glorious truth of true love, that its recognition, spoken or silent, constitutes the only perfect joy of life that of two made perhaps she had never been so really happy since she was born.

The last thing he did was to make her give him an assurance that in any and all difficulty she would apply to him.

"To me, and to no one else, remember. No one but myself must help you. And I will, so, long as I am alive. Do you believe this?"

She looked up at him by the lamp light, and said, "I do."

"And you promise?"

"Yes."

Then they loosed arms, and Hilary knew that they should never walk together again till--when and how?

Returning, of course, he walked with Miss Leaf; and throughout the next day, a terribly wet Sunday, spent by them entirely in the little parlor, they had not a minute of special or private talk together. He did not seem to wish it; indeed, almost avoided it.

Thus slipped away the strange, still day--a Sunday never to be forgotten. At night, after prayers were, over, Mr. Lyon rose suddenly, saying he must leave them now; he was obliged to start from Stowbury at daybreak.

"Shall we not see you again?" asked Johanna.

"No. This will be my last Sunday in England. Good-by!"

He turned excessively pale, shook hands silently with them all--Hilary last--and almost before they recognized the fact, he was gone.

With him departed, not all Hilary's peace or faith or courage of heart, for to all who love truly, while the best beloved lives, and lives worthily, no parting is hopeless and no grief overwhelming; but all the brightness of her youth, all the sense of joy that young people have in loving, and in being beloved again, in fond meetings and fonder partings, in endless walks and talks, in sweet kisses and clinging arms. Such happiness was not for her: when she saw it the lot of others, she said to herself sometimes with a natural sharp sting of pain, but oftener with a solemn acquiescence, "It is the will of God; it is the will of God."

Johanna, too, who would have given her life almost to bring some color back to the white face of her darling, of whom she asked no questions, and who never complained nor confessed any thing, many and many a night when Hilary either lay awake by her side, or tossed and moaned in her sleep, till the elder sister took her in her arms like a baby--Johanna, too, said to herself, "This is the will of God."

I have told thus much in detail the brief sad story of Hilary's youth, to show how impossible it was that Elizabeth Hand could live in the house with these two women without being strongly influenced by them, as every person--especially every woman--influences for good or for evil every other person connected with her, or dependent upon her. Elizabeth was a girl of close observation and keen perception. Besides, to most people, whether or not their sympathy be universal, so far as the individual is concerned, any deep affection generally lends eyes, tact, and delicacy.

Thus when on the Monday morning at breakfast Miss Selina observed, "What a fine day Mr. Lyon was having for his journey; what a lucky fellow he was; how he would be sure to make a fortune, and if so, she wondered whether they should ever see or hear any thing of him again"--Elizabeth, from the glimpse she caught of Miss Hilary's face, and from the quiet way in which Miss Leaf merely answered, "Time will show;" and began talking to Selina about some other subject--Elizabeth resolved never in any way to make the smallest allusion to Mr. Robert Lyon. Something had happened, she did not know what; and it was not her business to find out; the family affairs, so far as she was trusted with them, were warmly her own, but into the family secrets she had no right to pry.

Yet, long after Miss Selina had ceased to "wonder" about him, or even to name him--his presence or absence did not touch her personally, and she was always the centre of her own small world of interest--the little maidservant kept in her mind, and pondered over at odd times every possible solution of the mystery of this gentleman's sudden visit; of the long wet Sunday when he sat all day talking with her mistresses in the parlor; of the evening prayer, when Miss Leaf had twice to stop, her voice faltered so; and of the night when, long after all the others had gone to bed, Elizabeth, coming suddenly into the parlor, had found Miss Hilary sitting alone over the embers of the fire, with the saddest, saddest look! so that the girl had softly shut the door again without ever speaking to "Missis."

Elizabeth did more; which, strange as it may appear, a servant who is supposed to know nothing of any thing that has happened can often do better than a member of the family who knows every thing, and this knowledge is sometimes the most irritating consciousness a sufferer has. She followed her young mistress with a steady watchfulness, so quiet and silent that Hilary never found it out; saved her every little household care, gave her every little household treat. Not much to do, and less to be chronicled; but the way in which she did it was all.

During the long dull winter days, to come in and find the parlor fire always bright, the hearth clean swept, and the room tidy; never to enter the kitchen without the servant's face clearing up into a smile; when her restless irritability made her forget things and grow quite vexed in the search after them, to see that somehow her shoes were never misplaced, and her gloves always came to hand in some mysterious manner--these trifles; in her first heavy days of darkness, soothed Hilary more than words could tell.

And the sight of Miss Hilary going about the house and school room as usual, with that poor white face of hers; nay, gradually bringing to the family fireside, as usual, her harmless little joke, and her merry laugh at it and herself--who shall say what lessons may not have been taught by this to the humble servant, dropping deep sown into her heart, to germinate and fructify, as her future life's needs required?

It might have been so--God knows! He alone can know, who, through what (to us) seem the infinite littleness of our mortal existence, is educating us into the infinite greatness of His and our immortality. _

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