Chapter 23

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_ CHAPTER XXIII

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." _

Read next: Chapter 24

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