Part 15 (1/2)

”Confound you! no! Yes; stop.” And the young man took a furtive investigation of the plain, honest face, and not over-graceful, ultra-provincial figure, which still characterized his aunt's ”South Sea Islander.”

”I say, Elizabeth, I want you to do something for me.” He spoke so civilly, almost coaxingly, that Elizabeth turned round surprised.

”Would you just go and ask the landlady if she has got such thing as a latch key?”

”A what, Sir?”

”A latch-key--a--oh, she knows. Every London house has it. Tell her I'll take care of it, and lock the front door all right. She needn't be afraid of thieves.”

”Very well, Sir.”

Elizabeth went, but shortly reappeared with the information that Mrs.

Jones had gone to bed: in the kitchen, she supposed, as she could not get in. But she laid on the table the large street door key.

”Perhaps that's what you wanted, Mr. Leaf. Though I think you needn't be the least afraid of robbers, for there's three bolts, and a chain besides.”

”All right!” cried Ascott, smothering down a laugh. ”Thank you!

That's for you,” throwing a half-crown across the table.

Elizabeth took it up demurely, and put it down again. Perhaps she did not like him enough to receive presents from him; perhaps she thought, being an honest minded girl, that a young man who could not pay his rent had no business to be giving away half-crowns; or else she herself had not been so much as many servants are, in the habit of taking them. For Miss Hilary had put into Elizabeth some of her own feeling as to this habit of paying an inferior with money for any little civility or kindness which, from an equal, would be accepted simply as kindness, and only requited with thanks. Any how, the coin remained on the table, and the door was just shutting upon Elizabeth, when the young gentleman turned round again.

”I say, since my aunts are so horridly timid of robbers and such like, you'd better not tell them any thing about the latch-key.”

Elizabeth stood a minute perplexed, and then replied briefly: ”Miss Hilary isn't a bit timid; and I always tells Miss Hilary every thing.”

Nevertheless, though she was so ignorant as never to have heard of a latch-key, she had the wit to see that all was not right. She even lay awake, in her closet off Miss Leaf's room, whence she could hear the murmur of her two mistresses talking together, long after they retired--lay broad awake for an hour or more, trying to put things together--the sad things that she felt certain must have happened that day, and wondering what Mr. Ascott could possibly want with the key. Also, why he had asked her about it, instead of telling his aunts at once; and why he had treated her in the matter with such astonis.h.i.+ng civility.

It may be said a servant had no business to think about these things, to criticize her young master's proceedings, or wonder why her mistresses were sad: that she had only to go about her work like an automaton, and take no interest in any thing. I can only answer to those who like such service, let them have it: and as they sow they will a.s.suredly reap. But long after Elizabeth, young and hearty, was soundly snoring on her hard, cramped bed, Johanna and Hilary Leaf, after a brief mutual pretence of sleep, soon discovered by both, lay consulting together over ways and means. How could the family expenses, beginning with twenty-five s.h.i.+llings per week as rent, possibly be met by the only actual certain family income, their 50 per annum from a mortgage? For the Misses Leaf were or that old-fas.h.i.+oned stamp which believed that to reckon an income by mere probabilities is either insanity or dishonesty.

Common arithmetic soon proved that this 50 a year could not maintain them; in fact they must soon draw on the little sum--already dipped into to-day, for Ascott--which had been produced by the sale of the s...o...b..ry furniture. That sale, they now found had been a mistake; and they half feared whether the whole change from s...o...b..ry to London had not been a mistake--one of those sad errors in judgment which we all commit sometimes, and have to abide by, and make the best of, and learn from if we can. Happy those who ”Dinna greet ower spilt milk”--a proverb wise as cheerful, which Hilary, knowing well who it came from, repeated to Johanna to comfort her--teaches a second brave lesson, how to avoid spilling the milk a second time. And then they consulted anxiously about what was to be done to earn money.

Teaching presented itself as the only resource. In those days women's work and women's rights had not been discussed so freely as at present. There was a strong feeling that the princ.i.p.al thing required was our duties--owed to ourselves, our home, our family and friends.

There was a deep conviction--now, alas! slowly disappearing--that a woman, single or married, should never throw herself out of the safe circle of domestic life till the last extremity of necessity; that it is wiser to keep or help to keep a home, by learning how to expend its income, cook its dinners, make and mend its clothes, and, by the law that ”prevention is better than cure,” studying all those preservative means of holding a family together--as women, and women alone, can--than to dash into men's sphere of trades and professions, thereby, in most instances, fighting an unequal battle, and coming out of it maimed, broken, uns.e.xed; turned into beings that are neither men nor women, with the faults and corresponding sufferings of both, and the compensations of neither.

”I don't see,” said poor Hilary, ”what I can do but teach. And oh, if I could only get daily pupils, so that I might come home or nights, and creep into the fireside; and have time to mend the stockings and look after Ascott's linen, that he need not be so awfully extravagant.”

CHAPTER XI.

Aunt Hilary fixed her honest eyes on the lad's face--the lad, so little younger than herself, and yet who at tunes, when he let out sayings such as this, seemed so awfully, so pitifully old; and she felt thankful that, at all risks and costs, they had come to London to be beside him, to help him, to save him, if he needed saving, as women only can. For, after all, he was but a boy. And though as he walked by her side, stalwart and manly, the thought smote her painfully that many a young fellow of his age was the stay and bread winner of some widowed mother or sister, nay even of wife and child, still she repeated cheerfully. ”What can one expect from him? He is only a boy.”

G.o.d help the women who, for those belonging to them--husbands, fathers, brothers, lovers, sons--have ever so tenderly to apologize.

When they came in sight of St. Pancras's Church, Ascott said, suddenly, ”I think you'll knew your way now, Aunt Hilary.”

”Certainly. Why?”

”Because--you wouldn't be vexed if I left you? I have an engagement; some fellows that I dine with, out at Hampstead, or Richmond, or Blackwell, every Sunday. Nothing wicked, I a.s.sure you. And you know it's capital for one's health to get a Sunday in fresh air.”

”Yes; but Aunt Johanna will be sorry to miss you.”