Part 18 (1/2)

”Nonsense,” said Ascott, laughing. ”I beg your pardon,” he added, seeing it was with her no laughing matter; ”but I am so accustomed to be hard up that I don't seem to care. It always comes right somehow--at least with me.”

”How?”

”Oh, I don't exactly know; but it does. Don't fret, Aunt Hilary. I'll lend you a pound or two.”

She drew back. These poor, proud, fond women, who, if their boy, instead of a fine gentleman, had been a helpless invalid, would have tended him, worked for him, nay, begged for him--cheerfully, oh, how cheerfully! wanting nothing in the whole world but his love--they could not ask him for his money. Even now, offered thus, Hilary felt as if to take it would be intolerable.

Still the thing must be done.

”I wish, Ascott”--and she nerved herself to say what somebody ought to say to him--”I would you would not lend but pay us the pound a week you said you could so easily spare.”

”To be sure I will. What a thoughtless fellow I have been!

But--but--I fancied you would have asked me if you wanted it. Never mind, you'll get it all in a lump. Let me see--how much will it come to? You are the best head going for arithmetic, Aunt Hilary. Do reckon it all up?” She did so; and the sum total made Ascott open his eyes wide.

”Upon my soul I had no idea it was so much. I'm very sorry, but I seem fairly cleaned out this quarter--only a few sovereigns left to keep the mill going. You shall have them, or half of them, and I'll owe you the rest. Here!”

He emptied on the table, without counting, four or five pounds.

Hilary took two, asking him gravely ”If he was sure he could spare so much? She did not wish to inconvenience him.”

”Oh, not at all; and I wouldn't mind if it did; you have been good aunts to me.”

He kissed her, with a sudden fit of compunction, and bade her good-night, looking as if he did not care to be ”bothered” any more.

Hilary retired, more sad, more hopeless about him than if he had slammed the door in her face, or scolded her like a trooper. Had he met her seriousness in the same spirit, even though it had been a sullen or angry spirit--and little as she said he must have felt she wished him to feel--that his aunts were displeased with him; but that utterly unrepressible light-heartedness of his--there was no doing any thing with it. There was so to speak, ”no catching hold” of Ascott. He meant no harm. She repeated over and over again that the lad meant no harm. He had no evil ways; was always pleasant, good-natured, and affectionate, in his own careless fas.h.i.+on; but was no more to be relied on than a straw that every wind blows. .h.i.ther and thither; or, to use a common simile, a b.u.t.terfly that never sees any thing farther than the nearest flower. His was, in short, the pleasure-loving temperament, not positively sinful or sensual, but still holding pleasure as the greatest good; and regarding what deeper natures call ”duty,” and find therein their strong-hold and consolation, as a mere bugbear or a sentimental theory, or an impossible folly.

Poor lad! and he had the world to fight with; how would it use him?

Even if no heavy sorrows for himself or others smote him, his handsome face would have to grow old, his strong frame to meet sickness--death.--How would he do it? That is the thought which always recurs. What is the end of such men as these? Alas! the answer would come from hospital wards, alms-houses and work-houses, debtors'

prisons and lunatic asylums.

To apprehensions like this--except the last, happily it was as yet too far off--Hilary had been slowly and sadly arriving about Ascott for weeks past; and her conversation with him to-night seemed to make them darken down upon her with added gloom. As she went up stairs she set her lips together hard.

”I see there is n.o.body to do any thing except me. But I must not tell Johanna.”

She lay long awake, planning every conceivable scheme for saving money; till at length, her wits sharpened by the desperation of the circ.u.mstances, there flashed upon her an idea that came out of a talk she had had with Elizabeth that morning. True, it was a perfectly new and untried chance--and a mere chance; still it was right to overlook nothing. She would not have ventured to tell Selina of it for the world, and even to Johanna, she only said--finding her as wakeful as herself--said it in a careless manner, as if it had relation to nothing, and she expected nothing from it-- ”I think, as I have nothing else to do, I will go and see Miss Balquidder to-morrow morning.”

CHAPTER XIII.

Miss Balquidder's house was a handsome one, handsomely furnished, and a neat little to aid-servant showed Hilary at once into the dining-parlor, where the mistress sat before a business-like writing-table, covered with letters, papers, etc., all arranged with that careful order in disorder which indicates, even in the smallest things, the possession of an accurate, methodical mind, than which there are few greater possessions, either to its owner or to the world at large.

Miss Balquidder was not a personable woman; she had never been so even in youth; and age had told its tale upon those large, strong features--”thoroughly Scotch features,” they would have been called by those who think all Scotchwomen are necessarily big, raw-boned, and ugly; and have never seen that wonderfully n.o.ble beauty--not prettiness, but actual beauty in its highest physical as well as spiritual development--which is not seldom found across the Tweed.

But while there was nothing lovely, there was nothing unpleasant or uncomely in Miss Balquidder. Her large figure, in its plain black silk dress; her neat white cap, from under which peeped the little round curls of flaxen hair, neither gray nor snowy, but real ”lint-white locks” still; and her good-humored, motherly look--motherly rather than old-maidish--gave an impression which may be best described by the word ”comfortable.”--She was a ”comfortable”

woman. She had that quality--too rarely, alas! in all people, and rarest in women going solitary down the hill of life--of being able, out of the deep content of her own nature, to make other people the same.

Hilary was cheered in spite of herself: it always conveys hope to the young, when in sore trouble, if they see the old looking happy.

”Welcome, my dear! I was afraid you had forgotten your promise.”