Part 26 (1/2)

”Very well; just as you like. I do believe you are afraid of my turning forger.”

He b.u.t.toned his coat with a half sulky, half defiant air, left his supper untasted, and disappeared.

It was midnight before he returned. His aunts were still sitting up, imagining all sorts of horrors, in an anxiety too great for words; but when Hilary ran to the door, with the natural ”Oh, Ascott, where have you been?” he pushed her aside with a gesture that was almost fierce in its repulsion.

”Where have I been? taking a walk round the Park; that's all. Can't I come and go as I like, without being pestered by women? I'm horribly tired. Let me alone--do!”

They did let him alone. Deeply wounded, Aunt Johanna took no further notice of him than to set his chair a little closer to the fire, and Aunt Hilary slipped down stairs for more coals. There she found Elizabeth, who they thought had long since gone to bed, sitting on the stairs, very sleepy, but watching still.

”Is he come in?” she asked; ”because there are more bailiffs after him. I'm sure of it; I saw them.”

This, then, might account for his keeping out of the way till after twelve o'clock, and also for his wild, haggard look. Hilary put aside her vague dread of some new misfortune; a.s.sured Elizabeth that all was right; he had got wherewithal to pay every body on Monday morning, and would be safe till then. All debtors were safe on Sunday.

”Go to bed now--there's a good girl; it is hard that you should be troubled with our troubles.”

Elizabeth looked up with those fond gray eyes of hers. She was but a servant, and yet looks like these engraved themselves ineffaceably on her mistress's heart, imparting the comfort that all pure love gives from any one human being to another.

And love has its wonderful rights and rewards. Perhaps Elizabeth, who thought herself nothing at all to her mistress, would have marveled to know how much closer her mistress felt to this poor, honest, loving girl, whose truth she believed in, and on whose faithfulness she implicitly depended, than toward her own flesh and blood, who sat there moodily over the hearth; deeply pitied, sedulously cared for, but as for being confided in relied on, in great matters or small, his own concerns or theirs--the thing was impossible.

They could not even ask him--they dared not, in such a strange mood was he--the simple question, Had he seen Mr. Ascott, and had Mr.

Ascott been annoyed about the check? It would not have been referred to at all had not Hilary, in holding his coat to dry, taken his pocket book out of the breast pocket, when he s.n.a.t.c.hed at it angrily.

”What are you meddling with my things for? Do you want to get at the check, and be peering at it to see if it's all right? But you can't; I've paid it away. Perhaps you'd like to know who to? Then you shan't. I'll not be accountable to you for all my proceedings. I'll not be treated like a baby. You'd better mind what you are about, Aunt Hilary.”

Never, in all his childish naughtiness, or boyish impertinence, had Ascott spoken to her in such a tone. She regarded him at first with simple astonishment, then hot indignation, which spurred her on to stand up for her dignity, and not submit to be insulted by her own nephew. But then came back upon her her own doctrine, taught by her own experience, that character and conduct alone const.i.tutes real dignity or authority. She had, in point of fact, no authority over him; no one can have, not even parents, over a young man of his age, except that personal influence which is the strongest sway of all.

She said only, with a quietness that surprised herself--”You mistake, Ascott; I have no wish to interfere with you whatever; you are your own master, and must take your own course. I only expect from you the ordinary respect that a gentleman shows to a lady. You must be very tired and ill, or you would not have forgotten that.”

”I didn't; or, if I did, I beg your pardon,” said he, half subdued.

”When are you going to bed?”

”Directly. Shall I light your candle also?”

”Oh no; not for the world; I couldn't sleep a wink. I'd go mad if I went to bed. I think I'll turn out and have a cigar.”

His whole manner was so strange that his Aunt Johanna, who had sat aloof, terribly grieved, but afraid to interfere, was moved to rise up and go over to him.

”Ascott, my dear, you are looking quite ill. Be advised by your old auntie. Go to bed at once, and forget every thing till morning.”

”I wish I could; I wish I could. Oh, Auntie, Auntie!”

He caught hold of her hand, which she had laid upon his head, looked up a minute into her kind, fond face, and burst into a flood of boyish tears.

Evidently his troubles had been too much for him; he was in a state of great excitement. For some minutes his sobs were almost hysterical: then by a struggle he recovered him-self, seemed exceedingly annoyed and ashamed, took up his candle, bade them a hurried goodnight, and went to bed.

That is, he went to his room; but they heard him moving about overhead for a long while after: nor were they surprised that he refused to rise next morning, but lay most of the time with his door locked, until late in the afternoon, when he went out for a long walk, and did not return till supper, which he ate almost in silence.

Then, after going up to his room, and coming down again, complaining bitterly how very cold it was, he crept in to the fireside with a book in his hand, of which Hilary noticed he scarcely read a line.

His aunts said nothing to him; they had determined not: they felt that further interference would be not only useless but dangerous.