Part 44 (2/2)

Another dream was likewise ended; so completely that she sometimes wondered if it was ever real, whether she had ever been a happy girl, looking forward as girls do to wifehood and motherhood; or whether she had not been always the staid middle aged person she was now, whom n.o.body ever suspected of any such things.

She had been once back to her old home, to settle her mother comfortably upon a weekly allowance, to 'prentice her little brother, to see one sister married, and the other sent off to Liverpool, to be servant to Mrs. Lyon. While at s...o...b..ry, she had heard by chance of Tom Cliffe's pa.s.sing through the town as a Chartist lecturer, or something of the sort, with his pretty, showy London wife, who, when he brought her there, had looked down rather contemptuously upon the street where Tom was born.

This was all Elizabeth knew about them. They, too, had pa.s.sed from her life as phases of keen joy and keener sorrow do pa.s.s, like a dream and the shadows of a dream. It may be, life itself will seem at the end to be nothing more.

But Elizabeth Hand's love story was not so to end.

One morning, the same morning when she had been pointing out the lilacs to little Henry, and now came in from the square with a branch of them in her hand, the postman gave her a letter; the handwriting of which made her start as if it had been a visitation from the dead.

”Mammy Lizzie, mammy Lizzie!” cried little Henry, plucking at her gown, but for once his nurse did not notice him. She stood on the door-step, trembling violently; at length she put the letter into her pocket, lifted the child, and got up stairs somehow. When she had settled her charge to his mid-day sleep, then, and not till then, did she take out and read the few lines, which, though written on shabby paper, and with more than one blot, were so like--yet so terribly unlike--Tom's calligraphy of old:

”DEAR ELIZABETH,--I have no right to ask any kindness of you; but if you would like to see an old friend alive, I wish you would come and see me. I have been long of asking you, lest you might fancy I wanted to get something out of you; for I'm as poor as a rat; and once lately I saw you, looking so well and well-to-do. But it was the same kind old face, and I should like to get one kind look from it before I go where I sha'n't want any kindness from any body. However, do just as you choose.

”Yours affectionately, T. CLIFFE.

”Underneath is my address.”

It was in one of those wretched nooks in Westminster, now swept away by Victoria Street and other improvements. Elizabeth happened to have read about it in one of the many charitable pamphlets, reports, etc., which were sent continually to the wealthy Mr. Ascott, and which he sent down stairs to light fires with. What must not poor Tom have sunk to before he had come to live there? His letter was like a cry out of the depths, and the voice was that of her youth, her first love.

Is any woman ever deaf to that? The love may have died a natural death; many first loves do: a riper, completer, happier love may have come in its place; but there must be something unnatural about the woman and man likewise, who can ever quite forget it--the dew of their youth--the beauty of their dawn.

”Poor Tom, poor Tom!” sighed Elizabeth, ”my own poor Tom!”

She forgot Esther; either from Tom's not mentioning her, or in the strong return to old times which his letter produced; forgot her for the time being as completely as if she had never existed. Even when the recollection came it made little difference. The sharp jealousy, the dislike and contempt had all calmed down: she thought she could now see Tom's wife as any other woman. Especially if, as the letter indicated, they were so very poor and miserable.

Possibly Esther had suggested writing it? Perhaps, though Tom did not, Esther did ”want to get something out of her”--Elizabeth Hand, who was known to have large wages, and to be altogether a thriving person? Well, it mattered little. The one fact remained: Tom was in distress; Tom needed her; she must go.

Her only leisure time was of an evening, after Henry was in bed. The intervening hours, especially the last one, when the child was down stairs with his father, calmed her; subdued the tumult of old remembrances that came surging up and beating at the long shut door of her heart. When her boy returned, leaping and laughing, and playing all sorts of tricks as she put him to bed, she could smile too. And when kneeling beside her in his pretty white night gown, he stammered through the prayer she had thought it right to begin to teach him, though of course he was too young to understand it--the words ”Thy will be done;” ”Forgive us our trespa.s.ses, as we forgive those who trespa.s.s against us;” and lastly, ”Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” struck home to his nurse's in most soul.

”Mammy, mammy Lizzie's 'tying.”

Yes, she was crying, but it did her good. She was able to kiss her little boy, who slept like a top in five minutes: then she took off her good silk gown, and dressed herself; soberly and decently, but so that people should not suspect, in that low and dangerous neighborhood, the sovereigns that she carried in an under pocket, ready to use as occasion required. Thus equipped, without a minute's delay, she started for Tom's lodging.

It was poorer than even she expected. One attic room, bate almost as when it was built. No chimney or grate, no furniture except a box which served as both table and chair; and a heap of straw, with a blanket thrown over it. The only comfort about it was that it was clean; Tom's innate sense of refinement had abided with him to the last.

Elizabeth had time to make all these observations, for Tom was out--gone, the landlady said, to the druggist's shop, round the corner.

”He's very bad, ma'am,” added the woman, civilly, probably led thereto by Elizabeth's respectable appearance, and the cab in which she had come--lest she should lose a minute's time. ”Can't last long, and Lord knows who's to bury him.”

With that sentence knelling in her ears, Elizabeth waited till she heard the short cough and the hard breathing of some one toiling heavily up the stair. Tom, Tom himself. But oh, so altered! with every bit of youth gone out of him; with death written on every line of his haggard face, the death he had once prognosticated with a sentimental pleasure, but which now had come upon him in all its ghastly reality.

He was in the last stage of consumption. The disease was latent in his family, Elizabeth knew: she had known it when she belonged to him, and fondly thought that, as his wife, her incessant care might save him from it; but nothing could save him now.

”Who's that?” said he, in his own sharp, fretful voice.

”Me, Tom. But don't speak. Sit down till your cough's over.”

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