Part 47 (1/2)

A few minutes ended it all. When the undertaker and his men had also departed, she sat down on a bench near to watch the s.e.xton filling up the grave--Tom's grave. She was very quiet, and none but a closely observant person watching her face could have penetrated into the truth of what your impulsive characters, always in the extremes of mirth or misery, never understand about quiet people, that ”still waters run deep.”

While she sat there some one came past her, and turned round. It was the shabby-looking chemist's a.s.sistant, who had a appeared at the inquest, and given the satisfactory evidence which had prevented the necessity of her giving-hers.

Elizabeth rose and acknowledged him with a respectable courtesy; for under his threadbare clothes was the bearing of a gentleman, and he had been so kind to Tom.

”I am too late,” he said; ”the funeral is over. I meant to have attended it, and seen the last of the poor fellow.”

”Thank you, Sir,” replied Elizabeth, gratefully.

The young man stood before her, looking at her earnestly for a minute or two, and then exclaimed, with a complete change of voice and manner.

”Elizabeth, don't you know me? What has become of my aunt Johanna?”

It was Ascott Leaf.

But no wonder Elizabeth had not recognized him. His close cropped hair, his large beard hiding half his face, and a pair of spectacles which he had a.s.sumed, were a sufficient disguise. Besides, the great change from his former ”dandy” appearance to the extreme of shabbiness; his clothes being evidently worn as long as they could possibly hold together, and his generally depressed air, giving the effect of one who had gone down in the world, made him, even without the misleading ”John Smith,” most unlikely to be identified with the Ascott Leaf of old.

”I never should have known you, Sir!” said Elizabeth truthfully, when her astonishment had a little subsided; ”but I am very glad to see you. Oh how thankful your aunts will be!”

”Do you think so? I thought it was quite the contrary. But it does not matter; they will never hear of me unless you tell them--and I believe I may trust you. You would not betray me, if only for the sake of that poor fellow yonder?”

”No, Sir.”

”Now, tell me something about my aunts, especially my aunt Johanna.”

And sitting down in the suns.h.i.+ne, with his arms upon the back of the bench, and his hand hiding his eyes, the poor prodigal listened in silence to every thing Elizabeth told him; of his Aunt Selina's marriage and death, and of Mr. Lyon's return, and of the happy home at Liverpool.

”They are all quite happy, then?” said he, at length; ”they seem to have begun to prosper ever since they got rid of me. Well, I'm glad of it. I only wanted to hear of them from you. I shall never trouble them any more. You'll keep my secret, I know. And now I must go, for I have not a minute more to spare. Good-by, Elizabeth.”

With a humility and friendliness, strange enough in Ascott Leaf, he held out his hand--empty, for he had nothing to give now--to his aunt's old servant. But Elizabeth detained him.

”Don't go, Sir, please, don't; not just yet.” And then she added, with an earnest respectfulness that touched the heart of the poor, shabby man, ”I hope you'll pardon the liberty I take. I'm only a servant, but I knew you when you were a boy, Mr. Leaf: and if you would trust me, if you would let me be of use to you in any way--if only because you were so good to him there.”

”Poor Tom Cliffe; he was not a bad fellow; he liked me rather, I think; and I was able to doctor him and help him a little. Heigh-ho; it's a comfort to think I ever did any good to any body.”

Ascott sighed, drew his rusty coat sleeves across his eyes, and sat contemplating his boots, which were any thing but dandy boots now.

”Elizabeth, what relation was Tom to you? If I had known you were acquainted with him I should have been afraid to go near him; but I felt sure, though he came from s...o...b..ry, he did not guess who I was; he only knew me as Mr. Smith; and he never once mentioned you. Was he your cousin, or what?”

Elizabeth considered a moment, and then told the simple fact; it could not matter now.

”I was once going to be married to him, but he saw somebody he liked better, and married her.”

”Poor girl; poor Elizabeth?”

Perhaps nothing could have shown the great change in Ascott more than the tone in which he uttered these words; a tone of entire respect and kindly pity, from which he never once departed during that conversation, and many, many others, so long as their confidential relations lasted.

”Now, Sir, would you be so kind as to tell me something about yourself? I'll not repeat any thing to your aunts, if you don't wish it.”

Ascott yielded. He had been so long, so utterly forlorn. He sat down beside Elizabeth, and then, with eyes often averted, and with many breaks between, which she had to fill up as best as she could, he told her all his story, even to the sad secret of all, which had caused him to run away from home, and hide himself in the last place where they would have thought he was, the safe wilderness of London.

There, carefully disguised, he had lived decently while his money lasted, and then, driven step by step to the brink of dest.i.tution, he had offered himself for employment in the lowest grade of his own profession, and been taken as a.s.sistant by the not over scrupulous chemist and druggist in that not too respectable neighborhood of Westminster, with a salary of twenty pounds a year.