Mistress and Maid Part 17

"No, no; my old black silk will do capitally, and I can easily put on two shawls. n.o.body knows me; and people may wear what they like in London. Don't look so grave, Elizabeth. What does it signify if I can but keep myself warm? Now, run away."

Elizabeth obeyed, but shortly reappeared with a bundle--a large, old fas.h.i.+oned thick shawl.

"Mother gave it me; her mistress gave it her; but we've never worn it, and never shall. If only you didn't mind putting it on, just this once--this terrible soaking day!"

The scarlet face, the entreating tones--there was no resisting them.

One natural pang Hilary felt--that in her sharp poverty she had fallen so low as to be indebted to her servant, and then she too blushed, less for shame at accepting the kindness than for her own pride that could not at once receive it as such.

"Thank you, Elizabeth," she said, gravely and gently, and let herself be wrapped in the thick shawl. Its gorgeous reds and yellows would, she knew, make her noticeable, even though "people might wear any thing in London." Still, she put it on with a good grace, and all through her peregrinations that day it warmed not only her shoulders, but her heart.

Coming home, she paused wistfully before a glittering shoe shop; her poor little feet were so soaked and cold. Could she possibly afford a new pair of boots? It was not a matter of vanity--she had pa.s.sed that. She did not care now how ugly and shabby looked the "wee feet"

that had once been praised; but she felt it might be a matter of health and prudence. Suppose she caught cold--fell ill--died: died, leaving Johanna to struggle alone; died before Robert Lyon came home.

Both thoughts struck sharp. She was too young still, or had not suffered enough, calmly to think of death and dying.

"It will do no harm to inquire the price. I might stop it out in omnibuses."

For this was the way that every new article of dress had to be procured--"stopping it cut" of something else.

After trying several pairs-with a fierce, bitter blush at a small hole which the day's walking had worn in her well darned stockings, and which she was sure the shopman saw, as well as an old lady who sat opposite--Hilary bought the plainest and stoutest of boots. The bill overstepped her purse by six pence, but she promised that sum on delivery, and paid the rest. She had got into a nervous horror of letting any account stand over for a single day.

Look tenderly, reader, on this picture of struggles so small, of sufferings so uninteresting and mean. I paint it not because it is original, but because it is so awfully true. Thousands of women, well born, well reared, know it to be true--burned into them by the cruel conflict of their youth; happy they if it ended in their youth, while mind and body had still enough vitality and elasticity to endure! I paint it, because it accounts for the accusation sometimes made--especially by men--that women are naturally stingy. Possibly so: but in many instances may it not have been this petty struggle with petty wants this pitiful calculating of penny against penny, how best to save here and spend there, which narrows a woman's nature in spite of herself? It sometimes takes years of comparative ease and freedom from pecuniary cares to counteract the grinding, lowering effects of a youth of poverty.

And I paint this picture, too, literally, and not on its picturesque side--it, indeed, poverty has a picturesque side--in order to show another side which it really has--high, heroic, made up of dauntless endurance, self sacrifice, and self control Also, to indicate that blessing which narrow circ.u.mstances alone bestow, the habit of looking more to the realities than to the shows of things, and of finding pleasure in enjoyments mental rather than sensuous, inward rather than external. When people can truly recognize this they cease either to be afraid or ashamed of poverty.

Hilary was not ashamed:--not even now, when hers smote sharper and harder than it had ever done at s...o...b..ry. She felt it a sore thing enough; but it never humiliated nor angered her. Either she was too proud or not proud enough; but her low estate always seemed to her too simply external a thing to affect her relations with the world outside. She never thought of being annoyed with the shopkeeper, who, though he trusted her with the sixpence, carefully took down her name and address: still less to suspecting the old lady opposite, who sat and listened to the transaction--apparently a well-to-do customer, clad in a rich black silk and handsome sable furs--of looking down upon her and despising her. She herself never despised any body, except for wickedness.

So she waited contentedly, neither thinking of herself, nor of what others thought of her; but with her mind quietly occupied by the two thoughts, which in any brief s.p.a.ce of rest always recurred, calming down all annoyances, and raising her above the level of petty pains--Johanna and Robert Lyon. Under the influence of these her tired face grew composed, and there was a wishful, far away, fond look in her eyes, which made it not wonderful that the said old lady--apparently an acute old soul in her way--should watch her, as we do occasionally watch strangers in whom we have become suddenly interested.

There is no accounting for these interests, or to the events to which they give rise. Sometimes they are pooh-pooh-ed as "romantic,"

"unnatural," "like a bit in a novel;" and yet they are facts continually occurring, especially to people of quick intuition, observation, and sympathy. Nay, even the most ordinary people have known or heard of such, resulting in mysterious, life-long loves; firm friends.h.i.+ps; strange yet often wonderful happy marriages; sudden revolutions of fortune and destiny: things utterly unaccountable for, except by the belief in the inscrutable Providence which

"Shapes our ends, Rough-how them as we will."

When Hilary left the shop she was startled by a voice at her elbow.

"I beg your pardon, but if your way lies up Southampton Row, would you object to give an old woman a share of that capital umbrella of yours?"

"With pleasure," Hilary answered, though the oddness of the request amused her. And it was granted really with pleasure; for the old lady spoke with those "accents of the mountain tongue" which this foolish Hilary never recognized without a thrill at the heart.

"May be you think an old woman ought to take a cab, and not be intruding upon strangers; but I am hale and hearty, and being only a streets length from my own door, I dislike to waste unnecessary s.h.i.+llings."

"Certainly," acquiesced Hilary, with a half sigh: s.h.i.+llings were only too precious to her.

"I saw you in the boot shop, and you seemed the sort of young lady who would do a kindness to an old body like me; so I said to myself, 'Ill ask her.'"

"I am glad you did." Poor girl! she felt unconsciously pleased at finding herself still able to show a kindness to any body.

They walked on and on--it was certainly a long street's length--to the stranger's door, and it took Hilary a good way round from hers; but she said nothing of this, concluding, of course, that her companion was unaware of where she lived; in which she was mistaken.

They stopped at last before a respectable house near Brunswick Square, bearing a bra.s.s plate, with the words "Miss Balquidder."

"That is my name, and very much obliged to you, my dear. How it rains! Ye're just drenched."

Hilary smiled and shook her damp shawl. "I shall take no harm. I am used to go out in all weathers."

"Are you a governess?" The question was so direct and kindly, that it hardly seemed an impertinence.

"Yes; but I have no pupils, and I fear I shall never get any."

"Why not?"

"I suppose, because I know n.o.body here. It seems so very hard to get teaching in London. But I beg your pardon."

"I beg yours," said Miss Balquidder--not without a certain dignity--"for asking questions of a stranger. But I was once a stranger here myself, and had a 'sair fecht,' as we say in Scotland, before I could earn even my daily bread. Though I wasn't a governess, still I know pretty well what the sort of life is, and if I had daughters who must work for their bread, the one thing I would urge upon them should be--'Never become a governess.' "

"Indeed. For what reason?"

"I'll not tell you now, my dear, standing with all your wet clothes on; but as I said, if you will do me the favor to call."

"Thank you!" said Hilary, not sufficiently initiated in London caution to dread making a new acquaintance. Besides, she liked the rough hewn, good natured face; and the Scotch accent was sweet to her ear.

Yet when she reached home she was half shy of telling her sisters the engagement she had made. Selina was extremely shocked, and considered it quite necessary that the London Directory, the nearest clergyman, or, perhaps, Mr. Ascott, who living in the parish, must know--should be consulted as to Miss Balquidder's respectability.

"She has much more reason to question ours," recollected Hilary, with some amus.e.m.e.nt; for I never told her my name or address. She does not know a single thing about me.

Which fact, arguing the matter energetic ally two days after, the young lady might not have been so sure of, could she have penetrated the ceiling overhead. In truth, Miss Balquidder, a prudent person, who never did things by halves, and, like most truly generous people, was cautious even in her extremist fits of generosity, at that very moment was sitting in Mrs. Jones's first floor, deliberately discovering every single thing possible to be learned about the Leaf family.

Nevertheless, owing to Selina's indignant pertinacity, Hilary's own hesitation, and a dim hope of a pupil which rose up and faded like the rest, the possible acquaintance lay dormant for two or three weeks; till, alas! the fabulous wolf actually came to the door; and the sisters, after paying their week's rent, looked aghast at one another, not knowing where in the wide world the next week's rent was to come from.

"Thank G.o.d, we don't owe any thing: not a penny!" gasped Hilary.

"No; there is comfort in that," said Johanna. And the expression of her folded hands and upward face was not despairing, even though that of the poor widow, when her barrel of meal was gone, and her cruse of oil spent, would hardly have been sadder.

"I am sure we have wasted nothing, and cheated n.o.body;--surely G.o.d will help us."

"I know He will, my child."

And the two sisters, elder and younger, kissed one another, cried a little, and then sat down to consider what was to be done.

Ascott must be told how things were with them. Hitherto they had not troubled him much with their affairs: indeed, he was so little at home. And after some private consultation, both Johanna and Hilary decided that it was wisest to let the lad come and go as he liked; not attempting--as he once indignantly expressed it--"to tie him to their ap.r.o.n strings." For instinctively these maiden ladies felt that with men, and, above all, young men, the only way to bind the wandering heart was to leave it free, except by trying their utmost that home should be always a pleasant home.

It was touching to see their efforts, when Ascott came in of evenings, to enliven for his sake the dull parlor at No. 15. How Johanna put away her mending, and Selina ceased to grumble, and Hilary began her lively chat, that never failed to brighten and amuse the household. Her nephew even sometimes acknowledged that wherever he went, he met n.o.body so "clever" as Aunt Hilary.

So, presuming upon her influence with him, on this night, after the rest were gone to bed, she, being always the boldest to do any unpleasant thing, said to him.

"Ascott, how are your business affairs progressing? When do you think you will be able to get into practice?"

"Oh, presently. There's no hurry."

"I am not so sure of that. Do you know, my dear boy"--and she opened her purse, which contained a few s.h.i.+llings--"this is all the money we have in the world."