"I remember," said Miss Leaf, as they rumbled2 for the last time through the empty morning streets of poor old Stowbury: "I remember my grandmother telling me that when my grandfather was courting her, and she out of coquetry refused him, he set off on horseback to London, and she was so wretched to think of all the dangers he ran on the journey, and in London itself, that she never rested till she got him back, and then immediately married him."
"No such catastrophe3 is likely to happen to any of us, except, perhaps, to Elizabeth," said Miss Hilary, trying to get up, a little feeble mirth, any thing to pass away the time and lessen4 the pain of parting, which was almost too much for Johanna. "What do you say? Do you mean to get married in London, Elizabeth?"
But Elizabeth could make no answer, even to kind Miss Hilary. They had not imagined she felt the leaving her native place so much. She had watched intently the last glimpse of Stowbury church tower, and now sat with reddened eyes, staring blankly out of the carriage window,
"Silent as a stone."
Once or twice a large slow tear gathered on each of her eyes, but it was shaken off angrily from the high check bones, and never settled into absolute crying. They thought it best to take no notice of her. Only, when reaching the new small station, where the "resonant5 steam eagles" were, for the first time, beheld6 by the innocent Stowbury ladies, there arose a discussion as to the manner of traveling. Miss Leaf said, decidedly "Second class; and then we can keep Elizabeth with us." Upon which Elizabeth's mouth melted into something between a quiver and a smile.
Soon it was all over, and the little house-hold was compressed into the humble8 second class carriage, cheerless and cushionless, whirling through indefinite England in a way that confounded all their geography and topography. Gradually as the day darkened into heavy, chilly9 July rain, the scarcely kept up spirits of the four passengers began to sink. Johanna grew very white and worn, Selina became, to use Ascott's phrase, "as cross as two sticks," and even Hilary, turning her eyes from the gray sodden10 looking landscape without, could find no spot of comfort to rest on within the carriage, except that round rosy11 face of Elizabeth Hand's.
Whether it was from the spirit of contradiction existing in most such natures, which, especially in youth, are more strong than sweet, or from a better feeling, the fact was noticeable, that when every one else's spirits went down Elizabeth's went up. Nothing could bring her out of a "grumpy" fit so satisfactorily as her mistresses falling into one. When Miss Selina now began to fidget hither and thither12, each tone of her fretful voice seeming to go through her eldest13 sister's every nerve, till even Hilary said, impatiently, "Oh, Selina, can't you be quiet?" then Elizabeth rose from the depth of her gloomy discontent up to the surface immediately.
She was only a servant; but Nature bestows14 that strange vague thing that we term "force of character" independently of position. Hilary often remembered afterward15, how much more comfortable the end of the journey was than she had expected—how Johanna lay at ease, with her feet in Elizabeth's lap, wrapped in Elizabeth's best woolen16 shawl; and how, when Selina's whole attention was turned to an ingenious contrivance with a towel and fork and Elizabeth's basket, for stopping the rain out of the carriage roof—she became far less disagreeable, and even a little proud of her own cleverness. And so there was a temporary lull17 in Hilary's cares, and she could sit quiet, with her eyes fixed18 on the rainy landscape, which she did not see, and her thoughts wandering toward that unknown place and unknown life into which they were sweeping19, as we all sweep, ignorantly, unresistingly, almost unconsciously, into new destinies. Hilary, for the first time, began to doubt of theirs. Anxious as she had been to go to London, and wise as the proceeding20 appeared, now that the die was cast and the cable cut, the old simple, peaceful life at Stowbury grew strangely dear.
"I wonder if we shall ever go back again, or what is to happen to us before we do go back," she thought, and turned, with a half defined fear, toward her eldest sister, who looked so old and fragile beside that sturdy, healthful servant girl. "Elizabeth!" Elizabeth, rubbing Miss Leaf's feet, started at the unwonted sharpness of Miss Hilary's tone.
"There; I'll do that for my sister. Go and look out of the window at
London."
For the great smoky cloud which began to rise in the rainy horizon was indeed London. Soon through the thickening nebula21 of houses they converged22 to what was then the nucleus23 of all railway traveling, the Euston Terminus, and were hustled24 on to the platform, and jostled helplessly to and fro these poor country ladies! Anxiously they scanned the crowd of strange faces for the one only face they knew in the great metropolis—which did not appear.
"It is very strange; very wrong of Ascott. Hilary, you surely told him the hour correctly. For once, at least, he might have been in time"
So chafed25 Miss Selina, while Elizabeth, who by some miraculous26 effort of intuitive genius, had succeeded in collecting the luggage, was now engaged in defending it from all comers, especially porters, and making of it a comfort able seat for Miss Leaf.
"Nay27, have patience, Selina. We will give him just five minutes more,
Hilary."
And Johanna sat down, with her sweet, calm, long suffering face turned upward to that younger one, which was, as youth is apt to be, hot, and worried, and angry. And so they waited till the terminus was almost deserted28, and the last cab had driven off, when, suddenly, dashing up the station yard out of another, came Ascott.
He was so sorry, so very sorry, downright grieved, at having kept his aunts waiting. But his watch was wrong—some fellows at dinner detained him—the train was before its time surely. In fact, his aunts never quite made out what the excuse was; but they looked into his bright handsome face, and their wrath29 melted like clouds before the sun. He was so gentlemanly, so well dressed—much better dressed than even at Stowbury—and he seemed so unfeignedly glad to see them. He handed them all into the cab—even Elizabeth. though whispering meanwhile to his Aunt Hilary, "What on earth did you bring her for?" and their was just going to leap on to the box himself, when he stopped to ask "Where he should tell cabby to drive to?"
"Where to?" repeated his aunts in undisguised astonishment30. They had never thought of any thing but of being taken home at once by their boy.
"You see," Ascott said, in a little confusion, "you wouldn't be comfortable with me. A young fellow's lodgings31 are not like a house of one's own, and, besides—"
"Besides, when a young fellow is ashamed of his old aunts, he can easily find reasons."
"Hush33, Selina!" interposed Miss Leaf. "My dear boy, your old aunts would never let you inconvenience yourself for them. Take us to an inn for the night, and to morrow we will find lodgings for ourselves."
Ascott looked greatly relieved.
"And you are not vexed34 with me, Aunt Johanna?" said he, with something of his old childish tone of compunction, as he saw—he could not help seeing—the utter weariness which Johanna tried so hard to hide.
"No, my dear, not vexed. Only I wish we had known this a little sooner that we might have made arrangements. Now, where shall we go?"
Ascott mentioned a dozen hotels, but they found he only knew them by name. At last Miss Leaf remembered one, which her father used to go to, on his frequent journeys to London, and whence, indeed, he had been brought home to die. And though all the recollections about it were sad enough, still it felt less strange than the rest, in this dreariness35 of London. So she proposed going to the "Old Bell," Holborn.
"A capital place!" exclaimed Ascott, eagerly. "And I'll take and settle you there: and we'll order supper, and make a jolly night of it. All right. Drive on, cabby."
He jumped on the box, and then looked in mischievously36, flourishing his lit cigar and shaking his long hair—his Aunt Selina's two great abominations—right in her indignant face: but withal looking so merry and good tempered that she shortly softened37 into a smile.
"How handsome the boy is growing!"
"Yes," said Johanna, with a slight sigh; "and did you notice? how exceedingly like his—"
The sentence was left unfinished. Alas38! if every young man, who believes his faults and follies39 injure himself alone, could feel what it must be, years afterward, to have his nearest kindred shrink from saying as the saddest, most ominous40 thing they could say of his son, that the lad is growing "so like his father!"
It might have been—they assured each other that it was—only the incessant41 roll, roll of the street sounds below their windows, which kept the Misses Leaf awake half the night of this their first night in London. And when they sat down to breakfast—having waited an hour vainly for their nephew—it might have been only the gloom of the little parlor42 which cast a slight shadow over them all. Still the shadow was there.
It deepened despite the sunshiny morning into which the last night's rain had brightened till Holborn Bars looked cheerful, and Holborn pavement actually clean, so that, as Elizabeth said, "you might eat your dinner off it;" which was the one only thing she condescended43 to approve in London. She had sat all evening mute in her corner, for Miss Leaf would not send her away into the terra incognita of a London hotel. Ascott, at first considerably44 annoyed at the presence of what he called a "skeleton at the feast," had afterward got over it; and run on with a mixture of childish glee and mannish pomposity45 about his plans and intentions—how he meant to take a house, he thought, in one of the squares, or a street leading out of them: how he would put up the biggest of brass46 plates, with "Mr. Leaf, surgeon." and soon get an extensive practice, and have all his aunts to live with him. And his aunts had smiled and listened, forgetting all about the silent figure in the corner, who perhaps had gone to sleep, or had also listened.
"Elizabeth, come and look out at London."
So she and Miss Hilary whiled away another heavy three quarters of an hour in watching and commenting on the incessantly47 shifting crowd which swept past Holborn Bars. Miss Selina sometimes looked out too, but more often sat fidgeting and wondering why Ascott did not come; while Miss Leaf, who never fidgeted, became gradually more and more silent. Her eyes were fixed on the door, with an expression which, if Hilary could have remembered so far back, would have been to her something not painfully new, but still more painfully old—a look branded into her face by many an anxious hour's listening for the footstep that never came, or only came to bring distress48. It was the ineffaceable token of that long, long struggle between affection and conscience, pity and scarcely repressible contempt, which, for more than one generation, had been the appointed burden of this family—at least the women of it—till sometimes it seemed to hang over them almost like a fate.
About noon Miss Leaf proposed calling for the hotel bill. Its length so alarmed the country ladies that Hilary suggested not staying to dine, but going immediately in search of lodgings.
"What, without a gentleman! Impossible! I always understood ladies could go nowhere in London without a gentleman!"
"We shall come very ill off then, Selina. But any how I mean to try. You know the region where, we have heard, lodgings are cheapest and best—that is, best for us. It can not be far from here. Suppose I start at once?"
"What, alone?" cried Johanna, anxiously.
"No, dear, I'll take the map with me, and Elizabeth. She is not afraid."
Elizabeth smiled, and rose, with that air of dogged devotedness49 with which she would have prepared to follow Miss Hilary to the North Pole, if necessary. So, after a few minutes of arguing with Selina, who did not press her point overmuch, since she herself had not to commit the impropriety of the expedition. After a few minutes more of hopeless lingering about—till even Miss Leaf said they had better wait no longer—mistress and maid took a farewell nearly as pathetic as if they had been really Arctic voyagers, and
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