Chapter 26

________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XXVI

Let us linger a little over this chapter of happy love: so sweet, so rare a thing. Aye, most rare: though hundreds continually meet, love, or fancy they do, engage themselves, and marry; and hundreds more go through the same proceeding, with the slight difference of the love omitted--Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet left out. But the real love, steady and true: tried in the balance, and not found wanting: tested by time, silence, separation; by good and ill fortune; by the natural and inevitable change which years make in every character--this is the rarest thing to be found on earth, and the most precious.

I do not say that all love is worthless which is not exactly this sort of love. There have been people who have succumbed instantly and permanently to some mysterious attraction, higher than all reasoning; the same which made Hilary "take an interest" in Robert Lyon's face at church, and made him, he afterward confessed, the very first time he gave Ascott a lesson in the parlor at Stowbury, say to himself, "If I did marry, I think I should like such a wife as that brown-eyed bit lassie." And there have been other people, who choosing their partners from accidental circumstances, or from mean worldly motives, have found Providence kinder to them than they deserved, and settled down into happy, affectionate husbands and wives.

But none of these loves can possibly have the sweetness, the completeness of such a love as that between Hilary Leaf and Robert Lyon.

There was nothing very romantic about it. From the moment when Johanna entered the parlor, found them standing hand-in-hand at the fireside, and Hilary came forward and kissed her, and after a slight hesitation Robert did the same, the affair proceeded in most millpond fashion:

"Unruffled by those cataracts and breaks,
That humor interposed too often makes.':

There were no lovers' quarrels; Robert Lyon had chosen that best blessing next to a good woman, a sweet tempered woman; and there was no reason why they should quarrel more as lovers than they had done as friends. And, let it be said to the eternal honor of both, now, no more than in their friendship days, was there any of that hungry engrossment of each other's society, which is only another form of selfishness, and by which lovers so often make their own happy courting time a season of never-to-be-forgotten bitterness to every body connected with them.

Johanna suffered a little: all people do when the new rights clash with the old ones; but she rarely betrayed it. She was exceedingly good: she saw her child happy, and she loved Robert Lyon dearly. He was very mindful of her, very tender; and as Hilary still persisted in doing her daily duty in the shop, he spent more of his time with the elder sister than he did with the younger, and sometimes declared solemnly that if Hilary did not treat him well he intended to make an offer to Johanna!

Oh, the innumerable little jokes of those happy days! Oh, the long, quiet walks by the river side, through the park, across Ham Common--any where--it did not matter; the whole world looked lovely, even on the dullest winter day! Oh, the endless talks; the renewed mingling of two lives, which, though divided, had never been really apart, for neither had any thing to conceal; neither had ever loved any but the other.

Robert Lyon was, as I have said, a good deal changed, outwardly and inwardly. He had mixed much in society, taken an excellent position therein, and this had given him not only a more polished manner, but an air of decision and command, as of one used to be obeyed. There could not be the slightest doubt, as Johanna once laughingly told him, that he would always be "master in his own house."

But he was very gentle with his "little woman" as he called her. He would sit for hours at the "ingle-neuk"--how he did luxuriate in the English fires!--with Hilary on a footstool beside him, her arm resting on his knee, or her hand fast clasped in his. And sometimes, when Johanna went out of the room, he would stoop and gather her close to his heart. But I shall tell no tales; the world has no business with these sort of things.

Hilary was very shy of parading her happiness; she disliked any demonstrations thereof, even before Johanna. And when Miss Balquidder, who had, of course, been told of the engagement, came down one day expressly to see her "fortunate fellow countryman," this Machiavellian little woman actually persuaded her lover to have an important engagement in London! She could not bear him to be "looked at."

"Ah, well, you must leave me, and I will miss you terribly, my deal," said the old Scotch woman. But it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and I have another young lady quite ready to step into your shoes. When shall you be married?"

"I don't know--hush: we'll talk another time," said Hilary, glancing at Johanna.

Miss Balquidder took the hint and was silent.

That important question was indeed beginning to weigh heavily on Hilary's mind. She was fully aware of what Mr. Lyon wished, and indeed, expected; that when, the business of the firm being settled, in six months hence he returned to India, he should not return alone. When he said this, she had never dared to answer, hardly even to think. She let the peaceful present float on, day by day, without recognizing such a thing as the future.

But this could not be always. It came to an end one January afternoon, when he had returned from a second absence in Liverpool. They were walking up Richmond Hill. The sun had set frostily and red over the silver curve of the Thames, and Venus, large and bright, was shining like a great eye in the western sky. Hilary long remembered exactly how every thing looked, even to the very tree they stood under, when Robert Lyon asked her to fix definitely the day that she would marry him. Would she consent--there seemed no special reason to the contrary--that it should be immediately? Or would she like to remain with Johanna as she was, till just before they sailed? He wished to be as good as possible to Johanna--still.

And something in his manner impressed Hilary more than ever before with the conviction of all she was to him; likewise, all he was to her. More, much more than even a few short weeks since. Then, intense as it was, the love had a dream like unreality; now it was close, home-like, familiar. Instinctively she clung to his arm; she had become so used to being Robert's darling now. She shivered as she thought of the wide seas rolling between them; of the time when she should look for him at the daily meal and daily fireside, and find him no more.

"Robert, I want to talk to you about Johanna."

"I guess what it is," said he, smiling; "you would like her to go out to India with us. Certainly, if she chooses. I hope you did not suppose I should object."

"No; but it is not that. She would not live six months in a hot climate; the doctor tells me so."

"You consulted him?"

"Yes, confidentially, without her knowing it. But I thought it right. I wanted to make quite sure before--before-- Oh, Robert--."

The grief of her tone caused him to suspect what was coming, He started.

"You don't mean that? Oh no, you can not! My little woman, my own little woman--she could not be so unkind."

Hilary turned sick at heart. The dim landscape, the bright sky, seemed to mingle and dance before her, and Venus to stare at her with a piercing, threatening, baleful lustre.

"Robert, let me sit down on the bench, and sit you beside me. It is too dark for people to notice us, and we shall not be very cold."

"No, my darling;" and he slipped his plaid round her shoulders, and his arm with it.

She looked up pitifully. "Don't be vexed with me, Robert, dear; I have thought it all over; weighed it on every side; nights and nights I have been awake pondering what was right to do. And it always comes to the same thing."

"What?"

"It's the old story," she answered with a feeble smile. "'I canna leave my minnie.' There is nobody in the world to take care of Johanna but me, not even Elizabeth, who is engrossed in little Henry. If I left her, I am sure it would kill her. And she can not come with me. Dear!" (the only fond name she ever called him) "for these three years--you say it need only be three years--you will have to go back to India alone."

Robert Lyon was a very good man; but he was only a man, not an angle; and though he made comparatively little show of it, he was a man very deeply in love. With that jealous tenacity over his treasure, hardly blamable, since the love is worth little which does not wish to have its object "all to itself," he had, I am afraid, contemplated not without pleasure the carrying off of Hilary to his Indian home; and it had cost him something to propose that Johanna should go too. He was very fond of Johanna; still--

If I tell what followed will it forever lower Robert Lyon in the estimation of all readers? He said, coldly, "As you please, Hilary;" rose up, and never spoke another word till they reached home.

It was the first dull tea table they had ever known; the first time Hilary had ever looked at that dear face, and seen an expression there which made her look away again. He did not sulk; he was too gentlemanly for that; he even exerted himself to make the meal pass pleasantly as usual; but he was evidently deeply wounded; nay, more, displeased. The strong, stern man's nature within him had rebelled; the sweetness had gone out of his face, and something had come into it which the very best of men have sometimes: alas for the woman who cannot understand and put up with it!

I am not going to preach the doctrine of tyrants and slaves; but when two walk together they must be agreed, or if by any chance they are not agreed, one must yield. It may not always be the weaker, or in weakness may lie the chiefest strength; but it must be one or other of the two who has to be the first to give way; and, save in very exceptional cases, it is, and it ought to be, the woman. God's law and nature's which is also God's, ordains this; instinct teaches it; Christianity enforces it.

Will it inflict a death blow upon any admiration she may have excited, this brave little Hilary, who fought through the world by herself; who did not shrink from traversing London streets alone at seemly and unseemly hours; from going into sponging houses and debtor's prisons; from earning her own livelihood, even in a shop--if I confess that Robert Lyon, being angry with her, justly or unjustly, and she, looking upon him as her future husband, her "lord and master" if you will, whom she would one day promise, and intended, literally "to obey"--she thought it her duty, not only her pleasure but her duty, to be the first to make reconciliation between them? ay, and at every sacrifice, except that of principle.

And I am afraid, in spite of all that "strong-minded" women may preach to the contrary, that all good women will have to do this to all men who stand in any close relation toward them, whether fathers, husbands, brothers, or lovers, if they wish to preserve peace, and love, and holy domestic influence; and that so it must be to the end of time.

Miss Leaf might have discovered that something was amiss; but she was too wise to take any notice, and being more than usually feeble that day, immediately after tea she went to lie down. When Hilary followed her, arranged her pillows, and covered her up, Johanna drew her child's face close to her and whispered,

"That will do, love. Don't stay with me. I would not keep you from Robert on any account."

Hilary all but broke down; and yet the words made her stronger firmer; set more clearly before her the solemn duty which young folks in love are so apt to forget, that there can be no blessing on the new tie, if for any thing short of inevitable necessity they let go one link of the old.

Yet, Robert-- It was such a new and dreadful feeling to be standing outside the door and shrink from going in to him; to see him rise up formally, saying, "Perhaps he had better leave;" and have to answer with equal formality, "Not unless you are obliged;" and for him then, with a shallow pretence of being at ease, to take up a book and offer to read aloud to her while she worked. He--who used always to set his face strongly against all sewing of evenings--because it deprived him temporarily of the sweet eyes, and the little soft hand. Oh, it was hard, hard!

Nevertheless, she sat still and tried to listen; but the words went in at one ear and out at the other; she retained nothing. By-and-by her throat began to swell, and she could not see her needle and thread. Yet still he went on reading. It was only when, by some blessed chance, turning to reach a paper cutter, he caught sight of her, that he closed the book and looked discomposed; not softened, only discomposed.

Who shall be first to speak? Who shall catch the passing angel's wing? One minute, and it may have passed over. I am not apologizing for Hilary the least in the world. I do not know even if she considered whether it was her place or Robert's to make the first advance. Indeed, I fear she did not consider it at all, but just acted upon impulse, because it was so cruel, so heart breaking, to be at variance with him. But if she had considered it I doubt not she would have done from duty exactly what she did by instinct--crept up to him as he sat at the fireside, and laid her little hand on his.

"Robert, what makes you so angry with me still?"

"Not angry; I have no right to be."

"Yes, you would have if I had really done wrong. Have I?"

"You must judge for yourself. For me--I thought you loved me better than I find you do, and I made a mistake; that is all."

Ay, he had made a mistake, but it was not that one. It was the other mistake that men continually make about women; they can not understand that love is not worth having, that it is not love at all, but merely a selfish carrying out of selfish desires, if it blinds us to any other duty, or blunts in us any other sacred tenderness. They can not see how she who is false in one relation may be false in another; and that, true as human nature's truth, ay, and often fulfilling itself, is Brabantio's ominous warning to Othello--

"Look to her, Moor! have a good eye to see;
She has deceived her father, and may thee."

Perhaps as soon as he had said the bitter word Mr. Lyon was sorry, any how, the soft answer which followed it thrilled through every nerve of the strong willed man--a man not easily made angry, but when he was, very hard to move.

"Robert, will you listen to me for two minutes?"

"For as long as you like, only you must not expect me to agree with you. You can not suppose I shall say it is right for you to forsake me."

"I forsake you? Oh, Robert!"

Words are not always the wisest arguments. His "little woman" crept closer, and laid her head on his breast: he clasped convulsively.

"Oh, Hilary, how could you wound me so?"

And in lieu of the discussion, a long silence brooded over the fireside--the silence of exceeding love.

"Now, Robert, may I talk to you?"

"Yes. Preach away, my little conscience."

"It shall not be preaching, and it is not altogether for conscience," said she smiling. "You would not like me to tell you I did not love Johanna?"

"Certainly not. I love her very much myself, only I prefer you, as is natural. Apparently you do not prefer me, which may also be natural."

"Robert!"

There are times when a laugh is better than a reproach; and something else, which need not be more particularly explained, is safer than either. It is possible Hilary tried the experiment, and then resumed her "say."

"Now, Robert put yourself in my place, and try to think for me. I have been Johanna's child for thirty years; she is entirely dependent upon me. Her health is feeble; every year of her life is at least doubtful. If she lost me I think she would never live out the next three years. You would not like that?"

"No."

"In all divided duties like this somebody must suffer; the question is, which can suffer best? She is old and frail, we are young; she is alone, we are two; she never had any happiness in her life, except, perhaps me; and we--oh how happy we are! I think, Robert, it would be better for us to suffer than poor Johanna."

"You little Jesuit," he said: but the higher nature of the man was roused; he was no longer angry.

"It is only for a short time, remember--only three years."

"And how can I do without you for three years?"

"Yes, Robert, you can." And she put her arms round his neck, and looked at him, eye to eye. "You know I am your very own, a piece of yourself, as it were; that when I let you go it is like tearing myself from myself; yet I can bear it, rather than do, or let you do, in the smallest degree, a thing which is not right."

Robert Lyon was not a man of many words; but he had the rare faculty of seeing a case clearly, without reference to himself, and of putting it clearly also, when necessary.

"It seems to me, Hilary, that this is hardly a matter of abstract right or wrong, or a good deal might be argued on my side of the subject. It is more a case of personal conscience. The two are not always identical, though they look so at first; but they both come to the same result."

"And that is--"

"If my little woman thinks it right to act as she does, I also think it right to let her. And let this be the law of our married life, if we ever are married," and he sighed, "that when we differ each should respect the other's conscience, and do right in the truest sense, by allowing the other to do the same."

"Oh, Robert! how good you are."

So these two, an hour after, met Johanna with cheerful faces; and she never knew how much both had sacrificed for her sake. Once only, when she was for a few minutes absent from the parlor, did Robert Lyon renew the subject, to suggest a medium course.

But Hilary resolutely refused. Not that she doubted him--she doubted herself. She knew quite well by the pang that darted through her like a shaft of ice, as she felt his warm arm round her, and thought of the time when she would feel it no more, that, after she had been Robert Lyon's happy wife for three months, to let him go to India without her would be simply and utterly impossible.

Fast fled the months; they dwindled into weeks, and then into days. I shall not enlarge upon this time. Now, when the ends of the world have been drawn together, and every family has one or more relatives abroad, a grief like Hilary's has become so common that nearly every one can, in degree, understand it. How bitter such partings are, how much they take out of the brief span of mortal life, and, therefore, how far they are justifiable, for any thing short of absolute necessity, Heaven knows.

In this case it was an absolutely necessity. Robert Lyon's position in "our firm," with which he identified himself with the natural pride of a man who has diligently worked his way up to fortune, was such that he could not, without sacrificing his future prospects, and likewise what he felt to be a point of honor, refuse to go back to Bombay until such time as his senior partner's son, the young fellow whom he had "coached" in Hindostanee, and nursed through a fever years ago, could conveniently take his place abroad.

"Of course," he said, explaining this to Hilary and her sister, "accidental circumstances might occur to cause my return home before the three years were out, but the act must be none of mine; I must do my duty."

"Yes, you must," answered Hilary, with a gleam lighting up her eyes. She loved so in him this one great principle of his life--the back-bone of it, as it were--duty before all things.

Johanna asked no questions. Once she had inquired, with a tremulous, hardly concealed alarm, whether Robert wished to take Hilary back with him, and Hilary had kissed her, smilingly, saying, "No, that was impossible." Afterward the subject was never revived.

And so these two lovers, both stern in what they thought their duty, went on silently together to the last day of parting.

It was almost as quiet a day as that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday at Stowbury. They went a long walk together, in the course of which Mr. Lyon forced her to agree to what hitherto she had steadfastly resisted, that she and Johanna should accept from him enough, in addition to their own fifty pounds a year, to enable them to live comfortably without her working any more.

"Are you ashamed of my working?" she asked, with something between a tear and a smile. "Sometimes I used to be afraid you would think the less of me because circumstances made me an independent woman, earning my own bread. Do you?"

"My darling, no. I am proud of her. But she must never work any more. Johanna says right; it is a man's place, and not a woman's. I will not allow it."

When he spoke in that tone Hilary always submitted.

He told her another thing while arranging with her all the business part of their concerns, and to reconcile her to this partial dependence upon him, which, he urged, was only forestalling his rights; that before he first quitted England, seven years ago, he had made his will, leaving her, if still unmarried, his sole heir and legatee, indeed in exactly the position that she would have been had she been his wife.

"This will exists still; so that in any case you are safe. No further poverty can ever befall my Hilary."

His--his own--Robert Lyon's own. Her sense of this was so strong that it took away the sharpness of the parting, made her feel, up to the very last minute, when she clung to him--was pressed close to him--heart to heart and lip to lip--for a space that seemed half a life-time of mixed anguish and joy--that he was not really going; that somehow or other, next day or next week he would be back again, as in his frequent re-appearances, exactly as before.

When he was really gone--when, as she sat with her tearless eyes fixed on the closed door--Johanna softly touched her, saying, "My child" then Hilary learned it all.

The next twenty-four hours will hardly bear being written about. Most people know what it is to miss the face out of the house--the life out of the heart. To come and go, to eat and drink, to lie down and rise, and find all thing the same, and gradually to recognize that it must be the same, indefinitely, perhaps always. To be met continually by small trifles--a dropped glove, a book, a scrap of handwriting that yesterday would have been thrown into the fire, but to-day is picked up and kept as a relic; and at times, bursting through the quietness which must be gained, or at least assumed, the cruel craving for one word more--one kiss more--for only one five minutes of the eternally ended yesterday!

All this hundreds have gone through; so did Hilary. She said afterward it was good for her that she did; it would make her feel for others in a way she had never felt before. Also, because it taught her that such a heart-break can be borne and lived through when help is sought where only real help can be found; and where, when reason fails, and those who, striving to do right irrespective of the consequences, cry out against their torments and wonder why they should be made so to suffer, childlike faith comes to their rescue. For, let us have all the philosophy at our fingers' ends, what are we but children? We know not what a day may bring forth. All wisdom resolves itself into the simple hymn which we learned when we were young:

"Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill.
He treasures up His vast designs,
And works His sovereign will.

"Blind unbelief is sure to err.
And scan His work in vain:
God is His own interpreter.
And He will make it plain."

The night after Robert Lyon left, Hilary and Johanna were sitting together in their parlor. Hilary had been writing a long letter to Miss Balquidder, explaining that she would now give up in favor of the other young lady, or any other of the many to whom it would be a blessing, her position in the shop; but that she hoped still to help her--Miss Balquidder--in any way she could point out that would be useful to others. She wished, in her humble way, as a sort of thank offering from one who had passed through the waves and been landed safe ashore, to help those who were still struggling, as she herself had struggled once. She desired, as far as in her lay, to be Miss Balquidder's "right hand" till Mr. Lyon came home.

This letter she read aloud to Johanna, whose failing eye sight refused all candle light occupation, and then came and sat beside her in silence. She felt terribly worn and weary, but she was very quiet now.

"We must go to bed early," was all she said.

"Yes, my child."

And Johanna smoothed her hair in the old, fond way, making no attempt to console her, but only to love her--always the safest consolation. And Hilary was thankful that never, even in her sharpest agonies of grief, had she betrayed that secret which would have made her sister's life miserable, have blotted out the thirty years of motherly love, and caused the other love to rise up like a cloud between her and it, never to be lifted until Johanna sank into the possibly not far-off grave.

"No, no," she thought to herself, as she looked on that frail, old face, which even the secondary, grief of this last week seemed to have made frailer and older. "No, it is better as it is; I believe I did right. The end will show."

The end was nearer than she thought. So, sometimes--not often, lest self-sacrifice should become a less holy thing than it is--Providence accepts the will for the act, and makes the latter needless.

There was a sudden knock at the hall door. "It is the young people coming in to supper."

"It's not," said Hilary, starting up--"it's not their knock. It is--"

She never finished the sentence, for she was sobbing in Robert Lyon's arms.

"What does it all mean?" cried the bewildered Johanna, of whom, I must confess, for once nobody took the least notice.

It meant that, by one of these strange accidents, as we call them, which in a moment alter the whole current of things, the senior partner had suddenly died, and his son, not being qualified to take his place in the Liverpool house, had to go out to India instead of Robert Lyon, who would now remain permanently, as the third senior partner, in England.

This news had met him at Southampton. He had gone thence direct to Liverpool, arranged affairs so far as was possible, and returned, traveling without an hour's intermission, to tell his own tidings, as was best--or as he thought it was.

Perhaps at the core of his heart lurked the desire to come suddenly back, as, it is said, if the absent or the dead should come, they would find all things changed; the place filled up in home and hearth--no face of welcome--no heart leaping to heart in the ecstasy of reunion.

Well, if Robert Lyon had any misgivings--and being a man, and in love, perhaps he had--they were ended now.

"Is she glad to see me?" was all he could find to say when, Johanna having considerately vanished, he might have talked as much as he pleased.

Hilary's only answer was a little, low laugh of inexpressible content.

He lifted up between his bands the sweet face, neither so young nor so pretty as it had been, but oh! so sweet, with the sweetness that long outlives beauty--a face that a man might look on all his life time and never tire of--so infinitely loving, so infinitely true! And he knew it was his wife's face, to shine upon him day by day, and year by year, till it faded into old age--beautiful and beloved even then. All the strong nature of the man gave way; he wept almost like a child in his "little woman's" arms.

Let us leave them there, by that peaceful fireside--these two, who are to sit by one fire-side as long as they live. Of their further fortune we know nothing--nor do they themselves--except the one fact, in itself joy enough for any mortal cup to hold, that it will be shared together. Two at the hearth, two abroad; two to labor, two to rejoice; or, if so it must be, two to weep, and two to comfort one another; the man to be the head of the woman, and the woman the heart of the man. This is the ordination of God; this is the perfect life; none the less perfect that so many fall short of it.

So let us bid them good-by: Robert Lyon and Hilary Leaf, "Good-by; God be with ye!" for we shall see them no more. _

Read next: Chapter 27

Read previous: Chapter 25

Table of content of Mistress and Maid


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book