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.