CHAPTER X TER XXVI. badoo in pragtheir friendship days, was there any of that LET us linger a little over this chapter of hungry engrossment of each other's society, happy love; so sweet, so rare a thing. Ay, which is only another form of selfishness, most rare: though hundreds continually and by which lovers so often make their own meet, love, or fancy they do, engage them- happy courting-time a season of never-to-beselves, and marry; and hundreds more go forgotten bitterness to everybody connected through the same proceeding, with the slight with them. difference of the love omitted-Hamlet, with Johanna suffered a little; all people do the part of Hamlet left out. But the real when the new rights clash with the old ones; love, steady and true: tried in the balance, but she rarely betrayed it. She was exceedand not found wanting: tested by time, si-ingly good: she saw her child happy, and lence, separation; by good and ill fortune; she loved Robert Lyon dearly. He was by the natural and inevitable change which very mindful of her, very tender; and as years make in every character this is the Hilary still persisted in doing her daily rarest thing to be found on earth, and the duty in the shop, he spent more of his most precious. time with the elder sister than he did with I do not say that all love is worthless the younger, and sometimes declared solwhich is not exactly this sort of love. There emnly that if Hilary did not treat him well have been people who have succumbed in- he intended to make an offer to Johanna! stantly and permanently to some mysterious Oh, the innumerable little jokes of those attraction, higher than all reasoning; the happy days! Oh, the long, quiet walks by same which made Hilary "take an interest" the riverside, through the park, across Ham in Robert Lyons' face at church, and made Common-anywhere—it did not matter 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, and wives. affectionate husbands 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 en the whole world looked lovely, even on the Robert Lyon was, as I have said, a good But he was very gentle with his "little tered the parlor, found them standing hand woman," as he called her. He would sit for in hand at the fireside, and Hilary came for-hours at the "ingle-neuk "how he did lux ward and kissed her, and after a slight hes- uriate in the English fires!—with Hilary on Hilary was very shy of parading her hap- expressly to see her "fortunate fellow-coun- when she should look for him at the daily tryman," this Machiavelian little woman ac- meal and daily fireside, and find him no tually persuaded her lover to have an im- more. portant engagement in London! She could not bear him to be "looked at.” H "Ah, well! you must leave me, and I will miss you terribly, my dear," said the old Scotchwoman. "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? " "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 ? "STR "No; but it is not that. She would not live six months in a hot climate: the doctor tells me so." "You consulted him ? " "I don't know-hush; we'll talk another time," said Hilary, glancing at Johanna. Miss Balquidder took the hint and was si-"Yes, confidentially, without her knowing lent. it. But I thought it right. I wanted to make quite sure before before O Rob ert" Jore on I 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. Manor 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 everything looked, even to the very tree they 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 dreamlike unreality; now it was close, homelike, 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 "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." For "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, 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 cannot 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 angel; and though he made comparatively little show of it, he was a man very deeply in love. With that ciple. jealous tenacity over his treasure, hardly make reconciliation between them? Ay, And I am afraid, in spite of all that 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! 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 anything 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 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 weak-door and shrink from going in to him; to see ness may lie the chiefest strength; but it must be one or the 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 toaches it; Christianity enforces it. 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 Will it inflict a death-blow upon any ad- face strongly against all sewing of evenings miration she may have excited, this brave-because it deprived him temporarily of the little Hilary, who fought through the world sweet eyes, and the little soft hand. Oh, it by herself; who did not shrink from trav- was hard, hard! ersing London streets alone at seemly and Nevertheless, she sat still and tried to unseemly hours; from going into sponging-listen; but the words went in at one ear and houses and debtors' prisons; from earning out at the other-she retained nothing. Byher own livelihood, even in a shop-if I con-and-by her throat began to swell, and she fess 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 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. And, in lieu of the discussion, a long silence brooded over the fireside the silence of exceeding love. EA "Now, Robert, may I talk to you "Yes. Preach away, my little conscience! A 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 "It shall not be preaching, and it is not acted upon impulse, because it was so cruel, altogether for conscience," said she, smiling. so heart-breaking, to be at variance with" You would not like me to tell you I did him. But if she had considered it I doubt not love Johanna ?" 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.w "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?" "Certainly not. I love her very much myself, only I prefer you, as is natural. Ap parently you do not prefer me, which may be also natural." "Robert!" 2 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." "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 cannot 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 cannot "In all divided duties like this somebody see how she who is false in one relation may must suffer; the question is, which can sufbe false in another; and that, true as human fer best. She is old and frail, we are young; nature's truth, ay, and often fulfilling itself, she is alone, we are two; she never had any is Brabantio's ominous warning to Othello-happiness in her life, except, perhaps me; "Look to her, Moor! have a good eye to see; and we-oh, how happy we are! I think, She has deceived her father, and may thee." Robert, it would be better for us to suffer Perhaps as soon as he had said the bitter than poor Johanna." word Mr. Lyon was sorry; anyhow, 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, hard to move. very "Robert, will you listen to me for two minutes ? " "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, rememberonly 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 him self, and of putting it clearly also, when nec- | of honor, refuse to go back to Bombay until "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." "O 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 are 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 anything short of absolute necessity, Heaven knows. In this case it was an absolute 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 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 lifethe 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 neverto-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 un |