Part 41 (1/2)

Johanna would not have been human had she not been a little thoughtful and silent on the way home, and had she not many times, out of the corners of her eyes, sharply investigated Mr. Robert Lyon.

He was much altered; there was no doubt of that. Seven years of Indian life would change any body; take the youthfulness out of any body. It was so with Robert Lyon. When coming into the parlor he removed his hat, many a white thread was visible in his hair, and besides the spare, dried-up look which is always noticeable in people who have lived long in hot climates, there was an ”old” expression in his face, indicating many a worldly battle fought and won, but not without leaving scars behind. Even Hilary, as she sat opposite to him, at table, could not but feel that he was no longer a young man either in appearance or reality. We ourselves grow old, or older, without knowing it, but when we suddenly come upon the same fact in another it startles us. Hilary had scarcely recognized how far she herself had left her girlish days behind till she saw Robert Lyon.

”You think me very much changed?” said he, guessing by his curiously swift intuition of old what she was thinking of.

”Yes, a good deal changed,” she answered truthfully; at which he was silent.

He could not read--perhaps no man's heart could--all the emotion that swelled in hers as she looked at him, the love of her youth, no longer young. How the ghostly likeness of the former face gleamed out under the hard worn lines of the face that now was touching her with ineffable tenderness. Also, with solemn content came a sense of the entire indestructibleness of that love which through all decay or alteration traces the ideal image still, clings to it, and cherishes it with a tenacity that laughs to scorn the grim dread of ”growing old.”

In his premature and not specially comely middle age, in his gray hairs, in the painful, anxious, half melancholy expression which occasionally flitted across his features, as if life had gone hard with him, Robert Lyon was a thousand times dearer to her than when the world was all before them both in the early days at s...o...b..ry.

There is a great deal of a sentimental nonsense talked about people having been ”young together.” Not necessarily is that a bond. Many a tie formed in youth dwindles away and breaks off naturally in maturer years. Characters alter, circ.u.mstances divide. No one will dare to allege that there may not be loves and friends.h.i.+ps formed in middle life as dear, as close, as firm as any of those of youth; perhaps, with some temperaments, infinitely more so. But when the two go together, when the calm election of maturity confirms the early instinct, and the lives have been parallel, as it were, for many years, there can be no bond like that of those who say as these two did, ”We were young together.”

He said so when, after dinner, he came and stood by the window where Hilary was sitting sewing. Johanna had just gone out of the room; whether intentionally or not, this history can not avouch. Let us give her the benefit of the doubt; she was a generous woman.

During the three hours that Mr. Lyon had been with her, Hilary's first agitation had subsided. That exceeding sense of rest which she had always felt beside him--the sure index of people who, besides loving, are meant to guide and help and bless one another--returned as strong as ever. That deep affection which should underlie all love revived and clung to him with a chidlike confidence strengthening at every word he said, every familiar look and way.

He was by no means so composed as she was, especially now when coming up to her side and watching her hands moving for a minute or so, he asked her to tell him, a little more explicitly, of what had happened to her since they parted.

”Things are rather different from what I thought;” and he glanced with a troubled air round the neat but very humbly furnished parlor.

”And about the shop?”

”Johanna told you.”

”Yes; but her letters have been so few, so short--not that I could expect more. Still--now, if you will trust me--tell me all.”

Hilary turned to him, her friend for fifteen years. He was that if he was nothing more. And he had been very true; he deserved to be trusted. She told him, in brief, the history of the last year or two, and then added:

”But after all it is hardly worth the telling, because, you see, we are very comfortable now. Poor Ascott, we suppose, must be in Australia. I earn enough to keep Johanna and myself, and Miss Balquidder is a good friend to us. We have repaid her, and owe n.o.body any thing. Still, we have suffered a great deal. Two years ago; oh!

it was a dreadful time.”

She was hardly aware of it, but her candid tell-tale face betrayed more even than her words. It cut Robert Lyon to the heart.

”You suffered, and I never knew it.”

”I never meant you to know.”

”Why not?” He walked the room in great excitement. ”I ought to have been told; it was cruel not to tell me. Suppose you had sunk under it; suppose you had died, or been driven to do what many a woman does for the sake of mere bread and a home--what your poor sister did--married. But I beg your pardon.”

For Hilary had started up with her face all aglow.

”No,” she cried; ”no poverty would have sunk me as low as that. I might have starved, but I should never have married.”

Robert Lyon looked at her, evidently uncomprehending, then said humbly, though rather formally,

”I beg your pardon once more. I had no right to allude to any thing of the kind.”

Hilary replied not. It seemed as if now, close together, they were further apart than when the Indian seas rolled between them.

Mr. Lyon's brown cheek turned paler and paler; he pressed his lips hard together; they moved once or twice, but still he did not utter a word. At last, with a sort of desperate courage, and in a tone that Hilary had never heard from him in her life before, he said: