Part 41 (2/2)
”Yes, I believe I have a right, the right that every man has when his whole happiness depends upon it, to ask you one question. You know every thing concerning me; you always have known; I meant that you should--I have taken the utmost care that you should. There is not a bit of my life that has not been as open to you as if--as if--. But I know nothing whatever concerning you.”
”What do you wish to know?” she faltered.
”Seven years is a long time. Are you free? I mean, are you engaged to be married?”
”No.”
”Thank G.o.d!”
He dropped his head down between his hands and did not speak for a long time.
And then with difficulty--for it was always hard to him to speak out--he told her, at least he somehow made her understand, how he had loved her. No light fancy of sentimental youth, captivated by every fresh face it sees, putting upon each one the coloring of his own imagination, and adorning not what is, but what itself creates; no sudden, selfish, sensuous pa.s.sion, caring only to attain its object, irrespective of reason, right, or conscience; but the strong deep love of a just man, deliberately choosing one woman as the best woman out of all the world, and setting himself resolutely to win her.
Battling for her sake with all hard fortune; keeping, for her sake, his heart pure from all the temptations of the world; never losing sight of her; watching over her so far as he could, consistently with the sense of honor (or masculine pride--which was it? but Hilary forgave it, any how) which made him resolutely compel himself to silence; holding her perfectly free, while he held himself bound.
Bound by a faithfulness perfect as that of the knights of old--asking nothing, and yet giving all.
Such was his love--this brave, plain spoken, single hearted Scotsman.
Would that there were more such men and more such love in the world!
Few women could have resisted it, certainly not Hilary, especially with a little secret of her own lying perdu at the bottom of her heart; that ”sleeping angel” whence half her strength and courage had come; the n.o.ble, faithful, generous love of a good woman for a good man. But this secret Robert Lyon had evidently never guessed, or deemed himself wholly unworthy of such a possession.
He took her hand at last, and held it firmly.
”And now that you know all, do you think in time--I'll not hurry you--but in time, do you think I could make you love me?”
She looked up in his face with her honest eyes. Smiling as they were, there was pathos in them; the sadness left by those long years of hidden suffering, now forever ended.
”I have loved you all my life,” said Hilary.
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 succ.u.mbed 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 s...o...b..ry, say to himself, ”If I did marry, I think I should like such a wife as that brown-eyed bit la.s.sie.” And there have been other people, who choosing their partners from accidental circ.u.mstances, 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 fas.h.i.+on:
”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 friends.h.i.+p 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.
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