Part 43 (1/2)

”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 circ.u.mstances 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.