Part 43 (2/2)
It was almost as quiet a day as that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday at s...o...b..ry. 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 circ.u.mstances 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 s.p.a.ce 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 sc.r.a.p 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 a.s.sumed, 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: G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed through the waves and been landed safe ash.o.r.e, 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.”
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