Nevertheless, her life was not easy, for Mrs. Ascott was very difficult to manage. She resisted angrily all the personal sacrifices entailed by impending motherhood, and its terrors and forebodings used to come over her—poor weak woman that she was!—in a way that required all Elizabeth's reasonings to counteract, and all her self-control to hide the presentiment of evil, not unnatural under the circumstances.
Yet sometimes poor Mrs. Ascott would take fits of pathetic happiness; when she busied herself eagerly over the preparations for the new-comer; would make Elizabeth take out, over and over again, the little clothes, and examine them with childish delight. Sometimes she would gossip for hours over the blessing that was sent to her so late in life—half-regretting that it had come so late; that she should be almost an old woman before her little son or daughter was grown up.
"Still, I may live to see it, you know: to have a pretty girl to take on my arm into a ball-room, or a big fellow to send to College: the Leafs always went to College in old times. He shall be Henry Leaf Ascott, that I am determined on; and if it's a girl, perhaps I may call her Johanna. My sister would like it; wouldn't she?"
For more and more, in the strange softening of her nature, did Selina go back to the old ties.
"I am not older than my mother was when Hilary was born. She died, but that was because of trouble. Women do not necessarily die in childbirth even at forty; and in twenty years more I shall only be sixty—not such a very old woman. Besides, mothers never are old; at least not to their children. Don't you think so, Elizabeth?"
And Elizabeth answered as she best could. She too, out of sympathy or instinct, was becoming wondrous wise.
But I am aware all this will be thought very uninteresting, except by women and mothers. Let me hasten on.
By degrees, as Mrs. Ascott's hour approached, a curious tranquility and even gentleness came over her. Her fretful dislike of seeing any face about her but Elizabeth's became less. She even endured her husband's company for an hour of an evening; and at last humbled her pride enough to beg him to invite her sisters to Russell Square from Saturday to Monday, the only time when Hilary could be spared.
"For we don't know what may happen," said she to him, rather seriously.
And though he answered, "Oh, nonsense!" and desired her to get such ridiculous fancies out, of her head, still he consented, and himself wrote to Miss Leaf, giving the formal invitation.
The three sisters spent a happy time together, and Hilary made some highly appreciated family jokes about the handsome Christmas box that Selina was going to be so kind as to give them, and the small probability that she would have much enjoyment of the Christmas dinner to which Mr. Ascott, in the superabundance of his good feeling, had invited his sisters-in-law. The baby, blessed innocent! seemed to have softened down all things—as babies often do.
Altogether, it was with great cheerfulness, affectionateness, and hope that they took leave of Selina: she, with unwonted consideration, insisting that the carriage should convey them all the way to Richmond.
"And," she said, "perhaps some of these days my son, if he is a son, may have the pleasure of escorting his aunts home. I shall certainly call him 'Henry Leaf,' and bring him up to be in every way a credit to our family."
When the ladies were away, and Mrs. Ascott had retired to bed, it was still only nine o'clock, and a bright moonlight night. Elizabeth thought she could steal down stairs and try to get a breath of fresh air round the square. Her long confinement made her almost sick sometimes for a sight of the outer world, a sight of—let me tell the entire truth—her own faithful Tom.
She had not seen him now for fourteen days, and though his letters were very nice and exceedingly clever, still she craved for a look at his face, a grasp of his hand, perhaps even a kiss, long and close and tender, such as he would sometimes insist upon giving her, in spite of all policemen. His love for her, demonstrative as was his nature, had become to this still, quiet girl inexpressibly sweet, far sweeter than she knew.
It was a clear winter night, and the moon went climbing over the fleecy white clouds in a way that made beauty even in Russell Square. Elizabeth looked up at the sky, and thought how Tom would have enjoyed it, and wished he were beside her, and was so glad to think he would soon be beside her always, with all his humors and weaknesses, all his little cross-selfishness, and complainings; she could put up with all, and be happy through all, if only she had him with her and loving her.
His love for her, though fitful and fanciful, was yet so warm and real that it had become a necessity of her life. As he always told her—especially after he had had one of his little quarrels with her—hers was to him.
"Poor Tom, I wonder how he gets on without me! Well, it won't be for long."
And she wished she could have let him know she was out here, that they might have had a chat for just ten minutes.
Unconsciously she walked toward their usual trysting place, a large overhanging plane-tree on the Keppel Street corner of the square.
Surely, surely, that could not be Tom! Quite impossible, for he was not alone. Two people, a young man and a young woman, stood at the tryst, absorbed in conversation: evidently sweethearts, for he had one arm round her, and he kissed her unresisted several times.
Elizabeth gazed, fascinated, almost doubting the evidence of her own senses. For the young men's figure was so excessively like Tom's. At length, with the sort of feeling that makes one go steadily up to a shadow by the roadside, some ugly spectre that we feel sure, if we stare it out, will prove to be a mere imagination, she walked deliberately up to and past these "sweethearts."
They did not see her; they were far too much occupied with one another; but she saw them, and saw at once that it was Tom, Tom's own self, and with him her fellow-servant, Esther.
People may write volumes on jealousy, and volumes will still remain to be written. It is next to remorse for guilt, the sharpest, sorest, most maddening torment that human nature can endure.
We may sit and gaze from the boxes at our Othellos and Biancas; we may laugh at the silly heart-burnings between Cousin Kate and Cousin Lucy in the ball-room, or the squabbles of Mary and Sally in the kitchen over the gardener's lad; but there the thing remains. A man can not make love to two women, a woman can not coquet with two men, without causing in degree that horrible agony, cruel as death, which is at the root of half the tragedies, and the cause of half the crimes of this world.
The complaint comes in different forms: sometimes it is a case of slow poisoning or of ordeal by red-hot irons, which though not fatal, undermines the whole character, and burns ineffaceable scars into the soul. And people take it in various ways—some fiercely, stung by a sense of wounded self-love; others haughtily:
"Pride's a safe robe, I'll wear it; but no rags."
Others, again, humble, self-distrustful natures, whose only pride came through love, have nothing left them except rags. In a moment all their thin robes of happiness are torn off; they stand shivering, naked and helpless before the blasts of the bitter world.
This was Elizabeth's case. After the first instant of stunned bewilderment and despair she took it all quite naturally, as if it were a thing which she ought all along to have known was sure to happen, and which was no more than she expected and deserved.
She passed the couple, still unobserved by them, and then walked round the other side of the square, deliberately home.
I am not going to make a tragic heroine of this poor servant girl. Perhaps, people may say, there is nothing tragic about the incident. Merely a plain, quiet, old-fashioned woman, who is so foolish as to like a handsome young swain, and to believe in him, and to be surprised when he deserts her for a pretty girl of eighteen. All quite after the way things go on in the world, especially in the servant-world; and the best she can do is to get over it, or take another sweetheart as quickly as possible. A very common story after all, and more of a farce than a tragedy.
But there are some farces which, if you look underneath the surface, have a good many of the elements of tragedy.
I shall neither paint Elizabeth tearing her own hair nor Esther's, nor going raging about the square in moonlight in an insane fit of jealousy. She was not given to "fits" under any circumstances, or about any thing. All she felt went deep down into her heart, rooted itself, and either blossomed or cankered there.
On this night she, as I said, walked round the square to her home: then quietly went up stairs to her garret, locked the door, and sat down upon her bed.
She might have sat there for an hour or more, her bonnet and shawl still on, without stirring, without crying, altogether cold and hard like a stone, when she fancied she heard her mistress's bell ring, and mechanically rose up and went down stairs to listen. Nothing was wanted, so she returned to her garret and crept to bed in the dark.
When soon afterward Esther likewise came up to bed, Elizabeth pretended to be asleep. Only once, taking a stealthy glance at the pretty girl who stood combing her hair at the looking-glass, she was conscious of a sick sense of repulsion, a pain like a knife running thro' her, at sight of the red young lips which Tom had just been kissing, of the light figure which he had clasped as he used to clasp her. But she never spoke, not one word.
Half an hour after she was roused by the nurse coming to her bedside. Mrs. Ascott was very ill, and was calling for Elizabeth. Soon the whole establishment was in confusion, and in the sharp struggle between birth and death Elizabeth had no time to think of any thing but her mistress.
Contrary to every expectation, all ended speedily and happily; and before he went off to the City next day the master of the house, who, in the midst of his anxiety and felicity, had managed to secure a good night's sleep and a good breakfast, had the pleasure of sending off a special messenger to the Times office with the notification, "The Lady of Peter Ascott, Esq., of a son and heir."
A fortnight's time rather increased than diminished the excitement incident on the event at Russell Square.
Never was there such a wonderful baby, and never was there such a fuss made over it. Unprejudiced persons might have called it an ugly, weakly little thing; indeed, at first there were such apprehensions of its dying that it had been baptized in a great hurry, "Henry Leaf Ascott," according to the mother's desire, which in her critical position nobody dared to thwart. Even at the end of fourteen days the "son and heir" was still a puling, sickly, yellow-faced baby. But to the mother it was every thing.
From the moment she heard its first cry Mrs. Ascott's whole nature seemed to undergo a change. Her very eyes—those cold blue eyes of Miss Selina's—took a depth and tenderness whenever she turned to look at the little bundle that lay beside her. She never wearied of touching the tiny hands and feet, and wondering at them, and showing—to every one of the household who was favored with a sight of it—"my baby," as if it had been a miracle of the universe. She was so unutterably happy and proud.
Elizabeth, too, seemed not a little proud of the baby. To her arms it had first been committed; she had stood by at its first washing and dressing, and had scarcely left it or her mistress since. Nurse, a very grand personage, had been a little jealous of her at first, but soon grew condescending, and made great use of her in the sick room, alleging that such an exceedingly sensible young person, so quiet and steady, was almost as good as a middle-aged married woman. Indeed, she once asked Elizabeth if she was a widow, since she looked as if she had "seen trouble:" and was very much surprised to learn she was single and only twenty-three years old.
Nobody else took any notice of her. Even Miss Hilary was so engrossed by her excitement and delight over the baby that she only observed, "Elizabeth, you look rather worn-out; this has been a trying time for you." And Elizabeth had just answered, "Yes"-no more.
During the fortnight she had seen nothing of Tom. He had written her a short note or two, and the cook told her he had been to the kitchen door several times asking for her, but being answered that she was with her mistress up stairs, had gone away.
"In the sulks, most like, though he didn't look it. He's a pleasant spoken young man and I'm sure I wish you luck with him," said Cookie, who, like all the other servants, was now exceedingly civil to Elizabeth.
Her star had risen; she was considered in the household a most fortunate woman. It was shortly understood that nurse—majestic nurse, had spoken so highly of her, that at the month's end the baby was to be given entirely into her charge, with, of course, an almost fabulous amount of wages.
"Unless," said Mrs. Ascott, when this proposition was made, suddenly recurring to the fact which seemed hitherto to have quite slipped from her mind—"unless you are still willing to get married, and think you would be happier married. In that case I won't hinder you. But it would be such a comfort to me to keep you a little longer."
"Thank you, ma'am," answered Elizabeth, softly, and busied herselfwith walking baby up and down the room, hushing it on her shoulder.If in the dim light tears fell on its puny face, God help her, poorElizabeth!
Mrs. Ascott made such an excellent recovery that in three weeks' time nobody was the least anxious about her, and Mr. Ascott arranged to start on a business journey to Edinburgh; promising, however, to be back in three days for the Christmas dinner, which was to be a grand celebration. Miss Leaf and Miss Hilary were to appear thereat in their wedding dresses; and Mrs. Ascott herself took the most vital interest in Johanna's having a new cap for the occasion. Nay, she insisted upon ordering it from her own milliner, and having it made of the most beautiful lace—the "sweetest" old lady's cap that could possibly be invented.
Evidently this wonderful baby had opened all hearts, and drawn every natural tie closer. Selina, lying on the sofa, in her graceful white wrapper, and her neat close cap, looked so young, so pretty, and, above all, so exceedingly gentle and motherly, that her sisters' hearts were full to overflowing. They acknowledged that happiness, like misery, was often brought about in a fashion totally unforeseen and incredible. Who would have thought, for instance, on that wretched night when Mr. Ascott came to Hilary at Kensington, or on that dreary heartless wedding-day, that they should ever have been sitting in Selina's room so merry and comfortable, admiring the baby, and on the friendliest terms with baby's papa?
"Papa" is a magical word, and let married people have fallen ever so wide asunder, the thought, "my child's mother," "my baby's father," must in some degree bridge the gulf between them. When Peter Ascott was seen stooping, awkwardly enough, over his son's cradle, poking his dumpy fingers into each tiny cheek in a half-alarmed, half-investigating manner, as if he wondered how it had all come about, but, on the whole, was rather pleased than otherwise—the good angel of the household might have stood by and smiled, trusting that the ghastly skeleton therein might in time crumble away into harmless dust, under the sacred touch of infant fingers.
The husband and wife took a kindly, even affectionate leave of one another. Mrs. Ascott called him "Peter," and begged him to take care of himself, and wrap up well that cold night. And when he was gone, and her sisters also, she lay on her sofa with her eyes open, thinking. What sort of thoughts they were, whether repentant or hopeful, solemn or tender, whether they might have passed away and been forgotten, or how far they might have influenced her life to come, none knew, and none ever did know.
When there came a knock at the door, and a message for Elizabeth,Mrs. Ascott suddenly overheard it and turned round.
"Who is wanting you? Tom Cliffe? Isn't that the young man you are to be married to? Go down to him at once. And stay, Elizabeth, as it's such a bitter night, take him for half an hour into the housekeeper's room. Send her up stairs, and tell her I wished it, though I don't allow 'followers.' "
"Thank you, ma'am," said Elizabeth once more, and obeyed. She must speak to Tom some time, it might as well be done to-night as not. Without pausing to think, she went down with dull heavy steps to the housekeeper's room.
Tom stood there alone. He looked so exactly his own old self, he came forward to meet her so completely in his old familiar way, that for the instant she thought she must be under some dreadful delusion; that the moonlight night in the square must have been all a dream; Esther, still the silly little Esther, whom Tom had often heard of and laughed at; and Tom, her own Tom, who loved nobody but her.
"Elizabeth, what an age it is since I've had a sight of you!"
But though the manner was warm as ever,
"In his toneA something smote her, as if Duty triedTo mock the voice of Love, how long since flown,"
and quiet as she stood, Elizabeth shivered in his arms.
"Why, what's the matter? Aren't you glad to see me? Give me another kiss, my girl, do!"
He took it; and she crept away from him and sat down.
"Tom, I've got something to say to you, and I'd better say it at once."
"To be sure. 'Tisn't any bad news from home, is it? Or"—looking uneasily at her—"I haven't vexed you, have I?"
"Vexed me," she repeated, thinking what a small foolish word it was to express what had happened, and what she had been suffering. "No, Tom, not vexed me exactly. But I want to ask you a question. Who was it that you stood talking with, under our tree in the square, between nine and ten o'clock, this night three weeks ago?"
Though there was no anger in the voice it was so serious and deliberate that it made Tom start.
"Three weeks ago; how can I possibly tell?"
"Yes, you can; for it was a fine moonlight night, and you stood there a long time."
"Under the tree, talking to somebody? What nonsense! Perhaps it wasn't me at all."
"It was, for I saw you."
"The devil you did!" muttered Tom.
"Don't be angry, only tell me the plain truth. The young woman that was with you was our Esther here, wasn't she?"
For a moment Tom looked altogether confounded. Then he tried to recover himself, and said crossly, "Well, and if it was, where's the harm? Can't a man be civil to a pretty girl without being called over the coals in this way?"
Elizabeth made no answer, at least not immediately. At last she said, in a very gentle, subdued voice,
"Tom, are you fond of Esther? You would not kiss her if you were not fond of her. Do you like her as—as you used to like me?"
And she looked right up into his eyes. Hers had no reproach in them, only a piteous entreaty, the last clinging to a hope which she knew to be false.
"Like Esther? Of course I do? She's a nice sort of girl, and we're very good friends."
"Tom, a man can't be 'friends,' in that sort of way, with a pretty girl of eighteen, when he is going to be married to somebody else. At least, in my mind, he ought not."
Tom laughed in a confused manner. "I say, you're jealous, and you'd better get over it."
Was she jealous? was it all fancy, folly? Did Tom stand there, true as steel, without a feeling in his heart that she did not share, without a hope in which she was not united, holding her, and preferring her, with that individuality and unity of love which true love ever gives and exacts, as it has a right to exact?
Not that poor Elizabeth reasoned in this way, but she felt the thing by instinct without reasoning.
"Tom," she said, "tell me outright, just as if I was somebody else, and had never belonged to you at all, do you love Esther Martin."
Truthful people enforce truth. Tom might be fickle, but he was not deceitful; he could not look into Elizabeth's eyes and tell her a deliberate lie; somehow he dared not.
"Well, then—since you will have it out of me—I think I do."
So Elizabeth's "ship went down." It might have been a very frail vessel, that nobody in their right senses would have trusted any treasure with, still she did; and it was all she had, and it went down to the bottom like a stone.
It is astonishing how soon the sea closes over this sort of wreck; and how quietly people take—when they must take, and there is no more disbelieving it—the truth which they would have given their lives to prove was an impossible lie.
For some minutes Tom stood facing the fire, and Elizabeth sat on her chair opposite without speaking. Then she took off her brooch, the only love-token he had given her, and put it into his hand.
"What's this for?" asked he, suddenly.
"You know. You'd better give it to Esther. It's Esther, not me, you must marry now."
And the thought of Esther, giddy, flirting, useless Esther, as Tom's wife, was almost more than she could bear. The sting of it put even into her crushed humility a certain honest self-assertion.
"I'm not going to blame you, Tom; but I think I'm as good as she. I'm not pretty, I know, nor lively, nor young, at least I'm old for my age; but I was worth something. You should not have served me so."
Tom said, the usual excuse, that he "couldn't help it." And suddenly turning round, he begged her to forgive him, and not forsake him.
She forsake Tom! Elizabeth almost smiled.
"I do forgive you: I'm not a bit angry with you. If I ever was I have got over it."
"That's right. You're a dear soul. Do you think that I don't like you, Elizabeth?"
"Oh yes," she said, sadly, "I dare say you do, a little, in spite of Esther Martin. But that's not my way of liking, and I couldn't stand it."
"What couldn't you stand?"
"Your kissing me to-day, and another girl to-morrow: your telling me I was every thing to you one week, and saying exactly the same thing to another girl the next. It would be hard enough to bear if we were only friends, but as sweet-hearts, as husband and wife, it would be impossible. No Tom, I tell you the truth, I could not stand it."
She spoke strongly, unhesitatingly, and for an instant there flowed out of her soft eyes that wild fierce spark, latent even in these quiet humble natures, which is dangerous to meddle with.
Tom did not attempt it. He felt all was over. Whether he had lost or gained: whether he was glad or sorry, he hardly knew.
"I'm not going to take this back, any how," he said, "fiddling" with the brooch; and then going up to her, he attempted, with trembling hands, to refasten it in her collar.
The familiar action, his contrite look, were too much. People who have once loved one another, though the love is dead (for love can die), are not able to bury it all at once, or if they do, its pale ghost will still come knocking at the door of their hearts, "Let me in, let me in!"
Elizabeth ought, I know, in proper feminine dignity, to have bade Tom farewell without a glance or a touch. But she did not. When he had fastened her brooch she looked up in his familiar face a sorrowful, wistful, hungering look, and then clung about his neck:
"O Tom, Tom, I was so fond of you!"
And Tom mingled his tears with hers, and kissed her many times, and even felt his old affection returning, making him half oblivious of Esther; but mercifully—for love rebuilt upon lost faith is like a house founded upon sands—the door opened, and Esther herself came in.
Laughing, smirking, pretty Esther, who, thoughtless as she was, had yet the sense to draw back when she saw them.
"Come here, Esther!" Elizabeth called, imperatively; and she came.
"Esther, I've given up Tom; you may take him if he wants you. Make him a good wife, and I'll forgive you. If not—"
She could not say another word. She shut the door upon them, and crept up stairs, conscious only of one thought—if she only could get away from them, and never see either of their faces any more!
And in this fate was kind to her, though in that awful way in which fate—say rather Providence—often works; cutting, with one sharp blow, some knot that our poor, feeble, mortal fingers have been long laboring at in vain, or making that which seemed impossible to do the most natural, easy, and only thing to be done.
How strangely often in human life "one woe doth tread upon the other's heel!" How continually, while one of those small private tragedies that I have spoken of is being enacted within, the actors are called upon to meet some other tragedy from without, so that external energy counteracts inward emotion, and holy sympathy with another's sufferings stifles all personal pain. That truth about sorrows coming "in battalions" may have a divine meaning in it—may be one of those mysterious laws which guide the universe—laws that we can only trace in fragments, and guess at the rest, believing, in deep humility, that one day we shall "know even as we are known."
Therefore I ask no pity for Elizabeth, because ere she had time to collect herself, and realize in her poor confused mind that she had indeed said good by to Tom, given him up and parted from him forever, she was summoned to her mistress's room, there to hold a colloquy outside the door with the seriously-perplexed nurse.
One of those sudden changes had come which sometimes, after all seems safe, strike terror into a rejoicing household, and end by carrying away, remorseless, the young wife from her scarcely tasted bliss, the mother of many children from her close circle of happy duties and yearning loves.
Mrs. Ascott was ill. Either she had taken cold or been too much excited, or, in the overconfidence of her recovery, some slight neglect had occurred—some trifle which nobody thinks of till afterward, and which yet proves the fatal cause, "the little pin" that
"Bores through the castle wall"
of mortal hope, and King Death enters in all his awful state.
Nobody knew it or dreaded it; for though Mrs. Ascott was certainly ill, she was not at first very ill; and there being no telegraphs in those days no one thought of sending for either her husband or her sisters. But that very hour, when Elizabeth went up to her mistress, and saw the flush on her cheek and the rest-less expression of her eye, King Death had secretly crept in at the door of the mansion in Russell Square.
The patient was carefully removed back into her bed. She said little, except once, looking up uneasily—
"I don't feel quite myself, Elizabeth."
And when her servant soothed her in the long-familiar way, telling her she would be better in the morning, she smiled contentedly, and turned to go to sleep.
Nevertheless, Elizabeth did not go to her bed, but sat behind the curtain, motionless, for an hour or more.
Toward the middle of the night, when her baby was brought to her, and the child instinctively refused its natural food, and began screaming violently, Mrs. Ascott's troubled look returned.
"What is the matter? What are you doing, nurse? I won't be parted from my baby—I won't, I say!"
And when, to sooth her, the little thing was again put into her arms, and again turned from her, a frightened expression came into the mother's face.
"Am I going to be ill?—is baby—"
She stopped; and as nurse determinately carried it away, she attempted no resistance, only followed it across the room with eager eyes. It was the last glimmer of reason there. From that time her, mind began to wander, and before morning she was slightly delirious. Still nobody apprehended danger. Nobody really knew any thing about the matter except nurse, and she, with a selfish fear of being blamed for carelessness, resisted sending for the doctor till his usual hour of calling. In that large house, as in many other large houses, every body's business was nobody's business, and a member of the family, even the mistress, might easily be sick or dying in some room therein, while all things else went on just as usual, and no one was any the wiser.
About noon even Elizabeth's ignorance was roused up to the conviction that something was very wrong with Mrs. Ascott, and that nurse's skill could not counteract it. On her own responsibility she sent, or rather she went to fetch the doctor. He came; and his fiat threw the whole household into consternation.
Now they knew that the poor lady whose happiness had touched the very stoniest hearts in the establishment hovered upon the brink of the grave. Now all the women-servants, down to the little kitchen-maid with her dirty apron at her eyes, crept up stairs, one after the other, to the door of what had been such a silent, mysterious room, and listened, unhindered, to the ravings that issued thence. "Poor Missis," and the "poor little baby," were spoken of softly at the kitchen dinner table, and confidentially sympathized over with inquiring tradespeople at the area gate. A sense of awe and suspense stole over the whole house, gathering thicker hour by hour of that dark December day.
When her mistress was first pronounced "in danger," Elizabeth, aware that there was no one to act but herself, had taken a brief opportunity to slip from the room and write two letters, one to her master in Edinburgh, and the other to Miss Hilary. The first she gave to the footman to post; the second she charged him to send by special messenger to Richmond. But he, being lazily inclined, or else thinking that, as the order was only given by Elizabeth, it was of comparatively little moment, posted them both. So vainly did the poor girl watch and wait; neither Miss Leaf nor Miss Hilary came.
By night Mrs. Ascott's delirium began to subside, but her strength was ebbing fast. Two physicians—three—stood by the unconscious woman, and pronounced that all hope was gone, if, indeed, the case had not been hopeless from the beginning.
"Where is her husband? Has she no relations—no mother or sisters?" asked the fashionable physician, Sir —— ——, touched by the slight or this poor lady dying alone, with only a nurse and a servant about her. "If she has, they ought to be sent for immediately."
Elizabeth ran down stairs, and rousing the old butler from his bed,prevailed on him to start immediately in the carriage to bring backMiss Leaf and Miss Hilary. It would be midnight before he reachedRichmond; still it must be done.
"I'll do it, my girl," said he, kindly; "and I'll tell them as gently as I can. Never fear."
When Elizabeth returned to her mistress's room the doctors were all gone, and nurse, standing at the foot of Mrs. Ascott's bed, was watching her with the serious look which even a hireling or a stranger wears in the presence of that sight which, however familiar, never grows less awful—a fellow creature slowly passing from this life into the life unknown. Elizabeth crept up to the other side. The change, indescribable yet unmistakable, which comes over a human face when the warrant for its dissolution has gone forth, struck her at once. Never yet had Elizabeth seen death. Her father's she did not remember, and among her few friends and connections none other had occurred. At twenty-three years of age she was still ignorant of that solemn experience which every woman must go through some time, often many times during her life. For it is to women that all look in their extreme hour. Very few men, even the tenderest hearted, are able to watch by the last struggle and close the eyes of the dying.
For the moment, as she glanced round the darkened room, and then at the still figure on the bed, Elizabeth's courage failed. Strong love might have overcome this fear—the natural recoil of youth and life from coming into contact with death and mortality; but love was not exactly the bond between her and Mrs. Ascott. It was rather duty, pity, the tenderness that would have sprung up in her heart toward any body she had watched and tended so long.
"If she should die, die in the night, before Miss Hilary comes!" thought the poor girl, and glanced once more around the shadowy room, where she was now left quite alone. For nurse, thinking with true worldly wisdom of the preservation of the "son and heir," which was decidedly the most important question now, had stolen away, and was busy in the next room, seeing various young women whom the doctors had sent, one of whom was to supply to the infant the place of the poor mother whom it would never know. There was nobody left but herself to watch this dying mother, so Elizabeth took her lot upon her, smothered down her fears, and sat by the bedside waiting for the least expression of returning reason in the sunken face, which was very quiet now. Consciousness did return at last, as the doctors had said it would. Mrs. Ascott opened her eyes; they wandered from side to side, and then she said, feebly, "Elizabeth, where's my baby?"
What Elizabeth answered she never could remember; perhaps nothing, or her agitation betrayed her, for Mrs. Ascott said again, "Elizabeth, am I going to—to leave my baby?"
Some people might have considered it best to reply with a lie—the frightened, cowardly lie that is so often told at death-beds to the soul passing direct to its God. But this girl could not and dared not.
Leaning over her mistress, she whispered as softly as she could, choking down the tears that might have disturbed the peace which, mercifully, seemed to have come with dying,
"Yes, you are going very soon—to God. He will watch over baby, and give him back to you again some day quite safe."
"Will He?"
The tone was submissive, half-inquiring; like that of a child learning something it had never learned before—as Selina was now learning. Perhaps even those three short weeks of motherhood had power so to raise her whole nature that she now gained the composure with which even the weakest soul can sometimes meet death, and had grown not unworthy of the dignity of a Christian's dying.
Suddenly she shivered. "I am afraid; I never thought of—this. Will nobody come and speak to me?"
Oh, how Elizabeth longed for Miss Hilary, for any body, who would have known what to say to the dying woman; who perhaps, as her look and words implied, till this hour had never thought of dying. Once it crossed the servant's mind to send for some clergyman; but she knew none, and was aware that Mrs. Ascott did not either. She had no superstitious feeling that any clergyman would do; just to give a sort of spiritual extreme unction to the departing soul. Her own religious faith was of such an intensely personal silent kind, that she did not believe in any good to be derived from a strange gentleman coming and praying by the bedside of a stranger, repeating set sayings with a set countenance, and going away again. And yet with that instinct which comes to almost every human soul, fast departing, Mrs. Ascott's white lips whispered, "Pray."
Elizabeth had no words, except those which Miss Leaf used to say night after night in the little parlor at Stowbury. She knelt down, and in a trembling voice repeated in her mistress's ear—"Our Father which art in heaven"—to the end.
After it Mrs. Ascott lay very quiet. At length she said, "Please—bring—my—baby." It had been from the first, and was to the last, "my" baby. The small face was laid close to hers that she might kiss it.
"He looks well; he does not miss me much yet, poor little fellow!" And the strong natural agony came upon her, conquering even the weakness of her last hour. "Oh, it's hard, hard! Will nobody teach my baby to remember me?"
And then lifting herself up on her elbow she caught hold of nurse.
"Tell Mr. Ascott that Elizabeth is to take care of baby. Promise, Elizabeth. Johanna is old—Hilary may be married; you will take care of my baby?"
"I will—as long as I live," said Elizabeth Hand.
She took the child in her arms, and for almost another hour stood beside the bed thus, until nurse whispered, "Carry it away; its mother doesn't know it now."
But she did; for she feebly moved her fingers as if in search of something. Baby was still asleep, but Elizabeth contrived, by kneeling down close to the bed, to put the tiny hand under those cold fingers; they closed immediately upon it, and so remained till the last. When Miss Leaf and Miss Hilary came in, Elizabeth was still kneeling there, trying softly to take the little hand away; for the baby had wakened and began its piteous wail. But it did not disturb the mother now.
"Poor Selina" was no more. Nothing of her was left to her child except the name of a mother. It may have been better so.
Such was the inscription which now, for six months, had met the eyes of the inhabitants of Stowbury, on a large, dazzlingly white marble monument, the first that was placed in the Church-yard of the New Church. What motive induced Mr. Ascott to inter his wife here—whether it was a natural wish to lay her, and some day lay beside her, in their native earth; or the less creditable desire of showing how rich he had become, and of joining his once humble name, even on a tombstone, with one of the oldest names in the annals of Stowbury—nobody could find out. Probably nobody cared.
The Misses Leaf were content that he should do as he pleased in the matter: he had shown strong but not exaggerated grief at his loss; if any remorse mingled therewith, Selina's sisters happily did not know it. Nobody ever did know the full history of things except Elizabeth, and she kept it to herself. So the family skeleton was buried quietly in Mrs. Ascott's grave.
Peter Ascott showed, in his coarse fashion, much sympathy and consideration for his wife's sisters. He had them staying in the house till a week after the funeral was over, and provided them with the deepest and handsomest mourning. He even, in a formal way took counsel with them as to the carrying out of Mrs. Ascott's wishes, and the retaining of Elizabeth in charge of the son and heir, which was accordingly settled. And then they went back to their old life at Richmond, and the widower returned to his solitary bachelor ways. He looked as usual; went to and from the City as usual; and his brief married life seemed to have passed away from him like a dream.
Not altogether a dream. Gradually he began to awake to the consciousness of an occasional child's cry in the house—that large, silent, dreary house, where he was once more the sole, solitary master. Sometimes, when he came in from church of Sundays, he would mount another flight of stairs, walk into the nursery at the top of the house, and stare with distant curiosity at the little creature in Elizabeth's arms, pronounce it a "fine child, and did her great credit!" and then walk down again. He never seemed to consider it as his child, this poor old bachelor of so many years' standing; he had outgrown apparently all sense of the affections or the duties of a father. Whether they ever would come into him; whether, after babyhood was passed, he would begin to take an interest in the little creature who throve and blossomed into beauty—which, as if watched by guardian angles, dead mothers' children often seem to do—was a source of earnest speculation to Elizabeth.
In the mean time he treated both her and the baby with extreme consideration, allowed her to do just as she liked, and gave her indefinite sums of money to expend upon the nursery.
When summer came, and the doctor ordered change of air, Mr. Ascott consented to her suggestion of taking a lodging for herself and baby near baby's aunts at Richmond; only desiring that the lodging should be as handsome as could be secured, and that every other Sunday she should bring up his son to spend the day at Russell Square.
And so, during the long summer months, the motherless child, in its deep mourning—which looks so pathetic on a very young baby—might be seen carried about in Elizabeth's arms every where. When, after the first six weeks, the wet nurse left—in fact, two or three nurses successively were abolished—she took little Henry solely under her own charge. She had comparatively small experience, but she had common sense, and the strong motherly instinct which comes by nature to some women. Besides, her whole soul was wrapped up in this little child.
From the hour when, even with her mistress dying before her eyes, Elizabeth had felt a strange thrill of comfort in the new duty which had come into her blank life, she took to this duty as women only can whose life has become a blank. She received the child as a blessing sent direct from God; by unconscious hands—for Mrs. Ascott knew nothing of what happened; something that would heal her wounded heart, and make her forget Tom.
And so it did. Women and mothers well know how engrossing is the care of an infant; how each minute of the day is filled up with something to be done or thought of; so that "fretting" about extraneous things becomes quite impossible. How gradually the fresh life growing up and expanding puts the worn out or blighted life into the back ground, and all the hopes and fancies cling around the small, beautiful present, the ever developing, the ever marvelous mystery of a young child's existence! Why it should be so, we can only guess; but that it is so, many a wretched wife, many a widowed mother, many a broken hearted, forlorn aunt, has thankfully proved.
Elizabeth proved it likewise. She did not exactly lose all memory of her trouble, but it seemed lighter; it was swallowed up in this second passion of adopted motherhood. And so she sank, quietly and at once, into the condition of a middle aged woman, whose life's story—and her sort of women have but one—was a mere episode, told and ended.
For Esther had left and been married to Tom Cliffe within a few week's of Mrs. Ascott's funeral. Of course, the household knew every thing; but nobody condoled with Elizabeth. There was a certain stand-off-ishness about her which made them hold their tongues. They treated her with much respect, as her new position demanded. She took this, as she took every thing, with the grave quietness which was her fashion from her youth up; assumed her place as a confidential upper servant; dressed well but soberly, like a woman of forty, and was called "Mrs. Hand."
The only trace her "disappointment" left upon her was a slightly bitter way of speaking about men in general, and a dislike to any chatter about love affairs and matrimony. Her own story she was never known to refer to in the most distant way, except once.
Miss Hilary—who, of course, had heard all, but delicately kept silence—one night, when little Henry was not well, remained in the lodgings on Richmond Hill, and slept in the nursery, Elizabeth making up for herself a bed on the floor close beside baby and cradle. In the dead of night, the two women, mistress and maid, by some chance, said a few things to one another which never might have been said in the daylight, and which, by tacit consent, were never afterward referred to by either, any more than if they had been spoken in a dream.
Elizabeth told briefly, though not without emotion, all that had happened between herself and Tom, and how he was married to Esther Martin. And then both women went back, in a moralizing way, to the days when they had both been "young" at Stowbury, and how different life was from what they then thought and looked forward to—Miss Hilary and her "bower maiden."
"Yes," answered the former with a sigh, "things are indeed not as people fancy when they are girls. We dream, and dream, and think we see very far into the future, which nobody sees but God. I often wonder how my life will end."
Elizabeth said, after a pause, "I always felt sure you would be married, Miss Hilary. There was one person—Is he alive still? Is he ever coming home?"
"I don't know."
"I am sure he was very fond of you. And he looked like a good man."
"He was the best man I ever knew."
This was all Miss Hilary said, and she said it softly and mournfully. She might never have said it at all; but it dropped from her unawares in the deep feeling of the moment, when her heart was tender over Elizabeth's own sad, simply told story. Also because of a sudden and great darkness which had come over her own.
Literally, she did not now know whether Robert Lyon were alive or dead. Two months ago his letters had suddenly ceased, without any explanation, his last being exactly the same as the others—as frank, as warmly affectionate, as cheerful and brave.
One solution to this was his possible coming home. But she did not, after careful reasoning on the subject, believe that likely. She knew exactly his business relations with his employers; that there was a fixed time for his return to England, which nothing except the very strongest necessity could alter. Even in the chance of his health breaking, so as to incapacitate him for work, he should, he always said, have to go to the hills, rather than take the voyage home prematurely. And in that case he certainly would have informed his friends of his movements. There was nothing erratic, or careless, or eccentric about Robert Lyon; he was a practical, business-like Scotchman—far too cautious and too regular in all his habits to be guilty of those accidental negligences by which wanderers abroad sometimes cause such cruel anxieties to friends at home.
For the same reason, the other terrible possibility—his death—was not likely to have happened without their hearing of it. Hilary felt sure, with the strong confidence of love, that he would have taken every means to leave her some last word—some farewell token—which would reach hereafter he was gone, and comfort her with the assurance of what, living, he had never plainly told. Sometimes, when a wild terror of his death seized her, this settled conviction drove it back again. He must be living, or she would have heard.
There was another interpretation of the silence, which many would have considered the most probable of all—he might be married. Not deliberately, but suddenly; drawn into it by some of those impelling trains of circumstance which are the cause of so many marriages, especially with men; or, impelled by one of those violent passions which occasionally seize on an exceedingly good man, fascinating him against his conscience, reason, and will, until he wakes up to find himself fettered and ruined for life. Such things do happen, strangely, pitifully often. The like might have happened to Robert Lyon.
Hilary did not actually believe it, but still her common sense told her that it was possible. She was not an inexperienced girl now; she looked on the world with the eyes of a woman of thirty; and though, thank Heaven! the romance had never gone out of her—the faith, and trust, and tender love—still it had sobered down a little. She knew it was quite within the bounds of possibility that a young man, separated from her for seven years, thrown into all kinds of circumstances and among all sorts of people, should have changed very much in himself, and, consequently, toward her. That, without absolute faithlessness, he might suddenly have seen some other woman he liked better, and have married at once. Or, if he came back unmarried—she had taught herself to look this probability also steadily in the face—he might find the reality of her—Hilary Leaf—different from his remembrance of her; and so, without actual falseness to the old true love, might not love her any more.
These fears made her resolutely oppose Johanna's wish to write to the house of business at Liverpool, and ask what had become of Mr. Lyon. It seemed like seeking after him, trying to hold him by the slender chain which he had never attempted to make any stronger, and which, already, he might have broken, or desired to break.
She could not do it. Something forbade her; that something in the inmost depths of a woman's nature which makes her feel her own value, and exact that she shall be sought; that, if her love be worth having, it is worth seeking; that, however dear a man may be to her, she refuses to drop into his mouth like an overripe peach from a garden wall. In her sharpest agony of anxiety concerning him, Hilary felt that she could not, on her part, take any step that seemed to compel love—or even friendship—from Robert Lyon. It was not pride, she could hardly be called a proud woman; it was an innate sense of the dignity of that love which, as a free gift, is precious as "much fine gold." yet becomes the merest dross, utterly and insulting poor—when paid as a debt of honor, or offered as a benevolent largess.
And so, though oftentimes her heart felt breaking, Hilary labored on; sat the long day patiently at her desk; interested herself in the young people over whom she ruled; became Miss Balquidder's right hand in all sorts of schemes which that good woman was forever carrying out for the benefit of her fellow-creatures; and at leisure times occupied herself with Johanna, or with Elizabeth and the baby, trying to think it was a very beautiful and happy world, with love still in it, and a God of love ruling over it—only, only—
Women are very humble in their cruelest pride. Many a day she felt as if she could have crawled a hundred miles in the dust—like some Catholic pilgrim—just to get one sight of Robert Lyon.
Autumn came—lovely and lingering late. It was November, and yet the air felt mild as May, and the sunshine had that peculiar genial brightness which autumnal sunshine alone possesses; even as, perhaps, late happiness has in it a holy calm and sweetness which no youthful ecstasy can ever boast.
The day happened to be Hilary's birthday. She had taken a holiday, which she, Johanna, Elizabeth, and the baby, had spent in Richmond Park, watching the rabbits darting about under the brown fern, and the deer grazing contentedly hard by. They had sat a long time under one of the oak trees with which the Park abounds, listening for the sudden drop, drop of an occasional acorn among the fallen leaves; or making merry with the child, as a healthy, innocent, playful child always can make good women merry.
Still, Master Henry was not a remarkable specimen of infanthood, and had never occupied more than his proper nepotal corner in Hilary's heart. She left him chiefly to Elizabeth, and to his aunt Johanna, in whom the grandmotherly character had blossomed out in full perfection. And when these two became engrossed in his infant majesty. Hilary sat a little apart, unconsciously folding her hands and fixing her eyes on vacancy; becoming fearfully alive to the sharp truth, that of all griefs, a strong love unreturned or unfulfilled is the grief which most blights a woman's life. Say, rather, any human life; but it is worst to a woman, because she must necessarily endure passively. So enduring, it is very difficult to recognize the good hand of God therein. Why should He ordain longings, neither selfish nor unholy, which yet are never granted; tenderness which expends itself in vain; sacrifices which are wholly unheeded; and sufferings which seem quite thrown away? That is, if we dared allege of any thing in the moral or in the material world, where so much loveliness, so much love, appear continually wasted, that it is really "thrown away." We never know through what divine mysteries of compensation the Great Father of the universe may be carrying out his sublime plan; and those three words, "God is love," ought to contain, to every doubting soul, the solution of all things.
As Hilary rose from under the tree there was a shadow on her sweet face, a listless weariness in her movements, which caught Johanna's attention. Johanna had been very good to her child. When, do what she would, Hilary could not keep down fits of occasional dullness or impatience, it was touching to see how this woman of over sixty years slipped from her due pedestal of honor and dignity, to be patient with her younger sister's unspoken bitterness and incommunicable care.
She now, seeing how restless Hilary was, rose when she rose, put her arm in hers, and accompanied her, speaking or silent, with quick steps or slow, as she chose, across the beautiful park, than which, perhaps, all England can not furnish a scene more thoroughly sylvan, thoroughly English. They rested on that high ground near the gate of Pembroke Lodge, where the valley of the Thames lies spread out like a map, stretching miles and miles away in luxuriant greenery.
"How beautiful! I wonder what a foreigner would think of this view? Or any one who had been long abroad? How inexpressibly sweet and home-like it would seem to him!"
Hilary turned sharply away, and Johanna saw at once what her words had implied. She felt so sorry, so vexed with herself; but it was best to leave it alone. So they made their way homeward, speaking of something else; and then that happened which Johanna had been almost daily expecting would happen, though she dared not communicate her hopes to Hilary, lest they might prove fallacious.
The two figures, both in deep mourning, might have attracted any one's attention: they caught that of a gentleman, who was walking quickly and looking about him, as if in search of something. He passed them at a little distance, then repassed, then turned, holding out both his hands.
"Miss Leaf; I was sure it was you."
Only the voice; every thing else about him was so changed that Hilary herself would certainly have passed him in the street, that brown, foreign looking, middle aged man, nor recognized him as Robert Lyon. But for all that it was himself; it was Robert Lyon.
Nobody screamed, nobody fainted. People seldom do that in real life, even when a friend turns up suddenly from the other end of the world. They only hold out a warm hand, and look silently in one another's faces, and try to believe that all is real, as these did.
Robert Lyon shook hands with both ladies, one after the other, Hilary last, then placed himself between them.
"Miss Leaf, will you take my arm?"
The tone, the manner, were so exactly like himself, that in a moment all these intervening years seemed crushed into an atom of time. Hilary felt certain, morally and absolutely certain, that, in spite of all outward change, he was the same Robert Lyon who had bade them all good-by that Sunday night in the parlor at Stowbury. The same, even in his love for herself, though he had simply drawn her little hand under his arm, and never spoken a single word.
Hilary Leaf, down, secretly, on your heart's lowest knees, and thank God! Repent of all your bitterness, doubts, and pains; be joyful, be joyful! But, oh, remember to be so humble withal.
She was. As she walked silently along by Robert Lyon's side, she pulled down her veil to hide the sweetest, most contrite, most child-like tears. What did she deserve, more than her neighbors, that she should be so very, very happy? And when, a good distance across the park, she saw the dark, solitary figure of Elizabeth carrying baby, she quietly guided her companions into a different path, so as to avoid meeting, lest the sight of her happiness might in any way, hurt poor Elizabeth.
"I only landed last night at Southampton," Mr. Lyon explained to Miss Leaf, after the fashion people have, at such meetings, of falling upon the most practical and uninteresting details. "I came by the Overland Mail. It was a sudden journey, I had scarcely more than a few hours' notice. The cause of it was some very unpleasant defalcations in our firm."
Under any other circumstances Hilary might have smiled; maybe she did smile, and tease him many a time afterward, because the first thing he could find to talk about, after seven years' absence, was "defalcations in our firm. But now she listened gravely, and by-and-by took her part in the unimportant conversation which always occurs after such a meeting as this.
"Were you going home, Miss Leaf? They told me at your house you were expected to dinner. May I come with you? for I have only a few hours to stay. To-night I must go on to Liverpool."
"But we shall hope soon to see you again?"
"I hope so. And I trust, Miss Leaf, that I do not intrude to-day."
He said this with his Scotch shyness, or pride, or whatever it was; so like his old self, that it made somebody smile! But somebody loved it. Somebody lifted up to his face eyes of silent welcome; sweet, soft, brown eyes, where never, since he knew them, had he seen one cloud of anger darken, one shadow of unkindness rise.
"This is something worth coming home to," he said in a low voice, and not over lucidly. Ay, it was.
"I am by no means disinterested in the matter of dinner, Miss Leaf; for I have no doubt of finding good English roast beef and plum pudding on your sister's birth day.—Happy returns of the day, Miss Hilary."
She was so touched by his remembering this, that, to hide it, she put on a spice of her old mischievousness, and asked him if he was aware how old she was?
"Yes; you are thirty; I have known you for fifteen years."
"It is a long time," said Johanna, thoughtfully.
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 Stowbury.
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, circumstances divide. No one will dare to allege that there may not be loves and friendships 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 nobody 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:
"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 God!"
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 passion, 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 noble, 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.