Hilary's Husband.

Waikato Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2081, 7 November 1885, Page 1 (Supplement)

Hilary's Husband.

Huauy stood leaning against a ru^qed old oak just outside the farm-house gate, watching her lover as he drove away from her forever. It was a lonely road ; there were neither neighbors nor pr.Baers-by to peer curiously into her face, nnd Aaron never once looked round as he went ; the need not have pressed back the tears so resolutely. But she stood prrfectly calm and still, looking fixedly down tho road after the retreating wheels, though, feeling ng if sho wore watching a henrHe that bore away her heart to burial in soma far-away graveyard beyond reach of tears. Whon theilast flutter of duat had laid itself in the road behind the gig, like a sorrow momentarily lulled to sleep, but ready to start into life at memory's first breath, the girl raised her clasped hands abovo her head, and closed her eyes tightly as if to Bhut out tho vision of the long dull years to come, stretching themselves aimlessly into the distance, empty, loveless, and hard like the blank road before her. Then she turned and walked steadily into the house, and up the narrow stairs into her aunt'a room, and sat down by the bed, folding her slender hands in her lap, and looking down at tho invalid with tired grey eyes that seemed suddenly to have discovered the end of all things, and to know that henceforth they mmt always look back instead of forward. The paralytic neither saw nor heard whan Hilary camo in. Sho lay eh she had lain these many months, — papt seeing, pant hearing, past suffering, yot living still, though ai utterly dead to her old life as bad the lieguievitt in pace already been written in letters of marble abovo her. For a long time Hilary vat by tho bedside, absolutely motionlees, save when she mechanically leaned forward to brush a fly from her aunt's brow, or smooth ay/ay a crease in the counterpane, oi straighten some email crookedness that unconsciously arrested her eye. One'u outward i-cnßfiH aro never so peculiarly alivo to trilleo as win n a great cnem of fate holds all the spirit i^cll bound. So now the various consecutive Hounds of every-day farm-life shuck blmrply through to Hilary's brain, and sho roae obediently liom her beat tit tho iirnt ntioke of the bell ringing in the mon from the fields to their evening meal. She lin^red n moment before going down, to look curiously at herßoll in the glasi. No; this change that had come was all in her life — not in herself. Thcro were no wrinkles amid the faint horizontal lines that croß&ed her forehead, no hollows in the bmooth, palo checks, no faded threads in the blonde braids that covered her head in such profusion . Sho looked the same no w as when she had run down so blithely to bid her lover welcome only an hour before. She pressed her thin, sweet lips together, and shook her

head as if to fence off memory, and then slovvly descended to the dining-room, where Farmer Perkinß and his wife, with whom she and her aunt had boarded ever since she could remember, were already seated at the table, whioh was set for four, and had that air of elaboration^about it which tables, like people, put on for an expected guest. " Why, where's Aaron?" naked Mr?. Porkinß, in evident disappointment. " I made °uro ho would stay, and opened a j»r of my best Htiawb?rries, though young men are that ignorant, I believe he'd all as soon havo had crab-apples." "Ho couldn't wait," Hilary answered quietly, an she took her place and busied herself with her napkin. "He had a great deal to do." Farmer Perkins raised hia bushy brows without lifting his eyes from hia plate. " Had he, then ?" he paid, with good-humored doubt. " I'd be glad of the day when Aaron Johns had a deal to do." '•Yes," answered Hilary, lifting her head with a desperate feeling that it was best to get thiough the worst at once. "He had bo little time. Ho leaves to-night for the West — for Omaha." " What 1" The exclamation came from Mrs. Perkins. Her husband merply suspended his operations with the waflles, and stared at Hilary sideways. " Yos," she continued, in a perfectly quiet, unemotional voice. "He eaid he had failed long enough here, and he was suro to get a start there. It's a poor opening a young lawyer has in a little country town liko this, j he saye." " Eight enough there," assented the farmer, repuming his knife and fork and appetite. " We ain't so dishonest about here yet, that many folks can earn a living swearing black is white for us. He'll do a sight better in that lying country where he's going. He's a smart enough fellow too, is Aaron. Oivo him a start, and he'll not come in with the hindmost." " Well, I am took back," said Mrs. Perkins slowly, quite forgetting to spread her bread in her Eurprise, absently eating the butter in little lumps off the end of her knife, as if testing it. " I can't seem to settle down to it. Who'd ha\e thought he'd go off so sudden, for all the world like a rocket before the matoh is set to it ! And when is he coming back to fetch you, Hilary ? " "no is not coming back." "Not ever?" "No." The girl answered steadily enough, but her eyes fell. " Hilary," said Mrs Perkins solemnly, leaning forward to look at her, with both elbows on the table, " you don't mean you've been keeping company with Aaron Johns this twelvemonth baok, for him to give you the go-bye like that in the end? " " Thero isn't any go-by about it," replied Hilary quickly, a hot orimson spot coming to each cheek. " We've broken with each other — tine's all. He wanted me to go with him, and I wouldn't. How could I leave aunt, when she's only me in all the world to stay by her and closo her eye-3 decently when shs dies ? " "Come, come," taid Mrs. Perkins sympathetically. " I don't know as your church is stricter than ours, though it's tiueEpieoopals have queer notions ; but I do think there oughtn't any religion to expect a yjung girl to let go bo likely a fellow as Aaion, and tie herself down to a half-dead body like yon poor, unknowing creature upstairß, that can't tell poi ridge fiom oider." " I don't tie myeelf to her," Hilary answered. ",God tied me to her when he left us two all alone in the world, an*d I oan't undo a duty of God's making." There was silence for a time, during which Mrs. Perkins gazed fixedly at the girl, occasionally giving some tempting dish an abrupt push in her direotion, and once going to the pantry to cut off a slice of particularly successful eleotion cake, which she silently put on Hilary's plate, as if wishing to offer such alleviations of destiny as wre in her power. "Don't you feel bad, Hilary?" she brusquely asked, at last. " Very true, my dear," said Mrs. Perkins approvingly, considerably cheered by the answer. " That's the only proper way to take afflictions. That's just what I said myself when the black hen wouldn't set, and all the eggs went addled. And I dare say there'll be some other young man along all as good as Aaron, and n fltay-at-homo besides. There's Nathan Taylor, now. He's none so bad when you get used to his squint. Oh, you needn't think you've had your last chance yet, Hilary. There's many a hook slips a fish that lands its second easy. Hilary shivered ever so slightly. " There'll never be any one else for me, Mrs. Perkins. Don't let's ta,lk about it. Are you going to look over thdee currants to-night ? Shall I help you ?" " Well, yes, if you like," answered the good woman briskly. "Four hands is always better than two at a job, and there's nothing likB picking over ourrants for diverting the mind. It's the most distracting thing I know of. I set myself right to it the night after my little Jim was buried, and it consoled mo wonderful. It was really providential that he died in currant-time. I'll letch 'em right in." They all left the table together, and the farmer took up hia straw hat from the chair whare ho had thrown it upon entering, then turned back awkwardly to lay a heavy hand on Hilary's shoulder. " Hilary, my girl," he said kindly, " you're made of pretty decent stuff. You'll do." By ten o'clock that night all apparent life had ceased in the little farm-house. Save in Hilary's room every light was out, and all but she were sunk in the dreamless sleep of the hard-woiking. But Hilary still sat by her aunt's bod, lost in thought and taking no note of time. At last she rose, with the look of one who has come to some solemn decision, and, going to a tall chest of drawers that stood equare and ungainly in a coiner of the room under the sloping roof, oho took out a white muslin dress that had lain there undisturbed since her fiist and only ball, and which was still very fresh and unrumpled. She shook it carefully out of its creases and laid it by while she sought for various other dainty articles of apparel, — her one pair of silk stockings and kid slippers, a white ribbon sash, a bit of rare old lace,— and then, taking off nor plain stuff dress, she proceeded to make a fresh toilette from head to foot, even rebraiding her heavy masses of hair and arranging them in a way that suited her better. She stood at last fully dressed in the soft white muslin, — very fair, very bride-like. But poraething was still wanting. Brides wear veils. Ab, baa must borrow hers. That little Shetland shawl, soft as spun silk and cobwebby as lace, which had been her aunt's pride in bygone days, — what oould better fit her need? With trembling hands she unfolded it from its many wrappers and thiew it over her head, fastening it deftly here and thero to her Bhining brails. It fell fleecy and light over her shoulders and iloated far down over her dress. It was the finishing touch. Surely all was complete now. But no ; did ever bride go to the altar without a flower upon her ? Hilary hesitated an instant, then gathering her white skirts closely around her, with her long veil flung over one bare white arm, down she went, noiselessly as the ghost Bhe seemed, to the tiny hall below. She listened unxiouely. Had the creaking wooden stairs betrayed her ? There was not a sound indoors save the old clock ticking wcariedly in the corner, where it stood like a sentinel at his post waiting to be relieved. Another step

and she reached the fiont dno r , slid back the bolt, lifted the latch, and passed out into the dark and dewy garden. Her heart beat high as she stole softly down between the shrubberies. There was but moonlight enough to maka tho darkness visible, and to show herself a misty white spot upon it, t stranga in the midst of Btrangeness, as if 'a cloud had fallen to c.*rth and gathered a semblance of human shape in falling ; the rustling of the leaves was a r i so many faint spirit-voices asking in frightened whispers who and what she was that had thus come among them ; the tan felt cold and unaccustomed beneath her feet; the air was damp and heavy with too swept odors; bats flew low acrosß her pathway with ugly, flapping wings, and her eara tinged with a thousand little sounds that she seemed never to have heard before. It was a gruesome hour for a girl to be out alone, but she kept steadily on her way, down between the straight, still flower-beds. The lilacs were long since done blooming, and the lilies and the syrinpas too. She thought of these last with a sigh ; they would have been quite like orange-blossom 3. There were plenty of white balsams and white phlox and candytuft too, on either side ; but she passed them swiftly by, never pausing till she came to the very end of the garden, where a white rose-bush, laden with half-open buds, seemed to have bloomed purposely for this hour. Hilary broke olf the flowers with hasty hands,— b few for her breast and a few for her hair were all she needed, — and then, with an exultant thrill at her heart, she turned and retraced her steps through the fitful moonlight and the mysterious shadows, that seemed to turn when she did, and to chase her with gliding, dusky footsteps, as though loath to let co fair a vision go. But the house was reached in safety, the doors reclosed upon that strangely unfamiliar world of night outside, and Hilary stood once more in her room before the glass, smiling a sad little smile of triumph at herself. Yes, it was all complete now. There lacked nothing save only some one to say that she was fair. She glanced shyly at her own image, ashamed of her involuntary ploasuies in its sweetness, and turning away went to the bed to bend down over the poor invalid, who was no farther from her now Bleeping than waking, and softly kissed her forehead. "Aunt," she murmured beneath her breath, " I take you as my witness." The clock in the hall below struck eleven ; the lamp began to flioker and turn dim ; Hilary saw Bhe must not delay. From some hidden nook that held her choicest treasures she took out a daguerreotype and placed it open upon tho table. It was thB likeness of a good-humored, sturdy young fellow of about three and twenty, with a beardlcsa faoe and honest blue eyes, and big, awkward hands, brought into bold relief against the uncomfortably fitting Sunday coat. It was not altogether admirable as a work of art, but Hilary looked at it with loving eyes as Bhe knelt by the table in her bridal dra peries, and opening her prayer-book laid her right hand upon the picture and repeated aloud in a grave, hushed voice, firm with resolve and sweet with unutterable love : " I, Hilary, take thee, Aaron, to be my wedded husband, to havo and to hold from this day forward, for better for worso, for richer for poorer, in Bigness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance ; and thereto I give thee my troth. The strange rite wai not ended yet. Should she not too wear a marriage symbol upon her hand, like all womon who have sworn this vow ? Still on her knees, Hilary reached out for 5 spool of yellow silk in her basket, and, knotting a Blonder thread firmly about her wedding-finger, slipped over it a little ring which she had heretofore always worn on the other hand. Now she felt wedded indeed, and bending forward she pressed her lipa against the unresponsive pictured face, blushing all over hotly in sweet shame. And so the weird midnight ceremony came to an end, and Hilary rose, folded up her wedding garments one by one and laid them tenderly away for ever with the white roses that had scarcely yet lost their dew, returned the picture to its hiding-place, blew out the light, crept Bilently to her couch, and lay thero motionless aa the sleeping figure in the bed beyond, but with wide, bright eyes that refused to olose, though all was so dark and still. From that night a new life began for Hilary—a life unshared by any, unknown to any, and of which the only outward sign was that tiny silken thread upon her finger, which she replaced aa often aa it loosened or showed dim, and which, safely hidden as it was beneath the little trumpery garnet ring, provoked no manner of comment. Or if occasionally it caught a curious eye, her simple answer — " It is only to remember something by " — waa a quite suinoient explanation. But everything was changed to her from that night. She wore only the ribbons that he best liked her in ; every new gown was chosen and fashioned wholly according to his taste. Every Christmas, every birthday, she worked him presents that none saw save the poor to whom she gave them in his stead. "Aaron's handkorohiefa must be nearly worn out by now," she would say soberly to hereelf. " I must horn him some more." Or — " Aaron's shirts can surely hold no longer; I must make him another set. His wife must not neglect him." And the needy creatures who received her gilts little knew what pure and perfect love had aided in their making. Once a year upon her wedding anniversary, as she called it in her thoughts, she always made a little feast to mark out the day from its uneventful fellows. Was it not natural enough sometimes to call a few friends together ? And no one thought of notioing that on those occasions she invariably woie a bunch of white roses at her breast. And so the years went by. The poor old aunt quietly slipped away altogether out of the life upon whioh ehe had so elight a hold ; the farmer and his wife became old and infirm, and upon Hilary, who had grown to be more daughter than gueßt in the house, now devolved muoh of the real management of tho homestead. But who, seeing the quiet, middle-aged woman moving methodically and prosaically about her work, slurring no homely part of it, neglecting no wearisome detail, would have guessed that she hid such a bright fresh romance in her heart, and was glad of it and comforted by it through all the lonely days, and through all the tedious oommonplaces of the monotonous routine? Aaron Johns bad been heard of but once sinoe he drove angrily away through the nunshine and tho dust, never turning to look back at the girl who could so lightly let him go ; and that once when Farmer Perkins brought home word from town that Aaron had gone on from Umaha to Denver, and settled there, and had married a wife and was doing well. Hilary listened with no deepening of colour, no quickening of her even pulses, but with a curious sense that Aaion had committed a crime, and that she was responsible for his sin. J3ut even that feeling wore oil soon, and Aaron remained her dreunihußband still, her secret counsel in emergencies, her daily director and helper and comforter, while the tried to think of him as keeping pace with time, and to imngine him every year with hair a little more gray, and eyes a little less blue, and cheeks a little more sunken and fuirowod. " I should know him anywhere if I saw him," she often said to herself. Of course he would not reoognize me now ; but my love has kept step with his ohanges, and he oould not have grown away from it,"

And so tlio years si ppni softly by, until one day Farmer Perkins returned from town bringing a wonderful bit of news with him. " HiUry," he said, as ho sat down, resting the pabis of both hands on his knees, and looking solemnly at her over his spectacles, "Aaron Johns is back. He's picked up a tidy bit of money .and buried his wife out there, and now he's coino on a visit to see how the old place look's. I told him he'd find you here the nania as ever, only that the old aunt was dead. He wanted to know special if she was alive still. I always said he was a smart fellow, was Aaron. I knew he'd get on." "You don't mean Aaron's backl" Mrs. Perkins exclaimed, all in a flutter of exoitement at once. " Now I shouldn't wonder if he'd really come for Hilary at last, and here she's been a-waitmg ready to his hand all these years I" She went about all day as if stunned, and when at last word was brought her that Aaron was there and asking for her, she went to meet him like one walking in a dream. "Ha will never know me," she repeated to herself. " I have changed, and so of course haa he ; yet I feel that I should know him anywhere." And then she heard a voice saying heartily, " Why, she's positively not altered through all these twenty years 1 Hilary, I should have known you the world over 1" And raising her eyes she ~aw a stranger standing looking at her, a large, stout man, with a bald head, and bushy, red-brown whiskers, and not a wrinkle anywhere on all his round, good-humored face. Was this Aaron ? Was it possible that this was he ? Not a look, not a tone, not a gf store seemed familiar ; even his smile seemed strange. It came upon- her like a shock and took avay her breath. She could only give him her hand in silence. " Yep, the very, very same I" he cried delightedly. " Nothing is changed. No one ii changed. The same place, the same house, the same people. It is as if the whole town had been sleeping an enchanted Bleep. There are no improvements, no innovations, no alterations acywhere — not so much as a signboard torn down. Everybody seems just to have become his own giandfather. I oould swear I saw some of the very hats in the street to-day that I saw twenty years ago. It's delightful. You oan't think how it rests a man, after he has lived so long in the midst o! perpetual newness and stir and change, to step back to some spot where time is at a standstill, and where there is really nothing new under the sun. Should you have known me, Hilary ? Forgive me ; I could not call you by anything but the old name." " She hasn't any other hereabouts," said the farmer, patting her shoulder affectionately. "Our Hilary is Hilary to all the townsfolk still, just as she was in her young days." " She has never outgrown her young days," said Aaron, looking with pleased eye at the Blim figure and gentle, lovable face. "Time has stood more still with her than with anything else. But I'm afraid you have forgotten me, Hilary." She flushed deeply all over her delicate paia face, and her eyes dropped. '• No," she answered, " I have not. Batbut you do not seem the same." And try as she would, through all the days that followed, nhe oould not think him back into hia own place. He was a new Aaron altogether, not the old Aaron whom she had so loved, and to whom Bhe had been so faithful through the years. She could not get used to him. His presence was a continuous shock to her, as if his real and his imaginary self were always at war with each other. This Aaron was too stout, too noisy, too careless, and in too exuberant good spirits. His clothes fitted him too well, and she missed the blue neoktie, and the limp collar, and the big flapping silver chain. And he oarried silk handkerchiefs now, and wore shirts beyond anything her simple skill could fashion. He was very nice, very pleasant ; she found no fault with him as he was : it was only that he was not the Aaron of her dreams, And when one evening, as he was bidding her good-bye, he came nearer and said, gently, " Hilary, will you go West with me this time when I go back?" she trembled violently, and caught away her hand, looking up at him with eyes full of porplexity. " Oh, Aaron, give me time, give me time," she faltered. " I do not know,— l cannot say, — let me think," She sat up late in her own room that night, as she had sat there once so many years before, thinking it all over with a disquiet heart. There was no helpless form stretched on the bed beside her now. There was absolutely no one to keep her back — nothing to keep her from him. She had. been true to him all these years ; she had shut out all other love from her heart because of that lost love of his; and now he had brought it back to her to be hera, and hers always, if she would. How oould she do else than reach out to him the hand that she had given him so many years ago? She looked down at it, fingering the little gold thread nervously. Must she part with that ? Could any shining waddingring evet be dearer to her than that had been? It would be like unsaying an old vow, like canting off an old allegiance, to take this thread away. She went to her desk and took the little daguerreotype from its hiding-plaoe. A faint odor of rose-leaves clung to it, like a tangible emanation from all the gentle and sweet associations with which it had enriohed her life. A tranquilizing sense of peaoe stole over her as she looked down at the dear familiar face that had smiled changelessly back at her for so long. Oh, th i < was the real Aaron,— tint was the Aaron to whom she had given her heart — this was the Aaron who had been with her till he had grown into every fibre of her being. How could she be faithless to him now, giving herself away to that other and different Aaron who had so boldly come in to claim her ? " Oh, no, no ! " she cried aloud, olasping the pioture to her heart with a sudden paroxysm of foolish tears ; " I cannot — I cannot! Aaron, my dear pioture-love, you have been my all when I had no one else, and I will not give you up. This new Aaron is not the same, and if I took him in your plaoe, it would be like divoroing myself from you to marry him ; and I should miss you, oh, I should miss you till I died 1 " And so, merely for sake of a dream which she could not banish, Hilary sent her lover away once more, and stood at the end of her story as at the beginning, watching him as he drove disconsolately down the road, knowing that Bhe should never see hioi again. But he turned this time to wave his hand to her in friendly farewell, feeling vaguely, perhaps, that she was right after all, and that the Hilary he loved would cease to be the same transplanted to foreign soil. And when he had disappeared and the dust had settled quietly down behind him, Hilary turned with a Binile on her lips to re-enter the house. Farmer Perkins stood upon the threshold, watching her somewhat anxiously. She went up to him and laid her hand upon his shoulder. " Aaron is going back to Denver to-inonow," she said, still smiling. "And — I bhall stay behind again." "Hilary, my girl," said the old man earnestly " I've always 3aid it, your made of pretty decent stuff, and" — he took off his spectacles and wiped them carefully — " and I think you'll do, Hilary— you'll do." Grace Dento Lttihjidd, in the Century.

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