“SHE’S a good woman,” said Robina.
“Who’s a good woman?” I asked.
“He’s trying, I expect; although he is an old dear: to live with, I
mean,” continued Robina, addressing apparently the rising moon. “And
then there are all those children.”
“You are thinking of Mrs. St. Leonard,” I suggested.
“There seems no way of making her happy,” explained Robina. “On Thursday
I went round early in the morning to help Janie pack the baskets for the
picnic. It was her own idea, the picnic.”
“Speaking of picnics,” I said.
“You might have thought,” went on Robina, “that she was dressing for her
own funeral. She said she knew she was going to catch her death of cold,
sitting on the wet grass. Something told her. I reminded her it hadn’t
rained for three weeks, and that everything was as dry as a bone, but she
said that made no difference to grass. There is always a moisture in
grass, and that cushions and all that only helped to draw it out. Not
that it mattered. The end had to come, and so long as the others were
happy—you know her style. Nobody ever thought of her. She was to be
dragged here, dragged there. She talked about herself as if she were
some sacred image. It got upon my nerves at last, so that I persuaded
Janie to let me offer to stop at home with her. I wasn’t too keen about
going myself; not by that time.”
“When our desires leave us, says Rochefoucauld,” I remarked, “we pride
ourselves upon our virtue in having overcome them.”
“Well, it was her fault, anyhow,” retorted Robina; “and I didn’t make a
virtue of it. I told her I’d just as soon not go, and that I felt sure
the others would be all right without her, so that there was no need for
her to be dragged anywhere. And then she burst into tears.”
“She said,” I suggested, “that it was hard on her to have children who
could wish to go to a picnic and leave their mother at home; that it was
little enough enjoyment she had in her life, heaven knows; that if there
was one thing she had been looking forward to it was this day’s outing;
but still, of course, if everybody would be happier without her—”
“Something of the sort,” admitted Robina; “only there was a lot of it.
We had to all fuss round her, and swear that without her it wouldn’t be
worth calling a picnic. She brightened up on the way home.”
The screech-owl in the yew-tree emitted a blood-curdling scream. He
perches there each evening on the extreme end of the longest bough.
Dimly outlined against the night, he has the appearance of a friendly
hobgoblin. But I wish he didn’t fancy himself as a vocalist. It is
against his own interests, I am sure, if he only knew it. That American
college yell of his must have the effect of sending every living thing
within half a mile back into its hole. Maybe it is a provision of nature
for clearing off the very old mice who have become stone deaf and would
otherwise be a burden on their relatives. The others, unless out for
suicide, must, one thinks, be tolerably safe. Ethelbertha is persuaded
he is a sign of death; but seeing there isn’t a square quarter of a mile
in this county without its screech-owl, there can hardly by this time be
a resident that an Assurance Society would look at. Veronica likes him.
She even likes his screech. I found her under the tree the other night,
wrapped up in a shawl, trying to learn it. As if one of them were not
enough! It made me quite cross with her. Besides, it wasn’t a bit like
it, as I told her. She said it was better than I could do, anyhow; and I
was idiot enough to take up the challenge. It makes me angry now, when I
think of it: a respectable, middle-aged literary man, standing under a
yew-tree trying to screech like an owl. And the bird was silly enough to
encourage us.
“She was a charming girl,” I said, “seven-and-twenty years ago, when St.
Leonard fell in love with her. She had those dark, dreamy eyes so
suggestive of veiled mysteries; and her lips must have looked bewitching
when they pouted. I expect they often did. They do so still; but the
pout of a woman of forty-six no longer fascinates. To a pretty girl of
nineteen a spice of temper, an illogical unreasonableness, are added
attractions: the scratch of a blue-eyed kitten only tempts us to tease
her the more. Young Hubert St. Leonard—he had curly brown hair, with a
pretty trick of blushing, and was going to conquer the world—found her
fretfulness, her very selfishness adorable: and told her so, kneeling
before her, gazing into her bewildering eyes—only he called it her
waywardness, her imperiousness; begged her for his sake to be more
capricious. Told her how beautiful she looked when displeased. So, no
doubt, she did—at nineteen.”
“He didn’t tell you all that, did he?” demanded Robina.
“Not a word,” I reassured her, “except that she was acknowledged by all
authorities to have been the most beautiful girl in Tunbridge Wells, and
that her father had been ruined by a rascally solicitor. No, I was
merely, to use the phrase of the French police courts, ‘reconstructing
the crime.’”
“It may be all wrong,” grumbled Robina.
“It may be,” I agreed. “But why? Does it strike you as improbable?”
We were sitting in the porch, waiting for Dick to come by the white path
across the field.
“No,” answered Robina. “It all sounds very probable. I wish it didn’t.”
“You must remember,” I continued, “that I am an old playgoer. I have sat
out so many of this world’s dramas. It is as easy to reconstruct them
backwards as forwards. We are witnessing the last act of the St. Leonard
drama: that unsatisfactory last act that merely fills out time after the
play is ended! The intermediate acts were probably more exciting,
containing ‘passionate scenes’ played with much earnestness; chiefly for
the amusement of the servants. But the first act, with the Kentish lanes
and woods for a back-cloth, must have been charming. Here was the devout
lover she had heard of, dreamed of. It is delightful to be regarded as
perfection—not absolute perfection, for that might put a strain upon us
to live up to, but as so near perfection that to be more perfect would
just spoil it. The spots upon us, that unappreciative friends and
relations would magnify into blemishes, seen in their true light:
artistic shading relieving a faultlessness that might otherwise prove too
glaring. Dear Hubert found her excellent just as she was in every
detail. It would have been a crime against Love for her to seek to
change herself.”
“Well, then, it was his fault,” argued Robina. “If he was silly enough
to like her faults, and encourage her in them—”
“What could he have done,” I asked, “even if he had seen them? A lover
does not point out his mistress’s shortcomings to her.”
“Much the more sensible plan if he did,” insisted Robina. “Then if she
cared for him she could set to work to cure herself.”
“You would like it?” I said; “you would appreciate it in your own case?
Can you imagine young Bute—?”
“Why young Bute?” demanded Robina; “what’s he got to do with it?”
“Nothing,” I answered; “except that he happens to be the first male
creature you have ever come across since you were six that you haven’t
flirted with.”
“I don’t flirt with them,” said Robina; “I merely try to be nice to
them.”
“With the exception of young Bute,” I persisted.
“He irritates me,” Robina explained.
“I was reading,” I said, “the other day, an account of the marriage
customs prevailing among the Lower Caucasians. The lover takes his stand
beneath his lady’s window, and, having attracted her attention, proceeds
to sing. And if she seems to like it—if she listens to it without
getting mad, that means she doesn’t want him. But if she gets upset
about it—slams down the window and walks away, then it’s all right. I
think it’s the Lower Caucasians.”
“Must be a very silly people,” said Robina; “I suppose a pail of water
would be the highest proof of her affection he could hope for.”
“A complex being, man,” I agreed. “We will call him X. Can you imagine
young X coming to you and saying: ‘My dear Robina, you have many
excellent qualities. You can be amiable—so long as you are having your
own way in everything; but thwarted you can be just horrid. You are very
kind—to those who are willing for you to be kind to them in your own way,
which is not always their way. You can be quite unselfish—when you
happen to be in an unselfish mood, which is far from frequent. You are
capable and clever, but, like most capable and clever people, impatient
and domineering; highly energetic when not feeling lazy; ready to forgive
the moment your temper is exhausted. You are generous and frank, but if
your object could only be gained through meanness or deceit you would not
hesitate a moment longer than was necessary to convince yourself that the
circumstances justified the means. You are sympathetic, tender-hearted,
and have a fine sense of justice; but I can see that tongue of yours, if
not carefully watched, wearing decidedly shrewish. You have any amount
of grit. A man might go tiger-hunting with you—with no one better; but
you are obstinate, conceited, and exacting. In short, to sum you up, you
have all the makings in you of an ideal wife combined with faults
sufficient to make a Socrates regret he’d ever married you.’”
“Yes, I would!” said Robina, springing to her feet. I could not see her
face, but I knew there was the look upon it that made Primgate want to
paint her as Joan of Arc; only it would never stop long enough. “I’d
love him for talking like that. And I’d respect him. If he was that
sort of man I’d pray God to help me to be the sort of woman he wanted me
to be. I’d try. I’d try all day long. I would!”
“I wonder,” I said. Robina had surprised me. I admit it. I thought I
knew the sex better.
“Any girl would,” said Robina. “He’d be worth it.”
“It would be a new idea,” I mused. “_Gott im Himmel_! what a new world
might it not create!” The fancy began to take hold of me. “Love no
longer blind. Love refusing any more to be the poor blind fool—sport of
gods and men. Love no longer passion’s slave. His bonds broken, the
senseless bandage flung aside. Love helping life instead of muddling it.
Marriage, the foundation of civilisation, no longer reared upon the sands
of lies and illusions, but grappled to the rock of truth—reality. Have
you ever read ‘Tom Jones?’” I said.
“No,” answered Robina; “I’ve always heard it wasn’t a nice book.”
“It isn’t,” I said. “Man isn’t a nice animal, not all of him. Nor woman
either. There’s a deal of the beast in man. What can you expect? Till
a few paltry thousands of years ago he _was_ a beast, fighting with other
beasts, his fellow denizens of the woods and caves; watching for his
prey, crouched in the long grass of the river’s bank, tearing it with
claws and teeth, growling as he ate. So he lived and died through the
dim unnamed ages, transmitting his beast’s blood, his bestial instincts,
to his offspring, growing ever stronger, fiercer, from generation to
generation, while the rocks piled up their strata and the oceans shaped
their beds. Moses! Why, Lord Rothschild’s great-grandfather, a few
score times removed, must have known Moses, talked with him. Babylon!
It is a modern city, fallen into disuse for the moment, owing to
alteration of traffic routes. History! it is a tale of to-day. Man was
crawling about the world on all fours, learning to be an animal for
millions of years before the secret of his birth was whispered to him.
It is only during the last few centuries that he has been trying to be a
man. Our modern morality! Why, compared with the teachings of nature,
it is but a few days old. What do you expect? That he shall forget the
lessons of the æons at the bidding of the hours?”
“Then you advise me to read ‘Tom Jones’?” said Robina.
“Yes,” I said, “I do. I should not if I thought you were still a child,
knowing only blind trust, or blind terror. The sun is not extinguished
because occasionally obscured by mist; the scent of the rose is not dead
because of the worm in the leaf. A healthy rose can afford a few
worms—has got to, anyhow. All men are not Tom Joneses. The standard of
masculine behaviour continues to go up: many of us make fine efforts to
conform to it, and some of us succeed. But the Tom Jones is there in all
of us who are not anæmic or consumptive. And there’s no sense at all in
getting cross with us about it, because we cannot help it. We are doing
our best. In another hundred thousand years or so, provided all goes
well, we shall be the perfect man. And seeing our early training, I
flatter myself that, up to the present, we have done remarkably well.”
“Nothing like being satisfied with oneself,” said Robina.
“I’m not satisfied,” I said; “I’m only hopeful. But it irritates me when
I hear people talk as though man had been born a white-souled angel and
was making supernatural efforts to become a sinner. That seems to me the
way to discourage him. What he wants is bucking up; somebody to say to
him, ‘Bravo! why, this is splendid! Just think, my boy, what you were,
and that not so very long ago—an unwashed, hairy savage; your law that of
the jungle, your morals those of the rabbit-warren. Now look at
yourself—dressed in your little shiny hat, your trousers neatly creased,
walking with your wife to church on Sunday! Keep on—that’s all you’ve
got to do. In a few more centuries your own mother Nature won’t know
you.’
“You women,” I continued; “why, a handful of years ago we bought and sold
you, kept you in cages, took the stick to you when you were not spry in
doing what you were told. Did you ever read the history of Patient
Griselda?”
“Yes,” said Robina, “I have.” I gathered from her tone that the Joan of
Arc expression had departed. Had Primgate wanted to paint her at that
particular moment I should have suggested Katherine—during the earlier
stages—listening to a curtain lecture from Petruchio. “Are you
suggesting that all women should take her for a model?”
“No,” I said, “I’m not. Though were we living in Chaucer’s time I might;
and you would not think it even silly. What I’m impressing upon you is
that the human race has yet a little way to travel before the average man
can be regarded as an up-to-date edition of King Arthur—the King Arthur
of the poetical legend, I mean. Don’t be too impatient with him.”
“Thinking what a beast he has been ought to make him impatient himself
with himself,” considered Robina. “He ought to be feeling so ashamed of
himself as to be willing to do anything.”
The owl in the old yew screamed, whether with indignation or amusement I
cannot tell.
“And woman,” I said, “had the power been hers, would she have used it to
sweeter purpose? Where is your evidence? Your Cleopatras, Pompadours,
Jezebels; your Catherines of Russia, late Empresses of China; your
Faustines of all ages and all climes; your Mother Brownriggs; your
Lucretia Borgias, Salomes—I could weary you with names. Your Roman
task-mistresses; your drivers of lodging-house slaveys; your ladies who
whipped their pages to death in the Middle Ages; your modern dames of
fashion, decked with the plumage of the tortured grove. There have been
other women also—noble women, their names like beacon-lights studding the
dark waste of history. So there have been noble men—saints, martyrs,
heroes. The sex-line divides us physically, not morally. Woman has been
man’s accomplice in too many crimes to claim to be his judge. ‘Male and
female created He them’—like and like, for good and evil.”
By good fortune I found a loose match. I lighted a fresh cigar.
“Dick, I suppose, is the average man,” said Robina.
“Most of us are,” I said, “when we are at home. Carlyle was the average
man in the little front parlour in Cheyne Row, though, to hear fools
talk, you might think no married couple outside literary circles had ever
been known to exchange a cross look. So was Oliver Cromwell in his own
palace with the door shut. Mrs. Cromwell must have thought him monstrous
silly, placing sticky sweetmeats for his guests to sit on—told him so,
most likely. A cheery, kindly man, notwithstanding, though given to
moods. He and Mrs. Cromwell seem to have rubbed along, on the whole,
pretty well together. Old Sam Johnson—great, God-fearing, lovable,
cantankerous old brute! Life with him, in a small house on a limited
income, must have had its ups and downs. Milton and Frederick the Great
were, one hopes, a little below the average. Did their best, no doubt;
lacked understanding. Not so easy as it looks, living up to the standard
of the average man. Very clever people, in particular, find it tiring.”
“I shall never marry,” said Robina. “At least, I hope I sha’n’t.”
“Why ‘hope’?” I asked.
“Because I hope I shall never be idiot enough,” she answered. “I see it
all so clearly. I wish I didn’t. Love! it’s only an ugly thing with a
pretty name. It will not be me that he will fall in love with. He will
not know me until it is too late. How can he? It will be merely with
the outside of me—my pink-and-white skin, my rounded arms. I feel it
sometimes when I see men looking at me, and it makes me mad. And at
other times the admiration in their eyes pleases me. And that makes me
madder still.”
The moon had slipped behind the wood. She had risen, and, leaning
against the porch, was standing with her hands clasped. I fancy she had
forgotten me. She seemed to be talking to the night.
“It’s only a trick of Nature to make fools of us,” she said. “He will
tell me I am all the world to him; that his love will outlive the
stars—will believe it himself at the time, poor fellow! He will call me
a hundred pretty names, will kiss my feet and hands. And if I’m fool
enough to listen to him, it may last”—she laughed; it was rather an ugly
laugh—“six months; with luck perhaps a year, if I’m careful not to go out
in the east wind and come home with a red nose, and never let him catch
me in curl papers. It will not be me that he will want: only my youth,
and the novelty of me, and the mystery. And when that is gone—”
She turned to me. It was a strange face I saw then in the pale light,
quite a fierce little face. She laid her hands upon my shoulders, and I
felt them cold. “What comes when it is dead?” she said. “What follows?
You must know. Tell me. I want the truth.”
Her vehemence had arisen so suddenly. The little girl I had set out to
talk with was no longer there. To my bewilderment, it was a woman that
was questioning me.
I drew her down beside me. But the childish face was still stern.
“I want the truth,” she said; so that I answered very gravely:
“When the passion is passed; when the glory and the wonder of
Desire—Nature’s eternal ritual of marriage, solemnising, sanctifying it
to her commands—is ended; when, sooner or later, some grey dawn finds you
wandering bewildered in once familiar places, seeking vainly the lost
palace of youth’s dreams; when Love’s frenzy is faded, like the fragrance
of the blossom, like the splendour of the dawn; there will remain to you,
just what was there before—no more, no less. If passion was all you had
to give to one another, God help you. You have had your hour of madness.
It is finished. If greed of praise and worship was your price—well, you
have had your payment. The bargain is complete. If mere hope to be made
happy was your lure, one pities you. We do not make each other happy.
Happiness is the gift of the gods, not of man. The secret lies within
you, not without. What remains to you will depend not upon what you
_thought_, but upon what you _are_. If behind the lover there was the
man—behind the impossible goddess of his love-sick brain some honest,
human woman, then life lies not behind you, but before you.
“Life is giving, not getting. That is the mistake we most of us set out
with. It is the work that is the joy, not the wages; the game, not the
score. The lover’s delight is to yield, not to claim. The crown of
motherhood is pain. To serve the State at cost of ease and leisure; to
spend his thought and labour upon a hundred schemes, is the man’s
ambition. Life is doing, not having. It is to gain the peak the climber
strives, not to possess it. Fools marry thinking what they are going to
get out of it: good store of joys and pleasure, opportunities for
self-indulgence, eternal soft caresses—the wages of the wanton. The
rewards of marriage are toil, duty, responsibility—manhood, womanhood.
Love’s baby talk you will have outgrown. You will no longer be his
‘Goddess,’ ‘Angel,’ ‘Popsy Wopsy,’ ‘Queen of his heart.’ There are finer
names than these: wife, mother, priestess in the temple of humanity.
Marriage is renunciation, the sacrifice of Self upon the altar of the
race. ‘A trick of Nature’ you call it. Perhaps. But a trick of Nature
compelling you to surrender yourself to the purposes of God.”
I fancy we must have sat in silence for quite a long while; for the moon,
creeping upward past the wood, had flooded the fields again with light
before Robina spoke.
“Then all love is needless,” she said, “we could do better without it,
choose with more discretion. If it is only something that worries us for
a little while and then passes, what is the sense of it?”
“You could ask the same question of Life itself,” I said; “‘something
that worries us for a little while, then passes.’ Perhaps the ‘worry,’
as you call it, has its uses. Volcanic upheavals are necessary to the
making of a world. Without them the ground would remain rock-bound,
unfitted for its purposes. That explosion of Youth’s pent-up forces that
we term Love serves to the making of man and woman. It does not die, it
takes new shape. The blossom fades as the fruit forms. The passion
passes to give place to peace. The trembling lover has become the
helper, the comforter, the husband.”
“But the failures,” Robina persisted; “I do not mean the silly or the
wicked people; but the people who begin by really loving one another,
only to end in disliking—almost hating one another. How do _they_ get
there?”
“Sit down,” I said, “and I will tell you a story.
“Once upon a time there was a girl, and a boy who loved her. She was a
clever, brilliant girl, and she had the face of an angel. They lived
near to one another, seeing each other almost daily. But the boy, awed
by the difference of their social position, kept his secret, as he
thought, to himself; dreaming, as youth will, of the day when fame and
wealth would bridge the gulf between them. The kind look in her eyes,
the occasional seeming pressure of her hand, he allowed to feed his
hopes; and on the morning of his departure for London an incident
occurred that changed his vague imaginings to set resolve. He had sent
on his scanty baggage by the carrier, intending to walk the three miles
to the station. It was early in the morning, and he had not expected to
meet a soul. But a mile from the village he overtook her. She was
reading a book, but she made no pretence that the meeting was accidental,
leaving him to form what conclusions he would. She walked with him some
distance, and he told her of his plans and hopes; and she answered him
quite simply that she should always remember him, always be more glad
than she could tell to hear of his success. Near the end of the lane
they parted, she wishing him in that low sweet woman’s voice of hers all
things good. He turned, a little farther on, and found that she had also
turned. She waved her hand to him, smiling. And through the long day’s
journey and through many days to come there remained with him that
picture of her, bringing with it the scent of the pine-woods: her white
hand waving to him, her sweet eyes smiling wistfully.
“But fame and fortune are not won so quickly as boys dream, nor is life
as easy to live bravely as it looks in visions. It was nearly twenty
years before they met again. Neither had married. Her people were dead
and she was living alone; and to him the world at last had opened her
doors. She was still beautiful. A gracious, gentle lady, she had grown;
clothed with that soft sweet dignity that Time bestows upon rare women,
rendering them fairer with the years.
“To the man it seemed a miracle. The dream of those early days came back
to him. Surely there was nothing now to separate them. Nothing had
changed but the years, bringing to them both wider sympathies, calmer,
more enduring emotions. She welcomed him again with the old kind smile,
a warmer pressure of the hand; and, allowing a little time to pass for
courtesy’s sake, he told her what was the truth: that he had never ceased
to love her, never ceased to keep the vision of her fair pure face before
him, his ideal of all that man could find of help in womanhood. And her
answer, until years later he read the explanation, remained a mystery to
him. She told him that she loved him, that she had never loved any other
man and never should; that his love, for so long as he chose to give it
to her, she should always prize as the greatest gift of her life. But
with that she prayed him to remain content.
“He thought perhaps it was a touch of woman’s pride, of hurt dignity that
he had kept silent so long, not trusting her; that perhaps as time went
by she would change her mind. But she never did; and after awhile,
finding that his persistence only pained her, he accepted the situation.
She was not the type of woman about whom people talk scandal, nor would
it have troubled her much had they done so. Able now to work where he
would, he took a house in a neighbouring village, where for the best part
of the year he lived, near to her. And to the end they remained lovers.”
“I think I understand,” said Robina. “I will tell you afterwards if I am
wrong.”
“I told the story to a woman many years ago,” I said, “and she also
thought she understood. But she was only half right.”
“We will see,” said Robina. “Go on.”
“She left a letter, to be given to him after her death, in case he
survived her; if not, to be burned unopened. In it she told him her
reason, or rather her reasons, for having refused him. It was an odd
letter. The ‘reasons’ sounded so pitiably insufficient. Until one took
the pains to examine them in the cold light of experience. And then her
letter struck one, not as foolish, but as one of the grimmest
commentaries upon marriage that perhaps had ever been penned.
“It was because she had wished always to remain his ideal; to keep their
love for one another to the end, untarnished; to be his true helpmeet in
all things, that she had refused to marry him.
“Had he spoken that morning she had waited for him in the lane—she had
half hoped, half feared it—she might have given her promise: ‘For Youth,’
so she wrote, ‘always dreams it can find a new way.’ She thanked God
that he had not.
“‘Sooner or later,’ so ran the letter, ‘you would have learned, Dear,
that I was neither saint nor angel; but just a woman—such a tiresome,
inconsistent creature; she would have exasperated you—full of a thousand
follies and irritabilities that would have marred for you all that was
good in her. I wanted you to have of me only what was worthy, and this
seemed the only way. Counting the hours to your coming, hating the pain
of your going, I could always give to you my best. The ugly words, the
whims and frets that poison speech—they could wait; it was my lover’s
hour.
“‘And you, Dear, were always so tender, so gay. You brought me joy with
both your hands. Would it have been the same, had you been my husband?
How could it? There were times, even as it was, when you vexed me.
Forgive me, Dear, I mean it was my fault—ways of thought and action that
did not fit in with my ways, that I was not large-minded enough to pass
over. As my lover, they were but as spots upon the sun. It was easy to
control the momentary irritation that they caused me. Time was too
precious for even a moment of estrangement. As my husband, the jarring
note would have been continuous, would have widened into discord. You
see, Dear, I was not great enough to love _all_ of you. I remember, as a
child, how indignant I always felt with God when my nurse told me He
would not love me because I was naughty, that He only loved good
children. It seemed such a poor sort of love, that. Yet that is
precisely how we men and women do love; taking only what gives us
pleasure, repaying the rest with anger. There would have arisen the
unkind words that can never be recalled; the ugly silences; the gradual
withdrawing from one another. I dared not face it.
“‘It was not all selfishness. Truthfully I can say I thought more of you
than of myself. I wanted to keep the shadows of life away from you. We
men and women are like the flowers. It is in sunshine that we come to
our best. You were my hero. I wanted you to be great. I wanted you to
be surrounded by lovely dreams. I wanted your love to be a thing holy,
helpful to you.’
“It was a long letter. I have given you the gist of it.”
Again there was a silence between us.
“You think she did right?” asked Robina.
“I cannot say,” I answered; “there are no rules for Life, only for the
individual.”
“I have read it somewhere,” said Robina—“where was it?—‘Love suffers all
things, and rejoices.’”
“Maybe in old Thomas Kempis. I am not sure,” I said.
“It seems to me,” said Robina, “that the explanation lies in that one
sentence of hers: ‘I was not great enough to love _all_ of you.’”
“It seems to me,” I said, “that the whole art of marriage is the art of
getting on with the other fellow. It means patience, self-control,
forbearance. It means the laying aside of our self-conceit and admitting
to ourselves that, judged by eyes less partial than our own, there may be
much in us that is objectionable, that calls for alteration. It means
toleration for views and opinions diametrically opposed to our most
cherished convictions. It means, of necessity, the abandonment of many
habits and indulgences that however trivial have grown to be important to
us. It means the shaping of our own desires to the needs of others; the
acceptance often of surroundings and conditions personally distasteful to
us. It means affection deep and strong enough to bear away the ugly
things of life—its quarrels, wrongs, misunderstandings—swiftly and
silently into the sea of forgetfulness. It means courage, good humour,
commonsense.”
“That is what I am saying,” explained Robina. “It means loving him even
when he’s naughty.”
Dick came across the fields. Robina rose and slipped into the house.
“You are looking mighty solemn, Dad,” said Dick.
“Thinking of Life, Dick,” I confessed. “Of the meaning and the
explanation of it.”
“Yes, it’s a problem, Life,” admitted Dick.
“A bit of a teaser,” I agreed.
We smoked in silence for awhile.
“Loving a good woman must be a tremendous help to a man,” said Dick.
He looked very handsome, very gallant, his boyish face flashing challenge
to the Fates.
“Tremendous, Dick,” I agreed.
Robina called to him that his supper was ready. He knocked the ashes
from his pipe, and followed her into the house. Their laughing voices
came to me broken through the half-closed doors. From the night around
me rose a strange low murmur. It seemed to me as though above the
silence I heard the far-off music of the Mills of God.