And Desire?
Do you think I have passed her over lightly in her troubles? Or do
you think I am making her out to have herself passed over them
lightly?
Do you think it is hardly to be believed that she should have turned
round from these shocks and pains that bore down so heavily and all
at once upon her, and taken kindly to the living with old Uncle
Titus and Rachel Froke in the Greenley Street house, and going down
to Luclarion Grapp's to help wash little children's faces, and teach
them how to have innocent good times? Do you think there is little
making up in all that for her, while Rosamond Kincaid is happy in
her new home, and Ruth and Dakie Thayne are looking out together
over the world,--which can be nowhere wholly sad to them, since they
are to go down into it together,--and planning how to make long arms
with their wealth, to reach the largest neighborhood they can? In
the first place, do you know how full the world is, all around you,
of things that are missed by those who say nothing, but go on living
somehow without them? Do you know how large a part of life, even
young life, is made of the days that have never been lived? Do you
guess how many girls, like Desire, come near something that they
think they might have had, and then see it drift by just beyond
their reach, to fall easily into some other hand that seems hardly
put out to grasp it?
And do you see, or feel, or guess how life goes on, incompleteness
and all, and things settle themselves one way, if not another,
simply because the world does not stop, but keeps turning, and
tossing off days and nights like time-bubbles just the same?
Do you ever imagine how different this winter's parties are from
last, or this summer's visit or journey from those of the summer
gone,--to many a maiden who has her wardrobe made up all the same,
and takes her German or her music lessons, and goes in and out, and
has her ticket to the Symphony Concerts, and is no different to look
at, unless perhaps with a little of the first color-freshness gone
out of her face,--while secretly it seems to her as if the sweet
early symphony of her life were all played out, and had ended in a
discord?
We begin, most of us, much as we are to go on. Real or mistaken, the
experiences of eighteen initiate the lesson that those of two and
three score after years are needed to unfold and complete. What is
left of us is continually turning round, perforce, to take up with
what is left of the world, and make the best of it.
Thus much for what does happen, for what we have to put up with, for
the mere philosophy of endurance, and the possibility of things
being endured. We do live out our years, and get and bear it all.
And the scars do not show much outside; nay, even we ourselves can
lay a finger on the place, after a little time, without a cringe.
Desire Ledwith did what she had to do; there was a way made for her,
and there was still life left.
But there is a better reading of the riddle. There is never a
"Might-have-been" that touches with a sting, but reveals also to us
an inner glimpse of the wide and beautiful "May Be." It is all
there; somebody else has it now while we wait; but the years of God
are full of satisfying, each soul shall have its turn; it is His
good _pleasure_ to give us the kingdom. There is so much room, there
are such thronging possibilities, there is such endless hope!
To feel this, one must feel, however dimly, the inner realm, out of
which the shadows of this life come and pass, to interpret to us the
laid up reality.
"The real world is the inside world."
Desire Ledwith blessed Uncle Oldways in her heart for giving her
that word.
It comforted her for her father. If his life here had been hard,
toilsome, mistaken even; if it had never come to that it might have
come to; if she, his own child, had somehow missed the reality of
him here, and he of her,--was he not passed now into the within?
Might she not find him there; might they not silently and
spiritually, without sign, but needing no sign, begin to understand
each other now? Was not the real family just beginning to be born
into the real home?
Ah, that word _real_! How deep we have to go to find the root of it!
It is fast by the throne of God; in the midst.
Hazel Ripwinkley talked about "real folks." She sifted, and she
found out instinctively the true livers, the genuine _neahburs_,
nigh-dwellers; they who abide alongside in spirit, who shall find
each other in the everlasting neighborhood, when the veil falls.
But there, behind,--how little, in our petty outside vexations or
gladnesses, we stop to think of or perceive it!--is the actual, even
the present, inhabiting; there is the kingdom, the continuing city,
the real heaven and earth in which we already live and labor, and
build up our homes and lay up our treasure and the loving Christ,
and the living Father, and the innumerable company of angels, and
the unseen compassing about of friends gone in there, and they on
this earth who truly belong to us inwardly, however we and they may
be bodily separated,--are the Real Folks!
What matters a little pain, outside? Go _in_, and rest from it!
There is where the joy is, that we read outwardly, spelling by
parts imperfectly, in our own and others' mortal experience; there
is the content of homes, the beauty of love, the delight of
friendship,--not shut in to any one or two, but making the common
air that all souls breathe. No one heart can be happy, that all
hearts may not have a share of it. Rosamond and Kenneth, Dakie and
Ruth, cannot live out obviously any sweetness of living, cannot
sing any notes of the endless, beautiful score, that Desire
Ledwith, and Luclarion Grapp, and Rachel Froke, and Hapsie
Craydocke, and old Miss Arabel Waite, do not just as truly get the
blessed grace and understanding of; do not catch and feel the
perfect and abounding harmony of. Since why? No lip can sound more
than its own few syllables of music; no life show more than its
own few accidents and incidents and groupings; the vast melody,
the rich, eternal satisfying, are behind; and the signs are for us
all!
You may not think this, or see it so, in your first tussle and
set-to with the disappointing and eluding things that seem the real
and only,--missing which you miss all. This chapter may be less to
you--less _for_ you, perhaps--than for your elders; the story may
have ended, as to that you care for, some pages back; but for all
that, this is certain; and Desire Ledwith has begun to find it, for
she is one of those true, grand spirits to whom personal loss or
frustration are most painful as they seem to betoken something
wrong or failed in the general scheme and justice. This terrible
"why should it be?" once answered,--once able to say to themselves
quietly, "It is all right; the beauty and the joy are there; the
song is sung, though we are of the listeners; the miracle-play is
played, though but a few take literal part, and many of us look on,
with the play, like the song, moving through our souls only, or our
souls moving in the vital sphere of it, where the stage is wide
enough for all;"--once come to this, they have entered already into
that which is behind, and nothing of all that goes forth thence into
the earth to make its sunshine can be shut off from them forever.
Desire is learning to be glad, thinking of Kenneth and Rosamond,
that this fair marriage should have been. It is so just and exactly
best; Rosamond's sweet graciousness is so precisely what Kenneth's
sterner way needed to have shine upon it; her finding and making of
all manner of pleasantness will be so good against his sharp
discernment of the wrong; they will so beautifully temper and
sustain each other!
Desire is so generous, so glad of the truth, that she can stand
aside, and let this better thing be, and say to herself that it _is_
better.
Is not this that she is growing to inwardly, more blessed than any
marriage or giving in marriage? Is it not a partaking of the
heavenly Marriage Supper?
"We two might have grumbled at the world until we grumbled at each
other."
She even said that, calmly and plainly, to herself.
And then that manna was fed to her afresh of which she had been
given first to eat so long a while ago; that thought of "the Lamb in
the midst of the Throne" came back to her. Of the Tenderness deep
within the Almightiness that holds all earth and heaven and time and
circumstance in its grasp. Her little, young, ignorant human heart
begins to rest in that great warmth and gentleness; begins to be
glad to wait there for what shall arise out of it, moving the
Almightiness for her,--even on purpose for her,--in the by-and-by;
she begins to be sure; of what, she knows not,--but of a great,
blessed, beautiful something, that just because she is at all, shall
be for her; that she shall have a part, somehow, even in the
_showing_ of His good; that into the beautiful miracle-play she
shall be called, and a new song be given her, also, to sing in the
grand, long, perfect oratorio; she begins to pray quietly, that,
"loving the Lord, always above all things, she may obtain His
promises, which exceed all that she can desire."
And waiting, resting, believing, she begins also to work. This
beginning is even as an ending and forehaving, to any human soul.
I will tell you how she woke one morning; of a little poem that
wrote itself along her chamber wall.
It was a square, pleasant old room, with a window in an angle toward
the east. A great, old-fashioned mirror hung opposite, between the
windows that looked out north-westwardly; the morning and the
evening light came in upon her. Beside the solid, quaint old
furnishings of a long past time, there were also around her the
things she had been used to at home; her own little old
rocking-chair, her desk and table, and her toilet and mantel
ornaments and things of use. A pair of candle-branches with dropping
lustres,--that she had marveled at and delighted in as a child, and
had begged for herself when they fell into disuse in the
drawing-room,--stood upon the chimney along which the first
sun-rays glanced. Just in those days of the year, they struck in so
as to shine level through the clear prisms, and break into a hundred
little rainbows.
She opened her eyes, this fair October morning, and lay and looked
at the little scattered glories.
All around the room, on walls, curtains, ceiling,--falling like
bright soft jewels upon table and floor, touching everything with a
magic splendor,--were globes and shafts of colored light. Softly
blended from glowing red to tenderly fervid blue, they lay in
various forms and fragments, as the beam refracted or the objects
caught them.
Just on the edge of the deep, opposite window-frame, clung one
vivid, separate flash of perfect azure, all alone, and farthest off
of all.
Desire wondered, at first glance, how it should happen till she saw,
against a closet-door ajar, a gibbous sphere of red and golden
flame. Yards apart the points were, and a shadow lay between; but
the one sure sunbeam knew no distance, and there was no radiant line
of the spectrum lost.
Desire remembered her old comparison of complementary colors: "to
see blue, and to live red," she had said, complaining.
But now she thought,--"Foreshortening! In so many things, that is
all,--if we could only see as the Sun sees!"
One bit of our living, by itself, all one deep, burning, bleeding
color, maybe; but the globe is white,--the blue is somewhere. And,
lo! a soft, still motion; a little of the flame-tint has dropped
off; it has leaped to join itself to the blue; it gives itself over;
and they are beautiful together,--they fulfill each other; yet, in
the changing never a thread falls quite away into the dark. Why, it
is like love joining itself to love again!
As God's sun climbs the horizon, His steadfast, gracious purpose,
striking into earthly conditions, seems to break, and scatter, and
divide. Half our heart is here, half there; our need and ache are
severed from their help and answer; the tender blue waits far off
for the eager, asking red; yet just as surely as His light shines
on, and our life moves under it, so surely, across whatever gulf,
the beauty shall all be one again; so surely does it even now move
all together, perfect and close always under His eye, who never
sends a _half_ ray anywhere.
* * * * *
She read her little poem,--sent to her; she read it through. She
rose up glad and strong; her room was full of glorious sunshine now;
the broken bits of color were all taken up in one full pouring of
the day.
She went down with the light of it in her heart, and all about her.
Uncle Oldways met her at the foot of the wide staircase. "Good-day,
child!" he said to her in his quaint fashion. "Why it _is_ good day!
Your face shines."
"You have given me a beautiful east window, uncle," said Desire,
"and the morning has come in!"
And from the second step, where she still stood, she bent forward a
little, put her hands softly upon his shoulders, and for the first
time, kissed his cheek.