'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."
**** came across the fields. Robina rose and slipped into the house.
"You are looking mighty solemn, Dad," said ****.
"Thinking of Life, ****," I confessed. "Of the meaning and the explanation of it."
"Yes, it's a problem, Life," admitted ****.
"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 ****.
He looked very handsome, very gallant, his boyish face flashing challenge to the Fates.
"Tremendous, ****," 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.