"Perhaps, I am not of the stuff that conquerors are made," he went on. "Perhaps, if I were, I should be thinking differently. It comes to me sometimes that I may be one of those intended only to prepare the way--that for me there may be only the endless struggle. I may have to face unpopularity, abuse, failure. She won't mind.""Nor would you," he added, turning to her suddenly for the first time, "I know that. But I should be afraid--for you."She had listened to him without interrupting, and even now she did not speak for a while.
It was hard not to. She wanted to tell him that he was all wrong--at least, so far as she was concerned. It. was not the conqueror she loved in him; it was the fighter. Not in the hour of triumph but in the hour of despair she would have yearned to put her arms about him. "Unpopularity, abuse, failure," it was against the fear of such that she would have guarded him. Yes, she had dreamed of leadership, influence, command. But it was the leadership of the valiant few against the hosts of the oppressors that she claimed.
Wealth, honours! Would she have given up a life of ease, shut herself off from society, if these had been her standards?
"Mesalliance!" Had the male animal no instinct, telling it when it was loved with all a woman's being, so that any other union would be her degradation.
It was better for him he should think as he did. She rose and held out her hand.
"I will stay with her for a little while," she said. "Till I feel there is no more need. Then I must get back to work."He looked into her eyes, holding her hand, and she felt his body trembling. She knew he was about to speak, and held up a warning hand.
"That's all, my lad," she said with a smile. "My love to you, and God speed you."Mrs. Phillips progressed slowly but steadily. Life was returning to her, but it was not the same. Out of those days there had come to her a gentle dignity, a strengthening and refining. The face, now pale and drawn, had lost its foolishness. Under the thin, white hair, and in spite of its deep lines, it had grown younger.
A great patience, a child-like thoughtfulness had come into the quiet eyes.
She was sitting by the window, her hands folded. Joan had been reading to her, and the chapter finished, she had closed the book and her thoughts had been wandering. Mrs. Phillips's voice recalled them.
"Do you remember that day, my dear," she said, "when we went furnishing together. And I would have all the wrong things. And you let me.""Yes," answered Joan with a laugh. "They were pretty awful, some of them.""I was just wondering," she went on. "It was a pity, wasn't it? Iwas silly and began to cry."
"I expect that was it," Joan confessed. "It interferes with our reason at times.""It was only a little thing, of course, that," she answered. "But I've been thinking it must be that that's at the bottom of it all;and that is why God lets there be weak things--children and little animals and men and women in pain, that we feel sorry for, so that people like you and Robert and so many others are willing to give up all your lives to helping them. And that is what He wants.""Perhaps God cannot help there being weak things," answered Joan.
"Perhaps He, too, is sorry for them."
"It comes to the same thing, doesn't it, dear?" she answered.
"They are there, anyhow. And that is how He knows those who are willing to serve Him: by their being pitiful."They fell into a silence. Joan found herself dreaming.
Yes, it was true. It must have been the beginning of all things.
Man, pitiless, deaf, blind, groping in the darkness, knowing not even himself. And to her vision, far off, out of the mist, he shaped himself before her: that dim, first standard-bearer of the Lord, the man who first felt pity. Savage, brutish, dumb--lonely there amid the desolation, staring down at some hurt creature, man or beast it mattered not, his dull eyes troubled with a strange new pain he understood not.
And suddenly, as he stooped, there must have come a great light into his eyes.
Man had heard God's voice across the deep, and had made answer.