Part 17 (1/2)
Sometimes, into two hearts great enough to hold it, and into two souls where it may forever abide, there comes the Everlasting Love. It is elemental, like fire and the sea, with the depth and splendour of the surge and the glory of the flame. It makes the world a vast cathedral, in which they two may wors.h.i.+p, and where, even in the darkness, there is the peace which pa.s.seth all understanding, because it is of G.o.d.
When the time of parting comes, for there is always that turning in the road, the sadness is not so great because one must go on alone. Life grows beautiful after a time and even wholly sweet, when a man and a woman have so lived and loved and worked together, that death is not good-bye, but rather--”auf wiedersehen.”
The Consolations of Spinsterhood
[Ill.u.s.tration]
The Consolations of Spinsterhood
[Sidenote: ”A Great Miration”]
The attached members of the community are wont to make what Uncle Remus called ”a great miration,” when a woman deliberately chooses spinsterhood as her lot in life, rather than marriage.
There is an implied pity in their delicate inquiries, and always the insinuation that the spinster in question could never have had an offer of marriage. The husband of the lady leading the inquisition may have been one of the spinster's first admirers, but it is never safe to say so, for so simple a thing as this has been known to cause trouble in families.
If it is known positively that some man has offered her his name and his troubles, and there is still no solitaire to be seen, the logical hypothesis is charitably advanced, that she has been ”disappointed in love.” It is possible for a spinster to be disappointed in lovers, but only the married are ever disappointed in love.
[Sidenote: A Cause of Stagnation]
The married women who ask the questions and who, with gracious kindness, hunt up attractive men for the unfortunate young woman to meet, are, all unknowingly, one great cause of stagnation in the marriage-license market.
Nothing so pleases a woman safely inside the bonds of holy matrimony as to confide her sorrows, her regrets, and her broken ideals to her unattached friends. Many a woman thinks her ideal is broken when it is only sprained, but the effect is the same.
Was the coffee weak and were the waffles cold, and did Monsieur express his opinion of such a breakfast in language more concise than elegant?
Madame weeps, and gives a lurid account of the event to the visiting spinster. By any chance, does a girl go from her own dainty and orderly room into an apartment strewn with masculine belongings, confounded upon confusion such as Milton never dreamed? Does she have to wait while her friend restores order to the chaos? If so, she puts it down in her mental note-book, upon the page headed ”Against.”
The small domestic irritations which crowd upon the attached woman from day to day, leaving crow's feet around her eyes and delicate tracery in her forehead, have a certain effect upon the observing. But worse than this is the spectre of ”the other woman,” which haunts her friend from day to day, to the grave--and after, if the dead could tell their thoughts.
If she has been safely s.h.i.+elded from books which were not written for The Young Person, Mademoiselle believes that marriage is a bond which is not to be broken except by death. It is a severe shock when she first discovers that death changes nothing; that it is only life which separates utterly.
[Sidenote: That Pitiful Story]
That pitiful story of ”the other woman” comes from quarters which the uninitiated would never suspect. With grim loyalty, married women hide their hearts from each other. Many a smile conceals a tortured soul.
When the burden is no longer to be borne, a spinster is asked to share it.
A woman will forgive a man anything except disloyalty to herself. Crimes which the law stands ready to punish rank as naught with her, if the love between them is untarnished by doubt or mistrust. Any offence prompted by her own charm, even a duel to the death with a rival suitor, is easily condoned. But though G.o.d may be able to forgive disloyalty, in her heart of hearts no woman ever can.
[Sidenote: An Idle Flirtation]
More often than not, it is simply an idle flirtation, or, at the most, a pa.s.sing fancy which the next week may prove transient and unreal. The woman with the heartache will say, with wet eyes and quivering lips: ”I know, positively, that my husband has done nothing wrong. I would go to the stake upon that belief. He is only weak and foolish and a little vain, perhaps, and some day he will see his mistake, but I cannot bear to see him compromise himself and me in the eyes of the world. Of course, _I_ know,” she will say, proudly, ”but there are others who do not,--who are always ready to suspect,--and I will not have them pity me!”
When nearly all the married friends a spinster has have come to her with the same story, the variations being individual and of slight moment, she begins to have serious doubts of matrimony as a satisfactory career. Women who have been married five, ten, and even twenty years; women with children grown and whom the world counts safely and happily married, will sob bitterly in the embrace of the chosen girl friend.
[Sidenote: Indifference]
Indifference is the only counsel one has to offer, but even so, it gradually becomes the first of the steppes upon the heart-way which lead to an emotional Siberia.