Half an
hour had passed, in painful and wondering surmises, when a gentle knock
was heard at the door, and P. entered equipped for a journey. "We are
just going," he said, and holding out his hand, but without looking at
them, "Forgive."
They each took his hand, and silently pressed it, then he went without a
word more.
Some time passed and they heard now and then of P., as he passed from
one army station to another, with his uncongenial companion, who became,
it was said, constantly more degraded. Whoever mentioned having seen
them, wondered at the chance which had yoked him to such a woman, but
yet more at the silent fortitude with which he bore it. Many blamed him
for enduring it, apparently without efforts to check her; others
answered that he had probably made such at an earlier period, and
finding them unavailing, had resigned himself to despair, and was too
delicate to meet the scandal that, with such a resistance as such a
woman could offer, must attend a formal separation.
But my father, who was not in such haste to come to conclusions, and
substitute some plausible explanation for the truth, found something in
the look of P. at that trying moment to which none of these explanations
offered a key. There was in it, he felt, a fortitude, but not the
fortitude of the hero, a religious submission, above the penitent, if
not enkindled with the enthusiasm of the martyr.
I have said that my father, was not one of those who are ready to
substitute specious explanations for truth, and those who are thus
abstinent rarely lay their hand on a thread without making it a clue.
Pages:
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32