"That was n't true. She went to sleep almost instantly, and slept like a baby. I lay beside her, wide awake for hours. What she was, and what she said, had turned a key in my brain. A host of thoughts I didn't know I had came trooping out of some hidden room, and they marched and counter-marched across my mind all night."
Desire got up and began to walk about the room restlessly in her absorption as she recalled all this.
"It was wonderful, Uncle Ben. I wish I could make you understand. First of all, I recognized that what she said was absolutely true. I said to myself, Desire, you are a civilized, cultivated, mature, distinguished-looking person, well born and well reared--but what has it all done for you? It has, precisely, conducted you to Reno, Nevada. This girl beside you is {118} uncivilized, uneducated, crude, young, clearly of very common clay. And what has it all done for her but conduct her to Reno, Nevada,--where she finds you, daughter of the Pilgrims. Well met, sister!'
"It was very bitter to think that of myself," said my niece, stopping by my chair. "It may sound foolish, Uncle Ben, but my friends have always insisted I was a schöne Seele. I, a beautiful soul! I, a soul at all! A white light that I could not shut my eyes against seemed to beat down into my brain. I saw that I was just like the girl beside me in her incredible callousness,--even like the fat, self-satisfied, blonde women I had seen in the town. Oh, those common, common people! I had thought myself as fine as silk, as tempered as steel, yes, and as pure as flame! But I, too, was a brute.
{119}
"I thought and thought. I thought of Arnold, Arthur, and myself; we are all proud, we are all fastidious, yet we had come to this. We had drifted on the rocks. Pride had n't saved us, nor training, nor intelligence. I had lived in and for these things, and they had not prevented my doing the commonest things like the commonest creatures. Uncle Ben, I seemed horrible to myself--I can't tell you.
"More doors opened in my mind, and I began to think of you, and mother, and Aunt Mary, and of all the stories you used to tell me of the good Raynies and the bad, the weak Withacres and the strong ones, and what good fighters there were among them. And it seemed to me that I could see and feel--like the flight of wings in the dark over my head-- the passing of the struggling generations of my fathers, each one {120} achieving a little more; going from decency to good repute, and from repute to renown, keeping faith with one another and with God, from father to son.
"And all at once I saw that the dignity of my race did not consist in its honors, nor even in its character, but--forever and always--in its fight for character! It was the struggle that had made us. And I had never struggled--so--I was not made. I was still unformed, shapeless,--and a cheaper thing with all my pretensions than the girl asleep beside me.
"Then there came on me a great desire to be one with my own people. One life is nothing--somehow I saw it very clearly. Families build righteousness as coral insects build a reef. I felt the yearning to be built into a structure of honesty and honor. Even as I wished {121} this, I saw, in that fierce light beating down upon my brain, that there was something deep within me that forbade me to do the thing I had been planning. It lay at the core of being, dark and stern; it said No to my desires. And I knew it for the strength of every No my fathers ever uttered. It was my inheritance. And as I looked, it seized my will. It shook me free from my longing for Arthur, free from my impatience with Arnold, free from my wish to have my way!
"So--I have come back. It was strong enough to bring me back; it is strong enough to hold me here. I don't care what happens to me after this. I don't care. I may not be happy, but I don't seem to want to be happy: I want to do the seemly, fitting things, the decent things. I don't care if they are stupid; I don't care if I am bored! {122} I wish just what I say. I want to be one with my race. It is they who have brought me back. They held up the torch. I let it fall. Uncle Ben, do you think it has gone out? Suppose one of my children's children should stumble and then say, 'It is not my fault. I inherited this. There was grandmamma who went her willful way so long ago!' I know my dust would shiver in the ground. I can't add any more to the weaknesses and follies that will crush them down. Having my own way costs too much when they must pay. That's it. I have n't the price. I refuse to let them pay.--Will you help me, Uncle Ben? Will you ask Arnold to let me try again? I will be good. I will be humble--almost! For I must have my children if only that I may pass this on. The thing is to abolish our complacency. Why--it's {123} what the old religionists meant when they talked about getting down in the dust before their God! It really, really, is the thing we have to do. And-- my children will never learn it here, among you, where everybody is so happy and self-satisfied. They will never learn it even from the righteous Arnold. If they know it, they will have to learn it from me-- for I am the only repentant sinner of us all! So--I have come back."