She gave in “for the boy’s sake.”
And my grandmother had justified her existence.
They travelled home together, and Mary averted anti-climax by quite a real nervous breakdown, that overtook her after she got home, before my father had had time to forgive her in so many words.
So they began again—literally.
It wasn’t, in fact, possible for them to be happy together, and they never were so. I grew up in the midst of scenes, tears, and intermittent periods of reconciliation. There was no stability about my childhood; and no reality. Undoubtedly I was the victim—far more so than my father, who presently sought and found consolation elsewhere, or than Mary, whom he thus provided with a perfectly legitimate grievance that lasted her until he died, fifteen years later. After that, she was able gradually to forget that there had ever been unhappiness between them, and to assume the identity of a heart-broken widow.
Mrs. St. Luth, my grandmother, lived to be very old.
“But useless old woman though I am, God gave me the opportunity of justifying my existence, when He let me bring a mother home to her little child....”
I wonder.
Thank god, I’m a modern.