The Green Bough

by E. Temple Thurston

But why should it be to-day? Why in a sudden moment should this situation be thrust upon her? Why should she be harassed like this to say what she would do?

"You can't expect me to give you a decision about this all at once," she said, and there were rough edges to her voice. These were not the smooth words of an easy mind.

He heard each note. He knew she was swaying from her purpose. He realized the approach of what he had come there determined to secure.

"I don't wish you to give a decision to-day," he replied. "Of course I couldn't expect you to. Do you think I don't realize what I'm asking you--however much it may be for his sake."

"No--but I don't mean to-day or this year or the next," she went on in her distress. "Can't you wait until it can be put to him, until he's old enough to judge for himself; until he's learnt something of all I want to teach him?"

Liddiard put out his hand. She did not see it.

"My dear Mary," he said, as he withdrew it again, "wonderful as your ideals are, you have the fault of all idealists. You don't equip them to meet the facts of life. They're like flowers planted on a highway. You don't reckon on the traffic of the world that will break them down. Whatever your dreams may be, they cannot stop that traffic. The carts must go by. You can't prevent a man from setting out on his journeys. You can only hinder him from reaching his destination by the beast you give him to draw the vehicle of his ambitions, by the sound of the ramshackle vehicle itself which you provide him with to reach his journey's end. John couldn't come to Wenlock Hall with the education of a farmer's boy. That would be too cruel. That would hamper him at every turn. The springs of his cart would be creaking. It would be like asking him to drive down Rotten Row in a muck cart. Do you think he'd find that fair? He must go to school. He must go to the University. He must learn the things that it is necessary he should know to fill a position like that. You can't send him. It must be me. I don't want your decision at once. I can wait a week, a month, more. But you must see yourself it can't be years. It can't be till he's able to choose for himself. That is the unpractical side of your ideals. You don't realize it would be too late then."

Mary sat with her elbows resting on her knees, her face locked and hidden in her hands. It was an abyss which, round that unexpected corner, she had seen yawning at her feet. It was deep. It was dark. Nothing so dark or deep or fathomless had presented itself to her in her life before. She felt herself falling, falling, falling into the bottomless pit of it and not one hand was there in all the world that stretched itself out to save her.

She had come so far, knowing at every turn that, for all the rough and broken surfaces, her road was right; thinking, however hard or merciless to her feet, it yet would lead to sweet and quiet places. Courage she had had and fear she had known along the whole way. Still she had striven on as one, bearing a heavy burden, who knows there is release and rest at her journey's end.

But before the chasm of this abyss that fronted her, it was not so much courage she lost as the vital essence of volition. For herself she did not feel afraid. Whatever destruction might be awaiting her in those depths, she did not shrink from it. Eagerly, willingly, she would have sacrificed herself, but had no strength to take the hazard of what might chance and sacrifice him.