“I shouldn’t wonder if she was the nicest little sister any of you ever had, my dears. A proper little fairy very likely, and the one you’ll all like best.”
They vowed it never could be and Milly said: “Father hates her a’ready, so I be going to do the same.”
Then Mrs. Trivett preached very seriously against this inhuman spirit and was still preaching when there came Philander Knox.
“I thought the better the day the better the deed,” he explained, “and I hoped your young people would be going to church after their tea, so I might have a yarn with you.”
“Very kind of you, I’m sure. Perhaps you’ll be able to distract my brother’s mind a thought. He’s very much under the weather. And I dare say it would be a good thing if a few of you was to go to church.”
Milly, who loved church, but did not often attend evening service, was pleased at this plan and she took her younger sisters with her. Tom came down, smoked a pipe and grew calmer in the company of Mr. Knox; Lydia put the other children to bed—for the present the penultimate baby was in her room—and then Philander’s opportunity arrived, and after Mr. Dolbear had gone up the village, he enjoyed Lydia’s society for half an hour before interruption came.
She told him what had happened to Medora and he wondered, while he discussed the tragedy, whether it might not, after all, help rather than hinder his own designs.
“At first sight,” he said, “the human instinct is always to say that anything out of the common must be wrong; but that’s only our natural cowardice and love of letting life alone. And I, for one, am not going to say that because a woman changes husbands, or a man changes wives, it follows they are doing the wrong thing. Often a pinch of pluck will break a partnership to the advantage of both parties, and it’s a darned sight better than shaking their chains and making a nuisance of themselves in the face of the people. An unhappy marriage is a bad advertisement for the institution, and a man like me, who believes heart and soul in marriage, is always sorry to see an unhappy marriage go on.”
“But if every young pair who quarrelled before their first child came was to part like this, the world couldn’t go on. Those that God have joined let no man put asunder.”
“No man can,” he answered. “You needn’t worry about that. If God joins up a man and woman, man can’t put ’em asunder, nor yet anything else. They’re one body and soul till death parts ’em. But because a pair marry, it don’t follow that God have had anything to do with it. There’s a lot of other institutions besides God. We make mistakes in all walks of life and in none oftener than in marriage. And in my opinion it’s one of the things, like any other partnership, that God don’t specially take under His protection. Love is a trick of nature, and Nature says to herself, ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try again.’ Nature’s trying again with your daughter, Mrs. Trivett.”