It as a martyrdom across which one can but draw a curtain, and stand “eyes frontt”. Look this way, look that, what answer is there, what reason, what explanation, of the hidden martyrdoms of the work-a-day world, which the blank wall of heaven seems to regard with utter unconcern?
Mankind today is less disposed than ever of yore to calmly fold the hands and say, “It is the will of God.” They can no longer do so honestly without either blaming or criticising the Divine Will that not merely permits, but is said to send, such martyrdoms.
Better surely to accept bravely the enigma of the universe, and strive to lessen the suffering in our own little sphere, believing that same Divine Will is striving with us to mitigate the ills humanity has brought upon itself through blind disobedience and careless indifference to the laws of nature.
Uncomplaining resignation may help by its example, but the resignation which sits with folded hands and makes no effort to amend, is only a form of feebleness. The strong soul accepts life silently as a field of battle, asking for energy, resource, courage, and that fine spirit which obeys the unseen general in unquestioning faith.
It was only in such a spirit, through those years of pain and mystery, that Ethel was able to witness her passionately loved brother’s martyrdom, and give all the years of her youth to earn that pour salary from a wealthy Empire, to keep some sort of a home for the three of them in the little, dingy Holloway flat.
For even if Doris had been capable of sustained endeavour, the bedridden man could not have been left alone for long, and no choice was left them but to eke out Ethel’s pitiful £110 salary between them.
Often perhaps a passionate resentment burned in her heart concerning the heavy handicaps under which a woman achieves work equal to a man’s; but she had no time to lend herself to any open protest, and toiled on, silently fighting her individual daily battle the better encouraged by those brave women taking all the opprobrium of the warfare upon their own shoulders, for the sake of working womanhood as a whole.
Only, of late a fresh burden had been added in the fear that Dudley was growing to care for her sister Doris.
It was not that she grudged Doris the happiness, nor the prospect of a home in which she and Dudley might together take care of Basil; but she saw ahead the tragedy of the awakening, when Dudley learnt of the shallow, selfish little heart behind Doris’s charming exterior.
That he, of all people, should be drawn to such an one was only the contradiction seen on all sides in life. Because he had that old-fashioned distrust of the independent, self-reliant woman, he must needs go to the opposite extreme, and let himself be drawn to one capable of little else in the world but ornamentation. Doris, she knew, was fitted only to be a rich man’s plaything. Dudley, she felt instinctively, would start off by expecting of her things she had never had to give, and in his dismay and disappointment might wreck both their lives.