XII
IN WHICH I WILLINGLY TURN MY FACE WESTWARD
“Grow old along with me.
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made.
Our times are in His hand
Who saith, ‘A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God, see all, nor be afraid.’”
The years cannot go on without destroying the old landmarks, and I am so old-fashioned that change of any kind saddens me. People move away, strangers take their houses, the girls marry, children grow up, and everything is so mutable that sometimes my cheerfulness has a haze to it.
I am in a mood of retrospection to-night. I am living over the past and knitting up the ravelled ends.
Dear Rachel! I am thankful that she and Percival continue so happy. It is wonderful how every one recognizes and speaks of the completeness of these two. They do not parade their affection. They seem rather to try to hide it even from me, as if it were almost too sacred for even my kindly eyes. It is in the atmosphere, and, though they go their separate ways, they are more thoroughly together than any other married people I know.
Both Percival and Rachel are becoming very generally recognized now. People are discovering how wonderfully clever their work is, and they share themselves with the public, although it is a sacrifice every time they do so. Rachel’s rather turbulent cleverness has softened down. She says it is because it is “billowed in another greater and gentler sort.” She looks at me rather wistfully sometimes. I know what she thinks, but she does not bore me with questions. I wonder if she thinks I regret anything. Unless I consider that the Percivals have redeemed the record I am keeping, there is nothing especially tempting in the marriages I am watching. I cannot think that they are any happier than I am.
Sallie Cox seems contented most of the time. She has a magnificent establishment, handsomer than all the rest of the girls’ put together. Her husband “doesn’t bother” her, she says, and the Osbornes are very popular.
“I’m glad I’m shallow,” she said to me once. “Shallow hearts do not ache long. If I had a deep nature I should go mad or turn into a saint. As it is, I wear the scars.”
Once, when I went with her to Rachel’s, she sat and looked around the simple, inexpensive house, with the walls all lined with books and no room too good to live in every day, and she said,