"But I am here. I am going to remain here till I am sent away. Nothing that Cale has said shall influence me in this. All that is past—a part of another generation. I have put it all out of my life, once and for all. I live now and here, in Lamoral. I am not my mother; I am Marcia Farrell. I have not her life to answer for, and her life—oh, what she must have suffered!—shall no longer influence mine.
"I am free! I declare myself free from the bondage of past memories, free, and I will to remain so."'
This was my declaration of independence—independence of heredity and its accredited influence; of memories that control the mentality which governs life; freedom from the actuality of past environment. I drew a long free breath. My individual womanhood, this "I" of me, Marcia Farrell, not a composite of ancestral inheritance, asserted itself.
What if my nose resembles my great-grandmother's? I asked, unfurling my revolutionary flag over the moat—untechnically "ditch"—of the stronghold, considered by some impregnable, of present day scientific discovery.
What if I happen to have a temper like my maternal great-aunt's? What if I have a fighting instinct like my paternal ancestors, who may have come over with William the Conqueror as swordsmen or cooks—I don't care which?
What if I handle my crochet needle in a manner very like the brandished spear of Goths, Vandals, and Huns, from all of whom it is perfectly possible that I may count my descent?
What if I show distinctive animal characteristics? Jamie declares I run like a doe and look like a greyhound!
What do I care if, millions of years ago when things on this earth were stickier and hotter than the worst dog-day in New York, this thing that has, in the end, become Marcia Farrell, this half-perfected mechanism of body and mind, had gills like a fish? What do I care if it had?
This "I" of me is distinct from every other "I" on this inhabited globe. This "I" of me has its special work to do, not another's, not my ancestors'. Humble enough it is. It has to feed and clothe my body by labor, the brain regulating the handicraft. It has eyes to see all the beauty, all the ugliness of Life; ears to hear all its harmonies, all its discords; a mind to comprehend how some detail of chaos may find rebirth in order. This "I" of me, my soul, receives through the instruments of the senses, impressions of infinite chaos ordered into laws, not necessarily final, laws beneficial to man and his universe.—Am I to deny the existence of what is called the strange unknown ether, simply because, for ages, the instrument of the wireless was not on hand to give expression to its transmitting power?
I repeated to myself, that I had my own life to live, not my mother's—oh God, forbid! Not my grandfather's—oh, in mercy not! Not my myriad of ancestors' lives; were this so, the mechanism of the brain would give under the strain. But just my own, mine, Marcia Farrell's, here, from day to day in Lamoral; a life lived in thankfulness of spirit for a shelter that is a home; in thankfulness for the modicum of intellect—with its accompanying physical fitness—that enables me to earn my living; in thankfulness for friends; in thankfulness—yes, I dare say it, even in the shadow of Cale's story of my mother's short life—that I love, that I can love.