“Because only love is a feeling that would make you say 135 you could not speak of it when your heart is full of anger. Is it Betty, dear?”
“Yes, mother. You are uncanny to read me so.”
She laughed softly and held him closer. “I love Betty, too, Peter. You will always be gentle and kind? You will never be hard and stern with her?”
“Mother! Have I ever been so? Can’t you tell by the way I have always acted toward you that I would be tender and kind? She will be myself––my very own. How could I be otherwise?”
Again Hester smiled her slow, wise smile. “You have always been tender, Peter, but you have always gone right along and done your own way, absolutely. The only reason there has not been more friction between you and your father has been that you have been tactful; also you have never seemed to desire unworthy things. You have been a good son, dear: I am not complaining. And the only reason why I have never––or seldom––felt hurt by your taking your own way has been that my likings have usually responded to yours, and the thing I most desired was that you should be allowed to take your own way. It is good for a man to be decided and to have a way of his own: I have liked it in you. But the matter still stands that it has always been your way and never any one’s else that you have taken. I can see you being stern even with a wife you thought you wholly loved if her will once crossed yours.”
Peter Junior was silent and a little hurt. He rose and paced the room. “I can’t think I could ever cross Betty, or be unkind. It seems preposterous,” he said at last.
“Perhaps it might never seem to you necessary. Peter, boy, listen. You say: ‘She will be myself––my very own.’ Now what does that mean? Does it mean that when you are married, her personality will be merged in yours, and so you two will be one? If so, you will not be completed and rounded out, and she will be lost in you. A man does not reach his full manhood to completion until he has loved greatly and truly, and has found the one who is to complete him. At best, by ourselves, we are never wholly man or wholly woman until this great soul completion has taken place in us. Then children come to us, and our very souls are knit in one, and still the mystery goes on and on; never are we completed by being lost––either one––in the will or nature of the other; but to make the whole and perfect creature, each must retain the individuality belonging to himself or herself, each to each the perfect and equal other half.”
Peter Junior paused in his walk and stood for a moment looking down on his mother, awed by what she revealed to him of her inner nature. “I believe you have done this, mother. You have kept your own individuality complete, and father doesn’t know it.”
“Not yet, but my hand will always be in his, and some day he will know. You are very like him, and yet you understand me as he never has, so you see how our oneness is wrought out in you. That which you have in you of your father is good and strong: never lose it. The day may come when you will be glad to have had such a father. Out in the world men need such traits; but you must not forget that sometimes it takes more strength to yield than to hold your own way. Yes, it takes strength and courage 137 sometimes to give up––and tremendous faith in God. There! I hear him walking about. Go down and have your talk with him. Remember what I say, dear, and don’t get angry with your father. He loves you, too.”