"Lawrence does not show great power, I know, my dear. But he is a good man,—a faithful husband and a kind father. That is much, Margaret. It rests with you to make him more!"
'Does it?' Margaret was asking herself behind her blank countenance. 'One cannot make bricks without straw…. What is that sort of goodness worth in a man? I had rather my husband were what you call a bad man—and a Man.' But she said nothing.
"Thus our Lord has ordered it in this life," continued the Bishop, feeling that he was making headway; "that one who is weak is bound to one who is stronger,—perchance for the good of both."
Margaret smiled.
"And a good woman has always the comfort of her children,—when she has been blessed with them,—who will grow to fill the desolate places in her heart," concluded the good Bishop, feeling that he had irrefutably presented to his daughter the right ideas. But the daughter was thinking, with the new faculty that was awakening in her:—
'Do children fill the desolate spots in a woman's heart completely? I love mine, even if they are spotted with his weaknesses. I am a good mother,—I know that I am,—yet I could love,—oh, I could love grandly some one else, and love them more because of it! At thirty a woman is not done with loving, even though she has three children.'
But she did not dispute her father's words, merely saying in a weary voice,
"I suppose Larry and I will make a life of it, as most people do, somehow!"
Nevertheless, as she spoke these words of endurance, there was welling up within her the spirit of rebellion against her lot,—the ordinary lot of acceptance. She had a consciousness of power in herself to live, to be something other than the prosaic animal that endures.
* * * * *
The Poles took the house at Dudley Farms and began the routine of American suburban life, forty miles from New York. After several months of futile effort, spaced by periods of laziness that Margaret put an end to, a gentleman's job was secured for Larry, through the kindness of one of his father's friends. At first Larry was inclined to think that the work would belittle him, spoil his chances of "better things." But Margaret, seeing that as assistant secretary to the Malachite Company he could do no harm, could neither gamble nor loaf, replied to these doubts in a tone of cold irony:—