And the Dream God has the tiller,
And Fancy plies the oar.’
It is not always easy to drift, and I am not yet enough at ease to drift. I find, Pardy, that the changes at home are very great. I am getting slowly used to them. The boys seem new creatures. You are just the same. But mama! I am so sorry for her.”
“That will come right, dear. The mother-wounds heal slowly. As for me, I own to no discontent about my boy’s death. Most people hold foolish notions as to death. In my third chapter on Marcus Aurelius, I have given a history of opinion about death. It has had strange variations. Really, we are very stupid as to the matter. The old heathen is fine about it: ‘Thou hast embarked. Thou hast made the voyage. Thou art come to shore; leave the ship. There is no want of Gods even there.’”
“Yes, but—I did not embark,” said Rose. “I was put on as freight. I—”
“How horribly exact you are for a summer day! I won’t argue with you; you love it. How quiet it is! Not a leaf stirs. How completely peaceful! The drowsiness of noon.”
“Yes, it is like ‘the peace that is past understanding.’ I never think of that phrase,” she added, after a pause, “without a little puzzle of mind about it. Aunt Anne says it is so altogether nice after a mournful length of sermon; but Aunt Anne is terrible at times. I often wonder what people who do not know her well must think of her. What I mean is—Well, it is hard to state, Pardy. Is the peace so great that we have no earthly possibility of apprehending its relief from the unrest of this life?—or that—Don’t you dislike to stumble in thinking? I—it does not seem to me as if I wanted peace. Is that dreadful?”
“No, dear. But some day you may, and there are many kinds. I sometimes crave relief from mere intellectual turmoil. Another yearns after the day when his endless battle with the sensual shall cease. One could go on. Perhaps for you, and for all, the indefiniteness of the promise is part of the value of its mystery. That is widely true. You may one day come to love some man, and to entirely believe in his promise of love. Yet you will not fully know what that means,—you cannot; and yet you trust it, for the inner life after all rests on a system of credits, as business does. Do you follow me?”
“Yes,” she said, with a little doubt. “Yes, I think I do; and yet it is not peace I want, if that means just merely rest.”
“Oh, no; surely not finality of action. Remember that with that promise of peace is to come increase of knowledge of God, which means all knowledge. We see and hear now the beautiful in nature, and are troubled by its apparent discords. There the true harmonies of it all shall be ours to know. It is like learning the reasons for the music we hear now with only joy and wonder.”