When he got well, his breach of duty in going away without notice was overlooked, and he was taken back to his old post. There he worked on as the years rolled by. Country managerships were offered to him, and declined. He had nothing to make money for, and the only thing he really enjoyed was Margaret's society, in which he would talk about Nina and Geoffrey without restraint. For many years he remained ignorant that his marriage with Nina was, after all, for New York State a valid one, since marriage by simple contract, without religious ceremony, is sufficient in that State. He never dreamed Geoffrey had been indirectly the cause of his life's ruin, and always spoke of him as a man almost without blame. However unreasonable, there are, among all the faulty emotions, few more beautiful than a man's affection for a man. When it exists, it is the least exacting attachment of his life.
Margaret listened to his superlatives about Geoffrey. She listened; but as the years passed on she grew wiser. When walking in the open fields, or perhaps beside the wide lake, an image would come to her in gladsome colors, in matchless beauty—a Greek god with floating hair and full of resolve and victory, and in her dreams she would see and talk with him, and would find him grave and thoughtful and tender, and all that a man could be. Then would come the rending of the heart. This was a thief who had decoyed his friend, and, good or bad, was lost to her.
And thus time passed on. For two or three years she went nowhere. She tried going into society, after Geoffrey's sentence, thinking to obtain relief in change of thought, but the experiment was a failure. She found that she had not the elasticity of temperament which can doff care and don gayety as society demands. So she gave up the attempt for years, and then went again only at her mother's solicitation. She said she had her patients at the hospital, her studies with her father, her many books to read, her long walks with Jack and Maurice Rankin, and what more did she want?
She did not hear of Geoffrey. The six years of his imprisonment had dragged themselves into the past, and she supposed he was free again, if he had not died in the penitentiary. But nothing was heard of him, and thus the time rolled on, while Margaret's mother secretly wept to see her daughter's early bloom departing, while no hope of any happy married life seemed possible to her.
Grave, pleasant, studious, thoughtful, as the years rolled by, she went on with her hospital work. From the depths of the grief into which she was plunged, she could discern some truths that might have remained unknown if her life had continued sunny—just as at noonday from the bottom of a deep pit or well the stars above us can be seen. To her the bitterness of her life was medicinal. Speaking chemically, it was like the acid of the unripe apple acting upon the starch in it to make a sugar—thus to perfect a sweet maturity. She was one of the richly endowed women in whom sensitiveness and strength combine peculiarly for either superlative joy or sorrow, and hers was a grief which, for her, nothing but tending the bed of sickness seemed to mitigate. Many a bruised heart was healed, gladdened, and bewitched by the angel smile on the sweet firm, full lips which could quiver with compassion. There are some smiles, given for others, when grief has made thought for self unbearable, which nothing but a descent into hell and glorious rising again could produce.
CHAPTER XXIX.
This is peace!
To conquer love of self and lust of life,
To tear deep-rooted passion from the breast,
To still the inward strife;
For glory, to be lord of self;...
... For countless wealth,
To lay up lasting treasure
Of perfect service rendered, duties done
In charity, soft speech, and stainless days;
These riches shall not fade away in life
Nor any death dispraise.
(Buddha's Sermon.—The Light of Asia.) Arnold.