"Let me go my way, Uncle Sperber," she said--"let me go my way. I can't live without him!"
"Tubby, that's exactly the way your mother talked. I don't take any stock in a love like that--none of God's creatures is worth it. Not one. My old woman and I began gently and quietly, and we've always gone along the same way. It seems to me one doesn't want a harbor where the waves run so high that the ship can't rest in it. Listen, my girl ... were you intending to copy him in all his nonsense? I don't know ... I should be telling a lie if I said it would please me specially!"
"No," she said, "I believe you, Uncle Sperber; I suppose it couldn't please you. Every one speaks only to his own kind, and the rest don't understand him. My man is understood here by nobody--if he spoke with the tongue of an angel, it would be just the same. But I ...! My heart went out to him instantly: from the very first moment I felt that I knew him like an old friend."
"Tubby," said the old man with a sigh, "I don't have to tell you what you'd be exposed to with him. God gave you your father for a warning. What you are doing is against God's will. Your hot tears bear witness against you."
"Uncle Sperber," she said gravely, "that is just the reason why words are unnecessary. My tears must say to you, 'I know everything, I understand everything, and yet I cannot let him go.'"
"Then God be with you, my child! If it is so that you know what you are doing, then go the way that you are destined to go. I see nothing good before you. Exactly so I spoke to your mother--the very same words. She married the man she loved for no other reason, as it seems to me now, than that you should come to be what you are at this moment. You wanted to come to life. And now ... others are wanting to come to life, and seem, worse luck, to need you and this chance stranger.
"Child, if love only lasted! A marriage for love like that is a serious thing for anybody. If it were only for a short time, it wouldn't be so bad. But to choose a partner for life in the glare of a Bengal light! It would be the same for me to buy my cows by Bengal light, or when I was drunk. If you'd only listen to me! Let him go, Tubby, let him go, I've said; take our nephew. I can't do better by you."
Then the girl raised herself to her full height: "That's enough, Uncle Sperber," she said with shining eyes, as she gave him her hand. "You are very good to me! But if in the morning he still wants me, I stand by it. I am so full of force and courage and joy because he loves me. I am strong anyhow--I will work out whatever fate lays upon me. I know that every happiness must be paid for in suffering."
"Well," said old Sperber, "if you go to your folly with courage and joy, it's one thing--but with burning tears ...? Am I not right, my girl? If you have courage, you may get the best of this devil of a fellow--but going to it in sorrow ... no!"
And so they came together, as thousands and thousands of others have done, driven by love, in the face of all reason. The history of their marriage was the history of many another that reaches from youth to old age. They made each other happy and disappointed each other, they did good and evil to each other, they bored each other and grew accustomed to each other. As with all mortals, there were long stretches of life over which dulness lay like a covering of thickly-matted seaweed. Under this covering the waves of life could hardly move, could not break through to the light of day; only a mighty wave of joy or sorrow could break through it and send its spray up toward the heavens.