There is such a thing in life as turning straight round and going the
other way. This was what happened to Philip Ogilvie after the death of
Sibyl. All his life hitherto he had been on the downward plane. He was
now decidedly on the upward. The upward path was difficult, and his
feet were tired and his spirits sore, and often he faltered and
flagged and almost stopped, but he never once went back. He turned no
look toward the easy way which leads to destruction, for at the top of
the path which he was now climbing, he ever and always saw his child
waiting for him, nor did he feel even here on earth that his spirit
was really far from hers. Her influence still surrounded him--her
voice spoke to him in the summer breeze--her face looked at him out of
the flowers, and her smile met him in the sunshine.
He had a rough time to go through, but he endured everything for her
sake. By degrees his worldly affairs were put into some sort of order,
and so far as his friends and society went he vanished from view. But
none of these things mattered to him now. He was living on earth, it
is true; but all the ordinary earth desires had died within him. The
spiritual life, however, did not die. Day by day it grew stronger and
braver; so it came to pass that his sympathies, instead of dwindling
and becoming small and narrow, widened, until once more he loved and
once more he hoped.
He became very tolerant for others now, and especially was he tolerant
to his wife.
He bore with her small ways, pitied her grief, admitted to himself
that there were limits in her nature which no power could alter, and
did his best to make her happy.
She mourned and grieved and grieved and mourned for that which meant
nothing at all to him, but he was patient with her, and she owned to
herself that she loved him more in his adversity than she had done in
his prosperity.
For Sibyl's sake, too, Ogilvie roused himself to do what he could for
her special friends. There was a tiny fund which he had once put aside
for his child's education, and this he now spent in starting a shop
for the Holmans in Buckingham Palace Road. He made them a present of
the shop, and helped them to stock it with fresh toys. The old pair
did well there, they prospered and their trade was good, but they
never forgot Sibyl, and their favorite talk in the evenings as they
sat side by side together was to revive memories of the little, old
shop and the child who used to buy the dusty toys.
As to Lord Grayleigh, Philip Ogilvie and he never met after that day
outside the Cannon Street Hotel. The fact is, a gulf divided them; for
although both men to a great extent repented of what they had done,
yet there was a wide difference in their repentance--one had acted
with the full courage of his convictions, the other still led a life
of honor before his fellow-men, but his heart was not straight with
God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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