If, on the contrary, her moral and
physical strength held bravely out to the painful end, the struggle
would cease after the crisis, and leave her unburdened, unfettered,
hardened, cynical, cold, selfish, but unsusceptible, and incapable of
ever being influenced again by any sentiment or passion, and this
terrible experience promised, in any case to visit her but once in her
whole lifetime.
While she thought, she remembered the little note Guy had written her
that morning, telling her to let him know when her next meeting with
Vivian Standish should take place. Instinctively she rose up, as if to
leave the room. What could it matter now to either her or Guy whether
they had ever loved each other or not? Was it not the only misery of her
life that her love had come between her and the will of her kind
guardian? Duty is such a sober piece of heroism when one's affections,
one's very heart-core are not its sacrifice. The conscientious can go
bravely forth to the stern call of duty, the obedient follow out
unhesitatingly its command, the virtuous seek it out to accomplish it,
but when apart from these moral qualities the heart stands out, a weak
victim of passion, that passion that clings to the things it loves, that
lives because they live, when a heart thus circumstanced is assailed on
both sides, when love and duty put forth their respective claims, who
sneers because the noblest, grandest heart gives itself up vith a groan
of wretched resignation to the fascination of its love? Men may talk,
pens may write, bards may sing of magnanimous deeds in the abstract. In
theory we are most of us saints, if we had been our neighbors, we would
never have had a fault, but being each one our own miserable,
unfortunate self, we must fling ourselves into the open arms of
temptation, at the same moment that contrition fills our heart for the
rash deed.
Of Honor Edgeworth the reader might expect wonderful moral courage. May
be, he too has faith in the fallacious doctrine of worldlings--that he
believes good souls have not their struggles. The world generally shrugs
its shoulders in the face of the virtuous, and declares that in the
hearts of the good there is no moral struggle equal to that which quakes
the breast of the evil-doer, but to assure itself of its terrible error,
it must play the part of the publican and learn to subdue its passions
under a mask.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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