It was when she was away from Susie that she felt this. When she was
with her, she found herself as cold and quiet and contradictory as
Peter. She used, whenever she got the chance, to go to afternoon service
at St. Paul's. It was the only place and time in which all the bad part
of her was soothed into quiet, and the good allowed to prevail in peace.
The privacy of the great place, where she never met anyone she knew, the
beauty of the music, the stateliness of the service offered every day in
equal perfection to any poor wretch choosing to turn his back for an
hour on the perplexities of life, all helped to hush her grievances to
sleep and fill her heart with tenderness for those who were not happy,
and for those who did not know they were unhappy, and for those who
wasted their one precious life in being wretched when they might have
been happy. How little it would need, she thought (for she was young and
imaginative), to turn most people's worries and sadness into joy. Such a
little difference in Susie's ways and ideas would make them all so
happy; such a little change in Peter's habits would make his wife's life
radiant. But they all lived blindly on, each day a day of emptiness,
each of those precious days, so crowded with opportunities, and
possibilities, and unheeded blessings, and presently life would be
behind them, and their chances gone for ever.
"The world is a dreadful place, full of unhappy people," she thought,
looking out on to the world with unhappy eyes. "Each one by himself,
with no one to comfort him. Each one with more than he can bear, and no
one to help him. Oh, if I could, I would help and comfort everyone that
is sad, or sick at heart, or sorry--oh, if I could!"
And she dreamed of all that she would do if she were Susie--rich, and
free from any sort of interference--to help others, less fortunate, to
be happy too. But, since she was the very reverse of rich and free, she
shook off these dreams, and made numbers of good resolutions
instead--resolutions bearing chiefly on her future behaviour towards
Susie. And she would come out of the church filled with the sternest
resolves to be ever afterwards kind and loving to her; and the very
first words Susie uttered would either irritate her into speeches that
made her sorry, or freeze her back into her ordinary state of cold
aloofness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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