American fiction -- 20th century; Georgia -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Married women -- Fiction
It certainly does change a woman to lose her husband. It buries her
or brings her out. I suppose if Helen’s husband had been properly
and providentially parted from her by death, she might have retired
sorrowfully into her widow’s state and effaced herself or devoted
herself quite differently to good works. But the passing of George
Cutter left no such sanctities to dignify her. On the contrary she had
been abandoned on account of her virtues and stupid devotion to home.
She was like Job. She held on to her integrity and was sustained, as he
was, by her conceit.
But unlike Job, who suffered considerable financial losses during
this period, she had come into a considerable estate. She had been
paid off by this deflecting husband. Money will sustain your pride
and courage as an outraged woman when mere faith in God may leave you
exalted in the ditch of every worldly misfortune. Helen had remained
the proper resurrection period flat on her back in bed, not from
histrionic design; but she was actually able to rise on the third day.
My belief is that everything in the Scriptures is true, if you adjust
yourself to the way it is true. Thus, if you will not waste your vital
forces in emotional dissipations of grief when overtaken by sorrow or
humiliation, if you are really willing to live again normally, three
days down will usually put you on your feet with sufficient courage
and strength for the performance. It is no use to send for the doctor.
In cases of this kind a physician is a sort of psychic drug you take,
which requires a repetition of his soothing presence. Thrice fortunate
are they who dare to discover that the wings of adversity are the
strongest wings upward in human affairs.
Helen, penguin bred, had acquired this serene flying power. She had
been absolved from a depressing devotion to an ignoble man. She came
out of her travail informed with pride, the cold fury which good women,
scorned, feel, and with a determination to have what she had always
wanted and could not have as a wife.
She leaned back in her chair before the library fire, clasped her
hands over her head and looked anticipatingly at the ceiling, a queer
expression on this formerly merely dutiful woman’s face, like a song in
her eyes, like faith that smooths the brow, like a hope that lifted and
sweetened the corners of her mouth; there were no shadows of fear to
dim this gentle effulgence of eyes, lips and brow.
To be loved does make a woman happy, but it never endows her with her
own peace, only protection. There is a difference, if you know how to
read it, between love and hope in her face. The former is conferred and
may be taken away: the latter is an act of faith and cannot be dimmed
or destroyed. Helen had this look of “anticipation,” as some physicians
call it, a mark which Nature confers upon women like a meek distinction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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