“And then love came to Sam. Effie came, and you say that God is love. Sam put it to me in another way. He said he’d found salvation. Well, it’s a big word, and I dunno. But I do know he found love and it changed him. He’s done with politics, and he’s done with crowing and with riches, too. Effie did that by the power of love, and there’s another thing she did, that’s marked yon lass for me as the finest, strangest woman in the width of the world. She gave him up and sent him back to Ada. Well, I’ve heard of sacrifice before, and I’ve done a bit that way myself, but give up a man she loved and teach him how to make a woman of his wife, and send him home to do it--it’s more than I can rise to. And that is Effie Mannering. “He went home and he tried, and Ada laughed at him. She couldn’t understand: there wasn’t the one thing there that could make her understand: there wasn’t love. And he gave up his politics that night she laughed at him, to leave himself free to tackle Ada. Now Ada’s left him, and there’s sum-mat else turned up as well. You can guess.” He looked up sharply. “Aye, that’s it, and the rum thing is that it surprised them both. Their love’s that sort of love, and I reckon there are folk would call it careless of them. I would myself nine cases out of ten, aye, and ninety-nine in a hundred, but not this case. This wasn’t a case for care; it was a case of love. But a baby’s coming to Effie, and you know’ as well as I do that none will ever come to Ada. I’ve finished telling you about Effie now.” There was a long pause and it seemed several times that Peter was about to break it, and each time changed his mind. All that he finally said in comment on Effie was, “A lawless woman,” and it might have been deduced from his tone that he did not condemn, if he could not, confessedly, admire. “Aye, lawless,” Anne agreed, “but there’s a law of lawless women and she has not obeyed it. She’s not a breaker. She’s a maker.” Peter bowed his head. Perhaps he did not wish Anne to see what was written in his face. And he lacked conviction when he tried to speak again. “Whom God hath joined--he began. “But God,” Anne said, “is love.” He threw up his hands in a despairing gesture of surrender. “I deserve to be unfrocked for this,” he said, but he closed the book on his knee and took snuff violently. It marked the passing of a crisis. As for Anne, there mingled with her satisfaction at his consent a keen despondency at his unhappiness. She had both lost and won, and Anne took little pleasure in a mixed victory. She had not finished yet with Peter Struggles. CHAPTER XXVI--SNOW ON THE FELLS |LIFE is still greater than machines. Machines accomplish marvels and very wonderfully continue to accomplish them, but life refuses the mechanical. It was man, and not nature, who invented the wheel, and life does not revolve upon an axle. Life will not repeat itself: and it can excel itself.