New England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories
There was old Delilah Joyce, who went into a decline for love, and
wasted quite away. She had been one of those tragic fugitives on the
island of being, driven out into the storm of public sympathy to be
beaten and undone; for she was left on her wedding day by her lover,
who vowed he loved her no more. But now Dilly saw her without the
pathetic bravery of her silken gown which was never worn, and knew her
for a woman serene and glad. That very day she had unfolded the gown in
the attic, where it had lain, year upon year, wrapped about by the
poignant sympathy of her kin, a perpetual reminder of the hurts and
faithlessness of life. It had become a relic, set aside from modern
use. She felt now as if she could even wear it herself, though silk was
not for her, or deck some little child in its shot and shimmering
gayety. For it came to her, with a glad rush of acquiescent joy, that
all his life, the man, though blinded by illusion, had been true to her
whom he had left; and that, instead of being poor, she was very rich.
It was from that moment that Dilly began to understand that the soul
does not altogether weld its own bonds, but that they lie in the secret
core of things, as the planet rushes on its appointed way.
There was Annette Joyce, who married a Stackpole, and to the disgust of
her kin, clung to him through one debauch after another, until the
world found out that Annette "couldn't have much sense of decency
herself, or she wouldn't put up with such things." But on this one
night Dilly found out that Annette's life had been a continual laying
hold of Eternal Being, not for herself, but for the creature she loved;
that she had shown the insolence and audacity of a thousand spirits in
one, besieging high heaven and crying in the ear of God: "I demand of
Thee this soul that Thou hast made." And somehow Dilly knew now that
she was of those who overcome.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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