She revolved the "Son Willoughby" through moods of
stupefaction, contempt, revolt, subjection. It meant that she was
vanquished. It meant that her father's esteem for her was forfeited.
She saw him a gigantic image of discomposure.
Her recognition of her cowardly feebleness brought the brood of
fatalism. What was the right of so miserable a creature as she to
excite disturbance, let her fortunes be good or ill? It would be
quieter to float, kinder to everybody. Thank heaven for the chances of
a short life! Once in a net, desperation is graceless. We may be
brutes in our earthly destinies: in our endurance of them we need not
be brutish.
She was now in the luxury of passivity, when we throw our burden on the
Powers above, and do not love them. The need to love them drew her out
of it, that she might strive with the unbearable, and by sheer
striving, even though she were graceless, come to love them humbly. It
is here that the seed of good teaching supports a soul, for the
condition might be mapped, and where kismet whispers us to shut eyes,
and instruction bids us look up, is at a well-marked cross-road of the
contest.
Quick of sensation, but not courageously resolved, she perceived how
blunderingly she had acted. For a punishment, it seemed to her that she
who had not known her mind must learn to conquer her nature, and
submit. She had accepted Willoughby; therefore she accepted him. The
fact became a matter of the past, past debating.
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