Chapter 14

AND THEY LIVED HAPPY EVER AFTER

End of the story--end of the chapter--end of the book!

And what could be more satisfactory than the ending of the old fairy-tales,--"and so they were married, and lived happy ever after"? Not for them the strenuous adjustment of temper and temperament, of extravagance and poverty, with the divorce court at the end of the second year. In the blessed tales of one's childhood, they married and lived happily.

Ay, and for ever after!

It is a long time,--but I look forward to it without fear, yea, even with gladness. Not that I would so dare, did it depend upon _my_ temper, _my_ moods, _my_ days of ailing and depression, but ah, I depend upon my husband's. He has his days of ailing and depression, but I never know of them until they are past. He has his illnesses, but he conceals them from me. If things go wrong, his face only grows brighter for my eyes to rest upon, nor is he ever too busy or too preoccupied to stop his work and soothe my nervous fears. Disagreeable people are not allowed to annoy me. Disagreeable letters are held over until their sting has grown less. Disagreeable remarks are robbed of their venom by his kindly interpretation. He stands as a bulwark between me and the world.

"And so they were married, and lived happily ever after."

To live happily means for one or the other to ignore self. Aubrey is the epitome of selflessness. So that I claim no credit for the noiseless wheels of our domestic machinery, for over trifles I am inclined to go up in a puff of vapour and blue smoke, and I love my own way.

But somehow, after a year or two of seeing Aubrey give his way up to mine, without a frown or a word of remonstrance, and with such a look of unfathomable love in his wonderful eyes, I rather lost the taste for demanding my own way. Even when I got it some of its flavour had disappeared. Was I contrary? I do not know. I only knew that I began to pretend--I had to pretend, or Aubrey would not have allowed it--to want the things that he wanted, and to want them done in the way he liked. And with such a rich reward! Do all sacrifices made for love carry with them such immediate and rich rewards, I wonder? Can I ever forget the Angel's face when it dawned upon him that I was giving up my way for his? He realized it first as he was standing in front of me, filling his pipe. I saw it come first into his eyes, then tremble upon his sensitive lips, then he threw aside his precious pipe and knelt down beside my chair, and gathered me all up in his arms, and hid his face in my shoulder. What he said I shall never tell to any one, but I shall remember it in my grave, and it will be surging in my ears in the other world. Is sacrifice hard for one you love?

"And so they were married, and lived happily ever after."

That, in the old-fashioned story, was the end of everything. Married love evidently took no hold upon the youthful imagination, or upon that of our little selves. We wanted all the anguish to come to the unwed, and the happiness and dulness of unchanging bliss to descend upon the bridal pair.

Then somebody discovered that marriage was not the end; it was only the beginning, and somebody acted on this wonderful discovery and began to tell the varying fortunes of those stupid, cut and dried, buried and laid away persons, the bride and groom, whom we had hitherto parted with at the church door. It was as if the carriage door slammed upon their happiness, and ended their career. Their ultimate fate was for ever settled. They died to the world with the hurling of the rice, and vanished from the sight of readers with the casting of the old shoe.

Then we learned that life began with marriage. Has our taste changed, or have we only awakened to the truth?

Ask any woman who is happily married, and see if she says she can ever remember anything before she became a wife. I remember that certain things did happen before I met Aubrey, but I recall them as I sometimes try to tell him a dream which is indistinct and somewhat unreal.

But that is because I have found, out of all the world, my mate.

How does any one dare to marry? As I look around me, at the mistakes other women have made, I wonder that I had the courage to marry even the Angel. For supposing he hadn't been the right man! I'd have been dead by this time, so there's that comfort anyway.

But he was!

To those who know the Angel, I need say no more. And even to those who never have seen him, and never will know him except in this chronicle, the wonder of it can never cease, for so few women, out of all the men in the universe, find their mates, as I have found mine.

Men propose and women marry, but the misfits are palpable all through life to others, and frequently to themselves. They look back and wonder, when it is too late, how they ever imagined that they could live together without wanting to murder each other daily. Yet they console themselves with the thought that theirs is only an ordinary marriage, containing no more jarring notes than most. Yet if they ever stopped to think what might have been--if they dared look into the inner chamber where hope lies dead, they would wonder that their misery was not so stamped upon their faces that people would turn to look at them in the street and stare at the hopelessness of their broken lives. Do the unhappily married ever dare pause to think of the real mate of each, lost somewhere in the wide world, perhaps going about, ever seeking, seeking, perhaps greatly mismated and equally unhappy?

"Two shall be born the whole wide world apart And each in different tongues and have no thought Each of the other's being and no heed; And these, o'er unknown seas to unknown lands Shall cross, escaping wreck, defying death And all unconsciously shape every act And send each wandering step to this one end That, one day, out of darkness they shall meet And read life's meaning in each other's eyes.

"And two shall walk some narrow way of life So nearly side by side, that should one turn Ever so little space to left or right They needs must stand acknowledged face to face. And yet, with wistful eyes that never meet, With groping hands that never clasp, and lips Calling in vain to ears that never hear They seek each other all their weary days And die unsatisfied--and this is Fate!"

When I realize the beautiful and terrible truth of these two verses, I grow dumb with terror, and turn filled to overflowing with gratitude that, no matter what others may have done or will do; in spite of sad books and mournful plays; in spite of winter winds and illness and sorrow and the bitter disappointment of hope deferred; in spite of bodily ills and heart sickness and the times when even the strongest soul faints by the roadside, no matter what betide, I can always turn my face homeward, and there will be Aubrey.