Inside of the Cup, the — Volume 02 by Winston Churchill
page 54 of 71 (76%)
page 54 of 71 (76%)
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orderly course instead of striving for an impossible and shadowy ideal?
Very shadowy indeed! And to what end were his labours in that smoky, western city, with its heedless Dalton Streets, which went their inevitable ways? For he had the choice. To do him justice, he was slow in arriving at a realization that seemed to him so incredible, so preposterous. He was her rector! And he had accepted, all unconsciously, the worldly point of view as to Mrs. Larrabbee,--that she was reserved for a worldly match. A clergyman's wife! What would become of the clergyman? And yet other clergymen had married rich women, despite the warning of the needle's eye. She drove him in her buckboard to Jordan's Pond, set, like a jewel in the hills, and even to the deep, cliff bordered inlet beyond North East, which reminded her, she said, of a Norway fiord. And sometimes they walked together through wooded paths that led them to beetling shores, and sat listening to the waves crashing far below. Silences and commonplaces became the rule instead of the eager discussions with which they had begun,--on such safer topics as the problem of the social work of modern churches. Her aromatic presence, and in this setting, continually disturbed him: nature's perfumes, more definable, --exhalations of the sea and spruce,--mingled with hers, anaesthetics compelling lethargy. He felt himself drowning, even wished to drown, --and yet strangely resisted. "I must go to-morrow," he said. "To-morrow--why? There is a dinner, you know, and Mrs. Waterman wished so particularly to meet you." |
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