Tom Brown at Oxford Part 105

"Life should be all bright and beautiful to a woman. It is every man's duty to s.h.i.+eld her from all that can vex, or pain, or soil."

"But have women different souls from men?"

"G.o.d forbid!"

"Then are we not fit to share your highest hopes?"

"To share our highest hopes! Yes, when we have any. But the mire and clay where one sticks fast over and over again, with no high hopes or high anything else in sight--a man must be a selfish brute to bring any one he pretends to love into all that."

"Now, Tom," she said almost solemnly, "you are not true to yourself. Would you part with your own deepest convictions? Would you, if you could, go back to the time when you cared for and thought about none of these things?"

He thought a minute, and then, pressing her hand, said--

"No, dearest, I would not. The consciousness of the darkness in one and around one brings the longing for light. And then the light dawns, through mist and fog, perhaps, but enough to pick ones way by." He stopped a moment, and then added, "and s.h.i.+nes ever brighter unto the perfect day. Yes, I begin to know it."

"Then, why not put me on your own level? Why not let me pick my way by your side? Cannot a woman feel the wrongs that are going on in the world? Cannot she long to see them set right, and pray that they may be set right? We are not meant to sit in fine silks and look pretty, and spend money, any more than you are meant to make it, and cry peace where there is no peace. If a woman cannot do much herself, she can honor and love a man who can."

He turned to her, and bent over her, and kissed her forehead, and kissed her lips. She looked up with sparkling eyes and said--

"Am I not right, dear?"

"Yes, you are right, and I have been false to my creed. You have taken a load off my heart, dearest. Henceforth there shall be but one mind and one soul between us. You have made me feel what it is that a man wants, what is the help that is mete for him."

He looked into her eyes and kissed her again; and then rose up, for there was something within him like a moving of new life, which lifted him, and set him on his feet. And he stood with kindling brow, gazing into the autumn air, as his heart went sorrowing, but hopefully "sorrowing, back through all the faultful past." And she sat on at first, and watched his face, and neither spoke nor moved for some minutes. Then she rose, too, and stood by his side:--

And on her lover's arm she leant, And round her waist she felt it fold, And so across the hills they went, In that new world which is the old.

Yes, that new world, through the golden gates of which they had pa.s.sed together, which is the old, old world, after all, and nothing else. The same old and new world it was to our fathers and mothers as it is to us, and shall be to our children--a world clear and bright, and ever becoming clearer and brighter to the humble, and true, and pure of heart--to every man and woman who will live in it as the children of the Maker and Lord of it, their Father. To them, and to them alone, is that world, old and new, given, and all that is in it, fully and freely to enjoy. All others but these are occupying where they have no t.i.tle, "they are sowing much, but bringing in little; they eat, but have not enough; they drink, but are not filled with drink; they clothe themselves, but there is none warm; and he of them who earneth wages, earneth wages to put them into a bag with holes." But these have the world and all things for a rightful and rich inheritance; for they hold them as dear children of Him in whose hand it and they are lying, and no power in earth or h.e.l.l shall pluck them out of their Father's hand.

FINIS