Her eyes were wet with angry tears.
"This isn't a time to be kind, my dear." His voice was quivering like her
own. "I'm bungling it--I'm bungling it--but you must let me stumble along
and try to show you what I mean. You will have your work, your crowded
schools, to which you'll be able to give your life. But I look ahead, I
who know you--and I don't see you happy, I don't even see you whole. For
you there will be no family. None of the intimate sorrows and joys that
have been in this house will come to you. I look back and I see them
all--for a man who has come so near the end gets a larger vision." He shut
his eyes, his jaw set tight. "I look into my family back and back, and I
see how it has been made of many generations. Certain figures stand out in
my mind--they cover over a hundred years. And I see how much they've meant
to me. I see that I've been one of them--a link in a long chain of
lives--all inter-bound and reaching on. In my life they have all been
here--as I shall be in lives to come.
"And this is what I want for you." He held her close a moment. The tears
were rolling down her cheeks. "Until now you have been one of us, too. You
have never once been free. You have been the one in this house to step in
and take hold and try to decide what's best to be done. I'm not putting you
up on a pedestal, I don't say you've made no mistakes--but I say you're the
kind of a woman who craves what's in a family.
Pages:
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313