This struggle in her mind showed itself clearly when she was in the company of her husband and Miss Dounor. She would sit conscientiously bending her mind to her self-imposed task of understanding and development, when in the immediate circle of talkers that included her husband and Miss Dounor she gave anxious and impartial attention to the words of one and the other occasionally joining in the talk by an earnest inquiry and receiving always from Redfern the courteous deference that he extended to every one, to everything, to all women. She listened with admiring attention particularly to Miss Dounor who genuinely unconscious of all this nervous misery paid her in return scant attention. When she was not in the immediate group of talkers with these two she kept her attention on the person with whom she was talking and showed the burden of her feeling only in the anxious care with which she listened and talked.
She was not to be left much longer to work out her own conclusions. One afternoon in the late fall in the second year of their life at Farnham, Miss Charles came to the room where she was sitting alone and in her abrupt way spoke directly of the object of her visit. “Mrs. Redfern,” she began “you probably know something of the gossip that is at present going on, I want you to keep Mr. Redfern in order, I cannot allow him to make Miss Dounor the subject of scandalous talk.” She stopped and looked steadily at the uneasy woman who was dazed by this sudden statement of her own suspicion, “I, I don't understand,” she stammered. “I think you understand quite well. I depend upon you to speak to him about it,” and with this the dean departed.
This action on Miss Charles part showed her wisdom. She knew very well the small power that Mrs. Redfern had over her husband and she took this method of attack only because it was the only one open to her. Mrs. Redfern could not accomplish anything by any action but she was a woman and jealous and there was little doubt, so the dean thought, that before long she would effect some change.
Martha Redfern's mind was now in a confusion. Miss Charles had added nothing to her facts nevertheless her statement had made a certainty of what Mrs. Redfern had resolutely regarded as an impossibility. She sat there long and long thinking over again and again the same weary round of thoughts and terrors. She knew she was powerless to change him, she could only try to get the evidence to condemn him. Did she want it, if she had it she must act on it, she dreaded to obtain it and could not longer exist without it. She must watch him and find it all out without questioning, must learn it by seeing and hearing and she felt dimly a terror of the things she might be caught doing to obtain it, she dreaded the condemnation of Redfern's chivalrous honor. She did not doubt his disloyalty she was convinced of that and she still feared to lose his respect for her sense of honor. “He is dishonorable, all his action is deceit,” she said to herself again and again but she found no comfort in this thought, she knew there was a difference and that she respected his standard more than her own justification.
In the long weary days that followed she was torn by these desires, she must watch him always and secretly, she must gain the knowledge she dreaded to possess and she must be deeply ashamed of the ways she must pursue. She was no longer able to listen to others when her husband and Miss Dounor were in her presence, she dared not keep an open watch but her observation was unceasing.
Redfern was not wholly unconscious of this change in his wife's manner perhaps more in the relief that she ceased her eager efforts to please him than in the annoyance of her suspicious watching. Redfern was a man too much on guard to fear surprise and with all his experience too ignorant of women's ways to see danger where danger really lay.
It was the end of May and one late afternoon Mrs. Redfern filled with her sad past and sadder future, sat in her room watching the young leaves shining brilliantly in the warm sunshine on the long row of elms that stretched away through the village toward the green hills that rose beyond. Mrs. Redfern knew very well the feel of that earth warm with young life and wet with spring rains, knew it as part of her dreary life that seemed to have lasted always. As she sat there in sadness, the restless eagerness of her blond good-looking face was gone and her hands lay clasped quietly without straining, time and sadness had become stronger in her than desire.
Redfern came into the house and passed into his own study. He remained there a short while and then was called away. As soon as he was out of sight Mrs. Redfern arose and went into his room. She walked up to his desk and opening his portfolio saw a letter in his writing. She scarcely hesitated so eager was she to read it. She read it to the end, she had her evidence.
Categories that once to some one had real meaning can later to that same one be all empty. It is queer that words that meant something in our thinking and our feeling can later come to have in them in us not at all any meaning. This is happening always to every one really feeling meaning in words they are saying. This is happening very often to almost every one having any realisation in them in their feeling, in their thinking, in their imagining of the words they are always using. This is common then to many having in them any real realisation of the meaning of the words they are using. As I was saying categories that once to some one had real meaning come later to that same one not to have any meaning at all then for that one. Sometimes one reads a letter that they have been keeping with other letters, and one is not very old then and so it is not that they are old then and forgetting, they are not very old then and they come in cleaning something to reading this letter and it is all full of hot feeling and the one, reading the letter then, has not in them any memory of the person who once wrote that letter to them. This is different, very different from the changing of the feeling and the thinking in many who have in them real realisation of the meaning of words when they are using them but there is in each case so complete a changing of experiencing in feeling and thinking, or in time or in something, that something, some one once alive to some one is then completely a stranger to that one, the meaning in a word to that one the meaning in a way of feeling and thinking that is a category to some one, some one whom some one was knowing, these then come to be all lost to that one sometime later in the living of that one.
This is very true then, this is very true then of the feeling and the thinking that makes the meaning in the words one is using, this is very true then that to many of them having in them strongly a sense of realising the meaning of the words they are using that some words they once were using, later have not any meaning and some then have a little shame in them when they are copying an old piece of writing where they were using words that sometime had real meaning for them and now have not any real meaning in them to the feeling and the thinking and the imagining of such a one. Often this is in me in my feeling, often then I have to lose words I have once been using, now I commence again with words that have meaning, a little perhaps I had forgotten when it came to copying the meaning in some of the words I have just been writing. Now to begin again with what I know of the being in Phillip Redfern, now to begin again a description of Phillip Redfern and always now I will be using words having in my feeling, thinking, imagining very real meaning. As I was saying Phillip Redfern was to very many who knew him a queer one, he was to very many who knew him a bad one, he was to some who knew him so good a one that he was almost a real saint for them. This was true of him then and now I will begin a little more description of the kind of being in him, of the kind of being he had in living, of the many millions men and women always being like him.
He was of the kind of men and women who, in the end, to every one, have been as if they had been a failure. They are many of them, many of this kind of them, many of the kind of which Redfern was one, that have had very much reputation, have been well known for their living, for the being in them, in their living very many of this kind of them. These see themselves, always have, do and will see themselves all their living as virtuous, as heroic, as noble, as successful, as beautiful, as whatever is the best way of being to them, see themselves so through the weakness as well as through the strong things in them. Many men and many women see themselves as virtuous always in their living, this is a little now very interesting.
Many then have it in them that their weakness is a virtue in them. There are very many of this kind of them then. Johnson when he forgets his emotion, the emotion he had when he was friendly or loving or fighting, Johnson when he forgets his emotion and declares it to have been all the other one's doing attributes his having yielded to this indulging in loving, fighting, friendly action, to the weakness in him of always yielding. This weakness of his is uppermost in him and to himself, having forgotten that he had been himself wanting the thing he had once, later in describing, feeling of thinking the action over he says it was because he has the weakness of never being able to resist any one who wants anything. Perhaps Johnson began but later he forgets his having been wanting the thing, he remembers only that always he does anything anybody wants him to be doing, that is the weakness in him that is to him the whole principle of the being in him. Frank Hackart attributes his doing anything to the philanthropy in him, she was lonesome and threw herself on him, took possession and what did he do but take care of her. This later in telling, in remembering, in feeling is always the history of any woman and him. Mary Helbing always puts it down to, that they wanted it and she gave it but she had no responsibility, it was because she was so game that she did it, that is always the reason she does it, she is so game she never refuses anything that is a challenge, there is never anything that she is ever wanting in her living that she is ever getting. Sarah Sands puts her yielding down to unsuspiciousness, that is the reason she yields, she is so easy, that is the secret of it. Phillip Redfern was of this kind of them, he was to himself completely chivalrous, completely a gentleman, women, every one should always have complete courtesy always from him. And they are right all of them, all these things, each thing in each one, are characteristics in each one but they all think that one characteristic is the whole of them, they all of them forget the other things in them that are active in them, they all have it in common that in remembering anything they forget all the emotion they had then in them and so it must have been the other person's fault it happened, anything. All of them in remembering have not had any emotion except the one and so they had none then and so it must have been the other person. This is a little now very interesting.
As I was saying Phillip Redfern was of this kind in men and women.
There will be now more description of virtuous being, virtuous feeling in men and women. There will be now some description of religious feeling in some men and women, of virtuous and religious feeling in them, of the being in them, oî the sensitiveness in them, of the worldly feeling in them, of succeeding and failing in them. First then there will be more description of the kind of being in some men, men like Phillip Redfern, of religious, virtuous feeling in some men.
As I was saying some of the things all men have in them in their daily living have it to come in more men, only from the bottom nature in them than other things in them. Nothing of all the things all men have in them in their daily living comes in all men from the bottom nature of them. Eating, drinking, loving, anger in them, beginning and ending in them come more from many men from the bottom nature of most of them than other things in them but always there are many men of all the millions of each kind of them who have it in them not to have even eating and drinking and doctoring and living and anger in them and beginning and ending in them come from the bottom nature of them.
Men in their living have many things inside them, they have in them, each one of them has it in him, his own way of feeling himself important inside in him, they have in them all of them their own way of beginning, their own way of ending, their own way of working, their own way of having loving inside them and loving coming out from them, their own way of having anger inside them and letting their anger come out from inside them, their own way of eating their own way of drinking, their own way of sleeping, their own way of doctoring. They have each one of them their own way of fighting they have in them all of them their own way of having fear in them. They have all of them in them their own way of believing, their own way of being important inside them their own way of showing to others around them the important feeling inside in them.
Mostly every one has some kind of way of conceiving of themselves as a strong one, as a weak one, as a good one, as a bad one, as a virtuous, as an honorable one, as a religious, as an irreligious, as an unreligious one.
Mostly every one has some kind of way of conceiving of themselves, as a strong one, as a weak one, as a good one, as a bad one, as a virtuous one, as an honorable one, as a religious one, as an irreligious one, as an unreligious one.
Some as I am saying have honor in them and religion from the nature of them when this is strong enough in them to make it their own inside them. Some can make their own honor, some their own living, some their own religion, some are weak and can do one thing, make one thing their own, some are strong enough and all of it, loving, honor, and religion in them, all of it is some one else's, of some one else's making, some can just resist and not make their own anything, there are many of them. Some out of their own virtue make a god who sometimes later is a terror to them. Out of their own virtue they make a god who sometimes later is a terror to them. Some make some things like laws out of the nature of them, out of the nature of some other one. Some are controlled by other people's virtue, and then it scares them. Listen to each one telling about their own virtue and that grows to make a god for them, grows to be a law for them and often afterwards scares them, some afterwards like it, some forget it, some are it. Some honor what is right to them for them to be doing. Some separate honor from the doing of the thing, have it as a feeling.
