A Heritage and its History Read Online Free PDF

me. I trust my own time will not be long. That is the zenith of my hope. My brother and I have been too much to each other. We have given too little to our friends. I wonder we have them; we have but few. Life must be give and take.”
    â€œBut it should be good to give. If we must take as well, it is a poor giving. We must render freely to make a gift. I hope I may give what I have? It is what I ask.”
    â€œSo I shall have a friend. I shall need one and show my need. What I have will be less than nothing; you must indeed be willing to give. While I am waiting, I will remember. It will be a light in the coming blank. A faint one; I will say the truth; but it will be a light.”
    â€œI am grateful,” said Rhoda, in a low tone. “And the fainter the light, the more grateful. To be allowed to do our little, when we cannot do much! It is indeed a cause for it.”
    â€œI can say no more. My brother is looking at us. I am his while he needs me. In a sense I am always his.”
    â€œWe are talking of the future,” said Hamish. “I findI like to think of it. When one will not share it, there is a lightness in its interest. I see it as a picture or a play.”
    â€œI see it as a threat,” said Fanny. “There is more chance of ill than of good.”
    â€œLet us add your marriage to it. It is proper that a play should have one.”
    â€œThen I should have the loss,” said Rhoda. “Not that that is a thing to count.”
    â€œWhy is it not?” said Sir Edwin.
    â€œYou may marry yourself,” said Hamish.
    â€œThen the loss would be mine,” said Fanny. “And I should count it, and expect other people to. I could not have anything I suffered, passed over.”
    â€œYou would not mind pity?” said Sir Edwin.
    â€œI should mind the case for it. I think people usually mind that the most.”
    â€œYou are right not to be troubled by it. It can be of use.”
    â€œWhy does marriage make loss?” said Rhoda. “It ought to widen a relationship, not weaken it.”
    â€œWidening things attenuates them,” said Sir Edwin. “I think it has to be.”
    â€œIt sounds as if people should not marry,” said Hamish. “But permission is not sought. I have sons, and shall find it so. Or I should, if I were to see the time. It has yet to come.”
    â€œHow are the sons doing?” said Rhoda.
    â€œThank you, not well. Simon is restless and dissatisfied, and Walter has left Oxford without a degree. I do not know how to help them in my days. And whenI am elsewhere, it may only be permitted to help those who help themselves.”
    There was some mirth, and Rhoda spoke to Sir Edwin under its cover.
    â€œWe admire jesting about such things. We know it is brave and selfless; we should admire it. And yet we feel there is an emptiness beneath.”
    â€œMy brother and I have no beliefs. No religious issue is involved. Death is to us the natural change and end.”
    â€œYou have to be brave to face it, honest to feel it. Perhaps I could be neither. But I must stand by my own truth.”
    â€œIt is not a question of courage, simply of what our reason accepts or denies.”
    â€œPeople talk as if we could select our beliefs,” said Fanny. “They seem to think they are a matter of personal taste. And it is true there have been fashions in them, and that being out of fashion has been visited.”
    â€œAny honest belief is helpless,” said Hamish.
    â€œOh, there is so much more in it than that,” said Rhoda.
    â€œI thought it put the matter in a word,” said Sir Edwin.
    â€œYes, that is what it did. But is a word the right vehicle for anything with such a range, nothing less than the whole of human destiny?”
    â€œWords are all we have. It is no good to find fault with them.”
    â€œAnd yet I do so. They are used as if they had some power. And how little they