The Light Heart Read Online Free PDF

contemplated the monastic life.
    His parents very wisely, at first, let him alone, hoping he would right himself as his health returned. But there was created, between his mental depression and the recurrent bouts of fever, a sort ofvicious circle, and instead of getting well Miles showed a tendency now, at twenty-five, to become a chronic semi-invalid, patient, studious, self-effacing—half alive.
    Through it all, Phoebe had stood by him staunchly, always sympathetic and soothing, ready to read aloud to him till she was hoarse, anxious to absorb books he had already read and listen to him discuss them for hours, always serious-minded, undemanding, considerate of his feelings, tacitly recognizing his broken heart, and offering with both hands her generous, flattering friendship as a makeweight in his celibacy. And now she was going to England. Suppose, like Virginia, she never came back….
    Disturbed by emotions he had thought permanently shelved, Miles went for a walk on the Lawn at Charlottesville in the late afternoon shadows and sunlight, and faced things he had shirked with impunity too long. Was he to go on like this, he asked himself desolately, for the rest of his life, losing girl after girl into limbo, or was he going to put his foot down before it was too late and have a wife like other people? The family expected him to marry, he knew. Fitz had married, and then Bracken had taken to himself the younger sister of Virginia’s English husband. Miles was the last, and it was his turn.
    Pacing slowly under the old green trees across the closely mown grass between the classic pavilions, Miles contemplated marriage for himself and found himself, as always, shrinking back into his shell. He liked his life as it was. He had his own room in his parents’ spacious house—a rather Spartan, monkish room, with a plain white coverlet on the bed, plain white curtains at the windows, a writing-table in the best light, books all along one wall and all across the mantelpiece. He could readin bed—read all night, when he was having one of his bad times….
    The life-force in Miles had flickered very low. The possible introduction of a woman into his tidy, self-centred days and nights presented to him mainly problems and unwelcome readjustments—even a woman so familiar to him, so well-versed in his ways, and so eager to please as his Cousin Phoebe Sprague. He viewed the ensuing loss of his bachelor privacy almost as squeamishly as a girl. A wife would always be there, morning, noon and night; at breakfast when he wanted to read the newspaper, at luncheon when he was allowed to bring a book to the table, at dinner when he supposed it would become necessary to make a change of dress. She would be in his room when he went to bed and wanted to read before turning out the light—in his bed when he woke up in the morning. Would he ever be alone again, and how did married people bear it? What would you talk about with a woman, shut up with her seven days in the week, three hundred and sixty-five nights in the year? Even with Phoebe, who had an educated, serious mind, for a woman, what would you talk about all that time?
    Walking up and down in the lengthening shadows of the lovely grounds, his tall body stooping a little, his hands behind his back like an old man, Miles tried to think how his mother and father managed. He knew they were happy together, for it was plain to see. His mother was a notorious chatterer, and always had been. It amused his father, a smiling, silent man on whom the perpetual patter of her words fell like the gentle rain from heaven. Apparently his father dearly loved to hear her and was endlessly diverted. Miles wondered if she ever stopped, even when the door closed behind them in their own room at night—and was embarrassed at his own thoughts.
    Phoebe could be silent, he knew. Perhaps if he and Phoebe lived with his parents after they were married his mother would be company for her and he wouldn’t have