156
PARTISAN
R 'EVIEW
realization did not stay with him, he felt hatred and contempt for his
mother, for her belief in submissiveness and for her telling him, on
certain infuriating occasions, that it is only through submitting
bravely and cheerfully to unhappiness that we can learn God's Will,
and how most truly to
be
good. God's Will, he thought now: I bet
it isn't just for people to be unhappy! Who wants to be
good! I
do, he answered himself. But not like that. I sure was crazy then,
he thought, pleased that he was now able to recognize the fact. Just
a crazy fool. The whole crazy thing had begun to fade away soon
after Easter, with the good weather, and had vanished so com–
pletely during the free summer in Knoxville that he had forgotten
the whole of it until just now: but all through that dreary winter and
increasingly throughout that drizzling season of penitence, he realized
now with incredulous and amused self-scorn, he had ever more
miserly cherished and elaborated his wretchedness in everyone of its
sorry ramifications, as indispensable to the secret, the solution, he had
through God's Grace discovered; and had managed easily to forgive
himself those parts of his Lenten Rule which he meekly enjoyed in
public, by inventing still other, harder rules which were private.
His mother had tried uneasily to suggest to him that there
might be a kind of vanity mixed up in his extreme piety-"not that
you
mean
it, of course, dear"-against which he must be on his guard;
but remembering the role of dismayed parents and scornful villagers
in the early lives of many of the saints, he had answered her gently
and patiently, with forbearance, that was the word, as befitted com–
munication between creatures of two worlds so unbridgeably different.
He had been tempted on more than one occasion to say to her, "Wo–
man, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come";
but he had suspected that this might be thought impudent or absurd!
or even blasphemous. Nor had he ever said aloud, when others jeered
or tormented, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do"; but had often fortified himself with the silent words, "And He
held His peace."
It
had only gradually been borne upon him that he himself
might aspire to actual sainthood; he had quickly realized that if
that was to be
his
goal it was necessary, starting young, he might al–
ready be too late, to perform in private for God's eyes alone and
in public that others might see, and be edified, and remember, and
