People who have kept in the high-road of Life
really have less opportunity for taking a comprehensive view of it
than those who have leaped over the hedges and strayed up the
hills; not but what the hedges are very necessary, and our stray
travellers often have a weary time of it. So, you may say, have
those in the dusty roads.' Yet he was himself a very stern
respecter of the hedgerows; sought safety and found dignity in the
obvious path of conduct; and would palter with no simple and
recognised duty of his epoch. Of marriage in particular, of the
bond so formed, of the obligations incurred, of the debt men owe to
their children, he conceived in a truly antique spirit: not to
blame others, but to constrain himself. It was not to blame, I
repeat, that he held these views; for others, he could make a large
allowance; and yet he tacitly expected of his friends and his wife
a high standard of behaviour. Nor was it always easy to wear the
armour of that ideal.
Acting upon these beliefs; conceiving that he had indeed 'given
himself' (in the full meaning of these words) for better, for
worse; painfully alive to his defects of temper and deficiency in
charm; resolute to make up for these; thinking last of himself:
Fleeming was in some ways the very man to have made a noble, uphill
fight of an unfortunate marriage.
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