The choice

Faramir

Not long ago I was talking with Master Samwise, and our talk turned, as it so often does, to our memories of Frodo.

‘You know what I always admired most about him?’ said Samwise (who is not half-wise, like his name, but entirely so). ‘Every time he had a choice – to give up or go on – he always went on. Perhaps that’s the most that can be said about any hero.’

On that scale I would have small claim to be accounted a hero, for I grew up in a world that offered me few choices. Between resisting the Enemy and cravenly submitting; between duty and dishonour; between obedience and treason, there was never any real choice. Even with the Ring within my grasp, I had no real choice. By taking it I knew I would un-make myself first, the world only second. It was not heroism, but self-preservation.

The new world we have made has more room for choices, even for those of high blood.  Seldom can it happen now that the choices, even of great men, threaten to un-make the world. Yet that makes it perhaps more likely that they will un-make the chooser.

My daughter’s choice was one such. Whether she chose rightly I still do not know. I only hope that I did not make the choice for her.

I remember the day she made it. For five years she had held out against Eldarion: no long time in the life of the great ones of Númenor, but bitter eternity in the heart of a lover. And all the time, through those five years, quietly, without bitterness and with no loss of love, she was drawing away from me: not towards Eldarion or any other man, not into the elven world whither she had once fled, but into some place of her own, where she was alone with her freedom: the freedom to choose which I would not, could not take away from her, though it became her torment and mine, because it was part of the world we had made.

And through all those five years, if I was at home, there was no day when I did not wait for her at the evening hour in the orchard, which had been our sacred hour ever since she was deemed to be too old for bedtime stories (and determinedly cried herself to sleep for weeks afterwards, I remember, until this alternative was devised). Here I had watched her grow, from child to girl to woman; here I had soothed her sorrows, calmed her anger and rejoiced in her happiness, my cherished other self. But during those five years she came more and more seldom, and eventually not at all – until the day (a summer’s day, treacherously bright) when she made her choice.

She was waiting for me beside Húrin’s green grave. When I arrived she smiled briefly in greeting, as if we had been parted but an hour, and said abruptly, ‘Father, is it wicked to be too happy?’

‘Too happy?’

She nodded. ‘I know you and Mother have always done everything in the world to make me happy. Everybody in Ithilien always strove to make me happy. I thought it was my right to be happy. When I felt my happiness was threatened, I ran away. When I came back, I clung on to my happiness like a dog to a bare bone, snarling at anyone I thought wanted to take it away.’ She buried her face in her hands. ‘I am ashamed of it now, so ashamed I could die of it.’

I sat down beside her, not touching her; the time when her small sorrows could be dismissed with a hug and a kiss was long gone by.  Presently she looked up at me, challenging, almost angry. ‘You never ran away from things, did you, Father?’

‘I tried not to.’

‘Mother ran away once, but she ran into danger, not out of it. Mother wasn’t a coward.’

‘Fíriel…’

She ignored my protest, and sat biting her lip and shivering a little, though the evening was warm.

It is hard to sit by and watch your own soul in torment, but there was nothing I could do except hear her out.

‘Father,’ she resumed, in a toneless voice, unlike herself. ‘Father, is there anything you would not do for the good of Gondor?’

I was faced again, as of old, with my own lack of choice. There could be only one answer.

‘Nothing that I judged to be right.’

‘You would give up the Stewardship?’

‘If necessary.’

‘You would give up Ithilien?’

‘If it were better out of my hands.’

‘You would give your own life?’

‘If I had to.’ That was no mastery; I had been doomed to it from the day of my birth.

‘You would sacrifice us? Mother and Elboron and Túrin and me?’

Her voice and face were desperate now, but I still had no choice.

‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘I would not want to live after it, but I would do it.’

She nodded, seeming oddly relieved, and fell silent for a long while. At last she looked up, and her face was as pale as death, but calm.

‘And yet they ask so little of me, and that little I would not give. I’m not worthy to be your daughter, or Mother’s. I am ashamed – ashamed – ashamed!’ She beat her small white hand against the stone of the bench until I took and held it lest she do herself an injury. She was instantly still, and in another moment she was on her feet.

‘Father,’ she said, ‘will you tell Eldarion that if he comes and asks for speech with me, I will hear him?’

Then she asked my leave, and walked away, assured and graceful as a queen, and proud and despairing as a prisoner on his way to execution. It was thus that her choice was made. By her, or by me, or by Gondor? I still do not know.