"I hope you will not decide hastily," was his response. "I have long
recognized your excellent qualities; our ages are suitable; and I think
I am right in saying that we both find our highest satisfaction in doing
good. Be sure my esteem for you is too great for me to easily take a
refusal."
"But, Mr. Saychase," I argued, catching at any excuse to end his
importunity, "you forget that I am not a sharer in your beliefs. A
clergyman ought not to marry a woman that half his parish would think an
atheist."
"I have thought of that," he responded readily, "and knew you must
recognize that a clergyman's wife should be a helpmeet in his religious
work; but I hoped that for the sake of the work, if not for mine, you
might be willing to give up your unhappy views."
There was a sort of simplicity about this which was so complete as to be
almost noble. It might be considered an amazing egotism, and it might be
objected that Mr. Saychase had a singular idea of the sincerity of my
"unhappy views;" but the entire conviction with which he spoke almost
made me for the moment doubt myself. Unfortunately for him, a most
wickedly absurd remembrance came into my mind of a sentimental story in
an old red and gold annual that was grandmother's. A noble Christian
chieftain has falled in love with a Moorish damsel, and says to her:
"Beautiful Zorahida, only become a Christian, and thou shalt be my
bride." Beautiful Zorahida took at once to the proposition, but I am
made of more obstinate stuff. I hid the smile the story brought up, but
I determined to end this talk at once.
"Mr. Saychase," I said as firmly as I could, "you are kind, but it is
utterly impossible that I should change my views or that I should marry
you. We will, if you please, consider the subject closed entirely. How
soon do you go to Franklin to the annual conference?"
He evidently saw I was in earnest, and to my great relief said no more
in this line. He could not help showing that he was uncomfortable,
although I was more gracious to him than I had ever been in my life. He
did not stay long. As he was going I said I was sure he would not let
anything I had said wound him, for I had not meant to hurt him. He said
"Oh, no," rather vaguely, and left me. I wonder how many girls ever get
an offer of marriage without a hint of love from beginning to end!
July 30. Tomine is more adorable every day. I wish Tom could see her
oftener. It would soften him, and take out of his face the hard look
which is getting fixed there. He surely could not resist her when she
wakes up from her nap, all rosy and fresh, and with a wonder-look in her
eyes as if she had been off in dreamland so really that she could not
understand how she happens not to be there still. I think the clasp of
her soft little fingers on his would somehow take the ache out of his
heart. Poor Tom! I wonder how far being sorry for a thing makes one
better. Repentance is more than half discomfort, Mother used to say. I
always told her that to me it seemed like a sort of moral indigestion
which warned us not to eat any more of the forbidden fruit that caused
it. Tom is unhappy. He is proud, and he feels the disgrace more than he
would own. Any country town is so extremely pronounced in its
disapproval of sins of a certain kind that a man would have to be
covered with a rhinoceros hide not to feel it; and to stand up against
it means to a man of Tom's disposition a constant attitude of defiance.
Sometimes I find myself feeling so strongly on Tom's side that I seem to
have lost all moral sense. It is my instinct, the cruelly illogical
injustice of my sex perhaps, to lay the blame on poor dead Julia.
Only--but I cannot think of it, and how I come to be writing about it is
more than I can tell. I do think a good deal about Tom, however, and
wonder what the effect on his character will be. He is of a pretty
stubborn fibre when once he has taken a determination; and now that he
has made up his mind to fight down public opinion here he will do it.
The question is what it will cost him. Sometimes it seems a pity that he
could not have gone away from home, into a broader atmosphere, and one
where he could have expended his strength in developing instead of
resisting. Here he will be like a tree growing on a windy sea-cliff; he
will be toughened, but I am afraid he will be twisted and gnarled.
I wonder if little Tomine will ever ask me, when she is grown, about her
mother. If she does I can only say that I never saw Julia until she was
on her deathbed; and that will have to do. Dear little soft baby! The
idea of her being grown up is too preposterous. She is always to be my
baby Thomasine, and then I can love her without the penalty of having to
answer troublesome questions.