"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.
[VIII]
AUGUST
August 1. I said a thing to Tom to-day which was the most natural thing in the world, yet which teases me. He came to pay one of his rare visits to baby, and we were bending over her so that our heads were almost together. I was not thinking of him, but just of Tomine, and without considering how he might take it I declared that I felt exactly as if she were my very own.
"What do you mean?" Tom asked. "She is yours."