“I love that young man, daddy, with all my heart and soul and strength. And I know that I am not doing wrong, because all that I love in him comes direct from God, the God whom he’s always talking about and knows so well. But he doesn’t love me, I’m afraid, at least he doesn’t show any sign that he does, and what am I to do?”
Her father looked at her seriously and said nothing for a minute. Then he said—
“My darling girl, you can’t throw yourself at a man, not if he was half an angel. I love the young fellow too, and if he came to me and asked me for you, I should forget all about dollars and send him to you. But he hasn’t, and if I know anything of him he won’t. I don’t believe he’s ever had a thought about marryin’ or givin’ in marriage. In fact, I’ll own to you that I can’t make him out. He’s a different breed of man to any that I ever met before. However, dear one, believe this, your father’s with you, heart and soul, and short of going to him and askin’ him if he’ll be kind enough to take my daughter for a wife, I’ll do anything you ask me. Your happiness, my love, that’s what I live for.”
And the train sped relentlessly onward until in thirty-four hours from Chicago the big car rolled easily into the huge station at Boston, where by some mysterious means another coterie of journalists were awaiting them. Again poor C. B. was chosen as the medium whereby the Bostonians could acquire the information that apparently they thirsted for. But as no man can possibly have such an experience as he and remain quite ignorant of the task imposed upon him, so C. B. rose to the occasion, and surprised the interviewers by the astuteness of his answers. Of course he had been coached by both Mr. Stewart and Captain Taber, and something was due also to the difference between the methods of the journalists of Boston and those of Chicago. At any rate an hour after their arrival they were all safely installed in the comfortable Parker House, and feeling more at home than they had done since they left San Francisco or rather the Golden Gate.
And now for the first time Captain Taber sent a telegram acquainting his wife and children with the fact that he would soon be among them. He had not done so before, so as not to prolong their suspense, and as to writing, it had been quite out of the question as they had come more swiftly than a letter could have done. So that now while they were imagining him sailing about looking for whales in some unfrequented ocean on the other side of the world, there suddenly came to them the shock of his being quite near, and their hearts sank beneath the apprehension of calamity.
The news fled from one end of Fairhaven to the other, and over to New Bedford and its environs with great swiftness, for it was felt that something serious must have happened to the ship or her skipper would not have come home. And such excitement as these stern New Englanders ever allow themselves to feel steadily rose until it affected the whole neighbourhood.
Meanwhile the little group at the Parker House had come to the parting of the ways, and Mr. Stewart, remembering his daughter’s earnest appeal, was almost at his wits’ end what to do in the matter. He felt that to offer to go farther with the two men would be superfluous and obtrusive, and yet he could not bear to part from them like this. For not only had he his daughter’s happiness very near his heart, but he had grown to love the patient suffering skipper, whose career had thus been cut short in the prime of his days, and he felt that now if ever was a time to make some good use of his great wealth. In his perplexity it suddenly occurred to him to do the straight thing, go to the skipper at once and tell him his trouble about his daughter, and then lead from that up to his intentions or desires about the skipper himself. Here was a case he felt where any diplomacy would fail.
And while he was thus deciding, his daughter in an agony of doubt and apprehension had locked herself in her cabin. She felt so helpless, so little confident that even her good and powerful father would be able to help her, and yet she seemed certain that unless she became the wife of C. B., life for her would be henceforth a dreary blank. And she was no foolish girl, but an extremely level-headed young woman, only—she had hardly all her life known what it was to have a desire thwarted, and now in what she felt must be the one object of her life there appeared no way of obtaining it. She had seen C. B. put aside with calm dignity offer after offer of wealth, she had listened to the kind level tones of his voice and noted that the ring of passion never came into it, and had sometimes wondered whether he was not an abnormal man in whom love was so diffused that it could never be concentrated upon one single object. Then with a despairing little moan she flung herself on her knees and prayed to God for this good man’s love. In this she felt a thrill of sympathy with her beloved one, who in reply to a question of her one evening as to what he did if he wanted something very much and saw no way of getting it, said—
“I should ask God for it, but I should ask Him too not to let me have it if it were not good for me.”
So she prayed with deepest fervour but without the proviso, and never felt that she might be doing so without any warrant, not feeling at all inclined to resign herself to the will of God, but feeling that unless she got what she craved for she was aggrieved. A very common attitude, an easily explainable one too, but oh, how sadly illogical. Because it is certain that if we believe in the Infinite Wisdom as well as Infinite Power of God we must be contented to be refused our requests sometimes. And all of us who have prayed earnestly to God for something we wanted very badly as we thought, have known what it is to get our request granted, and afterwards, it may be many years after, to repent bitterly that ever our prayer was heard. It is one of the experiences of all Christians, yet few indeed are there of us who learn to pray with absolute sincerity, “Thy will be done.”