“She is very sweet and womanly,” said Macdonald. “She is, indeed, an ideal woman. She must be an immense help and comfort to you.”
“Yes, she is. I cannot tell what I should do without Tom. And she will be better than ever now, for I think she has heard every sermon you have preached in the neighbourhood. I am sorry they have been so few. Come to us again when you can. Like Arthur Knight, you make us think, and do us good.”
The two men went to London together, and separated at the railway terminus, each bent on his work.
A fortnight later, Mr. Whitwell, with a very grave face, called his youngest daughter into his study. “Tom, my dear,” he said, “I have a letter from Mr. Macdonald which has greatly surprised me, and he has enclosed one for you in it.”
CHAPTER XXXIII.
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
Miss Thomasine Grace Whitwell locked herself in her room, and read twice over the letter which she had received from the Rev. Peter Macdonald. The letter—a very short one, but one which went directly to its purpose—was a manly declaration of the love of its writer. “I have known you only a short time,” it said, “but I know you well enough to feel that the greatest joy I could have would be in the knowledge that you cared for me—a knowledge that would fill me with inspiration for my life and work. I am not of those who think that a clergyman can better fulfil his mission by debarring himself from the sweet domestic ties of home and wife and children. He can, certainly, unless his wife be a real helpmeet; but if she be, surely he will be the better fitted to help and sympathise with the dwellers in the multitudes of homes which Christianity has made possible for the people. I do not pretend that it is entirely because I have seen your ministry of mercy among your people that I ask you to come to my help; it is because I love you, and because it is only since I have known you that the alluring picture of a home of affection, with a gracious woman at its head, has formed itself in my mind. It is frequently there now, and always it is of yourself that I think in connection with it. Will you be good to me, and make the picture a reality, not because I am worthy, but because you are kind?”
It goes without saying that Tom was profoundly moved and impressed by this letter, and equally surprised by it also. “What can such a man as he see in me that he should care for me?” she asked herself, and the answer was not forthcoming. She admired and revered Mr. Macdonald exceedingly. It seemed to Tom that she had never been converted, or experienced any real religion until she knew him, and listened to his teachings; but it had never occurred to her that he could be like other men, or that human love could be essential to his happiness. Tom was a little disappointed as well as greatly astonished and flattered.
She knew what her answer must be; and she also knew, though it filled her with shame to acknowledge it to herself, that the true reason was because another knight had won her fealty. Why he was silent when she had expected him to speak she could not tell. She felt sure now, since months passed and brought neither Arthur Knight nor a word from him, that her lot would be that of so many other women of her time—a lot which contained great joy, if not the bliss of which almost every woman dreams, and the larger ministry of love which embraces many instead of one. And Tom deliberately chose it for herself now. There was only one possible person for her; and if he did not wish to share her life, no one else should.
We are not going to tell any tales of Tom. She was a sensible girl—too sensible, perhaps, to waste time and shed tears in useless regrets. And, moreover, as she often said to herself, “No woman can have everything.” She would not have liked to give up her share of philanthropic work which was occupying the best energies of so many of the women of the day; and she had only to do from compulsion what they did from choice. Hundreds of educated women deliberately chose to be patriots instead of parents; and they proved in their own experience that love is not everything. They wisely saw what—happily for England and the Church—was being increasingly realised, that fathers and mothers of children are culpably unfaithful to their trust and duty who are busily engaged in their endeavour to save other people’s children while their own are unsaved; and now men and women who had families, instead of being besieged with requests that they would leave their homes and preach in the Sunday-school, or help in the Band of Hope, were left to meet the responsibilities of their state, or, at the most, were asked to receive and instruct, with the members of their own family, a few other boys and girls who were not amenable to ordinary efforts. As for Tom, she knew that it was a pleasure to her to be in the thick of the grand work of the times, and this self-knowledge came to her aid.
Her letter to Mr. Macdonald left no doubt as to its sincerity. Tom showed it to her father before she sent it.