“Wait a moment, let me tell you—you have saved me.”
She smiled, her lips moved, and she whispered—
“You have saved me.”
By their love for each other they were both saved. The disguises are manifold which the Immortal Son assumes in the work of our redemption.
* * * * *
Tom henceforth wore the ring on his finger. Mr. Cardew resigned his living, and did not preach for many years. When pressed for an explanation he generally gave his health as an excuse. Later in life he took up work again in a far distant, purely agricultural parish, but his sermons were of the simplest kind—exhortations to pity, consideration, gentleness, and counsels as to the common duties of life. He spent much of his time in visiting his parishioners and in helping them in their difficulties. Mrs. Cardew, as we have said, died before him, but no woman ever had a husband more tender and devoted than hers in these later years. He had changed much, and she knew it, but she did not know exactly how, nor did she know the reason. It was not the kind of change which comes from a new theory or a new principle: it was something deeper. Some men are determined by principles, and others are drawn and directed by a vision or a face. Before Mr. Cardew was set for evermore the face which he saw white and saintly at Chapel Farm that May Sunday morning when death had entered, and it controlled and moulded him with an all-pervading power more subtle and penetrating than that which could have been exercised by theology or ethics.
Footnotes:
[{1}] “Not now nor of yesterday are they, but for ever they live, and no one knows whence to date their appearance.”—Sophocles, “Antigone.”
[{2}] “You, yourself, some time or other, overcome by the terror-speaking tales of the seers, will seek to fall away from us.”—Lucritius, “De Rerum Natura.”