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_."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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