He had capitulated; a
thin-skinned aversion to confronting difficulties, when he saw the chance
of avoiding them, had won the day. He intended--had perhaps the whole time
intended--to take the hand held out to him. After all, why not? Anyone
else, as Polly said, would have jumped at John's offer. He alone must
argue himself blue in the face over it.
But as he sat and pondered the lengthy chain of circumstance--Polly's
share in it, John's, his own, even the part played by incorporeal things
--he brought up short against the word "decision". He might flatter
himself by imagining he had been free to decide; in reality nothing was
further from the truth. He had been subtly and slily guided to his goal
--led blindfold along a road that not of his choosing. Everything and
every one had combined to constrain him: his favours to John, the
failure of his business, Polly's inclinations and persuasions, his own
fastidious shrinkings. So that, in the end, all he had had to do was to
brush aside a flimsy gossamer veil, which hung between him and his fate.
Was it straining a point to see in the whole affair the workings of a
Power outside himself--against himself, in so far as it took no count
of his poor earth-blind vision?
Well, if this were so, better still: his ways were in God's hand. And
after all, what did it matter where one strove to serve one's Maker--
east or west or south or north--and whether the stars overhead were
grouped in this constellation or in that? Their light was a pledge that
one would never be overlooked or forgotten, traced by the hand of Him
who had promised to note even a sparrow's fall.
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