Part 48 (1/2)
”What is the matter with you?”
”Only a bad cold.”
”Where is Alice?”
”At the shop. She will be back at eight o'clock.”
”Where is your mother?”
”I do not know; she is out.”
”Tell me anything I can do for you.”
”What does it matter! I do not know anything. It will soon be over.”
”And this,” reflected Richard, ”is the fate of one who believes in a G.o.d!” But the thought followed close, ”I wish I were going too!” And then came the suggestion, ”What if some one cares for him, and is taking him away because he cares for him! What if there be a good time waiting him! What if death be the way to something better! What if G.o.d be going to surprise us with something splendid! What if there come a glorious evening after the sad morning and fog-sodden night! What if Arthur's dying be in reality a waking up to a better suns.h.i.+ne than ours! We see only one side of the thing: he may see the other! What if G.o.d could not manage to ripen our life without suffering! If only there were a G.o.d that tried to do his best for us, finding great difficulties, but encountering them for the sake of his children!”--”How dearly I should love such a G.o.d!” thought Richard. He would hold by him to the last! He would do his best to help him! He would fight for him! He would die for him!
His hour was not yet come to know that there is indeed such a G.o.d, doing his best for us in great difficulties, with enemies almost too much for him--the falsehood, namely, the unfilialness of his children, so many of whom will not be true, priding themselves on the good he has created in them, while they refuse to make it their own by obeying it when they are disinclined.
If even he might but hope that with his last sigh Arthur would awake to a consciousness justifying his existence, let him be the creation of a living power or the helpless product of a senseless, formless Ens-non-ens, he would be content! For then they might one day meet again--somewhere--somewhen, somehow; together encounter afresh the troubles and dissatisfactions of life, and perhaps work out for themselves a world more endurable!
But with that came the thought of Barbara.
”No!” he said to himself, ”let us all die--die utterly! Why should we grumble at our poor life when it means nothing, is so short, and gives such a sure and certain hope of nothing more! Who would prolong it in such a world, with which every soul confesses itself disappointed, of which every heart cries that it cannot have been made for us! When they grow old, men always say they have found life a delusion, and would not live it again. From the first, things have been moving toward the worse; life has been growing more dreary; men are more miserable now than when they were savage: how can we tell that the world was not started at its best, to go down hill for ever and ever, with a G.o.d to urge its evil pace, for surely there is none to stop it! What if the world be the hate-contrivance of a being whose delight it is to watch its shuddering descent into the gulf of extinction, its agonized slide into the red foam of the lake of fire!”
But he must do something for the friend by whose side he had sat speechless for minutes!
”I will come and see you again soon, Arthur,” he said; ”I must go now.
Would you mind the loan of a few s.h.i.+llings? It is all I happen to have about me!”
Arthur shook his head, and wrote,
”Money is of no use--not the least.”
”Don't you fancy anything that might do you good?”
”I can't get out to get anything.”
”Your mother would get it for you!”
He shook his head.
”But there's Alice!”
Arthur gave a great sigh, and said nothing. Richard laid the s.h.i.+llings on the chimneypiece, and proceeded to make up the fire before he went.
He could see no sort of coal-scuttle, no fuel of any kind. With a heavy heart he left him, and went down into the street, wondering what he could do.
As he drew near the public-house that chiefly poisoned the neighbourhood, it opened its h.e.l.l-jaws, and cast out a woman in frowzy black, wiping her mouth under her veil with a dirty pocket-handkerchief.
She had a swollen red face, betokening the presence of much drink, walked erect, and went perfectly straight, but looked as if, were she to relax the least of her state, she would stagger. As she pa.s.sed Richard, he recognized her. It was Mrs. Manson. Without a thought he stopped to speak to her. The same moment he saw that, although not dead drunk, she could by no tropical contortion be said to be sober.
She started, and gave a snort of indignation.
”You here!” she cried. ”What the big devil do you want--coming here to insult your betters! You the son of the bookbinder! You're no more John Tuke's son than I am. You're the son of that precious rascal, my husband! Go to sir Wilton; don't come to me! You're a base-born wretch,--Oh yes, run to your mother! Tell her what I say! Tell her she was lucky to get hold of her tradesman.”