Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/90

 then there would be no injustice, therefore nothing wrong, and nothing contemptible."

"Might not what he did be wrong in the abstract, without having reference to any person?"

"There is no wrong man can do but is a thwarting of the living right. Surely you believe, my lady, that there is a living power of right, whose justice is the soul of our justice, who will have right done, and causes even our own souls to take up arms against us when we do wrong?"

"In plain language, I suppose you mean, Do I believe in a God?"

"That is what I mean, if by a God you mean a being who cares about us and loves justice — that is, fair play — one whom therefore we wrong to the very heart when we do a thing that is not just."

"I would gladly believe in such a being if things were so that I could. As they are, I confess it seems to me the best thing to doubt it. I do doubt it very much. How can I help doubting it when I see so much suffering, oppression, and cruelty in the world? If there were such a being as you say, would he permit the horrible things we hear of on every hand?"

"I used to find that a difficulty. Indeed, it troubled me sorely until I came to understand things better. I remember Mr. Graham saying once something like this — I did not understand it for months after: 'Every kind-hearted person who thinks a great deal of being comfortable, and takes prosperity to consist in being well off, must be tempted to doubt the existence of a God. — And perhaps it is well they should be so tempted,' he added."

"Why did he add that?"

"I think, because such are in danger of believing in an evil God. And if men believed in an evil God, and had not the courage to defy him, they must sink to the very depths of savagery. At least that is what I ventured to suppose he meant."

Clementina opened her eyes wide, but said nothing. Religious people, she found, could think as boldly as she.

"I remember all about it so well!" Malcolm added thoughtfully. "We had been talking about the Prometheus of Æschylus — how he would not give in to Jupiter."

"I am trying to understand," said Clementina, and ceased: and a silence fell which for a few moments Malcolm could not break. For suddenly he felt as if he had fallen under the power of a spell. Something seemed to radiate from her silence which invaded his consciousness. It was as if the wind which dwells in the tree of life had waked in the twilight of heaven and blew upon his spirit. It was not that now first he saw that she was beautiful: the moment his eyes fell upon her that morning in the park he saw her beautiful as he had never seen woman before. Neither was it that now first he saw her good: even in that first interview her heart had revealed itself to him as very lovely. But the foolishness which flowed from her lips, noble and unselfish as it was, had barred the way betwixt his feelings and her individuality as effectually as if she had been the loveliest of Venuses lying uncarved in the lunar marble of Carrara. There are men to whom silliness is an absolute freezing-mixture — to whose hearts a plain sensible woman at once appeals as a woman, while no amount of beauty can serve as sweet oblivious antidote to counteract the nausea produced by folly. Malcolm had found Clementina irritating, and the more irritating that she was so beautiful. But at the first sound from her lips that indicated genuine and truthful thought the atmosphere had begun to change; and at the first troubled gleam in her eyes, revealing that she pursued some dim seen thing of the world of reality, a nameless potency throbbed into the spiritual space betwixt her and him, and embraced them in an aether of entrancing relation. All that had been needed to awake love to her was, that her soul, her self, should look out of its windows; and now at length he had caught a glimpse of it. Not all her beauty, not all her heart, not all her courage, could draw him while she would ride only a hobby-horse, however tight its skin might be stuffed with emotions. But now who could tell how soon she might be charging in the front line of the Amazons of the Lord — on as real a horse as any in the heavenly army? For was she not thinking, the rarest human operation in the world?

"I will try to speak a little more clearly, my lady," said Malcolm. "If ease and comfort and the pleasures of animal and intellectual being were the best things to be had, as they are the only things most people desire, then that Maker who did not care that his creatures should possess or were deprived of such could not be a good God. But if the need with the lack