So he used to argue, with three-fourths
of mankind, mingling truth and falsehood: and would, on these grounds,
have done his best to turn the dissenting preacher out of that house,
had he found him in it. But to-day he was in a more lenient, perhaps
in a more human, and therefore more spiritual mood. It was all very
well for him, full of life, and power, and hope, to look on death in
that cold, careless way; but for that poor young thing, cut off just
as life opened from all that made life lovely--was not death for her a
painful, ugly anomaly? Could she be blamed, if she shuddered at going
forth into the unknown blank, she knew not whither? All very well for
the old emperor of Rome, who had lived his life and done his work, to
play with the dreary question--
"Animula, vagula, blandula,
Hospes comesque corporis,
Quae nunc abibis in loca,
Rigidula, nudula, pallida?--"
But she, who had lived no life, and done no work--only had pined
through weary years of hideous suffering; crippled and ulcerated with
scrofula, now dying of consumption: was it not a merciful dream, a
beautiful dream, a just dream--so beautiful and just, that perhaps it
might be true,--that in some fairer world, all this, and more, might
be made up to her? If not, was it not a mistake and an injustice, that
she should ever have come into the world at all? And was not Grace
doing a rational as well as a loving work, in telling her, under
whatsoever symbols, that such a home of rest and beauty awaited her?
It was not the sort of place to which he expected, perhaps even
wished, to go: but it fitted well enough with a young girl's hopes, a
young girl's powers of enjoyment.
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