"Oh, how foolish of me--to be idling away this opportunity; the only one, perhaps, which I may have! Oh, Mr. Thurnall, tell me about this cholera!"
"What about it?"
"Everything. Ever since I heard of what you have been saying to the people, ever since Mr. Headley"s sermon, it has been like fire in my ears!"
"I am truly glad to hear it. If all parsons had preached about it for the last fifteen years as Mr. Headley did last Sunday, if they had told people plainly that, if the cholera was G.o.d"s judgment at all, it was His judgment of the sin of dirt, and that the repentance which He required was to wash and be clean in literal earnest, the cholera would be impossible in England by now."
"Oh, Mr. Thurnall: but is it not G.o.d"s doing? and can we stop His hand?"
"I know nothing about that, Miss Harvey. I only know that wheresoever cholera breaks out, it is some one"s fault; and if deaths occur, some one ought to be tried for manslaughter--I had almost said murder, and transported for life."
"Someone? Who?"
"That will be settled in the next generation, when men have common sense enough to make laws for the preservation of their own lives, against the dirt, and covetousness, and idleness, of a set of human hogs."
Grace was silent for awhile.
"But can nothing be done to keep it off now? Must it come?"
"I believe it must. Still one may do enough to save many lives in the meanwhile."
"Enough to save many lives--lives?--immortal souls, too! Oh, what could I do?"
"A great deal, Miss Harvey," said Tom, across whom the recollection of Grace"s influence flashed for the first time. What a help she might be to him!
And he talked on and on to her, and found that she entered into his plans with all her wild enthusiasm, but also with sound practical common sense; and Tom began to respect her intellect as well as her heart.
At last, however, she faltered--
"Oh, if I could but believe all this! Is it not fighting against G.o.d?"
"I do not know what sort of G.o.d yours is, Miss Harvey. I believe in some One who made all that!" and he pointed round him to the glorious woods and glorious sky; "I should have fancied from your speech to that poor girl, that you believed in Him also. You may, however, only believe in the same being in whom the Methodist parson believes, one who intends to hurl into endless agony every human being who has not had a chance of hearing the said preacher"s nostrum for delivering men out of the hands of Him who made them!"
"What do you mean?" asked Grace, startled alike by Tom"s words, and the intense scorn and bitterness of his tone.
"That matters little. What do you mean in turn? What did you mean by saying, that saving lives is saving immortal souls?"
"Oh, is it not giving them time to repent? What will become of them, if they are cut off in the midst of their sins?"
"If you had a son whom it was not convenient to you to keep at home, would his being a bad fellow--the greatest scoundrel on the earth--be a reason for your turning him into the streets to live by thieving, and end by going to the dogs for ever and a day?"
"No; but what do you mean?"
"That I do not think that G.o.d, when He sends a human being out of this world, is more cruel than you or I would be. If we transport a man because he is too bad to be in England, and he shows any signs of mending, we give him a fresh chance in the colonies, and let him start again, to try if he cannot do better next time. And do you fancy that G.o.d, when He transports a man out of this world, never gives him a fresh chance in another--especially when nine out of ten poor rascals have never had a fair chance yet?"
Grace looked up in his face astonished.
"Oh, if I could but believe that! Oh! it would give me some gleam of hope for my two!--But no--it"s not in Scripture. Where the tree falls there it lies."
"And as the fool dies, so dies the wise man; and there is one account to the righteous and to the wicked. And a man has no pre-eminence over a beast, for both turn alike to dust; and Solomon does not know, he says, or any one else, anything about the whole matter, or even whether there be any life after death at all; and so, he says, the only wise thing is to leave such deep questions alone, for Him who made us to settle in His own way, and just to fear G.o.d and keep His commandments, and do the work which lies nearest us with all our might."
Grace was silent.
"You are surprised to hear me quote Scripture, and well you may be: but that same book of Ecclesiastes is a very old favourite with me; for I am no Christian, but a worlding, if ever there was one. But it does puzzle me why you, who are a Christian, should talk one half-hour as you have been talking to that poor girl, and the next go for information about the next life to poor old disappointed, broken-hearted Solomon, with his three hundred and odd idolatrous wives, who confesses fairly that this life is a failure, and that he does not know whether there is any next life at all."
Whether Tom was altogether right or not, is not the question here; the novelist"s business is to represent the real thoughts of mankind, when they are not absolutely unfit to be told; and certainly Tom spoke the doubts of thousands when he spoke his own.
Grace was silent still.
"Well," he said, "beyond that I can"t go, being no theologian. But when a preacher tells people in one breath of a G.o.d who so loves men that He gave His own Son to save them, and in the next, that the same G.o.d so hates men that He will cast nine-tenths of them into hopeless torture for ever,--(and if that is not hating, I don"t know what is),--unless he, the preacher, gets a chance of talking to them for a few minutes--Why, I should like, Miss Harvey, to put that gentleman upon a real fire for ten minutes, instead of his comfortable Sunday"s dinner, which stands ready frying for him, and which he was going home to eat, as jolly as if all the world was not going to destruction; and there let him feel what fire was like, and reconsider his statements."
Grace looked up at him no more; but walked on in silence, pondering many things.
"Howsoever that may be, sir, tell me what to do in this cholera, and I will do it, if I kill myself with work or infection!"
"You shan"t do that. We cannot spare you from Aberalva, Grace," said Tom; "you must save a few more poor creatures ere you die, out of the hands of that Good Being who made little children, and love, and happiness, and the flowers, and the sunshine, and the fruitful earth; and who, you say, redeemed them all again, when they were lost, by an act of love which pa.s.ses all human dreams."
"Do not talk so!" cried Grace. "It frightens me; it puzzles me, and makes me miserable. Oh, if you would but become a Christian!"
"And listen to the Gospel?"
"Yes--oh yes!"
"A gospel means good news, I thought. When you have any to tell me, I will listen. Meanwhile, the news that three out of four of those poor fellows down town are going to a certain place, seems to me such terribly bad news, that I can"t help fancying that it is not the Gospel at all; and so get on the best way I can, listening to the good news about G.o.d which this grand old world, and my microscope, and my books, tell me. No, Grace, I have more good news than that, and I"ll confess it to you."
He paused, and his voice softened.
"Say what the preacher may. He must be a good G.o.d who makes such creatures as you, and sends them into the world to comfort poor wretches. Follow your own sweet heart, Grace, and torment yourself no more with these dark dreams!"
"My heart?" cried she, looking down; "it is deceitful and desperately wicked."
"I wish mine were too, then," said Tom: "but it cannot be, as long as it is so unlike yours. Now stop, Grace, I want to speak to you."
There was a gate in front of them, leading into the road.
As they came to it, Tom lingered with his hand upon the top bar, that Grace might stop. She did stop, half-frightened. Why did he call her Grace?
"I wish to speak to you on one matter, on which I believe I ought to have spoken long ago."
She looked up at him, surprise in her large eyes: and turned pale as he went on.
"I ought long ago to have begged your pardon for something rude which I said to you at your own door. This day has made me quite ashamed of--"
But she interrupted him, quite wildly, gasping for breath.
"The belt? The belt? Oh, my G.o.d! my G.o.d! Have you heard anything more?--anything more?"
"Not a word; but--"