"A very simple earth if there was only three sorts of men on it, Jacob."
"Three sorts—those that leave the world better than they found it; those that leave it worse; and those that go through it like shadows and make no more mark than shadows do. And I thought, in my pride, I was the first sort of man, and never guessed to be the second."
He sat down on the bench beside William.
"We most of us leave the world better than we found it by a few kind actions and decent thoughts," declared Billy. "Very few go through life without doing their fellow-creatures a good turn here and there. Certainly you've done a lot of good in your time and many can testify to it. And to say you've done evil also—that's only to say you're a human."
"At best the good balances the evil and leaves us only shadows, with nothing to credit."
"Nonsense," answered Billy. "We know—even us small people—that we're of more account than shadows."
"In my case the great evil swallowed the little good. I wish I had never been born, because then none could point to my grave some day and say, 'There lies the man that killed his wife.' If I could have chose before I was born, I'd have said to God, 'Either let me come into the world for well-doing, or not at all,' and that would have been a decent, self-respecting wish. But how can people believe in God's mercy and love, when the world swarms with bad men He could as easily have made good ones? Take my late wife, for you must firmly grasp now that Margery's dead—that rare woman is dead, William. Take her and ask yourself how an all-seeing, all-loving God could let that innocent, harmless creature love a man who would end by killing her?"
"You waste a lot of time, Jacob," said the other, "and you ax a lot of questions no mortal man can ever answer, because we don't know enough. I've lived to see great changes myself, and you may say, well inside civility, that God's like some of us old men, who were once young. When I was young I was well thought of and held in great respect, and I counted, in my small way, among the rest. And when God was a thought younger—for time will go on and He can't be outside it, Jacob—when He was a thought younger, the people held Him in greater respect than now. He ain't quite so much in the middle of the picture as He was when I was a boy—just as I myself ain't no more in the middle of my own picture. But God's just the same as He always was, and just so determined as ever not to give a plain answer to a plain question. He never have done it and He never will, because it's contrary to His Almighty opinion of what's best for us."
"And how if it's all a mare's-nest and there's no God, William?"
"Then 'tis waste of time to be rude to Him. Civility costs nought anyway. My old father said to me when I was a child, 'Always touch your hat to a pair of hosses, William, for you never know who's behind 'em.'"