“So it always seemed to me,” Lucia observed with some hesitation. “But how does that help us? We are not allowed to say such things.”
“It is all the help in the world,” said Ethne. “That old chieftain could not be untrue. The other chiefs preached at him in all his pain and anguish, and kept saying, ‘The world is all right, and every one gets what he deserves.’ And Job said, ‘The world is anything but right, and people don’t get what they deserve.’ And the delight is to see that God was pleased not with the chiefs who meant to flatter Him by saying His world was going on all right, but with poor tortured Job, who found fault with it—even, it almost seemed, with Himself. We do dare sometimes to say the hardest things to those we love best.”
“But,” said Lucia, coming out with a problem which had vexed her in secret long, “how can that comfort us? God did not explain. He only said, ‘I am strong, and wise, and eternal, and you are frail and blind, and but for a moment.’ Is that any comfort?”
Ethne was silent for a time, and then she said—
“I suppose it is, if we love Him enough! It seems to me God never does explain. But He said that poor old chieftain had spoken right for Him and understood Him, and He must have known. That certainly must have comforted Job. And God told Job to make sacrifices for his friends who were so pleased with themselves. And it is a comfort to have people who are too much pleased with themselves set right; and the greatest comfort of all to be able to do good to those who have hurt us. Perhaps also it put the friends right too at last.”
“Job had also his riches back, and other children instead of those he had lost,” said Lucia.
“I do not see much comfort in that,” said Ethne; “the lost things may be replaced, but we always want the same lost people back, not new ones.”
“Hast thou no room for any new people?” Lucia said. “Have you no room for us?” and she clasped Ethne’s hands.
Ethne returned the caress, but rather parenthetically; and with a far-off look in the deep grey eyes she resumed—
“Poor old chieftain! That poem does not seem finished; but we have the end, you know,” she added.