The three weeks that had followed that scene in the drawing-room had been trying ones at Ravenshill. Meg's courage was of the kind that can lead a forlorn hope, but finds it very difficult to sustain a siege.
Poor child! it was hard enough that the first avowedly religious man she had met should be also a bit of a fanatic.
That our consciences have so little judgment is surely one of the oddest things in this queer world!
Martyrs go to the stake for false gods, as well as for the truth; men die heroically for mistakes, loyal to blundering leaders; and what is the end of it all, we ask? Is it a farce or a tragedy? or does the loyalty live somehow, though the error wither as chaff that has held the grain?
CHAPTER VI.
Uncle Russelthorpe sat alone in his library on the evening of the ball: the habit of shuffling out of family gatherings had grown on him, his queer slip-shod figure was seldom seen beyond its own precincts now. His distaste for his wife increased with increasing age, and her loud voice and rather aggressive strength jarred more on him.
Perhaps, after all, Meg's was not the saddest tragedy in that house; for it is better to burn than to rot, and it is doubtful whether the over-hasty actors who bring grief on themselves, and other people, in their attempts to make the world turn round the other way, do half the harm of the easy-going philosophers, who sit with their talents in napkins, and say, "Let be! why struggle against the inevitable?" Stagnant water is not a healthy feature in the landscape at any time.
It was late in the evening, the soft air came in at the window laden with dew, as well as with sweetness. The old man got up to close the shutters; he had a morbid dislike to intrusion, and the servants did not dare invade his sanctum. He lit his lamp, and fell back into the depths of his armchair with a sigh of relief, because that small effort was accomplished. He had grown weaker lately, though no one had noticed it. He no longer studied with the avidity of old, but sat often, as he sat to-night, with his hands on his knees, peering into the fire. Perhaps he saw shadows of the past there—ghosts of possibilities that were never realities, saddest of all ghosts are these "might-have-beens," pale phantoms that have never known life. He had started with rather more than the average share of brains and money, and come to the conclusion, now that his days were few and evil, that the game had hardly been worth playing, sorry fun at the best! Presently some one spoke behind him, and he frowned irritably.