“Will it then make the cruel man more cruel to be told that God is caring for the tortured creature from the citadel of whose life he would force an answer to save his own from the sphinx that must at last devour him, let him answer ever so wisely? Or will it make the tender less pitiful to be consoled a little in the agony of beholding what they cannot alleviate? Many hearts are from sympathy as sorely in need of comfort as those with whom they suffer. And to such I have one word more—to your heart, my lady, if it will consent to be consoled: The animals, I believe, suffer less than we, because they scarcely think of the past, and not at all of the future. It is the same with children, Mr Graham says; they suffer less than grown people, and for the same reason. To get back something of this privilege of theirs, we have to be obedient and take no thought for the morrow.”
Clementina took up her work. Malcolm walked away.
“Malcolm,” cried his mistress, “are you not going on with the book?”
“I hope your ladyship will excuse me,” said Malcolm. “I would rather not read more just at present.”
It may seem incredible that one so young as Malcolm should have been able to talk thus, and indeed my report may have given words more formal and systematic than his really were. For the matter of them, it must be remembered that he was not young in the effort to do and understand; and that the advantage to such a pupil of such a teacher as Mr Graham is illimitable.
CHAPTER XLIII.
A PERPLEXITY.
After Malcolm’s departure, Clementina attempted to find what Florimel thought of the things her strange groom had been saying: she found only that she neither thought at all about them, nor had a single true notion concerning the matter of their conversation. Seeking to interest her in it and failing, she found however that she had greatly deepened its impression upon herself.
Florimel had not yet quite made up her mind whether or not she should open her heart to Clementina, but she approached the door of it in requesting her opinion upon the matter of marriage between persons of social conditions widely parted—“frightfully sundered,” she said. Now Clementina was a radical of her day, a reformer, a leveller—one who complained bitterly that some should be so rich, and some so poor. In this she was perfectly honest. Her own wealth, from a vague sense of unrighteousness in the possession of it, was such a burden to her, that she threw it away where often it made other people stumble if not fall. She professed to regard all men as equal, and believed that she did so. She was powerful in her contempt of the distinctions made between certain of the classes, but had signally failed in some bold endeavours to act as if they had no existence except in the whims of society. As yet no man had sought her nearer regard for whom she would deign to cherish even friendship. As to marriage, she professed, right honestly, an entire disinclination, even aversion to it, saying to herself that if ever she should marry it must be, for the sake of protest and example, one notably beneath her in social condition. He must be a gentleman, but his claims to that rare distinction should lie only in himself, not his position—in what he was, not what he had. But it is one thing to have opinions, and another to be called upon to show them beliefs; it is one thing to declare all men equal, and another to tell the girl who looks up to you for advice, that she ought to feel herself at perfect liberty to marry—say a groom; and when Florimel proposed the general question, Clementina might well have hesitated. And indeed she did hesitate—but in vain she tried to persuade herself that it was solely for the sake of her young and inexperienced friend that she did so. As little could she honestly say that it was from doubt of the principles she had so long advocated. Had Florimel been open with her, and told her what sort of inferior was in her thoughts, instead of representing the gulf between them as big enough to swallow the city of Rome; had she told her that he was a gentleman, a man of genius and gifts, noble and large-hearted, and indeed better-bred than any other man she knew, the fact of his profession would only have clenched Lady Clementina’s decision in his favour; and if Florimel had been honest enough to confess the encouragement she had given him—nay, the absolute love-passages there had been, Clementina would at once have insisted that her friend should write an apology for her behaviour to him, should dare the dastard world, and offer to marry him when he would. But, Florimel putting the question as she did, how should Clementina imagine anything other than that it referred to Malcolm? and a strange confusion of feeling was the consequence. Her thoughts heaved in her like the half-shaped monsters of a spiritual chaos, and amongst them was one she could not at all identify. A direct answer she found impossible. She found also that in presence of Florimel, so much younger than herself, and looking up to her for advice, she dared not even let the questions now pressing for entrance appear before her consciousness. She therefore declined giving an answer of any sort—was not prepared with one, she said; much was to be considered; no two cases were just alike.
They were summoned to tea, after which she retired to her room, shut the door, and began to think—an operation which, seldom easy if worth anything, was in the present case peculiarly difficult, both because Clementina was not used to it, and the subject-object of it was herself. I suspect that self-examination is seldom the most profitable, certainly it is sometimes the most unpleasant, and always the most difficult of moral actions—that is, to perform after a genuine fashion. I know that very little of what passes for it has the remotest claim to reality; and I will not say it has never to be done; but I am certain that a good deal of the energy spent by some devout and upright people on trying to understand themselves and their own motives, would be expended to better purpose, and with far fuller attainment even in regard to that object itself, in the endeavour to understand God, and what he would have us to do.
Lady Clementina’s attempt was as honest as she dared make it. It went something after this fashion: