“I do not know; she is out.”
“Tell me anything I can do for you.”
“What does it matter! I do not know anything. It will soon be over.”
“And this,” reflected Richard, “is the fate of one who believes in a God!” But the thought followed close, “I wish I were going too!” And then came the suggestion, “What if some one cares for him, and is taking him away because he cares for him! What if there be a good time waiting him! What if death be the way to something better! What if God be going to surprise us with something splendid! What if there come a glorious evening after the sad morning and fog-sodden night! What if Arthur's dying be in reality a waking up to a better sunshine than ours! We see only one side of the thing: he may see the other! What if God could not manage to ripen our life without suffering! If only there were a God that tried to do his best for us, finding great difficulties, but encountering them for the sake of his children!”—“How dearly I should love such a God!” thought Richard. He would hold by him to the last! He would do his best to help him! He would fight for him! He would die for him!
His hour was not yet come to know that there is indeed such a God, doing his best for us in great difficulties, with enemies almost too much for him—the falsehood, namely, the unfilialness of his children, so many of whom will not be true, priding themselves on the good he has created in them, while they refuse to make it their own by obeying it when they are disinclined.
If even he might but hope that with his last sigh Arthur would awake to a consciousness justifying his existence, let him be the creation of a living power or the helpless product of a senseless, formless Ens-non-ens, he would be content! For then they might one day meet again—somewhere—somewhen, somehow; together encounter afresh the troubles and dissatisfactions of life, and perhaps work out for themselves a world more endurable!
But with that came the thought of Barbara.
“No!” he said to himself, “let us all die—die utterly! Why should we grumble at our poor life when it means nothing, is so short, and gives such a sure and certain hope of nothing more! Who would prolong it in such a world, with which every soul confesses itself disappointed, of which every heart cries that it cannot have been made for us! When they grow old, men always say they have found life a delusion, and would not live it again. From the first, things have been moving toward the worse; life has been growing more dreary; men are more miserable now than when they were savage: how can we tell that the world was not started at its best, to go down hill for ever and ever, with a God to urge its evil pace, for surely there is none to stop it! What if the world be the hate-contrivance of a being whose delight it is to watch its shuddering descent into the gulf of extinction, its agonized slide into the red foam of the lake of fire!”
But he must do something for the friend by whose side he had sat speechless for minutes!
“I will come and see you again soon, Arthur,” he said; “I must go now. Would you mind the loan of a few shillings? It is all I happen to have about me!”