“Never, never!” he answered, passionately; “there is a blighting curse around me, which it were worse than folly to resist. I must toil on, lonely, and unblessed by one sweet tie of home—seeking for no love, and receiving none—isolated in a world! There are many others whose destiny is the same. Bound by the iron chain of fate, he is but a madman who would seek to break it.”
“Destiny—fate! I thought you had long ere this banished their baneful influence,” said Annie, in a tone of mild reproach.
“From your ear, my gentle friend, because I saw you loved not their expression; but not from my own heart. Yet you, too, believe all things to be pre-ordained; that not a sparrow falls to the ground unmarked. Then, why so start at me—is not our creed the same?”
“It cannot be, Reginald. I am not wise enough to know wherein the difference lies, I can only judge from effects; and when they are so opposed, I fancy the cause must be so also. I do believe that all things are ordained, but yet I am no fatalist.”
“Will you try and explain the distinction, for your words seem somewhat contradictory.”
“I fear they do,” she replied, simply; “and I am over bold to speak on this weighty subject at all. Your creed appears to me to consist in this: that before your birth, your path was laid down—your destiny fixed; that you are, in consequence, bound in chains, enclosed in walls, from which no effort of your own will can enable you to escape; that you must stand the bursting of the thunder-cloud—for you have no force or energy to seek shelter, no free will to choose—swayed by an irresistible impulse, and, consequently, not a responsible being. Such seems to me the creed of a fatalist.”
“And you are right. Now, then, for yours; less difficult, I should imagine, to explain, than that in which you have no interest.”
“I differ from you, Reginald. It is comparatively easy to define the subject of a passing thought or an hour’s study; but that which we feel, feel to our inmost soul, is not so easily clothed in words. I believe that an eye of love is ever watching over me—a guiding arm is ever round me; that nothing can happen to me, unless willed for my good by my Father in heaven; but I do not believe my lot in life marked out before I saw the light. Such a creed at once changes the law of love into a dark and iron-bound necessity, from which my whole soul revolts. Where would be the comfort of prayer in such a case—the blessedness of pouring forth one’s whole soul in the hour of affliction? for how could prayer avail us were our lot marked out?”
“And do you think prayer ever does? Do you believe that you are answered?”
“I do, indeed, dear Reginald; not always as our own will would dictate, but as a loving Father knows it best. I was not answered as my heart implored when my only parent was taken from me; but I was answered in the strength that was granted me to feel that he was happy, and God’s will kinder and better than my own. I am not here because it is my destiny, but because it is better for me than the calm and quiet life I have hitherto enjoyed.”