“Not till I can prove Him!” and El-Râmi’s eyes flashed defiantly. “Vice triumphant, and Virtue vanquished, do not explain Him to me. Torture and death do not manifest to my spirit His much-talked-of ‘love and goodness.’ I must unriddle His secret; I must pierce into the heart of His plan, before I join the enforced laudations of the multitude; I must know and feel that it is the truth I am proclaiming, before I stand up in the sight of my fellows and say, ‘O God, Thou art the Fountain of Goodness, and all Thy works are wise and wonderful!’”
He spoke with remarkable power and emphasis; his attitude was full of dignity. Madame Vassilius gazed at him in involuntary admiration.
“It is a bold spirit that undertakes to catechise the Creator and examine into the value of His creation,” she said.
“If there is a Creator,” said El-Râmi, “and if from Him all things do come, then from Him also comes my spirit of inquiry. I have no belief in a devil, but, if there were one, the Creator is answerable for him, too. And to revert again to your questions, Madame, shall we not in a way make God somewhat responsible for the universal prostitution of woman? It is a world-wide crime, and only very slight attempts as yet have been made to remedy it, because the making of the laws is in the hands of men—the criminals. The Englishman, the European generally, is as great a destroyer of woman’s life and happiness as any Turk or other barbarian. The life of the average woman is purely animal; in her girlhood she is made to look attractive, and her days pass into the consideration of dress, appearance, manner, and conversation; when she has secured her mate, her next business is to bear him children. The children reared, and sent out into the world, she settles down into old age, wrinkled, fat, toothless, and frequently quarrelsome; the whole of her existence is not a grade higher than that of a leopardess or other forest creature, and sometimes not so exciting. When a woman rises above all this, she is voted by the men ‘unwomanly’; she is no longer the slave or the toy of their passions; and that is why, my dear Madame, they give the music-hall dancer their diamonds, and heap upon you their sneers.”
Irene sat silent for some minutes, and a sigh escaped her.
“Then it is no use trying to be a little different from the rest,” she said wearily; “a little higher, a little less prone to vulgarity? If one must be hated for striving to be worthy of one’s vocation——”
“My dear lady, you do not see that men will never admit that literature is your vocation! No, not even if you wrote as grand a tragedy as ‘Macbeth.’ Your vocation, according to them, is to adore their sex, to look fascinating, to wear pretty clothes, and purr softly like a pleased cat when they make you a compliment; not to write books that set everybody talking. They would rather see you dragged and worn to death under the burden of half a dozen children, than they would see you stepping disdainfully past them, in all the glory of fame. Yet be content,—you have, like Mary in the Gospel, ‘chosen the better part;’ of that I feel sure, though I am unable to tell you why or how I feel it.”
“If you feel sure of certain things without being able to explain how or why you feel them,” put in Féraz suddenly, “is it not equally easy to feel sure of God without being able to explain how or why He exists?”
“Admirably suggested, my dear Féraz,” observed El-Râmi, with a slight smile. “But please recollect that, though it may be easy to you and a fair romancist like Madame Vassilius to feel sure of God, it is not at all easy to me. I am not sure of Him; I have not seen Him, and I am not conscious of Him. Moreover, if an average majority of people taken at random could be persuaded to speak the truth for once in their lives, they would all say the same thing—that they are not conscious of Him. Because if they were—if the world were—the emotion of fear would be altogether annihilated; there would never be any ‘panic’ about anything; people would not shriek and wail at the terrors of an earthquake, or be seized with pallor and trembling at the crash and horror of an unexpected storm. Being sure of God would mean being sure of Good; and I’m afraid none of us are convinced in that direction. But I think and believe that, if we indeed felt sure of God, evil would be annihilated as well as fear. And the mystery is, why does He not make us sure of Him? It must be in His power to do so, and would save both Him and us an infinite deal of trouble.”
Féraz grew restless and left his place, laying down the volume he had been pretending to read.