"For that you have got to face trouble—perhaps are facing it now—I know. I have thought about you again and again lately, when fighting my own battles. The hardest test of faith, after all, is to fight when one is not sure the cause is good. Thank God that you and I both know ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt. Beneath every paradox of the Catholic Church truth lies concealed, if we will but dig down to it. But there are days when toil is impossible; when merely to attempt work so hard and difficult brings sweat to one's brow. And you will tell me, very truly, that, face to face with mental wreckage, to talk of paradox is small comfort.
"You are a unit of a big battalion; only a unit, but you count. There are others to right and to left, in front and in rear of you; they will fall if you fail. You know that a regiment once was lost through one man's cowardice. You and I have got to go on, whatever happens. We are not great generals—we are under command. Obedience is our watchword.
"I remember in the South African War, before a certain action, the general sent out an army order to his men, which I copied at the time, but cannot lay my hands on just now. It ran something like this: 'You are dealing with a treacherous enemy; one who seeks to lower your honour by his own intrigue. Face that fact, and face him; it is the only way.' The one simple thing in life for you and me lies in the fact that, after all, we have but one thing to do. We are fighting under a standard that we are going to uphold to the end. We shall bleed for it—a few drops of blood, more or less, really don't matter; we shall probably fall for it—we shall have to remember then to hold our heads up, because the world might think that we were afraid; we shall die for it, knowing that it is still raised high in the sight of men, and that it will so rise, please God, through all the coming centuries as it has done in all its glorious past.
"Rather cold comfort I am giving you, I suppose you will say. But you have been abroad, and seen life under different aspects, and watched great issues come to a climax as I have. Out in India, at the great Mahomedan festivals, I have walked ankle-deep through narrow streets reeking with blood. I once stood by the unlit ghât, and watched a man's dead body thereon, and saw his little widow of twenty years old set a light to the pyre with her own slender fingers, in default of a son old enough to undertake the office. Such things make one think.
"I shall never forget her shriek when the flame rose, nor the dreary misery of her look when, afterwards, she collected her husband's ashes, and, being only a peasant, was stripped of her fine garments, stripped of her ornaments, stripped of all that made life bearable from her limited point of view, to begin a new life of drudgery working in the fields, scorned and mocked by all, an unclean being to be stoned by the very boys in the street because, as a widow, she had lost her caste.
"Experiences like these wrench you out of yourself, and make you thank God you are not God to judge between the sins and errors of nations and of individuals. You and I rebel at drinking our cup of vinegar and gall because we are merely human, and so don't like the bitter draught. But it is because sin came first, that there is so much suffering now. Better drink the bitter cup to its dregs here than pay the penalty of drinking it hereafter. And whether or no it comforts us at the moment, the light of faith is still ours. 'May we walk therein until the day of eternal light breaks forth, and the shadows and figures pass away.'"
"You've been worrying again," said Lady Wereminster, returning. "Don't. Nothing in the world is worth worrying about more than half-an-hour. Worrying about, I said, not grieving over. Legitimate grief at a legitimate blow is one thing—racking your brains out adjusting something which ought never to have gone askew is another. Worry puts a spoke in the wheel of thought; it may stop the machinery from moving. And then——" She shrugged her shoulders significantly.
"I don't think any self-respecting person can be well in this weather," said Evelyn; "it would be rather rude not to acknowledge its power."
"It's no use looking at the door," said Lady Wereminster; "I am not going for hours yet. I returned with the intention of bullying you, and shan't stir until I've done it. I am in a bad temper, and must wreak it on somebody. One ought to give way to one's temper sometimes, you know, on the principle of a kettle boiling over and doing serious damage."
"I'm quite impervious to your tempers," said Evelyn; "they are more easy to deal with than the amenities of other people!"