“Forgive me, Arthur,” said the girl, “I am so clumsy; I can’t help it”—an apology which Arthur answered with a melancholy frown.
“It is not you who are clumsy; it is the evil one who tempts me perpetually, even by your means,” he said. “Tell me what your experience is,” he continued, turning to Colin with more eagerness than ever; “I find some people who are embarrassed when I speak to them about the state of their souls; some who assent to everything I say, by way of getting done with it; some who are shocked and frightened, as if speaking of death would make them die the sooner. You alone have spoken to me like a man who knows something about the matter. Tell me how you have grown familiar with the subject—tell me what your experiences are.”
Perhaps no request that could possibly have been made to Colin would have embarrassed him so much. He was interested and touched by the strange pair in whose company he found himself, and could not but regard with a pity, which had some fellow-feeling in it, the conscious state of life-in-death in which his questioner stood, who was not, at the same time, much older than himself, and still in what ought to be the flower of his youth. Though his own thoughts were of a very different complexion, Colin could not but be impressed by the aspect of the other youth, who was occupying the solemn position from which he himself seemed to have escaped.
“Neither of us can have much experience one way or another,” he said, feeling somehow his own limitations in the person of his new companion; “I have been near dying; that is all.”
“Have been!” said Meredith. “Are you not—are not we all, near dying now? A gale more or less, a spark of fire, a wrong turn of the helm, and we are all in eternity! How can any reasonable creature be indifferent for a moment to such a terrible thought?”
“It would be terrible, indeed, if God had nothing to do with it,” said Colin; “and, no doubt, death is terrible when one looks at it far off. I don’t think, however, that his face carries such terror when he is near. The only thing is the entire ignorance we are in. What it is—where it carries us—what is the extent of the separation it makes; all these questions are so hard to answer.” Colin’s eyes went away as he spoke; and his new friend, like Matty Frankland, was puzzled and irritated by the look which he could not follow. He broke in hastily with a degree of passion totally unlike Colin’s calm.
“You think of it as a speculative question,” he said; “I think of it as a dreadful reality. You seem at leisure to consider when and how; but have you ever considered the dreadful alternative? Have you never imagined yourself one of the lost—in outer darkness—shut out and separated from all good—condemned to sink lower and lower? Have you ever contemplated the possibility—?”
“No,” said Colin, rising; “I have never contemplated that possibility, and I have no wish to do so now. Let us postpone the discussion. Nothing anybody can say,” the young man continued, holding out his hand to meet the feverish, thin fingers which were stretched towards him, “can make me afraid of God.”
“Not if you had to meet Him this night in judgment?” said the solemn voice of the young prophet, who would not lose a last opportunity. The words and the look sent a strange chill through Colin’s veins. His hand was held tight in the feverish hand of the sick man—the dark hollow eyes were looking him through and through. Death himself, could he have taken shape and form, could scarcely have confronted life in a more solemn guise. “Not if you had to meet Him in judgment this night?”
“You put the case very strongly,” said Colin, who grew a little pale in spite of himself. “But I answer, No—no. The Gospel has come for very little purpose if it leaves any of His children in fear of the Heavenly Father. No more to-night. You look tired, as you may well be, with all your exertions, and after this rough weather—”