“It is not easy to imagine how one would conduct oneself under such circumstances,” said Colin; “let us talk of something else. If it were coming—and it may be, for anything I can tell—I think I should prefer not to give it too much importance. Look at that low blaze of sunshine, how it catches St. Peter’s. These sunsets are like dramas—but nobody plans the grouping beforehand,” said the young man, with an involuntary allusion which he was sorry for the next moment, but could not recall.
“That is an unkind speech,” said Meredith; “but I forgive you. If I could plan the grouping, as you say, I should like to collect all the world to see me die. Heathens, papists, Mahometans, Christians of every description—I would call them to see with what confidence a Christian could traverse the dark valley, knowing Him who can sustain, and who has preceded him there.”
“Yes, that was Addison’s idea; but his was an age when people did things for effect,” said Colin: “and everything I have heard makes me believe that people generally die very composedly upon the whole. The best and wisest are scarcely superior in that respect to the ignorant and stupid—scarcely even to the wicked. Either people have an infinite confidence in themselves and their good fortune; or else absolute faith in God is a great deal more general than you think it. I should like to believe that last was the case. Pardon me for what I said. You who realize so strongly what you are going to, should certainly die, when that time comes, a glorious and joyful death.”
At these words a cloud passed over the eager, hectic countenance which Meredith had turned to his friend. “Ah, you don’t know,” he said, with a sudden depression which Colin had never seen in him before. “Sometimes God sees fit to abandon His servants even in that hour; what, if after preaching to others I should myself be a castaway?” This conversation was going on while Alice talked to Lauderdale of the housekeeping, and how the man at the Trattoria had charged a scudo too much in the last weekly bill.
“Meredith,” said Colin, laying his hand on his friend’s arm, and forgetting all the discussion with Lauderdale which had occupied the afternoon, “when you say such words as Father and Saviour you put some meaning in them, do you not? You don’t think it depends upon how you feel to-day or to-morrow whether God will stand by his children or not? I don’t believe in the castaway as you understand it.”
“Ah, my dear friend, I am afraid you don’t believe in any castaways; don’t fall into that deadly error and snare of the devil,” said the sick man.
“We must not discuss mysteries,” said Colin. “There are men for whom no punishment is bad enough, and whom no amount of mercy seems to benefit. I don’t know what is to become of them. For my own part I prefer not to inquire. But this I know, that my father, much less my mother, would not altogether abandon their son for any crime; and does not God love us better than our fathers and our mothers?” said Colin, with a moisture gathering in his brown eyes and brightening his smile. As for Meredith, he snatched his hand away, and pushed forward with a feverish impulse. A sound, half sigh, half groan, burst from him, and Colin could see that this inarticulate complaint had private references of which he knew nothing. Then Lauderdale’s suggestion returned to his mind with singular force; but it was not a time to make any inquiries, even if such had been possible. Instinctively, without knowing it, Meredith turned from that subject to the only other which could mutually interest men so unlike each other; and what he said betrayed distinctly enough what had been the tenor of his thoughts.
“She has no mother,” said Meredith, with a little wave of his hand towards his sister. “Poor Alice! But I have no doubt God has gracious purposes towards her,” he continued, recovering himself. “This is in the family, and I don’t doubt she will follow me soon.”
It was thus he disposed of the matter which for the strangers to whose care he was about to leave her, was a matter of so much anxious thought.