Chapter Twenty.
Is cumulatively Astonishing.
There are, we suppose, in the lives of all men, critical periods—testing-points, as it were—when their faith in everything true is shaken almost, if not quite, to the foundation, and when they are tempted to ask with more or less of bitterness, “Who will show us any good?”
Well is it for such when, in the hour of trial, they can look up to the Fountain of all good and, in the face of doubt, darkness, difficulty, ay, and seeming contradiction, simply “believe” and “trust.”
When Lawrence Armstrong slowly sauntered back to the inn after his final interview with Manuela, it surprised even himself to find how strong had been his feelings, how profound his faith in the girl’s goodness of heart, and how intensely bitter was his disappointment.
“But it’s all over now,” he muttered, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his coat, and frowning ferociously at some imaginary wrong, though he would have been puzzled, if required, to state exactly what the wrong was. “All over,” he repeated, and then continued with an affected air of indifference, “and what of that? What matters it to me that I have been mistaken? I never was in love with the girl. How could I be with a black—well, a brown squaw. Impossible! It was only admiration—strong admiration I admit—of what I had fancied were rarely fine qualities, especially in a sav— an Indian; and I’ve been mistaken; that’s all. That’s all. But,” (after a pause), “have I been mistaken? Does this unaccountably callous indifference at saying good-bye to one who is nothing to her—who never can be anything to her—argue that all the good qualities I have admired so much are non-existent, or bad qualities? Surely not! Let me consider. Let me look this perplexing matter straight in the face, and see what is to be made of it. What are the good qualities that I seem to have been so mistaken about?”
Frowning still more ferociously, as if with a view to constrain himself to the performance of a deed of impartial justice, our hero continued to mutter—
“Earnest simplicity—that’s the first—no, that’s two qualities. Be just, Lawrence, whatever you are, be just. Earnestness, then, that’s the first point. Whatever else I may have been wrong about, there can be no mistake about that. She is intensely earnest. How often have I noticed her rapt attention and the eager flash of her dark eyes when Pedro or I chanced to tell any anecdote in which injustice or cruelty was laid bare. She is so earnest that I think sometimes she has difficulty in perceiving when one is in jest. She does not understand a practical joke—well, to be sure there was that upsetting of the coffee on Quashy’s leg! But after all I must have been mistaken in that. So much, then, for her earnestness. Next, simplicity. No child could be more simple. Utterly ignorant of the ways of the world—the nauseous conventionalities of civilised life! Brought up in a wigwam, no doubt, among the simple aborigines of the Pampas, or the mountains—yes, it must have been the mountains, for the Incas of Peru dwelt in the Andes.”
He paused here for a few minutes and sauntered on in silence, while a tinge of perplexity mingled with the frown. No doubt he was thinking of the tendency exhibited now and then by the aborigines of the Pampas and mountains to raid on the white man now and then, and appropriate his herds as well as scalp himself!