第184章

"He's a heartless, unnatural rascal, though," he resumed, "and has made of me the fool I deserved to be made! His mother must see it was not my fault! I would have set things right if I could! But it was too late! And you tell me she has had a hand in letting the truth out--leaving her letters about!--That's some comfort! She was always fair, and will be the less hard on me. If I could see a chance of God being half as good to me as my poor wife. She was my wife! I will say it in spite of all the priests in the stupid universe! She was my wife, and deserved to be my wife; and if I had her now, I would marry her, because she would be foolish enough to like it, though I would not do it all the time she was alive, let her beg ever so! Where was the use of giving in, when I kept her in hand so easily that way? That was it! It was not that I wanted to do her any wrong. But you should keep the lead. A man mustn't play out his last trump and lose the lead. But then you never know about dying! If I had known my poor wife was going to die, I would have done whatever she wanted. We had merry times together! It was those cursed drugs that wiled the soul out of me, and then the devil went in and took its place!--There was curara in that last medicine, I'll swear!--Look you here now, Grant:--if there were any way of persuading God to give me a fresh lease of life! You say he hears prayer: why shouldn't you ask him? I would make you any promise you pleased--give you any security you wanted, hereafter to live a godly, righteous, and sober life."

"But," said Donal, "suppose God, reading your heart, saw that you would go on as bad as ever, and that to leave you any longer would only be to make it the more difficult for him to do anything with you afterwards?"

"He might give me a chance! It is hard to expect a poor fellow to be as good as he is himself!"

"The poor fellow was made in his image!" suggested Donal.

"Very poorly made then!" said the earl with a sneer. "We might as well have been made in some other body's image!"

Donal thought with himself.

Did you ever know a good woman, my lord?" he asked.

"Know a good woman?--Hundreds of them!--The other sort was more to my taste! but there was my own mother! She was rather hard on my father now and then, but she was a good woman."

"Suppose you had been in her image, what then?"

"You would have had some respect for me!"

"Then she was nearer the image of God than you?"

"Thousands of miles!"

"Did you ever know a bad woman?"

"Know a bad woman? Hundreds that would take your heart's blood as you slept to make a philtre with!"

"Then you saw a difference between such a woman and your mother?"

"The one was of heaven, the other of hell--that was all the little difference!"

"Did you ever know a bad woman grow better?"

"No, never.--Stop! let me see" I did once know a woman--she was a married woman too--that made it all the worse--all the better I mean: she took poison--in good earnest, and died--died, sir--died, I say--when she came to herself, and knew what she had done! That was the only woman I ever knew that grew better. How long she might have gone on better if she hadn't taken the poison, I can't tell. That fixed her good, you see!"

"If she had gone on, she might have got as good as your mother?"

"Oh, hang it! no; I did not say that!"

"I mean, with God teaching her all the time--for ten thousand years, say--and she always doing what he told her!"

"Oh, well! I don't know anything about that. I don't know what God had to do with my mother being so good! She was none of your canting sort!"

"There is an old story," said Donal, "of a man who was the very image of God, and ever so much better than the best of women."

"He couldn't have been much of a man then!"

"Were you ever afraid, my lord?"

"Yes, several times--many a time."

"That man never knew what fear was."

"By Jove!"

"His mother was good, and he was better: your mother was good, and you are worse! Whose fault is that?"

"My own; I'm not ashamed to confess it!"

"Would to God you were!" said Donal: "you shame your mother in being worse than she was. You were made in the image of God, but you don't look like him now any more than you look like your mother. I have a father and mother, my lord, as like God as they can look!"

"Of course! of course! In their position there are no such temptations as in ours!"

"I am sure of one thing, my lord--that you will never be at any peace until you begin to show the image in which you were made. By that time you will care for nothing so much as that he should have his way with you and the whole world."