Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts | Page 2

of men, what insensate waste to
quench such a heart and brain as Harry's!--to nip, as it seemed out of
mere blundering wantonness, a bud which had begun to open so
generously: to sacrifice that youth and strength, that comeliness, that
enthusiasm, and all for nothing! Had some campaign claimed him, had
he been spent to gain a citadel or defend a flag, I had understood. But
that he should be killed on a friendly mission; attacked in ignorance by
those East Coast savages while bearing gifts to their king; deserted by
the porters whose comfort (on their own confession) he had studied
throughout the march; left to die, to be tortured, mutilated--and all for
no possible good: these things I could not understand. At the end he
might have escaped; but as he caught hold of his saddle by the band
between the holsters, it parted: it was not leather, but faced paper, the

job of some cheating contractor. I thought of this, too. And Harry had
been through Chitral!
But though a man may hate, he cannot easily despise God for long. "He
is great--but wasteful," said the American. We are the dust on His great
hands, and fly as He claps them carelessly in the pauses of His work.
Yet this theory would not do at all: for the unlucky particles are not
dust, not refuse, but exquisite and exquisitely fashioned, designed to
live, and to every small function of life adapted with the minutest care.
There were nights indeed when, walking along the shore where we had
walked together on the night before Harry left England and looking
from the dark waters which divided me from his grave up to the nightly
moon and to the stars around her, I could well believe God wasteful of
little things. Sirius flashing low, Orion's belt with the great nebula
swinging like a pendant of diamonds; the ruby stars, Betelgueux and
Aldebaran--my eyes went up beyond these to Perseus shepherding the
Kids westward along the Milky way. From the right Andromeda
flashed signals to him: and above sat Cassiopeia, her mother, resting
her jewelled wrists on the arms of her throne. Low in the east Jupiter
trailed his satellites in the old moon's path. As they all moved, silent,
looking down on me out of the hollow spaces of the night, I could
believe no splendid waste too costly for their perfection: and the
Artificer who hung them there after millions of years of patient effort,
if more intelligible than a God who produced them suddenly at will,
certainly not less divine. But walking the same shore by daylight I
recognised that the shells, the mosses, the flowers I trampled on, were,
each in its way, as perfect as those great stars: that on these-- and on
Harry--as surely as on the stars--God had spent, if not infinite pains,
then at least so superlative a wisdom that to conceive of them as
wastage was to deny the mind which called them forth.
There they were: and that He who had skill to create them could
blunder in using them was simply incredible.
But this led to worse: for having to admit the infallible design, I now
began to admire it as an exquisite scheme of evil, and to accuse God of
employing supreme knowledge and skill to gratify a royal lust of

cruelty. For a month and more this horrible theory justified itself in all
innocent daily sights. Throughout my country walks I "saw blood." I
heard the rabbit run squeaking before the weasel; I watched the butcher
crow working steadily down the hedge. If I turned seaward I looked
beneath the blue and saw the dog-fish gnawing on the whiting. If I
walked in the garden I surprised the thrush dragging worms from the
turf, the cat slinking on the nest, the spider squatting in ambush. Behind
the rosy face of every well-nourished child I saw a lamb gazing up at
the butcher's knife. My dear Violet, that was a hideous time!
And just then by chance a book fell into my hands--Lamartine's Chute
d'un Ange. Do you know the Seventh and Tenth Visions of that poem,
which describe the favourite amusements of the Men-gods? Before the
Deluge, beyond the rude tents of the nomad shepherds, there rose city
upon city of palaces built of jasper and porphyry, splendid and utterly
corrupt; inhabited by men who called themselves gods and explored the
subtleties of all sciences to minister to their vicious pleasures. At ease
on soft couches, in hanging gardens set with fountains, these beings
feasted with every refinement of cruelty. Kneeling slaves were their
living tables; while for their food--
Tous les oiseaux de l'air, tous les poissons de l'onde, Tout ce qui vole
ou nage ou rampe dans