Part 49 (1/2)

”If I had a G.o.d,” she said, suddenly, ”if a G.o.d cared to claim me--I would be proud of his wors.h.i.+p everywhere.”

Arslan smiled.

”All women have a G.o.d; that is why they are at once so much weaker and so much happier than men.”

”Who are their G.o.ds?”

”Their name is legion. Innocent women make G.o.ds of their offspring, of their homes, of their housework, of their duties; and are as cruel as tigresses meanwhile to all outside the pale of their temples.

Others--less innocent--make G.o.ds of their own forms and faces; of bright stones dug from the earth, of vessels of gold and silver, of purple and fine linen, of pa.s.sions, and vanities, and desires; G.o.ds that they consume themselves for in their youth, and that they curse, and beat, and upbraid in the days of their age. Which of these G.o.ds will be yours?”

She thought awhile.

”None of them,” she said at last.

”None? What will you put in their stead, then?”

She thought gravely some moments again. Although a certain terse and even poetic utterance was the shape which her spoken imaginations naturally took at all times, ignorance and solitude had made it hard for her aptly to marry her thoughts to words.

”I do not know,” she said, wearily. ”Marcellin says that G.o.d is deaf. He must be deaf--or very cruel. Look; everything lives in pain; and yet no G.o.d pities and makes an end of the earth. I would--if I were He.

Look--at dawn, the other day, I was out in the wood. I came upon a little rabbit in a trap; a little, pretty, soft black-and-white thing, quite young. It was screaming in its horrible misery; it had been screaming all night. Its thighs were broken in the iron teeth; the trap held it tight; it could not escape, it could only scream--scream--scream. All in vain. Its G.o.d never heard. When I got it free it was mangled as if a wolf had gnawed it; the iron teeth had bitten through the fur, and the flesh, and the bone; it had lost so much blood, and it was in so much pain, that it could not live. I laid it down in the bracken, and put water to its mouth, and did what I could; but it was of no use. It had been too much hurt. It died as the sun rose; a little, harmless, shy, happy thing, you know, that never killed any creature, and only asked to nibble a leaf or two, or sleep in a little round hole, and run about merry and free. How can one care for a G.o.d since all G.o.ds let these things be?”

Arslan smiled as he heard.

”Child,--men care for a G.o.d only as a G.o.d means a good to them. Men are heirs of heaven, they say; and, in right of their heritage, they make life h.e.l.l to every living thing that dares dispute the world with them.

You do not understand that,--tut! You are not human, then. If you were human, you would begrudge a blade of gra.s.s to a rabbit, and arrogate to yourself a lease of immortality.”

She did not understand him; but she felt that she was honored by him, and not scorned as others scorned her, for being thus unlike humanity.

It was a bitter perplexity to her, this earth on which she had been flung amidst an alien people; that she should suffer herself seemed little to her, it had become as a second nature; but the sufferings of all the innumerable tribes of creation, things of the woods, and the field, and the waters, and the sky, that toiled and sweated and were hunted, and persecuted and wrenched in torment, and finally perished to gratify the appet.i.tes or the avarice of humanity--these sufferings were horrible to her always: inexplicable, hideous, unpardonable,--a crime for which she hated G.o.d and Man.

”There is no G.o.d pitiful, then?” she said, at length; ”no G.o.d--not one?”

”Only those Three,” he answered her as he motioned towards the three brethren that watched above her.

”Are they your G.o.ds?”

A smile that moved her to a certain fear of him pa.s.sed a moment over his mouth.

”My G.o.ds?--No. They are the G.o.ds of youth and of age--not of manhood.”

”What is yours, then?”

”Mine?--a Moloch who consumes my offspring, yet in whose burning brazen hands I have put them and myself--forever.”

She looked at him in awe and in reverence. She imagined him the priest of some dark and terrible religion, for whose sake he pa.s.sed his years in solitude and deprivation, and by whose powers he created the wondrous shapes that rose and bloomed around him.

”Those are gentler G.o.ds?” she said, timidly, raising her eyes to the brethren above her. ”Do you never--will you never--wors.h.i.+p them?”