Drolls From Shadowland Part 5

He went to the King, where he sat sunning himself in his palace.

"You are very rich," said the man to the King.

"G.o.d has so willed it, and I am grateful," said the King.

"You hope one day to see G.o.d face to face?"

"I _do_ hope so, fervently!" said the King, with unction.

"And if He questions you of your wealth you will express your grat.i.tude and bow to Him, and G.o.d will accept the compliment and be content?"

The King was silent.

"You think He will ask no questions?" said the man. "He will not trouble to refer to His starving children, with whom you might reasonably have shared your superfluities; to the sick whom you might have succoured; or to the sorrowing whom you might have cheered? You had wealth, and were grateful for it: and you used it on yourself. And presently, when you are dead?" asked the man, more quietly. "If you sit beside the beggar who perished at your gates, what will you say to him if he should refer to matters such as these?"

"Sit beside a beggar!" cried the King, in high disdain.

"You forget it will be in heaven," said the man, gently.

"In heaven, of course, I shall be a king as I am here!"

"Oh, will you?" said the man: "I was not aware of that. I saw kings there performing the lowliest of services. And I saw many in h.e.l.l: the majority of them were there." And therewith the man sighed heavily, as he mused.

The King turned his back on him: and they thrust him out at the gates.

The Archbishop was reading a novel by the fire.

"Your work, then, is ended, is it?" asked the man.

"Oh no! not by any means ended, I hope. I attended a drawing-room meeting at Lady Clack's yesterday," said the Archbishop, smiling benignantly on his questioner, "and this morning I have sanctioned proceedings against a vicar who for some time has been wavering heretically in his opinions. I think we can effectually silence him at last. Oh yes, I am extremely busy, I can a.s.sure you."

"There are no souls, then, to be saved?" said the man. "No lives to be reformed: and no mourners to be comforted? This side of your duties you have completed and closed?"

The Archbishop looked at him with extreme hauteur. "My dear sir, I leave these matters to my subordinates. I am here as an administrator, not as a minister."

"And you always choose the men best fitted to be ministers?"

"Of course. At any rate, I hope so," quoth the Archbishop.

"That young curate who has so successfully played the evangelist in Gorseshire--he will have one of your earliest nominations, then, no doubt?"

"Indeed, he will not! He has offended me deeply. Would you believe it?

he wrote an article on me in one of the reviews, and he actually had the audacity, sir, to criticize me unfavourably! I will see that the man remains exactly where he is!"

"And when you by-and-by make your report to your Master, will you explain to Him your methods and your aims in this way? If so, do you think He will be satisfied with you? Your methods and His are at variance, surely? In heaven there are neither archbishops nor bishops, as such. If they pa.s.s the gates at all, it is merely as men who have done their duty. Do you think you will pa.s.s the gates on that score, your Grace?"

The Archbishop rang the bell sharply and abruptly.

"Please show this gentleman out!" said His Grace.

"So you persist in disowning your daughter?" asked the man, looking hard at the portly, pleasant-faced matron who was dandling her thirteenth infant on her knees. "You will show her no mercy, now she asks it at your hands?"

"She has disgraced me--I will never forgive her!" said the woman. "Let her starve with her brat. It will be well when they are dead."

"She has disgraced you, you say? But has she disgraced Nature? I thought it was Nature who was responsible for her s.e.x and its instincts. She has obeyed the one and fulfilled the other. And they have been paramount considerations with you also, I perceive."

"Did she owe no duty, then, to her parents? Was I to count in her life merely as the soil to the plant?"

"In the scales of justice, as I saw them adjusted in heaven, the claim against the parents weighed the heaviest," said the man. "You suckled her at your b.r.e.a.s.t.s; but you brought her there to suckle. In your bringing her there, lies the onus of her claim."

"I tell you, she has disgraced me, and I will never forgive her!"

"_'Never'_ is a long day for a mortal. You will be judged yourself before you reach the end of it," said the man.

"Three months' imprisonment with hard labour," said the magistrate.

"For taking a loaf of bread when he was starving!" cried the man.

"Even so," said the magistrate, with his hands on his paunch.

"But surely this is a monstrous perversion of justice. Or, rather, let me call it a monstrous _in_justice!"

"The laws of the community must be respected," said the magistrate.

"Here is a man--alive by no fault of his own, and poor, even to starvation, through absolute want of work: and yet you begrudge him the necessaries of life! If he tries to commit suicide, you pillory and chastise him, and if he tries to keep life in him out of the superfluities of others, you pa.s.s on him this monstrous sentence!" cried the man. "Surely here is some fault in the structure of your society."

"It is the law of the community!" said the magistrate, pompously.

"And in what way is the law of the community so very sacred, that it should be counted of higher price than the life and welfare of a man?

The law of the community may be a very pretty idol to play before, but in heaven it counts for nothing," said the quiet old man.

"This man is a pestilent fellow," said the community. "He troubles us overmuch with this vision that he has knowledge of. Come, let us kill him!"

And they smote him, and he died.

THE UNCHRISTENED CHILD.

"_Thee_ shaan't christen un, ef he's never christened!" said the father.