This comfort, to
do him justice, he never grudged her; and sometimes before midday
they would both be drunk--a condition expedited by the lack of food.
When they began to recover, they would quarrel fiercely; and at
last they became a nuisance to the whole street. Little did the
whisky-hating old lady know to what god she had really offered up
that violin--if the consequences of the holocaust can be admitted as
indicating the power which had accepted it.
But now began to appear in Robert the first signs of a practical
outcome of such truth as his grandmother had taught him, operating
upon the necessities of a simple and earnest nature. Reality,
however lapt in vanity, or even in falsehood, cannot lose its power.
It is--the other is not. She had taught him to look up--that there
was a God. He would put it to the test. Not that he doubted it yet:
he only doubted whether there was a hearing God. But was not that
worse? It was, I think. For it is of far more consequence what
kind of a God, than whether a God or no. Let not my reader suppose
I think it possible there could be other than a perfect
God--perfect--even to the vision of his creatures, the faith that
supplies the lack of vision being yet faithful to that vision. I
speak from Robert's point of outlook. But, indeed, whether better
or worse is no great matter, so long as he would see it or what
there was. He had no comfort, and, without reasoning about it, he
felt that life ought to have comfort--from which point he began to
conclude that the only thing left was to try whether the God in whom
his grandmother believed might not help him.
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