The unsuitableness in point of
natural feeling between scenes of mourning and scenes of liveliness did
not at all present itself. But I did feel that if at that moment any of
those faults had been brought before me which sometimes occur amongst
us; had I heard that any of you had been guilty of falsehood, or of
drunkenness, or of any other such sin; had I heard from any quarter the
language of profaneness, or of unkindness, or of indecency; had I heard
or seen any signs of that wretched folly which courts the laugh of
fools by affecting not to dread evil and not to care for good, then the
unsuitableness of any of these things with the scene I had just quitted
would indeed have been most intensely painful. And why? Not because such
things would really have been worse than at any other time, but because
at such a moment the eyes are opened really to know good and evil,
because we then feel what it is so to live as that death becomes an
infinite blessing, and what it is so to live also that it were good for
us if we had never been born."
Tom had gone into chapel in sickening anxiety about Arthur, but he came
out cheered and strengthened by those grand words, and walked up alone
to their study. And when he sat down and looked round, and saw Arthur's
straw hat and cricket-jacket hanging on their pegs, and marked all his
little neat arrangements, not one of which had been disturbed, the tears
indeed rolled down his cheeks; but they were calm and blessed tears, and
he repeated to himself, "Yes, Geordie's eyes are opened; he knows what
it is so to live as that death becomes an infinite blessing.
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