Their child! A life had been taken from her. Soon a life would be given
to her. Was that what is called compensation? Perhaps so. Many strange
thoughts, come she could not tell why, were passing through her mind as
she sat upon this height in the dawn. The thought of compensation
recalled to her the Book of Job. Everything was taken from Job; not only
his flocks and his herds, but his sons and his daughters. And then at the
last he was compensated. He was given new flocks and herds and new sons
and daughters. And it was supposed to be well with Job. If it was well
with Job, then Job had been a man without a heart.
Never could she be compensated for this loss, which she was trying to
realize, but which she would not be able to realize until the days went
by, and the nights, the days and the nights of the ordinary life, when
tragedy was supposed to be over and done with, and people would say, and
no doubt sincerely believe, that she was "getting accustomed" to her
loss.
Thinking of Job led her on to think of God's dealings with His creatures.
Hermione was a woman who clung to no special religion, but she had
always, all her life, had a very strong personal consciousness of a
directing Power in the world, had always had an innate conviction that
this directing Power followed with deep interest the life of each
individual in the scheme of His creation. She had always felt, she felt
now, that God knew everything about her and her life, was aware of all
her feelings, was constantly intent upon her.
He was intent. But was He kindly or was He cruelly intent?
Surely He had been dreadfully cruel to her!
Only yesterday she had been wondering what bereaved women felt about God.
Now she was one of these women.
"Was Maurice dead?" she thought--"was he already dead when I was praying
before the shrine of the Madonna della Rocca?"
She longed to know. Yet she scarcely knew why she longed. It was like a
strange, almost unnatural curiosity which she could not at first explain
to herself. But presently her mind grew clearer and she connected this
question with that other question--of God and what He really was, what He
really felt towards His creatures, towards her.
Had God allowed her to pray like that, with all her heart and soul, and
then immediately afterwards deliberately delivered her over to the fate
of desolate women, or had Maurice been already dead? If that were so, and
it must surely have been so, for when she prayed it was already night,
she had been led to pray for herself ignorantly, and God had taken away
her joy before He had heard her prayer. If He had heard it first He
surely could not have dealt so cruelly with her--so cruelly! No human
being could have, she thought, even the most hard-hearted.