“It is the judgment of God!”
NEMESIS.
Men, according to the old Greek, “are the sport
of the gods,” who, enthroned on high Olympus,
put evil desires into the hearts of mortals; and when
evil actions were the outcome of evil thoughts, amused
themselves by watching the ineffectual efforts made
by their victims to escape a relentless deity called
Nemesis, who exacted a penalty for their evil deeds.
It was no doubt very amusing—to the gods—but
it is questionable if the men found it so. They
had their revenge, however, for weary of plaguing
puny mortals, who whimpered and cried when they saw
they could not escape, the inevitable Nemesis turned
her attention from actors to spectators, and made
a clean sweep of the whole Olympian hierarchy.
She smashed their altars, pulled down their statues,
and after she had completed her malicious work, found
that she had, vulgarly speaking, been cutting off
her nose to spite her face, for she, too, became an
object of derision and of disbelief, and was forced
to retire to the same obscurity to which she had relegated
the other deities. But men found out that she
had not been altogether useless as a scapegoat upon
which to lay the blame of their own shortcomings,
so they created a new deity called Fate, and laid any
misfortune which happened to them to her charge.
Her worship is still very popular, especially among
lazy and unlucky people, who never bestir themselves:
on the ground that whether they do so or not their
lives are already settled by Fate. After all,
the true religion of Fate has been preached by George
Eliot, when she says that our lives are the outcome
of our actions. Set up any idol you please upon
which to lay the blame of unhappy lives and baffled
ambitions, but the true cause is to be found in men
themselves. Every action, good or bad, which
we do has its corresponding reward, and Mark Frettlby
found it so, for the sins of his youth were now being
punished in his old age. No doubt he had sinned
gaily enough in that far-off time when life’s
cup was still brimming with wine, and no asp hid among
the roses; but Nemesis had been an unseen spectator
of all his thoughtless actions, and now she came to
demand her just dues. He felt somewhat as Faust
must have felt when Mephistopheles suggested a visit
to Hades, in repayment of those years of magic youth
and magic power. So long ago it seemed since
he had married Rosanna Moore, that he almost persuaded
himself that it had been only a dream—a
pleasant dream, with a disagreeable awakening.
When she had left him he had tried to forget her,
recognising how unworthy she was of a good man’s
love. He heard that she had died in a London
hospital, and with a passionate sigh for a perished
love, he had dismissed her from his thoughts for ever.
His second marriage had turned out a happy one, and
he regretted the death of his wife deeply. Afterwards,
