THOMAS WINGFOLD, CURATE, page 15
But hard thoughts of him could not stay the fountain of Wingfold’s utterance, which filled as it flowed. Eager after a right presentation of what truth he saw, he dwelt on the mockery it would be of any man to call him the wisest, the best, the kindest, yea and the dearest of men, yet never heed either the smallest request or the most urgent entreaty he made.
“A Socinian!” said Mrs. Ramshorn.
“There’s stuff in the fellow!” said the rector’s churchwarden, who had been brought up a Wesleyan.
“He’d make a fellow fancy he did believe all his grandmother told him!” thought Bascombe.
As he went on, the awakened curate grew almost eloquent. His face shone with earnestness. Even Helen found her gaze fixed upon him, though she had not a notion what he was talking about. He closed at length with these words:
“After the confession I have now made to you, a confession which I have also entreated everyone to whom it belongs to make to himself and his God, it follows that I dare not call myself a Christian. How should such a one as I know anything about that which, if it be true at all, is the loftiest, the one all-absorbing truth in the universe? How should such a fellow as I” — he went on, growing scornful at himself in the presence of the truth— “judge of its sacred probabilities? or, having led such a life of simony, be heard when he declares that such a pretended message from God to men seems too good to be true? The things therein contained I declare good, yet went not and did them. Therefore am I altogether out of court, and must not be heard in the matter.
“No, my hearers, I call not myself a Christian, but I call everyone here who obeys the word of Jesus, who restrains anger, who declines judgment, who practises generosity, who loves his enemies, who prays for his slanderers, to witness my vow, that I will henceforth try to obey him, in the hope that he whom he called God and his Father, will reveal to him whom you call your Lord Jesus Christ, that into my darkness I may receive the light of the world!”
“A professed infidel!” said Mrs. Ramshorn. “A clever one too! That was a fine trap he laid for us, to prove us all atheists as well as himself! As if any mere mortal COULD obey the instructions of the Saviour! He was divine; we are but human!”
She might have added, “And but poor creatures as such,” but did not go so far, believing herself more than an average specimen.
But there was one shining face which, like a rising sun of love and light and truth, “pillowed his chin,” not “on an orient wave,” but on the book-board of a free seat. The eyes of it were full of tears, and the heart behind it was giving that God and Father thanks, for this was more, far more than he had even hoped for, save in the indefinite future. The light was no longer present as warmth or vivification alone, but had begun to shine as light in the heart of his friend, to whom now, praised be God! the way lay open into all truth. And when the words came, in a voice that once more trembled with emotion— “Now to God the Father,” — he bent down his face, and the poor, stunted, distorted frame and great grey head were grievously shaken with the sobs of a mighty gladness. Truth in the inward parts looked out upon him from the face of one who stood before the people their self-denied teacher! How would they receive it? It mattered not. Those whom the Father had drawn, would hear.
Polwarth neither sought the curate in the vestry, waited for him at the church-door, nor followed him to his lodging. He was not of those who compliment a man on his fine sermon. How grandly careless are some men of the risk of ruin their praises are to their friends! “Let God praise him!” said Polwarth; “I will only dare to love him.” He would not toy with his friend’s waking Psyche.
CHAPTER XXXII. HOPES.
It was the first Sunday Helen had gone to church since her brother came to her. On the previous Sunday he had passed some crisis and begun to improve, and by the end of the week was so quiet, that longing for a change of atmosphere, and believing he might be left with the housekeeper, she had gone to church. On her return she heard he was no worse, although he had “been a-frettin’ after her.” She hurried to him as if he had been her baby.
“What do you go to church for?” he asked, half-petulantly, like a spoilt child, with languid eyes whence the hard fire had vanished. “What’s the use of it?”
He looked at her, waiting an answer.
“Not much,” replied Helen. “I like the quiet and the music. That’s all.”
He seemed disappointed, and lay still for a few moments.
“In old times,” he said at last, “the churches used to be a refuge: I suppose that is why one can’t help feeling as if some safety were to be got from them yet. — Was your cousin George there this morning?”
“Yes, he went with us,” answered Helen.
“I should like to see him. I want somebody to talk to.”
Helen was silent. She was more occupied however in answering to herself the question why she shrank so decidedly from bringing Bascombe into the sick-room, than in thinking what she should say to Leopold. The truth was the truth, and why should she object to Leopold’s knowing, or at least being told as well as herself, that he need fear no punishment in the next world, whatever he might have to encounter in this; that there was no frightful God who hated wrong-doing to be terrified at; that even the badness of his own action need not distress him, for he and it would pass away as the blood he had shed had already vanished from the earth? Ought it not to encourage the poor fellow? — But to what? To live on and endure his misery, or to put an end to it and himself at once? Or perhaps to plunge into vice that he might escape the consciousness of guilt and the dread of the law?
I will not say that exactly such a train of thought as this passed through her mind, but of whatever sort it was, it brought her no nearer to a desire for the light of George Bascombe’s presence by the bedside of her guilty brother. At the same time her partiality for her cousin made her justify his exclusion thus: “George is so good himself, he is only fit for the company of good people. He would not in the least understand my poor Poldie, and would be too hard upon him.”
Since her brother’s appearance, in fact, she had seen very little of her cousin, and this not merely because her presence was so much required in the sick-chamber, but because she was herself unwilling to meet him. She had felt, almost without knowing it, that his character was unsympathetic, and that his loud, cold good-nature could never recognise or justify such love as she bore to her brother! Nor was this all; for, remembering how he had upon one occasion expressed himself with regard to criminals, she feared even to look in his face, lest his keen, questioning, unsparing eye should read in her soul that she was the sister of a murderer.
Before this time however a hint of light had appeared in the clouds that enwrapped her and Leopold: she had begun to doubt whether he had really committed the crime of which he accused himself. There had been no inquiry after him, except from his uncle, concerning his absence from Cambridge, for which his sudden attack of brain fever served as more than sufficient excuse. That there had been such a murder, the newspapers left her no room to question — but might not the relation in which he stood to the victim — the horror of her death, the insidious approaches of the fever, and the influences of that hateful drug, have combined to call up an hallucination of blood-guiltiness? And what at length all but satisfied her of the truth of her conjecture was that, when he began to recover, Leopold seemed himself in doubt at times whether his sense of guilt had not its origin in some one or other of the many dreams which had haunted him throughout his illness, knowing only too well that it was long since dreams had become to him more real than the greater part of what was going on around him. To this blurring and confusing of consciousness it probably contributed, that, in the first stages of the fever, he was under the influence of the same drug which had been working upon his brain up to the very moment when he committed the crime.
During the week the hope had almost settled into conviction; and one consequence was that, although she was not a whit more inclined to introduce George Bascombe to the sick-chamber, she found herself not only equal, but no longer averse to meeting him; and on the following Saturday, when he presented himself as usual, come to spend the Sunday, she listened to her aunt, and consented to go out with him for a ride — in the evening, however, when Mrs. Rainshorn herself, who had shown Leopold great and genuine kindness, would be able to sit with him. They therefore had dinner early, and Helen went again to her brother’s room, unwilling to leave him a moment until she gave up her charge to her aunt.
They had tea together, and Leopold was very quiet. It is wonderful with what success the mind will accommodate itself, in its effort after peace, to the presence of the most torturing thought. But Helen took this quietness for a sign of innocence, not knowing that the state of the feelings is neither test nor gauge of guilt. The nearer perfection a character is, the louder is the cry of conscience at the appearance of fault; and, on the other hand, the worst criminals have had the easiest minds.
Helen also was quiet, and fell into a dreamy mood, watching her brother, who every now and then turned on her a look of love and gratitude which moved her heart to its very depths. Not until she heard the horses coming round from the stable, did she rise to go and change her dress.
“I shall not be long away from you, Poldie,” she said.
“Do not forget me, Helen,” he returned. “If you forget me, an enemy will think of me.”
His love comforted her, and yet further strengthened her faith in his innocence; and it was with a kind of half-repose, timid, wavering, and glad, upon her countenance — how different from the old, dull, wooden quiescence! — that she joined her cousin in the hall. A moment, and he had lifted her to the saddle, and was mounted by her side.
CHAPTER XXXIII. THE RIDE.
A soft west wind, issuing as from the heart of a golden vase filled with roses, met them the instant they turned out of the street, walking their horses towards the park-gate.
Something — was it in the evening, or was it in his own soul? — had prevailed to the momentary silencing of George Bascombe: — it may have been but the influence of the cigar which Helen had begged him to finish. Helen too was silent: she felt as if the low red sun, straight into which they seemed to be riding, blotted out her being in the level torrent of his usurping radiance. Neither of them spoke a word until they had passed through the gate into the park.
It was a perfect English summer evening — warm, but not sultry. As they walked their horses up the carriage way, the sun went down, and as if he had fallen like a live coal into some celestial magazine of colour and glow, straightway blazed up a slow explosion of crimson and green in a golden triumph — pure fire, the smoke and fuel gone, and the radiance alone left. And now Helen received the second lesson of her initiation into the life of nature: she became aware that the whole evening was thinking around her, and as the dusk grew deeper and the night grew closer, the world seemed to have grown dark with its thinking. Of late Helen had been driven herself to think — if not deeply, yet intensely — and so knew what it was like, and felt at home with the twilight.
They turned from the drive on to the turf. Their horses tossed up their heads, and set off, unchecked, at a good pelting gallop, across the open park. On Helen’s cheek the wind blew cooling, strong, and kind. As if flowing from some fountain above, in an unseen unbanked river, down through the stiller ocean of the air, it seemed to bring to her a vague promise, almost a precognition, of peace — which, however, only set her longing after something — she knew not what — something of which she only knew that it would fill the longing the wind had brought her. The longing grew and extended — went stretching on and on into an infinite of rest. And as they still galloped, and the light-maddened colours sank into smoky peach, and yellow green, and blue gray, the something swelled and swelled in her soul, and pulled and pulled at her heart, until the tears were running down her face: for fear Bascombe should see them, she gave her horse the rein, and fled from him into the friendly dusk that seemed to grade time into eternity.
Suddenly she found herself close to a clump of trees, which overhung the deserted house. She had made a great circuit without knowing it. A pang shot to her heart, and her tears ceased to flow. The night, silent with thought, held THAT also in its bosom! She drew rein, turned, and waited for Bascombe.
“What a chase you’ve given me, Helen!” he cried, while yet pounding away some score of yards off.
“A wild-goose one you mean, cousin?”
“It would have been if I had thought to catch you on this ancient cocktail.”
“Don’t abuse the old horse, George: he has seen better days. I would gladly have mounted you more to your mind, but you know I could not — except indeed I had given you my Fanny, and taken the old horse myself. I have ridden him.”
“The lady ought always to be the better mounted,” returned George coolly. “For my part, I much prefer it, because then I need not be anxious about whether I am boring her or not: if I am, she can run away.”
“You cannot suppose I thought you a bore to-night. A more sweetly silent gentleman none could wish for squire.”
“Then it was my silence bored you. — Shall I tell you what I was thinking about?”
“If you like. I was thinking how pleasant it would be to ride on and on into eternity,” said Helen.
“That feeling of continuity,” returned George, “is a proof of the painlessness of departure. No one can ever know when he ceases to be, because then he is not; and that is how some men come to fancy they feel as if they were going to live for ever. But the worst of it is that they no sooner fancy it, than it seems to them a probable as well as delightful thing to go on and on and never cease. This comes of the man’s having no consciousness of ceasing, and when one is comfortable, it always seems good to go on. A child is never willing to turn from the dish of which he is eating to another. It is more he wants, not another.”
“That is if he likes it,” said Helen.
“Everybody likes it,” said George, “ — more or less.”
“I am not so sure of EVERYbody,” replied Helen. “Do you imagine that twisted little dwarf-woman that opened the gate for us is content with her lot?”
“No, that is impossible — while she sees you and remains what she is. But I said nothing of contentment. I was but thinking of the fools who, whether content or not, yet want to live for ever, and so, very conveniently, take their longing for immortality, which they call an idea innate in the human heart, for a proof that immortality is their rightful inheritance.”
“How then do you account for the existence and universality of the idea?” asked Helen, who had happened lately to come upon some arguments on the other side.
But while she spoke thus indifferently she felt in her heart like one who wakes from a delicious swim in the fairest of rivers, to find that the clothes have slipped from the bed to the floor: — that was all his river and all his swim!
“I account for its existence as I have just said; and for its universality by denying it. It is NOT universal, for I haven’t it.”
“At least you will not deny that men, even when miserable, shrink from dying?”
“Anything, everything is unpleasant out of its due time. I will allow, for the sake of argument, that the thought of dying is always unpleasant. But wherefore so? Because, in the very act of thinking it, the idea must always be taken from the time that suits with it — namely, its own time, when it will at length, and ought at length to come — and placed in the midst of the lively present, with which assuredly it does not suit. To life, death must be always hateful. In the rush and turmoil of effort, how distasteful even the cave of the hermit — let ever such a splendid view spread abroad before its mouth! But when it comes it will be pleasant enough, for then its time will have come also — the man will be prepared for it by decay and cessation. If one were to tell me that he had that endless longing for immortality, of which hitherto I have only heard at second hand, I would explain it to him thus: — Your life, I would say, not being yet complete, still growing, feels in itself the onward impulse of growth, and, unable to think of itself as other than complete, interprets that onward impulse as belonging to the time around it instead of the nature within it. Or rather let me say, the man feels in himself the elements of more, and not being able to grasp the notion of his own completeness, which is so far from him, transposes the feeling of growth and sets it beyond himself, translating it at the same time into an instinct of duration, a longing after what he calls eternal life. But when the man is complete, then comes decay and brings its own contentment with it — as will also death, when it arrives in its own proper season of fulness and ripeness.”
Helen said nothing in reply. She thought her cousin very clever, but could not enjoy what he said — not in the face of that sky, and in the yet lingering reflection of the feelings it had waked in her. He might be right, but now at least she wanted no more of it. She even felt as if she would rather cherish a sweet deception for the comfort of the moment in which the weaver’s shuttle flew, than take to her bosom a cold killing fact.
Such were indeed an unworthy feeling to follow! Of all things let us have the truth — even of fact! But to deny what we cannot prove, not even casts into our ice-house a spadeful of snow. What if the warm hope denied should be the truth after all? What if it was the truth in it that drew the soul towards it by its indwelling reality, and its relations with her being, even while she took blame for suffering herself to be enticed by a sweet deception? Alas indeed for men if the life and the truth are not one, but fight against each other! Surely it says something for the divine nature of him that denies the divine, when he yet cleaves to what he thinks the truth, although it denies the life, and blots the way to the better from every chart!
