Thomas Wingfold, Curate V2
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George MacDonald >> Thomas Wingfold, Curate V2
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"Now whether it was anything you had said coming back to me, I
cannot tell, but next day, that was yesterday, all at once, in the
shop here, as I was serving Mrs. Ramshorn, the thought came to me:
How would Jesus Christ have done if he had been a draper instead of
a carpenter? When she was gone, I went up to my room to think about
it. And there it seemed--that first I must know how he did as a
carpenter. But that we are told nothing about. I could get no light
upon that. And so my thoughts turned again to the original question.
--How would he have done had he been a draper? And, strange to say,
I seemed to know far more about that than the other, and to have
something to go upon. In fact I had a sharp and decisive answer
concerning several things of which I had dared to make a question."
"The vision of the ideal woke the ideal in yourself," said Wingfold
thoughtfully.
"I don't know that I quite understand that," returned Mr. Drew; "but
the more I thought the more dissatisfied I became. And, in a word,
it has come to this, that I must set things right, or give up
business."
"That would be no victory," remarked the curate.
"I know it, and shall not yield without a struggle, I promise you.
That same afternoon, taking the opportunity of having overheard one
of them endeavouring to persuade an old farmer's wife to her
disadvantage, I called all my people, and told them that if ever I
heard one of them do such a thing, I would turn him or her away at
once. But when I came to look at it, I saw how difficult it would be
to convict of the breach of such a vague law; and unfortunately too
I had some time ago introduced the system of a small percentage to
the sellers, making it their interest to force sales. That however
is easily rectified, and I shall see to it at once. But I do wish I
had a more definite law to follow than that of doing AS!"
"Would not more light inside do as well as clearer law outside?"
suggested Wingfold.
"How can I tell till I have had a chance of trying?" returned the
draper with a smile, which speedily vanished as he went on: "Then
again, there's about profits! How much ought I to take? Am I to do
as others do, and always be ruled by the market? Am I bound to give
my customers the advantage of any special bargain I may have made?
And then again--for I do a large wholesale business with the little
country shops--if I learn that one of my customers is going down
hill, have I, or have I not, a right to pounce upon him, and make
him pay me, to the detriment of his other creditors? There's no end
of questions, you see, sir."
"I am the worst possible man to ask," returned Wingfold again. "I
might, from very ignorance, judge that wrong which is really right,
or that right which is really wrong. But one thing I begin to see,
that before a man can do right by his neighbour, he must love him as
himself. Only I am such a poor scholar in these high things that, as
you have just said, I cannot pretend to teach anybody. That sermon
was but an appeal to men's own consciences whether they kept the
words of the Lord by whose name they called themselves. Except in
your case, Mr. Drew, I am not aware that one of the congregation has
taken it to heart."
"I am not sure of that," returned the draper. "Some talk amongst my
own people has made me fancy that, perhaps, though talk be but
froth, the froth may rise from some hot work down below. Never man
could tell from the quiet way I am talking to you, how much I have
felt these few days past."
Wingfold looked him in the face: the earnestness of the man was
plain in his eyes, and his resolve stamped on every feature. The
curate thought of Zacchaeus; thought of Matthew at the receipt of
custom; thought with some shame of certain judgments concerning
trade, and shopkeepers especially, that seemed somehow to have bred
in him like creeping things--for whence they had come he could not
tell.
Now it was clear as day that--always provided the man Christ Jesus
can be and is with his disciples always to the end of the world--a
tradesman might just as soon have Jesus behind the counter with him,
teaching him to buy and sell IN HIS NAME, that is, as he would have
done it, as an earl riding over his lands might have him with him,
teaching him how to treat his farmers and cottagers--all depending
on how the one did his trading and the other his earling. A mere
truism, is it? Yes, it is, and more is the pity; for what is a
truism, as most men count truisms? What is it but a truth that ought
to have been buried long ago in the lives of men--to send up for
ever the corn of true deeds and the wine of loving kindness,--but
instead of being buried in friendly soil, is allowed to lie about,
kicked hither and thither in the dry and empty garret of their
brains, till they are sick of the sight and sound of it, and to be
rid of the thought of it, declare it to be no living truth but only
a lifeless truism! Yet in their brain that truism must rattle until
they shift it to its rightful quarters in their heart, where it will
rattle no longer but take root and be a strength and loveliness. Is
a truth to cease to be uttered because no better form than that of
some divine truism--say of St. John Boanerges--can be found for it?
To the critic the truism is a sea-worn, foot-trodden pebble; to the
obedient scholar, a radiant topaz, which, as he polishes it with the
dust of its use, may turn into a diamond.
"Jesus buying and selling!" said Wingfold to himself. "And why not?
Did Jesus make chairs and tables, or boats perhaps, which the people
of Nazareth wanted, without any admixture of trade in the matter?
Was there no transaction? No passing of money between hands? Did
they not pay his father for them? Was his Father's way of keeping
things going in the world, too vile for the hands of him whose being
was delight in the will of that Father? No; there must be a way of
handling money that is noble as the handling of the sword in the
hands of the patriot. Neither the mean man who loves it, nor the
faithless man who despises it, knows how to handle it. The former is
one who allows his dog to become a nuisance, the latter one who
kicks him from his sight. The noble man is he who so truly does the
work given him to do that the inherent nobility of that work is
manifest. And the trader who trades nobly is nobler surely than the
high-born who, if he carried the principles of his daily life into
trade, would be as pitiful a sneak as any he that bows and scrapes
falsely behind that altar of lies, his counter."--All flat truisms I
know, but no longer such to Wingfold to whom they now for the first
time showed themselves truths.
He had taken a kindly leave of the draper, promising to call again
soon, and had reached the room-door on his way out, when he turned
suddenly and said,
"Did you think to try praying, Mr. Drew? Men, whose minds, if I may
venture to judge, seem to me, from their writings, of the very
highest order, have really and positively believed that the loftiest
activity of a man's being lay in prayer to the unknown Father of
that being, and that light in the inward parts was the certain
consequence--that, in very truth, not only did the prayer of the man
find the ear of God, but the man himself found God Himself. I have
no right to an opinion, but I have a splendid hope that I shall one
day find it true. The Lord said a man must go on praying and not
lose heart."
With the words he walked out, and the deacon thought of his many
prayers at prayer-meetings and family-worships. The words of a young
man who seemed to have only just discovered that there was such a
thing as prayer, who could not pretend to be sure about it, but
hoped splendidly, made him ashamed of them all.
CHAPTER VII.
RACHEL.
Wingfold went straight to his friend Polwarth, and asked him if he
would allow him to bring Mr. Drew some evening to tea.
"You mean the linen-draper?" asked Polwarth. "Certainly, if you wish
it."
"Some troubles are catching," said the curate. "Drew has caught my
disease."
"I am delighted to hear it. It would be hard to catch a better, and
it's one a rich man, as they say he is, seldom does catch. But I
always liked his round, good-humoured, honest face. If I remember
rightly, he had a sore trial in his wife. It is generally understood
that she ran away with some fellow or other. But that was before he
came to live in Glaston.--Would you mind looking in upon Rachel for
a few minutes, sir? She is not so well to-day, and has not been out
of her own room."
"With all my heart," answered Wingfold. "I am sorry to hear she is
suffering."
"She is always suffering more or less," said the little man. "But
she enjoys life notwithstanding, as you may clearly see. It is to
her only a mitigated good, and that, I trust, for the sake of an
unmitigated one.--Come this way, sir."
He led the curate to the room next his own. It was a humble little
garret, but dainty with whiteness. One who did not thoroughly know
her, might have said it was like her life, colourless, but bright
with innocence and peace. The walls were white; the boards of the
uncarpeted floor were as white as scrubbing could make old deal; the
curtains of windows and bed were whiteness itself; the coverlet was
white; so was the face that looked smiling over the top of it from
the one low white pillow. But although Wingfold knew that face so
well, he almost started at the sight of it now: in the patience of
its suffering it was positively lovely. All that was painful to see
was hidden; the crooked little body lay at rest in the grave of the
bed-clothes; the soul rose from it, and looked, gracious with
womanhood, in the eyes of the curate.
"I cannot give you my hand," she said smiling, as he went softly
towards her, feeling like Moses when he put off his shoes, "for I
have such a pain in my arm, I cannot well raise it."
The curate bowed reverentially, seated himself in a chair by her
bedside, and, like a true comforter, said nothing.
"Don't be sorry for me, Mr. Wingfold," said her sweet voice at
length. "The poor dwarfie, as the children call me, is not a
creature to be pitied. You don't know how happy I am as I lie here,
knowing my uncle is in the next room, and will come the moment I
call him--and that there is one nearer still," she added in a lower
voice, almost in a whisper, "whom I haven't even to call. I am his,
and he shall do with me just as he likes. I fancy sometimes, when I
have to lie still, that I am a little sheep, tied hands and feet--I
should have said all four feet, if I am a sheep"--and here she gave
a little merry laugh--"lying on an altar--the bed here--burning
away, in the flame of life, that consumes the deathful body--burning,
heart and soul and sense, up to the great Father.--Forgive me, Mr.
Wingfold, for talking about myself, but you looked so miserable!
and I knew it was your kind heart feeling for me. But I need not,
for that, have gone on at such a rate. I am ashamed of myself!"
"On the contrary, I am exceedingly obliged to you for honouring me
by talking so freely," said Wingfold. "It is a great satisfaction to
find that suffering is not necessarily unhappiness. I could be well
content to suffer also, Miss Polwarth, if with the suffering I might
have the same peace."
"Sometimes I am troubled," she answered; "but generally I am in
peace, and sometimes too happy to dare speak about it.--Would the
persons you and my uncle were talking about the other day--would
they say all my pleasant as well as my painful thoughts came from
the same cause--vibrations in my brain?"
"No doubt. They would say, I presume, that the pleasant thoughts
come from regular, and the unpleasant from irregular motions of its
particles. They must give the same origin to both. Would you be
willing to acknowledge that only your pleasant thoughts had a higher
origin, and that your painful ones came from physical sources?"
Because of a headache and depression of spirits, Wingfold had been
turning over similar questions in his own mind the night before.
"I see," said the dwarfie--"I see. No. There are sad thoughts
sometimes which in their season I would not lose, for I would have
their influences with me always. In their season they are better
than a host of happy ones, and there is joy at the root of all. But
if they did come from physical causes, would it follow that they did
not come from God? Is he not the God of the dying as well as the God
of the living?"
"If there be a God, Miss Polwarth," returned Wingfold eagerly, "then
is he God everywhere, and not a maggot can die any more than a
Shakespeare be born without him. He is either enough, that is, all
in all, or he is not at all."
"That is what I think--because it is best:--I can give no better
reason."
"If there be a God, there can be no better reason," said Wingfold.
This IF of Wingfold's was, I need hardly now say, an IF of bare
honesty, and came of no desire to shake an unthinking confidence.
Neither, had it been of the other sort, could it have shaken
Rachel's, for her confidence was full of thinking. As little could
it shock her, for she hardly missed a sentence that passed between
her uncle and his new friend. She made no reply, never imagining it
her business to combat the doubts of a man whom she knew to be eager
after the truth, and being guiltless of any tendency, because she
believed, to condemn doubt as wicked.
A short silence followed.
"How delightful it must be to feel well and strong!" said Rachel at
length. "I can't help often thinking of Miss Lingard. It's always
Miss Lingard comes up to me when I think of such things. Oh! ain't
she beautiful and strong, Mr. Wingfold?--and sits on her horse as
straight as a rush! It does one good to see her. Just fancy me on a
great tall horse! What a bag of potatoes I should look!"
She burst into a merry laugh, and then came a few tears, which were
not all of the merriment of which she let them pass as the
consequence, remarking, as she wiped them away,
"But no one can tell, Mr. Wingfold,--and I'm sure Miss Lingard would
be astonished to hear--what pleasure I have while lying unable to
move. I suppose I benefit by what people call the law of
compensation! How I hate the word! As if THAT was the way the Father
of Jesus Christ did, and not his very best to get his children,
elder brothers and prodigal sons, home to his heart! You heard what
my uncle said about dreams the other day?" she resumed after a
little pause.
"Yes. I thought it very sensible," replied the curate.
"It all depends on the sort, don't it?" said Rachel. "Some of mine I
would not give for a library. They make me grow, telling me things I
should never learn otherwise. I don't mean any rubbish about future
events, and such like. Of all useless things a knowledge of the
future seems to me the most useless, for what are you to do with a
thing before it exists? Such a knowledge could only bewilder you as
to the right way to take--would make you see double instead of
single. That's not the sort I mean at all.--You won't laugh at me,
Mr. Wingfold?"
"I can scarcely imagine anything less likely."
"Then I don't mind opening my toy-box to you.--In my dreams, for
instance, I am sometimes visited by such a sense of freedom as fills
me with a pure bliss unknown to my waking thoughts except as a rosy
cloud on the horizon. As if they were some heavenly corporation, my
dreams present me, not with the freedom of some poor little city
like London, but with the freedom of all space."
The curate sat and listened with wonder--but with no sense of
unfitness; such speech and such thought suited well with the face
that looked up from the low pillow with its lovely eyes--for lovely
they were, with a light that had both flash and force.
"I don't believe," she went on, "that even Miss Lingard has more of
the blessed sense of freedom and strength and motion when she is on
horseback than I have when I am asleep. The very winds of my dreams
will make me so unspeakabably happy that I wake weeping. Do not tell
me it is gone then, for I continue so happy that I can hardly get to
sleep again to hunt for more joy. Don't say it is an unreality--for
where does freedom lie? In the body or in the mind? What does it
matter whether my body be lying still or moving from one spot of
space to another? What is the good of motion but to produce the
feeling of freedom? The feeling is everything, and if I have it,
that is all that I want. Bodily motion would indeed disturb it for
me--lay fetters on my spirit.--Sometimes, again, I dream of a new
flower--one never before beheld by mortal eye--with some strange,
wonderful quality in it, perhaps, that makes it a treasure, like
that flower of Milton's invention--haemony--in Comus, you know. But
one curious thing is that that strange quality will never be
recalled in waking hours; so that what it was I can never tell--as
if it belonged to other regions than the life of this world: I
retain only the vaguest memory of its power, and marvel, and
preciousness.--Sometimes it is a little poem or a song I dream of,
or some strange musical instrument, perhaps like one of those I have
seen angels with in a photograph from an old picture. And somehow
with the instrument always comes the knowledge of how to play upon
it. So you see, sir, as it has pleased God to send me into the world
as crooked as a crab, and nearly as lame as a seal, it has pleased
him also to give me the health and riches of the night to strengthen
me for the pains and poverties of the day.--You rejoice in a
beautiful thought when it comes to you, Mr. Wingfold--do you not?"
"When it comes to me," answered Wingfold significantly--almost
petulantly. Could it be that he envied the dwarf-girl?
"Then is the thought any worse because it comes in a shape?--or is
the feeling less of a feeling that it is born in a dream?"
"I need no convincing, I admit all you say," returned Wingfold.
"Why are you so silent, then? You make me think you are objecting
inside to everything I am saying," rejoined Rachel with a smile.
"Partly because I fear you are exciting yourself too much and will
suffer in consequence," answered the curate, who had noted the rosy
flush on her face.
The same moment her uncle re-entered the room.
"I have been trying to convince Mr. Wingfold that there MAY be some
good in dreaming, uncle," she said.
"Successfully?" asked Polwarth.
"Unnecessarily," interjected Wingfold. "I required for conviction
only the facts. Why should I suppose that, if there be a God, he is
driven out of us by sleep?"
"It is an awful thing," said Polwarth, "to think--that this feeble
individuality of ours, the offspring of God's individuality, should
have some power, and even more will than power, to close its door
against him, and keep house without him!"
"But what sort of a house?" murmured Wingfold.
"Yes, uncle," said Rachel; "but think how he keeps about us,
haunting the doors and windows like the very wind, watching to get
in! And sometimes he makes of himself a tempest, that both doors and
windows fly open, and he enters in fear and dismay."
The prophetic in the uncle was the poetic in the niece.
"For you and me, uncle," she went on, "he made the doors and windows
so rickety that they COULD not keep him out."
"Ye are the temples of the Holy Ghost," said the curate, almost
unconsciously.
"Some of us a little ruinous!" rejoined the girl.
So full was her soul of a lively devotion that she took the
liberties of a child of the house with sacred things.
"But, Mr. Wingfold," she continued. "I must tell you one more
curious thing about my dreams: I NEVER dream of being crooked and
dwarfish. I don't dream that I am straight either; I suppose I feel
all right, and therefore never think about it. That makes me fancy
my soul must be straight.--Don't you think so, sir?"
"Indeed I do," said Wingfold warmly.
"I'm afraid I shall be telling you some of my dreams some day."
"We are rather given to that weakness," said Polwarth,--"so much so
as to make me fear for our brains sometimes. But a crooked rose-tree
may yet bear a good rose."
"Ah! you are thinking of my poor father, uncle, I know," said
Rachel. "His was a straight stem and a fine rose, only overblown,
perhaps.--I don't think I need be much afraid of that, for if I were
to go out of my mind, I should not have strength to live--unless
indeed I knew God through all the madness. I think my father did in
a way."
"It was quite plain he did," answered her uncle, "and that in no
feeble way either.--Some day I must tell you,"--here he turned to
Wingfold--"about that brother of mine, Rachel's father. I should
even like to show you a manuscript he left behind him--surely one of
the strangest ever written! It would be well worth printing if that
would ensure its falling into the hands of those who could read
through the madness.--But we have talked quite long enough for your
head, child; I will take Mr. Wingfold into the next room."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BUTTERFLY.
As Wingfold walked home that afternoon, he thought much of what he
had heard and seen. "If there be a God," he said to himself, "then
all is well, for certainly he would not give being to such a woman,
and then throw her aside as a failure, and forget her. It is strange
to see, though, how he permits his work to be thwarted. To be the
perfect God notwithstanding, he must be able to turn the very
thwarting to higher furtherance. Don't we see something of the sort
in life--the vigorous nursed by the arduous? Is it presumptuous to
imagine God saying to Rachel: 'Trust me, and bear, and I will do
better for thee than thou canst think?' Certainly the one who most
needs the comfort of such a faith, in this case HAS it. I wish I
could be as sure of him as Rachel Polwarth!--But then," he added,
smiling to himself, "she has had her crooked spine to help her! It
seems as if nothing less than the spiritual beholding of the Eternal
will produce at least absolute belief. And till then what better or
indeed other proof can the less receive of the presence of the
greater than the expansion of its own being under the influences of
that greater? But my plague now is that the ideas of religion are so
grand, and the things all around it in life so common-place, that
they give the lie to each other from morning to night--in my mind, I
mean. Which is the true? a loving, caring father, or the grinding of
cruel poverty and the naked exposure to heedless chance? How is it
that, while the former seems the only right, reasonable, and
all-sufficing thing, it should yet come more naturally to believe in
the latter? And yet, when I think of it, I never did come closer to
believing in the latter than is indicated by terror of its possible
truth--so many things looked like it.--Then, what has nature in
common with the Bible and its metaphysics?--There I am wrong--she
has a thousand things. The very wind on my face seems to rouse me to
fresh effort after a pure healthy life! Then there is the sunrise!
There is the snowdrop in the snow! There is the butterfly! There is
the rain of summer, and the clearing of the sky after a storm! There
is the hen gathering her chickens under her wing!--I begin to doubt
whether there be the common-place anywhere except in our own
mistrusting nature, that will cast no care upon the Unseen. It is
with me, in regard to my better life, as it was with the disciples
in regard to their bodily life, when they were for the time rendered
incapable of understanding the words of our Lord by having forgotten
to take bread in the boat: they were so afraid of being hungry that
they could think of nothing but bread."
Such were some of the curate's thoughts as he walked home, and they
drove him to prayer, in which came more thoughts. When he reached
his room he sat down at his table, and wove and knotted and pieced
together the following verses, venturing that easy yet perilous
thing, a sonnet. I give here its final shape, not its first or
second:
Methought I floated sightless, nor did know That I had ears until I
heard the cry As of a mighty man in agony: "How long, Lord, shall I
lie thus foul and slow? The arrows of thy lightning through me go,
And sting and torture me--yet here I lie A shapeless mass that
scarce can mould a sigh." The darkness thinned; I saw a thing below,
Like sheeted corpse, a knot at head and feet. Slow clomb the sun the
mountains of the dead, And looked upon the world: the silence broke!
A blinding struggle! then the thunderous beat Of great exulting
pinions stroke on stroke! And from that world a mighty angel fled.
But upon the heels of the sonnet came, as was natural, according to
the law of reaction, a fresh and more appalling, because more
self-assertive and verisimilous invasion of the commonplace. What a
foolish, unreal thing he had written! He caught up his hat and stick
and hurried out, thinking to combat the demon better in the open
air.
CHAPTER IX.
THE COMMON-PLACE.
It was evening, and the air was still warm. Pine Street was almost
empty, save of the red sun, which blinded him so that wherever he
looked he could only see great sunblots. All but a few of the shops
were closed, but amongst the few he was surprised to find that of
his friend the linendraper, who had always been a strong advocate of
early closing. The shutters were up, however, though the door stood
wide open. He peeped in. To his sun-blinded eyes the shop looked
very dark, but he thought he saw Mr. Drew talking to some one, and
entered. He was right; it was the draper himself, and a poor woman
with a child on one arm, and a print dress she had just bought on
the other. The curate leaned against the counter, and waited until
business should be over to address his friend.
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