Thomas Wingfold, Curate V2
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George MacDonald >> Thomas Wingfold, Curate V2
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"Is Mr. Drew an embryonic angel?" he half felt, half thought within
himself. "Is this shop the chrysalis of a great psyche? Will the
draper, with his round good-humoured face and puckering smile, ever
spread thunderous wings and cleave the air up to the throne of God?"
"I cannot tell you how it goes against me to take that woman's
money," said the voice of the draper.
The curate woke up in the presence of the unwinged, and saw that the
woman had left the shop.
"I did let her have the print at cost-price," Mr. Drew went on,
laughing merrily. "That was all I could venture on."
"Where was the danger?"
"Ah, you don't know so well as I do the good of having some
difficulty in getting what you need! To ease the struggles of the
poor, unless it be in sickness or absolute want, I have repeatedly
proved to be a cruel kindness."
"Then you don't sell to the poor women at cost-price always?"
"No--only to the soldiers' wives. They have a very hard life of it,
poor things!"
"That is your custom, then?"
"For the last ten years, but I don't let them know it."
"Is it for the soldiers' wives you keep your shop open so late? I
thought you were the great supporter of early closing in Glaston,"
said the curate.
"I will tell you how it happened to-night," answered the draper, and
as he spoke he turned round, not his long left ear upon the pivot of
his skull, but his whole person upon the pivot of the counter--to
misuse the word pivot with Wordsworth--and bolted the shop-door.
"After the young men had put up the shutters and were gone," he
said, returning to the counter, "leaving me as usual to bolt the
door, I fell a-thinking. Outside, the street was full of sunlight,
but only enough came in to show how gloomy the place was without
more of it, and the back of the shop was nearly dark. It was very
still too--so still that the silence seemed to have taken the shape
of gloom. Pardon me for talking in this unbusiness-like way: a man
can't be a draper always; he must be foolish sometimes. Thirty years
ago I used to read Tennyson. I believe I was amongst the earliest of
his admirers."
"Foolish!" echoed Wingfold, thoughtfully.
"You see," the draper went on, "there IS something solemn in the
quiet after business is over. Sometimes it's more so, sometimes
less; but this night it came upon me that the shop felt like a
chapel--had the very air of one somehow, and so I fell a thinking,
and forgot to shut the door. How it began I don't know, but my past
life came up to me, and I remembered how, when I was a young man, I
used to despise my father's business, to which he was bringing me
up, and feed my fancy with things belonging to higher walks in life.
Then I saw that must have been partly how I fell into the mistake of
marrying Mrs. Drew. She was the daughter of a doctor in our town, a
widower. He was in poor health, and unable to make much of his
practice, so that when he died she was left destitute, and for that
reason alone, I do believe, accepted me. What followed you know: she
went away with a man who used to travel for a large Manchester
house. I have never heard of her since.
"After she left me, a sort of something which I think I may call the
disease of self-preservation, laid hold upon me. I must acknowledge
that the loss of my wife was not altogether a misery. She despised
my trade, which drove me to defend it--and the more bitterly that I
also despised it. There was therefore a good deal of strife between
us. I did not make allowance enough for the descent she had made
from a professional father to a trade-husband. I forgot that, if she
was to blame for marrying me for bread, I was to blame for marrying
her to enlarge myself with her superiority. After she was gone, I
was aware of a not unwelcome calm in the house, and in the emptiness
of that calm came the demon of selfishness sevenfold into my heart,
and took up his abode with me. From that time I busied myself only
about two things--the safety of my soul, and a good provision for my
body. I joined the church I had occasion to mention to you before,
sir, grew a little harder in my business dealings, and began to lay
by money. And so, ever since, have I been going on till I heard your
sermon the other day, which I hope has waked me up to something
better.--All this long story is but to let you understand how I was
feeling when that woman came into the shop. I told you how, in the
dusk and the silence, it was as if I were in the chapel. I found
myself half-listening for the organ. Then the verse of a hymn came
into my mind--I can't tell where or when I had met with it, but it
had stuck to me:
Let me stand ever at the door,
And keep it from the entering sin,
That so thy temple, walls and floor,
Be pure for thee to enter in.
"Now that, you see, is said of the temple of the heart; but somehow
things went rather cross-cut that evening--they got muddled in my
head. It seemed as if I was the door-keeper of my shop, and at the
same time as if my shop, spreading out and dimly vanishing in the
sacred gloom, was the temple of the Holy Ghost, out of which I had
to keep the sin. And with the thought, a great awe fell upon me:
could it be--might it not be that God was actually in the
place?--that in the silence he was thinking--in the gloom he was
knowing? I laid myself over the counter, with my face in my hands,
and went on half thinking, half praying. All at once the desire
arose burning in my heart: Would to God my house were in truth a
holy place, haunted by his presence! 'And wherefore not?' rejoined
something within me--heart or brain or something deeper than either.
'Is thy work unholy? Are thy deeds base? Is thy buying or selling
dishonest? Is it all for thyself and nothing for thy fellows? Is it
not a lawful calling? Is it, or is it not, of God? If it be of God,
and yet he be not present, then surely thy lawful calling thou
followest unlawfully." So there I was--brought back to the old
story. And I said to myself, 'God knows I want to follow it
lawfully. Am I not even now seeking how to do so? But this, though
true, did not satisfy me. To follow it lawfully--even in his
sight--no longer seemed enough.--Was there then no possibility of
raising it to dignity? Did the business of Zacchaeus remain, after
the visit of Jesus, a contemptible one still? Could not mine be made
Christian? Was there no corner in the temple where a man might buy
and sell and not be driven out by the whip of small cords?--I heard
a step in the shop, and lifting my head, saw a poor woman with a
child in her arms. Annoyed at being found in that posture, like one
drunk or in despair; annoyed also with myself for not having shut
the door, with my usual first tendency to injustice a harsh word was
trembling on my very lips, when suddenly something made me look
round in a kind of maze on the dusky back shop. A moment more and I
understood: God was waiting to see what truth was in my words. That
is just how I felt it, and I hope I am not irreverent in saying so.
Then I saw that the poor woman looked frightened--I suppose at my
looks and gestures--perhaps she thought me out of my mind. I made
haste and received her, and listened to her errand as if she had
been a duchess--say rather an angel of God, for such I felt her in
my heart to be. She wanted a bit of dark print with a particular
kind of spot in it, which she had seen in the shop some months
before, but had not been able to buy. I turned over everything we
had, and was nearly in despair. At last, however, I found the very
piece which had ever since haunted her fancy--just enough of it
left for a dress! But all the time I sought it, I felt as if I were
doing God service--or at least doing something he wanted me to do.
It sounds almost ludicrous now, but--"
"God forbid!" said Wingfold.
"I'm glad you don't think so, sir. I was afraid you would."
"Had the thing been a trifle, I should still have said the same,"
returned the curate. "But who with any heart would call it--a trifle
to please the fancy of a poor woman, one who is probably far oftener
vexed than pleased? She had been brooding over this dress--you took
trouble to content her with her desire. Who knows what it may do for
the growth of the woman? I know what you've done for me by the story
of it."
"She did walk out pleased-like," said the draper, "--and left me
more pleased than she,--and so grateful to her for coming--you
can't think!"
"I begin to suspect," said the curate, after a pause, "that the
common transactions of life are the most sacred channels for the
spread of the heavenly leaven. There was ten times more of the
divine in selling her that gown as you did, in the name of God, than
in taking her into your pew and singing out of the same hymn-book
with her."
"I should be glad to do that next though, if I had the chance," said
Mr. Drew. "You must not think, because he has done me so little
good, that our minister is not a faithful preacher; and, owing you
more than heart can tell, sir, I like chapel better than church, and
consider it nearer the right way. I don't mean to be a turncoat, and
leave Drake for you, sir; I must give up my deaconship, but I won't
my pew or my subscription."
"Quite right, Mr. Drew," said Wingfold; "that could do nothing but
harm. I have just been reading what our Lord says about
proselytizing. Good night."
CHAPTER X.
HOME AGAIN.
The curate had entered the draper's shop in the full blaze of
sunset, but the demon of unbelief sat on his shoulders; he could get
no nearer his heart, but that was enough to make of the "majestical
roof fretted with golden fire .... a foul and pestilent congregation
of vapours." When he left the shop, the sun was far below the
horizon, and the glory had faded out of the west; but the demon had
fled, and the brown feathers of the twilight were beautiful as the
wings of the silver dove, sprung heavenwards from among the pots.
And as he went he reasoned with himself--
"Either there is a God, and that God the perfect heart of truth and
loveliness, or all poetry and art is but an unsown, unplanted,
rootless flower, crowning a somewhat symmetrical heap of stones. The
man who sees no beauty in its petals, finds no perfume in its
breath, may well accord it the parentage of the stones; the man
whose heart swells beholding it will be ready to think it has roots
that reach below them."
The curate's search, it will be remarked, had already widened
greatly the sphere of his doubts; but, the larger the field, the
greater the chance of finding a marl-pit; and, if there be such a
thing as truth, every fresh doubt is yet another finger-post
pointing towards its dwelling.--So talked the curate to himself,
and, full in the face, rounding the corner of a street, met George
Bascombe.
The young barrister held out his large hospitable hand at the full
length of his arm, and spread abroad his wide chest to greet him,
and they went through the ceremony of shaking hands,--which, even
in their case, I cannot judge so degrading and hypocritical as the
Latin nations seem to consider it. Then Wingfold had the first word.
"I have not yet had an opportunity of thanking you for the great
service you have done me," he said.
"I am glad to know I have such an honour; but--"
"I mean, in opening my eyes to my true position."
"Ah, my dear fellow! I was sure you only required to have your
attention turned in the right direction. When--?--ah!--I--I was on
the verge of committing the solecism of asking you when you thought
of resigning. Ha! ha!"
"Not yet," replied Wingfold to the question thus at once withdrawn
and put. "The more I look into the matter, the more reason I find
for hoping it may be possible for me to--to--keep the appointment."
"Oh!"
"The further I inquire, the more am I convinced that, if not in a
certain portion of what the church teaches, then nowhere else, and
assuredly not in what you teach, shall I find anything by which life
can either account for or justify itself."
"But if what you find is not true!" cried George, with a burst of
semi-grand indignation.
"But if what I find should be true, even though you should never be
able to see it!" returned the curate. And as if disjected by an
explosion between them, the two men were ten paces asunder, each
hurrying his own way.
"If I can't prove there is a God," said Wingfold to himself, "as
little surely can he prove there is none."
But then came the thought--"The fellow will say that, there being no
sign of a God, the burden of proof lies with me." And therewith he
saw how useless it would be to discuss the question with any one
who, not seeing him, had no desire to see him.
"No," he said, "my business is not to prove to any other man that
there is a God, but to find him for myself. If I should find him,
then will be time enough to think of showing him." And with that his
thoughts turned from Bascombe, and went back to the draper.
When he reached home, he took out his sonnet, but, after working at
it for a little while, he found that he must ease his heart by
writing another. Here it is:
Methought that in a solemn church I stood.
Its marble acres, worn with knees and feet,
Lay spread from, door to door, from street to street.
Midway the form hung high upon the rood
Of him who gave his life to be our good;
Beyond, priests flitted, bowed, and murmured meet
Among the candles shining still and sweet.
Men came and went, and worshipped as they could,
And still their dust a woman with her broom,
Bowed to her work, kept sweeping to the door.
Then saw I, slow through all the pillared gloom,
Across the church a silent figure come;
"Daughter," it said, "thou sweepest well my floor!"
It is the Lord! I cried; and saw no more.
I suppose, if one could so stop the throat of the blossom-buried
nightingale, that, though he might breathe at will, he could no
longer sing, he would drop from his bough, and die of suppressed
song. Perhaps some men so die--I do not know; it were better than to
live, and to bore their friends with the insuppressible. But,
however this may be, the man who can utter himself to his own joy in
any of the forms of human expression--let him give thanks to God;
and, if he give not his verses to the printer, he will probably have
cause to give thanks again. To the man's self, the utterance is not
the less invaluable. And so Wingfold found it.
He went out again, and into the churchyard, where he sat down on a
stone.
"How strange," he said to himself, "that out of faith should have
sprung that stone church! A poor little poem now and then is all
that stands for mine--all that shows, that is! But my heart does
sometimes burn, within me. If only I could be sure they were HIS
words that set it burning!"
CHAPTER XI.
THE SHEATH.
"Mr. Wingfold," said Polwarth one evening, the usual salutations
over, taking what he commonly left to his friend--the initiative,--"I
want to tell you something I don't wish even Rachel to hear."
He led the way to his room, and the curate followed. Seated there,
in the shadowy old attic, through the very walls of which the ivy
grew, and into which, by the open window in the gable, from the
infinite west, blew the evening air, carrying with it the precious
scent of honeysuckle, to mingle with that of old books, Polwarth
recounted and Wingfold listened to a strange adventure. The trees
hid the sky, and the little human nest was dark around them.
"I am going to make a confidant of you, Mr. Wingfold," said the
dwarf, with troubled face, and almost whispered word. "You will know
how much I have already learned to trust you when I say that what I
am about to confide to you plainly involves the secret of another."
His large face grew paler as he spoke, and something almost like
fear grew in his eyes, but they looked straight into those of the
curate, and his voice did not tremble.
"One night, some weeks ago--I can, if necessary, make myself certain
of the date,--I was--no uncommon thing with me--unable to sleep.
Sometimes, when such is my case, I lie as still and happy as any
bird under the wing of its mother; at other times I must get up and
go out, for I take longings for air almost as a drunkard for wine,
and that night nothing would serve my poor prisoned soul but more
air through the bars of its lungs. I rose, dressed, and went out.
"It was a still, warm night, no moon, but plenty of star-light, the
wind blowing as now, gentle and sweet and cool--just the wind my
lungs sighed for. I got into the open park, avoiding the trees, and
wandered on and on, without thinking where I was going. The turf was
soft under my feet, the dusk soft to my eyes, and the wind to my
soul; I had breath and room and leisure and silence and loneliness,
and everything to make me more than usually happy; and so I wandered
on and on, neither caring nor looking whither I went: so long as the
stars remained unclouded, I could find my way back when I pleased.
"I had been out perhaps an hour, when through the soft air came a
cry, apparently from far off. There was something in the tone that
seemed to me unusually frightful. The bare sound made me shudder
before I had time to say to myself it was a cry. I turned my face in
the direction of it, so far as I could judge, and went on. I cannot
run, for, if I attempt it, I am in a moment unable even to
walk--from palpitation and choking.
"I had not gone very far before I found myself approaching the
hollow where stands the old house of Glaston, uninhabited for twenty
years. Was it possible, I thought, that the cry came from the house,
and had therefore sounded farther off than it was? I stood and
listened for a moment, but all seemed still as the grave. I must go
in, and see whether anyone was there in want of help. You may well
smile at the idea of my helping anyone, for what could I do if it
came to a struggle?"
"On the contrary," interrupted Wingfold, "I was smiling with
admiration of your pluck."
"At least," resumed Polwarth, "I have this advantage over some, that
I cannot be fooled with the fancy that this poor miserable body of
mine is worth thinking of beside the smallest suspicion of duty.
What is it but a cracked jug? So down the slope I went, got into the
garden, and made my way through the tangled bushes to the house. I
knew the place perfectly, for I had often wandered all over it,
sometimes spending hours there.
"Before I reached the door, however, I heard some one behind me in
the garden, and instantly stepped into a thicket of gooseberry and
currant bushes. It is sometimes an advantage to be little--the
moment I stepped aside I was hidden. That same moment the night
seemed rent in twain by a most hideous cry from the house. Ere I
could breathe again after it, the tall figure of a woman rushed past
me, tearing its way through the bushes towards the door. I followed
instantly, saw her run up the steps, and heard her open and shut the
door. I opened it as quietly as I could, but just as I stepped into
the dark hall, came a third fearful cry, through the echoes of which
in the empty house I heard the rush of hurried feet and trailing
garments on the stair. As I say I knew the house quite well, but my
perturbation had so muddled the idea of it in my brain, that for a
few seconds I had to consider how it lay. The moment I recalled its
plan, I made what haste I could, reached the top of the stair, and
was hesitating which way to turn, when once more came the fearful
cry, and set me trembling from head to foot. I cannot describe the
horror of it. It was as the cry of a soul in torture--unlike any
sound of the human voice I had ever before heard. I shudder now at
the recollection of it as it echoed through the house, clinging to
the walls and driven along. I was hurrying I knew not whither, for I
had again lost all notion of the house, when I caught a glimpse of a
light shining from under a door. I approached it softly, and finding
that door inside a small closet, knew at once where I was. As I was
in office on the ground, and it could hardly be any thing righteous
that led to such an outcry in the house, which, although deserted,
was still my master's, I felt justified in searching further into
the matter. Laying my ear therefore against the door, I heard what
was plainly a lady's voice. Right sweet and womanly it was, though
full of pain--even agony, I thought, but heroically suppressed. She
soothed, she expostulated, she condoled, she coaxed. Mingled with
hers was the voice of a youth, as it seemed. It was wild, yet so low
as sometimes to be all but inaudible, and not a word from either
could I distinguish. Hardly the less plain was it, however, that the
youth spoke either in delirium or with something terrible on his
mind, for his tones were those of one in despair. I stood for a time
bewildered, fascinated, terrified. At length I grew convinced
somehow that I had no right to be there. Doubtless the man was in
hiding, and where a man hides there must he reason, but was it any
business of mine? I crept out of the house, and up to the higher
ground. There I drew deep breaths of the sweet night air--so pure
that it seemed to be washing the world clean for another day's uses.
But I had no longer any pleasure in the world. I went straight home,
and to bed again--but had brought little repose with me: I must do
something--but what? The only result certain to follow, was more
trouble to the troubled already. Might there not be innocent reasons
for the questionable situation?--Might not the man have been taken
ill, and so suddenly that he could reach no other shelter? And the
lady might be his wife, who had gone as soon as she could leave him
to find help, but had failed. There MUST be some simple explanation
of the matter, however strange it showed! I might, in the morning,
be of service to them. And partly comforted by the temporary
conclusion, I got a little troubled sleep.
"As soon as I had had a cup of tea, I set out for the old house. I
heard the sounds of the workmen's hammers on the new one as I went.
All else was silence. The day looked so honest and so clear of
conscience that it was difficult to believe the night had shrouded
such an awful meeting. Yet, in the broad light of the forenoon, a
cold shudder seized me when first I looked down on the slack ridges
and broken roofs of the old house. When I got into the garden I
began to sing and knock the bushes about, then opened the door
noisily, and clattered about in the hall and the lower rooms before
going up the stair. Along every passage and into every room I went,
to give good warning ere I approached that in which I had heard the
voices. At length I stood at the door of it and knocked. There was
no answer. I knocked again. Still no answer. I opened it and peeped
in. There was no one there! An old bedstead was all I saw. I
searched every corner, but not one trace could I discover of human
being having been there, except this behind the bed--and it may have
lain there as long as the mattress, which I remember since the first
time I ever went into the house."
As he spoke Polwarth handed to the curate a small leather sheath,
which, from its shape, could not have belonged to a pair of
scissors, although neither of the men knew any sort of knife it
would have fitted.
"Would you mind taking care of it, Mr. Wingfold?" the gate-keeper
continued as the curate examined it; "I don't like having it. I
can't even bear to think of it even in the house, and yet I don't
quite care to destroy it."
"I don't in the least mind taking charge of it," answered Wingfold.
Why was it that, as he said so, the face of Helen Lingard rose
before his mind's eye as he had now seen it twice in the
congregation at the Abbey--pale with an inward trouble as it seemed,
large-eyed and worn--so changed, yet so ennobled? Even then he had
felt the deadening effect of its listlessness, and had had to turn
away lest it should compel him to feel that he was but talking to
the winds, or into a desert where dwelt no voice of human response.
Why should he think of her now? Was it that her troubled pallid face
had touched him--had set something near his heart a trembling,
whether with merely human sympathy or with the tenderness of man for
suffering woman? Certainly he had never till then thought of her
with the slightest interest, and why should she come up to him now?
Could it be that--? Good heavens! There was her brother ill! And had
not Faber said there seemed something unusual about the character of
his illness?--What could it mean?--It was impossible of course--but
yet--and yet--
"Do you think," he said, "we are in any way bound to inquire further
into the affair?"
"If I had thought so, I should not have left it unmentioned till
now," answered Polwarth. "But without being busybodies, we might be
prepared in case the thing should unfold itself, and put it in our
power to be useful. Meantime I have the relief of the confessional."
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