Thomas Wingfold, Curate V2

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Again the curate took time to reply.

"I am endeavouring to answer your questions as well as I can," he
said; "but it is hard to deal with generalities. You see how
useless, for that very reason, my answers have as yet been! Still I
have something more to say, and hesitate only because it may imply
more confidence than I dare profess, and of all things I dread
untruth. But I am honest in this much at least, that I desire with
true heart to find a God who will acknowledge me as his creature and
make me his child, and if there be any God I am nearly certain he
will do so; for surely there cannot be any other kind of God than
the Father of Jesus Christ! In the strength of this much of
conscious truth I venture to say--that no crime can be committed
against a creature without being committed also against the creator
of that creature; therefore surely the first step for anyone who has
committed such a crime must be to humble himself before God, confess
the sin, and ask forgiveness and cleansing. If there is anything in
religion at all it must rest upon an actual individual communication
between God and the creature he has made; and if God heard the man's
prayer and forgave him, then the man would certainly know it in his
heart and be consoled--perhaps by the gift of humility."

"Then you think confession to God is all that is required?"

"If there be no one else wronged to whom confession can be made. If
the case were mine--and sometimes I much fear that in taking holy
orders I have grievously sinned--I should then do just as I have
done with regard to that--cry to the living power which I think
originated me, to set the matter right for me."

"But if it could not be set right?"

"Then to forgive and console me."

"Alas! alas! that he will not hear of. He would rather be punished
than consoled. I fear for his brain. But indeed that might be well."

She had gone much farther than she had intended; but the more
doubtful help became, the more she was driven by the agony of a
perishing hope to search the heart of Wingfold.

Again the curate pondered.

"Are you sure," he said at length, "that the person of whom you
speak is not neglecting something he ought to do--something he knows
perhaps?"

He had come back to the same with which he started.

Through her veil he saw her turn deadly white. Ever since Leopold
said the word JURY, a ghastly fear had haunted Helen. She pressed
her hand on her heart and made no answer.

"I speak from experience," the curate went on--"from what else could
I speak? I know that so long as we hang back from doing what
conscience urges, there is no peace for us. I will not say our
prayers are not heard, for Mr. Polwarth has taught me that the most
precious answer prayer can have, lies in the growing strength of the
impulse towards the dreaded duty, and in the ever sharper stings of
the conscience. I think I asked already whether there were no
relatives to whom reparation could be made?"

"Yes, yes," gasped Helen;" and I told you reparation was
impossible."

Her voice had sunk almost to a groan.

"But at least confession--" said Wingfold---and started from his
seat.

CHAPTER XX.

INTERCESSION.

A stifled cry had interrupted him. Helen was pressing her
handkerchief to her mouth. She rose and ran from him. Wingfold stood
alarmed and irresolute. She had not gone many steps, however, when
her pace slackened, her knees gave way, and she dropped senseless on
the grass. Wingfold ran to the house for water. Rachel hastened to
her assistance, and Polwarth followed. It was some time before they
succeeded in reviving her.

When at length the colour began to return a little to her cheek,
Polwarth dropped on his knees at her feet. Wingfold in his
ministrations was already kneeling on one side of her, and Rachel
now kneeled on the other. Then Polwarth said, in his low and husky,
yet not altogether unmelodious voice,

"Life eternal, this lady of thine hath a sore heart and we cannot
help her. Thou art Help, O mighty Love. They who know thee best
rejoice in thee most. As thy sun that shines over our heads, as thy
air that flows into our bodies, thou art above, around, and in us;
thou art in her heart: Oh speak to her there; let her know thy will,
and give her strength to do it, O Father of Jesus Christ! Amen."

When Helen opened her eyes, she saw only the dark leaves of an
arbutus over her, and knew nothing beyond a sense of utter misery
and weakness, with an impulse to rise and run. With an effort she
moved her head a little, and then she saw the three kneeling forms,
the clergyman with bowed head, and the two dwarfs with shining
upturned faces: she thought she was dead and they were kneeling
about her corpse. Her head dropped with a weary sigh of relief, she
lay passive, and heard the dwarf's prayer. Then she knew that she
was not dead, and the disappointment was bitter. But she thought of
Leopold, and was consoled. After a few minutes of quiet, they helped
her into the house, and laid her on a sofa in the parlour.

"Don't be frightened, dear lady," said the little woman; "nobody
shall come near you. We will watch you as if you were the queen. I
am going to get some tea for you."

But the moment she left the room, Helen got up. She could not endure
a moment longer in the place. There was a demon at her brother's
ear, whispering to him to confess, to rid himself of his torture by
the aid of the law: she must rush home and drive him away. She took
her hat in her hand, opened the door softly, and ere Rachel could
say a word, had flitted through the kitchen, and was amongst the
trees on the opposite side of the road. Rachel ran to the garden to
her uncle and Wingfold. They looked at each other for a moment in
silence.

"I will follow her," said Wingfold. "She may faint again. If she
does I shall whistle."

He followed, and kept her in sight until she was safe in her aunt's
garden.

"What IS to be done?" he said, returning in great trouble. "I do not
think I made any blunder, but there she is gone in tenfold misery! I
wish I could tell you what passed, but that of course I cannot."

"Of course not," returned Polwarth. "But the fact of her leaving yon
so is no sign that you said the wrong thing,--rather the contrary.
When people seek advice, it is too often in the hope of finding the
adviser side with their second familiar self, instead of their awful
first self, of which they know so little. Do not be anxious. You
have done your best. Wait for what will come next."

CHAPTER XXI.

HELEN ALONE.

Helen tottered to a little summer-house in the garden, which had
been her best retreat since she had given her room to her brother,
and there seated herself to regain breath and composure ere she went
to him. She had sought the door of Paradise, and the door of hell
had been opened to her! If the frightful idea which, she did not
doubt, had already suggested itself to Leopold, should now be
encouraged, there was nothing but black madness before her! Her
Poldie on the scaffold! God in heaven! Infinitely rather would she
poison herself and him! Then she remembered how pleased and consoled
he had been when she said something about their dying together, and
that reassured her a little: no, she was certain Leopold would never
yield himself to public shame! But she must take care that foolish,
extravagant curate should not come near him. There was no knowing to
what he might persuade him! Poor Poldie was so easily led by any
show of nobility--anything that looked grand or self-sacrificing!

Helen's only knowledge of guilt came from the pale image of it
lifted above her horizon by the refraction of her sympathy. She did
not know, perhaps never would understand the ghastly horror of
conscious guilt, besides which there is no evil else. Agonies of
injury a man may endure, and, so far from being overwhelmed, rise
above them tenfold a man, who, were he to awake to the self-knowledge
of a crime, would sink into a heap of ruin. Then indeed, if there be
no God, or one that has not an infinite power of setting right that
which has gone wrong with his work, then indeed welcome the faith,
for faith it may then be called, of such as say there is no hereafter!
Helen did not know to what gulfs of personal shame, nay, to what
summits of public execration, a man may be glad to flee for refuge
from the fangs of home-born guilt--if so be there is any refuge to
be found in either. And some kind of refuge there does seem to be.
Strange it is and true that in publicity itself lies some relief
from the gnawing of the worm--as if even a cursing humanity were a
barrier of protection between the torn soul and its crime. It flees
to its kind for shelter from itself. Hence, I imagine, in part, may
the coolness of some criminals be accounted for. Their quietness is
the relief brought by confession--even confession but to their
fellows. Is it that the crime seems then lifted a little from their
shoulders, and its weight shared by the ace?

Helen had hoped that the man who had spoken in public so tenderly,
and at the same time so powerfully, of the saving heart of the
universe, that would have no divisions of pride, no scatterings of
hate, but of many would make one, would in private have spoken yet
sweeter words of hope and consolation, which she might have carried
home in gladness to her sick-souled brother, to comfort and
strengthen him--words of might to allay the burning of the poison
within him, and make him feel that after all there was yet a place
for him in the universe, and that he was no outcast of Gehenna. But
instead of such words of gentle might, like those of the man of whom
he was so fond of talking, he had only spoken drearily of duty,
hinting at a horror that would plunge the whole ancient family into
a hell of dishonour and contempt! It did indeed show what mere
heartless windbags of effete theology those priests were! Skeletons
they were, and no human beings at all!--Her father!--the thought of
him was distraction! Her mother! Oh, if Leopold had had her mother
for his too, instead of the dark-skinned woman with the flashing
eyes, he would never have brought this upon them! It was all his
mother's fault--the fault of her race--and of the horrible drug her
people had taught him to take! And was he to go and confess it, and
be tried for it, and be--? Great God!--And here was the priest
actually counselling what was worse than any suicide!

Suddenly, however, it occurred to her that the curate had had no
knowledge of the facts of the case, and had therefore been compelled
to talk at random. It was impossible he should suspect the crime of
which her brother had been guilty, and therefore could not know the
frightful consequences of such a confession as he had counselled.
Had she not better then tell him all, and so gather from him some
right and reasonable advice for the soothing of the agonies of her
poor broken-winged angel? But alas! what security had she that a man
capable of such priestly sevei'ity and heartlessness--her terrors
made her thus inconsequent--would not himself betray the all but
innocent sufferer to the vengeance of justice so called? No; she
would venture no farther. Sooner would she go to George
Bascombe--from whom she not only could look for no spiritual
comfort, but whose theories were so cruel against culprits of all
sorts! Alas, alas! she was alone! absolutely alone in the great
waste, death-eyed universe!--But for a man to talk so of the
tenderness of Jesus Christ, and then serve her as the curate had
done--it was indeed shameless! HE would never have treated a poor
wretched woman like that!--And as she said thus to herself, again
the words sounded in the ear of her heart: 'COME UNTO ME, ALL YE
THAT LABOUR AND ARE HEAVY LADEN, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST.' Whence
came the voice? From her memory, or from that inner chamber of the
spirit which the one spirit-bearing spirit keeps for his own in
every house that he builds--alas so long in most human houses shut
away from the rest of the rooms and forgotten, or recollected with
uneasiness as a lumber-closet in which lie too many things that had
better not be looked into? But what matter where the voice that had
said them, so long as the words were true, and she might believe
them!--Whatever is true CAN be believed of the true heart.

Ere she knew, Helen was on her knees, with her head on the chair,
yet once more crying to the hearer of cries--possible or impossible
being she knew not in the least, but words reported of him had given
birth to the cry--to help her in her dire need.

Instead of any word, or thought even, coming to her that might be
fancied an answer, she was scared from her knees by an approaching
step---that of the house-keeper come to look for her with the
message from her aunt that Leopold was more restless than usual, not
at all like himself, and she could do nothing with him.

CHAPTER XXII.

A HAUNTED SOUL.

Helen rose and hastened to her brother, with a heart of lead in her
body.

She started when she saw him: some change had passed on him since
the morning! Was that eager look in his eyes a fresh access of the
fever? That glimmer on his countenance, doubtful as the first of the
morning, when the traveller knows not whether the light be in the
sky or only in his brain, did look more like a dawn of his old
healthful radiance than any fresh fire of madness; but at the same
time he appeared more wasted and pinched and death-like than she had
yet seen him. Or was it only in her eyes--was she but reading in his
face the agony she had herself gone through that day?

"Helen, Helen!" he cried as she entered the room, "come here, close
to me."

She hastened to him, sat down on the bedside, took his hand, and
looked as cheerfully as she could, yet it was but the more woefully,
in his face.

"Helen!" he said again, and he spoke with a strange expression in
his voice, for it seemed that of hope, "I have been thinking all day
of what you told me on Sunday."

"What was that, Poldie?" asked Helen with a pang of fear.

"Why, those words of course--what else? You sang them to me
afterwards, you know. Helen, I should like to see Mr. Wingfold.
Don't you think he might be able to do something?"

"What sort of thing, Poldie?" she faltered, growing sick at
heart.--Was this what came of praying! she thought bitterly.

"Something or other--I don't know what exactly," returned
Leopold.--"Oh Helen!" he broke out with a cry, stifled by the
caution that had grown habitual to both of them, "is there no help
of any kind anywhere? Surely Mr. Wingfold could tell me
something--comfort me somehow, if I were to tell him all about it! I
could trust the man that said such things as those you told me. That
I could!--Oh! I wish I hadn't run away, but had let them take me and
hang me!"

Helen felt herself grow white. She turned away, and pretended to
search for something she had dropped.

"I don't think he would be of the slightest use to you," she said,
still stooping.

And she felt like a devil dragging the soul of her brother to hell.
But that was a foolish fancy, and must be resisted!

"Not if I told him everything?" Leopold hissed from between his
teeth in the struggle to keep down a shriek.

"No, not if you told him everything," she answered, and felt like a
judge condemning him to death.

"What is he there for then?" said Leopold indignantly, and turned
his face to the wall and moaned.

Helen had not yet thought of asking herself whether her love to her
brother was all clear love, and nowise mingled with selfishness--
whether in the fresh horror that day poured into the cup that had
seemed already running over, it was of her brother only she thought,
or whether threatened shame to herself had not a part in her misery.
But, as far as she was aware, she was quite honest in saying that
the curate could not comfort him--for what attempt even had he made
to comfort her? What had he done but utter common-places and truisms
about duty? And who could tell but--indeed was she not certain that
such a man, bringing the artillery of his fanaticism to bear upon
her poor boy's wild enthusiastic temperament, would speedily
persuade him to make a reality of that terrible thing he had already
thought of, that hideously impossible possibility which she dared
not even allow to present itself before her imagination? So he lay
and moaned, and she sat crushed and speechless with despairing
misery.

All at once Leopold sat straight up, his eyes fixed and flaming, his
face white: he looked like a corpse possessed by a spirit of fear
and horror. Helen's heart swelled into her throat, the muscles of
her face contracted with irresistible rigor, and she felt it grow
exactly like his, while with wide eyes she stared at him, and he
stared at something which lest she also should see, she dared not
turn her head. Surely, she thought afterwards, she must have been
that moment in the presence of something unearthly! Her physical
being was wrenched from her control, and she must simply sit and
wait until the power or influence, whichever it might be, should
pass away. How long it was ere it relaxed its hold she could not
tell; it could not have been long, she thought. Suddenly the light
sank from Leopold's eyes, his muscles relaxed, he fell back
motionless, apparently senseless, on the pillow, and she thought he
was dead. The same moment she was free; the horror had departed from
her own atmosphere too, and she made haste to restore him. But in
all she did for him, she felt like the executioner who gives
restoratives to the wretch that has fainted on the rack or the
wheel. What right had SHE, she thought, to multiply to him his
moments of torture? If the cruel power that had created him for such
misery, whoever, whatever, wherever he might be, chose thus to
torture him, was she, his only friend, out of the selfish affection
he had planted in her, to lend herself his tool? Yet she hesitated
not a single moment in her ministrations.

There is so much passes in us of which our consciousness takes no
grasp,--or but with such a flitting touch as scarcely to hand it
over to the memory--that I feel encouraged to doubt whether ever
there was a man absolutely without hope. That there have been, alas,
are many, who are aware of no ground of hope, nay even who feel no
glimmer in them of anything they can call hope, I know; but I think
in them all is an underlying unconscious hope. I think that not one
in all the world has more than a shadowy notion of what hopelessness
means. Perhaps utter hopelessness is the outer darkness.

At length Leopold opened his eyes, gave a terrified glance around,
held out his arms to her, and drew her down upon his face.

"I saw her!" he said, in a voice that sounded as if it came from the
grave, and she heard it in her heart.

"Nonsense, dear Poldie! it was all fancy--nothing more," she
returned, in a voice almost as hollow as his; and the lightness of
the words uttered in such a tone jarred dismayfully on her own ear.

"Fancy!" he repeated; "I know what fancy is as well as any man or
woman born: THAT was no fancy. She stood there, by the wardrobe--in
the same dress!--her face as white as her dress! And--listen!--I
will tell YOU--I will soon satisfy you it COULD be no fancy."--Here
he pushed her from him and looked straight in her eyes.--"I saw her
back reflected in the mirror of the wardrobe-door, and"--here the
fixed look of horror threatened to return upon his face, but he went
on--"listen,--there was a worm crawling on it, over her lovely white
shoulder! Ugh! I saw it in the mirror!"

His voice had risen to a strangled shriek, his face was distorted,
and he shook like a child on the point of yelling aloud in an agony
of fear. Helen clasped his face between her hands, and gathering
courage from despair, if indeed that be a possible source of
courage, and it is not gathered rather from the hidden hope of which
I speak, and the love that will cleave and not forsake, she set her
teeth, and said:

"Let her come then, Poldie! I am with you, and I defy her! She shall
know that a sister's love is stronger than the hate of a jilt--even
if you did kill her. Before God, Poldie, I would after all rather be
you than she. Say what you will, she had herself to blame, and I
don't doubt did twenty worse things than you did when you killed
her."

But Leopold seemed not to hear a word she said, and lay with his
face to the wall.

At length he turned his head suddenly, and said,

"Helen, if you don't let me see Mr. Wingfold, I shall go mad, and
then everything will come out."

CHAPTER XXIII.

COMPELLED CONFIDENCE.

Helen flew to the dressing-room to hide her dismay, and there cast
herself on the bed. The gray Fate above, or the awful Demo-gorgon
beneath, would have its way! Whether it was a living Will or but the
shadow of the events it seemed to order, it was too much for her.
She had no choice but yield. She rose and returned to her brother.

"I am going to find Mr. Wingfold," she said in a hoarse voice, as
she took her hat.

"Don't be long then, Helen," returned Leopold. "I can't bear you out
of my sight. And don't let aunt come into the room. SHE might come
again, you know, and then all would be out.--Bring him with you,
Helen."

"I will," answered Helen, and went.

The curate might have returned: she would seek him first at his
lodging. She cared nothing about appearances now.

It was a dull afternoon. Clouds had gathered, and the wind was
chilly. It seemed to blow out of the church, which stood up cold and
gray against the sky, filling the end of the street. What a
wretched, horrible world it was! She approached the church, and
entered the churchyard from which it rose like a rock from the Dead
Sea--a type of the true church, around whose walls lie the dead
bodies of the old selves left behind by those who enter. Helen would
have envied the dead, who lay so still under its waves; but, alas!
if Leopold was right, they but roamed elsewhere in their trouble,
and were no better for dying.

She hurried across, and reached the house; but Mr. Wingfold had not
yet returned, and she hurried back across it again, to tell Leopold
that she must go farther to find him.

The poor youth was already more composed. What will not the vaguest
hope sometimes do for a man! Helen told him she had seen the curate
in the park, when she was out in the morning, and he might be there
still, or she might meet him coming back. Leopold only begged her to
make haste. She took the road to the lodge.

She did not meet him, and it was with intense repugnance that she
approached the gate.

"Is Mr. Wingfold here?" she asked of Rachel, as if she had never
spoken to her before; and Rachel, turning paler at the sight of her,
answered that he was in the garden with her uncle, and went to call
him.

The moment he appeared she said, in a tone rendered by conflicting
emotions inexplicable, and sounding almost rude,

"Will you come to my brother? He is very ill, and wants to see you."

"Certainly," returned Wingfold; "I will go with you at once."

But in his heart he trembled at the thought of being looked to for
consolation and counsel, and that apparently in a case of no
ordinary kind. Most likely he would not know what to say, or how to
behave himself! How different it would be if with all his heart he
believed the grand lovely things recorded in the book of his
profession! Then indeed he might enter the chambers of pain and fear
and guilt with the innocent confidence of a winged angel of comfort
and healing! But now the eyes of his understanding were blinded with
the IFS and BUTS that flew swarming like black muscae wherever they
turned. Still he would--nay, he must go and do his best.

They walked across the park to reach the house by the garden, and
for some distance they walked in silence. At length Helen said:

"You must not encourage my brother to talk much, if you please; and
you must not mind what he says; he has had brain-fever, and
sometimes talks strangely. But on the other hand, if he fancy you
don't believe him, it will drive him wild--so you must take care--
please."

Her voice was like that of a soul trying to speak with unproved
lips.

"Miss Lingard," said Wingfold, slowly and quietly--and if his voice
trembled, he only was aware of it, "I cannot see your face,
therefore you must pardon me if I ask you--are you quite honest with
me?"

Helen's first feeling was anger. She held her peace for a time. Then
she said,

"So, Mr. Wingfold!--that is the way you help the helpless!"

"How can any man help without knowing what has to be helped?"
returned the curate. "The very being of his help depends upon his
knowing the truth. It is very plain you do not trust me, and equally
impossible I should be of any service as long as the case is such."

Again Helen held her peace. Resentment and dislike towards himself
combined with terror of his anticipated counsel to render her
speechless.

Her silence lasted so long that Wingfold came to the resolution of
making a venture that had occurred to him more than once that
morning. Had he not been convinced that a soul was in dire misery,
he would not have had recourse to the seeming cruelty.

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