Thomas Wingfold, Curate V3
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George MacDonald >> Thomas Wingfold, Curate V3
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The second time he listened to Leopold's continuous narrative, the
doubt returned with more clearness and less flicker: there was such
a thing as being over-wise: might he not be taking himself in with
his own incredulity? Ought he not to apply some test? And did
Leopold's story offer any means of doing so?--One thing, he then
found, had been dimly haunting his thoughts ever since he heard it:
Leopold affirmed that he had thrown his cloak and mask down an old
pit-shaft, close by the place of murder: if there was such a shaft,
could it be searched?--Recurring doubt at length so wrought upon his
mind, that he resolved to make his holiday excursion to that
neighbourhood, and there endeavour to gain what assurance of any
sort might be to be had. What end beyond his own possible
satisfaction the inquiry was to answer he did not ask himself. The
restless spirit of the detective, so often conjoined with
indifference to what is in its own nature true, was at work in
him--but that was not all: he must know the very facts, if possible,
of whatever concerned Helen. I shall not follow his proceedings
closely: it is with their reaction upon Leopold that I have to do.
The house where the terrible thing took place was not far from a
little moorland village. There Bascombe found a small inn, where he
took up his quarters, pretending to be a geologist out for a
holiday. He soon came upon the disused shaft.
The inn was a good deal frequented in the evenings by the colliers
of the district--a rough race, but not beyond the influences of such
an address, mingled of self-assertion and good fellowship, as
Bascombe brought to bear upon them, for he had soon perceived that
amongst them he might find the assistance he wanted. In the course
of conversation, therefore, he mentioned the shaft, on which he
pretended to have come in his rambles. Remarking on the danger of
such places, he learned that this one served for ventilation, and
was still accessible below from other workings. Thereafter he begged
permission to go down one of the pits, on pretext of examining the
coal-strata, and having secured for his guide one of the most
intelligent of those whose acquaintance he had made at the inn,
persuaded him, partly by expressions of incredulity because of the
distance between, to guide him to the bottom of the shaft whose
accessibility he maintained. That they were going in the right
direction, he had the testimony of the little compass he carried at
his watch-chain, and at length he saw a faint gleam before him. When
at last he raised his head, wearily bent beneath the low roofs of
the passages, and looked upwards, there was a star looking down at
him out of the sky of day! But George never wasted time in staring
at what was above his head, and so began instantly to search about
as if examining the indications of the strata. Was it possible?
Could it be? There was a piece of black something that was not coal,
and seemed textile! It was a half-mask, for there were the
eye-holes in it! He caught it up and hurried it into his bag--not so
quickly but that the haste set his guide speculating. And Bascombe
saw that the action was noted. The man afterwards offered to carry
his bag, but he would not allow him.
The next morning he left the place and returned to London, taking
Glaston, by a detour, on his way. A few questions to Leopold drew
from him a description of the mask he had worn, entirely
corresponding with the one George had found; and at length he was
satisfied that there was truth more than a little in Leopold's
confession. It was not his business, however, he now said to
himself, to set magistrates right. True, he had set Mr. Hooker wrong
in the first place, but he had done it in good faith, and how could
he turn traitor to Helen and her brother? Besides, he was sure the
magistrate himself would be anything but obliged to him for opening
his eyes! At the same time Leopold's fanatic eagerness after
confession might drive the matter further, and if so, it might
become awkward for him. He might be looked to for the defence, and
were he not certain that his guide had marked his concealment of
what he had picked up, he might have ventured to undertake it, for
certainly it would have been a rare chance for a display of the
forensic talent he believed himself to possess; but as it was, the
moment he was called to the bar--which would be within a
fortnight--he would go abroad, say to Paris, and there, for twelve
months or so, await events.
When he disclosed to Helen his evil success in the coalpit, it was
but the merest film of a hope it destroyed, for she KNEW that her
brother was guilty. George and she now felt that they were linked by
the possession of a common, secret.
But the cloak had been found a short time before, and was in the
possession of Emmeline's mother. That mother was a woman of strong
passions and determined character. The first shock of the
catastrophe over, her grief was almost supplanted by a rage for
vengeance, in the compassing of which no doubt she vaguely imagined
she would be doing something to right her daughter. Hence the
protracted concealment of the murderer was bitterness to her soul,
and she vowed herself to discovery and revenge as the one business
of her life. In this her husband, a good deal broken by the fearful
event, but still more by misfortunes of another kind which had begun
to threaten him, offered her no assistance, and indeed felt neither
her passion urge him, nor her perseverance hold him to the pursuit.
In the neighbourhood her mind was well known, and not a few found
their advantage in supplying her passion with the fuel of hope. Any
hint of evidence, however small, the remotest suggestion even
towards discovery, they would carry at once to her, for she was an
open-handed woman, and in such case would give with a profusion
that, but for the feeling concerned, would have been absurd, and did
expose her to the greed of every lying mendicant within reach of
her. Not unnaturally, therefore, it had occurred to a certain
collier to make his way to the bottom of the shaft, on the
chance--hardly of finding, but of being enabled to invent something
worth reporting; and there, to the very fooling of his barren
expectation, he had found the cloak.
The mother had been over to Holland, where she had instituted
unavailing inquiries in the villages along the coast and among the
islands, and had been home but a few days when the cloak was carried
to her. In her mind it immediately associated itself with the
costumes of the horrible ball, and at once she sought the list of
her guests thereat. It was before her at the very moment when the
man, who had been Bascombe's guide, sent in to request an interview,
the result of which was to turn her attention for the time in
another direction.--Who might the visitor to the mine have been?
Little was to be gathered in the neighbourhood beyond the facts that
the letters G. B. were on his carpet-bag, and that a scrap of torn
envelope bore what seemed the letters mple. She despatched the poor
indications to an inquiry-office in London.
CHAPTER V.
FURTHER DECISION.
The day after his confession to Mr. Hooker, a considerable re-action
took place in Lingard. He did not propose to leave his bed, and lay
exhausted. He said he had caught cold. He coughed a little; wondered
why Mr. Wingfold did not come to see him, dozed a good deal, and
often woke with a start. Mrs. Ramshorn thought Helen ought to make
him get up: nothing, she said, could be worse for him than lying in
bed; but Helen thought, even if her aunt were right, he must be
humoured. The following day Mr. Hooker called, inquired after him,
and went up to his room to see him. There he said all he could think
of to make him comfortable; repeated that certain preliminaries had
to be gone through before the commencement of the prosecution; said
that while these went on, it was better he should be in his sister's
care than in prison, where, if he went at once, he most probably
would die before the trial came on; that in the meantime he was
responsible for him; that, although he had done quite right in
giving himself up, he must not let what was done and could no more
be helped, prey too much upon his mind, lest it should render him
unable to give his evidence with proper clearness, and he should be
judged insane and sent to Broadmoor, which would be frightful. He
ended by saying that he had had great provocation, and that he was
certain the judge would consider it in passing sentence, only he
must satisfy the jury there had been no premeditation.
"I will not utter a word to excuse myself, Mr. Hooker," replied
Leopold.
The worthy magistrate smiled sadly, and went away, if possible, more
convinced of the poor lad's insanity.
The visit helped Leopold over that day, but when the next also
passed, and neither did Wingfold appear, nor any explanation of his
absence reach him, he made up his mind to act again for himself.
The cause of the curate's apparent neglect, though ill to find, was
not far to seek.
On the Monday, he had, upon some pretext or other, been turned away;
on the Tuesday, he had been told that Mr. Lingard had gone for a
drive; on the Wednesday, that he was much too tired to be seen; and
thereupon had at length judged it better to leave things to right
themselves. If Leopold did not want to see him, it would be of no
use by persistence to force his way to him; while on the other hand,
if he did want to see him, he felt convinced the poor fellow would
manage to have his own way somehow.
The next morning after he had thus resolved, Leopold declared
himself better, and got up and dressed. He then lay on the sofa and
waited as quietly as he could until Helen went out--Mr, Faber
insisting she should do so every day. It was no madness, but a
burning desire for life, coupled with an utter carelessness of that
which is commonly called life, that now ruled his behaviour. He tied
his slippers on his feet, put on his smoking-cap, crept unseen from
the house, and took the direction, of the Abbey. The influence of
the air--by his weakness rendered intoxicating, the strange look of
everything around him, the nervous excitement of every human
approach, kept him up until he reached the churchyard, across which
he was crawling, to find the curate's lodging, when suddenly his
brain seemed to go swimming away into regions beyond the senses. He
attempted to seat himself on a grave-stone, but lost consciousness,
and fell at full length between that and the next one.
When Helen returned, she was horrified to find that he had
gone--when, or whither nobody knew: no one had missed him. Her first
fear was the river, but her conscience enlightened her, and her
shame could not prevent her from seeking him at the curate's. In her
haste she passed him where he lay.
Shown into the curate's study, she gave a hurried glance around, and
her anxiety became terror again.
"Oh! Mr. Wingfold," she cried, "where is Leopold?"
"I have not seen him," replied the curate, turning pale.
"Then he has thrown himself in the river!" cried Helen, and sank on
a chair.
The curate caught up his hat.
"You wait here," he said. "I will go and look for him."
But Helen rose, and, without another word, they set off together,
and again entered the churchyard. As they hurried across it, the
curate caught sight of something on the ground, and, springing
forward, found Leopold.
"He is dead!" cried Helen, in an agony, when she saw him stop and
stoop.
He looked dead indeed; but what appalled her the most reassured
Wingfold a little: blood had flowed freely from a cut on his
eyebrow.
The curate lifted him, no hard task, out of the damp shadow, and
laid him on the stone, which was warm in the sun, with his head on
Helen's lap, then ran to order the carriage, and hastened back with
brandy. They got a little into his mouth, but he could not swallow
it. Still it seemed to do him good, for presently he gave a deep
sigh; and just then they heard the carriage stop at the gate.
Wingfold took him up, carried him to it, got in with him in his
arms, and held him on his knees until he reached the manor house,
when he carried him upstairs and laid him on the sofa. When they had
brought him round a little, he undressed him and put him to bed.
"Do not leave me," murmured Leopold, just as Helen entered the room,
and she heard it.
Wingfold looked to her for the answer he was to make. Her bearing
was much altered: she was both ashamed and humbled.
"Yes, Leopold," she said, "Mr. Wingfold will, I am sure, stay with
you as long as he can."
"Indeed I will," assented the curate. "But I must run for Mr. Faber
first."
"How did I come here?" asked Leopold, opening his eyes large upon
Helen after swallowing a spoonful of the broth she held to his lips.
But, before she could answer him, he turned sick, and by the time
the doctor came was very feverish. Faber gave the necessary
directions, and Wingfold walked back with him to get his
prescription made up.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CURATE AND THE DOCTOR.
"There is something strange about that young man's illness," said
Faber, as soon as they had left the house. "I fancy you know more
than you can tell, and if so, then I have committed no indiscretion
in saying as much."
"Perhaps it might be an indiscretion to acknowledge as much
however," said the curate with a smile.
"You are right. I have not been long in the place," returned Faber,
"and you had no opportunity of testing me. But I am indifferent
honest as well as you, though I don't go you in everything."
"People would have me believe you don't go with me in anything."
"They say as much--do they?" returned Faber with some annoyance. "I
thought I had been careful not to trespass on your preserves."
"As for preserves, I don't know of any," answered the curate. "There
is no true bird in the grounds that won't manage somehow to escape
the snare of the fowler."
"Well," said the doctor, "I know nothing about God and all that kind
of thing, but, though I don't think I'm a coward exactly either, I
know I should like to have your pluck."
"I haven't got any pluck," said the curate.
"Tell that to the marines," said Faber. "I daren't go and say what I
think or don't think, even in the bedroom of my least orthodox
patient--at least, if I do, I instantly repent it--while you go on
saying what you really believe Sunday after Sunday!--How you can
believe it, I don't know, and it's no business of mine."
"Oh yes, it is!" returned Wingfold. "But as to the pluck, it may be
a man's duty to say in the pulpit what he would be just as wrong to
say by a sick-bed."
"That has nothing to do with the pluck! That's all I care about."
"It has everything to do with what you take for pluck. My pluck is
only Don Worm."
"I don't know what you mean by that."
"It's Benedick's name, in Much Ado about Nothing, for the
conscience. MY pluck is nothing but my conscience."
"It's a damned fine thing to have anyhow, whatever name you put upon
it!" said Faber.
"Excuse me if I find your epithet more amusing than apt," said
Wingfold, laughing.
"You are quite right," said Faber. "I apologize."
"As to the pluck again," Wingfold resumed, "--if you think of this
one fact--that my whole desire is to believe in God, and that the
only thing I can be sure of sometimes is that, if there be a God,
none but an honest man will ever find him, you will not then say
there is much pluck in my speaking the truth?"
"I don't see that that makes it a hair easier, in the face of such a
set of gaping noodles as--"
"I beg your pardon:--there is more lack of conscience than of brains
in the Abbey of a Sunday, I fear."
"Well, all I have to say is, I can't for the life of me see what you
want to believe in a God for! It seems to me the world would go
rather better without any such fancy. Look here now: there is young
Spenser--out there at Harwood--a patient of mine. His wife died
yesterday--one of the loveliest young creatures you ever saw. The
poor fellow is as bad about it as fellow can be. Well, he's one of
your sort, and said to me the other day, just as you would have him,
'It's the will of God,' he said, 'and we must hold our peace.'--'Don't
talk to me about God,' I said, for I couldn't stand it. 'Do you mean
to tell me that, if there was a God, he would have taken such a lovely
creature as that away from her husband and her helpless infant, at the
age of two and twenty? I scorn to believe it.'"
"What did he say to that?"
"He turned as white as death, and said never a word."
"Ah, you forgot that you were taking from him his only hope of
seeing her again!"
"I certainly did not think of that," said Faber.
"Even then," resumed Wingfold, "I should not say you were wrong, if
you were prepared to add that you had searched every possible region
of existence, and had found no God; or that you had tried every
theory man had invented, or even that you were able to invent
yourself, and had found none of them consistent with the being of a
God. I do not say that then you would be right in your judgment, for
another man, of equal weight, might have had a different experience.
I only say, I would not then blame you. But you must allow it a very
serious thing to assert as a conviction, without such grounds as the
assertor has pretty fully satisfied himself concerning, what COULD
only drive the sting of death ten times deeper."
The doctor was silent.
"I doubt not you spoke in a burst of indignation; but it seems to me
the indignation of a man unaccustomed to ponder the things
concerning which he expresses such a positive conviction."
"You are wrong there," returned Faber; "for I was brought up in the
straitest sect of the Pharisees, and know what I am saying."
"The straitest sect of the Pharisees can hardly be the school in
which to gather any such idea of a God as one could wish to be a
reality."
"They profess to know."
"Is that any argument of weight, they and their opinions being what
they are?--If there be a God, do you imagine he would choose any
strait sect under the sun to be his interpreters?"
"But the question is not of the idea of a God, but of the existence
of any, seeing, if he exists, he must be such as the human heart
could never accept as God, inasmuch as he at least permits, if not
himself enacts cruelty. My argument to poor Spenser remains--however
unwise or indeed cruel it may have been."
"I grant it a certain amount of force--as much exactly as had gone
to satisfy the children whom I heard the other day agreeing that Dr.
Faber was a very cruel man, for he pulled out nurse's tooth, and
gave poor little baby such a nasty, nasty powder!"
"Is that a fair parallel? I must look at it."
"I think it is. What you do is often unpleasant, sometimes most
painful, but it does not follow that you are a cruel man, and a
hurter instead of a healer of men."
"I think there is a fault in the analogy," said Faber. "For here am
I nothing but a slave to laws already existing, and compelled to
work according to them. It is not my fault therefore that the
remedies I have to use are unpleasant. But if there be a God, he has
the matter in his own hands."
"There is weight and justice in your argument, which may well make
the analogy appear at first sight false. But is there no theory
possible that should make it perfect?"
"I do not see how there should be any. For, if you say God is under
any such compulsion as I am under, then surely the house is divided
against itself, and God is not God any more."
"For my part," said the curate, "I think I COULD believe in a God
who did but his imperfect best: in one all power, and not all
goodness, I could not believe. But suppose that the design of God
involved the perfecting of men as the CHILDREN OF GOD--'I said ye
are gods,'--that he would have them partakers of his own blessedness
in kind--be as himself;--suppose his grand idea could not be
contented with creatures perfect ONLY by his gift, so far as that
should reach, and having no willing causal share in the perfection,
that is, partaking not at all of God's individuality and free-will
and choice of good; then suppose that suffering were the only way
through which the individual could be set, in separate and
self-individuality, so far apart from God, that it might WILL, and
so become a partaker of his singleness and freedom;--and suppose
that this suffering must be and had been initiated by God's taking
his share, and that the infinitely greater share;--suppose next,
that God saw the germ of a pure affection, say in your friend and
his wife, but saw also that it was a germ so imperfect and weak that
it could not encounter the coming frosts and winds of the world
without loss and decay, while, if they were parted now for a few
years, it would grow and strengthen and expand, to the certainty of
an infinitely higher and deeper and keener love through the endless
ages to follow--so that by suffering should come, in place of
contented decline, abortion, and death, a troubled birth of joyous
result in health and immortality;--suppose all this, and what then?"
Faber was silent a moment, then answered,
"Your theory has but one fault: it is too good to be true."
"My theory leaves plenty of difficulty, but has no such fault as
that. Why, what sort of a God would content you, Mr. Faber? The one
idea is too bad, the other too good to be true. Must you expand and
pare until you get one exactly to the measure of yourself ere you
can accept it as thinkable or possible? Why, a less God than that
would not rest your soul a week. The only possibility of believing
in a God seems to me to lie in finding an idea of a God large
enough, grand enough, pure enough, lovely enough to be fit to
believe in."
"And have you found such--may I ask?"
"I think I am finding such."
"Where?"
"In the man of the New Testament. I have thought a little more about
these things, I fancy, than you have, Mr. Faber. I may come to be
sure of something; I don't see how a man can ever be sure of
NOTHING."
"Don't suppose me quite dumbfoundered, though I can't answer you off
hand," said Mr. Faber, as they reached his door.--"Come in with me,
and I will make up the medicine myself; it will save time. There are
a thousand difficulties," he resumed in the surgery, "some of them
springing from peculiar points that come before one of my
profession, which I doubt if you would be able to meet so readily.
But about this poor fellow, Lingard. You know Glaston gossip says he
is out of his mind."
"If I were you, Mr. Faber, I would not take pains to contradict it.
He is not out of his mind, but has such trouble in it as might well
drive him out.--Don't you even hint at that, though."
"I understand," said Faber.
"If doctor and minister did understand each other and work
together," said Wingfold, "I fancy a good deal more might be done."
"I don't doubt it.--What sort of fellow is that cousin of
theirs--Bascombe is his name, I believe?"
"A man to suit you, I should think," said the curate; "a man with a
most tremendous power of believing in nothing."
"Come, come!" returned the doctor, "you don't know half enough about
me to tell what sort of man I should like or dislike."
"Well, all I will say more of Bascombe is, that if he were not
conceited he would be honest; and if he were as honest as he
believes himself, he would not be so ready to judge every one
dishonest who does not agree with him."
"I hope we may have another talk soon," said the doctor, searching
for a cork. "Some day I will tell you a few things that may stagger
you."
"Likely enough: I am only learning to walk yet," said Wingfold.
"But a man may stagger and not fall, and I am ready to hear anything
you choose to tell me."
Faber handed him the bottle, and he took his leave.
CHAPTER VII.
HELEN AND THE CURATE.
Before the morning Leopold lay wound in the net of a low fever,
almost as ill as ever, but with this difference, that his mind was
far less troubled, and that even his most restless dreams no longer
scared him awake to a still nearer assurance of misery. And yet,
many a time, as she watched by his side, it was excruciatingly plain
to Helen that the stuff of which his dreams were made was the last
process to the final execution of the law. She thought she could
follow it all in his movements and the expressions of his
countenance. At a certain point, the cold dew always appeared on his
forehead, after which invariably came a smile, and he would be quiet
until near morning, when the same signs again appeared. Sometimes he
would murmur prayers, and sometimes it seemed to Helen that he must
fancy himself talking face to face with Jesus, for the look of
blessed and trustful awe upon his countenance was amazing in its
beauty.
For Helen herself, she was prey to a host of changeful emotions. At
one time she accused herself bitterly of having been the cause of
the return of his illness; the next a gush of gladness would swell
her heart at the thought that now she had him at least safer for a
while, and that he might die and so escape the whole crowd of
horrible possibilities. For George's manipulation of the magistrate
could but delay the disclosure of the truth; even should no
discovery be made, Leopold must at length suspect a trick, and that
would at once drive him to fresh action.
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