Thomas Wingfold, Curate V3
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George MacDonald >> Thomas Wingfold, Curate V3
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Mrs. Ramshorn generally came to the meadow to see how the invalid
was after he was settled, but she seldom staid: she was not fond of
nursing, neither was there any need of her assistance; and as Helen
never dreamed now of opposing the smallest wish of her brother,
there was no longer any obstruction to the visits of Polwarth, which
were eagerly looked for by Leopold.
One day the little man did not appear, but soon after his usual time
the still more gnome-like form of his little niece came scrambling
rather than walking over the meadow. Gently and modestly, almost
shyly, she came up to Helen, made her a courtesy like a village
school-girl, and said, while she glanced at Leopold now and then
with an ocean of tenderness in her large, clear woman-eyes:
"My uncle is sorry, Miss Lingard, that he cannot come to see your
brother to-day, but he is laid up with an attack of asthma. He
wished Mr. Lingard to know that he was thinking of him:--shall I
tell you just what he said?"
Helen bent her neck: she did not feel much interest in the matter.
But Leopold said,
"Every word of such a good man is precious: tell me, please."
Rachel turned to him with the flush of a white rose on her face.
"I asked him, sir--'Shall I tell him you are praying for him?' and
he said, 'No. I am not exactly praying for him, but I am thinking of
God and him together.'"
The tears rose in Leopold's eyes. Rachel lifted her baby-hand, and
stroked the dusky, long-fingured one that lay upon the arm of the
chair.
"Dear Mr. Lingard," she said,--Helen stopped in the middle of an
embroidery stitch, and gave her a look as if she were about to ask
for her testimonials--"I could well wish, if it pleased God, that I
were as near home as you."
Leopold took her hand in his.
"Do you suffer then?" he said.
"Just look at me," she answered with a smile that was very pitiful,
though she did not mean it for such, "--shut up all my life in this
epitome of deformity! But I ain't grumbling: that would be a fine
thing! My house is not so small but God can get into it. Only you
can't think how tired I often am of it."
"Mr. Wingfold was telling me yesterday that some people fancy St.
Paul was little and misshapen, and that that was his thorn in the
flesh."
"I don't think that can be true, or he would never have compared his
body to a tabernacle, for, oh dear! it won't stretch an inch to give
a body room. I don't think either, if that had been the case, he
would have said he didn't want it taken off, but another put over
it. I do want mine taken off me, and a downright good new one put on
instead--something not quite so far off your sister's there, Mr.
Lingard. But I'm ashamed of talking like this. It came of wanting to
tell you I can't be sorry you are going when I should so dearly like
to go myself."
"And I would gladly stay a while, and that in a house no bigger than
yours, if I had a conscience of the same sort in my back-parlour,"
said Leopold smiling. "But when I am gone the world will be the
cleaner for it.--Do you know about God the same way your uncle does,
Miss Polwarth?"
"I hope I do--a little. I doubt if anybody knows as much as he
does," she returned, very seriously. "But God knows about us all the
same, and he don't limit his goodness to us by our knowledge of him.
It's so wonderful that he can be all to everybody! That is his
Godness, you know. We can't be all to any one person. Do what we
will, we can't let anybody see into us even. We are all in bits and
spots. But I fancy it's a sign that we come of God that we don't
like it. How gladly I would help you, Mr. Lingard, and I can do
nothing for you.--I'm afraid your beautiful sister thinks me very
forward. But she don't know what it is to lie awake all night
sometimes, think-thinking about my beautiful brothers and sisters
that I can't get near to do anything for."
"What an odd creature!" thought Helen, to whom her talk conveyed
next to nothing. "--But I daresay they are both out of their minds.
Poor things! they must have a hard time of it with one thing and
another!"
"I beg your pardon again for talking so much," concluded Rachel,
and, with a courtesy first to the one then to the other, walked
away. Her gait was no square march like her uncle's, but a sort of
sidelong propulsion, rendered more laborious by the thick grass of
the meadow.
CHAPTER XX.
THE BLOOD-HOUND.
I need not follow the steps by which the inquiry-office became able
so far to enlighten the mother of Emmeline concerning the person and
habits of the visitor to the deserted shaft, that she had now come
to Glaston in pursuit of yet farther discovery concerning him. She
had no plan in her mind, and as yet merely intended going to church
and everywhere else where people congregated, in the hope of
something turning up to direct inquiry. Not a suspicion of Leopold
had ever crossed her. She did not even know that he had a sister in
Glaston, for Emmeline's friends had not all been intimate with her
parents.
On the morning after her arrival, she went out early to take a walk,
and brood over her cherished vengeance; and finding her way into the
park, wandered about in it for some time. Leaving it at length by
another gate, and inquiring the way to Glaston, she was directed to
a footpath which would lead her thither across the fields. Following
this, she came to a stile, and being rather weary with her long
walk, sat down on it.
The day was a grand autumnal one. But nature had no charms for her.
Indeed had she not been close shut in the gloomy chamber of her own
thoughts, she would not thus have walked abroad alone; for nature
was to her a dull, featureless void; while her past was scarcely of
the sort to invite retrospection, and her future was clouded.
It so fell that just then Leopold was asleep in his chair,--every
morning he slept a little soon after being carried out,--and that
chair was in its usual place in the meadow, with the clump of trees
between it and the stile. Wingfold was seated in the shade of the
trees, but Helen, happening to want something for her work, went to
him and committed her brother to his care until she should return,
whereupon he took her place. Almost the same moment however, he
spied Polwarth coming from the little door in the fence, and went to
meet him. When he turned, he saw, to his surprise, a lady standing
beside the sleeping youth, and gazing at him with a strange
intentness. Polwarth had seen her come from the clump of trees, and
supposed her a friend. The curate walked hastily back, fearing he
might wake and be startled at sight of the stranger. So intent was
the gazing lady that he was within a few yards of her before she
heard him. She started, gave one glance at the curate, and hurried
away towards the town. There was an agitation in her movements which
Wingfold did not like; a suspicion crossed his mind, and he resolved
to follow her. In his turn he made over his charge to Polwarth, and
set off after the lady.
The moment the eyes of Emmeline's mother fell upon the countenance
of Leopold, whom, notwithstanding the change that suffering had
caused, she recognized at once, partly by the peculiarity of his
complexion, the suspicion, almost conviction, awoke in her that here
was the murderer of her daughter. That he looked so ill seemed only
to confirm the likelihood. Her first idea was to wake him and see
the effect of her sudden presence. Finding he was attended, however,
she hurried away to inquire in the town and discover all she could
about him.
A few moments after Polwarth had taken charge of him, and while he
stood looking on him tenderly, the youth woke with a start.
"Where is Helen?" he said.
"I have not seen her. Ah, here she comes!"
"Did you find me alone then?"
"Mr. Wingfold was with you. He gave you up to me, because he had to
go into the town."
He looked inquiringly at his sister as she came up, and she looked
in the same way at Polwarth.
"I feel as if I had been lying all alone in this wide field," said
Leopold, "and as if Emmeline had been by me, though I didn't see
her."
Polwarth looked after the two retiring forms, which were now almost
at the end of the meadow, and about to issue on the high road.
Helen followed his look with hers. A sense of danger seized her. She
trembled, and kept behind Leopold's chair.
"Have you been coughing much to-day?" asked the gate-keeper.
"Yes, a good deal--before I came out. But it does not seem to do
much good."
"What good would you have it do?"
"I mean, it doesn't do much to get it over. Oh, Mr. Polwarth, I am
so tired!"
"Poor fellow! I suppose it looks to you as if it would never be
over. But all the millions of the dead have got through it before
you. I don't know that that makes much difference to the one who is
going through it. And yet it is a sort of company. Only, the Lord of
Life is with you, and that is real company, even in dying, when no
one else can be with you."
"If I could only feel he was with me!"
"You may feel his presence without knowing what it is."
"I hope it isn't wrong to wish it over, Mr. Polwarth?"
"I don't think it is wrong to wish anything you can talk to him
about and submit to his will. St. Paul says, 'In everything let your
requests be made known unto God.'"
"I sometimes feel as if I would not ask him for anything, but just
let him give me what he likes."
"We must not want to be better than is required of us, for that is
at once to grow worse."
"I don't quite understand you."
"Not to ask may seem to you a more submissive way, but I don't think
it is so childlike. It seems to me far better to say, 'O Lord, I
should like this or that, but I would rather not have it if thou
dost not like it also.' Such prayer brings us into conscious and
immediate relations with God. Remember, our thoughts are then,
passing to him, sent by our will into his mind. Our Lord taught us
to pray always and not get tired of it. God, however poor creatures
we may be, would have us talk to him, for then he can speak to us
better than when we turn no face to him."
"I wonder what I shall do the first thing when I find myself
out--out, I mean, in the air, you know."
"It does seem strange we should know so little of what is in some
sense so near us! that such a thin veil should be so impenetrable! I
fancy the first thing I should do would be to pray."
"Then you think we shall pray there--wherever it is?"
"It seems to me as if I should go up in prayer the moment I got out
of this dungeon of a body. I am wrong to call it a dungeon, for it
lies open to God's fair world, and the loveliness of the earth comes
into me through eyes and ears just as well as into you. Still it is
a pleasant thought that it will drop off me some day. But for
prayer--I think all will pray there more than here--in their hearts
and souls I mean."
"Then where would be the harm if you were to pray for me after I am
gone?"
"Nowhere that I know. It were indeed a strange thing if I might pray
for you up to the moment when you ceased to breathe, and therewith
an iron gate close between us, and I could not even reach you
through the ear of the Father of us both! It is a faithless
doctrine, for it supposes either that those parted from us can do
without prayer, the thing Jesus himself could not do without, seeing
it was his highest joy, or that God has so parted those who are in
him from these who are in him, that there is no longer any relation,
even with God, common to them. The thing to me takes the form of an
absurdity."
"Ah, then, pray for me when I am dying, and don't be careful to stop
when you think I am gone, Mr. Polwarth."
"I will remember," said the little man.
And now Helen had recovered herself, and came and took her usual
seat by her brother's side. She cast an anxious glance now and then
into Polwarth's face, but dared not ask him anything.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE BLOOD-HOUND TRAVERSED.
Emmeline's mother had not gone far before she became aware that she
was followed. It was a turning of the tables which she did not
relish. As would not have been unnatural, even had she been at peace
with all the world, a certain feeling of undefined terror came upon
her and threatened to overmaster her. It was the more oppressive
that she did not choose to turn and face her pursuer, feeling that
to do so would be to confess consciousness of cause. The fate of her
daughter, seldom absent from her thoughts, now rose before her in
association with herself, and was gradually swelling uneasiness into
terror: who could tell but this man pressing on her heels in the
solitary meadow, and not the poor youth who lay dying there in the
chair, and who might indeed be only another of his victims, was the
murderer of Emmeline! Unconsciously she accelerated her pace until
it was almost a run, but did not thereby widen by a single yard the
distance between her and the curate.
When she came out on the high road, she gave a glance in each
direction, and, avoiding the country, made for the houses. A short
lane led her into Pine street. There she felt safe, the more that it
was market-day and a good many people about, and slackened her pace,
feeling confident that her pursuer, whoever he was, would now turn
aside. But she was disappointed, for, casting a glance over her
shoulder, she saw that he still kept the same distance behind her.
She saw also, in that single look, that he was well-known, for
several were saluting him at once. What could it mean? It must be
the G. B. of the Temple! Should she stop and challenge his pursuit?
The obstacle to this was a certain sinking at the heart accounted
for by an old memory. She must elude him instead. But she did not
know a single person in the place, or one house where she could seek
refuge. There was an hotel before her! But, unattended, heated,
disordered, to all appearance disreputable, what account could she
give of herself? That she had been followed by some one everybody
knew, and to whom everybody would listen! Feebly debating thus with
herself, she hurried along the pavement of Pine Street, with the
Abbey church before her.
The footsteps behind her grew louder and quicker: the man had made
up his mind and was coming up with her! He might be mad, or ready to
run all risks! Probably he knew his life at stake through her
perseverance and determination!
On came the footsteps, for the curate had indeed made up his mind to
speak to her, and either remove or certify his apprehensions. Nearer
yet and nearer they came. Her courage and strength were giving way
together, and she should be at his mercy. She darted into a shop,
sank on a chair by the counter, and begged for a glass of water. A
young woman ran to fetch it, while Mr. Drew went upstairs for a
glass of wine. Returning with it he came from behind the counter,
and approached the lady where she sat leaning her head upon it.
Meantime the curate also had entered the shop, and placed himself
where he might, unseen by her, await her departure, for he could not
speak to her there. He had her full in sight when Mr. Drew went up
to her.
"Do me the favour, madam," he said--but said no more. For at the
sound of his voice, the lady gave a violent start, and raising her
head looked at him. The wine-glass dropped from his hand. She gave a
half-choked cry, and sped from the shop.
The curate was on the spring after her when he was arrested by the
look of the draper: he stood fixed where she had left him, white and
trembling as if he had seen a ghost. He went up to him, and said in
a whisper:
"Who is she?"
"Mrs. Drew," answered the draper, and the curate was after her like
a greyhound.
A little crowd of the shop-people gathered in consternation about
their master.
"Pick up those pieces of glass, and call Jacob to wipe the floor,"
he said--then walked to the door, and stood staring after the curate
as he all but ran to overtake the swiftly gliding figure.
The woman, ignorant that her pursuer was again upon her track, and
hardly any longer knowing what she did, hurried blindly towards the
churchyard. Presently the curate relaxed his speed, hoping she would
enter it, when he would have her in a fit place for the interview
upon which he was, if possible, more determined than ever, now that
he had gained, so unexpectedly, such an absolute hold of her. "She
must be Emmeline's mother," he said to himself, "--fit mother for
such a daughter." The moment he caught sight of the visage lifted
from its regard of the sleeping youth, he had suspected the fact. He
had not had time to analyze its expression, but there was something
dreadful in it. A bold question would determine the suspicion.
She entered the churchyard, saw the Abbey door open, and hastened to
it. She was in a state of bewilderment and terror that would have
crazed a weaker woman. In the porch she cast a glance behind her:
there again was her pursuer! She sprang into the church. A woman was
dusting a pew not far from the door.
"Who is that coming?" she asked, in a tone and with a mien that
appalled Mrs. Jenkins. She had but to stretch her neck a little to
see through the porch.
"Why, it be only the parson, ma'am!" she answered.
"Then I shall hide myself, over there, and you must tell him I went
out by that other door. Here's a sovereign for you."
"I thank you, ma'am," said Mrs. Jenkins, looking wistfully at the
sovereign, which was a great sum of money to a sexton's wife with
children, then instantly going on with her dusting; "but it ain't no
use tryin' of tricks with our parson. HE ain't one of your Mollies.
A man as don't play no tricks with hisself, as I heerd a gentleman
say, it ain't no use tryin' no tricks with HIM."
Almost while she spoke, the curate entered. The suppliant drew
herself up, and endeavoured to look both dignified and injured.
"Would you oblige me by walking this way for a moment?" he said,
coming straight to her.
Without a word she followed him, a long way up the church, to the
stone screen which divided the chancel from the nave. There, in
sight of Mrs. Jenkins, but so far off that she could not hear a word
said, he asked her to take a seat on the steps that led up to the
door in the centre of the screen. Again she obeyed, and Wingfold sat
down near her.
"Are you Emmeline's mother?" he said.
The gasp, the expression of eye and cheek, the whole startled
response of the woman, revealed that he had struck the truth. But
she made no answer.
"You had better be open with me," he said, "for I mean to be very
open with you."
She stared at him, but either could not, or would not speak.
Probably it was caution: she must hear more.
The curate was already excited, and I fear now got a little angry,
for the woman was not pleasant to his eyes.
"I want to tell you," he said, "that the poor youth whom your
daughter's behaviour made a murderer of,--"
She gave a cry, and turned like ashes. The curate was ashamed of
himself.
"It seems cruel," he said, "but it is the truth. I say he is now
dying--will be gone after her in a few weeks. The same blow killed
both, only one has taken longer to die. No end can be served by
bringing him to justice. Indeed if he were arrested, he would but
die on the way to prison. I have followed you to persuade you, if I
can, to leave him to his fate and not urge it on. If ever man was
sorry, or suffered for his crime,--"
"And pray what is that to me, sir?" cried the avenging mother, who,
finding herself entreated, straightway became arrogant. "Will it
give me back my child? The villain took her precious life without
giving her a moment to prepare for eternity, and you ask me--her
mother--to let him go free! I will not. I have vowed vengeance, and
I will have it."
"Allow me to say that if you die in that spirit, you will be far
worse prepared for eternity than I trust your poor daughter was."
"What is that to you? If I choose to run the risk, it is my
business. I tell you it shall not be my fault if the wretch is not
brought to the gallows."
"But he cannot live to reach it. The necessary preliminaries would
waste all that is left of his life. I only ask of you to let him die
in what peace is possible to him. We must forgive our enemies, you
know. But indeed he is no enemy of yours."
"No enemy of mine! The man who murdered my child no enemy of mine! I
am his enemy then, and that he shall find. If I cannot bring him to
the gallows, I can at least make every man and woman in the country
point the finger of scorn and hatred at him. I can bring him and all
his to disgrace and ruin. Their pride indeed! They were far too
grand to visit me, but not to send a murderer into my family. I am
in my rights, and I will have justice. We shall see if they are too
grand to have a nephew hung! My poor lovely innocent! I will have
justice on the foul villain. Cringing shall not turn me."
Her lips were white, and her teeth set. She rose with the slow
movement of one whose intent, if it had blossomed in passion, was
yet rooted in determination, and turned to leave the church.
"It might hamper your proceedings a little," said Wingfold, "if in
the meantime a charge of bigamy were brought against yourself, MRS.
DREW!"
Her back was towards the curate, and for a moment she stood like
another pillar of salt. Then she began to tremble, and laid hold of
the carved top of a bench. But her strength failed her completely;
she sank on her knees and fell on the floor with a deep moan.
The curate called Mrs. Jenkins and sent her for water. With some
difficulty they brought her to herself.
She rose, shuddered, drew her shawl about her, and said to the
woman,
"I am sorry to give so much trouble. When does the next train start
for London?"
"Within an hour," answered the curate. "I will see you safe to it."
"Excuse me; I prefer going alone."
"That I cannot permit."
"I must go to my lodgings first."
"I will go with you."
She cast on him a look of questioning hate, yielded, and laid two
fingers on his offered arm.
They walked out of the church together and to the cottage where, for
privacy, she had lodged. There he left her for half an hour, and,
yielding to her own necessities and not his entreaties, she took
some refreshment. In the glowing sullenness of foiled revenge, the
smoke of which was crossed every now and then by a flash of hate,
she sat until he returned.
"Before I go with you to the train," said the curate,
re-entering, "you must give me your word to leave young Lingard
unmolested. I know my friend Mr. Drew has no desire to trouble you,
but I am equally confident that he will do whatever I ask him. If
you will not promise me, from the moment you get into the train you
shall be watched.--Do you promise?"
She was silent, with cold gleaming eyes, for a time, then said,
"How am I to know that this is not a trick to save his life?"
"You saw him; you could see he is dying. I tell you I do not think
he can live a month. His disease is making rapid progress. He must
go with the first of the cold weather."
She could not help believing him.
"I promise," she said. "But you are cruel to compel a mother to
forgive the villain that stabbed her daughter to the heart."
"If the poor lad were not dying, I should see that he gave himself
up, as indeed he set out to do some weeks ago, but was frustrated by
his friends. He is dying for love of her. I believe I say so with
truth. Pity and love and remorse and horror of his deed have brought
him to the state you saw him in. To be honest with you, he might
have got better enough to be tortured for a while in a madhouse, for
no jury would have brought him in anything but insane at the time,
with the evidence that would have been adduced; but in his anxiety
to see me one day--for his friends at that time did not favour my
visits, because I encouraged him to surrender--he got out of the
house alone to come to me, but fainted in the churchyard, and lay on
the damp earth for the better part of an hour, I fancy, before we
found him. Still, had it not been for the state of his mind, he
might have got over that too.--As you hope to be forgiven, you must
forgive him."
He held out his hand to her. She was a little softened, and gave him
hers.
"Allow me one word more," said the curate, "and then we shall go:
Our crimes are friends that will hunt us either to the bosom of God,
or the pit of hell."
She looked down, but her look was still sullen and proud.
The curate rose, took up her bag, went with her to the station, got
her ticket, and saw her off.
Then he hastened back to Drew, and told him the whole story.
"Poor woman!" said her husband. "--But God only knows how much _I_
am to blame for all this. If I had behaved better to her she might
never have left me, and your poor young friend would now be well and
happy."
"Perhaps consuming his soul to a cinder with that odious drug," said
Wingfold. "'Tis true, as Edgar in King Lear says:
The gods are just,
and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us;
but he takes our sins on himself, and while he drives them out of us
with a whip of scorpions he will yet make them work his ends. He
defeats our sins, makes them prisoners, forces them into the service
of good, chains them like galley-slaves to the rowing-benches of the
gospel-ship, or sets them like ugly gurgoyles or corbels or brackets
in the walls of his temples.--No, that last figure I retract. I
don't like it. It implies their continuance."
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