INVITATION.
As Wingfold walked back to his lodgings, he found a new element mingling
with the varied matter of his previous inquiry. Human suffering laid
hold upon him--neither as his own nor as that of humanity, but as that
of men and women--known or unknown, it mattered nothing: there were
hearts in the world from whose agony broke terrible cries, hearts of
which sad faces like that of Miss Lingard were the exponents. Such
hearts might be groaning and writhing in any of the houses he passed,
and, even if he knew the hearts, and what the vampire that sucked their
blood, he could do nothing for their relief.
Little indeed could he have imagined the life of such a comfort-guarded
lady as Miss Lingard, exposed to the intrusion of any terror-waking
monster, from the old ocean of chaos, into the quiet flow of its
meadow-banked river! And what multitudes must there not be in the
world--what multitudes in our island--how many even in Glaston, whose
hearts, lacerated by no remorse, overwhelmed by no crushing sense of
guilt, yet knew their own bitterness, and had no friend radiant enough
to make a sunshine in their shady places! He fell into mournful mood
over the troubles of his race. Always a kind-hearted fellow, he had not
been used to think about such things; he had had troubles of his own,
and had got through at least some of them; people must have troubles,
else would they grow unendurable for pride and insolence. But now that
he had begun to hope he saw a glimmer somewhere afar at the end of the
darksome cave in which he had all at once discovered that he was buried
alive, he began also to feel how wretched those must be who were groping
on without even a hope in their dark eyes.
If he had never committed any crime, he had yet done wrong enough to
understand the misery of shame and dishonour, and should he not find
a loving human heart the heart of the world, would rejoice--with what
rejoicing might then be possible--to accept George Bascombe’s theory,
and drop into the jaws of darkness and cease. How much more miserable
then must those be who had committed some terrible crime, or dearly
loved one who had! What relief, what hope, what lightening for them!
What a breeding nest of vermiculate cares and pains was this human heart
of ours! Oh, surely it needed some refuge! If no saviour had yet come,
the tortured world of human hearts cried aloud for one with unutterable
groaning! What would Bascombe do if he had committed a murder? Or
what could he do for one who had? If fable it were, it was at least a
need--invented one--that of a Saviour to whom anyone might go, at
any moment, without a journey, without letters or commendations or
credentials! And yet no: if it had been invented, it could hardly be
by any one in the need, for such even now could hardly be brought to
believe it. Ill bested were the world indeed if there were no one beyond
whose pardon crime could not go! Ah! but where was the good of pardon if
still the conscious crime kept stinging? and who would wish one he loved
to grow callous to the crime he had committed? Could one rejoice that
his guilty friend had learned to laugh again, able at length to banish
the memory of the foul thing? Would reviving self-content render him
pleasant to the eyes, and his company precious in the wisdom that
springs from the knowledge of evil? Would not that be the moment when
he who had most assiduously sought to comfort him in his remorse, would
first be tempted to withdraw his foot from his threshold? But if there
was a God--such a God as, according to the Christian story, had sent his
own son into the world--had given him to appear among us, clothed in
the garb of humanity, the armour that can be pierced, to take all the
consequences of being the god of obedience amongst the children of
disobedience, engulfing their wrongs in his infinite forbearance, and
winning them back, by slow and unpromising and tedious renewal, to the
heart of his father, surely such a God would not have created them,
knowing that some of them would sin sins from the horror of which in
themselves all his devotion could not redeem them!--And as he thought
thus, the words arose in his mind--“COME UNTO ME ALL YE THAT LABOUR
AND ARE HEAVY LADEN, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST.” His heart filled. He
pondered over them. When he got home he sought and found them in the
book.--Did a man ever really utter them? If a man did, either he was the
most presumptuous of mortals, or HE COULD DO WHAT HE SAID. If he could,
then to have seen and distrusted that man, Wingfold felt, would have
been to destroy in himself the believing faculty and become incapable
of trusting for ever after. And such a man must, in virtue of his very
innocence, know that the worst weariness and the worst load is evil
and crime, and must know himself able, in full righteousness, with no
jugglery of oblivion or self-esteem, to take off the heavy load and give
rest.
“And yet,” thought the curate, not without self-reproach, “for one who
will go to him to get the rest, a thousand will ask--HOW CAN HE THEN DO
IT?--As if they should be fit to know!”