CHAPTER XXXIV.

A SERMON TO LEOPOLD.

When the curate stood up to read, his eyes as of themselves sought Mrs.

Ramshorn’s pew. There sat Helen, with a look that revealed, he thought,

more of determination and less of suffering. Her aunt was by her side,

cold and glaring, an ecclesiastical puss, ready to spring upon any small

church-mouse that dared squeak in its own murine way. Bascombe was not

visible, and that was a relief. For an unbelieving face, whether the

dull dining countenance of a mayor, or the keen searching countenance of

a barrister, is a sad bone in the throat of utterance, and has to be

of set will passed over, and, if that may be, forgotten. Wingfold tried

hard to forget Mrs. Ramshorn’s, and one or two besides, and by the

time he came to the sermon, thought of nothing but human hearts, their

agonies, and him who came to call them to him.

“I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

“Was it then of the sinners first our Lord thought ere he came from the

bosom of the Father? Did the perfect will embrace in the all-atoning

tenderness of the divine heart, the degraded, disfigured, defiled,

distorted thing, whose angel is too blind ever to see the face of its

Father? Through all the hideous filth of the charnel-house, which

the passions had heaped upon her, did the Word recognise the bound,

wing-lamed, feather-draggled Psyche, panting in horriblest torture? Did

he have a desire to the work of his hands, the child of his father’s

heart, and therefore, strong in compassion, speed to the painful rescue

of hearts like his own? That purity arid defilement should thus meet

across all the great dividing gulf of law and morals! The friend of

publicans and sinners! Think: he was absolutely friendly with them! was

not shocked at them! held up no hands of dismay! Only they must do so no

more.

“If he were to come again, visibly, now, which do you think would come

crowding around him in greater numbers--the respectable church-goers, or

the people from the slums? I do not know. I dare not judge. But the fact

that the church draws so few of those that are despised, of those whom

Jesus drew and to whom most expressly he came, gives ground for question

as to how far the church is like her Lord. Certainly many a one would

find the way to the feet of the master, from whom the respectable

church-goer, the pharisee of our time, and the priest who stands on his

profession, would draw back with disgust. And doubtless it would be in

the religious world that a man like Jesus, who, without a professional

education, a craftsman by birth and early training, uttered scarce a

phrase endorsed by clerical use, or a word of the religious cant of the

day, but taught in simplest natural forms the eternal facts of faith

and hope and love, would meet with the chief and perhaps the only BITTER

opponents of his doctrine and life.

“But did our Lord not call the righteous? Did he not call honest men

about him--James and John and Simon--sturdy fisher-folk, who faced the

night and the storm, worked hard, fared roughly, lived honestly, and led

good cleanly lives with father and mother, or with wife and children?

I do not know that he said anything special to convince them that they

were sinners before he called them. But it is to be remarked that one

of the first effects of his company upon Simon Peter was, that the

fisherman grew ashamed of himself, and while ashamed was yet possessed

with an impulse of openness and honesty no less than passionate. The

pure man should not be deceived as to what sort of company he was in!

‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!’ I would I could clearly

behold with my mind’s eye what he then saw in Jesus that drew from him

that cry! He knew him for the Messiah: what was the working of the

carpenter upon the fisherman that satisfied him of the fact? Would the

miracle have done it but for the previous talk from the boat to the

people? I think not. Anyhow St. Peter judged himself among the sinners,

and we may be sure that if these fishers had been self-satisfied men,

they would not have left all and gone after him who called them. Still

it would hardly seem that it was specially as sinners that he did so.

Again, did not men such as the Lord himself regarded as righteous come

to him--Nicodemus, Nathaniel, the young man who came running and kneeled

to him, the scribe who was not far from the kingdom, the centurion, in

whom he found more faith than in any Jew, he who had built a synagogue

in Capernaum, and sculptured on its lintel the pot of manna? These came

to him, and we know he was ready to receive them. But he knew such would

always come drawn of the Father; they did not want much calling; they

were not so much in his thoughts therefore; he was not troubled about

them; they were as the ninety and nine, the elder son at home, the money

in the purse. Doubtless they had much to learn, were not yet in the

kingdom, but they were crowding about its door. If I set it forth

aright, I know not, but thus it looks to me. And one thing I cannot

forget--it meets me in the face--that some at least,--who knows if not

all?--of the purest of men have counted themselves the greatest sinners!

Neither can I forget that other saying of our Lord, a stumbling-block

to many--our Lord was not so careful as perhaps some would have had him,

lest men should stumble at the truth--The first shall be last and

the last first. While our Lord spoke the words: The time cometh that

whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service, even then

was Saul of Tarsus at the feet of Gamaliel, preparing to do God that

service; but like one born out of due time, after all the rest he saw

the Lord, and became the chief in labour and suffering. Thus the last

became first. And I bethink me that the beloved disciple, who leaned

on the bosom of the Lord, who was bolder to ask him than any--with the

boldness of love, he whom the meek and lowly called a Son of Thunder,

was the last of all to rejoin the master in the mansions of his Father.

Last or first--if only we are with him! One thing is clear that in the

order of the Lord’s business, first came sinners.

“Who that reflects can fail to see this at least, that a crime brings

a man face to face with the reality of things? He who knows himself a

sinner--I do not mean as one of the race--the most self-righteous man

will allow that as a man he is a sinner--he to whom, in the words of

the communion service, the remembrance of his sins is grievous, and the

burden of them intolerable, knows in himself that he is a lost man. He

can no more hold up his head among his kind; he cannot look a woman or

a child in the face; he cannot be left alone with the chaos of

his thoughts, and the monsters it momently breeds. The joys of his

childhood, the delights of existence, are gone from him. There dwells

within him an ever present judgment and fiery indignation. Such a man

will start at the sound of pardon and peace, even as the camel of the

desert at the scent of water. Therefore surely is such a man nearer to

the gate of the kingdom than he against whom the world has never wagged

a tongue, who never sinned against a social custom even, and has as easy

a conscience as the day he was born; but who knows so little of himself

that, while he thinks he is good enough, he carries within him the

capacity and possibility of every cardinal sin, waiting only the special

and fitting temptation which, like the match to the charged mine, shall

set all in a roar! Of this danger he knows nothing, never dreams of

praying against it, takes his seat in his pew Sunday after Sunday with

his family, nor ever murmurs Lead us not into temptation with the least

sense that temptation is a frightful thing, but repeats and responds and

listens in perfect self-satisfaction, doubting never that a world made

up of such as he must be a pleasant sight in the eyes of the Perfect.

There are men who will never see what they are capable or in danger of

until they have committed some fearful wrong. Nay there are some

for whom even that is not enough; they must be found out by their

fellow-men, and scorned in the eyes of the world, before they can or

will admit or comprehend their own disgrace. And there are worse still

than these.

“But a man may be oppressed by his sins, and hardly know what it is that

oppresses him. There is more of sin in our burdens than we are ourselves

aware. It needs not that we should have committed any grievous fault.

Do we recognize in ourselves that which needs to be set right, that of

which we ought to be ashamed, something which, were we lifted above

all worldly anxieties, would yet keep us uneasy, dissatisfied, take the

essential gladness out of the sunlight, make the fair face of the earth

indifferent to us, a trustful glance a discomposing look, and death a

darkness?--I say to the man who feels thus, whatever he may have done or

left undone, he is not so far from the kingdom of heaven but that he may

enter thereinto if he will.

“And if there be here any soul withered up with dismay, torn with

horrible wonder that he should have done the deed which he yet hath

done, to him I say--Flee from the self that hath sinned and hide thee

with Christ in God. Or if the words sound to thee as the words of some

unknown tongue, and I am to thee as one that beateth the air, I say

instead--Call aloud in thy agony, that, if there be a God, he may hear

the voice of his child, and put forth his hand and lay hold upon him,

and rend from him the garment that clings and poisons and burns, squeeze

the black drop from his heart, and set him weeping like a summer rain. O

blessed, holy, lovely repentance to which the Son of Man, the very root

and man of men, hath come to call us! Good it is, and I know it. Come

and repent with me, O heart wounded by thine own injustice and wrong,

and together we will seek the merciful. Think not about thy sin so as to

make it either less or greater in thine own eyes. Bring it to Jesus, and

let him show thee how vile a thing it is. And leave it to him to judge

thee--sure that he will judge thee justly, extenuating nothing, for he

hath to cleanse thee utterly, and yet forgetting no smallest excuse that

may cover the amazement of thy guilt, or witness for thee that not with

open eyes didst thou do the deed. At the last he cried, Father forgive

them, for they know not what they do. For his enemies the truth should

be spoken, his first words when they had nailed him to the cross. But

again I say, let it be Christ that excuseth thee; he will do it to more

purpose than thou, and will not wrong thy soul by excusing thee a hair

too much, or thy heart by excusing thee a hair too little.

“I dreamed once that I had committed a terrible crime. Carried beyond

myself by passion, I knew not at the moment HOW evil was the thing I

did. But I knew it was evil. And suddenly I became aware, when it was

too late, of the nature of that which I had done. The horror that came

with the knowledge was of the things that belong only to the secret

soul. I was the same man as before I did it, yet was I now a man of

whom my former self could not have conceived the possibility as dwelling

within it. The former self seemed now by contrast lovely in purity, yet

out of that seeming purity this fearful, foul _I_ of the present had

just been born! The face of my fellow-man was an avenging law, the face

of a just enemy. Where, how, should the frightful face be hidden? The

conscious earth must take it into its wounded bosom, and that before the

all-seeing daylight should come. But it would come, and I should stand

therein pointed at by every ray that shot through the sunny atmosphere!

“The agony was of its own kind, and I have no word to tell what it was

like. An evil odour and a sickening pain combined, might be a symbol of

the torture. As is in the nature of dreams, possibly I lay but a little

second on the rack, yet an age seemed shot through and through with the

burning meshes of that crime, while, cowering and terror-stricken, I

tossed about the loathsome fact in my mind. I had DONE it, and from

the done there was no escape: it was for evermore a thing done.--Came

a sudden change: I awoke. The sun stained with glory the curtains of my

room, and the light of light darted keen as an arrow into my very soul.

Glory to God! I was innocent! The stone was rolled from my sepulchre.

With the darkness whence it had sprung, the cloud of my crime went

heaving lurid away. I was a creature of the light and not of the dark.

For me the sun shone and the wind blew; for me the sea roared and the

flowers sent up their odours. For me the earth had nothing to hide. My

guilt was wiped away; there was no red worm gnawing at my heart; I could

look my neighbour in the face, and the child of my friend might lay

his hand in mine and not be defiled! All day long the joy of that

deliverance kept surging on in my soul.

“But something yet more precious, more lovely than such an awaking, will

repentance be to the sinner; for after all it was but a dream of the

night from which that set me free, and the spectre-deed that vanished

had never had a place in the world of fact; while the horror from which

repentance delivers, is no dream, but a stubborn abiding reality. Again,

the vanishing vision leaves the man what he was before, still capable it

may be of committing the crime from which he is not altogether clean

to whom in his sleep it was possible: repentance makes of the man a new

creature, one who has awaked from the sleep of sin to sleep that sleep

no more. The change in the one case is not for greatness comparable with

that in the other. The sun that awakes from the one sleep, is but the

outward sun of our earthly life--a glorious indeed and lovely thing,

which yet even now is gathering a crust of darkness, blotting itself out

and vanishing: the sun that awakes a man from the sleep of death is the

living Sun that casts from his thought out into being that other sun,

with the space wherein it holds planetary court--the Father of lights,

before whose shining in the inner world of truth eternal, even the deeds

of vice become as spectral dreams, and, with the night of godlessness

that engendered them, flee away.

“But a man may answer and say to me--‘Thou art but borne on the wings of

thine imagination. The fact of the crime remains, let a man tear out his

heart in repentance, and no awaking can restore an innocence which is

indeed lost.’ I answer: The words thou speakest are in themselves true,

yet thy ignorance makes them false, Thou knowest not the power of God,

nor what resurrection from the dead means. What if, while it restored

not thy former innocence, it brought thee a purity by the side of whose

white splendour and inward preciousness, the innocence thou hadst lost

was but a bauble, being but a thing that turned to dross in the first

furnace of its temptation? Innocence is indeed priceless--that innocence

which God counteth innocence, but thine was a flimsy show, a bit of

polished and cherished glass--instead of which, if thou repentest, thou

shalt in thy jewel-box find a diamond. Is thy purity, O fair Psyche of

the social world, upon whose wings no spattering shower has yet cast an

earthy stain, and who knowest not yet whether there be any such thing

as repentance or need of the same!--is thy purity to compare with

the purity of that heavenly Psyche, twice born, who even now in the

twilight-slumbers of heaven, dreams that she washes with her tears the

feet of her Lord, and wipes them with the hairs of her head? O bountiful

God, who wilt give us back even our innocence tenfold! He can give an

awaking that leaves the past of the soul ten times farther behind than

ever waking from sleep left the dreams of the night.

“If the potency of that awaking lay in the inrush of a new billow of

life, fresh from its original source, carrying with it an enlargement of

the whole nature and its every part, a glorification of every faculty,

every sense even, so that the man, forgetting nothing of his past or its

shame, should yet cry out in the joy of his second birth: ‘Lo! I am a

new man; I am no more he who did that awful and evil thing, for I am no

more capable of doing it! God be praised, for all is well!’--would not

such an awaking send the past afar into the dim distance of the first

creation, and wrap the ill deed in the clean linen cloth of forgiveness,

even as the dull creature of the sea rolls up the grain of intruding

sand in the lovely garment of a pearl? Such an awaking means God himself

in the soul, not disdaining closest vital company with the creature he

foresaw and created. And the man knows in full content that he is healed

of his plague. Nor would he willingly lose the scars which record its

outbreak, for they tell him what he is without God, and set him ever

looking to see that the door into the heavenly garden stands wide for

God to enter the house when it pleases him. And who can tell whether,

in the train of such an awaking, may not follow a thousand opportunities

and means of making amends to those whom he has injured? Nor must I

fail to remind the man who has committed no grievous crime, that except

he has repented of his evil self, and abjured all wrong, he is not safe

from any, even the worst offence. There was a time when I could not

understand that he who loved not his brother was a murderer: now I see

it to be no figure of speech, but, in the realities of man’s moral and

spiritual nature, an absolute simple fact. The murderer and the unloving

sit on the same bench before the judge of eternal truth. The man who

loves not his brother, I do not say is at this moment capable of killing

him, but if the natural working of his unlove be not checked, he will

assuredly become capable of killing him. Until we love our brother,

yes, until we love our enemy, who is yet our brother, we contain within

ourselves the undeveloped germ of murder. And so with every sin in the

tables or out of the tables. There is not one in this congregation who

has a right to cast a look of reproach at the worst felon who ever sat

in the prisoners’ dock. I speak no hyperbole, but simple truth. We

are very ready to draw in our minds a distinction between respectable

sins--human imperfections we call them, perhaps--and disreputable vices,

such as theft and murder; but there is no such distinction in fact. Many

a thief is a better man than many a clergyman, and miles nearer to the

gate of the kingdom. The heavenly order goes upon other principles than

ours, and there are first that shall be last, and last that shall be

first. Only, at the root of all human bliss lies repentance.

“Come then at the call of the Water, the Healer, the Giver of repentance

and light, the Friend of publicans and sinners, all ye on whom lies the

weight of a sin, or the gathered heap of a thousand crimes. He came to

call such as you, that he might make you clear and clean. He cannot bear

that you should live on in such misery, such badness, such blackness of

darkness. He would give you again your life, the bliss of your being. He

will not speak to you one word of reproach, except indeed you should aim

at justifying yourselves by accusing your neighbour. He will leave it to

those who cherish the same sins in their hearts to cast stones at you:

he who has no sin casts no stone. Heartily he loves you, heartily he

hates the evil in you--so heartily that he will even cast you into the

fire to burn you clean. By making you clean he will give you rest. If he

upbraid, it will not be for past sin, but for the present little faith,

holding out to him an acorn-cup to fill. The rest of you keep aloof, if

you will, until you shall have done some deed that compels you to cry

out for deliverance; but you that know yourselves sinners, come to him

that he may work in you his perfect work, for he came not to call the

righteous, but sinners, us, you and me, to repentance.”

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

VOLUME III.

CHAPTER I.

AFTER THE SERMON.

As the sermon drew to a close, and the mist of his emotion began to

disperse, individual faces of his audience again dawned out on the

preacher’s ken. Mr. Drew’s head was down. As I have always said,

certain things he had been taught in his youth, and had practised in

his manhood, certain mean ways counted honest enough in the trade,

had become to him, regarded from the ideal point of the divine in

merchandize--such a merchandize, namely, as the share the son of man

might have taken in buying and selling, had his reputed father been a

shop-keeper instead of a carpenter--absolutely hateful, and the memory

of them intolerable. Nor did it relieve him much to remind himself of

the fact, that he knew not to the full the nature of the advantages he

took, for he knew that he had known them such as shrunk from the light,

not coming thereto to be made manifest. He was now doing his best to

banish them from his business, and yet they were a painful presence to

his spirit--so grievous to be borne, that the prospect held out by

the preacher of an absolute and final deliverance from them by the

indwelling presence of the God of all living men and true merchants, was

a blessedness unspeakable. Small was the suspicion in the Abbey Church

of Olaston that morning, that the well-known successful man of business

was weeping. Who could once have imagined another reason for the laying

of that round, good-humoured, contented face down on the book-board,

than pure drowsiness from lack of work-day interest! Yet there was

a human soul crying out after its birthright. Oh, to be clean as a

mountain-river! clean as the air above the clouds, or on the middle

seas! as the throbbing aether that fills the gulf betwixt star and

star!--nay, as the thought of the Son of Man himself, who, to make all

things new and clean, stood up against the old battery of sin-sprung

suffering, withstanding and enduring and stilling the recoil of the

awful force wherewith his Father had launched the worlds, and given

birth to human souls with wills that might become free as his own!

While Wingfold had been speaking in general terms, with the race in his

mind’s, and the congregation in his body’s eye, he had yet thought more

of one soul, with its one crime and its intolerable burden, than all

the rest: Leopold was ever present to him, and while he strove to

avoid absorption in a personal interest however justifiable, it was of

necessity that the thought of the most burdened sinner he knew should

colour the whole of his utterance. At times indeed he felt as if he were

speaking to him immediately--and to him only; at others, although

then he saw her no more than him, that he was comforting the sister

individually, in holding out to her brother the mighty hope of a

restored purity. And when once more his mind could receive the messages

brought home by his eyes, he saw upon Helen’s face the red sunset of a

rapt listening. True it was already fading away, but the eyes had wept,

the glow yet hung about cheek and forehead, and the firm mouth

had forgotten itself into a tremulous form, which the stillness of

absorption had there for the moment fixed.

But even already, although he could not yet read it upon her

countenance, a snake had begun to lift its head from the chaotic swamp

which runs a creek at least into every soul, the rudimentary desolation,

a remnant of the time when the world was without form and void. And the

snake said: “Why, then, did he not speak like that to my Leopold? Why

did he not comfort him with such a good hope, well-becoming a priest of

the gentle Jesus? Or, if he fancied he must speak of confession, why did

he not speak of it in plain honest terms, instead of suggesting the idea

of it so that the poor boy imagined it came from his own spirit, and

must therefore be obeyed as the will of God?”

So said the snake, and by the time Helen had walked home with her aunt,

the glow had sunk from her soul, and a gray wintry mist had settled

down upon her spirit. And she said to herself that if this last hope in

George should fail her, she would not allow the matter to trouble her

any farther; she was a free woman, and as Leopold had chosen other

counsellors, had thus declared her unworthy of confidence, and, after

all that she had suffered and done for love of him, had turned away from

her, she would put money in her purse, set out for France or Italy, and

leave him to the fate, whatever it might be, which his new advisers and

his own obstinacy might bring upon him. Was the innocent bound to share

the shame of the guilty? Had she not done enough? Would even her father

require more of her than she had already done and endured?

When, therefore, she went into Leopold’s room, and his eyes sought her

from the couch, she took no notice that he had got up and dressed while

she was at church; and he knew that a cloud had come between them, and

that after all she had borne and done for him, he and his sister were

now farther apart, for the time at least, than when oceans lay betwixt

their birth and their meeting; and he found himself looking back with

vague longing even to the terrible old house of Glaston, and the sharing

of their agony therein. His eyes followed her as she walked across

to the dressing-room, and the tears rose and filled them, but he said

nothing. And the sister who, all the time of the sermon, had been filled

with wave upon wave of wishing--that Poldie could hear this, could hear

that, could have such a thought to comfort him, such a lovely word to

drive the horror from his soul, now cast on him a chilly glance, and

said never a word of the things to which she had listened with such

heavings of the spirit-ocean; for she felt, with an instinct more

righteous than her will, that they would but strengthen him in his

determination to do whatever the teacher of them might approve. As she

repassed him to go to the drawing-room, she did indeed say a word of

kindness; but it was in a forced tone, and was only about his dinner!

His eyes over-flowed, but he shut his lips so tight that his mouth grew

grim with determination, and no more tears came.

To the friend who joined her at the church-door, and, in George

Bascombe’s absence, walked with them along Pine Street, Mrs.

Ramshorn remarked that the curate was certainly a most dangerous

man--particularly for young people to hear--he so confounded all the

landmarks of right and wrong, representing the honest man as no better

than the thief, and the murderer as no worse than anybody else--teaching

people in fact that the best thing they could do was to commit some

terrible crime, in order thereby to attain to a better innocence than

without it could ever be theirs. How far she mistook, or how far she

knew or suspected that she spoke falsely, I will not pretend to know.

But although she spoke as she did, there was something, either in the

curate or in the sermon, that had quieted her a little, and she was less

contemptuous in her condemnation of him than usual.

Happily both for himself and others, the curate was not one of those who

cripple the truth and blind their own souls by

some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on the event--

A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom,

And ever three parts coward;

and hence, in proportion as he roused the honest, he gave occasion to

the dishonest to cavil and condemn. Imagine St. Paul having a prevision

of how he would be misunderstood, AND HEEDING IT!--what would then have

become of all those his most magnificent outbursts? And would any amount

of apostolic carefulness have protected him? I suspect it would only

have given rise to more vulgar misunderstandings and misrepresentations

still. To explain to him who loves not, is but to give him the more

plentiful material for misinterpretation. Let a man have truth in the

inward parts, and out of the abundance of his heart let his mouth speak.

If then he should have ground to fear honest misunderstanding, let him

preach again to enforce the truth for which he is jealous, and if it

should seem to any that the two utterances need reconciling, let those

who would have them consistent reconcile them for themselves.

The reason of George Bascombe’s absence from church that morning was,

that, after an early breakfast, he had mounted Helen’s mare, and set

out to call on Mr. Hooker before he should have gone to church. Helen

expected him back to dinner, and was anxiously looking for him. So also

was Leopold, but the hopes of the two were different.

At length the mare’s hoofs echoed through all Sunday Glaston, and

presently George rode up. The groom took his horse in the street, and he

came into the drawing-room. Helen hastened to meet him.

“Well, George?” she said, anxiously.

“Oh, it’s all right!--will be at least, I am sure. I will tell you all

about it in the garden after dinner.--Aunt has the good sense never

to interrupt us there,” he added. “I’ll just run and show myself to

Leopold: he must not suspect that I am of your party and playing

him false. Not that it is false, you know! for two negatives make a

positive, and to fool a mad-man is to give him fair play.”

The words jarred sorely on Helen’s ear.

Bascombe hurried to Leopold, and informed him that he had seen Mr.

Hooker, and that all was arranged for taking him over to his place on

Tuesday morning, if by that time he should be able for the journey.

“Why not to-morrow?” said Leopold. “I am quite able.”

“Oh! I told him you were not very strong. And he wanted a run after the

hounds to-morrow. So we judged it better put off till Tuesday.”

Leopold gave a sigh, and said no more.

CHAPTER II.

BASCOMBE AND THE MAGISTRATE.

After dinner, the cousins went to the summer-house, and there George

gave Helen his report, revealing his plan and hope for Leopold.

“Such fancies must be humoured, you know, Helen. There is nothing to be

gained by opposing them,” he said.

Helen looked at him with keen eyes, and he returned the gaze. The

confidence betwixt them was not perfect: each was doubtful as to the

thought of the other, and neither asked what it was.

“A fine old cock is Mr. Hooker!” said Greorge; “a jolly, good-natured,

brick-faced squire; a tory of course, and a sound church-man; as simple

as a baby, and took everything I told him without a hint of doubt

or objection;--just the sort of man I expected to find him! When I

mentioned my name, &c., he found he had known my father, and that gave

me a good start. Then I lauded his avenue, and apologized for troubling

him so early and on Sunday too, but said it was a pure work of mercy in

which I begged his assistance--as a magistrate, I added, lest he should

fancy I had come after a subscription. It was a very delicate case, I

said, in which were concerned the children of a man of whom he had, I

believed, at one time known something--General Lingard. ‘To be sure!’ he

cried; ‘knew him very well; a fine fellow--but hasty, sir--hasty in his

temper!’ I said I had never known him myself, but one of his children

was my cousin; the other was the child of his second wife, a Hindoo lady

unfortunately, and it was about him I presumed to trouble him. Then

I plunged into the matter at once, telling him that Leopold had had

violent brain-fever, brought on by a horrible drug, the use of which,

if use I dare call it, he had learnt in India; and that, although he had

recovered from the fever, it was very doubtful if ever he would recover

from the consequences of it, for that he had become the prey of a fixed

idea, the hard deposit from a heated imagination. ‘And pray what is the

idea?’ he asked. ‘Neither more nor less,’ I answered, ‘than that he is

a murderer!’--‘God bless me!’ he cried, somewhat to my alarm, for I

had been making all this preamble to prejudice the old gentleman in the

right direction, lest afterwards Leopold’s plausibility might be too

much for him. So I echoed the spirit of his exclamation, declaring it

was one of the saddest things I had ever known, that a fellow of such

sweet and gentle nature, one utterly incapable of unkindness, not to

say violence, should be so possessed by misery and remorse for a

phantom-deed, no more his than if he had dreamed it, a thing he not only

did not do, but never could have done. I had not yet however told him, I

said, what was perhaps the saddest point in the whole sad story--namely,

that the attack had been brought on by the news of the actual murder of

a lady to whom he had been passionately attached; the horror of it had

unhinged his reason, then turned and fastened upon his imagination;

so that he was now convinced beyond the reach of argument or even the

clearest proof, that it was his own hand that drove the knife to her

heart. Then I recalled to his memory the case as reported, adding that

the fact of the murderer’s prolonged evasion of justice, appeared,

by some curious legerdemain of his excited fancy, if not to have

suggested--of that I was doubtful--yet to have ripened his conviction

of guilt. Now nothing would serve him but he must give himself up,

confess--no, that was not a true word in his case!--accuse himself of

the crime, and meet his fate on the gallows,--‘in the hope, observe, my

dear sir,’ I said, ‘of finding her in the other world, and there making

it up with her!’--‘God bless me!’ he cried again, in a tone of absolute

horror. And every now and then, while I spoke, he would ejaculate

something; and still as he listened his eyes grew more and more

bloodshot with interest and compassion. ‘Ah, I see!’ he said then; ‘you

want to send him to a madhouse?--Don’t do it,’ he continued, in a tone

of expostulation, almost entreaty. ‘Poor boy! He may get over it. Let

his friends look to him. He has a sister, you say?’ I quickly reassured

him, telling him such was no one’s desire, and saying I would come

to the point in a moment, only there was one thing more which had

interested me greatly, as revealing how a brain in such a condition

will befool itself, all but generating two individualities.--There I

am afraid I put my foot in it, but he was far too simple to see it was

cloven--ha! ha! and I hastened to remark that, as a magistrate, he must

have numberless opportunities of noting similar phenomena. He waved

his hand in deprecation, and I hastened to remark that, up to a certain

point, whatever hint the newspapers had given, Leopold had expanded

and connected with every other, but that at one part of the story I had

found him entirely at fault: he could not tell what he did, where he

went, or how he had felt, first after the deed was done. He confessed

all after that was a blank until he found himself in bed. But when

I told him something he had not seen--which his worship might

remember--the testimony namely of the coast-guardsmen--about the

fishing-boat with the two men in it--I had here to refresh his memory

as to the whole of that circumstance--and did so by handing him the

newspaper containing it--that was what I made you give me the paper

for--I have lost the thread of my sentence, but never mind. I told

him then something I have not told you yet, Helen, namely, that when I

happened to allude to that portion of the story, Leopold started up with

flashing eyes, and exclaimed, ‘Now I remember! It all comes back to me

as clear as day. I remember running down the hill, and jumping into

the boat just as they shoved off. I was exhausted, and fell down in the

stern. When I came to myself, the two men were forward: I saw their legs

beneath the sails. I thought they would be sure to give me up, and at

once I slipped overboard. The water revived me, but when I reached the

shore, I fell down again, and lay there I don’t know how long. Indeed

I don’t remember anything more except very confusedly.’ That is what

Leopold said, and what I now told Mr. Hooker. Then at last I opened

my mind to him as to wherein I ventured to ask his assistance; and my

petition was, that he would allow me to bring Leopold, and would let him

go through the form of giving himself up to justice. Especially I begged

that he would listen to all he had to say, and give no sign that he

doubted his story. ‘And then, sir,’ I concluded, ‘I would leave it to

you to do what we cannot--reconcile him to going home instead of to

prison.’

“He sat with his head on his hand for a while, as if pondering some

weighty question of law. Then he said suddenly: ‘It is now almost

church-time. I will think the matter over. You may rely upon me. Will

you take a seat in my pew and dine with us after?’ I excused myself on

the ground that I must return at once to poor Leopold, who was anxiously

looking for me. And you must forgive me, Helen, and not fancy me

misusing Fanny, if I did yield to the temptation of a little longer

ride. I have scarcely more than walked her, with a canter now and then

when we had the chance of a bit of turf.”

Helen assured him with grateful eyes that she knew Fanny was as safe

with him as with herself; and she felt such a gush of gratitude follow

the revival of hope, that she was nearer being in love with her cousin

to ever before. Her gratitude inwardly delighted George, and he thought

the light in her blue eyes lovelier than ever; but although strongly

tempted, he judged it better to delay a formal confession until

circumstances should be more comfortable.

CHAPTER III.

THE CONFESSION.

All that and the following day Leopold was in spirits for him wonderful.

On Monday night there came a considerable reaction; he was dejected,

worn, and weary. Twelve o’clock the next day was the hour appointed

for their visit to Mr. Hooker, and at eleven he was dressed and

ready--restless, agitated, and very pale, but not a whit less determined

than at first. A drive was the pretext for borrowing Mrs. Ramshorn’s

carriage.

“Why is Mr. Wingfold not coming?” asked Lingard, anxiously, when it

began to move.

“I fancy we shall be quite as comfortable without him, Poldie,” said

Helen. “Did you expect him?”

“He promised to go with me. But he hasn’t called since the time was

fixed.”--Here Helen looked out of the window.--“I can’t think why it is.

I can do my duty without him though,” continued Leopold, “and perhaps it

is just as well.--Do you know, George, since I made up my mind, I have

seen her but once, and that was last night, and only in a dream.”

“A state of irresolution is one peculiarly open to unhealthy

impressions,” said George, good-naturedly disposing of his long legs so

that they should be out of the way.

Leopold turned from him to his sister.

“The strange thing, Helen,” he said, “was that I did not feel the least

afraid of her, or even abashed before her. ‘I see you,’ I said. ‘Be

at peace. I am coming; and you shall do to me what you will.’ And

then--what do you think?--O my God! she smiled one of her own old

smiles, only sad too, very sad, and vanished. I woke, and she

seemed only to have just left the room, for there was a stir in the

darkness.--Do you believe in ghosts, George?”

Leopold was not one of George’s initiated, I need hardly say.

“No,” answered Bascombe.

“I don’t wonder. I can’t blame you, for neither did I once. But just

wait till you have made one, George!”

“God forbid!” exclaimed Bascombe, a second time forgetting himself.

“Amen!” said Leopold: “for after that there’s no help but be one

yourself, you know.”

“If he would only talk like that to old Hooker!” thought George. “It

would go a long way to forestall any possible misconception of the

case.”

“I can’t think why Mr. Wingfold did not come yesterday,” resumed

Leopold. “I made sure he would.”

“Now, Poldie, you mustn’t talk,” said Helen, “or you’ll be exhausted

before we get to Mr. Hooker’s.”

“She did not wish the non-appearance of the curate on Monday to be

closely inquired into. His company at the magistrate’s was by all

possible means to be avoided. George had easily persuaded Helen, more

easily than he expected, to wait their return in the carriage, and the

two men were shown into the library, where the magistrate presently

joined them. He would have shaken hands with Leopold as well as George,

but the conscious felon drew back.

“No, sir; excuse me,” he said. “Hear what I have to tell you first;

and if after that you will shake hands with me, it will be a kindness

indeed. But you will not! you will not!”

Worthy Mr. Hooker was overwhelmed with pity at sight of the worn

sallow face with the great eyes, in which he found every appearance

confirmatory of the tale wherewith Bascombe had filled and prejudiced

every fibre of his judgment. He listened in the kindest way while the

poor boy forced the words of his confession from his throat. But

Leopold never dreamed of attributing his emotion to any other cause

than compassion for one who had been betrayed into such a crime. It was

against his will, for he seemed now bent, even to unreason, on fighting

every weakness, that he was prevailed upon to take a little wine. Having

ended, he sat silent, in the posture of one whose wrists are already

clasped by the double bracelet of steel.

Now Mr. Hooker had thought the thing out in church on the Sunday; and

after a hard run at the tail of a strong fox over a rough country on the

Monday, and a good sleep well into the morning of the Tuesday, could see

no better way. His device was simple enough.

“My dear young gentleman,” he said, “I am very sorry for you, but I must

do my duty.”

“That, sir, is what I came to you for,” answered Leopold, humbly.

“Then you must consider yourself my prisoner. The moment you, are gone,

I shall make notes of your deposition, and proceed to arrange for the

necessary formalities. As a mere matter of form, I shall take your own

bail in a thousand pounds to surrender when called upon.”

“But I am not of age, and haven’t got a thousand pounds,” said Leopold.

“Perhaps Mr. Hooker will accept my recognizance in the amount?” said

Bascombe.

“Certainly,” answered Mr. Hooker, and wrote something, which Bascombe

signed.

“You are very good, George,” said Leopold. “But you know I can’t run

away if I would,” he added with a pitiful attempt at a smile.

“I hope you will soon be better,” said the magistrate kindly.

“Why such a wish, sir?” returned Leopold, almost reproachfully, and the

good man stood abashed before him.

He thought of it afterwards, and was puzzled to know how it was.

“You must hold yourself in readiness,” he said, recovering himself with

an effort, “to give yourself up at any moment. And, remember, I shall

call upon you when I please, every week, perhaps, or oftener, to see

that you are safe. Your aunt is an old friend of mine, and there will be

no need of explanations. This turns out to be no common case, and after

hearing the whole, I do not hesitate to offer you my hand.”

Leopold was overcome by his kindness, and withdrew speechless, but

greatly relieved.

Several times during the course of his narrative, its apparent

truthfulness and its circumstantiality went nigh to stagger Mr. Hooker;

but a glance at Bascombe’s face, with its half-amused smile, instantly

set him right again, and he thought with dismay how near he had been to

letting himself be fooled by a madman.

Again in the carriage, Leopold laid his head on Helen’s shoulder, and

looked up in her face with such a smile as she had never seen on his

before. Certainly there was something in confession--if only enthusiasts

like Mr. Wingfold would not spoil all by pushing things to extremes and

turning good into bad!

Leopold was yet such a child, had so little occupied himself with things

about him, and had been so entirely taken up with his passion, and the

poetry of existence unlawfully forced, that if his knowledge of the

circumstances of Emmeline’s murder had depended on the newspapers, he

would have remained in utter ignorance concerning them. From the same

causes he was so entirely unacquainted with the modes of criminal

procedure, that the conduct of the magistrate never struck him as

strange, not to say illegal. And so strongly did he feel the good man’s

kindness and sympathy, that his comfort from making a clean breast of it

was even greater than he expected. Before they reached home he was fast

asleep. When laid on his couch, he almost fell asleep again, and Helen

saw him smile as he slept.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MASK.

But although such was George Bascombe’s judgment of Leopold, and such

his conduct of his affair, he could not prevent the recurrent intrusion

of the flickering doubt which had showed itself when first he listened

to the story. Amid all the wildness of the tale there was yet a certain

air, not merely of truthfulness in the narrator--that was not to be

questioned--but of verisimilitude in the narration, which had its

effect, although it gave rise to no conscious exercise of discriminating

or ponderating faculty. Leopold’s air of conviction also, although of

course that might well accompany the merest invention rooted in madness,

yet had its force, persistently as George pooh-poohed it--which he did

the more strenuously from the intense, even morbid abhorrence of his

nature to being taken in, and having to confess himself of unstable

intellectual equilibrium. Possibly this was not the only kind of thing

in which the sensitiveness of a vanity he would himself have disowned,

had rendered him unfit for perceiving the truth. Nor do I know how much

there may be to choose between the two shames--that of accepting what is

untrue, and that of refusing what is true.

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 with 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.

But amongst the rest, a feeling which had but lately begun to indicate

its far-off presence now threatened to bring with it a deeper and more

permanent sorrow: it became more and more plain to her that she had

taken the evil part against the one she loved best in the world; that

she had been as a Satan to him; had driven him back, stood almost bodily

in the way to turn him from the path of peace. Whether the path he had

sought to follow was the only one or not, it was the only one he knew;

and that it was at least A true one, was proved by the fact that he had

already found in it the beginnings of the peace he sought; while she,

for the avoidance of shame and pity, for the sake of the family, as she

had said to herself, had pursued a course which if successful, would at

best have resulted in shutting him up, as in a madhouse, with his

own inborn horrors, with vain remorse, and equally vain longing. Her

conscience, now that her mind was quieter, from the greater distance

to which the threatening peril had again withdrawn, had taken the

opportunity of speaking louder. And she listened--but still with one

question ever presented: Why might he not appropriate the consolations

of the gospel without committing the suicide of surrender? She could

not see that confession was the very door of refuge and safety, towards

which he must press.

George’s absence was now again a relief, and while she feared and

shrank from the severity of Wingfold, she could not help a certain

indescribable sense of safety in his presence--at least so long as

Leopold was too ill to talk.

For the curate, he became more and more interested in the woman who

could love so strongly, and yet not entirely, who suffered and must

still suffer so much, and who a faith even no greater than his own might

render comparatively blessed. The desire to help her grew and grew

in him, but he could see no way of reaching her. And then he began to

discover one peculiar advantage belonging to the little open chamber of

the pulpit--open not only or specially to heaven above, but to so many

of the secret chambers of the souls of the congregation. For what a

man dares not, could not if he dared, and dared not if he could, say to

another, even at the time and in the place fittest of all, he can say

thence, open-faced before the whole congregation; and the person in need

thereof may hear it without umbrage, or the choking husk of individual

application, irritating to the rejection of what truth may lie in it

for him. Would that our pulpits were all in the power of such men as by

suffering know the human, and by obedience the divine heart! Then would

the office of instruction be no more mainly occupied by the press, but

the faces of true men would everywhere be windows for the light of the

Spirit to enter other men’s souls, and the voice of their words would

follow with the forms of what truth they saw, and the power of the Lord

would speed from heart to heart. Then would men soon understand that not

the form of even soundest words availeth anything, but a new creature.

When Wingfold was in the pulpit, then, he could speak as from the

secret to the secret; but elsewhere he felt, in regard to Helen, like

a transport-ship filled with troops, which must go sailing around the

shores of an invaded ally, in frustrate search for a landing. Oh, to

help that woman, that the light of life might go up in her heart, and

her cheek bloom again with the rose of peace! But not a word could he

speak in her presence, for he heard everything he would have said as he

thought it would sound to her, and therefore he had no utterance. Is

it an infirmity of certain kinds of men, or a wise provision for their

protection, that the brightest forms the truth takes in their private

cogitations seem to lose half their lustre and all their grace when

uttered in the presence of an unreceptive nature, and they hear, as it

were, their own voice reflected in a poor, dull, inharmonious echo, and

are disgusted?

But, on the other hand, ever in the pauses of the rushing, ever in the

watery gleams of life that broke through the clouds and drifts of the

fever, Leopold sought his friend, and, finding him, shone into a brief

radiance, or, missing him, gloomed back into the land of visions. The

tenderness of the curate’s service, the heart that showed itself in

everything he did, even in the turn and expression of the ministering

hand, was a kind of revelation to Helen. For while his intellect was

hanging about the door, asking questions, and uneasily shifting hither

and thither in its unloved perplexities, the spirit of the master had

gone by it unseen, and entered into the chamber of his heart.

After preaching the sermon last recorded, there came a reaction of doubt

and depression on the mind of the curate, greater than usual. Had he not

gone farther than his right? Had he not implied more conviction than was

his? Words could not go beyond his satisfaction with what he found in

the gospel, or the hopes for the range of his conscious life springing

therefrom; but was he not now making people suppose him more certain of

the FACT of these things than he was? He was driven to console himself

with the reflection that so long as he had had no such intention, even

if he had been so carried away by the delight of his heart as to give

such an impression, it mattered little: what was it to other people what

he believed or how he believed? If he had not been untrue to himself,

no harm would follow. Was a man never to talk from the highest in him

to the forgetting of the lower? Was a man never to be carried beyond

himself and the regions of his knowledge? If so, then farewell poetry

and prophecy--yea, all grand discovery!--for things must be foreseen ere

they can be realized--apprehended ere they be comprehended. This much

he could say for himself, and no more, that he was ready to lay down his

life for the mere CHANCE, if he might so use the word, of these things

being true; nor did he argue any devotion in that, seeing life without

them would be to him a waste of unreality. He could bear witness to no

facts--but to the truth, to the loveliness and harmony and righteousness

and safety that he saw in the idea of the Son of Man--as he read it

in the story. He dared not say what, in a time of persecution, torture

might work upon him, but he felt right hopeful that, even were he base

enough to deny him, any cock might crow him back to repentance. At

the same time he saw plain enough that even if he gave his body to be

burned, it were no sufficing assurance of his Christianity: nothing

could satisfy him of that less than the conscious presence of the

perfect charity. Without that he was still outside the kingdom,

wandering in a dream around its walls.

Difficulties went on presenting themselves; at times he would be

overwhelmed in the tossing waves of contradiction and impossibility;

but still his head would come up into the air and he would get a breath

before he went down again. And with every fresh conflict, every fresh

gleam of doubtful victory, the essential idea of the master looked more

and more lovely. And he began to see the working of his doubts on the

growth of his heart and soul--both widening and realizing his faith, and

preventing it from becoming faith in an idea of God instead of in the

living God--the God beyond as well as in the heart that thought and

willed and imagined.

He had much time for reflection as he sat silent by the bedside of

Leopold. Sometimes Helen would be sitting near, though generally when

he arrived she went out for her walk, but never anything came to him he

could utter to her. And she was one of those who learn little from other

people. A change must pass upon her ere she could be rightly receptive.

Some vapour or other that clouded her being must be driven to the winds

first.

Mrs. Ramshorn had become at least reconciled to the frequent presence of

the curate, partly from the testimony of Helen, partly from the witness

of her own eyes to the quality of his ministrations. She was by no

means one of the loveliest among women, yet she had a heart, and could

appreciate some kinds of goodness which the arrogance of her relation to

the church did not interfere to hide--for nothing is so deadening to the

divine as an habitual dealing with the outsides of holy things--and she

became half-friendly and quite courteous when she met the curate on the

stair, and would now and then, when she thought of it, bring him a glass

of wine as he sat by the bedside.

CHAPTER VIII.

AN EXAMINATION.

The acquaintance between the draper and the gate-keeper rapidly ripened

into friendship. Very generally, as soon as he had shut his shop, Drew

would walk to the park-gate to see Polwarth; and three times a week at

least, the curate made one of the party. Much was then talked, more was

thought, and I venture to say, more yet was understood.

One evening the curate went earlier than usual, and had tea with the

Polwarths.

“Do you remember,” he asked of his host, “once putting to me the

question what our Lord came into this world for?”

“I do,” answered Polwarth.

“And you remember I answered you wrong: I said it was to save the

world.”

“I do. But remember, I said _primarily_, for of course he did come to

save the world.”

“Yes, just so you put it. Well, I think I can answer the question

correctly now, and in learning the true answer I have learned much.

Did he not come first of all to do the will of his Father? Was not his

Father first with him always and in everything--his fellow-men next--for

they were his Father’s?”

“I need not say it--you know that you are right. Jesus is tenfold a real

person to you--is he not--since you discovered that truth?”

“I think so; I hope so. It does seem as if a grand simple reality had

begun to dawn upon me out of the fog--the form as of a man pure and

simple, _because_ the eternal son of the Father.”

“And now, may I not ask--are you able to accept the miracles, things in

themselves so improbable?”

“If we suppose the question settled as to whether the man was what he

said, then all that remains is to ask whether the works reported of him

are consistent with what you can see of the character of the man.”

“And to you they seem--?”

“Some consistent, others not. Concerning the latter I look for more

light.”

“Meantime let me ask you a question about them. What was the main object

of miracles?”

“One thing at least I have learned, Mr. Polwarth and that is, not to

answer any question of yours in a hurry,” said Wingfold. “I will, if you

please, take this one home with me, and hold the light to it.”

“Do,” said Polwarth, “and you will find it return you the light

threefold.--One word more, ere Mr. Drew comes: do you still think of

giving up your curacy?”

“I have almost forgotten I ever thought of such a thing. Whatever

energies I may or may not have, I know one thing for certain, that I

could not devote them to anything else I should think entirely worth

doing. Indeed nothing else seems interesting enough--nothing to repay

the labour, but the telling of my fellow-men about the one man who is

the truth, and to know whom is the life. Even if there be no hereafter,

I would live my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true

if it is not. No facts can take the place of truths, and if these be not

truths, then is the loftiest part of our nature a waste. Let me hold

by the better than the actual, and fall into nothingness off the same

precipice with Jesus and John and Paul and a thousand more, who were

lovely in their lives, and with their death make even the nothingness

into which they have passed like the garden of the Lord. I will go

further, Polwarth, and say, I would rather die for evermore believing as

Jesus believed, than live for evermore believing as those that deny him.

If there be no God, I feel assured that existence is and could be but a

chaos of contradictions, whence can emerge nothing worthy to be called

a truth, nothing worth living for.--No, I will not give up my curacy. I

will teach that which IS good, even if there should be no God to make a

fact of it, and I will spend my life on it, in the growing hope, which

MAY become assurance, that there is indeed a perfect God, worthy of

being the Father of Jesus Christ, and that it was BECAUSE they are true,

that these things were lovely to me and to so many men and women, of

whom some have died for them, and some would be yet ready to die.”

“I thank my God to hear you say so. Nor will you stand still there,”

said Polwarth. “But here comes Mr. Drew!”

CHAPTER IX.

IMMORTALITY.

“How goes business?” said Polwarth, when the new-comer had seated

himself.

“That is hardly a question I look for from you, sir,” returned the

draper, smiling all over his round face, which looked more than ever

like a moon of superior intelligence. “For me, I am glad to leave it

behind me in the shop.”

“True business can never be left in any shop. It is a care, white or

black, that sits behind every horseman.”

“That is fact; and with me it has just taken a new shape,” said Drew,

“for I have come with quite a fresh difficulty. Since I saw you last,

Mr. Polwarth, a strange and very uncomfortable doubt has rushed in

upon me, and I find myself altogether unfit to tackle it. I have no

weapons--not a single argument of the least weight. I wonder if it be

a law of nature that no sooner shall a man get into a muddle with one

thing, than a thousand other muddles shall come pouring in upon him, as

if Muddle itself were going to swallow him up! Here am I just beginning

to get a little start in honester ways, when up comes the ugly head

of the said doubt, swelling itself more and more to look like a

fact--namely, that after this world there is nothing for us--nothing

at all to be had anyhow--that as we came so we go--into life, out of

life--that, having been nothing before, we shall be nothing after! The

flowers come back in the spring, and the corn in the autumn, but they

ain’t the same flowers or the same corn. They’re just as different as

the new generations of men.”

“There’s no pretence that we come back either. We only think we don’t go

into the ground, but away somewhere else.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“No.”

“And you don’t know anything about it!”

“Not much--but enough, I think.”

“Why, even those that profess to believe it, scoff at the idea of an

apparition--a ghost!”

“That’s the fault of the ghosts, I suspect--or their reporters. I don’t

care about them myself. I prefer the tale of one who, they say, rose

again, and brought his body with him.”

“Yes; but he was only one!”

“Except two or three whom, they say, he brought to life.”

“Still there are but three or four.”

“To tell you the truth, I do not care much to argue the point with

you.--It is by no means a matter of the FIRST importance whether we live

for ever or not.”

“Mr. Polwarth!” exclaimed the draper in such astonishment mingled with

horror, as proved he was not in immediate danger of becoming an advocate

of the doctrine of extinction.

The gate-keeper smiled what, but for a peculiar expression of

undefinable good in it, might have been called a knowing smile.

“Suppose a thing were in itself not worth having,” he said, “would it

be any great enhancement of it as a gift to add the assurance that the

possession of it was eternal! Most people think it a fine thing to have

a bit of land to call their own and leave to their children; but suppose

a stinking and undrainable swamp, full of foul springs--what consolation

would it be to the proprietor of that to know, while the world lasted,

not a human being would once dispute its possession with any fortunate

descendant holding it?”

The draper only stared, but his stare was a thorough one. The curate sat

waiting, with both amusement and interest, for what would follow: he saw

the direction in which the little man was driving.

“You astonish me!” said Mr. Drew, recovering his mental breath. “How

can you compare God’s gift to such a horrible thing! Where should we be

without life?”

Rachel burst out laughing, and the curate could not help joining her.

“Mr. Drew,” said Polwarth, half merrily, “are you going to help me drag

my chain out of its weary length, or are you too much shocked at the

doubtful condition of its links to touch them? I promise you the last

shall be of bright gold.”

“I beg your pardon,” said the draper; “I might have known you didn’t

mean it.”

“On the contrary, I mean everything I say and that literally. Perhaps

I don’t mean everything you fancy I mean.--Tell me then, would life be

worth having on any and every possible condition?”

“Certainly not.”

“You know some, I dare say, who would be glad to be rid of life such as

it is, and such as they suppose it must continue?”

“I don’t.”

“I do.”

“I have already understood that everybody clung to life.”

“Most people do; everybody certainly does not: Job, for instance.”

“They say that is but a poem.”

“BUT a poem! EVEN a poem--a representation true not of this or that

individual, but of the race! There ARE such persons as would gladly be

rid of life, and in their condition all would feel the same. Somewhat

similar is the state of those who profess unbelief in the existence

of God: none of them expect, and few of them seem to wish to live for

ever!--At least, so I am told.”

“That is no wonder,” said the draper; “--if they don’t believe in God, I

mean.”

“Then there I have you! There you allow life to be not worth having, if

on certain evil conditions.”

“I admit it, then.”

“And I repeat that to prove life endless is a matter of the FIRST

importance. And I will go a little farther.--Does it follow that life is

worth having because a man would like to have it for ever?”

“I should say so; who should be a better judge than the man himself?”

“Let us look at it a moment. Suppose--we will take a strong

case--suppose a man whose whole delight is in cruelty, and who has such

plentiful opportunity of indulging the passion that he finds it well

with him--such a man would of course desire such a life to endure for

ever: is such a life worth having? were it well that man should be

immortally cruel?”

“Not for others.”

“Still less, I say, for himself.”

“In the judgment of others, doubtless; but to himself he would be

happy.”

“Call his horrible satisfaction happiness then, and leave aside the

fact that in its own nature it is a horror, and not a bliss: a time must

come, when, in the exercise of his delight, he shall have destroyed all

life besides, and made himself alone with himself in an empty world:

will he then find life worth having?”

“Then he ought to live for punishment.”

“With that we have nothing to do now, but there you have given me an

answer to my question, whether a man’s judgment that his life is worth

having, proves immortality a thing to be desired.”

“I have. I understand now.”

“It follows that there is something of prior importance to the

possession of immortality:--what is that something?”

“I suppose that the immortality itself should be worth possessing.”

“Yes; that the life should be such that it were well it should be

endless.--And what then if it be not such?”

“The question then would be whether it could not be made such.”

“You are right.--And wherein consists the essential inherent worthiness

of a life as life?--The only perfect idea of life is--a unit,

self-existent, and creative. That is God, the only one. But to this

idea, in its kind, must every life, to be complete as life, correspond;

and the human correspondence to self-existence is, that the man should

round and complete himself by taking into himself that origin; by going

back and in his own will adopting his origin, rooting therein afresh

in the exercise of his own freedom and in all the energy of his own

self-roused will; in other words--that the man say ‘I will be after the

will of the creating _I_;’ that he see and say with his whole being

that to will the will of God in himself and for himself and concerning

himself, is the highest possible condition of a man. Then has he

completed his cycle by turning back upon his history, laying hold of his

cause, and willing his own being in the will of the only I AM. This is

the rounding, re-creating, unifying of the man. This is religion, and

all that gathers not with this, scatters abroad.”

“And then,” said Drew, with some eagerness, “lawfully comes the

question, ‘Shall I, or shall I not live for ever?’”

“Pardon me; I think not,” returned the little prophet. “I think rather

we have done with it for ever. The man with life so in himself, will not

dream of asking whether he shall live. It is only in the twilight of a

half-life, holding in it at once much wherefore it should desire its own

continuance, and much that renders it unworthy of continuance, that

the doubtful desire of immortality can arise.--Do you remember”--here

Polwarth turned to Wingfold--“my mentioning to you once a certain

manuscript of strange interest--to me at least and Rachel--which a

brother of mine left behind him?”

“I remember it perfectly,” answered the curate.

“It seems so to mingle with all I ever think on this question, that I

should much like, if you gentlemen would allow me, to read some extracts

from it.”

Nothing could have been heartier than the assurance of both the men that

they could but be delighted to listen to anything he chose to give them.

“I must first tell you, however,” said Polwarth, “merely to protect

you from certain disturbing speculations, otherwise sure to present

themselves, that my poor brother was mad, and that what I now read

portions of seemed to him no play of the imagination, but a record

of absolute fact. Some parts are stranger and less intelligible than

others, but through it all there is abundance of intellectual movement,

and what seems to me a wonderful keenness to perceive the movements and

arrest the indications of an imagined consciousness.”

As he spoke, the little man was opening a cabinet in which he kept his

precious things. He brought from it a good-sized quarto volume, neatly

bound in morocco, with gilt edges, which he seemed to handle not merely

with respect but with tenderness.

The heading of the next chapter is my own, and does not belong to the

manuscript.

CHAPTER X.

PASSAGES FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE WANDERING JEW.

“‘I have at length been ill, very ill, once more, and for many reasons

foreign to the weightiest, which I had forgotten, I had hoped that I was

going to die. But therein I am as usual deceived and disappointed.

That I have been out of my mind I know, by having returned to the real

knowledge of what I am. The conscious present has again fallen together

and made a whole with the past, and that whole is my personal identity.

“‘How I broke loose from the bonds of a madness, which, after so many

and heavy years of uninterrupted sanity, had at length laid hold upon

me, I will now relate.

“‘I had, as I have said, been very ill--with some sort of fever that

had found fit rooting in a brain overwearied, from not having been

originally constructed to last so long. Whether it came not of an

indwelling demon, or a legion of demons, I cannot tell--God knows.

Surely I was as one possessed. I was mad, whether for years, or but for

moments--who can tell? I cannot. Verily it seems for many years; but,

knowing well the truth concerning the relations of time in him that

dreameth and waketh from his dream, I place no confidence in the

testimony of the impressions left upon my seeming memory. I can however

trust it sufficiently as to the character of the illusions that then

possessed me. I imagined myself an Englishman called Polwarth, of an

ancient Cornish family. Indeed, I had in my imagination, as Polwarth,

gone through the history, every day of it, with its sunrise and sunset,

of more than half a lifetime. I had a brother who was deformed and a

dwarf, and a daughter who was like him; and the only thing, throughout

the madness, that approached a consciousness of my real being and

history, was the impression that these things had come upon me because

of a certain grievous wrong I had at one time committed, which wrong,

however, I had quite forgotten--and could ill have imagined in its

native hideousness.

“‘But one morning, just as I woke, after a restless night filled with

dreams, I was aware of a half-embodied shadow in my mind--whether

thought or memory or imagination, I could not tell: and the strange

thing was, that it darkly radiated from it the conviction that I must

hold and identify it, or be for ever lost to myself. Therefore, with

all the might of my will to retain the shadow, and all the energy of

my recollection to recall that of which it was the vague shadow, I

concentrated the whole power of my spiritual man upon the phantom

thought, to fix and retain it.

“‘Everyone knows what it is to hunt such a formless fact. Evanescent as

a rainbow, its whole appearance, from the first, is that of a thing in

the act of vanishing. It is a thing that was known, but, from the moment

consciousness turned its lantern upon it, began to become invisible.

For a time, during the close pursuit that follows, it seems only to be

turning corner after corner to evade the mind’s eye, but behind every

corner it leaves a portion of itself; until at length, although when

finally cannot be told, it is gone so utterly that the mind remains

aghast in the perplexity of the doubt whether ever there was a thought

there at all.

“‘Throughout my delusion of an English existence, I had been tormented

in my wakings with such thought-phantoms, and ever had I followed them,

as an idle man may follow a flitting marsh-fire. Indeed, I had grown so

much interested in the phenomenon and its possible indications that I

had invented various theories to account for them, some of which seemed

to myself original and ingenious, while the common idea that they are

vague reminiscences of a former state of being, I had again and again

examined, and as often entirely rejected, as in no way tenable or

verisimilar.

“‘But upon the morning to which I have referred, I succeeded, for the

first time, in fixing, capturing, identifying the haunting, fluttering

thing. That moment the bonds of my madness were broken. My past returned

upon me. I had but to think in any direction, and every occurrence, with

time and place and all its circumstance, rose again before me. The awful

fact of my own being once more stood bare--awful always--tenfold more

awful after such a period of blissful oblivion thereof: I was, I had

been, I am now, as I write, the man so mysterious in crime, so unlike

all other men in his punishment, known by various names in various

lands--here in England as the Wandering Jew. Ahasuerus was himself

again, alas!--himself and no other. Wife, daughter, brother vanished,

and returned only in dreams. I was and remain the wanderer, the undying,

the repentant, the unforgiven. O heart! O weary feet! O eyes that have

seen and never more shall see, until they see once and are blinded for

ever! Back upon my soul rushes the memory of my deed, like a storm of

hail mingled with fire, flashing through every old dry channel, that it

throbs and writhes anew, scorched at once and torn with the poisonous

burning.”

CHAPTER XI.

THE WANDERING JEW.

“‘It was a fair summer-morning in holy Jerusalem, and I sat and wrought

at my trade, for I sewed a pair of sandals for the feet of the high

priest Caiaphas. And I wrought diligently, for it behoved me to cease an

hour ere set of sun, for it was the day of preparation for the eating of

the Passover.

“‘Now all that night there had been a going to and fro in the city, for

the chief priests and their followers had at length laid hands upon him

that was called Jesus, whom some believed to be the Messiah, and others,

with my fool-self amongst them, an arch-impostor and blasphemer. For I

was of the house of Caiaphas, and heartily did desire that the man my

lord declared a deceiver of the people, should meet with the just reward

of his doings. Thus I sat and worked, and thought and rejoiced; and the

morning passed and the noon came.

“‘It was a day of sultry summer, and the street burned beneath the

sun, and I sat in the shadow and looked out upon the glare; and ever I

wrought at the sandals of my lord, with many fine stitches, in cunning

workmanship. All had been for some time very still, when suddenly I

thought I heard a far-off tumult. And soon came the idle children, who

ever run first that they be not swallowed up of the crowd; and they ran

and looked behind as they ran. And after them came the crowd, crying and

shouting, and swaying hither and thither; and in the midst of it arose

the one arm of a cross, beneath the weight of which that same Jesus

bent so low that I saw him not. Truly, said I, he hath not seldom borne

heavier burdens in the workshop of his father the Galilean, but now his

sins and his idleness have found him, and taken from him his vigour; for

he that despiseth the law shall perish, while they that wait upon the

Lord shall renew their strength. For I was wroth with the man who taught

the people to despise the great ones that administered the law, and give

honour to the small ones who only kept it. Besides, he had driven my

father’s brother from the court of the Gentiles with a whip, which truly

hurt him not outwardly, but stung him to the soul; and yet that very

temple which he pretended thus to honour, he had threatened to destroy

and build again in three days! Such were the thoughts of my heart; and

when I learned from the boys that it was in truth Jesus of Nazareth who

passed on his way to Calvary to be crucified, my heart leaped within me

at the thought that the law had at length overtaken the malefactor. I

laid down the sandal and my awl, and rose and went forth and stood in

the front of my shop. And Jesus drew nigh, and as he passed, lo, the end

of the cross dragged upon the street. And one in the crowd came behind,

and lifted it up and pushed therewith, so that Jesus staggered and had

nigh fallen. Then would be fain have rested the arm of the cross on the

stone by which I was wont to go up into my shop from the street. But I

cried out, and drove him thence, saying scornfully, “Go on Jesus; go on.

Truly thou restest not on stone of mine!” Then turned he his eyes upon

me, and said, “I go indeed, but thou goest not;” and therewith he rose

again under the weight of the cross, and staggered on,

“‘And I followed in the crowd to Calvary.’”

Here the reader paused and said,

“I can give you but a few passages now. You see it is a large

manuscript. I will therefore choose some of those that bear upon

the subject of which we have been talking. A detailed account of the

crucifixion follows here, which I could not bring myself to read aloud.

The eclipse is in it, and the earthquake, and the white faces of the

risen dead gleaming through the darkness about the cross. It ends thus:

“‘And all the time, I stood not far from the foot of the cross, nor

dared go nearer, for around it were his mother and they that were with

her, and my heart was sore for her also. And I would have withdrawn my

foot from the place where I stood, and gone home to weep, but something,

I know not what, held me there as it were rooted to the ground. At

length the end was drawing near. He opened his mouth and spake to his

mother and the disciple who stood by her, but truly I know not what

he said, for as his eyes turned from them, they looked upon me, and my

heart died within me. He said nought, but his eyes had that in them that

would have slain me with sorrow, had not death, although I knew it

not, already shrunk from my presence, daring no more come nigh such a

malefactor.--Oh Death, how gladly would I build thee a temple, set thee

in a lofty place, and worship thee with the sacrifice of vultures on

a fire of dead men’s bones, wouldst thou but hear my cry!--But I rave

again in my folly! God forgive me. All the days of my appointed time

will I wait until my change come.--With that look--a well of everlasting

tears in my throbbing brain--my feet were unrooted, and I fled.’”

Here the reader paused again, and turned over many leaves.

“‘And ever as I passed at night through the lands, when I came to a

cross by the wayside, thereon would I climb, and, winding my arms about

its arms and my feet about its stem, would there hang in the darkness

or the moon, in rain or hail, in wind or snow or frost, until my sinews

gave way, and my body dropped, and I knew no more until I found myself

lying at its foot in the morning. For, ever in such case, I lay without

sense until again the sun shone upon me.

“‘... And if ever the memory of that look passed from me, then,

straightway I began to long for death, and so longed until the memory

and the power of the look came again, and with the sorrow in my soul

came the patience to live. And truly, although I speak of forgetting

and remembering, such motions of my spirit in me were not as those of

another man; in me they are not measured by the scale of men’s lives;

they are not of years, but of centuries; for the seconds of my life are

ticked by a clock whose pendulum swings through an arc of motionless

stars.

“‘... Once I had a vision of Death. Methinks it must have been a

precursive vapour of the madness that afterwards infolded me, for I know

well that there is not one called Death, that he is but a word needful

to the weakness of human thought and the poverty of human speech; that

he is a no-being, and but a change from that which is.--I had a vision

of Death, I say. And it was on this wise: