“‘I was walking over a wide plain of sand, like Egypt, so that ever and

anon I looked around me to see if nowhere, from the base of the horizon,

the pyramids cut their triangle out of the blue night of heaven; but I

saw none. The stars came down and sparkled on the dry sands, and all

was waste, and wide desolation. The air also was still as the air of a

walled-up tomb, where there are but dry bones, and not even the wind of

an evil vapour that rises from decay. And through the dead air came ever

the low moaning of a distant sea, towards which my feet did bear me. I

had been journeying thus for years, and in their lapse it had grown

but a little louder.--Suddenly I was aware that I was not alone. A dim

figure strode beside me, vague, but certain of presence. And I feared

him not, seeing that which men fear the most was itself that which by me

was the most desired. So I stood and turned and would have spoken. But

the shade that seemed not a shadow, went on and regarded me not. Then

I also turned again towards the moaning of the sea and went on. And lo!

the shade which had gone before until it seemed but as a vapour among

the stars, was again by my side walking. And I said, and stood not, but

walked on: Thou shade that art not a shadow, seeing there shineth no sun

or moon, and the stars are many, and the one slayeth the shadow of the

other, what art thou, and wherefore goest thou by my side? Think not to

make me afraid, for I fear nothing in the universe but that which I love

the best.--I spake of the eyes of the Lord Jesus.--Then the shade that

seemed no shadow answered me and spake and said: Little knowest thou

what I am, seeing the very thing thou sayest I am not, that I am, and

nought else, and there is no other but me. I am Shadow, the shadow, the

only shadow--none such as those from which the light hideth in terror,

yet like them, for life hideth from me and turneth away, yet if life

were not, neither were I, for I am nothing; and yet again, as soon as

anything is, there am I, and needed no maker, but came of myself, for

I am Death.--Ha! Death! I cried, and would have cast myself before

him with outstretched arms of worshipful entreaty; but lo, there was a

shadow upon the belt of Orion, and no shadow by my side! and I sighed,

and walked on towards the ever moaning sea. Then again the shadow was by

my side. And again I spake and said: Thou thing of flitting and return,

I despise thee, for thou wilt not abide the conflict. And I would have

cast myself upon him and wrestled with him there, for defeat and not

for victory. But I could not lay hold upon him. Thou art a powerless

nothing, I cried; I will not even defy thee.--Thou wouldst provoke me,

said the shadow; but it availeth not. I cannot be provoked. Truly, I

am but a shadow, yet know I my own worth, for I am the Shadow of the

Almighty, and where he is, there am I--Thou art nothing, I said.--Nay,

nay, I am not Nothing. Thou, nor any man--God only knoweth what that

word meaneth. I am but the shadow of Nothing, and when THOU sayest

NOTHING, thou meanest only me; but what God meaneth when he sayeth

NOTHING--the nothing without him, that nothing which is no shadow but

the very substance of Unbeing--no created soul can know.--Then art thou

not Death? I asked.--I am what thou thinkest of when thou sayest Death,

he answered, but I am not Death.--Alas, then! why comest thou to me in

the desert places, for I did think thou wast Death indeed, and couldst

take me unto thee so that I should be no more.--That is what death

cannot do for thee, said the shadow; none but he that created thee can

cause that thou shouldst be no more. Thou art until he will that thou

be not. I have heard it said amongst the wise that, hard as it is to

create, it is harder still to uncreate. Truly I cannot tell. But wouldst

thou be uncreated by the hand of Death? Wouldst thou have thy no-being

the gift of a shadow?--Then I thought of the eyes of the Lord Jesus, and

the look he cast upon me, and I said, No: I would not be carried away of

Death. I would be fulfilled of Life, and stand before God for ever. Then

once again the belt of Orion grew dim, and I saw the shadow no more. And

yet did I long for Death, for I thought he might bring me to those eyes,

and the pardon that lay in them.

“‘But again, as the years went on, and each brought less hope than

that before it, I forgot the look the Lord had cast upon me, and in the

weariness of the life that was mortal and yet would not cease, in the

longing after the natural end of that which against nature endured, I

began to long even for the end of being itself. And in a city of the

Germans, I found certain men of my own nation who said unto me: Fear

not, Ahasuerus; there is no life beyond the grave. Live on until thy

end come, and cease thy complaints. Who is there among us who would

not gladly take upon him thy judgment, and live until he was weary of

living?--Yea, but to live after thou art weary? I said. But they heeded

me not, answering me and saying: Search thou the Scriptures, even the

Book of the Law, and see if thou find there one leaf of this gourd of a

faith that hath sprung up in a night. Verily, this immortality is but

a flash in the brain of men that would rise above their fate. Sayeth

Moses, or sayeth Job, or sayeth David or Daniel a word of the matter?

And I listened unto them, and became of their mind. But therewithal the

longing after death returned with tenfold force and I rose up and girt

my garment about me, and went forth once more to search for him whom

I now took for the porter of the gate of eternal silence and unfelt

repose. And I said unto myself as I walked: What in the old days was

sweeter when I was weary with my labour at making of shoes, than to find

myself dropping into the death of sleep! how much sweeter then must

it not be to sink into the sleepiest of sleeps, the father-sleep, the

mother-bosomed death of nothingness and unawaking rest! Then shall all

this endless whir of the wheels of thought and desire be over; then

welcome the night whose darkness doth not seethe, and which no morning

shall ever stir!

“‘And wherever armies were drawing nigh, each to the other, and the day

of battle was near, thither I flew in hot haste, that I might be first

upon the field, and ready to welcome hottest peril. I fought not, for I

would not slay those that counted it not the good thing to be slain, as

I counted it. But had the armies been of men that loved death like me,

how had I raged among them then, even as the angel Azrael to give them

their sore-desired rest! for I loved and hated not my kind, and would

diligently have mown them down out of the stinging air of life into the

soft balm of the sepulchre. But what they sought not, and I therefore

would not give, that searched I after the more eagerly for myself.

And my sight grew so keen that, when yet no bigger than a mote in the

sunbeam, I could always descry the vulture-scout, hanging aloft over

the field of destiny. Then would I hasten on and on, until a swoop would

have brought him straight on my head.

“‘And with that a troop of horsemen, horses and men mad with living

fear, came with a level rush towards the spot where I sat, faint with

woe. And I sprang up, and bounded to meet them, throwing my arms aloft

and shouting, as one who would turn a herd. And like a wave of the

rising tide before a swift wind, a wave that sweeps on and breaks not,

they came hard-buffeting over my head. Ah! that was a torrent indeed!--a

thunderous succession of solid billows, alive, hurled along by the

hurricane-fear in the heart of them! For one moment only I felt and knew

what I lay beneath, and then for a time there was nothing.--I woke in

silence, and thought I was dying, that I had all but passed across the

invisible line between, and in a moment there would be for evermore

nothing and nothing. Then followed again an empty space as it seemed.

And now I am dead and gone, I said, and shall wander no more. And with

that came the agony of hell, for, lo, still _I_ THOUGHT! And I said to

myself, Alas! O God! for, notwithstanding I no more see or hear or

taste or smell or touch, and my body hath dropped from me, still am I

Ahasuerus, the Wanderer, and must go on and on and on, blind and

deaf, through the unutterable wastes that know not the senses of

man--nevermore to find rest! Alas! death is not death, seeing he slayeth

but the leathern bottle, and spilleth not the wine of life upon the

earth. Alas! alas! for I cannot die! And with that a finger twitched,

and I shouted aloud for joy: I was yet in the body! And I sprang to my

feet jubilant, and, lame and bruised and broken-armed, tottered away

after Death, who yet might hold the secret of eternal repose. I was

alive, but yet there was hope, for Death was yet before me! I was alive,

but I had not died, and who could tell but I might yet find the lovely

night that hath neither clouds nor stars! I had not passed into the land

of the dead and found myself yet living! The wise men of my nation in

the city of the Almains might yet be wise! And for an hour I rejoiced,

and was glad greatly.’”

CHAPTER XII.

THE WANDERING JEW.

“It was midnight, and sultry as hell. All day not a breath had stirred.

The country through which I passed was level as the sea that had once

flowed above it. My heart had almost ceased to beat, and I was weary as

the man who is too weary to sleep outright, and labours in his dreams.

I slumbered and yet walked on. My blood flowed scarce faster than the

sluggish water in the many canals I crossed on my weary way. And ever I

thought to meet the shadow that was and was not death. But this was no

dream. Just on the stroke of midnight, I came to the gate of a large

city, and the watchers let me pass. Through many an ancient and lofty

street I wandered, like a ghost in a dream, knowing no one, and caring

not for myself, and at length reached an open space where stood a great

church, the cross upon whose spire seemed bejewelled with the stars upon

which it dwelt. And in my soul I said, O Lord Jesus! and went up to the

base of the tower, and found the door thereof open to my hand. Then with

my staff I ascended the winding stairs, until I reached the open sky.

And the stairs went still winding, on and on, up towards the stars. And

with my staff I ascended, and arose into the sky, until I stood at the

foot of the cross of stone.

“‘Ay me! how the centuries without haste, without rest, had glided along

since I stood by the cross of dishonour and pain! And God had not grown

weary of his life yet, but I had grown so weary in my very bones that

weariness was my element, and I had ceased almost to note it. And now,

high-uplifted in honour and worship over every populous city, stood

the cross among the stars! I scrambled up the pinnacles, and up on the

carven stem of the cross, for my sinews were as steel, and my muscles

had dried and hardened until they were as those of the tiger or the

great serpent. So I climbed, and lifted up myself until I reached the

great arms of the cross, and over them I flung my arms, as was my wont,

and entwined the stem with my legs, and there hung, three hundred feet

above the roofs of the houses. And as I hung the moon rose and cast the

shadow of me Ahasuerus upon the cross, up against the Pleiades. And as

if dull Nature were offended thereat, nor understood the offering of my

poor sacrifice, the clouds began to gather, like the vultures--no one

could have told whence. From all sides around they rose, and the moon

was blotted out, and they gathered and rose until they met right over

the cross. And when they closed, then the lightning brake forth, and

the thunder with it, and it flashed and thundered above and around

and beneath me, so that I could not tell which voice belonged to which

arrow, for all were mingled in one great confusion and uproar. And the

people in the houses below heard the sound of the thunder, and they

looked from their windows, and they saw the storm raving and flashing

about the spire, which stood the heart of the agony, and they saw

something hang there, even upon its cross, in the form of a man, and

they came from their houses, and the whole space beneath was filled with

people, who stood gazing up at the marvel. A MIRACLE! A MIRACLE! they

cried; and truly it was no miracle--it was only me Ahasuerus, the

wanderer taking thought concerning his crime against the crucified. Then

came a great light all about me, such light for shining as I had never

before beheld, and indeed I saw it not all with my eyes, but the greater

part with my soul, which surely is the light of the eyes themselves. And

I said to myself, Doubtless the Lord is at hand, and he cometh to me as

late to the blessed Saul of Tarsus, who was NOT the chief of sinners,

but I--Ahasuerus, the accursed. And the thunder burst like the bursting

of a world in the furnace of the sun; and whether it was that the

lightning struck me, or that I dropped, as was my custom, outwearied

from the cross, I know not, but thereafter I lay at its foot among the

pinnacles, and when the people looked again, the miracle was over, and

they returned to their houses and slept. And the next day, when I sought

the comfort of the bath, I found upon my side the figure of a cross, and

the form of a man hanging thereupon as I had hung, depainted in a dark

colour as of lead plain upon the flesh of my side over my heart. Here

was a miracle indeed! but verily I knew not whether therefrom to gather

comfort or despair.

“‘And it was night as I went into a village among the mountains, through

the desert places of which I had all that day been wandering. And never

before had my condition seemed to me so hopeless. There was not one left

upon the earth who had ever seen me knowing me, and although there went

a tale of such a man as I, yet faith had so far vanished from the earth

that for a thing to be marvellous, however just, was sufficient reason

wherefore no man, to be counted wise, should believe the same. For the

last fifty years I had found not one that would receive my testimony.

For when I told them the truth concerning myself, saying as I now say,

and knowing the thing for true--that I was Ahasuerus whom the Word

had banished from his home in the regions governed of Death, shutting

against him the door of the tomb that he should not go in, every man

said I was mad, and would hold with me no manner of communication,

more than if I had been possessed with a legion of swine-loving demons.

Therefore was I cold at heart, and lonely to the very root of my being.

And thus it was with me that midnight as I entered the village among the

mountains.--Now all therein slept, so even that not a dog barked at the

sound of my footsteps. But suddenly, and my soul yet quivers with dismay

at the remembrance, a yell of horror tore its way from the throat of

every sleeper at once, and shot into every cranny of the many-folded

mountains, that my soul knocked shaking against the sides of my body,

and I also shrieked aloud with the keen terror of the cry. For surely

there was no sleeper there, man, woman, or child, who yelled not aloud

in an agony of fear. And I knew that it could only be because of the

unseen presence in their street of the outcast, the homeless, the

loveless, the wanderer for ever, who had refused a stone to his maker

whereon to rest his cross. Truly I know not whence else could have come

that cry. And I looked to see that all the inhabitants of the village

should rush out upon me, and go for to slay the unslayable in their

agony. But the cry passed, and after the cry came again the stillness.

And for very dread lest yet another such cry should enter my ears, and

turn my heart to a jelly, I did hasten my steps to leave the dwellings

of the children of the world, and pass out upon the pathless hills

again. But as I turned and would have departed, the door of a house

opened over against where I stood; and as it opened, lo! a sharp gust

of wind from the mountains swept along the street, and out into the wind

came running a girl, clothed only in the garment of the night. And the

wind blew upon her, and by the light of the moon I saw that her hands

and her feet were rough and brown, as of one that knew labour and

hardship, but yet her body was dainty and fair, and moulded in

loveliness. Her hair blew around her like a rain cloud, so that it

almost blinded her, and truly she had much ado to clear it from her

face, as a half-drowned man would clear from his face the waters whence

he hath been lifted; and like two stars of light from amidst the cloud

gazed forth the eyes of the girl. And she looked upon me with the

courage of a child, and she said unto me, Stranger, knowest thou

wherefore was that cry? Was it thou who did so cry in our street in

the night? And I answered her and said, Verily not I, maiden, but I too

heard the cry, and it shook my soul within me.--What seemed it unto thee

like, she asked, for truly I slept, and know only the terror thereof

and not the sound? And I said, It seemed unto me that every soul in the

village cried out at once in some dream of horror.--I cried not out, she

said; for I slept and dreamed, and my dream was such that I know verily

I cried not out. And the maiden was lovely in her innocence. And I said:

And was thy dream such, maiden, that thou wouldst not refuse but wouldst

tell it to an old man like me? And with that the wind came down from the

mountain like a torrent of wolves, and it laid hold upon me and swept

me from the village, and I fled before it, and could not stay my steps

until I got me into the covert of a hollow rock.

“‘And scarce had I turned in thither when, lo! thither came the maiden

also, flying in my footsteps, and driven of the self-same mighty wind.

And I turned in pity and said, Fear not, my child. Here is but an old

man with a sore and withered heart, and he will not harm thee.--I fear

thee not, she answered, else would I not have followed thee.--Thou didst

not follow me of thine own inclining, I said, but the wind that

came from the mountains and swept me before it, did bear thee after

me.--Truly I know of no wind, she said, but the wind of my own following

of thee. Wherefore didst thou flee from me?--Nay! but wherefore didst

thou follow me, maiden?--That I might tell thee my dream to the which

thou didst desire to hearken. For, lo! as I slept I dreamed that a man

came unto me and said, Behold, I am the unresting and undying one, and

my burden is greater than I can bear, for Death who befriendeth all is

my enemy, and will not look upon me in peace. And with that came the

cry, and I awoke, and ran out to see whence came the cry, and found thee

alone in the street. And as God liveth, such as was the man in my dream,

such art thou in my waking sight.--Not the less must I ask thee again,

I said, wherefore didst thou follow me?--That I may comfort thee,

she answered.--And how thinkest thou to comfort one whom God hath

forsaken?--That cannot be, she said, seeing that in a vision of the

night he sent thee unto me, and so now hath sent me unto thee. Therefore

will I go with thee, and minister unto thee.--Bethink thee well what

thou doest, I said; and before thou art fully resolved, sit thee down by

me in this cave, that I may tell thee my tale. And straightway she

sat down, and I told her all. And ere I had finished the sun had

risen.--Then art thou now alone, said the maiden, and hast no one to

love thee?--No one, I answered, man, woman, or child.--Then will I go

with thee, for I know neither father nor mother, and no one hath power

over me, for I keep goats on the mountains for wages, and if thou wilt

but give me bread to eat I will serve thee. And a great love arose in my

heart to the maiden. And I left her in the cave, and went to the nearest

city, and returned thence with garments and victuals. And I loved the

maiden greatly. And although my age was then marvellous being over

and above a thousand and seven hundred years, yet found she my person

neither pitiful nor uncomely, for I was still in body even such as when

the Lord Jesus spake the word of my doom. And the damsel loved me, and

was mine. And she was as the apple of mine eye. And the world was no

more unto me as a desert, but it blossomed as the rose of Sharon. And

although I knew every city upon it, and every highway and navigable

sea, yet did all become to me fresh and new because of the joy which the

damsel had in beholding its kingdoms and the glories thereof.

“‘And it came to pass that my heart grew proud within me, and I said to

myself that I was all-superior to other men, for Death could not touch

me; that I was a marvel upon the face of the world; and in this yet more

above all men that had ever lived, that at such an age as mine I could

yet gain the love, yea, the absolute devotion, of such an one as my

wife, who never wearied of my company and conversation. So I took to me

even the free grace of love as my merit unto pride, and laid it not to

the great gift of God and the tenderness of the heart of my beloved.

Like Satan in Heaven I was uplifted in the strength and worthiness and

honour of my demon-self, and my pride went not forth in thanks, for I

gloried not in my God, but in Ahasuerus. Then the thought smote me

like an arrow of lightning: She will die, and thou shalt

live--live--live--and as he hath delayed, so will he yet delay his

coming. And as Satan from the seventh heaven, I fell prone.

“‘Then my spirit began again to revive within me, and I said, Lo! I have

yet many years of her love ere she dieth, and when she is gone, I shall

yet have the memory of my beloved to be with me, and cheer me, and bear

me up, for I may never again despise that which she hath loved as she

hath loved me. And yet again a thought smote me, and it was as an arrow

of the lightning, and its barb was the truth: But she will grow old, it

said, and will wither before thy face, and be as the waning moon in

the heavens. And my heart cried out in an agony. But my will sought to

comfort my heart, and said, Cry not out, for, in spite of old age as in

spite of death, I will love her still. Then something began to writhe

within me, and to hiss out words that gathered themselves unto this

purpose: But she will grow unlovely, and wrinkled, and dark of hue, and

the shape of her body will vanish, and her form be unformed, and her

eyes will grow small and dim, and creep back into her head, and her hair

will fall from her, and she shall be as the unsightly figure of Death

with a skin drawn over his unseemly bones; and the damsel of thy love,

with the round limbs and the flying hair, and the clear eyes out of

which looketh a soul clear as they, will be nowhere--nowhere, for

evermore, for thou wilt not be able to believe that she it is who

standeth before thee: how will it be with thee then? And what mercy

is his who hath sent thee a growing loss in the company of this woman?

Thereupon I rose in the strength of my agony and went forth. And I said

nothing unto my wife, but strode to the foot of the great mountain,

whose entrails were all aglow, and on whose sides grew the palm and the

tree-bread and the nut of milk. And I climbed the mountain, nor once

looked behind me, but climbed to the top. And there for one moment I

stood in the stock-dullness of despair. And beneath me was the great

fiery gulf, outstretched like a red lake skinned over with black ice,

through the cracks wherein shone the blinding fire. Every moment here

and there a great liquid bubbling would break through the crust, and

make a wallowing heap upon the flat, then sink again, leaving an open

red well-pool of fire whence the rays shot up like flame, although flame

there was none. It lay like the back of some huge animal upheaved out of

hell, which was wounded and bled fire.--Now, in the last year of my

long sojourn, life had again, because of the woman that loved me, become

precious unto me, and more than once had I laughed as I caught myself

starting back from some danger in a crowded street, for the thing was

new to me, so utterly had the care of my life fallen into disuse with

me. But now again in my misery I thought no more of danger, but went

stalking and sliding down the slipery slope of the huge fire-cup, and

out upon the lake of molten earth--molten as when first it shot from the

womb of the sun, of whose ardour, through all the millions of years, it

had not yet cooled. And as once St. Peter on the stormy water to find

the Lord of Life, so walked I on the still lake of fire, caring neither

for life nor death. For my heart was withered to the roots by the

thought of the decay of her whom I had loved; for would not then her

very presence every hour be causing me to forget the beauty that had

once made me glad?--I had walked some ten furlongs, and passed the

middle of the lake, when suddenly I bethought me that she would marvel

whither I had gone, and set out to seek me, and something might befall

her, and I should lose my rose ere its leaves had begun to drop. And I

turned and strode again in haste across the floor of black heat, broken

and seamed with red light. And lo! as I neared the midst of the lake,

a form came towards me, walking in the very footsteps I had left behind

me, nor had I to look again to know the gracious motion of my beloved.

And the black ice broke at her foot, and the fire shone up on her face,

and it was lovely as an angel of God, and the glow of her love outshone

the glow of the nether fire. And I called not to stay her foot, for

I judged that the sooner she was with me, the sooner would she be in

safety, for I knew how to walk thereon better than she. And my heart

sang a song within me in praise of the love of woman, but I thought only

of the love of my woman to me, whom the fires of hell could not hold

back from him who was worthy of her love; and my heart sent the song up

to my lips; but, as the first word arose, sure itself a red bubble from

the pit of glowing hell, the black crust burst up between us, and a

great hillock of seething, slow-spouting, slow-falling, mad red fire

arose. For a moment or two the molten mound bubbled and wallowed, then

sank--and I saw not my wife. Headlong I plunged into the fiery pool at

my feet, and the clinging torture hurt me not, and I caught her in my

arms, and rose to the surface, and crept forth, and shook the fire from

mine eyes, and lo! I held to my bosom but as the fragment of a cinder

of the furnace. And I laughed aloud in my madness, and the devils below

heard me, and laughed yet again. O Age! O Decay! I cried, see how I

triumph over thee: what canst thou do to this? And I flung the cinder

from me into the pool, and plunged again into the grinning fire. But

it cast me out seven times, and the seventh time I turned from it,

and rushed out of the valley of burning, and threw myself on the

mountain-side in the moonlight, and awoke mad.

“‘And what I had then said in despair, I said yet again in thankfulness.

O Age! O Decay! I cried, what canst thou now do to destroy the image of

her which I bear nested in my heart of hearts? That at least is safe,

I thank God. And from that hour I never more believed that I should die

when at length my body dropped from me. If the thought came, it came as

a fear, and not as a thing concerning which a man may say I would or

I would not. For a mighty hope had arisen within me that yet I should

stand forgiven in the eyes of him that was crucified, and that in token

of his forgiveness he would grant me to look again, but in peace, upon

the face of her that had loved me. O mighty Love, who can tell to what

heights of perfection thou mayest yet rise in the bosom of the meanest

who followeth the Crucified!’”

CHAPTER XIII.

REMARKS.

Polwarth closed the manuscript, and for a time no one spoke.

“The man who wrote that book,” said Wingfold, “could not have been all

out of his right mind.”

“I must confess to you,” returned Polwarth, “that I have chosen some

of the more striking passages--only some of them however. One thing is

pretty clear--that, granted the imagined conditions, within that circle

the writer is sane enough--as sane at least as the Wandering Jew himself

could well have been.”

“Could you trust me with the manuscript, Mr. Polwarth?” said the curate.

“Willingly,” said Polwarth, handing it to him.

“And I may carry it home with me?”

“Certainly.”

“I shall take right good care of it. Are there any further memorials of

struggle with unbelief?”

“Yes, there are some; for mood and not conviction must, in such a mind,

often rule the hour. Sometimes he can believe; sometimes he cannot: he

is a great man indeed who can always rise above his own moods! There

is one passage I specially remember in which after his own fashion he

treats of the existence of a God. You will know the one I mean when you

come to it.”

“It is indeed a treasure!” said the curate, taking the book and

regarding it with prizing eyes. In his heart he was thinking of Leopold

and Helen. And while he thus regarded the book, he was himself regarded

of the gray luminous eyes of Rachel. What shone from those eyes may have

been her delight at hearing him so speak of the book, for the hand that

wrote it was that of her father; but there was a lingering in her gaze,

not unmixed with questioning, and a certain indescribable liquidity in

its light, reminding one of the stars as seen through a clear air from

which the dew settles thick, that might have made a mother anxious. Alas

for many a woman whose outward form is ungainly--she has a full round

heart under the twisted ribs!

Why then should I say alas? Were it better that the heart were like the

shape? or are such as Rachel forgotten before the God of the sparrows?

No, surely; but he who most distinctly believes that from before the

face of God every sorrow shall vanish, that they that sow in tears shall

reap in joy, that death is but a mist that for a season swathes the

spirit, and that, ever as the self-seeking vanishes from love, it

groweth more full of delight--even he who with all his heart believes

this, may be mournful over the aching of another heart while yet it

lasts; and he who looks for his own death as his resurrection, may yet

be sorrowful at every pale sunset that reminds him of the departure of

the beloved before him.

The curate rose and took his departure, but the light of the gaze that

had rested upon him lingered yet on the countenance of Rachel, and a sad

half-smile hung over the motions of the baby-like fingers that knitted

so busily.

The draper followed the curate, and Polwarth went up to his own room: he

never could keep off his knees for long together. And as soon as she was

alone, Rachel’s hands dropped on her lap, her eyes closed, and her lips

moved with solemn sweet motions. If there was a hearing ear open to that

little house, oh surely those two were blessed! If not, then kind death

was yet for a certainty drawing nigh--only, what if in deep hell there

should be yet a deeper hell? And until slow Death arrive, what loving

heart can bear the load that stupid Chance or still more stupid Fate has

heaped upon it? Yet had I rather be crushed beneath the weight of mine,

and die with my friends in the moaning of eternal farewells, than live

like George Bascombe to carry lightly his little bag of content. A

cursed confusion indeed is the universe, if it be no creation, but the

helpless unhelpable thing such men would have us believe it--the hotbed

mother of the children of an iron Necessity. Can any damnation be worse

than this damning into an existence from which there is no refuge but a

doubtful death?

Drew overtook Wingfold, and they walked together into Glaston.

“Wasn’t that splendid?” said the draper.

“Hath not God chosen the weak things of the world to confound the

mighty?” returned the curate. “Even through the play of a mad-man’s

imagination, the spirit of a sound mind may speak. Did you not find in

it some stuff that would shape into answers to your questions?

“I ought to have done so, I dare say,” answered the draper, “but to tell

the truth, I was so taken up with the wild story, and the style of the

thing, and the little man’s way of reading it, that I never thought of

what I was full of when I came.”

They parted at the shop, and the curate went on.

CHAPTER XIV.

STRUGGLES.

He stopped at the Manor House, for it was only beginning to be late,

to inquire after Leopold. Helen received him with her usual coldness--a

manner which was in part assumed for self-protection, for in his

presence she always felt rebuked, and which had the effect of a veil

between them to hide from her much of the curate’s character that might

otherwise have been intelligible to her. Leopold, she said, was a little

better, but Wingfold walked home thinking what a happy thing it would be

if God were to take him away.

His interest in Helen deepened and deepened. He could not help admiring

her strength of character even when he saw it spent for worse than

nought; and her devotion to her brother was lovely, notwithstanding the

stains of selfishness that spotted it. Her moral standard was indeed

far from lofty, and as to her spiritual nature, that as yet appeared

nowhere. And yet the growth in her was marvellous when he thought of

what she had seemed before this trouble came. One evening as he left

Leopold, he heard her singing, and stood on the stair to listen. And to

listen was to marvel. For her voice, instead of being hard and dry, as

when he heard it before, was, without any loss of elasticity, now liquid

and mellifluous, and full of feeling. Its tones were borne along like

the leaves on the wild west wind of Shelley’s sonnet. And the longing of

the curate to help her from that moment took a fresh departure, and grew

and grew. But as the hours and days and weeks passed, and the longing

found no outlet, it turned to an almost hopeless brooding upon the face

and the form, yea the heart and soul of the woman he so fain would help,

until ere long he loved her with the passion of a man mingled with

the compassion of a prophet. He saw that something had to be done IN

her--perhaps that some saving shock in the guise of ruin had to visit

her; that some door had to be burst open, some roof blown away, some

rock blasted, that light and air might have free course through her

soul’s house, without which that soul could never grow stately like the

house it inhabited. Whatever might be destined to effect this, for the

chance of rendering poorest and most servile aid, he would watch and did

watch, in silence and self-restraint, lest he should be betrayed into

any presumptuous word that might breathe frost instead of balm upon the

buds of her delaying Spring. If he might but be allowed to minister when

at length the sleeping soul should stir! If its waking glance--ah! if

it might fall on him! As often as the thought intruded, his heart would

give one delirious bound, then couch ashamed of its presumption. He

would not, he dared not look in that direction. He accused himself of

mingling earthly motives and feelings with the unselfish and true, and

scorned himself because of it. And was not Bascombe already the favoured

friend of her heart?

Yet how could it be of her heart? for what concern had hearts in a

common unbelief? None; but there were the hearts--the man and the

woman--notwithstanding, who might yet well be drawn together by the

unknown divine which they also shared; and that Helen, whose foot seemed

now to approach and now to shun the line betwixt the kingdom of this

world and the kingdom of heaven, should retire with such a guide into

the deserts of denial and chosen godlessness, was to Wingfold a thought

of torture almost unendurable. The thought of its possibility, nay,

probability--for were not such unfitnesses continually becoming

facts?--threatened sometimes to upset the whole fabric of his faith,

although reared in spite of theology, adverse philosophy, and the most

honest and bewildering doubt. That such a thing should be possible

seemed at those times to bear more against the existence of a God than

all the other grounds of question together. Then a shudder would go to

the very deeps of his heart, and he would lay himself silent before the

presence for a time; or make haste into the solitudes--not where the sun

shone and the water ran, but where the light was dim and the wind low

in the pine woods. There, where the sombre green vaults were upheld by

a hundred slender columns, and the far-receding aisles seemed to lead to

the ancestral home of shadows, there, his own soul a shadow of grief and

fear among the shades of the gloomy temple, he bowed his heart before

the Eternal, gathered together all the might of his being, and groaned

forth in deepest effort of a will that struggled to be: “Thy will be

done, and not mine.” Then would his spirit again walk erect, and carry

its burden as a cross and not as a gravestone.

Sometimes he was sorely perplexed to think how the weakness, as he

called it, had begun, and how it had grown upon him. He could not say it

was his doing, and what had he ever been aware of in it against which he

ought to have striven? Came not the whole thing of his nature, a nature

that was not of his design, and was beyond him and his control--a nature

that either sprung from a God, or grew out of an unconscious Fate?

If from the latter, how was such as he to encounter and reduce to a

constrained and self-rejecting reason a Self unreasonable, being an

issue of the Unreasoning, which Self was yet greater than he, its

vagaries the source of his intensest consciousness and brightest

glimpses of the ideal and all-desirable. If on the other hand it was

born of a God, then let that God look to it, for, sure, that which

belonged to his nature could not be evil or of small account in the

eyes of him who made him in his own image. But alas! that image had, no

matter how, been so defaced, that the will of the man might even now be

setting itself up against the will of the God! Did his love then spring

from the God-will or the man-will? Must there not be some God-way of the

thing, all right and nothing wrong?--But he could not compass it,

and the marvel to himself was that all the time he was able to go on

preaching, and that with some sense of honesty and joy in his work.

In this trouble more than ever Wingfold felt that if there was no God,

his soul was but a thing of rags and patches out in the masterless

pitiless storm and hail of a chaotic universe. Often would he rush into

the dark, as it were, crying for God, and ever he would emerge therefrom

with some tincture of the light, enough to keep him alive and send him

to his work. And there, in her own seat, Sunday after Sunday, sat the

woman whom he had seen ten times, and that for no hasty moments, during

the week, by the bedside of her brother, yet to whom only now, in the

open secrecy of the pulpit, did he dare utter the words of might he

would so fain have poured direct into her suffering heart. And there,

Sunday after Sunday, the face he loved bore witness to the trouble of

the heart he loved yet more: that heart was not yet redeemed! oh, might

it be granted him to set some little wind a blowing for its revival

and hope! As often as he stood up to preach, his heart swelled with the

message he bore--a message of no private interpretation, but for the

healing of the nations, yet a message for her, and for the healing of

every individual heart that would hear and take, and he spoke with the

freedom and dignity of a prophet. But when he saw her afterwards, he

scarcely dared let his eyes rest a moment on her face, would only pluck

the flower of a glance flying, or steal it at such moments when he

thought she would not see. She caught his glance however far oftener

than he knew, and was sometimes aware of it without seeing it at all.

And there was that in the curate’s behaviour, in his absolute avoidance

of self-assertion, or the least possible intrusion upon her mental

privacy--in the wrapping of his garments around him as it were, that his

presence might offend as little as might be, while at the same time

he was full of simple direct ministration to her brother, without one

side-glance that sought approval of her, which the nobility of the woman

could not fail to note, and seek to understand.

It was altogether a time of great struggle with Wingfold. He seemed to

be assailed in every direction, and to feel the strong house of life

giving way in every part, and yet he held on--lived, which he thought

was all, and, without knowing it, grew. Perhaps it may be this period

that the following verses which I found among his papers belong: he

could not himself tell me.--

Out of my door I run to do the thing

That calls upon me. Straight the wind of words

Whoops from mine ears the sounds of them that sing

About their work--My God! my Father-King.

I turn in haste to see thy blessed door,

But lo! a cloud of flies and bats and birds,

And stalking vapours, and vague monster herds,

Have risen and lighted, rushed and swollen between.

Ah me! the house of peace is there no more.

Was it a dream then? Walls, fireside, and floor,

And sweet obedience, loving, calm, and free,

Are vanished--gone as they had never been.

I labour groaning. Comes a sudden sheen!--

And I am kneeling at my Father’s knee,

Sighing with joy, and hoping utterly.

CHAPTER XV.

THE LAWN.

Leopold had begun to cough, and the fever continued. Every afternoon

came the red flush to his cheek, and the hard glitter into his eye. His

talk was then excited, and mostly about his coming trial. To Helen it

was terribly painful, and she confessed to herself that but for Wingfold

she must have given way. Leopold insisted on seeing Mr. Hooker every

time he called, and every time expressed the hope that he would not

allow pity for his weak state to prevent him from applying the severe

remedy of the law to his moral condition. But in truth it began to look

doubtful whether disease would not run a race with law for his life,

even if the latter should at once proceed to justify a claim. From the

first Faber doubted if he would ever recover from the consequences of

that exposure in the churchyard, and it soon became evident that his

lungs were more than affected. His cough increased, and he began to lose

what little flesh he had.

One day Faber expressed his conviction to Wingfold that he was fighting

the disease at the great disadvantage of having an unknown enemy to

contend with.

“The fellow is unhappy,” he said, “and if that lasts another month, I

shall throw up the sponge. He has a good deal of vitality, but it is

yielding, and by that time he will be in a galloping consumption.”

“You must do your best for him,” said Wingfold, but in his heart he

wished, with an honest affection, that he might not succeed.

Leopold, however, seemed to have no idea of his condition, and the

curate wondered what he would think or do were he to learn that he was

dying. Would he insist on completing his confession, and urging on a

trial? He had himself told him all that had passed with the magistrate,

and how things now were as he understood them, but it was plain that

he had begun to be uneasy about the affair, and was doubtful at times

whether all was as it seemed. The curate was not deceived. He had been

present during a visit from Mr. Hooker, and nothing could be plainer

than the impression out of which the good man spoke. Nor could he fail

to suspect the cunning kindness of George Bascombe in the affair. But he

did not judge that he had now the least call to interfere. The poor

boy had done as much as lay either in or out of him in the direction of

duty, and was daily becoming more and more unfit either to originate or

carry out a further course of action. If he was in himself capable of

anything more, he was, in his present state of weakness, utterly unable

to cope with the will of those around him.

Faber would have had him leave the country for some southern climate,

but he would not hear of it, and Helen, knowing to what extremities

it might drive him, would not insist. Nor, indeed, was he now in a

condition to be moved. Also the weather had grown colder, and he was

sensitive to atmospheric changes as any creature of the elements.

But after a fortnight, when it was now the middle of the autumn, it grew

quite warm again, and he revived and made such progress that he was able

to be carried into the garden every day. There he sat in a chair on the

lawn, with his feet on a sheepskin, and a fur cloak about him. And for

all the pain at his heart, for all the misery in which no one could

share, for all the pangs of a helpless jealousy, checked only by a

gnawing remorse, both of which took refuge in the thought of following

through the spheres until he found her, cast himself at her feet, spoke

the truth, and became, if he might, her slave for ever, failing which

he could but turn and go wandering through the spheres, seeking rest and

finding none, save indeed there were some salvation even for him in the

bosom of his God--I say that, somehow, with all this on the brain and

in the heart of him, the sunshine was yet pleasant to his eyes, while

it stung him to the soul; the soft breathing of the wind was pleasant to

his cheek, while he cursed himself for the pleasure it gave him; the few

flowers that were left looked up at him mournfully and he let them look,

nor turned his eyes away, but let the tears gather and flow. The first

agonies of the encounter of life and death were over, and life was

slowly wasting away. Oh what might not a little joy do for him! But

where was the joy to be found that could irradiate such a darkness even

for one fair memorial moment?

One hot noon Wingfold lay beside him on the grass. Neither had spoken

for some time: the curate more and more shrunk from speech to which his

heart was not directly moved. As to what might be in season or out of

season, he never would pretend to judge, he said, but even Balaam’s ass

knew when he had a call to speak. He plucked a pale red pimpernel and

handed it up over his head to Leopold. The youth looked at it for a

moment, and burst into tears. The curate rose hastily.

“It is so heartless of me.” said Leopold, “to take pleasure in such a

childish innocence as this!”

“It merely shows,” said the curate, laying his hand gently on his

shoulder, “that even in these lowly lovelinesses, there is a something

that has its root deeper than your pain; that, all about us, in earth

and air, wherever eye or ear can reach, there is a power ever breathing

itself forth in signs, now in a daisy, now in a windwaft, a cloud, a

sunset; a power that holds constant and sweetest relation with the dark

and silent world within us; that the same God who is in us, and upon

whose tree we are the buds, if not yet the flowers, also is all about

us--inside, the Spirit; outside, the Word. And the two are ever trying

to meet in us; and when they meet, then the sign without, and the

longing within, become one in light, and the man no more walketh in

darkness, but knoweth whither he goeth.”

As he ended thus, the curate bent over and looked at Leopold. But the

poor boy had not listened to a word he said. Something in his tone had

soothed him, but the moment he ceased, the vein of his grief burst out

bleeding afresh. He clasped his thin hands together, and looked up in an

agony of hopeless appeal to the blue sky, now grown paler as in fear of

the coming cold, though still the air was warm and sweet, and cried,

“Oh! if God would only be good and unmake me, and let darkness cover the

place where once was me! That would be like a good God! All I should be

sorry for then would be, that there was not enough of me left for a dim

flitting Will-o’-the-wisp of praise, ever singing my thankfulness to him

that I was no more.--Yet even then my deed would remain, for I dare not

ask that she should die outright also--that would be to heap wrong upon

wrong. What an awful thing being is! Not even my annihilation could make

up for my crime, or rid it out of the universe.”

“True, Leopold!” said the curate. “Nothing but the burning love of God

can rid sin out of anywhere. But are you not forgetting him who surely

knew what he undertook when he would save the world? No more than you

could have set that sun flaming overhead, with its million-miled billows

and its limitless tempests of fire, can you tell what the love of God

is, or what it can do for you, if only by enlarging your love with the

inrush of itself. Few have such a cry to raise to the Father as you,

such a claim of sin and helplessness to heave up before him, such a

joy even to offer to the great Shepherd who cannot rest while one sheep

strays from his flock, one prodigal haunts the dens of evil and waste.

Cry to him, Leopold, my dear boy. Cry to him again and yet again, for

he himself said that men ought always to pray and not faint, for God did

hear and would answer although he might seem long about it. I think we

shall find one day that nobody, not the poet of widest sweep and most

daring imagination, not the prophet who soars the highest in his ardour

to justify the ways of God to men, not the child when he is most fully

possessed of the angel that in heaven always beholds the face of the

Father of Jesus, has come or could have come within sight of the majesty

of his bestowing upon his children. For did he not, if the story be

true, allow torture itself to invade the very soul’s citadel of his

best beloved, as he went to seek the poor ape of a prodigal, stupidly

grinning amongst his harlots?”

Leopold did not answer, and the shadow lay deep on his face for a while;

but at length it began to thin, and at last a feeble quivering smile

broke through the cloud, and he wept soft tears of refreshing.

It was not that the youth had turned again from the hope of rest in the

Son of Man; but that, as everyone knows who knows anything of the human

spirit, there must be in its history days and seasons, mornings and

nights, yea deepest midnights. It has its alternating summer and winter,

its storm and shine, its soft dews and its tempests of lashing hail, its

cold moons and prophetic stars, its pale twilights of saddest memory,

and its golden gleams of brightest hope. All these mingled and displaced

each other in Leopold’s ruined world, where chaos had come again, but

over whose waters a mightier breath was now moving.

And now after much thought, the curate saw that he could not hope to

transplant into the bosom of the lad the flowers of truth that gladdened

his own garden: he must sow the seed from which they had sprung, and

that seed was the knowledge of the true Jesus. It was now the more

possible to help him in this way, that the wild beast of his despair had

taken its claws from his bosom, had withdrawn a pace or two, and couched

watching. And Wingfold soon found that nothing calmed and brightened him

like talk about Jesus. He had tried verse first--seeking out the best

within his reach wherein loving souls have uttered their devotion to the

man of men; but here also the flowers would not be transplanted. How

it came about he hardly knew, but he had soon drifted into rather

than chosen another way, which way proved a right one: he would begin

thinking aloud on some part of the gospel story, generally that which

was most in his mind at the time--talking with himself, as it were, all

about it. He began this one morning as he lay on the grass beside

him, and that was the position in which he found he could best thus

soliloquize. Now and then but not often Leopold would interrupt him, and

perhaps turn the monologue into dialogue, but even then Wingfold would

hardly ever look at him: he would not disturb him with more of his

presence than he could help, or allow the truth to be flavoured with

more of his individuality than was unavoidable. For every individuality,

he argued, has a peculiar flavour to every other, and only Jesus is the

pure simple humanity that every one can love, out and out, at once.

In these mental meanderings, he avoided nothing, took notice of every

difficulty, whether able to discuss it fully or not, broke out in words

of delight when his spirit was moved, nor hid his disappointment when he

failed in getting at what might seem good enough to be the heart of the

thing. It was like hatching a sermon in the sun instead of in the oven.

Occasionally, when, having ceased, he looked up to know how his pupil

fared, he found him fast asleep--sometimes with a smile, sometimes with

a tear on his face. The sight would satisfy him well. Calm upon such

a tormented sea must be the gift of God; and the curate would then

sometimes fall asleep himself--to start awake at the first far-off sound

of Helen’s dress as it swept a running fire of fairy fog-signals

from the half-opened buds of the daisies, and the long heads of the

rib-grass, when he would rise and saunter a few paces aside, and she

would bend over her brother, to see if he were warm and comfortable. By

this time all the old tenderness of her ministration had returned, nor

did she seem any longer jealous of Wingfold’s.

One day she came behind them as they talked. The grass had been mown

that morning, and also she happened to be dressed in her riding-habit

and had gathered up the skirt over her arm, so that on this occasion she

made no sound of sweet approach. Wingfold had been uttering one of his

rambling monologues--in which was much without form, but nothing void.

“I don’t know quite,” he had been saying, “what to think about that

story of the woman they brought to Jesus in the temple--I mean how it

got into that nook of the gospel of St. John, where it has no right

place.--They didn’t bring her for healing or for the rebuke of her

demon, but for condemnation, only they came to the wrong man for that.

They dared not carry out the law of stoning, as they would have liked, I

suppose, even if Jesus had condemned her, but perhaps they hoped rather

to entrap him who was the friend of sinners into saying something

against the law.--But what I want is, to know how it got there,--just

there, I mean, betwixt the seventh and eighth chapters of St. John’s

Gospel. There is no doubt of its being an interpolation--that the

twelfth verse, I think it is, ought to join on to the fifty-second. The

Alexandrian manuscript is the only one of the three oldest that has it,

and it is the latest of the three. I did think once, but hastily, that

it was our Lord’s text for saying I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD, but it

follows quite as well on his offer of living water. One can easily

see how the place would appear a very suitable one to any presumptuous

scribe who wished to settle the question of where it should stand.--I

wonder if St. John told the lovely tale as something he had forgotten,

after he had finished dictating all the rest. Or was it well known to

all the evangelists, only no one of them was yet partaker enough of the

spirit of him who was the friend of sinners, to dare put it on written

record, thinking it hardly a safe story to expose to the quarrying of

men’s conclusions? But it doesn’t matter much: the tale must be a true

one. Only--to think of just this one story, of tenderest righteousness,

floating about like a holy waif through the world of letters!--a sweet

gray dove of promise that can find no rest for the sole of his foot!

Just this one story of all stories a kind of outcast! and yet as a

wanderer, oh, how welcome! Some manuscripts, I understand, have granted

it a sort of outhouse-shelter at the end of the gospel of St. Luke. But

it all matters nothing, so long as we can believe it; and true it must

be, it is so like him all through. And if it does go wandering as a

stray through the gospels, without place of its own, what matters it

so long as it can find hearts enough to nestle in, and bring forth its

young of comfort!--Perhaps the woman herself told it, and, as with the

woman of Samaria, some would and some would not believe her.--Oh!

the eyes that met upon her! The fiery hail of scorn from those of the

Pharisees--the light of eternal sunshine from those of Jesus!--I was

reading the other day, in one of the old Miracle Plays, how each that

looked on while Jesus wrote with his finger on the ground, imagined

he was writing down his individual sins, and was in terror lest his

neighbour should come to know them.--And wasn’t he gentle even with

those to whom he was sharper than a two-edged sword! and oh how gentle

to her he would cover from their rudeness and wrong! LET THE SINLESS

THROW! And the sinners went out, and she followed--to sin no more. No

reproaches, you see! No stirring up of the fiery snakes! Only don’t do

it again.--I don’t think she did it again:--do you?”

It was just here that Helen came and stood behind Leopold’s chair. The

curate lay on the grass, and neither saw her.

CHAPTER XVI.

HOW JESUS SPOKE TO WOMEN.

“But why wasn’t he as gentle with good women?” said Leopold.

“Wasn’t he?” said the curate in some surprise.

“He said What have I to do with thee to his own mother?”

“A Greek scholar should go to the Greek,” said the curate. “Our English

is not perfect. You see she wanted to make him show off, and he thought

how little she knew what he came to the world for. Her thoughts were so

unlike his that he said, What have we in common! It was a moan of the

God-head over the distance of its creature. Perhaps he thought: How then

will you stand the shock when at length it comes? But he looked at her

as her own son ought to look at every blessed mother, and she read in

his eyes no rebuke, for instantly, sure of her desire, she told them to

do whatever he said.”

“I hope that’s the right way of it,” said Leopold, “for I want to trust

him out and out. But what do you make of the story of the poor woman

that came about her daughter? Wasn’t he rough to her? It always seemed

to me such a cruel thing to talk of throwing the meat of the children to

the dogs!”

“We cannot judge of the word until we know the spirit that gave birth

to it. Let me ask you a question: What would you take for the greatest

proof of downright friendship a man could show you?”

“That is too hard a question to answer all at once.”

“Well, I may be wrong, but the deepest outcome of friendship seems to

me, on the part of the superior at least, the permission, or better

still, the call, to share in his sufferings. And in saying that hard

word to the poor Gentile, our Lord honoured her thus mightily. He

assumed for the moment the part of the Jew towards the Gentile, that he

might, for the sake of all the world of Gentiles and Jews, lay bare to

his Jewish followers the manner of spirit they were of, and let them see

what a lovely humanity they despised in their pride of election. He

took her to suffer with him for the salvation of the world. The cloud

overshadowed them both, but what words immediately thereafter made a

glory in her heart! He spoke to her as if her very faith had reached an

arm into the heavens, and brought therefrom the thing she sought.--But I

confess,” the curate went on, “those two passages have both troubled me.

So I presume will everything that is God’s, until it becomes a strength

and a light by revealing its true nature to the heart that has grown

capable of understanding it. The first sign of the coming capacity

and the coming joy, is the anxiety and the question.--There is another

passage, which, although it does not trouble me so much, I cannot yet

get a right perception of. When Mary Magdalene took the Master of Death

for the gardener--the gardener of the garden of the tombs! no great

mistake, was it?--it is a lovely thing, that mistaking of Jesus for the

gardener!--how the holy and the lowly, yea the holy and the common meet

on all sides! Just listen to their morning talk--the morning of the

eternal open world to Jesus, while the shadows of this narrow life still

clustered around Mary:--I can give it you exactly, for I was reading it

this very day.

“‘Woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?’

“‘Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him,

and I will take him away.’

“‘Mary.’

“‘Master!’

“‘Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my

brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father;

and to my God and your God.’

“Why did he say, DO NOT TOUCH ME? It could not be that there was any

defilement to one in the new body of the resurrection, from contact with

one still in the old garments of humanity. But could it be that there

was danger to her in the contact? Was there something in the new house

from Heaven hurtful to the old tabernacle? I can hardly believe

it. Perhaps it might be. But we must look at the reason the Master

gives--only of all words hard to understand, the little conjunctions are

sometimes the hardest. What can that FOR mean? ‘Touch me not, FOR I

am not yet ascended to my Father.’ Does it mean, ‘I must first present

myself to my Father; I must first have His hand laid on this body

new-risen from the grave; I must go home first?’ The child must kiss his

mother first, then his sisters and brothers: was it so with Jesus? Was

he so glad in his father, that he must carry even the human body he had

rescued eternal from the grave, home to show him first? There are many

difficulties about the interpretation, and even if true, it would still

shock every heart whose devotion was less than absolutely child-like.

Was not God WITH him, as close to him as even God could come to his

eternal son--in him--ONE with him, all the time? How could he get nearer

to him by going to Heaven? What head-quarters, what court of place and

circumstance should the Eternal, Immortal, Invisible hold? And yet if

from him flow time and space, although he cannot be subject to them; if

his son could incarnate himself--cast the living, responsive, elastic,

flowing, evanishing circumstance of a human garment around him; if, as

Novalis says, God can become whatever he can create, then may there not

be some central home of God, holding relation even to time and space and

sense? But I am bewildered about it.--Jesus stood then in the meeting

point of both worlds, or rather in the skirts of the great world that

infolds the less. I am talking like a baby, for my words cannot compass

or even represent my thoughts. This world looks to us the natural and

simple one, and so it is--absolutely fitted to our need and education.

But there is that in us which is not at home in this world, which I

believe holds secret relations with every star, or perhaps rather, with

that in the heart of God whence issued every star, diverse in kind and

character as in colour and place and motion and light. To that in us,

this world is so far strange and unnatural and unfitting, and we need a

yet homelier home. Yea, no home at last will do, but the home of God’s

heart. Jesus, I say, was now looking, on one side, into the region of a

deeper life, where his people, those that knew their own when they saw

him, would one day find themselves tenfold at home; while, on the other

hand, he was looking into the region of their present life, which custom

and faithlessness make them afraid to leave. But we need not fear what

the new conditions of life will bring, either for body or heart, for

they will be nearer and sweeter to our deeper being, as Jesus is nearer

and dearer than any man because he is more human than any. He is all

that we can love or look for, and at the root of that very loving and

looking.--‘In my Father’s house are many mansions,’ he said. Matter,

time, space, are all God’s, and whatever may become of our philosophies,

whatever he does with or in respect of time, place, and what we call

matter, his doing must be true in philosophy as well as fact. But I am

wandering.”

The curate was wandering, but the liberty of wandering was essential

to his talking with the kind of freedom and truth he wanted to mediate

betwixt his pupil and the lovely things he saw.

“I wonder where the penitent thief was all the time,” said Leopold.

“Yes, that also is a difficulty. There again come in the bothering time

and space, bothering in their relation to heavenly things, I mean. On

the Friday, the penitent thief, as you call him, was to be with Jesus in

Paradise; and now it was Sunday, and Jesus said he had not yet been up

to see his Father. Some would say, I am too literal, too curious; what

can Friday and Sunday have to do with Paradise? But words MEAN in both

worlds, for they are not two but one--surely at least when Jesus thinks

and speaks of them; and there can be no wrong in feeling ever so blindly

and dully after WHAT they mean. Such humble questioning can do no harm,

even if, in face of the facts, the questions be as far off and SILLY--in

the old sweet meaning of the word--as those of any infant concerning a

world he has not proved.--But about Mary Magdalene: He must have said

the word TOUCH ME NOT. That could not have crept in. It is too hard for

an interpolation, I think; and if no interpolation, it must mean some

deep-good thing we don’t understand. One thing we can make sure of: it

was nothing that should hurt her; for see what follows. But for that,

when he said TOUCH ME NOT, FOR I AM NOT YET ASCENDED TO MY FATHER, she

might have thought--‘Ah! thou hast thy Father to go to, and thou wilt

leave us for him.’--BUT, he went on, GO TO MY BRETHREN AND SAY UNTO

THEM: I ASCEND UNTO MY FATHER, AND YOUR FATHER; AND MY GOD AND YOUR GOD.

What more could she want? Think: the Father of Jesus, with whom, in

all his knowledge and all his suffering, the grand heart was perfectly,

exultingly satisfied,--that Father he calls our Father too. He shares

with his brethren--of his best, his deepest, his heartiest, most secret

delight, and makes it their and his most open joy: he shares his eternal

Father with us, his perfect God with his brethren. And whatever his not

having yet ascended to him may mean, we see, with marvel and joy, that

what delayed him--even though, for some reason perfect in tenderness as

in truth, he would not be touched--was love to Mary Magdalene and

his mother and his brethren. He could not go to the Father without

comforting them first. And certainly whatever she took the TOUCH ME

NOT to mean or point at, it was nothing that hurt her.--It just strikes

me--is it possible he said it in order to turn the overwhelming passion

of her joy, which after such a restoration would have clung more than

ever to the visible presence, and would be ready to suffer the pains

of death yet again when he parted from her--might it be to turn

that torrent into the wider and ever widening channel of joy in his

everlasting presence to the innermost being, his communion, heart

to heart, with every child of his Father? In our poor weakness and

narrowness and self-love, even of Jesus the bodily may block out the

spiritual nearness, which, however in most moods we may be unable to

realise the fact, is and remains a thing unutterably lovelier and better

and dearer--enhancing tenfold what vision of a bodily presence may at

some time be granted us. But how any woman can help casting herself

heart and soul at the feet of such a lowly grandeur, such a tender

majesty, such a self-dissolving perfection--I cannot imagine. The truth

must be that those who kneel not have not seen. You do not once read of

a woman being against him--except indeed it was his own mother, when

she thought he was going all astray and forgetting his high mission. The

divine love in him towards his Father in heaven and his brethren of men,

was ever melting down his conscious individuality in sweetest showers

upon individual hearts; he came down like rain upon the mown grass, like

showers that water the earth. No woman, no man surely ever saw him as he

was and did not worship!”

Helen turned and glided back into the house, and neither knew she had

been there.

CHAPTER XVII.

DELIVERANCE.

All that could be done for Leopold by tenderest sisterly care under the

supervision of Mr. Faber, who believed in medicine less than in good

nursing, was well supplemented by the brotherly ministrations of

Wingfold, who gave all the time he could honestly spare from his

ordinary work to soothe and enlighten the suffering youth. But it became

clearer every week that nothing would avail to entice the torn roots of

his being to clasp again the soil of the world: he was withering away

out of it. Ere long symptoms appeared which no one could well mistake,

and Lingard himself knew that he was dying. Wingfold had dreaded

that his discovery of the fact might reveal that he had imagined some

atonement in the public confession he desired to make, and that, when he

found it denied him, he would fall into despair. But he was with him

at the moment, and his bearing left no ground for anxiety. A gleam of

gladness from below the horizon of his spirit, shot up, like the aurora

of a heavenly morning, over the sky of his countenance. He glanced at

his friend, smiled, and said,

“It has killed me too, and that is a comfort.”

The curate only looked his reply.

“They say,” resumed Leopold, after a while, “that God takes the will for

the deed:--do you think so?”

“Certainly, if it be a true, genuine will.”

“I am sure I meant to give myself up,” said Leopold. “I had not the

slightest idea they were fooling me. I know it now, but what can I do? I

am so weak, I should only die on the way.”

He tried to rise, but fell back in the chair.

“Oh!” he sighed, “isn’t it good of God to let me die! Who knows what he

may do for me on the other side! Who can tell what the bounty of a God

like Jesus may be!”

A vision arose before the mind’s eye of the curate:--Emmeline kneeling

for Leopold’s forgiveness; but he wisely held his peace. The comforter

of the sinner must come from the forgiveness of God, not from the

favourable judgment of man mitigating the harshness of his judgment of

himself. Wingfold’s business was to start him well in the world whither

he was going. He must fill his scrip with the only wealth that would not

dissolve in the waters of the river--that was, the knowledge of Jesus.

It shot a terrible pang to the heart of Helen, herself, for all her

suffering, so full of life, when she learned that her darling must

die. Yet was there no small consolation mingled with the shock. Fear

vanished, and love returned with grief in twofold strength. She flew

to him, and she who had been so self-contained, so composed, so

unsubmissive to any sway of feeling, broke into such a storm of

passionate affection that the vexilla mortis answered from his bosom,

flaunting themselves in crimson before her eyes. In vain, for Leopold’s

sake, the curate had sought to quiet her: she had resented his

interference; but this result of her impetuosity speedily brought her to

her senses, and set her to subdue herself.

The same evening Leopold insisted on dictating to the curate his

confession, which done, he signed it, making him and Helen attest the

signature. This document Wingfold took charge of, promising to make the

right use of it, whatever he should on reflection conclude that to be;

after which Leopold’s mind seemed at ease.

His sufferings from cough and weakness and fever now augmented with

greater rapidity, but it was plain from the kind of light in his

eye, and the far look which was not yet retrospective, that hope and

expectation were high in him. He had his times of gloom, when the dragon

of the past crept out of its cave, and tore him afresh; but the prospect

of coming deliverance strengthened him.

“Do you really think,” he said once to the curate, “that I shall ever

see Emmeline again?”

“Truly I hope so,” answered his friend, “and could argue upon the point.

But I think the best way, when doubt comes as to anything you would like

to be true, is just to hide yourself in God, as the child would hide

from the dark in the folds of his mother’s mantle.”

“But aunt would say, if she knew, that, dying as she did, Emmeline could

not be saved.”

“Some people may have to be a good deal astonished as to what can and

cannot be,” returned the curate. “But never mind what people say: make

your appeal to the saviour of men about whatever troubles you. Cry to

the faithful creator, his Father. To be a faithful creator needs a

might of truth and loving-kindness of which our narrow hearts can ill

conceive. Ask much of God, my boy, and be very humble and very hoping.”

After all such utterances, Leopold would look his thanks, and hold his

peace.

“I wish it was over,” he said once.

“So do I,” returned the curate. “But be of good courage, I think nothing

will be given you to bear that you will not be able to bear.”

“I can bear a great deal more than I have had yet. I don’t think I shall

ever complain. That would be to take myself out of his hands, and I have

no hope anywhere else.--Are you any surer about him, sir, than you used

to be?”

“At least I hope in him far more,” answered Wingfold.

“Is that enough?”

“No. I want more.”

“I wish I could come back and tell you that I am alive and all is true.”

“I would rather have the natural way of it, and get the good of not

knowing first.”

“But if I could tell you I had found God, then that would make you

sure.”

Wingfold could not help a smile:--as if any assurance from such a simple

soul could reach the questions that tossed his troubled spirit!

“I think I shall find all I want in Jesus Christ,” he said.

“But you can’t see him, you know.”

“Perhaps I can do better. And at all events I can wait,” said the

curate. “Even if he would let me, I would not see him one moment before

he thought it best. I would not be out of a doubt or difficulty an hour

sooner than he would take me.”

Leopold gazed at him and said no more.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE MEADOW.

As the disease advanced, his desire for fresh air and freedom grew to

a great longing. One hot day, whose ardours, too strong for the leaves

whose springs had begun to dry up, were burning them “yellow and black

and pale and hectic red,” the fancy seized him to get out of the garden

with its clipt box-trees and cypresses, into the meadow beyond. There a

red cow was switching her tail as she gathered her milk from the world,

and looking as if all were well. He liked the look of the cow, and the

open meadow, and wanted to share it with her, he said. Helen, with the

anxiety of a careful nurse, feared it might hurt him.

“What DOES it matter?” he returned. “Is life so sweet that every moment

more of it is a precious boon? After I’m gone a few days, you won’t know

a week from an hour of me. What a weight it will be off you! I envy you

all the relief of it. It will be to you just what it would be to me to

get into that meadow.”

Helen made haste to let him have his will. They prepared a sort of

litter, and the curate and the coachman carried him. Hearing what

they were about, Mrs. Ramshorn hurried into the garden to protest, but

protested in vain, and joined the little procession, walking with

Helen, like a second mourner, after the bier. They crossed the lawn,

and through a double row of small cypresses went winding down to the

underground passage, as if to the tomb itself. They had not thought of

opening the door first, and the place was dark and sepulchral. Helen

hastened to set it wide.

“Lay me down for a moment,” said Leopold. “--Here I lie in my tomb! How

soft and brown the light is! I should not mind lying here, half-asleep,

half-awake, for centuries, if only I had the hope of a right good waking

at last.”

A flood of fair light flashed in sweet torrent into the place--and

there, framed in the doorway, but far across the green field, stood the

red cow, switching her tail.

“And here comes my resurrection!” cried Leopold. “I have not had long to

wait for it--have I?”

He smiled a pained content as he spoke, and they bore him out into

the sun and air. They set him down in the middle of the field in a low

chair--not far from a small clump of trees, through which the footpath

led to the stile whereon the curate was seated when he first saw the

Polwarths. Mrs. Ramshorn found the fancy of the sick man pleasant for

the hale, and sent for her knitting. Helen sat down empty-handed on the

wool at her brother’s feet, and Wingfold, taking a book from his pocket,

withdrew to the trees.

He had not read long, sitting within sight and call of the group, when

Helen came to him.

“He seems inclined to go to sleep,” she said. “Perhaps if you would read

something, it would send him off.”

“I will with pleasure,” he said, and returning with her, sat down on the

grass.

“May I read you a few verses I came upon the other day, Leopold?” he

asked.

“Please do,” answered the invalid, rather sleepily.

I will not pledge myself that the verses belonged to the book Wingfold

held before him, but here they are. He read them slowly, and as evenly

and softly and rhythmically as he could.

They come to thee, the halt, the maimed, the blind,

The devil-torn, the sick, the sore;

Thy heart their well of life they find,

Thine ear their open door.

Ah! who can tell the joy in Palestine--

What smiles and tears of rescued throngs!

Their lees of life were turned to wine,

Their prayers to shouts and songs!

The story dear our wise men fable call,

Give paltry facts the mighty range;

To me it seems just what should fall,

And nothing very strange.

But were I deaf and lame and blind and sore,

I scarce would care for cure to ask;

Another prayer should haunt thy door--

Set thee a harder task.

If thou art Christ, see here this heart of mine,

Torn, empty, moaning, and unblest!

Had ever heart more need of thine,

If thine indeed hath rest?

Thy word, thy hand right soon did scare the bane

That in their bodies death did breed:

If thou canst cure my deeper pain,

Then thou art Lord indeed.

Leopold smiled sleepily as Wingfold read, and ere the reading was over,

slept.

“What can the little object want here?” said Mrs. Ramshorn.

Wingfold looked up, and seeing who it was approaching them, said,

“Oh! that is Mr. Polwarth, who keeps the park gate.”

“Nobody can well mistake him,” returned Mrs. Ramshorn. “Everybody knows

the creature.”

“Few people know him really,” said Wingfold.

“I HAVE heard that he is an oddity in mind as well as in body,” said

Mrs. Ramshorn.

“He is a friend of mine,” rejoined the curate. “I will go and meet him.

He wants to know how Leopold is.”

“Pray keep your seat, Mr. Wingfold. I don’t in the least mind him,” said

Mrs. Ramshorn. “Any FRIEND of yours, as you are kind enough to call him,

will be welcome. Clergymen come to know--indeed it is their duty to be

acquainted with all sorts of people. The late dean of Halystone would

stop and speak to a pauper.”

The curate did however go and meet Polwarth, and returning with

him presented him to Mrs. Ramshorn, who received him with perfect

condescension, and a most gracious bow. Helen bent her head also, very

differently, but it would be hard to say how. The little man turned from

them, and for a moment stood looking on the face of the sleeping youth:

he had not seen him since Helen ordered him to leave the house. Even

now she looked angry at his presumption in staring at her brother. But

Polwarth did not see her look. A great tenderness came over his face,

and his lips moved softly. “The Lord of thy life keep it for thee, my

son!” he murmured, gazed a moment longer, then rejoined Wingfold.

They walked aside a few paces.

“Pray be seated,” said Mrs. Ramshorn, without looking up from her

knitting--the seat she offered being the wide meadow.

But they had already done so, and presently were deep in a gentle talk,

of which at length certain words that had been foolhardy enough to

wander within her range, attracted the notice of Mrs. Ramshorn, and she

began to listen. But she could not hear distinctly.

“There should be one bishop at least,” the little man was saying, “or

I don’t know but he ought to be the arch-arch-bishop,--a poor man, if

possible,--one like the country parson Chaucer sets up in contrast with

the regular clergy,--whose main business should be to travel about

from university to university, from college to college, from school to

school, warning off all young men who did not know within themselves

that it was neither for position, nor income, nor study, nor influence,

that they sought to minister in the temple, from entering the church. As

from holy ground, he would warn them off.”

Mrs. Ramshorn fancied, from certain obscure associations in her own

mind, that he was speaking of dissenting ministers and persons of low

origin, who might wish to enter the church for the sake of BETTERING

THEMSELVES, and holding as she did, that no church preferment should

be obtained except by persons of good family and position, qualified to

keep up the dignity of the profession, she was not a little gratified

to hear, as she supposed, the same sentiments from the mouth of such

an illiterate person as, taking no note of his somewhat remarkable

utterance, she imagined Polwarth to be. Therefore she proceeded to

patronize him yet a little farther.

“I quite agree with you,” she said graciously. “None but such as you

describe should presume to set foot within the sacred precincts of the

profession.”

Polwarth did not much relish Mrs. Ramshorn’s style, and was considerably

surprised at receiving such a hearty approval of a proposed reformation

in clerical things, reaching even to the archiepiscopal, which he

had put half-humorously, and yet in thorough earnest, for the ear

of Wingfold only. He was little enough desirous of pursuing the

conversation with Mrs. Ramshorn: Charity herself does not require of a

man to cast his precious things at the feet of my lady Disdain; but he

must reply.

“Yes,” he said, “the great evil in the church has always been the

presence in it of persons unsuited for the work there required of them.

One very simple sifting rule would be, that no one should be admitted to

holy orders who had not first proved himself capable of making a better

living in some other calling.”

“I cannot go with you so far as that--so few careers are opened

to gentlemen,” rejoined Mrs. Ramshorn. “Besides--take the bar, for

instance: the forensic style a man must there acquire would hardly

become the pulpit. But it would not be a bad rule that everyone, for

admission to holy orders, should be possessed of property sufficient at

least to live upon. With that for a foundation, his living would begin

at once to tell, and he would immediately occupy the superior position

every clergyman ought to have.”

“What I was thinking of,” said Polwarth, “was mainly the experience in

life he would gather by having to make his own living; that, behind the

counter or the plough, or in the workshop, he would come to know men and

their struggles and their thoughts--”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Mrs. Ramshorn. “But I must be under some

misapprehension! It is not possible you can be speaking of the

CHURCH--of the clerical PROFESSION. The moment that is brought within

the reach of such people as you describe, that moment the church sinks

to the level of the catholic priesthood.”

“Say rather, to the level of Jeremy Taylor,” returned Polwarth, “who was

the son of a barber; or of Tillotson, who was the son of a clothier,

or something of the sort, and certainly a fierce dissenter. His enemies

said the archbishop himself was never baptized. By-the-way, he was not

ordained till he was thirty--and that bears on what I was just saying

to Mr. Wingfold, that I would have no one ordained till after forty,

by which time he would know whether he had any real call or only a

temptation to the church, from the base hope of an easy living.”

By this time Mrs. Ramshorn had had more than enough of it. The man was a

leveller, a chartist, a positivist--a despiser of dignities!

“Mr.--, Mr.--, I don’t know your name--you will oblige me by uttering

no more such vile slanders in my company. You are talking about what you

don’t in the least understand. The man who does not respect the religion

of his native country is capable of--of--of ANYTHING.--I am astonished,

Mr. Wingfold, at your allowing a member of your congregation to speak

with so little regard for the feelings of the clergy.--You forget, sir,

when you attribute what you call base motives to the cloth--you forget

who said the labourer was worthy of his hire.”

“I hope not, madam. I only venture to suggest that, though the labourer

is worthy of his hire, not every man is worthy of the labour.”

Wingfold was highly amused at the turn things had taken. Polwarth looked

annoyed at having allowed himself to be beguiled into such an utterly

useless beating of the air.

“My friend HAS some rather peculiar notions, Mrs. Ramshorn,” said the

curate; “but you must admit it was your approval that encouraged him to

go on.”

“It is quite as well to know what people think,” answered Mrs. Ramshorn,

pretending she had drawn him out from suspicion. “My husband used to say

that very few of the clergy had any notion of the envy and opposition

of the lower orders, both to them personally, and to the doctrines they

taught. To low human nature the truth has always been unpalatable.”

What precisely she meant by THE TRUTH it would be hard to say, but if

the visual embodiment of it was not a departed dean, it was at least

always associated in her mind with a cathedral choir, and a portly

person in silk stockings.

Here happily Leopold woke, and his eyes fell upon the gate-keeper.

“Ah, Mr. Polwarth! I am so glad to see you!” he said. “I am getting on,

you see. It will be over soon.”

“I see,” replied Polwarth, going up to him, and taking his offered hand

in both his. “I could almost envy you for having got so near the end of

your troubles.”

“Are you sure it will be the end of them, sir?”

“Of some of them at least, I hope, and those the worst. I cannot be sure

of anything but that all things work together for good to them that love

God.”

“I don’t know yet whether I do love God.”

“Not the father of Jesus Christ?”

“If God is really just like him, I don’t see how any man could help

loving him. But, do you know? I am terrified sometimes at the thought

of seeing MY father. He was such a severe man! I am afraid he will scorn

me.”

“Never--if he has got into heavenly ways. And you have your mother there

too, have you not?”

“Oh! yes; I didn’t think of that. I don’t remember much of her.”

“Anyhow, you have God there, and you must rest in him. He will not

forget you, for that would be ceasing to be God. If God were to forget

for one moment, the universe would grow black--vanish--rush out again

from the realm of law and order into chaos and night.”

“But I have been wicked.”

“The more need you have, if possible, of your Father in heaven.”

Here Mrs. Ramshorn beckoned the attendance of the curate where she sat a

few yards off on the other side of Leopold. She was a little ashamed of

having condescended to lose her temper, and when the curate went up to

her, said, with an attempt at gaiety:

“Is your odd little friend, as you call him, all--?”

And she tapped her lace-cap carefully with her finger.

“Rather more so than most people,” answered Wingfold. “He is a very

remarkable man.”

“He speaks as if he had seen better days--though where he can have

gathered such detestable revolutionary notions, I can’t think.”

“He is a man of education, as you see,” said the curate.

“You don’t mean he has been to Oxford or Cambridge?”

“No. His education has been of a much higher sort than is generally

found there. He knows ten times as much as most university men.”

“Ah! yes; but that goes for nothing: he hasn’t the standing. And if

he had been to Oxford, he never could have imbibed such notions.

Besides--his manners! To speak of the clergy as he did in the hearing of

one whose whole history is bound up with the church!”

She meant herself, not Wingfold.

“But of course,” she went on, “there must be something VERY wrong with

him to know so much as you say, and occupy such a menial position!

Nothing but a gate-keeper, and talk like that about bishops and what

not! People that are crooked in body are always crooked in mind too. I

dare say now he has quite a coterie of friends and followers amongst the

lower orders in Glaston. He’s just the sort of man to lead the working

classes astray. No doubt he is a very interesting study for a young

man like you, but you must take care; you may be misunderstood. A young

clergyman CAN’T be too cautious--if he has any hope of rising in his

profession.--A gate-keeper, indeed!”

“Wasn’t it something like that David wanted to be?” said the curate.

“Mr. Wingfold, I never allow any such foolish jests in my hearing. It

was a DOOR-keeper the Psalmist said--and to the house of God, not a

nobleman’s park.”

“A verger, I suppose,” thought Wingfold.--“Seriously, Mrs. Ramshorn,

that poor little atom of a creature is the wisest man I know,” he said.

“Likely enough, in YOUR judgment, Mr. Wingfold,” said the dean’s widow,

and drew herself up.

The curate accepted his dismissal, and joined the little man by

Leopold’s chair.

“I wish you two could be with me when I am dying,” said Leopold.

“If you will let your sister know your wish, you may easily have it,”

said the curate.

“It will be just like saying good-bye at the pier-head, and pushing off

alone--you can’t get more than one into the boat--out, out, alone, into

the infinite ocean of--nobody knows what or where,” said Leopold.

“Except those that are there already, and they will be waiting to

receive you,” said Polwarth. “You may well hope, if you have friends to

see you off, you will have friends to welcome you too. But I think it’s

not so much like setting off from the pier-head, as getting down the

side of the ocean-ship, to laud at the pier-head, where your friends are

all standing looking out for you.”

“Well! I don’t know,” said Leopold, with a sigh of weariness. “I’m

thankful sometimes that I’ve grown stupid. I suppose it’s with dying.

I didn’t use to feel so. Sometimes I seem not to know or care anything

about anything. I only want to stop coughing and aching and go to

sleep.”

“Jesus was glad to give up his spirit into his Father’s hands. He was

very tired before he got away.”

“Thank you. Thank you. I have him. He is somewhere. You can’t mention

his name but it brings me something to live and hope for. If he is

there, all will be well. And if I do get too tired to care for anything,

he won’t mind; he will only let me go to sleep, and wake me up again

by-and-by when I am rested.”

He closed his eyes.

“I want to go to bed,” he said.

They carried him into the house.

CHAPTER XIX.

RACHEL AND LEOPOLD.

Every day after this, so long as the weather continued warm, it was

Leopold’s desire to be carried out to the meadow. Once at his earnest

petition, instead of setting him down in the usual place, they went

on with him into the park, but he soon wished to be taken back to the

meadow. He did not like the trees to come between him and his bed: they

made him feel like a rabbit that was too far from its hole, he said; and

he was never tempted to try it again.

Regularly too every day, about one o’clock, the gnome-like form of the

gate-keeper would issue from the little door in the park-fence, and come

marching across the grass towards Leopold’s chair, which was set near

the small clump of trees already mentioned. The curate was almost always

there, not talking much to the invalid, but letting him know every now

and then by some little attention or word, or merely by showing himself,

that he was near. Sometimes he would take refuge from the heat, which

the Indian never felt too great, amongst the trees, and there would

generally be thinking out what he wanted to say to his people the next

Sunday.

One thing he found strange, and could not satisfy himself concerning,

namely, that although his mind was so much occupied with Helen that he

often seemed unable to think consecutively upon any subject, he could

always foresee his sermon best when, seated behind one of the trees, he

could by moving his head see her at work beside Leopold’s chair. But the

thing that did carry him through became plain enough to him afterwards:

his faith in God was all the time growing--and that through what seemed

at the time only a succession of interruptions. Nothing is so ruinous

to progress in which effort is needful, as satisfaction with apparent

achievement; that ever sounds a halt; but Wingfold’s experience was

that no sooner did he set his foot on the lowest hillock of

self-congratulation than some fresh difficulty came that threw him

prostrate; and he rose again only in the strength of the necessity for

deepening and broadening his foundations that he might build yet higher,

trust yet farther: that was the only way not to lose everything. He was

gradually learning that his faith must be an absolute one, claiming from

God everything the love of a perfect Father could give, or the needs he

had created in his child could desire; that he must not look to himself

first for help, or imagine that the divine was only the supplement to

the weakness and failure of the human; that the highest effort of the

human was to lay hold of the divine. He learned that he could keep no

simplest law in its loveliness until he was possessed of the same spirit

whence that law sprung; that he could not love Helen aright, simply,

perfectly, unselfishly, except through the presence of the originating

Love; that the one thing wherein he might imitate the free creative will

of God was to will the presence and power of that will which gave birth

to his. It was the vital growth of this faith, even when he was too much

troubled to recognize the fact, that made him strong in the midst of

weakness; when the son of man in him cried out, Let this cup pass, the

son of God in him could yet cry, Let thy will be done. He could “inhabit

trembling,” and yet be brave.

Mrs. Ramshorn generally came to the meadow to see how the invalid was

after he was settled, but she seldom staid: she was not fond of nursing,

neither was there any need of her assistance; and as Helen never dreamed

now of opposing the smallest wish of her brother, there was no longer

any obstruction to the visits of Polwarth, which were eagerly looked for

by Leopold.

One day the little man did not appear, but soon after his usual time the

still more gnome-like form of his little niece came scrambling rather

than walking over the meadow. Gently and modestly, almost shyly, she

came up to Helen, made her a courtesy like a village school-girl,

and said, while she glanced at Leopold now and then with an ocean of

tenderness in her large, clear woman-eyes:

“My uncle is sorry, Miss Lingard, that he cannot come to see your

brother to-day, but he is laid up with an attack of asthma. He wished

Mr. Lingard to know that he was thinking of him:--shall I tell you just

what he said?”

Helen bent her neck: she did not feel much interest in the matter. But

Leopold said,

“Every word of such a good man is precious: tell me, please.”

Rachel turned to him with the flush of a white rose on her face.

“I asked him, sir--‘Shall I tell him you are praying for him?’ and he

said, ‘No. I am not exactly praying for him, but I am thinking of God

and him together.’”

The tears rose in Leopold’s eyes. Rachel lifted her baby-hand, and

stroked the dusky, long-fingered one that lay upon the arm of the chair.

“Dear Mr. Lingard,” she said,--Helen stopped in the middle of an

embroidery stitch, and gave her a look as if she were about to ask for

her testimonials--“I could well wish, if it pleased God, that I were as

near home as you.”

Leopold took her hand in his.

“Do you suffer then?” he said.

“Just look at me,” she answered with a smile that was very pitiful,

though she did not mean it for such, “--shut up all my life in this

epitome of deformity! But I ain’t grumbling: that would be a fine thing!

My house is not so small but God can get into it. Only you can’t think

how tired I often am of it.”

“Mr. Wingfold was telling me yesterday that some people fancy St. Paul

was little and misshapen, and that that was his thorn in the flesh.”

“I don’t think that can be true, or he would never have compared his

body to a tabernacle, for, oh dear! it won’t stretch an inch to give

a body room. I don’t think either, if that had been the case, he would

have said he didn’t want it taken off, but another put over it. I

do want mine taken off me, and a downright good new one put on

instead--something not quite so far off your sister’s there, Mr.

Lingard. But I’m ashamed of talking like this. It came of wanting to

tell you I can’t be sorry you are going when I should so dearly like to

go myself.”

“And I would gladly stay a while, and that in a house no bigger than

yours, if I had a conscience of the same sort in my back-parlour,” said

Leopold smiling. “But when I am gone the world will be the cleaner for

it.--Do you know about God the same way your uncle does, Miss Polwarth?”

“I hope I do--a little. I doubt if anybody knows as much as he does,”

she returned, very seriously. “But God knows about us all the same,

and he don’t limit his goodness to us by our knowledge of him. It’s

so wonderful that he can be all to everybody! That is his Godness, you

know. We can’t be all to any one person. Do what we will, we can’t let

anybody see into us even. We are all in bits and spots. But I fancy it’s

a sign that we come of God that we don’t like it. How gladly I would

help you, Mr. Lingard, and I can do nothing for you.--I’m afraid your

beautiful sister thinks me very forward. But she don’t know what it

is to lie awake all night sometimes, think-thinking about my beautiful

brothers and sisters that I can’t get near to do anything for.”

“What an odd creature!” thought Helen, to whom her talk conveyed next to

nothing. “--But I daresay they are both out of their minds. Poor things!

they must have a hard time of it with one thing and another!”

“I beg your pardon again for talking so much,” concluded Rachel, and,

with a courtesy first to the one then to the other, walked away. Her

gait was no square march like her uncle’s, but a sort of sidelong

propulsion, rendered more laborious by the thick grass of the meadow.

CHAPTER XX.

THE BLOOD-HOUND.

I need not follow the steps by which the inquiry-office became able so

far to enlighten the mother of Emmeline concerning the person and habits

of the visitor to the deserted shaft, that she had now come to Glaston

in pursuit of yet farther discovery concerning him. She had no plan in

her mind, and as yet merely intended going to church and everywhere else

where people congregated, in the hope of something turning up to direct

inquiry. Not a suspicion of Leopold had ever crossed her. She did not

even know that he had a sister in Glaston, for Emmeline’s friends had

not all been intimate with her parents.

On the morning after her arrival, she went out early to take a walk, and

brood over her cherished vengeance; and finding her way into the park,

wandered about in it for some time. Leaving it at length by another

gate, and inquiring the way to Glaston, she was directed to a footpath

which would lead her thither across the fields. Following this, she came

to a stile, and being rather weary with her long walk, sat down on it.

The day was a grand autumnal one. But nature had no charms for her.

Indeed had she not been close shut in the gloomy chamber of her own

thoughts, she would not thus have walked abroad alone; for nature was to

her a dull, featureless void; while her past was scarcely of the sort to

invite retrospection, and her future was clouded.

It so fell that just then Leopold was asleep in his chair,--every

morning he slept a little soon after being carried out,--and that chair

was in its usual place in the meadow, with the clump of trees between it

and the stile. Wingfold was seated in the shade of the trees, but Helen,

happening to want something for her work, went to him and committed

her brother to his care until she should return, whereupon he took her

place. Almost the same moment however, he spied Polwarth coming from the

little door in the fence, and went to meet him. When he turned, he saw,

to his surprise, a lady standing beside the sleeping youth, and gazing

at him with a strange intentness. Polwarth had seen her come from the

clump of trees, and supposed her a friend. The curate walked hastily

back, fearing he might wake and be startled at sight of the stranger. So

intent was the gazing lady that he was within a few yards of her before

she heard him. She started, gave one glance at the curate, and hurried

away towards the town. There was an agitation in her movements which

Wingfold did not like; a suspicion crossed his mind, and he resolved to

follow her. In his turn he made over his charge to Polwarth, and set off

after the lady.

The moment the eyes of Emmeline’s mother fell upon the countenance of

Leopold, whom, notwithstanding the change that suffering had caused,

she recognized at once, partly by the peculiarity of his complexion, the

suspicion, almost conviction, awoke in her that here was the murderer

of her daughter. That he looked so ill seemed only to confirm the

likelihood. Her first idea was to wake him and see the effect of her

sudden presence. Finding he was attended, however, she hurried away to

inquire in the town and discover all she could about him.

A few moments after Polwarth had taken charge of him, and while he stood

looking on him tenderly, the youth woke with a start.

“Where is Helen?” he said.

“I have not seen her. Ah, here she comes!”

“Did you find me alone then?”

“Mr. Wingfold was with you. He gave you up to me, because he had to go

into the town.”

He looked inquiringly at his sister as she came up, and she looked in

the same way at Polwarth.

“I feel as if I had been lying all alone in this wide field,” said

Leopold, “and as if Emmeline had been by me, though I didn’t see her.”

Polwarth looked after the two retiring forms, which were now almost at

the end of the meadow, and about to issue on the high road.

Helen followed his look with hers. A sense of danger seized her. She

trembled, and kept behind Leopold’s chair.

“Have you been coughing much to-day?” asked the gate-keeper.

“Yes, a good deal--before I came out. But it does not seem to do much

good.”

“What good would you have it do?”

“I mean, it doesn’t do much to get it over. Oh, Mr. Polwarth, I am so

tired!”

“Poor fellow! I suppose it looks to you as if it would never be over.

But all the millions of the dead have got through it before you. I don’t

know that that makes much difference to the one who is going through it.

And yet it is a sort of company. Only, the Lord of Life is with you, and

that is real company, even in dying, when no one else can be with you.”

“If I could only feel he was with me!”

“You may feel his presence without knowing what it is.”

“I hope it isn’t wrong to wish it over, Mr. Polwarth?”

“I don’t think it is wrong to wish anything you can talk to him about

and submit to his will. St. Paul says, ‘In everything let your requests

be made known unto God.’”

“I sometimes feel as if I would not ask him for anything, but just let

him give me what he likes.”

“We must not want to be better than is required of us, for that is at

once to grow worse.”

“I don’t quite understand you.”

“Not to ask may seem to you a more submissive way, but I don’t think

it is so childlike. It seems to me far better to say, ‘O Lord, I should

like this or that, but I would rather not have it if thou dost not like

it also.’ Such prayer brings us into conscious and immediate relations

with God. Remember, our thoughts are then, passing to him, sent by our

will into his mind. Our Lord taught us to pray always and not get tired

of it. God, however poor creatures we may be, would have us talk to him,

for then he can speak to us better than when we turn no face to him.”

“I wonder what I shall do the first thing when I find myself out--out, I

mean, in the air, you know.”

“It does seem strange we should know so little of what is in some sense

so near us! that such a thin veil should be so impenetrable! I fancy the

first thing I should do would be to pray.”

“Then you think we shall pray there--wherever it is?”

“It seems to me as if I should go up in prayer the moment I got out of

this dungeon of a body. I am wrong to call it a dungeon, for it lies

open to God’s fair world, and the loveliness of the earth comes into me

through eyes and ears just as well as into you. Still it is a pleasant

thought that it will drop off me some day. But for prayer--I think all

will pray there more than here--in their hearts and souls I mean.”

“Then where would be the harm if you were to pray for me after I am

gone?”

“Nowhere that I know. It were indeed a strange thing if I might pray for

you up to the moment when you ceased to breathe, and therewith an iron

gate close between us, and I could not even reach you through the ear

of the Father of us both! It is a faithless doctrine, for it supposes

either that those parted from us can do without prayer, the thing Jesus

himself could not do without, seeing it was his highest joy, or that God

has so parted those who are in him from these who are in him, that there

is no longer any relation, even with God, common to them. The thing to

me takes the form of an absurdity.”

“Ah, then, pray for me when I am dying, and don’t be careful to stop

when you think I am gone, Mr. Polwarth.”

“I will remember,” said the little man.

And now Helen had recovered herself, and came and took her usual seat

by her brother’s side. She cast an anxious glance now and then into

Polwarth’s face, but dared not ask him anything.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE BLOOD-HOUND TRAVERSED.

Emmeline’s mother had not gone far before she became aware that she was

followed. It was a turning of the tables which she did not relish. As

would not have been unnatural, even had she been at peace with all

the world, a certain feeling of undefined terror came upon her and

threatened to overmaster her. It was the more oppressive that she did

not choose to turn and face her pursuer, feeling that to do so would

be to confess consciousness of cause. The fate of her daughter, seldom

absent from her thoughts, now rose before her in association with

herself, and was gradually swelling uneasiness into terror: who could

tell but this man pressing on her heels in the solitary meadow, and not

the poor youth who lay dying there in the chair, and who might indeed be

only another of his victims, was the murderer of Emmeline! Unconsciously

she accelerated her pace until it was almost a run, but did not thereby

widen by a single yard the distance between her and the curate.

When she came out on the high road, she gave a glance in each direction,

and, avoiding the country, made for the houses. A short lane led her

into Pine street. There she felt safe, the more that it was market-day

and a good many people about, and slackened her pace, feeling confident

that her pursuer, whoever he was, would now turn aside. But she was

disappointed, for, casting a glance over her shoulder, she saw that he

still kept the same distance behind her. She saw also, in that single

look, that he was well-known, for several were saluting him at once.

What could it mean? It must be the G. B. of the Temple! Should she stop

and challenge his pursuit? The obstacle to this was a certain sinking

at the heart accounted for by an old memory. She must elude him instead.

But she did not know a single person in the place, or one house where

she could seek refuge. There was an hotel before her! But, unattended,

heated, disordered, to all appearance disreputable, what account could

she give of herself? That she had been followed by some one everybody

knew, and to whom everybody would listen! Feebly debating thus with

herself, she hurried along the pavement of Pine Street, with the Abbey

church before her.

The footsteps behind her grew louder and quicker: the man had made up

his mind and was coming up with her! He might be mad, or ready to run

all risks! Probably he knew his life at stake through her perseverance

and determination!