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