A VANISHING GLIMMER.
Helen ran upstairs, dropped on her knees by her brother's bedside,
and fell into a fit of sobbing, which no tears came to relieve.
"Helen! Helen! if you give way I shall go mad," said a voice of
misery from the pillow.
She jumped up, wiping her dry eyes.
"What a wicked, selfish, bad sister, bad nurse, bad everything, I
am, Poldie!" she said, her tone ascending the steps of vocal
indignation as she spoke. "But shall I tell you"--here she looked
all about the chamber and into the dressing-room ere she
proceeded--"shall I tell you, Poldie, what it is that makes me so--
I don't know what?--It is all the fault of the sermon I heard this
morning. It is the first sermon I ever really listened to in my
life--certainly the first I ever thought about again after I was
out of the church. Somehow or other of late Mr. Wingfold has been
preaching so strangely! but this is the first time I have cared to
listen. Do you know he preaches as if he actually believed the
things he was saying, and not only that, but as if he expected to
persuade you of them too! I USED to think all clergymen believed
them, but I doubt it now more than ever, for Mr. Wingfold speaks so
differently and looks so different. I never saw any clergyman look
like that; and I never saw such a change on a man as there is on
him. There must be something to account for it. Could it be that he
has himself really gone to--as he says--and found rest--or something
he hadn't got before? But you won't know what I mean unless I tell
you first what he was preaching about. His text was: Come unto me
all ye that labour and are heavy laden;--a common enough text, you
know? Poldie! but somehow it seemed fresh to him, and he made it
look fresh to me, for I felt as if it hadn't been intended for
preaching about at all, but for going straight into people's hearts
its own self, without any sermon. I think the way he did it was
this: he first made us feel the sort of person that said the words,
and then made us feel that he did say them, and so made us want to
see what they could really mean. But of course what made them so
different to me, was"--here Helen did burst into tears, but she
fought with her sobs, and went on--"was--was--that my heart is
breaking for you, Poldie--for I shall never see you smile again, my
darling!"
She buried her face on his pillow, and Leopold uttered "a great and
exceeding bitter cry." Her hand was on his mouth instantly, and her
sobs ceased, while the tears kept flowing down her white face.
"Just think, Poldie," she said, in a voice which she seemed to have
borrowed in her need from some one else, "--just think a moment!
What if there should be some help in the great wide universe--somewhere,
for as wide as it is--a heart that feels for us both, as my heart
feels for you, Poldie! Oh! oh! wouldn't it be grand? Wouldn't it be
lovely to be at peace again, Poldie? If there should be somebody
somewhere who could take this gnawing serpent from my heart!"--She
pulled wildly at her dress.--"'Come unto me,' he said, 'all ye that
labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' That's what
he said:--oh! if it could be true!"
"Surely it is--for you, best of sisters," cried Leopold; "but what
has it to do with me? Nothing. She is DEAD--I killed her. Even if
God were to raise her to life again, HE could not make it that I
didn't drive the knife into her heart! Give ME rest!--why there's
the hand that did it! O my God! my God!" cried the poor youth, and
stared at his thin wasted hand, through which the light shone red,
as at a conscious evil thing that had done the deed, and was still
stained with its signs.
"God CAN'T be very angry with you, Poldie," sobbed Helen, feeling
about blindly in the dark forest of her thoughts for some herb of
comfort, and offering any leaf upon which her hand fell first.
"Then he ain't fit to be God!" cried Leopold fiercely. "I wouldn't
have a word to say to a God that didn't cut a man in pieces for such
a deed! Oh Helen, she was so lovely!--and what is she now?"
"Surely if there were a God, he would do something to set it right
somehow! I know if I was God, Poldie, I should find some way of
setting you up again, my darling. You ain't half as bad as you make
yourself out."
"You had better tell that to the jury, Helen, and see how they will
take it," said Leopold contemptuously.
"The jury!" Helen almost screamed. "What do you mean, Poldie?"
"Well!" returned Leopold, in a tone of justification, but made no
further answer to her question. "All God can do to set it right," he
resumed, after a pause, "is to damn me for ever and ever, as one of
the blackest creatures in creation."
"THAT I don't believe, anyhow!" returned Helen with equal vehemence
and indefiniteness.
And for the first time, George Bascombe's teachings were a comfort
to her. It was all nonsense about a God. As to her brother's misery,
it had no source but that to which Shakespeare attributed the misery
of Macbeth--and who should know better than Shakespeare?--the
fear, namely, of people doing the like to himself! But straightway
thereupon--horrible thought!--she found herself--yes! it was in
her--call it thought, or call it feeling, it was hers!--she found
herself despising her poor crushed brother! disgusted with him!
turning from him, not even in scorn of his weakness, but in anger at
what he had brought upon her! It was but a flash of the lightning of
hell: one glance of his great, troubled, appealing, yet hopeless
eyes, vague with the fogs that steamed up from the Phlegethon within
him, was enough to turn her anger at him into hate of herself who
had stabbed his angel in her heart. Then in herself she knew that
all murderers are not of Macbeth's order, and that all remorse is
not for oneself.
But where was the God to be found who could and MIGHT help in the
wretched case? How were they to approach him? Or what could he do
for them? Were such a being to assure Leopold that no hurt should
come to him--even that he thought little of the wrong that he had
done--would that make his crushed heart begin to swell again with
fresh life? would that bring back Emmeline from the dark grave and
the worms to the sunny earth and the speech of men? And whither, yet
farther, he might have sent her, she dared not think. And Leopold
was not merely at strife with himself, but condemned to dwell with a
self that was loathsome to him. She no longer saw any glimmer of
hope but such as lay in George's doctrine of death. If there was no
helper who could clean hearts and revive the light of life, then
welcome gaunt death! let the grim-mouthed skeleton be crowned at
every feast!