HELEN ALONE.
Helen tottered to a little summer-house in the garden, which had
been her best retreat since she had given her room to her brother,
and there seated herself to regain breath and composure ere she went
to him. She had sought the door of Paradise, and the door of hell
had been opened to her! If the frightful idea which, she did not
doubt, had already suggested itself to Leopold, should now be
encouraged, there was nothing but black madness before her! Her
Poldie on the scaffold! God in heaven! Infinitely rather would she
poison herself and him! Then she remembered how pleased and consoled
he had been when she said something about their dying together, and
that reassured her a little: no, she was certain Leopold would never
yield himself to public shame! But she must take care that foolish,
extravagant curate should not come near him. There was no knowing to
what he might persuade him! Poor Poldie was so easily led by any
show of nobility--anything that looked grand or self-sacrificing!
Helen's only knowledge of guilt came from the pale image of it
lifted above her horizon by the refraction of her sympathy. She did
not know, perhaps never would understand the ghastly horror of
conscious guilt, besides which there is no evil else. Agonies of
injury a man may endure, and, so far from being overwhelmed, rise
above them tenfold a man, who, were he to awake to the self-knowledge
of a crime, would sink into a heap of ruin. Then indeed, if there be
no God, or one that has not an infinite power of setting right that
which has gone wrong with his work, then indeed welcome the faith,
for faith it may then be called, of such as say there is no hereafter!
Helen did not know to what gulfs of personal shame, nay, to what
summits of public execration, a man may be glad to flee for refuge
from the fangs of home-born guilt--if so be there is any refuge to
be found in either. And some kind of refuge there does seem to be.
Strange it is and true that in publicity itself lies some relief
from the gnawing of the worm--as if even a cursing humanity were a
barrier of protection between the torn soul and its crime. It flees
to its kind for shelter from itself. Hence, I imagine, in part, may
the coolness of some criminals be accounted for. Their quietness is
the relief brought by confession--even confession but to their
fellows. Is it that the crime seems then lifted a little from their
shoulders, and its weight shared by the ace?
Helen had hoped that the man who had spoken in public so tenderly,
and at the same time so powerfully, of the saving heart of the
universe, that would have no divisions of pride, no scatterings of
hate, but of many would make one, would in private have spoken yet
sweeter words of hope and consolation, which she might have carried
home in gladness to her sick-souled brother, to comfort and
strengthen him--words of might to allay the burning of the poison
within him, and make him feel that after all there was yet a place
for him in the universe, and that he was no outcast of Gehenna. But
instead of such words of gentle might, like those of the man of whom
he was so fond of talking, he had only spoken drearily of duty,
hinting at a horror that would plunge the whole ancient family into
a hell of dishonour and contempt! It did indeed show what mere
heartless windbags of effete theology those priests were! Skeletons
they were, and no human beings at all!--Her father!--the thought of
him was distraction! Her mother! Oh, if Leopold had had her mother
for his too, instead of the dark-skinned woman with the flashing
eyes, he would never have brought this upon them! It was all his
mother's fault--the fault of her race--and of the horrible drug her
people had taught him to take! And was he to go and confess it, and
be tried for it, and be--? Great God!--And here was the priest
actually counselling what was worse than any suicide!
Suddenly, however, it occurred to her that the curate had had no
knowledge of the facts of the case, and had therefore been compelled
to talk at random. It was impossible he should suspect the crime of
which her brother had been guilty, and therefore could not know the
frightful consequences of such a confession as he had counselled.
Had she not better then tell him all, and so gather from him some
right and reasonable advice for the soothing of the agonies of her
poor broken-winged angel? But alas! what security had she that a man
capable of such priestly sevei'ity and heartlessness--her terrors
made her thus inconsequent--would not himself betray the all but
innocent sufferer to the vengeance of justice so called? No; she
would venture no farther. Sooner would she go to George
Bascombe--from whom she not only could look for no spiritual
comfort, but whose theories were so cruel against culprits of all
sorts! Alas, alas! she was alone! absolutely alone in the great
waste, death-eyed universe!--But for a man to talk so of the
tenderness of Jesus Christ, and then serve her as the curate had
done--it was indeed shameless! HE would never have treated a poor
wretched woman like that!--And as she said thus to herself, again
the words sounded in the ear of her heart: 'COME UNTO ME, ALL YE
THAT LABOUR AND ARE HEAVY LADEN, AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST.' Whence
came the voice? From her memory, or from that inner chamber of the
spirit which the one spirit-bearing spirit keeps for his own in
every house that he builds--alas so long in most human houses shut
away from the rest of the rooms and forgotten, or recollected with
uneasiness as a lumber-closet in which lie too many things that had
better not be looked into? But what matter where the voice that had
said them, so long as the words were true, and she might believe
them!--Whatever is true CAN be believed of the true heart.
Ere she knew, Helen was on her knees, with her head on the chair,
yet once more crying to the hearer of cries--possible or impossible
being she knew not in the least, but words reported of him had given
birth to the cry--to help her in her dire need.
Instead of any word, or thought even, coming to her that might be
fancied an answer, she was scared from her knees by an approaching
step---that of the house-keeper come to look for her with the
message from her aunt that Leopold was more restless than usual, not
at all like himself, and she could do nothing with him.