POLWARTH AND LINGARD.
The morning after Wingfold's second visit, Lingard, much to his
sister's surprise, partly to her pleasure, and somewhat to her
consternation, asked for his clothes: he wanted to get up. So little
energy had he hitherto shown, so weak was he, and so frequent had
been the symptoms of returning fever, that the doctor had not yet
thought of advising more than an hour's sitting while his bed was
made comfortable. And Helen had felt that she had him, if not safe,
yet safer in bed than he could be elsewhere.
His wish to rise was a sign that he was getting better. But could
she wish him to get better, seeing every hour threatened to be an
hour of torture? On the other hand, she could not but hope that, for
the last day or so, his mind had been a little more at ease.
Assuredly the light in his eye was less troubled: perhaps he saw
prospect of such mental quiet as might render life endurable.
He declined assistance, and Helen, having got him everything he
required, left the room to wait within hearing. It took him a long
time to dress, but he had resolved to do it himself, and at length
called Helen.
She found he looked worse in his clothes--fearfully worn and white!
Ah, what a sad ghost he was of his former sunny self! Helen turned
her eyes from him, that he might not see how changed she thought
him, and there were the trees in the garden and the meadows and the
park beyond, bathing in the strength of the sun, betwixt the blue
sky and the green earth! "What a hideous world it is!" she said to
herself. She was not yet persuaded, like her cousin, that it was the
best possible world--only that, unfortunately, not much was
possible in worlds.
"Will you get me something, Helen," he said. "Mr. Wingfold will be
here, and I want to be able to talk to him."
It was the first time he had asked for food, though he had seldom
refused to take what she brought him. She made him lie on the couch,
and gave orders that, if Mr. Wingfold called, he should be shown up
at once. Leopold's face brightened; he actually looked pleased when
his soup came. When Wingfold was announced, he grew for a moment
radiant.
Helen received the curate respectfully, but not very cordially: SHE
could not make Leopold's face shine!
"Would your brother like to see Mr. Polwarth?" asked the curate
rather abruptly.
"I will see anyone you would like me to see. Mr. Wingfold," answered
Liugard for himself, with a decision that clearly indicated
returning strength.
"But, Leopold, you know it is hardly to be desired," suggested
Helen, "that more persons--"
"I don't know that," interrupted Leopold with strange expression.
"Perhaps I had better tell you, Miss Lingard," said the curate,
"that it was Mr. Polwarth who found the thing I gave you. After your
visit, he could not fail to put things together, and had he been a
common man, I should have judged it prudent to tell him for the sake
of secrecy what I have told him for the sake of counsel. I repeat in
your brother's hearing what I have said to you, that he is the
wisest and best man I have ever known.--I left him in the meadow at
the foot of the garden. He is suffering to-day, and I wanted to save
him the longer walk. If you will allow me, I will go and bring him
in."
"Do," said Leopold. "Think, Helen!--If he is the wisest and best man
Mr. Wingfold ever knew! Tell him where to find the key."
"I will go myself," she said--with a yielding to the inevitable.
When she opened the door, there was the little man seated a few
yards off on the grass. He had plucked a cowslip and was looking
into it so intently that he neither heard nor saw her.
"Mr. Polwarth!" said Helen.
He lifted his eyes, rose, and taking off his hat, said with a smile,
"I was looking in the cowslip for the spots which the fairy, in the
Midsummer Night's Dream, calls 'rubies.'--How is your brother, Miss
Lingard?"
Helen answered with cold politeness, and led the way up the garden
with considerably more stateliness of demeanour than was necessary.
When he followed her into the room, "This is Mr. Polwarth, Leopold,"
said the curate, rising respectfully. "You may speak to him as
freely as to me, and he is far more able to give you counsel than I
am."
"Would you mind shaking hands with me, Mr. Polwarth?" said Leopold,
holding out his shadowy hand.
Polwarth took it with the kindest of smiles, and held it a moment in
his.
"You think me an odd-looking creature--don't you?" he said; "but
just because God made me so, I have been compelled to think about
things I might otherwise have forgotten, and that is why Mr.
Wingfold would have me come to see you."
The curate placed a chair for him, and the gate-keeper sat down.
Helen seated herself a little way off in the window, pretending, or
hardly more, to hem a handkerchief. Leopold's big eyes went
wandering from one to the other of the two men.
"What a horrible world it is!" was the thought that kept humming on
like an evil insect in Helen's heart. "I am sorry to see you suffer
so much," said Leopold kindly, for he heard the laboured breath of
the little man, and saw the heaving of his chest.
"It does not greatly trouble me," returned Polwarth. "It is not my
fault, you see," he added with a smile; "at least I don't think it
is."
"You are happy to suffer without fault," said Leopold. "It is
because it is just that my punishment seems greater than I can
bear."
"You need God's forgiveness in your soul."
"I don't see how that should do anything for me."
"I do not mean it would take away your suffering; but it would make
you able to bear it. It would be fresh life in you."
"I can't see why it should. I can't feel that I have wronged God. I
have been trying to feel it, Mr. Wingfold, ever since you talked to
me. But I don't know God, and I only feel what I have done to
Emmeline. If I said to God, 'Pardon me,' and he said to me, 'I do
pardon you,' I should feel just the same. What could that do to set
anything right that I have set wrong? I am what I am, and what I
ever shall be, and the injury which came from me, cleaves fast to
her, and is my wrong wherever she is."
He hid his face in his hands.
"What use CAN it be to torture the poor boy so?" said Helen to
herself.
The two men sat silent. Then Polwarth said:
"I doubt if there is any use in trying to feel. And no amount of
trying could enable you to imagine what God's forgiveness is like to
those that have it in them. Tell me something more you do feel, Mr.
Lingard."
"I feel that I could kill myself to bring her back to life."
"That is, you would gladly make amends for the wrong you have done
her."
"I would give my life, my soul, to do it."
"And there is nothing you can do for it?"
Helen began to tremble.
"What is there that can be done?" answered Leopold. "It does seem
hard that a man should be made capable of doing things that he is
not made capable of undoing again."
"It is indeed a terrible thought! And even the smallest wrong is,
perhaps, too awful a thing for created being ever to set right
again."
"You mean it takes God to do that?"
"I do."
"I don't see how he ever could set some things right."
"He would not be God if he could not or would not do for his
creature what that creature cannot do for himself, and must have
done for him or lose his life."
"Then he isn't God, for he can't help me."
"Because you don't see what can be done, you say God can do
nothing--which is as much as to say there cannot be more within his
scope than there is within yours! One thing is clear, that, if he
saw no more than what lies within your ken, he could not be God. The
very impossibility you see in the thing points to the region wherein
God works."
"I don't quite understand you. But it doesn't matter. It's all a
horrible mess. I wish I was dead."
"My dear sir, is it reasonable that because a being so capable of
going wrong finds himself incapable of setting right, he should
judge it useless to cry to that being who called him into being to
come to his aid?--and that in the face of the story--if it were but
an old legend, worn and disfigured--that he took upon himself our
sins?"
Leopold hung his head.
"God needs no making up to him," the gate-keeper went on--"so far
from it that he takes our sins on himself, that he may clear them
out of the universe. How could he say he took our sins upon him, if
he could not make amends for them to those they had hurt?"
"Ah!" cried Leopold, with a profound sigh, "--if that could be!--if
he could really do that!"
"Why, of course he can do that!" said Polwarth. "What sort of
watchmaker were he who could not set right the watches and clocks
himself made?"
"But the hearts of men and women!" "Which God does far more than
make!" interposed Polwarth. "That a being able to make another
self-conscious being distinct from himself, should be able also to
set right whatever that being could set wrong, seems to me to follow
of simple necessity. He might even, should that be fit, put the man
himself in the way of making up for what he had done, or at least
put it in his power to ask and receive a forgiveness that would set
all right between him and the person wronged. One of the painful
things in the dogma of the endless loss of the wicked is that it
leaves no room for the righteous to make up to them for the wrongs
they did them in this life. For the righteous do the wicked far more
wrong than they think--the righteous being all the time, in
reality, the wealthy, and the wicked the poor. But it is a blessed
word that there are first that shall be last, and last that shall be
first."
Helen stared. This last sounded to her mere raving madness, and she
thought how wrong she had been to allow such fanatics to gain power
over her poor Leopold--who sat before them whiter than ever, and
with what she took for a wilder gleam in his eye.
"Is there not the might of love, and all eternity for it to work in,
to set things right?" ended Polwarth.
"O God!" cried Leopold, "if that might be true! That would be a gift
indeed--the power to make up for the wrong I have done!"
He rose from the couch--slowly, sedately, I had almost said
formally, like one with a settled object, and stood erect, swaying a
little from weakness.
"Mr. Wingfold," he said, "I want of you one more favour: will you
take me to the nearest magistrate? I wish to give myself up."
Helen started up and came forward, paler than the sick man.
"Mr. Wingfold! Mr. Polwarth!" she said, and turned from the one to
the other, "the boy is not himself. You will never allow him to do
such a mad thing!"
"It may be the right thing," said the curate to Leopold, "but we
must not act without consideration."
"I have considered and considered it for days--for weeks," returned
Leopold; "but until this moment I never had the courage to resolve
on the plainest of duties.--Helen, if I were to go up to the throne
of God with the psalm in my mouth, and say to him, 'Against thee,
thee only, have I sinned,' it would be false; for I have sinned
against every man, woman, and child in England at least, and I will
repudiate myself. To the throne of God I want to go, and there is no
way thither for me but through the gate of the law."
"Leopold!" pleaded Helen, as if for her own life with some hard
judge, "what good can it do to send another life after the one that
is gone? It cannot bring it back, or heal a single sorrow for its
loss."
"Except perhaps my own," said Leopold, in a feeble voice, but not
the less in a determined tone.
"Live till God send for you," persisted Helen, heedless of his
words. "You can give your life to make up for the wrong you have
done in a thousand better ways: that would be but to throw it in the
dirt. There is so much good waiting to be done!"
Leopold sank on the couch.
"I am sitting down again, Helen, only because I am not able to
stand," he said. "I WILL go. Don't talk to me about doing good!
Whatever I touched I should but smear with blood. I want the
responsibility of my own life taken off me. I am like the horrible
creature Frankenstein made--one that has no right to existence--and
at the same time like the maker of it, who is accountable for that
existence. I am a blot on God's creation that must be wiped off. For
this my strength is given back to me, and I am once more able to
will and resolve. You will find I can act too. Helen, if you will
indeed be my sister, you must NOT prevent me now. I know it is hard
upon you, awfully hard. I know I am dragging your life down with
mine, but I cannot help it. If I don't do it, I shall but go out of
one madness into another, ever a deeper, until the devils can't hold
me. Mr. Polwarth, is it not my duty to give myself up? Ought not the
evil thing to be made manifest and swept out of the earth? Most
people grant it a man's first duty to take care of his life: that is
the only thing I can do for mine. It is now a filthy pool with a
corpse in it:--I would clean it out--have the thing buried at least,
though never forgotten--never, never forgotten. Then I shall die
and go to God and see what he can do for me."
"Why should you put it off till then?" said Polwarth. "Why not go to
him at once and tell him all?"
As if it had been Samuel at the command of Eli, Leopold rose and
crept feebly across the floor to the dressing-room, entered it, and
closed the door.
Then Helen turned upon Wingfold with a face white as linen, and eyes
flashing with troubled wrath. The tigress-mother swelled in her
heart, and she looked like a Maenad indeed.
"Is this then your religion?" she cried with quivering nostril.
"Would he you dare to call your master have stolen into the house of
a neighbour to play upon the weakness of a poor lad suffering from
brain-fever? A fine trophy of your persuasive power and priestly
craft you would make of him! What is it to you whether he confesses
his sins or not? If he confesses them to him you say is your God, is
not that enough? For shame, gentlemen!"
She ceased, and stood trembling and flashing--a human
thunder-cloud. Neither of the men cared to assert innocence,
because, although they had not advised the step, they entirely
approved of it.
A moment more, and her anger suddenly went out. She burst into
tears, and falling on her knees before the curate, begged and prayed
like a child condemned to some frightful punishment. It was terrible
to Wingfold to see a woman in such an agony of prayer--to one who
would not grant it--and that one himself. In vain he sought to raise
her.
"If you do not save Leopold, I will kill myself," she cried, "and my
blood will be on your head."
"The only way to save your brother is to strengthen him to do his
duty, whatever that may be."
The hot fit of her mental fever returned. She sprang to her feet,
and her face turned again almost like that of a corpse with pale
wrath.
"Leave the house!" she said, turning sharply upon Polwarth, who
stood solemn and calm at Wingfold's side, a step behind. It was
wonderful what an unconscious dignity radiated from him.
"If my friend goes, I go too," said Wingfold. "But I must first tell
your brother why."
He made a step towards the dressing-room.
But now came a fresh change of mood upon Helen. She darted between
him and the door, and stood there with such a look of humble
entreaty as went to his very heart, and all but unmanned him. Ah,
how lovely she looked in the silent prayer of tears! But not even
her tears could turn Wingfold from what seemed his duty. They could
only bring answering tears from the depth of a tender heart. She saw
he would not flinch.
"Then may God do to you as you have done to me and mine!" she said.
"Amen!" returned Wingfold and Polwarth together.
The door of the dressing-room opened, and out came Leopold, his
white face shining.
"God has heard me!" he cried.
"How do you know that?" said his sister, in the hoarse accents of
unbelieving despair.
"Because he has made me strong to do my duty. He has reminded me
that another man may be accused of my crime, and now to conceal
myself were to double my baseness."
"It will be time enough to think of that when there is a necessity
for it. The thing you imagine may never happen," said Helen, in the
same unnatural voice.
"Leave it," cried Leopold, "until an innocent man shall have
suffered the torture and shame of a false accusation, that a guilty
man may a little longer act the hypocrite! No, Helen, I have not
fallen so low as that yet. Believe me, this is the only living hour
I have had since I did the deed!"
But as he spoke, the light died out of his face, and ere they could
reach him he had fallen heavily on the floor.
"You have killed him!" cried Helen, in a stifled shriek, for all the
time she had never forgotten that her aunt might hear.
But the same moment she caught from his condition a lurid hope.
"Go, I beg of you," she said--"by the window there, before my aunt
comes. She must have heard the fall. There is the key of the door
below."
The men obeyed, and left the house in silence.
It was some time before Leopold returned to consciousness. He made
no resistance to being again put to bed, where he lay in extreme
exhaustion.