HOPES.
It was the first Sunday Helen had gone to church since her brother
came to her. On the previous Sunday he had passed some crisis and
begun to improve, and by the end of the week was so quiet, that
longing for a change of atmosphere, and believing he might be left
with the housekeeper, she had gone to church. On her return she
heard he was no worse, although he had "been a-frettin' after her."
She hurried to him as if he had been her baby.
"What do you go to church for?" he asked, half-petulantly, like a
spoilt child, with languid eyes whence the hard fire had vanished.
"What's the use of it?"
He looked at her, waiting an answer.
"Not much," replied Helen. "I like the quiet and the music. That's
all."
He seemed disappointed, and lay still for a few moments.
"In old times," he said at last, "the churches used to be a refuge:
I suppose that is why one can't help feeling as if some safety were
to be got from them yet.--Was your cousin George there this
morning?"
"Yes, he went with us," answered Helen.
"I should like to see him. I want somebody to talk to."
Helen was silent. She was more occupied however in answering to
herself the question why she shrank so decidedly from bringing
Bascombe into the sick-room, than in thinking what she should say to
Leopold. The truth was the truth, and why should she object to
Leopold's knowing, or at least being told as well as herself, that
he need fear no punishment in the next world, whatever he might have
to encounter in this; that there was no frightful God who hated
wrong-doing to be terrified at; that even the badness of his own
action need not distress him, for he and it would pass away as the
blood he had shed had already vanished from the earth? Ought it not
to encourage the poor fellow?--But to what? To live on and endure
his misery, or to put an end to it and himself at once? Or perhaps
to plunge into vice that he might escape the consciousness of guilt
and the dread of the law?
I will not say that exactly such a train of thought as this passed
through her mind, but of whatever sort it was, it brought her no
nearer to a desire for the light of George Bascombe's presence by
the bedside of her guilty brother. At the same time her partiality
for her cousin made her justify his exclusion thus: "George is so
good himself, he is only fit for the company of good people. He
would not in the least understand my poor Poldie, and would be too
hard upon him."
Since her brother's appearance, in fact, she had seen very little of
her cousin, and this not merely because her presence was so much
required in the sick-chamber, but because she was herself unwilling
to meet him. She had felt, almost without knowing it, that his
character was unsympathetic, and that his loud, cold good-nature
could never recognise or justify such love as she bore to her
brother! Nor was this all; for, remembering how he had upon one
occasion expressed himself with regard to criminals, she feared even
to look in his face, lest his keen, questioning, unsparing eye
should read in her soul that she was the sister of a murderer.
Before this time however a hint of light had appeared in the clouds
that enwrapped her and Leopold: she had begun to doubt whether he
had really committed the crime of which he accused himself. There
had been no inquiry after him, except from his uncle, concerning his
absence from Cambridge, for which his sudden attack of brain fever
served as more than sufficient excuse. That there had been such a
murder, the newspapers left her no room to question--but might not
the relation in which he stood to the victim--the horror of her
death, the insidious approaches of the fever, and the influences of
that hateful drug, have combined to call up an hallucination of
blood-guiltiness? And what at length all but satisfied her of the
truth of her conjecture was that, when he began to recover, Leopold
seemed himself in doubt at times whether his sense of guilt had not
its origin in some one or other of the many dreams which had haunted
him throughout his illness, knowing only too well that it was long
since dreams had become to him more real than the greater part of
what was going on around him. To this blurring and confusing of
consciousness it probably contributed, that, in the first stages of
the fever, he was under the influence of the same drug which had
been working upon his brain up to the very moment when he committed
the crime.
During the week the hope had almost settled into conviction; and one
consequence was that, although she was not a whit more inclined to
introduce George Bascombe to the sick-chamber, she found herself not
only equal, but no longer averse to meeting him; and on the
following Saturday, when he presented himself as usual, come to
spend the Sunday, she listened to her aunt, and consented to go out
with him for a ride--in the evening, however, when Mrs. Rainshorn
herself, who had shown Leopold great and genuine kindness, would be
able to sit with him. They therefore had dinner early, and Helen
went again to her brother's room, unwilling to leave him a moment
until she gave up her charge to her aunt.
They had tea together, and Leopold was very quiet. It is wonderful
with what success the mind will accommodate itself, in its effort
after peace, to the presence of the most torturing thought. But
Helen took this quietness for a sign of innocence, not knowing that
the state of the feelings is neither test nor gauge of guilt. The
nearer perfection a character is, the louder is the cry of
conscience at the appearance of fault; and, on the other hand, the
worst criminals have had the easiest minds.
Helen also was quiet, and fell into a dreamy mood, watching her
brother, who every now and then turned on her a look of love and
gratitude which moved her heart to its very depths. Not until she
heard the horses coming round from the stable, did she rise to go
and change her dress.
"I shall not be long away from you, Poldie," she said.
"Do not forget me, Helen," he returned. "If you forget me, an enemy
will think of me."
His love comforted her, and yet further strengthened her faith in
his innocence; and it was with a kind of half-repose, timid,
wavering, and glad, upon her countenance--how different from the
old, dull, wooden quiescence!--that she joined her cousin in the
hall. A moment, and he had lifted her to the saddle, and was mounted
by her side.