AFTER THE SERMON.
As the sermon drew to a close, and the mist of his emotion began to
disperse, individual faces of his audience again dawned out on the
preacher's ken. Mr. Drew's head was down. As I have always said,
certain things he had been taught in his youth, and had practised in
his manhood, certain mean ways counted honest enough in the trade,
had become to him, regarded from the ideal point of the divine in
merchandize--such a merchandize, namely, as the share the son of man
might have taken in buying and selling, had his reputed father been
a shop-keeper instead of a carpenter--absolutely hateful, and the
memory of them intolerable. Nor did it relieve him much to remind
himself of the fact, that he knew not to the full the nature of the
advantages he took, for he knew that he had known them such as
shrunk from the light, not coming thereto to be made manifest. He
was now doing his best to banish them from his business, and yet
they were a painful presence to his spirit--so grievous to be borne,
that the prospect held out by the preacher of an absolute and final
deliverance from them by the indwelling presence of the God of all
living men and true merchants, was a blessedness unspeakable. Small
was the suspicion in the Abbey Church of Olaston that morning, that
the well-known successful man of business was weeping. Who could
once have imagined another reason for the laying of that round,
good-humoured, contented face down on the book-board, than pure
drowsiness from lack of work-day interest! Yet there was a human
soul crying out after its birthright. Oh, to be clean as a
mountain-river! clean as the air above the clouds, or on the middle
seas! as the throbbing aether that fills the gulf betwixt star and
star!--nay, as the thought of the Son of Man himself, who, to make
all things new and clean, stood up against the old battery of
sin-sprung suffering, withstanding and enduring and stilling the
recoil of the awful force wherewith his Father had launched the
worlds, and given birth to human souls with wills that might become
free as his own!
While Wingfold had been speaking in general terms, with the race in
his mind's, and the congregation in his body's eye, he had yet
thought more of one soul, with its one crime and its intolerable
burden, than all the rest: Leopold was ever present to him, and
while he strove to avoid absorption in a personal interest however
justifiable, it was of necessity that the thought of the most
burdened sinner he knew should colour the whole of his utterance. At
times indeed he felt as if he were speaking to him immediately--and
to him only; at others, although then he saw her no more than him,
that he was comforting the sister individually, in holding out to
her brother the mighty hope of a restored purity. And when once more
his mind could receive the messages brought home by his eyes, he saw
upon Helen's face the red sunset of a rapt listening. True it was
already fading away, but the eyes had wept, the glow yet hung about
cheek and forehead, and the firm mouth had forgotten itself into a
tremulous form, which the stillness of absorption had there for the
moment fixed.
But even already, although he could not yet read it upon her
countenance, a snake had begun to lift its head from the chaotic
swamp which runs a creek at least into every soul, the rudimentary
desolation, a remnant of the time when the world was without form
and void. And the snake said: "Why, then, did he not speak like that
to my Leopold? Why did he not comfort him with such a good hope,
well-becoming a priest of the gentle Jesus? Or, if he fancied he
must speak of confession, why did he not speak of it in plain honest
terms, instead of suggesting the idea of it so that the poor boy
imagined it came from his own spirit, and must therefore be obeyed
as the will of God?"
So said the snake, and by the time Helen had walked home with her
aunt, the glow had sunk from her soul, and a gray wintry mist had
settled down upon her spirit. And she said to herself that if this
last hope in George should fail her, she would not allow the matter
to trouble her any farther; she was a free woman, and as Leopold had
chosen other counsellors, had thus declared her unworthy of
confidence, and, after all that she had suffered and done for love
of him, had turned away from her, she would put money in her purse,
set out for France or Italy, and leave him to the fate, whatever it
might be, which his new advisers and his own obstinacy might bring
upon him. Was the innocent bound to share the shame of the guilty?
Had she not done enough? Would even her father require more of her
than she had already done and endured?
When, therefore, she went into Leopold's room, and his eyes sought
her from the couch, she took no notice that he had got up and
dressed while she was at church; and he knew that a cloud had come
between them, and that after all she had borne and done for him, he
and his sister were now farther apart, for the time at least, than
when oceans lay betwixt their birth and their meeting; and he found
himself looking back with vague longing even to the terrible old
house of Glaston, and the sharing of their agony therein. His eyes
followed her as she walked across to the dressing-room, and the
tears rose and filled them, but he said nothing. And the sister who,
all the time of the sermon, had been filled with wave upon wave of
wishing--that Poldie could hear this, could hear that, could have
such a thought to comfort him, such a lovely word to drive the
horror from his soul, now cast on him a chilly glance, and said
never a word of the things to which she had listened with such
heavings of the spirit-ocean; for she felt, with an instinct more
righteous than her will, that they would but strengthen him in his
determination to do whatever the teacher of them might approve. As
she repassed him to go to the drawing-room, she did indeed say a
word of kindness; but it was in a forced tone, and was only about
his dinner! His eyes over-flowed, but he shut his lips so tight that
his mouth grew grim with determination, and no more tears came.
To the friend who joined her at the church-door, and, in George
Bascombe's absence, walked with them along Pine Street, Mrs.
Ramshorn remarked that the curate was certainly a most dangerous
man--particularly for young people to hear--he so confounded all the
landmarks of right and wrong, representing the honest man as no
better than the thief, and the murderer as no worse than anybody
else--teaching people in fact that the best thing they could do was
to commit some terrible crime, in order thereby to attain to a
better innocence than without it could ever be theirs. How far she
mistook, or how far she knew or suspected that she spoke falsely, I
will not pretend to know. But although she spoke as she did, there
was something, either in the curate or in the sermon, that had
quieted her a little, and she was less contemptuous in her
condemnation of him than usual.
Happily both for himself and others, the curate was not one of those
who cripple the truth and blind their own souls by
some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event--
A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom,
And ever three parts coward;
and hence, in proportion as he roused the honest, he gave occasion
to the dishonest to cavil and condemn. Imagine St. Paul having a
prevision of how he would be misunderstood, AND HEEDING IT!--what
would then have become of all those his most magnificent outbursts?
And would any amount of apostolic carefulness have protected him? I
suspect it would only have given rise to more vulgar misunderstandings
and misrepresentations still. To explain to him who loves not, is
but to give him the more plentiful material for misinterpretation.
Let a man have truth in the inward parts, and out of the abundance
of his heart let his mouth speak. If then he should have ground to
fear honest misunderstanding, let him preach again to enforce the
truth for which he is jealous, and if it should seem to any that the
two utterances need reconciling, let those who would have them consistent
reconcile them for themselves.
The reason of George Bascombe's absence from church that morning
was, that, after an early breakfast, he had mounted Helen's mare,
and set out to call on Mr. Hooker before he should have gone to
church. Helen expected him back to dinner, and was anxiously looking
for him. So also was Leopold, but the hopes of the two were
different.
At length the mare's hoofs echoed through all Sunday Glaston, and
presently George rode up. The groom took his horse in the street,
and he came into the drawing-room. Helen hastened to meet him.
"Well, George?" she said, anxiously.
"Oh, it's all right!--will be at least, I am sure. I will tell you
all about it in the garden after dinner.--Aunt has the good sense
never to interrupt us there," he added. "I'll just run and show
myself to Leopold: he must not suspect that I am of your party and
playing him false. Not that it is false, you know! for two negatives
make a positive, and to fool a mad-man is to give him fair play."
The words jarred sorely on Helen's ear.
Bascombe hurried to Leopold, and informed him that he had seen Mr.
Hooker, and that all was arranged for taking him over to his place
on Tuesday morning, if by that time he should be able for the
journey.
"Why not to-morrow?" said Leopold. "I am quite able."
"Oh! I told him you were not very strong. And he wanted a run after
the hounds to-morrow. So we judged it better put off till Tuesday."
Leopold gave a sigh, and said no more.