HELEN AND THE CURATE.
Before the morning Leopold lay wound in the net of a low fever,
almost as ill as ever, but with this difference, that his mind was
far less troubled, and that even his most restless dreams no longer
scared him awake to a still nearer assurance of misery. And yet,
many a time, as she watched by his side, it was excruciatingly plain
to Helen that the stuff of which his dreams were made was the last
process to the final execution of the law. She thought she could
follow it all in his movements and the expressions of his
countenance. At a certain point, the cold dew always appeared on his
forehead, after which invariably came a smile, and he would be quiet
until near morning, when the same signs again appeared. Sometimes he
would murmur prayers, and sometimes it seemed to Helen that he must
fancy himself talking face to face with Jesus, for the look of
blessed and trustful awe upon his countenance was amazing in its
beauty.
For Helen herself, she was prey to a host of changeful emotions. At
one time she accused herself bitterly of having been the cause of
the return of his illness; the next a gush of gladness would swell
her heart at the thought that now she had him at least safer for a
while, and that he might die and so escape the whole crowd of
horrible possibilities. For George's manipulation of the magistrate
could but delay the disclosure of the truth; even should no
discovery be made, Leopold must at length suspect a trick, and that
would at once drive him to fresh action.
But amongst the rest, a feeling which had but lately begun to
indicate its far-off presence now threatened to bring with it a
deeper and more permanent sorrow: it became more and more plain to
her that she had taken the evil part against the one she loved best
in the world; that she had been as a Satan to him; had driven him
back, stood almost bodily in the way to turn him from the path of
peace. Whether the path he had sought to follow was the only one or
not, it was the only one he knew; and that it was at least A true
one, was proved by the fact that he had already found in it the
beginnings of the peace he sought; while she, for the avoidance of
shame and pity, for the sake of the family, as she had said to
herself, had pursued a course which if successful, would at best
have resulted in shutting him up, as in a madhouse, with his own
inborn horrors, with vain remorse, and equally vain longing. Her
conscience, now that her mind was quieter, from the greater distance
to which the threatening peril had again withdrawn, had taken the
opportunity of speaking louder. And she listened--but still with
one question ever presented: Why might he not appropriate the
consolations of the gospel without committing the suicide of
surrender? She could not see that confession was the very door of
refuge and safety, towards which he must press.
George's absence was now again a relief, and while she feared and
shrank from the severity of Wingfold, she could not help a certain
indiscribable sense of safety in his presence--at least so long as
Leopold was too ill to talk.
For the curate, he became more and more interested in the woman who
could love so strongly, and yet not entirely, who suffered and must
still suffer so much, and who a faith even no greater than his own
might render comparatively blessed. The desire to help her grew and
grew in him, but he could see no way of reaching her. And then he
began to discover one peculiar advantage belonging to the little
open chamber of the pulpit--open not only or specially to heaven
above, but to so many of the secret chambers of the souls of the
congregation. For what a man dares not, could not if he dared, and
dared not if he could, say to another, even at the time and in the
place fittest of all, he can say thence, open-faced before the whole
congregation; and the person in need thereof may hear it without
umbrage, or the choking husk of individual application, irritating
to the rejection of what truth may lie in it for him. Would that our
pulpits were all in the power of such men as by suffering know the
human, and by obedience the divine heart! Then would the office of
instruction be no more mainly occupied by the press, but the faces
of true men would everywhere be windows for the light of the Spirit
to enter other men's souls, and the voice of their words would
follow with the forms of what truth they saw, and the power of the
Lord would speed from heart to heart. Then would men soon understand
that not the form of even soundest words availeth anything, but a
new creature.
When Wingfold was in the pulpit, then, he could speak as from the
secret to the secret; but elsewhere he felt, in regard to Helen,
like a transport-ship filled with troops, which must go sailing
around the shores of an invaded ally, in frustrate search for a
landing. Oh, to help that woman, that the light of life might go up
in her heart, and her cheek bloom again with the rose of peace! But
not a word could he speak in her presence, for he heard everything
be would have said as he thought it would sound to her, and
therefore he had no utterance. Is it an infirmity of certain kinds
of men, or a wise provision for their protection, that the brightest
forms the truth takes in their private cogitations seem to lose half
their lustre and all their grace when uttered in the presence of an
unreceptive nature, and they hear, as it were, their own voice
reflected in a poor, dull, inharmonious echo, and are disgusted?
But, on the other hand, ever in the pauses of the rushing, ever in
the watery gleams of life that broke through the clouds and drifts
of the fever, Leopold sought his friend, and, finding him, shone
into a brief radiance, or, missing him, gloomed back into the land
of visions. The tenderness of the curate's service, the heart that
showed itself in everything he did, even in the turn and expression
of the ministering hand, was a kind of revelation to Helen. For
while his intellect was hanging about the door, asking questions,
and uneasily shifting hither and thither in its unloved
perplexities, the spirit of the master had gone by it unseen, and
entered into the chamber of his heart.
After preaching the sermon last recorded, there came a reaction of
doubt and depression on the mind of the curate, greater than usual.
Had he not gone farther than his right? Had he not implied more
conviction than was his? Words could not go beyond his satisfaction
with what he found in the gospel, or the hopes for the range of his
conscious life springing therefrom; but was he not now making people
suppose him more certain of the FACT of these things than he was? He
was driven to console himself with the reflection that so long as he
had had no such intention, even if he had been so carried away by
the delight of his heart as to give such an impression, it mattered
little: what was it to other people what he believed or how he
believed? If he had not been untrue to himself, no harm would
follow. Was a man never to talk from the highest in him to the
forgetting of the lower? Was a man never to be carried beyond
himself and the regions of his knowledge? If so, then farewell
poetry and prophecy--yea, all grand discovery!--for things must be
foreseen ere they can be realized--apprehended ere they be
comprehended. This much he could say for himself, and no more, that
he was ready to lay down his life for the mere CHANCE, if he might
so use the word, of these things being true; nor did he argue any
devotion in that, seeing life without them would be to him a waste
of unreality. He could bear witness to no facts--but to the truth,
to the loveliness and harmony and righteousness and safety that he
saw in the idea of the Son of Man--as he read it in the story. He
dared not say what, in a time of persecution, torture might work
upon him, but he felt right hopeful that, even were he base enough
to deny him, any cock might crow him back to repentance. At the same
time he saw plain enough that even if he gave his body to be burned,
it were no sufficing assurance of his Christianity: nothing could
satisfy him of that less than the conscious presence of the perfect
charity. Without that he was still outside the kingdom, wandering in
a dream around its walls.
Difficulties went on presenting themselves; at times he would be
overwhelmed in the tossing waves of contradiction and impossibility;
but still his head would come up into the air and he would get a
breath before he went down again. And with every fresh conflict,
every fresh gleam of doubtful victory, the essential idea of the
master looked more and more lovely. And he began to see the working
of his doubts on the growth of his heart and soul--both widening
and realizing his faith, and preventing it from becoming faith in an
idea of God instead of in the living God--the God beyond as well as
in the heart that thought and willed and imagined.
He had much time for reflection as he sat silent by the bedside of
Leopold. Sometimes Helen would be sitting near, though generally
when he arrived she went out for her walk, but never anything came
to him he could utter to her. And she was one of those who learn
little from other people. A change must pass upon her ere she could
be rightly receptive. Some vapour or other that clouded her being
must be driven to the winds first.
Mrs. Ramshorn had become at least reconciled to the frequent
presence of the curate, partly from the testimony of Helen, partly
from the witness of her own eyes to the quality of his ministrations.
She was by no means one of the loveliest among women, yet she had a
heart, and could appreciate some kinds of goodness which the arrogance
of her relation to the church did not interfere to hide--for nothing
is so deadening to the divine as an habitual dealing with the outsides
of holy things--and she became half-friendly and quite courteous when
she met the curate on the stair, and would now and then, when she
thought of it, bring him a glass of wine as he sat by the bedside.