RACHEL AND LEOPOLD.
Every day after this, so long as the weather continued warm, it was
Leopold's desire to be carried out to the meadow. Once at his
earnest petition, instead of setting him down in the usual place,
they went on with him into the park, but he soon wished to be taken
back to the meadow. He did not like the trees to come between him
and his bed: they made him feel like a rabbit that was too far from
its hole, he said; and he was never tempted to try it again.
Regularly too every day, about one o'clock, the gnome-like form of
the gate-keeper would issue from the little door in the park-fence,
and come marching across the grass towards Leopold's chair, which
was set near the small clump of trees already mentioned. The curate
was almost always there, not talking much to the invalid, but
letting him know every now and then by some little attention or
word, or merely by showing himself, that he was near. Sometimes he
would take refuge from the heat, which the Indian never felt too
great, amongst the trees, and there would generally be thinking out
what he wanted to say to his people the next Sunday.
One thing he found strange, and could not satisfy himself
concerning, namely, that although his mind was so much occupied with
Helen that he often seemed unable to think consecutively upon any
subject, he could always foresee his sermon best when, seated behind
one of the trees, he could by moving his head see her at work beside
Leopold's chair. But the thing that did carry him through became
plain enough to him afterwards: his faith in God was all the time
growing--and that through what seemed at the time only a succession
of interruptions. Nothing is so ruinous to progress in which effort
is needful, as satisfaction with apparent achievement; that ever
sounds a halt; but Wingfold's experience was that no sooner did he
set his foot on the lowest hillock of self-congratulation than some
fresh difficulty came that threw him prostrate; and he rose again
only in the strength of the necessity for deepening and broadening
his foundations that he might build yet higher, trust yet farther:
that was the only way not to lose everything. He was gradually
learning that his faith must be an absolute one, claiming from God
everything the love of a perfect Father could give, or the needs he
had created in his child could desire; that he must not look to
himself first for help, or imagine that the divine was only the
supplement to the weakness and failure of the human; that the
highest effort of the human was to lay hold of the divine. He
learned that he could keep no simplest law in its loveliness until
he was possessed of the same spirit whence that law sprung; that he
could not love Helen aright, simply, perfectly, unselfishly, except
through the presence of the originating Love; that the one thing
wherein he might imitate the free creative will of God was to will
the presence and power of that will which gave birth to his. It was
the vital growth of this faith, even when he was too much troubled
to recognize the fact, that made him strong in the midst of
weakness; when the son of man in him cried out, Let this cup pass,
the son of God in him could yet cry, Let thy will be done. He could
"inhabit trembling," and yet be brave.
Mrs. Ramshorn generally came to the meadow to see how the invalid
was after he was settled, but she seldom staid: she was not fond of
nursing, neither was there any need of her assistance; and as Helen
never dreamed now of opposing the smallest wish of her brother,
there was no longer any obstruction to the visits of Polwarth, which
were eagerly looked for by Leopold.
One day the little man did not appear, but soon after his usual time
the still more gnome-like form of his little niece came scrambling
rather than walking over the meadow. Gently and modestly, almost
shyly, she came up to Helen, made her a courtesy like a village
school-girl, and said, while she glanced at Leopold now and then
with an ocean of tenderness in her large, clear woman-eyes:
"My uncle is sorry, Miss Lingard, that he cannot come to see your
brother to-day, but he is laid up with an attack of asthma. He
wished Mr. Lingard to know that he was thinking of him:--shall I
tell you just what he said?"
Helen bent her neck: she did not feel much interest in the matter.
But Leopold said,
"Every word of such a good man is precious: tell me, please."
Rachel turned to him with the flush of a white rose on her face.
"I asked him, sir--'Shall I tell him you are praying for him?' and
he said, 'No. I am not exactly praying for him, but I am thinking of
God and him together.'"
The tears rose in Leopold's eyes. Rachel lifted her baby-hand, and
stroked the dusky, long-fingured one that lay upon the arm of the
chair.
"Dear Mr. Lingard," she said,--Helen stopped in the middle of an
embroidery stitch, and gave her a look as if she were about to ask
for her testimonials--"I could well wish, if it pleased God, that I
were as near home as you."
Leopold took her hand in his.
"Do you suffer then?" he said.
"Just look at me," she answered with a smile that was very pitiful,
though she did not mean it for such, "--shut up all my life in this
epitome of deformity! But I ain't grumbling: that would be a fine
thing! My house is not so small but God can get into it. Only you
can't think how tired I often am of it."
"Mr. Wingfold was telling me yesterday that some people fancy St.
Paul was little and misshapen, and that that was his thorn in the
flesh."
"I don't think that can be true, or he would never have compared his
body to a tabernacle, for, oh dear! it won't stretch an inch to give
a body room. I don't think either, if that had been the case, he
would have said he didn't want it taken off, but another put over
it. I do want mine taken off me, and a downright good new one put on
instead--something not quite so far off your sister's there, Mr.
Lingard. But I'm ashamed of talking like this. It came of wanting to
tell you I can't be sorry you are going when I should so dearly like
to go myself."
"And I would gladly stay a while, and that in a house no bigger than
yours, if I had a conscience of the same sort in my back-parlour,"
said Leopold smiling. "But when I am gone the world will be the
cleaner for it.--Do you know about God the same way your uncle does,
Miss Polwarth?"
"I hope I do--a little. I doubt if anybody knows as much as he
does," she returned, very seriously. "But God knows about us all the
same, and he don't limit his goodness to us by our knowledge of him.
It's so wonderful that he can be all to everybody! That is his
Godness, you know. We can't be all to any one person. Do what we
will, we can't let anybody see into us even. We are all in bits and
spots. But I fancy it's a sign that we come of God that we don't
like it. How gladly I would help you, Mr. Lingard, and I can do
nothing for you.--I'm afraid your beautiful sister thinks me very
forward. But she don't know what it is to lie awake all night
sometimes, think-thinking about my beautiful brothers and sisters
that I can't get near to do anything for."
"What an odd creature!" thought Helen, to whom her talk conveyed
next to nothing. "--But I daresay they are both out of their minds.
Poor things! they must have a hard time of it with one thing and
another!"
"I beg your pardon again for talking so much," concluded Rachel,
and, with a courtesy first to the one then to the other, walked
away. Her gait was no square march like her uncle's, but a sort of
sidelong propulsion, rendered more laborious by the thick grass of
the meadow.