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.
CHAPTER XXX. THE STRONG MAN
The next day he was much too exhausted and weak to talk about anything. He took what his sister brought him, smiled his thanks, and once put up his hand and stroked her cheek. But her heart was not gladdened by these signs of comparative composure, for what gave him quiet but the same that filled her with unspeakable horror?
The day after that was Saturday, and George Bascombe came as usual. The sound of his step in the hall made her dying hope once more flutter its wings: having lost the poor stay of the parson, from whom she had never expected much, she turned in her fresh despair to the cousin from whom she had never looked for anything. But what was she to say to him?—Nothing yet, she resolved; but she would take him to see Leopold—for was he not sure to hear that the parson had been admitted? She did not feel at all certain that she was doing right, but she would do it; and if she left them together, possibly George might drop some good PRACTICAL advice, which, though spoken in ignorance, might yet tell. George was such a healthy nature and such a sound thinker! Was it not as ridiculous as horrible for any man to think he had a right to throw away his very existence, and bring disgrace upon his family as well, for a mere point of honour—no, not honour, mere fastidiousness!
Leopold was better, and willing enough to see George, saying only,
“I would rather it were Mr. Wingfold. But he can’t come to-day, I suppose, to-morrow being Sunday.”
George’s entrance brought with it a waft of breezy health, and a show of bodily vigour pleasant and refreshing to the heart of the invalid. Kindness shone in his eyes, and his large, handsome hand was out as usual while he was yet yards away. It swallowed up that of poor Leopold, and held it fast.
“Come, come, old fellow! What’s the meaning of this?” he said right cheerily. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself—lying in bed like this in such weather! Why ain’t you riding in the park with Helen, instead of moping in this dark room? You’ll be as blind as the fish in the cave of Kentucky if you don’t get out of this directly! We must see what we can do to get you up!”
He glanced round the room, saw that Helen had left it, and changed his tone to a lower and serious one:
“I say, my boy, you must have been playing old Harry with your constitution to bring yourself to such a pass! By Jove! this will never do! You must turn over a new leaf, you know. That sort of thing never pays. The game’s not worth the candle. Why, you’ve been at death’s door, and life’s not so long that you can afford to play ducks and drakes with it.”
Thus he talked, in expostulatory rattle, the very high-priest of social morality, for some, time before Leopold could get a word in. But when he did, it turned the current into quite another channel.
An hour passed, and George reappeared in the drawing-room, where Helen was waiting for him. He looked very grave.
“I fear matters are worse with poor Leopold than I had imagined,” he said.
Helen gave a sad nod of acquiescence.
“He’s quite off his head,” continued George, “—telling me such an awful cock-and-bull story with the greatest gravity! He WILL have it that he is a murderer—the murderer of that very girl I was telling you about, you remember,—”
“Yes, yes! I know,” said Helen, as a faint gleam of reviving hope shot up from below her horizon. George took the whole thing for a sick fancy, and who was likely to know better than he—a lawyer, and skilled in evidence? Not a word would she say to interfere with such an opinion!
“I hope you gave him a good talking-to,” she said.
“Of course I did,” he answered; “but it was of no use. I see exactly how it is. He gave me a full and circumstantial account of the affair, filling up all the gaps, it is true, but going only just as far as the newspapers supplied the skeleton. How he got away, for instance, he could not tell me. And now nothing will serve him but confess it! He don’t care who knows it! He’s as mad as a hatter!—I beg your pardon, Helen—on that one point, I mean. The moment I saw him I read madness in his eye!—What’s to be done now?”
“George, I look to you,” said Helen. “Poor aunt is of no use. Think what will become of her, if the unhappy boy should attempt to give himself up! We should be the talk of the county—of the whole country!”
“Why didn’t you tell me of this before, Helen? It must have been coming on for some time.”
“George, I didn’t know what to do. And I had heard you say such terrible things about the duty of punishing crime.”
“Good gracious, Helen! where is your logic? What has crime to do with it! Is down-right stark-staring madness a crime? Anyone with half an eye can see the boy is mad!”
Helen saw she had made a slip, and held her peace. George went on:—
“He ought to be shut up.”
“No! no! no!” Helen almost screamed, and covered her face with her hands.
“I’ve done my best to persuade him. But I will have another try. That a fellow is out of his mind is no reason why he should be unassailable by good logic—that is, if you take him on his own admissions.”
“I fear you will make nothing of him, George. He is set upon it, and I don’t know what IS to be done.”
George got up, went back to Leopold, and plied him with the very best of arguments. But they were of no avail. There was for him but one door out of hell, and that was the door of confession—let what might lie on the other side of it.
“Who knows,” he said, “but the law of a life for a life may have come of compassion for the murderer?”
“Nonsense!” said George. “It comes of the care of society over its own constituent parts.”
“Whatever it came from, I know this,” returned Leopold, “that, since I made up my mind to confess, I am a man again.”
George was silent. He found himself in that rare condition for him—perplexity. It would be most awkward if the thing came to be talked of! Some would even be fools enough to believe the story! Entire proof of madness would only make such set it down as the consequence—or, if pity prevailed, then as the cause of the deed. They might be compelled to shut him up, to avoid no end of the most frightful annoyances. But Helen, he feared, would not consent to that. And then his story was so circumstantial—and therefore so far plausible—that there was no doubt most magistrates would be ready at once to commit him for trial—and then where would there be an end of the most offensive embarrassments!
Thus George reflected uneasily. But at length an idea struck him.
“Well,” he said lightly, “if you will, you will. We must try to make it as easy for you as we can. I will manage it, and go with you. I know all about such things, you know. But it won’t do just to-day. If you were to go before a magistrate, looking as you do now, he would not listen to a word you uttered. He would only fancy you in a fever and send you to bed. If you are quiet to-day—let me see—to-morrow is Sunday—and if you are in the same mind on Monday, I will take you to Mr. Hooker—he’s one of the county magistrates, and you shall make your statement to him.”
“Thank you.—I should like Mr. Wingfold to go too.”
“Soh!” said George to himself.
“By all means,” he answered. “We can take him with us.”
He went again to Helen.
“This is a most awkward business,” he said. “Poor girl! what you must have gone through with him! I had no idea! But I see my way out of it. Keep your mind easy, Helen. I do see what I can do. Only what’s the meaning of his wanting that fellow Wingfold to go with him? I shouldn’t a bit wonder now if it all came of some of his nonsense! At least, it may be that ass of a curate that has put confession in his head—to save his soul, of course! How did he come to see him?”
“The poor boy would see him.”
“What made him want to see him?”
Helen held her peace. She saw George suspected the truth.
“Well, no matter,” said George. “But one never knows what may come of things. We ought always to look well ahead.—You had better go and lie down awhile, Helen; you don’t seem quite yourself.”
“I am afraid to leave Leopold,” she answered. “He will be telling aunt and everybody now.”
“That I will take care he does not,” said George. “You go and lie down a while.”
Helen’s strength had been sorely tried: she had borne up bravely to the last; but now that she could do no more, and her brother had taken himself out of her hands, her strength had begun to give way, and, almost for the first time in her life, in daylight, she longed to go to bed. Let George, or Wingfold, or who would, see to the wilful boy! She had done what she could.
She gladly yielded to George’s suggestion, sought an unoccupied room, bolted the door, and threw herself upon the bed.
CHAPTER XXXI. GEORGE AND LEOPOLD
George went again to Leopold’s room, and sat down by him. The youth lay with his eyes half closed, and a smile—a faint sad one—flickered over his face. He was asleep: from infancy he had slept with his eyes open.
“Emmeline!” he murmured, in the tone of one who entreats forgiveness.
“Strange infatuation!” said George to himself: “even his dreams are mad! Good God! there can’t be anything in it—can there? I begin to feel as if I were not quite safe myself. Mad-doctors go mad themselves, they say. I wonder what sort of floating sporule carries the infection—reaching the brain by the nose, I fancy. Or perhaps there is latent madness in us all, requiring only the presence of another madness to set it free.”
Leopold was awake and looking at him.
“Is it a very bad way of dying?” he asked.
“What is, old boy!”
“Hanging.”
“Yes, very bad—choking, you know,” answered George, who wanted to make the worst of it.
“I thought the neck was broken and all was over,” returned Leopold, with a slight tremor in his voice.
“Yes, that’s how it ought to be; but it fails so often!”
“At least there’s no more hanging in public, and that’s a comfort,” said Leopold.
“What a queer thing,” said George to himself, “that a man should be ready to hang for an idea! Why should he not do his best to enjoy what is left of the sunlight, seeing, as their own prophet says, the night cometh when no man can work? A few more whiffs of his cigar before it goes out, would hurt no one. It is one thing to hang a murderer, and quite another to hang yourself if you happen to be the man. But he’s stark raving mad, and must be humoured. Dance upon nothing for an idea! Well, it’s not without plenty of parallels in history!—I wonder whether his one idea would give way now, if it were brought to the actual test of hanging! It is a pity it couldn’t be tried, just for experiment’s sake. But a strait-waistcoat would be better.”
Leopold’s acquaintance with George had been but small, and of his favourite theories he knew nothing. But he had always known that he was not merely his sister’s cousin, but the trusted friend both of her and of her aunt; and since he had come to know of his frequent visits, he had begun to believe him more to Helen than a friend. Hence the moment he had made up his mind to confess, he was ready to trust George entirely, and although he was disappointed to find him receive his communication in a spirit so different from that of Wingfold and his friend, he felt no motion of distrust on that account, seeing Helen, who had been to him true as steel, took the same view of his resolution.
“What would you do yourself then, George, if you had committed a crime like mine?” he asked, after lying silent for a while.
None of George’s theories had greatly taxed his imagination. He had not been in any habit of fancying himself in this or that situation—and when he did, it was always in some pleasant one of victory or recognition. Possible conditions of humanity other than pleasant, he had been content to regard from the outside, and come to logical conclusions concerning, without, as a German would say, thinking himself into them at all; and it would have been to do the very idea of George Bascombe a wrong to imagine him entangled in any such net of glowing wire as a crime against society! Therefore, although for most questions George had always an answer ready, for this he had none at hand, and required a moment, and but a moment, to think.
“I would say to myself,” he replied, “‘What is done, is done, and is beyond my power to alter or help.’ And so I would be a man and bear it—not a weakling, and let it crush me. No, by Jove! it shouldn’t crush ME!”
“Ah, but you haven’t tried the weight of it, George!” returned Leopold.
“God forbid!” said George.
“God forbid! indeed,” rejoined Leopold; “but there ‘tis done for all his forbidding!”
“What’s done is done, God or devil, and must be borne, I say,” said Bascombe, stretching out his legs. He was aware it sounded heartless, but how could he help it? What else was there to be said?
“But if you can’t bear it? If it is driving you mad—mad—mad? If you must do something or kill yourself?” cried Leopold.
“You haven’t done your best at trying yet,” returned George. “But you are ill, and not very able to try, I daresay, and so we can’t help it. On Monday we shall go to Mr. Hooker, and see what he says to it.”
He rose and went to get a book from the library. On the stair he met the butler: Mr. Wingfold had called to see Mr. Lingard.
“He can’t see him to-day. He is too much exhausted,” said Bascombe; and the curate left the house thoughtful and sorry, feeling as if a vulture had settled by the side of the youth—a good-natured vulture, no doubt, but not the less one bent on picking out the eyes of his mind.
He walked away along the street towards the church with down-bent head, seeing no one. He entered the churchyard, not looking whither he went: a lovely soul was in pain and peril, and he could not get near to help it. They were giving it choke-damp to breathe, instead of mountain-air. They were washing its sores with anodynes instead of laying them open with the knife of honesty, that they might be cleansed and healed. He found himself stumbling among the level gravestones, and stopped and sat down.
He sat a while, seeming to think of nothing, his eyes resting on a little tuft of moss that shone like green gold in the sunlight on the shoulder of an awkward little cherub’s wing. Ere long he found himself thinking how not the soul of Leopold, but that of Helen, was in chief danger. Poor Leopold had the serpent of his crime to sting him alive, but Helen had the vampyre of an imperfect love to fan her asleep with the airs of a false devotion. It was Helen he had to be anxious about more than Leopold.
He rose and walked back to the house.
“Can I see Miss Lingard?” he asked.
It was a maid who opened the door this time. She showed him into the library, and went to inquire.
CHAPTER XXXII. WINGFOLD AND HELEN
When Helen lay down, she tried to sleep, but she could not even lie still. For all her preference of George and his counsel, and her hope in the view he took of Leopold’s case, the mere knowledge that in the next room her cousin sat by her brother, made her anxious and restless.
At first it was the bare feeling that they were together—the thing she had for so long taken such pains to prevent. Next came the fear lest Leopold should succeed in persuading George that he was really guilty—in which case, what would George, the righteous man, counsel? And last and chief of all, what hope of peace to Leopold could he in any of his counsel—except indeed he led him up to the door of death, and urged him into the nothingness behind it? Then what if George should be wrong, and there WAS something behind it? Whatever sort of a something it might be, could the teaching of George be in the smallest measure a preparation for it? Were it not better, so far as the POSSIBILITY which remained untouched by any of George’s arguments was concerned, that Leopold should die believing after Mr. Wingfold’s fashion, and not disbelieving after George’s? If then there were nothing behind, he would be nothing the worse; if there were, the curate might have in some sort prepared him for it.
And now first she began to feel that she was a little afraid of her cousin—that she had yielded to his influence, or rather allowed him to assume upon the possession of influence, until she was aware of something that somewhere galled. He was a very good fellow, but was he one fit to rule her life? Would her nature consent to look up to his always, if she were to marry him? But the thought only flitted like a cloud across the surface of her mind, for all her care was Leopold, and alas! with him she was now almost angry, and it grieved her sorely.
All these feelings together had combined to form her mood, when her maid came to the door with the message that Mr. Wingfold was in the library. She resolved at once to see him.
The curate’s heart trembled a little as he waited for her. He was not quite sure that it was his business to tell her her duty—yet something seemed to drive him to it: he could not bear the idea of her going on in the path of crookedness. It is no easy matter for one man to tell another his duty in the simplest relations of life; and here was a man, naturally shy and self-distrustful, daring to rebuke and instruct a woman, whose presence was mighty upon him, and whose influence was tenfold heightened by the suffering that softened her beauty!
She entered, troubled yet stately, doubtful, yet with a kind of half-trust in her demeanour, white, and blue-eyed, with pained mouth, and a droop of weariness and suffering in eyelids and neck—a creature to be worshipped if only for compassion of dignified distress.
Thomas Wingfold’s nature was one more than usually bent towards helpfulness, but his early history, his lack of friends, of confidence, of convictions, of stand or aim in life, had hitherto prevented the outcome of that tendency. But now, like issuing water, which, having found way, gathers force momently, the pent-up ministration of his soul was asserting itself. Now that he understood more of the human heart, and recognised in this and that human countenance the bars of a cage through which peeped an imprisoned life, his own heart burned in him with the love of the helpless; and if there was mingled therein anything of the ambition of benefaction, anything of the love of power, anything of self-recommendation, pride of influence, or desire to be a centre of good, and rule in a small kingdom of the aided and aiding, these marshy growths had the fairest chance of dying an obscure death; for the one sun, potent on the wheat for life, and on the tares for death, is the face of Christ Jesus, and in that presence Wingfold lived more and more from day to day.
And now came Helen, who, more than anyone whose history he had yet learned—more perhaps than even her brother, needed such help as he confidently hoped he knew now where she might find! But when he saw her stand before him wounded and tearful and proud, regarding his behaviour in respect of her brother as cruel and heartless; when he felt in his very soul that she was jealous of his influence, that she disliked and even despised him; it was only with a strong effort he avoided assuming a manner correspondent to the idea of himself he saw reflected in her mind, and submitting himself, as it were, to be what she judged him.
When, however, by a pure effort of will, he rose above this weakness and looked her full and clear in the face, a new jealousy of himself arose: she stood there so lovely, so attractive, so tenfold womanly in her misery, that he found he must keep a stern watch upon himself, lest interest in her as a woman should trespass on the sphere of simple humanity, wherein with favouring distinction is recognized neither Jew nor Greek, prince nor peasant—not even man or woman, only the one human heart that can love and suffer. It aided him in this respect however, that his inherent modesty caused him to look up to Helen as to a suffering goddess, noble, grand, lovely, only ignorant of the one secret, of which he, haunting the steps of the Unbound Prometheus, had learned a few syllables, broken yet potent, which he would fain, could he find how, communicate in their potency to her. And besides, to help her now looking upon him from the distant height of conscious superiority, he must persuade her to what she regarded as an unendurable degradation! The circumstances assuredly protected him from any danger of offering her such expression of sympathy as might not have been welcome to her.
It is true that the best help a woman can get is from a right man—equally true with its converse; but let the man who ventures take heed. Unless he is able to counsel a woman to the hardest thing that bears the name of duty, let him not dare give advice even to her asking.
Helen however had not come to ask advice of Wingfold. She was in no such mood. She was indeed weary of a losing strife, and only for a glimmer of possible help from her cousin, saw ruin inevitable before her. But this revival of hope in George had roused afresh her indignation at the intrusion of Wingfold with what she chose to lay to his charge as unsought counsel. At the same time, through all the indignation, terror, and dismay, something within her murmured audibly enough that the curate and not her cousin was the guide who could lead her brother where grew the herb of what peace might yet be had. It was therefore with a sense of bewilderment, discord, and uncertainty, that she now entered the library.
Wingfold rose, made his obeisance, and advanced a step or two. He would not offer a hand that might be unwelcome, and Helen did not offer hers. She bent her neck graciously, and motioned him to be seated.
“I hope Mr. Lingard is not worse,” he said.
Helen started. Had anything happened while she had been away from him?
“No. Why should he be worse?” she answered. “Have they told you anything?”
“I have heard nothing; only as I was not allowed to see him,—”
“I left him with Mr. Bascombe half an hour ago,” she said, willing to escape the imputation of having refused him admittance.
Wingfold gave an involuntary sigh.
“You do not think that gentleman’s company desirable for my brother, I presume,” she said with a smile so lustreless that it seemed bitter.
“He won’t do him any harm—at least I do not think you need fear it.”
“Why not? No one in your profession can think his opinions harmless, and certainly he will not suppress them.”
“A man with such a weight on his soul as your brother carries, will not be ready to fancy it lightened by having lumps of lead thrown upon it. An easy mind may take a shroud on its shoulders for wings, but when trouble comes and it wants to fly, then it knows the difference. Leopold will not be misled by Mr. Bascombe.”
Helen grew paler. She would have him misled—so far as not to betray himself.
“I am far more afraid of your influence than of his,” added the curate.
“What bad influence do you suppose me likely to exercise?” asked Helen, with a cold smile.
“The bad influence of wishing him to act upon your conscience instead of his own.”
“Is my conscience then a worse one than Leopold’s?” she asked, but as if she felt no interest in the answer.
“It is not his, and that is enough. His own and no other can tell him what he ought to do.”
“Why not leave him to it, then?” she said bitterly.
“That is what I want of you, Miss Lingard. I would have you fear to touch the life of the poor youth.”
“Touch his life! I would give him mine to save it. YOU counsel him to throw it away.”
“Alas, what different meanings we put on the word! You call the few years he may have to live in this world his life; while I—”
“While you count it the millions of which you know nothing,—somewhere whence no one has ever returned to bring any news!—a wretched life at best if it be such as you represent it.”
“Pardon me, that is merely what you suppose I mean by the word. I do not mean that; I mean something altogether different. When I spoke of his life, I thought nothing about here or there, now or then. You will see what I mean if you think how the light came back to his eye and the colour to his cheek the moment he had made up his mind to do what had long seemed his duty. When I saw him again that light was still in his eyes, and a feeble hope looked out of every feature. Existence, from a demon-haunted vapor, had begun to change to a morning of spring; life, the life of conscious well-being, of law and order and peace, had begun to dawn in obedience and self-renunciation; his resurrection was at hand. But you then, and now you and Mr. Bascombe, would stop this resurrection; you would seat yourselves upon his gravestone to keep him down!—And why?—Lest he, lest you, lest your family should be disgraced by letting him out of his grave to tell the truth.”
“Sir!” cried Helen, indignantly drawing herself to her full height and something more.
Wingfold took one step nearer to her.
“My calling is to speak the truth,” he said: “and I am bound to warn you that you will never be at peace in your own soul until you love your brother aright.”
“Love my brother!” Helen almost screamed. “I would die for him.”
“Then at least let your pride die for him,” said Wingfold, not without indignation.
Helen left the room, and Wingfold the house.
She had hardly shut the door, and fallen again upon the bed, when she began to know in her heart that the curate was right. But the more she knew it, the less would she confess it even to herself: it was unendurable.