CHAPTER VII. 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 he 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.
CHAPTER VIII. AN EXAMINATION
The acquaintance between the draper and the gate-keeper rapidly ripened into friendship. Very generally, as soon as he had shut his shop, Drew would walk to the park-gate to see Polwarth; and three times a week at least, the curate made one of the party. Much was then talked, more was thought, and I venture to say, more yet was understood.
One evening the curate went earlier than usual, and had tea with the Polwarths.
“Do you remember,” he asked of his host, “once putting to me the question what our Lord came into this world for?”
“I do,” answered Polwarth.
“And you remember I answered you wrong: I said it was to save the world.”
“I do. But remember, I said primarily, for of course he did come to save the world.”
“Yes, just so you put it. Well, I think I can answer the question correctly now, and in learning the true answer I have learned much. Did he not come first of all to do the will of his Father? Was not his Father first with him always and in everything—his fellow-men next—for they were his Father’s?”
“I need not say it—you know that you are right. Jesus is tenfold a real person to you—is he not—since you discovered that truth?”
“I think so; I hope so. It does seem as if a grand simple reality had begun to dawn upon me out of the fog—the form as of a man pure and simple, because the eternal son of the Father.”
“And now, may I not ask—are you able to accept the miracles, things in themselves so improbable?”
“If we suppose the question settled as to whether the man was what he said, then all that remains is to ask whether the works reported of him are consistent with what you can see of the character of the man.”
“And to you they seem—?”
“Some consistent, others not. Concerning the latter I look for more light.”
“Meantime let me ask you a question about them. What was the main object of miracles?”
“One thing at least I have learned, Mr. Polwarth and that is, not to answer any question of yours in a hurry,” said Wingfold. “I will, if you please, take this one home with me, and hold the light to it.”
“Do,” said Polwarth, “and you will find it return you the light threefold.—One word more, ere Mr. Drew comes: do you still think of giving up your curacy?”
“I have almost forgotten I ever thought of such a thing. Whatever energies I may or may not have, I know one thing for certain, that I could not devote them to anything else I should think entirely worth doing. Indeed nothing else seems interesting enough—nothing to repay the labour, but the telling of my fellow-men about the one man who is the truth, and to know whom is the life. Even if there be no hereafter, I would live my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true if it is not. No facts can take the place of truths, and if these be not truths, then is the loftiest part of our nature a waste. Let me hold by the better than the actual, and fall into nothingness off the same precipice with Jesus and John and Paul and a thousand more, who were lovely in their lives, and with their death make even the nothingness into which they have passed like the garden of the Lord. I will go further, Polwarth, and say, I would rather die for evermore believing as Jesus believed, than live for evermore believing as those that deny him. If there be no God, I feel assured that existence is and could be but a chaos of contradictions, whence can emerge nothing worthy to be called a truth, nothing worth living for.—No, I will not give up my curacy. I will teach that which IS good, even if there should be no God to make a fact of it, and I will spend my life on it, in the growing hope, which MAY become assurance, that there is indeed a perfect God, worthy of being the Father of Jesus Christ, and that it was BECAUSE they are true, that these things were lovely to me and to so many men and women, of whom some have died for them, and some would be yet ready to die.”
“I thank my God to hear you say so. Nor will you stand still there,” said Polwarth. “But here comes Mr. Drew!”
CHAPTER IX. IMMORTALITY
“How goes business?” said Polwarth, when the new-comer had seated himself.
“That is hardly a question I look for from you, sir,” returned the draper, smiling all over his round face, which looked more than ever like a moon of superior intelligence. “For me, I am glad to leave it behind me in the shop.”
“True business can never be left in any shop. It is a care, white or black, that sits behind every horseman.”
“That is fact; and with me it has just taken a new shape,” said Drew, “for I have come with quite a fresh difficulty. Since I saw you last, Mr. Polwarth, a strange and very uncomfortable doubt has rushed in upon me, and I find myself altogether unfit to tackle it. I have no weapons—not a single argument of the least weight. I wonder if it be a law of nature that no sooner shall a man get into a muddle with one thing, than a thousand other muddles shall come pouring in upon him, as if Muddle itself were going to swallow him up! Here am I just beginning to get a little start in honester ways, when up comes the ugly head of the said doubt, swelling itself more and more to look like a fact—namely, that after this world there is nothing for us—nothing at all to be had anyhow—that as we came so we go—into life, out of life—that, having been nothing before, we shall be nothing after! The flowers come back in the spring, and the corn in the autumn, but they ain’t the same flowers or the same corn. They’re just as different as the new generations of men.”
“There’s no pretence that we come back either. We only think we don’t go into the ground, but away somewhere else.”
“You can’t prove that.”
“No.”
“And you don’t know anything about it!”
“Not much—but enough, I think.”
“Why, even those that profess to believe it, scoff at the idea of an apparition—a ghost!”
“That’s the fault of the ghosts, I suspect—or their reporters. I don’t care about them myself. I prefer the tale of one who, they say, rose again, and brought his body with him.”
“Yes; but he was only one!”
“Except two or three whom, they say, he brought to life.”
“Still there are but three or four.”
“To tell you the truth, I do not care much to argue the point with you.—It is by no means a matter of the FIRST importance whether we live for ever or not.”
“Mr. Polwarth!” exclaimed the draper in such astonishment mingled with horror, as proved he was not in immediate danger of becoming an advocate of the doctrine of extinction.
The gate-keeper smiled what, but for a peculiar expression of undefinable good in it, might have been called a knowing smile.
“Suppose a thing were in itself not worth having,” he said, “would it be any great enhancement of it as a gift to add the assurance that the possession of it was eternal! Most people think it a fine thing to have a bit of land to call their own and leave to their children; but suppose a stinking and undrainable swamp, full of foul springs—what consolation would it be to the proprietor of that to know, while the world lasted, not a human being would once dispute its possession with any fortunate descendant holding it?”
The draper only stared, but his stare was a thorough one. The curate sat waiting, with both amusement and interest, for what would follow: he saw the direction in which the little man was driving.
“You astonish me!” said Mr. Drew, recovering his mental breath. “How can you compare God’s gift to such a horrible thing! Where should we be without life?”
Rachel burst out laughing, and the curate could not help joining her.
“Mr. Drew,” said Polwarth, half merrily, “are you going to help me drag my chain out of its weary length, or are you too much shocked at the doubtful condition of its links to touch them? I promise you the last shall be of bright gold.”
“I beg your pardon,” said the draper; “I might have known you didn’t mean it.”
“On the contrary, I mean everything I say and that literally. Perhaps I don’t mean everything you fancy I mean.—Tell me then, would life be worth having on any and every possible condition?”
“Certainly not.”
“You know some, I dare say, who would be glad to be rid of life such as it is, and such as they suppose it must continue?”
“I don’t.”
“I do.”
“I have already understood that everybody clung to life.”
“Most people do; everybody certainly does not: Job, for instance.”
“They say that is but a poem.”
“BUT a poem! EVEN a poem—a representation true not of this or that individual, but of the race! There ARE such persons as would gladly be rid of life, and in their condition all would feel the same. Somewhat similar is the state of those who profess unbelief in the existence of God: none of them expect, and few of them seem to wish to live for ever!—At least, so I am told.”
“That is no wonder,” said the draper; “—if they don’t believe in God, I mean.”
“Then there I have you! There you allow life to be not worth having, if on certain evil conditions.”
“I admit it, then.”
“And I repeat that to prove life endless is a matter of the FIRST importance. And I will go a little farther.—Does it follow that life is worth having because a man would like to have it for ever?”
“I should say so; who should be a better judge than the man himself?”
“Let us look at it a moment. Suppose—we will take a strong case—suppose a man whose whole delight is in cruelty, and who has such plentiful opportunity of indulging the passion that he finds it well with him—such a man would of course desire such a life to endure for ever: is such a life worth having? were it well that man should be immortally cruel?”
“Not for others.”
“Still less, I say, for himself.”
“In the judgment of others, doubtless; but to himself he would be happy.”
“Call his horrible satisfaction happiness then, and leave aside the fact that in its own nature it is a horror, and not a bliss: a time must come, when, in the exercise of his delight, he shall have destroyed all life besides, and made himself alone with himself in an empty world: will he then find life worth having?”
“Then he ought to live for punishment.”
“With that we have nothing to do now, but there you have given me an answer to my question, whether a man’s judgment that his life is worth having, proves immortality a thing to be desired.”
“I have. I understand now.”
“It follows that there is something of prior importance to the possession of immortality:—what is that something?”
“I suppose that the immortality itself should be worth possessing.”
“Yes; that the life should be such that it were well it should be endless.—And what then if it be not such?”
“The question then would be whether it could not be made such.”
“You are right.—And wherein consists the essential inherent worthiness of a life as life?—The only perfect idea of life is—a unit, self-existent, and creative. That is God, the only one. But to this idea, in its kind, must every life, to be complete as life, correspond; and the human correspondence to self-existence is, that the man should round and complete himself by taking into himself that origin; by going back and in his own will adopting his origin, rooting therein afresh in the exercise of his own freedom and in all the energy of his own self-roused will; in other words—that the man say ‘I will be after the will of the creating I;’ that he see and say with his whole being that to will the will of God in himself and for himself and concerning himself, is the highest possible condition of a man. Then has he completed his cycle by turning back upon his history, laying hold of his cause, and willing his own being in the will of the only I AM. This is the rounding, re-creating, unifying of the man. This is religion, and all that gathers not with this, scatters abroad.”
“And then,” said Drew, with some eagerness, “lawfully comes the question, ‘Shall I, or shall I not live for ever?’”
“Pardon me; I think not,” returned the little prophet. “I think rather we have done with it for ever. The man with life so in himself, will not dream of asking whether he shall live. It is only in the twilight of a half-life, holding in it at once much wherefore it should desire its own continuance, and much that renders it unworthy of continuance, that the doubtful desire of immortality can arise.—Do you remember”—here Polwarth turned to Wingfold—“my mentioning to you once a certain manuscript of strange interest—to me at least and Rachel—which a brother of mine left behind him?”
“I remember it perfectly,” answered the curate.
“It seems so to mingle with all I ever think on this question, that I should much like, if you gentlemen would allow me, to read some extracts from it.”
Nothing could have been heartier than the assurance of both the men that they could but be delighted to listen to anything he chose to give them.
“I must first tell you, however,” said Polwarth, “merely to protect you from certain disturbing speculations, otherwise sure to present themselves, that my poor brother was mad, and that what I now read portions of seemed to him no play of the imagination, but a record of absolute fact. Some parts are stranger and less intelligible than others, but through it all there is abundance of intellectual movement, and what seems to me a wonderful keenness to perceive the movements and arrest the indications of an imagined consciousness.”
As he spoke, the little man was opening a cabinet in which he kept his precious things. He brought from it a good-sized quarto volume, neatly bound in morocco, with gilt edges, which he seemed to handle not merely with respect but with tenderness.
The heading of the next chapter is my own, and does not belong to the manuscript.