Thomas Wingfold, Curate Part 37

said the curate, rising respectfully. "You may speak to him as freely as to me, and he is far more able to give you counsel than I am."

"Would you mind shaking hands with me, Mr. Polwarth?" said Leopold, holding out his shadowy hand.

Polwarth took it with the kindest of smiles, and held it a moment in his.

"You think me an odd-looking creature--don't you?" he said; "but just because G.o.d made me so, I have been compelled to think about things I might otherwise have forgotten, and that is why Mr. Wingfold would have me come to see you."

The curate placed a chair for him, and the gate-keeper sat down. Helen seated herself a little way off in the window, pretending, or hardly more, to hem a handkerchief. Leopold's big eyes went wandering from one to the other of the two men.

"What a horrible world it is!" was the thought that kept humming on like an evil insect in Helen's heart. "I am sorry to see you suffer so much,"

said Leopold kindly, for he heard the laboured breath of the little man, and saw the heaving of his chest.

"It does not greatly trouble me," returned Polwarth. "It is not my fault, you see," he added with a smile; "at least I don't think it is."

"You are happy to suffer without fault," said Leopold. "It is because it is just that my punishment seems greater than I can bear."

"You need G.o.d's forgiveness in your soul."

"I don't see how that should do anything for me."

"I do not mean it would take away your suffering; but it would make you able to bear it. It would be fresh life in you."

"I can't see why it should. I can't feel that I have wronged G.o.d. I have been trying to feel it, Mr. Wingfold, ever since you talked to me. But I don't know G.o.d, and I only feel what I have done to Emmeline. If I said to G.o.d, 'Pardon me,' and he said to me, 'I do pardon you,' I should feel just the same. What could that do to set anything right that I have set wrong? I am what I am, and what I ever shall be, and the injury which came from me, cleaves fast to her, and is my wrong wherever she is."

He hid his face in his hands.

"What use CAN it be to torture the poor boy so?" said Helen to herself.

The two men sat silent. Then Polwarth said:

"I doubt if there is any use in trying to feel. And no amount of trying could enable you to imagine what G.o.d's forgiveness is like to those that have it in them. Tell me something more you do feel, Mr. Lingard."

"I feel that I could kill myself to bring her back to life."

"That is, you would gladly make amends for the wrong you have done her."

"I would give my life, my soul, to do it."

"And there is nothing you can do for it?"

Helen began to tremble.

"What is there that can be done?" answered Leopold. "It does seem hard that a man should be made capable of doing things that he is not made capable of undoing again."

"It is indeed a terrible thought! And even the smallest wrong is, perhaps, too awful a thing for created being ever to set right again."

"You mean it takes G.o.d to do that?"

"I do."

"I don't see how he ever could set some things right."

"He would not be G.o.d if he could not or would not do for his creature what that creature cannot do for himself, and must have done for him or lose his life."

"Then he isn't G.o.d, for he can't help me."

"Because you don't see what can be done, you say G.o.d can do nothing--which is as much as to say there cannot be more within his scope than there is within yours! One thing is clear, that, if he saw no more than what lies within your ken, he could not be G.o.d. The very impossibility you see in the thing points to the region wherein G.o.d works."

"I don't quite understand you. But it doesn't matter. It's all a horrible mess. I wish I was dead."

"My dear sir, is it reasonable that because a being so capable of going wrong finds himself incapable of setting right, he should judge it useless to cry to that being who called him into being to come to his aid?--and that in the face of the story--if it were but an old legend, worn and disfigured--that he took upon himself our sins?"

Leopold hung his head.

"G.o.d needs no making up to him," the gate-keeper went on--"so far from it that he takes our sins on himself, that he may clear them out of the universe. How could he say he took our sins upon him, if he could not make amends for them to those they had hurt?"

"Ah!" cried Leopold, with a profound sigh, "--if that could be!--if he could really do that!"

"Why, of course he can do that!" said Polwarth. "What sort of watchmaker were he who could not set right the watches and clocks himself made?"

"But the hearts of men and women!" "Which G.o.d does far more than make!"

interposed Polwarth. "That a being able to make another self-conscious being distinct from himself, should be able also to set right whatever that being could set wrong, seems to me to follow of simple necessity.

He might even, should that be fit, put the man himself in the way of making up for what he had done, or at least put it in his power to ask and receive a forgiveness that would set all right between him and the person wronged. One of the painful things in the dogma of the endless loss of the wicked is that it leaves no room for the righteous to make up to them for the wrongs they did them in this life. For the righteous do the wicked far more wrong than they think--the righteous being all the time, in reality, the wealthy, and the wicked the poor. But it is a blessed word that there are first that shall be last, and last that shall be first."

Helen stared. This last sounded to her mere raving madness, and she thought how wrong she had been to allow such fanatics to gain power over her poor Leopold--who sat before them whiter than ever, and with what she took for a wilder gleam in his eye.

"Is there not the might of love, and all eternity for it to work in, to set things right?" ended Polwarth.

"O G.o.d!" cried Leopold, "if that might be true! That would be a gift indeed--the power to make up for the wrong I have done!"

He rose from the couch--slowly, sedately, I had almost said formally, like one with a settled object, and stood erect, swaying a little from weakness.

"Mr. Wingfold," he said, "I want of you one more favour: will you take me to the nearest magistrate? I wish to give myself up."

Helen started up and came forward, paler than the sick man.

"Mr. Wingfold! Mr. Polwarth!" she said, and turned from the one to the other, "the boy is not himself. You will never allow him to do such a mad thing!"

"It may be the right thing," said the curate to Leopold, "but we must not act without consideration."

"I have considered and considered it for days--for weeks," returned Leopold; "but until this moment I never had the courage to resolve on the plainest of duties.--Helen, if I were to go up to the throne of G.o.d with the psalm in my mouth, and say to him, 'Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,' it would be false; for I have sinned against every man, woman, and child in England at least, and I will repudiate myself. To the throne of G.o.d I want to go, and there is no way thither for me but through the gate of the law."

"Leopold!" pleaded Helen, as if for her own life with some hard judge, "what good can it do to send another life after the one that is gone? It cannot bring it back, or heal a single sorrow for its loss."

"Except perhaps my own," said Leopold, in a feeble voice, but not the less in a determined tone.

"Live till G.o.d send for you," persisted Helen, heedless of his words.

"You can give your life to make up for the wrong you have done in a thousand better ways: that would be but to throw it in the dirt. There is so much good waiting to be done!"