The Curate's Awakening, The Lady's Confession & The Baron's Apprenticeship (Complete Trilogy)
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.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
A REVIEW.
The curate walked hurriedly home, and seated himself at his table, where yet lay his Greek Testament open at the passage he had been pondering for his sermon. Alas! all he had then been thinking with such fervour had vanished. He knew his inspiring text, but the rest was gone. Worst of all, feeling was gone with thought, and was, for the time at least, beyond recall. Righteous as his anger was, it had ruffled the mirror of his soul till it could no longer reflect heavenly things. He rose, caught up his New Testament, and went to the church-yard. It was a still place, and since the pains of a new birth had come upon him, he had often sought the shelter of its calm. A few yards from the wall of the rectory garden stood an old yew-tree, and a little nearer on one side was a small thicket of cypress; between these and the wall was an ancient stone upon which he generally seated himself. It had already begun to be called the curate's chair. Most imagined him drawn thither by a clerical love of gloom, but in that case he could scarcely have had such delight in seeing the sky through the dark foliage of the yew: he thought the parts so seen looked more divinely blue than any of the rest. He would have admitted, however, that he found quiet, for the soul as well as the body, upon this edge of the world, this brink of the gulf that swallowed the ever-pouring ever-vanishing Niagara of human life. On the stone he now seated himself and fell a-musing.
What a change had come upon him—slow, indeed, yet how vast, since the night when he sat in the same churchyard indignant and uneasy with the words of Bascombe like hot coals in his heart! He had been made ashamed of himself who had never thought much of himself, but the more he had lost of