Thomas Wingfold, Curate Part 18

But I said nothing of contentment. I was but thinking of the fools who, whether content or not, yet want to live for ever, and so, very conveniently, take their longing for immortality, which they call an idea innate in the human heart, for a proof that immortality is their rightful inheritance."

"How then do you account for the existence and universality of the idea?" asked Helen, who had happened lately to come upon some arguments on the other side.

But while she spoke thus indifferently she felt in her heart like one who wakes from a delicious swim in the fairest of rivers, to find that the clothes have slipped from the bed to the floor:--that was all his river and all his swim!

"I account for its existence as I have just said; and for its universality by denying it. It is NOT universal, for _I_ haven't it."

"At least you will not deny that men, even when miserable, shrink from dying?"

"Anything, everything is unpleasant out of its due time. I will allow, for the sake of argument, that the thought of dying is always unpleasant. But wherefore so? Because, in the very act of thinking it, the idea must always be taken from the time that suits with it--namely, its own time, when it will at length, and ought at length to come--and placed in the midst of the lively present, with which a.s.suredly it does not suit. To life, death must be always hateful. In the rush and turmoil of effort, how distasteful even the cave of the hermit--let ever such a splendid view spread abroad before its mouth! But when it comes it will be pleasant enough, for then its time will have come also--the man will be prepared for it by decay and cessation. If one were to tell me that he had that endless longing for immortality, of which hitherto I have only heard at second hand, I would explain it to him thus:--Your life, I would say, not being yet complete, still growing, feels in itself the onward impulse of growth, and, unable to think of itself as other than complete, interprets that onward impulse as belonging to the time around it instead of the nature within it. Or rather let me say, the man feels in himself the elements of more, and not being able to grasp the notion of his own completeness, which is so far from him, transposes the feeling of growth and sets it beyond himself, translating it at the same time into an instinct of duration, a longing after what he calls eternal life. But when the man is complete, then comes decay and brings its own contentment with it--as will also death, when it arrives in its own proper season of fulness and ripeness."

Helen said nothing in reply. She thought her cousin very clever, but could not enjoy what he said--not in the face of that sky, and in the yet lingering reflection of the feelings it had waked in her. He might be right, but now at least she wanted no more of it. She even felt as if she would rather cherish a sweet deception for the comfort of the moment in which the weaver's shuttle flew, than take to her bosom a cold killing fact.

Such were indeed an unworthy feeling to follow! Of all things let us have the truth--even of fact! But to deny what we cannot prove, not even casts into our ice-house a spadeful of snow. What if the warm hope denied should be the truth after all? What if it was the truth in it that drew the soul towards it by its indwelling reality, and its relations with her being, even while she took blame for suffering herself to be enticed by a sweet deception? Alas indeed for men if the life and the truth are not one, but fight against each other! Surely it says something for the divine nature of him that denies the divine, when he yet cleaves to what he thinks the truth, although it denies the life, and blots the way to the better from every chart!

"And what were you thinking of, George?" said Helen, willing to change the subject.

"I was thinking," he answered, "let me see!--oh! yes--I was thinking of that very singular case of murder. You must have seen it in the newspapers. I have long had a doubt whether I were better fitted for a barrister or a detective. I can't keep my mind off a puzzling case.--You must have heard of this one--the girl they found lying in her ball-dress in the middle of a wood--stabbed to the heart?"

"I do remember something of it," answered Helen, gathering a little courage to put into her voice from the fact that her cousin could hardly see her face. "Then the murderer has not been discovered?"

"That is the point of interest. Not a trace of him! Not a soul suspected even!"

Helen drew a deep breath.

"Had it been in Rome, now," George went on. "But in a quiet country place in England! The thing seems incredible! So artistically done!--no struggle!--just one blow right to the heart, and the a.s.sa.s.sin gone as if by magic!--no weapon dropped!--nothing to give a clue! The whole thing suggests a practised hand.--But why such a one for the victim? Had it been some false member of a secret society thus immolated, one could understand it. But a merry girl at a ball!--it IS strange! I SHOULD like to try the unravelling of it."

"Has nothing then been done?" said Helen with a gasp, to hide which she moved in her saddle, as if readjusting her habit.

"Oh, everything--of course. There was instant pursuit on the discovery of the body, but they seem to have got on the track of the wrong man--or, indeed, for anything certain, of no man at all. A coast-guardsman says that, on the night or rather morning in question, he was approaching a little cove on the sh.o.r.e, not above a mile from the scene of the tragedy, with an eye upon what seemed to be two fishermen preparing to launch their boat, when he saw a third man come running down the steep slope from the pastures above, and jump into the stern of it. Ere he could reach the spot, they were off, and had hoisted two lugsails. The moon was in the first of her last quarter, and gave light enough for what he reported. But, when inquiries founded on this evidence were made, nothing whatever could be discovered concerning boat or men. The next morning no fishing-boat was lacking, and no fisherman would confess to having gone from that cove. The marks of the boat's keel, and of the men's feet, on the sand, if ever there were any, had been washed out by the tide. It was concluded that the thing had been pre-arranged and provided for, and that the murderer had escaped, probably to Holland. Thereupon telegrams were shot in all directions, but no news could be gathered of any suspicious landing on the opposite coast. There the matter rests, or at least has rested for many weeks.

Neither parents, relatives, nor friends appear to have a suspicion of anyone."

"Are there no conjectures as to motives?" asked Helen, feeling with joy her power of dissimulation gather strength.

"No end of them. She was a beautiful creature, they say, sweet-tempered as a dove, and of course fond of admiration--whence the conjectures all turn on jealousy. The most likely thing seems, that she had some squire of low degree, of whom neither parents nor friends knew anything. That they themselves suspect this, appears likely from their more than apathy with regard to the discovery of the villain. I am strongly inclined to take the matter in hand myself."

"We must get him out of the country as soon as possible," thought Helen.

"I should hardly have thought it worthy of your gifts, George," she said, "to turn police-man. For my part, I should not relish hunting down any poor wretch."

"The sacrifice of individual choice is a claim society has upon each of its members," returned Bas...o...b... "Every murderer hanged, or better, imprisoned for life, is a gain to the community."

Helen said no more, and presently turned homewards, on the plea that she must not be longer absent from her invalid.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

VOLUME II.

CHAPTER I.

RACHEL AND HER UNCLE.

It was nearly dark when they arrived again at the lodge. Rachel opened the gate for them. Without even a THANK YOU, they rode out. She stood for a moment gazing after them through the dusk, then turned with a sigh, and went into the kitchen, where her uncle sat by the fire with a book in his hand.

"How I should like to be as well made as Miss Lingard!" she said, seating herself by the lamp that stood on the deal-table. "It MUST be a fine thing to be strong and tall, and able to look this way and that without turning all your body along with your head, like the old man that gathers the leeches in Wordsworth's poem. And what it must be to sit on a horse as she does! You should have seen her go flying like the very wind across the park! You would have thought she and her horse were cut out of the same piece. I'm dreadfully envious, uncle."

"No, my child; I know you better than you do yourself. There is a great difference between _I_ WISH _I_ WAS and _I_ SHOULD LIKE TO BE--as much as between a grumble and a prayer. To be content is not to be satisfied.

No one ought to be satisfied with the imperfect. It is G.o.d's will that we should bear, and contentedly--because in hope, looking for the redemption of the body. And we know he has a ready servant who will one day set us free."

"Yes, uncle; I understand. You know I enjoy life: how could I help it and you with me? But I don't think I ever go through the churchyard without feeling a sort of triumph. 'There's for you!' I say sometimes to the little crooked shadow that creeps along by my side across the graves. 'You'll soon be caught and put inside!'--But how am I to tell I mayn't be crooked in the next world as well as this? That's what troubles me at times. There might be some necessity for it, you know."

"Then will there be patience to bear it there also; that you may be sure of. But I do not fear. It were more likely that those who have not thanked G.o.d, but prided themselves that they were beautiful in this world, should be crooked in the next. It would be like Dives and Lazarus, you know. But G.o.d does what is best for them as well as for us. We shall find one day that beauty and riches were the best thing for those to whom they were given, as deformity and poverty were the best for us."

"I wonder what sort of person I should have been if I had had a straight spine!" said Rachel laughing.

"Hardly one so dear to your deformed uncle," said her companion in ugliness.

"Then I'm glad I am as I am," rejoined Rachel.

"This conscious individuality of ours," said Polwarth, after a thoughtful silence, "is to me an awful thing--the one thing that seems in humanity like the onliness of G.o.d. Mine terrifies me sometimes--looking a stranger to me--a limiting of myself--a breaking in upon my existence--like a volcanic outburst into the blue Sicilian air.

When it thus manifests itself, I find no refuge but the offering of it back to him who thought it worth making. I say to him: 'Lord, it is thine, not mine;--see to it, Lord. Thou and thy eternity are mine, Father of Jesus Christ.'"

He covered his eyes with his hands, and his lips grew white, and trembled. Thought had turned into prayer, and both were silent for a s.p.a.ce. Rachel was the first to speak.

"I think I understand, uncle," she said. "I don't mind being G.o.d's dwarf. But I would rather be made after his own image; this can't be it.

I should like to be made over again."

"And if the hope we are saved by be no mockery, if St. Paul was not the fool of his own radiant imaginings, you will be, my child.--But now let us forget our miserable bodies. Come up to my room, and I will read you a few lines that came to me this morning in the park."

"Won't you wait for Mr. Wingfold, uncle? He will be here yet, I think.

It can't be ten o'clock. He always looks in on Sat.u.r.days as he goes home from his walk. I should like you to read them to him too. They will do him good, I know."

"I would, my dear, willingly, if I thought he would care for them. But I don't think he would. They are not good enough verses. He has been brought up on Horace, and, I fear, counts the best poetry the neatest."

"I think you must be mistaken there, uncle; I have heard him talk delightfully about poetry."

"You must excuse me if I am shy of reading my poor work to any but yourself, Rachel. My heart was wo much in it, and the subject is so sacred--"