Thomas Wingfold, Curate Part 60

"You are no stranger to Mr. Wingfold or my uncle," said Rachel, "and I daresay you know Mr. Drew?"

"To tell you the truth, Miss Polwarth, I have not behaved as I should either to your uncle or Mr. Wingfold. I know it now that my brother is gone. They were so good to him! I feel now as if I had been possessed with an evil spirit. I could not bear them to be more to him than I was. Oh, how I should like to hear what they are saying! I feel as if I should get a glimpse of Leopold--almost, if I might. But I couldn't face them all together. I could not go into the room."

Rachel was silent for a moment, thinking. Then she said:

"I'll tell you what then: there's no occasion. Between my uncle's room and mine there's a little closet, where you shall sit and hear every word. Nothing will divide you from them but a few thin old boards."

"That would hardly be honourable though--would it?"

"I will answer for it. I shall tell my uncle afterwards. There may be cases where the motive makes the right or the wrong. It's not as if you were listening to find out secrets. I shall be in the room, and that will be a connecting link, you know: they never turn me out. Come now.

We don't know what we may be losing."

The desire to hear Leopold's best friends talk about him was strong in Helen, but her heart misgave her: was it not unbecoming? She would be in terror of discovery all the time. In the middle of the stair, she drew Rachel back and whispered,

"I dare not do it."

"Come on," said Rachel. "Hear what I shall say to them first. After that you shall do as you please."

Evidently, so quick was her response, her thoughts had been going in the same direction as Helen's.

"Thank you for trusting me," she added, as Helen again followed her.

Arrived at the top, the one stood trembling, while the other went into the room.

"Uncle," said Rachel, "I have a friend in the house who is very anxious to hear you and our friends speak your minds to each other, but for reasons does not wish to appear: will you allow my friend to listen without being seen?"

"Is it your wish, Rachel, or are you only conveying the request of another?" asked her uncle.

"It is my wish," answered Rachel. "I really desire it--if you do not mind."

She looked from one to another as she spoke. The curate and the draper indicated a full acquiescence.

"Do you know quite what you are about, Rachel?" asked Polwarth.

"Perfectly, uncle," she answered. "There is no reason why you should not talk as freely as if you were talking only to me. I will put my friend in the closet, and you need never think that anyone is in the house but ourselves."

"Then I have no more to say," returned her uncle with a smile. "Your FRIEND, whoever he or she may be, is heartily welcome."

Rachel rejoined Helen, who had already drawn nearer to the door of the closet, and now seated herself right willingly in its shelter, amidst an atmosphere odorous of apples and herbs. Already the talk was going on just as before. At first each of the talkers did now and then remember there was a listener unseen but found, when the conversation came to a close, that he had for a long time forgotten it.

CHAPTER XXVII.

WHAT HELEN HEARD,

Although satisfied that, after what Rachel had said to the men, there could be no impropriety in her making use of the privilege granted her, Helen felt oddly uncomfortable at first. But soon the fancy came, that she was listening at the door of the other world to catch news of her Leopold, and that made her forget herself and put her at peace. For some time, however, the conversation was absolutely unintelligible to her.

She understood the words and phrases, and even some of the sentences, but as she had no clue to their drift, the effort to understand was like attempting to realize the span of a rainbow from a foot or two of it appearing now and then in different parts and vanishing again at once.

It was chiefly Polwarth, often Wingfold, and now and then Drew that spoke, Rachel contributing only an occasional word. At length broke something of a dawn over the seeming chaos. The words from which the light that first reached Helen flowed, were the draper's.

"I can't think, for all that," he said, "why, if there be life beyond the grave, and most sincerely I trust there is--I don't see why we should know so little about it. Confess now, Mr. Polwarth!--Mr.

Wingfold!" he said appealingly, "--does it not seem strange that, if our dearest friends go on living somewhere else, they should, the moment they cease to breathe, pa.s.s away from us utterly--so utterly that from that moment neither hint nor trace nor sign of their existence ever reaches us? Nature, the Bible, G.o.d himself says nothing about how they exist or where they are, or why they are so silent--cruelly silent if it be in their power to speak,--therefore, they cannot; and here we are left not only with aching hearts but wavering faith, not knowing whither to turn to escape the stare of the awful blank, that seems in the very intensity of its silence to shout in our ears that we are but dust and return to the dust!"

The gate-keeper and curate interchanged a pleased look of surprise at the draper's eloquence, but Polwarth instantly took up his answer.

"I grant you it would be strange indeed if there were no good reason for it," he said.

"Then do you say," asked Wingfold, "that until we see, discover, or devise some good reason for the darkness that overhangs it, we are at liberty to remain in doubt as to whether there be any life within the cloud?"

"I would say so," answered Polwarth, "were it not that we have the story of Jesus, which, if we accept it, is surely enough to satisfy us both as to the thing itself, and as to the existence of a good reason, whether we have found one or not, for the mystery that overshadows it."

"Still I presume we are not forbidden to seek such a reason," said the curate.

The draper was glancing from the one to the other with evident anxiety.

"Certainly not," returned the gate-keeper. "For what else is our imagination given us but the discovery of good reasons that are, or the invention of good reasons that may perhaps be?"

"Can you then imagine any good reason," said Drew, "why we should be kept in such absolute ignorance of everything that befalls the parted spirit from the moment it quits its house with us?"

"I think I know one," answered Polwarth. "I have sometimes fancied it might be because no true idea of their condition could possibly be grasped by those who remain in the tabernacle of the body; that to know their state it is necessary that we also should be clothed in our new bodies, which are to the old as a house to a tent. I doubt if we have any words in which the new facts could be imparted to our knowledge, the facts themselves being beyond the reach of any senses whereof we are now in actual possession. I expect to find my new body provided with new, I mean OTHER senses beyond what I now possess: many more may be required to bring us into relation with all the facts in himself which G.o.d may have shadowed forth in properties, as we say, of what we call matter.

The s.p.a.ces all around us, even to those betwixt star and star, may be the home of the mult.i.tudes of the heavenly host, yet seemingly empty to all who have but our provision of senses. But I do not care to dwell upon that kind of speculation. It belongs to a lower region, upon which I grudge to expend interest while the far loftier one invites me, where, if I gather not the special barley of which I am in search, I am sure to come upon the finest of wheat.--Well, then, for my reason: There are a thousand individual events in the course of every man's life, by which G.o.d takes a hold of him--a thousand breaches by which he would and does enter, little as the man may know it; but there is one universal and unchanging grasp he keeps upon the race, yet not as the race, for the grasp is upon every solitary single individual that has a part in it: that grasp is--death in its mystery. To whom can the man who is about to die in absolute loneliness and go he cannot tell whither, flee for refuge from the doubts and fears that a.s.sail him, but to the Father of his being?"

"But," said Drew, "I cannot see what harm would come of letting us know a little--as much at least as might serve to a.s.sure us that there was more of SOMETHING on the other side."

"Just this," returned Polwarth, "that, their fears allayed, their hopes encouraged from any lower quarter, men would, as usual, turn away from the fountain to the cistern of life, from the ever fresh original creative Love to that drawn off and shut in. That there are thousands who would forget G.o.d if they could but be a.s.sured of such a tolerable state of things beyond the grave as even this wherein we now live, is plainly to be antic.i.p.ated from the fact that the doubts of so many in respect of religion concentrate themselves now-a-days upon the question whether there is any life beyond the grave; a question which, although no doubt nearly a.s.sociated with religion,--as what question worth asking is not?--does not immediately belong to religion at all. Satisfy such people, if you can, that they shall live, and what have they gained? A little comfort perhaps--but a comfort not from the highest source, and possibly gained too soon for their well-being. Does it bring them any nearer to G.o.d than they were before? Is he filling one cranny more of their hearts in consequence? Their a.s.surance of immortality has not come from a knowledge of him, and without him it is worse than worthless.

Little indeed has been gained, and that with the loss of much. The word applies here which our Lord in his parable puts into the mouth of Abraham: If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead. He does not say they would not believe in a future state though one rose from the dead--although most likely they would soon persuade themselves that the apparition after all was only an illusion--[Footnote: See Lynch's admirable sermon on this subject.] but that they would not be persuaded to repent, though one rose from the dead; and without that, what great matter whether they believed in a future state or not? It would only be the worse for them if they did. No, Mr. Drew! I repeat, it is not a belief in immortality that will deliver a man from the woes of humanity, but faith in the G.o.d of life, the father of lights, the G.o.d of all consolation and comfort.

Believing in him, a man can leave his friends, and their and his own immortality, with everything else--even his and their love and perfection, with utter confidence in his hands. Until we have the life in us, we shall never be at peace. The living G.o.d dwelling in the heart he has made, and glorifying it by inmost speech with himself--that is life, a.s.surance, and safety. Nothing less is or can be such."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

WHAT HELEN HEARD MORE