CHAPTER XXII. A HAUNTED SOUL
Helen rose and hastened to her brother, with a heart of lead in her body.
She started when she saw him: some change had passed on him since the morning! Was that eager look in his eyes a fresh access of the fever? That glimmer on his countenance, doubtful as the first of the morning, when the traveller knows not whether the light be in the sky or only in his brain, did look more like a dawn of his old healthful radiance than any fresh fire of madness; but at the same time he appeared more wasted and pinched and death-like than she had yet seen him. Or was it only in her eyes—was she but reading in his face the agony she had herself gone through that day?
“Helen, Helen!” he cried as she entered the room, “come here, close to me.”
She hastened to him, sat down on the bedside, took his hand, and looked as cheerfully as she could, yet it was but the more woefully, in his face.
“Helen!” he said again, and he spoke with a strange expression in his voice, for it seemed that of hope, “I have been thinking all day of what you told me on Sunday.”
“What was that, Poldie?” asked Helen with a pang of fear.
“Why, those words of course—what else? You sang them to me afterwards, you know. Helen, I should like to see Mr. Wingfold. Don’t you think he might be able to do something?”
“What sort of thing, Poldie?” she faltered, growing sick at heart.—Was this what came of praying! she thought bitterly.
“Something or other—I don’t know what exactly,” returned Leopold.—“Oh Helen!” he broke out with a cry, stifled by the caution that had grown habitual to both of them, “is there no help of any kind anywhere? Surely Mr. Wingfold could tell me something—comfort me somehow, if I were to tell him all about it! I could trust the man that said such things as those you told me. That I could!—Oh! I wish I hadn’t run away, but had let them take me and hang me!”
Helen felt herself grow white. She turned away, and pretended to search for something she had dropped.
“I don’t think he would be of the slightest use to you,” she said, still stooping.
And she felt like a devil dragging the soul of her brother to hell. But that was a foolish fancy, and must be resisted!
“Not if I told him everything?” Leopold hissed from between his teeth in the struggle to keep down a shriek.
“No, not if you told him everything,” she answered, and felt like a judge condemning him to death.
“What is he there for then?” said Leopold indignantly, and turned his face to the wall and moaned.
Helen had not yet thought of asking herself whether her love to her brother was all clear love, and nowise mingled with selfishness—whether in the fresh horror that day poured into the cup that had seemed already running over, it was of her brother only she thought, or whether threatened shame to herself had not a part in her misery. But, as far as she was aware, she was quite honest in saying that the curate could not comfort him—for what attempt even had he made to comfort her? What had he done but utter common-places and truisms about duty? And who could tell but—indeed was she not certain that such a man, bringing the artillery of his fanaticism to bear upon her poor boy’s wild enthusiastic temperament, would speedily persuade him to make a reality of that terrible thing he had already thought of, that hideously impossible possibility which she dared not even allow to present itself before her imagination? So he lay and moaned, and she sat crushed and speechless with despairing misery.
All at once Leopold sat straight up, his eyes fixed and flaming, his face white: he looked like a corpse possessed by a spirit of fear and horror. Helen’s heart swelled into her throat, the muscles of her face contracted with irresistible rigor, and she felt it grow exactly like his, while with wide eyes she stared at him, and he stared at something which lest she also should see, she dared not turn her head. Surely, she thought afterwards, she must have been that moment in the presence of something unearthly! Her physical being was wrenched from her control, and she must simply sit and wait until the power or influence, whichever it might be, should pass away. How long it was ere it relaxed its hold she could not tell; it could not have been long, she thought. Suddenly the light sank from Leopold’s eyes, his muscles relaxed, he fell back motionless, apparently senseless, on the pillow, and she thought he was dead. The same moment she was free; the horror had departed from her own atmosphere too, and she made haste to restore him. But in all she did for him, she felt like the executioner who gives restoratives to the wretch that has fainted on the rack or the wheel. What right had SHE, she thought, to multiply to him his moments of torture? If the cruel power that had created him for such misery, whoever, whatever, wherever he might be, chose thus to torture him, was she, his only friend, out of the selfish affection he had planted in her, to lend herself his tool? Yet she hesitated not a single moment in her ministrations.
There is so much passes in us of which our consciousness takes no grasp,—or but with such a flitting touch as scarcely to hand it over to the memory—that I feel encouraged to doubt whether ever there was a man absolutely without hope. That there have been, alas, are many, who are aware of no ground of hope, nay even who feel no glimmer in them of anything they can call hope, I know; but I think in them all is an underlying unconscious hope. I think that not one in all the world has more than a shadowy notion of what hopelessness means. Perhaps utter hopelessness is the outer darkness.
At length Leopold opened his eyes, gave a terrified glance around, held out his arms to her, and drew her down upon his face.
“I saw her!” he said, in a voice that sounded as if it came from the grave, and she heard it in her heart.
“Nonsense, dear Poldie! it was all fancy—nothing more,” she returned, in a voice almost as hollow as his; and the lightness of the words uttered in such a tone jarred dismayfully on her own ear.
“Fancy!” he repeated; “I know what fancy is as well as any man or woman born: THAT was no fancy. She stood there, by the wardrobe—in the same dress!—her face as white as her dress! And—listen!—I will tell YOU—I will soon satisfy you it COULD be no fancy.”—Here he pushed her from him and looked straight in her eyes.—“I saw her back reflected in the mirror of the wardrobe-door, and”—here the fixed look of horror threatened to return upon his face, but he went on—“listen,—there was a worm crawling on it, over her lovely white shoulder! Ugh! I saw it in the mirror!”
His voice had risen to a strangled shriek, his face was distorted, and he shook like a child on the point of yelling aloud in an agony of fear. Helen clasped his face between her hands, and gathering courage from despair, if indeed that be a possible source of courage, and it is not gathered rather from the hidden hope of which I speak, and the love that will cleave and not forsake, she set her teeth, and said:
“Let her come then, Poldie! I am with you, and I defy her! She shall know that a sister’s love is stronger than the hate of a jilt—even if you did kill her. Before God, Poldie, I would after all rather be you than she. Say what you will, she had herself to blame, and I don’t doubt did twenty worse things than you did when you killed her.”
But Leopold seemed not to hear a word she said, and lay with his face to the wall.
At length he turned his head suddenly, and said,
“Helen, if you don’t let me see Mr. Wingfold, I shall go mad, and then everything will come out.”
CHAPTER XXIII. COMPELLED CONFIDENCE
Helen flew to the dressing-room to hide her dismay, and there cast herself on the bed. The gray Fate above, or the awful Demo-gorgon beneath, would have its way! Whether it was a living Will or but the shadow of the events it seemed to order, it was too much for her. She had no choice but yield. She rose and returned to her brother.
“I am going to find Mr. Wingfold,” she said in a hoarse voice, as she took her hat.
“Don’t be long then, Helen,” returned Leopold. “I can’t bear you out of my sight. And don’t let aunt come into the room. SHE might come again, you know, and then all would be out.—Bring him with you, Helen.”
“I will,” answered Helen, and went.
The curate might have returned: she would seek him first at his lodging. She cared nothing about appearances now.
It was a dull afternoon. Clouds had gathered, and the wind was chilly. It seemed to blow out of the church, which stood up cold and gray against the sky, filling the end of the street. What a wretched, horrible world it was! She approached the church, and entered the churchyard from which it rose like a rock from the Dead Sea—a type of the true church, around whose walls lie the dead bodies of the old selves left behind by those who enter. Helen would have envied the dead, who lay so still under its waves; but, alas! if Leopold was right, they but roamed elsewhere in their trouble, and were no better for dying.
She hurried across, and reached the house; but Mr. Wingfold had not yet returned, and she hurried back across it again, to tell Leopold that she must go farther to find him.
The poor youth was already more composed. What will not the vaguest hope sometimes do for a man! Helen told him she had seen the curate in the park, when she was out in the morning, and he might be there still, or she might meet him coming back. Leopold only begged her to make haste. She took the road to the lodge.
She did not meet him, and it was with intense repugnance that she approached the gate.
“Is Mr. Wingfold here?” she asked of Rachel, as if she had never spoken to her before; and Rachel, turning paler at the sight of her, answered that he was in the garden with her uncle, and went to call him.
The moment he appeared she said, in a tone rendered by conflicting emotions inexplicable, and sounding almost rude,
“Will you come to my brother? He is very ill, and wants to see you.”
“Certainly,” returned Wingfold; “I will go with you at once.”
But in his heart he trembled at the thought of being looked to for consolation and counsel, and that apparently in a case of no ordinary kind. Most likely he would not know what to say, or how to behave himself! How different it would be if with all his heart he believed the grand lovely things recorded in the book of his profession! Then indeed he might enter the chambers of pain and fear and guilt with the innocent confidence of a winged angel of comfort and healing! But now the eyes of his understanding were blinded with the IFS and BUTS that flew swarming like black muscae wherever they turned. Still he would—nay, he must go and do his best.
They walked across the park to reach the house by the garden, and for some distance they walked in silence. At length Helen said:
“You must not encourage my brother to talk much, if you please; and you must not mind what he says; he has had brain-fever, and sometimes talks strangely. But on the other hand, if he fancy you don’t believe him, it will drive him wild—so you must take care—please.”
Her voice was like that of a soul trying to speak with unproved lips.
“Miss Lingard,” said Wingfold, slowly and quietly—and if his voice trembled, he only was aware of it, “I cannot see your face, therefore you must pardon me if I ask you—are you quite honest with me?”
Helen’s first feeling was anger. She held her peace for a time. Then she said,
“So, Mr. Wingfold!—that is the way you help the helpless!”
“How can any man help without knowing what has to be helped?” returned the curate. “The very being of his help depends upon his knowing the truth. It is very plain you do not trust me, and equally impossible I should be of any service as long as the case is such.”
Again Helen held her peace. Resentment and dislike towards himself combined with terror of his anticipated counsel to render her speechless.
Her silence lasted so long that Wingfold came to the resolution of making a venture that had occurred to him more than once that morning. Had he not been convinced that a soul was in dire misery, he would not have had recourse to the seeming cruelty.
“Would this help to satisfy you that, whatever my advice may be worth, at least my discretion may be trusted?” he said.
They were at the moment passing through a little thicket in the park, where nobody could see them, and as he spoke, he took the knife-sheath from his pocket, and held it out to her.
She started like a young horse at something dead: she had never seen it, but the shape had an association. She paled, retreated a step, with a drawing back of her head and neck and a spreading of her nostrils, stared for a moment, first at the sheath, then at the curate, gave a little moan, bit her under lip hard, held out her hand, but as if she were afraid to touch the thing, and said:
“What is it? Where did you find it?”
She would have taken it, but Wingfold held it fast.
“Give it me,” she said imperatively. “It is mine. I lost it.”
“There is something dark on the lining of it,” said the curate, and looked straight into her eyes.
She let go her hold. But almost the same moment she snatched the sheath out of his hand and held it to her bosom, while her look of terror changed into one of defiance. Wingfold made no attempt to recover it. She put it in her pocket, and drew herself up.
“What do you mean?” she said, in a voice that was hard yet trembled.
She felt like one that sees the vultures gathering above him, and lifts a moveable finger in defence. Then with sudden haughtiness both of gesture and word:
“You have been acting the spy, sir!”
“No,” returned the curate quietly. “The sheath was committed to my care by one whom certain facts that had come to his knowledge—certain words he had overheard—”
He paused. She shook visibly, but still would hold what ground might yet be left her.
“Why did you not give it me before?” she asked.
“In the public street, or in your aunt’s presence?”
“You are cruel!” she panted. Her strength was going. “What do you know?”
“Nothing so well as that I want to serve you, and you may trust me.”
“What do you mean to do?”
“My best to help you and your brother.”
“But to what end?”
“To any end that is right.”
“But how? What would you tell him to do?”
“You must help me to discover what he ought to do.”
“Not—” she cried, clasping her hands and dropping on her knees before him, “—you WILL not tell him to give himself up? Promise me you will not, and I will tell you everything. He shall do anything you please but that! Anything but that!”
Wingfold’s heart was sore at sight of her agony. He would have raised her with soothing words of sympathy and assurance, but still she cried, “Promise me you will not make him give himself up.”
“I dare not promise anything.” he said. “I MUST do what I may see to be right. Believe me, I have no wish to force myself into your confidence, but you have let me see that you are in great trouble and in need of help, and I should be unfaithful to my calling if I did not do my best to make you trust me.”
A pause followed. Helen rose despairingly, and they resumed their walk. Just as they reached the door in the fence which would let them out upon the meadow in sight of the Manor-house, she turned to him and said,
“I will trust you, Mr. Wingfold. I mean, I will take you to my brother, and he shall do as he thinks proper.”
They passed out and walked across the meadow in silence. In the passage under the fence, as she turned from closing the door behind them, she stood and pressed her hand to her side.
“Oh! Mr. Wingfold,” she cried, “my heart will break! He has no one but me! No one but me to be mother and sister and all to him! He is NOT wicked—my poor darling!”
She caught the curate by the arm with a grasp which left its mark behind it, and gazed appealingly into his face: in the dim tomb-like light, her wide-strained eyes, white agonized countenance, and trembling roseless lips made her look like one called back from death “to speak of horrors.”
“Save him from madness,” she said, in forced and unnatural utterance. “Save him from the remorse gnawing at his heart. But do not, DO not counsel him to give himself up.”
“Would it not be better you should tell me about it,” said the curate, “and save him the pain and excitement?”
“I will do so, if he wishes it, not otherwise. Come; we must not stay longer. He can hardly bear me out of his sight. I will leave you for one moment in the library, and then come to you. If you should see my aunt, not a word of all this, please. All she knows is that he has had brain-fever, and is recovering only very slowly. I have never given her even a hint of anything worse. Indeed, honestly, Mr. Wingfold, I am not at all certain he did do what he will tell you. But there is his misery all the same. Do have pity on us, and don’t be hard upon the poor boy. He is but a boy—only twenty.”
“May God be to me as I am to him!” said Wingfold solemnly.
Helen withdrew her entreating eyes, and let go his arm. They went up into the garden and into the house.
Afterwards, Wingfold was astonished at his own calmness and decision in taking upon him—almost, as it were, dragging to him—this relation with Helen and her brother. But he had felt that not to do so would be to abandon Helen to her grief, and that for her sake he must not hesitate to encounter whatever might have to be encountered in doing so.
Helen left him in the library, as she had said, and there he waited her return in a kind of stupor, unable to think, and feeling as if he were lost in a strange and anxious dream.
CHAPTER XXIV. WILLING CONFIDENCE
“Come,” said Helen, re-entering, and the curate rose and followed her.
The moment he turned the corner of the bed and saw the face on the pillow, he knew in his soul that Helen was right, and that that was no wicked youth who lay before him—one, however, who might well have been passion-driven. There was the dark complexion and the great soft yet wild eyes that came of tropical blood. Had not Helen so plainly spoken of her brother, however, he would have thought he saw before him a woman. The worn, troubled, appealing light that overflowed rather than shone from his eyes, went straight to the curate’s heart.
Wingfold had had a brother, the only being in the world he had ever loved tenderly; he had died young, and a thin film of ice had since gathered over the well of his affections; but now suddenly this ice broke and vanished, and his heart yearned over the suffering youth. He had himself been crying to God, not seldom in sore trouble, and now, ere, as it seemed, he had himself been heard, here was a sad brother crying to him for help. Nor was this all; the reading of the gospel story had roused in his heart a strange yet most natural longing after the face of that man of whom he read such lovely things, and thence, unknown to himself, had come a reverence and a love for his kind, which now first sprang awake to his consciousness in the feeling that drew him towards Leopold.
Softly he approached the bed, his face full of tenderness and strong pity. The lad, weak with protracted illness and mental torture, gave one look in his face, and stretched out both his arms to him. How could the curate give him but a hand? He put his arms round him as if he had been a child.
“I knew you would come,” sobbed Lingard.
“What else should I do but come?” returned Wingfold.
“I have seen you somewhere before,” said Lingard—“in one of my dreams, I suppose.”
Then, sinking his voice to a whisper, he added:
“Do you know you came in close behind HER? She looked round and saw you, and vanished!”
Wingfold did not even try to guess at his meaning.
“Hush, my dear fellow!” he said; “I must not let you talk wildly, or the doctor might forbid my seeing you.”
“I am not talking a bit wildly,” returned Leopold. “I am as quiet as a mountain-top. Ah! when I AM wild—if you saw me then, you might say so!”
Wingfold sat down on the side of the bed, and took the thin, hot hand next him in his own firm, cool one.
“Come now,” he said, “tell me all about it. Or shall your sister tell me?—Come here, please, Miss Lingard.”
“No, no!” cried Leopold hastily; “I will tell you myself. My poor sister could not bear to tell it you. It would kill her.—But how am I to know you will not get up and walk out the moment you have a glimpse of what is coming?”
“I would as soon leave a child burning in the fire, and go out and shut the door,” said Wingfold.
“You can go now, Helen,” said Lingard very quietly. “Why should you be tortured over again? You needn’t mind leaving me. Mr. Wingfold will take care of me.”
Helen left the room, with one anxious look at her brother as she went.
Without a moment’s further delay, Leopold began, and in wonderfully direct and unbroken narrative, told the sad evil tale as he had formerly told it to his sister, only more consecutively and quietly. Possibly his anxiety as to how the listener would receive it, served, by dividing him between two emotions, to keep the reuttered tale from overpowering him with freshened vividness. All the time, he kept watching Wingfold’s face, the expressions of which the curate felt those eyes were reading like a book.
He was so well prepared, however, that no expression of surprise, no reflex of its ghastfulness met Leopold’s gaze, and he went on to the end without a pause even. When he had finished, both sat silent, looking in each other’s eyes, Wingfold’s beaming with compassion, and Lingard’s glimmering with doubtful, anxious inquiry and appeal. At length Wingfold said:
“And what do you think I can do for you?”
“I don’t know. I thought you could tell me something. I cannot live like this! If I had but thought before I did it, and killed myself instead of her! It would have done so much better! Of course I should be in hell now, but that would be all right, and this is all wrong. I have no right to be lying here and Emmeline in her grave. I know I deserve to be miserable for ever and ever, and I don’t want not to be miserable—that is all right—but there is something in this wretchedness that I cannot bear. Tell me something to make me able to endure my misery. That is what you can do for me. I don’t want to go mad. And what is worst of all, I have made my sister miserable, and I can’t bear to see it. She is wasting away with it. And besides I fancy she loves George Bascombe—and who would marry the sister of a murderer? And now she has begun to come to me again—in the daytime—I mean Emmeline!—or I have begun to see her again—I don’t know which;—perhaps she is always there, only I don’t always see her—and it don’t much matter which. Only if other people were to see her!—While she is there nothing could persuade me I do not see her, but afterwards I am not so sure that I did. And at night I keep dreaming the horrible thing over and over again; and the agony is to think I shall never get rid of it, and never never feel clean again. To be for ever and ever a murderer and people not know it, is more than I CAN bear.”