Wingfold

“ The larger portion looked as if neither Wingfold nor any other body ever meant anything—at least in the pulpit.
The moment Wingfold reached the vestry, he hurried off the garments of his profession, sped from the Abbey, and all but ran across the church-yard to his lodging. There he shut himself up in his chamber, fearful lest he should have said more than he had yet a right to say, and lest ebbing emotion should uncover the fact that he had been but "fired by the running of his own wheels," and not inspired by the guide of "the fiery-wheeled throne, the cherub Contemplation." ”

“ In Wingfold he had found a man docile and obedient, both thirsting after, and recognizant of the truth, and if he might but aid him in unsealing the well of truth in his own soul, the healing waters might from him flow far and near. Not as the little Zacchæus who pieced his own shortness with the length of the sycamore tree, so to rise above his taller brethren and see Jesus, little Polwarth would lift tall Wingfold on his shoulders, first to see, and then cry aloud to his brethren who was at hand. ”

“ Leopold smiled sleepily as Wingfold read, and ere the reading was over, slept.
"What can the little object want here?" said Mrs. Ramshorn.
Wingfold looked up, and seeing who it was approaching them, said,
"Oh! that is Mr. Polwarth, who keeps the park gate."
"Nobody can well mistake him," returned Mrs. Ramshorn. "Everybody knows the creature."
"Few people know him really," said Wingfold.
"I HAVE heard that he is an oddity in mind as well as in body," said
Mrs. Ramshorn.
"He is a friend of mine," rejoined the curate. "I will go and meet him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ CHAPTER XII. INVITATION. As Wingfold walked back to his lodgings, he found a new element mingling with the varied matter of his previous inquiry. Human suffering laid hold upon him—neither as his own nor as that of humanity, but as that of men and women—known or unknown, it mattered nothing: there were hearts in the world from whose agony broke terrible cries, hearts of which sad faces like that of Miss Lingard were the exponents. ”

“ Wingfold held his peace. It was incontestably with such a view that he had signed the articles and sought holy orders—and that without a single question as to truth or reality in either act.
"Your silence is honesty, Mr. Wingfold, and I honour you for it," said Bascombe. "It is an easy thing for a man in another profession to speak his mind, but silence such as yours, casting a shadow backward over your past, require courage: I honour you, sir."
As he spoke, he laid his hand on Wingfold's shoulder with the grasp of an athlete.
"Can the sherry have anything to do with it?" thought the curate. ”

“ Then would men soon understand that not the form of even soundest words availeth anything, but a new creature.
When Wingfold was in the pulpit, then, he could speak as from the secret to the secret; but elsewhere he felt, in regard to Helen, like a transport-ship filled with troops, which must go sailing around the shores of an invaded ally, in frustrate search for a landing. Oh, to help that woman, that the light of life might go up in her heart, and her cheek bloom again with the rose of peace! ”

“ The curate bowed reverentially, seated himself in a chair by her bedside, and, like a true comforter, said nothing.
"Don't be sorry for me, Mr. Wingfold," said her sweet voice at length. "The poor dwarfie, as the children call me, is not a creature to be pitied. You don't know how happy I am as I lie here, knowing my uncle is in the next room, and will come the moment I call him—and that there is one nearer still," she added in a lower voice, almost in a whisper, "whom I haven't even to call. I am his, and he shall do with me just as he likes. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII. THE BUTTERFLY. As Wingfold walked home that afternoon, he thought much of what he had heard and seen. "If there be a God," he said to himself, "then all is well, for certainly he would not give being to such a woman, and then throw her aside as a failure, and forget her. It is strange to see, though, how he permits his work to be thwarted. To be the perfect God notwithstanding, he must be able to turn the very thwarting to higher furtherance. ”

“ Wingfold, or any other human biped, may think proper to address to him with his face buried in his blankets by his bedside or in his surplice over the pulpit-bible?—not to mention that they would have you believe, or be damned to all eternity, that every thought vibrated in the convolutions of your brain is known to him as well as to yourself! ”

“ Might she not thus gather a little honey of comfort and bring it home to Leopold?
Thinking thus and thus she sat silent; and all the time the suffering eyes were fixed upon her face, looking for no comfort, but finding there all they ever had of rest.
"Are you thinking about the sermon, Helen?" he asked. "What was it you were telling me about it just now? Who preached it?"
"Mr. Wingfold," she answered listlessly.
"Who is Mr. Wingfold?"
"Our curate at the Abbey."
"What sort of man is he?"
"Oh, a man somewhere about thirty—a straightforward, ordinary kind of man." ”

“ Or was there a soul to that machine whose myriad wheels went grinding on and on, grinding the stars into dust, matter into man, and man into nothingness? Was there—could there be a living heart to the universe that did positively hear him—poor, misplaced, dishonest, ignorant Thomas Wingfold, who had presumed to undertake a work he neither could perform nor had the courage to forsake, when out of the misery of the grimy little cellar of his consciousness he cried aloud for light and something to make a man of him? ”

“ While Wingfold had been speaking in general terms, with the race in his mind's, and the congregation in his body's eye, he had yet thought more of one soul, with its one crime and its intolerable burden, than all the rest: Leopold was ever present to him, and while he strove to avoid absorption in a personal interest however justifiable, it was of necessity that the thought of the most burdened sinner he knew should colour the whole of his utterance. ”

“ However, it is not with other people we have to do, but with ourselves—as you will say. Well then it is for myself I am troubled now. Mr. Wingfold, sir, I am not altogether at ease in my own mind as to the way I have made my money—what little money I have—no great sum, but enough to retire upon when I please. I would not have you think me worse than I am, but I am sincerely desirous of knowing what you would have me do."
"My dear sir," returned Wingfold, "I am the very last to look to for enlightenment. I am as ignorant of business as any child. ”

“ Wingfold's anxiety was all for Helen. He could do no more for Leopold, nor did he need more from man. As to many of the things that puzzled them most, he was on his way to know more; he would soon be in the heart of what seemed likely to remain a long secret to him. But there was his sister, about to be left behind him without his hopes; for her were dreary days at hand; and the curate prayed the God of comfort and consolation to visit her. ”

“ Then Helen turned upon Wingfold with a face white as linen, and eyes flashing with troubled wrath. The tigress-mother swelled in her heart, and she looked like a Maenad indeed.
“Is this then your religion?” she cried with quivering nostril. “Would he you dare to call your master have stolen into the house of a neighbour to play upon the weakness of a poor lad suffering from brain-fever? A fine trophy of your persuasive power and priestly craft you would make of him! What is it to you whether he confesses his sins or not? If he confesses them to him you say is your God, is not that enough? ”

“ They heard him, and turning waited his approach. He took off his hat, and presenting the book to the young woman, asked if she had dropped it. Possibly, had they been ordinary people of the class to which they seemed to belong, he would not have uncovered to them, for he naturally shrunk from what might be looked upon as a display of courtesy, but their deformity rendered it imperative. Her face flushed so at sight of the book, that, in order to spare her uneasiness, Wingfold could not help saying with a smile,
"Do not be alarmed: I have not read one word of it." ”

“ I NEVER dream of being crooked and dwarfish. I don't dream that I am straight either; I suppose I feel all right, and therefore never think about it. That makes me fancy my soul must be straight.—Don't you think so, sir?"
"Indeed I do," said Wingfold warmly.
"I'm afraid I shall be telling you some of my dreams some day."
"We are rather given to that weakness," said Polwarth,—"so much so as to make me fear for our brains sometimes. But a crooked rose-tree may yet bear a good rose."
"Ah! you are thinking of my poor father, uncle, I know," said Rachel. ”

“ But that was before he came to live in Glaston.—Would you mind looking in upon Rachel for a few minutes, sir? She is not so well to-day, and has not been out of her own room.”
“With all my heart,” answered Wingfold. “I am sorry to hear she is suffering.”
“She is always suffering more or less,” said the little man. “But she enjoys life notwithstanding, as you may clearly see. It is to her only a mitigated good, and that, I trust, for the sake of an unmitigated one.—Come this way, sir.”
He led the curate to the room next his own. It was a humble little garret, but dainty with whiteness. ”

“ It was a DOOR-keeper the Psalmist said—and to the house of God, not a nobleman’s park.”
“A verger, I suppose,” thought Wingfold.—“Seriously, Mrs. Ramshorn, that poor little atom of a creature is the wisest man I know,” he said.
“Likely enough, in YOUR judgment, Mr. Wingfold,” said the dean’s widow, and drew herself up.
The curate accepted his dismissal, and joined the little man by Leopold’s chair.
“I wish you two could be with me when I am dying,” said Leopold. ”

“ Wingfold, lady Ann!—My wife, Mr. Wingfold!—The other gentleman, lady Ann.—”
He paused. Lady Ann turned her eyes slowly on Richard. Wingfold saw a slight, just perceptible start, and a settling of the jaws.
“The other gentleman,” resumed the baronet, “you do not know, but you will soon be the best of friends.”
“I beg your pardon, sir Wilton, I do know him!—I hope,” she went on, turning to Richard, “you will keep steadily to your work. The sooner the books are finished, the better!” ”

“ A vision arose before the mind’s eye of the curate:—Emmeline kneeling for Leopold’s forgiveness; but he wisely held his peace. The comforter of the sinner must come from the forgiveness of God, not from the favourable judgment of man mitigating the harshness of his judgment of himself. Wingfold’s business was to start him well in the world whither he was going. He must fill his scrip with the only wealth that would not dissolve in the waters of the river—that was, the knowledge of Jesus. ”

“ Richard remarked to himself that, whoever the gentleman was, he was certainly not stuck-up. They might have parted late the night before, instead of meeting now for the first time!
“Are you a married man?” asked Wingfold.
“No, sir,” answered Richard, surprised that a stranger should put the question.
“If you had been,” Wingfold went on, “I should have been surer of your seeing what I mean when I say, that to be out before sunrise is like looking at your best friend asleep—that is, before her sun, her thought, namely, is up. ”

“ I thought it very sensible," replied the curate.
"It all depends on the sort, don't it?" said Rachel. "Some of mine I would not give for a library. They make me grow, telling me things I should never learn otherwise. I don't mean any rubbish about future events, and such like. Of all useless things a knowledge of the future seems to me the most useless, for what are you to do with a thing before it exists? Such a knowledge could only bewilder you as to the right way to take—would make you see double instead of single. That's not the sort I mean at all.—You won't laugh at me, Mr. Wingfold?" ”

“ Wingfold had called to see Mr. Lingard.
"He can't see him to-day. He is too much exhausted," said Bascombe; and the curate left the house thoughtful and sorry, feeling as if a vulture had settled by the side of the youth—a good-natured vulture, no doubt, but not the less one bent on picking out the eyes of his mind.
He walked away along the street towards the church with down-bent head, seeing no one. He entered the churchyard, not looking whither he went: a lovely soul was in pain and peril, and he could not get near to help it. ”

“ At the same time she shrunk from Wingfold as hard and unsympathetic. True he had been most kind, even tender, to her brother, but to him he had taken a fancy, having found in him one whom he could work upon and fashion to his own liking: poor Poldie had never been one of the strongest of men. ”

“ Hooker; but a glance at Bascombe’s face, with its half-amused smile, instantly set him right again, and he thought with dismay how near he had been to letting himself be fooled by a madman.
Again in the carriage, Leopold laid his head on Helen’s shoulder, and looked up in her face with such a smile as she had never seen on his before. Certainly there was something in confession—if only enthusiasts like Mr. Wingfold would not spoil all by pushing things to extremes and turning good into bad! ”