Thomas Wingfold, Curate
Home - George MacDonald - Thomas Wingfold, CurateTHE MEADOW.
As the disease advanced, his desire for fresh air and freedom grew to a great longing. One hot day, whose ardours, too strong for the leaves whose springs had begun to dry up, were burning them "yellow and black and pale and hectic red," the fancy seized him to get out of the garden with its clipt box-trees and cypresses, into the meadow beyond. There a red cow was switching her tail as she gathered her milk from the world, and looking as if all were well. He liked the look of the cow, and the open meadow, and wanted to share it with her, he said. Helen, with the anxiety of a careful nurse, feared it might hurt him.
"What DOES it matter?" he returned. "Is life so sweet that every moment more of it is a precious boon? After I'm gone a few days, you won't know a week from an hour of me. What a weight it will be off you! I envy you all the relief of it. It will be to you just what it would be to me to get into that meadow."
Helen made haste to let him have his will. They prepared a sort of litter, and the curate and the coachman carried him. Hearing what they were about, Mrs. Ramshorn hurried into the garden to protest, but protested in vain, and joined the little procession, walking with Helen, like a second mourner, after the bier. They crossed the lawn, and through a double row of small cypresses went winding down to the underground passage, as if to the tomb itself. They had not thought of opening the door first, and the place was dark and sepulchral. Helen hastened to set it wide.
"Lay me down for a moment," said Leopold. "--Here I lie in my tomb! How soft and brown the light is! I should not mind lying here, half-asleep, half-awake, for centuries, if only I had the hope of a right good waking at last."
A flood of fair light flashed in sweet torrent into the place--and there, framed in the doorway, but far across the green field, stood the red cow, switching her tail.
"And here comes my resurrection!" cried Leopold. "I have not had long to wait for it--have I?"
He smiled a pained content as he spoke, and they bore him out into the sun and air. They set him down in the middle of the field in a low chair--not far from a small clump of trees, through which the footpath led to the stile whereon the curate was seated when he first saw the Polwarths. Mrs. Ramshorn found the fancy of the sick man pleasant for the hale, and sent for her knitting. Helen sat down empty-handed on the wool at her brother's feet, and Wingfold, taking a book from his pocket, withdrew to the trees.
He had not read long, sitting within sight and call of the group, when Helen came to him.
"He seems inclined to go to sleep," she said. "Perhaps if you would read something, it would send him off."
"I will with pleasure," he said, and returning with her, sat down on the grass.
"May I read you a few verses I came upon the other day, Leopold?" he asked.
"Please do," answered the invalid, rather sleepily.
I will not pledge myself that the verses belonged to the book Wingfold held before him, but here they are. He read them slowly, and as evenly and softly and rhythmically as he could.
They come to thee, the halt, the maimed, the blind, The devil-torn, the sick, the sore;
- Thy
- heart their well of life they find, Thine ear their open door.
- Ah!
- who can tell the joy in Palestine-- What smiles and tears of rescued throngs!
Their lees of life were turned to wine, Their prayers to shouts and songs!
- The
- story dear our wise men fable call, Give paltry facts the mighty range;
To me it seems just what should fall, And nothing very strange.
- But
- were I deaf and lame and blind and sore, I scarce would care for cure to ask;
Another prayer should haunt thy door-- Set thee a harder task.
If thou art Christ, see here this heart of mine, Torn, empty, moaning, and unblest!
- Had
- ever heart more need of thine, If thine indeed hath rest?
- Thy
- word, thy hand right soon did scare the bane That in their bodies death did breed:
If thou canst cure my deeper pain, Then thou art Lord indeed.
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. He wants to know how Leopold is."
"Pray keep your seat, Mr. Wingfold. I don't in the least mind him," said Mrs. Ramshorn. "Any FRIEND of yours, as you are kind enough to call him, will be welcome. Clergymen come to know--indeed it is their duty to be acquainted with all sorts of people. The late dean of Halystone would stop and speak to a pauper."
The curate did however go and meet Polwarth, and returning with him presented him to Mrs. Ramshorn, who received him with perfect condescension, and a most gracious bow. Helen bent her head also, very differently, but it would be hard to say how. The little man turned from them, and for a moment stood looking on the face of the sleeping youth: he had not seen him since Helen ordered him to leave the house. Even now she looked angry at his presumption in staring at her brother. But Polwarth did not see her look. A great tenderness came over his face, and his lips moved softly. "The Lord of thy life keep it for thee, my son!" he murmured, gazed a moment longer, then rejoined Wingfold.
They walked aside a few paces.
"Pray be seated," said Mrs. Ramshorn, without looking up from her knitting--the seat she offered being the wide meadow.
But they had already done so, and presently were deep in a gentle talk, of which at length certain words that had been foolhardy enough to wander within her range, attracted the notice of Mrs. Ramshorn, and she began to listen. But she could not hear distinctly.
"There should be one bishop at least," the little man was saying, "or I don't know but he ought to be the arch-arch-bishop,--a poor man, if possible,--one like the country parson Chaucer sets up in contrast with the regular clergy,--whose main business should be to travel about from university to university, from college to college, from school to school, warning off all young men who did not know within themselves that it was neither for position, nor income, nor study, nor influence, that they sought to minister in the temple, from entering the church. As from holy ground, he would warn them off."
Mrs. Ramshorn fancied, from certain obscure associations in her own mind, that he was speaking of dissenting ministers and persons of low origin, who might wish to enter the church for the sake of