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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.
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