Home > Authors Index > George MacDonald > Thomas Wingfold, Curate > This page
Thomas Wingfold, Curate, a novel by George MacDonald |
||
Volume 3 - Chapter 18. The Meadow |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ VOLUME III CHAPTER XVIII. THE 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. Ah! who can tell the joy in Palestine-- The story dear our wise men fable call, But were I deaf and lame and blind and sore, If thou art Christ, see here this heart of mine, Thy word, thy hand right soon did scare the bane
"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 BETTERING THEMSELVES, and holding as she did, that no church preferment should be obtained except by persons of good family and position, qualified to keep up the dignity of the profession, she was not a little gratified to hear, as she supposed, the same sentiments from the mouth of such an illiterate person as, taking no note of his somewhat remarkable utterance, she imagined Polwarth to be. Therefore she proceeded to patronize him yet a little farther. "I quite agree with you," she said graciously. "None but such as you describe should presume to set foot within the sacred precincts of the profession." Polwarth did not much relish Mrs. Ramshorn's style, and was considerably surprised at receiving such a hearty approval of a proposed reformation in clerical things, reaching even to the archiepiscopal, which he had put half-humorously, and yet in thorough earnest, for the ear of Wingfold only. He was little enough desirous of pursuing the conversation with Mrs. Ramshorn: Charity herself does not require of a man to cast his precious things at the feet of my lady Disdain; but he must reply. "Yes," he said, "the great evil in the church has always been the presence in it of persons unsuited for the work there required of them. One very simple sifting rule would be, that no one should be admitted to holy orders who had not first proved himself capable of making a better living in some other calling." "I cannot go with you so far as that--so few careers are opened to gentlemen," rejoined Mrs. Ramshorn. "Besides--take the bar, for instance: the forensic style a man must there acquire would hardly become the pulpit. But it would not be a bad rule that everyone, for admission to holy orders, should be possessed of property sufficient at least to live upon. With that for a foundation, his living would begin at once to tell, and he would immediately occupy the superior position every clergyman ought to have." "What I was thinking of," said Polwarth, "was mainly the experience in life he would gather by having to make his own living; that, behind the counter or the plough, or in the workshop, he would come to know men and their struggles and their thoughts--" "Good heavens!" exclaimed Mrs. Ramshorn. "But I must be under some misapprehension! It is not possible you can be speaking of the CHURCH--of the clerical PROFESSION. The moment that is brought within the reach of such people as you describe, that moment the church sinks to the level of the catholic priesthood." "Say rather, to the level of Jeremy Taylor," returned Polwarth, "who was the son of a barber; or of Tillotson, who was the son of a clothier, or something of the sort, and certainly a fierce dissenter. His enemies said the archbishop himself was never baptized. By-the-way, he was not ordained till he was thirty--and that bears on what I was just saying to Mr. Wingfold, that I would have no one ordained till after forty, by which time he would know whether he had any real call or only a temptation to the church, from the base hope of an easy living." By this time Mrs. Ramshorn had had more than enough of it. The man was a leveller, a chartist, a positivist--a despiser of dignities! "Mr.--, Mr.--, I don't know your name--you will oblige me by uttering no more such vile slanders in my company. You are talking about what you don't in the least understand. The man who does not respect the religion of his native country is capable of--of--of ANYTHING.--I am astonished, Mr. Wingfold, at your allowing a member of your congregation to speak with so little regard for the feelings of the clergy.--You forget, sir, when you attribute what you call base motives to the cloth--you forget who said the labourer was worthy of his hire." "I hope not, madam. I only venture to suggest that, though the labourer is worthy of his hire, not every man is worthy of the labour." Wingfold was highly amused at the turn things had taken. Polwarth looked annoyed at having allowed himself to be beguiled into such an utterly useless beating of the air. "My friend HAS some rather peculiar notions, Mrs. Ramshorn," said the curate;" but you must admit it was your approval that encouraged him to go on." "It is quite as well to know what people think," answered Mrs. Ramshorn, pretending she had drawn him out from suspicion. "My husband used to say that very few of the clergy had any notion of the envy and opposition of the lower orders, both to them personally, and to the doctrines they taught. To low human nature the truth has always been unpalatable." What precisely she meant by THE TRUTH it would be hard to say, but if the visual embodiment of it was not a departed dean, it was at least always associated in her mind with a cathedral choir, and a portly person in silk stockings. Here happily Leopold woke, and his eyes fell upon the gate-keeper. "Ah, Mr. Polwarth! I am so glad to see you!" he said." I am getting on, you see. It will be over soon." "I see," replied Polwarth, going up to him, and taking his offered hand in both his. "I could almost envy you for having got so near the end of your troubles." "Are you sure it will be the end of them, sir?" "Of some of them at least, I hope, and those the worst. I cannot be sure of anything but that all things work together for good to them that love God." "I don't know yet whether I do love God." "Not the father of Jesus Christ?" "If God is really just like him, I don't see how any man could help loving him. But, do you know? I am terrified sometimes at the thought of seeing MY father. He was such a severe man! I am afraid he will scorn me." "Never--if he has got into heavenly ways. And you have your mother there too, have you not?" "Oh! yes; I didn't think of that. I don't remember much of her." "Anyhow, you have God there, and you must rest in him. He will not forget you, for that would be ceasing to be God. If God were to forget for one moment, the universe would grow black--vanish--rush out again from the realm of law and order into chaos and night." "But I have been wicked." "The more need you have, if possible, of your Father in heaven." Here Mrs. Ramshorn beckoned the attendance of the curate where she sat a few yards off on the other side of Leopold. She was a little ashamed of having condescended to lose her temper, and when the curate went up to her, said, with an attempt at gaiety: "Is your odd little friend, as you call him, all--?" And she tapped her lace-cap carefully with her finger. "Rather more so than most people," answered Wingfold. "He is a very remarkable man." "He speaks as if he had seen better days--though where he can have gathered such detestable revolutionary notions, I can't think." "He is a man of education, as you see," said the curate. "You don't mean he has been to Oxford or Cambridge?" "No. His education has been of a much higher sort than is generally found there. He knows ten times as much as most university men." "Ah! yes; but that goes for nothing: he hasn't the standing. And if he had been to Oxford, he never could have imbibed such notions. Besides--his manners! To speak of the clergy as he did in the hearing of one whose whole history is bound up with the church!" She meant herself, not Wingfold. "But of course," she went on, "there must be something VERY wrong with him to know so much as you say, and occupy such a menial position! Nothing but a gate-keeper, and talk like that about bishops and what not! People that are crooked in body are always crooked in mind too. I dare say now he has quite a coterie of friends and followers amongst the lower orders in Glaston. He's just the sort of man to lead the working classes astray. No doubt he is a very interesting study for a young man like you, but you must take care; you may be misunderstood. A young clergyman CAN'T be too cautious--if he has any hope of rising in his profession.--A gate-keeper, indeed!" "Wasn't it something like that David wanted to be?" said the curate. "Mr. Wingfold, I never allow any such foolish jests in my hearing. 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. "If you will let your sister know your wish, you may easily have it," said the curate. "It will be just like saying good-bye at the pier-head, and pushing off alone--you can't get more than one into the boat--out, out, alone, into the infinite ocean of--nobody knows what or where," said Leopold. "Except those that are there already, and they will be waiting to receive you," said Polwarth. "You may well hope, if you have friends to see you off, you will have friends to welcome you too. But I think it's not so much like setting off from the pier-head, as getting down the side of the ocean-ship, to laud at the pier-head, where your friends are all standing looking out for you." "Well! I don't know," said Leopold, with a sigh of weariness. "I'm thankful sometimes that I've grown stupid. I suppose it's with dying. I didn't use to feel so. Sometimes I seem not to know or care anything about anything. I only want to stop coughing and aching and go to sleep." "Jesus was glad to give up his spirit into his Father's hands. He was very tired before he got away." "Thank you. Thank you. I have him. He is somewhere. You can't mention his name but it brings me something to live and hope for. If he is there, all will be well. And if I do get too tired to care for anything, he won't mind; he will only let me go to sleep, and wake me up again by-and-by when I am rested." He closed his eyes. "I want to go to bed," he said. They carried him into the house. _ |
||