Thomas Wingfold, Curate, vol 2 | Page 9

But the moment the tide of her trouble began again to rise,
Helen found herself less desirous of meeting one from whom she could
hope neither help nor cheer. It might be that future generations of the
death-doomed might pass their poor life a little more comfortably that
she had not been a bad woman, and she might be privileged to pass
away from the world, as George taught her, without earning the curses
of those that came after her; but there was her precious brother lying
before her with a horrible worm gnawing at his heart, and what to her
were a thousand generations unborn! Rather with Macbeth she might
well "wish the estate o' the world were now undone"--most of all when,
in the silent watches of the night, as she sat by the bedside of her

beloved and he slept, his voice would come murmuring out of a dream,
sounding so far away that it seemed as if his spirit only and not his lips
had spoken the words, "Oh Helen, darling, give me my knife. Why will
you not let me die?"

CHAPTER V
.
GLASTON AND THE CURATE.

Outside, the sun rose and set, never a crimson thread the less in the
garment of his glory that the spirit of one of the children of the earth
was stained with blood-guiltiness; the moon came up and knew nothing
of the matter; the stars minded their own business; and the people of
Glaston were talking about their curate's sermons. Alas, it was about
his sermons, and not the subject of them, that men talked, their interest
mainly roused by their PECULIARITY, and what some called the
oddity of the preacher.
What had come to him? He was not in the least like that for months
after his appointment, and the change came all at once! Yes--it began
with those extravagant notions about honesty in writing his own
sermons! It might have been a sunstroke, but it took him far too early in
the year for that! Softening of the brain it might be, poor fellow! Was
not excessive vanity sometimes a symptom?--Poor fellow!
So said some. But others said he was a clever fellow, and long-headed
enough to know that that sort of thing attracted attention, and might
open the way to a benefice, or at least an engagement in London, where
eloquence was of more account than in a dead-and-alive country place
like Glaston, from which the tide of grace had ebbed, leaving that great
ship of the church, the Abbey, high and dry on the shore.
Others again judged him a fanatic--a dangerous man. Such did not all
venture to assert that he had erred from the way, but what man was
more dangerous than he who went too far? Possibly these forgot that
the narrow way can hardly be one to sit down in comfortably, or indeed
to be entered at all save by him who tries the gate with the intent of
going all the way--even should it lead up to the perfection of the Father

in heaven. "But," they would in effect have argued, "is not a fanatic
dangerous? and is not an enthusiast always in peril of becoming a
fanatic?--Be his enthusiasm for what it may--for Jesus Christ, for God
himself, such a man is dangerous-- most dangerous! There are so many
things, comfortably settled like Presumption's tubs upon their own
bottoms, which such men would, if they could, at once upset and
empty!"
Others suspected a Romanizing drift in the whole affair. "Wait until he
gathers influence," they said, "and a handful of followers, and then
you'll see! They'll be all back to Rome together in a month!"
As the wind took by the tail St. Peter's cock on the church spire and
whirled it about, so did the wind of words in Glaston rudely seize and
flack hither and thither the spiritual reputation of Thomas Wingfold,
curate. And all the time, the young man was wrestling, his life in his
hand, with his own unbelief; while upon his horizon ever and anon rose
the glimmer of a great aurora, or the glimpse of a boundless main--if
only he could have been sure they were no mirage of his own parched
heart and hungry eye--that they were thoughts in the mind of the
Eternal, and THRERFORE had appeared in his, even as the Word was
said to have become flesh and dwelt with men! The next moment he
would be gasping in that malarious exhalation from the marshes of his
neglected heart--the counter-fear, namely, that the word under whose
potent radiance the world seemed on the verge of budding forth and
blossoming as the rose, was TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.
"Yes, much too good, if there be no