CHAPTER XVII.
POLWARTH'S PLAN.
"I think I understand you now," said Wingfold, after the little
pause occasioned by the young woman's entrance. "You would have a
man who cannot be original, deal honestly in second-hand goods. Or
perhaps rather, he should say to the congregation--'This is not
home-made bread I offer you, but something better. I got it from
this or that baker's shop. I have eaten of it myself, and it has
agreed well with me and done me good. If you chew it well, I don't
doubt you also will find it good.'--Is that something like what you
would have, Mr. Polwarth?"
"Precisely," answered the gate-keeper. "But," he added, after a
moment's delay, "I should be sorry if you stopped there."
"Stopped there!" echoed Wingfold. "The question is whether I can
begin there. You have no idea how ignorant I am--how little I have
read!"
"I have some idea of both, I fancy. I must have known considerably
less than you at your age, for I was never at a university."
"But perhaps even then you had more of the knowledge which, they
say, life only can give."
"I have it now at all events. But of that everyone has enough who
lives his life. Those who gain no experience are those who shirk the
king's highway, for fear of encountering the Duty seated by the
roadside."
"You ought to be a clergyman yourself, sir," said Wingfold, humbly.
"How is it that such as I----"
Here he checked himself, knowing something of how it was.
"I hope I ought to be just what I am, neither more nor less,"
replied Polwarth. "As to being a clergyman, Moses had a better idea
about such things, at least so far as concerns outsides, than you
seem to have, Mr. Wingfold. He would never have let a man who in
size and shape is a mere mockery of the human, stand up to minister
to the congregation. But if you will let me help you, I shall be
most grateful; for of late I have been oppressed with the thought
that I serve no one but myself and my niece. I am in mortal fear of
growing selfish under the weight of my privileges."
A fit of asthmatic coughing seized him, and grew in severity until
he seemed struggling for his life. It was at the worst when his
niece entered, but she showed no alarm, only concern, and did
nothing but go up to him and lay her hand on his back between his
shoulders till the fit was over. The instant the convulsion ceased,
its pain dissolved in a smile.
Wingfold uttered some lame expressions of regret that he should
suffer so much.
"It is really nothing to distress you, or me either, Mr. Wingfold,"
said the little man. "Shall we have a cup of tea, and then resume
our talk?"
"The fact, I find, Mr. Polwarth," said the curate, giving the result
of what had been passing through his mind, and too absorbed in that
to reply to the invitation, "is, that I must not, and indeed cannot
give you half-confidences. I will tell you all that troubles me, for
it is plain that you know something of which I am ignorant,
--something which, I have great hopes, will turn out to be the very
thing I need to know. May I speak? Will you let me talk about
myself?"
"I am entirely at your service, Mr. Wingfold," returned Polwarth,
and seeing the curate did not touch his tea, placed his own cup
again on the table.
The young woman got down like a child from the chair upon which she
had perched herself at the table, and with a kind look at Wingfold,
was about to leave the room.
"No, no, Miss Polwarth!" said the curate, rising; "I shall not be
able to go on if I feel that I have sent you away--and your tea
untouched too! What a selfish and ungrateful fellow I am! I did not
even observe that you had given me tea! But you would pardon me if
you knew what I have been going through. If you don't mind staying,
we can talk and drink our tea at the same time. I am very fond of
tea, when it is so good as I see yours is. I only fear I may have to
say some things that will shock you."
"I will stay till then," replied Rachel, with a smile, and climbed
again upon her chair. "I am not much afraid. My uncle says things
sometimes fit to make a Pharisee's hair stand on his head, but
somehow they make my heart burn inside me.--May I stop, uncle?--I
should like so much!"
"Certainly, my child, if Mr. Wingfold will not feel your presence a
restraint."
"Not in the least," said the curate.
Miss Polwarth helped them to bread and butter, and a brief silence
followed.
"I was brought up to the church," said Wingfold at length, playing
with his teaspoon, and looking down on the table. "It's an awful
shame such a thing should have been, but I don't find out that
anybody in particular was to blame for it. Things are all wrong that
way, in general, I doubt. I pass my examinations with decency,
distinguish myself in nothing, go before the bishop, am admitted a
deacon, after a year am ordained a priest, and after another year or
two of false preaching and of parish work, suddenly find myself
curate in charge of a grand old abbey church; but as to what the
whole thing means in practical relation with myself as a human
being, I am as ignorant as Simon Magus, without his excuse. Do not
mistake me. I think I could stand an examination on the doctrines of
the church, as contained in the articles, and prayer-book generally.
But for all they have done for me, I might as well have never heard
of them."
"Don't be quite sure of that, Mr. Wingfold. At least, they have
brought you to inquire if there be anything in them."
"Mr. Polwarth," returned Wingfold abruptly, "I cannot even prove
there is a God!"
"But the church of England exists for the sake of teaching
Christianity, not proving that there is a God."
"What is Christianity, then?"
"God in Christ, and Christ in man."
"What is the use of that if there be no God?"
"None whatever."
"Mr. Polwarth, can you prove there is a God?"
"No."
"Then if you don't believe there is a God--I don't know what is to
become of me," said the curate, in a tone of deep disappointment,
and rose to go.
"Mr. Wingfold," said the little man, with a smile and a deep breath
as of delight at the thought that was moving in him, "I know him in
my heart, and he is all in all to me. You did not ask whether I
believed in him, but whether I could prove that there was a God. As
well ask a fly, which has not yet crawled about the world, if he can
prove that it is round!"
"Pardon me, and have patience with me," said Wingfold, resuming his
seat. "I am a fool. But it is life or death to me."
"I would we were all such fools!--But please ask me no more
questions; or ask me as many as you will, but expect no answers just
yet. I want to know more of your mind first."
"Well, I will ask questions, but press for no answers.--If you
cannot prove there is a God, do you know for certain that such a one
as Jesus Christ ever lived? Can it be proved with positive
certainty? I say nothing of what they call the doctrines of
Christianity, or the authority of the church, or the sacraments, or
anything of that sort. Such questions are at present of no interest
to me. And yet the fact that they do not interest me, were enough to
prove me in as false and despicable a position as ever man found
himself occupying--as arrant a hypocrite and deceiver as any
god-personating priest in the Delphic temple.--I had rather a man
despised than excused me, Mr. Polwarth, for I am at issue with
myself, and love not my past."
"I shall do neither, Mr. Wingfold. Go on, if you please, sir. I am
more deeply interested than I can tell you."
"Some few months ago then, I met a young man who takes for granted
the opposite of all that I had up to that time taken for granted,
and which now I want to be able to prove. He spoke with contempt of
my profession. I could not defend my profession, and of course had
to despise myself. I began to think. I began to pray--if you will
excuse me for mentioning it. My whole past life appeared like the
figures that glide over the field of a camera obscura--not an
abiding fact in it all. A cloud gathered about me, and hangs about
me still. I call, but no voice answers me out of the darkness, and
at times I am in despair. I would, for the love and peace of
honesty, give up the profession, but I shrink from forsaking what I
may yet possibly find--though I fear, I fear--to be as true as I
wish to find it. Something, I know not what, holds me to it--some
dim vague affection, possibly mere prejudice, aided by a love for
music, and the other sweet sounds of our prayers and responses. Nor
would I willingly be supposed to deny what I dare not say--indeed
know not how to say I believe, not knowing what it is. I should
nevertheless have abandoned everything months ago, had I not felt
bound by my agreement to serve my rector for a year. You are the
only one of the congregation who has shown me any humanity, and I
beg of you to be my friend and help me. What shall I do? After the
avowal you have made, I may well ask you again, How am I to know
that there is a God?"
"It were a more pertinent question, sir," returned Polwarth,--"If
there be a God, how am I to find him?--And, as I hinted before,
there is another question--one you have already put--more pertinent
to your position as an English clergyman: Was there ever such a man
as Jesus Christ?--Those, I think, were your own words: what do you
mean by SUCH a man?"
"Such as he is represented in the New Testament."
"From that representation, what description would you give of him
now? What is that SUCH? What sort of person, supposing the story
true, would you take this Jesus, from that story, to have been?"
Wingfold thought for a while.
"I am a worse humbug than I fancied," he said. "I cannot tell what
he was. My thoughts of him are so vague and indistinct that it would
take me a long time to render myself able to answer your question."
"Perhaps longer still than you think, sir. It took me a very long
time.--"
