Part 52 (1/2)
”I wish it was over,” he said once.
”So do I,” returned the curate. ”But be of good courage, I think nothing will be given you to bear that you will not be able to bear.”
”I can bear a great deal more than I have had yet. I don't think I shall ever complain. That would be to take myself out of his hands, and I have no hope anywhere else.--Are you any surer about him, sir, than you used to be?”
”At least I hope in him far more,” answered Wingfold.
”Is that enough?”
”No. I want more.”
”I wish I could come back and tell you that I am alive and all is true.”
”I would rather have the natural way of it, and get the good of not knowing first.”
”But if I could tell you I had found G.o.d, then that would make you sure.”
Wingfold could not help a smile:--as if any a.s.surance from such a simple soul could reach the questions that tossed his troubled spirit!
”I think I shall find all I want in Jesus Christ,” he said.
”But you can't see him, you know.”
”Perhaps I can do better. And at all events I can wait,” said the curate. ”Even if he would let me, I would not see him one moment before he thought it best. I would not be out of a doubt or difficulty an hour sooner than he would take me.”
Leopold gazed at him and said no more.
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 pa.s.sage, 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.