Thomas Wingfold, Curate, vol 2 | Page 8

Faber to ask Helen whether she knew of any
disappointment or other source of mental suffering that could explain it.
She told him of the habit he had formed, and asked whether his being
deprived of the narcotic might not be the cause. He accepted the

suggestion, and set himself, not without some success, to repair the
injury the abuse had occasioned. Still, although his physical condition
plainly improved, the dejection continued, and Mr. Faber was thrown
back upon his former conjecture. Learning nothing, however, and yet
finding that, as he advanced towards health, his dejection plainly
deepened, he began at length to fear softening of the brain, but could
discover no other symptom of such disease.
The earnestness of the doctor's quest after a cause for what anyone
might observe, added greatly to Helen's uneasiness; and besides, the
fact itself began to undermine the hope of his innocence which had
again sprung up and almost grown to assurance in the absence of any
fresh contradiction from without. Also, as his health returned, his sleep
became more troubled; he dreamed more, and showed by his increased
agitation in his dreams that they were more painful. In this respect his
condition was at the worst always between two and three o'clock in the
morning; and having perceived this fact, Helen would never allow
anyone except herself to sit up with him the first part of the night.
Increased anxiety and continued watching soon told upon her health yet
more severely, and she lost appetite and complexion. Still she slept
well during the latter part of the morning, and it was in vain that aunt
and doctor and nurse all expostulated with her upon the excess of her
ministration: nothing should make her yield the post until her brother
was himself again. Nor was she without her reward, and that a sufficing
one--in the love and gratitude with which Leopold clung to her.
During the day also she spent every moment, except such as she passed
in the open air, and at table with her aunt, by his bedside, reading and
talking to him; but as yet not a single allusion had been made to the
frightful secret.
At length he was so much better that there was no longer need for
anyone to sit up with him; but then Helen had her bed put in the
dressing-room, that at one o'clock she might be by his side, to sit there
until three should be well over and gone.
Thus she gave up her whole life to him, and doubtless thereby gained
much fresh interest in it for herself. But the weight of the secret, and
the dread of the law, were too much for her, and were gradually
undermining that strength of dissimulation in which she had trusted,
and which, in respect of cheerfulness, she had to exercise towards her

brother as well as her aunt. She struggled hard, for if those weak
despairing eyes of his were to encounter weakness and despair in hers,
madness itself would be at the door for both. She had come nearly to
the point of discovering that the soul is not capable of generating its
own requirements, that it needs to be supplied from a well whose
springs lie deeper than its own soil, in the infinite All, namely, upon
which that soil rests. Happy they who have found that those springs
have an outlet in their hearts--on the hill of prayer.
It was very difficult to lay her hands on reading that suited him. Gifted
with a glowing yet delicate eastern imagination, pampered and all but
ruined, he was impatient of narratives of common life, whose current
bore him to a reservoir and no sea; while, on the other hand, some tales
that seemed to Helen poverty-stricken flats of nonsense, or jumbles of
false invention, would in her brother wake an interest she could not
understand, appearing to afford him outlooks into regions to her
unknown. But from the moral element in any story he shrunk visibly.
She tried the German tales collected by the brothers Grimm, so popular
with children of all ages; but on the very first attempt she blundered
into an awful one of murder and vengeance, in which, if the drawing
was untrue, the colour was strong, and had to blunder clumsily out of it
again, with a hot face and a cold heart. At length she betook herself to
the Thousand and One Nights, which she had never read, and found
very dull, but which with Leopold served for what book could do.
In the rest of the house things went on much the same. Old friends and
their daughters called on Mrs. Ramshorn, and inquired after the invalid,
and George Bascombe came almost every Saturday, and stayed till
Monday.