“You think me an odd-looking creature—don’t you?” he said; “but just because God made me so, I have been compelled to think about things I might otherwise have forgotten, and that is why Mr. Wingfold would have me come to see you.”
The curate placed a chair for him, and the gate-keeper sat down. Helen seated herself a little way off in the window, pretending, or hardly more, to hem a handkerchief. Leopold’s big eyes went wandering from one to the other of the two men.
“What a horrible world it is!” was the thought that kept humming on like an evil insect in Helen’s heart. “I am sorry to see you suffer so much,” said Leopold kindly, for he heard the laboured breath of the little man, and saw the heaving of his chest.
“It does not greatly trouble me,” returned Polwarth. “It is not my fault, you see,” he added with a smile; “at least I don’t think it is.”
“You are happy to suffer without fault,” said Leopold. “It is because it is just that my punishment seems greater than I can bear.”
“You need God’s forgiveness in your soul.”
“I don’t see how that should do anything for me.”
“I do not mean it would take away your suffering; but it would make you able to bear it. It would be fresh life in you.”
“I can’t see why it should. I can’t feel that I have wronged God. I have been trying to feel it, Mr. Wingfold, ever since you talked to me. But I don’t know God, and I only feel what I have done to Emmeline. If I said to God, ‘Pardon me,’ and he said to me, ‘I do pardon you,’ I should feel just the same. What could that do to set anything right that I have set wrong? I am what I am, and what I ever shall be, and the injury which came from me, cleaves fast to her, and is my wrong wherever she is.”
He hid his face in his hands.