“Ah!” cried Leopold, with a profound sigh, “—if that could be!—if he could really do that!”
“Why, of course he can do that!” said Polwarth. “What sort of watchmaker were he who could not set right the watches and clocks himself made?”
“But the hearts of men and women!” “Which God does far more than make!” interposed Polwarth. “That a being able to make another self-conscious being distinct from himself, should be able also to set right whatever that being could set wrong, seems to me to follow of simple necessity. He might even, should that be fit, put the man himself in the way of making up for what he had done, or at least put it in his power to ask and receive a forgiveness that would set all right between him and the person wronged. One of the painful things in the dogma of the endless loss of the wicked is that it leaves no room for the righteous to make up to them for the wrongs they did them in this life. For the righteous do the wicked far more wrong than they think—the righteous being all the time, in reality, the wealthy, and the wicked the poor. But it is a blessed word that there are first that shall be last, and last that shall be first.”
Helen stared. This last sounded to her mere raving madness, and she thought how wrong she had been to allow such fanatics to gain power over her poor Leopold—who sat before them whiter than ever, and with what she took for a wilder gleam in his eye.
“Is there not the might of love, and all eternity for it to work in, to set things right?” ended Polwarth.
“O God!” cried Leopold, “if that might be true! That would be a gift indeed—the power to make up for the wrong I have done!”
He rose from the couch—slowly, sedately, I had almost said formally, like one with a settled object, and stood erect, swaying a little from weakness.
“Mr. Wingfold,” he said, “I want of you one more favour: will you take me to the nearest magistrate? I wish to give myself up.”
Helen started up and came forward, paler than the sick man.
“Mr. Wingfold! Mr. Polwarth!” she said, and turned from the one to the other, “the boy is not himself. You will never allow him to do such a mad thing!”