Kitabı oku: «Paul Faber, Surgeon», sayfa 11

CHAPTER XX

AT THE PIANO

When Faber called on Juliet, the morning after the last interview recorded, and found where she was gone, he did not doubt she had taken refuge with her new friends from his importunity, and was at once confirmed in the idea he had cherished through the whole wakeful night, that the cause of her agitation was nothing else than the conflict between her heart and a false sense of duty, born of prejudice and superstition. She was not willing to send him away, and yet she dared not accept him. Her behavior had certainly revealed any thing but indifference, and therefore must not make him miserable. At the same time if it was her pleasure to avoid him, what chance had he of seeing her alone at the rectory? The thought made him so savage that for a moment he almost imagined his friend had been playing him false.

"I suppose he thinks every thing fair in religion, as well as in love and war!" he said to himself. "It's a mighty stake, no doubt—a soul like Juliet's!"

He laughed scornfully. It was but a momentary yielding to the temptation of injustice, however, for his conscience told him at once that the curate was incapable of any thing either overbearing or underhand. He would call on her as his patient, and satisfy himself at once how things were between them. At best they had taken a bad turn.

He judged it better, however, to let a day or two pass. When he did call, he was shown into the drawing-room, where he found Helen at the piano, and Juliet having a singing-lesson from her. Till then he had never heard Juliet's song voice. A few notes of it dimly reached him as he approached the room, and perhaps prepared him for the impression he was about to receive: when the door opened, like a wind on a more mobile sea, it raised sudden tumult in his soul. Not once in his life had he ever been agitated in such fashion; he knew himself as he had never known himself. It was as if some potent element, undreamed of before, came rushing into the ordered sphere of his world, and shouldered its elements from the rhythm of their going. It was a full contralto, with pathos in the very heart of it, and it seemed to wrap itself round his heart like a serpent of saddest splendor, and press the blood from it up into his eyes. The ladies were too much occupied to hear him announced, or note his entrance, as he stood by the door, absorbed, entranced.

Presently he began to feel annoyed, and proceeded thereupon to take precautions with himself. For Juliet was having a lesson of the severest kind, in which she accepted every lightest hint with the most heedful attention, and conformed thereto with the sweetest obedience; whence it came that Faber, the next moment after fancying he had screwed his temper to stoic pitch, found himself passing from displeasure to indignation, and thence almost to fury, as again and again some exquisite tone, that went thrilling through all his being, discovering to him depths and recesses hitherto unimagined, was unceremoniously, or with briefest apology, cut short for the sake of some suggestion from Helen. Whether such suggestion was right or wrong, was to Faber not of the smallest consequence: it was in itself a sacrilege, a breaking into the house of life, a causing of that to cease whose very being was its justification. Mrs. Wingfold! she was not fit to sing in the same chorus with her! Juliet was altogether out of sight of her. He had heard Mrs. Wingfold sing many a time, and she could no more bring out a note like one of those she was daring to criticise, than a cat could emulate a thrush!

"Ah, Mr. Faber!—I did not know you were there," said Helen at length, and rose. "We were so busy we never heard you."

If she had looked at Juliet, she would have said I instead of we.

Her kind manner brought Faber to himself a little.

"Pray, do not apologize," he said. "I could have listened forever."

"I don't wonder. It is not often one hears notes like those. Were you aware what a voice you had saved to the world?"

"Not in the least. Miss Meredith leaves her gifts to be discovered."

"All good things wait the seeker," said Helen, who had taken to preaching since she married the curate, some of her half-friends said; the fact being that life had grown to her so gracious, so happy, so serious, that she would not unfrequently say a thing worth saying.

In the interstices of this little talk, Juliet and Faber had shaken hands, and murmured a conventional word or two.

"I suppose this is a professional visit?" said Helen. "Shall I leave you with your patient?"

As she put the question, however, she turned to Juliet.

"There is not the least occasion," Juliet replied, a little eagerly, and with a rather wan smile. "I am quite well, and have dismissed my doctor."

Faber was in the mood to imagine more than met the ear, and the words seemed to him of cruel significance. A flush of anger rose to his forehead, and battled with the paleness of chagrin. He said nothing. But Juliet saw and understood. Instantly she held out her hand to him again, and supplemented the offending speech with the words,

"—but, I hope, retained my friend?"

The light rushed again into Faber's eyes, and Juliet repented afresh, for the words had wrought too far in the other direction.

"That is," she amended, "if Mr. Faber will condescend to friendship, after having played the tyrant so long."

"I can only aspire to it," said the doctor.

It sounded mere common compliment, the silliest thing between man and woman, and Mrs. Wingfold divined nothing more: she was not quick in such matters. Had she suspected, she might, not knowing the mind of the lady have been a little perplexed. As it was, she did not leave the room, and presently the curate entered, with a newspaper in his hand.

"They're still at it, Faber," he said, "with their heated liquids and animal life!"

"I need not ask which side you take," said the doctor, not much inclined to enter upon any discussion.

"I take neither," answered the curate. "Where is the use, or indeed possibility, so long as the men of science themselves are disputing about the facts of experiment? It will be time enough to try to understand them, when they are agreed and we know what the facts really are. Whatever they may turn out to be, it is but a truism to say they must be consistent with all other truth, although they may entirely upset some of our notions of it."

"To which side then do you lean, as to the weight of the evidence?" asked Faber, rather listlessly.

He had been making some experiments of his own in the direction referred to. They were not so complete as he would have liked, for he found a large country practice unfriendly to investigation; but, such as they were, they favored the conclusion that no form of life appeared where protection from the air was thorough.

"I take the evidence," answered the curate, "to be in favor of what they so absurdly call spontaneous generation."

"I am surprised to hear you say so," returned Faber. "The conclusions necessary thereupon, are opposed to all your theology."

"Must I then, because I believe in a living Truth, be myself an unjust judge?" said the curate. "But indeed the conclusions are opposed to no theology I have any acquaintance with; and if they were, it would give me no concern. Theology is not my origin, but God. Nor do I acknowledge any theology but what Christ has taught, and has to teach me. When, and under what circumstances, life comes first into human ken, can not affect His lessons of trust and fairness. If I were to play tricks with the truth, shirk an argument, refuse to look a fact in the face, I should be ashamed to look Him in the face. What he requires of his friends is pure, open-eyed truth."

"But how," said the doctor, "can you grant spontaneous generation, and believe in a Creator?"

"I said the term was an absurd one," rejoined the curate.

"Never mind the term then: you admit the fact?" said Faber.

"What fact?" asked Wingfold.

"That in a certain liquid, where all life has been destroyed, and where no contact with life is admitted, life of itself appears," defined the doctor.

"No, no; I admit nothing of the sort," cried Wingfold. "I only admit that the evidence seems in favor of believing that in some liquids that have been heated to a high point, and kept from the air, life has yet appeared. How can I tell whether all life already there was first destroyed? whether a yet higher temperature would not have destroyed yet more life? What if the heat, presumed to destroy all known germs of life in them, should be the means of developing other germs, further removed? Then as to spontaneity, as to life appearing of itself, that question involves something beyond physics. Absolute life can exist only of and by itself, else were it no perfect thing; but will you say that a mass of protoplasm—that proto by the way is a begged question—exists by its own power, appears by its own will? Is it not rather there because it can not help it?"

"It is there in virtue of the life that is in it," said Faber.

"Of course; that is a mere truism," returned Wingfold, "equivalent to, It lives in virtue of life. There is nothing spontaneous in that. Its life must in some way spring from the true, the original, the self-existent life."

"There you are begging the whole question," objected the doctor.

"No; not the whole," persisted the curate; "for I fancy you will yourself admit there is some blind driving law behind the phenomenon. But now I will beg the whole question, if you like to say so, for the sake of a bit of purely metaphysical argument: the law of life behind, if it be spontaneously existent, can not be a blind, deaf, unconscious law; if it be unconscious of itself, it can not be spontaneous; whatever is of itself must be God, and the source of all non-spontaneous, that is, all other existence."

"Then it has been only a dispute about a word?" said Faber.

"Yes, but a word involving a tremendous question," answered Wingfold.

"Which I give up altogether," said the doctor, "asserting that there is nothing spontaneous, in the sense you give the word—the original sense I admit. From all eternity a blind, unconscious law has been at work, producing."

"I say, an awful living Love and Truth and Right, creating children of its own," said the curate—"and there is our difference."

"Yes," assented Faber.

"Anyhow, then," said Wingfold, "so far as regards the matter in hand, all we can say is, that under such and such circumstances life appears—whence, we believe differently; how, neither of us can tell—perhaps will ever be able to tell. I can't talk in scientific phrase like you, Faber, but truth is not tied to any form of words."

"It is well disputed," said the doctor, "and I am inclined to grant that the question with which we started does not immediately concern the great differences between us."

It was rather hard upon Faber to have to argue when out of condition and with a lady beside to whom he was longing to pour out his soul—his antagonist a man who never counted a sufficing victory gained, unless his adversary had had light and wind both in his back. Trifling as was the occasion of the present skirmish, he had taken his stand on the lower ground. Faber imagined he read both triumph and pity in Juliet's regard, and could scarcely endure his position a moment longer.

"Shall we have some music?" said Wingfold. "—I see the piano open. Or are you one of those worshipers of work, who put music in the morning in the same category with looking on the wine when it is red?"

"Theoretically, no; but practically, yes," answered Faber, "—at least for to-day. I shouldn't like poor Widow Mullens to lie listening to the sound of that old water-wheel, till it took up its parable against the faithlessness of men in general, and the doctor in particular. I can't do her much good, poor old soul, but I can at least make her fancy herself of consequence enough not to be forgotten."

The curate frowned a little—thoughtfully—but said nothing, and followed his visitor to the door. When he returned, he said,

"I wonder what it is in that man that won't let him believe!"

"Perhaps he will yet, some day," said Juliet, softly.

"He will; he must," answered the curate. "He always reminds me of the young man who had kept the law, and whom our Lord loved. Surely he must have been one of the first that came and laid his wealth at the apostles' feet! May not even that half of the law which Faber tries to keep, be school-master enough to lead him to Christ?—But come, Miss Meredith; now for our mathematics!"

Every two or three days the doctor called to see his late patient. She wanted looking after, he said. But not once did he see her alone. He could not tell from their behavior whether she or her hostess was to blame for his recurring disappointment; but the fact was, that his ring at the door-bell was the signal to Juliet not to be alone.

CHAPTER XXI

THE PASTOR'S STUDY

Happening at length to hear that visitors were expected, Juliet, notwithstanding the assurances of her hostess that there was plenty of room for her, insisted on finding lodgings, and taking more direct measures for obtaining employment. But the curate had not been idle in her affairs, and had already arranged for her with some of his own people who had small children, only he had meant she should not begin just yet. He wanted her both to be a little stronger, and to have got a little further with one or two of her studies. And now, consulting with Helen, he broached a new idea on the matter of her lodgment.

A day or two before Jones, the butcher, had been talking to him about Mr. Drake—saying how badly his congregation had behaved to him, and in what trouble he had come to him, because he could not pay his bill. The good fellow had all this time never mentioned the matter; and it was from growing concern about the minister that he now spoke of it to the curate.

"We don't know all the circumstances, however, Mr. Jones," the curate replied; "and perhaps Mr. Drake himself does not think so badly of it as you do. He is a most worthy man. Mind you let him have whatever he wants. I'll see to you. Don't mention it to a soul."

"Bless your heart and liver, sir!" exclaimed the butcher, "he's ten times too much of a gentleman to do a kindness to. I couldn't take no liberty with that man—no, not if he was 'most dead of hunger. He'd eat the rats out of his own cellar, I do believe, before he'd accept what you may call a charity; and for buying when he knows he can't pay, why he'd beg outright before he'd do that. What he do live on now I can't nohow make out—and that's what doos make me angry with him—as if a honest tradesman didn't know how to behave to a gentleman! Why, they tell me, sir, he did use to drive his carriage and pair in London! And now he's a doin' of his best to live on nothink at all!—leastways, so they tell me—seem' as how he'd have 'em believe he was turned a—what's it they call it!—a—a—a wegetablarian!—that's what he do, sir! But I know better. He may be eatin' grass like a ox, as did that same old king o' Israel as growed the feathers and claws in consequence; and I don't say he ain't; but one thing I'm sure of, and that is, that if he be, it's by cause he can't help it. Why, sir, I put it to you—no gentleman would—if he could help it.—Why don't he come to me for a bit o' wholesome meat?" he went on in a sorely injured tone. "He knows I'm ready for anythink in reason! Them peas an' beans an' cabbages an' porridges an' carrots an' turmits—why, sir, they ain't nothink at all but water an' wind. I don't say as they mayn't keep a body alive for a year or two, but, bless you, there's nothink in them; and the man'll be a skelinton long before he's dead an' buried; an' I shed jest like to know where's the good o' life on sich terms as them!"

Thus Jones, the butcher—a man who never sold bad meat, never charged for an ounce more than he delivered, and when he sold to the poor, considered them. In buying and selling he had a weakness for giving the fair play he demanded. He had a little spare money somewhere, but he did not make a fortune out of hunger, retire early, and build churches. A local preacher once asked him if he knew what was the plan of salvation. He answered with the utmost innocence, cutting him off a great lump of leg of beef for a family he had just told him was starving, that he hadn't an idea, but no Christian could doubt it was all right.

The curate, then, pondering over what Mr. Jones had told him, had an idea; and now he and his wife were speedily of one mind as to attempting an arrangement for Juliet with Miss Drake. What she would be able to pay would, they thought, ease them a little, while she would have the advantage of a better protection than a lodging with more humble people would afford her. Juliet was willing for any thing they thought best.

Wingfold therefore called on the minister, to make the proposal to him, and was shown up to his study—a mere box, where there was just room for a chair on each side of the little writing-table. The walls from top to bottom were entirely hidden with books.

Mr. Drake received him with a touching mixture of sadness and cordiality, and heard in silence what he had to say.

"It is very kind of you to think of us, Mr. Wingfold," he replied, after a moment's pause. "But I fear the thing is impossible. Indeed, it is out of the question. Circumstances are changed with us. Things are not as they once were."

There had always been a certain negative virtue in Mr. Drake, which only his friends were able to see, and only the wisest of them to set over against his display—this, namely, that he never attempted to gain credit for what he knew he had not. As he was not above show, I can not say he was safely above false show, for he who is capable of the one is still in danger of the other; but he was altogether above deception: that he scorned. If, in his time of plenty he liked men to be aware of his worldly facilities, he now, in the time of his poverty, preferred that men should be aware of the bonds in which he lived. His nature was simple, and loved to let in the daylight. Concealment was altogether alien to him. From morning to night anxious, he could not bear to be supposed of easy heart. Some men think poverty such a shame that they would rather be judged absolutely mean than confess it. Mr. Drake's openness may have sprung from too great a desire for sympathy; or from a diseased honesty—I can not tell; I will freely allow that if his faith had been as a grain of mustard seed, he would not have been so haunted with a sense of his poverty, as to be morbidly anxious to confess it. He would have known that his affairs were in high charge: and that, in the full flow of the fountain of prosperity, as well as in the scanty, gravelly driblets from the hard-wrought pump of poverty, the supply came all the same from under the throne of God, and he would not have felt poor. A man ought never to feel rich for riches, nor poor for poverty. The perfect man must always feel rich, because God is rich.

"The fact is," Mr. Drake went on, "we are very poor—absolutely poor, Mr. Wingfold—so poor that I may not even refuse the trifling annuity my late congregation will dole out to me."

"I am sorry to know it," said the curate.

"But I must take heed of injustice," the pastor resumed; "I do not think they would have treated me so had they not imagined me possessed of private means. The pity now is that the necessity which would make me glad to fall in with your kind proposal itself renders the thing impracticable. Even with what your friend would contribute to the housekeeping we could not provide a table fit for her. But Dorothy ought to have the pleasure of hearing your kind proposition: if you will allow me I will call her."

Dorothy was in the kitchen, making pastry—for the rare treat of a chicken pudding: they had had a present of a couple of chickens from Mrs. Thomson—when she heard her father's voice calling her from the top of the little stair. When Lisbeth opened the door to the curate she was on her way out, and had not yet returned; so she did not know any one was with him, and hurried up with her arms bare. She recoiled half a step when she saw Mr. Wingfold, then went frankly forward to welcome him, her hands in her white pinafore.

"It's only flour," she said, smiling.

"It is a rare pleasure now-a-days to catch a lady at work" said Wingfold. "My wife always dusts my study for me. I told her I would not have it done except she did it—just to have the pleasure of seeing her at it. My conviction is, that only a lady can become a thorough servant."

"Why don't you have lady-helps then?" said Dorothy.

"Because I don't know where to find them. Ladies are scarce; and any thing almost would be better than a houseful of half-ladies."

"I think I understand," said Dorothy thoughtfully.

Her father now stated Mr. Wingfold's proposal—in the tone of one sorry to be unable to entertain it.

"I see perfectly why you think we could not manage it, papa," said Dorothy. "But why should not Miss Meredith lodge with us in the same way as with Mrs. Puckridge? She could have the drawing-room and my bedroom, and her meals by herself. Lisbeth is wretched for want of dinners to cook."

"Miss Meredith would hardly relish the idea of turning you out of your drawing-room," said Wingfold.

"Tell her it may save us from being turned out of the house. Tell her she will be a great help to us," returned Dorothy eagerly.

"My child," said her father, the tears standing in his eyes, "your reproach sinks into my very soul."

"My reproach, father!" repeated Dorothy aghast. "How you do mistake me! I can't say with you that the will of God is every thing; but I can say that far less than your will—your ability—will always be enough for me."

"My child," returned her father, "you go on to rebuke me! You are immeasurably truer to me than I am to my God.—Mr. Wingfold, you love the Lord, else I would not confess my sin to you: of late I have often thought, or at least felt as if He was dealing hardly with me. Ah, my dear sir! you are a young man: for the peace of your soul serve God so, that, by the time you are my age, you may be sure of Him. I try hard to put my trust in Him, but my faith is weak. It ought by this time to have been strong. I always want to see the way He is leading me—to understand something of what He is doing with me or teaching me, before I can accept His will, or get my heart to consent not to complain. It makes me very unhappy. I begin to fear that I have never known even the beginning of confidence, and that faith has been with me but a thing of the understanding and the lips."

He bowed his head on his hands. Dorothy went up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder, looking unspeakably sad. A sudden impulse moved the curate.

"Let us pray," he said, rising, and kneeled down.

It was a strange, unlikely thing to do; but he was an unlikely man, and did it. The others made haste to kneel also.

"God of justice," he said, "Thou knowest how hard it is for us, and Thou wilt be fair to us. We have seen no visions; we have never heard the voice of Thy Son, of whom those tales, so dear to us, have come down the ages; we have to fight on in much darkness of spirit and of mind, both from the ignorance we can not help, and from the fault we could have helped; we inherit blindness from the error of our fathers; and when fear, or the dread of shame, or the pains of death, come upon us, we are ready to despair, and cry out that there is no God, or, if there be, He has forgotten His children. There are times when the darkness closes about us like a wall, and Thou appearest nowhere, either in our hearts, or in the outer universe; we can not tell whether the things we seemed to do in Thy name, were not mere hypocrisies, and our very life is but a gulf of darkness. We cry aloud, and our despair is as a fire in our bones to make us cry; but to all our crying and listening, there seems neither hearing nor answer in the boundless waste. Thou who knowest Thyself God, who knowest Thyself that for which we groan, Thou whom Jesus called Father, we appeal to Thee, not as we imagine Thee, but as Thou seest Thyself, as Jesus knows Thee, to Thy very self we cry—help us, O Cause of us! O Thou from whom alone we are this weakness, through whom alone we can become strength, help us—be our Father. We ask for nothing beyond what Thy Son has told us to ask. We beg for no signs or wonders, but for Thy breath upon our souls, Thy spirit in our hearts. We pray for no cloven tongues of fire—for no mighty rousing of brain or imagination; but we do, with all our power of prayer, pray for Thy spirit; we do not even pray to know that it is given to us; let us, if so it pleases Thee, remain in doubt of the gift for years to come—but lead us thereby. Knowing ourselves only as poor and feeble, aware only of ordinary and common movements of mind and soul, may we yet be possessed by the spirit of God, led by His will in ours. For all things in a man, even those that seem to him the commonest and least uplifted, are the creation of Thy heart, and by the lowly doors of our wavering judgment, dull imagination, luke-warm love, and palsied will, Thou canst enter and glorify all. Give us patience because our hope is in Thee, not in ourselves. Work Thy will in us, and our prayers are ended. Amen."

They rose. The curate said he would call again in the evening, bade them good-by, and went. Mr. Drake turned to his daughter and said—

"Dorothy, that's not the way I have been used to pray or hear people pray; nevertheless the young man seemed to speak very straight up to God. It appears to me there was another spirit there with his. I will humble myself before the Lord. Who knows but he may lift me up!"

"What can my father mean by saying that perhaps God will lift him up?" said Dorothy to herself when she was alone. "It seems to me if I only knew God was anywhere, I should want no other lifting up. I should then be lifted up above every thing forever."

Had she said so to the curate, he would have told her that the only way to be absolutely certain of God, is to see Him as He is, and for that we must first become absolutely pure in heart. For this He is working in us, and perfection and vision will flash together. Were conviction possible without that purity and that vision, I imagine it would work evil in us, fix in their imperfection our ideas, notions, feelings, concerning God, give us for His glory the warped reflection of our cracked and spotted and rippled glass, and so turn our worship into an idolatry.

Dorothy was a rather little woman, with lightish auburn hair, a large and somewhat heavy forehead, fine gray eyes, small well-fashioned features, a fair complexion on a thin skin, and a mouth that would have been better in shape if it had not so often been informed of trouble. With this trouble their poverty had nothing to do; that did not weigh upon her a straw. She was proud to share her father's lot, and could have lived on as little as any laboring woman with seven children. She was indeed a trifle happier since her father's displacement, and would have been happier still had he found it within the barest possibility to decline the annuity allotted him; for, as far back as she could remember, she had been aware of a dislike to his position—partly from pride it may be, but partly also from a sense of the imperfection of the relation between him and his people—one in which love must be altogether predominant, else is it hateful—and chiefly because of a certain sordid element in the community—a vile way of looking at sacred things through the spectacles of mammon, more evident—I only say more evident—in dissenting than in Church of England communities, because of the pressure of expenses upon them. Perhaps the impossibility of regarding her father's church with reverence, laid her mind more open to the cause of her trouble—such doubts, namely, as an active intellect, nourished on some of the best books, and disgusted with the weak fervor of others rated high in her hearing, had been suggesting for years before any words of Faber's reached her. The more her devout nature longed to worship, the more she found it impossible to worship that which was presented for her love and adoration. See believed entirely in her father, but she knew he could not meet her doubts, for many things made it plain that he had never had such himself. An ordinary mind that has had doubts, and has encountered and overcome them, or verified and found them the porters of the gates of truth, may be profoundly useful to any mind similarly assailed; but no knowledge of books, no amount of logic, no degree of acquaintance with the wisest conclusions of others, can enable a man who has not encountered skepticism in his own mind, to afford any essential help to those caught in the net. For one thing, such a man will be incapable of conceiving the possibility that the net may be the net of The Fisher of Men.

Dorothy, therefore, was sorely oppressed. For a long time her life had seemed withering from her, and now that her father was fainting on the steep path, and she had no water to offer him, she was ready to cry aloud in bitterness of spirit.

She had never heard the curate preach—had heard talk of his oddity on all sides, from men and women no more capable of judging him than the caterpillar of judging the butterfly—which yet it must become. The draper, who understood him, naturally shrunk from praising to her the teaching for which he not unfrequently deserted that of her father, and she never looked in the direction of him with any hope. Yet now, the very first time she had heard him speak out of the abundance of his heart, he had left behind him a faint brown ray of hope in hers. It was very peculiar of him to break out in prayer after such an abrupt fashion—in the presence of an older minister than himself—and praying for him too! But there was such an appearance of reality about the man! such a simplicity in his look! such a directness in his petitions! such an active fervor of hope in his tone—without an atom of what she had heard called unction! His thought and speech appeared to arise from no separated sacred mood that might be assumed and laid aside, but from present faith and feeling, from the absolute point of life at that moment being lived by him. It was an immediate appeal to a hearing, and understanding, and caring God, whose breath was the very air His creatures breathed, the element of their life; an utter acknowledgment of His will as the bliss of His sons and daughters! Such was the shining of the curate's light, and it awoke hope in Dorothy.