Paul Faber, Surgeon

CHAPTER XXIV

After tea, Mr. Drake and Dorothy went out for a walk together—a thing they had not once done since the church-meeting of acrid memory in which had been decreed the close of the minister's activity, at least in Glaston. It was a lovely June twilight; the bats were flitting about like the children of the gloamin', and the lamps of the laburnum and lilac hung dusky among the trees of Osterfield Park.

Juliet, left all but alone in the house, sat at her window, reading. Her room was on the first floor, but the dining-room beneath it was of low pitch, and at the lane-door there were two steps down into the house, so that her window was at no great height above the lane. It was open, but there was little to be seen from it, for immediately opposite rose a high old garden-wall, hiding every thing with its gray bulk, lovelily blotted with lichens and moss, brown and green and gold, except the wall-flowers and stone-crop that grew on its coping, and a running plant that hung down over it, like a long fringe worn thin. Had she put her head out of the window, she would have seen in the one direction a cow-house, and in the other the tall narrow iron gate of the garden—and that was all. The twilight deepened as she read, until the words before her began to play hide and seek; they got worse and worse, until she was tired of catching at them; and when at last she stopped for a moment, they were all gone like a troop of fairies, and her reading was ended. She closed the book, and was soon dreaming awake; and the twilight world was the globe in which the dream-fishes came and went—now swelling up strange and near, now sinking away into the curious distance.

Her mood was broken by the sound of hoofs, which she almost immediately recognized as those of the doctor's red horse—great hoofs falling at the end of long straight-flung steps. Her heart began to beat violently, and confident in the protection of the gathering night, she rose and looked cautiously out toward the side on which was the approach. In a few moments, round the furthest visible corner, and past the gate in the garden-wall, swung a huge shadowy form—gigantic in the dusk. She drew back her head, but ere she could shape her mind to retreat from the window, the solid gloom hurled itself thundering past, and she stood trembling and lonely, with the ebb of Ruber's paces in her ears—and in her hand a letter. In a minute she came to herself, closed her window, drew down the blind, lighted a candle, set it on the window-sill, and opened the letter. It contained these verses, and nothing more:—

Juliet laid her head on her hands and wept.

"Why should I not let him have his rosy sunset?" she thought. "It is all he hopes for—cares for, I think—poor fellow! Am I not good enough to give him that? What does it matter about me, if it is all but a vision that flits between heaven and earth, and makes a passing shadow on human brain and nerves?—a tale that is telling—then a tale that is told! Much the good people make out of their better faith! Should I be troubled to learn that it was indeed a lasting sleep? If I were dead, and found myself waking, should I want to rise, or go to sleep again? Why should not I too dare to hope for an endless rest? Where would be the wrong to any? If there be a God, He will have but to wake me to punish me hard enough. Why should I not hope at least for such a lovely thing? Can any one help desiring peace? Oh, to sleep, and sleep, and wake no more forever and ever! I would not hasten the sleep; the end will surely come, and why should we not enjoy the dream a little longer—at least while it is a good dream, and the tossing has not begun? There would always be a time. Why wake before our time out of the day into the dark nothing? I should always want to see what to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow would bring—that is, so long as he loved me. He is noble, and sad, and beautiful, and gracious!—but would he—could he love me to the end—even if—? Why should we not make the best of what we have? Why should we not make life as happy to ourselves and to others as we can—however worthless, however arrant a cheat it may be? Even if there be no such thing as love, if it be all but a lovely vanity, a bubble-play of color, why not let the bubble-globe swell, and the tide of its ocean of color flow and rush and mingle and change? Will it not break at last, and the last come soon enough, when of all the glory is left but a tear on the grass? When we dream a pleasant dream, and know it is but a dream, we will to dream on, and quiet our minds that it may not be scared and flee: why should we not yield to the stronger dream, that it may last yet another sweet, beguiling moment? Why should he not love me—kiss me? Why should we not be sad together, that we are not and can not be the real man and woman we would—that we are but the forms of a dream—the fleeting shadows of the night of Nature?—mourn together that the meddlesome hand of fate should have roused us to consciousness and aspiration so long before the maturity of our powers that we are but a laughter—no—a scorn and a weeping to ourselves? We could at least sympathize with each other in our common misery—bear with its weakness, comfort its regrets, hide its mortifications, cherish its poor joys, and smooth the way down the steepening slope to the grave! Then, if in the decrees of blind fate, there should be a slow, dull procession toward perfection, if indeed some human God be on the way to be born, it would be grand, although we should know nothing of it, to have done our part fearless and hopeless, to have lived and died that the triumphant Sorrow might sit throned on the ever dying heart of the universe. But never, never would I have chosen to live for that! Yes, one might choose to be born, if there were suffering one might live or die to soften, to cure! That would be to be like Paul Faber. To will to be born for that would be grand indeed!"

In paths of thought like these her mind wandered, her head lying upon her arms on the old-fashioned, wide-spread window-sill. At length, weary with emotion and weeping, she fell fast asleep, and slept for some time.

The house was very still. Mr. Drake and Dorothy were in no haste to return. Amanda was asleep, and Lisbeth was in the kitchen—perhaps also asleep.

Juliet woke with a great start. Arms were around her from behind, lifting her from her half-prone position of sorrowful rest. With a terrified cry, she strove to free herself.

"Juliet, my love! my heart! be still, and let me speak," said Faber. His voice trembled as if full of tears. "I can bear this no longer. You are my fate. I never lived till I knew you. I shall cease to live when I know for certain that you turn from me."

Juliet was like one half-drowned, just lifted from the water, struggling to beat it away from eyes and ears and mouth.

"Pray leave me, Mr. Faber," she cried, half-terrified, half-bewildered, as she rose and turned toward him. But while she pushed him away with one hand, she unconsciously clasped his arm tight with the other. "You have no right to come into my room, and surprise me—startle me so! Do go away. I will come to you."

"Pardon, pardon, my angel! Do not speak so loud," he said, falling on his knees, and clasping hers.

"Do go away," persisted Juliet, trying to remove his grasp. "What will they think if they find us—you here. They know I am perfectly well."

"You drive me to liberties that make me tremble, Juliet. Everywhere you avoid me. You are never to be seen without some hateful protector. Ages ago I put up a prayer to you—one of life or death to me, and, like the God you believe in, you have left it unanswered. You have no pity on the sufferings you cause me! If your God be cruel, why should you be cruel too? Is not one tormentor enough in your universe? If there be a future let us go on together to find it. If there be not, let us yet enjoy what of life may be enjoyed. My past is a sad one—"

Juliet shuddered.

"Ah, my beautiful, you too have suffered!" he went on. "Let us be angels of mercy to each other, each helping the other to forget! My griefs I should count worthless if I might but erase yours."

"I would I could say the same!" said Juliet, but only in her heart.

"Whatever they may have been," he continued, "my highest ambition shall be to make you forget them. We will love like beings whose only eternity is the moment. Come with me, Juliet; we will go down into the last darkness together, loving each other—and then peace. At least there is no eternal hate in my poor, ice-cold religion, as there is in yours. I am not suffering alone, Juliet. All whom it is my work to relieve, are suffering from your unkindness. For a time I prided myself that I gave every one of them as full attention as before, but I can not keep it up. I am defeated. My brain seems deserting me. I mistake symptoms, forget cases, confound medicines, fall into incredible blunders. My hand trembles, my judgment wavers, my will is undecided. Juliet, you are ruining me."

"He saved my life," said Juliet to herself, "and that it is which has brought him to this. He has a claim to me. I am his property. He found me a castaway on the shore of Death, and gave me his life to live with. He must not suffer where I can prevent it."—She was on the point of yielding.

The same moment she heard a step in the lane approaching the door.

"If you love me, do go now, dear Mr. Faber," she said. "I will see you again. Do not urge me further to-night.—Ah, I wish! I wish!" she added, with a deep sigh, and ceased.

The steps came up to the door. There came a knock at it. They heard Lisbeth go to open it. Faber rose.

"Go into the drawing-room," said Juliet. "Lisbeth may be coming to fetch me; she must not see you here."

He obeyed. Without a word he left the chamber, and went into the drawing-room. He had been hardly a moment there, when Wingfold entered. It was almost dark, but the doctor stood against the window, and the curate knew him.

"Ah, Faber!" he said, "it is long since I saw you. But each has been about his work, I suppose, and there could not be a better reason."

"Under different masters, then," returned Faber, a little out of temper.

"I don't exactly think so. All good work is done under the same master."

"Pooh! Pooh!"

"Who is your master, then?"

"My conscience. Who is yours?"

"The Author of my conscience."

"A legendary personage!"

"One who is every day making my conscience harder upon me. Until I believed in Him, my conscience was dull and stupid—not half-awake, indeed."

"Oh! I see You mean my conscience is dull and stupid."

"I do not. But if you were once lighted up with the light of the world, you would pass just such a judgment on yourself. I can't think you so different from myself, as that that shouldn't be the case; though most heartily I grant you do your work ten times better than I did. And all the time I thought myself an honest man! I wasn't. A man may honestly think himself honest, and a fresh week's experience may make him doubt it altogether. I sorely want a God to make me honest."

Here Juliet entered the room, greeted Mr. Wingfold, and then shook hands with Faber. He was glad the room was dark.

"What do you think, Miss Meredith—is a man's conscience enough for his guidance?" said the curate.

"I don't know any thing about a man's conscience," answered Juliet.

"A woman's then?" said the curate.

"What else has she got?" returned Juliet.

The doctor was inwardly cursing the curate for talking shop. Only, if a man knows nothing so good, so beautiful, so necessary, as the things in his shop, what else ought he to talk—especially if he is ready to give them without money and without price? The doctor would have done better to talk shop too.

"Of course he has nothing else," answered the curate; "and if he had, he must follow his conscience all the same."

"There you are, Wingfold!—always talking paradoxes!" said Faber.

"Why, man! you may only have a blundering boy to guide you, but if he is your only guide, you must follow him. You don't therefore call him a sufficient guide!"

"What a logomachist you are! If it is a horn lantern you've got, you needn't go mocking at it."

"The lantern is not the light. Perhaps you can not change your horn for glass, but what if you could better the light? Suppose the boy's father knew all about the country, but you never thought it worth while to send the lad to him for instructions?"

"Suppose I didn't believe he had a father? Suppose he told me he hadn't?"

"Some men would call out to know if there was any body in the house to give the boy a useful hint."

"Oh bother! I'm quite content with my fellow."

"Well, for my part I should count my conscience, were it ten times better than it is, poor company on any journey. Nothing less than the living Truth ever with me can make existence a peace to me,—that's the joy of the Holy Ghost, Miss Meredith.—What if you should find one day, Faber, that, of all facts, the thing you have been so coolly refusing was the most precious and awful?"

Faber had had more than enough of it. There was but one thing precious to him; Juliet was the perfect flower of nature, the apex of law, the last presentment of evolution, the final reason of things! The very soul of the world stood there in the dusk, and there also stood the foolish curate, whirling his little vortex of dust and ashes between him and her!

"It comes to this," said Faber; "what you say moves nothing in me. I am aware of no need, no want of that Being of whom you speak. Surely if in Him I did live and move and have my being, as some old heathen taught your Saul of Tarsus, I should in one mode or another be aware of Him!"

While he spoke, Mr. Drake and Dorothy had come into the room. They stood silent.

"That is a weighty word," said Wingfold. "But what if you feel His presence every moment, only do not recognize it as such?"

"Where would be the good of it to me then?"

"The good of it to you might lie in the blinding. What if any further revelation to one who did not seek it would but obstruct the knowledge of Him? Truly revealed, the word would be read untruly—even as The Word has been read by many in all ages. Only the pure in heart, we are told, shall see Him. The man who, made by Him, does not desire Him—how should he know Him?"

"Why don't I desire Him then?—I don't."

"That is for you to find out."

"I do what I know to be right; even on your theory I ought to get on," said Faber, turning from him with a laugh.

"I think so too," replied Wingfold. "Go on, and prosper. Only, if there be untruth in you alongside of the truth—? It might be, and you are not awake to it. It is marvelous what things can co-exist in a human mind."

"In that case, why should not your God help me?"

"Why not? I think he will. But it may have to be in a way you will not like."

"Well, well! good night. Talk is but talk, whatever be the subject of it.—I beg your pardon," he added, shaking hands with the minister and his daughter; "I did not see you come in. Good night."

"I won't allow that talk is only talk, Faber," Wingfold called after him with a friendly laugh. Then turning to Mr. Drake, "Pardon me," he said, "for treating you with so much confidence. I saw you come in, but believed you would rather have us end our talk than break it off."

"Certainly. But I can't help thinking you grant him too much, Mr. Wingfold," said the minister seriously.

"I never find I lose by giving, even in argument," said the curate. "Faber rides his hobby well, but the brute is a sorry jade. He will find one day she has not a sound joint in her whole body."

The man who is anxious to hold every point, will speedily bring a question to a mere dispute about trifles, leaving the real matter, whose elements may appeal to the godlike in every man, out in the cold. Such a man, having gained his paltry point, will crow like the bantam he is, while the other, who may be the greater, perhaps the better man, although in the wrong, is embittered by his smallness, and turns away with increased prejudice. Human nature can hardly be blamed for its readiness to impute to the case the shallowness of its pleader. Few men do more harm than those who, taking the right side, dispute for personal victory, and argue, as they are sure then to do, ungenerously. But even genuine argument for the truth is not preaching the gospel, neither is he whose unbelief is thus assailed, likely to be brought thereby into any mood but one unfit for receiving it. Argument should be kept to books; preachers ought to have nothing to do with it—at all events in the pulpit. There let them hold forth light, and let him who will, receive it, and him who will not, forbear. God alone can convince, and till the full time is come for the birth of the truth in a soul, the words of even the Lord Himself are not there potent.