Paul Faber, Surgeon

For days Faber took measures not to be seen by Juliet. But he was constantly about the place, and when she woke from a sleep, they had often to tell her that he had been by her side all the time she slept. At night he was either in her room or in the next chamber. Dorothy used to say to her that if she wanted her husband, she had only to go to sleep. She was greatly tempted to pretend, but would not.

At length Faber requested Dorothy to tell Juliet that the doctor said she might send for her husband when she pleased. Much as he longed to hear her voice, he would not come without her permission.

He was by her side the next moment. But for minutes not a word was spoken; a speechless embrace was all.

It does not concern me to relate how by degrees they came to a close understanding. Where love is, everything is easy, or, if not easy, yet to be accomplished. Of course Faber made his return confession in full. I will not say that Juliet had not her respondent pangs of retrospective jealousy. Love, although an angel, has much to learn yet, and the demon Jealousy may be one of the school masters of her coming perfection: God only knows. There must be a divine way of casting out the demon; else how would it be here-after?

Unconfessed to each other, their falls would forever have been between to part them; confessed, they drew them together in sorrow and humility and mutual consoling. The little Amanda could not tell whether Juliet's house or Dorothy's was her home: when at the one, she always talked of the other as home. She called her father papa, and Juliet mamma; Dorothy had been auntie from the first. She always wrote her name, Amanda Duck Faber. From all this the gossips of Glaston explained everything satisfactorily: Juliet had left her husband on discovering that he had a child of whose existence he had never told her; but learning that the mother was dead, yielded at length, and was reconciled. That was the nearest they ever came to the facts, and it was not needful they should ever know more. The talkers of the world are not on the jury of the court of the universe. There are many, doubtless, who need the shame of a public exposure to make them recognize their own doing for what it is; but of such Juliet had not been. Her husband knew her fault—that was enough: he knew also his own immeasurably worse than hers, but when they folded each other to the heart, they left their faults outside—as God does, when He casts our sins behind His back, in utter uncreation.

I will say nothing definite as to the condition of mind at which Faber had arrived when last Wingfold and he had a talk together. He was growing, and that is all we can require of any man. He would not say he was a believer in the supernal, but he believed more than he said, and he never talked against belief. Also he went as often as he could to church, which, little as it means in general, did not mean little when the man was Paul Faber, and where the minister was Thomas Wingfold.

It is time for the end. Here it is—in a little poem, which, on her next birthday, the curate gave Dorothy:

O wind of God, that blowest in the mind,Blow, blow and wake the gentle spring in me;Blow, swifter blow, a strong, warm summer wind,Till all the flowers with eyes come out to see;Blow till the fruit hangs red on every tree,And our high-soaring song-larks meet thy dove—High the imperfect soars, descends the perfect Love.Blow not the less though winter cometh then;Blow, wind of God, blow hither changes keen;Let the spring creep into the ground again,The flowers close all their eyes, not to be seen:All lives in thee that ever once hath been:Blow, fill my upper air with icy storms;Breathe cold, O wind of God, and kill my canker-worms.

1

Joshua Sylvester. I suspect the word ought to be five, not fine, as my copy (1613) has it.