Paul Faber, Surgeon Part 36

It was just breakfast-time when she reached the house. Her father was coming down the stair.

"Would you mind, father," she said as they sat, "if I were to make a room at the Old House a little comfortable?"

"I mind nothing you please to do, Dorothy," he answered. "But you must not become a recluse. In your search for G.o.d, you must not forsake your neighbor."

"If only I could find my neighbor!" she returned, with a rather sad smile. "I shall never be able even to look for him, I think, till I have found One nearer first."

"You have surely found your neighbor when you have found his wounds, and your hand is on the oil-flask," said her father, who knew her indefatigable in her ministrations.

"I don't feel it so," she answered. "When I am doing things for people, my arms seem to be miles long."

As soon as her father left the table, she got her basket again, filled it from the larder and store-room, laid a book or two on the top, and telling Lisbeth she was going to the Old House for the rest of the day, set out on her third journey thither. To her delight she found Juliet fast asleep. She sat down, rather tired, and began to reflect. Her great fear was that Juliet would fall ill, and then what was to be done? How was she to take the responsibility of nursing her? But she remembered how the Lord had said she was to take no thought for the morrow; and therewith she began to understand the word. She saw that one can not _do_ any thing in to-morrow, and that all care which can not be put into the work of to-day, is taken out of it. One thing seemed clear--that, so long as it was Juliet's desire to remain concealed from her husband, she had no right to act against that desire. Whether Juliet was right or wrong, a sense of security was for the present absolutely necessary to quiet her mind. It seemed therefore, the first thing she had to do was to make that concealed room habitable for her. It was dreadful to think of her being there alone at night, but her trouble was too great to leave much room for fear--and anyhow there was no choice. So while Juliet slept, she set about cleaning it, and hard work she found it.

Great also was the labor afterward, when, piece by piece, at night or in the early morning, she carried thither every thing necessary to make abode in it clean and warm and soft.

The labor of love is its own reward, but Dorothy received much more.

For, in the fresh impulse and freedom born of this service, she soon found, not only that she thought better and more clearly on the points that troubled her, but that, thus spending herself, she grew more able to believe there must be One whose glory is perfect ministration. Also, her anxious concentration of thought upon the usurping thoughts of others, with its tendency to diseased action in the logical powers, was thereby checked, much to her relief. She was not finding an atom of what is called proof; but when the longing heart finds itself able to hope that the perfect is the fact, that the truth is alive, that the lovely is rooted in eternal purpose, it can go on without such proof as belongs to a lower stratum of things, and can not be had in these. When we rise into the mountain air, we require no other testimony than that of our lungs that we are in a healthful atmosphere. We do not find it necessary to submit it to a quant.i.tative a.n.a.lysis; we are content that we breathe with joy, that we grow in strength, become lighter-hearted and better-tempered. Truth is a very different thing from fact; it is the loving contact of the soul with spiritual fact, vital and potent. It does its work in the soul independently of all faculty or qualification there for setting it forth or defending it. Truth in the inward parts is a power, not an opinion. It were as poor a matter as any held by those who deny it, if it had not its vitality in itself, if it depended upon any b.u.t.tressing of other and lower material.

How should it be otherwise? If G.o.d be so near as the very idea of Him necessitates, what other availing proof of His existence can there be, than such _awareness_ as must come of the developing relation between Him and us? The most satisfying of intellectual proofs, if such were to be had, would be of no value. G.o.d would be no nearer to us for them all.

They would bring about no blossoming of the mighty fact. While He was in our very souls, there would yet lie between Him and us a gulf of misery, of no-knowledge.

Peace is for those who _do_ the truth, not those who opine it. The true man troubled by intellectual doubt, is so troubled unto further health and growth. Let him be alive and hopeful, above all obedient, and he will be able to wait for the deeper content which must follow with completer insight. Men may say such a man but deceives himself, that there is nothing of the kind he pleases himself with imagining; but this is at least worth reflecting upon--that while the man who aspires fears he may be deceiving himself, it is the man who does not aspire who a.s.serts that he is. One day the former may be sure, and the latter may cease to deny, and begin to doubt.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

THE DOCTOR'S STUDY.

Paul Faber's condition, as he sat through the rest of that night in his study, was about as near absolute misery as a man's could well be, in this life, I imagine. The woman he had been watching through the first part of it as his essential bliss, he had left in a swoon, lying naked on the floor, and would not and did not go near her again. How could he?

Had he not been duped, sold, married to----?--That way madness lay! His pride was bitterly wounded. Would it had been mortally! but pride seems in some natures to thrive upon wounds, as in others does love. Faber's pride grew and grew as he sat and brooded, or, rather, was brooded upon.

He, Paul Faber, who knew his own worth, his truth, his love, his devotion--he, with his grand ideas of woman and purity and unity, conscious of deserving a woman's best regards--he, whose love (to speak truly his unworded, undefined impression of himself) any woman might be proud to call hers--he to be thus deceived! to have taken to his bosom one who had before taken another to hers, and thought it yet good enough for him! It would not bear thinking! Indignation and bitterest sense of wrong almost crazed him. For evermore he must be a hypocrite, going about with the knowledge of that concerning himself which he would not have known by others! This was how the woman, whom he had brought back from death with the life of his own heart, had served him! Years ago she had sacrificed her bloom to some sneaking wretch who flattered a G.o.d with prayers, then enticed and bewitched and married _him_!

In all this thinking there was no thought but for himself--not one for the woman whose agony had been patent even to his wrath-blinded eyes. In what is the wretchedness of our condition more evident than in this, that the sense of wrong always makes us unjust? It is a most humbling thought. G.o.d help us. He forgot how she had avoided him, resisted him, refused to confess the love which his goodness, his importunities, his besieging love had compelled in her heart. It was true she ought either to have refused him absolutely and left him, or confessed and left the matter with him; but he ought to have remembered for another, if ever he had known it for himself, the hardness of some duties; and what duty could be more torturing to a delicate-minded woman than either of those--to leave the man she loved in pa.s.sionate pain, sore-wounded with a sense of undeserved cruelty, or to give him the strength to send her from him by confessing to his face what she could not recall in the solitude of her own chamber but the agony would break out wet on her forehead! We do our brother, our sister, grievous wrong, every time that, in our selfish justice, we forget the excuse that mitigates the blame. That G.o.d never does, for it would be to disregard the truth. As He will never admit a false excuse, so will He never neglect a true one.

It may be He makes excuses which the sinner dares not think of; while the most specious of false ones shrivel into ashes before Him. A man is bound to think of all just excuse for his offender, for less than the righteousness of G.o.d will not serve his turn.

I would not have my reader set Faber down as heartless, His life showed the contrary. But his pride was roused to such furious self-a.s.sertion, that his heart lay beaten down under the sweep of its cyclone. Its turn was only delayed. The heart is always there, and rage is not. The heart is a constant, even when most intermittent force. It can bide its time.

Nor indeed did it now lie quite still; for the thought of that white, self-offered sacrifice, let him rave as he would against the stage-trickery of the scene, haunted him so, that once and again he had to rouse an evil will to restrain him from rushing to clasp her to his bosom.

Then there was the question: why now had she told him all--if indeed she had made a clean breast of it? Was it from love to him, or reviving honesty in herself? From neither, he said. Superst.i.tion alone was at the root of it. She had been to church, and the preaching of that honest idiotic enthusiast, Wingfold, had terrified her.--Alas! what refuge in her terror had she found with her husband?

Before morning he had made up his mind as to the course he would pursue.

He would not publish his own shame, but neither would he leave the smallest doubt in her mind as to what he thought of her, or what he felt toward her. All should be utterly changed between them. He would behave to her with extreme, with marked politeness; he would pay her every attention woman could claim, but her friend, her husband, he would be no more. His thoughts of vengeance took many turns, some of them childish.

He would always call her _Mrs. Faber_. Never, except they had friends, would he sit in the same room with her. To avoid scandal, he would dine with her, if he could not help being at home, but when he rose from the table, it would be to go to his study. If he happened at any time to be in the room with her when she rose to retire, he would light her candle, carry it up stairs for her, open the door, make her a polite bow, and leave her. Never once would he cross the threshold of her bedroom. She should have plenty of money; the purse of an adventuress was a greedy one, but he would do his best to fill it, nor once reproach her with extravagance--of which fault, let me remark, she had never yet shown a sign. He would refuse her nothing she asked of him--except it were in any way himself. As soon as his old aunt died, he would get her a brougham, but never would he sit in it by her side. Such, he thought, would be the vengeance of a gentleman. Thus he fumed and raved and trifled, in an agony of selfish suffering--a proud, injured man; and all the time the object of his vengeful indignation was lying insensible on the spot where she had prayed to him, her loving heart motionless within a bosom of ice.

In the morning he went to his dressing-room, had his bath, and went down to breakfast, half-desiring his wife's appearance, that he might begin his course of vindictive torture. He could not eat, and was just rising to go out, when the door opened, and the parlor-maid, who served also as Juliet's attendant, appeared.

"I can't find mis'ess nowhere, sir," she said. Faber understood at once that she had left him, and a terror, neither vague nor ill-founded, possessed itself of him. He sprung from his seat, and darted up the stair to her room. Little more than a glance was necessary to a.s.sure him that she had gone deliberately, intending it should be forever. The diamond ring lay on her dressing-table, spending itself in flashing back the single ray of the sun that seemed to have stolen between the curtains to find it; her wedding ring lay beside it, and the sparkle of the diamonds stung his heart like a demoniacal laughter over it, the more horrible that it was so silent and so lovely: it was but three days since, in his wife's presence, he had been justifying suicide with every argument he could bring to bear. It was true he had insisted on a proper regard to circ.u.mstances, and especially on giving due consideration to the question, whether the act would hurt others more than it would relieve the person contemplating it; but, after the way he had treated her, there could be no doubt how Juliet, if she thought of it at all, was compelled to answer it. He rushed to the stable, saddled Ruber, and galloped wildly away. At the end of the street he remembered that he had not a single idea to guide him. She was lying dead somewhere, but whether to turn east or west or north or south to find her, he had not the slightest notion. His condition was horrible. For a moment or two he was ready to blow his brains out: that, if the orthodox were right, was his only chance for over-taking her. What a laughing-stock he would then be to them all! The strangest, wildest, maddest thoughts came and went as of themselves, and when at last he found himself seated on Ruber in the middle of the street, an hour seemed to have pa.s.sed. It was but a few moments, and the thought that roused him was: could she have betaken herself to her old lodging at Owlkirk? It was not likely; it was possible: he would ride and see.

"They will say I murdered her," he said to himself as he rode--so little did he expect ever to see her again. "I don't care. They may prove it if they can, and hang me. I shall make no defense. It will be but a fit end to the farce of life."

He laughed aloud, struck his spurs in Ruber's flanks, and rode wildly.

He was desperate. He knew neither what he felt nor what he desired. If he had found her alive, he would, I do not doubt, have behaved to her cruelly. His life had fallen in a heap about him; he was ruined, and she had done it, he said, he thought, he believed. He was not aware how much of his misery was occasioned by a shrinking dread of the judgments of people he despised. Had he known it, he would have been yet more miserable, for he would have scorned himself for it. There is so much in us that is beyond our reach!

Before arriving at Owlkirk, he made up his mind that, if she were not there, he would ride to the town of Broughill--not in the hope of any news of her, but because there dwelt the only professional friend he had in the neighborhood--one who sympathized with his view of things, and would not close his heart against him because he did not believe that this horrid, ugly, disjointed thing of a world had been made by a G.o.d of love. Generally, he had been in the habit of dwelling on the loveliness of its developments, and the beauty of the gradual adaptation of life to circ.u.mstance; but now it was plainer to him than ever, that, if made at all, it was made by an evil being; "--for," he said, and said truly, "a conscious being without a heart must be an evil being." This was the righteous judgment of a man who could, by one tender, consoling word, have made the sun rise upon a glorious world of conscious womanhood, but would not say that word, and left that world lying in the tortured chaos of a slow disintegration. This conscious being with a heart, this Paul Faber, who saw that a G.o.d of love was the only G.o.d supposable, set his own pride so far above love, that his one idea was, to satisfy the justice of his outraged dignity by the torture of the sinner!--even while all the time dimly aware of rebuke in his soul. If she should have destroyed herself, he said once and again as he rode, was it more than a just sacrifice to his wronged honor? As such he would accept it. If she had, it was best--best for her, and best for him! What so much did it matter! She was very lovely!--true--but what was the quintessence of dust to him? Where either was there any great loss? He and she would soon be wrapped up in the primal darkness, the mother and grave of all things, together!--no, not together; not even in the dark of nothingness could they two any more lie together! Hot tears forced their way into his eyes, whence they rolled down, the lava of the soul, scorching his cheeks. He struck his spurs into Ruber fiercely, and rode madly on.

At length he neared the outskirts of Broughill. He had ridden at a fearful pace across country, leaving all to his horse, who had carried him wisely as well as bravely. But Ruber, although he had years of good work left in him, was not in his first strength, and was getting exhausted with his wild morning. For, all the way, his master, apparently unconscious of every thing else, had been immediately aware of the slightest slackening of muscle under him, the least faltering of the onward pace, and, in the temper of the savage, which wakes the moment the man of civilization is hard put to it, the moment he flagged, still drove the cruel spurs into his flanks, when the grand, unresenting creature would rush forward at straining speed--not, I venture to think, so much in obedience to the pain, as in obedience to the will of his master, fresh recognized through the pain.

Close to the high road, where they were now approaching it through the fields, a rail-fence had just been put up, inclosing a piece of ground which the owner wished to let for building. That the fact might be known, he was about to erect a post with a great board announcing it.

For this post a man had dug the hole, and then gone to his dinner. The inclosure lay between Faber and the road, in the direct line he was taking. On went Ruber blindly--more blindly than his master knew, for, with the prolonged running, he had partially lost his sight, so that he was close to the fence before he saw it. But he rose boldly, and cleared it--to light, alas! on the other side with a foreleg in the hole. Down he came with a terrible crash, pitched his master into the road upon his head, and lay groaning with a broken leg. Faber neither spoke nor moved, but lay as he fell. A poor woman ran to his a.s.sistance, and finding she could do nothing for him, hurried to the town for help. His friend, who was the first surgeon in the place, flew to the spot, and had him carried to his house. It was a severe case of concussion of the brain.

Poor old Ruber was speedily helped to a world better than this for horses, I trust.

Meantime Glaston was in commotion. The servants had spread the frightful news that their mistress had vanished, and their master ridden off like a madman. "But he won't find her alive, poor lady! I don't think," was the general close of their communication, accompanied by a would-be wise and really sympathetic shake of the head. In this conclusion most agreed, for there was a general impression of something strange about her, partly occasioned by the mysterious way in which Mrs. Puckridge had spoken concerning her illness and the marvelous thing the doctor had done to save her life. People now supposed that she had gone suddenly mad, or, rather, that the latent madness so plain to read in those splendid eyes of hers had been suddenly developed, and that under its influence she had rushed away, and probably drowned herself. Nor were there wanting, among the discontented women of Glaston, some who regarded the event--vaguely to their own consciousness, I gladly admit--as _almost a judgment_ upon Faber for marrying a woman of whom n.o.body knew any thing.

Hundreds went out to look for the body down the river. Many hurried to an old quarry, half full of water, on the road to Broughill, and peered horror-stricken over the edge, but said nothing. The boys of Glaston were mainly of a mind that the pond at the Old House was of all places the most likely to attract a suicide, for with the fascination of its horrors they were themselves acquainted. Thither therefore they sped; and soon Glaston received its expected second shock in the tidings that a lady's bonnet had been found floating in the frightful pool: while in the wet ma.s.s the boys brought back with them, some of her acquaintance recognized with certainty a bonnet they had seen Mrs. Faber wear. There was no room left for doubt; the body of the poor lady was lying at the bottom of the pool! A mult.i.tude rushed at once to the spot, although they knew it was impossible to drag the pool, so deep was it, and for its depth so small. Neither would she ever come to the surface, they said, for the pikes and eels would soon leave nothing but the skeleton.

So Glaston took the whole matter for ended, and began to settle down again to its own affairs, condoling greatly with the poor gentleman, such a favorite! who, so young, and after such a brief experience of marriage, had lost, in such a sad way, a wife so handsome, so amiable, so clever. But some said a doctor ought to have known better than marry such a person, however handsome, and they hoped it would be a lesson to him. On the whole, so sorry for him was Glaston, that, if the doctor could then have gone about it invisible, he would have found he had more friends and fewer enemies than he had supposed.

For the first two or three days no one was surprised that he did not make his appearance. They thought he was upon some false trail. But when four days had elapsed and no news was heard of him, for his friend knew nothing of what had happened, had written to Mrs. Faber, and the letter lay unopened, some began to hint that he must have had a hand in his wife's disappearance, and to breathe a presentiment that he would never more be seen in Glaston. On the morning of the fifth day, however, his accident was known, and that he was lying insensible at the house of his friend, Dr. May; whereupon, although here and there might be heard the expression of a pretty strong conviction as to the character of the visitation, the sympathy both felt and uttered was larger than before.

The other medical men immediately divided his practice amongst them, to keep it together against his possible return, though few believed he would ever again look on scenes darkened by the memory of bliss so suddenly blasted.

For weeks his recovery was doubtful, during which time, even if they had dared, it would have been useless to attempt acquainting him with what all believed the certainty of his loss. But when at length he woke to a memory of the past, and began to desire information, his friend was compelled to answer his questions. He closed his lips, bowed his head on his breast, gave a great sigh, and held his peace. Every one saw that he was terribly stricken.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

THE MIND OF JULIET.

There was one, however, who, I must confess, was not a little relieved at the news of what had befallen Faber. For, although far from desiring his death, which indeed would have ruined some of her warmest hopes for Juliet, Dorothy greatly dreaded meeting him. She was a poor dissembler, hated even the shadow of a lie, and here was a fact, which, if truth could conceal it, must not be known. Her dread had been, that, the first time she saw Faber, it would be beyond her power to look innocent, that her knowledge would be legible in her face; and much she hoped their first encounter might be in the presence of Helen or some other ignorant friend, behind whose innocent front she might shelter her conscious secrecy. To truth such a silence must feel like a culpable deception, and I do not think such a painful position can ever arise except from wrong somewhere. Dorothy could not tell a lie. She could not try to tell one; and if she had tried, she would have been instantly discovered through the enmity of her very being to the lie she told; from her lips it would have been as transparent as the truth. It is no wonder therefore that she felt relieved when first she heard of the durance in which Faber was lying. But she felt equal to the withholding from Juliet of the knowledge of her husband's condition for the present. She judged that, seeing she had saved her friend's life, she had some right to think and choose for the preservation of that life.

Meantime she must beware of security, and cultivate caution; and so successful was she, that weeks pa.s.sed, and not a single doubt a.s.sociated Dorothy with knowledge where others desired to know. Not even her father had a suspicion in the direction of the fact. She knew he would one day approve both of what she did, and of her silence concerning it. To tell him, thoroughly as he was to be trusted, would be to increase the risk; and besides, she had no right to reveal a woman's secret to a man.

It was a great satisfaction, however, notwithstanding her dread of meeting him, to hear that Faber had at length returned to Glaston; for if he had gone away, how could they have ever known what to do? For one thing, if he were beyond their knowledge, he might any day, in full confidence, go and marry again.

Her father not unfrequently accompanied her to the Old House, but Juliet and she had arranged such signals, and settled such understandings, that the simple man saw nothing, heard nothing, forefelt nothing. Now and then a little pang would quaver through Dorothy's bosom, when she caught sight of him peering down into the terrible dusk of the pool, or heard him utter some sympathetic hope for the future of poor Faber; but she comforted herself with the thought of how glad he would be when she was able to tell him all, and how he would laugh over the story of their precautions against himself.

Her chief anxiety was for Juliet's health, even more for the sake of avoiding discovery, than for its own. When the nights were warm she would sometimes take her out in the park, and every day, one time or another, would make her walk in the garden while she kept watch on the top of the steep slope. Her father would sometimes remark to a friend how Dorothy's love of solitude seemed to grow upon her; but the remark suggested nothing, and slowly Juliet was being forgotten at Glaston.

It seemed to Dorothy strange that she did not fall ill. For the first few days she was restless and miserable as human being could be. She had but one change of mood: either she would talk feverously, or sit in the gloomiest silence, now and then varied with a fit of abandoned weeping.

Every time Dorothy came from Glaston, she would overwhelm her with questions--which at first Dorothy could easily meet, for she spoke absolute fact when she said she knew nothing concerning her husband.

When at length the cause of his absence was understood, she told her he was with his friend, Dr. May, at Broughill. Knowing the universal belief that she had committed suicide, nothing could seem more natural. But when, day after day, she heard the same thing for weeks, she began to fear he would never be able to resume his practice, at least at Glaston, and wept bitterly at the thought of the evil she had brought upon him who had given her life, and love to boot. For her heart was a genuine one, and dwelt far more on the wrong her too eager love had done him, than on the hardness with which he had resented it. Nay, she admired him for the fierceness of his resentment, witnessing, in her eyes, to the purity of the man whom his neighbors regarded as wicked.

After the first day, she paid even less heed to any thing of a religious kind with which Dorothy, in the strength of her own desire after a perfect stay, sought to rouse or console her. When Dorothy ventured on such ground, which grew more and more seldom, she would sit listless, heedless, with a far-away look. Sometimes when Dorothy fancied she had been listening a little, her next words would show that her thoughts had been only with her husband. When the subsiding of the deluge of her agony, allowed words to carry meaning to her, any hint at supernal consolation made her angry, and she rejected every thing Dorothy said, almost with indignation. To seem even to accept such comfort, she would have regarded as traitorous to her husband. Not the devotion of the friend who gave up to her all of her life she could call her own, sufficed to make her listen even with a poor patience. So absorbed was she in her trouble, that she had no feeling of what poor Dorothy had done for her. How can I blame her, poor lady! If existence was not a thing to be enjoyed, as for her it certainly was not at present, how was she to be thankful for what seemed its preservation? There was much latent love to Dorothy in her heart; I may go further and say there was much latent love to G.o.d in her heart, only the latter was very latent as yet. When her heart was a little freer from grief and the agony of loss, she would love Dorothy; but G.o.d must wait with his own patience--wait long for the child of His love to learn that her very sorrow came of His dearest affection. Who wants such affection as that? says the unloving.

No one, I answer; but every one who comes to know it, glorifies it as the only love that ever could satisfy his being.