Say and Seal Volume Ii Part 50

"I dare say he'd tell you if he was here--as I wish he was," said Mrs.

Derrick,--"Mr. Linden always seemed to have good reasons for what he did."

"I think that too," said the doctor. "I am not quite so sure of his telling them to me. But Pattaqua.s.set has reason to be very sorry he is gone away! What sort of a preacher will he make, Mrs. Derrick?"

"He's a good one now--" said Mrs. Derrick with a smile that was even a little moved. "Don't you think so, doctor?"

"How dare you ask me that, Mrs. Derrick?" said the doctor with slow funny utterance. "But I will confess this,--I would rather have _him_ preach to me than you."

"What sort of a bad reason have you got for that?" she said, looking at him.

"Miss Faith," said the doctor with the mock air of being in a dilemma,--"you are good at definitions, if I remember--what is the proper character of a _bad reason!_"

Faith looked up--he had never seen her look prettier, with a little hidden laughter both on and under her face and that colour she had brought down stairs with her. But her answer was demure enough.

"I suppose, sir, one that ought not to be a reason at all,--or one that is not reason enough."

"Do you consider it a bad reason for my not liking Mrs. Derrick's preaching, that I am afraid of her?"

"I shouldn't think it was reason enough," said Faith.

"Do you like preaching from people that you are afraid of?"

"Yes. At least I think I should. I don't know that I ever really was afraid of anybody."

These words, or the manner which went with them, quite obliterated the idea of Mrs. Derrick from the doctor's head. But his manner did not change. He only addressed his talk to Faith and altered the character of it. Nothing could be more cool and disembarra.s.sed. He had chosen his tactics.

They were made to regulate likewise the length of his visit, though the short summer evening had near run its course before he (in parliamentary phrase) "was on his legs" not to speak but to go. Then strolling on to the front door, he there met Reuben Taylor; flush in the doorway. The boy stept back into the hall to let him cone out; whence, as the doctor saw through the open window,--he went at once to Faith's side. But either accidentally or of design, Reuben stood so directly before her, that Dr. Harrison could see neither face--indeed could scarce see her at all. The little business transaction that went on then--the letter which Reuben took from his pocket and then again from its outer enveloppe,--the simple respect and pleasure with which he gave it to Faith--though colouring a little too,--all this was invisible, except to Mrs. Derrick. Faith's face would have told the doctor the whole. The pretty colour--the dropped eyes--and the undertone of her grateful, "I am very much obliged to you, Reuben!"

Reuben made no verbal answer, and staid not a minute longer, but the pleasure of his new trust was wonderful!

CHAPTER XVIII.

Faith did not have as uninterrupted a time for studies as she had counted upon for the next few months. In the first place, letters took a great many hours. In the second place, her studies were pretty frequently broken up of an evening by Dr. Harrison.

He certainly came often; whether it was because of the strength of attraction in that particular house, or the failure of any attraction beside in all the coasts of Pattaqua.s.set, was a problem which remained unsolved by anything in the doctor's manner. His manner was like what it had been the evening just recounted. He amused himself, after his nonchalant fashion, and amused his hearers; he did not in the mean time call upon them for any help at all. He discerned easily that Faith had a little shyness about her; that might mean one thing or it might mean another; and Dr. Harrison was far too wise to risk the one thing by endeavouring to find out whether it was the other. The doctor was no fisher had no favour for the sport; but if he had been, he might have thought that now he was going to give his fish a very long line indeed, and let it play to any extent of shyness or wilfulness; his hand on the reel all the time.

The talk that would do for Miss Essie would not please Faith. The doctor knew that long ago. He drew upon his better stores. His knowledge of the earth we live on; his familiarity with nature's and art's wonders; history and philosophy; literature and science; and a knowledge of the world which he used as a little piquant spice to flavour all the rest of his knowledge. Thrown in justly, with a nice hand, so as not to offend, it did rather serve to provoke a delicate palate; while it unmistakably gratified his own. It was the salt to the doctor's dish.

But everything wants breaking up with variety, and variety itself may come to be monotonous. He asked Faith one evening if she knew anything of chymistry; and proceeded upon her reply to give her sundry bits of detail and some further insight into the meaning and bearing of the science. It was not August then, but it might have been, for the leisurely manner in which the doctor "unwound his skein" of talk, as if he were talking to himself or _for_ himself; and yet he was, and he knew it, filling Faith's ears with delight. He took up the same subject afterwards from time to time; beginning from any trifle of suggestion, he would go off into an exquisite chymical discussion, ill.u.s.trated and pointed and ornamented, as no lecturer but one loving both his subject and his _object_ could ever make it. After a while the doctor began to come with bits of metal and phials of acids, and delight Faith and astonish Mrs. Derrick by turning her sitting-room into an impromptu laboratory. Such fumes! such gaseous odours! such ominous "reports", were never known in and about Mrs. Derrick's quiet household; nor were her basins and tumblers ever put to such strange, and in her view hideous, uses. But Dr. Harrison rather seemed to enjoy what appeared at first sight inconveniences; triumphed over the imperfections of tools and instruments, and wrought wonders over which Faith bent with greater raptures than if the marvels of Aladdin's lamp had been shewn before her. The doctor began by slow degrees; he let all this grow up of itself; he asked only for a tumbler the first time. And insensibly they went on, from one thing to another; till instead of a tumbler, the doctor would sometimes be surrounded with a most extraordinary retinue and train of diversified crockery and china. An empty b.u.t.ter-tub came to do duty for a water-bath; bottles and jars and cups and gla.s.ses, of various shapes and dimensions, attended or waited upon the doctor's operations; and with a slight apology and a.s.surance to Mrs. Derrick he on more than one or two occasions appropriated the clock-shade for his use and behoof as a receiver. Then siphons began to come in the doctor's pocket; and gla.s.s tubes, bent and straight, open and sealed, in the doctor's hand; and one of his evenings came to be "better than a play." A most beautiful and exquisite play to Faith. Yet Dr. Harrison never forgot his tactics; never let his fish feel the line; and to Faith's joyous "How shall I ever thank you, Dr. Harrison!"--would reply by a dry request that she would induce Mrs. Derrick to have m.u.f.fins for tea some evening and let him come.

And what did Dr. Harrison gain by all this? He did gain some hours of pleasure--that would have been very exquisite pleasure, but for the doubt that haunted him, and respecting which he could get no data of decision. The shyness and reserve did pa.s.s away from Faith; she met him and talked with him as a pleasant intimate friend whose company she enjoyed and who had a sort of right to hers; the right of friendship and kindliness. But then he never did anything to try her shyness or to call up her reserve. He never asked anything of her that she _could_ refuse. He never advanced a step where it could with decency be repressed. He knew it. But he bided his time. He did not know what thorough and full accounts of all his evenings went--through the post-office.

He knew, and it rather annoyed him, that Reuben Taylor was very freely admitted and very intimately regarded in the house. There was perhaps no very good reason why this should have annoyed the doctor. Yet somehow he always rather identified Reuben Taylor with another of his friends. He found out, too, that Reuben much preferred the times when he, the doctor, was not there; for after once or twice coming in upon sulphuric acid and clock shades (from which he retreated faster than if it had all been gun-powder) Reuben changed his hour; and the doctor had the satisfaction of wishing him good evening in the porch--or of pa.s.sing him on the sidewalk--or of hearing the swing of the little gate and Reuben's quick bound up the steps when his own feet were well out in the common ground of the road.

Mrs. Derrick expressed unequivocally (to Faith, not the doctor) her dislike of all chymical "smells" whatever, and her abhorrence of all "reports" but those which went off after the doctor's departure; the preparation of which Mrs. Derrick beheld with a sort of vindictive satisfaction. Mr. Linden enjoyed his letters unqualifiedly, sometimes wrote chymical answers--now and then forestalling the doctor, but rarely saying much about him. Faith was in little danger of annoyance from anything with her mother sitting by, and for the rest Dr. Harrison was at his own risk. Letters were too precious--every inch of them--to be much taken up with discussing _him_. Other things were of more interest,--sometimes discussion, sometimes information, oftenest of all, talk; and now and then came with the letter some book to give Faith a new bit of reading. Above all, the letters told her--in a sort of indefinable, unconscious way, how much, how much her presence was missed and longed for; it seemed to her as if where one letter laid it down the next took it up--not in word but in atmosphere, and carried it further. In that one respect (though Faith never found it out) the chymical accounts gave pain.

Faith in her letters never spoke directly of this element of his; but she made many a gentle effort to meet it and soothe what could be soothed. To this end partly were her very full accounts of all the course of her quiet life. As fearlessly and simply as possible Faith talked, to him; quite willing to be found wrong and to be told so, wherever wrong was. It was rather by the fulness of what she gave him, than by any declaration of want on her own part, that Mr. Linden could tell from her letters how much she felt or missed in his absence. She rarely put any of that into words, and if it got in atmospherically it was by the subtlest of entrances. When she spoke it at all, it was generally a very frank and simple expression of strong truth.

Of out-door work, during all this time, she had a variety. For some time after Mr. Linden's going away, neither Mrs. Stoutenburgh nor the Squire had been near the house; but then they began to amuse themselves with taking her to drive, and whenever Faith could and would go she was sure of a pleasant hour or two out in the brisk autumn air, and with no danger of even hearing Mr. Linden's name mentioned. The silence indeed proved rather too much, but it was better than speech. Then she and Reuben had many excursions, short and long. Sometimes the flowers or eggs or tracts were sent by him alone, but often Faith chose to go too; and he was her ever ready, respectful, and efficient escort,--respect it was truly, of the deepest and most affectionate kind. And thus--on foot or with Jerry--the two went their rounds; but at such houses Faith must both hear and speak of Mr. Linden--there was always some question to answer, some story to hear.

It happened, among Dr. Harrison's other pleasures, that he several times met them on these expeditions; generally when he was driving, sometimes when they were too; but one late November afternoon--not late in the month but late in the day, fortune favoured him. Strolling along for an unwonted walk, the doctor beheld from a little hill Faith and Reuben in the valley below,--saw them go up to the door of a cottage, saw Faith go in, and Reuben sit down in the porch and take out his book. It was a fair picture,--the brown woodland, the soft sunlight, the little dark cottage, the pretty youthful figures with their quick steps and natural gestures, and the evening hue and tone of everything.

But the doctor did not admire it--and went down the hill without even taking off his hat to the chickadees that bobbed their black caps at him from both sides of the road. By the porch the doctor suddenly slackened his pace, looked within, nodded to Reuben, and came to a halt.

"Have I accidentally found out where you live, Reuben?"

"I live down by the sh.o.r.e, sir," said Reuben standing up.

"I thought--" said the doctor, "I had got an impression that you were not a thorough-going Pattaqua.s.seter--but you looked so much at home there.--Where _do_ you live? whereabouts, I mean; for the sh.o.r.e stretches a long way."

Reuben gave the vernacular name of the little rocky coast point which was his home, but the point itself was too much out of the doctor's 'beat' to have the name familiar.

"How far off is that?"

"About four miles from here, sir."

"May I ask what you are studying so diligently four miles from home at this hour?"

Reuben coloured a good deal, but with not more than a moment's reluctance held out his book for the doctor's inspection. It was a Bible. The doctor's face changed, ever so little; but with what feeling, or combination of feelings, it would have taken a much wiser reader of men and faces than Reuben to tell. It was only a moment, and then he stood with the book in his hand gravely turning it over, but with his usual face.

"I once had the pleasure of asking you questions on some other matters," he remarked,--"and I remember you answered well. Can you pa.s.s as good an examination in this?"

"As to the words, sir? or the thoughts?--I don't quite know," said Reuben modestly.

"Words are the signs of thoughts, you know."

"Yes, sir--but n.o.body can know all the Bible thoughts--though some people have learned all the Bible words."

The doctor gave a little sort of commenting nod, rather approving than otherwise. "You are safe here," he paid as he handed the book back to Reuben; "for in this study I couldn't examine you. What are you pursuing the study for?--may I ask?"

"If you don't know!" was in the boy's full gaze for a moment. But he looked down again, answering steadily--"'Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee!'--I love it, Dr.

Harrison--and it shews me the way to serve G.o.d."

"Well," said the doctor rather kindly--"if I hadn't interrupted you, how much more study would you have accomplished before you thought it time to set oft for that four miles' walk home--to that unp.r.o.nounceable place?"

"I don't know, sir--I am not obliged to be there by any particular time of night."

"No, I know you are not. But--excuse my curiosity!--are you so fond of the Bible that you stop on the way home to read it as you go along? or are you waiting for somebody?"

The words brought the colour back with a different tinge, but Reuben simply answered, "No, sir--I did not stop here to read. I am waiting."

"For Miss Derrick, are you not?"

"Yes, sir."