Say and Seal Volume Ii Part 65

"Well--" said the doctor,--"it is impossible to trace the limits of the influences of mignonette."

Faith looked grave. She was thinking how very powerless her influences had been.

"Don't you see that I have made out my position?"

"No."

"What sort of studying--may I ask it?--do you favour most?" he said with a smile.

"I like all kinds--every kind!"

"I believe that. I know you have a love for chymistry, and Shakspeare, and natural history. But I should like to know Mignonette's favourite atmosphere."

"The study I like best of all is the one you like least, Dr. Harrison."

"What may that be, Miss Faith?"

"The study of the Bible."

"The Bible! Surely you know that already," he said in an interested voice.

"Did you think so?" said Faith quickly and with secret humbleness. "You made a great mistake, Dr. Harrison. But there is nothing I take such deep lessons in;--nor such pleasant ones."

"You mistake me too, Miss Faith. I do like it. You are strong enough for it to-day--I wish you would give me one of those lessons you speak of?"

"If you loved it, sir, you would not ask me. You would find them for yourself."

"Another mistake!" said the doctor. "I might love them, and yet ask you. Won't you give me one?"

She lifted to his a look so gentle and grave that he could not think she was displeased, or harsh, or even unkind. But she answered him, "No."

"Don't you feel strong enough for it?" he said with a shade of concern.

"Yes."

"You think you have given me one lesson already," he said smiling, "which I am not attending to. I will go and see your little sick child immediately. But I don't know the way! I wish you were well enough to pilot me. I can't find her by the sign of the rosebush?"

"Reuben Taylor will take you there, Dr. Harrison, if you will let him.

He goes there often."

"If I will let him! Say, if he will let me! Your knight does not smile upon me, Miss Faith."

"Why not?"

"I'm sure I'm not qualified to give evidence," said the doctor half laughing at having the tables turned upon him. "Unless his chivalric devotion to you is jealous of every other approach--even mine. But you say he will guide me to the rosebush?"

"I am sure he will with great pleasure, Dr. Harrison."

"And I will go with great pleasure--for you."

He was standing before her, looking down. There was something in the look that made Faith's colour come again. She answered seriously, "No sir--not for me."

"Why not?"

"I can't reward you," said Faith; trembling, for she felt she was speaking to the point. "Do it for a better reason."

"Will you shew me a better?"

She answered instantly with a bright little smile, "'Give, and it shall be given unto you; full measure, pressed down, heaped up, and running over, shall men give into your bosom.'"

"In another world!--" said the doctor.

"No--in this. The promise stands for it."

"It's your part of this world--not mine; and unless you shew me the way, Miss Faith, I shall never get into it."--Then more gently, taking her hand and kissing it, he added, "Are you tired of trying to help me?"

Faith met his keen eye, reddened, and drooped her head; for indeed she felt weak. And her words were low and scarce steady. "I will not be tired of praying for you, Dr Harrison."

What swift electric current along the chain of a.s.sociation moved the doctor's next question. He was silent a minute before he spoke it; then spoke in a clear even voice. "May I ask you--is it impertinent--what first led you to this way of thinking?--Sophy says you were not always so."

The colour deepened on Faith's cheek, he saw that, and deepened more.

"The teaching is always of heaven, sir. But it came to me through the hands of the friend who was so long in our house--last year."

"And has that adventurer counselled you to trust no friend that isn't of his way of thinking?" the doctor said with some haughtiness of accent.

Faith raised her eyes and looked at him, the steady grave look that the doctor never liked to meet from those soft eyes. It fixed his, till her eyes fell with a sudden motion, and the doctor's followed them--whither? To that gloved forefinger which he had often noticed was kept covered. Faith was slowly drawing the covering off; and something in her manner or her look kept his eyes rivetted there. Slowly, deliberately, Faith uncovered the finger, and in full view the brilliants sparkled; danced and leapt, as it seemed to Faith, whose eyes saw nothing else. She did not dare look up, nor could, for a double reason. She sat like a fair statue, looking still and only at the diamond sign, while the blood in her cheeks that bore witness to it seemed the only moving thing about her. That rose and deepened, from crimson to scarlet, and from her cheeks to the rim of her hair.

She never saw the changes in her neighbour's face, nor what struggles the paleness and the returning flush bore witness to. She never looked up. She had revealed all; she was willing he should conceal all,--that he could. It was but a minute or two, though Faith's measurement made it a more indefinite time; and Dr. Harrison took her hand again, precisely in his usual manner, remarked that it was possible he might be obliged to go south in a day or two _for_ a day or two, but that he rather thought he had cured her; and so went off, with no difference of tone that any stranger could have told, and Faith never raised her eyes to see how he looked.

CHAPTER XXV.

Dr. Harrison sent away his curricle and walked home,--slowly, with his hands behind him, as if the May air had made him lazy. To any one that met him, he wore as disengaged an air as usual; his eye was as coolly cognizant of all upon which it fell, and his brow never looked less thoughtful. While his head never had been more busy. He kept the secret of his pride--he had kept and would keep it, well; no one should guess what he bore; but he bore a writhing brain and a pa.s.sion that was heaving with disappointment. To no end--except to expose himself--he had worked at his mining operations all these months; nothing could be more absolute than the silence of Faith's answer; nothing could be more certain than the fixedness of her position. Against the very impa.s.sableness of the barrier the doctor's will chafed, even while his hope gave way. He ruthlessly called himself a fool for it too, at the minute. But he was unused to be baffled; and no man pursues long with such deliberate energy a purpose upon which he has set his heart, without having all the cords of his will and his pa.s.sion knit at last into a cable of strength and tenacity. The doctor's walk grew slower, and his eyes fell on the ground. How lovely Faith had looked--even then, when she was putting him and herself to pain; how speakingly the crimson hues had chased each other all over her face, and neck; how shyly her eyelashes had kept their place on her cheek; with how exquisite grace her still att.i.tude had been maintained. And withal what a piece of simplicity she was! What a contrast those superb diamonds had made with the almost quaint unadornedness of her figure in its white wrapper. A contrast that somehow was not inharmonious, and with which the doctor's artistic taste confessed itself bewitched, though Faith's only other remotest ornament was that very womanly one of her rich brown hair. A piece of simplicity? Could she be beyond his reach?

With duty between,--yes; otherwise,--no! as all the doctor's experience told him. And he walked leisurely past his own door, past the houses of the village, on almost to the entrance of the woody road; then turned and came with a brisker pace back. He still called himself a fool, secretly; but he went into the library and wrote a letter. Which in course of time was received and read by Mr. Linden between two of his pieces of work.

It appeared the next day that Dr. Harrison had changed his mind, or his plans, about going south; for he came as usual to see Faith. In every sense as usual; to her astonishment no traces remained of the yesterday's conversation. The ease and kindliness of his manner had suffered no abatement, although a little touch of regretfulness, just allowed to appear, forbade her to doubt that she had been understood.

Spite of herself, she could not help being presently again almost at ease with him. Nevertheless Faith wished he had gone south.

She did not feel sure that Mr. Linden would be pleased with the state of matters, as days went on, and she was sure she was not pleased herself. There was something she did not understand. The doctor's manner was not presuming, in a way; neither did he obtrude even his sorrow upon her; yet he took the place of a privileged person--she felt that--and she was obliged to see his pain in the very silence and in the play of words or of face which she thought a.s.sumed to conceal it.

She was very sorry for him, and in the same breath thought she must have been wrong in something, though she could not see how, or things would never have come to such a point.

She could not guess--how could she!--that the doctor was playing a desperate game and had thrown his last stake on the chance of a flaw in Mr. Linden's confidence towards her or in hers towards him, or of a flaw in the temper of either of them, or a flaw in their pride, or affection! There are flaws in so many characters! Did but either of them lack moral courage, or truth, or trust, or common sense, like a great many of the rest of the world--and the doctor had gained his ground! For Dr. Harrison had determined that Faith's religious opinions should not stand in his way; she should think as he did, or--he would think with her!

Of all this Faith knew nothing. She had only an intuitive sense that something was not right; and doubt and annoyance kept her strength back. She lost ground again. All summed itself up in a longing for Mr.

Linden to come.