Say and Seal Volume I Part 66

"O you shall hear a great deal--I will take that upon myself."

Faith shook her head, gave the fire a final mending, and ran off; for it was again an hour past the mid-day. Mr. Linden's dinner came up, and was hardly removed before Dr. Harrison followed.

"Well, Linden!" he said coming jauntily in,--"I hope you haven't missed me this morning."

"Not in the least."

"I am glad of that. How do you do? I will try and put you in condition not to miss me this evening--though it is benevolent!"--added the doctor, pulling off his left glove. "It is a great secret--to make oneself missed!"

"It is a secret your gloves will hardly find out, by my fire," said Mr.

Linden. "How well you look, doctor!--not a bit like Nought and All."

"No,"--said the doctor,--"I believe I disclaimed that particular sphere of existence yesterday. One had need be One and Somewhat in this wind--if one will keep a place in a wagon, or elsewhere! But fire mustn't tempt me, Linden. I'll see to you and be off, and decide what I'll be afterwards."

"You may be off without preamble."

"Do you mean to dismiss me?" exclaimed the doctor raising his eyebrows.

"Have I said that you _must_ accept my poor services?"

"Why no!" said Mr. Linden,--"doubly no! I am most happy to see you, doctor."

"The happiness will be mutual when I have the felicity of understanding you," said the doctor, settling himself in an att.i.tude. Mr. Linden surveyed him from head to foot.

"I perceive indeed that you are One and Somewhat!" he said,--"you still need 'the four azure chains.' Do you need explanations too?"

"If you'll be so good!" said the doctor. "Or--ha! you don't mean _that_, do you?"

"My arm has been dressed," said Mr. Linden quietly.

"Never trust a woman!" said the doctor wheeling round. "I thought she had got enough of that yesterday. Did she do it well?"

"Excellently well."

"Your face says so as well as your tongue," said the doctor, with an odd manner of despair. "I have lost--not my occupation, for I never had any!--but I have lost my power over you; and she has got it!--I don't know how to whistle, or I suppose I could take comfort in that."

Mr. Linden did not whistle, nor laugh, nor speak,--all that could be said of him was that he lay there very quiet, with his eyes open, looking remarkably well.

"Let a woman alone for doing what she has a mind to!" the doctor went on, in his usual manner now, putting on his gloves. "I tell you what, Linden--they're the hardest creatures to manage there are;--boys are nothing to them! Well, good morning!"

"Good morning,"--said Mr. Linden. "I hope you will be able to manage the wind."

The Dr. Harrison who had been up stairs was not at all the Dr. Harrison that met Faith in the hall and escorted her to the carriage. Grave, gentle, graceful, but especially grave, for some reason or other, he was; and not the less for that agreeable, she thought. Faith was in a sober mood herself; for she was about an undertaking she did not much like; and which Mr. Linden had liked even less. Faith pondered, as they drove swiftly along, what the particular objections had been which he had not chosen to tell her; and now and then thought a little uneasily of the coming interview with the doctor's patient, with Dr. Harrison himself for auditor and spectator. She did not like it; but she had honestly done what she thought right, and Mr. Linden had said _she_ was not wrong. And she was bound on the expedition, which she could not get rid of; so though these considerations did float over and over her mind they did not shake what was nevertheless a very happy peacefulness.

Faith was glad the doctor was pretty well engaged with his horses; and let her own musings run upon the pleasant things of the morning, and of yesterday, with glances at the delightful new world of work and knowledge into which she had entered, or was entering; and happy resting down on the foundation for all joy so lately known to her.

Whirled along on smooth going wheels, in that bright brisk day, little interrupted with talk, these thoughts and meditations took fair little flying pa.s.sages through her head; chasing and succeeding each other, put in and put out by the lights and shadows, the hills and fields, sky and trees and wind-clouds, as the case might be, and mixing up with them all.

Dr. Harrison had come for her this time in an easy pleasant-going curricle, drawn by beautiful animals, and who felt beautifully in that gay wind. They looked so, certainly, every motion from ears to tail telling of life and the enjoyment of it.

"You are not afraid of anything, I know," said Dr. Harrison, one time when he had been obliged to hold them in with a good deal of decision;--"or I would have brought the old family trotter for you."

"What makes you think so, Dr. Harrison?"

"I have had proof of it," said he looking at her. Faith shook her head a little, and could have told him several things; but did not.

"You are not afraid of these fellows?"

She said no.

"There is no pleasure in handling what gives you no trouble;--don't you think so?"

Faith sought for ill.u.s.trations of the subject in her own experience; did not find them.

"Now look at those fellows," the doctor went on. "They are fit to fly out of their skins; but a little bit of steel in their mouths--and a good rein--and a strong hand at the end of it--and they are mine, and not their own," said he, giving them a powerful check at the same time which brought them on their haunches;--"and they know it. Now isn't there some pleasure in this?"

"It is rather a man's pleasure," said Faith;--"isn't it?"

"Do you think so?" said the doctor. "Ah, you know better. Do you mean to say," he added softly, "that a woman doesn't know the pleasure of power?"

"I don't think _I_ do," said Faith meeting his eyes with a smile. He smiled too, a different smile from what was usual with him.

The drive was long--much longer than Faith had counted upon, although they went so fast. "Down by the river"--the doctor had said; but it appeared not yet what part of the river he was aiming for. Still it was beautiful; the broken country, open and free, with the cloud shadows and the brilliant sunlight driving across it, and grey sharp rocks everywhere breaking it, and tufts and reaches of brown or sear woodland diversifying it, was not easy to weary of. Nor did Faith weary. The doctor's words had sent her off on a long journey of thought, while she travelled over all that open, sunlight and shadow, country. Starting from the words, "Behold we put bits in the horses' mouths, that they may obey us";--she had gone on to moral government and suasion; the means and the forces of both, not failing to ill.u.s.trate largely here from personal experience; and on and up to the one great and strong hand that holds the reins of all, and makes even sunlight and shade, rock and hill, do his work and his bidding.

But now in all that broad picture of life and life work, appeared a little dark spot; which, small as it was, formed for the moment the vanishing point, where every line of beauty and sunlight met and ended.

For with that strange recognizing of unknown things, Faith saw before her the house where the dying woman lay,--and knew it for that, before the doctor spoke. A plain, brown, unpainted house; straight and square, with no break of piazza or window blinds; tapestried on the front with frost-bitten gourd vines, the yellow and green fruit yet unscathed. The usual little gate and dooryard common to such country houses; the usual remains of autumn flowers therein; the usual want of trees. Yet by the universal law of indemnification, the house was more picturesque than painting and architecture could have made it. Neighbours it had none, for contrast; but a low woody point of land stretched off behind it, reaching out even into the Mong. And the Mong itself--with its cool sharp glitter in the stirring wind, and the swash of its blue waves at the very foot of the little paling about the house; its white-sailed craft, its white-winged sea gulls;--

"Our lives are rivers, gliding free To that unfathomed, boundless sea, The silent grave!

Thither all earthly pomp and boast Roll, to be swallowed up and lost In one dark wave.

'Thither the mighty torrents stray, Thither the brook pursues its way, And tinkling rill.

There all are equal. Side by side The poor man and the son of pride Lie calm and still."

Of the two that now entered that little dooryard, one felt all this and one did not. The one who had felt "the power of an endless life,"

perceived the narrow bounds of this,--to the one who had nothing beyond, its domain was vast. And as is often the case, the man went first and the angel followed.

The doctor stepped up to the bedside and made some general enquiries.

But it did not appear that there was much _he_ could do.

"Mrs. Custers," said he presently, "you know I promised I would bring, if I could, a lady to see you. Here she is--Miss Derrick."

Faith came to the side of the bed. Little her quiet face shewed how she was trembling. In her soft sweet way she asked the sick woman how she did. And Mrs. Custers turned her head a little, and gazed up into the blooming face with strange, eager, feverish eyes--eyes that thirsted, but with no bodily thirst. Then she closed them again and turned her face away, but said nothing.

"Have you been sick long?" asked Faith.

She did not answer, then; though as if the tones of Faith's voice were making their way, there came presently a slight quiver of the face, and a bright drop or two that the closed eyelids could not quite keep back.

But she was at that point of time where the fear of man has lost its power,--where the doctor loses his supremacy and visiters their interest: where men and things are pushed like shadows into the background, and the mind can see no object save "the great white throne." This was what the silence expressed,--it was not dislike, nor churlishness; but those surface questions failed to reach her where she stood. The next gentle and tender "What is the matter?"--was so spoken that it found her even there. Her eyes came back to Faith's face with the sort of look they had given before. And then she spoke.

"Where would you be going if you were lying where I be?"