Paul Faber, Surgeon Part 30

"Or no end of faith in their husbands," said Helen. "If ever I come to be afraid of you, it will be because I have done something very wrong indeed."

"Don't be too sure of that, Helen," returned Wingfold. "There are very decent husbands as husbands go, who are yet unjust, exacting, selfish.

The most devoted of wives are sometimes afraid of the men they yet consider the very models of husbands. It is a brutal shame that a woman should feel afraid, or even uneasy, instead of safe, beside her husband."

"You are always on the side of the women, Thomas," said his wife; "and I love you for it somehow--I can't tell why."

"You make a mistake to begin with, my dear: you don't love me because I am on the side of the women, but because I am on the side of the wronged. If the man happened to be the injured party, and I took the side of the woman, you would be down on me like an avalanche."

"I dare say. But there is something more in it. I don't think I am altogether mistaken. You don't talk like most men. They have such an ugly way of a.s.serting superiority, and sneering at women! That you never do, and as a woman I am grateful for it."

The same afternoon Dorothy Drake paid a visit to Mrs. Faber, and was hardly seated before the feeling that something was wrong arose in her.

Plainly Juliet was suffering--from some cause she wished to conceal.

Several times she seemed to turn faint, hurriedly fanned herself, and drew a deep breath. Once she rose hastily and went to the window, as if struggling with some oppression, and returned looking very pale.

Dorothy was frightened.

"What is the matter, dear?" she said.

"Nothing," answered Juliet, trying to smile. "Perhaps I took a little cold last night," she added with a s.h.i.+ver.

"Have you told your husband?" asked Dorothy.

"I haven't seen him since Sat.u.r.day," she answered quietly, but a pallor almost deathly overspread her face.

"I hope he will soon be home," said Dorothy. "Mind you tell him how you feel the instant he comes in."

Juliet answered with a smile, but that smile Dorothy never forgot. It haunted her all the way home. When she entered her chamber, her eyes fell upon the petal of a monthly rose, which had dropped from the little tree in her window, and lay streaked and crumpled on the black earth of the flower-pot: by one of those queer mental vagaries in which the imagination and the logical faculty seem to combine to make sport of the reason--"How is it that smile has got here before me?" she said to herself.

She sat down and thought. Could it be that Juliet had, like herself, begun to find there could be no peace without the knowledge of an absolute peace? If it were so, and she would but let her know it, then, sisters at least in sorrow and search, they would together seek the Father of their spirits, if haply they might find Him; together they would cry to Him--and often: it might be He would hear them, and reveal Himself. Her heart was sore all day, thinking of that sad face. Juliet, whether she knew it or not, was, like herself, in trouble because she had no G.o.d.

The conclusion shows that Dorothy was far from hopeless. That she could believe the lack of a G.o.d was the cause unknown to herself of her friend's depression, implies an a.s.surance of the human need of a G.o.d, and a hope there might be One to be found. For herself, if she could but find Him, she felt there would be nothing but bliss evermore. Dorothy then was more hopeful than she herself knew. I doubt if absolute hopelessness is ever born save at the word, _Depart from me_. Hope springs with us from G.o.d Himself, and, however down-beaten, however sick and nigh unto death, will evermore lift its head and rise again.

She could say nothing to her father. She loved him--oh, how dearly! and trusted him; where she could trust him at all!--oh, how perfectly! but she had no confidence in his understanding of herself. The main cause whence arose his insufficiency and her lack of trust was, that all his faith in G.o.d was as yet scarcely more independent of thought-forms, word-shapes, dogma and creed, than that of the Catholic or Calvinist.

How few are there whose faith is simple and mighty in the Father of Jesus Christ, waiting to believe all that He will reveal to them! How many of those who talk of faith as the one needful thing, will accept as sufficient to the razing of the walls of part.i.tion between you and them, your heartiest declaration that you believe _in Him_ with the whole might of your nature, lay your soul bare to the revelation of His spirit, and stir up your will to obey Him?--And then comes _your_ temptation--to exclude, namely, from your love and sympathy the weak and boisterous brethren who, after the fas.h.i.+on possible to them, believe in your Lord, because they exclude you, and put as little confidence in your truth as in your insight. If you do know more of Christ than they, upon you lies the heavier obligation to be true to them, as was St. Paul to the Judaizing Christians, whom these so much resemble, who were his chief hindrance in the work his Master had given him to do. In Christ we must forget Paul and Apollos and Cephas, pope and bishop and pastor and presbyter, creed and interpretation and theory. Care-less of their opinions, we must be careful of themselves--careful that we have salt in ourselves, and that the salt lose not its savor, that the old man, dead through Christ, shall not, vampire-like, creep from his grave and suck the blood of the saints, by whatever name they be called, or however little they may yet have entered into the freedom of the gospel that G.o.d is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

How was Dorothy to get nearer to Juliet, find out her trouble, and comfort her?

"Alas!" she said to herself, "what a thing is marriage in separating friends!"

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

THE OLD HOUSE OF GLASTON.

The same evening Dorothy and her father walked to the Old House. Already the place looked much changed. The very day the deeds were signed, Mr.

Drake, who was not the man to postpone action a moment after the time for it was come, had set men at work upon the substantial repairs. The house was originally so well built that these were not so heavy as might have been expected, and when completed they made little show of change.

The garden, however, looked quite another thing, for it had lifted itself up from the wilderness in which it was suffocated, reviving like a repentant soul reborn. Under its owner's keen watch, its ancient plan had been rigidly regarded, its ancient features carefully retained. The old bushes were well trimmed, but as yet nothing live, except weeds, had been uprooted. The hedges and borders, of yew and holly and box, tall and broad, looked very bare and broken and patchy; but now that the shears had, after so long a season of neglect, removed the gathered shade, the naked stems and branches would again send out the young shoots of the spring, a new birth would begin everywhere, and the old garden would dawn anew. For all his lack of sympathy with the older forms of religious economy in the country, a thing, alas! too easy to account for, the minister yet loved the past and felt its mystery. He said once in a sermon--and it gave offense to more than one of his deacons, for they scented in it _Germanism_,--"The love of the past, the desire of the future, and the enjoyment of the present, make an eternity, in which time is absorbed, its lapse lapses, and man partakes of the immortality of his Maker. In each present personal being, we have the whole past of our generation inclosed, to be re-developed with endless difference in each individuality. Hence perhaps it comes that, every now and then, into our consciousnesses float strange odors of feeling, strange tones as of bygone affections, strange glimmers as of forgotten truths, strange mental sensations of indescribable sort and texture. Friends, I should be a terror to myself, did I not believe that wherever my dim consciousness may come to itself, G.o.d is there."

Dorothy would have hastened the lighter repairs inside the house as well, so as to get into it as soon as possible; but her father very wisely argued that it would be a pity to get the house in good condition, and then, as soon as they went into it, and began to find how it could be altered better to suit their tastes and necessities, have to destroy a great part of what had just been done. His plan, therefore, was to leave the house for the winter, now it was weather-tight, and with the first of the summer partly occupy it as it was, find out its faults and capabilities, and have it gradually repaired and altered to their minds and requirements. There would in this way be plenty of time to talk about every thing, even to the merest suggestion of fancy, and discover what they would really like.

But ever since the place had been theirs, Dorothy had been in the habit of going almost daily to the house, with her book and her work, sitting now in this, now in that empty room, undisturbed by the noises of the workmen, chiefly outside: the foreman was a member of her father's church, a devout man, and she knew every one of his people. She had taken a strange fancy to those empty rooms: perhaps she felt them like her own heart, waiting for something to come and fill them with life.

Nor was there any thing to prevent her, though the work was over for a time, from indulging herself in going there still, as often as she pleased, and she would remain there for hours, sometimes nearly the whole day. In her present condition of mind and heart, she desired and needed solitude: she was one of those who when troubled rush from their fellows, and, urged by the human instinct after the divine, seek refuge in loneliness--the cave on h.o.r.eb, the top of Mount Sinai, the closet with shut door--any lonely place where, unseen, and dreading no eye, the heart may call aloud to the G.o.d hidden behind the veil of the things that do appear.

How different, yet how fit to merge in a mutual sympathy, were the thoughts of the two, as they wandered about the place that evening!

Dorothy was thinking her commonest thought--how happy she could be if only she knew there was a Will central to the universe, willing all that came to her--good or seeming-bad--a Will whom she might love and thank for _all_ things. He would be to her no G.o.d whom she could thank only when He sent her what was pleasant. She must be able to thank Him for every thing, or she could thank Him for nothing.

Her father was saying to himself he could not have believed the lifting from his soul of such a gravestone of debt, would have made so little difference to his happiness. He fancied honest Jones, the butcher, had more mere pleasure from the silver snuff-box he had given him, than he had himself from his fortune. Relieved he certainly was, but the relief was not happiness. His debt had been the stone that blocked up the gate of Paradise: the stone was rolled away, but the gate was not therefore open. He seemed for the first time beginning to understand what he had so often said, and in public too, and had thought he understood, that G.o.d Himself, and not any or all of His gifts, is the life of a man. He had got rid of the dread imagination that G.o.d had given him the money in anger, as He had given the Israelites the quails, nor did he find that the possession formed any barrier between him and G.o.d: his danger, now seemed that of forgetting the love of the Giver in his anxiety to spend the gift according to His will.

"You and I ought to be very happy, my love," he said, as now they were walking home.

He had often said so before, and Dorothy had held her peace; but now, with her eyes on the ground, she rejoined, in a low, rather broken voice,

"Why, papa?"

"Because we are lifted above the anxiety that was crus.h.i.+ng us into the very mud," he answered, with surprise at her question.

"It never troubled me so much as all that," she answered. "It is a great relief to see you free from it, father; but otherwise, I can not say that it has made much difference to me."

"My dear Dorothy," said the minister, "it is time we should understand each other. Your state of mind has for a long time troubled me; but while debt lay so heavy upon me, I could give my attention to nothing else. Why should there be any thing but perfect confidence between a father and daughter who belong to each other alone in all the world?

Tell me what it is that so plainly oppresses you. What prevents you from opening your heart to me? You can not doubt my love."

"Never for one moment, father," she answered, almost eagerly, pressing to her heart the arm on which she leaned. "I know I am safe with you because I am yours, and yet somehow I can not get so close to you as I would. Something comes between us, and prevents me."

"What is it, my child? I will do all and every thing I can to remove it."

"You, dear father! I don't believe ever child had such a father."

"Oh yes, my dear! many have had better fathers, but none better than I hope one day by the grace of G.o.d to be to you. I am a poor creature, Dorothy, but I love you as my own soul. You are the blessing of my days, and my thoughts brood over you in the night: it would be in utter content, if I only saw you happy. If your face were acquainted with smiles, my heart would be acquainted with gladness."

For a time neither said any thing more. The silent tears were streaming from Dorothy's eyes. At length she spoke.

"I wonder if I could tell you what it is without hurting you, father!"

she said.

"I can hear any thing from you, my child," he answered. "Then I will try. But I do not think I shall ever quite know my father on earth, or be quite able to open my heart to him, until I have found my Father in Heaven."

"Ah, my child! is it so with you? Do you fear you have not yet given yourself to the Saviour? Give yourself now. His arms are ever open to receive you."

"That is hardly the point, father.--Will you let me ask you any question I please?"

"a.s.suredly, my child." He always spoke, though quite unconsciously, with a little of the _ex-cathedral_ tone.

"Then tell me, father, are you just as sure of G.o.d as you are of me standing here before you?"

She had stopped and turned, and stood looking him full in the face with wide, troubled eyes.