Paul Faber, Surgeon Part 7

To his great relief she had. He told her to wash it out thoroughly with the hot water, unscrew the top, and take out the piston. While giving his directions, he unbound the arm, enlarged the wound in the vein longitudinally, and re-bound the arm tight below the elbow, then quickly opened a vein of his own, and held the syringe to catch the spout that followed. When it was full, he replaced the piston, telling Mrs.

Puckridge to put her thumb on his wound, turned the point of the syringe up and drove a little out to get rid of the air, then, with the help of a probe, inserted the nozzle into the wound, and gently forced in the blood. That done, he placed his own thumbs on the two wounds, and made the woman wash out the syringe in clean hot water. Then he filled it as before, and again forced its contents into the lady's arm. This process he went through repeatedly. Then, listening, he found her heart beating quite perceptibly, though irregularly. Her breath was faintly coming and going. Several times more he repeated the strange dose, then ceased, and was occupied in binding up her arm, when she gave a great shuddering sigh. By the time he had finished, the pulse was perceptible at her wrist. Last of all he bound up his own wound, from which had escaped a good deal beyond what he had used. While thus occupied, he turned sick, and lay down on the floor. Presently, however, he grew able to crawl from the room, and got into the garden at the back of the house, where he walked softly to the little rude arbor at the end of it, and sat down as if in a dream. But in the dream his soul felt wondrously awake. He had been tasting death from the same cup with the beautiful woman who lay there, coming alive with his life. A terrible weight was heaved from his bosom. If she had died, he would have felt, all his life long, that he had sent one of the loveliest of Nature's living dreams back to the darkness and the worm, long years before her time, and with the foam of the cup of life yet on her lips. Then a horror seized him at the presumptuousness of the liberty he had taken. What if the beautiful creature would rather have died than have the blood of a man, one she neither loved nor knew, in her veins, and coursing through her very heart! She must never know it.

"I am very grateful," he said to himself; then smiled and wondered to whom he was grateful.

"How the old stamps and colors come out in the brain when one least expects it!" he said. "What I meant was, _How glad I am!_"

Honest as he was, he did not feel called upon to examine whether _glad_ was really the word to represent the feeling which the thought of what he had escaped, and of the creature he had saved from death, had sent up into his consciousness. Glad he was indeed! but was there not mingled with his gladness a touch of something else, very slight, yet potent enough to make him mean _grateful_ when the word broke from him? and if there was such a something, where did it come from? Perhaps if he had caught and held the feeling, and submitted it to such a searching scrutiny as he was capable of giving it, he might have doubted whether any mother-instilled superst.i.tion ever struck root so deep as the depth from which that seemed at least to come. I merely suggest it. The feeling was a faint and poor one, and I do not care to reason from it. I would not willingly waste upon small arguments, when I see more and more clearly that our paltriest faults and dishonesties need one and the same enormous cure.

But indeed never had Faber less time to examine himself than now, had he been so inclined. With that big wound in it, he would as soon have left a sh.e.l.l in the lady's chamber with the fuse lighted, as her arm to itself. He did not leave the village all day. He went to see another patient in it, and one on its outskirts, but he had his dinner at the little inn where he put up Ruber, and all night long he sat by the bedside of his patient. There the lovely white face, blind like a statue that never had eyes, and the perfect arm, which now and then, with a restless, uneasy, feeble toss, she would fling over the counterpane, the arm he had to watch as the very gate of death, grew into his heart. He dreaded the moment when she would open her eyes, and his might no longer wander at will over her countenance. Again and again in the night he put a hand under her head, and held a cooling draught to her lips; but not even when she drank did her eyes open: like a child too weak to trust itself, therefore free of all anxiety and fear, she took whatever came, questioning nothing. He sat at the foot of the bed, where, with the slightest movement, he could, through the opening of the curtains, see her perfectly.

By some change of position, he had unknowingly drawn one of them back a little from between her and him, as he sat thinking about her. The candle shone full upon his face, but the other curtain was between the candle and his patient. Suddenly she opened her eyes.

A dream had been with her, and she did not yet know that it was gone.

She could hardly be said to _know_ any thing. Fever from loss of blood; uneasiness, perhaps, from the presence in her system of elements elsewhere fas.h.i.+oned and strangely foreign to its economy; the remnants of sleep and of the dream; the bewilderment of sudden awaking--all had combined to paralyze her judgment, and give her imagination full career.

When she opened her eyes, she saw a beautiful face, and nothing else, and it seemed to her itself the source of the light by which she saw it.

Her dream had been one of great trouble; and when she beheld the s.h.i.+ning countenance, she thought it was the face of the Saviour: he was looking down upon her heart, which he held in his hand, and reading all that was written there. The tears rushed to her eyes, and the next moment Faber saw two fountains of light and weeping in the face which had been but as of loveliest marble. The curtain fell between them, and the lady thought the vision had vanished. The doctor came softly through the dusk to her bedside. He felt her pulse, looked to the bandage on her arm, gave her something to drink, and left the room. Presently Mrs. Puckridge brought her some beef tea.

CHAPTER XII.

THE MINISTER'S GARDEN.

Up and down the garden paced the pastor, stung by the gadflies of debt.

If he were in London he could sell his watch and seals; he had a ring somewhere, too--an antique, worth what now seemed a good deal; but his wife had given him both. Besides, it would cost so much to go to London, and he had no money. Mr. Drew, doubtless, would lend him what he wanted, but he could not bring himself to ask him. If he parted with them in Glaston, they would be put in the watchmaker's window, and that would be a scandal--with the Baptists making head in the very next street! For, notwithstanding the heartless way in which the Congregationalists had treated him, theirs was the cause of scriptural Christianity, and it made him shudder to think of bringing the smallest discredit upon the denomination. The church-butcher was indeed a worse terror to him than Apollyon had been to Christian, for it seemed to his faithlessness that not even the weapon of All-prayer was equal to his discomfiture; nothing could render him harmless but the payment of his bill. He began to look back with something like horror upon the sermons he had preached on honesty; for how would his inability to pay his debts appear in the eyes of those who had heard them? Oh! why had he not paid for every thing as they had it? Then when the time came that he could not pay, they would only have had to go without, whereas now, there was the bill louring at the back of the want!

When Miss Drake returned from the chapel, she found her father leaning on the sun-dial, where she had left him. To all appearance he had not moved. He knew her step but did not stir.

"Father!" she said.

"It is a hard thing, my child," he responded, still without moving, "when the valley of Humiliation comes next the river Death, and no land of Beulah between! I had my good things in my youth, and now I have my evil things."

She laid her hand on his shoulder lovingly, tenderly, wors.h.i.+pfully, but did not speak.

"As you see me now, my Dorothy, my G.o.d's-gift, you would hardly believe your father was once a young and popular preacher, ha, ha! Fool that I was! I thought they prized my preaching, and loved me for what I taught them. I thought I was somebody! With shame I confess it! Who were they, or what was their judgment, to fool me in my own concerning myself!

Their praise was indeed a fit rock for me to build my shame upon."

"But, father dear, what is even a sin when it is repented of?"

"A shame forever, my child. Our Lord did not cast out even an apostle for his conceit and self-sufficiency, but he let him fall."

"He has not let you fall, father?" said Dorothy, with tearful eyes.

"He is bringing my gray hairs with sorrow and shame to the grave, my child."

"Why, father!" cried the girl, shocked, as she well might be, at his words, "what have I done to make you say that?"

"Done, my darling! _you_ done? You have done nothing but righteousness ever since you could do any thing! You have been like a mother to your old father. It is that bill! that horrid butcher's bill!"

Dorothy burst out laughing through her dismay, and wept and laughed together for more than a minute ere she could recover herself.

"Father! you dear father! you're too good to live! Why, there are forks and spoons enough in the house to pay that paltry bill!--not to mention the cream-jug which is, and the teapot which we thought was silver, because Lady Sykes gave it us. Why didn't you tell me what was troubling you, father dear?"

"I can't bear--I never _could_ bear to owe money. I asked the man for his bill some time ago. I could have paid it then, though it wouldn't have left me a pound. The moment I looked at it, I felt as if the Lord had forsaken me. It is easy for you to bear; you are not the one accountable. I am. And if the p.a.w.nbroker or the silver-smith does stand between me and absolute dishonesty, yet to find myself in such a miserable condition, with next to nothing between us and the workhouse, may well make me doubt whether I have been a true servant of the Lord, for surely such shall never be ashamed! During these last days the enemy has even dared to tempt me with the question, whether after all, these unbelievers may not be right, and the G.o.d that ruleth in the earth a mere projection of what the conscience and heart bribe the imagination to construct for them!"

"I wouldn't think that before I was driven to it, father," said Dorothy, scarcely knowing what she said, for his doubt shot a poisoned arrow of despair into the very heart of her heart.

He, never doubting the security of his child's faith, had no slightest suspicion into what a sore spot his words had carried torture. He did not know that the genius of doubt--shall I call him angel or demon?--had knocked at her door, had called through her window; that words dropped by Faber, indicating that science was against all idea of a G.o.d, and the confidence of their tone, had conjured up in her bosom hollow fears, faint dismays, and stinging questions. Ready to trust, and incapable of arrogance, it was hard for her to imagine how a man like Mr. Faber, upright and kind and self-denying, could say such things if he did not _know_ them true. The very word _science_ appeared to carry an awful authority. She did not understand that it was only because science had never come closer to Him than the mere sight of the fringe of the outermost folds of the tabernacle of His presence, that her wors.h.i.+pers dared a.s.sert there was no G.o.d. She did not perceive that nothing ever science could find, could possibly be the G.o.d of men; that science is only the human reflex of truth, and that truth itself can not be measured by what of it is reflected from the mirror of the understanding. She did not see that no incapacity of science to find G.o.d, even touched the matter of honest men's belief that He made His dwelling with the humble and contrite. Nothing she had learned from her father either provided her with reply, or gave hope of finding argument of discomfiture; nothing of all that went on at chapel or church seemed to have any thing to do with the questions that presented themselves.

Such a rough shaking of so-called faith, has been of endless service to many, chiefly by exposing the insecurity of all foundations of belief, save that which is discovered in digging with the spade of obedience.

Well indeed is it for all honest souls to be thus shaken, who have been building upon doctrines concerning Christ, upon faith, upon experiences, upon any thing but Christ Himself, as revealed by Himself and His spirit to all who obey Him, and so revealing the Father--a doctrine just as foolish as the rest to men like Faber, but the power of G.o.d and the wisdom of G.o.d to such who know themselves lifted out of darkness and an ever-present sense of something wrong--if it be only into twilight and hope.

Dorothy was a gift of G.o.d, and the trouble that gnawed at her heart she would not let out to gnaw at her father's.

"There's Ducky come to call us to dinner," she said, and rising, went to meet her.

"Dinner!" groaned Mr. Drake, and would have remained where he was. But for Dorothy's sake he rose and followed her, feeling almost like a repentant thief who had stolen the meal.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE HEATH AT NESTLEY.

On the Monday morning, Mr. Bevis's groom came to the rectory with a note for the curate, begging him and Mrs. Wingfold to dine at Nestley the same day if possible.

"I know," the rector wrote, "Monday is, or ought to be, an idle day with you, and I write instead of my wife, because I want to see you on business. I would have come to you, had I not had reasons for wis.h.i.+ng to see you here rather than at Glaston. The earlier you can come and the longer you can stay the better, but you shall go as soon after an early dinner as you please. You are a bee and I am a drone. G.o.d bless you.

JOHN BEVIS."

The curate took the note to his wife. Things were at once arranged, an answer of ready obedience committed to the groom, and Helen's pony-carriage ordered out.

The curate called every thing Helen's. He had a great contempt for the spirit of men who marry rich wives and then lord it over their money, as if they had done a fine thing in getting hold of it, and the wife had been but keeping it from its rightful owner. They do not know what a confession their whole bearing is, that, but for their wives' money, they would be but the merest, poorest n.o.bodies. So small are they that even that suffices to make them feel big! But Helen did not like it, especially when he would ask her if he might have this or that, or do so and so. Any common man who heard him would have thought him afraid of his wife; but a large-hearted woman would at once have understood, as did Helen, that it all came of his fine sense of truth, and reality, and obligation. Still Helen would have had him forget all such matters in connection with her. They were one beyond obligation. She had given him herself, and what were bank-notes after that? But he thought of her always as an angel who had taken him in, to comfort, and bless, and cherish him with love, that he might the better do the work of his G.o.d and hers; therefore his obligation to her was his glory.

"Your ponies go splendidly to-day, Helen," he said, as admiringly he watched how her hands on the reins seemed to mold their movements.

They were the tiniest, daintiest things, of the smallest ever seen in harness, but with all the ways of big horses, therefore amusing in their very grace. They were the delight of the children of Glaston and the villages round.

"Why _will_ you call them _my_ ponies, Thomas?" returned his wife, just sufficiently vexed to find it easy to pretend to be cross. "I don't see what good I have got by marrying you, if every thing is to be mine all the same!"

"Don't be unreasonable, my Helen!" said the curate, looking into the lovely eyes whose colors seemed a little blown about in their rings.

"Don't you see it is my way of feeling to myself how much, and with what a halo about them, they are mine? If I had bought them with my own money, I should hardly care for them. Thank G.o.d, they are _not_ mine that way, or in any way like that way. _You_ are mine, my life, and they are yours--mine therefore because they are about you like your clothes or your watch. They are mine as your handkerchief and your gloves are mine--through wors.h.i.+ping love. Listen to reason. If a thing is yours it is ten times more mine than if I had bought it, for, just because it is yours, I am able to possess it as the meek, and not the land-owners, inherit the earth. It makes _having_ such a deep and high--indeed a perfect thing! I take pleasure without an atom of shame in every rich thing you have brought me. Do you think, if you died, and I carried your watch, I should ever cease to feel the watch was yours? Just so they are your ponies; and if you don't like me to say so, you can contradict me every time, you know, all the same."

"I know people will think I am like the lady we heard of the other day, who told her husband the sideboard was hers, not his. Thomas, I _hate_ to look like the rich one, when all that makes life worth living for, or fit to be lived, was and is given me by you."