Say and Seal, Volume II

by Susan Warner; Anna Bartlett Warner

CHAPTER XXIV.

Faith rallied somewhat from the prostration that succeeded those days of anxiety; but then the fever again asserted its empire, and strength, little by little but daily, lost ground rather than gained it. Though not ever very high, the fever came back with persevering regularity; it would not be baffled; and such always recurring assaults are trying to flesh and blood and to spirit too, be they of what they may. Faith's patience and happy quiet never left her; as the weeks went on it did happen that the quiet grew more quiet, and was even a little bordering on depression. One or two things helped this uncomfortably.

The sense of the extreme unpleasantness of such a meeting as her mother had wished for, perhaps startled Faith to a fresh sense of what she had to do in the premises. She resolved to be as grave and cool as it was possible to be, in Dr. Harrison's presence. She would keep him at such a distance as should wean him from any thoughts of her. Faith tried faithfully to do what she had purposed. But it was very difficult to keep at a distance a person who did not pretend to be near, or only pretended it in a line where he could not be repulsed. He must see her every day as her physician. He must be allowed the kindly expression of kind feelings; he could not be forbidden to bring to his patient, as her friend and physician, such things as he thought her strength, or weakness, needed. These instances of thoughtfulness and care for her were many. Birds, old wine from his father's cellar, flowers from the greenhouse, and fruit from nobody knows where, came often; and the manner of offering them, the quiet, unobtrusive, unexacting kindness and attention, it was scarce possible to reject without something that would have seemed churlishness. Faith took them as gravely as she could without being unkind. Her illness helped her, and also hindered the effect she wished to produce. Feeling weak and weary and unable for any sort of exertion, it was the easier for her to be silent, abstracted, unresponsive to anything that was said or done. And also her being so signified the less and testified the less of her real purpose. Faith knew it and could not help it. She could not besides be anything but natural; and she felt kindly towards Dr. Harrison; with a grave kindness, that yet was more earnest in its good wishes for him than any other perhaps that existed for Dr. Harrison in the world. Faith could not hide that, careful as she was in her manner of shewing it. And there was one subject upon which she dared not be unresponsive or abstracted when the doctor brought it up. He brought it up now very often.

She did not know how it was, she was far from knowing why it was; but the pleasant talk with which the doctor sought to amuse her, and which was most skilfully pleasant as to the rest, was very apt to glance upon Bible subjects; and as it touched, to brush them with the wing of doubt—or difficulty or—uneasiness. Dr. Harrison did not see things as she did—that was of old; but he contrived to let her see that he doubted she did not see them right, and somehow contrived also to make her hear his reasons. It was done with the art of a master and the steady aim of a general who has a great field to win. Faith did not want to hear his suggestions of doubt and cavil. She remembered Mr. Linden's advice long ago given; repeated it to herself every day; and sought to meet Dr. Harrison only with the sling stone of truth and let his weapons of artificial warfare alone. Truly she "had not proved these," and "could not go with them." But whatever effect her sling might have upon him, which she knew not, his arrows were so cunningly thrown that they wounded her. Not in her belief; she never failed for a moment to be aware that they were arrows from a false quiver, that the sword of truth would break with a blow. And yet, in her weak state of body and consequent weak state of mind, the sight of such poisoned arrows flying about distressed her; the mere knowledge that they did fly and bore death with them; a knowledge which once she happily had not. All this would have pained her if she had been well; in the feverish depression of illness it weighed upon her like a mountain of cloud. Faith's shield caught the darts and kept them from herself; but in her increasing nervous weakness her hand at last grew weary; and it seemed to Faith then as if she could see nothing but those arrows flying through the air. But there was one human form before which, she knew, this mental array of enemies would incontinently take flight and disappear; she knew they would not stand the first sound of Mr. Linden's voice; and her longing grew intense for his coming. How did she ever keep it out of her letters! Yet it hardly got in there, for she watched it well. Sometimes the subdued "I want to see you very much,"—at the close of a letter, said, more than Faith knew it did; and she could not be aware how much was told by the tone of her writing. That had changed, though that too was guarded, so far as she could. She could not pour out a light, free, and joyous account of all that was going on within and about her, when she was suffering alternately from fever and weakness, and through both from depression and nervous fancies. Most unlike Faith! and she tried to seem her usual self then when she came most near it, in writing to him. But it was a nice matter to write letters for so many weeks out of a sick room and not let Mr. Linden find out that she herself was there all the while. His letters however were both a help and a spur; Faith talked a good deal of things not at Pattaquasset; and through all weakness and ailing sent her exercises prepared with utmost care, regularly as usual. It hurt her; but Faith would not be stopped. Her sickness she knew after all was but a light matter; and nothing could persuade her to break in upon Mr. Linden's term of study with any more interruptions for her. And even to Mrs. Derrick she did not tell the keen heart-longing, which daily grew more urgent, for that term to come to an end.

Mrs. Derrick did sometimes connect the cause of her weariness with Dr. Harrison, and was indignant in proportion. Faith looked at him with different eyes, and her feeling was of very gentle and deep sorrow for him. It was by the appeal to that side of her character that Dr. Harrison gained all his advantage.

Faith's shield caught his arrows of unbelieving suggestion and threw them off from her own heart; she could not put that shield between them and the doctor, and that was her grief. It grieved her more than he thought. And yet, it was with a half conscious, half instinctive availing himself of this feeling that he aimed and managed his attacks with such consummate tact and skill. Faith would not have entered into controversy; she would not have taken up a gauntlet of challenge; did he know that? His hints and questions were brought into the subject, Faith knew not how; but the point of view in which they always presented themselves was as troublers of his own mind—difficulties he would willingly have solved—questions he would like to see answered. And Faith's words, few or many, for she was sometimes drawn on, were said in the humble yearning desire to let him know what she rejoiced in and save him from an abyss of false fathomless depth. It was more than she could do. Dr. Harrison's subtle difficulties and propositions had been contrived in a school of which she knew nothing; and were far too subtle and complicate in their false wit for Faith's true wit to answer. Not at all for lack of wit, but for lack of skill in fencing and of experience in the windings of duplicity. So she heard things that grieved her and that she could not shew up to the doctor for what she knew them to be.

"I am no better than this little knife!" she thought bitterly one day, as she was looking at her favourite silver banana-carver;—"it can go through soft fruit well enough, but it isn't strong enough or sharp enough to deal with anything harder!—"

Faith did herself injustice. It takes sometimes little less than Ithuriel's spear to make the low, insidious, unobtrusive forms of evil stand up and shew themselves what they are—the very Devil!

"Reuben," said Faith one time when they were alone together,—"did you ever hear any of the mischievous talk against the Bible, of people who don't love it?"

"Yes, Miss Faith,—I never heard a great deal at a time—only little bits now and then. And I've felt some times from a word or two what other words the people had in their hearts."

"Don't ever let people talk it to you, Reuben, unless God makes it your duty to hear it," she said wearily. Reuben looked at her.

"Do you think he ever makes it our duty, Miss Faith?"

"I don't know!" said Faith, a little as if the question startled her.
"But you might be where you could not help it, Reuben."

He was silent, looking rather thoughtfully into the fire.

"Miss Faith," he said, "you remember when Christian was going through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the fiends came and whispered to him all sorts of dreadful things which he would not have thought of for the world. 'But,' as Mr. Bunyan says, 'he had not the discretion either to stop his ears, or to know from whence those blasphemies came.'" Reuben blushed a little at his own advice-giving, but made no other apology.

There was much love and respect and delight in Faith's swift look at him. Her words glanced. "Reuben, I am glad you are going to be a minister!"—She added with the sorrowful look stealing over her face, "I wish the world was full of ministers!—if they were good ones."

His face was very bright and grateful, and humble too. "Miss Faith," he said, taking up her words, "don't you love to think of that other definition of minister?—you know—'ye ministers of his, that do his pleasure.'"

"In that way the world is full now," said Faith; "in all things except men. But by and by 'the great trumpet will be blown' and 'they that were ready to perish' shall come, from everywhere. It's good to know that."

"It's such a beautiful thing to know, just by believing!" Reuben said,—"don't you think so, Miss Faith? And then whatever people say or do, and if we can't find a word to answer them, we know down in our hearts, that the Bible is true. And so 'by faith we stand.'"

"But we ought to find words to answer them, Reuben—or else, though we stand, they fall!"

"Yes, ma'am—sometimes," Reuben said rather hesitatingly. "Only—I've heard Mr. Linden say that a Christian must take care of his own standing first, and do nothing to shake that; or else he may have his own light blown out while he's trying to light other people's. You know, Miss Faith, the five wise virgins would not give their oil to the others. I've heard Mr. Linden talk about it very often," Reuben added softly, as if he wanted to screen himself from the charge of presumption.

If Faith was bringing charges, it was against herself, for she sat very silent and thoughtful, and weary also; for when for the fifth or sixth time Reuben brought his eyes from the fire to her face he saw that she had fallen asleep.

Mr. Linden's letters about this time told two or three things, among the rest that he might soon be looked for instead of letters. Moreover that he felt sure he was wanted—and further, that Faith's letters had changed. These two last things were not said in words, but Faith read them none the less surely—read thus first that her letters really were different. Just what cause Mr. Linden assigned to himself, she did not know, nor whether he had fixed upon any; but it was clear that nothing but the fact that his freedom was so close at hand, kept him from freeing himself at once and coming to Pattaquasset. And second only to Faith did Mrs. Derrick long for his appearance.

She had heard bits of the doctor's talk from time to time, but for a while with some doubt of their meaning,—as whether he was reporting what other people said, or whether she had heard him correctly. But when by degrees the goodness of her hearing attested itself, then Mrs. Derrick's indignation began to follow suit. The doctor's object she did not at first guess (perhaps made it, if possible, worse than it was) but that made little difference.

On this particular afternoon, when Faith woke up she found Reuben gone and her mother keeping watch. The fair look that always greeted Mrs. Derrick was given her, but otherwise the face she was studying was not satisfactory. The roundness of the cheek was much lessened, the colour was gone, and the lines of expression were weary though she had slept. Or rather perhaps they were too gravely drawn.

"Faith," said her mother decisively, "you want your tea. Can you eat a broiled pigeon, if I broil it myself?"

"I can eat a piece of one, if you'll take the rest, mother," she said with a smile at her. "I eat a whole banana just before I went to sleep."

"Well this ain't the doctor's pigeon, so I guess it will be good," said Mrs. Derrick. "Sam Stoutenburgh brought it.—And I'm going to cook it here, pretty child, because I want to be here myself. I suppose the smoke won't trouble you if it goes up chimney?"

"I'd like it, smoke and all, mother," said Faith, changing the resting-place for her head. "But you needn't slight the doctor's birds—they were as fine birds as could be—when I could eat them."

"'Birds of a feather'"—said Mrs. Derrick laconically. And she drew out some of the glowing and winking embers, and set thereon the tiny gridiron with its purplish plump pigeon. "Sam's home now, Faith, and you'd think he'd been through every degree of everything. But the first thing he did was to go off and shoot pigeons for you."

Faith was inclined to think he had not got above one degree. She sat in her easy-chair and watched the play cookery with amused pleased eyes.

"I should like to be in the kitchen again, mother—doing something for you."

"You shall do something for me presently," said her mother, as the pigeon began to send out little puffs of steam and jets of juice, which the coals resented. "This one's fat, anyway—and there's a half dozen more. The fun of it is, child, that Sam was afraid there weren't enough!—he wanted to know if I was sure they'd last till to-morrow!—so I guess he's not in a fainting away state. I told him we'd roast beef in the house, for you to fall back upon, child," she added with a little laugh, as she turned the pigeon. But her face was very grave the next moment, with the sorrowful reality. "Pretty child," she said tenderly, "do you feel as if you could eat a muffin or a biscuit best?"

"Mother, that pigeon is making me hungry, it smells so nice. I am sure
I can eat anything."

"Well I made muffins," said Mrs. Derrick, bustling softly about with the little table and the tea-things. "Faith, I'm afraid to have Mr. Linden come home and find your cheeks so thin."

"I'm not," said Faith quietly.

"My!" said her mother, "you never were afraid of anything he'd a mind to do, child. But for all I know, he may carry you off to Europe in the next steamer. He's up to 'most anything," said Mrs. Derrick stooping down by the pigeon, and giving it the persuasion of a few more coals.

Faith said languidly that she did not think there was much danger, and Mrs. Derrick for the present concentrated her attention upon the tea preparations. Cindy came up with a little teakettle, and Mrs. Derrick made the tea, and then went down stairs to superintend the first baking of the muffins, leaving the teakettle to sing Faith into a very quiet state of mind. Then presently reappearing, with a smoking plate of cakes in her hand, Mrs. Derrick took up the pigeon, with due applications of butter and salt and pepper, and the tea was ready. It was early; the sunbeams were lingering yet in the room, the air wafted in through the window the sweet dewy breath of flowers and buds and springing grass over the pigeon and muffins; and by Faith's plate stood the freshest of watercresses in a little white bowl. These Reuben brought her every day, wet from the clear stream where they grew, shining with the drops of bright water, and generally sprinkled too with some of the spring flowers. To-day the plate on which the bowl stood had a perfect wreath or crown of mouse-ear,—the pale pink blossoms saying all sorts of sweet things. The room was well off for flowers in other respects. Dr. Harrison's hothouse foreigners looked dainty and splendid, and Mrs. Stoutenburgh's periwinkle and crocuses and daffodils looked springlike and fresh; while in another glass a rich assortment of dandelions spoke a prettier message yet, from Charles twelfth and his little compeers.

"And the mouse-ear is come!" said Faith as she applied herself to the refreshment of salt and watercresses. "I wonder whether Reuben does this because he loves flowers him self, or because he knows I do. I guess it's both. How lovely they are! How my dairy must want me, mother." Which was said with a little recollective patient sigh.

"I guess it can wait," said her mother cheerfully. "And I guess it'll have to. You needn't think you'll be let do anything for one while, Faith."

"I guess I shall, mother. I am sure I am stronger to-day,—and Dr. Harrison said I had less fever. And your pigeon is good. Besides, I must,—if I can,"—said Faith, with an anticipative glance this time.

"It's my belief, child," said her mother, "that if Dr. Harrison had staid away altogether—or never staid here more than five minutes at a time, you'd have been better long ago. But I think you are better—in spite of him."

Of the two subjects Faith preferred the pigeon to Dr. Harrison, and discussed it quite to her mother's satisfaction. But if silent, she thought never the less. Both Reuben Taylor's words and her mother's words quickened her to thinking, and thinking seemed of very little use. The next day when the doctor came she was as grave and still and unresponsive as she could be. And it had no effect on him whatever. He was just as usual, he talked just as usual; and Faith could but be grieved, and be silent. It did not enter her gentle imagination that the very things which so troubled her were spoken on purpose to trouble her. How could it? when they made their way into the conversation and into her hearing as followers of something else, as harpies that worried or had worried somebody else, as shapes that a cloud might take and be a cloud again—only she could not forget that shape. It was near now the time for Mr. Linden to come home, and Faith looked for his coming with an hourly breath of longing. It seemed to her that his very being there would at once break the mesh Dr. Harrison was so busy weaving and in which she had no power to stop him.

But the doctor's opportunity for playing this game was nearing an end, and he knew it. He did not know that Mr. Linden was coming; he did know that Faith was getting well.

A day or two after the talk with Reuben it happened that Mrs. Derrick was detained down stairs when the doctor came up to see Faith. The room was full of a May warmth and sweetness from the open windows; and Faith herself in a white dress instead of the brown wrapper, looked May-like enough. Not so jocund and blooming certainly; she was more like a snowdrop than a crocus. Her cheeks were pale and thin, but their colour was fresh; and her eye had the light of returning health,—or of returning something else!

"You are getting well!" said the doctor. "I shall lose my work—and forgive me, my pleasure!"

"I will give you some better work to do, Dr. Harrison."

"What is that? Anything for you!—"

"It is not for me. That little lame child to whom you sent the rose-tree, Dr. Harrison,—she is very sick. Would you go and see her?"

"Did you think I would not?" he said rather gravely.

"I want to see her very much myself," Faith went on;—"but I suppose I could not take so long a ride yet. Could I?"

The doctor looked at her.

"I think the mother of the Gracchi must have been something such a woman!" he said with an indescribable grave comic mien;—"and the other Roman mother that saved Rome and lost her son! Or that lady of Sparta who made the affectionate request to her son about coming home from the battle on his shield! I thought the race had died out."

Faith could not help laughing. He had not been sure that she would understand his allusions, but his watchful eye saw that she did.

"Were you educated in Pattaquasset?" he said. "Pardon me!"—

All Faith's gravity returned, and all her colour too. "No, sir," she said, "I have never been educated. I am studying now."

"Studying!" said he gently. "You have little need to study."

"Why, sir?"

"There are minds and natures so rich by their original constitution, that their own free growth is a fuller and better harvest than all the schoolmasters in the world can bring out of other people."

Again Faith's cheek was dyed. "I was poor enough," she said bowing her head for a moment. "I am poor now,—but I am studying."

In which last words lay perhaps the tiniest evidence of an intention not to be poor always. A suspicious glance of thought shot from the doctor's mind. But as it had happened more than once before, the simplicity of Faith's frankness misled him, and he dismissed suspicion.

"If you want an illustration of my meaning," he went on without change of manner, "permit me to remind you that your paragon of character,—the Rhododendron—does no studying. My conclusion is plain!"

"The Rhododendron does all it can."

"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 association 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.