Say and Seal, Volume II

by Susan Warner; Anna Bartlett Warner

CHAPTER XXXII.

Dr. Harrison took passage in the steamship Vulcan, C. W. Cyclops, commander, for the Old World; having come to the conclusion that the southern country was not sufficiently remote, and that only a change of hemispheres would suit the precise state of his mind. Letters of combined farewell and notice-giving, reached Pattaquasset too late to cumber the doctor with a bevy of friends to see him off; but his sudden motions were too well known, and his peculiarities too long established, to excite much surprise or dismay by any new manifestations.

The Vulcan lay getting her steam up in that fair June morning, with very little regard to the amount of high pressure that her passengers might bring on board. Nothing could be more regardless of their hurry and bustle, the causes that brought them, the tears they shed, the friends they left behind, than the ship with her black sides and red smoke pipe. Tears did indeed trickle down some parts of her machinery, but they were only condensed steam—which might indeed be true of some of the tears of her passengers.

Punctual to her time she left her moorings, steaming down the beautiful bay with all the June light upon her, throwing back little foamy waves that glittered in the sun, making her farewell with a long train of blue rollers that came one after another to kiss the shore. What if tears sprinkled the dusty sidewalks of Canal St.?—what if that same light shone on white handkerchiefs and bowed heads?—The answering drops might fall in the state-rooms of the Vulcan, but on deck bustle and excitement had their way.

So went on the miles and the hours,—then the pilot left the vessel, taking with him a little handful of letters; and the passengers who had been down stairs to write were on deck, watching him off. In the city business rolled on with its closing tide,—far down on the Long Branch shore people looked northward towards a dim outline, a little waft of smoke, and said—"There goes the Vulcan." The freshening breeze, the long rolls of the Atlantic, sent some passengers below, even now,—others stood gazing back at the faint city indications,—others still walked up and down—those who had left little, or cared little for what they had left. Of these was Dr. Harrison, who paced the deck with very easy external manifestations.

Some change of mind—some freak of fancy, sent him at last to the other side of the ship—then to the prow. Here sailors were busy,—here one passenger stood alone: but if there had been twenty more, Dr. Harrison could have seen but this one. He was standing with arms folded, in a sort of immoveable position, that yet accommodated itself easily to the ship's slow courtseying; as regardless of that as of the soft play of the sea breeze; looking back—but not to the place where the Vulcan had lain a few hours before. He was rather looking forward,—looking off to some spot that lay north or northeast of them: some spot invisible, yet how clearly seen! Looking thither,—as if in all the horizon that alone had any interest. So absorbed—so far from the ship,—his lips set in such grave, sad lines; his eyes so intent, as if they could by no means look at anything else. Nay, for the time, there was nothing else to see! Dr. Harrison might come or go—the sailors might do their utmost,—far over the rolling water, conscious of that only because it was a barrier of separation, the watcher's eyes rested on Mignonette. If once or twice the eyelids fell, it was not that the vision failed.

Dr. Harrison stopped short, unseen, and not wishing at that moment to meet the consequences of being seen. Yet he stood still and looked. The first feeling being one of intense displeasure and disgust that the Vulcan carried so unwelcome a fellow-passenger; the second, of unbounded astonishment and wonder what he did there. He putting the ocean between him and Pattaquasset? he setting out for the Old World, with all his hopes just blossoming in the New? What could be the explanation? Was it possible, Dr. Harrison asked himself for one moment, that he could have been mistaken? that he could have misunderstood the issue of the conversation that morning in Faith's sick room? A moment resolved him. He recalled the steady, dauntless look of Faith's eyes after his words,—a look which he had two or three times been privileged to receive from her and never cared to meet;—he remembered how daintily her colour rose as her eyes fell, and the slow deliberate uncovering of her diamond finger from which the eyes were not raised again to look at him; he remembered it with the embittered pang of the moment. No! he had not been mistaken; he had read her right. Could it be—it crossed the doctor's mind like a flash of the intensest lightning—that his letter had done its work? its work of separation? But the cool reminder of reason came like the darkness after the lightning. Mr. Linden would not have been at Mrs. Derrick's, as the doctor had heard of his being there, if any entering wedge of division had made itself felt between his place there and him. No, though now he was here in the Vulcan. And Dr. Harrison noticed anew, keenly, that the expression of the gazer's face, though sorrowful and grave, was in nowise dark or desponding. Nothing of that! The grave brow was unbent in every line of it; the grave lips had no hard set of pain; the doctor read them well, both lips and brow! Mr. Linden was no man to stand and look towards Pattaquasset if he had nothing there. And with a twinge he now recollected the unwonted sound of that name from the pilot's mouth as he took charge of the letters and went off. Ay! and turning with the thought the doctor paced back again, as unregardful now of the contents of the Vulcan, animate or inanimate, as the man himself whom he had been watching.

What should he do? he must meet him and speak to him, though the doctor desired nothing less in the whole broad earth. But he must do it, for the maintenance of his own character and the safety of his own secret and pride that hung thereby. That little piece of simplicity up there in the country had managed to say him no without being directly asked to say anything—thanks to her truthful honesty; and perhaps, a twinge or two of another sort came to Dr. Harrison's mind as he thought of his relations with her,—yes, and of his relations with him. Not pleasant, but all the more, if possible, Dr. Harrison set his teeth and resolved to speak to Mr. Linden the first opportunity. All the more, that he was not certain Mr. Linden had received his letter,—it was likely, yet Dr. Harrison had had no note of the fact. It might have failed. And not withstanding all the conclusions to which his meditations had come, curiosity lingered yet;—a morbid curiosity, unreasonable, as he said to himself, yet uncontrollable, to see by eye and ear witness, even in actual speech and conversation, whether all was well with Mr. Linden or not. His own power of self-possession Dr. Harrison could trust; he would try that of the other. Yet he took tolerably good care that the opportunity of speaking should not be this evening. The doctor did not come in to supper till all the passengers were seated, or nearly so, and then carried himself to the end of the apartment furthest from his friend; where he so bore his part that no mortal could have supposed Dr. Harrison had suffered lately in mind, body, or estate.

Mr. Linden's part that night was a quiet one, the voluntary part of it, and strictly confined to the various little tea-table courtesies which with him might indeed be called involuntary. But it so happened that the Vulcan carried out quite a knot of his former friends—gentlemen who knew him well, and these from their various places at the table spoke either to him or of him frequently. Dr. Harrison in the pauses of his own talk could hear, "Linden"—"Endecott Linden"—"John, what have you been doing with yourself?"—in different tones of question or comment,—sometimes caught the tones of Mr. Linden's voice in reply; but as they were both on the same side of the table eyesight was not called for. The doctor sat in his place until the table was nearly cleared; then sauntered forth into the evening light. Fair, bright, glowing light, upon gay water and a gay deck-full; but Dr. Harrison gaining nothing from its brightness, stood looking out on its reflection in the waves more gloomily than he had seen another look a little time ago. Then a hand was laid lightly on his shoulder, making its claim of acquaintanceship with a very kind, friendly touch. The doctor turned and met hand and eye with as far as could be seen his old manner, only perhaps his fingers released themselves a little sooner than once they would, and the smile was a trifle more broad than it might if there had been no constraint about it.

"I am not altogether taken now by surprise," said he, "though surprise hasn't yet quit its hold of me. I heard your name a little while ago. What are you doing here, Linden?"

"Rocking in the cradle of business as well as of the deep," said Mr. Linden. "The last steamer brought word that I must sail by this, and so here I am."

"Who rocks the cradle of business?" said the doctor, with the old comical lift of the eyebrows with which he used to begin a tilt with Mr. Linden.

"Duty and Interest rock it between them,—singing of rest, and keeping one awake thereby."

"A proper pair of nurses!" said the doctor. "Why man, they would tear the infant Business to pieces between them! Unless one of them did as much for the other in time to prevent it."

"Never—unless Inclination took the place of Interest."

"Don't make any difference," said the doctor;—"Inclination always follows the lead of Interest.—Except in a few extraordinary specimens of human nature."

Mr. Linden turned towards the scattered groups of passengers, and so doing his eye caught the shining of that very star which was rising over Pattaquasset as he and Mignonette rode home two nights before. Only two nights!—For a minute everything else might have been at the antipodes—then Mr. Linden brought at least his eyes back to the deck of the Vulcan. "What sort of a motley have we here, doctor? Do you know many of them?"

"Yes," said the doctor slightly;—"the usual combinations of Interest and Inclination. I wonder if we are exceptions, Linden?"

"The usual combination is not, perhaps, just the best,—it is a nice matter for a man to judge in his own case how far the proportions are rectified."

"He can't do it. Human machinery can't do it. Can you measure the height of those waves while they dazzle your eyes with gold and purple as they do now?"

"Nay—but I can tell how much they do or do not throw me out of my right course."

"What course are you on now, Linden?" said the doctor with his old-fashioned assumption of carelessness, dismissing the subject.

"Now?" Mr. Linden repeated. "Do you mean in studies, travels, or conversation?"

"In conversation, you have as usual brought me to a point! I mean—if I mean anything,—the other two; but I mean nothing, unless you like."

"I do like. Just now, then, I am in the vacation before the last year of my Seminary life,—for the rest, I am on my way to Germany."

"Finish your course there, eh?" said the doctor. "Why man, I thought you had found the 'four azure chains' long ago."

"No, not to finish my course,—if I am kept in Germany more than a few weeks, it will not be by 'azure' chains," said Mr. Linden.

"That it will not!" said one of the young men coming up, fresh from the tea-table and his cigar. "Azure chains?—pooh!—Linden breaks them as easy as Samson did the green withs. How biblical it makes one to be in company with such a theologian! But I shouldn't wonder if he was going to Europe to join some order of friars—he'll find nothing monastic enough for him in America."

"Mistaken your man, Motley!" said the doctor; who for reasons of his own did not choose to quit the conversation. "The worst I have to say of him is, that if he spends an other year in Germany his hearers will never be able to understand him!"

"Mistaken him!" said Mr. Motley—"at this time of day,—that'll do!
Where did you get acquainted with him, pray?"

"Once when I had the management of him," said the doctor coolly. "There is no way of becoming acquainted with a man, like that."

"Once when you thought you had," said Mr. Motley. "Well, where was it?—in a dark passage when you got to the door first?"

"Whenever I have had the misfortune to be in a dark passage with him, he has shewed me the door," said the doctor gravely but gracefully, in his old fashion admirably maintained.

"If one of you wasn't Endecott Linden," said Mr. Motley throwing the end of his cigar overboard, "I should think you had made acquaintance on a highway robbery."

"Instead of which, it was in the peaceful town of Pattaquasset," said
Mr. Linden.

"Permit me to request the reason of Mr. Motley's extraordinary guess," said the doctor.

"So natural to say where you've met a man—if there's no reason against it," said the other coolly. "But you don't say it was in Pattaquasset, doctor? Were you ever there?"

"Depends entirely on the decision of certain questions in metaphysics,"—said the doctor. "As for instance, whether anything that is, is—and the matter of personal identity, which you know is doubtful. I know the appearance of the place, Motley."

"Are there any pretty girls there?" said Mr. Motley, carelessly, but keeping his eye rather on Mr. Linden than the doctor.

"Mr. Linden can answer better than I," said Dr. Harrison, whose eye also turned that way, and whose tone changed somewhat in spite of himself. "There are none there that could not answer any question about Mr. Linden."—

"By the help of a powerful imagination," said the person spoken of. Mr.
Motley looked from one to the other.

"I don't know what to make of either of you," he said. "Why doctor, Endecott Linden is a—a mere—I don't like to call him hard names, and I can't call him soft ones! However—to be sure—the cat may look at the king, even if his majesty won't return the compliment. Well—you and I were never thought hard-hearted, so I'll tell you my story. Did it ever happen—or seem to happen, doctor—that you, seeming to be in Pattaquasset, went—not to church—but along the road therefrom? Preferring the exit to the entrance—as you and I too often do?"

"It has seemed to happen to me,"—said Dr. Harrison, as if mechanically.

"Well—George Alcott and I—do you know George?—no great loss—we were kept one Sunday in that respectable little town by a freshet. Whether it was one of those rains that bring down more things from the sky than water, I don't know,—George declared it was. If it wasn't, we made discoveries."

"If you and George both used your eyes, there must have been discoveries," said Mr. Linden. "Did you take notice how green the grass looked after the rain? and that when the clouds were blown away the sun shone?"

"You're not all theology yet!" said Mr. Motley. "Be quiet—can't you? I'm not talking to you. We were sauntering down this same road, doctor—after church,—falling in with the people, so that we could see them and be taken for churchgoers. But there wasn't much to see.—Then George declared that here was the place where Linden had secluded himself for nobody knows what,—then we fell naturally into lamenting the waste of such fine material, and conned over various particulars of his former life and prospects—the great promise of past years, the present melancholy mania to make money and be useful. Upon which points George and I fought as usual. Then we grew tired of the subject and of the mud—turned short about—and beheld—what do you suppose, doctor?"

"How far you had come for nothing?"

"Imagine," said Mr. Motley, taking out a fresh cigar and a match and proceeding to put them to their respective uses,—"Imagine the vision that appeared to Balaam's ass—and how the ass felt."

"Nay, that we cannot do," said Mr. Linden. "You tax us too far."

"In both requisitions—" added the doctor.

"There stood," said Mr. Motley, removing his cigar and waving it gracefully in one hand. "There stood close behind us on the mud—she could not have been in it—an immortal creature, in mortal merino! We—transfixed, mute—stepped aside right and left to let her pass,—I believe George had presence of mind enough to take off his hat; and she—'severe in youthful beauty', glorious in youthful blushes—walked on, looking full at us as she went. But such a look! and from such eyes!—fabulous eyes, doctor, upon my honour. Then we saw that the merino was only a disguise. Imagine a search warrant wrapped up in moonbeams—imagine the blending of the softest sunset reflection with a keen lightning flash,—and after all you have only words—not those eyes. Linden!—seems to me your imagination serves you better here,—your own eyes are worth looking at!"

"It has had more help from you," Mr. Linden said, controlling the involuntary unbent play of eye and lip with which he had heard the description.

"Well, George raved about them for a month," Mr. Motley went on, "and staid in Pattaquasset a whole week to see them again—which he didn't; so he made up his mind that they had escaped in the train of events—or of ears, and now seeks them through the world. Some day he will meet them in the possession of Mrs. Somebody—and then hang himself." And Mr. Motley puffed out clouds of smoke thereupon.

"According to your account, he could not do better," said the doctor cynically.

"I suppose the world would get on, if he did," said Mr. Motley with philosophical coolness. "But the queerity was," he added, removing the cigar once more, "what made her look at us so? Did she know by her supernatural vision that we had not been to church?—for I must say, Linden, she looked like one of your kind. Or were her unearthly ears charmed by the account of your unearthly perfections?—for George and I were doing the thing handsomely."

"It was probably that," said Mr. Linden. "Few people, I think, can listen to your stories unmoved."

"Hang it," said Mr. Motley, "I wish I could!—This vixenish old craft is behaving with a great deal too much suavity to suit my notions. I don't care about making a reverence to every wave I meet if they're going to tower up at this rate. But I guess you're right, Linden—the description of you can be made quite captivating—and her cheeks glowed like damask roses with some sort of inspiration. However, as George pathetically and poetically remarks,

'I only know she came and went!'—

the last part of which illustrious example I shall follow. Linden, if any story don't move you, you're no better than the North Cape."

"Can you stand it?"—asked the doctor suddenly of his remaining companion.

"Yes—I have known Motley a long time."

"Pshaw! no, I mean this wind."

"I beg your pardon! Yes—for anything I have felt of it yet."

"If you will excuse me, I will get something more on. I have come from a warmer part of the world lately."

The doctor disappeared, and found something in another part of the boat to detain him.

Dr. Harrison had stood one conversation, but he had no mind to stand a second. He did not think it necessary. If by any possibility he could have put himself on board of another steamer, or packet; or have leaped forward into France, or back into America!—he would have done it. But since he must see Mr. Linden from time to time in their present situation, he contrived that that should be all. Even that was as seldom and as little as possible; the art not to see, Dr. Harrison could practise to perfection, and did now; so far as he could without rendering it too obviously a matter of his own will. That would not have suited his plans. So he saw his one-time friend as often as he must, and then was civil invariably, civil with the respect which was Dr. Harrison's highest degree of civility and which probably in this instance was true and heartfelt; but he was cool, after his slight gay surface manner, and even when speaking kept at a distance. For the rest, it is notable, even in so small a space as the walls of a steamer shut in, how far apart people can be that have no wish to be near. Days passed that saw at the utmost only a bow exchanged between these two; many days that heard but one or two words. Mr. Linden's own plans and occupations, the arrangement of his time, helped to further the doctor's wish. There was many an hour when Dr. Harrison would not have found him if he had tried, but when they were really together the non-intercourse was the doctor's fault. For all that had been, Mr. Linden was still his friend,—he realized more and more every day the value of the prize for which Dr. Harrison had played and lost; and pity had made forgiveness easy. He was ready for all their old kindly intercourse, but seeing the doctor shunned him there was nothing to do but follow the lead. Sometimes indeed they came together for a few minutes—were thrown so—in a way that was worse than hours of talk.

The Vulcan had made about half her passage, and a fair, fresh morning had brought most of the passengers on deck. Mr. Linden was not there, but the rest were grouped and watching the approach of a homeward bound steamer; when as she neared them Mr. Linden too came on deck. It was to talk with the Captain however, not the passengers—or to consult with him, for the two stood together speaking and smiling. "You can try," Dr. Harrison heard the Captain say; and then he lifted his trumpet and hailed—the other Captain responding. Still the steamer came on, nearer and nearer,—still the two on the deck of the Vulcan stood side by side; till at a certain point, just where the vessels were at the nearest, Captain Cyclops gave his companion a little signal nod. And Mr. Linden stepping forward a pace or two, lent the whole power of his skill and strength to send a despatch on board the Polar Bear. The little packet sped from his hand, spinning through the air like a dark speck. Not a person spoke or moved—Would it reach?—would it fail?—until the packet, just clearing the guards, fell safe on the deck of the other vessel, was picked up by her Captain and proclaimed through the speaking trumpet. Slightly raising his hat then, Mr. Linden drew back from his forward position; just as a shout of delighted acclaim burst from both the boats.

"That went with a will, I tell you!" said Captain Cyclops with a little nod of his head.

"I say, Linden!" spoke out one of the young men—"is that your heart you sent home?"

"I feel it beating here yet," Mr. Linden answered. But just how much of it he carried back to his state-room for the next hour has never been ascertained. Society had no help from Dr. Harrison for more than that length of time. Neither could proximity nor anything else make him, visibly, aware of Mr. Linden's existence during the rest of the day.

Mr. Linden knew the doctor too well—and it maybe said, knew Faith too well—to be much surprised at that. If he could have spared Dr. Harrison the pain of seeing his little air-sent missive, he would have done it; but the letter could go but at one time, and from one side of the ship—and just there and then Dr. Harrison chose to be. But though the sort of growing estrangement which the doctor practised sprang from no wish nor feeling but his own, yet Mr. Linden found it hard to touch it in any way. Sometimes he tried—sometimes he left it for Time's touching, which mends so many things. And slowly, and gently, that touch did work—not by fading one feeling but by deepening another. Little as Dr. Harrison had to do with his friend, almost every one else in the ship had a good deal, and the place which Mr. Linden soon took in the admiration as well as the respect of the passengers, could not fail to come to the doctor's notice. Men of very careless life and opinions pruned their language in his presence,—those who lived but for themselves, and took poor care of what they lived for, passed him reverently on some of his errands through the ship. Dr. Harrison had never lived with him before, and little as they saw each other, you could as well conceal the perfume of a hidden bunch of violets—as well shut your senses to the spring air—as could the doctor shut his to the beauty of that well-grown Christian character. The light of it shone, and the influence of it went forth through all the ship.

"What a strange, incomprehensible, admirable fellow, Linden is!" said Mr. Motley one day when he and the doctor were sunning themselves in profound laziness on deck. It was rather late Sunday afternoon, and the morning service had left a sort of respectful quietness behind it.

"He must be!" said the doctor with a slight indescribable expression,—"if at this moment you can be roused to wonder at anything."

Mr. Motley inclined his head with perfect suavity in honour of the doctor's words.

"It's a glorious thing to lie here on deck and do nothing!" he said, extending his elegantly clad limbs rather more into the distance. "How fine the breeze is, doctor—what do you think of the day, as a whole?"

"Unfinished, at present,—"

"Well—" said Mr. Motley,—"take that part of it which you with such precision term 'this moment',—what do you think of it as it appears here on deck?"

"Sunny—" said the doctor,—"and we are flies. On the whole I think it's a bore, Motley."

"What do you think of the Black Hole of Calcutta, in comparison?" said
Mr. Motley closing his eyes.

"The difference is, that that would have been an insufferable bore."

Mr. Motley smiled—stroking his chin with affectionate fingers. "On the whole," he said, "I think you're right in that position. What do you suppose Linden's about at this moment?"

"Is he your ward?" said the doctor.

"He's down below—" said Mr. Motley with a significant pointing of his train of remarks. "By which I don't mean! that he's left this planet—for truly, when he does I think it will be in a different direction; but he's down in the steerage—trying to get some of those creatures to follow him."

"Which way?"

"You and George Alcott have such a snappish thread in you!" said Mr.
Motley yawning—"only it sits better on George than it does on you. But
I like it—it rather excites me to be snubbed. However, here comes
Linden—so I hope they'll not follow him this way."

"This way" Mr. Linden himself did not come, but chose another part of the deck for a somewhat prolonged walk in the seabreeze. The doctor glanced towards him, then moved his chair slightly, so as to put the walker out of his range of vision.

"He's a good fellow enough," he remarked carelessly. "You were pleased to speak of him just now as 'incomprehensible'—may I ask how he has earned a title to that?" The tone was a little slighting.

"Take the last instance—" said Mr. Motley,—"you yourself were pleased to pronounce the steerage a more insufferable bore than the deck—yet he chooses it,—and not only on Sundays. I don't believe there's a day that he don't go down there. He's popular enough without it—'tisn't that. And nobody knows it—one of the sailors told me. If he was a medico, like you, doctor, there'd be less wonder—but as it is!—" and Mr. Motley resigned himself again to the influence of the sunshine. A moment's meditation on the doctor's part, to judge by his face, was delectable.

"There isn't any sickness down there?" he said then.

"Always is in the steerage—isn't there?" said Mr. Motley,—"I don't know!—the surgeon can tell you."

"There's no occasion,—" said the doctor with a little haughtiness. "He knows who I am."

And Dr. Harrison too resigned himself, apparently, to the sunny influences of the time and was silent.

But as the sun went down lower and lower, Mr. Motley roused himself up and went off to try the effect upon his spirits of a little cheerful society,—then Mr. Linden came and took the vacant chair.

"How beautiful it is!" he said, in a tone that was half greeting, half meditation. The start with which Dr. Harrison heard him was skilfully transformed into a natural change of position.

"Beautiful?—yes," said he. "Has the beauty driven Motley away?"

"He is gone.—Your waves are very dazzling to-night, doctor."

"They are helping us on," said the doctor looking at them. "We shall be in after two days more—if this holds."

Helping us on—perhaps the thought was not unqualified in Mr. Linden's mind, for he considered that—or something else—in grave silence for a minute or two.

"Dr. Harrison," he said suddenly, "you asked me about my course—I wish you would tell me yours. Towards what—for what. You bade me call myself a friend—may I use a friend's privilege?" He spoke with a grave, frank earnestness.

The doctor's face shewed but a small part of the astonishment which this speech raised. It shewed a little.

"I can be but flattered!—" he said with something of the old graceful medium between play and earnest. "You ask me what I am hardly wise enough to answer you. I am going to Paris, and you to Germany. After that, I really know about as much of one 'course' as of the other."

"My question referred, not to the little daily revolutions, but to the great life orbit. Harrison, what is yours to be?"

Evidently it was an uneasy question. Yet the power of influence—or of associations—was such that Dr. Harrison did not fling it away. "I remember," he said, not without some bitterness of accent—"you once did me the honour to profess to care."

"I do care, very much." And one of the old looks, that Dr. Harrison well remembered—said the words were true.

"You do me more honour than I do myself," he said, not so lightly as he meant to say it. "I do not care. I see nothing to care for."

"You refuse to see it—" Mr. Linden said gently and sorrowfully.

Dr. Harrison's brow darkened—it might be with pain, for Mr. Linden's words were the echo of others he had listened to—not long ago. In a moment he turned and spoke with an impulse—of bravado? Perhaps he could not have defined, and his companion could not trace.

"I refuse to see nothing!—but I confess to you I see nothing distinctly. What sort of an 'orbit' would you propose to me?"

The tone sounded frank, and certainly was not unkind. Mr. Linden's answer was in few words—"'To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life'."

Dr. Harrison remained a little while with knitted brow looking down at his hands, which certainly were in an order to need no examination. Neither was he examining them. When he looked up again it was with the frankness and kindliness both more defined. Perhaps, very strange to his spirit, a little shame was at work there.

"Linden," he said, "I believe in you! and if ever I enter upon an orbit of any sort, I'll take up yours. But—" said he relapsing into his light tone, perhaps of intent,—"you know two forces are necessary to keep a body going in one—and I assure you there is none, of any sort, at present at work upon me!"

"You are mistaken," said Mr. Linden,—"there are two."

"Let's hear—" said the doctor without looking at him.

"In the first place your conscience, in the second your will."

"You have heard of such things as both getting stagnant for want of use—haven't you?"

"I have heard of the one being half choked by the other," said Mr.
Linden:

"It's so warm this afternoon that I can't contradict you. What do you want me to do, Linden?"

"Let conscience do its work—and then you do yours."

A minute's silence.

"You do me honour, to believe I have such a thing as a conscience,"—said the doctor again a little bitterly. "I didn't use to think it, myself."

He was unaware that it was that very ignored principle which had forced him to make this speech.

"My dear friend—" Mr. Linden began, and he too paused, looking off gravely towards the brightening horizon. "Then do yourself the honour to let conscience have fair play," he went on presently,—"it is too delicate a stream to bear the mountain torrents of unchecked will and keep its clearness."

"Hum!—there's no system of drainage that ever I heard of that will apply up in those regions!" said the doctor, after again a second's delay to speak. "And you are doing my will too much honour now—I tell you it is in a state of stagnation, and I don't at present see any precipice to tumble down. When I do, I'll promise to think of you—if that thought isn't carried away too.—Come, Linden!" he said with more expression of kindliness than Mr. Linden had seen certainly during all the voyage before,—"I believe in you, and I will!—though I suppose my words do seem to you no better than the very spray of those torrents you are talking about. Will you walk?—Motley put me to sleep, but you have done one good thing—you have stirred me to desire action at least."

It was curious, how the power of character, the power of influence, had borne down passion and jealousy—even smothered mortification and pride—and made the man of the world speak truth. Mr. Linden rose—yet did not immediately begin the walk; for laying one hand on the doctor's shoulder with a gesture that spoke both regard and sorrow and entreaty, he stood silently looking off at the colours in the west.

"Dr. Harrison," he said, "I well believe that your mother and mine are dear friends in heaven—God grant that we may be, too!"

Then they both turned, and together began their walk. It lasted till they were summoned to tea; and from that time till they got in there was no more avoidance of his old friend by the doctor. His manner was changed; if he did not find enjoyment in Mr. Linden's society he found somewhat else which had value for him. There was not again a shade of dislike or of repulsion; and when they parted on landing, though it might be that there lay in Dr. Harrison's secret heart a hope that he might never see Mr. Linden again, there lay with it also, as surely, a secret regret.

Now all that Faith knew of this for a long time, was from a newspaper; where—among a crowd of unimportant passengers in the Vulcan's list—she read the names of Dr. Harrison and J. E. Linden.