Say and Seal, Volume II

by Susan Warner; Anna Bartlett Warner

"Well—" said her mother,—"you'll see what he'll say. I guess he'd rather you'd judge for him about something else."

From that time letters went and came through the Patchaug post-office.

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!