Paul Faber, Surgeon. George MacDonald
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are quite unfit for any exertion yet," he said, and seated himself near her. "You must consent to be an invalid for a while. Do not be anxious. There is no fear of your finding what you want by the time you are able for it. I pledge myself. Keep your mind perfectly easy."
She answered him with a look that dazzled him. Her very eyelids seemed radiant with thankfulness. The beauty that had fixed his regard was now but a mask through which her soul was breaking, assimilating it. His eyes sank before the look, and he felt himself catching his breath like a drowning man. When he raised them again he saw tears streaming down her face. He rose, and saying he would call again in the evening, left the room.
During the rest of his round he did not find it easy to give due attention to his other cases. His custom was to brood upon them as he rode; but now that look and the tears that followed seemed to bewilder him, taking from him all command of his thought.
Ere long the shadow that ever haunts the steps of the angel, Love, the shadow whose name is Beneficence, began to reassume its earlier tyranny. Oh, the bliss of knowing one's self the source of well-being, the stay and protector, the comfort and life, to such a woman! of wrapping her round in days of peace, instead of anxiety and pain and labor! But ever the thought of her looking up to him as the source of her freedom, was present through it all. What a glory to be the object of such looks as he had never in his dearest dreams imagined! It made his head swim, even in the very moment while his great Ruber, astonished at what his master required of him that day, rose to some high thorny hedge, or stiff rail. He was perfectly honest; the consequence he sought was only in his own eyes—and in hers; there was nothing of vulgar patronage in the feeling; not an atom of low purpose for self in it. The whole mental condition was nothing worse than the blossom of the dream of his childhood—the dream of being the benefactor of his race, of being loved and worshiped for his kindness. But the poison of the dream had grown more active in its blossom. Since then the credit of goodness with himself had gathered sway over his spirit; and stoical pride in goodness is a far worse and lower thing than delight in the thanks of our fellows. He was a mere slave to his own ideal, and that ideal was not brother to the angel that beholds the face of the Father. Now he had taken a backward step in time, but a forward step in his real history, for again another than himself had a part in his dream. It would be long yet, however, ere he learned so to love goodness as to forget its beauty. To him who is good, goodness has ceased to be either object or abstraction; it is in him—a thirst to give; a solemn, quiet passion to bless; a delight in beholding well-being. Ah, how we dream and prate of love, until the holy fire of the true divine love, the love that God kindles in a man toward his fellows, burns the shadow of it out!
In the afternoon Mrs. Puckridge appeared with the ring. He took it, told her to wait, and went out. In a few minutes he returned, and, to the woman's astonishment, gave her fifty pounds in notes. He did not tell her he had been to nobody but his own banker. The ring he laid carefully aside, with no definite resolve concerning it, but the great hope of somehow managing that it should return to her one day. The thought shot across his heaven—what a lovely wedding present it would make! and the meteor drew a long train of shining fancies after it.
CHAPTER XV
When he called, as he had said, in the evening, she looked much better, and there was even a touch of playfulness in her manner. He could not but hope some crisis had been passed. The money she had received for the ring had probably something to do with it. Perhaps she had not known how valuable the ring was. Thereupon in his conscientiousness he began to doubt whether he had given her its worth. In reality he had exceeded it by a few pounds, as he discovered upon inquiry afterward in London. Anyhow it did not much matter, he said to himself: he was sure to find some way of restoring it to her.
Suddenly she looked up, and said hurriedly:
"I can never repay you, Dr. Faber. No one can do the impossible."
"You can repay me," returned Faber.
"How?" she said, looking startled.
"By never again thinking of obligation to me."
"You must not ask that of me," she rejoined. "It would not be right."
The tinge of a rose not absolutely white floated over her face and forehead as she spoke.
"Then I shall be content," he replied, "if you will say nothing about it until you are well settled. After that I promise to send you a bill as long as a snipe's."
She smiled, looked up brightly, and said,
"You promise?"
"I do."
"If you don't keep your promise, I shall have to take severe measures. Don't fancy me without money. I could pay you now—at least I think so."
It was a great good sign of her that she could talk about money plainly as she did. It wants a thoroughbred soul to talk just right about money. Most people treat money like a bosom-sin: they follow it earnestly, but do not talk about it at all in society.
"I only pay six shillings a week for my lodgings!" she added, with a merry laugh.
What had become of her constraint and stateliness? Courtesy itself seemed gone, and simple trust in its place! Was she years younger than he had thought her? She was hemming something, which demanded her eyes, but every now and then she cast up a glance, and they were black suns unclouding over a white sea. Every look made a vintage in the doctor's heart. There could be no man in the case! Only again, would fifty pounds, with the loss of a family ring, serve to account for such a change? Might she not have heard from somebody since he saw her yesterday? In her presence he dared not follow the thought.
Some books were lying on the table which could not well be Mrs.
Puckridge's. He took up one: it was In Memoriam.
"Do you like Tennyson?" she asked.
"That is a hard question to answer straight off," he replied.—He had once liked Tennyson, else he would not have answered so.—"Had you asked me if I liked In Memoriam" he went on, "I could more easily have answered you."
"Then, don't you like In Memoriam?"
"No; it is weak and exaggerated."
"Ah! you don't understand it. I didn't until after my father died. Then I began to know what it meant, and now think it the most beautiful poem I ever read."
"You are fond of poetry, then?"
"I don't read much; but I think there is more in some poetry than in all the prose in the world."
"That is a good deal to say."
"A good deal too much, when I think that I haven't read, I suppose, twenty books in my life—that is, books worth calling books: I don't mean novels and things of that kind. Yet I can not believe twenty years of good reading would make me change my mind about In Memoriam.—You don't like poetry?"
"I can't say I do—much. I like Pope and Crabbe—and—let me see—well, I used to like Thomson. I like the men that give you things just as they are. I do not like the poets that mix themselves up with what they see, and then rave about Nature. I confess myself a lover of the truth beyond all things."
"But are you sure," she returned, looking him gently but straight in the eyes, "that, in your anxiety not to make more of things than they are, you do not make less of them than they are?"
"There is no fear of that," returned Faber sadly, with an unconscious shake of the head. "So long as there is youth and imagination on that side to paint them,—"
"Excuse me: are you not begging the question? Do they paint, or do they see what they say? Some profess to believe that the child sees more truly than the grown man—that the latter is the one who paints,—paints out, that is, with a coarse brush."
"You mean Wordsworth."
"Not him only."
"True; no end of poets besides. They all say it now-a-days."
"But surely, Mr. Faber, if there be a God,—"
"Ah!" interrupted the doctor, "there, you