Reuben had risen to his feet as the doctor spoke, and as he quitted Faith's hand laid his own, with the slightest possible gesture, upon the left breast of his coat; which did not mean (as it would with Sam Stoutenburgh) that there was his heart—but that there were the letters! Then stepping back with a bow acknowledging Dr. Harrison's presence, Reuben went over to the window to speak to Mrs. Derrick. The doctor had seen him before that morning from the window, as with some ordered fish Reuben entered Judge Harrison's gate, and his dress was the same now as then,—how the different offices could be so different and so reconciled—or what this office was, were matters of study. But clearly Faith was as strong for her knight as her knight was for her.
"I didn't understand the transmuting philosophy in the former case," the doctor remarked.
"It is not that," said Faith with rising colour, for she had seenReuben's hand gesture. "It is just taking things as they are."
"That is a philosophy deeper than that of transmutation!" said the doctor. "I give it up. But what is the philosophy in this case?—" and he nodded slightly towards Reuben.
"If you ever know him, you'll know, Dr. Harrison," Faith said softly.
"Is he so trustworthy?" said the doctor thoughtfully looking at him; but then he gave his attention to Faith, and talked of herself and what she was to do for herself; until seeing no prospect of the doctor's being out of his way, Reuben was again passing them on his way out. The doctor arrested him by a slight but pleasant gesture.
"What are you doing now, Taylor?"
"Nothing new, sir,—a little for my father and a little for myself."
"I saw you doing something for your father, I think to-day. Doesn't that hinder your studies?"
"Mr. Linden used to say that one duty never really hinders another, sir."
"Pleasant doctrine!" said the doctor. "I am tempted to try it now. If you bestow a little time upon me, it will not perhaps interfere with your going to dinner afterwards. Does Mr. Linden continue to hold some of his supervision over you? Do you hear from him sometimes?"
"Yes sir—both,"—was Reuben's prompt answer.
"Then you have something to do with the post-office occasionally?"
"Yes sir."
"And know pretty well what everybody in Pattaquasset says of every other body,—don't you?"
"I don't need to go to the post office for that, sir," Reuben said quietly.
"No—I mean by virtue of another office—that which you exercise for your father. But it is true, isn't it?"
"Not quite, sir. Some people do not talk to me—and some I never stop to hear."
The doctor smiled a little, along with an acute look of approving intelligence.
"Well—do you happen to know what is said or thought of the people I was the means of putting into the post-office, half a year ago?"
"Not very well, sir. I haven't heard much said about them."
"As far as your knowledge goes, they seem to be doing their duty?"
"I make no complaint, sir."
Dr. Harrison glanced at Faith with a not pleased expression, and back again. "Does that mean that you have none to make, or that you will make none? I am asking, you surely must know, not officially nor judicially; but to gain private information which it is desirable I should have; and which I ask, and expect to receive, confidentially."
"Sir," Reuben said gravely, though with a manner perfectly respectful, "why do you ask me? The gentlemen of Pattaquasset should know more about their own post-office, than the poor fishers of Quapaw. There is a clannishness among poor people, sir,—if I had heard anything, I should not like to tell you."
The doctor got up and took his old position on the carpet rug, a very slight air of haughty displeasure mixing with his habitual indolent gracefulness.
"This is your knight, Miss Derrick! Apparently the proverb of 'friends' friends' does not hold good with him. When you are a little older, sir, you will know—if you grow correspondingly wiser—that the fishers of Quapaw or of any other point are precisely the people to know in such a matter what the gentlemen whom it more nearly concerns, cannot get at; and you have yourself given the reason."
Faith looked at Reuben with a little inquiring wonder. But he made no answer, either to her look or the doctor's words; indeed perhaps did not see the former, for his own eyes were cast down. He stood there, the fingers of both hands lightly interlaced, his face quiet to the last degree of immovability. The doctor's first words, to Faith, had brought a moment's flush to his cheeks, but it had passed with the moment; gravity and steadiness and truth were all that remained. The doctor recognized them all, but all as adverse or opposition forces.
"I will not detain you longer, sir!—I told you, Miss Faith," he said sitting down and changing his tone, "that I did not know how to cut up cake—still less how to administer it. I found this family—very poor—over at Neanticut, on some of my excursions;—and somewhat carelessly thought they could perform the duty of taking papers out of a bag, as well as wiser people. There is a girl too, the daughter, who seemed clever enough. But I have had reason to doubt my own wisdom in the proceeding, after all."
Faith heard the door close after Reuben with the first of the doctor's words to her. She listened to the rest with a divided interest. Her mind had gone off to her basket of bananas, and was besides occupied with a little lurking wonder at Reuben's impracticability. But with nothing strongly, the feeling of weakness and lassitude was so taking the upper hand of every other. The relaxing now began to tell of the great tension she had borne for a day or two; the relaxing was entire, for what the basket had begun Reuben's appearance had finished. Faith was sure he had a letter for her, and so sat and looked at the doctor like one whose senses were floating away in a dream—one of those pleasant dreams that they do not wish to break.
"You are faint!" said the doctor suddenly. "Mrs. Derrick, have you any wine in the house? I should like some here."
But Mrs. Derrick's first step (it seemed but that) was to Faith—taking her out of the easy-chair and putting her on the couch before any one had time to say ay or no. There she left her while she opened the closet and got out the wine; bringing it then to Faith and setting the doctor aside most unceremoniously. Faith had not quite reached the fainting point, though she was near it from mere inanition. She drank the wine, and smiled at them both like one who had a secret wine of her own that she was taking privately.
"What will she eat, Mrs. Derrick?" said the doctor in real concern."Tea and toast won't do!"
"I will take something presently," Faith said with another of those childlike satisfied looks. They made Dr. Harrison very unlike himself, always. He stood so now.
"Doctor," said Mrs. Derrick, in her odd, free, rather blunt and yet kindly way, "you are a very good doctor, I dare say, but you're not much of a nurse. Now I am—and I'll find her something to eat,—you needn't be uneasy."
He looked at her with one of the best smiles that ever came over his face; bright, free and kindly; then turned to Faith.
"What made your knight so cross with me?" he said as he bent over her to take her hand.
"I don't know—" said Faith. "I am sure he had some good reason."
"Reason to be cross!"—
"He didn't mean to be cross. You don't know Reuben Taylor."
The doctor was inclined to be of a different opinion, for his brows knit as soon as he had closed her door.
"Now mother!" said Faith half raising herself,—"please let me have my basket. I am going to try one of those queer things. That is what I want."
"Do you know what I want?" said Mrs. Derrick as she brought up the basket. "Just to have Dr. Harrison find Mr. Linden here some day!" Which severe sentence was so much softened down by the weight of the basket, that it sounded quite harmless.
Faith was too eager to get the cover off to pay present attention to this speech. There they were again! the red and yellow strange, beautiful, foreign-looking things which she was to eat; too handsome to disturb. But finally a red plump banana was cut from the stem, and Faith looked at it in her fingers, uncertain how to begin the attack. Looking back to the little empty space where it had been, Faith became "ware" of an end of blue ribband beneath said space. Down went the banana and down went Faith. The loop of ribband being pulled gently suggested that it was not able to contend with an unknown weight of bananas; but when Faith partly held these up, the ribband yielded to persuasion, and tugged after it into the daylight a tiny package—which being unwrapped revealed a tiny oval case; wherein lay, last of all, a delicate silver knife. Faith's face of overflowing delight it was good to see.
"O mother!—how just like him!—Mother!" exclaimed Faith,—"this is to eat those with!"
Could anything more be wanting to give bananas a flavour? They happened moreover to hit the fancy the doctor had been so anxious to suit. Faith liked her first one very much, and pronounced it very nearly the best of all fruits. But being persuaded to try one, Mrs. Derrick avowed that she could not eat it and wondered how Faith could; declaring that in her judgment if a thing was sweet at all, it ought to be sweeter.
If Dr. Harrison could have seen the atmosphere of peace and delight his knit brows had left behind them!
As soon as he was gone, Reuben brought up the letters. And with sunshine all round her, Faith read them and went to sleep, which she did with the little case that held her knife clasped in her hand. Sleep claimed her while fever took its turn and passed away for the day. Faith woke up towards evening, weak and weary in body, unable to make much lively shew of the "merry heart" which "doeth good like a medicine".
"My studies don't get on very fast at this rate, mother," she remarked as she sat in the easy-chair at her tea, unable to hold her head up.
"This has been a hard day," her mother said sadly as she looked at her. "Faith, I won't let Dr. Harrison pay any more such long visits! he tires you to death."
"It wasn't that. Mother—I think I'll have one of those things out of my basket—I wish Mr. Linden had told me what to call them."
Mrs. Derrick brought the basket and looked on intently.
"When is he coming, child?" she said.
Faith did not certainly know. Under the influence of a plantain and the silver knife she revived a little.
"Mother—what made you wish Dr. Harrison might meet Mr. Linden here?"
"It would save him a world of trouble," said Mrs. Derrick kindly. "And besides, child, I'm tired seeing him buzz round you, myself. Faith, Mr. Linden would say that he ought to be told you're sick."
"I can judge for him once in a while," Faith said with a little bit of a triumphing smile.
"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!
"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 sureI 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!