Say and Seal, Volume II

'Sweets to the sweet.'

"Faith, I should put in more, but the basket refuses. It is the measure of only one part of the proverb—do you understand?"

Faith knew oranges, she had never seen bananas or plantains before. It was all one; for the time being they were not bananas or oranges but hieroglyphics; and the one fruit looked as much like Mr. Linden's handwriting as the other. She sat with her arm resting on the couch supporting her head, and looking at them. Not the finest picture that Goethe ever viewed, or bade his friends view as part of their "duty," was so beautiful as that basket of red and yellow fruit to Faith's eye. And all the more for that foreign look they were like Mr. Linden; for the common things which they said, it was like him to say uncommonly. How very sweet was the smell of those oranges! and how delicious the soft feeling of peace which settled down on all Faith's senses. Very different from the sort of quiet she was in a quarter of an hour ago. She did not trouble herself now about the missing letters. This told that Mr. Linden was well, or he could hardly have been out to buy fruit and pack it and pack it off to her. So Mrs. Derrick found her—reading not words, but oranges and bananas; with a face it was a pity Mr. Linden could not see.

It may be remarked in passing that the face was not lost upon the one who did see it. Mrs. Derrick came and stooped down by Faith and her basket in great admiration and joy and silence for a moment—the sight almost put everything else out of her head; but then she exclaimed, "Child, the doctor's coming!—I saw him driving up to the door."

Faith put the cover on the basket, and while Mrs. Derrick set it out of sight, she received the doctor as yesterday, standing. But with a nice little colour in her cheeks to-day, in place of yesterday's sad want of it. Dr. Harrison came up with one hand full of a most rare and elegant bunch of hothouse flowers.

"My amends-making—" he said as he presented it.

It was not in Faith's nature not to look pleasure and admiration at such bits of kindred nature. They were very exquisite, they were some of them new to her, they were all most lovely, and Faith's eyes looked love at them. Dr. Harrison was satisfied, for in those eyes there was to-day no shadow at all. Their gravity he was accustomed to, and thought he liked.

"How do you do?" he said.

"I am—a great deal better. O mother—may I have a glass of water for these?"

"You said yesterday you were well, Miss Faith."

"You saw I wasn't," said Faith as she put her flowers in the glass.

"That is very true. And I see also that your statement to-day is not of much juster correctness. How came you to say that?"

"I said, it without knowing—what I said," Faith answered simply. "What is this, Dr. Harrison?"

The doctor puzzled over her answer and could make nothing of it.

"That is a Fuchsia—and that is another."

"How beautiful!—how beautiful. They are not sweet?"

"You cannot always have sweetness in connexion with everything else," he said with a slight emphasis. Faith's mind was too far away from the subject to catch his innuendo; unless other lips had spoken it.

"Mrs. Derrick," said the doctor, "I should like as a professional man, to know what portion of the wing of a robin this lady can manage for her breakfast?"

"Some days more and some days less," said Mrs. Derrick. "She was not very hungry this morning." (A mild statement of the case.)

"Some days less than the wing of a robin!" said the doctor. "The robin himself is a better feeder. Mrs. Derrick, what fancies does this bird live upon?"

The allusion drew a smile to Faith's face, which Mrs Derrick did not understand.

"She don't tell all her fancies,—she has seemed to live on tea and toast, for eatables."

The doctor smiled, and went back to Faith who was busy with the flowers; or as Mrs. Derrick said, seemed to be busy with them.

"Are those better than cowslips?" he asked lightly.

"They are more wonderfully beautiful—they are not better in their place."

"How is that?"

"I told you cowslips were bits of spring," said Faith smiling. "These are not that. I think everything in the world—I mean, the natural world—has its place, that it fills."

"Better than any other would?"

"I suppose so. Yes."

"That is admirable philosophy," said the doctor. "Excellent to keep one contented. Three feet of snow is then as good as May zephyrs! Daisies and dandelions are fair substitutes for geraniums and cacti! And these barren granite fields, where the skeleton rock has hardly covered itself skin deep with soil, are better than flowery prairies of rolling land, and fertile wildernesses of roses!"

"Well," said Faith; "you needn't laugh. I think they are."

"By what transmutation of philosophy?"

Faith's philosophy was put to the test by certain sounds which just then came to her ear; the hall door opened and shut quick though softly, and Reuben came lightly upstairs—two stairs at a time!—but his knock at Faith's door was almost as quiet as usual. Whatever spirit of energy was at work in him, however, calmed itself down at sight of Dr. Harrison—whom he did not then stay to greet, but coming up with a swift steady step to Faith's chair, knelt down there and gave her his hand with, "Miss Faith, are you better to-day?"

If a rosebud yesterday shut up in the cold had opened all its beams to the sun,—that was Faith to-day, as she took Reuben's hand and held it.

"That is a very devoted servant of yours, Miss Faith," said the doctor pointedly. "I notice he gives you homage in true chivalric style. Does the transmuting philosophy extend thus far also?"

Faith turned the light of her face upon him as she answered, "I shouldn't be worthy of one of those knights or of this, Dr. Harrison, if I would change one for the other."

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.