Say and Seal Volume I Part 52

'My soul is free, as ambient air,'--

My sense of liberty comes from the possession--not the want."

"Prospective possession,"--said the doctor. "Unless indeed," he went on with a humorous play of the lips--"you mean that my orders to you to lie still, merely gave zest to your triumphant knowledge that you could get up if you had a mind. A riotous degree of self-will that I believe I do not possess. Was that what good Mrs. Derrick meant when she said she wondered how I had hindered you?"

"No," said Mr. Linden smiling--"she meant that she did not think you had."

"She didn't mean a thing of the kind! She spoke in pure wonder, and made me begin to wonder in my turn."

Which wonder Mr. Linden did not inquire into.

"I am very sorry I wasn't a boy this morning!" said Dr. Harrison, after standing and looking down at him a little.

"Can't you sit down and say why?"

"I should have heard so much!--which now I am not to hear. For if I had been a boy, I should certainly not have been missing at your levee."

"O you deceive yourself,--if you were a boy nothing short of my authority would bring you, in the first place."

"I have not the slightest doubt the power would have been found equal to the resistance," said the doctor bowing.

"Neither have I."

"Well!--" said the doctor laughing a little peculiarly,--"in that case I should have been here. Now I have a fancy to know what you call pleasant things, Linden. You speak with a mouth full--as if there were plenty of them."

"Yes, there are plenty," Mr. Linden said, moving a little and resting his face on his hand as if he felt tired; "but we were talking of only two this morning,--heaven, and the way thither."

Dr. Harrison looked at him steadily.

"You are tired," he said gently. "You shall not talk any more to me now, and I shall forbid your holding any more levees to-day. After which," he added, the humourous expression coming back, "I shall expect to hear a proclamation going through Pattaqua.s.set, that, like the knights of old, you are ready for all comers!--Well--I'll come and see you to-morrow; and as long as you'll let me, as a friend; for the pleasure of talking. You can have it all your own way, with a few more days' strength. Will you have a levee to-morrow at the same hour?"

A little play of the lips came with the answer--

"Will that suit you?--I'll send you word." Then looking up at the doctor with a different expression, he added, "What do you think of my pleasant things?"

"Hardly in my line--" said the doctor with a carelessness which was somewhat dubious in its character. "It is very well for those who find the subject pleasant. I confess I have never studied it much."

"Then you have but half learned your profession." But the words were so spoken that they could not give offence.

Neither did the doctor seem disposed to take offence.

"I'll ask you what you mean by that to-morrow," he said very pleasantly. "I thought I had learned my profession. Have you learned yours?" The last words were with a keen eye to the answer.

"Some people dignify my present business with that name," Mr. Linden said.

"Well, you shall discourse to me more at length to-morrow," said the doctor. "Shall I come later?"

"I don't expect to be in school to-morrow, so you may name your own time," Mr. Linden said with a pleasant look. "But remember,--a physician who has no skill to feel the pulse of the mind, no remedies that can reach its fever or its chills,--is but half a physician. If I had never studied the subject,--one word about heaven and the way thither would be worth more to me than all the science of medicine ever discovered! It is now--" he said in a low tone, as the flush pa.s.sed away. And then holding out his hand to Dr. Harrison, Mr. Linden added, "I fully appreciate your skill and kindness--you need not doubt it."

The hand was taken, and grasped, cordially but in silence.

Whether the doctor went straight from Mr. Simlins' house to church--where he was not a very constant attendant--it does not appear.

What is certain about the matter, is, that he was outside of the church door after service just at the time that Faith Derrick found herself there, and that he a.s.sumed a place at her side and walked with her towards her mother's house instead of taking the other direction towards his own. Faith was alone, Mrs. Derrick having chosen to stay at home _in case_ she should be sent for. The mist had cleared off completely, and the sunny warm air invited to lingering in it. Faith would not have lingered, but the doctor walked slowly, and she could not leave him.

"I have been wanting to see you, ever since my inopportune proposal yesterday," said he in a low tone,--"to make my peace with you."

"It is made, sir," said Faith, giving him a smile.

"How do you do to-day?"

"Very well!" she told him.

The doctor listened to the sound of her voice, and thought with himself that as regarded the moral part of her nature the words were certainly true.

"Let me have the pleasure of relieving you of that,"--he said, taking Faith's little Bible gently away from her. "I am going your way. Miss Derrick--you spoke yesterday of particular work to be done on Sunday.

Have you any objection to tell me what you meant by it? I confess to you, your words are somewhat dark to me. That is my fault, of course.

Will you give me light?" It was a gentle, grave, quiet tone of questioning.

"Others might do it far better, sir," said Faith.

"I would far rather hear it from you!"

The colour came a little into Faith's cheeks, but her words were given with great simplicity.

"The other days are taken up very much with the work of this world--Sunday is meant more particularly for the work that belongs to the other world."

"And what is that? if you do not object to tell me. I confess, as I tell you, I am ignorant."

She forgot herself now, and looked steadily at him.

"To learn to know G.o.d--with whom we have so much to do, here and there;--to learn to know his will and to do it, and to bring others to do it too, if we can.--And if we know and love him already, to enjoy it and take the good of it,"--she added a little lower, and with a softening of expression.

Dr. Harrison read her look fixedly, till she turned it away from him.

"And are these what you call pleasant things?" said he somewhat curiously.

But Faith's answer rang out from her heart.

"Oh yes!"--

She stopped there, but evidently not for want of what to say.

"You are a happy thing," said the doctor, but not in a way to make his words other than graceful. "I wish you would make me as good as you are."

She looked at him, and answered very much as if she had been speaking to a child.

"G.o.d will make you much better, Dr. Harrison, if you ask him."

He was silent a minute after that, without looking at her. When he spoke again, it was with a change of tone.