Paul Faber, Surgeon Part 20

"Please ask her not to tell any body," said Mr. Drake. "I shouldn't like it talked about before I understand it myself."

"You are quite right. If I were you I would tell n.o.body yet but Mr.

Drew. He is a right man, and will help you to bear your good fortune. I have always found good fortune harder to bear than bad."

Dorothy ran to put her bonnet on. The curate went back to the bedside.

Mr. Drake had again turned his face to the wall.

"Sixty years of age!" he was murmuring to himself.

"Mr. Drake," said Wingfold, "so long as you bury yourself with the centipedes in your own cellar, instead of going out into G.o.d's world, you are tempting Satan and Mammon together to come and tempt you.

Wors.h.i.+p the G.o.d who made the heaven and the earth, and the sea and the mines of iron and gold, by doing His will in the heart of them. Don't wors.h.i.+p the poor picture of Him you have got hanging up in your closet;--wors.h.i.+p the living power beyond your ken. Be strong in Him whose is your strength, and all strength. Help Him in His work with His own. Give life to His gold. Rub the canker off it, by sending it from hand to hand. You must rise and bestir yourself. I will come and see you again to-morrow. Good-by for the present."

He turned away and walked from the room. But his hand had scarcely left the lock, when he heard the minister alight from his bed upon the floor.

"He'll do!" said the curate to himself, and walked down the stair.

When he got home, he left Dorothy with his wife, and going to his study, wrote the following verses, which had grown in his mind as he walked silent beside her:--

WHAT MAN IS THERE OF YOU?

The homely words, how often read!

How seldom fully known!

"Which father of you, asked for bread, Would give his son a stone?"

How oft has bitter tear been shed, And heaved how many a groan, Because Thou wouldst not give for bread The thing that was a stone!

How oft the child Thou wouldst have fed, Thy gift away has thrown!

He prayed, Thou heardst, and gav'st the bread: He cried, it is a stone!

Lord, if I ask in doubt or dread Lest I be left to moan-- I am the man who, asked for bread, Would give his son a stone.

As Dorothy returned from the rectory, where Helen had made her happier than all the money by the kind words she said to her, she stopped at Mr.

Jones' shop, and bought of him a bit of loin of mutton.

"Shan't I put it down, miss?" he suggested, seeing her take out her purse.--Helen had just given her the purse: they had had great fun, with both tears and laughter over it.

"I would rather not--thank you very much," she replied with a smile.

He gave her a kind, searching glance, and took the money.

That day Juliet dined with them. When the joint appeared, Amanda, who had been in the kitchen the greater part of the morning, clapped her hands as at sight of an old acquaintance.

"Dere it comes! dere it comes!" she cried.

But the minister's grace was a little longer than she liked, for he was trying hard to feel grateful. I think some people mistake pleasure and satisfaction for thankfulness: Mr. Drake was not so to be taken in. Ere long, however, he found them a good soil for thankfulness to grow in.--So Amanda fidgeted not a little, and the moment the grace was over--

"Now 'en! now 'en!" she almost screamed, her eyes sparkling with delight. "'Iss is dinner!--'Ou don't have dinner every day, Miss Mellidif!"

"Be quiet, Ducky," said her aunt, as she called her. "You mustn't make any remarks."

"Ducky ain't makin' no marks," returned the child, looking anxiously at the table-cloth, and was quiet but not for long.

"Lisbef say surely papa's sip come home wif 'e nice dinner!" she said next.

"No, my ducky," said Mr. Drake: "it was G.o.d's s.h.i.+p that came with it."

"Dood sip!" said the child.

"It will come one day and another, and carry us all home," said the minister.

"Where Ducky's yeal own papa and mamma yive in a big house, papa?" asked Amanda, more seriously.

"I will tell you more about it when you are older," said Mr. Drake. "Now let us eat the dinner G.o.d has sent us." He was evidently far happier already, though his daughter could see that every now and then his thoughts were away; she hoped they were thanking G.o.d. Before dinner was over, he was talking quite cheerfully, drawing largely from his stores both of reading and experience. After the child was gone, they told Juliet of their good fortune. She congratulated them heartily, then looked a little grave, and said--

"Perhaps you would like me to go?"

"What!" said Mr. Drake; "does your friends.h.i.+p go no further than that?

Having helped us so much in adversity, will you forsake us the moment prosperity looks in at the window?"

Juliet gave one glance at Dorothy, smiled, and said no more. For Dorothy, she was already building a castle for Juliet--busily.

CHAPTER XXIV.

JULIET'S CHAMBER.

After tea, Mr. Drake and Dorothy went out for a walk together--a thing they had not once done since the church-meeting of acrid memory in which had been decreed the close of the minister's activity, at least in Glaston. It was a lovely June twilight; the bats were flitting about like the children of the gloamin', and the lamps of the laburnum and lilac hung dusky among the trees of Osterfield Park.

Juliet, left all but alone in the house, sat at her window, reading. Her room was on the first floor, but the dining-room beneath it was of low pitch, and at the lane-door there were two steps down into the house, so that her window was at no great height above the lane. It was open, but there was little to be seen from it, for immediately opposite rose a high old garden-wall, hiding every thing with its gray bulk, lovelily blotted with lichens and moss, brown and green and gold, except the wall-flowers and stone-crop that grew on its coping, and a running plant that hung down over it, like a long fringe worn thin. Had she put her head out of the window, she would have seen in the one direction a cow-house, and in the other the tall narrow iron gate of the garden--and that was all. The twilight deepened as she read, until the words before her began to play hide and seek; they got worse and worse, until she was tired of catching at them; and when at last she stopped for a moment, they were all gone like a troop of fairies, and her reading was ended.

She closed the book, and was soon dreaming awake; and the twilight world was the globe in which the dream-fishes came and went--now swelling up strange and near, now sinking away into the curious distance.

Her mood was broken by the sound of hoofs, which she almost immediately recognized as those of the doctor's red horse--great hoofs falling at the end of long straight-flung steps. Her heart began to beat violently, and confident in the protection of the gathering night, she rose and looked cautiously out toward the side on which was the approach. In a few moments, round the furthest visible corner, and past the gate in the garden-wall, swung a huge shadowy form--gigantic in the dusk. She drew back her head, but ere she could shape her mind to retreat from the window, the solid gloom hurled itself thundering past, and she stood trembling and lonely, with the ebb of Ruber's paces in her ears--and in her hand a letter. In a minute she came to herself, closed her window, drew down the blind, lighted a candle, set it on the window-sill, and opened the letter. It contained these verses, and nothing more:--

My morning rose in laughter-- A gold and azure day.

Dull clouds came trooping after, Livid, and sullen gray.

At noon, the rain did batter, And it thundered like a h.e.l.l: I sighed, it is no matter, At night I shall sleep as well.

But I longed with a madness tender For an evening like the morn, That my day might die in splendor, Not folded in mist forlorn--

Die like a tone elysian, Like a bee in a cactus-flower, Like a day-surprised vision, Like a wind in a summer shower.

Through the vaulted clouds about me Broke trembling an azure s.p.a.ce: Was it a dream to flout me-- Or was it a perfect face?

The sky and the face together Are gone, and the wind blows fell.