Paul Faber, Surgeon Part 38

"Your behavior, Juliet," answered Dorothy, putting on the matron, and speaking with authority, "shows plainly how right I was. You were not to be trusted, and I knew it. Had I told you, you would have rushed to him, and been anything but welcome. He would not even have known you; and you would have been two on the doctor's hands. You would have made everything public, and when your husband came to himself, would probably have been the death of him after all."

"He may have begun to think more kindly of me by that time," said Juliet, humbled a little.

"We must not act on _may-haves_," answered Dorothy.

"You say he looks wretched now," suggested Juliet.

"And well he may, after concussion of the brain, not to mention what preceded it," said Dorothy.

She had come to see that Juliet required very plain speaking. She had so long practiced the art of deceiving herself that she was skillful at it.

Indeed, but for the fault she had committed, she would all her life long have been given to petting and pitying, justifying and approving of herself. One can not help sometimes feeling that the only chance for certain persons is to commit some fault sufficient to shame them out of the self-satisfaction in which they burrow. A fault, if only it be great and plain enough to exceed their powers of self-justification, may then be, of G.o.d's mercy, not indeed an angel of light to draw them, but verily a goblin of darkness to terrify them out of themselves. For the powers of darkness are His servants also, though incapable of knowing it: He who is first and last can, even of those that love the lie, make slaves of the truth. And they who will not be sons shall be slaves, let them rant and wear crowns as they please in the slaves' quarters.

"You must not expect him to get over such a shock all at once," said Dorothy. "--It may be," she continued, "that you were wrong in running away from him. I do not pretend to judge between you, but, perhaps, after the injury you had done him, you ought to have left it with him to say what you were to do next. By taking it in your own hands, you may have only added to the wrong."

"And who helped me?" returned Juliet, in a tone of deep reproach.

"Helped you to run from him, Juliet!--Really, if you were in the habit of behaving to your husband as you do to me--!" She checked herself, and resumed calmly--"You forget the facts of the case, my dear. So far from helping you to run from him, I stopped you from running so far that neither could he find you, nor you return to him again. But now we must make the best of it by waiting. We must find out whether he wants you again, or your absence is a relief to him. If I had been a man, I should have been just as wild as he."

She had seen in Juliet some signs that self-abhorrence was wanting, and self-pity reviving, and she would connive at no unreality in her treatment of herself. She was one thing when bowed to the earth in misery and shame, and quite another if thinking herself hardly used on all sides.

It was a strange position for a young woman to be in--that of watcher over the marriage relations of two persons, to neither of whom she could be a friend otherwise than _ab extra_. Ere long she began almost to despair. Day after day she heard or saw that Faber continued sunk in himself, and how things were going there she could not tell. Was he thinking about the wife he had lost, or brooding over the wrong she had done him? There was the question--and who was to answer it? At the same time she was all but certain, that, things being as they were, any reconciliation that might be effected would owe itself merely to the raising, as it were of the dead, and the root of bitterness would soon trouble them afresh. If but one of them had begun the task of self-conquest, there would be hope for both. But of such a change there was in Juliet as yet no sign.

Dorothy then understood her position--it was wonderful with what clearness, but solitary necessity is a hot sun to ripen. What was she to do? To what quarter--could she to any quarter look for help? Naturally she thought first of Mr. Wingfold. But she did not feel at all sure that he would consent to receive a communication upon any other understanding than that he was to act in the matter as he might see best; and would it be right to acquaint him with the secret of another when possibly he might feel bound to reveal it? Besides, if he kept it hid, the result might be blame to him; and blame, she reasoned, although a small matter in regard to one like herself, might in respect of a man in the curate's position involve serious consequences. While she thus reflected, it came into her mind with what enthusiasm she had heard him speak of Mr.

Polwarth, attributing to him the beginnings of all enlightenment he had himself ever received. Without this testimony, she would not have once thought of him. Indeed she had been more than a little doubtful of him, for she had never felt attracted to him, and from her knowledge of the unhealthy religious atmosphere of the chapel, had got unreasonably suspicious of cant. She had not had experience enough to distinguish with any certainty the speech that comes from the head and that which comes out of the fullness of the heart. A man must talk out of that which is in him; his well must give out the water of its own spring; but what seems a well maybe only a cistern, and the water by no means living water. What she had once or twice heard him say, had rather repelled than drawn her; but Dorothy had faith, and Mr. Wingfold had spoken.

Might she tell him? Ought she not to seek his help? Would he keep the secret? Could he help if he would? Was he indeed as wise as they said?

In the meantime, little as she thought it, Polwarth had been awaiting a communication from her; but when he found that the question whose presence was so visible in her whole bearing, neither died nor bore fruit, he began to think whether he might not help her to speak. The next time, therefore, that he opened the gate to her, he held in his hand a little bud he had just broken from a monthly rose. It was a hard little b.u.t.ton, upon which the green leaves of its calyx clung as if choking it.

"What is the matter with this bud, do you think, Miss Drake?" he asked.

"That you have plucked it," she answered sharply, throwing a suspicious glance in his face.

"No; that can not be it," he answered with a quiet smile of intelligence. "It has been just as you see it for the last three days. I only plucked it the moment I saw you coming."

"Then the frost has caught it."

"The frost _has_ caught it," he answered; "but I am not quite sure whether the cause of its death was not rather its own life than the frost."

"I don't see what you mean by that, Mr. Polwarth," said Dorothy, doubtfully, and with a feeling of discomfort.

"I admit it sounds paradoxical," returned the little man. "What I mean is, that the struggle of the life in it to unfold itself, rather than any thing else, was the cause of its death."

"But the frost was the cause of its not being able to unfold itself,"

said Dorothy.

"That I admit," said Polwarth; "and perhaps a weaker life in the flower would have yielded sooner. I may have carried too far an a.n.a.logy I was seeking to establish between it and the human heart, in which repression is so much more dangerous than mere oppression. Many a heart has withered like my poor little bud, because it did not know its friend when it saw him."

Dorothy was frightened. He knew something! Or did he only suspect?

Perhaps he was merely guessing at her religious troubles, wanting to help her. She must answer carefully.

"I have no doubt you are right, Mr. Polwarth," she said; "but there are some things it is not wise, and other things it would not be right to speak about."

"Quite true," he answered. "I did not think it wise to say any thing sooner, but now I venture to ask how the poor lady does?"

"What lady?" returned Dorothy, dreadfully startled, and turning white.

"Mrs. Faber," answered Polwarth, with the utmost calmness. "Is she not still at the Old House?"

"Is it known, then?" faltered Dorothy.

"To n.o.body but myself, so far as I am aware," replied the gatekeeper.

"And how long have you known it?"

"From the very day of her disappearance, I may say."

"Why didn't you let me know sooner?" said Dorothy, feeling aggrieved, though she would have found it hard to show wherein lay the injury.

"For more reasons than one," answered Polwarth; "but one will be enough: you did not trust me. It was well therefore to let you understand I could keep a secret. I let you know now only because I see you are troubled about her. I fear you have not got her to take any comfort, poor lady!"

Dorothy stood silent, gazing down with big, frightened eyes at the strange creature who looked steadfastly up at her from under what seemed a huge hat--for his head was as large as that of a tall man. He seemed to be reading her very thoughts.

"I can trust you, Miss Drake," he resumed. "If I did not, I should have at once acquainted the authorities with my suspicions; for, you will observe, you are hiding from a community a fact which it has a right to know. But I have faith enough in you to believe that you are only waiting a fit time, and have good reasons for what you do. If I can give you any help, I am at your service."

He took off his big hat, and turned away into the house.

Dorothy stood fixed for a moment or two longer, then walked slowly away, with her eyes on the ground. Before she reached the Old House, she had made up her mind to tell Polwarth as much as she could without betraying Juliet's secret, and to ask him to talk to her, for which she would contrive an opportunity.

For some time she had been growing more anxious every day. No sign of change showed in any quarter; no way opened through the difficulties that surrounded them, while these were greatly added to by the likelihood appearing that another life was on its way into them. What was to be done? How was she in her ignorance so to guard the hopeless wife that motherhood might do something to console her? She had two lives upon her hands, and did indeed want counsel. The man who knew their secret already--the minor prophet, she had heard the curate call him--might at least help her to the next step she must take.

Juliet's mental condition was not at all encouraging. She was often ailing and peevish, behaving as if she owed Dorothy grudge instead of grat.i.tude. And indeed to herself Dorothy would remark that if nothing more came out of it than seemed likely now, Juliet would be under no very ponderous obligation to her. She found it more and more difficult to interest her in any thing. After Oth.e.l.lo she did not read another play. Nothing pleased her but to talk about her husband. If Dorothy had seen him, Juliet had endless questions to put to her about him; and when she had answered as many of them as she could, she would put them all over again afresh. On one occasion when Dorothy could not say she believed he was, when she saw him, thinking about his wife, Juliet went into hysterics. She was growing so unmanageable that if Dorothy had not partially opened her mind to Polwarth, she must at last have been compelled to give her up. The charge was wearing her out; her strength was giving way, and her temper growing so irritable that she was ashamed of herself--and all without any good to Juliet. Twice she hinted at letting her husband know where she was, but Juliet, although, on both occasions, she had a moment before been talking as if Dorothy alone prevented her from returning to him, fell on her knees in wild distress, and entreated her to bear with her. At the smallest approach of the idea toward actuality, the recollection rushed scorching back--of how she had implored him, how she had humbled herself soul and body before him, how he had turned from her with loathing, would not put forth a hand to lift her from destruction and to restore her to peace, had left her naked on the floor, nor once returned "to ask the spotted princess how she fares"--and she shrunk with agony from any real thought of again supplicating his mercy.

Presently another difficulty began to show in the near distance: Mr.

Drake, having made up his mind as to the alterations he would have effected, had begun to think there was no occasion to put off till the spring, and talked of commencing work in the house at no distant day.

Dorothy therefore proposed to Juliet that, as it was impossible to conceal her there much longer, she should go to some distant part of the country, where she would contrive to follow her. But the thought of moving further from her husband, whose nearness, though she dared not seek him, seemed her only safety, was frightful to Juliet. The wasting anxiety she caused Dorothy did not occur to her. Sorrow is not selfish, but many persons are in sorrow entirely selfish. It makes them so important in their own eyes, that they seem to have a claim upon all that people can do for them.

To the extent therefore, of what she might herself have known without Juliet's confession, Dorothy, driven to her wits' end, resolved to open the matter to the gatekeeper; and accordingly, one evening on her way home, called at the lodge, and told Polwarth where and in what condition she had found Mrs. Faber, and what she had done with her; that she did not think it the part of a friend to advise her return to her husband at present; that she would not herself hear of returning; that she had no comfort, and her life was a burden to her; and that she could not possibly keep her concealed much longer, and did not know what next to do.

Polwarth answered only that he must make the acquaintance of Mrs. Faber.

If that could be effected, he believed he should be able to help them out of their difficulties. Between them, therefore, they must arrange a plan for his meeting her.

CHAPTER XLI.

THE OLD GARDEN.