Surgeon Paul Faber by George MacDonald (e book free reading txt) 📕

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 God's ship 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 God 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 God. 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 friendship 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 hell:
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 space:
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.
But what matters a dream or the weather?
At night it will all be well.

For the day of life and labor,
Of ecstasy and pain,
Is only a beaten tabor,
And I shall not dream again.

But as the old Night steals o'er me,
Deepening till all is dead,
I shall see thee still before me
Stand with averted head.

And I shall think, Ah sorrow!
The might that never was may!
The night that has no morrow!
And the sunset all in gray!

Juliet laid her head on her hands and wept.

"Why should I not let him have his rosy sunset?" she thought. "It is all he hopes for-cares for, I think-poor fellow! Am I not good enough to give him that? What does it matter about me, if it is all but a vision that flits between heaven and earth, and makes a passing shadow on human brain and nerves?-a tale that is telling-then a tale that is told! Much the good people make out of their better faith! Should I be troubled to learn that it was indeed a lasting sleep? If I were dead, and found myself waking, should I want to rise, or go to sleep again? Why should not I too dare to hope for an endless rest? Where would be the wrong to any? If there be a God, He will have but to wake me to punish me hard enough. Why should I not hope at least for such a lovely thing? Can any one help desiring peace? Oh, to sleep, and sleep, and wake no more forever and ever! I would not hasten the sleep; the end will surely come, and why should we not enjoy the dream a little longer-at least while it is a good dream, and the tossing has not begun? There would always be a time. Why wake before our time out of the day into the dark nothing? I should always want to see what to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow would bring-that is, so long as he loved me. He is noble, and sad, and beautiful, and gracious!-but would he-could he love me to the end-even if-? Why should we not make the best of what we have? Why should we not make life as happy to ourselves and to others as we can-however worthless, however arrant a cheat it may be? Even if there be no such thing as love, if it be all but a lovely vanity, a bubble-play of color, why not let the bubble-globe swell, and the tide of its ocean of color flow and rush and mingle and change? Will it not break at last, and the last come soon enough, when of all the glory is left but a tear on the grass? When we dream a pleasant dream, and know it is but a dream, we will to dream on, and quiet our minds that it may not be scared and flee: why should we not yield to the stronger dream, that it may last yet another sweet, beguiling moment? Why should he not love me-kiss me? Why should we not be sad together, that we are not and can not be the real man and woman we would-that we are but the forms of a dream-the fleeting shadows of the night of Nature?-mourn together that the meddlesome hand of fate should have roused us to consciousness and aspiration so long before the maturity of our powers that we are but a laughter-no-a scorn and a weeping to ourselves? We could at least sympathize with each other in our common misery-bear with its weakness, comfort its regrets, hide its mortifications, cherish its poor joys, and smooth the way down the steepening slope to the grave! Then, if in the decrees of blind fate, there should be a slow, dull procession toward perfection, if indeed some human God be on the way to be born, it would be grand, although we should know nothing of it, to have done our part fearless and hopeless, to have lived and died that the triumphant Sorrow might sit throned on the ever dying heart of the universe. But never, never would I have chosen to live for that! Yes, one might choose to be born, if there were suffering one might live or die to soften, to cure! That would be to be like Paul Faber. To will to be born for that would be grand indeed!"

In paths of thought like these her mind wandered, her head lying upon her arms on the old-fashioned, wide-spread window-sill. At length, weary with emotion and weeping, she fell fast asleep, and slept for some time.

The house was very still. Mr. Drake and Dorothy were in no haste to return. Amanda was asleep, and Lisbeth was in the kitchen-perhaps also asleep.

Juliet woke with a great start. Arms were around her from behind, lifting her from her half-prone position of sorrowful rest. With a terrified cry, she strove to free herself.

"Juliet, my love! my heart! be still, and let me speak," said Faber. His voice trembled as if full of tears. "I can bear this no longer. You are my fate. I never lived till I knew you. I shall cease to live when I know for certain that you turn from me."

Juliet was like one half-drowned, just lifted from the water, struggling to beat it away from eyes and ears and mouth.

"Pray leave me, Mr. Faber," she cried, half-terrified, half-bewildered, as she rose and turned toward him. But while she pushed him away with one hand, she unconsciously clasped