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

she added.

"You are right, my child!" returned her father. "It was not my poverty-it was not being sure of God that crushed me.-How long is it since I was poor, Dorothy?"

"Two days, father-not two till to-morrow morning."

"It looks to me two centuries. My mind is at ease, and I have not paid a debt yet! How vile of me to want the money in my own hand, and not be content it should be in God's pocket, to come out just as it was wanted! Alas! I have more faith in my uncle's leavings than in my Father's generosity! But I must not forget gratitude in shame. Come, my child-no one can see us-let us kneel down here on the grass and pray to God who is in yon star just twinkling through the gray, and in my heart and in yours, my child."

I will not give the words of the minister's prayer. The words are not the prayer. Mr. Drake's words were commonplace, with much of the conventionality and platitude of prayer-meetings. He had always objected to the formality of the Prayer-book, but the words of his own prayers without book were far more formal; the prayer itself was in the heart, not on the lips, and was far better than the words. But poor Dorothy heard only the words, and they did not help her. They seemed rather to freeze than revive her faith, making her feel as if she never could believe in the God of her father. She was too unhappy to reason well, or she might have seen that she was not bound to measure God by the way her father talked to him-that the form of the prayer had to do with her father, not immediately with God-that God might be altogether adorable, notwithstanding the prayers of all heathens and of all saints.

Their talk turned again upon the Old House of Glaston.

"If it be true, as I have heard ever since I came," said Mr. Drake, "that Lord de Barre means to pull down the house and plow up the garden, and if he be so short of money as they say, he might perhaps take a few thousands for it. The Lythe bounds the estate, and there makes a great loop, so that a portion might be cut off by a straight line from one arm of the curve to the other, which would be quite outside the park. I will set some inquiry on foot. I have wished for a long time to leave the river, only we had a lease. The Old House is nothing like so low as the one we are in now. Besides, as I propose, we should have space to build, if we found it desirable, on the level of the park."

When they reached the gate on their return, a second dwarfish figure, a man, pigeon-chested, short-necked, and asthmatic-a strange, gnome-like figure, came from the lodge to open it. Every body in Glaston knew Polwarth the gatekeeper.

"How is the asthma to-night, Mr. Polwarth?" said the pastor. He had not yet got rid of the tone in which in his young days he had been accustomed to address the poor of his flock-a tone half familiar, half condescending. To big ships barnacles will stick-and may add weeks to the length of a voyage too.

"Not very bad, thank you, Mr. Drake. But, bad or not, it is always a friendly devil," answered the little man.

"I am ast-- a little surprised to hear you use such--express yourself so, Mr. Polwarth," said the minister.

The little man laughed a quiet, huskily melodious, gently merry laugh.

"I am not original in the idea, and scarcely so in my way of expressing it. I am sorry you don't like it, Mr. Drake," he said. "I found it in the second epistle to the Corinthians last night, and my heart has been full of it ever since. It is surely no very bad sign if the truth should make us merry at a time! It ought to do so, I think, seeing merriment is one of the lower forms of bliss."

"I am at a loss to understand you, Mr. Polwarth," said the minister.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Drake. I will come to the point. In the passage I refer to St. Paul says: 'There was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure:'-am I not right in speaking of such a demon as a friendly one? He was a gift from God."

"I had not observed-that is, I had not taken particular notice of the unusual combination of phrases in the passage," answered Mr. Drake. "It is a very remarkable one, certainly. I remember no other in which a messenger of Satan is spoken of as being given by God."

"Clearly, sir, St. Paul accepted him as something to be grateful for, so soon as his mission was explained to him; and after that, who is to say what may not be a gift of God! It won't do to grumble at any thing-will it, sir?-when it may so unexpectedly turn out to be given to us by God. I begin to suspect that never, until we see a thing plainly a gift of God, can we be sure that we see it right. I am quite certain the most unpleasant things may be such gifts. I should be glad enough to part with this asthma of mine, if it pleased God it should depart from me; but would I yield a fraction of what it has brought me, for the best lungs in England? I trow not!"

"You are a happy man, Mr. Polwarth-if you can say that and abide by it."

"I am a happy man, sir. I don't know what would come of me sometimes, for very gladness, if I hadn't my good friend, the asthma-devil, to keep me down a bit. Good night, sir," he added, for Mr. Drake was already moving away.

He felt superior to this man, set him down as forward, did not quite approve of him. Always ready to judge involuntarily from externals, he would have been shocked to discover how much the deformity of the man, which caused him discomfort, prejudiced him also against him. Then Polwarth seldom went to a place of worship, and when he did, went to church! A cranky, visionary, talkative man, he was in Mr. Drake's eyes. He set him down as one of those mystical interpreters of the Word, who are always searching it for strange things, whose very insight leads them to vagary, blinding them to the relative value of things. It is amazing from what a mere fraction of fact concerning him, a man will dare judge the whole of another man. In reality, little Polwarth could have carried big Drake to the top of any hill Difficulty, up which, in his spiritual pilgrimage, he had yet had to go panting and groaning-and to the top of many another besides, within sight even of which the minister would never come in this world.

"He is too ready with his spiritual experience, that little man!-too fond of airing it," said the minister to his daughter. "I don't quite know what to make of him. He is a favorite with Mr. Wingfold; but my experience makes me doubtful. I suspect prodigies."

Now Polwarth was not in the habit of airing his religious experiences; but all Glaston could see that the minister was in trouble, and he caught at the first opportunity he had of showing his sympathy with him, offering him a share of the comfort he had just been receiving himself. He smiled at its apparent rejection, and closed the gate softly, saying to himself that the good man would think of it yet, he was sure.

Dorothy took little interest in Polwarth, little therefore in her father's judgment of him. But, better even than Wingfold himself, that poor physical failure of a man could have helped her from under every gravestone that was now crushing the life out of her-not so much from superiority of intellect, certainly not from superiority of learning, but mainly because he was alive all through, because the life eternal pervaded every atom of his life, every thought, every action. Door nor window of his being had a lock to it! All of them were always on the swing to the wind that bloweth where it listeth. Upon occasions when most would seek refuge from the dark sky and gusty weather of trouble, by hiding from the messengers of Satan in the deepest cellar of their hearts, there to sit grumbling, Polwarth always went out into the open air. If the wind was rough, there was none the less life in it: the breath of God, it was rough to blow the faults from him, genial to put fresh energy in him; if the rain fell, it was the water of cleansing and growth. Misfortune he would not know by that name: there was no mis but in himself, and that the messenger of Satan was there to buffet. So long as God was, all was right. No wonder the minister then was incapable of measuring the gate-keeper! But Polwarth was right about him-as he went home he pondered the passage to which he had referred him, wondering whether he was to regard the fortune sent him as a messenger of Satan given to buffet him.


CHAPTER XXVI.

THE SURGERY DOOR.


That Juliet loved Faber as she had at one time resolved never to love man, she no longer attempted to conceal from herself; but she was far from being prepared to confess the discovery to him. His atheism she satisfactorily justified herself in being more ready to pity than to blame. There were difficulties! There were more than difficulties! Not a few of them she did not herself see how to get over! If her father had been alive, then indeed!-children must not break their parents' hearts. But if, as appeared the most likely thing, that father, tenderly as she had loved him, was gone from her forever, if life was but a flash across from birth to the grave, why should not those who loved make the best of it for each other during that one moment "brief as the lightning in the collied night"? They must try to be the more to one another, and the time was so short. All that Faber had ever pleaded was now blossoming at once in her thought. She had not a doubt that he loved her-as would have been enough once at all events. A man of men he was!-noble, unselfish, independent, a ruler of himself, a benefactor of his race! What right had those believers to speak of him as they did? In any personal question he was far their superior. That they undervalued him, came all of their narrow prejudices! He was not of their kind, therefore he must be below them! But there were first that should be last, and last first!

She felt herself no whit worthy of him. She believed herself not for a moment comparable to him! But his infinite chivalry, gentleness, compassion, would be her refuge! Such a man would bear with her weaknesses, love her love, and forgive her sins! If he took her God from her, he must take His place, and be a God-like man to her! Then, if there should be any further truth discoverable, why indeed, as himself said, should they not discover it together? Could they be as likely to discover it apart, and distracted