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

boat, with the child pressed to his bosom. He could not speak.

"To Doctor Faber's! For the child's life!" said Dorothy, and the fisher rowed like a madman.

Faber had just come in. He undressed the child with his own hands, rubbed her dry, and did every thing to initiate respiration. For a long time all seemed useless, but he persisted beyond the utmost verge of hope. Mr. Drake and Dorothy stood in mute dismay. Neither was quite a
child of God yet, and in the old man a rebellious spirit murmured: it was hard that he should have evil for good! that his endeavors for his people should be the loss of his child!

Faber was on the point of ceasing his efforts in utter despair, when he thought he felt a slight motion of the diaphragm, and renewed them eagerly. She began to breathe. Suddenly she opened her eyes, looked at him for a moment, then with a smile closed them again. To the watchers heaven itself seemed to open in that smile. But Faber dropped the tiny form, started a pace backward from the bed, and stood staring aghast. The next moment he threw the blankets over the child, turned away, and almost staggered from the room. In his surgery he poured himself out a glass of brandy, swallowed it neat, sat down and held his head in his hands. An instant after, he was by the child's side again, feeling her pulse, and rubbing her limbs under the blankets.

The minister's hands had turned blue, and he had begun to shiver, but a smile of sweetest delight was on his face.

"God bless me!" cried the doctor, "you've got no coat on! and you are drenched! I never saw any thing but the child!"

"He plunged into the horrible hole after her," said Dorothy. "How wicked of me to forget him for any child under the sun! He got her out all by himself, Mr. Faber!-Come home, father dear.-I will come back and see to Amanda as soon as I have got him to bed."

"Yes, Dorothy; let us go," said the minister, and put his hand on her shoulder. His teeth chattered and his hand shook.

The doctor rang the bell violently.

"Neither of you shall leave this house to-night.-Take a hot bath to the spare bedroom, and remove the sheets," he said to the housekeeper, who had answered the summons. "My dear sir," he went on, turning again to the minister, "you must get into the blankets at once. How careless of me! The child's life will be dear at the cost of yours."

"You have brought back the soul of the child to me, Mr. Faber," said the minister, trembling, "and I can never thank you enough."

"There won't be much to thank me for, if you have to go instead.-Miss Drake, while I give your father his bath, you must go with Mrs. Roberts, and put on dry clothes. Then you will be able to nurse him."

As soon as Dorothy, whose garments Juliet had been wearing so long, was dressed in some of hers, she went to her father's room. He was already in bed, but it was long before they could get him warm. Then he grew burning hot, and all night was talking in troubled dreams. Once Dorothy heard him say, as if he had been talking to God face to face: "O my God, if I had but once seen Thee, I do not think I could ever have mistrusted Thee. But I could never be quite sure."

The morning brought lucidity. How many dawns a morning brings! His first words were "How goes it with the child?" Having heard that she had had a good night, and was almost well, he turned over, and fell fast asleep. Then Dorothy, who had been by his bed all night, resumed her own garments, and went to the door.


CHAPTER XLV.

HERE AND THERE.


The rain had ceased, and the flood was greatly diminished. It was possible, she judged, to reach the Old House, and after a hasty breakfast, she set out, leaving her father to Mrs. Roberts's care. The flood left her no choice but go by the high road to Polwarth's gate, and then she had often to wade through mud and water. The moment she saw the gatekeeper, she knew somehow by his face that Juliet was in the lodge. When she entered, she saw that already her new circumstances were working upon her for peace. The spiritual atmosphere, so entirely human, the sense that she was not and would not be alone, the strange talk which they held openly before her, the food they coaxed her to eat, the whole surrounding of thoughts and things as they should be, was operating far more potently than could be measured by her understanding of their effects, or even consciousness of their influences. She still looked down upon the dwarfs, condescended to them, had a vague feeling that she honored them by accepting their ministration-for which, one day, she would requite them handsomely. Not the less had she all the time a feeling that she was in the society of ministering spirits of God, good and safe and true. From the Old House to the cottage was from the Inferno to the Purgatorio, across whose borders faint wafts from Paradise now and then strayed wandering. Without knowing it, she had begun already to love the queer little woman, with the wretched body, the fine head, and gentle, suffering face; while the indescribable awe, into which her aversion to the kobold, with his pigeon-chest, his wheezing breath, his great head, and his big, still face, which to such eyes as the curate's seemed to be looking into both worlds at once, had passed over, bore no unimportant part in that portion of her discipline here commenced. One of the loftiest spirits of the middle earth, it was long before she had quite ceased to regard him as a power of the nether world, partly human, and at once something less and something more. Yet even already she was beginning to feel at home with them! True, the world in which they really lived was above her spiritual vision, as beyond her intellectual comprehension, yet not the less was the air around them the essential air of homeness; for the truths in which their spirits lived and breathed, were the same which lie at the root of every feeling of home-safety in the world, which make the bliss of the child in his mother's bed, the bliss of young beasts in their nests, of birds under their mother's wing. The love which inclosed her was far too great for her-as the heaven of the mother's face is beyond the understanding of the new-born child over whom she bends; but that mother's face is nevertheless the child's joy and peace. She did not yet recognize it as love, saw only the ministration; but it was what she sorely needed: she said the sort of thing suited her, and at once began to fall in with it. What it cost her entertainers, with organization as delicate as uncouth, in the mere matter of bodily labor, she had not an idea-imagined indeed that she gave them no trouble at all, because, having overheard the conversation between them upon her arrival, she did herself a part of the work required for her comfort in her own room. She never saw the poor quarters to which Ruth for her sake had banished herself-never perceived the fact that there was nothing good enough wherewith to repay them except worshipful gratitude, love, admiration, and submission-feelings she could not even have imagined possible in regard to such inferiors.

And now Dorothy had not a little to say to Juliet about her husband. In telling what had taken place, however, she had to hear many more questions than she was able to answer.

"Does he really believe me dead, Dorothy?" was one of them.

"I do not believe there is one person in Glaston who knows what he thinks," answered Dorothy. "I have not heard of his once opening his mouth on the subject. He is just as silent now as he used to be ready to talk."

"My poor Paul!" murmured Juliet, and hid her face and wept.

Indeed not a soul in Glaston or elsewhere knew a single thought he had. Certain mysterious advertisements in the county paper were imagined by some to be his and to refer to his wife. Some, as the body had never been seen, did begin to doubt whether she was dead. Some, on the other hand, hinted that her husband had himself made away with her-for, they argued, what could be easier to a doctor, and why, else, did he make no search for the body? To Dorothy this supposed fact seemed to indicate a belief that she was not dead-perhaps a hope that she would sooner betray herself if he manifested no anxiety to find her. But she said nothing of this to Juliet.

Her news of him was the more acceptable to the famished heart of the wife, that, from his great kindness to them all, and especially from the perseverance which had restored to them their little Amanda, Dorothy's heart had so warmed toward him, that she could not help speaking of him in a tone far more agreeable to Juliet than hitherto she had been able to use. His pale, worn look, and the tokens of trouble throughout his demeanor, all more evident upon nearer approach, had also wrought upon her; and she so described his care, anxiety, and tenderness over Amanda, that Juliet became jealous of the child, as she would have been of any dog she saw him caress. When all was told, and she was weary of asking questions to which there were no answers, she fell back in her chair with a sigh: alas, she was no nearer to him for the hearing of her ears! While she lived she was open to his scorn, and deserved it the more that she had seemed to die! She must die; for then at last a little love would revive in his heart, ere he died too and followed her nowhither. Only first she must leave him his child to plead for her:-she used sometimes to catch herself praying that the infant might be like her.

"Look at my jacket!" said Dorothy. It was one of Juliet's, and she hoped to make her smile.

"Did Paul see you with my clothes on?" she said angrily.

Dorothy started with the pang of hurt that shot through her. But the compassionate smile on the face of Polwarth, who had just entered, and had heard the last article of the conversation, at once set her right. For not only was he capable of immediate sympathy with emotion, but of revealing at once that he understood its cause. Ruth, who had come into the room behind him, second only to her uncle in the insight of love, followed his look by asking Dorothy if she might go to the Old House, as soon as the weather permitted, to fetch some clothes for Mrs. Faber, who had brought nothing with her but what she wore; whereupon Dorothy, partly for leisure to fight her temper, said she would go herself, and went. But when she returned, she gave the bag to Ruth at the door, and went away without seeing Juliet again. She was getting tired of her selfishness, she said to herself. Dorothy was not herself yet perfect in love-which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Faber too had been up all night-by