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

would have taken his departure, but feared leaving him in such a state. He bethought himself of something that might help to calm him, and took out his pocket-book. The minister's dream had moved him deeply, but he restrained himself all he could from manifesting his emotion.

"Your vision," he said, "reminds me of some verses of Mr. Wingfold's, of which Mrs. Wingfold very kindly let me take a copy. I have them here in my pocket-book; may I read them to you?"

The minister gave rather a listless consent, but that was enough for Mr. Drew's object, and he read the following poem.

SHALL THE DEAD PRAISE THEE?

I can not praise Thee. By his instrument
The organ-master sits, nor moves a hand;
For see the organ pipes o'erthrown and bent,
Twisted and broke, like corn-stalks tempest-fanned!

I well could praise Thee for a flower, a dove;
But not for life that is not life in me;
Not for a being that is less than love-
A barren shoal half-lifted from a sea,

And for the land whence no wind bloweth ships,
And all my living dead ones thither blown-
Rather I'd kiss no more their precious lips,
Than carry them a heart so poor and prone.

Yet I do bless Thee Thou art what Thou art,
That Thou dost know Thyself what Thou dost know-
A perfect, simple, tender, rhythmic heart,
Beating Thy blood to all in bounteous flow.

And I can bless Thee too for every smart,
For every disappointment, ache, and fear;
For every hook Thou fixest in my heart,
For every burning cord that draws me near.

But prayer these wake, not song. Thyself I crave.
Come Thou, or all Thy gifts away I fling.
Thou silent, I am but an empty grave;
Think to me, Father, and I am a king.

Then, like the wind-stirred bones, my pipes shall quake,
The air burst, as from burning house the blaze;
And swift contending harmonies shall shake
Thy windows with a storm of jubilant praise.

Thee praised, I haste me humble to my own-
Then love not shame shall bow me at their feet,
Then first and only to my stature grown,
Fulfilled of love, a servant all-complete.

At first the minister seemed scarcely to listen, as he sat with closed eyes and knitted brows, but gradually the wrinkles disappeared like ripples, an expression of repose supervened, and when the draper lifted his eyes at the close of his reading, there was a smile of quiet satisfaction on the now aged-looking countenance. As he did not open his eyes, Drew crept softly from the room, saying to Dorothy as he left the house, that she must get him to bed as soon as possible. She went to him, and now found no difficulty in persuading him. But something, she could not tell what, in his appearance, alarmed her, and she sent for the doctor. He was not at home, and had expected to be out all night. She sat by his bedside for hours, but at last, as he was quietly asleep, ventured to lay herself on a couch in the room. There she too fell fast asleep, and slept till morning, undisturbed.

When she went to his bedside, she found him breathing softly, and thought him still asleep. But he opened his eyes, looked at her for a moment fixedly, and then said:

"Dorothy, child of my heart! things may be very different from what we have been taught, or what we may of ourselves desire; but every difference will be the step of an ascending stair-each nearer and nearer to the divine perfection which alone can satisfy the children of a God, alone supply the poorest of their cravings."

She stooped and kissed his hand, then hastened to get him some food.

When she returned, he was gone up the stair of her future, leaving behind him, like a last message that all was well, the loveliest smile frozen upon a face of peace. The past had laid hold upon his body; he was free in the Eternal. Dorothy was left standing at the top of the stair of the present.


CHAPTER XLIX.

EMPTY HOUSES.


The desolation that seized on Dorothy seemed at first overwhelming. There was no refuge for her. The child's tears, questions, and outbreaks of merriment were but a trouble to her. Even Wingfold and Helen could do little for her. Sorrow was her sole companion, her sole comfort for a time against the dreariness of life. Then came something better. As her father's form receded from her, his spirit drew nigh. I mean no phantom out of Hades-no consciousness of local presence: such things may be-I think sometimes they are; but I would rather know my friend better through his death, than only be aware of his presence about me; that will one day follow-how much the more precious that the absence will have doubled its revelations, its nearness! To Dorothy her father's character, especially as developed in his later struggles after righteousness-the root-righteousness of God, opened itself up day by day. She saw him combating his faults, dejected by his failures, encouraged by his successes; and he grew to her the dearer for his faults, as she perceived more plainly how little he had sided, how hard he had fought with them. The very imperfections he repudiated gathered him honor in the eyes of her love, sowed seeds of perennial tenderness in her heart. She saw how, in those last days, he had been overcoming the world with accelerated victory, and growing more and more of the real father that no man can be until he has attained to the sonship. The marvel is that our children are so tender and so trusting to the slow developing father in us. The truth and faith which the great Father has put in the heart of the child, makes him the nursing father of the fatherhood in his father; and thus in part it is, that the children of men will come at last to know the great Father. The family, with all its powers for the development of society, is a family because it is born and rooted in, and grows out of the very bosom of God. Gabriel told Zacharias that his son John, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord, should turn the hearts of the fathers to the children.

Few griefs can be so paralyzing as, for a time, that of a true daughter upon the departure, which at first she feels as the loss, of a true parent; but through the rifts of such heartbreaks the light of love shines clearer, and where love is, there is eternity: one day He who is the Householder of the universe, will begin to bring out of its treasury all the good old things, as well as the better new ones. How true must be the bliss up to which the intense realities of such sorrows are needful to force the way for the faithless heart and feeble will! Lord, like Thy people of old, we need yet the background of the thunder-cloud against which to behold Thee; but one day the only darkness around Thy dwelling will be the too much of Thy brightness. For Thou art the perfection which every heart sighs toward, no mind can attain unto. If Thou wast One whom created mind could embrace, Thou wouldst be too small for those whom Thou hast made in Thine own image, the infinite creatures that seek their God, a Being to love and know infinitely. For the created to know perfectly would be to be damned forever in the nutshell of the finite. He who is His own cause, alone can understand perfectly and remain infinite, for that which is known and that which knows are in Him the same infinitude.

Faber came to see Dorothy-solemn, sad, kind. He made no attempt at condolence, did not speak a word of comfort; but he talked of the old man, revealing for him a deep respect; and her heart was touched, and turned itself toward him. Some change, she thought, must have passed upon him. Her father had told her nothing of his relation to Amanda. It would have to be done some day, but he shrunk from it. She could not help suspecting there was more between Faber and him than she had at first imagined; but there was in her a healthy contentment with ignorance, and she asked no questions. Neither did Faber make any attempt to find out whether she knew what had passed; even about Amanda and any possible change in her future he was listless. He had never been a man of plans, and had no room for any now under the rubbish of a collapsed life. His days were gloomy and his nights troubled. He dreamed constantly either of Amanda's mother, or of Juliet-sometimes of both together, and of endless perplexity between them. Sometimes he woke weeping. He did not now despise his tears, for they flowed neither from suffering nor self-pity, but from love and sorrow and repentance. A question of the possibility of his wife's being yet alive would occasionally occur to him, but he always cast the thought from him as a folly in which he dared not indulge lest it should grow upon him and unman him altogether. Better she were dead than suffering what his cruelty might have driven her to: he had weakened her self-respect by insult, and then driven her out helpless.

People said he took the loss of his wife coolly; but the fact was that, in every quiet way, he had been doing all man could do to obtain what information concerning her there might possibly be to be had. Naturally he would have his proceedings as little as possible in the public mouth; and to employ the police or the newspapers in such a quest was too horrible. But he had made inquiries in all directions. He had put a question or two to Polwarth, but at that time he knew nothing of her, and did not feel bound to disclose his suspicions. Not knowing to what it might not expose her, he would not betray the refuge of a woman with a woman. Faber learned what every body had learned, and for a time was haunted by the horrible expectation of further news from the lake. Every knock at the door made him start and turn pale. But the body had not floated, and would not now.

We have seen that, in the light thrown upon her fault from the revived memory of his own, a reaction had set in: the tide of it grew fiercer as it ran. He had deposed her idol-the God who she believed could pardon, and the bare belief in whom certainly could comfort her; he had taken the place with her of that imaginary, yet, for some, necessary being; but when, in the agony of repentant shame, she looked to him for the pardon he alone could give her, he had turned from her with loathing, contempt, and insult! He was the