Paul Faber, Surgeon

Polwarth went on digging, nor once looked up. After a little while he resumed, in the most natural way, speaking as if he had known her well:

"Mr. Drake and I were talking, some weeks ago, about a certain curious little old-fashioned flower in my garden at the back of the lodge. He asked me if I could spare him a root of it. I told him I could spare him any thing he would like to have, but that I would gladly give him every flower in my garden, roots and all, if he would but let me dig three yards square in his garden at the Old House, and have all that came up of itself for a year."

He paused again. Juliet neither spoke nor moved. He dug rather feebly for a gnome, with panting, asthmatic breath.

"Perhaps you are not aware, ma'am," he began again, and ceasing his labor stood up leaning on the spade, which was nearly as high as himself, "that many of the seeds which fall upon the ground do not grow, yet, strange to tell, retain the power of growth. I suspect myself, but have not had opportunity of testing the conjecture, that such fall in their pods, or shells, and that before these are sufficiently decayed to allow the sun and moisture and air to reach them, they have got covered up in the soil too deep for those same influences. They say fishes a long time bedded in ice will come to life again: I can not tell about that, but it is well enough known that if you dig deep in any old garden, such as this, ancient, perhaps forgotten flowers, will appear. The fashion has changed, they have been neglected or uprooted, but all the time their life is hid below. And the older they are, the nearer perhaps to their primary idea!"

By this time she was far more composed, though not yet had she made up her mind what to say, or how to treat the dilemma in which she found herself.

After a brief pause therefore, he resumed again:

"I don't fancy," he said, with a low, asthmatic laugh, "that we shall have many forgotten weeds come up. They all, I suspect, keep pretty well in the sun. But just think how the fierce digging of the crisis to which the great Husbandman every now and then leads a nation, brings back to the surface its old forgotten flowers. What virtues, for instance, the Revolution brought to light as even yet in the nature of the corrupted nobility of France!"

"What a peculiar goblin it is!" thought Juliet, beginning to forget herself a little in watching and listening to the strange creature. She had often seen him before, but had always turned from him with a kind of sympathetic shame: of course the poor creature could not bear to be looked at; he must know himself improper!

"I have sometimes wondered," Polwarth yet again resumed, "whether the troubles without end that some people seem born to—I do not mean those they bring upon themselves—may not be as subsoil plows, tearing deep into the family mold, that the seeds of the lost virtues of their race may in them be once more brought within reach of sun and air and dew. It would be a pleasant, hopeful thought if one might hold it. Would it not, ma'am?"

"It would indeed," answered Juliet with a sigh, which rose from an undefined feeling that if some hidden virtue would come up in her, it would be welcome. How many people would like to be good, if only they might be good without taking trouble about it! They do not like goodness well enough to hunger and thirst after it, or to sell all that they have that they may buy it; they will not batter at the gate of the kingdom of Heaven; but they look with pleasure on this or that aerial castle of righteousness, and think it would be rather nice to live in it! They do not know that it is goodness all the time their very being is pining after, and that they are starving their nature of its necessary food. Then Polwarth's idea turned itself round in Juliet's mind, and grew clearer, but assumed reference to weeds only, and not flowers. She thought how that fault of hers had, like the seed of a poison-plant, been buried for years, unknown to one alive, and forgotten almost by herself—so diligently forgotten indeed, that it seemed to have gradually slipped away over the horizon of her existence; and now here it was at the surface again in all its horror and old reality! nor that merely, for already it had blossomed and borne its rightful fruit of dismay—an evil pod, filled with a sickening juice, and swarming with gray flies.—But she must speak, and, if possible, prevent the odd creature from going and publishing in Glaston that he had seen Mrs. Faber, and she was at the Old House.

"How did you know I was here?" she asked abruptly.

"How do you know that I knew, ma'am?" returned Polwarth, in a tone which took from the words all appearance of rudeness.

"You were not in the least surprised to see me," she answered.

"A man," returned the dwarf, "who keeps his eyes open may almost cease to be surprised at any thing. In my time I have seen so much that is wonderful—in fact every thing seems to me so wonderful that I hardly expect to be surprised any more."

He said this, desiring to provoke conversation. But Juliet took the answer for an evasive one, and it strengthened her suspicion of Dorothy. She was getting tired of her! Then there was only one thing left!—The minor prophet had betaken himself again to his work, delving deeper, and throwing slow spadeful after spadeful to the surface.

"Miss Drake told you I was here!" said Juliet.

"No, indeed, Mrs. Faber. No one told me," answered Polwarth. "I learned it for myself. I could hardly help finding it out."

"Then—then—does every body know it?" she faltered, her heart sinking within her at the thought.

"Indeed, ma'am, so far as I know, not a single person is aware you are alive except Miss Drake and myself. I have not even told my niece who lives with me, and who can keep a secret as well as myself."

Juliet breathed a great sigh of relief.

"Will you tell me why you have kept it so secret?" she asked.

"Because it was your secret, ma'am, not mine."

"But you were under no obligation to keep my secret."

"How do you justify such a frightful statement as that, ma'am?"

"Why, what could it matter to you?"

"Every thing."

"I do not understand. You have no interest in me. You could have no inducement."

"On the contrary, I had the strongest inducement: I saw that an opportunity might come of serving you."

"But that is just the unintelligible thing to me. There is no reason why you should wish to serve me!" said Juliet, thinking to get at the bottom of some design.

"There you mistake, ma'am. I am under the most absolute and imperative obligation to serve you—the greatest under which any being can find himself."

"What a ridiculous, crooked little monster!" said Juliet to herself. But she began the same moment to think whether she might not turn the creature's devotion to good account. She might at all events insure his silence.

"Would you be kind enough to explain yourself?" she said, now also interested in the continuance of the conversation.

"I would at once," replied Polwarth, "had I sufficient ground for hoping you would understand my explanation."

"I do not know that I am particularly stupid," she returned, with a wan smile.

"I have heard to the contrary," said Polwarth. "Yet I can not help greatly doubting whether you will understand what I am now going to tell you. For I will tell you—on the chance: I have no secrets—that is, of my own.—I am one of those, Mrs. Faber," he went on after a moment's pause, but his voice neither became more solemn in tone, nor did he cease his digging, although it got slower, "who, against the non-evidence of their senses, believe there is a Master of men, the one Master, a right perfect Man, who demands of them, and lets them know in themselves the rectitude of the demand that they also shall be right and true men, that is, true brothers to their brothers and sisters of mankind. It is recorded too, and I believe it, that this Master said that any service rendered to one of His people was rendered to Himself. Therefore, for love of His will, even if I had no sympathy with you, Mrs. Faber, I should feel bound to help you. As you can not believe me interested in yourself, I must tell you that to betray your secret for the satisfaction of a love of gossip, would be to sin against my highest joy, against my own hope, against the heart of God, from which your being and mine draws the life of its every moment."

Juliet's heart seemed to turn sick at the thought of such a creature claiming brotherhood with her. That it gave ground for such a claim, seemed for the moment an irresistible argument against the existence of a God.

In her countenance Polwarth read at once that he had blundered, and a sad, noble, humble smile irradiated his. It had its effect on Juliet. She would be generous and forgive his presumption: she knew dwarfs were always conceited—that wise Nature had provided them with high thoughts wherewith to add the missing cubit to their stature. What repulsive things Christianity taught! Her very flesh recoiled from the poor ape!

"I trust you are satisfied, ma'am," the kobold added, after a moment's vain expectation of a word from Juliet, "that your secret is safe with me."

"I am," answered Juliet, with a condescending motion of her stately neck, saying to herself in feeling if not in conscious thought,—"After all he is hardly human! I may accept his devotion as I would that of a dog!"

The moment she had thus far yielded, she began to long to speak of her husband. Perhaps he can tell her something of him! At least he could talk about him. She would have been eager to look on his reflection, had it been possible, in the mind of a dog that loved him. She would turn the conversation in a direction that might find him.

"But I do not see," she went on, "how you, Mr. Polwarth—I think that is your name—how you can, consistently with your principles,—"

"Excuse me, ma'am: I can not even, by silence, seem to admit that you know any thing whatever of my principles."

"Oh!" she returned, with a smile of generous confession, "I was brought up to believe as you do."

"That but satisfies me that for the present you are incapable of knowing any thing of my principles."

"I do not wonder at your thinking so," she returned, with the condescension of superior education, as she supposed, and yet with the first motion of an unconscious respect for the odd little monster.—He, with wheezing chest, went on throwing up the deep, damp, fresh earth, to him smelling of marvelous things. Ruth would have ached all over to see him working so hard!—"Still," Juliet went on, "supposing your judgment of me correct, that only makes it the stranger you should imagine that in serving such a one, you are pleasing Him you call your Master. He says whosoever denies Him before men He will deny before the angels of God."

"What my Lord says He will do, He will do, as He meant it when He said it: what He tells me to do, I try to understand and do. Now He has told me of all things not to say that good comes of evil. He condemned that in the Pharisees as the greatest of crimes. When, therefore, I see a man like your husband, helping his neighbors near and far, being kind, indeed loving, and good-hearted to all men,"—Here a great sigh, checked and broken into many little ones, came in a tremulous chain from the bosom of the wife—"I am bound to say that man is not scattering his Master abroad. He is indeed opposing Him in words: he speaks against the Son of Man; but that the Son of Man Himself says shall be forgiven him. If I mistake in this, to my own Master I stand or fall."

"How can He be his Master if he does not acknowledge Him?"

"Because the very tongue with which he denies Him is yet His. I am the master of the flowers that will now grow by my labor, though not one of them will know me—how much more must He be the Master of the men He has called into being, though they do not acknowledge Him! If the story of the gospel be a true one, as with my heart and soul and all that is in me I believe it is, then Jesus of Nazareth is Lord and Master of Mr. Faber, and for him not to acknowledge it is to fall from the summit of his being. To deny one's Master, is to be a slave."

"You are very polite!" said Mrs. Faber, and turned away. She recalled her imaginary danger, however, and turning again, said, "But though I differ from you in opinion, Mr. Polwarth, I quite recognize you as no common man, and put you upon your honor with regard to my secret."

"Had you entrusted me with your secret, ma'am, the phrase would have had more significance. But, obeying my Master, I do not require to think of my own honor. Those who do not acknowledge their Master, can not afford to forget it. But if they do not learn to obey Him, they will find by the time they have got through what they call life, they have left themselves little honor to boast of."

"He has guessed my real secret!" thought poor Juliet, and turning away in confusion, without a word of farewell, went straight into the house. But before Dorothy, who had been on the watch at the top of the slope, came in, she had begun to hope that the words of the forward, disagreeable, conceited dwarf had in them nothing beyond a general remark.

When Dorothy entered, she instantly accused her of treachery. Dorothy, repressing her indignation, begged she would go with her to Polwarth. But when they reached the spot, the gnome had vanished.

He had been digging only for the sake of the flowers buried in Juliet, and had gone home to lie down. His bodily strength was exhausted, but will and faith and purpose never forsook the soul cramped up in that distorted frame. When greatly suffering, he would yet suffer with his will—not merely resigning himself to the will of God, but desiring the suffering that God willed. When the wearied soul could no longer keep the summit of the task, when not strength merely, but the consciousness of faith and duty failed him, he would cast faith and strength and duty, all his being, into the gulf of the Father's will, and simply suffer, no longer trying to feel any thing—waiting only until the Life should send him light.

Dorothy turned to Juliet.

"You might have asked Mr. Polwarth, Juliet, whether I had betrayed you," she said.

"Now I think of it, he did say you had not told him. But how was I to take the word of a creature like that?"

"Juliet," said Dorothy, very angry, "I begin to doubt if you were worth taking the trouble for!"

She turned from her, and walked toward the house. Juliet rushed after her and caught her in her arms.

"Forgive me, Dorothy," she cried. "I am not in my right senses, I do believe. What is to be done now this—man knows it?"

"Things are no worse than they were," said Dorothy, as quickly appeased as angered. "On the contrary, I believe we have the only one to help us who is able to do it. Why, Juliet, why what am I to do with you when my father sends the carpenters and bricklayers to the house? They will be into every corner! He talks of commencing next week, and I am at my wits' end."

"Oh! don't forsake me, Dorothy, after all you have done for me," cried Juliet. "If you turn me out, there never was creature in the world so forlorn as I shall be—absolutely helpless, Dorothy!"

"I will do all I can for you, my poor Juliet; but if Mr. Polwarth do not think of some way, I don't know what will become of us. You don't know what you are guilty of in despising him. Mr. Wingfold speaks of him as far the first man in Glaston."

Certainly Mr. Wingfold, Mr. Drew, and some others of the best men in the place, did think him, of those they knew, the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven. Glaston was altogether of a different opinion. Which was the right opinion, must be left to the measuring rod that shall finally be applied to the statures of men.

The history of the kingdom of Heaven—need I say I mean a very different thing from what is called church-history?—is the only history that will ever be able to show itself a history—that can ever come to be thoroughly written, or to be read with a clear understanding; for it alone will prove able to explain itself, while in doing so it will explain all other attempted histories as well. Many of those who will then be found first in the eternal record, may have been of little regard in the eyes of even their religious contemporaries, may have been absolutely unknown to generations that came after, and were yet the men of life and potency, working as light, as salt, as leaven, in the world. When the real worth of things is, over all, the measure of their estimation, then is the kingdom of our God and His Christ.

CHAPTER XLII

THE POTTERY

It had been a very dry autumn, and the periodical rains had been long delayed, so that the minister had been able to do much for the houses he had bought, called the Pottery. There had been but just rain enough to reveal the advantage of the wall he had built to compel the water to keep the wider street. Thoroughly dry and healthy it was impossible to make them, at least in the time; but it is one thing to have the water all about the place you stand on, and another to be up to the knees in it. Not at that point only, however, but at every spot where the water could enter freely, he had done what he could provisionally for the defense of his poor colony—for alas! how much among the well-to-do, in town or city, are the poor like colonists only!—and he had great hopes of the result. Stone and brick and cement he had used freely, and one or two of the people about began to have a glimmering idea of the use of money after a gospel fashion—that is, for thorough work where and because it was needed. The curate was full of admiration and sympathy. But the whole thing gave great dissatisfaction to others not a few. For, as the currents of inundation would be somewhat altered in direction and increased in force by his obstructions, it became necessary for several others also to add to the defenses of their property, and this of course was felt to be a grievance. Their personal inconveniences were like the shilling that hides the moon, and, in the resentment they occasioned, blinded their hearts to the seriousness of the evils from which their merely temporary annoyance was the deliverance of their neighbors. A fancy of prescriptive right in their own comforts outweighed all the long and heavy sufferings of the others. Why should not their neighbors continue miserable, when they had been miserable all their lives hitherto? Those who, on the contrary, had been comfortable all their lives, and liked it so much, ought to continue comfortable—even at their expense. Why not let well alone? Or if people would be so unreasonable as to want to be comfortable too, when nobody cared a straw about them, let them make themselves comfortable without annoying those superior beings who had been comfortable all the time!—Persons who, consciously or unconsciously, reason thus, would do well to read with a little attention the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, wherein it seems recognized that a man's having been used to a thing may be just the reason, not for the continuance, but for the alteration of his condition. In the present case the person who most found himself aggrieved, was the dishonest butcher. A piece of brick wall which the minister had built in contact with the wall of his yard, would indubitably cause such a rise in the water at the descent into the area of his cellar, that, in order to its protection in a moderate flood—in a great one the cellar was always filled—the addition to its defense of two or three more rows of bricks would be required, carrying a correspondent diminution of air and light. It is one of the punishments overtaking those who wrong their neighbors, that not only do they feel more keenly than others any injury done to themselves, but they take many things for injuries that do not belong to the category. It was but a matter of a few shillings at the most, but the man who did not scruple to charge the less careful of his customers for undelivered ounces, gathering to pounds and pounds of meat, resented bitterly the necessity of the outlay. He knew, or ought to have known, that he had but to acquaint the minister with the fact, to have the thing set right at once; but the minister had found him out, and he therefore much preferred the possession of his grievance to its removal. To his friends he regretted that a minister of the gospel should be so corrupted by the mammon of unrighteousness as to use it against members of his own church: that, he said, was not the way to make friends with it. But on the pretense of a Christian spirit, he avoided showing Mr. Drake any sign of his resentment; for the face of his neighbors shames a man whose heart condemns him but shames him not. He restricted himself to grumbling, and brooded to counterplot the mischiefs of the minister. What right had he to injure him for the sake of the poor? Was it not written in the Bible: Thou shall not favor the poor man in his cause? Was it not written also: For every man shall bear his own burden? That was common sense! He did his share in supporting the poor that were church-members, but was he to suffer for improvements on Drake's property for the sake of a pack of roughs! Let him be charitable at his own cost! etc., etc. Self is prolific in argument.

It suited Mr. Drake well, notwithstanding his church republican theories, against which, in the abstract, I could ill object, seeing the whole current of Bible teaching is toward the God-inspired ideal commonwealth—it suited a man like Mr. Drake well, I say, to be an autocrat, and was a most happy thing for his tenants, for certainly no other system of government than a wise autocracy will serve in regard to the dwellings of the poor. And already, I repeat, he had effected not a little. Several new cottages had been built, and one incorrigible old one pulled down. But it had dawned upon him that, however desirable it might be on a dry hill-side, on such a foundation as this a cottage was the worst form of human dwelling that could be built. For when the whole soil was in time of rain like a full sponge, every room upon it was little better than a hollow in a cloud, and the right thing must be to reduce contact with the soil as much as possible. One high house, therefore, with many stories, and stone feet to stand upon, must be the proper kind of building for such a situation. He must lift the first house from the water, and set as many more houses as convenient upon it.

He had therefore already so far prepared for the building of such a house as should lift a good many families far above all deluge; that is, he had dug the foundation, and deep, to get at the more solid ground. In this he had been precipitate, as not unfrequently in his life; for while he was yet meditating whether he should not lay the foundation altogether solid, of the unporous stone of the neighborhood, the rains began, and there was the great hole, to stand all the winter full of water, in the middle of the cottages!

The weather cleared again, but after a St. Martin's summer unusually prolonged, the rain came down in terrible earnest. Day after day, the clouds condensed, grew water, and poured like a squeezed sponge. A wet November indeed it was—wet overhead—wet underfoot—wet all round! and the rivers rose rapidly.

When the Lythe rose beyond a certain point, it overflowed into a hollow, hardly a valley, and thereby a portion of it descended almost straight to Glaston. Hence it came that in a flood the town was invaded both by the rise of the river from below, and by this current from above, on its way to rejoin the main body of it, and the streets were soon turned into canals. The currents of the slowly swelling river and of its temporary branch then met in Pine street, and formed not a very rapid, but a heavy run at ebb tide; for Glaston, though at some distance from the mouth of the river, measuring by its course, was not far from the sea, which was visible across the green flats, a silvery line on the horizon. Landward, beyond the flats, high ground rose on all sides, and hence it was that the floods came down so deep upon Glaston.

On a certain Saturday it rained all the morning heavily, but toward the afternoon cleared a little, so that many hoped the climax had been reached, while the more experienced looked for worse. After sunset the clouds gathered thicker than before, and the rain of the day was as nothing to the torrent descending with a steady clash all night. When the slow, dull morning came Glaston stood in the middle of a brown lake, into which water was rushing from the sky in straight, continuous lines. The prospect was discomposing. Some, too confident in the apparent change, had omitted needful precautions, in most parts none were now possible, and in many more none would have been of use. Most cellars were full, and the water was rising on the ground-floors. It was a very different affair from a flood in a mountainous country, but serious enough, though without immediate danger to life. Many a person that morning stepped out of bed up to the knee in muddy water.