Paul Faber, Surgeon

With the first of the dawn the curate stood peering from the window of his dressing-room, through the water that coursed down the pane, to discover the state of the country; for the window looked inland from the skirt of the town. All was gray mist, brown water, and sheeting rain. The only things clear were that not a soul would be at church that morning, and that, though he could do nothing to divide them the bread needful for their souls, he might do something for some of their bodies. It was a happy thing it was Sunday, for, having laid in their stock of bread the day before, people were not so dependent on the bakers, half whose ovens must now be full of water. But most of the kitchens must be flooded, he reasoned, the fire-wood soaking, and the coal in some cellars inaccessible. The very lucifer-matches in many houses would be as useless as the tinderbox of a shipwrecked sailor. And if the rain were to cease at once the water would yet keep rising for many hours. He turned from the window, took his bath in homoeopathic preparation, and then went to wake his wife.

She was one of those blessed women who always open their eyes smiling. She owed very little of her power of sympathy to personal suffering; the perfection of her health might have made one who was too anxious for her spiritual growth even a little regretful. Her husband therefore had seldom to think of sparing her when any thing had to be done. She could lose a night's sleep without the smallest injury, and stand fatigue better than most men; and in the requirements of the present necessity there would be mingled a large element of adventure, almost of frolic, full of delight to a vigorous organization.

"What a good time of it the angels of wind and flame must have!" said the curate to himself as he went to wake her. "What a delight to be embodied as a wind, or a flame, or a rushing sea!—Come, Helen, my help! Glaston wants you," he said softly in her ear.

She started up.

"What is it, Thomas?" she said, holding her eyes wider open than was needful, to show him she was capable.

"Nothing to frighten you, darling," he answered, "but plenty to be done. The river is out, and the people are all asleep. Most of them will have to wait for their breakfast, I fear. We shall have no prayers this morning."

"But plenty of divine service," rejoined Helen, with a smile for what her aunt called one of his whims, as she got up and seized some of her garments.

"Take time for your bath, dear," said her husband.

"There will be time for that afterward," she replied. "What shall I do first?"

"Wake the servants, and tell them to light the kitchen fire, and make all the tea and coffee they can. But tell them to make it good. We shall get more of every thing as soon as it is light. I'll go and bring the boat. I had it drawn up and moored in the ruins ready to float yesterday. I wish I hadn't put on my shirt though: I shall have to swim for it, I fear."

"I shall have one aired before you come back," said Helen.

"Aired!" returned her husband: "you had better say watered. In five minutes neither of us will have a dry stitch on. I'll take it off again, and be content with my blue jersey."

He hurried out into the rain. Happily there was no wind.

Helen waked the servants. Before they appeared she had the fire lighted, and as many utensils as it would accommodate set upon it with water. When Wingfold returned, he found her in the midst of her household, busily preparing every kind of eatable and drinkable they could lay hands upon.

He had brought his boat to the church yard and moored it between two headstones: they would have their breakfast first, for there was no saying when they might get any lunch, and food is work. Besides, there was little to be gained by rousing people out of their good sleep: there was no danger yet.

"It is a great comfort," said the curate, as he drank his coffee, "to see how Drake goes in heart and soul for his tenants. He is pompous—a little, and something of a fine gentleman, but what is that beside his great truth! That work of his is the simplest act of Christianity of a public kind I have ever seen!"

"But is there not a great change on him since he had his money?" said Helen. "He seems to me so much humbler in his carriage and simpler in his manners than before."

"It is quite true," replied her husband. "It is mortifying to think," he went on after a little pause, "how many of our clergy, from mere beggarly pride, holding their rank superior—as better accredited servants of the Carpenter of Nazareth, I suppose—would look down on that man as a hedge-parson. The world they court looked down upon themselves from a yet greater height once, and may come to do so again. Perhaps the sooner the better, for then they will know which to choose. Now they serve Mammon and think they serve God."

"It is not quite so bad as that, surely!" said Helen.

"If it is not worldly pride, what is it? I do not think it is spiritual pride. Few get on far enough to be much in danger of that worst of all vices. It must then be church-pride, and that is the worst form of worldly pride, for it is a carrying into the kingdom of Heaven of the habits and judgments of the kingdom of Satan. I am wrong! such things can not be imported into the kingdom of Heaven: they can only be imported into the Church, which is bad enough. Helen, the churchman's pride is a thing to turn a saint sick with disgust, so utterly is it at discord with the lovely human harmony he imagines himself the minister of. He is the Pharisee, it may be the good Pharisee, of the kingdom of Heaven; but if the proud churchman be in the kingdom at all, it must be as one of the least in it. I don't believe one in ten who is guilty of this pride is aware of the sin of it. Only the other evening I heard a worthy canon say, it may have been more in joke than appeared, that he would have all dissenters burned. Now the canon would not hang one of them—but he does look down on them all with contempt. Such miserable paltry weaknesses and wickednesses, for in a servant of the Kingdom the feeling which suggests such a speech is wicked, are the moth holes in the garments of the Church, the teredo in its piles, the dry rot in its floors, the scaling and crumbling of its buttresses. They do more to ruin what such men call the Church, even in outward respects, than any of the rude attacks of those whom they thus despise. He who, in the name of Christ, pushes his neighbor from him, is a schismatic, and that of the worst and only dangerous type! But we had better be going. It's of no use telling you to take your waterproof; you'd only be giving it to the first poor woman we picked up."

"I may as well have the good of it till then," said Helen, and ran to fetch it, while the curate went to bring his boat to the house.

When he opened the door, there was no longer a spot of earth or of sky to be seen—only water, and the gray sponge filling the upper air, through which coursed multitudinous perpendicular runnels of water. Clad in a pair of old trowsers and a jersey, he went wading, and where the ground dipped, swimming, to the western gate of the churchyard. In a few minutes he was at the kitchen window, holding the boat in a long painter, for the water, although quite up to the rectory walls, was not yet deep enough there to float the boat with any body in it. The servants handed him out the great cans they used at school-teas, full of hot coffee, and baskets of bread, and he placed them in the boat, covering them with a tarpaulin. Then Helen appeared at the door, in her waterproof, with a great fur-cloak—to throw over him, she said, when she took the oars, for she meant to have her share of the fun: it was so seldom there was any going on a Sunday!—How she would have shocked her aunt, and better women than she!

"To-day," said the curate, "we shall praise God with the mirth of the good old hundredth psalm, and not with the fear of the more modern version."

As he spoke he bent to his oars, and through a narrow lane the boat soon shot into Pine-street—now a wide canal, banked with houses dreary and dead, save where, from an upper window, peeped out here and there a sleepy, dismayed countenance. In silence, except for the sounds of the oars, and the dull rush of water everywhere, they slipped along.

"This is fun!" said Helen, where she sat and steered.

"Very quiet fun as yet," answered the curate. "But it will get faster by and by."

As often as he saw any one at a window, he called out that tea and coffee would be wanted for many a poor creature's breakfast. But here they were all big houses, and he rowed swiftly past them, for his business lay, not where there were servants and well-stocked larders, but where there were mothers and children and old people, and little but water besides. Nor had they left Pine street by many houses before they came where help was right welcome. Down the first turning a miserable cottage stood three feet deep in the water. Out jumped the curate with the painter in his hand, and opened the door.

On the bed, over the edge of which the water was lapping, sat a sickly young woman in her night-dress, holding her baby to her bosom. She stared for a moment with big eyes, then looked down, and said nothing; but a rose-tinge mounted from her heart to her pale cheek.

"Good morning, Martha!" said the curate cheerily. "Rather damp—ain't it? Where's your husband?"

"Away looking for work, sir," answered Martha, in a hopeless tone.

"Then he won't miss you. Come along. Give me the baby."

"I can't come like this, sir. I ain't got no clothes on."

"Take them with you. You can't put them on: they're all wet. Mrs. Wingfold is in the boat: she'll see to every thing you want. The door's hardly wide enough to let the boat through, or I'd pull it close up to the bed for you to get in."

She hesitated.

"Come along," he repeated. "I won't look at you. Or wait—I'll take the baby, and come back for you. Then you won't get so wet."

He took the baby from her arms, and turned to the door.

"It ain't you as I mind, sir," said Martha, getting into the water at once and following him, "—no more'n my own people; but all the town'll be at the windows by this time."

"Never mind; we'll see to you," he returned.

In half a minute more, with the help of the windowsill, she was in the boat, the fur-cloak wrapped about her and the baby, drinking the first cup of the hot coffee.

"We must take her home at once," said the curate.

"You said we should have fun!" said Helen, the tears rushing into her eyes.

She had left the tiller, and, while the mother drank her coffee, was patting the baby under the cloak. But she had to betake herself to the tiller again, for the curate was not rowing straight.

When they reached the rectory, the servants might all have been grandmothers from the way they received the woman and her child.

"Give them a warm bath together," said Helen, "as quickly as possible.—And stay, let me out, Thomas—I must go and get Martha some clothes. I shan't be a minute."

The next time they returned, Wingfold, looking into the kitchen, could hardly believe the sweet face he saw by the fire, so refined in its comforted sadness, could be that of Martha. He thought whether the fine linen, clean and white, may not help the righteousness even of the saints a little.

Their next take was a boat-load of children and an old grandmother. Most of the houses had a higher story, and they took only those who had no refuge. Many more, however, drank of their coffee and ate of their bread. The whole of the morning they spent thus, calling, on their passages, wherever they thought they could get help or find accommodation. By noon a score of boats were out rendering similar assistance. The water was higher than it had been for many years, and was still rising. Faber had laid hands upon an old tub of a salmon-coble, and was the first out after the curate. But there was no fun in the poor doctor's boat. Once the curate's and his met in the middle of Pine street—both as full of people as they could carry. Wingfold and Helen greeted Faber frankly and kindly. He returned their greeting with solemn courtesy, rowing heavily past.

By lunch-time, Helen had her house almost full, and did not want to go again: there was so much to be done! But her husband persuaded her to give him one hour more: the servants were doing so well! he said. She yielded. He rowed her to the church, taking up the sexton and his boy on their way. There the crypts and vaults were full of water. Old wood-carvings and bits of ancient coffins were floating about in them. But the floor of the church was above the water: he landed Helen dry in the porch, and led her to the organ-loft. Now the organ was one of great power; seldom indeed, large as the church was, did they venture its full force: he requested her to pull out every stop, and send the voice of the church, in full blast, into every corner of Glaston. He would come back for her in half an hour and take her home. He desired the sexton to leave all the doors open, and remember that the instrument would want every breath of wind he and his boy could raise.

He had just laid hold of his oars, when out of the porch rushed a roar of harmony that seemed to seize his boat and blow it away upon its mission like a feather—for in the delight of the music the curate never felt the arms that urged it swiftly along. After him it came pursuing, and wafted him mightily on. Over the brown waters it went rolling, a grand billow of innumerable involving and involved waves. He thought of the spirit of God that moved on the face of the primeval waters, and out of a chaos wrought a cosmos. "Would," he said to himself, "that ever from the church door went forth such a spirit of harmony and healing of peace and life! But the church's foes are they of her own household, who with the axes and hammers of pride and exclusiveness and vulgar priestliness, break the carved work of her numberless chapels, yea, build doorless screens from floor to roof, dividing nave and choir and chancel and transepts and aisles into sections numberless, and, with the evil dust they raise, darken for ages the windows of her clerestory!"

The curate was thinking of no party, but of individual spirit. Of the priestliness I have encountered, I can not determine whether the worse belonged to the Church of England or a certain body of Dissenters.

CHAPTER XLIII

THE GATE-LODGE

Mr Bevis had his horses put to, then taken away again, and an old hunter saddled. But half-way from home he came to a burst bridge, and had to return, much to the relief of his wife, who, when she had him in the house again, could enjoy the rain, she said: it was so cosey and comfortable to feel you could not go out, or any body call. I presume she therein seemed to take a bond of fate, and doubly assure the every-day dullness of her existence. Well, she was a good creature, and doubtless a corner would be found for her up above, where a little more work would probably be required of her.

Polwarth and his niece Ruth rose late, for neither had slept well. When they had breakfasted, they read together from the Bible: first the uncle read the passage he had last got light upon—he was always getting light upon passages, and then the niece the passage she had last been gladdened by; after which they sat and chatted a long time by the kitchen fire.

"I am afraid your asthma was bad last night, uncle dear," said Ruth. "I heard your breathing every time I woke."

"It was, rather," answered the little man, "but I took my revenge, and had a good crow over it."

"I know what you mean, uncle: do let me hear the crow."

He rose, and slowly climbing the stair to his chamber, returned with a half sheet of paper in his hand, resumed his seat, and read the following lines, which he had written in pencil when the light came:

Satan, avaunt!Nay, take thine hour;Thou canst not daunt,Thou hast no power;Be welcome to thy nest,Though it be in my breast.Burrow amain;Dig like a mole;Fill every veinWith half-burned coal;Puff the keen dust about,And all to choke me out.Fill music's waysWith creaking cries,That no loud praiseMay climb the skies;And on my laboring chestLay mountains of unrest.My slumber steepIn dreams of haste,That only sleep,No rest I taste—With stiflings, rimes of rote,And fingers on the throat.Satan, thy mightI do defy;Live core of night,I patient lie:A wind comes up the grayWill blow thee clean away.Christ's angel, Death,All radiant white,With one cold breathWill scare thee quite,And give my lungs an airAs fresh as answered prayer.So, Satan, doThy worst with me,Until the TrueShall set me free,And end what He began,By making me a man.

"It is not much of poetry, Ruth!" he said, raising his eyes from the paper; "—no song of thrush or blackbird! I am ashamed that I called it a cock-crow—for that is one of the finest things in the world—a clarion defiance to darkness and sin—far too good a name for my poor jingle—except, indeed, you call it a Cochin-china-cock-crow—from out a very wheezy chest!"

"'My strength is made perfect in weakness,'" said Ruth solemnly, heedless of the depreciation. To her the verses were as full of meaning as if she had made them herself.

"I think I like the older reading better—that is, without the My," said Polwarth: "'Strength is made perfect in weakness.' Somehow—I can not explain the feeling—to hear a grand aphorism, spoken in widest application, as a fact of more than humanity, of all creation, from the mouth of the human God, the living Wisdom, seems to bring me close to the very heart of the universe. Strength—strength itself—all over—is made perfect in weakness;—a law of being, you see, Ruth! not a law of Christian growth only, but a law of growth, even all the growth leading up to the Christian, which growth is the highest kind of creation. The Master's own strength was thus perfected, and so must be that of His brothers and sisters. Ah, what a strength must be his!—how patient in endurance—how gentle in exercise—how mighty in devotion—how fine in its issues,-perfected by such suffering! Ah, my child, you suffer sorely sometimes—I know it well! but shall we not let patience have her perfect work, that we may—one day, Ruth, one day, my child—be perfect and entire, wanting nothing?"

Led by the climax of his tone, Ruth slipped from her stool on her knees.

Polwarth kneeled beside her, and said:

"O Father of life, we praise Thee that one day Thou wilt take Thy poor crooked creatures, and give them bodies like Christ's, perfect as His, and full of Thy light. Help us to grow faster—as fast as Thou canst help us to grow. Help us to keep our eyes on the opening of Thy hand, that we may know the manna when it comes. O Lord, we rejoice that we are Thy making, though Thy handiwork is not very clear in our outer man as yet. We bless Thee that we feel Thy hand making us. What if it be in pain! Evermore we hear the voice of the potter above the hum and grind of his wheel. Father, Thou only knowest how we love Thee. Fashion the clay to Thy beautiful will. To the eyes of men we are vessels of dishonor, but we know Thou dost not despise us, for Thou hast made us, and Thou dwellest with us. Thou hast made us love Thee, and hope in Thee, and in Thy love we will be brave and endure. All in good time, O Lord. Amen."

While they thus prayed, kneeling on the stone floor of the little kitchen, dark under the universal canopy of cloud, the rain went on clashing and murmuring all around, rushing from the eaves, and exploding with sharp hisses in the fire, and in the mingled noise they had neither heard a low tap, several times repeated, nor the soft opening of the door that followed. When they rose from their knees, it was therefore with astonishment they saw a woman standing motionless in the doorway, without cloak or bonnet, her dank garments clinging to her form and dripping with rain.

When Juliet woke that morning, she cared little that the sky was dull and the earth dark. A selfish sorrow, a selfish love even, makes us stupid, and Juliet had been growing more and more stupid. Many people, it seems to me, through sorrow endured perforce and without a gracious submission, slowly sink in the scale of existence. Such are some of those middle-aged women, who might be the very strength of social well-being, but have no aspiration, and hope only downward—after rich husbands for their daughters, it may be—a new bonnet or an old coronet—the devil knows what.

Bad as the weather had been the day before, Dorothy had yet contrived to visit her, and see that she was provided with every necessary; and Juliet never doubted she would come that day also. She thought of Dorothy's ministrations as we so often do of God's—as of things that come of themselves, for which there is no occasion to be thankful.

When she had finished the other little house-work required for her comfort, a labor in which she found some little respite from the gnawings of memory and the blankness of anticipation, she ended by making up a good fire, though without a thought of Dorothy's being wet when she arrived, and sitting down by the window, stared out at the pools, spreading wider and wider on the gravel walks beneath her. She sat till she grew chilly, then rose and dropped into an easy chair by the fire, and fell fast asleep.

She slept a long time, and woke in a terror, seeming to have waked herself with a cry. The fire was out, and the hearth cold. She shivered and drew her shawl about her. Then suddenly she remembered the frightful dream she had had.

She dreamed that she had just fled from her husband and gained the park, when, the moment she entered it, something seized her from behind, and bore her swiftly, as in the arms of a man—only she seemed to hear the rush of wings behind her—the way she had been going. She struggled in terror, but in vain; the power bore her swiftly on, and she knew whither. Her very being recoiled from the horrible depth of the motionless pool, in which, as she now seemed to know, lived one of the loathsome creatures of the semi-chaotic era of the world, which had survived its kind as well as its coevals, and was ages older than the human race. The pool appeared—but not as she had known it, for it boiled and heaved, bubbled and rose. From its lowest depths it was moved to meet and receive her! Coil upon coil it lifted itself into the air, towering like a waterspout, then stretched out a long, writhing, shivering neck to take her from the invisible arms that bore her to her doom. The neck shot out a head, and the head shot out the tongue of a water-snake. She shrieked and woke, bathed in terror.

With the memory of the dream not a little of its horror returned; she rose to shake it off, and went to the window. What did she see there? The fearsome pool had entered the garden, had come half-way to the house, and was plainly rising every moment. More or less the pool had haunted her ever since she came; she had seldom dared go nearer it than half-way down the garden. But for the dulling influence of her misery, it would have been an unendurable horror to her, now it was coming to fetch her as she had seen it in her warning dream! Her brain reeled; for a moment she gazed paralyzed with horror, then turned from the window, and, with almost the conviction that the fiend of her vision was pursuing her, fled from the house, and across the park, through the sheets of rain, to the gate-lodge, nor stopped until, all unaware of having once thought of him in her terror, she stood at the door of Polwarth's cottage.

Ruth was darting toward her with outstretched hands, when her uncle stopped her.

"Ruth, my child," he said, "run and light a fire in the parlor. I will welcome our visitor."

She turned instantly, and left the room. Then Polwarth went up to Juliet, who stood trembling, unable to utter a word, and said, with perfect old-fashioned courtesy, "You are heartily welcome, ma'am. I sent Ruth away that I might first assure you that you are as safe with her as with me. Sit here a moment, ma'am. You are so wet, I dare not place you nearer to the fire.—Ruth!"

She came instantly.

"Ruth," he repeated, "this lady is Mrs. Faber. She is come to visit us for a while. Nobody must know of it.—You need not be at all uneasy, Mrs. Faber. Not a soul will come near us to-day. But I will lock the door, to secure time, if any one should.—You will get Mrs. Faber's room ready at once, Ruth. I will come and help you. But a spoonful of brandy in hot water first, please.—Let me move your chair a little, ma'am—out of the draught."