Paul Faber, Surgeon

He struck his fist on the table, rose, and turned from him. Faber also rose, quietly, silent and pale. He stood a moment, waiting. Mr. Drake turned. Faber made him an obeisance, and left the room.

The minister was too hard upon him. He would not have been so hard but for his atheism; he would not have been so hard if he could have seen into his soul. But Faber felt he deserved it. Ere he reached home, however, he had begun to think it rather hard that, when a man confessed a wrong, and desired to make what reparation he could, he should have the very candor of his confession thus thrown in his teeth. Verily, even toward the righteous among men, candor is a perilous duty.

He entered the surgery. There he had been making some experiments with peroxide of manganese, a solution of which stood in a bottle on the table. A ray of brilliant sunlight was upon it, casting its shadow on a piece of white paper, a glorious red. It caught his eyes. He could never tell what it had to do with the current of his thoughts, but neither could he afterward get rid of the feeling that it had had some influence upon it. For as he looked at it, scarcely knowing he did, and thinking still how hard the minister had been upon him, suddenly he found himself in the minister's place, and before him Juliet making her sad confession: how had he met that confession? The whole scene returned, and for the first time struck him right on the heart, and then first he began to be in reality humbled in his own eyes. What if, after all, he was but a poor creature? What if, instead of having any thing to be proud of, he was in reality one who, before any jury of men or women called to judge him, must hide his head in shame?

The thought once allowed to enter and remain long enough to be questioned, never more went far from him. For a time he walked in the midst of a dull cloud, first of dread, then of dismay—a cloud from which came thunders, and lightnings, and rain. It passed, and a doubtful dawn rose dim and scared upon his consciousness, a dawn in which the sun did not appear, and on which followed a gray, solemn day. A humbler regard of himself had taken the place of confidence and satisfaction. An undefined hunger, far from understood by himself, but having vaguely for its object clearance and atonement and personal purity even, had begun to grow, and move within him. The thought stung him with keen self-contempt, yet think he must and did, that a woman might be spotted not a little, and yet be good enough for him in the eyes of retributive justice. He saw plainly that his treatment of his wife, knowing what he did of himself, was a far worse shame than any fault of which a girl, such as Juliet was at the time, could have been guilty. And with that, for all that he believed it utterly in vain, his longing after the love he had lost, grew and grew, ever passing over into sickening despair, and then springing afresh; he longed for Juliet as she had prayed to him—as the only power that could make him clean; it seemed somehow as if she could even help him in his repentance for the wrong done to Amanda's mother. The pride of the Pharisee was gone, the dignity of the husband had vanished, and his soul longed after the love that covers a multitude of sins, as the air in which alone his spirit could breathe and live and find room. I set it down briefly: the change passed upon him by many degrees, with countless alternations of mood and feeling, and without the smallest conscious change of opinion.

The rest of the day after receiving Faber's communication, poor Mr. Drake roamed about like one on the verge of insanity, struggling to retain lawful dominion over his thoughts. At times he was lost in apprehensive melancholy, at times roused to such fierce anger that he had to restrain himself from audible malediction. The following day Dorothy would have sent for Faber, for he had a worse attack of the fever than ever before, but he declared that the man should never again cross his threshold. Dorothy concluded there had been a fresh outbreak between them of the old volcano. He grew worse and worse, and did not object to her sending for Dr. Mather; but he did not do him much good. He was in a very critical state, and Dorothy was miserable about him. The fever was persistent, and the cough which he had had ever since the day that brought his illness, grew worse. His friends would gladly have prevailed upon him to seek a warmer climate, but he would not hear of it.

Upon one occasion, Dorothy, encouraged by the presence of Dr. Mather, was entreating him afresh to go somewhere from home for a while.

"No, no: what would become of my money?" he answered, with a smile which Dorothy understood. The doctor imagined it the speech of a man whom previous poverty and suddenly supervening wealth had made penurious.

"Oh!" he remarked reassuringly, "you need not spend a penny more abroad than you do at home. The difference in the living would, in some places, quite make up for the expense of the journey."

The minister looked bewildered for a moment, then seemed to find himself, smiled again, and replied—

"You do not quite understand me: I have a great deal of money to spend, and it ought to be spent here in England where it was made—God knows how."

"You may get help to spend it in England, without throwing your life away with it," said the doctor, who could not help thinking of his own large family.

"Yes, I dare say I might—from many—but it was given me to spend—in destroying injustice, in doing to men as others ought to have done to them. My preaching was such a poor affair that it is taken from me, and a lower calling given me—to spend money. If I do not well with that, then indeed I am a lost man. If I be not faithful in that which is another's, who will give me that which is my own? If I can not further the coming of Christ, I can at least make a road or two, exalt a valley or two, to prepare His way before Him."

Thereupon it was the doctor's turn to smile. All that was to him as if spoken in a language unknown, except that he recognized the religious tone in it. "The man is true to his profession," he said to himself, "—as he ought to be of course; but catch me spending my money that way, if I had but a hold of it!"

His father died soon after, and he got a hold of the money he called his, whereupon he parted with his practice, and by idleness and self-indulgence, knowing all the time what he was about, brought on an infirmity which no skill could cure, and is now a grumbling invalid, at one or another of the German spas. I mention it partly because many preferred this man to Faber on the ground that he went to church every Sunday, and always shook his head at the other's atheism.

Faber wrote a kind, respectful letter, somewhat injured in tone, to the minister, saying he was much concerned to hear that he was not so well, and expressing his apprehension that he himself had been in some measure the cause of his relapse. He begged leave to assure him that he perfectly recognized the absolute superiority of Mr. Drake's claim to the child. He had never dreamed of asserting any right in her, except so much as was implied in the acknowledgment of his duty to restore the expense which his wrong and neglect had caused her true father; beyond that he well knew he could make no return save in gratitude; but if he might, for the very partial easing of his conscience, be permitted to supply the means of the child's education, he was ready to sign an agreement that all else connected with it should be left entirely to Mr. Drake. He begged to be allowed to see her sometimes, for, long ere a suspicion had crossed his mind that she was his, the child was already dear to him. He was certain that her mother would have much preferred Mr. Drake's influence to his own, and for her sake also, he would be careful to disturb nothing. But he hoped Mr. Drake would remember that, however unworthy, he was still her father.

The minister was touched by the letter, moved also in the hope that an arrow from the quiver of truth had found in the doctor a vulnerable spot. He answered that he should be welcome to see the child when he would; and that she should go to him when he pleased. He must promise, however, as the honest man every body knew him to be, not to teach her there was no God, or lead her to despise the instructions she received at home.

The word honest was to Faber like a blow. He had come to the painful conclusion that he was neither honest man nor gentleman. Doubtless he would have knocked any one down who told him so, but then who had the right to take with him the liberties of a conscience? Pure love only, I suspect, can do that without wrong. He would not try less to be honest in the time to come, but he had never been, and could no more ever feel honest. It did not matter much. What was there worth any effort? All was flat and miserable—a hideous long life! What did it matter what he was, so long as he hurt nobody any more! He was tired of it all.

It added greatly to his despondency that he found he could no longer trust his temper. That the cause might be purely physical was no consolation to him. He had been accustomed to depend on his imperturbability, and now he could scarcely recall the feeling of the mental condition. He did not suspect how much the change was owing to his new-gained insight into his character, and the haunting dissatisfaction it caused.

To the minister he replied that he had been learning a good deal of late, and among other things that the casting away of superstition did not necessarily do much for the development of the moral nature; in consequence of which discovery, he did not feel bound as before to propagate the negative portions of his creed. If its denials were true, he no longer believed them powerful for good; and merely as facts he did not see that a man was required to disseminate them. Even here, however, his opinion must go for little, seeing he had ceased to care much for any thing, true or false. Life was no longer of any value to him, except indeed he could be of service to Amanda. Mr. Drake might be assured she was the last person on whom he would wish to bring to bear any of the opinions so objectionable in his eyes. He would make him the most comprehensive promise to that effect. Would Mr. Drake allow him to say one thing more?—He was heartily ashamed of his past history; and if there was one thing to make him wish there were a God—of which he saw no chance—it was that he might beg of Him the power to make up for the wrongs he had done, even if it should require an eternity of atonement. Until he could hope for that, he must sincerely hold that his was the better belief, as well as the likelier—namely, that the wronger and the wronged went into darkness, friendly with oblivion, joy and sorrow alike forgotten, there to bid adieu both to reproach and self-contempt. For himself he had no desire after prolonged existence. Why should he desire to live a day, not to say forever—worth nothing to himself, or to any one? If there were a God, he would rather entreat Him, and that he would do humbly enough, to unmake him again. Certainly, if there were a God, He had not done over well by His creatures, making them so ignorant and feeble that they could not fail to fall. Would Mr. Drake have made his Amanda so?

When Wingfold read the letter of which I have thus given the substance—it was not until a long time after, in Polwarth's room—he folded it softly together and said:

"When he wrote that letter, Paul Faber was already becoming not merely a man to love, but a man to revere." After a pause he added, "But what a world it would be, filled with contented men, all capable of doing the things for which they would despise themselves."

It was some time before the minister was able to answer the letter except by sending Amanda at once to the doctor with a message of kind regards and thanks. But his inability to reply was quite as much from the letter's giving him so much to think of first, as from his weakness and fever. For he saw that to preach, as it was commonly understood, the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins to such a man, would be useless: he would rather believe in a God who would punish them, than in One who would pass them by. To be told he was forgiven, would but rouse in him contemptuous indignation. "What is that to me?" he would return. "I remain what I am." Then grew up in the mind of the minister the following plant of thought: "Things divine can only be shadowed in the human; what is in man must be understood of God with the divine difference—not only of degree, but of kind, involved in the fact that He makes me, I can make nothing, and if I could, should yet be no less a creature of Him the Creator; therefore, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and what we call His forgiveness may be, must be something altogether transcending the conception of man—overwhelming to such need as even that of Paul Faber, whose soul has begun to hunger after righteousness, and whose hunger must be a hunger that will not easily be satisfied." For a poor nature will for a time be satisfied with a middling God; but as the nature grows richer, the ideal of the God desired grows greater. The true man can be satisfied only with a God of magnificence, never with a God such as in his childhood and youth had been presented to Faber as the God of the Bible. That God only whom Christ reveals to the humble seeker, can ever satisfy human soul.

Then it came into the minister's mind, thinking over Faber's religion toward his fellows, and his lack toward God, how when the young man asked Jesus what commandments he must keep up that he might inherit eternal life, Jesus did not say a word concerning those of the first table—not a word, that is, about his duty toward God; He spoke only of his duty toward man. Then it struck him that our Lord gave him no sketch or summary or part of a religious system—only told him what he asked, the practical steps by which he might begin to climb toward eternal life. One thing he lacked—namely, God Himself, but as to how God would meet him, Jesus says nothing, but Himself meets him on those steps with the offer of God. He treats the duties of the second table as a stair to the first—a stair which, probably by its crumbling away in failure beneath his feet as he ascended, would lift him to such a vision and such a horror of final frustration, as would make him stretch forth his hands, like the sinking Peter, to the living God, the life eternal which he blindly sought, without whose closest presence he could never do the simplest duty aright, even of those he had been doing from his youth up. His measure of success, and his sense of utter failure, would together lift him toward the One Good.

Thus, looking out upon truth from the cave of his brother's need, and seeing the direction in which the shadow of his atheism fell, the minister learned in what direction the clouded light lay, and turning his gaze thitherward, learned much. It is only the aged who have dropped thinking that become stupid. Such can learn no more, until first their young nurse Death has taken off their clothes, and put the old babies to bed. Of such was not Walter Drake. Certain of his formerly petted doctrines he now threw away as worse than rubbish; others he dropped with indifference; of some it was as if the angels picked his pockets without his knowing it, or ever missing them; and still he found, whatever so-called doctrine he parted with, that the one glowing truth which had lain at the heart of it, buried, mired, obscured, not only remained with him, but shone out fresh, restored to itself by the loss of the clay-lump of worldly figures and phrases, in which the human intellect had inclosed it. His faith was elevated, and so confirmed.

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE BORDER-LAND

Mr. Drew, the draper, was, of all his friends, the one who most frequently visited his old pastor. He had been the first, although a deacon of the church, in part to forsake his ministry, and join the worship of, as he honestly believed, a less scriptural community, because in the abbey church he heard better news of God and His Kingdom: to him rightly the gospel was every thing, and this church or that, save for its sake, less than nothing and vanity. It had hurt Mr. Drake not a little at first, but he found Drew in consequence only the more warmly his personal friend, and since learning to know Wingfold, had heartily justified his defection; and now that he was laid up, he missed something any day that passed without a visit from the draper. One evening Drew found him very poorly, though neither the doctor nor Dorothy could prevail upon him to go to bed. He could not rest, but kept walking about, his eye feverish, his pulse fluttering. He welcomed his friend even more warmly than usual, and made him sit by the fire, while he paced the room, turning and turning, like a caged animal that fain would be king of infinite space.

"I am sorry to see you so uncomfortable," said Mr. Drew.

"On the contrary, I feel uncommonly well," replied the pastor. "I always measure my health by my power of thinking; and to-night my thoughts are like birds—or like bees rather, that keep flying in delight from one lovely blossom to another. Only the fear keeps intruding that an hour may be at hand, when my soul will be dark, and it will seem as if the Lord had forsaken me."

"But does not our daily bread mean our spiritual as well as our bodily bread?" said the draper. "Is it not just as wrong in respect of the one as of the other to distrust God for to-morrow when you have enough for to-day? Is He a God of times and seasons, of this and that, or is He the All in all?"

"You are right, old friend," said the minister, and ceasing his walk, he sat down by the fire opposite him. "I am faithless still.—O Father in Heaven, give us this day our daily bread.—I suspect, Drew, that I have had as yet no more than the shadow of an idea how immediately I—we live upon the Father.—I will tell you something. I had been thinking what it would be if God were now to try me with heavenly poverty, as for a short time he tried me with earthly poverty—that is, if he were to stint me of life itself—not give me enough of Himself to live upon—enough to make existence feel a good. The fancy grew to a fear, laid hold upon me, and made me miserable. Suppose, for instance, I said to myself, I were no more to have any larger visitation of thoughts and hopes and aspirations than old Mrs. Bloxam, who sits from morning to night with the same stocking on her needles, and absolutely the same expression, of as near nothing as may be upon human countenance, nor changes whoever speaks to her!"

"She says the Lord is with her," suggested the draper.

"Well!" rejoined the minister, in a slow, cogitative tone.

"And plainly life is to her worth having," added the draper. "Clearly she has as much of life as is necessary to her present stage."

"You are right. I have been saying just the same things to myself; and, I trust, when the Lord comes, He will not find me without faith. But just suppose life were to grow altogether uninteresting! Suppose certain moods—such as you, with all your good spirits and blessed temper, must surely sometimes have experienced—suppose they were to become fixed, and life to seem utterly dull, God nowhere, and your own dreary self, and nothing but that self, everywhere!"

"Let me read you a chapter of St. John," said the draper.

"Presently I will. But I am not in the right mood just this moment. Let me tell you first how I came by my present mood. Don't mistake me: I am not possessed by the idea—I am only trying to understand its nature, and set a trap fit to catch it, if it should creep into my inner premises, and from an idea swell to a seeming fact.—Well, I had a strange kind of a vision last night—no, not a vision—yes, a kind of vision—anyhow a very strange experience. I don't know whether the draught the doctor gave me—I wish I had poor Faber back—this fellow is fitter to doctor oxen and mules than men!—I don't know whether the draught had any thing to do with it—I thought I tasted something sleepy in it—anyhow, thought is thought, and truth is truth, whatever drug, no less than whatever joy or sorrow, may have been midwife to it. The first I remember of the mental experience, whatever it may have to be called, is, that I was coming awake—returning to myself after some period wherein consciousness had been quiescent. Of place, or time, or circumstance, I knew nothing. I was only growing aware of being. I speculated upon nothing. I did not even say to myself, 'I was dead, and now I am coming alive.' I only felt. And I had but one feeling—and that feeling was love—the outgoing of a longing heart toward—I could not tell what;—toward—I can not describe the feeling—toward the only existence there was, and that was every thing;—toward pure being, not as an abstraction, but as the one actual fact, whence the world, men, and me—a something I knew only by being myself an existence. It was more me than myself; yet it was not me, or I could not have loved it. I never thought me myself by myself; my very existence was the consciousness of this absolute existence in and through and around me: it made my heart burn, and the burning of my heart was my life—and the burning was the presence of the Absolute. If you can imagine a growing fruit, all blind and deaf, yet loving the tree it could neither look upon nor hear, knowing it only through the unbroken arrival of its life therefrom—that is something like what I felt. I suspect the form of the feeling was supplied by a shadowy memory of the time before I was born, while yet my life grew upon the life of my mother.

"By degrees came a change. What seemed the fire in me, burned and burned until it began to grow light; in which light I began to remember things I had read and known about Jesus Christ and His Father and my Father. And with those memories the love grew and grew, till I could hardly bear the glory of God and His Christ, it made me love so intensely. Then the light seemed to begin to pass out beyond me somehow, and therewith I remembered the words of the Lord, 'Let your light so shine before men,' only I was not letting it shine, for while I loved like that, I could no more keep it from shining than I could the sun. The next thing was, that I began to think of one I had loved, then of another and another and another—then of all together whom ever I had loved, one after another, then all together. And the light that went out from me was as a nimbus infolding every one in the speechlessness of my love. But lo! then, the light staid not there, but, leaving them not, went on beyond them, reaching and infolding every one of those also, whom, after the manner of men, I had on earth merely known and not loved. And therewith I knew that, for all the rest of the creation of God, I needed but the hearing of the ears or the seeing of the eyes to love each and every one, in his and her degree; whereupon such a perfection of bliss awoke in me, that it seemed as if the fire of the divine sacrifice had at length seized upon my soul, and I was dying of absolute glory—which is love and love only. I had all things, yea the All. I was full and unutterably, immeasurably content. Yet still the light went flowing out and out from me, and love was life and life was light and light was love. On and on it flowed, until at last it grew eyes to me, and I could see. Lo! before me was the multitude of the brothers and sisters whom I loved—individually—a many, many—not a mass;—I loved every individual with that special, peculiar kind of love which alone belonged to that one, and to that one alone. The sight dazzled the eyes which love itself had opened. I said to myself, 'Ah, how radiant, how lovely, how divine they are! and they are mine, every one—the many, for I love them!'

"Then suddenly came a whisper—not to my ear—I heard it far away, but whether in some distant cave of thought, away beyond the flaming walls of the universe, or in some forgotten dungeon-corner of my own heart, I could not tell. 'O man,' it said, 'what a being, what a life is thine! See all these souls, these fires of life, regarding and loving thee! It is in the glory of thy love their faces shine. Their hearts receive it, and send it back in joy. Seest thou not all their eyes fixed upon thine? Seest thou not the light come and go upon their faces, as the pulses of thy heart flow and ebb? See, now they flash, and now they fade! Blessed art thou, O man, as none else in the universe of God is blessed!'