Surgeon Paul Faber by George MacDonald (i am malala young readers edition TXT) 📖

he was merely guessing at her religious troubles, wanting to help her. She must answer carefully.

"I have no doubt you are right, Mr. Polwarth," she said; "but there are some things it is not wise, and other things it would not be right to speak about."

"Quite true," he answered. "I did not think it wise to say any thing sooner, but now I venture to ask how the poor lady does?"

"What lady?" returned Dorothy, dreadfully startled, and turning white.

"Mrs. Faber," answered Polwarth, with the utmost calmness. "Is she not still at the Old House?"

"Is it known, then?" faltered Dorothy.

"To nobody but myself, so far as I am aware," replied the gatekeeper.

"And how long have you known it?"

"From the very day of her disappearance, I may say."

"Why didn't you let me know sooner?" said Dorothy, feeling aggrieved, though she would have found it hard to show wherein lay the injury.

"For more reasons than one," answered Polwarth; "but one will be enough: you did not trust me. It was well therefore to let you understand I could keep a secret. I let you know now only because I see you are troubled about her. I fear you have not got her to take any comfort, poor lady!"

Dorothy stood silent, gazing down with big, frightened eyes at the strange creature who looked steadfastly up at her from under what seemed a huge hat-for his head was as large as that of a tall man. He seemed to be reading her very thoughts.

"I can trust you, Miss Drake," he resumed. "If I did not, I should have at once acquainted the authorities with my suspicions; for, you will observe, you are hiding from a community a fact which it has a right to know. But I have faith enough in you to believe that you are only waiting a fit time, and have good reasons for what you do. If I can give you any help, I am at your service."

He took off his big hat, and turned away into the house.

Dorothy stood fixed for a moment or two longer, then walked slowly away, with her eyes on the ground. Before she reached the Old House, she had made up her mind to tell Polwarth as much as she could without betraying Juliet's secret, and to ask him to talk to her, for which she would contrive an opportunity.

For some time she had been growing more anxious every day. No sign of change showed in any quarter; no way opened through the difficulties that surrounded them, while these were greatly added to by the likelihood appearing that another life was on its way into them. What was to be done? How was she in her ignorance so to guard the hopeless wife that motherhood might do something to console her? She had two lives upon her hands, and did indeed want counsel. The man who knew their secret already-the minor prophet, she had heard the curate call him-might at least help her to the next step she must take.

Juliet's mental condition was not at all encouraging. She was often ailing and peevish, behaving as if she owed Dorothy grudge instead of gratitude. And indeed to herself Dorothy would remark that if nothing more came out of it than seemed likely now, Juliet would be under no very ponderous obligation to her. She found it more and more difficult to interest her in any thing. After Othello she did not read another play. Nothing pleased her but to talk about her husband. If Dorothy had seen him, Juliet had endless questions to put to her about him; and when she had answered as many of them as she could, she would put them all over again afresh. On one occasion when Dorothy could not say she believed he was, when she saw him, thinking about his wife, Juliet went into hysterics. She was growing so unmanageable that if Dorothy had not partially opened her mind to Polwarth, she must at last have been compelled to give her up. The charge was wearing her out; her strength was giving way, and her temper growing so irritable that she was ashamed of herself-and all without any good to Juliet. Twice she hinted at letting her husband know where she was, but Juliet, although, on both occasions, she had a moment before been talking as if Dorothy alone prevented her from returning to him, fell on her knees in wild distress, and entreated her to bear with her. At the smallest approach of the idea toward actuality, the recollection rushed scorching back-of how she had implored him, how she had humbled herself soul and body before him, how he had turned from her with loathing, would not put forth a hand to lift her from destruction and to restore her to peace, had left her naked on the floor, nor once returned "to ask the spotted princess how she fares"-and she shrunk with agony from any real thought of again supplicating his mercy.

Presently another difficulty began to show in the near distance: Mr. Drake, having made up his mind as to the alterations he would have effected, had begun to think there was no occasion to put off till the spring, and talked of commencing work in the house at no distant day. Dorothy therefore proposed to Juliet that, as it was impossible to conceal her there much longer, she should go to some distant part of the country, where she would contrive to follow her. But the thought of moving further from her husband, whose nearness, though she dared not seek him, seemed her only safety, was frightful to Juliet. The wasting anxiety she caused Dorothy did not occur to her. Sorrow is not selfish, but many persons are in sorrow entirely selfish. It makes them so important in their own eyes, that they seem to have a claim upon all that people can do for them.

To the extent therefore, of what she might herself have known without Juliet's confession, Dorothy, driven to her wits' end, resolved to open the matter to the gatekeeper; and accordingly, one evening on her way home, called at the lodge, and told Polwarth where and in what condition she had found Mrs. Faber, and what she had done with her; that she did not think it the part of a friend to advise her return to her husband at present; that she would not herself hear of returning; that she had no comfort, and her life was a burden to her; and that she could not possibly keep her concealed much longer, and did not know what next to do.

Polwarth answered only that he must make the acquaintance of Mrs. Faber. If that could be effected, he believed he should be able to help them out of their difficulties. Between them, therefore, they must arrange a plan for his meeting her.


CHAPTER XLI.

THE OLD GARDEN.


The next morning, Juliet, walking listlessly up and down the garden, turned the corner of a yew hedge, and came suddenly upon a figure that might well have appeared one of the kobolds of German legend. He was digging slowly but steadily, crooning a strange song-so low that, until she saw him she did not hear him.

She started back in dismay. The kobold neither raised his head nor showed other sign than the ceasing of his song that he was aware of her presence. Slowly and steadily he went on with his work. He was trenching the ground deep, still throwing the earth from the bottom to the top. Juliet, concluding he was deaf, and the ceasing of his song accidental, turned softly, and would have retreated. But Polwarth, so far from being deaf, heard better than most people. His senses, indeed, had been sharpened by his infirmities-all but those of taste and smell, which were fitful, now dull and now exquisitely keen. At the first movement breaking the stillness into which consternation had cast her, he spoke.

"Can you guess what I am doing, Mrs. Faber?" he said, throwing up a spadeful and a glance together, like a man who could spare no time from his work.

Juliet's heart got in the way, and she could not answer him. She felt much as a ghost, wandering through a house, might feel, if suddenly addressed by the name she had borne in the old days, while yet she was clothed in the garments of the flesh. Could it be that this man led such a retired life that, although living so near Glaston, and seeing so many at his gate, he had yet never heard that she had passed from the ken of the living? Or could it be that Dorothy had betrayed her? She stood quaking. The situation was strange. Before her was a man who did not seem to know that what he knew concerning her was a secret from all the world besides! And with that she had a sudden insight into the consequence of the fact of her existence coming to her husband's knowledge: would it not add to his contempt and scorn to know that she was not even dead? Would he not at once conclude that she had been contriving to work on his feelings, that she had been speculating on his repentance, counting upon and awaiting such a return of his old fondness, as would make him forget all her faults, and prepare him to receive her again with delight?-But she must answer the creature! Ill could she afford to offend him! But what was she to say? She had utterly forgotten what he had said to her. She stood staring at him, unable to speak. It was but for a few moments, but they were long as minutes. And as she gazed, it seemed as if the strange being in the trench had dug his way up from the lower parts of the earth, bringing her secret with him, and come to ask her questions. What an earthy yet unearthly look he had! Almost for the moment she believed the ancient rumors of other races than those of mankind, that shared the earth with them, but led such differently conditioned lives, that, in the course of ages, only a scanty few of the unblending natures crossed each other's path, to stand astare in mutual astonishment.

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