Part 10 (1/2)
Suddenly she looked up, and said hurriedly:
”I can never repay you, Dr. Faber. No one can do the impossible.”
”You can repay me,” returned Faber.
”How?” she said, looking startled.
”By never again thinking of obligation to me.”
”You must not ask that of me,” she rejoined. ”It would not be right.”
The tinge of a rose not absolutely white floated over her face and forehead as she spoke.
”Then I shall be content,” he replied, ”if you will say nothing about it until you are well settled. After that I promise to send you a bill as long as a snipe's.”
She smiled, looked up brightly, and said,
”You promise?”
”I do.”
”If you don't keep your promise, I shall have to take severe measures.
Don't fancy me without money. I _could_ pay you now--at least I think so.”
It was a great good sign of her that she could talk about money plainly as she did. It wants a thoroughbred soul to talk _just_ right about money. Most people treat money like a bosom-sin: they follow it earnestly, but do not talk about it at all in society.
”I only pay six s.h.i.+llings a week for my lodgings!” she added, with a merry laugh.
What had become of her constraint and stateliness? Courtesy itself seemed gone, and simple trust in its place! Was she years younger than he had thought her? She was hemming something, which demanded her eyes, but every now and then she cast up a glance, and they were black suns unclouding over a white sea. Every look made a vintage in the doctor's heart. There _could_ be no man in the case! Only again, would fifty pounds, with the loss of a family ring, serve to account for such a change? Might she not have heard from somebody since he saw her yesterday? In her presence he dared not follow the thought.
Some books were lying on the table which could not well be Mrs.
Puckridge's. He took up one: it was _In Memoriam_.
”Do you like Tennyson?” she asked.
”That is a hard question to answer straight off,” he replied.--He had once liked Tennyson, else he would not have answered so.--”Had you asked me if I liked _In Memoriam_” he went on, ”I could more easily have answered you.”
”Then, don't you like _In Memoriam_?”
”No; it is weak and exaggerated.”
”Ah! you don't understand it. I didn't until after my father died. Then I began to know what it meant, and now think it the most beautiful poem I ever read.”
”You are fond of poetry, then?”
”I don't read much; but I think there is more in some poetry than in all the prose in the world.”
”That is a good deal to say.”
”A good deal too much, when I think that I haven't read, I suppose, twenty books in my life--that is, books worth calling books: I don't mean novels and things of that kind. Yet I can not believe twenty years of good reading would make me change my mind about _In Memoriam_.--You don't like poetry?”
”I can't say I do--much. I like Pope and Crabbe--and--let me see--well, I used to like Thomson. I like the men that give you things just as they are. I do not like the poets that mix themselves up with what they see, and then rave about Nature. I confess myself a lover of the truth beyond all things.”