Part 24 (1/2)
”You are a wretch below insult,” returned the doctor; and the next moment the youth staggered again down the steps, this time to fall, in awkward and ignominious fas.h.i.+on, half on the pavement, half in the road.
Then out on the top of the steps came Paul Faber, white with wrath, too full of indignation to see person or thing except the object of it.
”You d.a.m.ned rascal!” he cried. ”If you set foot on my premises again, it will be at the risk of your contemptible life.”
”Come, come, Mr. Faber! this won't do,” returned the youth, defiantly, as he gathered himself up. ”I don't want to make a row, but--
”_You_ don't want to make a row, you puppy! Then _I_ do. You don't come into my house again. I'll have your traps turned out to you.--Jenkins!--You had better leave the town as fast as you can, too, for this won't be a secret.”
”You'll allow me to call on Mr. Crispin first?”
”Do. Tell him the truth, and see whether he'll take the thing up! If I were G.o.d, I'd d.a.m.n you!”
”Big words from you, Faber!” said the youth with a sneer, struggling hard to keep the advantage he had in temper. ”Every body knows you don't believe there is any G.o.d.”
”Then there ought to be, so long as such as you 'ain't got your deserts.
_You_ set up for a doctor! I would sooner lose all the practice I ever made than send _you_ to visit woman or child, you heartless miscreant!”
The epithet the doctor really used here was stronger and more contemptuous, but it is better to take the liberty of subst.i.tuting this.
”What have I done then to let loose all this Billingsgate?” cried the young man indignantly. ”I have done nothing the most distinguished in the profession haven't done twenty times over.”
”I don't care a d.a.m.n. What's the profession to humanity! For a wonder the public is in the right on this question, and I side with the public.
The profession may go to--Turkey!”--Probably Turkey was not the place he had intended to specify, but at the moment he caught sight of Juliet and her companion.--”There!” he concluded, pointing to the door behind him, ”you go in and put your things up--_and be off_.”
Without another word, the young man ascended the steps, and entered the house.
Juliet stood staring, motionless and white. Again and again Dorothy would have turned back, but Juliet grasped her by the arm, stood as if frozen to the spot, and would not let her move. She _must_ know what it meant. And all the time a little crowd had been gathering, as it well might, even in a town no bigger than Glaston, at such uproar in its usually so quiet streets. At first it was all women, who showed their interest by a fixed regard of each speaker in the quarrel in turn, and a confused staring from one to the other of themselves. No handle was yet visible by which to lay hold of the affair. But the moment the young man re-entered the surgery, and just as Faber was turning to go after him, out, like a bolt, shot from the open door a long-legged, gaunt mongrel dog, in such a pitiful state as I will not horrify my readers by attempting to describe. It is enough to say that the knife had been used upon him with a ghastly freedom. In an agony of soundless terror the poor animal, who could never recover the usage he had had, and seemed likely to tear from himself a part of his body at every bound, rushed through the spectators, who scattered horror-stricken from his path. Ah, what a wild waste look the creature had!--as if his spirit within him were wan with dismay at the lawless invasion of his humble house of life. A cry, almost a shriek, rose from the little crowd, to which a few men had now added themselves. The doctor came das.h.i.+ng down the steps in pursuit of him. The same instant, having just escaped collision with the dog, up came Mr. Drew. His round face flamed like the sun in a fog with anger and pity and indignation. He rushed straight at the doctor, and would have collared him. Faber flung him from him without a word, and ran on. The draper reeled, but recovered himself, and was starting to follow, when Juliet, hurrying up, with white face and flas.h.i.+ng eyes, laid her hand on his arm, and said, in a voice of whose authoritative tone she was herself unconscious,
”Stop, Mr. Drew.”
The draper obeyed, but stood speechless with anger, not yet doubting it was the doctor who had so misused the dog.
”I have been here from the first,” she went on. ”Mr. Faber is as angry as you are.--Please, Dorothy, will you come?--It is that a.s.sistant of his, Mr. Drew! He hasn't been with him more than three days.”
With Dorothy beside her, Juliet now told him, loud enough for all to hear, what they had heard and seen. ”I must go and beg his pardon,” said the draper. ”I had no right to come to such a hasty conclusion. I hope he will not find it hard to forgive me.”
”You did no more than he would have done in your place,” replied Juliet.
”--But,” she added, ”where is the G.o.d of that poor animal, Mr. Drew?”
”I expect He's taken him by this time,” answered the draper. ”But I must go and find the doctor.”
So saying, he turned and left them. The ladies went also, and the crowd dispersed. But already rumors, as evil as discordant, were abroad in Glaston to the prejudice of Faber, and at the door of his G.o.dlessness was from all sides laid the charge of cruelty.
How difficult it is to make prevalent the right notion of any thing! But only a little reflection is required to explain the fact. The cause is, that so few people give themselves the smallest trouble to understand what is told them. The first thing suggested by the words spoken is taken instead of the fact itself, and to that as a ground-plan all that follows is fitted. People listen so badly, even when not sleepily, that the wonder is any thing of consequence should ever be even approximately understood. How appalling it would be to one anxious to convey a meaning, to see the shapes his words a.s.sumed in the mind of his listening friend! For, in place of falling upon the table of his perception, kept steady by will and judgment, he would see them tumble upon the sounding-board of his imagination, ever vibrating, and there be danced like sand into all manner of shapes, according to the tune played by the capricious instrument. Thus, in Glaston, the strangest stories of barbarity and cruelty were now attributed to a man entirely incapable of them. He was not one of the foul seekers after knowledge, and if he had had a presentiment of the natural tendency of his opinions, he would have trembled at the vision, and set himself to discover whether there might not be truth in another way of things.
As he went about in the afternoon amongst his sick and needy, the curate heard several of these ill reports. Some communicated them to ease their own horror, others in the notion of pleasing the believer by revolting news of the unbeliever. In one house he was told that the poor young man whom Dr. Faber had enticed to be his a.s.sistant, had behaved in the most gentlemanly fas.h.i.+on, had thrown up his situation, consenting to the loss of his salary, rather than connive at the horrors of cruelty in which the doctor claimed his help. Great moan was made over the pity that such a nice man should be given to such abominations; but where was the wonder, some said, seeing he was the enemy of G.o.d, that he should be the enemy of the beasts G.o.d had made? Much truth, and many wise reflections were uttered, only they were not ”as level as the cannon to his blank,”
for they were pointed at the wrong man.
There was one thing in which Wingfold differed from most of his paris.h.i.+oners: he could hear with his judgment, and make his imagination lie still. At the same time, in order to arrive the more certainly at the truth, in any matter presented to him, he would, in general, listen to the end of what any body had to say. So doing he let eagerness exhaust itself, and did not by opposition in the first heat of narration, excite partisan interest, or wake malevolent caution. If the communication was worthy, he thus got all the worth of it; if it was evil, he saw to the bottom of it, and discovered, if such were there, the filthy reptile in the mud beneath, which was setting the whole ugly pool in commotion. By this deliberateness he also gave the greater weight to what answer he saw fit to give at last--sometimes with the result of considerable confusion of face to the narrator. In the present instance, he contented himself with the strongest a.s.surance that the whole story was a mistake so far as it applied to Mr. Faber, who had, in fact, dismissed his a.s.sistant for the very crime of which they accused himself. The next afternoon, he walked the whole length of Pine street with the doctor, conversing all the way.
Nor did he fail to turn the thing to advantage. He had for some time been awaiting a fit opportunity for instructing his people upon a point which he thought greatly neglected: here was the opportunity, and he made haste to avail himself of it.