Part 44 (1/2)

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE MINISTER'S STUDY.

Helen was in the way of now and then writing music to any song that specially took her fancy--not with foolish hankering after publication, but for the pleasure of brooding in melody upon the words, and singing them to her husband. One day he brought her a few stanzas, by an unknown poet, which, he said, seemed to have in them a slightly new element.

They pleased her more than him, and began at once to sing themselves. No sooner was her husband out of the room than she sat down to her piano with them. Before the evening, she had written to them an air with a simple accompaniment. When she now sung the verses to him, he told her, to her immense delight, that he understood and liked them far better.

The next morning, having carried out one or two little suggestions he had made, she was singing them by herself in the drawing-room, when Faber, to whom she had sent because one of her servants was ill, entered. He made a sign begging her to continue, and she finished the song.

”Will you let me see the words,” he said.

She handed them to him. He read them, laid down the ma.n.u.script, and, requesting to be taken to his patient, turned to the door. Perhaps he thought she had laid a music-snare for him.

The verses were these:

A YEAR SONG.

Sighing above, Rustling below, Through the woods The winds go.

Beneath, dead crowds; Above, life bare; And the besom winds Sweep the air.

_Heart, leave thy woe; Let the dead things go._

Through the brown leaves Gold stars push; A mist of green Veils the bush.

Here a twitter, There a croak!

They are coming-- The spring-folk!

_Heart, be not dumb; Let the live things come._

Through the beach The winds go, With a long speech, Loud and slow.

The gra.s.s is fine, And soft to lie in; The sun doth s.h.i.+ne The blue sky in.

_Heart, be alive; Let the new things thrive._

Round again!

Here now-- A rimy fruit On a bare bough!

There the winter And the snow; And a sighing ever To fall and go!

_Heart, thy hour shall be; Thy dead will comfort thee._

Faber was still folded in the atmosphere of the song when, from the curate's door, he arrived at the minister's, resolved to make that morning a certain disclosure--one he would gladly have avoided, but felt bound in honor to make. The minister grew pale as he listened, but held his peace. Not until the point came at which he found himself personally concerned, did he utter a syllable.

I will in my own words give the substance of the doctor's communication, stating the facts a little more fairly to him than his pride would allow him to put them in his narrative.

Paul Faber was a student of St. Bartholomew's, and during some time held there the office of a.s.sistant house-surgeon. Soon after his appointment, he being then three and twenty, a young woman was taken into one of the wards, in whom he gradually grew much interested. Her complaint caused her much suffering, but was more tedious than dangerous.

Attracted by her sweet looks, but more by her patience, and the grat.i.tude with which she received the attention shown her, he began to talk to her a little, especially during a slight operation that had to be not unfrequently performed. Then he came to giving her books to read, and was often charmed with the truth and simplicity of the remarks she would make. She had been earning her living as a clerk, had no friends in London, and therefore no place to betake herself to in her illness but the hospital. The day she left it, in the simplicity of her heart, and with much timidity, she gave him a chain she had made for him of her hair. On the ground of supplementary attention, partly desirable, partly a pretext, but una.s.sociated with any evil intent, he visited her after in her lodging. The joy of her face, the light of her eyes when he appeared, was enchanting to him. She pleased every gentle element of his nature; her wors.h.i.+p flattered him, her confidence bewitched him. His feelings toward her were such that he never doubted he was her friend.

He did her no end of kindness; taught her much; gave her good advice as to her behavior, and the dangers she was in; would have protected her from every enemy, real and imaginary, while all the time, undesignedly, he was depriving her of the very nerve of self-defense. He still gave her books--and good books--Carlyle even, and Tennyson; read poetry with her, and taught her to read aloud; went to her chapel with her sometimes of a Sunday evening--for he was then, so he said, and so he imagined, a thorough believer in revelation. He took her to the theater, to pictures, to concerts, taking every care of her health, her manners, her principles. But one enemy he forgot to guard her against: how is a man to protect even the woman he loves from the hidden G.o.d of his idolatry--his own grand contemptible self?

It is needless to set the foot of narration upon every step of the slow-descending stair. With all his tender feelings and generous love of his kind, Paul Faber had not yet learned the simplest lesson of humanity--that he who would not be a murderer, must be his brother's keeper--still more his sister's, protecting every woman first of all from himself--from every untruth in him, chiefly from every unhallowed approach of his lower nature, from every thing that calls itself love and is but its black shadow, its demon ever murmuring _I love_, that it may devour. The priceless reward of such honesty is the power to love better; but let no man insult his nature by imagining himself n.o.ble for so carrying himself. As soon let him think himself n.o.ble that he is no swindler. Doubtless Faber said to himself as well as to her, and said it yet oftener when the recoil of his selfishness struck upon the door of his conscience and roused Don Worm, that he would be true to her forever. But what did he mean by the words? Did he know? Had they any sense of which he would not have been ashamed even before the girl herself? Would such truth as he contemplated make of him her hiding-place from the wind, her covert from the tempest? He never even thought whether to marry her or not, never vowed even in his heart not to marry another. All he could have said was, that at the time he had no intention of marrying another, and that he had the intention of keeping her for himself indefinitely, which may be all the notion some people have of _eternally_. But things went well with them, and they seemed to themselves, notwithstanding the tears shed by one of them in secret, only the better for the relation between them.