Say and Seal Volume Ii Part 81

"He's a good fellow enough," he remarked carelessly. "You were pleased to speak of him just now as 'incomprehensible'--may I ask how he has earned a t.i.tle to that?" The tone was a little slighting.

"Take the last instance--" said Mr. Motley,--"you yourself were pleased to p.r.o.nounce the steerage a more insufferable bore than the deck--yet he chooses it,--and not only on Sundays. I don't believe there's a day that he don't go down there. He's popular enough without it--'tisn't that. And n.o.body knows it--one of the sailors told me. If he was a medico, like you, doctor, there'd be less wonder--but as it is!--" and Mr. Motley resigned himself again to the influence of the suns.h.i.+ne. A moment's meditation on the doctor's part, to judge by his face, was delectable.

"There isn't any sickness down there?" he said then.

"Always is in the steerage--isn't there?" said Mr. Motley,--"I don't know!--the surgeon can tell you."

"There's no occasion,--" said the doctor with a little haughtiness. "He knows who I am."

And Dr. Harrison too resigned himself, apparently, to the sunny influences of the time and was silent.

But as the sun went down lower and lower, Mr. Motley roused himself up and went off to try the effect upon his spirits of a little cheerful society,--then Mr. Linden came and took the vacant chair.

"How beautiful it is!" he said, in a tone that was half greeting, half meditation. The start with which Dr. Harrison heard him was skilfully transformed into a natural change of position.

"Beautiful?--yes," said he. "Has the beauty driven Motley away?"

"He is gone.--Your waves are very dazzling to-night, doctor."

"They are helping us on," said the doctor looking at them. "We shall be in after two days more--if this holds."

Helping us on--perhaps the thought was not unqualified in Mr. Linden's mind, for he considered that--or something else--in grave silence for a minute or two.

"Dr. Harrison," he said suddenly, "you asked me about my course--I wish you would tell me yours. Towards what--for what. You bade me call myself a friend--may I use a friend's privilege?" He spoke with a grave, frank earnestness.

The doctor's face shewed but a small part of the astonishment which this speech raised. It shewed a little.

"I can be but flattered!--" he said with something of the old graceful medium between play and earnest. "You ask me what I am hardly wise enough to answer you. I am going to Paris, and you to Germany. After that, I really know about as much of one 'course' as of the other."

"My question referred, not to the little daily revolutions, but to the great life orbit. Harrison, what is yours to be?"

Evidently it was an uneasy question. Yet the power of influence--or of a.s.sociations--was such that Dr. Harrison did not fling it away. "I remember," he said, not without some bitterness of accent--"you once did me the honour to profess to care."

"I do care, very much." And one of the old looks, that Dr. Harrison well remembered--said the words were true.

"You do me more honour than I do myself," he said, not so lightly as he meant to say it. "I do not care. I see nothing to care for."

"You refuse to see it--" Mr. Linden said gently and sorrowfully.

Dr. Harrison's brow darkened--it might be with pain, for Mr. Linden's words were the echo of others he had listened to--not long ago. In a moment he turned and spoke with an impulse--of bravado? Perhaps he could not have defined, and his companion could not trace.

"I refuse to see nothing!--but I confess to you I see nothing distinctly. What sort of an 'orbit' would you propose to me?"

The tone sounded frank, and certainly was not unkind. Mr. Linden's answer was in few words--"'To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life'."

Dr. Harrison remained a little while with knitted brow looking down at his hands, which certainly were in an order to need no examination.

Neither was he examining them. When he looked up again it was with the frankness and kindliness both more defined. Perhaps, very strange to his spirit, a little shame was at work there.

"Linden," he said, "I believe in you! and if ever I enter upon an orbit of any sort, I'll take up yours. But--" said he relapsing into his light tone, perhaps of intent,--"you know two forces are necessary to keep a body going in one--and I a.s.sure you there is none, of any sort, at present at work upon me!"

"You are mistaken," said Mr. Linden,--"there are two."

"Let's hear--" said the doctor without looking at him.

"In the first place your conscience, in the second your will."

"You have heard of such things as both getting stagnant for want of use--haven't you?"

"I have heard of the one being half choked by the other," said Mr.

Linden:

"It's so warm this afternoon that I can't contradict you. What do you want me to do, Linden?"

"Let conscience do its work--and then you do yours."

A minute's silence.

"You do me honour, to believe I have such a thing as a conscience,"--said the doctor again a little bitterly. "I didn't use to think it, myself."

He was unaware that it was that very ignored principle which had forced him to make this speech.

"My dear friend--" Mr. Linden began, and he too paused, looking off gravely towards the brightening horizon. "Then do yourself the honour to let conscience have fair play," he went on presently,--"it is too delicate a stream to bear the mountain torrents of unchecked will and keep its clearness."

"Hum!--there's no system of drainage that ever I heard of that will apply up in those regions!" said the doctor, after again a second's delay to speak. "And you are doing my will too much honour now--I tell you it is in a state of stagnation, and I don't at present see any precipice to tumble down. When I do, I'll promise to think of you--if that thought isn't carried away too.--Come, Linden!" he said with more expression of kindliness than Mr. Linden had seen certainly during all the voyage before,--"I believe in you, and I will!--though I suppose my words do seem to you no better than the very spray of those torrents you are talking about. Will you walk?--Motley put me to sleep, but you have done one good thing--you have stirred me to desire action at least."

It was curious, how the power of character, the power of influence, had borne down pa.s.sion and jealousy--even smothered mortification and pride--and made the man of the world speak truth. Mr. Linden rose--yet did not immediately begin the walk; for laying one hand on the doctor's shoulder with a gesture that spoke both regard and sorrow and entreaty, he stood silently looking off at the colours in the west.

"Dr. Harrison," he said, "I well believe that your mother and mine are dear friends in heaven--G.o.d grant that we may be, too!"

Then they both turned, and together began their walk. It lasted till they were summoned to tea; and from that time till they got in there was no more avoidance of his old friend by the doctor. His manner was changed; if he did not find enjoyment in Mr. Linden's society he found somewhat else which had value for him. There was not again a shade of dislike or of repulsion; and when they parted on landing, though it might be that there lay in Dr. Harrison's secret heart a hope that he might never see Mr. Linden again, there lay with it also, as surely, a secret regret.

Now all that Faith knew of this for a long time, was from a newspaper; where--among a crowd of unimportant pa.s.sengers in the Vulcan's list--she read the names of Dr. Harrison and J. E. Linden.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

Faith and her mother sat alone at breakfast. About a fortnight of grave quiet had followed after the joyous month that went before, with little enlivening, few interruptions. Without, the season had bloomed into greater luxuriance,--within, the flowers now rarely came; and Faith's flowerless dress and belt and hair, said of themselves that Mr. Linden was away. Roses indeed peeped through the windows, and thrust their heads between the blinds, but no one invited them in.

Not so peremptorily as the roses--and yet with more a.s.surance of welcome--Reuben Taylor knocked at the door during breakfast time; scattering the abstract musings that floated about the coffee-pot and mingled with its vapoury cloud.

"Sit down, Reuben," said Faith jumping up;--"there's a place for you,--and I'll give you a plate." To which Reuben only replied, "A letter, Miss Faith!"--and putting it in her hands went off with quick steps. On the back of it was written, up in one corner--"Flung on board the Polar Bear, by a strong hand, from steams.h.i.+p Vulcan, half way across."

There was no need of flowers now truly in the house, for Faith stood by the table transformed into a rose of summer joy.

"Mother!" she exclaimed,--"It's from sea--half way across."--