Say and Seal, Volume I

"Unless he tells you?" said Faith smiling.

The doctor stood, half smiling; evidently revolving more thoughts than of one kind. With a face from which every shadow was banished he suddenly took a seat by Mrs. Derrick.

"Do you know," he said with gentle pleasantness of manner and expression, "how much better man I should be if I should come here and get only one definition a day from your little daughter?"

"What one has she given you now?" said Mrs. Derrick, whose mind evidently stood in abeyance upon this speech.

"One you didn't hear, ma'am. It was a definition of me, to myself. It isn't the first," said the doctor gravely. "Mrs. Derrick, are you friends with me?"

"As much as I ever was," said Mrs. Derrick, smilingly. "I always thought you wanted putting in order."

"How did you know that?"

"Why, because you were out of order," said Mrs. Derrick, knitting away.The doctor uttered the lowest of whistles and looked down at his boot.

"It's because of that unlucky dog!" he muttered. "Linden—" (glancing up from under his eyebrows) "when I was a boy, I set my dog on Miss Faith's cat."

"Felt yourself called upon to uphold natural antipathies—"

"Miss Faith, have you a cat now?" said the doctor looking over to her.

"No, sir."

"And I have no dog!" said the doctor. "I have only horses. If I could manage to do without animals altogether,—Mrs. Derrick, have you forgiven me?" This last was in a changed tone.

"I don't want to talk about it, doctor," said Mrs. Derrick very soberly.

"About forgiving me?" he said as soberly.

"And I don't mean to."

"Nor I," said the doctor quietly; "but you are going to inflict more punishment on me than I deserve."

"What am I going to do?" said Mrs. Derrick. "If you know, I don't."

"Refuse to give me your hand, perhaps."

"I never did that to anybody, yet," she said pleasantly.

"Then you must let me do as we do in another country."

He bent his face to her hand as he spoke, and kissed it. There was no mockery in the action. Done by some people it would have been ridiculous. By Dr. Harrison, in the circumstances, it was in the highest degree graceful. It spoke sympathy, penitence, respect, manly confession, and submission, too simply not to be what it certainly was in some measure, a true expression of feeling. Mrs. Derrick on her part looked amused,—her old recollections of the boy constantly tinged her impressions of the man; and perhaps not without reason.

"You're as like yourself as ever you can be, doctor!" she said, smiling at him. "How you used to try to get round me!"

"I don't remember!" said the doctor. "I am sure I never succeeded, Mrs.Derrick?"

"I'm afraid you did, sometimes," she said, shaking her head. He smiled a little, and turned the other way.

"Linden, I've been considering the German question."

"Will it please you to state the result?"

"This!" said the doctor. "I have come to the conclusion,—that in order to be One and Somewhat, it is necessary to begin by being Nought and All—Thus ranging myself in security on both sides of a great abyss of metaphysics. What do you think? Unphilosophical?"

"Unsafe—" said Mr. Linden. "And impossible."

"Humph?"—said the doctor. "Nothing is impossible in metaphysics—because you may be on both sides of an abyss, and in the bottom of it!—at once—and without knowing where you are. The angel that rode Milton's sunbeam, you know, was no time at all going from heaven to earth; and I suppose he went the other way as quick."

"I don't see the abyss in that case," said Mr. Linden,—"but

–'Uriel to his charge   Returned on that bright beam'—

so probably he did."

"Yes"—said the doctor.—"And my meaning skipped the abyss,—also on a sunbeam. It referred to the unsubstantial means of travelling in use among metaphysicians."

"And among angels."

"That reminds me," said the doctor. And quitting his stand on the rug, which he had taken again, he went over to Faith and sat down by her.

"Is the Nightingale flourishing on her rose-bush to-day?"

"What, sir?" said Faith, her eyes opening at him a little.

"I beg pardon!" said the doctor. "I have been living in a part of the world, Miss Derrick, where it is the fashion to call things not by their right names. I have got a foolish habit of it. Do you feel quite recovered?"

"Quite. I'm a little tired to-night, perhaps."

"I see you are, and I'll not detain you. Mrs. Custers wants to see you again." He had dropped all banter, and was speaking to her quietly, respectfully, kindly, as he should speak; in a lowered tone, but not so low as to be unheard by others than her.

"I will try to see her again soon—I will try to go very soon," she answered.

"Would you be afraid to go with my father's old stand-bys?—they are safe!"—

"I cannot do that, Dr. Harrison—but I will try to see her soon."

"Can you go without riding?"

"No," she said smiling; "but I must find some other way."

"I won't press that point," said the doctor. "I can't blame you. I must bear that. But—I want for my own sake to have the honour of a little talk with you—I want to explain to you one or two things. Shall you be at leisure to-morrow afternoon?"

"I am hardly at leisure any time, Dr. Harrison. I do not suppose I shall be particularly busy then."

"Then will you take that time for a walk?"

Faith hesitated. "I have very little time, sir."