Say and Seal, Volume I

"The fact is more than the intention. Whence came that?"

"It was only—Please don't ask me, Mr. Linden. I can't tell you."

He made no answer to that, but turning over the leaves read to her here and there without much comment,—then asked her if she was tired of hearing about angels.

"I think I should never be tired!" said Faith. "But you must be, Mr. Linden. Please," she said putting her hand gently on the book,—"don't read for me any more. Is all the book like that?"

"Not quite all—I have given you some bits that I particularly like, but there is much more. You need not be uneasy about my being tired," he said smiling; "if I were, by your own shewing I can have rest. However, Miss Faith—lessons being the order of the day—will you read French to me?"

In her reading, Faith came to the description of the philosopher's perplexity in finding that the birds would not pick up the crumbs he threw to them on the roof as usual. He concluded the feathered things were not more reason able than mankind, and had taken fright for nothing.

"J'allais fermer ma fenêtre sur cette réflexion, quand j'aperçois tout à coup, dans l'espace lumineux qui s'étend à droite, l'ombre de deux oreilles qui se dressent, puis une griffe qui s'avance, puis la tête d'un chat tigré qui se montre à l'angle de la gouttière. Le drôle était là en embuscade, espérant que les aniettes lui amèneraient du gibier.

"Et moi qui accusais la couardise de mes hôtes! J'étais sûr qu'aucun danger ne les menaçait! je croyais avoir bien regardé partout! je n'avais oublié que le coin derrière moi!

"Dans la vie comme sur les toits, que de malheurs arrivent pour avoir oublié un seul coin!"

Faith closed the book then, very much amused with the philosopher's "chat tigré."

"But often one can't see round the corner," she remarked.

A little gesture of lips and brow, half asserted that if one could not, one could: but Mr. Linden only said,

"Most true! Miss Faith. Nevertheless, the knowledge that there are corners is not to be despised."

"I don't know. I shouldn't like to live always in fear of seeing the shadow of a cat's ears come in."

"Have you quite outgrown the love of cats?" said Mr. Linden smiling.

"No, but I was talking of the fear of corners," she said with an answering smile. "I don't think I want to remember the corners, Mr. Linden."

"I don't think I want you should. Philosophers and birds, you know, go through the world on different principles."

She laughed a little at that, gave the hearth a parting brush, and went off to dinner.

Business claimed its place after dinner, business of a less pleasant kind, quite up to the time when Faith must put on her bonnet to walk with Dr. Harrison.

Faith had no great mind to the walk, but she couldn't help finding it pleasant. The open air was very sweet and bracing; the exercise was inspiriting, and the threatened talk went well with both. There was nothing whatever formidable about it; the words and thoughts seemed to play, like the sunlight, on anything that came in their way. Dr. Harrison knew how to make a walk or a talk pleasant, even to Faith, it seemed. Whatever she had at any time seen in him that she did not like, was out of sight; pleasant, gentle, intelligent, grave, he was constantly supplying ear and mind with words and things that were worth the having. Probably he had discovered her eager thirst for knowledge; for he furnished her daintily with bits of many a kind, from his own stores which were large. She did not know there was any design in this; she knew only that the steps were taken very easily in that walk. So pleasant it was that Faith was in no haste to turn, in no mood to quicken her pace. But something else was on her mind,—and must come out.

"Dr. Harrison,"—she said when they were in a quiet part of the way, with nobody near, "may I speak to you about something?—that perhaps you won't like?"

"You can speak of nothing I should not like—to hear," he said with gentle assurance.

"Dr. Harrison—" said Faith, speaking as if the recollection touched her,—"when you and I were thrown out in that meadow the other day and came so near losing our lives—if the almost had been quite, if we had both been killed,—I should have been safe and well, I believe.—How would it have been with you?"

Dr. Harrison looked at her.

"If I had gone in your company," he said, "I think it would hardly have been ill with me."

"Do you know so little as that?"—she said, in such a tone of sorrow and pity as might have suited one of the 'ministering spirits' she had been likened to.

"I don't think I am as good as you are," the doctor said with a face not unmoved.

"Good!" said Faith. "What do you mean by goodness, Dr. Harrison?"

"I shall have the worst of it if I try to go into definitions again," he said smiling. "I think you will find what I mean, in consulting your own thoughts."

"Goodness?" said Faith again. "Do you remember the silver scale-armour of that Lepisma, Dr. Harrison? That is perfection. That is what God means by goodness—not the outside things that every eye, or your own, can see;—but when the far-down, far-back thoughts and imaginations of your heart will bear such looking at and be found faultless! Less than that, God will not take from you, if you are going to heaven by your own goodness."

He looked at her. They had changed sides; and as fearless now as he, she was the speaker, and he had little to say.

"I don't know much about these things, Miss Faith," he answered soberly.

"I don't know much, Dr. Harrison," she said humbly. "But think what you were near the other day."

"I don't know!"—said he, as if making a clean breast of it. She paused.

"Dr. Harrison, will a wise man leave such a matter in uncertainty?"

"I am not wise," said he. "I am ignorant—in this."

"You know you need not remain so."

"That is not so certain! I have seen so much—of what you have seen so little, my dear Miss Derrick, that you can scarce understand how light the weight of most people's testimony is to me."

"But there is the testimony of one higher," said Faith. "There is God's own word?"

"I don't know it."

"Won't you know it, sir?"

"I will do anything you ask me in that voice," he said smiling at her."But after all one reads people and people's professions, missFaith;—and they make the first impression."

"I dare say it is often not true," said Faith sadly.

"You are true," said he; "and you may say to me what you will, on this subject or any other, and I will believe it."

They walked a little distance in silence.

"What are you thinking of?" said the doctor in a very gentle accent of inquiry.

"I am sorry—very sorry for you, Dr. Harrison."

"Why?" said he taking her hand.

"Because it seems to me you are not caring in earnest about this matter."

He kissed the hand, without asking permission. But it was done with a grateful warm expression of feeling.