THE MINISTER'S DOOR.
Every body knew Mr. Faber, whether he rode Ruber or Niger--Rubber and
Nigger, his groom called them--and many were the greetings that met him
as he passed along Pine Street, for, despite the brand of his atheism,
he was popular. The few ladies out shopping bowed graciously, for both
his manners and person were pleasing, and his professional attentions
were unexceptionable. When he dropped into a quick walk, to let Ruber
cool a little ere he reached his stall, he was several times accosted
and detained. The last who addressed him was Mr. Drew, the principal
draper of the town. He had been standing for some time in his shop-door,
but as Faber was about to turn the corner, he stepped out on the
pavement, and the doctor checked his horse in the gutter.
"I wish you would look in upon Mr. Drake, sir," he said. "I am quite
uneasy about him. Indeed I am sure he must be in a bad way, though he
won't allow it. He's not an easy man to do any thing for, but just you
let me know what _can_ be done for him--and we'll contrive. A _nod_, you
know, doctor, etc."
"I don't well see how I can," returned Faber. "To call now without being
sent for, when I never called before!--No, Mr. Drew, I don't think I
could."
It was a lovely spring noon. The rain that had fallen heavily during the
night lay in flashing pools that filled the street with suns. Here and
there were little gardens before the houses, and the bushes in them were
hung with bright drops, so bright that the rain seemed to have fallen
from the sun himself, not from the clouds.
"Why, goodness gracious!" cried the draper, "here's your excuse come
direct!"
Under the very nose of the doctor's great horse stood a little
woman-child, staring straight up at the huge red head above her. Now
Ruber was not quite gentle, and it was with some dismay that his master,
although the animal showed no offense at the glowering little thing,
pulled him back a step or two with the curb, the thought darting through
him how easily with one pash of his mighty hoof the horse could
annihilate a mirrored universe.
"Where from?" he asked, by what he would himself have called a
half-conscious cerebration.
"From somewhere they say you don't believe in, doctor," answered the
draper. "It's little Amanda, the minister's own darling--Naughty little
dear!" he continued, his round good-humored face wrinkled all over with
smiles, as he caught up the truant, "what ever do you mean by splashing
through every gutter between home and here, making a little drab of
yourself? Why your frock is as wet as a dish-clout!--_and_ your shoes!
My gracious!"
The little one answered only by patting his cheeks, which in shape much
resembled her own, with her little fat puds, as if she had been beating
a drum, while Faber looked down amused and interested.
"Here, doctor!" the draper went on, "you take the little mischief on the
saddle before you, and carry her home: that will be your excuse."
As he spoke he held up the child to him. Faber took her, and sitting as
far back in the saddle as he could, set her upon the pommel. She
screwed up her eyes, and grinned with delight, spreading her mouth wide,
and showing an incredible number of daintiest little teeth. When Ruber
began to move she shrieked in her ecstasy.
Holding his horse to a walk, the doctor crossed the main street and went
down a side one toward the river, whence again he entered a narrow lane.
There with the handle of his whip he managed to ring the door-bell of a
little old-fashioned house which rose immediately from the lane without
even a footpath between. The door was opened by a lady-like young
woman, with smooth soft brown hair, a white forehead, and serious,
rather troubled eyes.
"Aunty! aunty!" cried the child, "Ducky 'iding!"
Miss Drake looked a little surprised. The doctor lifted his hat. She
gravely returned his greeting and stretched up her arms to take the
child. But she drew back, nestling against Faber.
"Amanda! come, dear," said Miss Drake. "How kind of Dr. Faber to bring
you home! I'm afraid you've been a naughty child again--running out into
the street."
"Such a g'eat 'ide!" cried Amanda, heedless of reproof. "A yeal
'ossy--big! big!"
She spread her arms wide, in indication of the vastness of the upbearing
body whereon she sat. But still she leaned back against the doctor, and
he awaited the result in amused silence. Again her aunt raised her hands
to take her.
"Mo' 'yide!" cried the child, looking up backward, to find Faber's eyes.
But her aunt caught her by the feet, and amid struggling and laughter
drew her down, and held her in her arms.
"I hope your father is pretty well, Miss Drake," said the doctor,
wasting no time in needless explanation.
"Ducky," said the girl, setting down the child, "go and tell grandpapa
how kind Dr. Faber has been to you. Tell him he is at the door." Then
turning to Faber, "I am sorry to say he does not seem at all well," she
answered him. "He has had a good deal of annoyance lately, and at his
age that sort of thing tells."
As she spoke she looked up at the doctor, full in his face, but with a
curious quaver in her eyes. Nor was it any wonder she should look at him
strangely, for she felt toward him very strangely: to her he was as it
were the apostle of a kakangel, the prophet of a doctrine that was
evil, yet perhaps was a truth. Terrible doubts had for some time been
assailing her--doubts which she could in part trace to him, and as he
sat there on Ruber, he looked like a beautiful evil angel, who _knew_
there was no God--an evil angel whom the curate, by his bold speech, had
raised, and could not banish.
The surgeon had scarcely begun a reply, when the old minister made his
appearance. He was a tall, well-built man, with strong features, rather
handsome than otherwise; but his hat hung on his occiput, gave his head
a look of weakness and oddity that by nature did not belong to it, while
baggy, ill-made clothes and big shoes manifested a reaction from the
over-trimness of earlier years. He greeted the doctor with a severe
smile.
"I am much obliged to you, Mr. Faber," he said, "for bringing me home my
little runaway. Where did you find her?"
"Under my horse's head, like the temple between the paws of the Sphinx,"
answered Faber, speaking a parable without knowing it.
"She is a fearless little damsel," said the minister, in a husky voice
that had once rung clear as a bell over crowded congregations--"too
fearless at times. But the very ignorance of danger seems the panoply of
childhood. And indeed who knows in the midst of what evils we all walk
that never touch us!"
"A Solon of platitudes!" said the doctor to himself.
"She has been in the river once, and almost twice," Mr. Drake went on.
"--I shall have to tie you with a string, pussie! Come away from the
horse. What if he should take to stroking you? I am afraid you would
find his hands both hard and heavy."
"How do you stand this trying spring weather, Mr. Drake? I don't hear
the best accounts of you," said the surgeon, drawing Ruber a pace back
from the door.
"I am as well as at my age I can perhaps expect to be," answered the
minister. "I am getting old--and--and--we all have our troubles, and, I
trust, our God also, to set them right for us," he added, with a
suggesting look in the face of the doctor.
"By Jove!" said Faber to himself, "the spring weather has roused the
worshiping instinct! The clergy are awake to-day! I had better look out,
or it will soon be too hot for me."
"I can't look you in the face, doctor," resumed the old man after a
pause, "and believe what people say of you. It can't be that you don't
even believe there _is_ a God?"
Faber would rather have said nothing; but his integrity he must keep
fast hold of, or perish in his own esteem.
"If there be one," he replied, "I only state a fact when I say He has
never given me ground sufficient to think so. You say yourselves He has
favorites to whom He reveals Himself: I am not one of them, and must
therefore of necessity be an unbeliever."
"But think, Mr. Faber--if there should be a God, what an insult it is to
deny Him existence."
"I can't see it," returned the surgeon, suppressing a laugh. "If there
be such a one, would He not have me speak the truth? Anyhow, what great
matter can it be to Him that one should say he has never seen Him, and
can't therefore believe He is to be seen? A god should be above that
sort of pride."
The minister was too much shocked to find any answer beyond a sad
reproving shake of the head. But he felt almost as if the hearing of
such irreverence without withering retort, made him a party to the sin
against the Holy Ghost. Was he not now conferring with one of the
generals of the army of Antichrist? Ought he not to turn his back upon
him, and walk into the house? But a surge of concern for the frank young
fellow who sat so strong and alive upon the great horse, broke over his
heart, and he looked up at him pitifully.
Faber mistook the cause and object of his evident emotion.
"Come now, Mr. Drake, be frank with me," he said. "You are out of
health; let me know what is the matter. Though I'm not religious, I'm
not a humbug, and only speak the truth when I say I should be glad to
serve you. A man must be neighborly, or what is there left of him? Even
you will allow that our duty to our neighbor is half the law, and there
is some help in medicine, though I confess it is no science yet, and we
are but dabblers."
"But," said Mr. Drake, "I don't choose to accept the help of one who
looks upon all who think with me as a set of humbugs, and regards those
who deny every thing as the only honest men."
"By Jove! sir, I take you for an honest man, or I should never trouble
my head about you. What I say of such as you is, that, having inherited
a lot of humbug, you don't know it for such, and do the best you can
with it."
"If such is your opinion of me--and I have no right to complain of it in
my own person--I should just like to ask you one question about
another," said Mr. Drake: "Do you in your heart believe that Jesus
Christ was an impostor?"
"I believe, if the story about him be true, that he was a well-meaning
man, enormously self-deceived."
"Your judgment seems to me enormously illogical. That any ordinarily
good man should so deceive himself, appears to my mind altogether
impossible and incredible."
"Ah! but he was an extraordinarily good man."
"Therefore the more likely to think too much of himself?"
"Why not? I see the same thing in his followers all about me."
"Doubtless the servant shall be as his master," said the minister, and
closed his mouth, resolved to speak no more. But his conscience woke,
and goaded him with the truth that had come from the mouth of its
enemy--the reproach his disciples brought upon their master, for, in the
judgment of the world, the master is as his disciples.
"You Christians," the doctor went on, "seem to me to make yourselves,
most unnecessarily, the slaves of a fancied ideal. I have no such ideal
to contemplate; yet I am not aware that you do better by each other than
I am ready to do for any man. I can't pretend to love every body, but I
do my best for those I can help. Mr. Drake, I would gladly serve you."
The old man said nothing. His mood was stormy. Would he accept life
itself from the hand of him who denied his Master?--seek to the powers
of darkness for cure?--kneel to Antichrist for favor, as if he and not
Jesus were lord of life and death? Would _he_ pray a man to whom the
Bible was no better than a book of ballads, to come betwixt him and the
evils of growing age and disappointment, to lighten for him the
grasshopper, and stay the mourners as they went about his streets! He
had half turned, and was on the point of walking silent into the house,
when he bethought himself of the impression it would make on the
unbeliever, if he were thus to meet the offer of his kindness. Half
turned, he stood hesitating.
"I have a passion for therapeutics," persisted the doctor; "and if I
can do any thing to ease the yoke upon the shoulders of my fellows--"
Mr. Drake did not hear the end of the sentence: he heard instead,
somewhere in his soul, a voice saying, "My yoke is easy, and my burden
is light." He _could_ not let Faber help him.
"Doctor, you have the great gift of a kind heart," he began, still half
turned from him.
"My heart is like other people's," interrupted Faber. "If a man wants
help, and I've got it, what more natural than that we should come
together?"
There was in the doctor an opposition to every thing that had if it were
but the odor of religion about it, which might well have suggested doubt
of his own doubt, and weakness buttressing itself with assertion But the
case was not so. What untruth there was in him was of another and more
subtle kind. Neither must it be supposed that he was a propagandist, a
proselytizer. Say nothing, and the doctor said nothing. Fire but a
saloon pistol, however, and off went a great gun in answer--with no
bravado, for the doctor was a gentleman.
"Mr. Faber," said the minister, now turning toward him, and looking him
full in the face, "if you had a friend whom you loved with all your
heart, would you be under obligation to a man who counted your
friendship a folly?"
"The cases are not parallel. Say the man merely did not believe your
friend was alive, and there could be no insult to either."
"If the denial of his being in life, opened the door to the greatest
wrongs that could be done him--and if that denial seemed to me to have
its source in some element of moral antagonism to him--_could_ I
accept--I put it to yourself, Mr. Faber--_could_ I accept assistance
from that man? Do not take it ill. You prize honesty; so do I: ten times
rather would I cease to live than accept life at the hand of an enemy to
my Lord and Master."
"I am very sorry, Mr. Drake," said the doctor; "but from your point of
view I suppose you are right. Good morning."
He turned Ruber from the minister's door, went off quickly, and entered
his own stable-yard just as the rector's carriage appeared at the
further end of the street.