THE ROAD TO OWLKIRK.
Paul Faber fared otherwise. Hardly was he in bed before he was called
out of it again. A messenger had come from Mrs. Puckridge to say that
Miss Meredith was worse, and if the doctor did not start at once, she
would be dead before he reached Owlkirk. He sent orders to his groom to
saddle Niger and bring him round instantly, and hurried on his clothes,
vexed that he had taken Ruber both in the morning and afternoon, and
could not have him now. But Niger was a good horse also: if he was but
two-thirds of Ruber's size, he was but one-third of his age, and saw
better at night. On the other hand he was less easily seen, but the
midnight there was so still and deserted, that that was of small
consequence. In a few minutes they were out together in a lane as dark
as pitch, compelled now to keep to the roads, for there was not light
enough to see the pocket-compass by which the surgeon sometimes steered
across country.
Could we learn what waking-dreams haunted the boyhood of a man, we
should have a rare help toward understanding the character he has
developed. Those of the young Faber were, almost exclusively, of playing
the prince of help and deliverance among women and men. Like most boys
that dream, he dreamed himself rich and powerful, but the wealth and
power were for the good of his fellow-creatures. If it must be confessed
that he lingered most over the thanks and admiration he set to haunt his
dream-steps, and hover about his dream-person, it must be remembered
that he was the only real person in the dreams, and that he regarded
lovingly the mere shadows of his fellow-men. His dreams were not of
strength and destruction, but of influence and life. Even his revenges
never-reached further than the making of his enemies ashamed.
It was the spirit of help, then, that had urged him into the profession
he followed. He had found much dirt about the door of it, and had not
been able to cross the threshold without some cleaving to his garments.
He is a high-souled youth indeed, in whom the low regards and corrupt
knowledge of his superiors will fail utterly of degrading influence; he
must be one stronger than Faber who can listen to scoffing materialism
from the lips of authority and experience, and not come to look upon
humanity and life with a less reverent regard. What man can learn to
look upon the dying as so much matter about to be rekneaded and
remodeled into a fresh mass of feverous joys, futile aspirations, and
stinging chagrins, without a self-contempt from which there is no
shelter but the poor hope that we may be a little better than we appear
to ourselves. But Faber escaped the worst. He did not learn to look on
humanity without respect, or to meet the stare of appealing eyes from
man or animal, without genuine response--without sympathy. He never
joined in any jest over suffering, not to say betted on the chance of
the man who lay panting under the terrors of an impending operation. Can
one be capable of such things, and not have sunk deep indeed in the
putrid pit of decomposing humanity? It is true that before he began to
practice, Faber had come to regard man as a body and not an embodiment,
the highest in him as dependent on his physical organization--as indeed
but the aroma, as it were, of its blossom the brain, therefore subject
to _all_ the vicissitudes of the human plant from which it rises; but he
had been touched to issues too fine to be absolutely interpenetrated and
inslaved by the reaction of accepted theories. His poetic nature, like
the indwelling fire of the world, was ever ready to play havoc with
induration and constriction, and the same moment when degrading
influences ceased to operate, the delicacy of his feeling began to
revive. Even at its lowest, this delicacy preserved him from much into
which vulgar natures plunge; it kept alive the memory of a lovely
mother; and fed the flame of that wondering, worshiping reverence for
women which is the saviour of men until the Truth Himself saves both. A
few years of worthy labor in his profession had done much to develop
him, and his character for uprightness, benevolence, and skill, with the
people of Glaston and its neighborhood, where he had been ministering
only about a year, was already of the highest. Even now, when, in a
fever of honesty, he declared there _could_ be no God in such an
ill-ordered world, so full was his heart of the human half of religion,
that he could not stand by the bedside of dying man or woman, without
lamenting that there was no consolation--that stern truth would allow
him to cast no feeblest glamour of hope upon the departing shadow. His
was a nobler nature than theirs who, believing no more than he, are
satisfied with the assurance that at the heart of the evils of the world
lie laws unchangeable.
The main weak point in him was, that, while he was indeed
tender-hearted, and did no kindnesses to be seen of men, he did them to
be seen of himself: he saw him who did them all the time. The boy was in
the man; doing his deeds he sought, not the approbation merely, but the
admiration of his own consciousness. I am afraid to say this was
_wrong_, but it was poor and childish, crippled his walk, and obstructed
his higher development. He liked to _know_ himself a benefactor. Such a
man may well be of noble nature, but he is a mere dabbler in nobility.
Faber delighted in the thought that, having repudiated all motives of
personal interest involved in religious belief, all that regard for the
future, with its rewards and punishments, which, in his ignorance,
genuine or willful, of essential Christianity, he took for its main
potence, he ministered to his neighbor, doing to him as he would have
him do to himself, hopeless of any divine recognition, of any betterness
beyond the grave, in a fashion at least as noble as that of the most
devoted of Christians. It did not occur to him to ask if he loved him as
well--if his care about him was equal to his satisfaction in himself.
Neither did he reflect that the devotion he admired in himself had been
brought to the birth in him through others, in whom it was first
generated by a fast belief in an unselfish, loving, self-devoting God.
Had he inquired he might have discovered that this belief had carried
some men immeasurably further in the help of their fellows, than he had
yet gone. Indeed he might, I think, have found instances of men of faith
spending their lives for their fellows, whose defective theology or
diseased humility would not allow them to hope their own salvation.
Inquiry might have given him ground for fearing that with the love of
the _imagined_ God, the love of the indubitable man would decay and
vanish. But such as Faber was, he was both loved and honored by all whom
he had ever attended; and, with his fine tastes, his genial nature, his
quiet conscience, his good health, his enjoyment of life, his knowledge
and love of his profession, his activity, his tender heart--especially
to women and children, his keen intellect, and his devising though not
embodying imagination, if any man could get on without a God, Faber was
that man. He was now trying it, and as yet the trial had cost him no
effort: he seemed to himself to be doing very well indeed. And why
should he not do as well as the thousands, who counting themselves
religious people, get through the business of the hour, the day, the
week, the year, without one reference in any thing they do or abstain
from doing, to the will of God, or the words of Christ? If he was more
helpful to his fellows than they, he fared better; for actions in
themselves good, however imperfect the motives that give rise to them,
react blissfully upon character and nature. It is better to be an
atheist who does the will of God, than a so-called Christian who does
not. The atheist will not be dismissed because he said _Lord, Lord,_ and
did not obey. The thing that God loves is the only lovely thing, and he
who does it, does well, and is upon the way to discover that he does it
very badly. When he comes to do it as the will of the perfect Good, then
is he on the road to do it perfectly--that is, from love of its own
inherent self-constituted goodness, born in the heart of the Perfect.
The doing of things from duty is but a stage on the road to the kingdom
of truth and love. Not the less must the stage be journeyed; every path
diverging from it is "the flowery way that leads to the broad gate and
the great fire."
It was with more than his usual zeal of helpfulness that Faber was now
riding toward Owlkirk, to revisit his new patient. Could he have
mistaken the symptoms of her attack?