AT THE PIANO.
When Faber called on Juliet, the morning after the last interview
recorded, and found where she was gone, he did not doubt she had taken
refuge with her new friends from his importunity, and was at once
confirmed in the idea he had cherished through the whole wakeful night,
that the cause of her agitation was nothing else than the conflict
between her heart and a false sense of duty, born of prejudice and
superstition. She was not willing to send him away, and yet she dared
not accept him. Her behavior had certainly revealed any thing but
indifference, and therefore must not make him miserable. At the same
time if it was her pleasure to avoid him, what chance had he of seeing
her alone at the rectory? The thought made him so savage that for a
moment he almost imagined his friend had been playing him false.
"I suppose he thinks every thing fair in religion, as well as in love
and war!" he said to himself. "It's a mighty stake, no doubt--a soul
like Juliet's!"
He laughed scornfully. It was but a momentary yielding to the temptation
of injustice, however, for his conscience told him at once that the
curate was incapable of any thing either overbearing or underhand. He
would call on her as his patient, and satisfy himself at once how things
were between them. At best they had taken a bad turn.
He judged it better, however, to let a day or two pass. When he did
call, he was shown into the drawing-room, where he found Helen at the
piano, and Juliet having a singing-lesson from her. Till then he had
never heard Juliet's song voice. A few notes of it dimly reached him as
he approached the room, and perhaps prepared him for the impression he
was about to receive: when the door opened, like a wind on a more mobile
sea, it raised sudden tumult in his soul. Not once in his life had he
ever been agitated in such fashion; he knew himself as he had never
known himself. It was as if some potent element, undreamed of before,
came rushing into the ordered sphere of his world, and shouldered its
elements from the rhythm of their going. It was a full contralto, with
pathos in the very heart of it, and it seemed to wrap itself round his
heart like a serpent of saddest splendor, and press the blood from it up
into his eyes. The ladies were too much occupied to hear him announced,
or note his entrance, as he stood by the door, absorbed, entranced.
Presently he began to feel annoyed, and proceeded thereupon to take
precautions with himself. For Juliet was having a lesson of the severest
kind, in which she accepted every lightest hint with the most heedful
attention, and conformed thereto with the sweetest obedience; whence it
came that Faber, the next moment after fancying he had screwed his
temper to stoic pitch, found himself passing from displeasure to
indignation, and thence almost to fury, as again and again some
exquisite tone, that went thrilling through all his being, discovering
to him depths and recesses hitherto unimagined, was unceremoniously, or
with briefest apology, cut short for the sake of some suggestion from
Helen. Whether such suggestion was right or wrong, was to Faber not of
the smallest consequence: it was in itself a sacrilege, a breaking into
the house of life, a causing of that to cease whose very being was its
justification. Mrs. Wingfold! she was not fit to sing in the same chorus
with her! Juliet was altogether out of sight of her. He had heard Mrs.
Wingfold sing many a time, and she could no more bring out a note like
one of those she was daring to criticise, than a cat could emulate a
thrush!
"Ah, Mr. Faber!--I did not know you were there," said Helen at length,
and rose. "We were so busy we never heard you."
If she had looked at Juliet, she would have said _I_ instead of _we_.
Her kind manner brought Faber to himself a little.
"Pray, do not apologize," he said. "I could have listened forever."
"I don't wonder. It is not often one hears notes like those. Were you
aware what a voice you had saved to the world?"
"Not in the least. Miss Meredith leaves her gifts to be discovered."
"All good things wait the seeker," said Helen, who had taken to
preaching since she married the curate, some of her half-friends said;
the fact being that life had grown to her so gracious, so happy, so
serious, that she would not unfrequently say a thing worth saying.
In the interstices of this little talk, Juliet and Faber had shaken
hands, and murmured a conventional word or two.
"I suppose this is a professional visit?" said Helen. "Shall I leave you
with your patient?"
As she put the question, however, she turned to Juliet.
"There is not the least occasion," Juliet replied, a little eagerly, and
with a rather wan smile. "I am quite well, and have dismissed my
doctor."
Faber was in the mood to imagine more than met the ear, and the words
seemed to him of cruel significance. A flush of anger rose to his
forehead, and battled with the paleness of chagrin. He said nothing.
But Juliet saw and understood. Instantly she held out her hand to him
again, and supplemented the offending speech with the words,
"--but, I hope, retained my friend?"
The light rushed again into Faber's eyes, and Juliet repented afresh,
for the words had wrought too far in the other direction.
"That is," she amended, "if Mr. Faber will condescend to friendship,
after having played the tyrant so long."
"I can only aspire to it," said the doctor.
It sounded mere common compliment, the silliest thing between man and
woman, and Mrs. Wingfold divined nothing more: she was not quick in such
matters. Had she suspected, she might, not knowing the mind of the lady
have been a little perplexed. As it was, she did not leave the room, and
presently the curate entered, with a newspaper in his hand.
"They're still at it, Faber," he said, "with their heated liquids and
animal life!"
"I need not ask which side you take," said the doctor, not much inclined
to enter upon any discussion.
"I take neither," answered the curate. "Where is the use, or indeed
possibility, so long as the men of science themselves are disputing
about the facts of experiment? It will be time enough to try to
understand them, when they are agreed and we know what the facts really
are. Whatever they may turn out to be, it is but a truism to say they
must be consistent with all other truth, although they may entirely
upset some of our notions of it."
"To which side then do you lean, as to the weight of the evidence?"
asked Faber, rather listlessly.
He had been making some experiments of his own in the direction referred
to. They were not so complete as he would have liked, for he found a
large country practice unfriendly to investigation; but, such as they
were, they favored the conclusion that no form of life appeared where
protection from the air was thorough.
"I take the evidence," answered the curate, "to be in favor of what they
so absurdly call spontaneous generation."
"I am surprised to hear you say so," returned Faber. "The conclusions
necessary thereupon, are opposed to all your theology."
"Must I then, because I believe in a living Truth, be myself an unjust
judge?" said the curate. "But indeed the conclusions are opposed to no
theology I have any acquaintance with; and if they were, it would give
me no concern. Theology is not my origin, but God. Nor do I acknowledge
any theology but what Christ has taught, and has to teach me. When, and
under what circumstances, life comes first into human ken, can not
affect His lessons of trust and fairness. If I were to play tricks with
the truth, shirk an argument, refuse to look a fact in the face, I
should be ashamed to look Him in the face. What he requires of his
friends is pure, open-eyed truth."
"But how," said the doctor, "can you grant spontaneous generation, and
believe in a Creator?"
"I said the term was an absurd one," rejoined the curate.
"Never mind the term then: you admit the fact?" said Faber.
"What fact?" asked Wingfold.
"That in a certain liquid, where all life has been destroyed, and where
no contact with life is admitted, life of itself appears," defined the
doctor.
"No, no; I admit nothing of the sort," cried Wingfold. "I only admit
that the evidence seems in favor of believing that in some liquids that
have been heated to a high point, and kept from the air, life has yet
appeared. How can I tell whether _all_ life already there was first
destroyed? whether a yet higher temperature would not have destroyed yet
more life? What if the heat, presumed to destroy all known germs of life
in them, should be the means of developing other germs, further removed?
Then as to _spontaneity_, as to life appearing of itself, that question
involves something beyond physics. Absolute life can exist only of and
by itself, else were it no perfect thing; but will you say that a mass
of protoplasm--that _proto_ by the way is a begged question--exists by
its own power, appears by its own will? Is it not rather there because
it can not help it?"
"It is there in virtue of the life that is in it," said Faber.
"Of course; that is a mere truism," returned Wingfold, "equivalent to,
It lives in virtue of life. There is nothing _spontaneous_ in that. Its
life must in some way spring from the true, the original, the
self-existent life."
"There you are begging the whole question," objected the doctor.
"No; not the whole," persisted the curate; "for I fancy you will
yourself admit there is some blind driving law behind the phenomenon.
But now I will beg the whole question, if you like to say so, for the
sake of a bit of purely metaphysical argument: the law of life behind,
if it be spontaneously existent, can not be a blind, deaf, unconscious
law; if it be unconscious of itself, it can not be spontaneous; whatever
is of itself must be God, and the source of all non-spontaneous, that
is, all other existence."
"Then it has been only a dispute about a word?" said Faber.
"Yes, but a word involving a tremendous question," answered Wingfold.
"Which I give up altogether," said the doctor, "asserting that there is
_nothing_ spontaneous, in the sense you give the word--the original
sense I admit. From all eternity a blind, unconscious law has been at
work, producing."
"I say, an awful living Love and Truth and Right, creating children of
its own," said the curate--"and there is our difference."
"Yes," assented Faber.
"Anyhow, then," said Wingfold, "so far as regards the matter in hand,
all we can say is, that under such and such circumstances life
_appears--whence_, we believe differently; _how_, neither of us can
tell--perhaps will ever be able to tell. I can't talk in scientific
phrase like you, Faber, but truth is not tied to any form of words."
"It is well disputed," said the doctor, "and I am inclined to grant that
the question with which we started does not immediately concern the
great differences between us."
It was rather hard upon Faber to have to argue when out of condition and
with a lady beside to whom he was longing to pour out his soul--his
antagonist a man who never counted a sufficing victory gained, unless
his adversary had had light and wind both in his back. Trifling as was
the occasion of the present skirmish, he had taken his stand on the
lower ground. Faber imagined he read both triumph and pity in Juliet's
regard, and could scarcely endure his position a moment longer.
"Shall we have some music?" said Wingfold. "--I see the piano open. Or
are you one of those worshipers of work, who put music in the morning in
the same category with looking on the wine when it is red?"
"Theoretically, no; but practically, yes," answered Faber, "--at least
for to-day. I shouldn't like poor Widow Mullens to lie listening to the
sound of that old water-wheel, till it took up its parable against the
faithlessness of men in general, and the doctor in particular. I can't
do her much good, poor old soul, but I can at least make her fancy
herself of consequence enough not to be forgotten."
The curate frowned a little--thoughtfully--but said nothing, and
followed his visitor to the door. When he returned, he said,
"I wonder what it is in that man that won't let him believe!"
"Perhaps he will yet, some day," said Juliet, softly.
"He will; he must," answered the curate. "He always reminds me of the
young man who had kept the law, and whom our Lord loved. Surely he must
have been one of the first that came and laid his wealth at the
apostles' feet! May not even that half of the law which Faber tries to
keep, be school-master enough to lead him to Christ?--But come, Miss
Meredith; now for our mathematics!"
Every two or three days the doctor called to see his late patient. She
wanted looking after, he said. But not once did he see her alone. He
could not tell from their behavior whether she or her hostess was to
blame for his recurring disappointment; but the fact was, that his ring
at the door-bell was the signal to Juliet not to be alone.