Say and Seal, Volume I

"I should suppose not—unless roses impart their colour in that way," said Mr. Linden, softly turning the folded paper from side to side.

"This is a nice place," said the doctor surveying the room—"and you look very comfortable. I should like to take your invitation and sit down—but I mustn't. Won't you try and put a good opinion of me into the head of Mrs Derrick?"

"What an extraordinary request!" said Mr. Linden, laughing a little. "Pray what am I to understand by it? And why mustn't you sit down?—here is something to rejoice your heart with a few of the aforesaid upheavings of Society;" and he handed the doctor an unopened foreign newspaper.

"Absolutely irresistible!" said the doctor, and he broke the cover, took a chair and sat down before the fire; where for awhile to all appearance he also made himself 'comfortable'; and certainly turned and returned and ran over the paper in an artistic manner.

"After all," said he, "it's a bore! this alternation of knocking each other down which the nations of the earth practise,—and the societies,—and the men! It's a pugilistic world we live in, Linden. It's a bore to keep up with them,—for one must know who's atop—both in Europe and in Pattaquasset—where you are just now the king of men's mouths—And all the while it don't a pin signify, except to the one who is atop;—I beg your pardon!"

"How long must I, being 'atop,' lie here? All this week?"

"What will you do if I say more than that?"

"Why I'll listen respectfully. Do you know I like to see you sitting there?—Here is another paper for you."

The doctor looked at him with an odd, frankly inquisitive smile; but he only took the paper to play with it.

"I wonder if I may ask a roundabout favour from you?"

"You may ask anything—" said Mr. Linden. "I would rather have it in a straight-forward form."

"Can't," said the doctor, "because it is crooked. I suppose at this hour every lady in Pattaquasset expects that her friends will not call her away from her affairs; and I stupidly forgot to deliver my message when I had a moment's chance this morning. Now as it is possible you may see this—if she cannot be called the silver-footed Thetis, she is certainly the silver-tongued—you would know how to address her?"

"Thetis!—probably, when I see her."

"I may presume you will know her when you see her,—and that brings me to my point. I have got some good microscopic preparations which I am to have the pleasure of exhibiting to-night to some friends of my sister. Now it would greatly add to her pleasure and mine, if this mortal Polyhymnia will consent to be of the number—and this is what I was going to ask you, if you please, to communicate to her or to her mother, in whose good graces, as I told you," said the doctor with a funny smile, "I don't think I have the honour to stand high. Sophy would have written this morning, but I gave her no chance. I will call for Miss Derrick this evening if she will allow me."

Mr. Linden took out his pencil and made a note of the facts.

"First," he said, "I am to communicate, then you are to call, after that to exhibit. Do you call that crooked?—why it's as straight as the road from here to your house."

Dr. Harrison looked—and for a minute did not anything else.

"For your arm, Linden," he said then getting up from his chair, and a smile of doubtful comicality moving his lip a little—"we shall know better about it in two or three weeks; but certainly I think you must be content to stay at home for double those—that's undoubted."

Mr. Linden gave the doctor a quick glance, but the smile which followed was 'undoubted' in another way.

"When two opposing forces meet at right angles, doctor," he said, "you know what happens to the object. Not contented inertia."

"Contented! no, very likely,—not when it is this object. But you will find a third force will establish the inertia."

"What is your third force?"

"The necessity of the case," said the doctor seriously.

But to that Mr. Linden made no reply. The conversation had been kept up not only against weakness but against pain, and he lay very still and colourless for a long time after the doctor closed the door.

Meanwhile Faith, busy at her brown moreen, made her mother's job of mending seem like embroidery; but by degrees Mrs. Derrick's face became thoughtful, and she said, rather emphatically,

"Child, have you been up to see Mr. Linden to-day?"

Faith's hammer dropped, and her hands too.

"No, mother," she said, looking at her.

"Why child!"—Mrs. Derrick began,—then she stopped and began again. "I guess he'd rather see you than that box, child,—if the doctor hasn't talked him to death."

"Mother, do you think he would like to have me come up and see him?"

"Like it?" said Mrs. Derrick, her mind almost refusing to consider such an absurd question. "I'm sure he likes to see you when he's well, Faith. Didn't he like it last night?"

Faith looked a little bit grave, then she hastily pushed her brown moreen and box into a somewhat more orderly state of disorganization, and went up stairs, with a quick light step that was not heard before her tap at Mr. Linden's door. And then receiving permission she went in, a little rosy this time at venturing into the charmed region when its occupant was there; and came with her step a little lighter, a little slower, up to the side of the couch and held out her hand; saying her soft "How do you do, Mr. Linden?"

He was lying just as the doctor had left him, with the unopened letters, and the white paper which Faith felt instinctively was her own exercise. But eye and hand were ready for her.

"Courageous Miss Faith!" he said with a smile. "And so, 'She's gentle and not fearful'?"

She smiled, with an eye that took wistful note of him.

"How do you feel to-day, Mr. Linden?"

"Not very well—and not worse. Miss Faith, do you know that we have a great deal to do this week? You may lock up your stocking basket."

"Please let me do something for you, Mr. Linden?" she said earnestly.

"That's just what I'm talking about. Do you think, Miss Faith, that if you brought that low chair here, and set the door wide open so that you could run out if you got frightened at my grim appearance, you would be willing to philosophize a little?"

"Not to-day, Mr. Linden," said Faith. "Don't speak so! I haven't any stocking basket in the way. Can't I do something that would do you some good?"

"It would do me a great deal of good to get up and set that chair for you, but that is something I must ask you to do for me. I see you want coaxing"—he added, looking at her. "Well—if you will do half a dozen things for me this morning, you shall have the reward of a letter and two messages."

Faith looked down doubtful,—doubtful, whether to do what would please herself, and him, would be just right to-day; but the pleading of the affirmative side of the question was too strong. She gave up considering the prudential side of the measure, thinking that perhaps Mr. Linden knew his own feelings best; and once decided, let pleasure have its full flow. With hardly a shade upon the glad readiness of her movements, she placed the chair and brought the book, and sat docile down, though keeping a jealous watch for any sign of pain or weariness that should warn her to stop. And from one thing to another he led her on, talking less than usual, perhaps, himself, but giving her none the less good a lesson. And the signs she sought for could not be found. Weary he was not, mentally, and physical nature knew its place. Last of all, the little exercise was opened and commented upon and praised—and she praised through it, though very delicately.

"Have I tired you?" he said, as the town clock struck an hour past the mid-day.

"Oh no!—And you, Mr. Linden?"

In what a different tone the two parts of her speech were spoken.

"I have not hurt myself," he said smiling. "Perhaps by and by, this afternoon, you will let me see you again. Dr. Harrison threatens to keep me at home for two or three weeks, and I want to make the most of them,—I may not have such a time of leisure again." And then Mr. Linden gave the doctor's message—a message, very strictly, and as near as possible in the doctor's own words, receiving as little tinge as it well could from the medium through which it passed.

"The other message," he said, giving her a letter, "you will find there."

"A message?"—said Faith doubtfully and flushing with pleasure—"isn't this one of your sister's letters?"

"Yes. Mayn't she send you a message?"

A very modest and very happy smile and deepening blush answered that; and she ran away with a sudden compunctious remembrance of Mr. Linden's dinner.