How can man love but what he yearns to help? R.Browning During the year of Erica's illness, Brian began to realize his true position toward her better than he had hitherto done.
He saw quite well that any intrusion of his love, even any slight manifestation of it, might do untold harm.She was not ready for it yet why, he could not have told.
The truth was, that his Undine, although in many respects a high-souled woman, was still in some respects a child.She would have been merely embarrassed by his love; she did not want it.She liked him very much as an acquaintance; he was to her Tom's friend, or her doctor, or perhaps Mr.Osmond's son.In this way she liked him, was even fond of him, but as a lover he would have been a perplexing embarrassment.
He knew well enough that her frank liking boded ill for his future success; but in spite of that he could not help being glad to obtain any footing with her.It was something even to be "Tom's friend Brian." He delighted in hearing his name from her lips, although knowing that it was no good augury.He lived on from day to day, thinking very little of the doubtful future as long as he could serve her in the present.A reserved and silent man, devoted to his profession, and to practical science of every kind, few people guessed that he could have any particular story of his own.
He was not at all the sort of man who would be expected to fall hopelessly in love at first sight, nor would any one have selected him as a good modern specimen of the chivalrous knight of olden times; he was so completely a nineteenth-century man, so progressive, so scientific.But, though his devotion was of the silent order, it was, perhaps for that reason, all the truer.
There was about him a sort of divine patience.As long as he could serve Erica, he was content to wait any number of years in the hope of winning her love.He accepted his position readily.He knew that she had not the slightest love for him.He was quite secondary to his father, even, who was one of Erica's heroes.He liked to make her talk of him; her enthusiastic liking was delightful perhaps all the more so because she was far from agreeing with her prophet.Brian, with the wonderful self-forgetfulness of true love, liked to hear the praises of all those whom she admired; he liked to realize what were her ideals, even when conscious how far he fell short of them.
For it was unfortunately true that his was not the type of character she was most likely to admire.As a friend she might like him much, but he could hardly be her hero.His wonderful patience was quite lost upon her; she hardly counted patience as a virtue at all.His grand humility merely perplexed her; it was at present far beyond her comprehension.While his willingness to serve every one, even in the most trifling and petty concerns of daily life, she often attributed to mere good nature.Grand acts of self-sacrifice she admired enthusiastically, but the more really difficult round of small denials and trifling services she did not in the least appreciate.Absorbed in the contemplation, as it were, of the Hamlets in life, she had no leisure to spare for the Horatios.
She proved a capital patient; her whole mind was set on getting well, and her steady common sense and obedience to rules made her a great favorite with her elder doctor.Really healthy, and only invalided by the hard work and trouble she had undergone, seven or eight months' rest did wonders for her.In the enforced quiet, too, she found plenty of time for study.Charles Osmond had never had a better pupil.They learned to know each other very well during those lessons, and many were the perplexing questions which Erica started.But they were not as before, a mere repetition of the difficulties she had been primed with at her father's lecture hall, nor did she bring them forward with the triumphant conviction that they were unanswerable.They were real, honest questions, desiring and seeking everywhere for the true answer which might be somewhere.
