Faith Gartney's Girlhood, Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney [good e books to read .txt] 📗

tea in the night before, only that this opened to the southeast, and hailed the morning sun. "Auntie, will you go over with me to the Cross Corners house, after breakfast? It's empty, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's empty. But it's no great show of a house. What do you want to see it for?"

"Why, it used to be so pretty, there. I'd like just to go into it. Have you heard of anybody's wanting it yet?"

"No; and I guess nobody's likely to, for one while. Folks don't make many changes, out here."

"What a bright little breakfast room this is, auntie! And how grand you are to have a room for every meal!"

"It ain't for the grandeur of it. But I always did like to follow the sun round. For the most part of the year, at any rate. And this is just as near the kitchen as the other. Besides, I kind of hate to shut up any of the rooms, altogether. They were all wanted, once; and now I'm all alone in 'em."

For Miss Henderson, this was a great opening of the heart. But she didn't go on to say that the little west room had been her young brother's, who long ago, when he was just ready for his Master's work in this world, had been called up higher; and that her evening rest was sweeter, and her evening reading holier for being holden there; or that here, in the sunny morning hours, her life seemed almost to roll back its load of many years, and to set her down beside her mother's knee, and beneath her mother's gentle tutelage, once more; that on the little "light stand" in the corner by the fireplace stood the selfsame basket that had been her mother's then--just where she had kept it, too, when it was running over with little frocks and stockings that were always waiting finishing or mending--and now held only the plain gray knitting work and the bit of sewing that Aunt Faith might have in hand.

A small, square table stood now in the middle of the floor, with a fresh brown linen breakfast cloth upon it; and Glory, neat and fresh, also, with her brown spotted calico dress and apron of the same, came in smiling like a very goddess of peace and plenty, with the steaming coffeepot in one hand, and the plate of fine, white rolls in the other. The yellow print of butter and some rounds from a brown loaf were already on the table. Glory brought in, presently, the last addition to the meal--six eggs, laid yesterday, the water of their boiling just dried off, and modestly took her own seat at the lower end of the board.

Aunt Faith, living alone, kept to the kindly old country fashion of admitting her handmaid to the table with herself. "Why not?" she would say. "In the first place, why should we keep the table about, half an hour longer than we need? And I suppose hot cakes and coffee are as much nicer than cold, for one body as another. Then where's the sense? We take Bible meat together. Must we be more dainty about 'meat that perisheth'?" So her argument climbed up from its lower reason to its climax.

Glory had little of the Irish now about her but her name. And all that she retained visibly of the Roman faith she had been born to, was her little rosary of colored shells, strung as beads, that had been blessed by the Pope.

Miss Henderson had trained and fed her in her own ways, and with such food as she partook herself, physically and spiritually. Glory sat, every Sunday, in the corner pew of the village church, by her mistress's side. And this church-going being nearly all that she had ever had, she took in the nutriment that was given her, to a soul that recognized it, and never troubled itself with questions as to one truth differing from another, or no. Indeed, no single form or theory could have contained the "credo" of her simple, yet complex, thought. The old Catholic reverence clung about her still, that had come with her all the way from her infancy, when her mother and grandmother had taught her the prayers of their Church; and across the long interval of ignorance and neglect flung a sort of cathedral light over what she felt was holy now.

Rescued from her dim and servile city life--brought out into the light and beauty she had mutely longed for--feeling care and kindliness about her for the long-time harshness and oppression she had borne--she was like a spirit newly entered into heaven, that needs no priestly ministration any more. Every breath drew in a life and teaching purer than human words.

And then the words she _did_ hear were Divine. Miss Henderson did no preaching--scarcely any lip teaching, however brief. She broke the bread of life God gave her, as she cut her daily loaf and shared it--letting each soul, God helping, digest it for itself.

Glory got hold of some old theology, too, that she could but fragmentarily understand but that mingled itself--as all we gather does mingle, not uselessly--with her growth. She found old books among Miss Henderson's stores, that she read and mused on. She trembled at the warnings, and reposed in the holy comforts of Doddridge's "Rise and Progress," and Baxter's "Saint's Rest." She traveled to the Holy City, above all, with Bunyan's Pilgrim. And then, Sunday after Sunday, she heard the simple Christian preaching of an old and simple Christian man. Not terrible--but earnest; not mystical--but high; not lax--but liberal; and this fused and tempered all.

So "things had happened" for Glory. So God had cared for this, His child. So, according to His own Will--not any human plan or forcing-- she grew.

Aunt Faith washed up the breakfast cups, dusted and "set to rights" in the rooms where, to the young Faith's eyes, there seemed such order already as could not be righted, made up a nice little pudding for dinner, and then, taking down her shawl and silk hood, and putting on her overshoes, announced herself ready for Cross Corners.

"Though it's all cross corners to me, child, sure enough. I suppose it's none of my business, but I can't think what you're up to."

"Not up to any great height, yet, auntie. But I'm growing," said Faith, merrily, and with meaning somewhat beyond the letter.

They went out at the back door, which opened on a little footpath down the sudden green slope behind, and stretched across the field, diagonally, to a bar place and stile at the opposite corner. Here the roads from five different directions met and crossed, which gave the locality its name.

Opposite the stile at which they came out, across the shady lane that wound down from the Old Road whereon Miss Henderson's mansion faced, a gateway in a white paling that ran round and fenced in a grassy door yard, overhung with pendent branches of elms and stouter canopy of chestnuts, let them in upon the little "Cross Corners Farm."

"Oh, Aunt Faith! It's just as lovely as ever! I remember that path up the hill, among the trees, so well! When I was a little bit of a girl, and nurse and I came out to stay with you. I had my 'fairy house' there. I'd like to go over this minute, only that we shan't have time. How shall we get in? Where is the key?"

"It's in my pocket. But it mystifies me, what you want there."

"I want to look out of all the windows, auntie, to begin with."

Aunt Faith's mystification was not lessened.

The front door opened on a small, square hall, with doors to right and left. The room on the left, spite of the bare floor and fireless hearth, was warm with the spring sunshine that came pouring in at the south windows. Beyond this, embracing the corner of the house rectangularly, projected an equally sunny and cheery kitchen; at the right of which, communicating with both apartments, was divided off a tiny tea and breakfast room. So Faith decided, though it had very likely been a bedroom.

From the entrance hall at the right opened a room larger than either of the others--so large that the floor above afforded two bedrooms over it--and having, besides its windows south and east, a door in the farther corner beyond the chimney, that gave out directly upon the grassy slope, and looked up the path among the trees that crossed the ridge.

Faith drew the bolt and opened it, expecting to find a closet or a passage somewhither. She fairly started back with surprise and delight. And then seated herself plump upon the threshold, and went into a midsummer dream.

"Oh, auntie!" she cried, at her waking, presently, "was ever anything so perfect? To think of being let out so! Right from a regular, proper parlor, into the woods!"

"Do you mean to go upstairs?" inquired Miss Henderson, with a vague amaze in her look that seemed to question whether her niece had not possibly been "let out" from her "regular and proper" wits!

Whereupon Faith scrambled up from her seat upon the sill, and hurried off to investigate above.

Miss Henderson closed the door, pushed the bolt, and followed quietly after.

It was a funny little pantomime that Faith enacted then, for the further bewilderment of the staid old lady.

Darting from one chamber to another, with an inexplicable look of business and consideration in her face, that contrasted comically with her quick movements and her general air of glee, she would take her stand in the middle of each one in turn, and wheeling round to get a swift panoramic view of outlook and capabilities, would end by a succession of mysterious and apparently satisfied little nods, as if at each pause some point of plan or arrangement had settled itself in her mind.

"Aunt Faith!" cried she, suddenly, as she came out upon the landing when she had peeped into the last corner, and found Miss Henderson on the point of making her descent--"what sort of a thing do you think it would be for us to come here and live?"

Aunt Faith sat down now as suddenly, in her turn, on the stairhead. Recovering, so, from her momentary and utter astonishment, and taking in, during that instant of repose, the full drift of the question propounded, she rose from her involuntarily assumed position, and continued her way down--answering, without so much as turning her head, "It would be just the most sensible thing that Henderson Gartney ever did in his life!"

What made Faithie a bit sober, all at once, when the key was turned, and they passed on, out under the elms, into the lane again?

Did you ever project a very wise and important scheme, that involves a little self-sacrifice, which, by a determined looking at the bright side of the subject, you had managed tolerably to ignore; and then, by the instant and unhesitating acquiescence of some one to whose judgment you submitted it, find yourself suddenly wheeled about in your own mind to the standpoint whence you discerned only the difficulty again?

"There's one thing, Aunt Faith," said she, as they slowly walked up the field path; "I couldn't go to school any more."

Faith had discontinued her regular attendance since the recommencement for the year, but had gone in for a few hours on "French and German days."

"There's another thing," said Aunt Faith. "I don't believe your father can afford to send you any more. You're