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

refused to be sent away. I think my brain reeled with the weariness of sleepless nights and horror of the shock.

"I cannot dwell upon the story. It was ended quickly. When I struggled back, painfully, to life, from the disease that struck me down, there were strange faces round me, and none could even tell me of her last hours. The nurse--Miss Sampson--had been smitten--was dying.

"They sent me to a hospital for convalescents. Weeks after, I came out, feeble and hopeless, into my lonely life!

"Since then, God, who had taken from me the object I had set for myself, has filled its room with His own work. And, doing it, He has not denied me to find many a chastened joy.

"Dear young friend!" said he, with a tender, lingering emphasis--it was all he could say then--all they had left him to say, if he would--"I have told you this, because you have come nearer into my sympathies than any in all these years that have been my years of strangerhood and sorrow! You have made me think, in your fresh, maidenly life, and your soul earnestness, of Miriam!

"When your way broadens out into busy sunshine, and mine lies otherwise, do not forget me!"

A solemn baptism of mingled grief and joy seemed to touch the soul of Faith. One hand covered her face, that was bowed down, weeping. The other lay in her companion's, who had taken it as he uttered these last words. So it rested a moment, and then its fellow came to it, and, between the two, held Roger Armstrong's reverently, while the fair, tearful face lifted itself to his.

"I do thank you so!" And that was all.

Faith was his "dear, young friend!" How the words in which her mother limited his thoughts of her to commonplace, widened, when she spoke them to herself, into a great beatitude! She never thought of more--scarcely whether more could be. This great, noble, purified, God-loving soul that stood between her and heaven, like the mountain peak, bathing its head in clouds, and drawing lightnings down, leaned over her, and blessed her thus!

She never suspected her own heart, even when the remembrance of Paul came up and took a tenderness from the thought how he, too, might love, and learn from, this her friend. She turned back with a new gentleness to all other love, as one does from a prayer!


CHAPTER XXIII.

QUESTION AND ANSWER.

"Unless you can swear, 'For life, for death!' Oh, fear to call it loving!"
MRS. BROWNING.

Faith sent Nurse Sampson in to talk with Mr. Armstrong. Then he learned all that he had longed to know, but had never known before; that which took him to his lost bride's deathbed, and awoke out of the silent years for him a moment refused to him in its passing.

Miss Sampson came from her hour's interview, with an unbending of the hard lines of her face, and a softness, even, in her eyes, that told of tears.

"If ever there was an angel that went walking about in black broadcloth, that man is the one," said she.

And that was all she would say.

"I'm staying," she explained, in answer to their inquiries, "with a half-sister of mine at Sedgely. Mrs. Crabe, the blacksmith's wife. You see, I'd got run down, and had to take a rest. Resting is as much a part of work as doing, when it's necessary. I had a chance to go to Europe with an invaleed lady; but I allers hate such halfway contrivances. I either want to work with all my might, or be lazy with all my might. And so I've come here to do nothing, as hard as ever I can."

"I know well enough," she said again, afterwards, "that something's being cut out for me, tougher'n anything I've had yet. I never had an hour's extra rest in my life, but I found out, precious soon, what it had been sent for. I'm going to stay on all summer, as the doctor told me to; but I'm getting strong, already; and I shall be just like a tiger before the year's out. And then it'll come, whatever it is. You'll see."

Miss Sampson stayed until the next day after, and then Mr. Gartney drove her back to Sedgely.

In those days it came to pass that Glory found she had a "follower."

Luther Goodell, who "did round" at Cross Corners, got so into the way of straying up the field path, in his nooning hours, and after chores were done at night, that Miss Henderson at last, in her plain, outright fashion, took the subject up, and questioned Glory.

"If it means anything, and you mean it shall mean anything, well and good. I shall put up with it; though what anybody wants with men folks cluttering round, is more than I can understand. But, if you don't want him, he shan't come. So tell me the truth, child. Yes, or no. Have you any notion of him for a husband?"

Glory blushed her brightest at these words; but there was no falling of the eye, or faltering of the voice, as she spoke with answering straightforwardness and simplicity.

"No ma'am. I don't think I shall ever have a husband."

"No ma'am's enough. The rest you don't know anything about. Most likely you will."

"I shouldn't want anybody, ma'am, that would be likely to want me."

And Glory walked out into the milk room with the pans she had been scalding.

It was true. This woman-child would go all through life as she had begun; discerning always, and reaching spiritually after, that which was beyond; which in that "kingdom of heaven" was hers already; but which to earthly having and holding should never come.

God puts such souls, oftener than we think, into such life. These are His vestals.

Miss Henderson's foot had not grown perfectly strong. She, herself, said, coolly, that she never expected it to. More than that, she supposed, now she had begun, she should keep on going to pieces.

"An old life," she said, "is just like old cloth when it begins to tear. It'll soon go into the ragbag, and then to the mill that grinds all up, and brings us out new and white again!"

"Glory McWhirk," said she, on another day after, "if you could do just the thing you would like best to do, what would it be?"

"To-day, ma'am? or any time?" asked Glory, puzzled as to how much her mistress's question included.

"Ever. If you had a home to live in, say, and money to spend?"

Glory had to wait a moment before she could so grasp such an extraordinary hypothesis as to reply.

"Well?" said Miss Henderson, with slight impatience.

"If I had--I should like best to find some little children, without any fathers or mothers, as I was, and dress them up, as you did me, and curl their hair, and make a real good time for them, every day!"

"You would! Well, that's all. I was curious to know what you'd say. I guess those beans in the oven want more hot water."

The Rushleighs had come to Lakeside. Every day, nearly, saw Paul, or Margaret, or both, at Cross Corners.

Faith was often, also, at Lakeside.

Old Mr. Rushleigh treated her with a benignant fatherliness, and looked upon her with an evident fondness and pride that threw heavy weight in the scale of his son's chances. And Madam Rushleigh, as she began to be called, since Mrs. Philip had entered the family, petted her in the old, graceful, gracious fashion; and Margaret loved her, simply, and from her heart.

With Paul himself, it had not been as in the days of bouquets, and "Germans," and bridal association in Mishaumok. They were all living and enjoying together a beautiful idyl. Nothing seemed special--nothing was embarrassing.

Faith thought, in these days, that she was very happy.

Mr. Armstrong relinquished her, almost imperceptibly, to her younger friends. In the pleasant twilights, though, when her day's pleasures and occupations were ended, he would often come over, as of old, and sit with them in the summer parlor, or under the elms.

Or Faith would go up the beautiful Ridge walk with him; and he would have a thought for her that was higher than any she could reach, by herself, or with the help of any other human soul.

And the minister? How did his world look to him? Perhaps, as if clouds that had parted, sending a sunbeam across from the west upon the dark sorrow of the morning, had shut again, inexorably, leaving him still to tread the nightward path under the old, leaden sky.

A day came, that set him thinking of all this--of the years that were past, of those that might be to come.

Mr. Armstrong was not quite so old as he had been represented. A man cannot go through plague and anguish, as he had, and "keep," as Nurse Sampson had said, long ago, of women, "the baby face on." There were lines about brow and mouth, and gleams in the hair, that seldom come so early.

This day he completed one-and-thirty years.

The same day, last month, had been Faith's birthday. She was nineteen.

Roger Armstrong thought of the two together.

He thought of these twelve years that lay between them. Of the love--the loss--the stern and bitter struggle--the divine amends and holy hope that they had brought to him; and then of the innocent girl life she had been living in them; then, how the two paths had met so, in these last few, beautiful months.

Whither, and how far apart, trended they now?

He could not see. He waited--leaving the end with God.

A few weeks went by, in this careless, holiday fashion, with Faith and her friends; and then came the hour when she must face the truth for herself and for another, and speak the word of destiny for both.

She had made a promise for a drive round the Pond Road. Margaret and her brother were to come for her, and to return to Cross Corners for tea.

At the hour fixed, she sat, waiting, under the elms, hat and mantle on, and whiling the moments of delay with a new book Mr. Armstrong had lent her.

Presently, the Rushleighs' light, open, single-seated wagon drove up.

Paul had come alone.

Margaret had a headache, but thought that after sundown she might feel better, and begged that Faith would reverse the plan agreed upon, and let Paul bring her home to tea with them.

Paul took for granted that Faith would keep to her engagement with himself. It was difficult to refuse. She was ready, waiting. It would be absurd to draw back, sensitively, now, she thought. Besides, it would be very pleasant; and why should she be afraid? Yet she wished, very regretfully, that Margaret were there.

She shrank from _tete-a-tetes_--from anything that might help to precipitate a moment she felt herself not quite ready for.

She supposed she did care for Paul Rushleigh as most girls cared for lovers; that she had given him reason to expect she should; she felt, instinctively, whither all this pleased acquiescence of father and mother, and this warm