Faith Gartney's Girlhood by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney (people reading books TXT) 📕

kind friends at Lakeside, parted from but a few hours before--thoughts of the young lover to whom the answer he waited for should be given, perhaps, so awfully; through all, lighting, as it were, suddenly and searchingly, the deep places of her own soul, the thought--the feeling, rather, of that presence in her dream; of him who had led her, taught her, lifted her so, to high things; brought her nearer, by his ministry, to God! Of all human influence or love, his was nearest and strongest, spiritually, to her, now!

All at once, across these surging, crowding, agonizing feelings, rushed an inspiration for the present moment.

The water gate! The force pump!

The apparatus for working these lay at this end of the building. She had been shown the method of its operation; they had explained to her its purpose. It was perfectly simple. Only the drawing of a rope over a pulley--the turning of a faucet. She could do it, if she could only reach the spot.

Instantly and strangely, the cloud of terror seemed to roll away. Her faculties cleared. Her mind was all alert and quickened. She thought of things she had heard of years before, and long forgotten. That a wet cloth about the face would defend from smoke. That down low, close to the floor, was always a current of fresher air.

She turned a faucet that supplied a basin in the countingroom, held her handkerchief to it, and saturated it with water. Then she tied it across her forehead, letting it hang before her face like a veil. She caught a fold of it between her teeth.

And so, opening the doors between whose cracks the pent-up smoke was curling, she passed through, crouching down, and crawled along the end of the chamber, toward the great rope in the opposite corner.

The fire was creeping thitherward, also, to meet her. Along from the front, down the chamber on the opposite side, the quick flames sprang and flashed, momently higher, catching already, here and there, from point to point, where an oiled belt or an unfinished web of cloth attracted their hungry tongues.

As yet, they were like separate skirmishers, sent out in advance; their mighty force not yet gathered and rolled together in such terrible sheet and volume as raged beneath.

She reached the corner where hung the rope.

Close by, was the faucet in the main pipe fed by the force pump. Underneath it, lay a coil of hose, attached and ready.

She turned the faucet, and laid hold of the long rope. A few pulls, and she heard the dashing of the water far below. The wheel was turning.

The pipes filled. She lifted the end of the coiled hose, and directed it toward the forward part of the chamber, where flames were wreathing, climbing, flashing. An impetuous column of water rushed, eager, hissing, upon blazing wood and heated iron.

Still keeping the hose in her grasp, she crawled back again, half stifled, yet a new hope of life aroused within her, to the double doors. Before these, with the little countingroom behind her, as her last refuge, she took her stand.

How long could she fight off death? Till help came?

All this had been done and thought quickly. There had been less time than she would have believed, since she first woke to the knowledge of this, her horrible peril.

The flames were already repulsed. The mill was being flooded. Down the belt holes the water poured upon the fiercer blaze below, that swept across the forward and central part of the great spinning room, from side to side.

At this moment, a cry, close at hand.

"Fire!"

A man was swaying by a rope, down from a third-story window.

"Fire!" came again, instantly, from without, upon another side.

It was a voice hoarse, excited, strained. A tone Faith had never heard before; yet she knew, by a mysterious intuition, from whom it came. She dropped the hose, still pouring out its torrent, to the floor, and sprang back, through the doors, to the countingroom window. The voice came from the riverside.

A man was dashing down the green slope, upon the footbridge.

Faith stretched her arms out, as a child might, wakened in pain and terror. A cry, in which were uttered the fear, the horror, that were now first fully felt, as a possible safety appeared, and the joy, that itself came like a sudden pang, escaped her, piercingly, thrillingly.

Roger Armstrong looked upward as he sprang upon the bridge.

He caught the cry. He saw Faith stand there, in her white dress, that had been wet and blackened in her battling with the fire.

A great soul glance of courage and resolve flashed from his eyes. He reached his uplifted arms toward her, answering hers. He uttered not a word.

"Round! round!" cried Faith. "The door upon the other side!"

Roger Armstrong, leaping to the spot, and Michael Garvin, escaped by the long rope that hung vibrating from his grasp, down the brick wall of the building, met at the staircase door.

"Help me drive that in!" cried the minister.

And the two men threw their stalwart shoulders against the barrier, forcing lock and hinges. Up the stairs rushed Roger Armstrong.

Answering the crash of the falling door, came another and more fearful crash within.

Gnawed by the fire, the timbers and supports beneath the forward portion of the second floor had given way, and the heavy looms that stood there had gone plunging down. A horrible volume of smoke and steam poured upward, with the flames, from out the chasm, and rushed, resistlessly, everywhere.

Roger Armstrong dashed into the little countingroom. Faith lay there, on the floor. At that fearful crash, that rush of suffocating smoke, she had fallen, senseless. He seized her, frantically, in his arms to bear her down.

"Faith! Faith!" he cried, when she neither spoke nor moved. "My darling! Are you hurt? Are you killed? Oh, my God! must there be another?"

Faith did not hear these words, uttered with all the passionate agony of a man who would hold the woman he loves to his heart, and defy for her even death.

She came to herself in the open air. She felt herself in his arms. She only heard him say, tenderly and anxiously, in something of his old tone, as her consciousness returned, and he saw it:

"My dear child!"

But she knew then all that had been a mystery to her in herself before.

She knew that she loved Roger Armstrong. That it was not a love of gratitude and reverence, only; but that her very soul was rendered up to him, involuntarily, as a woman renders herself but once. That she would rather have died there, in that flame and smoke, held in his arms--gathered to his heart--than have lived whatever life of ease and pleasantness--aye, even of use--with any other! She knew that her thought, in those terrible moments before he came, had been--not father's or mother's, only; not her young lover, Paul's; but, deepest and mostly, his!


CHAPTER XXIX.

HOME.

"The joy that knows there _is_ a joy—
That scents its breath, and cries,
'tis there! And, patient in its pure repose,
Receiveth so the holier share."

Faith's thought and courage saved the mill from utter destruction.

For one fearful moment, when that forward portion of the loom floor fell through, and flame, and vapor, and smoke rioted together in a wild alliance of fury, all seemed lost. But the great water wheel was plying on; the river fought the fire; the rushing, exhaustless streams were pouring out and down, everywhere; and the crowd that in a few moments after the first alarm, and Faith's rescue, gathered at the spot, found its work half done.

A little later, there were only sullen smoke, defeated, smoldering fires, blackened timbers, the burned carding rooms, and the ruin at the front, to tell the awful story of the night.

Mr. Armstrong had carried Faith into one of the unfinished factory houses. Here he was obliged to leave her for a few moments, after making such a rude couch for her as was possible, with a pile of clean shavings, and his own coat, which he insisted, against all her remonstrances, upon spreading above them.

"The first horse and vehicle which comes, Miss Faith, I shall impress for your service," he said; "and to do that I must leave you. I have made that frightened watchman promise to say nothing, at present, of your being here; so I trust the crowd may not annoy you. I shall not be gone long, nor far away."

The first horse and vehicle which came was the one that had brought her there in the afternoon but just past, yet that seemed, strangely, to have been so long ago.

Mr. Rushleigh found her lying here, quiet, amidst the growing tumult--exhausted, patient, waiting.

"My little Faithie!" he cried, coming up to her with hands outstretched, and a quiver of strong feeling in his voice. "To think that you should have been in this horrible danger, and we all lying in our beds, asleep! I do not quite understand it all. You must tell me, by and by. Armstrong has told me what you have _done_. You have saved me half my property here--do you know it, child? Can I ever thank you for your courage?"

"Oh, Mr. Rushleigh!" cried Faith, rising as he came to her, and holding her hands to his, "don't thank me! and don't wait here! They'll want you--and, oh! my kind friend! there will be nothing to thank me for, when I have told you what I must. I have been very near to death, and I have seen life so clearly! I know now what I did not know yesterday--what I could not answer you then!"

"Let it be as it may, I am sure it will be right and true, and I shall honor you, Faith! And we must bear what is, for it has come of the will of God, and not by any fault of yours. Now, let me take you home."

"May I do that in your stead, Mr. Rushleigh?" asked Roger Armstrong, who entered at this moment, with garments he had brought from somewhere to wrap Faith.

"I must go home," said Faith. "To Aunt Henderson's."

"You shall do as you like," answered Mr. Rushleigh. "But it belongs to us to care for you, I think."

"You do--you have cared for me already," said Faith, earnestly.

And Mr. Rushleigh helped to wrap her up, and kissed her forehead tenderly, and Roger Armstrong lifted her into the chaise, and seated himself by her, and drove her away from out the smoke and noise and curious crowd that had begun to find out she was there, and that she had been shut up in the mill, and had saved herself and stopped the fire; and would have made her as uncomfortable as crowds always do heroes or heroines--had it not been for the friend beside her, whose foresight and precaution had warded it all off.

And the mill owner went back among the villagers and firemen, to direct their efforts for his property.

Glory McWhirk had been up and watching the great fire, since Roger Armstrong first went out.

She had seen it from the window of Miss Henderson's room, where she was to sleep to-night; and had first carefully lowered the blinds lest the