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

light should waken her mistress, who, after suffering much pain, had at length, by the help of an anodyne, fallen asleep; and then she had come round softly to the southwest room, to call the minister.

The door stood open, and she saw him sitting in his chair, asleep. Just as she crossed the threshold to come toward him, he started, and spoke those words out of his restless dream:

"Faith! Faith! What danger is about you, child?" They were instinct with his love. They were eager with his visionary fear. It only needed a human heart to interpret them.

Glory drew back as he sprang to his feet, and noiselessly disappeared. She would not have him know that she had heard this cry with which he waked.

"He dreamed about her! and he called her Faith. How beautiful it is to be cared for so!"

Glory--while we have so long been following Faith--had no less been living on her own, peculiar, inward life, that reached to, that apprehended, that seized ideally--that was denied, so much!

As Glory had seen, in the old years, children happier than herself, wearing beautiful garments, and "hair that was let to grow," she saw those about her now whom life infolded with a grace and loveliness she might not look for; about whom fair affections, "let to grow," clustered radiant, and enshrined them in their light.

She saw always something that was beyond; something she might not attain; yet, expectant of nothing, but blindly true to the highest within her, she lost no glimpse of the greater, through lowering herself to the less.

Her soul of womanhood asserted itself; longing, ignorantly, for a soul love. "To be cared for, so!"

But she would rather recognize it afar--rather have her joy in knowing the joy that might be--than shut herself from knowledge in the content of a common, sordid lot.

She did not think this deliberately, however; it was not reason, but instinct. She renounced unconsciously. She bore denial, and never knew she was denied.

Of course, the thought of daring to covet what she saw, had never crossed her, in her humbleness. It was quite away from her. It was something with which she had nothing to do. "But it must be beautiful to be like Miss Faith." And she thanked God, mutely, that she had this beautiful life near her, and could look on it every day.

She could not marry Luther Goodell.

"A vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her breast";

But, unlike the maiden of the ballad, she could not smother it down, to break forth, by and by, defying the "burden of life," in sweet bright vision, grown to a keen torture then.

Faith had read to her this story of Maud, one day.

"I shouldn't have done so," she had said, when it was ended. "I'd rather have kept that one minute under the apple trees to live on all the rest of my days!"

She could not marry Luther Goodell.

Would it have been better that she should? That she should have gone down from her dreams into a plain man's life, and made a plain man happy? Some women, of far higher mental culture and social place, have done this, and, seemingly, done well. Only God and their own hearts know if the seeming be true.

Glory waited. "Everybody needn't marry," she said.

This night, with those words of Mr. Armstrong's in her ears, revealing to her so much, she stood before that window of his and watched the fire.

Doors were open behind her, leading through to Miss Henderson's chamber. She would hear her mistress if she stirred.

If she had known what she did not know--that Faith Gartney stood at this moment in that burning mill, looking forth despairingly on those bright waters and green fields that lay between it and this home of hers--that were so near her, she might discern each shining pebble and the separate grass blades in the scarlet light, yet so infinitely far, so gone from her forever--had she known all this, without knowing the help and hope that were coming--she would yet have said "How beautiful it would be to be like Miss Faith!"

She watched the fire till it began to deaden, and the glow paled out into the starlight.

By and by, up from the direction of the river road, she saw a chaise approaching. It was stopped at the corner, by the bar place. Two figures descended from it, and entered upon the field path through the stile.

One--yes--it was surely the minister! The other--a woman. Who?

Miss Faith!

Glory met them upon the doorstone.

Faith held her finger up.

"I was afraid of disturbing my aunt," said she.

"Take care of her, Glory," said her companion. "She has been in frightful danger."

"At the fire! And you----"

"I was there in time, thank God!" spoke Roger Armstrong, from his soul.

The two girls passed through to the blue bedroom, softly.

Mr. Armstrong went back to the mills again, with horse and chaise.

Glory shut the bedroom door.

"Why, you are all wet, and draggled, and smoked!" said she, taking off Faith's outer, borrowed garments. "What _has_ happened to you--and how came you there, Miss Faith?"

"I fell asleep in the countingroom, last evening, and got locked in. I was coming home. I can't tell you now, Glory. I don't dare to think it all over, yet. And we mustn't let Aunt Faith know that I am here."

These sentences they spoke in whispers.

Glory asked no more; but brought warm water, and bathed and rubbed Faith's feet, and helped her to undress, and put her night clothes on, and covered her in bed with blankets, and then went away softly to the kitchen, whence she brought back, presently, a cup of hot tea, and a biscuit.

"Take these, please," she said.

"I don't think I can, Glory. I don't want anything."

"But he told me to take care of you, Miss Faith!"

That, also, had a power with Faith. Because he had said that, she drank the tea, and then lay back--so tired!

* * * * *

"I waited up till you came, sir, because I thought you would like to know," said Glory, meeting Mr. Armstrong once more upon the doorstone, as he returned a second time from the fire. "She's gone to sleep, and is resting beautiful!"

"You are a good girl, Glory, and I thank you," said the minister; and he put his hand forth, and grasped hers as he spoke. "Now go to bed, and rest, yourself."

It was reward enough.

From the plenitude that waits on one life, falls a crumb that stays the craving of another.


CHAPTER XXX.

AUNT HENDERSON'S MYSTERY.

"Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west, And I said in underbreath,--All our life is mixed with death,
And who knoweth which is best?

"Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west, And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness,--
Round our restlessness, His rest."
MRS. BROWNING.

"So the dreams depart,
So the fading phantoms flee,
And the sharp reality Now must act its part."
WESTWOOD.

It was a little after noon of the next day, when Mr. Rushleigh came to Cross Corners.

Faith was lying back, quite pale, and silent--feeling very weak after the terror, excitement, and fatigue she had gone through--in the large easy-chair which had been brought for her into the southeast room. Miss Henderson had been removed from her bed to the sofa here, and the two were keeping each other quiet company. Neither could bear the strain of nerve to dwell long or particularly on the events of the night. The story had been told, as simply as it might be; and the rest and the thankfulness were all they could think of now. So there were deep thoughts and few words between them. On Faith's part, a patient waiting for a trial yet before her.

"It's Mr. Rushleigh, come over to see Miss Faith. Shall I bring him in?" asked Glory, at the door.

"Will you mind it, aunt?" asked Faith.

"I? No," said Miss Henderson. "Will you mind my being here? That's the question. I'd take myself off, without asking, if I could, you know."

"Dear Aunt Faith! There is something I have to say to Mr. Rushleigh which will be very hard to say, but no more so because you will be by to hear it. It is better so. I shall only have to say it once. I am glad you should be with me."

"Brave little Faithie!" said Mr. Rushleigh, coming in with hands outstretched. "Not ill, I hope?"

"Only tired," Faith answered. "And a little weak, and foolish," as the tears would come, in answer to his cordial words.

"I am sorry. Miss Henderson, that I could not have persuaded this little girl to go home with me last night--this morning, rather. But she would come to you."

"She did just right," Aunt Faith replied. "It's the proper place for her to come to. Not but that we thank you all the same. You're very kind."

"Kinder than I have deserved," whispered Faith, as he took his seat beside her.

Mr. Rushleigh would not let her lead him that way yet. He ignored the little whisper, and by a gentle question or two drew from her that which he had come, especially, to learn and speak of to-day--the story of the fire, and her own knowledge of, and share in it, as she alone could tell it.

Now, for the first time, as she recalled it to explain her motive for entering the mill at all, the rough conversation she had overheard between the two men upon the river bank, suggested to Faith, as the mention of it was upon her lips, a possible clew to the origin of the mischief. She paused, suddenly, and a look of dismayed hesitation came over her face.

"I ought to tell you all, I suppose," she continued. "But pray, sir, do not conclude anything hastily. The two things may have had nothing to do with each other."

And then, reluctantly, she repeated the angry threat that had come to her ears.

Pausing, timidly, to look up in her listener's face, to judge of its expression, a smile there surprised her.

"See how truth is always best," said Mr. Rushleigh. "If you had kept back your knowledge of this, you would have