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

and comforted her as no other earthly comfort could. But this was not all earthly; it lifted her toward heaven. It bore her toward the eternal solace there.

Aunt Faith would have no scenes. She told the others, in turn, very much as she had told Faith, that a suffering and an uncertainty lay before her; and then, by her next word and gesture, demanded that the life about her should go right on, taking as slightly as might be its coloring from this that brooded over her. Nobody had a chance to make a wail. There was something for each to do.

Miss Henderson, by Nurse Sampson's advice, remained mostly in her bed. In fact, she had kept back the announcement of this ailment of hers, just so long as she could resist its obvious encroachment. The twisted ankle had been, for long, a convenient explanation of more than its own actual disability.

But it was not a sick room--one felt that--this little limited bound in which her life was now visibly encircled. All the cheer of the house was brought into it. If people were sorry and fearful, it was elsewhere. Neither Aunt Faith nor the nurse would let anybody into "their hospital," as Miss Sampson said, "unless they came with a bright look for a pass." Every evening, the great Bible was opened there, and Mr. Armstrong read with them, and uttered for them words that lifted each heart, with its secret need and thankfulness, to heaven. All together, trustfully, and tranquilly, they waited.

Dr. Wasgatt had been called in. Quite surprised he was, at this new development. He "had thought there was something a little peculiar in her symptoms." But he was one of those AEsculapian worthies who, having lived a scientifically uneventful life, plodding quietly along in his profession among people who had mostly been ill after very ordinary fashions, and who required only the administering of stereotyped remedies, according to the old stereotyped order and rule, had quite forgotten to think of the possibility of any unusual complications. If anybody were taken ill of a colic, and sent for him and told him so, for a colic he prescribed, according to outward indications. The subtle signs that to a keener or more practiced discernment, might have betokened more, he never thought of looking for. What then? All cannot be geniuses; most men just learn a trade. It is only a Columbus who, by the drift along the shore of the fact or continent he stands on, predicates another, far over, out of sight.

Surgeons were to come out from Mishaumok to consult. Mr. and Mrs. Gartney would be home, now, in a day or two, and Aunt Faith preferred to wait till then. Mis' Battis opened the Cross Corners house, and Faith went over, daily, to direct the ordering of things there.

"Faith!" said Miss Henderson, on the Wednesday evening when they were to look confidently for the return of their travelers next day, "come here, child! I have something to say to you."

Faith was sitting alone, there, with her aunt, in the twilight.

"There's one thing on my mind, that I ought to speak of, as things have turned out. When I thought, a few weeks ago, that you were provided for, as far as outside havings go, I made a will, one day. Look in that right-hand upper bureau drawer, and you'll find a key, with a brown ribbon to it. That'll unlock a black box on the middle shelf of the closet. Open it, and take out the paper that lies on the top, and bring it to me."

Faith did all this, silently.

"Yes, this is it," said Miss Henderson, putting on her glasses, which were lying on the counterpane, and unfolding the single sheet, written out in her own round, upright, old-fashioned hand. "It's an old woman's whim; but if you don't like it, it shan't stand. Nobody knows of it, and nobody'll be disappointed. I had a longing to leave some kind of a happy life behind me, if I could, in the Old House. It's only an earthly clinging and hankering, maybe; but I'd somehow like to feel sure, being the last of the line, that there'd be time for my bones to crumble away comfortably into dust, before the old timbers should come down. I meant, once, you should have had it all; but it seemed as if you wasn't going to _need_ it, and as if there was going to be other kind of work cut out for you to do. And I'm persuaded there is yet, somewhere. So I've done this; and I want you to know it beforehand, in case anything goes wrong--no, not that, but unexpectedly--with me."

She reached out the paper, and Faith took it from her hand. It was not long in reading.

A light shone out of Faith's eyes, through the tears that sprang to them, as she finished it, and gave it back.

"Aunt Faith!" she said, earnestly. "It is beautiful! I am so glad! But, auntie! You'll get well, I know, and begin it yourself!"

"No," said Miss Henderson, quietly. "I may get over this, and I don't say I shouldn't be glad to. But I'm an old tree, and the ax is lying, ground, somewhere, that's to cut me down before very long. Old folks can't change their ways, and begin new plans and doings. I'm only thankful that the Lord has sent me a thought that lightens all the dread I've had for years about leaving the old place; and that I can go, thinking maybe there'll be His work doing in it as long as it stands."

"I don't know," she resumed, after a pause, "how your father's affairs are now. The likelihood is, if he has any health, that he'll go into some kind of a venture again before very long. But I shall have a talk with him, and if he isn't satisfied I'll alter it so as to do something more for you."

"Something more!" said Faith. "But you have done a great deal, as it is! I didn't say so, because I was thinking so much of the other."

"It won't make an heiress of you," said Aunt Faith. "But it'll be better than nothing, if other means fall short. And I don't feel, somehow, as if you need be a burden on my mind. There's a kind of a certainty borne in on me, otherwise. I can't help thinking that what I've done has been a leading. And if it has, it's right. Now, put this back, and tell Miss Sampson she may bring my gruel."


CHAPTER XXXII.

GLORY McWHIRK'S INSPIRATION.

"No bird am I to sing in June, And dare not ask an equal boon. Good nests and berries red are Nature's To give away to better creatures,-- And yet my days go on, go on."
MRS. BROWNING.

Mr. and Mrs. Gartney arrived on Thursday.

Two weeks and three days they had been absent; and in that time how the busy sprites of change and circumstance had been at work! As if the scattered straws of events, that, stretched out in slender windrows, might have reached across a field of years, had been raked together, and rolled over--crowded close, and heaped, portentous, into these eighteen days!

Letters had told them something; of the burned mill, and Faith's fearful danger and escape; of Aunt Henderson's continued illness, and its present serious aspect; and with this last intelligence, which met them in New York but two days since, Mrs. Gartney found her daughter's agitated note of pained avowal, that she "had come, through all this, to know herself better, and to feel sure that this marriage ought not to be"; that, in short, all was at length over between her and Paul Rushleigh.

It was a meeting full of thought--where much waited for speech that letters could neither have conveyed nor satisfied--when Faith and her father and mother exchanged the kiss of love and welcome, once more, in the little home at Cross Corners.

It was well that Mis' Battis had made waffles, and spread a tempting summer tea with these and her nice, white bread, and fruits and creams; and wished, with such faint impatience as her huge calm was capable of, that "they would jest set right down, while things was good and hot"; and that Hendie was full of his wonderful adventures by boat and train, and through the wilds; so that these first hours were gotten over, and all a little used to the old feeling of being together again, before there was opportunity for touching upon deeper subjects.

It came at length--the long evening talk, after Hendie was in bed, and Mr. Gartney had been over to the old house, and seen his aunt, and had come back, to find wife and daughter sitting in the dim light beside the open door, drawn close in love and confidence, and so glad and thankful to have each other back once more!

First--Aunt Faith; and what was to be done--what might be hoped--what must be feared--for her. Then, the terrible story of the fire; and all about it, that could only be got at by the hundred bits of question and answer, and the turning over and over, and repetition, whereby we do the best--the feeble best--we can, to satisfy great askings and deep sympathies that never can be anyhow made palpable in words.

And, last of all--just with the good-night kiss--Faith and her mother had had it all before, in the first minutes they were left alone together--Mr. Gartney said to his daughter:

"You are quite certain, now, Faith?"

"Quite certain, father"; Faith answered, low, with downcast eyes, as she stood before him.

Her father laid his hand upon her head.

"You are a good girl; and I don't blame you; yet I thought you would have been safe and happy, so."

"I am safe and happy here at home," said Faith.

"Home is in no hurry to spare you, my child."

And Faith felt taken back to daughterhood once more.

Margaret Rushleigh had been to see her, before this. It was a painful visit, with the mingling of old love and new restraint; and the effort, on either side, to show that things, except in the one particular, were still unchanged.

Faith felt how true it was that "nothing could go back, precisely, to what it was before."

There was another visit, a day or two after the reassembling of the family at Cross Corners. This was to say farewell. New plans had been made. It would take some time to restore the mills to working order, and Mr. Rushleigh had not quite resolved whether to sell them out as they were, or to retain the property. Mrs. Rushleigh wished Margaret to join her at Newport, whither the Saratoga party was to go within the coming week. Then there was talk of another trip to Europe. Margaret had never been abroad. It was very likely they would all go out in October.

Paul's name was never mentioned.

Faith realized, painfully, how her little hand had been upon the motive power of much that was all ended, now.

Two eminent medical men had been summoned from Mishaumok, and had held consultation with Dr. Wasgatt upon Miss Henderson's case. It had been decided to postpone the surgical operation for two or three weeks. Meanwhile, she was simply to be kept comfortable and cheerful, strengthened with fresh