CHAPTER VIII.A NICHE IN LIFE, AND A WOMAN TO FILL IT."A Traveller between Life and Death."Wordsworth.
"A Traveller between Life and Death."
Wordsworth.
Miss Sampson was at home this evening. It was not what one would have pictured to oneself as a scene of home comfort or enjoyment; but Miss Sampson was at home. In her little room of fourteen feet square, up a dismal flight of stairs, sitting, in the light of a single lamp, by her air-tight stove, whereon a cup of tea was keeping warm; that, and the open newspaper on the little table in the corner, being the only things in any way cheery about her.
Not even a cat or a canary bird had she for companionship. There was no cozy arrangement for daily feminine employment; no workbasket, or litter of spools and tapes; nothing to indicate what might be her daily way of going on. On the broad ledges of the windows, where any other woman would have had a plant or two, there was no array of geraniums or verbenas—not even a seedling orange tree or a monthly rose. But in one of them lay a plaid shawl and a carpet bag, and in the other that peculiar and nearly obsolete piece of feminine property, a paper bandbox, tied about with tape.
Packed up for a journey?
Reader, Miss Sampson wasalwayspacked up. She was that much-enduring, all-foregoing creature, a professional nurse.
There would have been no one to feed a cat, or a canary bird, or to water a rose bush, if she had had one. Her home was no more to her than his station at the corner of the street is to the handcart man or the hackney coachman. It was only the place where she might receive orders; whence she might go forth to the toilsomeness and gloom of one sick room after another, returning between each sally and the next toher cheerless post of waiting—keeping her strength for others, and living no life of her own.
There was nothing in Miss Sampson's outer woman that would give you, at first glance, an idea of her real energy and peculiar force of character. She was a tall and slender figure, with no superfluous weight of flesh; and her long, thin arms seemed to have grown long and wiry with lifting, and easing, and winding about the poor wrecks of mortality that had lost their own vigor, and were fain to beg a portion of hers. Her face was thin and rigid, too—molded to no mere graces of expression—but with a strong outline, and a habitual compression about the mouth that told you, when you had once learned somewhat of its meaning, of the firm will that would go straight forward to its object, and do, without parade or delay, whatever there might be to be done. Decision, determination, judgment, and readiness were all in that habitual look of a face on which little else had been called out for years. But you would not so have read it at first sight. You would almost inevitably have called her a "scrawny, sour-looking old maid."
A creaking step was heard upon the stair, and then a knock of decision at Miss Sampson's door.
"Come in!"
And as she spoke, Miss Sampson took her cup and saucer in her hand. That was to be kept waiting no longer for whatever visitor it might chance to be. She was taking her first sip as Dr. Gracier entered.
"Don't move, Miss Sampson; don't let me interrupt."
"I don't mean to! What sends you here?"
"A new patient."
"Humph! Not one of the last sort, I hope. You know my kind, and 'tain't any use talking up about any others. Any old woman can make gruel, and feed a baby with catnip tea. Don't offer me any more such work as that! If it's work thatiswork, speak out!"
"It's work that nobody else can do for me. A critical case of typhoid, and nobody in the house that understands such illness. I've promised to bring you."
"You knew I was back, then?"
"I knew you would be. I only sent you at the pinch. I warned them you'd go as soon as things were tolerably comfortable."
"Of course I would. What business should I have where there was nothing wanted of me but to go to bed at nine o'clock, and sleep till daylight? That ain't the sort of corner I was cut out to fill."
"Well, drink your tea, and put on your bonnet. There's a carriage at the door."
"Man? or woman?" asked Miss Sampson.
"A man—Mr. Henderson Gartney, Hickory Street."
"Out of his head?"
"Yes—and getting more so. Family all frightened to death."
"Keep 'em out of my way, then, and let me have him to myself. One crazy patient is enough, at a time, for any one pair of hands. I'm ready."
In fifteen minutes more, they were in Hickory Street; and the nurse was speedily installed, or rather installed herself, in her office. Dr. Gracie hastened away to another patient, promising to call again at bedtime.
"Now, ma'am," said Miss Sampson to Mrs. Gartney, who, after taking her first to the bedside of the patient, had withdrawn with her to the little dressing room adjoining, and given her arésuméof the treatment thus far followed, with the doctor's last directions to herself—"you just go downstairs to your supper. I know, by your looks, you ain't had a mouthful to-day. That's no way to help take care of sick folks."
Mrs. Gartney smiled a little, feebly; and an expression of almost childlike rest and relief came over her face. She felt herself in strong hands.
"And you?" she asked. "Shall I send you something here?"
"I've drunk a cup of tea, before I started. If I see my way clear, I'll run down for a bite after you get through. I don't want any special providings. I take my nibbles anyhow, as I go along. You needn't mind, more'n as if I wasn't here. I shall find my way all over the house. Now, you go."
"Only tell me how he seems to you."
"Well—not so terrible sick. Just barely bad enough to keep me here. I don't take any easy cases."
The odd, abrupt manner and speech comforted, while they somewhat astonished Mrs. Gartney.
"Leave the bread and butter and cold chicken on the table," said she, when the tea things were about to be removed; "and keep the chocolate hot, downstairs. Faithie—sit here; and if Miss Sampson comes down by and by, see that she is made comfortable."
It was ten o'clock when Miss Sampson came down, and then it was with Dr. Gracie.
"Cheer up, little lady!" said the doctor, meeting Faith's anxious, inquiring glance. "Not so bad, by any means, as we might be. The only difficulty will be to keep Nurse Sampson here. She won't stay a minute, if we begin to get better too fast. Yes—I will take a bit of chicken, I think; and—what have you there that's hot?" as the maid came in with the chocolate pot, in answer to Faith's ring of the bell. "Ah, yes! Chocolate! I missed my tea, somehow, to-night." The "somehow" had been in his kindly quest of the best nurse in Mishaumok.
"Sit down, Miss Sampson. Let me help you to a scrap of cold chicken. What? Drumstick! Miss Faithie—here is a woman who makes it a principle to go through the world, choosing drumsticks! She's a study; and I set you to finding her out."
Last night, as he had told Miss Sampson, the family had been "frightened to death." He had found Faith sitting on the front stairs, at midnight, when he came in at a sudden summons. She was pale and shivering, and caught him nervously by both hands.
"Oh, doctor!"
"And oh, Miss Faithie! This is no place for you. You ought to be in bed."
"But I can't. Mother is all alone, except Mahala. And I don't dare stay up there, either. Whatshallwe do?"
For all answer, the doctor had just taken her in his arms, and carried her down to the sofa in the hall, where he laid her, and covered her over with his greatcoat. There she stayed, passively, till he came back. And then he told her kindly and gravely, that if she could bequitequiet, and firm, she might go and lie on the sofa in her mother's dressing room for the remainder of the night, to be at hand for any needed service. To-morrow he would see that they were otherwise provided.
And so, to-night, here was Miss Sampson eating her drumstick.
Faith watched the hard lines of her face as she did so, and wondered what, and how much Dr. Gracie had meant by "setting her to find her out."
"I'm afraid you haven't had a vary nice supper," said she, timidly. "Do you like that best?"
"Somebody must always eat drumsticks," was the concise reply.
And so, presently, without any further advance toward acquaintance, they went upstairs; and the house, under the new, energetic rule, soon subsided into quiet for the night.
CHAPTER IX.LIFE OR DEATH?"With God the Lord belong the issues from death."—Ps. 68; 18.
The nursery was a corner room, opening both into Faith's and her mother's. Hendie and Mahala Harris had been removedupstairs, and the apartment was left at Miss Sampson's disposal. Mrs. Gartney's bed had been made up in the little dressing room at the head of the front entry, so that she and the nurse had the sick room between them.
Faith came down the two steps that led from her room into the nursery, the next night at bedtime, as Miss Sampson entered from her father's chamber to put on her night wrapper and make ready for her watch.
"How is he, nurse? He will get well, won't he? What does the doctor say?"
"Nothing," said Miss Sampson, shortly. "He don't know, and he don't pretend to. And that's just what proves he's good for something. He ain't one of the sort that comes into a sick room as if the Almighty had made him a kind of special delegit, and left the whole concern to him. He knows there's a solemner dealing there than his, whether it's for life or death."
"But he can't helpthinking," said Faith, tremblingly. "And I wish I knew. What doyou—?" But Faith paused, for she was afraid, after all, to finish the question, and to hear it answered.
"I don't think. I just keep doing. That's my part. Folks that think too much of what's a-coming, most likely won't attend to what there is."
Faith was finding out—a little of Miss Sampson, and a good deal of herself. Had she not thought too much of what might be coming? Had she not missed, perhaps, some of her own work, when that work was easier than now? And how presumptuously she had wished for "something to happen!" Was God punishing her for that?
"You just keep still, and patient—and wait," said Miss Sampson, noting the wistful look of pain. "That's your work, and after all, maybe it's the hardest kind. And I can't take it off folks' shoulders," added she to herself in an under voice; "so I needn't set up for theverytoughest jobs, to be sure."
"I'll try," answered Faith, submissively, with quivering lips, "only if thereshouldbe anything that I could do—to sit up, or anything—you'll let me, won't you?"
"Of course I will," replied the nurse, cheerily. "I shan't be squeamish about asking when there's anything I really want done."
Faith moved toward the door that opened to her father's room. It was ajar. She pushed it gently open, and paused. "I may go in, mayn't I, nurse, just for a good-night look?"
The sick man heard her voice, though he did not catch her words.
"Come in, Faithie," said he, with one of his half gleams of consciousness, "I'll see you, daughter, as long as I live."
Faith's heart nearly broke at that, and she came, tearfullyand silently, to the bedside, and laid her little, cool hand on her father's fevered one, and looked down on his face, worn, and suffering, and flushed—and thought within herself—it was a prayer and vow unspoken—"Oh, if God will only let him live, I willfindsomething that I can do for him!"
And then she lifted the linen cloth that was laid over his forehead, and dipped it afresh in the bowl of ice water beside the bed, and put it gently back, and just kissed his hair softly, and went out into her own room.
Three nights—three days—more, the fever raged. And on the fourth night after, Faith and her mother knew, by the scrupulous care with which the doctor gave minute directions for the few hours to come, and the resolute way in which Miss Sampson declared that "whoever else had a mind to watch, she should sit up till morning this time," that the critical point was reached; that these dark, silent moments that would flit by so fast, were to spell, as they passed by, the sentence of life or death.
Faith would not be put by. Her mother sat on one side of the bed, while the nurse busied herself noiselessly, or waited, motionless, upon the other. Down by the fireside, on a low stool, with her head on the cushion of an easy-chair, leaned the young girl—her heart full, and every nerve strained with emotion and suspense.
She will never know, precisely, how those hours went on. She can remember the low breathing from the bed, and the now and then half-distinct utterance, as the brain wandered still in a dreamy, feverish maze; and she never will forget the precise color and pattern of the calico wrapper that Nurse Sampson wore; but she can recollect nothing else of it all, except that, after a time, longer or shorter, she glanced up, fearfully, as a strange hush seemed to have come over the room, and met a look and gesture of the nurse that warned her down again, for her life.
And then, other hours, or minutes, she knows not which, went by.
And then, a stir—a feeble word—a whisper from Nurse Sampson—a low "Thank God!" from her mother.
The crisis was passed. Henderson Gartney lived.
CHAPTER X.ROUGH ENDS."So others shallTake patience, labor, to their heart and hand,From thy hand and thy heart, and thy brave cheer,And God's grace fructify through thee to all."Mrs. Browning.
"So others shallTake patience, labor, to their heart and hand,From thy hand and thy heart, and thy brave cheer,And God's grace fructify through thee to all."
Mrs. Browning.
"M. S. What does that stand for?" said little Hendie, reading the white letters painted on the black leather bottom of nurse's carpetbag. He got back, now, often, in the daytime, to his old nursery quarters, where his father liked to hear his chatter and play, for a short time together—though he still slept, with Mahala, upstairs. "Does that mean 'Miss Sampson'?"
Faith glanced up from her stocking mending, with a little fun and a little curiosity in her eyes.
"What does 'M.' stand for?" repeated Hendie.
The nurse was "setting to rights" about the room. She turned round at the question, from hanging a towel straight over the stand, and looked a little amazed, as if she had almost forgotten, herself. But it came out, with a quick opening and shutting of the thin lips, like the snipping of a pair of scissors—"Mehitable."
Faith had been greatly drawn to this odd, efficient woman. Beside that her skillful, untiring nursing had humanly, been the means of saving her father's life, which alone had warmed her with an earnest gratitude that was restless to prove itself, and that welled up in every glance and tone she gave Miss Sampson, there were a certain respect and interest that could not withhold themselves from one who so evidently worked on with a great motive that dignified her smallest acts. In whom self-abnegation was the underlying principle of all daily doing.
Miss Sampson had stayed on at the Gartneys', notwithstanding the doctor's prediction, and her usual habit. And, in truth, her patient did not "get welltoofast." She was needed now as really as ever, though the immediate danger which had summoned her was past, and the fever had gone. The months of overstrained effort and anxiety that had culminated in its violent attack were telling upon him now, in the scarcely less perilous prostration that followed. And Mrs. Gartney had quite given out since the excessive tension of nerve and feeling had relaxed. She was almost ill enough to be regularly nursed herself. She alternated between her bed in the dressing room and an easy-chair opposite her husband's, at his fireside. Miss Sampson knew when she was really wanted, whether theemergency were more or less obvious. She knew the mischief of a change of hands at such a time. And so she stayed on, though she did sleep comfortably of a night, and had many an hour of rest in the daytime, when Faith would come into the nursery and constitute herself her companion.
Miss Sampson was to her like a book to be read, whereof she turned but a leaf or so at a time, as she had accidental opportunity, yet whose every page rendered up a deep, strong—above all, a most sound and healthy meaning.
She turned over a leaf, one day, in this wise.
"Miss Sampson, how came you, at first, to be a sick nurse?"
The shadow of some old struggle seemed to come over Miss Sampson's face, as she answered, briefly:
"I wanted to find the very toughest sort of a job to do."
Faith looked up, surprised.
"But I heard you tell my father that you had been nursing more than twenty years. You must have been quite a young woman when you began. I wonder—"
"You wonder why I wasn't like most other young women, I suppose. Why I didn't get married, perhaps, and have folks of my own to take care of? Well, I didn't; and the Lord gave me a pretty plain indication that He hadn't laid out that kind of a life for me. So then I just looked around to find out what better He had for me to do. And I hit on the very work I wanted. A trade that it took all the old Sampson grit to follow. I made up my mind, as the doctor says, thatsomebodyin the world had got to choose drumsticks, and I might as well take hold of one."
"But don't you ever get tired of it all, and long for something to rest or amuse you?"
"Amuse! I couldn't be amused, child. I've been in too much awful earnest ever to be much amused again. No, I want to die in the harness. It's hard work I want. I couldn't have been tied down to a common, easy sort of life. I want something to fight and grapple with; and I'm thankful there's been a way opened for me to do good according to my nature. If I hadn't had sickness and death to battle against, I should have got into human quarrels, maybe, just for the sake of feeling ferocious."
"And you always take the very worst and hardest cases, Dr. Gracie says."
"What's the use of taking a tough job if you don't face the toughest part of it? I don't want the comfortable end of the business.Somebody'sgot to nurse smallpox, and yellow fever, and raving-distracted people; and Iknowthe Lord made me fit to do just that very work. There ain't many that Hedoesmake for it, but I'm one. And if I shirked, there'd be a stitch dropped."
"Yellow fever! where have you nursed that?"
"Do you suppose I didn't go to New Orleans? I've nursed it, and I'vehadit, and nursed it again. I've been in the cholera hospitals, too. I'm seasoned to most everything."
"Do you think everybody ought to take the hardest thing they can find, to do?"
"Do you think everybody ought to eat drumsticks? We'd have to kill an unreasonable lot of fowls to let 'em! No. The Lord portions out breasts and wings, as well as legs. If He puts anything into your plate, take it."
Dr. Gracie always had a word for the nurse, when he came; and, to do her justice, it was seldom but she had a word to give him back.
"Well, Miss Sampson," said he gayly, one bright morning, "you're as fresh as the day. What pulls down other folks seems to set you up. I declare you're as blooming as—twenty-five."
"You—fib—like—sixty! It's no such thing! And if it was, I'd ought to be ashamed of it."
"Prodigious! as your namesake, the Dominie, would say. Don't tell me a woman is ever ashamed of looking young, or handsome!"
"Now, look here, doctor!" said Miss Sampson, "I never was handsome; and I thank the Lord He's given me enough to do in the world to wear off my young looks long ago! And any woman ought to be ashamed that gets to be thirty and upward, to say nothing of forty-five, and keeps her baby face on! It's a sign she ain't been of much account, anyhow."
"Oh, but there are always differences and exceptions," persisted the doctor, who liked nothing better than to draw Miss Sampson out. "There are some faces that take till thirty, at least, to bring out all their possibilities of good looks, and wear on, then, till fifty. I've seen 'em. And the owners were no drones or do-nothings, either. What do you say to that?"
"I say there's two ways of growing old. And growing old ain't always growing ugly. Some folks grow old from the inside, out; and some from the outside, in. There's old furniture, and there's growing trees!"
"And the trunk that is roughest below may branch out greenest a-top!" said the doctor.
The talk Faith heard now and then, in her walks from home, or when some of "the girls" came in and called her down into the parlor—about pretty looks, and becoming dresses, and who danced with who at the "German" last night, and what a scrape Loolie Lloyd had got into with mixing up and misdating her engagements at the class, and the last new roll for the hair—used to seem rather trivial to her in these days!
Occasionally, when Mr. Gartney had what nurse called a "good" day, he would begin to ask for some of his books and papers, with a thought toward business; and then Miss Sampson would display her carpetbag, and make a show of picking up things to put in it. "For," said she, "when you get at your business, it'll be high time for me to go about mine."
"But only for half an hour, nurse! I'll give you that much leave of absence, and then we'll have things back again as they were before."
"I guess you will! Andfurtherthan they were before. No, Mr. Gartney, you've got to behave. Iwon'thave them vicious-looking accounts about, and it don't signify."
"If it don't, why not?" But it ended in the accounts and the carpetbag disappearing together.
Until one morning, some three weeks from the beginning of Mr. Gartney's illness, when, after a few days' letting alone the whole subject, he suddenly appealed to the doctor.
"Doctor," said he, as that gentleman entered, "I must have Braybrook up here this afternoon. I dropped things just where I stood, you know. It's time to take an observation."
The doctor looked at his patient gravely.
"Can't you be content with simply picking up things, and putting them by, for this year? What I ought to tell you to do would be to send business to the right about, and go off for an entire rest and change, for three months, at least."
"You don't know what you're talking about, doctor!"
"Perhaps not, on one side of the subject. I feel pretty certain on the other, however."
Mr. Gartney did not send for Braybrook that afternoon. The next morning, however, he came, and the tabooed books and papers were got out.
In another day or two, Miss Sampsondidpack her carpetbag, and go back to her air-tight stove and solitary cups of tea. Her occupation in Hickory Street was gone.
CHAPTER XI.CROSS CORNERS."O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the Gods for a kingdom, wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth, the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see!"—Carlyle.
"O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the Gods for a kingdom, wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth, the thing thou seekest is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see!"—Carlyle.
"It is of no use to talk about it," said Mr. Gartney, wearily. "If I live—as long as I live—I must do business. How else are you to get along?"
"How shall we get along if you donotlive?" asked his wife, in a low, anxious tone.
"My life's insured," was all Mr. Gartney's answer.
"Father!" cried Faith, distressfully.
Faith had been taken more and more into counsel and confidence with her parents since the time of the illness that had brought them all so close together. And more and more helpful she had grown, both in word and doing, since she had learned to look daily for the daily work set before her, and to perform it conscientiously, even although it consisted only of little things. She still remembered with enthusiasm Nurse Sampson and the "drumsticks," and managed to pick up now and then one for herself. Meantime she began to see, indistinctly, before her, the vision of a work that must be done by some one, and the duty of it pressed hourly closer home to herself. Her father's health had never been fully reëstablished. He had begun to use his strength before and faster than it came. There was danger—it needed no Dr. Gracie, even, to tell them so—of grave disease, if this went on. And still, whenever urged, his answer was the same. "What would become of his family without his business?"
Faith turned these things over and over in her mind.
"Father," said she, after a while—the conversation having been dropped at the old conclusion, and nobody appearing to have anything more to say—"I don't know anything about business; but I wish you'd tell me how much money you've got!"
Her father laughed; a sad sort of laugh though, that was not so much amusement as tenderness and pity. Then, as if the whole thing were a mere joke, yet with a shade upon his face that betrayed there was far too much truth under the jest, after all, he took out his portemonnaie and told her to look and see.
"You know I don't mean that, father! How much in the bank, and everywhere?"
"Precious little in the bank, now, Faithie. Enough to keep house with for a year, nearly, perhaps. But if I were to take it and go off and spend it in traveling, you can understand that the housekeeping would fall short, can't you?"
Faith looked horrified. She was bringing down her vague ideas of money that came from somewhere, through her father's pocket, as water comes from Lake Kinsittewink by the turning of a faucet, to the narrow point of actuality.
"But that isn't all, I know! I've heard you talk about railroad dividends, and such things."
"Oh! what does the Western Road pay this time?" asked his wife.
"I've had to sell out my stock there."
"And where's the money, father?" asked Faith.
"Gone to pay debts, child," was the answer.
Mrs. Gartney said nothing, but she looked very grave. Herhusband surmised, perhaps, that she would go on to imagine worse than had really happened, and so added, presently:
"I haven't been obliged to sellallmy railroad stocks, wifey. I held on to some. There's the New York Central all safe; and the Michigan Central, too. That wouldn't have sold so well, to be sure, just when I was wanting the money; but things are looking better, now."
"Father," said Faithie, with her most coaxing little smile, "please just take this bit of paper and pencil, and set down these stocks and things, will you?"
The little smile worked its way; and half in idleness, half in acquiescence, Mr. Gartney took the pencil and noted down a short list of items.
"It's very little, Faith, you see." They ran thus:
"And now, father, please put down how much you get a year in dividends."
"Not always the same, little busybody."
Nevertheless he noted down the average sums. And the total was between six and seven hundred dollars.
"But that isn't all. You've got other things. Why, there's the house at Cross Corners."
"Yes, but I can't let it, you know."
"What used you to get for it?"
"Two hundred and fifty. For house and land."
"And you own this house, too, father?"
"Yes. This is your mother's."
"How much rent would this bring?"
Mr. Gartney turned around and looked at his daughter. He began to see there was a meaning in her questions. And as he caught her eye, he read, or discerned without fully reading, a certain eager kindling there.
"Why, what has come over you, Faithie, to set you catechising so?"
Faith laughed.
"Just answer this, please, and I won't ask a single question more to-night."
"About the rent? Why, this house ought to bring six hundred, certainly. And now, if the court will permit, I'll read the news."
About a week after this, in the latter half of one of those spring days that come with a warm breath to tell that summeris glowing somewhere, and that her face is northward, Aunt Faith Henderson came out upon the low, vine-latticed stoop of her house in Kinnicutt.
Up the little footpath from the road—across the bit of greensward that lay between it and the stoop—came a quick, noiseless step, and there was a touch, presently, on the old lady's arm.
Faith Gartney stood beside her, in trim straw bonnet and shawl, with a black leather bag upon her arm.
"Auntie! I've come to make you a tiny little visit! Till day after to-morrow."
"Faith Gartney! However came you here? And in such a fashion, too, without a word of warning, like—an angel from Heaven!"
"I came up in the cars, auntie! I felt just like it! Will you keep me?"
"Glory! Glory McWhirk!" Like the good Vicar of Wakefield, Aunt Henderson liked often to give the whole name; and calling, she disappeared round the corner of the stoop, without ever a word of more assured welcome.
"Put on the teapot again, and make a slice of toast." The good lady's voice, going on with further directions, was lost in the intricate threading of the inner maze of the singular old dwelling, and Faith followed her as far as the first apartment, where she set down her bag and removed her bonnet.
It was a quaint, dim room, overbrowed and gloomed by the roofed projection of the stoop; low-ceiled, high-wainscoted and paneled. All in oak, of the natural color, deepened and glossed by time and wear. The heavy beams that supported the floor above were undisguised, and left the ceiling in panels also, as it were, between. In these highest places, a man six feet tall could hardly have stood without bending. He certainly would not, whether he could or no. Even Aunt Faith, with her five feet, six-and-a-half, dropped a little of her dignity, habitually, when she entered. But then, as she said, "A hen always bobs her head when she comes in at a barn door." Between the windows stood an old, old-fashioned secretary, that filled up from floor to ceiling; and over the fireplace a mirror of equally antique date tilted forward from the wall. Opposite the secretary, a plain mahogany table; and eight high-backed, claw-footed chairs ranged stiffly around the room.
Aunt Henderson was proud of her old ways, her old furniture, and her house, that was older than all.
Some far back ancestor and early settler had built it—the beginning of it—before Kinnicutt had even become a town; and—rare exception to the changes elsewhere—generation after generation of the same name and line had inhabited it until now. Aunt Faith, exultingly, told each curious visitor that ithad been built precisely two hundred and ten years. Out in the back kitchen, or lean-to, was hung to a rafter the identical gun with which the "old settler" had ranged the forest that stretched then from the very door; and higher up, across a frame contrived for it, was the "wooden saddle" fabricated for the back of the placid, slow-moving ox, in the time when horses were as yet rare in the new country, and used with pillions, to transport I can't definitely say how many of the family to "meeting."
Between these—the best room and the out-kitchen—the labyrinth of sitting room, bedrooms, kitchen proper, milk room, and pantry, partitioned off, or added on, many of them since the primary date of the main structure, would defy the pencil of modern architect.
In one of these irregularly clustered apartments that opened out on different aspects, unexpectedly, from their conglomerate center, Faith sat, some fifteen minutes after her entrance into the house, at a little round table between two corner windows that looked northwest and southwest, and together took in the full radiance of the evening sky.
Opposite sat her aunt, taking care of her as regarded tea, toast, and plain country loaf cake, and watching somewhat curiously, also, her face.
Faith's face had changed a little since Aunt Henderson had seen her last. It was not the careless girl's face she had known. There was a thought in it now. A thought that seemed to go quite out from, and forget the self from which it came.
Aunt Henderson wondered greatly what sudden whim or inward purpose had brought her grandniece hither.
When Faith absolutely declined any more tea or cake, Miss Henderson's tap on the table leaf brought in Glory McWhirk.
A tall, well-grown girl of eighteen was Glory, now—quite another Glory than had lightened, long ago, the dull little house in Budd Street, and filled it with her bright, untutored dreams. The luminous tresses had had their way since then; that is, with certain comfortable bounds prescribed; and rippled themselves backward from a clear, contented face, into the net that held them tidily.
Faith looked up, and remembered the poor office girl of three years since, half clad and hopeless, with a secret amaze at what "Aunt Faith had made of her."
"You may give me some water, Glory," said Miss Henderson.
Glory brought the pitcher, and poured into the tumbler, and gazed at Faith's pretty face, and the dark-brown glossy rolls that framed it, until the water fairly ran over the table.
"There! there! Why, Glory, what are you thinking of?" cried Miss Henderson.
Glory was thinking her old thoughts—wakened always by all that was beautiful andbeyond.
She came suddenly to herself, however, and darted off, with her face as bright a crimson as her hair was golden; flashing up so, as she did most easily, into as veritable a Glory as ever was. Never had baby been more aptly or prophetically named.
Coming back, towel in hand, to stop the freshet she had set flowing, she dared not give another glance across the table; but went busily and deftly to work, clearing it of all that should be cleared, that she might make her shy way off again before she should be betrayed into other unwonted blundering.
"And now, Faith Gartney, tell me all about it! What sent you here?"
"Nothing. Nobody. I came, aunt. I wanted to see the place, and you."
The rough eyebrows were bent keenly across the table.
"Hum!" breathed Aunt Henderson.
There was small interior sympathy between her ideas and those that governed the usual course of affairs in Hickory Street. Fond of her nephew and his family, after her fashion, notwithstanding Faith's old rebellion, and all other differences, she certainly was; but they went their way, and she hers. She felt pretty sure theirs would sooner or later come to a turning; and when that should happen, whether she should meet them round the corner, or not, would depend. Her path would need to bend a little, and theirs to make a pretty sharp angle, first.
But here was Faith cutting across lots to come to her! Aunt Henderson put away her loaf cake in the cupboard, set back her chair against the wall in its invariable position of disuse, and departed to the milk room and kitchen for her evening duty and oversight.
Glory's hands were busy in the bread bowl, and her brain kneading its secret thoughts that no one knew or intermeddled with.
Faith sat at the open window of the little tea room, and watched the young moon's golden horn go down behind the earth rim among the purple, like a flamy flower bud floating over, and so lost.
And the three lives gathered in to themselves, separately, whatsoever the hour brought to each.
At nine o'clock Aunt Faith came in, took down the great leather-bound Bible from the corner shelf, and laid it on the table. Glory appeared, and seated herself beside the door.
For a few moments, the three lives met in the One Great Life that overarches and includes humanity. Miss Henderson read from the sixth chapter of St. John.
They were fed with the five thousand.
CHAPTER XII.A RECONNOISSANCE."Then said his Lordship, 'Well God mend all!' 'Nay, Donald, we must help him to mend it,' said the other."—Quoted byCarlyle."Oh, leave these jargons, and go your way straight to God's work in simplicity and singleness of heart!"—Miss Nightingale.
"Then said his Lordship, 'Well God mend all!' 'Nay, Donald, we must help him to mend it,' said the other."—Quoted byCarlyle.
"Oh, leave these jargons, and go your way straight to God's work in simplicity and singleness of heart!"—Miss Nightingale.
"Auntie," said Faith, next morning, when, after some exploring, she had discovered Miss Henderson in a little room, the very counterpart of the one she had had her 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 andapron 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 shedidhear 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 wegather 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 andfireless 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 bejust 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 eighteen, ain't you?"
"I shall be, this summer."
"Time for you to leave off school. Bring your books and things along with you. You'll have chance enough to study."
Faith hadn't thought much of herself before. But when she found her aunt didn't apparently think of her at all, she began to realize keenly all that she must silently give up.
"But it's a good deal of help, auntie, to study with other people. And then—we shouldn't have any society out here. I don't mean for the sake of parties, and going about. But for the improvement of it. I shouldn't like to be shut out from cultivated people."
"Faith Gartney!" exclaimed Miss Henderson, facing about in the narrow footway, "don't you go to being fine and transcendental! If there's one word I despise more than another, in the way folks use it nowadays—it's 'Culture'! As if God didn't know how to make souls grow! You just take root where He puts you, and go to work, and live! He'll take care of the cultivating! If He means you to turn out a rose, or an oak tree, you'll come to it. And pig-weed's pig-weed, no matter where it starts up!"
"Aunt Faith!" replied the child, humbly and earnestly, "I believe that's true! And I believe I want the country to grow in! But the thing will be," she added, a little doubtfully, "to persuade father."
"Doesn't he want to come, then? Whose plan is it, pray?" asked Miss Henderson, stopping short again, just as she had resumed her walk, in a fresh surprise.
"Nobody's but mine, yet, auntie! I haven't asked him, but I thought I'd come and look."
Miss Henderson took her by the arm, and looked steadfastly in her dark, earnest eyes.
"You're something, sure enough!" said she, with a sharp tenderness.
Faith didn't know precisely what she meant, except that she seemed to mean approval. And at the one word of appreciation, all difficulty and self-sacrifice vanished out of her sight, and everything brightened to her thought, again, till her thought brightened out into a smile.
"What a skyful of lovely white clouds!" she said, looking up to the pure, fleecy folds that were flittering over the blue. "We can't see that in Mishaumok!"
"She's just heavenly!" said Glory to herself, standing at the back door, and gazing with a rapturous admiration at Faith's upturned face. "And the dinner's all ready, and I'm thankful, and more, that the custard's baked so beautiful!"