CHAPTER XXI.PRESSURE."To be warped, unconsciously, by the magnetic influence of all around is the destiny, to a certain extent, of even the greatest souls."—Oakfield.
"To be warped, unconsciously, by the magnetic influence of all around is the destiny, to a certain extent, of even the greatest souls."—Oakfield.
June came, and Saidie Gartney. Not for flowers, or strawberries, merely; but for father's and mother's consent that, in a few weeks, when flowers and strawberries should have fully come, there should be a marriage feast made for her in the simple home, and she should go forth into the gay world again, the bride of a wealthy New York banker.
Aunt Etherege and Saidie filled the house. With finery, with bustle, with important presence.
Miss Gartney's engagement had been sudden; her marriage was to be speedy. Half a dozen seamstresses, and as many sewing machines, were busy in New York—hands, feet, and wheels—in making up the delicate draperies for thetrousseau; and Madame A—— was frantic with the heap of elaborate dresses that was thrust upon her hands, and must be ready for the thirtieth.
Mrs. Gartney and Faith had enough to do, to put the house and themselves in festival trim. Hendie was spoiled with having no lessons, and more toys and sugar plums than he knew what to do with. Mr. Selmore's comings and goings made special ebullitions, weekly, where was only a continuous lesser effervescence before. Mis' Battis had not been able to subside into an armchair since the last day of May.
Faith found great favor in the eyes of her brother-in-law elect. He pronounced her a "naïve, piquantelittle person," and already there was talk of how pleasant it would be, to have her in Madison Square, and show her to the world. Faith said nothing to this, but in her heart she clung to Kinnicutt.
Glory thought Miss Gartney wonderful. Even Mr. Armstrong spoke to Aunt Faith of the striking beauty of her elder niece.
"I don't know how shedoeslook," Aunt Faith replied, with all her ancient gruffness. "I see a great show of flounces, and manners, and hair; but they don't look as if they all grew, natural. I can't makeherout, amongst all that. Now,Faith'sjust Faith. You see her prettiness the minute you look at her, as you do a flower's."
"There are not many like Miss Faith," replied Mr. Armstrong. "I never knew but one other who so wore the fresh, pure beauty of God's giving."
His voice was low and quiet, and his eye looked afar, as he spoke.
Glory went away, and sat down on the doorstone. There was a strange tumult at her heart. In the midst, a noble joy. About it, a disquietude, as of one who feels shut out—alone.
"I don't know what ails me. I wonder if I ain't glad! Of course, it's nothing to me. I ain't in it. But it must be beautiful to be so! And to have such words said!Shedon't know what a sight the minister thinks of her! I know. I knew before. It's beautiful—but I ain't in it. Only, I think I've got the feeling of it all. And I'm glad it's real, somewhere. Some way, I seem to have so muchhere, that never grows out into anything. Maybe I'd be beautiful if it did!"
So talked Glory, interjectionally, with herself.
In the midst of these excited days, there came two letters to Mr. Gartney.
One was from a gentleman in Michigan, in relation to some land Mr. Gartney owned there, taken years ago, at a very low valuation, for a debt. This was likely, from the rapid growth and improvement in the neighborhood, to become, within a few years, perhaps, a property of some importance.
The other letter was from his son, James Gartney, in San Francisco. The young man urged his father to consider whether it might not be a good idea for him to come out and join him in California.
James Gartney's proposal evidently roused his attention. It was a great deal to think of, certainly; but it was worth thinking of, too. James had married in San Francisco, had a pleasant home there, and was prospering. Many old business friends had gone from Mishaumok, in the years when the great flood of enterprise set westward across the continent, and were building up name and influence in the Golden Land. The idea found a place in his brain, and clung there. Only, there was Faith! But things might come round so that even this thought need to be no hindrance to the scheme.
Changes, and plans, and interests, and influences were gathering; all to bear down upon one young life.
"More news!" said Mr. Gartney, one morning, coming in from his walk to the village post office, to the pleasant sitting room, or morning room, as Mrs. Etherege and Saidie called it, where Faith was helping her sister write a list of the hundreds who were to receive Mr. and Mrs. Selmore's cards—"At Home, in September, in Madison Square." "Whom do you think I met in the village, this morning?"
Everybody looked up, and everybody's imagination took a discursive leap among possibilities, and then everybody, of course, asked "Whom?"
"Old Jacob Rushleigh, himself. He has taken a house atLakeside, for the summer. And he has bought the new mills just over the river. That is to give young Paul something to do, I imagine. Kinnicutt has begun to grow; and when places or people once take a start, there's no knowing what they may come to. Here's something for you, Faithie, that I dare say tells all about it."
And he tossed over her shoulder, upon the table, a letter, bearing her name, in Margaret Rushleigh's chirography, upon the cover.
Faith's head was bent over the list she was writing; but the vexatious color, feeling itself shielded in her face, crept round till it made her ear tips rosy. Saidie put out her forefinger, with a hardly perceptible motion, at the telltale sign, and nodded at Aunt Etherege behind her sister's back.
Aunt Etherege looked bland and sagacious.
Upstairs, a little after, these sentences were spoken in Saidie's room.
"Of course it will be," said the younger to the elder lady. "It's been going on ever since they were children. Faith hasn't a right to say no, now. And what else brought him up here after houses and mills?"
"I don't see that the houses and mills were necessary to the object. Rather cumbersome and costly machinery, I should think, to bring to bear upon such a simple purpose."
"Oh, the business plan is something that has come up accidentally, no doubt. Running after one thing, people very often stumble upon another. But it will all play in together, you'll see. Only, I'm afraid I shan't have the glory of introducing Faithie in New York!"
"It would be as good a thing as possible. And I can perceive that your father and mother count upon it, also. In their situation what a great relief it would be! Of course, Henderson never could do so mad a thing as take the child up by the roots, again, and transplant her to San Francisco! And I see plainly he has got that in his own head."
A door across the passage at this moment shut, softly, but securely.
Behind it, in her low chair by her sewing table sat the young sister whose fate had been so lightly decreed.
Was it all just so, as Saidie had said? Had she no longer a right to say no? Only themselves know how easily, how almost inevitably, young judgments and consciences are drawn on in the track beaten down for them by others. Many and many a life decision has been made, through thistaking for grantedthat bears with its mute, but magnetic power, upon the shyness and irresolution that can scarcely face and interpret its own wish or will.
It was very true, that, as Saidie Gartney had said, "this hadbeen going on for years." For years, Faith had found great pleasantness in the companionship and evident preference of Paul Rushleigh. There had been nobody to compare with him in her young set in Mishaumok. She knew he liked her. She had been proud of it. The girlish fancy, that may be forgotten in after years, or may, fostered by circumstance, endure and grow into a calm and happy wifehood, had been given to him. And what troubled her now? Was it that always, when the decisive moment approaches, there is a little revulsion of timid feminine feeling, even amidst the truest joy? Or was it that a new wine had been given into Faith's life, which would not be held in the old bottles? Was she uncertain—inconstant; or had she spiritually outgrown her old attachment? Or, was she bewildered, now, out of the discernment of what was still her heart's desire and need?
Paul was kind, and true, and manly. She recognized all this in him as surely as ever. If he had turned from, and forgotten her, she would have felt a pang. What was this, then, that she felt, as he came near, and nearer?
And then, her father! Had he really begun to count on this? Do men know how their young daughters feel when the first suggestion comes that they are not regarded as born for perpetual daughterhood in the father's house? Would she even encumber his plans, if she clung still to her maidenly life?
By all these subtleties does the destiny of woman close in upon her.
Margaret Rushleigh's letter was full of delight, and eagerness, and anticipation. She and Paul had been so charmed with Kinnicutt and Lakeside; and there had happened to be a furnished house to let for the season close by the Morrises, and they had persuaded papa to take it. They were tired of the seashore, and Conway was getting crowded to death. They wanted a real summer in the country. And then this had turned up about the mills! Perhaps, now, her father would build, and they should come up every year. Perhaps Paul would stay altogether, and superintend. Perhaps—anything! It was all a delightful chaos of possibilities; with this thing certain, that she and Faith would be together for the next four months in the glorious summer shine and bloom.
Miss Gartney's wedding was simple. The stateliness and show were all reserved for Madison Square.
Mr. Armstrong pronounced the solemn words, in the shaded summer parlor, with the door open into the sweeter and stiller shade without.
Faith stood by her sister's side, in fair, white robes, and Mr. Robert Selmore was groomsman to his brother. A few especial friends from Mishaumok and Lakeside were present to witness the ceremony.
And then there was a kissing—a hand-shaking—a well-wishing—a going out to the simple but elegantly arranged collation—a disappearance of the bride to put on traveling array—a carriage at the door—smiles, tears, and good-bys—Mr., and Mrs., and Mr. Robert Selmore were off to meet the Western train—and all was over.
Mrs. Etherege remained a few days longer at Cross Corners. As Mis' Battis judiciously remarked, "after a weddin' or a funeral, there ought to be somebody to stay a while and cheer up the mourners."
This visit, that had been so full of happenings, was to have a strange occurrence still to mark it, before all fell again into the usual order.
Aunt Etherege was to go on Thursday. On Wednesday, the three ladies sat together in the cool, open parlor, where Mr. Armstrong, walking over from the Old House, had joined them. He had the July number of theMishaumokin his hand, and a finger between the fresh-cut leaves at a poem he would read them.
Just as he had finished the last stanza, amidst a hush of the room that paid tribute to the beauty of the lines and his perfect rendering of them, wheels came round from the high road into the lane.
"It is Mr. Gartney come back from Sedgely," said Aunt Etherege, looking from her window, between the blinds. "Whom on earth has he picked up to bring with him?"
A thin, angular figure of a woman, destitute of crinoline, wearing big boots, and a bonnet that ignored the fashion, and carrying in her hand a black enameled leather bag, was alighting as she spoke, at the gate.
"Mother!" said Faith, leaning forward, and glancing out, also, "it looks like—it is—Nurse Sampson!"
And she put her work hastily from her lap, and rose to go out at the side door, to meet and welcome her.
To do this, she had to pass by Mr. Armstrong. How came that rigid look, that deadly paleness, to his face? What spasm of pain made him clutch the pamphlet he held with fingers that grew white about the nails?
Faith stopped, startled.
"Mr. Armstrong! Are you not well?" said she. At the same instant of her pausing, Miss Sampson entered from the hall, behind her. Mr. Armstrong's eye, lifted toward Faith in an attempt to reply, caught a glimpse of the sharp, pronounced outlines of the nurse's face. Before Faith could comprehend, or turn, or cry out, the paleness blanched ghastlier over his features, and the strong man fell back, fainting.
With quick, professional instinct, Miss Sampson sprang forward, seizing, as she did so, an ice-water pitcher from the table.
"There, take this!" said she to Faith, "and sprinkle him with it, while I loosen his neckcloth! Gracious goodness!" she exclaimed, in an altered tone, as she came nearer to him for this purpose, "do it, some of the rest of you, and let me get out of his way! It was me!"
And she vanished out of the room.
CHAPTER XXII.ROGER ARMSTRONG'S STORY."Even by means of our sorrows, we belong to the Eternal Plan."Humboldt.
"Even by means of our sorrows, we belong to the Eternal Plan."
Humboldt.
"Go in there," said Nurse Sampson to Mr. Gartney, calling him in from the porch, "and lay that man flat on the floor!"
Which Mr. Gartney did, wondering, vaguely, in the instant required for his transit to the apartment, whether bandit or lunatic might await his offices.
All happened in a moment; and in that moment, the minister's fugitive senses began to return.
"Lie quiet, a minute. Faith, get a glass of wine, or a little brandy."
Faith quickly brought both; and Mr. Armstrong, whom her father now assisted to the armchair again, took the wine from her hand, with a smile that thanked her, and depreciated himself.
"I am not ill," he said. "It is all over now. It was the sudden shock. I did not think I could have been so weak."
Mrs. Gartney had gone to find some hartshorn. Mrs. Etherege, seeing that the need for it was passing, went out to tell her sister so, and to ask the strange woman who had originated all the commotion, what it could possibly mean. Mr. Gartney, at the same instant, caught a glimpse of his horse, which he had left unfastened at the gate, giving indications of restlessness, and hastened out to tie him.
Faith and Mr. Armstrong were left alone.
"Did I frighten you, my child?" he asked, gently. "It was a strange thing to happen! I thought that woman was in her grave. I thought she died, when—I will tell you all about it some day, soon, Miss Faith. It was the sad, terrible page of my life."
Faith's eyes were lustrous with sympathy. Under all other thought was a beating joy—not looked at yet—that he couldspeak to her so! That he could snatch this chance moment to tell her, only, of his sacred sorrow!
She moved a half step nearer, and laid her hand, softly, on the chair arm beside him. She did not touch so much as a fold of his sleeve; but it seemed, somehow, like a pitying caress.
"I am sorry!" said she. And then the others came in.
Mr. Gartney walked round with his friend to the old house.
Miss Sampson began to recount what she knew of the story. Faith escaped to her own room at the first sentence. She would rather have it as Mr. Armstrong's confidence.
Next morning, Faith was dusting, and arranging flowers in the east parlor, and had just set the "hillside door," as they called it, open, when Mr. Armstrong passed the window and appeared thereat.
"I came to ask, Miss Faith, if you would walk up over the Ridge. It is a lovely morning, and I am selfish enough to wish to have you to myself for a little of it. By and by, I would like to come back, and see Miss Sampson."
Faith understood. He meant to tell her this that had been heavy upon his heart through all these years. She would go. Directly, when she had brought her hat, and spoken with her mother.
Mrs. Etherege and Mrs. Gartney were sitting together in the guest chamber, above. At noon, after an early dinner, Mrs. Etherege was to leave.
Mr. Armstrong stood upon the doorstone below, looking outward, waiting. If he had been inside the room, he would not have heard. The ladies, sitting by the window, just over his head, were quite unaware and thoughtless of his possible position.
He caught Faith's clear, sweet accent first, as she announced her purpose to her mother, adding:
"I shall be back, auntie, long before dinner."
Then she crossed the hall into her own room, made her slight preparation for the walk, and went down by the kitchen staircase, to give Parthenia some last word about the early dinner.
"I think," said Mrs. Etherege, in the keenness of her worldly wisdom, "that this minister of yours might as well have a hint of how matters stand. It seems to me he is growing to monopolize Faith, rather."
"Oh," replied Mrs. Gartney, "there is nothing of that! You know what nurse told us, last evening. It isn't quite likely that a man would faint away at the memory of one woman, if his thoughts were turned, the least, in that way, upon another. No, indeed! She is his Sunday scholar, and he treats her always as a very dear young friend. But that is all."
"Maybe. But is it quite safe for her? He is a young man yet, notwithstanding those few gray hairs."
"Oh, Faith has tacitly belonged to Paul Rushleigh these three years!"
Mr. Armstrong heard it all. He turned the next moment, and met his "dear young friend" with the same gentle smile and manner that he always wore toward her, and they walked up the Ridge path, among the trees, together.
A bowlder of rock, scooped into smooth hollows that made pleasant seats, was the goal, usually, of the Ridge walk. Here Faith paused, and Mr. Armstrong made her sit down and rest.
Standing there before her, he began his story.
"One summer—years ago," he said, "I went to the city of New Orleans. I went to bring thence, with me, a dear friend—her who was to have been my wife."
The deep voice trembled, and paused. Faith could not look up, her breath came quickly, and the tears were all but ready.
"She had been there, through the winter and spring, with her father, who, save myself, was the only near friend she had in all the world.
"The business which took him there detained him until later in the season than Northerners are accustomed to feel safe in staying. And still, important affairs hindered his departure.
"He wrote to me, that, for himself, he must risk a residence there for some weeks yet; but that his daughter must be placed in safety. There was every indication of a sickly summer. She knew nothing of his writing, and he feared would hardly consent to leave him. But, if I came, she would yield to me. Our marriage might take place there, and I could bring her home. Without her, he said, he could more quickly dispatch what remained for him to do; and I must persuade her of this, and that it was for the safety of all that she should so fulfill the promise which was to have been at this time redeemed, had their earlier return been possible.
"In the New Orleans papers that came by the same mail, were paragraphs of deadly significance. The very cautiousness with which they were worded weighted them the more.
"Miss Faith! my friend! in that city of pestilence, was my life! Night and day I journeyed, till I reached the place. I found the address which had been sent me—there were only strangers there! Mr. Waldo had been, but the very day before, seized with the fatal disease, and removed to a fever hospital. Miriam had gone with him—into plague and death!
"Was I wrong, child? Could I have helped it? I followed. Ah! God lets strange woes into this world of His! I cannot tell you, if I would, what I saw there! Pestilence—death—corruption!
"In the midst of all, among the gentle sisters of charity, I found a New England woman—a nurse—her whom I met yesterday. She came to me on my inquiry for Mr. Waldo. Hewas dead. Miriam had already sickened—was past hope. I could not see her. It was against the rule. She would not know me.
"I only remember that I 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.
"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 pridethat 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 fromtête-à-têtes—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 welcome and encouragement at Lakeside, tended; and she had a dim prescience of what must, some time, come of it: but that was all in the far-off by and by. She would not look at it yet.
She was afraid, now, as she let Paul help her into the wagon, and take his place at her side.
She had been frightened by a word of her mother's, when she had gone to her, before leaving, to tell how the plan had been altered, and ask if she had better do as was wished of her.
Mrs. Gartney had assented with a smile, and a "Certainly, if you like it, Faith; indeed, I don't see how you can very well help it; only——"
"Only what, mother?" asked Faith, a little fearfully.
"Nothing, dear," answered her mother, turning to her with a little caress. But she had a look in her eyes that mothers wear when they begin to see their last woman's sacrifice demand itself at their hands.
"Go, darling. Paul is waiting."
It was like giving her away.
So they drove down, through byways, among the lanes, toward the Wachaug Road.
Summer was in her perfect flush and fullness of splendor. The smell of new-mown hay was in the air.
As they came upon the river, they saw the workmen busy in and about the new mills. Mr. Rushleigh's buggy stood by thefence; and he was there, among his mechanics, with his straw hat and seersucker coat on, inspecting and giving orders.
"What a capital old fellow the governor is!" said Paul, in the fashion young men use, nowadays, to utter their affections.
"Do you know he means to set me up in these mills he is making such a hobby of, and give me half the profits?"
Faith had not known. She thought him very good.
"Yes; he would do anything, I believe, for me—or anybody I cared for."
Faith was silent; and the strange fear came up in heart and throat.
"I like Kinnicutt, thoroughly."
"Yes," said Faith. "It is very beautiful here."
"Not only that. I like the people. I like their simple fashions. One gets at human life and human nature here. I don't think I was ever, at heart, a city boy. I don't like living at arm's length from everybody. People come close together, in the country. And—Faith! what a minister you've got here! What a sermon that was he preached last Sunday! I've never been what you might call one of the serious sort; but such a sermon as that must do anybody good."
Faith felt a warmth toward Paul as he said this, which was more a drawing of the heart than he had gained from her by all the rest.
"My father says he will keep him here, if money can do it. He never goes to church at Lakeside, now. It needs just such a man among mill villages like these, he says. My father thinks a great deal of his workpeople. He says nobody ought to bring families together, and build up a neighborhood, as a manufacturer does, and not look out for more than the money. I think he'll expect a great deal of me, if he leaves me here, at the head of it all. More than I can ever do, by myself."
"Mr. Armstrong will be the very best help to you," said Faith. "I think he means to stay. I'm sure Kinnicutt would seem nothing without him, now."
"Faith! Will you help me to make a home here?"
She could not speak. A great shock had fallen upon her whole nature, as if a thunderbolt she had had presentiment of, burst from a clear blue sky.
They drove on for minutes, without another word.
"Faith! You don't answer me. Must I take silence as I please? It can't be that you don't care for me!"
"No, no!" cried Faith, desperately, like one struggling for voice through a nightmare. "I do care. But—Paul! I don't know! I can't tell. Let me wait, please. Let me think."
"As long as you like, darling," said he, gently and tenderly. "You know all I can tell you. You know I have cared for youall my life. And I'll wait now till you tell me I may speak again. Till you put on that little ring of mine, Faith!"
There was a little loving reproach in these last words.
"Please take me home, now, Paul!"
They were close upon the return path around the Lake. A look of disappointed pain passed over Paul Rushleigh's features. This was hardly the happy reception, however shy, he had hoped and looked for. Still he hoped, however. He could not think she did not care for him. She, who had been the spring of his own thoughts and purposes for years. But, obedient to her wish, he touched his horse with the lash, and urged him homeward.
Paul helped her from the wagon at the little white gate at Cross Corners, and then they both remembered that she was to have gone to Lakeside to tea.
"What shall I tell Margaret?" he asked.
"Oh, don't tell her anything! I mean—tell her, I couldn't come to-night. And, Paul—forgive me! I do want so to do what is right!"
"Isn't it right to let me try and make you happy all your life?"
A light had broken upon her—confusedly, it is true—yet that began to show her to herself more plainly than any glimpse she had had before, as Paul's words, simple, yet burning with his strong sure love, came to her, with their claim to honest answer.
She saw what it was he brought her; she felt it was less she had to give him back. There was something in the world she might go missing all the way through life, if she took this lot that lay before her now. Would he not miss a something in her, also? Yet, must she needs insist on the greatest, the rarest, that God ever sends? Why should she, more than others? Would she wrong him more, to give him what she could, or to refuse him all?
"I ought—if I do—" she said, tremulously, "to care as you do!"
"You never can, Faith!" cried the young man, impetuously. "I care as a man cares! Let me love you! care a little for me, and let it grow to more!"
Men, till something is accorded, are willing to take so little! And then the little must become so entire!
"Well, I declare!" exclaimed Mis' Battis, as Faith came in. "Who'd a thought o' seein' you home to tea! I s'pose you ain't had none?"
"Yes—no. That is, I don't want any. Where is my mother?"
"She and your pa's gone down to Dr. Wasgatt's. I knew 'twould be contrary to the thirty-nine articles that they shouldget away from there without their suppers, and so I let the fire right down, and blacked the stove."
"Never mind," said Faith, abstractedly. "I don't feel hungry." And she went away, upstairs.
"'M!" said Mis 'Battis, significantly, to herself, running a released knitting needle through her hair, "don't tell me! I've been through the mill!"
Half an hour after, she came up to Faith's door.
"The minister's downstairs," said she. "Hope to goodness, he's hadhissupper!"
"Oh, if I dared!" thought Faith; and her heart throbbed tumultuously. "Why can't there be somebody to tell me what I ought to do?"
If she had dared, how she could have leaned upon this friend! How she could have trusted her conscience and her fate to his decision!
"Does anything trouble you to-night, Miss Faith?" asked Mr. Armstrong, watching her sad, abstracted look in one of the silent pauses that broke their attempts at conversation. "Are you ill, or tired?"
"Oh, no!" answered Faith, quickly, from the surface, as one often does when thoughts lie deep. "I am quite well. Only—I am sometimes puzzled."
"About what is? Or about what ought to be?"
"About doing. So much depends. I get so tired—feeling how responsible everything makes me. I wish I were a little child again! Or that somebody would just take me and tell me where to go, and where to stay, and what to do, and what not. From minute to minute, as the things come up."
Roger Armstrong, with his great, chastened soul, yearned over the child as she spoke; so gladly he would have taken her, at that moment, to his heart, and bid her lean on him for all that man might give of help—of love—of leading!
If she had told him, in that moment, all her doubt, as for the instant of his pause she caught her breath with swelling impulse to do!
"'And they shall all be led of God';" said the minister. "It is only to be willing to take His way rather than one's own. All this that seems to depend painfully upon oneself, depends, then, upon Him. The act is human—the consequences become divine."
Faith was silenced then. There was no appeal to human help from that. Her impulse throbbed itself away into a lonely passiveness again.
There was a distance between these two that neither dared to pass.
A word was spoken between mother and daughter as they parted for the night.
"Mother! I have such a thing to think of—to decide!"
It was whispered low, and with cheek hidden on her mother's neck, as the good-night kiss was taken.
"Decide for your own happiness, Faithie. We have seen and understood for a long time. If it is to be as we think, nothing could give us a greater joy for you."
Ah! how much had father and mother seen and understood?
The daughter went her way, to wage her own battle in secret; to balance and fix her decision between her own heart and God. So we find ourselves left, at the last, in all the great crises of our life.
Late that night, while Mr. and Mrs. Gartney were felicitating each other, cheerily, upon the great good that had fallen to the lot of their cherished child, that child sat by her open window, looking out into the summer night; the tossing elm boughs whispering weird syllables in her ears, and the stars looking down upon her soul struggle, so silently, from so far!
"Mr. Rushleigh's here!" shouted Hendie, precipitating himself, next morning, into the breakfast room, where, at a rather later hour than usual, Mrs. Gartney and Faith were washing and wiping the silver and china, and Mr. Gartney still lingered in his seat, finishing somebody's long speech, reported in the evening paper of yesterday.
"Mr. Rushleigh's here, on his long-tailed black horse! And he says he'll give me a ride, but not yet. He wants to see papa. Make haste, papa."
Faith dropped her towel, and as Mr. Gartney rose to go out and meet his visitor, just whispered, hurriedly, to her mother:
"I'll come down again. I'll see him before he goes." And escaped up the kitchen staircase to her own room.
Paul Rushleigh came, he told Mr. Gartney, because, although Faith had not authorized him to appeal to her father to ratify any consent of hers, he thought it right to let him know what he had already said to his daughter. He did not wish to hurry Faith. He only wished to stand openly with Mr. Gartney in the matter, and would wait, then, till she should be quite ready to give him her own answer.
He explained the prospect his father offered him, and the likelihood of his making a permanent home at Kinnicutt.
"That is," he added, "if I am to be so happy as to have a home, anywhere, of my own."
Mr. Gartney was delighted with the young man's unaffected warmth of heart and noble candor.
"I could not wish better for my daughter, Mr. Rushleigh," he replied. "And she is a daughter whom I may fairly wish the best for, too."
Mr. Gartney rose. "I will send Faith," said he.
"I do notaskfor her," answered Paul, a flush of feelingshowing in his cheek. "I did not come, expecting it—my errand was one I owed to yourself—but Faith knows quite well how glad I shall be if she chooses to see me."
As Mr. Gartney crossed the hall from parlor to sitting room, a light step came over the front staircase.
Faith passed her father, with a downcast look, as he motioned with his hand toward the room where Paul stood, waiting. The bright color spread to her temples as she glided in.
She held, but did not wear, the little turquoise ring.
Paul saw it, as he came forward, eagerly.
A thrill of hope, or dread—he scarce knew which—quivered suddenly at his heart. Was he to take it back, or place it on her finger as a pledge?
"I have been thinking, Paul," said she, tremulously, and with eyes that fell again away from his, after the first glance and greeting, "almost ever since. And I do not think I ought to keep you waiting to know the little I can tell you. I do not think I understand myself. I cannot tell, certainly, how I ought—how I do feel. I have liked you very much. And it was very pleasant to me before all this. I know you deserve to be made very happy. And if it depends on me, I do not dare to say I will not try to do it. If you think, yourself, that this is enough—that I shall do the truest thing so—I will try."
And the timid little fingers laid the ring into his hand, to do with as he would.
What else could Paul have done?
With the strong arm that should henceforth uphold and guard her, he drew her close; and with the other hand slipped the simply jeweled round upon her finger. For all word of answer, he lifted it, so encircled, to his lips.
Faith shrank and trembled.
Hendie's voice sounded, jubilant, along the upper floor, toward the staircase.
"I will go, now, if you wish. Perhaps I ought," said Paul. "And yet, I would so gladly stay. May I come again, by and by?"
Faith uttered a half-audible assent, and as Hendie's step came nearer down the stairs, and passed the door, straight out upon the grassplot, toward the gate, and the long-tailed black horse that stood there, she escaped again to her own chamber.
Hendie had his ride. Meanwhile, his sister, down upon her knees at her bedside, struggled with the mystery and doubt of her own heart. Why could she not feel happier? Would it never be otherwise? Was this all life had for her, in its holiest gift, henceforth? But, come what might, she would have God, always!
So, without words, only with tears, she prayed, and at last, grew calm.