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.
"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 do _not_ live?" 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. Her husband
surmised, perhaps, that she would go on to imagine worse than had really
happened, and so added, presently:
"I haven't been obliged to sell _all_ my 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:
New York Central Railroad 20 shares.
Michigan Central " 15 "
Kinnicutt Branch " 10 "
Mishaumok Insurance Co. 15 "
Merchants Bank 30 "
"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 summer is 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 it had 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 and _beyond_.
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.