QUESTION AND ANSWER.
"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 pride that 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 from _tête-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 the fence; 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 you all 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 should get 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 had _his_
supper!"
"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 not _ask_ for her," answered Paul, a flush of feeling showing 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.