Two weeks passed quietly, without much apparent change in Miss
Danforth; and Faith was beginning to think of appointing a time to go
home. But the necessity for that was suddenly superseded. The Friday
following, Miss Dilly took a change for the worse, and Saturday she
died. Faith sent off tidings immediately to Pattaquasset; but her
letter could not reach there till Monday; and Monday came a very great
fall of snow which made travelling impossible. Faith waited patiently,
comforting Madame Danforth as she might, and endeavouring to win her to
some notion of that joy in the things of the Bible in which Miss Dilly
had lived and died. For no change had come over Miss Dilly's sky; and
she had set sail from the shores of earth in the very sunlight.
It fell out, that Faith's letter of Saturday afternoon had been five
minutes too late for the mail; and after lying in the office at Pequot
over Sunday, had been again subjected to the delays of Monday's storm,
which in its wild fury put a stop to everything else; and thus, when
Mr. Linden went to the office Tuesday morning before school time, the
mail had not yet got in. Not long after, however, Mr. Skip brought home
the letters; and Mrs. Derrick reading hers, at once took Mr. Skip and
Jerry and set off for Pequot; minding neither snowdrifts nor driving
wind, when the road to Faith lay through them, and arriving there quite
safe about the hour of midday.
The delayed funeral took place the same afternoon. And the next
morning, in a brilliant cold day, snow all over the ground and the sky
all blue, the mother and daughter set forth homewards. Madame Danforth
was going to take another relation in, and live on still in the little
house where she and her sister-in-law had made a happy home for so many
years. Miss Danforth had left a few hundreds, three or four, to Faith.
It was all she had owned in the world; her principal living having been
an annuity settled upon her by her brother, which reverted to Madame
Danforth.
It was about mid-afternoon when they reached home, and of course the
house held no one but Cindy; except indeed that sort of invisible
presence which books and other inanimate things make known; and Cindy
had to tell of two or three visiters, but otherwise nothing. Very fair
it all looked to Faith,--very sweet to her ear was the sound of the
village clock, although as yet it was only striking three. She did not
say much about the matter. A gleeful announcement that she was glad to
be at home, she made to Mrs. Derrick; but after that she expressed
herself in action. One of her first moves was to the kitchen,
determined that there should be a double consciousness of her being at
home when supper-time came. Then books were got out, and fires put in
wonderful order. Mr. Linden might guess, from the state in which he
found his room, that it had come under its old rule. No such fire had
greeted him there for weeks; no such brushed-up clean hearth; no such
delicate arrangement of table and chairs and curtains and couch. But
the fire burned quietly and told no tales, otherwise than by its very
orderly snapping and sparkling.
And indeed it so happened, that Mr. Linden went first into the
sitting-room,--partly to see if any one was there, partly because the
day was cold, and under Cindy's management there was small reason to
suppose that his room was warm. And once there, the easy-chair reminded
him so strongly that he was tired, that he even sat down in it before
going upstairs,--which combination a long walk through the snowdrifts
since school, made very acceptable. Five minutes after, Faith having
got rid of her kitchen apron, opened softly the door of the
sitting-room. She stopped an instant, and then came forward, her
gladness not at all veiled by a very rosy veil of shy modesty. There
was no stay in his step to meet her,--he had sprung up with the first
sound of her foot on the threshold; and how much she had been missed
and longed for Faith might guess, from the glad silence in which she
was held fast and for a minute not allowed to speak herself. So very
glad!--she could see it and feel it exceedingly as he brought her
forward to the fire, and lifted up her face, and looked at it with eyes
that were not easily satisfied.
"My little Sunbeam," he said, "how lovely you are!"
She had been laughing and flushing with a joy almost as frankly shewn
as his own; but that brought a change over her face. The eyes fell, and
the line of the lips was unbent after a different fashion.
"I don't know what it is like to see you again," Mr. Linden said as his
own touched them once more,--"like any amount of balm and rest and
refreshment! How long have you been here, dear child? and how do you
do?--and have you any idea how glad I am to have you home?"
She answered partly in dumb show, clasping one hand upon his shoulder
and laying down her head upon it. Her words were very quiet and
low-spoken.
"We came home a while ago--and I am very well." Mr. Linden rested his
face lightly upon her shining hair, and was silent--till Faith
wondered; little guessing what thoughts the absence and the meeting and
above all her mute expression, had stirred; nor what bitterness was
wrapped in those sweet minutes. But he put it aside, and then took the
sweetness pure and unmixed; giving her about as much sunshine as he
said she gave him.
"How do you like writing to me, Faith?" he said. "Am I, on the whole,
any more terrific at a distance than near by?"
"I didn't know you could be so good at a distance,"--she said
expressively.
"Did you find out what reception your letters met?"
"I didn't want to find out."
"Do you call that an answer?" he said smiling. "Why didn't you want to
find out?--and _did_ you?"
"Why!"--said Faith,--"I didn't want to find out because it wasn't
necessary. I _did_ find out that I liked to write. But you wouldn't
have liked it if you had known what time of night it was, often."
"What do you think of taking up a new study?" said Mr. Linden. "It
strikes me that it would do you good to stand in the witness-box half
an hour every day,--just for practice. Faith--did you find out what
reception your letters met?"
"I knew before--" she said, meeting his eyes.
"Did you!--then what made you assure me I should not like them?"
"I don't think you did, Endecott--the parts of them that you oughtn't
to have liked."
"Truly I think not!" he said laughing. "You are on safe ground there,
little Mignonette. But speaking of letters--do you want more tidings
from Italy?"
"O yes I if you please. Are they good? And has all been good here with
you and the school since I have been away?"
"Yes, they are good,--my sister--and yours--is enjoying herself
reasonably. And the boys have been good,--and I--have wanted my
Mignonette."
One word in that speech brought a soft play of colour to Faith's face,
but her words did not touch that point.
The days went on very quietly after that, and the weeks
followed,--quietly, regularly, full of business and pleasure. Quick
steps were made in many things during those weeks, little interrupted
by the rest of Pattaquasset, some of the most stirring people of that
town being away. An occasional tea-drinking did steal an evening now
and then, but also furnished the before and after walk or ride, and so
on the whole did little mischief; and as Faith was now sometimes taken
on Mr. Linden's visits to another range of society, she saw more of him
than ever; and daily learned more and more--not only of him, but of his
care for her. His voice--never indeed harsh to any one--took its
gentlest tones to her; his eye its softest and deepest lustre: no
matter how tired he came home--the first sight of her seemed to banish
all thought of fatigue. Faith could feel that she was the very delight
of his life. Indeed, by degrees, she began to understand that she had
long been so--only there had once been a qualification,--now, the
sunshine of his happiness had nothing to check its expression, or its
endeavour to make her life as bright. That he took "continual comfort"
in her, Faith could see.
And--child!--he did not see what this consciousness spurred her to do;
how the strength of her heart spent itself--yet was never spent--in
efforts to grow and become more worthy of him and more fit for him to
take comfort in. The days were short, and Faith's household duties not
few, especially in the severe weather, when she could not let her
mother be tried with efforts which in summer-time might be easy and
pleasant enough. A good piece of every day was of necessity spent by
Faith about house and in the kitchen, and faithfully given to its work.
But her heart spurred her on to get knowledge. The times when Mr.
Linden was out of school could rarely be study times, except of study
with him; and to be prepared for him Faith was eager. She took times
that were hers all alone. Nobody heard her noiseless footfall in the
early morning down the stair. Long before it was light,--hours before
the sun thought of shewing his face to the white Mong and the snowy
houseroofs of Pattaquasset, Faith lighted her fire in the sitting-room,
and her lamp on the table; and after what in the first place was often
a good while with her Bible, she bent herself to the deep earnest
absorbed pressing into the studies she was pursuing with Mr. Linden--or
such of them as the morning had time for. Faith could not lengthen the
day at the other end; to prevent the sun was her only chance; and day
after day and week after week, through the short days of February, she
had done solid work and a deal of it before anybody in the house saw
her face in the kitchen or at breakfast. They saw it then as bright as
ever. Mr. Linden only knew that his scholar made very swift and smooth
progress. He would have known more, for Faith would have shewn the
effects of her early hours of work in her looks and life the rest of
the day, but happiness is strong; and a mind absolutely at peace with
God and the world has a great rest! Friction is said to be one of the
notable hindering powers in the world of matter--it is equally true,
perhaps, of the world of spirit. Without it, in either sphere, how
softly and with how little wear and tear, everything moves! And Faith's
life knew none.