Faith Gartney's Girlhood Part 40

NURSE SAMPSON'S WAY OF LOOKING AT IT.

"I can believe, it shall you grieve, And somewhat you distrain; But afterward, your paines hard, Within a day or twain, Shall soon aslake; and ye shall take Comfort to you again."

OLD ENGLISH BALLAD.

Glory looked in, once, at the southeast room, and saw Faith lying, still with hidden face; and went away softly, shutting the door behind her as she went.

When Mr. Armstrong and Miss Sampson came, she met them at the front entrance, and led the nurse directly to her mistress, as she had been told.

Mr. Armstrong betook himself to his own room. Perhaps the hollow Paul Rushleigh's horse had pawed at the gatepost, and the closed door of the keeping room, revealed something to his discernment that kept him from seeking Faith just then.

There was a half hour of quiet in the old house. A quiet that ever brooded very much.

Then Nurse Sampson came out, with a look on her face that made Faith gaze upon her with an awed feeling of expectation. She feared, suddenly, to ask a question.

It was not a long-drawn look of sympathy. It was not surprised, nor shocked, nor excited. It was a look of business. As if she knew of work before her to do. As if Nurse Sampson were in her own proper element, once more.

Faith knew that something--she could not guess what--something terrible, she feared--had happened, or was going to happen, to her aunt.

It was in the softening twilight that Miss Henderson sent for her to come in.

Aunt Faith leaned against her pillows, looking bright and comfortable, even cheerful; but there was a strange gentleness in look and word and touch, as she greeted the young girl who came to her bedside with a face that wore at once its own subduedness of fresh-past grief, and a wondering, loving apprehension of something to be disclosed concerning the kind friend who lay there, invested so with such new grace of tenderness.

Was there a twilight, other than that of day, softening, also, around her?

"Little Faith!" said Aunt Henderson. Her very voice had taken an unwonted tone.

"Auntie! It is surely something very grave! Will you not tell me?"

"Yes, child. I mean to tell you. It may be grave. Most things are, if we had the wisdom to see it. But it isn't very dreadful. It's what I've had warning enough of, and had mostly made up my mind to. But I wasn't quite sure. Now, I am. I suppose I've got to bear some pain, and go through a risk that will be greater, at my years, than it would have been if I'd been younger. And I may die. That's all."

The words, of old habit, were abrupt. The eye and voice were tender with unspoken love.

Faith turned to Miss Sampson, who sat by.

"And then, again, she mayn't," said the nurse. "I shall stay and see her through. There'll have to be an operation. At least, I think so. We'll have the doctor over, to-morrow. And now, if there's one thing more important than another, it's to keep her cheerful. So, if you've got anything bright and lively to say, speak out! If not, _keep_ out! She'll do well enough, I dare say."

Poor Faith! And, without this new trouble, there was so much that she, herself, was needing comfort for!

"You're a wise woman, Nurse Sampson. But you don't know everything,"

said Aunt Faith. "The best thing to take people out of their own worries, is to go to work and find out how other folks' worries are getting on. He's been here, hasn't he, child?"

It was not so hard for Aunt Faith, who had borne secretly, so long, the suspicion of what was coming, and had lived on, calmly, nevertheless, in her daily round, to turn thus from the announcement of her own state and possible danger, to thought and inquiry for the affairs of another, as it was for that other, newly apprised, and but half apprised, even, of what threatened, to leave the subject there, and answer. But she saw that Miss Henderson spoke only truth in declaring it was the best way to take her out of her worries; she read Nurse Sampson's look, and saw that she, at any rate, was quite resolved her patient should not be let to dwell longer on any painful or apprehensive thought, and she put off all her own anxious questionings, till she should see the nurse alone, and said, in a low tone--yes, Paul Rushleigh had been there.

"And you've told him the truth, like a woman, and he's heard it like a man?"

"I've told him it must be given up. Oh, it was hard, auntie!"

"You needn't worry. You've done just the rightest thing you could do."

"But it seems so selfish. As if my happiness were of so much more consequence than his. I've made him so miserable, I'm afraid!"

"Miss Sampson!" cried Aunt Faith, with all her old oddity and suddenness, "just tell this girl, if you know, what kind of a commandment a woman breaks, if she can't make up her mind to marry the first man that asks her! 'Tain't in _my_ Decalogue!"

"I can't tell what commandment she won't be likely to break, if she isn't pretty sure of her own mind before she _does_ marry!" said Miss Sampson, energetically. "Talk of making a man miserable! Supposing you do for a little while? 'Twon't last long. Right's right, and settles itself. Wrong never does. And there isn't a greater wrong than to marry the wrong man. To him as well as to you. And it won't end there--that's the worst of it. There's more concerned than just yourself and him; though you mayn't know how, or who. It's an awful thing to tangle up and disarrange the plans of Providence. And more of it's done, I verily believe, in this matter of marrying, than any other way. It's like mismatching anything else--gloves or stockings--and wearing the wrong ones together. They don't fit; and more'n that, it spoils another pair.

I believe, as true as I live, if the angels ever do cry over this miserable world, it's when they see the souls they have paired off, all right, out of heaven, getting mixed up and mismated as they do down here! Why, it's fairly enough to account for all the sin and misery there is in the world! If it wasn't for Adam and Eve and Cain, I should think it did!"

"But it's very hard," said Faith, smiling, despite all her saddening thoughts, at the characteristic harangue, "always to know wrong from right. People may make mistakes, if they mean ever so well."

"Yes, awful mistakes! There's that poor, unfortunate woman in the Bible.

I never thought the Lord meant any reflection by what he said--on her.

She'd had six husbands. And he knew she hadn't got what she bargained for, after all. Most likely she never had, in the whole six. And if things had got into such a snarl as that eighteen hundred years ago, how many people, do you think, by this time, are right enough in themselves to be right for anybody? I've thought it all over, many a time. I've had reasons of my own, and I've seen plenty of reasons as I've gone about the world. And my conclusion is, that matrimony's come to be more of a discipline, nowadays, than anything else!"

It was strange cheer; and it came at a strange moment; with the very birth of a new anxiety. But so our moments and their influences are mingled. Faith was roused, strengthened, confirmed in her own thought of right, beguiled out of herself, by the words of these two odd, plain-dealing women, as she would not have been if a score of half-comprehending friends had soothed her indirectly with inanities, and delicate half-handling of that which Aunt Faith and Nurse Sampson went straight to the heart of, and brought out, uncompromisingly, into the light. So much we can endure from a true earnestness and simplicity, rough and homely though it be, which would be impertinent and intolerable if it came but with surface sympathy.

She had a word that night from Robert Armstrong, when he came, late in the evening, from a conversation with Aunt Faith, and found her at the open door upon the stoop. It was only a hand grasp, and a fervent "G.o.d bless you, child! You have been brave and true!" and he pa.s.sed on. But a balm and a quiet fell deep into her heart, and a tone, that was a joy, lingered in her ear, and comforted her as no other earthly comfort could. But this was not all earthly; it lifted her toward heaven. It bore her toward the eternal solace there.

Aunt Faith would have no scenes. She told the others, in turn, very much as she had told Faith, that a suffering and an uncertainty lay before her; and then, by her next word and gesture, demanded that the life about her should go right on, taking as slightly as might be its coloring from this that brooded over her. n.o.body had a chance to make a wail. There was something for each to do.

Miss Henderson, by Nurse Sampson's advice, remained mostly in her bed.

In fact, she had kept back the announcement of this ailment of hers, just so long as she could resist its obvious encroachment. The twisted ankle had been, for long, a convenient explanation of more than its own actual disability.

But it was not a sick room--one felt that--this little limited bound in which her life was now visibly encircled. All the cheer of the house was brought into it. If people were sorry and fearful, it was elsewhere.

Neither Aunt Faith nor the nurse would let anybody into "their hospital," as Miss Sampson said, "unless they came with a bright look for a pa.s.s." Every evening, the great Bible was opened there, and Mr.

Armstrong read with them, and uttered for them words that lifted each heart, with its secret need and thankfulness, to heaven. All together, trustfully, and tranquilly, they waited.

Dr. Wasgatt had been called in. Quite surprised he was, at this new development. He "had thought there was something a little peculiar in her symptoms." But he was one of those aesculapian worthies who, having lived a scientifically uneventful life, plodding quietly along in his profession among people who had mostly been ill after very ordinary fashions, and who required only the administering of stereotyped remedies, according to the old stereotyped order and rule, had quite forgotten to think of the possibility of any unusual complications. If anybody were taken ill of a colic, and sent for him and told him so, for a colic he prescribed, according to outward indications. The subtle signs that to a keener or more practiced discernment, might have betokened more, he never thought of looking for. What then? All cannot be geniuses; most men just learn a trade. It is only a Columbus who, by the drift along the sh.o.r.e of the fact or continent he stands on, predicates another, far over, out of sight.

Surgeons were to come out from Mishaumok to consult. Mr. and Mrs.

Gartney would be home, now, in a day or two, and Aunt Faith preferred to wait till then. Mis' Battis opened the Cross Corners house, and Faith went over, daily, to direct the ordering of things there.

"Faith!" said Miss Henderson, on the Wednesday evening when they were to look confidently for the return of their travelers next day, "come here, child! I have something to say to you."

Faith was sitting alone, there, with her aunt, in the twilight.

"There's one thing on my mind, that I ought to speak of, as things have turned out. When I thought, a few weeks ago, that you were provided for, as far as outside havings go, I made a will, one day. Look in that right-hand upper bureau drawer, and you'll find a key, with a brown ribbon to it. That'll unlock a black box on the middle shelf of the closet. Open it, and take out the paper that lies on the top, and bring it to me."

Faith did all this, silently.

"Yes, this is it," said Miss Henderson, putting on her gla.s.ses, which were lying on the counterpane, and unfolding the single sheet, written out in her own round, upright, old-fashioned hand. "It's an old woman's whim; but if you don't like it, it shan't stand. n.o.body knows of it, and n.o.body'll be disappointed. I had a longing to leave some kind of a happy life behind me, if I could, in the Old House. It's only an earthly clinging and hankering, maybe; but I'd somehow like to feel sure, being the last of the line, that there'd be time for my bones to crumble away comfortably into dust, before the old timbers should come down. I meant, once, you should have had it all; but it seemed as if you wasn't going to _need_ it, and as if there was going to be other kind of work cut out for you to do. And I'm persuaded there is yet, somewhere. So I've done this; and I want you to know it beforehand, in case anything goes wrong--no, not that, but unexpectedly--with me."

She reached out the paper, and Faith took it from her hand. It was not long in reading.

A light shone out of Faith's eyes, through the tears that sprang to them, as she finished it, and gave it back.

"Aunt Faith!" she said, earnestly. "It is beautiful! I am so glad! But, auntie! You'll get well, I know, and begin it yourself!"

"No," said Miss Henderson, quietly. "I may get over this, and I don't say I shouldn't be glad to. But I'm an old tree, and the ax is lying, ground, somewhere, that's to cut me down before very long. Old folks can't change their ways, and begin new plans and doings. I'm only thankful that the Lord has sent me a thought that lightens all the dread I've had for years about leaving the old place; and that I can go, thinking maybe there'll be His work doing in it as long as it stands."