Faith Gartney's Girlhood Part 44

"And why not?" asked a voice, pleasantly, behind her.

Mr. Armstrong had come in, unheard by the lady in her own rush of words, and had approached too near, as this suddenly ceased, to be able to escape again unnoticed.

Mis' Battis told Luther Goodell afterwards, that she "jest looked in from the next room, at that, and if ever a woman felt cheap--all over--and as if she hadn't a right to her own toes and fingers, and as if every thread and st.i.tch on her turned mean, all at once--it was Mrs.

Gimp, that minit!"

"Has Faith returned?" Mr. Armstrong asked, of Mrs. Gartney, after a little pause in which Mrs. Gimp showed no disposition to develop into deed her forty-times declared "great mind."

"I think not. She said she would remain an hour or two with Glory, and help her to arrange those matters she came in, this morning, to ask us about."

"I will walk over."

And the minister took his hat again, and with a bow to the two ladies, pa.s.sed out, and across the lane.

"Faith!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the village matron, her courage and her mind to meddle returning. "Well, that's intimate!"

It might as well be done now, as at any time. Mr. Armstrong, himself, had heedlessly precipitated the occasion. It had only been, among them, a question of how and when. There was nothing to conceal.

"Yes," replied Mrs. Gartney, quietly. "They will be married by and by."

"Did she go out the door, ma'am? Or has she melted down into the carpet?

'Cause, I _have_ heerd of people sinkin' right through the floor," said Mis' Battis, who "jest looked in" a second time, as the bewildered visitor receded.

The pleasant autumn months, mellowing and brightening all things, seemed also to soften and gild their memories of the life that had ended, ripely and beautifully, among them.

Glory, after the first overwhelm of astonishment at what had befallen her--made fully to understand that which she had a right, and was in duty bound to do--entered upon the preparations for her work with the same unaffected readiness with which she would have done the bidding of her living mistress. It was so evident that her true humbleness was untouched by all. "It's beautiful!" and the tears and smiles would come together as she said it. "But then, Miss Faith--Mr. Armstrong! I never can do any of it unless you help me!"

Faith and Mr. Armstrong did help with heart and hand, and every word of counsel that she needed.

"I must buy some cotton and calico, and make some little clothes and tyers. Hadn't I better? When they come, I'll have them to take care of."

And with the loving antic.i.p.ation of a mother, she made up, and laid away, Faith helping her in all, her store of small apparel for little ones that were to come.

She had gone down, one day, to Mishaumok, and found out Bridget Foye, at the old number in High Street. And to her she had intrusted the care of looking up the children--to be not less than five, and not more than eight or nine years of age--who should be taken to live with her at "Miss Henderson's home," and "have a good time every day."

"I must get them here before Christmas," said Glory to her friends. "We must hang their stockings all up by the great kitchen chimney, and put sugarplums and picture books in!"

She was going back eagerly into her child life--rather into the life her childhood wist of, but missed--and would live it all over, now, with these little ones, taken already, before even they were seen or found, out of their strangerhood into her great, kindly heart!

A plain, capable, motherly woman had been obtained, by Mr. Armstrong's efforts and inquiry, who would live with Glory as companion and a.s.sistant. There was the dairy work to be carried on, still. This, and the hay crops, made the princ.i.p.al income of the Old Farm. A few fields were rented for cultivation.

"Just think," cried Glory when the future management of these matters was talked of, "what it will be to see the little things let out a-rolling in the new hay!"

Her thoughts pa.s.sed so entirely over herself, as holder and arbiter of means, to the good--the daily little joy--that was to come, thereby, to others!

When all was counted and calculated, they told her that she might safely venture to receive, in the end, six children. But that, for the present, four would perhaps be as many as it would be wise for her to undertake.

"You know best," she said, "and I shall do whatever you say. But I don't feel afraid--any more, that is, for taking six than four. I shall just do for them all the time, whether or no."

"And what if they are bad and troublesome, Glory?"

"Oh, they won't be," she replied. "I shall love them so!"

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

INDIAN SUMMER.

"'Tis as if the benignant Heaven Had a new revelation given, And written it out with gems; For the golden tops of the elms And the burnished bronze of the ash And the scarlet lights that flash From the sumach's points of flame, Like blazonings on a scroll Spell forth an illumined Name For the reading of the soul!"

It is of no use to dispute about the Indian summer. I never found two people who could agree as to the time when it ought to be here, or upon a month and day when it should be decidedly too late to look for it. It keeps coming. After the equinoctial, which begins to be talked about with the first rains of September, and isn't done with till the sun has measured half a dozen degrees of south declination, all the pleasant weather is Indian summer--away on to Christmastide. For my part, I think we get it now and then, little by little, as "the kingdom" comes. That every soft, warm, mellow, hazy, golden day, like each fair, fragrant life, is a part and outcrop of it; though weeks of gale and frost, or ages of cruel worldliness and miserable sin may lie between.

It was an Indian summer day, then; and it was in October.

Faith and Mr. Armstrong walked over the brook, and round by Pasture Rocks, to the "little chapel," as Faith had called it, since the time, last winter, when she and Glory had met the minister there, in the still, wonderful, pure beauty that enshrined it on that "diamond morning."

The elms that stood then, in their icy sheen, about the meadows, like great cataracts of light, were soft with amber drapery, now; translucent in each leaf with the detained sunshine of the summer; and along the borders of the wood walk, scarlet flames of sumach sprang out, vivid, from among the lingering green; and birches trembled with their golden plumes; and bronzed ash boughs, and deep crimsons and maroons and chocolate browns and carbuncle red that crowned the oaks with richer and intenser hues, made up a wealth and ma.s.siveness of beauty wherein eye and thought reveled and were sated.

Over and about all, the glorious October light, and the dreamy warmth that was like a palpable love.

They stood on the crisp moss carpet of the "halfway rock"--the altar crag behind them, with its cherubim that waved illumined wings of tenderer radiance now--and gazed over the broad outspread of marvelous color; and thought of the summer that had come and gone since they had stood there, last, together, and of the beauty that had breathed alike on earth and into life, for them.

"Faith, darling! Tell me your thought," said Roger Armstrong.

"This was my thought," Faith answered, slowly. "That first sermon you preached to us--that gave me such a hope, then--that comes up to me so, almost as a warning, now! The poor--that were to have the kingdom! And then, those other words--'how hardly shall they who have riches enter in!' And I am _so_ rich! It frightens me."

"Entire happiness does make one tremble. Only, if we feel G.o.d in it, and stand but the more ready for His work, we may be safe."

"His work--yes," Faith answered. "But now he only gives me rest. It seems as if, somehow, I were not worthy of a hard life. As if all things had been made too easy for me. And I had thought, so, of some great and difficult thing to do."

Then Faith told him of the oracle that, years ago, had first wakened her to the thought of what life might be; of the "high and holy work" that she had dreamed of, and of her struggles to fulfill it, feebly, in the only ways that as yet had opened for her.

"And now--just to receive all--love, and help, and care--and to rest, and to be so wholly happy!"

"Believe, darling, that we are led, through all. That the oil of joy is but as an anointing for a n.o.bler work. It is only so I dare to think of it. We shall have plenty to do, Faithie! And, perhaps, to bear. It will all be set before us, in good time."

"But nothing can be _hard_ to do, any more. That is what makes me almost feel unworthy. Look at Nurse Sampson. Look at Glory. They have only their work, and the love of G.o.d to help them in it. And I--! Oh, I am not poor any longer. The words don't seem to be for me."

"Let us take them with their double edge of truth, then. Holding ourselves always poor, in sight of the infinite spiritual riches of the kingdom. Blessed are the poor, who can feel, even in the keenest earthly joy, how there is a fullness of life laid up in Him who gives it, of whose depth the best gladness here is but a glimpse and foretaste! We will not be selfishly or unworthily content, G.o.d helping us, my little one!"

"It is so hard _not_ to be content!" whispered Faith, as the strong, manly arm held her, in its shelter, close beside the n.o.ble, earnest heart.

"I think," said Roger Armstrong, afterwards, as they walked down over the fragrant pathway of fallen pine leaves, "that I have never known an instance of one more evidently called, commissioned, and prepared for a good work in the world, than Glory. Her whole life has been her education for it. It is not without a purpose, when a soul like hers is left to struggle up through such externals of circ.u.mstance. We can love and help her in it, Faith; and do something, in our way, for her, as she will do, in hers, for others."