CHAPTER IX
Mrs Derrick went to Pequot the next day, and found Miss Danforth as Faith had left her; or rather, somewhat more failing in everything but mind-strength. Mrs. Derrick was greatly welcomed by both ladies; but she had not been there three hours when Miss Dilly spoke out what was on her heart.
"Isn't Faith coming back to me again?"
For Faith's sake her mother hesitated, and yet it was for Faith's sake that she answered,—"Yes, if you want her."
"It won't be for long I shall want her,"—said Miss Dilly with a quietness very unlike her old self:—"but I would like to have her dear face and music about me once more—if she can let me."
Mrs. Derrick came back with Mr. Stoutenburgh to Pattaquasset that same evening; and Faith put up her books and made immediate preparations for going to Pequot in her stead.
"I must let you go, child," said her mother,—"I couldn't refuse."
"And I am so glad to-morrow is Wednesday, for I can take you over," said Mr. Linden.
Wednesday afternoon was very fair, and after dinner Faith and all her needful baggage were bestowed in the little sleigh, and the journey began. Not very much of a journey indeed, unless compared with the length of day-light; but as fair and bright and pleasant as a journey could be. Full of talk of all sorts,—gliding on through the fading day and the falling night, until
–—"the floor of heaven Was thick inlaid with patines of bright gold."
Very bright the stars were, very dark the sky, when Jerry's bells began to mingle with a crowd of others in the streets of Pequot. Faith had insisted that Mr. Linden should come in and have a cup of tea or coffee before he went back again; and this being a not unreasonable request, besides a pleasant one, she had her way.
Miss Danforth was in her room and could not see Mr. Linden. Faith with a kiss and a word established the little Frenchwoman to talk to him, obtaining leave to do what she pleased; though Madame Danforth managed to have her share in the hospitality; got out cups and saucers for Faith and Mr. Linden both on a little table by the fire,—her rolls and her butter; talking all the while to him; and took a minute to run down into the kitchen and see that Faith and the coffee-pot were getting on properly. And it may be said in passing that the result did credit to both. The coffee served to Mr. Linden was faultless. Madame Danforth however had hardly presented him his cup, when she was called off and her guests were left alone.
"Faith," said Mr. Linden, "you must not forget that you have something to do for me as well as for other people while you are here."
"I don't forget it. But what do you mean, Endecott?"
"To put it in the most effective way—I mean that you must take care of me!" he said smiling.
"I will. As good care as you would take of yourself."
"That is a little ambiguous! But will you send me word very often of your success?"
Faith looked up and looked at him, a little startled.
"Do you mean—"
"I mean that there is a postoffice in Pattaquasset—and another inPequot."
She coloured, and somewhat hastily busied herself with refilling Mr. Linden's cup. Then she folded her hands and sat looking into the fire with a face on which there was a touching expression of humbleness.
"My little Mignonette," he said, "what are you thinking of?"
"I am thinking of that,"—she said with a smile which did not change the expression. "Of what you want me to do—and about it."
"What about it? Are you inditing a letter to me on the spot?"
"No."
"What then?"
Faith would have liked to have her face out of sight, but she couldn't, conveniently.
"I am thinking, how I shall do it—and how you will not like it."
"You don't know"—said Mr. Linden. "Let me tell you how I shall like it. I shall read it, and love it, and answer it—will that satisfy you? or do you want me to hang it round my neck by a blue ribband?—because if you do, I will."
The laughing flash of Faith's eye contained nevertheless a protest.
"No, you will not like it, because it will not be fit for you to like; but you will have patience with it,"—she said with a smile which did in its loveliness bid good-bye to shadows.
Mr. Linden left the table, and standing before her as she had risen too, took her face softly in both hands and raised it up for his inspection.
"Do you know what a naughty child you are?"
A most quaint little "yes."
"Then why don't you behave better?" he said, enforcing his question but not releasing her.
"I suppose you will teach me, in time"—she said, blushing and sparkling under his hands. He seemed to like to study her face—or was thinking that he should not see it again for some time,—the expression on his own belonged to more than one thing.
"You must not make me wait for that letter, Faith," he said—"and I must not let you keep me any longer here! But if you want anything, of any sort, you must send to me."
"Yes!—to you or to mother."
"To me—if it is anything I can do," he said as he bade her good-bye. "And take care of yourself, dear child, for me." And releasing her at last, none too willingly, Mr. Linden went out alone into the starlight. He did not see—nor guess—how Faith stood before the fire where he had left her, looking down into it,—motionless and grave until Madame Danforth came back. Then all that part of her life was shut up within her, and Faith was again to other eyes what she had been before at Pequot. Yet not so entirely the same, nor was all that part of her life so entirely shut up to herself, that both her aunt and Madame Danforth did not have a thought and exchange a word on the subject.
"The sun has found the blossom!" said the little Frenchwoman knowingly one day; "they do not open so without that!"
"Nonsense!" said Miss Danforth. "I will ask her." But she never did.
And for a little while again Faith filled her old office. Miss Dilly had no troubles or darkness to clear away now; the Bible was plain sailing to her; but she could never spread her sails too soon or too full for that navigation. Early and late, as before, Faith read to her, with a joy and gladness all brightened from the contrast of that Sunday night's reading, and coming with a fuller spring since that one little word of her mother the same night. Indeed the last few days had seemed to make the Bible even greatly more precious to Faith than ever before. She clung more fast, she searched more eagerly, among its treasures of riches, to its pillars of strength; valuing them all, as it seemed to her, with a new value, with a fresh knowledge of what might be found and won there for others and herself. So with the very eagerness of love Faith read the Bible to Miss Dilly; and so as she had done before, many a time, early and late, in childlike simpleness prayed at her bedside and by her chair. And as before when she was at Pequot she won Madame Danforth's heart, she intrenched herself there now. She was all over the house, carrying a sunbeam with her; but Faith never thought it was her own. She was a most efficient maid of all work, for nursing and too much care had worn poor Madame Danforth not a little. Faith was upper servant and cook by turns; and sometimes went to market; made every meal pleasant with her gentle happy ways; and comforted the two old ladies to the very top of comfort.
Whether she wanted to be at home or not, Faith did not stop to ask herself. But those letters—those letters—they were written, and they were carried to the postoffice—and others were found at the postoffice in reply to them. And what had been such trial in the proposition, became, even in the first instance, the joy of Faith's life. She wrote hers how she could; generally at night, when she could be quite uninterrupted and alone. It was often very late at night, but it was always a time of rare pleasure and liberty of heart; for if the body were tired, the spirit was free. And Faith's was particularly free, for the manacles and fetters of pride which weigh so bitter heavy on many a mind and life, her gentle and true spirit had let fall. She knew—nobody better—that her letters were not like those letters of Mr. Linden's sister, Pet:—those exquisite letters, where every grace and every talent of a finely gifted and fully cultivated mind seemed playing together with all the rich stores of the past and realities of the present. She knew, that in very style and formalities of execution, her own letters were imperfect and unformed. But she was equally sure that in time what was wrong in this kind would be made right; and she was not afraid to be found wrong, at all, for her own sake. It was because of somebody else, that she had flinched from this writing proposal; because she felt that what was wrong in her touched him now. But there again, Faith wrote, trusting with an absolute trust in the heart and hand to which she sent her letters; willing to be found wrong if need be; sure to be set right truly and gently. And so, Faith wrote her own heart and life out, from day to day, giving Mr. Linden precisely what he wanted, and with a child's fearlessness. It was a great thing to go to the postoffice those days! Faith left it to nobody else to do for her. And how strange—how weird, almost, the signature of those letters and her own name on the outside looked to her, in the same free, graceful handwriting which she had read on that little card so long ago! And the letters themselves?—enough to say, that they made Faith think of the way she had been sheltered from the wind, and carried upstairs when her strength failed, and read to and talked to and instructed,—that they made her long to be home and yet content to be there; giving her all sorts of details, of things in Pattaquasset and things elsewhere—just as the writer would have talked them to her; with sometimes a word of counsel, or of caution, or of suggestion,—or some old German hymn which she might find of use in her ministrations, written out in full. It may be mentioned in passing, that the fair little face he had been looking at, or her evident fear of writing to him, made Mr. Linden write to her that very night; a little sugarplum of a letter, which Faith had for her dinner next day.
And Faith read these letters at all sorts of times, and thought of them at other times; and made them next to her Bible—as she should.
CHAPTER X
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.