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"No bird am I to sing in June, And dare not ask an equal boon. Good nests and berries red are Nature's To give away to better creatures,— And yet my days go on, go on." Mrs. Browning. |
Mr. and Mrs. Gartney arrived on Thursday.
Two weeks and three days they had been absent; and in that time how the busy sprites of change and circumstance had been at work! As if the scattered straws of events, that, stretched out in slender windrows, might have reached across a field of years, had been raked together, and rolled over—crowded close, and heaped, portentous, into these eighteen days!
Letters had told them something; of the burned mill, and Faith's fearful danger and escape; of Aunt Henderson's continued illness, and its present serious aspect; and with this last intelligence, which met them in New York but two days since, Mrs. Gartney found her daughter's agitated note of pained avowal, that she "had come, through all this, to know herself better, and to feel sure that this marriage ought not to be"; that, in short, all was at length over between her and Paul Rushleigh.
It was a meeting full of thought—where much waited for speech that letters could neither have conveyed nor satisfied—when Faith and her father and mother exchanged the kiss of love and welcome, once more, in the little home at Cross Corners.
It was well that Mis' Battis had made waffles, and spread a tempting summer tea with these and her nice, white bread, and fruits and creams; and wished, with such faint impatience as her huge calm was capable of, that "they would jest set right down, while things was good and hot"; and that Hendie was full of his wonderful adventures by boat and train, and through the wilds; so that these first hours were gotten over, and all a little used to the old feeling of being together again, before there was opportunity for touching upon deeper subjects.
It came at length—the long evening talk, after Hendie was in bed, and Mr. Gartney had been over to the old house, and seen his aunt, and had come back, to find wife and daughter sitting in the dim light beside the open door, drawn close in love and confidence, and so glad and thankful to have each other back once more!
First—Aunt Faith; and what was to be done—what might be hoped—what must be feared—for her. Then, the terrible story of the fire; and all about it, that could only be got at by the hundred bits of question and answer, and the turning over and over, and repetition, whereby we do the best—the feeble best—we can, to satisfy great askings and deep sympathies that never can be anyhow made palpable in words.
And, last of all—just with the good-night kiss—Faith and her mother had had it all before, in the first minutes they were left alone together—Mr. Gartney said to his daughter:
"You are quite certain, now, Faith?"