Say and Seal, Volume II

by Susan Warner; Anna Bartlett Warner

"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.