"Oh, yes!" a.s.sented Faith, impulsively. "I have wished--" but there she stopped.

"Am I to hear no more?" asked Mr. Armstrong, presently. "Have I not a right to insist upon the wish?"

"I forgot what I was coming to," said Faith, blushing deeply. "I spoke of it, one day, to mother. And she said it was a thing I couldn't decide for myself, now. That some one else would be concerned, as well as I."

"And some one else will be sure to wish as you do. Only there may be a wisdom in waiting. Faithie--I have never told you yet--will you be frightened if I tell you now--that I am not a poor man, as the world counts poverty? My friend, of whom you know, in those terrible days of the commencing pestilence, having only his daughter and myself to care for, made his will; in provision against whatever might befall them there. By that will--through the fearful sorrow that made it effective--I came into possession of a large property. Your little inheritance, Faithie, goes into your own little purse for private expenditures or charities. But for the present, as it seems to me, Glory has ample means for all that it is well for her to undertake. By and by, as she gains in years and in experience, you will have it in your power to enlarge her field of good. 'Miss Henderson's Home' may grow into a wider benefit than even she, herself, foresaw."

Faith was not frightened. These were not the riches that could make her tremble with a dread lest earth should too fully satisfy. This was only a promise of new power to work with; a guarantee that G.o.d was not leaving her merely to care for and to rest in a good that must needs be all her own.

"We shall find plenty to do, Faithie!" Mr. Armstrong repeated; and he held her hand in his with a strong pressure that told how the thought of that work to come, and her sweet and entire a.s.sociation in it, leaped along his pulses with a living joy.

Faith caught it; and all fear was gone. She could not shrink from the great blessedness that was laid upon her, any more than Nature could refuse to wear her coronation robes, that trailed their radiance in this path they trod.

Life held them in a divine harmony.

The October sun, that mantled them with warmth and glory; the Indian summer, that transfigured earth about them; all tints--all redolence--all broad beat.i.tude of globe and sky--were none too much to breathe out and make palpable the glad and holy auspice of the hour.

Mr. Gartney had gradually relinquished his half-formed thought of San Francisco. Already the unsettled and threatening condition of affairs in the country had begun to make men feel that the time was not one for new schemes or adventurous changes. Somehow, the great wheels, mercantile and political, had slipped out of their old grooves, and went laboring, as it were, roughly and at random, with fierce clattering and jolting, quite off the ordinary track; so that none could say whether they should finally regain it, and roll smoothly forward, as in the prosperous and peaceful days of the past, or should bear suddenly and irretrievably down to some horrible, unknown crash and ruin.

Henderson Gartney, however, was too restless a man to wait, with entire pa.s.siveness, the possible turn and issue of things.

Quite strong, again, in health--so great a part of his burden and anxiety lifted from him in the marriages, actual and prospective, of his two daughters--and his means augmented by the sale of a portion of his Western property which he had effected during his summer visit thereto--it was little to be looked for that he should consent to vegetate, idly and quietly, through a second winter at Cross Corners.

The first feeling of some men, apparently, when they have succeeded in shuffling off a load of difficulty, is a sensation of the delightful ease with which they can immediately shoulder another. As when one has just cleared a desk or drawer of rubbish, there is such a tempting opportunity made for beginning to stow away and acc.u.mulate again. Well!

the principle is an eternal one. Nature does abhor a vacuum.

The greater portion of the ensuing months, therefore, Mr. Gartney spent in New York; whither his wife and children accompanied him, also, for a stay of a few weeks; during which, Faith and her mother accomplished the inevitable shopping that a coming wedding necessitates; and set in train of preparation certain matters beyond the range of Kinnicutt capacity and resource.

Mr. Armstrong, too, was obliged to be absent from his parish for a little time. Affairs of his own required some personal attention. He chose these weeks while the others, also, were away.

It was decided that the marriage should take place in the coming spring; and that then the house at Cross Corners should become the home of Mr.

Armstrong and Faith; and that Mr. Gartney should remove, permanently, to New York, where he had already engaged in some incidental and preliminary business transactions. His purpose was to fix himself there, as a shipping and commission merchant, concerning himself, for a large proportion, with California trade.

The house in Mishaumok had been rented for a term of five years. One change prepares the way for another. Things never go back precisely to what they were before.

Mr. Armstrong, after serious thought, had come to this conclusion of accepting the invitation of the Old Parish at Kinnicutt to remain with it as its pastor, because the place itself had become endeared to him for its a.s.sociations; because, also, it was Faith's home, which she had learned to love and cling to; because she, too, had a work here, in a.s.sisting Glory to fulfill the terms of her aunt's bequest; and because, country parish though it was, and a limited sphere, as it might seem, for his means and talents, he saw the way here, not only to accomplish much direct good in the way of his profession, but as well for a wider exercise of power through the channel of authorship; for which a more onerous pastoral charge would not have left him the needful quiet or leisure.

So, with these comings and goings, these happy plans, and helpings and onlookings, the late autumn weeks merged in winter, and days slipped almost imperceptibly by, and Christmas came.

Three little orphan girls had been welcomed into "Miss Henderson's Home." And only one of them had hair that would curl. But Glory gave the other two an extra kiss each, every morning.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

CHRISTMASTIDE.

"Through suffering and through sorrow thou hast past, To show us what a woman true may be; They have not taken sympathy from thee, Nor made thee any other than thou wast;

"Nor hath thy knowledge of adversity Robbed thee of any faith in happiness, But rather cleared thine inner eye to see How many simple ways there are to bless."

LOWELL.

"And if any painter drew her, He would paint her unaware, With a halo round the hair."

MRS. BROWNING.

There were dark portents abroad. Rumors, and threats, and prognostications of fear and strife teemed in the columns of each day's sheet of news, and pulsed wildly along the electric nerves of the land; and men looked out, as into a coming tempest, that blackened all the southerly sky with wrath; and only that the horror was too great to be believed in, they could not have eaten and drunken, and bought and sold, and planted and builded, as they did, after the age-old manner of man, in these days before the flood that was to come.

Civil war, like a vulture of h.e.l.l, was swooping down from the foul fastness of iniquity that had hatched her in its high places, and that reared itself, audaciously, in the very face of Heaven.

And a voice, as of a mighty angel, sounded "Woe! woe! woe! to the inhabiters of earth!"

And still men but half heard and comprehended; and still they slept and rose, and wrought on, each in his own work, and planned for the morrow, and for the days that were to be.

And in the midst of all, came the blessed Christmastide! Yes! even into this world that has rolled its seething burden of sin and pain and shame and conflict along the listening depths through waiting cycles of G.o.d's eternity, was Christ once born!

And little children, of whom is the kingdom, in their simple faith and holy unconsciousness, were looking for the Christmas good, and wondering only what the coming joy should be.

The shops and streets of Mishaumok were filled with busy throngs. People forgot, for a day, the fissure that had just opened, away there in the far Southland, and the fierce flames that shot up, threatening, from the abyss. What mattered the ma.s.s meetings, and the shouts, and the guns, along those sh.o.r.es of the Mexican Gulf? To-night would be Christmas Eve; and there were thousands of little stockings waiting to be hung by happy firesides, and they must all be filled for the morrow.

So the shops and streets were crowded, and people with arms full of holiday parcels jostled each other at every corner.

There are odd encounters in this world tumble that we live in. In the early afternoon, at one of the bright show cases, filled within and heaped without with toys, two women met--as strangers are always meeting, with involuntary touch and glance--borne together in a crowd--atoms impinging for an instant, never to approach again, perhaps, in all the coming combinations of time.

These two women, though, had met before.

One, sharp, eager--with a stylish-shabby air of dress about her, and the look of pretense that shopmen know, as she handled and asked prices, where she had no actual thought of buying--holding by the hand a child of six, who dragged and teased, and got an occasional word that crushed him into momentary silence, but who, tired with the sights and the Christmas shopping, had nothing for it but to begin to drag and tease again; another, with bright, happy, earnest eyes and flushing cheeks, and hair rolled back in a golden wealth beneath her plain straw bonnet; bonnet, and dress, and all, of simple black; these two came face to face.

The shabby woman with a sharp look recognized nothing. Glory McWhirk knew Mrs. Grubbling, and the child of six that had been the Grubbling baby.

All at once, she had him in her arms; and as if not a moment had gone by since she held him so in the little, dark, upper entry in Budd Street, where he had toddled to her in his nightgown, for her grieved farewell, was hugging and kissing him, with the old, forgetting and forgiving love.

Mrs. Grubbling looked on in petrified amaze. Glory had transferred a fragrant white paper parcel from her pocket to the child's hands, and had thrust upon that a gay tin horse from the counter, before it occurred to her that the mother might, possibly, neither remember nor approve.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am, for the liberty; and it's very likely you don't know me. I'm Glory McWhirk, that used to live with you, and mind the baby."

"I'm sure I'm glad to see you, Glory," said Mrs. Grubbling patronizingly; "and I hope you've been doing well since you went away from me." As if she had been doing so especially well before, that there might easily be a doubt as to whether going farther had not been faring worse. I have no question that Mrs. Grubbling fancied, at the moment, that the foundation of all the simple content and quiet prosperity that evidenced themselves at present in the person of her former handmaid, had been laid in Budd Street.

"And where are you living now?" proceeded she, as Glory resigned the boy to his mint stick, and was saying good-by.

"Out in Kinnicutt, ma'am; at Miss Henderson's, where I have been ever since."

She never thought of triumphing. She never dreamed of what it would be to electrify her former mistress with the announcement that she whom she had since served had died, and left her, Glory McWhirk, the life use of more than half her estate. That she dwelt now, as proprietress, where she had been a servant. Her humbleness and her faithfulness were so entire that she never thought of herself as occupying, in the eyes of others, such position. She was Miss Henderson's handmaiden, still; doing her behest, simply, as if she had but left her there in keeping, while she went a journey.

So she bade good-by, and courtesied to Mrs. Grubbling and gathered up her little parcels, and went out. Fortunately, Mrs. Grubbling was half stunned, as it was. It is impossible to tell what might have resulted, had she then and there been made cognizant of more. Not to the shorn lamb, alone, always, are sharp winds beneficently tempered. There is a mercy, also, to the miserable wolf.