"About the rent? Why, this house ought to bring six hundred, certainly.
And now, if the court will permit, I"ll read the news."
About a week after this, in the latter half of one of those spring days that come with a warm breath to tell that summer is glowing somewhere, and that her face is northward, Aunt Faith Henderson came out upon the low, vine-latticed stoop of her house in Kinnicutt.
Up the little footpath from the road--across the bit of greensward that lay between it and the stoop--came a quick, noiseless step, and there was a touch, presently, on the old lady"s arm.
Faith Gartney stood beside her, in trim straw bonnet and shawl, with a black leather bag upon her arm.
"Auntie! I"ve come to make you a tiny little visit! Till day after to-morrow."
"Faith Gartney! However came you here? And in such a fashion, too, without a word of warning, like--an angel from Heaven!"
"I came up in the cars, auntie! I felt just like it! Will you keep me?"
"Glory! Glory McWhirk!" Like the good Vicar of Wakefield, Aunt Henderson liked often to give the whole name; and calling, she disappeared round the corner of the stoop, without ever a word of more a.s.sured welcome.
"Put on the teapot again, and make a slice of toast." The good lady"s voice, going on with further directions, was lost in the intricate threading of the inner maze of the singular old dwelling, and Faith followed her as far as the first apartment, where she set down her bag and removed her bonnet.
It was a quaint, dim room, overbrowed and gloomed by the roofed projection of the stoop; low-ceiled, high-wainscoted and paneled. All in oak, of the natural color, deepened and glossed by time and wear. The heavy beams that supported the floor above were undisguised, and left the ceiling in panels also, as it were, between. In these highest places, a man six feet tall could hardly have stood without bending. He certainly would not, whether he could or no. Even Aunt Faith, with her five feet, six-and-a-half, dropped a little of her dignity, habitually, when she entered. But then, as she said, "A hen always bobs her head when she comes in at a barn door." Between the windows stood an old, old-fashioned secretary, that filled up from floor to ceiling; and over the fireplace a mirror of equally antique date tilted forward from the wall. Opposite the secretary, a plain mahogany table; and eight high-backed, claw-footed chairs ranged stiffly around the room.
Aunt Henderson was proud of her old ways, her old furniture, and her house, that was older than all.
Some far back ancestor and early settler had built it--the beginning of it--before Kinnicutt had even become a town; and--rare exception to the changes elsewhere--generation after generation of the same name and line had inhabited it until now. Aunt Faith, exultingly, told each curious visitor that it had been built precisely two hundred and ten years. Out in the back kitchen, or lean-to, was hung to a rafter the identical gun with which the "old settler" had ranged the forest that stretched then from the very door; and higher up, across a frame contrived for it, was the "wooden saddle" fabricated for the back of the placid, slow-moving ox, in the time when horses were as yet rare in the new country, and used with pillions, to transport I can"t definitely say how many of the family to "meeting."
Between these--the best room and the out-kitchen--the labyrinth of sitting room, bedrooms, kitchen proper, milk room, and pantry, part.i.tioned off, or added on, many of them since the primary date of the main structure, would defy the pencil of modern architect.
In one of these irregularly cl.u.s.tered apartments that opened out on different aspects, unexpectedly, from their conglomerate center, Faith sat, some fifteen minutes after her entrance into the house, at a little round table between two corner windows that looked northwest and southwest, and together took in the full radiance of the evening sky.
Opposite sat her aunt, taking care of her as regarded tea, toast, and plain country loaf cake, and watching somewhat curiously, also, her face.
Faith"s face had changed a little since Aunt Henderson had seen her last. It was not the careless girl"s face she had known. There was a thought in it now. A thought that seemed to go quite out from, and forget the self from which it came.
Aunt Henderson wondered greatly what sudden whim or inward purpose had brought her grandniece hither.
When Faith absolutely declined any more tea or cake, Miss Henderson"s tap on the table leaf brought in Glory McWhirk.
A tall, well-grown girl of eighteen was Glory, now--quite another Glory than had lightened, long ago, the dull little house in Budd Street, and filled it with her bright, untutored dreams. The luminous tresses had had their way since then; that is, with certain comfortable bounds prescribed; and rippled themselves backward from a clear, contented face, into the net that held them tidily.
Faith looked up, and remembered the poor office girl of three years since, half clad and hopeless, with a secret amaze at what "Aunt Faith had made of her."
"You may give me some water, Glory," said Miss Henderson.
Glory brought the pitcher, and poured into the tumbler, and gazed at Faith"s pretty face, and the dark-brown glossy rolls that framed it, until the water fairly ran over the table.
"There! there! Why, Glory, what are you thinking of?" cried Miss Henderson.
Glory was thinking her old thoughts--wakened always by all that was beautiful and _beyond_.
She came suddenly to herself, however, and darted off, with her face as bright a crimson as her hair was golden; flashing up so, as she did most easily, into as veritable a Glory as ever was. Never had baby been more aptly or prophetically named.
Coming back, towel in hand, to stop the freshet she had set flowing, she dared not give another glance across the table; but went busily and deftly to work, clearing it of all that should be cleared, that she might make her shy way off again before she should be betrayed into other unwonted blundering.
"And now, Faith Gartney, tell me all about it! What sent you here?"
"Nothing. n.o.body. I came, aunt. I wanted to see the place, and you."
The rough eyebrows were bent keenly across the table.
"Hum!" breathed Aunt Henderson.
There was small interior sympathy between her ideas and those that governed the usual course of affairs in Hickory Street. Fond of her nephew and his family, after her fashion, notwithstanding Faith"s old rebellion, and all other differences, she certainly was; but they went their way, and she hers. She felt pretty sure theirs would sooner or later come to a turning; and when that should happen, whether she should meet them round the corner, or not, would depend. Her path would need to bend a little, and theirs to make a pretty sharp angle, first.
But here was Faith cutting across lots to come to her! Aunt Henderson put away her loaf cake in the cupboard, set back her chair against the wall in its invariable position of disuse, and departed to the milk room and kitchen for her evening duty and oversight.
Glory"s hands were busy in the bread bowl, and her brain kneading its secret thoughts that no one knew or intermeddled with.
Faith sat at the open window of the little tea room, and watched the young moon"s golden horn go down behind the earth rim among the purple, like a flamy flower bud floating over, and so lost.
And the three lives gathered in to themselves, separately, whatsoever the hour brought to each.
At nine o"clock Aunt Faith came in, took down the great leather-bound Bible from the corner shelf, and laid it on the table. Glory appeared, and seated herself beside the door.
For a few moments, the three lives met in the One Great Life that overarches and includes humanity. Miss Henderson read from the sixth chapter of St. John.
They were fed with the five thousand.
CHAPTER XII.
A RECONNOISSANCE.
"Then said his Lordship, "Well G.o.d mend all!" "Nay, Donald, we must help him to mend it," said the other."--Quoted by CARLYLE.
"Oh, leave these jargons, and go your way straight to G.o.d"s work in simplicity and singleness of heart!"--MISS NIGHTINGALE.
"Auntie," said Faith, next morning, when, after some exploring, she had discovered Miss Henderson in a little room, the very counterpart of the one she had had her tea in the night before, only that this opened to the southeast, and hailed the morning sun. "Auntie, will you go over with me to the Cross Corners house, after breakfast? It"s empty, isn"t it?"
"Yes, it"s empty. But it"s no great show of a house. What do you want to see it for?"
"Why, it used to be so pretty, there. I"d like just to go into it. Have you heard of anybody"s wanting it yet?"
"No; and I guess n.o.body"s likely to, for one while. Folks don"t make many changes, out here."
"What a bright little breakfast room this is, auntie! And how grand you are to have a room for every meal!"
"It ain"t for the grandeur of it. But I always did like to follow the sun round. For the most part of the year, at any rate. And this is just as near the kitchen as the other. Besides, I kind of hate to shut up any of the rooms, altogether. They were all wanted, once; and now I"m all alone in "em."