"I think it is good, Endy. I am glad."
"I thought you would be. But that does not satisfy me, dear Faith--I want you to say to me all the different things that your thoughts were saying to you. You are not afraid of me at this time of day?" he said bringing her face closer.
"I have nothing to say I need be afraid to say," Faith answered slowly,--"but it is hard to disentangle so many thoughts. I was thinking it is such great and high work--such happy work--and such honour--and then that you will do it right, Endecott--" she hesitated.--"How could I help but be glad?"
"Do you like your new prospective position, little Sunbeam?"
A deep colour came over her face, and the eyes fell Yet Faith folded her hands and spoke.
"I was glad to think--" She got so far, but the sentence was never finished.
"Glad to think what, dear child?"
Faith glanced up. She did not want to answer. Then she said with the greatest simplicity, "I am glad if I may do something."
"Glad that I should realize my ideal?" Mr. Linden said with a smile, and softly bringing her face round again. "Faith, do you know what a dear little "minister"s wife" you will make?--Mignonette is so suitable for a parsonage!--so well calculated to impress the people with a notion of the extreme grave propriety which reigns there! For is not Mignonette always sweet, demure, and never--by any chance!--high coloured?"
She would not let her face be held up. It went down upon her lap--into her hands, which she pressed close to hide it.
"Oh Endecott!--" she said desperately.--"You"ll have to call me something else."
"O Faith!" was his smiling reply,--"I will, just so soon as I can.
Don"t you want to come over to the sofa and hear the rest of my story?"
"Your story! Oh yes!"--
And first having a sympathizing interview with the fire, Faith went over to the sofa and sat down; but hid her face no more. Much as he had done before tea, Mr. Linden came and sat down by her,--with the same sort of gentle steadiness of manner, as if some strong thread of feeling had wrapped itself round an equally deep thread of purpose,--his gay talk now as then finding always some contrast in his face. But of this Faith had seen little or nothing--her eyes had not been very free to look. She did notice how silently he stood by her as she put the fire in order, she did notice the look that rested on her as she took her seat, but then he began his story and she could thing of nothing else.
"It was given to me, dear Faith," he said, "to spend my boyhood in an atmosphere more like the glow of that firelight than anything I can compare it to, for its warmth and radiance; where very luxurious worldly circ.u.mstances were crowned with the full luxury of earthly love. But it was a love so heaven-directed, so heaven-blessed, that it was but the means of preparing me to go out into the cold alone. That was where I learned to love your diamonds," he added, taking the jewelled hand in his,--"when I used to see them not more busy among things of literature and taste, than in all possible ministrations to the roughest and poorest and humblest of those whom literature describes and taste shrinks from!--But I used to think," he said speaking very low, "that the ring was never so bright, nor so quick moving, as when it was at work for me."
Faith"s eye fell with his to the diamonds. She was very still; the flash all gone.
"That time of my life," Mr. Linden presently went on, "was pa.s.sed partly in Europe and partly here. We came home just after I had graduated from a German University, but before I went away again--almost everything I had in the world went from me." He was silent for a little, drawing Faith"s head down upon his shoulder and resting his lightly upon it, till she felt what she was to him. Then he looked up and spoke quietly as before.
"Pet and I were left alone. A sister of my father"s was very anxious to take her, but Pet would not hear of it, and so for a year we lived together, and when I went to the Seminary she went too,--living where I lived, and seeing what she could of me between times. It was not very good for her, but it was the best we could do then. I suppose there was some mismanagement on the part of my father"s executors--or some complication in his affairs, I need not trouble you with details; but we were left without much more than enough to give her the income I wished her to have for her own private use. Of course I would not touch that for our joint expenses. But until a year ago we did still live together--by various means. Then this sister of my father"s set her heart upon taking Pet with her to Europe--and I set mine almost as much; I could better bear to live alone, than to have her; and her life then amounted to that. And so between us both she consented--very unwillingly; and she went to Italy, and I studied as long as I had ways and means, and then came here to get more. So you see, dear child," Mr.
Linden said with a smile, "it is not my fortune I have asked you to share, but my fortunes."
She gave him a smile, as bright and free as the glancing of a star; then her look went away again. And it was a good little while before perhaps she dared speak--perhaps before she wanted to speak. So very steady and still her look and herself were, it said that they covered thoughts too tender or too deep to be put into words. And the thoughtfulness rather deepened as minutes rolled on--and a good many of them rolled on, and still Faith did not speak. Mr. Linden"s watch ticked its remarks unhindered. Words came at last.
"Endecott--you said something about "means" for study. How much means does it want?--and how much study?" The interest at work in the question was deeper than Faith meant to shew, or knew she shewed.
He told her the various expenses, ordinary and contingent, in few words, and was silent a moment. But then drawing her close to him, with that same sort of sheltering gesture she had noticed before, he went on to answer her other question; the voice and manner giving her a perfect key to all the grave looks she had mused over.
"Do you remember, dear Faith, that I once called you "a brave little child"?"
"Yes."
"You must be that now," he said gently,--"you and I must both be brave, and cheerful, and full of trust. Because, precious child, I have two years" work before me--and the work cannot be done here."
She looked in his face once, and was silent;--what her silence covered could only be guessed. But it lasted a little while.
"It must be done at that place where you were with your sister?"
"Yes, little Mignonette, it must be done there."
"And when must you begin the work, Endecott?" If the words cost her some effort, it only just appeared.
"I came for a year, dear Faith--and I ought not to stay much beyond that."
Faith mentally counted the months, in haste, with a pang; but the silence did not last long this time. Her head left its resting place and bending forward she looked up into Mr. Linden"s face, with a sunny clear look that met his full. It was not a look that could by any means be mistaken to indicate a want of other feeling, however. One might as soon judge from the sunshine gilding on the slope of a mountain that the mountain is made of tinsel.
"Endecott--is that what has been the matter with you?"
She needed no answer but his look, though that was a clear as her own.
"I could easier bear it if _I_ could bear the whole," he said. "But you can understand that Dr. Harrison"s proposal tried, though it did not tempt me."
She scarce gave a thought to that.
"There is one thing more I wanted to ask. Will there be--" she paused, and went on,--"no time at all that you can be here?"
"Dear Faith!" he said kissing her, "do you think I could bear that? How often I shall be able to come I cannot quite tell, but come I shall--from time to time, if I live. And in the meanwhile we must make letters do a great deal."
Her face brightened. She sat quietly looking at him.
"Will that shadow come any more,--now that you have told me?"
"I will give you leave to scold me, if you see it," Mr. Linden said, answering her smile,--"I ought not to be in shadow for a minute--with such a sunbeam in my possession. Although, although!--do you know, little bright one, that the connexion between sunbeams and shadows is very intimate? and very hard to get rid of?"
"Shall I talk to you about "nonsense" again?"--she said half lightly, resting her hand on his arm and looking at him. Yet behind her light tone there was a great tenderness.
"You may--and I will plead guilty. But in which of the old cla.s.ses of "uncanny" folk will you put me?--with those who were known by their having no shadow, or with those who went always with two?"
"So I suppose one must have a _little_ shadow, to keep from being uncanny!"
"You and I will not go upon that understanding, dear Faith."
Faith did not look like one who had felt no shadow; rather perhaps she looked like one who had borne a blow; a look that in the midst of the talk more than once brought to Mr. Linden"s mind a shadowy remembrance of her as she was after they got home that terrible evening; but her face had a gentle brightness now that then was wanting.
"I don"t know"--she said wistfully in answer to his last words.--"Perhaps it is good. I dare say it is, for me. It is a shame for me to remind you of anything--but don"t you know, Endecott--"all things are ours"? _both_ "things present and things to come?"" And her eye looked up with a child"s gravity, and a child"s smile.
Bear it alone?--yes, he could have done that--as he had borne other things,--it tried him to see her bear it. It touched him to see that look come back--to see any tempering of the bright face she had worn so long. Faith hardly knew perhaps with what eyes he had watched her through all the conversation, eyes none the less anxious for the smile that met hers so readily; she hardly guessed what pain her bright efforts at keeping up, gave him. To shelter and gladden her life was the dearest delight of his; and just now duty thwarted him in both points. And he knew--almost better than she did--how much she depended on him. He looked down at her for a moment with a face of such grave submission as Faith had never seen him wear.
"My dear little child!" he said. But that sentence was let stand by itself. The next was spoken differently. "I do know it, dear Faith,--and yet you do well to remind me. I need to be kept up to the mark. And it is not more true that each day has sufficient evil, than that each has sufficient good--if it be only sought out. There cannot much darkness live in the light of those words."
"How far have you to go," she said with demure archness,--"to find the good of these days?"
"You are quick at conclusions"--said Mr. Linden,--"how far do you think it is between us at present?"