Faith Gartney's Girlhood Part 21

"There is a good deal of everywhere in every little distance," said Mr.

Gartney. "People get into cars, and go whizzing across whole States, often, before they stop to enjoy thoroughly something that is very like what they might have found within ten miles of home. For my part, I like microscopic journeying."

"Leaving 'no stone unturned.' So do I," said Faith. "We don't half know the journey between Kinnicutt and Sedgely yet, I think. And then, too, they're multiplied, over and over, by all the different seasons, and by different sorts of weather. Oh, we shan't use them up, in a long while!"

Saidie Gartney had not felt, perhaps, in all her European travel, the sense of inexhaustible pleasure that Faith had when she said this.

Down under Grover's Peak, with the river on one side, and the white-robed cedar thickets rising on the other--with the low afternoon sun glinting across from the frosted roofs of the red mill buildings and barns and farmhouses to the rocky slope of the Peak.

Then they came round and up again, over a southerly ridge, by beautiful Garland Lane, that she knew only in its summer look, when the wild grape festooned itself wantonly from branch to branch, and sometimes, even, from side to side; and so gave the narrow forest road its name.

Quite into fairyland they had come now, in truth; as if, skirting the dark peak that shut it off from ordinary espial, they had lighted on a bypath that led them covertly in. Trailing and climbing vines wore their draperies lightly; delicate shrubs bowed like veiled shapes in groups around the bases of tall tree trunks, and slight-stemmed birches quivered under their canopies of snow. Little birds hopped in and out under the pure, still shelter, and left their tiny tracks, like magical hieroglyphs, in the else untrodden paths.

"Lean this way, Faith, and keep steady!" cried Mr. Gartney, as the horse plunged breast high into a drift, and the sleigh careened toward the side Faith was on. It was a sharp strain, but they plowed their way through, and came upon a level again. This by-street was literally unbroken. No one had traversed it since the beginning of the storm. The drifts had had it all their own way there, and it involved no little adventurousness and risk, as Mr. Gartney began to see, to pioneer a pa.s.sage through. But the spirit of adventure was upon them both. On all, I should say; for the strong horse plunged forward, from drift to drift, as though he delighted in the encounter. Moreover, to turn was impossible.

Faith laughed, and gave little shrieks, alternately, as they rose triumphantly from deep, "slumpy" hollows, or pitched headlong into others again. Thus, struggling, enjoying--just frightened enough, now and then, to keep up the excitement--they came upon the summit of the ridge. Now their way lay downward. This began to look really almost perilous. With careful guiding, however, and skillful balancing--tipping, creaking, sinking, emerging--they kept on slowly, about half the distance down the descent.

Suddenly, the horse, as men and brutes, however sagacious, sometimes will, made a miscalculation of depth or power--lost his sure balance--sunk to his body in the yielding snow--floundered violently in an endeavor to regain safe footing--and, snap! cras.h.!.+ was down against the drift at the left, with a broken shaft under him!

Mr. Gartney sprang to his head.

One runner was up--one down. The sleigh stuck fast at an angle of about thirty degrees. Faith clung to the upper side.

Here was a situation! What was to be done? Twilight coming on--no help near--no way of getting anywhere!

"Faith," said Mr. Gartney, "what have you got on your feet?"

"Long, thick snow boots, father. What can I do?"

"Do you dare to come and try to unfasten these buckles? There is no danger. Major can't stir while I hold him by the head."

Faith jumped out into the snow, and valorously set to work at the buckles. She managed to undo one, and to slip out the fastening of the trace, on one side, where it held to the whiffletree. But the horse was lying so that she could not get at the other.

"I'll come there, father!" she cried, clambering and struggling through the drift till she came to the horse's head. "Can't I hold him while you undo the harness?"

"I don't believe you can, Faithie. He isn't down so flat as to be quite under easy control."

"Not if I sit on his head?" asked Faith.

"That might do," replied her father, laughing. "Only you would get frightened, maybe, and jump up too soon."

"No, I won't," said Faith, quite determined upon heroism. While she spoke, she had picked up the whip, which had fallen close by, doubled back the lash against the handle, and was tying her blue veil to its tip. Then she sat down on the animal's great cheek, which she had never fancied to be half so broad before, and gently patted his nose with one hand, while she upheld her blue flag with the other. Major's big, panting breaths came up, close beside her face. She kept a quick, watchful eye upon the road below.

"He's as quiet as can be, father! It must be what Miss Beecher called the 'chivalry of horses'!"

"It's the chivalry that has to develop under petticoat government!"

retorted Mr. Gartney.

At this moment Faith's blue flag waved vehemently over her head. She had caught the jingle of bells, and perceived a sleigh, with a man in it, come out into the crossing at the foot of Garland Lane. The man descried the signal and the disaster, and the sleigh stopped. Alighting, he led his horse to the fence, fastened him there, and turning aside into the steep, narrow, unbroken road, began a vigorous struggle through the drifts to reach the wreck.

Coming nearer, he discerned and recognized Mr. Gartney, who also, at the same moment, was aware of him. It was Mr. Armstrong.

"Keep still a minute longer, Faith," said her father, lifting the remaining shaft against the dasher, and trying to push the sleigh back, away from the animal. But this, alone, he was unable to accomplish. So the minister came up, and found Faith still seated on the horse's head.

"Miss Gartney! Let me hold him!" cried he.

"I'm quite comfortable!" laughed Faith. "If you would just help my father, please!"

The sleigh was drawn back by the combined efforts of the two gentlemen, and then both came round to Faith.

"Now, Faith, jump!" said her father, placing his hands upon the creature's temple, close beside her, while Mr. Armstrong caught her arms to s.n.a.t.c.h her safely away. Faith sprang, or was lifted as she sprang, quite to the top of the huge bank of snow under and against which they had, among them, beaten in and trodden down such a hollow, and the instant after, Mr. Gartney releasing Major's head, and uttering a sound of encouragement, the horse raised himself, with a half roll, and a mighty scramble, first to his knees, and then to his four feet again, and shook his great skin.

Mr. Gartney examined the harness. The broken shaft proved the extent of damage done. This, at the moment, however, was irremediable. He knotted the hanging straps and laid them over the horse's neck. Then he folded a buffalo skin, and arranged it, as well as he could, above and behind the saddle, which he secured again by its girth.

"Mr. Armstrong," said he, as he completed this disposal of matters, "you came along in good time. I am very much obliged to you. If you will do me the further favor to take my daughter home, I will ride to the nearest house where I can obtain a sleigh, and some one to send back for these traps of mine."

"Miss Gartney," said the minister, in answer, "can you sit a horse's back as well as you did his eyebrow?"

Faith laughed, and reaching her arms to the hands upheld for them, was borne safely from her snowy pinnacle to the buffalo cus.h.i.+on. Her father took the horse by the bit, and Mr. Armstrong kept at his side holding Faith firmly to her seat. In this fas.h.i.+on, grasping the bridle with one hand, and resting the other on Mr. Armstrong's shoulder, she was transported to the sleigh at the foot of the hill.

"We were talking about long journeys in small circuits," said Faith, when she was well tucked in, and they had set off on a level and not utterly untracked road. "I think I have been to the Alhambra, and to Rome, and have had a peep into fairyland, and come back, at last, over the Alps!"

Mr. Armstrong understood her.

"It has been beautiful," said he. "I shall begin to expect always to encounter you whenever I get among things wild and wonderful!"

"And yet I have lived all my life, till now, in tame streets," said Faith. "I thought I was getting into tamer places still, when we first came to the country. But I am finding out Kinnicutt. One can't see the whole of anything at once."

"We are small creatures, and can only pick up atoms as we go, whether of things outward or inward. People talk about taking 'comprehensive views'; and they suppose they do it. There is only One who does."

Faith was silent.

"Did it ever occur to you," said Mr. Armstrong, "how little your thought can really grasp at once, even of what you already know? How narrow your mental horizon is?"

"Doesn't it seem strange," said Faith, in a subdued tone, "that the earth should all have been made for such little lives to be lived in, each in its corner?"

"If it did not thereby prove these little lives to be but the beginning.

This great Beyond that we get glimpses of, even upon earth, makes it so sure to us that there must be an Everlasting Life, to match the Infinite Creation. G.o.d puts us, as He did Moses, into a cleft of the rock, that we may catch a glimmer of His glory as He goes by; and then He tells us that one day we 'shall know even as also we are known'!"

"And I suppose it ought to make us satisfied to live whatever little life is given us?" said Faith, gently and wistfully.

Mr. Armstrong turned toward her, and looked earnestly into her eyes.

"Has that thought troubled _you_, too? Never let it do so again, my child! Believe that however little of tangible present good you may have, you have the unseen good of heaven, and the promise of all things to come."

"But we do see lives about us in the world that seem to be and to accomplish so much!"

"And so we ask why ours should not be like them? Yes; all souls that aspire, must question that; but the answer comes! I will give you, some day, if you like, the thought that comforted me at a time when that question was a struggle."

"I _should_ like!" said Faith, with deeply stirred and grateful emphasis.