Faith Gartney's GirlhoodWhitney, A. D. T. (Adeline Dutton Train)
General
Faith Gartney's Girlhood
Whitney, A. D. T. (Adeline Dutton Train)
Teenage girls -- Juvenile fiction
The long, main structure ran several feet beyond the square projection
within which she stood. Upon the other side, close to the front, quite
away, of course, from all observation hence, joined, at right angles,
another building, communicating and forming one with the first. Here
were the carding rooms. Then beyond, detached, were houses for storage
and other purposes connected with the business.
Was it from one of these the glare and smoke and suffocating burning
smell were pouring?
Or, lay the danger nearer--within these close, contiguous walls?
Vainly she threw up the one window, and leaned forth.
She could not tell.
* * * * *
At this moment, Roger Armstrong, also, woke from out a dream.
In this strange, second life of ours, that replaces the life of day, do
we not meet interiorly? Do not thoughts and knowledges cross, from
spirit to spirit, over the abyss, that lip, and eye, and ear, in waking
moments, neither send nor receive? That even mind itself is scarcely
conscious of? Is not the great deep of being, wherein we rest, electric
with a sympathetic life--and do not warnings and promises and cheer
pulse in upon us, mysteriously, in these passive hours of the flesh,
when soul only is awake and keen?
Do not two thoughts, two consciousnesses, call and answer to each other,
mutely, in twin dreams of night?
Roger Armstrong came in, late, that evening, from a visit to a distant
sick parishioner. Then he sat, writing, for an hour or two longer.
By and by, he threw down his pen--pushed back his armchair before his
window--stretched his feet, wearily, into the deep, old-fashioned window
seat--leaned his head back, and let the cool breeze stir his hair.
So it soothed him into sleep.
He dreamed of Faith. He dreamed he saw her stand, afar off, in some
solitary place, and beckon, as it were, visibly, from a wide, invisible
distance. He dreamed he struggled to obey her summons. He battled with
the strange inertia of sleep. He strove--he gasped--he broke the spell
and hastened on. He plunged--he climbed--he stood in a great din that
bewildered and threatened; there was a lurid light that glowed intense
about him as he went; in the midst of all--beyond--she beckoned still.
"Faith! Faith! What danger is about you, child?"
These words broke forth from him aloud, as he started to his feet, and
stretched his hands, impulsively, out before him, toward the open
window.
His eyes flashed wide upon that crimson glare that flooded sky and field
and river.
There was fire at the mills!
Not a sound, yet, from the sleeping village.
* * * * *
The heavy, close-fitting double doors between the countingroom and the
great mill chamber were shut. Only by opening these and venturing forth,
could Faith gain certain knowledge of her situation.
Once more she pulled them open and passed through.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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