Kitabı oku: «The Story of Waitstill Baxter», sayfa 11
XXII. HARVEST-TIME
NEW ENGLAND’S annual pageant of autumn was being unfolded day by day in all its accustomed splendor, and the feast and riot of color, the almost unimaginable glory, was the common property of the whole countryside, rich and poor, to be shared alike if perchance all eyes were equally alive to the wonder and the beauty.
Scarlet days and days of gold followed fast one upon the other; Saco Water flowing between quiet woodlands that were turning red and russet and brown, and now plunging through rocky banks all blazing with crimson.
Waitstill Baxter went as often as she could to the Boynton farm, though never when Ivory was at home, and the affection between the younger and the older woman grew closer and closer, so that it almost broke Waitstill’s heart to leave the fragile creature, when her presence seemed to bring such complete peace and joy.
“No one ever clung to me so before,” she often thought as she was hurrying across the fields after one of her half-hour visits. “But the end must come before long. Ivory does not realize it yet, nor Rodman, but it seems as if she could never survive the long winter. Thanksgiving Day is drawing nearer and nearer, and how little I am able to do for a single creature, to prove to God that I am grateful for my existence! I could, if only I were free, make such a merry day for Patty and Mark and their young friends. Oh! what joy if father were a man who would let me set a bountiful table in our great kitchen; would sit at the head and say grace, and we could bow our heads over the cloth, a united family! Or, if I had done my duty in my home and could go to that other where I am so needed—go with my father’s blessing! If only I could live in that sad little house and brighten it! I would trim the rooms with evergreen and creeping-Jenny; I would put scarlet alder berries and white ever-lastings and blue fringed gentians in the vases! I would put the last bright autumn leaves near Mrs. Boynton’s bed and set out a tray with a damask napkin and the best of my cooking; then I would go out to the back door where the woodbine hangs like a red waterfall and blow the dinner-horn for my men down in the harvest-field! All the woman in me is wasting, wasting! Oh! my dear, dear man, how I long for him! Oh! my own dear man, my helpmate, shall I ever live by his side? I love him, I want him, I need him! And my dear little unmothered, unfathered boy, how happy I could make him! How I should love to cook and sew for them all and wrap them in comfort! How I should love to smooth my dear mother’s last days,—for she is my mother, in spirit, in affection, in desire, and in being Ivory’s!”
Waitstill’s longing, her discouragement, her helplessness, overcame her wholly, and she flung herself down under a tree in the pasture in a very passion of sobbing, a luxury in which she could seldom afford to indulge herself. The luxury was short-lived, for in five minutes she heard Rodman’s voice, and heard him running to meet her as he often did when she came to their house or went away from it, dogging her footsteps or Patty’s whenever or wherever he could waylay them.
“Why, my dear, dear Waity, did you tumble and hurt yourself?” the boy cried.
“Yes, dreadfully, but I’m better now, so walk along with me and tell me the news, Rod.”
“There isn’t much news. Ivory told you I’d left school and am studying at home? He helps me evenings and I’m ‘way ahead of the class.”
“No, Ivory didn’t tell me. I haven’t seen him lately.”
“I said if the big brother kept school, the little brother ought to keep house,” laughed the boy.
“He says I can hire out as a cook pretty soon! Aunt Boynton’s ‘most always up to get dinner and supper, but I can make lots of things now,– things that Aunt Boynton can eat, too.”
“Oh, I cannot bear to have you and Ivory cooking for yourselves!” exclaimed Waitstill, the tears starting again from her eyes. “I must come over the next time when you are at home, Rod, and I can help you make something nice for supper.
“We get along pretty well,” said Rodman contentedly. “I love book-learning like Ivory and I’m going to be a schoolmaster or a preacher when Ivory’s a lawyer. Do you think Patty’d like a schoolmaster or a preacher best, and do you think I’d be too young to marry her by and by, if she would wait for me?”
“I didn’t think you had any idea of marrying Patty,” laughed Waitstill through her tears. “Is this something new?”
“It’s not exactly new,” said Rod, jumping along like a squirrel in the path. “Nobody could look at Patty and not think about marrying her. I’d love to marry you, too, but you re too big and grand for a boy. Of course, I’m not going to ask Patty yet. Ivory said once you should never ask a girl until you can keep her like a queen; then after a minute he said: ‘Well, maybe not quite like a queen, Rod, for that would mean longer than a man could wait. Shall we say until he could keep her like the dearest lady in the land?’ That ‘s the way he said it.—You do cry dreadfully easy to-day, Waity; I’m sure you barked your leg or skinned your knee when you fell down.—Don’t you think the ‘dearest lady in the land’ is a nice-sounding sentence?”
“I do, indeed!” cried Waitstill to herself as she turned the words over and over trying to feed her hungry heart with them.
“I love to hear Ivory talk; it’s like the stories in the books. We have our best times in the barn, for I’m helping with the milking, now. Our yellow cow’s name is Molly and the red cow used to be Dolly, but we changed her to Golly, ‘cause she’s so troublesome. Molly’s an easy cow to milk and I can get almost all there is, though Ivory comes after me and takes the strippings. Golly swishes her tail and kicks the minute she hears us coming; then she stands stiff-legged and grits her teeth and holds on to her milk HARD, and Ivory has to pat and smooth and coax her every single time. Ivory says she’s got a kind of an attachment inside of her that she shuts down when he begins to milk.”
“We had a cross old cow like that, once,” said Waitstill absently, loving to hear the boy’s chatter and the eternal quotations from his beloved hero.
“We have great fun cooking, too,” continued Rod. “When Aunt Boynton was first sick she stayed in bed more, and Ivory and I hadn’t got used to things. One morning we bound up each other’s burns. Ivory had three fingers and I two, done up in buttery rags to take the fire out. Ivory called us ‘Soldiers dressing their Wounds after the Battle.’ Sausages spatter dreadfully, don’t they? And when you turn a pancake it flops on top of the stove. Can you flop one straight, Waity?”
“Yes, I can, straight as a die; that’s what girls are made for. Now run along home to your big brother, and do put on some warmer clothes under your coat; the weather’s getting colder.”
“Aunt Boynton hasn’t patched our thick ones yet, but she will soon, and if she doesn’t, Ivory’ll take this Saturday evening and do them himself; he said so.”
“He shall not!” cried Waitstill passionately. “It is not seemly for Ivory to sew and mend, and I will not allow it. You shall bring me those things that need patching without telling any one, do you hear, and I will meet you on the edge of the pasture Saturday afternoon and give them back to you. You are not to speak of it to any one, you understand, or perhaps I shall pound you to a jelly. You’d make a sweet rosy jelly to eat with turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, you dear, comforting little boy!”
Rodman ran towards home and Waitstill hurried along, scarcely noticing the beauties of the woods and fields and waysides, all glowing masses of goldenrod and purple frost flowers. The stone walls were covered with wild-grape and feathery clematis vines. Everywhere in sight the cornfields lay yellow in the afternoon sun and ox carts heavily loaded with full golden ears were going home to the barns to be ready for husking.
A sudden breeze among the orchard boughs as she neared the house was followed by a shower of russets, and everywhere the red Baldwins gleamed on the apple-tree boughs, while the wind-falls were being gathered and taken to the cider mills. There was a grove of maples on the top of Town-House Hill and the Baxters’ dooryard was a blaze of brilliant color. To see Patty standing under a little rock maple, her brown linsey-woolsey in I one with the landscape, and the hood of her brown cape pulled over her bright head, was a welcome for anybody. She looked flushed and excited as she ran up to her sister and said, “Waity, darling, you’ve been crying! Has father been scolding you?”
“No, dear, but my heart is aching to-day so that I can scarcely bear it. A wave of discouragement came over me as I was walking through the woods, and I gave up to it a bit. I remembered how soon it will be Thanksgiving Day, and I’ll so like to make it happier for you and a few others that I love.”
Patty could have given a shrewd guess as to the chief cause of the heartache, but she forebore to ask any questions. “Cheer up, Waity,” she cried. “You never can tell; we may have a thankful Thanksgiving, after all! Who knows what may happen? I’m ‘strung up’ this afternoon and in a fighting mood. I’ve felt like a new piece of snappy white elastic all day; it’s the air, just like wine, so cool and stinging and full of courage! Oh, yes, we won’t give up hope yet awhile, Waity, not until we’re snowed in!”
“Put your arms round me and give me a good hug, Patty! Love me hard, HARD, for, oh! I need it badly just now!”
And the two girls clung together for a moment and then went into the house with hands close-locked and a kind of sad, desperate courage in their young hearts. What would either of them have done, each of them thought, had she been forced to endure alone the life that went on day after day in Deacon Baxter’s dreary house?
XXIII. AUNT ABBY’S WINDOW
MRS. ABEL DAY had come to spend the afternoon with Aunt Abby Cole and they were seated at the two sitting-room windows, sweeping the landscape with eagle eyes in the intervals of making patchwork.
“The foliage has been a little mite too rich this season,” remarked Aunt Abby. “I b’lieve I’m glad to see it thinin’ out some, so ‘t we can have some kind of an idee of what’s goin’ on in the village.”
“There’s plenty goin’ on,” Mrs. Day answered unctuously; “some of it aboveboard an’ some underneath it.”
“An’ that’s jest where it’s aggravatin’ to have the leaves so thick and the trees so high between you and other folks’ houses. Trees are good for shade, it’s true, but there’s a limit to all things. There was a time when I could see ‘bout every-thing that went on up to Baxters’, and down to Bart’s shop, and, by goin’ up attic, consid’able many things that happened on the bridge. Bart vows he never planted that plum tree at the back door of his shop; says the children must have hove out plum stones when they was settin’ on the steps and the tree come up of its own accord. He says he didn’t take any notice of it till it got quite a start and then ‘t was such a healthy young bush he couldn’t bear to root it out. I tell him it’s kind O’ queer it should happen to come up jest where it spoils my view of his premises. Men folks are so exasperatin’ that sometimes I wish there was somebody different for us to marry, but there ain’t,—so there we be!”
“They are an awful trial,” admitted Mrs. Day. “Abel never sympathizes with my head-aches. I told him a-Sunday I didn’t believe he’d mind if I died the next day, an’ all he said was: ‘Why don’t you try it an’ see, Lyddy?’ He thinks that’s humorous.”
“I know; that’s the way Bartholomew talks; I guess they all do. You can see the bridge better ‘n I can, Lyddy; has Mark Wilson drove over sence you’ve been settin’ there? He’s like one o’ them ostriches that hides their heads in the sand when the bird-catchers are comin’ along, thinkin’ ‘cause they can’t see anything they’ll never BE seen! He knows folks would never tell tales to Deacon Baxter, whatever the girls done; they hate him too bad. Lawyer Wilson lives so far away, he can’t keep any watch o’ Mark, an’ Mis’ Wilson’s so cityfied an’ purse-proud nobody ever goes to her with any news, bad or good; so them that’s the most concerned is as blind as bats. Mark’s consid’able stiddier’n he used to be, but you needn’t tell me he has any notion of bringin’ one o’ that Baxter tribe into his family. He’s only amusin’ himself.”
“Patty’ll be Mrs. Wilson or nothin’,” was Mrs. Day’s response. “Both o’ them girls is silk purses an’ you can’t make sows’ ears of ‘em. We ain’t neither of us hardly fair to Patty, an’ I s’pose it ‘s because she didn’t set any proper value on Cephas.”
“Oh, she’s good enough for Mark, I guess, though I ain’t so sure of his intentions as you be. She’s nobody’s fool, Patty ain’t, I allow that, though she did treat Cephas like the dirt in the road. I’m thankful he’s come to his senses an’ found out the diff’rence between dross an’ gold.”
“It’s very good of you to put it that way, Abby,” Mrs. Day responded gratefully, for it was Phoebe, her own offspring, who was alluded to as the most precious of metals. “I suppose we’d better have the publishing notice put up in the frame before Sunday? There’ll be a great crowd out that day and at Thanksgiving service the next Thursday too!”
“Cephas says he don’t care how soon folks hears the news, now all’s settled,” said his mother. “I guess he’s kind of anxious that the village should know jest how little truth there is in the gossip ‘bout him bein’ all upset over Patience Baxter. He said they took consid’able notice of him an’ Phoebe settin’ together at the Harvest Festival last evenin’. He thought the Baxter girls would be there for certain, but I s’pose Old Foxy wouldn’t let ‘em go up to the Mills in the evenin’, nor spend a quarter on their tickets.”
“Mark could have invited Patty an’ paid for her ticket, I should think; or passed her in free, for that matter, when the Wilsons got up the entertainment; but, of course, the Deacon never allows his girls to go anywheres with men-folks.”
“Not in public; so they meet ‘em side o’ the river or round the corner of Bart’s shop, or anywhere they can, when the Deacon’s back’s turned. If you tied a handkerchief over Waitstill’s eyes she could find her way blindfold to Ivory Boynton’s house, but she’s good as gold, Waitstill is; she’ll stay where her duty calls her, every time! If any misfortune or scandal should come near them two girls, the Deacon will have no-body but himself to thank for it, that’s one sure thing!”
“Young folks can’t be young but once,” sighed Mrs. Day. “I thought we had as handsome a turn-out at the entertainment last evenin’ as any village on the Saco River could ‘a’ furnished: an’ my Phoebe an’ your Cephas, if I do say so as shouldn’t, was about the best-dressed an’ best-appearin’ couple there was present. Also, I guess likely, they’re startin’ out with as good prospects as any bride an’ groom that’s walked up the middle aisle o’ the meetin’-house for many a year.... How’d you like that Boston singer that the Wilsons brought here, Abby?—Wait a minute, is Cephas, or the Deacon, tendin’ store this after-noon?”
“The Deacon; Cephas is paintin’ up to the Mills.”
“Well, Mark Wilson’s horse an’ buggy is meanderin’ slowly down Aunt Betty-Jack’s hill, an’ Mark is studyin’ the road as if he was lookin’ for a four-leafed clover.”
“He’ll hitch at the tavern, or the Edgewood store, an’ wait his chance to get a word with Patience,” said Aunt Abby. “He knows when she takes milk to the Morrills’, or butter to the parsonage; also when she eats an’ drinks an’ winks her eye an’ ketches her breath an’ lifts her foot. Now he’s disappeared an’ we’ll wait.. .. Why, as to that Boston singer,—an’ by the way, they say Ellen Wilson’s goin’ to take lessons of her this winter,—she kind o’ bewildered me, Lyddy! Of course, I ain’t never been to any cities, so I don’t feel altogether free to criticise; but what did you think of her, when she run up so high there, one time? I don’t know how high she went, but I guess there wa’n’t no higher to go!”
“It made me kind o’ nervous,” allowed Mrs. Day.
“Nervous! Bart’ an’ I broke out in a cold sweat! He said she couldn’t hold a candle to Waitstill Baxter. But it’s that little fly-away Wilson girl that’ll get the lessons, an’ Waitstill will have to use her voice callin’ the Deacon home to dinner. Things ain’t divided any too well in this world, Lyddy.”
“Waitstill’s got the voice, but she lacks the trainin’. The Boston singer knows her business, I’ll say that for her,” said Mrs. Day.
“She’s got good stayin’ power,” agreed Aunt Abby. “Did you notice how she held on to that high note when she’d clumb where she wanted to git? She’s got breath enough to run a gristmill, that girl has! And how’d she come down, when she got good and ready to start? Why, she zig-zagged an’ saw-toothed the whole way! It kind o’ made my flesh creep!”
“I guess part o’ the trouble’s with us country folks,” Mrs. Day responded, “for folks said she sung runs and trills better’n any woman up to Boston.”
“Runs an’ trills,” ejaculated Abby scornfully. “I was talkin’ ‘bout singin’ not runnin’. My niece Ella up to Parsonfield has taken three terms on the pianner an’ I’ve heerd her practise. Scales has got to be done, no doubt, but they’d ought to be done to home, where they belong; a concert ain’t no place for ‘em… . There, what did I tell yer? Patience Baxter’s crossin’ the bridge with a pail in her hand. She’s got that everlastin’ yeller-brown, linsey-woolsey on, an’ a white ‘cloud’ wrapped around her head with con’sid’able red hair showin’ as usual. You can always see her fur’s you can a sunrise! And there goes Rod Boynton, chasin’ behind as usual. Those Baxter girls make a perfect fool o’ that boy, but I don’t s’pose Lois Boynton’s got wit enough to make much fuss over the poor little creeter!”
Mark Wilson could certainly see Patty Baxter as far as he could a sunrise, although he was not intimately acquainted with that natural phenomenon. He took a circuitous route from his watch-tower, and, knowing well the point from which there could be no espionage from Deacon Baxter’s store windows, joined Patty in the road, took the pail from her hand, and walked up the hill beside her. Of course, the village could see them, but, as Aunt Abby had intimated, there wasn’t a man, woman, or child on either side of the river who wouldn’t have taken the part of the Baxter girls against their father.
XXIV. PHOEBE TRIUMPHS
MEANTIME Feeble Phoebe Day was driving her father’s horse up to the Mills to bring Cephas Cole home. It was a thrilling moment, a sort of outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual tie, for their banns were to be published the next day, so what did it matter if the community, nay, if the whole universe, speculated as to why she was drawing her beloved back from his daily toil? It had been an eventful autumn for Cephas. After a third request for the hand of Miss Patience Baxter, and a refusal of even more than common decision and energy, Cephas turned about face and employed the entire month of September in a determined assault upon the affections of Miss Lucy Morrill, but with no better avail. His heart was not ardently involved in this second wooing, but winter was approaching, he had moved his mother out of her summer quarters back to the main house, and he doggedly began papering the ell and furnishing the kitchen without disclosing to his respected parents the identity of the lady for whose comfort he was so hospitably preparing.
Cephas’s belief in the holy state of matrimony as being the only one proper for a man, really ought to have commended him to the opposite (and ungrateful) sex more than it did, and Lucy Morrill held as respectful an opinion of the institution and its manifold advantages as Cephas himself, but she was in a very unsettled frame of mind and not at all susceptible to wooing. She had a strong preference for Philip Perry, and held an opinion, not altogether unfounded in human experience, that in course of time, when quite deserted by Patty Baxter, his heart might possibly be caught on the rebound. It was only a chance, but Lucy would almost have preferred remaining unmarried, even to the withering age of twenty-five, rather than not be at liberty to accept Philip Perry in case she should be asked.
Cephas therefore, by the middle of October, could be picturesquely and alliteratively described as being raw from repeated rejections. His bruised heart and his despised ell literally cried out for the appreciation so long and blindly withheld. Now all at once Phoebe disclosed a second virtue; her first and only one, hitherto, in the eyes of Cephas, having been an ability to get on with his mother, a feat in which many had made an effort and few indeed had succeeded. Phoebe, it seems, had always secretly admired, respected, and loved Cephas Cole! Never since her pale and somewhat glassy blue eye had opened on life had she beheld a being she could so adore if encouraged in the attitude.
The moment this unusual and unexpected poultice was really applied to Cephas’s wounds, they began to heal. In the course of a month the most ordinary observer could have perceived a physical change in him. He cringed no more, but held his head higher; his back straightened; his voice developed a gruff, assertive note, like that of a stern Roman father; he let his moustache grow, and sometimes, in his most reckless moments, twiddled the end of it. Finally he swaggered; but that was only after Phoebe had accepted him and told him that if a girl traversed the entire length of the Saco River (which she presumed to be the longest in the world, the Amazon not being familiar to her), she could not hope to find his equal as a husband.
And then congratulations began to pour in! Was ever marriage so fortuitous! The Coles’ farm joined that of the Days and the union between the two only children would cement the friendship between the families. The fact that Uncle Bart was a joiner, Cephas a painter, and Abel Day a mason and bricklayer made the alliance almost providential in its business opportunities. Phoebe’s Massachusetts aunt sent a complete outfit of gilt-edged china, a clock, and a mahogany chamber set. Aunt Abby relinquished to the young couple a bedroom and a spare chamber in the “main part,” while the Days supplied live-geese feathers and table and bed-linen with positive prodigality. Aunt Abby trod the air like one inspired. “Balmy” is the only adjective that could describe her.
“If only I could ‘a’ looked ahead,” smiled Uncle Bart quizzically to himself, “I’d ‘a’ had thirteen sons and daughters an’ married off one of ‘em every year. That would ‘a’ made Abby’s good temper kind o’ permanent.”
Cephas was content, too. There was a good deal in being settled and having “the whole doggoned business” off your hands. Phoebe looked a very different creature to him in these latter days. Her eyes were just as pale, of course, but they were brighter, and they radiated love for him, an expression in the female eye that he had thus far been singularly unfortunate in securing. She still held her mouth slightly open, but Cephas thought that it might be permissible, perhaps after three months of wedded bliss, to request her to be more careful in closing it. He believed, too, that she would make an effort to do so just to please him; whereas a man’s life or property would not be safe for a single instant if he asked Miss Patience Baxter to close her mouth, not if he had been married to her for thirty times three months!
Cephas did not think of Patty any longer with bitterness, in these days, being of the opinion that she was punished enough in observing his own growing popularity and prosperity.
“If she should see that mahogany chamber set going into the ell I guess she’d be glad enough to change her tune!” thought Cephas, exultingly; and then there suddenly shot through his mind the passing fancy—“I wonder if she would!” He promptly banished the infamous suggestion however, reinforcing his virtue with the reflection that the chamber set was Phoebe’s, anyway, and the marriage day appointed, and the invitations given out, and the wedding-cake being baked, a loaf at a time, by his mother and Mrs. Day.
As a matter of fact Patty would have had no eyes for Phoebe’s magnificent mahogany, even had the cart that carried it passed her on the hill where she and Mark Wilson were walking. Her promise to marry him was a few weeks old now, and his arm encircled her slender waist under the brown homespun cape. That in itself was a new sensation and gave her the delicious sense of belonging to somebody who valued her highly, and assured her of his sentiments clearly and frequently, both by word and deed. Life, dull gray life, was going to change its hue for her presently, and not long after, she hoped, for Waitstill, too! It needed only a brighter, a more dauntless courage; a little faith that nettles, when firmly grasped, hurt the hand less, and a fairer future would dawn for both of them. The Deacon was a sharper nettle than she had ever meddled with before, but in these days, when the actual contact had not yet occurred, she felt sure of herself and longed for the moment when her pluck should be tested and proved.
The “publishing” of Cephas and his third choice, their dull walk up the aisle of the meeting-house before an admiring throng, on the Sunday when Phoebe would “appear bride,” all this seemed very tame as compared with the dreams of this ardent and adventurous pair of lovers who had gone about for days harboring secrets greater and more daring, they thought, than had ever been breathed before within the hearing of Saco Water.
