Kitabı oku: «The Story of Waitstill Baxter», sayfa 13

XXVII. THE CONFESSIONAL

“WAITY, I know what it is; you have found out about me! Who has been wicked enough to tell you before I could do so—tell me, who?”

“Oh, Patty, Patty!” cried Waitstill, who could no longer hold back her tears. “How could you deceive me so? How could you shut me out of your heart and keep a secret like this from me, who have tried to be mother and sister in one to you ever since the day you were born? God has sent me much to bear, but nothing so bitter as this—to have my sister take the greatest step of her life without my knowledge or counsel!”

“Stop, dear, stop, and let me tell you!”

“All is told, and not by you as it should have been. We’ve never had anything separate from each other in all our lives, and when I looked in your bureau drawer for a bit of soft cotton—it was nothing more than I have done a hundred times—you can guess now what I stumbled upon; a wedding-ring for a hand I have held ever since it was a baby’s. My sister has a husband, and I am not even sure of his name!

“Waity, Waity, don’t take it so to heart!” and Patty flung herself on her knees beside Waitstill’s chair. “Not till you hear everything! When I tell you all, you will dry your eyes and smile and be happy about me, and you will know that in the whole world there is no one else in my love or my life but you and my—my husband.”

“Who is the husband?” asked Waitstill dryly, as she wiped her eyes and leaned her elbow on the table.

“Who could it be but Mark? Has there ever been any one but Mark?”

“I should have said that there were several, in these past few months.”

Waitstill’s tone showed clearly that she was still grieved and hurt beyond her power to conceal. “I have never thought of marrying any one but Mark, and not even of marrying him till a little while ago,” said Patty. “Now do not draw away from me and look out of the window as if we were not sisters, or you will break my heart. Turn your eyes to mine and believe in me, Waity, while I tell you everything, as I have so longed to do all these nights and days. Mark and I have loved each other for a long, long time. It was only play at first, but we were young and foolish and did not understand what was really happening between us.”

“You are both of you only a few months older than when you were ‘young and foolish,’” objected Waitstill.

“Yes, we are—years and years! Five weeks ago I promised Mark that I would marry him; but how was I ever to keep my word publicly? You have noticed how insultingly father treats him of late, passing him by without a word when he meets him in the street? You remember, too, that he has never gone to Lawyer Wilson for advice, or put any business in his hands since spring?”

“The Wilsons are among father’s aversions, that is all you can say; it is no use to try and explain them or rebel against them,” Waitstill answered wearily.

“That is all very well, and might be borne like many another cross; but I wanted to marry this particular ‘aversion,’” argued Patty. “Would you have helped me to marry Mark secretly if I had confided in you?”

“Never in the world—never!”

“I knew it,” exclaimed Patty triumphantly. “We both said so! And what was Mark to do? He was more than willing to come up here and ask for me like a man, but he knew that he would be ordered off the premises as if he were a thief. That would have angered Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, and made matters worse. We talked and talked until we were hoarse; we thought and thought until we nearly had brain fever from thinking, but there seemed to be no way but to take the bull by the horns.”

“You are both so young, you could well have bided awhile.”

“We could have bided until we were gray, nothing would have changed father; and just lately I couldn’t make Mark bide,” confessed Patty ingenuously. “He has been in a rage about father’s treatment of you and me. He knows we haven’t the right food to eat, nothing fit to wear, and not an hour of peace or freedom. He has even heard the men at the store say that our very lives might be in danger if we crossed father’s will, or angered him beyond a certain point. You can’t blame a man who loves a girl, if he wants to take her away from such a wretched life. His love would be good for nothing if he did not long to rescue her!”

“I would never have left you behind to bear your slavery alone, while I slipped away to happiness and comfort—not for any man alive would I I have done it!” This speech, so unlike Waitstill in its ungenerous reproach, was repented of as soon as it left her tongue. “Oh, I did not mean that, my darling!” she cried. “I would have welcomed any change for you, and thanked God for it, if only it could have come honorably and aboveboard.”

“But, don’t you see, Waity, how my marriage helps everything? That is what makes me happiest; that now I shall have a home and it can be yours. Father has plenty of money and can get a housekeeper. He is only sixty-five, and as hale and hearty as a man can be. You have served your time, and surely you need not be his drudge for the rest of your life. Mark and I thought you would spend half the year with us.”

Waitstill waived this point as too impossible for discussion. “When and where were you married, Patty?” she asked.

“In Allentown, New Hampshire, last Monday, the day you and father went to Saco. Ellen went with us. You needn’t suppose it was much fun for me! Girls that think running away to be married is nothing but a lark, do not have to deceive a sister like you, nor have a father such as mine to reckon with afterwards.”

“You thought of all that before, didn’t you, child?”

“Nobody that hasn’t already run away to be married once or twice could tell how it was going to feel! Never did I pass so unhappy a day! If Mark was not everything that is kind and gentle, he would have tipped me out of the sleigh into a snowbank and left me by the roadside to freeze. I might have been murdered instead of only married, by the way I behaved; but Mark and Ellen understood. Then, the very next day, Mark’s father sent him up to Bridgton on business, and he had to go to Allentown first to return a friend’s horse, so he couldn’t break the news to father at once, as he intended.”

“Does a New Hampshire marriage hold good in Maine?” asked Waitstill, still intent on the bare facts at the bottom of the romance.

“Well, of course,” stammered Patty, some-what confused, “Maine has her own way of doing things, and wouldn’t be likely to fancy New Hampshire’s. But nothing can make it wicked or anything but according to law. Besides, Mark considered all the difficulties. He is wonderfully clever, and he has a clerkship in a Portsmouth law office waiting for him; and that’s where we are going to live, in New Hampshire, where we were married, and my darling sister will come soon and stay months and months with us.”

“When is Mark coming back to arrange all this?”

“Late to-night or early to-morrow morning. Where did you go after you were married?”

“Where did I go?” echoed Patty, in a childish burst of tears. “Where could I go? It took all day to be married—all day long, working and driving hard from sunrise to seven o’clock in the evening. Then when we reached the bridge, Mark dropped me, and I walked up home in the dark, and went to bed without any supper, for fear that you and father would come back and catch me at it and ask why I was so late.”

“My poor, foolish dear!” sighed Waitstill.

Patty’s tears flowed faster at the first sound of sympathy in Waitstill’s voice, for self-pity is very enfeebling. She fairly sobbed as she continued:—

“So my only wedding-journey was the freezing drive back from Allentown, with Ellen crying all the way and wishing that she hadn’t gone with us. Mark and I both say we’ll never be married again so long as we live!”

“Where have you seen your husband from that day to this?”

“I haven’t laid eyes on him!” said Patty, with a fresh burst of woe. “I have a certificate-thing, and a wedding-ring and a beautiful frock and hat that Mark bought in Boston, but no real husband. I’m no more married than ever I was! Don’t you remember I said that Mark was sent away on Tuesday morning? And this is Thursday. I’ve had three letters from him; but I don’t know, till we see how father takes it, when we can tell the Wilsons and start for Portsmouth. We shan’t really call ourselves married till we get to Portsmouth; we promised each other that from the first. It isn’t much like being a bride, never to see your bridegroom; to have a father who will fly into a passion when he hears that you are married; not to know whether your new family will like or despise you; and to have your only sister angered with you for the first time in her life!”

Waitstill’s heart melted, and she lifted Patty’s tear-stained face to hers and kissed it. “Well, dear, I would not have had you do this for the world, but it is done, and Mark seems to have been as wise as a man can be when he does an unwise thing. You are married, and you love each other. That’s the comforting thing to me.”

“We do,” sobbed Patty. “No two people ever loved each other better than we; but it’s been all spoiled for fear of father.”

“I must say I dread to have him hear the news”; and Waitstill knitted her brows anxiously. “I hope it may be soon, and I think I ought to be here when he is told. Mark will never under-stand or bear with him, and there may be trouble that I could avert.”

“I’ll be here, too, and I’m not afraid!” And Patty raised her head defiantly. “Father can unmarry us, that’s why we acted in this miserable, secret, underhanded way. Somehow, though I haven’t seen Mark since we went to Allentown, I am braver than I was last week, for now I’ve got somebody to take my part. I’ve a good mind to go upstairs and put on my gold beads and my wedding-ring, just to get used to them and to feel a little more married.—No: I can’t, after all, for there is father driving up the hill now, and he may come into the house. What brings him home at this hour?”

“I was expecting him every moment”; and Waitstill rose and stirred the fire. “He took the pung and went to the Mills for grain.”

“He hasn’t anything in the back of the pung—and, oh, Waity! he is standing up now and whipping the horse with all his might. I never saw him drive like that before: what can be the matter? He can’t have seen my wedding-ring, and only three people in all the world know about my being married.”

Waitstill turned from the window, her heart beating a little faster. “What three people know, three hundred are likely to know sooner or later. It may be a false alarm, but father is in a fury about something. He must not be told the news until he is in a better humor!”

XXVIII. PATTY IS SHOWN THE DOOR

DEACON BAXTER drove into the barn, and flinging a blanket over the wheezing horse, closed the door behind him and hurried into the house without even thinking to lay down his whip.

Opening the kitchen door and stopping outside long enough to kick the snow from his heavy boots, he strode into the kitchen and confronted the two girls. He looked at them sharply before he spoke, scanning their flushed faces and tear-stained eyes; then he broke out savagely:—

“Oh! you’re both here; that’s lucky. Now stan’ up and answer to me. What’s this I hear at the Mills about Patience,—common talk outside the store?”

The time had come, then, and by some strange fatality, when Mark was too far away to be of service.

“Tell me what you heard, father, and I can give you a better answer,” Patty replied, hedging to gain time, and shaking inwardly.

“Bill Morrill says his brother that works in New Hampshire reports you as ridin’ through the streets of Allentown last Monday with a young man.”

There seemed but one reply to this, so Patty answered tremblingly: “He says what’s true; I was there.”

“WHAT!” And it was plain from the Deacon’s voice that he had really disbelieved the rumor. A whirlwind of rage swept through him and shook him from head to foot.

“Do you mean to stan’ there an’ own up to me that you was thirty miles away from home with a young man?” he shouted.

“If you ask me a plain question, I’ve got to tell you the truth, father: I was.”

“How dare you carry on like that and drag my name into scandal, you worthless trollop, you? Who went along with you? I’ll skin the hide off him, whoever ‘t was!”

Patty remained mute at this threat, but Waitstill caught her hand and whispered: “Tell him all, dear; it’s got to come out. Be brave, and I’ll stand by you.”

“Why are you interferin’ and puttin’ in your meddlesome oar?” the Deacon said, turning to Waitstill. “The girl would never ‘a’ been there if you’d attended to your business. She’s nothin’ but a fool of a young filly, an’ you’re an old cart-horse. It was your job to look out for her as your mother told you to. Anybody might ‘a’ guessed she needed watchin’!”

“You shall not call my sister an old cart-horse! I’ll not permit it!” cried Patty, plucking up courage in her sister’s defence, and as usual comporting herself a trifle more like a spitfire than a true heroine of tragedy.

“Hush, Patty! Let him call me anything that he likes; it makes no difference at such a time.”

“Waitstill knew nothing of my going away till this afternoon,” continued Patty. “I kept it secret from her on purpose, because I was afraid she would not approve. I went with Mark Wilson, and—and—I married him in New Hampshire because we couldn’t do it at home without every-body’s knowledge. Now you know all.”

“Do you mean to tell me you’ve gone an’ married that reckless, wuthless, horse-trottin’, card-playin’ sneak of a Wilson boy that’s courted every girl in town? Married the son of a man that has quarrelled with me and insulted me in public? By the Lord Harry, I’ll crack this whip over your shoulders once before I’m done with you! If I’d used it years ago you might have been an honest woman to-day, instead of a—”

Foxwell Baxter had wholly lost control of himself, and the temper, that had never been governed or held in check, lashed itself into a fury that made him for the moment unaccountable for his words or actions.

Waitstill took a step forward in front of Patty. “Put down that whip, father, or I’ll take it from you and break it across my knee!” Her eyes blazed and she held her head high. “You’ve made me do the work of a man, and, thank God, I’ve got the muscle of one. Don’t lift a finger to Patty, or I’ll defend her, I promise you! The dinner-horn is in the side entry and two blasts will bring Uncle Bart up the hill, but I’d rather not call him unless you force me to.”

The Deacon’s grasp on the whip relaxed, and he fell back a little in sheer astonishment at the bravado of the girl, ordinarily so quiet and self-contained. He was speechless for a second, and then recovered breath enough to shout to the terrified Patty: “I won’t use the whip till I hear whether you’ve got any excuse for your scandalous behavior. Hear me tell you one thing: this little pleasure-trip o’ yourn won’t do you no good, for I’ll break the marriage! I won’t have a Wilson in my family if I have to empty a shot-gun into him; but your lies and your low streets are so beyond reason I can’t believe my ears. What’s your excuse, I say?”

“Stop a minute, Patty, before you answer, and let me say a few things that ought to have been said before now,” interposed Waitstill. “If Patty has done wrong, father, you’ve no one but yourself to thank for it, and it’s only by God’s grace that nothing worse has happened to her. What could you expect from a young thing like that, with her merry heart turned into a lump in her breast every day by your cruelty? Did she deceive you? Well, you’ve made her afraid of you ever since she was a baby in the cradle, drawing the covers over her little head when she heard your step. Whatever crop you sow is bound to come up, father; that’s Nature’s law, and God’s, as well.”

“You hold your tongue, you,—readin’ the law to your elders an’ betters,” said the old man, choking with wrath. “My business is with this wuthless sister o’ yourn, not with you!—You’ve got your coat and hood on, miss, so you jest clear out o’ the house; an’ if you’re too slow about it, I’ll help you along. I’ve no kind of an idea you’re rightly married, for that young Wilson sneak couldn’t pay so high for you as all that; but if it amuses you to call him your husband, go an’ find him an’ stay with him. This is an honest house, an’ no place for such as you!”

Patty had a good share of the Baxter temper, not under such control as Waitstill’s, and the blood mounted into her face.

“You shall not speak to me so!” she said intrepidly, while keeping a discreet eye on the whip. “I’m not a—a—caterpillar to be stepped on, I’m a married woman, as right as a New Hampshire justice can make me, with a wedding-ring and a certificate to show, if need be. And you shall not call my husband names! Time will tell what he is going to be, and that’s a son-in-law any true father would be proud to own!”

“Why are you set against this match, father?” argued Waitstill, striving to make him hear reason. “Patty has married into one of the best families in the village. Mark is gay and thought-less, but never has he been seen the worse for liquor, and never has he done a thing for which a wife need hang her head. It is something for a young fellow of four-and-twenty to be able to provide for a wife and keep her in comfort; and when all is said and done, it is a true love-match.”

Patty seized this inopportune moment to forget her father’s presence, and the tragic nature of the occasion, and, in her usual impetuous fashion, flung her arms around Waitstill’s neck and gave her the hug of a young bear.

“My own dear sister,” she said. “I don’t mind anything, so long as you stand up for us.”

“Don’t make her go to-night, father,” pleaded Waitstill. “Don’t send your own child out into the cold. Remember her husband is away from home.”

“She can find another up at the Mills as good as he is, or better. Off with you, I say, you trumpery little baggage, you!”

“Go, then, dear, it is better so; Uncle Bart will keep you overnight; run up and get your things”; and Waitstill sank into a chair, realizing the hopelessness of the situation.

“She’ll not take anything from my house. It’s her husband’s business to find her in clothes.”

“They’ll be better ones than ever you found me,” was Patty’s response.

No heroics for her; no fainting fits at being disowned; no hysterics at being turned out of house and home; no prayers for mercy, but a quick retort for every gibe from her father; and her defiant attitude enraged the Deacon the more.

“I won’t speak again,” he said, in a tone that could not be mistaken. “Into the street you go, with the clothes you stand up in, or I’ll do what I said I’d do.”

“Go, Patty, it’s the only thing to be done. Don’t tremble, for nobody shall touch a hair of your head. I can trust you to find shelter to-night, and Mark will take care of you to-morrow.”

Patty buttoned her shabby coat and tied on her hood as she walked from the kitchen through the sitting-room towards the side door, her heart heaving with shame and anger, and above all with a child’s sense of helplessness at being parted from her sister.

“Don’t tell the neighbors any more lies than you can help,” called her father after her retreating form; “an’ if any of ‘em dare to come up here an’ give me any of their imperdence, they’ll be treated same as you. Come back here, Waitstill, and don’t go to slobberin’ any good-byes over her. She ain’t likely to get out o’ the village for some time if she’s expectin’ Mark Wilson to take her away.”

“I shall certainly go to the door with my sister,” said Waitstill coldly, suiting the action to the word, and following Patty out on the steps. “Shall you tell Uncle Bart everything, dear, and ask him to let you sleep at his house?”

Both girls were trembling with excitement; Waitstill pale as a ghost, Patty flushed and tearful, with defiant eyes and lips that quivered rebelliously.

“I s’pose so,” she answered dolefully; “though Aunt Abby hates me, on account of Cephas. I’d rather go to Dr. Perry’s, but I don’t like to meet Phil. There doesn’t seem to be any good place for me, but it ‘s only for a night. And you’ll not let father prevent your seeing Mark and me to-morrow, will you? Are you afraid to stay alone? I’ll sit on the steps all night if you say the word.”

“No, no, run along. Father has vented his rage upon you, and I shall not have any more trouble. God bless and keep you, darling. Run along!”

“And you’re not angry with me now, Waity? You still love me? And you’ll forgive Mark and come to stay with us soon, soon, soon?”

“We’ll see, dear, when all this unhappy business is settled, and you are safe and happy in your own home. I shall have much to tell you when we meet to-morrow.”