Kitabı oku: «The Story of Waitstill Baxter», sayfa 2
IV. SOMETHING OF A HERO
IVORY BOYNTON lifted the bars that divided his land from the highroad and walked slowly toward the house. It was April, but there were still patches of snow here and there, fast melting under a drizzling rain. It was a gray world, a bleak, black-and-brown world, above and below. The sky was leaden; the road and the footpath were deep in a muddy ooze flecked with white. The tree-trunks, black, with bare branches, were lined against the gray sky; nevertheless, spring had been on the way for a week, and a few sunny days would bring the yearly miracle for which all hearts were longing.
Ivory was season-wise and his quick eye had caught many a sign as he walked through the woods from his schoolhouse. A new and different color haunted the tree-tops, and one had only to look closely at the elm buds to see that they were beginning to swell. Some fat robins had been sunning about in the school-yard at noon, and sparrows had been chirping and twittering on the fence-rails. Yes, the winter was over, and Ivory was glad, for it had meant no coasting and skating and sleighing for him, but long walks in deep snow or slush; long evenings, good for study, but short days, and greater loneliness for his mother. He could see her now as he neared the house, standing in the open doorway, her hand shading her eyes, watching, always watching, for some one who never came.
“Spring is on the way, mother, but it isn’t here yet, so don’t stand there in the rain,” he called. “Look at the nosegay I gathered for you as I came through the woods. Here are pussy willows and red maple blossoms and Mayflowers, would you believe it?”
Lois Boynton took the handful of budding things and sniffed their fragrance.
“You’re late to-night, Ivory,” she said. “Rod wanted his supper early so that he could go off to singing-school, but I kept something warm for you, and I’ll make you a fresh cup of tea.”
Ivory went into the little shed room off the kitchen, changed his muddy boots for slippers, and made himself generally tidy; then he came back to the living-room bringing a pine knot which he flung on the fire, waking it to a brilliant flame.
“We can be as lavish as we like with the stumps now, mother, for spring is coming,” he said, as he sat down to his meal.
“I’ve been looking out more than usual this afternoon,” she replied. “There’s hardly any snow left, and though the walking is so bad I’ve been rather expecting your father before night. You remember he said, when he went away in January, that he should be back before the Mayflowers bloomed?”
It did not do any good to say: “Yes, mother, but the Mayflowers have bloomed ten times since father went away.” He had tried that, gently and persistently when first her mind began to be confused from long grief and hurt love, stricken pride and sick suspense.
Instead of that, Ivory turned the subject cheerily, saying, “Well, we’re sure of a good season, I think. There’s been a grand snow-fall, and that, they say, is the poor man’s manure. Rod and I will put in more corn and potatoes this year. I shan’t have to work single-handed very long, for he is growing to be quite a farmer.”
“Your father was very fond of green corn, but he never cared for potatoes,” Mrs. Boynton said, vaguely, taking up her knitting. “I always had great pride in my cooking, but I could never get your father to relish my potatoes.”
“Well, his son does, anyway,” Ivory replied, helping himself plentifully from a dish that held one of his mother’s best concoctions, potatoes minced fine and put together into the spider with thin bits of pork and all browned together.
“I saw the Baxter girls to-day, mother,” he continued, not because he hoped she would give any heed to what he said, but from the sheer longing for companionship. “The Deacon drove off with Lawyer Wilson, who wanted him to give testimony in some case or other down in Milltown. The minute Patty saw him going up Saco Hill, she harnessed the old starved Baxter mare and the girls started over to the Lower Corner to see some friends. It seems it’s Patty’s birthday and they were celebrating. I met them just as they were coming back and helped them lift the rickety wagon out of the mud; they were stuck in it up to the hubs of the wheels. I advised them to walk up the Town-House Hill if they ever expected to get the horse home.”
“Town-House Hill!” said Ivory’s mother, dropping her knitting. “That was where we had such wonderful meetings! Truly the Lord was present in our midst, and oh, Ivory! the visions we saw in that place when Jacob Cochrane first unfolded his gospel to us. Was ever such a man!”
“Probably not, mother,” remarked Ivory dryly.
“You were speaking of the Baxters. I remember their home, and the little girl who used to stand in the gateway and watch when we came out of meeting. There was a baby, too; isn’t there a Baxter baby, Ivory?”
“She didn’t stay a baby; she is seventeen years old to-day, mother.”
“You surprise me, but children do grow very fast. She had a strange name, but I cannot recall it.”
“Her name is Patience, but nobody but her father calls her anything but Patty, which suits her much better.”
“No, the name wasn’t Patience, not the one I mean.”
“The older sister is Waitstill, perhaps you mean her?”—and Ivory sat down by the fire with his book and his pipe.
“Waitstill! Waitstill! that is it! Such a beautiful name!”
“She’s a beautiful girl.”
“Waitstill! ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’ ‘Wait, I say, on the Lord and He will give thee the desires of thy heart.’—Those were wonderful days, when we were caught up out of the body and mingled freely in the spirit world.” Mrs. Boynton was now fully started on the topic that absorbed her mind and Ivory could do nothing but let her tell the story that she had told him a hundred times.
“I remember when first we heard Jacob Cochrane speak.” (This was her usual way of beginning.) “Your father was a preacher, as you know, Ivory, but you will never know what a wonderful preacher he was. My grandfather, being a fine gentleman, and a governor, would not give his consent to my marriage, but I never regretted it, never! Your father saw Elder Cochrane at a revival meeting of the Free Will Baptists in Scarboro’, and was much impressed with him. A few days later we went to the funeral of a child in the same neighborhood. No one who was there could ever forget it. The minister had made his long prayer when a man suddenly entered the room, came towards the coffin, and placed his hand on the child’s forehead. The room, in an instant, was as still as the death that had called us together. The stranger was tall and of commanding presence; his eyes pierced our very hearts, and his marvellous voice penetrated to depths in our souls that had never been reached before.”
“Was he a better speaker than my father?” asked Ivory, who dreaded his mother’s hours of complete silence even more than her periods of reminiscence.
“He spoke as if the Lord of Hosts had given him inspiration; as if the angels were pouring words into his mouth just for him to utter,” replied Mrs. Boynton. “Your father was spell-bound, and I only less so. When he ceased speaking, the child’s mother crossed the room, and swaying to and fro, fell at his feet, sobbing and wailing and imploring God to forgive her sins. They carried her upstairs, and when we looked about after the confusion and excitement the stranger had vanished. But we found him again! As Elder Cochrane said: ‘The prophet of the Lord can never be hid; no darkness is thick enough to cover him!’ There was a six weeks’ revival meeting in North Saco where three hundred souls were converted, and your father and I were among them. We had fancied ourselves true believers for years, but Jacob Cochrane unstopped our ears so that we could hear the truths revealed to him by the Almighty!—It was all so simple and easy at the beginning, but it grew hard and grievous afterward; hard to keep the path, I mean. I never quite knew whether God was angry with me for backsliding at the end, but I could not always accept the revelations that Elder Cochrane and your father had!”
Lois Boynton’s hands were now quietly folded over the knitting that lay forgotten in her lap, but her low, thrilling voice had a note in it that did not belong wholly to earth.
There was a long silence; one of many long silences at the Boynton fireside, broken only by the ticking of the clock, the purring of the cat, and the clicking of Mrs. Boynton’s needles, as, her paroxysm of reminiscence over, she knitted ceaselessly, with her eyes on the window or the door.
“It’s about time for Rod to be coming back, isn’t it?” asked Ivory.
“He ought to be here soon, but perhaps he is gone for good; it may be that he thinks he has made us a long enough visit. I don’t know whether your father will like the boy when he comes home. He never did fancy company in the house.”
Ivory looked up in astonishment from his Greek grammar. This was an entirely new turn of his mother’s mind. Often when she was more than usually confused he would try to clear the cobwebs from her brain by gently questioning her until she brought herself back to a clearer understanding of her own thought. Thus far her vagaries had never made her unjust to any human creature; she was uniformly sweet and gentle in speech and demeanor.
“Why do you talk of Rod’s visiting us when he is one of the family?” Ivory asked quietly.
“Is he one of the family? I didn’t know it,” replied his mother absently.
“Look at me, mother, straight in the eye; that’s right: now listen, dear, to what I say.”
Mrs. Boynton’s hair that had been in her youth like an aureole of corn-silk was now a strange yellow-white, and her blue eyes looked out from her pale face with a helpless appeal.
“You and I were living alone here after father went away,” Ivory began. “I was a little boy, you know. You and father had saved something, there was the farm, you worked like a slave, I helped, and we lived, somehow, do you remember?”
“I do, indeed! It was cold and the neighbors were cruel. Jacob Cochrane had gone away and his disciples were not always true to him. When the magnetism of his presence was withdrawn, they could not follow all his revelations, and they forgot how he had awakened their spiritual life at the first of his preaching. Your father was always a stanch believer, but when he started on his mission and went to Parsonsfield to help Elder Cochrane in his meetings, the neighbors began to criticize him. They doubted him. You were too young to realize it, but I did, and it almost broke my heart.”
“I was nearly twelve years old; do you think I escaped all the gossip, mother?”
“You never spoke of it to me, Ivory.”
“No, there is much that I never spoke of to you, mother, but sometime when you grow stronger and your memory is better we will talk together.—Do you remember the winter, long after father went away, that Parson Lane sent me to Fairfield Academy to get enough Greek and Latin to make me a schoolmaster?”
“Yes,” she answered uncertainly.
“Don’t you remember I got a free ride down-river one Friday and came home for Sunday, just to surprise you? And when I got here I found you ill in bed, with Mrs. Mason and Dr. Perry taking care of you. You could not speak, you were so ill, but they told me you had been up in New Hampshire to see your sister, that she had died, and that you had brought back her boy, who was only four years old. That was Rod. I took him into bed with me that night, poor, homesick little fellow, and, as you know, mother, he’s never left us since.”
“I didn’t remember I had a sister. Is she dead, Ivory?” asked Mrs. Boynton vaguely.
“If she were not dead, do you suppose you would have kept Rodman with us when we hadn’t bread enough for our own two mouths, mother?” questioned Ivory patiently.
“No, of course not. I can’t think how I can be so forgetful. It’s worse sometimes than others. It ‘s worse to-day because I knew the Mayflowers were blooming and that reminded me it was time for your father to come home; you must forgive me, dear, and will you excuse me if I sit in the kitchen awhile? The window by the side door looks out towards the road, and if I put a candle on the sill it shines quite a distance. The lane is such a long one, and your father was always a sad stumbler in the dark! I shouldn’t like him to think I wasn’t looking for him when he’s been gone since January.”
Ivory’s pipe went out, and his book slipped from his knee unnoticed.
His mother was more confused than usual, but she always was when spring came to remind her of her husband’s promise. Somehow, well used as he was to her mental wanderings, they made him uneasy to-night. His father had left home on a fancied mission, a duty he believed to be a revelation given by God through Jacob Cochrane. The farm did not miss him much at first, Ivory reflected bitterly, for since his fanatical espousal of Cochranism his father’s interest in such mundane matters as household expenses had diminished month by month until they had no meaning for him at all. Letters to wife and boy had come at first, but after six months—during which he had written from many places, continually deferring the date of his return-they had ceased altogether. The rest was silence. Rumors of his presence here or there came from time to time, but though Parson Lane and Dr. Perry did their best, none of them were ever substantiated.
Where had those years of wandering been passed, and had they all been given even to an imaginary and fantastic service of God? Was his father dead? If he were alive, what could keep him from writing? Nothing but a very strong reason, or a very wrong one, so his son thought, at times.
Since Ivory had grown to man’s estate, he understood that in the later days of Cochrane’s preaching, his “visions,” “inspirations,” and “revelations” concerning the marriage bond were a trifle startling from the old-fashioned, orthodox point of view. His most advanced disciples were to hold themselves in readiness to renounce their former vows and seek “spiritual consorts,” sometimes according to his advice, sometimes as their inclinations prompted.
Had Aaron Boynton forsaken, willingly, the wife of his youth, the mother of his boy? If so, he must have realized to what straits he was subjecting them. Ivory had not forgotten those first few years of grinding poverty, anxiety, and suspense. His mother’s mind had stood the strain bravely, but it gave way at last; not, however, until that fatal winter journey to New Hampshire, when cold, exposure, and fatigue did their worst for her weak body. Religious enthusiast, exalted and impressionable, a natural mystic, she had probably always been, far more so in temperament, indeed, than her husband; but although she left home on that journey a frail and heartsick woman, she returned a different creature altogether, blurred and confused in mind, with clouded memory and irrational fancies.
She must have given up hope, just then, Ivory thought, and her love was so deep that when it was uprooted the soil came with it. Now hope had returned because the cruel memory had faded altogether. She sat by the kitchen window in gentle expectation, watching, always watching.
And this is the way many of Ivory Boynton’s evenings were spent, while the heart of him, the five-and-twenty-year-old heart of him, was longing to feel the beat of another heart, a girl’s heart only a mile or more away. The ice in Saco Water had broken up and the white blocks sailed majestically down towards the sea; sap was mounting and the elm trees were budding; the trailing arbutus was blossoming in the woods; the robins had come;-everything was announcing the spring, yet Ivory saw no changing seasons in his future; nothing but winter, eternal winter there!
V. PATIENCE AND IMPATIENCE
PATTY had been searching for eggs in the barn chamber, and coming down the ladder from the haymow spied her father washing the wagon by the well-side near the shed door. Cephas Cole kept store for him at meal hours and whenever trade was unusually brisk, and the Baxter yard was so happily situated that Old Foxy could watch both house and store.
There never was a good time to ask Deacon Baxter a favor, therefore this moment would serve as well as any other, so, approaching him near enough to be heard through the rubbing and splashing, but no nearer than was necessary Patty said:—
“Father, can I go up to Ellen Wilson’s this afternoon and stay to tea? I won’t start till I’ve done a good day’s work and I’ll come home early.”
“What do you want to go gallivantin’ to the neighbors for? I never saw anything like the girls nowadays; highty-tighty, flauntin’, traipsin’, triflin’ trollops, ev’ry one of ‘em, that’s what they are, and Ellen Wilson’s one of the triflin’est. You’re old enough now to stay to home where you belong and make an effort to earn your board and clothes, which you can’t, even if you try.”
Spunk, real, Simon-pure spunk, started somewhere in Patty and coursed through her blood like wine.
“If a girl’s old enough to stay at home and work, I should think she was old enough to go out and play once in a while.” Patty was still too timid to make this remark more than a courteous suggestion, so far as its tone was concerned.
“Don’t answer me back; you’re full of new tricks, and you’ve got to stop ‘em, right where you are, or there’ll be trouble. You were whistlin’ just now up in the barn chamber; that’s one of the things I won’t have round my premises,—a whistlin’ girl.”
“‘T was a Sabbath-School hymn that I was whistling!” This with a creditable imitation of defiance.
“That don’t make it any better. Sing your hymns if you must make a noise while you’re workin’.”
“It’s the same mouth that makes the whistle and sings the song, so I don’t see why one’s any wickeder than the other.”
“You don’t have to see,” replied the Deacon grimly; “all you have to do is to mind when you’re spoken to. Now run ‘long ‘bout your work.”
“Can’t I go up to Ellen’s, then?”
“What’s goin’ on up there?”
“Just a frolic. There’s always a good time at Ellen’s, and I would so like the sight of a big, rich house now and then!”
“‘Just a frolic.’ Land o’ Goshen, hear the girl! ‘Sight of a big, rich house,’ indeed!—Will there be any boys at the party?”
“I s’pose so, or ‘t wouldn’t be a frolic,” said Patty with awful daring; “but there won’t be many; only a few of Mark’s friends.”
“Well, there ain’t goin’ to be no more argyfyin’! I won’t have any girl o’ mine frolickin’ with boys, so that’s the end of it. You’re kind o’ crazy lately, riggin’ yourself out with a ribbon here and a flower there, and pullin’ your hair down over your ears. Why do you want to cover your ears up? What are they for?”
“To hear you with, father,” Patty replied, with honey-sweet voice and eyes that blazed.
“Well, I hope they’ll never hear anything worse,” replied her father, flinging a bucket of water over the last of the wagon wheels.
“THEY COULDN’T!” These words were never spoken aloud, but oh! how Patty longed to shout them with a clarion voice as she walked away in perfect silence, her majestic gait showing, she hoped, how she resented the outcome of the interview.
“I’ve stood up to father!” she exclaimed triumphantly as she entered the kitchen and set down her yellow bowl of eggs on the table. “I stood up to him, and answered him back three times!”
Waitstill was busy with her Saturday morning cooking, but she turned in alarm.
“Patty, what have you said and done? Tell me quickly!”
“I ‘argyfied,’ but it didn’t do any good; he won’t let me go to Ellen’s party.”
Waitstill wiped her floury hands and put them on her sister’s shoulders.
“Hear what I say, Patty: you must not argue with father, whatever he says. We don’t love him and so there isn’t the right respect in our hearts, but at least there can be respect in our manners.”
“I don’t believe I can go on for years, holding in, Waitstill!” Patty whimpered.
“Yes, you can. I have!”
“You’re different, Waitstill.”
“I wasn’t so different at sixteen, but that’s five years ago, and I’ve got control of my tongue and my temper since then. Sometime, perhaps, when I have a grievance too great to be rightly borne, sometime when you are away from here in a home of your own, I shall speak out to father; just empty my heart of all the disappointment and bitterness and rebellion. Somebody ought to tell him the truth, and perhaps it will be me!”
“I wish it could be me,” exclaimed Patty vindictively, and with an equal disregard of grammar.
“You would speak in temper, I’m afraid, Patty, and that would spoil all. I’m sorry you can’t go up to Ellen’s,” she sighed, turning back to her work; “you don’t have pleasure enough for one of your age; still, don’t fret; something may happen to change things, and anyhow the weather is growing warmer, and you and I have so many more outings in summer-time. Smooth down your hair, child; there are straws in it, and it’s all rough with the wind. I don’t like flying hair about a kitchen.”
“I wish my hair was flying somewhere a thousand miles from here; or at least I should wish it if it did not mean leaving you; for oh. I’m so miserable and disappointed and unhappy!”
Waitstill bent over the girl as she flung herself down beside the table and smoothed her shoulder gently.
“There, there, dear; it isn’t like my gay little sister to cry. What is the matter with you to-day, Patty?”
“I suppose it’s the spring,” she said, wiping her eyes with her apron and smiling through her tears. “Perhaps I need a dose of sulphur and molasses.”
“Don’t you feel well as common?”
“Well? I feel too well! I feel as if I was a young colt shut up in an attic. I want to kick up my heels, batter the door down, and get out into the pasture. It’s no use talking, Waity;—I can’t go on living without a bit of pleasure and I can’t go on being patient even for your sake. If it weren’t for you, I’d run away as Job did; and I never believed Moses slipped on the logs; I’m sure he threw himself into the river, and so should I if I had the courage!”
“Stop, Patty, stop, dear! You shall have your bit of pasture, at least. I’ll do some of your indoor tasks for you, and you shall put on your sunbonnet and go out and dig the dandelion greens for dinner. Take the broken knife and a milkpan and don’t bring in so much earth with them as you did last time. Dry your eyes and look at the green things growing. Remember how young you are and how many years are ahead of you! Go along, dear!”
Waitstill went about her work with rather a heavy heart. Was life going to be more rather than less difficult, now that Patty was growing up? Would she he able to do her duty both by father and sister and keep peace in the household, as she had vowed, in her secret heart, always to do? She paused every now and then to look out of the window and wave an encouraging hand to Patty. The girl’s bonnet was off, and her uncovered head blazed like red gold in the sunlight. The short young grass was dotted with dandelion blooms, some of them already grown to huge disks of yellow, and Patty moved hither and thither, selecting the younger weeds, deftly putting the broken knife under their roots and popping them into the tin pan. Presently, for Deacon Baxter had finished the wagon and gone down the hill to relieve Cephas Cole at the counter, Patty’s shrill young whistle floated into the kitchen, but with a mischievous glance at the open window she broke off suddenly and began to sing the words of the hymn with rather more emphasis and gusto than strict piety warranted.
“There’ll be SOMEthing in heav-en for chil-dren to do,
None are idle in that bless-ed land:
There’ll be WORK for the heart. There’ll be WORK for the mind,
And emPLOYment for EACH little hand.
“There’ll be SOME-thing to do,
There’ll be SOME-thing to do,
There’ll be SOME-thing for CHIL-dren to do!
On that bright blessed shore where there’s joy evermore,
There’ll be SOME-thing for CHIL-DREN to do.”
Patty’s young existence being full to the brim of labor, this view of heaven never in the least appealed to her and she rendered the hymn with little sympathy. The main part of the verse was strongly accented by jabs at the unoffending dandelion roots, but when the chorus came she brought out the emphatic syllables by a beat of the broken knife on the milkpan.
This rendition of a Sabbath-School classic did not meet Waitstill’s ideas of perfect propriety, but she smiled and let it pass, planning some sort of recreation for a stolen half-hour of the afternoon. It would have to be a walk through the pasture into the woods to see what had grown since they went there a fortnight ago. Patty loved people better than Nature, but failing the one she could put up with the other, for she had a sense of beauty and a pagan love of color. There would be pale-hued innocence and blue and white violets in the moist places, thought Waitstill, and they would have them in a china cup on the supper-table. No, that would never do, for last time father had knocked them over when he was reaching for the bread, and in a silent protest against such foolishness got up from the table and emptied theirs into the kitchen sink.
“There’s a place for everything,” he said when he came back, “and the place for flowers is outdoors.”
Then in the pine woods there would be, she was sure, Star of Bethlehem, Solomon’s Seal, the white spray of groundnuts and bunchberries. Perhaps they could make a bouquet and Patty would take it across the fields to Mrs. Boynton’s door. She need not go in, and thus they would not be disobeying their father’s command not to visit that “crazy Boynton woman.”
Here Patty came in with a pan full of greens and the sisters sat down in the sunny window to get them ready for the pot.
“I’m calmer,” the little rebel allowed. “That’s generally the way it turns out with me. I get into a rage, but I can generally sing it off!”
“You certainly must have got rid of a good deal of temper this morning, by the way your voice sounded.”
“Nobody can hear us in this out-of-the-way place. It’s easy enough to see that the women weren’t asked to say anything when the men settled where the houses should be built! The men weren’t content to stick them on the top of a high hill, or half a mile from the stores, but put them back to the main road, taking due care to cut the sink-window where their wives couldn’t see anything even when they were washing dishes.”
“I don’t know that I ever thought about it in that way”; and Waitstill looked out of the window in a brown study while her hands worked with the dandelion greens. “I’ve noticed it, but I never supposed the men did it intentionally.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Patty with the pessimism of a woman of ninety, as she stole an admiring glance at her sister. Patty’s own face, irregular, piquant, tantalizing, had its peculiar charm, and her brilliant skin and hair so dazzled the masculine beholder that he took note of no small defects; but Waitstill was beautiful; beautiful even in her working dress of purple calico. Her single braid of hair, the Foxwell hair, that in her was bronze and in Patty pale auburn, was wound once around her fine head and made to stand a little as it went across the front. It was a simple, easy, unconscious fashion of her own, quite different from anything done by other women in her time and place, and it just suited her dignity and serenity. It looked like a coronet, but it was the way she carried her head that gave you the fancy, there was such spirit and pride in the poise of it on the long graceful neck. Her eyes were as clear as mountain pools shaded by rushes, and the strength of the face was softened by the sweetness of the mouth.
Patty never let the conversation die out for many seconds at a time and now she began again. “My sudden rages don’t match my name very well, but, of course, mother didn’t know how I was going to turn out when she called me Patience, for I was nothing but a squirming little bald, red baby; but my name really is too ridiculous when you think about it.”
Waitstill laughed as she said: “It didn’t take you long to change it! Perhaps Patience was a hard word for a baby to say, but the moment you could talk you said, ‘Patty wants this’ and ‘Patty wants that.”’
“Did Patty ever get it? She never has since, that’s certain! And look at your name: it’s ‘Waitstill,’ yet you never stop a moment. When you’re not in the shed or barn, or chicken-house, or kitchen or attic, or garden-patch, you are working in the Sunday School or the choir.”
It seemed as if Waitstill did not intend to answer this arraignment of her activities. She rose and crossed the room to put the pan of greens in the sink, preparing to wash them.
Taking the long-handled dipper from the nail, she paused a moment before plunging it into the water pail; paused, and leaning her elbow on a corner of the shelf over the sink, looked steadfastly out into the orchard.
Patty watched her curiously and was just going to offer a penny for her thoughts when Waitstill suddenly broke the brief silence by saying: “Yes, I am always busy; it’s better so, but all the same, Patty, I’m waiting,—inside! I don’t know for what, but I always feel that I am waiting!”
