“I do believe I can get on, with you to help me, Patty,” he said, pressing her arm more closely to his side, and looking down ardently into her radiant face. “You’re a great deal cleverer than I am, but I have a faculty for the business of the law, so my father says, and a faculty for money-making, too. And even if we have to begin in a small way, my salary will be a certainty, and we’11 work up together. I can see you in a yellow satin dress, stiff enough to stand alone!”
“It must be white satin, if you please, not yellow! After having used a hundred and ten yards of shop-worn yellow calico on myself within two years, I never want to wear that color again. If only I could come to you better provided, she sighed, with the suggestion of tears in her voice. “If I’d been a common servant I could have saved something from my wages to be married on; I haven’t even got anything to be married IN!”
“I’11 get you anything you want in Portland to-morrow.”
“Certainly not; I’d rather be married in rags than have you spend your money upon me beforehand!”
“Remember to have a box of your belongings packed and slipped under the shed somewhere. You can’t be certain what your father will say or do when the time comes for telling him, and I want you to be ready to leave on a moment’s notice.”
“I will; I’ll do everything you say, Mark, but are you sure that we have thought of every other way? I do so hate being underhanded.”
“Every other way! I am more than willing to ask your father, but we know he would treat me with contempt, for he can’t bear the sight of me! He would probably lock you up and feed you on bread and water. That being the state of things, how can I tell our plans to my own father? He never would look with favor on my running away with you; and mother is, by nature, set upon doing things handsomely and in proper order. Father would say our elopement would be putting us both wrong before the community, and he’d advise me to wait. ‘You are both young’–I can hear him announcing his convictions now, as clearly as if he was standing here in the road–‘You are both young and you can well afford to wait until something turns up.’ As if we hadn’t waited and waited from all eternity!”
“Yes, we have been engaged to be married for at least five weeks,” said Patty, with an upward glance peculiar to her own sparkling face,–one that always intoxicated Mark. “I am seventeen and a half; your father couldn’t expect a confirmed old maid like me to waste any more time.
But I never would do this–this–sudden, unrespectable thing, if there was any other way. Everything depends on my keeping it secret from Waitstill, but she doesn’t suspect anything yet. She thinks of me as nothing but a child still. Do you suppose Ellen would go with us, just to give me a little comfort?”
“She might,” said Mark, after reflecting a moment. “She is very devoted to you, and perhaps she could keep a secret; she never has, but there’s always a first time. You can’t go on adding to the party, though, as if it was a candy-pull! We cannot take Lucy Morrill and Phoebe Day and Cephas Cole, because it would be too hard on the horse; and besides, I might get embarrassed at the town clerk’s office and marry the wrong girl; or you might swop me off for Cephas! But I’ll tell Ellen if you say so; she’s got plenty of grit.”
“Don’t joke about it, Mark, don’t. I shouldn’t miss Waitstill so much if I had Ellen, and how happy I shall be if she approves of me for a sister and thinks your mother and father will like me in time.”
“There never was a creature born into the world that wouldn’t love you, Patty!”
“I don’t know; look at Aunt Abby Cole!” said Patty pensively. “Well, it does not seem as if a marriage that isn’t good in Riverboro was really decent! How tiresome of Maine to want all those days of public notice; people must so often want to get married in a minute. If I think about anything too long I always get out of the notion.”
“I know you do; that’s what I’m afraid of!”–and Mark’s voice showed decided nervousness. “You won’t get out of the notion of marrying me, will you, Patty dear?”
“Marrying you is more than a ‘notion,’ Mark,” said Patty soberly. “I’m only a little past seventeen, but I’m far older because of the difficulties I’ve had. I don’t wonder you speak of my ‘notions.’ I was as light as a feather in all my dealings with you at first.”
“So was I with you! I hadn’t grown up, Patty.”
“Then I came to know you better and see how you sympathized with Waitstill’s troubles and mine. I couldn’t love anybody, I couldn’t marry anybody, who didn’t feel that things at our house can’t go on as they are! Father has had a good long trial! Three wives and two daughters have done their best to live with him, and failed. I am not willing to die for him, as my mother did, nor have Waitstill killed if I can help it. Sometimes he is like a man who has lost his senses and sometimes he is only grim and quiet and cruel. If he takes our marriage without a terrible scene, Mark, perhaps it will encourage Waitstill to break her chains as I have mine.”
“There’s sure to be an awful row,” Mark said, as one who had forecasted all the probabilities. “It wouldn’t make any difference if you married the Prince of Wales; nothing would suit your father but selecting the man and making all the arrangements; and then he would never choose any one who wouldn’t tend the store and work on the farm for him without wages.”
“Waitstill will never run away; she isn’t like me. She will sit and sit there, slaving and suffering, till doomsday; for the one that loves her isn’t free like you!”
“You mean Ivory Boynton? I believe he worships the ground she walks on. I like him better than I used, and I understand him better. Oh! but I’m a lucky young dog to have a kind, liberal father and a bit of money put by to do with as I choose. If I hadn’t, I’d be eating my heart out like Ivory!”
“No, you wouldn’t eat your heart out; you’d always get what you wanted somehow, and you wouldn’t wait for it either; and I’m just the same. I’m not built for giving up, and enduring, and sacrificing. I’m naturally just a tuft of thistle-down, Mark; but living beside Waitstill all these years I’ve grown ashamed to be so light, blowing about hither and thither. I kept looking at her and borrowing some of her strength, just enough to make me worthy to be her sister. Waitstill is like a bit of Plymouth Rock, only it’s a lovely bit on the land side, with earth in the crevices, and flowers blooming all over it and hiding the granite. Oh! if only she will forgive us, Mark, I won’t mind what father says or does.”
“She will forgive us, Patty darling; don’t fret, and cry, and make your pretty eyes all red. I’11 do nothing in all this to make either of you girls ashamed of me, and I’ll keep your father and mine ever before my mind to prevent my being foolish or reckless; for, you know, Patty, I’m heels over head in love with you, and it’s only for your sake I’m taking all these pains and agreeing to do without my own wedded wife for weeks to come!”
“Does the town clerk, or does the justice of the peace give a wedding-ring, just like the minister?” Patty asked. “I shouldn’t feel married without a ring.”
“The ring is all ready, and has ‘M.W. to P.B.’ engraved in it, with the place for the date waiting; and here is the engagement ring if you’11 wear it when you’re alone, Patty. My mother gave it to me when she thought there would be something between Annabel Franklin and me. The moment I looked at it–you see it’s a topaz stone–and noticed the yellow fire in it, I said to myself: ‘It is like no one but Patty Baxter, and if she won’t wear it, no other girl shall!’ It’s the color of the tip ends of your curls and it’s just like the light in your eyes when you’re making fun!”
“It’s heavenly!” cried Patty. “It looks as if it had been made of the yellow autumn leaves, and oh! how I love the sparkle of it! But never will I take your mother’s ring or wear it, Mark, till I’ve proved myself her loving, dutiful daughter. I’ll do the one wrong thing of running away with you and concealing our marriage, but not another if I can help it.”
“Very well,” sighed Mark, replacing the ring in his pocket with rather a crestfallen air. “But the first thing you know you’ll be too good for me, Patty! You used to be a regular will-o’-the-wisp, all nonsense and fun, forever laughing and teasing, so that a fellow could never be sure of you for two minutes together.”
“It’s all there underneath,” said Patty, putting her hand on his arm and turning her wistful face up to his. “It will come again; the girl in me isn’t dead; she isn’t even asleep; but she’s all sobered down. She can’t laugh just now, she can only smile; and the tears are waiting underneath.
ready to spring out if any one says the wrong word. This Patty is frightened and anxious and her heart beats too fast from morning till night. She hasn’t any mother, and she cannot say a word to her dear sister, and she’s going away to be married to you, that’s almost a stranger, and she isn’t eighteen, and doesn’t know what’s coming to her, nor what it means to be married. She dreads her father’s anger, and she cannot rest till she knows whether your family will love her and take her in; and, oh! she’s a miserable, worried girl, not a bit like the old Patty.”
Mark held her close and smoothed the curls under the loose brown hood. “Don’t you fret, Patty darling! I’m not the boy I was last week. Every word you say makes me more of a man. At first I would have run away just for the joke; anything to get you away from the other fellows and prove I was the best man, but now’ I’m sobered down, too. I’ll do nothing rash; I’ll be as staid as the judge you want me to be twenty years later. You’ve made me over, Patty, and if my love for you wasn’t the right sort at first, it is now. I wish the road to New Hampshire was full of lions and I could fight my way through them just to show you how strong I feel!”
“There’ll be lions enough,” smiled Patty through her tears, “though they won’t have manes and tails; but I can imagine how father will roar, and how my courage will ooze out of the heels of my boots!”
“Just let me catch the Deacon roaring at my wife!” exclaimed Mark with a swelling chest. “Now, run along, Patty dear, for I don’t want you scolded on my account. There’s sure to be only a day or two of waiting now, and I shall soon see the signal waving from your window. I’ll sound Ellen and see if she’s brave enough to be one of the eloping party. Good-night! Good-night! Oh! How I hope our going away will be to-morrow, my dearest, dearest Patty!”
WINTER
XXVI
A WEDDING-RING
THE snow had come. It had begun to fall softly and steadily at the beginning of the week, and now for days it had covered the ground deeper and deeper, drifting about the little red brick house on the hilltop, banking up against the barn, and shrouding the sheds and the smaller buildings. There had been two cold, still nights; the windows were covered with silvery landscapes whose delicate foliage made every pane of glass a leafy bower, while a dazzling crust bediamonded the hillsides, so that no eye could rest on them long without becoming snow-blinded.
Town-House Hill was not as well travelled as many others, and Deacon Baxter had often to break his own road down to the store, without waiting for the help of the village snow-plough to make things easier for him. Many a path had Waitstill broken in her time, and it was by no means one of her most distasteful tasks–that of shovelling into the drifts of heaped-up whiteness, tossing them to one side or the other, and cutting a narrow, clean-edged track that would pack down into the hardness of marble.
There were many “chores” to be done these cold mornings before any household could draw a breath of comfort. The Baxters kept but one cow in winter, killed the pig,–not to eat, but to sell,–and reduced the flock of hens and turkeys; but Waitstill was always as busy in the barn as in her own proper domain. Her heart yearned for all the dumb creatures about the place, intervening between them and her father’s scanty care; and when the thermometer descended far below zero she would be found stuffing hay into the holes and cracks of the barn and hen-house, giving the horse and cow fresh beddings of straw and a mouthful of extra food between the slender meals provided by the Deacon.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon and a fire in the Baxters’ kitchen since six in the morning had produced a fairly temperate climate in that one room, though the entries and chambers might have been used for refrigerators, as the Deacon was as parsimonious in the use of fuel as in all other things, and if his daughters had not been hardy young creatures, trained from their very birth to discomforts and exposures of every sort, they would have died long ago.
The Baxter kitchen and glittered in all its accustomed cleanliness and order. Scrubbing and polishing were cheap amusements, and nobody grudged them to Waitstill. No tables in Riverboro were whiter, no tins more lustrous, no pewter brighter, no brick hearths ruddier than hers. The beans and brown bread and Indian pudding were basking in the warmth of the old brick oven, and what with the crackle and sparkle of the fire, the gleam of the blue willow-ware on the cupboard shelves, and the scarlet geraniums blooming on the sunny shelf above the sink, there were few pleasanter place to be found in the village than that same Baxter kitchen. Yet Waitstill was ill at ease this afternoon; she hardly knew why. Her father had just put the horse into the pung and driven up to Milliken’s Mills for some grain, and Patty was down at the store instructing Bill Morrill (Cephas Cole’s successor) in his novel task of waiting on customers and learning the whereabouts of things; no easy task in the bewildering variety of stock in a country store; where pins, treacle, gingham, Epsom salts, Indian meal, shoestrings, shovels, brooms, sulphur, tobacco, suspenders, rum, and indigo may be demanded in rapid succession.
Patty was quiet and docile these days, though her color was more brilliant than usual and her eyes had all their accustomed sparkle. She went about her work steadily, neither ranting nor railing at fate, nor bewailing her lot, but even in this Waitstill felt a sense of change and difference too subtle to be put in words. She had noted Patty’s summer flirtations, but regarded them indulgently, very much as if they had been the irresponsible friskings of a lamb in a meadow. Waitstill had more than the usual reserve in these matters, for in New England at that time, though the soul was a subject of daily conversation, the heart was felt to be rather an indelicate topic, to be alluded to as seldom as possible. Waitstill certainly would never have examined Patty closely as to the state of her affections, intimate as she was with her sister’s thoughts and opinions about life; she simply bided her time until Patty should confide in her. She had wished now and then that Patty’s capricious fancy might settle on Philip Perry, although, indeed, when she considered it seriously, it seemed like an alliance between a butterfly and an owl. Cephas Cole she regarded as quite beneath Patty’s rightful ambitions, and as for Mark Wilson, she had grown up in the belief, held in the village generally, that he would marry money and position, and drift out of Riverboro into a gayer, larger world. Her devotion to her sister was so ardent, and her admiration so sincere, that she could not think it possible that Patty would love anywhere in vain; nevertheless, she had an instinct that her affections were crystallizing somewhere or other, and when that happened, the uncertain and eccentric temper of her father would raise a thousand obstacles.
While these thoughts coursed more or less vagrantly through Waitstill’s mind, she suddenly determined to get her cloak and hood and run over to see Mrs. Boynton. Ivory had been away a good deal in the woods since early November chopping trees and helping to make new roads. He could not go long distances, like the other men, as he felt constrained to come home every day or two to look after his mother and Rodman, but the work was too lucrative to be altogether refused. With Waitstill’s help, he had at last overcome his mother’s aversion to old Mrs. Mason, their nearest neighbor; and she, being now a widow with very slender resources, went to the Boyntons’ several times each week to put the forlorn household a little on its feet.
It was all uphill and down to Ivory’s farm, Waitstill reflected, and she could take her sled and slide half the way, going and coming, or she could cut across the frozen fields on the crust. She caught up her shawl from a hook on the kitchen door, and, throwing it over her head and shoulders to shield herself from the chill blasts on the stairway, ran up to her bedroom to make herself ready for the walk.
She slipped on a quilted petticoat and warmer dress, braided her hair freshly, while her breath went out in a white cloud to meet the freezing air; snatched her wraps from her closet, and was just going down the stairs when she remembered that an hour before, having to bind up a cut finger for her father, she had searched Patty’s bureau drawer for an old handkerchief, and had left things in disorder while she ran to answer the Deacon’s impatient call and stamp upon the kitchen floor.
“Hurry up and don’t make me stan’ here all winter!” he had shouted. “If you ever kept things in proper order, you wouldn’t have to hunt all over the house for a piece of rag when you need it!”
Patty was very dainty about her few patched and darned belongings; also very exact in the adjustment of her bits of ribbon, her collars of crocheted thread, her adored coral pendants, and her pile of neat cotton handkerchiefs, hem-stitched by her own hands. Waitstill, accordingly, with an exclamation at her own unwonted carelessness, darted into her sister’s room to replace in perfect order the articles she had disarranged in her haste. She knew them all, these poor little trinkets,–humble, pathetic evidences of Patty’s feminine vanity and desire to make her bright beauty a trifle brighter.
Suddenly her hand and her eye fell at the same moment on something hidden in a far corner under a white “fascinator,” one of those head-coverings of filmy wool, dotted with beads, worn by the girls of the period. She drew the glittering, unfamiliar object forward, and then lifted it wonderingly in her hand. It was a string of burnished gold beads, the avowed desire of Patty’s heart; a string of beads with a brilliant little stone in the fastening. And, as if that were not mystery enough, there was something slipped over the clasped necklace and hanging from it, as Waitstill held it up to the light–a circlet of plain gold, a wedding-ring!
Waitstill stood motionless in the cold with such a throng of bewildering thoughts, misgivings, imaginings, rushing through her head that they were like a flock of birds beating their wings against her ears. The imaginings were not those of absolute dread or terror, for she knew her Patty. If she had seen the necklace alone she would have been anxious, indeed, for it would have meant that the girl, urged on by ungoverned desire for the ornament, had accepted present from one who should not have given it to her secretly; but the wedding-ring meant some-thing different for Patty,– something more, something certain, something unescapable, for good or ill. A wedding-ring could stand for nothing but marriage. Could Patty be married? How, when, and where could so great a thing happen without her knowledge? It seemed impossible. How had such a child surmounted the difficulties in the path? Had she been led away by the attractions of some stranger? No, there had been none in the village. There was only one man who had the worldly wisdom or the means to carry Patty off under the very eye of her watchful sister; only one with the reckless courage to defy her father; and that was Mark Wilson. His name did not bring absolute confidence to Waitstill’s mind. He was gay and young and thoughtless; how had he managed to do this wild thing?–and had he done all decently and wisely, with consideration for the girl’s good name? The thought of all the risks lying in the train of Patty’s youth and inexperience brought a wail of anguish from Waitstill’s lips, and, dropping the beads and closing the drawer, she stumbled blindly down the stairway to the kitchen, intent upon one thought only–to find her sister, to look in her eyes, feel the touch of her hand, and assure herself of her safety.
She gave a dazed look at the tall clock, and was beginning to put on her cloak when the door opened and Patty entered the kitchen by way of the shed; the usual Patty, rosy, buoyant, alert, with a kind of childlike innocence that could hardly be associated with the possession of wedding-rings.
“Are you going out, Waity? Wrap up well, for it’s freezing cold. Waity, Waity, dear! What’s the matter?” she cried, coming closer to her sister in alarm.
Waitstill’s face had lost its clear color, and her eyes had the look of some dumb animal that has been struck and wounded. She sank into the flag-bottomed rocker by the window, and leaning back her head, uttered no word, but closed her eyes and gave one long, shivering sigh and a dry sob that seemed drawn from the very bottom of her heart.
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. 283
“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’11 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’11 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’11 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’11 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’11 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’11 not let father prevent your seeing Mark and me to-morrow, will you? Are you afraid to stay alone? I’11 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.”
XXIX
WAITSTILL SPEAKS HER MIND
Patty had the most ardent love for her elder sister, and something that resembled reverence for her unselfishness, her loyalty, and her strength of character; but if the truth were told she had no great opinion of Waitstill’s ability to feel righteous wrath, nor of her power to avenge herself in the face of rank injustice. It was the conviction of her own superior finesse and audacity that had sustained patty all through her late escapade. She felt herself a lucky girl, indeed, to achieve liberty and happiness for herself, but doubly lucky if she had chanced to open a way of escape for her more docile and dutiful sister.
She would have been a trifle astonished had she surmised the existence of certain mysterious waves that had been sweeping along the coasts of Waitstill’s mind that afternoon, breaking down all sorts of defences and carrying her will along with them by sheer force: but it is a truism that two human beings can live beside each other for half a century and yet continue strangers.
Patty’s elopement with the youth of her choice, taking into account all its attendant risks, was Indeed an exhibition of courage and initiative not common to girls of seventeen; but Waitstill was meditating a mutiny more daring yet–a mutiny, too, involving a course of conduct most unusual in maidens of puritan descent.
She walked back into the kitchen to find her father sitting placidly in the rocking-chair by the window. He had lighted his corn-cob pipe, in which he always smoked a mixture of dried sweet-fern as being cheaper than tobacco, and his face wore something resembling a smile–a foxy smile–as he watched his youngest-born ploughing down the hill through the deep snow, while the more obedient Waitstill moved about the room, setting supper on the table.
Conversation was not the Deacon’s forte, but it seemed proper for some one to break the ice that seemed suddenly to be very thick in the immediate vicinity.
“That little Jill-go-over-the-ground will give the neighbors a pleasant evenin’ tellin’ ’em ’bout me,” he chuckled. “Aunt Abby Cole will run the streets o’ the three villages by sun-up to-morrer; but nobody pays any ‘tention to a woman whose tongue is hung in the middle and wags at both ends. I wa’n’t intending to use the whip on your sister, Waitstill,” continued the Deacon, with a crafty look at his silent daughter, “though a trouncin’ would ‘a’ done her a sight o’ good; but I was only tryin’ to frighten her a little mite an’ pay her up for bringin’ disgrace on us the way she’s done, makin’ us the talk o’ the town. Well, she’s gone, an’ good riddance to bad rubbish, say I! One less mouth to feed, an’ one less body to clothe. You’ll miss her jest at first, on account
o’ there bein’ no other women-folks on the hill, but ‘t won’t last long. I’ll have Bill Morrill do some o’ your outside chores, so ‘t you can take on your sister’s work, if she ever done any.”
This was a most astoundingly generous proposition on the Deacon’s part, and to tell the truth he did not himself fully understand his mental processes when he made it; but it seemed to be drawn from him by a kind of instinct that he was not standing well in his elder daughter’s books. Though the two girls had never made any demonstration of their affection in his presence, he had a fair idea of their mutual dependence upon each other. Not that he placed the slightest value on Waitstill’s opinion of him, or cared in the smallest degree what she, or any one else in the universe, thought of his conduct; but she certainly did appear to advantage when contrasted with the pert little hussy who had just left the premises. Also, Waitstill loomed large in his household comforts and economies, having a clear head, a sure hand, and being one of the steady-going, reliable sort that can be counted on in emergencies, not, like Patty, going off at half-cock at the smallest provocation. Yes, Waitstill, as a product of his masterly training for the last seven years, had settled down, not without some trouble and friction, into a tolerably dependable pack-horse, and he intended in the future to use some care in making permanent so valuable an aid and ally. She did not pursue nor attract the opposite sex, as his younger daughter apparently did; so by continuing his policy of keeping all young men rigidly at a distance he could count confidently on having’, Waitstill serve his purposes for the next fifteen or twenty years, or as long as he, himself, should continue to ornament and enrich the earth. He would go to Saco the very next day, and cut Patty out of his will, arranging his property so that Waitstill should be the chief legatee as long as she continued to live obediently under his roof. He intended to make the last point clear if he had to consult every lawyer in York County; for he wouldn’t take risks on any woman alive.
If he must leave his money anywhere–and it was with a bitter pang that he faced the inexorable conviction that he could neither live forever, nor take his savings with him to the realms of bliss prepared for members of the Orthodox Church in good and regular standing–if he must leave his money behind him, he would dig a hole in the ground and bury it, rather than let it go to any one who had angered him in his lifetime.
These were the thoughts that caused him to relax his iron grip and smile as he sat by the window, smoking his corn-cob pipe and taking one of his very rare periods of rest.
Presently he glanced at the clock. “It’s only quarter-past four,” he said. “I thought ‘t was later, but the snow makes it so light you can’t jedge the time. The moon fulls to-night, don’t it? Yes; come to think of it, I know it does. Ain’t you settin’ out supper a little mite early, Wait still? “This was a longer and more amiable speech than he had made in years, but Waitstill never glanced at him as she said: “It is a little early, but I want to get it ready before I leave.”
“Be you goin’ out? Mind, I won’t have you follerin’ Patience round; you’ll only upset what I’ve done, an’ anyhow I want you to keep away from the neighbors for a few days, till all this blows over.”
He spoke firmly, though for him mildly, for he still had the uneasy feeling that he stood on the brink of a volcano; and, as a matter of fact, he tumbled into it the very next moment.
The meagre supper was spread; a plate of cold; soda biscuits, a dried-apple pie, and the usual brown teapot were in evidence; and as her father ceased speaking Waitstill opened the door of the brick oven where the bean-pot reposed, set a chair by the table, and turning, took up her coat (her mother’s old riding-cloak, it was), and calmly put it on, reaching then for her hood and her squirrel tippet.
“You are goin’ out, then, spite o’ what I said?” the Deacon inquired sternly.
“Did you really think, father, that I would sleep under your roof after you had turned my sister out into the snow to lodge with whoever might take her in–my seventeen year-old-sister that your wife left to my care; my little sister, the very light of my life?”
Waitstill’s voice trembled a trifle, but other-wise she was quite calm and free from heroics of any sort.
The Deacon looked up in surprise. “I guess you’re kind o’ hystericky,” he said. “Set down–set down an’ talk things over. I ain’t got nothin’ ag’in’ you, an’ I mean to treat you right. Set down!”
The old man was decidedly nervous, and intended to keep his temper until there was a safer chance to let it fly.
Waitstill sat down. “There’s nothing to talk over,” she said. “I have done all that I promised my stepmother the night she died, and now I am going. If there’s a duty owed between daughter and father, it ought to work both ways. I consider that I have done my share, and now I intend to seek happiness for myself. I have never had any, and I am starving for it.”
“An’ you’d leave me to git on the best I can, after what I’ve done for you?” burst out the Deacon, still trying to hold down his growing passion.
“You gave me my life, and I’m thankful to you for that, but you’ve given me little since, father.”
“Hain’t I fed an’ clothed you?”
“No more than I have fed and clothed you. You’ve provided the raw food, and I’ve cooked and served it. You’ve bought and I have made shirts and overalls and coats for you, and knitted your socks and comforters and mittens. Not only have I toiled and saved and scrimped away my girlhood as you bade me, but I’ve earned for you. Who made the butter, and took care of the hens, and dried the apples, and ‘drew in’ the rugs? Who raised and ground the peppers for sale, and tended the geese that you might sell the feathers? No, father, I don’t consider that I’m in your debt!”
XXX
A CLASH OF WILLS
DEACON FOXWELL BAXTER was completely non-plussed for the first time in his life. He had never allowed “argyfyin'” in his household, and there had never been a clash of wills before this when he had not come off swiftly and brutally triumphant. This situation was complicated by the fact that he did not dare to apply the brakes as usual, since there were more issues involved than ever before. He felt too stunned to deal properly with this daughter, having emptied all the vials of his wrath upon the other one, and being, in consequence, somewhat enfeebled. It was always easy enough to cope with Patty, for her impertinence evoked such rage that the argument took care of itself; but this grave young woman was a different matter. There she sat composedly on the edge of her wooden chair, her head lifted high, her color coming and going, her eyes shining steadily, like fixed stars; there she sat, calmly announcing her intention of leaving her father to shift for himself; yet the skies seemed to have no thought of falling! He felt that he must make another effort to assert his authority.
“Now, you take off your coat,” he said, the pipe in his hand trembling as he stirred nervously in his chair. “You take your coat right off an’ set down to the supper-table, same as usual, do you hear? Eat your victuals an’ then go to your bed an’ git over this crazy fit that Patience has started workin’ in you. No more nonsense, now; do as I tell you!”
“I have made up my mind, father, and it’s no use arguing. All who try to live with you fail, sooner or later. You have had four children, father. One boy ran away; the other did not mind being drowned, I fear, since life was so hard at home. You have just turned the third child out for a sin of deceit and disobedience she would never have committed–for her nature is as clear as crystal–if you had ever loved her or considered her happiness. So I have done with you, unless in your old age God should bring you to such a pass that no one else will come to your assistance; then I’d see somehow that you were cared for and nursed and made comfortable. You are not an old man; you are strong and healthy, and you have plenty of money to get a good house-keeper. I should decide differently, perhaps, if all this were not true.”
“You lie! I haven’t got plenty of money!” And the Deacon struck the table a sudden blow that made the china in the cupboard rattle. “You’ve no notion what this house costs me, an’ the feed for the stock, an’ you two girls, an’ labor at the store, an’ the hay-field, an’ the taxes an’ insurance! I’ve slaved from sunrise to sunset but I ain’t hardly been able to lay up a cent. I s’pose the neighbors have been fillin’ you full o’ tales about my mis’able little savin’s an’ makin’ ’em into a fortune. Well, you won’t git any of ’em, I promise you that!”
“You have plenty laid away; everybody knows, so what’s the use of denying it? Anyway, I don’t want a penny of your money, father, so good-bye. There’s enough cooked to keep you for a couple of days”; and Waitstill rose from her chair and drew on her mittens.
Father and daughter confronted each other, the secret fury of the man met by the steady determination of the girl. The Deacon was baffled, almost awed, by Waitstill’s quiet self-control; but at the very moment that he was half-uncomprehendingly glaring at her, it dawned upon him that he was beaten, and that she was mistress of the situation.
Where would she go? What were her plans?–for definite plans she had, or she could not meet his eye with so resolute a gaze. If she did leave
him, how could he contrive to get her back again, and so escape the scorn of the village, the averted look, the lessened trade?
“Where are you goin’ now?” he asked, and though he tried his best he could not for the life of him keep back one final taunt. “I s’pose, like your sister, you’ve got a man in your eye?” He chose this, to him, impossible suggestion as being the most insulting one that he could invent at the moment.
“I have,” replied Waitstill, “a man in my eye and in my heart. We should have been husband and wife before this had we not been kept apart by obstacles too stubborn for us to overcome. My way has chanced to open first, though it was none of my contriving.”
Had the roof fallen in upon him, the Deacon could not have been more dumbfounded. His tongue literally clove to the roof of his mouth; his face fell, and his mean, piercing eyes blinked under his shaggy brows as if seeking light.
Waitstill stirred the fire, closed the brick oven and put the teapot on the back of the stove, hung up the long-handled dipper on its accustomed nail over the sink, and went to the door.
Her father collected his scattered wits and pulled himself to his feet by the arms of the high-backed rocker. “You shan’t step outside this 306
room till you tell me where you’re goin’,” he said when he found his voice.
“I have no wish to keep it secret: I am going to see if Mrs. Mason will keep me to-night. To-morrow I shall walk down river and get work at the mills, but on my way I shall stop at the Boyntons’ to tell Ivory I am ready to marry him as soon as he’s ready to take me.”
This was enough to stir the blood of the Deacon into one last fury.
“I might have guessed it if I hadn’t been blind as a bat an’ deaf as an adder!” And he gave the table another ringing blow before he leaned on it to gather strength. “Of course, it would be one o’ that crazy Boynton crew you’d take up with,” he roared. “Nothin’ would suit either o’ you girls but choosin’ the biggest enemies I’ve got in the whole village!”
“You’ve never taken pains to make anything but enemies, so what could we do?”
“You might as well go to live on the poor-farm! Aaron Boynton was a disrep’table hound; Lois Boynton is as crazy as a loon; the boy is a no-body’s child, an’ Ivory’s no better than a common pauper.”
“Ivory’s a brave, strong, honorable man, and a scholar, too. I can work for him and help him earn and save, as I have you.”
“How long’s this been goin’ on?” The Deacon was choking, but he meant to get to the bottom of things while he had the chance.
“It has not gone on at all. He has never said a word to me, and I have always obeyed your will in these matters; but you can’t hide love, any more than you can hide hate. I know Ivory loves me, so I’m going to tell him that my duty is done here and I am ready to help him.”
“Goin’ to throw yourself at his head, be you?” sneered the Deacon. “By the Lord, I don’ know where you two girls got these loose ways o’ think-in’ an’ acting mebbe he won’t take you, an’ then where’ll you be? You won’t git under my roof again when you’ve once left it, you can make up your mind to that!”
“If you have any doubts about Ivory’s being willing to take me, you’d better drive along behind me and listen while I ask him.”
Waitstill’s tone had an exultant thrill of certainty in it. She threw up her head, glorying in what she was about to do. If she laid aside her usual reserve and voiced her thoughts openly, it was not in the hope of convincing her father, but for the bliss of putting them into words and intoxicating herself by the sound of them.
“Come after me if you will, father, and watch the welcome I shall get. Oh! I have no fear of being turned out by Ivory Boynton. I can hardly wait to give him the joy I shall be bringing! It ‘s selfish to rob him of the chance to speak first, but I’11 do it!” And before Deacon Baxter could cross the room, Waitstill was out of the kitchen door into the shed, and flying down Town-House Hill like an arrow shot free from the bow.
The Deacon followed close behind, hardly knowing why, but he was no match for the girl, and at last he stood helpless on the steps of the shed, shaking his fist and hurling terrible words after her, words that it was fortunate for her peace of mind she could not hear.
“A curse upon you both!” he cried savagely. “Not satisfied with disobeyin’ an’ defyin’ me, you’ve put me to shame, an’ now you’ll be settin’ the neighbors ag’in’ me an’ ruinin’ my trade. If you was freezin’ in the snow I wouldn’t heave a blanket to you! If you was starvin’ I wouldn’t fling either of you a crust! Never shall you darken my doors again, an’ never shall you git a penny o’ my money, not if I have to throw it into the river to spite you!”
Here his breath failed, and he stumbled out into the barn whimpering between his broken sentences like a whipped child.
“Here I am with nobody to milk, nor feed the hens; nobody to churn to-morrow, nor do the chores; a poor, mis’able creeter, deserted by my children, with nobody to do a hand’s turn ‘thout bein’ paid for every step they take! I’11 give ’em what they deserve; I don’ know what, but I’ll be even with ’em yet.” And the Deacon set his Baxter jaw in a way that meant his determination to stop at nothing.
XXXI
SENTRY DUTY
IVORY BOYNTON drove home from the woods that same afternoon by way of the bridge, in order to buy some provisions at the brick store. When he
was still a long distance from the bars that divided the lane from the highroad, he espied a dark-clad little speck he knew to be Rodman leaning over the fence, waiting and longing as usual for his home-coming, and his heart warmed at the thought of the boyish welcome that never failed.
The sleigh slipped quickly over the hard-packed, shining road, and the bells rang merrily in the clear, cold air, giving out a joyous sound that had no echo in Ivory’s breast that day. He had just had a vision of happiness through another man’s eyes. was he always to stand out-side the banqueting-table, he wondered, and see others feasting while he hungered
Now the little speck bounded from the fence, flew down the road to meet the sleigh, and jumped in by the driver’s side.
“I knew you’d come to-night,” Rodman cried eagerly. “I told Aunt Boynton you’d come.”
“How is she, well as common?”
“No, not a bit well since yesterday morning, but Mrs. Mason says it’s nothing worse than a cold. Mrs. Mason has just gone home, and we’ve had a grand house-cleaning to-day. She’s washed and ironed and baked, and we’ve put Aunt Boynton in clean sheets and pillow-cases, and her room’s nice and warm, and I carried the eat in and put it on her bed to keep her company while I came to watch for you. Aunt Boynton let Mrs. Mason braid her hair, and seemed to like her brushing it. It’s been dreadful lonesome, and oh! I am glad you came back, Ivory. Did you find any more spruce gum where you went this time?”
“Pounds and pounds, Rod; enough to bring me in nearly a hundred dollars. I chanced on the greatest place I’ve found yet. I followed the wake of an old whirlwind that had left long furrows in the forest,–I’ve told you how the thing works,–and I tracked its course by the gum that had formed wherever the trees were wounded. It’s hard, lonely work, Rod, but it pays well.”
“If I could have been there, maybe we could have got more. I’m good at shinning up trees.”
“Yes, sometime we’11 go gum-picking together. We’ll climb the trees like a couple of cats, and take our knives and serape off the precious lumps that are worth so much money to the druggists. You’ve let down the bars, I see.”
“‘Cause I knew you’d come to-night,” said Rodman. “I felt it in my bones. We’re going to have a splendid supper.”
“Are we? That’s good news.” Ivory tried to make his tone bright and interested, though his heart was like a lump of lead in his breast. “It’s the least I can do for the poor little chap,” he thought, “when he stays as caretaker in this lonely spot.–I wonder if I hadn’t better drive into the barn, Rod, and leave the harness on Nick till I go in and see mother? Guess I will.”
“She’s hot, Aunt Boynton is, hot and restless, but Mrs. Mason thinks that’s all.”
Ivory found his mother feverish, and her eyes were unnaturally bright; but she was clear in X mind and cheerful, too, sitting up in bed to r^ breathe the better, while the Maltese eat snuggled under her arm and purred peacefully
“The cat is Rod’s idea,” she said smilingly but in a very weak voice. “He is a great nurse I should never have thought of the eat myself but she gives me more comfort than all the medicine.”
Ivory and Rodman drew up to the supper table, already set in the kitchen, but before Ivory took his seat he softly closed the door that led into the living-room. They ate their beans and brown bread and the mince pie that had been the “splendid” feature of the meal, as reported by the boy; and when they had finished, and Rodman was clearing the table, Ivory walked to the window, lighting his pipe the while, and stood soberly looking out on the snowy landscape. One could scarcely tell it was twilight, with such sweeps of whiteness to catch every gleam of the dying day.
“Drop work a minute and come here, Rod,” he said at length. “Can you keep a secret?”
“‘Course I can! I’m chock full of ’em now, and nobody could dig one of ’em out o’ me with a pickaxe!”
“Oh, well! If you’re full you naturally couldn’t hold another!”
“I could try to squeeze it in, if it’s a nice one,” coaxed the boy.
“I don’t know whether you’11 think it’s a nice one, Rod, for it breaks up one of your plans. I’m not sure myself how nice it is, but it’s a very big, unexpected, startling one. What do you think? Your favorite Patty has gone and got married.”
“Patty! Married!” cried Rod, then hastily putting his hand over his mouth to hush his too-loud speaking.
“Yes, she and Mark Wilson ran away last Monday, drove over to Allentown, New Hampshire, and were married without telling a soul. Deacon Baxter discovered everything this afternoon, like the old fox that he is, and turned Patty out of the house.”
“Mean old skinflint!” exclaimed Rod excitedly, all the incipient manhood rising in his ten-year-old breast. “Is she gone to live with the Wilsons?”
“The Wilsons don’t know yet that Mark is married to her, but I met him driving like Jehu, just after I had left Patty, and told him everything that had happened, and did my best to cool him down and keep him from murdering his new father-in-law by showing him it would serve no real purpose now.”
“Did he look married, and all different?” asked Rod curiously.
“Yes, he did, and more like a man than ever he looked before in his life. We talked everything over together, and he went home at once to break the news to his family, without even going to take a peep at Patty. I couldn’t bear to have them meet till he had something cheerful to say to the poor little soul. When I met her by Uncle Bart’s shop, she was trudging along in the snow like a draggled butterfly, and crying like a baby.”
Sympathetic tears dimmed Rodman’s eyes. “I can’t bear to see girls cry, Ivory. I just can’t bear it, especially Patty.”
“Neither can I, Rod. I came pretty near wiping her eyes, but pulled up, remembering she wasn’t a child but a married lady. Well, now we come to the point.”
“Isn’t Patty’s being married the point?”
“No, only part of it. Patty’s being sent away from home leaves Waitstill alone with the Deacon, do you see? And if Patty is your favorite, Waitstill is mine–I might as well own up to that.”
“She’s mine, too,” cried Rod. “They’re both my favorites, but I always thought Patty was the suitablest for me to marry if she’d wait for me. Waitstill is too grand for a boy!”
“She’s too grand for anybody, Rod. There isn’t a man alive that’s worthy to strap on her skates.”
“Well, she’s too grand for anybody except–” and here Rod’s shy, wistful voice trailed off into discreet silence.
“Now I had some talk with Patty, and she thinks Waitstill will have no trouble with her father just at present. She says he lavished so much rage upon her that there’ll be none left for anybody else for a day or two. And, moreover, that he will never dare to go too far with Waitstill, because she’s so useful to him. I’m not afraid of his beating or injuring her so long as he keeps his sober senses, if he’s ever rightly had any; but I don’t like to think of his upbraiding her and breaking her heart with his cruel talk just after she’s lost the sister that’s been her only companion.” And Ivory’s hand trembled as he filled his pipe. He had no confidant but this quaint, tender-hearted, old-fashioned little lad, to whom he had grown to speak his mind as if he were a man of his own age; and Rod, in the same way, had gradually learned to understand and sympathize.
“It’s dreadful lonesome on Town-House Hill,” said the boy in a hushed tone
“Dreadful lonesome,” echoed Ivory with a sigh; “and I don’t dare leave mother until her fever dies down a bit and she sleeps. Now do you remember the night that she was taken ill, and we shared the watch?”
Rodman held his breath. ” Do you mean you ‘re going to let me help just as if I was big? ” he asked, speaking through a great lump in his throat.
“There are only two of us, Rod. You’re rather young for this piece of work, but you’re trusty–you ‘re trusty!”
“Am I to keep watch on the Deacon?”
“That’s it, and this is my plan: Nick will have had his feed; you ‘re to drive to the bridge when it gets a little darker and hitch in Uncle Bart’s horse-shed, covering Nick well. You’re to go into the brick store, and while you’re getting some groceries wrapped up, listen to anything the men say, to see if they know what’s happened. When you’ve hung about as long as you dare, leave your bundle and say you’ll call in again for it. Then see if Baxter’s store is open. I don’t believe it will be, and if it Isn’t, look for a light in his kitchen window, and prowl about till you know that Waitstill and the Deacon have gone up to their bedrooms. Then go to Uncle Bart’s and find out if Patty is there.”
Rod’s eyes grew bigger and bigger: “Shall I talk to her?” he asked; “and what’ll I say?”
“No, just ask if she’s there. If she’s gone, Mark has made it right with his family and taken her home. If she hasn’t, why, God knows how that matter will be straightened out. Anyhow, she has a husband now, and he seems to value her; and Waitstill is alone on the top of that wind-swept hill!”
“I’ll go. I’ll remember everything,” cried Rodman, in the seventh heaven of delight at the responsibilities Ivory was heaping upon him.
318
“Don’t stay beyond eight o’clock; but come back and tell me everything you’ve learned. Then, if mother grows no worse, I’ll walk back to Uncle Bart’s shop and spend the night there, just–just to be near, that’s all.”
“You couldn’t hear Waitstill, even if she called,” Rod said.
“Couldn’t I? A man’s ears are very sharp under certain circumstances. I believe if Waitstill needed help I could hear her–breathe! Besides, I shall be up and down the hill till I know all’s well; and at sunrise I’11 go up and hide behind some of Baxter’s buildings till I see
him get his breakfast and go to the store. Now wash your dishes”; and Ivory caught up his cap from a hook behind the door.
“Are you going to the barn? ” asked Rodman.
“No, only down to the gate for a minute. Mark said that if he had a good chance he’d send a boy with a note, and get him to put it under the stone gate-post. It’s too soon to expect it, perhaps, but I can’t seem to keep still.”
Rodman tied a gingham apron round his waist, carried the tea-kettle to the sink, and poured the dishpan full of boiling water; then dipped the cups and plates in and out, wiped them and replaced them on the table’ gave the bean-platter a special polish, and set the half mince pie and the butter-dish in the cellar-way.
“A boy has to do most everything in this family!” He sighed to himself.
“I don’t mind washing dishes, except the nasty frying-pan and the sticky bean-pot; but what I’m going to do to-night is different.” Here he glowed and tingled with anticipation. “I know what they call it in the story-books–it’s sentry duty; and that’s braver work for a boy than dish-washing!”
Which, however, depends a good deal upon circumstances, and somewhat on the point of view.
XXXII
THE HOUSE OF AARON
A FEELING that the day was to bring great things had dawned upon Waitstill when she woke that morning, and now it was coming true.
Climbing Saco Hill was like climbing the hill of her dreams; life and love beckoned to her across the snowy slopes.
At rest about Patty’s future, though troubled as to her sorry plight at the moment, she was conscious chiefly of her new-born freedom. She revelled in the keen air that tingled against her cheek, and drew in fresh hope with every breath. As she trod the shining pathway she was full of expectancy, her eyes dancing, her heart as buoyant as her step. Not a vestige of confusion or uncertainty vexed her mind. She knew Ivory for her true mate, and if the way to him took her through dark places it was lighted by a steadfast beacon of love.
At the top of the hill she turned the corner breathlessly, and faced the length of road that led to the Boynton farm. Mrs. Mason’s house was beyond, and oh, how she hoped that Ivory would be at home, and that she need not wait another day to tell him all, and claim the gift she knew was hers before she asked it. She might not have the same exaltation to-morrow, for now there were no levels in her heart and soul. She had a sense of mounting from height to height and lighting fires on every peak of her being. She took no heed of the road she was travelling; she was conscious only of a wonderful inward glow.
The house was now in sight, and a tall figure was issuing from the side door, putting on a fur cap as it came out on the steps and down the lane. Ivory was at home, then, and, best of all, he was unconsciously coming to meet her–although their hearts had been coming to meet each other, she thought, ever since they first began to beat.
As she neared the bars she called Ivory’s name. His hands were in the pockets of his great-coat, and his eyes were fixed on the ground. Sombre he was, distinctly sombre, in mien and gait; could she make him smile and flush and glow, as she was smiling and flushing and glowing? As he heard her voice he raised his head quickly and uncomprehendingly.
“Don’t come any nearer,” she said, “until I have told you something!” His mind had been so full of her that the sight of her in the flesh, standing twenty feet away, bewildered him.
She took a few steps nearer the gate, near enough now for him to see her rosy face framed in a blue hood, and to catch the brightness of her eyes under their lovely lashes. Ordinarily they were cool and limpid and grave, Waitstill’s eyes; now a sunbeam danced in each of them. And her lips, almost always tightly closed, as if she were holding back her natural speech,–her lips were red and parted, and the soul of her, free at last, shone through her face, making it luminous with a new beauty.
“I have left home for good and all,” she said. “I’ll tell you more of this later on, but I have left my father’s house with nothing to my name but the clothes I stand in. I am going to look for work in the mills to-morrow, but I stopped here to say that I’m ready to marry you whenever you want me–if you do want me.”
Ivory was bewildered, indeed, but not so much so that he failed to apprehend, and instantly, too, the real significance of this speech.
He took a couple of long strides, and before Waitstill had any idea of his intentions he vaulted over the bars and gathered her in his arms.
“Never shall you go to the mills, never shall you leave my sight for a single hour again, my one-woman-in-all-the-world! Come to me, to be loved and treasured all your life long! I’ve worshipped you ever since I was a boy; I’ve kept my heart swept and garnished for you and no other, hoping I might win you at last.”
How glorious to hear all this delicious poetry of love, and to feel Ivory’s arms about her, making the dream seem surer!
“Oh, how like you to shorten the time of my waiting!” he went on, his words fairly chasing one another in their eagerness to be spoken
How like you to count on me, to guess my hunger for your love, to realize the chains that held me back, and break them yourself with your own dear, womanly hands! How like you, oh, wonderful Waitstill!”
Ivory went on murmuring phrases that had been lying in his heart unsaid for years, scarcely conscious of what he was saying, realizing only that the miracle of miracles had happened.
Waitstill, for her part, was almost dumb with joy to be lying so close to his heart that she could hear it beating; to feel the passionate tenderness of his embrace and his kiss falling upon her hair.
“I did not know a girl could be so happy!” she whispered. “I’ve dreamed of it, but it was nothing like this. I am all a-tremble with it.”
Ivory held her off at arm’s length for a moment, reluctantly, grudgingly. “You took me fairly off my feet, dearest,” he said, “and forgot everything but the one supreme fact you were telling me. Had I been on guard I should have told you that I am no worthy husband for you, Waitstill. I haven’t enough to offer such a girl as you.”
“You’re too late, Ivory! You showed me your heart first, and now you are searching your mind for bugbears to frighten me.”
“I am a poor man.”
“No girl could be poorer than I am.”
“After what you’ve endured, you ought to have rest and comfort.”
“I shall have both–in you!” This with eyes, all wet, lifted to Ivory’s.
“My mother is a great burden–a very dear and precious, but a grievous one.”
“She needs a daughter. It is in such things that I shall be your helpmate.”
“Will not the boy trouble you and add to your cares?”
“Rod? I love him; he shall be my little brother.”
“What if my father were not really dead?–I think of this sometimes in the night!–What if he should wander back, broken in spirit, feeble in body, empty in purse?”
“I do not come to you free of burdens. If my father is deserted by all, I must see that he is made comfortable. He never treated me like a daughter, but I acknowledge his claim.”
“Mine is such a gloomy house!”
“Will it be gloomy when I am in it?” and Waitstill, usually so grave, laughed at last like a care-free child.
Ivory felt himself hidden in the beautiful shelter of the girl’s love. It was dark now, or as dark as the night ever is that has moonlight and snow. He took Waitstill in his arms again reverently, and laid his cheek against her hair. “I worship God as well as I know how,” he whispered; “worship him as the maker of this big heaven and earth that surrounds us. But I worship you as the maker of my little heaven and earth, and my heart is saying its prayers to you at this very moment!”
“Hush, my dear! hush! and don’t value me too much, or I shall lose my head–I that have never known a sweet word in all my life save those that my sister has given me.–I must tell you all about Patty now.”
“I happen to know more than you, dear. I met her at the bridge when I was coming home from the woods, and I saw her safely to Uncle Bart’s door.–I don’t know why we speak of it as Uncle Bart’s when it is really Aunt Abby’s!–I next met Mark, who had fairly flown from Bridgton on the wings of love, arriving hours ahead of time. I managed to keep him from avenging the insults heaped upon his bride, and he has driven to the Mills to confide in his father and mother. By this time Patty is probably the centre of the family group, charming them all as is her custom.”
“Oh, I am so glad Mark is at home! Now I can be at rest about Patty. And I must not linger another moment, for I am going to ask Mrs. Mason to keep me overnight,” cried Waitstill, bethinking herself suddenly of time and place.
“I will take you there myself and explain everything. And the moment I’ve lighted a fire in Mrs. Mason’s best bedroom and settled you there, what do you think I am going to do? I shall drive to the town clerk’s house, and if he is in bed, rout him out and have the notice of our intended marriage posted in a public place according to law. Perhaps I shall save a day out of the fourteen I’ve got to wait for my wife. ‘Mills,’ indeed! I wonder at you, Waitstill! As if Mrs. Mason’s house was not far enough away, without your speaking of ‘mills.'”
“I only suggested mills in case you did not want to marry me,” said Waitstill.
“Walk up to the door with me,” begged Ivory.
“The horse is all harnessed, and Rod will slip him into the sleigh in a jiffy.”
“Oh, Ivory! do you realize what this means?”–and Waitstill clung to his arm as they went up the lane together–“that whatever sorrow, whatever hardship comes to us, neither of us will ever have to bear it alone again?”
“I believe I do realize it as few men could, for never in my five-and-twenty years have I had a human creature to whom I could pour myself out, in whom I could really confide, with whom I could take counsel. You can guess what it will be to have a comprehending woman at my side. Shall we tell my mother? Do say ‘yes’; I believe she will understand.–Rod, Rod! come and see who’s stepping in the door this very minute!”
Rodman was up in his bedroom, attiring himself elaborately for sentry duty. His delight at seeing Waitstill was perhaps slightly tempered by the thought that flashed at once through his mind,–that if she was safe, he would not be required to stand guard in the snow for hours as he had hoped. But this grief passed when he fully realized what Waitstill’s presence at the farm at this unaccustomed hour really meant. After he had been told, he hung about her like the child that he was,–though he had a bit of the hero in him, at bottom, too,–embracing her waist fondly, and bristling with wondering questions.
“Is she really going to stay with us for always, Ivory?” he asked.
“Every day and all the days; every night and all the nights. ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow!'” said Ivory, taking off his fur cap and opening the door of the living-room. “But we’ve got to wait for her a whole fortnight, Rod. Isn’t that a ridiculous snail of a law?”
“Patty didn’t wait a fortnight.”
“Patty never waited for anything,” Ivory responded with a smile; “but she had a good reason, and, alas! we haven’t, or they’11 say that we haven’t. And I am very grateful to the same dear little Patty, for when she got herself a husband she found me a wife!”
Rodman did not wholly understand this, but felt that there were many mysteries attending the love affairs of grown-up people that were too complicated for him to grasp; and it did not seem to be just the right moment for questions.
Waitstill and Ivory went into Mrs. Boynton’s room quietly, hand in hand, and when she saw Waitstill she raised herself from her pillow and held out her arms with a soft cry of delight.
“I haven’t had you for so long, so long!” she said, touching the girl’s cheek with her frail hand.
“You are going to have me every day now, dear,” whispered Waitstill, with a sob in her voice; for she saw a change in the face, a new transparency, a still more ethereal look than had been there before.
“Every day?” she repeated, longingly. Waitstill took off her hood, and knelt on the floor beside the bed, hiding her face in the counterpane to conceal the tears.
“She is coming to live with us, dear.–Come in, Rod, and hear me tell her.–Waitstill is coming to live with us: isn’t that a beautiful thing to happen to this dreary house?” asked Ivory, bending to take his mother’s hand.
“Don’t you remember what you thought the first time I ever came here, mother?” and Waitstill lifted her head, and looked at Mrs. Boynton with swimming eyes and lips that trembled. “Ivory is making it all come true, and I shall be your daughter!”
Mrs. Boynton sank farther back into her pillows, and closing her eyes, gave a long sigh of infinite content. Her voice was so faint that they
had to stoop to catch the words, and Ivory, feeling the strange benediction that seemed to be passing from his mother’s spirit to theirs, took Rod’s hand and knelt beside Waitstill.
The verse of a favorite psalm was running through Lois Boynton’s mind, and in a moment the words came clearly, as she opened her eyes, lifted her hands, and touched the bowed heads. “Let the house of Aaron now say that his mercy endureth forever!” she said, slowly and reverently; and Ivory, with all his heart, responded, “Amen!”
XXXIII
AARON’S ROD
“IVORY! IVORY!”
Ivory stirred in a sleep that had been troubled by too great happiness. To travel a dreary path alone, a path leading seemingly nowhere, and then suddenly to have a companion by one’s side, the very sight of whom enchanted the eye, the very touch of whom delighted the senses–what joy unspeakable! Who could sleep soundly when wakefulness brought a train of such blissful thoughts?
“Ivory! Ivory!”
He was fully awake now, for he knew his mother’s voice. In all the years, ever thoughtful of his comfort and of the constant strain upon his strength, Lois had never wakened her son at night.
“Coming, mother, coming!” he said, when he realized she was calling him; and hastily drawing on some clothing, for the night was bitterly cold, he came out of his room and saw his mother standing at the foot of the stairway, with a lighted candle in her hand.
“Can you come down, Ivory? It is a strange hour to call you but I have something to tell you; something I have been piecing together for weeks; something I have just clearly remembered.”
“If it’s something that won’t keep till morning, mother, you creep back into bed and we’ll hear it comfortably,” he said, coming downstairs and leading her to her room. “I’ll smooth the covers, so; beat up the pillows,–there, and throw another log on the sitting-room fire. Now, what’s the matter? Couldn’t you sleep?”
“All summer long I have been trying to remember something; something untrue that you have been believing, some falsehood for which I was responsible. I have pursued and pursued it, but it has always escaped me. Once it was clear as daylight, for Rodman read me from the Bible a plain answer to all the questions that tortured me.”
“That must have been the night that she fainted,” thought Ivory.
“When I awoke next morning from my long sleep, the old puzzle had come back, a thousand times worse than before, for then I knew that I had held the clue in my own hand and had lost it. Now, praise God! I know the truth, and you, the only one to whom I can tell it, are close at hand.”
Ivory looked at his mother and saw that the veil that had separated them mentally seemed to five vanished in the night that had passed. Often and often it had blown away, as it were, for the fraction of a moment and then blown back again. Now her eyes met his with an altogether new clearness that startled him, while her health came with ease and she seemed stronger than for many days.
“You remember the winter I was here at the farm alone, when you were at the Academy?”
“Yes; it was then that I came home and found you so terribly ill. Do you think we need go back to that old time now, mother dear?”
“Yes, I must, I must! One morning I received a strange letter, bearing no signature, in which the writer said that if I wished to see my husband I had only to go to a certain address in Brentville, New Hampshire. The letter went on to say that Mr. Aaron Boynton was ill and longed for nothing so much as to speak with me; but there were reasons why he did not wish to return to Edgewood,–would I come to him without delay.”
Ivory now sat straight in his chair and listened keenly, feeling that this was to be no vague, uncertain, and misleading memory, but something true and tangible.
“The letter excited me greatly after your father’s long absence and silence. I knew it could mean nothing but sorrow, but although I was half ill at the time, my plain duty was to go, so I thought, and go without making any explanation in the village.”
All this was new to Ivory and he hung upon his mother’s words, dreading yet hoping for the light that they might shed upon the past.
“I arrived at Brentville quite exhausted with the journey and weighed down by anxiety and dread. I found the house mentioned in the letter at seven o’clock in the evening, and knocked at the door. A common, hard-featured woman answered the knock and, seeming to expect me, ushered me in. I do not remember the room; I remember only a child leaning patiently against the window-sill looking out into the dark, and that the place was bare and cheerless.
“I came to call upon Mr. Aaron Boynton,’ I said, with my heart sinking lower and lower as I spoke. The woman opened a door into the next
room and when I walked in, instead of seeing your father, I confronted a haggard, death-stricken young woman sitting up in bed, her great eyes bright with pain, her lips as white as her hollow cheeks, and her long, black hair streaming over the pillow. The very sight of her struck a knell to the little hope I had of soothing your father’s sick bed and forgiving him if he had done me any wrong.
“‘Well, you came, as I thought you would,’ said the girl, looking me over from head to foot in a way that somehow made me burn with shame. ‘Now sit down in that chair and hear what I’ve got to say while I’ve got the strength to say it. I haven’t the time nor the desire to put a gloss on it. Aaron Boynton isn’t here, as you plainly see, but that’s not my fault, for he belongs here as much as anywhere, though he wouldn’t have much interest in a dying woman. If you have suffered on account of him, so have I and you haven’t had this pain boring into you and eating your life away for months, as I have.’
“I pitied her, she seemed so distraught, but I was in terror of her all the same, and urged her to tell her story calmly and I would do my best to hear it in the same way.
“‘Calm,’ she exclaimed, ‘with this agony tearing me to pieces! Well, to make beginning and end in one, Aaron Boynton was my husband for three years.’
“I caught hold of the chair to keep myself from falling and cried: ‘I do not believe it!’ ‘Believe it or not, she answered scornfully, ‘it makes no difference to me, but I can give you twenty proofs in as many seconds. We met at a Cochrane meeting and he chose me from all the others as his true wife. For two years we travelled together, but long before they came to an end there was no happiness for either of us. He had a conscience–not much of a one, but just enough to keep him miserable. At last I felt he was not believing the doctrines he preached and I caught him trying to get news of you and your boy, just because you were out of reach, and neglecting my boy and me, who had given up everything to wander with him and live on whatever the brethren and sisters chose to give us.’
“‘So there was a child, a boy,’ I gasped. ‘Did–did he live?’ ‘He’s in the next room,’ she answered, ‘and it’s him I brought you here for. Aaron Boynton has served us both the same. He left you for me and me for Heaven knows who. If I could live I wouldn’t ask any favors, of you least of all, but I haven’t a penny in the world, though I shan’t need one very long. My friend that’s nursing me hasn’t a roof to her head and she wouldn’t share it with the boy if she had–she’s a bigoted Orthodox.’
“‘But what do you expect me to do?’ I asked angrily, for she was stabbing me with every word.
“‘The boy is your husband’s child and he always represented you as a saint upon earth. I expect you to take him home and provide for him. He doesn’t mean very much to me–just enough so that I don’t relish his going to the poorhouse, that’s all.’
“‘He’ll go to something very like that if he comes to mine,’ I said.
“‘Don’t worry me with talk, for I can’t stand it,’ she wailed, clutching at her nightgown and flinging back her hair. ‘Either you take the child or I send somebody to Edgewood with him, somebody to tell the whole story. Some of the Cochranites can support him if you won’t; or, at the worst, Aaron Boynton’s town can take care of his son. The doctor has given me two days to live. If it’s a minute longer I’ve warned him and I warn you, that I’ll end it myself; and if you don’t take the boy I’ll do the same for him. He’s a good sight better off dead than knocking about the world alone; he’s innocent and there’s no sense in his being punished for the sins of other folks.'”
“I see it all! Why did I never think of it before; my poor, poor Rod!” said Ivory, clenching his hands and burying his head in them.
“Don’t grieve, Ivory; it has all turned out so much better than we could have hoped; just listen to the end. She was frightful to hear and to look at, the girl was, though all the time I could feel that she must have had a gipsy beauty and vigor that answered to something in your father.
“‘Go along out now,’ she cried suddenly. ‘I can’t stand anybody near. The doctor never gives me half enough medicine and for the hour before he comes I fairly die for lack of it–though little he cares! Go upstairs and have your sleep and to-morrow you can make up your mind.’
“‘You don’t leave me much freedom to do that,’ I tried to answer; but she interrupted me, rocking her body to and fro. ‘Neither of us wi11 ever see Aaron Boynton again; you no more than I. He’s in the West, and a man with two families and no means of providing for them doesn’t come back where he’s known.–Come and take her away, Eliza! Take her away, quick!’ she called.
“I stumbled out of the room and the woman waved me upstairs. ‘You mustn’t mind Hetty,’ she apologized; ‘she never had a good disposition at the best, but she’s frantic with the pain now, and good reason, too. It’s about over and I’11 be thankful when it is. You’d better swallow the shame and take the child; I can’t and won’t have him and it’11 be easy enough for you to say he belongs to some of your own folks.’
“By this time I was mentally bewildered. When the iron first entered my soul, when I first heard the truth about your father, at that moment my mind gave way–I know it now.”
“Poor, poor mother! My poor, gentle little mother!” murmured Ivory brokenly, as he asked her hand.
“Don’t cry, my son; it is all past; the sorrow and the bitterness and the struggle. I will just finish the story and then we’11 close the book forever. The woman gave me some bread and tea, and I flung myself on the bed without undressing. I don’t know how long afterward it was, but the door opened and a little boy stole