IVORY BOYNTON lifted the bars that divided his land from the highroad
and walked slowly toward the house. It was April, but there were still
patches of snow here and there, fast melting under a drizzling rain. It
was a gray world, a bleak, black-and-brown world, above and below. The
sky was leaden; the road and the footpath were deep in a muddy ooze
flecked with white. The tree-trunks, black, with bare branches, were
lined against the gray sky; nevertheless, spring had been on the way for
a week, and a few sunny days would bring the yearly miracle for which
all hearts were longing.
Ivory was season-wise and his quick eye had caught many a sign as he
walked through the woods from his schoolhouse. A new and different color
haunted the tree-tops, and one had only to look closely at the elm
buds to see that they were beginning to swell. Some fat robins had been
sunning about in the school-yard at noon, and sparrows had been chirping
and twittering on the fence-rails. Yes, the winter was over, and Ivory
was glad, for it had meant no coasting and skating and sleighing for
him, but long walks in deep snow or slush; long evenings, good for
study, but short days, and greater loneliness for his mother. He could
see her now as he neared the house, standing in the open doorway, her
hand shading her eyes, watching, always watching, for some one who never
came.
“Spring is on the way, mother, but it isn't here yet, so don't stand
there in the rain,” he called. “Look at the nosegay I gathered for
you as I came through the woods. Here are pussy willows and red maple
blossoms and Mayflowers, would you believe it?”
Lois Boynton took the handful of budding things and sniffed their
fragrance.
“You're late to-night, Ivory,” she said. “Rod wanted his supper early
so that he could go off to singing-school, but I kept something warm for
you, and I'll make you a fresh cup of tea.”
Ivory went into the little shed room off the kitchen, changed his muddy
boots for slippers, and made himself generally tidy; then he came back
to the living-room bringing a pine knot which he flung on the fire,
waking it to a brilliant flame.
“We can be as lavish as we like with the stumps now, mother, for spring
is coming,” he said, as he sat down to his meal.
“I've been looking out more than usual this afternoon,” she replied.
“There's hardly any snow left, and though the walking is so bad I've
been rather expecting your father before night. You remember he
said, when he went away in January, that he should be back before the
Mayflowers bloomed?”
It did not do any good to say: “Yes, mother, but the Mayflowers have
bloomed ten times since father went away.” He had tried that, gently and
persistently when first her mind began to be confused from long grief
and hurt love, stricken pride and sick suspense.
Instead of that, Ivory turned the subject cheerily, saying, “Well, we're
sure of a good season, I think. There's been a grand snow-fall, and
that, they say, is the poor man's manure. Rod and I will put in more
corn and potatoes this year. I shan't have to work single-handed very
long, for he is growing to be quite a farmer.”
“Your father was very fond of green corn, but he never cared for
potatoes,” Mrs. Boynton said, vaguely, taking up her knitting. “I always
had great pride in my cooking, but I could never get your father to
relish my potatoes.”
“Well, his son does, anyway,” Ivory replied, helping himself plentifully
from a dish that held one of his mother's best concoctions, potatoes
minced fine and put together into the spider with thin bits of pork and
all browned together.
“I saw the Baxter girls to-day, mother,” he continued, not because
he hoped she would give any heed to what he said, but from the sheer
longing for companionship. “The Deacon drove off with Lawyer Wilson, who
wanted him to give testimony in some case or other down in Milltown. The
minute Patty saw him going up Saco Hill, she harnessed the old starved
Baxter mare and the girls started over to the Lower Corner to see some
friends. It seems it's Patty's birthday and they were celebrating. I
met them just as they were coming back and helped them lift the rickety
wagon out of the mud; they were stuck in it up to the hubs of the
wheels. I advised them to walk up the Town-House Hill if they ever
expected to get the horse home.”
“Town-House Hill!” said Ivory's mother, dropping her knitting. “That was
where we had such wonderful meetings! Truly the Lord was present in
our midst, and oh, Ivory! the visions we saw in that place when Jacob
Cochrane first unfolded his gospel to us. Was ever such a man!”
“Probably not, mother,” remarked Ivory dryly.
“You were speaking of the Baxters. I remember their home, and the little
girl who used to stand in the gateway and watch when we came out of
meeting. There was a baby, too; isn't there a Baxter baby, Ivory?”
“She didn't stay a baby; she is seventeen years old to-day, mother.”
“You surprise me, but children do grow very fast. She had a strange
name, but I cannot recall it.”
“Her name is Patience, but nobody but her father calls her anything but
Patty, which suits her much better.”
“No, the name wasn't Patience, not the one I mean.”
“The older sister is Waitstill, perhaps you mean her?”--and Ivory sat
down by the fire with his book and his pipe.
“Waitstill! Waitstill! that is it! Such a beautiful name!”
“She's a beautiful girl.”
“Waitstill! 'They also serve who only stand and wait.' 'Wait, I say, on
the Lord and He will give thee the desires of thy heart.'--Those were
wonderful days, when we were caught up out of the body and mingled
freely in the spirit world.” Mrs. Boynton was now fully started on the
topic that absorbed her mind and Ivory could do nothing but let her tell
the story that she had told him a hundred times.
“I remember when first we heard Jacob Cochrane speak.” (This was her
usual way of beginning.) “Your father was a preacher, as you know,
Ivory, but you will never know what a wonderful preacher he was. My
grandfather, being a fine gentleman, and a governor, would not give his
consent to my marriage, but I never regretted it, never! Your father
saw Elder Cochrane at a revival meeting of the Free Will Baptists in
Scarboro', and was much impressed with him. A few days later we went to
the funeral of a child in the same neighborhood. No one who was there
could ever forget it. The minister had made his long prayer when a man
suddenly entered the room, came towards the coffin, and placed his hand
on the child's forehead. The room, in an instant, was as still as
the death that had called us together. The stranger was tall and
of commanding presence; his eyes pierced our very hearts, and his
marvellous voice penetrated to depths in our souls that had never been
reached before.”
“Was he a better speaker than my father?” asked Ivory, who dreaded
his mother's hours of complete silence even more than her periods of
reminiscence.
“He spoke as if the Lord of Hosts had given him inspiration; as if the
angels were pouring words into his mouth just for him to utter,” replied
Mrs. Boynton. “Your father was spell-bound, and I only less so. When he
ceased speaking, the child's mother crossed the room, and swaying to and
fro, fell at his feet, sobbing and wailing and imploring God to forgive
her sins. They carried her upstairs, and when we looked about after the
confusion and excitement the stranger had vanished. But we found him
again! As Elder Cochrane said: 'The prophet of the Lord can never be
hid; no darkness is thick enough to cover him!' There was a six weeks'
revival meeting in North Saco where three hundred souls were converted,
and your father and I were among them. We had fancied ourselves true
believers for years, but Jacob Cochrane unstopped our ears so that we
could hear the truths revealed to him by the Almighty!--It was all so
simple and easy at the beginning, but it grew hard and grievous
afterward; hard to keep the path, I mean. I never quite knew whether God
was angry with me for backsliding at the end, but I could not always
accept the revelations that Elder Cochrane and your father had!”
Lois Boynton's hands were now quietly folded over the knitting that lay
forgotten in her lap, but her low, thrilling voice had a note in it that
did not belong wholly to earth.
There was a long silence; one of many long silences at the Boynton
fireside, broken only by the ticking of the clock, the purring of the
cat, and the clicking of Mrs. Boynton's needles, as, her paroxysm of
reminiscence over, she knitted ceaselessly, with her eyes on the window
or the door.
“It's about time for Rod to be coming back, isn't it?” asked Ivory.
“He ought to be here soon, but perhaps he is gone for good; it may be
that he thinks he has made us a long enough visit. I don't know whether
your father will like the boy when he comes home. He never did fancy
company in the house.”
Ivory looked up in astonishment from his Greek grammar. This was an
entirely new turn of his mother's mind. Often when she was more than
usually confused he would try to clear the cobwebs from her brain by
gently questioning her until she brought herself back to a clearer
understanding of her own thought. Thus far her vagaries had never made
her unjust to any human creature; she was uniformly sweet and gentle in
speech and demeanor.
“Why do you talk of Rod's visiting us when he is one of the family?”
Ivory asked quietly.
“Is he one of the family? I didn't know it,” replied his mother
absently.
“Look at me, mother, straight in the eye; that's right: now listen,
dear, to what I say.”
Mrs. Boynton's hair that had been in her youth like an aureole of
corn-silk was now a strange yellow-white, and her blue eyes looked out
from her pale face with a helpless appeal.
“You and I were living alone here after father went away,” Ivory began.
“I was a little boy, you know. You and father had saved something, there
was the farm, you worked like a slave, I helped, and we lived, somehow,
do you remember?”
“I do, indeed! It was cold and the neighbors were cruel. Jacob Cochrane
had gone away and his disciples were not always true to him. When the
magnetism of his presence was withdrawn, they could not follow all his
revelations, and they forgot how he had awakened their spiritual life
at the first of his preaching. Your father was always a stanch believer,
but when he started on his mission and went to Parsonsfield to help
Elder Cochrane in his meetings, the neighbors began to criticize him.
They doubted him. You were too young to realize it, but I did, and it
almost broke my heart.”
“I was nearly twelve years old; do you think I escaped all the gossip,
mother?”
“You never spoke of it to me, Ivory.”
“No, there is much that I never spoke of to you, mother, but sometime
when you grow stronger and your memory is better we will talk
together.--Do you remember the winter, long after father went away, that
Parson Lane sent me to Fairfield Academy to get enough Greek and Latin
to make me a schoolmaster?”
“Yes,” she answered uncertainly.
“Don't you remember I got a free ride down-river one Friday and came
home for Sunday, just to surprise you? And when I got here I found you
ill in bed, with Mrs. Mason and Dr. Perry taking care of you. You could
not speak, you were so ill, but they told me you had been up in New
Hampshire to see your sister, that she had died, and that you had
brought back her boy, who was only four years old. That was Rod. I took
him into bed with me that night, poor, homesick little fellow, and, as
you know, mother, he's never left us since.”
“I didn't remember I had a sister. Is she dead, Ivory?” asked Mrs.
Boynton vaguely.
“If she were not dead, do you suppose you would have kept Rodman with us
when we hadn't bread enough for our own two mouths, mother?” questioned
Ivory patiently.
“No, of course not. I can't think how I can be so forgetful. It's worse
sometimes than others. It 's worse to-day because I knew the Mayflowers
were blooming and that reminded me it was time for your father to come
home; you must forgive me, dear, and will you excuse me if I sit in the
kitchen awhile? The window by the side door looks out towards the road,
and if I put a candle on the sill it shines quite a distance. The lane
is such a long one, and your father was always a sad stumbler in the
dark! I shouldn't like him to think I wasn't looking for him when he's
been gone since January.”
Ivory's pipe went out, and his book slipped from his knee unnoticed.
His mother was more confused than usual, but she always was when spring
came to remind her of her husband's promise. Somehow, well used as he
was to her mental wanderings, they made him uneasy to-night. His
father had left home on a fancied mission, a duty he believed to be a
revelation given by God through Jacob Cochrane. The farm did not miss
him much at first, Ivory reflected bitterly, for since his fanatical
espousal of Cochranism his father's interest in such mundane matters
as household expenses had diminished month by month until they had no
meaning for him at all. Letters to wife and boy had come at first,
but after six months--during which he had written from many places,
continually deferring the date of his return-they had ceased altogether.
The rest was silence. Rumors of his presence here or there came from
time to time, but though Parson Lane and Dr. Perry did their best, none
of them were ever substantiated.
Where had those years of wandering been passed, and had they all been
given even to an imaginary and fantastic service of God? Was his father
dead? If he were alive, what could keep him from writing? Nothing but a
very strong reason, or a very wrong one, so his son thought, at times.
Since Ivory had grown to man's estate, he understood that in the
later days of Cochrane's preaching, his “visions,” “inspirations,” and
“revelations” concerning the marriage bond were a trifle startling from
the old-fashioned, orthodox point of view. His most advanced disciples
were to hold themselves in readiness to renounce their former vows and
seek “spiritual consorts,” sometimes according to his advice, sometimes
as their inclinations prompted.
Had Aaron Boynton forsaken, willingly, the wife of his youth, the
mother of his boy? If so, he must have realized to what straits he
was subjecting them. Ivory had not forgotten those first few years of
grinding poverty, anxiety, and suspense. His mother's mind had stood the
strain bravely, but it gave way at last; not, however, until that fatal
winter journey to New Hampshire, when cold, exposure, and fatigue
did their worst for her weak body. Religious enthusiast, exalted and
impressionable, a natural mystic, she had probably always been, far more
so in temperament, indeed, than her husband; but although she left home
on that journey a frail and heartsick woman, she returned a different
creature altogether, blurred and confused in mind, with clouded memory
and irrational fancies.
She must have given up hope, just then, Ivory thought, and her love was
so deep that when it was uprooted the soil came with it. Now hope had
returned because the cruel memory had faded altogether. She sat by the
kitchen window in gentle expectation, watching, always watching.
And this is the way many of Ivory Boynton's evenings were spent, while
the heart of him, the five-and-twenty-year-old heart of him, was longing
to feel the beat of another heart, a girl's heart only a mile or more
away. The ice in Saco Water had broken up and the white blocks sailed
majestically down towards the sea; sap was mounting and the elm trees
were budding; the trailing arbutus was blossoming in the woods; the
robins had come;-everything was announcing the spring, yet Ivory saw
no changing seasons in his future; nothing but winter, eternal winter
there!