WAITSTILL found a cool and shady place in which to hitch the old mare,
loosening her check-rein and putting a sprig of alder in her headstall
to assist her in brushing off the flies.
One could reach the Boynton house only by going up a long grass-grown
lane that led from the high-road. It was a lonely place, and Aaron
Boynton had bought it when he moved from Saco, simply because he secured
it at a remarkable bargain, the owner having lost his wife and gone
to live in Massachusetts. Ivory would have sold it long ago had
circumstances been different, for it was at too great a distance from
the schoolhouse and from Lawyer Wilson's office to be at all convenient,
but he dreaded to remove his mother from the environment to which she
was accustomed, and doubted very much whether she would be able to care
for a house to which she had not been wonted before her mind became
affected. Here in this safe, secluded corner, amid familiar and
thoroughly known conditions, she moved placidly about her daily tasks,
performing them with the same care and precision that she had used from
the beginning of her married life. All the heavy work was done for her
by Ivory and Rodman; the boy in particular being the fleetest-footed,
the most willing, and the neatest of helpers; washing dishes, sweeping
and dusting, laying the table, as deftly and quietly as a girl. Mrs.
Boynton made her own simple dresses of gray calico in summer, or dark
linsey-woolsey in winter by the same pattern that she had used when
she first came to Edgewood: in fact there were positively no external
changes anywhere to be seen, tragic and terrible as had been those that
had wrought havoc in her mind.
Waitstill's heart beat faster as she neared the Boynton house. She had
never so much as seen Ivory's mother for years. How would she be met?
Who would begin the conversation, and what direction would it take? What
if Mrs. Boynton should refuse to talk to her at all? She walked slowly
along the lane until she saw a slender, gray-clad figure stooping over
a flower-bed in front of the cottage. The woman raised her head with a
fawn-like gesture that had something in it of timidity rather than fear,
picked some loose bits of green from the ground, and, quietly turning
her back upon the on coming stranger, disappeared through the open front
door.
There could be no retreat on her own part now, thought Waitstill. She
wished for a moment that she had made this first visit under Ivory's
protection, but her idea had been to gain Mrs. Boynton's confidence and
have a quiet friendly talk, such a one as would be impossible in the
presence of a third person. Approaching the steps, she called through
the doorway in her clear voice: “Ivory asked me to come and see you one
day, Mrs. Boynton. I am Waitstill Baxter, the little girl on Town House
Hill that you used to know.”
Mrs. Boynton came from an inner room and stood on the threshold. The
name “Waitstill” had always had a charm for her ears, from the time she
first heard it years ago, until it fell from Ivory's lips this summer;
and again it caught her fancy.
“'WAITSTILL!”' she repeated softly; “'WAITSTILL!' Does Ivory know you?”
“We've known each other for ever so long; ever since we went to the
brick school together when we were girl and boy. And when I was a child
my stepmother brought me over here once on an errand and Ivory showed me
a humming-bird's nest in that lilac bush by the door.”
Mrs. Boynton smiled “Come and look!” she whispered. “There is always a
humming-bird's nest in our lilac. How did you remember?”
The two women approached the bush and Mrs. Boynton carefully parted the
leaves to show the dainty morsel of a home thatched with soft gray-green
and lined with down. “The birds have flown now,” she said. “They were
like little jewels when they darted off in the sunshine.”
Her voice was faint and sweet, as if it came from far away, and her eyes
looked, not as if they were seeing you, but seeing something through
you. Her pale hair was turned back from her paler face, where the
veins showed like blue rivers, and her smile was like the flitting of a
moonbeam. She was standing very close to Waitstill, closer than she
had been to any woman for many years, and she studied her a little,
wistfully, yet courteously, as if her attention was attracted by
something fresh and winning. She looked at the color, ebbing and flowing
in the girl's cheeks; at her brows and lashes; at her neck, as white
as swan's-down; and finally put out her hand with a sudden impulse and
touched the knot of wavy bronze hair under the brimmed hat.
“I had a daughter once,” she said. “My second baby was a girl, but she
lived only a few weeks. I need her very much, for I am a great care to
Ivory. He is son and daughter both, now that Mr. Boynton is away from
home.--You did not see any one in the road as you turned in from the
bars, I suppose?”
“No,” answered Waitstill, surprised and confused, “but I didn't really
notice; I was thinking of a cool place for my horse to stand.”
“I sit out here in these warm afternoons,” Mrs. Boynton continued,
shading her eyes and looking across the fields, “because I can see so
far down the lane. I have the supper-table set for my husband already,
and there is a surprise for him, a saucer of wild strawberries I picked
for him this morning. If he does not come, I always take away the plate
and cup before Ivory gets here; it seems to make him unhappy.”
“He doesn't like it when you are disappointed, I suppose,” Waitstill
ventured. “I have brought my knitting, Mrs. Boynton, so that I needn't
keep you idle if you wish to work. May I sit down a few minutes? And
here is a cottage cheese for Ivory and Rodman, and a jar of plums for
you, preserved from my own garden.”
Mrs. Boynton's eyes searched the face of this visitor from a world she
had almost forgotten and finding nothing but tenderness there, said with
just a trace of bewilderment: “Thank you yes, do sit down; my workbasket
is just inside the door. Take that rocking-chair; I don't have another
one out here because I have never been in the habit of seeing visitors.”
“I hope I am not intruding,” stammered Waitstill, seating herself and
beginning her knitting, to see if it would lessen the sense of strain
between them.
“Not at all. I always loved young and beautiful people, and so did my
husband. If he comes while you are here, do not go away, but sit with
him while I get his supper. If Elder Cochrane should be with him,
you would see two wonderful men. They went away together to do some
missionary work in Maine and New Hampshire and perhaps they will come
back together. I do not welcome callers because they always ask so many
difficult questions, but you are different and have asked me none at
all.”
“I should not think of asking questions, Mrs. Boynton.”
“Not that I should mind answering them,” continued Ivory's mother,
“except that it tires my head very much to think. You must not imagine I
am ill; it is only that I have a very bad memory, and when people ask me
to remember something, or to give an answer quickly, it confuses me the
more. Even now I have forgotten why you came, and where you live; but I
have not forgotten your beautiful name.”
“Ivory thought you might be lonely, and I wanted so much to know you
that I could not keep away any longer, for I am lonely and unhappy too.
I am always watching and hoping for what has never come yet. I have no
mother, you have lost your daughter; I thought--I thought--perhaps we
could be a comfort to each other!” And Waitstill rose from her chair
and put out her hand to help Mrs. Boynton down the steps, she looked
so frail, so transparent, so prematurely aged. “I could not come very
often--but if I could only smooth your hair sometimes when your head
aches, or do some cooking for you, or read to you, or any little thing
like that, as I would fer my own mother--if I could, I should be so
glad!”
Waitstill stood a head higher than Ivory's mother and the glowing health
of her, the steadiness of her voice, the warmth of her hand-clasp must
have made her seem like a strong refuge to this storm-tossed derelict.
The deep furrow between Lois Boynton's eyes relaxed a trifle, the blood
in her veins ran a little more swiftly under the touch of the young hand
that held hers so closely. Suddenly a light came into her face and her
lip quivered.
“Perhaps I have been remembering wrong all these years,” she said. “It
is my great trouble, remembering wrong. Perhaps my baby did not die as I
thought; perhaps she lived and grew up; perhaps” (her pale cheek burned
and her eyes shone like stars) “perhaps she has come back!”
Waitstill could not speak; she put her arm round the trembling figure,
holding her as she was wont to hold Patty, and with the same protective
instinct. The embrace was electric in its effect and set altogether
new currents of emotion in circulation. Something in Lois Boynton's
perturbed mind seemed to beat its wings against the barriers that had
heretofore opposed it, and, freeing itself, mounted into clearer air and
went singing to the sky. She rested her cheek on the girl's breast with
a little sob. “Oh! let me go on remembering wrong,” she sighed, from
that safe shelter. “Let me go on remembering wrong! It makes me so
happy!”
Waitstill gently led her to the rocking-chair and sat down beside her
on the lowest step, stroking her thin hand. Mrs. Boynton's eyes were
closed, her breath came and went quickly, but presently she began to
speak hurriedly, as if she were relieving a surcharged heart.
“There is something troubling me,” she began, “and it would ease my mind
if I could tell it to some one who could help. Your hand is so warm and
so firm! Oh, hold mine closely and let me draw in strength as long
as you can spare it; it is flowing, flowing from your hand into mine,
flowing like wine.... My thoughts at night are not like my thoughts by
day, these last weeks.... I wake suddenly and feel that my husband has
been away a long time and will never come back.... Often, at night, too,
I am in sore trouble about something else, something I have never told
Ivory, the first thing I have ever hidden from my dear son, but I think
I could tell you, if only I could be sure about it.”
[Illustration: “Tell me if it will help you; I will try to understand”]
“Tell me if it will help you; I will try to understand,” said Waitstill
brokenly.
“Ivory says Rodman is the child of my dead sister. Some one must have
told him so; could it have been I? It haunts me day and night, for
unless I am remembering wrong again, I never had a sister. I can call to
mind neither sister nor brother.”
“You went to New Hampshire one winter,” Waitstill reminded her gently,
as if she were talking to a child. “It was bitter cold for you to take
such a hard journey. Your sister died, and you brought her little boy,
Rodman, back, but you were so ill that a stranger had to take care of
you on the stage-coach and drive you to Edgewood next day in his own
sleigh. It is no wonder you have forgotten something of what happened,
for Dr. Perry hardly brought you through the brain fever that followed
that journey.”
“I seem to think, now, that it is not so!” said Mrs. Boynton, opening
her eyes and looking at Waitstill despairingly. “I must grope and grope
in the dark until I find out what is true, and then tell Ivory. God will
punish false speaking! His heart is closed against lies and evil-doing!”
“He will never punish you if your tired mind remembers wrong,” said
Waitstill. “He knows, none better, how you have tried to find Him and
hold Him, through many a tangled path. I will come as often as I can and
we will try to frighten away these worrying thoughts.”
“If you will only come now and then and hold my hand,” said Ivory's
mother,--“hold my hand so that your strength will flow into my weakness,
perhaps I shall puzzle it all out, and God will help me to remember
right before I die.”
“Everything that I have power to give away shall be given to you,”
promised Waitstill. “Now that I know you, and you trust me, you shall
never be left so alone again,--not for long, at any rate. When I stay
away you will remember that I cannot help it, won't you?”
“Yes, I shall think of you till I see you again I shall watch the long
lane more than ever now. Ivory sometimes takes the path across the
fields but my dear husband will come by the old road, and now there will
be you to look for!”