AT the Baxters the late supper was over and the girls had not sat at the
table with their father, having eaten earlier, by themselves. The hired
men had gone home to sleep. Patty had retired to the solitude of her
bedroom almost at dusk, quite worn out with the heat, and Waitstill sat
under the peach tree in the corner of her own little garden, tatting,
and thinking of her interview with Ivory's mother. She sat there until
nearly eight o'clock, trying vainly to put together the puzzling details
of Lois Boynton's conversation, wondering whether the perplexities that
vexed her mind were real or fancied, but warmed to the heart by the
affection that the older woman seemed instinctively to feel for her.
“She did not know me, yet she cared for me at once,” thought Waitstill
tenderly and proudly; “and I for her, too, at the first glance.”
She heard her father lock the barn and shed and knew that he would be
going upstairs immediately, so she quickly went through the side yard
and lifted the latch of the kitchen door. It was fastened. She went to
the front door and that, too, was bolted, although it had been standing
open all the evening, so that if a breeze should spring up, it might
blow through the house. Her father supposed, of course, that she was
in bed, and she dreaded to bring him downstairs for fear of his anger;
still there was no help for it and she rapped smartly at the side
door. There was no answer and she rapped again, vexed with her own
carelessness. Patty's face appeared promptly behind her screen of
mosquito netting in the second story, but before she could exchange a
word with her sister, Deacon Baxter opened the blinds of his bedroom
window and put his head out.
“You can try sleepin' outdoors, or in the barn to-night,” he called. “I
didn't say anything to you at supper-time because I wanted to see where
you was intendin' to prowl this evenin'.”
“I haven't been 'prowling' anywhere, father,” answered Waitstill; “I've
been out in the garden cooling off; it's only eight o'clock.”
“Well, you can cool off some more,” he shouted, his temper now fully
aroused; “or go back where you was this afternoon and see if they'll
take you in there! I know all about your deceitful tricks! I come home
to grind the scythes and found the house and barn empty Cephas said
you'd driven up Saco Hill and I took his horse and followed you and saw
where you went Long's you couldn't have a feller callin' on you here to
home, you thought you'd call on him, did yer, you bold-faced hussy?”
“I am nothing of the sort,” the girl answered him quietly; “Ivory
Boynton was not at his house, he was in the hay-field. You know it, and
you know that I knew it. I went to see a sick, unhappy woman who has no
neighbors. I ought to have gone long before. I am not ashamed of it, and
I don't regret it. If you ask unreasonable things of me, you must expect
to be disobeyed once in a while.
“Must expect to be disobeyed, must I?” the old man cried, his face
positively terrifying in its ugliness. “We'll see about that! If you
wa'n't callin' on a young man, you were callin' on a crazy woman, and I
won't have it, I tell you, do you hear? I won't have a daughter o' mine
consortin' with any o' that Boynton crew. Perhaps a night outdoors will
teach you who's master in this house, you imperdent, shameless girl!
We'll try it, anyway!” And with that he banged down the window and
disappeared, gibbering and jabbering impotent words that she could hear
but not understand.
Waitstill was almost stunned by the suddenness of this catastrophe. She
stood with her feet rooted to the earth for several minutes and then
walked slowly away out of sight of the house. There was a chair beside
the grindstone under the Porter apple tree and she sank into it, crossed
her arms on the back, and bowing her head on them, burst into a fit of
weeping as tempestuous and passionate as it was silent, for although her
body fairly shook with sobs no sound escaped.
The minutes passed, perhaps an hour; she did not take account of time.
The moon went behind clouds, the night grew misty and the stars faded
one by one. There would be rain to-morrow and there was a great deal of
hay cut, so she thought in a vagrant sort of way.
Meanwhile Patty upstairs was in a state of suppressed excitement and
terror. It was a quarter of an hour before her father settled him-self
in bed; then an age, it seemed to her, before she heard his heavy
breathing. When she thought it quite safe, she slipped on a print
wrapper, took her shoes in her hand, and crept noiselessly downstairs,
out through the kitchen and into the shed. Lifting the heavy bar that
held the big doors in place she closed them softly behind her, stepped
out, and looked about her in the darkness. Her quick eye espied in the
distance, near the barn, the bowed figure in the chair, and she flew
through the wet grass without a thought of her bare feet till she
reached her sister's side and held her in a close embrace.
“My darling, my own, own, poor darling!” she cried softly, the tears
running down her cheeks. “How wicked, how unjust to serve my dearest
sister so! Don't cry, my blessing, don't cry; you frighten me! I'll take
care of you, dear! Next time I'll interfere; I'll scratch and bite; yes,
I'll strangle anybody that dares to shame you and lock you out of the
house! You, the dearest, the patientest, the best!”
Waitstill wiped her eyes. “Let us go farther away where we can talk,”
she whispered.
“Where had we better sleep?” Patty asked. “On the hay, I think, though
we shall stifle with the heat”; and Patty moved towards the barn.
“No, you must go back to the house at once, Patty dear; father might
wake and call you, and that would make matters worse. It's beginning to
drizzle, or I should stay out in the air. Oh! I wonder if father's mind
is going, and if this is the beginning of the end! If he is in his sober
senses, he could not be so strange, so suspicious, so unjust.”
“He could be anything, say anything, do anything,” exclaimed Patty.
“Perhaps he is not responsible and perhaps he is; it doesn't make much
difference to us. Come along, blessed darling! I'll tuck you in, and
then I'll creep back to the house, if you say I must. I'll go down and
make the kitchen fire in the morning; you stay out here and see what
happens. A good deal will happen, I'm thinking, if father speaks to
me of you! I shouldn't be surprised to see the fur flying in all
directions; I'll seize the first moment to bring you out a cup of coffee
and we'll consult about what to do. I may tell you now, I'm all for
running away!”
Waitstill's first burst of wretchedness had subsided and she had
recovered her balance. “I'm afraid we must wait a little longer, Patty,”
she advised. “Don't mention my name to father, but see how he acts in
the morning. He was so wild, so unlike himself, that I almost hope he
may forget what he said and sleep it off. Yes, we must just wait.”
“No doubt he'll be far calmer in the morning if he remembers that, if he
turns you out, he faces the prospect of three meals a day cooked by me,”
said Patty. “That's what he thinks he would face, but as a matter of
fact I shall tell him that where you sleep I sleep, and where you eat
I eat, and when you stop cooking I stop! He won't part with two unpaid
servants in a hurry, not at the beginning of haying.” And Patty, giving
Waitstill a last hug and a dozen tearful kisses, stole reluctantly back
to the house by the same route through which he had left it.
Patty was right. She found the fire lighted when she went down into the
kitchen next morning, and without a word she hurried breakfast on to the
table as fast as she could cook and serve it. Waitstill was safe in the
barn chamber, she knew, and would be there quietly while her father was
feeding the horse and milking the cows; or perhaps she might go up in
the woods and wait until she saw him driving away.
The Deacon ate his breakfast in silence, looking and acting very much
as usual, for he was generally dumb at meals. When he left the house,
however, and climbed into the wagon, he turned around and said in his
ordinary gruff manner: “Bring the lunch up to the field yourself to-day,
Patience. Tell your sister I hope she's come to her senses in the course
of the night. You've got to learn, both of you, that my 'say-so' must be
law in this house. You can fuss and you can fume, if it amuses you any,
but 't won't do no good. Don't encourage Waitstill in any whinin' nor
blubberin'. Jest tell her to come in and go to work and I'll overlook
what she done this time. And don't you give me any more of your
eye-snappin' and lip-poutin' and head-in-the-air imperdence! You're
under age, and if you don't look out, you'll get something that's good
for what ails you! You two girls jest aid an' abet one another that's
what you do, aid an' abet one another, an if you carry it any further
I'll find some way o' separatin' you, do you hear?”
Patty spoke never a word, nor fluttered an eyelash. She had a proper
spirit, but now her heart was cold with a new fear, and she felt, with
Waitstill, that her father must be obeyed and his temper kept within
bounds, until God provided them a way of escape.
She ran out to the barn chamber and, not finding Waitstill, looked
across the field and saw her coming through the path from the woods.
Patty waved her hand, and ran to meet her sister, joy at the mere fact
of her existence, of being able to see her again, and of hearing her
dear voice, almost choking her in its intensity. When they reached the
house she helped her upstairs as if she were a child, brought her cool
water to wash away the dust of the haymow, laid out some clean clothes
for her, and finally put her on the lounge in the darkened sitting-room.
“I won't let anybody come near the house,” she said, “and you must have
a cup of tea and a good sleep before I tell you all that father said.
Just comfort yourself with the thought that he is going to 'overlook it'
this time! After I carry up his luncheon, I shall stop at the store and
ask Cephas to come out on the river bank for a few minutes. Then I shall
proceed to say what I think of him for telling father where you went
yesterday afternoon.”
“Don't blame Cephas!” Waitstill remonstrated. “Can't you see just how
it happened? He and Uncle Bart were sitting in front of the shop when I
drove by. When father came home and found the house empty and the horse
not in the stall, of course he asked where I was, and Cephas probably
said he had seen me drive up Saco Hill. He had no reason to think that
there was any harm in that.”
“If he had any sense he might know that he shouldn't tell anything to
father except what happens in the store,” Patty insisted. “Were you
frightened out in the barn alone last night, poor dear?”
“I was too unhappy to think of fear and I was chiefly nervous about you,
all alone in the house with father.”
“I didn't like it very much, myself! I buttoned my bedroom door and sat
by the window all night, shivering and bristling at the least sound.
Everybody calls me a coward, but I'm not! Courage isn't not being
frightened; it's not screeching when you are frightened. Now, what
happened at the Boyntons'?”
“Patty, Ivory's mother is the most pathetic creature I ever saw!” And
Waitstill sat up on the sofa, her long braids of hair hanging over her
shoulders, her pale face showing the traces of her heavy weeping. “I
never pitied any one so much in my whole life! To go up that long, long
lane; to come upon that dreary house hidden away in the trees; to feel
the loneliness and the silence; and then to know that she is living
there like a hermit-thrush in a forest, without a woman to care for her,
it is heart-breaking!”
“How does the house look,--dreadful?”
“No: everything is as neat as wax. She isn't 'crazy,' Patty, as we
understand the word. Her mind is beclouded somehow and it almost seems
as if the cloud might lift at any moment. She goes about like somebody
in a dream, sewing or knitting or cooking. It is only when she talks,
and you notice that her eyes really see nothing, but are looking beyond
you, that you know there is anything wrong.”
“If she appears so like other people, why don't the neighbors go to see
her once in a while?”
“Callers make her unhappy, she says, and Ivory told me that he dared not
encourage any company in the house for fear of exciting her, and making
her an object of gossip, besides. He knows her ways perfectly and that
she is safe and content with her fancies when she is alone, which is
seldom, after all.”
“What does she talk about?” asked Patty.
“Her husband mostly. She is expecting him to come back daily. We knew
that before, of course, but no one can realize it till they see her
setting the table for him and putting a saucer of wild strawberries by
his plate; going about the kitchen softly, like a gentle ghost.”
“It gives me the shudders!” said Patty. “I couldn't bear it! If she
never sees strangers, what in the world did she make of you? How did you
begin?”
“I told her I had known Ivory ever since we were school children. She
was rather strange and indifferent at first, and then she seemed to take
a fancy to me.”
“That's queer!” said Patty, smiling fondly and giving Waitstill's hair
the hasty brush of a kiss.
“She told me she had had a girl baby, born two or three years after
Ivory, and that she had always thought it died when it was a few weeks
old. Then suddenly she came closer to me--
“Oh! Waity, weren't you terrified?”
“No, not in the least. Neither would you have been if you had been
there. She put her arms round me and all at once I understood that the
poor thing mistook me just for a moment for her own daughter come back
to life. It was a sudden fancy and I don't think it lasted, but I didn't
know how to deal with it, or contradict it, so I simply tried to soothe
her and let her ease her heart by talking to me. She said when I left
her: 'Where is your house? I hope it is near! Do come again and sit with
me. Strength flows into my weakness when you hold my hand!' I somehow
feel, Patty, that she needs a woman friend even more than a doctor. And
now, what am I to do? How can I forsake her; and yet here is this new
difficulty with father?”
“I shouldn't forsake her; go there when you can, but be more careful
about it. You told father that you didn't regret what you had done, and
that when he ordered you to do unreasonable things, you should disobey
him. After all, you are not a black slave. Father will never think of
that particular thing again, perhaps, any more than he ever alluded to
my driving to Saco with Mrs. Day after you had told him it was necessary
for one of us to go there occasionally. He knows that if he is too hard
on us, Dr. Perry or Uncle Bart would take him in hand. They would have
done it long ago if we had ever given any one even a hint of what we
have to endure. You will be all right, because you only want to do kind,
neighborly things. I am the one that will always have to suffer, because
I can't prove that it's a Christian duty to deceive father and steal off
to a dance or a frolic. Yet I might as well be a nun in a convent for
all the fun I get! I want a white book-muslin dress; I want a pair of
thin shoes with buckles; I want a white hat with a wreath of yellow
roses; I want a volume of Byron's poems; and oh! nobody knows--nobody
but the Lord could understand--how I want a string of gold beads.”
“Patty, Patty! To hear you chatter anybody would imagine you thought of
nothing but frivolities. I wish you wouldn't do yourself such injustice;
even when nobody hears you but me, it is wrong.”
“Sometimes when you think I'm talking nonsense it's really the gospel
truth,” said Patty. “I'm not a grand, splendid character, Waitstill,
and it's no use your deceiving yourself about me; if you do, you'll be
disappointed.”
“Go and parboil the beans and get them into the pot, Patty. Pick up some
of the windfalls and make a green-apple pie, and I'll be with you in the
kitchen myself before long. I never expect to be disappointed in you,
Patty, only continually surprised and pleased.”
“I thought I'd begin making some soft soap to-day,” said Patty
mischievously, as she left the room. “We have enough grease saved up. We
don't really need it yet, but it makes such a disgusting smell that
I'd rather like father to have it with his dinner. It's not much of a
punishment for our sleepless night.”