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.