The Story of Waitstill Baxter

“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’ll 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 will 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’ll 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’ll 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’ll 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 in; a sad, strange, dark-eyed little boy who said: ‘Can I sleep up here? Mother’s screaming and I’m afraid.’ He climbed to the couch. I covered him with a blanket, and I soon heard his deep breathing. But later in the night, when I must have fallen asleep myself, I suddenly awoke and felt him lying beside me. He had dragged the blanket along and crept up on the bed to get close to my side for the warmth I could give, or the comfort of my nearness. The touch of him almost broke my heart; I could not push the little creature away when he was lying there so near and warm and confiding—he, all unconscious of the agony his mere existence was to me. I must have slept again and when the day broke I was alone. I thought the presence of the child in the night was a dream and I could not remember where I was, nor why I was there.”

“Mother, dear mother, don’t tell me any more to-night. I fear for your strength,” urged Ivory, his eyes full of tears at the remembrance of her sufferings.

“There is only a little more and the weight will be off my heart and on yours, my poor son. Would that I need not tell you! The house was still and I thought at first that no one was awake, but when I opened the sitting-room door the child ran towards me and took my hand as the woman came in from the sick-room. ‘Go into the kitchen, Rodman,’ she said, ‘and lace up your boots; you’re going right out with this lady. Hetty died in the night,’ she continued impassively. ‘The doctor was here about ten o’clock and I’ve never seen her so bad. He gave her a big dose of sleeping powder and put another in the table drawer for me to mix for her towards morning. She was helpless to move, we thought, but all the same she must have got out of bed when my back was turned and taken the powder dry on her tongue, for it was gone when I looked for it. It didn’t hasten things much and I don’t blame her. If ever there was a wild, reckless creature it was Hetty Rodman, but I, who am just the opposite, would have done the same if I’d been her.’

“She hurriedly gave me a cup of coffee, and, putting a coat and a cap on the boy, literally pushed me out of the house. ‘I’ve got to report things to the doctor,’ she said, ‘and you’re better out of the way. Go down that side street to the station and mind you say the boy belonged to your sister who died and left him to you. You’re a Cochranite, ain’t you? So was Hetty, and they’re all sisters, so you’ll be telling no lies. Good-bye, Rodman, be a good boy and don’t be any trouble to the lady.’

“How I found the station I do not know, nor how I made the journey, nor where I took the stage-coach. The snow began to fall and by noon there was a drifting storm. I could not remember where I was going, nor who the boy was, for just as the snow was whirling outside, so it was whirling in my brain.”

“Mother, I can hardly bear to hear any more; it is too terrible!” cried Ivory, rising from his chair and pacing the floor.

“I can recall nothing of any account till I awoke in my own bed weeks afterwards. The strange little boy was there, but Mrs. Day and Dr. Perry told me what I must have told them—that he was the child of my dead sister. Those were the last words uttered by the woman in Brentville; I carried them straight through my illness and brought them out on the other side more firmly intrenched than ever.”

“If only the truth had come back to you sooner!” sighed Ivory, coming back to her bedside. “I could have helped you to bear it all these years. Sorrow is so much lighter when you can share it with some one else. And the girl who died was called Hetty Rodman, then, and she simply gave the child her last name?”

“Yes, poor suffering creature. I feel no anger against her now; it has burned itself all away. Nor do I feel any bitterness against your father. I forgot all this miserable story for so long, loving and watching for him all the time, that it is as if it did not belong to my own life, but had to do with some unhappy stranger. Can you forgive, too, Ivory?”

“I can try,” he answered. “God knows I ought to be able to if you can!”

“And will it turn you away from Rod?”

“No, it draws me nearer to him than ever. He shall never know the truth—why should he? Just as he crept close to you that night, all unconscious of the reason you had for shrinking from him, so he has crept close to me in these years of trial, when your mind has been wandering.”

“Life is so strange. To think that this child, of all others, should have been a comfort to you. The Lord’s hand is in it!” whispered Mrs. Boynton feebly.

“His boyish belief in me, his companionship, have kept the breath of hope alive in me—that’s all I can say.”

“The Bible story is happening over again in our lives, then. Don’t you remember that Aaron’s rod budded and blossomed and bore fruit, and that the miracle kept the rebels from murmuring?”

“This rebel never will murmur again, mother,” and Ivory rose to leave the room. “Now that you have shed your burden you will grow stronger and life will be all joy, for Waitstill will come to us soon and we can shake off these miseries and be a happy family once more.”

“It is she who has helped me most to find the thread; pouring sympathy and strength into me, nursing me, loving me, because she loved my wonderful son. Oh! how blest among women I am to have lived long enough to see you happy!”

And as Ivory kissed his mother and blew out the candle, she whispered to herself: “Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly!”

XXXIV. THE DEACON’S WATERLOO

MRS. MASON’S welcome to Waitstill was unexpectedly hearty—much heartier than it would have been Six months before, when she regarded Mrs. Boynton as little less than a harmless lunatic, of no use as a neighbor; and when she knew nothing more of Ivory than she could gather by his occasional drive or walk past her door with a civil greeting. Rodman had been until lately the only member of the family for whom she had a friendly feeling; but all that had changed in the last few weeks, when she had been allowed to take a hand in the Boyntons’ affairs. As to this newest development in the life of their household, she had once been young herself, and the veriest block of stone would have become human when the two lovers drove up to the door and told their exciting story.

Ivory made himself quickly at home, and helped the old lady to get a room ready for Waitstill before he drove back for a look at his mother and then on to carry out his impetuous and romantic scheme of routing out the town clerk and announcing his intended marriage. 345

Waitstill slept like the shepherd boy in “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” with the “herb called Heart’s Ease” in her bosom. She opened her eyes next morning from the depths of Mrs. Mason’s best feather bed, and looked wonderingly about the room, with all its unaccustomed surroundings. She heard the rattle of fire-irons and the flatter of dishes below; the first time in all her woman’s life that preparations for breakfast had ever greeted her ears when she had not been an active participator in them.

She lay quite still for a quarter of an hour, tired in body and mind, but incredibly happy in spirit, marvelling at the changes wrought in her during the day preceding, the most eventful one in her history. Only yesterday her love had been a bud, so closely folded that she scarcely recognized its beauty or color or fragrance; only yesterday, and now she held in her hand a perfect flower. When and how had it grown, and by what magic process?

The image of Ivory had been all through the night in the foreground of her dreams and in her moments of wakefulness, both made blissful by the heaven of anticipation that dawned upon her. Was ever man so wise, so tender and gentle, so strong, so comprehending? What mattered the absence of worldly goods, the presence of care and anxiety, when n woman had a steady hand to hold, a steadfast heart to trust, a man who would love her and stand by her, whate’er befell?

Then the face of Ivory’s mother would swim into the mental picture; the pale face, as white as the pillow it lay upon; the face with its aureole of ashen hair, and the wistful blue eyes that begged of God and her children some peace before they closed on life.

The vision of her sister was a joyful one, and her heart was at peace about her, the plucky little princess who had blazed the way out of the ogre’s castle.

She saw Patty clearly as a future fine lady, in velvets and satins and furs, bewitching every-body by her gay spirits, her piquant vivacity, and the loving heart that lay underneath all the nonsense and gave it warmth and color.

The remembrance of her father alone on the hilltop did indeed trouble Waitstill. Self-reproach, in the true sense of the word, she did not, could not, feel. Never since the day she was born had she been fathered, and daughterly love was absent; but she suffered when she thought of the fierce, self-willed old man, cutting himself off from all possible friendships, while his vigor was being sapped daily and hourly by his terrible greed of money.

True housewife that Waitstill was, her mind reverted to every separate crock and canister in her cupboards, every article of her baking or cooking that reposed on the swing-sheh in the cellar, thinking how long her father could be comfortable without her ministrations, and so, how long he would delay before engaging the u inevitable housekeeper. She revolved the number of possible persons to whom the position would be offered, and wished that Mrs. Mason, who so needed help, might be the chosen one: but the fact of her having been friendly to the Boyntons would strike her at once from the list.

When she was thankfully eating her breakfast with Mrs. Mason a little later, and waiting for Ivory to call for them both and take them to the Boynton farm, she little knew what was going on at her old home in these very hours, when to tell the truth she would have liked to slip in, had it been possible, wash the morning dishes, skim the cream, do the week’s churning, make her father’s bed, and slip out again into the dear shelter of love that awaited her.

The Deacon had passed a good part of the night in scheming and contriving, and when he drank his self-made cup of muddy coffee at seven o’clock next morning he had formed several plans that were to be immediately frustrated, had he known it, by the exasperating and suspicious nature of the ladies involved in them.