THE STORY OF WAITSTILL BAXTER
Wiggin, Kate Douglas
The Story of Waitstill Baxter By KATE DOUGLAS WIGG1N Author of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" (Copyright, 191S, by Kate Douglas Wiggin) What Has Gone Before WAITSTILL BAXTER and her sister,...
...said Ivory's mother, dropping her knitting...
...nothing but winter, eternal winter there...
...When the magnetism of his presence was withdrawn they could not follow all his revelations, and they forgot how he had awakened their spiritual life at the first of his preaching...
...CHAPTER IV Patience and Impatience PATTY had been searching for eggs in the barn chamber and, coming down the ladder from the haymow, spied her father washing the wagon by the well-side near the shed door...
...It's about time for Rod to be coming back, isn't it...
...Patty's own face, irregular, piquant, tantalizing, had its peculiar charm, and her brilliant skin and hair so dazzled the masculine beholder that he took note of no small defects...
...They doubted him...
...It was a simple, easy, unconscious fashion of her own, quite different from anything done by other women in her time and place and it just suited her dignity and serenity...
...no darkness is thick eonugh to cover him!' There was a six week's revival meeting in North Saco, where 300 souls were converted, and your father and I were among them...
...I don't know for what, but I always feel that I am waiting:" To be Continued...
...Perhaps you mean her...
...It did not do any good to say: "Yes, mother, but the mayflowers have bloomed ten times since father went away...
...What is the matter with you today, Patty...
...It's no use talking, Waity I can't go on living without a bit of pleasure and I can't go ion being patient even for your sake, If it weren't for you I'd run away as Job did, and I never believed Moses slipped on the logs...
...paused, and leaning her elbow on a corner of the shelf over the sink, looked steadfastly out into the orchard...
...A few days later he went to the funeral of a child in the same neighborhood...
...Patty whimpered...
...Instead of that Ivory turned the subject cheerily, saying, "Well, we're sure of a good season, I think...
...When you're not in the shed or barn or chicken house or kitchen or attic or garden patch you are working in the Sunday school or the choir...
...asked Ivory, who dreaded his mother's hours of complete silence even more than her periods of reminiscence...
...That's right...
...Do you think I escaped all the gossip, mother...
...Somehow, well used as he was to her mental wanderings, they made him uneasy tonight...
...I 'argyfied,' but it didn't do any good...
...Patty watched her curiously and was just going to offer a penny for her thoughts when Waitstill suddenly broke the brief silence by saying: "Yes, I am always busy...
...I don't believe I can go on for years holding in, Waitstill...
...you remember he said when he went away in January that he should be back before the mayflowers bloomed...
...She never has since, that's certain...
...Her single braid of hair, the Foxwell hair, that in her was bronze and in Patty pale auburn, was wound once around her fine head and made to stand a little as it went across the front...
...Sing your hymns if you must make a noise while you're workin...
...Religious enthusiast, exalted and impressionable, a natural mystic, she had probably always been, far more so in temperament, indeed, than her husband...
...I've stood up to father...
...As Elder Cochrane said: 'The prophet of the Lord can never be hid...
...I remember their home and the little girl who used to stand in the gateway and watch when we came out of meeting...
...Boynton said, vaguely, taking up her knitting...
...I never saw anything like the girls nowadays— highty tighty, flauntin', traipsin,' tri-flin' trollops, ev'ry one of 'em, that's what they are, and Ellen Wilson's one of the triflin'est...
...To hear you with, father," Patty replied, with honey sweet voice and eyes, that blazed...
...I took him into bed with me that night, poor, homesick little fellpw, and, as you know, mother, he's never left us since...
...Sap was mounting and the elm trees were budding...
...The ice in Saco water had broken up and the white blocks sailed majestically down toward the sea...
...Well...
...not, however, until the fatal winter journey to New Hampshire, when cold, exposure and fatigue did their worst for her weak body...
...The short ¦ young grass was dotted with dandelion blooms, some of them already grown to huge disks of yellow, and Patty moved hither and thither, selecting the younger weeds, deftly putting the broken knife under their roots and popping them into the tin pan...
...All you have to do is to mind when you're spoken to...
...At Last Salesman: Here's an alarm-clock that's guaranteed positively to make a fellow jump out of bed...
...It would have to be a walk through the pasture into the woods to £iee what had grown since they went there a fortnight ago...
...It seemed as if Waitstill did not intend to answer this arraignment of her activities...
...I'm calmer," the litt lowed...
...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...
...but all the same, Patty, I'm waiting—inside...
...It was cold, and the neighbors were cruel...
...Twas a Sabbath school hymn that I was whistling...
...Then in the pine woods there would he, she was sure, Star of Bethlehem, Solomon's Seal, the white spray of ground nuts and bunch berries...
...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...
...There's been a grand snowfall and that, they say, is the poorman's manure...
...It's 'Waitstill,' yet you never stop a moment...
...the trailing arbutus was blossomins in the woods...
...Your father was a preacher, as you know, Ivory, but you will never know what a wonderful preacher he was...
...Was ever such a man!'' "Probably not, mother," remarked Ivory dryly...
...They couldn't...
...I'll do some of your indoor tasks for you, and you shall put on your sunbonnet and go out and dig the dandelion greens for dinner...
...You were whistlin' just now up in the barn chamber...
...asked Ivory...
...His mother's mind had stood the strain bravely, but it gave way at last...
...And look at your name...
...Patty's young existence being full to the brim of labor, this view of heaven never in the least appealed to her, and she rendered the hymn with little sympathy...
...She is seventeen years old today, mother...
...the name wasn't Patience, not the one I mean...
...You must forgive me, dear, and will you excuse me if I sit in the kitchen awhile...
...Don't you remember I got a free ride downriver one Friday and came home for Sunday, just to surprise you...
...Stop, Patty, stop, dear...
...Presently— for Deacon Baxter had finished the wagon and gone down the hill to relieve Cephas Cote at the counter— Patty's shrill young whistle floated into the kitchen, but with a mischievous glance at the open window she broke off suddenly and began to sing the words of the hymn with rather more emphasis and gusto than strict piety warranted: There'll be something in heav-en for children to do...
...asked Mrs...
...But my name really is too ridiculous when you think about it...
...Perry did their best, none of them were ever substantiated...
...The girl's bonnet was off, and her uncovered head blazed like red gold In the sunlight...
...Taking the long handled dipper from the nail, she paused a moment before plunging it into the water pail...
...And Waitstill looked out of the window in a brown study, while her hands worked with the dandelion greens...
...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 school-master...
...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 sea some friends...
...You were speaking of the Baxters...
...There was a long silence...
...I feel too well...
...Well, I hope they'll never hear anything worse," replied her father, flinging a bucket of water over the last of the wagon wheels...
...Can't I go up to Ellen's, then...
...There would be pale hued innocence and blue and white violets in the moist places, thought Waitstill, and they would have them in a china cup on the supper table...
...Sometime perhaps when I have a grievance too great to be rightly borne, sometime when you are away from here in a home of your own, I shall speak out to father...
...CHAPTER III Something of a Hero 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...
...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...
...If a girl's old enough to stay at home and work I should think she was old enough to go out and play once In awhile...
...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...
...The older sister is Waitstill...
...Now hope had returned because the cruel memory had faded altogether...
...Boynton...
...You and father had saved something, there was the farm, you worked like a slave, I helped, and we lived sowehow, do you remember...
...Waitstill was busy with her Saturday morning cooking but she turned in alarm...
...If he were alive, what could keep him from writing...
...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...
...No, you wouldn't," said Patty, with the pessimism of a woman of ninety, as she stole an admiring glance at her sister...
...Well, there ain't goin' to be no more argyfyin...
...You don't have to see," replied the deacon grimly...
...Waitstill went about her work with rather a heavy heart...
...Perhaps Patience was a hard word for a baby to say, but the moment you could talk you said 'Patty wants this,' and 'Patty wants that.'" "Did Patty ever get it...
...Cephas Cole kept store for him at meal hours and whenever trade was unusually brisk, and the Baxter yard was so happily situated that Old Foxy could watch both house and store...
...No one who was there could ever forget it...
...I didn't remember I had a sister, Is she dead, Ivory...
...I've been looking out more than usual this afternoon," she replied...
...Was life going to be more rather than less difficult now that Patty was growing up...
...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...
...Perhaps they could make a bouquet, and ' Patty would take it across the fields to Mrs...
...Isn't there a Baxter baby, Ivory...
...as if the angels were pouring words into his mouth just for him to utter," replied Mrs...
...Would she be able to do her duty both by father and sister and keep peace in the household, as she had vowed in her secret heart always to do...
...Its the same mouth that makes the whistle and sings the song, so I don't see why one's any wickeder than the other...
...Waitstill laughed as she said: "It didn't take you long to change it...
...This rendition of a Sabbath school classic did not meet Waitstill's ideas of perfect propriety, but she smiled and let it pass, planning some sort of recreation for a stolen half hour of the afternoon...
...The lane, is such a long one, and your father was always a sad stumbler in the dark...
...Hear what I say, Patty: You must not argue with father, whatever he says...
...There'll be some-thing- to do, There'll be some-thing to do...
...Rod and I will put in more corn and potatoes this year...
...There, there, dear...
...Mrs...
...so should I if I had the courage...
...better we will talk together...
...Ivory's pipe went out, and his book slipped from his knee unnoticed...
...He won't let me go to Ellen's party...
...the robins had come— everything was announcing the spring, yet Ivory saw no changing seasons in his future...
...The stranger was tall and of commanding presence...
...It was all so simple and easy at the beginning, but it grew hard and grievous afterward...
...Mrs...
...The main part of the verse was strongly accented by jabs at the unoffending dandeloin roots, but when the chorus came she brought out the emphatic syllables by a beat of the broken knife on the milk pan...
...He takes care of his daft mother...
...Truly the Lord was present in our midst...
...It looked like a coronet, but it was the way she carried her head that gave you the fancy, there were such spirit and pride in the poise of it on the long, graceful neck...
...And Ivory sat down by the fire, with his book and his pipe...
...Patty never let the conversation die out for many seconds at a time and now she began again: "My sudden rages don't match my name very well: but of course mother didn't know how I was going to turn out when she called me Patience, for I was nothing but a squirming little bald, red baby...
...There's always a good time at Ellen's, and I would so like the sight of a big, rich house now and then...
...That was Rod...
...but I can generall "You certainly a good deal of by the way you "Nobody the way p see that where the houses should be The men weren't content to stick them on the top of a high hill or half a mile from the stores, but put them back to the main road, taking due care to cut the sink window where their wives couldn't see anything, even when they were washing dishes...
...Tell me quickly...
...I met them just as they were coming back and helped them lift the rickety wagon out of the mud...
...There'll be some-thing for chil-dren to do...
...No...
...Your father saw Elder Cochrane at a revival meeting of the Free Will Baptists in Scarboro and was much impressed with him...
...Waitstill bent over the girl as she flung herself down beside the table and smoothed her shoulder gently...
...I do indeed...
...I don't know that I ever thought about it in that way...
...There's hardly any snow left, and though the walking is so bad I've been rather expecting your father before night...
...his eyes pierced our very hearts, and his marvelous voice penetrated to depths in our souls that had never been reached before...
...Boyn-ton vaguely...
...Ivory looked up in astonishment from his Greek grammar...
...Why do you want to cover your ears up...
...hard to keep the path, I mean...
...You're old enough now to stay home where you belong and make an effort to earn your board and clothes, which you can't, even if you try...
...Don't you feel well as common...
...I'm sure he threw himself into the river, and...
...Was his father dead...
...My grandfather, being a fine gentleman and a governor, would not give his consent to my marriage, but I never regretted it, never...
...The Story of Waitstill Baxter By KATE DOUGLAS WIGG1N Author of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" (Copyright, 191S, by Kate Douglas Wiggin) What Has Gone Before WAITSTILL BAXTER and her sister, Patience (Patty), keep house for their widowed, mean father...
...Patty loved people better than nature, but failing the one she could put up with the other, for she had a sense of beauty and a pagan love of color...
...but, though Parson Lane and Dr...
...Sight of a big, rich house,' indeed...
...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...
...She paused every now and then to look out of the window and wave an encouraging hand to Patty...
...Thus far her vagaries had never made her unjust to any human creature...
...We don't love him and so there isn't the right respect in our hearts, but at least there can be respect in our manners...
...That's one of the things I won't have around my premises—a whistlin' girl...
...It's worse sometimes than others...
...she exclaimed triumphantly as she entered the kitchen and set down her yellow bowl of eggs on the table...
...Ivory asked quietly...
...There never was a good time to ask Deacon Baxter a favor, therefore this moment would serve as well as any other...
...I didn't know it," replied his mother absently...
...The minister had made his long prayer when a man suddenly entered the room, came toward the coffin and placed his hand on the child's forehead...
...Salesman: It doesn't ring—it honks!—Puck...
...so, approaching him near enough to be heard through the rubbing and splashing, but no nearer than was necessary, Patty said: "Father, can I go up to Ellen Wilson's this afternoon and stay for tea...
...The deacon drove off with Lawyer Wilson, who wanted him to give testimony in some case or other down in Mill-town...
...You're different, Waitstill," "I wasn't so different at sixteen, but that's five years ago, and I've got control of my tongue and my temper since then...
...I suppose it's the spring" she said, wiping her eyes with her apron and smiling through her tears, "Perhaps I need a dose of sulphur and molasses...
...That don't make it any better...
...I want to kick up my heels, batter the door down and get out into the pasture...
...She had a strange name, but I cannot recall it...
...Take the broken knife and a milk pan, and don't bring in so much earth with them as you did last time...
...You're kind o' crazy lately, riggin' yourself out with a ribbon here and a flower there and pullin' your hair down over your ears...
...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...
...Ivory had not forgotten those first few years of grinding poverty, anxiety and suspense...
...She was uniformly sweet and gentle in speech and demeanor...
...Where had those years of wandering been passed, and had they all been given even to an imaginary and fantastic service of God...
...Y6u will have your bit of pasture at least...
...I can't think how I can be so forgetful...
...This was her usual way of beginning...
...Mason and Dr...
...It's better so...
...And employment for each little hand...
...Will there be any boys at the party...
...Look at me, mother, straight in the eye...
...And oh, Ivory, the visions we saw in that place when Jacob Cochrane first unfolded his gospel to us...
...You never spoke of it to me, Ivory...
...Ivory Boynton, whose father disappeared, is interested in Waitstill...
...But Waitstill was beautiful—beautiful even in networking dress of purple calico...
...I was a little boy, you know...
...Spunk, real Simon pure spunk, started somewhere in Patty and coursed through her blood like wine...
...His mother was more confused than usual, but she always was when spring came to remind her of her husband's promise...
...The room in an instant was as still as the death that had called us together...
...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...
...There was a baby too...
...Yes, you can...
...She didn't stay a baby...
...I've noticed it, but I never supposed the men did it intentionally...
...Nothing but a very strong reason or a very wrong one, so his son thought at times...
...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...
...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...
...They carried her upstairs, and when we looked about after the confusion and excitement the stranger had vanished...
...She's a beautiful girl...
...Boynton's hair, that had been in her youth like an aureole of corn silk, was now a strangle yellow white, and her blue eyes looked out from her pale face with a helpless appeal...
...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...
...I was nearly twelve years old...
...He spoke as if the Lord of Hosts had given him inspiration...
...I shan't have to work single handed very long, for he is 'growing to be quite a farmer...
...I s'pose so or 'twouldnt be a frolic," said Patty, with awful daring, "but there won't be many—only a few of Mark's friends...
...If she were not dead do you sup-pose you would have kept Rodman with us when we hadn't bread enough for our own two mouths, mother...
...This was an entirely new turn of his mother's mind...
...His father had left home on a fancied mission, a duty he believed to be a revelation given by God through Jacob Cochrane...
...Boynton's needles, as, her paroxysm of reminiscence over, she knitted ceaselessly, with her eyes on the window or the door...
...I feel as if I was a young colt shut up in an attic...
...He never did fancy company in the house...
...That is it...
...Whats goin' on up there...
...Just a frolic!' Land o' Goshen, hear the girl...
...but, oh, how Patty longed to shout them with a clarion voice as she walked away in perfect silence, her majestic gait showing, she hoped, how she resented the outcome of the interview...
...I won't start till I've done a good day's work, and I'll come home early...
...You were too young to realize it, but I did, and it almost broke my heart...
...Now run 'long 'bout your work...
...Had Aaron Boynton forsaken willingly the wife of his youth, the mother of his boy...
...The rest was Silence...
...This with a creditable imitation of defiance...
...Just a frolic...
...There's a place for everything," he said when he came back, "and the place for flowers is outdoors...
...Jacob Cochrane had gone away, and his disciples were not always true to him...
...Her eyes were as clear as mountain pools shaded by rushes and the strength of the face was softened by the sweetness of the mouth...
...You and I were living alone here after father went away," Ivory began...
...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 criticise him...
...Was he a better speaker than my father...
...None are idle in that bless-ed land...
...Boynton's door...
...Now listen, dear, to what I say...
...No, that would never do, for last time father had knocked them over when he was reaching for the bread and in a silent protest against such foolishness got up from the table and emptied them Into the kitchen sink...
...Go along, dear...
...I remember when first we heard Jacob Cochrane speak...
...Perry taking care of you...
...Patty was still too timid to make this remark more than a courteous suggestion, so far as its tone was concerned...
...She rose and crossed the room to put the pan of greens in the sink, preparing to wash them...
...just empty my heart of all the disappointment and bitterness and rebellion...
...It may be that he thinks he has made us a long enough visit...
...I advised them to walk up the Town House hill if they ever expected to get the horse home...
...And when I got here I found you ill in bed, with Mrs...
...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...
...I won't have any girl o' mine frolickin' with boys, so that's the end of it...
...There'll be some-thing- for chil-dren to do: On that bright, blessed shore Where there's joy evermore...
...He ought to be here soon, but perhaps he is gone for good...
...That's generall turns out with me...
...questioned Ivory patiently...
...Town House hill...
...Rumors of his presence here or there came from time to time...
...No, of course not...
...A have...
...I don't know whether your father will like the boy when he comes home...
...I stood up to him and answered him back three times...
...You're full of new tricks, and you've got to stop 'em right where you are or there'll be trouble...
...If so he must have realized to what straits he was subjecting them...
...Here Patty came in with a panful of greens and the sisters sat down in the sunny window to get them ready lor the pot...
...These words were never spoken aloud...
...It's worse today because I knew the mayflowers were blooming, and that reminded me it was time for your father to come" home...
...Why do you talk of Rod's visiting us when he is one of the family...
...Is he one of the family...
...What do you want to go gallivant-in' to the neighbors for...
...Dry your eyes and look at the green things growing...
...It seems it's Patty's birthday, and they were celebrating...
...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...
...Your father was spellbound, and I only less so...
...I saw the Baxter girls today, mother," he continued not because he hoped she would give any heed to what he said, but from the sheer longing for companionship...
...They were stuck in it up to the hubs of the wheels...
...That was where we had such wonderful meetings...
...I shouldn't like him to think I wasn't looking for him when he's been gone since January...
...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...
...There'll be work for the heart, there'll be work for the mind...
...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...
...Patty, what have you said and done...
...The window by the side door looks out toward the road, and if I put a candle on the sill it shines quite a distance...
...She sat by the kitchen window in gentle expectation, watching, always watching...
...Yes," she answered uncertainly...
...No, there is much that I never spoke of to you, mother, but some time when you grow stronger and your memory is...
...I always had great pride in my cooking, but I could never get your father to relish my potatoes...
...She need not go in, and thus they would not be disobeying their father's command not to visit that "crazy Boynton woman...
...Her name is Patience, but nobody but her father calls her anything but Patty, which suits her much better...
...But we found him again...
...What are they for...
...It isn't like my gay little sister to cry...
...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...
...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...
...Remember how young you are and how many years are ahead of you...
...Your father was very fond of green corn, but he never cared for potatoes," Mrs...
...Somebody ought to tell him the truth and perhaps it will be me...
...You surprise me, but children do grow very fast...
...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 caught up out of the body and mingled freely in the spirit world...
...Such a beautiful name...
...Waitstill wiped her floury hands and put them on her sister's shoulders...
...Don't answer me back...
...Tardee: That's what they all say—but let's hear it ring...
Vol. 6 • May 1914 • No. 22
