WAITSTILL found a cool and shady place in which to hitch1 the old mare2, loosening her check-rein and putting a sprig of alder3 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 remarkable4 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 dreaded5 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 affected7. Here in this safe, secluded8 corner, amid familiar and thoroughly9 known conditions, she moved placidly10 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, sweeping11 and dusting, laying the table, as deftly12 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 positively13 no external changes anywhere to be seen, tragic14 and terrible as had been those that had wrought15 havoc16 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 doorway17 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 morsel18 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 darted19 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 veins20 showed like blue rivers, and her smile was like the flitting of a moonbeam. She was standing21 very close to Waitstill, closer than she had been to any woman for many years, and she studied her a little, wistfully, yet courteously22, as if her attention was attracted by something fresh and winning. She looked at the color, ebbing23 and flowing in the girl's cheeks; at her brows and lashes24; at her neck, as white as swan's-down; and finally put out her hand with a sudden impulse and touched the knot of wavy25 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," stammered26 Waitstill, seating herself and beginning her knitting, to see if it would lessen27 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 missionary28 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 frail29, so transparent30, so prematurely31 aged32. "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 furrow33 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 wont6 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 perturbed34 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 sob35. "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."
"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 tangled36 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!"
1 hitch | |
v.免费搭(车旅行);系住;急提;n.故障;急拉 | |
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2 mare | |
n.母马,母驴 | |
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3 alder | |
n.赤杨树 | |
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4 remarkable | |
adj.显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的 | |
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5 dreaded | |
adj.令人畏惧的;害怕的v.害怕,恐惧,担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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6 wont | |
adj.习惯于;v.习惯;n.习惯 | |
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7 affected | |
adj.不自然的,假装的 | |
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8 secluded | |
adj.与世隔绝的;隐退的;偏僻的v.使隔开,使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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9 thoroughly | |
adv.完全地,彻底地,十足地 | |
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10 placidly | |
adv.平稳地,平静地 | |
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11 sweeping | |
adj.范围广大的,一扫无遗的 | |
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12 deftly | |
adv.灵巧地,熟练地,敏捷地 | |
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13 positively | |
adv.明确地,断然,坚决地;实在,确实 | |
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14 tragic | |
adj.悲剧的,悲剧性的,悲惨的 | |
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15 wrought | |
v.引起;以…原料制作;运转;adj.制造的 | |
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16 havoc | |
n.大破坏,浩劫,大混乱,大杂乱 | |
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17 doorway | |
n.门口,(喻)入门;门路,途径 | |
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18 morsel | |
n.一口,一点点 | |
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19 darted | |
v.投掷,投射( dart的过去式和过去分词 );向前冲,飞奔 | |
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20 veins | |
n.纹理;矿脉( vein的名词复数 );静脉;叶脉;纹理 | |
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21 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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22 courteously | |
adv.有礼貌地,亲切地 | |
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23 ebbing | |
(指潮水)退( ebb的现在分词 ); 落; 减少; 衰落 | |
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24 lashes | |
n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 );鞭子;突然猛烈的一击;急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 );煽动;紧系;怒斥 | |
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25 wavy | |
adj.有波浪的,多浪的,波浪状的,波动的,不稳定的 | |
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26 stammered | |
v.结巴地说出( stammer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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27 lessen | |
vt.减少,减轻;缩小 | |
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28 missionary | |
adj.教会的,传教(士)的;n.传教士 | |
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29 frail | |
adj.身体虚弱的;易损坏的 | |
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30 transparent | |
adj.明显的,无疑的;透明的 | |
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31 prematurely | |
adv.过早地,贸然地 | |
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32 aged | |
adj.年老的,陈年的 | |
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33 furrow | |
n.沟;垄沟;轨迹;车辙;皱纹 | |
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34 perturbed | |
adj.烦燥不安的v.使(某人)烦恼,不安( perturb的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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35 sob | |
n.空间轨道的轰炸机;呜咽,哭泣 | |
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36 tangled | |
adj. 纠缠的,紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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