Patty's Perversities
by Arlo Bates · English · Gutenberg #48396 · 436,264 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Patty's Perversities
Author: Arlo Bates
Release date: March 1, 2015 [eBook #48396]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PATTY'S PERVERSITIES ***
"SPARKLING." "FASCINATING." "CHARMING."
A FAIR BARBARIAN.
By Mrs. FRANCES H. BURNETT. One volume 16mo, handsomely bound.
Price $1.00.
"It has a good plot, excellent character-drawing, and the story is told
in delightful style. There is a certain freshness and purity about
Mrs. Burnett's writings that can never lose their charm, and 'A Fair
Barbarian' is among her best productions."--_Boston Post._
"In her latest novel, 'A Fair Barbarian,' we find Mrs. Burnett amid
still other scenes and characters; and here she seems likely to
eclipse, at least as far as popularity is concerned, all her earlier
triumphs. The title of the story is in itself a most happy conception.
The 'Fair Barbarian' is a young American lady who has lived in Nevada,
and who comes upon an English country town with the suggestive name
of 'Slowbridge,' to astonish its inhabitants by an individuality of
character wholly unique.... The raciness of the scenes that attend the
meeting of these parties is indescribable. This American girl is not
an untamed hoiden by any means: she is, on the contrary, true-womanly
in the best sense of the term. She is kind of heart, sympathetic, and
self-respecting,--a really lovely, if a somewhat unconventional person.
She is high-spirited too; and, while she manifests a willingness to
learn the standards of those among whom her lot is temporarily cast,
there is a charming youthful dignity about her which is one of the
best points in her delineation. Of course she finds her lover. Of the
results that attend his wooing, we leave the reader to learn from the
story. The merit of the novel is largely in its admirable purpose, and
the exquisite skill with which it is carried out. It is a refreshing
vindication of the American girl, whom it has been too much the custom
of writers to depreciate of late. Mrs. Burnett knows her well, and does
her ample justice. She knows England too, and we have the benefit of
that knowledge in the types of English character presented.
"Her book is likely, not only to succeed in favor beyond her own
previous productions, but to gain a popularity which none other of
those novels which have treated this phase of the American-girl
question have obtained."--_Boston Journal._
"If a more amusing or clever novelette than 'A Fair Barbarian' has ever
been given the American public, we fail to recall it."--_Pittsburgh
Telegraph._
"The 'Fair Barbarian' is that charming indigenous production of
ours, 'an American girl,' who goes to England, and makes John Bull
open his eyes in surprise, and frequently admiration."--_Louisville
Courier-Journal._
"Mrs. Burnett fascinates her readers without appearing to make an
effort, and plays upon the human heart at will, making it thrill
and vibrate under the magic influence of her genius."--_New Orleans
Democrat._
"We have no hesitation in saying that there is no living writer
(man or woman) who has Mrs. Burnett's dramatic power in telling a
story."--_New-York Herald._
"The brightest and wittiest of Mrs. Burnett's stories."--_Baltimore
Every Saturday._
"A particularly sparkling story, the subject being the young heiress
of a Pacific-slope silver-mine, thrown amid the very proper petty
aristocracy of an English rural town."--_Springfield Republican._
"Mrs. Burnett's new and charming story, which is much different from,
and much better than, 'The Lass of Lowrie's.'"--_Philadelphia Evening
News._
FOR SALE EVERYWHERE.
JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO. PUBLISHERS,
=BOSTON.=
_ROUND-ROBIN SERIES._
_Patty's Perversities._
[Illustration: "PERHAPS IT MAY TURN OUT A SONG,
PERHAPS TURN OUT A SERMON."]
BOSTON
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY
1881
COPYRIGHT, 1881,
BY JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved._
_Stereotyped and Printed by Rand, Avery, & Co.,
117 Franklin Street, Boston._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER. PAGE.
I. MORNING 1
II. "A BIRD IN THE BUSH" 5
III. "A BIRD IN THE HAND" 12
IV. THE PICNIC 20
V. A MISHAP 26
VI. CHIT-CHAT 35
VII. A BUSINESS INTERVIEW 43
VIII. ON THE PIAZZA 49
IX. AN ARRIVAL 55
X. A CHANCE MEETING 61
XI. A BUNDLE OF PAPERS 67
XII. AN AFTERNOON RIDE 73
XIII. AT REHEARSAL 79
XIV. AN ELOPEMENT 86
XV. A CASTLE IN THE AIR 95
XVI. THE CHURCH AT SAMOSET 111
XVII. A CONFIDENCE 121
XVIII. A CHAPTER OF SHREDS AND PATCHES 129
XIX. TOXTETH SEEKS AN ALLY 136
XX. AN OUTBURST 144
XXI. THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN 151
XXII. A MISUNDERSTANDING 156
XXIII. NOTES AND SOUVENIRS 163
XXIV. MRS. SANFORD SPEAKS 171
XXV. CLARENCE SPEAKS 181
XXVI. MULLEN HOUSE 186
XXVII. THE RUSTIC ROAD 194
XXVIII. THE THEATRICALS 199
XXIX. NIGHT-SCENES 206
XXX. THE WOUNDS OF A FRIEND 211
XXXI. AUNT JEFF REMONSTRATES 219
XXXII. HEADS AND TAILS 227
XXXIII. "WHEN SHE WILL, SHE WILL" 233
XXXIV. THE MASKERS 241
XXXV. PETER MIXON 246
XXXVI. MRS. SMITHERS 250
XXXVII. THANKSGIVING 256
XXXVIII. A TEST OF CIVILIZATION 262
XXXIX. THE NIGHT-WATCH 269
XL. CLARENCE AGAIN 275
XLI. OLD MULLEN'S WILL 279
XLII. BOLD PLAY 283
XLIII. CLARENCE IS ANSWERED 289
XLIV. WILL AND EASE 294
XLV. A QUIET WEDDING 297
XLVI. CHRISTMAS 302
PATTY'S PERVERSITIES.
CHAPTER I.
MORNING.
"There is one thing sure," mused Patty Sanford, newly awakened by the
sun's rays which streamed through her honeysuckle-draped casement;
"there is one thing sure,--I shall go to the picnic with whom I like:
else why should I go at all? To-day they will come to invite me.
Burleigh will come, of course; but it is easy to get rid of him. Then
Clarence Toxteth is sure to ask me. How it piques the girls to see me
behind his span! Clarence's span is so nice! It is a pity he isn't--I
mean I wish I liked him better. But he isn't always saying horrid
things, like Tom Putnam. I wonder if Tom will ask me. I do so hope he
will, so I can snub him. I'm sure," she continued to herself, in her
energy raising herself upon her dimpled elbow,--"I'm sure I don't know
anybody who needs snubbing more than he. If he only would come after
Clarence has invited me, that would be fun. He'd manage to come out
superior, though, in some way. He always does; and that's the worst of
him--or the best, I'm not quite certain which. There! Will would say I
was 'moonier than the moon.'--Flossy, Floss!"
"Yes," answered a sleepy voice from the next chamber.
"Are you awake?"
"Well," the voice replied with great deliberation, "not as much as
some."
"You'd better be, then. There are oceans of things to see to to-day."
At that moment was heard from below the voice of Mrs. Sanford, calling
her daughter; and Patty hastily began her toilet for the early
breakfast, already being prepared below by Bathalina Clemens, the maid
of all work.
The company assembled around the breakfast-table consisted, in addition
to Patty, of her father and mother, her brother Will, and a cousin
rejoicing in the euphonious title of Flossy Plant.
Dr. Sanford was a tall, thin-faced gentleman, with deep, kindly eyes,
and slightly-stooping shoulders. He would have been hen-pecked, but for
the fact that he was so fully aware of his wife's peculiarities as to
be able to guard himself against them. He smiled at her vagaries and
gallinaceous ways with a quiet, inward sense of humor.
"Your aunt is a very amusing woman," he once said to Flossy Plant; and,
indeed, it was sometimes difficult for the whole family not to regard
Mrs. Sanford as a species of private Punch and Judy intended for their
especial entertainment.
This morning the worthy lady was discussing the church picnic, to take
place the following day.
"I think," she said impressively, "that picnics are chiefly bugs and
critters; but I suppose it is a duty folks owe to religion to go."
"And to ride there with the gentlemen," put in Flossy, seeing the
twinkle in her uncle's eye.
"But the buggies are so terrible narrow nowadays," Mrs. Sanford
continued, the breadth of her figure giving point to the remark, "that
one is squeezed to death. The last time I rode in one I dreamed, the
next night, that I was a postage-stamp on a letter; and, of course,
that couldn't be a lucky dream."
"Oh, the narrow buggies are the beauty of it!" Flossy retorted: "it
brings you and the gentlemen so close and cosey, you know."
"Flossy Plant!" exclaimed Bathalina Clemens, who was bringing in a
fresh supply of griddle-cakes, and felt called upon, as she frequently
did, to "bear testimony." "Flossy Plant, that is positively indelicate."
"Bathalina Clemens," returned Flossy serenely, "you don't know the very
first principles of indelicacy."
In the general laugh that greeted this sally Mrs. Sanford did not join.
"I don't know what you mean," she said; "but I'm sure it isn't proper.
Besides," she continued, "I have a foreboding in my mind. I put my left
shoe on my right foot this morning, and I doubt something will happen:
besides, I know strangers are coming, for my nose itches; and Bathalina
dropped the dish-cloth last night; and a fork stuck up straight in the
floor this morning."
"I am glad of that," Patty said lightly. "The more people that come
to-day, the better Floss and I shall be pleased, if they come to invite
us to the picnic."
"Flossy," interrupted Mrs. Sanford, "you have spilled your salt. Throw
a pinch over your left shoulder quick. It is strange how careless folks
can be; just the day before a picnic too.--And then," she rambled on,
"there's the cooking. Patty, you'll have to make the cake, and do all
the millinery of the cooking: you ought to have picked over the raisins
before breakfast."
"If I do any thing before breakfast," Flossy said, "I have to have my
breakfast first."
"So do I," Patty laughed; "but I can make up for lost time afterward."
CHAPTER II.
"A BIRD IN THE BUSH."
It was while Patty was engaged in doing "the millinery of the cooking,"
that her first swain arrived. Social etiquette in Montfield was not
rigid, and Patty was not at all surprised when the shadow of Burleigh
Blood's broad shoulders fell upon the kitchen-floor, and that enamoured
youth entered without the formality of knocking.
"Good-morning, Burleigh," she said, her eyes bright with the spark of
merriment which always kindled when Mr. Blood appeared. "Can't shake
hands with you without getting you all covered with flour."
"I shouldn't mind that much," he answered awkwardly.
"Sit down, please," she said. "I'm just done with these puffs. Isn't it
a lovely day?"
"It is good growing weather for the corn."
"And for you," she laughed. "You get bigger and bigger every day."
"Do I?" he said disconsolately, looking from his big hand to the one
she was wiping on the long snowy roller. "I am too big now."
"Nonsense--not for a man! I like to see a man big and strong."
"Do you, though, really," he said, a glow of delight spreading over his
honest features. "I--I'm glad of it."
"Come into the other room," Patty said, leading the way: "it's cooler
there.--Bathalina, don't let those puffs burn."
The windows of the sitting-room were open, and the blinds unclosed;
but so thickly was the piazza overhung with honeysuckle and woodbine,
that a cool shade filled the apartment. It was unoccupied, save by
Pettitoes, the cat, who had curled himself up luxuriously in Mrs.
Sanford's work-basket. Mr. Blood stumbled over a chair or two before
he found his way safely into a seat, and then sat, flushed and
uncomfortable, trying to make up his mind to do the errand upon which
he had come. Patty, who knew perfectly well the state of her guest's
mind, played carelessly with Pettitoes, making casual remarks, to which
Burleigh replied in monosyllables.
"I hope it will be as good weather as this for the picnic," she said at
length. "Of course, you are going?"
"Yes, I thought I should; that is, I may."
"Oh, you must! We are sure to have a splendid time. Everybody is going.
I wouldn't miss it for any thing."
"Then you are going?" he asked.
"Of course. I am always ready for a lark," she answered. "And I know
you'll go."
"It depends," said he, "whether I can get any one to go with me."
"Of course you can. There are lots of girls would be delighted. There's
Emily Purdy, or Dessie Farnum. You know you can get some one."
"But I mean one particular one," he said, blushing at his own temerity.
"Oh! you mean Flossy," Patty exclaimed, her eyes dancing. "I'm sure
she'll be delighted. I'll ask her myself for you this minute. You are
so bashful, Burleigh, that you'd never get along in this world, if I
didn't help you."
"Wait, Patty," the unfortunate Burleigh began; but his voice stuck
in his throat. For days he had been summoning his courage to invite
Miss Sanford to ride with him to the picnic; and now it failed him in
his extremity. To add to his confusion, his eye at that moment caught
sight of a rival advancing from the front-gate towards the cottage
in the person of Clarence Toxteth, only child of the richest man in
Montfield. A sudden burning sensation seized young Blood at the sight.
He was ready to pour out his heart and his passion in the moment
that remained to him. But what is love in the heart, albeit never so
burning, when the tongue refuses its office? A flippant rogue without
a soul may defeat the most deeply loyal silent one, and never a word
could Burleigh utter. He was conscious, as if in a dream, that the bell
rang, and that Mr. Toxteth, in all the glory of a light summer suit
and kid gloves, was ushered into the room. He unconsciously glowered
at the new-comer in a way that made it difficult for Patty to preserve
her gravity. The entrance of Mrs. Sanford restored him to himself
somewhat. He always felt more comfortable for her bustling, homely
presence.
"How do you do, Burleigh?" the worthy lady said. "How do you do, Mr.
Toxteth? I knew we should see strangers to-day. You remember, Patty, I
said so at breakfast. Bathalina dropped the dish-cloth, and then a fork
that stood up in the floor, and I never knew either of those signs to
fail. You must be the dish-cloth, Burleigh, and you are the fork, Mr.
Toxteth. I always think the dish-cloth don't mean as much of a stranger
as the fork does."
Mrs. Sanford had a never-ending procession of signs and omens. "The
wisest aunt" could scarcely have extracted more mystical lore from
everyday occurrences to other observers the most commonplace. Every
thing with her was lucky or unlucky, related to the past, or foretold
the future; and the wisdom she extracted from dreams was little less
than miraculous.
What Dr. Sanford was accustomed to term "the religious ceremonies of
a call,"--the remarks upon health and the weather,--having been duly
accomplished, Mr. Toxteth proceeded directly to the point.
"I called," he said, while Mrs. Sanford was asking his rival about the
prospects of the crops, "to beg the honor of your company to-morrow at
the picnic."
"How kind of you!" Patty answered with an appearance of sweet
frankness; the inward struggle which had been going on ever since his
entrance being suddenly decided against him. "I am very sorry, if you
will be disappointed; but, you see, Burleigh came before you."
She spoke so softly that her mother did not hear; yet the words reached
the ears of her earlier caller, and filled him with triumphant joy. For
Patty herself, she was not quite able to understand her own act. She
had beforehand fully determined to accept the invitation to ride behind
the Toxteth span, should she be favored with it; and she certainly had
even now no intention of going with Burleigh Blood. It was partly due,
no doubt, to the fact that the dandified air of the young fop offended
her honest taste; but she was uncomfortably conscious that there was a
stronger reason underlying all others. She had said to herself that it
would be charming to reject an invitation from Mr. Putnam after having
promised to accompany Clarence Toxteth. Now she had refused the latter
upon the mere chance that the former would come. She would gladly have
recalled the words, and given a different answer to the rich young
swell, with his elegant clothes, and a turnout which was the admiration
of all the girls in Montfield. But there was now no help for it; and
with a sigh she saw the form of her rich suitor disappear down the
walk, and turned to the task in hand. She knew Burleigh had overheard
her refusal to Clarence; and, as soon as the latter was gone, she said
lightly, "I knew you wouldn't mind my making you an excuse to put him
off; and, besides, mother was here, and wouldn't have liked it if I had
refused him outright. Here comes Flossy. It is very kind of you to ask
her; for she really knows so few people here."
Flossy Plant was a little maiden much afflicted by dyspepsia, and given
to making odd remarks. Her father was a Boston merchant, noted for his
dinners; and Flossy always maintained that his high living caused her
ill-health.
"I am like that text of Scripture," she declared: "'The fathers have
eaten sour grapes,--or drank their juice,--and the child's stomach is
set on edge.' I don't mind the dyspepsia so much, but oh! think of the
good things father has eaten to give it to me."
Her physician had ordered the constant use of pop-corn; and Flossy was
accustomed to wander about the house at all times of day and night with
a large blue bowl of that dry and aggravating edible tucked comfortably
under her arm. Her hair, fine and flaxen, was generally in a state
aptly enough described by her name; so that it was not without reason
that Will Sanford compared her to a thistle-puff.
"I thought I would wait," Flossy said, as she came into the
sitting-room, "until Clarence Toxteth went away. He always looks so
soft and juicy that I want to eat him, and it makes me dreadfully
hungry to look at him."
Burleigh laughed; but this little pale creature was a mystery to him,
and her dryly-uttered drolleries not wholly devoid of a sibylline
character, it being a profound wonder to him how one could have such
thoughts.
"I don't think he'd be good to eat," he said grimly; "but I guess he'd
be soft enough."
"Did he come to invite you to the picnic, Patty?" Flossy asked,
munching at her pop-corn.
"What would you give to know?" laughed her cousin. "But Mr. Blood has
come to invite you, at least: so you are provided for."
In such a situation what was a bashful man to do, particularly if, like
Burleigh, he was not sure that he was offended at the turn affairs had
taken? Patty was an old friend, indeed, in Montfield parlance a "flame"
of the young man's; yet certainly the stranger cousin exercised over
him a peculiar fascination. He left the house as the promised escort of
Miss Plant, and went home, wondering whether Patty did not know he came
to invite her, and whether he were glad or sorry things had turned out
as they had.
The long sunny day wore on, and no third invitation came for Patty.
She kept her own counsel so completely that the family thought she had
accepted young Toxteth's escort,--an impression which she took pains
not to dissipate. But, although outwardly gay, she grew more and more
heavy-hearted as the day passed with no sign of Mr. Putnam.
CHAPTER III.
"A BIRD IN THE HAND."
The day of the picnic dawned as fair and sweet as if made for a pure
girl's wedding, or a children's holiday.
The gathering was to take place at Mackerel Cove, a little bay jutting
inward, amid lovely groves of beech-trees, from a larger inlet of the
Atlantic. A drive of a dozen miles stretched between the cove and
Montfield; the picnickers taking their own time for starting, and speed
in going, the rendezvous being at the hour fixed for dinner.
Patty saw the family depart one by one. First Will went to call for
Ease Apthorpe, the lady-elect of his heart or fancy; then Dr. Sanford
drove off with his wife, intending to visit certain patients on the
way; and, last of all, Flossy was swung lightly up into his buggy by
the mighty arms of Burleigh Blood.
"Don't you mean to go at all?" the latter asked of Patty, who came
running after them with Flossy's bowl of pop-corn.
"I never tell my plans," she laughed gayly. "Mother went off predicting
that something dreadful was sure to happen. How do you know but I am
afraid to go?"
"Pooh! She's going with Clarence Toxteth," Flossy said.
"But"--began her escort.
"There! Drive on, and don't bother about me," said Patty. "I have
usually been thought able to take care of my own affairs. A pleasant
ride to you."
She turned back toward the lonely house. Bathalina Clemens was at work
somewhere in the chambers, counteracting any tendency to too great
cheerfulness which the beauty of the day might develop in her mind, by
singing the most doleful of minors:--
"'Hearken, ye sprightly, and attend, ye vain ones;
Pause in your mirth, adversity consider;
Learn from a friend's pen sentimental, painful
Death-bed reflections,'"
she sang, with fearful inflections and quavers. Patty's face fell. A
feeling of angry disappointment came over her. This picnic was an event
in Montfield. What to the belle of the season would be the loss of its
most brilliant ball was this privation to Patty. This is a relative
world, wherein the magnitude of an object depends upon the position of
the eye which observes it; and for the time being the picnic filled the
whole field of mental vision of the young people of the village. Nor
did it tend to lessen the girl's annoyance that the fault was her own,
although she resolutely persisted in thinking that she thought herself
not at all responsible, but had transferred the entire blame upon the
shoulders of the cavalier who should have invited her, and had not.
She wandered restlessly through the house and garden, at last seating
herself upon the piazza with a book, upon which she vainly attempted to
fix her attention. From above came the voice of Bathalina chanting,--
"'Shun my example!'"
"'Shun your example!'" muttered Patty to herself. "I shall shun my own
hereafter. I might have known that poky old Tom Putnam wouldn't ask me.
It is too mean that I should have to stay at home! He might at least
have given me a chance to refuse him, and then I should have known what
to count on. He is so intensely aggravating. I don't doubt he took
Flora Sturtevant. I've no patience with a man that will let himself be
trapped by a flirt like her."
And at that moment, raising her eyes, she saw the object of her
animadversions--a tall, slender man of two or three and thirty--coming
up the walk. He seemed surprised to find her at home.
"Good-morning," Mr. Putnam said, in a voice which few persons heard
with indifference, so rich and pleasing it was. "I supposed you had
gone to the picnic."
"You see I haven't."
It required no great penetration to see that Patty was out of spirits.
The new-comer looked at her keenly.
"Thank you, I will sit down for a moment," he said, as if she had
invited him to do so. "These steps are very comfortable. Don't trouble
to get me a chair."
"I had not the faintest intention of doing so," she returned.
"Why have you not gone?" he asked, looking up at her curiously from his
seat upon the piazza-steps.
"I chose to stay at home," she answered shortly.
"Conclusive, but impossible. A better reason, please?"
"I do not know that it can make any difference to you why I stay at
home."
"But it does, however ignorant you may be on that point."
"Why should it?"
"You have not answered me," he said; "but I will be generous, and tell
you why. I was coming yesterday to invite you myself, and heard that
you were going with Burleigh Blood."
"Did you?" she asked, brightening visibly. "That was a lie I told, or
rather a lie I didn't tell. How did you hear of it?"
"I heard Clarence Toxteth say so. Is your list of questions much
longer?"
"If Bathalina doesn't stop singing such hymns," Patty said
irrelevantly, "I know I shall murder her sooner or later."
"I would," he answered, looking at his watch. "I came for a book of
your father's; but it is no matter to-day. I will have the horse at the
gate in fifteen minutes. Can you be ready so soon?"
"Who said I'd go?" she laughed, springing up.
"Who asked you to?" he retorted.
"But I will, if only to plague you," she said.
"Don't feel obliged to," he replied, starting down the walk. "It really
won't annoy me enough to make it worth your trouble."
Patty darted into the house, and up to her chamber, like a swallow.
Unconsciously she caught up Bathalina's strain.
"'Sudden and awful, from the height of pleasure,
By pain and sickness thrown upon a down-bed,'"
she carolled; and for once the hymn put on a garb of mocking gayety.
"Patience Sanford!" solemnly ejaculated the pious maid-servant, putting
her head in at the chamber-door. "It's tempting Providence to sing that
hymn that way. No good'll come of it, you may depend."
"Nonsense, Bath! I could dance to the hymns of the cherubim!"
And into the garden she flew to pin a bunch of clove-pinks at her belt.
"Do you know how solemn you looked," Putnam asked as they drove along
the smooth road, between unfenced fields green with the starting
aftermath, "when I found you on the piazza? Were you thinking of your
sins?"
"No: of those of my neighbors."
"Of omission, or commission?" he asked, looking at her closely.
"Both," she returned, flushing a little. "I was lonesome, of course.
You wouldn't like to stay at home alone all day."
"On the contrary," he said, "there are few things I like better. It is
strange how a woman is never good company for herself. She can never
keep still and think, but must always be rattling away to somebody."
"You think so because you don't know."
"My observation has not been very extensive, perhaps; but it has been
all in one direction. Men are content enough to be alone."
"It is all the conceit of the men," she retorted. "You all fancy you
are never in so good company as when alone."
"Unless we are favored by some one of your sex."
"Nonsense! You don't think so. What a man finds to say to himself, I
cannot imagine; unless, indeed, his mind is one grand vacuum."
"The wisdom of a man's reflections must always be beyond a woman's
comprehension," he returned. "Some men have made great mistakes by
forgetting this."
"Then, of course, you'll never marry," Patty ventured. "You wouldn't
want a companion who couldn't understand you."
"Oh! I may join 'the noble army of martyrs,'" he answered in the
same bantering tone he had been using. "Every man will be ruled by
some women; and with a wife his resistance would be a trifle less
restrained, you see."
"I have heard it said," she answered, "that, as love increased, good
manners decreased; but I never made such an application of it."
"Of course," he began, "having a legal mind, I regard a wife as a piece
of personal property, and"--
"There!" she interrupted. "It is perfectly maddening to hear you talk
in that way about women. I hate it."
"I'm sure I don't mean any disrespect," he answered soberly. "I should
have married long ago, had I been able."
"Whom would you have married?" she demanded. "You speak as if you had
only to make your selection, and any girl would be glad of the chance
to take you."
"That is because I think so highly of the penetration of your sex,"
he retorted, with a return to his light manner; adding, with some
bitterness, "but, when a man is as poor as a church mouse, he can have
as little thought of marrying, and being given in marriage, as the
angels in heaven."
"Don't be profane. You have your profession."
"Oh! I earn enough to keep soul and body together, if I don't do too
much for either. But this is not a cheerful subject, even if it were in
good taste for me to be complaining of poverty. Did you know my nephews
came last night?"
"Yes; and I am so glad! It is always pleasant to have Hazard Breck
here. Of course, they'll be at the picnic."
"Yes. Frank, you know, has graduated, and Hazard is a junior. It is two
years since I have seen them."
"They probably feel ten years older. We are to have company too.
Grandmother is coming."
With such discourse they rolled over the country road towards Mackerel
Cove. Under the gay surface of the conversation was a sting for Patty
in the lawyer's allusion to his poverty. He was usually very reticent
about his affairs; and it may have been for that reason that the
gossips of Montfield called him "close." "He's close-mouthed and he's
close-fisted," Mrs. Brown was accustomed to say; "and most generally
the things go together."
To Patty's thinking few faults could be worse. To an open-handed
Sanford, avarice was the most disgusting of vices; and this fatal
defect in her companion was like the feet of clay of the image of gold.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PICNIC.
Seated upon a stone which happened to be clean enough for even her
exacting taste, Mrs. Sanford was conversing with Mrs. Brown, a frowsy
lady whose house-keeping was a perennial source of offence to her
order-loving neighbor. Mrs. Brown was a miracle of tardiness,--the
last-comer at every gathering, the last guest to depart. Indeed, so
fixed were her friends in the habit of expecting her to be behindhand,
that she could have chosen no surer method of throwing into confusion
any plan wherein she was concerned than by appearing for once on time;
which, to do her justice, she never did. "She is so slow," Will Sanford
once said, "that she always looks solemn at a wedding, because the
grief of the last funeral has just got into her face. Her smiles appear
by the time another funeral comes."
On the present occasion Mrs. Brown had reached Mackerel Cove just
as preparations for dinner were being completed. Mrs. Sanford, who
had been superintending the making of the coffee, had seated her
plump person upon the stone mentioned to rest and get cool, when the
late-comer appeared. Mrs. Brown sank languidly upon the fallen trunk of
a tree.
"I didn't know as I should ever get here," she said. "My girl's gone
mad."
"Gone mad!" ejaculated the doctor's wife. "I knew something dreadful
would happen when you found that silver dollar, and kept it: that's
always unlucky. Is she really mad? You don't mean Selina?"
"No, not Selina, but the hired girl. She must be mad. She poked all my
hair-pins down a crack in the floor. Selina thinks she did it to plague
me; but I know she's crazy."
"I declare! The trouble you have with your girls beats every thing I
ever heard of. I should think you'd rather do the work yourself than
have them about."
"Oh! I must have a girl to shirk things on to," said Mrs. Brown.
"Shirk!" exclaimed Mrs. Sanford. "Lawful sakes! I don't have time
to shirk. If I hadn't so much to do, I might find time to plan and
contrive to get rid of half my work; but now"--
The words died upon her lips as she caught sight of a buggy coming
along the shady wood-road. In it sat her daughter Patty, chatting
happily with Tom Putnam. The sight filled her with amazement little
mixed with pleasure. The lawyer might be a man after her husband's
heart; but he was not after hers. He constantly said things she could
not understand; he oppressed her as might an unguessed conundrum;
and, moreover, he was a dozen years older than her daughter. Clarence
Toxteth filled the measure of Mrs. Sanford's requirements when she
considered her daughter's matrimonial prospects, which, thrifty
housewife that she was, was not seldom. The young man was rich,
good-looking, trimly dressed; and Mrs. Sanford appreciated to the
full the advantages of the possession of money. The worthy lady was
not without a deeply-seated suspicion that Patty, in the depth of her
heart, preferred the lawyer to his more pretentious rival. The girl was
like her father, and looked at things in a way wholly unaccountable
to her mother, who saw only the other side of the shield. To-day Mrs.
Sanford had been at ease in her mind, believing Toxteth to have been
the chosen escort. She chanced to be out of the way when he arrived at
the picnic-ground, and supposed her daughter to be about somewhere.
What, then, was her dismay to perceive her driving up with Mr. Putnam,
as boldly and gayly as if she had never deceived her family!
"Is dinner ready, mother?" called the transgressor lightly, as they
drove up. "I am as hungry as three polar bears."
"Good-morning, Mrs. Sanford!" the lawyer said. "There is a delightful
smell in the air, as if you had been making coffee."
"So I have," she returned, a little mollified by the compliment
implied. "You are just in time: they are blowing the horn now."
And indeed, through the beautiful beech-woods rang the shrill cry
of a tin dinner-horn blown by lusty lungs. It sounded harsh enough
in the sylvan spaces; but not Pan himself could have piped more
enchantingly into the ears of the hungry country people scattered
about in the grove. The young folk came flocking towards the spot
where table-cloths, spread upon the mossy ground, were heaped with
that profusion of cake and other sweetmeats, and scarcity of any thing
eatable, by which a picnic-dinner is usually characterized. A pleasant
chattering and bustle followed, while the company seated themselves
around upon stones, stumps, moss-covered roots, or the green turf
itself. Harmless practical jokes were played, clumsy attempts at wit
laughed over, clever ruses employed by people who wished their being
together to have the appearance of the merest accident; and amid the
chatter, the laughter, and the rattle of crockery, the feast began.
Mrs. Sanford had pressed Mr. Putnam into her service to pour the
coffee, knowing of old that he was steady-handed and quick-witted, and
feeling not unwilling, moreover, to draw him away from Patty's side.
That young lady, being thus left to her own devices, curled herself
up in a soft mossy nook, between two huge beech-roots, the tree-trunk
behind her.
"I have a crow to pluck with you," the voice of Clarence Toxteth said
at her elbow.
"Oh, let's not pluck a crow!" she answered, without turning her head.
"It isn't pleasant; and nobody feels any better for it."
"But why did you tell me you were coming with Mr. Blood?"
"I beg your pardon," she said, laughing, and turning to flash her dark
eyes upon him. "I only said he came before you to ask me, and so he
did. You gave up too easily. I knew by that, that you didn't really
care whether I came with you or not."
"Care? I did care. I thought you had promised him: so I brought Miss
Purdy, and you know I can't endure her."
"I am sure she ought to be obliged to you."
"Well, there was nobody else."
"Was that the reason you came for me?" Patty said saucily. "Flossy,
what are you wandering about so for?"
"I am seeking what I may devour," Flossy answered, seating herself at
her cousin's feet. "But I do not find it. I'd like a square chunk out
of the side of a cow or a chicken. The sight of these deserts of cake
makes me sick."
"Make up your mind what you really would like," Clarence said,
"and I'll order it of the wood-nymphs. What will you have
first,--turtle-soup?"
"Oh, dear, no!" Flossy answered. "I like to know what I am eating, and
turtle-soup is all green fat and things. I'll eat a little pop-corn, if
you please. So saying I gayly munch and munch like an educated mooly
cow. Patty, where did you pick up Mr. Putnam?"
"Nowhere. He came after me."
"You didn't put him off with an evasive answer," Toxteth said in her
ear.
"He didn't ask me," she retorted. "He only told me he was coming to
take me."
"You girls like to be bullied," the young man muttered crossly.
"Mercy sakes!" cried the shrill voice of Mrs. Brown, behind the tree at
whose roots they were seated. "I thought I heard dishes rattling; but I
didn't think dinner'd begun."
"Not only begun, but finished," Patty cried, springing up. "Let's go
down to the beach, Flossy."
CHAPTER V.
A MISHAP.
Mackerel Cove was surrounded by high banks, the path from the grove
above being very steep and difficult. A rude hand-rail had been nailed
to the trees to assist the visitor in descending; but the feat was
still any thing but an easy one.
As Flossy and her cousin, with young Toxteth following, took the path
through the grove to the top of the embankment, they fell in with
several of their friends going in the same direction.
Clarence saw, to his intense annoyance, Mr. Putnam take his place at
Patty's side; while he himself was forced to drop into step with Miss
Purdy. The etiquette of Montfield was rather primitive, and demanded
that a gentleman should bestow his attentions exclusively upon the
lady whose escort he was for the time being. A picnic was a gathering
of couples, not a homogeneous mixture of friends; and the young people
trooped along in pairs, with a prim and decorous consciousness of doing
the proper thing.
Miss Flora Sturtevant, however, was above any such rustic etiquette.
Miss Sturtevant, like Flossy, was a Boston girl; and although at home
there stretched between them that fathomless abyss which is supposed
to divide the South End from the sacred precincts of the West End,
they met on a common footing at Montfield; and Miss Plant was too
good-humored to show the superiority which her residence might give
her reason to feel. Flora was a cousin of Mrs. Brown, who had passed
several summers in Montfield, pecuniary reasons having forbidden those
excursions to more expensive resorts for which her heart yearned.
She was rather stylish, and her pursuit of Mr. Putnam was scarcely
disguised. She was several years his senior; but nature, having
fashioned her face so that she had never looked young, now apportioned
to her some compensation by preserving her from looking old. On the
present occasion she hovered about the lawyer, asking his help at
every obstacle, and so managing, that, when they came to the edge of
the embankment, Patty, who had been gathering the red clusters of the
bunch-berry and the silvery blossoms of the "wild everlasting," was a
few steps behind. Mr. Putnam turned to the latter, and held out his
hand.
"O Mr. Putnam!" Flora cried, stepping into the narrow descending path,
"do hold me! Oh, I shall fall! I shall fall!"
She clutched his arm, and dragged him forward so violently, that it
was with difficulty he retained his foothold, supporting as he did
the entire weight of Miss Sturtevant. He caught at the rail with so
sudden a wrench, that it was started from its fastenings. He was able,
however, to get the young lady to the bottom unhurt, although they
rushed down the path in a way scarcely dignified, nearly overturning
Burleigh Blood and Flossy, who had just descended. Patty was less
fortunate. She had stepped forward, and extended her hand to take that
of her escort, only to see that gentleman seized, and whirled down the
precipitous way like an unfortunate sinner in the clutch of fiends, as
portrayed in the frescos of the old masters. Thrown from her balance,
she sought the hand-rail; but, already loosened, it gave way, and
she plunged headlong. Fortunately Putnam had time to turn before she
reached him, half falling, half running; and he caught her in his arms.
"What a performance!" she exclaimed, laughing and breathless. "I came
down like a falling star. I beg your pardon."
She extricated herself from the arms of the lawyer, and planted her
feet on the shingle, beginning to smooth her dress. Suddenly she gave a
smothered scream, and for the first time in her life fainted dead away,
falling back again into the arms of her escort. She had sprained her
ankle badly, but in the excitement had not noticed the mishap, until
her weight was thrown upon the injured limb.
"And then and there was hurrying to and fro." Patty's cry was
re-enforced by a shriek loud, shrill, and long, from Miss Sturtevant,
who, with no apparent provocation, threw her arms about the lawyer's
neck, and went into violent hysterics.
"For Heaven's sake, Burleigh," Mr. Putnam cried angrily, "take that
girl off!--Spread out that shawl, please, Miss Plant.--Bring some
water, Will."
Miss Flora's hysterics were not so violent as to need any stronger
restorative than the lawyer's words, and she left him unhampered. Under
the kindly offices of her friends, Patty soon opened her eyes, and sat
up upon the shawls which had been hastily spread for her.
"Oh, what a goose I am!" she cried, as the situation dawned upon her.
"I never fainted in my life before; but my ankle hurt terribly."
Dr. Sanford was soon on the spot, and proceeded to put a compress upon
the injured limb; the girls standing about in a protecting circle. Mrs.
Sanford stood upon the bank above, unable to descend, but showering
down pathetic remarks.
"I knew something would happen," she said. "I had a foreboding in my
mind when I put my left foot on my right shoe--no, I mean my right foot
on my left shoe. That isn't what I mean, either. But I told Charles
then I doubted something would happen to this picnic.--Does it pain
you much, Patty? I can't get down without breaking my neck, and that
wouldn't do you any good.--Do you think she's lamed for life, Charles?"
"Father," Patty said, forcing a smile, "I am really very comfortable
now, and don't need you: so you can climb up, and quiet mother."
Patty now arranged herself picturesquely upon a pile of shawls as on a
divan, and held an impromptu levee. Flora Sturtevant persisted in going
down upon her knees, and with a flood of tears begging forgiveness for
having caused the accident.
"Don't be a goose, Miss Sturtevant!" the other laughed. "It was my own
fault--or it isn't anybody's fault. There is salt water enough here
now: so don't shed any more tears."
Patty was a leader among the girls of Montfield; and now they served
her like a queen. They brought her various rustic treasures,--red
checkerberries, long wreaths of ground-pine, the white, waxy
Indian-pipes, and mosses from the grove or from the water. Burleigh
Blood sat for half an hour breaking open live mussels; and when at last
a pearl rewarded his persistence, he brought it to her as proudly as if
it had been already set in a betrothal ring. Dessie Farnum and Emily
Purdy came, dragging between them a crooked tree-root, washed ashore
by the waves, which was pronounced just the thing for the back of a
rustic chair; and Clarence Toxteth undertook that the chair should be
manufactured accordingly.
The afternoon sped on happily and brightly. The salt breeze always
inspired Tom Putnam; and he was the life of the party. Older than
most of them, and passing for a taciturn man, because he talked with
few people, the lawyer had yet a vivid fancy, a quick wit, and a dry
humor, which made him a charming companion to those who shared his
friendship. The day, the lovely scene, the sea-air, the presence of the
girl he worshipped, and her escape from a fall which might have been so
much more serious, all tended to render him joyous; and his gladness
overflowed to all the company.
Not all the picnickers, however, remained with Patty. Frank Breck
wanted to talk with Ease Apthorpe; and Flora Sturtevant longed for the
society of Mr. Putnam. Being unable to compass their desires, the two
were forced to look to each other for consolation, and went strolling
among the rocks in an aimless fashion. Flora had known Frank too well
to waste upon him those coquetries which she lavished upon his uncle.
They had been neighbors in their young days, and had at various times
been useful to each other: they had reached a period of intimacy where
many of the fictions which disguise the true purposes of conversation
were between them laid aside, although it is doubtful if they were the
more honest in consequence.
The two strolled for some distance in comparative silence. Flora
stopped at length by a rock which the waves had fashioned into the rude
likeness of a seat; and here she seated herself with a deft adjustment
of the blue draperies of her yachting dress. "She gets herself up
well," her companion mused. "She certainly doesn't look a day older
than she did five years ago."
"Frank," the lady said, breaking the silence, "wasn't it the Samoset
and Brookfield stock that Montfield people lost so heavily on?"
"Yes," he answered, dropping upon the shingle. "Uncle Tom has a small
fortune in the bonds, if they were worth any thing. Half the people in
town got bitten on it."
"Then I suppose the bonds could be bought for a song."
"No doubt. Why? Are you going into railroad speculation?"
"I may," she said thoughtfully, looking out over the sea, and letting
the quiet of the afternoon envelop them a moment. "If"--She watched a
white sail disappear over the horizon's rim, before she completed her
sentence. "If I only had a hold over uncle Jacob, I'd make my fortune;
but I haven't."
"How?" Breck asked.
"Never mind, I haven't, so _n'importe_. If there's an opening, I'll
tell you. What was it you had to tell me, by the way?"
"I want help," he answered; "but I don't see how you can help me. You
have had some clever ideas, though, before now."
"Thanks!" she returned, turning the rings upon her white fingers. "Say
on."
"It is about that Smithers woman."
"Who is she?"
"Nonsense! Don't bother to pretend you don't know, Flora. You can't
expect me to be honest, unless you are."
"Well," Miss Sturtevant smiled, "let us assume that I do know who
the Smithers woman is. An old friend of your father, if I remember
correctly."
"Bother!" he said impatiently. "Why do you tease so to-day? Do you want
me to relate all the details of her disreputable relations with my
father?"
"Oh, no! Nothing disreputable," Flora exclaimed with a deprecatory
gesture of her small hands. "But what about her now?"
"You've heard how madly fond of her old Mullen became in his last
days?"
"Yes: it was as romantic as it was improper."
"Mullen put into her hands papers which related to my father's affairs,
and I want them."
"It is strange how that woman held both your father and Mr. Mullen,"
Miss Sturtevant said reflectively. "I should like to see her."
She seemed to become more and more indifferent as the conversation
proceeded; while, in reality, reasons of which Breck could know
nothing, made her intensely interested.
"She is at Samoset," Frank said. "You may see her any day."
"And she has these papers?" Flora asked.
"No, she has not."
"Who has?"
"Will you help me get them?"
"If I can, of course I will."
"I'll make it worth your while," he said, taking out his tablets.
He leaned towards her, and wrote a name before her eyes, as if he
feared to speak what some unseen listener might overhear. Then, in
answer to her puzzled look, he added an explanatory word or two.
* * * * *
The afternoon sun was declining swiftly when the party prepared to
leave the beautiful cove. Many of the elder people had gone, Mrs.
Sanford among them, the worthy dame having first come to the top of the
bank, and poured out a flood of directions to her daughter, to all of
which, an impartial historian is compelled to add, Patty gave not the
slightest heed.
A rope had been fastened to a tree standing near the head of the path
leading up the embankment, and supplied the place of the broken rail.
When Patty was ready, a discussion arose how she should be got up
the steep. Putnam cut it short by taking her, blushing as a modest
maiden should, in his arms, and climbing up with her, she assisting by
clinging to the rope.
"You are something of a load," he said, puffing as they reached the top.
"I shall be as heavy as mother some day, I don't doubt," she replied
demurely; "but it isn't grateful of you to speak of it, when I pulled
you up by the rope."
"You are not the first lady who has pulled a man up by a rope," he
replied, tucking her into the carriage with great tenderness; "but they
generally do it by means of the hangman."
CHAPTER VI.
CHIT-CHAT.
Three carriages followed in succession the homeward road; the first
contained Patty and Putnam; the second Clarence Toxteth and Miss Purdy;
the third, Burleigh Blood and Flossy.
Young Blood found himself unexpectedly at his ease with his companion.
The awe he felt for her as a stranger, and because of her quaint
speech, had largely worn away. Still he regarded her rather doubtfully,
as one looks at something dangerous to handle. Her tiny figure, her
quick, nervous motions, reminded him constantly of a humming-bird, and
he had a fearful if vague sense of the danger of crushing her by the
mere force of his huge presence. The great honest fellow, almost a
giant, could have taken her up with one hand, his gentlest movements
seeming overpoweringly forcible when exerted in behalf of his _petite_
companion; and of this he was unpleasantly conscious.
Burleigh had known Patty Sanford from childhood in the way that
everybody in Montfield knew everybody else. They had been companions at
school, where Burleigh was only one of a dozen who believed themselves
ready to lay down their lives for the doctor's daughter, or--a far
greater proof of devotion--to share with her their last apple, or
handful of chestnuts. It is true that the social status of the Bloods,
so far as such distinctions were marked in Montfield, was below that of
the Sanfords; and Miss Mullen of Mullen House, the aristocrat of the
village, wondered that Patty could associate with everybody as she did.
But Patty, while secretly proud enough of her family, was democratic
at least in the treatment of her admirers; and young Blood found as
warm a welcome at the doctor's cottage as did Clarence Toxteth. With
Patty, Burleigh was less shy than with any girl of his acquaintance,
and yet was far from being at his ease, even in her presence. With her
cousin, whom he had known only a few weeks, he was at first painfully
diffident. Her manner so completely ignored this shyness, however, that
it was gradually wearing away.
"I do hope Patty's ankle isn't hurt so that she can't take her part in
the theatricals," Flossy said as they rode along.
"Dr. Sanford thought," he returned, "that is, he said, she'd be all
right in a week or so, if she'd keep still."
"She never did keep still," answered Flossy. "But I'll do my best to
make her now. Did you ever play in amateur theatricals?"
"I? Oh, no! of course not."
"There's no of course about it; only of course you'll play now. This
bashful man, you know, is just your part."
"This bashful man?" he repeated doubtfully.
"Oh, yes! In this play, you know. Patty and I both say you'll do it
capitally."
In despite of her assurance that he knew, Burleigh was painfully
conscious that he did not; and, indeed, her way of designating every
thing as "this, you know," or "that other, you know," was sufficiently
confusing.
"I have had such fun in theatricals!" Flossy ran on, not noticing his
puzzled expression. "We played 'Trying It On,' one Christmas, and I was
Mr. Tittlebat. I was so nervous, that I repeated stage-directions and
all. And such a time as I had to get a man's suit small enough!"
Her companion involuntarily glanced from his own figure to the tiny
maiden by his side. She understood the look, and burst into a gay laugh.
"Oh, dear! I should have been lost in your clothes," she cried. He
blushed as red as the big clover she had pinned in his buttonhole, and
modestly cast down his eyes.
"In that other, you know," she chattered on, "they wanted me to take
the part of Jane. That was after I had been Mr. Tittlebat, and I felt
insulted."
"Insulted? Why, because it wasn't a man's part?"
"Oh, dear, no! I don't like to act men's parts. But I hunted and hunted
and hunted, and it was forever before I could find it; and then this
was all it was. [_Enter_ JANE.] Mrs. BROWN.--Jane, bring my bonnet.
[_Exit_ JANE.] [_Enter_ JANE.] Mrs. BROWN.--That will do, Jane. [_Exit_
JANE.] Of course I wouldn't take it."
"What was there insulting in that?" asked Burleigh, to whom the brevity
of the part would have been a strong recommendation.
"Why, in the first place I couldn't find it; and then, when I did, it
was only 'Exit Jane.' You wouldn't want to exit all the time, would
you? I wouldn't 'exit Jane' for 'em."
"Well," he answered, laughing at her emphatic speech; "it is just as
anybody feels: but I think I'd rather 'exit' than any thing else."
"Did you ever see 'Ruy Blas'?" Flossy asked. "You ought to see that.
All the ladies cry; or at least they all take out their handkerchiefs:
this man is so cruel, you know. And it's lovely where she says,--she's
the queen, you know,--'Ruy Blas, I pity, I forgive, and I love you!'
Oh, it's too lovely for any thing."
"Is that the place where the ladies all take out their handkerchiefs?"
"No, that isn't the time _I_ cry."
"Why not?" Burleigh asked, his bashfulness forgotten. "Because you have
shed all your tears?"
"Oh, no!" she answered. "But I never cry until the music strikes up."
In the carriage before Burleigh's, theatrical matters were also the
subject of conversation.
"Of course, Patty can't take her part now," said Emily Purdy.
"Then we shall have to put off our play until she can," Clarence
replied, somewhat to the discontent of his companion, who wished to be
asked to take the part assigned to Patty.
A theatrical entertainment was to be given for the benefit of the
Unitarian Church; that edifice being, so to speak, decidedly out at the
elbows; and the young people of the society were all much interested.
"Of course," Miss Purdy said rather spitefully, "every thing must be
put off for her. She needn't have been flirting with Mr. Putnam. I
wonder if she is engaged to him."
Clarence should have been wise enough to let this pass unanswered;
but his annoyance got the better of his prudence. He found it hard to
forgive Patty's rejection of his invitation to the picnic; and before
he thought he blurted out what he would instantly have been glad to
recall.
"Of course not. She told me she thought him an old miser."
"Did she?" his companion cried, her eyes sparkling maliciously. "I
didn't think she'd abuse a person behind his back, and then accept his
invitations. If you only knew what she said about you!"
But Toxteth, in spite of the slip he had made, was a gentleman, and
couldn't be brought to ask what Patty had said about him; so that, as
Miss Purdy hardly thought it best to offer the information unsolicited,
he remained forever in ignorance of the careless remark about his
foppishness, which would have been envenomed by the tongue of the
mischief-maker who longed to repeat it.
"I ought not to have told what Patty Sanford said," he remarked. "She
didn't mean it. Indeed, I am not sure but I said it, and she only
assented. Of course it should never have been repeated. I beg you'll
forget it."
"I never forget any thing," laughed Emily; "but I never should mention
what was told me in confidence."
In the first carriage of the three, the lawyer and his companion rode
for some time in silence. Each was endeavoring to imagine the thoughts
of the other, and each at the same time carrying on an earnest train
of reflections. With people in love, silence is often no less eloquent
than speech, and perhaps is more often truly interpreted.
Mr. Putnam was the first to speak.
"You are twenty-one," he said, with no apparent connection.
"I am twenty-one," she answered, not failing to remark that the words
showed that his thoughts had been of her.
"A girl at twenty-one," he continued, "is old enough to know her own
mind."
"This girl at twenty-one certainly knows her own mind."
"Humph! I suppose so--or thinks she does."
Another long silence followed, more intense than before. Both were
conscious of a secret excitement,--an electric condition of the mental
atmosphere. At last Putnam, as if the question of ages was of the most
vital interest, spoke again.
"I am thirty-two," he said.
"You are thirty-two," she echoed.
"Do you think that so old?"
"That depends"--
"Well, too old for marrying, say?"
"That depends too," she answered, her color heightening, in spite of
her determination not to look conscious.
"To marry," he continued, "say,--for the sake of example merely,--say a
girl of twenty-one. You ought to know what a lady of twenty-one would
think."
"I know a great deal that I should never think of telling."
"But I am in earnest. You see this is an important question."
"You had better ask the lady herself."
"_The_ lady? I said _a_ lady. Besides, as I said this morning
(pardon my repeating it), 'the little god of love won't turn the
spit--spit--spit.'"
"Of course you are not too old," Patty said with a sudden flash of the
eyes, "to marry a girl of twenty--if she would accept you."
"I said twenty-one," he returned; "but the difference isn't material.
You've evaded the question. What I want to get at is, wouldn't she
think I was too old to accept?"
"Not if she loved you."
"But if she didn't?"
"Why, then she wouldn't marry you, if you were young as Hazard, as big
as Burleigh, and as gorgeously arrayed as Clarence Toxteth. You had
best not let any woman know, however, that you think her love meaner
than your own."
"I do not understand."
"A woman, if she loved a man at all, would find it hard to forgive him
for believing her unwilling to share his bitter things as well as his
sweet."
"Um! But suppose he thought it selfish to ask her to share the bitter
things?"
"That is like a man!" Patty said impatiently. "But what nonsense we are
talking! Won't it be funny to hear Bathalina condole with me? She'll
quote 'Watts and Select' by the quantity, and sing the most doleful
minors about the house to cheer me up. For every one of mother's signs
she'll have a verse of Scripture, or a hymn."
"There is as much variety in love," Mr. Putnam said, returning to the
subject they had been discussing, "there is as much variety in love as
in candy."
"And as much difference in taste," she retorted. "For my part, I should
hate a love that was half chalk or flour. But I don't wish to talk of
love. I hope my friends will come and see me, now I am lame, or I shall
die of loneliness."
"I'll send the Breck boys over," the lawyer said. "Hazard is very good
company."
"Of course their uncle," she said demurely, "would come to look after
them."
"Perhaps," he replied. "But who would look after their uncle?"
CHAPTER VII.
A BUSINESS INTERVIEW.
Whatever else Flora Sturtevant might or might not be, she at least was
energetic, and what she had to do she did at once and with her might.
Although she returned from the picnic at Mackerel Cove very weary, she
did not rest until she had written a dainty missive to Jacob Wentworth,
the brother of her late step-father. The answer came on the evening of
the following day in this telegram:--
"Will be in Boston Saturday. Come to office at twelve.
"JACOB WENTWORTH."
It was to meet this appointment that Miss Sturtevant passed leisurely
down Milk Street about noon Saturday. The signal-ball upon the
Equitable Building fell just as she passed the Old South Church; but
she seemed not disposed to quicken her steps.
"Uncle Jacob will be cross if he has to wait; but I think I like him
best a little cross. I wonder how he'll act. I must make my cards tell:
I never shall hold a better hand, and the stake is worth playing for.
How tremendously hot it is! How do people live in the city in August!
Next summer I'll be at the seashore, if this goes through all straight.
I shall be independent of everybody then."
Musing in this agreeable fashion, Miss Flora turned the corner of
Congress Street, and walked on until she entered one of those noble
buildings which have sprung up since the great fire, making Boston's
business streets among the finest in the world. Miss Sturtevant
adjusted her dress a little in the elevator, looked to the buttons of
her gloves, and glanced over her general trigness, as might an admiral
about to go into action. An inward smile softened her lips without
disturbing their firmness, as she entered an office upon the glass of
whose door was inscribed her uncle's name.
"Good-morning, uncle Jacob," she said brightly.
A white-haired man, with small, shrewd eyes which twinkled beneath
bushy brows, looked up from the letter he was writing. His forehead was
high and retreating, his nose suggestive of good dinners; and his whole
bearing had that firmness only obtained by the use as a tonic of the
elixir of gold. Flora had been from childhood forbidden to address him
as uncle, and he understood at once that she felt sure of her ground
to-day, or she would not have ventured upon the term. The lawyer paused
almost perceptibly before he answered her salutation.
"Good-morning," he said. "Sit down."
"Thanks," answered the visitor, leisurely seating herself. "This office
is so much nicer than your old one! I hope you are well, uncle."
"I am well enough," he returned gruffly. "What is this wonderful
business which brings you to Boston?"
"You know I always do you a good turn when I can," remarked Miss
Sturtevant by way of introduction.
"Yes," he assented. "You find it pays."
"You may or may not remember," she went on with great deliberation,
"that you once requested me to discover for you--or for a client, you
said--what became of certain papers which you drew up for Mr. Mullen of
Montfield."
"I remember," the other said, his eyes twinkling more than ever.
"I had hard work enough," Flora continued, "to trace them as far as I
did, and little gratitude I got for my pains."
"You did not discover where the papers were?"
"I found that they had been in the possession of Mrs. Smithers."
"Her name," Mr. Wentworth remarked, pressing softly together the tips
of his plump fingers, "is not Mrs. Smithers. She never married. It is
best to be exact."
"Miss Clemens, then," said Flora. "I know now where those papers are."
"You do?" the old lawyer cried, at last showing some excitement. "Where
are they?"
"That is my secret," she answered, with the faintest smile, and a nod
of her head. "When is that directors' meeting?"
"Next Tuesday," replied Mr. Wentworth.
He knew his interlocutor well enough to allow her to take her own way
in the conversation, fully aware that she would not idly turn from the
subject in hand.
"And you then decide whether to buy the Samoset and Brookfield Branch?"
"Yes," he said. "Do you object to telling me how you discovered that?"
"I have my living to earn," she answered, smiling, "and it is necessary
that I keep my eyes and ears open. Could you promise me, if you chose,
that the decision should be to buy the Samoset and Brookfield Branch?"
"If I chose, I dare say I could," the lawyer affirmed. "My own vote,
and others upon which I can count, will turn the scale."
"Very well. Do you accept my terms?"
"By George!" exclaimed Wentworth, slapping his palm upon his knee.
"What a long head you have, Flora! You are like your mother, and she
was a devilish smart woman, or she wouldn't have married my brother."
"It would have been to my advantage," Flora said, "if she had taken
him for her first husband, instead of her second. Those precious
half-sisters of mine would hardly hold their heads so high now, if she
had. But do you agree?"
"If I understand," he said, "you offer me your information for my vote."
"For your assurance," she corrected, "that the vote is affirmative."
"What is your game?" demanded the old man. "What assurance have I that
your information is correct?"
"Only my word," she said coolly. "I will tell you the name of the
person having those papers, and where that person is to be found, the
day I have proof that the affirmative vote is passed. You do as you
like about accepting my terms."
It is needless to narrate further the conversation between the two:
suffice it to say that Miss Flora was in the end triumphant. The wily
lawyer determined to find his own account in the purposed vote, by
the immediate purchase of Samoset and Brookfield Railroad stocks. One
question Miss Sturtevant asked before she left the office.
"Had these papers any relation to Mr. Breck or his property?" she asked.
"No," Mr. Wentworth answered, evidently surprised. "What put that into
your head?"
"Nothing," she said. "Good-morning."
And the enterprising woman, going to the bank, drew every dollar
she could raise, and then hastened to catch the afternoon train to
Montfield.
"Frank Breck," she said to herself, as she rolled along, "you are
hardly a match for me, after all."
Within the next few days Miss Flora was very busy. She astonished
the business-men of Samoset, a village half a dozen miles west of
Montfield, by going about, purchasing the old Samoset and Brookfield
stock, which everybody knew to be worthless, and which was to be had
for a song. The lady was full of a thousand affectations and kittenish
wiles in her leisure hours; but, when attending to business, she showed
the hard, shrewd nature which lay beneath this soft exterior. She
drove sharp bargains, and when, at last, the vote of the directors of
the great Brookfield Valley Railroad to purchase the Branch became
known, Miss Sturtevant's name was in every mouth, not always uncoupled
with curses. Many a man and woman whose all had been sunk in the Branch
found it hard to forgive this woman for the advantage she had taken;
and she was accused of a sharpness not to be clearly distinguished
from dishonesty; for country people see stock operations in a light
very different from that of Wall Street. That Flora was not without
consideration for the property of others, however, is proved by the
following note, which she wrote the Sunday after her interview with Mr.
Wentworth:--
DEAR MR. PUTNAM,--My interest in your welfare is too deep for me
to stop to consider how you will regard my writing you. I heard in
Boston yesterday, that the stock of the Samoset and Brookfield is
likely to increase in value very soon. I tell you this _in strictest
confidence_, as I have heard it intimated that you own some of the
stock.
Very sincerely yours,
FLORA STURTEVANT.
CHAPTER VIII.
ON THE PIAZZA.
The life of Bathalina Clemens was one long wail in the past-potential
tense. "I might have been" was the refrain of all her days.
"I might ha' been Peter Mixon's wife, if my sinful pride hadn't a made
me high-minded," she said continually. "How'd I know he'd give up so
easily, 'cause I said I wouldn't let him lick the ground I walked on?"
The nasal melancholy of camp-meeting minors floated after her angular
form like the bitter odor from wormwood or tansy. She reproved the
levity of those about her with an inner satisfaction at having "borne
testimony;" and particularly did she labor with Patty, whose high
spirits were a continual thorn to Bathalina.
"It's so like the Amorites and the Hittites and Hivites," she groaned,
"to be always singing and laughing and dancing about! How'll you feel
when you come to your latter end? Would you dance on your dying-bed?"
"Probably not," Patty answered, laughing more than ever; "but I can't
tell."
The spraining of Patty's ankle seemed to Bathalina a direct visitation
of Providence in reproof for her vain merry-making.
"I knew some judgment would happen to you," the servant said. "'My
sinfulness has been visited upon me.' If you'd only live as you'll wish
you had when you come to stand around your dying-bed!"
"Bathalina," Patty said sedately, "I am glad you mention it. I intend
to behave until my ankle gets better; and I wanted to ask you if you'd
mind taking my place in the theatricals we are getting up."
"You may mock now," retorted Bathalina wrathfully; "but at the last
you'll bite like an adder, and sting like a serpent.--Mrs. Sanford, I
came to tell you that I am going this afternoon to the funeral of my
cousin Sam's first wife's child."
"Is she dead?" asked Mrs. Sanford. "I hadn't heard of it; though, now,
I remember I did hear a dog howl night before last."
"I suppose she's dead," the servant answered; "because, when I was over
there Saturday, Jane said to me, says she, 'We sha'n't churn till after
Emma dies.' And she wouldn't ha' said that if she warn't a-goin' to
die soon. And, as that family always has their funerals Wednesday, I
thought I better go over."
"But to-night is bread night," Mrs. Sanford objected; while Patty sank
back in convulsions of laughter.
"Well'm, I'll mix it up early to-morrow morning."
"No," the housewife said decidedly; "none of your bread raised by
daylight in my house. I'll see to it myself to-night. Grandmother
Sanford is coming to-day; and she knows what good bread is, if anybody
does."
"Mother," Patty asked, as the door closed behind Bathalina, "do you
suppose Bath is as crazy as she seems? She talks like a perfect idiot."
"Well," her mother answered meditatively, "sometimes I think that
perhaps maybe she isn't; and then, again, I don't know but after all I
can't tell but she is."
Later in the forenoon Patty lay upon a light willow lounge which Will
had placed for her on the piazza. It was a lovely summer's day. The
bees hummed drowsily among the flowers, and Patty had drifted halfway
from waking into sleeping. Through an opening in the vines which shaded
the piazza, she watched the clouds moving slowly through the far, still
spaces of blue ether, one shape insensibly changing into another as
they passed.
The girl was thinking of nothing higher or greater than her suitors,
perhaps having meditated sufficiently upon graver subjects in the days
since her accident, now making almost a week. She was not counting
her conquests; yet she had a pleasant consciousness of her power, and
recalled with satisfaction the compliments bestowed upon her in words
or attentions. The two nephews of Mr. Putnam, Frank and Hazard Breck,
had the previous afternoon called upon her; and the younger was of old
a devoted worshipper at her shrine. Hazard Breck was a fine, manly
fellow a year Patty's junior. He believed himself madly in love with
her; and indeed, in the fashion of pure-minded youth, he felt for her
that maiden passion which is light and sweetness without the heat and
wholesome bitter of a man's love.
As Patty lay watching the clouds, and enjoying the colors brought out
by the sunlight as it filtered through the leafy screen, she heard the
latch of the gate click. Without turning her head, she tried to guess
whose step it was coming up the gravel-walk, and rightly concluded it
must be that of Hazard Breck. He crossed the piazza, and came to her
side.
"Good-morning," he said, in a tone having something of the richness of
his uncle's voice. "Are you asleep, or awake?"
"Asleep," she answered, closing her eyes. "Isn't it a delicious morning
to sleep and dream?"
"What do you dream?"
"That you have good news to tell."
"You are no witch to guess that. You knew it from my voice."
"What is it?"
"Now I can torment you," he said, "as you did me last night. Guess."
"One never guesses in sleep."
"Dream it, then."
"I should dream that the sky had fallen, and you had caught larks."
"No, I haven't, worse luck. But you'll never get it."
"Then tell me."
"It is about uncle Tom," he said after some further bantering. "He's
had a windfall. The Samoset and Brookfield stock has gone up like a
rocket, and made his fortune. Isn't that jolly!"
"I know nothing about stocks," she answered; "but I'm glad he's made
his fortune."
"I'm just wild over it!" Hazard said. "It is so opportune!"
"Did he need it so much, then?" Patty asked, with a secret
consciousness that she was pumping her guest.
"Uncle Tom is so generous!" Breck answered.
"He has not usually had that reputation," she returned, dropping the
words slowly, one by one.
"I know," he said indignantly. "Of course I've no right to tell it,
because he has always insisted that I should not. But I'd like you,
at least, to know, and it can't do any harm to tell you now. He has
supported not only aunt Pamela, but Frank and me; and of course, with
two of us in college, it has been a hard pull on him."
"But I should think," she began, "that"--
"That we wouldn't have let him?" Hazard said as she hesitated. "I
wonder--I've always wondered that we did. But he insisted, and said we
could pay him back when we got our professions; and so we shall, of
course."
Patty was silent. She was filled with self-reproach for having
misjudged the lawyer. Why, from all her suitors, her heart had chosen
this elderly-looking man, his hair already threaded with gray, she
could have told as little as any one else. Love as a rule is so
illogical, that it is strange the ancients did not give the little
god the female sex; though it is true they approximated toward it
by representing him eternally blindfold. Something in Patty had
instinctively recognized the innate nobility of Mr. Putnam's character,
hidden beneath a somewhat cold exterior. Against the fascination
which his personality exercised over her, she struggled as a strong
will always struggles against the dominion of a stronger. She could
not easily yield herself up, and often treated the lawyer with less
tenderness, or even courtesy, than the rest of her suitors. At the
revelations of Hazard, however, she was much softened; and had Tom
Putnam been at hand--but he was not; and it is idle to speculate
upon chances, albeit the whole world is poised upon an IF, as a
rocking-stone upon its pivot.
CHAPTER IX.
AN ARRIVAL.
The silence of the pair upon the piazza was broken by the arrival at
the gate of Will, who had been to the station to meet grandmother
Sanford. Patty started up as if to run to meet her, but fell back.
"I forget that I am a cripple," she said.
"Mother, how do you do?" exclaimed Mrs. Sanford, appearing in the
doorway. "Do come up on to the piazza. I don't want to meet you on the
stairs, or I'll have a disappointment."
"Thee art as full of foolish superstitions as ever, daughter Britann,"
the old lady said, coming slowly up the steps on Will's arm.
"You dear little grandmother!" Patty cried. "How glad I am you've come!"
"I am glad to come," her grandmother answered, "and grieved much to
find thee lame. How dost thee do to-day?"
"Oh! I'm nicely. My ankle isn't painful at all. It would have been well
if I could have kept still. This is Hazard Breck, grandmother, Mr.
Putnam's nephew; you remember him.--And this, Hazard, is the nicest
grandmother that ever lived."
"Thee art the nephew of an honest man," the old lady said, "though he
is somewhat given to irreverent speech."
"He is the best of uncles, at least," Hazard answered warmly.
"He is a very respectable old gentleman," Mrs. Sanford said
patronizingly.
Will laughed meaningly, and glanced at his sister, whose cheeks
flushed. Mrs. Sanford's antipathy to the lawyer was no secret.
"Mr. Putnam is the finest man I know," Patty said, a trifle defiantly,
"except my father."
"Indeed?" Will said teasingly. "Grandmother," he added, "I think it is
all nonsense about Patty's ankle. She only makes believe, so as to have
everybody come and see her. She has a regiment of callers about the
house all the time."
"Hazard," Patty said, "if mother has no objections, I wish you'd please
toss Will into that bed of pinks."
"Objections!" exclaimed Mrs. Sanford. "Of course I've objections.
Your own brother and the most thrifty bed of pinks I've got! Patience
Sanford, I'm surprised at you!"
"If thee hast no objection, daughter Britann," grandmother Sanford said
with her quiet smile, "I'll go in and rest a little."
The old lady was the mother of Dr. Sanford and of Mrs. Plant. She was
a woman of strong character, and had adopted the Quaker faith after
her marriage, being converted to it by the labors of a woman who had
nursed her through a long illness. In her youth, grandmother Sanford
had perhaps been somewhat stern, as people of strong wills are apt
to be: but age had mellowed her, as it does all sound fruit; and now
she was so beloved by her friends and relatives, that they were ready
to quarrel for her society to such a degree, that she declared she
lived "on the circuit." She had keen perceptions, a quick sense of the
ludicrous, and a kindly heart, which endeared her to all. Even Mrs.
Sanford, who was undemonstrative in her affection for everybody else,
brightened visibly whenever her mother-in-law came, and showed her
pleasure in numerous kindly attentions. As for Patty, she worshipped
her grandmother, who understood her as no one else but Dr. Sanford did.
It was a peculiarity of the girl's to make few confidences; but to her
grandmother she would talk of matters which she mentioned to no one
else. Nor was the old lady less proud and fond of her grand-daughter;
and the love between them was, as is always love between youth and age,
a most beautiful thing to see.
Patty and Hazard Breck were scarcely left alone on the piazza, when a
new visitor appeared, in the person of Burleigh Blood. The young man
had been to the depot to see about the freight of the products of the
dairy-farm which he owned in company with his father, and had chosen
to improve his opportunity by calling at the Sanford cottage. At sight
of him, young Breck said good-by, and betook himself home by a short
cut across the garden, much to Patty's disappointment, as she wished to
hear further concerning his uncle's good fortune. She, however, sped
the parting, and welcomed the coming guest with a smile; and the young
farmer sat bashfully on the steps of the piazza before her.
"How big you are, Burleigh!" she said, glancing admiringly over his
breadth of shoulder and chest, the strong head, and the firm, large
hands.
"You told me that the other day," he said ruefully; "but I can't help
it."
"Help it? Of course not. What makes you think I meant any thing but
praise?"
"I thought I was so big and clumsy, that you must be making fun of me."
"Oh, no! I was only thinking what a mere morsel Flossy looked beside
you at the picnic."
He blushed, and pulled at his hat, after his usual awkward fashion; and
at that moment, as if summoned by a call-boy for her part in the play,
Flossy herself appeared in the doorway, bowl of pop-corn, and all.
"Good-morning, Mr. Blood," she said. "Can you tell why mutton always
tastes catty? As if it were cats, I mean."
"I--I never tasted any cats," he said with the utmost earnestness.
"No? Well, I wouldn't. But why didn't you come to inquire how I felt
after the picnic? Montfield manners and bonnets both need to be issued
in a revised edition."
"Montfield manners are perfect," Patty said, coming to the rescue of
the guest. "They cannot be improved. But you remember, Flossy, what
you had to ask Burleigh."
"Of course you understand, Mr. Blood," Flossy said, "that a lady's
request is a command."
"Yes, certainly."
"Very well. It is this I spoke to you about the other day, you know."
"I don't remember what you mean."
"You are to be my lover in this play."
"What?"
"You don't look over-charmed at the prospect," Flossy remarked coolly.
"You ought to feel honored. So saying, I will eat a few kernels of
corn. Have some, Patty?"
"But of course I can't act."
"Of course you can. I'll get the book for you now, so you can be
studying your part. We don't have rehearsal until next week."
"You are to be Jonathan Cowboy in the play," Flossy continued, having
produced the book. "Will is Mr. Bramble, and Ease Apthorpe his
daughter. I'm to be Waitstill Eastman. I chose that because she has
things to eat."
"Shall you eat pop-corn?" asked Patty.
"Really, I couldn't think of taking a part," Burleigh said.
"Nobody wants you to think of it," Flossy returned placidly. "It is
settled that you are to have it. It is a bashful part, and, if you make
any mistakes, people will think it is part of the play."
"'Vanity of vanities,'" said the voice of Bathalina Clemens, who had
approached unperceived. "'All is vanity.'"
"So are you," Flossy retorted.
"How came you home so soon?" Patty asked. "Didn't they have the
funeral?"
"No," the doleful servant answered. "Emma ain't dead: so they had to
put it off. Jane concluded to do her churning, after all; but she says
she's in hopes to get through the burying by next Wednesday. And I
should think she'd want to; for that'll finish up all the first wife's
children. It'll naturally give her more time to look after her own."
"Did you ever hear any thing so atrocious!" exclaimed Patty, as the
maid-servant disappeared round the corner of the house. "The way she
talks about that funeral is more crazy than her usual speeches, and
that is certainly needless."
"Don't names," Flossy asked pensively, "always convey a color to your
mind, Mr. Blood?"
"Convey a color?"
"Yes. Like Caroline, you know: that always makes me think of pale
yellow, and Susan of red, and Mary of blue."
"What nonsense!" laughed her cousin. "What color would Bathalina
suggest?"
"That name," said Flossy, "always calls up a grayish, dirty green, like
faded linsey-woolsey."
And at that moment the dinner-bell rang.
CHAPTER X.
A CHANCE MEETING.
The Putnam mansion, wherein the lawyer's ancestors had lived and died
for several generations, stood next to the cottage of Dr. Sanford; or
rather the two places were back to back, each facing one of the two
principal of the village streets. To reach either house from the more
distant thoroughfare, a short cut was taken across the grounds of the
other, right-of-way being conceded by mutual agreement.
People in Montfield retired early; and thus it happened that at ten
o'clock of the Friday night following the coming of grandmother Sanford
the lights were out in the doctor's cottage, and sleep was supposed to
have descended upon all the dwellers therein. Patty had not, however,
retired. A thunder-storm was slowly rising out of the west, with golden
fringes of lightning about its dark edges; and she sat at her open
window to watch its progress. The unusual restraint imposed upon her
by her lameness had made her restless; and she longed to steal out
of the house, and run races across the orchard as she had done when
a child. The sultry closeness of the night made her take a fan, with
which she did little but tap impatiently upon the window-ledge. She was
not thinking connectedly, but in a vague way unpleasant thoughts and
feelings crowded tumultuously through her brain like the crew of Comus.
Suddenly in the garden below she heard voices. A man was speaking
earnestly, but in a tone too low to be audible at the window above. A
woman answered him, the pair seeming to discuss something with much
emphasis. Her curiosity greatly excited by so unusual a circumstance,
Patty leaned out of the window to discover, if possible, who were the
speakers.
"Well, it's the Lord's will," she heard the woman's voice say. "And I,
for one, ain't a-going to run a muck agin it."
"It is Bathalina!" the listener said to herself. "Who in the world can
she be talking to?"
She leaned farther from her window, but by an unlucky movement of her
arm sent her fan fluttering down to the gravel walk below. The speakers
departed in different directions like phantoms, and Patty was left once
again to her own reflections. At first she speculated upon the possible
nature of the interview she had interrupted; then her thoughts came
back to her fan. It chanced to be one painted by an artist-cousin, and
one of which she was fond: a thunder-storm was rapidly approaching,
and the fan likely to be ruined. Her ankle was fast recovering, and
she was not long in determining to go down into the garden for her
property. With the aid of the furniture and the stair-railings she got
safely down to the side-door, cautiously unbolted it and slipped out.
The fan was only a few steps from the door, but a rolling-stone lay
in wait for the lame ankle, and gave it so severe a turn that Patty
sank down a miserable heap upon the ground. She sat there a moment to
recover herself, and then crawled back to the door-steps. Seated here,
she gazed ruefully at the fan, a white spot upon the dusky walk, and,
coddling her aching ankle in her hands, wondered how she was to regain
her room.
At that moment brisk steps sounded on the walk, approaching the spot
where she sat. A tall form defined itself amid the darkness, pausing
before her.
"Good-evening," said the voice of Tom Putnam. "Is it you, Patty?"
"Yes. It is I."
"Would it be polite to ask if you walk in your sleep?"
"I can't walk awake at any rate," she replied, half laughing and half
crying, "whatever I may do in my sleep."
"Then, you must have come here for air in your dreams."
"I came after that fan, and I've twisted my foot over again."
He restored the fan, and then seated himself at her feet on the lowest
step.
"It is fortunate I took this way home," he said coolly. "I hear that
you think I am miserly."
"What?" she exclaimed in surprise.
"I am told that you pronounce me miserly," he repeated. "I am very
sorry, for I mean to ask you to be my wife."
Instead of answering this strange declaration, Patty covered her face
with her hands and burst into tears. He laid his fingers lightly upon
her hair, smoothing it with a caressing motion. Surprise, physical
pain, anger, and love were all oddly mingled in Patty's mind. She knew
that she loved this man, and she was bitterly angry with herself for
having misjudged him. She was no less angry with him for knowing the
latter fact, of which Emily Purdy had taken care that he should not
remain ignorant. She had, too, that Amazonian repugnance to the caress
of a lover which is often inborn in strong personalities. She shook off
the lawyer's touch as if it were fire.
"I misjudged you," she said, by an angry effort controlling her tears,
"and I am not too proud to own it. Now forget it."
"Very well," he said, "it is forgotten. But your opinion is every thing
to me, for I have loved you these dozen years, Patty. I've watched you
growing up, and loved you more and more every year. I've had the words
in my mouth a hundred times; but now I am able to marry, and I ask you
to be my wife."
However cool these words may seem in black and white, they were
intense as Tom Putnam spoke them, his rich voice gathering force as he
proceeded. He was moved from that calm which Flossy Plant declared to
be an essential law of his existence. The passion he felt was too old,
too well defined, to come stammering and broken from his tongue; but
his voice trembled, and he bent forward until his hot breath touched
her cheek. He did not again attempt to caress her, but she felt that
his eyes were fixed upon her with a keenness that could almost pierce
the darkness. Still her mood was a defensive one. That she fought
against herself no less than against him, only added strength to her
determination not to yield.
"You had little faith in the depth of my love," she said at last, after
a silence which seemed to both very long, "if you thought I should be
afraid of poverty with you."
"Then you do love me!" he exclaimed, in joyous, vibrating tones.
"I did not say so," she retorted quickly. "I was talking of your
feelings, not mine."
"I had no right to ask you to share poverty," he said. "I loved you too
well to do it."
"That is because you looked only at your own side," she persisted. "If
I loved a man, I should be glad if he were poor. I should delight to
show him that I loved him better than any thing money would buy. Oh! I
should be proud and glad to work for him if I need--and you thought I
wouldn't do it!"
He caught her hand, and kissed it passionately.
"You know it is not that," he said. "I never thought any thing of you
but that you were the noblest woman I knew; but I was not worth so much
hardship--I couldn't bring it on you. But since you love me, I can
wait."
"I never said I loved you! I--I don't."
"I know better," said he, springing up; "but let that go. It is
beginning to rain, and sentiment must give place to reason. How shall
you get into the house?"
"But you must not go away thinking I love you," she said weakly.
"How can you help it?" he returned. "How shall you get back to your
room?"
"If I only could wake Flossy, she'd help me."
"Which is her window?"
"The one over the rosebush."
He took up a handful of pebbles, and threw them lightly against the
panes until Flossy came to the window.
"Who's there?" she called timidly.
"It's I," Patty answered. "Come down."
"What on earth!" began Flossy.
"Come quick, and keep quiet."
"She is coming," Putnam said. "Good-night, Patty. If you knew how I
love you!"
He kissed her hand again, and was gone just in time to escape Flossy.
"How did you hit my window from the door-step?" the latter asked as the
two girls climbed slowly the stairs.
"By sleight of hand," her cousin answered. "Good-night. Thank you very
much. I want to get to bed and to sleep before it begins to lighten any
worse."
But how could she sleep with those two kisses burning like live coals
upon her hand?
CHAPTER XI.
A BUNDLE OF PAPERS.
Patty slept late the following morning, and before she was well awake
the sense of something strange and sad was present in her mind. She
opened her eyes, and slowly recalled the conversation of the previous
night, with the most mingled feelings. That Tom Putnam loved her was
a new, keen joy; but bitter indeed was it to remember how she had met
the proffer of his heart. It was true he had not accepted her negative;
but all the combativeness of the girl's disposition was aroused, and
she felt something of the martyr spirit of men determined to die
for a cause they know lost or hopeless. She felt that nothing would
make her retract her denial; that she could not do so and retain her
self-respect. And yet an inner double-consciousness knew that some
time she meant to yield, and that she hoped for some fortunate turn of
circumstances to bring about the means of graceful submission.
She dressed herself slowly and sadly, until, catching sight of her
lugubrious face in the glass, she laughed in spite of herself, and
determined to shake off her melancholy.
She descended to breakfast humming a gay air, and trying to appear
as if she were no more lame than upon the day previous. No one but
grandmother Sanford noticed that her gayety was forced; but the
beautiful old Friend with silvery hair and snowy kerchief possessed a
shrewd head and a tender heart, quick to detect and to sympathize with
pain.
"Grand-daughter," she said after breakfast, when they were alone
together, "something troubleth thee."
"Me, grandmother?" Patty began with affected surprise. But there was
about the other a candor which enforced frankness in return. "It is
nothing that can be helped," Patty said, sighing, "and indeed it is
nothing to tell of."
"Thee must have confidence in thy grandmother, Patience, if so be that
I can ever serve thee."
"I shall, I do. Grandmother, I"--
The door opened, and admitted Flossy and her aunt.
"I can trust the maid to clean the parlor," Mrs. Sanford was saying
impressively; "but the cellar I must see to myself."
"Yes," Flossy returned, "and that reminds me, Aunt Britann: can you
tell why a cat's breath always smells fishy?"
"It cleared off in the night," her aunt continued, without taking the
slightest notice of the whimsical question, "and so ain't likely to
stay pleasant."
"Beech-nuts," Flossy said in the same rambling way, "used to be good to
eat in school, they took up so much time. But then they have a sort of
apologetic taste, as if they'd be bigger if they could."
"And horse-chestnuts," added her aunt, "are so good for rheumatism."
"Mercy!" cried Patty. "Are you both insane? You talk like two crazy
Janes."
"I'd like to be a crazy Jane," Flossy said reflectively. "I wonder what
they eat? Grandmother, did you bring those old-fashioned things with
you? We are counting on them for our play. So saying, I gracefully
fling myself into a chair. I think I could wear your dresses,
grandmother."
"I brought them," the old lady answered with a twinkle in her eye.
"Though I fear 'tis encouraging thee in vain and frivolous follies."
"If we don't go into vain and frivolous follies until you encourage
them," Patty cried, "we may live to grow as solemn as Bathalina
herself."
"It seems to me," Flossy put in, "that Mademoiselle Clemens has a
dreadful 'hark-from-the-tombs-a-doleful-sound' air this morning."
"Why"--her cousin began, as there flashed through her mind the
remembrance of the interview she had interrupted on the previous night.
Her own troubles had until now driven it out of her mind.
"Well, what?" Flossy asked.
"Nothing. Let's look at the dresses now. Can't Flossy get them,
grandmother?"
The costumes were produced in a hair-covered trunk which Flossy and
Mrs. Sanford with some difficulty dragged into the sitting-room.
When it was opened, a delightful odor of lavender and camphor and
sweet-grass was diffused through the air; which grew more and more
pungent as from the trunk were taken delicious old gowns of Canton
crape, broidered kerchiefs, caps, and hand-bags.
"That corn-colored crape is just the thing for me," Patty cried. "Isn't
it lovely! Oh, you vain old grandmother! you are as gray as a sparrow
now, but you used to go arrayed in purple and fine linen."
"I was not weaned from the worldliness of fine dress then," the old
lady said, smiling. "And they did say," she added, smoothing her
dove-gray dress with innocent complacency, "that I was not uncomely in
those days."
"You are the handsomest mother in the State now," said Dr. Sanford, who
had entered. "Patty, what is that bundle of papers?"
A packet of papers yellowed by age lay in the bottom of the trunk, and
Patty took them up.
"Some of the letters grandmother had in her philandering days, I
suppose. Shall I open them, grandmother?"
"Give them to me. Thee art a sad, giddy girl, grand-daughter.--They are
old papers of thy father's, Charles. I haven't seen them this forty
years for aught I know."
"Let me see them, mother," Dr. Sanford said. "This is father's
land-grant for serving in the war of 1812."
"I never knew grandfather was in the war of 1812," said Patty. "Was he
wounded?"
"Wounded," repeated grandmother Sanford, laughing. "There came a report
that the British were coming to Quinnebasset where he lived, and a
company of men was raised. They went down to Edgecomb, and had a camp
for four or five weeks, and then came home again."
"'The king of France, with forty thousand men,
Marched up a hill, and then marched down again,'"
quoted Dr. Sanford.
"But, grandmother," Flossy said, "you must have been awfully frightened
to have him in danger."
"There was no danger. The men camped out, and spent their time in
riotous living I fear. At least the British were not within hundreds of
miles of them."
"But they might have come. I should have lain awake nights fearing
something would happen, if it had been my husband."
"I think I did not lie awake nights much," grandmother answered,
smiling. "I was but eight years old, and did not know that there was
such a person in the world as William Sanford. It was before my father
removed his family to Quinnebasset."
"But, mother," Dr. Sanford said, "you must be entitled to a pension
as the widow of a veteran of the war of 1812. I'd forgotten all about
father's being mustered in. This land-grant is evidence enough to show
that he was."
"O grandmother!" put in Patty. "Now I shall begin to behave, so as to
be remembered in your will."
"I am little in favor of receiving money obtained by bloodshed, son
Charles, as thee knowest."
"Nonsense, mother. There was no blood shed. The money will be clean of
any taint of war according to your own story. The money won't hurt you:
you know you are only half Friend, when all's said and done."
And, after much laughter and joking, it was decided that the matter
should be put into the hands of Mr. Putnam.
Many were the allusions made to the grandmother's pension, and out of
the matter came several odd incidents as will in due time appear.
CHAPTER XII.
AN AFTERNOON RIDE.
The quiet which falls upon a country village after its noonday meal,
brooded over Montfield. Only the great butterflies and the bees were
stirring, except for a humming-bird that now and then darted among
the flowers. Patty and Flossy were together upon the piazza, lazily
discussing matters relating to the theatrical entertainment, when
a buggy stopped at the gate, from which descended the huge form of
Burleigh Blood.
"Now, Burleigh," Patty cried, as he approached, and before he had time
to say more than good-day, "I know you've come to take Flossy to drive,
but I want to go myself. It is too lovely for any thing this afternoon,
and I am an invalid and must be humored, you know."
"If I could ever see that mushrooms had any taste," Flossy said
deliberately, but with no discoverable connection, "I am sure I should
be fond of them: so I always eat them, and think what a good time I am
having if I only knew it."
"Flossy, you get to be more and more incomprehensible every day. Sit
down, Burleigh, please. Of course you'll have to take me to ride."
"That is what I came for," he answered.
He did not, however, tell the truth. He had come intending to ask
Flossy; but somehow his invitations always seemed to get crossed at
the Sanfords', and he fated to be the sport of adverse fortune. He
had reasoned out in his honest head a profound scheme of diplomacy.
He would pique Patty by his attentions to her cousin, and thus force
her to treat him with more consideration. He was about as well fitted
for diplomatic juggleries as a babe in its cradle, and certainly this
beginning was sufficiently unpropitious.
"Flossy, get my hat, that's a dear. Now, Burleigh, you'll have to let
me lean on you. I'm lame still."
The afternoon was enchanting. It was one of those September days which
in some strange way get transposed into August; when the air is full of
hazes that soften the distant landscape with tints of purple and smoky
blue and topaz; when the breeze is soft and enervating with a pleasing
melancholy, like a revery, the sweeter for its sadness. The golden-rod
and purple asters seem suddenly to have bloomed by the roadside, and
the trees rustle softly with a dry murmur as if already falling into
"the sear and yellow leaf." The crickets chirped cheerily in the
lichen-covered stone walls and in the fields, while not a bird was to
be seen or heard, unless now and then some chatty sparrow gossiping
volubly with her neighbor, or an ill-omened crow that flew heavily over
a distant field.
Burleigh and Patty chose a road leading out of the village, and lonely
as country roads are apt to be. Patty was somewhat absent, sadly
recalling the conversation of the previous night; but Burleigh looked
so troubled at her pre-occupation that she resolved to throw off her
heaviness, and began to chat cheerily.
"It is a lovely afternoon to ride," she said. "It is one of those days
when one wants to go somewhere, yet doesn't know quite where."
"I knew where I wanted to go," he answered, "and went."
"Perhaps it is different with men," she continued, ignoring the
allusion. "You men can always go and come as you please, and haven't
the restrictions to incite you that we girls have."
"Haven't we? I did not know we were so free. We usually end, I think,
by doing as you like."
"That is an epigram, Burleigh. Since when did you become so wise?"
"Since you began to knock me about as you chose," he answered boldly.
"You do as you like with me. I went to invite you to the picnic, and
you had me take your cousin. This afternoon I went after her, and have
you."
"Did you really!" Patty exclaimed. "Honestly, I did not think of such a
thing. It was all my vanity. Let's turn round. I didn't mean to cheat
Flossy out of a ride."
"We'll keep on now, I guess," he answered. "I can take her another
time."
"There is no time like the present," Patty said absently; wondering
secretly what was the true nature of Burleigh's feeling toward her
cousin.
"Isn't there?" he said, facing her suddenly. "Then I have a question to
ask you. I"--
"About Flossy?" she interrupted hastily, warned by the look in his eyes.
"No; about yourself. I"--
"But I want to tell you about Flossy first. You know she"--
"I don't want to talk of Flossy," Burleigh said.
Alas! that he would not be warned or hindered. His excitement swept
away every trace of his diffidence, and he had never looked so manly
as now. His somewhat florid face was pale, and his great eyes looked
straight upon her as if his very soul were in them.
"I love you," he said concisely enough. "I want you to marry me."
"O Burleigh! Oh, don't! Oh, please!" Patty cried, drawing away the hand
which he had seized to the neglect of the reins. "I didn't think you
could say such things, when we've always been such good friends."
"Is that any reason we should not be better friends?" he demanded.
"But not that way; not"--
Fate came to her assistance, and spared her the necessity of completing
the sentence. The horse had been following his own impulses in lack of
any direction from his driver; and bringing the wheel too near the edge
of the ditch, the carriage lightly careened, depositing its inmates
unhurt but badly shaken in the midst of a sand-heap.
The horse was fortunately well trained; and Burleigh had no difficulty
in stopping him, which he did with a very angry face. As for Patty,
she sat up in the sand, and burst into perfect shouts of laughter. She
laughed and laughed, and held her sides and laughed again until the
tears streamed from her eyes.
"O Burleigh!" she cried between her bursts of merriment. "Oh, I can't
help it! Oh, it's too funny! I shall die, I believe!"
And off she went into fresh peals of laughter, until her companion felt
a strong desire to shake her.
"To think you should tip me over, on top of making love to me! O
Burleigh! it is too awfully droll for any thing! It is the funniest
thing I ever heard of. Oh, dear!"
"I don't see where the fun comes in," he returned, rather crossly. "You
always laugh at me."
"Oh, I don't either, but now I can't help it! Don't look so solemn, or
you'll kill me!"
Her escort was hurt and angry. He felt that she flouted him and his
love, and in this he did her injustice. Chagrin at his rejection,
and mortification at the accident, combined to render him morbidly
sensitive. Besides, he could not know that this lovely girl before
him with flushed cheeks and tumbled hair was laughing as much from
nervousness as from fun, and that the words of Tom Putnam on the
previous night were as much a motive power in this extravagant
cachinnation as his own proposal.
"I will help you into the buggy," he said stiffly.
"Don't be cross," she said, rising with the aid of the hand he
extended. "I am sorry I vexed you. I was horrid to laugh so. We are
good friends again, and for always, are we not?"
But in that moment of mortification had unconsciously dawned in the
mind of Burleigh Blood the knowledge, that, however great might be his
friendship for Patty, he did not love her. It is true that it was some
time before he appreciated the discovery; but he was inclined to be
very silent on the homeward way, although his companion used her utmost
endeavors to restore him to good humor.
CHAPTER XIII.
AT REHEARSAL.
"Well, Bathalina," Mrs. Sanford said with despair in her voice, "if you
must go, I suppose you must; but this is the third Wednesday you've
been to that funeral, and I think that's plenty. It isn't lucky to put
off a funeral; and here's all these cucumbers to pickle, and I can't
possibly spare you, but I suppose I'll have to."
"Cousin Sam's child don't die every day," the maid retorted; "and of
course they couldn't bury her alive."
"Oh, dear, no!" her mistress assented. "That would be too awful; but
I want you to be sure she is really dead before you go to her funeral
again."
"Yes, she's dead," was the answer. "Peter Mixon came over last night
and told me."
"Peter Mixon had better mind his own business. You told me yourself,
Bathalina, that he was going to be married this very month to that West
girl."
"Yes, mum, of course. But it's a great cross to him. He asked me first,
and if it hadn't been for my sinful pride I'd a had him in the first
place."
"Sinful fire-shovels!" Mrs. Sanford exclaimed. "You turned him off
because he was after the money you've got in the bank, so don't
let me hear any more about him. If you are going to this protracted
funeral, go along; and I do hope the remains won't need a great deal
more burying. As for Peter Mixon, the less you have to do with him the
better."
"I feel confident," Bathalina answered, "that it's the last funeral the
child'll ever have; but in the midst of life we are in death."
"You may be," retorted her mistress bustling about; "but _I'm_ in the
midst of pickling, and can't stop to talk. Go along."
"Mother," Patty asked, appearing in the doorway, "what is the trouble?"
"Bathalina has gone traipsing off to her funeral again; and here are
these cucumbers to do, and the kitchen all in heaps. She's got fool in
the head worse than ever to-day."
"What awful slang, mother. Never mind, I'll help."
The next visitor to the kitchen was Flossy, who, having searched the
rest of the house for her cousin, at length discovered her with sleeves
rolled up, engaged in washing dishes.
"Goodness gracious, Patsy!" she exclaimed. "Are you here?"
"Mercy sakes, Flossy!" said her aunt. "Don't say 'goodness gracious,'
it sounds so."
"No: I'll say 'mercy sakes,' Aunt Britann," her niece returned saucily.
"Patty, what are you washing dishes for?"
"Somebody must do it; and Bathalina, the insane, has gone off."
"You are becoming a very model miss. Have you forgotten they are coming
this morning to read this play?"
"I had forgotten all about that. I'm sorry, marmee, but I don't see but
I must leave you in the lurch. Here comes somebody now."
The first thing concerning which a country audience is anxious is that
it "gets its money's worth;" and in amateur theatricals success depends
much upon the duration of the entertainment. Two plays had therefore
been chosen; one a melodramatic affair entitled, "The Faithful Jewess,"
and the other a jolly little comedy called "The Country Wooing." Patty,
who was "the favorite local actress," as Will put it, had been cast in
both plays. Clarence Toxteth was her Jewish lover, toward a union with
whom she struggled hopefully but vainly through the most heart-rending
situations. A pretended friend,
"With falsest heart though fairest seeming,"
endeavored to separate the betrothed, with fatal success. Mr. Putnam
had declined to take part; and the _rôle_ which had been offered him
had been given to the postmaster, one Sol Shankland.
The company assembled this morning in Mrs. Sanford's wide, low
sitting-room, numbered about a score; and Babel itself could scarcely
have been noisier. The girls talked of their parts, their dresses,
their hopes and fears, of this, that, and the other, until the general
effect was that of mill-wheels running ever faster and faster, quite
beyond the control of any regulator.
"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Will at last. "'I would I were dead and worms
had eaten me, but not for love.' If there isn't silence here in three
seconds, there will be blood shed!"
By the most energetic measures in the way of pounding and shouting,
something like quiet was obtained, and the meeting proceeded to
business. The two plays were read, rehearsals appointed, and a great
deal said about the necessity of being letter-perfect before the next
meeting.
"By Monday," Patty said, "we ought to be able to rehearse without a
book."
"Mr. Blackfan is off," Sol Shankland said, "so we shall have nothing to
do Sunday but to study our parts."
"How immoral!" exclaimed Miss Sturtevant. "I shall lie in a hammock all
day and read."
"I suppose," Will Sanford said, "that I am the most unfortunate man
that ever happened. I sent to Uncle Christopher for his grandfather's
knee-breeches, and now I can't get into them."
"That is because they are small-clothes," suggested Ease Apthorpe.
"I think we have some at home," Toxteth said: "if you will come over,
I'll see."
When rehearsal was over, Clarence and Will accordingly walked off
together, accompanying Ease Apthorpe, who lived in the same direction.
Frank Breck showed some inclination to join the group as they moved
down the walk, but changed his mind, and accompanied Miss Sturtevant
towards Mrs. Brown's.
The Toxteth mansion lay halfway between Dr. Sanford's and Mullen House,
as was somewhat fancifully called the home of Ease. Will asked Ease to
wait for him, as he was going with her after an extra play-book. Mrs.
Toxteth was sitting upon the veranda, and invited Ease to a seat by her
side while the young men went into the house.
"It makes me think of old times when theatricals come up," Mrs.
Toxteth said. "I have always been extravagantly fond of acting and of
masquerades."
"I wish we could have a masquerade," remarked Ease. "We have only had
one in three years."
"Why not have one, then?"
"The girls say it is so much trouble to get up costumes. It is a
bother, it is so difficult to get things."
"But now when you have your costumes all made for the plays, why not
use them? You could arrange to exchange among yourselves."
"The very thing!" Ease exclaimed. "I am so glad you thought of it."
"As a reward," Mrs. Toxteth said, "I claim the privilege of giving the
party. But don't speak of it just yet until I've talked with Clarence."
"Will," Ease asked as they walked towards Mullen House, "how long does
Flossy mean to stay in Montfield? I am getting so fond of her that I
don't like to think of her going back to Boston."
"'It may be for years, and it may be forever,'" he replied. "The
case is just this. Flossy's father--you know there's nobody left in
the family but these two now--cares for nothing in the world but
his dinners and whist, as far as I can make out. I don't know Uncle
Christopher very well, but he has the reputation of giving the best
dinners of any man in his club. He had one once when I was there; and
such a set of red-nosed, blear-eyed, pottle-paunched"--
"Will!"
"I beg your pardon, but the old sinners that came to that dinner were
enough to disgust anybody. They were like the people Paul tells about,
each carrying his own individual god under his waistcoat. No wonder
Flossy doesn't care to stay at home to dine with those ogres."
"It can't be very nice for her."
"No more is it. She likes to stay here, and we certainly like to have
her. As for her father, if his soup and his wines are right he is
troubled by no concern for the whereabouts of his friends. So, on the
whole, I dare say she may remain indefinitely."
"Don't you think she and Burleigh Blood are getting to be very good
friends?"
"I hadn't noticed. I thought he was one of Patty's followers."
"He isn't so much so now," Ease answered. "To-day at rehearsal he
called her Flossy, and then colored and stammered and begged her
pardon. I don't believe he ever did it before."
She was right; for at that very moment Burleigh Blood was walking
along a sweet country road, saying softly over and over to his bashful
but happy self: "Flossy, Flossy. And she said I was always to call her
so. Flossy: what a pretty name it is too!"
CHAPTER XIV.
AN ELOPEMENT.
The problem of "help" was no less perplexing in Montfield than in the
majority of New-England villages. Mrs. Sanford often declared that
she had rather do the work for the household than "to wait upon the
hired girl;" but her husband insisted upon her having a servant, and
Bathalina Clemens had accordingly been engaged. The girl was little
better than half-witted, but she was honest and faithful. Moreover,
Mrs. Sanford could not abide the Irish. So strong was her dislike for
the children of Erin, that had she known the wish of Thomas Carlyle,
that the Emerald Isle were sunk, she would have indorsed it most
heartily. As it was, she vented her feelings in various expletives and
wishes, which, if less elegant than Carlyle's Teutonic diction, were
certainly more clear and no less forcible.
"The Irish," Mrs. Sanford was wont to affirm, "are part pig, or pigs
are part Irish, I don't know which. They tell about pigs living in the
house with the Paddies in Ireland, and I make no doubt that many a pig
has been brought up as a child of the family and nobody ever the wiser."
So as Mrs. Sanford would have no Irish girl, she had been obliged to
endure Bathalina, who was every thing her soul abhorred, except that
she was neat. It was her one virtue; and, as people usually do who have
but one virtue, she carried it to excess.
"If she was to get into heaven," her mistress declared, waxing
eloquent, "I know she'd begin to scour up things, and be down on her
knees to wash the golden streets."
Numberless were the freaks which resulted from her morbid mania for
cleanliness. She would wash a counterpane if Pettitoes, the most dainty
of cats, happened but to set one of his snowy paws upon it. She washed
her sunshade, her hats, her bonnets, boots, any thing and every thing.
She was accustomed to prowl about the house, seizing upon any stray
article left in sight, and into the tub it went. Flossy's lace shawl
was rescued on its way to the suds, Patty's muslin fichu and Will's
shooting-jacket were fished out of the washtub together; and for weeks
after the advent of Miss Clemens the whole house was pervaded with a
damp and discouraging odor, as if in it reigned a perpetual washing-day.
"This must be stopped," Dr. Sanford declared when one night on
returning home he found the pear-trees decorated with an old skeleton
hoop-skirt, his own high boots, carefully scoured inside, and a
miscellaneous assortment of smaller wares. Into the kitchen he walked,
and found Bathalina at the washtub chanting as usual a dismal stave.
"'Tortured in body, and condemned in spirit,
No sweet composure, to'"--
"Bathalina," interrupted the master of the house sternly, "get into
that tub."
"What, sir?"
"Get into that tub instantly."
"But"--
"Get in."
"But my clothes"--
"In with you."
"My shoes!"
He picked her up as lightly as if her bony frame weighed nothing, and
deposited her in the midst of the foamy suds. Her screams quickly
brought the household to the spot.
"Don't you get out," Dr. Sanford said, "until you have had enough of
the washtub to last you for five years."
"But, Charles," remonstrated his wife, "she'll get her death cold."
"She's more likely to get her death hot," he returned, smiling grimly.
"Let her soak a while. It won't hurt her. And now let us have supper."
He marched off to the dining-room.
"Come, Britann; come, Patty."
"But you don't mean to leave that poor creature there to die, do you?"
Mrs. Sanford pleaded. "I doubt it must be a forerunner of a bad sign to
have such things happen in a house."
The doctor made no reply, but sat down to his supper quite as if
nothing had happened. After the meal he took his pipe and usual seat on
the piazza, but was hardly seated before Patty appeared, half-choked
with laughter.
"Oh, dear, father!" she said, "that foolish thing is in the tub still,
and says she won't get out till you tell her to!"
"Let her stay there then. She will dry quicker than my boots."
"Soapsuds makes green things grow," put in Will; "and Bathalina is as
green as if she had been browsing with Nebuchadnezzar."
"Do come, father," Patty said, taking his arm. "She'll spend the night
there if you don't."
Thus urged, Dr. Sanford rose; and the party adjourned to the kitchen,
where the maid-servant still squatted amid the half-washed clothing
like a very bony mermaid, singing in a defiantly mournful manner:
"'Broad is the road that leads to death.'"
"Get out of that tub, Bathalina," Dr. Sanford commanded, "and stop that
noise."
"I'm going home to my Aunt Jeff's," the mermaid said.
"Nonsense: you'll do nothing of the sort. Get out of the tub and get
dry clothing on."
From that day the servant never washed any thing save her own person
without an express command from her mistress. Dr. Sanford made her
ample amends for the damage done to her attire; and thereafter she
spoke of him with the utmost respect, apparently admiring his treatment
of her extremely. She held to him as her ideal of manhood, even after
she had fallen a victim to the wiles of Peter Mixon, an unscrupulous
fellow who had served the Brecks in the days of their father's
magnificence.
"I can't think what has become of Bathalina," Mrs. Sanford remarked on
the evening of the rehearsal. "She can't have staid at the funeral of
that cousin's child's wife all this time. It's half-past ten."
At that moment the door-bell rang violently.
"Some one has come in considerable haste," grandmother Sanford said
placidly. "Charles, it is probably some one for thee."
The person ushered into the sitting-room was not wholly a stranger to
the family, and indeed by reputation they knew her well. She was an
aunt of Bathalina Clemens, and rejoiced in the somewhat remarkable
cognomen of Thomas Jefferson Gooch. Her grandfather being in his prime
an ardent partisan of that famous statesman, had made a rash vow that
his first grandchild should bear Jefferson's name. The first-born
grandchild proved to be a girl, but the determined old gentleman,
was no more to be restrained from the fulfilment of his vow than was
Jephtha. Thomas Jefferson was the infant christened, and as "Aunty
Jeff" she was now known to the whole neighborhood. She was a perfect
"roly-poly-pudding" of a woman, "her husband's sphere," Will Sanford
called her; but her activity was greater than that of her gauntest
neighbor, and she walked as briskly as if she'd an electric battery in
her back hair to keep her in motion. The corpulent little woman managed
herself and her relatives with a determination which there was no
evading. She dressed always in rusty black, and went about slipshod,
explaining that she was too fat to reach her feet and lace up boots.
To-day, having been to the funeral of the long death-defying Emma, her
attire was more striking than usual; her black bonnet being garnished
with the largest of red roses, and a magenta bow lighting up the
voluminous amplitude of her chins, which, like spice-boxes, came in
assorted sizes.
"Good-evenin', Mis' Sanford," Aunty Jeff burst out, plunging
porpoise-like at once into the room and the midst of her errand. "That
ungrateful Bathaliny Clemens hain't come home, has she? No, of course
she hain't; an' I knew it, the miserable hussy! She's been elopin' with
that all-fired Peter Mixon."
"Eloping!" her listeners cried in chorus.
"Yes, elopin'. I knew there was some kind of a gum-game up when I seed
her an' him comin' in together. The hussy brought him right into the
room with the mourners, and he looked at the remains as familiar and
easy-like as if he'd been one of the next relations. I tried to catch
Bathaliny's eye, but she wouldn't look at me. They couldn't walk to the
grave together, 'cause he wasn't called with the mourners. But when we
got there, and Parson Jones was a-prayin', I peeked through my fingers,
and I seed Peter was a-sneakin' round toward her,--the dispisable,
miser'ble wretch! An' when we was a-singin' the last hymn--we sung,
'Why do ye mourn, departed friends?'
to the tune of Chany,--an' I thought the singin' didn't sound so
mournful kinder as it had orter,--not nigh so mournful as when we
buried Marthy Foster, she was a Harris, you remember, and second cousin
to Bathaliny on the father's side: so I looked up to see if Bathaliny
was givin' out on the air; for, bein' a near relation, I naturally
felt a care for the mournin', and wanted to see Emma buried in decent
shape, if she was always a scrawny, pindlin' little thing, an' her
mother Ezikel's first wife. An' I'll be blowed if that Bathaliny warn't
a-sneakin' off round the thorn-bushes,--you know where they be, close
by where Frank Wiswell was buried, his mother bein' a Pettingill,--she
was a-skulkin' off, if you'll believe it, round them thorn-bushes with
Peter Mixup, or Old Evil One, or whatever he calls himself. I wanted to
holler; but, thinks I to myself, I'm a relation of the corpse, if it
is only by marriage, and I ain't goin' to spoil the solemnity of this
funeral if I never sets eyes on that scandiculous hussy again! An' off
they went; an' Tim Bowlin see 'em goin' to Joe Brown's, an' of course
they are married long ago, he bein' a justice. An' I says to myself,
'Mis' Sanford ought to know, an' I'll go over an' tell her, bein' as
it's one of our family.' It does seem as if her mother's children was
bound to bring disgrace on themselves and everybody else. Look at
Hannah Clemens! only she ain't to be looked at by an honest woman. The
nasty hussy!"
Aunty Jeff's breath failed entirely at this point; and she fell back in
her chair, her whole person quivering with excitement and indignation.
Dr. Sanford laughed unrestrainedly, and Flossy and Patty were not slow
to follow his lead.
"She's Bathaliny Mixon by this time," aunty Jeff burst out afresh.
"All he wanted of her was the money she had in the bank. He was
bespoke to 'Mandy West too; an' I shouldn't be a mite surprised ef
he got his livin' goin' round marryin' girls just that way. To think
one of our folks should marry a brigamist," continued the irate lady,
unconsciously punning, "and demean herself to take up with a Mixon!
He's a dreadful unfacalized critter; an' that's what I've always said,
an' what I'll stick to, ef I was to be run through the wringin'-machine
the next minute, like that baby's hand over to Samoset--poor thing! He
never stuck to nothin' 'thout 'twas Mr. Breck, and them two never got
no good out of one 'nother. A dreadful unfacalized critter! An' I'm in
as big a hurry as a rat in the wall, Mis' Sanford, but thought you'd
want to know, owin' to havin' breakfast to get. The ungrateful hussy!"
The last objurgation was addressed, not to Mrs. Sanford, but to the
absent Bathalina; that maiden having evidently defeated the designs of
Providence to punish her sinful pride, and wed Peter Mixon in spite
of his engagement to Amanda West. The following morning the newly-wed
pair came after the possessions of the bride. Bathalina looked a little
sheepish, and was disposed to apologize for the step she had taken.
"Being in love," she said to Patty, "I naturally felt like taking him
for better or for worse, especially as he said his shirts had give out
awfully; and he told no more than the truth, either, as I've see with
my own eyes."
"But where's your wedding-cake, Bathalina?" inquired Flossy. "A wedding
isn't a wedding without cake."
"It isn't legal without cake," Patty added demurely.
"Ain't it?" demanded Mrs. Mixon, aghast.
"Of course not," answered Flossy. "You are not married unless you've
had wedding-cake, and eaten it with your friends."
"But we didn't have no time to get cake."
"Then," pronounced Patty, "you are no more married than I am."
"O Lord! O Lord!" cried the dismayed bride. "That's what my sinful
pride has brought me to. O Peter, Peter!" she continued, rushing out to
the wagon where he sat waiting: "we ain't married, after all!"
It was with some difficulty that Mrs. Sanford, who appeared at this
juncture, persuaded her that her marriage was legal. Bathalina was not
really satisfied until Patty had produced a loaf of fruit-cake, and
they had all tasted it except Peter, who still sat without, waiting.
"Now I'm married, at any rate," the bride observed, "and I don't
suppose it makes so much difference to Peter as it does to me."
A slice of cake was at this hint sent to the bridegroom; and the Mixons
drove away, leaving Mrs. Sanford face to face with the tremendous task
of finding another servant.
CHAPTER XV.
A CASTLE IN THE AIR.
Grandmother Sanford's pension had come to be a standing joke. The
charming old lady had begun to found upon her expectations the most
extensive schemes for benevolence; which, as the pension, if obtained,
would be only eight dollars a month, seemed rather premature.
"Charles," she said, "I wish thee'd advance me a small sum on the
security of my pension. I desire to send some wine to old Mrs. Utley,
and I do not wish to draw for it."
"That pension will be the ruin of you, mother," he said, laughing, as
he gave her the money. "You've spent it two or three times over now."
"Thee is mistaken, son," she returned. "There are arrears due, besides
that for the future. If friend Putnam would hasten a little, and
arrange matters, it would be pleasant."
Mr. Putnam with his nephews had planned a fishing expedition, meaning
to leave home Saturday morning, and camp in the woods a few days.
Will Sanford remarked at the breakfast-table Sunday morning, that they
did not get away before noon; and some comment was made about their
starting so near Sunday.
"They must be back so soon for rehearsals," Patty remarked. "Hazard
said they wanted all the time they could get."
"It is a splendid day," Will continued. "I wish I were with them!
There's no meeting to-day, and I think I'll drive over to Samoset to
church this afternoon. Want to go, girls?"
"I'll go," answered Flossy. "I want to see what they wear over there."
Her cousin, however, preferred remaining at home, and about the middle
of the afternoon might have been seen sauntering leisurely down the
garden-path, book in hand, toward the old-fashioned summerhouse.
As has been said, the Putnam place adjoined that of Dr. Sanford. A
brook flowed between, crossed by a rustic bridge, and fringed with a
tangled thicket of elder, roses, wild clevis, and ground-nut vines,
with here and there a tall clump of alders wading knee-deep into
the water. Not far from the bridge, in the field behind the Putnam
mansion, stood a monster elm in the branches of which Mr. Putnam had
had an arbor constructed by the placing of a flooring upon two nearly
horizontal branches, and surrounding this with a railing. The arbor was
reached by means of ladders, and was so completely hidden by the boughs
as to be invisible from below.
The wild asters blooming by the brook attracted Patty's steps; and she
stood for some moments leaning upon the railing of the bridge, looking
down into the water, or out over the lovely scene about her.
It was one of those soft days of early September which are like a
memory or a dream. The sky was cloudless, the grass and foliage yet
untouched by frost, but beginning to show russet tints of ripeness. The
only sound which came to the maiden's ears was the soft purling of the
brook beneath her feet as it flowed among the sedges and alders. Now
and then a dragon-fly flitted like a flash across; and occasionally a
minnow, with the gleam of a dark back or red-tipped fin, darted through
the dusky water.
Patty was out of sympathy with the peaceful scene. Such a restless
mood had seized her as she seldom experienced. She was dissatisfied
with every thing, most of all with Tom Putnam. Since the night of the
thunder-storm, she had scarcely seen her lover. The day following he
had called while she was riding with Burleigh Blood. The next day he
had seen her, indeed, but in a room full of people. For a moment they
were alone together one morning soon after, but the interview had been
unsatisfactory. Women demand from the men they love their utmost. A
man having in some passionate moment shown his capability for utter
devotion, his lady feels a vague terror when he falls below this
high-wrought mood, as he inevitably must. Perhaps it is the hereditary
instinct of a sex that has found men too apt to reach a crisis of
passion, only to fall away from it fatally and forever. It is difficult
for women to understand a love which flows silently in an underground
channel. The lawyer had been too much like his ordinary self, and too
little like the ardent lover who had kissed Patty's hand so hotly that
August night. He seemed to assume in addressing her that they were
betrothed, and she resented this as presumption.
"I am not engaged to you," she said pettishly. "Goodness knows where
you got that idea!"
"I dreamed it," he returned; "and the dream was so pleasant, that I
chose to believe it."
"It could only have been a nightmare," she retorted.
Immediately after, he had been called from home on business, returning
only in time to make arrangements for the fishing expedition; and, as
Patty was out when he called, she had not seen him since his return.
"Heigh-ho!" sighed Patty, lifting her eyes from the water to glance
toward the Putnam house half-buried in trees. "Heigh-ho! I am getting
as stupid as an owl. Now that good fortune has come, I suppose Tom will
repair the house. How aunt Pamela will cackle over it! She is always
sighing over the departed grandeur of the place."
Aunt Pamela Gilfether was the widowed sister of Tom Putnam's father.
She moaned over the fallen fortunes of her race as the autumn wind
wails over the departed summer. Her great desire had been that her
nephew should marry, and build up the family; and the worthy lady had
a standing grievance against Miss Sturtevant for presuming to attempt
to insnare Tom by her fascinations. Whenever Miss Sturtevant was
mentioned, aunt Pamela was wont to remark contemptuously upon her "blue
chany eyes," by which she was understood to indicate that Flora had
eyes like those of a china doll.
At the moment Patty's thoughts recurred to aunt Pamela, that lady was
seated upon the piazza, talking with Hazard Breck.
"I know he'd have asked Patty long ago," Mrs. Gilfether said, "if only
he'd been easy in his affairs. Your father was no kind of a provider,
nor no kind of a getting-ahead man, as you know. And what with
having you boys on his hands, and me too,--though, to be sure, I'm a
Putnam,--it's been a hard pull on Tom."
"I know it, aunt Pamela," Hazard answered in a low tone.
The pain he felt at discovering his uncle's fondness for Patty made him
oblivious to the little stings with which aunt Pamela was accustomed to
give piquancy to her conversation.
"There he is, up there in that tree now," the lady went on
pathetically, "and moping and mooning for that girl, I've no manner of
doubt. Not that he ever said a word, or that she's half good enough for
him; but he's been crazy over her this ten years, and nothing was just
exactly right but what Patience Sanford did."
The idea of his uncle's "moping and mooning" from any cause struck
Hazard as ludicrous enough; and he smiled, even while his young heart
was full of pain. He rose, and went into the house for his hat, setting
out immediately after for a walk.
Whether there was any unconscious influence of the mind of aunt
Pamela upon the consciousness of Patty, standing on the bridge, is a
question psychologists may consider, if they please. Certain it is,
that, while Mrs. Gilfether was commenting upon the love of her nephew
for the doctor's daughter, the glance of the maiden was arrested by the
ladders leading to Mr. Putnam's Castle in the Air, as he called his
elm-tree-arbor; and her thoughts flew in that direction.
"I've a mind to go up there," she said to herself. "The men are all
away, and it must be jolly."
She looked about her in all directions, but discerned no one. She
hesitated a moment, then crossed the Rubicon by running lightly and
rapidly across the field, and began to mount the ladders. At the top of
the first ladder she looked about her again, but still discovered no
one. She had been a bit of a romp in her younger days, and a feeling
of tom-boyish joy came over her. Nimbly as a squirrel she ran up the
second ladder. The third was very short, and shut about closely with
leaves and branches. As she put her foot upon the lowest rung, the odor
of a cigar greeted her nostrils.
"Good-afternoon," said the voice of Tom Putnam above her.
Her short-lived joy vanished in the twinkling of an eye.
"What right has he there?" was her first thought. "I will _not_ go
back!" was her second. She stepped up the ladder, disregarding the
proffered hand of her lover, and stood upon the floor of the arbor.
"Welcome to the Castle in the Air," he said, extending his hand once
more.
She took it with a pout.
"I thought you had gone fishing," said she petulantly.
"We started," he answered; "but we broke down between here and Samoset,
so we gave it up."
Patty looked about her curiously. The arbor was half a dozen feet
across, with wall and ceiling of green boughs. It was a grotto dug in
a huge emerald. On one side an opening had been cut in the foliage, so
as to afford a view of the river, and the mountains beyond, now blue
and purple with autumn hazes. The castle was securely railed in, and
furnished with three or four rustic seats, besides a small table, or
rather shelf, supported by a living bough. Upon this lay an open book,
in which the lawyer had apparently been reading.
"I trust my cigar does not trouble you," he said: "I'll drop it if it
does."
"Not in the least."
Magnetism by induction is a phenomenon no less interesting in the
intellectual than in the physical world. The restless mood of Patty,
her defensive attitude, began to re-act upon her companion. She
unconsciously was defending herself from herself, rather than from him;
while he was at once puzzled and offended by her repellence. Patty was
more affected by this meeting with her lover than she realized, and her
nature instinctively guarded itself against any betrayal of emotion.
She affected, as many another has done, to cover her concern by a mask
of indifference, and began to banter gayly.
"I would on no account have come here, had I known you were at home,"
she said.
"Um,"--he returned. "You and truth have one thing in common."
"I am delighted to hear it. What may that be?"
"You are both very coy when sought, and yet will often show your faces
unasked."
"Thanks! That is, then, our only resemblance?"
"Oh, no! You both can say extremely disagreeable things."
"And both are very unpleasant generally, I suppose you'd like to add."
"By no means. That would be impolite to my guest."
"I am glad if you keep a semblance even of good manners."
"Manners?" he said reflectively. "I dimly remember having had something
of the kind in my youth, but I long since threw them aside. I thought
them out of fashion."
"Is that the reason you have not asked me to sit down?"
"I did not know as you would stay long enough to make it an object."
"I can go, of course, if you wish it."
"Don't on my account, I beg," he said coolly. "I am charmed to have you
here. I should have invited you, had I supposed you'd accept."
"You have, hundreds of times."
"Have I? We say so many of those things for politeness' sake, and
forget them instantly."
She tossed her head, and took up the book he had been reading.
"'Thomas Putnam,'" she read upon the fly-leaf. "What an extremely
homely name!" she commented.
"A matter of taste," he replied. "I confess that Patience Putnam would
please me better."
"You are very rude!" she said, angry that she needs must blush.
"Am I? You may have an opportunity to polish my manners whenever you
choose."
"They need it badly enough; but some materials are so coarse-grained,
that they will take no polish. Will you please talk sensibly for a few
moments?"
"Certainly. Any thing to please you. Your request is at once too
reasonable and too polite to be disregarded. Have you any choice of
subject?"
"What have you been reading?"
"Merely a foolish lovelorn ditty."
"Read it to me," she commanded.
"As you please; if you will give me the book. Sir John Suckling is
responsible for it."
"'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,'" Patty quoted.
The lawyer smiled, and in his rich voice read the following poem:--
TRUE SIGNS OF LOVE.
Honest lover, whosoever,
If in all thy love there ever
Wavering thought was, if thy flame
Were not still even, still the same,
Know this,--
Thou lov'st amiss;
And to love true
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
If, when she appears i' th' room,
Thou dost not quake, and be struck dumb,
And, in striving this to cover,
Dost not speak thy words twice over,
Know this,--
Thou lov'st amiss;
And to love true
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
If fondly thou dost not mistake,
And all defects for graces take,
Persuad'st thyself that jests are broken
When she has little or nothing spoken,
Know this,--
Thou lov'st amiss;
And to love true
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
If, when thou appear'st to be within,
Thou let'st not men ask, and again;
And, when thou answer'st, if it be
To what was asked thee properly;
Know this,--
Thou lov'st amiss;
And to love true
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
If, when thy stomach calls to eat,
Thou cut'st not fingers 'stead of meat,
And, with much gazing on her face,
Dost not rise hungry from the place,
Know this,--
Thou lov'st amiss;
And to love true
Thou must begin again, and love anew.
He read better than he intended, or, indeed, than he knew. His voice
had always a remarkable power over Patty,--a fascination which she
loved to experience. As he read, she turned away from him, and gazed
through the twig-set window toward the softly-outlined hills. As he
concluded, she turned her face toward him like a flash of light.
"Do you believe it?" she asked in a voice which proved her melted mood.
But her companion was less facile in his mental changes, and did not
respond to this quick transition from banter to sentiment.
"I believe," he replied, "that it is wholly and entirely--poetry. It is
not a bad description of Burleigh Blood."
She sprang up impetuously from the seat into which she had sunk, and
began to pace restlessly up and down.
"But there is some snap to that sort of love," she said: "one can
believe in its earnestness."
"And in its unreasoning exaction," he returned. "It must be very
uncomfortable."
"But I'd rather be hated than comfortably loved: it would amount to
more. I hate placidity. I think love should be so strong that one
surrenders one's whole being to it."
"You are like the rest of your sex," he began. But at that moment
a paper fluttered out of the book whose leaves he had been turning
carelessly as they talked. "Very _apropos_," he said, taking it up.
"This is the work of a college-friend of mine. I trust you'll pardon my
reading it:--
"While daisies swing on their slender stalks,
As when the spring was new;
While golden-rod into bloom has burst,
As summer quite were through;
Then 'tis ah! and alack! and well-a-day!
For the time when dreams were true:
'Tis best to be off with the old love
Before you are on with the new!
"For happy with either,
Is happy with neither,
And love is hard to tame:
The old love's grieving,
The new's believing,
Both feed the treacherous flame.
"Clarissa's sad crying,
Dorinda's sweet sighing,
Alike my comfort fears;
Fain would I ease me
From things that tease me,--
Dorinda's doubting, Clarissa's tears.
"Soon daisies fade from the sloping fields
They graced when spring was new;
And golden-rod alone on the hills
Proclaims the summer through;
Then heigh-ho! and alack! and well-a-way!
Is a second love less true?
Be speedily off with the old love,
And speedily on with the new!"
"That is simply abominable!" Patty exclaimed. "He had no idea what love
is!"
"I understand that to imply that you do," Mr. Putnam said critically.
"Women know that by intuition."
"Oh!"
"Every woman desires the sort of love Suckling describes," she said
insistently, standing at the window, with her back toward her companion.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "Taste in love is as different as taste
in flavors."
"But every one must desire true love."
"True love is no more palatable to all than is honey."
She turned suddenly, and faced him. He was startled to see how pale she
was.
"What is it?" he cried, springing up from his lounging position. "Are
you dizzy?"
"Yes, yes," she said.
He made her sit down, and began to fan her with his hat. Every look and
motion was full of solicitude, but the girl shrank from him.
"It is nothing. It has passed now," she said; by a strong effort
recovering her composure.
"I am very sorry," he began; but she interrupted him.
"It is all passed," she said, laughing nervously. "I am very foolish.
What do you think of the weather?"
"The moon last night entertained a select circle with one or two stars
in it," he said slowly, while he watched her with keen eyes; "and that
seems to promise rain."
"That is unfortunate," she answered, rising. "We have rehearsal in the
afternoon at Selina Brown's, and it is so uncomfortable getting about
in the rain!"
"You are not going home now?"
"I must. I am deeply grateful to you for your hospitality, and more for
your frankness."
"My frankness?"
"Good-by."
"Wait. You will be dizzy on the ladders."
"Nonsense! I never was dizzy in my life."
"Not a moment ago?"
"Oh, yes! But I am clear-headed now. Don't come. I really mean it. I
don't want you."
She slipped down the ladder, leaving him alone. He stood a moment
looking at the branches which hid her from his sight, and then flung
himself down upon a rustic seat in deep thought.
Meanwhile Patty went back towards the brook and her home. She stopped
at the bridge as before, but now the vague unrest in her heart was
changed to positive pain. It had not been giddiness which had made
her white, but a sudden conviction, that, after all, her lover had no
passion worth the name. She was very unhappy,--so unhappy, indeed, as
to forget to be angry with herself for being so. She saw Hazard Breck
coming down the brookside, and looked about for a means of escape from
meeting him. At that moment he looked up, and saw her. He involuntarily
made a motion, as if half minded to turn back; and instantly a
desire arose in Patty to encounter him. Life, like dreams, goes often
by contraries; and desires are oftener caught upon the rebound than
directly.
"Good-afternoon," Patty called, with a fine assumption of gayety.
"Good-afternoon," he answered, coming up to her side, and leaning upon
the railing of the bridge.
"Are you thinking of suicide?" she asked, as he continued to look, not
at her, but intently into the water.
"No, indeed!"
"Then don't look so melancholy, please."
"How shall I look?"
"I don't much care; only don't have that dreadful dead-and-gone
expression."
"Shall I grin?"
"Of course not!"
"Why may I not look melancholy, then?"
"Because it does not please me to have you," she said.
"Oh!" he retorted. "The trouble is not in me, then, but in your mood."
"I am not given to moods. I am _semper idem_."
"So is a post."
"Thank you!" Patty replied. "You are as complimentary as your uncle."
"Uncle Tom? Where did you see him?"
"At various places in Montfield all my life."
Hazard began to look at her curiously. He had at first noticed
nothing strange in her manner, being too much occupied with his own
disquietude, having left the house after aunt Pamela had confided to
him his uncle's passion. He had been walking along the side of the
brook, recalling the thousand signs of this love which he had seen,
and yet accounted not at all; and he wondered, man-like, at his own
obtuseness to what now seemed so clear. When he met Patty, he was
absorbed in counterfeiting indifference; but something in her tone made
him perceive at length that she was not her usual self. Perhaps the
love in his own heart, whose fruition he had unquestioningly resigned
at the words of aunt Pamela, made him clearer sighted. He longed to
question her, to tell her of his uncle's love and of his own. His lip
trembled with the impetuous words he could not speak, and his eyes were
fixed upon her face with an intense gaze which was more than she could
bear.
"Good-by," she said hastily, and went her way.
"Don't fail to be at rehearsal," she called, lest he should think her
leave-taking abrupt.
But she would not look back, for her eyes were full of tears.
Hazard walked thoughtfully on towards the house, which he reached just
as a woman drove to the front entrance. It was the woman who went under
the name of Mrs. Smithers, and she had driven over from Samoset after
Mr. Putnam.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CHURCH AT SAMOSET.
The road to Samoset was up hill and down hill, and altogether uneven;
but it lay through a lovely country, just now colored with those soft
hues autumn wears before her gorgeous gala dress is ready. Beside the
way the squirrels leaped and chattered in the Sunday stillness as our
friends drove to church. Flossy had proposed that they call for Ease
Apthorpe; and her cousin, who had been secretly wishing her to make
this suggestion, assented with alacrity. Ease yielded to the temptation
of a ride on so beautiful an afternoon, and abandoned her own for the
Unitarian service at Samoset. In spite of Mrs. Sanford's reflections
upon the narrowness of modern buggies, the seat of their carriage
proved wide enough for the three, perhaps because Ease, like Flossy,
was rather small.
Halfway between Montfield and Samoset the country-road crossed a large
brook, which was known as Wilk's Run. It was deep and swift, being fed
by springs among the hills; and it foamed along its channel, fretting
at every bowlder, with a sense of its own importance, little more
reasonable than if it had been gifted with human intelligence. The
banks of the stream were rough, and broken with miniature coves and
shallows, cliffs and caves, where the schoolchildren, picnicking or
playing truant, frolicked joyously.
"Do you remember, Will," Ease said, as our friends halted upon the
bridge to look up and down the Run, "do you remember the May Day when
we hid Sol Shankland's pea-shooter in the hole in the rock?"
"I think I do," he returned, laughing. "He pelted Selina Brown until
she threatened to drown herself; and Emily Purdy inquired if we
supposed Mrs. Brown would get to the funeral in time to be called with
the mourners."
"I wonder if the thing is there now," continued Ease. "That was--why,
it was seven years ago: think of it!"
"We might see," Will suggested. "We are early enough."
"It would be such fun!"
"You don't mind staying with the horse, do you, Floss?" Will asked.
"Oh, no! I shall drive on if I do. I know the road to Samoset
perfectly."
"Come on, then, Ease: we'll investigate."
Off the pair went, laughing and chatting like two children. Flossy
waited until they had clambered down the rocky path to the water below
the bridge, and then shouted to them.
"What is it?" her cousin asked.
"I'll call when I come from church," she screamed in reply.
Then she deliberately drove off.
"By George!" Will exclaimed. "That's just like Floss: I might have
known."
"What shall we do?" asked his companion in dismay.
"Do? Make ourselves comfortable. Meeting won't be more than an hour,
and we can endure that. It is a great deal pleasanter here than in
church."
"Yes," she assented doubtfully.
"And, as we can't help ourselves, it is no use to fret."
They found a cosey nook, and a log for a seat, which Will, with a
praiseworthy care for Ease's Sunday raiment, covered with a newspaper
he chanced to have in his pocket. They fell to chatting of old times,
the theatricals, Will's college-scrapes, and the thousand things which
give to life its varied savors. Will in a quiet fashion had been fond
of his companion from childhood, but had never thought it necessary
to tell her so: indeed, he had never in any serious way considered
the fact himself, but, being fond of her companionship, had sought
and accepted it as a matter of course. This placid afternoon, with
the water at their feet, the trees rustling in the faintest whispers
overhead, and the air about them mellow and fragrant, a sensuous,
"lotus-fed content" stole over them, and the moments went by unheeded.
They were too much at ease for lovers, but they were the best of
friends.
Meanwhile, Flossy Plant, filled with a wicked glee, drove onward to
Samoset, found an old man to fasten her horse, and walked into church
as demurely as the most saintly maiden of them all. The party had set
out for the Unitarian church; but Flossy, having taken matters into her
own hands, drove to quite another sanctuary. She had often heard her
cousins laugh about the quaintness of a church of Scotch Presbyterians
which had been established in the earlier days of Samoset, and which
still retained much of its antique simplicity.
She had seen the building in driving with Will, and now the whim had
seized her to attend the service. She was a little late, and an icy
breath of stern theology seemed to meet her when she entered. She
slipped into a seat near the door, and half held her breath, lest a
precentor should start up from some unsuspected corner, and pounce upon
her for disturbing the awful solemnity of the assembly.
The building was plain to ugliness,--a square box, high and bare, with
stiff pews, whose uncushioned angles precluded the possibility of any
sacred drowsiness. The windows were devoid of shutters, the floor
was carpetless, the pulpit as guiltless of cushions as the pews. The
congregation had a blue, pinched look, as if their religion were too
difficult of digestion to be nourishing, and a moral dyspepsia had been
the result of swallowing large portions of it.
The preacher, however, was a noble-looking man, with snowy hair and
beard. He was reading and expounding the twenty-second Psalm when
Flossy entered; and she could not but be struck with the force of his
unaffected diction and the nobility of his thought, colored though it
necessarily was by his narrow theology.
But all solemn meditations were suddenly interrupted, when, the
exposition ended, the congregation sang the psalm which had been
read. No wicked hymns, the invention of men, are allowed in the
conservative precincts of orthodox Presbyterianism, but only the old
metrical versions of the Psalms of David. The old custom of having the
precentor sit in a box before the pulpit was not followed in the church
at Samoset, nor were the lines deaconed out; these two concessions
having been grudgingly made to the progressive spirit of the age. The
precentor sat in the front pew; and, suddenly stepping out before the
people, he began in a cracked, nasal tenor to sing the psalm read.
The congregation generously allowed him half a line the start, and
then one after the other attempted the hopeless task of overtaking him
before he completed the stanza. He had a great advantage from the fact
that he probably knew what tune he intended to sing; and by skilfully
introducing sundry original quavers, runs, and quirks, he succeeded
in throwing his pursuers so completely off the scent, that, although
at least a dozen different airs were tried by various members of the
chorus, no one seemed really to have hit the right one until the
precentor had triumphantly completed two stanzas, and got well into the
third.
The effect was indescribable. Flossy was at first too amazed to
understand what was the matter; and then it required all her energies
to keep from laughing aloud. How any human beings could stand up and
give vent to such unearthly sounds, and still preserve their gravity,
was beyond her comprehension. The volume of noise constantly increased
as one after another of the singers, having tried hastily half a dozen
or more tunes in various keys, came proudly into the right one, pouring
forth a torrent of sound to let the precentor know, that, after all,
he was conquered, and his secret wrested from him. That individual,
finding himself defeated in his endeavors to conceal the tune under new
and more elaborate variations, sulkily abandoned the contest, and tried
to sing it correctly, thereby coming so far from the original, that
once more the congregation were puzzled, and, concluding him to have
changed the air, struck anew into a wild variety of experiments more
discordant than before.
The singing was so astonishing, that the words did not at first impress
Flossy; but they were sufficiently remarkable when once her attention
was fixed on them.
"Like water I'm poured out, my bones
all out of joynt do part.
Amidst my bowels, as the wax,
so melted is my heart.
"My strength is like a pot-sheard dry'd,
my tongue it cleaveth fast
Unto my jaws; and to the dust
of death thou brought me hast."
And so on through innumerable stanzas.
For the remainder of the service Flossy gave her attention chiefly to
the book of psalms, and very entertaining she found it. She had a very
funny time all alone in the corner of the great bare pew, her golden
hair fluffed about her face, and her cheeks flushed with her efforts
to restrain her laughter. She grew more and more absorbed until at the
lines,--
"Like as the hart for water-brooks
in thirst doth pant and bray,"
she forgot herself entirely, and a little golden trill of laughter
rippled through the solemn old church. Then poor Flossy felt, rather
than saw, the looks of horror and indignation which were cast in her
direction, and her cheeks burned like fire. She relieved her mind by
pulling to pieces a ragged psalmody; and, as she grew calmer, the
printed paper used in the binding caught her eye. Upon it she read the
following notice:--
"Dec. 25, by the Rev. Edward French, William Sanford of Montfield, to
Linda, youngest daughter of Ezekiel Thaxter, Esq."
"Grandmother Sanford's wedding," Flossy said to herself, and dreamed
over the notice until the service ended.
"Mercy!" she remarked to the horse, looking at her watch as she drove
out of Samoset: "how late it is! Do get along faster. What will Ease
and Will think has become of me? Get up! Mercy, who's that?"
It was the stalwart form of Burleigh Blood she saw, walking along the
grassy edge of the road. He turned his head as she approached, lifting
his hat, and blushing diffidently.
"How do you do?" she said, drawing rein beside him. "Will you ride?"
"Thank you," he answered confusedly, "I--I think not."
"Very well," she returned, "get in then."
He laughed and obeyed her, as if he had given the acceptance her words
assumed.
"Where have you been?" Flossy asked as they drove on. "How in the world
do you happen to be straying about so on Sunday? Have you been to
church?"
"Yes: I rode over this morning, and staid all day."
"But you didn't eat your horse for dinner, I hope."
"Oh, no! I had dinner at aunt Phelena's. I lent the horse. Joe
Brown and his wife came over to see their cousin. Her husband has
disappeared, and nobody knows what has become of him."
"Disappeared?"
"Yes. He went out to his office, and never came back."
"How disgusting for a man to act so!" exclaimed Flossy. "Why, the
friends can't tell whether to have a funeral, or be chirky. It must be
dreadfully aggravating. It keeps them all at home, and yet they don't
know what to expect."
"It is usually safe to expect the worst."
"But that isn't pleasant. One doesn't like to be in the dumps without
being obliged to be. And it's not only the immediate family, but other
folks,--sort of cousins, and the like. I should be awfully cross if I
were a cousin. They can't even have the comfort of the services, or
of wearing black, no matter how becoming it is to them. For my part,
I think it would be a great deal less selfish to leave word whether
there's a funeral or not."
"I don't think people who disappear can always help it," he
said, laughing. "But I suppose you'll leave a note saying,
'Farewell--farewell forever;' or something like that."
"Yes, I'll say 'Funeral at such a time, and I'll be ready.' How
shockingly I talk! So saying, she folded her lips, and sank into
silence. Will you drive, please?"
"This cousin of the Browns," Burleigh remarked, "just went off, or was
carried off, or something else: at least, he is gone. The Browns were
going home in the mail-team at nine o'clock this morning, but Mrs.
Brown didn't get ready until about one this afternoon."
"And you lent them your horse. That was very good of you."
"Oh, no! It was only casting bread upon the waters. I shall want a good
turn of him some time, likely enough."
"I never supposed," Flossy returned critically, "that bread cast upon
the waters could be worth much when it came back after many days. It
most likely would be mouldy, and so water-soaked it wouldn't be fit to
eat."
"I don't like to joke about Scripture," he said gravely, flushing at
his own boldness. "Of course," he added, "I don't think you meant any
harm."
"Of course not. It is a trick I have caught from father: it is part of
my inheritance, like dyspepsia and a liver. Though why," she added,
"it should be called a liver, I can't see. I think _dier_ would be more
appropriate."
At that moment Wilk's Run came in sight.
"Dear me!" Flossy exclaimed. "I entirely forgot them, but this man put
them all out of my head."
Her companion answered only by a puzzled stare.
"This one that disappeared, you know," she explained lucidly. "And they
went to find a popgun, or something, and the service was so very long,
you know."
Burleigh, vainly endeavoring to catch some clew to her meaning, said
nothing. In another moment they reached the bridge. No person was to be
seen.
"I wish you'd shout," Flossy said. "They can't be far off."
"What shall I shout?"
"I don't believe you know a word I've been saying," she remarked,
looking into his face. "I want you to call them."
Burleigh was not without a sense of humor, and his bashfulness had
yielded in a great degree to the pleasure which Miss Plant's presence
gave him. He accepted the command literally, and roared, "Them! them!"
so lustily that the rocky banks of the brook re-echoed.
"Mercy!" cried his companion. "You've lungs like organ-bellows. I'll
get out and look for them before I'm stone-deaf."
"If 'them' means Will and Ease Apthorpe," Burleigh said, "there they
come now."
CHAPTER XVII.
A CONFIDENCE.
The shores of Wilk's Run were as varied as the caprices of a coquette.
Here the rocks rose up bold and steep, with broken faces over which
trailed green and graceful ferns, and in whose clefts and niches
bloomed in spring clusters of the pale-red columbines. Again the groves
of birch and poplar, or the copses of walnut-trees, grew quite down to
the water's edge, their golden or silver trunks gleaming out of the
half-luminous dusk of their leaves. Occasionally a tiny meadow would be
planted upon the brook's bank, fringed with rushes and moisture-loving
plants; while at another spot the turf, level and verdant, formed a
greensward fit for the foot of a princess or a fairy. It was to a nook
shut in by a wall of rocks, and carpeted with the softest grass, that
Will and Ease came after rambling about for a time. A large golden
birch stood near the middle of the open space, its leaves forever
quivering, aspen-like, and mingling their murmur with the ripple of the
brook, until only the "talking-bird" seemed needed to complete the trio
of the garden of the Princess Parizade. Knots of golden-rod, and the
purple tassels of the asters, fringed the foot of the rocky wall half
enclosing the place; and there, too, the nightshade trailed its rich
clusters of claret-hued berries. The leaves of the woodbine, which had
climbed up the rocks on one side, contesting every foothold with a wild
grape-vine now hanging heavy with purple clusters, had begun to turn
crimson with ripeness, and furnished a mass of high color.
The schoolgirls of Montfield, like schoolgirls in general, more
sentimental than original, had named this place "Lovers' Retreat;" not,
indeed, that tradition or history recorded that any lovers ever did,
might, could, would, or should retreat thither, but because the spot
and the name had both a gentle fascination for their maiden bosoms.
The popgun for which Will and Ease came to look was not to be found,
having, doubtless, long since mouldered into dust. The search for it,
however, called up a thousand reminiscences, over which they chatted
and laughed like children.
"This is a vast deal better than going to church," Will said,
stretching himself comfortably at the feet of his companion, who sat
leaning against the trunk of the birch-tree. "I am glad Floss left us.
What a queer little thing she is!"
"Do you remember the time we went nutting," said Ease, "and Emily Purdy
ran away with the horse, so that we had to walk home?"
"I guess I do! That was the time you turned your ankle, and your aunt
Tabitha accused me of having lamed you for life."
"Yes. And Mrs. Brown got along with her infallible lotion the day
after I first walked out. She was so astonished when she met me!"
"That's precisely the way she did when Sol Shankland was hit in the
eye with 'old Thunderbust.' You remember the ball we called 'old
Thunderbust,' don't you?"
Very good companions had these two always been, but without a thought
of love between them. They were too frank, too calmly happy together,
for love. The old days, the old memories, cast a soft glow over all
their relations with each other,--a light not love, but the rosy hues
of a dawn that was yet to be, the luminous foretelling of the sun of
passion before the day. They often alluded lightly to the persons they
meant to marry,--ideals which unconsciously they made somehow like each
other, even when intended most to be different.
"It seems to me," Will remarked this afternoon, in a dispassionate
tone, "that Frank Breck goes to see you often enough."
"Doesn't he! I wish he wouldn't. Were ever two brothers more unlike
than he and Hazard?"
"They are different. Hazard is a royal fellow, but the less said of
Frank the better."
"Yes: only"--
"Only what?"
The temptation of an appreciative listener has elicited many a secret
which sharpest tortures could not have wrung from its possessor. Ease
had no intention of disclosing to her friend the troubles which buzzed
gnat-like about her ears at home; but the time, the place, and, more
than all, his interested face and his often-proved sympathy won the
tale from her.
"It all came about," she said, "before I understood any thing of it;
and now I don't know the whole story. There is something about a will
that I've no clew to."
"Really, this is an impressive beginning," Sanford said. "You don't
mind if I smoke?"
"No. I noticed that aunt Tabitha acted queerly when Frank Breck's name
was mentioned, or rather I remember it now; but it has always seemed as
if every thing that happened at Mullen House was strange some way. I've
always seemed to be somebody else, and not myself, ever since I came
here to live."
"It is strange," Will assented. "It is a sort of ogre's castle, and
your aunt, 'savin' yer presince,' is the ogress."
"Aunt Tabitha has always been a puzzle to me," Ease said, "and I never
attempt to understand her ways."
"Who does?" he asked.
"Frank kept coming and coming," continued she, "and getting more and
more bothersome, and"--
"More what?"
"Bothersome, acting foolish, you know, about me, as if he were--well
you understand, of course, what I mean. I don't think I'm vain; but he
did act as if he was--why, as if he liked me."
"Made love to you, you mean?"
"Yes: I suppose so."
"The puppy!"
"Why, that wasn't any harm, was it?" she asked naïvely. "Only, of
course, I hate to have him about all the time, and I never liked him
very well."
"I should hope not," the young man interpolated with emphasis.
"Not that he ever troubled me much, for of course I didn't let him; but
he wanted to."
"Look here," Will exclaimed, sitting up. "I've always been like a
brother to you, Ease, and now you are in a place where you need a
brother more than ever. I think I'd better hint gently to that young
donkey that he'd find it safer to let you alone."
"Oh, no, no!" she replied. "You mustn't let anybody know that you
know this. Aunt Tabitha told me not to say a word to anybody, and
particularly to you. I'm not sure I didn't promise not to tell, but
I must talk to somebody. There is something or other they don't tell
me about a will; and aunt Tabitha says we shall both be paupers, if I
don't do as she wishes."
"Do as she wishes? What does she want you to do?"
"She has promised him that I shall marry him," Ease said earnestly,
with cheeks like the petals of a damask rose.
"The devil she has!"
"Hush! You mustn't talk so. Of course she wouldn't make me; but, if she
did, what could I do?"
"Do!" he exclaimed hotly. Then suddenly he changed his tone to one of
cool impartiality. "If she makes you marry him, of course you'll have
to do it."
"But you wouldn't like to be made to marry him," she said, half crying.
"No," he replied with an air of great candor. "I don't fancy I should.
Frank Breck," he added vehemently, "is his father over again. I wonder
if Putnam knows what he's about."
"Oh, he couldn't!" Ease returned. "I don't understand it myself; only
you mustn't let any one know I've told you any thing."
"Look here, Ease," her companion said, flinging his cigar halfway
across Wilk's Run, and taking her hand in his. "I want you to make me a
promise--yes, two of them."
"What are they?"
"Will you promise?"
"If I can."
"Of course you can. The first is, that, if you get into any trouble
where I can help you, you'll let me know. Do you promise that?"
"Yes, I promise that; and I thank you for being such a dear good
brother."
"The second is, that, whatever happens, you won't marry Frank Breck."
"But, Will"--
"No: no buts. Either promise, or don't promise; but don't put in ifs
and buts."
"But I must. There is aunt Tabitha."
"Aunt Tabitha be hanged! I beg your pardon; but she has always used you
shamefully, bossing you round, and"--
"We agreed long ago," she interrupted, "not to discuss her."
"Very well. Only I wish you'd promise me."
"How can I, when I might not be able to keep my promise?"
"Good heavens, Ease!" he exclaimed, springing up, and pacing excitedly
to and fro on the greensward. "It is enough to make a man go mad to
hear you talk in that cold-blooded way about marrying Frank Breck. You
can't marry him; and, what's more, you sha'n't marry him!"
"Hark!" she said.
They heard the sound of wheels, stopping immediately after upon the
bridge, and then the voice of Burleigh Blood.
"It isn't Flossy," Will said.
"It must be," Ease answered. "There, don't you hear her call?"
"What of it? Let her go home. When she finds we are not there, they'll
send back for us. I want to talk to you."
"Oh, no, no!" Ease said, hurrying along towards the bridge. "Aunt
Tabitha didn't want me to come, anyway, and she'd be wild if she knew
we hadn't been to church."
"I should think you were old enough to decide something for yourself,"
he growled, giving her his hand to help her over the stones.
The buggy would hardly accommodate four: so Burleigh was forced to
complete his journey on foot, the others driving merrily away with
bantering good-bys. They had driven only a short distance when they
encountered a buggy driven violently.
"Why, isn't that Tom Putnam?" exclaimed Will. "What on earth's got him?"
"And this horrid, bold-looking woman with him," Flossy remarked
reflectively.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A CHAPTER OF SHREDS AND PATCHES.
Monday morning found the young people at the Sanford cottage in rather
indifferent spirits. When the sun, after having fought his way through
clouds to do so, awoke Patty, the sound which his beams evoked from her
lips was not, like that of Memnon, a note of joy, but a sigh. Flossy
announced at breakfast a severe attack of her dyspepsia, caused, she
declared, by the sermon to which she had listened at Samoset.
"It was a dreadfully hard sermon," she said, "and had more heads than a
hydra. I'm not used to such things, and it's no wonder it made me ill."
"I didn't hear it," Will remarked; "but it has given me a headache all
the same. It must be because I have so many ideas. I shall lose my wits
with the pain some day, I've no doubt."
"If you do," Floss retorted, "you can advertise for them as of no use
but to the owner, like private papers."
"What nonsense you two talk!" grandmother Sanford said mildly. "Dost
thee think, William, that friend Putnam has secured my pension yet?"
"I will try to find out to-day, grandmother, after I've driven mother
over to call on the young and lovely bride, Mrs. Bathalina Peter
Clemens Mixon."
From the time of the sudden and romantic departure of Bathalina,
the life of Mrs. Sanford had been made a burden by the trial of new
servants. She utterly refused to have anybody about her who was Irish;
yet the servants she had tried had proved alike a weariness to the
flesh and a vexation to the spirit. They were principally farmers'
daughters, who "never thought o' livin' out, but would stop a spell,
jes' to 'commodate." In Montfield everybody knew his neighbor's
affairs; and the friends of the family had been sending in a continuous
stream of candidates, or messages respecting girls they thought might
be available, or concerning people who might know of girls to hire, or
have heard of somebody who did. Even Mrs. Brown at length became aware
of the vacancy in the Sanfords' kitchen, and sent over a girl whom she
recommended as being all that the most exacting could desire. It proved
to be the same amiable domestic who had dealt such destruction among
Mrs. Brown's hairpins; and for various reasons her first morning at the
doctor's cottage was also her last.
"What could you expect," Mrs. Sanford said, "of a girl Mrs. Brown
recommended? She's no kind of a housekeeper. She'd be sure to have
a pig killed on the wane of the moon. And she's like one of her own
doughnuts: she's no sort or kind of life nor sconce, but tough as
leather to bite, if you are ever hungry enough to want to eat one.
I declare I am worn almost to a shadow with trying girls, and not
getting one fit to live with."
But at last a ray of light had shone through the clouds. Bathalina
Mixon had sent word that her experience of wedded bliss was not,
on the whole, satisfactory, and that she was willing to return and
be forgiven. So Mrs. Sanford and Will were going to treat with the
repentant bride, and if possible arrange for her return.
"She ain't more than half-witted," Mrs. Sanford said; "but I've
concluded that's an advantage; and she knows the ways of the house, and
is afraid of the doctor."
Few couples were ever more ill-assorted than Dr. Sanford and his
wife; but the husband bore with admirable patience the follies which
experience had taught him it was idle to hope to eradicate. His keen
sense of humor aided him in this forbearance, and a remark of his
wife's more than usually grotesque, had no other visible effect upon
him than to provoke a quiet smile about the corners of his lips.
The doctor was unspeakably fond of his children, and in them found
something of the companionship denied him with his wife. Will was to
succeed his father in his practice, and was already studying with that
in view. For Patty her father could not bear to plan a future, since he
could not endure the thought of separation. Her wooers had made little
impression upon him, but he frowned decidedly upon Clarence Toxteth.
"I do not like the breed," he said to his wife. "The Toxteth blood
doesn't seem to have any brain-making power in it."
"I think anybody must have brains to get money," Mrs. Sanford answered.
"They've got that, at any rate, and only one son for it to go to."
"One son of that kind," her husband returned grimly, "is a great
plenty."
Towards Mr. Putnam the doctor's attitude was not hostile, but rather
that of one who reserved his opinion. He postponed in his mind the
consideration of these things, as if by so doing he could delay the
inevitable, and retain his favorite child the longer in the home-nest.
But all this has no very intimate connection with the visit which Mrs.
Sanford and her son had set out to pay to Mrs. Mixon. They found her
in a dilapidated building in the outskirts of Samoset, which had been
built as a tenement for the hands in a cotton-mill now burned. Hither
Peter had conveyed his bride, when, flushed with eager love, she flew
to his arms from the funeral of her cousin's child; and for a week he
had treated her with the utmost consideration, having an eye to her
money.
"The shekels naturally belong in the husband's hands," he said, "and
you'd better let me take care of them. These banks are slippery things,
and I've no confidence in those Samoset fellers anyway. I'll get it,
and you can call on me for cash when you want it."
Whether her call would be answered was a question the foolish wife
unfortunately forgot to consider; and into the rascal's pocket went
the savings which Dr. Sanford had taken pains to have Bathalina lay
by. Mixon's tenderness decreased in the same proportion as his bride's
funds; and, when once he had obtained them all, the amiable Peter was
amiable no longer. He began a course of reckless abuse, developing
an imaginative ingenuity in the invention of curses and opprobrious
epithets, which was wonderful to hear.
"I bore livin' with him as long as I could," Bathalina afterward
confided to aunty Jeff; "but one day it was borne in upon me that I was
unequally yoked with unbelievers, and I made up my mind, that, as it
wasn't much of a marriage anyway, I wouldn't have no more to do with
him. So I told him if he'd go over to Montfield, and ask Mis' Sanford
would she take me back, I'd get out of his way, and he might marry
'Mandy West for what I cared."
The arrangements for Bathalina's return were easily concluded, and Mrs.
Sanford and Will set out towards home once more. They drove rapidly,
as the clouds were every moment becoming more threatening. Fate,
however, had her purposes in their going, and interposed by breaking
beneath the wheels of their carriage a decayed culvert. The buggy was
overturned, mother and son being suddenly and unceremoniously tumbled
in an undignified heap into the carriage-top. The horse stopped of his
own will in spite of the alarming outcry of Mrs. Sanford, who moaned
and shrieked, and wailed and lamented, while her son fished her from
the wreck.
"'What can wringing of the hands do,
That which is ordained, to alter?'"
he remarked coolly.
"Will," his mother exclaimed, "do stop quoting things till we see if we
are alive!"
A consultation ensued, if so it could be called where the lady refused
to consult. Mrs. Sanford was far too plump to walk, and could hardly be
expected to mount, and ride on horseback. There seemed no alternative
but for her to remain where she was while her son went to the nearest
farmhouse, a mile away, for a carriage.
When Will returned from his search, which was somewhat prolonged by the
necessity of going to several places, his mother had disappeared. The
cushions were piled up in the broken carriage; so he concluded that the
lady's taking-off had not been violent, and followed the homeward road
himself.
His way lay by Mullen House, the home of Ease Apthorpe and her aunt,
Miss Tabitha Mullen. The mansion stood at some distance from the
street, a stone wall surrounding the grounds. The principal entrance
was an imposing gateway, whose iron gates were religiously closed at
night, but stood open by day. As Sanford rode near, his eyes were
greeted by a strange spectacle. In the gateway he saw Peter Mixon
defending the passage against an angry woman, who, half crazed with
drink or drugs, was loudly insisting upon entering. The woman's dark
hair fell in tangled masses over her shoulders, and her handsome throat
was bared by the neglect of her dress.
"I tell you I will go in!" she screamed, just as Will rode within
hearing. "I will go in and claim my own, in spite of them! Get out of
my way, or I'll kill you!"
She looked equal to the execution of her threat as she ended with a
terrible oath, her eyes flashing, her bosom heaving, and her hands
clinched. Mixon made some reply inaudible to young Sanford, evidently
intended to soothe or cow the woman; but liquor had carried her beyond
restraint.
"Putnam!" she vociferated scornfully. "What do I care for him! I'll cut
his throat too, if I get hold of him! Get out of my way, or"--
At this instant the sound of Sanford's horse's feet attracted her
attention, and she turned towards him. Mixon took advantage of the
diversion to seize her by the arm, and hurry her away.
"Come along!" he said, with every appearance of confusion. "Don't you
see who is coming?"
The woman stared, evidently not comprehending in the least who the
new-comer was; but she allowed herself to be led away, swearing and
threatening as she went.
Will at this moment recognized the woman as the one whom he had met
driving towards Samoset with Tom Putnam.
CHAPTER XIX.
TOXTETH SEEKS AN ALLY.
Mrs. Sanford was so round, so plump, so rosy, that, as she sat
enthroned among the carriage-cushions, she might easily have been
mistaken for an unusually fine specimen of Dutch cabbage, by the
wand of some new Rübezahl endowed with life. The poor lady was much
frightened, not at any thing in particular, but in a general way. She
had a vague idea that something astounding and destructive might take
place at any moment: she had a misty notion that lions and tigers came
out of forests to devour people; and she distinctly recalled the fact
that her grandfather had once shot a wolf in the neighborhood, perhaps
in these very woods which rustled and murmured so ominously behind her.
An unusual situation, even the most trivial, which delivers shallow
minds to reflection, is for them full of uneasiness. To be given up to
self is the most frightful of catastrophes to him who finds self an
utter stranger. If Mrs. Sanford had no great power of reasoning, she
was not without a fancy which fear stirred into activity; and, by the
time she had been alone five minutes, her terror had become ludicrously
great. A squirrel scampering across the road called from her a scream,
which was quickly stifled by the thought that an outcry would be likely
to attract beasts of prey. A crow flew overhead; and that presager of
evil filled her with terror unutterable. The fact that she was alone
on a road much travelled, and but three or four miles from her own
home, seems an insufficient cause for such fear; but Mrs. Sanford could
hardly have suffered more mental anguish if deposited with Daniel in
the den of lions.
Suddenly she heard the sound of approaching wheels, and this sign of
human proximity revived her drooping courage. As the moments had seemed
hours to her, she thought her son had already returned; but a glimpse
of the tossing manes of a span of grays told her that it was the
Toxteth equipage which approached. Her mind yielded to an entirely new
sensation, as a fluff of thistledown is lightly blown about.
"Mrs. Toxteth shall never see me in such a position as this," she said
to herself. "I wouldn't demean myself by letting her know who it is."
So the foolish woman, who had, in common with the ostrich, the feeling,
that, if her head was concealed, her entire person must be invisible,
spread the corner of her shawl over her face, and sat motionless. The
carriage drew nearer, and stopped, a man's voice asking who was there.
As the veiled figure returned no answer, Clarence Toxteth, for he it
was, jumped out, and approached the lady.
"Who is it?" he asked. "Do you want help?"
"No," she answered. "Go away!"
"Why, Mrs. Sanford!" he said, recognizing the voice. "What has
happened? Are you hurt?"
Being recognized, the lady uncovered her face, and said with acerbity,--
"If I'm not killed, I'm sure it isn't my fault. I am so shaken, I doubt
I shall ever get over it."
The young man, being fortunately alone, took the lady into his own
carriage and drove on, leaving the wreck of the buggy to Will's care.
"I doubt but it's a forerunner of a bad sign," Mrs. Sanford said as
they drove along. "I always heard it was unlucky to break down."
"It was lucky for me, at least," young Toxteth answered gallantly. "I
am glad you were not hurt."
"But the shock to my mind, I being as fleshy as I am," she returned
rather illogically, "was dreadful."
They drove smoothly along, Clarence secretly considering how he might
best broach a subject of which his mind was full.
"I've wanted to see you for a long time," he began.
"Those that want to see me," Mrs. Sanford retorted, in a tone which
showed that her temper had been a little shaken by her mishap, "usually
come where I am."
"Oh, yes!" he said, somewhat confused. "But I wanted to see you without
its being known."
"You don't mean to leave me anywhere on the road, do you?" she demanded
in alarm. "I don't know as it'll hurt your reputation if folks do know
you've seen me."
"Oh, dear, no! You misunderstand me entirely."
"Then, I wish you'd speak plainer."
"Why," he said, driven abruptly to the point, "it was about Patty I
wanted to speak."
"Oh!"
Merely writing the interjection indicates but feebly the emotions
filling the breast of Mrs. Sanford when she gave it utterance. Like
Lady Geraldine's answer,--
"It lies there on the paper,
A mere word without her accent."
Surprise, gratification, triumph, were commingled in her voice. She
laid her plump hands together complacently. The doctor's wife loved her
son best, as such women necessarily do; but she was proud of Patty,
and particularly anxious that she should marry advantageously. Here,
was a bridegroom who could deck her daughter in purple and scarlet,
and fine-twined linen. Already in fancy the ladybug mother saw herself
riding behind this handsome span of dappled grays, not as a stranger,
but with all the rights of a mother-in-law. Hers was one of those
vulgar natures which instinctively regarded marriage as a contract
wherein a woman brought her charms to market to be disposed of to the
highest bidder. She unconsciously rustled and plumed herself like a
pigeon in the sun.
"I am well enough able to marry," Clarence said; "and my wife would
have all her heart would wish."
Nature endows weak and sensuous minds with a species of protective
instinct, which sometimes serves them as well as the acutest reason.
Young Toxteth used the argument which was best calculated to touch the
fancy of Mrs. Sanford; and it was so good a choice as to be almost
shrewdness, that he had selected that lady as his confidante. In her
he found an eager listener, whereas no other member of Dr. Sanford's
family would have heard him through his first purseproud remark.
"I have been fond of her for a long time," Toxteth continued. "I didn't
pay her particular attentions until I was sure of myself, of course."
"Very honorable, I'm sure," chirruped Mrs. Sanford,--"very honorable,
indeed."
"I think she likes me," the suitor continued, the admiring attitude of
his listener betraying him into more and more frankness. "She's never
said so; but I'm sure I don't see why she shouldn't like me, and she
naturally wouldn't speak until I did."
"Oh, dear me, no!" acquiesced the gratified mother. "Naturally not."
"But girls are so queer," he said, hesitating a little, now that the
real purpose of the interview was reached. "She doesn't consider how
she hurts my feelings, and she might say she didn't care for me when
she really did, you know. And if you would--why, if you would speak to
her, and--and prepare her a little, you know, so that it shall not be
so unexpected to her."
"I trust I know my duty," replied his companion, nodding her head with
great complacency; "and you may certainly count on me. Patty can't help
seeing the great advantages of being your wife, and it's very good of
you to ask her. Though, to be sure, she may pick and choose of the best
in Montfield, and doesn't have to go begging for a husband, as some
girls do. It isn't every man I'd say yes to, by any manner of means."
And at this moment the carriage stopped at the gate of the Sanford
cottage.
* * * * *
A rehearsal was held that evening at Dessie Farnum's. Will's headache
prevented his attendance; but his part was read, and things went as
smoothly as is usual on such occasions. Flossy showed a desire to
recite the whole of the scenes in which she took part; but as they
chanced to be principally between herself and Burleigh Blood, who knew
few of his lines, this was rather a help.
"If you were only a ventriloquist, Flossy," Patty said, "Burleigh need
do nothing but act bashful, and you could do all the talking."
"I wonder if I couldn't learn," Flossy returned, beginning to repeat
Burleigh's part in a deep voice, which made them all laugh.
"I'm afraid I shall have to learn myself," Blood said, "unless you can
do better than that."
"Better than that! What base ingratitude!"
"Are these plates old-fashioned enough?" Dessie asked. "They were my
grandmother's."
"Do!" exclaimed Flossy. "They are rapturous! Oh the things we shall
have to eat off them!"
"What will you have? Brown-bread and beans, I suppose."
"Oh, dear, no! Chicken-salad and Charlotte-Russes. I am glad I'm going
to be Waitstill Eastman. I couldn't have stood it to see anybody else
eating, and I left out. It must certainly be salad and Charlottes."
"Salads and Charlotte-Russes for an old-fashioned supper!" retorted
Patty. "Indeed, miss, you'll have nothing of the kind. Pumpkin-pies and
nut-cakes are the best you'll get."
"It is no matter," Flossy answered. "It is a great deal better to talk
about things than it is to eat them, after all."
"Flossy never really eats much of any thing but pop-corn," her cousin
explained. "You'd think, to hear her talk, that her life was one long
feast."
"Oh, yes, I do! I eat enormously; but I don't think it is so good as
reading about nice things. Now, I like to read Dickens's books, because
they're always having something to eat or to drink in them. Think of
the cold punch now, the lovely cold punch!"
"Flossy, I'm ashamed of you!" exclaimed Patty. "I do believe you are
tipsy, just thinking about it; and you make me too thirsty for any
thing."
"Your reproof convicts yourself," put in Frank Breck. "I am sorry you
can't hear punch mentioned without being thirsty."
"I am glad if you can," she retorted.
The hit was a palpable one, for the young man had the reputation of
walking in ways far removed from the paths of sobriety.
When the rehearsal was concluded, the rain fell in torrents. Burleigh,
who had his buggy, offered to take Patty and Flossy home. The former
declined the invitation, although insisting that her cousin should
ride. For herself, Patty delighted in the rain. The excitement of the
storm exhilarated her, filling her with a delightful animal joy in
living. She was fond of taking long walks in rainy weather, greatly to
the disturbance of her mother, who had neither sympathy nor patience
with this side of her daughter's nature. Even grandmother, who usually
found whatever Patty did perfect, felt called upon to remonstrate
against these escapades. But to the girl the struggle with the storm
was delightful: it was a keen pleasure to feel the rain beat upon her
face, and her young blood tingled under the cold touch. So to-night
she chose to walk home, and meant to escape alone. She was prevented
by Hazard Breck, who forestalled young Toxteth in seeking the honor of
escorting her. As they left the house, Patty's quick ear caught a word
or two between Ease Apthorpe and Frank Breck.
"Thank you," she heard Ease say. "I will not trouble you."
"Your aunt charged me to see you safe home," he answered. "I shouldn't
want to disobey her."
And as usual Ease yielded.
CHAPTER XX.
AN OUTBURST.
"Hazard," Patty asked, as they went splashing through the puddles, "is
Frank in earnest with Ease? Does he really care for her?"
"I do not know," he answered slowly. "He never makes a confidant of me."
"He persecutes her," Patty continued. "I wish he'd let her alone. She's
too meek to stand out against him. I ought not to say this to you, but
it makes me angry. Why are you so sober lately? You are as solemn as
Bathalina."
"Am I? I wasn't aware of it."
"But of course you know what is troubling you."
"It does little good to talk over such things," he said.
"Such things as what?" she asked.
"As--as being solemn."
"You've some sort of a deadly secret preying upon your mind, Hazard.
That I am sure of. Now, I insist upon knowing what it is."
"I haven't any secret now," he answered rather mournfully.
Hazard was, after all, only a boy, though a very noble and manly one.
He adored Patty with all the ardor of a pure boy's first passion; a
light which, if extinguished, leaves the very blackness of despair in
the boyish heart; a dream from which the waking is very bitter. The lad
whose first love is ill-starred refuses to believe that he can ever
love again, that any sun will rise after this brilliant meteor-flash
has faded.
Hazard had not for a moment entertained the possibility of contesting
his uncle's right to Patty. He was too loyal, too devoted to the man
who had unostentatiously made so many sacrifices to him and his. In
the lonely walk he had taken Sunday afternoon, when aunt Pamela had
spoken of Putnam's love, the young man had fought with himself, and
conquered. When he met Patty on the bridge, she was to him as belonging
to another. There was in the lad a high chivalry, which caused him to
regard things in a noble if somewhat overstrained temper. Mr. Putnam to
him was not merely the uncle to whom he was warmly attached, but also
the generous benefactor who had not spared himself to save the name
and the welfare of his nephews. Hazard was not ignorant, that, but for
Putnam, his father might have been publicly branded as the felon he
was; and he knew, too, that sacrifices made to shield him had crippled
his uncle's fortune. That this had prevented Tom's seeking from Patty
the love which his nephew felt to be richly his due, was an added
reason why in this, most of all things, no obstacle should come between
Mr. Putnam and his desire. The boy's self-renunciation was a little
Quixotic; but who more sadly noble than the crazy knight of La Mancha?
There are, however, limits to all human endurance. To suffer and be
strong is possible to many: to suffer and be silent is within the power
of but few. Hazard had resolved never to speak of his love; but no
one can judge the strength of a resolution until it has been tried by
opportunity. There suddenly rushed over him a wave of boyish despair.
One who voluntarily renounces pursuit, generally believes that he might
have won; and to Hazard his act seemed the renunciation of a prize
surely his.
"Life is so hard!" he burst out suddenly, with all the hopelessness of
despairing twenty.
"Oh, no!" Patty returned lightly. "As Flossy says, 'life would be very
pleasant, if it were not so much trouble to live.'"
"But to live is so much trouble," he answered. "See what a life I've
had! I wasn't asked if I wanted it; and, when I had been made to live,
I didn't have my choice about it, in any way. You know that my father
was a constant trouble to us,--everybody knew that,--and we all had to
endure to be pitied; and pity is always half contempt."
"O Hazard!"
"Of course I don't mean from you," he said illogically enough; "but it
is the truth. Then, mother was just worn into her grave by grief and
poverty; and we boys had to stand by helpless, and see it."
Patty was at a loss how to answer him, and wisely said little. Hazard
was usually so bright, and seemed of so happy a disposition, that this
outburst was the more bewildering. Ignorant of the cause which had
worked his old pains to the surface, Patty's only thought was of how
deep must have been the sorrow of his boyhood to have left so much
bitterness behind. She knew in a vague way that Mr. Breck had been a
dissipated, unprincipled man, who had ill-treated his family, and been
a scandal to the neighborhood until he moved out of it to take up his
residence in Boston. She had no means of knowing how sad a childhood
had been that of Hazard,--a life so shaded, that only an unusually fine
temperament, and the noble disposition inherited from his mother, had
prevented his becoming morbidly gloomy. Partly because she knew not
what to say, and partly from an instinctive feeling that talking would
relieve Hazard's overwrought mood, she let him continue.
"I have never had any good from life for myself," he went on with
increasing vehemence, "and I am sure I have never helped my friends to
any. I've been a dead weight on those I wanted most to help; and, if I
am ever fond of anybody, we are either separated, or something happens
to spoil our friendship. Frank and I never had any thing in common; and
now he is all the time plaguing Ease Apthorpe, or travelling about with
that vile Mixon."
"Who is Mixon?" asked Patty. "Not Bathalina's husband?"
"Yes: that's the one. The old scoundrel!"
"What has Frank to do with him?"
"I don't know. Sometimes I think it's only fondness for low company,
and then at others fancy he has some sort of a secret of Frank's. He
was one of father's dogs; sometimes hostler, sometimes waiter, or
footman, or whatever happened. Father had a strange liking for his
company, and Mixon could manage him when nobody else could come near
him. Why, I've seen father lay his pistols on the table, and dare one
of us to stir, and then go on drinking, and flinging the dishes at
one or another of us, till Peter heard the racket, and came, and took
the revolvers away. Nobody else in the house dared dispute any thing
father did. It is a pleasant childhood to remember, isn't it? And it is
pleasant to think that Mixon may know some secret which would disgrace
us all if it were told."
"Now, Hazard," Patty said soothingly, "you shouldn't talk of these
things. You make them worse than they ever were, and at worst they are
passed now. Then you have always your uncle to help you and to advise
with."
"Uncle Tom? There's where it hurts worse than all. We have always been
a drag on him. If it were not for us, he might have been married long
ago."
"Oh, no!" his companion returned hastily, with a pang in her heart.
"You don't know what you are saying."
"But I do. Even aunt Pamela sees it, and spoke to me of it."
"But"--
"But what?" he broke in fiercely, his passion and pain sweeping away
all his reserve. "Oh, I know what you would say! You think you might
have a voice in the matter. I tell you, Patty Sanford, if you trifled
with uncle Tom, I should hate you as much as I love you now."
"Hazard Breck, you are crazy!"
"I know I am crazy. I've been crazy all summer. I was crazy thinking
I was coming to Montfield because I should see you; and since I came
I've been wild night and day because you were alive in the same town,
because"--
"Oh, hush! For pity's sake, hush!" she cried.
Then she laid her other hand upon his arm, which she already held.
"I have completely forgotten every word we have spoken to-night," she
said.
The tone, the words, affected him like a sudden dash of ice-cold water.
He strode on through the rain in silence, suddenly feeling now how his
heart beat, and his blood rushed tingling through his veins. They had
nearly reached Dr. Sanford's cottage when he spoke again.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "You were always too good to me. I think
I have been out of my head to-night."
"Why shouldn't I be good to you?" she returned. "You have always been
good to me. So old friends as we are don't need to apologize to each
other. I dare say we all say foolish things sometimes."
He winced a little, but did not dissent. As they went up the path
together between the dripping shrubs which glimmered in the light from
the windows, they heard Will's voice.
"There is Will singing," Patty said. "He always sings when he has a
headache. He insists that dying swans sing on account of the pain in
their heads."
"That has been the trouble with me," Hazard answered, smiling faintly.
"I've had my swan-song--unless you call it a hiss. But my pain was not
in my head. Good-night."
"Ah!" Patty said to herself, looking after him, "the pain in your heart
isn't sharper than in mine."
CHAPTER XXI.
THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN.
"This must be the liner," Mrs. Sanford declared upon the following
morning, looking out at the pouring rain. "I doubt Bathalina will not
come to-day."
The event proved her mistaken; for Mrs. Mixon walked over from Samoset,
despite the storm, her bundles hanging about her until she looked like
one of the seven wives of the man met upon the road to St. Ives. Flossy
saw her coming up the walk which led to the kitchen-door, the water
streaming from every fold and end of her garments and belongings.
"Behold a water-nymph!" she said. "She's so fond of washing, I suppose
she feels as if she were in her native element."
"She looks a good deal like an angel dragged through a brush-fence into
a world of bitterness and woe," commented Will.
"There are marriages of convenience," Patty said; "but Bathalina
certainly made a marriage of inconvenience."
"Let's go and see her," proposed Flossy.
To the kitchen they all trooped. Mrs. Sanford was there before them,
alternately scolding the returned prodigal, and pitying herself.
"The trials I've been through since you left," she said, "are beyond
mortal belief. How you could have the heart to leave me in
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