Patty's Perversities

"Like as the hart for water-brooksin 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.