CHAPTER XXXI
AUNT JEFF REMONSTRATES
"If it makes you feel bad to have me cross," Patty said one morning, in answer to a remonstrance of Flossy's, "think how much worse it is for me to be cross. I have to endure my own company all the time, you know."
"Well, Patty-pat," Flossy answered meditatively, "be happy and you'll be virtuous. And that reminds me of Bathalina's room. Don't you think that when it's papered – aunt Britann, didn't you say it was to be done this week? – it might have a frieze, or a dado, or something, of mottoes?"
"Of mottoes?"
"Yes. I've thought up some lovely ones. 'A woman is known by the company she forsakes' is a good one. Then, 'The early bird dreads the fire,' – you know how she hates to get up and build the fire."
"Water is more her element," said Will. "Can't you have —
'Bonnet and feather
She'll wash together!'
or something of that kind?"
"Oh, no! That isn't good. 'Be virtuous and you'll be disagreeable' might do; and 'Marry in haste, and separate at leisure.' I'll think up plenty of mottoes, aunt Britann, if you'll have them put on her walls."
"There comes her aunt Thomas Jefferson Gooch, at your service," Will said, glancing from the window. "There must be a storm in the air to bring her over so early."
He was right. Mrs. Gooch had come over to remonstrate with her niece upon her relations to her husband.
"I couldn't rest, Bathalina," she said, "after hearing that that unfacalized critter was round here again, for I knew just what a fool you be. And it ain't no way respectable to have an intermittent husband, always comin' an' goin,' like the old woman's soap. 'Tain't what our folks has been used to. He's got all your money, hain't he? I'm sure I don't see what more he wants. You let him have every copper you had in the bank, I'll be bound."
"Well," retorted Mrs. Mixon, "what if I did? I put that money by for a rainy day, didn't I? an' when it come, I spent it."
"Lawful sakes! I hope you didn't put it by for Peter Mixin's rainy days! As I told your cousin Huldy, he's one of them folks that makes a dreadful cheerful funeral."
"Dear me!" exclaimed Bathalina, in her confusion wetting her finger, and putting it to the water in the boiler to see if it were hot enough to sizzle, like a hot iron. "How confusin' you are, aunt Jeff! 'Restless mortals toil for nought,' as the hymn says; and you're one of 'em."
"I should think I was!" retorted aunty Jeff. "But I tell you ours is a respectable family, and such culch as Peter Mixup was never brought into it before; to say nothing of having a husband bobbing after you like the tail of a kite, now here and now there!"
"Gracious!" exclaimed her niece fiercely. "How you go on! Don't get me mad, or my sinful pride'll be too much for me."
"Sinful fiddlesticks! If you had any pride, you wouldn't have that rag-tag-and-bobtail, Tom-Dick-and-Harry sort of a husband round you!"
"I shall go mad!" cried Bathalina, with an awful shrillness in her tones. "You'll make me go a raving lunacy!"
"You are one now!" screamed her aunt. "You always was."
Instead of replying, Bathalina seized the rolling-pin, and began to roll the pie-crust she was making with a vigor which bespoke the conflict within. At the same time she burst out into her favorite song, —
"'Tortured in body, and condemned in spirit,
No sweet composure'" —
"I always hide the rolling-pin from my pastry," broke in aunt Jeff with cutting emphasis. "Pie-crust is like millinery, the less it is handled, the better."
"Sinful sakes!" exclaimed her niece, throwing down the rolling-pin. "I try to live as I'll wish I had when I stand round my dying-bed; but if you come here to fight, we'll just make a business of that, and let other things go. But if you come peaceable, you just keep your tongue still."
"Well, well," the visitor said, somewhat startled, "we won't quarrel. But what is Peter Mixer dangling round here for?"
"Something or other between him and Frank Breck," Bathalina said evasively. "I never asked him; for I found I couldn't get it out of him, though I've tried more'n forty different ways."
"But what's he taking up with you again for?"
"Me?" demanded the other indignantly. "Ain't I his wife? Besides, he says Hannah wants to make up with me, and leave me her property."
"Her property! Where'd she get any?"
"Well," Bathalina answered with an air of profound mystery, which in reality arose from profound ignorance, "Hannah may not have been all she ought to be, an' I ain't sayin' she has. But she may have property for all that. And, since her daughter ran off with that Brown of Samoset, Hannah's set agin her, and Peter's talked her over to consider me. And if she does, – as why shouldn't she? – if she does" —
"Nonsense!" interrupted aunty Jeff sardonically. "Ef she does! Ef is a crooked letter. And I thought our family was done with that Hannah Clemens, or Smithers, or whatever she calls herself. I'm sure I cast her off the day she went off with old Mullen."
With which conclusion she gathered herself together, and departed.
On the afternoon of this same day Burleigh Blood came to take council with Flossy about his masquerade dress. In Montfield the young people were thrown upon their own resources for costumes to be used in theatricals or fancy-dress parties. Burleigh, motherless from boyhood, and having no sisters, was forced to take Miss Plant at her word, and come to her for aid on this occasion, being, if the truth were told, but too glad to do so. The brawny fellow, with his magnificent chest and his deep voice, was as ardently in love with this sallow morsel of humanity as if she had been as like Brunhilde as he like Siegfried. Her odd ways and harmless affectations were to him inexpressibly droll and charming. He had at first been thrown into her society by the caprice of Patty, who amused herself by playing upon the diffidence of her suitor. It was not long before Patty began to suspect that this clear-eyed giant had somehow touched her cousin's heart, which proved large enough to contain him, despite her tiny person. Visions of matchmaking danced rainbow-like before the eyes of Patty, and she contrived that her quondam lover and her cousin should constantly be thrown together; or, more exactly, she fancied she managed what would in any case have come about. Later her own affairs had engrossed her so completely, that she hardly even noticed how matters stood with Flossy.
"I am sure I do not know what to wear," Burleigh said, when he and Flossy were alone together in Mrs. Sanford's parlor. "It is such a bother to get up a rig!"
"I've thought it all out," Flossy answered. "You wear this long frock, you know, and it will disguise your figure, and oh! monks do have such good things to eat! This will do finely, don't you think?"
Her friend had not the least idea of her meaning, and only stared.
"It could be made of black cambric," Flossy continued; "and I'll lend you a rosary, and you'll want an old rope to gird it in. You'll make a magnificent monk."
"Oh! you mean me to dress as a monk."
"Of course. Didn't I say so? Sometimes folks don't understand me, but I'm sure I don't see why. Of course I can't help that."
"No, of course not," he assented. "But how shall I get this robe?"
"Bring me the cloth, and I'll make it. Grandmother will help me."
"It is too bad for you to have so much trouble."
"Pooh! It's no bother. I'm sure I shall be glad to do it; and, besides, I shall know you."
"That's so!" he said. "What are you going to wear?"
"Do you think I'd tell?"
"It is only fair you should, for you'll know me. Besides, I can never find out anybody."
"Well," Flossy said in a sudden burst of confidence, "I'll tell you something. Ease and Will – no, I won't tell that, for I promised not to, and you mustn't mention it if I did. But I'm going to wear the dress Ease wore in 'The Country Wooing.'"
"Was it red?"
"Red? No, indeed! You never know any thing about what a girl has on."
"I know I don't. I don't look at them enough."
"More likely," she retorted, "you look at the wearers, and not at the dresses."
"No: only at you."
Let no reader suppose Burleigh was complimenting: he was only telling the simple truth. Flossy blushed a little at his earnest frankness.
"You'd better look at Patty," she said. "She's ever so much prettier."
"I suppose she must be," he responded naïvely; "but I'd rather look at you. I hope you don't mind."
"Oh, not in the least! Why should I? But this is all wool-gathering. Let's arrange about your suit."
"But you haven't told me what your dress is."
"It's a white lute-string."
"Lute-string?"
"Yes, of course," she said, laughing at his puzzled face. "This old-fashioned soft silk."
"Oh! I thought lute-string" —
"Would be like a guitar-string, I suppose; but it isn't. Don't you remember the dress? It had a square corsage" —
"You'd better not tell me any more. It's an old-fashioned soft silk, and it's white. That is all I could remember. I shouldn't know a square corsage from – from a square handspike."
The friendship between Flossy and Burleigh ripened rapidly over that monk's garb. She assumed great airs of superiority and authority over him, which pleased Burleigh marvellously. She climbed into a chair to fit the robe over his shoulders, boxing his ears when he insisted upon turning around that he might see her; being at last forced to compromise by letting him face the mirror, and gaze rapturously at the image of her petite person and pale face. But at last Flossy got so embarrassed, that she declared she must at once be satisfied about the weather, and led him off to consult Mrs. Sanford.
"Of course it will be pleasant next Tuesday evening," Mrs. Sanford decided after a consultation with her beloved "Old Farmer's Almanac." "The moon quarters in the west at seven o'clock that very night. I wish," she continued with a sigh, as she returned the almanac to its place, "that we didn't have to change almanacs every year. I just get all my accounts down in one, and its year's gone by. And then I'd like to keep an almanac for association's sake; but I suppose it wouldn't be much good the second year. Things do pass away so in this world!"
CHAPTER XXXII
HEADS AND TAILS
The day of the masquerade came, and a more sombre mortal than was Patience Sanford the sun did not shine upon. The resolve to wear the costume she had chosen cost her many a bitter pang. She endeavored to persuade herself that self-respect required this assertion of her independence of control, yet by this very decision it sank like the mercury upon a winter's night. She said to herself, that, had Tom requested her not to wear the dress, she would gladly have yielded; but that his assumption of deliberate indelicacy on her part, and his overbearing way of correcting her, were insolences not to be endured. There was little meekness about Patty's love. As yet it was a flame that scorched rather than warmed. But she was as true as steel, and the fire within would in time work to her finer tempering.
Riding with her father the morning of this day, Patty saw Peter Mixon accompany Tom Putnam into the office of the latter; and she fell to wondering deeply what could be the occasion of so strange a companionship. Had she entered with them unperceived, she might have heard the following conversation: —
"What is up between you and Frank?" the lawyer asked. "You are together a good deal. What sort of a hold have you on him?"
"Hold on him?" echoed the other. "I hain't got no hold on him. We've been gunning together some. He got kind o' used to me when he was a little feller. He always had more sconce than Hazard. Hazard's too almighty good for me. I like a feller's got some devil in him."
"I think likely," Putnam answered. "What is your hold on him?"
"I tell you I hain't got none."
"You may as well carry your lies somewhere else," the lawyer said coolly. "They are wasted on me."
"You was always d – d hard on me," Mixon said after a moment of sullen silence. "You don't take no account o' your family's spoilin' me. I was straight as a Christian before Breck got hold o' me. 'Tain't no fair twittin' on facts gener'ly; but you don't seem to remember that I know your brother-in-law wrote your name once, an' there warn't never nothin' done about it."
"Now you speak of it," returned the other unmoved, "I remember that Peter Mixon witnessed it. It seems to me rather longer than it is broad; for Breck is dead, and Mixon is living."
"But Breck's family ain't dead. You won't bedaub them in a hurry, I'm thinkin'; and you can't touch me 'thout you do them."
"We talked this all over when Breck died," Putnam said. "It will hardly pay to go over it again now. I want to know just what you and Frank are at."
"'Tain't nothin' that concerns you," the man said, sullenly yielding. "'Tain't nothin' but a paper his father gave me to keep, and he wants it."
"To keep for whom?"
"To keep for – for myself of course. 'Tain't at all likely he'd give me a paper for any one else."
"No, it is not," the lawyer remarked impartially; "and that is why I think you stole it."
"D – n you!" began Mixon, "I'm no more of a thief than Breck was. I'll" —
"There," Putnam interrupted, "that will do. Keep still, and let me see this paper, whatever it is."
"I hain't got it with me."
"Nonsense! Let me see it."
"I hain't got it here, I tell yer. You never take no stock in nothin' I say, seems to me."
"That's true. What is this paper? and how came you by it?"
"He give it to me the night before he died. That old maid Mullen wanted to get it, but Breck he give it to me. 'You've always been a faithful frien' to me,' says he, 'an' you shall have it.' An' then he give it to me."
The lawyer looked at him with mingled amusement and disgust. Perfectly aware that the man was lying, he tried to decide upon what slight foundation of fact had been built this touching death-bed fiction. In his own mind Putnam connected this mysterious paper with the anxiety of his nephew Frank to force Ease Apthorpe to marry him, the mention of Miss Mullen's name giving to this some plausibility. Suddenly a new thought flashed through his mind.
"Is Mrs. Smithers mixed up in this business?" he asked.
Mixon, evidently startled, denied this so strongly, that his questioner was positive he had hit the truth, and insisted upon seeing the mysterious document. Peter stuck to his assertion that he did not have it with him, but at length promised to bring it on the following day for Putnam's inspection. And with this the lawyer was forced to content himself.
On the afternoon of this same day a pleasant little scene was enacted in the chamber of Burleigh Blood, that young man being at once actor and audience.
He had been trying on the dress he was to wear that evening, and his thoughts naturally turned from the robe to its maker. In his fancy rose a picture of the little maiden seated by his own fireside, or flitting about the house as its mistress. He felt his bosom glow, thinking how dear to him would be the traces of her presence, the sound of her voice. His heart grew warm with sweet languors at the dream of clasping her in his arms, of resting that tiny blonde head upon his breast. There is something inexpressibly touching in the love of a strong, pure man. Burleigh neither analyzed nor understood his own passion; but in manly, noble fashion, he loved Flossy with all the strength of his big heart.
"I wonder," Burleigh mused, "if she would be angry if I asked her to marry me; or if she'd have me. She'd be a fool if she did! she knows so much, and is so used to great people! I suppose it is no use to bother my head for what I can't have. But I want her; and she's been very good to me; and perhaps – perhaps she wouldn't really say no. I'm a fool to lose the chance by being afraid to speak! Confound it! a woman's no right to be angry with a fellow for being in love with her. He can't help it, I suppose. I'm sure I can't. Besides I've heard her say she'd like to live in Montfield all her life."
He had thrown himself half-dressed upon the bed, his monkish masquerade costume hanging over a chair near by. Turning and twisting about uneasily as the conflict in his mind became more and more earnest, the silver-pieces loose in his pocket rattled out, one rolling from the bed to the floor. He raised himself, and picked it up. It was a Mexican dollar, dated the year of his birth, and he had for years carried it as a pocket-piece.
"I have half a mind," he soliloquized, tossing the coin in his hand, "to offer myself this very night. I don't think it would be so hard with this suit on as it would in my own clothes. It would be more natural to do any thing extraordinary in a mask. I've a mind to toss up for it. That is one way of settling it. It might go against me, though. However, it won't be any harm to see what it would have been if I had tried it."
The coin went spinning into the air.
"Heads!" he called aloud. "Humph!" he commented inwardly, "It's tails. But of course I should have tried the best two in three. Heads! And heads it is, by thunder! That's one and one. Heads! Confound it, it's tails again. But then that was only to try what might have been. Here goes in earnest. Heads!"
The dollar struck upon the edge of the bed, and Burleigh cried out "Bar that!" then, picking it up, found the head uppermost.
"Why didn't I let that go?" he said. "Heads!"
The coin spun round and round gayly. When at last it lay still, the reverse stared the lover in the face.
"Plague take that dollar! it is always tails. I'll change it, and begin again. Heads now!"
The new coin proved no less perverse than the old one, and turned its back toward the young man quite as resolutely as its predecessor.
"Well, then, here goes, – tails! By the great horn spoon, heads it is! I'll make it the best three in five. Tails!"
But neither the "best three in five" nor the "best four in seven" gave any thing of hope or comfort to the lovelorn swain. He ended by dashing the coins together between his palms with a great clash, all the combativeness in him aroused by the perverseness of fate.
"I'll be hanged if I don't propose this very night," he said resolutely. "I'll not be beaten out of that by all the unlucky lucky-pennies between here and Africa. She can't do any more than refuse me, and I certainly never'll get her if I don't try."
With which notable resolve burning in his heart, he adjusted his toilet, and descended to the work-a-day world.
CHAPTER XXXIII
"WHEN SHE WILL, SHE WILL."
Patty was the last to come down from dressing that night. She had refused to share with any one the secret of her costume; and even Flossy was ignorant, that beneath the long cloak which completely enveloped her cousin was concealed male attire. She supposed Patty had discarded entirely the suits used in the theatricals, and had manufactured one. And indeed she had seen signs of dress-making in her cousin's chamber; Patty's resolution having at one time so faltered, that she had begun a page's costume, which by its short skirt compromised between propriety and the dress she had chosen. A bundle from Putnam containing the dress he wished her to wear had been sufficient to strengthen her faltering courage; and in full masculine array, knee-breeches and all, Mistress Patience started for the masquerade.
Very pretty and jaunty she looked in the dress, her fine form displayed to the best advantage; but under the embroidered waistcoat and velvet frock beat a very miserable heart, as sad as it was proud. She smarted under what she received as a slur upon her modesty. Conscious of the innocence with which she had chosen the costume, she assumed that the lawyer had impugned her delicacy, when in truth he had merely reproved her thoughtlessness. In carrying out her original intent, and refusing to consider her resolve unmaidenly, she fancied herself protesting and demonstrating the whiteness of her thought; not recognizing, that, on the contrary, she was championing the act itself, of which, in a calmer mood, she would have herself disapproved.
Light streamed from all the windows of the Toxteth mansion, brightening up the sear lawn and leafless trees with a warm glow. Sounds of laughter and snatches of music were already heard, as the Sanfords were rather late in arriving.
"Let us separate," Patty suggested. "I'll stand in the shadow of the piazza a moment, and go in with somebody else. People will be less likely to know us."
"Very well," Will said; and then, as Flossy stepped across the piazza, he added, "What is the trouble with you, Pit-pat? You've been glum as a ghost all day, and now your tone is awfully lugubrious."
"Nothing, nothing," she answered. "Go in quick, before these folks come. You are good to care, but really nothing is the matter."
A group of maskers came up the path as she dismissed her brother with this well-intentioned fib, and with them she entered. Familiar with the house, she slipped past the dressing-room, and went into a sort of recess at the head of the back-stairway. Here in the dark she adjusted her dress as well as she was able, and then seated herself upon her cloak, holding her head in her hands. She dreaded going down to encounter the lights, and the eyes of the company. She shrank from possible discovery, and lingered until the fear of having to enter the parlors alone drove her from her hiding-place. She saw a lady emerging from the dressing-room, and with a swaggering bow Patty offered her arm. The lady, taking it, murmured "Thanks." By the voice Patty recognized Dessie Farnum. The two descended the stairs together.
They found Mrs. Toxteth receiving at the parlor-door. Near her stood a mask whom Patience did not recognize. He was tall and slender, with a figure which his motions seemed to indicate supple and well knit. His dress, which was admirably adapted to display his figure, was that of a Florentine courtier of Lorenzo de' Medici's day. Patty recalled Clarence's speaking of friends from Samoset who were to be present, and set the unknown down as one of the party. As she moved away, however, she felt a touch on her shoulder. She started violently, but by a strong effort endeavored to regain her composure. She felt that at any cost she must preserve her incognito; and, resolutely steadying herself, she turned to see who had arrested her. It was the Florentine chevalier. Taking her hand in one of his, with the finger of the other he traced upon her palm the letters "P. S." She shook her head; but, as she did so, it flashed upon her that the unknown was Tom Putnam. She had not considered that it would be necessary for him to procure a dress in place of the one he had taken to exchange with her; and now, in despite her agitation, she concluded that he must have sent to Boston for the costume he wore, and she admired him in it. Her next thought was that he must have been waiting for her. She refused the arm which he proffered, but followed as he led the way into a small back-parlor which chanced to be empty. There he stood looking at her without speaking.
"Well," she said, when she had endured the silence as long as she could. "What has my Lord Mentor to say now?"
"Nothing," he answered. "The Chevalier Sorrowful might present a petition, but certainly my Lord Mentor is silent."
"I am glad of that at least. Still I should like to be informed if the Chevalier Sorrowful has ever had dealings with Paul Pry."
"The Chevalier," the other said, parrying her thrust, "needs no dealings with Paul Pry. He has eyes for but one lady, and her he can detect under any disguise."
"What keenness of vision!" Patty retorted. Then, hoping to give the conversation a less personal character, she added, "Hark! Who is that singing?"
A voice affecting the Scotch accent was appealing more frantically than tunefully to "Douglas, Douglas, tender and true."
"It is Miss Yamfert from Samoset," the lawyer said. "She is dressed in Scotch costume."
The voice sang on, —
"'Could you come back to me, Douglas, Douglas,
In the old likeness that I knew,
I would be so kind and faithful, Douglas, —
Douglas, Douglas, tender and true!'"
"Very pretty," Putnam remarked rather savagely. "But, if Douglas is comfortable where he is, he'd much better remain there. If she really loved him, she would have shown it while he was in the flesh. I've no faith in a love which expends itself only in tormenting its object."
"How harsh you are!" Patty said. "Doesn't your scheme of life allow any space for repentance?"
"Yes; but I've the smallest possible faith in it. If she hadn't love enough for Douglas to treat him decently, he was better off with no love at all. No doubt she would think herself sincere in making frantic promises over his grave; but, if he were back, it would be the same dreary story over again."
"Then Douglas had better leave her, and have done," Patty answered.
She felt, that, under the guise of allusions, they were discussing their own relations.
"You are right," he said. "But suppose he cannot choose? What if he be so bound up in her, that he would endure any thing, would forgive any thing?"
"Forgiveness," she retorted bitterly, "is sweet to the forgiver."
"It may at least show him his own weakness. If the lady's love for Douglas is not sufficient to make her glad of a small sacrifice for him, or at least to make her endure it, he has small reason to flatter himself upon the depths of her affection; and he must despise himself for wearing his heart upon his sleeve for her daws to peck at."
"Well," she said irrelevantly, her heart leaping at the assurance that after all he still loved her, "who laughs last laughs best."
"Not always," he returned. "The last laugh may have a bitterness from which the first was happily free."
"Pooh!" she laughed, turning a pirouette, her cue standing out behind her. "How like two owls we are, talking in this gloomy room! Let us get out among people."
She had suddenly recovered her spirits. Since he loved her, she forgot that she was wounding him, and that he was unhappy. At another time the thought would have produced tenderness: now it brought a reaction from her despondency, and for the moment she was her most piquant, saucy self. She hummed a snatch of song, —
"'You call me inconstant and fickle,
But there's no justice in that;
For the passing fancy I showed you'" —
"Patty!" her lover cried, catching her wrist, "are you perfectly heartless?"
"I shall have a post mortem made to discover," she returned flippantly. "It will be too late for my own information, but it will satisfy the curiosity of my friends."
"If you do not begin soon to cultivate some show, either of delicacy or sensibility," he said almost brutally, "your friends will cease to be interested. For my part," he went on, his voice showing more and more emotion, "though I can't help being a fool, I shall try to help amusing you with exhibitions of my folly. I have never flattered myself that you could have any particular reason for caring for me; and I may thank my stars, I suppose, that the question is settled. But I tell you this, Patience Sanford, you will go far before you will find a man who will give his heart for you to set your feet on so absolutely as I have done. If it is any satisfaction for you to know that, you are welcome to the knowledge. Perhaps some time I shall be unselfish enough to hope you may be happy without me. Just now I have an absurd fancy that it would be pleasant to strangle you. If you ever love anybody but yourself, you may know what that means. Good-night, and good-by."
The cup whose sweet foam Patty had a moment before set laughing to her lips proved more bitter than wormwood in its depths. Never had she so thrilled with passion as while her lover cast her off. Never before had she seen him so moved. The dress he wore, setting off as it did his fine figure, gave an appropriate setting for his words, and by its strangeness half explained them. Had he remained a moment longer, Patty felt that she must have thrown herself at his feet, and begged him to forgive and love her still. As it was she burst into tears, but in a moment resolutely suppressed them, and followed her lover into the crowd of maskers.
Dessie Farnum, having seen that her escort did not come from the dressing-rooms above, supposed herself to have been escorted down stairs by Clarence Toxteth, and as such pointed out her companion. Several approached Patty, and crossed her palm with a "T;" but she shook her head, and made her way from the parlors as quickly as possible. She desired nothing now but to get out of the house; and, wrapping herself up, she effected her escape by a side-door, and walked rapidly away. She removed her mask to let the night-air cool her heated cheeks and brow; and, struggling hard to repress the tears which forced themselves into her eyes, she went on towards home.
Suddenly a clatter broke the stillness of the night, the noise of wheels and trampling mingled with oaths and cries. A carriage dashed by her, the horse plunging forward, evidently beyond the control of the driver. Another moment, and the vehicle was overturned. She heard a cry followed by a heavy fall. The horse rushed madly on, with the carriage half dragging behind him, the noise of his frantic hoof-beats dying away in the distance, leaving a stillness more intense than before.
Patty ran forward, and discovered the lifeless body of a man lying on the ground.