CHAPTER XXIII
NOTES AND SOUVENIRS
"I took cold leaving off my apron," Mrs. Sanford remarked. "I always do."
"That is a slight cause, daughter Britann," said grandmother. "Do'st thee feel sure there was no other?"
"I suppose I know when I take cold," she retorted. "I always take cold if I leave off my apron; and, if I go to a tea-party, I always wear my apron under my dress."
"I declare!" exclaimed Patty, rushing in like a whirlwind. "I'll never speak to that horrid Tom Putnam again to the longest day I live!"
"Softly, softly," said the old lady. "Thee do'st not wish to make promises and break them. What disturbs thee?"
"It's about you, grandmother. He dared to say you were not married."
"Not married?"
"Not married!" echoed Mrs. Sanford. "And your family always held out to be so much better than ours, and so leading me to marry into it, and help bear the disgrace!"
"Hush, mother!" Patty said impatiently. "There isn't any disgrace. It is only a blunder of Mr. Putnam's."
"Then, your father ought to sue him for libel. I always told you I didn't approve of your dawdling about with that lawyer, with Clarence Toxteth at your beck and call. But you always would have your own way, and disgrace us all by keeping company with the man that slanders your family."
"Slanders our family!" Patty returned, her eyes blazing. "Who said he slandered the family? If he isn't disgraced by my company, I'm sure I am not by his. I shouldn't be ashamed to sweep the streets for him to walk on!"
"You'd demean yourself, I dare say, when you might have the streets swept for you."
"I" – began her daughter.
"Daughter Patience," interposed her grandmother, laying her hand upon the girl's arm, "thee had best not say it."
By a strong effort Patty repressed the retort which had sprung to her lips.
"What does it mean, grandmother?" she asked, when a moment's silence had given her more composure. "Tom Putnam says he can find no proof of your marriage."
"I told thy father to tell him to go to the town-records."
"He says he has, and it is not there."
"Then, the man that married us neglected his duty," the old lady said with gentle severity. "He was a Methodist preacher at Quinnebasset; for we had only one preacher here, and he was away; and that, as thee knows, was before I received light to become a Friend."
"But didn't you have a certificate?" asked Mrs. Sanford.
"No. The man promised us one; but, though he was a man of God, he kept his word no better than one of the world's people, and we never got it."
"What are you talking about?" demanded Flossy, entering. "I told Will I didn't think this play would be very intelligible to the audience; and he said they would have the advantage of the actors, if it were. Was that what you were talking about?"
"Flossy," her aunt said disdainfully, "don't be so silly!"
"Thank you, aunt Britann. I prefer to be silly." So saying, she made her aunt a graceful courtesy, and then sat down. "What were you talking about?"
Patty explained; and her cousin flourished her bowl of pop-corn wildly about with excitement.
"Yes, of course," Flossy burst out. "I knew there was something sure to come of it when I ran away; and there it was in the binding of this book, and the pew was so hard I thought I should die. This cover, you know, is almost torn off, and there's where Linda Thaxter married William French; I mean Edward French, no, Edward Sanford – at least you know what I mean."
Flossy always became less and less intelligible as she became excited; and Patty, knowing this by frequent experience, seized her by both shoulders.
"Wait!" she said. "Stop short there. Now, what are you trying to say?"
By degrees they elicited from her the story of the psalmody in the Presbyterian Church at Samoset; and Dr. Sanford, when he came home, declared that this might prove a decisive piece of evidence. He laughed at Patty's anger, and requested her to write a note to the lawyer, informing him of Flossy's story.
It amused him to see his daughter nibbling her pen over the epistle she had vainly tried to avoid writing.
She wrote and tore up a dozen notes before she would send one. There sat the doctor in his easy-chair, apparently reading, but with his peculiar faint smile curling the corners of his lips sufficiently to show that he appreciated her difficulty. The note when completed read as follows: —
Tuesday Evening.
Flossy saw in the binding of a hymn-book at Samoset a notice of grandmother's wedding. She will tell you about it, if you will call on her.
Patience Sanford.
P.S. – I have to beg your pardon for my rudeness this afternoon.
The effect of this note was to bring the lawyer to the cottage the next morning. As mischievous fortune chose to have it, Patty was on the piazza, selecting for pressing the brightest of the scarlet and russet woodbine-leaves which had been spared by the storm. She knew his step upon the walk; and, although she would not turn, she was prepared to meet him with a kindness which should atone for yesterday's harshness. But she defeated her own intention. Meaning to be gracious, she yet was not willing to give the first sign of abandoning hostilities, expecting her lover to know instinctively the state of her mind, and to approach her in a corresponding temper.
The lover's eyes shone with a wistful tenderness as he regarded the slender figure upon which the bright leaves fell in showers of gold and green and scarlet. His relations with Patty troubled him, and yet he knew not how they might be improved. He knew women from books rather than from nature, and his knowledge profited him little in his own dilemma. The sudden changes in Patty were incomprehensible to him. He had accepted her apology as a necessary consequence of the fact that she was a lady: what it had cost her, or how she had passed from anger to tenderness, he did not suspect.
She, on her side, interpreted him no better. His self-restraint she called coldness; and, when he failed to respond to a softened mood, she felt that her affection found no response in his heart. This morning she was unconsciously in a frame of mind which would render her dissatisfied, whatever his attitude: had he divined her relenting, she would have thought him presuming, as now she called him cold. The only comfort Tom might extract from such a situation was the fact, hardly likely to occur to him, that she was a thousand times more displeased with herself than with him.
"Good-morning," the gentleman said, stepping upon the piazza.
"Good-morning," she returned, keeping her face from him.
"It is a right royal day after the storm," he said, rather for the sake of saying something than from any active interest in the weather.
"Yes," she assented laconically.
"How do your theatricals come on?" asked he.
"'As the man went to be hung, – very slowly,' to use Will's slang, or figure of speech as Flossy calls it."
"This world," the lawyer said rather irrelevantly, "is chiefly figures of speech."
"What does that signify?"
"It signifies that you think of our talk yesterday hyperbolically."
Patty felt herself growing flushed and perturbed. Their conversation hid completely the sentiments underlying it. Her tenderness was met by apparent indifference. What was this talk of figures of speech, when he should have said simply "I love you."
"On the contrary," she replied, "I do not think of our conversation yesterday at all."
"Then, why do you so resolutely keep your face from me?"
"Certainly not because I said any thing yesterday that I am ashamed of."
Putnam took from his pocket her note, and read aloud the postscript.
"It is very generous in you to fling that in my face," she exclaimed, turning suddenly.
"It was abominable," he laughed; "but it made you show your face, and that's worth sinning for."
"Why did you keep my note?" she asked, as he carefully replaced it in his pocket-book. "You told me once you never kept any letters but business ones."
"Oh! I always preserve yours. Every rule has its exception."
"I am flattered," she said, softening a little.
"You've no reason to be," he retorted saucily. "I only keep them because I suppose you are sure to demand them some time; and, if I couldn't return them, you'd say I kept them."
"Then, I demand them now."
"You shall have them when you give me mine."
"You may have them this minute," she exclaimed.
"Ah!" retorted he, laughing. "I have discovered what I wanted to know. You have cared enough for them to keep them."
"You are the most hateful man on the face of the earth!" she said angrily, running into the house, and up to her own chamber.
She gathered all his notes together, with the trifles she had treasured, even before she confessed to herself that she cared for him, – this odd stone from Mackerel Cove, that Chinese coin he took from his watch-guard one day as a reward for a joke she made, a dry and musty cracker upon which he drew at a picnic a clever caricature of Mrs. Brown's frowsy head, a few dried flowers, and a pencil-sketch or two. She gathered them together, meaning to make a packet of them to put into Tom's hands before he left the house. Then she began to read over the notes, simple things that said little, and from another would have had no especial meaning or value. Here he asked her if he might drive her to a picnic at Wilk's Run; this was to say that he was going to Boston, and would be glad to execute any commissions for her, – trifling things, but written by his hand. She turned over his gifts, keepsakes which any friend might give to another. She recalled, while making up her packet, the circumstances in which each came to her. Memories exhale from mementos as odors from faded roses laid long away among our treasures. Patty ended by a brief shower of tears, and by replacing the souvenirs in the box whence they came. Her tears cleared her mental atmosphere as a thunder-shower may the air of a sultry day. Ten minutes later she flashed down stairs, bright, trenchant, and gay as a dragon-fly. She comforted herself with the illogical conclusion, "After all, I love him so deeply, he must love me."
Meanwhile the lawyer had questioned Flossy. She described so bewilderingly the situation of "this pew, you know," that it was quite impossible to form the slightest idea of its position. He therefore concluded to take the young lady herself to Samoset; and, just as Patty descended from her chamber, the two drove away. The psalmody was found without trouble; and the printed slip in the binding was eventually traced to the newspaper from which it was cut, furnishing the link which had before been missing in the evidence needed to secure the long-talked-of pension.
CHAPTER XXIV
MRS. SANFORD SPEAKS
"There's nobody else," said Will Sanford; "and if Tom Putnam won't take the part, the 'Faithful Jewess' may go to the 'demnition bowwows' but her sorrows will never afflict a Montfield audience."
"Nobody would be more heartily rejoiced, I'm sure, than I should," his sister answered, "if she would take a journey in that direction: only there isn't time to learn another play. So you'll have to ask him."
"Why don't you ask him yourself?" Will said. "It's your place."
"I'll never ask him to do any thing. He's too stubborn to live, and he treats me abominably."
"Then, you should heap coals of fire on his head by inviting him to take this part, that nobody but Sol Shankland would have anyway."
"When I heap coals of fire," she returned vigorously, "I want them to burn: I want at least to be able to smell the scorched hair."
"I think you will have that satisfaction," her brother replied, "if you'll walk into his office this afternoon, and tell him there is no one in the three towns can act as well as he can, and ask will he please be that drivelling idiot of a patriarch."
"I'll do nothing of the kind. Besides, I'm going to ride with Clarence Toxteth this afternoon."
"He's always dangling round you nowadays, it seems to me."
"Well, I can't help that, can I?"
"You could if you wanted to. If you married anybody for his money, Patty, I'd never speak to you again."
"Pooh! You'd speak to me if I married a boa-constrictor."
"No. I'd send you a card on which you'd find nothing but the awful words, —
'Boa-constrictoress, farewell!'"
"Nonsense! You'd come over to be constricted, and the long and lovely bridegroom could make his supper of you. You know you adore me, Will, and so you'll see Tom Putnam. Tell him Sol is sick, or lame, or dead, or whatever it is, and we can't do without him."
"I'm always put upon," her brother said with mock despair: "in fact, I'm but a lovely, timorous flower that has been snubbed in the bud. I suppose I'll have to do it."
"That's a duck. You're an awful nice brother! But then who wouldn't be with such a surpassingly lovely sister!"
Half an hour later, Will encountered the lawyer in the street.
"I was going to see you," he said. "You presented yourself in the nick of time."
"People who present themselves in the nick of time," Putnam answered good-humoredly, "generally find themselves in a tight place. What did you want of me?"
"I wanted to tell you that you are to take the part of the patriarch in the sensational, melodramatic madness entitled 'The Faithful Jewess,' to be performed for the benefit of the church on the 23d of this blessed month of October."
"You are sure that you are not misinformed?"
"Quite sure."
"But I have already declined to take part in those theatricals."
"My informant was very positive," Will said.
"May I ask the name of your informant?"
"Patty Sanford."
"Did she say I was to act?"
"Certainly," Will answered, distorting the truth with perfect recklessness.
"Um! The part must have been given to some one before this."
"Yes. When you refused, there was nobody left to take it but Sol Shankland."
"What has become of him?" asked the lawyer.
"General inanity, I suspect, though he says, 'neümonyer,' as he calls it."
"In that case," Putnam said, laughing, "he might furnish the funds."
"But you'll come to rehearsal to-morrow night?" Sanford asked, fumbling in his pocket for a play-book. "It's at our house at half-past seven."
"If your sister has issued her commands, I suppose I've nothing to do but to obey."
The fact was, that the lawyer repented his former refusal, since it shut him out of the rehearsals at which Patty necessarily spent most of her evenings; and he was glad circumstances had put it into his power to retrieve his error. He found himself daily longing more and more to be near her, and yet shut more completely from her presence. He walked on towards his office with a brisker step, and neglected his business to commit the senseless lines of the part assigned to him.
About the time that Will was so unscrupulously using his sister's name to insnare the lawyer, that young lady was having a somewhat spicy interview with her mother. From the day when young Toxteth had confided to Mrs. Sanford his intentions in regard to Patty, the shallow woman had gone about with the secret locked in her bosom like a vase of perfume, whose subtile odors pervaded every corner of her brain-chambers. Her head unconsciously took a new elevation, and her step a fresh dignity. The Sanfords were independent and comfortable. Dr. Sanford's practice was good, and rather more lucrative than is usual in country-towns. With Will's education, however, and Patty's books and music-teachers to provide for, the surplus at the end of the year was small; and Mrs. Sanford never ceased to sigh for the time when, the son being established in his profession, and the daughter married, her husband could begin to accumulate property.
"Daughter Britann," grandmother would say, "thy mind is overmuch set on this world's goods. The Sanfords are never rich, unless thee shouldst reckon the wealth of brains; and thou hast already sufficient for all thy needs."
"So have you, mother," Mrs. Sanford one day retorted; "but I notice you are just as anxious about your pension, for all that."
"That I shall bestow in charity," the old lady answered. "I hope I am not unduly anxious. If my son Charles had not wished it, I should never have troubled the matter."
"Nonsense!" Mrs. Sanford said. "It would have been a sin to neglect such an opportunity. I am glad that for once Charles had sense enough to do the right thing about a money matter. He's usually so dreadfully squeamish!"
To a mind like Mrs. Sanford, the getting of money was the only end worth pursuing in this world. Her fancy dwelt upon the position Patience might occupy as the wife of a wealthy Toxteth, and upon her own importance as the mother-in-law of the best catch in Montfield. Knowing how much Patty might be influenced by her father, in case she proved blind to her own good in this important matter, Mrs. Sanford one night ventured to broach the subject to him.
"It is time Patty was getting settled," she began.
"Humph!" the doctor returned, "I do not see the need of any haste."
"But there is need. If she lets her chances slip by now, she'll live to repent of it. Girls who are over particular always have to put up with a crooked stick at last."
"What are you driving at?"
"Why," Mrs. Sanford said rather hesitatingly, "she might have Clarence Toxteth, if she only chose."
"How do you know?"
"I do know, and that's enough," his wife answered importantly. "He's half dead for her."
"He'll be whole dead before he gets her, unless she's a bigger fool than I ever thought her."
"Now, Charles, that's the way you always talk. What have you got against Clarence?"
"He hasn't any brains, for one thing."
"He must have," Mrs. Sanford returned, as if her logic admitted of no controversy. "Just see what a smart father he's got! What a sight of money Orrin Toxteth has made!"
"Nonsense! His brains stand in the same relation to his father's as froth does to beer. Good-night. I want to go to sleep."
"You always were prejudiced against Clarence Toxteth," the wife said. But Dr. Sanford allowed this to be the last word by answering nothing.
Mrs. Sanford felt that irritation which one feels who cannot understand how any point of view but one's own is possible. Not to be foiled, she abandoned the attempt to convince her husband, only to concentrate her energies upon her daughter. Very naturally she attempted to dazzle her eyes with the wealth which so bewitched her own fancy. Knowing by experience the difficulty of dealing abruptly with Patty, she began by throwing out hints which seemed to her the acme of strategical tactics, but which were in reality so transparent, that Flossy and Patty made merry over them without stint. Of course, this came to nothing; and Mrs. Sanford would have been the most obtuse of mortals, had she failed to perceive that she produced no impression in the suitor's favor. But the doughty woman had obstinacy, if not firmness; and, the more her plans did not succeed, the more firmly she clung to them. She prepared for the attack; and her daughter, foreseeing what was to come, steeled herself for the combat.
Patty suffered more from the weakness and prejudices of her mother than any one but Dr. Sanford himself. Will, both from his sex and from being much away from home, treated her oddities rather as witticisms. In his sister an inborn reverence for family, and a devotion to the name and relation of a mother, fought with her perception of the ludicrous, and an instinctive repugnance to narrowness and mental inferiority. Shut her eyes as she might, she could not be blind to her mother's faults; and Mrs. Sanford's affection, which should have compensated, had always appeared rather an accident of custom, and but skin-deep. The silly blunders which the doctor's wife constantly made, her absurd superstitions, continually jarred upon her daughter. Patty reproached herself sharply, her conscience flagellating her with vigorous arm for discerning these shortcomings of her mother; but no amount of self-reproach can dull the mental vision. She attempted to see only her mother's kindly deeds; but Patty was neither the first nor the last to discover that reverence and love are not to be constrained by an illogical balance-sheet; and that the taking account of stock in affection generally indicates a tendency to bankruptcy.
Mrs. Sanford had remained in suspense as long as she was able to endure it; and, upon the morning referred to earlier in this chapter, she at last spoke definitely. She was a little in awe of her daughter, having more than once been confused and worsted by that young lady's quickness of thought and expression; and the "Sanford will," she knew of old, had a strength against which it was useless to contend, if it were once determinedly fixed.
"Patty," she said, as they chanced to be alone together, "didn't I hear you tell Willie you were going to ride with Clarence Toxteth this afternoon?"
"Yes, mother. We are going to Samoset to look at those costumes."
"I am glad of it. You haven't treated him very well lately."
"You are losing a hairpin, mother."
"Dear me! Your father's thinking of me, I suppose."
"It ought to please you to have your husband think of you."
"He needn't think all the hairpins out of my head, though," responded Mrs. Sanford. "I'm always losing them."
"Where does the sewing-circle meet next week?" Patty asked, endeavoring to lead the conversation as far as possible from its original theme.
"At Mrs. Brown's; though I doubt she won't be ready for it until a week after it's all over. I declare, I thank the Lord I ain't so shiftless!"
"Well you may," Patty said lightly, feeling safe now.
"He'll be the richest man in Montfield," said Mrs. Sanford, returning to the charge with an abruptness which found the other off her guard.
"Well, what of that?" her daughter asked absently.
"What of that!" the mother cried impatiently. "A good deal of that. But I suppose you'd refuse him, if he offered himself to-day."
"Of course, mother. You know I'm never going to marry."
"Don't talk like a fool, Patience. If you know when you're well off, you'll be careful how you snub Clarence Toxteth."
"I treat him as I do everybody else."
"But you mustn't. You must treat him different. Oh, dear!" Mrs. Sanford continued, quivering with excitement and indignation. "The trouble that girls are from the day they are born! Always contrary, and never knowing what they want, nor what's best for them. Why girls can't be born boys is more than I know!"
"There, mother, that is Irish enough for old Paddy Shaunessey."
"Always flying in the face of luck too," her mother went on, not heeding the interruption, "and always taking up with some crooked stick at last. The way you run after that old Tom Putnam is shameful!"
It perhaps made little difference what Mrs. Sanford said in an argument of this kind, except that a reference to Mr. Putnam was the most infelicitous thing it were possible for her to utter. Patty had self-control enough not to speak the angry words which were on her tongue; but she hastened from the room, leaving her mother to reflect as she chose upon the results of the interview.