PATTY.

Patty's whole education tended to foster her pride, and in Patty's

circumstances pride was conservative; it saved her from possible

assimilation with the vulgarity about her. She was a lily among

hollyhocks. Her mother had come of an "old family"--in truth, of two

or three old families. All of them had considered that attachment to

the Established Church was part and parcel of their gentility, and

most of them had been staunch Tories in the Revolution. Patty had

inherited from her mother refinement, pride, and a certain lofty

inflexibility of disposition. In this congenial soil Mrs. Lumsden

had planted traditional prejudices. Patty read her Prayer-book, and

wished that she might once attend the stately Episcopal service; she

disliked the lowness of all the sects: the sing-song of the Baptist

preacher and the rant of the Methodist itinerant were equally

distasteful. She had never seen a clergyman in robes, but she tried,

from her mother's descriptions, to form a mental picture of the

long-drawn dignity of the service in an Old Virginia country church.

Patty was imaginative, like most girls of her age; but her ideals

were ruled by the pride in which she had been cradled.

For the Methodists she entertained a peculiar aversion. Methodism

was new, and, like everything new, lacked traditions,

picturesqueness, mustiness, and all the other essentials of gentility

in religious matters. The converts were rude, vulgar, and poor; the

preachers were illiterate, and often rough in voice and speech; they

made war on dancing and jewelry, and dancing and jewelry appertained

to good-breeding. Ever since her father had been taken with that

strange disorder called "the jerks," she had hated the Methodists

worse than ever. They had made a direct attack on her pride.

The story of Morton's gambling had duly reached the ears of Patty.

The thoughtful unkindness of her father could not leave her without

so delectable a morsel of news. He felt sure that Patty's pride

would be outraged by conduct so reckless, and he omitted nothing from

the tale--the loss of horse and gun, the offer to stake his hat and

coat, the proposal to commit suicide, the flight upon the forfeited

horse--such were the items of Captain Lumsden's story. He told it at

the table in order to mortify Patty as much as possible in the

presence of her brothers and sisters and the hired men. But the

effect was quite different from his expectations. With that

inconsistency characteristic of the most sensible women when they are

in love, Patty only pitied Morton's misfortunes. She saw him, in her

imagination, a hapless and homeless wanderer. She would not abandon

him in his misfortunes. He should have one friend at least. She was

sorry he had gambled, but gambling was not inconsistent with

gentlemanliness. She had often heard that her mother would have

inherited a plantation if her grandfather had been able to let cards

alone. Gambling was the vice of gentlemen, a generous and impulsive

weakness. Then, too, she laid the blame on her favorite scape-goat.

If it had not been for Kike's exciting exhortation and the

inconsiderate violence of the Methodist revival, Morton's misfortune

would not have befallen him. Patty forgave in advance. Love

condones all sins except sins against love.

It was with more than his usual enjoyment of gossip that the

school-master hurried home to the Captain's that evening to tell the

story of Morton's return, and to boast that he had already soiphered

it out by the single Rule of Thray that Moirton would come out

roight. The Captain, as he ate his waffles with country molasses,

slurred the whole thing, and wanted to know if he was going to refuse

to pay a debt of honor and keep the mare, when he had fairly lost her

gambling with Burchard. But Patty inly resolved to show her lover

more affection than ever. She would make him feel that her love

would be constant when the friendship of others failed. She liked to

flatter herself, as other young women have to their cost, that her

love would reform her lover.

Patty knew he would come. She went about her work next morning,

humming some trifling air, that she might seem nonchalant. But after

awhile she happened to think that her humming was an indication of

pre-occupation. So she ceased to hum. Then she remembered that

people would certainly interpret silence as indicative of meditation;

she immediately fell a-talking with might and main, until one of the

younger girls asked: "What does make Patty talk so much?" Upon

which, Patty ceased to talk and went to work harder than ever; but,

being afraid that the eagerness with which she worked would betray

her, she tried to work more slowly until that was observed. The very

devices by which we seek to hide mental pre-occupation generally

reveal it.

At last Patty was fain to betake herself to the loom-room, where she

could think without having her thoughts guessed at. Here, too, she

would be alone when Morton should come.

Poor Morton, having told his mother of his religious change, found it

hard indeed to tell Patty. But he counted certainly that she would

censure him for gambling, which would make it so much easier for him

to explain to her that the only way for him to escape from vice was

to join the Methodists, and thus give up all to a better life. He

shaped some sentences founded upon this supposition. But after all

his effort at courage, and all his praying for grace to help him to

"confess Christ before men," he found the cross exceedingly hard to

bear; and when he set his foot upon the threshold of the loom-room,

his heart was in his mouth and his face was suffused with guilty

blushes. Ah, weak nature! He was not blushing for his sins, but for

his repentance!

Patty, seeing his confusion, determined to make him feel how full of

forgiveness love was. She saw nobleness in his very shame, and she

generously resolved that she would not ask, that she would not allow,

a confession. She extended her hand cordially and beamed upon him,

and told him how glad she was that he had come back,

and--and--well--; she couldn't find anything else to say, but she

urged him to sit down and handed him a splint-bottom chair, and tried

for the life of her to think of something to say--the silence was so

embarrassing. But talking for talk's sake is always hard. One talks

as one breathes--best when volition has nothing to do with it.

The silence was embarrassing to Morton, but not half so much so as

Patty's talk. For he had not expected this sort of an opening. If

she had accused him of gambling, if she had spurned him, the road

would have been plain. But now that she loved him and forgave him of

her own sweet generosity, how should he smite her pride in the face

by telling her that he had joined himself to the illiterate, vulgar

fanatical sect of ranting Methodists, whom she utterly despised?

Truly the Enemy had set an unexpected snare for his unwary feet. He

had resolved to confess his religious devotion with heroic courage,

but he had not expected to be disarmed in this fashion. He talked

about everything else, he temporized, he allowed her to turn the

conversation as she would, hoping vainly that she would allude to his

gambling. But she did not. Could it be that she had not heard of

it? Must he then reveal that to her also?

While he was debating the question in his mind, Patty, imagining that

he was reproaching himself for the sin and folly of gambling, began

to talk of what had happened in the neighborhood--how Jake Sniger

"fell with the power" on Sunday and got drunk on Tuesday: "that's all

this Methodist fuss amounts to, you know," she said. Morton thought

it ungracious to blurt out at this moment that he was a Methodist:

there would be an air of contradiction in the avowal; so he sat still

while Patty turned all the sobbing and sighing, and shouting and loud

praying of the meetings into ridicule. And Morton became conscious

that it was getting every minute more and more difficult for him to

confess his conversion. He thought it better to return to his

gambling for a starting point.

"Did you hear what a bad boy I've been, Patty?"

"Oh! yes. I'm sorry you got into such a bad scrape; but don't say

any more about it, Morton. You're too good for me with all your

faults, and you won't do it any more."

"But I want to tell you all about it, and what happened while I was

gone. I'm afraid you'll think too hard of me--"

"But I don't think hard of you at all, and I don't want to hear about

it because it isn't pleasant. It'll all come out right at last: I'd

a great deal rather have you a little wild at first than a hard

Methodist, like Kike, for instance."

"But--"

"I tell you, Morton, I won't hear a word. Not one word. I want you

to feel that whatever anybody else may say, I know you're all right."

You think Morton very weak. But, do you know how exceedingly sweet

is confidence from one you love, when there is only censure, and

suspicion, and dark predictions of evil from everybody else? Poor

Morton could not refuse to bask in the sunshine for a moment after so

much of storm. It is not the north wind, but the southern breezes

that are fatal to the ice-berg's voyage into sunny climes.

At last he rose to go. He felt himself a Peter. He had denied the

Master!

"Patty," he said, with resolution, "I have not been honest with you.

I meant to tell you something when I first came, and I didn't. It is

hard to have to give up your love. But I'm afraid you won't care for

me when I tell you--"

The severity of Morton's penitence only touched Patty the more deeply.

"Morton," she said, interrupting, "if you've done anything naughty, I

forgive you without knowing it. But I don't want to hear any more

about it, I tell you." And with that the blushing Patty held her

cheek up for her betrothed to kiss, and when Morton, trembling with

conflicting emotions, had kissed her for the first time, she slipped

away quickly to prevent his making any painful confessions.

For a moment Morton stood charmed with her goodness. When he

believed himself to have conquered, he found himself vanquished.

In a dazed sort of way he walked the greater part of the distance

home. He might write to her about it. He might let her hear it from

others. But he rejected both as unworthy of a man. The memory of

the kiss thrilled him, and he was tempted to throw away his Methodism

and rejoice in the love of Patty, now so assured. But suddenly he

seemed to himself to be another Judas. He had not denied the

Lord--he had betrayed him; and with a kiss!

Horrified by this thought, Morton hastened back toward Captain

Lumsden's. He entered the loom-room, but it was vacant. He went

into the living-room, and there he saw not Patty alone, but the whole

family. Captain Lumsden had at that moment entered by the opposite

door. Patty was carding wool with hand-cards, and she looked up,

startled at this reappearance of her lover when she thought him

happily dismissed.

"Patty," said Morton, determined not to fall into any devil's snare

by delay, and to atone for his great sin by making his profession as

public as possible, "Patty, what I wanted to say was, that I have

determined to be a Christian, and I have

joined--the--Methodist--Church."

Morton's sense of inner conflict gave this utterance an unfortunate

sound of defiance, and it aroused all Patty's combativeness. It was

in fact a death wound to her pride. She had feared sometimes that

Morton would be drawn into Methodism, but that he should join the

despised sect without so much as consulting her was more than she

could bear. This, then, was the way in which her forbearance and

forgiveness were rewarded! There stood her father, sneering like a

Mephistopheles. She would resent the indignity, and at the same time

show her power over her lover.

"Morton, if you are a Methodist, I never want to see you again," she

said, with lofty pride, and a solemn awfulness of passion more

terrible than an oath.

"Don't say that, Patty!" stammered Morton, stretching his hands out

in eager, despairing entreaty. But this only gave Patty the greater

assurance that a little decision on her part would make him give up

his Methodism.

[Illustration: THE CHOICE.]

"I do say it, Morton, and I will never take it back." There was a

sternness in the white face and a fire in the black eyes that left

Morton no hope.

But he straightened himself up now to his full six feet, and said,

with manly stubbornness: "Then, Patty, since you make me choose, I

shall not give up the Lord, even for you. But," he added, with a

broken voice, as he turned away, "may God help me to bear it."

Ah, Matilda Maria! if Morton were a knight in armor giving up his

ladye love for the sake of monastic religiousness, how admirable he

would be! But even in his homespun he is a man making the greatest

of sacrifices. It is not the garb or the age that makes sublime a

soul's offering of heart and hope to duty. When Morton was gone

Lumsden chuckled not a little, and undertook to praise Patty for her

courage; but I have understood that she resented his compliments, and

poured upon him some severe denunciation, in which the Captain heard

more truth than even Kike had ventured to utter. Such are the

inconsistencies of a woman when her heart is wounded.

It seems a trifle to tell just here, when Morton and Patty are in

trouble--but you will want to know about Brady. He was at Colonel

Wheeler's that evening, eagerly telling of Morton's escape from

lynching, when Mrs. Wheeler expressed her gratification that Morton

had ceased to gamble and become a Methodist.

"Mithodist? He's no Mithodist."

"Yes, he is," responded Mrs. Wheeler, "his mother told me so; and

what's more, she said she was glad of it." Then, seeing Brady's

discomfiture, she added: "You didn't get all the news that time, Mr.

Brady."

"Well, me dair madam, when I'm admithed to a family intervoo, it's

not proper fer me to tell all I heerd. I didn't know the fact was

made public yit, and so I had to denoy it. It's the honor of a

Oirish gintleman, ye know."

What a journalist he would have made!

_CHAPTER XX._