“WHILE Thee I seek, protecting Power,” was the first hymn on this
particular Sunday morning, and it usually held Patty's rather vagrant
attention to the end, though it failed to do so to-day. The Baxters
occupied one of the wing pews, a position always to be envied, as one
could see the singers without turning around, and also observe everybody
in the congregation,--their entrance, garments, behavior, and especially
their bonnets,--without being in the least indiscreet, or seeming to
have a roving eye.
Lawyer Wilson's pew was the second in front of the Baxters in the same
wing, and Patty, seated decorously but unwillingly beside her father,
was impatiently awaiting the entrance of the family, knowing that Mark
would be with them if he had returned from Boston. Timothy Grant, the
parish clerk, had the pew in between, and afforded a most edifying
spectacle to the community, as there were seven young Grants of a
church-going age, and the ladies of the congregation were always
counting them, reckoning how many more were in their cradles at home
and trying to guess from Mrs. Grant's lively or chastened countenance
whether any new ones had been born since the Sunday before.
Patty settled herself comfortably, and put her foot on the wooden
“cricket,” raising her buff calico a little on the congregation side,
just enough to show an inch or two of petticoat. The petticoat was
as modestly long as the frock itself, and disclosing a bit of it was
nothing more heinous than a casual exhibition of good needlework.
Deacon Baxter furnished only the unbleached muslin for his daughters'
undergarments; but twelve little tucks laboriously done by hand,
elaborate inch-wide edging, crocheted from white spool cotton, and days
of bleaching on the grass in the sun, will make a petticoat that can be
shown in church with some justifiable pride.
The Wilsons came up the aisle a moment later than was their usual
habit, just after the parson had ascended the pulpit. Mrs. Wilson always
entered the pew first and sat in the far end. Patty had looked at her
admiringly, and with a certain feeling of proprietorship, for several
Sundays. There was obviously no such desirable mother-in-law in the
meeting-house. Her changeable silk dress was the latest mode; her shawl
of black llama lace expressed wealth in every delicate mesh, and her
bonnet had a distinction that could only have emanated from Portland or
Boston. Ellen Wilson usually came in next, with as much of a smile to
Patty in passing as she dared venture in the Deacon's presence, and
after her sidled in her younger sister Selina, commonly called “Silly,”
and with considerable reason.
Mark had come home! Patty dared not look up, but she felt his approach
behind the others, although her eyes sought the floor, and her cheeks
hung out signals of abashed but certain welcome. She heard the family
settle in their seats somewhat hastily, the click of the pew door and
the sound of Lawyer Wilson's cane as he stood it in the corner; then
the parson rose to pray and Patty closed her eyes with the rest of the
congregation.
Opening them when Elder Boone rose to announce the hymn, they
fell--amazed, resentful, uncomprehending--on the spectacle of Mark
Wilson finding the place in the book for a strange young woman who sat
beside him. Mark himself had on a new suit and wore a seal ring that
Patty had never observed before; while the dress, pelisse, and hat
of the unknown were of a nature that no girl in Patty's position, and
particularly of Patty's disposition, could have regarded without a
desire to tear them from her person and stamp them underfoot; or better
still, flaunt them herself and show the world how they should be worn!
Mark found the place in the hymn-book for the--creature, shared it with
her, and once, when the Grant twins wriggled and Patty secured a better
view, once, Mark shifted his hand on the page so that his thumb touched
that of his pretty neighbor, who did not remove hers as if she found
the proximity either unpleasant or improper. Patty compared her own
miserable attire with that of the hated rival in front, and also
contrasted Lawyer Wilson's appearance with that of her father; the
former, well dressed in the style of a gentleman of the time, in
broadcloth, with fine linen, and a tall silk hat carefully placed on the
floor of the pew; while Deacon Baxter wore homespun made of wool from
his own sheep, spun and woven, dyed and finished, at the fulling-mill in
the village, and carried a battered felt hat that had been a matter of
ridicule these dozen years. (The Deacon would be buried in two coats,
Jed Morrill always said, for he owned just that number, and would be too
mean to leave either of 'em behind him!)
The sermon was fifty minutes long, time enough for a deal of thinking.
Many a housewife, not wholly orthodox, cut and made over all her
children's clothes, in imagination; planned the putting up of her fruit,
the making of her preserves and pickles, and arranged her meals for
the next week, during the progress of those sermons. Patty watched the
parson turn leaf after leaf until the final one was reached. Then came
the last hymn, when the people stretched their aching limbs, and rising,
turned their backs on the minister and faced the choir. Patty looked
at Waitstill and wished that she could put her throbbing head on her
sisterly shoulder and cry,--mostly with rage. The benediction was said,
and with the final “Amen” the pews were opened and the worshippers
crowded into the narrow aisles and moved towards the doors.
Patty's plans were all made. She was out of her pew before the Wilsons
could possibly leave theirs, and in her progress down the aisle securely
annexed her great admirer, old Dr. Perry, as well as his son Philip.
Passing the singing-seats she picked up the humble Cephas and carried
him along in her wake, chatting and talking with her little party while
her father was at the horse-sheds, making ready to go home between
services as was his habit, a cold bite being always set out on the
kitchen table according to his orders. By means of these clever
manoeuvres Patty made herself the focus of attention when the Wilson
party came out on the steps, and vouchsafed Mark only a nonchalant nod,
airily flinging a little greeting with the nod,--just a “How d'ye do,
Mark? Did you have a good time in Boston?”
Patty and Waitstill, with some of the girls who had come long distances,
ate their luncheon in a shady place under the trees behind the
meeting-house, for there was an afternoon service to come, a service
with another long sermon. They separated after the modest meal to walk
about the Common or stray along the road to the Academy, where there was
a fine view.
Two or three times during the summer the sisters always went quietly
and alone to the Baxter burying-lot, where three grassgrown graves lay
beside one another, unmarked save by narrow wooden slabs so short that
the initials painted on them were almost hidden by the tufts of clover.
The girls had brought roots of pansies and sweet alyssum, and with a
knife made holes in the earth and planted them here and there to make
the spot a trifle less forbidding. They did not speak to each other
during this sacred little ceremony; their hearts were too full when they
remembered afresh the absence of headstones, the lack of care, in the
place where the three women lay who had ministered to their father,
borne him children, and patiently endured his arbitrary and loveless
rule. Even Cleve Flanders' grave,--the Edgewood shoemaker, who lay
next,--even his resting-place was marked and, with a touch of some one's
imagination marked by the old man's own lapstone twenty-five pounds in
weight, a monument of his work-a-day life.
Waitstill rose from her feet, brushing the earth from her hands, and
Patty did the same. The churchyard was quiet, and they were alone with
the dead, mourned and unmourned, loved and unloved.
“I planted one or two pansies on the first one's grave,” said Waitstill
soberly. “I don't know why we've never done it before. There are no
children to take notice of and remember her; it's the least we can do,
and, after all, she belongs to the family.”
“There is no family, and there never was!” suddenly cried Patty. “Oh!
Waity, Waity, we are so alone, you and I! We've only each other in all
the world, and I'm not the least bit of help to you, as you are to me!
I'm a silly, vain, conceited, ill-behaved thing, but I will be better,
I will! You won't ever give me up, will you, Waity, even if I'm not like
you? I haven't been good lately!”
“Hush, Patty, hush!” And Waitstill came nearer to her sister with a
motherly touch of her hand. “I'll not have you say such things; you
that are the helpfullest and the lovingest girl that ever was, and the
cleverest, too, and the liveliest, and the best company-keeper!”
“No one thinks so but you!” Patty responded dolefully, although she
wiped her eyes as if a bit consoled.
It is safe to say that Patty would never have given Mark Wilson a second
thought had he not taken her to drive on that afternoon in early May.
The drive, too, would have quickly fled from her somewhat fickle memory
had it not been for the kiss. The kiss was, indeed, a decisive factor
in the situation, and had shed a rosy, if somewhat fictitious light of
romance over the past three weeks. Perhaps even the kiss, had it never
been repeated, might have lapsed into its true perspective, in due
course of time, had it not been for the sudden appearance of the
stranger in the Wilson pew. The moment that Patty's gaze fell upon that
fashionably dressed, instantaneously disliked girl, Marquis Wilson's
stock rose twenty points in the market. She ceased, in a jiffy, to weigh
and consider and criticize the young man, but regarded him with wholly
new eyes. His figure was better than she had realized, his smile more
interesting, his manners more attractive, his eyelashes longer; in
a word, he had suddenly grown desirable. A month ago she could have
observed, with idle and alien curiosity, the spectacle of his thumb
drawing nearer to another (feminine) thumb, on the page of the Watts and
Select Hymn book; now, at the morning service, she had wished nothing so
much as to put Mark's thumb back into his pocket where it belonged, and
slap the girl's thumb smartly and soundly as it deserved.
The ignorant cause of Patty's distress was a certain Annabel Franklin,
the daughter of a cousin of Mrs. Wilson's. Mark had stayed at the
Franklin house during his three weeks' visit in Boston, where he had
gone on business for his father. The young people had naturally seen
much of each other and Mark's inflammable fancy had been so kindled by
Annabel's doll-like charms that he had persuaded her to accompany him to
his home and get a taste of country life in Maine. Such is man, such is
human nature, and such is life, that Mark had no sooner got the whilom
object of his affections under his own roof than she began to pall.
Annabel was twenty-three, and to tell the truth she had palled before,
more than once. She was so amiable, so well-finished,--with her smooth
flaxen hair, her neat nose, her buttonhole of a mouth, and her trim
shape,--that she appealed to the opposite sex quite generally and
irresistibly as a worthy helpmate. The only trouble was that she began
to bore her suitors somewhat too early in the game, and they never
got far enough to propose marriage. Flaws in her apparent perfection
appeared from day to day and chilled the growth of the various young
loves that had budded so auspiciously. She always agreed with everybody
and everything in sight, even to the point of changing her mind on the
instant, if circumstances seemed to make it advisable. Her instinctive
point of view, when she went so far as to hold one, was somewhat cut and
dried; in a word, priggish. She kept a young man strictly on his good
behavior, that much could be said in her favor; the only criticism that
could be made on this estimable trait was that no bold youth was ever
tempted to overstep the bounds of discretion when in her presence. No
unruly words of love ever rose to his lips; his hand never stole out
involuntarily and imprudently to meet her small chilly one; the sight of
her waist never even suggested an encircling arm; and as a fellow never
desired to kiss her, she was never obliged to warn or rebuke or strike
him off her visiting list. Her father had an ample fortune and some
one would inevitably turn up who would regard Annabel as an altogether
worthy and desirable spouse. That was what she had seemed to Mark Wilson
for a full week before he left the Franklin house in Boston, but there
were moments now when he regretted, fugitively, that he had ever removed
her from her proper sphere. She did not seem to fit in to the conditions
of life in Edgewood, and it may even be that her most glaring fault
had been to describe Patty Baxter's hair at this very Sunday dinner
as “carroty,” her dress altogether “dreadful,” and her style of beauty
“unladylike.” Ellen Wilson's feelings were somewhat injured by these
criticisms of her intimate friend, and in discussing the matter
privately with her brother he was inclined to agree with her.
And thus, so little do we know of the prankishness of the blind god,
thus was Annabel Franklin working for her rival's best interests; and
instead of reviling her in secret, and treating her with disdain in
public, Patty should have welcomed her cordially to all the delights of
Riverboro society.