“WAITY, I know what it is; you have found out about me! Who has been
wicked enough to tell you before I could do so--tell me, who?”
“Oh, Patty, Patty!” cried Waitstill, who could no longer hold back her
tears. “How could you deceive me so? How could you shut me out of your
heart and keep a secret like this from me, who have tried to be mother
and sister in one to you ever since the day you were born? God has sent
me much to bear, but nothing so bitter as this--to have my sister take
the greatest step of her life without my knowledge or counsel!”
“Stop, dear, stop, and let me tell you!”
“All is told, and not by you as it should have been. We've never had
anything separate from each other in all our lives, and when I looked in
your bureau drawer for a bit of soft cotton--it was nothing more than
I have done a hundred times--you can guess now what I stumbled upon;
a wedding-ring for a hand I have held ever since it was a baby's. My
sister has a husband, and I am not even sure of his name!
“Waity, Waity, don't take it so to heart!” and Patty flung herself on
her knees beside Waitstill's chair. “Not till you hear everything! When
I tell you all, you will dry your eyes and smile and be happy about me,
and you will know that in the whole world there is no one else in my
love or my life but you and my--my husband.”
“Who is the husband?” asked Waitstill dryly, as she wiped her eyes and
leaned her elbow on the table.
“Who could it be but Mark? Has there ever been any one but Mark?”
“I should have said that there were several, in these past few months.”
Waitstill's tone showed clearly that she was still grieved and hurt
beyond her power to conceal. “I have never thought of marrying any one
but Mark, and not even of marrying him till a little while ago,” said
Patty. “Now do not draw away from me and look out of the window as if we
were not sisters, or you will break my heart. Turn your eyes to mine and
believe in me, Waity, while I tell you everything, as I have so longed
to do all these nights and days. Mark and I have loved each other for
a long, long time. It was only play at first, but we were young and
foolish and did not understand what was really happening between us.”
“You are both of you only a few months older than when you were 'young
and foolish,'” objected Waitstill.
“Yes, we are--years and years! Five weeks ago I promised Mark that I
would marry him; but how was I ever to keep my word publicly? You
have noticed how insultingly father treats him of late, passing him by
without a word when he meets him in the street? You remember, too, that
he has never gone to Lawyer Wilson for advice, or put any business in
his hands since spring?”
“The Wilsons are among father's aversions, that is all you can say;
it is no use to try and explain them or rebel against them,” Waitstill
answered wearily.
“That is all very well, and might be borne like many another cross; but
I wanted to marry this particular 'aversion,'” argued Patty. “Would you
have helped me to marry Mark secretly if I had confided in you?”
“Never in the world--never!”
“I knew it,” exclaimed Patty triumphantly. “We both said so! And what
was Mark to do? He was more than willing to come up here and ask for me
like a man, but he knew that he would be ordered off the premises as if
he were a thief. That would have angered Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, and made
matters worse. We talked and talked until we were hoarse; we thought and
thought until we nearly had brain fever from thinking, but there seemed
to be no way but to take the bull by the horns.”
“You are both so young, you could well have bided awhile.”
“We could have bided until we were gray, nothing would have changed
father; and just lately I couldn't make Mark bide,” confessed Patty
ingenuously. “He has been in a rage about father's treatment of you and
me. He knows we haven't the right food to eat, nothing fit to wear, and
not an hour of peace or freedom. He has even heard the men at the store
say that our very lives might be in danger if we crossed father's will,
or angered him beyond a certain point. You can't blame a man who loves
a girl, if he wants to take her away from such a wretched life. His love
would be good for nothing if he did not long to rescue her!”
“I would never have left you behind to bear your slavery alone, while I
slipped away to happiness and comfort--not for any man alive would I
I have done it!” This speech, so unlike Waitstill in its ungenerous
reproach, was repented of as soon as it left her tongue. “Oh, I did not
mean that, my darling!” she cried. “I would have welcomed any change for
you, and thanked God for it, if only it could have come honorably and
aboveboard.”
“But, don't you see, Waity, how my marriage helps everything? That
is what makes me happiest; that now I shall have a home and it can be
yours. Father has plenty of money and can get a housekeeper. He is only
sixty-five, and as hale and hearty as a man can be. You have served your
time, and surely you need not be his drudge for the rest of your life.
Mark and I thought you would spend half the year with us.”
Waitstill waived this point as too impossible for discussion. “When and
where were you married, Patty?” she asked.
“In Allentown, New Hampshire, last Monday, the day you and father went
to Saco. Ellen went with us. You needn't suppose it was much fun for me!
Girls that think running away to be married is nothing but a lark, do
not have to deceive a sister like you, nor have a father such as mine to
reckon with afterwards.”
“You thought of all that before, didn't you, child?”
“Nobody that hasn't already run away to be married once or twice could
tell how it was going to feel! Never did I pass so unhappy a day! If
Mark was not everything that is kind and gentle, he would have tipped me
out of the sleigh into a snowbank and left me by the roadside to
freeze. I might have been murdered instead of only married, by the way I
behaved; but Mark and Ellen understood. Then, the very next day,
Mark's father sent him up to Bridgton on business, and he had to go to
Allentown first to return a friend's horse, so he couldn't break the
news to father at once, as he intended.”
“Does a New Hampshire marriage hold good in Maine?” asked Waitstill,
still intent on the bare facts at the bottom of the romance.
“Well, of course,” stammered Patty, some-what confused, “Maine has
her own way of doing things, and wouldn't be likely to fancy New
Hampshire's. But nothing can make it wicked or anything but according
to law. Besides, Mark considered all the difficulties. He is wonderfully
clever, and he has a clerkship in a Portsmouth law office waiting for
him; and that's where we are going to live, in New Hampshire, where we
were married, and my darling sister will come soon and stay months and
months with us.”
“When is Mark coming back to arrange all this?”
“Late to-night or early to-morrow morning. Where did you go after
you were married?”
“Where did I go?” echoed Patty, in a childish burst of tears. “Where
could I go? It took all day to be married--all day long, working and
driving hard from sunrise to seven o'clock in the evening. Then when we
reached the bridge, Mark dropped me, and I walked up home in the dark,
and went to bed without any supper, for fear that you and father would
come back and catch me at it and ask why I was so late.”
“My poor, foolish dear!” sighed Waitstill.
Patty's tears flowed faster at the first sound of sympathy in
Waitstill's voice, for self-pity is very enfeebling. She fairly sobbed
as she continued:--
“So my only wedding-journey was the freezing drive back from Allentown,
with Ellen crying all the way and wishing that she hadn't gone with us.
Mark and I both say we'll never be married again so long as we live!”
“Where have you seen your husband from that day to this?”
“I haven't laid eyes on him!” said Patty, with a fresh burst of woe. “I
have a certificate-thing, and a wedding-ring and a beautiful frock and
hat that Mark bought in Boston, but no real husband. I'm no more married
than ever I was! Don't you remember I said that Mark was sent away on
Tuesday morning? And this is Thursday. I've had three letters from him;
but I don't know, till we see how father takes it, when we can tell
the Wilsons and start for Portsmouth. We shan't really call ourselves
married till we get to Portsmouth; we promised each other that from the
first. It isn't much like being a bride, never to see your bridegroom;
to have a father who will fly into a passion when he hears that you are
married; not to know whether your new family will like or despise you;
and to have your only sister angered with you for the first time in her
life!”
Waitstill's heart melted, and she lifted Patty's tear-stained face to
hers and kissed it. “Well, dear, I would not have had you do this for
the world, but it is done, and Mark seems to have been as wise as a man
can be when he does an unwise thing. You are married, and you love each
other. That's the comforting thing to me.”
“We do,” sobbed Patty. “No two people ever loved each other better than
we; but it's been all spoiled for fear of father.”
“I must say I dread to have him hear the news”; and Waitstill knitted
her brows anxiously. “I hope it may be soon, and I think I ought to be
here when he is told. Mark will never under-stand or bear with him, and
there may be trouble that I could avert.”
“I'll be here, too, and I'm not afraid!” And Patty raised her head
defiantly. “Father can unmarry us, that's why we acted in this
miserable, secret, underhanded way. Somehow, though I haven't seen Mark
since we went to Allentown, I am braver than I was last week, for now
I've got somebody to take my part. I've a good mind to go upstairs and
put on my gold beads and my wedding-ring, just to get used to them and
to feel a little more married.--No: I can't, after all, for there is
father driving up the hill now, and he may come into the house. What
brings him home at this hour?”
“I was expecting him every moment”; and Waitstill rose and stirred the
fire. “He took the pung and went to the Mills for grain.”
“He hasn't anything in the back of the pung--and, oh, Waity! he is
standing up now and whipping the horse with all his might. I never saw
him drive like that before: what can be the matter? He can't have seen
my wedding-ring, and only three people in all the world know about my
being married.”
Waitstill turned from the window, her heart beating a little faster.
“What three people know, three hundred are likely to know sooner or
later. It may be a false alarm, but father is in a fury about something.
He must not be told the news until he is in a better humor!”