"A BIRD IN THE HAND."
The day of the picnic dawned as fair and sweet as if made for a pure
girl's wedding, or a children's holiday.
The gathering was to take place at Mackerel Cove, a little bay jutting
inward, amid lovely groves of beech-trees, from a larger inlet of the
Atlantic. A drive of a dozen miles stretched between the cove and
Montfield; the picnickers taking their own time for starting, and speed
in going, the rendezvous being at the hour fixed for dinner.
Patty saw the family depart one by one. First Will went to call for
Ease Apthorpe, the lady-elect of his heart or fancy; then Dr. Sanford
drove off with his wife, intending to visit certain patients on the
way; and, last of all, Flossy was swung lightly up into his buggy by
the mighty arms of Burleigh Blood.
"Don't you mean to go at all?" the latter asked of Patty, who came
running after them with Flossy's bowl of pop-corn.
"I never tell my plans," she laughed gayly. "Mother went off predicting
that something dreadful was sure to happen. How do you know but I am
afraid to go?"
"Pooh! She's going with Clarence Toxteth," Flossy said.
"But"--began her escort.
"There! Drive on, and don't bother about me," said Patty. "I have
usually been thought able to take care of my own affairs. A pleasant
ride to you."
She turned back toward the lonely house. Bathalina Clemens was at work
somewhere in the chambers, counteracting any tendency to too great
cheerfulness which the beauty of the day might develop in her mind, by
singing the most doleful of minors:--
"'Hearken, ye sprightly, and attend, ye vain ones;
Pause in your mirth, adversity consider;
Learn from a friend's pen sentimental, painful
Death-bed reflections,'"
she sang, with fearful inflections and quavers. Patty's face fell. A
feeling of angry disappointment came over her. This picnic was an event
in Montfield. What to the belle of the season would be the loss of its
most brilliant ball was this privation to Patty. This is a relative
world, wherein the magnitude of an object depends upon the position of
the eye which observes it; and for the time being the picnic filled the
whole field of mental vision of the young people of the village. Nor
did it tend to lessen the girl's annoyance that the fault was her own,
although she resolutely persisted in thinking that she thought herself
not at all responsible, but had transferred the entire blame upon the
shoulders of the cavalier who should have invited her, and had not.
She wandered restlessly through the house and garden, at last seating
herself upon the piazza with a book, upon which she vainly attempted to
fix her attention. From above came the voice of Bathalina chanting,--
"'Shun my example!'"
"'Shun your example!'" muttered Patty to herself. "I shall shun my own
hereafter. I might have known that poky old Tom Putnam wouldn't ask me.
It is too mean that I should have to stay at home! He might at least
have given me a chance to refuse him, and then I should have known what
to count on. He is so intensely aggravating. I don't doubt he took
Flora Sturtevant. I've no patience with a man that will let himself be
trapped by a flirt like her."
And at that moment, raising her eyes, she saw the object of her
animadversions--a tall, slender man of two or three and thirty--coming
up the walk. He seemed surprised to find her at home.
"Good-morning," Mr. Putnam said, in a voice which few persons heard
with indifference, so rich and pleasing it was. "I supposed you had
gone to the picnic."
"You see I haven't."
It required no great penetration to see that Patty was out of spirits.
The new-comer looked at her keenly.
"Thank you, I will sit down for a moment," he said, as if she had
invited him to do so. "These steps are very comfortable. Don't trouble
to get me a chair."
"I had not the faintest intention of doing so," she returned.
"Why have you not gone?" he asked, looking up at her curiously from his
seat upon the piazza-steps.
"I chose to stay at home," she answered shortly.
"Conclusive, but impossible. A better reason, please?"
"I do not know that it can make any difference to you why I stay at
home."
"But it does, however ignorant you may be on that point."
"Why should it?"
"You have not answered me," he said; "but I will be generous, and tell
you why. I was coming yesterday to invite you myself, and heard that
you were going with Burleigh Blood."
"Did you?" she asked, brightening visibly. "That was a lie I told, or
rather a lie I didn't tell. How did you hear of it?"
"I heard Clarence Toxteth say so. Is your list of questions much
longer?"
"If Bathalina doesn't stop singing such hymns," Patty said
irrelevantly, "I know I shall murder her sooner or later."
"I would," he answered, looking at his watch. "I came for a book of
your father's; but it is no matter to-day. I will have the horse at the
gate in fifteen minutes. Can you be ready so soon?"
"Who said I'd go?" she laughed, springing up.
"Who asked you to?" he retorted.
"But I will, if only to plague you," she said.
"Don't feel obliged to," he replied, starting down the walk. "It really
won't annoy me enough to make it worth your trouble."
Patty darted into the house, and up to her chamber, like a swallow.
Unconsciously she caught up Bathalina's strain.
"'Sudden and awful, from the height of pleasure,
By pain and sickness thrown upon a down-bed,'"
she carolled; and for once the hymn put on a garb of mocking gayety.
"Patience Sanford!" solemnly ejaculated the pious maid-servant, putting
her head in at the chamber-door. "It's tempting Providence to sing that
hymn that way. No good'll come of it, you may depend."
"Nonsense, Bath! I could dance to the hymns of the cherubim!"
And into the garden she flew to pin a bunch of clove-pinks at her belt.
"Do you know how solemn you looked," Putnam asked as they drove along
the smooth road, between unfenced fields green with the starting
aftermath, "when I found you on the piazza? Were you thinking of your
sins?"
"No: of those of my neighbors."
"Of omission, or commission?" he asked, looking at her closely.
"Both," she returned, flushing a little. "I was lonesome, of course.
You wouldn't like to stay at home alone all day."
"On the contrary," he said, "there are few things I like better. It is
strange how a woman is never good company for herself. She can never
keep still and think, but must always be rattling away to somebody."
"You think so because you don't know."
"My observation has not been very extensive, perhaps; but it has been
all in one direction. Men are content enough to be alone."
"It is all the conceit of the men," she retorted. "You all fancy you
are never in so good company as when alone."
"Unless we are favored by some one of your sex."
"Nonsense! You don't think so. What a man finds to say to himself, I
cannot imagine; unless, indeed, his mind is one grand vacuum."
"The wisdom of a man's reflections must always be beyond a woman's
comprehension," he returned. "Some men have made great mistakes by
forgetting this."
"Then, of course, you'll never marry," Patty ventured. "You wouldn't
want a companion who couldn't understand you."
"Oh! I may join 'the noble army of martyrs,'" he answered in the
same bantering tone he had been using. "Every man will be ruled by
some women; and with a wife his resistance would be a trifle less
restrained, you see."
"I have heard it said," she answered, "that, as love increased, good
manners decreased; but I never made such an application of it."
"Of course," he began, "having a legal mind, I regard a wife as a piece
of personal property, and"--
"There!" she interrupted. "It is perfectly maddening to hear you talk
in that way about women. I hate it."
"I'm sure I don't mean any disrespect," he answered soberly. "I should
have married long ago, had I been able."
"Whom would you have married?" she demanded. "You speak as if you had
only to make your selection, and any girl would be glad of the chance
to take you."
"That is because I think so highly of the penetration of your sex,"
he retorted, with a return to his light manner; adding, with some
bitterness, "but, when a man is as poor as a church mouse, he can have
as little thought of marrying, and being given in marriage, as the
angels in heaven."
"Don't be profane. You have your profession."
"Oh! I earn enough to keep soul and body together, if I don't do too
much for either. But this is not a cheerful subject, even if it were in
good taste for me to be complaining of poverty. Did you know my nephews
came last night?"
"Yes; and I am so glad! It is always pleasant to have Hazard Breck
here. Of course, they'll be at the picnic."
"Yes. Frank, you know, has graduated, and Hazard is a junior. It is two
years since I have seen them."
"They probably feel ten years older. We are to have company too.
Grandmother is coming."
With such discourse they rolled over the country road towards Mackerel
Cove. Under the gay surface of the conversation was a sting for Patty
in the lawyer's allusion to his poverty. He was usually very reticent
about his affairs; and it may have been for that reason that the
gossips of Montfield called him "close." "He's close-mouthed and he's
close-fisted," Mrs. Brown was accustomed to say; "and most generally
the things go together."
To Patty's thinking few faults could be worse. To an open-handed
Sanford, avarice was the most disgusting of vices; and this fatal
defect in her companion was like the feet of clay of the image of gold.