ON THE PIAZZA.
The life of Bathalina Clemens was one long wail in the past-potential
tense. "I might have been" was the refrain of all her days.
"I might ha' been Peter Mixon's wife, if my sinful pride hadn't a made
me high-minded," she said continually. "How'd I know he'd give up so
easily, 'cause I said I wouldn't let him lick the ground I walked on?"
The nasal melancholy of camp-meeting minors floated after her angular
form like the bitter odor from wormwood or tansy. She reproved the
levity of those about her with an inner satisfaction at having "borne
testimony;" and particularly did she labor with Patty, whose high
spirits were a continual thorn to Bathalina.
"It's so like the Amorites and the Hittites and Hivites," she groaned,
"to be always singing and laughing and dancing about! How'll you feel
when you come to your latter end? Would you dance on your dying-bed?"
"Probably not," Patty answered, laughing more than ever; "but I can't
tell."
The spraining of Patty's ankle seemed to Bathalina a direct visitation
of Providence in reproof for her vain merry-making.
"I knew some judgment would happen to you," the servant said. "'My
sinfulness has been visited upon me.' If you'd only live as you'll wish
you had when you come to stand around your dying-bed!"
"Bathalina," Patty said sedately, "I am glad you mention it. I intend
to behave until my ankle gets better; and I wanted to ask you if you'd
mind taking my place in the theatricals we are getting up."
"You may mock now," retorted Bathalina wrathfully; "but at the last
you'll bite like an adder, and sting like a serpent.--Mrs. Sanford, I
came to tell you that I am going this afternoon to the funeral of my
cousin Sam's first wife's child."
"Is she dead?" asked Mrs. Sanford. "I hadn't heard of it; though, now,
I remember I did hear a dog howl night before last."
"I suppose she's dead," the servant answered; "because, when I was over
there Saturday, Jane said to me, says she, 'We sha'n't churn till after
Emma dies.' And she wouldn't ha' said that if she warn't a-goin' to
die soon. And, as that family always has their funerals Wednesday, I
thought I better go over."
"But to-night is bread night," Mrs. Sanford objected; while Patty sank
back in convulsions of laughter.
"Well'm, I'll mix it up early to-morrow morning."
"No," the housewife said decidedly; "none of your bread raised by
daylight in my house. I'll see to it myself to-night. Grandmother
Sanford is coming to-day; and she knows what good bread is, if anybody
does."
"Mother," Patty asked, as the door closed behind Bathalina, "do you
suppose Bath is as crazy as she seems? She talks like a perfect idiot."
"Well," her mother answered meditatively, "sometimes I think that
perhaps maybe she isn't; and then, again, I don't know but after all I
can't tell but she is."
Later in the forenoon Patty lay upon a light willow lounge which Will
had placed for her on the piazza. It was a lovely summer's day. The
bees hummed drowsily among the flowers, and Patty had drifted halfway
from waking into sleeping. Through an opening in the vines which shaded
the piazza, she watched the clouds moving slowly through the far, still
spaces of blue ether, one shape insensibly changing into another as
they passed.
The girl was thinking of nothing higher or greater than her suitors,
perhaps having meditated sufficiently upon graver subjects in the days
since her accident, now making almost a week. She was not counting
her conquests; yet she had a pleasant consciousness of her power, and
recalled with satisfaction the compliments bestowed upon her in words
or attentions. The two nephews of Mr. Putnam, Frank and Hazard Breck,
had the previous afternoon called upon her; and the younger was of old
a devoted worshipper at her shrine. Hazard Breck was a fine, manly
fellow a year Patty's junior. He believed himself madly in love with
her; and indeed, in the fashion of pure-minded youth, he felt for her
that maiden passion which is light and sweetness without the heat and
wholesome bitter of a man's love.
As Patty lay watching the clouds, and enjoying the colors brought out
by the sunlight as it filtered through the leafy screen, she heard the
latch of the gate click. Without turning her head, she tried to guess
whose step it was coming up the gravel-walk, and rightly concluded it
must be that of Hazard Breck. He crossed the piazza, and came to her
side.
"Good-morning," he said, in a tone having something of the richness of
his uncle's voice. "Are you asleep, or awake?"
"Asleep," she answered, closing her eyes. "Isn't it a delicious morning
to sleep and dream?"
"What do you dream?"
"That you have good news to tell."
"You are no witch to guess that. You knew it from my voice."
"What is it?"
"Now I can torment you," he said, "as you did me last night. Guess."
"One never guesses in sleep."
"Dream it, then."
"I should dream that the sky had fallen, and you had caught larks."
"No, I haven't, worse luck. But you'll never get it."
"Then tell me."
"It is about uncle Tom," he said after some further bantering. "He's
had a windfall. The Samoset and Brookfield stock has gone up like a
rocket, and made his fortune. Isn't that jolly!"
"I know nothing about stocks," she answered; "but I'm glad he's made
his fortune."
"I'm just wild over it!" Hazard said. "It is so opportune!"
"Did he need it so much, then?" Patty asked, with a secret
consciousness that she was pumping her guest.
"Uncle Tom is so generous!" Breck answered.
"He has not usually had that reputation," she returned, dropping the
words slowly, one by one.
"I know," he said indignantly. "Of course I've no right to tell it,
because he has always insisted that I should not. But I'd like you,
at least, to know, and it can't do any harm to tell you now. He has
supported not only aunt Pamela, but Frank and me; and of course, with
two of us in college, it has been a hard pull on him."
"But I should think," she began, "that"--
"That we wouldn't have let him?" Hazard said as she hesitated. "I
wonder--I've always wondered that we did. But he insisted, and said we
could pay him back when we got our professions; and so we shall, of
course."
Patty was silent. She was filled with self-reproach for having
misjudged the lawyer. Why, from all her suitors, her heart had chosen
this elderly-looking man, his hair already threaded with gray, she
could have told as little as any one else. Love as a rule is so
illogical, that it is strange the ancients did not give the little
god the female sex; though it is true they approximated toward it
by representing him eternally blindfold. Something in Patty had
instinctively recognized the innate nobility of Mr. Putnam's character,
hidden beneath a somewhat cold exterior. Against the fascination
which his personality exercised over her, she struggled as a strong
will always struggles against the dominion of a stronger. She could
not easily yield herself up, and often treated the lawyer with less
tenderness, or even courtesy, than the rest of her suitors. At the
revelations of Hazard, however, she was much softened; and had Tom
Putnam been at hand--but he was not; and it is idle to speculate
upon chances, albeit the whole world is poised upon an IF, as a
rocking-stone upon its pivot.