AN OUTBURST.
"Hazard," Patty asked, as they went splashing through the puddles, "is
Frank in earnest with Ease? Does he really care for her?"
"I do not know," he answered slowly. "He never makes a confidant of me."
"He persecutes her," Patty continued. "I wish he'd let her alone. She's
too meek to stand out against him. I ought not to say this to you, but
it makes me angry. Why are you so sober lately? You are as solemn as
Bathalina."
"Am I? I wasn't aware of it."
"But of course you know what is troubling you."
"It does little good to talk over such things," he said.
"Such things as what?" she asked.
"As--as being solemn."
"You've some sort of a deadly secret preying upon your mind, Hazard.
That I am sure of. Now, I insist upon knowing what it is."
"I haven't any secret now," he answered rather mournfully.
Hazard was, after all, only a boy, though a very noble and manly one.
He adored Patty with all the ardor of a pure boy's first passion; a
light which, if extinguished, leaves the very blackness of despair in
the boyish heart; a dream from which the waking is very bitter. The lad
whose first love is ill-starred refuses to believe that he can ever
love again, that any sun will rise after this brilliant meteor-flash
has faded.
Hazard had not for a moment entertained the possibility of contesting
his uncle's right to Patty. He was too loyal, too devoted to the man
who had unostentatiously made so many sacrifices to him and his. In
the lonely walk he had taken Sunday afternoon, when aunt Pamela had
spoken of Putnam's love, the young man had fought with himself, and
conquered. When he met Patty on the bridge, she was to him as belonging
to another. There was in the lad a high chivalry, which caused him to
regard things in a noble if somewhat overstrained temper. Mr. Putnam to
him was not merely the uncle to whom he was warmly attached, but also
the generous benefactor who had not spared himself to save the name
and the welfare of his nephews. Hazard was not ignorant, that, but for
Putnam, his father might have been publicly branded as the felon he
was; and he knew, too, that sacrifices made to shield him had crippled
his uncle's fortune. That this had prevented Tom's seeking from Patty
the love which his nephew felt to be richly his due, was an added
reason why in this, most of all things, no obstacle should come between
Mr. Putnam and his desire. The boy's self-renunciation was a little
Quixotic; but who more sadly noble than the crazy knight of La Mancha?
There are, however, limits to all human endurance. To suffer and be
strong is possible to many: to suffer and be silent is within the power
of but few. Hazard had resolved never to speak of his love; but no
one can judge the strength of a resolution until it has been tried by
opportunity. There suddenly rushed over him a wave of boyish despair.
One who voluntarily renounces pursuit, generally believes that he might
have won; and to Hazard his act seemed the renunciation of a prize
surely his.
"Life is so hard!" he burst out suddenly, with all the hopelessness of
despairing twenty.
"Oh, no!" Patty returned lightly. "As Flossy says, 'life would be very
pleasant, if it were not so much trouble to live.'"
"But to live is so much trouble," he answered. "See what a life I've
had! I wasn't asked if I wanted it; and, when I had been made to live,
I didn't have my choice about it, in any way. You know that my father
was a constant trouble to us,--everybody knew that,--and we all had to
endure to be pitied; and pity is always half contempt."
"O Hazard!"
"Of course I don't mean from you," he said illogically enough; "but it
is the truth. Then, mother was just worn into her grave by grief and
poverty; and we boys had to stand by helpless, and see it."
Patty was at a loss how to answer him, and wisely said little. Hazard
was usually so bright, and seemed of so happy a disposition, that this
outburst was the more bewildering. Ignorant of the cause which had
worked his old pains to the surface, Patty's only thought was of how
deep must have been the sorrow of his boyhood to have left so much
bitterness behind. She knew in a vague way that Mr. Breck had been a
dissipated, unprincipled man, who had ill-treated his family, and been
a scandal to the neighborhood until he moved out of it to take up his
residence in Boston. She had no means of knowing how sad a childhood
had been that of Hazard,--a life so shaded, that only an unusually fine
temperament, and the noble disposition inherited from his mother, had
prevented his becoming morbidly gloomy. Partly because she knew not
what to say, and partly from an instinctive feeling that talking would
relieve Hazard's overwrought mood, she let him continue.
"I have never had any good from life for myself," he went on with
increasing vehemence, "and I am sure I have never helped my friends to
any. I've been a dead weight on those I wanted most to help; and, if I
am ever fond of anybody, we are either separated, or something happens
to spoil our friendship. Frank and I never had any thing in common; and
now he is all the time plaguing Ease Apthorpe, or travelling about with
that vile Mixon."
"Who is Mixon?" asked Patty. "Not Bathalina's husband?"
"Yes: that's the one. The old scoundrel!"
"What has Frank to do with him?"
"I don't know. Sometimes I think it's only fondness for low company,
and then at others fancy he has some sort of a secret of Frank's. He
was one of father's dogs; sometimes hostler, sometimes waiter, or
footman, or whatever happened. Father had a strange liking for his
company, and Mixon could manage him when nobody else could come near
him. Why, I've seen father lay his pistols on the table, and dare one
of us to stir, and then go on drinking, and flinging the dishes at
one or another of us, till Peter heard the racket, and came, and took
the revolvers away. Nobody else in the house dared dispute any thing
father did. It is a pleasant childhood to remember, isn't it? And it is
pleasant to think that Mixon may know some secret which would disgrace
us all if it were told."
"Now, Hazard," Patty said soothingly, "you shouldn't talk of these
things. You make them worse than they ever were, and at worst they are
passed now. Then you have always your uncle to help you and to advise
with."
"Uncle Tom? There's where it hurts worse than all. We have always been
a drag on him. If it were not for us, he might have been married long
ago."
"Oh, no!" his companion returned hastily, with a pang in her heart.
"You don't know what you are saying."
"But I do. Even aunt Pamela sees it, and spoke to me of it."
"But"--
"But what?" he broke in fiercely, his passion and pain sweeping away
all his reserve. "Oh, I know what you would say! You think you might
have a voice in the matter. I tell you, Patty Sanford, if you trifled
with uncle Tom, I should hate you as much as I love you now."
"Hazard Breck, you are crazy!"
"I know I am crazy. I've been crazy all summer. I was crazy thinking
I was coming to Montfield because I should see you; and since I came
I've been wild night and day because you were alive in the same town,
because"--
"Oh, hush! For pity's sake, hush!" she cried.
Then she laid her other hand upon his arm, which she already held.
"I have completely forgotten every word we have spoken to-night," she
said.
The tone, the words, affected him like a sudden dash of ice-cold water.
He strode on through the rain in silence, suddenly feeling now how his
heart beat, and his blood rushed tingling through his veins. They had
nearly reached Dr. Sanford's cottage when he spoke again.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "You were always too good to me. I think
I have been out of my head to-night."
"Why shouldn't I be good to you?" she returned. "You have always been
good to me. So old friends as we are don't need to apologize to each
other. I dare say we all say foolish things sometimes."
He winced a little, but did not dissent. As they went up the path
together between the dripping shrubs which glimmered in the light from
the windows, they heard Will's voice.
"There is Will singing," Patty said. "He always sings when he has a
headache. He insists that dying swans sing on account of the pain in
their heads."
"That has been the trouble with me," Hazard answered, smiling faintly.
"I've had my swan-song--unless you call it a hiss. But my pain was not
in my head. Good-night."
"Ah!" Patty said to herself, looking after him, "the pain in your heart
isn't sharper than in mine."