NOTES AND SOUVENIRS.
"I took cold leaving off my apron," Mrs. Sanford remarked. "I always
do."
"That is a slight cause, daughter Britann," said grandmother. "Do'st
thee feel sure there was no other?"
"I suppose I know when I take cold," she retorted. "I always take cold
if I leave off my apron; and, if I go to a tea-party, I always wear my
apron under my dress."
"I declare!" exclaimed Patty, rushing in like a whirlwind. "I'll never
speak to that horrid Tom Putnam again to the longest day I live!"
"Softly, softly," said the old lady. "Thee do'st not wish to make
promises and break them. What disturbs thee?"
"It's about you, grandmother. He dared to say you were not married."
"Not married?"
"Not married!" echoed Mrs. Sanford. "And your family always held out to
be so much better than ours, and so leading me to marry into it, and
help bear the disgrace!"
"Hush, mother!" Patty said impatiently. "There isn't any disgrace. It
is only a blunder of Mr. Putnam's."
"Then, your father ought to sue him for libel. I always told you I
didn't approve of your dawdling about with that lawyer, with Clarence
Toxteth at your beck and call. But you always would have your own way,
and disgrace us all by keeping company with the man that slanders your
family."
"Slanders our family!" Patty returned, her eyes blazing. "Who said he
slandered the family? If he isn't disgraced by my company, I'm sure I
am not by his. I shouldn't be ashamed to sweep the streets for him to
walk on!"
"You'd demean yourself, I dare say, when you might have the streets
swept for you."
"I"--began her daughter.
"Daughter Patience," interposed her grandmother, laying her hand upon
the girl's arm, "thee had best not say it."
By a strong effort Patty repressed the retort which had sprung to her
lips.
"What does it mean, grandmother?" she asked, when a moment's silence
had given her more composure. "Tom Putnam says he can find no proof of
your marriage."
"I told thy father to tell him to go to the town-records."
"He says he has, and it is not there."
"Then, the man that married us neglected his duty," the old lady said
with gentle severity. "He was a Methodist preacher at Quinnebasset;
for we had only one preacher here, and he was away; and that, as thee
knows, was before I received light to become a Friend."
"But didn't you have a certificate?" asked Mrs. Sanford.
"No. The man promised us one; but, though he was a man of God, he kept
his word no better than one of the world's people, and we never got it."
"What are you talking about?" demanded Flossy, entering. "I told Will I
didn't think this play would be very intelligible to the audience; and
he said they would have the advantage of the actors, if it were. Was
that what you were talking about?"
"Flossy," her aunt said disdainfully, "don't be so silly!"
"Thank you, aunt Britann. I prefer to be silly." So saying, she made
her aunt a graceful courtesy, and then sat down. "What were you talking
about?"
Patty explained; and her cousin flourished her bowl of pop-corn wildly
about with excitement.
"Yes, of course," Flossy burst out. "I knew there was something sure
to come of it when I ran away; and there it was in the binding of this
book, and the pew was so hard I thought I should die. This cover, you
know, is almost torn off, and there's where Linda Thaxter married
William French; I mean Edward French, no, Edward Sanford--at least you
know what I mean."
Flossy always became less and less intelligible as she became excited;
and Patty, knowing this by frequent experience, seized her by both
shoulders.
"Wait!" she said. "Stop short there. Now, what are you trying to say?"
By degrees they elicited from her the story of the psalmody in the
Presbyterian Church at Samoset; and Dr. Sanford, when he came home,
declared that this might prove a decisive piece of evidence. He laughed
at Patty's anger, and requested her to write a note to the lawyer,
informing him of Flossy's story.
It amused him to see his daughter nibbling her pen over the epistle she
had vainly tried to avoid writing.
She wrote and tore up a dozen notes before she would send one. There
sat the doctor in his easy-chair, apparently reading, but with his
peculiar faint smile curling the corners of his lips sufficiently to
show that he appreciated her difficulty. The note when completed read
as follows:--
TUESDAY EVENING.
Flossy saw in the binding of a hymn-book at Samoset a notice of
grandmother's wedding. She will tell you about it, if you will call on
her.
PATIENCE SANFORD.
P.S.--I have to beg your pardon for my rudeness this afternoon.
The effect of this note was to bring the lawyer to the cottage the next
morning. As mischievous fortune chose to have it, Patty was on the
piazza, selecting for pressing the brightest of the scarlet and russet
woodbine-leaves which had been spared by the storm. She knew his step
upon the walk; and, although she would not turn, she was prepared to
meet him with a kindness which should atone for yesterday's harshness.
But she defeated her own intention. Meaning to be gracious, she yet was
not willing to give the first sign of abandoning hostilities, expecting
her lover to know instinctively the state of her mind, and to approach
her in a corresponding temper.
The lover's eyes shone with a wistful tenderness as he regarded the
slender figure upon which the bright leaves fell in showers of gold and
green and scarlet. His relations with Patty troubled him, and yet he
knew not how they might be improved. He knew women from books rather
than from nature, and his knowledge profited him little in his own
dilemma. The sudden changes in Patty were incomprehensible to him. He
had accepted her apology as a necessary consequence of the fact that
she was a lady: what it had cost her, or how she had passed from anger
to tenderness, he did not suspect.
She, on her side, interpreted him no better. His self-restraint she
called coldness; and, when he failed to respond to a softened mood,
she felt that her affection found no response in his heart. This
morning she was unconsciously in a frame of mind which would render her
dissatisfied, whatever his attitude: had he divined her relenting, she
would have thought him presuming, as now she called him cold. The only
comfort Tom might extract from such a situation was the fact, hardly
likely to occur to him, that she was a thousand times more displeased
with herself than with him.
"Good-morning," the gentleman said, stepping upon the piazza.
"Good-morning," she returned, keeping her face from him.
"It is a right royal day after the storm," he said, rather for the sake
of saying something than from any active interest in the weather.
"Yes," she assented laconically.
"How do your theatricals come on?" asked he.
"'As the man went to be hung,--very slowly,' to use Will's slang, or
figure of speech as Flossy calls it."
"This world," the lawyer said rather irrelevantly, "is chiefly figures
of speech."
"What does that signify?"
"It signifies that you think of our talk yesterday hyperbolically."
Patty felt herself growing flushed and perturbed. Their conversation
hid completely the sentiments underlying it. Her tenderness was met by
apparent indifference. What was this talk of figures of speech, when he
should have said simply "I love you."
"On the contrary," she replied, "I do not think of our conversation
yesterday at all."
"Then, why do you so resolutely keep your face from me?"
"Certainly not because I said any thing yesterday that I am ashamed of."
Putnam took from his pocket her note, and read aloud the postscript.
"It is very generous in you to fling that in my face," she exclaimed,
turning suddenly.
"It was abominable," he laughed; "but it made you show your face, and
that's worth sinning for."
"Why did you keep my note?" she asked, as he carefully replaced it
in his pocket-book. "You told me once you never kept any letters but
business ones."
"Oh! I always preserve yours. Every rule has its exception."
"I am flattered," she said, softening a little.
"You've no reason to be," he retorted saucily. "I only keep them
because I suppose you are sure to demand them some time; and, if I
couldn't return them, you'd say I kept them."
"Then, I demand them now."
"You shall have them when you give me mine."
"You may have them this minute," she exclaimed.
"Ah!" retorted he, laughing. "I have discovered what I wanted to know.
You have cared enough for them to keep them."
"You are the most hateful man on the face of the earth!" she said
angrily, running into the house, and up to her own chamber.
She gathered all his notes together, with the trifles she had
treasured, even before she confessed to herself that she cared for
him,--this odd stone from Mackerel Cove, that Chinese coin he took
from his watch-guard one day as a reward for a joke she made, a dry
and musty cracker upon which he drew at a picnic a clever caricature
of Mrs. Brown's frowsy head, a few dried flowers, and a pencil-sketch
or two. She gathered them together, meaning to make a packet of them
to put into Tom's hands before he left the house. Then she began to
read over the notes, simple things that said little, and from another
would have had no especial meaning or value. Here he asked her if
he might drive her to a picnic at Wilk's Run; this was to say that
he was going to Boston, and would be glad to execute any commissions
for her,--trifling things, but written by his hand. She turned over
his gifts, keepsakes which any friend might give to another. She
recalled, while making up her packet, the circumstances in which each
came to her. Memories exhale from mementos as odors from faded roses
laid long away among our treasures. Patty ended by a brief shower of
tears, and by replacing the souvenirs in the box whence they came. Her
tears cleared her mental atmosphere as a thunder-shower may the air
of a sultry day. Ten minutes later she flashed down stairs, bright,
trenchant, and gay as a dragon-fly. She comforted herself with the
illogical conclusion, "After all, I love him so deeply, he must love
me."
Meanwhile the lawyer had questioned Flossy. She described so
bewilderingly the situation of "this pew, you know," that it was quite
impossible to form the slightest idea of its position. He therefore
concluded to take the young lady herself to Samoset; and, just as Patty
descended from her chamber, the two drove away. The psalmody was found
without trouble; and the printed slip in the binding was eventually
traced to the newspaper from which it was cut, furnishing the link
which had before been missing in the evidence needed to secure the
long-talked-of pension.