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CHAPTER XLV
A QUIET WEDDING

The marriage of Will and Ease was naturally a quiet one. Wedding Ease with the certainty of hard work before him, and with the consciousness of taking up a man's burdens, Will was thoughtful and grave. He was full of a serious joy, and, as Patty declared, began already to look older and more sedate. Regret as he might the loss to his bride of her old home, he secretly experienced a virile joy that their fortunes were to be of his own carving.

"My boy," Dr. Sanford said to him upon the eve of his wedding-day, "make two agreements with your wife the day you marry, and stick to them, – never to cry over spilt milk, and never to cross a bridge till you come to it. That takes care of the past and the future; and, if you cannot bear the present together, you had better separate."

Bathalina, too, had her word to say.

"I approve of your bein' married," she said. "Some folks don't take no stock in folks gettin' married so young; but I believe in it. Then you ain't so much older than your children that they treat you as if you was their grand-dad; but they're kind of company for you. Now, when you get to be an old man, you may have a son as old as or older than yourself to stick by you. I always believed in folks bein' married young myself."

The ceremony took place at the Episcopal church, which the Mullens had for years attended, and was wholly free from display.

"God bless you!" Dr. Sanford greeted the newly-wedded pair as they stepped over the threshold of his home. "May you never be less in love than now!"

On the following day Miss Mullen flitted from Montfield like the last-remaining bittern, and established herself with her maiden cousin in Boston, where she gradually recovered her normal condition, and posed before a circle of select if somewhat antiquated people, among whom she soon came to feel perfectly at home.

Meanwhile life in Montfield went on much as usual. Tom Putnam endeavored vainly to come to an understanding with Patty. She resolutely avoided him, except on a single occasion. As Ease and Patty sat sewing one day, conversation turned on Mrs. Toxteth's masquerade.

"Do you know," Ease said, "I never found out what you wore? Emily Purdy told me beforehand that you were going in a man's dress, but of course I didn't believe that."

"Emily Purdy!" exclaimed Patty.

In an instant the whole matter was clear to her, and she saw how Putnam had obtained his knowledge of her costume. The following day she met the lawyer on the street, and stopped him with a little gesture of the hand.

"It is hardly worth while to bother you with apologies," she said; "but I shall respect myself a trifle more if I tell you that I have discovered how you knew of my masquerade-dress, and I beg your pardon for so misjudging you."

"You do not need to apologize," said he eagerly. "It is I who should" —

"Not at all," she interrupted. "Good-morning."

And she walked swiftly away.

For the rest of our friends, Burleigh continually urged upon Flossy the desirability of a speedy marriage; Clarence Toxteth had taken his wounded heart, or vanity, to Europe; Mrs. Smithers took possession of Mullen House; and December brooded in a sulky, rainy mood over the land.

"A green Christmas," Mrs. Sanford said, "makes a full churchyard. I knew we'd have a mild fall when the 21st of September was so mild. Don't you remember, mother? The wind was south-west, and the day very warm."

"The weather has truly been very warm this season," replied grandmother Sanford.

"I think it must be the weather," continued Mrs. Sanford, "that ails Bathalina. She isn't worth any thing for work now: all she'll do is the heavy talking and light lifting. She seems to lay up her husband's death against the doctor. But, as I told her, Peter wouldn't respond to the medicine; and what could Charles do?"

"I know of only one thing Bathalina is good for now," Patty remarked. "She'd make a very ornamental figure in a lunatic-asylum, with her long widow's veil."

"She is certainly crazy enough," put in Flossy. "She told me last night that Noah must have been familiar with the Bible, because he gave his sons names out of it, and that that showed how old the Bible was."

"There comes Will with the letters," Ease said, running to meet him.

"It's as good as eating perennial wedding-cake to see Ease and Will," Flossy laughed. "They are those two souls, you know, that have only a single thought."

"Young married couples," Patty returned somewhat cynically, "are apt to be so foolish that a single thought is quite as much as they can get up between them."

"You are getting misanthropical," Flossy said. "It isn't becoming. And, so saying, she went to stir up the young couple to see – Oh, here you are!"

"Here's a letter for Patty," Will said: "I think it is from Hazard Breck."

The letter which he put into his sister's hands was written in a bold, somewhat boyish hand, which always seemed to Patty very like Hazard himself. It was as follows: —

Dear Patty, – I don't know as I ought to write to you as I am going to, but I am sure you are too much my friend not to understand that I mean right. I want your help; and, to make things clear, I must tell you something. You know that Smithers woman who has got possession of Mullen House, and I dare say you have heard folks blame uncle Tom for taking so much care of her. He has always treated her better than she deserved. When her daughter ran away, she came after him to help find her; but they lost all trace till now. I am mixing things all up, for I hate to tell you the truth: it must come, though. You know well enough what father was, and – think how hard it is for me to tell you, Patty, and you'll excuse my writing this – Mrs. Smithers always said that this girl, her daughter, was my half-sister. Father asked uncle Tom, on his death-bed, to take care of the two; and she's had an income out of his pocket. The man with whom Alice Smithers ran away from Samoset has left her, and somehow or other she has got here. She met me on the street, and begged for a bit of bread. She is sick and penniless, and promises, that, if her mother will let her come home, she will behave. Mrs. Smithers only answers her letters by threats of vengeance if she dares go to Mullen House. I can't write to uncle Tom; for Mrs. Smithers hates him for having tried to make her behave decently, and, now that she is independent, she will do nothing for him. Cannot you do something, Patty, to help this poor girl? She looks half dead, and she has always been delicate.

I am too troubled about this to write about any thing else; but I hope you will have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Very truly yours,

Hazard Breck.

Patty read this letter carefully twice. Then she started up.

"I am going down to the brook for rose-hips to put about the Christmas-cake," she said.

CHAPTER XLVI
CHRISTMAS

Patty went out of the house, and across the orchard. The grass over which she took her way was wet with the cold fog that made the air chill. Everywhere the trees and bushes were loaded with crystal drops upon which no sun shone to make them glitter. The fields were faded, and blotched with patches of gray and brown, and a frost-bitten green. Patty had thrown over her shoulders a long cloak, which covered her from head to feet; and as she walked through the fields she might have passed for the spirit of the sombre weather.

Along the margin of the brook which separated the fields of the Putnam place from Dr. Sanford's possessions, the wild roses grew in profusion, and left so many of their scarlet hips behind them, that the birds had not been able to devour the half. Patty moved along among the leafless shrubs, her cloak catching upon the briers, and her fingers suffering not unfrequently from the same sharp cause, while she gathered the rose-hips for which she had come. The brook, which was quite free from ice, and somewhat swollen by rain, gurgled and murmured past her. The drops shook down upon her from the dripping branches, so that by the time she reached Black-Clear Eddy her cloak was pretty thoroughly wet.

She had not been here since the night she threw her ring into the pool. Remembering how clear was the water, she leaned over to see if she could discover the trinket. Looking carefully for some time, she fancied that her eye caught the gleam of gold. Kneeling upon the wet margin of the brook, she bent down, and assured herself that she indeed saw the ring lodged in a tuft of water-grass. Instantly she longed to recover it. She began to bare her arm, and then paused, laughing at her own folly. The pool was something like eight feet deep, and there seemed no way for her to get possession of the ring but by the use of a hook and line. She ruthlessly sacrificed her handkerchief, tearing it into strips; and, fastening a bent hair-pin to the end of this improvised line, with a pebble for a sinker, she began to angle.

 
"'Simple Simon went a-fishing,'"
 

she sang to herself,

 
"'For to catch a whale:
All the water that he had
Was'" —
 

"In Black-Clear Eddy apparently," the voice of Tom Putnam said close behind her.

So absorbed had she been, that she had not heard him approach. She sprang up quickly, and faced him.

"I wish you a Merry Christmas!" he continued, before she could speak.

"Thank you!" she answered. "I wish you many. How came you here?"

"In the simplest way in the world. I walked."

"But people do not usually go strolling about wet fields in such weather as this."

"Oh! you mean to ask why I came here. I was going over to pay your grandmother her pension for the month – and to see you."

"I am flattered," Patty said, "by even so secondary a remembrance."

She turned her face towards home, and began slowly to walk in that direction, as if expecting him to follow. Every time she encountered her lover, she found it more difficult to retain her self-possession. So completely was she now occupied in schooling herself, that to Putnam she seemed absent and distant.

"Wait," he said, as she turned from him. "You are leaving your rosebuds."

"Thank you!" she returned, taking them from him.

Their hands touched, and both were conscious of a thrill.

"What have I done to offend you?" he burst out. "Why do you avoid me, Patty?"

"Do I?" she asked, fixing her eyes upon the faded grass.

"You know you do. If I have done any thing wrong, any thing that offends you, it was at worst a sin of ignorance, and I sincerely beg your pardon. It is Christmas time, and you cannot better observe it than by a general amnesty."

"Will a general amnesty satisfy you, then?" she asked, teasing a tuft of the withered aftermath with her foot.

Patty understood little her own mood. She desired intensely to be reconciled to her lover; but she was tormented by a secret feeling, that, if he loved her as she wished to be loved, his passion would break down all obstacles. She could endure a lukewarm affection better from any man in the world than from him. To give a sign of her own tenderness, to meet his advances half way, would leave her unsatisfied, even though it resulted in that understanding for which she so ardently longed. She wished to be seized, to be conquered by a passion so powerful as to break down all barriers, to sweep away all hinderances. Hazard's letter, too, had affected her strongly. She had never really believed her lover guilty of any tangible offence, but with a woman's inconsistency had secretly required him to prove his purity. Now that she understood the nature of his relations with Mrs. Smithers, and found here one more proof of his unselfishness, she felt herself contemptible for ever allowing a shadow of doubt to cross her mind. Her feelings were a wild mixture, and instinctively she waited to prove the strength of her lover's passion and its power over her. She stood there in the misty light, knowing that Putnam thought her trifling with him, and angry that he permitted her to do so.

"Is a general amnesty all you desire?" she asked again, as he remained silent.

"If it is the best you have to give," he said coldly. "Still I may perhaps be pardoned if I ask why I need the grace of an amnesty at all. What is my offence?"

"Who accused you of any?" she queried evasively.

"Is it a sin of omission, or of commission?" he persisted.

"Nowadays we seem only to talk in conundrums of great moral import," she said. "It doesn't seem to me to amount to much."

Her companion looked at her as might at the sphinx one whom that monster gave the choice between guessing her riddle, and being devoured. A sense of irritation struggled with his love. He felt at once the annoyance of one who is trifled with, and the strong tenderness of his regard for this slender woman before him. He came a step nearer to her.

"Does any thing seem to you to amount to much?" he demanded. "I think sometimes that you are only half human. You draw men on to love you, and then give only mockery in return."

"If there were only a rock in the middle of Black-Clear Eddy," Patty returned, with an affectation of the utmost deliberation, "I would certainly get a harp, and play the Loreley."

She raised her eyes as she spoke, and they met his. For an instant the two regarded each other as if each strove for mastery in that long, deep glance. Then she turned away once more.

"We had better go to the house," she said. "The grass is very wet."

He took a long stride towards her, and caught her by the arms, looking full into her face.

"You shall love me!" he exclaimed in a voice intense with feeling. "You must love me! I will have you, Patty, in spite of yourself."

A look of defiance flashed upon him from the dark eyes, but it faded into one of gladness. She freed herself gently from his grasp, and moved on. But at the first step she turned back; and, lifting one of his hands in both of her own, she kissed it.

"I do love you," she said in a low voice. "I think I have loved you always."

Then she found herself half smothered in his arms.

There are few threads which need further gathering up. Mrs. Smithers persistently refused to receive her daughter, and the girl soon died from poverty and heart-break. A late remorse seized the unhappy mother, who made Mullen House the scene of disgraceful orgies, until an overdose of opium put an end to her ill-regulated life. In process of time, by a train of circumstances which need not be related here, Mullen House came into the possession of young Dr. Sanford and his wife: Ease thus returned again to the home of her ancestors. But all this was long after the April day upon which Patty and her cousin Flossy were both united to the men they had chosen. "Giant Blunderbore and the Princess Thumbling," Will called Mr. and Mrs. Blood; but the giant was so bewildered with happiness, that he shook the joker's hand cordially, and thanked him for his good wishes.

Patty and her husband walked home across the bridge over the brook, on whose banks the grass was already green, and the alder-tassels golden.

"Let us look in the eddy," the bride said. "We might see that ring."

For answer, her husband lifted her hand, and showed her, embedded in the midst of her wedding-ring, the golden thread she had thrown in the pool.

"It is symbolical," he said with a happy smile. "It signifies how my life is enclosed in yours."

She answered him with a look.

Finis