University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.
PATTY.

PATTY'S whole education tended to foster her pride,
and in Patty's circumstances pride was conservative;
it saved her from possible assimilation with the
vulgarity about her. She was a lily among hollyhocks.
Her mother had come of an “old family”—in truth,
of two or three old families. All of them had considered
that attachment to the Established Church was
part and parcel of their gentility, and most of them
had been staunch Tories in the Revolution. Patty
had inherited from her mother refinement, pride, and
a certain lofty inflexibility of disposition. In this congenial
soil Mrs. Lumsden had planted traditional prejudices.
Patty read her Prayer-book, and wished that
she might once attend the stately Episcopal service;
she disliked the lowness of all the sects: the sing-song
of the Baptist preacher and the rant of the Methodist
itinerant were equally distasteful. She had never seen
a clergyman in robes, but she tried, from her mother's
descriptions, to form a mental picture of the long-drawn
dignity of the service in an Old Virginia country
church. Patty was imaginative, like most girls of her
age; but her ideals were ruled by the pride in which
she had been cradled.

For the Methodists she entertained a peculiar aversion.

Methodism was new, and, like everything new,
lacked traditions, picturesqueness, mustiness, and all
the other essentials of gentility in religious matters.
The converts were rude, vulgar, and poor; the preachers
were illiterate, and often rough in voice and
speech; they made war on dancing and jewelry, and
dancing and jewelry appertained to good-breeding.
Ever since her father had been taken with that strange
disorder called “the jerks,” she had hated the Methodists
worse than ever. They had made a direct
attack on her pride.

The story of Morton's gambling had duly reached
the ears of Patty. The thoughtful unkindness of her
father could not leave her without so delectable a
morsel of news. He felt sure that Patty's pride
would be outraged by conduct so reckless, and he
omitted nothing from the tale—the loss of horse and
gun, the offer to stake his hat and coat, the proposal
to commit suicide, the flight upon the forfeited horse—
such were the items of Captain Lumsden's story. He
told it at the table in order to mortify Patty as much
as possible in the presence of her brothers and sisters
and the hired men. But the effect was quite different
from his expectations. With that inconsistency characteristic
of the most sensible women when they are
in love, Patty only pitied Morton's misfortunes. She
saw him, in her imagination, a hapless and homeless
wanderer. She would not abandon him in his misfortunes.
He should have one friend at least. She
was sorry he had gambled, but gambling was not
inconsistent with gentlemanliness. She had often

heard that her mother would have inherited a plantation
if her grandfather had been able to let cards
alone. Gambling was the vice of gentlemen, a generous
and impulsive weakness. Then, too, she laid
the blame on her favorite scape-goat. If it had not
been for Kike's exciting exhortation and the inconsiderate
violence of the Methodist revival, Morton's
misfortune would not have befallen him. Patty forgave
in advance. Love condones all sins except sins
against love.

It was with more than his usual enjoyment of
gossip that the school-master hurried home to the
Captain's that evening to tell the story of Morton's
return, and to boast that he had already soiphered it
out by the single Rule of Thray that Moirton would
come out roight. The Captain, as he ate his waffles
with country molasses, slurred the whole thing, and
wanted to know if he was going to refuse to pay a
debt of honor and keep the mare, when he had fairly
lost her gambling with Burchard. But Patty inly
resolved to show her lover more affection than ever.
She would make him feel that her love would be
constant when the friendship of others failed. She
liked to flatter herself, as other young women have to
their cost, that her love would reform her lover.

Patty knew he would come. She went about her
work next morning, humming some trifling air, that
she might seem nonchalant. But after awhile she
happened to think that her humming was an indication
of pre-occupation. So she ceased to hum. Then
she remembered that people would certainly interpret

silence as indicative of meditation; she immediately
fell a-talking with might and main, until one of the
younger girls asked: “What does make Patty talk so
much?” Upon which, Patty ceased to talk and went
to work harder than ever; but, being afraid that the
eagerness with which she worked would betray her,
she tried to work more slowly until that was observed.
The very devices by which we seek to hide mental
pre-occupation generally reveal it.

At last Patty was fain to betake herself to the
loom-room, where she could think without having her
thoughts guessed at. Here, too, she would be alone
when Morton should come.

Poor Morton, having told his mother of his religious
change, found it hard indeed to tell Patty. But
he counted certainly that she would censure him for
gambling, which would make it so much easier for
him to explain to her that the only way for him to
escape from vice was to join the Methodists, and thus
give up all to a better life. He shaped some sentences
founded upon this supposition. But after all
his effort at courage, and all his praying for grace to
help him to “confess Christ before men,” he found
the cross exceedingly hard to bear; and when he set
his foot upon the threshold of the loom-room, his
heart was in his mouth and his face was suffused with
guilty blushes. Ah, weak nature! He was not blushing
for his sins, but for his repentance!

Patty, seeing his confusion, determined to make
him feel how full of forgiveness love was. She saw
nobleness in his very shame, and she generously

resolved that she would not ask, that she would not
allow, a confession. She extended her hand cordially
and beamed upon him, and told him how glad she
was that he had come back, and—and—well—; she
couldn't find anything else to say, but she urged him
to sit down and handed him a splint-bottom chair,
and tried for the life of her to think of something to
say—the silence was so embarrassing. But talking for
talk's sake is always hard. One talks as one breathes
—best when volition has nothing to do with it.

The silence was embarrassing to Morton, but not
half so much so as Patty's talk. For he had not
expected this sort of an opening. If she had accused
him of gambling, if she had spurned him, the road
would have been plain. But now that she loved him
and forgave him of her own sweet generosity, how
should he smite her pride in the face by telling her
that he had joined himself to the illiterate, vulgar
fanatical sect of ranting Methodists, whom she utterly
despised? Truly the Enemy had set an unexpected
snare for his unwary feet. He had resolved to confess
his religious devotion with heroic courage, but he
had not expected to be disarmed in this fashion. He
talked about everything else, he temporized, he allowed
her to turn the conversation as she would, hoping
vainly that she would allude to his gambling. But
she did not. Could it be that she had not heard of
it? Must he then reveal that to her also?

While he was debating the question in his mind,
Patty, imagining that he was reproaching himself for
the sin and folly of gambling, began to talk of what

had happened in the neighborhood—how Jake Sniger
“fell with the power” on Sunday and got drunk on
Tuesday: “that's all this Methodist fuss amounts to,
you know,” she said. Morton thought it ungracious to
blurt out at this moment that he was a Methodist:
there would be an air of contradiction in the avowal;
so he sat still while Patty turned all the sobbing and
sighing, and shouting and loud praying of the meetings
into ridicule. And Morton became conscious
that it was getting every minute more and more difficult
for him to confess his conversion. He thought it
better to return to his gambling for a starting point.

“Did you hear what a bad boy I've been, Patty?”

“Oh! yes. I'm sorry you got into such a bad
scrape; but don't say any more about it, Morton.
You're too good for me with all your faults, and you
won't do it any more.”

“But I want to tell you all about it, and what
happened while I was gone. I'm afraid you'll think
too hard of me—”

“But I don't think hard of you at all, and I don't
want to hear about it because it is n't pleasant. It'll
all come out right at last: I'd a great deal rather
have you a little wild at first than a hard Methodist,
like Kike, for instance.”

“But—”

“I tell you, Morton, I won't hear a word. Not
one word. I want you to feel that whatever anybody
else may say, I know you're all right.”

You think Morton very weak. But, do you know
how exceedingly sweet is confidence from one you

love, when there is only censure, and suspicion, and
dark predictions of evil from everybody else? Poor
Morton could not refuse to bask in the sunshine for
a moment after so much of storm. It is not the north
wind, but the southern breezes that are fatal to the
ice-berg's voyage into sunny climes.

At last he rose to go. He felt himself a Peter.
He had denied the Master!

“Patty,” he said, with resolution, “I have not
been honest with you. I meant to tell you something
when I first came, and I didn't. It is hard to have
to give up your love. But I'm afraid you won't care
for me when I tell you—”

The severity of Morton's penitence only touched
Patty the more deeply.

“Morton,” she said, interrupting, “if you've done
anything naughty, I forgive you without knowing it.
But I don't want to hear any more about it, I tell
you.” And with that the blushing Patty held her
cheek up for her betrothed to kiss, and when Morton,
trembling with conflicting emotions, had kissed her for
the first time, she slipped away quickly to prevent his
making any painful confessions.

For a moment Morton stood charmed with her
goodness. When he believed himself to have conquered,
he found himself vanquished.

In a dazed sort of way he walked the greater part
of the distance home. He might write to her about
it. He might let her hear it from others. But he
rejected both as unworthy of a man. The memory of
the kiss thrilled him, and he was tempted to throw

away his Methodism and rejoice in the love of Patty,
now so assured. But suddenly he seemed to himself
to be another Judas. He had not denied the Lord—
he had betrayed him; and with a kiss!

Horrified by this thought, Morton hastened back
toward Captain Lumsden's. He entered the loom-room,
but it was vacant. He went into the living-room,
and there he saw not Patty alone, but the whole
family. Captain Lumsden had at that moment entered
by the opposite door. Patty was carding wool with
hand-cards, and she looked up, startled at this reappearance
of her lover when she thought him happily
dismissed.

“Patty,” said Morton, determined not to fall into
any devil's snare by delay, and to atone for his great
sin by making his profession as public as possible,
“Patty, what I wanted to say was, that I have determined
to be a Christian, and I have joined—the—
Methodist—Church.”

Morton's sense of inner conflict gave this utterance
an unfortunate sound of defiance, and it aroused all
Patty's combativeness. It was in fact a death wound
to her pride. She had feared sometimes that Morton
would be drawn into Methodism, but that he should
join the despised sect without so much as consulting
her was more than she could bear. This, then, was the
way in which her forbearance and forgiveness were
rewarded! There stood her father, sneering like a
Mephistopheles. She would resent the indignity, and
at the same time show her power over her lover.

“Morton, if you are a Methodist, I never want to

[ILLUSTRATION]

THE CHOICE.

[Description: 554EAF. Page 181. In-line engraving of a woman seated, carding wool; a man stands behind her in the doorway holding his cap, and three other figures look on in the background. ] see you again.” she said, with lofty pride, and a
solemn awfulness of passion more terrible than an
oath.

“Don't say that, Patty!” stammered Morton,
stretching his hands out in eager, despairing entreaty.
But this only gave Patty the greater assurance that a
little decision on her part would make him give up
his Methodism.

“I do say it, Morton, and I will never take
it back.” There was a sternness in the white face

and a fire in the black eyes that left Morton no
hope.

But he straightened himself up now to his full six
feet, and said, with manly stubbornness: “Then, Patty,
since you make me choose, I shall not give up the
Lord, even for you. But,” he added, with a broken
voice, as he turned away, “may God help me to
bear it.”

Ah, Matilda Maria! if Morton were a knight in
armor giving up his ladye love for the sake of monastic
religiousness, how admirable he would be! But
even in his homespun he is a man making the greatest
of sacrifices. It is not the garb or the age that
makes sublime a soul's offering of heart and hope to
duty. When Morton was gone Lumsden chuckled
not a little, and undertook to praise Patty for her
courage; but I have understood that she resented his
compliments, and poured upon him some severe denunciation,
in which the Captain heard more truth
than even Kike had ventured to utter. Such are
the inconsistencies of a woman when her heart is
wounded.

It seems a trifle to tell just here, when Morton
and Patty are in trouble—but you will want to know
about Brady. He was at Colonel Wheeler's that
evening, eagerly telling of Morton's escape from lynching,
when Mrs. Wheeler expressed her gratification that
Morton had ceased to gamble and become a Methodist.

“Mithodist? He's no Mithodist.”

“Yes, he is,” responded Mrs. Wheeler, “his mother

told me so; and what's more, she said she was glad
of it.” Then, seeing Brady's discomfiture, she added:
“You didn't get all the news that time, Mr. Brady.”

“Well, me dair madam, when I'm admithed to a
family intervoo, it's not proper fer me to tell all I
heerd. I didn't know the fact was made public yit,
and so I had to denoy it. It's the honor of a Oirish
gintleman, ye know.”

What a journalist he would have made!