CHAPTER XXXVIII
A TEST OF CIVILIZATION
"Now we shall see," Mr. Plant remarked to his niece as he led her down to dinner, "what stuff Mr. Blood is made of. There is no more crucial test of a man's civilization than the way in which he dines."
"Poor Burleigh!" Patty said to herself. "Little do you dream of the ordeal before you."
But Burleigh had received sundry very minute instructions from a city cousin who had taken it upon herself to prepare him a little for this important visit; and, although he eyed his turtle-soup doubtfully, he got through the first courses well enough. His diffidence was not wholly to his disadvantage, since he was so thoroughly in awe of his host as to treat him with a respect which Mr. Plant found very flattering. All went smoothly until what Flossy called the crisis of the dinner came.
Dining was with Mr. Plant the chief business of life. Other employments were in his eyes simply artifices to kill the time which nature demanded for getting up a proper appetite. He came to this solemn culmination of the day with a mind prepared to hold in reserve his judgment of the success or failure of twenty-four hours of life until he had dined.
"Father begins dinner," Flossy once said, "in good nature, because he thinks what a fine time he is going to have. By the time he is half way through, he has found enough things wrong to make him ready to be cross. Then he makes a curry, or a salad; and, if that succeeds, he comes out as happy and as gentle as a kitten."
To-day it was unluckily a curry upon which the epicure expended his energies; and having compounded a dish which might have warmed the soul and the liver of an old East-Indian, Mr. Plant sent a portion to his guest with the complacent comment that Mr. Blood would certainly find it the most delicious curry he had ever tasted.
Burleigh was just then talking to Patty.
"I forgot to tell you," he said, "that Tom Putnam came on the train with me."
"Tom Putnam!" exclaimed Patty.
"What is he in Boston for?" inquired Flossy.
"He is looking after that Smithers girl that ran off," Burleigh answered, absently conveying a generous portion of Mr. Plant's fiery preparation to his mouth. "Joe Brown's cousin, you know" —
He left his sentence unfinished, and caught wildly at a glass of water. The curry had suddenly asserted itself; and the general impression of the unsophisticated Burleigh was that he had taken a mouthful of live coals. He gasped and strangled, growing very red in the face, setting his lips together with a firm determination to swallow the scorching viand, or perish in the attempt.
"Isn't it delicious?" demanded the unconscious host, smacking his lips in unfeigned admiration. "What the devil!" he added, looking up, and catching a glimpse of the agonized face of his guest.
"Papa!" exclaimed Flossy.
"If Burleigh liked curry," Patty said, coming quickly to the rescue, "he would forfeit my good opinion forever. I think it is the most diabolical compound that it has ever entered into the heart of man to invent."
"Besides," her cousin put in, "I won't have you spoiling Mr. Blood's digestion with any of your monstrous mixtures. Think to what a condition you've reduced your own suffering family!"
"Very well," Mr. Plant said, with the air of one who has cast his pearls before swine. "Just as you like."
"But about this Smithers girl," Patty said indifferently. "What does he want of her?"
"He came to get her home again, if he can find her. Somebody saw her on the street in Boston. But her mother says she won't take her back."
"What does Mr. Putnam care about her?" queried Flossy.
"I'm sure I don't know," Burleigh answered.
"Some old flame," volunteered Mr. Plant a little spitefully. "I always thought Putnam couldn't be so quiet for nothing. He's a sly old boy. So he's after a runaway young woman, is he?"
A sudden and entire silence fell upon the party at this unlucky outburst; but Patty quickly broke it.
"I forgot to ask, Burleigh, when you are going home."
"I must go on the first train to-morrow," he answered. "I have to be at home to-morrow night."
"How nice!" Patty said. "I am going then. I am glad to have company."
"Patty Sanford!" cried her cousin. "You won't go a step before Monday."
But remonstrances were vain. Nothing could shake Patty's sudden determination to get away from Boston, now that her lover had come thither. Her conversation with Mrs. Smithers was indelibly imprinted upon her memory; and this new proof of his intimate relations with the woman or her daughter came to Patience like a stab in an old wound. She made a strong effort to hide her bitter sadness, but an irresistible impulse drove her homeward.
They were all together in the parlor when Mr. Putnam's card was handed to Patty.
"I will not see him!" she said excitedly, starting up from her chair.
"See whom?" asked Floss; while Burleigh's face betrayed his astonishment at this sudden outburst.
"Show him up here," Patty said to the servant, recovering her self-command. In another moment she was bowing to Tom Putnam, and giving him her fingers with an indifference which would not have discredited a society belle.
"We were speaking of your being in the city at dinner," she said presently; "but we thought your business so important we should hardly have the pleasure of seeing you."
"Important is merely a relative term," he answered. "I could not deny myself the pleasure of calling. I see Mr. Plant at Montfield so seldom, that I am glad of any excuse to get sight of him."
"You surely need no excuse for calling," that gentleman said graciously. "I am always glad to see you."
"But Mr. Putnam must have come to the city to see friends who are so much more interesting," Patty remarked, with her most dazzling smile, "that we are indeed flattered at his remembrance."
The girl scarcely knew herself, so strange and unnatural was the part she was playing. A spell seemed to constrain her to go on wounding her lover, even though the blow rebounded upon herself. Inwardly she was saying to herself, "How dare he come from pursuing that woman, and call on me?"
She nerved herself to the task; and, under a show of the utmost cordiality, she lashed Tom Putnam with all the scorn and sarcasm of which she was mistress. He received with dignity her attacks, or parried them adroitly; but he did not make his call a long one.
"God forgive us!" Mr. Plant said as soon as the lawyer had taken leave. "What had that poor devil done, Patty, that you baited him so? And he took it like a hero. If he didn't deserve it, you ought to be bastinadoed; and, if he did, he's brazen-faced enough. Anyway he's plucky. You treated him like a dog."
The company were decidedly out of spirits. Flossy was angry with her cousin's treatment of Putnam, and Burleigh was confused and uncomfortable by the state of the mental atmosphere. As for Mr. Plant, he was annoyed at his niece, at Mr. Blood, at the disturbances which hindered the usual slow and placid digestion of his dinner. He had resolutely avoided giving Burleigh an opportunity of seeing him alone; and now the poor suitor, lacking courage to ask for an interview, found himself obliged to speak out, or leave his errand undone.
"Mr. Plant," he blurted out after a period of perfect silence, in which he had been screwing his courage to the sticking-point, "I want to marry your daughter."
His host started as if a bomb had dropped at his feet.
"I like your impudence," he said.
"Sir?" stammered poor Burleigh, starting to his feet.
"Who are you?" Mr. Plant continued, his impatience finding vent at last, and pouring upon the head of the bewildered suitor. "Does Flossy look as if she'd make a good farmer's wife? Can you give her any thing to compensate for what she must sacrifice in marrying so far outside her circle? I repeat, I like your impudence!"
"I know she would be sacrificing," began Burleigh; but the irate father, whose annoyance had been increasing all day, interrupted.
"Sacrificing!" he said, "of course she is sacrificing. God save us! You'd be an idiot if you didn't know she was sacrificing a thousand times more than you can even understand. What right had you" —
"Papa," Flossy said, very pale, stepping up to her lover, and clasping her hands about his brawny arm, – "you forget, papa, that this is the man I am going to marry."
"Mr. Plant," Burleigh said, lifting his head proudly, and drawing his tiny betrothed close to him, "I never pretended to be worthy of your daughter, and never hoped to be; but she could not find one who would love her better, or be more honest in trying to make her life happy."
"Uncle Chris," whispered Patty, taking his arm, "come into the library."
"God save us!" he ejaculated, looking at her. "What are you crying for? – There, Mr. Blood, shake hands. Good-night, both of you. – Come, Patty."
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE NIGHT-WATCH
"I think, Patty," her mother said as the last word of a long and vain argument, "that you'll end by bringing my gray hairs to a grave in a lunatic-asylum. You are crazy to think of sitting up with Peter to-night. You are tired out with your ride from Boston anyway."
"But Bathalina has a sick-headache, mother, and I'm only to stay until eleven. Good-night. I'd rather go."
It was the night following Thanksgiving, and Patty had carried out her intention of coming home in the morning. As she walked over to Mrs. Brown's, she seemed to herself to be free from all bodily fatigue, so strongly did her inner excitement buoy her up. She resolutely endeavored to put away all thought of Tom Putnam and the Smithers women; but the consciousness of painful suspicion flowed as a bitter undercurrent through all her musings.
The sick man was unusually tractable that night.
"I'm afeared, Miss Patience," his wife said tearfully, "I'm afeared he's goin' for it. He hasn't swored at me but twice to-day, and one of them his gruel was too hot."
"It was only your soothing influence," Patty answered dispiritedly. "You can go home, and go to bed. I'll watch with him until Sol comes at eleven."
Left alone, the watcher seated herself in the shadow, and plunged anew into distracting and painful reveries; but she quickly was called from them by the sick man.
"I'd like to ask yer to do somethin'," he said feebly.
"What is it?" she asked, going to the bedside.
"Frank Breck's been here," he answered, "tryin' to get my pocket-book; and the women-folks are awful curious too."
One of his first requests on recovering consciousness had been for this pocket-book, which since he had guarded beneath his pillow.
"There's papers in it," Peter went on, "they hadn't ought to see. I want you to keep it for me."
"You seem to keep it very well yourself," she said rather absently.
"Oh! but it's wearin' on me," he returned. "If it isn't took care of for me, I shall kick the bucket sure."
"Why should I take it?"
"I reckon," he said, "that you're one could hold your tongue, or anyways would stick to your word, specially to a man with his ribs all drove into him. I want you to keep it till I get well, and promise not to open it."
"Very well," she replied. "If it will make you feel easier, I promise."
The sick man drew from beneath the pillow a black and oily-looking pocket-book, long and flat, and apparently empty. It was so dirty, that Patty seized the first piece of paper at hand, and wrapped it up, thinking to herself that the valuable papers probably existed only in the imagination of the invalid.
"You are very mysterious and dramatic, my friend," she said to herself. "Is this perhaps a chapter from 'The Blood-boultered Battering-Ram;' or every-day life in Montfield?"
The incident turned her thoughts somewhat from herself, and her weariness asserted itself. Seeing that the patient had sunk into a quiet sleep, Patty lay back in her chair, and let herself drift away into a soft drowse.
It was about half-past ten when she found herself suddenly wide awake from a profound sleep. A presence in the room made itself felt before she opened her eyes, and she cautiously peered between her scarcely parted lids without moving. The light was as she had left it, turned down and dim. The heavy breathings of the sick man told that he was still sleeping. Above his bed bent the figure of a woman. Her back was towards the watcher; and, as Patty opened her eyes, she recognized the stooping form as that of Flora Sturtevant. With a cautious, cat-like movement, the woman slid her hand beneath Mixon's pillow, searching for something which Frank Breck had assured her was to be found there. As Patty watched, her mind gathered up with marvellous quickness the allusions made by the sick man to Breck; and, knowing the long intimacy between the latter and Miss Sturtevant, it was not difficult to guess her errand.
"Do you find what you want?" Patty at length asked coolly.
The other started away from the bed, and turned quickly.
"Patty Sanford!" she exclaimed. "They said his wife was here."
"She is not, you see."
"My room is next this," Flora continued, regaining her self-command, "and, hearing your heavy breathing, I thought the patient might need attention: so I came in."
"Oh!" the watcher said incredulously. "That was very kind of you. I think Sol Shankland is coming now, and he can keep awake: so you need not trouble any further."
It was about four in the afternoon of the next day, when Bathalina returned from a visit to Mrs. Brown's. Mrs. Sanford heard her come in, and sent her daughter to inquire for the sick man.
Patty waited to finish something she was doing; so that, by the time she reached the kitchen, Mrs. Mixon had been to her chamber, and brought down a black dress, which she was engaged in ripping up, to the accompaniment of a doleful minor.
"What are you doing?" Patty asked.
"I'm breaking down my black alpaccy," was the reply. "I'm goin' to have it made over, and trimmed with crape."
"Trimmed with crape? What for?"
"Oh! I'm a widow now."
"A widow!"
"Yes, Peter's gone. I knew he couldn't last much longer. He's been failin', gradual, for a week. You must ha' noticed it."
"But I didn't think," Patty began, wondering how to phrase the condolences it seemed proper to offer under the circumstances.
"No, nor I didn't, neither," the widow remarked, as she hesitated. "I thought he'd hold out longer, or I'd have been more forehanded with my black dress. Anyway I'm glad he got through it before cold weather sot in. It's easier for him. And, besides, Mrs. Brown's house is awful draughty, spec'ly as she never gets ready to have it banked before spring."
"If we can do any thing for you," Patty said, exerting herself to preserve a grave face, "we shall be glad to."
"Thank you kindly," the servant answered. "I'll let you know if there is. I never had much comfort as Peter's wife," she added; "for he was real onery, as you might say: but it's some satisfaction to be his widow; widows are so respectable."
This was too much for Patty's gravity; and she retreated precipitately, leaving the widow to "break down" her black dress at leisure.
Peter Mixon was interred with due solemnity, aunty Jeff coming to take her part in the mourning, with much unction. She had never favored her niece's marriage, it was true, and regarded the deceased as a very black sheep indeed. But to her mind numerous funerals conferred a certain distinction upon a family, and it was a duty which she owed at once to her relatives and to society to see that the mourning was properly attended to. So the dead man was put under the sod, and in time came to the one good appointed to all men, – to nourish the grass and the daisies. Bathalina arrayed herself in her widow's weeds with the satisfaction of a new importance, and began soon to speak of her departed spouse with great regret and affection, persuading herself in time that she sincerely mourned for him, and lamenting that her "sinful pride" had made necessary for her good the severe trial of his loss.
And here it may be mentioned that Frank Breck searched carefully among the effects of the dead man for certain papers which he did not find, because they were in the possession of Patty Sanford.
CHAPTER XL
CLARENCE AGAIN
Soberly and slowly Patty was walking towards home on the last day of November. The rain had been falling at intervals through the day, interspersed with spits of snow. Not far from her own gate Patty encountered Clarence Toxteth. The afternoon was already drawing to a close, the gray clouds cutting off the last faint rays of daylight; and, as the young man was somewhat near-sighted, he did not recognize her until they were face to face.
"Ah!" he said. "I am delighted to meet you. I have been to see you."
"Will you turn back now?" she responded.
"I've wanted to see you," said he, turning, "ever since the masquerade; but you were always with that sick tramp."
"I am emulating Florence Nightingale," she returned lightly. "You'll doubtless hear of me some day as a famous sister of charity, or cousin of mercy, or aunt of benevolence, or something of the sort."
"Really? You don't mean it?"
"Who can tell what one does mean?" she queried wilfully. "Will you come and see me take the veil? A nun's life must be dreadfully tame and insipid, but the dress is becoming."
"What do you mean?" her companion asked, puzzled. "You can't be in earnest."
"In earnest? I fancy people are as seldom in earnest as they are in love; but it is easy enough to persuade one's self of being either."
Clarence looked at her with so confused an air, that she burst out into a laugh. Her mood had changed into a mocking, insincere phase; and she experienced a wicked delight in baffling and bewildering her suitor.
"It is a round world," she went on, giving her extravagance more and more the rein, "and round things are apt to be slippery. It is rather trite to call life a masquerade; but it is one, all the same. You fancy you see my face. You are mistaken, it is only a mask: in fact, I dare say you never see your own. Not that it matters in the least, for you're better off for having flattering glasses. I shall hate to wash the convent-floors, for they'll be stone, and awfully cold; but I suppose I shall have to."
"Yes," Clarence stammered. He had not the faintest notion what she was talking about; but the word "masquerade" seemed to furnish a clew. "Why didn't you come to the masquerade?" he asked. "You and Flossy and Burleigh were all missing when we unmasked. You lost your gloves."
"I was there, and you did not know me: so I won."
"But what became of you?"
"I went out to get a breath of air, and that Peter Mixon got thrown out of his carriage at my very feet. Of course I didn't feel like going back after that."
"There are some things very mysterious about that night," Toxteth said. "I'm sure I don't know half that went on in my own house."
"Who ever did?" she retorted. "I'm sure you are better off. Will you come in?"
They had reached the piazza by this time, and Patty laid her hand upon the door-handle.
"I think not," he answered. "They will wait tea for me at home. But I want to ask you something."
"It is dangerous to ask things in this world," she said, "there is always so much uncertainty what the answer will be."
"But I am in uncertainty now."
"That can't be pleasant," replied she; "but the frying-pan is better than the fire. It cannot be any thing that concerns yourself, however, or you couldn't hesitate about it."
"It does concern me, and I want it answered."
"Really?" she said, angry that she could not evade him. "When the sultan throws the handkerchief, I supposed he never had a doubt of its reception."
"Throws the handkerchief? I don't understand."
"It is a Turkish custom, which has been copied the world over by those favored individuals whom fate or fortune has made irresistible; only the handkerchief must be gold-edged."
"If you are going to talk nonsense," the young man said, offended, "I may as well go."
"Nonsense!" Patty retorted, giving her umbrella a flirt. "Do you call it nonsense? It is the most serious thing I know. However, it is no matter. I am hindering you. Good-night."
"Wait," he said. "You promised me an answer long ago, and you've never given it to me."
"An answer? An answer to what?"
"You know what," he said doggedly. "To the question I asked you the day we went to Samoset."
"I haven't had time to think," she answered weakly. "First there was the exhibition, and then the masquerade, and then Peter Mixon's sickness."
"If you require so much time to think," returned he bitterly, "that is answer enough."
"Very well. We'll consider the matter settled."
"No, no!" he exclaimed. "Take your own time. I'll wait. But you ought to answer me."
"That is true," assented Patty gloomily. "Give me a week, only a week, and I will."
"In a week then," he said, "I shall come for my answer. Don't make it 'no,' Patty."