MRS. SANFORD SPEAKS.
"There's nobody else," said Will Sanford; "and if Tom Putnam won't take
the part, the 'Faithful Jewess' may go to the 'demnition bowwows' but
her sorrows will never afflict a Montfield audience."
"Nobody would be more heartily rejoiced, I'm sure, than I should," his
sister answered, "if she would take a journey in that direction: only
there isn't time to learn another play. So you'll have to ask him."
"Why don't you ask him yourself?" Will said. "It's your place."
"I'll never ask him to do any thing. He's too stubborn to live, and he
treats me abominably."
"Then, you should heap coals of fire on his head by inviting him to
take this part, that nobody but Sol Shankland would have anyway."
"When I heap coals of fire," she returned vigorously, "I want them to
burn: I want at least to be able to smell the scorched hair."
"I think you will have that satisfaction," her brother replied, "if
you'll walk into his office this afternoon, and tell him there is no
one in the three towns can act as well as he can, and ask will he
please be that drivelling idiot of a patriarch."
"I'll do nothing of the kind. Besides, I'm going to ride with Clarence
Toxteth this afternoon."
"He's always dangling round you nowadays, it seems to me."
"Well, I can't help that, can I?"
"You could if you wanted to. If you married anybody for his money,
Patty, I'd never speak to you again."
"Pooh! You'd speak to me if I married a boa-constrictor."
"No. I'd send you a card on which you'd find nothing but the awful
words,--
'BOA-CONSTRICTORESS, FAREWELL!'"
"Nonsense! You'd come over to be constricted, and the long and lovely
bridegroom could make his supper of you. You know you adore me, Will,
and so you'll see Tom Putnam. Tell him Sol is sick, or lame, or dead,
or whatever it is, and we can't do without him."
"I'm always put upon," her brother said with mock despair: "in fact,
I'm but a lovely, timorous flower that has been snubbed in the bud. I
suppose I'll have to do it."
"That's a duck. You're an awful nice brother! But then who wouldn't be
with such a surpassingly lovely sister!"
Half an hour later, Will encountered the lawyer in the street.
"I was going to see you," he said. "You presented yourself in the nick
of time."
"People who present themselves in the nick of time," Putnam answered
good-humoredly, "generally find themselves in a tight place. What did
you want of me?"
"I wanted to tell you that you are to take the part of the patriarch in
the sensational, melodramatic madness entitled 'The Faithful Jewess,'
to be performed for the benefit of the church on the 23d of this
blessed month of October."
"You are sure that you are not misinformed?"
"Quite sure."
"But I have already declined to take part in those theatricals."
"My informant was very positive," Will said.
"May I ask the name of your informant?"
"Patty Sanford."
"Did she say I was to act?"
"Certainly," Will answered, distorting the truth with perfect
recklessness.
"Um! The part must have been given to some one before this."
"Yes. When you refused, there was nobody left to take it but Sol
Shankland."
"What has become of him?" asked the lawyer.
"General inanity, I suspect, though he says, 'neümonyer,' as he calls
it."
"In that case," Putnam said, laughing, "he might furnish the funds."
"But you'll come to rehearsal to-morrow night?" Sanford asked,
fumbling in his pocket for a play-book. "It's at our house at half-past
seven."
"If your sister has issued her commands, I suppose I've nothing to do
but to obey."
The fact was, that the lawyer repented his former refusal, since it
shut him out of the rehearsals at which Patty necessarily spent most of
her evenings; and he was glad circumstances had put it into his power
to retrieve his error. He found himself daily longing more and more to
be near her, and yet shut more completely from her presence. He walked
on towards his office with a brisker step, and neglected his business
to commit the senseless lines of the part assigned to him.
About the time that Will was so unscrupulously using his sister's
name to insnare the lawyer, that young lady was having a somewhat
spicy interview with her mother. From the day when young Toxteth
had confided to Mrs. Sanford his intentions in regard to Patty, the
shallow woman had gone about with the secret locked in her bosom like
a vase of perfume, whose subtile odors pervaded every corner of her
brain-chambers. Her head unconsciously took a new elevation, and her
step a fresh dignity. The Sanfords were independent and comfortable.
Dr. Sanford's practice was good, and rather more lucrative than is
usual in country-towns. With Will's education, however, and Patty's
books and music-teachers to provide for, the surplus at the end of the
year was small; and Mrs. Sanford never ceased to sigh for the time
when, the son being established in his profession, and the daughter
married, her husband could begin to accumulate property.
"Daughter Britann," grandmother would say, "thy mind is overmuch set on
this world's goods. The Sanfords are never rich, unless thee shouldst
reckon the wealth of brains; and thou hast already sufficient for all
thy needs."
"So have you, mother," Mrs. Sanford one day retorted; "but I notice you
are just as anxious about your pension, for all that."
"That I shall bestow in charity," the old lady answered. "I hope I am
not unduly anxious. If my son Charles had not wished it, I should never
have troubled the matter."
"Nonsense!" Mrs. Sanford said. "It would have been a sin to neglect
such an opportunity. I am glad that for once Charles had sense enough
to do the right thing about a money matter. He's usually so dreadfully
squeamish!"
To a mind like Mrs. Sanford, the getting of money was the only end
worth pursuing in this world. Her fancy dwelt upon the position
Patience might occupy as the wife of a wealthy Toxteth, and upon her
own importance as the mother-in-law of the best catch in Montfield.
Knowing how much Patty might be influenced by her father, in case she
proved blind to her own good in this important matter, Mrs. Sanford one
night ventured to broach the subject to him.
"It is time Patty was getting settled," she began.
"Humph!" the doctor returned, "I do not see the need of any haste."
"But there is need. If she lets her chances slip by now, she'll live to
repent of it. Girls who are over particular always have to put up with
a crooked stick at last."
"What are you driving at?"
"Why," Mrs. Sanford said rather hesitatingly, "she might have Clarence
Toxteth, if she only chose."
"How do you know?"
"I do know, and that's enough," his wife answered importantly. "He's
half dead for her."
"He'll be whole dead before he gets her, unless she's a bigger fool
than I ever thought her."
"Now, Charles, that's the way you always talk. What have you got
against Clarence?"
"He hasn't any brains, for one thing."
"He must have," Mrs. Sanford returned, as if her logic admitted of no
controversy. "Just see what a smart father he's got! What a sight of
money Orrin Toxteth has made!"
"Nonsense! His brains stand in the same relation to his father's as
froth does to beer. Good-night. I want to go to sleep."
"You always were prejudiced against Clarence Toxteth," the wife said.
But Dr. Sanford allowed this to be the last word by answering nothing.
Mrs. Sanford felt that irritation which one feels who cannot understand
how any point of view but one's own is possible. Not to be foiled, she
abandoned the attempt to convince her husband, only to concentrate her
energies upon her daughter. Very naturally she attempted to dazzle her
eyes with the wealth which so bewitched her own fancy. Knowing by
experience the difficulty of dealing abruptly with Patty, she began by
throwing out hints which seemed to her the acme of strategical tactics,
but which were in reality so transparent, that Flossy and Patty made
merry over them without stint. Of course, this came to nothing; and
Mrs. Sanford would have been the most obtuse of mortals, had she failed
to perceive that she produced no impression in the suitor's favor. But
the doughty woman had obstinacy, if not firmness; and, the more her
plans did not succeed, the more firmly she clung to them. She prepared
for the attack; and her daughter, foreseeing what was to come, steeled
herself for the combat.
Patty suffered more from the weakness and prejudices of her mother than
any one but Dr. Sanford himself. Will, both from his sex and from being
much away from home, treated her oddities rather as witticisms. In his
sister an inborn reverence for family, and a devotion to the name and
relation of a mother, fought with her perception of the ludicrous,
and an instinctive repugnance to narrowness and mental inferiority.
Shut her eyes as she might, she could not be blind to her mother's
faults; and Mrs. Sanford's affection, which should have compensated,
had always appeared rather an accident of custom, and but skin-deep.
The silly blunders which the doctor's wife constantly made, her absurd
superstitions, continually jarred upon her daughter. Patty reproached
herself sharply, her conscience flagellating her with vigorous arm
for discerning these shortcomings of her mother; but no amount of
self-reproach can dull the mental vision. She attempted to see only
her mother's kindly deeds; but Patty was neither the first nor the
last to discover that reverence and love are not to be constrained by
an illogical balance-sheet; and that the taking account of stock in
affection generally indicates a tendency to bankruptcy.
Mrs. Sanford had remained in suspense as long as she was able to endure
it; and, upon the morning referred to earlier in this chapter, she at
last spoke definitely. She was a little in awe of her daughter, having
more than once been confused and worsted by that young lady's quickness
of thought and expression; and the "Sanford will," she knew of old, had
a strength against which it was useless to contend, if it were once
determinedly fixed.
"Patty," she said, as they chanced to be alone together, "didn't I
hear you tell Willie you were going to ride with Clarence Toxteth this
afternoon?"
"Yes, mother. We are going to Samoset to look at those costumes."
"I am glad of it. You haven't treated him very well lately."
"You are losing a hairpin, mother."
"Dear me! Your father's thinking of me, I suppose."
"It ought to please you to have your husband think of you."
"He needn't think all the hairpins out of my head, though," responded
Mrs. Sanford. "I'm always losing them."
"Where does the sewing-circle meet next week?" Patty asked, endeavoring
to lead the conversation as far as possible from its original theme.
"At Mrs. Brown's; though I doubt she won't be ready for it until a week
after it's all over. I declare, I thank the Lord I ain't so shiftless!"
"Well you may," Patty said lightly, feeling safe now.
"He'll be the richest man in Montfield," said Mrs. Sanford, returning
to the charge with an abruptness which found the other off her guard.
"Well, what of that?" her daughter asked absently.
"What of that!" the mother cried impatiently. "A good deal of that. But
I suppose you'd refuse him, if he offered himself to-day."
"Of course, mother. You know I'm never going to marry."
"Don't talk like a fool, Patience. If you know when you're well off,
you'll be careful how you snub Clarence Toxteth."
"I treat him as I do everybody else."
"But you mustn't. You must treat him different. Oh, dear!" Mrs. Sanford
continued, quivering with excitement and indignation. "The trouble
that girls are from the day they are born! Always contrary, and never
knowing what they want, nor what's best for them. Why girls can't be
born boys is more than I know!"
"There, mother, that is Irish enough for old Paddy Shaunessey."
"Always flying in the face of luck too," her mother went on, not
heeding the interruption, "and always taking up with some crooked
stick at last. The way you run after that old Tom Putnam is shameful!"
It perhaps made little difference what Mrs. Sanford said in an
argument of this kind, except that a reference to Mr. Putnam was the
most infelicitous thing it were possible for her to utter. Patty had
self-control enough not to speak the angry words which were on her
tongue; but she hastened from the room, leaving her mother to reflect
as she chose upon the results of the interview.