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."