Colonel Sprowle's family arose late the next morning. The fatigues and
excitements of the evening and the preparation for it were followed by
a natural collapse, of which somnolence was a leading symptom. The sun
shone into the window at a pretty well opened angle when the Colonel
first found himself sufficiently awake to address his yet slumbering
spouse.
“Sally!” said the Colonel, in a voice that was a little husky,--for he
had finished off the evening with an extra glass or two of “Madary,”
and had a somewhat rusty and headachy sense of renewed existence, on
greeting the rather advanced dawn,--“Sally!”
“Take care o' them custard-cups! There they go!”
Poor Mrs. Sprowle was fighting the party over in her dream; and as the
visionary custard-cups crashed down through one lobe of her brain into
another, she gave a start as if an inch of lightning from a quart Leyden
jar had jumped into one of her knuckles with its sudden and lively
poonk!
“Sally!” said the Colonel,--“wake up, wake up. What 'r' y' dreamin'
abaout?”
Mrs. Sprowle raised herself, by a sort of spasm, sur son seant, as they
say in France,--up on end, as we have it in New England. She looked
first to the left, then to the right, then straight before her,
apparently without seeing anything, and at last slowly settled down,
with her two eyes, blank of any particular meaning, directed upon the
Colonel.
“What time is 't?” she said.
“Ten o'clock. What y' been dreamin' abaout? Y' giv a jump like a
hopper-grass. Wake up, wake UP! Th' party 's over, and y' been asleep
all the mornin'. The party's over, I tell ye! Wake up!”
“Over!” said Mrs. Sprowle, who began to define her position at
last,--“over! I should think 't was time 't was over! It's lasted a
hundud year. I've been workin' for that party longer 'n Methuselah's
lifetime, sence I been asleep. The pies would n' bake, and the blo'monje
would n' set, and the ice-cream would n' freeze, and all the folks
kep' comin' 'n' comin' 'n' comin',--everybody I ever knew in all my
life,--some of 'em 's been dead this twenty year 'n' more,--'n' nothin'
for 'em to eat nor drink. The fire would n' burn to cook anything, all
we could do. We blowed with the belluses, 'n' we stuffed in paper 'n'
pitch-pine kindlin's, but nothin' could make that fire burn; 'n' all the
time the folks kep' comin', as if they'd never stop,--'n' nothin' for
'em but empty dishes, 'n' all the borrowed chaney slippin' round on the
waiters 'n' chippin' 'n' crackin',--I would n' go through what I been
through t'-night for all th' money in th' Bank,--I do believe it's
harder t' have a party than t'”--
Mrs. Sprowle stated the case strongly.
The Colonel said he did n't know how that might be. She was a better
judge than he was. It was bother enough, anyhow, and he was glad that
it was over. After this, the worthy pair commenced preparations for
rejoining the waking world, and in due time proceeded downstairs.
Everybody was late that morning, and nothing had got put to rights. The
house looked as if a small army had been quartered in it over night.
The tables were of course in huge disorder, after the protracted assault
they had undergone. There had been a great battle evidently, and it had
gone against the provisions. Some points had been stormed, and all their
defences annihilated, but here and there were centres of resistance
which had held out against all attacks,--large rounds of beef, and
solid loaves of cake, against which the inexperienced had wasted their
energies in the enthusiasm of youth or uninformed maturity, while the
longer-headed guests were making discoveries of “shell-oysters” and
“patridges” and similar delicacies.
The breakfast was naturally of a somewhat fragmentary character. A
chicken that had lost his legs in the service of the preceding campaign
was once more put on duty. A great ham stuck with cloves, as Saint
Sebastian was with arrows, was again offered for martyrdom. It would
have been a pleasant sight for a medical man of a speculative turn to
have seen the prospect before the Colonel's family of the next week's
breakfasts, dinners, and suppers. The trail that one of these
great rural parties leaves after it is one of its most formidable
considerations. Every door-handle in the house is suggestive of
sweetmeats for the next week, at least. The most unnatural articles of
diet displace the frugal but nutritious food of unconvulsed periods
of existence. If there is a walking infant about the house, it
will certainly have a more or less fatal fit from overmuch of some
indigestible delicacy. Before the week is out, everybody will be tired
to death of sugary forms of nourishment and long to see the last of the
remnants of the festival.
The family had not yet arrived at this condition. On the contrary,
the first inspection of the tables suggested the prospect of days of
unstinted luxury; and the younger portion of the household, especially,
were in a state of great excitement as the account of stock was taken
with reference to future internal investments. Some curious facts came
to light during these researches.
“Where's all the oranges gone to?” said Mrs. Sprowle. “I expected
there'd be ever so many of 'em left. I did n't see many of the folks
eatin' oranges. Where's the skins of 'em? There ought to be six dozen
orange-skins round on the plates, and there a'n't one dozen. And all
the small cakes, too, and all the sugar things that was stuck on the
big cakes. Has anybody counted the spoons? Some of 'em got swallered,
perhaps. I hope they was plated ones, if they did!”
The failure of the morning's orange-crop and the deficit in other
expected residual delicacies were not very difficult to account for. In
many of the two-story Rockland families, and in those favored households
of the neighboring villages whose members had been invited to the great
party, there was a very general excitement among the younger people on
the morning after the great event. “Did y' bring home somethin' from the
party? What is it? What is it? Is it frut-cake? Is it nuts and oranges
and apples? Give me some! Give me some!” Such a concert of treble
voices uttering accents like these had not been heard since the great
Temperance Festival with the celebrated “colation” in the open air under
the trees of the Parnassian Grove,--as the place was christened by the
young ladies of the Institute. The cry of the children was not in
vain. From the pockets of demure fathers, from the bags of sharp-eyed
spinsters, from the folded handkerchiefs of light-fingered sisters, from
the tall hats of sly-winking brothers, there was a resurrection of
the missing oranges and cakes and sugar-things in many a rejoicing
family-circle, enough to astonish the most hardened “caterer” that ever
contracted to feed a thousand people under canvas.
The tender recollections of those dear little ones whom extreme youth or
other pressing considerations detain from scenes of festivity--a trait
of affection by no means uncommon among our thoughtful people--dignifies
those social meetings where it is manifested, and sheds a ray of
sunshine on our common nature. It is “an oasis in the desert,”--to
use the striking expression of the last year's “Valedictorian” of the
Apollinean Institute. In the midst of so much that is purely selfish, it
is delightful to meet such disinterested care for others. When a
large family of children are expecting a parent's return from an
entertainment, it will often require great exertions on his part to
freight himself so as to meet their reasonable expectations. A few rules
are worth remembering by all who attend anniversary dinners in Faneuil
Hall or elsewhere. Thus: Lobsters' claws are always acceptable to
children of all ages. Oranges and apples are to be taken one at a time,
until the coat-pockets begin to become inconveniently heavy. Cakes are
injured by sitting upon them; it is, therefore, well to carry a stout
tin box of a size to hold as many pieces as there are children in the
domestic circle. A very pleasant amusement, at the close of one of
these banquets, is grabbing for the flowers with which the table is
embellished. These will please the ladies at home very greatly, and, if
the children are at the same time abundantly supplied with fruits, nuts,
cakes, and any little ornamental articles of confectionery which are of
a nature to be unostentatiously removed, the kind-hearted parent will
make a whole household happy, without any additional expense beyond the
outlay for his ticket.
There were fragmentary delicacies enough left, of one kind and another,
at any rate, to make all the Colonel's family uncomfortable for the next
week. It bid fair to take as long to get rid of the remains of the great
party as it had taken to make ready for it.
In the mean time Mr. Bernard had been dreaming, as young men dream, of
gliding shapes with bright eyes and burning cheeks, strangely blended
with red planets and hissing meteors, and, shining over all, the white,
un-wandering star of the North, girt with its tethered constellations.
After breakfast he walked into the parlor, where he found Miss Darley.
She was alone, and, holding a school-book in her hand, was at work with
one of the morning's lessons. She hardly noticed him as he entered,
being very busy with her book,--and he paused a moment before speaking,
and looked at her with a kind of reverence. It would not have been
strictly true to call her beautiful. For years,--since her earliest
womanhood,--those slender hands had taken the bread which repaid the
toil of heart and brain from the coarse palms which offered it in the
world's rude market. It was not for herself alone that she had bartered
away the life of her youth, that she had breathed the hot air of
schoolrooms, that she had forced her intelligence to posture before
her will, as the exigencies of her place required,--waking to mental
labor,--sleeping to dream of problems,--rolling up the stone of
education for an endless twelvemonth's term, to find it at the bottom
of the hill again when another year called her to its renewed duties,
schooling her temper in unending inward and outward conflicts, until
neither dulness nor obstinacy nor ingratitude nor insolence could
reach her serene self-possession. Not for herself alone. Poorly as her
prodigal labors were repaid in proportion to the waste of life they
cost, her value was too well established to leave her without what,
under other circumstances, would have been a more than sufficient
compensation. But there were others who looked to her in their need,
and so the modest fountain which might have been filled to its brim was
continually drained through silent-flowing, hidden sluices.
Out of such a life, inherited from a race which had lived in conditions
not unlike her own, beauty, in the common sense of the term, could
hardly find leisure to develop and shape itself. For it must be
remembered, that symmetry and elegance of features and figure, like
perfectly formed crystals in the mineral world, are reached only by
insuring a certain necessary repose to individuals and to generations.
Human beauty is an agricultural product in the country, growing up in
men and women as in corn and cattle, where the soil is good. It is a
luxury almost monopolized by the rich in cities, bred under glass like
their forced pine-apples and peaches. Both in city and country, the
evolution of the physical harmonies which make music to our eyes
requires a combination of favorable circumstances, of which alternations
of unburdened tranquillity with intervals of varied excitement of mind
and body are among the most important. Where sufficient excitement is
wanting, as often happens in the country, the features, however rich in
red and white, get heavy, and the movements sluggish; where excitement
is furnished in excess, as is frequently the case in cities, the
contours and colors are impoverished, and the nerves begin to make their
existence known to the consciousness, as the face very soon informs us.
Helen Darley could not, in the nature of things, have possessed the kind
of beauty which pleases the common taste. Her eye was calm, sad-looking,
her features very still, except when her pleasant smile changed them for
a moment, all her outlines were delicate, her voice was very gentle,
but somewhat subdued by years of thoughtful labor, and on her smooth
forehead one little hinted line whispered already that Care was
beginning to mark the trace which Time sooner or later would make a
furrow. She could not be a beauty; if she had been, it would have been
much harder for many persons to be interested in her. For, although in
the abstract we all love beauty, and although, if we were sent naked
souls into some ultramundane warehouse of soulless bodies and told to
select one to our liking, we should each choose a handsome one, and
never think of the consequences,--it is quite certain that beauty
carries an atmosphere of repulsion as well as of attraction with it,
alike in both sexes. We may be well assured that there are many persons
who no more think of specializing their love of the other sex upon one
endowed with signal beauty, than they think of wanting great diamonds or
thousand-dollar horses. No man or woman can appropriate beauty
without paying for it,--in endowments, in fortune, in position, in
self-surrender, or other valuable stock; and there are a great many who
are too poor, too ordinary, too humble, too busy, too proud, to pay any
of these prices for it. So the unbeautiful get many more lovers than
the beauties; only, as there are more of them, their lovers are spread
thinner and do not make so much show.
The young master stood looking at Helen Darley with a kind of tender
admiration. She was such a picture of the martyr by the slow social
combustive process, that it almost seemed to him he could see a pale
lambent nimbus round her head.
“I did not see you at the great party last evening,” he said, presently.
She looked up and answered, “No. I have not much taste for such large
companies. Besides, I do not feel as if my time belonged to me after
it has been paid for. There is always something to do, some lesson or
exercise,--and it so happened, I was very busy last night with the new
problems in geometry. I hope you had a good time.”
“Very. Two or three of our girls were there. Rosa Milburn. What a beauty
she is! I wonder what she feeds on! Wine and musk and chloroform and
coals of fire, I believe; I didn't think there was such color and flavor
in a woman outside the tropics.”
Miss Darley smiled rather faintly; the imagery was not just to her
taste: femineity often finds it very hard to accept the fact of
muliebrity.
“Was”--?
She stopped short; but her question had asked itself.
“Elsie there? She was, for an hour or so. She looked frightfully
handsome. I meant to have spoken to her, but she slipped away before I
knew it.”
“I thought she meant to go to the party,” said Miss Darley. “Did she
look at you?”
“She did. Why?”
“And you did not speak to her?”
“No. I should have spoken to her, but she was gone when I looked for
her. A strange creature! Is n't there an odd sort of fascination about
her? You have not explained all the mystery about the girl. What does
she come to this school for? She seems to do pretty much as she likes
about studying.”
Miss Darley answered in very low tones. “It was a fancy of hers to come,
and they let her have her way. I don't know what there is about her,
except that she seems to take my life out of me when she looks at me. I
don't like to ask other people about our girls. She says very little to
anybody, and studies, or makes believe to study, almost what she likes.
I don't know what she is,” (Miss Darley laid her hand, trembling, on the
young master's sleeve,) “but I can tell when she is in the room without
seeing or hearing her. Oh, Mr. Langdon, I am weak and nervous, and no
doubt foolish,--but--if there were women now, as in the days of our
Saviour, possessed of devils, I should think there was something not
human looking out of Elsie Venner's eyes!”
The poor girl's breast rose and fell tumultuously as she spoke, and her
voice labored, as if some obstruction were rising in her throat.
A scene might possibly have come of it, but the door opened. Mr. Silas
Peckham. Miss Darley got away as soon as she well could.
“Why did not Miss Darley go to the party last evening?” said Mr.
Bernard.
“Well, the fact is,” answered Mr. Silas Peckham, “Miss Darley,
she's pooty much took up with the school. She's an industris young.
woman,--yis, she is industris,--but perhaps she a'n't quite so spry a
worker as some. Maybe, considerin' she's paid for her time, she is n't
fur out o' the way in occoopyin' herself evenin's,--that--is, if so
be she a'n't smart enough to finish up all her work in the daytime.
Edoocation is the great business of the Institoot. Amoosements are
objec's of a secondary natur', accordin' to my v'oo.” [The unspellable
pronunciation of this word is the touchstone of New England Brahminism.]
Mr. Bernard drew a deep breath, his thin nostrils dilating, as if the
air did not rush in fast enough to cool his blood, while Silas Peckham
was speaking. The Head of the Apollinean Institute delivered himself
of these judicious sentiments in that peculiar acid, penetrating tone,
thickened with a nasal twang, which not rarely becomes hereditary after
three or four generations raised upon east winds, salt fish, and large,
white-bellied, pickled cucumbers. He spoke deliberately, as if weighing
his words well, so that, during his few remarks, Mr. Bernard had time
for a mental accompaniment with variations, accented by certain bodily
changes, which escaped Mr. Peckham's observation. First there was a
feeling of disgust and shame at hearing Helen Darley spoken of like a
dumb working animal. That sent the blood up into his cheeks. Then the
slur upon her probable want of force--her incapacity, who made the
character of the school and left this man to pocket its profits--sent
a thrill of the old Wentworth fire through him, so that his muscles
hardened, his hands closed, and he took the measure of Mr. Silas
Peckham, to see if his head would strike the wall in case he went over
backwards all of a sudden. This would not do, of course, and so the
thrill passed off and the muscles softened again. Then came that state
of tenderness in the heart, overlying wrath in the stomach, in which the
eyes grow moist like a woman's, and there is also a great boiling-up of
objectionable terms out of the deep-water vocabulary, so that Prudence
and Propriety and all the other pious P's have to jump upon the lid of
speech to keep them from boiling over into fierce articulation. All
this was internal, chiefly, and of course not recognized by Mr. Silas
Peckham. The idea, that any full-grown, sensible man should have any
other notion than that of getting the most work for the least money out
of his assistants, had never suggested itself to him.
Mr. Bernard had gone through this paroxysm, and cooled down, in the
period while Mr. Peckham was uttering these words in his thin, shallow
whine, twanging up into the frontal sinuses. What was the use of losing
his temper and throwing away his place, and so, among the consequences
which would necessarily follow, leaving the poor lady-teacher without
a friend to stand by her ready to lay his hand on the grand-inquisitor
before the windlass of his rack had taken one turn too many?
“No doubt, Mr. Peckham,” he said, in a grave, calm voice, “there is
a great deal of work to be done in the school; but perhaps we can
distribute the duties a little more evenly after a time. I shall look
over the girls' themes myself, after this week. Perhaps there will be
some other parts of her labor that I can take on myself. We can arrange
a new programme of studies and recitations.”
“We can do that,” said Mr. Silas Peckham. “But I don't propose mater'lly
alterin' Miss Darley's dooties. I don't think she works to hurt herself.
Some of the Trustees have proposed interdoosin' new branches of study,
and I expect you will be pooty much occoopied with the dooties that
belong to your place. On the Sahbath you will be able to attend divine
service three times, which is expected of our teachers. I shall continoo
myself to give Sahbath Scriptur' readin's to the young ladies. That is
a solemn dooty I can't make up my mind to commit to other people. My
teachers enjoy the Lord's day as a day of rest. In it they do no manner
of work, except in cases of necessity or mercy, such as fillin' out
diplomas, or when we git crowded jest at the end of a term, or when
there is an extry number of p'oopils, or other Providential call to
dispense with the ordinance.”
Mr. Bernard had a fine glow in his cheeks by this time,--doubtless
kindled by the thought of the kind consideration Mr. Peckham showed for
his subordinates in allowing them the between meeting-time on Sundays
except for some special reason. But the morning was wearing away; so
he went to the schoolroom, taking leave very properly of his respected
principal, who soon took his hat and departed.
Mr. Peckham visited certain “stores” or shops, where he made inquiries
after various articles in the provision-line, and effected a purchase or
two. Two or three barrels of potatoes, which had sprouted in a promising
way, he secured at a bargain. A side of feminine beef was also obtained
at a low figure. He was entirely satisfied with a couple of barrels of
flour, which, being invoiced “slightly damaged,” were to be had at a
reasonable price.
After this, Silas Peckham felt in good spirits. He had done a pretty
stroke of business. It came into his head whether he might not follow
it up with a still more brilliant speculation. So he turned his steps in
the direction of Colonel Sprowle's.
It was now eleven o'clock, and the battle-field of last evening was as
we left it. Mr. Peckham's visit was unexpected, perhaps not very well
timed, but the Colonel received him civilly.
“Beautifully lighted,--these rooms last night!” said Mr. Peckham.
“Winter-strained?”
The Colonel nodded.
“How much do you pay for your winter-strained?”
The Colonel told him the price.
“Very hahnsome supper,--very hahnsome. Nothin' ever seen like it in
Rockland. Must have been a great heap of things leftover.”
The compliment was not ungrateful, and the Colonel acknowledged it by
smiling and saying, “I should think the' was a trifle? Come and look.”
When Silas Peckham saw how many delicacies had survived the evening's
conflict, his commercial spirit rose at once to the point of a proposal.
“Colonel Sprowle,” said he, “there's 'meat and cakes and pies and
pickles enough on that table to spread a hahnsome colation. If you'd
like to trade reasonable, I think perhaps I should be willin' to take
'em off your hands. There's been a talk about our havin' a celebration
in the Parnassian Grove, and I think I could work in what your folks
don't want and make myself whole by chargin' a small sum for tickets.
Broken meats, of course, a'n't of the same valoo as fresh provisions; so
I think you might be willin' to trade reasonable.”
Mr. Peckham paused and rested on his proposal. It would not, perhaps,
have been very extraordinary, if Colonel Sprowle had entertained the
proposition. There is no telling beforehand how such things will strike
people. It didn't happen to strike the Colonel favorably. He had a
little red-blooded manhood in him.
“Sell you them things to make a colation out of?” the Colonel replied.
“Walk up to that table, Mr. Peckham, and help yourself! Fill your
pockets; Mr. Peckham! Fetch a basket, and our hired folks shall fill
it full for ye! Send a cart, if y' like, 'n' carry off them leavin's to
make a celebration for your pupils with! Only let me tell ye this:--as
sure 's my name's Hezekiah Spraowle, you 'll be known through the taown
'n' through the caounty, from that day forrard, as the Principal of the
Broken-Victuals Institoot!”
Even provincial human-nature sometimes has a touch of sublimity about
it. Mr. Silas Peckham had gone a little deeper than he meant, and come
upon the “hard pan,” as the well-diggers call it, of the Colonel's
character, before he thought of it. A militia-colonel standing on his
sentiments is not to be despised. That was shown pretty well in New
England two or three generations ago. There were a good many plain
officers that talked about their “rigiment” and their “caounty” who knew
very well how to say “Make ready!” “Take aim!” “Fire!”--in the face of a
line of grenadiers with bullets in their guns and bayonets on them. And
though a rustic uniform is not always unexceptionable in its cut and
trimmings, yet there was many an ill-made coat in those old times that
was good enough to be shown to the enemy's front rank too often to
be left on the field with a round hole in its left lapel that matched
another going right through the brave heart of the plain country captain
or major or colonel who was buried in it under the crimson turf.
Mr. Silas Peckham said little or nothing. His sensibilities were not
acute, but he perceived that he had made a miscalculation. He hoped that
there was no offence,--thought it might have been mutooally agreeable,
conclooded he would give up the idee of a colation, and backed himself
out as if unwilling to expose the less guarded aspect of his person to
the risk of accelerating impulses.
The Colonel shut the door,--cast his eye on the toe of his right boot,
as if it had had a strong temptation,--looked at his watch, then round
the room, and, going to a cupboard, swallowed a glass of deep-red brandy
and water to compose his feelings.