HE ENACTS THE PART OF GROOMSMAN.
"Out of the frying-pan into the fire!" This should have been my chosen
motto from the beginning. The performance of the maddening feat
indicated in the proverb has been the principal business of my life. I
am always finding myself in the frying-pan, and always flopping out
into the fire. My father's interference saved me from the dreadful old
creature into whose net I had stumbled when I fled from my native
village, only to return with the certainty that I was unfit to cope
with the world outside of it.
"I will never put my foot beyond the township line again," I vowed to
my secret soul. I had a harrowing sorrow preying upon me all the
remainder of the winter. I was given to understand that Belle Marigold
was actually engaged to Fred Hencoop. And she might have been mine!
Alas, that mighty _might_!
"Of all sad words of tongue or pen
The saddest are these--'It might have been!'"
I am positive that when I first came home from school she admired me
very much. She welcomed my early attentions. It was only the
ridiculous blunders into which my bashfulness continually drove me
that alienated her regard. If I had not caught my foot in the reins
that time I got out of the buggy in front of her house--if I had not
fallen in the water and had my clothes shrink in drying--nor choked
almost to death--nor got under the counter--nor failed to "speak my
piece"--nor sat down in that mud-puddle--nor committed suicide--nor
run away from home--nor performed any other of the thousand-and-one
absurd feats into which my constitutional embarrassment was
everlastingly urging me, I declare boldly, "Belle might have been
mine." She had encouraged me at first. Now it was too late. She had
"declined," as Tennyson says, "on a lower love than mine"--on Fred
Hencoop's.
The thought was despair. Never did I realized of what the human heart
is capable until Belle came into the store, one lovely spring morning,
looking like a seraph in a new spring bonnet, and blushingly--with a
saucy flash of her dark eyes that made her rising color all the more
divine--inquired for table-damask and 4-4 sheetings.
With an ashen brow and quivering lip, I displayed before her our best
assortment of table-cloths and napkins, pillow-casing and sheeting.
Her mother accompanied her to give her the benefit of her experience;
and kept telling her daughter to choose the best, and what and how
many dozens she had before she was married.
They ran up a big bill at the store that morning, and father came
behind the counter to help, and was mightily pleased; but I felt as if
I were measuring off cloth for my own shroud.
"Come, John, you go do up the sugar for Widow Smith, her boy is
waiting," said my parent, seeing the muddle into which I was getting
things. "I will attend to these ladies--twelve yards of the
pillow-casing, did you say, Mrs. Marigold?"
I moved down to the end of the store and weighed and tied up in brown
paper the "three pounds of white sugar to make cake for the
sewin'-society," which the lad had asked for. A little girl came in
for a pound of bar-soap, and I attended to her wants. Then another
boy, with a basket, came in a hurry for a dozen of eggs. You see, ours
was one of those village-stores that combine all things.
While I waited on these insignificant customers father measured off
great quantities of white goods for the two ladies; and I strained my
ears to hear every word that was said. They asked father if he was
going to New York _soon_? He said, in about ten days. Then Mrs.
Marigold confided to him that they wanted him to purchase twenty-five
yards of white corded silk.
If every cord in that whole piece of silk had been drawing about my
throat I couldn't have felt more suffocated. I sat right down, I felt
so faint, in a tub of butter. I had just sense enough left to remember
that I had on my new spring lavender pants. The butter was
disgustingly soft and mushy.
"Come here, John, and add up this bill," called father.
"I can't; I'm sick."
I had got up from the tub and was leaning on the counter--I was pale,
I know.
"Why, what's the matter?" he asked.
Belle cast one guilty look in my direction. "It's the spring weather,
I dare say," she said softly to my parent.
I sneaked out of the back door and went across the yard to the house
to change my pants. I _was_ sick, and I did not emerge from my room
until the dinner-bell rang.
I went down then, and found father, usually so good-natured, looking
cross, as he carved the roast beef.
"You will never be good for anything, John," was his salutation--"at
least, not as a clerk. I've a good mind to write to Captain Hall to
take you to the North Pole."
"What's up, father?"
"Oh, nothing!" _very_ sarcastically. "That white sugar you sent Mrs.
Smith was table-salt, and she made a whole batch of cake out of it
before she discovered her mistake. She was out of temper when she flew
in the store, I tell you. I had not only to give her the sugar, but
enough butter and eggs to make good her loss, and throw in a neck-tie
to compensate her for waste of time. Before she got away, in came the
mother of the little girl to whom you had given a slab of molasses
candy for bar-soap, and said that the child had brought nothing home
but some streaks of molasses on her face. Just as I was coming out to
dinner the other boy brought back the porcelain eggs you had given him
with word that 'Ma had biled 'em an hour, and she couldn't even budge
the shells.' So you see, my son, that in a miscellaneous store you are
quite out of your element."
"It was that flirt of a Belle Marigold that upset him," said mother,
laughing so that she spilled the gravy on the table-cloth. "He'll be
all right when she is once Mrs. Hencoop."
That very evening Fred came in the store to ask me to be his
groomsman.
"We're going to be married the first of June," he told me, grinning
like an idiot.
"Does Belle know that you invite me to be groomsman?" I responded,
gloomily.
"Yes; she suggested that you be asked. Rose Ellis is to be
bridesmaid."
"Very well; I accept."
"All right, old fellow. Thank you," slapping me on the back.
As I lay tossing restlessly on my bed that night--after an hour spent
in a vain attempt to take the butter out of my lavenders with French
chalk--I made a new and firm resolution. I would make Belle sorry that
she had given her preference to Fred. I would so bear myself--during
our previous meetings and consultations, and during the day of the
ceremony--that she should bitterly repent not having given me an
opportunity to conquer my diffidence before taking up with Frederick
Hencoop. The opportunity was given me to redeem myself. I would prove
that, although modest, I was a gentleman; that the blushing era of
inexperience could be succeeded by one of calm grandeur. Chesterfield
could never have been more quietly self-possessed; Beau Brummell more
imperturbable. I would get by heart all the little formalities of the
occasion, and, when the time came, I would execute them with
consummate ease.
These resolutions comforted me--supported me under the weight of
despair I had to endure. Ha! yes. I would show some people that some
things could be done as well as others.
It was four weeks to the first of June. As I had ruined my lavender
trousers I ordered another pair, with suitable neck-tie, vest, and
gloves, from New York. I also ordered three different and
lately-published books on etiquette. I studied in all three of these
the etiquette of weddings. I thoroughly posted myself on the ancient,
the present, and the future duties of "best men" on such occasions. I
learned how they do it in China, in Turkey, in Russia, in New Zealand,
more particularly how it is done, at present, in England and America.
As the day drew nigh I felt equal to the emergency I had a powerful
motive for acquitting myself handsomely. I wanted to show _her_ what a
mistake she had made.
The wedding was to take place in church at eight o'clock in the
evening. The previous evening we--that is, the bride-elect, groom,
bridesmaid, and groomsman, parents, and two or three friends--had a
private rehearsal, one of the friends assuming the part of clergyman.
All went merry as a marriage bell. I was the soul of ease and grace:
Fred was the awkward one, stepping on the bride's train, dropping the
ring, and so forth.
"I declare, Mr. Flutter, I never saw any one improve as you have,"
said Belle, aside to me, when we had returned to her house. "I do hope
poor Fred will get along better to-morrow. I shall be really vexed at
him if anything goes wrong."
"You must forgive a little flustration on his part," I loftily
answered. "Perhaps, were I in his place, I should be agitated too."
Well, the next evening came, and at seven o'clock I repaired to the
squire's residence. Fred was already there, walking up and down the
parlor, a good deal excited, but dressed faultlessly and looking
frightfully well.
"Why, John," was his first greeting, "aren't you going to wear any
cravat?"
I put my hand up to my neck and dashed madly back a quarter of a mile
for the delicate white silk tie I had left on my dressing bureau.
This, of course, made me uncomfortably warm. When I got back to the
squire's I was in a perspiration, felt that my calm brow was flushed,
and had to wipe it with my handkerchief.
"Come," said that impatient Fred, "you have just two minutes to get
your gloves on."
My hands were damp, and being hurried had the effect to make me
nervous, in spite of four long weeks' constant resolution. What with
the haste and perspiration, I tore the thumb completely out of the
left glove.
Never mind; no time to mend, in spite of the proverb.
The bride came down-stairs, cool, white, and delicious as an orange
blossom. She was helped into one carriage; Fred and I entered another.
"I hope you feel cool," I said to Fred.
"I hope _you_ do," he retorted.
I have always laid the catastrophe which followed to the first mistake
in having to fly home for my neck-tie. I was disconcerted by that, and
I couldn't exactly get concerted again.
I don't know what happened after the carriage stopped at the church
door--I must take the report of my friends for it. They say that I
bolted at the last moment, and followed the bride up one aisle instead
of the groom up the other, as I should have done. But I was perfectly
calm and collected. Oh, yes, that was why, when we attempted to form
in front of the altar, I insisted on standing next to Belle, and when
I was finally pushed into my place by the irate Fred, I kept diving
forward every time the clergyman said anything, trying to take the
bride's hand, and responding, "Belle, I take thee to be my lawful,
wedded," answering, "I do," loudly, to every question, even to that
"Who gives this woman?" etc., until every man, woman, and child in
church was tittering and giggling, and the holy man had to come to a
full pause, and request me to realize that it was not I who was being
married.
"I do. With all my worldly goods I thee endow," was my reply to his
reminder.
"For Heaven's sake subside, or I'll thrash you within an inch of your
life when I get out of this," whispered Fred.
Dimly mistrusting that I was on the wrong track, I turned and seized
Mrs. Marigold by the hand, and began to feel in my pocket for a ring,
because I saw the groom taking one out of his pocket.
The giggling and tittering increased; somebody--father or the
constable--took me by the shoulder and marched me out of that; after
which, I suppose, the ceremony was duly concluded. I only know that
somebody knocked me down about five minutes afterward--I have been
told that it was the bridegroom who did it--and that all the books of
etiquette on earth won't fortify a man against the attacks of
constitutional bashfulness.