EVENTS
Sunday came.
Doctor Garde’s little girl was richer by one music lesson, which
Miss Melissa herself gave her; and by a blue shirred silk bonnet and
muslin-gingham dress, as well as long black mitts, the like of which
she had never seen before. Sunday was an important day in Sharon. This
old Massachusetts colony retained many Puritan customs. All day the
various church bells rang--for Sunday-school, for forenoon, afternoon
and evening services. Miss Melissa and Bluebell moved on crowded
sidewalks on their way to church. The little girl was astonished by the
architecture which she saw around her. The church they entered seemed a
sublime pile. They ascended a flight of broad steps, and passed through
a matted vestibule into the vastest and whitest place Doctor Garde’s
little girl had ever seen. The aisles were carpeted, many of the seats
were cushioned, the pulpit was a sumptuous small parlor by itself, and
music, so full and mighty that it made the air shudder with delight,
came from some invisible place. She followed Miss Melissa’s rustling
clothes up the central aisle, and was placed beside her in one of the
most comfortably padded pews, with footstools under foot, and books in
the racks. The tremendous congregation spread on every hand. There were
no men’s side and women’s side! Families sat in their own seats. The
bald head of a father might be seen beside the dancing, bonneted head
of his daughter. Everybody seemed solemn but exceedingly comfortable;
and when the music ceased nothing but a whisper of fans could be heard.
Through a door at one side of the pulpit came a saint-faced man, who
ascended and opened the Bible. He looked very nice, and not a bit like
that Mr. Joel Clark at the Rocky Fork who cruelly mortified her one
Sunday when she ventured to peep between the leaves of her book while
he was preaching in very loud and long-sounding words. Her eye had
just caught an old English wood-cut--possibly one of Bewick’s--when it
seemed the world was tumbling about her ears! She could not believe
her senses. Mr. Clark was pointing his finger at _her_, and sinking her
in seas of shame.
“That little girl,” said he, “who is reading there, had better close
her book and listen to the sermon.”
Then the whole congregation looked at her as if they had always known
she was a wretch. Perintha Pancost and Minerva Ridenour, who were just
going to look into their books, sat up and appeared virtuously wrapped
in the discourse, while Mr. Clark went on as if it were just right to
crush a shrinking child by the way. And may be it _was_ right. How did
Bluebell know? He was a grown-up, good man, and a preacher, and she a
little girl, of no account except in her relationship to Doctor Garde.
She held the tears back with heroic struggles, but her face burned with
hot blood; a mark was set upon her; and whenever Mr. Clark came around
on the circuit, she could not bear to pass under his eye; and if he
made an address to the Sunday-school, she cowered down behind the tall
seats. This preacher in the Sharon church did not look as if he would
point out little girls: therefore Bluebell liked him. The congregation
stood up and turned around to sing, and then she saw the source of the
music: two or three key-boards like a treble piano, on which a young
man played, and a great row of pipes in a mass of woodwork which she
did not understand. There were some people who stood in a class holding
singing-books, and this singing-school was up in a high place like a
slice of a second story, and this second story extended also around the
sides of the church.
Miss Libbie Biggar sat in a pew the other side of a partition, in the
most beautiful cherry silk bonnet, tied under her chin with ribbon. It
was made like Bluebell’s, with a slight flare. What else Miss Libbie
wore, was concealed by the high partition. Beside her sat an old lady
as fair as a lily, in mourning clothes. But that her hair was as white
as dandelion-down. Bluebell must have believed her young; for nowhere
in the church could be found a smoother, more delicate face. An old
woman, according to Bluebell’s observation, was a bent, brown person,
wrinkled like a withered apple, like Granny Ridenour.
The two little girls exchanged glances; then the people stood up;
they sang out of books instead of having their hymns lined two lines
at a time by the minister, which Bluebell thought a great improvement
herself.
Libbie took advantage of this new position to lean over the partition
and whisper:
“I’m going to call on you to-morrow. We went to Newark, so I couldn’t
come before. Orpha and Orrell are coming too.”
“Yes,” nodded Bluebell in trepidation, making signs, for the minister
seemed looking over people’s heads at them. She wanted to ask what made
him lay a pile of writing on the pulpit beside the Bible. The people
suddenly kneeled, and Bluebell hurried to drop to her footstool as she
saw Aunt Melissa do. It was all beautiful, and made her feel good; but
Libbie Biggar reached over the partition to whisper again:
“You’ve got a pretty bonnet.”
Her grandmother pulled her dress as she subsided, and Bluebell could
hear her industriously turning over hymn-book leaves. Then everybody
resumed his seat; and the music which had so pleased her glad ear at
first, began again triumphantly, and the people in the class up-stairs
sang a very beautiful piece, which never afterwards quite left
Bluebell’s mind. She learned in time to know it as the Te Deum.
“There’s Orrell,” whispered Libbie again, indicating a flossy-haired
child at the side of the church.
“Oh, don’t!” begged Bluebell; “he mightn’t like it.” She cast her eye
at the pulpit.
“Our minister don’t care. I like him. He takes tea at our house. His
boy whispers and squirms all the time. Look at him up there.”
Bluebell looked at the boy in a front pew, and felt thankful to see him
twisting very restlessly. He was a handsome little fellow; but, as Mr.
Cook would say, not in harmony with his environments.
The sermon began, and Libbie’s grandmother moved nearer to her.
“I don’t have to come at evening, do you?” said Libbie to Bluebell,
when service was over.
“I don’t know,” said Bluebell.
They moved out in different streams of people, and did not see each
other again.
After dinner. Aunt Melissa brought out her good books and instructed
her namesake. They read some poems; and, before the gas was lighted,
had a long talk, sitting with their arms around each other, in which
the duties of guardian and charge were discussed.
On Monday morning Bluebell practised her music lesson while Aunt
Melissa was shopping. After dinner she put on the muslin-gingham, for
in this town people frequently wore their Sunday clothes on common
days!--and sat down by her auntie to learn herring-bone stitch.
The French clock on the mantel ticked: it was black marble, with a
shepherd leaning across the top; the piano stood open; when Bluebell
had stitched a strip or two, she might practise again. Afternoon
checker-work moved on the porch, and shadows chased each other up and
down the pillars. Bluebell felt like some grand little girl in a story,
who had a fairy godmother. How pleased father would be to see her
learning to be such a lady! Probably at that moment the scholars in the
log school-house were just mopping their faces after recess. What fun
they had had!--but how different the log school-house was from Aunt
Melissa’s drawing-room! Bluebell’s polish at this period began to have
a vulgar, varnishy odor. She wondered if it was the proper thing to
have gone to school in a log school-house. Libbie Biggar had evidently
never done such a thing, and that pretty, fluff-haired girl at church
could not understand how the benches had a queer, foreign smell, and
Mr. Pitzer let them have such good times. Doctor Garde’s little girl
was noting the differences in externals, and the refining influence
of beautiful surroundings; and in her anxiety to improve, she was in
danger of forgetting what she owed to the country hills.
The knocker was lifted and came down with a boom, ushering in the
prettiest and most laughable bit of comedy. Miss Libbie Biggar
introduced her friends Misses Orrell Pratt and Orpha Rose, and the
three diminutive ladies sat down in large chairs, and acted grown-up.
They had on all their ornaments, and their white dresses were distended
with the hoops which at that time were coming into vogue. Sweet and
kissable in their ribbons and bright bonnets, they were a charming
study as to manners. Orrell held her little sunshade in her crossed
hands, and drooped her eyelids prettily, as she inquired about Miss
Melissa’s health, and delivered her mamma’s compliments. Bluebell, at
a signal from Miss Calder, had put her work out of hands, and she too
sat up, trying to reflect as faithfully as a mirror these pinks and
patterns of juvenile society.
Miss Orpha had difficulty with the small wire frame-work, known as a
skeleton, which surrounded her person, but she managed it with a great
deal of tact.
“How do you like Sharon?” inquired Miss Biggar, as if she had never
done so rude a thing as to talk across partitions in church.
“Oh, I think it’s beautiful!” exclaimed Bluebell, with immediate
consciousness that enthusiasm was out of place in the presence of such
well-balanced ladies.
“Where did you live before you came here?” inquired Miss Orpha.
Bluebell blushed! When she was older she blushed to remember that she
blushed. But these girls seemed so finished, and she was so little in
accord with their past, that her beginnings looked raw and humble.
“It was a very hilly place called the Rocky Fork.”
“There are a great many hills here,” remarked Miss Orrell.
“Yes; they are very pretty.”
Bluebell’s nerves twitched, she was on such a strain of propriety.
If the conversation flagged, the young ladies sat looking at each
other and their young hostess, or Miss Calder, with calm, unchildlike
nonchalance, which threw Doctor Garde’s little girl almost into
despair. Her former standard of being agreeable was to talk much and
fluently; a pause was a breach of politeness, and put pins and needles
into her flesh. How then could she ever hope to attain to such silent
self-possession? Afterwards, at school, she discovered that Orrell
was naturally dull, and Orpha not half as charming and amiable as
first acquaintance seemed to warrant. She asked them about their dolls
without arousing much maternal enthusiasm. As they went away, however,
their voices could be heard in quick chatter along the street. Timidity
had not ruled them in the least. They had simply been making a proper,
dressed-up call, like their mammas did.
Then followed, in due course, that great day of the party. Bluebell was
nearly worn out with anticipation before afternoon came. She had a new
fluffy dress of a material called tarletan, spread over innumerable
skirts and a skeleton. Aunt Melissa became her maid, and filled the
office with the greatest care. The little girl’s hair was braided
loosely and tied in two ropes with long satin ribbon. Miss Melissa was
guilty of shoeing her in white satin slippers, but they were heelless.
This vision of little girl paraded up and down before the long glass
in the parlor, overlooking her thin arms, and delighted with her fairy
disguise. Promptly at four o’clock, some ladies and gentlemen began
to arrive, some under the chaperonage of mothers or elder sisters, but
the majority in twos, or covies like partridges. Bluebell, previously
instructed, and much awed by the good company, did not run to meet her
future playmates and ask them to go to the play-house, or up-stairs to
the garret for a play; even the luxury of a chicken funeral was far
from her mind. She stood by Aunt Melissa, and each little girl and
boy, on emerging from the dressing-room and entering the parlor, was
presented to her. There was a dressing-room up-stairs for the boys;
the girls took off their hats and laid down their parasols in Aunt
Melissa’s room. And they had doting elders who stood by and retwisted
their curls or adjusted the “set” of their hoops.
When everybody had arrived, the parlors swam with sweet faces, white
full-blown tarletan flowers, white pants and black jackets. The boys
had not the ease of the girls: it drew Bluebell’s heart to them to see
their awkward postures and attempts at behaving. The boys intended to
come out strong at tea-time.
The older people who came along started games; the children played
“Hunt the Slipper,” and this created some real noise and scrambling.
Then they played “Forfeits” and “Consequences;” and just before supper
a grown young lady in enormous crinoline sat down at the piano and
cried, “Partners for a French Four.”
Immediately certain little couples took their places on the floor, and
Johnny Pratt, evidently prodded by his sister, stepped up to Bluebell.
“Come on,” said Johnny.
“What they going to play?”
“Goin’ to dance a French Four.”
But Doctor Grarde’s little girl hung back, full of dismay.
“Come on!” exclaimed Libbie Biggar, “it’s your party and you have to
lead off. Isn’t that the way, Miss Ann?”
The young lady at the piano turned half-way around and said she
believed it was. She looked at Doctor Garde’s disconcerted little girl
with a kind smile.
“What’s the trouble?”
Oh, it was dreadful to have the room full of children and several
irreproachable grown-up folks looking at her as if she were some
peculiar savage.
“Why don’t you come on?” cried Libbie with an impatient stamp.
“But I don’t know how. I sha’n’t mind if somebody else plays in my
place.”
Somebody else would not do, in the eyes of a few sticklers; so Bluebell
was pushed and huddled through the figures, and merrily laughed at.
And it seemed the most dreadful performance she had ever heard of, and
mortified her sadly. She was consumed with a desire to step and act
gracefully; the motion was exhilarating; but how could she put her toe
out just so, and remember which hand to give every time! The others
made precise steps with which she was unacquainted, and to imitate them
in her timid way was to make a caricature of herself.
Aunt Melissa came in from the dining-room like a friendly sail to a
half-wrecked sailor, and made a few smiling excuses for her little
friend. Then she marshalled the children out, and their guardians
looked in at the dining-room door to see what a charming company they
made. Admiring mothers assisted Aunt Melissa in serving refreshments,
and from the first biscuit to the last dish of pink ice-cream there
were exclamations of delight over the table.
After supper they played in the grounds until sunset; other games in
the parlors followed; and by eight o’clock the last little girl was
going home saying she had had a lovely time.
And all these things made a deep impression on Doctor Garde’s little
girl. She felt elated notwithstanding the French Four, and kissed Aunt
Melissa with quite the air of Libbie Biggar. Miss Calder was delighted
with the pleasure she had given. Her own individuality was very slight:
to be amiable and appear as well as the best Sharon people was her
standard of manners, and she was glad to see her charge conforming to
them.
Still, the sap of the woods is strong, and will rise in veins which it
has nurtured. After all this civilized excitement, Bluebell fell asleep
late, and dreamed a wordless and rhymeless dream which had no beginning
or end, but chimed along, bringing the smell of ferns and oak-leaves,
sweet-brier and sassafras, and the very breath of trees, all around
her. Nobody sings the full expression of dreams: if this dream had been
sung, perhaps it would have sounded--
Oh, there was a very funny little pink-eyed man;
His hair stood out as only silk of dandelion can;
He whistled up the morning, and down the afternoon,
And slept inside a hollow tree all covered up with moon;
His dress was made of moss-hair that greener branches studs.
And fringed around with catkins of palest willow-buds;
He drove a sled of oak-leaf with katydids a span--
Oho! this world is rosy to a pink-eyed man!
His feet he bathed in violets; he tapped the big paw-paw,
And sucked, astride May-apple forks, each apple that he saw;
Peppermint and pennyroyal, sheep’s-sorrel had he,
Spicewood and sassafras, and nuts from nutty tree;
His pockets sagged with dewdrops so bright they shone like sparks,
And he teetered on a grass-blade and threw the cores at marks.
He made a spider spin him a gray hammock on her plan,--
Sing, oh, this world is rosy to a pink-eyed man!
He made a brook-stone chimney within his little garth,
And piled a heap of fireflies to sparkle on his hearth;
All overhead were carvings of ancient wormy sort;
He tied up ants in couples and made them hunt for sport;
He had a little long-bow of throstle-quill; for string
He tore a strip of bat-leather out of a gray bat’s wing;
And when he shot one June-bug, why, twenty others ran,--
Aha! this world is rosy to a pink-eyed man!
His boat was half a butternut all scooped and polished clear;
He had a crew of water-skates, and he need only steer;
He always wore an acorn-cap for fear his hair might burn;
And he sat upon a toadstool and fanned him with a fern;
Or in an empty bird’s nest he piped whole afternoons;
The gnats would dance by thousands to hear such merry tunes;
The long sweet time in honey-drops of amber clearness ran,--
And oh, this world is rosy to a pink-eyed man!