Produced by Jeff Kaylin and Andrew Sly
The Jamesons
by
Mary E. Wilkins
Author of "A Humble Romance,"
"A New England Nun,"
"Pembroke," "The People of Our
Neighborhood," etc.
with pictures
New York
Doubleday & McClure Company
Philadelphia
Curtis Publishing Company
1899
I
THEY ARRIVE
Until that summer nobody in our village had ever taken boarders.
There had been no real necessity for it, and we had always been
rather proud of the fact. While we were certainly not rich--there was
not one positively rich family among us--we were comfortably provided
with all the necessities of life. We did not need to open our houses,
and our closets, and our bureau drawers, and give the freedom of our
domestic hearths, and, as it were, our household gods for playthings,
to strangers and their children.
Many of us had to work for our daily bread, but, we were thankful to
say, not in that way. We prided ourselves because there was no summer
hotel with a demoralizing bowling-alley, and one of those dangerous
chutes, in our village. We felt forbiddingly calm and superior when
now and then some strange city people from Grover, the large summer
resort six miles from us, travelled up and down our main street
seeking board in vain. We plumed ourselves upon our reputation of not
taking boarders for love or money.
Nobody had dreamed that there was to be a break at last in our
long-established custom, and nobody dreamed that the break was to
be made in such a quarter. One of the most well-to-do, if not the
most well-to-do, of us all, took the first boarders ever taken in
Linnville. When Amelia Powers heard of it she said, "Them that
has, gits."
On the afternoon of the first day of June, six years ago, I was
sewing at my sitting-room window. I was making a white muslin dress
for little Alice, my niece, to wear to the Seventeenth-of-June
picnic. I had been sitting there alone all the afternoon, and it was
almost four o'clock when I saw Amelia Powers, who lives opposite, and
who had been sewing at her window--I had noticed her arm moving back
and forth, disturbing the shadows of the horse-chestnut tree in the
yard--fling open her front door, run out on the piazza, and stand
peering around the corner post, with her neck so stretched that it
looked twice as long as before. Then her sister Candace, who has poor
health and seldom ventures out-of-doors, threw up the front chamber
window and leaned out as far as she was able, and stared with her
hand shading her eyes from the sun. I could just see her head through
an opening in the horse-chestnut branches.
Then I heard another door open, and Mrs. Peter Jones, who lives in
the house next below the Powers', came running out. She ran down the
walk to her front gate and leaned over, all twisted sideways, to see.
Then I heard voices, and there were Adeline Ketchum and her mother
coming down the street, all in a flutter of hurry. Adeline is slender
and nervous; her elbows jerked out, her chin jerked up, and her
skirts switched her thin ankles; Mrs. Ketchum is very stout, and she
walked with a kind of quivering flounce. Her face was blazing, and I
knew her bonnet was on hindside before--I was sure that the sprig of
purple flowers belonged on the front.
When Adeline and her mother reached Mrs. Peter Jones' gate they
stopped, and they all stood there together looking. Then I saw Tommy
Gregg racing along, and I felt positive that his mother had sent him
to see what the matter was. She is a good woman, but the most curious
person in our village. She never seems to have enough affairs of her
own to thoroughly amuse her. I never saw a boy run as fast as Tommy
did--as if his mother's curiosity and his own were a sort of motor
compelling him to his utmost speed. His legs seemed never to come out
of their running crooks, and his shock of hair was fairly stiffened
out behind with the wind.
Then I began to wonder if it were possible there was a fire anywhere.
I ran to my front door and called:
"Tommy! Tommy!" said I, "where is the fire?"
Tommy did not hear me, but all of a sudden the fire-bell began
to ring.
Then I ran across the street to Mrs. Peter Jones' gate, and Amelia
Powers came hurrying out of her yard.
"Where is it? Oh, where is it?" said she, and Candace put her head
out of the window and called out, "Where is it? Is it near here?"
We all sniffed for smoke and strained our eyes for a red fire glare
on the horizon, but we could neither smell nor see anything unusual.
Pretty soon we heard the fire-engine coming, and Amelia Powers cried
out: "Oh, it's going to Mrs. Liscom's! It's her house! It's Mrs.
Liscom's house!"
Candace Powers put her head farther out of the window, and screamed
in a queer voice that echoed like a parrot's, "Oh, 'Melia! 'Melia!
it's Mrs. Liscom's, it's Mrs. Liscom's, and the wind's this way!
Come, quick, and help me get out the best feather bed, and the
counterpane that mother knit! Quick! Quick!"
Amelia had to run in and quiet Candace, who was very apt to have a
bad spell when she was over-excited, and the rest of us started for
the fire.
As we hurried down the street I asked Mrs. Jones how she had known
there was a fire in the first place, for I supposed that was why she
had run out to her front door and looked down the street. Then I
learned about the city boarders. She and Amelia, from the way they
faced at their sitting-room windows, had seen the Grover stage-coach
stop at Mrs. Liscom's, and had run out to see the boarders alight.
Mrs. Jones said there were five of them--the mother, grandmother,
two daughters, and a son.
I said that I did not know Mrs. Liscom was going to take boarders;
I was very much surprised.
"I suppose she thought she would earn some money and have some extra
things," said Mrs. Jones.
"It must have been that," said Mrs. Ketchum, panting--she was almost
out of breath--"for, of course, the Liscoms don't need the money."
I laughed and said I thought not. I felt a little pride about it,
because Mrs. Liscom was a second cousin of my husband, and he used
to think a great deal of her.
"They must own that nice place clear, if it ain't going to burn to
the ground, and have something in the bank besides," assented Mrs.
Peter Jones.
Ever so many people were running down the street with us, and the air
seemed full of that brazen clang of the fire-bell; still we could not
see any fire, nor even smell any smoke, until we got to the head of
the lane where the Liscom house stands a few rods from the main
street.
The lane was about choked up with the fire-engine, the hose-cart, the
fire department in their red shirts, and, I should think, half the
village. We climbed over the stone wall into Mrs. Liscom's oat-field;
it was hard work for Mrs. Ketchum, but Mrs. Jones and I pushed and
Adeline pulled, and then we ran along close to the wall toward the
house. We certainly began to smell smoke, though we still could not
see any fire. The firemen were racing in and out of the house,
bringing out the furniture, as were some of the village boys, and the
engine was playing upon the south end, where the kitchen is.
Mrs. Peter Jones, who is very small and alert, said suddenly that
it looked to her as if the smoke were coming out of the kitchen
chimney, but Mrs. Ketchum said of course it was on fire inside in
the woodwork. "Oh, only to think of Mrs. Liscom's nice house being
all burned up, and what a dreadful reception for those boarders!"
she groaned out.
I never saw such a hubbub, and apparently over nothing at all, as
there was. There was a steady yell of fire from a crowd of boys who
seemed to enjoy it; the water was swishing, the firemen's arms were
pumping in unison, and everybody generally running in aimless circles
like a swarm of ants. Then we saw the boarders coming out. "Oh, the
house must be all in a light blaze inside!" groaned Mrs. Ketchum.
There were five of the boarders. The mother, a large, fair woman with
a long, massive face, her reddish hair crinkling and curling around
it in a sort of ivy-tendril fashion, came first. Her two daughters,
in blue gowns, with pretty, agitated faces, followed; then the young
son, fairly teetering with excitement; then the grandmother, a
little, tremulous old lady in an auburn wig.
The woman at the head carried a bucket, and what should she do but
form her family into a line toward the well at the north side of
the house where we were!
Of course, the family did not nearly reach to the well, and she
beckoned to us imperatively. "Come immediately!" said she; "if the
men of this village have no head in an emergency like this, let the
women arise! Come immediately."
So Mrs. Peter Jones, Mrs. Ketchum, Adeline, and I stepped into the
line, and the mother boarder filled the bucket at the well, and we
passed it back from hand to hand, and the boy at the end flung it
into Mrs. Liscom's front entry all over her nice carpet.
Then suddenly we saw Caroline Liscom appear. She snatched the bucket
out of the hands of the boy boarder and gave it a toss into the
lilac-bush beside the door; then she stood there, looking as I had
never seen her look before. Caroline Liscom has always had the
reputation of being a woman of a strong character; she is manifestly
the head of her family. It is always, "Mrs. Liscom's house," and
"Mrs. Liscom's property," instead of Mr. Liscom's.
It is always understood that, though Mr. Liscom is the nominal voter
in town matters, not a selectman goes into office with Mr. Liscom's
vote unless it is authorized by Mrs. Liscom. Mr. Liscom is, so to
speak, seldom taken without Mrs. Liscom's indorsement.
Of course, Mrs. Liscom being such a character has always more or less
authority in her bearing, but that day she displayed a real majesty
which I had never seen in her before. She stood there a second, then
she turned and made a backward and forward motion of her arm as if
she were sweeping, and directly red-shirted firemen and boys began to
fly out of the house as if impelled by it.
"You just get out of my house; every one of you!" said Caroline in
a loud but slow voice, as if she were so angry that she was fairly
reining herself in; and they got out. Then she called to the firemen
who were working the engine, and they heard her above all the uproar.
"You stop drenching my house with water, and go home!" said she.
Everybody began to hush and stare, but Tommy Gregg gave one squeaking
cry of fire as if in defiance.
"There is no fire," said Caroline Liscom. "My house is not on fire,
and has not been on fire. I am getting tea, and the kitchen chimney
always smokes when the wind is west. I don't thank you, any of you,
for coming here and turning my house upside down and drenching it
with water, and lugging my furniture out-of-doors. Now you can go
home. I don't see what fool ever sent you here!"
The engine stopped playing, and you could hear the water dripping off
the south end of the house. The windows were streaming as if there
had been a shower. Everybody looked abashed, and the chief engineer
of the fire department--who is a little nervous man who always works
as if the river were on fire and he had started it--asked meekly if
they shouldn't bring the furniture back.
"No," said Caroline Liscom, "I want you to go home, and that is all I
do want of you."
Then the mother boarder spoke--she was evidently not easily put down.
"I refuse to return to the house or to allow my family to do so
unless I am officially notified by the fire department that the fire
is extinguished," said she.
"Then you can stay out-of-doors," said Caroline Liscom, and we all
gasped to hear her, though we secretly admired her for it.
The boarder glared at her in a curious kind of way, like a broadside
of stoniness, but Caroline did not seem to mind it at all. Then the
boarder changed her tactics like a general on the verge of defeat.
She sidled up to Mr. Spear, the chief engineer, who was giving orders
to drag home the engine, and said in an unexpectedly sweet voice,
like a trickle of honey off the face of a rock: "My good man, am I to
understand that I need apprehend no further danger from fire! I ask
for the sake of my precious family."
Mr. Spear looked at her as if she had spoken to him in Choctaw, and
she was obliged to ask him over again. "My good man," said she,
"_is_ the fire out?"
Mr. Spear looked at her as if he were half daft then, but he
answered: "Yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am, certainly, ma'am, no danger at
all, ma'am." Then he went on ordering the men: "A leetle more to
the right, boys! All together!"
"Thank you, my good man, your word is sufficient," said the boarder,
though Mr. Spear did not seem to hear her.
Then she sailed into the house, and her son, her two daughters, and
the grandmother after her. Mrs. Peter Jones and Adeline and her
mother went home, but I ventured, since I was a sort of relation, to
go in and offer to help Caroline set things to rights. She thanked
me, and said that she did not want any help; when Jacob and Harry
came home they would set the furniture in out of the yard.
"I am sorry for you, Caroline," said I.
"Look at my house, Sophia Lane," said she, and that was all she would
say. She shut her mouth tight over that. That house was enough to
make a strong-minded woman like Caroline dumb, and send a weak one
into hysterics. It was dripping with water, and nearly all the
furniture out in the yard piled up pell-mell. I could not see how
she was going to get supper for the boarders: the kitchen fire was
out and the stove drenched, with a panful of biscuits in the oven.
"What are you going to give them for supper, Caroline?" said I, and
she just shook her head. I knew that those boarders would have to
take what they could get, or go without.
When Caroline was in any difficulty there never was any help for her,
except from the working of circumstances to their own salvation. I
thought I might as well go home. I offered to give her some pie or
cake if hers were spoiled, but she only shook her head again, and I
knew she must have some stored away in the parlor china-closet, where
the water had not penetrated.
I went through the house to the front entry, thinking I would go out
the front door--the side one was dripping as if it were under a
waterfall. Just as I reached it I heard a die-away voice from the
front chamber say, "My good woman."
I did not dream that I was addressed, never having been called by
that name, though always having hoped that I was a good woman.
So I kept right on. Then I heard a despairing sigh, and the voice
said, "You speak to her, Harriet."
Then I heard another voice, very sweet and a little timid, "Will you
please step upstairs? Mamma wishes to speak to you."
I began to wonder if they were talking to me. I looked up, and
there discovered a pretty, innocent, rosy little face, peering over
the balustrade at the head of the stairs. "Will you please step
upstairs?" said she again, in the same sweet tones. "Mamma wishes
to speak to you."
I have a little weakness of the heart, and do not like to climb
stairs more than I am positively obliged to; it always puts me so out
of breath. I sleep downstairs on that account. I looked at Caroline's
front stairs, which are rather steep, with some hesitation. I felt
shaken, too, on account of the alarm of fire. Then I heard the first
voice again with a sort of languishing authority: "My good woman,
will you be so kind as to step upstairs immediately?"
I went upstairs. The girl who had spoken to me--I found afterward
that she was the elder of the daughters--motioned me to go into the
north chamber. I found them all there. The mother, Mrs. H. Boardman
Jameson, as I afterward knew her name to be, was lying on the bed,
her head propped high with pillows; the younger daughter was fanning
her, and she was panting softly as if she were almost exhausted. The
grandmother sat beside the north window, with a paper-covered book on
her knees. She was eating something from a little white box on the
window-sill. The boy was at another window, also with a book in which
he did not seem to be interested. He looked up at me, as I entered,
with a most peculiar expression of mingled innocence and shyness
which was almost terror. I could not see why the boy should possibly
be afraid of me, but I learned afterward that it was either his
natural attitude or natural expression. He was either afraid of every
mortal thing or else appeared to be. The singular elevated arch of
his eyebrows over his wide-open blue eyes, and his mouth, which was
always parted a little, no doubt served to give this impression. He
was a pretty boy, with a fair pink-and-white complexion, and long
hair curled like a girl's, which looked odd to me, for he was quite
large.
Mrs. Jameson beckoned me up to the bed with one languid finger, as if
she could not possibly do more. I began to think that perhaps she had
some trouble with her heart like myself, and the fire had overcome
her, and I felt very sympathetic.
"I am sorry you have had such an unpleasant experience," I began,
but she cut me short.
"My good woman," said she in little more than a whisper, "do you
know of any house in a sanitary location where we can obtain board
immediately? I am very particular about the location. There must be
no standing water near the house, there must not be trees near on
account of the dampness, the neighbors must not keep hens--of course,
the people of the house must not keep hens--and the woman must have
an even temper. I must particularly insist upon an even temper. My
nerves are exceedingly weak; I cannot endure such a rasping manner as
that which I have encountered to-day."
When she stopped and looked at me for an answer I was so astonished
that I did not know what to say. There she was, just arrived; had not
eaten one meal in the house, and wanting to find another
boarding-place.
Finally I said, rather stupidly I suppose, that I doubted if she
could find another boarding-place in our village as good as the one
which she already had.
She gave another sigh, as if of the most determined patience. "Have I
not already told you, my good woman," said she, "that I cannot endure
such a rasping manner and voice as that of the woman of the house?
It is most imperative that I have another boarding-place at once."
She said this in a manner which nettled me a little, as if I had
boarding-places, for which she had paid liberally and had a right
to demand, in my hand, and was withholding them from her. I replied
that I knew of no other boarding-place of any kind whatsoever in the
village. Then she looked at me in what I suppose was meant to be an
ingratiating way.
"My good woman," said she, "you look very neat and tidy yourself, and
I don't doubt are a good plain cook; I am willing to try your house
if it is not surrounded by trees and there is no standing water near;
I do not object to running water."
In the midst of this speech the elder daughter had said in a
frightened way, "Oh, mamma!" but her mother had paid no attention.
As for myself, I was angry. The memory of my two years at Wardville
Young Ladies' Seminary in my youth and my frugally independent life
as wife and widow was strong upon me. I had read and improved my
mind. I was a prominent member of the Ladies' Literary Society of our
village: I wrote papers which were read at the meetings; I felt, in
reality, not one whit below Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson, and, moreover,
large sleeves were the fashion, and my sleeves were every bit as
large as hers, though she had just come from the city. That added to
my conviction of my own importance.
"Madam," said I, "I do not take boarders. I have never taken
boarders, and I never shall take boarders." Then I turned and went
out of the room, and downstairs, with, it seemed to me, much dignity.
However, Mrs. Jameson was not impressed by it, for she called after
me: "My good woman, will you please tell Mrs. Liscom that I must have
some hot water to make my health food with immediately? Tell her to
send up a pitcher at once, very hot."
I did not tell Caroline about the hot water. I left that for them
to manage themselves. I did not care to mention hot water with
Caroline's stove as wet as if it had been dipped in the pond, even
if I had not been too indignant at the persistent ignoring of my own
dignity. I went home and found Louisa Field, my brother's widow, and
her little daughter Alice, who live with me, already there. Louisa
keeps the district school, and with her salary, besides the little
which my brother left her, gets along very comfortably. I have a
small sum in bank, besides my house, and we have plenty to live on,
even if we don't have much to spare.
Louisa was full of excitement over the false alarm of fire, and had
heard a reason for it which we never fairly knew to be true, though
nearly all the village believed it. It seems that the little Jameson
boy, so the story ran, had peeped into the kitchen and had seen it
full of smoke from Caroline's smoky chimney when she was kindling the
fire; then had run out into the yard, and seeing the smoke out there
too, and being of such an exceedingly timid temperament, had run out
to the head of the lane calling fire, and had there met Tommy Gregg,
who had spread the alarm and been the means of calling out the fire
department.
Indeed, the story purported to come from Tommy Gregg, who declared
that the boy at Liscom's had "hollered" fire, and when he was asked
where it was had told him at Liscom's. However that may have been, I
looked around at our humble little home, at the lounge which I had
covered myself, at the threadbare carpet on the sitting-room floor,
at the wallpaper which was put on the year before my husband died, at
the vases on the shelf, which had belonged to my mother, and I was
very thankful that I did not care for "extra things" or new furniture
and carpets enough to take boarders who made one feel as if one were
simply a colonist of their superior state, and the Republic was over
and gone.
II
WE BECOME ACQUAINTED WITH THEM
It was certainly rather unfortunate, as far as the social standing of
the Jamesons among us was concerned, that they brought Grandma Cobb
with them.
Everybody spoke of her as Grandma Cobb before she had been a week in
the village. Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson always called her Madam Cobb,
but that made no difference. People in our village had not been
accustomed to address old ladies as madam, and they did not take
kindly to it. Grandma Cobb was of a very sociable disposition, and
she soon developed the habit of dropping into the village houses at
all hours of the day and evening. She was an early riser, and all the
rest of her family slept late, and she probably found it lonesome.
She often made a call as early as eight o'clock in the morning, and
she came as late as ten o'clock in the evening. When she came in the
morning she talked, and when she came in the evening she sat in her
chair and nodded. She often kept the whole family up, and it was less
exasperating when she came in the morning, though it was unfortunate
for the Jamesons.
If a bulletin devoted to the biography of the Jameson family had been
posted every week on the wall of the town house it could have been no
more explicit than was Grandma Cobb. Whether we would or not we soon
knew all about them; the knowledge was fairly forced upon us. We knew
that Mr. H. Boardman Jameson had been very wealthy, but had lost most
of his money the year before through the failure of a bank. We knew
that his wealth had all been inherited, and that he would never have
been, in Grandma Cobb's opinion, capable of earning it himself. We
knew that he had obtained, through the influence of friends, a
position in the custom-house, and we knew the precise amount of his
salary. We knew that the Jamesons had been obliged to give up their
palatial apartments in New York and take a humble flat in a less
fashionable part of the city. We knew that they had always spent
their summers at their own place at the seashore, and that this was
the first season of their sojourn in a little country village in a
plain house. We knew how hard a struggle it had been for them to
come here; we knew just how much they paid for their board, how Mrs.
Jameson never wanted anything for breakfast but an egg and a hygienic
biscuit, and had health food in the middle of the forenoon and
afternoon.
We also knew just how old they all were, and how the H. in Mr.
Jameson's name stood for Hiram. We knew that Mrs. Jameson had never
liked the name--might, in fact, have refused to marry on that score
had not Grandma Cobb reasoned with her and told her that he was a
worthy man with money, and she not as young as she had been; and how
she compromised by always using the abbreviation, both in writing and
speaking. "She always calls him H," said Grandma Cobb, "and I tell
her sometimes it doesn't look quite respectful to speak to her
husband as if he were part of the alphabet." Grandma Cobb, if the
truth had been told, was always in a state of covert rebellion
against her daughter.
Grandma Cobb was always dressed in a black silk gown which seemed
sumptuous to the women of our village. They could scarcely reconcile
it with the statement that the Jamesons had lost their money. Black
silk of a morning was stupendous to them, when they reflected how
they had, at the utmost, but one black silk, and that guarded as if
it were cloth of gold, worn only upon the grandest occasions, and
designed, as they knew in their secret hearts, though they did not
proclaim it, for their last garment of earth. Grandma Cobb always
wore a fine lace cap also, which should, according to the opinions of
the other old ladies of the village, have been kept sacred for other
women's weddings or her own funeral. She used her best gold-bowed
spectacles every day, and was always leaving them behind her in the
village houses, and little Tommy or Annie had to run after her with
a charge not to lose them, for nobody knew how much they cost.
Grandma Cobb always carried about with her a paper-covered novel and
a box of cream peppermints. She ate the peppermints and freely
bestowed them upon others; the novel she never read. She said quite
openly that she only carried it about to please her daughter, who had
literary tastes. "She belongs to a Shakespeare Club, and a Browning
Club, and a Current Literature Club," said Grandma Cobb.
We concluded that she had, feeling altogether incapable of even
carrying about Shakespeare and Browning, compromised with peppermints
and current literature.
"That book must be current literature," said Mrs. Ketchum one day,
"but I looked into it when she was at our house, and I should not
want Adeline to read it."
After a while people looked upon Grandma Cobb's book with suspicion;
but since she always carried it, thereby keeping it from her
grandchildren, and never read it, we agreed that it could not do
much harm.
The very first time that I saw Grandma Cobb, at Caroline Liscom's,
she had that book. I knew it by the red cover and a baking-powder
advertisement on the back; and the next time also--that was at the
seventeenth-of-June picnic.
The whole Jameson family went to the picnic, rather to our surprise.
I think people had a fancy that Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson would be
above our little rural picnic. We had yet to understand Mrs. Jameson,
and learn that, however much she really held herself above and aloof,
she had not the slightest intention of letting us alone, perhaps
because she thoroughly believed in her own nonmixable quality. Of
course it would always be quite safe for oil to go to a picnic with
water, no matter how exclusive it might be.
The picnic was in Leonard's grove, and young and old were asked. The
seventeenth-of-June picnic is a regular institution in our village. I
went with Louisa, and little Alice in her new white muslin dress; the
child had been counting on it for weeks. We were nearly all assembled
when the Jamesons arrived. Half a dozen of us had begun to lay the
table for luncheon, though we were not to have it for an hour or two.
We always thought it a good plan to make all our preparations in
season. We were collecting the baskets and boxes, and it did look as
if we were to have an unusual feast that year. Those which we peeped
into appeared especially tempting. Mrs. Nathan Butters had brought a
great loaf of her rich fruit cake, a kind for which she is famous in
the village, and Mrs. Sim White had brought two of her whipped-cream
pies. Mrs. Ketchum had brought six mince pies, which were a real
rarity in June, and Flora Clark had brought a six-quart pail full of
those jumbles she makes, so rich that if you drop one it crumbles to
pieces. Then there were two great pinky hams and a number of
chickens. Louisa and I had brought a chicken; we had one of ours
killed, and I had roasted it the day before.
I remarked to Mrs. Ketchum that we should have an unusually nice
dinner; and so we should have had if it had not been for Mrs. H.
Boardman Jameson.
The Jamesons came driving into the grove in the Liscom carryall and
their buggy. Mr. Jacob Liscom was in charge of the carryall, and the
Jameson boy was on the front seat with him; on the back seat were
Grandma, or Madam Cobb, and the younger daughter. Harry Liscom drove
the bay horse in the buggy, and Mrs. Jameson and Harriet were with
him, he sitting between them, very uncomfortably, as it appeared--his
knees were touching the dasher, as he is a tall young man.
Caroline Liscom did not come, and I did not wonder at it for one.
She must have thought it a good chance to rest one day from taking
boarders. We were surprised that Mrs. Jameson, since she is such a
stout woman, did not go in the carryall, and let either her younger
daughter or the boy go with Harry and Harriet in the buggy. We heard
afterward that she thought it necessary that she should go with them
as a chaperon. That seemed a little strange to us, since our village
girls were all so well conducted that we thought nothing of their
going buggy-riding with a good young man like Harry Liscom; he is a
church member and prominent in the Sunday-school, and this was in
broad daylight and the road full of other carriages. So people stared
and smiled a little to see Harry driving in with his knees braced
against the dasher, and the buggy canting to one side with the weight
of Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson. He looked rather shamefaced, I thought,
though he is a handsome, brave young fellow, and commonly carries
himself boldly enough. Harriet Jameson looked very pretty, though her
costume was not, to my way of thinking, quite appropriate. However,
I suppose that she was not to blame, poor child, and it may easily
be more embarrassing to have old fine clothes than old poor ones.
Really, Harriet Jameson would have looked better dressed that day in
an old calico gown than the old silk one which she wore. Her waist
was blue silk with some limp chiffon at the neck and sleeves, and her
skirt was old brown silk all frayed at the bottom and very shiny.
There were a good many spots on it, too, and some mud stains, though
it had not rained for two weeks.
However, the girl looked pretty, and her hair was done with a stylish
air, and she wore her old Leghorn hat, with its wreath of faded
French flowers, in a way which was really beyond our girls.
And as for Harry Liscom, it was plain enough to be seen that, aside
from his discomfiture at the close attendance of Mrs. H. Boardman
Jameson, he was blissfully satisfied and admiring. I was rather sorry
to see it on his account, though I had nothing against the girl. I
think, on general principles, that it is better usually for a young
man of our village to marry one of his own sort; that he has a better
chance of contentment and happiness. However, in this case it seemed
quite likely that there would be no chance of married happiness at
all. It did not look probable that Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson would
smile upon her eldest daughter's marriage with the son of "a good
woman," and I was not quite sure as to what Caroline Liscom would
say.
Mr. Jacob Liscom is a pleasant-faced, mild-eyed man, very tall and
slender. He lifted out the Jameson boy, who did not jump out over the
wheel, as boys generally do when arriving at a picnic, and then he
tipped over the front seat and helped out Madam Cobb, and the younger
daughter, whose name was Sarah. We had not thought much of such
old-fashioned names as Harriet and Sarah for some years past in our
village, and it seemed rather odd taste in these city people. We
considered Hattie and Sadie much prettier. Generally the Harriets and
Sarahs endured only in the seclusion of the family Bible and the
baptismal records. Quite a number of the ladies had met Mrs. Jameson,
having either called at Mrs. Liscom's and seen her there, or having
spoken to her at church; and as for Grandma Cobb, she had had time to
visit nearly every house in the village, as I knew, though she had
not been to mine. Grandma Cobb got out, all smiling, and Jacob Liscom
handed her the box of peppermints and the paper-covered novel, and
then Harry Liscom helped out Harriet and her mother.
Mrs. Jameson walked straight up to us who were laying the table, and
Harry followed her with a curiously abashed expression, carrying a
great tin cracker-box in one hand and a large basket in the other. We
said good-morning as politely as we knew how to Mrs. Jameson, and she
returned it with a brisk air which rather took our breaths away, it
was so indicative of urgent and very pressing business. Then, to our
utter astonishment, up she marched to the nearest basket on the
table and deliberately took off the cover and began taking out the
contents. It happened to be Mrs. Nathan Butters' basket. Mrs. Jameson
lifted out the great loaf of fruit cake and set it on the table
with a contemptuous thud, as it seemed to us; then she took out a
cranberry pie and a frosted apple pie, and set them beside it. She
opened Mrs. Peter Jones' basket next, and Mrs. Jones stood there
all full of nervous twitches and saw her take out a pile of ham
sandwiches and a loaf of chocolate cake and a bottle of pickles. She
went on opening the baskets and boxes one after another, and we stood
watching her. Finally she came to the pail full of jumbles, and her
hand slipped and the most of them fell to the ground and were a mass
of crumbles.
Then Mrs. Jameson spoke; she had not before said a word. "These are
enough to poison the whole village," said she, and she sniffed with
a proud uplifting of her nose.
I am sure that a little sound, something between a groan and a gasp,
came from us, but no one spoke. I felt that it was fortunate, and
yet I was almost sorry that Flora Clark, who made those jumbles, was
not there; she had gone to pick wild flowers with her Sunday-school
class. Flora is very high-spirited and very proud of her jumbles, and
I knew that she would not have stood it for a minute to hear them
called poison. There would certainly have been words then and there,
for Flora is afraid of nobody. She is a smart, handsome woman, and
would have been married long ago if it had not been for her temper.
Mrs. Jameson did not attempt to gather up the jumbles; she just went
on after that remark of hers, opening the rest of the things; there
were only one or two more. Then she took the cracker-box which Harry
had brought; he had stolen away to put up his horse, and it looked to
me very much as if Harriet had stolen away with him, for I could not
see her anywhere.
Mrs. Jameson lifted this cracker-box on to the table and opened it.
It was quite full of thick, hard-looking biscuits, or crackers. She
laid them in a pile beside the other things; then she took up the
basket and opened that. There was another kind of a cracker in that,
and two large papers of something. When everything was taken out she
pointed at the piles of eatables on the table, and addressed us:
"Ladies, attention!" rapping slightly with a spoon at the same time.
Her voice was very sweet, with a curious kind of forced sweetness:
"Ladies, attention! I wish you to carefully observe the food upon
the table before us. I wish you to consider it from the standpoint
of wives and mothers of families. There is the food which you have
brought, unwholesome, indigestible; there is mine, approved of by the
foremost physicians and men of science of the day. For ten years I
have had serious trouble with the alimentary canal, and this food
has kept me in strength and vigor. Had I attempted to live upon your
fresh biscuits, your frosted cakes, your rich pastry, I should be in
my grave. One of those biscuits which you see there before you is
equal in nourishment to six of your indigestible pies, or every cake
upon the table. The great cause of the insanity and dyspepsia so
prevalent among the rural classes is rich pie and cake. I feel it my
duty to warn you. I hope, ladies, that you will consider carefully
what I have said."
With that, Mrs. Jameson withdrew herself a little way and sat down
under a tree on a cushion which had been brought in the carryall. We
looked at one another, but we did not say anything for a few minutes.
Finally, Mrs. White, who is very good-natured, remarked that she
supposed that she meant well, and she had better put her pies back in
the basket or they would dry up. We all began putting back the things
which Mrs. Jameson had taken out, except the broken jumbles, and
were very quiet. However, we could not help feeling astonished and
aggrieved at what Mrs. Jameson had said about the insanity and
dyspepsia in our village, since we could scarcely remember one case
of insanity, and very few of us had to be in the least careful as
to what we ate. Mrs. Peter Jones did say in a whisper that if Mrs.
Jameson had had dyspepsia ten years on those hard biscuits it
was more than any of us had had on our cake and pie. We left the
biscuits, and the two paper packages which Mrs. Jameson had brought,
in a heap on the table just where she had put them.
After we had replaced the baskets we all scattered about, trying to
enjoy ourselves in the sweet pine woods, but it was hard work, we
were so much disturbed by what had happened. We wondered uneasily,
too, what Flora Clark would say about her jumbles. We were all quiet,
peaceful people who dreaded altercation; it made our hearts beat too
fast. Taking it altogether, we felt very much as if some great,
overgrown bird of another species had gotten into our village nest,
and we were in the midst of an awful commotion of strange wings and
beak. Still we agreed that Mrs. Jameson had probably meant well.
Grandma Cobb seemed to be enjoying herself. She was moving about, her
novel under her arm and her peppermint box in her hand, holding up
her gown daintily in front. She spoke to everybody affably, and told
a number confidentially that her daughter was very delicate about
her eating, but she herself believed in eating what you liked.
Harriet and Harry Liscom were still missing, and so were the younger
daughter, Sarah, and the boy. The boy's name, by the way, was Cobb,
his mother's maiden name. That seemed strange to us, but it possibly
would not have seemed so had it been a prettier name.
Just before lunch-time Cobb and his sister Sarah appeared, and they
were in great trouble. Jonas Green, who owns the farm next the grove,
was with them, and actually had Cobb by the hair, holding all his
gathered-up curls tight in his fist. He held Sarah by one arm, too,
and she was crying. Cobb was crying, too, for that matter, and crying
out loud like a baby.
Jonas Green is a very brusque man, and he did look as angry as I had
ever seen any one, and when I saw what those two were carrying I did
not much wonder. Their hands were full of squash blossoms and potato
blossoms, and Jonas Green's garden is the pride of his life.
Jonas Green marched straight up to Mrs. Jameson under her tree, and
said in a loud voice: "Ma'am, if this boy and girl are yours I think
it is about time you taught them better than to tramp through folks'
fields picking things that don't belong to them, and I expect what
I've lost in squashes and potatoes to be made good to me."
We all waited, breathless, and Mrs. Jameson put on her eyeglasses
and looked up. Then she spoke sweetly.
"My good man," said she, "if, when you come to dig your squashes, you
find less than usual, and when you come to pick your potatoes the
bushes are not in as good condition as they generally are, you may
come to me and I will make it right with you."
Mrs. Jameson spoke with the greatest dignity and sweetness, and we
almost felt as if she were the injured party, in spite of all those
squash and potato blossoms. As for Jonas Green, he stared at her for
the space of a minute, then he gave a loud laugh, let go of the boy
and girl, and strode away. We heard him laughing to himself as he
went; all through his life the mention of potato bushes and digging
squashes was enough to send him into fits of laughter. It was the
joke of his lifetime, for Jonas Green had never been a merry man, and
it was probably worth more than the vegetables which he had lost. I
pitied Cobb and Sarah, they were so frightened, and got hold of them
myself and comforted them. Sarah was just such another little timid,
open-mouthed, wide-eyed sort of thing as her brother, and they were
merely picking flowers, as they supposed.
"I never saw such beautiful yellow flowers," Sarah said, sobbing and
looking ruefully at her great bouquet of squash blossoms. This little
Sarah, who was only twelve, and very small and childish for her age,
said sooner and later many ignorant, and yet quaintly innocent things
about our country life, which were widely repeated. It was Sarah who
said, when she was offered some honey at a village tea-drinking, "Oh,
will you please tell me what time you drive home your bees? and do
they give honey twice a day like the cows?" It was Sarah who, when
her brother was very anxious to see the pigs on Mr. White's farm,
said, "Oh, be quiet, Cobb, dear; it is too late tonight; the pigs
must have gone into their holes."
I think poor Cobb and Sarah might have had a pleasant time at the
picnic, after all--for my little Alice made friends with them, and
Mrs. Sim White's Charlie--had it not been for their mother's obliging
them to eat her hygienic biscuits for their luncheons. It was really
pitiful to see them looking so wistfully at the cake and pie. I had a
feeling of relief that all the rest of us were not obliged to make
our repast of hygienic bread. I had a fear lest Mrs. Jameson might
try to force us to do so. However, all she did was to wait until we
were fairly started upon our meal, and then send around her children
with her biscuits, following them herself with the most tender
entreaties that we would put aside that unwholesome food and not risk
our precious lives. She would not, however, allow us to drink our own
coffee--about that she was firm. She insisted upon our making some
hygienic coffee which she had brought from the city, and we were
obliged to yield, or appear in a very stubborn and ungrateful light.
The coffee was really very good, and we did not mind. The other
parcel which she had brought contained a health food, to be made
into a sort of porridge with hot water, and little cups of that were
passed around, Mrs. Jameson's face fairly beaming with benevolence
the while, and there was no doubt that she was entirely in earnest.
Still, we were all so disturbed--that is, all of us elder
people--that I doubt if anybody enjoyed that luncheon unless it was
Grandma Cobb. She did not eat hygienic biscuits, but did eat cake and
pie in unlimited quantities. I was really afraid that she would make
herself ill with Mrs. Butter's fruit cake. One thing was a great
relief, to me at least: Flora Clark did not know the true story of
her jumbles until some time afterward. Mrs. White told her that the
pail had been upset and they were broken, and we were all so sorry;
and she did not suspect. We were glad to avoid a meeting between her
and Mrs. Jameson, for none of us felt as if we could endure it then.
I suppose the young folks enjoyed the picnic if we did not, and that
was the principal thing to be considered, after all. I know that
Harry Liscom and Harriet Jameson enjoyed it, and all the more that
it was a sort of stolen pleasure. Just before we went home I was
strolling off by myself near the brook, and all of a sudden saw the
two young things under a willow tree. I stood back softly, and they
never knew that I was there, but they were sitting side by side, and
Harry's arm was around the girl's waist, and her head was on his
shoulder, and they were looking at each other as if they saw angels,
and I thought to myself that, whether it was due to hygienic bread or
pie, they were in love--and what would Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson and
Caroline Liscom say?
III
MRS. JAMESON IMPROVES US
It was some time before we really understood that we were to be
improved. We might have suspected it from the episode of the hygienic
biscuits at the picnic, but we did not. We were not fairly aware of
it until the Ladies' Sewing Circle met one afternoon with Mrs. Sim
White, the president, the first week in July.
It was a very hot afternoon, and I doubt if we should have had the
meeting that day had it not been that we were anxious to get off
a barrel as soon as possible to a missionary in Minnesota. The
missionary had seven children, the youngest only six weeks old, and
they were really suffering. Flora Clark did say that if it were as
hot in Minnesota as it was in Linnville she would not thank anybody
to send her clothes; she would be thankful for the excuse of poverty
to go without them. But Mrs. Sim White would not hear to having the
meeting put off; she said that a cyclone might come up any minute in
Minnesota and cool the air, and then think of all those poor children
with nothing to cover them. Flora Clark had the audacity to say that
after the cyclone there might not be any children to cover, and a few
of the younger members tittered; but we never took Flora's speeches
seriously. She always came to the sewing meeting, no matter how much
she opposed it, and sewed faster than any of us. She came that
afternoon and made three flannel petticoats for three of the
children, though she did say that she thought the money would have
been better laid out in palm-leaf fans.
We were astonished to see Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson come that very
hot afternoon, for we knew that she considered herself delicate,
and, besides, we wondered that she should feel interested in our
sewing circle. Her daughter Harriet came with her; Madam Cobb, as
I afterward learned, went, instead, to Mrs. Ketchum's, and stayed
all the afternoon, and kept her from going to the meeting at all.
Caroline Liscom came with her boarders, and I knew, the minute I saw
her, that something was wrong. She had a look of desperation and
defiance which I had seen on her face before. Thinks I to myself:
"You are all upset over something, but you have made up your mind
to hide it, whether or no."
Mrs. Jameson had a book in her hand, and when she first came in she
laid it on the table where we cut out our work. Mrs. Liscom went
around the room with her, introducing her to the ladies whom she had
not met before. I could see that she did not like to do it, and was
simply swallowing her objections with hard gulps every time she
introduced her.
Harriet walked behind her mother and Mrs. Liscom, and spoke very
prettily every time she was addressed.
Harriet Jameson was really an exceedingly pretty girl, with a kind of
apologetic sweetness and meekness of manner which won her friends.
Her dress that afternoon was pretty, too: a fine white lawn trimmed
with very handsome embroidery, and a white satin ribbon at the waist
and throat. I understood afterward that Mrs. Jameson did not allow
her daughters to wear their best clothes generally to our village
festivities, but kept them for occasions in the city, since their
fortunes were reduced, thinking that their old finery, though it
might be a little the worse for wear, was good enough for our
unsophisticated eyes. But that might not have been true; Harriet
was very well dressed that afternoon, at all events.
Mrs. Jameson seemed to be really very affable. She spoke cordially
to us all, and then asked to have some work given her; but, as it
happened, there was nothing cut out except a black dress for the
missionary's wife, and she did not like to strain her eyes working
on black.
"Let me cut something out," said she in her brisk manner; "I have
come here to be useful. What is there needing to be cut out?"
It was Flora Clark who replied, and I always suspected her of a
motive in it, for she had heard about her jumbles by that time. She
said there was a little pair of gingham trousers needed for the
missionary's five-year-old boy, and Mrs. Jameson, without a quiver of
hesitation, asked for the gingham and scissors. I believe she would
have undertaken a suit for the missionary with the same alacrity.