one of the village women go there and welcome them, but we did not
know how Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson might take it, and nobody dared go.
Mrs. White said that she would have been glad to make some of her
cream biscuits and send them over, but she knew that Mrs. Jameson
would not eat them, of course, and she did not know whether she would
like any of the others to, and might think it a liberty.
So nobody did anything but watch. It was not an hour after the stage
coach arrived before we saw Grandma Cobb coming up the road. We did
not know whether she was going to Amelia Powers', or Mrs. Jones', or
to our house; but she turned in at our gate.
We went to the door to meet her, and I must say she did seem glad to
see us, and we were glad to see her. In a very short time we knew
all that had happened in the Jameson family since they had left
Linnville, and with no urging, and with even some reluctance on our
part. It did not seem quite right for us to know how much Mrs.
Jameson had paid her dressmaker for making her purple satin, and
still less so for us to know that she had not paid for the making of
her black lace net and the girls' organdy muslins, though she had
been dunned three times. The knowledge was also forced upon us that
all these fine new clothes were left in New York, since the shabby
old ones must be worn out in the country, and that Harriet had cried
because she could not bring some of her pretty gowns with her.
"Her mother does not think that there is any chance of her making a
match here, and she had better save them up till next winter. Dress
does make so much difference in a girl's prospects, you know," said
Grandma Cobb shrewdly.
I thought of poor Harry Liscom, and how sorry his little sweetheart
must have felt not to be able to show herself in her pretty dresses
to him. However, I was exceedingly glad to hear that she had cried,
because it argued well for Harry, and looked as if she had not found
another lover more to her mind in New York.
Indeed, Grandma Cobb informed us presently as to that. "Harriet does
not seem to find anybody," said she. "I suppose it is because H.
Boardman lost his money; young men are so careful nowadays."
Grandma Cobb stayed to tea with us that night; our supper hour came,
and of course we asked her.
Grandma Cobb owned with the greatest frankness that she should like
to stay. "There isn't a thing to eat at our house but hygienic
biscuits and eggs," said she. "My daughter wrote Hannah not to cook
anything until we came; Hannah would have made some cake and pie,
otherwise. I tell my daughter I have got so far along in life without
living on hygienic food, and I am not going to begin. I want to get a
little comfort out of the taste of my victuals, and my digestion is
as good as hers, in spite of all her fussing. For my part," continued
Grandma Cobb, who had at times an almost coarsely humorous method
of expressing herself, "I believe in not having your mind on your
inwards any more than you can possibly help. I believe the best way
to get along with them is to act as if they weren't there."
After Grandma Cobb went home, as late as nine o'clock, I saw a
clinging, shadowy couple stroll past our house, and knew it was
Harriet Jameson and Harry, as did Louisa, and our consciences began
to trouble us again.
"I feel like a traitor to Caroline and to Mrs. Jameson sometimes,"
said I.
"Well, maybe that is better than to be traitor to true love," said
Louisa, which did sound rather sentimental.
The next morning about eleven o'clock Mrs. Jameson came in, and we
knew at once that she was, so to speak, fairly rampant in the field
of improvement for our good, or rather the good of the village, for,
as I said before, she was now resolved upon the welfare of the
village at large, and not that of individuals or even societies.
"I consider that my own sphere has been widened this winter," said
Mrs. Jameson, and Louisa and I regarded her with something like
terror. Flora Clark said, when she heard that remark of Mrs.
Jameson's, that she felt, for her part, as if a kicking horse had got
out of the pasture, and there was no knowing where he would stop.
We supposed that it must be an evidence of Mrs. Jameson's own advance
in improvement that she had adopted such a singular costume,
according to our ideas. She was dressed no longer in the rich fabrics
which had always aroused our admiration, but, instead, wore a gown of
brown cloth cut short enough to expose her ankles, which were,
however, covered with brown gaiters made of cloth like her dress. She
wore a shirt-waist of brown silk, and a little cutaway jacket. Mrs.
Jameson looked as if she were attired for riding the wheel, but that
was a form of exercise to which she was by no means partial either
for herself or for her daughters. I could never understand just why
she was not partial to wheeling. Wheels were not as fashionable then
as now, but Mrs. Jameson was always quite up with, if not in advance
of, her age.
Neither of us admired her in this costume. Mrs. Jameson was very
stout, and the short skirt was not, to our way of thinking, becoming.
"Don't you think that I have adopted a very sensible and becoming
dress for country wear?" said she, and Louisa and I did not know what
to say. We did not wish to be untruthful and we disliked to be
impolite. Finally, Louisa said faintly that she thought it must be
very convenient for wear in muddy weather, and I echoed her.
"Of course, you don't have to hold it up at all," said I.
"It is the only costume for wear in the country," said Mrs. Jameson,
"and I hope to have all the women in Linnville wearing it before the
summer is over."
Louisa and I glanced at each other in dismay. I think that we both
had mental pictures of some of the women whom we knew in that
costume. Some of our good, motherly, village faces, with their
expressions of homely dignity and Christian decorousness, looking at
us from under that jaunty English walking-hat, in lieu of their sober
bonnets, presented themselves to our imaginations, and filled us with
amusement and consternation.
"Only think how Mrs. Sim White would look," Louisa said after Mrs.
Jameson had gone, and we both saw Mrs. White going down the street in
that costume indicative of youthful tramps over long stretches of
road, and mad spins on wheels, instead of her nice, softly falling
black cashmere skirts covering decently her snowy stockings and her
cloth congress boots; and we shuddered.
"Of course, she would have to wear gaiters like Mrs. Jameson," said
Louisa, "but it would be dreadful."
"Well, there's one comfort," said I; "Mrs. White will never wear it."
"Nor anybody else," said Louisa.
Still we did feel a little nervous about it; there is never any
estimating the influence of a reformer. However, we were sure of
ourselves. Louisa and I agreed that we never would be seen out in any
such costume. Not very many in the village were. There were a few
women, who were under the influence of Mrs. Jameson, who did cut off
some of their old dresses and make themselves some leggings with hers
for a pattern. After their housework was done they started off for
long tramps with strides of independence and defiance, but they did
not keep it up very long; none of them after Mrs. Jameson went away.
To tell the truth, most of the women in our village had so much work
to do, since they kept no servants, that they could not take many
ten-mile walks, no matter what length skirts they wore. However, many
wore the short ones while doing housework, which was very sensible.
During that morning call, Mrs. Jameson, besides the reformed costume,
advocated another innovation which fairly took our breaths away.
She was going to beautify the village. We had always considered the
village beautiful as it was, and we bridled a little at that.
"There is scarcely a house in this village which is overgrown with
vines," said she. "I am going to introduce vines."
Louisa ventured to say that she thought vines very pretty, but she
knew some people objected to them on the score of spiders, and also
thought that they were bad for the paint. We poor, frugal village
folk have always to consider whether beauty will trespass on utility,
and consequently dollars and cents. There are many innocent slaves to
Mammon in our midst.
Mrs. Jameson sniffed in her intensely scornful way. "Spiders and
paint!" said she. "I am going to have the houses of this village
vine-clad. It is time that the people were educated in beauty."
"People won't like it if she does go to planting vines around their
houses without their permission, even if she does mean well," said
Louisa after she had gone.
"She never will dare to without their permission," said I; but I
wondered while I spoke, and Louisa laughed.
"Don't you be too sure of that," said she--and she was right.
Permission in a few cases Mrs. Jameson asked, and in the rest she
assumed. Old Jonas Martin ransacked the woods for vines--clematis and
woodbine--then he, with Mrs. Jameson to superintend, set them out
around our village houses. The calm insolence of benevolence with
which Mrs. Jameson did this was inimitable. People actually did not
know whether to be furious or amused at this liberty taken with their
property. They saw with wonder Mrs. Jameson, with old Jonas following
laden with vines and shovel, also the girls and Cobb, who had been
pressed, however unwillingly, into service, tagging behind trailing
with woodbine and clematis; they stood by and saw their house-banks
dug up and the vines set, and in most cases said never a word. If
they did expostulate, Mrs. Jameson only directed Jonas where to put
the next vine, and assured the bewildered owner of the premises that
he would in time thank her.
However, old Jonas often took the irate individual aside for a
consolatory word. "Lord a-massy, don't ye worry," old Jonas would
say, with a sly grin; "ye know well enough that there won't a blamed
one of the things take root without no sun an' manure; might as well
humor her long as she's sot on 't."
Then old Jonas would wink slowly with a wink of ineffable humor.
There was no mistaking the fact that old Jonas was getting a deal of
solid enjoyment out of the situation. He had had a steady, hard grind
of existence, and was for the first time seeing the point of some of
those jokes of life for which his natural temperament had given him
a relish. He acquired in those days a quizzical cock to his right
eyebrow, and a comically confidential quirk to his mouth, which were
in themselves enough to provoke a laugh.
Mrs. Jameson, however, did not confine herself, in her efforts for
the wholesale decoration of our village, to the planting of vines
around our house-walls; and there were, in one or two cases, serious
consequences.
When, thinking that corn-cockles and ox-eyed daisies would be a
charming combination at the sides of the country road, she caused
them to be sowed, and thereby introduced them into Jonas Green's
wheat-field, he expostulated in forcible terms, and threatened a suit
for damages; and when she caused a small grove of promising young
hemlocks to be removed from Eben Betts' woodland and set out in the
sandy lot in which the schoolhouse stands, without leave or license,
it was generally conceded that she had exceeded her privileges as a
public benefactress.
I said at once there would be trouble, when Louisa came home and told
me about it.
"The school house looks as if it were set in a shady grove," said
she, "and is ever so pretty. The worst of it is, of course, the trees
won't grow in that sand-hill."
"The worst of it is, if she has taken those trees without leave or
license, as I suspect, Eben Betts will not take it as a joke," said
I; and I was right.
Mr. H. Boardman Jameson had to pay a goodly sum to Eben Betts to hush
the matter up; and the trees soon withered, and were cut up for
firewood for the schoolhouse. People blamed old Jonas Martin somewhat
for his share of this transaction, arguing that he ought not to have
yielded to Mrs. Jameson in such a dishonest transaction, even in the
name of philanthropy; but he defended himself, saying: "It's easy
'nough to talk, but I'd like to see any of ye stand up agin that
woman. When she gits headed, it's either git out from under foot or
git knocked over."
Mrs. Jameson not only strove to establish improvements in our midst,
but she attacked some of our time-honored institutions, one against
which she directed all the force of her benevolent will being our
front doors. Louisa and I had always made free with our front door,
as had some others; but, generally speaking, people in our village
used their front doors only for weddings, funerals, and parties. The
side doors were thought to be good enough for ordinary occasions,
and we never dreamed, when dropping in for a neighborly call, of
approaching any other. Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson resolved to do away
with this state of things, and also with our sacred estimate of the
best parlors, which were scarcely opened from one year's end to the
other, and seemed redolent of past grief and joy, with no dilution by
the every-day occurrences of life. Mrs. Jameson completely ignored
the side door, marched boldly upon the front one, and compelled the
mistress to open it to her resolute knocks. Once inside, she advanced
straight upon the sacred precincts of the best parlor, and seated
herself in the chilly, best rocking-chair with the air of one who
usurps a throne, asking with her manner of sweet authority if the
blinds could not be opened and the sun let in, as it felt damp to
her, and she was very susceptible to dampness. It was told, on good
authority, that in some cases she even threw open the blinds and
windows herself while the person who admitted her was calling other
members of the family.
It was also reported that she had on several occasions marched
straight up to a house which she had no design of entering, thrown
open the parlor blinds, and admitted the sunlight, with its fading
influence, on the best carpet, and then proceeded down the street
with the bearing of triumphant virtue. It was related that in a
number of instances the indignant housewife, on entering her best
parlor, found that the sun had been streaming in there all day,
right on the carpet.
Mrs. Jameson also waged fierce war on another custom dear to the
average village heart, and held sacred, as everything should be which
is innocently dear to one's kind, by all who did not exactly approve
of it.
In many of our village parlors, sometimes in the guest-chambers, when
there had been many deaths in the family, hung the framed
coffin-plates and faded funeral wreaths of departed dear ones. Now
and then there was a wreath of wool flowers, a triumph of domestic
art, which encircled the coffin-plate instead of the original funeral
garland. Mrs. Jameson set herself to work to abolish this grimly
pathetic New England custom with all her might. She did everything
but actually tear them from our walls. That, even in her fiery zeal
of improvement, she did not quite dare attempt. She made them a
constant theme of conversation at sewing circle and during her
neighborly calls. She spoke of the custom quite openly as grewsome
and barbarous, but I must say without much effect. Mrs. Jameson found
certain strongholds of long-established customs among us which were
impregnable to open rancor or ridicule--and that was one of them.
The coffin-plates and the funeral wreaths continued to hang in the
parlors and chambers.
Once Flora Clark told Mrs. Jameson to her face, in the sewing circle,
when she had been talking for a good hour about the coffin-plates,
declaring them to be grewsome and shocking, that, for her part, she
did not care for them, did not have one in her house--though every
one of her relations were dead, and she might have her walls covered
with them--but she believed in respecting those who did; and it
seemed to her that, however much anybody felt called upon to
interfere with the ways of the living, the relics of the dead should
be left alone. Flora concluded by saying that it seemed to her that
if the Linnville folks let Mrs. Jameson's bean-pots alone, she might
keep her hands off their coffin-plates.
Mrs. Jameson was quite unmoved even by that. She said that Miss Clark
did not realize, as she would do were her sphere wider, the
incalculable harm that such a false standard of art might do in a
community: that it might even pervert the morals.
"I guess if we don't have anything to hurt our morals any worse than
our coffin-plates, we shall do," returned Flora. She said afterward
that she felt just like digging up some of her own coffin-plates,
and having them framed and hung up, and asking Mrs. Jameson to tea.
All through June and a part of July Louisa and I had seen the
clandestine courtship between Harry Liscom and Harriet Jameson going
on. We could scarcely help it. We kept wondering why neither Caroline
Liscom nor Mrs. Jameson seemed aware of it. Of course, Mrs. Jameson
was so occupied with the village welfare that it might account for it
in her case, but we were surprised that Caroline was so blinded. We
both of us thought that she would be very much averse to the match,
from her well-known opinion of the Jamesons; and it proved that
she was. Everybody talked so much about Harry and his courtship of
Harriet that it seemed incredible that Caroline should not hear of
it, even if she did not see anything herself to awaken suspicion. We
did not take into consideration the fact that a strong-minded woman
like Caroline Liscom has difficulty in believing anything which she
does not wish to be true, and that her will stands in her own way.
However, on Wednesday of the second week of July both she and Mrs.
Jameson had their eyes opened perforce. It was a beautiful moonlight
evening, and Louisa and I were sitting at the windows looking out and
chatting peacefully. Little Alice had gone to bed, and we had not
lit the lamp, it was so pleasant in the moonlight. Presently, about
half-past eight o'clock, two figures strolled by, and we knew who
they were.
"It is strange to me that Grandma Cobb does not find it out, if Mrs.
Jameson is too wrapped up in her own affairs and with grafting ours
into them," said Louisa thoughtfully.
I remarked that I should not be surprised if she did know; and it
turned out afterward that it was so. Grandma Cobb had known all the
time, and Harriet had gone through her room to get to the back
stairs, down which she stole to meet Harry.
The young couple had not been long past when a stout, tall figure
went hurriedly by with an angry flirt of skirts--short ones.
"Oh, dear, that is Mrs. Jameson!" cried Louisa.
We waited breathless. Harry and Harriet could have gone no farther
than the grove, for in a very short time back they all came, Mrs.
Jameson leading--almost pulling--along her daughter, and Harry
pressing close at her side, with his arm half extended as if to
protect his sweetheart. Mrs. Jameson kept turning and addressing him;
we could hear the angry clearness of her voice, though we could not
distinguish many words; and finally, when they were almost past we
saw poor Harriet also turn to him, and we judged that she, as well as
her mother, was begging him to go, for he directly caught her hand,
gave it a kiss, said something which we almost caught, to the effect
that she must not be afraid--he would take care that all came out
right--and was gone.
"Oh, dear," sighed Louisa, and I echoed her. I did pity the poor
young things.
To our surprise, and also to our dismay, it was not long before we
saw Mrs. Jameson hurrying back, and she turned in at our gate.
Louisa jumped and lighted the lamp, and I set the rocking-chair for
Mrs. Jameson.
"No, I can't sit down," said she, waving her hand. "I am too much
disturbed to sit down," but even as she said that she did drop into
the rocking-chair. Louisa said afterward that Mrs. Jameson was one
who always would sit down during all the vicissitudes of life, no
matter how hard she took them.
Mrs. Jameson was very much disturbed; we had never seen her calm
superiority so shaken; it actually seemed as if she realized for once
that she was not quite the peer of circumstances, as Louisa said.
"I wish to inquire if you have known long of this shameful
clandestine love affair of my daughter's?" said she, and Louisa and I
were nonplussed. We did not know what to say. Luckily, Mrs. Jameson
did not wait for an answer; she went on to pour her grievance into
our ears, without even stopping to be sure whether they were
sympathizing ones or not.
"My daughter cannot marry into one of these village families," said
she, without apparently the slightest consideration of the fact that
we were a village family. "My daughter has been very differently
brought up. I have other views for her; it is impossible; it must be
understood at once that I will not have it."
Mrs. Jameson was still talking, and Louisa and I listening with more
of dismay than sympathy, when who should walk in but Caroline Liscom
herself.
She did not knock--she never does; she opened the door with no
warning whatsoever, and stood there.
Louisa turned pale, and I know I must have. I could not command my
voice, though I tried hard to keep calm.
I said "Good-morning," when it should have been "Good-evening,"
and placed Alice's little chair, in which she could not by any
possibility sit, for Caroline.
"No, I don't want to sit down," said Caroline, and she kept her word
better than Mrs. Jameson. She turned directly to the latter. "I have
just been over to your house," said she, "and they told me that you
had come over here. I want to say something to you, and that is, I
don't want my son to marry your daughter, and I will never give my
consent to it, never, never!"
Mrs. Jameson's face was a study. For a minute she had not a word
to say; she only gasped. Finally she spoke. "You can be no more
unwilling to have your son marry my daughter than I am to have my
daughter marry your son," said she.
Then Caroline said something unexpected. "I would like to know what
you have against my son, as fine a young man as there is anywhere
about, I don't care who he is," said she.
And Mrs. Jameson said something unexpected. "I should like to inquire
what you have against my daughter?" said she.
"Well, I'll tell you one thing," returned Caroline; "she doesn't know
enough to keep a doll-baby's house, and she ain't neat."
Mrs. Jameson choked; it did not seem as if she could reply in her
usual manner to such a plain statement of objections. She and
Caroline glared at each other a minute; then to our great relief, for
no one wants her house turned into the seat of war, Caroline simply
repeated, "I shall never give my consent to have my son marry your
daughter," and went out.
Mrs. Jameson did not stay long after that. She rose, saying that her
nerves were very much shaken, and that she felt it sad that all her
efforts for the welfare and improvement of the village should have
ended in this, and bade us a mournful good-evening and left.
Louisa and I had an impression that she held us in some way
responsible, and we could not see why, though I did reflect guiltily
how I had asked the lovers into my house that October night. Louisa
and I agreed that, take it altogether, we had never seen so much
mutual love and mutual scorn in two families.
VI
THE CENTENNIAL
The older one grows, the less one wonders at the sudden, inconsequent
turns which an apparently reasonable person will make in a line of
conduct. Still I must say that I was not prepared for what Mrs. H.
Boardman Jameson did in about a week after she had declared that her
daughter should never marry Harry Liscom: capitulated entirely, and
gave her consent.
It was Grandma Cobb who brought us the news, coming in one morning
before we had our breakfast dishes washed.
"My daughter told Harriet last night that she had written to her
father and he had no objections, and that she would withdraw hers
on further consideration," said Grandma Cobb, with a curious,
unconscious imitation of Mrs. Jameson's calm state of manner. Then
she at once relapsed into her own. "My daughter says that she is
convinced that the young man is worthy, though he is not socially
quite what she might desire, and she does not feel it right to part
them if they have a true affection for each other," said Grandma
Cobb. Then she added, with a shake of her head and a gleam of
malicious truth in her blue eyes: "That is not the whole of it;
Robert Browning was the means of bringing it about."