Chapter 6

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."

"Robert Browning!" I repeated. I was bewildered, and Louisa stared at me in a frightened way. She said afterward that she thought for a minute that Grandma Cobb was out of her head.

But Grandma Cobb went on to explain. "Yes, my daughter seems to look upon Robert Browning as if everything he said was written on tables of stone," said she; "and last night she had a letter from Mrs. Addison Sears, who feels just the same way. My daughter had written her about Harriet's love affair, and this was in answer. Mrs. Sears dwelt a good deal upon Mr. Browning's own happy marriage; and then she quoted passages; and my daughter became convinced that Robert Browning would have been in favor of the match,--and that settled it. My daughter proves things by Browning almost the same way as people do by Scripture, it seems to me sometimes. I am thankful that it has turned out so," Grandma Cobb went on to say, "for I like the young man myself; and as for Harriet, her mind is set on him, and she's something like me: once get her mind set on anybody, that's the end of it. My daughter has got the same trait, but it works the contrary way: when she once gets her mind set against anybody, that's the end of it unless Robert Browning steps in to turn her."

Louisa and I were heartily glad to hear of Mr. Browning's unconscious intercession and its effect upon Mrs. Jameson, but we wondered what Caroline Liscom would say.

"It will take more than passages of poetry to move her," said Louisa when Grandma Cobb had gone.

All we could do was to wait for developments concerning Caroline. Then one day she came in and completely opened her heart to us with that almost alarming frankness which a reserved woman often displays if she does lose her self-restraint.

"I can't have it anyhow," said Caroline Liscom; and I must say I did pity her, though I had a weakness for little Harriet. "I feel as if it would kill me if Harry marries that girl--and I am afraid he will; but it shall never be with my consent, and he shall never bring her to my house while I am in it."

Then Caroline went on to make revelations about Harriet which were actually dire accusations from a New England housewife like her.

"It was perfectly awful the way her room looked while she was at my house," said Caroline; "and she doesn't know how to do one thing about a house. She can't make a loaf of bread to save her life, and she has no more idea how to sweep a room and dust it than a baby. I had it straight from Hannah Bell that she dusted her room and swept it afterward. Think of my boy, brought up the way he has been, everything as neat as wax, if I do say it, and his victuals always cooked nice, and ready when he wanted them, marrying a girl like that. I can't and I won't have it. It's all very well now, he's captivated by a pretty face; but wait a little, and he'll find out there's something else. He'll find out there's comfort to be considered as well as love. And she don't even know how to do plain sewing. Only look at the bottoms of her dresses, with the braid hanging; and I know she never mends her stockings--I had it from the woman who washes them. Only think of my son, who has always had his stockings mended as smooth as satin, either going with holes in them, or else having them gathered up in hard bunches and getting corns. I can't and I won't have it!"

Caroline finished all her remarks with that, setting her mouth hard. It was evident that she was firm in her decision. I suggested mildly that the girl had never been taught, and had always had so much money that she was excusable for not knowing how to do all these little things which the Linnville girls had been forced to do.

"I know all that," said Caroline; "I am not blaming her so much as I am her mother. She had better have stopped reading Browning and improving her own mind and the village, and improved her own daughter, so she could walk in the way Providence has set for a woman without disgracing herself. But I am looking at her as she is, without any question of blame, for the sake of my son. He shall not marry a girl who don't know how to make his home comfortable any better than she does--not if his mother can save him from it."

Louisa asked timidly--we were both of us rather timid, Caroline was so fierce--if she did not think she could teach Harriet.

"I don't know whether I can or not!" said Caroline. "Anyway, I am not going to try. What kind of a plan would it be for me to have her in the house teaching her, where Harry could see her every day, and perhaps after all find out that it would not amount to anything. I'd rather try to cure drink than make a good housewife of a girl who hasn't been brought up to it. How do I know it's in her? And there I would have her right under Harry's nose. She shall never marry him; I can't and I won't have it."

Louisa and I speculated as to whether Caroline would be able to help it, when she had taken her leave after what seemed to us must have been a most unsatisfactory call, with not enough sympathy from us to cheer her.

"Harry Liscom has a will, as well as his mother, and he is a man grown, and running the woollen factory on shares with his father, and able to support a wife. I don't believe he is going to stop, now the girl's mother has consented, because his mother tells him to," said Louisa; and I thought she was right.

That very evening Harry went past to the Jamesons, in his best suit, carrying a cane, which he swung with the assured air of a young man going courting where he is plainly welcome.

"I am glad for one thing," said I, "and that is there is no more secret strolling in my grove, but open sitting up in her mother's parlor."

Louisa looked at me a little uncertainly, and I saw that there was something which she wanted to say and did not quite dare.

"What is it?" said I.

"Well," said Louisa, hesitatingly, "I was thinking that I supposed--I don't know that it would work at all--maybe her mother wouldn't be willing, and maybe she wouldn't be willing herself--but I was thinking that you were as good a housekeeper as Caroline Liscom, and--you might have the girl in here once in a while and teach her."

"I will do it," said I at once,--"if I can, that is."

I found out that I could. The poor child was only too glad to come to my house and take a few lessons in housekeeping. I waylaid her when she was going past one day, and broached the subject delicately. I said it was a good idea for a young girl to learn as much as she could about keeping a house nice before she had one of her own, and Harriet blushed as red as a rose and thanked me, and arranged to come for her first lesson the very next morning. I got a large gingham apron for her, and we began. I gave her a lesson in bread-making that very day, and found her an apt pupil. I told her that she would make a very good housekeeper--I should not wonder if as good as Mrs. Liscom, who was, I considered, the best in the village; and she blushed again and kissed me.

Louisa and I had been a little worried as to what Mrs. Jameson would say; but we need not have been. Mrs. Jameson was strenuously engaged in uprooting poison-ivy vines, which grew thickly along the walls everywhere in the village. I must say it seemed Scriptural to me, and made me think better in one way of Mrs. Jameson, since it did require considerable heroism.

Luckily, old Martin was one of the few who are exempt from the noxious influence of poison-ivy, and he pulled up the roots with impunity, but I must say without the best success. Poison-ivy is a staunch and persistent thing, and more than a match for Mrs. Jameson. She suffered herself somewhat in the conflict, and went about for some time with her face and hands done up in castor-oil, which we consider a sovereign remedy for poison-ivy. Cobb, too, was more or less a victim to his mother's zeal for uprooting noxious weeds.

It was directly after the poison-ivy that Mrs. Jameson made what may be considered her grand attempt of the season. All at once she discovered what none of the rest of us had thought of--I suppose we must have been lacking in public feeling not to have done so--that our village had been settled exactly one hundred years ago that very August.

Mrs. Jameson came into our house with the news on the twenty-seventh day of July. She had just found it out in an old book which had been left behind and forgotten in the garret of the Wray house.

"We must have a centennial, of course," said she magisterially.

Louisa and I stared at her. "A centennial!" said I feebly. I think visions of Philadelphia, and exhibits of the products of the whole world in our fields and cow-pastures, floated through my mind. Centennial had a stupendous sound to me, and Louisa said afterward it had to her.

"How would you make it?" asked Louisa vaguely of Mrs. Jameson, as if a centennial were a loaf of gingerbread.

Mrs. Jameson had formed her plans with the rapidity of a great general on the eve of a forced battle. "We will take the oldest house in town," said she promptly. "I think that it is nearly as old as the village, and we will fit it up as nearly as possible like a house of one hundred years ago, and we will hold our celebration there."

"Let me see, the oldest house is the Shaw house," said I.

"Why, Emily Shaw is living there," said Louisa in wonder.

"We shall make arrangements with her," returned Mrs. Jameson, with confidence. She looked around our sitting-room, and eyed our old-fashioned highboy, of which we are very proud, and an old-fashioned table which becomes a chair when properly manipulated. "Those will be just the things to go in one of the rooms," said she, without so much as asking our leave.

"Emily Shaw's furniture will have to be put somewhere if so many other things are to be moved in," suggested Louisa timidly; but Mrs. Jameson dismissed that consideration with merely a wave of her hand.

"I think that Mrs. Simeon White has a swell-front bureau and an old looking-glass which will do very well for one of the chambers," she went on to say, "and Miss Clark has a mahogany table." Mrs. Jameson went on calmly enumerating articles of old-fashioned furniture which she had seen in our village houses which she considered suitable to be used in the Shaw house for the centennial.

"I don't see how Emily Shaw is going to live there while all this is going on," remarked Louisa in her usual deprecatory tone when addressing Mrs. Jameson.

"I think we may be able to leave her one room," said Mrs. Jameson; and Louisa and I fairly gasped when we reflected that Emily Shaw had not yet heard a word of the plan.

"I don't know but Emily Shaw will put up with it, for she is pretty meek," said Louisa when Mrs. Jameson had gone hurrying down the street to impart her scheme to others; "but it is lucky for Mrs. Jameson that Flora Clark hasn't the oldest house in town."

I said I doubted if Flora would even consent to let her furniture be displayed in the centennial; but she did. Everybody consented to everything. I don't know whether Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson had really any hypnotic influence over us, or whether we had a desire for the celebration, but the whole village marshalled and marched to her orders with the greatest docility. All our cherished pieces of old furniture were loaded into carts and conveyed to the old Shaw house.

The centennial was to be held the tenth day of August, and there was necessarily quick work. The whole village was in an uproar; none of us who had old-fashioned possessions fairly knew where we were living, so many of them were in the Shaw house; we were short of dishes and bureau drawers, and counterpanes and curtains. Mrs. Jameson never asked for any of these things; she simply took them as by right of war, and nobody gainsaid her, not even Flora Clark. However, poor Emily Shaw was the one who displayed the greatest meekness under provocation. The whole affair must have seemed revolutionary to her. She was a quiet, delicate little woman, no longer young. She did not go out much, not even to the sewing circle or the literary society, and seemed as fond of her home as an animal of its shell--as if it were a part of her. Old as her house was, she had it fitted up in a modern, and, to our village ideas, a very pretty fashion. Emily was quite well-to-do. There were nice tapestry carpets on all the downstairs floors, lace curtains at the windows, and furniture covered with red velvet in the parlor. She had also had the old fireplaces covered up and marble slabs set. There was handsome carved black walnut furniture in the chambers; and taken altogether, the old Shaw house was regarded as one of the best furnished in the village. Mrs. Sim White said she didn't know as she wondered that Emily didn't like to go away from such nice things.

Now every one of these nice things was hustled out of sight to make room for the pieces of old-fashioned furniture. The tapestry carpets were taken up and stowed away in the garrets, the lace curtains were pulled down. In their stead were the old sanded bare floors and curtains of homespun linen trimmed with hand-knitted lace. Emily's nice Marseilles counterpanes were laid aside for the old blue-and-white ones which our grandmothers spun and wove, and her fine oil paintings gave way to old engravings of Webster death-bed scenes and portraits of the Presidents, and samplers. Emily was left one room to herself--a little back chamber over the kitchen--and she took her meals at Flora Clark's, next door. She was obliged to do that, for her kitchen range had been taken down, and there was only the old fireplace furnished with kettles and crane to cook in.

"I suppose my forefathers used to get all their meals there," said poor Emily Shaw, who has at all times a gentle, sad way of speaking, and then seemed on the verge of uncomplaining tears, "but I don't quite feel competent to undertake it now. It looks to me as if the kettles might be hard to lift." Emily glanced at her hands and wrists as she spoke. Emily's hands and arms are very small and bony, as she is in her general construction, though she is tall.

The little chamber which she inhabited during the preparation for the centennial was very hot in those midsummer days, and her face was always suffused with a damp pink when she came out of it; but she uttered no word of complaint, not even when they took down her marble slabs and exposed the yawning mouths of the old fireplaces again. All she said was once in a deprecatory whisper to me, to the effect that she was a little sorry to have strangers see her house looking so, but she supposed it was interesting.

We expected a number of strangers. Mrs. Sim White's brother, who had gone to Boston when he was a young man and turned out so smart, being the head of a large dry-goods firm, was coming, and was to make a speech; and Mr. Elijah M. Mills, whose mother's people came from Linnville, was to be there, as having a hereditary interest in the village. Of course, everybody knows Elijah M. Mills. He was to make a speech. Mrs. Lucy Beers Wright, whose aunt on her father's side, Miss Jane Beers, used to live in Linnville before she died, was to come and read some selections from her own works. Mrs. Lucy Beers Wright writes quite celebrated stories, and reads them almost better than she writes them. She has enormous prices, too, but she promised to come to the centennial and read for nothing; she used to visit her aunt in Linnville when she was a girl, and wrote that she had a sincere love for the dear old place. Mrs. Jameson said that we were very fortunate to get her.

Mrs. Jameson did not stop, however, at celebrities of local traditions; she flew higher still. She wrote the Governor of the State, inviting him to be present, and some of us were never quite certain that she did not invite the President of the United States. However, if she had done so, it seemed incredible that since he was bidden by Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson he neither came nor wrote a letter. The Governor of the State did not come, but he wrote a very handsome letter, expressing the most heartfelt disappointment that he was unable to be present on such an occasion; and we all felt very sorry for him when we heard it read. Mrs. Sim White said that a governor's life must be a hard one, he must have to deny himself many pleasures. Our minister, the Rev. Henry P. Jacobs, wrote a long poem to be read on the occasion; it was in blank verse like Young's "Night Thoughts," and some thought he had imitated it; but it was generally considered very fine, though we had not the pleasure of hearing it at the centennial--why, I will explain later.

There was to be a grand procession, of course, illustrative of the arts, trades, and professions in our village a hundred years ago and at the present time, and Mrs. Jameson engineered that. I never saw a woman work as she did. Louisa and I agreed that she could not be so very delicate after all. She had a finger in everything except the cooking; that she left mostly to the rest of us, though she did break over in one instance to our sorrow. We made pound-cake, and cupcake, and Indian puddings, and pies, and we baked beans enough for a standing army. Of course, the dinner was to be after the fashion of one of a hundred years ago. The old oven in the Shaw kitchen was to be heated, and Indian puddings and pies baked in it; but that would not hold enough for such a multitude as we expected, so we all baked at home--that is, all except Caroline Liscom. She would not bake a thing because Mrs. Jameson got up the centennial, and she declared that she would not go. However, she changed her mind, which was fortunate enough as matters afterward transpired.