The Blunders of a Bashful Man Part 8

I am positive that when I first came home from school she admired me very much. She welcomed my early attentions. It was only the ridiculous blunders into which my bashfulness continually drove me that alienated her regard. If I had not caught my foot in the reins that time I got out of the buggy in front of her house--if I had not fallen in the water and had my clothes shrink in drying--nor choked almost to death--nor got under the counter--nor failed to "speak my piece"--nor sat down in that mud-puddle--nor committed suicide--nor run away from home--nor performed any other of the thousand-and-one absurd feats into which my const.i.tutional embarra.s.sment was everlastingly urging me, I declare boldly, "Belle might have been mine." She had encouraged me at first. Now it was too late. She had "declined," as Tennyson says, "on a lower love than mine"--on Fred Hencoop's.

The thought was despair. Never did I realized of what the human heart is capable until Belle came into the store, one lovely spring morning, looking like a seraph in a new spring bonnet, and blushingly--with a saucy flash of her dark eyes that made her rising color all the more divine--inquired for table-damask and 4-4 sheetings.

With an ashen brow and quivering lip, I displayed before her our best a.s.sortment of table-cloths and napkins, pillow-casing and sheeting.

Her mother accompanied her to give her the benefit of her experience; and kept telling her daughter to choose the best, and what and how many dozens she had before she was married.

They ran up a big bill at the store that morning, and father came behind the counter to help, and was mightily pleased; but I felt as if I were measuring off cloth for my own shroud.

"Come, John, you go do up the sugar for Widow Smith, her boy is waiting," said my parent, seeing the muddle into which I was getting things. "I will attend to these ladies--twelve yards of the pillow-casing, did you say, Mrs. Marigold?"

I moved down to the end of the store and weighed and tied up in brown paper the "three pounds of white sugar to make cake for the sewin'-society," which the lad had asked for. A little girl came in for a pound of bar-soap, and I attended to her wants. Then another boy, with a basket, came in a hurry for a dozen of eggs. You see, ours was one of those village-stores that combine all things.

While I waited on these insignificant customers father measured off great quant.i.ties of white goods for the two ladies; and I strained my ears to hear every word that was said. They asked father if he was going to New York _soon_? He said, in about ten days. Then Mrs.

Marigold confided to him that they wanted him to purchase twenty-five yards of white corded silk.

If every cord in that whole piece of silk had been drawing about my throat I couldn't have felt more suffocated. I sat right down, I felt so faint, in a tub of b.u.t.ter. I had just sense enough left to remember that I had on my new spring lavender pants. The b.u.t.ter was disgustingly soft and mushy.

"Come here, John, and add up this bill," called father.

"I can't; I'm sick."

I had got up from the tub and was leaning on the counter--I was pale, I know.

"Why, what's the matter?" he asked.

Belle cast one guilty look in my direction. "It's the spring weather, I dare say," she said softly to my parent.

I sneaked out of the back door and went across the yard to the house to change my pants. I _was_ sick, and I did not emerge from my room until the dinner-bell rang.

I went down then, and found father, usually so good-natured, looking cross, as he carved the roast beef.

"You will never be good for anything, John," was his salutation--"at least, not as a clerk. I've a good mind to write to Captain Hall to take you to the North Pole."

"What's up, father?"

"Oh, nothing!" _very_ sarcastically. "That white sugar you sent Mrs.

Smith was table-salt, and she made a whole batch of cake out of it before she discovered her mistake. She was out of temper when she flew in the store, I tell you. I had not only to give her the sugar, but enough b.u.t.ter and eggs to make good her loss, and throw in a neck-tie to compensate her for waste of time. Before she got away, in came the mother of the little girl to whom you had given a slab of mola.s.ses candy for bar-soap, and said that the child had brought nothing home but some streaks of mola.s.ses on her face. Just as I was coming out to dinner the other boy brought back the porcelain eggs you had given him with word that 'Ma had biled 'em an hour, and she couldn't even budge the sh.e.l.ls.' So you see, my son, that in a miscellaneous store you are quite out of your element."

"It was that flirt of a Belle Marigold that upset him," said mother, laughing so that she spilled the gravy on the table-cloth. "He'll be all right when she is once Mrs. Hencoop."

That very evening Fred came in the store to ask me to be his groomsman.

"We're going to be married the first of June," he told me, grinning like an idiot.

"Does Belle know that you invite me to be groomsman?" I responded, gloomily.

"Yes; she suggested that you be asked. Rose Ellis is to be bridesmaid."

"Very well; I accept."

"All right, old fellow. Thank you," slapping me on the back.

As I lay tossing restlessly on my bed that night--after an hour spent in a vain attempt to take the b.u.t.ter out of my lavenders with French chalk--I made a new and firm resolution. I would make Belle sorry that she had given her preference to Fred. I would so bear myself--during our previous meetings and consultations, and during the day of the ceremony--that she should bitterly repent not having given me an opportunity to conquer my diffidence before taking up with Frederick Hencoop. The opportunity was given me to redeem myself. I would prove that, although modest, I was a gentleman; that the blushing era of inexperience could be succeeded by one of calm grandeur. Chesterfield could never have been more quietly self-possessed; Beau Brummell more imperturbable. I would get by heart all the little formalities of the occasion, and, when the time came, I would execute them with consummate ease.

These resolutions comforted me--supported me under the weight of despair I had to endure. Ha! yes. I would show some people that some things could be done as well as others.

It was four weeks to the first of June. As I had ruined my lavender trousers I ordered another pair, with suitable neck-tie, vest, and gloves, from New York. I also ordered three different and lately-published books on etiquette. I studied in all three of these the etiquette of weddings. I thoroughly posted myself on the ancient, the present, and the future duties of "best men" on such occasions. I learned how they do it in China, in Turkey, in Russia, in New Zealand, more particularly how it is done, at present, in England and America.

As the day drew nigh I felt equal to the emergency I had a powerful motive for acquitting myself handsomely. I wanted to show _her_ what a mistake she had made.

The wedding was to take place in church at eight o'clock in the evening. The previous evening we--that is, the bride-elect, groom, bridesmaid, and groomsman, parents, and two or three friends--had a private rehearsal, one of the friends a.s.suming the part of clergyman.

All went merry as a marriage bell. I was the soul of ease and grace: Fred was the awkward one, stepping on the bride's train, dropping the ring, and so forth.

"I declare, Mr. Flutter, I never saw any one improve as you have,"

said Belle, aside to me, when we had returned to her house. "I do hope poor Fred will get along better to-morrow. I shall be really vexed at him if anything goes wrong."

"You must forgive a little fl.u.s.tration on his part," I loftily answered. "Perhaps, were I in his place, I should be agitated too."

Well, the next evening came, and at seven o'clock I repaired to the squire's residence. Fred was already there, walking up and down the parlor, a good deal excited, but dressed faultlessly and looking frightfully well.

"Why, John," was his first greeting, "aren't you going to wear any cravat?"

I put my hand up to my neck and dashed madly back a quarter of a mile for the delicate white silk tie I had left on my dressing bureau.

This, of course, made me uncomfortably warm. When I got back to the squire's I was in a perspiration, felt that my calm brow was flushed, and had to wipe it with my handkerchief.

"Come," said that impatient Fred, "you have just two minutes to get your gloves on."

My hands were damp, and being hurried had the effect to make me nervous, in spite of four long weeks' constant resolution. What with the haste and perspiration, I tore the thumb completely out of the left glove.

Never mind; no time to mend, in spite of the proverb.

The bride came down-stairs, cool, white, and delicious as an orange blossom. She was helped into one carriage; Fred and I entered another.

"I hope you feel cool," I said to Fred.

"I hope _you_ do," he retorted.

I have always laid the catastrophe which followed to the first mistake in having to fly home for my neck-tie. I was disconcerted by that, and I couldn't exactly get concerted again.

I don't know what happened after the carriage stopped at the church door--I must take the report of my friends for it. They say that I bolted at the last moment, and followed the bride up one aisle instead of the groom up the other, as I should have done. But I was perfectly calm and collected. Oh, yes, that was why, when we attempted to form in front of the altar, I insisted on standing next to Belle, and when I was finally pushed into my place by the irate Fred, I kept diving forward every time the clergyman said anything, trying to take the bride's hand, and responding, "Belle, I take thee to be my lawful, wedded," answering, "I do," loudly, to every question, even to that "Who gives this woman?" etc., until every man, woman, and child in church was t.i.ttering and giggling, and the holy man had to come to a full pause, and request me to realize that it was not I who was being married.

"I do. With all my worldly goods I thee endow," was my reply to his reminder.

"For Heaven's sake subside, or I'll thrash you within an inch of your life when I get out of this," whispered Fred.

Dimly mistrusting that I was on the wrong track, I turned and seized Mrs. Marigold by the hand, and began to feel in my pocket for a ring, because I saw the groom taking one out of his pocket.

The giggling and t.i.ttering increased; somebody--father or the constable--took me by the shoulder and marched me out of that; after which, I suppose, the ceremony was duly concluded. I only know that somebody knocked me down about five minutes afterward--I have been told that it was the bridegroom who did it--and that all the books of etiquette on earth won't fortify a man against the attacks of const.i.tutional bashfulness.