The Jamesons Part 6

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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 trespa.s.s 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 a.s.sumed. 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 a.s.sured 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-ma.s.sy, 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 c.o.c.k 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-c.o.c.kles 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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.