The Jamesons Part 7

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 pa.s.sages; 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 pa.s.sages 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 a.s.sured 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 ap.r.o.n 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."