The Jamesons Part 5

Though Harry did not go to the Jameson house, I, for one, used to see two suspicious-looking figures steal past the house in the summer evenings; but I said nothing. There was a little grove on the north side of our house, and there was a bench under the trees. Often I used to see a white flutter out there of a moonlight evening, and I knew that Harriet Jameson had a little white cloak. Louisa saw it too, but we said nothing, though we more than suspected that Harriet must steal out of the house after her mother had gone to her room, which we knew was early. Hannah Bell must know if that were the case, but she kept their secret.

Louisa and I speculated as to what was our duty if we were witnessing clandestine meetings, but we could never bring our minds to say anything.

The night before the Jamesons left it was moonlight and there was a hard frost, and I saw those young things stealing down the road for their last stolen meeting, and I pitied them. I was afraid, too, that Harriet would take cold in the sharp air. I thought she had on a thin cloak. Then I did something which I never quite knew whether to blame myself for or not. It did seem to me that, if the girl were a daughter of mine, and would in any case have a clandestine meeting with her lover, I should prefer it to be in a warm house rather than in a grove on a frosty night. So I caught a shawl from the table, and ran out to the front door, and called.

"Harry!" said I, "is that you?" They started, and I suppose poor Harriet was horribly frightened; but I tried to speak naturally, and as if the two being there together were quite a matter of course.

"I wonder if it will be too much for me to ask of you," said I, when Harry had responded quite boldly with a "Good-evening, Aunt Sophia"--he used to call me Aunt when he was a child, and still kept it up--"I wonder if it will be too much to ask if you two will just step in here a minute while I run down to Mrs. Jones'? I want to get a pattern to use the first thing in the morning. Louisa has gone to meeting, and I don't like to leave Alice alone."

They said they would be glad to come in, though, of course, with not as much joy as they felt later, when they saw that I meant to leave them to themselves for a time.

I stayed at Mrs. Jones' until I knew that Louisa would be home if I waited any longer, and I thought, besides, that the young people had been alone long enough. Then I went home. I suppose that they were sorry to see me so soon, but they looked up at me very gratefully when I bade them good-night and thanked them. I said quite meaningly that it was a cold night and there would be a frost, and Harriet must be careful and not take cold. I thought that would be enough for Harry Liscom, unless being in love had altered him and made him selfish. I did not think he would keep his sweetheart out, even if it were his last chance of seeing her alone for so long, if he thought she would get any harm by it, especially after he had visited her for a reasonable length of time.

I was right in my opinion. They did not turn about directly and go home--I did not expect that, of course--but they walked only to the turn of the road the other way; then I saw them pa.s.s the house, and presently poor Harry returned alone.

I did pity Harry Liscom when I met him on the street a few days after the Jamesons had left. I guessed at once that he was missing his sweetheart sorely, and had not yet had a letter from her. He looked pale and downcast, though he smiled as he lifted his hat to me, but he colored a little as if he suspected that I might guess his secret.

I met him the next day, and his face was completely changed, all radiant and glowing with the veritable light of youthful hope upon it. He bowed to me with such a flash of joy in his smile that I felt quite warmed by it, though it was none of mine. I thought, though I said nothing, "Harry Liscom, you have had a letter."

V

THEIR SECOND SUMMER

The Jamesons returned to Linnville the first of June. For some weeks we had seen indications of their coming. All through April and May repairs and improvements had been going on in their house. Some time during the winter the Jamesons had purchased the old Wray place, and we felt that they were to be a permanent feature in our midst.

The old Wray house had always been painted white, with green blinds, as were most of our village houses; now it was painted red, with blinds of a darker shade. When Louisa and I saw its bright walls through the budding trees we were somewhat surprised, but thought it might look rather pretty when we became accustomed to it. Very few of the neighbors agreed with us, however; they had been so used to seeing the walls of their dwellings white that this startled them almost as much as a change of color in their own faces would have done.

"We might as well set up for red Injuns and done with it," said Mrs.

Gregg one afternoon at the sewing circle. "What anybody can want anything any prettier than a neat white house with green blinds for, is beyond me."

Every month during the winter a letter had come to our literary society in care of the secretary, who was my sister-in-law, Louisa Field. Louisa was always secretary because she was a school-teacher and was thought to have her hand in at that sort of work. Mrs.

Jameson wrote a very kind, if it was a somewhat patronizing, sort of letter. She extended to us her very best wishes for our improvement and the widening of our spheres, and made numerous suggestions which she judged calculated to advance us in those respects. She recommended selections from Robert Browning to be read at our meetings, and she sent us some copies of explanatory and critical essays to be used in connection with them. She also in March sent us a copy of another lecture about the modern drama which she had herself written and delivered before her current literature club.

With that she sent us some works of Ibsen and the Belgian writer, Maeterlinck, with the recommendation that we devote ourselves to the study of them at once, they being eminently calculated for the widening of our spheres.

Flora Clark, who is the president of the society; Mrs. Peter Jones, who is the vice-president; Louisa, and I, who am the treasurer, though there is nothing whatever to treasure, held a council over the books. We all agreed that while we were interested in them ourselves, though they were a strange savor to our mental palates, yet we would not read Mrs. Jameson's letter concerning them to the society, nor advise the study of them.

"I, for one, don't like to take the responsibility of giving the women of this village such reading," said Flora Clark. "It may be improving and widening, and it certainly is interesting, and there are fine things in it, but it does not seem to me that it would be wise to take it into the society when I consider some of the members.

I would just as soon think of asking them to tea and giving them nothing but olives and Russian caviare, which, I understand, hardly anybody likes at first. I never tasted them myself. We know what the favorite diet of this village is; and as long as we can eat it ourselves it seems to me it is safer than to try something which we may like and everybody else starve on, and I guess we haven't exhausted some of the older, simpler things, and that there is some nourishment to be gotten out of them yet for all of us. It is better for us all to eat bread and b.u.t.ter and pie than for two or three of us to eat the olives and caviare, and the rest to have to sit gnawing their forks and spoons."

Mrs. Peter Jones, who is sometimes thought of for the president instead of Flora, bridled a little. "I suppose you think that these books are above the ladies of this village," said she.

"I don't know as I think they are so much above as too far to one side," said Flora. "Sometimes it's longitude, and sometimes it's lat.i.tude that separates people. I don't know but we are just as far from Ibsen and Maeterlinck as they are from us."

Louisa and I thought Flora might be right. At all events, we did not wish to set ourselves up in opposition to her. We never carried the books into the society, and we never read Mrs. Jameson's letter about them, though we did feel somewhat guilty, especially as we reflected that Flora had never forgotten the affair of the jumbles, and might possibly have allowed her personal feelings to influence her.

"I should feel very sorry," said Louisa to me, "if we were preventing the women of this village from improving themselves."

"Well, we can wait until next summer, and let Mrs. Jameson take the responsibility. I don't want to be the means of breaking up the society, for one," said I.

However, when Mrs. Jameson finally arrived in June, she seemed to be on a slightly different tack, so to speak, of improvement. She was not so active in our literary society and our sewing circle as she had been the summer before, but now, her own sphere having possibly enlarged, she had designs upon the village in the abstract.

Hannah Bell came over from the West Corners to open the house for them, and at five o'clock we saw the Grover stage rattle past with their trunks on top, and Grandma Cobb and the girls and Cobb looking out of the windows. Mrs. Jameson, being delicate, was, of course, leaning back, exhausted with her journey. Jonas Martin, who had been planting the garden, was out at the gate of the Wray house to help the driver carry in the trunks, and Hannah Bell was there too.

Louisa and I had said that it seemed almost too bad not to have some one of the village women go there and welcome them, but we did not know how Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson might take it, and n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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 coa.r.s.ely 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 s.h.i.+rt-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 fas.h.i.+onable 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."