Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Jamesons
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Mary E. Wilkins Freeman >> The Jamesons
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7 The Jamesons
by
Mary E. Wilkins
Author of "A Humble Romance,"
"A New England Nun,"
"Pembroke," "The People of Our
Neighborhood," etc.
with pictures
New York
Doubleday & McClure Company
Philadelphia
Curtis Publishing Company
1899
I
THEY ARRIVE
Until that summer nobody in our village had ever taken boarders.
There had been no real necessity for it, and we had always been
rather proud of the fact. While we were certainly not rich--there was
not one positively rich family among us--we were comfortably provided
with all the necessities of life. We did not need to open our houses,
and our closets, and our bureau drawers, and give the freedom of our
domestic hearths, and, as it were, our household gods for playthings,
to strangers and their children.
Many of us had to work for our daily bread, but, we were thankful to
say, not in that way. We prided ourselves because there was no summer
hotel with a demoralizing bowling-alley, and one of those dangerous
chutes, in our village. We felt forbiddingly calm and superior when
now and then some strange city people from Grover, the large summer
resort six miles from us, travelled up and down our main street
seeking board in vain. We plumed ourselves upon our reputation of not
taking boarders for love or money.
Nobody had dreamed that there was to be a break at last in our
long-established custom, and nobody dreamed that the break was to
be made in such a quarter. One of the most well-to-do, if not the
most well-to-do, of us all, took the first boarders ever taken in
Linnville. When Amelia Powers heard of it she said, "Them that
has, gits."
On the afternoon of the first day of June, six years ago, I was
sewing at my sitting-room window. I was making a white muslin dress
for little Alice, my niece, to wear to the Seventeenth-of-June
picnic. I had been sitting there alone all the afternoon, and it was
almost four o'clock when I saw Amelia Powers, who lives opposite, and
who had been sewing at her window--I had noticed her arm moving back
and forth, disturbing the shadows of the horse-chestnut tree in the
yard--fling open her front door, run out on the piazza, and stand
peering around the corner post, with her neck so stretched that it
looked twice as long as before. Then her sister Candace, who has poor
health and seldom ventures out-of-doors, threw up the front chamber
window and leaned out as far as she was able, and stared with her
hand shading her eyes from the sun. I could just see her head through
an opening in the horse-chestnut branches.
Then I heard another door open, and Mrs. Peter Jones, who lives in
the house next below the Powers', came running out. She ran down the
walk to her front gate and leaned over, all twisted sideways, to see.
Then I heard voices, and there were Adeline Ketchum and her mother
coming down the street, all in a flutter of hurry. Adeline is slender
and nervous; her elbows jerked out, her chin jerked up, and her
skirts switched her thin ankles; Mrs. Ketchum is very stout, and she
walked with a kind of quivering flounce. Her face was blazing, and I
knew her bonnet was on hindside before--I was sure that the sprig of
purple flowers belonged on the front.
When Adeline and her mother reached Mrs. Peter Jones' gate they
stopped, and they all stood there together looking. Then I saw Tommy
Gregg racing along, and I felt positive that his mother had sent him
to see what the matter was. She is a good woman, but the most curious
person in our village. She never seems to have enough affairs of her
own to thoroughly amuse her. I never saw a boy run as fast as Tommy
did--as if his mother's curiosity and his own were a sort of motor
compelling him to his utmost speed. His legs seemed never to come out
of their running crooks, and his shock of hair was fairly stiffened
out behind with the wind.
Then I began to wonder if it were possible there was a fire anywhere.
I ran to my front door and called:
"Tommy! Tommy!" said I, "where is the fire?"
Tommy did not hear me, but all of a sudden the fire-bell began
to ring.
Then I ran across the street to Mrs. Peter Jones' gate, and Amelia
Powers came hurrying out of her yard.
"Where is it? Oh, where is it?" said she, and Candace put her head
out of the window and called out, "Where is it? Is it near here?"
We all sniffed for smoke and strained our eyes for a red fire glare
on the horizon, but we could neither smell nor see anything unusual.
Pretty soon we heard the fire-engine coming, and Amelia Powers cried
out: "Oh, it's going to Mrs. Liscom's! It's her house! It's Mrs.
Liscom's house!"
Candace Powers put her head farther out of the window, and screamed
in a queer voice that echoed like a parrot's, "Oh, 'Melia! 'Melia!
it's Mrs. Liscom's, it's Mrs. Liscom's, and the wind's this way!
Come, quick, and help me get out the best feather bed, and the
counterpane that mother knit! Quick! Quick!"
Amelia had to run in and quiet Candace, who was very apt to have a
bad spell when she was over-excited, and the rest of us started for
the fire.
As we hurried down the street I asked Mrs. Jones how she had known
there was a fire in the first place, for I supposed that was why she
had run out to her front door and looked down the street. Then I
learned about the city boarders. She and Amelia, from the way they
faced at their sitting-room windows, had seen the Grover stage-coach
stop at Mrs. Liscom's, and had run out to see the boarders alight.
Mrs. Jones said there were five of them--the mother, grandmother,
two daughters, and a son.
I said that I did not know Mrs. Liscom was going to take boarders;
I was very much surprised.
"I suppose she thought she would earn some money and have some extra
things," said Mrs. Jones.
"It must have been that," said Mrs. Ketchum, panting--she was almost
out of breath--"for, of course, the Liscoms don't need the money."
I laughed and said I thought not. I felt a little pride about it,
because Mrs. Liscom was a second cousin of my husband, and he used
to think a great deal of her.
"They must own that nice place clear, if it ain't going to burn to
the ground, and have something in the bank besides," assented Mrs.
Peter Jones.
Ever so many people were running down the street with us, and the air
seemed full of that brazen clang of the fire-bell; still we could not
see any fire, nor even smell any smoke, until we got to the head of
the lane where the Liscom house stands a few rods from the main
street.
The lane was about choked up with the fire-engine, the hose-cart, the
fire department in their red shirts, and, I should think, half the
village. We climbed over the stone wall into Mrs. Liscom's oat-field;
it was hard work for Mrs. Ketchum, but Mrs. Jones and I pushed and
Adeline pulled, and then we ran along close to the wall toward the
house. We certainly began to smell smoke, though we still could not
see any fire. The firemen were racing in and out of the house,
bringing out the furniture, as were some of the village boys, and the
engine was playing upon the south end, where the kitchen is.
Mrs. Peter Jones, who is very small and alert, said suddenly that
it looked to her as if the smoke were coming out of the kitchen
chimney, but Mrs. Ketchum said of course it was on fire inside in
the woodwork. "Oh, only to think of Mrs. Liscom's nice house being
all burned up, and what a dreadful reception for those boarders!"
she groaned out.
I never saw such a hubbub, and apparently over nothing at all, as
there was. There was a steady yell of fire from a crowd of boys who
seemed to enjoy it; the water was swishing, the firemen's arms were
pumping in unison, and everybody generally running in aimless circles
like a swarm of ants. Then we saw the boarders coming out. "Oh, the
house must be all in a light blaze inside!" groaned Mrs. Ketchum.
There were five of the boarders. The mother, a large, fair woman with
a long, massive face, her reddish hair crinkling and curling around
it in a sort of ivy-tendril fashion, came first. Her two daughters,
in blue gowns, with pretty, agitated faces, followed; then the young
son, fairly teetering with excitement; then the grandmother, a
little, tremulous old lady in an auburn wig.
The woman at the head carried a bucket, and what should she do but
form her family into a line toward the well at the north side of
the house where we were!
Of course, the family did not nearly reach to the well, and she
beckoned to us imperatively. "Come immediately!" said she; "if the
men of this village have no head in an emergency like this, let the
women arise! Come immediately."
So Mrs. Peter Jones, Mrs. Ketchum, Adeline, and I stepped into the
line, and the mother boarder filled the bucket at the well, and we
passed it back from hand to hand, and the boy at the end flung it
into Mrs. Liscom's front entry all over her nice carpet.
Then suddenly we saw Caroline Liscom appear. She snatched the bucket
out of the hands of the boy boarder and gave it a toss into the
lilac-bush beside the door; then she stood there, looking as I had
never seen her look before. Caroline Liscom has always had the
reputation of being a woman of a strong character; she is manifestly
the head of her family. It is always, "Mrs. Liscom's house," and
"Mrs. Liscom's property," instead of Mr. Liscom's.
It is always understood that, though Mr. Liscom is the nominal voter
in town matters, not a selectman goes into office with Mr. Liscom's
vote unless it is authorized by Mrs. Liscom. Mr. Liscom is, so to
speak, seldom taken without Mrs. Liscom's indorsement.
Of course, Mrs. Liscom being such a character has always more or less
authority in her bearing, but that day she displayed a real majesty
which I had never seen in her before. She stood there a second, then
she turned and made a backward and forward motion of her arm as if
she were sweeping, and directly red-shirted firemen and boys began to
fly out of the house as if impelled by it.
"You just get out of my house; every one of you!" said Caroline in
a loud but slow voice, as if she were so angry that she was fairly
reining herself in; and they got out. Then she called to the firemen
who were working the engine, and they heard her above all the uproar.
"You stop drenching my house with water, and go home!" said she.
Everybody began to hush and stare, but Tommy Gregg gave one squeaking
cry of fire as if in defiance.
"There is no fire," said Caroline Liscom. "My house is not on fire,
and has not been on fire. I am getting tea, and the kitchen chimney
always smokes when the wind is west. I don't thank you, any of you,
for coming here and turning my house upside down and drenching it
with water, and lugging my furniture out-of-doors. Now you can go
home. I don't see what fool ever sent you here!"
The engine stopped playing, and you could hear the water dripping off
the south end of the house. The windows were streaming as if there
had been a shower. Everybody looked abashed, and the chief engineer
of the fire department--who is a little nervous man who always works
as if the river were on fire and he had started it--asked meekly if
they shouldn't bring the furniture back.
"No," said Caroline Liscom, "I want you to go home, and that is all I
do want of you."
Then the mother boarder spoke--she was evidently not easily put down.
"I refuse to return to the house or to allow my family to do so
unless I am officially notified by the fire department that the fire
is extinguished," said she.
"Then you can stay out-of-doors," said Caroline Liscom, and we all
gasped to hear her, though we secretly admired her for it.
The boarder glared at her in a curious kind of way, like a broadside
of stoniness, but Caroline did not seem to mind it at all. Then the
boarder changed her tactics like a general on the verge of defeat.
She sidled up to Mr. Spear, the chief engineer, who was giving orders
to drag home the engine, and said in an unexpectedly sweet voice,
like a trickle of honey off the face of a rock: "My good man, am I to
understand that I need apprehend no further danger from fire! I ask
for the sake of my precious family."
Mr. Spear looked at her as if she had spoken to him in Choctaw, and
she was obliged to ask him over again. "My good man," said she,
"_is_ the fire out?"
Mr. Spear looked at her as if he were half daft then, but he
answered: "Yes, ma'am, yes, ma'am, certainly, ma'am, no danger at
all, ma'am." Then he went on ordering the men: "A leetle more to
the right, boys! All together!"
"Thank you, my good man, your word is sufficient," said the boarder,
though Mr. Spear did not seem to hear her.
Then she sailed into the house, and her son, her two daughters, and
the grandmother after her. Mrs. Peter Jones and Adeline and her
mother went home, but I ventured, since I was a sort of relation, to
go in and offer to help Caroline set things to rights. She thanked
me, and said that she did not want any help; when Jacob and Harry
came home they would set the furniture in out of the yard.
"I am sorry for you, Caroline," said I.
"Look at my house, Sophia Lane," said she, and that was all she would
say. She shut her mouth tight over that. That house was enough to
make a strong-minded woman like Caroline dumb, and send a weak one
into hysterics. It was dripping with water, and nearly all the
furniture out in the yard piled up pell-mell. I could not see how
she was going to get supper for the boarders: the kitchen fire was
out and the stove drenched, with a panful of biscuits in the oven.
"What are you going to give them for supper, Caroline?" said I, and
she just shook her head. I knew that those boarders would have to
take what they could get, or go without.
When Caroline was in any difficulty there never was any help for her,
except from the working of circumstances to their own salvation. I
thought I might as well go home. I offered to give her some pie or
cake if hers were spoiled, but she only shook her head again, and I
knew she must have some stored away in the parlor china-closet, where
the water had not penetrated.
I went through the house to the front entry, thinking I would go out
the front door--the side one was dripping as if it were under a
waterfall. Just as I reached it I heard a die-away voice from the
front chamber say, "My good woman."
I did not dream that I was addressed, never having been called by
that name, though always having hoped that I was a good woman.
So I kept right on. Then I heard a despairing sigh, and the voice
said, "You speak to her, Harriet."
Then I heard another voice, very sweet and a little timid, "Will you
please step upstairs? Mamma wishes to speak to you."
I began to wonder if they were talking to me. I looked up, and
there discovered a pretty, innocent, rosy little face, peering over
the balustrade at the head of the stairs. "Will you please step
upstairs?" said she again, in the same sweet tones. "Mamma wishes
to speak to you."
I have a little weakness of the heart, and do not like to climb
stairs more than I am positively obliged to; it always puts me so out
of breath. I sleep downstairs on that account. I looked at Caroline's
front stairs, which are rather steep, with some hesitation. I felt
shaken, too, on account of the alarm of fire. Then I heard the first
voice again with a sort of languishing authority: "My good woman,
will you be so kind as to step upstairs immediately?"
I went upstairs. The girl who had spoken to me--I found afterward
that she was the elder of the daughters--motioned me to go into the
north chamber. I found them all there. The mother, Mrs. H. Boardman
Jameson, as I afterward knew her name to be, was lying on the bed,
her head propped high with pillows; the younger daughter was fanning
her, and she was panting softly as if she were almost exhausted. The
grandmother sat beside the north window, with a paper-covered book on
her knees. She was eating something from a little white box on the
window-sill. The boy was at another window, also with a book in which
he did not seem to be interested. He looked up at me, as I entered,
with a most peculiar expression of mingled innocence and shyness
which was almost terror. I could not see why the boy should possibly
be afraid of me, but I learned afterward that it was either his
natural attitude or natural expression. He was either afraid of every
mortal thing or else appeared to be. The singular elevated arch of
his eyebrows over his wide-open blue eyes, and his mouth, which was
always parted a little, no doubt served to give this impression. He
was a pretty boy, with a fair pink-and-white complexion, and long
hair curled like a girl's, which looked odd to me, for he was quite
large.
Mrs. Jameson beckoned me up to the bed with one languid finger, as if
she could not possibly do more. I began to think that perhaps she had
some trouble with her heart like myself, and the fire had overcome
her, and I felt very sympathetic.
"I am sorry you have had such an unpleasant experience," I began,
but she cut me short.
"My good woman," said she in little more than a whisper, "do you
know of any house in a sanitary location where we can obtain board
immediately? I am very particular about the location. There must be
no standing water near the house, there must not be trees near on
account of the dampness, the neighbors must not keep hens--of course,
the people of the house must not keep hens--and the woman must have
an even temper. I must particularly insist upon an even temper. My
nerves are exceedingly weak; I cannot endure such a rasping manner as
that which I have encountered to-day."
When she stopped and looked at me for an answer I was so astonished
that I did not know what to say. There she was, just arrived; had not
eaten one meal in the house, and wanting to find another
boarding-place.
Finally I said, rather stupidly I suppose, that I doubted if she
could find another boarding-place in our village as good as the one
which she already had.
She gave another sigh, as if of the most determined patience. "Have I
not already told you, my good woman," said she, "that I cannot endure
such a rasping manner and voice as that of the woman of the house?
It is most imperative that I have another boarding-place at once."
She said this in a manner which nettled me a little, as if I had
boarding-places, for which she had paid liberally and had a right
to demand, in my hand, and was withholding them from her. I replied
that I knew of no other boarding-place of any kind whatsoever in the
village. Then she looked at me in what I suppose was meant to be an
ingratiating way.
"My good woman," said she, "you look very neat and tidy yourself, and
I don't doubt are a good plain cook; I am willing to try your house
if it is not surrounded by trees and there is no standing water near;
I do not object to running water."
In the midst of this speech the elder daughter had said in a
frightened way, "Oh, mamma!" but her mother had paid no attention.
As for myself, I was angry. The memory of my two years at Wardville
Young Ladies' Seminary in my youth and my frugally independent life
as wife and widow was strong upon me. I had read and improved my
mind. I was a prominent member of the Ladies' Literary Society of our
village: I wrote papers which were read at the meetings; I felt, in
reality, not one whit below Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson, and, moreover,
large sleeves were the fashion, and my sleeves were every bit as
large as hers, though she had just come from the city. That added to
my conviction of my own importance.
"Madam," said I, "I do not take boarders. I have never taken
boarders, and I never shall take boarders." Then I turned and went
out of the room, and downstairs, with, it seemed to me, much dignity.
However, Mrs. Jameson was not impressed by it, for she called after
me: "My good woman, will you please tell Mrs. Liscom that I must have
some hot water to make my health food with immediately? Tell her to
send up a pitcher at once, very hot."
I did not tell Caroline about the hot water. I left that for them
to manage themselves. I did not care to mention hot water with
Caroline's stove as wet as if it had been dipped in the pond, even
if I had not been too indignant at the persistent ignoring of my own
dignity. I went home and found Louisa Field, my brother's widow, and
her little daughter Alice, who live with me, already there. Louisa
keeps the district school, and with her salary, besides the little
which my brother left her, gets along very comfortably. I have a
small sum in bank, besides my house, and we have plenty to live on,
even if we don't have much to spare.
Louisa was full of excitement over the false alarm of fire, and had
heard a reason for it which we never fairly knew to be true, though
nearly all the village believed it. It seems that the little Jameson
boy, so the story ran, had peeped into the kitchen and had seen it
full of smoke from Caroline's smoky chimney when she was kindling the
fire; then had run out into the yard, and seeing the smoke out there
too, and being of such an exceedingly timid temperament, had run out
to the head of the lane calling fire, and had there met Tommy Gregg,
who had spread the alarm and been the means of calling out the fire
department.
Indeed, the story purported to come from Tommy Gregg, who declared
that the boy at Liscom's had "hollered" fire, and when he was asked
where it was had told him at Liscom's. However that may have been, I
looked around at our humble little home, at the lounge which I had
covered myself, at the threadbare carpet on the sitting-room floor,
at the wallpaper which was put on the year before my husband died, at
the vases on the shelf, which had belonged to my mother, and I was
very thankful that I did not care for "extra things" or new furniture
and carpets enough to take boarders who made one feel as if one were
simply a colonist of their superior state, and the Republic was over
and gone.
II
WE BECOME ACQUAINTED WITH THEM
It was certainly rather unfortunate, as far as the social standing of
the Jamesons among us was concerned, that they brought Grandma Cobb
with them.
Everybody spoke of her as Grandma Cobb before she had been a week in
the village. Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson always called her Madam Cobb,
but that made no difference. People in our village had not been
accustomed to address old ladies as madam, and they did not take
kindly to it. Grandma Cobb was of a very sociable disposition, and
she soon developed the habit of dropping into the village houses at
all hours of the day and evening. She was an early riser, and all the
rest of her family slept late, and she probably found it lonesome.
She often made a call as early as eight o'clock in the morning, and
she came as late as ten o'clock in the evening. When she came in the
morning she talked, and when she came in the evening she sat in her
chair and nodded. She often kept the whole family up, and it was less
exasperating when she came in the morning, though it was unfortunate
for the Jamesons.
If a bulletin devoted to the biography of the Jameson family had been
posted every week on the wall of the town house it could have been no
more explicit than was Grandma Cobb. Whether we would or not we soon
knew all about them; the knowledge was fairly forced upon us. We knew
that Mr. H. Boardman Jameson had been very wealthy, but had lost most
of his money the year before through the failure of a bank. We knew
that his wealth had all been inherited, and that he would never have
been, in Grandma Cobb's opinion, capable of earning it himself. We
knew that he had obtained, through the influence of friends, a
position in the custom-house, and we knew the precise amount of his
salary. We knew that the Jamesons had been obliged to give up their
palatial apartments in New York and take a humble flat in a less
fashionable part of the city. We knew that they had always spent
their summers at their own place at the seashore, and that this was
the first season of their sojourn in a little country village in a
plain house. We knew how hard a struggle it had been for them to
come here; we knew just how much they paid for their board, how Mrs.
Jameson never wanted anything for breakfast but an egg and a hygienic
biscuit, and had health food in the middle of the forenoon and
afternoon.
We also knew just how old they all were, and how the H. in Mr.
Jameson's name stood for Hiram. We knew that Mrs. Jameson had never
liked the name--might, in fact, have refused to marry on that score
had not Grandma Cobb reasoned with her and told her that he was a
worthy man with money, and she not as young as she had been; and how
she compromised by always using the abbreviation, both in writing and
speaking. "She always calls him H," said Grandma Cobb, "and I tell
her sometimes it doesn't look quite respectful to speak to her
husband as if he were part of the alphabet." Grandma Cobb, if the
truth had been told, was always in a state of covert rebellion
against her daughter.
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