Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Jamesons

M >> Mary E. Wilkins Freeman >> The Jamesons

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It seemed to me that Tommy had seen all the furniture unpacked, and
much of it set up, by lurking around in the silent, shrinking,
bright-eyed fashion that he has. Tommy Gregg is so single-minded in
his investigations that I can easily imagine that he might seem as
impersonal as an observant ray of sunlight in the window. Anyway, he
had evidently seen everything, and nobody had tried to stop him.

"It ain't very handsome," said Tommy Gregg with a kind of
disappointment and wonder. "There ain't no carpets in the house
except in Grandma Cobb's room, and that's jest straw mattin'; and
there's some plain mats without no roses on 'em; and there ain't no
stove 'cept in the kitchen; just old andirons like mother keeps up
garret; and there ain't no stuffed furniture at all; and they was
eatin' supper without no table-cloth."

Amelia Powers and Mrs. Jones thought that it was very singular that
the Jamesons had no stuffed furniture, but Louisa and I did not feel
so. We had often wished that we could afford to change the haircloth
furniture, which I had had when I was married, for some pretty rattan
or plain wood chairs. Louisa and I rather fancied the Jamesons' style
of house-furnishing when we call there. It was rather odd, certainly,
from our village standpoint, and we were not accustomed to see bare
floors if people could possibly buy a carpet; the floors were pretty
rough in the old house, too. It did look as if some of the furniture
was sliding down-hill, and it was quite a steep descent from the
windows to the chimney in all the rooms. Of course, a carpet would
have taken off something of that effect. Another thing struck us as
odd, and really scandalized the village at large: the Jamesons had
taken down every closet and cupboard door in the house. They had hung
curtains before the clothes-closets, but the shelves of the pantry
which opened out of the dining-room, and the china-closet in the
parlor, were quite exposed, and furnished with, to us, a very queer
assortment of dishes. The Jamesons had not one complete set, and very
few pieces alike. They had simply ransacked the neighborhood for
forsaken bits of crockery-ware, the remnants of old wedding-sets
which had been long stored away on top shelves, or used for baking
or preserving purposes.

I remember Mrs. Gregg laughing, and saying that the Jamesons were
tickled to death to get some old blue cups which she had when she was
married and did not pay much for then, and had used for fifteen years
to put up her currant jelly in; and had paid her enough money for
them to make up the amount which she had been trying to earn, by
selling eggs, to buy a beautiful new tea-set of a brown-and-white
ware. I don't think the Jamesons paid much for any of the dishes
which they bought in our village; we are not very shrewd people, and
it did not seem right to ask large prices for articles which had
been put to such menial uses. I think many things were given them.
I myself gave Harriet Jameson an old blue plate and another brown
one which I had been using to bake extra pies in when my regular
pie-plates gave out. They were very discolored and cracked, but I
never saw anybody more pleased than Harriet was.

I suppose the special feature of the Jamesons' household adornments
which roused the most comment in the village was the bean-pots. The
Jamesons, who did not like baked beans and never cooked them, had
bought, or had given them, a number of old bean-pots, and had them
sitting about the floor and on the tables with wild flowers in them.
People could not believe that at first; they thought they must be
some strange kind of vase which they had had sent from New York. They
cast sidelong glances of sharpest scrutiny at them when they called.
When they discovered that they were actually bean-pots, and not only
that, but were sitting on the floor, which had never been considered
a proper place for bean-pots in any capacity, they were really
surprised. Flora Clark said that for her part her bean-pot went into
the oven with beans in it, instead of into the corner with flowers in
it, as long as she had her reason. But I must say I did not quite
agree with her. I have only one bean-pot, and we eat beans, therefore
mine has to be kept sacred to its original mission; and I must say
that I thought Mrs. Jameson's with goldenrod in it really looked
better than mine with beans. I told Louisa that I could not see why
the original states of inanimate things ought to be remembered
against them when they were elevated to finer uses any more than
those of people, and now that the bean-pot had become a vase in a
parlor why its past could not be forgotten. Louisa agreed with me,
but I don't doubt that many people never looked at those pots full of
goldenrod without seeing beans. It was to my way of thinking more
their misfortune than the Jamesons' mistake; and they made enough
mistakes which were not to be questioned not to have the benefit of
any doubt.

Soon the Jamesons, with their farm, were the standing joke in our
village. I had never known there was such a strong sense of humor
among us as their proceedings awakened. Mr. H. Boardman Jameson did
not remain in Fairville long, as he had to return to his duties at
the custom-house. Mrs. Jameson, who seemed to rouse herself suddenly
from the languid state which she had assumed at times, managed the
farm. She certainly had original ideas and the courage of her
convictions.

She stopped at nothing; even Nature herself she had a try at, like
some mettlesome horse which does not like to be balked by anything in
the shape of a wall.

Old Jonas Martin was a talker, and he talked freely about the people
for whom he worked. "Old Deacon Sears had a cow once that would jump
everything. Wa'n't a wall could be built that was high enough to stop
her," he would say. "'Tain't no ways clear to my mind that she ain't
the identical critter that jumped the moon;--and I swan if Mis'
Jameson ain't like her. There ain't nothin' that's goin' to stop her;
she ain't goin' to be hendered by any sech little things as times an'
seasons an' frost from raisin' corn an' green peas an' flowers in her
garden. 'The frost'll be a-nippin' of 'em, marm,' says I, 'as soon as
they come up, marm.' 'I wish you to leave that to me, my good man,'
says she. Law, she ain't a-goin' to hev any frost a-nippin' her
garden unless she's ready for it. And as for the chickens, I wouldn't
like to be in their shoes unless they hatch when Mis' Jameson she
wants 'em to. They have to do everything else she wants 'em to, and I
dunno but they'll come to time on that. They're the fust fowls I ever
see that a woman could stop scratchin'."

With that, old Jonas Martin would pause for a long cackle of mirth,
and his auditor would usually join him, for Mrs. Jameson's hens were
enough to awaken merriment, and no mistake. Louisa and I could never
see them without laughing enough to cry; and as for little Alice,
who, like most gentle, delicate children, was not often provoked to
immoderate laughter, she almost went into hysterics. We rather
dreaded to have her catch sight of the Jameson hens. There were
twenty of them, great, fat Plymouth Rocks, and every one of them in
shoes, which were made of pieces of thick cloth sewed into little
bags and tied firmly around the legs of the fowls, and they were
effectually prevented thereby from scratching up the garden seeds.
The gingerly and hesitating way in which these hens stepped around
the Jameson premises was very funny. It was quite a task for old
Jonas Martin to keep the hens properly shod, for the cloth buskins
had to be often renewed; and distressed squawkings amid loud volleys
of aged laughter indicated to us every day what was going on.

The Jamesons kept two Jersey cows, and Mrs. Jameson caused their
horns to be wound with strips of cloth terminating in large, soft
balls of the same, to prevent their hooking. When the Jamesons first
began farming, their difficulty in suiting themselves with cows
occasioned much surprise. They had their pick of a number of fine
ones, but invariably took them on trial, and promptly returned them
with the message that they were not satisfactory. Old Jonas always
took back the cows, and it is a question whether or not he knew what
the trouble was, and was prolonging the situation for his own
enjoyment.

At last it came out. Old Jonas came leading back two fine Jerseys to
Sim White's, and he said, with a great chuckle: "Want to know what
ails these ere critters, Sim? Well, I'll tell ye: they ain't got no
upper teeth. The Jamesons ain't goin' to git took in with no cows
without no teeth in their upper jaws, you bet."

That went the rounds of the village. Mrs. White was so sorry for the
Jamesons in their dilemma of ignorance of our rural wisdom that she
begged Sim to go over and persuade them that cows were created
without teeth in their upper jaw, and that the cheating, if cheating
there were, was done by Nature, and all men alike were victimized. I
suppose Mr. White must have convinced her, for they bought the cows;
but it must have been a sore struggle for Mrs. Jameson at least to
swallow instruction, for she had the confidence of an old farmer in
all matters pertaining to a farm.

She, however, did listen readily to one singular piece of information
which brought much ridicule upon them. She chanced to say to Wilson
Gregg, who is something of a wag, and had just sold the Jamesons a
nice little white pig, that she thought that ham was very nice in
alternate streaks of fat and lean, though she never ate it herself,
and only bought the pig for the sake of her mother, who had
old-fashioned tastes in her eating and would have pork, and she
thought that home-raised would be so much healthier.

"Why, bless you, ma'am," said he, "if you want your ham streaky all
you have to do is to feed the pig one day and starve him the next."

The Jamesons tried this ingenious plan; then, luckily for the pig,
old Jonas, who had chuckled over it for a while, revealed the fraud
and put him on regular rations.

I suppose the performance of the Jamesons which amused the village
the most was setting their hens on hard-boiled eggs for sanitary
reasons. That seemed incredible to me at first, but we had it on good
authority--that of Hannah Bell, a farmer's daughter from the West
Corners, who worked for the Jamesons. She declared that she told Mrs.
Jameson that hens could not set to any purpose on boiled eggs; but
Mrs. Jameson had said firmly that they must set upon them or none
at all; that she would not have eggs about the premises so long
otherwise; she did not consider it sanitary. Finally, when the eggs
would not hatch submitted to such treatment, even at her command, she
was forced to abandon her position, though even then with conditions
of her surrender to Nature. She caused the nests to be well soaked
with disinfectants.

The Jamesons shut the house up the last of October and went back to
the city, and I think most of us were sorry. I was, and Louisa said
that she missed them.

Mrs. Jameson had not been what we call neighborly through the summer,
when she lived in the next house. Indeed, I think she never went into
any of the village houses in quite a friendly and equal way, as we
visit one another. Generally she came either with a view toward
improving us--on an errand of mercy as it were, which some
resented--or else upon some matter of business. Still we had, after
all, a kindly feeling for her, and especially for Grandma Cobb and
the girls, and the little meek boy. Grandma Cobb had certainly
visited us, and none of us were clever enough to find out whether it
was with a patronizing spirit or not. The extreme freedom which she
took with our houses, almost seeming to consider them as her own,
living in them some days from dawn till late at night, might have
indicated either patronage or the utmost democracy. We missed her
auburn-wigged head appearing in our doorways at all hours, and there
was a feeling all over the village as if company had gone home.

I missed Harriet more than any of them. During the last of the time
she had stolen in to see me quite frequently when she was released
from her mother's guardianship for a minute. None of our village
girls were kept as close as the Jamesons. Louisa and I used to wonder
whether Mrs. Jameson kept any closer ward because of Harry Liscom. He
certainly never went to the Jameson house. We knew that either Mrs.
Jameson had prohibited it, or his own mother. We thought it must be
Mrs. Jameson, for Harry had a will of his own, as well as his mother,
and was hardly the man to yield to her in a matter of this kind
without a struggle.

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 pass 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 butter 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
latitude 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 nobody 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 nobody 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 coarsely 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."

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