Chapter Eighteen--A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go
If the reader supposes that I lived all this while in Rivermouth withoutfalling a victim to one or more of the young ladies attending MissDorothy Gibbs's Female Institute, why, then, all I have to say is thereader exhibits his ignorance of human nature.
Miss Gibbs's seminary was located within a few minutes' walk of theTemple Grammar School, and numbered about thirty-five pupils, themajority of whom boarded at the Hall--Primrose Hall, as Miss Dorothyprettily called it. The Prim-roses, as we called them, ranged fromseven years of age to sweet seventeen, and a prettier group of sirensnever got together even in Rivermouth, for Rivermouth, you should know,is famous for its pretty girls.
There were tall girls and short girls, rosy girls and pale girls, andgirls as brown as berries; girls like Amazons, slender girls, weirdand winning like Undine, girls with black tresses, girls with auburnringlets, girls with every tinge of golden hair. To behold MissDorothy's young ladies of a Sunday morning walking to church two by two,the smallest toddling at the end of the procession, like the bobs at thetail of a kite, was a spectacle to fill with tender emotion the leastsusceptible heart. To see Miss Dorothy marching grimly at the head ofher light infantry, was to feel the hopelessness of making an attack onany part of the column.
She was a perfect dragon of watchfulness. The most unguarded lifting ofan eyelash in the fluttering battalion was sufficient to put her on thelookout. She had had experiences with the male sex, this Miss Dorothyso prim and grim. It was whispered that her heart was a tattered albumscrawled over with love-lines, but that she had shut up the volume longago.
There was a tradition that she had been crossed in love; but it was thefaintest of traditions. A gay young lieutenant of marines had flirtedwith her at a country ball (A.D. 1811), and then marched carelessly awayat the head of his company to the shrill music of the fife, without somuch as a sigh for the girl he left behind him. The years rolled on, thegallant gay Lothario--which wasn't his name--married, became a father,and then a grandfather; and at the period of which I am speaking hisgrandchild was actually one of Miss Dorothy's young ladies. So, atleast, ran the story.
The lieutenant himself was dead these many years; but Miss Dorothy nevergot over his duplicity. She was convinced that the sole aim of mankindwas to win the unguarded affection of maidens, and then march offtreacherously with flying colors to the heartless music of the drum andfife. To shield the inmates of Primrose Hall from the bitter influencesthat had blighted her own early affections was Miss Dorothy's mission inlife.
"No wolves prowling about my lambs, if you please," said
Miss Dorothy. "I will not allow it."
She was as good as her word. I don't think the boy lives who ever setfoot within the limits of Primrose Hall while the seminary was under hercharge. Perhaps if Miss Dorothy had given her young ladies a little moreliberty, they would not have thought it "such fun" to make eyes over thewhite lattice fence at the young gentlemen of the Temple Grammar School.I say perhaps; for it is one thing to manage thirty-five young ladiesand quite another thing to talk about it.
But all Miss Dorothy's vigilance could not prevent the young folksfrom meeting in the town now and then, nor could her utmost ingenuityinterrupt postal arrangements. There was no end of notes passing betweenthe students and the Primroses. Notes tied to the heads of arrows wereshot into dormitory windows; notes were tucked under fences, and hiddenin the trunks of decayed trees. Every thick place in the boxwood hedgethat surrounded the seminary was a possible post-office.
It was a terrible shock to Miss Dorothy the day she unearthed a nest ofletters in one of the huge wooden urns surmounting the gateway that ledto her dovecot. It was a bitter moment to Miss Phoebe and Miss Candaceand Miss Hesba, when they had their locks of hair grimly handed backto them by Miss Gibbs in the presence of the whole school. Girls whoselocks of hair had run the blockade in safety were particularly severe onthe offenders. But it didn't stop other notes and other tresses, and Iwould like to know what can stop them while the earth holds together.
Now when I first came to Rivermouth I looked upon girls as rather tamecompany; I hadn't a spark of sentiment concerning them; but seeing mycomrades sending and receiving mysterious epistles, wearing bits ofribbon in their button-holes and leaving packages of confectionery(generally lemon-drops) in the hollow trunks of trees--why, I felt thatthis was the proper thing to do. I resolved, as a matter of duty, tofall in love with somebody, and I didn't care in the least who it was.In much the same mood that Don Quixote selected the Dulcinea del Tobosofor his lady-love, I singled out one of Miss Dorothy's incomparableyoung ladies for mine.
I debated a long while whether I should not select two, but at lastsettled down on one--a pale little girl with blue eyes, named Alice. Ishall not make a long story of this, for Alice made short work ofme. She was secretly in love with Pepper Whitcomb. This occasioned atemporary coolness between Pepper and myself.
Not disheartened, however, I placed Laura Rice--I believe it was LauraRice--in the vacant niche. The new idol was more cruel than the old.The former frankly sent me to the right about, but the latter was adeceitful lot. She wore my nosegay in her dress at the evening service(the Primroses were marched to church three times every Sunday), shepenned me the daintiest of notes, she sent me the glossiest of ringlets(cut, as I afterwards found out, from the stupid head of Miss Gibbs'schamber-maid), and at the same time was holding me and my pony up toridicule in a series of letters written to Jack Harris. It was Harrishimself who kindly opened my eyes.
"I tell you what, Bailey," said that young gentleman, "Laura is an oldveteran, and carries too many guns for a youngster. She can't resist aflirtation; I believe she'd flirt with an infant in arms. There's hardlya fellow in the school that hasn't worn her colors and some of her hair.She doesn't give out any more of her own hair now. It's been pretty wellused up. The demand was greater than the supply, you see. It's all verywell to correspond with Laura, but as to looking for anything seriousfrom her, the knowing ones don't. Hope I haven't hurt your feelings,old boy," (that was a soothing stroke of flattery to call me "old boy,")"but it was my duty as a friend and a Centipede to let you know who youwere dealing with."
Such was the advice given me by that time-stricken, careworn, andembittered man of the world, who was sixteen years old if he was a day.
I dropped Laura. In the course of the next twelve months I had perhapsthree or four similar experiences, and the conclusion was forced uponme that I was not a boy likely to distinguish myself in this branch ofbusiness.
I fought shy of Primrose Hall from that moment. Smiles were smiled overthe boxwood hedge, and little hands were occasionally kissed to me;but I only winked my eye patronizingly, and passed on. I never renewedtender relations with Miss Gibbs's young ladies. All this occurredduring my first year and a half at Rivermouth.
Between my studies at school, my out-door recreations, and the hurts myvanity received, I managed to escape for the time being any very seriousattack of that love fever which, like the measles, is almost certain toseize upon a boy sooner or later. I was not to be an exception. I wasmerely biding my time. The incidents I have now to relate took placeshortly after the events described in the last chapter.
In a life so tranquil and circumscribed as ours in the Nutter House, avisitor was a novelty of no little importance. The whole household awokefrom its quietude one morning when the Captain announced that a youngniece of his from New York was to spend a few weeks with us.
The blue-chintz room, into which a ray of sun was never allowed topenetrate, was thrown open and dusted, and its mouldy air made sweetwith a bouquet of pot-roses placed on the old-fashioned bureau. Kittywas busy all the forenoon washing off the sidewalk and sand-papering thegreat brass knocker on our front-door; and Miss Abigail was up to herelbows in a pigeon-pie.
I felt sure it was for no ordinary person that all these preparationswere in progress; and I was right. Miss Nelly Glentworth was no ordinaryperson. I sh
all never believe she was. There may have been lovelierwomen, though I have never seen them; there may have been more brilliantwomen, though it has not been my fortune to meet them; but that therewas ever a more charming one than Nelly Glentworth is a propositionagainst which I contend.
I don't love her now. I don't think of her once in five years; andyet it would give me a turn if in the course of my daily walk I shouldsuddenly come upon her eldest boy. I may say that her eldest boy wasnot playing a prominent part in this life when I first made heracquaintance.
It was a drizzling, cheerless afternoon towards the end of summer thata hack drew up at the door of the Nutter House. The Captain and MissAbigail hastened into the hall on hearing the carriage stop. In a momentmore Miss Nelly Glentworth was seated in our sitting-room undergoinga critical examination at the hands of a small boy who loungeduncomfortably on a settee between the windows.
The small boy considered himself a judge of girls, and he rapidly cameto the following conclusions: That Miss Nelly was about nineteen; thatshe had not given away much of her back hair, which hung in two massivechestnut braids over her shoulders; that she was a shade too pale and atrifle too tall; that her hands were nicely shaped and her feet muchtoo diminutive for daily use. He furthermore observed that her voice wasmusical, and that her face lighted up with an indescribable brightnesswhen she smiled.
On the whole, the small boy liked her well enough; and, satisfied thatshe was not a person to be afraid of, but, on the contrary, one whomight be made quite agreeable, he departed to keep an appointment withhis friend Sir Pepper Whitcomb.
But the next morning when Miss Glentworth came down to breakfast in apurple dress, her face as fresh as one of the moss-roses on the bureauupstairs, and her laugh as contagious as the merriment of a robin, thesmall boy experienced a strange sensation, and mentally compared herwith the loveliest of Miss Gibbs's young ladies, and found those youngladies wanting in the balance.
A night's rest had wrought a wonderful change in Miss Nelly. The pallorand weariness of the journey had passed away. I looked at her throughthe toast-rack and thought I had never seen anything more winning thanher smile.
After breakfast she went out with me to the stable to see Gypsy, and thethree of us became friends then and there. Nelly was the only girl thatGypsy ever took the slightest notice of.
It chanced to be a half-holiday, and a baseball match of unusualinterest was to come off on the school ground that afternoon; but,somehow, I didn't go. I hung about the house abstractedly. The Captainwent up town, and Miss Abigail was busy in the kitchen making immortalgingerbread. I drifted into the sitting-room, and had our guest all tomyself for I don't know how many hours. It was twilight, I recollect,when the Captain returned with letters for Miss Nelly.
Many a time after that I sat with her through the dreamy Septemberafternoons. If I had played baseball it would have been much better forme.
Those first days of Miss Nelly's visit are very misty in my remembrance.I try in vain to remember just when I began to fall in love with her.'Whether the spell worked upon me gradually or fell upon me all at once,I don't know. I only know that it seemed to me as if I had always lovedher. Things that took place before she came were dim to me, like eventsthat had occurred in the Middle Ages.
Nelly was at least five years my senior. But what of that? Adam is theonly man I ever heard of who didn't in early youth fall in love with awoman older than himself, and I am convinced that he would have done soif he had had the opportunity.
I wonder if girls from fifteen to twenty are aware of the glamour theycast over the straggling, awkward boys whom they regard and treat asmere children? I wonder, now. Young women are so keen in such matters.I wonder if Miss Nelly Glentworth never suspected until the very lastnight of her visit at Rivermouth that I was over ears in love with herpretty self, and was suffering pangs as poignant as if I had beenten feet high and as old as Methuselah? For, indeed, I was miserablethroughout all those five weeks. I went down in the Latin class at therate of three boys a day. Her fresh young eyes came between me and mybook, and there was an end of Virgil.
"O love, love, love! Love is like a dizziness, It winna let a body Gang aboot his business."
I was wretched away from her, and only less wretched in her presence.The special cause of my woe was this: I was simply a little boy to MissGlentworth. I knew it. I bewailed it. I ground my teeth and wept insecret over the fact. If I had been aught else in her eyes would shehave smoothed my hair so carelessly, sending an electric shock throughmy whole system? Would she have walked with me, hand in hand, for hoursin the old garden, and once when I lay on the sofa, my head aching withlove and mortification, would she have stooped down and kissed me if Ihadn't been a little boy? How I despised little boys! How I hated oneparticular little boy--too little to be loved!
I smile over this very grimly even now. My sorrow was genuine andbitter. It is a great mistake on the part of elderly people, male andfemale, to tell a child that he is seeing his happiest days. Don't youbelieve a word of it, my little friend. The burdens of childhood are ashard to bear as the crosses that weigh us down later in life, while thehappinesses of childhood are tame compared with those of our matureryears. And even if this were not so, it is rank cruelty to throw shadowsover the young heart by croaking, "Be merry, for to-morrow you die!"
As the last days of Nelly's visit drew near, I fell into a veryunhealthy state of mind. To have her so frank and unconsciouslycoquettish with me was a daily torment; to be looked upon and treated asa child was bitter almonds; but the thought of losing her altogether wasdistraction.
The summer was at an end. The days were perceptibly shorter, and now andthen came an evening when it was chilly enough to have a wood-fire inour sitting-room. The leaves were beginning to take hectic tints, andthe wind was practising the minor pathetic notes of its autumnaldirge. Nature and myself appeared to be approaching our dissolutionsimultaneously--
One evening, the evening previous to the day set for Nelly'sdeparture--how well I remember it--I found her sitting alone by the widechimney-piece looking musingly at the crackling back log. There wereno candles in the room. On her face and hands, and on the small goldencross at her throat, fell the flickering firelight--that ruddy, mellowfirelight in which one's grandmother would look poetical.
I drew a low stool from the corner and placed it by the side of herchair. She reached out her hand to me, as was her pretty fashion, and sowe sat for several moments silently in the changing glow of the burninglogs. At length I moved back the stool so that I could see her face inprofile without being seen by her. I lost her hand by this movement, butI couldn't have spoken with the listless touch of her fingers on mine.After two or three attempts I said "Nelly" a good deal louder than Iintended.
Perhaps the effort it cost me was evident in my voice. She raisedherself quickly in the chair and half turned towards me.
"Well, Tom?"
"I--I am very sorry you are going away."
"So am I. I have enjoyed every hour of my visit."
"Do you think you will ever come back here?"
"Perhaps," said Nelly, and her eyes wandered off into the fitfulfirelight.
"I suppose you will forget us all very quickly."
"Indeed I shall not. I shall always have the pleasantest memories ofRivermouth."
Here the conversation died a natural death. Nelly sank into a sort ofdream, and I meditated. Fearing every moment to be interrupted by somemember of the family, I nerved myself to make a bold dash.
"Nelly."
"Well."
"Do you--" I hesitated.
"Do I what?"
"Love anyone very much?"
"Why, of course I do," said Nelly, scattering her revery with a merrylaugh. "I love Uncle Nutter, and Aunt Nutter, and you--and Towser."
Towser, our new dog! I couldn't stand that. I pushed back the stoolimpatiently and stood in front of her.
"That's not what I mean," I said angrily.
; "Well, what do you mean?"
"Do you love anyone to marry him?"
"The idea of it," cried Nelly, laughing.
"But you must tell me."
"Must, Tom?"
"Indeed you must, Nelly."
She had risen from the chair with an amused, perplexed look in her eyes.I held her an instant by the dress.
"Please tell me."
"O you silly boy!" cried Nelly. Then she rumpled my hair all over myforehead and ran laughing out of the room.
Suppose Cinderella had rumpled the prince's hair all over his forehead,how would he have liked it? Suppose the Sleeping Beauty, when the king'sson with a kiss set her and all the old clocks agoing in the spell-boundcastle--suppose the young minx had looked up and coolly laughed in hiseye, I guess the king's son wouldn't have been greatly pleased.
I hesitated a second or two and then rushed after Nelly just in time torun against Miss Abigail, who entered the room with a couple of lightedcandles.
"Goodness gracious, Tom!" exclaimed Miss Abigail. "Are you possessed?"
I left her scraping the warm spermaceti from one of her thumbs.
Nelly was in the kitchen talking quite unconcernedly with Kitty Collins.There she remained until supper-time. Supper over, we all adjourned tothe sitting-room. I planned and plotted, but could manage in no way toget Nelly alone. She and the Captain played cribbage all the evening.
The next morning my lady did not make her appearance until we wereseated at the breakfast-table. I had got up at daylight myself.Immediately after breakfast the carriage arrived to take her to therailway station. A gentleman stepped from this carriage, and greatly tomy surprise was warmly welcomed by the Captain and Miss Abigail, and byMiss Nelly herself, who seemed unnecessarily glad to see him. From thehasty conversation that followed I learned that the gentleman had comesomewhat unexpectedly to conduct Miss Nelly to Boston. But how did heknow that she was to leave that morning? Nelly bade farewell to theCaptain and Miss Abigail, made a little rush and kissed me on the nose,and was gone.
As the wheels of the hack rolled up the street and over my finerfeelings, I turned to the Captain.
"Who was that gentleman, sir?"
"That was Mr. Waldron."
"A relation of yours, sir?" I asked craftily.
"No relation of mine--a relation of Nelly's," said the Captain, smiling.
"A cousin," I suggested, feeling a strange hatred spring up in my bosomfor the unknown.
"Well, I suppose you might call him a cousin for the present. He's goingto marry little Nelly next summer."
In one of Peter Parley's valuable historical works is a description ofan earthquake at Lisbon. "At the first shock the inhabitants rushed intothe streets; the earth yawned at their feet and the houses tottered andfell on every side." I staggered past the Captain into the street; agiddiness came over me; the earth yawned at my feet, and the housesthreatened to fall in on every side of me. How distinctly I rememberthat momentary sense of confusion when everything in the world seemedtoppling over into ruins.
As I have remarked, my love for Nelly is a thing of the past. I had notthought of her for years until I sat down to write this chapter, andyet, now that all is said and done, I shouldn't care particularly tocome across Mrs. Waldron's eldest boy in my afternoon's walk. He must befourteen or fifteen years old by this time--the young villain!