[Footnote 1:Correspondence,1637]
Of the discoveries of Kepler, we can here have to do with their universal and humanitary bearings alone. It is to be understood, however, that the three grand sweeps of Deduction which we call Kepler's Laws formed the foundation of the higher conception of astronomy, that is, the dynamical theory of astronomical phenomena, and prepared the way for the "Mécanique Céleste." Whewell, the learned historian of the Sciences, speaks of them as "by far the most magnificent and most certain train of truths which the whole expanse of human knowledge can show"; and Comte declares, that "history tells of no such succession of philosophical efforts as in the case of Kepler, who, after constituting Celestial Geometry, strove to pursue that science of Celestial Mechanics which was by its very nature reserved for a future generation." These laws are, first, the law of the velocities of the planets; second, the law of the elliptic orbit of the planets; and, third, the harmonic law, that the squares of the times of the planetary revolutions are proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from the sun. They compass the whole sweep of Celestial Geometry, and stamp their seer as unapproachably the greatest of astronomers, as well as one of the chief benefactors of mankind.
The announcement of Kepler's first two laws was made in his New Astronomy,—"Astronomia Nova, seu Physica Caelestis, tradita Commentariis de Motibus Stellae Martis: Ex Observationibus G.V. Tychonis Brahe." Folio. Prague: 1609. This he published in his thirty-eighth year. The title he gave to this work, "Celestial Physics," must ever be regarded as a stroke of philosophical genius; it is the prediction of Newton and Laplace, and prefigures the path on which astronomical discovery has advanced these two hundred and fifty years.
An auspicious circumstance conspired to forward the astronomical discoveries of Kepler. Invited to Prague in 1600 by Tycho Brahe, as Assistant Royal Astronomer, he had access to the superb series of observations which Tycho had been accumulating for twenty-five years. Endowed with a genius for observation unsurpassed in the annals of science, the noble Dane had obtained a grant from the king of Denmark of the island of Hven, at the mouth of the Baltic. Here he erected a magnificent observatory, which he namedUranienborg, City of the Heavens. This he fitted up with a collection of instruments of hitherto unapproached size and perfection, and here, for twenty years, he pursued his observations. Thus it was that Kepler, himself a poor observer, found his complement in one who, without any power of constructive generalization, was yet the possessor of the richest series of astronomical observations ever made. From this admirable conjunction admirable realizations were to be expected. And, indeed, the "Astronomia Nova" presents an unequalled illustration of observation vivified by theory, and theory tested and fructified by observation.
To appreciate the significance of the discovery of the elliptical orbit of the planets, it is necessary to understand the complicated confusion that prevailed in the conception of planetary motions. The primal thought was that the motions of the planets were uniform and circular. This intuition of circular orbits was a happy one, and was, perhaps, necessitated by the very structure of the human mind. The sweeping and centrifugal soul, darting manifold rays of equal reach, realizes the conception of the circle, that is, a figure all of whose radii are equidistant from a central point. But this conception of the circle afterwards came to acquire superstitious tenacity, being regarded as the perfect form, and the only one suitable for such divine natures as the stars, and was for two thousand years an impregnable barrier to the progress of Astronomy. To account for every new appearance, every deviation from circular perfection, a new cycloid was supposed, till all the simplicity of the original hypothesis was lost in a complication of epicycles:—
"The sphere,With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb."
By the end of the sixteenth century the number of circles supposed necessary for the seven stars then known amounted to seventy-four, while Tycho Brahe was discovering more and more planetary movements for which these circles would not account.
To push aside forever this complicated chaos and evoke celestial order and harmony, came Kepler. Long had the sublime intuition possessed him, that numerical and geometrical relations connect the distances, times, and revolutions of the planets. He began his studies on the planet Mars,—a fortunate choice, as the marked eccentricity of that planet would afford ready suggestions and verifications of the true law of irregularity, and on which Tycho had accumulated copious data. It had long been remarked that the angular velocity of each planet increases constantly in proportion as the body approaches its centre of motion; but the relation between the distance and the velocity remained wholly unknown. Kepler discovered it by comparing the maximum and minimum of these quantities, by which their relation became more sensible. He found that the angular velocities of Mars at its nearest and farthest distances from the sun were in inverse proportion to the squares of the corresponding distances. This law, deduced, was the immediate path to the law of orbital ellipticity. For, on attempting to apply his newly-discovered law to Mars, on the old assumption that its orbit was a circle, he soon found that the results from the combination of the two principles were such as could not be reconciled with the places of Mars observed by Tycho. In this dilemma, finding he must give up one or the other of these principles, he first proposed to sacrifice his own theory to the authority of the old system,—a memorable example of resolute candor. But, after indefatigably subjecting it to crucial experiment, he found that it was the old hypothesis, and not the new one, that had to be sacrificed.[1] If the orbit was not a circle, what, then, was it? By a happy stroke of philosophical genius he lit on the ellipse. On bringing his hypothesis to the test of observation, he found it was indeed so; and rising from the case of Mars to universal statement, he generalized the law, that the planetary orbits are elliptical, having the sun for their common focus.
[Footnote 1: ROBERT SMALL:Astronomical Discoveries of Kepler.]
Kepler had now determined the course of each planet. But there was no known relation between the distances and times; and the evolution of some harmony between these factors was to him an object of the greatest interest and the most restless curiosity. Long he dwelt in the dream of the Pythagorean harmonies. Then he essayed to determine it from the regular geometrical solids, and afterwards from the divisions of musical chords. Over twenty years he spent in these baffled efforts. At length, on the 8th of March, 1618, it occurred to him, that, instead of comparing the simple times, he should compare the numbers expressing the similar powers, as squares, cubes, etc.; and lastly, he made the very comparison on which his discovery was founded, between the squares of the times and the cubes of the distances. But, through some error of calculation, no common relation was found between them. Finding it impossible, however, to banish the subject from his thoughts, he tells us, that on the 8th of the following May he renewed the last of these comparisons, and, by repeating his calculations with greater care, found, with the highest astonishment and delight, that the ratio of the squares of the periodical times of any two planets was constantly and invariably the same with the ratio of the cubes of their mean distances from the sun. Then it was that he burst forth in his memorable rhapsody:—"What I prophesied twenty-two years ago, as soon as I discovered the five solids among the heavenly orbits,—what I firmly believed long before I had seen Ptolemy's harmonics,—what I had promised my friends in the title of this book, which I named before I was sure of my discovery,—what sixteen years ago I urged as a thing to be sought,—that for which I joined Tycho Brahe, for which I settled in Prague, for which I have devoted the best part of my life to astronomical contemplation,—at length I have brought to light, and have recognized its truth beyond my most sanguine expectations. It is now eighteen months since I got the first glimpse of light, three months since the dawn, very few days since the unveiled sun, most admirable to gaze upon, burst out upon me. Nothing holds me; I will indulge in my sacred fury; I will triumph over mankind by the honest confession, that I have stolen the golden vases of the Egyptians to build up a tabernacle for my God far away from the confines of Egypt. If you forgive me, I rejoice; if you are angry, I can bear it: the die is cast; the book is written, to be read either now or by posterity, I care not which: it may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer!"
These laws have, no doubt, a universal significance, and may be translated into problems of life. For, after the farthest sweep of Induction, a question yet remains to be asked: Whence comes the power to perceive a law? Whence that subtile correspondence and consanguinity, that the laws of man's mental structure tally with the phenomena of the universe? To this problem of problems our science as yet affords but meagre answers. It seems though, so far in the history of humanity, it had been but given man to recognize this truth as a splendid idealism, without the ability to make it potential in his theory of the world. Yet what a key to new and beautiful gates of laws!
"Who can be sure to find its true degree,Magister magnus in igneshall he be."
Antique and intuitive nations—Indians, Egyptians, Greeks—sought a solution of this august mystery in the doctrines of Transmigration and Anamnesis or Reminiscence. Nothing is whereto man is not kin. He knows all worlds and histories by virtue of having himself travelled the mystic spiral descent. Awaking through memory, the processes of his mind repeat the processes of the visible Kosmos. His unfolding is a hymn of the origination of the world.
Nature and man having sprung from the same spiritual source, a perfect agreement subsists between the phenomena of the world and man's mentality. This is necessary to the very conception of Science. If the laws of reason did not exist in Nature, we should vainly attempt to force them upon her: if the laws of Nature did not exist in our reason, we should not be able to comprehend them.[1] There is a saying reported of Zoroaster, and, coming from the deeps of fifty centuries, still authentic and intelligible, that "the congruities of material forms to the laws of the soul are divine allurements." Ever welcome is the perception of this truth,—as the sublime audacity of Paracelsus, that "those who would understand the course of the heavens above must first of all recognize the heaven in man"; and the affirmation, that "the laws of Nature are the same as the thoughts within us: the laws of motion are such as are required by our understanding." It remains to say that Kepler, too, had intuition of this lofty thought. At the conclusion of his early work, "The Prodromus Dissertationum Cosmographicarum," he wrote,—"As men enjoy dainties at the dessert, so do wise souls gain a taste for heavenly things when they ascend from their college to the universe and there look around them. Great Artist of the World! I look with wonder on the works of Thy hands, constructed after five regular forms, and in the midst the sun, the dispenser of light and life. I see the moon and stars strewn over the infinite field of space. Father of the World! what moved Thee thus to exalt a poor, weak little creature of earth so high that he stands in light a far-ruling king, almost a god?—for he thinks Thy thoughts after Thee."
[Footnote 1: OERSTED:Soul in Nature.]
It is impossible not to feel freer at the accession of so much power as these laws bring us. They carry farther on the bounds of humanity. The stars are the eternal monitions of spirituality. Who can estimate how much man's thoughts have been colored by these golden kindred? It seems as though it were but required to show man space,—space, space, space,—there is that in him will fill and pass it. There is that in the celestial prodigies—in gulfs of Time and Space—that seems to mate the greed of the soul. There is that greed in the soul to pass through worlds and ages,—through growths, griefs, desires, processes, spheres,—to travel the endless highways,—to pass and resume again. O Heavens, you are but a splendid fable of the elder mind! Centripetal and centrifugal are in man, too, and primarily; and an aspiring soul will ascend into the sweeps and circles, and pass swift and devouring through baffling intervals and steep-down strata of galaxies and stars.
The thought that overarches the centuries with firmamental sweep is the thought of the Ensemble. To this all has led along,—but the disclosures of Astronomy especially. The discovery of the earth's revolution, at once transporting the stars to distances outside of all telluric connection, broke the old spell, and replaced the petty provincialism of the earth as the All-Centre by the vast, sublime conception of the Universe. Laplace has pointed this out, showing how to the fantastic and enervating notion of a universe arranged for man has succeeded the sound and vivifying thought of man discovering, by a positive exercise of his intelligence, the general laws of the world, so as to be able to modify them for his own good, within certain limits. Dawning prophetic on modern times, the thought of the Ensemble holds the seeds of new humanitary growths. This is the vast similitude that binds together the ages,—that balances creeds, colors, eras. Through Nature, man, forms, spirit, the eternal conspiracy works and weaves. This is the water of spirituality. All is bound up in the Divine Scheme. The Divine Scheme encloses all.
"Das Vergnügen ist Nichts als ein höchst angenehmer Schmerz."—HEINRICHHEINE
Full of beautiful blossomsStood the tree in early May:Came a chilly gale from the sunset,And blew the blossoms away,—
Scattered them, through the garden,Tossed them into the mere:The sad tree moaned and shuddered,"Alas! the fall is here."
But all through the glowing summerThe blossomless tree throve fair,And the fruit waxed ripe and mellow,With sunny rain and air;
And when the dim OctoberWith golden death was crowned,Under its heavy branchesThe tree stooped to the ground.
In youth there comes a west windBlowing our bloom away,—A chilly breath of AutumnOut of the lips of May.
We bear the ripe fruit after,—Ah, me! for the thought of pain!—We know the sweetness and beautyAnd the heart-bloom never again.
One sails away to sea,—One stands on the shore and cries;The ship goes down the world, and the lightOn the sullen water dies.
The whispering shell is mute,—And after is evil cheer:She shall stand on the shore and cry in vain,Many and many a year.
But the stately, wide-winged shipLies wrecked on the unknown deep;Far under, dead in his coral bed,The lover lies asleep.
In the wainscot ticks the death-watch,Chirps the cricket in the floor,In the distance dogs are barking,Feet go by outside my door.
From her window honeysucklesStealing in upon the gloom,Spice and sweets embalm the silenceDead within the lonesome room.
And the ghost of that dead silenceHaunts me ever, thin and chill,In the pauses of the death-watch,When the cricket's cry is still.
She stands in silks of purple,Like a splendid flower in bloom;She moves, and the air is ladenWith delicate perfume.
The over-vigilant mammaCan never let her be:She must play this march for another,And sing that song for me.
I wonder if she remembersThe song I made for her:"The hopes of love are frailerThan lines of gossamer":
Made when we strolled togetherThrough fields of happy June,And our hearts kept time together,With birds and brooks in tune,—
And I was so glad of loving,That I must mimic grief,And, trusting in love forever,Must fable unbelief.
I did not hear the prelude,—I was thinking of these old things.She is fairer and wiser and olderThan——What is it she sings?
"The hopes of love are frailerThan lines of gossamer."Alas! the bitter wisdomOf the song I made for her!
All the long August afternoon,The little drowsy streamWhispers a melancholy tune,As if it dreamed of JuneAnd whispered in its dream.
The thistles show beyond the brookDust on their down and bloom,And out of many a weed-grown nookThe aster-flowers lookWith eyes of tender gloom.
The silent orchard aisles are sweetWith smell of ripening fruit.Through the sere grass, in shy retreat,Flatter, at coming feet,The robins strange and mute.
There is no wind to stir the leaves,The harsh leaves overhead;Only the querulous cricket grieves,And shrilling locust weavesA song of summer dead.
"Mr. and Mrs. Colonel Sprowle's compliments to Mr. Langdon and requests the pleasure of his company at a social entertainment on Wednesday evening next.
"Elm St. Monday."
On paper of a pinkish color and musky smell, with a large S at the top, and an embossed border. Envelop adherent, not sealed. Addressed,
——_Langdon Esq.
Present._
Brought by H. Frederic Sprowle, youngest son of the Colonel,—the H. of course standing for the paternal Hezekiah, put in to please the father, and reduced to its initial to please the mother, she having a marked preference for Frederic. Boy directed to wait for an answer.
"Mr. Langdon has the pleasure of accepting Mr. and Mrs. ColonelSprowle's polite invitation for Wednesday evening."
On plain paper, sealed with an initial.
In walking along the main street, Mr. Bernard had noticed a large house of some pretensions to architectural display, namely, unnecessarily projecting eaves, giving it a mushroomy aspect, wooden mouldings at various available points, and a grandiose arched portico. It looked a little swaggering by the side of one or two of the mansion-houses that were not far from it, was painted too bright for Mr. Bernard's taste, had rather too fanciful a fence before it, and had some fruit-trees planted in the front-yard, which to this fastidious young gentleman implied a defective sense of the fitness of things, not promising in people who lived in so large a house, with a mushroom roof, and a triumphal arch for its entrance.
This place was known as "Colonel Sprowle's villa," (genteel friends,)—as "the elegant residence of our distinguished fellow-citizen, Colonel Sprowle," (Rockland Weekly Universe,)—as "the neew haouse," (old settlers,)—as "Spraowle's Folly," (disaffected and possibly envious neighbors,)—and in common discourse, as "the Colonel's".
Hezekiah Sprowle, Esquire, Colonel Sprowle of the Commonwealth's Militia, was a retired "merchant." An India merchant he might, perhaps, have been properly called; for he used to deal in West India goods, such as coffee, sugar, and molasses, not to speak of rum,—also in tea, salt fish, butter and cheese, oil and candles, dried fruit, agricultural "p'dóose" generally, industrial products, such as boots and shoes, and various kinds of iron and wooden ware, and at one end of the establishment in calicoes and other stuffs,—to say nothing of miscellaneous objects of the most varied nature, from sticks of candy, which tempted in the smaller youth with coppers in their fists, up to ornamental articles of apparel, pocket-books, breast-pins, gilt-edged Bibles, stationery,—in short, everything which was like to prove seductive to the rural population. The Colonel had made money in trade, and also by matrimony. He had married Sarah, daughter and heiress of the late Tekel Jordan, Esq., an old miser, who gave the town clock, which carries his name to posterity in large gilt letters as a generous benefactor of his native place. In due time the Colonel reaped the reward of well-placed affections. When his wife's inheritance fell in, he thought he had money enough to give up trade, and therefore sold out his "store," called in some dialects of the English languageshop, and his business.
Life became pretty hard work to him, of course, as soon as he had nothing particular to do. Country people with money enough not to have to work are in much more danger than city people in the same condition. They get a specific look and character, which are the same in all the villages where one studies them. They very commonly fall into a routine, the basis of which is going to some lounging-place or other, a bar-room, a reading-room, or something of the kind. They grow slovenly in dress, and wear the same hat forever. They have a feeble curiosity for news perhaps, which they take daily as a man takes his bitters, and then fall silent and think they are thinking. But the mind goes out under this regimen, like a fire without a draught; and it is not very strange, if the instinct of mental self-preservation drives them to brandy-and-water, which makes the hoarse whisper of memory musical for a few brief moments, and puts a weak leer of promise on the features of the hollow-eyed future. The Colonel was kept pretty well in hand as yet by his wife, and though it had happened to him once or twice to come home rather late at night with a curious tendency to say the same thing twice and even three times over, it had always been in very cold weather,—and everybody knows that no one is safe to drink a couple of glasses of wine in a warm room and go suddenly out into the cold air.
Miss Matilda Sprowle, sole daughter of the house, had reached the age at which young ladies are supposed in technical language to havecome out, and thereafter are considered to bein company.
"There's one piece o' goods," said the Colonel to his wife, "that we ha'n't disposed of, nor got a customer for yet. That's Matildy. I don't mean to setherup at vaandoo. I guess she can have her pick of a dozen."
"She's never seen anybody yet," said Mrs. Sprowle, who had had a certain project for some time, but had kept quiet about it. "Let's have a party, and give her a chance to show herself and see some of the young folks."
The Colonel was not very clear-headed, and he thought, naturally enough, that the party was his own suggestion, because his remark led to the first starting of the idea. He entered into the plan, therefore, with a certain pride as well as pleasure, and the great project was resolved upon in a family council without a dissentient voice. This was the party, then, to which Mr. Bernard was going. The town had been full of it for a week. "Everybody was asked." So everybody said that was invited. But how in respect of those who were not asked? If it had been one of the old mansion-houses that was giving a party, the boundary between the favored and the slighted families would have been known pretty well beforehand, and there would have been no great amount of grumbling. But the Colonel, for all his title, had a forest of poor relations and a brushwood swamp of shabby friends, for he had scrambled up to fortune, and now the time was come when he must define his new social position.
This is always an awkward business in town or country. An exclusive alliance between two powers is often the same thing as a declaration of war against a third. Rockland was soon split into a triumphant minority, invited to Mrs. Sprowle's party, and a great majority, uninvited, of which the fraction just on the border line between recognized "gentility" and the level of the ungloved masses was in an active state of excitement and indignation.
"Who is she, I should like to know?" said Mrs. Saymore, the tailor's wife. "There was plenty of folks in Rockland as good as ever Sally Jordan was, if shehadmanaged to pick up a merchant. Other folks could have married merchants, if their families wasn't as wealthy as them old skinflints that willed her their money," etc., etc. Mrs. Saymore expressed the feeling of many beside herself. She had, however, a special right to be proud of the name she bore. Her husband was own cousin to the Saymores of Freestone Avenue (who write the nameSeymour, and claim to be of the Duke of Somerset's family, showing a clear descent from the Protector to Edward Seymour, (1630,)—then a jump that would break a herald's neck to one Seth Saymore, (1783,)—from whom to the head of the present family the line is clear again). Mrs. Saymore, the tailor's wife, was not invited, because her husbandmendedclothes. If he had confined himself strictly tomakingthem, it would have put a different face upon the matter.
The landlord of the Mountain House and his lady were invited to Mrs. Sprowle's party. Not so the landlord of Pollard's Tavern and his lady. Whereupon the latter vowed that they would have a party at their house too, and made arrangements for a dance of twenty or thirty couples, to be followed by an entertainment. Tickets to this "Social Ball" were soon circulated, and, being accessible to all at a moderate price, admission to the "Elegant Supper" included, this second festival promised to be as merry, if not as select, as the great party.
Wednesday came. Such doings had never been heard of in Rockland as went on that day at the "villa." The carpet had been taken up in the long room, so that the young folks might have a dance. Miss Matilda's piano had been moved in, and two fiddlers and a clarionet-player engaged to make music. All kinds of lamps had been put in requisition, and even colored wax-candles figured on the mantel-pieces. The costumes of the family had been tried on the day before: the Colonel's black suit fitted exceedingly well; his lady's velvet dress displayed her contours to advantage; Miss Matilda's flowered silk was considered superb; the eldest son of the family, Mr. T. Jordan Sprowle, called affectionately and elegantly "Geordie," voted himself "stunnin'"; and even the small youth who had borne Mr. Bernard's invitation was effective in a new jacket and trousers, buttony in front, and baggy in the reverse aspect, as is wont to be the case with the home-made garments of inland youngsters.
Great preparations had been made for the refection which was to be part of the entertainment. There was much clinking of borrowed spoons, which were to be carefully counted, and much clicking of borrowed china, which was to be tenderly handled,—for nobody in the country keeps those vast closets full of such things which one may see in rich city-houses. Not a great deal could be done in the way of flowers, for there were no greenhouses, and few plants were out as yet; but there were paper ornaments for the candlesticks, and colored mats for the lamps, and all the tassels of the curtains and bells were taken out of those brown linen bags, in which, for reasons hitherto undiscovered, they are habitually concealed in some households. In the remoter apartments every imaginable operation was going on at once,—roasting, boiling, baking, beating, rolling, pounding in mortars, frying, freezing; for there was to be ice-cream to-night of domestic manufacture;—and in the midst of all these labors, Mrs. Sprowle and Miss Matilda were moving about, directing and helping as they best might, all day long. When the evening came, it might be feared they would not be in just the state of mind and body to entertain company.
——One would like to give a party now and then, if one could be a billionnaire.—"Antoine, I am going to have twenty people to dine to-day." "Bien, Madame." Not a word or thought more about it, but get home in season to dress, and come down to your own table, one of your own guests.—"Giuseppe, we are to have a party a week from to-night,—five hundred invitations,—there is the list." The day comes. "Madam, do you remember you have your party to-night?" "Why, so I have! Everything right? supper and all?" "All as it should be, Madam." "Send up Victorine." "Victorine, full toilet for this evening,—pink, diamonds, and emeralds. Coiffeur at seven.Allez."—Billionism, or even millionism, must be a blessed kind of state, with health and clear conscience and youth and good looks,—but most blessed in this, that it takes off all the mean cares which give people the three wrinkles between the eyebrows, and leaves them free to have a good time and make others have a good time, all the way along from the charity that tips up unexpected loads of wood at widows' doors, and leaves foundling turkeys upon poor men's doorsteps, and sets lean clergymen crying at the sight of anonymous fifty-dollar bills, to the taste which orders a perfect banquet in such sweet accord with every sense that everybody's nature flowers out full-blown in its golden-glowing, fragrant atmosphere.
——A great party given by the smaller gentry of the interior is a kind of solemnity, so to speak. It involves so much labor and anxiety,—its spasmodic splendors are so violently contrasted with the homeliness of every-day family-life,—it is such a formidable matter to break in the raw subordinates to themanégeof the cloak-room and the table,—there is such a terrible uncertainty in the results of unfamiliar culinary operations,—so many feuds are involved in drawing that fatal line which divides the invited from the uninvited fraction of the local universe,—that, if the notes requested the pleasure of the guests' company on "this solemn occasion," they would pretty nearly express the true state of things.
The Colonel himself had been pressed into the service. He had pounded something in the great mortar. He had agitated a quantity of sweetened and thickened milk in what was called a cream-freezer. At eleven o'clock, A.M., he retired for a space. On returning, his color was noted to be somewhat heightened, and he showed a disposition to be jocular with the female help,—which tendency, displaying itself in livelier demonstrations than were approved at head-quarters, led to his being detailed to out-of-door duties, such as raking gravel, arranging places for horses to be hitched to, and assisting in the construction of an arch of wintergreen at the porch of the mansion.
A whiff from Mr. Geordie's cigar refreshed the toiling females from time to time; for the windows had to be opened occasionally, while all these operations were going on, and the youth amused himself with inspecting the interior, encouraging the operatives now and then in the phrases commonly employed by genteel young men,—for he had perused an odd volume of "Verdant Green," and was acquainted with a Sophomore from one of the fresh-water colleges.—"Go it on the feed!" exclaimed this spirited young man. "Nothin' like a good spread. Grub enough and good liquor; that's the ticket. Guv'nor 'll do the heavy polite, and let me alone for polishin' off the young charmers." And Mr. Geordie looked expressively at a handmaid who was rolling gingerbread, as if he were rehearsing for "Don Giovanni."
Evening came at last, and the ladies were forced to leave the scene of their labors to array themselves for the coming festivities. The tables had been set in a back room, the meats were ready, the pickles were displayed, the cake was baked, the blanc-mange had stiffened, and the ice-cream had frozen.
At half past seven o'clock, the Colonel, in costume, came into the front parlor, and proceeded to light the lamps. Some were good-humored enough and took the hint of a lighted match at once. Others were as vicious as they could be,—would not light on any terms, any more than if they were filled with water, or lighted and smoked one side of the chimney, or sputtered a few sparks and sulked themselves out, or kept up a faint show of burning, so that their ground glasses looked as feebly phosphorescent as so many invalid fireflies. With much coaxing and screwing and pricking, a tolerable illumination was at last achieved. At eight there was a grand rustling of silks, and Mrs. and Miss Sprowle descended from their respective bowers or boudoirs. Of course they were pretty well tired by this time, and very glad to sit down,—having the prospect before them of being obliged to stand for hours. The Colonel walked about the parlor, inspecting his regiment of lamps. By-and-by Mr. Geordie entered.
"Mph! mph!" he sniffed, as he came in. "You smell of lamp-smoke here."
That always galls people,—to have a new-comer accuse them of smoke or close air, which they have got used to and do not perceive. The Colonel raged at the thought of his lamps' smoking, and tongued a few anathemas inside of his shut teeth, but turned down two or three that burned higher than the rest.
Master H. Frederic next made his appearance, with questionable marks upon his fingers and countenance. Had been tampering with something brown and sticky. His elder brother grew playful, and caught him by the baggy reverse of his more essential garment.
"Hush!" said Mrs. Sprowle,—"there's the bell!"
Everybody took position at once, and began to look very smiling and altogether at ease.—False alarm. Only a parcel of spoons,—"loaned," as the inland folks say when they mean lent, by a neighbor.
"Better late than never!" said the Colonel; "let me heft them spoons."
Mrs. Sprowle came down into her chair again as if all her bones had been bewitched out of her.
"I'm pretty nigh beat out a'ready," said she, "before any of the folks has come."
They sat silent awhile, waiting for the first arrival. How nervous they got! and how their senses were sharpened!
"Hark!" said Miss Matilda,—"what's that rumblin'?"
It was a cart going over a bridge more than a mile off, which at any other time they would not have heard. After this there was a lull, and poor Mrs. Sprowle's head nodded once or twice. Presently a crackling and grinding of gravel;—how much that means, when we are waiting for those whom we long or dread to see! Then a change in the tone of the gravel-crackling.
"Yes, they have turned in at our gate. They're comin'. Mother! mother!"
Everybody in position, smiling and at ease. Bell rings. Enter the first set of visitors. The Event of the Season has begun.
"Law! it's nothin' but the Cranes' folks! I do believe Mahala's come in that old green de-laine she wore at the Surprise Party!"
Miss Matilda had peeped through a crack of the door and made this observation and the remark founded thereon. Continuing her attitude of attention, she overheard Mrs. Crane and her two daughters conversing in the attiring-room, up one flight.
"How fine everything is in the great house!" said Mrs. Crane,—"jest look at the picters!" "Matildy Sprowle's drawins," said Ada Azuba, the eldest daughter.
"I should think so," said Mahala Crane, her younger sister,—a wide-awake girl, who hadn't been to school for nothing, and performed a little on the lead pencil herself. "I should like to know whether that's a hay-cock or a mountain!"
Miss Matilda winced; for this must refer to her favorite monochrome, executed by laying on heavy shadows and stumping them down into mellow harmony,—the style of drawing which is taught in six lessons, and the kind of specimen which is executed in something less than one hour. Parents and other very near relatives are sometimes gratified with these productions, and cause them to be framed and hung up, as in the present instance.
"I guess we won't go down jest yet," said Mrs. Crane, "as folks don't seem to have come."
So she began a systematic inspection of the dressing-room and its conveniences.
"Mahogany four-poster,—come from the Jordans', I cal'late. Marseilles quilt. Ruffles all round the piller. Chintz curtings,—jest put up,—o' purpose for the party, I'll lay ye a dollar.—What a nice washbowl!" (Taps it with a white knuckle belonging to a red finger.) "Stone chaney.—Here's a bran'-new brush and comb,—and here's a scent-bottle. Come here, girls, and fix yourselves in the glass, and scent your pocket-handkerchers."
And Mrs. Crane bedewed her own kerchief with some of theeau de Cologneof native manufacture,—said on its label to be much superior to the German article.
It was a relief to Mrs. and the Miss Cranes when the bell rang and the next guests were admitted. Deacon and Mrs. Soper,—Deacon Soper of the Rev. Mr. Fairweather's church, and his lady. Mrs. Deacon Soper was directed, of course, to the ladies' dressing-room, and her husband to the other apartment, where gentlemen were to leave their outside coats and hats. Then came Mr. and Mrs. Briggs, and then the three Miss Spinneys, then Silas Peckham, Head of the Apollinean Institute, and Mrs. Peckham, and more after them, until at last the ladies' dressing-room got so full that one might have thought it was a trap none of them could get out of. The fact is, they all felt a little awkwardly. Nobody wanted to be first to venture down-stairs. At last Mr. Silas Peckham thought it was time to make a move for the parlor, and for this purpose presented himself at the door of the ladies' dressing-room.
"Lorindy, my dear!" he exclaimed to Mrs. Peckham,—"I think there can be no impropriety in our joining the family down-stairs."
Mrs. Peckham laid her large, flaccid arm in the sharp angle made by the black sleeve which held the bony limb her husband offered, and the two took the stair and struck out for the parlor. The ice was broken, and the dressing-room began to empty itself into the spacious, lighted apartments below.
Mr. Silas Peckham scaled into the room with Mrs. Peckham alongside, like a shad convoying a jelly-fish.
"Good evenin', Mrs. Sprowle! I hope I see you well this evenin'. How's your health, Colonel Sprowle?"
"Very well, much obleeged to you. Hope you and your good lady are well. Much pleased to see you. Hope you'll enjoy yourselves. We've laid out to have everything in good shape,—spared no trouble nor ex"——
——"pense,"—said Silas Peckham.
Mrs. Colonel Sprowle, who, you remember, was a Jordan, had nipped the Colonel's statement in the middle of the word Mr. Peckham finished, with a look that jerked him like one of those sharp twitches women keep giving a horse when they get a chance to drive one.
Mr. and Mrs. Crane, Miss Ada Azuba, and Miss Mahala Crane made their entrance. There had been a discussion about the necessity and propriety of inviting this family, the head of which kept a small shop for hats and boots and shoes. The Colonel's casting vote had carried it in the affirmative.—How terribly the poor old green de-laine did cut up in the blaze of so many lamps and candles!
——Deluded little wretch, male or female, in town or country, going to your first great party, how little you know the nature of the ceremony in which you are to bear the part of victim! What! are not these garlands and gauzy mists and many-colored streamers which adorn you, is not this music which welcomes you, this radiance that glows about you, meant solely for your enjoyment, young miss of seventeen or eighteen summers, now for the first time swimming into the frothy, chatoyant, sparkling, undulating sea of laces and silks and satins, and white-armed, flower-crowned maidens struggling in their waves, beneath the lustres that make the false summer of the drawing-room?
Stop at the threshold! This is a hall of judgment you are entering; the court is in session; and if you move five steps forward, you will be at its bar.
There was a tribunal once in France, as you may remember, called theChambre Ardente, the Burning Chamber. It was hung all round with lamps, and hence its name. The burning chamber for the trial of young maidens is the blazing ballroom. What have they full-dressed you, or rather half-dressed you for, do you think? To make you look pretty, of course!—Why have they hung a chandelier above you, flickering all over with flames, so that it searches you like the noonday sun, and your deepest dimple cannot hold a shadow? To give brilliancy to the gay scene, no doubt!—No, my dear! Society isinspectingyou, and it finds undisguised surfaces and strong lights a convenience in the process. The dance answers the purpose of the revolving pedestal upon which the "White Captive" turns, to show us the soft, kneaded marble, which looks as if it had never been hard, in all its manifold aspects of living loveliness. No mercy for you, my love! Justice, strict justice, you shall certainly have,—neither more nor less. For, look you, there are dozens, scores, hundreds, with whom you must be weighed in the balance; and you have got to learn that the "struggle for life" Mr. Charles Darwin talks about reaches to vertebrates clad in crinoline, as well as to mollusks in shells, or articulates in jointed scales, or anything that fights for breathing-room and food and love in any coat of fur or feather! Happy they who can flash defiance from bright eyes and snowy shoulders back into the pendants of the insolent lustres!
——Miss Mahala Crane did not have these reflections; and no young girl ever did, or ever will, thank Heaven! Her keen eyes sparkled under her plainly parted hair, and the green de-laine moulded itself in those unmistakable lines of natural symmetry in which Nature indulges a small shopkeeper's daughter occasionally as well as a wholesale dealer's young ladies. She would have liked a new dress as much as any other girl, but she meant to go and have a good time at any rate.
The guests were now arriving in the drawing-room pretty fast, and the Colonel's hand began to burn a good deal with the sharp squeezes which many of the visitors gave it. Conversation, which had begun like a summer-shower, in scattering drops, was fast becoming continuous, and occasionally rising into gusty swells, with now and then a broad-chested laugh from some Captain or Major or other military personage,—for it may be noted that all large and loud men in the impaved districts bear military titles.
Deacon Soper came up presently and entered into conversation withColonel Sprowle.
"I hope to see our pastor present this evenin'," said the Deacon.
"I don't feel quite sure," the Colonel answered. "His dyspepsy has been bad on him lately. He wrote to say, that, Providence permittin', it would be agreeable to him to take a part in the exercises of the evenin'; but I mistrusted he didn't mean to come. To tell the truth, Deacon Soper, I rather guess he don't like the idee of dancin', and some of the other little arrangements."
"Well," said the Deacon, "I know there's some condemns dancin'. I've heerd a good deal of talk about it among the folks round. Some have it that it never brings a blessin' on a house to have dancin' in it. Judge Tileston died, you remember, within a month after he had his great ball, twelve year ago, and some thought it was in the natur' of a judgment. I don't believe in any of them notions. If a man happened to be struck dead the night after he'd been givin' a ball," (the Colonel loosened his black stock a little, and winked and swallowed two or three times,) "I shouldn't call it a judgment,—I should call it a coincidence. But I'm a little afraid our pastor won't come. Somethin' or other's the matter with Mr. Fairweather. I should sooner expect to see the old Doctor come over out of the Orthodox parsonage-house."
"I've asked him," said the Colonel.
"Well?" said Deacon Soper.
"He said he should like to come, but he didn't know what his people would say. For his part, he loved to see young folks havin' their sports together, and very often felt, as if he should like to be one of 'em himself. 'But,' says I, 'Doctor, I don't say there won't be a little dancin'.' 'Don't!' says he, 'for I want Letty to go,' (she's his granddaughter that's been stayin' with him,) 'and Letty's mighty fond of dancin'. You know,' says the Doctor, 'it isn't my business to settle whether other people's children should dance or not.' And the Doctor looked as if he should like to rigadoon and sashy across as well as the young one he was talkin' about. He's got blood in him, the old Doctor has. I wish our little man and him would swop pulpits."
Deacon Soper started and looked up into the Colonel's face, as if to see whether he was in earnest.
Mr. Silas Peckham and his lady joined the group.
"Is this to be a Temperance Celebration, Mrs. Sprowle?" asked Mr. SilasPeckham.
Mrs. Sprowle replied, "that there would be lemonade and srub for those that preferred such drinks, but that the Colonel had given folks to understand that he didn't mean to set in judgment on the marriage in Canaan, and that those that didn't like srub and such things would find somethin' that would suit them better."
Deacon Soper's countenance assumed a certain air of restrained cheerfulness. The conversation rose into one of its gusty paroxysms just then. Master H. Frederic got behind a door and began performing the experiment of stopping and unstopping his ears in rapid alternation, greatly rejoicing in the singular effect of mixed conversation chopped very small, like the contents of a mince-pie,—or meat pie, as it is more forcibly called in the deep-rutted villages lying along the unsalted streams. All at once it grew silent just round the door, where it had been loudest,—and the silence spread itself like a stain, till it hushed everything but a few corner-duets. A dark, sad-looking, middle-aged gentleman entered the parlor, with a young lady on his arm,—his daughter, as it seemed, for she was not wholly unlike him in feature, and of the same dark complexion.
"Dudley Venner!" exclaimed a dozen people, in startled, but half-suppressed tones.
"What can have brought Dudley out to-night?" said Jefferson Buck, a young fellow, who had been interrupted in one of the corner-duets which he was executing in concert with Miss Susy Pettingill.
"How do I know, Jeff?" was Miss Susy's answer. Then, after a pause,—"Elsie made him come, I guess. Go ask Dr. Kittredge; he knows all about 'em both, they say."
Dr. Kittredge, the leading physician of Rockland, was a shrewd old man, who looked pretty keenly into his patients through his spectacles, and pretty widely at men, women, and things in general over them. Sixty-three years old,—just the year of the grand climacteric. A bald crown, as every doctor should have. A consulting practitioner's mouth; that is, movable round the corners while the case is under examination, but both corners well drawn down and kept so when the final opinion is made up. In fact, the Doctor was often sent for to act as "caounsel," all over the county, and beyond it. He kept three or four horses, sometimes riding in the saddle, commonly driving in a sulky, pretty fast, and looking straight before him, so that people got out of the way of bowing to him as he passed on the road. There was some talk about his not being so long-sighted as other folks, but his old patients laughed and looked knowing when this was spoken of.
The Doctor knew a good many things besides how to drop tinctures and shake out powders. Thus, he knew a horse, and, what is harder to understand, a horse-dealer, and was a match for him. He knew what a nervous woman is, and how to manage her. He could tell at a glance when she is in that condition of unstable equilibrium in which a rough word is like blow to her, and the touch of unmagnetized fingers reverses all her nervous currents. It is not everybody that enters into the soul of Mozart's or Beethoven's harmonies; and there are vital symphonies in B flat, and other low, sad keys, which a doctor may know as little of as a hurdy-gurdy player of the essence of those divine musical mysteries. The Doctor knew the difference between what men say and what they mean as well as most people. When he was listening to common talk, he was in the habit of looking over his spectacles; if he lifted his head so as to look through them at the person talking, he was busier with that person's thoughts than with his words.
Jefferson Buck was not bold enough to confront the Doctor with Miss Susy's question, for he did not look as if he were in the mood to answer queries put by curious young people. His eyes were fixed steadily on the dark girl, every movement of whom he seemed to follow.
She was, indeed, an apparition of wild beauty, so unlike the girls about her that it seemed nothing more than natural, that, when she moved, the groups should part to let her pass through them, and that she should carry the centre of all looks and thoughts with her. She was dressed to please her own fancy, evidently, with small regard to the modes declared correct by the Rockland milliners and mantua-makers. Her heavy black hair lay in a braided coil, with a long gold pin shot through it like a javelin. Round her neck was a goldentorque, a round, cord-like chain, such as the Gauls used to wear: the "Dying Gladiator" has it. Her dress was a grayish watered silk; her collar was pinned with a flashing diamond brooch, the stones looking as fresh as morning dew-drops, but the silver setting of the past generation; her arms were bare, round, but slender rather than large, in keeping with her lithe round figure. On her wrists she wore bracelets: one was a circlet of enamelled scales; the other looked as if it might have been Cleopatra's asp, with its body turned to gold and its eyes to emeralds.
Her father—for Dudley Venner was her father—looked like a man of culture and breeding, but melancholy and with a distracted air, as one whose life had met some fatal cross or blight. He saluted hardly anybody except his entertainers and the Doctor. One would have said, to look at him, that he was not at the party by choice; and it was natural enough to think, with Susy Pettingill, that it must have been a freak of the dark girl's that brought him there, for he had the air of a shy and sad-hearted recluse.
It was hard to say what could have brought Elsie Venner to the party. Hardly anybody seemed to know her, and she seemed not at all disposed to make acquaintances. Here and there was one of the older girls from the Institute, but she appeared to have nothing in common with them. Even in the school-room, it may be remembered, she sat apart by her own choice, and now in the midst of the crowd she made a circle of isolation round herself. Drawing her arm out of her father's, she stood against the wall, and looked, with a strange, cold glitter in her eyes, at the crowd which moved and babbled before her.
The old Doctor came up to her by-and-by.
"Well, Elsie, I am quite surprised to find you here. Do tell me how you happened to do such a good-natured thing as to let us see you at such a great party."
"It's been dull at the mansion-house," she said, "and I wanted to get out of it. It's too lonely there,—there's nobody to hate since Dick's gone."
The Doctor laughed good-naturedly, as if this were an amusing bit of pleasantry,—but he lifted his head and dropped his eyes a little, so as to see her through his spectacles. She narrowed her lids slightly, as one often sees a sleepy cat narrow hers,—somewhat as you may remember our famous Margaret used to, if you remember her at all,—so that her eyes looked very small, but bright as the diamonds on her breast. The old Doctor felt very oddly as she looked at him; he did not like the feeling, so he dropped his head and lifted his eyes and looked at her over his spectacles again.
"And how have you all been at the mansion-house?" said the Doctor.
"Oh, well enough. But Dick's gone, and there's nobody left but Dudley and I and the people. I'm tired of it. What kills anybody quickest, Doctor?" Then, in a whisper, "I ran away again the other day, you know."
"Where did you go?" The Doctor spoke in a low, serious tone.
"Oh, to the old place. Here, I brought this for you."
The Doctor started as she handed him a flower of theAtragene Americana, for he knew that there was only one spot where it grew, and that not one where any rash foot, least of all a thin-shod woman's foot, should venture.
"How long were you gone?" said the Doctor.
"Only one night. You should have heard the horns blowing and the guns firing. Dudley was frightened out of his wits. Old Sophy told him she'd had a dream, and that I should be found in Dead-Man's Hollow, with a great rock lying on me. They hunted all over it, but they did'nt find me,—I was farther up."
Doctor Kittredge looked cloudy and worried while she was speaking, but forced a pleasant professional smile, as he said cheerily, and as if wishing to change the subject,—
"Have a good dance this evening, Elsie. The fiddlers are tuning up. Where's the young master? Has he come yet? or is he going to be late, with the other great folks?"
The girl turned away without answering, and looked toward the door.
The "great folks," meaning the mansion-house gentry, were just beginning to come; Dudley Venner and his daughter had been the first of them. Judge Thornton, white-headed, fresh-faced, as good at sixty as he was at forty, with a youngish second wife, and one noble daughter, Arabella, who, they said, knew as much law as her father, a stately, Portia-like girl, fit for a premier's wife, not like to find her match even in the great cities she sometimes visited; the Trecothicks, the family of a merchant, (in the larger sense,) who, having made himself rich enough by the time he had reached middle life, threw down his ledger as Sylla did his dagger, and retired to make a little paradise around him in one of the stateliest residences of the town, a family inheritance; the Vaughans, an old Rockland race, descended from its first settlers, Toryish in tendency in Revolutionary times, and barely escaping confiscation or worse; the Dunhams, a new family, dating its gentility only as far back as the Honorable Washington Dunham, M.C., but turning out a clever boy or two that went to college, and some showy girls with white necks and fat arms who had picked up professional husbands: these were the principal mansion-house people. All of them had made it a point to come; and as each of them entered, it seemed to Colonel and Mrs. Sprowle that the lamps burned up with a more cheerful light, and that the fiddles which sounded from the uncarpeted room were all half a tone higher and half a beat quicker.
Mr. Bernard came in later than any of them; he had been busy with his new duties. He looked well; and that is saying a good deal; for nothing but a gentleman is endurable in full dress. Hair that masses well, a head set on with an air, a neckerchief tied cleverly by an easy, practised hand, close-fitting gloves, feet well shaped and well covered,—these advantages can make us forgive the odious sable broadcloth suit, which appears to have been adopted by society on the same principle that condemned all the Venetian gondolas to perpetual and uniform blackness. Mr. Bernard, introduced by Mr. Geordie, made his bow to the Colonel and his lady and to Miss Matilda, from whom he got a particularly gracious curtsy, and then began looking about him for acquaintances. He found two or three faces he knew,—many more strangers. There was Silas Peckham,—there was no mistaking him; there was the inelastic amplitude of Mrs. Peckham; few of the Apollinean girls, of course, they not being recognized members of society,—but there is one with the flame in her cheeks and the fire in her eyes, the girl of vigorous tints and emphatic outlines, whom we saw entering the school-room the other day. Old Judge Thornton has his eyes on her, and the Colonel steals a look every now and then at the red brooch which lifts itself so superbly into the light, as if he thought it a wonderfully becoming ornament. Mr. Bernard himself was not displeased with the general effect of the rich-blooded school-girl, as she stood under the bright lamps, fanning herself in the warm, languid air, fixed in a kind of passionate surprise at the new life which seemed to be flowering out in her consciousness. Perhaps he looked at her somewhat steadily, as some others had done; at any rate, she seemed to feel that she was looked at, as people often do, and, turning her eyes suddenly on him, caught his own on her face, gave him a half-bashful smile, and threw in a blush involuntarily which made it more charming.
"What can I do better," he said to himself, "than have a dance with Rosa Milburn?" So he carried his handsome pupil into the next room and took his place with her in a cotillon. Whether the breath of the Goddess of Love could intoxicate like the cup of Circe,—whether a woman is ever phosphorescent with the luminous vapor of life that she exhales,—these and other questions which relate to occult influences exercised by certain women, we will not now discuss. It is enough that Mr. Bernard was sensible of a strange fascination, not wholly new to him, nor unprecedented in the history of human experience, but always a revelation when it comes over us for the first or the hundredth time, so pale is the most recent memory by the side of the passing moment with the flush of any new-born passion on its cheek. Remember that Nature makes every man love all women, and trusts the trivial matter of special choice to the commonest accident.
If Mr. Bernard had had nothing to distract his attention, he might have thought too much about his handsome partner, and then gone home and dreamed about her, which is always dangerous, and waked up thinking of her still, and then begun to be deeply interested in her studies, and so on, through the whole syllogism which ends in Nature's supremequod erat demonstrandum. What was there to distract him or disturb him? He did not know,—but there was something. This sumptuous creature, this Eve just within the gate of an untried Paradise, untutored in the ways of the world, but on tiptoe to reach the fruit of the tree of knowledge,—alive to the moist vitality of that warm atmosphere palpitating with voices and music, as the flower of some diaecious plant which has grown in a lone corner, and suddenly unfolding its corolla on some hot-breathing June evening, feels that the air is perfumed with strange odors and loaded with golden dust wafted from those other blossoms with which its double life is shared,—this almost overwomanized woman, might well have bewitched him, but that he had a vague sense of a counter-charm. It was, perhaps, only the same consciousness that some one was looking at him which he himself had just given occasion to in his partner. Presently, in one of the turns of the dance, he felt his eyes drawn to a figure he had not distinctly recognized, though he had dimly felt its presence, and saw that Elsie Venner was looking at him as if she saw nothing else but him. He was not a nervous person, like the poor lady teacher, yet the glitter of the diamond eyes affected him strangely. It seemed to disenchant the air, so fall a moment before of strange attractions. He became silent, and dreamy, as it were. The round-limbed beauty at his side crushed her gauzy draperies against him, as they trod the figure of the dance together, but it was no more to him than if an old nurse had laid her hand on his sleeve. The young girl chafed at his seeming neglect, and her imperious blood mounted into her cheeks; but he appeared unconscious of it.
"There is one of our young ladies I must speak to," he said,—and was just leaving his partner's side.
"Four hands all round!" shouted the first violin,—and Mr. Bernard found himself seized and whirled in a circle out of which he could not escape, and then forced to "cross over," and then to "dozy do," as themaestrohad it,—and when, on getting back to his place, he looked for Elsie Venner, she was gone.
The dancing went on briskly. Some of the old folks looked on, others conversed in groups and pairs, and so the evening wore along, until a little after ten o'clock. About this time there was noticed an increased bustle in the passages, with a considerable opening and shutting of doors. Presently it began to be whispered about that they were going to have supper. Many, who had never been to any large party before, held their breath for a moment at this announcement. It was rather with a tremulous interest than with open hilarity that the rumor was generally received.
One point the Colonel had entirely forgotten to settle. It was a point involving not merely propriety, but perhaps principle also, or at least the good report of the house,—and he had never thought to arrange it. He took Judge Thornton aside and whispered the important question to him,—in his distress of mind, mistaking pockets and taking out his bandanna instead of his white handkerchief to wipe his forehead.
"Judge," he said, "do you think, that, before we commence refreshing ourselves at the tables, it would be the proper thing to—crave a—to request Deacon Soper or some other elderly person—to ask a blessing?"
The Judge looked as grave as if he were about giving the opinion of theCourt in the great India-rubber case.
"On the whole," he answered, after a pause, "I should think it might, perhaps, be dispensed with on this occasion. Young folks are noisy, and it is awkward to have talking and laughing going on while a blessing is being asked. Unless a clergyman is present and makes a point of it, I think it will hardly be expected."
The Colonel was infinitely relieved. "Judge, will you take Mrs. Sprowle in to supper?" And the Colonel returned the compliment by offering his arm to Mrs. Judge Thornton.
The door of the supper-room was now open, and the company, following the lead of the host and hostess, began to stream into it, until it was pretty well filled.
There was an awful kind of pause. Many were beginning to drop their heads and shut their eyes, in anticipation of the usual petition before a meal; some expected the music to strike up,—others, that an oration would now be delivered by the Colonel.
"Make yourselves at home, ladies and gentlemen," said the Colonel; "good things were made to eat, and you're welcome to all you see before you."
So saying, he attacked a huge turkey which stood at the head of the table; and his example being followed first by the bold, then by the doubtful, and lastly by the timid, the clatter soon made the circuit of the tables. Some were shocked, however, as the Colonel had feared they would be, at the want of the customary invocation. Widow Leech, a kind of relation, who had to be invited, and who came with her old, back-country-looking string of gold beads round her neck, seemed to feel very serious about it.
"If she'd ha' known that folks would begrutch cravin' a blessin' over sech a heap o' provisions, she'd rather have staid t' home. It was a bad sign, when folks wasn't grateful for the baounties of Providence."
The elder Miss Spinney, to whom she made this remark, assented to it, at the same time ogling a piece of frosted cake, which she presently appropriated with great refinement of manner,—taking it between her thumb and forefinger, keeping the others well spread and the little finger in extreme divergence, with a graceful undulation of the neck, and a queer little sound in her throat, as of anmthat wanted to get out and perished in the attempt.
The tables now presented an animated spectacle. Young fellows of the more dashing sort, with high stand-up collars and voluminous bows to their neckerchiefs, distinguished themselves by cutting up fowls and offering portions thereof to the buxom girls these knowing ones had commonly selected.
"A bit of the wing, Roxy, or of the—under limb?"
The first laugh broke out at this, but it was premature, asporadiclaugh, as Dr. Kittredge would have said, which did not become epidemic. People were very solemn as yet, many of them being new to such splendid scenes, and crushed, as it were, in the presence of so much crockery and so many silver spoons, and such a variety of unusual viands and beverages. When the laugh rose around Roxy and her saucy beau, several looked in that direction with an anxious expression, as if something had happened,—a lady fainted, for instance, or a couple of lively fellows came to high words.
"Young folks will be young folks," said Deacon Soper. "No harm done.Least said soonest mended."
"Have some of these shell-oysters?" said the Colonel to Mrs.Trecothick.
A delicate emphasis on the wordshellimplied that the Colonel knew what was what. To the New England inland native, beyond the reach of the east winds, the oyster unconditioned, the oyster absolute, without a qualifying adjective, is thepickledoyster. Mrs. Trecothick, who knew very well that an oyster long out of his shell (as is apt to be the case with the rural bivalve) gets homesick and loses his sprightliness, replied, with the pleasantest smile in the world, that the chicken she had been helped to was too delicate to be given up even for the greater rarity. But the word "shell-oysters" had been overheard; and there was a perceptible crowding movement towards their newly discovered habitat, a large soup-tureen.
Silas Peckham had meantime fallen upon another locality of these recent mollusks. He said nothing, but helped himself freely, and made a sign to Mrs. Peckham.
"Lorindy," he whispered, "shell-oysters!"
And ladled them out to her largely, without betraying any emotion, just as if they had been the natural inland or pickled article.
After the more solid portion of the banquet had been duly honored, the cakes and sweet preparations of various kinds began to get their share of attention. There were great cakes and little cakes, cakes with raisins in them, cakes with currants, and cakes without either; there were brown cakes and yellow cakes, frosted cakes, glazed cakes, hearts and rounds, andjumbles, which playful youth slip over the forefinger before spoiling their annular outline. There were moulds ofblo'monje, of the arrowroot variety,—that being undistinguishable from such as is made with Russia isinglass. There were jellies, that had been shaking, all the time the young folks were dancing in the next room, as if they were balancing to partners. There were built-up fabrics, calledCharlottes, caky externally, pulpy within; there were alsomarangs, and likewise custards,—some of the indolent-fluid sort, others firm, in which every stroke of the teaspoon left a smooth, conchoidal surface like the fracture of chalcedony, with here and there a little eye like what one sees in cheeses. Nor was that most wonderful object of domestic art calledtriflewanting, with its charming confusion of cream and cake and almonds and jam and jelly and wine and cinnamon and froth; nor yet the marvellousfloating-island,—name suggestive of all that is romantic in the imaginations of youthful palates.
"It must have cost you a sight of work, to say nothin' of money, to get all this beautiful confectionery made for the party," said Mrs. Crane to Mrs. Sprowle.
"Well, it cost some consid'able labor, no doubt," said Mrs. Sprowle. "Matilda and our girls and I made 'most all the cake with our own hands, and we all feel some tired; but if folks get what suits 'em, we don't begrudge the time nor the work. But I do feel thirsty," said the poor lady, "and I think a glass of srub would do my throat good; it's dreadful dry. Mr. Peckham, would you be so polite as to pass me a glass of srub?"
Silas Peckham bowed with great alacrity, and took from the table a small glass cup, containing a fluid reddish in hue and subacid in taste. This wassrub, a beverage in local repute, of questionable nature, but suspected of owing its color and sharpness to some kind of syrup derived from the maroon-colored fruit of the sumac. There were similar small cups on the table filled with lemonade, and here and there a decanter of Madeira wine, of the Marsala kind, which some prefer to, and many more cannot distinguish from, that which comes from the Atlantic island.
"Take a glass of wine, Judge," said the Colonel; "here is an article that I rather think 'll suit you."
The Judge knew something of wines, and could tell all the famous old Madeiras from each other,—"Eclipse," "Juno," the almost fabulously scarce and precious "White-top," and the rest. He struck the nativity of the Mediterranean Madeira before it had fairly moistened his lip.
"A sound wine, Colonel, and I should think of a genuine vintage. Your very good health."
"Deacon Soper," said the Colonel, "here is some Madary Judge Thornton recommends. Let me fill you a glass of it."
The Deacon's eyes glistened. He was one of those consistent Christians who stick firmly by the first miracle and Paul's advice to Timothy.
"A little good wine won't hurt anybody," said the Deacon. "Plenty,—plenty,—plenty. There!" He had not withdrawn his glass, while the Colonel was pouring, for fear it should spill; and now it was running over.
——It is very odd how all a man's philosophy and theology are at the mercy of a few drops of a fluid which the chemists say consists of nothing but C 4, O 2, H 6. The Deacon's theology fell off several points towards latitudinarianism in the course of the next ten minutes. He had a deep inward sense that everything was as it should be, human nature included. The little accidents of humanity, known collectively to moralists as sin, looked very venial to his growing sense of universal brotherhood and benevolence.