CHAPTER VII. THE EVENT OF THE SEASON.

"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. Colonel Sprowle'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 mola.s.ses, not to speak of rum,--also in tea, salt fish, b.u.t.ter and cheese, oil and candles, dried fruit, agricultural "p'doose" 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 language shop, 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 gla.s.ses 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 have come out, and thereafter are considered to be in 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 set HER up 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 feeling of 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 t.i.tle, 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 ma.s.ses 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 she had managed to pick up a merchant. Other folks could have married merchants, if their families was n'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 name Seymour, 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 husband mended clothes.

If he had confined himself strictly to making them, 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 Tahvern 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, b.u.t.tony 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 n.o.body 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 ta.s.sels of the curtains and bells were taken out of those brown linen bags, in which, for reasons. .h.i.therto 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 billionaire.--"Antoine, I am going to have twenty people to dine to-day." "Biens, 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 tonight?" "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 is 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 before widows' houses, and leaves foundling turkeys upon poor men's door-steps, 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 the manege of 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 quant.i.ty of sweetened and thickened milk in what was called a cream-freezer. At eleven o'clock, A. M., he retired for a s.p.a.ce. 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 a.s.sisting 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 Soph.o.m.ore 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 spattered a few sparks and sulked themselves out, or kept up a faint show of burning, so that their ground gla.s.ses looked as feebly phosph.o.r.escent as so many invalid fireflies. With much coaxing and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g and p.r.i.c.king, 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 wicks 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 att.i.tude 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 drawin's," said Ada Azuba, the eldest daughter.