 | CHAPTER V. A New-England tale, or, Sketches of New-England character and manners. |  |
5. CHAPTER V.
“I am for other, than for dancing measures.”
As You Like It.
A few months after Jane entered her aunt's family,
an unusual commotion had been produced in
the village of—by an event of rare occurrence.
This was no less than the arrival of a
dancing-master, and the issuing of proposals for a
dancing-school.
This was regarded by some very zealous persons
as a ruse de guerre of the old Adversary, which, if
not successfully opposed, would end in the establishment
of his kingdom.
The plan of the disciple of Vestris, was to establish
a chain of dancing-schools from one extremity
of the county to the other; and this was looked
upon as a mine which would be sprung to the certain
destruction of every thing that was `virtuous
and of good report.' Some clergymen denounced
the impending sin from their pulpits. One said
that he had searched the Bible from Genesis to
Revelation, and he could not find a text that expressly
treated of that enormity, but that was manifestly
because it was a sin too heinous to be spoken
of in holy writ; he said that dancing was one
nations that were under the immediate and visible
government of the prince of this world; and,
finally, he referred them to the church documents,
those precious records of the piety, and wisdom,
and purity of their ancestors; and they would
there find a rule which prohibited any church-member
from frequenting, or being present at,
a ball, or dance, or frolic, or any such assembly
of Satan; and they would moreover find that such
transgressions had been repeatedly punished by
expulsion from the church, and exclusion from all
christian ordinances. Some of this gentleman's
brethren contented themselves by using their influence
in private advice and remonstrance; and
a few said they could not see the sin nor the danger
of the young people's indulging, with moderation,
in the healthful exercise and innocent recreation
adapted to their season of life; that what
the moral and pious Locke had strenuously advocated,
and the excellent Watts approved, it did
not become them to frown upon; but they should
use their efforts in restraining the young people
within the bounds of moderation.
The result was that our dancing-master obtained
a few schools, and one in the village which enjoyed
the privilege of such a light as Mrs. Wilson.
She, filled with alarm, `lifted up her voice and
spared not.' Some of her warmest admirers
thought her clamour had more of valour in it than
discretion.
Notwithstanding the violence of the opposition,
and perhaps aided by it, the dancing-school was at
length fairly established, and some of the elderly
matrons of the village, who had considered dances
as the orgies of Satan, were heard to confess that
when properly regulated, they might furnish an
amusement not altogether unsuited to youth, and
that they did not, in point of propriety, suffer by
a comparison with the romps, forfeits, and cushion-dances
of their younger days.
At Mrs. Wilson's instance, two new weekly meetings
were appointed, on the same evenings with the
dancing-school; the one to be a conference in the
presence of the young people, and the other a catechetical
lecture for them. These her daughters
were compelled to attend, in spite of the bold and
turbulent opposition of Martha, and the well-concerted
artifices of Elvira.
Elvira expressed her surprise at Jane's patience
under the new dispensation. “To be sure, Jane,”
she said, “you have not the trial that I have,
about the dancing-school, for a poor girl can't
expect such accomplishments.—I do so long to
dance! It was in the mazy dance Edward Montreville
first fell in love with Selina;—but then these
odious—these hateful meetings! Oh, I have certainly
a natural antipathy to them; you do not
always have to attend them; mother is ready
enough to let you off, when there is any hard job
to be done in the family;—well, much as I hate
work, I had rather work than go to meeting.
Tell me honestly, Jane, would not you like to
deep mourning, and could afford to pay for it?”
Jane, all used as she was to the coarseness of
her cousins, would sometimes feel the colour come
unbidden to her cheeks, and she felt them glow as
she replied, “I learned to dance, Elvira, during
the year I spent at Mrs. B.'s boarding school.”
“La, is it possible? I never heard you say a
word about it.”
“No,” said Jane; “many things have happened
to me that you never heard me say a word
about.”
“Oh! I dare say, Miss Jane. Every body
knows your cold, reserved disposition. My sensibility
would destroy me, if I did not permit it to
flow out into a sympathizing bosom.”
“But now, Jane,” said she, shutting the door,
and lowering her voice, “I have hit upon a capital
plan to cheat mother. There is to be a little
ball to-night, after the school; and I have promised
Edward Erskine to go with him to it. For
once, Jane, be generous, and lend me a helping-hand.
In the first place, to get rid of the meeting,
I am going to put a flannel round my throat,
to tell my mother it is very sore, and I have a
head-ach; and then I shall go to bed; but as
soon as she is well out of the house, I shall get up
and dress me, and wind that pretty wreath of yours,
which I'm sure you will lend me, around my head,
and meet Erskine just at the pear-tree, at the end
of the garden. Then, as to the return, you know
you told mother you could not go to meeting, because
you was going to stay with old Phillis, and I
would live the night through. This is clear luck,
what mother would call providential. At any rate,
you know, if she should not be any worse, you can
sit up till 12 o'clock, and I will just tap at Phillis's
bed-room window, and you won't refuse, Jane, to
slip the bolt of the outside door for me.”
Jane told her she could not take part in her projects;
but, Elvira trusting to the impulse of her
cousin's good-nature, adhered to her plan.
Mrs. Wilson was not, on this occasion, so keen-eyed
as usual. She had, that very day, received
proposals of marriage from a broken merchant,
and though she had no idea of jeopardizing her
estates and liberty, she was a good deal fluttered
with what she would fain have believed to be a
compliment to her personal charms. Every thing
succeeded to Elvira's most sanguine expectations.
Her mother went to the conference. Elvira, arrayed
in all the finery her own wardrobe supplied, and
crowned with Jane's wreath, went off to her expecting
gallant, leaving Jane by the bedside of
Phillis; and there the sweet girl kindly watched
alone, till after the return of the family from the
conference, till after the bell had summoned the
household to the evening prayer, and till after the
last lingering sound of fastening doors, windows,
&c. died away.
The poor old invalid was really in the last extremity;
her breathing grew shorter and more interrupted;
her eyes assumed a fearful stare and
glassiness. Jane's fortitude forsook her, and she
ventured to call her aunt, who had but just entered
In the last struggle she grasped Jane's hand,
and as her fingers released their hold, and the arm
fell beside her, Jane raised it up, and gently laying
it across her body, and retaining the hand for
a moment in her own, she said, “Poor Phillis! how
much hard work you have done with this hand,
and how many kindnesses for me. Your troubles
are all over, now.”
“You take upon you to say a great deal, Jane,”
replied her aunt. “Phillis did not give me satisfying
evidence of a saving faith.”
“But,” said Jane, as if she did not quite comprehend
the import of her aunt's remark, “Phillis
was very faithful over her little.”
“That's nothing to the purpose, Jane,” answered
Mrs. Wilson.
Jane made no reply, unless the tear she dropped
on her old friend might be deemed one, and
Mrs. Wilson added,
“Now, child, you must get the things together,
to lay her out.” Then saying, that Phillis's sickness
had been a bill of cost to her, and quite overlooking
her long life of patient and profitable service,
she gave the most sordid directions as to the
selection of provisions for the last wants of the
poor menial. Jane went out of the room to execute
her orders.
She had scarcely gone, when Mrs. Wilson heard
the window carefully raised, and some one said,
“Here I am, Jane; go softly and slip the bolt of
old lady.” By any brighter light than the dim
night lamp that was burning on the hearth, Elvira
could not have mistaken her dark harsh visaged
mother for her fair cousin. A single glance revealed
the truth to Mrs. Wilson. The moon-beams
were playing on the wreath of flowers, and
Edward Erskine, who was known as the ring-leader
of the ball-faction, stood beside Elvira.
She smothered her rage for a few moments, and
creeping softly to the passage, opened the door,
and admitted the rebel, who followed her to Phillis's
room, saying, “Oh, Jane, you are a dear good
soul for once. I have had an ecstatic time. Never
try to persuade me not to trick the old woman.”
By this time they had arrived at Phillis's room,
where Jane had just entered with a candle in her
hand.
Mrs. Wilson turned to her child, who stood confounded
with the sudden detection, “I have caught
you,” said she, almost bursting with rage; “caught
you both!” Then seizing the wreath of flowers,
which she seemed to look upon as the hoisted flag
of successful rebellion, she threw it on the floor;
and crushing it with her foot, she grasped the terrified
girl, and pushed her so violently that she fell
on the cold body of the lifeless woman: “and
you, viper!” continued the furious creature, turning
to Jane, “is this my reward for warming you
in my bosom? You, with your smooth hypocritical
face, teaching my child to deceive and abuse
me. But you shall have your reward. You shall
child, in my own house.”
Jane had often seen her aunt angry, but she
had never witnessed such passion as this, and she
was for a moment confounded; but like a delicate
plant that bends to the ground before a sudden
gust of wind, and then is firm and erect as ever,
she turned to Mrs. Wilson, and said, “Ma'am, I
have never deceived or aided others to deceive
you.”
“I verily believe you lie!” replied her aunt, in
a tone of undiminished fury.
Jane looked to her cousin, who had recoiled
from the cold body of Phillis, and sat in sullen silence
on a trunk at the foot of the bed,—“Elvira,”
said she, “you will do me the justice to tell your
mother I had no part in your deception.” But
Elvira, well pleased to have any portion of the
storm averted from her own head, had not generosity
enough to interpose the truth. She therefore
compromised with her conscience, and merely
said,—“Jane knew I was going.”
“I was sure of it,—I was sure of it; I always
knew she was an artful jade; `still waters run
deep;' but she shall be exposed, the mask shall
be stripped from the hypocrite.”
“Aunt,” said Jane, in a voice so sweet, so composed,
that it sounded like the breath of music
following the howlings of an enraged animal,
“Aunt, we are in the chamber of death; and in a
little time you, and I, and all of us, shall be as this
poor creature; as you will then wish your soul to
now; you know I never deceived you; Elvira
knows it; I am willing to bear any thing it pleases
God to lay upon me, but I cannot have my good
name taken, it is all that remains to me.”
This appeal checked Mrs. Wilson for a moment,
she would have replied, but she was interrupted
by two coloured women, whom she had sent
for, to perform the last offices for Phillis. She
restrained her passion, gave them the necessary
directions, and withdrew to her own room: where,
we doubt not, she was followed by the rebukes of
her conscience; for however neglected and stifled,
its `still small voice' will be heard in darkness
and solitude.
It may seem strange, that Mrs. Wilson should
have manifested such anxiety to throw the blame
of this affair on Jane; but however a parent may
seek by every flattering unction vanity can devise,
to evade the truth, the misconduct of a child will
convey a reproach, and reflect dishonour on the
author of its existence.
Jane and Elvira crept to their beds without exchanging
a single word. Elvira felt some shame
at her own meanness; but levity and selfishness always
prevailed in her mind, and she soon lost all
consciousness of realities, and visions of dances
and music and moonlight floated in her brain;
sometimes `a change came o'er the spirit of her
dream,' and she shrunk from a violent grasp, and
she felt the icy touch of death; and wherever she
turned, a ray from her cousin's mild blue eye fell
beautiful reproach. The mother and the daughter
might both have envied the repose of the solitary
abused orphan, who possessed `a peace they could
not trouble.' She soon lost all memory of her
aunt's rage and her cousin's injustice, and sunk
into quiet slumbers. In her dream she saw her
mother tenderly smiling on her; and heard again
and again the last words of the old woman: “the
Lord bless you, Miss Jane! the Lord will bless
you, for your kindness to old Phillis.”
If Mrs. Wilson had not been blinded by self-love,
she might have learnt an invaluable lesson from
the melancholy results of her own mal-government.
But she preferred incurring every evil, to
the relinquishment of one of the prerogatives of
power. Her children, denied the appropriate
pleasures of youth, were driven to sins of a much
deeper die, than those which Mrs. Wilson sought
to avoid could have had even in her eyes; for surely
the very worst effects that ever were attributed to
dancing, or to romance-reading, cannot equal the
secret dislike of a parent's authority, the risings
of the heart against a parent's tyranny, and the
falsehood and meanness that weakness always will
employ in the evasion of power; and than which
nothing will more certainly taint every thing that
is pure in the character.
The cool reflection of the morning pointed out
to Mrs. Wilson, as the most discreet, the very line
of conduct justice would have dictated. She
knew she could not accuse Jane, without exposing
known that her sagacity had been outwitted by
these children. Therefore, though she appeared
at breakfast more sulky and unreasonable than
usual, she took no notice of the transactions of the
preceding night, and they remained secret to all
but the actors in them; except that we have reason
to believe, from Mr. Lloyd's increased attention
to Jane, shortly after, that they had been
faithfully transmitted to him by Mary Hull, the
balm of whose sympathy it cannot be deemed wonderful
our little solitary should seek.
| CHAPTER V. A New-England tale, or, Sketches of New-England character and manners. | |