 | CHAPTER V. A New England tale, and Miscellanies |  |
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 country 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 as he
could not find a text that expressly rebuked that enormity,
he was confirmed in a previous opinion that it was included
in all general denunciations of sin! he said that dancing was
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 faithfulness 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 a 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
Mrs. Wilson's light. She, filled with alarm, `lifted up her
voice and spared not.' Some of her warmest admirers thought
her clamor had more of valor 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
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 learn to dance, if you were not obliged to
wear 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. Benson'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
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-ache; 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 just heard the doctor say, he did not believe she 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 hazarding 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
supplied, and crowned with Jane's wreath, went off to
meet 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., had 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 the room, when the poor creature expired.
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
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 the west door, and don't for the
world wake the 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 moonbeams were playing on the wreath of flowers, and
Edward Erskine, who was known as the ringleader 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 play off a good trick on mother.” 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
by a dependent 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 as 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 be lightened
of all injustice—spare the innocent 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 colored
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 dishonor 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 felt the icy touch of death;
and wherever she turned, a ray from her cousin's mild blue
eye fell upon her, and she could not escape from its silent
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
of power. Her children, denied the appropriate pleasures
of youth, were driven to sins of a much deeper dye 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 Elvira, and besides, she did not care to have
it 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, and Miscellanies | |