Mrs. Jameson choked; it did not seem as if she could reply in her usual manner to such a plain statement of objections. She and Caroline glared at each other a minute; then to our great relief, for no one wants her house turned into the seat of war, Caroline simply repeated, “I shall never give my consent to have my son marry your daughter,” and went out.
Mrs. Jameson did not stay long after that. She rose, saying that her nerves were very much shaken, and that she felt it sad that all her efforts for the welfare and improvement of the village should have ended in this, and bade us a mournful good-evening and left.
Louisa and I had an impression that she held us in some way responsible, and we could not see why, though I did reflect guiltily how I had asked the lovers into my house that October night. Louisa and I agreed that, take it altogether, we had never seen so much mutual love and mutual scorn in two families.
VI
THE CENTENNIAL
The older one grows, the less one wonders at the sudden, inconsequent turns which an apparently reasonable person will make in a line of conduct. Still I must say that I was not prepared for what Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson did in about a week after she had declared that her daughter should never marry Harry Liscom: capitulated entirely, and gave her consent.
It was Grandma Cobb who brought us the news, coming in one morning before we had our breakfast dishes washed.
“My daughter told Harriet last night that she had written to her father and he had no objections, and that she would withdraw hers on further consideration,” said Grandma Cobb, with a curious, unconscious imitation of Mrs. Jameson's calm state of manner. Then she at once relapsed into her own. “My daughter says that she is convinced that the young man is worthy, though he is not socially quite what she might desire, and she does not feel it right to part them if they have a true affection for each other,” said Grandma Cobb. Then she added, with a shake of her head and a gleam of malicious truth in her blue eyes: “That is not the whole of it; Robert Browning was the means of bringing it about.”
“Robert Browning!” I repeated. I was bewildered, and Louisa stared at me in a frightened way. She said afterward that she thought for a minute that Grandma Cobb was out of her head.
But Grandma Cobb went on to explain. “Yes, my daughter seems to look upon Robert Browning as if everything he said was written on tables of stone,” said she; “and last night she had a letter from Mrs. Addison Sears, who feels just the same way. My daughter had written her about Harriet's love affair, and this was in answer. Mrs. Sears dwelt a good deal upon Mr. Browning's own happy marriage; and then she quoted passages; and my daughter became convinced that Robert Browning would have been in favor of the match,—and that settled it. My daughter proves things by Browning almost the same way as people do by Scripture, it seems to me sometimes. I am thankful that it has turned out so,” Grandma Cobb went on to say, “for I like the young man myself; and as for Harriet, her mind is set on him, and she's something like me: once get her mind set on anybody, that's the end of it. My daughter has got the same trait, but it works the contrary way: when she once gets her mind set against anybody, that's the end of it unless Robert Browning steps in to turn her.”
Louisa and I were heartily glad to hear of Mr. Browning's unconscious intercession and its effect upon Mrs. Jameson, but we wondered what Caroline Liscom would say.