The Blunders of a Bashful Man

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The thought was despair. Never did I realized of what the human heart
is capable until Belle came into the store, one lovely spring morning,
looking like a seraph in a new spring bonnet, and blushingly--with a
saucy flash of her dark eyes that made her rising color all the more
divine--inquired for table-damask and 4-4 sheetings.

With an ashen brow and quivering lip, I displayed before her our best
assortment of table-cloths and napkins, pillow-casing and sheeting.
Her mother accompanied her to give her the benefit of her experience;
and kept telling her daughter to choose the best, and what and how
many dozens she had before she was married.

They ran up a big bill at the store that morning, and father came
behind the counter to help, and was mightily pleased; but I felt as if
I were measuring off cloth for my own shroud.

"Come, John, you go do up the sugar for Widow Smith, her boy is
waiting," said my parent, seeing the muddle into which I was getting
things. "I will attend to these ladies--twelve yards of the
pillow-casing, did you say, Mrs. Marigold?"

I moved down to the end of the store and weighed and tied up in brown
paper the "three pounds of white sugar to make cake for the
sewin'-society," which the lad had asked for. A little girl came in
for a pound of bar-soap, and I attended to her wants. Then another
boy, with a basket, came in a hurry for a dozen of eggs. You see, ours
was one of those village-stores that combine all things.

While I waited on these insignificant customers father measured off
great quantities of white goods for the two ladies; and I strained my
ears to hear every word that was said. They asked father if he was
going to New York _soon_? He said, in about ten days. Then Mrs.
Marigold confided to him that they wanted him to purchase twenty-five
yards of white corded silk.

If every cord in that whole piece of silk had been drawing about my
throat I couldn't have felt more suffocated. I sat right down, I felt
so faint, in a tub of butter. I had just sense enough left to remember
that I had on my new spring lavender pants. The butter was
disgustingly soft and mushy.

"Come here, John, and add up this bill," called father.

"I can't; I'm sick."

I had got up from the tub and was leaning on the counter--I was pale,
I know.

"Why, what's the matter?" he asked.

Belle cast one guilty look in my direction. "It's the spring weather,
I dare say," she said softly to my parent.

I sneaked out of the back door and went across the yard to the house
to change my pants. I _was_ sick, and I did not emerge from my room
until the dinner-bell rang.

I went down then, and found father, usually so good-natured, looking
cross, as he carved the roast beef.

"You will never be good for anything, John," was his salutation--"at
least, not as a clerk. I've a good mind to write to Captain Hall to
take you to the North Pole."

"What's up, father?"

"Oh, nothing!" _very_ sarcastically. "That white sugar you sent Mrs.
Smith was table-salt, and she made a whole batch of cake out of it
before she discovered her mistake. She was out of temper when she flew
in the store, I tell you. I had not only to give her the sugar, but
enough butter and eggs to make good her loss, and throw in a neck-tie
to compensate her for waste of time. Before she got away, in came the
mother of the little girl to whom you had given a slab of molasses
candy for bar-soap, and said that the child had brought nothing home
but some streaks of molasses on her face. Just as I was coming out to
dinner the other boy brought back the porcelain eggs you had given him
with word that 'Ma had biled 'em an hour, and she couldn't even budge
the shells.' So you see, my son, that in a miscellaneous store you are
quite out of your element."

"It was that flirt of a Belle Marigold that upset him," said mother,
laughing so that she spilled the gravy on the table-cloth. "He'll be
all right when she is once Mrs. Hencoop."

That very evening Fred came in the store to ask me to be his
groomsman.

"We're going to be married the first of June," he told me, grinning
like an idiot.

"Does Belle know that you invite me to be groomsman?" I responded,
gloomily.

"Yes; she suggested that you be asked. Rose Ellis is to be
bridesmaid."

"Very well; I accept."

"All right, old fellow. Thank you," slapping me on the back.

As I lay tossing restlessly on my bed that night--after an hour spent
in a vain attempt to take the butter out of my lavenders with French
chalk--I made a new and firm resolution. I would make Belle sorry that
she had given her preference to Fred. I would so bear myself--during
our previous meetings and consultations, and during the day of the
ceremony--that she should bitterly repent not having given me an
opportunity to conquer my diffidence before taking up with Frederick
Hencoop. The opportunity was given me to redeem myself. I would prove
that, although modest, I was a gentleman; that the blushing era of
inexperience could be succeeded by one of calm grandeur. Chesterfield
could never have been more quietly self-possessed; Beau Brummell more
imperturbable. I would get by heart all the little formalities of the
occasion, and, when the time came, I would execute them with
consummate ease.

These resolutions comforted me--supported me under the weight of
despair I had to endure. Ha! yes. I would show some people that some
things could be done as well as others.

It was four weeks to the first of June. As I had ruined my lavender
trousers I ordered another pair, with suitable neck-tie, vest, and
gloves, from New York. I also ordered three different and
lately-published books on etiquette. I studied in all three of these
the etiquette of weddings. I thoroughly posted myself on the ancient,
the present, and the future duties of "best men" on such occasions. I
learned how they do it in China, in Turkey, in Russia, in New Zealand,
more particularly how it is done, at present, in England and America.
As the day drew nigh I felt equal to the emergency I had a powerful
motive for acquitting myself handsomely. I wanted to show _her_ what a
mistake she had made.

The wedding was to take place in church at eight o'clock in the
evening. The previous evening we--that is, the bride-elect, groom,
bridesmaid, and groomsman, parents, and two or three friends--had a
private rehearsal, one of the friends assuming the part of clergyman.
All went merry as a marriage bell. I was the soul of ease and grace:
Fred was the awkward one, stepping on the bride's train, dropping the
ring, and so forth.

"I declare, Mr. Flutter, I never saw any one improve as you have,"
said Belle, aside to me, when we had returned to her house. "I do hope
poor Fred will get along better to-morrow. I shall be really vexed at
him if anything goes wrong."

"You must forgive a little flustration on his part," I loftily
answered. "Perhaps, were I in his place, I should be agitated too."

Well, the next evening came, and at seven o'clock I repaired to the
squire's residence. Fred was already there, walking up and down the
parlor, a good deal excited, but dressed faultlessly and looking
frightfully well.

"Why, John," was his first greeting, "aren't you going to wear any
cravat?"

I put my hand up to my neck and dashed madly back a quarter of a mile
for the delicate white silk tie I had left on my dressing bureau.
This, of course, made me uncomfortably warm. When I got back to the
squire's I was in a perspiration, felt that my calm brow was flushed,
and had to wipe it with my handkerchief.

"Come," said that impatient Fred, "you have just two minutes to get
your gloves on."

My hands were damp, and being hurried had the effect to make me
nervous, in spite of four long weeks' constant resolution. What with
the haste and perspiration, I tore the thumb completely out of the
left glove.

Never mind; no time to mend, in spite of the proverb.

The bride came down-stairs, cool, white, and delicious as an orange
blossom. She was helped into one carriage; Fred and I entered another.

"I hope you feel cool," I said to Fred.

"I hope _you_ do," he retorted.

I have always laid the catastrophe which followed to the first mistake
in having to fly home for my neck-tie. I was disconcerted by that, and
I couldn't exactly get concerted again.

I don't know what happened after the carriage stopped at the church
door--I must take the report of my friends for it. They say that I
bolted at the last moment, and followed the bride up one aisle instead
of the groom up the other, as I should have done. But I was perfectly
calm and collected. Oh, yes, that was why, when we attempted to form
in front of the altar, I insisted on standing next to Belle, and when
I was finally pushed into my place by the irate Fred, I kept diving
forward every time the clergyman said anything, trying to take the
bride's hand, and responding, "Belle, I take thee to be my lawful,
wedded," answering, "I do," loudly, to every question, even to that
"Who gives this woman?" etc., until every man, woman, and child in
church was tittering and giggling, and the holy man had to come to a
full pause, and request me to realize that it was not I who was being
married.

"I do. With all my worldly goods I thee endow," was my reply to his
reminder.

"For Heaven's sake subside, or I'll thrash you within an inch of your
life when I get out of this," whispered Fred.

Dimly mistrusting that I was on the wrong track, I turned and seized
Mrs. Marigold by the hand, and began to feel in my pocket for a ring,
because I saw the groom taking one out of his pocket.

The giggling and tittering increased; somebody--father or the
constable--took me by the shoulder and marched me out of that; after
which, I suppose, the ceremony was duly concluded. I only know that
somebody knocked me down about five minutes afterward--I have been
told that it was the bridegroom who did it--and that all the books of
etiquette on earth won't fortify a man against the attacks of
constitutional bashfulness.

CHAPTER IX.

MEETS A PAIR OF BLUE EYES.

I kept pretty quiet the remainder of that summer--didn't even attend
church for several weeks. In fact, I got father to give me a vacation,
and beat a retreat into the country during the month of July, to an
aunt of mine, who lived on a small farm with her husband, her son of
fourteen, and a "hand." Their house was at least a mile from the
nearest neighbor's, and as I was less afraid of Aunt Jerusha than of
any other being of her sex, and as there was not another frock,
sun-bonnet, or apron within the radius of a mile, I promised myself a
month of that negative bliss which comes from retrospection, solitude,
and the pleasure of following the men about the harvest-field. Sitting
quietly under some shadowing tree, with my line cast into the still
pool of a little babbling trout-brook, where it was held in some
hollow of nature's hand, I had leisure to forget the past and to make
good resolutions for the future. Belle Marigold was forever lost to
me. She was Mrs. Hencoop; and Fred had knocked me down because I had
been so unfortunate as to lose my presence of mind at his wedding.
All was over between us.

The course now open for me to pursue was to forever steel my heart to
the charms of the other sex, to attend strictly to business, to grow
rich and honored, while, at the same time, I hardened into a sort of
granite obelisk, incapable of blushing, faltering, or stepping on
other people's toes.

One day, as the men were hauling in the "loaded wains" from the fields
to the great barn, I sat under my favorite tree, as usual, waiting for
a bite. Three speckled beauties already lay in a basin of water at my
side, and I was thinking what a pleasant world this would be were
there no girls in it, when suddenly I heard a burst of silvery
laughter!

Looking up, there, on the opposite side of the brook, stood two young
ladies! They were evidently city girls. Their morning toilets were the
perfection of simple elegance--hats, parasols, gloves, dresses, the
very cream of style.

Both of them were pretty--one a dark, bright-eyed brunette, the other
a blonde, fair as a lily and sweet as a rose. Their faces sparkled
with mischief, but they made a great effort to resume their dignity.

I jumped to my feet, putting one of them--my feet, I mean--in the
basin of water I had for my trout.

"Oh, it's too bad to disturb you, sir," said the dark-eyed one. "You
were just having a nibble, I do believe. But we have lost our way. We
are boarding at the Widow Cooper's, and came out for a ramble in the
woods, and got lost; and here, just as we thought we were on the right
way home, we came to this naughty little river, or whatever you call
it, and can't go a step farther. Is there no way of getting across it,
sir?"

"There is a bridge about a quarter of a mile above here, but to get to
it you will have to go through a field in which there is a very cross
bull. Then there is a log just down here a little ways--I'll show it
to you, ladies"; and tangling my beautiful line inextricably in my
embarrassment, I threw down my fishing-rod and led the way, I on one
side of the stream and they on the other.

"Oh, oh!" cried Blue-Eyes, when we reached the log. "I'll be sure to
get dizzy and fall off."

"Nonsense!" said Black-Eyes, bravely, and walked over without winking.

"I shall never--never dare!" screamed Blue-Eyes.

"Allow me to assist you, miss," I said, in my best style, going on the
log and reaching out my hand to steady her.

She laid her little gray glove in my palm, and put one tiny slipper on
the log, and then she stood, the little coquette! shrinking and
laughing, and taking a step and retreating, and I falling head over
ears in love with her, deeper and deeper every second. I do believe,
if the other one hadn't been there, I would have taken her right up in
my arms and carried her over. Well, Black-Eyes began to scold, and so,
at last, she ventured across, and then she said she was tired and
thirsty, and did wish she had a glass of milk; and so I asked her to
go to the house, and rest a few minutes, and Aunt Jerusha would give
them some milk. You'd better believe aunt opened her eyes, when she
saw me marching in as bold as brass, with two stylish young ladies;
while, the moment I met her sly look, all my customary confusion--over
which I had contrived to hold a tight rein--ran rampant and jerked at
my self-possession until I lost control of it!

"These young ladies, Aunt Jerusha," I stammered, "would like a glass
of milk. They've got lost, and don't know where they are, and can't
find their way back, and I expect I'll have to show them the way."

"They're very welcome," said aunt, who was kindness itself, and she
went into the milk-pantry and brought out two large goblets of
morning's milk, with the rising cream sticking around the inside.

I started forward gallantly, took the server from aunt's hand, and
conveyed it, with almost the grace of a French waiter, across the
large kitchen to where the two beautiful beings were resting in the
chairs which I had set for them. Unfortunately, being blinded by my
bashfulness, I caught my toe in a small hole in aunt's rag carpet, the
result being that I very abruptly deposited both glasses of milk,
bottom up, in the lap of Blue-Eyes. A feeling of horror overpowered me
as I saw that exquisite toilet in ruins--those dainty ruffles, those
cunning bows the color of her eyes, submerged in the lacteal fluid.

I think a ghastly pallor must have overspread my face as I stood
motionless, grasping the server in my clenched hands.

What do you think Blue-Eyes said? _This_ is the way she "gave me
fits." Looking up prettily to my aunt, she says:

"Oh, madam, I am _so_ sorry for your carpet."

"Your dress!" exclaimed Aunt Jerusha.

"Never mind _that_, madam. It can go to the laundry."

"Well, I never!" continued aunt, flying about for a towel, and wiping
her off as well as she could; "but John Flutter is so careless. He's
_always_ blundering. He means well enough, but he's bashful. You'd
think a clerk in a dry-goods store would get over it some time now,
wouldn't you? Well, young ladies, I'll get some more milk for you; but
I won't trust it in _his_ hands."

When Aunt Jerusha let the cat out of the bag about my bashfulness,
Blue-Eyes flashed, at me from under her long eyelashes a glance so
roguish, so perfectly infatuating, that my heart behaved like a
thermometer that is plunged first into a tea-kettle and then into
snow; it went up into my throat, and then down into my boots. I still
grasped the server and stood there like a revolving lantern--one
minute white, another red. Finally my heart settled into my boots. It
was evident that fate was against me. I was _doomed_ to go on leading
a blundering existence. My admiration for this lovely girl was already
a thousand times stronger than any feeling I had ever had for Belle
Marigold. Yet how ridiculous I must appear to her. How politely she
was laughing at me.

The sense of this, and the certainty that I was born to blunder, came
home to me with crushing weight. I turned slowly to Aunt Jerusha, who
was bringing fresh milk, and said, with a simplicity to which pathos
must have given dignity:

"Aunt, will you show them the way to Widow Cooper's? I am going to the
barn to hang myself," and I walked out.

"Is he in earnest?" I heard Blue-Eyes inquire.

"Wall, now, I shouldn't be surprised," avowed Aunt Jerusha. "He's been
powerful low-spirited lately. You see, ladies, he was born that
bashful that life is a burden to him."

I walked on in the direction of the barn; I would not pause to listen
or to cast a backward glance. Doubtless, my relative told them of my
previous futile attempt to poison myself--perhaps became so interested
in relating anecdotes of her nephew's peculiar temperament, that she
forgot the present danger which threatened him. At least, it was some
time before she troubled herself to follow me to ascertain if my
threat meant anything serious.

When she finally arrived at the large double door, standing wide open
for the entrance of the loaded wagons, she gave a sudden shriek.

I was standing on the beam which supported the light flooring of the
hay-loft; beneath was the threshing-floor; above me the great rafters
of the barn, and around one of these I had fastened a rope, the other
terminus of which was knotted about my neck.

I stood ready for the fatal leap.

As she screamed, I slightly raised my hand:

"Silence, Aunt Jerusha, and receive my parting instructions. Tell
Blue-Eyes that I love her madly, but not to blame herself for my
untimely end. The ruin of her dress was only the last drop in the
cup--the last straw on the camel's back. Farewell!" and as she threw
up her arms and shrieked to me to desist, I rolled up my eyes--and
sprang from the beam.

For a moment I thought myself dead. The experience was different from
what I had anticipated. Instead of feeling choked, I had a pain in my
legs, and it seemed to me that I had been shut together like an
opera-glass. Still I knew that I must be dead, and I kept very quiet
until the sound of little screams and gurgles of--what?--_laughter_,
smote my ears!

Then I opened my eyes and looked about. I was not dangling in the air
overhead, but standing on the threshing-floor, with a bit of broken
halter about my neck. The rope had played traitor and given way
without even chafing my throat.

[Illustration: "I STOOD READY FOR THE FATAL LEAP."]

I dare say the sight of me, standing there with my eyes closed and
looking fully convinced that I was dead, must have been vastly
amusing to the two young ladies, who had followed Aunt Jerusha to the
door. They laughed as if I had been the prince of clowns, and had just
performed a most funny trick in the ring. I began to feel as if I had,
too.

Aunt rushed forward and gave me a shake.

"Another blunder, John," she said; "it's plain as the nose on a man's
face that Providence never intended you to commit suicide."

And then Blue-Eyes, repressing her mirth, came forward, half shy and
half coaxing, and said to me:

"How my sister and I would feel if you had killed yourself on our
account! Come! do please show us the way to our boarding-house. Mamma
will be so anxious about us."

Cunning witch! she knows, how to twist a man around her little finger.

"Come," she continued, "let _me_ untie this ugly rope."

And I did let her, and picked up my hat to walk with them to the Widow
Cooper's.

They made themselves very agreeable on the way--so that I would think
no more of hanging myself, I suppose.

Only one more little incident occurred on the road. We met a tramp. He
was a roughly-dressed fellow, with a straw hat such as farmers wear,
whose broad brim nearly hid his face. He sauntered up impudently, and,
before we could pass him, he chucked Blue-Eyes under the chin. In
less than half a second he was flying backward over the rail fence,
although he was a tall fellow, more than my weight.

"Now," said I proudly to myself, "she will forget that unlucky circus
performance in the barn."

Imagine my sensations when she turned on me with the fire flashing out
of those soft blue eyes.

"What did you fling my brother over the fence for?"

That was what she asked me.

CHAPTER X.

HE CATCHES A TROUT AND PRESENTS IT TO A LADY.

"Some achieve greatness; some have greatness thrust upon them." I
think I have achieved greatness. Of one thing I am convinced: that it
is only necessary to do some one thing _well_--as well or better than
any one else--in order to acquire distinction. The thing I do really
well--better than any living human being--is to blunder. I defy
competition. There are champion tight-rope dancers, billiard players,
opera singers, swindlers, base-ballists, candidates for the
Presidency. I am the champion blunderer. You remember the man who
asked of another, "Who is that coarse, homely creature across the
room?" and received for answer, "That creature is my wife!" Well, I
_ought_ to have been that man, although in that case I did not happen
to be. My compliments always turn out to be left-handed ones; all my
remarks, all my efforts to please are but so many never-ending
_faux-pas_.

As a general seeks to retrieve one defeat by some act of unparalleled
bravery, so had I sought to wipe out from the memory of the lovely
pair whom I escorted, my shameful failure to hang myself, by gallantly
pitching over the fence the fellow who had made himself too familiar
with the fairer of the two; and, as a _matter of course_, he turned
out to be her favorite brother.

He was a good-natured fellow, after all--a perfect gentleman; and when
I stammered out my excuses, saying that I had mistaken him for a
tramp, he laughed and shook hands with me, explaining that he was in
his fishing costume, and saying very handsomely that were his dear
sister ever in such danger of being insulted, he hoped some person as
plucky as I would be on hand to defend her. This was applying cold
cream to my smarting self-love. But it did not prevent me from
observing the sly glances exchanged between the girls, nor prevent my
hearing the little bursts of suppressed giggling which they pretended
were caused by the funny motions of the hay-cutter in a neighboring
field. So, as their brother could show them the way to Widow Cooper's,
I said good-morning rather abruptly. He called me back, however, and
asked if I would not like to join him on a fishing tramp in the
morning. I said "I would, and I knew all the best places."

Then we shook hands again, while the young ladies smiled like angels;
but I had not more than turned a bend in the road, which hid me from
view, than I heard such shrieks and screams of laughter as turned my
two ears into boiled lobsters for the remainder of the day.

But, spite of my burning ears, I could not get mad at those girls.
They had a right to laugh at me, for I had, as usual, made myself
ridiculous. I was head over ears in love with Blue-Eyes. The feeling I
had once cherished toward Belle Marigold, compared with my sudden
adoration of this glorious stranger, was as bean-soup to the condensed
extract of beef, as water to wine, as milk to cream, as mush to
mince-pie.

I do not think I slept a wink that night. My room was suffocating, and
I took a pillow, and crawled out on the roof of the kitchen, just
under my window, and stretched myself out on the shingles, and winked
back at the stars which winked at me, and thought of the bright,
flashing eyes of the bewitching unknown. I resolved to seek her
acquaintance, through her brother, and never, never to blunder again,
but to be calm and cool like other young men--calm, cool, and
persistent. It might have been four o'clock in the morning that I came
to this determination, and so soothing was it, that I was able to take
a brief nap after it.

I was awakened by young Knickerbocker, the lady's brother, tickling
the soles of my feet with a rake, and I started up with such violence
from a sound sleep, that I slipped on the inclined plane, rolled down
to the edge, and went over into a hogshead of rain-water just
underneath.

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