Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1886 — CLORINDA PERRIVALE'S LOVERS. [ARTICLE]

CLORINDA PERRIVALE'S LOVERS.

BY PAUL PASTNOR.

There was no mistaking it —Eliphalet Babbitt was in love. He had all the general symptoms of that species of heart disease, and some that were peculiar to himself. He lost his appetite, and that was no small loss to Eliphalet, though it was a great gain to the family. He grew moody and absent-minded, and was falling into a habit of stealing away to the woods at noon and evening, and lung on his back under the trees. These, of course, were only general symptoms, but Eliphalet developed others characteristic of himself. For instance, when he went to work in the west meadow he invariably put on his Sunday clothes, even to the black gloves and stiff bell-crowned hat. Thus equipped, he would seize his scythe or his rake and work steadily toward the little white eot- . tage with the brown barns and patent tirogilt lightning-rods, where the l'orrivales—father and daughter—lived. It was a rare sight to see that gaunt, clerical figure in black stalking by industrial degrees across the meadow,.and even- now and then raising n pair of shy. half-frightened eyes in the direction of the leaf-embowered cottage,as though he suspected himself of being watched, and would like desperately well to be visibly assured of the fact. The extraordinary attraction of the Pen-halo homestead to Eliphalet Babbitt, it might not take an oracle to divine, was none other • than the fair mistress of the place—Miss Clorinda Perrivale.: In fact, it was whispered abroad, in rural vernacular, that Eliphalet Babbitt was “emit” with “Clorindy” Perrivale, What wonder if it were so? Clorinda Perrivale was as trim and pretty a lass as one sees in a year’s wanderings. She was as plump and well-turned as a ball of her own golden butter, and had a face and a pair of eyes that raised the mischief with every young fellow she looked at. And then she had a way—the pretty minx!—of letting her long lashes droop upon her cheeks, when the shy youth caught her glance, and actually blushing in sympathy with his confusion. Clorinda was an incorrigible flirt. Unfortunately, she had lost her mother when a mere child, and, without the restraining influence of womanhood upon her girlish playfulness and love of admiration, had involved herself in a life of excitement and pleasure, which had gradually become the very breath of life to her. • Eliphalet Babbitt was among the latest of her admirers. He had been at school’for Mix years, vainly attempting to polish his rough but honest wit on the grindstone of culture; and now', but little changed—the same awkward, good-natured, bashful, blundering but capable fellow—he had returned home, to displace the Greek verbs in his hair with hayseed, and get rid of the crude mass of philosophies and sciences which he had gorged, by a judicious regimen of plain homo duties, and occasional eructations of local, vernacular. He had met Clorinda Perrivale frequently since his return, at church, at picnics, and at home, and had fallen irretrievably in love with the village belle. During the course of the summer in which our story opens, “Clorinda Perrivale’s love-making” had become the subject of so much ill-considered village gossip that, one evening, as she sat with her father on the little honeysuckle-Covered porch in front of the cottage, he had said to her: “My girl, you have had your lovers now for so long that don’t you think you could decide upon one for your partner in life?” Then, in answer to the girl’s quick look of apprehension and pain, he had quietly gone on to tell her of the village talk; of his own fear that she was transgressing the bounds of conventional propriety by admitting equally the warm attentions of so many young men; and finally, to ask her if, for his sake, and the sake of her dead mother, she would either cease giving encouragement to her suitors, or choose one of them, as best suited her own sweet will, for life. It was a plain, serious talk, such as every father of a motherless girl is bound and privileged to have, when the strange, wayward age of girlhood is budding into womanhood. Clorinda listened with downcast eyes, and when he had finished she came and sat in his lap and laid her warm cheek against his, and said, with tears: “Father, you are right; I have been very thoughtless, and I thank you for what you have said. Good-night!” and then she ran away upstairs to her own room, and cast herself on the bed, and wept, not bitterly, but tenderly, until the shadows of night, and the stillness, and the stars brooded over the world, and she fell asleep. Fonrth-of-July night (here was to be a great and glorious celebration, with speeches ar.d cannon and fireworks, in the little city of Marbray, six miles down the river. Every nian and boy in Newville had .shaped his affairs during the previous six Weeks to the one special end of attending the grand demonstration on that night,.- Now Clorinda Perrivale, mern and mischievous’ again, even after her tears, but this time wi.h a pur and sweet purpose in her merriment. conceived the idea of testing her devoted swains upon that memorable occasion,

and chosing him whose love for her should prove paramount to his love for Chinese fireworks and scintillating eloquence. So 6he managed to convey to each of her suitors singly the information that she would be at home on Fourth-of-July night, and should very much like the pleasure of his company at that time. Something, too, in the manner of the invitation seemed to hint ti .it it was of especial interest to the recij i -nt. Among the rest, Eliphalet Babbitt re eived the message of the fair and instantly all visions of pyrotechnic display and soul-stining oratory vanished from his mind, and his heart went pit-a-pat with love's alternate hope and fear. Now Eliphalet was a shrewd fellow, and by dint of considerable prying about, and keeping his eyes and ears open, he found out that he was not the only one appointed to meet the bewitching Clorinda upon the evening of the celebration. Some half-score rivals evaded his questions about going to Marbray in such a manner that he was sure they were intending to keep the appointment with Miss Perrivale. Eliphalet went home and pondered upon the matter. He reflected that, if Clorinda were intending to make her choice from a superficial examination of some ten or twelve young men dressed in their Sunday clothes and gotten up to “kill,” he would stand a pretty poor chance. If there were only some way of getting rid of his rivals! If he could think of some plan to keep them away on the eventful night, and make it appear to Clorinda that they cared less about her than they did about a night’s fun in Marbray, why, his suit would be as good as won, for a girl of her spirit wouldn’t stand snubbing by the handsomest and most agreeable young man that ever walked, Eliphalet put on liis thinking-cap, and drew it tighter than he ever diet before. He concocted all sorts of schemes, but rejected them one after the other as impracticable. All of a sudden he started up as if he had been sitting on a box of dynamite. “By the great horn spoon!” he exclaimed, striking his leg with the palm of his hand, “I’ve got it now!” He nodded so emphatically that his | hair tumbled down over bis forehead, and gave him the appearance of a very much exaggerated sky terrier, “I’ve got it, sir! I’ve got it!” he repeated, in louder tones, leaving any chance listener to surmise for j himself whether he meant he had the de- j lirimn tremens or the secret of perpetual I motion. He then danced all around the j loom on one foot, and ended up by taking a j running jump on to the bed and" bringing J down the whole structure in one confused 1 mass of slats, pillows, blankets, and bedposts.

Any oue loitering around the Babbitt farm-house at about eight o’clock on the evening of the 4th of July, 18—, might have seen u tall, gaunt figure, neatly arrayed in black, emerging from the shed door with a tin-pail in one hand and a shorthandled brush in the other. That figure belonged to Eliphalet Babbitt, and that pail to his mother, and in that pail was lard. Now it happened that the regular path of Clorinda Perrivale’s suitors lay across the vast meadow aforesaid, over the fence and across a good-sized brook by means of a single log. They took this path because it brought them to the rear of the house, and relicvi d them of the disagreeable necessity of saying good-evening to Mr. Perrivale, who usually sat • on the front porch at the evening hour, smoking his pipe. (It is to be, noticed as a universal fact in love affairs that the suitor, -however well received, always keeps shy of th- girl’s male parent.) Eliphalet Babbitt was aware of the custom of his rivals. b -cause it was one that ho himself habitually practiced, and tonight a grim smile sat upon his lips, as he pursued his way across the fields in the soft summer twilight, lard-pail in hand, and with his love-speech already made out in his heart. The shadows of early night were just closing round, as he climbed the fence and approached the log bridge over the brook. Looking carefully about him to see that no one was witness to his deed, he flung himself astride of the log, with his back to the Perrivale cottage, opened his pail, dipped the brush in the lard, and proceeded to apply a liberal coating of it to the already smooth-worn log. as he hitched along backward toward the opposite bank. When his task was completed he hid pail and brush under the bank and hastened up the path to the cottage. Clorinda was sitting in her little work-room with the vine-covered window as he drew near, and she merrily bade him come in without knocking. Oh, how beautiful she looked rocking back and forth in the dusk-light, against toe background of the vine, her pure white dress of muslin but half concealing her routid white arms and marble shoulders! Eliphalet shyly sat down on the edge of a chair, and turned his bellcrowned hat round and round in his nervous hands. They talked—or rather, she talked —pleasantly and quietly for a little while, listening in the pauses to the monotonous chirp, chirp of the cricket and the croaking of the frogs on the banks of the brook. Deeper and deeper grew the shadows, till the figure in white seemed like a substanceless thing seen dimly in a vision, and the figure in black had almost melted away into the darkness of the inner room. The girl had ceased to talk much. Her face was turned away from Eliphalet, and she seemed to he looking out anxiously, as she rocked, through the narrow spaces of the vine. At length a dead silence prevailed. Eliphalet’s tongue was so dry that he could not speak, and his wits were drier still of words to speak to the beautiful girl, with herjhoughts apparently so far away from him. Suddenly there was a heavy "splash from the brook below. “Oh, my!” cried Clorinda, starting as if suddenly "wakened from a dream. “ That rock has fallen out of the bank—l knew it would!”

“What rock, Clorindy?” asked Eliphalet, hitching his chair a little nearer in the dark, under cover of the sound of his voice. “Do you mean the big rock by the bridge?” “Yes,” answered Clorinda. “Did you notice it?” “I guess I did,” exclaimed Eliphalet, glad to get upon a subject of conversation in that trying moment. “I lowed that rock was going to fall one of (hese days. I told father so. Did it frighten you, Clorindy?” (Here he started to hitch a little nearer, but his chair creaked, and he forebore.) “Yes, it did,” admitted.the girl. “I must have been thinking ’.’ Splash! “Gosh, what a mushrat!” exclaimed Eliphalet, the cold'sweat starting. out. all over him. “Wish I’d a been • there with a gun!” :. - . . , Was it a -muskrat?” asked Clorinda, curiously.' “It didn’t sound like a stone.” “Yes, it was,” asseverated Eliphalet, roundly. “I know a mushrat splash, every time. Did you ever see a mushrat, Clorindy?” (Creak, creak, from the chair.)

i “No, I never did,” exclaimed Clorinda’ “but I have seen their holes.” “So’ve I, go’ve I!” exclaimed Eliphalet, immensely tickled at the coincidence, i “ When the brook gets down real low and hayin’s over, so there won’t be anybody round to bother us, I’ll show you more’n i fifteen or sixteen of ’em, all in a ” ; Splash! “That was a fish!” cried Clorinda, positively. 1 “So ’twas! so ’twas!” assented Eliphalet, and his chair made a long, scraping noise on the floor. “Say, Clorindv, do you like to .fish?” “Yes, I do—ever so much.” | “So do I! uh, uh. So do —I.” Eliphalet ! was sucking the rim of his bell-crowned j bat, and bending forward, and looking up sidewise through the darkness at the figure in white. “Clorindy—will you go fishing i with me, some time?” j “Perhaps so, Eliph—Mr. Babbitt.” ■ “He, lie, he!” from Eliphalet. Scrape, creak, creak! from the chair. “Say, Clorindy—l’m glad I did’t go to the fireworks to-night.” “Why, Eliph—alet?” “Becuz—becuz, all the other boys went, you know, and—bee, hee, hee!” Splash! splash! “Bull-frogs!” exclaimed Eliphalet. (“Two of ’em together, by the great horn spoon!”) “How do you know they were bull-frogs, Eliphalet?” “I heard ’em croak, didn't you?” “I thought I heard some noise—more like a man’s voice.” “Oh, no! that was me. I was just going to say something.” “AVhat was it, Eliphalet?” “I—l like you putty well, Clorindy”— scrape, scrape, from tiie chair. Eliphalet was very close now. He put out his arm; it slipped around Clorimla’s waist, and the chair stopped rocking. “Clorindy—l—” Something precluded the use of further words, and when Eliphalet went home that night he was so elated that he forgot all about the larded bridge, and Clorinda, in her little room over the porch, thought she faintly heard— Splash!— Chicago Ledger.