seemed to be the making of his wife frivolous, filling her with
useless worries, training his daughters to be idle and self-indulgent,
and his sons to be careless and reckless of expenditure. So when at
last the crash came, there was a certain sense of relief in finding
himself once more an honest man at the bottom of the hill, and he
quietly resolved in his inmost soul that he never would climb again.
He had settled up his affairs with a manly exactness that won the
respect of all his creditors, and they had put him into a salaried
position which insured a competence, and with this he resolved to be
contented; his wife returned to the economical habits and virtues of
her early life; his sons developed an amount of manliness and energy
which was more than enough to compensate for what they had lost in
worldly prospects. He enjoyed his small, quiet house and his reduced
establishment as he never had done a more brilliant one, for he felt
that it was founded upon certainties and involved no risks. Mrs. Van
Arsdel was a sweet-tempered, kindly woman, and his daughters had
each and every one met the reverse in a way that showed the sterling
quality which is often latent under gay and apparently thoughtless
young womanhood.
Aunt Maria, however, settled it in her own mind, with the decision
with which she usually settled her relatives' affairs, that this state
of things would be only temporary.
"Of course," she said to her numerous acquaintances, "of course, Mr.
Van Arsdel will go into business again--he is only waiting for a good
opening--he'll be up again in a few years where he was before."
And to Mrs. Van Arsdel she said, "Nelly, you must keep him up--you
mustn't hear of his sinking down and doing nothing"--_doing nothing_
being his living contentedly on a comfortable salary and going without
the "pomps and vanities." "Your husband, of course, will go into some
operations to retrieve his fortunes, you know," she said. "What is he
thinking of?"
"Well, really, Maria, I don't see as he has the least intention--he
seems perfectly satisfied to live as we do."
"You must put him up to it, Nelly--depend upon it, he's in danger of
sinking down and giving up; and he has splendid business talents. He
should go to operating in stocks, you see. Why, men make fortunes in
that way. Look at the Bubbleums, and the Flashes, they were all down
two years ago, and now they're up higher than ever, and they did it
all in stocks. Your husband would find plenty of men ready to go in
with him and advance money to begin on. No man is more trusted. Why,
Nelly, that man might die a millionaire as well as not, and you ought
to put him up to it; it's a wife's business to keep her husband up."
"I _have_ tried to, Maria; I have been just as cheerful as I knew
how to be, and I've retrenched and economized everywhere, as all the
girls do--they are wonderful, those girls! To see them take hold so
cheerfully and help about household matters, you never would dream
that they had not been brought up to it; and they are so prudent about
their clothes--so careful and saving. And then the boys are getting
on so well. Tom has gone into surveying with a will, and is going out
with Smithson's party to the Rocky Mountains, and Hal has just got a
good situation in Boston----"
"Oh, yes, that is all very well; but, Nelly, that isn't what I mean.
You know that when men fail in business they are apt to get blue and
discouraged and give up enterprise, and so gradually sink down and
lose their faculties. That's the way old Mr. Snodgrass did when he
failed."
"But I don't think, Maria, that there is the least danger of my
husband's losing his mind--or sinking down, as you call it. I never
saw him more cheerful and seem to take more comfort of his life. Mr.
Van Arsdel never did care for style--except as he thought it pleased
me--and I believe he really likes the way we live now better than the
way we did before; he says he has less care."
"And you are willing to sink down and be a nobody, and have no
carriage, and rub round in omnibuses, and have to go to little mean
private country board instead of going to Newport, when you might
just as well get back the position that you had. Why, it's downright
stupidity, Nelly!"
"As to mean country board," pleaded Mrs. Van Arsdel, "I don't know
what you mean, Maria. We kept our old homestead up there in Vermont,
and it's a very respectable place to spend our summer in."
"Yes, and what chances have the girls up there--where nobody sees
them but oxen? The girls ought to be considered. For their sakes you
ought to put your husband up to do something. It's cruel to them,
brought up with the expectations they have had, to have to give all up
just as they are coming out. If there is any time that a mother _must_
feel the want of money it is when she has daughters just beginning
to go into society; and it is cruel towards young girls not to give
them the means of dressing and doing a little as others do; and dress
does cost so abominably, now-a-days; it's perfectly frightful--people
cannot live creditably on what they used to."
"Yes, certainly, it is frightful to think of the requirements of
society in these matters," said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "Now, when you and
I were girls, Maria, you know we managed to appear well on a very
little. We embroidered our own capes and collars, and wore white a
good deal, and cleaned our own gloves, and cut and fitted our own
dresses; but, then dress was not what it is now. Why, making a dress
now is like rigging a man-of-war--it's so complicated--there are so
many parts, and so much trimming."
"Oh, it's perfectly fearful," said Aunt Maria; "but, then, what is
one to do? If one goes into society with people who have so much of
all these things, why one must, at least, make some little approach
to decent appearance. We must keep within sight of them. All I ask,"
she added, meekly, "is to be _decent_. I never expect to run into the
extremes those Elmores do--the waste and the extravagance that there
must be in that family! And there's Mrs. Wat Sydney coming out with
the whole new set of her Paris dresses. I should like to know, for
curiosity's sake, just what that woman has spent on her dresses!"
"Yes," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, warming with the subject, "you know
she had all her wardrobe from Worth, and Worth's dresses come to
something. Why, Polly told me that the lace alone on some of those
dresses would be a fortune."
"And just to think that Eva might have married Wat Sydney," said Aunt
Maria. "It does seem as if things in this world fell out on purpose to
try us!"
"Well, I suppose they do, and we ought to try and improve by them,"
said Mrs. Van Arsdel, who had some weak, gentle ideas of a moral
purpose in existence, to which even the losses and trials of lace and
embroidery might be made subservient. "After all," she added, "I don't
know but we ought to be contented with Eva's position. Eva always was
a peculiar child. Under all her sweetness and softness she has quite a
will of her own; and, indeed, Harry is a good fellow, and doing well
in his line. He makes a very good income, for a beginning, and he
is rising every day in the literary world, and I don't see but that
they have as good an opportunity to make their way in society as the
Sydneys with all their money."
"Sophie Sydney is perfectly devoted to Eva," said Aunt Maria.
"And well she may be," answered Mrs. Van Arsdel, "in fact, Eva made
that match; she actually turned him over to her. You remember how she
gave her that prize croquet-pin that Sydney gave her, and how she
talked to Sydney, and set him to thinking of Sophie--oh, pshaw! Sydney
never would have married that girl in the world if it had not been for
Eva."
"Well," said Aunt Maria, "it's as well to cultivate that intimacy.
It will be a grand summer visiting place at their house in Newport,
and we want visiting places for the girls. I have put two or three
anchors out to the windward, in that respect. I am going to have the
Stephenson girls at my house this winter, and your girls must help
show them New York, and cultivate them, and then there will be a nice
visiting place for them at Judge Stephenson's next summer. You see the
Judge lives within an easy drive of Newport, so that they can get over
there, and see and be seen."
"I'm sure, Maria, it's good in you to be putting yourself out for my
girls."
"Pshaw, Nelly, just as if your girls were not mine--they are all I
have to live for. I can't stop any longer now, because I must catch
the omnibus to go down to Eva's; I am going to spend the day with her."
"How nicely Eva gets along," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, with a little
pardonable motherly pride; "that girl takes to housekeeping as if it
came natural to her."
"Yes," said Aunt Maria; "you know I have had Eva a great deal under my
own eye, first and last, and it shows that early training will tell."
Aunt Maria picked up this crumb of self-glorification with an easy
matter-of-fact air which was peculiarly aggravating to her sister.
In her own mind Mrs. Van Arsdel thought it a little too bad. "Maria
always did take the credit of everything that turned out well in my
family," she said to herself, "and blamed me for all that went wrong."
But she was too wary to murmur out loud, and bent her head to the yoke
in silence.
"Eva needs a little showing and cautioning," said Aunt Maria; "that
Mary of hers ought to be watched, and I shall tell her so--she mustn't
leave everything to Mary."
"Oh, Mary lived years with me, and is the most devoted, faithful
creature," said Mrs. Van Arsdel.
"Never mind--she needs watching. She's getting old now, and don't work
as she used to, and if Eva don't look out she won't get half a woman's
work out of her--these old servants always take liberties. I shall
look into things there. Eva is my girl; I sha'n't let anyone get
around her;" and Aunt Maria arose to go forth. But if anybody supposes
that two women engaged in a morning talk are going to stop when one
of them rises to go, he knows very little of the ways of womankind.
When they have risen, drawn up their shawls, and got ready to start,
then is the time to call a new subject, and accordingly Aunt Maria, as
she was going out the door, turned round and said: "Oh! there now! I
almost forgot what I came for:--What _are_ you going to do about the
girls' party dresses?"
"Well, we shall get a dressmaker in the house. If we can get
Silkriggs, we shall try her."
"Now, Nelly, look here, I have found a real treasure--the nicest
little dressmaker, just set up, and who works cheap. Maria Meade told
me about her. She showed me a suit that she had had made there in
imitation of a Paris dress, with ever so much trimming, cross-folds
bound on both edges, and twenty or thirty bows, all cut on the bias
and bound, and box-plaiting with double quilling on each side all
round the bottom, and going up the front--graduated, you know. There
was waist, and overskirt, and a little sacque, and, will you believe
me, she only asked fifteen dollars for making it all."
"You don't say so!"
"It's a fact. Why, it must have been a good week's work to make that
dress, even with her sewing machine. Maria told me of her as a great
secret, because she really works so well that if folks knew it she
would be swamped with work, and then go to raising her price--that's
what they all do when they can get a chance--but I've been to her and
engaged her for you."
"I'm sure, Maria, I don't know what we should do if you were not
always looking out for us."
"I don't know--I'm getting to be an old woman," said Aunt Maria. "I'm
not what I was. But I consider your family as my appointed field of
labor--just as our rector said last Sunday, we must do the duty next
us. But tell the girls not to talk about this dressmaker. We shall
want all she can do, and make pretty much our own terms with her. It's
nice and convenient for Eva that she lives somewhere down in those
out-of-the-way regions where she has chosen to set up. Well, good
morning;" and Aunt Maria opened the house-door and stood upon the top
of the steps, when a second postscript struck her mind.
"There now!" said she, "I was meaning to tell you that it is getting
to be reported everywhere that Alice and Jim Fellows are engaged."
"Oh, well, of course there's nothing in it," said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "I
don't think Alice would think of him for a moment. She likes him as a
friend, that's all."
"I don't know, Nelly; you can't be too much on your guard. Alice is a
splendid girl, and might have almost anybody. Between you and me--now,
Nelly, you must be sure not to mention it--but Mr. Delafield has been
very much struck with her."
"Oh, Maria, how can you? Why, his wife hasn't been dead a year!"
"Oh, pshaw! these widowers don't always govern their eyes by the
almanac," said Aunt Maria, with a laugh. "Of course, John Delafield
will marry again. I always knew that; and Alice would be a splendid
woman to be at the head of his establishment. At any rate, at the
little company the other night at his sister's, Mrs. Singleton's, you
know, he was perfectly devoted to her, and I thought Mrs. Singleton
seemed to like it."
"It would certainly be a fine position, if Alice can fancy him," said
Mrs. Van Arsdel. "Seems to me he is rather querulous and dyspeptic,
isn't he?"
"Oh; well, yes; his health is delicate; he needs a wife to take care
of him."
"He's so yellow!" ruminated Mrs. Van Arsdel, ingenuously. "I never
could bear thin, yellow men."
"Oh, come, don't you begin, Nelly--it's bad enough to have girls with
their fancies. What we ought to look at are the solid excellences.
What a pity that the marrying age always comes when girls have the
least sense! John Delafield is a solid man, and if he should take a
fancy to Alice, it would be a great piece of good luck. Alice ought
to be careful, and not have these reports around, about her and Jim
Fellows; it just keeps off advantageous offers. I shall talk to Alice
the first time I get a chance."
"Oh, pray don't, Maria--I don't think it would do any good. Alice is
very set in her way, and it might put her up to make something of it
more than there is."
"Oh, never fear me," said Aunt Maria, nodding her head; "I understand
Alice, and know just what needs to be said. I sha'n't do her any
harm, you may be sure," and Aunt Maria, espying her omnibus afar, ran
briskly down the steps, thus concluding the conference.
Now it happened that adjoining the parlor where this conversation had
taken place was a little writing-cabinet which Mr. Van Arsdel often
used for the purposes of letter-writing. On this morning, when his
wife supposed him out as usual at his office, he had retired there to
attend to some correspondence. The entrance was concealed by drapery,
and so he had been an unintentional and unsuspected but much amused
listener to Aunt Maria's adjurations to his wife on his behalf.
All through his subsequent labors of the pen, he might have been
observed to pause from time to time and laugh to himself. The idea
of lying as a quiet dead weight on the wheels of the progress of his
energetic relation was something vastly pleasing to the dry and
secretive turn of his humor--and he rather liked it than otherwise.
"We shall see whether I am losing my faculties," he said to himself,
as he gathered up his letters and departed.
_CHAPTER IV._
EVA HENDERSON TO HARRY'S MOTHER.
My Dear Mother: Harry says I must do all the writing to you and
keep you advised of all our affairs, because he is so driven with
his editing and proofreading that letter-writing is often the most
fatiguing thing he can do. It is like trying to run after one has
become quite out of breath.
The fact is, dear mother, the demands of this New York newspaper life
are terribly exhausting. It's a sort of red-hot atmosphere of hurry
and competition. Magazines and newspapers jostle each other, and run
races, neck and neck, and everybody connected with them is kept up to
the very top of his speed, or he is thrown out of the course. You see,
Bolton and Harry have between them the oversight of three papers--a
monthly magazine for the grown folk, another for the children, and
a weekly paper. Of course there are sub-editors, but they have the
general responsibility, and so you see they are on the _qui vive_ all
the time to keep up; for there are other papers and magazines running
against them, and the price of success seems to be eternal vigilance.
What is exacted of an editor now-a-days seems to be a sort of general
omniscience. He must keep the run of everything,--politics, science,
religion, art, agriculture, general literature; the world is alive and
moving everywhere, and he must know just what's going on and be able
to have an opinion ready made and ready to go to press at any moment.
He must tell to a T just what they are doing in Ashantee and Dahomey,
and what they don't do and ought to do in New York. He must be wise
and instructive about currency and taxes and tariffs, and able to
guide Congress; and then he must take care of the Church,--know just
what the Old Catholics are up to, the last new kink of the Ritualists,
and the right and wrong of all the free fights in the different
denominations. It really makes my little head spin just to hear what
they are getting up articles about. Bolton and Harry are kept on the
chase, looking up men whose specialties lie in these lines to write
for them. They have now in tow a Jewish Rabbi, who is going to do
something about the Talmud, or Targums, or something of that sort;
and a returned missionary from the Gaboon River, who entertained Du
Chaillu and can speak authentically about the gorilla; and a lively
young doctor who is devoting his life to the study of the brain and
nervous system. Then there are all sorts of writing men and women
sending pecks and bushels of articles to be printed, and getting
furious if they are not printed, though the greater part of them are
such hopeless trash that you only need to read four lines to know that
they are good for nothing; but they all expect them to be re-mailed
with explanations and criticisms, and the ladies sometimes write
letters of wrath to Harry that are perfectly fearful.
Altogether there is a good deal of an imbroglio, and you see with it
all how he comes to be glad that I have a turn for letter-writing and
can keep you informed of how we of the interior go on. My business
in it all is to keep a quiet, peaceable, restful home, where he
shall always have the enjoyment of seeing beautiful things and find
everything going on nicely without having to think why, or how, or
wherefore; and, besides this, to do every little odd and end for him
that he is too tired or too busy to do; in short, I suppose some of
the ambitious lady leaders of our time would call it playing second
fiddle. Yes, that is it; but there must be second fiddles in an
orchestra, and it's fortunate that I have precisely the talent for
playing one, and my doctrine is that the second fiddle _well_ played
is quite as good as the first. What would the first be without it?
After all, in this great fuss about the men's sphere and the women's,
isn't the women's ordinary work just as important and great in
its way? For, you see, it's what the men with all their greatness
can't do, for the life of them. I can go a good deal further in
Harry's sphere than he can in mine. I can judge about the merits of
a translation from the French, or criticise an article or story, a
great deal better than he can settle the difference between the effect
of tucking and inserting in a dress, or of cherry and solferino in
curtains. Harry appreciates a room prettily got up as well as any
man, but how to get it up--all the shades of color and niceties of
arrangement, the thousand little differences and agreements that go to
it--he can't comprehend. So this man and woman question is just like
the quarrel between the mountain and the squirrel in Emerson's poem,
where "Bun" talks to the mountain:
"If I am not so big as you,
You're not so small as I,
And not half so spry.
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut."
I am quite satisfied that, first and last, I shall crack a good
many nuts for Harry. Not that I am satisfied with a mere culinary
or housekeeping excellence, or even an artistic and poetic skill in
making home lovely; I do want a sense of something noble and sacred
in life--something to satisfy a certain feeling of the heroic that
always made me unhappy and disgusted with my aimless fashionable girl
career. I always sympathized with Ida, and admired her because she had
force enough to do something that she thought was going to make the
world better. It is better to try and fail with such a purpose as hers
than never to try at all; and in that point of view I sympathize with
the whole woman movement, though I see no place for myself in it. But
my religion, poor as it is, has always given this excitement to me: I
never could see how one could profess to be a Christian at all and not
live a heroic life--though I know I never have. When I hear in church
of the "glorious company of the apostles," the "goodly fellowship
of the prophets," the "noble army of martyrs," I have often such an
uplift--and the tears come to my eyes, and then my life seems so poor
and petty, so frittered away in trifles. Then the communion service of
our church always impresses me as something so serious, so profound,
that I have wondered how I dared go through with it; and it always
made me melancholy and dissatisfied with myself. To offer one's soul
and body and spirit to God a living sacrifice surely ought to mean
something that should make one's life noble and heroic, yet somehow it
didn't do so with mine.
It was one thing that drew me to Harry, that he seemed to me an
earnest, religious man, and I told him when we were first engaged that
he must be my guide; but he said no, we must go hand in hand, and
guide each other, and together we would try to find the better way.
Harry is very good to me in being willing to go with me to my church.
I told him I was weak in religion at any rate, and all my associations
with good and holy things were with my church, and I really felt
afraid to trust myself without them. I have tried going to his sort of
services with him, but these extemporaneous prayers don't often help
me. I find myself weighing and considering in my own mind whether that
is what I really do feel or ask; and if one is judging or deciding one
can't be praying at the same time. Now and then I hear a good man who
so wraps me up in his sympathies, and breathes such a spirit of prayer
as carries me without effort, and that is lovely; but it is so rare a
gift! In general I long for the dear old prayers of my church, where
my poor little naughty heart has learned the way and can go on with
full consent without stopping to think.
So Harry and I have settled on attending an Episcopal mission
church in our part of the city. Its worshipers are mostly among the
poor, and Harry thinks we might do good by going there. Our rector
is a young Mr. St. John, a man as devoted as any of the primitive
Christians. I never saw anybody go into work for others with more
entire self-sacrifice. He has some property, and he supports himself
and pays about half the expenses of the mission besides. All this
excites Harry's respect, and he is willing to do himself and have me
do all we can to help him. Both Alice and I, and my younger sisters,
Angelique and Marie, have taken classes in his mission school, and the
girls help every week in a sewing-school, and, so far as practical
work is concerned, everything moves beautifully. But then, Mr. St.
John is very high church and very stringent in his notions, and Harry,
who is ultra-liberal, says he is good, but narrow; and so when they
are together I am quite nervous about them. I want Mr. St. John to
appear well to Harry, and I want Harry to please Mr. St. John. Harry
is æsthetic and likes the church services, and is ready to go as far
as anybody could ask in the way of interesting and beautiful rites
and ceremonies, and he likes antiquities and all that, and so to a
certain extent they get on nicely; but come to the question of church
authority, and Lloyd Garrison and all the radicals are not more
untamable. He gets quite wild, and frightens me lest dear Mr. St. John
should think him an infidel. And, in fact, Harry has such a sort of
latitudinarian way of hearing what all sorts of people have to say,
and admitting bits of truth here and there in it, as sometimes makes
me rather uneasy. He talks with these Darwinians and scientific men
who have an easy sort of matter-of-course way of assuming that the
Bible is nothing but an old curiosity-shop of by-gone literature, and
is so tolerant in hearing all they have to say, that I quite burn to
testify and stand up for my faith--if I knew enough to do it; but I
really feel afraid to ask Mr. St. John to help me, because he is so
set and solemn, and confines himself to announcing that thus and so is
the voice of the church; and you see that don't help me to keep up my
end with people that don't care for the church.