Christians to sit by and hear all that is dearest and most sacred to
us spoken of as a by-gone superstition, and smile assent on the ground
that everybody must be free to express his opinions in good society?
Now, for instance, there is this young Dr. Campbell, whom Harry is
in treaty with for articles on the brain and nervous system--a nice,
charming, agreeable fellow, and a perfect enthusiast in science,
and has got so far that love or hatred or inspiration or heroism or
religion is nothing in his view but what he calls "cerebration"--he is
so lost and absorbed in cerebration and molecules, and all that sort
of thing, that you feel all the time he is observing you to get facts
about some of his theories as they do the poor mice and butterflies
they experiment with.
The other day he was talking, in his taking-for-granted, rapid way,
about the absurdity of believing in prayer, when I stopped him
squarely, and told him that he ought not to talk in that way; that
to destroy faith in prayer was taking away about all the comfort
that poor, sorrowful, oppressed people had. I said it was just like
going through a hospital and pulling all the pillows from under the
sick people's heads because there might be a more perfect scientific
invention by and by, and that I thought it was cruel and hard-hearted
to do it. He looked really astonished, and asked me if I believed in
prayer. I told him our Saviour had said, "Ask, and ye shall receive,"
and I believed it. He seemed quite astonished at my zeal, and said he
didn't suppose any really cultivated people now-a-days believed those
things. I told him I believed everything that Jesus Christ said, and
thought he knew more than all the philosophers, and that he said we
had a Father that loved us and cared for us, even to the hairs of our
heads, and that I shouldn't have courage to live if I didn't believe
that. Harry says I did right to speak up as I did. Dr. Campbell don't
seem to be offended with me, for he comes here more than ever. He is
an interesting fellow, full of life and enthusiasm in his profession,
and I like to hear him talk.
But here I am, right in the debatable land between faith and no faith.
On the part of a great many of the intelligent, good men whom Harry,
for one reason or other, invites to our house, and wants me to be
agreeable to, are all shades of opinion, of half faith, and no faith,
and I don't wish to hush free conversation, or to be treated like a
baby who will cry if they make too much noise; and then on the other
hand is Mr. St. John--whom I regard with reverence on account of his
holy, self-denying life--who stands so definitely entrenched within
the limits of the church, and does not in his own mind ever admit a
doubt of anything which the church has settled; and between them and
Harry and all I don't know just what I ought to do.
I am sure, if there is a man in the world who means in all things
to live the Christian life, it's Harry. There is no difference
between him and Mr. St. John there. He is ready for any amount of
self-sacrifice, and goes with Mr. St. John to the extent of his
ability in his efforts to do good; and yet he really does not believe
a great many things that Mr. St. John thinks are Christian doctrines.
He says he believes only in the wheat, and not in the chaff, and
that it is only the chaff that will be blown away in these modern
discussions. With all this, I feel nervous and anxious, and sometimes
wish I could go right into some good, safe, dark church, and pull down
all the blinds, and shut all the doors, and keep out all the bustle of
modern thinking, and pray, and meditate, and have a lovely, quiet time.
Mr. St. John lends me from time to time some of his ritualistic books;
and they are so refined and scholarly, and yet so devout, that Harry
and I are quite charmed with their tone; but I can't help seeing that,
as Harry says, they lead right back into the Romish church--and by a
way that seems enticingly beautiful. Sometimes I think it would be
quite delightful to have a spiritual director who would save you all
the trouble of deciding, and take your case in hand, and tell you
exactly what to do at every step. Mr. St. John, I know, would be just
the person to assume such a position. He is a natural school-master,
and likes to control people, and, although he is so very gentle, I
always feel that he is very stringent, and that if I once allowed him
ascendancy he would make no allowances. I can feel the "_main de fer_"
through the perfect gentlemanly polish of his exterior; but you see
I _know_ Harry never would go completely under his influence, and I
shrink from anything that would divide me from my husband, and so I
don't make any move in that direction.
You see, I write to _you_ all about these matters, for my mamma is a
sweet, good little woman who never troubles her head with anything
in this line, and my god-mother, Aunt Maria, is a dear worldly old
soul, whose heart is grieved within her because I care so little for
the pomps and vanities. She takes it to heart that Harry and I have
definitely resolved to give up party-going, and all that useless
round of calling and dressing and visiting that is called "going into
society," and she sometimes complicates matters by trying her forces
to get me into those old grooves I was so tired of running in. I never
pretend to talk to her of the deeper wants or reasons of my life, for
it would be ludicrously impossible to make her understand. She is a
person over whose mind never came the shadow of a doubt that she was
right in her views of life; and I am not the person to evangelize her.
Well now, dear Mother, imagine a further complication. Harry is very
anxious that we should have an evening once a week to receive our
friends--an informal, quiet, sociable, talking evening, on a sort
of ideal plan of his, in which everybody is to be made easy and at
home, and to spend just such a quiet, social hour as at one's own
chimney-corner. But fancy my cares, with all the menagerie of our very
miscellaneous acquaintances! I should be like the man in the puzzle
that had to get the fox and geese and corn over in one boat without
their eating each other. Fancy Jim Fellows and Mr. St. John! Dr.
Campbell, with his molecules and cerebration, talking to my little
Quaker dove, with her white wings and simple faith, or Aunt Maria and
mamma conversing with a Jewish Rabbi! I believe our family have a
vague impression that Jews are disreputable, however gentlemanly and
learned; and I don't know but Mr. St. John would feel shocked at him.
Nevertheless, our Rabbi is a very excellent German gentleman, and one
of the most interesting talkers I have heard. Oh! then there are our
rococo antiquities across the street, Miss Dorcas Vanderheyden and
her sister. What shall I do with them all? Harry has such boundless
confidence in my powers of doing the agreeable that he seems to
think I can, out of this material, make a most piquant and original
combination. I have an awful respect for the art _de tenir salon_, and
don't wonder that among our artistic French neighbors it got to be a
perfect science. But am I the woman born to do it in New York?
Well, there's no way to get through the world but to keep doing, and
to attack every emergency with courage. I shall do my possible, and
let you know of my success.
Your daughter,
EVA.
_CHAPTER V._
A TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT.
The housekeeping establishment of Eva Henderson, _née_ Van Arsdel,
was in its way a model of taste, order, and comfort. There was that
bright, attractive, cosy air about it that spoke of refined tastes and
hospitable feelings--it was such a creation as only the genius of a
thorough home-artist could originate. There are artists who work in
clay and marble, there are artists in water-colors, and artists in
oils, whose works are on exhibition through galleries and museums: but
there are also, in thousands of obscure homes, domestic artists, who
contrive out of the humblest material to produce in daily life the
sense of the beautiful; to cast a veil over its prosaic details and
give it something of the charm of a poem.
Eva was one of these, and everybody that entered her house felt her
power at once in the atmosphere of grace and enjoyment which seemed to
pervade her rooms.
But there was underneath all this an unseen, humble operator, without
whom one step in the direction of poetry would have been impossible;
one whose sudden withdrawal would have been like the entrance of a
black frost into a flower-garden, leaving desolation and unsightliness
around: and this strong pivot on which the order and beauty of all the
fairy contrivances of the little mistress turned was no other than
the Irish Mary McArthur, cook, chambermaid, laundress, and general
operator and adviser of the whole.
Mary was a specimen of the best class of those women whom the
old country sends to our shores. She belonged to the family of a
respectable Irish farmer, and had been carefully trained in all
household economies and sanctities. A school kept on the estate of
their landlord had been the means of instructing her in the elements
of a plain English education. She wrote a good hand, was versed in
accounts, and had been instructed in all branches of needle-work with
a care and particularity from which our American schools for girls
might take a lesson. A strong sense of character pervaded her family
life--a sense of the decorous, the becoming, the true and honest, such
as often gives dignity to the cottage of the laboring man of the old
world. But the golden stories of wealth to be gotten in America had
induced her parents to allow Mary with her elder brother to try their
fortunes on these unknown shores. Mary had been fortunate in falling
into the Van Arsdel family; for Mrs. Van Arsdel, though without the
energy or the patience which would have been necessary to control
or train an inexperienced and unsteady subject, was, on the whole,
appreciative of the sterling good qualities of Mary, and liberal and
generous in her dealings with her.
In fact, the Van Arsdels were in all things a free, careless, good
natured, merry set, and Mary reciprocated their kindliness to her
with all the warmth of her Irish heart. Eva had been her particular
pet and darling. She was a pretty, engaging child at the time she
first came into the family. Mary had mended her clothes, tidied her
room, studied her fancies and tastes, and petted her generally with a
whole-souled devotion. "When you get a husband, Miss Eva," she would
say, "I will come and live with _you_." But before that event had
come to pass, Mary had given her whole heart to an idle, handsome,
worthless fellow, whom she appeared to love in direct proportion to
his good-for-nothingness. Two daughters were the offspring of this
marriage, and then Mary became a widow, and had come with her youngest
child under the shadow of "Miss Eva's" roof-tree.
Thus much to give back-ground to the scenery on which Aunt Maria
entered, on the morning when she took the omnibus at Mrs. Van Arsdel's
door.
Eva was gone out when the door-bell of the little house rang. Mary
looking from the chamber window saw Mrs. Wouvermans standing at the
door step. Now against this good lady Mary had always cherished a
secret antagonism. Nothing so awakens the animosity of her class as
the entrance of a third power into the family, between the regnant
mistress and the servants; and Aunt Maria's intrusions and dictations
had more than once been discussed in the full parliament of Mrs.
Van Arsdel's servants. Consequently the arrival of a police officer
armed with a search warrant could not have been more disagreeable
or alarming. In an instant Mary's mental eye ran over all her own
demesne and premises--for when one woman is both chambermaid, cook
and laundress, it may well be that each part of these different
departments cannot be at all times in a state of absolute perfection.
There was a cellar table that she had been intending this very morning
to revise; there were various short-comings in pantry and closet which
she had intended to set in order.
But the course of Mrs. Wouvermans was straight and unflinching as
justice. A brisk interrogation to the awe-struck little maiden who
opened the door showed her that Eva was out, and the field was all
before her. So she marched into the parlor, and, laying aside her
things, proceeded to review the situation. From the parlor to the
little dining-room was the work of a moment; thence to the china
closet, where she opened cupboards and drawers and took note of their
contents; thence to the kitchen and kitchen pantry, where she looked
into the flour barrel, the sugar barrel, the safe, the cake box, and
took notes.
When Mary had finished her chamber work and came down to the kitchen,
she found her ancient adversary emerging from the cellar with several
leaves of cabbage in her hands which she had gathered off from the
offending table. In her haste to make a salad for a sudden access of
company, the day before, Mary had left these witnesses, and she saw
that her sin had found her out.
"Good morning, Mary," said Mrs. Wouvermans, in the curt, dry tone that
she used in speaking to servants, "I brought up these cabbage leaves
to show you. Nothing is more dangerous, Mary, than to leave any refuse
vegetables in a cellar; if girls are careless about such matters
they get thrown down on the floor and rot and send up a poisonous
exhalation that breeds fevers. I have known whole families poisoned by
the neglect of girls in these little matters."
"Mrs. Wouvermans, I was intending this very morning to come down and
attend to that matter, and all the other matters about the house,"
said Mary. "There has been company here this week, and I have had a
deal to do."
"And Mary, you ought to be very careful never to leave the lid of your
cake box up--it dries the cake. I am very particular about mine."
"And so am I, ma'am; and if my cake box was open it is because
somebody has been to it since I shut it. It may be that Mrs. Henderson
has taken something out."
"I noticed, Mary, a broom in the parlor closet not hung up; it ruins
brooms to set them down in that way."
By this time the hot, combative blood of Ireland rose in Mary's cheek,
and she turned and stood at bay.
"Mrs. Wouvermans, _you_ are not my mistress, and this is not _your_
house; and I am not going to answer to you, but to Mrs. Henderson,
about my matters."
"Mary, don't you speak to me in that way," said Mrs. Wouvermans,
drawing herself up.
"I _shall_ speak in just that way to anybody who comes meddling with
what they have no business with. If you was my mistress, I'd tell you
to suit yourself to a better girl; and I shall ask Mrs. Henderson if
I am to be overlooked in this way. No _lady_ would ever do it," said
Mary, with a hot emphasis on the word _lady_, and tears of wrath in
her eyes.
"There's no use in being impertinent, Mary," said Mrs. Wouvermans,
with stately superiority, as she turned and sailed up stairs, leaving
Mary in a tempest of impotent anger.
Just about this time Eva returned from her walk with a basket full of
cut flowers, and came singing into the kitchen and began arranging
flower vases; not having looked into the parlor on her way, she did
not detect the traces of Aunt Maria's presence.
"Well, Mary," she called, in her usual cheerful tone, "come and look
at my flowers."
But Mary came not, although Eva perceived her with her back turned in
the pantry.
"Why, Mary, what is the matter?" said Eva, following her there and
seeing her crying. "Why, you dear soul, what has happened? Are you
sick?"
"Your Aunt Maria has been here."
"Oh, the horrors, Mary. Poor Aunt Maria! you mustn't mind a word she
says. Don't worry, now--_don't_--you know Aunt Maria is always saying
things to us girls, but _we_ don't mind it, and you mustn't; we know
she _means_ well, and we just let it pass for what it's worth."
"Yes; you are young ladies, and I am only a poor woman, and it comes
hard on me. She's been round looking into every crack and corner, and
picked up those old cabbage leaves, and talked to me about keeping
a cellar that would give you all a fever--it's too bad. You know
yesterday I hurried and cut up that cabbage to help make out the
dinner when those gentlemen came in and we had only the cold mutton,
and I was going to clear them away this very morning."
"I know it, Mary; and you do the impossible for us all twenty times
a day, if you did drop cabbage leaves once; and Aunt Maria has no
business to be poking about my house and prying into our management;
but, you see, Mary, she's my aunt, and I can't quarrel with her. I'm
sorry, but we must just bear it as well as we can--now promise not to
mind it--for my sake."
"Well, for your sake, Miss Eva," said Mary, wiping her eyes.
"You know we all think you are a perfect jewel, Mary, and couldn't get
along a minute without you. As to Aunt Maria, she's old, and set in
her way, and the best way is not to mind her."
And Mary was consoled, and went on her way with courage, and with
about as much charity for Mrs. Wouvermans as an average good Christian
under equal provocation.
Eva went on singing and making up her vases, and carried them into the
parlor, and was absorbed in managing their respective positions, when
Aunt Maria came down from her tour in the chambers.
"Seems to me, Eva, that your hired girl's room is furnished up for a
princess," she began, after the morning greetings had been exchanged.
"What, Mary's? Well, Mary has a great deal of neatness and taste, and
always took particular pride in her room when she lived at mamma's,
and so I have arranged hers with special care. Harry got her those
pictures of the Madonna and infant Jesus, and I gave the _bénitier_
for holy water, over her bed. We matted the floor nicely, and I made
that toilet table, and draped her looking-glass out of an old muslin
dress of mine. The pleasure Mary takes in it all makes it really worth
while to gratify her."
"I never pet servants," said Mrs. Wouvermans, briefly. "Depend on it,
Eva, when you've lived as long as I have, you'll find it isn't the
way. It makes them presumptuous and exacting. Why, at first, when I
blundered into Mary's room, I thought it must be yours--it had such an
air."
"Well, as to the air, it's mostly due to Mary's perfect neatness and
carefulness. I'm sorry to say you wouldn't always find my room as
trimly arranged as hers, for I am a sad hand to throw things about
when I am in a hurry. I love order, but I like somebody else to keep
it."
"I'm afraid," said Aunt Maria, returning with persistence to her
subject, "that you are beginning wrong with Mary, and you'll have
trouble in the end. Now I saw she had white sugar in the kitchen
sugar-bowl, and there was the tea caddy for her to go to. It's
abominable to have servants feel that they must use such tea as we do."
"Oh, well, aunty, you know Mary has been in the family so long I don't
feel as if she were a servant; she seems like a friend, and I treat
her like one. I believe Mary really loves us."
"It don't do to mix sentiment and business," said Aunt Maria, with
sententious emphasis. "I never do. I don't want my servants to
love me--that is _not_ what I have them for. I want them to _do my
work_, and take their wages. They understand that there are to be
no favors--everything is specifically set down in the bargain I make
with them; their work is all marked out. I never talk with them, or
encourage them to talk to me, and that is the way we get along."
"Dear me, Aunt Maria, that may be all very well for such an energetic,
capable housekeeper as you are, who always know exactly how to manage,
but such a poor little thing as I am can't set up in that way. Now I
think it's a great mercy and favor to have a trained girl that knows
more about how to get on than I do, and that is fond of me. Why, I
know rich people that would be only too glad to give Mary double what
we give, just to have somebody to depend on."
"But, Eva, child, you're beginning wrong--you ought not to leave
things to Mary as you do. You ought to attend to everything yourself.
I always do."
"But you see, aunty, the case is very different with you and me. You
are so very capable and smart, and know so exactly how everything
ought to be done, you can make your own terms with everybody. And, now
I think of it, how lucky that you came in! I want you to give me your
judgment as to two pieces of linen that I've just had sent in. You
know, Aunty, I am such a perfect ignoramus about these matters."
And Eva tripped up stairs, congratulating herself on turning the
subject, and putting her aunt's busy advising faculties to some
harmless and innocent use. So, when she came down with her two pieces
of linen, Aunt Maria tested and pulled them this way and that, in the
approved style of a domestic expert, and gave judgment at last with an
authoritative air.
"_This_ is the best, Eva--you see it has a round thread, and very
little dressing."
"And _why_ is the round thread the best, Aunty?"
"Oh, because it always is--everybody knows _that_, child; all good
judges will tell you to buy the round threaded linen, that's perfectly
well understood."
Eva did not pursue the inquiry farther, and we must all confess that
Mrs. Wouverman's reply was about as satisfactory as those one gets
to most philosophical inquiries as to why and wherefore. If our
reader doubts that, let him listen to the course of modern arguments
on some of the most profound problems; so far as can be seen, they
consist of inflections of Aunt Maria's style of statement--as, "Oh,
of course everybody knows _that_, now;" or, negatively, "Oh, nobody
believes _that_, now-a-days." Surely, a mode of argument which very
wise persons apply fearlessly to subjects like death, judgment and
eternity, may answer for a piece of linen.
"Oh, by-the-by, Eva, I see you have cards there for Mrs. Wat Sydney's
receptions this winter," said Aunt Maria, turning her attention to the
card plate. "They are going to be very brilliant, I'm told. They say
nothing like their new house is to be seen in this country."
"Yes," said Eva, "Sophie has been down here urging me to come up and
see her rooms, and says they depend on me for their receptions, and
I'm going up some day to lunch with her, in a quiet way; but Harry and
I have about made up our minds that _we_ sha'n't go to parties. You
know, Aunty, we are going in for economy, and this sort of thing costs
so much."
"But, bless your soul, child, what is money for?" said Aunt Maria,
innocently. "If you have _any_ thing you ought to improve your
advantages of getting on in society. It's important to Harry in his
profession to be seen and heard of, and to push his way among the
notables, and, with due care and thought and economy, a person with
your air and style, and your taste, can appear as well as anybody. I
came down here, among other things, to look over your dresses, and
see what can be done with them."
"Oh, thank you a thousand times, Aunty dear, but what do you think all
my little wedding finery would do for me in an assemblage of Worth's
spick-and-span new toilettes? In our own little social circles I am
quite a leader of the mode, but I should look like an old last night's
bouquet among all their fresh finery!"
"Well, now, Eva, child, you talk of economy and all that, and then go
spending on knick-knacks and mere fancies what would enable you to
make a very creditable figure in society."
"Really, Aunty, is it possible now, when I thought we were being _so_
prudent?"
"Well, there's your wood fire, for instance; very cheerful, I admit,
but it's a downright piece of extravagance. I know that the very
richest and most elegant people, that have everything they can think
of, have fallen back on the fancy of having open wood fires in their
parlors, just for a sort of ornament to their rooms, but you don't
really need it--your furnace keeps you warm enough."
"But, Aunty, it looks so bright and cheerful, and Harry is so fond of
it! We only have it evenings, when he comes home tired, and he says
the very sight of it rests him."
"There you go, now, Eva--with wood at fifteen dollars a cord!--going
in for a mere luxury just because it pleases your fancy, and you can't
go into society because it's so expensive. Eva, child, that's just
like you. And there are twenty other little things that I see about
here," said Aunt Maria, glancing round, "pretty enough, but each costs
a little. There, for instance, those cut flowers in the vases cost
something."
"But, Aunty, I got them of a poor little man just setting up a
green-house, and Harry and I have made up our minds that it's our duty
to patronize him. I'm going up to Sophie's to get her to take flowers
for her parties of him."
"It's well enough to get Sophie to do it, but you oughtn't to afford
it," said Aunt Maria; "nor need you buy a new matting and pictures for
your servant's room."