generations, and we never suffer a servant to touch it."
"Please let _me_ help you," said Eva, taking up the napkin sociably,
"I do so love old china."
And pretty soon one might have seen a gay morning party--Mrs. Betsey
washing, Eva wiping, and Miss Dorcas the while reading scraps out
of _Abbotsford_ about Maida, and Finette, and Hamlet, and Camp, and
Percy, and others of Walter Scott's four-footed friends. The ice of
ceremony and stiffness was not only broken by this bit of morning
domesticity, but floated gaily down-stream never to be formed again.
You may go further into the hearts of your neighbors by one-half hour
of undressed rehearsal behind the scenes than a century of ceremonious
posing before the foot-lights.
_Real_ people, with anything like heart and tastes and emotions, do
not _enjoy_ being shut up behind barricades, and conversing with their
neighbors only through loop-holes. If any warm-hearted adventurer gets
in at the back door of the heart, the stiffest and most formal are
often the most thankful for the deliverance.
The advent of this pretty young creature, with her air of joy and
gaiety, into the shadowed and mossy precincts of the old Vanderheyden
house was an event to be dated from, as the era of a new life. She was
to them a flower, a picture, a poem; and a thousand dear remembrances
and new capabilities stirred in the withered old hearts to meet her.
Her sincere artlessness and naïf curiosity, her genuine interest in
the old time-worn furniture, relics and belongings of the house gave
them a new sense of possession. We seem to acquire our things over
again when stimulated by the admiration of a new spectator.
"Dear me," said Eva, as she put down a tea-cup she was wiping, "what a
pity I haven't some nice old china to begin on! but all my things are
spick and span new; I don't think it's a bit interesting. I do love to
see things that look as if they had a history."
"Ah! my dear child, you are making history fast enough," said Miss
Dorcas, with that kind of half sigh with which people at eighty look
down on the aspirants of twenty; "don't try to hurry things."
"But I think _old_ things are so nice," said Eva. "They get so many
associations. Things just out of Tiffany's or Collamore's haven't
associations--there's no poetry in them. Now, everything in your house
has its story. It's just like the old villas I used to see in Italy
where the fountains were all mossy."
"We are mossy enough, dear knows," said Miss Dorcas, laughing, "Betsey
and I."
"I'm so glad I've got acquainted with you," said Eva, looking up with
clear, honest eyes into Miss Dorcas's face; "it's so lonesome not to
know one's neighbors, and I'm an inexperienced beginner, you know.
There are a thousand questions I might ask, where your experience
could help me."
"Well, don't hesitate, dear Mrs. Henderson," said Mrs. Betsey; "do
use us if you can. Dorcas is really quite a doctor, and if you should
be ill any time, don't fail to let us know. _We_ never have a doctor.
Dorcas always knows just what to do. You ought to see her herb
closet--there's a little of everything in it; and she is wonderful for
strengthening-mixtures."
And so Eva was taken to see the herbal, and thence, by natural
progression, through the chambers, where she admired the old
furniture. Then cabinets were unlocked, old curiosities brought out,
snatches and bits of history followed, and, in fact, lunch time came
in the old Vanderheyden house before any of them perceived whither the
tide of social enthusiasm had carried them. Eva stayed to lunch. Such
a thing had not happened for years to the desolate old couple, and it
really seemed as if the roses of youth and joy, the flowers of years
past, all bloomed and breathed around her, and it was late in the day
before she returned to her own home to look back on the Vanderheyden
fortress as taken. Two stiff, ceremonious strangers had become two
warm-hearted, admiring friends--a fortress locked and barred by
constraint had become an open door of friendship. Was it not a good
morning's work?
_CHAPTER IX._
JIM AND ALICE.
The recent discussions of the marriage question, betokening unrest and
dissatisfaction with the immutable claims of this institution, are
founded, no doubt, on the various distresses and inconveniences of
ill-assorted marriages.
In times when the human being was little developed, the elements
of agreement and disagreement were simpler, and marriages were
proportionately more tranquil. But modern civilized man has a thousand
points of possible discord in an immutable near relation where there
was one in the primitive ages.
The wail, and woe, and struggle to undo marriage bonds, in our day,
comes from this dissonance of more developed and more widely varying
natures, and it shows that a large proportion of marriages have been
contracted without any advised and rational effort to ascertain
whether there was a reasonable foundation for a close and life-long
intimacy.
It would seem as if the arrangements and customs of modern society
did everything that could be done to render such a previous knowledge
impossible.
Good sense would say that if men and women are to single each other
out, and bind themselves by a solemn oath, forsaking all others to
cleave to each other as long as life should last, there ought to be,
before taking vows of such gravity, the very best opportunity to
become minutely acquainted with each other's dispositions, and habits,
and modes of thought and action. It would seem to be the dictate of
reason that a long and intimate friendship ought to be allowed, in
which, without any bias or commitment, young people might have full
opportunity to study each other's character and disposition, being
under no obligation, expressed or implied, on account of such intimacy
to commit themselves to the irrevocable union.
Such a kind of friendship is the instinctive desire of both the
parties that make up society. Both young men and young women, as we
observe, would greatly enjoy a more intimate and friendly intercourse,
if the very fact of that initiatory acquaintance were not immediately
seized upon by busy A, B, and C, and reported as an engagement. The
flower that might possibly blossom into the rose of love is withered
and blackened by the busy efforts of gossips to pick it open before
the time.
Our young friend, Alice Van Arsdel, was what in modern estimation
would be called just the "nicest kind of a girl." She had a warm
heart, a high sense of justice and honor, she was devout in her
religious profession, conscientious in the discharge of the duties
of family life. Naturally, Alice was of a temperament which might
have inclined her to worldly ambition. She had that keen sense of the
advantages of wealth and station which even the most sensible person
may have, and, had her father's prosperity continued, might have run
the gay career of flirtation and conquest supposed to be proper to a
rich young belle.
The failure of her father not only cut off all these prospects, but
roused the deeper and better part of her nature to comfort and support
her parents, and to assist in all ways in trimming the family vessel
to the new navigation. Her self-esteem took a different form. Had she
been enthroned in wealth and station, it would have taken pleasure in
reigning; thrown from that position, it became her pride to adapt
herself entirely to the proprieties of her different circumstances. Up
to that hour, she had counted Jim Fellows simply as a tassel on her
fan, or any other appendage to her glittering life. When the crash
came, she expected no more of him than of a last summer's bird, and
it was with somewhat of pleased surprise that, on the first public
tidings of the news, she received from Jim an expensive hot-house
bouquet of a kind that he had never thought of giving in prosperous
days.
"The extravagant boy!" she said. Yet she said it with tears in her
eyes, and she put the bouquet into water, and changed it every day
while it lasted. The flowers and the friends of adversity have a value
all their own.
Then Jim came, came daily, with downright unsentimental offers of
help, and made so much fun and gaiety for them in the days of their
breaking up as almost shocked Aunt Maria, who felt that a period of
weeping and wailing would have been more appropriate. Jim became
recognized in the family as a sort of factotum, always alert and ready
to advise or to do, and generally knowing where every body or thing
which was wanted in New York was to be found. But, as Alice was by no
means the only daughter, as Marie and Angelique were each in their
way as lively and desirable young candidates for admiration, it would
have appeared that here was the best possible chance for a young man
to have a friendship whose buds even the gossips would not pick open
to find if there were love inside of them. As a young neophyte of the
all-powerful press, Jim had the dispensation of many favors, in the
form of tickets to operas, concerts, and other public entertainments,
which were means of conferring enjoyment and variety, and dispensed
impartially among the sisters. Eva's house, in all the history of its
finding, inception, and construction, had been a ground for many
a familiar meeting from whence had grown up a pleasant feeling of
comradeship and intimacy.
The things that specialized this intimacy, as relating to Alice more
than to the other sisters, were things as indefinite and indefinable
as the shade mark between two tints of the rainbow; and yet there
undoubtedly was a peculiar intimacy, and since the misfortunes of the
family it had been of a graver kind than before, though neither of
them cared to put it into words. Between a young man and a young woman
of marriageable age a friendship of this kind, if let alone, generally
comes to its bud and blossom in its own season; and there is something
unutterably vexatious and revolting to every fibre of a girl's nature
to have any well-meaning interference to force this denouement.
Alice enjoyed the unspoken devotion of Jim, which she perceived by
that acute sort of divination of which women are possessed; she felt
quietly sure that she had more influence over him, could do more with
him, than any other woman; and this consciousness of power over a man
is something most agreeable to girls of Alice's degree of self-esteem.
She assumed to be a sort of mentor; she curbed the wild sallies of
his wit, rebuking him if he travestied a hymn, or made a smart, funny
application of a text of Scripture. But, as she generally laughed, the
culprit was not really overborne by the censure. She had induced him
to go with her to Mr. St. John's church, and even to take a class in
the Sunday-school, where he presided with the unction of an apostle
over a class of street "_gamins_," who certainly never found a more
entertaining teacher.
Now, although Marie and Angelique were also teachers in the same
school, it somehow always happened that Jim and Alice walked to
the scene of their duties in company. It was one of those quiet,
unobserved arrangements of particles which are the result of laws of
chemical affinity. These street _tête-à-têtes_ gave Alice admirable
opportunity for those graceful admonitions which are so very effective
on young gentlemen when coming from handsome, agreeable monitors. On a
certain Sunday morning in our history, as Alice was on her way to the
mission school with Jim, she had been enjoining upon him to moderate
his extreme liveliness to suit the duties of the place and scene.
"It's all very well, Alice," he said to her, "so long as I don't have
to be too much with that St. John. But I declare that fellow stirs me
up awfully: he looks so meek and so fearfully pious that it's all I
can do to keep from ripping out an oath, just to see him jump!"
"Jim, you bad fellow! How can you talk so?"
"Well, it's a serious fact now. Ministers oughtn't to _look_ so pious!
It's too much a temptation. Why, last Sunday, when he came trailing by
so soft and meek and asked me what books we wanted, I perfectly longed
to rip out an oath and say, 'Why in thunder can't you speak louder.'
It's a temptation of the devil, I know; but you mustn't let St. John
and me run too much together, or I shall blow out."
"Oh, Jim, you mustn't talk so. Why, you really shock me--you grieve
me."
"Well, you see, I've given up swearing for ever so long, but some
kinds of people do tempt me fearfully, and he's one of 'em, and then I
think that he must think I'm a wolf in sheep's clothing. But then, you
see, a wolf understands those cubs better than a sheep. You ought to
hear how I put gospel into them. I make 'em come out on the responses
like little Trojans. I've promised every boy who is 'sharp up' on his
Collect next Sunday a new pop-gun."
"O Jim, you creature!" said Alice, laughing.
"By George, Alice, it's the best way. You don't know anything about
these little heathen. You've got to take 'em where they live. They put
up with the Collect for the sake of the pop-gun, you see."
"But, Jim, I really was in hopes that you would look on this thing
seriously," said Alice, endeavoring to draw on a face of protest.
"Why, Alice, I am serious; didn't I go round to the highways and
hedges, drumming up those little varmints? Not a soul of them would
have put his head inside a Sunday-school room if it hadn't been for
me. I tell you I ought to be encouraged now. I'm not appreciated."
"Oh Jim, you _have_ done beautifully."
"I should think I had. I keep a long face while they are there, and
don't swear at Mr. St. John, and sing like a church robin. So I think
you ought to let me let out a little to you going home. That eases
my mind; it's the confessional--Mr. St. John believes in that. I
_didn't_ swear, mind you. I only felt like it; maybe that'll wear off,
by-and-by. So don't give me up, yet."
"Oh, I don't; and I'm perfectly sure, Jim, that you are the very
person that can do good to these wild boys. Of course the free
experience of life which young men have, enables them to know how to
deal with such cases better than we girls can."
"Yes, you ought to hear me expound the commandments, and put it into
them about stealing and lying. You see Jim knows a thing or two, and
is up to their tricks. They don't come it round Jim, I tell you. Any
boy that don't toe the crack gets it. I give 'em C sharp with the key
up."
"O Jim, you certainly are original in your ways! But I dare say you're
right," said Alice. "You know how to get on with them."
"Indeed I do. I tell you I know what's what for these boys, though I
don't know, and don't care about, what the old coves did in the first
two centuries, and all that. Don't you think, Alice, St. John is a
little prosy on that chapter?"
"Mr. St. John is such a good man that I receive everything he says on
subjects where he knows more than I do," said Alice, virtuously.
"Oh pshaw, Alice! If a fellow has to swallow every good man's
hobby-horses, hoofs, tail and all, why he'll have a good deal to
digest. I tell you St. John is too 'other-worldly,' as Charles Lamb
used to say. He ought to get in love, and get married. I think, now,
that if our little Angie would take him in hand she would bring him
into mortal spheres, make a nice fellow of him."
"Oh, Mr. St. John never will marry," said Alice, solemnly; "he is
devoted to the church. He has published a tract on holy virginity that
is beautiful."
"Holy grandmother!" said Jim; "that's all bosh, Ally. Now you are
too sensible a girl to talk that way. That's going to Rome on a high
canter."
"I don't think so," said Alice, stoutly. "For my part, I think if a
man, for the sake of devoting himself to the church, gives up family
cares, I reverence him. I like to feel that my rector is something
sacred to the altar. The very idea of a clergyman in any other than
sacred relations is disagreeable to me."
"Go it, now! So long as I'm not the clergyman!"
"You sauce-box!"
"Well, now, mark my words. St. John is a man, after all, and not a
Fra Angelico angel, with a long neck and a lily in his hand, and, I
tell you, when Angie sits there at the head of her class, working and
fussing over those girls, she looks confoundedly pretty, and if St.
John finds it out I shall think the better of him, and I think he
will.
"Pshaw, Jim, he never looks at her."
"Don't he? He does though. I've seen him go round and round, and look
at her as if she was an electrical battery, or something that he was
afraid might go off and kill him. But he _does_ look at her. I tell
you, Jim knows the signs of the sky."
With which edifying preparation of mind, Alice found herself at
the door of the Sunday-school room, where the pair were graciously
received by Mr. St. John.
_CHAPTER X._
MR. ST. JOHN.
That good man, in the calm innocence of his heart, was ignorant of the
temptations to which he exposed his tumultuous young disciple. He was
serenely gratified with the sight of Jim's handsome face and alert,
active figure, as he was enacting good shepherd over his unruly flock.
Had he known the exact nature of the motives which he presented to
lead them to walk in the ways of piety, he might have searched a good
while in primitive records before finding a churchly precedent.
Arthur St. John was by nature a poet and idealist He was as pure as
a chrysolite, as refined as a flower; and, being thus, had been,
by the irony of fate, born on one of the bleakest hillsides of New
Hampshire, where there was a literal famine of any esthetic food. His
childhood had been fed on the dry husks of doctrinal catechism; he
had sat wearily on hard high-backed seats and dangled his little legs
hopelessly through sermons on the difference between justification and
sanctification. His ultra-morbid conscientiousness had been wrought
into agonized convulsions by stringent endeavors to carry him through
certain prescribed formulæ of conviction of sin and conversion;
efforts which, grating against natures of a certain delicate fiber,
produce wounds and abrasions which no after-life can heal. To such a
one the cool shades of the Episcopal Church, with its orderly ways,
its poetic liturgy, its artistic ceremonies, were as the shadow of a
great rock in a weary land. No converts are so disposed to be ultra
as converts by reaction; and persons of a poetic and imaginative
temperament are peculiarly liable to these extremes.
Wearied with the intense and noisy clangor of modern thought, it was
not strange if he should come to think free inquiry an evil, look
longingly back on the ages of simple credulity, and believe that the
dark ages of intellect were the bright ones of faith. Without really
going over to the Romish Church, he proposed to walk that path, fine
as the blade that Mahomet fabled as the Bridge of Paradise, in which
he might secure all the powers and influences and advantages of that
old system without its defects and corruptions.
So he had established his mission in one of the least hopeful
neighborhoods of New York. The chapel was a marvel of beauty and taste
at small expense, for St. John was in a certain way an ecclesiastical
architect and artist. He could illuminate neatly, and had at command
a good store of the beautiful forms of the past to choose from. He
worked at diaphanous windows which had all the effect of painted
glass, and emblazoned texts and legends, and painted in polychrome,
till the little chapel dazzled the eyes of street vagabonds, who never
before had been made welcome to so pretty a place in their lives.
Then, when he impressed it on the minds of these poor people that
this lovely, pretty little church was their Father's house, freely
open to them every day, and that prayers and psalms might be heard
there morning and evening, and the holy communion of Christ's love
every Sunday, it is no marvel if many were drawn in and impressed.
Beauty of form and attractiveness of color in the church arrangements
of the rich may cease to be means of grace and become wantonness of
luxury--but for the very poor they are an education, they are means
of quickening the artistic sense, which is twin brother to the
spiritual. The rich do not need these things, and the poor do.
St. John, like many men of seemingly gentle temperament, had the
organizing talent of the schoolmaster. No one could be with him
and not _feel_ him; and the intense purpose with which he labored,
in season and out of season, carried all before it. He marshaled
his forces like an army; his eye was everywhere and on everyone.
He trained his choir of singing boys for processional singing; he
instructed his teachers, he superintended and catechised his school.
In the life of incessant devotion to the church which he led, woman
had no place except as an obedient instrument. He valued the young and
fair who flocked to his standard, simply and only for what they could
do in his work, and apparently had no worldly change with which to
carry on commerce of society.
Yet it was true, as Jim said, that his eye had in some way or other
been caught by Angelique; yet, at first, it was in the way of doubt
and inquiry, rather than approval.
Angelique was gifted by nature with a certain air of piquant vivacity,
which gave to her pretty person the effect of a French picture. In
heart and character she was a perfect little self-denying saint,
infinitely humble in her own opinion, devoted to doing good wherever
her hand could find it, and ready at any time to work her pretty
fingers to the bone in a good cause. But yet undeniably she had a
certain style and air of fashion not a bit like "St. Jerome's love"
or any of the mediæval saints. She could not help it. It was not her
fault that everything about her had a sort of facility for sliding
into trimly fanciful arrangement--that her little hats would sit
so jauntily on her pretty head, that her foot and ankle had such
a provoking neatness, and that her daintily gloved hands had a
hundred little graceful movements in a moment. Then her hair had
numberless mutinous little curly-wurlies, and flew of itself into
the golden mists of modern fashion; and her almond-shaped hazel eyes
had a trick of glancing like a bird's, and she looked always as if a
smile might break out at any moment, even on solemn occasions;--all
which were traits to inspire doubt in the mind of an earnest young
clergyman, in whose study the pictures of holy women were always lean,
long-favored, with eyes rolled up, and looking as if they never had
heard of a French hat or a pair of gaiter-boots. He watched her the
first Sunday that she sat at the head of her class, looking for all
the world like a serious-minded canary bird, and wondered whether so
evidently airy and worldly a little creature would adapt herself to
the earnest work before her; but she did succeed in holding a set
of unpromising street-girls in a sort of enchanted state while she
chippered to them in various little persuasive intonations, made them
say catechism after her, and then told them stories that were not in
any prayer-book. After a little observation, he was convinced that she
would "do." But the habit of watchfulness continued!
On this day, as Jim had suggested the subject, Alice somehow was moved
to remark the frequent direction of Mr. St. John's eyes.