"I've been up there myself and seen them. Now, how _can_ you let your
children run at loose ends so, Nellie? I only wish you had heard the
sermon this morning. He showed the danger of running into Popery; and
it really was enough to make one's blood run cold to hear how those
infidels are attacking the church, carrying all before them; and then
to think that the only true church should be all getting divided and
mixed up and running after Romanism! It's perfectly awful."
"Well, I don't know what we can do," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, helplessly.
"And we've got both kinds of trouble in our family. Eva's husband is
reading all What's-his-name's works--that evolution man, and all that;
and then Eva and the girls going after this St. John--and he's leading
them as straight to Rome as they can go."
Poor Mrs. Van Arsdel was somewhat fluttered by this alarming view of
the case, and clasped her pretty, fat, white hands, that glittered
with rings like lilies with dew-drops, and looked the image of gentle,
incapable perplexity.
"I don't believe Harry is an infidel," she said at last. "He has to
read Darwin and all those things, because he has to talk about them
in the magazine; and as to Mr. St. John--you know Eva is delicate and
can't walk so far as our church, and this is right round the corner
from her; and Mr. St. John is a good man. He does ever so much for the
poor, and almost supports a mission there; and the Bishop doesn't
forbid him, and if the Bishop thought there was any danger, he would."
"Well, I can't think, for my part, what our Bishop can be thinking
of," said Aunt Maria, who was braced up to an extraordinary degree
by the sermon of the morning. "I don't see how he can let them go on
so--with candles, and processions, and heathen robes, and all that.
I'd process 'em out of the church in quick time. If I were he, I'd
have all that sort of trumpery cleaned out at once; for just see where
it leads to! I may not be as good a Christian as I ought to be--we
all have our short-comings--but one thing I know, _I do hate the
Catholics_ and all that belongs to them; and I'd no more have such
goings on in _my_ diocese than I'd have moths in my carpet! I'd sweep
'em right out!" said Aunt Maria, with a gesture as if she held the
besom of destruction.
Mrs. Wouvermans belonged to a not uncommon class of Christians, whose
evidences of piety are more vigorous in hating than in loving. There
is no manner of doubt that she would have made good her word, had she
been a bishop.
"Oh, well, Maria," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, drawing her knit zephyr shawl
about her with a sort of consolatory movement, and settling herself
cosily back on her sofa, "it's evident that the Bishop doesn't see
just as you do, and I am content to allow what he does. As to the
girls, they are old enough to judge for themselves, and, besides, I
think they are doing some good by teaching in that mission school. I
hope so, at least. Anyway, I couldn't help it if I would. But, do tell
me, _did_ Mrs. Demas have on her new bonnet?"
"Yes, she did," said Aunt Maria, with vigor; "and I can tell you
it's a perfect fright, if it did come from Paris. Another thing I
saw--_fringes have come round again_! Mrs. Lamar's new cloak was
trimmed with fringe."
"You don't say so," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, contemplating all the
possible consequences of this change. "There was another reason why I
couldn't go out this morning," she added, rather irrelevantly--"I had
no bonnet. Adrienne couldn't get the kind of ruche necessary to finish
it till next week, and the old one is too shabby. Were the Stuyvesants
out?"
"Oh, yes, in full force. She has the same bonnet she wore last year,
done over with a new feather."
"Oh, well, the Stuyvesants can do as they please," said Mrs. Van
Arsdel; "everybody knows who they are, let them wear what they will."
"Emma Stuyvesant had a new Paris hat and a sacque trimmed with bullion
fringe," continued Aunt Maria. "I thought I'd tell you, because you
can use what was on your velvet dress over again; it's just as good as
ever."
"So I can"--and for a moment the great advantage of going punctually
to church appeared to Mrs. Van Arsdel. "Did you see Sophie Sidney?"
"Yes. She was gorgeous in a mauve suit with hat to match; but she has
gone off terribly in her looks--yellow as a lemon."
"Who else did you see?" said Mrs. Van Arsdel, who liked this topic of
conversation better than the dangers of the church.
"Oh, well, the Davenports were there, and the Livingstones, and of
course Polly Elmore, with her tribe, looking like birds of Paradise.
The amount of time and money and thought that family gives to dress
is enormous! John Davenport stopped and spoke to me coming out of
church. He says, 'Seems to me, Mrs. Wouvermans, your young ladies have
deserted us; you mustn't suffer them to stray from the fold,' says he.
I saw he had his eye on our pew when he first came into church."
"I think, Maria, you really are quite absurd in your suspicions about
that man," said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "I don't think there's anything in
it."
"Well, just wait now and see. I know more about it than you do. If
only Alice manages her cards right, she can get that man."
"Alice will never manage cards for any purpose. She is too proud for
that. She hasn't a bit of policy."
"And there was that Jim Fellows waiting on her home. I met him this
morning, just as I turned the corner."
"Well, Alice tries to exert a good influence over Jim, and has got him
to teach in Mr. St. John's Sunday-school."
"Fiddlesticks! What does he care for Sunday-school?"
"Well, the girls all say that he does nicely. He has more influence
over that class of boys than anybody else would."
"Likely! Set a rogue to catch a rogue," said Aunt Maria. "It's his
being seen so much with Alice that I'm thinking of. You may depend
upon it, it has a bad effect."
Mrs. Van Arsdel dreaded the setting of her sister's mind in this
direction, so by way of effecting a diversion she rang and inquired
when tea would be ready. As the door opened, the sound of very merry
singing came up stairs. Angelique was seated at the piano and playing
tunes out of one of the Sunday-school manuals, and the whole set were
singing with might and main. Jim's tenor could be heard above all the
rest.
"Why, is that fellow here?" said Aunt Maria.
"Yes," said Mrs. Van Arsdel; "he very often stays to tea with us
Sunday nights, and he and the girls sing hymns together."
"Hymns!" said Aunt Maria. "I should call that a regular jollification
that they are having down there."
"Oh, well, Maria, they are singing children's tunes out of one of
the little Sunday-school manuals. You know children's tunes are so
different from old-fashioned psalm tunes!"
Just then the choir below struck up
"Forward, Christian soldier,"
with a marching energy and a vivacity that was positively startling,
and, to be sure, not in the least like the old, long-drawn, dolorous
strains once supposed to be peculiar to devotion. In fact, one of the
greatest signs of progress in our modern tunes is the bursting forth
of religious thought and feeling in childhood and youth in strains gay
and airy as hope and happiness--melodies that might have been learned
of those bright little "fowls of the air," of whom the Master bade us
take lessons, so that a company of wholesome, healthy, right-minded
young people can now get together and express themselves in songs of
joy, and hope, and energy, such as childhood and youth ought to be
full of.
Let those who will talk of the decay of Christian faith in our day;
so long as songs about Jesus and his love are bursting forth on every
hand, thick as violets and apple blossoms in June, so long as the
little Sunday-school song books sell by thousands and by millions,
and spring forth every year in increasing numbers, so long will it
appear that faith is ever fresh-springing and vital. It was the little
children in the temple who cried, "Hosanna to the Son of David,"
when chief priests and scribes were scowling and saying, "Master,
forbid them," and doubtless the same dear Master loves to hear these
child-songs now as then.
At all events, our little party were having a gay and festive time
over two or three new collections of Clarion, Golden Chain, Golden
Shower, or what not, of which Jim had brought a pocketful for the
girls to try, and certainly the melodies as they came up were bright
and lively and pretty enough to stir one's blood pleasantly. In fact,
both Aunt Maria and Mrs. Van Arsdel were content for a season to leave
the door open and listen.
"You see," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "Jim is such a pleasant, convenient,
obliging fellow, and has done so many civil turns for the family,
that we quite make him at home here; we don't mind him at all. It's
a pleasant thing, too, and a convenience, now the boys are gone, to
have some young man that one feels perfectly free with to wait on
the girls; and where there are so many of them, there's less danger
of anything particular. There's no earthly danger of Alice's being
specially interested in Jim. He isn't at all the person she would ever
think seriously of, though she likes him as a friend."
Mrs. Wouvermans apparently acquiesced for the time in this reasoning,
but secretly resolved to watch appearances narrowly this evening, and
if she saw what warranted the movement to take the responsibility
of the case into her own hands forthwith. Her perfect immutable and
tranquil certainty that she was the proper person to manage anything
within the sphere of her vision gave her courage to go forward in
spite of the fears and remonstrances of any who might have claimed
that they were parties concerned.
Mr. Jim Fellows was one of those persons in whom a sense of humor
operates as a subtle lubricating oil through all the internal
machinery of the mind, causing all which might otherwise have jarred
or grated to slide easily. Many things which would be a torture to
more earnest people were to him a source of amusement. In fact, humor
was so far a leading faculty that it was difficult to keep him within
limits of propriety and decorum, and prevent him from racing off at
unsuitable periods like a kitten after a pin-ball, skipping over all
solemnities of etiquette and decorum. He had not been so long intimate
in the family without perfectly taking the measure of so very active
and forth-putting a member as Aunt Maria. He knew exactly--as well
as if she had told him--how she regarded him, for his knowledge of
character was not the result of study, but that sort of clear sight
which in persons of quick perceptive organs seems like a second sense.
He saw into persons without an effort, and what he saw for the most
part only amused him.
He perceived immediately on sitting down to tea that he was under
the glance of Mrs. Wouverman's watchful and critical eye, and the
result was that he became full and ready to boil over with wicked
drollery. With an apparently grave face, without passing the limits
of the most ceremonious politeness and decorum, he contrived, by a
thousand fleeting indescribable turns and sliding intonations and
adroit movements to get all the girls into a tempest of suppressed
gaiety. There are wicked rogues known to us all who have this magical
power of making those around them burst out into indiscreet sallies
of laughter, while they retain the most edifying and innocent air
of gravity. Seated next to Aunt Maria, Jim managed, by most devoted
attention and reverential listening, to draw from her a zealous
analysis of the morning sermon, which she gave with the more heat and
vigor, hoping thereby to reprove the stray sheep who had thus broken
boundaries.
Her views of the danger of modern speculation, and her hearty measures
for its repression, were given with an earnestness that was from the
heart.
"I can't understand what anybody wants to have these controversies
for, and listen to these infidel philosophers. I never doubt. I never
have doubted. I don't think I have altered an iota of my religious
faith since I was seven years old; and if I had the control of things,
I'd put a stop to all this sort of fuss."
"You then would side with his Holiness, the Pope," said Jim. "That's
precisely the ground of his last allocution."
"No, indeed, I shouldn't. I think Popery is worse yet--it's terrible!
Dr. Cushing showed _that_ this morning, and it's the greatest danger
of our day; and I think that Mr. St. John of yours is nothing more
than a decoy duck to lead you all to Rome. I went up there once and
saw 'em genuflecting, and turning to the east, and burning candles,
and that's all I want to know about them."
"But the east is a perfectly harmless point of the compass," said Jim,
with suavity; "and though I don't want candles in the daytime myself,
yet I don't see what harm it does anybody to burn them."
"Why, that's just what the Catholics do," said Mrs. Wouvermans.
"Oh, that's it, is it!" said Jim, with a submissive air. "Mustn't we
do _any_ thing that Catholics do?"
"No, indeed," said Aunt Maria, falling into the open trap with
affecting naïveté.
"Then we mustn't pray at all," said Jim.
"Oh, pshaw! of course I didn't mean that. You know what I mean."
"Certainly, ma'am. I think I understand," said Jim, while Alice, who
had been looking reprovingly at him, led off the subject into another
strain.
But Mrs. Wouvermans was more gracious to Jim that evening than
usual, and when she rose to go home that young gentleman offered his
attendance, and was accepted with complacency.
Mrs. Wouvermans, in a general way, believed in what is called
Providence. That is to say, when any little matter fell out in
a manner exactly apposite to any of her schemes, she called it
providential. On the present occasion, when she found herself walking
in the streets of New York alone, in the evening, with a young man who
treated her with flattering deference, it could not but strike her
as a providential opportunity not to be neglected of fulfilling her
long-cherished intentions and giving a sort of wholesome check and
caution to the youth. So she began with infinite adroitness to prepare
the way. Jim, the while, who saw perfectly what she was aiming at,
assisting her in the most obliging manner.
After passing through sundry truisms about the necessity of caution
and regarding appearances, and thinking what people will say to
this and that, she proceeded to inform him that the report was in
circulation that he was engaged to Alice.
"The report does me entirely too much honor," said Jim. "But of course
if Miss Alice isn't disposed to deny it, I am not."
"Of course Miss Alice's friends will deny it," said Aunt Maria,
decisively. "I merely mentioned it to you that you may see the need of
caution. You know, of course, Mr. Fellows, that such reports stand in
the way of _others_ who might be disposed--well, you understand."
"Oh, perfectly, exactly, quite so," said Jim, who could be profuse of
his phrases on occasion, "and I'm extremely obliged to you for this
suggestion; undoubtedly your great experience and knowledge of the
ways of society will show you the exact way to deal with such things."
"You see," pursued Mrs. Wouvermans, in a confidential tone, "there is
at present a person every way admirable and desirable, who is thinking
very seriously of Alice; it's quite confidential, you know; but you
must be aware--of the danger."
"I perceive--a blight of the poor fellow's budding hopes and early
affections," said Jim, fluently; "well, though of course the very
suggestion of such a report in regard to me is flattery far beyond
my deserts, so that I can't be annoyed by it, still I should be
profoundly sorry to have it occasion any trouble to Miss Alice."
"I felt sure that you wouldn't be offended with me for speaking so
very plainly. I hope you'll keep it entirely private."
"Oh, certainly," said Jim, with the most cheerful goodwill. "When
ladies with your tact and skill in human nature talk to us young
fellows you _never_ give offense. We take your frankness as a favor."
Mrs. Wouvermans smiled with honest pride. Had she not been warned
against talking to this youth as something that was going to be of
most explosive tendency? How little could Nellie, or Eva, or any of
them, appreciate her masterly skill! She really felt in her heart
disposed to regret that so docile a pupil, one so appreciative of her
superior abilities, was not a desirable matrimonial _parti_. Had Jim
been a youth of fortune she felt that she could have held up both
hands for him.
"He really _is_ agreeable," was her thought, as she shut the door upon
him.
[Illustration: THE DOMESTIC ARTIST
"_A spray of ivy that was stretching towards the window had been drawn
back, and forced to wreathe itself around a picture._"--p. 131.]
_CHAPTER XII._
WHY CAN'T THEY LET US ALONE?
Harry went out to his office, and Eva commenced the morning labors of
a young housekeeper.
What are they? Something in their way as airy and pleasant as the
light touches and arrangements which Eve gave to her bower in
Paradise--gathering-up stray rose-leaves, tying up a lily that the
rain has bent, looping a honeysuckle in a more graceful festoon, and
meditating the while whether she shall have oranges and figs and
grapes, or guavas and pineapples, for her first course at dinner.
Such, according to Father Milton, were the ornamental duties of the
first wife, while her husband went out to his office in some distant
part of Eden.
But Eden still exists whenever two young lovers set up housekeeping,
even in prosaic New York; only our modern Eves wear jaunty little
morning caps and fascinating wrappers and slippers, with coquettish
butterfly bows. Eva's morning duties consisted in asking Mary what
they had better have for dinner, giving here and there a peep into the
pantry, re-arranging the flower vases, and flecking the dust from her
pictures and statuettes with a gay and glancing brush of peacock's
feathers. Sometimes the morning arrangements included quite a change;
as, this particular day, when, on mature consideration, a spray of ivy
that was stretching towards the window had been drawn back and forced
to wreathe itself around a picture, and a spray of nasturtium, gemmed
with half-opened golden buds, had been trained in its place in the
window.
One may think this a very simple matter, but whoever knows all the
resistance which the forces of matter and the laws of gravitation make
to the simplest improvement in one's parlor, will know better.
It required a scaffolding made of a chair and an ottoman to reach the
top of the pictures, and a tack-hammer and little tacks. Then the
precise air of arrangement and exact position had to be studied from
below, after the tacks were driven, and that necessitated two or three
descents from the perch to review, and the tumbling of the ottoman to
the floor, and the calling of Mary in to help, and to hold the ottoman
firm while the persevering little artist finished her work. It is by
ups and downs like these, by daily labor of modern Eves, each in their
little paradises, O ye Adams! that your houses have that "just right"
look that makes you think of them all day, and long to come back to
them at night.
"Somehow or other," you say, "I don't know how it is, my wife's
things have a certain air; her vines grow just as they ought to, her
flowers blossom in just the right places, and her parlors always look
pleasant." You don't know how many periods of grave consideration, how
many climbings on chairs and ottomans, how many doings and undoings
and shiftings and changes produce the appearance that charms you.
Most people think that flower vases are very simple affairs; but the
keeping of parlors dressed with flowers is daily work for an hour or
two for any woman. Nor is it work in vain. No altar is holier than the
home altar, and the flowers that adorn it are sacred.
Eva was sitting, a little tired with her strenuous exertions,
contemplating her finished arrangement with satisfaction, when the
door-bell rang, and Alice came in.
"Why, Allie, dear, how nice of you to be down here so early! I was
just wanting somebody to show my changes to. Look there. See how I've
looped that ivy round mother's picture; isn't it sweet?" and Eva
caressingly arranged a leaf or two to suit her.
"Charming!" said Alice, but with rather an abstracted, preoccupied
tone.
"And look at this nasturtium; it's full of buds. See, the yellow is
beginning to show. I've fastened it in a wreath around the window, so
that the sun will shine through the blossoms."
"It's beautiful," said Alice, still absently and nervously playing
with her bonnet strings.
"Why, darling, what's the matter?" said Eva, suddenly noticing signs
of some unusual feeling. "What ails you?"
"Well," said Alice, hastily untying her bonnet strings and throwing it
down on the sofa, "I've come up to talk with you. I hope," she said,
flushing crimson with vexation, "that Aunt Maria is satisfied now; she
is the most exasperating woman I ever knew or heard of!"
"Dear me, Allie, what has she done now?"
"Well, what do you think? Last Sunday she came to our house to tea,
drawn up in martial array and ready to attack us all for not going
to the old church--that stupid, dead old church, where people do
nothing but doze and wake up to criticise each other's bonnets--but
you really would think to hear Aunt Maria talk that there was a second
Babylonian captivity or something of that sort coming on, and we were
getting it up. You see, Dr. Cushing has got excited because some of
the girls are going up to the mission church, and it's led him to an
unwonted exertion; and Aunt Maria quite waked up and considers herself
an apostle and prophet. I wish you could have heard her talk. It's
enough to make any cause ridiculous to have one defend it as she
did. You ought to have heard that witch of a Jim Fellows arguing with
her and respectfully leading her into all sorts of contradictions and
absurdities till I stopped him. I really wouldn't let him lead her to
make such a fool of herself."
"Oh, well, if that's all, Allie, I don't think you need to trouble
your head," said Eva. "Aunt Maria, of course, will hold on to her old
notions, and her style of argument never was very consecutive."
"But that isn't all. Oh, you may be sure I didn't care for what she
said about the church. I can have my opinion and she hers, on that
point."
"Well, then, what is the matter?"
"Well, if you'll believe me, she has actually undertaken to tutor Jim
Fellows in relation to his intimacy with me."
"Oh, Allie," groaned Eva, "has she done that? I begged and implored
her to let that matter alone."
"Then she's been talking with you, too! and I wonder how many more,"
said Alice in tones of disgust.
"Yes, she did talk with me in her usual busy, imperative way, and told
me all that Mrs. Thus-and-so and Mr. This-and-that said--but people
are always saying things, and if they don't say one thing they will
another. I tried to persuade her to let it alone, but she seemed to
think you must be talked with; so I finally told her that if she'd
leave it to me I would say all that was necessary. I did mean to say
something, but I didn't want to trouble you. I thought there was no
hurry."
"Well, you see," said Alice, "Jim went home with her that night, and I
suppose she thought the opportunity too good to be neglected. I don't
know just what she said to him, but I know it was about me."
"How do you know? Did Jim tell you?"
"No, indeed; catch him telling me! He knows too much for that. Aunt
Maria let it out herself."
"Let it out herself?"
"Yes; she blundered into it before she knew what she was saying, and
betrayed herself; and then, when I questioned her, she had to tell me."
"How came she to commit herself so?"
"It was just this. You know the little party Aunt Maria had Tuesday
evening,--the one you couldn't come to on account of that Stephens
engagement."
"Yes; what of it?"