Maria's schemes to bring me and that John Davenport together. At any
rate, there he was, and his sister; and really, Eva, his treatment of
me was so marked that it was quite disagreeable. Why, the man seemed
really infatuated. His manner was so that everybody remarked it;
and the colder and more distant I grew, the more it increased. Aunt
Maria was delighted. She plumed herself and rushed round in the most
satisfied way, while I was only provoked. I saw he was going to ask to
wait on me home, and so I fell back on a standing engagement that I
have with Jim, to go with me whenever anybody asks that I don't want
to go with. Jim and I have always had that understanding in dancing
and at parties, so that we can keep clear of disagreeable partners and
people. I was determined I wouldn't walk home with that man, and I
told Jim privately that he was to be on duty, and he took the hint in
a minute. So when Mr. Davenport wound up his attentions by asking if
he should have the pleasure of seeing me home, I told him with great
satisfaction that I was engaged, and off I walked with Jim. The girls
were in a perfect state of giggle, to see Aunt Maria's indignation."
"And so really you don't like this Mr. Davenport?"
"Like him! Indeeed I don't. In the first place, it isn't a year yet
since his wife died; and everybody was pitying him. He could hardly be
kept alive, and fainted away, and had to have hot bottles at his feet,
and all that. All the old ladies were rolling up their eyes; such a
sighing and sympathizing for John Davenport; and now, here he is!"
"Poor man!" said Eva, "I suppose he is lonesome."
"Yes. I suppose, as Irving says, the greatest compliment he can pay
to his former wife is to display an eagerness for another; but his
attentions are simply disagreeable to me."
"After all, the worst crime you allege seems to be that he is too
sensitive to your attractions."
"Yes; and shows it in a very silly way--making me an object of remark!
He may be very nice and very worthy, and all that; but in any such
relation as that he is so unpleasant to me! I can't _bear_ him, and
I'm not going to be talked or maneuvered into anything that might
commit me to even consider him. I remember the trouble you had for
being persuaded to let Wat Sydney dangle after you. I will not have
anything of the kind. I am a decided young woman, and know my own
mind."
"Well, how did you learn about Aunt Maria and Jim?"
"How? Oh, well, the next day comes Aunt Maria to talk with Mamma, who
wasn't there, by the bye; Papa hates so to go out that she has got to
staying at home with him. But the next day came an exaggerated picture
of my triumphs to Mamma and a lecture to me on my bad behavior. The
worst of all, she said, was the very marked thing of my going home
with Jim; and in her heat she let out that she had spoken to him and
warned him of what folks would think and say of such appearances. I
_was_ angry then, and I expressed my mind freely to Aunt Maria, and
we had a downright quarrel. I said things I ought not to say, just as
one always does, and--now isn't it disagreeable? Isn't it _dreadful_?"
said Alice, with the earnestness of a young girl whose whole nature
goes into her first trouble. "Nothing could be nicer and more just
what a thing ought to be than my friendship with Jim. I have influence
over him and I can do him good, and I enjoy his society, and the kind
of easy, frank understanding that there is between us, that we can say
_any_ thing to each other; and what business is it of anybody's? It's
our own affair, and no one's else."
"Certainly it is," said Eva, sympathizingly.
"And Aunt Maria said that folks were saying that if we weren't engaged
we ought to be. What a hateful thing to say! As if there were any
impropriety in a friendship between a gentleman and a lady. Why may
not a gentleman and a lady have a special friendship as well one lady
with another, or one gentleman with another? I don't see."
"Neither do I," said Eva, responsively.
"Now," said Alice, "the suggestion of marriage and all that is
disagreeable to me. I'm thinking of nothing of the kind. I like Jim.
Well, I don't mind saying to you, Eva, who can understand me, that
I _love_ him, in a sort of way. I am interested for him. I know his
good points and I know his faults, and I'm at liberty to speak to him
with perfect freedom, and I think there is nothing so good for a young
man as such a friendship. We girls, you know, dear, can do a great
deal for young men if we try. We are not tempted as they are; we have
not their hard places and trials to walk through, and we can make
allowances, and they will receive things from us that they wouldn't
from any one else, and they show us just the best side of their
nature, which is the truest side of everybody."
"Certainly, Alice. Harry was saying only a little while ago that
your influence would make a man of Jim; and I certainly think he has
wonderfully improved of late--he seems more serious."
"We've learned to know him better; that's all," said Alice. "Young
men rattle and talk idly to girls when they don't feel acquainted and
haven't real confidence in their friendship, just as a sort of blind.
They don't dare to express their real, deepest feelings."
"Well, I didn't know that Jim had any," said Eva, incautiously.
"Why, Eva, how unjust you are to Jim!" said Alice, with flushing
cheeks. "I shouldn't have thought it of you; so many kind things as
Jim has done for us all!"
"My darling, I beg Jim's pardon with all my heart," said Eva, laughing
to herself at this earnest championship. "I didn't mean quite what I
said, but you know, Alice, his sort of wild rattling way of talking
over all subjects, so that you can't tell which is jest and which is
earnest."
"Oh! _I_ can always tell," said Alice. "I always can make him come
down to the earnest part of him, and Jim has, after all, really good,
sensible ideas of life and aspirations after what is right and true.
He has the temptation of having been a sort of spoiled child. People
do so like a laugh that they set him on and encourage him in saying
all sorts of things he ought not. People have very little principle
about that. So that anyone amuses them, they never consider whether he
does right to talk as he does; they'll set Jim up to talk because it
amuses them, and then go away and say what a rattle he is, and that he
has no real principle or feeling. They just make a buffoon of him,
and they know nothing about the best part of him."
"Well, Alice, I dare say you do see more of Jim's real nature than any
of us."
"Oh! indeed I do; and I know how to appeal to it. Even when I can't
help laughing at things he ought not to say--and sometimes they are so
droll I can't help it--afterwards I have _my_ say and tell him really
and soberly just what I think, and you've no idea how beautifully he
takes it. Oh, Jim really is good at heart, there's no doubt about
that."
"Do you think Aunt Maria's meddling will make trouble between you?"
"No! only that it's an awkward, disagreeable thing to speak of; but I
shall speak to Jim about it and let him understand, if he doesn't now,
just what Aunt Maria is, and that he mustn't mind anything she says.
I feel rather better, now I've relieved my mind to you, and perhaps
shall have more charity for Aunt Maria."
"After all, poor soul," said Eva, "it's her love for us that leads
her to vex us in all these ways. She can't help planning and fussing
and lying awake nights for us. She failed in getting a splendid
marriage for me, and now she's like Bruce's spider, up and at her web
again weaving a destiny for you. It's in her to be active; she has no
children; her house don't half satisfy her as a field of enterprise,
and she, of course, is taking care of Mamma and our family. If Mamma
had not been just the gentle, lovely, yielding woman she is, Aunt
Maria never would have got such headway in the family and taken such
airs about us."
"She perfectly tyrannizes over Mamma," said Alice. "She's always
coming up to lecture her for not doing this, that, or the other thing.
Now all this talk about our going to Mr. St. John's church;--poor,
dear, little Mamma is as willing to let us do as we please as the
flowers are to blossom, and then Aunt Maria talks as if she were
abetting a conspiracy against the church. I know that we are all
living more serious, earnest lives for Mr. St. John's influence. It
may be that he is going too far in certain directions; it may be that
in the long run such things tend to dangerous extremes, but I don't
see any real harm in them so far, and I find real good."
"Well, you know, dear, that Harry isn't of our church--he is a
Congregationalist--but his theory is that Christian people should
join with any other Christian people who they see are really working
in earnest to do good. This church is near by us, where we can
conveniently go, and as I have my house to attend to and am not strong
you know, that is quite a consideration. I know Harry don't agree
with Mr. St. John at all about his ideas of the church, and he thinks
he carries some of his ceremonies too far; but, on the whole, he
really is doing a great deal of practical good, and Harry is willing
to help him. I think it's just lovely in Harry to do so. It is real
liberality."
"I wish," said Alice, "that Mr. St. John were a little freer in his
way. There is a sort of solemnity about him that is depressing, and
it seems to set Jim off in a spirit of contradiction. He says Mr. St.
John stirs up the evil within him, and makes him long to break over
bounds and say something wicked, just to shock him."
"I've had that desire to shock very proper people in the days of my
youth," said Eva. "I don't know what it comes from."
"I think," said Alice, "that, to be sure, this is an irreverent age,
and New York is an irreverent place; but yet I think people may carry
the outside air of reverence too far. Don't you? They impose a sort of
constraint on everybody around them that keeps them from knowing the
people they associate with. Mr. St. John, for instance, knows nothing
about Jim, he never acts himself out before him."
"Oh, dear me," said Eva, "fancy what he would think if he should see
Jim in one of his frolics."
"And yet, Jim, in his queer way, appreciates Mr. St. John," said
Alice. "He says he's 'a brick' after all, by which he means that he
does good, honest work; and Jim has been enough around among the poor
of New York, in his quality of newspaper writer, to know when a man
does good among them. If Mr. St. John only could learn to be indulgent
to other people's natures he might do a great deal for Jim."
"I rather think Jim will be your peculiar parish for some time to
come," said Eva with a smile, "but Harry and I are projecting schemes
to draw Mr. St. John into more general society. That's one of the
things we are going to try to do in our 'evenings.' I don't believe
he has ever been into general society at all; he ought to hear the
talk of his day--he talks and feels and thinks more in the past than
the present; he's all the while trying to restore an ideal age of
reverence and devotion, but he ought to know the real age he lives in.
If we could get him to coming to our house every week, and meeting
real live men, women and girls of to-day and entering a little into
their life, it would do him good."
"I suppose he'd be afraid of any indulgence!"
"We must not put it to him as an indulgence, but a good hard duty,"
said Eva; "we should never catch him with an indulgence."
"When are you going to begin?"
"I've been talking with Mary about it, and I rather think I shall take
next Thursday for the first. I shall depend on you and the girls to
help me keep the thing balanced, and going on just right. Jim must be
moderated, and kept from coming out too strong, and everybody must be
made to have a good time, so that they'll want to come again. You see
we want to get them to coming every week, so that they will all know
one another by-and-by, and get a sort of home feeling about our rooms;
such a thing is possible, I think."
The conversation now meandered off into domestic details, not further
traceable in this chapter.
_CHAPTER XIII._
OUR "EVENING" PROJECTED.
"Well, Harry," said Eva, when they were seated at dinner, "Alice was
up at lunch with me this morning, in such a state! It seems, after
all, Aunt Maria could not contain her zeal for management, and has
been having an admonitory talk with Jim Fellows about his intimacy
with Alice."
"Now, I declare that goes beyond me," said Harry, laying down his
knife and fork. "That woman's impertinence is really stupendous. It
amounts to the sublime."
"Doesn't it? Alice was in such a state about it; but we talked the
matter down into calmness. Still, Harry, I'm pretty certain that Alice
is more seriously interested in Jim than she knows of. Of course she
thinks it's all friendship, but she is so sensitive about him, and if
you make even the shadow of a criticism she flames up and defends him.
You ought to see."
"Grave symptoms," said Harry.
"But as she says she is not thinking nor wanting to think of
marriage--"
"Any more than a certain other young lady was, with whom I cultivated
a friendship some time ago," said Harry, laughing.
"Just so," said Eva; "I plume myself on my forbearance in listening
gravely to Alice and not putting in any remarks; but I remembered old
times and had my suspicions. _We_ thought it was friendship, didn't
we, Harry? And I used to be downright angry if anybody suggested
anything else. Now I think Allie's friendship for Jim is getting to
be of the same kind. Oh, she knows him _so_ well! and she understands
him so perfectly! and she has _so_ much influence over him! and
they have such perfect comprehension of each other! and as to his
faults, oh, she understands all about them! But, mind you, nobody
must criticise him but herself--that's quite evident. I did make a
blundering remark or so; but I found it wasn't at all the thing, and I
had to beat a rapid retreat, I assure you."
"Well, poor girl! I hope you managed to console her."
"Oh, I was sympathetic and indignant, and after she had poured out her
griefs she felt better; and then I put in a soothing word for Aunt
Maria, poor woman, who is only monomaniac on managing our affairs."
"Yes," said Harry, "forgiveness of enemies used to be the _ultima
thule_ of virtue; but I rather think it will have to be forgiveness of
friends. I call the man a perfect Christian that can always forgive
his friends."
"The fact is, Aunt Maria ought to have had a great family of her
own--twelve or thirteen, to say the least. If Providence had
vouchsafed her eight or nine ramping, roaring boys, and a sprinkling
of girls, she would have been a splendid woman and we should have had
better times."
"She puts me in mind of the story of the persistent broomstick that
would fetch water," said Harry; "we are likely to be drowned out by
her."
"Well, we can accept her for a whetstone to sharpen up our Christian
graces on," said Eva. "So, let her go. I was talking over our
projected evening with Alice, and we spent some time discussing that."
"When are you going to begin?" said Henry. "'Well begun is half done,'
you know."
Said Eva, "I've been thinking over what day is best, and talking
about it with Mary. Now, we can't have it Monday, there's the washing,
you know; and Tuesday and Wednesday come baking and ironing."
"Well, then, what happens Thursday?"
"Well, then, it's precisely Thursday that Mary and I agreed on. We
both made up our minds that it was the right day. One wouldn't want it
on Friday, you know, and Saturday is too late; besides, Mr. St. John
never goes out Saturday evenings."
"But what's the objection to Friday?"
"Oh, the unlucky day. Mary wouldn't hear of beginning anything on
Friday, you know. Then, besides, Mr. St. John, I suspect, fasts every
Friday. He never told me so, of course, but they say he does; at all
events, I'm sure he wouldn't come of a Friday evening, and I want to
be sure and have _him_, of all people. Now, you see, I've planned it
all beautifully. I'm going to have a nice, pretty little tea-table in
one corner, with a vase of flowers on it, and I shall sit and make
tea. That breaks the stiffness, you know. People talk first about the
tea and the china, and whether they take cream and sugar, and so on,
and the gentlemen help the ladies. Then Mary will make those delicate
little biscuits of hers and her charming sponge-cake. It's going to
be perfectly quiet, you see--from half-past seven till eleven--early
hours and simple fare, 'feast of reason and flow of soul.'"
"Quite pastoral and Arcadian," said Harry. "When we get it going it
will be the ideal of social life. No fuss, no noise; all the quiet
of home life with all the variety of company; people seeing each
other till they get really intimate and have a genuine interest in
meeting each other; not a mere outside, wild beast show, as it is when
people go to parties to gaze at other people and see how they look in
war-paint."
"I feel a little nervous at first," said Eva; "getting people together
that are so diametrically opposed to each other as Dr. Campbell and
Mr. St. John, for instance. I'm afraid Dr. Campbell will come out with
some of his terribly free speaking, and then Mr. St. John will be so
shocked and distressed."
"Then Mr. St. John must get over being shocked and distressed. Mr.
St. John needs Dr. Campbell," said Harry. "He is precisely the man he
ought to meet, and Dr. Campbell needs Mr. St. John. The two men are
intended to help each other: each has what the other wants, and they
ought to be intimate."
"But you see, Dr. Campbell is such a dreadful unbeliever!"
"In a certain way he is no more an unbeliever than Mr. St. John.
Dr. Campbell is utterly ignorant of the higher facts of moral
consciousness--of prayer and communion with God--and therefore he
doesn't believe in them. St. John is equally ignorant of some of the
most important facts of the body he inhabits. He does not believe in
them--ignores them."
"Oh, but now, Harry, I didn't think that of you--that you could put
the truths of the body on a level with the truths of the soul."
"Bless you, darling, since the Maker has been pleased to make the soul
so dependent on the body, how can I help it? Why, just see here; come
to this very problem of saving a soul, which is a minister's work. I
insist there are cases where Dr. Campbell can do more towards it than
Mr. St. John. He was quoting to me only yesterday a passage from Dr.
Wigan, where he says, 'I firmly believe I have more than once changed
the moral character of a boy by leeches applied to the inside of his
nose.'"
"Why, Harry, that sounds almost shocking."
"Yet it's a fact--a physiological fact--that some of the worst vices
come through a disordered body, and can be cured only by curing the
body. So long as we are in this mortal state, our souls have got to
be saved _in_ our bodies and by the laws of our bodies; and a doctor
who understands them will do more than a minister who doesn't. Why,
just look at poor Bolton. The trouble that he dreads, the fear that
blasts his life, that makes him afraid to marry, is a disease of the
body. Fasting, prayer, sacraments, couldn't keep off an acute attack
of dipsomania; but a doctor might."
"Oh, Harry, do you think so? Well, I must say I do think Mr. St. John
is as ignorant as a child about such matters, if I may judge from the
way he goes on about his own health. He ignores his body entirely,
and seems determined to work as if he were a spirit and could live on
prayer and fasting."
"Which, as he isn't a spirit, won't do," said Harry. "It may end in
making a spirit of him before the time."
"But don't you think the disinterestedness he shows is perfectly
heroic?" said Eva.
"Oh, certainly!" said Harry. "The fact is, I should despair of St.
John if he hadn't set himself at mission work. He is naturally so
ideal, and so fastidious, and so fond of rules, and limits, and order,
that if he hadn't this practical common-sense problem of working among
the poor on his hands, I should think he wouldn't be good for much.
But drunken men and sorrowful wives, ragged children, sickness, pain,
poverty, teach a man the common-sense of religion faster than anything
else, and I can see St. John is learning sense for everybody but
himself. If he only don't run his own body down, he'll make something
yet."
"I think, Harry," said Eva, "he is a little doubtful of whether you
really go with him or not. I don't think he knows how much you like
him."
"Go with him! of course I do. I stand up for St. John and defend him.
So long as a man is giving his whole life to hard work among the poor
and neglected he may burn forty candles, if he wants to, for all I
care. He may turn to any point of the compass he likes, east, west,
north, or south, and wear all the colors of the rainbow if it suits
him, and I won't complain. In fact, I like processions, and chantings,
and ceremonies, if you don't get too many of them. I think, generally
speaking, there's too little of that sort of thing in our American
life. In the main, St. John preaches good sermons; that is, good,
manly, honest talks to people about what they need to know. But then
his mind is tending to a monomania of veneration. You see he has a
mystical, poetic element in it that may lead him back into the old
idolatries of past ages, and lead weak minds there after him; that's
why I want to get him acquainted with such fellows as Campbell. He
needs to learn the common sense of life. I think he is capable of it,
and one of the first things he has got to learn is not to be shocked
at hearing things said from other people's points of view. If these
two men could only like each other, so as to listen tolerantly and
dispassionately to what each has to say, they might be everything to
each other."
"Well, how to get a mordant to unite these two opposing colors," said
Eva.
"That's what you women are for--at least such women as you. It's your
mission to interpret differing natures--to bind, and blend, and unite."
"But how shall we get them to like each other?" said Eva. "Both are so
very intense and so opposite. I suppose Dr. Campbell would consider
most of Mr. St. John's ideas stuff and nonsense; and I know, as well
as I know anything, that if Mr. St. John should hear Dr. Campbell
talking as he talks to you, he would shut up like a flower--he would
retire into himself and not come here any more."
"Oh, Eva, that's making the man too ridiculous and unmanly. Good
gracious! Can't a man who thinks he has God's truth--and _such_
truth!--listen to opposing views without going into fits? It's like
a soldier who cannot face guns and wants to stay inside of a clean,
nice fort, making pretty stacks of bayonets and piling cannon balls in
lovely little triangles."
"Well, Harry, I know Mr. St. John isn't like that. I don't think he's
cowardly or unmanly, but he is very reverent, and, Harry, you are
_very_ free. You do let Dr. Campbell go on so, over everything. It
quite shocks me."
"Just because my faith is so strong that I can afford it. I can see
when he is mistaken; but he is a genuine, active, benevolent man,
following truth when he sees it, and getting a good deal of it, and
most important truth, too. We've got to get truth as we can in this
world, just as miners dig gold out of the mine with all the quartz,
and dirt, and dross; but it pays."
"Well, now, I shall try my skill, and do my best to dispose these two
refractory chemicals to a union," said Eva. "I'll tell you how let's
do. I'll interest Dr. Campbell in Mr. St. John's health. I'll ask him
to study him and see if he can't take care of him. I'm sure he needs
taking care of."
"And," said Harry, "why not interest Mr. St. John in Dr. Campbell's
soul? Why shouldn't he try to convert him from the error of his ways?"
"That would be capital," said Eva. "Let each convert the other. If we
could put Dr. Campbell and Mr. St. John together, what a splendid man
we could make of them!"
"Try your best, my dear; but meanwhile I have three or four hours'
writing to do this evening."
"Well, then, settle yourself down, and I will run over and expound my
plans to the good old ladies over the way. I am getting up quite an
intimacy over there; Miss Dorcas is really vastly entertaining. It's
like living in a past age to hear her talk."
"You really have established a fashion of rushing in upon them at all
sorts of hours," said Harry.
"Yes, but they like it. You have no idea what nice things they say to
me. Even old Dinah quivers and giggles with delight the minute she
sees me--poor old soul! You see they're shut up all alone in that
musty old house, like enchanted princesses, and gone to sleep there;
and I am the predestined fairy to wake them up!"
Eva said this as she was winding a cloud of fleecy worsted around her
head, and Harry was settling himself at his writing-table in a little
alcove curtained off from the parlor.
"Don't keep the old ladies up too late," said Harry.
"Never you fear," said Eva. "Perhaps I shall stay to see Jack's feet
washed and blanket spread. Those are solemn and impressive ceremonies
that I have heard described, but never witnessed."
It was a bright, keen, frosty, starlight evening, and when Eva had
rung the door-bell on the opposite side, she turned and looked at the
play of shadow and firelight on her own window-curtains.