of the house, and standing irresolute, looking at the windows. Then
she drew near the house, and seemed trying to read the name on the
door-plate.
There was something that piqued Eva's curiosity about these
movements, and just as the door was opening behind her into the
Vanderheyden house, the strange woman turned away, and as she turned,
the light of the street-lamp flashed strongly on her face. Its
expression of haggard pain and misery was something that struck to
Eva's heart, though it was but a momentary glimpse, as she turned to
go into the house; for, after all, the woman was nothing to her, and
the glimpse of her face was purely an accident, such as occurs to one
hundreds of times in the streets of a city.
Still, like the sound of a sob or a cry from one unknown, the misery
of those dark eyes struck painfully to Eva's heart; as if to _her_,
young, beloved, gay and happy, some of the ever-present but hidden
anguish of life--the great invisible mass of sorrow--had made an
appeal.
But she went in and shut the door, gave one sigh and dismissed it.
_CHAPTER XIV._
MR. ST. JOHN IS OUT-ARGUED.
A woman has two vernal seasons in her life. One is the fresh,
sweet-brier, apple-blossom spring of girlhood--dewy, bird-singing,
joyous and transient. The other is the spring of young marriage,
before the austere labors and severe strains of real life commence.
It is the spring of wedding presents, of first housekeeping, of
incipient, undeveloped matronage. If the young girl is charming, with
her dawning airs of womanhood, her inexperienced naïve assumptions,
her grave, ignorant wisdom, at which elders smile indulgently--so is
the new-made wife with her little matronly graces, her pretty sense of
responsibility in her new world of power.
In the first period, the young girl herself is the object of attention
and devotion. She is the permitted center of all eyes, the leading
star of her own little drama of life. But with marriage the center
changes. Self begins to melt away into something higher. The girl
recognizes that it is no longer her individuality that is the chief
thing, but that she is the priestess and minister of a family state.
The _home_ becomes her center, and to her home passes the charm that
once was thrown around her person. The pride that she may have had in
self becomes a pride in her home. Her home is the new impersonation of
herself; it is her throne, her empire. How often do we see the young
wife more sensitive to the adornment of her house than the adornment
of her person, willing even to retrench and deny in the last, that
her home may become more cheerful and attractive! A pretty set of
china for her tea-table goes farther with her than a gay robe for
herself. She will sacrifice ribbons and laces for means to adorn the
sacred recesses which have become to her an expansion of her own being.
The freshness of a new life invests every detail of the freshly
arranged _ménage_. Her china, her bronzes, her pictures, her silver,
her table cloths and napkins, her closets and pantries, all speak
to her of a new sense of possession--a new and different hold on
life. Once she was only a girl, moving among things that belonged
to mamma and papa; now she is a matron, surrounded everywhere by
things that are her own--a princess in her own little kingdom. Nor is
the charm lessened that she no longer uses the possessive singular,
but says _our_. And behind those pronouns, _we_ and _our_, what
pleasant security! What innocent pharisaism of self-complacency,
as each congratulates the other on "our" ways, "our" plans, "our"
arrangements; each, the while, sure that they two are the fortunate
among mankind, and that all who are not blest as they are proper
subjects for indulgent pity. "After all, my dear," says he, "what can
you expect of poor Snooks?--a bachelor, poor fellow. If he only had
a wife like you, now," etc., etc. Or, "I can't really blame Cynthia
with that husband of hers, Harry dear. If I were married to such a
man, I should act like a little fiend. If she had only such a husband
as you, now!" This secret, respectable, mutual admiration society of
married life, of how much courage and hope is it the parent! For, do
not our failures and mistakes often come from discouragement? Does
not every human being need a believing second self, whose support
and approbation shall reinforce one's failing courage? The saddest
hours of life are when we doubt ourselves. To sensitive, excitable
people, who expend nervous energy freely, must come many such low
tides. "Am I really a miserable failure--a poor, good-for-nothing,
abortive attempt?" In such crises we need another self to restore our
equilibrium.
Our young friends were just in the second spring of life's new year.
They were as fond and proud of their little house as a prince of
his palace--possibly a good deal more so. They were proud of each
other. Eva felt sure that Harry was destined to the high places of
the literary world. She read his editorials with sincere admiration,
hid his poems away in her heart, and pasted them carefully in her
scrap-book. Fame and success she felt sure ought to come to him, and
would. He was "such a faithful, noble-hearted fellow, and worked so
steadily." And he, with what pride he spoke the words "my wife"! With
what exultation repressed under an air of playful indifference he
brought this and that associate in to dine, and enjoyed the admiration
of her and her pretty home, and graceful, captivating ways. He liked
to see the effect of her gay, sparkling conversation, her easy grace,
on these new subjects; for Eva was, in truth, a charming woman. The
mixture of innocent shrewdness, of sprightly insight, of bright and
airy fancy about her, made her society a thing to be longed after,
as people long for a pleasant stimulant. Like all bright, earnest
young men, Harry wanted to "lend a hand" to make the world around him
brighter and better, and had his ideas of what a charming, attractive
home might do as a center to many hearts in promoting mutual
brotherhood and good fellowship. He had not a doubt of their little
social venture in society, nor that Eva was precisely the person to
make of their house a pleasant resort, to be in herself the blending
and interpreting medium through whom differing and even discordant
natures should be brought to understand the good that was in one
another.
As a preparation for the first experiment, Eva had commenced
by inviting Mr. St. John to dinner, that she might enlist his
approbation of her scheme and have time to set it before him in that
charming fireside hour, when spirits, like flowers, open to catch
the dews of influence. After dinner Harry had an engagement at the
printing-office, and left Eva the field all to herself; and she
managed her cards admirably. Mr. St. John had been little accustomed
to the society of cultured, attractive women; but he had in his
own refined nature every sensibility to respond agreeably to its
influences; and already this fireside had come to be a place where he
loved to linger. And so, when she had him comfortably niched in his
corner, she opened the first parallel of her siege.
"Now, Mr. St. John, you have been preaching to us about self-denial,
and putting us all up to deeds of self-sacrifice--I have some
self-denying work to propose to you."
Mr. St. John opened his blue eyes wide at this exordium, and looked an
interrogation.
"Well, Mr. St. John," pursued Eva, "we are going to have little social
reunions at our house every Thursday, from seven till ten, for the
purpose of promoting good feeling and fellowship, and we want our
rector to be one of us and help us."
"Indeed, Mrs. Henderson, I have not the least social tact. My sphere
doesn't lie at all in that direction," said Mr. St. John, nervously.
"I have no taste for general society."
"Yes, but I think you told us last Sunday we were not to consult
our tastes. You told us that if we felt a strong distaste for any
particular course, it might possibly show that just here the true
path of Christian heroism lay."
"You turn my words upon me, Mrs. Henderson. I was thinking then of the
distaste that people usually feel for visiting the poor and making
themselves practically familiar with the unlovely side of life."
"Well, but may it not apply the other way? You are perfectly familiar
and at home among the poor, but you have always avoided society among
cultured persons of your own class. May not the real self-denial for
you lie there? You have a fastidious shrinking from strangers. May it
not be your duty to overcome it? There are a great many I know in our
circle who might be the better for knowing you. Have you a right to
shrink back from them?"
Mr. St. John moved uneasily in his chair.
"Now," pursued Eva, "there's a young Dr. Campbell that I want you to
know. To be sure, he isn't a believer in the church--not a believer at
all, I fear; but still a charming, benevolent, kindly, open-hearted
man, and I want him to know you, and come under good influences."
"I don't believe I'm at all adapted," said Mr. St. John, hesitatingly.
"Well, dear sir, what do you say to us when we say the same about
mission work? Don't you tell us that if we honestly try we shall learn
to adapt ourselves?"
"That is true," said St. John, frankly.
"Besides," said Eva, "Mr. St. John, Dr. Campbell might do _you_ good.
All your friends feel that you are too careless of your health.
Indeed, we all feel great concern about it, and you might learn
something of Dr. Campbell in this."
Thus Eva pursued her advantage with that fluent ability with
which a pretty young woman at her own fireside always gets the
best of the argument. Mr. St. John, attacked on the weak side of
conscientiousness, was obliged at last to admit that to spend an
evening with agreeable, cultivated, well-dressed people might be
occasionally as much a shepherd's duty as to sit in the close,
ill-smelling rooms of poverty and listen to the croonings and
maunderings of the ill-educated, improvident, and foolish, who make so
large a proportion of the less fortunate classes of society. It had
been suggested to him that a highly-educated, agreeable young doctor,
who talked materialism and dissented from the thirty-nine articles,
might as properly be borne with as a drinking young mechanic who
talked unbelief of a lower and less respectable order.
Now it so happened, by one of those unexpected coincidences that fall
out in the eternal order of things, that Eva was reinforced in her
course of argument by a silent and subtle influence, of which she was
herself scarcely aware. The day seldom passed that one or other of her
sisters did not form a part of her family circle, and on this day of
all others the fates had willed that Angelique should come up to work
on her Christmas presents by Eva's fireside.
Imagine, therefore, as the scene of this conversation, a fire-lighted
room, the evening flicker of the blaze falling in flecks and flashes
over books and pictures, and Mr. St. John in a dark, sheltered corner,
surveying without being surveyed, listening to Eva's animated logic,
and yet watching a very pretty tableau in the opposite corner.
There sat Angelique, listening to the conversation, with the
fire-light falling in flashes on her golden hair and her lap full of
worsteds--rosy, pink, blue, lilac, and yellow. Her little hands were
busy in some fleecy wonder, designed to adorn the Christmas-tree for
the mission school of his church; and she knit and turned and twisted
the rosy mystery with an air of grave interest, the while giving an
attentive ear to the conversation.
Mr. St. John was not aware that he was looking at her; in fact, he
supposed he was listening to Eva, who was eloquently setting forth to
him all the good points in Dr. Campbell's character, and the reasons
why it was his duty to seek and cultivate his acquaintance; but while
she spoke and while he replied he saw the little hands moving, and a
sort of fairy web weaving, and the face changing as, without speaking
a word, she followed with bright, innocent sympathy the course of the
conversation.
When Eva, with a becoming air of matronly gravity, lectured him for
his reckless treatment of his own health, and his want of a proper
guide on that subject, Angelique's eyes seemed to say the same; and
sometimes, when Eva turned just the faintest light of satire on the
ascetic notions to which he was prone, those same eyes sparkled with
that frank gaiety that her dimpled face seemed made to express. Now
the kitten catches at her thread, and she stops, and bends over and
dangles the ball, and laughs softly to herself, and St. John from his
dark corner watches the play. There is something of the kitten in her,
he thinks. Even her gravest words have suggested the air of a kitten
on good behavior, and perhaps she may be a naughty, wicked kitten--who
knows? A kitten lying in wait to catch unwary birds and mice! But she
looked so artless--so innocent!--her little head bent on one side like
a flower, and her eyes sparkling as if she were repressing a laugh!--a
nervous idea shot through the conversation to Mr. St. John's heart.
What if this girl _should_ laugh at him? St. Jerome himself might
have been vulnerable to a poisoned arrow like this. What if he really
were getting absurd notions and ways in the owl-like recesses and
retirements of his study--growing rusty, unfit for civilized life?
Clearly it was his duty to "come forth into the light of things," and
before he left that evening he gave his pledge to Eva that he would be
one of the patrons of her new social enterprise.
It is to be confessed that as he went home that night he felt that
duty had never worn an aspect so agreeable. It was certainly his place
as a good fisher of men to study the habits of the cultured, refined,
and influential portion of society, as well as of its undeveloped
children. Then, he didn't say it to himself, but the scene where these
investigations were to be pursued rose before him insensibly as one
where Angelique was to be one of the entertainers. It would give him
a better opportunity of studying the genus and habits of that variety
of the church militant who train in the uniform of fashionable girls,
and to decide the yet doubtful question whether they had any genuine
capacity for church work. Angelique's evident success with her class
was a puzzle to him, and he thought he would like to know her better,
and see if real, earnest, serious purposes could exist under that gay
exterior.
Somehow, he could not fancy those laughing eyes and that willful,
curly, golden hair under the stiff cap of a Sister of Charity; and he
even doubted whether a gray cloak would seem as appropriate as the
blue robe and ermine cape where the poor little child had rested her
scarred cheek. He liked to think of her just as she looked then and
there. And why shouldn't he get acquainted with her? If he was ever
going to form a sisterhood of good works, certainly it was his duty to
understand the sisters. Clearly it was!
_CHAPTER XV._
GETTING READY TO BEGIN.
"Having company" is one of those incidents of life which in all
circles, high or low, cause more or less searchings of heart.
Even the moderate "tea-fight" of good old times necessitated not only
anxious thought in the hostess herself, but also a mustering and
review of best "bibs and tuckers," through the neighborhood.
But to undertake a "serial sociable" in New York, in this day of
serials, was something even graver, causing many thoughts and words in
many houses.
Witness the following specimens:
"I confess, Nellie, _I_ can't understand Eva's ways," said Aunt Maria,
the morning of the first Thursday. "She don't come to _me_ for advice;
but I confess I don't understand her."
Aunt Maria was in a gloomy, severe state of mind, owing to the
contumacy and base ingratitude of Alice in rejecting her interposition
and care, and she came down this morning to signify her displeasure to
Nellie at the way she had been treated.
"I don't know what you mean, sister," said Mrs. Van Arsdel,
deprecatingly. "I'm sure I don't know of anything that Eva's been
doing lately."
"Why, these evenings of hers; I don't understand them. Setting
out to have receptions in that little out-of-the-way shell of
hers! Why, who'll go? Nobody wants to ramble off up there, and not
get to anything after all. It's going to be a sort of mixed-up
affair--newspaper men, and people that nobody knows--all well enough
in their way, perhaps; but _I_ shan't be mixed up in it." Aunt Maria
nodded her head gloomily, and the bows and feathers on her hat
quivered protestingly.
"Oh, they are going to be just unpretending sociable little
gatherings," said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "Just the family and a few friends;
and _I_ think they are going to be pleasant. I wish you would go,
Maria. Eva will be disappointed."
"No, she won't. It's evident, Nelly, that your girls don't any of them
care about me, or regard anything I say. Well, I only hope they mayn't
live to repent it; that's all."
Aunt Maria said this with that menacing sniff with which people in
a bad humor usually dispense Christian charity. The dark awfulness
of the hope expressed really chilled poor little Mrs. Van Arsdel's
blood. From long habits of dependence upon her sister, she had come
to regard her displeasure as one of the severer evils of life. To
keep the peace with Maria, as far as she herself was concerned, would
have been easy. Contention was fatiguing to her. It was a trouble
to have the responsibility of making up her own mind; and she was
quite willing that Maria should carry her through the journey of
life, buy her tickets, choose her hotels, and settle with her cabmen.
But, complicated with a husband, and a family of bright, independent
daughters, each endowed with a separate will of her own, Mrs. Van
Arsdel led on the whole a hard life. People who hate trouble generally
get a good deal of it. It's all very well for a gentle acquiescent
spirit to be carried through life by _one_ bearer. But when half a
dozen bearers quarrel and insist on carrying one opposite ways, the
more facile the spirit, the greater the trouble.
Mrs. Van Arsdel, in fact, passed a good deal of her life in being
talked over to one course of conduct by Aunt Maria, and talked back
again by her girls. She resembled a weak, peaceable hamlet on the
border-land between France and Germany, taken and retaken with much
wear and tear of spirit, and heartily wishing peace at any price.
"I don't see how Eva is going to afford all this," continued Aunt
Maria gloomily.
"Oh! there's to be no evening entertainment, nothing but a little tea,
and biscuit, and sponge cake, in the most social way," pleaded Mrs.
Van Arsdel.
"But all this, every week, in time comes to a good deal," said Aunt
Maria. "Now, if Eva would put all the extra trouble and expense of
these evenings into _one good handsome party_ of select people and
have it over with, why _that_ would be something worth while, and
I would help her get it up. Such a party stands for something. But
she doesn't come to _me_ for advice. I'm a superannuated old woman,
I suppose," and Aunt Maria sighed in a way heart-breaking to her
peace-loving sister.
"Indeed, Maria, you are wrong. You are provoked now. You don't mean
so."
"I'm--_not_ provoked. Do you suppose I care? I don't! but I can _see_,
I suppose! I'm not _quite_ blind yet, I hope, and I sha'n't go where
I'm not wanted. And now, if you'll give me those samples, Nellie, I'll
go to Arnold's and Stewart's and look up that dress for you, and then
I'll take your laces to the mender's. It's a good morning's work to go
up to that dark alley where she rooms; but I'll do it, now I'm about
it. I'm not so worn out yet but what I am acceptable to do errands for
you," said Aunt Maria, with gloomy satisfaction.
"Oh, Maria, how can you talk so!" said little Mrs. Van Arsdel, with
tears in her eyes. "You really are unjust."
"There's no use in discussing matters, Nellie. Give me the patterns
and the laces," said Aunt Maria, obdurately. "Here! I'll sort 'em
out. You never have anything ready," she said, opening her sister's
drawer, and taking right and left such articles as she deemed proper,
with as much composure as if her sister had been a seven-year-old
child. "There!" she said, shutting the drawer, "now I'm ready. Good
morning!"--and away she sailed, leaving her sister abased in spirit,
and vaguely contrite for she couldn't tell what.
Aunt Maria had the most disagreeable habit of venting her indignation
on her sister, by going to most uncomfortable extremes of fatiguing
devotion to her service. With a brow of gloom and an air of martyrdom,
she would explore shops, tear up and down stair-cases, perform
fatiguing pilgrimages for Nellie and the girls; piling all these coals
of fire on their heads, and looking all the while so miserably abused
and heart-broken that it required stronger discrimination than poor
Mrs. Van Arsdel was gifted with not to feel herself a culprit.
"Only think, your Aunt Maria says she won't go this evening," she said
in a perplexed and apprehensive tone to her girls.
"Glad of it," said Alice, and the words were echoed by Angelique.
"Oh, girls, you oughtn't to feel so about your aunt!"
"We don't," said Alice, "but as long as she feels so about us, it's
just as well not to have her there. We girls are all going to do our
best to make the first evening a success, so that everybody shall have
a good time and want to come again; and if Aunt Maria goes in her
present pet, she would be as bad as Edgar Poe's raven."
"Just fancy our having her on our hands, saying '_nevermore_' at
stated intervals," said Angelique, laughing; "why, it would upset
everything!"
"Angelique, you oughtn't to make fun of your aunt," said Mrs. Van
Arsdel, with an attempt at reproving gravity.
"I'm sure it's the nicest thing we _can_ make of her, Mammy dear,"
said Angelique; "it's better to laugh than to cry any time. Oh, Aunt
Maria will _keep_, never fear. She'll clear off by-and-by, like a
northeast rain-storm, and then we shall like her well as ever; sha'n't
we, girls?"
"Oh, yes; she always comes round after a while," said Alice.
"Well, now I'm going up to help Eva get the rooms ready," said
Angelique, and out she fluttered, like a flossy bit of thistle-down.
Angelique belonged to the corps of the laughing saints--a department
not always recognized by the straiter sort in the church militant, but
infinitely effective and to the purpose in the battle of life. Her
heart was a tender but a gay one--perhaps the lovingness of it kept it
bright; for love is a happy divinity, and Angelique loved everybody,
and saw the best side of everything; besides, just now she was barely
seventeen, and thought the world a very nice place. She was the very
life of the household, the one who loved to run and wait and tend; who
could stop gaps and fill spaces, and liked to do it: and so, this day,
she devoted herself to Eva's service in the hundred somethings that
pertain to getting a house in order for an evening reception.
* * * * *
On the opposite side of the way, the projected hospitalities awoke
various conflicting emotions.
"Dinah, I don't really know whether I shall go to that company
to-night or not," said Mrs. Betsey confidentially to Dinah over her
ironing-table.
"Land sakes, Mis' Betsey," said Dinah, with her accustomed giggle,
"how you talk! What you 'feard on?"
Mrs. Betsey had retreated to the kitchen, to indulge herself with
Dinah in tremors and changes of emotion which had worn out the
patience of Miss Dorcas in the parlor. That good lady, having made up
her mind definitively to go and take Betsey with her, was indisposed
to repeat every half hour the course of argument by which she had
demonstrated to her that it was the proper thing to do.