the idea of going into company again. Years had passed in that old
dim house, with the solemn clock tick-tocking in the corner, and the
sunbeam streaming duskily at given hours through the same windows,
with no sound of coming or going footsteps. There the two ancient
sisters had been working, reading, talking, round and round on the
same unvarying track, for weeks, months and years, and now, suddenly,
had come a change. The pretty, gay, little housekeeper across the way
had fluttered in with a whole troop of invisible elves of persuasion
in the very folds of her garments, and had cajoled and charmed them
into a promise to be supporters of her "evenings," and Miss Dorcas was
determined to go. But all ye of womankind know that after every such
determination comes a review of the wherewithal, and many tremors.
Now Miss Dorcas was self-sufficing, and self-sustained. She knew
herself to be Miss Dorcas Vanderheyden, in the first place; and
she had a general confidence, by right of her family and position,
that all her belongings were the right things. They might be out of
fashion--so much the worse for the fashion; Miss Dorcas wore them
with a cheerful courage. Yet, as she frequently remarked, "sooner or
later, if you let things lie, fashion always comes round to them."
They had come round to her many times in the course of her life, and
always found her ready for them. But Mrs. Betsey was timorous, and had
a large allowance of what the phrenologists call "approbativeness." In
her youth she had been a fashionable young belle, and now she had as
many flutters and tremors about her gray curls and her caps as in the
days when she sat up all night in an arm-chair with her hair dressed
and powdered for a ball. In fact, an old lady's cap is undeniably a
tender point. One might imagine it to be a sort of shrine or last
retreat in which all her youthful love of dress finds asylum; and,
in estimating her fitness for any scene of festivity, the _cap_ is
the first consideration. So, when Dinah chuckled, "What ye 'feard on,
honey?" Mrs. Betsey came out with it:
"Dinah, I don't know which of my caps to wear."
"Lor' sakes, Mis' Betsey, wear yer new one. What's to hender?"
"Well, you see, it's trimmed with lilac ribbons, and the shade don't
go with my new brown gown; they look horridly together. Dorcas never
does notice such things, but they don't go well together. I tried to
tell Dorcas about it, but she shut me up, saying I was always fussy."
"Well, laws! then, honey, wear your other cap--it's a right nice un
now," said Dinah in a coaxing tone.
"Trimmed with white ribbon--" said Mrs. Betsey, ruminating; "but you
see, Dinah, that ribbon has really got quite yellow; and there's a
spot on one of the strings," she added, in a tone of poignant emotion.
"Well, now, I tell ye what to do," said Dinah; "you jest wear your
new cap with them laylock ribbins, and wear your black silk: that are
looks illegant now."
"But my black silk is so old; it's pieced under the arm, and beginning
to fray in the gathers."
"Land sake, Mis' Betsey! who's agoin' to look under your arm?" said
Dinah. "They a'n't agoin' to set you up under one o' them sterry
scopes to be looked at, be they? You'll do to pass now, I tell ye; now
don't go to gettin' fluttered and 'steriky, Mis' Betsey. Why don't
ye go right along, like Mis' Dorcas? She don't have no megrims and
tantrums 'bout what she's goin' to wear."
Dinah's tolerant spirit in admitting this discussion was, however, a
real relief to Mrs. Betsey. Like various liquors which are under a
necessity of working themselves clear, Mrs. Betsey found a certain
amount of _talk_ necessary to clear her mind when proceeding to act
in any emergency, and for this purpose a listener was essential; but
Dorcas was so entirely above such fluctuations as hers--so positive
and definite in all her judgments and conclusions--that she could not
enjoy in her society the unlimited amount of discussion necessary to
clarify her mental vision.
It was now about the fifth or sixth time that all the possibilities
with regard to her wardrobe had been up for consideration that day;
till Miss Dorcas, who had borne with her heroically for a season, had
finally closed the discussion by recommending a chapter in _Watts on
the Mind_ which said a great many unpleasant things about people who
occupy themselves too much with trifles, and thus Mrs. Betsey was
driven to unbosom herself to Dinah.
"Then, again, there's Jack," she added; "I'm sure I don't know what
he'll think of our both being out; there never such a thing happened
before."
"Land sake, Mis' Betsey, jest as if Jack cared! Why, he'll stay with
me. I'll see arter _him_--I will."
"Well, you must be good to him, Dinah," said Mrs. Betsey,
apprehensively.
"Ain't I allers good to him? I don't set him up for a graven image and
fall down and washup him, to be sure; but Jack has good times with me,
if I _do_ make him mind."
The fact was, that Dinah often seconded the disciplinary views of Miss
Dorcas with the strong arm, pulling Jack backward by the tail, and
correcting him with vigorous thumps of the broomstick when he fell
into those furors of barking which were his principal weakness.
Dinah had all the sociable instincts of her race; and it moved her
indignation that the few acquaintances who found their way to the
forsaken old house should be terrified and repelled by such distracted
tumults as Jack generally created when the door-bell rang. Hence her
attitude toward him had so often been belligerent that poor Mrs.
Betsey felt small confidence in leaving him to the trying separation
of the evening under Dinah's care.
"Well, Dinah, you won't whip Jack if he does bark? I dare say he'll be
lonesome. You must make allowances for him."
"Oh, laws, yes, honey, I'll make 'lowance, never you fear."
"And you really think the black dress will do?"
"Jest as sartin as I be that I'm here a ironin' this 'ere pillow-bier.
Why, honey, you'll look like a pictur, you will."
"Oh, Dinah, I'm an old woman."
"Well, honey, what if you be? Land sakes, don't I remember when you
was the belle of New York _city_? Lord love ye! Them _was_ days! When
'twas all comin' and goin', hosses a-prancin', house full, and fellers
fairly a-tumblin' over each other jest to get a look at ye. Laws,
honey, ye was wuth lookin' at in dem days."
"Oh, Dinah, you silly old soul, what nonsense you talk!"
"Well, honey, you know you was de handsomest gal goin'. Now you knows
you was," said Dinah, chuckling and shaking her portly sides.
"I suppose I wasn't bad looking," said Mrs. Betsey, laughing in turn;
and the color flushed in her delicate, faded cheeks, and her pretty
bright eyes grew misty with a thought of all the little triumphs,
prides, and regrets of years ago.
To say the truth, Mrs. Betsey, though past the noon-time of
attraction, was a very pretty old woman. Her hands were still delicate
and white, her skin was of lily fairness, and her hair like fine-spun
silver; and she retained still all the nice instincts and habits of
the woman who has known herself charming. She still felt the discord
of a shade in her ribbons like a false note in music, and was annoyed
by the slightest imperfection of her dress, however concealed, to a
degree which seemed at times wearisome and irrational to her stronger
minded sister.
But Miss Dorcas, who had carried her in her arms, a heart-broken
wreck snatched from the waves of a defeated life, bore with her as
heroically as we ever can bear with another whose nature is wholly of
a different make and texture from our own.
In general, she made up her mind with a considerable share of good
sense as to what it was best for Betsey to do, and then made her do
it, by that power which a strong and steady nature exercises over a
weaker one.
Miss Dorcas had made up her mind that more society, and some little
change in her modes of life, would be a benefit to her sister; she
had taken a strong fancy to Eva, and really looked forward to her
evenings as something to give a new variety and interest in life.
* * * * *
"Now, Jim," said Alice, in a monitory tone, "you know we all depend
on you to manage this thing just right to-night. You mustn't be too
lively and frighten the serious folks; but you must keep things
moving, just as you know how."
"Well, are you going to have 'our rector?'" said Jim.
"Certainly. Mr. St. John will be there."
"And of course, our little Angie," said Jim.
"Certainly. Angie, and Mamma, and Papa, and I, shall all be there,"
said Alice, with dignity. "Now, Jim!"
The exclamation was addressed not to anything which this young
gentleman had said, but to a certain wicked sparkle in his eye which
Alice thought predicted coming mischief.
"What's the matter now?" said Jim.
"I know just what you're thinking," said Alice; "and now, Jim, you
mustn't _look_ that way to-night."
"Look _what_ way!"
"Well, you mustn't in _any_ way--look, sign, gesture or word--direct
anybody's attention to Mr. St. John and Angie. Of course there's
nothing there; it's all a fancy of your own--a _very_ absurd one; but
I've known people made very uncomfortable by such absurd suggestions."
"Well, am I to wear green spectacles to keep my eyes from looking?"
"You are to do just right, Jim, and nobody knows how that is to
be done better than you do. You know that you have the gift of
entertaining, and there isn't a mortal creature that you can't please,
if you try; and you mustn't talk to those you like best to-night, but
bestow yourself wherever a hand is needed. You must entertain those
old ladies over the way, and get acquainted with Mr. St. John, and
talk to the pretty Quaker woman; in short, make yourself generally
useful."
"O. K.," said Jim. "I'll be on hand. I'll make love to all the old
ladies, and let the parson admonish me, as meek as Moses; and I'll
look right the other way, if I see him looking at Angie. Anything
more?"
"No, that'll do," said Alice, laughing. "Only do your best, and it
will be good enough."
* * * * *
Eva was busy about her preparations, when Dr. Campbell came in to
borrow a book.
"Now, Dr. Campbell," said she, "you're just the man I wanted to see.
I must tell you that one grand reason why I want to be sure and
secure you for our evenings, and this one in particular, is I have
caught our rector and got his promise to come, and I want you to
study him critically, for I'm afraid he's in the way to get to heaven
long before we do, if he isn't looked after. He's not in the least
conscious of it, but he does need attention."
Dr. Campbell was a hale young man of twenty-five; blonde, vigorous,
high-strung, active, and self-confident, and as keen set after medical
and scientific facts as a race-horse for the goal. As a general thing,
he had no special fancy for clergymen; but a clergyman as a physical
study, a possible verification of some of his theories, was an object
of interest, and he readily promised Eva that he would spare no pains
in making Mr. St. John's acquaintance.
"Now, drolly enough," said Eva, "we're going to have a Quaker preacher
here. I went in to invite Ruth and her husband; and lo, they have got
a celebrated minister staying with them, one Sibyl Selwyn. She is as
lovely as an angel in a pressed crape cap and dove-colored gown; but
what Mr. St. John will think about her I don't know."
"Oh, Mrs. Henderson, there'll be trouble there, depend on it," said
Dr. Campbell. "He won't recognize her ordination, and very likely she
won't recognize his. You see, I was brought up among the Friends. I
know all about them. If your friend Sibyl should have a 'concern'
laid on her for your Mr. St. John, she would tell him some wholesome
truths."
"Dear me," said Eva. "I hope she won't have a 'concern' the very first
evening. It would be embarrassing."
"Oh, no; to tell the truth, these Quaker preachers are generally
delightful women," said Dr. Campbell. "I'm sure I ought to say so, for
my good aunt that brought me up was one of them, and I don't doubt
that Sibyl Selwyn will prove quite an addition to your circle."
Well, the evening came, and so did all the folks. But what they said
and did, must be told in another chapter.
_CHAPTER XVI._
THE MINISTER'S VISIT.
Mr. St. John was sitting in his lonely study, contemplating with some
apprehension the possibilities of the evening.
Perhaps few women know how much of an ordeal general society is to
many men. Women are naturally social and gregarious, and have very
little experience of the kind of shyness that is the outer bark of
many manly natures, in which they fortify all the more sensitive part
of their being against the rude shocks of the world.
As we said, Mr. St. John's life had been that of a recluse and
scholar, up to the time of his ordination as a priest. He was, by
birth and education, a New England Puritan, with all those habits of
reticence and self-control which a New England education enforces.
His religious experiences, being those of reaction from a sterile and
severe system of intellectual dogmatism, still carried with them a
tinge of the precision and narrowness of his early life. His was a
nature like some of the streams of his native mountains, inclining to
cut for itself straight, deep, narrow currents; and all his religious
reading and thinking had run in one channel. As to social life, he
first began to find it among his inferiors; among those to whom he
came, not as a brother man, but as an authoritative teacher--a master,
divinely appointed, set apart from the ordinary ways of men. In his
rôle of priest he felt strong. In the belief of his divine and sacred
calling, he moved among the poor and ignorant with a conscious
superiority, as a being of a higher sphere. There was something in
this which was a protection to his natural diffidence; he seemed among
his parishioners to feel surrounded by a certain sacred atmosphere
that shielded him from criticism. But to mingle in society as man with
man, to lay aside the priest and be only the gentleman, appeared on
near approach a severe undertaking. As a priest at the altar he was
a privileged being, protected by a kind of divine aureole, like that
around a saint. In general society he was but a man, to make his way
only as other men; and, as a man, St. John distrusted and undervalued
himself. As he thought it over, he inly assented to the truth of what
Eva had so artfully stated--that this ordeal of society was indeed,
for him, the true test of self-sacrifice. Like many other men of
refined natures, he was nervously sensitive to personal influences.
The social sphere of those around him affected him, through sympathy,
almost as immediately as the rays of the sun impress the daguerreotype
plate; but he felt it his duty to subject himself to the ordeal the
more because he dreaded it. "After all," he said to himself, "what is
my faith worth, if I cannot carry it among men? Do I hold a lamp with
so little oil in it that the first wind will blow it out?"
It was with such thoughts as these that he started out on his usual
afternoon tour of visiting and ministration in one of the poorest
alleys of his neighborhood.
As he was making his way along, a little piping voice was heard at his
elbow:
"Mr. St. Don; Mr. St. Don."
He looked hastily down and around, to meet the gaze of a pair of dark
childish eyes looking forth from a thin, sharp little face. Gradually,
he recognized in the thin, barefoot child, the little girl whom he
had seen in Angie's class, leaning on her.
"What do you want, my child?"
"Mother's took bad, and Poll's gone to wash for her. They told me to
watch till you came round, and call you. Mother wants to see you."
"Well, show me the way," said Mr. St. John, affably, taking the thin,
skinny little hand.
The child took him under an alley-way, into a dark, back passage, up
one or two rickety staircases, into an attic, where lay a woman on a
poor bed in the corner.
The room was such a one as his work made only too familiar to
him--close, dark, bare of comforts, yet not without a certain
lingering air of neatness and self-respect. The linen of the bed was
clean, and the woman that lay there had marks of something refined and
decent in her worn face. She was burning with fever; evidently, hard
work and trouble had driven her to the breaking point.
"Well, my good woman, what can I do for you?" said Mr. St. John.
The woman roused from a feverish sleep and looked at him.
"Oh, sir, please send _her_ here. She said she would come any time I
needed her, and I want her now."
"Who is she? Who do you mean?"
"Please, sir, she means my teacher," said the child, with a bright,
wise look in her thin little face. "It's Miss Angie. Mother wants her
to come and talk to father; father's getting bad again."
"He isn't a bad man," put in the woman, "except they get him to drink;
it's the liquor. God knows there never was a kinder man than John used
to be."
"Where is he? I will try to see him," said Mr. St. John.
"Oh, don't; it won't do any good. He hates ministers; he wouldn't hear
you; but Miss Angie he will hear; he promised her he wouldn't drink
any more, but Ben Jones and Jim Price have been at him and got him off
on a spree. O dear!"
At this, moment a feeble wail was heard from the basket cradle in the
corner, and the little girl jumped from the bed, and in an important,
motherly way, began to soothe an indignant baby, who put up his
stomach and roared loudly after the manner of his kind, astonished and
angry at not finding the instant solace and attention which his place
in creation demanded.
Mr. St. John looked on in a kind of silent helplessness, while the
little skinny creature lifted a child who seemed almost as large
as herself and proceeded to soothe and assuage his ill humor by
many inexplicable arts, till she finally quenched his cries in a
sucking-bottle, and peace was restored.
"The only person in the world that can do John any good," resumed the
woman, when she could be heard, "is Miss Angie. John would turn any
_man_, specially any minister, out of the house, that said a word
about his ways; but he likes to have Miss Angie come here. She has
been here Saturday afternoons and read stories to the children, and
taught them little songs, and John always listens, and she almost got
him to promise he would give up drinking; she has such pretty ways of
talking, a man can't get mad with her. What I want is, can't you tell
her John's gone, and ask her to come to me? He'll be gone two days
or more, and when he comes back he'll be sorry--he always is then;
and then if Miss Angie will talk to him; you see she's so pretty, and
dresses so pretty. John says she is the brightest, prettiest lady he
ever saw, and it sorter pleases him that she takes notice of us. John
always puts his best foot foremost when she is round. John's used to
being with gentlefolk," she said, with a sigh; "he knows a lady when
he sees her."
"Well, my good woman," said Mr. St. John, "I shall see Miss Angie this
evening, and you may be sure that I shall tell her all about this.
Meanwhile, how are you off? Do you need money now?"
"I am pretty well off, sir. _He_ took all my last week's money when he
went, but Poll has gone to my wash-place to-day, and I told her to ask
for pay. I hope they'll send it."
"If they don't," said Mr. St. John, "here is something to keep things
going," and he slipped a bill into the woman's hand.
"Thank you, sir. When I get up, if you'll please give me some washing,
I'll make it square. I've been held good at getting up linen."
Poor woman! She had her little pride of independence, and her little
accomplishment--she could wash and iron! There she felt strong! Mr.
St. John allowed her the refuge, and let her consider the money as an
advance, not a charity.
He turned away, and went down the cracked and broken stairs with the
thought struggling in an undefined manner in his breast, how much
there was of pastoral work which transcended the power of man, and
required the finer intervention of woman. With all, there came a glow
of shy pleasure that there was a subject of intercommunication opened
between him and Angie, something definite to talk about; and to a
diffident man a definite subject is a mine of gold.
_CHAPTER XVII._
OUR FIRST THURSDAY.
The Henderson's first "Evening" was a social success. The little
parlors were radiant with the blaze of the wood-fire, which gleamed
and flashed and made faces at itself in the tall, old-fashioned brass
andirons, and gave picturesque tints to the room.
Eva's tea-table was spread in one corner, dainty with its white
drapery, and with her pretty wedding-present of china upon it--not
china like Miss Dorcas Vanderheyden's, of the real old Chinese fabric,
but china fresh from the modern improvements of Paris, and so adorned
with violets and grasses and field flowers that it made a December
tea-table look like a meadow where one could pick bouquets. Every
separate tea-cup and saucer was an artist's study, and a topic for
conversation.
The arrangement of the rooms had been a day's work of careful
consideration between Eva and Angelique. There was probably not a
perch or eyrie accessible by chairs, tables, or ottomans, where
these little persons had not been mounted, at divers times of the
day, trying the effect of various floral decorations. The amount of
fatigue that can be gone through in the mere matter of preparing one
little set of rooms for an evening reception, is something that _men_
know nothing about; only the sisterhood could testify to that frantic
"fanaticism of the beautiful" which seizes them when an evening
company is in contemplation, and their house is to put, so to speak,
its best foot forward. Many an aching back and many a drooping form
could testify how the woman spends herself in advance, in this sort
of altar dressing for home worship.
But, as a consequence, the little rooms were bowers of beauty. The
pictures were overshadowed with nodding wreaths of pressed ferns and
bright bitter-sweet berries, with glossy holly leaves; the statuettes
had backgrounds of ivy which threw out their whiteness. Harry's
little workroom adjoining the parlor had become a green alcove, where
engravings and books were spread out under the shade of a German
student-lamp. Everywhere that a vase of flowers could make a pretty
show, there was a vase of flowers, though it was December, and the
ground frozen like lead. For the next door neighbor, sweet Ruth
Baxter, had clipped and snipped every rosebud, and mignonette blossom,
and even a splendid calla lily, with no end of scarlet geranium, and
sent them in to Eva; and Miss Dorcas had cut away about half of an
ancient and well-kept rose-geranium, which was the apple of her eye,
to help out her little neighbor. So they reveled in flowers, without
cutting those which grew on Eva's own bushes, which were all turned
to the light and arranged in appropriate situations, blossoming their
best. The little dining-room also was thrown open, and dressed, and
adorned with flowers, pressed ferns, berries, and autumn leaves; with
a distant perspective of light in it, that there might be a place of
withdrawal and quiet chats over books and pictures. In every spot
were disposed objects to start conversation. Books of autographs,
portfolios of sketches, photographs of distinguished people,
stereoscopic views, with stereoscope to explain them,--all sorts
of intervening means and appliances by which people, not otherwise
acquainted, should find something to talk about in common.
Eva was admirably seconded by her friends, from long experience
versed in the art of entertaining. Mrs. Van Arsdel, gentle, affable,
society-loving, and with a quick tact at reading the feelings of
others, was a host in herself. She at once took possession of Miss
Dorcas Vanderheyden, who came in a very short dress of rich India
satin, and very yellow and mussy but undeniably precious old lace, and
walked the rooms with a high-shouldered independence of manner most
refreshing in this day of long trains and modern inconveniences.
"Sensible old girl," was Jim Fellows's comment in Alice's ear as Miss
Dorcas marched in; for which, of course, he got a reproof, and was
ordered to remember and keep himself under.