receiving station for homeless and desolate people, where they might
find temporary shelter, where their wants might be inquired into, and
help found for them according to their need.
After the interview with Bolton had made him acquainted with the
state of the case, Mr. St. John went immediately to the Refuge. He
was received in the parlor by a sweet-faced, motherly woman, with
her white cap and black robe, and with a large black cross depending
from her girdle. There was about her an air of innocent sanctity and
seclusion from the out-door bustle of modern life that was refreshing.
She readily gave him an account of the new inmate, whose sad condition
had excited the sympathy of all the Sisters.
She had come to them, she said, in a state of most woeful agitation
and distress, having walked the streets on a freezing night till
a late hour, in very insufficient clothing. Immediately on being
received, she began to have violent chills, followed by burning fever,
and had been all night tossing restlessly and talking wildly.
This morning, they had sent for the doctor, who pronounced her in a
brain fever, and in a condition of great danger. She was still out of
her mind, and could give no rational account of herself.
"It is piteous to hear her call upon her mother," said the Sister.
"Poor child! perhaps her mother is distressing herself about her."
Mr. St. John promised to secure the assistance and sympathy of some
benevolent women to aid the Sisters in their charge, and took his
leave, promising to call daily.
_CHAPTER XXIV._
EVA TO HARRY'S MOTHER
MY DEAR MOTHER: When I wrote you last we were quite
prosperous, having just come through with our first evening as a
great success; and everybody since has been saying most agreeable
things to us about it. Last Thursday, we had our second, and it was
even pleasanter than the last, because people had got acquainted, so
that they really wanted to see each other again. There was a most
charming atmosphere of ease and sociability. Bolton and Mr. St. John
are getting quite intimate. Mr. St. John, too, develops quite a fine
social talent, and has come out wonderfully. The side of a man that
one sees in the church and the pulpit is after all only one side, as
we have discovered. I find that he has quite a gift in conversation,
when you fairly get him at it. Then, his voice for singing comes into
play, and he and Angie and Dr. Campbell and Alice make up a quartette
quite magnificent for non-professionals. Angie has a fine soprano,
and Alice takes the contralto, and the Doctor, with his great broad
shoulders and deep chest, makes a splendid bass. Mr. St. John's tenor
is really very beautiful. It is one of those penetrating, sympathetic
voices that indicate both feeling and refinement, and they are all
of them surprised and delighted to find how well they go together.
Thursday evening they went on from thing to thing, and found that they
could sing this and that and the other, till the evening took a good
deal the form of a musical. But never mind, it brought them acquainted
with each other and made them look forward to the next reunion as
something agreeable. Ever since, the doctor goes round humming tunes,
and says he wants St. John to try the tenor of this and that, and
really has quite lost sight of his being anything else but a musical
brother. So here is the common ground I wanted to find between them.
The doctor has told Mr. St. John to call on him whenever he can make
him useful in his visits among the poor. Our doctor loves to _talk_ as
if he were a hard-hearted, unbelieving pirate, who didn't care a straw
for his fellow-creatures, while he loses no opportunity to do anybody
or anything a kindness.
You know I told you in my last letter about a girl that Harry and
Bolton found in the street, the night of our first reception, and
that they took her to the St. Barnabas Refuge. The poor creature has
been lying there ever since, sick of a brain fever, caught by cold
and exposure, and Dr. Campbell has given his services daily. If she
had been the richest lady in the land, he could not have shown more
anxiety and devotion to her than he has, calling twice and sometimes
three times a day, and one night watching nearly all night. She is
still too low and weak to give any account of herself; all we know
of her is that she is one of those lost sheep, to seek whom the Good
Shepherd would leave the ninety nine who went not astray. I have been
once or twice to sit by her, and relieve the good Sisters who have so
much else to do; and Angelique and Alice have also taken their turns.
It seems very little for us to do, when these good women spend all
their time and all their strength for those who have no more claim on
them than they have on us.
It is a week since I began this letter, and something quite surprising
to me has just developed.
I told you we had been to help nurse the poor girl at the Sisters',
and the last week she has been rapidly mending. Well, yesterday, as
I didn't feel very well, and my Mary is an excellent nurse, I took
her there to sit with the patient in my place, when a most strange
scene ensued. The moment Mary looked on her, she recognized her own
daughter, who had left her some years ago with a bad man. Mary had
never spoken to me of this daughter, and I only knew, in a sort
of general way, that she had left her mother under some painful
circumstances. The recognition was dreadfully agitating to Mary and
to the poor girl; indeed, for some time it was feared that the shock
would produce a relapse. The Sisters say that the poor thing has been
constantly calling for her mother in her distress.
It really seemed, for the time, as if Mary were going to be wholly
unnerved. She has a great deal of that respectable pride of family
character which belongs to the better class of the Irish, and it has
been a bitter humiliation to her to have to acknowledge her daughter's
shame to me; but I felt that it would relieve her to tell the whole
story to some one, and I drew it all out of her. This poor Maggie had
the misfortune to be very handsome. She was so pretty as a little
girl, her mother tells me, as to attract constant attention; and I
rather infer that the father and mother both made a pet and plaything
of her, and were unboundedly indulgent. The girl grew up handsome,
and thoughtless, and self-confident, and so fell an easy prey to a
villain who got her to leave her home, on a promise of marriage which
he never kept. She lived with him a while in one place and another,
and he became tired of her and contrived to place her in a house of
evil, where she was entrapped and enslaved for a long time. Having by
some means found out where her mother was living, she escaped from
her employers, and hung round the house irresolutely for some time,
wishing but fearing to present herself, and when she spoke to Harry
in the street, the night after our party, she was going in a wild,
desperate way to ask something about her mother--knowing that he was
the man with whom she was living.
Such seems to be her story; but I suppose, what with misery and cold,
and the coming on of the fever, the poor thing hardly had her senses,
or knew what she was about--the fever must have been then upon her.
So you see, dear mother, I was wishing in my last that I could go off
with Sibyl Selwyn on her mission to the lost sheep, and now here is
one brought to my very door. Is not this sent to me as my work? as if
the good Lord had said, "No, child, your feet are not strong enough
to go over the stones and briars, looking for the lost sheep; you are
not able to take them out of the jaws of the wolf; but here is a poor
wounded lamb that I leave at your door--that is your part of the great
work." So I understand it, and I have already told Mary that as soon
as Maggie is able to sit up, we will take her home with us, and let
her stay with us till she is strong and well, and then we will try and
put her back into good respectable ways, and keep her from falling
again.
I think persons in our class of life cannot be too considerate of
the disadvantages of poor working women in the matter of bringing up
children.
A very beautiful girl in that walk of life is exposed to solicitation
and temptation that never come near to people in our stations. We are
guarded on all hands by our very position. I can see in this poor
child the wreck of what must have been very striking beauty. Her hair
is lovely, her eyes are wonderfully fine, and her hands, emaciated as
she is, are finely formed and delicate. Well, being beautiful, she
was just like any other young girl--her head was turned by flattery.
She was silly and foolish, and had not the protections and barriers
that are around us, and she fell. Well, then, we that have been more
fortunate must help her up. Is it not so?
So, dear Mother, my mission work is coming to me. I need not go out
for it. I shall write more of this in a day or two.
Ever yours,
EVA.
_CHAPTER XXV._
AUNT MARIA ENDEAVORS TO SET MATTERS RIGHT.
Mrs. Maria Wouvermans was one of those forces in creation to whom
quiet is impossible. Watchfulness, enterprise and motion were the laws
of her existence, as incessantly operating as any other laws of nature.
When we last saw her, she was in high ill-humor with her sister, Mrs.
Van Arsdel, with Alice and Eva, and the whole family. She revenged
herself upon them, as such good creatures know how to do, by heaping
coals of fire on their heads in the form of ostentatiously untiring
and uncalled-for labors for them all. The places she explored to get
their laces mended and their quillings done up and their dresses
made, the pilgrimages she performed in omnibuses, the staircases she
climbed, the men and women whom she browbeat and circumvented in
bargains--all to the advantage of the Van Arsdel purse--were they
not recounted and told over in a way to appall the conscience of
poor, easy Mrs. Van Arsdel, whom they summarily convicted of being
an inefficient little know-nothing, and of her girls, who thus stood
arraigned for the blackest ingratitude in not appreciating Aunt Maria?
"I'll tell you what it is, Alice," said Eva, when Aunt Maria's labors
had come to the usual climax of such smart people, and laid her up
with a sick-headache, "we girls have just got to make up with Aunt
Maria, or she'll tear down all New York. I always notice that when
she's out with us she goes tearing about in this way, using herself up
for us--doing things no mortal wants her to do, and yet that it seems
black ingratitude not to thank her for. Now, Alice, you are the one,
this time, and you must just go and sit with her and make up, as I
did."
"But, Eva, _I_ know the trouble you fell into, letting her and mother
entangle you with Wat Sydney, and I'm not going to have it happen
again. I will not be compromised in any way or shape with a man whom I
never mean to marry."
"Oh, well, I think by this time Aunt Maria understands this, only she
wants you to come back and be loving to her, and say you're sorry you
can't, etc. After all, Aunt Maria is devoted to us and is miserable
when we are out with her."
"Well, I hate to have friends that one must be always bearing with and
deferring to."
"Well, Alice, you remember Mr. St. John's sermons on the trials of the
first Christians--when he made us all feel that it would have been a
blessed chance to go to the stake for our religion?"
"Yes; it was magnificent. I felt a great exaltation."
"Well, I'll tell you what I thought. It may be as heroic, and more
difficult, to put down our own temper and make the first concession to
an unreasonable old aunt who really loves us than to be martyrs for
Christ. Nobody wants us to be martyrs now-a-days; but I think these
things that make no show and have no glory are a harder cross to take
up."
"Well, Eva, I'll do as you say," said Alice, after a few moments
of silence, "for really you speak the truth. I don't know anything
harder than to go and make concessions to a person who has acted
as ridiculously as Aunt Maria has, and who will take all your
concessions and never own a word on her side."
"Well, dear, what I think in these cases is, that I am not perfect.
There are always enough things where I didn't do quite right for me to
confess; and as to her confessing, that's not _my_ affair. What _I_
have to do is to cut loose from my own sins; they are mine, and hers
are hers."
"True," said Alice; "and the fact is, I did speak improperly to Aunt
Maria. She is older than I am. I ought not to have said the things I
did. I'm hot tempered, and always say more than I mean."
"Well, Ally, do as I did--confess everything you can think of and then
say, as I did, that you must still be firm upon one point; and, depend
upon it, Aunt Maria will be glad to be friends again."
This conversation had led to an amelioration which caused Aunt Maria
to appear at Eva's second reunion in her best point lace and with
her most affable company manners, whereby she quite won the heart
of simple Mrs. Betsey Benthusen, and was received with patronizing
civility by Miss Dorcas. That good lady surveyed Mrs. Wouvermans with
an amicable scrutiny as a specimen of a really creditable production
of modern New York life. She took occasion to remark to her sister
that the Wouvermans were an old family of unquestioned position, and
that really Mrs. Wouvermans had acquired quite the family air.
Miss Dorcas was one of those people who sit habitually on thrones of
judgment and see the children of this world pass before them, with but
one idea, to determine what she should think of them. What they were
likely to think of her, was no part of her concern. Her scrutinies and
judgments were extremely quiet, tempered with great moderation and
Christian charity, and were so seldom spoken to anybody else that
they did no one any harm.
She was a spectator at the grand theater of life; it interested and
amused her to watch the acting, but she kept her opinions, for the
most part, to herself. The reunions at Eva's were becoming most
interesting to her as widening her sphere of observation. In fact,
her intercourse with her sister could hardly be called society, it
was so habitually that of a nurse with a patient. She said to her, of
the many things which were in her mind, only those which she thought
she could bear. She was always planning to employ Mrs. Betsey's mind
with varied occupations to prevent her sinking into morbid gloom,
and to say only such things of everybody and everything to her as
would tranquilize and strengthen her. To Miss Dorcas, the little
white-haired lady was still the beautiful child of past days--the
indiscreet, flighty, pretty pet, to be watched, nursed, governed,
restrained and cared for. As for conversation, in the sense of an
unrestricted speaking out of thoughts as they arose, it was long since
Miss Dorcas had held it with any human being. The straight, tall old
clock in the corner was not more lonely, more self-contained and
reticent.
The next day after the re-union, Aunt Maria came at the appointed
hour, with all due pomp and circumstance, to make her call upon the
two sisters, and was received in kid gloves in the best parlor,
properly darkened, so that the faces of the parties could scarcely
be seen; and then the three remarked upon the weather, the state
of the atmosphere to-day and its probable state to-morrow. Mrs.
Wouvermans was properly complimented upon her niece's delightful
re-unions; whereat she drew herself up with suitable modesty, as one
who had been the source and originator of it all--claiming property
in charming Mrs. Henderson as the girl of her bringing up, the work
of her hands, the specimen of her powers, marshalled and equipped by
her for the field of life; and in her delightful soirées, as in some
sort a result of her management. It may be a consolation to those who
are ever called to wrestle with good angels like Aunt Maria, that if
they only hold on and overcome them, and hold their own independent
way, the angels, so far from being angry, will immediately assume the
whole merit of the result. On the whole, Aunt Maria, hearing on all
sides flattering things of Mrs. Henderson's lovely house and charming
evenings, was pluming herself visibly in this manner.
Now, as Eva, in one of those bursts of confidence in which she could
not help pouring herself out to those who looked kindly on her, had
talked over with Miss Dorcas all Aunt Maria's objections to her
soirées, and her stringent advice against them, the good lady was
quietly amused at this assumption of merit.
"My! how odd, Dorcas!" said Mrs. Betsey to her sister, after Mrs.
Wouvermans had serenely courtesied herself out. "Isn't this the 'Aunt
Maria' that dear Mrs. Henderson was telling you about, that made all
those objections to her little receptions?"
"Oh, yes," said Miss Dorcas.
"But how strange; she really talks now as if she had started them."
"People usually adopt a good thing, if they find they can't hinder
it," said Miss Dorcas.
"I think it is just the oddest thing in the world; in fact, I don't
think it's really honest," said Mrs. Betsey.
"It's the way people always do," said Miss Dorcas; "nothing succeeds
like success. Mrs. Wouvermans opposed the plan because she thought
it wouldn't go. Now that she finds it goes, she is so delighted she
thinks she must have started it herself."
In fact, Aunt Maria was in an uncommonly loving and genial frame about
this time. Her fits of petulance generally had the good effect of a
clearing-up thunder-shower--one was sure of clear skies for some time
afterwards.
The only difficulty about these charming periods of general
reconciliation was that when the good lady once more felt herself
free of the family, and on easy terms all around with everybody, she
immediately commenced in some new direction that process of managing
other people's affairs which was an inevitable result of her nature.
Therefore she came, one afternoon not long after, into her sister's
dressing-room with an air of preoccupation and mystery, which Mrs. Van
Arsdel had learned to dread as a sign that Maria had something new
upon her mind.
Shutting the doors carefully, with an air of great precaution and
importance, she said: "Nellie, I've been wanting to talk to you;
something will have to be done about Eva: it will never do to let
matters go on as they are going."
Mrs. Van Arsdel's heart began to sink within her; she supposed that
she was to be required in some way to meddle or interfere with her
daughter. Now, if anything was to be done of an unpleasant nature,
Mrs. Van Arsdel had always far rather that Maria would do it herself.
But the most perplexing of her applications were when she began
stirring up her ease-loving, indulgent self to fulfill any such
purposes on her children. So she said, in a faltering voice, "What
_is_ the matter now, Maria?"
"Well, _what_ should you think?" said Mrs. Wouvermans, emphasizing the
words. "You know that good-for-nothing daughter of Mary's that lived
with me, years ago?"
"That handsome girl? To be sure."
"Handsome! the baggage! I've no patience when I think of her, with
her airs and graces; dressing so that she really was mistaken for one
of the family! And such impertinence! I made her walk Spanish very
quick----"
"Well?"
"Well, who do you suppose this sick girl is that Angelique and Alice
have been helping take care of in the new hospital, or whatever you
call it, that those Popish women have started up there?"
Now Mrs. Van Arsdel knew very well what Aunt Maria was coming to, but
she only said, faintly,
"Well?"
"Its just that girl and no other, and a more impudent tramp and huzzy
doesn't live."
"It really is very shocking," said Mrs. Van Arsdel.
"Shocking! well I should think it was, but that isn't all. Eva
actually has taken this creature to her house, and is going to let her
stay there."
"Oh, indeed?" said Mrs. Van Arsdel, faintly.
Now Mrs. Van Arsdel had listened sympathetically to Eva when, in
glowing and tender words, she had avowed her intention of giving
this help to a poor, bewildered mother, and this chance of recovery
to an erring child, but in the sharp, nipping atmosphere of Aunt
Maria's hard, dry, selfish common sense, the thing looked so utterly
indefensible that she only breathed this faint inquiry.
"Yes," said Aunt Maria, "and it's all that Mary's art. She has been
getting old and isn't what she was, and she means to get both her
children saddled upon Eva, who is ignorant and innocent as a baby. Eva
and her husband are no more fit to manage than two babes in the woods,
and this set of people will make them no end of trouble. The girl is a
perfect witch, and it will never do in the world. You ought to talk
to her and tell her about the danger."
"But, Maria, I am not at all sure that it may not be Eva's duty to
help Mary take care of her daughter."
"Well, if it was a daughter that had behaved herself decently; but
this creature is a tramp--a street-walker! It is not respectable to
have her in the house a minute."
"But where can she go?"
"That's none of our look out. I suppose there are asylums, or refuges,
or something or other, for such creatures."
"But if the Sisters could take her in and take care of her, I'm sure
Eva might keep her awhile; at least till she gets strong enough to
find some place."
"Oh, those Sisters! Don't tell me! I've no opinion of them. Wasn't
I on the committee, and didn't I find crucifixes, and rosaries, and
prie-dieus, and the Lord knows what of Popish trinkets in their rooms?
They are regular Jesuits, those women. It's just like 'em to take in
tramps and nurse 'em.
"You know, Nellie, I warned you I never believed in this Mr. St. John
and his goings on up there, and I foresee just what trouble Eva is
going to be got into by having that sort of creature put in upon her.
Maggie was the most conceited, impertinent, saucy hussy I ever saw.
She had the best of all chances in my house, if she'd been of a mind
to behave herself, for I give good wages, pay punctually, and mine is
about as good a house for a young woman to be trained in as there is.
Nobody can say that Maggie didn't have a fair chance with me!"
"But really, Maria, I'm afraid that unless Mary can take care of her
daughter at Eva's she'll leave her altogether and go to housekeeping,
and Eva never would know how to get along without Mary."
"Oh, nonsense! I'll engage to find Eva a good, stout girl--or two of
them, for that matter, since she thinks she could afford two--that
will do better than Mary, who is getting older every year and less
capable. I make it a principle to cut off girls that have sick friends
and all such entanglements and responsibilities, right away; it unfits
them for my service."
"Yes, but, Maria, you must consider that Eva isn't like you. Eva
really is fond of Mary, and had rather have her there than a younger
and stronger woman. Mary has been an old servant in the family. Eva
has grown up with her. She loves Eva like a child."
"Oh, pshaw!" said Aunt Maria. "Now, of all things, don't be
sentimental about servants. It's a little too absurd. We are to attend
to our own interests!"
"But you see, sister," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "Eva _is_ just what you
call sentimental, and it wouldn't do the least good for _me_ to talk
to her. She's a married woman, and she and her husband have a right
to manage their affairs in their own way. Now, to tell the truth, Eva
told me about this affair, and on the whole"--here Mrs. Van Arsdel's
voice trembled weakly--"on the whole, I didn't think it would do any
good, you know, to oppose her; and really, Maria, I was sorry for poor
Mary. You don't know, you never had a daughter, but I couldn't help
thinking that if I were a poor woman, and a daughter of mine had gone
astray, I should be so glad to have a chance given her to do better;
and so I really couldn't find it in my heart to oppose Eva."