have always been, and I'm sure I thank you with all my heart; but
still, after all, we must be firm in saying that you cannot govern our
family."
"Who is wanting to govern your family?--what ridiculous talk that
is! Just as if I had ever tried; but you may, of course, allow your
old aunt, that has had experience that you haven't had, to propose
arrangements and tell you of things to your advantage, can't you?"
"Oh, of course, Aunty."
"Well, I went up to the Willises, because they are going to Europe, to
be gone for three years, and I thought I could secure their Ann for
you. Ann is a treasure. She has been ten years with the Willises, and
Mrs. Willis says she don't know of a fault that she has."
"Very well, but, Aunty, I don't want Ann, if she were an angel; I have
my Mary, and I prefer her to anybody that could be named."
"But, Eva, Mary is getting old, and she is encumbered with this witch
of a daughter, whom she is putting upon your shoulders and making you
carry; and I perceive that you'll be ridden to death--it's a perfect
Old Man of the Sea on your backs. Now, get rid of Mary, and you'll get
rid of the whole trouble. It isn't worth while, just because you've
got attached to Mary, to sacrifice your interests for her sake. Just
let her go."
"Well, now, Aunty, the short of the matter is, that I will do
nothing of the kind. I won't let Mary go, and I don't want any other
arrangement than just what I have. I am perfectly satisfied."
"Well, you'll see that your keeping that girl in your house will
bring you all into disgrace yet," said Aunt Maria, rising hastily.
"But it's no use talking. I spent a good half-day attending to this
matter, and making arrangements that would have given you the very
best of servants; but if you choose to take in tramps, you must take
the consequences. I can't help it;" and Aunt Maria rose vengefully and
felt for her bonnet.
Eva opened the door of the little sewing-room, where Maggie had laid
it, and saw her vanishing out of the opposite door.
"I hope she did not hear you, Aunty," she said, involuntarily.
"I don't care if she did," was the reply, as the injured lady resumed
her bonnet and departed from the house, figuratively shaking the dust
from her feet.
Eva went out also to attend to some of her morning business, and, on
her return, was met by Mary with an anxious face. Maggie had gone
out and taken all her things with her, and was nowhere to be found.
After some search, Eva found a paper pinned to the cushion of her
toilet-table, on which was written:
"_Dear Mrs. Henderson_: You have tried hard to save me; but
it's no use. I am only a trouble to mother, and I disgrace
you. So I am going, and don't try to find me. May God bless
you and mother.
MAGGIE."
_CHAPTER XXX._
A DINNER ON WASHING DAY.
The world cannot wait for anybody. No matter whose heart breaks or
whose limbs ache, the world must move on. Life always has its next
thing to be done, which comes up imperatively, no matter what happens
to you or me.
So when it appeared that Maggie was absolutely gone--gone without
leaving trace or clue where to look for her, Mary, though distressed
and broken-hearted, had small time for lamentations.
For just as Maggie's note had been found, read, and explained to Mary,
and in the midst of grief and wonderment, a note was handed in to Eva
by an office-boy, running thus:
"_Dear Little Wifie_: I have caught Selby, and we can have
him at dinner to-night; and as I know there's nothing like
you for emergencies, I secured him, and took the liberty of
calling in on Alice and Angie, and telling them to come. I
shall ask St. John, and Jim, and Bolton, and Campbell--you
know, the more the merrier, and, when you are about it,
it's no more trouble to have six or seven than one; and now
you have Maggie, one may as well spread a little.
Your own
HARRY."
"Was ever such a man!" said Eva; "poor Mary! I'm sorry all this is
to come upon you just as you have so much trouble, but just hear
now! Mr. Henderson has invited an English gentleman to dinner, and a
whole parcel of folks with him. Well, most of them are _our_ folks,
Mary--Miss Angie, and Miss Alice, and Mr. Fellows, and Mr. Bolton,
and Mr. St. John--of course we must have him."
"Oh, well, we must just do the best we can," said Mary, entering
into the situation at once; "but really, the turkey that's been sent
in isn't enough for so many. If you'd be so good as to step down to
Simon's, ma'am, and order a pair of chickens, I could make a chicken
pie, and then there's most of that cold boiled ham left, and trimmed
up with parsley it would do to set on table--you'll ask him to send
parsley--and the celery's not enough, we shall want two or three more
bunches. I'm sorry Mr. Henderson couldn't have put it off, later in
the week, till the washing was out of the way," she concluded, meekly,
"but we must do the best we can."
Now, Christian fortitude has many more showy and sublime forms, but
none more real than that of a poor working-woman suddenly called
upon to change all her plans of operations on washing day, and more
especially if the greatest and most perplexing of life's troubles
meets her at the same moment. Mary's patience and self-sacrifice
showed that the crucifix and rosary and prayer-book in her chamber
were something more than ornamental appendages--they were the
outward signs of a faith that was real.
"My dear, good Mary," said Eva, "it's just sweet of you to take things
so patiently, when I know you're feeling so bad; but the way it came
about is this: this gentleman is from England, and he is one that
Harry wants very much to show attention to, and he only stays a short
time, and so we have to take him when we can get him. You know Mr.
Henderson generally is so considerate."
"Oh, I know," said Mary, "folks can't always have things just as they
want."
"And then, you know, Mary, he thought we should have Maggie here to
help us. He couldn't know, you see----"
Mary's countenance fell, and Eva's heart smote her, as if she were
hard and unsympathetic in forcing her own business upon her in her
trouble, and she hastened to add:
"We sha'n't give Maggie up. I will tell Mr. Henderson about her when
he comes home, and he will know just what to do. You may be sure,
Mary, he will stand by you, and leave no stone unturned to help you.
We'll find her yet."
"It's my fault partly, I'm afraid; if I'd only done better by her,"
said Mary; "and Mike, he was hard on her; she never would bear curbing
in, Maggie wouldn't. But we must just do the best we can," she added,
wiping her eyes with her apron. "What would you have for dessert,
ma'am?"
"What would you make easiest, Mary?"
"Well there's jelly, blanc-mange or floating island, though we didn't
take milk enough for that; but I guess I can borrow some of Dinah over
the way. Miss Dorcas would be willing, I'm sure."
"Well, Mary, arrange it just as you please. I'll go down and order
more celery and the chickens, and I know you'll bring it all right;
you always do. Meanwhile, I'll go to a fruit store, and get some
handsome fruit to set off the table."
And so Eva went out, and Mary, left alone with her troubles, went on
picking celery, and preparing to make jelly and blanc-mange, with
bitterness in her soul. People must eat, no matter whose hearts break,
or who go to destruction; but, on the whole, this incessant drive of
the actual in life is not a bad thing for sorrow.
If Mary had been a rich woman, with nothing to do but to go to bed
with a smelling-bottle, with full leisure to pet and coddle her
griefs, she could not have made half as good headway against them as
she did by help of her chicken pie, and jelly, and celery and what
not, that day.
Eva had, to be sure, given her the only comfort in her power, in the
assurance that when her husband came home she would tell him about
it, and they would see if anything could be done to find Maggie and
bring her back. Poor Mary was full of self-reproach for what it was
too late to help, and with concern for the trouble which she felt her
young mistress had been subjected to. Added to this was the wounded
pride of respectability, even more strong in her class than in higher
ones, because with them a good name is more nearly an only treasure.
To be come of honest, decent folk is with them equivalent to what in
a higher class would be called coming of gentle blood. Then Mary's
brother Mike, in his soreness at Maggie's disgrace, had not failed to
blame the mother's way of bringing her up, after the manner of the
world generally when children turn out badly.
"She might have expected this. She ought to have known it would come.
She hadn't held her in tight enough; had given her her head too much;
his wife always told him they were making a fool of the girl."
This was a sharp arrow in Mary's breast; because Mike's wife, Bridget,
was one on whom Mary had looked down, as in no way an equal match
for her brother, and her consequent want of cordiality in receiving
her had rankled in Bridget's mind, so that she was forward to take
advantage of Mary's humiliation.
It is not merely professed enemies, but decent family connections,
we are sorry to say, who in time of trouble sometimes say "aha! so
would we have it." All whose advice has not been taken, all who have
felt themselves outshone or slighted, are prompt with the style of
consolation exemplified by Job's friends, and eager above all things
to prove to those in trouble that they have nobody but themselves to
thank for it.
So, no inconsiderable part of Mary's bitter herbs this day, was the
prick and sting of all the possible things which might be said of her
and Maggie by Bridget and Mike, and the rest of the family circle by
courtesy included in the term "her best friends." Eva, tender-hearted
and pitiful, could not help feeling a sympathetic cloud coming over
her as she watched poor Mary's woe-struck and dejected air. She felt
quite sure that Maggie had listened, and overheard Aunt Maria's
philippic in the parlor, and that thus the final impulse had been
given to send her back to her miserable courses; and somehow Eva could
not help a vague feeling of blame from attaching to herself, for not
having made sure that those violent and cruel denunciations should not
be overheard.
"I ought to have looked and made sure, when I found what Aunt Maria
was at," she said to herself. "If I had kept Maggie up stairs, this
would not have happened." But then, an English literary man, that
Harry thought a good deal of, was to dine there that night, and Eva
felt all a housekeeper's enthusiasm and pride, to have everything
charming. You know how it is, sisters. Each time that you have a
social enterprise in hand you put your entire soul into it for the
time being, and have a complete little set of hopes and fears, joys,
sorrows and plans, born with the day and dying with the morrow.
Just as she was busy arranging her flowers, the door-bell rang, and
Jim Fellows came in with a basket of fruit.
"Good morning," he said; "Harry told me you were going to have a
little blow-out to-night, and I thought I'd bring in a contribution."
"Oh! thanks, Jim; they are exactly the thing I was going out to look
for. How lovely of you!"
"Well, they've come to you without looking, then," said Jim. "Any
commands for me? Can't I help you in any way?"
"No, Jim, unless--well, you know my good Mary is the great wheel
of this establishment, and if she breaks down we all go too--for I
shouldn't know what to do a single day without her."
"Well, what has happened to this great wheel?" said Jim. "Has it a
cold in its head, or what?"
"Come, Jim, don't make fun of my metaphors; the fact is, that Mary's
daughter, Maggie, has run off again and left her."
"Just what she might have expected," said Jim.
"No; Maggie was doing very well, and I really thought I should make
something of her. She thought everything of me, and I could get along
with her perfectly well, and I found her very ingenious and capable;
but her relations all took up against her, and her uncle came in last
night and talked to her till she was in a perfect fury."
"Of course," said Jim, "that's the world's way; a fellow can't repent
and turn quietly, he must have his sins well rubbed into him, and his
nose held to the grindstone. I should know that Maggie would flare up
under that style of operation; those great black eyes of hers are not
for nothing, I can tell you."
"Well, you see it was last night, while I was up at papa's, that her
uncle came, and they had a stormy time, I fancy; and when Harry and I
came home we found Maggie just flying out of the door in desperation,
and I brought her back, and quieted her down, and brought her to
reason, and her mother too, and made it all smooth and right. But,
this morning, came in Aunt Maria--"
Jim gave a significant whistle.
"Yes, you may well whistle. You see, Maggie once lived with Aunt
Maria, and she's dead set against her, and came to make me turn her
out of my house, if she could. You ought to have seen the look of
withering scorn and denunciation she gave Maggie when she opened the
door!--and she talked about her so loud to me, and said so much to
induce me to turn away both her and Mary, and take another set of
girls, that I don't wonder Maggie went off; and now poor Mary is quite
broken-hearted. It makes me feel sad to see her go about her work so
forlorn and patient, wiping her eyes every once in a while, and yet
doing everything for me, like the good soul she always is."
"By George!" said Jim; "I wish I could help her. Well, I'll put
somebody on Maggie's track and we'll find her out. I know all the
detectives and the police--trust us newspaper fellows for that--and
Maggie is a pretty marked article, and I think I may come on the track
of her; there are not many things that Jim can't find out, when he
sets himself to work. Meanwhile, have you any errands for me to run,
or any message to send to your folks? I may as well take it, while I'm
about it."
"Well, yes, Jim; if you'd be kind enough, as you go by papa's, to ask
Angie to come down and help me. She is always so brisk and handy, and
keeps one in such good spirits, too."
"Oh, yes, Angie is always up and dressed, whoever wants her, and is
good for any emergency. The little woman has Christmas tree on her
brain just now--for our Sunday-school; only the other night, she was
showing me the hoods and tippets she had been knitting for it, like a
second Dorcas--"
"Yes," said Eva, "we must all have a consultation about that
Christmas tree. I wanted to see Mr. St. John about it."
"Do you think there were any Christmas trees in the first centuries,"
said Jim, "or any churchly precedent for them?--else I don't see how
St. John is going to allow such a worldly affair in his chapel."
"Oh, pshaw! Mr. St. John is sensible. He listened with great interest
to Angie, the other night, while she was telling about one that she
helped get up last year in Dr. Cushing's Sunday-school room, and he
seemed quite delighted with the idea; and Angie and Alice and I are on
a committee to get a list of children and look up presents, and that
was one thing I wanted to talk about to-night."
"Well, get St. John and Angie to talking tree together, and she'll
edify him. St. John is O. K. about all the particulars of how they
managed in the catacombs, without doubt, and he gets ahead of us all
preaching about the primitive Christians, but come to a Christmas
tree for New York street boys and girls, in the 19th century, I'll
bet on Angie to go ahead of him. He'll have to learn of her--and you
see he won't find it hard to take, either. Jim knows a thing or two."
And Jim cocked his head on one side, like a saucy sparrow, and looked
provokingly knowing.
"Now, Jim, what do you mean?"
"Oh, nothing. Alice says I mustn't think anything or say anything, on
pain of her high displeasure. But, you just watch the shepherd and
Angie to-night."
"Jim, you provoking creature, you mustn't talk so."
"Bless your heart, who is talking so? Am I saying anything? Of course
I'm not saying anything. Alice won't let me. I always have to shut my
eyes and look the other way when Angie and St. John are around, for
fear I should say something and make a remark. Jim says nothing, but
he thinks all the more."
Now, we'll venture to say that there isn't a happy young wife in the
first months of wifehood that isn't predisposed to hope for all her
friends a happy marriage, as about the summit of human bliss; and so
Eva was not shocked like Alice by the suggestion that her rector might
become a candidate for the sacrament of matrimony. On the contrary,
it occurred to her at once that the pretty, practical, lively,
efficient little Angie might be a true angel, not merely of church and
Sunday-school, but of a rector's house. He was ideal and theoretic,
and she practical and common-sense; yet she was pretty enough, and
picturesque, and fanciful enough for an ideal man to make a poem
of, and weave webs around, and write sonnets to; and as all these
considerations flashed at once upon Eva's mind, she went on settling a
spray of geranium with rose-buds, a pleased dreamy smile on her face.
After a moment's pause, she said:
"Jim, if you see a bird considering whether to build a nest in the
tree by your window, and want him there, the way is to keep pretty
still about it and not go to the window, and watch, and call people,
saying, 'Oh, see here, there's a bird going to build!' Don't you see
the sense of my parable?"
"Well, why do you talk to me? Haven't I kept away from the window, and
walked round on tip-toe like a cat, and only given the quietest look
out of the corner of my eye?"
"Well, it seems you couldn't help calling my attention and Alice's.
Don't extend the circle of observers, Jim."
"See if I do. You'll find me discretion itself. I shall be so quiet
that even a humming bird's nerves couldn't be disturbed. Well, good
by, for the present."
"Oh, but, Jim, don't forget to do what you can about Maggie. It
really seems selfish in me to be absorbed in my own affairs, and not
doing anything to help Mary, poor thing, when she's so good to me."
"Well, I don't see but you are doing all you can. I'll see about it
right away and report to you," said Jim; "so, _au revoir_."
Angie came in about lunch time; the two sisters, once at their tea
and toast, discussed the forthcoming evening's preparations and the
Christmas Sunday-school operations: and Eva, with the light of Jim's
suggestions in her mind, began to observe certain signs of increasing
intimacy between Angie and Mr. St. John.
"O Eva, I want to tell you: I went to see those poor Prices, Saturday
afternoon; and there was John, just back from one of those dreadful
sprees that he will have every two or three weeks. You never saw a
creature so humble and so sorry, and so good, and so anxious to make
up with his wife and me, and everybody all round, as he was. He was
sitting there, nursing his wife and tending his baby, just as handy
as a woman,--for she, poor thing, has had a turn of fever, in part, I
think, brought on by worry and anxiety; but she seemed so delighted
and happy to have him back!--and I couldn't help thinking what a shame
it is that there should be any such thing as rum, and that there
should be people who make it their business and get their living by
tempting people to drink it. If I were a Queen, I'd shut up all the
drinking-shops right off!"
"I fancy, if we women could have our way, we should do it pretty
generally."
"Well, I don't know about that," said Angie. "One of the worst shops
in John's neighborhood is kept by a woman."
"Well, it seems so hopeless--this weakness of these men," said Eva.
"Oh, well, never despair," said Angie. "I found him in such a good
mood that I could say anything I wanted to, and I found that he was
feeling terribly because he had lost his situation in Sanders' store
on account of his drinking habits. He had been a porter and errand boy
there, and he is so obliging and quick that he is a great favorite;
but they got tired of his being so unreliable, and had sent him
word that they didn't want him any more. Well, you see, here was an
opportunity. I said to him: 'John, I know Mr. Sanders, and if you'll
sign a solemn pledge never to touch another drop of liquor, or go
into a place where it is sold, I will try and get him to take you
back again.' So I got a sheet of paper and wrote a pledge, strong and
solemn, in a good round hand, and he put his name to it; and just then
Mr. St. John came in and I showed it to him, and he spoke beautifully
to him, and prayed with him, and I really do hope, now, that John will
stand."
"So, Mr. St. John visits them?"
"Oh, to be sure; ever since I had those children in my class, he has
been very attentive there. I often hear of his calling; and when he
was walking home with me afterwards, he told me about that article of
Dr. Campbell's and advised me to read it. He said it had given him
some new ideas. He called this family my little parish, and said I
could do more than he could. Just think of our rector saying that."
Eva did think of it, but forbore to comment aloud. "Jim was right,"
she said to herself.
_CHAPTER XXXI._
WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT.
The dinner party, like many impromptu social ventures, was a success.
Mr. Selby proved one of that delightful class of English travelers who
travel in America to see and enter into its peculiar and individual
life, and not to show up its points of difference from old-world
social standards. He seemed to take the sense of a little family
dinner, got up on short notice, in which the stereotyped doctrine of
courses was steadfastly ignored; where there was no soup or fish, and
only a good substantial course of meat and vegetables, with a slight
dessert of fruit and confectionery; where there was no black servant,
with white gloves, to change the plates, but only respectable,
motherly Mary, who had tidied herself and taken the office of waiter,
in addition to her services as cook.
A real high-class English gentleman, when he fairly finds himself
out from under that leaden pale of conventionalities which weighs
down elasticity like London fog and smoke, sometimes exhibits all
the hilarity of a boy out of school on a long vacation, and makes
himself frisky and gamesome to a degree that would astonish the solemn
divinities of insular decorum. Witness the stories of the private
fun and frolic of Thackeray and Dickens, on whom the intoxicating
sense of social freedom wrought results sometimes surprising to staid
Americans; as when Thackeray rode with his heels out of the carriage
window through immaculate and gaping Boston and Dickens perpetrated
his celebrated walking wager.
Mr. Selby was a rising literary man in the London writing world, who
had made his own way up in the world, and known hard times and hard
commons, though now in a lucrative position. It would have been quite
possible, by spending a suitable sum and deranging the whole house, to
set him down to a second-rate imitation of a dull, conventional London
dinner, with waiters in white chokers, and protracted and circuitous
courses; and in that case Mr. Selby would have frozen into a stiff,
well preserved Briton, with immaculate tie and gloves, and a guarded
and diplomatic reserve of demeanor. Eva would have been nervously
thinking of the various unusual arrangements of the dinner table, and
a general stiffness and embarrassment would have resulted. People who
entertain strangers from abroad often re-enact the mistake of the
two Englishmen who traveled all night in a diligence, laboriously
talking broken French to each other, till at dawn they found out by a
chance slip of the tongue that they were both English. So, at heart,
every true man, especially in a foreign land, is wanting what every
true household can give him--sincere homely feeling, the sense of
domesticity, the comfort of being off parade and among friends; and
Mr. Selby saw in the first ten minutes that this was what he had found
in the Hendersons' house.