ferns and her manner of training them, and found an appreciate
observer and listener. Mr. Selby was curious about American
interiors and the detail of domestic life among people of moderate
fortune. He was interested in the modes of warming and lighting,
and arranging furniture, etc.; and soon Eva and he were all over
the house, while she eloquently explained to him the working of the
furnace, the position of the water pipes, and the various comforts
and conveniences which they had introduced into their little
territories.
[Illustration: CONFIDENCES.
"_In due course followed an introduction to 'my wife,' whose
photograph Mr. Selby wore dutifully in his coat-pocket over the exact
region of the heart._"--p. 287.]
"I've got a little box of my own at Kentish town," Mr. Selby said, in
a return burst of confidence, "and I shall tell my wife about some of
your contrivances; the fact is," he added, "we literary people need
to learn all these ways of being comfortable at small expense. The
problem of our age is, that of perfecting small establishments for
people of moderate means; and I must say, I think it has been carried
further in your country than with us."
In due course followed an introduction to "my wife," whose photograph
Mr. Selby wore dutifully in his coat-pocket, over the exact region
of the heart; and then came "my son," four years old, with all his
playthings round him; and, in short, before an hour, Eva and he were
old acquaintances, ready to tell each other family secrets.
Alice and Angelique were delightful girls to reinforce and carry out
the home charm of the circle. They had eminently what belongs to the
best class of American girls,--that noble frankness of manner, that
fearless giving forth of their inner nature, which comes from the
atmosphere of free democratic society. Like most high-bred American
girls, they had traveled, and had opportunities of observing European
society, which added breadth to their range of conversation without
taking anything from their frank simplicity. Foreign travel produces
two opposite kinds of social effect, according to character. Persons
who are narrow in their education, sensitive and self-distrustful,
are embarrassed by a foreign experience: they lose their confidence
in their home life, in their own country and its social habitudes,
and get nothing adequate in return; their efforts at hospitality
are repressed by a sort of mental comparison of themselves with
foreign models; they shrink from, entertaining strangers, through an
indefinite fear that they shall come short of what would be expected
somewhere else. But persons of more breadth of thought and more
genuine courage see at once that there is a characteristic American
home life, and that what a foreigner seeks in a foreign country is the
_peculiarity_ of that country, and not an attempt to reproduce that
which has become stupid and tedious to him by constant repetition at
home.
Angelique and Alice talked readily and freely; Alice with the calm,
sustained good sense and dignity which was characteristic of her, and
Angelique in those sunny jets and flashes of impulsive gaiety which
rise like a fountain at the moment. Given the presence of three female
personages like Eva, Alice, and Angelique, and it would not be among
the possibilities for a given set of the other sex to be dull or
heavy. Then, most of the gentlemen were more or less _habitués_ of the
house, and somewhat accorded with each other, like instruments that
have been played in unison; and it is not, therefore to be wondered
at that Mr. Selby made the mental comment that, taken at home, these
Americans are delightful, and that cultivated American women are
particularly so from their engaging frankness of manner.
There would be a great deal more obedience to the apostolic
injunction, "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers," if it once
could be clearly got into the heads of well-intending people _what_ it
is that strangers want. What do _you_ want, when away from home, in a
strange city? Is it not the warmth of the home fireside, and the sight
of people that you know care for you? Is it not the blessed privilege
of speaking and acting yourself out unconstrainedly among those who
you know understand you? And had you not rather dine with an old
friend on simple cold mutton, offered with a warm heart, than go to a
splendid ceremonious dinner party among people who don't care a rush
for you?
Well, then, set it down in your book that other people are like
you; and that the art of entertaining is the art of really caring
for people. If you have a warm heart, congenial tastes, and a real
interest in your stranger, don't fear to invite him, though you have
no best dinner set, and your existing plates are sadly chipped at the
edges, and even though there be a handle broken off from the side of
your vegetable dish. Set it down in your belief that you can give
something better than a dinner, however good,--you can give a part of
yourself. You can give love, good will, and sympathy, of which there
has, perhaps, been quite as much over cracked plates and restricted
table furniture as over Sèvres china and silver.
It soon appeared that Mr. Selby, like other sensible Englishmen,
had a genuine interest in getting below the surface life of our
American world, and coming to the real "hard-pan" on which our social
fabric is founded. He was full of intelligent curiosity as to the
particulars of American journalism, its management, its possibilities,
its remunerations compared with those of England; and here was
where Bolton's experience, and Jim Fellows's many-sided practical
observations, came out strongly.
Alice was delighted with the evident impression that Jim made on a
man whose good opinion appeared to be worth having; for that young
lady, insensibly perhaps to herself, held a sort of right of property
in Jim, such as the princesses of the middle ages had in the knights
that wore their colors, and Jim, undoubtedly, was inspired by the
idea that bright eyes looked on, to do his _devoir_ manfully in
the conversation. So they went over all the chances and prospects
of income and living for literary men and journalists in the two
countries; the facilities for marriage, and the establishment of
families, including salaries, rents, prices of goods, etc. In the
course of the conversation, Mr. Selby made many frank statements of
his own personal experience and observation, which were responded to
with equal frankness on the part of Harry and Eva and others, till it
finally seemed as if the whole company were as likely to become _au
courant_ of each other's affairs as a party of brothers and sisters.
Eva, sitting at the head, like a skillful steerswoman, turned the helm
of conversation adroitly, now this way and now that, to draw out the
forces of all her guests, and bring each into play. She introduced
the humanitarian questions of the day; and the subject branched at
once upon what was doing by the Christian world: the high church, the
ritualists, the broad church, and the dissenters all rose upon the
carpet, and St. John was wide awake and earnest in his inquiries. In
fact, an eager talking spirit descended upon them, and it was getting
dark when Eva made the move to go to the parlor, where a bright fire
and coffee awaited them.
"I always hate to drop very dark shades over my windows in the
evening," said Eva, as she went in and began letting down the lace
curtains; "I like to have the firelight of a pleasant room stream out
into the dark, and look cheerful and hospitable outside; for that
reason I don't like inside shutters. Do you know, Mr. Selby, how your
English arrangements used to impress me? They were all meant to be
very delightful to those _in_side, but freezingly repulsive to those
without. Your beautiful grounds that one longs to look at, are guarded
by high stone-walls with broken bottles on the top, to keep one from
even hoping to get over. Now, I think beautiful grounds are a public
charity, and a public education; and a man shouldn't build a high wall
round them, so that even the sight of his trees, and the odor of his
flowers, should be denied to his poor neighbors."
"It all comes of our national love of privacy," said Mr. Selby;
"it isn't stinginess, I beg you to believe, Mrs. Henderson, but
_shyness_,--you find our hearts all right when you get in."
"That we do; but, I beg pardon, Mr. Selby, oughtn't shyness to be put
down in the list of besetting sins, and fought against; isn't it the
enemy of brotherly kindness and charity?"
"Certainly, Mrs. Henderson, you practice so delightfully, one cannot
find fault with your preaching," said Mr. Selby; "but, after all, is
it a sin to want to keep one's private life to himself, and unexposed
to the comments of vulgar, uncongenial natures? It seems to me, if you
will pardon the suggestion, that there is too little of this sense of
privacy in America. Your public men, for instance, are required to
live in glass cases, so that they may be constantly inspected behind
and before. Your press interviewers beset them on every hand, take
down their chance observations, record everything they say and do, and
how they look and feel at every moment of their lives. I confess that
I would rather be comfortably burned at the stake at once than to be
one of your public men in America; and all this comes of your _not_
being shy and reserved. It's a state of things impossible in the kind
of country that has high walls with glass bottles around its private
grounds."
"He has us there, Eva," said Harry; "our vulgar, jolly, democratic
level of equality over here produces just these insufferable results;
there's no doubt about it."
"Well," said Jim, "I have one word to say about newspaper reporters.
Poor boys! everybody is down on them, nobody has a bit of charity for
them; and yet, bless you, it isn't their fault if they're impertinent
and prying. That is what they are engaged for and paid for, and
kicked out if they're not up to. Why, look you, here are four or five
big dailies running the general gossip-mill for these great United
States, and if any one of them gets a bit of news before another,
it's a victory--a 'beat.' Well, if the boys are not sharp, if other
papers get things that they don't or can't, off they must go; and the
boys have mothers and sisters to support--and want to get wives some
day--and the reporting business is the first round of the ladder; if
they get pitched off, it's all over with them."
"Precisely," said Mr. Selby; "it is, if you will pardon my saying it,
it is your great American public that wants these papers and takes
them, and takes the most of those that have the most gossip in them,
that are to blame. _They_ make the reporters what they are, and keep
them what they are, by the demand they keep up for their wares; and
so, I say, if Mrs. Henderson will pardon me, that, as yet, I am unable
to put down our national shyness in the catalogue of sins to be fought
against. I confess I would rather, if I should ever happen to have any
literary fame, I would rather shut my shutters, evenings, and have
high walls with glass bottles on top around my grounds, and _not_ have
every vulgar, impertinent fellow in the community commenting on my
private affairs. Now, in England, we have all arrangements to keep our
families to ourselves, and to such intimates as we may approve."
"Oh, yes, I knew it to my cost when I was in England," said Eva. "You
might be in a great hotel with all the historic characters of your
day, and see no more of them than if you were in America. They came
in close family carriages, they passed to close family rooms, they
traveled in railroad compartments specially secured to themselves,
and you knew no more about them than if you had stayed at home."
"Well," said Mr. Selby, "you describe what I think are very nice,
creditable, comfortable ways of managing."
"With not even a newspaper reporter to tell the people what they were
talking about, and what gowns their wives and daughters wore," said
Bolton, dryly. "I confess, of the two extremes, the English would most
accord with my natural man."
"So it is with all of us," said St. John; "the question is, though,
whether this strict caste system which links people in certain lines
and ruts of social life, doesn't make it impossible to have that
knowledge of one another as human beings which Christianity requires.
It struck me in England that the high clergy had very little practical
comprehension of the feelings of the lower classes, and their wives
and daughters less. They were prepared to dispense charity to them
from above, but not to study them on the plane of equal intercourse.
They never mingle, any more than oil and water; and that, I think, is
why so much charity in England is thrown away--the different classes
do not understand each other, and never can."
"Yes," said Harry; "with all the disadvantages and disagreeable
results of our democratic jumble in society, our common cars where all
ride side by side, our hotel parlors where all sit together, and our
_tables d'hote_ where all dine together, we do know each other better,
and there is less chance of class misunderstandings and jealousies,
than in England."
"For my part, I sympathize with Mr. Selby, according to the flesh,"
said Mr. St. John. "The sheltered kind of life one leads in English
good society is what I prefer; but, if our Christianity is good for
anything, we cannot choose what we prefer."
"I have often thought," said Eva, "that the pressure of vulgar
notoriety, the rush of the crowd around our Saviour, was evidently
the same kind of trial to him that it must be to every refined
and sensitive nature; and yet how constant and how close was his
affiliation with the lowest and poorest in his day. He _lived_ with
them, he gave them just what we shrink from giving--his personal
presence--himself."
Eva spoke with a heightened color and with a burst of self-forgetful
enthusiasm. There was a little pause afterwards, as if a strain of
music had suddenly broken into the conversation, and Mr. Selby, after
a moment's pause, said:
"Mrs. Henderson, I give way to _that_ suggestion. Sometimes, for a
moment, I get a glimpse that Christianity is something higher and
purer than any conventional church shows forth, and I feel that we
nominal Christians are not living on that plane, and that if we only
could live thus, it would settle the doubts of modern skeptics faster
than any Bampton Lectures."
"Well," said Eva, "it does seem as if that which is best for society
on the whole is always gained by a sacrifice of what is agreeable.
Think of the picturesque scenery, and peasantry, and churches, and
ceremonials in Italy, and what a perfect scattering and shattering
of all such illusions would be made by a practical, common-sense
system of republican government, that would make the people thrifty,
prosperous, and happy! The good is not always the beautiful."
"Yes," said Bolton to Mr. Selby, "and you Liberals in England are
assuredly doing your best to bring on the very state of society which
produces the faults that annoy you here. The reign of the great
average masses never can be so agreeable to taste as that of the
cultured few."
But we will not longer follow a conversation which was kept up till a
late hour around the blazing hearth. The visit was one of those happy
ones in which a man enters a house a stranger and leaves it a friend.
When all were gone, Harry and Eva sat talking it over by the decaying
brands.
"Harry, you venturesome creature, how dared you send such a company in
upon me on washing day?"
"Because, my dear, I knew you were the one woman in a thousand that
could face an emergency and never lose either temper or presence of
mind; and you see I was right."
"But it isn't me that you should praise, Harry; it's my poor, good
Mary. Just think how patiently she turned out of her way and changed
all her plans, and worked and contrived for me, when her poor old
heart was breaking! I must run up now and say how much I thank her for
making everything go off so well."
Eva tapped softly at the door of Mary's room. There was no answer.
She opened it softly. Mary was kneeling with clasped hands before her
crucifix, and praying softly and earnestly; so intent that she did not
hear Eva coming in. Eva waited a moment, and then kneeled down beside
her and softly put her arm around her.
"Oh, dear, Miss Eva!" said Mary, "my heart's just breaking."
"I know it, I know it, my poor Mary."
"It's so cold and dark out-doors, and where is she?" said Mary, with a
shudder. "Oh, I wish I'd been kinder to her, and not scolded her."
"Oh, dear Mary, don't reproach yourself; you did it for the best. We
will pray for her, and the dear Father will hear us, I know he will.
The Good Shepherd will go after her and find her."
_CHAPTER XXXII._
A MISTRESS WITHOUT A MAID.
[_Eva to Harry's Mother._]
VALLEY OF HUMILIATION.
DEAR MOTHER: I have kept you well informed of all our
prosperities in undertaking and doing: how everything we have set
our hand to has turned out beautifully; how "our evenings" have been
a triumphant success; and how _we and our neighbors_ are all coming
into the spirit of love and unity, getting acquainted, mingling and
melting into each other's sympathy and knowledge. I have had the
most delightful run of compliments about my house, as so bright,
so cheerful, so social and cosy, and about my skill in managing to
always have every thing so nice, and in entertaining with so little
parade and trouble, that I really began to plume myself on something
very uncommon in the way of what Aunt Prissy Diamond calls "faculty."
Well, you know, next in course after the Palace Beautiful comes the
Valley of Humiliation--whence my letter is dated--where I am at this
present writing. Honest old John Bunyan says that, although people do
not descend into this place with a very good grace, but with many a
sore bruise and tumble, yet the air thereof is mild and refreshing,
and many sweet flowers grow here that are not found in more exalted
regions.
I have not found the flowers yet, and feel only the soreness and
bruises of the descent. To drop the metaphor: I have been now three
days conducting my establishment without Mary, and with no other
assistant than her daughter, the little ten-year-old midget I told you
about. You remember about poor Maggie, and what we were trying to do
for her, and how she fled from our house? Well, Jim Fellows set the
detectives upon her track, and the last that was heard of her, she
had gone up to Poughkeepsie; and, as Mary has relations somewhere in
that neighborhood, she thought, perhaps, if she went immediately, she
should find her among them. The dear, faithful soul felt dreadfully
about leaving me, knowing that, as to all practical matters, I am a
poor "sheep in the wilderness;" and if I had made any opposition,
or argued against it, I suppose that I might have kept her from
going, but I did not. I did all I could to hurry her off, and talked
heroically about how I would try to get along without her, and little
Midge swelled with importance, and seemed to long for the opportunity
to display her latent powers; and so Mary departed suddenly one
morning, and left me in possession of the field.
The situation was the graver that we had a gentleman invited to
dinner, and Mary had not time even to stuff the turkey, as she had
to hurry off to the cars. "What will you do, Miss Eva?" she said,
ruefully; and I said cheerily: "Oh, never fear, Mary; I never found a
situation yet that I was not adequate to," and I saw her out of the
door, and then turned to my kitchen and my turkey. My soul was fired
with energy. I would prove to Harry what a wonderful and unexplored
field of domestic science lay in my little person. Everything should
be so perfect that the absence of Mary should not even be suspected!
So I came airily upon the stage of action, and took an observation of
the field. This turkey should be stuffed, of course; turkeys always
were stuffed; but what with? How very shadowy and indefinite my
knowledge grew, as I contemplated those yawning rifts and caverns
which were to be filled up with something savory--I didn't precisely
know what! But the cook-book came to my relief. I read and studied
the directions, and proceeded to explore for the articles. "Midge,
where does your mother keep the sweet herbs?" Midge was prompt and
alert in her researches and brought them to light, and I proceeded
gravely to measure and mix, while Midge, delighted at the opportunity
of exploring forbidden territory, began a miscellaneous system of
rummaging and upsetting in Mary's orderly closets. "Here's the
mustard, ma'am, and here's the French mustard, and here's the vanilla,
and the cloves is here, and the nutmeg-grater, ma'am, and the nutmegs
is here;" and so on, till I was half crazy.
"Midge, put all those things back and shut the cupboard door, and stop
talking," said I, decisively. And Midge obeyed.
"Now," said I, "I wonder where Mary keeps her needles; this must be
sewed up."
Midge was on hand again, and pulled forth needles, and thread, and
twine, and after some pulling and pinching of my fingers, and some
unsuccessful struggles with the stiff wings that wouldn't lie down,
and the stiff legs that would kick out, my turkey was fairly bound and
captive, and handsomely awaiting his destiny.
"Now, Midge," said I, triumphant; "open the oven door!"
"Oh! please, ma'am, it's only ten o'clock. You don't want to roast him
all day."
Sure enough; I had not thought of that. Our dinner hour was five
o'clock; and, for the first time in my life, the idea of time as
connected with a roast turkey rose in my head.
"Midge, when _does_ your mother put the turkey in?"
"Oh! not till some time in the afternoon," said Midge, wisely.
"How long does it take a turkey to roast?" said I.
"Oh! a good while," said Midge, confidently, "'cordin' as how large
they is."
I turned to my cook-book, and saw that so much time must be given to
so many pounds; but I had not the remotest idea how many pounds there
were in the turkey. So I set Midge to cleaning the silver, and ran
across the way, to get light of Miss Dorcas.
How thankful I was for the neighborly running-in terms on which I
stood with my old ladies; it stood me in good stead in this time
of need. I ran in at the back door and found Miss Dorcas in her
kitchen, presiding over some special Eleusinian mysteries in the
way of preserves. The good soul had on a morning-cap calculated to
strike terror into an inexperienced beholder, but her face beamed with
benignity, and she entered into the situation at once.
"Cookery books are not worth a fly in such cases," she remarked,
sententiously. "You must use your judgment."
"But what if you haven't got any judgment to use?" said I. "I haven't
a bit."
"Well, then, dear child, you must use Dinah's, as I do. Dinah can tell
to a T, how long a turkey takes to roast, by looking at it. Here,
Dinah, run over, and 'talk turkey' to Mrs. Henderson."
Dinah went back with me, boiling over with giggle. She laughed so
immoderately over my turkey that I began to fear I had made some
disgraceful blunder; but I was relieved by a facetious poke in the
side which she gave me, declaring:
"Lord's sakes alive, Mis' Henderson, you's dun it like a bawn cook,
you has. Land sake! but it just _kills_ me to see ladies work," she
added, going into another chuckle of delight. "Waall, now, Mis'
Henderson, dat 'are turkey'll want a mighty sight of doin'. Tell ye
what--I'll come over and put him in for you, 'bout three o'clock," she
concluded, giving me a matronizing pat on the back.
"Besides," said little Midge, wisely, "there's all the chambers and
the parlors to do."
Sure enough! I had forgotten that beds do not make themselves, nor
chambers arrange themselves, as always had seemed to me before. But
I went at the work, with little Midge for handmaid, guiding her zeal
and directing and superintending her somewhat erratic movements, till
bedrooms, parlors, house, were all in wonted order. In the course
of this experience, it occurred to me a number of times how much
activity, and thought, and care and labor of some one went to make the
foundation on which the habitual ease, quiet and composure of my daily
life was built; and I mentally voted Mary a place among the saints.
Punctually to appointment, Dinah came over and lifted my big turkey
into the oven, and I shut the door on him, and thought my dinner was
fairly under way.