and flowers, watching for her halting, and seeking occasion against
her, had only had grace to do for her what lies in the power of
every Christian mistress; if she had won her confidence, given her
motherly care and sympathy, and trained her up under the protection of
household influences, it might have been otherwise. Or, supposing that
Maggie were too self-willed, too elate with the flatteries that come
to young beauty, to be saved from a fall, yet, after that fall, when
she rose, ashamed and humbled, there was still a chance of retrieval.
Perhaps there is never a time when man or woman has a better chance,
with suitable help, of building a good character than just after a
humiliating fall which has taught the sinner his own weakness, and
given him a sad experience of the bitterness of sin.
Nobody wants to be sold under sin, and go the whole length in
iniquity; and when one has gone just far enough in wrong living to
perceive in advance all its pains and penalties, there is often an
agonized effort to get back to respectability, like the clutching
of the drowning man for the shore. The waters of death are cold and
bitter, and nobody wants to be drowned.
But it is just at this point that the drowning hand is wrenched off;
society fears that the poor wet wretch will upset its respectable
boat; it pushes him off, and rows over the last rising bubbles.
And this is not in the main because men and women are hard-hearted
or cruel, but because they are busy, every one of them, with their
own works and ways, hurried, driven, with no time, strength, or
heart-leisure for more than they are doing. What is one poor soul
struggling in the water, swimming up stream, to the great pushing,
busy, bustling world?
Nothing in the review of life appears to us so pitiful as the absolute
nothingness of the individual in the great mass of human existence.
To each living, breathing, suffering atom, the consciousness of what
it desires and suffers is so intense, and to every one else so faint.
It is faint even to the nearest and dearest, compared to what it is
to one's self. "The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger
intermeddleth not therewith."
Suppose you were suddenly struck down to-day by death in any of its
dreadful forms, how much were this to you, how little to the world!
how little even to the friendly world, who think well of you and wish
you kindly! The paper that tells the tale scarcely drops from their
hand; a few shocked moments of pity or lamentation, perhaps, and then
returns the discussion of what shall be for dinner, and whether the
next dress shall be cut with flounces or folds: the gay waves of life
dance and glitter over the last bubble which marks where you sank.
So we have seen poor Maggie, with despair and bitterness in her heart,
wandering, on a miserable cold day, through the Christmas rejoicings
of New York, on the very verge of going back to courses that end
in unutterable degradation and misery; and yet, how little it was
anybody's business to seek or to save her.
"So," said Mrs. Wouvermans, in a tone of exultation, when she heard
of Maggie's flight, "I _hope_, I'm sure, Eva's had enough of her fine
ways of managing! Miss Maggie's off, just as I knew she'd be. That
girl is a baggage! And now, of course, nothing must do but Mary must
be off to look for her, and then Eva is left with all her house on her
hands. I should think this would show her that my advice wasn't so
altogether to be scorned."
Now, it is not to be presumed that Mrs. Wouvermans really was so cruel
as to exult in the destruction of Maggie, and the perplexity and
distress of her mother, or in Eva's domestic discomfort; yet there was
something very like this in the tone of her remarks.
Whence is the feeling of satisfaction which we have when things that
we always said we knew, turn out just as we predicted? Had we really
rather our neighbor would be proved a thief and a liar than to be
proved in a mistake ourselves? Would we be willing to have somebody
topple headlong into destruction for the sake of being able to say, "I
told you so"?
Mrs. Wouvermans did not ask herself these pointed questions, and so
she stirred her faultless coffee without stirring up a doubt of her
own Christianity--for, like you and me, Mrs. Wouvermans held herself
to be an ordinarily good Christian.
Gentle, easy Mrs. Van Arsdel heard this news with acquiescence. "Well,
girls, so that Maggie's run off and settled the question; and, on the
whole, I'm not sorry, for that ends Eva's responsibility for her; and,
after all, I think your aunt was half right about that matter. One
doesn't want to have too much to do with such people."
"But, mamma," said Alice, "it seems such a dreadful thing that so
young a girl, not older than I am, should be utterly lost."
"Yes, but you can't help it, and such things are happening all the
time, and it isn't worth while making ourselves unhappy about it. I'm
sure Eva acted like a little saint about it, and the girl can have no
one to blame but herself."
"I know," said Alice; "Eva told me about it. It was Aunt Maria, with
her usual vigor and activity, who precipitated the catastrophe. Eva
had just got the girl into good ways, and all was going smoothly, when
Aunt Maria came in and broke everything up. I must say, I think Aunt
Maria is a nuisance."
"Oh, Alice, how can you talk so, when you know that your aunt is
thinking of nothing so much as how to serve and advance you girls?"
"She is thinking of how to carry her own will and pleasure; and we
girls are like so many ninepins that she wants to set up or knock down
to suit her game. Now she has gone and invited those Stephenson girls
to spend the holidays with her."
"Well, you know it's entirely on your account, Alice,--you girls. The
Stephensons are a very desirable family to cultivate."
"Yes; it's all a sort of artifice, so that they may have to invite us
to visit them next summer at Newport. Now, I never was particularly
interested in those girls. They always seemed to me insipid sort of
people; and to feel obliged to be very attentive to them and cultivate
their intimacy, with any such view, is a sort of maneuvering that is
very repulsive to me; it doesn't seem honest."
"But now your aunt has got them, and we must be attentive to them,"
pleaded Mrs. Van Arsdel.
"Oh, of course. What I am complaining of is that my aunt can't let
us alone; that she is always scheming for us, planning ahead for us,
getting people that we must be attentive to, and all that; and then,
because she's our aunt and devoted to our interests, our conscience
is all the while troubling us because we don't like her better. The
truth is, Aunt Maria is a constant annoyance to me, and I reproach
myself for not being grateful to her. Now, Angelique and I are on
a committee for buying the presents for the Christmas-tree of our
mission-school, and we shall have to go and get the tree up; and it's
no small work to dress a Christmas-tree--in fact, we shall just have
our hands full, without the Stephensons. We are going up to Eva's
this very morning, to talk this matter over and make out our lists of
things; and, for my part, I find the Stephensons altogether _de trop_."
Meanwhile, in Eva's little dominion, peace and prosperity had returned
with the return of cook to the kitchen cabinet. A few days' withdrawal
of that important portion of the household teaches the mistress many
things, and, among others, none more definitely than the real dignity
and importance of that sphere which is generally regarded as least and
lowest.
Mary had come back disheartened from a fruitless quest. Maggie had
indeed been at Poughkeepsie, and had spent a day and a night with a
widowed sister of Mary's, and then, following a restless impulse, had
gone back to New York--none knew whither; and Mary was going on with
her duties with that quiet, acquiescent sadness with which people of
her class bear sorrow which they have no leisure to indulge. The girl
had for two or three years been lost to her; but the brief interval
of restoration seemed to have made the pang of losing her again still
more dreadful. Then, the anticipated mortification of having to tell
Mike of it, and the thought of what Mike and Mike's wife's would
say, were a stinging poison. Though Maggie's flight was really due
in a great measure to Mike's own ungracious reception of her and his
harsh upbraidings, intensified by what she had overheard from Mrs.
Wouvermans, yet Mary was quite sure that Mike would receive it as a
confirmation of his own sagacity in the opinion he had pronounced.
The hardness and apathy with which even near relations will consign
their kith and kin to utter ruin is one of the sad phenomena of life.
Mary knew that Mike would say to her, "Didn't I tell you so? The
girl's gone to the bad; let her go! She's made her bed; let her lie in
it."
It was only from her gentle, sympathetic mistress that Mary met with a
word of comfort. Eva talked with her, and encouraged her to pour out
all her troubles and opened the door of her own heart to her sorrows.
Eva cheered and comforted her all she could, though she had small
hopes, herself.
She had told Mr. Fellows, she said, and Mr. Fellows knew all about New
York--knew everybody and everything--and if Maggie were there he would
be sure to hear of her; "and if she is anywhere in New York I will go
to her," said Eva, "and persuade her to come back and be a good girl.
And don't you tell your brother anything about it. Why need he know?
I dare say we shall get Maggie back, and all going right, before he
knows anything about it."
Eva had just been talking to this effect to Mary in the kitchen, and
she came back into her parlor, to find there poor, fluttering, worried
little Mrs. Betsey Benthusen, who had come in to bewail her prodigal
son, of whom, for now three days and nights, no tidings had been heard.
"I came in to ask you, dear Mrs. Henderson, if anything has been heard
from the advertising of Jack? I declare, I haven't been able to sleep
since he went, I am so worried. I dare say you must think it silly of
me," she said, wiping her eyes, "but I _am_ just so silly. I really
had got so fond of him--I feel so lonesome without him." "Silly, dear
friend!" said Eva in her usual warm, impulsive way, "no, indeed; I
think it's perfectly natural that you should feel as you do. I think,
for my part, these poor dumb pets were given us to love; and if we
do love them, we can't help feeling anxious about them when they are
gone."
"You see," said Mrs. Betsey, "if I only knew--but I don't--if I knew
just where he was, or if he was well treated; but then, Jack is a dog
that has been used to kindness, and it would come hard to him to have
to suffer hunger and thirst, and be kicked about and abused. I lay
and thought about things that might happen to him, last night, till I
fairly cried"--and the tears stood in the misty blue eyes of the faded
little old gentlewoman, in attestation of the possibility. "I got so
wrought up," she continued, "that I actually prayed to my Heavenly
Father to take care of my poor Jack. Do you think that was profane,
Mrs. Henderson?--I just could not help it."
"No, dear Mrs. Betsey, I don't think it was profane; I think it was
just the most sensible thing you could do. You know our Saviour says
that not a sparrow falls to the ground without our Father, and I'm
sure Jack is a good deal larger than a sparrow."
"Well, I didn't tell Dorcas," said Mrs. Betsey, "because she thinks
I'm foolish, and I suppose I am. I'm a broken-up old woman now, and
I never had as much strength of mind as Dorcas, anyway. Dorcas has a
_very_ strong mind," said little Mrs. Betsey in a tone of awe; "she
has tried all she could to strengthen mine, but she can't do much with
me."
Just at this instant, Eva, looking through the window down street,
saw Jim Fellows approaching, with Jack's head appearing above his
shoulder in that easy, jaunty attitude with which the restored lamb
is represented in a modern engraving of the Good Shepherd.
There he sat, to be sure, with a free and easy air of bright, doggish
vivacity; perched aloft with his pink tongue hanging gracefully out of
his mouth, and his great, bright eyes and little black tip of a nose
gleaming out from the silvery thicket of his hair, looking anything
but penitent for all the dismays and sorrows of which he had been the
cause.
"Oh, Mrs. Betsey, do come here," cried Eva; "here is Jack, to be sure!"
"You don't say so! Why, so he is; that _dear_, good Mr. Fellows! how
can I ever thank him enough!"
And, as Jim mounted the steps, Eva hastened to open the door in
anticipation of the door-bell.
"Any dogs to-day, ma'am?" said Jim in the tone of a pedlar.
"Oh, Mrs. Henderson!" said Mrs. Betsey. But what further she said
was lost in Jack's vociferous barking. He had recognized Mrs. Betsey
and struggled down out of Jim's arms, and was leaping and capering
and barking, overwhelming his mistress with obstreperous caresses,
in which there was not the slightest recognition of any occasion for
humility or penitence. Jack was forgiving Mrs. Betsey with all his
might and main for all the trouble he had caused, and expressing his
perfect satisfaction and delight at finding himself at home again.
"Well," said Jim, in answer to the numerous questions showered upon
him, "the fact is that Dixon and I were looking up something to write
about in a not very elegant or reputable quarter of New York, and
suddenly, as we were passing one of the dance houses, that girl Maggie
darted out with Jack in her arms, and calling after me by name, she
said: 'This poor dog belongs to the people opposite Mrs. Henderson's.
He has been stolen away, and won't you take him back?' I said I would,
and then I said, 'Seems to me, Maggie, you'd better come back, too,
to your mother, who is worrying dreadfully about you.' But she turned
quickly and said, 'The less said about me the better,' and ran in."
"Oh, how dreadful that anybody should be so depraved at her age," said
little Mrs. Betsey, complacently caressing Jack. "Mrs. Henderson, you
have had a fortunate escape of her; you must be glad to get her out of
your house. Well, I must hurry home with him and get him washed up,
for he's in _such_ a state! And do look at this ribbon! Would you know
it ever had been a ribbon? it's thick with grease and dirt, and I dare
say he's covered with fleas. O Jack, Jack, what trouble you have made
me!"
And the little woman complacently took up her criminal, who went off
on her shoulder with his usual waggish air of impudent assurance.
"See what luck it is to be a dog," said Jim. "Nobody would have half
the patience with a ragamuffin boy, now!"
"But, seriously, Jim, what can be done about poor Maggie? I've
promised her mother to get her back, if she could be discovered."
"Well, really she is in one of the worst drinking saloons of that
quarter, kept by Mother Mogg, who is, to put the matter explicitly, a
sort of she devil. It isn't a place where it would do for me or any of
the boys to go. We are not calculated for missionary work in just that
kind of field."
"Well, who _can_ go? What can be done? I've promised Mary to save her.
I'll go myself, if you'll show me the way."
"You, Mrs. Henderson? You don't know what you are talking about. You
never could go there. It isn't to be thought of."
"But somebody must go, Jim; we can't leave her there."
"Well, now I think of it," said Jim, "there is a Methodist minister
who has undertaken to set up a mission in just that part of the
city. They bought a place that used to be kept for a rat-pit, and
had it cleaned up, and they have opened a mission house, and have
prayer-meetings and such things there. I'll look that thing up;
perhaps he can find Maggie for you. Though I must say you are taking a
great deal of trouble about this girl."
"Well, Jim, she has a mother, and her mother loves her as yours does
you."
"By George, now, that's enough," said Jim. "You don't need to say
another word. I'll go right about it, this very day, and hunt up
this Mr. What's-his-name, and find all about this mission. I've been
meaning to write that thing up this month or so."
_CHAPTER XXXVI._
LOVE IN CHRISTMAS GREENS.
The little chapel in one of the out-of-the-way streets of New York
presented a scene of Christmas activity and cheerfulness approaching
to gaiety. The whole place was fragrant with the spicy smell of spruce
and hemlock. Baskets of green ruffles of ground-pine were foaming over
their sides with abundant contributions from the forest; and bright
bunches of vermilion bitter-sweet, and the crimson-studded branches
of the black alder, added color to the picture. Of real traditional
holly, which in America is a rarity, there was a scant supply,
reserved for more honorable decorations.
Mr. St. John had been busy in his vestry with paper, colors, and
gilding, illuminating some cards with Scriptural mottoes. He had just
brought forth his last effort and placed it in a favorable light for
inspection. It is the ill-fortune of every successful young clergyman
to stir the sympathies and enkindle the venerative faculties of
certain excitable women, old and young, who follow his footsteps
and regard his works and ways with a sort of adoring rapture that
sometimes exposes him to ridicule if he accepts it, and which yet it
seems churlish to decline. It is not generally his fault, nor exactly
the fault of the women, often amiably sincere and unconscious; but it
is a fact that this kind of besetment is more or less the lot of every
clergyman, and he cannot help it. It is to be accepted as we accept
any of the shadows which are necessary in the picture of life, and got
along with by the kind of common sense with which we dispose of any of
its infelicities.
Mr. St. John did little to excite demonstrations of this kind; but
the very severity with which he held himself in reserve seemed rather
to increase a kind of sacred prestige which hung around him, making
of him a sort of churchly Grand Llama. When, therefore, he brought
out his illuminated card, on which were inscribed in Anglo Saxon
characters,
"The Word was made flesh
And dwelt among us,"
there was a loud acclaim of "How lovely! how sweet!" with groans of
intense admiration from Miss Augusta Gusher and Miss Sophronia Vapors,
which was echoed in "ohs!" and "ahs!" from an impressible group of
girls on the right and left.
Angelique stood quietly gazing on it, with a wreath of ground-pine
dangling from her hand, but she said nothing.
Mr. St. John at last said, "And what do _you_ think, Miss Van Arsdel?"
"I think the colors are pretty," Angie said, hesitating, "but"--
"But what?" said Mr. St. John, quickly.
"Well, I don't know what it means--I don't understand it."
Mr. St. John immediately read the inscription in concert with Miss
Gusher, who was a very mediæval young lady and quite up to reading
Gothic, or Anglo Saxon, or Latin, or any Churchly tongue.
"Oh!" was all the answer Angie made; and then, seeing something more
was expected, she added again, "I think the effect of the lettering
very pretty," and turned away, and busied herself with a cross of
ground-pine that she was making in a retired corner.
[Illustration: SKIRMISHING.
_"I like your work," he said, "better than you do mine." "I didn't say
that I didn't like yours," said Angie, coloring._--p. 341.]
The chorus were loud and continuous in their acclaims, and Miss
Gusher talked learnedly of lovely inscriptions in Greek and Latin,
offering to illuminate some of them for the occasion. Mr. St. John
thanked her and withdrew to his sanctum, less satisfied than before.
About half an hour after, Angie, who was still quietly busy upon her
cross in her quiet corner, under the shade of a large hemlock tree
which had been erected there, was surprised to find Mr. St. John
standing, silently observing her work.
"I like your work," he said, "better than you did mine."
"I didn't say that I didn't like yours," said Angie, coloring, and
with that sort of bright, quick movement that gave her the air of a
bird just going to fly.
"No, you did not _say_, but you left approbation unsaid, which amounts
to the same thing. You have some objection, I see, and I really wish
you would tell me frankly what it is."
"O Mr. St. John, don't say that! Of course I never thought of
objecting; it would be presumptuous in me. I really don't understand
these matters at all, not at all. I just don't know anything about
Gothic letters and all that, and so the card doesn't say anything to
me. And I must confess, I thought"--
Here Angie, like a properly behaved young daughter of the Church,
began to perceive that her very next sentence might lead her into
something like a criticism upon her rector; and she paused on the
brink of a gulf so horrible, "with pious awe that feared to have
offended."
Mr. St. John felt a very novel and singular pleasure in the progress
of this interview. It interested him to be differed with, and he said,
with a slight intonation of dictation:
"I must insist on your telling me what you thought, Miss Angie."
"Oh, nothing, only this--that if I, who have had more education than
our Sunday-school scholars, can't read a card like that, why, _they_
could not. I'm quite sure that an inscription in plain modern letters
that I could read would have more effect upon my mind, and I am quite
sure it would on them."
"I thank you sincerely for your frankness, Miss Angie; your suggestion
is a valuable one."
"I think," said Angie, "that mediæval inscriptions, and Greek and
Latin mottoes, are interesting to educated, cultivated people. The
very fact of their being in another language gives a sort of piquancy
to them. The idea gets a new coloring from a new language; but to
people who absolutely don't understand a word, they say nothing, and
of course they do no good; so, at least, it seems to me."
"You are quite right, Miss Angie, and I shall immediately put my
inscription into the English of to-day. The fact is, Miss Angie,"
added St. John after a silent pause, "I feel more and more what a
misfortune it has been to me that I never had a sister. There are
so many things where a woman's mind sees so much more clearly than
a man's. I never had any intimate female friend." Here Mr. St. John
began assiduously tying up little bunches of the ground-pine in the
form which Angie needed for her cross, and laying them for her.
Now, if Angie had been a sophisticated young lady, familiar with
the tactics of flirtation, she might have had precisely the proper
thing at hand to answer this remark; as it was, she kept on tying her
bunches assiduously and feeling a little embarrassed.
It was a pity he should not have a sister, she thought. Poor man, it
must be lonesome for him; and Angie's face at this moment must have
expressed some commiseration or some emotion that emboldened the young
man to say, in a lower tone, as he laid down a bunch of green by her:
"If you, Miss Angie, would look on me as you do on your brothers, and
tell me sincerely your opinion of me, it might be a great help to me."
Now Mr. St. John was certainly as innocent and translucently ignorant
of life as Adam at the first hour of his creation, not to know that
the tone in which he was speaking and the impulse from which he spoke,
at that moment, was in fact that of man's deepest, most absorbing
feeling towards woman. He had made his scheme of life; and, as a set
purpose, had left _love_ out of it, as something too terrestrial and
mundane to consist with the sacred vocation of a priest. But, from
the time he first came within the sphere of Angelique, a strange,
delicious atmosphere, vague and dreamy, yet delightful, had encircled
him, and so perplexed and dizzied his brain as to cause all sorts
of strange vibrations. At first, there was a sort of repulsion--a
vague alarm, a suspicion and repulsion singularly blended with an
attraction. He strove to disapprove of her; he resolved not to think
of her; he resolutely turned his head away from looking at her in her
place in Sunday-school and church, because he felt that his thoughts
were alarmingly drawn in that direction.
Then came his invitation into society, of which the hidden charm,
unacknowledged to himself, was that he should meet Angelique; and that
mingling in society had produced, inevitably, modifying effects, which
made him quite a different being from what he was in his recluse life
passed between the study and the altar.
It is not in man, certainly not in a man so finely fibered and strung
as St. John, to associate intimately with his fellows without feeling
their forces upon himself, and finding many things in himself of which
he had not dreamed.
But if there be in the circle some one female presence which all the
while is sending out an indefinite though powerful enchantment, the
developing force is still more marked.