"I know he cares for me very much," said Angie, quickly, "more than he
says."
"And you, Angie?"
"I think he's good and noble and true, and I love him."
"As a sister, of course," said Eva, laughing.
"Never mind how--I love him," said Angie; "and I shall use my sisterly
privilege to caution him to be very distant and dignified to me in
future, when those prying eyes are around."
"Well now, darling," said Eva, with all the conscious dignity of early
matronage, "we shall have to manage this matter very prudently--for
those girls have had their suspicions aroused, and you know how such
things will fly through the air. The fact is, there is nothing so
perplexing as just this state of things; when you know as well as you
know anything that a man is in love with you, and yet you are not
engaged to him. I know all about the trouble of that, I'm sure; and it
seems to me, what with Mamma, Aunt Maria, and all the rest of them, it
was a perfect marvel how Harry and I ever came together. Now, there's
that Miss Gusher, she'll be on the watch all the time, like a cat at a
mouse-hole; and she's going to be there when we get the Christmas-tree
ready and tie on the things, and you must manage to keep as far off
from him as possible. I shall be there, and I shall have my eyes in my
head, I promise you. We must try to lull their suspicions to sleep."
"Dear me," said Angie, "how disagreeable!"
"I'm sorry for you, darling, but I've kept it off as long as I could;
I've seen for a long time how things are going."
"You have? Oh, Eva!"
"Yes; and I have had all I could do to keep Jim Fellows from talking,
and teasing you, as he has been perfectly longing to do for a month
past."
"You don't say that Jim has noticed anything?"
"Yes, Jim noticed his looking at you, the very first thing after he
came to Sunday-school."
"Well, now, at first I noticed that he looked at me often, but I
thought it was because he saw something he disapproved of--and it used
to embarrass me. Then I thought he seemed to avoid me, and I wondered
why. And I wondered, too, why he always would take occasion to look at
me. I noticed, when your evenings first began, that he never came near
me, and never spoke to me, and yet his eyes were following me wherever
I went. The first evening you had, he walked round and round me nearly
the whole evening, and never spoke a word; then suddenly he came and
sat down by me, when I was sitting by Mrs. Betsey, and gave me a
message from the Prices; but he spoke in such a stiff, embarrassed
way, and then there was an awful pause, and suddenly he got up and
went away again; and poor little Mrs. Betsey said, 'Bless me, how
stiff and ungracious he is'; and I said that I believed he wasn't much
used to society--but, after a while, this wore away, and he became
very social, and we grew better and better acquainted all the time.
Although I was a little contradictious, and used to controvert some of
his notions, I fancy it was rather a novelty to him to find somebody
that didn't always give up to him, for, I must say, some of the women
that go to our chapel do make fools of themselves about him. It really
provokes me past all bearing. If any body _could_ set me against a
man, it would be those silly, admiring women who have their hands and
eyes always raised in adoration, whatever he does. It annoys him,
I can see, for it is very much against his taste, and he likes me
because, he says, I always will tell him the truth."
* * * * *
Meanwhile St. John had gone back to his study, walking as on a cloud.
The sunshine streaming into a western window touched the white
lilies over his _prie dieu_ till they seemed alive. He took down the
illumination and looked at it. He had a great mind to give this to her
as a Christmas present. Why not? Was she not to be his own sister? And
his thoughts strolled along through pleasant possibilities and all the
privileges of a brother. Certainly, he longed to see her now, and talk
them over with her; and suddenly it occurred to him that there were a
few points in relation to the arrangement of the tree about which it
would be absolutely necessary to get the opinion of Mrs. Henderson.
Whether this direction of the path of duty had any relation to the
fact that he had last seen her going away from the vestry arm in arm
with Angie, we will not assume to say; but the solemn fact was that,
that evening, just as it came time to drop the lace curtains over the
Henderson windows, when the blazing wood fire was winking and blinking
roguishly at the brass andirons, the door-bell rang, and in he walked.
Angelique had her lap full of dolls, and was sitting like Iris in the
rainbow, in a confused _mélange_ of silks, and gauzes, and tissues,
and spangles. Three dressed dolls were propped up in various attitudes
around her, and she was holding the fourth, while she fitted a
sky-blue mantilla which she was going to trim with silver braid. Where
Angie got all her budget of fineries was a standing mystery in the
household, only that she had an infinitely persuasive tongue, and
talked supplies out of admiring clerks and milliners' apprentices.
It was a pretty picture to see her there in the warm, glowing room,
tossing and turning her filmy treasures, and cocking her little head
on one side and the other with an air of profound reflection.
Harry was gone out. Eva was knitting a comforter in her corner, and
everything was as still and as cosy as heart could desire, when St.
John made his way into the parlor and got himself warmly ensconced
in his favorite niche. What more could mortal man desire? He talked
gravely with Eva, and watched Angie. He thought of a lean, haggard
picture of a St. Mary of Egypt, praying forlornly in the desert, that
had hitherto stood in his study, and the idea somehow came over him
that modern New York saints had taken a much more agreeable turn than
those of old. Was it not better to be dressing dolls for poor children
than to be rolling up one's eyes and praying alone out in a desert? In
his own mind he resolved to take down that picture forthwith. He had,
in his overcoat in the hall, his illuminated lilies, wrapped snugly in
tissue paper and tied with a blue ribbon; and, all the while he was
discoursing with Eva, he was ruminating how he could see Angie alone
a minute, just long enough to place it in her hands. Surely, somebody
ought to make her a Christmas present, she who was thinking of every
one but herself.
Eva was one of the class of diviners, and not at all the person to sit
as Madame de Trop in an exigency of this sort, and so she had a sudden
call to consult with Mary in the kitchen.
"Now for it," thought St. John, as he rose and drew nearer. Angie
looked up with a demure consciousness.
He began fingering her gauzes and her scissors unconsciously.
"Now, now! I don't allow that," she said, playfully, as she took them
altogether from his hand.
"I have something for you," he said suddenly.
"Something for me!" with a bright, amused look. "Where is it?"
St. John fumbled a moment in the entry and brought in his parcel.
Angie watched him untying it with a kittenish gravity. He laid it down
before her. "From your brother, Angie," he said.
"Oh, how lovely! how beautiful! O Mr. St. John, did you do this for
me?"
"It was of you I was thinking; you, my inspiration in all that is
holy and good; you who strengthen and help me in all that is pure and
heavenly."
"Oh, don't say that!"
"It's true, Angie, my Angie, my angel. I knew nothing worthily till I
knew you."
Angie looked up at him; her eyes, clear and bright as a bird's, looked
into his; their hands clasped together, and then, it was the most
natural thing in the world, he kissed her.
"But, Arthur," said Angie, "you must be careful not to arouse
disagreeable reports and gossip. What is so sacred between us must
not be talked of. Don't look at me, or speak to me, when others are
present. You don't know how very easy it is to make people talk."
Mr. St. John promised all manner of prudence, and walked home
delighted. And thus these two Babes in the Wood clasped hands with
each other, to wander up and down the great forest of life, as simply
and sincerely as if they had been Hensel and Grettel in the fairy
story. They loved each other, wholly trusted each other without a
question, and were walking in dream-land. There was no question of
marriage settlements, or rent and taxes; only a joyous delight that
they two in this wilderness world had found each other.
We pity him who does not know that there is nothing purer, nothing
nearer heaven than a young man's first-enkindled veneration and
adoration of womanhood in the person of her who is to be his life's
ideal. It is the morning dew before the sun arises.
_CHAPTER XXXIX._
SAYS SHE TO HER NEIGHBOR--WHAT?
"My dear," said Mrs. Dr. Gracey to her spouse, "I have a great piece
of news for you about Arthur--they say that he is engaged to one of
the Van Arsdel girls."
"Good," said the Doctor, pushing up his spectacles. "It's the most
sensible thing I have heard of him this long while. I always knew that
boy would come right if he were only let alone. How did you hear?"
"Miss Gusher told Mary Jane. She charged her not to tell; but, oh,
it's all over town! There can be no doubt about it."
"Why hasn't he been here, then, like a dutiful nephew, to tell us, I
should like to know?" said Dr. Gracey.
"Well, I believe they say it isn't announced yet; but there's no
sort of doubt of it. There's no doubt, at any rate, that there's
been a very decided intimacy, and that if they are not engaged, they
ought to be; and as I know Arthur is a good fellow, I know it must
be all right. Those Ritualistic young ladies are terribly shocked.
Miss Gusher says that her idol is broken; that she never again shall
reverence a clergyman."
"Very likely. A Mrs. St. John will be a great interruption in the way
of holy confidences and confessionals, and all their trumpery; but
it's the one thing needful for Arthur. A good, sensible woman for a
wife will make him a capital worker. The best adviser in church work
is a good wife; and the best school of the church is a Christian
family. That's my doctrine, Mrs. G."
Mrs. G. blushed at the implied compliment, while the Doctor went on:
"Now, I never felt the least fear of how Arthur was coming out, and I
take great credit to myself for not opposing him. I knew a young man
must do a certain amount of fussing and fizzling before he settles
down strong and clear; and fighting and opposing a crotchety fellow
does no good. I think I have kept hold on Arthur by never rousing his
combativeness and being sparing of good advice; and you see he is
turning right already. A wife will put an end to all the semi-monkish
trumpery that has got itself mixed up with his real self-denying
labor. A woman is capital for sweeping down cobwebs in Church or
State. Well, I shall call on Arthur and congratulate him forthwith."
Dr. Gracey was Arthur's maternal uncle, and he had always kept an eye
upon him from boyhood, as the only son of a favorite sister.
The Doctor, himself rector of a large and thriving church, was a fair
representative of that exact mixture of conservatism and progress
which characterizes the great, steady middle class of the American
Episcopacy. He was tolerant and fatherly both to the Ritualists, who
overdo on one side, and the Low Church, who underdo on the other.
He believed largely in good nature, good sense, and the expectant
treatment, as best for diseases both in the churchly and medical
practice.
So, when he had succeeded in converting his favorite nephew to
Episcopacy, and found him in danger of using it only as a half-way
house to Rome, he took good heed neither to snub him, nor to sneer at
him, but to give him sympathy in all the good work he did, and, as far
as possible, to shield him from that species of persecution which is
sure to endear a man's errors to him, by investing them with a kind of
pathos.
"The world isn't in danger from the multitudes rushing into extremes
of self-sacrifice," the Doctor said, when his wife feared that Arthur
was becoming an ascetic. "Keep him at work; work will bring sense and
steadiness. Give him his head, and he'll pull in harness all right by
and by. A colt that don't kick out of the traces a little, at first,
can't have much blood in him."
It will be seen by the subject-matter of this conversation that the
good seed which had been sown in the heart of Miss Gusher had sprung
up and borne fruit--thirty, sixty and a hundred fold, as is the wont
of the gourds of gossip,--more rapid by half in their growth than the
gourd of Jonah, and not half as consolatory.
In fact, the gossip plant is like the grain of mustard seed, which,
though it be the least of all seeds, becometh a great tree, and the
fowls of the air lodge in its branches and chatter mightily there at
all seasons.
Miss Gusher, and Miss Vapors, and Miss Rapture, and old Mrs. Eyelet,
and the Misses Glibbett, so well employed their time, about the season
of Christmas, that there was not a female person in the limits of
their acquaintance that had not had the whole story of all that had
been seen, surmised, or imagined, related as a profound secret. Notes
were collected and compared. Mrs. Eyelet remembered that she had twice
seen Mr. St. John attending Angie to her door about nightfall. Miss
Sykes, visiting one afternoon in the same district, deposed and said
that she had met them coming out of a door together. She was quite
sure that they must have met by appointment. Then, oh, the depths
of possibility that the gossips saw in that Henderson house! Always
there, every Thursday evening! On intimate terms with the family.
"Depend upon it, my dear," said Mrs. Eyelet, "Mrs. Henderson has been
doing all she could to catch him. They say he's at her house almost
constantly."
Aunt Maria's plumage rustled with maternal solicitude. "I don't know
but it is as good a thing as we could expect for Angie," said she to
Mrs. Van Arsdel. "He's a young man of good family and independent
property. I don't like his ritualistic notions, to be sure; but one
can't have everything. And, at any rate, he can't become a Roman
Catholic if he gets married--that's one comfort."
"There he goes!" said little Mrs. Betsey, as she sat looking through
the blinds, with the forgiven Jack on her knee. "He's at the door now.
Dorcas, I _do_ believe there's something in it."
"Something in what?" said Miss Dorcas, "and who _are_ you talking
about, Betsey?"
"Why, Mr. St. John and Angie. He's standing at the door, this very
minute. It must be true. I'm glad of it; only he isn't half good
enough for her."
"Well, it don't follow that there is an engagement because Mr. St.
John is at the door," said Miss Dorcas.
"But all the things Mrs. Eyelet said, Dorcas!"
"Mrs. Eyelet is a gossip," said Miss Dorcas, shortly.
"But, Dorcas, I really thought his manner to her last Thursday was
particular. Oh, I'm sure there's something in it! They say he's such
a good young man, and independently rich. I wonder if they'll take
a house up in this neighborhood? It would be so nice to have Angie
within calling distance! A great favorite of mine is Angie."
_CHAPTER XL._
THE ENGAGEMENT ANNOUNCED.
Meanwhile Dr. Gracey found his way to Arthur's study.
"So, Arthur," he said, "that pretty Miss Van Arsdel's engaged."
The blank expression and sudden change of color in St. John's face was
something quite worthy of observation.
"Miss Van Arsdel engaged!" he repeated with a gasp, feeling as if the
ground were going down under him.
"Yes, that pretty fairy, Miss Angelique, you know."
"How did you hear--who told you?"
"How did I hear? Why, it's all over town. Arthur, you bad boy, why
haven't _you_ told _me_?"
"Me?"
"Yes, you; you are the happy individual. I came to congratulate you."
St. John looked terribly confused.
"Well, we are not really exactly engaged."
"But you are going to be, I understand. So far so good. I like the
family--good stock--nothing could be better; but, Arthur, let me tell
you, you'd better have it announced and above board forthwith. You are
not my sister's son, nor the man I took you for, if you could take
advantage of the confidence inspired by your position to carry on a
flirtation."
The blood flushed into St. John's cheeks.
"I'm not flirting, uncle; that vulgar word is no name for my
friendship with Miss Van Arsdel. It is as sacred as the altar. I
reverence her; I love her with all my heart. I would lay down my life
for her."
"Good! but nobody wants you to lay down your life. That is quite
foreign to the purpose. What is wanting is, that you step out like a
man and define your position with regard to Miss Van Arsdel before
the world; otherwise all the gossips will make free with her name and
yours. Depend upon it, Arthur, a man has done too much or too little
when a young lady's name is in every one's mouth in connection with
his, without a definite engagement."
"It is all my fault, uncle. I hadn't the remotest idea. It's all my
fault--all. I had no thought of what the world would say; no idea that
we were remarked--but, believe me, our intimacy has been, from first
to last, entirely of my seeking. It has grown on us gradually, till I
find she is more to me than any one ever has been or can be. Whether I
am as much to her, I cannot tell. My demands have been humble. We are
not engaged, but it shall not be my fault if another day passes and we
are not."
"Right, my boy. I knew you. You were no nephew of mine if you didn't
feel, when your eyes were open, the honor of the thing. God made you
a gentleman before he made you a priest, and there's but one way for
a gentleman in a case like this. If there's anything I despise, it's
a priest who uses his priestly influence, under this fine name and
that, to steal from a woman love that doesn't belong to him, and that
he never can return, and never ought to. If a man thinks he can do
more good as a single man and a missionary, well; I honor him, but let
him make the sacrifice honestly. Don't let him want pretty girls for
intimate friends or guardian angels, or Christian sisters, or any such
trumpery. It's dishonest and disloyal; it is unfair to the woman and
selfish in the man."
"Well, uncle, I trust you say all this because you don't think it of
me; as I know my heart before God, I say I have not been doing so mean
and cowardly a thing. There was a time when I thought I never should
marry. Those were my days of ignorance. I did not know how much a true
woman might teach me, and how much I needed such a guide, even in my
church work."
"In short, my boy, you found out that the Lord was right when he said,
'It is not good for man to be alone.' We pay the Lord the compliment
once in a while to believe he knows best. Depend on it, Arthur, that
Christian families are the Lord's church, and better than any guild of
monks and nuns whatsoever."
All which was listened to by Mr. St. John with a radiant countenance.
It is all down-hill when you are showing a man that it is his duty to
do what he wants to do. Six months before, St. John would have fought
every proposition of this speech, and brought up the whole of the
Middle Ages to back him. Now, he was as tractable as heart could wish.
"After all, Uncle," he said, at last, "what if she will not have me?
And what if I am not the man to make her happy?"
"Oh, if you ask prettily, I fancy she won't say nay; and then you
_must_ make her happy. There are no two ways about that, my boy."
"I'm not half good enough for her," said St. John.
"Like enough. We are none of us good enough for these women; but,
luckily, that isn't apt to be their opinion."
St. John started out from the conference with an alert step. In two
days more, rumor was met with open confirmation. St. John had had the
decisive interview with Angie, had seen and talked with her father
and mother, and been invited to a family dinner; and Angie wore on her
finger an engagement-ring. There was no more to be said now. Mr. St.
John was an idol who had stepped down from his pedestal into the ranks
of common men. He was no longer a mysterious power--an angel of the
churches, but a _man_ of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, it is
an undoubted fact that, for all the purposes of this mortal life, a
good man is better than an angel.
But not so thought the ecstasia of his chapel. A holy father, in a
long black gown, with a cord round his waist, and with a skull and
hour-glass in his cell, is somehow thought to be nearer to heaven
than a family man with a market-basket on his arm; but we question
whether the angels themselves think so. There may be as holy and
unselfish a spirit in the way a market-basket is filled as in a week
of fasting; and the oil of gladness may make the heavenward wheels
run more smoothly than the spirit of heaviness. The first bright day,
St. John took Angie a drive in the park, a proceeding so evidently of
the earth, earthy, that Miss Gusher hid her face, after the manner
of the seraphim, as he passed; but he and Angie were too happy and
too busy in their new world to care who looked or who didn't, and St.
John rather triumphantly remembered the free assertion of the great
apostle, "Have we not power to lead about a sister or a wife?" and
felt sure that he should have been proud and happy to show Angie to
St. Paul himself.
Alice was at first slightly disappointed, but the compensation of
receiving so very desirable a brother-in-law reconciled her to the
loss of her poetic and distant ideal.
As to little Mrs. Betsey, she fell upon Angie's neck in rapture; and
her joy was heightened in the convincing proof that she was now able
to heap upon the unbelieving head of Dorcas that she had been in the
right all along.
When dear little Mrs. Betsey was excited, her words and thoughts came
so thick that they were like a flock of martins, all trying to get out
of a martin-box together,--chattering, twittering, stumbling over each
other, and coming out at heads and points in a wonderful order. When
the news had been officially sealed to her, she begged the right to
carry it to Dorcas, and ran home and burst in upon her with shining
eyes and two little pink spots in her cheeks.
"There, Dorcas, they are engaged. Now, _didn't_ I say so, Dorcas? I
knew it. I told you so, that Thursday evening. Oh, you can't fool
me; and that day I saw him standing on the doorstep! I was just as
certain! I saw it just as plain! What a shame for people to talk about
him as they do, and say he's going to Rome. I wonder what they think
now? The sweetest girl in New York, certainly. Oh! and that ring he
bought! Just as if he could be a Roman Catholic! It's big as a pea,
and sparkles beautiful, and's got the 'Lord is thy keeper' in Hebrew
on the inside. I want to see Mrs. Wouvermans and ask her what she
thinks now. Oh, and he took her to ride in such a stylish carriage,
white lynx lap-robe, and all! I don't care if he does burn candles
in his chapel. What does that prove? It don't prove anything. I like
to see people have some logic about things, for my part, don't you,
Dorcas? _Don't_ you?"
"Mercy! yes, Betsey," said Miss Dorcas, delighted to see her sister
so excitedly happy, "though I don't exactly see my way clear through
yours; but no matter."
"I'm going to crochet a toilet cushion for a wedding present, Dorcas,
like that one in the red room, you know. I wonder when it will come
off? How lucky I have that sweet cap that Mrs. Henderson made. Wasn't
it good of her to make it? I hope they'll invite us. Don't you think
they will? I suppose it will be in his chapel, with candles and all
sorts of new ways. Well, I don't care, so long as folks are good
people, what their ways are; do _you_, Dorcas? I must run up and count
the stitches on that cushion this minute!" And Mrs. Betsey upset her
basket of worsteds in her zeal, and Jack flew round and round, barking
sympathetically. In fact, he was so excited by the general breeze that
he chewed up two balls of worsted before recovering his composure.
Such was the effect of the news at the old Vanderheyden house.
_CHAPTER XLI._
LETTER FROM EVA TO HARRY'S MOTHER.