fellow--a faultless husband--a desirable brother-in-law; but still
Harry was not a hero. He was a man subject to domestic discipline
for at times littering the parlor table with too many pamphlets, for
giving imprudent invitations to dinner on an ill-considered bill of
fare, and for confounding solferino with pink when describing colors
or matching worsteds. All these things brought him down into the
sphere of the actual, and took off the halo. In review of all the
married men of her acquaintance, she was constrained to acknowledge
that the genus _hero_ was rare. Nobody that she was acquainted
with ever had married this kind of being; and, in fact, within her
own mind his lineaments were cloudy and indistinct, like the magic
looking-glass of Agrippa before the destined image shone out. She only
knew of this or that mortal man of her acquaintance, that he was not
in the least like this ideal of her dreams.
Meanwhile, Miss Alice was not at all insensible to the charm of having
a friend of the other sex wholly and entirely devoted to her.
She thought she had with most exemplary frankness and directness
indicated to Jim that they were to be friends and only friends; she
had contended for her right to be just as intimate with him as he and
she pleased, in the face of Aunt Maria and of all the ranks and orders
of good gossips who make the regulation of other people's affairs a
specialty; and she flattered herself that she had at last conquered
this territory and secured for herself this independent right.
People had almost done telling her they had heard that she was engaged
to Jim Fellows, and asking her when it was going to be announced. She
plumed herself, in a quiet way, on the independence and spirit she had
shown in the matter.
Now, Jim was one of those fellows who, in certain respects, remain a
boy forever. The boy in him was certainly booked for as long a mortal
journey as the man; and, at threescore years and ten, one ought not
to expect to meet in him other than a white-headed, vivacious old
boy. He was a driving, industrious, efficient creature. He was, in all
respects, ideally fitted to success in the profession he had chosen;
the very image and body of the New York press man--lively, versatile,
acute, unsleeping, untiring, always wide-awake, up and dressed, and
in full command of his faculties, at any hour of day or night, ready
for any emergency, overflowing with inconsiderate fun and frolic, and,
like the public he served, going for his joke at any price. Since his
intimacy with Alice she had assumed to herself the right of looking
over his ways and acting the part of an exterior conscience; and Jim
had formed the habit of bringing to her his articles for criticism.
And Alice flattered herself that she was not altogether selfish
in accepting his devotion, but was saving him from many an unwise
escapade, and exciting him to higher standards and nobler ways of
looking at life.
Of all the Christian and becoming _rôles_ in the great drama of life,
there is none that so exactly suits young ladies of a certain degree
of gravity and dignity as that of guardian angel.
Now, in respect to Jim, Alice certainly was fitted to sustain this
_rôle_. She was well-poised, decided, sensible and serious in her
conceptions of life, truthful and conscientious; and the dash of
ideality which pervaded all her views gave to her, in the eyes of the
modern New York boy, a sort of sacred prestige, like the halo around a
saint.
No one sees life on a harder, colder, more utterly unscrupulous
side than the _élève_ of the New York press. He grinds in a mill
of competition. He serves sharp and severe masters, who in turn
are driven up by an exacting, irresponsible public, panting for
excitement, grasping for the latest sensation. The man of the press
sees behind the scenes in every illusion of life; the shapeless
pulleys, the dripping tallow candles that light up the show, all are
familiar to him.
To him come all the tribes who have axes to grind, and want him to
turn their grindstones. Avarice, ambition, petty vanity, private
piques, mean intrigues, sly revenges, all unbosom themselves to him
as to a father confessor, and invoke his powerful aid. To him it is
given to see the back door and back stairs of much that the world
venerates, and he finds there filthy sweepings and foul _débris_. Even
the church of every name and sect has its back door, its unsightly
sweepings. He who is in so many secrets, who explores so many cabals,
who sees the wrong side of so many a fair piece of goods, with all its
knots, and jags, and thrums, what wonder if he come to that worse form
of scepticism--the doubt of all truth, of all virtue, of all honor?
When he sees how reputations can be made and unmade in the secret
conclaves of printing offices, how generous and holy enthusiasms are
assumed as a cloak for low and selfish designs, how the language
which stirs man's deepest nature lies around loose in the hands of
skilled word-experts, to be used in getting up cabals and carrying
party intrigues, it is scarcely to be wondered at if he come to regard
life as a mere game of skill, where the shrewdest player wins. It is
exactly here that a true, good woman is the moral salvation of man.
Such a woman seems to a man more than she can ever seem to her female
acquaintances. She is to him the proof of a better world, of a truer
life, of the reality of justice, purity, honor, and unselfishness. He
regards her, to be sure, as unpractical, and ignorant of the world's
ways, but with a holy ignorance which belongs to a higher region.
Jim had dived into New York life at first with the mere animal
recklessness with which an expert swimmer shows his skill in difficult
navigation. Life was an adventure, a game, a game at which he was
determined nobody should cheat him, a race in which he was determined
to come out ahead. Nobody should catch _him_ napping; nobody should
outwit him; he would be nobody's fool. His acquaintance with a certain
class of girls was only a continuation of the bright, quick, adroit
game of fencing which he played in the world. If a girl would flirt,
so would Jim. He was _au courant_ of all the positions and strategy of
that sort of encounter; he had all the _persiflage_ of flattery and
compliment at his tongue's end, and enjoyed the rustle and flutter
of ribbons, the tapping of fans, and the bustle and mystery of small
secrets, the little "ohs and ahs," and feminine commotions that
he could stir up in almost any bevy of nymphs in evening dresses.
Speaking of female influence, there are some exceptions to be taken
to the general theory that woman has an elevating power over man.
It may be doubted whether there goes any of this divine impulse
from giggling, flirting girls, whose highest aim is to secure the
admiration and attention of men, and who, to get it, will flatter and
fawn, profess to adore tobacco smoke, and even to have a warm side
towards whiskey punch,--girls whose power over men is based on an
indiscriminate deference to what men themselves feel to be their lower
and less worthy nature.
The woman who really wins for herself a worthy influence with a man
is she who recognizes in him the divine under all worldly disguises,
and invariably and strongly takes part with his higher against his
lower nature. This was the secret of Alice's power over Jim; and this
was why she had become, in the secret and inner world of his life,
almost a religious image. All his dawning aspirations to be somewhat
better than a mere chaser of expedients, to be a man of lofty objects
and noble purposes, had come from her acquaintance with him--an
acquaintance begun on both sides in the spirit of mere flirtation,
and passing from that to esteem and friendship. But, in the case of
a marriageable young man of twenty-five, friendship is like some
of those rare cacti of the greenhouses which, in an unexpected
hour, burst out into blossoms of untold splendor. An engagement
just declared in their circle had breathed a warmer atmosphere of
suggestion around them, and upon that had come a position in his
profession which offered him both consideration and money; and when
Jim was assured of this, his first thought was of Alice.
"Friendship is a humbug," was that young gentleman's mental decision.
"It may do all very well with some kinds of girls"--and Jim mentally
reviewed some of his lady acquaintances--"but with Alice Van Arsdel,
it is all humbug for me to go on talking friendship. I _can't_, and
_shan't_, and WON'T." And in this mood it was that he gave to
Alice's hand that startling kind of pressure, and something of this
flashed from his eyes into hers. It was that something, like the gleam
of a steel blade, determined, resolute, assured, that disconcerted and
alarmed her. It was like the sounding of a horn, summoning a parley
at the postern gate of a fortress, and the lady chatelaine not ready
either to surrender or to defend. So, in a moment, Alice resolved
not to walk the four or five squares between her present position
and home, _tête-à-tête_ with Jim Fellows; and she sat very composed
and very still in her corner, and put in demand all those quiet,
repressive tactics by which dignified young ladies keep back issues
they are not precisely ready to meet.
The general subject under discussion when Jim came in, was a party to
be given at Aunt Maria's the next evening in honor of the Stephenses,
when Angie and Mr. St. John would make their first appearance
together as a betrothed couple.
"Now, Jim," said Eva, "how lucky that you came in, for I was just
going to send a note to you! Here's Harry has got to give a lecture
to-morrow night and can't come in till towards the end of the evening.
Alice is coming to dine and dress down here with me, and I want you
to dine with us and be our escort to the party--that is, if you will
put up with our dressing time and not get into such a state of perfect
amazement as Harry always does when we are not ready at the moment."
"If you ever get a wife, Jim, you'll be made perfect in this science
of waiting," said Harry. "The only way to have a woman ready in season
for a party is to shut her up just after breakfast and keep her at
it straight along through the day. Then you may have her before ten
o'clock."
"You see," said Eva, "Harry's only idea, when he is going to a party,
is to get home again early. We almost never go, and then he is in such
a hurry to get there, so as to have it over with and be at home again."
"Well, I confess, for my part, I hate parties," said Harry. "They
always get agoing just about my usual bed-time."
"Well, Harry, you know Aunt Maria wants an old-fashioned, early party,
at eight o'clock at the latest; and when _she_ says she wants a thing,
she _means_ it. She would never forgive us for being late."
"Dear me, Eva, do begin to dress over night then," said Harry. "You
certainly never will get through to-morrow, if you don't."
"Harry, you sauce-box, I think you talk abominably about me. Just
because I have so many more things to see to than he has! A woman's
dress, of course, takes more time; there's a good deal more to do and
every little thing has to be just right."
"Of course, I know that," said Harry. "Haven't I stood, and stood, and
stood, while bows were tied, and picked out, and patted, and flatted,
and then pulled out and tied over, and when we were half an hour
behind time already?"
"I fancy," said Alice, "that if the secrets of some young gentlemen's
toilets were unveiled, we should see that we were not alone in tying
bows and pulling them out. I've known Tom to labor over his neck-ties
by the hour together; it took him quite as long to prink as any of us
girls."
"But don't you be alarmed, Jim," said Eva; "we intend to be on time."
"No, don't," said Harry; "you can have my writing-table, and get up
your editorials, while the conjuration is going on up-stairs."
"Just think," said Alice, "how Aunt Maria is coming out."
"Why, yes, it's a larger affair than usual," said Eva. "A hundred
invitations! That must be on account of Angie."
"Oh, yes," said Alice, "Aunt Maria is pluming herself on Angie's
engagement. Since she has discovered that Mr. St. John has an
independent fortune, there is no end to her praises and felicitations.
Oh, and she has altered her opinion entirely about his ritualism. The
Bishop, she says, stands by him; and what the Bishop doesn't condemn,
nobody has any right to; and then she sets forth what a good family
he belongs to, and so well connected! I'd like to see anybody say
anything against Mr. St. John's practices before Aunt Maria now!"
"I'm sure this party is quite an outlay for Aunt Maria," said Eva.
"Oh," said Alice, "she's making all her jellies, and blanc-manges,
and ice creams in the house. You know how perfectly she always does
things. I've been up helping her. She will have a splendid table. She
was rather glorifying herself to me that she could get up so fine a
show at so little expense."
"Well, she can," said Eva. "No one can get more for a given amount of
money than Aunt Maria. I suppose that is one of the womanly virtues,
and one can learn as much of it from her as anybody."
"Yes," said Alice, "if a stylish party is the thing to be
demonstrated, Aunt Maria will get one up more successfully, more
perfect in all points, and for less money, than any other woman in New
York. She will have exactly the right people, and exactly the right
things to give them. Her rooms will be lovely. She will be dressed
herself to a T, and she will say just the right thing to everybody.
All her nice silver and her pretty things will come out of their
secret crypts and recesses to do honor to the occasion, and, for one
night, all will be suavity and sociability personified; and then
everything will go back into lavender, the silver to the safe, the
chairs and lounges to their cover, the shades will come down, and her
part of the world's debt of sociability will be done up for the year.
Then she will add up the expense, and set it down in her account book,
and that thing'll be finished and checked off."
"A mode of proceeding which she was very anxious to engraft upon me,"
said Eva; "but I am a poor stock. My instincts are for what she would
call an expensive, chronic state of hospitality, as we live down here!"
"Well," said Jim, "when I get a house of my own, I'm going to do as
you do."
"Jim has got sight of the domestic tea-kettle in the future," said
Harry. "That's the first effect of his promotion."
"Oh, don't be in a hurry about setting up a house of your own," said
Eva. "I'm afraid we should miss you here, and you're an institution,
Jim; we couldn't get on without you."
"Oh, Jim ought not to give up to one what was meant for mankind," said
Alice, hardily. "I think there would be a universal protest against
his retiring to private life."
And Alice looked into the fire, apparently as sweetly unconscious of
anything particular on Jim's part as if she had not read aright the
flash of his eye and the pressure of his hand.
Jim seemed vexed and nervous, and talked extravaganzas all the
evening, with more than even his usual fluency, and towards ten
o'clock said to Alice:
"I am at your command at any time, when you are ready to return home."
"Thank you, Jim," said Alice, with that demure and easy composure
with which young ladies avoid a crisis without seeming to see it. "I
am going to stay here to-night, to discuss some important points of
party costume with Eva; so mind you don't fail us to-morrow night. _Au
revoir!_"
_CHAPTER XLIII._
A MIDNIGHT CAUCUS OVER THE COALS.
"Now, don't you girls sit up and talk all night," said Harry from the
staircase, as he started bedward, after Jim Fellows had departed, and
the house-door was locked for the night.
Now, Eva was one of that class of household birds whose eyes grow
wider awake and brighter as the small hours of the night approach;
and, just this night, she felt herself swelling with a world of that
distinctively feminine talk which women keep for each other, when
the lordly part of creation are out of sight and hearing. Harry, who
worked hard in his office all day and came home tired at night, and
who had the inevitable next day's work ever before him, was always
an advocate for early and regular hours, and regarded these sisterly
night-watches with suspicion.
"You know, now, Eva, that you oughtn't to sit up late. You're not
strong," he preached from the staircase in warning tones, as he slowly
ascended.
"Oh, no, dear; we won't be long. We've just got a few things to talk
over."
"Well, you know you never know what time it is."
"Oh, never you mind, Harry; you'll be asleep in ten minutes. I want to
talk with Ally."
"There, now, he's off," said Eva, gleefully shutting the door and
drawing an easy chair to the remains of the fire, while she disposed
the little unburned brands and ends so as to make a last blaze; then,
leaning back, she began taking out hair-pins and shaking down curls
and untying ribbons, as a sort of preface to a wholly free and easy
conversation. "I think, Ally," she said, with an air of profound
reflection, "if I were you, I should wear my white tarletan to-morrow
night, with cherry-colored trimming, and cherry velvet in your hair.
You see that altering the trimming changes the whole effect, so that
it will look exactly like a new dress."
"I was thinking of doing something with the tarletan," said Alice, who
had also taken out her hair-pins and let down her long dark masses of
hair around her handsome oval face, while her great dark eyes were
studying the coals abstractedly. It was quite evident by the deep
intense gaze she fixed before her that it was not the tarletan or the
trimmings that at that moment occupied her mind, but something deeper.
Eva saw and suspected, and went on designedly:
"How nice and lucky it was that Jim came in just as he did."
"Yes, it was lucky," repeated Alice, abstractedly, taking off her
neck-scarf, and folding and smoothing it with an unnecessary amount of
precision.
"Jim is such a nice fellow," said Eva. "I am thoroughly delighted that
he has got that situation. It is really quite a position for him."
"Yes, Jim is doing very well," said Alice, with a certain uneasy
motion.
"I really think," pursued Eva, "that your friendship has been
everything to Jim. We all notice how much he has improved."
"It's only that we know him better," said Alice. "Jim always was a
nice fellow; but it takes a very intimate acquaintance to get at the
real earnest nature there is under all his nonsense. But after all,
Eva, I'm a little afraid of trouble in that friendship."
[Illustration: A MIDNIGHT CAUCUS.
"_'There, now, he's off,' said Eva, ... then, leaning back, she began
taking out hair-pins and shaking down curls and untying ribbons as a
preface to a wholly free conversation._"--p. 400.]
"Trouble--how?" said Eva, with the most innocent air in the world,
as if she did not feel perfectly sure of what was coming next.
"Well, I do think, and I always have said, that an intimate friendship
between a lady and a gentleman is just the best thing for both
parties."
"Well, isn't it?" said Eva.
"Well, yes. But the difficulty is, it won't stay. It will get to be
something more than you want, and that makes a trouble. Now, did you
notice Jim's manner to me to-night?"
"Well, I _thought_ I saw something rather suspicious," said Eva,
demurely; "but then you always have been so sure that there was
nothing, and was to be nothing, in that quarter."
"Well, I never have meant there should be. I have been perfectly
honorable and above-board with Jim; treated him just like a sister,
and I thought there was the most perfect understanding between us."
"Well, you see, darling," said Eva, "I've sometimes thought whether
it was quite fair to let any one be so very intimate with one, unless
one were willing to take the consequences, in case his feelings should
become deeply involved. Now, we should have thought it a bad thing for
Mr. St. John to go on cultivating an intimate friendship with Angie,
if he never meant to marry. It would be taking from her feelings and
affections that might be given to some one who would make her happy
for life; and I think some women, I don't mean you, of course, but
some women I have seen and heard of, like to absorb all the feeling
and devotion a man has without in the least intending to marry him.
They keep him from being interested in any one else who might make him
a happy home, and won't have him themselves."
"Eva, you are too hard," said Alice.
"Understand me, dear; I said I didn't mean you, for I think your
course has been perfectly honorable and honest so far; but I do think
you have got to a place that needs care. It's my positive belief that
Jim not only loves you, Alice, but that he is _in_ love with you in a
way that will have the most serious effect on his life and character."
"Oh, dear me, that's just what I've been fearing," said Alice, "isn't
it too bad? I really don't think it's my fault. Do you know, Eva, I
came here meaning to go home to-night, and I stayed only because I was
afraid to walk home with Jim. I was sure if I did there would be a
crisis of some kind."
"For my part, Ally," said Eva, "I'm not so very sure that there hasn't
been some advance in your feelings, as well as in Jim's. I don't see
why you should set it down among the impossibles that you should marry
Jim Fellows."
"Oh! well," said Alice, "I like--yes, I really love Jim very much; he
is very agreeable to me, always. I know nobody, on the whole, more so;
but then, Eva, he's not at all the sort of man I have ever thought of
as possible for me to marry. Oh! not at all," and Alice gazed before
her into the coals, as if she saw her hero through them.
"And what sort of a man is this phenix?"
"Oh! something grave, and deep, and high, and heroic."
Eva gave a light, little shrug to her shoulders, and rippled a laugh.
"And when you have got such a man, you will have to ask him to go to
market for beef and cranberry sauce. You will have to get him to match
your worsted, and carry your parcels, and talk over with him about how
to cure the chimney of smoking and make the kitchen range draw. Don't
you think a hero will be a rather cumbersome help in housekeeping?
Besides, your heroes like to sit on pedestals and have you worship
them. Now, for my part, I'd rather have a good kind _man_ that will
worship me.
"'A creature not too bright and good
For human nature's daily food.'
A man like Harry, for instance. Harry isn't a hero; he's a good,
true, noble-hearted boy, though, and I'd rather have him than the
angel Gabriel, if I could choose now. I don't see what's to object
to in Jim, if you like him and love him, as you say. He's handsome;
he's lively and cheerful; he's kind-hearted and obliging; and he's
certainly true and constant in his affections: and now he has a good
position, and one where he can do a good work in the world, and your
influence might help him in it."
"Why, Eva, you seem to be pleading for him like a lawyer," said Alice,
apparently not at all displeased to hear that side of the question
discussed.
"Well, really," said Eva, "I do think it would be a nice thing for us
all if you could like Jim, for he's one of us; we all know him and
like him, and he wouldn't take you away to the ends of the earth; you
might settle right down here, and live near us, and all go on together
cosily. Jim is just the fellow to make a bright, pleasant, hospitable
home; and he's certain to be a devoted husband to whomever he marries."
"Jim ought to be married, certainly," said Alice, in a reflective
tone. "Just the right kind of a marriage would be the making of him."
"Well, look over the girls you know, and see if there's any one that
you would like to have Jim marry."
"I know," said Alice, with a quickened flush of color, "that there
isn't a girl he cares a snap of his finger for."
"There's Jane Stuyvesant."
"Oh, nonsense! don't mention Jane Stuyvesant!"
"Well, she's rich, and brilliant, and very gracious to Jim."
"Well, I happen to know just how much that amounts to. Jim never would
have a serious thought of Jane Stuyvesant--that I'm certain of. She's
a perfectly frivolous girl, and he knows it."
"I've thought sometimes he was quite attentive to one of those
Stephenson girls, at Aunt Maria's."
"What, Sophia Stephenson! You couldn't have got more out of the way.
Why, no! Why, she's nothing but a breathing wax doll; that's all there
is to her. Jim never could care for her."
"Well, what was it about that Miss Du Hare?"
"Oh, nothing at all, except that she was a dashing, flirting young
thing that took a fancy to Jim and invited him to her opera box, and
of course Jim went. The fact is, Jim is good-looking and lively and
gay, and will go a certain way with any nice girl. He likes to have
a jolly, good time; but he has his own thoughts about them all, as I
happen to know. There isn't one of these that he has a serious thought
of."
"Well, then, darling, since nobody else will suit him, and it's for
his soul's health and wealth to be married, I don't see but you ought
to undertake him yourself."
Alice smiled thoughtfully, and twisted her sash into various bows, in
an abstracted manner.