you to enact the fable of the dog in the manger--neither take him
yourself nor let any one else have him."
"Oh, as to that," said Alice, flushing up, "he has my free consent to
take anybody else he wants to; only I know there isn't anybody he does
want."
"Except--" said Eva.
"Well, except present company," said Alice. "I'll tell you, Eva, if
anything could incline me more to such a decision, it's the way Aunt
Maria has talked about Jim to me--setting him down as if he was the
last and most improbable _parti_ I could choose; and as if, of course,
I never could even think of him. I don't see what right she has to
think so, when there are girls a great deal richer and standing higher
in fashionable society than I do that would have Jim in a minute, if
they could get him. Jim is constantly beset with more invitations to
parties and to go into society than he can at all meet, and I know
there are plenty that would be glad enough to take him."
"Oh, but Aunt Maria has moderated a good deal as to Jim, lately," said
Eva. "She told me herself, the other day, that he really was one of
the most gentlemanly, agreeable young fellows she knew of, and said
what a pity it was he hadn't a fortune."
"Oh, that witch of a creature!" said Alice, laughing. "He has been
just amusing himself with getting round Aunt Maria."
"And I dare say," said Eva, "that, if she finds Jim has a really good
position, she might at last come to a state of resignation. I will say
that for Aunt Maria, that after fighting you for a while she comes
round handsomely--when she is certain that fighting is in vain; but
the most amusing thing is to see how she has come down about Mr. St.
John's ritualism. Think of her actually going up there to church last
Sunday, and not saying a word about the candles, or the chantings, or
any of the abominations! She only remarked that she was sure she never
heard a better Gospel sermon than Mr. St. John preached--which was
true enough. Harry and I were so amused we could hardly keep our faces
straight; but we said not a word to remind her of past denunciations."
"The danger of going to Rome is sensibly abated, it appears," said
Alice.
"Oh, yes. I believe Aunt Maria must be cherishing distant visions of a
time when she shall be aunt to Mr. St. John, and set him all straight."
"She'll have her match for once," said Alice, "if she has any such
intentions."
"One thing is a comfort," said Eva. "Aunt Maria has her hands so full,
getting up Angie's trousseau, and buying her sheets and towels and
table-cloths, and tearing all about, up stairs and down, and through
dark alleys, to get everything of the very best at the smallest
expense, that her nervous energies are all used up, and there is
less left to be expended on you and me. A wedding in the family is a
godsend to us all."
The conversation here branched off into an animated discussion of
some points in Angie's wedding-dress, and went on with an increasing
interest till it was interrupted by a dolorous voice from the top of
the entry staircase.
"Girls, have you the least idea what time it is?"
"Why, there's Harry, to be sure," said Eva. "Dear me, Alice, what time
is it?"
"Half-past one! Mercy on us! isn't it a shame?"
"Coming, Harry, coming this minute," called Eva, as the two sisters
began turning down the gas and raking up the fire; then, gathering
together collars, hair-pins, ribbons, sashes and scarfs, they flew
up the stairway, and parted with a suppressed titter of guilty
consciousness.
"It was abominable of us," said Eva; "but I never looked at the
clock."
_CHAPTER XLIV._
FLUCTUATIONS.
Midnight conversations of the sort we have chronicled between Alice
and Eva, do not generally lead to the most quiet kind of sleep. Such
conversations suggest a great deal, and settle nothing; and Alice,
after retiring, lay a long time with her great eyes wide open, looking
into the darkness of futurity, and wondering, as girls of twenty-two
or thereabouts do wonder, what she should do next.
There is no help for it; the fact may as well be confessed at once,
that no care and assiduity in fencing and fortifying the conditions of
a friendship between an attractive young woman and a lively, energetic
young man, will ensure their always remaining simply and purely those
of companionship and good fellowship, and never becoming anything more.
In the case of St. John and Angie, the stalk of friendship had had but
short growth before developing the flower of love; and now, in Alice's
mind and conscience, it was becoming quite a serious and troublesome
question whether a similar result were not impending over her.
The wise man of old said: "He that delicately bringeth up his servant
from a child shall have him for his son at last." The proverb is
significant, as showing the gradual growth of kindly relations into
something more and more kindly, and more absorbing.
So, in the night-watches, Alice mentally reviewed all those looks,
words and actions of Jim's which produced a conviction in her mind
that he was passing beyond the allotted boundaries, and approaching
towards a point in which there would inevitably be a crisis, calling
for a decision on her part which should make him either more or less
than he had been. Her talk with Eva had only set this possibility more
distinctly before her.
Was she, then, willing to give him up entirely, and to shut the door
resolutely on all intimacy tending to keep up and encourage feelings
that could come to no result? When she proposed this to herself,
she was surprised at her own unwillingness to let him go. She could
scarcely fancy herself able to do without his ready friendship,
his bright, agreeable society--without the sense of ownership and
power which she felt in him. Reviewing the matter strictly in the
night-watches, she was obliged to admit to herself that she could
not afford to part with Jim; that there was no woman she could
fancy--certainly none in the circle of her acquaintance--whom she
could be sincerely glad to have him married to; and when she fancied
him absorbed in any one else, there was a dreary sense of loss which
surprised her. Was it possible, she asked herself, that he had become
necessary to her happiness--he whom she never thought of otherwise
than as a pleasant friend, a brother, for whose success and good
fortune she had interested herself?
Well then, was she ready for an engagement? Was the great ultimate
revelation of woman's life--that dark Eleusinian mystery of fate about
which vague conjecture loves to gather, and which the imagination
invests with all sorts of dim possibilities--suddenly to draw its
curtains and disclose to her neither demi-god nor hero, but only the
well-known, every-day features of one with whom she had been walking
side by side for months past--"only Jim and nothing more?"
Alice could not but acknowledge to herself that she knew no man
possible or probable that she liked better; and yet this shadowy,
ideal rival--this cross between saint and hero, this Knight of the
Holy Grail--was as embarrassing to her conclusions as the ghost in
"Hamlet." It was only to be considered that the ideal hero had not
put in an actual appearance. He was nowhere to be found or heard
from; and here was this warm-hearted, helpful, companionable Jim,
with faults as plenty as blackberries, but with dozens of agreeable
qualities to every fault; and the time seemed to be rapidly coming
when she must make up her mind either to take him or leave him, and
she was not ready to do either! No wonder she lay awake, and studied
the squares of the dim window and listened to the hours that struck,
one after another, bringing her no nearer to fixed conclusions than
before! A young lady who sees the time coming when she must make a
decision, and who doesn't want to take either alternative presented,
is certainly to be pitied. Alice felt herself an abused and afflicted
young woman. She murmured at destiny. Why would men fall in love? she
queried. Why wouldn't they remain always devoted, admiring friends,
and get no further? She was having such good times! and why must they
end in a dilemma of this sort? How nice to have a gentleman friend,
all devotion, all observance, all homage, without its involving any
special consequences!
When she came to shape this feeling into words and look at it, she
admitted that it savored of the worst kind of selfishness, and might
lead to trifling with what is most precious and sacred. Alice was a
conscientious, honorable girl, and felt all the force of this. She had
justified herself all along by saying that her intimacy with Jim had
so far been for his good; that he had often expressed to her his sense
that she was leading him to a higher and better life, to more worthy
and honorable aims and purposes: but how if he should claim that this
very ministry had made her necessary to him, and that, if she threw
him off, it would be worse than if she had never known him? Looking
over the history of the last few months, she could not deny to herself
that, as their acquaintance had grown more and more confidential, her
manners possibly had expressed a degree of kindness which might justly
have inspired hopes. Was she not bound to fulfill such hopes if she
could?
These were most uncomfortable inquiries, and she was glad of morning
and a cheerful breakfast-table to dispel them. Things never look so
desperate by daylight, and Alice managed a good breakfast with a
tolerable appetite. Then there was the tarlatan dress to be made over
and rearranged, and Eva's toilette to be put into party order--quite
enough to keep two young women of active fancy and skillful fingers
busy for one day. It was a snowy, unpleasant day, and, as they lived
on an out-of-the-way street, they were secure from callers and took
their work into the parlor so soon as Harry had gone for the day.
The little room soon became a brilliant maelstrom of gauzy stuffs
and bright ribbons, among which the two sat chatting, arranging,
combining, compounding; as of old, one might imagine a pair of
heathen goddesses in the clouds, getting up rainbows. No matter how
solemn and serious we of womankind are in our deepest hearts, or how
philosophically we may look down on the vanity of dress, we must all
confess that a party is a party; and the sensible, economical woman
who does not often go, and does not make a point of having all the
paraphernalia in constant readiness, has to give all the more care
and thought to the exceptional occasion when she does. Even Scripture
recognizes the impossibility of appearing at a feast without the
appropriate garment; and so Eva and Alice cut and fitted and trimmed
and tried experiments in head-dresses and arrangements of hair, and
meanwhile Alice had the comfort of talking over and over to Eva all
the varying shades of the subject that was on her mind.
What woman does not appreciate the blessing of a patient, sympathetic
listener, who will hear with unabated interest the same story repeated
over and over as it rises in one's thoughts? Eva listened complacently
and with the warmest interest to the same things that Alice had said
the night before, and went on repeating to her the same lessons of
matronly wisdom with which she had then enriched her, neither of
them betraying the slightest consciousness that the things they were
saying were not just fresh from the mint--entirely new and hitherto
unconsidered.
Jim's character was discussed, and with that fine, skillful faculty
of analysis and synthesis which forms the distinctive interest of
feminine conversation. In the course of these various efforts of
character portrait-painting, it became quite evident to Eva that Alice
was in just that state in which some people's admitted faults are
more interesting and agreeable than the virtues of some others. When
a woman gets thus far, her final decision is not a matter of doubt to
any far-sighted reader of human nature.
Alice was by nature exact and conscientious as to all rules, forms,
and observances. Her pronunciation, whether of English or French, was
critically perfect; her hand-writing and composition were faultless
to a comma. She was an enthusiastic and thorough maintainer of all
the boundaries and forms of good society and of churchly devotion.
Jim, without being in any sense really immoral or wicked, was a sort
of privileged Arab, careering in and out through the boundaries of
all departments, shocking respectable old prejudices and fluttering
reverential usages, talking slang and making light of dignitaries with
a free and easy handling that was alarming.
But it is a fact that very correct people, who would not violate in
their own persons one of the _convenances_, are often exceedingly
amused and experience a peculiar pleasure in seeing them tossed hither
and thither by somebody else. Nothing is so tiresome as perfect
correctness, and we all know that everything that amuses us and makes
us laugh lies outside of it; and Alice, if the truth were to be told,
liked Jim all the better for the very things in which he was most
unlike herself. Well, such being the state of the garrison on the one
side, what was the position of the attacking party?
Jim had gone home discontented at not having a private interview with
Alice, but more and more resolved, with every revolving hour since
the accession of good fortune which had given him a settled position,
that he would have a home of his own forthwith, and that the queen of
that home should be Alice Van Arsdel. She must not, she could not,
she would not say him Nay; and if she did, he wouldn't take No for
an answer. He would have her, if he had to serve for her as long as
Jacob did for Rachel. But when Jim remembered how many times he had
persuaded Alice to his own way, how many favors she had granted him,
he was certain that it was not in her to refuse. He had looked with
new interest at the advertisements of houses to let, and the furniture
stores for the last few days had worn a new and suggestive aspect.
He had commenced transactions with regard to parlor furniture, and
actually bought a pair of antique brass andirons, which he was sure
would be just the thing for their fireside. Then he had bought an
engagement ring, which lay snugly ensconced in its satin case in a
corner of his vest pocket, and he was inly resolved that he would
make to himself a chance to lodge it on the proper finger in the next
twenty-four hours. How he was to get an interview did not yet appear;
but he trusted to Providence. It is a fact on record, that before the
twenty-four hours were up the deed was done, and Jim and Alice were
engaged; but it came about in a way far different from any foreseen by
any party, as we shall proceed to show.
_CHAPTER XLV._
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.
It wanted yet twenty minutes to eight o'clock, and Jim was sitting
alone in the glow of the evening fireside. The warm, red light,
flickering and shadowing, made the room seem like a mysterious grotto.
Jim, in best party trim, sat gazing dreamily into the fire, turning
the magic ring now and then in his vest pocket, and looking at his
watch at intervals, while the mysterious rites of the toilet were
going on upstairs.
Alice had never made a more elaborate or more careful toilet. Did
she want to precipitate that which she said to herself she dreaded?
Certainly she did not spare one possible attraction. She evidently
saw no reason, under present circumstances, why she should not make
herself look as well as she could.
As the result of the whole day's agitations and discussions, she had
come to the conclusion that if Jim had anything to say she would
listen to it advisedly, and take it into mature consideration. So she
braided her long, dark hair, and crowned herself therewith, and then
earrings and brooches came twinkling out here and there like stars,
and bits of ribbon and velvet fluttered hither and thither, and fell
into wonderfully apposite places, and the woman grew and brightened
before the glass, as a picture under the hands of the artist.
It wanted yet a quarter of an hour of the time for the carriage,
when there came a light fluff of gauzy garments, and the two party
goddesses floated in in all misty splendor, and seemed to fill the
whole room with the flutter of dresses.
Alice was radiant; her eyes were never more brilliant, and she
was full of that subtle brightness which comes from the tremor of
fully-awakened feeling. She was gayer than was her usual wont as she
swept about the room and courteseyed with much solemnity to Jim, and
turned herself round and round after the manner of a revolving figure
in the shop windows.
Suddenly--and none of them knew how--there was a quick flash; the
gauzy robe had swept into the fire, and, before any of them could
speak, the dress was in flames. There was a scream, an utterance of
agony from all parties at once, and Eva was just doing the most fatal
thing possible in rushing desperately towards her sister, when Jim
came between them, caught the woolen cloth from the table, and wrapped
it around Alice; then, taking her in his arms, he laid her on the
sofa, and crushed out the fire, beating it with his hands, and tearing
the burning fragments away and casting them under foot. It all passed
in one fearful, awe-struck moment, while Eva stood still, with the
very shadow of death upon her, and saw Jim fighting back the fire,
which in a moment or two was entirely extinguished. Alice had fainted,
and Jim and Eva looked at each other as people do who have just seen
death rising up between them.
"She is safe now," said Jim, as he stood there, pale as death and
quivering from head to foot, while the floor around was strewed with
the blackened remains of the gauzy material which he had torn away.
"She is all right," he added; "the cloth has saved her throat and
lungs."
It seemed now the most natural thing in the world that Jim should lay
Alice's head upon his arm and administer restoratives; and, when she
opened her eyes, that he should call her his darling, his life, his
love. They had been in the awful valley of the shadow together--that
valley where all that is false perishes and drops off, and what is
true becomes the only reality. Alice felt that she loved Jim--that she
belonged to him, and she did not dispute his right to speak as he did,
and to care for her as one had a right to care for his own.
"Well," said Eva, drawing a long breath, when the bell rang and the
carriage was announced, "we cannot go to the party, that is certain;
and, Jim, tell him to go for Doctor Campbell. Mary, bring down a
wrapper; we'll slip it over your torn finery, Alice, for the present,"
said Eva, endeavoring to be practical and self-possessed, though with
a little hysterical sob every now and then betraying the shock to her
nerves. "Then there must be a note sent to Aunt Maria, or what will
she think?" pursued Eva, when Alice had been made comfortable on the
sofa, where Jim was devoting himself to her.
"Don't, pray, tell all about it," said Alice. "One doesn't want to
become the talk of all New York."
"I'll tell her that you have met with an accident that will detain you
and me, but that you are not dangerous," said Eva, as she wrote her
note and sent Mary up with it.
It was not until tranquillity had somewhat settled down on the party
that Jim began to feel that his own hands were blistered; for, though
a man under strong excitement may handle fire for a while and not feel
it, yet nature keeps account and brings in her bill in due season.
"Why, Jim, you brave fellow," said Alice, suddenly raising herself, as
she saw an expression of pain on his face, "here I am thinking only of
myself, and you are suffering."
"Oh, nothing; nothing at all," said Jim; but Eva and Alice, now
thoroughly aroused, were shocked at the state of his hands.
"The doctor will have you to attend to first," said Alice. "You have
saved me by sacrificing yourself."
"Thank God for that!" said Jim, fervently.
Well, the upshot of the story is that Eva would not hear of Jim's
leaving them that night. Doctor Campbell pronounced that the burns on
his hands needed serious attention, and the prospect was that he would
be obliged to rest from using them for a day or two.
But these two or three days of hospital care were not on the whole the
worst of Jim's life, for Alice insisted on being his amanuensis, and
writing his editorials for him, and, as she wrote with the engagement
ring sparkling on her finger, Jim thought that he had never seen it
appear to so great advantage. It was said that Jim's editorials, that
week, had a peculiar vigor and pungency. We should not at all wonder,
under the circumstances, if that were the case.
_CHAPTER XLVI._
WHAT THEY ALL SAID ABOUT IT.
And so Jim Fellows and Alice Van Arsdel were engaged at last. The
reader who has cared to follow the workings of that young lady's mind
has doubtless seen from the first that she was on the straight highway
to such a result.
Intimate friendship--what the French call "_camaraderie_"--is, in
fact, the healthiest and the best commencement of the love that is
needed in married life; because it is more like what the staple of
married life must at last come to. It gives opportunity for the
knowledge of all those minor phases of character under which a married
couple must at last see each other.
Alice and Jim had been side by side in many an every-day undress
rehearsal. They had laughed and frolicked together like two children;
they had known each other's secrets; they had had their little miffs
and tiffs, and had gotten over them; but, through all, there had been
a steady increase on Jim's part of that deeper feeling which makes
a woman the ideal guide and governor and the external conscience of
life. But his habit of jesting, and of talking along the line of his
most serious feelings in language running between joke and earnest,
had prevented the pathos and the power of what was really deepest in
him from making itself felt. There wanted something to call forth the
expression of the deep manly feeling that lay at the bottom of his
heart. There wanted, on her part, something to change friendship to a
warmer feeling. Those few dreadful moments, when they stood under the
cloud of a sudden and frightful danger, did more to reveal to them how
much they were to each other than years of ordinary acquaintance. It
was as if they had crossed the river of death together, and saw each
other in their higher natures. Do we not all remember how suffering
and danger will bring out in well-known faces a deep and spiritual
expression never there before? It was a marked change in the faces of
our boys who went to the recent war. Looking in a photograph book, one
sees first the smooth lines of a boyish face indicating nothing more
than a boy's experience, but, as he turns the following pages, he sees
the same face, after suffering and danger and death have called up the
strength of the inner man, and imparted a higher and more spiritual
expression to the countenance.
The sudden nearness into which they had come to the ever possible
tragedy that underlies human life, had given a deep and solemn
tenderness to their affection. It was a baptism into the love which is
stronger than death. Alice felt her whole heart going out, without a
fear or a doubt, in return for the true love that she felt was ready
to die for her.
Those few first days that they spent mostly in each other's society,
were full of the real, deep, enthusiastic tenderness of that
understanding of each other which had suddenly arisen between them.
So, to her confidential female correspondent--the one who had always
held her promise to be the first recipient of the news of her
engagement--she wrote as follows: