I MEET A VISION.
"I say, Hal, do you want to get acquainted with any of the P. G.'s here
in New York? If you do, I can put you on the track."
"P. G.'s?" said I, innocently.
"Yes; you know that's what Plato calls pretty girls. I don't believe you
remember your Greek. I'm going out this evening where there's a lot of
'em--splendid house on Fifth avenue--lots of tin--girls gracious. Don't
know which of 'em I shall take yet. Don't you want to go with me and
see?"
Jim stood at the looking-glass brushing his hair and arranging his
necktie.
"Jim Fellows, you are a coxcomb," said I.
"I don't know why I shouldn't be," said he. "The girls fairly throw
themselves at one's head. They are up to all that sort of thing.
Besides, I'm on the lookout for my fortune, and it all comes in the way
of business. Come, now, don't sit there writing all the evening. Come
out, and let me show you New York by gaslight."
"No," said I; "I've got to finish up this article for the _Milky Way_.
The fact is, a fellow must be industrious to make anything, and my time
for seeing girls isn't come yet. I must have something to support a wife
on before I look round in that direction."
"The idea, Harry, of a good-looking fellow like you, not making the most
of his advantages! Why, there are nice girls in this city that could
help you up faster than all the writing you can do these ten years. And
you sitting, moiling and toiling, when you ought to be making some
lovely woman happy!"
"I shall never marry for money, Jim, you may depend upon that."
"Bah, bah, black sheep," said Jim. "Who is talking about marrying for
money? A fine girl is none the worse for fifty thousand dollars, and I
can give you a list of twenty that you can go round among until you fall
in love, and not come amiss anywhere, if it's falling in love that you
want to do."
"Oh, come, Jim," said I, "do finish your toilet and be off with yourself
if you are going. I don't blame a _woman_ who marries for money, since
the whole world has always agreed to shut her out of any other way of
gaining an independence. But for a man, with every other avenue open to
him, to mouse about for a rich wife, I think is too dastardly for
anything."
"That would make a fine point for a paragraph," said Jim, turning round
to me, with perfect good humor. "So I advise you to save it for the
moral part of the paper. You see, if you waste too much of that sort of
thing on me, your mill may run low. It's a deuced hard thing to keep the
moral agoing the whole year, you'll find."
"Well," said I, "I am going to try to make a home for a wife, by good,
thorough work, done just as work ought to be done; and I have no time to
waste on society in the meanwhile."
"And when you are ready for her," said Jim, "I suppose you expect to
receive her per 'Divine Providence' Express, ticketed and labeled, and
expenses paid. Or, may be she'll be brought to you some time by genii,
as the Princess of China was brought to the Prince of Tartary, when he
was asleep. I used to read about that in the Arabian tales."
I give this little passage of my conversation with Jim, because it is a
pretty good illustration of the axiom, that "It is not in man that
walketh to direct his steps." When we have announced any settled purpose
or sublime intention, in regard to our future course of life, it seems
to be the delight of fortune to throw us directly into circumstances in
which we shall be tempted to do what we have just declared we never will
do, and the fortunes of our lives turn upon the most inconsiderable
hinges.
Mine turned upon an umbrella.
The next morning I had business in the very lowermost part of the city,
and started off without my umbrella; but being weather-wise, and
discerning the face of the sky, I went back to my room and took it. It
was one of those little pet objects of _vertu_, to which a bachelor
sometimes treats himself in lieu of domestic luxuries. It had a
finely-carved handle, which I bought in Dieppe, and which caused it to
be peculiar among all the umbrellas in New York.
It was one of those uncertain, capricious days that mark the coming in
of April, when Nature, like a nervous beauty, doesn't seem to know her
own mind, and laughs one moment and cries the next with a perplexing
uncertainty.
The first part of the morning the amiable and smiling predominated, and
I began to regret that I had encumbered myself with the troublesome
precaution of an umbrella while tramping around down town. In this mood
of mind I sat at Fulton Ferry waiting the starting of the Bleecker
street car, when suddenly the scene was enlivened to my view by the
entrance of a young lady, who happened to seat herself exactly opposite
to me.
Now, as a writer, an observer of life and manners, I had often made
quiet studies of the fair flowers of modern New York society as I rode
up and down in the cars. In no other country in the world, perhaps, has
a man the opportunity of being _vis-à-vis_ with the best and most
cultured class of young women in the public conveyances. In England,
this class are veiled and secluded from gaze by all the ordinances and
arrangements of society. They go out only in their own carriage; they
travel in reserved compartments of the railway carriages; they pass from
these to reserved apartments in the hotels, where they are served apart
in family privacy as much as in their own dwellings. So that the
stranger traveling in the country, unless he have introductions to the
personal hospitality of these circles, has almost no way of forming any
opinion even as to the external appearance of its younger women. In
France, a still stricter _régime_ watches over the young, unmarried
girl, who is kept in the shade of an almost conventual seclusion till
marriage opens the doors of her prison. The young American girl,
however, of the better and of the best classes, is to be met and
observed everywhere. She moves through life with the assured step of a
princess, too certain of her position and familiar with her power even
to dream of a fear. She looks on her surroundings from above with the
eye of a mistress, and expects, of course, to see all things give way
before her, as in our republican society they generally do.
During the few months I had spent in New York I had diligently kept out
of society. The permitted silent acquaintance with my fair countrywomen
which I gained while riding up and down the street conveyances, became,
therefore, a favorite and harmless source of amusement. Not an item in
the study escaped me, not a feather in that rustling and wonderful
plumage of fashion that bore them up, was unnoted. I mused on styles,
and characteristics, and silently wove in my own mind histories to
correspond with the various physiognomies I studied. Let not the reader
imagine me staring point blank, with my mouth open, at all I met. The
art of noting without appealing to note, of seeing without seeming to
see, was one that I cultivated with assiduity.
Therefore, without any impertinent scrutiny, satisfied myself of the
fact that a feminine presence of an unusual kind and quality was
opposite to me. It was, at first glance, one of the New York princesses
of the blood, accustomed to treading on clouds and breathing incense.
There was a quiet _savoir faire_ and self-possession as she sat down on
her seat, as if it were a throne; and there was a species of repressed
vitality and decision in all her little involuntary movements that
interested me as live things always do interest, in proportion to their
quantum of life. We all are familiar with the fact that there are some
people, who, let them sit still as they may, and conduct themselves
never so quietly, nevertheless impress their personality on those around
them, and make their presence felt. An attraction of this sort drew my
eyes toward my neighbor. She was a young lady of medium height, slender
and elastic figure, features less regularly beautiful than piquant and
expressive. I remarked a pair of fine dark eyes the more from the
contrast with a golden crêpe of hair. The combination of dark eyes and
lashes with fair hair, always produces effect of a striking character.
She was attired as became a Fifth Avenue princess, who has the world of
fashion at her feet,--yet, to my thinking, as one who had chosen and
adapted her material with an eye of taste. A delicate cashmere was
folded carelessly round her shoulders, and her little hands were gloved
with a careful nicety of fit; and dangling from one finger was a toy
purse of gold and pearl, in which she began searching for the change to
pay her fare. I saw, too, as she investigated, an expression of
perplexity, slightly tinged with the ludicrous, upon her face. I
perceived at a glance the matter. She was surveying a ten-dollar note
with a glance of amused vexation, and vainly turning over her little
purse for the smaller change or tickets available in the situation. I
leaned forward and offered, as gentlemen generally do, to take her fare
and pass it forward. With a smile of apology she handed me the bill, and
showed the little empty purse. "Allow me to arrange it," I said. She
smiled and blushed. I passed up the ticket necessary for the occasion,
returned her bill, bowed, and immediately looked another way with
sedulous care.
It requires an extra amount of discretion and delicacy to make it
tolerable to a true lady to become in the smallest degree indebted to a
gentleman who is a stranger. I was aware that my fair _vis-à-vis_ was
inwardly disturbed at having inadvertently been obliged to accept from
me even so small an obligation as a fare ticket; but as matters were,
there was no help for it. On the whole, though I was sorry for her, I
could not but regard the incident as a species of good luck for myself.
We rode along--perhaps each of us conscious at times of being
attentively considered by the other, until the cars turned up Park Row
before the Astor House; she signalled the conductor to stop, and got
out. Here it was that the beneficent intentions of the fates, in causing
me to bring my umbrella, were made manifest.
[Illustration: _THE UMBRELLA._
"_Before a very elegant house in Fifth Avenue my unknown alighted, and
the rain still continuing, there was an excuse for my still attending
her up the steps._"]
Just as the car started again, came one of those sudden gushes of rain
with which perverse April delights to ruffle and discompose unwary
passengers. It was less a decent, decorous shower, than a dash of water
by the bucketful. Immediately I jumped out and stepped to the side of my
gentle neighbor, begging her to allow me to hold my umbrella over her,
and see her in safety across Broadway. She meant to have stopped at one
or two places, she said, but it rained so she would thank me to put her
into a Fifth Avenue stage. So we went together, threading our way
through rushing and trampling carriages, horses, and cars,--a driving
storm above, below, and around, which seemed to throw my fair princess
entirely upon my protection for a few moments, till I had her safe in
the up-town omnibus. As it was my route, also, I, too, entered, and by
this time feeling a sort of privilege of acquaintance, arranged the fare
for her, and again received a courteous and apologetic acknowledgment.
Before a very elegant house in Fifth Avenue my unknown alighted, and the
rain still continuing, there was an excuse for my attending her up the
steps, and ringing the door-bell for her.
We were kept waiting in this position several minutes, when she very
gracefully expressed her thanks for my kindness, and begged that I would
walk in.
Surprised and pleased, I excused myself on plea of engagements, but
presented her with my card, and said I would do myself the pleasure of
calling at another time.
With a little laugh and blush she handed me a card from the tiny pearl
and gold case, on which was engraved "Eva Van Arsdel," and in the
corner, "_Wednesdays_."
"We receive on Wednesdays, Mr. Henderson," she said, "and mamma will be
so happy to make your acquaintance."
Here the door opened, and my fairy princess vanished from view, with a
parting vision of a blush, smile, and bow, and I was left outside with
the rain and the mud and the dull, commonplace grind of my daily work.
The house, as I noted it, was palatial in its aspect. Clear, large
windows, which seemed a single sheet of crystal, gave a view of banks of
flowering hyacinths, daffodils, crocuses, and roses, curtained in by
misty falls of lace drapery. Evidently it was one of those Circean
regions of retreat, where the lovely daughters of fashionable wealth in
New York keep guard over an eternal lotus-eater's paradise; where they
tread on enchanted carpets, move to the sound of music, and live among
flowers and odors a life of blissful ignorance of toil or care.
"To what purpose," I thought to myself, "should I call there, or pursue
the vision into its own regions? Æneas might as well try to follow Venus
to the scented regions above Idalia, where her hundred altars forever
burn, and her flowers never die."
But yet I was no wiser and no older than other men at three-and-twenty,
and the little card which I had placed in my vest pocket seemed to
diffuse an agreeable, electric warmth, which constantly reminded me of
its presence there. I took it out and looked at it. I spelled the name
over, and dwelt on every letter. There was so much positive _character_
in the little lady,--such a sort of spicy, racy individuality, that the
little I had seen of her was like reading the first page of an
enchanting romance, and I could not repress a curiosity to go on with
it. To-day was Monday; the reception day was Wednesday. Should I go?
Prudence said, "No; you are a young man with your way to make; you are
self-dependent; you are poor; you have no time to spend in helping rich
idle people to hunt butterflies, and string rose-leaves, and make
dandelion-chains. If you set your foot over one of those enchanted
thresholds, where wealth and idleness rule together, you will be
bewildered, enervated, and spoiled for any really high or severe
task-work; you will become an idler, a dangler; the power of sustained
labor and self-denial will depart from you, and you will run like a
breathless lackey after the chariot of wealth and fashion."
On the other hand, as the little bit of enchanted pasteboard gently
burned in my vest pocket, it said:
"Why should you be rude? It is incumbent on you as a gentleman to
respond to the invitation so frankly given. Besides, the writer who
aspires to influence society must know society; and how can one know
society unless one studies it? A hermit in his cell is no judge of what
is going on in the world. Besides, he does not overcome the world who
runs away from it, but he who meets it bravely. It is the part of a
coward to be afraid of meeting wealth and luxury and indolence on their
own grounds. He really conquers who can keep awake, walking straight
through the enchanted ground; not he who makes a detour to get round
it."
All which I had arrayed in good set terms as I rode back to my room, and
went up to Bolton to look up in his library the authorities for an
article I was getting out on the Domestic Life of the Ancient Greeks.
Bolton had succeeded in making me feel so thoroughly at home in his
library that it was to all intents and purposes as if it were my own.
As I was tumbling over the books that filled every corner, there fell
out from a little niche a photograph, or rather ambrotype, such as were
in use in the infancy of the art. It fell directly into my hand, so that
taking it up it was impossible not to perceive what it was, and I
recognized in an instant the person. It was the head of my cousin
Caroline, not as I knew her now, but as I remembered her years ago, when
she and I went to the Academy together.
It is almost an involuntary thing, on such occasions, to exclaim, "Who
is this?" But Bolton was so very reticent a being that I found it
extremely difficult to ask him a personal question. There are
individuals who unite a great winning and sympathetic faculty with great
reticence. They make _you_ talk, they win your confidence, they are
interested in you, but they ask nothing from you, and they tell you
nothing. Bolton was all the while doing obliging things for me and for
Jim, but he asked nothing from us; and while we felt safe in saying
anything in the world before him, and while we never felt at the moment
that conversation flagged, or that there was any deficiency in sympathy
and good fellowship on his part, yet upon reflection we could never
recall anything which let us into the interior of his own life-history.
The finding of this little memento impressed me, therefore, oddly,--as
if a door had suddenly been opened into a private cabinet where I had no
right to look, or an open letter which I had no right to read had been
inadvertently put into my hands. I looked round on Bolton, as he sat
quietly bending over a book that he was consulting, with his pen in hand
and his cat at his elbow; but the question I longed to ask stuck fast in
my throat, and I silently put back the picture in its place, keeping the
incident to ponder in my heart. What with the one pertaining to myself,
and with the thoughts suggested by this, I found myself in a disturbed
state that I determined to resist by setting myself a definite task of
so many pages of my article.
In the evening, when Jim came in, I recounted my adventure and showed
him the card.
He surveyed it with a prolonged whistle. "Good now!" he said; "the
ticket sent by the Providence Express. I see--"
"Who are these Van Arsdels, Jim?"
"Upper tens," said Jim, decisively. "Not the oldest Tens, but the second
batch. Not the old Knickerbocker Vanderhoof, and Vanderhyde, and
Vanderhorn set that Washy Irving tells about,--but the modern nobs. Old
Van Arsdel does a smashing importing business--is worth his
millions--has five girls, all handsome--two out--two more to come out,
and one strong-minded sister who has retired from the world, and isn't
seen out anywhere. The one you saw was Eva; they say she's to marry Wat
Sydney,--the greatest match there is going in New York. How do you
say--shall you go, Wednesday?"
"Do you know them?"
"Oh, yes. Alice Van Arsdel is a splendid girl, and we are good friends,
and I look in on them sometimes just to give them the light of my
countenance. They are always after me to lead the German in their
parties; but I've given that up. Hang it all! it's too steep on a fellow
that has to work all day, with no let up, to be kept dancing till
daylight with those girls. It don't pay!"
"I should think not," said I.
"You see," pursued Jim, "these girls have nothing under heaven to do,
and when they've danced all night, _they_ go to bed and sleep till
eleven or twelve o'clock the next day and get their rest; while we
fellows have to be up and in our offices at eight o'clock next morning.
The fact is, it may do for once or twice, but it knocks a fellow up
pretty fast. It's a bad thing for the fellows; they get to taking wine
and brandy and one thing or another to keep up, and the Devil only knows
what comes of it."
"And are these Van Arsdels in that frivolous set?" said I.
"Well, you see they are not really frivolous, either; they are nice
girls, well educated, graduated at the Universal Thingumbob College,
where they teach girls everything that ever has been heard of, before
they are seventeen. And then they have lived in Paris, and lived in
Germany, and lived in Italy, and picked up all the languages; so that
when they have anything to say they have a choice of four languages to
say it in."
"And have they anything to say worth hearing in any of the four?" said
I.
"Well, yes, now, honor bright. There's Alice Van Arsdel: she's ambitious
as the devil, but, after all, a good, warm-hearted girl under it--and
smart! there's no doubt of that."
"And _this_ lady?" said I, fingering the card.
"Eva? Well, she's had a great run; she's killing, as they say, and she's
pretty--no denying that; and, really, there's a good deal to her,--like
the sponge cake at the bottom of the trifle, you know, with a good smart
flavor of wine and spice."
"And she's engaged to--whom did you say?"
"Wat Sydney."
"And what sort of a man is he?"
"What sort? why, he's a _rich_ man; owns all sorts of things,--gold
mines in California, and copper mines in Lake Superior, and salt works,
and railroads. In fact, the thing is to say what he doesn't own. Immense
head for business,--regular steel-trap to deal with,--has the snap of a
pike."
"Pleasing prospect for a domestic companion," said I.
"Oh, as to that, I believe Wat is good-hearted enough to his own folks.
They say he is very devoted to his old mother and a parcel of old maid
aunts, and as he's rich, it's thought a great virtue. Nobody sings _my_
praises, I notice, because I mind my mammy and Aunt Sarah. You see it
takes a million-power solar microscope to bring out fellows' virtues."
"Is the gentleman handsome?"
"Well, if he was poor, nobody would think much of his looks. If he had,
say, a hundred thousand or two, he would be called fair to middling in
looks. As it is, the girls rave about him. He's been after Eva now for
six months, and the other girls are ready to tear her eyes out. But the
engagement hasn't come out yet. I think she's making up her mind to
him."
"Not in love, then?"
"Well, she's been queen so long she's _blasée_ and difficult, and likes
to play with her fish before she lands him. But of course she _must_
have him. Girls like that must have money to keep 'em up; that's the
first requisite. I tell you the purple and fine linen of these
princesses come to something. Now, as _rich_ men go, she'd find ten
worse than Wat where there's one better. Then she's been out three
seasons. There's Alice just come out, and Alice is a stunner, and takes
tremendously! And then there's Angeline, a handsome, spicy little witch,
smarter than either, that is just fluttering, and scratching, and
tearing her hair with impatience to have her turn. And behind Angeline
there's Marie--she's got a confounded pair of eyes. So you see there's
no help for it; Miss Eva _must_ abdicate and make room for the next
comer."
"Well," said I, "about this reception?"
"Oh! go, by all means," said Jim. "It will be fun. I'll go with you. You
see it's Lent now, thank the stars! and so there's no dancing,--only
quiet evenings and lobster salad; because, you see, we're all repenting
of our sins and getting ready to go at it again after Easter. A fellow
now can go to receptions, and get away in time to have a night's rest,
and the girls now and then talk a little sense between whiles. They
_can_ talk sense when they like, though one wouldn't believe it of 'em.
Well, take care of yourself, my son, and I'll take you round there on
Wednesday evening." And Jim went whistling down the stairs, leaving me
to finish my article on the Domestic Manners of the Greeks.
I remember that very frequently that evening, while stopping to consider
how I should begin the next sentence, I unconsciously embellished the
margin of my manuscript by writing "Eva, Eva, Eva Van Arsdel" in an
absent-minded, mechanical way. In fact, from that time, that name began
often to obtrude itself on every bit of paper when I tried my pen.
The question of going to the Wednesday evening reception was settled in
the affirmative. What was to hinder my taking a look at fairy land in a
purely philosophical spirit? Nothing, certainly. If she were engaged she
was nothing to me,--never would be. So, clearly there was no danger.