AUNT MARIA.
Aunt Maria came into the parlor where Eva and Alice were chatting over
their embroidery. A glance showed that she had been occupied in that
sensible and time-honored method of keeping up the social virtues, which
is called making calls. She was all plumed and rustling in flowers and
laces, and had on her calling manners. She had evidently been smiling
and bowing and inquiring after people's health, and saying pretty and
obliging things, till the very soul within her was quite dried up and
exhausted. For it must be admitted that to be obliged to remember and
inquire for every uncle, aunt and grandmother, every baby, and young
master and miss in a circle of one's three hundred particular friends,
is an exercise of Christian benevolence very fatiguing. Aunt Maria,
however, always went through with it with exhaustive thoroughness, so
that everybody said, What a kind-hearted, pleasant woman that Mrs.
Wouverman is.
"Well, there!" she said, throwing herself into an arm-chair, "I've
nearly cleared my list, thank heaven! I think Lent is a grand good
season to get these matters off your mind. You know Mr. Selwyn said last
Sunday, that it was the time to bring ourselves up to the disagreeable
duties."
"How many have you made, aunty?" said Eva.
"Just three dozen, my dear. You see I chose a nice day when a good many
are sure to be out. That shortens matters a good deal. Well, girls, I've
been to the Elmore's. You ought to see what a state they are in! In all
my experience I never saw people so perfectly tipped over, and beside
themselves with delight. I'm sure if I were they I wouldn't show it
quite so plain."
"I suppose," said Alice, "they are quite benignant and patronizing to us
now."
"Patronizing! Well, I wish you could have seen Poll Elmore and her airs!
You would have thought her a duchess from the Faubourg St. Germain, and
no less! She was so very sweet and engaging! Dear me, she patronized me
within an inch of my life; and 'How are your dear girls?' she said. 'All
the world is expecting to hear some news of Miss Eva, _should_ we soon
have an opportunity of returning congratulations?'"
"Oh, pshaw! aunt," said Eva uneasily, "what did you say?"
"Oh! I told her that Eva was in no hurry, that she was very reticent of
her private affairs, and did not think it in good taste to proclaim
them. 'Ah, then, there really is something in it,' said she. I was
telling my girls perhaps after all it is mere report; people say so many
things. 'The thing was reported about Maria,' she said, 'long before
there was any truth in it'; and then she went on to tell me how much
Maria had been admired, and how many offers she had rejected, and among
other things she said that Mr. Sidney had been at her disposal,--only
she couldn't fancy him. 'You know,' she said with a sentimental air,
that 'the _heart_ is all in such cases.'"
"How perfectly absurd of her," said Eva.
"I know," said Alice eagerly, "that Wat Sidney doesn't like Maria
Elmore. She was perfectly wild after him, and used to behave so that it
really disgusted him."
"Oh, well," said Eva, "all these things are excessively disagreeable to
me; it seems to me where such matters are handled and talked about and
bandied about, they become like shop-worn goods, utterly disgusting. Who
wants every fool and fop and every gossip who has nothing better to do
talking over what ought to be the most private and delicate affairs of
one's own heart!"
"Well, dear, you can't help it in society. Why, every person where I
have called inquired about your engagement to Wat Sidney. You see you
_can't_ keep a thing of this sort private. Of course you can't. You are
in the world, and the world will have you do as others do. Of course I
didn't announce it, because I have no authority; but the thing is just
as much _out_ as if I had. There was old Mrs. Ellis, dear old soul, said
to me, 'Give my love to dear Eva, and tell her I hope she'll be happy. I
suppose,' she added, 'I may send congratulations, though it isn't
announced.' Oh, said I, Eva doesn't like to have matters of this sort
talked about."
"But aunty," said Eva, who had been coloring with vexation, "this is all
gratuitous--you are all engaging and marrying me in spite of my screams
as appears. I am not engaged to Mr. Sidney, and never expect to be; he
is gone off on a long Southern tour, and I hope out of sight will be out
of mind, and people will stop talking."
"But my dear Eva, really now you ought not to treat a nice man like him
in that way."
"Treat him in what way?" said Eva.
"Why, keep him along in this undecided manner without giving him a
definite answer."
"He might have had a definite answer any time in the last three months
if he had asked for it. It isn't my business to speak till I'm spoken
to."
"You don't mean, Eva, that he has gone off without saying anything
definite--bringing matters to a point."
"I do mean just that, Aunty, and what's more I'm glad he's gone, and I
hope before he comes back he'll see somebody that he likes better, and
then it'll be all off; and, Aunty, if any one speaks to you about it
you'll oblige me by saying decidedly there is nothing in it."
"Well, I shan't say there never has been anything in it. I shall say you
refused him."
"And why so? I am not anxious to have the credit of it, and besides I
think it is indelicate when a man has paid a lady the highest possible
compliment he can pay, to make a public parade of it. Its sufficient to
say there is nothing in it and never will be; its nobody's business how
it happened."
"Oh, come Eva, don't say there never will be anything in it. That is a
subject on which girls are licensed to change their minds."
"For my part," said Alice, "I only wish it were I. I'd have him in a
minute. Aunty, _did_ you see that nobby phæton he was driving the last
day he was on the park; those horses, and that white fur lap-robe, with
the long pluffy hair like silver? I must say, Eva, I think you are a
little goose."
"I've no objection to the park phæton, or horses or lap-robe; but it
isn't those I'm to marry, you see."
"But Eva," said Aunt Maria, "if you wouldn't fancy such a match as Wat
Sidney, who would you? he is a man of correct and temperate habits, and
that's more than you can say of half the men."
"But a woman doesn't necessarily want to make her most intimate and
personal friend of a man merely because he doesn't drink," said Eva.
"But he's good looking."
"So they say, but not to me, not my style. In short, aunty, _I don't
love him_, and never should; and if I were tied too close to him might
end by hating him. As it is, he and I are the best friends possible. I
hope we always shall stay so."
"Well, I should like to know whoever will suit you Eva," said Aunt
Maria.
"Oh, he will come along, Aunty, never fear! I shall know him when I see
him, and I dare say everybody will wonder what in the world possessed
me, but _I_ shall be content. I know exactly what I want, I'm like the
old party in the Ancient Mariner. I shall know when I see him 'the man
that must have me,' and then I shall 'hold him with my glittering eye.'"
"Well, Eva, you must remember one thing. There are not many men able to
keep you in the way you always have lived."
"Then, when the right one comes I shall live as he is able to keep me."
"Go to housekeeping in three rooms, perhaps. You look like it."
"Yes; and do my own cooking. I'm rather fond of cooking; I have decided
genius that way too. Ask Jane down in the kitchen if I don't make
splendid fritters. The fact is, Aunty, I have so much superfluous
activity and energy that I should be quite thrown away on a rich man. A
poor country rector, very devout, with dark eyes like Longfellow's
Kavanah is rather my ideal. I would get up his surplices myself, and
make him such lovely frontals and altar cloths! Why doesn't somebody of
that sort come after me? I'm quite impatient to have a sphere and show
what I can do."
"Well," said Alice, "you don't catch me marrying a poor man. Not I. No
home missionaries, nor poor rectors, nor distressed artists need apply
at this office."
"Now, girls," said Aunt Maria, "let me tell you it's all very pretty at
your turn of life to dream about love in a cottage and all that, but
when you have seen all of life that I have, you will know the worth of
the solid; when one has been used to a certain way of living, for
example, one can't change; and if you married the angel Gabriel without
money, you would soon repent it."
"Well," said Eva, "I'd risk it if Gabriel would have me, and I'd even
try it with some man a little lower than the angels; so prepare your
mind to endure it, Aunty, for one of these days everybody will be
holding up their hands and saying, What, Eva Van Arsdel engaged to
_him!_ Why, what _could_ have possessed her? That's just the way I heard
Lottie Simmons talking last week about Belle St. John's engagement. She
is going to marry a college professor in New Haven on one of those very
homoeopathic doses of salary that people give to really fine men that
have talent and education, and she's just as happy as she can be about
it, and the girls are all scraping their throats, 'oh-ing and ah-ing'
and wondering what _could_ have led her to it. No engagement ring _to
show_! private wedding! and just going off together up to his mother's
in Vermont instead of making the bridal tour of all the watering places!
It must be so charming, you see, to be exhibited as a new bride, along
with all the other new brides at Trenton and Niagara and the White
Mountains, so that everybody may have a chance to compare your finery
with everybody else's, also to see how you conduct yourself in new
circumstances. For my part I shall be very glad if my poor rector can't
afford it."
"By the by, speaking of that girl," said Aunt Maria, "what are you going
to wear to the wedding. It's quite time you were attending to that. I
called in at Tullegig's, and of course she was all in a whirl, but I put
in for you. 'Now, Madame,' said I, 'you must leave a place in your mind
for my girls,' and of course she went on with her usual French
rodomontade, but I assure you you'll have to look after her. Tullegig
has no conscience, and will put you off with anything she can make you
take, unless you give your mind to it and follow her up."
"Well, I'm sure, aunty, I don't feel equal to getting a new dress out of
Tullegig," said Eva, with a sigh, "and I have dresses enough, any one of
which will do. I am _blasée_ with dresses, and I think weddings are a
drug. If there's anything that I think downright vulgar and disagreeable
it's this style of blaring, flaring, noisy, crowded disagreeable modern
weddings. It is a crush of finery; a smash of china; a confusion of
voices; and everybody has the headache after it; it's a perfect
infliction to think of being obliged to go to another. For my part I
believe I am going to leave all those cares to Alice; she is come out
now, and I am only Queen Dowager."
"Oh pshaw, Eva, don't talk so," said Aunt Maria, "and now I think of it
you don't look well, you ought to take a tonic in the Spring. Let me
see, Calisaya Bark and iron is just the thing. I'll send you in a
bottleful from Jennings as I go home, and you must take a tablespoonful
three times a day after eating, and be very particular not to fatigue
yourself."
"I think," said Alice, "that Eva gets tired going to all those early
services."
"Oh my dear child, yes; how can you think of such a thing? It's very
inconsiderate in Mr. Selwyn, I think, to have so many services when he
must know many weddings and things are coming off just after Easter.
People will be all fagged out, just as Eva is. Now I believe in the
church as much as anybody, but in our day I think there is danger in
running religion to extremes."
"Ah!" said Eva, "I suppose there is no danger of one running to extremes
in anything but religion--in dress or parties for instance?"
"But you know one has these things to attend to, my dear; one must keep
up a certain style; and of course, there is a proper medium that I hold
to as much as anybody. Nobody is more particular about religion in its
place than I am. I keep Sunday strictly; very few people more so. I
never ride in the park Sundays, nor write a letter, though I have seen
people who called themselves religious that would. No. I believe in
giving full observance to the Lord's day, but then I think one ought to
have the week clear for action. That belongs to us, as I view it, and
our old rector was very easy with us about all the Saint's days, and
week-day services, and things in the prayer-book. To be sure there are
Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. One, of course, should attend to these,
that is no more than is proper, but the way Mr. Selwyn goes on! why, one
wouldn't be able to think of much else than religion if he had his way."
"What a dreadful state of society that would bring on!" said Eva.
"But come, Aunty," said Alice, "don't talk theology, tell us what
discoveries you made at the Elmore's. I know they showed you
everything."
"Oh, of course they did. Well there's the wedding veil, cost two
thousand dollars; for my part I thought it looked ordinary after all;
it's so thick and stiff with embroidery, you see, no lightness to it."
"I wouldn't take it as a gift," said Eva. "I think such expensive things
are simply vulgar."
"Go on, Aunty," said Alice, "what next?"
"Well, then the dress has a new style of trimming, and really is very
elegant. I must do it the justice to say that it's something quite
_recherché_. And then they took me up stairs to see the _trousseau_, and
there was a perfect bazar! all her things laid out by dozens and tied up
with pink ribbons,--you would have thought it got for the Empress. Those
Elmores are the most worldly family I ever did hear of; all for dash and
show! They seemed to be perfectly transported with these things,--and
that reminds me, Eva, I noticed last Sunday at church your new poplin
suit was made with quillings; now they are not going to wear quillings
any more. I noticed none of those Paris dresses had it. You should have
Jacobs alter yours at once, and substitute fringes; fringes is the style
now."
"And, Aunty, what do you suppose would happen to me if I should wear
quillings when THEY don't?" said Eva.
"Well, of course, you don't want to be odd, child. There is a certain
propriety in all these things. I will speak to Jacobs about it, and send
him up here. Shall I?"
"Well, Aunty, anything to suit you. You may take off quillings, or put
on fringe, if you won't insist on marrying me to anybody," said Eva;
"only I do wish any one fashion would last long enough to give one time
to breathe and turn round before it has to be altered, but the Bible
says the fashion of this world passeth quickly away, and so I suppose
one must put up with it."
"Eva, do you correspond with Mr. Sydney?" said Aunt Maria, after a
moment's reflection.
"Correspond? No, to be sure I don't. What should I do that for?"
"He writes to mamma, though," said Alice, laughing.
"It's his own affair, if he does," said Eva. "I told him, before he
went, I never corresponded with gentlemen. I believe that is the correct
thing to say. I never mean to, either, unless it's with one whose
letters are particularly interesting to me."
"How do you like that young Henderson?"
"What, Ida's admirer?" said Eva, coloring. "Oh, we think him nice
enough. Don't we Alice?--rather jolly, in fact."
"And does Ida continue gracious?"
"Certainly. They are the best of friends," said Eva. "The fact is, he is
quite a fine fellow; and he reads things to Ida, and she advises him
about his style, you know."
"He and Jim Fellows always come together," said Alice; "and I think they
are both nice--in fact, rather better than the average. He isn't quite
such a rattle-cap as Jim, but one trusts him more."
"Well," said Eva, "I don't like a professed joker. A man that never is
in earnest ought to wear the cap and bells, as the court fools used to
do in old times."
"O, bless you, child," said Alice, "that's what Jim is for; he always
makes me laugh, and I like to laugh."
"Don't you think that Mr. Henderson would do nicely for Ida," said Aunt
Maria.
"Oh, as to that," said Alice, "neither he nor Jim Fellows are marrying
men. You see they haven't anything, and of course that they can't be
thinking of such things."
"But," said Aunt Maria, "Ida is just the wife for a poor man. She has a
turn for economy, and doesn't care for dress and show; and could rub and
scrub along, and help to support the family. I really think she likes
work for the sake of it. I wish to mercy she could be engaged, and get
all these dreadful queer plans and notions out of her head. I am always
so puzzled what in the world to tell people when they ask why she
doesn't visit and go into society."
"Why not tell the truth," said Eva, "that she prefers to help papa in
his business."
"Because, love, that's so odd. People can't understand it."
"They can't understand," said Eva, "that a woman may be tired of leading
a lazy life, and want to use her faculties. Well, I'm sure _I_ can
understand it. I'd give all the world to feel that I was of as much real
use to anybody as Ida is to papa; and I think papa likes it too. Poor,
dear old papa, with his lovely old white head, who just toils and slaves
for us. I wish I could help him too."
"Well, dear, I can tell you how you can help him."
"How?"
"Marry Wat Sydney."
"Nonsense, Aunt, what has that to do with papa?"
"It would have more to do than you think," said Aunt Maria, shaking her
head, mysteriously.