PERTURBATIONS.
SCENE.--_Ida's Study--Ida busy making notes from a book--Eva sitting by,
embroidering._
Eva--"Heigho! how stupid things are. I am tired of everything. I am
tired of shopping--tired of parties--tired of New York--where the same
thing keeps happening over and over. I wish I was a man. I'd just take
my carpet-bag and go to Europe. Come now, Ida, pray stop that, and talk
to me, do!"
_Ida_, putting down her book and pen:
"Well--and what about?"
"Oh, you know!--this inextricable puzzle--what does ail a certain
person? Now he didn't come at all last night, and when I asked Jim
Fellows where his friend was (one must pass the compliment of inquiring,
you know), he said, 'Henderson had grown dumpy lately,' and he couldn't
get him out anywhere."
"Well, Eva, I'm sure I can't throw any light on the subject. I know no
more than you."
"Now, Ida, let me tell you, this afternoon when we stopped in the park,
I went into that great rustic arbor on the top of the hill there, and
just as we came in on one side, I saw him in all haste hurrying out on
the other, as if he were afraid to meet me."
"How very odd!"
"Odd! Well, I should think it was; but what was worse, he went and
stationed himself on a bench under a tree where he could hear and see
us, and there my lord sat--perhaps he thought I didn't see him, but I
did.
"Lillie and Belle Forrester and Wat Jerrold were with me, and we were
having such a laugh! I don't know when I have had such a frolic, and how
silly it was of him to sit there glowering like an owl in an ivy bush,
when he might have come out and joined us, and had a good time! I'm
quite out of patience with the creature, it's so vexatious to have him
act so!"
"It is vexatious, darling, but then as you can't do anything about it
why think of it?"
"Because I can't help it. Can you have a real friendship for a person
and enjoy his society, and not care in the least whether you have it or
not? Of course you can't. We were friends--quite good friends, and I'm
not ashamed to say I miss him, very much, and then to have such an
unaccountable mystery about it. I should think you'd miss him too."
"I do somewhat," said Ida, "but then you see I have so much more to
think of. I have my regular work every day for papa, and I have my plan
of study, and to say the truth, so far as I am concerned, though I liked
Mr. Henderson very much, yet I don't miss him."
"Well, Ida, now I want to ask you, didn't you think he acted as if----"
"As if he were in love with you, you would say."
"Well--yes."
"He certainly did, if I am any judge of symptoms; but then, dear, men
are often in love with women they don't mean to marry."
"Who wants to marry him, I should like to know? I'm not thinking of
that."
"Well, then, Eva, perhaps he has discovered that _he_ wants to marry
you; and, perhaps, for some reason he regards that as impossible, and so
is going to try to keep away."
"How perfectly hateful and stupid of him! I'd rather never have seen
him."
"A man generally has this advantage over a woman in a matter of this
sort, that he has an object in life which is more to him than anything
else, and he can fill his whole mind with that."
"Well, Ida, that's all very true, but what object in life can a girl
have who lives as we do; who has everything she can want without an
effort--I for instance."
"But _I_ have an object."
"Yes, I know you have, but I am different from you. It would be as
impossible for me to do as you do, as for a fish to walk upright on dry
land."
"Well, Eva, this objectless, rootless, floating kind of life that you
and almost all girls lead, is at the bottom of nearly all your troubles.
Literally and truly you have nothing in the world to do but to amuse
yourselves; the consequence is that you soon get tired of almost every
kind of amusement, and so every friendship, and flirtation assumes a
disproportioned interest in your minds. There is real danger now that
you may think too much of Mr."----
"Oh, stuff and nonsense, Ida! I _won't_, so there! I'll put him out of
my head forthwith and bolt the door. Give me a good stiff dose of
reading, Ida; one of your dullest scientific books, and get me to write
you an analysis of it as we did at school. Here, let me see, 'Descent of
Man.' Come, now, I'll sit down and go at it."
Eva sits down with book, pencil and paper, and turns over the leaves.
"Let's try how it looks. 'Sexual Selection'! Oh, horrid! 'Her Ape-like
Proportions'! I should be ashamed to talk so about my ancestors.
Apes!--of all things--why not some more respectable animal? lions or
horses, for example. You remember Swift's story about the houyhnhums.
Isn't this a dreadfully dull book, Ida?"
"No, I don't find it so. I am deeply interested in it, though I admit it
is pretty heavy."
"But, then, Ida, you see it goes against the Bible, doesn't it?"
"Not necessarily as I see."
"Why, yes; to be sure. I haven't read it; but Mr. Henderson gave me the
clearest kind of a sketch of the argument, and that is the way it
impressed me. That to be sure is among the things I principally value
him for; he is my milk-skimmer; he gets all the cream that rises on a
book and presents it to me in a portable form. I remember one of the
very last really comfortable long talks we had; it was on this subject,
and I told him that it seemed to me that the modern theory and the Bible
were point blank opposites. Instead of men being a _fallen_ race, they
are a _rising_ race, and never so high as now; and then, what becomes of
the Garden of Eden, and St. Paul? Now, for my part, I told Mr. Henderson
I wasn't going to give up all the splendid poetry of Milton and the
Bible, just because Mr. Darwin took it into his head that it was not
improbable that my seventy fifth millionth grandfather might have been a
big baboon with green nose and pointed ears!"
"My dear Eva, you have capital reasons for believing and _not_
believing. You believe what seems most agreeable and poetic."
"Exactly, Ida; and in those far-off regions, sixteen million billion
ages ago, why shouldn't I? Nobody knows what happened there; nobody has
been there to see what made the first particle of jelly take to living,
and turn into a germ cell, and then go working on like yeast, till it
worked out into all the things we see. I think it a good deal easier to
believe the Garden of Eden story, especially as that is pretty and
poetical, and is in the dear old Book that is so sweet and comfortable
to us; but then Mr. Henderson insists that even if we do hold the
Evolution theory, the old book will be no less true. I never saw a man
of so much thought who had so much reverence."
"I thought you were going to study Darwin and not think of him," said
Ida.
"Well, somehow, almost every thing puts me in mind of him, because we
have had such long talks about everything; and, Ida, to tell the truth,
I do believe I am intellectually lazy. I don't like rough hard work, I
like polishing and furbishing. Now, I want a man to go through all this
rough, hard, stupid, disagreeable labyrinth of scientific terms, and
pick out the meaning and put it into a few, plain words, and then I take
it and brighten it up and put on the rainbows. Look here, now, think of
my having to scrabble through a bog like this in the "Origin of the
Species":
"'In Carthamus and some other compositæ the central achenes alone are
furnished with a pappus; and in Hyoseris the same head yields achenes of
three different forms. In certain Umbelliferæ the exterior seeds,
according to Tanch, are orthospermous, and the central one
coelospermous, and this difference has been considered by De Candolle
as of the highest systematic importance in the family.'
"Now all this is just as unintelligible to me as if it were written in
Choctaw. I don't know enough to know what it means, and I'm afraid I
don't care enough to know. I want to know the upshot of the whole in
good plain English, and then see whether I can believe it or not; and
isn't it a shame that things are so that one cannot have a sensible man
to be one's guide, philosopher and friend, without this everlasting
marriage question coming up? If a woman makes an effort to get or keep a
valuable friend, she is supposed to be intriguing and making unfeminine
efforts for a husband. Now this poor man is perfectly wretched about
something--for I can see he has really gone off shockingly, and looks
thin and haggard, and I can't just write him a note and ask him to come
and finish his resumé of Darwin for me, without going over the
boundaries; and the worst of it is, it is _I_ who set these limits;--I
myself who am a world too proud to say the first word or give the
slightest indication that his absence isn't quite as agreeable as his
presence."
"Well, Eva, I can write a note and request him to call and see _me_,"
said Ida, "and if you like, I will. I have no sort of fear what he will
think of me."
"I would not have you for the world. It would look like an advance on
our part--no indeed. These creatures are so conceited, if they once find
out that you can't do without them----"
"I never observed any signs of conceit in Mr. Henderson."
"Well, I have made it an object to keep him a little humble, so far as
his sex will permit, you see. But seriously, Ida, is not it curious
about this marriage matter? Everybody says it's what we are made for,
all the novels end with it, all the poems are about it, you are hearing
about it in one way or other all the time; and yet all this while you
are supposed not to care anything about it one way or the other. If a
man be ever so agreeable to you, and do ever so much to make you like
him, you must pretend that you are quite indifferent to him, and don't
care whether he comes or goes, until such time as he chooses to launch
the tremendous question at you."
"Well," said Ida, "I admit that there is just this absurdity in our
life: but I avoid it all by firmly laying a plan of my own, and having a
business of my own. To me marriage would be an interruption; it would
require a breaking up and reconstruction of my whole plan, and of course
I really think nothing about it."
"But are you firmly resolved never to marry?"
"No; but never, unless I find some one more to me than all on which I
have set my heart. I do not need it for my happiness. I am sufficient to
myself; and besides I have an object I hope to attain, and that is to
open a way by which many other women shall secure independence and
comfort and ease."
"Deary me, Ida, I wish I were like you: but I'm not. It seems to me that
the only way to give most girls any concentration or object is to marry
them. Then, somehow, things seem to arrange themselves, and, at all
events, the world stops talking about you, and wondering what you are
going to do; they get you off their minds. That I do believe was the
reason why at one time I came so near drifting into that affair with Wat
Sydney. Aunt Maria was so vigorous with me and talked in such a
commanding manner, and with so many 'of courses,' that I really began
to think I was one of the 'of courses' myself; but my acquaintance with
Mr. Henderson has shown me that it would be intolerable to live with a
man that you couldn't talk with about everything that comes into your
head; and now I can't talk with him, and I won't marry Wat Sydney; and
so what is to be done? Shall I go to Stewart's and buy me a new suit of
Willow Green, or gird up the loins of my mind and go through Darwin like
a man, and look out all the terms in the dictionary and come out the
other side a strong minded female? or shall I go and join the Sisters of
St. John, and wear a great white cape and gray gown, and have all the
world say I did it because I couldn't get Wat Sydney (for that's exactly
what they would say), or what shall I do? The trouble is, mamma and Aunt
Maria with their expectations. It's much as mamma can do to survive
_your_ course, and if _I_ take to having a 'purpose' too, I don't know
but mamma would commit suicide, poor dear woman."
(Enter Alice with empressement):
"Girls, what do you think? Wat Sydney come back and going to give a
great croquet party out at Clairmont, and of course we are all invited
with notes in the most resplendent style, with crest and coat of arms,
and everything--perfectly '_mag!_' There's to be a steamboat with a band
of music to take the guests up, and no end of splendid doings; marquées
and tents and illuminations and fireworks, and to return by moonlight
after all's over; isn't it lovely? I do think Wat Sydney's perfectly
splendid! and it's all on your account, Eva, I know it is."
"Pooh, nonsense, you absurd child, I don't believe it. I dare say its a
party just to proclaim that he is engaged to somebody else."
"Do you know," added Alice, "I met Jim Fellows, and he says everybody is
wild about this party--just stark, tearing wild about it--for it isn't
going to be a crush--something _very_ select."
"Is Jim going?"
"Yes, he showed me his ticket and Henderson's, and he declared he was
going to take 'Hal,' as he called him, spite of his screams; he said
that he had been writing and studying and moping himself to death, and
that he should drag him out by the hair of the head. Come, Eva, let's go
down to Tullegig's and have a 'kank' about costumes. I haven't a thing
fit to wear, nor you either."