THE EXPLOSION.
"Hal! it's too confounded bad!" said Jim Fellows, bursting into my room;
"your apple cart's upset for good. The Van Arsdels are blown to thunder.
The old one has failed for a million. Gone to smash on that Lightning
Railroad, and there you all are! Hang it all, I'm sorry now!"
And to say the truth Jim's face did wear an air of as much concern as
his features were capable of. "Seems to me," he added, "you take it
coolly."
"The fact is, Jim, I knew all about this the day I proposed. I knew it
must come, and I'm glad, since it had to be, to have it over and be done
with it. Mr. Van Arsdel told me exactly what to expect when I engaged
myself."
"And you and Miss Eva Van Arsdel are going to join hands and play 'Babes
in the Woods'?"
"No," said I, "we are going to play the interesting little ballet of
'Man and Wife.' I am to work for her, and all that I win is to be put
into her hands."
"Hum! I fancy she'll find things on quite another scale when it comes to
your dividends."
"We're not at all afraid of that--you'll see."
"She's a trump--that girl!" said Jim; "now that's what I call the right
sort of thing. And there's Alice! Now, I declare it's too confounded
rough on Alice! Just as she's come out and such a splendid girl too!"
At this moment the office boy brought up a note.
"From Eva," I said, opening it.
It ran thus:
"Well, dearest, the storm has burst and nobody is killed yet. Papa
told mamma last night, and mamma told us this morning, and we are all
agreed to be brave as possible and make it seem as light as we can to
papa. Dear papa! I know it was for us he struggled, it was for us he
was anxious, and we'll show him we can do very well. Come down now.
Mamma says she feels as if she could trust you as a son. Isn't that
kind?
Your own Eva."
"I'm going right down to the house," said I.
"I declare," said Jim, "I want to do something, and one doesn't know
what. I say, I'll buy a bouquet for Alice, and you just take it with my
compliments." So saying Jim ran down with me, crossed to a florist's
cellar, and selected the most extravagant of the floral treasures there.
"Hang it all!" he said, "I wouldn't send her such a one when she was up
in the world, but now a fellow wants to do all he can, you know."
"Jim," said I, "you are not a mere smooth-water friend."
"Not I. 'Go for the under dog in the fight' is my principle, so get
along with you and stay as long as you like. I can do your book notices;
I know just the sort of thing you would say, you know--do 'em up brown,
so that you wouldn't know my ideas from your own."
Arrived at the Van Arsdel house, I thought I could see and feel the
traces of a crisis, by that mysterious intimation that fills the very
air of a place where something has just happened. The elegant colored
servant who opened the door wore an aspect of tender regret like an
undertaker at a funeral.
"Miss Eva was in her boudoir," he said, "but Miss Alice hadn't come
down." I sent up the bouquet with Mr. Fellows' compliments, and made the
best of my way to Eva.
She was in the pretty little nook in which we had had our first long
talk and which now she called _our_ Italy. I found her a little pale and
serious, but on the whole in cheerful spirits.
"It's about as bad as it can be," said she. "It seems papa has made
himself personally responsible for the Lightning Railroad and borrowed
money to put into it, and then there's something or other about the
stock he borrowed on running down till it isn't worth anything. I don't
understand a word of it, only I know that the upshot of it all is, papa
is going to give up all he has and begin over. This house and furniture
will be put into a broker's hands and advertised for sale. All the
pictures are going to Goupil's sale rooms and will make quite a nice
gallery."
"Except yours in this room," said I.
"Ah well! I thought we should keep these, but I find papa is very
sensitive about giving up everything that is really his--and these are
his in fact. I bought them with his money. At all events, let them go.
We won't care, will we?"
"Not so long as we have each other," said I. "For my part, though I'm
sorry for you all, yet I bless the stroke that brings you to me. You see
we must make a new home at once, you and I, isn't it so? Now, hear me;
let us be married in June, the month of months, and for our wedding
journey we'll go up to the mountains and see my mother. It's perfectly
lovely up there. Shall it be so?"
"As you will, Harry. And it will be all the better so, because Ida is
going to sail for Paris sooner than she anticipated."
"Why does Ida do that?"
"Well, you see, Ida has been the manager of papa's foreign
correspondence and written all the letters for three years past, and
papa has paid her a large salary, of which she has spent scarcely
anything. She has invested it to make her studies with in Paris. She
offered this to papa, but he would not take it. He told her it was no
more his than the salary of any other of his clerks, and that if she
wouldn't make him very unhappy she would take it and go to Paris; and by
going immediately she could arrange some of his foreign business. So you
see she will stay to see us married and then sail."
"We'll be married in the same church where we put up the Easter
crosses," said I.
"How little we dreamed it then," she said, "and that reminds me, sir,
where's my glove that you stole on that occasion? You naughty boy, you
thought nobody saw you, but somebody did."
"Your glove," said I, "is safe and sound in my reliquary along with
sundry other treasures."
"You unprincipled creature! what are they? Confess."
"Well! a handkerchief."
"Wretched man! and besides?"
"Two hair pins, a faded rose, two beads that dropped from your croquet
suit, and a sleeve button. Then there is a dry sprig of myrtle that you
dropped, on, let me see, the 14th of April, when you were out at the
Park in one of those rustic arbors."
"And you were sitting glowering like an owl in an ivy bush. I remember I
saw you there."
We both found ourselves laughing very much louder than circumstances
seemed really to require, when Eva heard her father's footstep and
checked herself.
"There goes poor papa. Isn't it a shame that we laugh? We ought to be
sober, now, but for the life of me I can't. I'm one of the imponderable
elastic gases; you can't keep me down."
"One may 'as well laugh as cry,' under all circumstances," said I.
"Better, a dozen times. But seriously and soberly, I believe that even
papa, now it's all over, feels relieved. It was while he was struggling,
fearing, dreading, afraid to tell us, that he had the worst of it."
"Nothing is ever so bad as one's fears," said I. "There is always some
hope even at the bottom of Pandora's box."
"Sententious, Mr. Editor, but true. Now in illustration. Last week Ida
and I wrote to the boys at Cambridge all about what we feared was
coming, and this very morning we had such nice manly letters from both
of them. If we hadn't been in trouble we never should have known half
what good fellows they are. Look here," she said, opening a letter, "Tom
says, 'Tell father that I can take care of myself. I'm in my senior year
and the rest of the course isn't worth waiting for and I've had an
opportunity to pitch in with a surveying party on the Northern Railroad
along with my chum. I shall work like sixty, and make myself so
essential that they can't do without me. And, you see, the first that
will be known of me I shall be one of the leading surveyors of the day.
So have no care for me.' And here's a letter from Will which says, 'Why
didn't father tell us before? We've spent ever so much more than we
needed, but are going about financial retrenchments with a vengeance.
Last week I attended the boat race at Worcester and sent an account of
it to the _Argus_, written off-hand, just for the fun of it. I got a
prompt reply, wanting to engage me to go on a reporting tour of all the
great election meetings for them. I'm to have thirty dollars a week and
all expenses paid; so you see I step into the press at once. We shall
sell our pictures and furniture to some freshies that are coming in, and
wind up matters so as not to come on father for anything till he gets
past these straits. Tell mother not to worry, she shall be taken care
of; she shall have Tom and me both to work for her.'"
"They are splendid fellows!" said I, "and it is worth a crisis to see
how well they behave in it. Well, then," I resumed, "our wedding day
shall be fixed, say for the 14th of June?"
"How very statistical! I'm sure I can't say, I've got to talk with mamma
and all the powers that be, and settle my own head. Don't let's set a
day yet; it soils the blue line of the distance--nothing like those
pearl tints. Our drawing master used to tell us one definite touch would
spoil them."
"For the present, then, it is agreed that we are to be married
_generally_ in the month of June?" said I.
"P. P.--Providence permitting," said she--"Providence, meaning mamma,
Ida, Aunt Maria, and all the rest."