Chapter V: Part 5

"Well, I can't think, for my part, what our Bishop can be thinking of," said Aunt Maria, who was braced up to an extraordinary degree by the sermon of the morning. "I don't see how he can let them go on so--with candles, and processions, and heathen robes, and all that. I'd process 'em out of the church in quick time. If I were he, I'd have all that sort of trumpery cleaned out at once; for just see where it leads to! I may not be as good a Christian as I ought to be--we all have our short-comings--but one thing I know, _I do hate the Catholics_ and all that belongs to them; and I'd no more have such goings on in _my_ diocese than I'd have moths in my carpet! I'd sweep 'em right out!" said Aunt Maria, with a gesture as if she held the besom of destruction.

Mrs. Wouvermans belonged to a not uncommon class of Christians, whose evidences of piety are more vigorous in hating than in loving. There is no manner of doubt that she would have made good her word, had she been a bishop.

"Oh, well, Maria," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, drawing her knit zephyr shawl about her with a sort of consolatory movement, and settling herself cosily back on her sofa, "it's evident that the Bishop doesn't see just as you do, and I am content to allow what he does. As to the girls, they are old enough to judge for themselves, and, besides, I think they are doing some good by teaching in that mission school. I hope so, at least. Anyway, I couldn't help it if I would. But, do tell me, _did_ Mrs. Demas have on her new bonnet?"

"Yes, she did," said Aunt Maria, with vigor; "and I can tell you it's a perfect fright, if it did come from Paris. Another thing I saw--_fringes have come round again_! Mrs. Lamar's new cloak was trimmed with fringe."

"You don't say so," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, contemplating all the possible consequences of this change. "There was another reason why I couldn't go out this morning," she added, rather irrelevantly--"I had no bonnet. Adrienne couldn't get the kind of ruche necessary to finish it till next week, and the old one is too shabby. Were the Stuyvesants out?"

"Oh, yes, in full force. She has the same bonnet she wore last year, done over with a new feather."

"Oh, well, the Stuyvesants can do as they please," said Mrs. Van Arsdel; "everybody knows who they are, let them wear what they will."

"Emma Stuyvesant had a new Paris hat and a sacque trimmed with bullion fringe," continued Aunt Maria. "I thought I'd tell you, because you can use what was on your velvet dress over again; it's just as good as ever."

"So I can"--and for a moment the great advantage of going punctually to church appeared to Mrs. Van Arsdel. "Did you see Sophie Sidney?"

"Yes. She was gorgeous in a mauve suit with hat to match; but she has gone off terribly in her looks--yellow as a lemon."

"Who else did you see?" said Mrs. Van Arsdel, who liked this topic of conversation better than the dangers of the church.

"Oh, well, the Davenports were there, and the Livingstones, and of course Polly Elmore, with her tribe, looking like birds of Paradise. The amount of time and money and thought that family gives to dress is enormous! John Davenport stopped and spoke to me coming out of church. He says, 'Seems to me, Mrs. Wouvermans, your young ladies have deserted us; you mustn't suffer them to stray from the fold,' says he. I saw he had his eye on our pew when he first came into church."

"I think, Maria, you really are quite absurd in your suspicions about that man," said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "I don't think there's anything in it."

"Well, just wait now and see. I know more about it than you do. If only Alice manages her cards right, she can get that man."

"Alice will never manage cards for any purpose. She is too proud for that. She hasn't a bit of policy."

"And there was that Jim Fellows waiting on her home. I met him this morning, just as I turned the corner."

"Well, Alice tries to exert a good influence over Jim, and has got him to teach in Mr. St. John's Sunday-school."

"Fiddlesticks! What does he care for Sunday-school?"

"Well, the girls all say that he does nicely. He has more influence over that class of boys than anybody else would."

"Likely! Set a rogue to catch a rogue," said Aunt Maria. "It's his being seen so much with Alice that I'm thinking of. You may depend upon it, it has a bad effect."

Mrs. Van Arsdel dreaded the setting of her sister's mind in this direction, so by way of effecting a diversion she rang and inquired when tea would be ready. As the door opened, the sound of very merry singing came up stairs. Angelique was seated at the piano and playing tunes out of one of the Sunday-school manuals, and the whole set were singing with might and main. Jim's tenor could be heard above all the rest.

"Why, is that fellow here?" said Aunt Maria.

"Yes," said Mrs. Van Arsdel; "he very often stays to tea with us Sunday nights, and he and the girls sing hymns together."

"Hymns!" said Aunt Maria. "I should call that a regular jollification that they are having down there."

"Oh, well, Maria, they are singing children's tunes out of one of the little Sunday-school manuals. You know children's tunes are so different from old-fashioned psalm tunes!"

Just then the choir below struck up

"Forward, Christian soldier,"

with a marching energy and a vivacity that was positively startling, and, to be sure, not in the least like the old, long-drawn, dolorous strains once supposed to be peculiar to devotion. In fact, one of the greatest signs of progress in our modern tunes is the bursting forth of religious thought and feeling in childhood and youth in strains gay and airy as hope and happiness--melodies that might have been learned of those bright little "fowls of the air," of whom the Master bade us take lessons, so that a company of wholesome, healthy, right-minded young people can now get together and express themselves in songs of joy, and hope, and energy, such as childhood and youth ought to be full of.

Let those who will talk of the decay of Christian faith in our day; so long as songs about Jesus and his love are bursting forth on every hand, thick as violets and apple blossoms in June, so long as the little Sunday-school song books sell by thousands and by millions, and spring forth every year in increasing numbers, so long will it appear that faith is ever fresh-springing and vital. It was the little children in the temple who cried, "Hosanna to the Son of David," when chief priests and scribes were scowling and saying, "Master, forbid them," and doubtless the same dear Master loves to hear these child-songs now as then.

At all events, our little party were having a gay and festive time over two or three new collections of Clarion, Golden Chain, Golden Shower, or what not, of which Jim had brought a pocketful for the girls to try, and certainly the melodies as they came up were bright and lively and pretty enough to stir one's blood pleasantly. In fact, both Aunt Maria and Mrs. Van Arsdel were content for a season to leave the door open and listen.

"You see," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "Jim is such a pleasant, convenient, obliging fellow, and has done so many civil turns for the family, that we quite make him at home here; we don't mind him at all. It's a pleasant thing, too, and a convenience, now the boys are gone, to have some young man that one feels perfectly free with to wait on the girls; and where there are so many of them, there's less danger of anything particular. There's no earthly danger of Alice's being specially interested in Jim. He isn't at all the person she would ever think seriously of, though she likes him as a friend."

Mrs. Wouvermans apparently acquiesced for the time in this reasoning, but secretly resolved to watch appearances narrowly this evening, and if she saw what warranted the movement to take the responsibility of the case into her own hands forthwith. Her perfect immutable and tranquil certainty that she was the proper person to manage anything within the sphere of her vision gave her courage to go forward in spite of the fears and remonstrances of any who might have claimed that they were parties concerned.

Mr. Jim Fellows was one of those persons in whom a sense of humor operates as a subtle lubricating oil through all the internal machinery of the mind, causing all which might otherwise have jarred or grated to slide easily. Many things which would be a torture to more earnest people were to him a source of amusement. In fact, humor was so far a leading faculty that it was difficult to keep him within limits of propriety and decorum, and prevent him from racing off at unsuitable periods like a kitten after a pin-ball, skipping over all solemnities of etiquette and decorum. He had not been so long intimate in the family without perfectly taking the measure of so very active and forth-putting a member as Aunt Maria. He knew exactly--as well as if she had told him--how she regarded him, for his knowledge of character was not the result of study, but that sort of clear sight which in persons of quick perceptive organs seems like a second sense. He saw into persons without an effort, and what he saw for the most part only amused him.

He perceived immediately on sitting down to tea that he was under the glance of Mrs. Wouverman's watchful and critical eye, and the result was that he became full and ready to boil over with wicked drollery. With an apparently grave face, without passing the limits of the most ceremonious politeness and decorum, he contrived, by a thousand fleeting indescribable turns and sliding intonations and adroit movements to get all the girls into a tempest of suppressed gaiety. There are wicked rogues known to us all who have this magical power of making those around them burst out into indiscreet sallies of laughter, while they retain the most edifying and innocent air of gravity. Seated next to Aunt Maria, Jim managed, by most devoted attention and reverential listening, to draw from her a zealous analysis of the morning sermon, which she gave with the more heat and vigor, hoping thereby to reprove the stray sheep who had thus broken boundaries.

Her views of the danger of modern speculation, and her hearty measures for its repression, were given with an earnestness that was from the heart.

"I can't understand what anybody wants to have these controversies for, and listen to these infidel philosophers. I never doubt. I never have doubted. I don't think I have altered an iota of my religious faith since I was seven years old; and if I had the control of things, I'd put a stop to all this sort of fuss."

"You then would side with his Holiness, the Pope," said Jim. "That's precisely the ground of his last allocution."

"No, indeed, I shouldn't. I think Popery is worse yet--it's terrible! Dr. Cushing showed _that_ this morning, and it's the greatest danger of our day; and I think that Mr. St. John of yours is nothing more than a decoy duck to lead you all to Rome. I went up there once and saw 'em genuflecting, and turning to the east, and burning candles, and that's all I want to know about them."

"But the east is a perfectly harmless point of the compass," said Jim, with suavity; "and though I don't want candles in the daytime myself, yet I don't see what harm it does anybody to burn them."

"Why, that's just what the Catholics do," said Mrs. Wouvermans.

"Oh, that's it, is it!" said Jim, with a submissive air. "Mustn't we do _any_ thing that Catholics do?"

"No, indeed," said Aunt Maria, falling into the open trap with affecting naïveté.

"Then we mustn't pray at all," said Jim.

"Oh, pshaw! of course I didn't mean that. You know what I mean."

"Certainly, ma'am. I think I understand," said Jim, while Alice, who had been looking reprovingly at him, led off the subject into another strain.

But Mrs. Wouvermans was more gracious to Jim that evening than usual, and when she rose to go home that young gentleman offered his attendance, and was accepted with complacency.

Mrs. Wouvermans, in a general way, believed in what is called Providence. That is to say, when any little matter fell out in a manner exactly apposite to any of her schemes, she called it providential. On the present occasion, when she found herself walking in the streets of New York alone, in the evening, with a young man who treated her with flattering deference, it could not but strike her as a providential opportunity not to be neglected of fulfilling her long-cherished intentions and giving a sort of wholesome check and caution to the youth. So she began with infinite adroitness to prepare the way. Jim, the while, who saw perfectly what she was aiming at, assisting her in the most obliging manner.

After passing through sundry truisms about the necessity of caution and regarding appearances, and thinking what people will say to this and that, she proceeded to inform him that the report was in circulation that he was engaged to Alice.

"The report does me entirely too much honor," said Jim. "But of course if Miss Alice isn't disposed to deny it, I am not."

"Of course Miss Alice's friends will deny it," said Aunt Maria, decisively. "I merely mentioned it to you that you may see the need of caution. You know, of course, Mr. Fellows, that such reports stand in the way of _others_ who might be disposed--well, you understand."

"Oh, perfectly, exactly, quite so," said Jim, who could be profuse of his phrases on occasion, "and I'm extremely obliged to you for this suggestion; undoubtedly your great experience and knowledge of the ways of society will show you the exact way to deal with such things."

"You see," pursued Mrs. Wouvermans, in a confidential tone, "there is at present a person every way admirable and desirable, who is thinking very seriously of Alice; it's quite confidential, you know; but you must be aware--of the danger."

"I perceive--a blight of the poor fellow's budding hopes and early affections," said Jim, fluently; "well, though of course the very suggestion of such a report in regard to me is flattery far beyond my deserts, so that I can't be annoyed by it, still I should be profoundly sorry to have it occasion any trouble to Miss Alice."

"I felt sure that you wouldn't be offended with me for speaking so very plainly. I hope you'll keep it entirely private."

"Oh, certainly," said Jim, with the most cheerful goodwill. "When ladies with your tact and skill in human nature talk to us young fellows you _never_ give offense. We take your frankness as a favor."

Mrs. Wouvermans smiled with honest pride. Had she not been warned against talking to this youth as something that was going to be of most explosive tendency? How little could Nellie, or Eva, or any of them, appreciate her masterly skill! She really felt in her heart disposed to regret that so docile a pupil, one so appreciative of her superior abilities, was not a desirable matrimonial _parti_. Had Jim been a youth of fortune she felt that she could have held up both hands for him.

"He really _is_ agreeable," was her thought, as she shut the door upon him.

"_A spray of ivy that was stretching towards the window had been drawn back, and forced to wreathe itself around a picture._"--p. 131.]

_CHAPTER XII._

WHY CAN'T THEY LET US ALONE?

Harry went out to his office, and Eva commenced the morning labors of a young housekeeper.

What are they? Something in their way as airy and pleasant as the light touches and arrangements which Eve gave to her bower in Paradise--gathering-up stray rose-leaves, tying up a lily that the rain has bent, looping a honeysuckle in a more graceful festoon, and meditating the while whether she shall have oranges and figs and grapes, or guavas and pineapples, for her first course at dinner.

Such, according to Father Milton, were the ornamental duties of the first wife, while her husband went out to his office in some distant part of Eden.

But Eden still exists whenever two young lovers set up housekeeping, even in prosaic New York; only our modern Eves wear jaunty little morning caps and fascinating wrappers and slippers, with coquettish butterfly bows. Eva's morning duties consisted in asking Mary what they had better have for dinner, giving here and there a peep into the pantry, re-arranging the flower vases, and flecking the dust from her pictures and statuettes with a gay and glancing brush of peacock's feathers. Sometimes the morning arrangements included quite a change; as, this particular day, when, on mature consideration, a spray of ivy that was stretching towards the window had been drawn back and forced to wreathe itself around a picture, and a spray of nasturtium, gemmed with half-opened golden buds, had been trained in its place in the window.

One may think this a very simple matter, but whoever knows all the resistance which the forces of matter and the laws of gravitation make to the simplest improvement in one's parlor, will know better.

It required a scaffolding made of a chair and an ottoman to reach the top of the pictures, and a tack-hammer and little tacks. Then the precise air of arrangement and exact position had to be studied from below, after the tacks were driven, and that necessitated two or three descents from the perch to review, and the tumbling of the ottoman to the floor, and the calling of Mary in to help, and to hold the ottoman firm while the persevering little artist finished her work. It is by ups and downs like these, by daily labor of modern Eves, each in their little paradises, O ye Adams! that your houses have that "just right" look that makes you think of them all day, and long to come back to them at night.

"Somehow or other," you say, "I don't know how it is, my wife's things have a certain air; her vines grow just as they ought to, her flowers blossom in just the right places, and her parlors always look pleasant." You don't know how many periods of grave consideration, how many climbings on chairs and ottomans, how many doings and undoings and shiftings and changes produce the appearance that charms you. Most people think that flower vases are very simple affairs; but the keeping of parlors dressed with flowers is daily work for an hour or two for any woman. Nor is it work in vain. No altar is holier than the home altar, and the flowers that adorn it are sacred.

Eva was sitting, a little tired with her strenuous exertions, contemplating her finished arrangement with satisfaction, when the door-bell rang, and Alice came in.

"Why, Allie, dear, how nice of you to be down here so early! I was just wanting somebody to show my changes to. Look there. See how I've looped that ivy round mother's picture; isn't it sweet?" and Eva caressingly arranged a leaf or two to suit her.

"Charming!" said Alice, but with rather an abstracted, preoccupied tone.

"And look at this nasturtium; it's full of buds. See, the yellow is beginning to show. I've fastened it in a wreath around the window, so that the sun will shine through the blossoms."

"It's beautiful," said Alice, still absently and nervously playing with her bonnet strings.

"Why, darling, what's the matter?" said Eva, suddenly noticing signs of some unusual feeling. "What ails you?"

"Well," said Alice, hastily untying her bonnet strings and throwing it down on the sofa, "I've come up to talk with you. I hope," she said, flushing crimson with vexation, "that Aunt Maria is satisfied now; she is the most exasperating woman I ever knew or heard of!"

"Dear me, Allie, what has she done now?"

"Well, what do you think? Last Sunday she came to our house to tea, drawn up in martial array and ready to attack us all for not going to the old church--that stupid, dead old church, where people do nothing but doze and wake up to criticise each other's bonnets--but you really would think to hear Aunt Maria talk that there was a second Babylonian captivity or something of that sort coming on, and we were getting it up. You see, Dr. Cushing has got excited because some of the girls are going up to the mission church, and it's led him to an unwonted exertion; and Aunt Maria quite waked up and considers herself an apostle and prophet. I wish you could have heard her talk. It's enough to make any cause ridiculous to have one defend it as she did. You ought to have heard that witch of a Jim Fellows arguing with her and respectfully leading her into all sorts of contradictions and absurdities till I stopped him. I really wouldn't let him lead her to make such a fool of herself."

"Oh, well, if that's all, Allie, I don't think you need to trouble your head," said Eva. "Aunt Maria, of course, will hold on to her old notions, and her style of argument never was very consecutive."

"But that isn't all. Oh, you may be sure I didn't care for what she said about the church. I can have my opinion and she hers, on that point."

"Well, then, what is the matter?"

"Well, if you'll believe me, she has actually undertaken to tutor Jim Fellows in relation to his intimacy with me."

"Oh, Allie," groaned Eva, "has she done that? I begged and implored her to let that matter alone."

"Then she's been talking with you, too! and I wonder how many more," said Alice in tones of disgust.

"Yes, she did talk with me in her usual busy, imperative way, and told me all that Mrs. Thus-and-so and Mr. This-and-that said--but people are always saying things, and if they don't say one thing they will another. I tried to persuade her to let it alone, but she seemed to think you must be talked with; so I finally told her that if she'd leave it to me I would say all that was necessary. I did mean to say something, but I didn't want to trouble you. I thought there was no hurry."

"Well, you see," said Alice, "Jim went home with her that night, and I suppose she thought the opportunity too good to be neglected. I don't know just what she said to him, but I know it was about me."

"How do you know? Did Jim tell you?"

"No, indeed; catch him telling me! He knows too much for that. Aunt Maria let it out herself."

"Let it out herself?"

"Yes; she blundered into it before she knew what she was saying, and betrayed herself; and then, when I questioned her, she had to tell me."

"How came she to commit herself so?"

"It was just this. You know the little party Aunt Maria had Tuesday evening,--the one you couldn't come to on account of that Stephens engagement."

"Yes; what of it?"

"I really suspect that was all got up in the interest of one of Aunt Maria's schemes to bring me and that John Davenport together. At any rate, there he was, and his sister; and really, Eva, his treatment of me was so marked that it was quite disagreeable. Why, the man seemed really infatuated. His manner was so that everybody remarked it; and the colder and more distant I grew, the more it increased. Aunt Maria was delighted. She plumed herself and rushed round in the most satisfied way, while I was only provoked. I saw he was going to ask to wait on me home, and so I fell back on a standing engagement that I have with Jim, to go with me whenever anybody asks that I don't want to go with. Jim and I have always had that understanding in dancing and at parties, so that we can keep clear of disagreeable partners and people. I was determined I wouldn't walk home with that man, and I told Jim privately that he was to be on duty, and he took the hint in a minute. So when Mr. Davenport wound up his attentions by asking if he should have the pleasure of seeing me home, I told him with great satisfaction that I was engaged, and off I walked with Jim. The girls were in a perfect state of giggle, to see Aunt Maria's indignation."

"And so really you don't like this Mr. Davenport?"

"Like him! Indeeed I don't. In the first place, it isn't a year yet since his wife died; and everybody was pitying him. He could hardly be kept alive, and fainted away, and had to have hot bottles at his feet, and all that. All the old ladies were rolling up their eyes; such a sighing and sympathizing for John Davenport; and now, here he is!"

"Poor man!" said Eva, "I suppose he is lonesome."

"Yes. I suppose, as Irving says, the greatest compliment he can pay to his former wife is to display an eagerness for another; but his attentions are simply disagreeable to me."

"After all, the worst crime you allege seems to be that he is too sensitive to your attractions."

"Yes; and shows it in a very silly way--making me an object of remark! He may be very nice and very worthy, and all that; but in any such relation as that he is so unpleasant to me! I can't _bear_ him, and I'm not going to be talked or maneuvered into anything that might commit me to even consider him. I remember the trouble you had for being persuaded to let Wat Sydney dangle after you. I will not have anything of the kind. I am a decided young woman, and know my own mind."

"Well, how did you learn about Aunt Maria and Jim?"

"How? Oh, well, the next day comes Aunt Maria to talk with Mamma, who wasn't there, by the bye; Papa hates so to go out that she has got to staying at home with him. But the next day came an exaggerated picture of my triumphs to Mamma and a lecture to me on my bad behavior. The worst of all, she said, was the very marked thing of my going home with Jim; and in her heat she let out that she had spoken to him and warned him of what folks would think and say of such appearances. I _was_ angry then, and I expressed my mind freely to Aunt Maria, and we had a downright quarrel. I said things I ought not to say, just as one always does, and--now isn't it disagreeable? Isn't it _dreadful_?" said Alice, with the earnestness of a young girl whose whole nature goes into her first trouble. "Nothing could be nicer and more just what a thing ought to be than my friendship with Jim. I have influence over him and I can do him good, and I enjoy his society, and the kind of easy, frank understanding that there is between us, that we can say _any_ thing to each other; and what business is it of anybody's? It's our own affair, and no one's else."

"Certainly it is," said Eva, sympathizingly.

"And Aunt Maria said that folks were saying that if we weren't engaged we ought to be. What a hateful thing to say! As if there were any impropriety in a friendship between a gentleman and a lady. Why may not a gentleman and a lady have a special friendship as well one lady with another, or one gentleman with another? I don't see."

"Neither do I," said Eva, responsively.

"Now," said Alice, "the suggestion of marriage and all that is disagreeable to me. I'm thinking of nothing of the kind. I like Jim. Well, I don't mind saying to you, Eva, who can understand me, that I _love_ him, in a sort of way. I am interested for him. I know his good points and I know his faults, and I'm at liberty to speak to him with perfect freedom, and I think there is nothing so good for a young man as such a friendship. We girls, you know, dear, can do a great deal for young men if we try. We are not tempted as they are; we have not their hard places and trials to walk through, and we can make allowances, and they will receive things from us that they wouldn't from any one else, and they show us just the best side of their nature, which is the truest side of everybody."

"Certainly, Alice. Harry was saying only a little while ago that your influence would make a man of Jim; and I certainly think he has wonderfully improved of late--he seems more serious."

"We've learned to know him better; that's all," said Alice. "Young men rattle and talk idly to girls when they don't feel acquainted and haven't real confidence in their friendship, just as a sort of blind. They don't dare to express their real, deepest feelings."

"Well, I didn't know that Jim had any," said Eva, incautiously.

"Why, Eva, how unjust you are to Jim!" said Alice, with flushing cheeks. "I shouldn't have thought it of you; so many kind things as Jim has done for us all!"

"My darling, I beg Jim's pardon with all my heart," said Eva, laughing to herself at this earnest championship. "I didn't mean quite what I said, but you know, Alice, his sort of wild rattling way of talking over all subjects, so that you can't tell which is jest and which is earnest."

"Oh! _I_ can always tell," said Alice. "I always can make him come down to the earnest part of him, and Jim has, after all, really good, sensible ideas of life and aspirations after what is right and true. He has the temptation of having been a sort of spoiled child. People do so like a laugh that they set him on and encourage him in saying all sorts of things he ought not. People have very little principle about that. So that anyone amuses them, they never consider whether he does right to talk as he does; they'll set Jim up to talk because it amuses them, and then go away and say what a rattle he is, and that he has no real principle or feeling. They just make a buffoon of him, and they know nothing about the best part of him."

"Well, Alice, I dare say you do see more of Jim's real nature than any of us."

"Oh! indeed I do; and I know how to appeal to it. Even when I can't help laughing at things he ought not to say--and sometimes they are so droll I can't help it--afterwards I have _my_ say and tell him really and soberly just what I think, and you've no idea how beautifully he takes it. Oh, Jim really is good at heart, there's no doubt about that."

"Do you think Aunt Maria's meddling will make trouble between you?"

"No! only that it's an awkward, disagreeable thing to speak of; but I shall speak to Jim about it and let him understand, if he doesn't now, just what Aunt Maria is, and that he mustn't mind anything she says. I feel rather better, now I've relieved my mind to you, and perhaps shall have more charity for Aunt Maria."

"After all, poor soul," said Eva, "it's her love for us that leads her to vex us in all these ways. She can't help planning and fussing and lying awake nights for us. She failed in getting a splendid marriage for me, and now she's like Bruce's spider, up and at her web again weaving a destiny for you. It's in her to be active; she has no children; her house don't half satisfy her as a field of enterprise, and she, of course, is taking care of Mamma and our family. If Mamma had not been just the gentle, lovely, yielding woman she is, Aunt Maria never would have got such headway in the family and taken such airs about us."

"She perfectly tyrannizes over Mamma," said Alice. "She's always coming up to lecture her for not doing this, that, or the other thing. Now all this talk about our going to Mr. St. John's church;--poor, dear, little Mamma is as willing to let us do as we please as the flowers are to blossom, and then Aunt Maria talks as if she were abetting a conspiracy against the church. I know that we are all living more serious, earnest lives for Mr. St. John's influence. It may be that he is going too far in certain directions; it may be that in the long run such things tend to dangerous extremes, but I don't see any real harm in them so far, and I find real good."

"Well, you know, dear, that Harry isn't of our church--he is a Congregationalist--but his theory is that Christian people should join with any other Christian people who they see are really working in earnest to do good. This church is near by us, where we can conveniently go, and as I have my house to attend to and am not strong you know, that is quite a consideration. I know Harry don't agree with Mr. St. John at all about his ideas of the church, and he thinks he carries some of his ceremonies too far; but, on the whole, he really is doing a great deal of practical good, and Harry is willing to help him. I think it's just lovely in Harry to do so. It is real liberality."

"I wish," said Alice, "that Mr. St. John were a little freer in his way. There is a sort of solemnity about him that is depressing, and it seems to set Jim off in a spirit of contradiction. He says Mr. St. John stirs up the evil within him, and makes him long to break over bounds and say something wicked, just to shock him."

"I've had that desire to shock very proper people in the days of my youth," said Eva. "I don't know what it comes from."

"I think," said Alice, "that, to be sure, this is an irreverent age, and New York is an irreverent place; but yet I think people may carry the outside air of reverence too far. Don't you? They impose a sort of constraint on everybody around them that keeps them from knowing the people they associate with. Mr. St. John, for instance, knows nothing about Jim, he never acts himself out before him."

"Oh, dear me," said Eva, "fancy what he would think if he should see Jim in one of his frolics."

"And yet, Jim, in his queer way, appreciates Mr. St. John," said Alice. "He says he's 'a brick' after all, by which he means that he does good, honest work; and Jim has been enough around among the poor of New York, in his quality of newspaper writer, to know when a man does good among them. If Mr. St. John only could learn to be indulgent to other people's natures he might do a great deal for Jim."

"I rather think Jim will be your peculiar parish for some time to come," said Eva with a smile, "but Harry and I are projecting schemes to draw Mr. St. John into more general society. That's one of the things we are going to try to do in our 'evenings.' I don't believe he has ever been into general society at all; he ought to hear the talk of his day--he talks and feels and thinks more in the past than the present; he's all the while trying to restore an ideal age of reverence and devotion, but he ought to know the real age he lives in. If we could get him to coming to our house every week, and meeting real live men, women and girls of to-day and entering a little into their life, it would do him good."

"I suppose he'd be afraid of any indulgence!"

"We must not put it to him as an indulgence, but a good hard duty," said Eva; "we should never catch him with an indulgence."

"When are you going to begin?"

"I've been talking with Mary about it, and I rather think I shall take next Thursday for the first. I shall depend on you and the girls to help me keep the thing balanced, and going on just right. Jim must be moderated, and kept from coming out too strong, and everybody must be made to have a good time, so that they'll want to come again. You see we want to get them to coming every week, so that they will all know one another by-and-by, and get a sort of home feeling about our rooms; such a thing is possible, I think."

The conversation now meandered off into domestic details, not further traceable in this chapter.

_CHAPTER XIII._

OUR "EVENING" PROJECTED.

"Well, Harry," said Eva, when they were seated at dinner, "Alice was up at lunch with me this morning, in such a state! It seems, after all, Aunt Maria could not contain her zeal for management, and has been having an admonitory talk with Jim Fellows about his intimacy with Alice."

"Now, I declare that goes beyond me," said Harry, laying down his knife and fork. "That woman's impertinence is really stupendous. It amounts to the sublime."

"Doesn't it? Alice was in such a state about it; but we talked the matter down into calmness. Still, Harry, I'm pretty certain that Alice is more seriously interested in Jim than she knows of. Of course she thinks it's all friendship, but she is so sensitive about him, and if you make even the shadow of a criticism she flames up and defends him. You ought to see."

"Grave symptoms," said Harry.

"But as she says she is not thinking nor wanting to think of marriage--"

"Any more than a certain other young lady was, with whom I cultivated a friendship some time ago," said Harry, laughing.

"Just so," said Eva; "I plume myself on my forbearance in listening gravely to Alice and not putting in any remarks; but I remembered old times and had my suspicions. _We_ thought it was friendship, didn't we, Harry? And I used to be downright angry if anybody suggested anything else. Now I think Allie's friendship for Jim is getting to be of the same kind. Oh, she knows him _so_ well! and she understands him so perfectly! and she has _so_ much influence over him! and they have such perfect comprehension of each other! and as to his faults, oh, she understands all about them! But, mind you, nobody must criticise him but herself--that's quite evident. I did make a blundering remark or so; but I found it wasn't at all the thing, and I had to beat a rapid retreat, I assure you."

"Well, poor girl! I hope you managed to console her."

"Oh, I was sympathetic and indignant, and after she had poured out her griefs she felt better; and then I put in a soothing word for Aunt Maria, poor woman, who is only monomaniac on managing our affairs."

"Yes," said Harry, "forgiveness of enemies used to be the _ultima thule_ of virtue; but I rather think it will have to be forgiveness of friends. I call the man a perfect Christian that can always forgive his friends."

"The fact is, Aunt Maria ought to have had a great family of her own--twelve or thirteen, to say the least. If Providence had vouchsafed her eight or nine ramping, roaring boys, and a sprinkling of girls, she would have been a splendid woman and we should have had better times."

"She puts me in mind of the story of the persistent broomstick that would fetch water," said Harry; "we are likely to be drowned out by her."

"Well, we can accept her for a whetstone to sharpen up our Christian graces on," said Eva. "So, let her go. I was talking over our projected evening with Alice, and we spent some time discussing that."

"When are you going to begin?" said Henry. "'Well begun is half done,' you know."

Said Eva, "I've been thinking over what day is best, and talking about it with Mary. Now, we can't have it Monday, there's the washing, you know; and Tuesday and Wednesday come baking and ironing."

"Well, then, what happens Thursday?"

"Well, then, it's precisely Thursday that Mary and I agreed on. We both made up our minds that it was the right day. One wouldn't want it on Friday, you know, and Saturday is too late; besides, Mr. St. John never goes out Saturday evenings."

"But what's the objection to Friday?"

"Oh, the unlucky day. Mary wouldn't hear of beginning anything on Friday, you know. Then, besides, Mr. St. John, I suspect, fasts every Friday. He never told me so, of course, but they say he does; at all events, I'm sure he wouldn't come of a Friday evening, and I want to be sure and have _him_, of all people. Now, you see, I've planned it all beautifully. I'm going to have a nice, pretty little tea-table in one corner, with a vase of flowers on it, and I shall sit and make tea. That breaks the stiffness, you know. People talk first about the tea and the china, and whether they take cream and sugar, and so on, and the gentlemen help the ladies. Then Mary will make those delicate little biscuits of hers and her charming sponge-cake. It's going to be perfectly quiet, you see--from half-past seven till eleven--early hours and simple fare, 'feast of reason and flow of soul.'"

"Quite pastoral and Arcadian," said Harry. "When we get it going it will be the ideal of social life. No fuss, no noise; all the quiet of home life with all the variety of company; people seeing each other till they get really intimate and have a genuine interest in meeting each other; not a mere outside, wild beast show, as it is when people go to parties to gaze at other people and see how they look in war-paint."

"I feel a little nervous at first," said Eva; "getting people together that are so diametrically opposed to each other as Dr. Campbell and Mr. St. John, for instance. I'm afraid Dr. Campbell will come out with some of his terribly free speaking, and then Mr. St. John will be so shocked and distressed."

"Then Mr. St. John must get over being shocked and distressed. Mr. St. John needs Dr. Campbell," said Harry. "He is precisely the man he ought to meet, and Dr. Campbell needs Mr. St. John. The two men are intended to help each other: each has what the other wants, and they ought to be intimate."

"But you see, Dr. Campbell is such a dreadful unbeliever!"

"In a certain way he is no more an unbeliever than Mr. St. John. Dr. Campbell is utterly ignorant of the higher facts of moral consciousness--of prayer and communion with God--and therefore he doesn't believe in them. St. John is equally ignorant of some of the most important facts of the body he inhabits. He does not believe in them--ignores them."

"Oh, but now, Harry, I didn't think that of you--that you could put the truths of the body on a level with the truths of the soul."

"Bless you, darling, since the Maker has been pleased to make the soul so dependent on the body, how can I help it? Why, just see here; come to this very problem of saving a soul, which is a minister's work. I insist there are cases where Dr. Campbell can do more towards it than Mr. St. John. He was quoting to me only yesterday a passage from Dr. Wigan, where he says, 'I firmly believe I have more than once changed the moral character of a boy by leeches applied to the inside of his nose.'"

"Why, Harry, that sounds almost shocking."

"Yet it's a fact--a physiological fact--that some of the worst vices come through a disordered body, and can be cured only by curing the body. So long as we are in this mortal state, our souls have got to be saved _in_ our bodies and by the laws of our bodies; and a doctor who understands them will do more than a minister who doesn't. Why, just look at poor Bolton. The trouble that he dreads, the fear that blasts his life, that makes him afraid to marry, is a disease of the body. Fasting, prayer, sacraments, couldn't keep off an acute attack of dipsomania; but a doctor might."

"Oh, Harry, do you think so? Well, I must say I do think Mr. St. John is as ignorant as a child about such matters, if I may judge from the way he goes on about his own health. He ignores his body entirely, and seems determined to work as if he were a spirit and could live on prayer and fasting."

"Which, as he isn't a spirit, won't do," said Harry. "It may end in making a spirit of him before the time."

"But don't you think the disinterestedness he shows is perfectly heroic?" said Eva.

"Oh, certainly!" said Harry. "The fact is, I should despair of St. John if he hadn't set himself at mission work. He is naturally so ideal, and so fastidious, and so fond of rules, and limits, and order, that if he hadn't this practical common-sense problem of working among the poor on his hands, I should think he wouldn't be good for much. But drunken men and sorrowful wives, ragged children, sickness, pain, poverty, teach a man the common-sense of religion faster than anything else, and I can see St. John is learning sense for everybody but himself. If he only don't run his own body down, he'll make something yet."

"I think, Harry," said Eva, "he is a little doubtful of whether you really go with him or not. I don't think he knows how much you like him."

"Go with him! of course I do. I stand up for St. John and defend him. So long as a man is giving his whole life to hard work among the poor and neglected he may burn forty candles, if he wants to, for all I care. He may turn to any point of the compass he likes, east, west, north, or south, and wear all the colors of the rainbow if it suits him, and I won't complain. In fact, I like processions, and chantings, and ceremonies, if you don't get too many of them. I think, generally speaking, there's too little of that sort of thing in our American life. In the main, St. John preaches good sermons; that is, good, manly, honest talks to people about what they need to know. But then his mind is tending to a monomania of veneration. You see he has a mystical, poetic element in it that may lead him back into the old idolatries of past ages, and lead weak minds there after him; that's why I want to get him acquainted with such fellows as Campbell. He needs to learn the common sense of life. I think he is capable of it, and one of the first things he has got to learn is not to be shocked at hearing things said from other people's points of view. If these two men could only like each other, so as to listen tolerantly and dispassionately to what each has to say, they might be everything to each other."

"Well, how to get a mordant to unite these two opposing colors," said Eva.

"That's what you women are for--at least such women as you. It's your mission to interpret differing natures--to bind, and blend, and unite."

"But how shall we get them to like each other?" said Eva. "Both are so very intense and so opposite. I suppose Dr. Campbell would consider most of Mr. St. John's ideas stuff and nonsense; and I know, as well as I know anything, that if Mr. St. John should hear Dr. Campbell talking as he talks to you, he would shut up like a flower--he would retire into himself and not come here any more."

"Oh, Eva, that's making the man too ridiculous and unmanly. Good gracious! Can't a man who thinks he has God's truth--and _such_ truth!--listen to opposing views without going into fits? It's like a soldier who cannot face guns and wants to stay inside of a clean, nice fort, making pretty stacks of bayonets and piling cannon balls in lovely little triangles."

"Well, Harry, I know Mr. St. John isn't like that. I don't think he's cowardly or unmanly, but he is very reverent, and, Harry, you are _very_ free. You do let Dr. Campbell go on so, over everything. It quite shocks me."

"Just because my faith is so strong that I can afford it. I can see when he is mistaken; but he is a genuine, active, benevolent man, following truth when he sees it, and getting a good deal of it, and most important truth, too. We've got to get truth as we can in this world, just as miners dig gold out of the mine with all the quartz, and dirt, and dross; but it pays."

"Well, now, I shall try my skill, and do my best to dispose these two refractory chemicals to a union," said Eva. "I'll tell you how let's do. I'll interest Dr. Campbell in Mr. St. John's health. I'll ask him to study him and see if he can't take care of him. I'm sure he needs taking care of."

"And," said Harry, "why not interest Mr. St. John in Dr. Campbell's soul? Why shouldn't he try to convert him from the error of his ways?"

"That would be capital," said Eva. "Let each convert the other. If we could put Dr. Campbell and Mr. St. John together, what a splendid man we could make of them!"

"Try your best, my dear; but meanwhile I have three or four hours' writing to do this evening."

"Well, then, settle yourself down, and I will run over and expound my plans to the good old ladies over the way. I am getting up quite an intimacy over there; Miss Dorcas is really vastly entertaining. It's like living in a past age to hear her talk."

"You really have established a fashion of rushing in upon them at all sorts of hours," said Harry.

"Yes, but they like it. You have no idea what nice things they say to me. Even old Dinah quivers and giggles with delight the minute she sees me--poor old soul! You see they're shut up all alone in that musty old house, like enchanted princesses, and gone to sleep there; and I am the predestined fairy to wake them up!"

Eva said this as she was winding a cloud of fleecy worsted around her head, and Harry was settling himself at his writing-table in a little alcove curtained off from the parlor.

"Don't keep the old ladies up too late," said Harry.

"Never you fear," said Eva. "Perhaps I shall stay to see Jack's feet washed and blanket spread. Those are solemn and impressive ceremonies that I have heard described, but never witnessed."

It was a bright, keen, frosty, starlight evening, and when Eva had rung the door-bell on the opposite side, she turned and looked at the play of shadow and firelight on her own window-curtains.

Suddenly she noticed a dark form of a woman coming from an alley back of the house, and standing irresolute, looking at the windows. Then she drew near the house, and seemed trying to read the name on the door-plate.

There was something that piqued Eva's curiosity about these movements, and just as the door was opening behind her into the Vanderheyden house, the strange woman turned away, and as she turned, the light of the street-lamp flashed strongly on her face. Its expression of haggard pain and misery was something that struck to Eva's heart, though it was but a momentary glimpse, as she turned to go into the house; for, after all, the woman was nothing to her, and the glimpse of her face was purely an accident, such as occurs to one hundreds of times in the streets of a city.