It was the last hymn, and they were about breaking up as we went into the house. This building, Mr. James told us, used to be a rat-pit, where the lowest, vilest, and most brutal kinds of sport were going on. It used to be, he said, foul and filthy, physically as well as morally; but scrubbing and paint and whitewash had transformed it into a comfortable home. There was a neat sitting-room, carpeted and comfortably furnished, a dining-room, a pantry stocked with serviceable china, a workroom with two or three sewing-machines, and a kitchen, from which at this moment came a most appetizing smell of the soup which was preparing for the midnight supper. Above, were dormitories, in which were lodging about twenty girls, who had fled to this refuge to learn a new life. They had known the depth of sin and the bitterness of punishment, had been spurned, disgraced and outcast. Some of them had been at Blackwell's Island—on the street—in the very gutter—and now, here they were, as I saw some of them, decently and modestly dressed, and busy preparing for the supper. When I looked at them setting the tables, or busy about their cooking, they seemed so cheerful and respectable, I could scarcely believe that they had been so degraded. A portion of them only were detailed for the night service; the others had come up from the chapel and were going to bed in the dormitories, and we heard them singing a hymn before retiring. It was very affecting to me—the sound of that hymn, and the thought of so peaceful a home in the midst of this dreadful neighborhood. Mr. James introduced us to the man and his wife who take charge of the family. They are converts—the fruits of these labors. He was once a singer, and connected with a drinking-saloon, but was now giving his whole time and strength to this work, in which he had all the more success because he had so thorough an experience and knowledge of the people to be reached. We were invited to sit down to a supper in the dining-room, for Mr. James said we should be out so late before returning home that we should need something to sustain us. So we took some of the soup which was preparing for the midnight supper, and very nice and refreshing we found it. After this, we went out with Mr. James and the superintendent, to go through the saloons and dance-houses and drinking places, and to distribute tickets of invitation to the supper. What we saw seems now to me like a dream. I had heard that such things were, but never before did I see them. We went from one place to another, and always the same features—a dancing-room, with girls and women dressed and ornamented, sitting round waiting for partners; men of all sorts walking in and surveying and choosing from among them and dancing, and, afterwards or before, going with them to the bar to drink. Many of these girls looked young and comparatively fresh; their dresses were cut very low, so that I blushed for them through my veil. I clung tight to Harry's arm, and asked myself where I was, as I moved round among them. Nobody noticed us. Everybody seemed to have a right to be there, and see what they could.
I remember one large building of two or three stories, with larger halls below, all lighted up, with dancing and drinking going on, and throngs and throngs of men, old and young, pouring and crowding through it. These tawdrily bedizened, wretched girls and women seemed to me such a sorrow and disgrace to womanhood and to Christianity that my very heart sunk, as I walked among them. I felt as if I could have cried for their disgrace. Yet nobody said a word to us. All the keepers of the places seemed to know Mr. James and the superintendent. He spoke to them all kindly and politely, and they answered with the same civility. In one or two of the saloons, the superintendent asked leave to sing a song, which was granted, and he sung the hymn that begins:
At another place, he sung "Home, sweet home," and I thought I saw many faces that looked sad. Either our presence was an embarrassment, or for some other reason it seemed to me there was no real gaiety, and that the dancing and the keeping up of a show of hilarity were all heavy work.
There seems, however, to be a gradation in these dreadful places. Besides these which were furnished with some show and pretension, there were cellars where the same sort of thing was going on—dancing and drinking, and women set to be the tempters of men. We saw miserable creatures standing out on the sidewalk, to urge the passers-by to come into these cellars. It was pitiful, heart-breaking to see.
But the lowest, the most dreadful of all, was what they called the bucket shops. There the vilest of liquors are mixed in buckets and sold to wretched, crazed people who have fallen so low that they cannot get anything better. It is the lowest depth of the dreadful deep.
Oh, those bucket shops! Never shall I forget the poor, forlorn, forsaken-looking creatures, both men and women, that I saw there. They seemed crouching in from the cold—hanging about, or wandering uncertainly up and down. Mr. James spoke to many of them, as if he knew them, kindly and sorrowfully. "This is a hard way you are going," he said to one. "Ar'n't you most tired of it?" "Well," he said to another poor creature, "when you have gone as far as you can, and come to the end, and nobody will have you, and nobody do anything for you, then come to us, and we'll take you in."
During all this time, and in all these places, the Superintendent, who seemed to have a personal knowledge of many of those among whom he was moving, was busy distributing his tickets of invitation to the supper. He knew where the utterly lost and abandoned ones were most to be found, and to them he gave most regard.
But as yet, though I looked with anxious eyes, I had seen nothing of Maggie. I spoke to Mr. James at last, and he said, "We have not yet visited Mother Moggs's establishment, where she was said to be. We are going there now."
"Mother Moggs is a character in her way," he told us. "She has always treated me with perfect respect and politeness, because I have shown the same to her. She seems at first view like any other decent woman, but she is one that, if she were roused, would be as prompt with knife and pistol as any man in these streets." As he said this, we turned a corner, and entered a dancing-saloon, in its features much like many others we had seen. Mother Moggs stood at a sort of bar at the upper end, where liquors were displayed and sold. She seemed really so respectably dressed, and so quiet and pleasant-looking, that I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw her.
Mr. James walked up with us to where she was standing, and spoke to her, as he does to every one, gently and respectfully, inquiring after her health, and then, in a lower tone, he said, "And how about the health of your soul?"
She colored, and forced a laugh, and answered with some smartness: "Which soul do you mean? I've got two—one on each foot."
He took no notice of the jest, but went on:
"And how about the souls of these girls? What will become of them?"
"I ain't hurting their souls," she said. "I don't force 'em to stay with me; they come of their own accord, and they can go when they please. I don't keep 'em. If any of my girls can better themselves anywhere else, I don't stand in their way."
The air of virtuous assurance with which she spoke would have given the impression that she was pursuing, under difficult circumstances, some praiseworthy branch of industry at which her girls were apprentices.
Just at this moment, I turned, and saw Maggie standing behind me. She was not with the other girls, but standing a little back, toward the bar. Instantly I crossed over, and, raising my veil, said, "Maggie, poor child! come back to your mother."
Her face changed in a moment; she looked pale, as if she were going to faint, and said only, "Oh! Mrs. Henderson, you here?"
"Yes, I came to look for you, Maggie. Come right away with us," I said. "O Maggie! come," and I burst into tears.
She seemed dreadfully agitated, but said:
"Oh, I can't; it's too late!"
"No, it isn't. Mr. James," I said, "here she is. Her mother has sent for her."
"And you, madam," said Mr. James to the woman, "have just said you wouldn't stand in the way, if any of your girls could better themselves."
The woman was fairly caught in her own trap. She cast an evil look at us all, but said nothing, as we turned to leave, I holding upon Maggie, determined not to let her go.
We took her with us to the Home. She was crying as if her heart would break. The girls who were getting the supper looked at her with sympathy and gathered round her. One of them interested me deeply. She was very pale and thin, but had such a sweet expression of peace and humility in her face! She came and sat down by Maggie and said, "Don't be afraid; this is Christ's home, and he will save you as he has me. I was worse than you are—worse than you ever could be—and He has saved me. I am so happy here!"
And now the miserable wretches who had been invited to the supper came pouring in. Oh, such a sight! Such forlorn wrecks of men, in tattered and torn garments, with such haggard faces, such weary, despairing eyes! They looked dazed at the light and order and quiet they saw as they came in. Mr. James and the superintendent stood at the door, saying, "Come in, boys, come in; you're welcome heartily! Here you are, glad to see you," seating them on benches at the lower part of the room.
While the supper was being brought in, the table was set with an array of bowls of smoking hot soup and a large piece of nice white bread at each place. When all had been arranged, Mr. James saw to seating the whole band at the tables, asked a blessing, standing at the head, and then said, cheerily, "Now, boys, fall to; eat all you want; there is plenty more where this came from, and you shall have as much as you can carry."
The night was cold, and the soup was savory and hot, and the bread white and fine, and many of them ate with a famished appetite; the girls meanwhile stood watchful to replenish the bowls or hand more bread. All seemed to be done with such a spirit of bountiful, cheerful good-will as was quite inspiriting.
It was not till hunger was fully satisfied that Mr. James began to talk to them, and when he did, I wondered at his tact.
"This is quite the thing, now, isn't it, boys, of a cold night like this, when a fellow is hungry? See what it is to have friends.
"I suppose, boys, you get better suppers than these from those fellows that you buy your drink of. They make suppers for you sometimes, I suppose?"
"No, indeed," growled some of the men. "Catch 'em doing it!"
"Why, I should think they ought to, when you spend all your money on them. You pay all your money to them, and make yourselves so poor that you haven't a crust, and then they won't even get you a supper?"
"No, that they won't," growled some. "They don't care if we starve."
"Boys," said Mr. James, "aren't you fools? Here these men get rich, and you get poor. You pay all your earnings to them. You can't have anything, and they have everything. They can have plate-glass windows, and they can keep their carriages, and their wives have their silk dresses and jewels, and you pay for it all; and then, when you've spent your last cent over their counters, they kick you into the street. Aren't you fools to be supporting such men? Your wives don't get any silk dresses, I'll bet. O boys, where are your wives?—where are your mothers?—where are your children?"
By this time they were looking pretty sober, and some of them had tears in their eyes.
"Oh, boys, boys! this is a bad way you've been in—a bad way. Haven't you gone long enough? Don't you want to give it up? Look here—now, boys, I'll read you a story." And then he read from his pocket Testament the Parable of the Prodigal Son. He read it beautifully: I thought I had never understood it before. When he had done, he said, "And now, boys, hadn't you better come back to your Father? Do you remember, some of you, how your mother used to teach you to say, 'Our Father, who art in heaven?' Come now, kneel down, every one of you, and let's try it once more."
They all knelt, and I never heard anything like that prayer. It was so loving, so earnest, so pitiful. He prayed for those poor men, as if he were praying for his own soul. They must have felt how he loved them. It almost broke my heart to hear him: it did seem for the time as if the wall were down that separates God's love from us, and that everybody must feel it, even these poor wretched creatures.
There were among them some young men, and some whose heads and features were good, and indicative of former refinement of feeling. I could not help thinking how many histories of sorrow, for just so many families, were written in those faces.
"Is it possible that you can save any of these?" I said to Mr. James, as they were going out.
"We cannot, but God can," he said. "With God, all things are possible. We have seen a great many saved that were as low as these; but it was only by the power of God converting their souls. That is at all times possible."
"But," said Harry, "the craving for drink gets to be a physical disease."
"Yet I have seen that craving all subdued and taken away by the power of the Holy Spirit. They become new creatures in Christ."
"That would be almost miraculous," said Harry.
"We must expect miracles, and we shall have them," replied he.
Meanwhile the girls had gathered around Maggie, and were talking with her, and when we spoke of going, she said:
"Dear Mrs. Henderson, let me stay here awhile; the girls here will help me, and I can do some good here, and by-and-by, perhaps, when I am stronger, I can come back to mother. It's better for me here now."
Mr. James and the matron both agreed that, for the present, this would be best.
There is a current of sympathy, an energy of Christian feeling, a sort of enthusiasm, about this house, that helps one to begin anew.
It was nearly morning before we found ourselves in our home again—but, for me, the night has not been spent in vain. Oh, mother, can it be that in a city full of churches and Christians such dreadful things as I saw are going on every night? Certainly, if all Christians felt about it as those do who have begun this Home, there would be a change. If every Christian would do a little, a great deal would be done; for there are many Christians. But now it seems as if a few were left to do all, while the many do nothing. But Harry and I are resolved henceforth to do our part in helping this work.
Mary is comforted about Maggie and unboundedly grateful to me for going.
I think she herself prefers her staying there awhile; she has felt so keenly what Aunt Maria said about her being a burden and disgrace to us.
We shall watch over her there, and help her forward in life as fast as she is strong enough to go. But I am making this letter too long, so good-by for the present.
Your loving
"Well, hurrah for Jim!" exclaimed our friend Jim Fellows, making tumultuous entrance into the Henderson house, with such a whirl and breeze of motion as to flutter the music on the piano, and the papers on Harry's writing-desk, while he skipped round the room, executing an extemporary pas seul.
"Jim, for goodness sake, what now?" said Harry, rising. "What's up?"
"I've got it! I've got it!—the first place on 'the Forum!' Think of the luck! I've been talking with Ivison and Sears about it, and the papers are all drawn. I'm made now, you'd better believe. It's firm land at last, and I tell you, if I haven't scratched for it!"
"Wish you joy, my boy, with all my heart," said Harry, shaking his hand. "It's the top of the ladder."
"And I, too, Jim," said Eva, offering her hand frankly. "Sit down and have a cup of tea with us."
"You don't care, I suppose, what happens to me," said Jim in an abused tone, turning to Alice, who had sat quietly in a shaded corner through this outburst.
"Bless me, Jim, I've been holding my breath, for I didn't know what you'd do next. I'm sure I wish you joy with all my heart. There's my hand on it," and Alice reached out her hand as frankly as Eva.
It was a hand as fair, soft and white as a man might wish to have settle like a dove of peace and rest in his own; and, as it went into his palm, Jim could not help giving it a warm, detaining grasp that had a certain significance, especially as his eyes rested upon her with a flash of expression before which hers fell.
Alice had come to Eva's to dine, and they were now just enjoying that pleasant after-dinner hour around the fireside, when they sat and played with their tea in pretty teacups, and chatted, and looked into the fire. It is the hour dear to memory, when the home fireside seems like a picture, when the gleams of light that fall on one's plants and pictures and books and statuettes, bring forth some new charm in each one, giving rise to the exulting feeling, "Nowhere in the world is there a place so pretty and so cosy as this."
Now, Alice had been meditating a return to her own home that night, trusting to Harry for escort; but, at the moment that Jim took her hand and she saw the expression of his eyes, she mentally altered her intentions and resolved to remain all night. She was sure if she rose to go Jim would, of course, be her escort. She was not going to walk home alone with him in his present mood, and trust herself to hear, and be obliged to answer, anything he might be led to say.
The fact is well known to observers of mental phenomena, that an engagement suddenly sprung upon a circle of intimate acquaintances is often productive of great searchings of heart, and that it is apt to have a result similar to the knocking down of one brick at the extreme of a line of them.
Alice had been startled and astonished by finding her rector descending from the semi-angelic sphere where she had, in her imagination, placed him, and coming into the ranks of mortal and marrying men. She had seen and handled the engagement ring which sparkled on Angie's finger, and it looked like any other ring that a gentleman of good taste might buy, and she had heard all the comments of the knowing ones thereon. Already there was activity in the direction of a prospective trousseau. Aunt Maria, with her usual alertness, was prizing stuffs and giving records of prices and of cheap and desirable shopping places, and racing from one end of the city to the other in self-imposed pilgrimages of research. There were discussions of houses for the future rectory. Everything was in a whirl of preparation. There was marriage in the very air: and the same style of reflection which occurs when there is a death, is apposite also to the betrothal—"Whose turn shall come next?" "Hodie mihi—cras tibi."
Jim Fellows, the most excitable, sympathetic of all mortal Jims, may well be supposed to have felt something of the general impulse.
Now, Miss Alice was as fine a specimen of young-lady-hood at twenty-two as is ordinarily to be met with in New York or otherwhere. She was well read, well bred, high-minded and high-principled. She was a little inclined to the ultra-romantic in her views, and while living along contentedly, and with a moderate degree of good sense and comfort, with such people as were to be found on earth, was a little prone to indulge dreams of super-celestial people—imaginary heroes and heroines. In the way of friendship, she imagined she liked many of her gentlemen associates; but the man she was to marry was to be a hero—somebody before whom she and every one else should be irresistibly constrained to bow down and worship. She knew nobody of this species as yet.
Harry was all very well; a nice fellow—a bright, lively, wide-awake fellow—a faultless husband—a desirable brother-in-law; but still Harry was not a hero. He was a man subject to domestic discipline for at times littering the parlor table with too many pamphlets, for giving imprudent invitations to dinner on an ill-considered bill of fare, and for confounding solferino with pink when describing colors or matching worsteds. All these things brought him down into the sphere of the actual, and took off the halo. In review of all the married men of her acquaintance, she was constrained to acknowledge that the genus hero was rare. Nobody that she was acquainted with ever had married this kind of being; and, in fact, within her own mind his lineaments were cloudy and indistinct, like the magic looking-glass of Agrippa before the destined image shone out. She only knew of this or that mortal man of her acquaintance, that he was not in the least like this ideal of her dreams.
Meanwhile, Miss Alice was not at all insensible to the charm of having a friend of the other sex wholly and entirely devoted to her.
She thought she had with most exemplary frankness and directness indicated to Jim that they were to be friends and only friends; she had contended for her right to be just as intimate with him as he and she pleased, in the face of Aunt Maria and of all the ranks and orders of good gossips who make the regulation of other people's affairs a specialty; and she flattered herself that she had at last conquered this territory and secured for herself this independent right.
People had almost done telling her they had heard that she was engaged to Jim Fellows, and asking her when it was going to be announced. She plumed herself, in a quiet way, on the independence and spirit she had shown in the matter.
Now, Jim was one of those fellows who, in certain respects, remain a boy forever. The boy in him was certainly booked for as long a mortal journey as the man; and, at threescore years and ten, one ought not to expect to meet in him other than a white-headed, vivacious old boy. He was a driving, industrious, efficient creature. He was, in all respects, ideally fitted to success in the profession he had chosen; the very image and body of the New York press man—lively, versatile, acute, unsleeping, untiring, always wide-awake, up and dressed, and in full command of his faculties, at any hour of day or night, ready for any emergency, overflowing with inconsiderate fun and frolic, and, like the public he served, going for his joke at any price. Since his intimacy with Alice she had assumed to herself the right of looking over his ways and acting the part of an exterior conscience; and Jim had formed the habit of bringing to her his articles for criticism. And Alice flattered herself that she was not altogether selfish in accepting his devotion, but was saving him from many an unwise escapade, and exciting him to higher standards and nobler ways of looking at life.
Of all the Christian and becoming rôles in the great drama of life, there is none that so exactly suits young ladies of a certain degree of gravity and dignity as that of guardian angel.
Now, in respect to Jim, Alice certainly was fitted to sustain this rôle. She was well-poised, decided, sensible and serious in her conceptions of life, truthful and conscientious; and the dash of ideality which pervaded all her views gave to her, in the eyes of the modern New York boy, a sort of sacred prestige, like the halo around a saint.
No one sees life on a harder, colder, more utterly unscrupulous side than the élève of the New York press. He grinds in a mill of competition. He serves sharp and severe masters, who in turn are driven up by an exacting, irresponsible public, panting for excitement, grasping for the latest sensation. The man of the press sees behind the scenes in every illusion of life; the shapeless pulleys, the dripping tallow candles that light up the show, all are familiar to him.
To him come all the tribes who have axes to grind, and want him to turn their grindstones. Avarice, ambition, petty vanity, private piques, mean intrigues, sly revenges, all unbosom themselves to him as to a father confessor, and invoke his powerful aid. To him it is given to see the back door and back stairs of much that the world venerates, and he finds there filthy sweepings and foul débris. Even the church of every name and sect has its back door, its unsightly sweepings. He who is in so many secrets, who explores so many cabals, who sees the wrong side of so many a fair piece of goods, with all its knots, and jags, and thrums, what wonder if he come to that worse form of scepticism—the doubt of all truth, of all virtue, of all honor? When he sees how reputations can be made and unmade in the secret conclaves of printing offices, how generous and holy enthusiasms are assumed as a cloak for low and selfish designs, how the language which stirs man's deepest nature lies around loose in the hands of skilled word-experts, to be used in getting up cabals and carrying party intrigues, it is scarcely to be wondered at if he come to regard life as a mere game of skill, where the shrewdest player wins. It is exactly here that a true, good woman is the moral salvation of man. Such a woman seems to a man more than she can ever seem to her female acquaintances. She is to him the proof of a better world, of a truer life, of the reality of justice, purity, honor, and unselfishness. He regards her, to be sure, as unpractical, and ignorant of the world's ways, but with a holy ignorance which belongs to a higher region.
Jim had dived into New York life at first with the mere animal recklessness with which an expert swimmer shows his skill in difficult navigation. Life was an adventure, a game, a game at which he was determined nobody should cheat him, a race in which he was determined to come out ahead. Nobody should catch him napping; nobody should outwit him; he would be nobody's fool. His acquaintance with a certain class of girls was only a continuation of the bright, quick, adroit game of fencing which he played in the world. If a girl would flirt, so would Jim. He was au courant of all the positions and strategy of that sort of encounter; he had all the persiflage of flattery and compliment at his tongue's end, and enjoyed the rustle and flutter of ribbons, the tapping of fans, and the bustle and mystery of small secrets, the little "ohs and ahs," and feminine commotions that he could stir up in almost any bevy of nymphs in evening dresses. Speaking of female influence, there are some exceptions to be taken to the general theory that woman has an elevating power over man. It may be doubted whether there goes any of this divine impulse from giggling, flirting girls, whose highest aim is to secure the admiration and attention of men, and who, to get it, will flatter and fawn, profess to adore tobacco smoke, and even to have a warm side towards whiskey punch,—girls whose power over men is based on an indiscriminate deference to what men themselves feel to be their lower and less worthy nature.
The woman who really wins for herself a worthy influence with a man is she who recognizes in him the divine under all worldly disguises, and invariably and strongly takes part with his higher against his lower nature. This was the secret of Alice's power over Jim; and this was why she had become, in the secret and inner world of his life, almost a religious image. All his dawning aspirations to be somewhat better than a mere chaser of expedients, to be a man of lofty objects and noble purposes, had come from her acquaintance with him—an acquaintance begun on both sides in the spirit of mere flirtation, and passing from that to esteem and friendship. But, in the case of a marriageable young man of twenty-five, friendship is like some of those rare cacti of the greenhouses which, in an unexpected hour, burst out into blossoms of untold splendor. An engagement just declared in their circle had breathed a warmer atmosphere of suggestion around them, and upon that had come a position in his profession which offered him both consideration and money; and when Jim was assured of this, his first thought was of Alice.
"Friendship is a humbug," was that young gentleman's mental decision. "It may do all very well with some kinds of girls"—and Jim mentally reviewed some of his lady acquaintances—"but with Alice Van Arsdel, it is all humbug for me to go on talking friendship. I can't, and shan't, and WON'T." And in this mood it was that he gave to Alice's hand that startling kind of pressure, and something of this flashed from his eyes into hers. It was that something, like the gleam of a steel blade, determined, resolute, assured, that disconcerted and alarmed her. It was like the sounding of a horn, summoning a parley at the postern gate of a fortress, and the lady chatelaine not ready either to surrender or to defend. So, in a moment, Alice resolved not to walk the four or five squares between her present position and home, tête-à-tête with Jim Fellows; and she sat very composed and very still in her corner, and put in demand all those quiet, repressive tactics by which dignified young ladies keep back issues they are not precisely ready to meet.
The general subject under discussion when Jim came in, was a party to be given at Aunt Maria's the next evening in honor of the Stephenses, when Angie and Mr. St. John would make their first appearance together as a betrothed couple.
"Now, Jim," said Eva, "how lucky that you came in, for I was just going to send a note to you! Here's Harry has got to give a lecture to-morrow night and can't come in till towards the end of the evening. Alice is coming to dine and dress down here with me, and I want you to dine with us and be our escort to the party—that is, if you will put up with our dressing time and not get into such a state of perfect amazement as Harry always does when we are not ready at the moment."
"If you ever get a wife, Jim, you'll be made perfect in this science of waiting," said Harry. "The only way to have a woman ready in season for a party is to shut her up just after breakfast and keep her at it straight along through the day. Then you may have her before ten o'clock."
"You see," said Eva, "Harry's only idea, when he is going to a party, is to get home again early. We almost never go, and then he is in such a hurry to get there, so as to have it over with and be at home again."
"Well, I confess, for my part, I hate parties," said Harry. "They always get agoing just about my usual bed-time."
"Well, Harry, you know Aunt Maria wants an old-fashioned, early party, at eight o'clock at the latest; and when she says she wants a thing, she means it. She would never forgive us for being late."
"Dear me, Eva, do begin to dress over night then," said Harry. "You certainly never will get through to-morrow, if you don't."
"Harry, you sauce-box, I think you talk abominably about me. Just because I have so many more things to see to than he has! A woman's dress, of course, takes more time; there's a good deal more to do and every little thing has to be just right."
"Of course, I know that," said Harry. "Haven't I stood, and stood, and stood, while bows were tied, and picked out, and patted, and flatted, and then pulled out and tied over, and when we were half an hour behind time already?"
"I fancy," said Alice, "that if the secrets of some young gentlemen's toilets were unveiled, we should see that we were not alone in tying bows and pulling them out. I've known Tom to labor over his neck-ties by the hour together; it took him quite as long to prink as any of us girls."
"But don't you be alarmed, Jim," said Eva; "we intend to be on time."
"No, don't," said Harry; "you can have my writing-table, and get up your editorials, while the conjuration is going on up-stairs."
"Just think," said Alice, "how Aunt Maria is coming out."
"Why, yes, it's a larger affair than usual," said Eva. "A hundred invitations! That must be on account of Angie."
"Oh, yes," said Alice, "Aunt Maria is pluming herself on Angie's engagement. Since she has discovered that Mr. St. John has an independent fortune, there is no end to her praises and felicitations. Oh, and she has altered her opinion entirely about his ritualism. The Bishop, she says, stands by him; and what the Bishop doesn't condemn, nobody has any right to; and then she sets forth what a good family he belongs to, and so well connected! I'd like to see anybody say anything against Mr. St. John's practices before Aunt Maria now!"
"I'm sure this party is quite an outlay for Aunt Maria," said Eva.
"Oh," said Alice, "she's making all her jellies, and blanc-manges, and ice creams in the house. You know how perfectly she always does things. I've been up helping her. She will have a splendid table. She was rather glorifying herself to me that she could get up so fine a show at so little expense."
"Well, she can," said Eva. "No one can get more for a given amount of money than Aunt Maria. I suppose that is one of the womanly virtues, and one can learn as much of it from her as anybody."
"Yes," said Alice, "if a stylish party is the thing to be demonstrated, Aunt Maria will get one up more successfully, more perfect in all points, and for less money, than any other woman in New York. She will have exactly the right people, and exactly the right things to give them. Her rooms will be lovely. She will be dressed herself to a T, and she will say just the right thing to everybody. All her nice silver and her pretty things will come out of their secret crypts and recesses to do honor to the occasion, and, for one night, all will be suavity and sociability personified; and then everything will go back into lavender, the silver to the safe, the chairs and lounges to their cover, the shades will come down, and her part of the world's debt of sociability will be done up for the year. Then she will add up the expense, and set it down in her account book, and that thing'll be finished and checked off."
"A mode of proceeding which she was very anxious to engraft upon me," said Eva; "but I am a poor stock. My instincts are for what she would call an expensive, chronic state of hospitality, as we live down here!"
"Well," said Jim, "when I get a house of my own, I'm going to do as you do."
"Jim has got sight of the domestic tea-kettle in the future," said Harry. "That's the first effect of his promotion."
"Oh, don't be in a hurry about setting up a house of your own," said Eva. "I'm afraid we should miss you here, and you're an institution, Jim; we couldn't get on without you."
"Oh, Jim ought not to give up to one what was meant for mankind," said Alice, hardily. "I think there would be a universal protest against his retiring to private life."
And Alice looked into the fire, apparently as sweetly unconscious of anything particular on Jim's part as if she had not read aright the flash of his eye and the pressure of his hand.
Jim seemed vexed and nervous, and talked extravaganzas all the evening, with more than even his usual fluency, and towards ten o'clock said to Alice:
"I am at your command at any time, when you are ready to return home."
"Thank you, Jim," said Alice, with that demure and easy composure with which young ladies avoid a crisis without seeming to see it. "I am going to stay here to-night, to discuss some important points of party costume with Eva; so mind you don't fail us to-morrow night. Au revoir!"
"Now, don't you girls sit up and talk all night," said Harry from the staircase, as he started bedward, after Jim Fellows had departed, and the house-door was locked for the night.
Now, Eva was one of that class of household birds whose eyes grow wider awake and brighter as the small hours of the night approach; and, just this night, she felt herself swelling with a world of that distinctively feminine talk which women keep for each other, when the lordly part of creation are out of sight and hearing. Harry, who worked hard in his office all day and came home tired at night, and who had the inevitable next day's work ever before him, was always an advocate for early and regular hours, and regarded these sisterly night-watches with suspicion.
"You know, now, Eva, that you oughtn't to sit up late. You're not strong," he preached from the staircase in warning tones, as he slowly ascended.
"Oh, no, dear; we won't be long. We've just got a few things to talk over."
"Well, you know you never know what time it is."
"Oh, never you mind, Harry; you'll be asleep in ten minutes. I want to talk with Ally."
"There, now, he's off," said Eva, gleefully shutting the door and drawing an easy chair to the remains of the fire, while she disposed the little unburned brands and ends so as to make a last blaze; then, leaning back, she began taking out hair-pins and shaking down curls and untying ribbons, as a sort of preface to a wholly free and easy conversation. "I think, Ally," she said, with an air of profound reflection, "if I were you, I should wear my white tarletan to-morrow night, with cherry-colored trimming, and cherry velvet in your hair. You see that altering the trimming changes the whole effect, so that it will look exactly like a new dress."
"I was thinking of doing something with the tarletan," said Alice, who had also taken out her hair-pins and let down her long dark masses of hair around her handsome oval face, while her great dark eyes were studying the coals abstractedly. It was quite evident by the deep intense gaze she fixed before her that it was not the tarletan or the trimmings that at that moment occupied her mind, but something deeper.
Eva saw and suspected, and went on designedly:
"How nice and lucky it was that Jim came in just as he did."
"Yes, it was lucky," repeated Alice, abstractedly, taking off her neck-scarf, and folding and smoothing it with an unnecessary amount of precision.
"Jim is such a nice fellow," said Eva. "I am thoroughly delighted that he has got that situation. It is really quite a position for him."
"Yes, Jim is doing very well," said Alice, with a certain uneasy motion.
"I really think," pursued Eva, "that your friendship has been everything to Jim. We all notice how much he has improved."
"It's only that we know him better," said Alice. "Jim always was a nice fellow; but it takes a very intimate acquaintance to get at the real earnest nature there is under all his nonsense. But after all, Eva, I'm a little afraid of trouble in that friendship."
"Trouble—how?" said Eva, with the most innocent air in the world, as if she did not feel perfectly sure of what was coming next.
"Well, I do think, and I always have said, that an intimate friendship between a lady and a gentleman is just the best thing for both parties."
"Well, isn't it?" said Eva.
"Well, yes. But the difficulty is, it won't stay. It will get to be something more than you want, and that makes a trouble. Now, did you notice Jim's manner to me to-night?"
"Well, I thought I saw something rather suspicious," said Eva, demurely; "but then you always have been so sure that there was nothing, and was to be nothing, in that quarter."
"Well, I never have meant there should be. I have been perfectly honorable and above-board with Jim; treated him just like a sister, and I thought there was the most perfect understanding between us."
"Well, you see, darling," said Eva, "I've sometimes thought whether it was quite fair to let any one be so very intimate with one, unless one were willing to take the consequences, in case his feelings should become deeply involved. Now, we should have thought it a bad thing for Mr. St. John to go on cultivating an intimate friendship with Angie, if he never meant to marry. It would be taking from her feelings and affections that might be given to some one who would make her happy for life; and I think some women, I don't mean you, of course, but some women I have seen and heard of, like to absorb all the feeling and devotion a man has without in the least intending to marry him. They keep him from being interested in any one else who might make him a happy home, and won't have him themselves."
"Eva, you are too hard," said Alice.
"Understand me, dear; I said I didn't mean you, for I think your course has been perfectly honorable and honest so far; but I do think you have got to a place that needs care. It's my positive belief that Jim not only loves you, Alice, but that he is in love with you in a way that will have the most serious effect on his life and character."
"Oh, dear me, that's just what I've been fearing," said Alice, "isn't it too bad? I really don't think it's my fault. Do you know, Eva, I came here meaning to go home to-night, and I stayed only because I was afraid to walk home with Jim. I was sure if I did there would be a crisis of some kind."
"For my part, Ally," said Eva, "I'm not so very sure that there hasn't been some advance in your feelings, as well as in Jim's. I don't see why you should set it down among the impossibles that you should marry Jim Fellows."
"Oh! well," said Alice, "I like—yes, I really love Jim very much; he is very agreeable to me, always. I know nobody, on the whole, more so; but then, Eva, he's not at all the sort of man I have ever thought of as possible for me to marry. Oh! not at all," and Alice gazed before her into the coals, as if she saw her hero through them.
"And what sort of a man is this phenix?"
"Oh! something grave, and deep, and high, and heroic."
Eva gave a light, little shrug to her shoulders, and rippled a laugh. "And when you have got such a man, you will have to ask him to go to market for beef and cranberry sauce. You will have to get him to match your worsted, and carry your parcels, and talk over with him about how to cure the chimney of smoking and make the kitchen range draw. Don't you think a hero will be a rather cumbersome help in housekeeping? Besides, your heroes like to sit on pedestals and have you worship them. Now, for my part, I'd rather have a good kind man that will worship me.