Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “Right or wrong?”

  “Yes, fair Eve, just as Adam ate the apple; so beware!”

  “I’m just dying to know, but if you really ought not to tell me I won’t tease for it; but I tell you what it is, Harry, if I were you I should bring them together.”

  “Would you dare take the responsibility of bringing any two together?”

  “I suppose I should. I am a daring young woman.”

  “I have not your courage,” said I, “but if it will do you any good to know, Bolton is in a fair way to renew the acquaintance, though he meant not to do it.”

  “You can tell me how that happened, I suppose?”

  “Yes, that is at your service. Simply, the meeting was effected as some others of fateful results have been, — in a New York street car.”

  “Aha!” she said, laughing.

  “Yes; he was traveling up Sixth Avenue the other night when a drunken conductor was very rude to two ladies. Bolton interfered, made the man behave himself, waited on the ladies across the street to their door as somebody else once did, — when, behold! a veil is raised, the light of the lamp flashes, and one says ‘Mr. Bolton!’ and the other ‘Miss Simmons!’ and the romance is opened.”

  “How perfectly charming! Of course he’ll call and see her. He must, you know.”

  “That has proved the case in my experience.”

  “And all the rest will follow. They are made for each other. Poor Ida, she won’t have Caroline to go to Paris with her!”

  “No? I think she will. In fact, I think it would be the best thing Caroline could do.”

  “You do! You don’t want them to be married?”

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t say — in fact, it’s a case I wouldn’t for the world decide.”

  “Oh, heavens! Here’s a mystery, an obstacle, an unknown horror, and you can’t tell me what it is, and I must not ask. Why, this is perfectly dreadful! It isn’t anything against Bolton?”

  “Bolton is the man I most love, most respect, most revere,” I said.

  “What can it be then?”

  “Suppose we leave it to fate and the future,” said I.

  CHAPTER XL. 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 Wood’?”

  “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’s 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.”

&n
bsp; “Wretched man! and besides?”

  “Two hairpins, 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.”

  CHAPTER XLI. THE WEDDING AND THE TALK OVER THE PRAYER- BOOK

  IF novels are to be considered true pictures of real life we must believe that the fall from wealth to poverty is a less serious evil in America than in any other known quarter of the world.

  In English novels the failure of a millionaire is represented as bringing results much the same as the commission of an infamous crime. Poor old Mr. Sedley fails, and forthwith all his acquaintances cut him; nobody calls on his wife or knows her in the street; the family who have all along been courting his daughter for their son, and kissing the ground at her feet, now command the son to break with her, and turn him out of doors for marrying her.

  In America it is quite otherwise. A man fails without losing friends, neighbors, and the consideration of society. He moves into a modest house, find some means of honest livelihood, and everybody calls on his wife as before. Friends and neighbors as they have opportunity are glad to stretch forth a helping hand, and a young fellow who should break his engagement with the daughter at such a crisis would simply be scouted as infamous.

  Americans have been called worshipers of the almighty dollar, and they certainly are not backward in that species of devotion, but still these well-known facts show that our worship is not, after all, so absolute as that of other quarters of the world.

  Mr. Van Arsdel commanded the respect and sympathy of the influential men of New York. The inflexible honesty and honor with which he gave up all - things to his creditors won sympathy, and there was a united effort made to procure for him an appointment in the Custom House, which would give him a comfortable income. In short, by the time that my wedding day arrived, the family might be held as having fallen from wealth into competence. The splendid establishment on Fifth Avenue was to be sold. It was, in fact, already advertised, and our wedding was to be the last act of the family drama in it. After that we were to go to my mother’s, in the mountains of New Hampshire, and Mr. Van Arsdel’s family were to spend the summer at the old farm-homestead where his aged parents yet kept house.

  Our wedding preparations therefore went forward with a good degree of geniality on the part of the family, and with many demonstrations of sympathy and interest on the part of friends and relations. A genuine love-marriage always and everywhere evokes a sort of instinctive warmth and sympathy. The most worldly are fond of patronizing it as a delightful folly, and as Eva had been one of the most popular girls of her set she was flooded with presents.

  And now the day of days was at hand, and for the last time I went up the steps of the Van Arsdel mansion to spend a last evening with Eva Van Arsdel.

  She met me at the door of her boudoir: “Harry, here you are! oh, I have no end of things to tell you! — the door-bell has been ringing all day, and a perfect storm of presents. We have duplicates of all the things that nobody can do without. I believe we have six pie-knives and four sugar-sifters and three egg-boilers and three china hens to sit on eggs, and a perfect meteoric shower of salt-cellars. I couldn’t even count them.”

  “Oh, well! Salt is the symbol of hospitality,” said I, “so we can’t have too many.”

  “And look here, Harry, the wedding dress has come home. Think of the unheard-of incomprehensible virtue of Tullegig! I don’t think she ever had a thing done in time before in her life. Behold now!”

  Sure enough! before me, arranged on a chair, was a misty and visionary pageant of vapory tulle and shimmering satin.

  “All this is Ida’s gift. She insisted that she alone would dress me for my wedding, and poor Tullegig actually has outdone herself, and worked over it with tears in her eyes. Good soul! she has a heart behind all her finery, and really seems to take to me especially, perhaps because I’ve been such a model of patience in waiting at her doors, and never scolded her for any of her tricks. In fact, we girls have been as good as an annuity to Tullegig; no wonder she mourns over us. Do you know, Harry, the poor old thing actually kissed me!”

  “I’m not in the least surprised at her wanting that privilege,” said I.

  “Well, I felt rather tender toward her. I believe it’s Dr. Johnson or somebody else who says there are few things, not purely evil, of which we can say without emotion, ‘This is the last!’ And Tullegig is by no means a pure evil. This is probably the last of her — with me. But come, you don’t say what you think of it. What is it like?”‘

  “Like a vision, like the clouds of morning, like the translation robes of saints, like impossible undreamed mysteries of bliss. I feel as if they might all dissolve away and be gone before to-morrow.”

  “Oh, shocking, Harry! you mustn’t take such indefinite, cloudy views of things. You must learn t
o appreciate details. Open your eyes, and learn now that Tullegig out of special love and grace has adorned my dress with a new style of trimming that not one of the girls has ever had or seen before. It is an original composition of her own. Isn’t it blissful, now?”

  “Extremely blissful,” said I obediently.

  “You don’t admire, — you are not half awake.”

  “I do admire — wonder — adore — anything else that you like — but I can’t help feeling that it is all a vision, and that when those cloud wreaths float around you, you will dissolve away and be gone.”

  “Poh! poh! You will find me very visible and present, as a sharp little thorn in your side. Now, see, here are the slippers!” and therewith she set down before me a pair of pert little delicious white satin absurdities, with high heels and tiny toes, and great bows glistening with bugles.

  Nothing fascinates a man like a woman’s slipper, from its utter incomprehensibility, its astonishing unlikeness to any article subserving the same purpose for his own sex. Eva’s slippers always seemed to have a character of their own, — a prankish elfin grace, and these as they stood there seemed instinct with life as two white kittens just ready for a spring.

  I put two fingers into each of the little wretches and made them caper and dance, and we laughed gayly.

  “Let me see your boots, Harry?”

  “There,” said I, putting best foot forward, a brand-new pair bought for the occasion. “I am wearing them to get used to them, so as to give my whole mind to the solemn services to-morrow.”

  “Oh, you enormous creature!” she said; “you are a perfect behemoth. Fancy now my slippers peeping over the table here and wondering at your boots. I can imagine the woman question discussed between the slippers and the boots.”

  “And I can fancy,” said I, “the poor, stumping, well-meaning old boots being utterly perplexed and routed by the elfin slippers. What can poor boots do? They cannot follow them, cannot catch or control them, and if they come down hard on them they ruin them altogether.”