Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Well now, dear mother, imagine a further complication. Harry is very anxious that we should have an evening once a week to receive our friends — an informal, quiet, sociable, talking evening, on a sort of ideal plan of his, in which everybody is to be made easy and at home, and to spend just such a quiet, social hour as at one’s own chimney-corner. But fancy my cares, with all the menagerie of our very miscellaneous acquaintances! I should be like the man in the puzzle who had to get the fox and goose and corn over in one boat without having any of them eaten. Fancy Jim Fellows and Mr. St. John! Dr. Campbell, with his molecules and cerebration, talking to my little Quaker dove, with her white wings and simple faith, or Aunt Maria and mamma conversing with a Jewish Rabbi! I believe our family have a vague impression that Jews are disreputable, however gentlemanly and learned; and I don’t know but Mr. St. John would feel shocked at him. Nevertheless, our Rabbi is a very excellent German gentleman, and one of the most interesting talkers I have heard. Oh! then there are our rococo antiquities across the street, Miss Dorcas Vanderheyden and her sister. What shall I do with them all? Harry has such boundless confidence in my powers of doing the agreeable that he seems to think I can, out of this material, make a most piquant and original combination. I have an awful respect for the art de tenir salon, and don’t wonder that among our artistic French neighbors it got to be a perfect science. But am I the woman born to do it in New York?

  Well, there’s no way to get through the world but to keep doing, and to attack every emergency with courage. I shall do my possible, and let you know of my success.

  Your daughter, —

  EVA.

  CHAPTER V

  A TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT

  THE housekeeping establishment of Eva Henderson, née Van Arsdel, was in its way a model of taste, order, and comfort. There was that bright, attractive, cosy air about it that spoke of refined tastes and hospitable feelings — it was such a creation as only the genius of a thorough home-artist could originate. There are artists who work in clay and marble, there are artists in water-colors, and artists in oils, whose works are on exhibition through galleries and museums: but there are also, in thousands of obscure homes, domestic artists, who contrive out of the humblest material to produce in daily life the sense of the beautiful; to cast a veil over its prosaic details and give it something of the charm of a poem. Eva was one of these, and everybody that entered her house felt her power at once in the atmosphere of grace and enjoyment which seemed to pervade her rooms.

  But there was underneath all this an unseen, humble operator, without whom one step in the direction of poetry would have been impossible; one whose sudden withdrawal would have been like the entrance of a black frost into a flower garden, leaving desolation and unsightliness around: and this strong pivot on which the order and beauty of all the fairy contrivances of the little mistress turned was no other than the Irish Mary McArthur, cook, chambermaid, laundress, and general operator and adviser of the whole.

  Mary was a specimen of the best class of those women whom the old country sends to our shores. She belonged to the family of a respectable Irish farmer, and had been carefully trained in all household economies and sanctities. A school kept on the estate of their landlord had been the means of instructing her in the elements of a plain English education. She wrote a good hand, was versed in accounts, and had been instructed in all branches of needlework with a care and particularity from which our American schools for girls might take a lesson. A strong sense of character pervaded her family life — a sense of the decorous, the becoming, the true and honest, such as often gives dignity to the cottage of the laboring man of the Old World. But the golden stories of wealth to be gotten in America had induced her parents to allow Mary with her elder brother to try their fortunes on these unknown shores. Mary had been fortunate in falling into the Van Arsdel family; for Mrs. Van Arsdel, though without the energy or the patience which would have been necessary to control or train an inexperienced and unsteady subject, was, on the whole, appreciative of the sterling good qualities of Mary, and liberal and generous in her dealings with her.

  In fact, the Van Arsdels were in all things a free, careless, good-natured, merry set, and Mary reciprocated their kindliness to her with all the warmth of her Irish heart. Eva had been her particular pet and darling. She was a pretty, engaging child at the time she first came into the family. Mary had mended her clothes, tidied her room, studied her fancies and tastes, and petted her generally with a whole-souled devotion. “When you get a husband, Miss Eva,” she would say, “I will come and live with you.” But before that event had come to pass, Mary had given her whole heart to an idle, handsome, worthless fellow, whom she appeared to love in direct proportion to his good-for-nothingness. Two daughters were the offspring of this marriage, and then Mary became a widow, and had come with her younger child under the shadow of “Miss Eva’s” roof-tree.

  Thus much to give background to the scenery on which Aunt Maria entered, on the morning when she took the omnibus at Mrs. Van Arsdel’s door.

  Eva was gone out when the door-bell of the little house rang. Mary looking from the chamber window saw Mrs. Wouvermans standing at the door-step. Now against this good lady Mary had always cherished a secret antagonism. Nothing so awakens the animosity of her class as the entrance of a third power into the family, between the regnant mistress and the servants; and Aunt Maria’s intrusions and dictations had more than once been discussed in the full parliament of Mrs. Van Arsdel’s servants. Consequently the arrival of a police officer armed with a search-warrant could not have been more disagreeable or alarming. In an instant Mary’s mental eye ran over all her own demesne and premises — for when one woman is both chambermaid, cook, and laundress, it may well be that each part of these different departments cannot be at all times in a state of absolute perfection. There was a cellar-table that she had been intending this very morning to revise; there were various shortcomings in pantry and closet which she had intended to set in order.

  But the course of Mrs. Wouvermans was straight and unflinching as justice. A brisk interrogation to the awestruck little maiden who opened the door showed her that Eva was out, and the field was all before her. So she marched into the parlor, and, laying aside her things, proceeded to review the situation. From the parlor to the little dining-room was the work of a moment; thence to the china closet, where she opened cupboards and drawers and took note of their contents; thence to the kitchen and kitchen pantry, where she looked into the flour-barrel, the sugar-barrel, the safe, the cake-box, and took notes.

  When Mary had finished her chamber work and came down to the kitchen, she found her ancient adversary emerging from the cellar with several leaves of cabbage in her hands which she had gathered off from the offending table. In her haste to make a salad for a sudden access of company, the day before, Mary had left these witnesses, and she saw that her sin had found her out.

  “Good-morning, Mary,” said Mrs. Wouvermans in the curt, dry tone that she used in speaking to servants. “I brought up these cabbage leaves to show you. Nothing is more dangerous, Mary, than to leave any refuse vegetables in a cellar; if girls are careless about such matters, they get thrown down on the floor and rot and send up a poisonous exhalation that breeds fevers. I have known whole families poisoned by the neglect of girls in these little matters.”

  “Mrs. Wouvermans, I was intending this very morning to come down and attend to that matter, and all the other matters about the house,” said Mary. “There has been company here this week, and I have had a deal to do.”

  “And Mary, you ought to be very careful never to leave the lid of your cake-box up — it dries the cake. I am very particular about mine.”

  “And so am I, ma’am; and if my cake-box was open it is because somebody has been to it since I shut it. It may be that Mrs. Henderson has taken something out.”

  “I noticed, Mary, a broom in the parlor closet not hung up; it ruins brooms to set them down in that way.”

&n
bsp; By this time the hot, combative blood of Ireland rose’ in Mary’s cheek, and she turned and stood at bay.

  “Mrs. Wouvermans, you are not my mistress, and this is not your house; and I am not going to answer to you, but to Mrs. Henderson, about my matters.”

  “Mary, don’t you speak to me in that way,” said Mrs. Wouvermans, drawing herself up.

  “I shall speak in just that way to anybody who comes meddling with what they have no business with. If you was my mistress, I’d tell you to suit yourself to a better girl; and I shall ask Mrs. Henderson if I am to be overlooked in this way. No lady would ever do it,” said Mary, with a hot emphasis on the word ‘lady,’ and tears of wrath in her eyes.

  “There’s no use in being impertinent, Mary,” said Mrs. Wouvermans, with stately superiority, as she turned and sailed upstairs, leaving Mary in a tempest of impotent anger.

  Just about this time Eva returned from her walk with a basket full of cut flowers, and came singing into the kitchen and began arranging flower vases; not having looked into the parlor on her way, she did not detect the traces of Aunt Maria’s presence.

  “Well, Mary,” she called, in her usual cheerful tone, “come and look at my flowers.”

  But Mary came not, although Eva perceived her with her back turned in the pantry.

  “Why, Mary, what is the matter?” said Eva, following her there and seeing her crying. “Why, you dear soul, what has happened? Are you sick?”

  “Your Aunt Maria has been here.”

  “Oh, the horrors, Mary. Poor Aunt Maria! you mustn’t mind a word she says. Don’t worry, now — don’t —— you know Aunt Maria is always saying things to us girls, but we don’t mind it, and you mustn’t; we know she means well, and we just let it pass for what it’s worth.”

  “Yes; you are young ladies, and I am only a poor woman, and it comes hard on me. She’s been round looking into every crack and corner, and picked up those old cabbage leaves, and talked to me about keeping a cellar that would give you all a fever — it’s too bad. You know yesterday I hurried and cut up that cabbage to help make out the dinner when those gentlemen came in and we had only the cold mutton, and I was going to clear them away this very morning.”

  “I know it, Mary; and you do the impossible for us all twenty times a day, if you did drop cabbage leaves once; and Aunt Maria has no business to be poking about my house and prying into our management; but, you see, Mary, she’s my aunt, and I can’t quarrel with her. I’m sorry, but we must just bear it as well as we can — now promise not to mind it — for my sake.”

  “Well, for your sake, Miss Eva,” said Mary, wiping her eyes.

  “You know we all think you are a perfect jewel, Mary, and couldn’t get along a minute without you. As to Aunt Maria, she’s old, and set in her way, and the best way is not to mind her.”

  And Mary was consoled, and went on her way with courage, and with about as much charity for Mrs. Wouvermans as an average good Christian under equal provocation.

  Eva went on singing and making up her vases, and carried them into the parlor, and was absorbed in managing their respective positions when Aunt Maria came down from her tour in the chambers.

  “Seems to me, Eva, that your hired girl’s room is furnished up for a princess,” she began, after the’ morning greetings had been exchanged.

  “What, Mary’s? Well, Mary has a great deal of neatness and taste, and always took particular pride in her room when she lived at mamma’s, and so I have arranged hers with special care. Harry got her those pictures of the Madonna and infant Jesus, and I gave the bénitier for holy water, over her bed. We matted the floor nicely, and I made that toilet-table, and draped her looking-glass out of an old muslin dress of mine. The pleasure Mary takes in it all makes it really worth while to gratify her.”

  “I never pet servants,” said Mrs. Wouvermans briefly. “Depend on it, Eva, when you’ve lived as long as I have, you’ll find it isn’t the way. It makes them presumptuous and exacting. Why, at first when I blundered into Mary’s room, I thought it must be yours — it had such an air.”

  “Well, as to the air, it’s mostly due to Mary’s perfect neatness and carefulness. I’m sorry to say you wouldn’t always find my room as trimly arranged as hers, for I am a sad hand to throw things about when I am in a hurry. I love order, but I like somebody else to keep it.”

  “I’m afraid,” said Aunt Maria, returning with persistence to her subject, “that you are beginning wrong with Mary, and you’ll have trouble in the end. Now I saw she had white sugar in the kitchen sugar-bowl, and there was the tea-caddy for her to go to. It’s abominable to have servants feel that they must use such tea as we do.”

  “Oh, well, aunty, you know Mary has been in the family so long I don’t feel as if she were a servant; she seems like a friend, and I treat her like one. I believe Mary really loves us.”

  “It don’t do to mix sentiment and business,” said Aunt Maria, with sententious emphasis. “I never do. I don’t want my servants to love me — that is not what I have them for. I want them to do my work, and take their wages. They understand that there are to be no favors — everything is specifically set down in the bargain I make with them; their work is all marked out. I never talk with them, or encourage them to talk to me, and that is the way we get along.”

  “Dear me, Aunt Maria, that may be all very well for such an energetic, capable housekeeper as you are, who always know exactly how to manage, but such a poor little thing as I am can’t set up in that way. Now I think it’s a great mercy and favor to have a trained girl that knows more about how to get on than I do, and that is fond of me. Why, I know rich people that would be only too glad to give Mary double what we give, just to have somebody to depend on.”

  “But, Eva, child, you’re beginning wrong — you ought not to leave things to Mary as you do. You ought to attend to everything yourself. I always do.”

  “But you see, aunty, the case is very different with you and me. You are so very capable and smart, and know so exactly how everything ought to be done, you can make your own terms with everybody. And, now I think of it, how lucky that you came in! I want you to give me your judgment as to two pieces of linen that I’ve just had sent in. You know, aunty, I am such a perfect ignoramus about these matters.”

  And Eva tripped upstairs, congratulating herself on turning the subject, and putting her aunt’s busy advising faculties to some harmless and innocent use. So, when she came down with her two pieces of linen, Aunt Maria tested and pulled them this way and that, in the approved style of a domestic expert, and gave judgment at last with an authoritative air.

  “This is the best, Eva — you see it has a round thread and very little dressing.”

  “And why is the round thread the best, aunty?”

  “Oh, because it always is — everybody knows that, child; all good judges will tell you to buy the round threaded linen, that’s perfectly well understood.”

  Eva did not pursue the inquiry farther, and we must all confess that Mrs. Wouvermans’ reply was about as satisfactory as those one gets to most philosophical inquiries as to why and wherefore. If our reader doubts that, let him listen to the course of modern arguments on some of the most profound problems; so far as can be seen, they consist of inflections of Aunt Maria’s style of statement — as, “Oh, of course everybody knows that, now;” or, negatively, “Oh, nobody believes that, nowadays.” Surely, a mode of argument which very wise persons apply fearlessly to subjects like death, judgment, and eternity, may answer for a piece of linen.

  “Oh, by the bye, Eva, I see you have cards there for Mrs. Wat Sydney’s receptions this winter,” said Aunt Maria, turning her attention to the card plate. “They are going to be very brilliant, I’m told. They say nothing like their new house is to be seen in this country.”

  “Yes,” said Eva, “Sophie has been down here urging me to come up and see her rooms, and says they depend on me for their receptions, and I’m going up some day to lunch with her, in a
quiet way; but Harry and I have about made up our minds that we sha’n’t go to parties. You know, aunty, we are going in for economy, and this sort of thing costs so much.”

  “But, bless your soul, child, what is money for?” said Aunt Maria innocently. “If you have anything you ought to improve your advantages of getting on in society. It’s important to Harry in his profession to be seen and heard of, and to push his way among the notables, and, with due care and thought and economy, a person with your air and style, and your taste, can appear as well as anybody. I came down here, among other things, to look over your dresses, and see what can be done with them.”

  “Oh, thank you a thousand times, aunty dear, but what do you think all my little wedding finery would do for me in an assemblage of Worth’s spick-and-span new toilets? In our own little social circles I am quite a leader of the mode, but I should look like an old last night’s bouquet among all their fresh finery!”

  “Well, now, Eva, child, you talk of economy and all that, and then go spending on knickknacks and mere fancies what would enable you to make a very creditable figure in society.”

  “Really, aunty, is it possible now, when I thought we were being so prudent?”