“I ought to have looked and made sure, when I found what Aunt Maria was at,” she said to herself. “If I had kept Maggie upstairs this would not have happened.” But then, an English literary man, that Harry thought a good deal of, was to dine there that night, and Eva felt all a housekeeper’s enthusiasm and pride to have everything charming. You know how it is, sisters. Each time that you have a social enterprise in hand you put your entire soul into it for the time being, and have a complete little set of hopes and fears, joys, sorrows, and plans, born with the day and dying with the morrow.
Just as she was busy arranging her flowers the doorbell rang, and Jim Fellows came in with a basket of fruit.
“Good-morning,” he said; “Harry told me you were going to have a little blow-out to-night, and I thought I’d bring in a contribution.”
“Oh! thanks, Jim; they are exactly the thing I was going out to look for. How lovely of you!”
“Well, they’ve come to you without looking, then,” said Jim. “Any commands for me? Can’t I help you in any way?”
“No, Jim, unless — well, you know my good Mary is the great wheel of this establishment, and if she breaks down we all go too — for I shouldn’t know what to do a single day without her.”
“Well, what has happened to this great wheel?” said Jim. “Has it a cold in its head, or what?”
“Come, Jim, don’t make fun of my metaphors; the fact is, that Mary’s daughter, Maggie, has run off again and left her.”
“Just what she might have expected,” said Jim.
“No; Maggie was doing very well, and I really thought I should make something of her. She thought everything of me, and I could get along with her perfectly well, and I found her very ingenious and capable; but her relations all took up against her, and her uncle came in last night and talked to her till she was in a perfect fury.”
“Of course,” said Jim, “that’s the world’s way; a fellow can’t repent and turn quietly, he must have his sins well rubbed into him, and his nose held to the grindstone.
I should know that Maggie would flare up under that style of operation; those great black eyes of hers are not for nothing, I can tell you.”
“Well, you see it was last night, while I was up at papa’s, that her uncle came, and they had a stormy time, I fancy; and when Harry and I came home we found Maggie just flying out of the door in desperation, and I brought her back, and quieted her down, and brought her to reason, and her mother too, and made it all smooth and right. But, this morning, came in Aunt Maria” —
Jim gave a significant whistle.
“Yes, you may well whistle. You see, Maggie once lived with Aunt Maria, and she’s dead set against her, and came to make me turn her out of my house, if she could.
You ought to have seen the look of withering scorn and denunciation she gave Maggie when she opened the door! and she talked about her so loud to me, and said so much to induce me to turn away both her and Mary, and take another set of girls, that I don’t wonder Maggie went off; and now poor Mary is quite broken-hearted. It makes me feel sad to see her go about her work so forlorn and patient, wiping her eyes every once in a while, and yet doing everything for me, like the good soul she always is.”
“By George!” said Jim; “I wish I could help her. Well, I’ll put somebody on Maggie’s track and we’ll find her out. I know all the detectives and the police — trust us newspaper fellows for that — and Maggie is a pretty marked article, and I think I may come on the track of her; there are not many things that Jim can’t find out, when he sets himself to work. Meanwhile, have you any errands for me to run, or any message to send to your folks? I may as well take it, while I’m about it.”
“Well, yes, Jim; if you’d be kind enough, as you go by papa’s, to ask Angie to come down and help me. She is always so brisk and handy, and keeps one in such good spirits, too.”
“Oh yes, Angie is always up and dressed, whoever wants her, and is good for any emergency. The little woman has Christmas tree on her brain just now — for our Sunday-school; only the other night, she was showing me the hoods and tippets she had been knitting for it, like a second Dorcas” —
“Yes,” said Eva, “we must all have a consultation about that Christmas tree. I wanted to see Mr. St. John about it.”
“Do you think there were any Christmas trees in the first centuries,” said Jim, “or any churchly precedent for them? — else I don’t see how St. John is going to allow such a worldly affair in his chapel.”
“Oh, pshaw! Mr. St. John is sensible. He listened with great interest to Angie, the other night, while she was telling about one that she helped get up last year in Dr. Cushing’s Sunday-school room, and he seemed quite delighted with the idea; and Angie and Alice and I are on a committee to get a list of children and look up presents, and that was one thing I wanted to talk about tonight.” — , “Well, get St. John and Angie to talking tree together, and she’ll edify him. St. John is |O. K. about all the particulars of how they managed in the catacombs, without doubt, and he gets ahead of us all preaching about the primitive Christians, but come to a Christmas tree for New York street boys and girls, in the nineteenth century, I’ll bet on Angie to go ahead of him. He’ll have to learn of her — and you see he won’t find it hard to take, either. Jim knows a thing or two.” And Jim cocked his head on one side, like a saucy sparrow, and looked provokingly knowing.
“Now, Jim, what do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing. Alice says I mustn’t think anything or say anything, on pain of her high displeasure. But, you just watch the shepherd and Angie to-night.”
“Jim, you provoking creature, you mustn’t talk so.”
“Bless your heart, who is talking so? Am I saying anything? Of course I’m not saying anything. Alice won’t let me. I always have to shut my eyes and look the other way when Angie and St. John are around, for fear I should say something and make a remark. Jim says nothing, but he thinks all the more.”
Now, we’ll venture to say that there isn’t a happy. young wife in the first months of wifehood that isn’t predisposed to hope for all her friends a happy marriage, as about the summit of human bliss; and so Eva was not shocked like Alice by the suggestion that her rector might become a candidate for the sacrament of matrimony. On the contrary, it occurred to her at once that the pretty, practical, lively, efficient little Angie might be a true angel, not merely of church and Sunday-school, but of a rector’s house. He was ideal and theoretic, and she practical and common-sense; yet she was pretty enough, and picturesque, and fanciful enough for an ideal man to make a poem of, and weave webs around, and write sonnets to; and as all these considerations flashed at once upon Eva’s mind she went on settling a spray of geranium with rosebuds, a pleased, dreamy smile on her face. After a moment’s pause she said, “Jim, if you see a bird considering whether to build a nest in the tree by your window, and want him there, the way is to keep pretty still about it and not go to the window, and watch, and call people, saying, ‘ Oh, see here, there’s a bird going to build!’ Don’t you see the sense of my parable?”
“Well, why do you talk to me? Haven’t I kept away from the window, and walked round on tiptoe like a cat, and only given the quietest look out of the corner of my eye?”
“Well, it seems you couldn’t help calling my attention and Alice’s. Don’t extend the circle of observers, Jim.”
“See if I do. You’ll find me discretion itself. I shall be so quiet that even a humming-bird’s nerves couldn’t be disturbed. Well, good-by for the present.”
“Oh, but, Jim, don’t forget to do what you can about Maggie. It really seems selfish in me to be absorbed in my own affairs, and not doing anything to help Mary, poor thing, when she’s so good to me.”
“Well, I don’t see but you are doing all you can. I’ll see about it right away and report to you,” said Jim; “so, au revoir.”
Angie came in about lunch time; the two sisters, once at their tea and toast, discussed the forthcoming e
vening’s preparations and the Christmas Sunday-school operations: and Eva, with the light of Jim’s suggestions in her mind, began to observe certain signs of increasing intimacy between Angie and Mr. St. John.
“Oh, Eva, I want to tell you: I went to see those poor Prices, Saturday afternoon; and there was John, just back from one of those dreadful sprees that he will have every two or three weeks. You never saw a creature so humble and so sorry, and so good, and so anxious to make up with his wife and me, and everybody all round, as he was. He was sitting there, nursing his wife and tending his baby, just as handy as a woman, — for she, poor thing, has had a turn of fever, in part, I think, brought on by worry and anxiety; but she seemed so delighted and happy to have him back! and I couldn’t help thinking what a shame it is that there should be any such thing as rum, and that there should be people who make it their business and get their living by tempting people to drink it. If I were a queen I’d shut up all the drinking-shops right off!”
“I fancy, if we women could have our way, we should do it pretty generally.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Angie. “One of the worst shops in John’s neighborhood is kept by a woman.”
“Well, it seems so hopeless — this weakness of these men,” said Eva.
“Oh, well, never despair,” said Angie. “I found him in such a good mood that I could say anything I wanted to, and I found that he was feeling terribly because he had lost his situation in Sanders’ store on account of his drinking habits. He had been a porter and errand boy there, and he is so obliging and quick that he is a great favorite; but they got tired of his being so unreliable, and had sent him word that they didn’t want him any more. Well, you see, here was an opportunity. I said to him, ‘John, I know Mr. Sanders, and if you’ll sign a solemn pledge never to touch another drop of liquor, or go into a place where it is sold, I will try and get him to take you back again. ‘ So I got a sheet of paper and wrote a pledge, strong and solemn, in a good round hand, and he put his name to it; and just then Mr. St. John came in and I showed it to him, and he spoke beautifully to him, and prayed with him, and I really do hope, now, that John will stand.”
“So, Mr. St. John visits them?”
“Oh, to be sure; ever since I had those children in my class he has been very attentive there. I often hear of his calling; and when he was walking home with me afterwards he told me about that article of Dr. Campbell’s and advised me to read it. He said it had given him some new ideas. He called this family my little parish, and said I could do more than he could. Just think of our rector saying that.”
Eva did think of it, but forbore to comment aloud. “Jim was right,” she said to herself.
CHAPTER XXXI
WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT
THE dinner-party, like many impromptu social ventures, was a success. Mr. Selby proved one of that delightful class of English travelers who travel in America to see and enter into its peculiar and individual life, and not to show up its points of difference from Old World social standards. He seemed to take the sense of a little family dinner, got up on short notice, in which the stereotyped doctrine of courses was steadfastly ignored; where there was no soup or fish, and only a good substantial course of meat and vegetables, with a slight dessert of fruit and confectionery; where there was no black servant, with white gloves, to change the plates, but only respectable, motherly Mary, who had tidied herself and taken the office of waiter in addition to her services as cook.
A real high-class English gentleman, when he fairly finds himself out from under that leaden pale of conventionalities which weighs down elasticity like London fog and smoke, sometimes exhibits all the hilarity of a boy out of school on a long vacation, and makes himself frisky and gamesome to a degree that would astonish the solemn divinities of insular decorum. Witness the stories of the private fun and frolic of Thackeray and Dickens, on whom the intoxicating sense of social freedom wrought results sometimes surprising to staid Americans; as when Thackeray rode with his heels out of the carriage window through immaculate and gaping Boston and Dickens perpetrated his celebrated walking wager.
Mr. Selby was a rising literary man in the London writing world, who had made his own way up in the world, and known hard times and hard commons, though now in a lucrative position. It would have been quite possible, by spending a suitable sum and deranging the whole house, to set him down to a second-rate imitation of a dull, conventional London dinner, with waiters in white chokers, and protracted and circuitous courses; and in that case Mr. Selby would have frozen into a stiff, well preserved Briton, with immaculate tie and gloves, and a guarded and diplomatic reserve of demeanor. Eva would have been nervously thinking of the various unusual arrangements of the dinner-table, and a general stiffness and embarrassment would have resulted. People who entertain strangers from abroad often reenact the mistake of the two Englishmen who traveled all night in a diligence, laboriously talking broken French to each other, till at dawn they found out by a chance slip of the tongue that they were both English. So, at heart, every true man, especially in a foreign land, is wanting what every true household can give him — sincere homely feeling, the sense of domesticity, the comfort of being off parade and among friends; and Mr. Selby saw in the first ten minutes that this was what he had found in the Hendersons’ house.
In the hour before dinner Eva had shown him her ivies and her ferns and her manner of training them, and found an appreciative observer and listener. Mr. Selby was curious about American interiors and the detail of domestic life among people of moderate fortune. He was interested in the modes of warming and lighting, and arranging furniture, etc.; and soon Eva and he were all over the house, while she eloquently explained to him the working of the furnace, the position of the water pipes, and the various comforts and conveniences which they had introduced into their little territories.
“I’ve got a little box of my own at Kentish-Town,” Mr. Selby said in a return burst of confidence, “and I shall tell my wife about some of your contrivances; the fact is,” he added, “we literary people need to learn all these ways of being comfortable at small expense. The problem of our age is, that of perfecting small establishments for people of moderate means; and I must say, I think it has been carried further in your country than with us.”
In due course followed an introduction to “my wife,” whose photograph Mr. Selby wore dutifully in his coat-pocket, over the exact region of the heart; and then came “my son,” four years old, with all his playthings round him; and, in short, before an hour, Eva and he were old acquaintances, ready to tell each other family secrets.
Alice and Angelique were delightful girls to reinforce and carry out the home charm of the circle. They had eminently what belongs to the best class of American girls, — that noble frankness of manner, that fearless giving forth of their inner nature, which comes from the atmosphere of free democratic society. Like most high-bred American girls, they had traveled, and had opportunities of observing European society, which added breadth to their range of conversation without taking anything from their frank simplicity. Foreign travel produces two opposite kinds of social effect, according to character. Persons who are narrow in their education, sensitive and self-distrustful, are embarrassed by a foreign experience; they lose their confidence in their home life, in their own country and its social habitudes, and get nothing adequate in return; their efforts at hospitality are repressed by a sort of mental comparison of themselves with foreign models; they shrink from entertaining strangers, through an indefinite fear that they shall come short of what would be expected somewhere else. But persons of more breadth of thought and more genuine courage see at once that there is a characteristic American home life, and that what a foreigner seeks in a foreign country is the peculiarity of that country, and not an attempt to reproduce that which has become stupid and tedious to him by constant repetition at home.
Angelique and Alice talked readily and freely; Alice with the calm, sustained good sense
and dignity which was characteristic of her, and Angelique in those sunny jets and flashes of impulsive gayety which rise like a fountain at the moment. Given the presence of three female personages like Eva, Alice, and Angelique, and it would not be among the possibilities for a given set of the other sex to be dull or heavy. Then, most of the gentlemen were more or less habitues of the house, and somewhat accorded with each other, like instruments that have been played in unison; and it is not, therefore, to be wondered at that Mr. Selby made the mental comment that, taken at home, these Americans are delightful, and that cultivated American women are particularly so from their engaging frankness of manner. —
There would be a great deal more obedience to the apostolic injunction, “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers,” if it once could be clearly got into the heads of well-intending people what it is that strangers want. What do you want, when away from home, in a strange city? Is it not the warmth of the home fireside, and the sight of people that you know care for you? Is it not the blessed privilege of speaking and acting yourself out unconstrainedly among those who you know understand you? And had you not rather dine with an old friend on simple cold mutton, offered with a warm heart, than go to a splendid ceremonious dinner-party among people who don’t care a rush for you?
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 397
