“Couldn’t do it, divinest charmer,” said Jim, “couldn’t do it; too poor; mill runs low; no water; modest merit not rewarded. Wait till my ship comes in, and I’ll subscribe for anything you like.”
“Well, now, you don’t get rid of me that way. I tell you I came in to get a subscription, and I am going to stay till I get one,” said Miss Audacia. “Come, Hal,” she said, crossing once more to me, and sitting down by me and taking my hand, “write your name there, there’s a good fellow.”
I wrote my name in desperation, while Jim stood by, laughing.
“Jim,” I said, “come, put yours down quick, and let’s have it over.”
“Well, now,” said she, “fork out the stamps — five dollars each.”
We both obeyed mechanically.
“Well, well,” said she good-naturedly, “that’ll do for this time, good-morning,” and she vanished from the apartment with a jaunty toss of the head and a nod of the cock’s-feathers in her hat.
Jim closed the door smartly after her.
“Mercy upon us! Jim,” said I, “who and what is this creature?”
“Oh, one of the harbingers of the new millennium,” said Jim. “Won’t it be jolly when all the girls are like her? But we shall have to keep our doors locked then.”
“But,” said I, “is it possible, Jim, that this is a respectable woman?”
“She’s precisely what you see,” said Jim; “whether that’s respectable is a matter of opinion. There ‘s a woman that’s undertaken, in good faith, to run and jostle in all the ways that men run in. Her principle is, that whatever a young fellow in New York could do, she’ll do.”
“Good heavens!” said I, “what would the Van Arsdels think of us, if they should know that she had been in our company?”
“It’s lucky that they don’t and can’t,” said Jim. “But you see what you get for belonging to the New Dispensation.”
“Boys, what’s all this fuss?” said Bolton, coming in at this moment.
“Oh, nothing, only ‘Dacia Dangyereyes has been here,” said Jim, “and poor Hal is ready to faint away and sink through the floor. He isn’t up to snuff yet, for all he writes such magnificent articles about the nineteenth century.”
“Well,” said I, “it was woman as woman that I was speaking of, and not this kind of creature. If I believed that granting larger liberty and wider opportunities was going to change the women we reverence to things like these, you would never find me advocating it.”
“Well, my dear Hal,” said Bolton, “be comforted; you ‘re not the first reformer that has had to cry out, ‘Deliver me from my friends.’ Always, when the waters of any noble, generous enthusiasm rise and overflow their banks, there must come down the driftwood — the wood, hay, and stubble. Luther had more trouble with the fanatics of his day, who ran his principles into the ground, as they say, than he had with the Pope and the Emperor, both together. As to this Miss Audacia, she is one of the phenomenal creations of our times; this time, when every kind of practical experiment in life has got to be tried, and stand or fall on its own merits. So don’t be ashamed of having spoken the truth because crazy people and fools caricature it. It is true, as you have said, that women ought to be allowed a freer, stronger, and more generous education and scope for their faculties. It is true that they ought, everywhere, to have equal privileges with men; and because some crack-brained women draw false inferences from this, it is none the less true. For my part, I always said that one must have a strong conviction for a cause, if he could stand the things its friends say for it, or read a weekly paper devoted to it. If I could have been made a pro-slavery man, it would have been by reading anti-slavery papers, and vice versa. I had to keep myself on a good diet of pro-slavery papers, to keep my zeal up.”
“But,” said I anxiously to Jim, “do you suppose that we ‘re going to be exposed to the visits of this young woman?”
“Well,” said Jim, “as you’ve subscribed for her paper, perhaps she’ll let us alone till she has some other point to carry.”
“Subscribe!” said I; “I did it from compulsion, to get her out of the office; I didn’t think the situation respectable; and yet I don’t want her paper, and I don’t want my name on her subscription list. What if the Van Arsdels should find it out? People are apt enough to think that our doctrines lead to all sorts of outré consequences; and if Mrs. Wouvermans, their Aunt Maria, should once get hold of this, and it should get all through the circle in which they move, how disagreeable it would be.”
“Oh, never fear,” said Jim; “I guess we can manage to keep our own secrets; and as to any of them ever knowing, or seeing, anything about that paper, it’s out of the question. Bless you! they wouldn’t touch it with a pair of tongs!”
CHAPTER XXIII. AUNT MARIA
AUNT MARIA came into the parlor where Eva and Alice were chatting over their embroidery. A glance showed that she had been occupied in that sensible and time-honored method of keeping up the social virtues, which is called making calls. She was all plumed and rustling in flowers and laces, and had on her calling manners. She had evidently been smiling and bowing and inquiring after people’s health, and saying pretty and obliging things, till the very soul within her was quite dried up and exhausted. For it must be admitted that to be obliged to remember and inquire for every uncle, aunt, and grandmother, every baby and young master and miss, in a circle of one’s three hundred particular friends, is an exercise of Christian benevolence very fatiguing. Aunt Maria, however, always went through with it with exhaustive thoroughness, so that everybody said, What a kind-hearted, pleasant woman that Mrs. Wouvermans is.
“Well, there!” she said, throwing herself into an armchair, “I’ve nearly cleared my list, thank Heaven! I think Lent is a grand good season to get these matters off your mind. You know Mr. Selwyn said last Sunday that it was the time to bring ourselves up to the disagreeable duties.”
“How many have you made, Aunty?” said Eva.
“Just three dozen, my dear. You see I chose a nice day when a good many are sure to be out. That shortens matters a good deal. Well, girls, I’ve been to the Elmores’. You ought to see what a state they are in! In all my experience I never saw people so perfectly tipped over and beside themselves with delight. I’m sure if I were they I wouldn’t show it quite so plain.”
“I suppose,” said Alice, “they are quite benignant and patronizing to us now.”
“Patronizing! Well, I wish you could have seen Poll Elmore and her airs! You would have thought her a duchess from the Faubourg St. Germain, and no less! She was so very sweet and engaging! Dear me, she patronized me within an inch of my life; and ‘How are your dear girls?’ she said. ‘All the world is expecting to hear some news of Miss Eva; should we soon have an opportunity of returning congratulations?’”
“Oh, pshaw, Aunt,” said Eva uneasily, “what did you say?”
“Oh! I told her that Eva was in no hurry, that she was very reticent of her private affairs, and did not think it in good taste to proclaim them. ‘Ah, then, there really is something in it,’ said she. ‘I was telling my girls perhaps after all it is mere report; people say so many things. The thing was reported about Maria,’ she said, ‘long before there was any truth in it;’ and then she went on to tell me how much Maria had been admired, and how many offers she had rejected, and among other things she said that Mr. Sydney had been at her disposal, — only she couldn’t fancy him. ‘You know,’ she said with a sentimental air, ‘that the heart is all in such cases.’”
“How perfectly absurd of her,” said Eva.
“I know,” said Alice eagerly, “that Wat Sydney doesn’t like Maria Elmore., She was perfectly wild after him, and used to behave so that it really disgusted him.”
“Oh, well,” said Eva, “all these things are excessively disagreeable to me; it seems to me where such matters are handled and talked about and bandied about, they become like shop-worn goods, utterly disgusting. Who wants every fool and fop and ev
ery gossip who has nothing better to do talking over what ought to be the most private and delicate affairs of one’s own heart!”
“Well, dear, you can’t help it in society. Why, every person where I have called inquired about your engagement to Wat Sydney. You see you can’t keep a thing of this sort private. Of course you can’t. You are in the world, and the world will have you do as others do. Of course I didn’t announce it, because I have no authority; but the thing is just as much out as if I had. There was old Mrs. Ellis, dear old soul, said to me, ‘Give my love to dear Eva, and tell her I hope she’ll be happy. I suppose,’ she added, ‘I may send congratulations, though it isn’t announced.’ ‘Oh,’ said I, ‘Eva doesn’t like to have matters of this sort talked about.’”
“But Aunty,” said Eva, who had been coloring with vexation, “this is all gratuitous — you are all engaging and marrying me in spite of my screams, as appears. I am not engaged to Mr. Sydney, and never expect to be; he is gone off on a long Southern tour, and I hope out of sight will be out of mind, and people will stop talking.”
“But, my dear Eva, really, now, you ought not to treat a nice man like him in that way.”
“Treat him in what way?” said Eva.
“Why, keep him along in this undecided manner without giving him a definite answer.”
“He might have had a definite answer any time in the last three months if he had asked for it. It isn’t my business to speak till I’m spoken to.”
“You don’t mean, Eva, that he has gone off without saying anything definite — bringing matters to a point?”
“I do mean just that, Aunty, and what’s more I’m glad he’s gone, and I hope before he comes back he’ll see somebody that he likes better, and then it’ll be all off; and, Aunty, if any one speaks to you about it you’ll oblige me by saying decidedly there is nothing in it.”
“Well, I sha’n’t say there never has been anything in it. I shall say you refused him.”
“And why so? I am not anxious to have the credit of it, and besides I think it is indelicate when a man has paid a lady the highest possible compliment he can pay, to make a public parade of it. It’s sufficient to say there is nothing in it and never will be; it’s nobody’s business how it happened.”
“Oh, come, Eva, don’t say there never will be anything in it. That is a subject on which girls are licensed to change their minds.”
“For my part,” said Alice, “I only wish it were I. I ‘d have him in a minute. Aunty, did you see that nobby phaeton he was driving the last day he was on the park; those horses, and that white fur lap-robe, with the long pluffy hair like silver? I must say, Eva, I think you are a little goose.”
“I’ve no objection to the park phaeton, or horses, or lap-robe; but it isn’t those I’m to marry, you see.”
“But, Eva,” said Aunt Maria, “if you wouldn’t fancy such a match as Wat Sydney, who would you? he is a man of correct and temperate habits, and that’s more than you can say of half the men.”
“But a woman doesn’t necessarily want to make her most intimate and personal friend of a man merely because he doesn’t drink,” said Eva.
“But he ‘s good looking.”
“So they say, but not to me, not my style. In short, Aunty, I don’t love him, and never should; and if I were tied too close to him might end by hating him. As it is, he and I are the best friends possible. I hope we always shall stay so.”
“Well, I should like to know who ever will suit you, Eva,” said Aunt Maria.
“Oh, he will come along, Aunty, never fear! I shall know him when I see him, and I dare say everybody will wonder what in the world possessed me, but I shall be content. I know exactly what I want, I’m like the old party in the ‘Ancient Mariner.’ I shall know when I see him ‘the man that must have me,’ and then I shall ‘hold him with my glittering eye.’”
“Well, Eva, you must remember one thing. There are not many men able to keep you in the way you always have lived.”
“Then, when the right one comes I shall live as he is able to keep me.”
“Go to housekeeping in three rooms, perhaps. You look like it.”
“Yes; and do my own cooking. I’m rather fond of cooking; I have decided genius that way too. Ask Jane down in the kitchen if I don’t make splendid fritters. The fact is, Aunty, I have so much superfluous activity and energy that I should be quite thrown away on a rich man. A poor country rector, very devout, with dark eyes like Longfellow’s Kavanagh, is rather my ideal. I would get up his surplices myself, and make him such lovely fontals and altar cloths! Why doesn’t somebody of that sort come after me? I’m quite impatient to have a sphere and show what I can do.”
“Well,” said Alice, “you don’t catch me marrying a poor man. Not I. No home missionaries, nor poor rectors, nor distressed artists need apply at this office.”
“Now, girls,” said Aunt Maria, “let me tell you it’s all very pretty at your time of life to dream about love in a cottage and all that, but when you have seen all of life that I have, you will know the worth of the solid; when one has been used to a certain way of living, for example, one can’t change; and if you married the angel Gabriel without money, you would soon repent it.”
“Well,” said Eva, “I’d risk it if Gabriel would have me, and I’d even try it with some man a little lower than the angels; so prepare your mind to endure it, Aunty, for one of these days everybody will be holding up their hands and saying, ‘What, Eva Van Arsdel engaged to him! Why, what could have possessed her?’ That’s just the way I heard Lottie Simmons talking last week about Belle St. John’s engagement. She is going to marry a college professor in New Haven on one of those very homoeopathic doses of salary that people give to really fine men that have talent and education, and she ‘s just as happy as she can be about it, and the girls are all scraping their throats, ‘oh-ing and ah-ing’ and wondering what could have led her to it. No engagement ring to show! private wedding! and just going off together up to his mother’s in Vermont instead of making the bridal tour of all the watering-places! It must be so charming, you see, to be exhibited as a new bride, along with all the other new brides at Trenton and Niagara and the White Mountains, so that everybody may have a chance to compare your finery with everybody else’s, also, to see how you conduct yourself in new circumstances. For my part, I shall be very glad if my poor rector can’t afford it.”
“By the bye, speaking of that girl,” said Aunt Maria, “what are you going to wear to the wedding? It’s quite time you were attending to that. I called in at Tullegig’s, and of course she was all in a whirl, but I put in for you. ‘Now, Madame,’ said I, ‘you must leave a place in your mind for my girls,’ and of course she went on with her usual French rodomontade, but I assure you you’ll have to look after her. Tullegig has no conscience, and will put you off with anything she can make you take, unless you give your mind to it and follow her up.”
“Well, I’m sure, Aunty, I don’t feel equal to getting a new dress out of Tullegig,” said Eva, with a sigh, “and I have dresses enough, any one of which will do. I am blasée with dresses, and I think weddings are a drug. If there ‘s anything that I think downright vulgar and disagreeable, it’s this style of blaring, flaring, noisy, crowded, disagreeable modern weddings. It is a crush of finery; a smash of china; a confusion of voices; and everybody has the headache after it; it’s a perfect infliction to think of being obliged to go to another. For my part, I believe I am going to leave all those cares to Alice; she is come out now, and I am only Queen Dowager.”
“Oh, pshaw, Eva, don’t talk so,” said Aunt Maria, “and now I think of it you don’t look well, you ought to take a tonic in the spring. Let me see, Calisaya bark and iron is just the thing. I’ll send you in a bottleful from Jennings’ as I go home, and you must take a tablespoonful three times a day after eating, and be very particular not to fatigue yourself.”
“I think,” said Alice, “that Eva gets tired going to all those early services.”
“Oh, my dear child, yes; how can you think of such a thing? It’s very inconsiderate in Mr. Selwyn, I think, to have so many services when he must know many weddings and things are coming off just after Easter. People will be all fagged out, just as Eva is. Now I believe in the Church as much as anybody, but in our day I think there is danger in running religion to extremes.”
“Ah!” said Eva, “I suppose there is no danger of one running to extremes in anything but religion — in dress or parties, for instance?”
“But you know one has these things to attend to, my dear; one must keep up a certain style; and, of course, there is a proper medium that I hold to as much as anybody. Nobody is more particular about religion in its place than I am. I keep Sunday strictly; very few people more so. I never ride in the Park Sundays, nor write a letter, though I have seen people who called themselves religious that would. No. I believe in giving full observance to the Lord’s day, but then I think one ought to have the week clear for action. That belongs to us, as I view it, and our old rector was very easy with us about all the saints’ days, and week-day services, and things in the Prayer-Book. To be sure, there are Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. One, of course, should attend to these, — that is no more than is proper; but the way Mr. Selwyn goes on! why, one wouldn’t be able to think of much else than religion if he had his way.”
“What a dreadful state of society that would bring on!” said Eva.
“But come, Aunty,” said Alice, “don’t talk theology; tell us what discoveries you made at the Elmores’. I know they showed you everything.”
“Oh, of course they did. Well, there’s the wedding veil, cost two thousand dollars; for my part, I thought it looked ordinary after all; it’s so thick and stiff with embroidery, you see — no lightness to it.”
“I wouldn’t take it as a gift,” said Eva. “I think such expensive things are simply vulgar.”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 327