“Yes,” said I, “I remember how long I called you Eva in my heart, while I was addressing you at arm’s length as Miss Van Arsdel.”
“It was in the Park, Harry, that we lost the Mr and Miss, never to find them again.”
“I’ve often thought it strange,” said I, “how these unworldly modes of speaking among the Quakers seem to have with them a certain dignity. It would be an offense, a piece of vulgar forwardness, in most people to address you by your Christian name. But, with them it seems to be an attempt at realizing a certain ideal of Christian simplicity and sincerity, which one almost loses sight of in the conventional course of life.”
“I was very much amused,” said my wife, “at her telling me of one of her visits of Christian love to a Jew family, living on this street. And really, Harry, she has learned an amount of good about the Jews, from cultivating an intimacy with this family, that is quite astonishing. I ‘d no idea how good the Jews were.”
“Well, my little High Church darling,” said I, “you ‘re in a fair way to become ultra-liberal, and to find that what you call the Church doesn’t come anywhere near representing the whole multitude of the elect in this world. I comfort myself with thinking, all the time, how much more good there is in the world and in human nature than appears on the surface.”
“And, now, Harry, that you and I have this home of our own, we can do some of those things with it that our friends next door seem to be doing. I thought we might stir about and see if we couldn’t get up a class for this poor Frenchman, and I ‘m going to call on his wife. In fact, Harry, I’ve been thinking that it must be one’s own fault if one has no friends in one’s neighborhood. I can’t believe in living on a street, and never knowing or caring whether your next-door neighbor is sick or dead, simply because you belong to a circle up at the other end of the city.”
“Well, dear, you know that I am a democrat by nature. But I am delighted to have you make these discoveries for yourself. It was bad enough, in the view of your friends, I presume, for me to have come between you and a fashionable establishment, and a palace on the Park, without being guilty of introducing you into such very mixed society as the course that you ‘re falling into seems to promise. But wherever you go I’ll follow.”
CHAPTER L. MY WIFE PROJECTS HOSPITALITIES
“My dear,” said my wife to me at breakfast, “our house is about done. To be sure there are ever so many little niceties that I haven’t got at yet, but it’s pretty enough now. So that I ‘m not at all ashamed to show it to mamma or Aunt Maria, or any of them.”
“Do you think,” said I, “that last-named respectable individual could possibly think of countenancing us, when we have only an ingrain carpet on our parlor and nothing but mattings on the chambers, and live down here where nobody lives?”
“Well, poor soul!” said Eva, “she’ll have to accept it as one of the trials of life, and have recourse to the consolations of religion. Then, after all, Harry, I really am proud of our parlor. Of course, we’ve had the good luck to have a good many handsome ornaments given to us; so that, though we haven’t the regulation things that people generally get, it does look very bright and pretty.”, “It’s perfectly lovely,” said I. “Our house to me is a perfect dream of loveliness. I think of it all day from time to time when I’m at work in my office, and am always wanting to come home and see it again, and have a little curiosity to know what new thing you’ve accomplished. So far, your career has been a daily succession of triumphs, and the best of it is that it’s all so much like you.”
“So,” said she, “that I can’t be jealous at your loving the house so much.. I suppose you think it as much a part of me as the shell on a turtle’s back. Well, now, before we invite mother and Aunt Maria, and all the folks down here, I propose that we have just a nice little housewarming, with our own little private particular set, who know how to appreciate us.”
“Agreed!” said I; “Bolton, and Jim, and Alice, and you, and I will have a commemoration-dinner together. Our fellows, you see, seem to feel as much interested in this house as if it were their own.”
“I know it,” said she. “Isn’t it really amusing to see the grandfatherly concern that Bolton has for our cooking-stove?”
“Oh! Bolton has staked his character on that stove,” I said. “Its success is quite a personal matter now.”
“Well, it does bake admirably,” said my wife, “and I think our dinner will be a perfect success, so far as that is concerned. And, do you know, I ‘m going to introduce that new way of doing up cold chicken which I’ve invented.”
“Yes,” said I, “we shall christen it Chicken à la Eva.”
“And I’ve been talking with our Mary about it, and she’s quite in the spirit of the affair. You see, like all Irishwomen, Mary perfectly worships the boys, and thinks there never was anybody like Mr. Bolton and Mr. Jim; and, of course, it’s quite a labor of love with her. Then I’ve been giving her little cub there a series of lessons to enable her to wait on table; and she is all exercised with the prospect.”
“Why,” said I, “the little flibberty-gibbet is hardly as high as the table.”
“Oh, never say that before her. She feels very high indeed in the world, and is impressed with the awful gravity and responsibility of being eight years old. I have made her a white apron with pockets, in which her soul delights; and her mother has starched and ironed it till it shines with whiteness. And she is learning to brush the table-cloth, and change plates in the most charming way, and with a gravity that is quite overcoming.”
“Capital!” said I. “And when shall it be?”
“To-morrow night.”
“Agreed! I’ll tell the fellows this is to be a regular blow-out, and we must do our very prettiest, which is very pretty indeed,” said I, “thanks to the contributions of our numerous friends. For my part, I think the fashion of wedding presents has proved a lucky thing for us.”
“Even if we have six pie-knives, and no pie to eat with them,” said my wife, “as may happen in our establishment pretty often.”
“Still,” said I, “among them all there are a sufficiency of articles that give quite another aspect to our prudent little house from what it would wear if we were obliged to buy everything ourselves.”
“Yes,” said my wife, “and one such present as that set of bronzes on the mantelpiece gives an air to a whole room. A mantelpiece is like a lady’s bonnet. It’s the headpiece of a room, and if that be pleasing the rest is a good deal taken for granted. Then, you see, our parlor is all of a warm color, — crimson carpet, crimson curtains, — everything warm and glowing. And so long as you have the color it isn’t a bit of matter whether your carpet cost three dollars and a half a yard or eighty-seven cents, and whether your curtains are damask or Turkey red. Color is color, and will produce its effects, no matter in what material.”
“And we men,” said I, “never know what the material is, if only the effect is pleasant. I always look at a room as a painting. It never occurs to me whether the articles in it are cheap or dear, so that only the general effect is warm, and social, and agreeable. And that is just what you have made these rooms. I think the general effect of the rooms, either by daylight, or lamplight, or firelight, would be to make a person like to stay in them, and when he had left them want to come back.”
“Yes,” said my wife, “I flatter myself our rooms have the air of belonging to people that are having nice times, and enjoying themselves, as we are. And, for my own part, I feel like sitting right down in them. All that round of party-going, and calling, and visiting that I used to have to keep up seems to me really wearisome. I want you to understand, Harry, that it’s not the slightest sacrifice in the world for me to give it up. I ‘m just happy to be out of it.”
“You see,” said I, “we can sit down here and make our own world. Those that we really like very much and who like, us very much will come to us. My ideal of good society is of a few congenial persons who can know each other very
thoroughly, so as to feel perfectly acquainted and at home with one another. That was the secret of those reunions that went on so many years around Madame Bécamier. It made no difference whether she lived in a palace, or a little obscure street; her friends were real friends, and followed her everywhere. The French have made a science of the cultivation of friendship, which is worth study.”
Thus my wife and I chatted, and felicitated each other, in those first happy home-making days. There was never any end to our subjects of mutual conversation. Every little change in our arrangements was fruitful in conversation. We hung our pictures here at first, and liked them well, but our maturer second thoughts received bright inspirations to take them down and hang them there; and then we liked them better. I must say, by the bye, that I had committed one of those extravagances which lovers do commit when they shut their eyes and go it blind. I had bought back the pictures of Eva’s little boudoir from Goupil’s. The fact was that there was a considerable sympathy felt for Mr. Van Arsdel, and one of the members of the concern was a nice fellow, with whom I had some pleasant personal acquaintance. So that the redemption of the pictures was placed at a figure which made it possible for me to accomplish it. And the pictures themselves were an untold store of blessedness to us. I believe we took them all down and hung them over four times, on four successive days, before we were satisfied that we had come to ultimate perfection.
CHAPTER LI. PREPARATIONS FOR OUR DINNER-PARTY
“HARRY,” said my wife, the morning of the day of our projected house-warming, “there ‘s one thing you must get me.”
“Well, Princess?”
“Well, you know you and I don’t care for wine and don’t need it, and can’t afford it, but I have such a pretty set of glasses and decanters, and you must get me a couple of bottles just to set off our table for celebration.”
Immediately I thought of Bolton’s letter, of what he had told me of the effect of wine upon his senses at Hestermann’s dinner table. I knew it must not be at ours, but how to explain to my wife without compromising him? At a glance I saw that all through the future my intimacy with Bolton must be guided and colored by what I knew of his history, his peculiar struggles and temptations, and that not merely now, but on many future occasions, I should need a full understanding with my wife to act as I should be obliged to act. I reflected that Eva and I had ceased to be two and had become one, that I owed her an unlimited confidence in those respects where my actions must involve her comfort, or wishes, or cooperation.
“Eva, darling,” I said, “you remember I told you there was a mystery about the separation of Bolton and Caroline.”
“Yes, of course,” said she, wondering; “but what has this to do with this wine question?”
“A great deal,” I said, and going to my desk I took out Bolton’s letter and put it into her hand. “Read that, my dear, and then tell me what to do.” She took it and read with something of the eagerness of feminine curiosity while I left the room for a few moments. In a little while she came after me and laid her hand on my arm.
“Harry, dear,” she said, “I’ll stand by you in this thing. His secret shall be sacred with me, and I will make a safe harbor for him where he may have a home without danger. I want our house to seem like a home for him.”
“You are an angel, Eva.”
“Well, Harry, I must say I always have had conscience about offering wine to some young men that I knew ought to keep clear of it, but it never occurred to me in regard to such a grave, noble man as Bolton.”
“We never know who may be in this danger. It is a diseased action of the nervous system — often inherited —— a thing very little understood, like the tendency to insanity or epilepsy. But while we know such things are, we cannot be too careful.”
“I should never have forgiven myself, Harry, if I had done it.”
“The result would have been that Bolton would never have dined with us again; he is resolute to keep entirely out of all society where this temptation meets him.”
“Well, we don’t want it, don’t need it, and won’t have it. Mary makes magnificent coffee, and that’s ever so much better. So that matter is settled, Harry, and I ‘m ever and ever so glad you told me. I do admire him so much! There is something really sad and noble in his struggle.”
“Many a man with that temptation who fails often exercises more self-denial and self-restraint than most Christians,” said I.
“I’m sure I don’t deny myself much. I generally want to do just what I do,” said Eva.
“You always want to do all that is good and generous,” said I.
“I think, on the whole,” said Eva reflectively, “my self-denial is in not doing what other people want me to. I ‘m like Mrs. Quickly. I want to please everybody. I wanted to please mamma and Aunt Maria.”
“And came very near marrying a man you couldn’t love purely to oblige people.”
“If you hadn’t rescued me,” she said, laughing. “But now, Harry, really I want some little extravagance about our dinner. So if we don’t have wine, buy the nicest of grapes and pears, and I will arrange a pretty fruit piece for the centre of the table.”
“My love, I will get you all the grapes and pears you want.”
“And my little Ruth has sent me in this lovely tumbler of apple jelly. You see, I held sweet counsel with her yesterday on the subject of jelly-making, where I am only a novice, and hers is splendid; literally now, splendid, for see how the light shines through it! And do you think, the generous little Puss actually sent me in half a dozen tumblers.”
“What a perfect saint!” said I.
“And I am to have all the flowers in her garden. She says the frost will take them in a day or two if we don’t. Harry, next summer we must take lessons of her about our little back yard. I never saw so much made of so little ground.”
“She’ll be only too delightful,” said I.
“Well, now, mind you are home at five. I want you to look the house over before your friends come, and see if I have got everything as pretty as it can be.”
“Are they to ‘process’ through the house and see your blue room, and your pink room, and your guest chamber, and all?”
Yes. I want them to see all through how pretty the rooms are, and then sometimes, perhaps, we shall tempt them to stay all night.”
And sleep in the chamber that is called Peace,” said I, “after the fashion of Pilgrim’s Progress.”
“Come, Harry, begone. I want you to go, so as to be sure and come back early.”
CHAPTER XLII. THE HOUSE-WARMING
DEAR reader, fancy now a low-studded room, with crimson curtains and carpet, a deep recess filled by a crimson divan with pillows, the lower part of the room taken up by a row of book-shelves, three feet high, which ran all round the room and accommodated my library. The top of this formed a convenient shelf, on which all our pretty little wedding presents — statuettes, bronzes, and articles of vertu — were arranged. A fireplace, surrounded by an old-fashioned border of Dutch tiles, with a pair of grandmotherly brass andirons, rubbed and polished to an extreme of brightness, exhibits a wood fire, all laid in order to be lighted at the touch of the match. My wife has dressed the house with flowers, which our pretty little neighbor has almost stripped her garden to contribute. There are vases of fire-colored nasturtiums and many-hued chrysanthemums, the arrangement of which has cost the little artist an afternoon’s study, but which I pronounce to be perfect. I have come home from my office an hour earlier to see if she has any commands.
“Here, Harry,” she says, with a flushed face, “I believe everything now is about as perfect as it can be. Now come and stand at this door, and see how you think it will strike our friends, when they first come in. You see I’ve heaped up those bronze vases on the mantel with nothing but nasturtiums; and it has such a surprising effect in that dark bronze! Then I’ve arranged those white chrysanthemums right against these crimson curtains. And now come out in the dining-room, and see how I’ve
set the dinner table! You see, I’ve the prettiest possible centre-piece of fruit and flowers. Isn’t it lovely?”
Of course I kissed her and said it was lovely, and that she was lovelier; and she was a regular little enchantress, witch, and fairy-queen, and ever so much more to the same purport. And then Alice came down, all equipped for conquest, as pretty an additional ornament to the house as heart could desire. And when the clock was on the stroke of six, and we heard the feet of our guests at the door, we lighted our altar-fire in the fireplace; for it must be understood that this was a pure coup de théâtre, a brightening, vivifying, ornamental luxury — one of the things we were determined to have, on the strength of having determined not to have a great many others. How proud we were when the blaze streamed up and lighted the whole room, fluttered on the pictures, glinted here and there on the gold bindings of the books, made dreamy lights and deep shadows, and called forth all the bright glowing color of the crimson tints which seemed to give out their very heart to firelight! My wife was evidently proud of the effect of all things in our rooms, which Jim declared looked warm enough to bring a dead man to life.
Bolton was seated in due form in a great, deep armchair, which, we informed him, we had bought especially with reference to him, and the corner was to be known henceforth as his corner.
“Well,” said he, with grave delight, “I have brought my final contribution to your establishment;” and forthwith from the capacious hinder pockets of his coat he drew forth a pair of kittens, and set them down on the hearthrug. “There, Harry,” he said gravely, “there are a pair of ballet dancers that will perform for you gratis, at any time.”
“Oh, the little witches, the perfect loves!” said my wife and Alice, rushing at them.
Bolton very gravely produced from his pocket two long strings with corks attached to them, and hanging them to the gas fixtures, began, as he said, to exhibit the ballet dancing, in which we all became profoundly interested. The wonderful leaps and flings and other achievements of the performers occupied the whole time till dinner was announced.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 348