Eva felt a sort of awed pleasure in Sibyl’s admiration of her pretty things, as if an angel guide were stooping to play with her. She felt in her presence like one of earth’s unweaned babies.
St. John, in one of the pauses of the conversation, looked up and saw this striking head and face opposite to him; a head reminding him of some of those saintly portraitures of holy women in which Over beck delights. We have described him as peculiarly impressible under actual social influences. It was only the week before that an application had been made to him for one Sibyl Selwyn to hold a meeting in his little chapel, and sternly refused. His idea of a female preacher had been largely blended with the mediæval masculine contempt of woman and his horror of modern, woman public teachers and lecturers. When this serene vision rose like an exhalation before him he did not at first recall the applicant for his chapel, but he looked at her admiringly in a sort of dazed wonder, and inquired of Dr. Campbell in a low voice, “Who is that?”
“Oh,” said Dr. Campbell, “don’t you know? that’s the Quaker preacher, Sibyl Selwyn; the woman who has faced and put down the devil in places where you couldn’t and I wouldn’t go.”
St. John felt the blood flush in his cheeks, and a dim idea took possession of him that, if some had entertained angels unawares, others unawares had rejected them.
“Yes,” said Dr. Campbell, “that woman has been alone, at midnight, through places where you and I could not go without danger of our heads; and she has said words to bar-tenders and brothel-keepers that would cost us our lives. But she walks out of it all, as calm as you see her to-night. I know that kind of woman — I was brought up among them. They are an interesting physiological study; the over-cerebration of the spiritual faculties among them occasions some very peculiar facts and phenomena. I should like to show you a record I have kept. It gives them at times an almost miraculous ascendancy over others. I fancy,” he said carelessly, “that your legends of the saints could furnish a good many facts of the same sort.”
At this moment Eva came up in her authoritative way as mistress of ceremonies, took Mr. St. John by the arm, and, walking across with him, seated him by Sibyl Selwyn, introduced them to each other, and left them. St. John was embarrassed, but Sibyl received him with the perfect composure in which she sat enthroned.
“Arthur St. John,” she said, “I am glad to meet thee.
I am interested in thy work among the poor of this quarter, and have sought the Lord for thee in it.”
“I am sure I thank you,” said St. John, thus suddenly reduced to primitive elements and spoken to on the simple plane of his unvarnished humanity. It is seldom, after we come to mature years and have gone out into the world, that any one addresses us simply by our name without prefix or addition of ceremony. It is the province only of rarest intimacy or nearest relationship, and it was long since St. John had been with friend or relation who could thus address him. It took him back to childhood and his mother’s knee. He was struggling with a vague sense of embarrassment, when he remembered the curt and almost rude manner in which he had repelled her overture to speak in his chapel, and the contempt he had felt for her at the time. In the presence of the clear, saintly face, it seemed as if he had been unconsciously guilty of violating a shrine. He longed to apologize, but he did not know how to begin.
“I feel,” he said, “that I am inexperienced, and that the work is very great. You,” he added, “have had longer knowledge of it than I; perhaps I might learn something of you.”
“Thou wilt be led,” said Sibyl, with the same assured calmness, “be not afraid.”
“I am sorry — I was sorry,” said St. John, hesitating, “to refuse the help you offered in speaking in my chapel, but it is contrary to the rules of the Church.”
“Be not troubled. Thee follows thy light. Thee can do no otherways. Thee is but young yet,” she said, with a motherly smile.
“I did not know you personally then,” he said. “I should like to talk more with you, some time. I should esteem it a favor to have you tell me some of your experiences.”
“Some time, if we can sit together in stillness, I might have something given me for thee; this is not the time,” said Sibyl, with quiet graciousness.
A light laugh seemed to cut into the gravity of the conversation. Both turned. Angelique was the centre of a gay group to whom she was telling a droll story. Angie had a gift for this sort of thing; and Miss Dorcas and Mrs. Betsey, Mrs. Van Arsdel and Mr. Van Arsdel, were gathered around her as, with half-pantomime, half-mimicry, she was giving a street scene in one of her Sunday-school visitations. St. John laughed too; he could not help it. In a moment, however, he seemed to recollect himself, and sighed and said: —
“It seems sometimes strange to me that we can allow ourselves to laugh in a world like this. She is only a child or she couldn’t.”
Sibyl looked tenderly at Angelique. “It is her gift,” she said. “She is one of the children of the bride-chamber, who cannot mourn because the bridegroom is with them. It would be better for thee, Arthur St. John, to be more a child. Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
St. John was impressed by the calm decision of this woman’s manner and the atmosphere of peace and assurance around her. The half-mystical character of her words fell in with his devout tendencies, and that strange, indefinable something that invests some persons with influence seemed to be with her, and he murmured to himself the words from Comus: —
“She fables not, and I do feel her words
Set off by some superior power.”
Mr. St. John had not for a moment during that whole evening lost the consciousness that Angelique was in the room. Through that double sense by which two trains of thought can be going on at the same time, he was sensible of her presence and of what she was doing, through all his talks with other people. He had given one glance, when he came into the room, to the place where she was sitting and entertaining Mrs. Betsey, and without any apparent watchfulness he was yet conscious of every movement she made from time to time. He knew when she dropped her handkerchief, he knew when she rose to get down another book, and when she came to the table and poured for Mrs. Betsey another cup of tea. A subtle exhilaration was in the air. He knew not why everything seemed so bright and cheerful; it is as when a violet or an orange blossom, hid in a distant part of a room, fills the air with a vague deliciousness.
He dwelt dreamily on Sibyl’s half-mystical words, and felt as if an interpreting angel had sanctioned the charm that he found in this bright, laughing child. He liked to call her a child to himself, — it was a pleasant little nook into which he could retreat from a too severe scrutiny of his feelings towards her; for, quite unknown to himself, St. John’s heart was fast slipping off into the good old way of Eden.
But we leave him for a peep at other parties. It is amusing to think how many people in one evening company are weaving and winding threads upon their own private, separate spools. Jim Fellows, in the dining-room, was saying to Alice: —
“I’m going to bring Hal Stephens and Ben Hubert to you this evening; and by George, Alice, I want you to look after them a little, as you can. They are raw newspaper boys, tumbled into New York; and nobody cares a hang for them. Nobody does care a hang for any stranger body, you know. They haven’t a decent place to visit, nor a woman to say a word to them; and yet I tell you they ‘re good fellows. Everybody curses newspaper reporters and that sort of fellow. Nobody has a good word for them. It’s small salary, and many kicks and cuffs they get at first; and yet that’s the only way to get on the papers, and make a man of yourself at last; and so, as I’ve got up above the low rounds, I want to help the boys that are down there, and I’ll tell you, Alice, it’ll do ’em lots of good to know you.”
And so Alice was gracious to the newcomers and made them welcome, and showed them pictures, and drew them out to talk, and made them feel that they were entertaining her.
Some women have this power of divining what a man can say,
and giving him courage to say it. Alice was one of these; people wondered when they left her how they had been made to talk so well. It was the best and truest part of every one’s nature that she gave courage and voice to. This power of young girls to ennoble young men is unhappily one of which too often they are unconscious. Too often the woman, instead of being a teacher in the higher life, is only a flatterer of the weaknesses and lower propensities of the men whose admiration she seeks.
St. John felt frightened and embarrassed with his message to Angie. He had dwelt on it, all his way to the house, as an auspicious key to a conversation which he anticipated with pleasure; yet the evening rolled by, and though he walked round and round, and nearer and nearer, and conversed with this and that one, he did not come to the point of speaking to Angie. Sometimes she was talking to somebody else and he waited; sometimes she was not with anybody else, and then he waited lest his joining her should be remarked. He did not stop to ask himself why on earth it should be remarked any more than if he had spoken to Alice or Eva, or anybody else, but he felt as if it would be.
At last, however, after making several circles about the table where she sat with Mrs. Betsey, he sat down by them, and delivered his message with a formal precision, as if he had been giving her a summons. Angie was all sympathy and sweetness, and readily said she would go and see the poor woman the very next day, and then an awkward pause ensued. She was a little afraid of him as a preternaturally good man, and began to wonder whether she had been laughing too loud, or otherwise misbehaving, in the gayety of her heart, that evening.
So, after a rather dry pause, Mr. St. John uttered some commonplaces about the books of engravings before them, and then, suddenly seeming to recollect something he had forgotten, crossed the room to speak to Dr. Campbell.
“Dear me, child, and so that is your rector,” said Mrs. Betsey. “Isn’t he a little stiff?”
“I believe he is not much used to society,” said Angie; “but he is a very good man.”
The evening entertainment had rather a curious finale. A spirit of sociability had descended upon the company, and it was one of those rare tides that come sometimes where everybody is having a good time, and nobody looks at one’s watch; and so, ten o’clock was long past, and eleven had struck, and yet there was no movement for dissolving the session.
Across the way, old Dinah had watched the bright windows with longing eyes, until finally the spirit of the occasion was too strong for her, and, bidding Jack lie down and be a good dog, she left her own precincts and ran across to the kitchen of the festal scene, to pick up some crumbs for her share.
Jack looked at her in winking obedience as she closed the kitchen door, being mindful in his own dog’s head of a small slip of a pantry window which had served his roving purposes before now. The moment Dinah issued from the outer door Jack bounced from the pantry window and went padding at a discreet distance from her heels. Sitting down on the front door-mat of the festive mansion, he occupied himself with his own reflections till the door opening for a late corner gave him an opportunity to slip in quietly.
Jack used his entrance ticket with discretion, watched, waited, reconnoitered, till finally, seeing an unemployed ottoman next Mrs. Betsey, he suddenly appeared in the midst, sprang up on the ottoman with easy grace, sat up on his hind paws, and waved his front ones affably to the public.
The general tumult that ensued, the horror of Miss Dorcas, the scolding she tried to give Jack, the storm of applause and petting which greeted him in all quarters, confirming him, as Miss Dorcas remarked, in his evil ways, —— all these may better be imagined than described.
“A quarter after eleven, sister!”
“Can it be possible?” said Mrs. Betsey. “No wonder Jack came to bring us home.”
Jack seconded the remark with a very staccato bark and a brisk movement towards the door, where, with much laughing, many handshakings, ardent protestations that they had had a delightful evening, and promises to come again next week, the company dispersed.
CHAPTER XVIII
RAKING UP THE FIRE
THE cream of an evening company is the latter end of it, after the more ceremonious have slipped away and only “we and our folks” remain to croon and rake up the fire.
Mr. and Mrs. Van Arsdel, Angelique, and Marie went home in the omnibus. Alice stayed to spend the night with Eva, and help put up the portfolios, and put back the plants, and turn the bower back into a work-room, and set up the vases of flowers in a cool place where they could keep till morning; because, you know — you who are versed in these things — that flowers in December need to be made the most of, in order to go as far as possible.
Bolton yet lingered in his armchair, in his favorite corner, gazing placidly at the coals of the fire. Dr. Campbell was solacing himself, after the unsatisfied longings of the evening, with seeing how his own article looked in print, and Jim Fellows was helping miscellaneously in setting back flower-pots, rearranging books, and putting chairs and tables, that had been arranged festively, back into humdrum household places. Meanwhile, the kind of talk was going on that usually follows a social venture — a sort of review of the whole scene and of all the actors.
“Well, Doctor, what do you think of our rector?” said Eva, tapping his magazine briskly.
He lowered his magazine and squared himself round gravely.
“That fellow hasn’t enough of the abdominal to carry his brain power,” he said. “Splendid head — a little too high in the upper stories and not quite heavy enough in the basement. But if he had a good broad, square chest, and a good digestive and blood-making apparatus, he’d go. The fellow wants blood; he needs mutton and beef, and plenty of it. That’s what he needs. What’s called common sense is largely a matter of good diet and digestion.”
“Oh, Doctor, you materialistic creature!” said Eva. “To think of talking of a clergyman as if he were a horse —— to be managed by changing his feed!”
“Certainly, a man must be a good animal before he can be a good man.”
“Well,” said Alice, “all I know is, that Mr. St. John is perfectly, disinterestedly, heart and soul and body, devoted to doing good among men; and if that is not noble and grand and godlike, I don’t know what is.”
“Well,” said Dr. Campbell, “I have a profound respect for all those fellows that are trying to mop out the Atlantic Ocean; and he mops cheerfully and with good courage.”
“It’s perfectly hateful of you, Doctor, to talk so,” said Eva.
“Well, you know I don’t go in for interfering with Nature — having noble, splendid fellows waste and wear themselves down, to keep miserable scalawags and ill-begotten vermin from dying out as they ought to. Nature is doing her best to kill off the poor specimens of the race, begotten of vice and drunkenness; and what you call Christian charity is only interference.”
“But you do it, Doctor; you know you do. Nobody does more of that very sort of thing than you do, now. Don’t you visit, and give medicine and nursing, and all that, to just such people?”
“I may be a fool for doing it, for all that,” said the Doctor. “I don’t pretend to stick to my principles any better than most people do. We are all fools, more or less; but I don’t believe in Christian charity; it’s all wrong — this doctrine that the brave, strong, good specimens of the race are to torment and tire and worry their lives out to save the scum and dregs. Here’s a man who, by economy, honesty, justice, temperance, and hard work, has grown rich, and has houses, and lands, and gardens, and pictures, and what not, and is having a good time as he ought to have, and right by him is another who, by dishonesty, and idleness, and drinking, has come to rags and poverty and sickness. Shall the temperate and just man deny himself enjoyment, and spend his time, and risk his health, and pour out his money, to take care of the wife and children of this scalawag? There’s the question in a nutshell; and I say, no! If scalawags find that their duties will be performed for them when they neglect them, that’s all they want. Wha
t should St. John live like a hermit for? deny himself food, rest, and sleep? spend a fortune that might make him and some nice wife happy and comfortable, on drunkards’ wives and children? No sense in it.”
“That’s just where Christianity stands above and opposite to Nature,” said Bolton, from his corner. “Nature says, destroy. She is blindly striving to destroy the maimed and imperfect. Christianity says, save. Its God is the Good Shepherd, who cares more for the one lost sheep than for the ninety and nine that went not astray.”
“Yes,” said Eva; “He who was worth more than all of us put together came down from heaven to labor and suffer and die for sinners.”
“That’s supernaturalism,” said Dr. Campbell. “I don’t know about that.”
“That’s what we learn at church,” said Eva, “and what we believe; and it’s a pity you don’t, Doctor.”
“Oh, well,” said Dr. Campbell, lighting his cigar, previous to going out, “I won’t quarrel with you. You might believe worse things. St. John is a good fellow, and if he wants a doctor any time, I told him to call me. Good-night.”
“Did you ever see such a creature?” said Eva.
“He talks wild, but acts right,” said Alice.
“You had him there about visiting poor folks,” said Jim. “Why, Campbell is a perfect fool about people in distress — would give a fellow watch and chain, and boots and shoes, and then scold anybody else that wanted to go and do likewise.”
“Well, I say such discussions are fatiguing,” said Alice. “I don’t like people to talk all round the points of the compass so.”
“Well, to change the subject, I vote our evening a success,” said Jim. “Didn’t we all behave beautifully!”
“We certainly did,” said Eva.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 389