Meanwhile, in Eva’s little dominion, peace and prosperity had returned with the return of cook to the kitchen cabinet. A few days’ withdrawal of that important portion of the household teaches the mistress many things, and, among others, none more definitely than the real dignity and importance of that sphere which is generally regarded as least and lowest.
Mary had come back disheartened from a fruitless quest. Maggie had indeed been at Poughkeepsie, and had spent a day and a night with a widowed sister of Mary’s, and then, following a restless impulse, had gone back to New York — none knew whither; and Mary was going on with her duties with that quiet, acquiescent sadness with which people of her class bear sorrow which they have no leisure to indulge. The girl had for two or three years been lost to her; but the brief interval of restoration seemed to have made the pang of losing her again still more dreadful. Then, the anticipated mortification of having to tell Mike of it, and the thought of what Mike and Mike’s wife would say, were a stinging poison. Though Maggie’s flight was really due in a great measure to Mike’s own ungracious reception of her and his harsh upbraidings, intensified by what she had overheard from Mrs. Wouvermans, yet Mary was quite sure that Mike would receive it as a confirmation of his own sagacity in the opinion he had pronounced.
The hardness and apathy with which even near relations will consign their kith and kin to utter ruin is one of the sad phenomena of life. Mary knew that Mike would say to her, “Didn’t I tell you so? The girl’s gone to the bad; let her go! She’s made her bed; let her lie in it.”
It was only from her gentle, sympathetic mistress that Mary met with a word of comfort. Eva talked with her, and encouraged her to pour out all her troubles and opened the door of her own heart to her sorrows. Eva cheered and comforted her all she could, though she had small hopes, herself. She had told Mr. Fellows, she said, and Mr. Fellows knew all about New York — knew everybody and everything — and if Maggie were there he would be sure to hear of her; “and if she is anywhere in New York I will go to her,” said Eva, “and persuade her to come back and be a good girl. And don’t you tell your brother anything about it. Why need he know? I dare say we shall get Maggie back, and all going right, before he knows anything about it.”
Eva had just been talking to this effect to Mary in the kitchen, and she came back into her parlor, to find there poor, fluttering, worried little Mrs. Betsey Benthusen, who had come in to bewail her prodigal son, of whom, for now three days and nights, no tidings had been heard.
“I came in to ask you, dear Mrs. Henderson, if anything has been heard from the advertising of Jack? I declare, I haven’t been able to sleep since he went, I am so worried. I dare say you must think it silly of me,” she said, wiping her eyes, “but I am just so silly. I really had got so fond of him — I feel so lonesome without him.”
“Silly, dear friend!” said Eva in her usual warm, impulsive way, “no, indeed; I think it’s perfectly natural that you should feel as you do. I think, for my part, these poor dumb pets were given us to love; and if we do love them, we can’t help feeling anxious about them when they are gone.”
“You see,” said Mrs. Betsey, “if I only knew — but I don’t — if I knew just where he was, or if he was well treated; but then, Jack is a dog that has been used to kindness, and it would come hard to him to have to suffer hunger and thirst, and he kicked about and abused. I lay and thought about things that might happen to him, last night, till I fairly cried” — and the tears stood in the misty blue eyes of the faded little old gentlewoman, in attestation of the possibility. “I got so wrought up,” she continued, “that I actually prayed to my Heavenly Father to take care of my poor Jack. Do you think that was profane, Mrs. Henderson? I just could not help it.”
“No, dear Mrs. Betsey, I don’t think it was profane; I think it was just the most sensible thing you could do. You know our Saviour says that not a sparrow falls to the ground without our Father, and I’m sure Jack is a good deal larger than a sparrow.”
“Well, I didn’t tell Dorcas,” said Mrs. Betsey, “because she thinks I’m foolish, and I suppose I am. I’m a broken-up old woman now, and I never had as much strength of mind as Dorcas, anyway. Dorcas has a very strong mind,” said little Mrs. Betsey in a tone of awe; “she has tried all she could to strengthen mine, but she can’t do much with me.”
Just at this instant, Eva, looking through the window down street, saw Jim Fellows approaching, with Jack’s head appearing above his shoulder in that easy, jaunty attitude with which the restored lamb is represented in a modern engraving of the Good Shepherd. There he sat, to be sure, with a free and easy air of bright, doggish vivacity; perched aloft with his pink tongue hanging gracefully out of his mouth, and his great, bright eyes and little black tip of a nose gleaming out from the silvery thicket of his hair, looking anything but penitent for all the dismays and sorrows of which he had been the cause.
“Oh, Mrs. Betsey, do come here,” cried Eva; “here is Jack, to be sure!”
“You don’t say so! Why, so he is; that dear, good Mr. Fellows! how can I ever thank him enough!”
And, as Jim mounted the steps, Eva hastened to open the door in anticipation of the door-bell.
“Any dogs to-day, ma’am?” said Jim in the tone of a peddler.
“Oh, Mrs. Henderson!” said Mrs. Betsey. But what further she said was lost in Jack’s vociferous barking. He had recognized Mrs. Betsey and struggled down out of Jim’s arms, and was leaping and capering and barking, overwhelming his mistress with obstreperous caresses, in which there was not the slightest recognition of any occasion for humility or penitence. Jack was forgiving Mrs. Betsey with all his might and main for all the trouble he had caused, and expressing his perfect satisfaction and delight at finding himself at home again.
“Well,” said Jim, in answer to the numerous questions showered upon him, “the fact is that Dixon and I were looking up something to write about in a not very elegant or reputable quarter of New York, and suddenly, as we were passing one of the dance houses, that girl Maggie darted out with Jack in her arms, and calling after me by name, she said, ‘ This poor dog belongs to the people opposite Mrs. Henderson’s. He has been stolen away, and won’t you take him back?’ I said I would, and then I said, ‘Seems to me, Maggie, you’d better come back, too, to your mother, who is worrying dreadfully about you.’ But she turned quickly and said, ‘ The less said about me the better,’ and ran in.”
“Oh, how dreadful that anybody should be so depraved at her age,” said little Mrs. Betsey, complacently caressing Jack. “Mrs. Henderson, you have had a fortunate escape of her; you must be glad to get her out of your house. Well, I must hurry home with him and get him washed up, for he’s in such a state! And do look at this ribbon! Would you know it ever had been a ribbon? it’s thick with grease and dirt, and I dare say he’s covered with fleas. Oh, Jack, Jack, what trouble you have made me!”
And the little woman complacently took up her criminal, who went off on her shoulder with his usual waggish air of impudent assurance.
“See what luck it is to be a dog,” said Jim. “Nobody would have half the patience with a ragamuffin boy, now!”
“But, seriously, Jim, what can be done about poor Maggie? I’ve promised her mother to get her back, if she could be discovered.”
“Well, really she is in one of the worst drinking saloons of that quarter, kept by Mother Moggs, who is, to put the matter explicitly, a sort of she-devil. It isn’t a place where it would do for me or any of the boys to go. We are not calculated for missionary work in just that kind of field.”
“Well, who can go? What can be done? I’ve promised Mary to save her. I’ll go myself, if you’ll show me the way.”
“You, Mrs. Henderson? You don’t know what you are talking about. You never could go there. It isn’t to be thought of.”
“But somebody must go, Jim; we can’t leave her there.”
“Well, now I think of it,” said Jim, “there is a Methodist minister
who has undertaken to set up a mission in just that part of the city. They bought a place that used to be kept for a rat-pit, and had it cleaned up, and they have opened a mission house, and have prayer-meetings and such things there. I’ll look that thing up; perhaps he can find Maggie for you. Though I must say you are taking a great deal of trouble about this girl.”
“Well, Jim, she has a mother, and her mother loves her as yours does you.”
“By George, now, that’s enough,” said Jim. “You don’t need to say another word. I’ll go right about it, this very day, and hunt up this Mr. What ‘s-his-name, and find all about this mission. I’ve been meaning to write that thing up this month or so.”
CHAPTER XXXVI
LOVE IN CHRISTMAS GREENS
THE little chapel in one of the out-of-the-way streets of New York presented a scene of Christmas activity and cheerfulness approaching to gayety. The whole place was fragrant with the spicy smell of spruce and hemlock. Baskets of green ruffles of ground-pine were foaming over their sides with abundant contributions from the forest; and bright bunches of vermilion bitter-sweet, and the crimson-studded branches of the black alder, added color to the picture. Of real traditional holly, which in America is a rarity, there was a scant supply, reserved for more honorable decorations.
Mr. St. John had been busy in his vestry with paper, colors, and gilding, illuminating some cards with Scriptural mottoes. He had just brought forth his last effort and placed it in a favorable light for inspection. It is the ill fortune of every successful young clergyman to stir the sympathies and enkindle the venerative faculties of certain excitable women, old and young, who follow his footsteps and regard his works and ways with a sort of adoring rapture that sometimes exposes him to ridicule if he accept it, and which yet it seems churlish to decline. It is not generally his fault, nor exactly the fault of the women, often amiably sincere and unconscious; but it is a fact that this kind of besetment is more or less the lot of every clergyman, and he cannot help it. It is to be accepted as we accept any of the shadows which are necessary in the picture of life, and got along with by the kind of common sense with which we dispose of any of its infelicities.
Mr. St. John did little to excite demonstrations of this kind; but the very severity with which he held himself in reserve seemed rather to increase a kind of sacred prestige which hung around him, making of him a sort of churchly Grand Llama. When, therefore, he brought out his illuminated card, on which was inscribed in Anglo-Saxon characters,
“The Word was made flesh
And dwelt among us,”
there was a loud acclaim of “How lovely! how sweet!” with groans of intense admiration from Miss Augusta Gusher and Miss Sophronia Vapors, which was echoed in “ohs!” and “ahs!” from an impressible group of girls on the right and left.
Angelique stood quietly gazing on it, with a wreath of ground-pine dangling from her hand, but she said nothing.
Mr. St. John at last said, “And what do you think, Miss Van Arsdel?”
“I think the colors are pretty,” Angie said, hesitating, “but” —
“But what?” said Mr. St. John quickly.
“Well, I don’t know what it means — I don’t understand it.”
Mr. St. John immediately read the inscription in concert with Miss Gusher, who was a very mediæval young lady and quite up to reading Gothic, or Anglo-Saxon, or Latin, or any churchly tongue.
“Oh!” was all the answer Angie made; and then, seeing something more was expected, she added again, “I think the effect of the lettering very pretty,” and turned away, and busied herself with a cross of ground-pine that she was making in a retired corner.
The chorus were loud and continuous in their acclaims, and Miss Gusher talked learnedly of lovely inscriptions in Greek and Latin, offering to illuminate some of them for the occasion. Mr. St. John thanked her and withdrew to his sanctum less satisfied than before.
About half an hour after, Angie, who was still quietly busy upon her cross in her quiet corner, under the shade of a large hemlock-tree which had been erected there, was surprised to find Mr. St. John standing, silently observing her work. “I like your work,” he said, “better than you did mine.”
“I didn’t say that I didn’t like yours,” said Angie, coloring, and with that sort of bright, quick movement that gave her the air of a bird just going to fly.
“No, you did not say, but you left approbation unsaid, which amounts to the same thing. You have some objection, I see, and I really wish you would tell me frankly what it is.”
“Oh, Mr. St. John, don’t say that! Of course I never thought of objecting; it would be presumptuous in me. I really don’t understand these matters at all, not at all. I just don’t know anything about Gothic letters and all that, and so the card doesn’t say anything to me. And I must confess, I thought” —
Here Angie, like a properly behaved young daughter of the Church, began to perceive that her very next sentence might lead her into something like a criticism upon her rector; and she paused on the brink of a gulf so horrible, “with pious awe that feared to have offended.”
Mr. St. John felt a very novel and singular pleasure in the progress of this interview. It interested him to be differed with, and he said, with a slight intonation of dictation: —
“I must insist on your telling me what you thought, Miss Angie.”
“Oh, nothing, only this — that if I, who have had more education than our Sunday-school scholars, can’t read a card like that, why, they could not. I’m quite sure that an inscription in plain modern letters that I could read would have more effect upon my mind, and I am quite sure it would on them.”
“I thank you sincerely for your frankness, Miss Angie; your suggestion is a valuable one.”
“I think,” said Angie, “that mediæval inscriptions, and Greek and Latin mottoes, are interesting to educated, cultivated people. The very fact of their being in another language gives a sort of piquancy to them. The idea gets a new coloring from a new language; but to people who absolutely don’t understand a word, they say nothing, and of course they do no good; so, at least, it seems to me.”
“You are quite right, Miss Angie, and I shall immediately put my inscription into the English of to-day. The fact is, Miss Angie,” added St. John after a silent pause, “I feel more and more what a misfortune it has been to me that I never had a sister. There are so many things where a woman’s mind sees so much more clearly than a man’s. I never had any intimate female friend.” Here Mr. St. John began assiduously tying up little bunches of the ground-pine in the form which Angie needed for her cross, and laying them for her.
Now, if Angie had been a sophisticated young lady, familiar with the tactics of flirtation, she might have had precisely the proper thing at hand to answer this remark; as it was, she kept on tying her bunches assiduously and feeling a little embarrassed. It was a pity he should ‘ not have a sister, she thought. Poor man, it must be lonesome for him; and Angie’s face at this moment must have expressed come commiseration or some emotion that emboldened the young man to say, in a lower tone, as he laid down a bunch of green by her: —
“If you, Miss Angie, would look on me as you do on your brothers, and tell me sincerely your opinion of me, it might be a great help to me.”
Now Mr. St. John was certainly as innocent and translucently ignorant of life as Adam at the first hour of his creation, not to know that the tone in which he was speaking and the impulse from which he spoke, at that moment, was in fact that of man’s deepest, most absorbing feeling towards woman. He had made his scheme of life; and, as a set purpose, had left love out of it, as something too terrestrial and mundane to consist with the sacred vocation of a priest. But, from the time he first came within the sphere of Angelique, a strange, delicious atmosphere, vague and dreamy, yet delightful, had encircled him, and so perplexed and dizzied his brain as to cause all sorts of strange vibrations. At first, there was a sort of repulsion —— a vague alarm, a suspicion
and repulsion singularly blended with an attraction. He strove to disapprove of her; he resolved not to think of her; he resolutely turned his head away from looking at her in her place in Sunday-school and church, because he felt that his thoughts were alarmingly drawn in that direction.
Then came his invitation into society, of which the hidden charm, unacknowledged to himself, was that he should meet Angelique; and that mingling in society had produced, inevitably, modifying effects, which made him quite a different being from what he was in his recluse life passed between the study and the altar.
It is not in man, certainly not in a man so finely fibred and strung as St. John, to associate intimately with his fellows without feeling their forces upon himself, and finding many things in himself of which he had not dreamed. But if there be in the circle some one female presence which all the while is sending out an indefinite though powerful enchantment, the developing force is still more marked.
St. John had never suspected himself of the ability to be so agreeable as he found himself in the constant reunions which, for one cause or another, were taking place in the little Henderson house. He developed a talent for conversation, a vein of gentle humor, a turn for versification, with a cast of thought rising into the sphere of poetry, and then, with Dr. Campbell and Alice and Angie, he formed no mean quartette in singing.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 402