Of all the Christian and becoming rôles in the great drama of life, there is none that so exactly suits young ladies of a certain degree of gravity and dignity as that of guardian angel. Now, in respect to Jim, Alice certainly was fitted to sustain this rôle. She was well poised, decided, sensible and serious in her conceptions of life, truthful and conscientious; and the dash of ideality which pervaded all her views gave to her, in the eyes of the modern New York boy, a sort of sacred prestige, like the halo around a saint.
No one sees life on a harder, colder, more utterly unscrupulous side than the élève of the New York press. He grinds in a mill of competition. He serves sharp and severe masters, who in turn are driven up by an exacting, irresponsible public, panting for excitement, grasping for the latest sensation. The man of the press sees behind the scenes in every illusion of life; the shapeless pulleys, the dripping tallow candles that light up the show, all are familiar to him.
To him come all the tribes who have axes to grind, and want him to turn their grindstones. Avarice, ambition, petty vanity, private piques, mean intrigues, sly revenges, all unbosom themselves to him as to a father confessor, and invoke his powerful aid. To him it is given to see the back door and back stairs of much that the world venerates, and he finds there filthy sweepings and foul débris. Even the church of every name and sect has its back door, its unsightly sweepings. He who is in so many secrets, who explores so many cabals, who sees the wrong side of so many a fair piece of goods, with all its knots, and jags, and thrums, what wonder if he come to that worse form of skepticism — the doubt of all truth, of all virtue, of all honor? When he sees how reputations can be made and unmade in the secret conclaves of printing offices, how generous and holy enthusiasms are assumed as a cloak for low and selfish designs, how the language which stirs man’s deepest nature lies around loose in the hands of skilled word-experts, to be used in getting up cabals and carrying party intrigues, it is scarcely to be wondered at if he come to regard life as a mere game of skill, where the shrewdest player wins. It is exactly here that a true, good woman is the moral salvation of man. Such a woman seems to a man more than she can ever seem to her female acquaintances. She is to him the proof of a better world, of a truer life, of the reality of justice, purity, honor, and unselfishness. He regards her, to be sure, as unpractical, and ignorant of the world’s ways, but with a holy ignorance which belongs to a higher region.
Jim had dived into New York life at first with the mere animal recklessness with which an expert swimmer shows his skill in difficult navigation. Life was an adventure, a game, a game at which he was determined nobody should cheat him, a race in which he was determined to come out ahead. Nobody should catch him napping; nobody should outwit him; he would be nobody’s fool. His acquaintance with a certain class of girls was only a continuation of the bright, quick, adroit game of fencing which he played in the world. If a girl would flirt, so would Jim. He was au courant of all the positions and strategy of that sort of encounter; he had all the persiflage of flattery and compliment at his tongue’s end, and enjoyed the rustle and flutter of ribbons, the tapping of fans, and the bustle and mystery of small secrets, the little “ohs” and “ahs,” and feminine commotions that he could stir up in almost any bevy of nymphs in evening dresses. Speaking of female influence, there are some exceptions to be taken to the general theory that woman has an elevating power over man. It may be doubted whether there goes any of this divine impulse from giggling, flirting girls, whose highest aim is to secure the admiration and attention of men, and who, to get it, will flatter and fawn, profess to adore tobacco smoke, and even to have a warm side towards whiskey punch, — girls whose power over men is based on an indiscriminate deference to what men themselves feel to be their lower and less worthy nature.
The woman who really wins for herself a worthy influence with a man is she who recognizes in him the divine under all worldly disguises, and invariably and strongly takes part with his higher against his lower nature. This was the secret of Alice’s power over Jim; and this was why she had become, in the secret and inner world of his life, almost a religious image. All his dawning aspirations to be somewhat better than a mere chaser of expedients, to be a man of lofty objects and noble purposes, had come from her acquaintance with him — an acquaintance begun on both sides in the spirit of mere flirtation, and passing from that to esteem and friendship. But, in the case of a marriageable young man of twenty-five, friendship is like some of those rare cacti of the greenhouses which, in an unexpected hour, burst out into blossoms of untold splendor. An engagement just declared in their circle had breathed a warmer atmosphere of suggestion around them, and upon that had come a position in his profession which offered him both consideration and money; and when Jim was assured of this, his first thought was of Alice.
“Friendship is a humbug,” was that young gentleman’s mental decision. “It may do all very well with some kinds of girls,” — and Jim mentally reviewed some of his lady acquaintances,—” but with Alice Van Arsdel, it is all humbug for me to go on talking friendship. I can’t, and sha’n’t, and WON’T.” And in this mood it was that he gave to Alice’s hand that startling kind of pressure, and something of this flashed from his eyes into hers. It was that something, like the gleam of a steel blade, determined, resolute, assured, that disconcerted and alarmed her. It was like the sounding of a horn, summoning a parley at the postern gate of a fortress, and the lady chatelaine not ready either to surrender or to defend. So, in a moment, Alice resolved not to walk the four or five squares between her present position and home tête-à-tête with Jim Fellows; and she sat very composed and very still in her corner, and put in demand all those quiet, repressive tactics by which dignified young ladies keep back issues they are not precisely ready to meet.
The general subject under discussion when Jim came in was a party to be given at Aunt Maria’s the next evening in honor of the Stephensons, when Angie and Mr. St. John would make their first appearance together as a betrothed couple.
“Now, Jim,” said Eva, “how lucky that you came in, for I was just going to send a note to you! Here’s Harry has got to give a lecture to-morrow night and can’t come in till towards the end of the evening. Alice is coming to dine and dress down here with me, and I want you to dine with us and be our escort to the party — that is, if you will put up with our dressing time and not get into such a state of perfect amazement as Harry always does when we are not ready at the moment.”
“If you ever get a wife, Jim, you’ll be made perfect in this science of waiting,” said Harry. “The only way to have a woman ready in season for a party is to shut her up just after breakfast and keep her at it straight along through the day. Then you may have her before ten o’clock.”
“You see,” said Eva, “Harry’s only idea, when he is going to a party, is to get home again early. We almost never go, and then he is in such a hurry to get there, so as to have it over with and be at home again.”
“Well, I confess, for my part, I hate parties,” said Harry. “They always get a-going just about my usual bedtime.”
“Well, Harry, you know Aunt Maria wants an old-fashioned, early party, at eight o’clock at the latest; and when she says she wants a thing, she means it. She would never forgive us for being late.”
“Dear me, Eva, do begin to dress over night then,” said Harry. “You certainly never will get through to-morrow, if you don’t.”
“Harry, you sauce-box, I think you talk abominably about me. Just because I have so many more things to see to than he has! A woman’s dress, of course, takes more time; there’s a good deal more to do and every little thing has to be just right.”
“Of course, I know that,” said Harry. “Haven’t I stood, and stood, and stood, while bows were tied, and picked out, and patted, and flatted, and then pulled out and tied over, and when we were half an hour behind time already?”
“I fancy,” said Alice, “that if the secrets of some young gentlemen’s toilets were unv
eiled, we should see that we were not alone in tying bows and pulling them out. I’ve known Tom to labor over his neckties by the hour together; it took him quite as long to prink as any of us girls.”
“But don’t you be alarmed, Jim,” said Eva; “we intend to be on time.”
“No, don’t,” said Harry; “you can have my writing-table, and get up your editorials, while the conjuration is going on upstairs.”
“Just think,” said Alice, “how Aunt Maria is coming out.”
“Why, yes, it’s a larger affair than usual,” said Eva. “A hundred invitations! That must be on account of Angie.”
“Oh yes,” said Alice, “Aunt Maria is pluming herself on Angie’s engagement. Since she has discovered that Mr. St. John has an independent fortune, there is no end to her praises and felicitations. Oh, and she has altered her opinion entirely about his ritualism. The Bishop, she says, stands by him; and what the Bishop doesn’t condemn, nobody has any right to; and then she sets forth what a good family he belongs to, and so well connected! I’d like to see anybody say anything against Mr. St. John’s practices before Aunt Maria now!”
“I’m sure this party is quite an outlay for Aunt Maria,” said Eva.
“Oh,” said Alice, “she’s making all her jellies, and blanc-manges, and ice creams in the house. You know how perfectly she always does things. I’ve been up helping her. She will have a splendid table. She was rather glorifying herself to me that she could get up so fine a show at so little expense.”
“Well, she can,” said Eva. “No one can get more for a given amount of money than Aunt Maria. I suppose that is one of the womanly virtues, and one can learn as much of it from her as anybody.”
“Yes,” said Alice, “if a stylish party is the thing to be demonstrated, Aunt Maria will get one up more successfully, more perfect in all points, and for less money, than any other woman in New York. She will have exactly the right people, and exactly the right things to give them.
Her rooms will be lovely. She will be dressed herself to a T, and she will say just the right thing to everybody. All her nice silver and her pretty things will come out of their secret crypts and recesses to do honor to the occasion, and, for one night, all will be suavity and sociability personified; and then everything will go back into lavender, the silver to the safe, the chairs and lounges to their cover, the shades will come down, and her part of the world’s debt of sociability will be done up for the year. Then she will add up the expense, and set it down in her account book, and that thing’ll be finished and checked off.”
“A mode of proceeding which she was very anxious to engraft upon me,” said Eva; “but I am a poor stock. My instincts are for what she would call an expensive, chronic state of hospitality, as we live down here.”
“Well,” said Jim, “when I get a house of my own, I’m going to do as you do.”
“Jim has got sight of the domestic tea-kettle in the future,” said Harry. “That’s the first effect of his promotion.”
“Oh, don’t be in a hurry about setting up a house of your own,” said Eva. “I’m afraid we should miss you here, and you’re an institution, Jim; we couldn’t get on without you.”
“Oh, Jim ought not to give up to one what was meant for mankind,” said Alice hardily. “I think there would be a universal protest against his retiring to private life.”
And Alice looked into the fire, apparently as sweetly unconscious of anything particular on Jim’s part as if she had not read aright the flash of his eye and the pressure of his hand.
Jim seemed vexed and nervous, and talked extravaganzas all the evening, with more than even his usual fluency, and towards ten o’clock said to Alice: —
“I am at your command at any time, when you are ready to return home.”
“Thank you, Jim,” said Alice, with that demure and easy composure with which young ladies avoid a crisis without seeming to see it. “I am going to stay here tonight, to discuss some important points of party costume with Eva; so mind you don’t fail us to-morrow night. Au revoir!”
CHAPTER XLIII
A MIDNIGHT CAUCUS OYER THE COALS
“Now, don’t you girls sit up and talk all night,” said Harry from the staircase, as he started bed ward, after Jim Fellows had departed, and the house door was locked for the night.
Now, Eva was one of that class of household birds whose eyes grow wider awake and brighter as the small hours of the night approach; and, just this night, she felt herself swelling with a world of that distinctively feminine talk which women keep for each other, when the lordly part of creation are out of sight and hearing. Harry, who worked hard in his office all day and came home tired at night, and who had the inevitable next day’s work ever before him, was always an advocate for early and regular hours, and regarded these sisterly night-watches with suspicion.
“You know, now, Eva, that you oughtn’t to sit up late. You’re not strong,” he preached from the staircase in warning tones, as he slowly ascended.
“Oh, no, dear; we won’t be long. We’ve just got a few things to talk over.”
“Well, you know you never know what time it is.”
“Oh, never you mind, Harry; you’ll be asleep in ten minutes. I want to talk with Ally.”
“There, now, he’s off,” said Eva, gleefully shutting the door and drawing an easy-chair to the remains of the fire, while she disposed the little unburned brands and ends so as to make a last blaze; then, leaning back, she began taking out hairpins and shaking down curls and untying ribbons, as a sort of preface to a wholly free and easy conversation. “I think, Ally,” she said, with an air of profound reflection, “if I were you, I should wear my white tarlatan to-morrow night, with cherry-colored trimming, and cherry velvet in your hair. You see that altering the trimming changes the whole effect, so that it will look exactly like a new dress.”
“I was thinking of doing something with the tarlatan,” said Alice, who had also taken out her hairpins and let down her long masses of hair around her handsome oval face, while her great dark eyes were studying the coals abstractedly. It was quite evident by the deep, intense gaze she fixed before her that it was not the tarlatan or the trimmings that at that moment occupied her mind, but something deeper.
Eva saw and suspected, and went on designedly: “How nice and lucky it was that Jim came in just as he did.”
“Yes, it was lucky,” repeated Alice abstractedly, taking off her neck-scarf, and folding and smoothing it with an unnecessary amount of precision.
“Jim is such a nice fellow,” said Eva. “I am thoroughly delighted that he has got that situation. It is really quite a position for him.”
“Yes, Jim is doing very well,” said Alice, with a certain uneasy motion.
“I really think,” pursued Eva, “that your friendship has been everything to Jim. We all notice how much he has improved.”
“It’s only that we know him better,” said Alice. “Jim always was a nice fellow; but it takes a very intimate acquaintance to get at the real earnest nature there is under all his nonsense. But after all, Eva, I’m a little afraid of trouble in that friendship.”
“Trouble — how?” said Eva, with the most innocent air in the world, as if she did not feel perfectly sure of what was coming next.
“Well, I do think, and I always have said, that an intimate friendship between a lady and a gentleman is just the best thing for both parties.”
“Well, isn’t it?” said Eva.
“Well, yes. But the difficulty is, it won’t stay. It will get to be something more than you want, and that makes a trouble. Now, did you notice Jim’s manner to me to-night?”
“Well, I thought I saw something rather suspicious,” said Eva demurely; “but then you always have been so sure that there was nothing, and was to be nothing, in that quarter.”
“Well, I never have meant there should be. I have been perfectly honorable and aboveboard with Jim; treated him just like a sister, and I thought there was the most perfe
ct understanding between us.”
“Well, you see, darling,” said Eva, “I’ve sometimes thought whether it was quite fair to let any one be so very intimate with one, unless one were willing to take the consequences, in case his feelings should become deeply involved. Now, we should have thought it a bad thing for Mr. St. John to go on cultivating an intimate friendship with Angie, if he never meant to marry. It would be taking from her feelings and affections that might be given to some one who would make her happy for life; and I think some women, I don’t mean you, of course, but some women I have seen and heard of, like to absorb all the feeling and devotion a man has without in the least intending to marry him. They keep him from being interested in any one else who might make him a happy home, and won’t have him themselves.”
“Eva, you are too hard,” said Alice.
“Understand me, dear; I said I didn’t mean you, for I think your course has been perfectly honorable and honest so far; but I do think you have got to a place that needs care. It’s my positive belief that Jim not only loves you, Alice, but that he is in love with you in a way that will have the most serious effect on his life and character.”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 407