“Oh, and, Dorcas! you’ve no idea. They’ve been having the most dreadful time over there! Miss Alice has had the greatest escape! The most wonderful providence!
It really makes my blood run cold to think of it. Don’t you think, she was all dressed to go to Mrs. Wouvermans’ party, and her dress caught on fire, and if it hadn’t been for Mr. ‘ Fellows’ presence of mind she might have been burned to death — really burned to death! Only think of it!”
“You don’t say so!” said Miss Dorcas, who now showed excitement enough to fully satisfy Mrs. Betsey. “How very dreadful! Why, how was it?”
“Yes — she was passing in front of the fire, in a thin white tarlatan, made very full, with flounces, and it was just drawn in and flashed up like tinder. Mr. Fellows caught the cloth from the table, wrapped her in it and laid her on the sofa, and then tore and beat out the fire with his hands.”
“Dear — me! dear — me!” said Miss Dorcas, “how dreadful! But he did just the right thing.”
“Yes, indeed; you ought to have seen! Mrs. Henderson showed me what was left of the dress, and it was really awful to see! I could not help thinking, ‘In the midst of life we are in death.’ All trimmed up with scarlet velvet and bows, and just hanging in rags and tatters, where it had been burned and torn away! I never saw anything so solemn in my life.”
“A narrow escape, certainly,” said Miss Dorcas. “And is she not injured at all?”
“Nothing to speak of, only a few slight burns;-but poor Mr. Fellows has to have his hands bandaged and dressed every day; but of course he doesn’t mind that since he has saved her life. But just think of it, Dorcas, we shall have two weddings, and it’ll make two more visiting places. I’m going to tell Dinah all about it,” and the little woman fled to the kitchen, with Jack at her heels, and was soon heard going over the whole story again. Dinah’s effusion and sympathy, in fact, were the final refuge of Mrs. Betsey on every occasion, whether of joy or sorrow or perplexity — and between her vigorous exclamations and loud responses, and Jack’s running commentary of unrestrained barking, there was as much noise over the announcement as could be made by an average town meeting.
Thus were the tidings received across the way. In the Van Arsdel family, Jim was already an established favorite. Mr. Yan Arsdel always liked him as a bright, agreeable evening visitor, and, now that he had acquired a position that promised a fair support, there was no opposition on his part to overcome. Mrs. Yan Arsdel was one of the motherly, complying sort of women, generally desirous of doing what the next person to her wanted her to do; and, though she was greatly confused by remembering Alice’s decided asseverations that “it never was and never would be anything, and that Jim was not at all the person she ever should think of marrying,” yet, since it was evident that she was now determined upon the affair, Mrs. Van Arsdel looked at it on the bright side.
“After all, my dear,” she said to her spouse, “if I must lose both my daughters, it’s a mercy to have them marry and settle down here in New York, where I can have the comfort of them. Jim will always be an attentive husband and a good family man. I saw that when he was helping us move; but I’m sure I don’t know what Maria will say now!”
“No matter what Maria says, my dear,” said Mr. Van Arsdel. “It don’t make one hair white or black. It’s time you were emancipated from Maria.”
But Aunt Maria, like many dreaded future evils, proved less formidable on this occasion than had been feared. The very submissive and edifying manner in which Mr. Jim Fellows had received her strictures and cautions on a former occasion, and the profound respect he had shown for her opinion, had so far wrought upon her as to make her feel that it was really a pity that he was not a young man of established fortune. If he only had anything to live on, why, he might be a very desirable match; and so, when he had a good position and salary, he stood some inches higher in her esteem. Besides this, there was another balm which distilled resignation in the cup of acquiescence, and that was the grand chance it gave her to say, “I told you so.” How dear and precious this privilege is to the very best of people, we need not insist. There are times when it would comfort them, if all their dearest friends were destroyed, to be able to say, “I told you so. It’s just as I always predicted!” We all know how Jonah, though not a pirate or a cut-throat, yet wished himself dead because a great city was not destroyed, when he had taken the trouble to say it would be. Now, though Alice’s engagement was not in any strict sense an evil, yet it was an event which Aunt Maria had always foreseen, foretold, and insisted on.
So when, with heart-sinkings and infinite precautions, Mrs. Van Arsdel had communicated the news to her, she was rather relieved at the response given, with a toss of the head and a vigorous sniff: “Oh, that’s no news to me; it’s just what I have foreseen all along — what I told you was coming on, and you wouldn’t believe it. Now I hope all of you will see that I was right.”
“I think,” said Mrs. Van Arsdel, “that it was Jim’s presence of mind in saving her life that decided Alice at last. She always liked him; but I don’t think she really loved him till then.”
“Well, of course, it was a good thing that there was somebody at hand who had sense to do the right thing, when girls will be so careless; but it wasn’t that. She meant to have him all along; and I knew it,” said Aunt Maria. “Well, Jim Fellows, after all, isn’t the worst match a girl could make, either, now that he has some prospects of his own — but, at any rate, it has turned out just as I said it would. I knew she’d marry him, six months ago, just as well as I know it now, unless you and she listened to my advice then. So now all we have to do is to make the best of it. You’ve got two weddings on your hands now, Nelly, instead of one, and I shall do all I can to help you. I was out all day yesterday looking at sheeting, and I think that at Shanks & Maynard’s is decidedly the firmest and the cheapest, and I ordered three pieces sent home; and I carried back the napkins to Taggart’s, and then went rambling off up by the Park to find that woman that does marking.”
“I’m sure, Maria, I am ever so much obliged to you,” said Mrs. Van Arsdel.
“Well, I hope I’m good for something. Though I’m not fit to be out; I’ve such a dreadful cold in my head, I can hardly see; and riding in these New York omnibuses always makes it worse.”
“Dear Maria, why will you expose yourself in that way?”
“Well, somebody’s got to do it — and your judgment isn’t worth a fip, Nelly. That sheeting that you were thinking of taking wasn’t half so good, and cost six cents a yard more. I couldn’t think of having things go that way.”
“But I’m sure we don’t any of us want you to make yourself sick.”
“Oh, I sha’n’t be sick. I may suffer; but I sha’n’t give up. I’m not one of the kind. If you had the cold in your head that I have, Nelly, you’d be in bed, with both girls nursing you; but that isn’t my way. I keep up, and attend to things. I want these things of Angie’s to be got up properly, as they ought to be, and there’s nobody to do it but me.”
And little Mrs. Van Arsdel, used, from long habit, to be thus unceremoniously snubbed, dethroned, deposed, and set down hard by her sister when in full career of labor for her benefit, looked meekly into the fire, and comforted herself with the reflection that it “was just like Maria. She always talked so; but, after all, she was a good soul, and saved her worlds of trouble, and made excellent bargains for her.”
CHAPTER XLVII
“IN THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS”
THIS article of faith forms a part of the profession of all Christendom, is solemnly recited every Sunday and many week-days in the services of all Christian churches that have a liturgy, whether Roman or Greek or Anglican or Lutheran, and may, therefore, bid fair to pass for a fundamental doctrine of Christianity.
Yet, if narrowly looked into, it is a proposition under which there are more heretics and unbelievers than all the other doctrines of religion put together.
Mrs. Maria Wouvermans, standing
, like a mother in Israel, in the most eligible pew of Dr. Cushing’s church, has just pronounced these words with all the rest of the Apostles’ Creed, which she has recited devoutly twice a day every Sunday for forty years or more. She always recited her creed in a good, strong, clear voice, designed to rebuke the indolent or fastidious who only mumbled or whispered, and made a deep reverence in the proper place at the name of Jesus; and somehow it seemed to feel as if she were witnessing a good confession, and were part and parcel with the protesting saints and martyrs that, in blue and red and gold, were shining down upon her through the painted windows. This solemn standing up in her best bonnet and reciting her Christian faith every Sunday was a weekly testimony against infidelity and schism and lax doctrines of all kinds, and the good lady gave it with unfaltering regularity. Nothing would have shocked her more than to have it intimated to her that she did not believe the articles of her own faith; and yet, if there was anything in the world that Mrs. Maria Wouvermans practically didn’t believe in, and didn’t mean to believe in, it was “the forgiveness of sins.”
As long as people did exactly right, she had fellowship and sympathy with them. When they did wrong, she wished to have nothing more to do with them. Nay, she seemed to consider it a part of public justice and good morals to clear her skirts from all contact with sinners. If she heard of penalties and troubles that befell evil-doers, it was with a face of grim satisfaction. “It serves them right — just what they ought to expect. I don’t pity them in the least,” were familiar phrases with her. If anybody did her an injury, crossed her path, showed her disrespect or contumely, she seemed to feel as free and full a liberty of soul to hate them as if the Christian religion had never been heard of. And, in particular, for the sins of women, Aunt Maria had the true ingrain Saxon ferocity which Sharon Turner describes as characteristic of the original Saxon female in the earlier days of English history, when the unchaste woman was pursued and beaten, starved and frozen, from house to house, by the merciless justice of her sisters.
It is the same spirit that has come down through English law and literature, and shows itself in the old popular ballad of “Jane Shore,” where, without a word of pity, it is recorded how Jane Shore, the king’s mistress, after his death, first being made to do public penance in a white sheet, was thereafter turned out to be frozen and starved to death in the streets, and died miserably in a ditch, from that time called Shoreditch. A note tells us that there was one man who, moved by pity, at one time sheltered the poor creature and gave her food, for which he was thrown into prison, to the great increase of her sorrow and misery.
It was in a somewhat similar spirit that Mrs. Wouvermans regarded all sinning women. Her uniform ruling in such cases was that they were to be let alone by all decent people, and that if they fell into misery and want, it was only just what they deserved, and she was glad of it. What business had they to behave so? In her view, all efforts to introduce sympathy and mercy into prison discipline — all forbearance and painstaking with the sinful and lost in all places in society — was just so much encouragement given to the criminal classes, and one of the lax humanitarian tendencies of the age. It is quite certain that had Mrs. Wouvermans been a guest in old times at a certain Pharisee’s house, where the Master allowed a fallen woman to kiss His feet, she would have joined in saying, “If this man were a prophet he would have known what manner of woman this is that toucheth him, for she is a sinner.” There was certainly a marked difference of spirit between her and that Jesus to whom she bowed so carefully whenever she repeated the Creed.
On this particular Sunday, Eva had come to church with her aunt, and was going to dine with her, intent on a mission of Christian diplomacy. Some weeks had now passed since she left Maggie in the mission retreat, and it was the belief of the matron there, and the attending clergyman, that a change had taken place in her, so radical and so deep that, if now some new and better course of life were opened to her, she might, under careful guidance, become a useful member of society. Whatever views modern skepticism may entertain in regard to what is commonly called the preaching of the gospel, no sensible person conversant with actual facts can help acknowledging that it does produce in some cases the phenomenon called conversion, and that conversion, when real, is a solution of all difficulties in our days as it was in those of the first apostles.
The first Christians were gathered from the dregs of society, and the Master did not fear to say to the Pharisees, “The publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of heaven before you;” and St. Paul addresses those who he says had been thieves and drunkards and revilers and extortioners, with the words, “Ye are washed; ye are sanctified; ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of God.” It is on the power of the Divine spirit to effect such changes, even in the most hopeless and forlorn subjects, that Christians of every name depend for success; and by this faith such places as the Home for the Fallen are undertaken and kept up.
What people look for, and labor for, as is proved by all experience, is more liable to happen than what they do not expect and do not labor for. The experiment of Mr. James was attended by many marked and sudden instances of conversion and permanent change of character. Maggie had been entrapped and drawn in by Mother Moggs in one of those paroxysms of bitter despair which burned in her bosom, when she saw, as she thought, every respectable door of life closed upon her and the way of virtue shut up beyond return. When she thought how, while she was cast out as utterly beyond hope, the man who had betrayed her and sinned with her was respected, flattered, rich, caressed, and joined in marriage to a pure and virtuous wife, a blind and keen sense of injustice awoke every evil or revengeful passion within her. “If they won’t let me do good, I can do mischief,” she thought, and she was now ready to do all she could to work misery and ruin for a world that would give her no place to do better. Mother Moggs saw Maggie’s brightness and smartness, and the remains of her beauty. She flattered and soothed her. To say the truth, Mother Moggs was by no means all devil. She had large remains of that motherly nature which is common to warm-blooded women of easy virtue. She took Maggie’s part, was indignant at her wrongs, and offered her a shelter and a share in her business. Maggie was to tend her bar; and by her talents and her good looks and attractions Mother Moggs hoped to double her liquor sales. What if it did ruin the men? What if it was selling them ruin, madness, beggary — so much the better; had they not ruined her?
If Maggie had been left to her own ways, she might have been the ruin of many. It was the Christ in the heart of a woman who had the Christian love and Christian courage to go after her and seek for her that brought to her salvation. The invisible Christ must be made known through human eyes; he must speak through a voice of earthly love, and a human hand inspired by his spirit must be reached forth to save.
The sight of Eva’s pure, sweet face in that den of wickedness, the tears of pity in her eyes, the imploring tones of her voice, had produced an electric revulsion in Maggie’s excitable nature. She was not, then, forsaken: she was cared for, loved, followed even into the wilderness, by one so far above her in rank and station. It was an illustration of what Christian love was, which made it possible to believe in the love of Christ. The hymns, the prayers, that spoke of hope and salvation, had a vivid meaning in the light of this interpretation. The enthusiasm of gratitude that arose first towards Eva, overflowed and bore the soul higher towards a Heavenly Friend.
Maggie was now longing to come back and prove by her devotion and obedience her true repentance, and Eva had decided to take her again. With two weddings impending in the family, she felt that Maggie’s skill with the needle and her facility in matters pertaining to the female toilet might do good service, and might give her the sense of usefulness — the strength that comes from something really accomplished.
Her former experience made her careful, however, of those sore and sensitive conditions which attend the return to virtue in those who have sinned, and which are often severest wh
ere there is the most moral vitality, and she was anxious to prevent any repetition on Aunt Maria’s part of former unwise proceedings. All the other habitués of the house partook of her own feeling; Alice and Angie were warmly interested for the poor girl; and if Aunt Maria could be brought to tolerate the arrangement, the danger of a sudden domiciliary visit from her attended with, inflammatory results might be averted.
So Eva was very sweet and very persuasive in her manner to-day, for Aunt Maria had been devoting herself so entirely to the family service during the few weeks past, that she felt in some sort under a debt of obligation to her. The hardest person in the world to manage is a sincere, willful, pig-headed, pertinacious friend who will insist on doing you all sorts of kindnesses in a way that plagues about as much as it helps you.
But Eva was the diplomatist of the family; the one with the precise mixture of the suaviter in modo with the fortiter in re. She had hitherto carried her points with the good lady in a way that gave her great advantage, for Aunt Maria was one of those happily self-complacent people who do not fail to arrogate to themselves the credit of all the good things that they have not been able, after the most strenuous efforts, to hinder, and Eva’s housekeeping and social successes, so far, were quite a feather in her cap. So, after dinner, Eva began with: —
“Well, you know, Aunt Maria, what with these two weddings coming on, there is to be a terrible pressure of work — both coming the week after Easter, you see. So,” she added quickly, “I think it quite lucky that I have found Maggie and got her back again, for she is one of the quickest and best seamstresses that I know of.” Aunt Maria’s brow suddenly darkened. Every trace of good humor vanished from her face as she said: —
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