We and Our Neighbors: or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street

"Let us hope so, darling."

"It seems selfish for me to wrap my comforts about me, and turn away my thoughts, and congratulate myself on my good luck – don't it?"

"But, darling, if you can't do anything, I don't know why you should dwell on it. But I'll promise you Bolton shall call and inquire of the Sisters, and if there is anything we can do, he will let us know. But now it's late, and you are tired and need rest."

CHAPTER XX

EVA TO HARRY'S MOTHER

Congratulate us, dear mother; we have had a success! Our first evening was all one could hope! Everybody came that we wanted, and, what is quite as good in such cases, everybody staid away that we didn't want. You know how it is; when you intend to produce real acquaintance, that shall ripen into intimacy, it is necessary that there should be no non-conductors to break the circle. There are people that shed around them coldness and constraint, as if they were made of ice, and it is a mercy when such people don't come to your parties. As it is, I have had the happiness to see our godly rector on most conversable terms with our heretic doctor, and each thinking better of the other. Oh! and, what was a greater triumph yet, I managed to introduce a Quaker preacheress to Mr. St. John, and had the satisfaction to see that he was completely charmed by her, as well he may be. The way it came about, you must know, is this: —

Little Ruth Baxter, our next door neighbor, has received this Sibyl Selwyn at her house, and is going with her soon on one of her preaching expeditions. I find it is a custom of their sect for the preachers to associate with themselves one or more lay sisters, who travel with them, and for a certain time devote themselves to works of charity and mercy under their superintendence. They visit prisons and penitentiaries; they go to houses of vice and misery, where one would think a woman would scarcely dare to go; they reprove sin, yet carry always messages of hope and mercy. Little Ruth is now preparing to go with Sibyl on such a mission, and I am much interested in the stories she tells me of the strange unworldly experiences of this woman. It is true that these missions are temporary; they seem to be only like what we could suppose the visits of angels might be – something to arouse and to stimulate, but not to exert a continuous influence. What feeling they excite, what good purposes and resolutions spring up under their influence, they refer to the organized charities of Christian churches of whatever name. If Sibyl's penitents are Romanists, she carries them to the Romish Sisters; and so with Methodist, Baptist, or Ritualist, wherever they can find shelter and care. She seems to regard her mission as like that of the brave Sisters of Charity who go upon the field of battle amid belching cannon and bursting shells, to bring away the wounded. She leaves them in this or that hospital, and is off again for more.

This she has been doing many years, as the spirit within leads her, both in England and in this country. I wish you could see her – I know how you would love her. As for me, I look up to her with a kind of awe; yet she has such a pretty, simple-hearted innocence about her. I felt a little afraid of her at first, and thought all my pins and rings and little bows and fixtures would seem so many sins in her sight; but I found she could admire a bracelet or a gem as much as I did, and seemed to enjoy all my pretty things for me. She says so prettily, "If thee acts up to thy light, Eva, thee can do no more." I only wish that I were as sure as she is that I do. It is quite sweet of her, and puts me at ease in her presence. They are going to be gone all this week on some mission. I don't know yet exactly where, but I can't help feeling as if I wished some angel woman like Sibyl would take me off with her, and let me do a little something in this great and never finished work of helping and healing. I have always had a longing to do a little at it, and perhaps, with some one to inspire and guide me, even I might do some good.

This reminds me of a strange incident. The other night, as I was crossing the street, I saw a weird-looking young woman, very haggard and miserable, who seemed to be in a kind of uncertain way, hanging about our house. There was something about her face and eyes that affected me quite painfully, but I thought nothing of it at the time. But, the evening after our reception, as Harry and Bolton were walking about a square beyond our house, this creature came suddenly upon them and took Harry's arm. He threw her off with a sudden impulse, and then Bolton, like a good man, as he always is, and with that sort of quiet self-possession he always has, spoke to her and asked where her mother was. That word was enough, and the poor thing began sobbing and crying, and then he took her and led her away to the St. Barnabas, a refuge for homeless people which is kept by some of our church Sisters, and there he left her; and Harry says he will tell Mr. St. John about it, so that he may find out what can be done for her, if anything.

When I think of meeting any such case personally, I feel how utterly weak and inexperienced I am, and how utterly unfit to guide or help, though I wish with my whole heart I could do something to help all poor desolate people. I feel a sort of self-reproach for being so very happy as I am while any are miserable. To take another subject, – I have been lately more and more intimate with Bolton. You know I sent you Caroline's letter about him. Well, really it seemed to me such a pity that two who are entirely devoted to each other should be living without the least comfort of intercommunion, that I could not help just trying the least little bit to bring them together. Harry rather warned me not to do it. These men are so prudent; their counsels seem rather cold to our hearts – is it not so, mother? Harry advised me not to name the subject to Bolton, and said he would not dare do it for the world. Well, that's just because he's a man; he does not know how differently men receive the approaches of a woman. In fact, I soon found that there was no subject on which Bolton was so all alive and eager to hear. When I had once mentioned Caroline, he kept recurring to the subject, evidently longing to hear more from her; and so, one way and another, in firelight talks and moonlight walks, and times and places when words slip out before one thinks, the whole of what is to be known of Caroline's feelings went into his mind, and all that might be known of his to her passed into mine. I, in short, became a medium. And do you think I was going to let her fret her heart out in ignorance of anything I could tell her? Not if I know myself; in fact, I have been writing volumes to Caroline, for I am determined that no people made for each other shall go wandering up and down this labyrinth of life, missing their way at every turn, for want of what could be told them by some friendly good fairy who has the clue.

Say now, mother, am I imprudent? If I am, I can't help it; the thing is done. Bolton has broken the silence and written to Caroline; and once letter-writing is begun, you see, the rest follows. Does it not?

Now the thing is done, Harry is rather glad of it, as he usually is with the results of my conduct when I go against his advice and the thing turns out all right; and, what's of Harry better than that, when I get into a scrape by going against his counsels, he never says, "I told you so," but helps me out, and comforts me in the loveliest manner. Mother, dear, he does you credit, for you had the making of him! He never would have been the husband he is, if you had not been the mother you are.

You say you are interested in my old ladies across the way.

Yes, I really flatter myself that our coming into this neighborhood is quite a godsend to them. I don't know any that seemed to enjoy the evening more than they two. It was so long since they had been in any society, and their society power had grown cramped, stiff by disuse; but the light and brightness of our fireside, and the general friendly cheerfulness, seemed to wake them up. My sisters are admirable assistants. They are society girls in the best sense, and my dear little mamma is never so much herself as when she is devoting herself to entertaining others. Miss Dorcas told me, this morning, that she was thankful on her sister's account to have this prospect of a weekly diversion opened to her; for that she had so many sorrows and suffered so much, it was all she could do at times to keep her from sinking in utter despondency. What her troubles could have been Miss Dorcas did not say; but I know that her marriage was unhappy, and that she has lost all her children. But, at any rate, this acknowledgement from her that we have been a comfort and help to them gratifies me. It shows me that we were right in thinking that we need not run beyond our own neighborhood to find society full of interest and do our little part in the kindly work of humanity. Oh, don't let me forget to tell you that that lovely, ridiculous Jack of theirs, that they make such a pet of, insisted on coming to the party to look after them; waylaid the door, and got in, and presented himself in a striking attitude on an ottoman in the midst of the company, to Miss Dorcas's profound horror and our great amusement. Jack has now become the "dog of the regiment," and we think of issuing a season ticket in his behalf: for everybody pets him; he helps to make fun and conversation.

After all, my dear mother, I must say a grateful word in praise of my Mary. I pass for a first-rate housekeeper, and receive constant compliments for my lovely house, its charming arrangements, the ease with which I receive and entertain company, the smoothness and completeness with which everything goes on; and all the while, in my own conscience, I feel that almost all the credit is due to Mary. The taste in combination and arrangement is mine, to be sure – and I flatter myself on having some nice domestic theories; but after all, Mary's knowledge, and Mary's strength, and Mary's neatness and order, are the foundation on which all the structure is built. Of what use would be taste and beauty and refinement, if I had to do my own washing, or cook my own meals, or submit to the inroads of a tribe of untaught barbarians, such as come from the intelligence offices? How soon would they break my pretty teacups, and overwhelm my lovely bijouterie with a second Goth and Vandal irruption! So, with you, dear mother, you see I do justice to Mary, strong and kind, whom nobody thinks of and nobody praises, and yet who enables me to do all that I do. I believe she truly loves me with all the warmth of an Irish heart, and I love her in return; and I give her this credit with you, to absolve my own conscience for taking so much more than is due to myself in the world. But what a long letter I am writing! Writing to you is talking, and you know what a chatterbox I am; but you won't be tired of hearing all this from us.

Your lovingEva.

CHAPTER XXI

BOLTON AND ST. JOHN

St. John was seated in his study, with a book of meditations before him on which he was endeavoring to fix his mind. In the hot, dusty, vulgar atmosphere of modern life, it was his daily effort to bring around himself the shady coolness, the calm conventual stillness, that breathes through such writers as St. Francis de Sales and Thomas à Kempis, men with a genius for devotion, who have left to mankind records of the mile-stones and road-marks by which they traveled towards the highest things. Nor should the most stringent Protestant fail to honor that rich and grand treasury of the experience of devout spirits of which the Romish Church has been the custodian. The hymns and prayers and pious meditations which come to us through this channel are particularly worthy of a cherishing remembrance in this dusty, materialistic age. To St. John they had a double charm, by reason of their contrast with the sterility of the religious forms of his early life. While enough of the Puritan and Protestant remained in him to prevent his falling at once into the full embrace of Romanism, he still regarded the old fabric with a softened, poetic tenderness; he "took pleasure in her stones and favored the dust thereof."

Nor is it to be denied that in the history of the Romish Church are records of heroism and self-devotion which might justly inspire with ardor the son of a line of Puritans. Who can go beyond St. Francis Xavier in the signs of an apostle? Who labored with more utter self-surrender than Father Claver for the poor negro slaves of South America? And how magnificent are those standing Orders of Charity, composed of men and women of that communion, that have formed from age to age a life-guard of humanity, devoted to healing the sick, sheltering and educating the orphans, comforting the dying!

A course of eager reading in this direction might make it quite credible even that a Puritan on the rebound should wish to come as near such a church as is possible without sacrifice of conscience and reason.

In the modern Anglican wing of the English Church St. John thought he had found the blessed medium. There he believed were the signs of the devotion, the heroism and self-sacrifice of the primitive Catholic Church, without the hindrances and incrustations of superstition. That little record, "Ten Years in St. George's Mission," was to him the seal of their calling. There he read of men of property devoting their entire wealth, their whole time and strength, to the work of regenerating the neglected poor of London. He read of a district that at first could be entered only under the protection of the police, where these moral heroes began their work of love amid the hootings and howlings of the mob and threats of personal violence, – the scoff and scorn of those they came to save; and how by the might of Christian love and patience these savage hearts were subdued, these blasphemies turned to prayers; and how in this dark district arose churches, schools, homes for the destitute, reformatories for the lost. No wonder St. John, reading of such a history, felt, "This is the church for me." Perhaps a wider observation might have shown him that such labors and successes are not peculiar to the ritualist, that to wear the cross outwardly is not essential to bearing the cross inwardly, and that without signs and the symbolism of devout forms, the spirit of love, patience and self-denial can and does accomplish the same results.

St. John had not often met Bolton before that evening at the Henderson's. There, for the first time, he had had a quiet, uninterrupted conversation with him; and, from the first, there had been felt between them that constitutional sympathy that often unites widely varying natures, like the accord of two different strings of an instrument.

Bolton was less of an idealist than St. John, with a wider practical experience and a heavier mental caliber. He was in no danger of sentimentalism, and yet there was about him a deep and powerful undertone of feeling that inclined him in the same direction with Mr. St. John. There are men, and very strong men, whose natures gravitate towards Romanism with a force only partially modified by intellectual convictions: they would be glad to believe it if they could.

Bolton was an instance of a man of high moral and intellectual organization, of sensitive conscience and intense sensibility, who, with the highest ideal of manhood and of the purposes to which life should be devoted, had come to look upon himself as an utter failure. An infirmity of the brain and the flesh had crept upon him in the unguarded period of youth, had struck its poison through his system, and weakened the power of the will, till all the earlier part of his life had been a series of the most mortifying failures. He had fallen from situation after situation, where he had done work for a season: and, each time, the agony of his self-reproach and despair had been doubled by the reproaches and expostulations of many of his own family friends, who poured upon bare nerves the nitric acid of reproach. He had seen the hair of his mother slowly and surely whitening in the sickening anxieties and disappointments which he had brought. Loving her with almost a lover's fondness, desiring above all things to be her staff and stay, he had felt himself to be to her only an anxiety and a disappointment.

When, at last, he had gained a foothold and a place in the press, he was still haunted with the fear of recurring failure. He who has two or three times felt his sanity give way, and himself become incapable of rational control, never thereafter holds himself secure. And so it was with this overpowering impulse to which Bolton had been subjected; he did not know at what time it might sweep over him again.

Of late, his intimacy had been sought by Eva, and he had yielded to the charm of her society. It was impossible for a nature at once so sympathetic and so transparent as hers to mingle intimately with another without learning and betraying much. The woman's tact at once divined that his love for Caroline had only grown with time, and the scarce suppressed eagerness with which he listened to any tidings from her led on from step to step in mutual confidence, till there was nothing more to be told, and Bolton felt that the only woman he had ever loved, loved him in return with a tenacity and intensity which would be controlling forces in her life.

It was with a bitter pleasure nearly akin to pain that this conviction entered his soul. To a delicate moral organization, the increase of responsibility, with distrust of ability to meet it, is a species of torture. He feared himself destined once more to wreck the life and ruin the hopes of one dearer than his own soul, who was devoting herself to him with a woman's uncalculating fidelity.

This agony of self-distrust, this conscious weakness in his most earnest resolutions and most fervent struggles, led Bolton to wish with all his heart that the beautiful illusion of an all-powerful church in which still resided the visible presence of Almighty God might be a reality. His whole soul sometimes cried out for such a visible Helper – for a church with power to bind and loose, with sacraments which should supplement human weakness by supernatural grace, with a priesthood competent to forgive sin and to guide the penitent. It was simply and only because his clear, well-trained intelligence could see no evidence of what he longed to believe, that the absolute faith was wanting.

He was not the only one in this perplexed and hopeless struggle with life and self and the world who has cried out for a visible temple, such as had the ancient Jew; for a visible High-Priest, who should consult the oracle for him and bring him back some sure message from a living God.

When he looked back on the seasons of his failures, he remembered that it was with vows and tears and prayers of agony in his mouth that he had been swept away by the burning temptation; that he had been wrenched, cold and despairing, from the very horns of the altar. Sometimes he looked with envy at those refuges which the Romish Church provides for those who are too weak to fight the battle of life alone, and thought, with a sense of rest and relief, of entering some of those religious retreats where a man surrenders his whole being to the direction of another, and ends the strife by laying down personal free agency at the feet of absolute authority. Nothing but an unconvinced intellect – an inability to believe – stood in the way of this entire self-surrender. This morning, he had sought Mr. St. John's study, to direct his attention to the case of the young woman whom he had rescued from the streets, the night before.

Bolton's own personal experience of human weakness and the tyranny of passion had made him intensely pitiful. He looked on the vicious and the abandoned as a man shipwrecked and swimming for his life looks on the drowning who are floating in the waves around him; and where a hand was wanting, he was prompt to stretch it out.

There was something in that young, haggard face, those sad, appealing eyes, that had interested him more powerfully than usual, and he related the case with much feeling to Mr. St. John, who readily promised to call and ascertain if possible some further particulars about her.

"You did the very best possible thing for her," said he, "when you put her into the care of the Church. The Church alone is competent to deal with such cases."

Bolton ruminated within himself on the wild, diseased impulses, the morbid cravings and disorders, the complete wreck of body and soul that comes of such a life as the woman had led, and then admired the serene repose with which St. John pronounced that indefinite power, the church, as competent to cast out the seven devils of the Magdalen.

"I shall be very glad to hear good news of her," he said; "and if the Church is strong enough to save such as she, I shall be glad to know that too."

"You speak in a skeptical tone," said St. John.

"Pardon me: I know something of the difficulties, physical and moral, which lie in the way," said Bolton.

"To them that believe, nothing shall be impossible," said St. John, his face kindling with ardor.

"And by the Church do you mean all persons who have the spirit of Jesus Christ, or simply that portion of them who worship in the form that you do?"

"Come, now," said St. John, "the very form of your question invites to a long historic argument; and I am sure you did not mean to draw that on your head."

"Some other time, though," said Bolton, "if you will undertake to convince me of the existence in this world of such a power as you believe in, you will find me certainly not unwilling to believe. But, this morning, I have but a brief time to spend. Farewell, for the present."

And with a hearty hand-shake the two parted.

CHAPTER XXII

BOLTON TO CAROLINE

I had not thought to obtrude myself needlessly on you ever again. Oppressed with the remembrance that I have been a blight on a life that might otherwise have been happy, I thought my only expiation was silence. But it had not then occurred to me that possibly you could feel and be pained by that silence. But of late I have been very intimate with Mrs. Henderson, whose mind is like those crystalline lakes we read of – a pebble upon the bottom is evident. She loves you so warmly and feels for you so sympathetically that, almost unconsciously, when you pour your feelings into her heart, they are revealed to me through the transparent medium of her nature. I confess that I am still so selfish as to feel a pleasure in the thought that you cannot forget me. I cannot forget you. I never have forgotten you, I believe, for a waking conscious hour since that time when your father shut the door of his house between you and me. I have demonstrated in my own experience that there may be a double consciousness all the while going on, in which the presence of one person should seem to pervade every scene of life. You have been with me, even in those mad fatal seasons when I have been swept from reason and conscience and hope – it has added bitterness to my humiliation in my weak hours; but it has been motive and courage to rise up again and again and renew the fight – the fight that must last as long as life lasts; for, Caroline, this is so. In some constitutions, with some hereditary predispositions, the indiscretions and ignorances of youth leave a fatal irremediable injury. Though the sin be in the first place one of inexperience and ignorance, it is one that nature never forgives. The evil once done can never be undone; no prayers, no entreaties, no resolutions, can change the consequences of violated law. The brain and nerve force, once vitiated by poisonous stimulants, become thereafter subtle tempters and traitors, forever lying in wait to deceive and urging to ruin; and he who is saved, is saved so as by fire. Since it is your unhappy fate to care so much for me, I owe to you the utmost frankness. I must tell you plainly that I am an unsafe man. I am like a ship with powder on board and a smouldering fire in the hold. I must warn my friends off, lest at any moment I carry ruin to them, and they be drawn down in my vortex. We can be friends, dear friends; but let me beg you, think as little of me as you can. Be a friend in a certain degree, after the manner of the world, rationally, and with a wise regard to your own best interests – you who are worth five hundred times what I am – you who have beauty, talent, energy – who have a career opening before you, and a most noble and true friend in Miss Ida; do not let your sympathies for a very worthless individual lead you to defraud yourself of all that you should gain in the opportunities now open to you. Command my services for you in the literary line when ever they may be of the slightest use. Remember that nothing in the world makes me so happy as an opportunity to serve you. Treat me as you would a loyal serf, whose only thought is to live and die for you; as the princess of the middle ages treated the knight of low degree, who devoted himself to her service. There is nothing you could ask me to do for you that would not be to me a pleasure; and all the more so, if it involved any labor or difficulty. In return, be assured, that merely by being the woman you are, merely by the love which you have given and still give to one so unworthy, you are a constant strength to me, an encouragement never to faint in a struggle which must last as long as this life lasts. For although we must not forget that life, in the best sense of the word, lasts forever, yet this first mortal phase of it is, thank God, but short. There is another and a higher life for those whose life has been a failure here. Those who die fighting – even though they fall, many times trodden under the hoof of the enemy – will find themselves there made more than conquerors through One who hath loved them.