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

Let us look back and remember how the Master once coupled an immaculate Pharisee and a fallen woman in one sentence as two debtors, both owing a sum to a creditor, and both having nothing to pay, – both freely forgiven by infinite clemency. It is a summing up of the case that is too often forgotten.

Eva's natural tact and delicacy stood her in stead in her dealings with Maggie, and made her touch upon the wounds of the latter more endurable than any other. Without reproof for the past, she expressed hope for the future.

"You shall come and stay with your mother at my house, Maggie," she said, cheerfully, "and we will make you useful. The fact is, your mother needs you; she is not so strong as she was, and you could save her a great many steps."

Now, Maggie still had skillful hands and a good many available worldly capacities. The very love of finery and of fine living which had once helped to entrap her, now came in play for her salvation. Something definite to do, is, in some crises, a far better medicine for a sick soul than any amount of meditation and prayer. One step fairly taken in a right direction, goes farther than any amount of agonized back-looking.

In a few days, Maggie made for herself in Eva's family a place in which she could feel herself to be of service. She took charge of Eva's wardrobe, and was zealous and efficient in ripping, altering and adapting articles for the adornment of her pretty mistress; and Eva never failed to praise and encourage her for every right thing she did, and never by word or look reminded her of the past.

Eva did not preach to Maggie; but sometimes, sitting at her piano while she sat sewing in an adjoining room, she played and sung some of those little melodies which Sunday-schools have scattered as a sort of popular ballad literature. Words of piety, allied to a catching tune, are like seeds with wings – they float out in the air and drop in odd corners of the heart, to spring up in good purposes.

One of these little ballads reminded Eva of the night she first saw Maggie lingering in the street by her house:

"I stood outside the gate,A poor wayfaring child;Within my heart there beatA tempest fierce and wild.A fear oppressed my soulThat I might be too late;And, oh, I trembled soreAnd prayed – outside the gate,"'Mercy,' I loudly cried,'Oh, give me rest from sin!''I will,' a voice replied,And Mercy let me in.She bound my bleeding woundsAnd carried all my sin;She eased my burdened soul,Then Jesus took me in."In Mercy's guise I knewThe Saviour long abused,Who oft had sought my heart,And oft had been refused.Oh, what a blest returnFor ignorance and sin!I stood outside the gateAnd Jesus let me in."

After a few days, Eva heard Maggie humming this tune over her work. "There," she said to herself, "the good angels are near her! I don't know what to say to her, but they do."

In fact, Eva had that delicacy and self-distrust in regard to any direct and personal appeal to Maggie which is the natural attendant of personal refinement. She was little versed in any ordinary religious phraseology, such as very well-meaning persons often so freely deal in. Her own religious experiences, fervent and sincere though they were, never came out in any accredited set of phrases; nor had she any store of cut-and-dried pious talk laid by, to be used for inferiors whom she was called to admonish. But she had stores of kind artifices to keep Maggie usefully employed, to give her a sense that she was trusted in the family, to encourage hope that there was a better future before her.

Maggie's mother, fond and loving as she was, seconded these tactics of her mistress but indifferently. Mary had the stern pride of chastity which distinguishes the women of the old country, and which keeps most of the Irish girls who are thrown unprotected on our shores superior to temptation.

Mary keenly felt that Maggie had disgraced her, and as health returned and she no longer trembled for her life, she seemed called upon to keep her daughter's sin ever before her. Her past bad conduct and the lenity of her young mistress, her treating her so much better than she had any reason to expect, were topics on which Mary took every occasion to enlarge in private, leading to passionate altercations between herself and her daughter, in which the child broke over all bounds of goodness and showed the very worst aspects of her nature. Nothing can be more miserable, more pitiable, than these stormy passages between wayward children and honest, good-hearted mothers, who love them to the death, and yet do not know how to handle them, sensitive and sore with moral wounds. Many a time poor Mary went to sleep with a wet pillow, while Maggie, sullen and hard-hearted, lay with her great black eyes wide open, obdurate and silent, yet in her secret heart longing to make it right with her mother. Often, after such a passage she would revolve the line of the hymn —

"I stood outside the gate."

It seemed to her that that gate was her mother's heart, and that she stood outside of it; and yet all the while the poor mother would have died for her. Eva could not at first account for the sullen and gloomy moods which came upon Maggie, when she would go about the house with lowering brows, and all her bright, cheerful ways and devices could bring no smile upon her face.

"What is the matter with Maggie?" she would say to Mary.

"Oh, nothing, ma'am, only she's bad; she's got to be brought under, and brought down, – that's what she has."

"Mary, I think you had better not talk to Maggie about her past faults. She knows she has been wrong, and the best way is to let her get quietly into the right way. We mustn't keep throwing up the past to her. When we do wrong, we don't like to have people keep putting us in mind of it."

"You're jest an angel, Miss Eva, and it isn't many ladies that would do as you do. You're too good to her entirely. She ought to be made sensible of it."

"Well, Mary, the best way to make her sensible and bring her to repentance is to treat her kindly and never bring up the past. Don't you see it does no good, Mary? It only makes her sullen, and gloomy, and unhappy, so that I can't get anything out of her. Now please, Mary, just keep quiet, and let me manage Maggie."

And then Mary would promise, and Eva would smooth matters over, and affairs would go on for a day or two harmoniously. But there was another authority in Mary's family, as in almost every Irish household, – a man who felt called to have a say and give a sentence.

Mary had an elder brother, Mike McArtney, who had established himself in a grocery business a little out of the city, and who felt himself to stand in position of head of the family to Mary and her children.

The absolute and entire reverence and deference with which Irish women look up to the men of their kindred is something in direct contrast to the demeanor of American women. The male sex, if repulsed in other directions, certainly are fully justified and glorified by the submissive daughters of Erin. Mike was the elder brother, under whose care Mary came to this country. He was the adviser and director of all her affairs. He found her places; he guided her in every emergency. Mike, of course, had felt and bitterly resented the dishonor brought on their family by Maggie's fall. In his view, there was danger that the path of repentance was being made altogether too easy for her, and he had resolved on the first leisure Sunday evening to come to the house and execute a thorough work of judgment on Maggie, setting her sin in order before her, and, in general, bearing down on her in such a way as to bring her to the dust and make her feel it the greatest possible mercy and favor that any of her relations should speak to her.

So, after Eva had hushed the mother and tranquilized the girl, and there had been two or three days of serenity, came Sunday evening and Uncle Mike.

The result was, as might have been expected, a loud and noisy altercation. Maggie was perfectly infuriated, and talked like one possessed of a demon; using, alas! language with which her sinful life had made her only too familiar, and which went far to justify the rebukes which were heaped upon her.

In his anger at such contumacious conduct, Uncle Mike took full advantage of the situation, and told Maggie that she was a disgrace to her mother and her relations – a disgrace to any honest house – and that he wondered that decent gentle-folks would have her under their roof.

In short, in one hour, two of Maggie's best friends – the mother that loved her as her life and the uncle that had been as a father to her – contrived utterly to sweep away and destroy all those delicate cords and filaments which the hands of good angels had been fastening to her heart, to draw her heavenward.

When a young tree is put in new ground, its roots put forth fibres delicate as hairs, but in which is all the vitality of a new phase of existence. To tear up those roots and wrench off those fibres is too often the destructive work of well-intending friends; it is done too often by those who would, if need be, give their very heart's blood for the welfare they imperil. Such is life as we find it.

CHAPTER XXVII

ROUGH HANDLING OF SORE NERVES

The same Sunday evening that Mary and her brother Mike had devoted to the disciplinary processes with Maggie, had been spent by Eva and her husband at her father's house.

Mrs. Van Arsdel, to say the truth, had been somewhat shaken and disturbed by Aunt Maria's suggestions; and she took early occasion to draw Eva aside, and make many doubtful inquiries and utter many admonitory cautions with regard to the part she had taken for Maggie.

"Of course, dear, it's very kind in you," said Mrs. Van Arsdel; "but your aunt thinks it isn't quite prudent; and, come to think it over, Eva, I'm afraid it may get you into trouble. Everything is going on so well in your house, I don't want you to have anything disagreeable, you know."

"Well, after all, mother, how can I be a Christian, or anything like a Christian, if I am never willing to take any trouble? If you heard the preaching we do every Sunday, you would feel so."

"I don't doubt that Mr. St. John is a good preacher," said Mrs. Van Arsdel; "but then I never could go so far, you know; and your aunt is almost crazy now because the girls go up there and don't sit in our pew in church. She was here yesterday, and talked very strongly about your taking Maggie. She really made me quite uncomfortable."

"Well, I should like to know what concern it is of Aunt Maria's!" said Eva. "It's a matter in which Harry and I must follow our own judgment and conscience; Harry thinks we are doing right, and I suspect Harry knows what is best to do as well as Aunt Maria."

"Well, certainly, Eva, I must say it's an unusual sort of thing to do. I know your motives are all right and lovely, and I stood up for you with your aunt. I didn't give in to her a bit; and yet, all the while, I couldn't help thinking that maybe she was right and that maybe your good-heartedness would get you into difficulty."

"Well, suppose it does; what then? Am I never to have any trouble for the sake of helping anybody? I am not one of the very good women with missions, like Sibyl Selwyn, and can't do good that way; and I'm not enterprising and courageous, like sister Ida, to make new professions for women: but here is a case of a poor woman right under my own roof who is perplexed and suffering, and if I can help her carry her load, ought I not to do it, even if it makes me a good deal of trouble?"

"Well, yes, I don't know but you ought," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, who was always convinced by the last speaker.

"You see," continued Eva, "the priest and the Levite who passed by on the other side when a man lay wounded were just of Aunt Maria's mind. They didn't want trouble, and if they undertook to do anything for him they would have a good deal; so they left him. And if I turn my back on Mary and Maggie I shall be doing pretty much the same thing."

"Well, if you only are sure of succeeding. But girls that have fallen into bad ways are such dangerous creatures; perhaps you can't do her any good, and will only get yourself into trouble."

"Well, if I fail, why then I shall fail. But I think it's better to try and fail in doing our part for others than never to try at all."

"Well, I suppose you are right, Eva; and after all I'm sorry for poor Mary. She had a hard time with her marriage all round; and I suppose it's no wonder Maggie went astray. Mary couldn't control her; and handsome girls in that walk of life are so tempted. How does she get on?"

"Oh, nicely, for the most part. She seems to have a sort of adoration for me. I can say or do anything with her, and she really is very handy and skillful with her needle; she has ripped up and made over an old dress for me so you'd be quite astonished to see it, and seems really pleased and interested to have something to do. If only her mother will let her alone, and not keep nagging her, and bringing up old offenses. Mary is so eager to make her do right that she isn't judicious, she doesn't realize how sensitive and sore people are that know they have been wrong. Maggie is a proud girl."

"Oh, well, she's no business to be proud," said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "I'm sure she ought to be humbled in the very dust; that's the least one should expect."

"And so ought we all," said Eva, "but we are not, and she isn't. She makes excuses for herself, and feels as if she had been abused and hardly treated, just as most of us do when we go wrong, and I tell Mary not to talk to her about the past, but just quietly let her do better in future; but it's very hard to get her to feel that Maggie ought not to be willing to be lectured and preached to from morning till night."

"Your Aunt Maria, no doubt, will come up and free her mind to you about this affair," said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "She has a scheme in her head of getting another girl for you in Mary's place. The Willises are going abroad for three years and have given their servants leave to advertise from the house; and your aunt left me Saturday, saying she was going up there to ascertain all about them and get you the refusal of one of them, provided you wished to get rid of Mary."

"Get rid of Mary! I think I see myself turning upon my good Mary that loves me as she does her life, and scheming to get her out of my house because she's in trouble. No, indeed; Mary has been true and faithful to me, and I will be a true and faithful friend to her. What could I do with one of the Willises' servants, with their airs and their graces? Would they come to a little house like mine, and take all departments in turn, and do for me as if they were doing for themselves, as Mary does?"

"Just so," said Mrs. Van Arsdel. "That's just what I told Maria. I told her that you never would consent. But you know how it is with her when she gets an idea in her head, there's no turning her. You might as well talk to a steam engine. She walked off down stairs straight as a ramrod, and took the omnibus for the Willises, in spite of all I could say; and, sure as the world, she'll be up to talk with you about it. She insisted that it was my duty to interfere; and I told her you had a right to manage your matters in your own way. Then she said if I didn't do my duty by you, she should."

"Well, you have done your duty, Mamma dear," said Eva, kissing her mother. "I'll bear witness to that, and it isn't your fault if I am not warned. But you, dear little mother, have sense to let your children sail their own boat their own way, without interfering."

"Well, I think your ways generally turn out the best ways, Eva," said her mother. "And I think Aunt Maria herself comes into them finally. She is proud as a peacock of your receptions, and takes every occasion to tell people what charming, delightful evenings you have; and she praises your house and your housekeeping and you to everybody, so you may put up with a little bother now and then."

"Oh, I'll manage Aunt Maria, never you fear," said Eva, as she rose confidently and took her husband from a discussion with Mr. Van Arsdel.

"Come, Harry, it's nine o'clock, and we have a long walk yet to get home."

It was brisk, clear winter moonlight in the streets as Harry and Eva took their way homeward – she the while relieving her mind by reciting her mother's conversation.

"Don't it seem strange," she said, "how the minute one actually tries to do some real Christian work everything goes against one?"

"Yes," said Harry; "the world isn't made for the unfortunate or unsuccessful. In general, the instinct of society is the same among men as among animals – anything sickly or maimed is to be fought off and got rid of. If there is a sick bird, all the rest fly at it and peck it to death. So in the world, when man or woman doesn't keep step with respectable people, the first idea is to get them out of the way. We can't exactly kill them, but we can wash our hands of them. Saving souls is no part of the world's work – it interferes with its steady business; it takes unworldly people to do that."

"And when one begins," said Eva, "shrewd, sensible folks, like Aunt Maria, blame us; and little, tender-hearted folks, like mamma, think it's almost a pity we should try, and that we had better leave it to somebody else; and then the very people we are trying to do for are really troublesome and hard to manage – like poor Maggie. She is truly a very hard person to get along with, and her mother is injudicious, and makes it harder; but yet, it really does seem to be our work to help take care of her. Now, isn't it?"

"Well, then, darling, you may comfort your heart with one thought: when you are doing for pure Christian motives a thing that makes you a great deal of trouble, and gets you no applause, you are trying to live just that unworldly life that the first Christians did. They were called a peculiar people, and whoever acts in the same spirit now-a-days will be called the same. I think it is the very highest wisdom to do as you are doing; but it isn't the wisdom of this world. It's the kind of thing that Mr. St. John is sacrificing his whole life to; it is what Sibyl Selwyn is doing all the time, and your little neighbor Ruth is helping in. We can at least try to do a little. We are inexperienced, it may be that we shall not succeed, it may be that the girl is past saving; but it's worth while to try, and try our very best."

Harry was saying this just as he put his latch-key into the door of his house.

It was suddenly opened from within, and Maggie stood before them with her bonnet and shawl on, ready to pass out. There was a hard, sharp, desperate expression in her face as she pressed forward to pass them.

"Maggie, child," said Eva, laying hold of her arm, "where are you going?"

"Away – anywhere – I don't care where," said Maggie, fiercely, trying to pull away.

"But you mustn't," said Eva, laying hold of her.

"Maggie," said Harry, stepping up to her and speaking in that calm, steady voice which controls passionate people, "go into the house immediately with Mrs. Henderson; she will talk with you."

Maggie turned, and sullenly followed Eva into a little sewing room adjoining the parlor, where she had often sat at work.

"Now, Maggie," said Eva, "take off your bonnet, for I'm not going to have you go into the streets at this hour of the night, and sit down quietly here and tell me all about it. What has happened? What is the matter? You don't want to distress your mother and break her heart?"

"She hates me," said Maggie. "She says I've disgraced her and I disgrace you, and that it's a disgrace to have me here. She and Uncle Mike both said so, and I said I'd go off, then."

"But where could you go?" said Eva.

"Oh, I know places enough! They're bad, to be sure. I wanted to do better, so I came away; but I can go back again."

"No, Maggie, you must never go back. You must do as I tell you. Have I not been a friend to you?"

"Oh, yes, yes, you have; but they say I disgrace you."

"Maggie, I don't think so. I never said so. There is no need that you should disgrace anybody. I hope you'll live to be a credit to your mother – a credit to us all. You are young yet; you have a good many years to live; and if you'll only go on and do the very best you can from this time, you can be a comfort to your mother and be a good woman. It's never too late to begin, Maggie, and I'll help you now."

Maggie sat still and gazed gloomily before her.

"Come, now, I'll sing you some little hymns," said Eva, going to her piano and touching a few chords. "You've got your mind all disturbed, and I'll sing to you till you are more quiet."

Eva had a sweet voice, and a light, dreamy sort of touch on the piano, and she played and sung with feeling.

There were truths in religion, higher, holier, deeper than she felt capable of uttering, which breathed themselves in these hymns; and something within her gave voice and pathos to them.

The influence of music over the disturbed nerves and bewildered moral sense of those who have gone astray from virtue, is something very remarkable. All modern missions more or less recognize that it has a power which goes beyond anything that spoken words can utter, and touches springs of deeper feeling.

Eva sat playing a long time, going from one thing to another; and then, rising, she found Maggie crying softly by herself.

"Come, now, Maggie," she said, "you are going to be a good girl, I know. Go up and go to bed now, and don't forget your prayers. That's a good girl."

Maggie yielded passively, and went to her room.

Then Eva had another hour's talk, to persuade Mary that she must not be too exacting with Maggie, and that she must for the future avoid all such encounters with her. Mary was, on the whole, glad to promise anything; for she had been thoroughly alarmed at the altercation into which their attempt at admonition had grown, and was ready to admit to Eva that Mike had been too hard on her. At all events, the family honor had been sufficiently vindicated, and, if Maggie would only behave herself, she was ready to promise that Mike should not be allowed to interfere in future. And so, at last, Eva succeeded in inducing Mary to go to her daughter's room with a reconciling word before she went to bed, and had the comfort of seeing the naughty girl crying in her mother's arms, and the mother petting and fondling her as a mother should.

Alas! it is only in the good old Book that the father sees the prodigal a great way off, and runs and falls on his neck and kisses him, before he has confessed his sin or done any work of repentance. So far does God's heavenly love outrun even the love of fathers and mothers.

"Well, I believe I've got things straightened out at last," said Eva, as she came back to Harry; "and now, if Mary will only let me manage Maggie, I think I can make all go smooth."

CHAPTER XXVIII

REASON AND UNREASON

The next morning being Monday, Dr. Campbell dropped in to breakfast. Since he and Eva had met so often in Maggie's sick room, and he had discussed the direction of her physical well-being, he had rapidly grown in intimacy with the Hendersons, and the little house had come to be regarded by him as a sort of home. Consequently, when Eva sailed into her dining-room, she found him quietly arranging a handful of cut flowers which he had brought in for the center of her breakfast table.

"Good morning, Mrs. Henderson," he said, composedly. "I stepped into Allen's green-house on my way up, to bring in a few flowers. With the mercury at zero, flowers are worth something."

"How perfectly lovely of you, Doctor," said she. "You are too good."

"I don't say, however, that I had not my eye on a cup of your coffee," he replied. "You know I have no faith in disinterested benevolence."

"Well, sit down then, old fellow," said Harry, clapping him on the shoulder. "You're welcome, flowers or no flowers."

"How are you all getting on?" he said, seating himself.

"Charmingly, of course," said Eva, from behind the coffee-pot, "and as the song says, 'the better for seeing you.'"

"And how's my patient – Maggie?"

"Oh, she's doing well, if only people will let her alone; but her mother, and uncle, and relations will keep irritating her with reproaches. You see, I had got her in beautiful training, and she was sewing for me and making herself very useful, when, Sunday evening, when I was gone out, her uncle came to see her, and talked and bore down upon her so as to completely upset all I had done. I came home and found her just going out of the house, perfectly desperate."