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

Mrs. Van Arsdel dreaded the setting of her sister's mind in this direction, so by way of effecting a diversion she rang and inquired when tea would be ready. As the door opened, the sound of very merry singing came up stairs. Angelique was seated at the piano and playing tunes out of one of the Sunday-school manuals, and the whole set were singing with might and main. Jim's tenor could be heard above all the rest.

"Why, is that fellow here?" said Aunt Maria.

"Yes," said Mrs. Van Arsdel; "he very often stays to tea with us Sunday nights, and he and the girls sing hymns together."

"Hymns!" said Aunt Maria. "I should call that a regular jollification that they are having down there."

"Oh, well, Maria, they are singing children's tunes out of one of the little Sunday-school manuals. You know children's tunes are so different from old-fashioned psalm tunes!"

Just then the choir below struck up

"Forward, Christian soldier,"

with a marching energy and a vivacity that was positively startling, and, to be sure, not in the least like the old, long-drawn, dolorous strains once supposed to be peculiar to devotion. In fact, one of the greatest signs of progress in our modern tunes is the bursting forth of religious thought and feeling in childhood and youth in strains gay and airy as hope and happiness – melodies that might have been learned of those bright little "fowls of the air," of whom the Master bade us take lessons, so that a company of wholesome, healthy, right-minded young people can now get together and express themselves in songs of joy, and hope, and energy, such as childhood and youth ought to be full of.

Let those who will talk of the decay of Christian faith in our day; so long as songs about Jesus and his love are bursting forth on every hand, thick as violets and apple blossoms in June, so long as the little Sunday-school song books sell by thousands and by millions, and spring forth every year in increasing numbers, so long will it appear that faith is ever fresh-springing and vital. It was the little children in the temple who cried, "Hosanna to the Son of David," when chief priests and scribes were scowling and saying, "Master, forbid them," and doubtless the same dear Master loves to hear these child-songs now as then.

At all events, our little party were having a gay and festive time over two or three new collections of Clarion, Golden Chain, Golden Shower, or what not, of which Jim had brought a pocketful for the girls to try, and certainly the melodies as they came up were bright and lively and pretty enough to stir one's blood pleasantly. In fact, both Aunt Maria and Mrs. Van Arsdel were content for a season to leave the door open and listen.

"You see," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "Jim is such a pleasant, convenient, obliging fellow, and has done so many civil turns for the family, that we quite make him at home here; we don't mind him at all. It's a pleasant thing, too, and a convenience, now the boys are gone, to have some young man that one feels perfectly free with to wait on the girls; and where there are so many of them, there's less danger of anything particular. There's no earthly danger of Alice's being specially interested in Jim. He isn't at all the person she would ever think seriously of, though she likes him as a friend."

Mrs. Wouvermans apparently acquiesced for the time in this reasoning, but secretly resolved to watch appearances narrowly this evening, and if she saw what warranted the movement to take the responsibility of the case into her own hands forthwith. Her perfect immutable and tranquil certainty that she was the proper person to manage anything within the sphere of her vision gave her courage to go forward in spite of the fears and remonstrances of any who might have claimed that they were parties concerned.

Mr. Jim Fellows was one of those persons in whom a sense of humor operates as a subtle lubricating oil through all the internal machinery of the mind, causing all which might otherwise have jarred or grated to slide easily. Many things which would be a torture to more earnest people were to him a source of amusement. In fact, humor was so far a leading faculty that it was difficult to keep him within limits of propriety and decorum, and prevent him from racing off at unsuitable periods like a kitten after a pin-ball, skipping over all solemnities of etiquette and decorum. He had not been so long intimate in the family without perfectly taking the measure of so very active and forth-putting a member as Aunt Maria. He knew exactly – as well as if she had told him – how she regarded him, for his knowledge of character was not the result of study, but that sort of clear sight which in persons of quick perceptive organs seems like a second sense. He saw into persons without an effort, and what he saw for the most part only amused him.

He perceived immediately on sitting down to tea that he was under the glance of Mrs. Wouverman's watchful and critical eye, and the result was that he became full and ready to boil over with wicked drollery. With an apparently grave face, without passing the limits of the most ceremonious politeness and decorum, he contrived, by a thousand fleeting indescribable turns and sliding intonations and adroit movements to get all the girls into a tempest of suppressed gaiety. There are wicked rogues known to us all who have this magical power of making those around them burst out into indiscreet sallies of laughter, while they retain the most edifying and innocent air of gravity. Seated next to Aunt Maria, Jim managed, by most devoted attention and reverential listening, to draw from her a zealous analysis of the morning sermon, which she gave with the more heat and vigor, hoping thereby to reprove the stray sheep who had thus broken boundaries.

Her views of the danger of modern speculation, and her hearty measures for its repression, were given with an earnestness that was from the heart.

"I can't understand what anybody wants to have these controversies for, and listen to these infidel philosophers. I never doubt. I never have doubted. I don't think I have altered an iota of my religious faith since I was seven years old; and if I had the control of things, I'd put a stop to all this sort of fuss."

"You then would side with his Holiness, the Pope," said Jim. "That's precisely the ground of his last allocution."

"No, indeed, I shouldn't. I think Popery is worse yet – it's terrible! Dr. Cushing showed that this morning, and it's the greatest danger of our day; and I think that Mr. St. John of yours is nothing more than a decoy duck to lead you all to Rome. I went up there once and saw 'em genuflecting, and turning to the east, and burning candles, and that's all I want to know about them."

"But the east is a perfectly harmless point of the compass," said Jim, with suavity; "and though I don't want candles in the daytime myself, yet I don't see what harm it does anybody to burn them."

"Why, that's just what the Catholics do," said Mrs. Wouvermans.

"Oh, that's it, is it!" said Jim, with a submissive air. "Mustn't we do any thing that Catholics do?"

"No, indeed," said Aunt Maria, falling into the open trap with affecting naïveté.

"Then we mustn't pray at all," said Jim.

"Oh, pshaw! of course I didn't mean that. You know what I mean."

"Certainly, ma'am. I think I understand," said Jim, while Alice, who had been looking reprovingly at him, led off the subject into another strain.

But Mrs. Wouvermans was more gracious to Jim that evening than usual, and when she rose to go home that young gentleman offered his attendance, and was accepted with complacency.

Mrs. Wouvermans, in a general way, believed in what is called Providence. That is to say, when any little matter fell out in a manner exactly apposite to any of her schemes, she called it providential. On the present occasion, when she found herself walking in the streets of New York alone, in the evening, with a young man who treated her with flattering deference, it could not but strike her as a providential opportunity not to be neglected of fulfilling her long-cherished intentions and giving a sort of wholesome check and caution to the youth. So she began with infinite adroitness to prepare the way. Jim, the while, who saw perfectly what she was aiming at, assisting her in the most obliging manner.

After passing through sundry truisms about the necessity of caution and regarding appearances, and thinking what people will say to this and that, she proceeded to inform him that the report was in circulation that he was engaged to Alice.

"The report does me entirely too much honor," said Jim. "But of course if Miss Alice isn't disposed to deny it, I am not."

"Of course Miss Alice's friends will deny it," said Aunt Maria, decisively. "I merely mentioned it to you that you may see the need of caution. You know, of course, Mr. Fellows, that such reports stand in the way of others who might be disposed – well, you understand."

"Oh, perfectly, exactly, quite so," said Jim, who could be profuse of his phrases on occasion, "and I'm extremely obliged to you for this suggestion; undoubtedly your great experience and knowledge of the ways of society will show you the exact way to deal with such things."

"You see," pursued Mrs. Wouvermans, in a confidential tone, "there is at present a person every way admirable and desirable, who is thinking very seriously of Alice; it's quite confidential, you know; but you must be aware – of the danger."

"I perceive – a blight of the poor fellow's budding hopes and early affections," said Jim, fluently; "well, though of course the very suggestion of such a report in regard to me is flattery far beyond my deserts, so that I can't be annoyed by it, still I should be profoundly sorry to have it occasion any trouble to Miss Alice."

"I felt sure that you wouldn't be offended with me for speaking so very plainly. I hope you'll keep it entirely private."

"Oh, certainly," said Jim, with the most cheerful goodwill. "When ladies with your tact and skill in human nature talk to us young fellows you never give offense. We take your frankness as a favor."

Mrs. Wouvermans smiled with honest pride. Had she not been warned against talking to this youth as something that was going to be of most explosive tendency? How little could Nellie, or Eva, or any of them, appreciate her masterly skill! She really felt in her heart disposed to regret that so docile a pupil, one so appreciative of her superior abilities, was not a desirable matrimonial parti. Had Jim been a youth of fortune she felt that she could have held up both hands for him.

"He really is agreeable," was her thought, as she shut the door upon him.

CHAPTER XII

WHY CAN'T THEY LET US ALONE?

Harry went out to his office, and Eva commenced the morning labors of a young housekeeper.

What are they? Something in their way as airy and pleasant as the light touches and arrangements which Eve gave to her bower in Paradise – gathering-up stray rose-leaves, tying up a lily that the rain has bent, looping a honeysuckle in a more graceful festoon, and meditating the while whether she shall have oranges and figs and grapes, or guavas and pineapples, for her first course at dinner.

Such, according to Father Milton, were the ornamental duties of the first wife, while her husband went out to his office in some distant part of Eden.

But Eden still exists whenever two young lovers set up housekeeping, even in prosaic New York; only our modern Eves wear jaunty little morning caps and fascinating wrappers and slippers, with coquettish butterfly bows. Eva's morning duties consisted in asking Mary what they had better have for dinner, giving here and there a peep into the pantry, re-arranging the flower vases, and flecking the dust from her pictures and statuettes with a gay and glancing brush of peacock's feathers. Sometimes the morning arrangements included quite a change; as, this particular day, when, on mature consideration, a spray of ivy that was stretching towards the window had been drawn back and forced to wreathe itself around a picture, and a spray of nasturtium, gemmed with half-opened golden buds, had been trained in its place in the window.

One may think this a very simple matter, but whoever knows all the resistance which the forces of matter and the laws of gravitation make to the simplest improvement in one's parlor, will know better.

It required a scaffolding made of a chair and an ottoman to reach the top of the pictures, and a tack-hammer and little tacks. Then the precise air of arrangement and exact position had to be studied from below, after the tacks were driven, and that necessitated two or three descents from the perch to review, and the tumbling of the ottoman to the floor, and the calling of Mary in to help, and to hold the ottoman firm while the persevering little artist finished her work. It is by ups and downs like these, by daily labor of modern Eves, each in their little paradises, O ye Adams! that your houses have that "just right" look that makes you think of them all day, and long to come back to them at night.

"Somehow or other," you say, "I don't know how it is, my wife's things have a certain air; her vines grow just as they ought to, her flowers blossom in just the right places, and her parlors always look pleasant." You don't know how many periods of grave consideration, how many climbings on chairs and ottomans, how many doings and undoings and shiftings and changes produce the appearance that charms you. Most people think that flower vases are very simple affairs; but the keeping of parlors dressed with flowers is daily work for an hour or two for any woman. Nor is it work in vain. No altar is holier than the home altar, and the flowers that adorn it are sacred.

Eva was sitting, a little tired with her strenuous exertions, contemplating her finished arrangement with satisfaction, when the door-bell rang, and Alice came in.

"Why, Allie, dear, how nice of you to be down here so early! I was just wanting somebody to show my changes to. Look there. See how I've looped that ivy round mother's picture; isn't it sweet?" and Eva caressingly arranged a leaf or two to suit her.

"Charming!" said Alice, but with rather an abstracted, preoccupied tone.

"And look at this nasturtium; it's full of buds. See, the yellow is beginning to show. I've fastened it in a wreath around the window, so that the sun will shine through the blossoms."

"It's beautiful," said Alice, still absently and nervously playing with her bonnet strings.

"Why, darling, what's the matter?" said Eva, suddenly noticing signs of some unusual feeling. "What ails you?"

"Well," said Alice, hastily untying her bonnet strings and throwing it down on the sofa, "I've come up to talk with you. I hope," she said, flushing crimson with vexation, "that Aunt Maria is satisfied now; she is the most exasperating woman I ever knew or heard of!"

"Dear me, Allie, what has she done now?"

"Well, what do you think? Last Sunday she came to our house to tea, drawn up in martial array and ready to attack us all for not going to the old church – that stupid, dead old church, where people do nothing but doze and wake up to criticise each other's bonnets – but you really would think to hear Aunt Maria talk that there was a second Babylonian captivity or something of that sort coming on, and we were getting it up. You see, Dr. Cushing has got excited because some of the girls are going up to the mission church, and it's led him to an unwonted exertion; and Aunt Maria quite waked up and considers herself an apostle and prophet. I wish you could have heard her talk. It's enough to make any cause ridiculous to have one defend it as she did. You ought to have heard that witch of a Jim Fellows arguing with her and respectfully leading her into all sorts of contradictions and absurdities till I stopped him. I really wouldn't let him lead her to make such a fool of herself."

"Oh, well, if that's all, Allie, I don't think you need to trouble your head," said Eva. "Aunt Maria, of course, will hold on to her old notions, and her style of argument never was very consecutive."

"But that isn't all. Oh, you may be sure I didn't care for what she said about the church. I can have my opinion and she hers, on that point."

"Well, then, what is the matter?"

"Well, if you'll believe me, she has actually undertaken to tutor Jim Fellows in relation to his intimacy with me."

"Oh, Allie," groaned Eva, "has she done that? I begged and implored her to let that matter alone."

"Then she's been talking with you, too! and I wonder how many more," said Alice in tones of disgust.

"Yes, she did talk with me in her usual busy, imperative way, and told me all that Mrs. Thus-and-so and Mr. This-and-that said – but people are always saying things, and if they don't say one thing they will another. I tried to persuade her to let it alone, but she seemed to think you must be talked with; so I finally told her that if she'd leave it to me I would say all that was necessary. I did mean to say something, but I didn't want to trouble you. I thought there was no hurry."

"Well, you see," said Alice, "Jim went home with her that night, and I suppose she thought the opportunity too good to be neglected. I don't know just what she said to him, but I know it was about me."

"How do you know? Did Jim tell you?"

"No, indeed; catch him telling me! He knows too much for that. Aunt Maria let it out herself."

"Let it out herself?"

"Yes; she blundered into it before she knew what she was saying, and betrayed herself; and then, when I questioned her, she had to tell me."

"How came she to commit herself so?"

"It was just this. You know the little party Aunt Maria had Tuesday evening, – the one you couldn't come to on account of that Stephens engagement."

"Yes; what of it?"

"I really suspect that was all got up in the interest of one of Aunt Maria's schemes to bring me and that John Davenport together. At any rate, there he was, and his sister; and really, Eva, his treatment of me was so marked that it was quite disagreeable. Why, the man seemed really infatuated. His manner was so that everybody remarked it; and the colder and more distant I grew, the more it increased. Aunt Maria was delighted. She plumed herself and rushed round in the most satisfied way, while I was only provoked. I saw he was going to ask to wait on me home, and so I fell back on a standing engagement that I have with Jim, to go with me whenever anybody asks that I don't want to go with. Jim and I have always had that understanding in dancing and at parties, so that we can keep clear of disagreeable partners and people. I was determined I wouldn't walk home with that man, and I told Jim privately that he was to be on duty, and he took the hint in a minute. So when Mr. Davenport wound up his attentions by asking if he should have the pleasure of seeing me home, I told him with great satisfaction that I was engaged, and off I walked with Jim. The girls were in a perfect state of giggle, to see Aunt Maria's indignation."

"And so really you don't like this Mr. Davenport?"

"Like him! Indeeed I don't. In the first place, it isn't a year yet since his wife died; and everybody was pitying him. He could hardly be kept alive, and fainted away, and had to have hot bottles at his feet, and all that. All the old ladies were rolling up their eyes; such a sighing and sympathizing for John Davenport; and now, here he is!"

"Poor man!" said Eva, "I suppose he is lonesome."

"Yes. I suppose, as Irving says, the greatest compliment he can pay to his former wife is to display an eagerness for another; but his attentions are simply disagreeable to me."

"After all, the worst crime you allege seems to be that he is too sensitive to your attractions."

"Yes; and shows it in a very silly way – making me an object of remark! He may be very nice and very worthy, and all that; but in any such relation as that he is so unpleasant to me! I can't bear him, and I'm not going to be talked or maneuvered into anything that might commit me to even consider him. I remember the trouble you had for being persuaded to let Wat Sydney dangle after you. I will not have anything of the kind. I am a decided young woman, and know my own mind."

"Well, how did you learn about Aunt Maria and Jim?"

"How? Oh, well, the next day comes Aunt Maria to talk with Mamma, who wasn't there, by the bye; Papa hates so to go out that she has got to staying at home with him. But the next day came an exaggerated picture of my triumphs to Mamma and a lecture to me on my bad behavior. The worst of all, she said, was the very marked thing of my going home with Jim; and in her heat she let out that she had spoken to him and warned him of what folks would think and say of such appearances. I was angry then, and I expressed my mind freely to Aunt Maria, and we had a downright quarrel. I said things I ought not to say, just as one always does, and – now isn't it disagreeable? Isn't it dreadful?" said Alice, with the earnestness of a young girl whose whole nature goes into her first trouble. "Nothing could be nicer and more just what a thing ought to be than my friendship with Jim. I have influence over him and I can do him good, and I enjoy his society, and the kind of easy, frank understanding that there is between us, that we can say any thing to each other; and what business is it of anybody's? It's our own affair, and no one's else."

"Certainly it is," said Eva, sympathizingly.

"And Aunt Maria said that folks were saying that if we weren't engaged we ought to be. What a hateful thing to say! As if there were any impropriety in a friendship between a gentleman and a lady. Why may not a gentleman and a lady have a special friendship as well one lady with another, or one gentleman with another? I don't see."

"Neither do I," said Eva, responsively.

"Now," said Alice, "the suggestion of marriage and all that is disagreeable to me. I'm thinking of nothing of the kind. I like Jim. Well, I don't mind saying to you, Eva, who can understand me, that I love him, in a sort of way. I am interested for him. I know his good points and I know his faults, and I'm at liberty to speak to him with perfect freedom, and I think there is nothing so good for a young man as such a friendship. We girls, you know, dear, can do a great deal for young men if we try. We are not tempted as they are; we have not their hard places and trials to walk through, and we can make allowances, and they will receive things from us that they wouldn't from any one else, and they show us just the best side of their nature, which is the truest side of everybody."

"Certainly, Alice. Harry was saying only a little while ago that your influence would make a man of Jim; and I certainly think he has wonderfully improved of late – he seems more serious."

"We've learned to know him better; that's all," said Alice. "Young men rattle and talk idly to girls when they don't feel acquainted and haven't real confidence in their friendship, just as a sort of blind. They don't dare to express their real, deepest feelings."

"Well, I didn't know that Jim had any," said Eva, incautiously.

"Why, Eva, how unjust you are to Jim!" said Alice, with flushing cheeks. "I shouldn't have thought it of you; so many kind things as Jim has done for us all!"

"My darling, I beg Jim's pardon with all my heart," said Eva, laughing to herself at this earnest championship. "I didn't mean quite what I said, but you know, Alice, his sort of wild rattling way of talking over all subjects, so that you can't tell which is jest and which is earnest."

"Oh! I can always tell," said Alice. "I always can make him come down to the earnest part of him, and Jim has, after all, really good, sensible ideas of life and aspirations after what is right and true. He has the temptation of having been a sort of spoiled child. People do so like a laugh that they set him on and encourage him in saying all sorts of things he ought not. People have very little principle about that. So that anyone amuses them, they never consider whether he does right to talk as he does; they'll set Jim up to talk because it amuses them, and then go away and say what a rattle he is, and that he has no real principle or feeling. They just make a buffoon of him, and they know nothing about the best part of him."