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

CHAPTER XXV

AUNT MARIA ENDEAVORS TO SET MATTERS RIGHT

Mrs. Maria Wouvermans was one of those forces in creation to whom quiet is impossible. Watchfulness, enterprise and motion were the laws of her existence, as incessantly operating as any other laws of nature.

When we last saw her, she was in high ill-humor with her sister, Mrs. Van Arsdel, with Alice and Eva, and the whole family. She revenged herself upon them, as such good creatures know how to do, by heaping coals of fire on their heads in the form of ostentatiously untiring and uncalled-for labors for them all. The places she explored to get their laces mended and their quillings done up and their dresses made, the pilgrimages she performed in omnibuses, the staircases she climbed, the men and women whom she browbeat and circumvented in bargains – all to the advantage of the Van Arsdel purse – were they not recounted and told over in a way to appall the conscience of poor, easy Mrs. Van Arsdel, whom they summarily convicted of being an inefficient little know-nothing, and of her girls, who thus stood arraigned for the blackest ingratitude in not appreciating Aunt Maria?

"I'll tell you what it is, Alice," said Eva, when Aunt Maria's labors had come to the usual climax of such smart people, and laid her up with a sick-headache, "we girls have just got to make up with Aunt Maria, or she'll tear down all New York. I always notice that when she's out with us she goes tearing about in this way, using herself up for us – doing things no mortal wants her to do, and yet that it seems black ingratitude not to thank her for. Now, Alice, you are the one, this time, and you must just go and sit with her and make up, as I did."

"But, Eva, I know the trouble you fell into, letting her and mother entangle you with Wat Sydney, and I'm not going to have it happen again. I will not be compromised in any way or shape with a man whom I never mean to marry."

"Oh, well, I think by this time Aunt Maria understands this, only she wants you to come back and be loving to her, and say you're sorry you can't, etc. After all, Aunt Maria is devoted to us and is miserable when we are out with her."

"Well, I hate to have friends that one must be always bearing with and deferring to."

"Well, Alice, you remember Mr. St. John's sermons on the trials of the first Christians – when he made us all feel that it would have been a blessed chance to go to the stake for our religion?"

"Yes; it was magnificent. I felt a great exaltation."

"Well, I'll tell you what I thought. It may be as heroic, and more difficult, to put down our own temper and make the first concession to an unreasonable old aunt who really loves us than to be martyrs for Christ. Nobody wants us to be martyrs now-a-days; but I think these things that make no show and have no glory are a harder cross to take up."

"Well, Eva, I'll do as you say," said Alice, after a few moments of silence, "for really you speak the truth. I don't know anything harder than to go and make concessions to a person who has acted as ridiculously as Aunt Maria has, and who will take all your concessions and never own a word on her side."

"Well, dear, what I think in these cases is, that I am not perfect. There are always enough things where I didn't do quite right for me to confess; and as to her confessing, that's not my affair. What I have to do is to cut loose from my own sins; they are mine, and hers are hers."

"True," said Alice; "and the fact is, I did speak improperly to Aunt Maria. She is older than I am. I ought not to have said the things I did. I'm hot tempered, and always say more than I mean."

"Well, Ally, do as I did – confess everything you can think of and then say, as I did, that you must still be firm upon one point; and, depend upon it, Aunt Maria will be glad to be friends again."

This conversation had led to an amelioration which caused Aunt Maria to appear at Eva's second reunion in her best point lace and with her most affable company manners, whereby she quite won the heart of simple Mrs. Betsey Benthusen, and was received with patronizing civility by Miss Dorcas. That good lady surveyed Mrs. Wouvermans with an amicable scrutiny as a specimen of a really creditable production of modern New York life. She took occasion to remark to her sister that the Wouvermans were an old family of unquestioned position, and that really Mrs. Wouvermans had acquired quite the family air.

Miss Dorcas was one of those people who sit habitually on thrones of judgment and see the children of this world pass before them, with but one idea, to determine what she should think of them. What they were likely to think of her, was no part of her concern. Her scrutinies and judgments were extremely quiet, tempered with great moderation and Christian charity, and were so seldom spoken to anybody else that they did no one any harm.

She was a spectator at the grand theater of life; it interested and amused her to watch the acting, but she kept her opinions, for the most part, to herself. The reunions at Eva's were becoming most interesting to her as widening her sphere of observation. In fact, her intercourse with her sister could hardly be called society, it was so habitually that of a nurse with a patient. She said to her, of the many things which were in her mind, only those which she thought she could bear. She was always planning to employ Mrs. Betsey's mind with varied occupations to prevent her sinking into morbid gloom, and to say only such things of everybody and everything to her as would tranquilize and strengthen her. To Miss Dorcas, the little white-haired lady was still the beautiful child of past days – the indiscreet, flighty, pretty pet, to be watched, nursed, governed, restrained and cared for. As for conversation, in the sense of an unrestricted speaking out of thoughts as they arose, it was long since Miss Dorcas had held it with any human being. The straight, tall old clock in the corner was not more lonely, more self-contained and reticent.

The next day after the re-union, Aunt Maria came at the appointed hour, with all due pomp and circumstance, to make her call upon the two sisters, and was received in kid gloves in the best parlor, properly darkened, so that the faces of the parties could scarcely be seen; and then the three remarked upon the weather, the state of the atmosphere to-day and its probable state to-morrow. Mrs. Wouvermans was properly complimented upon her niece's delightful re-unions; whereat she drew herself up with suitable modesty, as one who had been the source and originator of it all – claiming property in charming Mrs. Henderson as the girl of her bringing up, the work of her hands, the specimen of her powers, marshalled and equipped by her for the field of life; and in her delightful soirées, as in some sort a result of her management. It may be a consolation to those who are ever called to wrestle with good angels like Aunt Maria, that if they only hold on and overcome them, and hold their own independent way, the angels, so far from being angry, will immediately assume the whole merit of the result. On the whole, Aunt Maria, hearing on all sides flattering things of Mrs. Henderson's lovely house and charming evenings, was pluming herself visibly in this manner.

Now, as Eva, in one of those bursts of confidence in which she could not help pouring herself out to those who looked kindly on her, had talked over with Miss Dorcas all Aunt Maria's objections to her soirées, and her stringent advice against them, the good lady was quietly amused at this assumption of merit.

"My! how odd, Dorcas!" said Mrs. Betsey to her sister, after Mrs. Wouvermans had serenely courtesied herself out. "Isn't this the 'Aunt Maria' that dear Mrs. Henderson was telling you about, that made all those objections to her little receptions?"

"Oh, yes," said Miss Dorcas.

"But how strange; she really talks now as if she had started them."

"People usually adopt a good thing, if they find they can't hinder it," said Miss Dorcas.

"I think it is just the oddest thing in the world; in fact, I don't think it's really honest," said Mrs. Betsey.

"It's the way people always do," said Miss Dorcas; "nothing succeeds like success. Mrs. Wouvermans opposed the plan because she thought it wouldn't go. Now that she finds it goes, she is so delighted she thinks she must have started it herself."

In fact, Aunt Maria was in an uncommonly loving and genial frame about this time. Her fits of petulance generally had the good effect of a clearing-up thunder-shower – one was sure of clear skies for some time afterwards.

The only difficulty about these charming periods of general reconciliation was that when the good lady once more felt herself free of the family, and on easy terms all around with everybody, she immediately commenced in some new direction that process of managing other people's affairs which was an inevitable result of her nature. Therefore she came, one afternoon not long after, into her sister's dressing-room with an air of preoccupation and mystery, which Mrs. Van Arsdel had learned to dread as a sign that Maria had something new upon her mind.

Shutting the doors carefully, with an air of great precaution and importance, she said: "Nellie, I've been wanting to talk to you; something will have to be done about Eva: it will never do to let matters go on as they are going."

Mrs. Van Arsdel's heart began to sink within her; she supposed that she was to be required in some way to meddle or interfere with her daughter. Now, if anything was to be done of an unpleasant nature, Mrs. Van Arsdel had always far rather that Maria would do it herself. But the most perplexing of her applications were when she began stirring up her ease-loving, indulgent self to fulfill any such purposes on her children. So she said, in a faltering voice, "What is the matter now, Maria?"

"Well, what should you think?" said Mrs. Wouvermans, emphasizing the words. "You know that good-for-nothing daughter of Mary's that lived with me, years ago?"

"That handsome girl? To be sure."

"Handsome! the baggage! I've no patience when I think of her, with her airs and graces; dressing so that she really was mistaken for one of the family! And such impertinence! I made her walk Spanish very quick – "

"Well?"

"Well, who do you suppose this sick girl is that Angelique and Alice have been helping take care of in the new hospital, or whatever you call it, that those Popish women have started up there?"

Now Mrs. Van Arsdel knew very well what Aunt Maria was coming to, but she only said, faintly,

"Well?"

"Its just that girl and no other, and a more impudent tramp and huzzy doesn't live."

"It really is very shocking," said Mrs. Van Arsdel.

"Shocking! well I should think it was, but that isn't all. Eva actually has taken this creature to her house, and is going to let her stay there."

"Oh, indeed?" said Mrs. Van Arsdel, faintly.

Now Mrs. Van Arsdel had listened sympathetically to Eva when, in glowing and tender words, she had avowed her intention of giving this help to a poor, bewildered mother, and this chance of recovery to an erring child, but in the sharp, nipping atmosphere of Aunt Maria's hard, dry, selfish common sense, the thing looked so utterly indefensible that she only breathed this faint inquiry.

"Yes," said Aunt Maria, "and it's all that Mary's art. She has been getting old and isn't what she was, and she means to get both her children saddled upon Eva, who is ignorant and innocent as a baby. Eva and her husband are no more fit to manage than two babes in the woods, and this set of people will make them no end of trouble. The girl is a perfect witch, and it will never do in the world. You ought to talk to her and tell her about the danger."

"But, Maria, I am not at all sure that it may not be Eva's duty to help Mary take care of her daughter."

"Well, if it was a daughter that had behaved herself decently; but this creature is a tramp – a street-walker! It is not respectable to have her in the house a minute."

"But where can she go?"

"That's none of our look out. I suppose there are asylums, or refuges, or something or other, for such creatures."

"But if the Sisters could take her in and take care of her, I'm sure Eva might keep her awhile; at least till she gets strong enough to find some place."

"Oh, those Sisters! Don't tell me! I've no opinion of them. Wasn't I on the committee, and didn't I find crucifixes, and rosaries, and prie-dieus, and the Lord knows what of Popish trinkets in their rooms? They are regular Jesuits, those women. It's just like 'em to take in tramps and nurse 'em.

"You know, Nellie, I warned you I never believed in this Mr. St. John and his goings on up there, and I foresee just what trouble Eva is going to be got into by having that sort of creature put in upon her. Maggie was the most conceited, impertinent, saucy hussy I ever saw. She had the best of all chances in my house, if she'd been of a mind to behave herself, for I give good wages, pay punctually, and mine is about as good a house for a young woman to be trained in as there is. Nobody can say that Maggie didn't have a fair chance with me!"

"But really, Maria, I'm afraid that unless Mary can take care of her daughter at Eva's she'll leave her altogether and go to housekeeping, and Eva never would know how to get along without Mary."

"Oh, nonsense! I'll engage to find Eva a good, stout girl – or two of them, for that matter, since she thinks she could afford two – that will do better than Mary, who is getting older every year and less capable. I make it a principle to cut off girls that have sick friends and all such entanglements and responsibilities, right away; it unfits them for my service."

"Yes, but, Maria, you must consider that Eva isn't like you. Eva really is fond of Mary, and had rather have her there than a younger and stronger woman. Mary has been an old servant in the family. Eva has grown up with her. She loves Eva like a child."

"Oh, pshaw!" said Aunt Maria. "Now, of all things, don't be sentimental about servants. It's a little too absurd. We are to attend to our own interests!"

"But you see, sister," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "Eva is just what you call sentimental, and it wouldn't do the least good for me to talk to her. She's a married woman, and she and her husband have a right to manage their affairs in their own way. Now, to tell the truth, Eva told me about this affair, and on the whole" – here Mrs. Van Arsdel's voice trembled weakly – "on the whole, I didn't think it would do any good, you know, to oppose her; and really, Maria, I was sorry for poor Mary. You don't know, you never had a daughter, but I couldn't help thinking that if I were a poor woman, and a daughter of mine had gone astray, I should be so glad to have a chance given her to do better; and so I really couldn't find it in my heart to oppose Eva."

"Well, you'll see what'll come of it," said Aunt Maria, who had stood, a model of hard, sharp, uncompromising common sense, looking her sister down during this weak apology for the higher wisdom. For now, as in the days of old, the wisdom of the cross is foolishness to the wise and prudent of the world; and the heavenly arithmetic, which counts the one lost sheep more than the ninety and nine that went not astray, is still the arithmetic, not of earth, but of heaven. There are many who believe in the Trinity, and the Incarnation, and all the articles of the Athanasian and Nicene Creeds, to whom this wisdom of the Master is counted as folly: "For the natural man understandeth not the things of the kingdom of God; they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them."

Now Aunt Maria was in an eminent degree a specimen of the feminine sort of "natural man."

That a young and happy wife, with a peaceful, prosperous home, should put a particle of her own happiness to risk, or herself to inconvenience, for the sake of a poor servant woman and a sinful child, was, in her view, folly amounting almost to fatuity; and she inly congratulated herself with the thought that her sister and Eva would yet see themselves in trouble by their fine fancies and sentimental benevolence.

"Well, sister," she said, rising and drawing her cashmere shawl in graceful folds round her handsome shoulders, "I thought I should come to you first, as you really are the most proper person to talk to Eva; but if you should neglect your duty, there is no reason why I should neglect mine.

"I hear of a very nice, capable girl that has lived five years with the Willises, who has had permission to advertise from the house, and I am going to have an interview with her, and engage her provisionally, so that, if Eva has a mind to listen to reason, there may be a way for her to supply Mary's place at once. I've made up my mind that, on the whole, it's best Mary should go," she added reflectively, as if she were the mistress of Eva's house and person.

"I'm sorry to have you take so much trouble, Maria; I'm sure it won't do any good."

"Did you ever know me to shrink from any trouble or care or responsibility by which I could serve you and your children, Nellie? I may not be appreciated – I don't expect it – but I shall not swerve from my duty to you; at any rate, it's my duty to leave no stone unturned, and so I shall start out at once for the Willises. They are going to Europe for a year or two, and want to find good places for their servants."

And so Mrs. Van Arsdel, being a little frightened at the suggestions of Aunt Maria, began to think with herself that perhaps she had been too yielding, and made herself very uncomfortable in reflecting on positive evils that might come on Eva.

She watched her sister's stately, positive, determined figure as she went down the stairs with the decision of a general, gave a weak sigh, wished that she had not come, and, on the whole, concluded to resume her story where she had left off at Aunt Maria's entrance.

CHAPTER XXVI

SHE STOOD OUTSIDE THE GATE

The trial of human life would be a much simpler and easier thing to meet, if the lines of right and wrong were always perfectly definite. We are happy so far to believe in our kind as to think that there are vast multitudes who, if they only knew exactly what was right and proper to be done, would do it at all hazards.

But what is right for me, in these particular circumstances? – in that question, as it constantly rises, lies the great stress of the trial of life.

We have, for our guidance, a Book of most high and unworldly maxims and directions, and the life of a Leader so exalted above all the ordinary conceptions and maxims of this world that a genuine effort to be a Christian, after the pattern and directions of Christ, at once brings us face to face with daily practical inquiries of the most perplexing nature.

Our friend, Mrs. Maria Wouvermans, was the very type and impersonation of this world's wisdom of the ordinary level. The great object of life being to insure ease, comfort, and freedom from annoyance to one's self and one's family, her views of duty were all conveniently arranged along this line. In her view, it was the first duty of every good housekeeper to look ahead and avoid every occasion whence might arise a possible inconvenience or embarrassment. It was nobody's duty, in her opinion, to have any trouble, if it could be avoided, or to risk having any. There were, of course, duties to the poor, which she settled for by a regular annual subscription to some well-recommended board of charity in her most respectable church. That done, she regarded herself as clear for action, and bound to shake off in detail any troublesome or embarrassing person that threatened to be a burden to her, or to those of her family that she felt responsible for.

On the other hand, Eva was possessed by an earnest desire to make her religious profession mean something adequate to those startling and constantly recurring phrases in the Bible and the church service which spoke of the Christian as a being of a higher order, led by another Spirit, and living a higher life than that of the world in general. Nothing is more trying to an ingenuous mind than the conviction of anything like a sham and a pretense in its daily life.

Mr. St. John had lately been preaching a series of sermons on the history and customs of the primitive church, in hearing which the conviction often forced itself on her mind that it was the unworldly life of the first Christians which gave victorious power to the faith. She was intimately associated with people who seemed to her to live practically on the same plan. Here was Sibyl Selwyn, whose whole life was an exalted mission of religious devotion; there was her neighbor Ruth Baxter, associated as a lay sister with the work of her more gifted friend. Here were the Sisters of St. Barnabas, lovely, cultivated women who had renounced all selfish ends and occupations in life, to give themselves to the work of comforting the sorrowful and saving the lost. Such people, she thought, fully answered to the terms in which Christians were spoken of in the Bible. But could she, if she lived only to brighten one little spot of her own, if she shut out of its charmed circle all sight or feeling of the suffering and sorrow of the world around her, and made her own home a little paradise of ease and forgetfulness, could she be living a Christian life?

When, therefore, she heard from the poor mother under her roof the tale of her secretly-kept shames, sorrows, and struggles for the daughter whose fate had filled her with misery, she accepted with a large-hearted inconsiderateness a mission of love towards the wanderer.

She carried it to her husband; and, like two kind-hearted, generous-minded young people, they resolved at once to make their home sacred by bringing into it this work of charity.

Now, this work would be far easier in most cases, if the sinner sought to be saved would step forthwith right across the line, and behave henceforth like a saint. But unhappily that is not to be expected. Certain it was, that Maggie, with her great, black eyes and her wavy black hair, was no saint. A petted, indulged child, with a strong, ungovernable nature, she had been whirled hither and thither in the tides of passion, and now felt less repentance for sin than indignation at her own wrongs. It might have been held a hopeful symptom that Maggie had, at least, so much real truthfulness in her as not to profess what she did not feel.

It was a fact that the constant hymns and prayers and services of the pious Sisters wearied her. They were too high for her. The calm, refined spirituality of these exalted natures was too far above her, and she joined their services at best with a patient acquiescence, feeling the while how sinful she must be to be so bored by them.

But for Eva she had a sort of wondering, passionate admiration. When she fluttered into her sick room, with all her usual little graceful array of ribbons and fanciful ornament, Maggie's dull eye would brighten, and she looked after her with delighted wonder. When she spoke to her tenderly, smoothed her pillow, put cologne on her laced handkerchief and laid it on her brow, poor Maggie felt awed and flattered by the attention, far more, it is to be feared, than if somebody more resembling the traditional angel had done it. This lively, sprightly little lady, so graceful, so pretty in all her motions and in all her belongings, seemed to poor worldly Maggie much more nearly what she would like an angel to be, in any world where she would have to live with them.

The Sisters, with their black robes, their white caps, and their solemn prayers, seemed to her so awfully good that their presence chilled her. She felt more subdued, but more sinful and more hopeless with them than ever.

In short, poor Maggie was yet a creature of this world, and of sense, and the spiritual world to her was only one dark, confused blur, rather more appalling than attractive. A life like that of the Sisters, given to prayer and meditation and good works, was too high a rest for a soul growing so near the ground and with so few tendrils to climb by. Maggie could conceive of nothing more dreary. To her, it seemed like being always thinking of her sins; and that topic was no more agreeable a subject of meditation to Maggie than it is to any of us. Many people seem to feel that the only way of return for those who have wandered from the paths of virtue is the most immediate and utter self-abasement. There must be no effort at self-justification, no excusing one's self, no plea for abatement of condemnation. But let us Christians who have never fallen, in the grosser sense, ask ourselves if, with regard to our own particular sins and failings, we hold the same strict line of reckoning. Do we come down upon ourselves for our ill temper, for our selfishness, for our pride, and other respectable sins, as we ask the poor girl to do who has been led astray from virtue?