Part 26

Eva was at the chapel that morning and overheard, of the conversation between Miss Gusher and Miss Vapors, just enough to pique her curiosity and rouse her alarm. Of all things, she dreaded any such report getting into the whirlwind of gossip that always eddies round a church door where there is an interesting, unmarried rector, and she resolved to caution Angie on the very first opportunity; and so, when her share of wreaths and crosses was finished, and the afternoon sun began to come level through the stained windows, she crossed over to Angie's side, to take her home with her to dinner.

"I've something to tell you," she said, "and you must come home and stay with me to-night." And so Angie came.

"Do you know," said Eva, as soon as the sisters found themselves alone in her chamber, where they were laying off their things and preparing for dinner, "do you know that Miss Gusher?"

"I--no, very slightly," said Angie, shaking out her shawl to fold it. "She's a very cultivated woman, I believe."

"Well, I heard her saying some disagreeable things about you and Mr. St. John this morning," said Eva.

The blood flushed in Angie's cheek, and she turned quickly to the glass and began arranging her hair.

"What did she say?" she inquired.

"Something about the Van Arsdel girls always getting up flirtations."

"Nonsense! how hateful! I'm sure it's no fault of mine that Mr. St. John came and spoke to me."

"Then he did come?"

"Oh, yes; I was perfectly astonished. I was sitting all alone in that dark corner where the great hemlock tree was, and the first I knew he was there. You see, I criticised his illuminated card--that one in the strange, queer letters--I said I couldn't understand it; but Miss Gusher, Miss Vapors, and all the girls were oh-ing and ah-ing about it, and I felt quite snubbed and put down. I supposed it must be my stupidity, and so I just went off to my tree and sat down to work quietly in the dark corner, and left Miss Gusher expatiating on mottoes and illuminations. I knew she was very accomplished and clever and all that, and that I didn't know anything about such things."

"Well, then," said Eva, "he followed you?"

"Yes, he came suddenly in from the vestry behind the tree, and I thought, or hoped, he stood so that nobody noticed us, and he insisted on my telling him why I didn't like his illumination. I said I did like it, that I thought it was beautifully done, but that I did not think it would be of any use to those poor children and folks to have inscriptions that they didn't understand; and he said I was quite right, and that he should alter it and put it in plain English; and then he said, what a help it was to have a woman's judgment on things, what a misfortune it was that he had never had a sister or any friend of that kind, and then he asked me to be a sister to him, and tell him frankly always just what I thought of him, and I said I would. And then"--

"What then?"

"Oh, Eva, I can't tell you; but he spoke so earnestly and quick, and asked me if I couldn't love him just a little; he asked me to call him Arthur, and then, if you believe me, he would have me give him my glove, and so I let him take it, because I was afraid some of those girls would see us talking together. I felt almost frightened that he should speak so, and I wanted him to go away."

"Well, Angie dear, what do you think of all this?"

"I know he cares for me very much," said Angie, quickly, "more than he says."

"And you, Angie?"

"I think he's good and noble and true, and I love him."

"As a sister, of course," said Eva, laughing.

"Never mind how--I love him," said Angie; "and I shall use my sisterly privilege to caution him to be very distant and dignified to me in future, when those prying eyes are around."

"Well now, darling," said Eva, with all the conscious dignity of early matronage, "we shall have to manage this matter very prudently--for those girls have had their suspicions aroused, and you know how such things will fly through the air. The fact is, there is nothing so perplexing as just this state of things; when you know as well as you know anything that a man is in love with you, and yet you are not engaged to him. I know all about the trouble of that, I'm sure; and it seems to me, what with Mamma, Aunt Maria, and all the rest of them, it was a perfect marvel how Harry and I ever came together. Now, there's that Miss Gusher, she'll be on the watch all the time, like a cat at a mouse-hole; and she's going to be there when we get the Christmas-tree ready and tie on the things, and you must manage to keep as far off from him as possible. I shall be there, and I shall have my eyes in my head, I promise you. We must try to lull their suspicions to sleep."

"Dear me," said Angie, "how disagreeable!"

"I'm sorry for you, darling, but I've kept it off as long as I could; I've seen for a long time how things are going."

"You have? Oh, Eva!"

"Yes; and I have had all I could do to keep Jim Fellows from talking, and teasing you, as he has been perfectly longing to do for a month past."

"You don't say that Jim has noticed anything?"

"Yes, Jim noticed his looking at you, the very first thing after he came to Sunday-school."

"Well, now, at first I noticed that he looked at me often, but I thought it was because he saw something he disapproved of--and it used to embarrass me. Then I thought he seemed to avoid me, and I wondered why. And I wondered, too, why he always would take occasion to look at me. I noticed, when your evenings first began, that he never came near me, and never spoke to me, and yet his eyes were following me wherever I went. The first evening you had, he walked round and round me nearly the whole evening, and never spoke a word; then suddenly he came and sat down by me, when I was sitting by Mrs. Betsey, and gave me a message from the Prices; but he spoke in such a stiff, embarrassed way, and then there was an awful pause, and suddenly he got up and went away again; and poor little Mrs. Betsey said, 'Bless me, how stiff and ungracious he is'; and I said that I believed he wasn't much used to society--but, after a while, this wore away, and he became very social, and we grew better and better acquainted all the time. Although I was a little contradictious, and used to controvert some of his notions, I fancy it was rather a novelty to him to find somebody that didn't always give up to him, for, I must say, some of the women that go to our chapel do make fools of themselves about him. It really provokes me past all bearing. If any body _could_ set me against a man, it would be those silly, admiring women who have their hands and eyes always raised in adoration, whatever he does. It annoys him, I can see, for it is very much against his taste, and he likes me because, he says, I always will tell him the truth."

* * * * *

Meanwhile St. John had gone back to his study, walking as on a cloud. The sunshine streaming into a western window touched the white lilies over his _prie dieu_ till they seemed alive. He took down the illumination and looked at it. He had a great mind to give this to her as a Christmas present. Why not? Was she not to be his own sister? And his thoughts strolled along through pleasant possibilities and all the privileges of a brother. Certainly, he longed to see her now, and talk them over with her; and suddenly it occurred to him that there were a few points in relation to the arrangement of the tree about which it would be absolutely necessary to get the opinion of Mrs. Henderson. Whether this direction of the path of duty had any relation to the fact that he had last seen her going away from the vestry arm in arm with Angie, we will not assume to say; but the solemn fact was that, that evening, just as it came time to drop the lace curtains over the Henderson windows, when the blazing wood fire was winking and blinking roguishly at the brass andirons, the door-bell rang, and in he walked.

Angelique had her lap full of dolls, and was sitting like Iris in the rainbow, in a confused _mélange_ of silks, and gauzes, and tissues, and spangles. Three dressed dolls were propped up in various attitudes around her, and she was holding the fourth, while she fitted a sky-blue mantilla which she was going to trim with silver braid. Where Angie got all her budget of fineries was a standing mystery in the household, only that she had an infinitely persuasive tongue, and talked supplies out of admiring clerks and milliners' apprentices. It was a pretty picture to see her there in the warm, glowing room, tossing and turning her filmy treasures, and cocking her little head on one side and the other with an air of profound reflection.

Harry was gone out. Eva was knitting a comforter in her corner, and everything was as still and as cosy as heart could desire, when St. John made his way into the parlor and got himself warmly ensconced in his favorite niche. What more could mortal man desire? He talked gravely with Eva, and watched Angie. He thought of a lean, haggard picture of a St. Mary of Egypt, praying forlornly in the desert, that had hitherto stood in his study, and the idea somehow came over him that modern New York saints had taken a much more agreeable turn than those of old. Was it not better to be dressing dolls for poor children than to be rolling up one's eyes and praying alone out in a desert? In his own mind he resolved to take down that picture forthwith. He had, in his overcoat in the hall, his illuminated lilies, wrapped snugly in tissue paper and tied with a blue ribbon; and, all the while he was discoursing with Eva, he was ruminating how he could see Angie alone a minute, just long enough to place it in her hands. Surely, somebody ought to make her a Christmas present, she who was thinking of every one but herself.

Eva was one of the class of diviners, and not at all the person to sit as Madame de Trop in an exigency of this sort, and so she had a sudden call to consult with Mary in the kitchen.

"Now for it," thought St. John, as he rose and drew nearer. Angie looked up with a demure consciousness.

He began fingering her gauzes and her scissors unconsciously.

"Now, now! I don't allow that," she said, playfully, as she took them altogether from his hand.

"I have something for you," he said suddenly.

"Something for me!" with a bright, amused look. "Where is it?"

St. John fumbled a moment in the entry and brought in his parcel. Angie watched him untying it with a kittenish gravity. He laid it down before her. "From your brother, Angie," he said.

"Oh, how lovely! how beautiful! O Mr. St. John, did you do this for me?"

"It was of you I was thinking; you, my inspiration in all that is holy and good; you who strengthen and help me in all that is pure and heavenly."

"Oh, don't say that!"

"It's true, Angie, my Angie, my angel. I knew nothing worthily till I knew you."

Angie looked up at him; her eyes, clear and bright as a bird's, looked into his; their hands clasped together, and then, it was the most natural thing in the world, he kissed her.

"But, Arthur," said Angie, "you must be careful not to arouse disagreeable reports and gossip. What is so sacred between us must not be talked of. Don't look at me, or speak to me, when others are present. You don't know how very easy it is to make people talk."

Mr. St. John promised all manner of prudence, and walked home delighted. And thus these two Babes in the Wood clasped hands with each other, to wander up and down the great forest of life, as simply and sincerely as if they had been Hensel and Grettel in the fairy story. They loved each other, wholly trusted each other without a question, and were walking in dream-land. There was no question of marriage settlements, or rent and taxes; only a joyous delight that they two in this wilderness world had found each other.

We pity him who does not know that there is nothing purer, nothing nearer heaven than a young man's first-enkindled veneration and adoration of womanhood in the person of her who is to be his life's ideal. It is the morning dew before the sun arises.

_CHAPTER XXXIX._

SAYS SHE TO HER NEIGHBOR--WHAT?

"My dear," said Mrs. Dr. Gracey to her spouse, "I have a great piece of news for you about Arthur--they say that he is engaged to one of the Van Arsdel girls."

"Good," said the Doctor, pushing up his spectacles. "It's the most sensible thing I have heard of him this long while. I always knew that boy would come right if he were only let alone. How did you hear?"

"Miss Gusher told Mary Jane. She charged her not to tell; but, oh, it's all over town! There can be no doubt about it."

"Why hasn't he been here, then, like a dutiful nephew, to tell us, I should like to know?" said Dr. Gracey.

"Well, I believe they say it isn't announced yet; but there's no sort of doubt of it. There's no doubt, at any rate, that there's been a very decided intimacy, and that if they are not engaged, they ought to be; and as I know Arthur is a good fellow, I know it must be all right. Those Ritualistic young ladies are terribly shocked. Miss Gusher says that her idol is broken; that she never again shall reverence a clergyman."

"Very likely. A Mrs. St. John will be a great interruption in the way of holy confidences and confessionals, and all their trumpery; but it's the one thing needful for Arthur. A good, sensible woman for a wife will make him a capital worker. The best adviser in church work is a good wife; and the best school of the church is a Christian family. That's my doctrine, Mrs. G."

Mrs. G. blushed at the implied compliment, while the Doctor went on:

"Now, I never felt the least fear of how Arthur was coming out, and I take great credit to myself for not opposing him. I knew a young man must do a certain amount of fussing and fizzling before he settles down strong and clear; and fighting and opposing a crotchety fellow does no good. I think I have kept hold on Arthur by never rousing his combativeness and being sparing of good advice; and you see he is turning right already. A wife will put an end to all the semi-monkish trumpery that has got itself mixed up with his real self-denying labor. A woman is capital for sweeping down cobwebs in Church or State. Well, I shall call on Arthur and congratulate him forthwith."

Dr. Gracey was Arthur's maternal uncle, and he had always kept an eye upon him from boyhood, as the only son of a favorite sister.

The Doctor, himself rector of a large and thriving church, was a fair representative of that exact mixture of conservatism and progress which characterizes the great, steady middle class of the American Episcopacy. He was tolerant and fatherly both to the Ritualists, who overdo on one side, and the Low Church, who underdo on the other. He believed largely in good nature, good sense, and the expectant treatment, as best for diseases both in the churchly and medical practice.

So, when he had succeeded in converting his favorite nephew to Episcopacy, and found him in danger of using it only as a half-way house to Rome, he took good heed neither to snub him, nor to sneer at him, but to give him sympathy in all the good work he did, and, as far as possible, to shield him from that species of persecution which is sure to endear a man's errors to him, by investing them with a kind of pathos.

"The world isn't in danger from the multitudes rushing into extremes of self-sacrifice," the Doctor said, when his wife feared that Arthur was becoming an ascetic. "Keep him at work; work will bring sense and steadiness. Give him his head, and he'll pull in harness all right by and by. A colt that don't kick out of the traces a little, at first, can't have much blood in him."

It will be seen by the subject-matter of this conversation that the good seed which had been sown in the heart of Miss Gusher had sprung up and borne fruit--thirty, sixty and a hundred fold, as is the wont of the gourds of gossip,--more rapid by half in their growth than the gourd of Jonah, and not half as consolatory.

In fact, the gossip plant is like the grain of mustard seed, which, though it be the least of all seeds, becometh a great tree, and the fowls of the air lodge in its branches and chatter mightily there at all seasons.

Miss Gusher, and Miss Vapors, and Miss Rapture, and old Mrs. Eyelet, and the Misses Glibbett, so well employed their time, about the season of Christmas, that there was not a female person in the limits of their acquaintance that had not had the whole story of all that had been seen, surmised, or imagined, related as a profound secret. Notes were collected and compared. Mrs. Eyelet remembered that she had twice seen Mr. St. John attending Angie to her door about nightfall. Miss Sykes, visiting one afternoon in the same district, deposed and said that she had met them coming out of a door together. She was quite sure that they must have met by appointment. Then, oh, the depths of possibility that the gossips saw in that Henderson house! Always there, every Thursday evening! On intimate terms with the family.

"Depend upon it, my dear," said Mrs. Eyelet, "Mrs. Henderson has been doing all she could to catch him. They say he's at her house almost constantly."

Aunt Maria's plumage rustled with maternal solicitude. "I don't know but it is as good a thing as we could expect for Angie," said she to Mrs. Van Arsdel. "He's a young man of good family and independent property. I don't like his ritualistic notions, to be sure; but one can't have everything. And, at any rate, he can't become a Roman Catholic if he gets married--that's one comfort."

"There he goes!" said little Mrs. Betsey, as she sat looking through the blinds, with the forgiven Jack on her knee. "He's at the door now. Dorcas, I _do_ believe there's something in it."

"Something in what?" said Miss Dorcas, "and who _are_ you talking about, Betsey?"

"Why, Mr. St. John and Angie. He's standing at the door, this very minute. It must be true. I'm glad of it; only he isn't half good enough for her."

"Well, it don't follow that there is an engagement because Mr. St. John is at the door," said Miss Dorcas.

"But all the things Mrs. Eyelet said, Dorcas!"

"Mrs. Eyelet is a gossip," said Miss Dorcas, shortly.

"But, Dorcas, I really thought his manner to her last Thursday was particular. Oh, I'm sure there's something in it! They say he's such a good young man, and independently rich. I wonder if they'll take a house up in this neighborhood? It would be so nice to have Angie within calling distance! A great favorite of mine is Angie."

_CHAPTER XL._

THE ENGAGEMENT ANNOUNCED.

Meanwhile Dr. Gracey found his way to Arthur's study.

"So, Arthur," he said, "that pretty Miss Van Arsdel's engaged."

The blank expression and sudden change of color in St. John's face was something quite worthy of observation.

"Miss Van Arsdel engaged!" he repeated with a gasp, feeling as if the ground were going down under him.

"Yes, that pretty fairy, Miss Angelique, you know."

"How did you hear--who told you?"

"How did I hear? Why, it's all over town. Arthur, you bad boy, why haven't _you_ told _me_?"

"Me?"

"Yes, you; you are the happy individual. I came to congratulate you."

St. John looked terribly confused.

"Well, we are not really exactly engaged."

"But you are going to be, I understand. So far so good. I like the family--good stock--nothing could be better; but, Arthur, let me tell you, you'd better have it announced and above board forthwith. You are not my sister's son, nor the man I took you for, if you could take advantage of the confidence inspired by your position to carry on a flirtation."

The blood flushed into St. John's cheeks.

"I'm not flirting, uncle; that vulgar word is no name for my friendship with Miss Van Arsdel. It is as sacred as the altar. I reverence her; I love her with all my heart. I would lay down my life for her."

"Good! but nobody wants you to lay down your life. That is quite foreign to the purpose. What is wanting is, that you step out like a man and define your position with regard to Miss Van Arsdel before the world; otherwise all the gossips will make free with her name and yours. Depend upon it, Arthur, a man has done too much or too little when a young lady's name is in every one's mouth in connection with his, without a definite engagement."

"It is all my fault, uncle. I hadn't the remotest idea. It's all my fault--all. I had no thought of what the world would say; no idea that we were remarked--but, believe me, our intimacy has been, from first to last, entirely of my seeking. It has grown on us gradually, till I find she is more to me than any one ever has been or can be. Whether I am as much to her, I cannot tell. My demands have been humble. We are not engaged, but it shall not be my fault if another day passes and we are not."

"Right, my boy. I knew you. You were no nephew of mine if you didn't feel, when your eyes were open, the honor of the thing. God made you a gentleman before he made you a priest, and there's but one way for a gentleman in a case like this. If there's anything I despise, it's a priest who uses his priestly influence, under this fine name and that, to steal from a woman love that doesn't belong to him, and that he never can return, and never ought to. If a man thinks he can do more good as a single man and a missionary, well; I honor him, but let him make the sacrifice honestly. Don't let him want pretty girls for intimate friends or guardian angels, or Christian sisters, or any such trumpery. It's dishonest and disloyal; it is unfair to the woman and selfish in the man."

"Well, uncle, I trust you say all this because you don't think it of me; as I know my heart before God, I say I have not been doing so mean and cowardly a thing. There was a time when I thought I never should marry. Those were my days of ignorance. I did not know how much a true woman might teach me, and how much I needed such a guide, even in my church work."

"In short, my boy, you found out that the Lord was right when he said, 'It is not good for man to be alone.' We pay the Lord the compliment once in a while to believe he knows best. Depend on it, Arthur, that Christian families are the Lord's church, and better than any guild of monks and nuns whatsoever."

All which was listened to by Mr. St. John with a radiant countenance. It is all down-hill when you are showing a man that it is his duty to do what he wants to do. Six months before, St. John would have fought every proposition of this speech, and brought up the whole of the Middle Ages to back him. Now, he was as tractable as heart could wish.

"After all, Uncle," he said, at last, "what if she will not have me? And what if I am not the man to make her happy?"

"Oh, if you ask prettily, I fancy she won't say nay; and then you _must_ make her happy. There are no two ways about that, my boy."

"I'm not half good enough for her," said St. John.

"Like enough. We are none of us good enough for these women; but, luckily, that isn't apt to be their opinion."

St. John started out from the conference with an alert step. In two days more, rumor was met with open confirmation. St. John had had the decisive interview with Angie, had seen and talked with her father and mother, and been invited to a family dinner; and Angie wore on her finger an engagement-ring. There was no more to be said now. Mr. St. John was an idol who had stepped down from his pedestal into the ranks of common men. He was no longer a mysterious power--an angel of the churches, but a _man_ of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, it is an undoubted fact that, for all the purposes of this mortal life, a good man is better than an angel.