Part 29

"Well, I never have meant there should be. I have been perfectly honorable and above-board with Jim; treated him just like a sister, and I thought there was the most perfect understanding between us."

"Well, you see, darling," said Eva, "I've sometimes thought whether it was quite fair to let any one be so very intimate with one, unless one were willing to take the consequences, in case his feelings should become deeply involved. Now, we should have thought it a bad thing for Mr. St. John to go on cultivating an intimate friendship with Angie, if he never meant to marry. It would be taking from her feelings and affections that might be given to some one who would make her happy for life; and I think some women, I don't mean you, of course, but some women I have seen and heard of, like to absorb all the feeling and devotion a man has without in the least intending to marry him. They keep him from being interested in any one else who might make him a happy home, and won't have him themselves."

"Eva, you are too hard," said Alice.

"Understand me, dear; I said I didn't mean you, for I think your course has been perfectly honorable and honest so far; but I do think you have got to a place that needs care. It's my positive belief that Jim not only loves you, Alice, but that he is _in_ love with you in a way that will have the most serious effect on his life and character."

"Oh, dear me, that's just what I've been fearing," said Alice, "isn't it too bad? I really don't think it's my fault. Do you know, Eva, I came here meaning to go home to-night, and I stayed only because I was afraid to walk home with Jim. I was sure if I did there would be a crisis of some kind."

"For my part, Ally," said Eva, "I'm not so very sure that there hasn't been some advance in your feelings, as well as in Jim's. I don't see why you should set it down among the impossibles that you should marry Jim Fellows."

"Oh! well," said Alice, "I like--yes, I really love Jim very much; he is very agreeable to me, always. I know nobody, on the whole, more so; but then, Eva, he's not at all the sort of man I have ever thought of as possible for me to marry. Oh! not at all," and Alice gazed before her into the coals, as if she saw her hero through them.

"And what sort of a man is this phenix?"

"Oh! something grave, and deep, and high, and heroic."

Eva gave a light, little shrug to her shoulders, and rippled a laugh. "And when you have got such a man, you will have to ask him to go to market for beef and cranberry sauce. You will have to get him to match your worsted, and carry your parcels, and talk over with him about how to cure the chimney of smoking and make the kitchen range draw. Don't you think a hero will be a rather cumbersome help in housekeeping? Besides, your heroes like to sit on pedestals and have you worship them. Now, for my part, I'd rather have a good kind _man_ that will worship me.

"'A creature not too bright and good For human nature's daily food.'

A man like Harry, for instance. Harry isn't a hero; he's a good, true, noble-hearted boy, though, and I'd rather have him than the angel Gabriel, if I could choose now. I don't see what's to object to in Jim, if you like him and love him, as you say. He's handsome; he's lively and cheerful; he's kind-hearted and obliging; and he's certainly true and constant in his affections: and now he has a good position, and one where he can do a good work in the world, and your influence might help him in it."

"Why, Eva, you seem to be pleading for him like a lawyer," said Alice, apparently not at all displeased to hear that side of the question discussed.

"Well, really," said Eva, "I do think it would be a nice thing for us all if you could like Jim, for he's one of us; we all know him and like him, and he wouldn't take you away to the ends of the earth; you might settle right down here, and live near us, and all go on together cosily. Jim is just the fellow to make a bright, pleasant, hospitable home; and he's certain to be a devoted husband to whomever he marries."

"Jim ought to be married, certainly," said Alice, in a reflective tone. "Just the right kind of a marriage would be the making of him."

"Well, look over the girls you know, and see if there's any one that you would like to have Jim marry."

"I know," said Alice, with a quickened flush of color, "that there isn't a girl he cares a snap of his finger for."

"There's Jane Stuyvesant."

"Oh, nonsense! don't mention Jane Stuyvesant!"

"Well, she's rich, and brilliant, and very gracious to Jim."

"Well, I happen to know just how much that amounts to. Jim never would have a serious thought of Jane Stuyvesant--that I'm certain of. She's a perfectly frivolous girl, and he knows it."

"I've thought sometimes he was quite attentive to one of those Stephenson girls, at Aunt Maria's."

"What, Sophia Stephenson! You couldn't have got more out of the way. Why, no! Why, she's nothing but a breathing wax doll; that's all there is to her. Jim never could care for her."

"Well, what was it about that Miss Du Hare?"

"Oh, nothing at all, except that she was a dashing, flirting young thing that took a fancy to Jim and invited him to her opera box, and of course Jim went. The fact is, Jim is good-looking and lively and gay, and will go a certain way with any nice girl. He likes to have a jolly, good time; but he has his own thoughts about them all, as I happen to know. There isn't one of these that he has a serious thought of."

"Well, then, darling, since nobody else will suit him, and it's for his soul's health and wealth to be married, I don't see but you ought to undertake him yourself."

Alice smiled thoughtfully, and twisted her sash into various bows, in an abstracted manner.

"You see," continued Eva, "that it would be altogether improper for you to enact the fable of the dog in the manger--neither take him yourself nor let any one else have him."

"Oh, as to that," said Alice, flushing up, "he has my free consent to take anybody else he wants to; only I know there isn't anybody he does want."

"Except--" said Eva.

"Well, except present company," said Alice. "I'll tell you, Eva, if anything could incline me more to such a decision, it's the way Aunt Maria has talked about Jim to me--setting him down as if he was the last and most improbable _parti_ I could choose; and as if, of course, I never could even think of him. I don't see what right she has to think so, when there are girls a great deal richer and standing higher in fashionable society than I do that would have Jim in a minute, if they could get him. Jim is constantly beset with more invitations to parties and to go into society than he can at all meet, and I know there are plenty that would be glad enough to take him."

"Oh, but Aunt Maria has moderated a good deal as to Jim, lately," said Eva. "She told me herself, the other day, that he really was one of the most gentlemanly, agreeable young fellows she knew of, and said what a pity it was he hadn't a fortune."

"Oh, that witch of a creature!" said Alice, laughing. "He has been just amusing himself with getting round Aunt Maria."

"And I dare say," said Eva, "that, if she finds Jim has a really good position, she might at last come to a state of resignation. I will say that for Aunt Maria, that after fighting you for a while she comes round handsomely--when she is certain that fighting is in vain; but the most amusing thing is to see how she has come down about Mr. St. John's ritualism. Think of her actually going up there to church last Sunday, and not saying a word about the candles, or the chantings, or any of the abominations! She only remarked that she was sure she never heard a better Gospel sermon than Mr. St. John preached--which was true enough. Harry and I were so amused we could hardly keep our faces straight; but we said not a word to remind her of past denunciations."

"The danger of going to Rome is sensibly abated, it appears," said Alice.

"Oh, yes. I believe Aunt Maria must be cherishing distant visions of a time when she shall be aunt to Mr. St. John, and set him all straight."

"She'll have her match for once," said Alice, "if she has any such intentions."

"One thing is a comfort," said Eva. "Aunt Maria has her hands so full, getting up Angie's trousseau, and buying her sheets and towels and table-cloths, and tearing all about, up stairs and down, and through dark alleys, to get everything of the very best at the smallest expense, that her nervous energies are all used up, and there is less left to be expended on you and me. A wedding in the family is a godsend to us all."

The conversation here branched off into an animated discussion of some points in Angie's wedding-dress, and went on with an increasing interest till it was interrupted by a dolorous voice from the top of the entry staircase.

"Girls, have you the least idea what time it is?"

"Why, there's Harry, to be sure," said Eva. "Dear me, Alice, what time is it?"

"Half-past one! Mercy on us! isn't it a shame?"

"Coming, Harry, coming this minute," called Eva, as the two sisters began turning down the gas and raking up the fire; then, gathering together collars, hair-pins, ribbons, sashes and scarfs, they flew up the stairway, and parted with a suppressed titter of guilty consciousness.

"It was abominable of us," said Eva; "but I never looked at the clock."

_CHAPTER XLIV._

FLUCTUATIONS.

Midnight conversations of the sort we have chronicled between Alice and Eva, do not generally lead to the most quiet kind of sleep. Such conversations suggest a great deal, and settle nothing; and Alice, after retiring, lay a long time with her great eyes wide open, looking into the darkness of futurity, and wondering, as girls of twenty-two or thereabouts do wonder, what she should do next.

There is no help for it; the fact may as well be confessed at once, that no care and assiduity in fencing and fortifying the conditions of a friendship between an attractive young woman and a lively, energetic young man, will ensure their always remaining simply and purely those of companionship and good fellowship, and never becoming anything more.

In the case of St. John and Angie, the stalk of friendship had had but short growth before developing the flower of love; and now, in Alice's mind and conscience, it was becoming quite a serious and troublesome question whether a similar result were not impending over her.

The wise man of old said: "He that delicately bringeth up his servant from a child shall have him for his son at last." The proverb is significant, as showing the gradual growth of kindly relations into something more and more kindly, and more absorbing.

So, in the night-watches, Alice mentally reviewed all those looks, words and actions of Jim's which produced a conviction in her mind that he was passing beyond the allotted boundaries, and approaching towards a point in which there would inevitably be a crisis, calling for a decision on her part which should make him either more or less than he had been. Her talk with Eva had only set this possibility more distinctly before her.

Was she, then, willing to give him up entirely, and to shut the door resolutely on all intimacy tending to keep up and encourage feelings that could come to no result? When she proposed this to herself, she was surprised at her own unwillingness to let him go. She could scarcely fancy herself able to do without his ready friendship, his bright, agreeable society--without the sense of ownership and power which she felt in him. Reviewing the matter strictly in the night-watches, she was obliged to admit to herself that she could not afford to part with Jim; that there was no woman she could fancy--certainly none in the circle of her acquaintance--whom she could be sincerely glad to have him married to; and when she fancied him absorbed in any one else, there was a dreary sense of loss which surprised her. Was it possible, she asked herself, that he had become necessary to her happiness--he whom she never thought of otherwise than as a pleasant friend, a brother, for whose success and good fortune she had interested herself?

Well then, was she ready for an engagement? Was the great ultimate revelation of woman's life--that dark Eleusinian mystery of fate about which vague conjecture loves to gather, and which the imagination invests with all sorts of dim possibilities--suddenly to draw its curtains and disclose to her neither demi-god nor hero, but only the well-known, every-day features of one with whom she had been walking side by side for months past--"only Jim and nothing more?"

Alice could not but acknowledge to herself that she knew no man possible or probable that she liked better; and yet this shadowy, ideal rival--this cross between saint and hero, this Knight of the Holy Grail--was as embarrassing to her conclusions as the ghost in "Hamlet." It was only to be considered that the ideal hero had not put in an actual appearance. He was nowhere to be found or heard from; and here was this warm-hearted, helpful, companionable Jim, with faults as plenty as blackberries, but with dozens of agreeable qualities to every fault; and the time seemed to be rapidly coming when she must make up her mind either to take him or leave him, and she was not ready to do either! No wonder she lay awake, and studied the squares of the dim window and listened to the hours that struck, one after another, bringing her no nearer to fixed conclusions than before! A young lady who sees the time coming when she must make a decision, and who doesn't want to take either alternative presented, is certainly to be pitied. Alice felt herself an abused and afflicted young woman. She murmured at destiny. Why would men fall in love? she queried. Why wouldn't they remain always devoted, admiring friends, and get no further? She was having such good times! and why must they end in a dilemma of this sort? How nice to have a gentleman friend, all devotion, all observance, all homage, without its involving any special consequences!

When she came to shape this feeling into words and look at it, she admitted that it savored of the worst kind of selfishness, and might lead to trifling with what is most precious and sacred. Alice was a conscientious, honorable girl, and felt all the force of this. She had justified herself all along by saying that her intimacy with Jim had so far been for his good; that he had often expressed to her his sense that she was leading him to a higher and better life, to more worthy and honorable aims and purposes: but how if he should claim that this very ministry had made her necessary to him, and that, if she threw him off, it would be worse than if she had never known him? Looking over the history of the last few months, she could not deny to herself that, as their acquaintance had grown more and more confidential, her manners possibly had expressed a degree of kindness which might justly have inspired hopes. Was she not bound to fulfill such hopes if she could?

These were most uncomfortable inquiries, and she was glad of morning and a cheerful breakfast-table to dispel them. Things never look so desperate by daylight, and Alice managed a good breakfast with a tolerable appetite. Then there was the tarlatan dress to be made over and rearranged, and Eva's toilette to be put into party order--quite enough to keep two young women of active fancy and skillful fingers busy for one day. It was a snowy, unpleasant day, and, as they lived on an out-of-the-way street, they were secure from callers and took their work into the parlor so soon as Harry had gone for the day. The little room soon became a brilliant maelstrom of gauzy stuffs and bright ribbons, among which the two sat chatting, arranging, combining, compounding; as of old, one might imagine a pair of heathen goddesses in the clouds, getting up rainbows. No matter how solemn and serious we of womankind are in our deepest hearts, or how philosophically we may look down on the vanity of dress, we must all confess that a party is a party; and the sensible, economical woman who does not often go, and does not make a point of having all the paraphernalia in constant readiness, has to give all the more care and thought to the exceptional occasion when she does. Even Scripture recognizes the impossibility of appearing at a feast without the appropriate garment; and so Eva and Alice cut and fitted and trimmed and tried experiments in head-dresses and arrangements of hair, and meanwhile Alice had the comfort of talking over and over to Eva all the varying shades of the subject that was on her mind.

What woman does not appreciate the blessing of a patient, sympathetic listener, who will hear with unabated interest the same story repeated over and over as it rises in one's thoughts? Eva listened complacently and with the warmest interest to the same things that Alice had said the night before, and went on repeating to her the same lessons of matronly wisdom with which she had then enriched her, neither of them betraying the slightest consciousness that the things they were saying were not just fresh from the mint--entirely new and hitherto unconsidered.

Jim's character was discussed, and with that fine, skillful faculty of analysis and synthesis which forms the distinctive interest of feminine conversation. In the course of these various efforts of character portrait-painting, it became quite evident to Eva that Alice was in just that state in which some people's admitted faults are more interesting and agreeable than the virtues of some others. When a woman gets thus far, her final decision is not a matter of doubt to any far-sighted reader of human nature.

Alice was by nature exact and conscientious as to all rules, forms, and observances. Her pronunciation, whether of English or French, was critically perfect; her hand-writing and composition were faultless to a comma. She was an enthusiastic and thorough maintainer of all the boundaries and forms of good society and of churchly devotion. Jim, without being in any sense really immoral or wicked, was a sort of privileged Arab, careering in and out through the boundaries of all departments, shocking respectable old prejudices and fluttering reverential usages, talking slang and making light of dignitaries with a free and easy handling that was alarming.

But it is a fact that very correct people, who would not violate in their own persons one of the _convenances_, are often exceedingly amused and experience a peculiar pleasure in seeing them tossed hither and thither by somebody else. Nothing is so tiresome as perfect correctness, and we all know that everything that amuses us and makes us laugh lies outside of it; and Alice, if the truth were to be told, liked Jim all the better for the very things in which he was most unlike herself. Well, such being the state of the garrison on the one side, what was the position of the attacking party?

Jim had gone home discontented at not having a private interview with Alice, but more and more resolved, with every revolving hour since the accession of good fortune which had given him a settled position, that he would have a home of his own forthwith, and that the queen of that home should be Alice Van Arsdel. She must not, she could not, she would not say him Nay; and if she did, he wouldn't take No for an answer. He would have her, if he had to serve for her as long as Jacob did for Rachel. But when Jim remembered how many times he had persuaded Alice to his own way, how many favors she had granted him, he was certain that it was not in her to refuse. He had looked with new interest at the advertisements of houses to let, and the furniture stores for the last few days had worn a new and suggestive aspect. He had commenced transactions with regard to parlor furniture, and actually bought a pair of antique brass andirons, which he was sure would be just the thing for their fireside. Then he had bought an engagement ring, which lay snugly ensconced in its satin case in a corner of his vest pocket, and he was inly resolved that he would make to himself a chance to lodge it on the proper finger in the next twenty-four hours. How he was to get an interview did not yet appear; but he trusted to Providence. It is a fact on record, that before the twenty-four hours were up the deed was done, and Jim and Alice were engaged; but it came about in a way far different from any foreseen by any party, as we shall proceed to show.

_CHAPTER XLV._

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

It wanted yet twenty minutes to eight o'clock, and Jim was sitting alone in the glow of the evening fireside. The warm, red light, flickering and shadowing, made the room seem like a mysterious grotto. Jim, in best party trim, sat gazing dreamily into the fire, turning the magic ring now and then in his vest pocket, and looking at his watch at intervals, while the mysterious rites of the toilet were going on upstairs.

Alice had never made a more elaborate or more careful toilet. Did she want to precipitate that which she said to herself she dreaded? Certainly she did not spare one possible attraction. She evidently saw no reason, under present circumstances, why she should not make herself look as well as she could.

As the result of the whole day's agitations and discussions, she had come to the conclusion that if Jim had anything to say she would listen to it advisedly, and take it into mature consideration. So she braided her long, dark hair, and crowned herself therewith, and then earrings and brooches came twinkling out here and there like stars, and bits of ribbon and velvet fluttered hither and thither, and fell into wonderfully apposite places, and the woman grew and brightened before the glass, as a picture under the hands of the artist.

It wanted yet a quarter of an hour of the time for the carriage, when there came a light fluff of gauzy garments, and the two party goddesses floated in in all misty splendor, and seemed to fill the whole room with the flutter of dresses.

Alice was radiant; her eyes were never more brilliant, and she was full of that subtle brightness which comes from the tremor of fully-awakened feeling. She was gayer than was her usual wont as she swept about the room and courteseyed with much solemnity to Jim, and turned herself round and round after the manner of a revolving figure in the shop windows.

Suddenly--and none of them knew how--there was a quick flash; the gauzy robe had swept into the fire, and, before any of them could speak, the dress was in flames. There was a scream, an utterance of agony from all parties at once, and Eva was just doing the most fatal thing possible in rushing desperately towards her sister, when Jim came between them, caught the woolen cloth from the table, and wrapped it around Alice; then, taking her in his arms, he laid her on the sofa, and crushed out the fire, beating it with his hands, and tearing the burning fragments away and casting them under foot. It all passed in one fearful, awe-struck moment, while Eva stood still, with the very shadow of death upon her, and saw Jim fighting back the fire, which in a moment or two was entirely extinguished. Alice had fainted, and Jim and Eva looked at each other as people do who have just seen death rising up between them.

"She is safe now," said Jim, as he stood there, pale as death and quivering from head to foot, while the floor around was strewed with the blackened remains of the gauzy material which he had torn away. "She is all right," he added; "the cloth has saved her throat and lungs."