Part 7

It was a brisk, frosty morning, and she went out with Harry and darted across from the door. He saw her in the distance, as he went down the street, laughing and kissing her hand to him on the door-step of the Vanderheyden house.

Just then the sound of the door-bell--unheard of in that hour in the morning--caused an excitement in the back breakfast-parlor, where Miss Dorcas and Mrs. Betsey were at a late breakfast, with old Dinah standing behind Miss Dorcas' chair to get her morning orders, giggling and disputing them inch by inch, as was her ordinary wont.

The old door-bell had a rustling, harsh, rusty sound, as if cross with a chronic rheumatism of disuse.

"Who under the sun!" said Miss Dorcas. "Jack, be still!"

But Jack wouldn't be still, but ran and snuffed at the door, and barked as if he smelt a legion of burglars.

Eva heard, within the house, the dining-room door open, and then Jack's barking came like a fire of artillery at the crack of the front door, where she was standing. It was slowly opened, and old Dinah's giggling countenance appeared. "Laws bless your soul, Mis' Henderson," she said, flinging the door wide open, "is that you? Jack, be still, sir!"

But Eva had caught Jack up in her arms, and walked with him to the door of the breakfast room.

"Do pray excuse me," she said, "but I thought I'd just run over and see that you hadn't taken any cold."

The scene within was not uninviting. There was a cheerful wood fire burning on the hearth behind a pair of gigantic old-fashioned brass fire-irons. The little breakfast-table, with its bright old silver and India china, was drawn comfortably up in front. Miss Dorcas had her chair on one side, and Miss Betsey on the other, and between them there was a chair drawn up for Jack, where he had been sitting at the time the door-bell rang.

"We are ashamed of our late hours," said Miss Dorcas, when she had made Eva sit down in an old-fashioned claw-footed arm-chair in the warmest corner; "we don't usually breakfast so late, but, the fact is, Betsey was quite done up by the adventure last night."

"Perhaps," said Eva, "I had better have tried keeping Jack till morning."

"Oh no, indeed, Mrs. Henderson," said Mrs. Betsey, with energy; "I know it's silly, but I shouldn't have slept a wink all night if Jack hadn't come home. You know he sleeps with me," she added.

Eva did not know it before, but she said "Yes" all the same, and the good lady rushed on:

"Yes; Dorcas thinks it's rather silly, but I do let Jack sleep on the foot of my bed. I spread his blanket for him every night, and I always wash his feet and wipe them clean before he goes to bed, and when you brought him back you really ought to have seen him run right up stairs to where I keep his bowl and towel; and he stood there, just as sensible, waiting for me to come and wash him. I wish you could have seen how dirty he was! I can't think where ever that dog gets his paws so greasy."

"'Cause he will eat out o' swill-pails!" interposed Dinah, with a chuckle. "Greatest dog after swill-pails I ever see. That's what he's off after."

"Well, I don't know why. It's very bad of him when we always feed him and take such pains with him," said Mrs. Betsey, in accents of lamentation.

"Dogs is allers jest so," said Dinah; "they's arter nastiness and carron. You can't make a Christian out o' a dog, no matter what you do."

Old Dinah was the very impersonation of that coarse, hard literalness which forces actual unpalatable facts upon unwilling ears. There was no disputing that she spoke most melancholy truths, that even the most infatuated dog-lovers could not always shut their eyes to. But Mrs. Betsey chose wholly to ignore her facts and treat her communication as if it had no existence, so she turned her back to Dinah and went on.

"I don't know what makes Jack have these turns of running away. Sometimes I think it's our system of dieting him. Perhaps it may be because we don't allow him all the meat he wants; but then they say if you do give these pet dogs meat they become so gross that it is quite shocking."

Miss Dorcas rapped her snuff-box, sat back in her chair, and took snuff with an air of antique dignity that seemed to call heaven and earth to witness that she only tolerated such fooleries on account of her sister, and not at all in the way of personal approbation.

The nurture and admonition of Jack was the point where the two sisters had a chronic controversy, Miss Dorcas inclining to the side of strict discipline and vigorous repression.

In fact, Miss Dorcas soothed her violated notions of dignity and propriety by always speaking of Jack as "Betsey's dog"--he was one of the permitted toys and amusements of Betsey's more juvenile years; but she felt called upon to keep some limits of discipline to prevent Jack's paw from ruling too absolutely in the family councils.

"You see," said Mrs. Betsey, going on with her reminiscences of yesterday, "we had taken Jack down town with us because we wanted to get his photographs; we'd had him taken last week, and they were not ready till yesterday."

"Dear me, do show them to me," said Eva, entering cheerfully into the humor of the thing; and Mrs. Betsey trotted up stairs to get them.

"You see how very absurd we are," said Miss Dorcas; "but the fact is, Mrs. Henderson, Betsey has had her troubles, poor child, and I'm glad to have her have anything that can be any sort of a comfort to her."

Betsey came back with her photographs, which she exhibited with the most artless innocence.

"You see," said Miss Dorcas, "just how it is. If people set out to treat a dog as a child, they have to take the consequences. That dog rules this whole family, and of course he behaves like spoiled children generally. Here, now, this morning; Betsey and I both have bad colds because we were got out of bed last night with that creature."

Here Jack, seeming to understand that he was the subject-matter of some criticism, rose up suddenly on his haunches before Miss Dorcas and waved his paws in a supplicatory manner at her. Jack understood this to be his only strong point, and brought it out as a trump card on all occasions when he felt himself to be out of favor. Miss Dorcas laughed, as she generally did, and Jack seemed delighted, and sprang into her lap and offered to kiss her with the most brazen assurance.

"Oh, well, Mrs. Henderson, I suppose you see that we are two old fools about that dog," she said. "I don't know but I am almost as silly as Betsey is, but the fact is one must have _something_, and a dog is not so much risk as a boy, after all. Yes, Jack," she said, tapping his shaggy head patronizingly, "after all you're no more impudent than puppies in general."

"I never quarrel with anyone for loving dogs," said Eva. "For my part I think no family is complete without one. I tell Harry we must 'set up' our dog as soon as we get a little more settled. When _we_ get one, we'll compare notes."

"Well," said Miss Dorcas, "I always comfort myself with thinking that dear Sir Walter, with all his genius, went as far in dog-petting as any of us. You remember Washington Irving's visit to Abbotsford?"

Eva did not remember it, and Miss Dorcas said she must get it for her at once; she ought to read it. And away she went to look it up in the book-case in the next room.

"The fact is," said Mrs. Betsey, mysteriously, "though Dorcas has so much strength of mind, she is to the full as silly about Jack as I am. When I was gone to Newburg, if you'll believe me, _she_ let Jack sleep on her bed. Dinah knows it, doesn't she?"

Dinah confirmed this fact by a loud explosing, in which there was a singular mixture of snort and giggle; and to cover her paroxysm she seized violently on the remains of the breakfast and bore them out into the kitchen, and was heard giggling and gurgling in a rill of laughter all along the way.

Mrs. Betsey began gathering up and arranging the cups, and filling a lacquered bowl of Japanese fabric with hot water, she proceeded to wash the china and silver.

"What _lovely_ china," said Eva, with the air of a connoisseur.

"Yes," said Mrs. Betsey, "this china has been in the family for three generations, and we never suffer a servant to touch it."

"Please let _me_ help you," said Eva, taking up the napkin sociably, "I do so love old china."

And pretty soon one might have seen a gay morning party--Mrs. Betsey washing, Eva wiping, and Miss Dorcas the while reading scraps out of _Abbotsford_ about Maida, and Finette, and Hamlet, and Camp, and Percy, and others of Walter Scott's four-footed friends. The ice of ceremony and stiffness was not only broken by this bit of morning domesticity, but floated gaily down-stream never to be formed again.

You may go further into the hearts of your neighbors by one-half hour of undressed rehearsal behind the scenes than a century of ceremonious posing before the foot-lights.

_Real_ people, with anything like heart and tastes and emotions, do not _enjoy_ being shut up behind barricades, and conversing with their neighbors only through loop-holes. If any warm-hearted adventurer gets in at the back door of the heart, the stiffest and most formal are often the most thankful for the deliverance.

The advent of this pretty young creature, with her air of joy and gaiety, into the shadowed and mossy precincts of the old Vanderheyden house was an event to be dated from, as the era of a new life. She was to them a flower, a picture, a poem; and a thousand dear remembrances and new capabilities stirred in the withered old hearts to meet her.

Her sincere artlessness and naïf curiosity, her genuine interest in the old time-worn furniture, relics and belongings of the house gave them a new sense of possession. We seem to acquire our things over again when stimulated by the admiration of a new spectator.

"Dear me," said Eva, as she put down a tea-cup she was wiping, "what a pity I haven't some nice old china to begin on! but all my things are spick and span new; I don't think it's a bit interesting. I do love to see things that look as if they had a history."

"Ah! my dear child, you are making history fast enough," said Miss Dorcas, with that kind of half sigh with which people at eighty look down on the aspirants of twenty; "don't try to hurry things."

"But I think _old_ things are so nice," said Eva. "They get so many associations. Things just out of Tiffany's or Collamore's haven't associations--there's no poetry in them. Now, everything in your house has its story. It's just like the old villas I used to see in Italy where the fountains were all mossy."

"We are mossy enough, dear knows," said Miss Dorcas, laughing, "Betsey and I."

"I'm so glad I've got acquainted with you," said Eva, looking up with clear, honest eyes into Miss Dorcas's face; "it's so lonesome not to know one's neighbors, and I'm an inexperienced beginner, you know. There are a thousand questions I might ask, where your experience could help me."

"Well, don't hesitate, dear Mrs. Henderson," said Mrs. Betsey; "do use us if you can. Dorcas is really quite a doctor, and if you should be ill any time, don't fail to let us know. _We_ never have a doctor. Dorcas always knows just what to do. You ought to see her herb closet--there's a little of everything in it; and she is wonderful for strengthening-mixtures."

And so Eva was taken to see the herbal, and thence, by natural progression, through the chambers, where she admired the old furniture. Then cabinets were unlocked, old curiosities brought out, snatches and bits of history followed, and, in fact, lunch time came in the old Vanderheyden house before any of them perceived whither the tide of social enthusiasm had carried them. Eva stayed to lunch. Such a thing had not happened for years to the desolate old couple, and it really seemed as if the roses of youth and joy, the flowers of years past, all bloomed and breathed around her, and it was late in the day before she returned to her own home to look back on the Vanderheyden fortress as taken. Two stiff, ceremonious strangers had become two warm-hearted, admiring friends--a fortress locked and barred by constraint had become an open door of friendship. Was it not a good morning's work?

_CHAPTER IX._

JIM AND ALICE.

The recent discussions of the marriage question, betokening unrest and dissatisfaction with the immutable claims of this institution, are founded, no doubt, on the various distresses and inconveniences of ill-assorted marriages.

In times when the human being was little developed, the elements of agreement and disagreement were simpler, and marriages were proportionately more tranquil. But modern civilized man has a thousand points of possible discord in an immutable near relation where there was one in the primitive ages.

The wail, and woe, and struggle to undo marriage bonds, in our day, comes from this dissonance of more developed and more widely varying natures, and it shows that a large proportion of marriages have been contracted without any advised and rational effort to ascertain whether there was a reasonable foundation for a close and life-long intimacy.

It would seem as if the arrangements and customs of modern society did everything that could be done to render such a previous knowledge impossible.

Good sense would say that if men and women are to single each other out, and bind themselves by a solemn oath, forsaking all others to cleave to each other as long as life should last, there ought to be, before taking vows of such gravity, the very best opportunity to become minutely acquainted with each other's dispositions, and habits, and modes of thought and action. It would seem to be the dictate of reason that a long and intimate friendship ought to be allowed, in which, without any bias or commitment, young people might have full opportunity to study each other's character and disposition, being under no obligation, expressed or implied, on account of such intimacy to commit themselves to the irrevocable union.

Such a kind of friendship is the instinctive desire of both the parties that make up society. Both young men and young women, as we observe, would greatly enjoy a more intimate and friendly intercourse, if the very fact of that initiatory acquaintance were not immediately seized upon by busy A, B, and C, and reported as an engagement. The flower that might possibly blossom into the rose of love is withered and blackened by the busy efforts of gossips to pick it open before the time.

Our young friend, Alice Van Arsdel, was what in modern estimation would be called just the "nicest kind of a girl." She had a warm heart, a high sense of justice and honor, she was devout in her religious profession, conscientious in the discharge of the duties of family life. Naturally, Alice was of a temperament which might have inclined her to worldly ambition. She had that keen sense of the advantages of wealth and station which even the most sensible person may have, and, had her father's prosperity continued, might have run the gay career of flirtation and conquest supposed to be proper to a rich young belle.

The failure of her father not only cut off all these prospects, but roused the deeper and better part of her nature to comfort and support her parents, and to assist in all ways in trimming the family vessel to the new navigation. Her self-esteem took a different form. Had she been enthroned in wealth and station, it would have taken pleasure in reigning; thrown from that position, it became her pride to adapt herself entirely to the proprieties of her different circumstances. Up to that hour, she had counted Jim Fellows simply as a tassel on her fan, or any other appendage to her glittering life. When the crash came, she expected no more of him than of a last summer's bird, and it was with somewhat of pleased surprise that, on the first public tidings of the news, she received from Jim an expensive hot-house bouquet of a kind that he had never thought of giving in prosperous days.

"The extravagant boy!" she said. Yet she said it with tears in her eyes, and she put the bouquet into water, and changed it every day while it lasted. The flowers and the friends of adversity have a value all their own.

Then Jim came, came daily, with downright unsentimental offers of help, and made so much fun and gaiety for them in the days of their breaking up as almost shocked Aunt Maria, who felt that a period of weeping and wailing would have been more appropriate. Jim became recognized in the family as a sort of factotum, always alert and ready to advise or to do, and generally knowing where every body or thing which was wanted in New York was to be found. But, as Alice was by no means the only daughter, as Marie and Angelique were each in their way as lively and desirable young candidates for admiration, it would have appeared that here was the best possible chance for a young man to have a friendship whose buds even the gossips would not pick open to find if there were love inside of them. As a young neophyte of the all-powerful press, Jim had the dispensation of many favors, in the form of tickets to operas, concerts, and other public entertainments, which were means of conferring enjoyment and variety, and dispensed impartially among the sisters. Eva's house, in all the history of its finding, inception, and construction, had been a ground for many a familiar meeting from whence had grown up a pleasant feeling of comradeship and intimacy.

The things that specialized this intimacy, as relating to Alice more than to the other sisters, were things as indefinite and indefinable as the shade mark between two tints of the rainbow; and yet there undoubtedly was a peculiar intimacy, and since the misfortunes of the family it had been of a graver kind than before, though neither of them cared to put it into words. Between a young man and a young woman of marriageable age a friendship of this kind, if let alone, generally comes to its bud and blossom in its own season; and there is something unutterably vexatious and revolting to every fibre of a girl's nature to have any well-meaning interference to force this denouement.

Alice enjoyed the unspoken devotion of Jim, which she perceived by that acute sort of divination of which women are possessed; she felt quietly sure that she had more influence over him, could do more with him, than any other woman; and this consciousness of power over a man is something most agreeable to girls of Alice's degree of self-esteem. She assumed to be a sort of mentor; she curbed the wild sallies of his wit, rebuking him if he travestied a hymn, or made a smart, funny application of a text of Scripture. But, as she generally laughed, the culprit was not really overborne by the censure. She had induced him to go with her to Mr. St. John's church, and even to take a class in the Sunday-school, where he presided with the unction of an apostle over a class of street "_gamins_," who certainly never found a more entertaining teacher.

Now, although Marie and Angelique were also teachers in the same school, it somehow always happened that Jim and Alice walked to the scene of their duties in company. It was one of those quiet, unobserved arrangements of particles which are the result of laws of chemical affinity. These street _tête-à-têtes_ gave Alice admirable opportunity for those graceful admonitions which are so very effective on young gentlemen when coming from handsome, agreeable monitors. On a certain Sunday morning in our history, as Alice was on her way to the mission school with Jim, she had been enjoining upon him to moderate his extreme liveliness to suit the duties of the place and scene.

"It's all very well, Alice," he said to her, "so long as I don't have to be too much with that St. John. But I declare that fellow stirs me up awfully: he looks so meek and so fearfully pious that it's all I can do to keep from ripping out an oath, just to see him jump!"

"Jim, you bad fellow! How can you talk so?"

"Well, it's a serious fact now. Ministers oughtn't to _look_ so pious! It's too much a temptation. Why, last Sunday, when he came trailing by so soft and meek and asked me what books we wanted, I perfectly longed to rip out an oath and say, 'Why in thunder can't you speak louder.' It's a temptation of the devil, I know; but you mustn't let St. John and me run too much together, or I shall blow out."

"Oh, Jim, you mustn't talk so. Why, you really shock me--you grieve me."

"Well, you see, I've given up swearing for ever so long, but some kinds of people do tempt me fearfully, and he's one of 'em, and then I think that he must think I'm a wolf in sheep's clothing. But then, you see, a wolf understands those cubs better than a sheep. You ought to hear how I put gospel into them. I make 'em come out on the responses like little Trojans. I've promised every boy who is 'sharp up' on his Collect next Sunday a new pop-gun."

"O Jim, you creature!" said Alice, laughing.

"By George, Alice, it's the best way. You don't know anything about these little heathen. You've got to take 'em where they live. They put up with the Collect for the sake of the pop-gun, you see."

"But, Jim, I really was in hopes that you would look on this thing seriously," said Alice, endeavoring to draw on a face of protest.

"Why, Alice, I am serious; didn't I go round to the highways and hedges, drumming up those little varmints? Not a soul of them would have put his head inside a Sunday-school room if it hadn't been for me. I tell you I ought to be encouraged now. I'm not appreciated."

"Oh Jim, you _have_ done beautifully."

"I should think I had. I keep a long face while they are there, and don't swear at Mr. St. John, and sing like a church robin. So I think you ought to let me let out a little to you going home. That eases my mind; it's the confessional--Mr. St. John believes in that. I _didn't_ swear, mind you. I only felt like it; maybe that'll wear off, by-and-by. So don't give me up, yet."

"Oh, I don't; and I'm perfectly sure, Jim, that you are the very person that can do good to these wild boys. Of course the free experience of life which young men have, enables them to know how to deal with such cases better than we girls can."

"Yes, you ought to hear me expound the commandments, and put it into them about stealing and lying. You see Jim knows a thing or two, and is up to their tricks. They don't come it round Jim, I tell you. Any boy that don't toe the crack gets it. I give 'em C sharp with the key up."

"O Jim, you certainly are original in your ways! But I dare say you're right," said Alice. "You know how to get on with them."

"Indeed I do. I tell you I know what's what for these boys, though I don't know, and don't care about, what the old coves did in the first two centuries, and all that. Don't you think, Alice, St. John is a little prosy on that chapter?"

"Mr. St. John is such a good man that I receive everything he says on subjects where he knows more than I do," said Alice, virtuously.

"Oh pshaw, Alice! If a fellow has to swallow every good man's hobby-horses, hoofs, tail and all, why he'll have a good deal to digest. I tell you St. John is too 'other-worldly,' as Charles Lamb used to say. He ought to get in love, and get married. I think, now, that if our little Angie would take him in hand she would bring him into mortal spheres, make a nice fellow of him."

"Oh, Mr. St. John never will marry," said Alice, solemnly; "he is devoted to the church. He has published a tract on holy virginity that is beautiful."

"Holy grandmother!" said Jim; "that's all bosh, Ally. Now you are too sensible a girl to talk that way. That's going to Rome on a high canter."