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

CHAPTER XXIII
THE SISTERS OF ST. BARNABAS

Who was St. Barnabas? We are told in the book of the Acts of the Apostles that he was a man whose name signified a "son of consolation." It must at once occur that such a saint is very much needed in this weary world of ours, and most worthy to be the patron of an "order."

To comfort human sorrow, to heal and help the desolate and afflicted, irrespective either of their moral worth or of any personal reward, is certainly a noble and praiseworthy object.

Nor can any reasonable objection be made to the custom of good women combining for this purpose into a class or order, to be known by the name of such a primitive saint, and wearing a peculiar livery to mark their service, and having rites and ceremonials such as to them seem helpful for this end. Surely the work is hard enough, and weary enough, to entitle the doers thereof to do it in their own way, as they feel they best can, and to have any sort of innocent helps in the way of signs and symbols that may seem to them desirable.

Yet the Sisters of St. Barnabas had been exposed to a sort of modern form of persecution from certain vigorous-minded Protestants, as tending to Romanism. A clamor had been raised about them for wearing large crosses, for bowing before altars, and, in short, for a hundred little points of Ritualism; and it was held that a proper zeal for Protestantism required their ejection from a children's refuge, where, with much patience and Christian mildness, they were taking care of sick babies and teaching neglected street children. Mrs. Maria Wouvermans, with a committee of ladies equally zealous for the order of the church and excited about the dangers of Popery, had visited the refuge and pursued the inquisition even to the private sleeping apartments of the Sisters, unearthing every symptom of principle or practice that savored of approach to the customs of the Scarlet Woman; and, as the result of relentless inquisition and much vigorous catechising, she and her associates made such reports as induced the Committee of Supervision to withdraw the charity from the Sisters of St. Barnabas, and place it in other hands. The Sisters, thus ejected, had sought work in other quarters of the great field of human suffering and sorrow. A portion of them had been enabled by the charity of friends to rent a house to be devoted to the purposes of nursing destitute sick children, with dormitories also where homeless women could find temporary shelter.

The house was not a bit more conventual or mediæval than the most common-place of New York houses. It is true, one of the parlors had been converted into a chapel, dressed out and arranged according to the preferences of these good women. It had an altar, with a gilded cross flanked by candles, which there is no denying were sometimes lighted in the day-time. The altar was duly dressed with white, red, green, violet or black, according as the traditional fasts or feasts of the Church came round. There is no doubt that this simple chapel, with its flowers, and candles, and cross, and its little ceremonial, was an immense comfort and help to these good women in the work that they were doing. But the most rigid Protestant, who might be stumbled by this little attempt at a chapel, would have been melted into accord when he went into the long bright room full of little cribs and cradles, where child invalids of different ages and in different stages of convalescence were made happy amid flowers, and toys, and playthings, by the ministration of the good women who wore the white caps and the large crosses. It might occur to a thoughtful mind, that devotion to a work so sweetly unselfish might well entitle them to wear any kind of dress and pursue any kind of method, unchallenged by criticism.

In a neat white bed of one of the small dormitories in the upper part of this house, was lying in a delirious fever the young woman whom Bolton had carried there on the night of our story. The long black hair had become loosened by the restless tossing of her head from side to side; her brow was bent in a heavy frown, made more intense by the blackness of her eyebrows; her large, dark eyes were wandering wildly to and fro over every object in the room, and occasionally fixing themselves with a strange look of inquiry on the Sister who, in white cap and black robe, sat by her bedside, changing the wet cloths on her burning head, and moistening her parched lips from time to time with a spoonful of water.

"I can't think who you are," she muttered, as the Sister with a gentle movement put a fresh, cool cloth on her forehead.

"Never mind, poor child," said the sweet voice in reply; "try to be quiet."

"Quiet! me be quiet! – that's pretty well! Me!" and she burst into weak, hysteric laughter.

"Hush, hush!" said the Sister, making soothing motions with her hands.

The wandering eyes closed a few moments in a feverish drowse. In a moment more, she started with a wild look.

"Mother! mother! where are you? I can't find you. I've looked and looked till I'm so tired, and I can't find you. Mother, come to me, – I'm sick!" – and the girl rose and threw out her arms wildly.

The Sister passed her arm round her tenderly and spoke with a gentle authority, making her lie down again.

Then, in a sweet low voice, she began singing a hymn:

 
"Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly,
While the billows near me roll,
While the tempest still is high."
 

As she sung, the dark sad eyes fixed themselves upon her with a vague, troubled questioning. The Sister went on:

 
"Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,
Till the storm of life is past,
Safe into the haven guide,
Oh, receive my soul at last."
 

It was just day-dawn, and the patient had waked from a temporary stupor produced by a narcotic which had been given a few hours before to compose her.

The purple-and-rose color of dawn was just touching faintly everything in the room. Another Sister entered softly, to take the place of the one who had watched for the last four hours.

"How is she?" she said.

"Quite out of her head, poor thing. Her fever is very high."

"We must have the doctor," said the other. "She looks like a very sick girl."

"That she certainly is. She slept, under the opiate, but kept starting, and frowning, and muttering in her sleep; and this morning she waked quite wild."

"She must have got dreadfully chilled, walking so late in the street – so poorly clad, too!"

With this brief conversation, the second sister assumed her place by the bedside, and the first went to get some rest in her own room.

As day grew brighter, the singing of the matins in the chapel came floating up in snatches; and the sick girl listened to it with the same dazed and confused air of inquiry with which she looked on all around.

"Who is singing," she said to herself. "It's pretty, and good. But how came I here? I was so cold, so cold – out there! – and now it's so hot. Oh, my head! my head!"

A few hours later, Mr. St. John called at the Refuge to inquire after the new inmate.

Mr. St. John was one of the patrons of the Sisters. He had contributed liberally to the expenses of the present establishment, and stood at all times ready to assist with influence and advice.

The Refuge was, in fact, by the use of its dormitories, a sort of receiving station for homeless and desolate people, where they might find temporary shelter, where their wants might be inquired into, and help found for them according to their need.

After the interview with Bolton had made him acquainted with the state of the case, Mr. St. John went immediately to the Refuge. He was received in the parlor by a sweet-faced, motherly woman, with her white cap and black robe, and with a large black cross depending from her girdle. There was about her an air of innocent sanctity and seclusion from the out-door bustle of modern life that was refreshing.

She readily gave him an account of the new inmate, whose sad condition had excited the sympathy of all the Sisters.

She had come to them, she said, in a state of most woeful agitation and distress, having walked the streets on a freezing night till a late hour, in very insufficient clothing. Immediately on being received, she began to have violent chills, followed by burning fever, and had been all night tossing restlessly and talking wildly.

This morning, they had sent for the doctor, who pronounced her in a brain fever, and in a condition of great danger. She was still out of her mind, and could give no rational account of herself.

"It is piteous to hear her call upon her mother," said the Sister. "Poor child! perhaps her mother is distressing herself about her."

Mr. St. John promised to secure the assistance and sympathy of some benevolent women to aid the Sisters in their charge, and took his leave, promising to call daily.

CHAPTER XXIV
EVA TO HARRY'S MOTHER

My Dear Mother: When I wrote you last we were quite prosperous, having just come through with our first evening as a great success; and everybody since has been saying most agreeable things to us about it. Last Thursday, we had our second, and it was even pleasanter than the last, because people had got acquainted, so that they really wanted to see each other again. There was a most charming atmosphere of ease and sociability. Bolton and Mr. St. John are getting quite intimate. Mr. St. John, too, develops quite a fine social talent, and has come out wonderfully. The side of a man that one sees in the church and the pulpit is after all only one side, as we have discovered. I find that he has quite a gift in conversation, when you fairly get him at it. Then, his voice for singing comes into play, and he and Angie and Dr. Campbell and Alice make up a quartette quite magnificent for non-professionals. Angie has a fine soprano, and Alice takes the contralto, and the Doctor, with his great broad shoulders and deep chest, makes a splendid bass. Mr. St. John's tenor is really very beautiful. It is one of those penetrating, sympathetic voices that indicate both feeling and refinement, and they are all of them surprised and delighted to find how well they go together. Thursday evening they went on from thing to thing, and found that they could sing this and that and the other, till the evening took a good deal the form of a musical. But never mind, it brought them acquainted with each other and made them look forward to the next reunion as something agreeable. Ever since, the doctor goes round humming tunes, and says he wants St. John to try the tenor of this and that, and really has quite lost sight of his being anything else but a musical brother. So here is the common ground I wanted to find between them.

The doctor has told Mr. St. John to call on him whenever he can make him useful in his visits among the poor. Our doctor loves to talk as if he were a hard-hearted, unbelieving pirate, who didn't care a straw for his fellow-creatures, while he loses no opportunity to do anybody or anything a kindness.

You know I told you in my last letter about a girl that Harry and Bolton found in the street, the night of our first reception, and that they took her to the St. Barnabas Refuge. The poor creature has been lying there ever since, sick of a brain fever, caught by cold and exposure, and Dr. Campbell has given his services daily. If she had been the richest lady in the land, he could not have shown more anxiety and devotion to her than he has, calling twice and sometimes three times a day, and one night watching nearly all night. She is still too low and weak to give any account of herself; all we know of her is that she is one of those lost sheep, to seek whom the Good Shepherd would leave the ninety nine who went not astray. I have been once or twice to sit by her, and relieve the good Sisters who have so much else to do; and Angelique and Alice have also taken their turns. It seems very little for us to do, when these good women spend all their time and all their strength for those who have no more claim on them than they have on us.

It is a week since I began this letter, and something quite surprising to me has just developed.

I told you we had been to help nurse the poor girl at the Sisters', and the last week she has been rapidly mending. Well, yesterday, as I didn't feel very well, and my Mary is an excellent nurse, I took her there to sit with the patient in my place, when a most strange scene ensued. The moment Mary looked on her, she recognized her own daughter, who had left her some years ago with a bad man. Mary had never spoken to me of this daughter, and I only knew, in a sort of general way, that she had left her mother under some painful circumstances. The recognition was dreadfully agitating to Mary and to the poor girl; indeed, for some time it was feared that the shock would produce a relapse. The Sisters say that the poor thing has been constantly calling for her mother in her distress.

It really seemed, for the time, as if Mary were going to be wholly unnerved. She has a great deal of that respectable pride of family character which belongs to the better class of the Irish, and it has been a bitter humiliation to her to have to acknowledge her daughter's shame to me; but I felt that it would relieve her to tell the whole story to some one, and I drew it all out of her. This poor Maggie had the misfortune to be very handsome. She was so pretty as a little girl, her mother tells me, as to attract constant attention; and I rather infer that the father and mother both made a pet and plaything of her, and were unboundedly indulgent. The girl grew up handsome, and thoughtless, and self-confident, and so fell an easy prey to a villain who got her to leave her home, on a promise of marriage which he never kept. She lived with him a while in one place and another, and he became tired of her and contrived to place her in a house of evil, where she was entrapped and enslaved for a long time. Having by some means found out where her mother was living, she escaped from her employers, and hung round the house irresolutely for some time, wishing but fearing to present herself, and when she spoke to Harry in the street, the night after our party, she was going in a wild, desperate way to ask something about her mother – knowing that he was the man with whom she was living.

Such seems to be her story; but I suppose, what with misery and cold, and the coming on of the fever, the poor thing hardly had her senses, or knew what she was about – the fever must have been then upon her.

So you see, dear mother, I was wishing in my last that I could go off with Sibyl Selwyn on her mission to the lost sheep, and now here is one brought to my very door. Is not this sent to me as my work? as if the good Lord had said, "No, child, your feet are not strong enough to go over the stones and briars, looking for the lost sheep; you are not able to take them out of the jaws of the wolf; but here is a poor wounded lamb that I leave at your door – that is your part of the great work." So I understand it, and I have already told Mary that as soon as Maggie is able to sit up, we will take her home with us, and let her stay with us till she is strong and well, and then we will try and put her back into good respectable ways, and keep her from falling again.

I think persons in our class of life cannot be too considerate of the disadvantages of poor working women in the matter of bringing up children.

A very beautiful girl in that walk of life is exposed to solicitation and temptation that never come near to people in our stations. We are guarded on all hands by our very position. I can see in this poor child the wreck of what must have been very striking beauty. Her hair is lovely, her eyes are wonderfully fine, and her hands, emaciated as she is, are finely formed and delicate. Well, being beautiful, she was just like any other young girl – her head was turned by flattery. She was silly and foolish, and had not the protections and barriers that are around us, and she fell. Well, then, we that have been more fortunate must help her up. Is it not so?

So, dear Mother, my mission work is coming to me. I need not go out for it. I shall write more of this in a day or two.

Ever yours,

Eva.

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."