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

It was not till hunger was fully satisfied that Mr. James began to talk to them, and when he did, I wondered at his tact.

"This is quite the thing, now, isn't it, boys, of a cold night like this, when a fellow is hungry? See what it is to have friends.

"I suppose, boys, you get better suppers than these from those fellows that you buy your drink of. They make suppers for you sometimes, I suppose?"

"No, indeed," growled some of the men. "Catch 'em doing it!"

"Why, I should think they ought to, when you spend all your money on them. You pay all your money to them, and make yourselves so poor that you haven't a crust, and then they won't even get you a supper?"

"No, that they won't," growled some. "They don't care if we starve."

"Boys," said Mr. James, "aren't you fools? Here these men get rich, and you get poor. You pay all your earnings to them. You can't have anything, and they have everything. They can have plate-glass windows, and they can keep their carriages, and their wives have their silk dresses and jewels, and you pay for it all; and then, when you've spent your last cent over their counters, they kick you into the street. Aren't you fools to be supporting such men? Your wives don't get any silk dresses, I'll bet. O boys, where are your wives? – where are your mothers? – where are your children?"

By this time they were looking pretty sober, and some of them had tears in their eyes.

"Oh, boys, boys! this is a bad way you've been in – a bad way. Haven't you gone long enough? Don't you want to give it up? Look here – now, boys, I'll read you a story." And then he read from his pocket Testament the Parable of the Prodigal Son. He read it beautifully: I thought I had never understood it before. When he had done, he said, "And now, boys, hadn't you better come back to your Father? Do you remember, some of you, how your mother used to teach you to say, 'Our Father, who art in heaven?' Come now, kneel down, every one of you, and let's try it once more."

They all knelt, and I never heard anything like that prayer. It was so loving, so earnest, so pitiful. He prayed for those poor men, as if he were praying for his own soul. They must have felt how he loved them. It almost broke my heart to hear him: it did seem for the time as if the wall were down that separates God's love from us, and that everybody must feel it, even these poor wretched creatures.

There were among them some young men, and some whose heads and features were good, and indicative of former refinement of feeling. I could not help thinking how many histories of sorrow, for just so many families, were written in those faces.

"Is it possible that you can save any of these?" I said to Mr. James, as they were going out.

"We cannot, but God can," he said. "With God, all things are possible. We have seen a great many saved that were as low as these; but it was only by the power of God converting their souls. That is at all times possible."

"But," said Harry, "the craving for drink gets to be a physical disease."

"Yet I have seen that craving all subdued and taken away by the power of the Holy Spirit. They become new creatures in Christ."

"That would be almost miraculous," said Harry.

"We must expect miracles, and we shall have them," replied he.

Meanwhile the girls had gathered around Maggie, and were talking with her, and when we spoke of going, she said:

"Dear Mrs. Henderson, let me stay here awhile; the girls here will help me, and I can do some good here, and by-and-by, perhaps, when I am stronger, I can come back to mother. It's better for me here now."

Mr. James and the matron both agreed that, for the present, this would be best.

There is a current of sympathy, an energy of Christian feeling, a sort of enthusiasm, about this house, that helps one to begin anew.

It was nearly morning before we found ourselves in our home again – but, for me, the night has not been spent in vain. Oh, mother, can it be that in a city full of churches and Christians such dreadful things as I saw are going on every night? Certainly, if all Christians felt about it as those do who have begun this Home, there would be a change. If every Christian would do a little, a great deal would be done; for there are many Christians. But now it seems as if a few were left to do all, while the many do nothing. But Harry and I are resolved henceforth to do our part in helping this work.

Mary is comforted about Maggie and unboundedly grateful to me for going.

I think she herself prefers her staying there awhile; she has felt so keenly what Aunt Maria said about her being a burden and disgrace to us.

We shall watch over her there, and help her forward in life as fast as she is strong enough to go. But I am making this letter too long, so good-by for the present.

Your loving

Eva.

CHAPTER XLII
JIM'S FORTUNES

"Well, hurrah for Jim!" exclaimed our friend Jim Fellows, making tumultuous entrance into the Henderson house, with such a whirl and breeze of motion as to flutter the music on the piano, and the papers on Harry's writing-desk, while he skipped round the room, executing an extemporary pas seul.

"Jim, for goodness sake, what now?" said Harry, rising. "What's up?"

"I've got it! I've got it! – the first place on 'the Forum!' Think of the luck! I've been talking with Ivison and Sears about it, and the papers are all drawn. I'm made now, you'd better believe. It's firm land at last, and I tell you, if I haven't scratched for it!"

"Wish you joy, my boy, with all my heart," said Harry, shaking his hand. "It's the top of the ladder."

"And I, too, Jim," said Eva, offering her hand frankly. "Sit down and have a cup of tea with us."

"You don't care, I suppose, what happens to me," said Jim in an abused tone, turning to Alice, who had sat quietly in a shaded corner through this outburst.

"Bless me, Jim, I've been holding my breath, for I didn't know what you'd do next. I'm sure I wish you joy with all my heart. There's my hand on it," and Alice reached out her hand as frankly as Eva.

It was a hand as fair, soft and white as a man might wish to have settle like a dove of peace and rest in his own; and, as it went into his palm, Jim could not help giving it a warm, detaining grasp that had a certain significance, especially as his eyes rested upon her with a flash of expression before which hers fell.

Alice had come to Eva's to dine, and they were now just enjoying that pleasant after-dinner hour around the fireside, when they sat and played with their tea in pretty teacups, and chatted, and looked into the fire. It is the hour dear to memory, when the home fireside seems like a picture, when the gleams of light that fall on one's plants and pictures and books and statuettes, bring forth some new charm in each one, giving rise to the exulting feeling, "Nowhere in the world is there a place so pretty and so cosy as this."

Now, Alice had been meditating a return to her own home that night, trusting to Harry for escort; but, at the moment that Jim took her hand and she saw the expression of his eyes, she mentally altered her intentions and resolved to remain all night. She was sure if she rose to go Jim would, of course, be her escort. She was not going to walk home alone with him in his present mood, and trust herself to hear, and be obliged to answer, anything he might be led to say.

The fact is well known to observers of mental phenomena, that an engagement suddenly sprung upon a circle of intimate acquaintances is often productive of great searchings of heart, and that it is apt to have a result similar to the knocking down of one brick at the extreme of a line of them.

Alice had been startled and astonished by finding her rector descending from the semi-angelic sphere where she had, in her imagination, placed him, and coming into the ranks of mortal and marrying men. She had seen and handled the engagement ring which sparkled on Angie's finger, and it looked like any other ring that a gentleman of good taste might buy, and she had heard all the comments of the knowing ones thereon. Already there was activity in the direction of a prospective trousseau. Aunt Maria, with her usual alertness, was prizing stuffs and giving records of prices and of cheap and desirable shopping places, and racing from one end of the city to the other in self-imposed pilgrimages of research. There were discussions of houses for the future rectory. Everything was in a whirl of preparation. There was marriage in the very air: and the same style of reflection which occurs when there is a death, is apposite also to the betrothal – "Whose turn shall come next?" "Hodie mihi – cras tibi."

Jim Fellows, the most excitable, sympathetic of all mortal Jims, may well be supposed to have felt something of the general impulse.

Now, Miss Alice was as fine a specimen of young-lady-hood at twenty-two as is ordinarily to be met with in New York or otherwhere. She was well read, well bred, high-minded and high-principled. She was a little inclined to the ultra-romantic in her views, and while living along contentedly, and with a moderate degree of good sense and comfort, with such people as were to be found on earth, was a little prone to indulge dreams of super-celestial people – imaginary heroes and heroines. In the way of friendship, she imagined she liked many of her gentlemen associates; but the man she was to marry was to be a hero – somebody before whom she and every one else should be irresistibly constrained to bow down and worship. She knew nobody of this species as yet.

Harry was all very well; a nice fellow – a bright, lively, wide-awake fellow – a faultless husband – a desirable brother-in-law; but still Harry was not a hero. He was a man subject to domestic discipline for at times littering the parlor table with too many pamphlets, for giving imprudent invitations to dinner on an ill-considered bill of fare, and for confounding solferino with pink when describing colors or matching worsteds. All these things brought him down into the sphere of the actual, and took off the halo. In review of all the married men of her acquaintance, she was constrained to acknowledge that the genus hero was rare. Nobody that she was acquainted with ever had married this kind of being; and, in fact, within her own mind his lineaments were cloudy and indistinct, like the magic looking-glass of Agrippa before the destined image shone out. She only knew of this or that mortal man of her acquaintance, that he was not in the least like this ideal of her dreams.

Meanwhile, Miss Alice was not at all insensible to the charm of having a friend of the other sex wholly and entirely devoted to her.

She thought she had with most exemplary frankness and directness indicated to Jim that they were to be friends and only friends; she had contended for her right to be just as intimate with him as he and she pleased, in the face of Aunt Maria and of all the ranks and orders of good gossips who make the regulation of other people's affairs a specialty; and she flattered herself that she had at last conquered this territory and secured for herself this independent right.

People had almost done telling her they had heard that she was engaged to Jim Fellows, and asking her when it was going to be announced. She plumed herself, in a quiet way, on the independence and spirit she had shown in the matter.

Now, Jim was one of those fellows who, in certain respects, remain a boy forever. The boy in him was certainly booked for as long a mortal journey as the man; and, at threescore years and ten, one ought not to expect to meet in him other than a white-headed, vivacious old boy. He was a driving, industrious, efficient creature. He was, in all respects, ideally fitted to success in the profession he had chosen; the very image and body of the New York press man – lively, versatile, acute, unsleeping, untiring, always wide-awake, up and dressed, and in full command of his faculties, at any hour of day or night, ready for any emergency, overflowing with inconsiderate fun and frolic, and, like the public he served, going for his joke at any price. Since his intimacy with Alice she had assumed to herself the right of looking over his ways and acting the part of an exterior conscience; and Jim had formed the habit of bringing to her his articles for criticism. And Alice flattered herself that she was not altogether selfish in accepting his devotion, but was saving him from many an unwise escapade, and exciting him to higher standards and nobler ways of looking at life.

Of all the Christian and becoming rôles in the great drama of life, there is none that so exactly suits young ladies of a certain degree of gravity and dignity as that of guardian angel.

Now, in respect to Jim, Alice certainly was fitted to sustain this rôle. She was well-poised, decided, sensible and serious in her conceptions of life, truthful and conscientious; and the dash of ideality which pervaded all her views gave to her, in the eyes of the modern New York boy, a sort of sacred prestige, like the halo around a saint.

No one sees life on a harder, colder, more utterly unscrupulous side than the élève of the New York press. He grinds in a mill of competition. He serves sharp and severe masters, who in turn are driven up by an exacting, irresponsible public, panting for excitement, grasping for the latest sensation. The man of the press sees behind the scenes in every illusion of life; the shapeless pulleys, the dripping tallow candles that light up the show, all are familiar to him.

To him come all the tribes who have axes to grind, and want him to turn their grindstones. Avarice, ambition, petty vanity, private piques, mean intrigues, sly revenges, all unbosom themselves to him as to a father confessor, and invoke his powerful aid. To him it is given to see the back door and back stairs of much that the world venerates, and he finds there filthy sweepings and foul débris. Even the church of every name and sect has its back door, its unsightly sweepings. He who is in so many secrets, who explores so many cabals, who sees the wrong side of so many a fair piece of goods, with all its knots, and jags, and thrums, what wonder if he come to that worse form of scepticism – the doubt of all truth, of all virtue, of all honor? When he sees how reputations can be made and unmade in the secret conclaves of printing offices, how generous and holy enthusiasms are assumed as a cloak for low and selfish designs, how the language which stirs man's deepest nature lies around loose in the hands of skilled word-experts, to be used in getting up cabals and carrying party intrigues, it is scarcely to be wondered at if he come to regard life as a mere game of skill, where the shrewdest player wins. It is exactly here that a true, good woman is the moral salvation of man. Such a woman seems to a man more than she can ever seem to her female acquaintances. She is to him the proof of a better world, of a truer life, of the reality of justice, purity, honor, and unselfishness. He regards her, to be sure, as unpractical, and ignorant of the world's ways, but with a holy ignorance which belongs to a higher region.

Jim had dived into New York life at first with the mere animal recklessness with which an expert swimmer shows his skill in difficult navigation. Life was an adventure, a game, a game at which he was determined nobody should cheat him, a race in which he was determined to come out ahead. Nobody should catch him napping; nobody should outwit him; he would be nobody's fool. His acquaintance with a certain class of girls was only a continuation of the bright, quick, adroit game of fencing which he played in the world. If a girl would flirt, so would Jim. He was au courant of all the positions and strategy of that sort of encounter; he had all the persiflage of flattery and compliment at his tongue's end, and enjoyed the rustle and flutter of ribbons, the tapping of fans, and the bustle and mystery of small secrets, the little "ohs and ahs," and feminine commotions that he could stir up in almost any bevy of nymphs in evening dresses. Speaking of female influence, there are some exceptions to be taken to the general theory that woman has an elevating power over man. It may be doubted whether there goes any of this divine impulse from giggling, flirting girls, whose highest aim is to secure the admiration and attention of men, and who, to get it, will flatter and fawn, profess to adore tobacco smoke, and even to have a warm side towards whiskey punch, – girls whose power over men is based on an indiscriminate deference to what men themselves feel to be their lower and less worthy nature.

The woman who really wins for herself a worthy influence with a man is she who recognizes in him the divine under all worldly disguises, and invariably and strongly takes part with his higher against his lower nature. This was the secret of Alice's power over Jim; and this was why she had become, in the secret and inner world of his life, almost a religious image. All his dawning aspirations to be somewhat better than a mere chaser of expedients, to be a man of lofty objects and noble purposes, had come from her acquaintance with him – an acquaintance begun on both sides in the spirit of mere flirtation, and passing from that to esteem and friendship. But, in the case of a marriageable young man of twenty-five, friendship is like some of those rare cacti of the greenhouses which, in an unexpected hour, burst out into blossoms of untold splendor. An engagement just declared in their circle had breathed a warmer atmosphere of suggestion around them, and upon that had come a position in his profession which offered him both consideration and money; and when Jim was assured of this, his first thought was of Alice.

"Friendship is a humbug," was that young gentleman's mental decision. "It may do all very well with some kinds of girls" – and Jim mentally reviewed some of his lady acquaintances – "but with Alice Van Arsdel, it is all humbug for me to go on talking friendship. I can't, and shan't, and WON'T." And in this mood it was that he gave to Alice's hand that startling kind of pressure, and something of this flashed from his eyes into hers. It was that something, like the gleam of a steel blade, determined, resolute, assured, that disconcerted and alarmed her. It was like the sounding of a horn, summoning a parley at the postern gate of a fortress, and the lady chatelaine not ready either to surrender or to defend. So, in a moment, Alice resolved not to walk the four or five squares between her present position and home, tête-à-tête with Jim Fellows; and she sat very composed and very still in her corner, and put in demand all those quiet, repressive tactics by which dignified young ladies keep back issues they are not precisely ready to meet.

The general subject under discussion when Jim came in, was a party to be given at Aunt Maria's the next evening in honor of the Stephenses, when Angie and Mr. St. John would make their first appearance together as a betrothed couple.

"Now, Jim," said Eva, "how lucky that you came in, for I was just going to send a note to you! Here's Harry has got to give a lecture to-morrow night and can't come in till towards the end of the evening. Alice is coming to dine and dress down here with me, and I want you to dine with us and be our escort to the party – that is, if you will put up with our dressing time and not get into such a state of perfect amazement as Harry always does when we are not ready at the moment."

"If you ever get a wife, Jim, you'll be made perfect in this science of waiting," said Harry. "The only way to have a woman ready in season for a party is to shut her up just after breakfast and keep her at it straight along through the day. Then you may have her before ten o'clock."

"You see," said Eva, "Harry's only idea, when he is going to a party, is to get home again early. We almost never go, and then he is in such a hurry to get there, so as to have it over with and be at home again."

"Well, I confess, for my part, I hate parties," said Harry. "They always get agoing just about my usual bed-time."

"Well, Harry, you know Aunt Maria wants an old-fashioned, early party, at eight o'clock at the latest; and when she says she wants a thing, she means it. She would never forgive us for being late."

"Dear me, Eva, do begin to dress over night then," said Harry. "You certainly never will get through to-morrow, if you don't."

"Harry, you sauce-box, I think you talk abominably about me. Just because I have so many more things to see to than he has! A woman's dress, of course, takes more time; there's a good deal more to do and every little thing has to be just right."

"Of course, I know that," said Harry. "Haven't I stood, and stood, and stood, while bows were tied, and picked out, and patted, and flatted, and then pulled out and tied over, and when we were half an hour behind time already?"

"I fancy," said Alice, "that if the secrets of some young gentlemen's toilets were unveiled, we should see that we were not alone in tying bows and pulling them out. I've known Tom to labor over his neck-ties by the hour together; it took him quite as long to prink as any of us girls."

"But don't you be alarmed, Jim," said Eva; "we intend to be on time."

"No, don't," said Harry; "you can have my writing-table, and get up your editorials, while the conjuration is going on up-stairs."

"Just think," said Alice, "how Aunt Maria is coming out."

"Why, yes, it's a larger affair than usual," said Eva. "A hundred invitations! That must be on account of Angie."

"Oh, yes," said Alice, "Aunt Maria is pluming herself on Angie's engagement. Since she has discovered that Mr. St. John has an independent fortune, there is no end to her praises and felicitations. Oh, and she has altered her opinion entirely about his ritualism. The Bishop, she says, stands by him; and what the Bishop doesn't condemn, nobody has any right to; and then she sets forth what a good family he belongs to, and so well connected! I'd like to see anybody say anything against Mr. St. John's practices before Aunt Maria now!"

"I'm sure this party is quite an outlay for Aunt Maria," said Eva.

"Oh," said Alice, "she's making all her jellies, and blanc-manges, and ice creams in the house. You know how perfectly she always does things. I've been up helping her. She will have a splendid table. She was rather glorifying herself to me that she could get up so fine a show at so little expense."

"Well, she can," said Eva. "No one can get more for a given amount of money than Aunt Maria. I suppose that is one of the womanly virtues, and one can learn as much of it from her as anybody."

"Yes," said Alice, "if a stylish party is the thing to be demonstrated, Aunt Maria will get one up more successfully, more perfect in all points, and for less money, than any other woman in New York. She will have exactly the right people, and exactly the right things to give them. Her rooms will be lovely. She will be dressed herself to a T, and she will say just the right thing to everybody. All her nice silver and her pretty things will come out of their secret crypts and recesses to do honor to the occasion, and, for one night, all will be suavity and sociability personified; and then everything will go back into lavender, the silver to the safe, the chairs and lounges to their cover, the shades will come down, and her part of the world's debt of sociability will be done up for the year. Then she will add up the expense, and set it down in her account book, and that thing'll be finished and checked off."

"A mode of proceeding which she was very anxious to engraft upon me," said Eva; "but I am a poor stock. My instincts are for what she would call an expensive, chronic state of hospitality, as we live down here!"

"Well," said Jim, "when I get a house of my own, I'm going to do as you do."

"Jim has got sight of the domestic tea-kettle in the future," said Harry. "That's the first effect of his promotion."

"Oh, don't be in a hurry about setting up a house of your own," said Eva. "I'm afraid we should miss you here, and you're an institution, Jim; we couldn't get on without you."

"Oh, Jim ought not to give up to one what was meant for mankind," said Alice, hardily. "I think there would be a universal protest against his retiring to private life."

And Alice looked into the fire, apparently as sweetly unconscious of anything particular on Jim's part as if she had not read aright the flash of his eye and the pressure of his hand.

Jim seemed vexed and nervous, and talked extravaganzas all the evening, with more than even his usual fluency, and towards ten o'clock said to Alice:

"I am at your command at any time, when you are ready to return home."

"Thank you, Jim," said Alice, with that demure and easy composure with which young ladies avoid a crisis without seeming to see it. "I am going to stay here to-night, to discuss some important points of party costume with Eva; so mind you don't fail us to-morrow night. Au revoir!"