My Wife and I. Harry Henderson's History

Our conversation was interrupted here by Jim Fellows, who came thundering up-stairs, singing at the top of his lungs —

"If an engine meet an engineComing round a curve, —If it smash both train and tender,What does It deserve?Not a penny – paid to any,So far as I observe – "

"Gracious, Jim! what a noise!" said I, as he entered the room with a perfect war-whoop on the chorus.

"Bless my soul, man, why arn't you dressing? Arn't you going up to the garden of Eden with me to night, to see the woman, and the serpent, and all that?" he said, collaring me without ceremony. "Come away to your bower, and curl your nut-brown hair; for

Time roils along,Nor waits for mortal care or bliss,We'll take our staff and travel on,Till we arrive where the pretty gals is."

And thus singing, Jim whirled me down the stairs, and tumbled me into my room, and went into his, where I heard him accompanying his toilet operations with very loud selections from the last comic opera, beating time with his hair-brush in a bewildering manner.

Jim was certainly a natural curiosity in respect to the eternal, unceasing vivacity of his animal spirits, which were in a state of effervesence from morning to night, frothing out in some odd freak of drollery or buffoonery. There was not the smallest use in trying remonstrance or putting on a sober face; his persistence, and the endless variety of his queer conceits, would have overcome the gravity of the saddest hermit that ever wore sackcloth and ashes.

Bolton had become accustomed to see him bursting into his room at all hours, with a breeze which fluttered all his papers; and generally sat back resignedly in his chair, and laughed in helpless good-nature, no matter how untimely the interruption. "Oh, it's Jim!" he would say, in tones of comic resignation. "It's no use; he must have his fling!"

"Time's up," said Jim, drumming on my door with his hair-brush when his toilet was completed. "Come on, my boy, 'Let us haste to Kelvyn Grove.'"

I opened my door, and Jim took a paternal survey of me from neck-cloth to boot-toe, turning me round and inspecting me on all sides, as if I had been a Sunday-school boy, dressed for an exhibition.

"Those girls have such confounded sharp eyes," he remarked, "a fellow needs to be well got up. Yes, you'll do; and you're not bad looking, Hal, either, all things considered," he added, encouragingly. "Come along. I've got lots of things to make a sensation with among the girls to-night."

"What, for example?"

"Oh, I've been investigating round, and know sundry little interesting particulars as to the new engagement just declared. I know when the engagement ring was got, and what it cost, and where the bride's jewels are making up, and what they are to be – all secrets, you understand, of the very deadest door-nail kind. But Jim knows them! Oh, yes! – you'll see the flutter I'll make in the roost to-night! I say, if you want to cultivate your acquaintance with Miss Eva there, I'll draw all the rest off, and keep 'em so wide awake round me that they'll never think what becomes of you."

I must confess to feeling not a little nervous in the prospect of my initiation into society, and regarding with a secret envy the dashing, easy assurance of Jim. I called him in my heart something of a coxcomb, but it was with a half-amused tolerance that I allowed him to patronize me.

The experience of a young man who feels that he has his own way in life to make, and all whose surroundings must necessarily be of the most rigid economy, when he enters the modern sphere of young ladyhood, is like a sudden change from Nova Zembla to the tropics. His is a world of patient toil, of hard effort, of dry drudgery, of severe economies; while our young American princesses, his social equals, whose society fascinates him, to whose acquaintance he aspires, live like the fowls of the air or the lilies of the field, without a thought of labor, or a care, or serious responsibility of any kind. They are "gay creatures of the element," living to enjoy and to amuse themselves, to be fostered, sheltered, dressed, petted, and made to have "good times" generally. In England, there are men born to just this life and position, – hereditary possessors of wealth, ease, and leisure, and therefore able to be hereditary idlers and triflers – to live simply to spend and to enjoy. But in America, where there are no laws to keep fortunes in certain families, fortunes, as a general rule, must be made by their possessors, and young men must make them. The young, unmarried women, therefore, remain the only aristocracy privileged to live in idleness, and wait for their duties to come to them.

The house to which I was introduced that night was one of those New York palaces that are furnished with eclectic taste, after a survey of all that Europe has to give. The suites of rooms opened into each other in charming vista, and the walls were hung with the choicest paintings. It was evident that cultured skill and appreciation had presided over the collection of the endless objects of artistic elegance and vertu which adorned every apartment: it was no vulgar display of wealth, but a selection which must have been the result of study and care.

Jim, acting the part of master of ceremonies, duly presented me to Mr. and Mrs. Van Arsdel, and the bevy of young ladies, whose eyes twinkled with dangerous merriment as I made my bow to them.

Mr. Van Arsdel was what one so often sees in these palaces, a simple, quiet, silent man, not knowing or caring a bodle about any of the wonders of art and luxury with which his womankind have surrounded him, and not pretending in the least to comprehend them; but quietly indulgent to the tastes and whims of wife and daughters, of whose superior culture he is secretly not a little proud.

In Wall street Mr. Van Arsdel held up his head, and found much to say; his air was Napoleonic; in short, there his foot was on his native heath. But in his own house, among Cuyps, and Frères, and Rembrandts, and Fra Angelicos, with a set of polyglot daughters who spake with tongues, he walked softly, and expressed himself with humility, like a sensible man.

Mrs. Van Arsdel had been a beauty from her youth; had come of a family renowned for belles, and was still a very handsome woman, and, of course, versed in all those gentle diplomacies, and ineffable arts and crafts, by which the sons of Adam are immediately swayed and governed.

Never was stately swan sailing at the head of a brood of fair young cygnets more competent to leadership than she to marshal her troop of bright, handsome daughters through the straits of girlhood to the high places of matrimony. She read, and classified, and ticketed, at a glance, every young man presented to her, yet there was not a shade of the scrutiny dimming the bland cordiality of her reception. She was winning, warming, and charming; fully alive to the éclat of a train of admirers, and to the desirableness of keeping up a brilliant court.

"Mr. Henderson," she said, with a rich mellow laugh, "I tell Eva there is some advantage, first or last, in almost everything. One of her scatter-brained tricks has brought us the pleasure of your acquaintance."

"Mamma has such a shocking way of generalizing about us girls," said Eva; "If we once are caught doing a thing she talks as if we made a regular habit of it. Now, I have come over from Brooklyn hundreds of times, and never failed to have the proper change in my purse till this once."

"I am to regard it, then, as a special piece of good fortune, sent to me?" said I, drawing somewhat nearer, as Mrs. Van Arsdel turned to receive some new arrivals.

I had occasion this evening to admire the facility with which Jim fulfilled his promise of absorbing to himself the attention of the young hostesses, and leaving me the advantage of a tête-à-tête with my new acquaintance. I could see him at this moment, seated by Miss Alice, a splendid, brilliant brunette, while the two pretty younger sisters, not yet supposed to be out, were seated on ottomans, and all in various stages of intense excitement. I could hear:

"Oh, Mr. Fellows, now, you must tell us! indeed I am quite wild to know! how could you find it out?" in various, eager tones. Jim, of course, was as fully aware of the importance of a dramatic mystery as a modern novel-writer, and pursued a course of most obdurate provocation, letting out only such glimpses and sparkles of the desired intelligence as served to inflame curiosity, and hold the attention of the circle concentrated upon himself.

"I think you are perfectly dreadful! Oh, Mr. Fellows, it really is a shame that you don't tell us, really now I shall break friendship with you," – the tones here became threatening. Then Jim struck a tragic attitude, and laid his hand on his heart, and declared that he was a martyr, and there was more laughing and such a chatter, and confusion of tongues, that nothing definite could be made out.

The length of time that young people, from eighteen to twenty, and even upward, can keep themselves in ecstacies of excitement with such small stock of real things of any sort to say, is something that invariably astonishes old and sober people, who have forgotten that they once were in this happy age, when everything made them laugh. There was soon noise enough, and absorption enough, in the little circle, – widened by the coming in of one or two other young men – to leave me quite unnoticed, and in the background. This was not to be regretted, as Miss Eva assumed with a charming ease and self-possession that rôle of hospitality and entertainment, for which I fancy our young American princess has an especial talent.

"Do you know, Mr. Henderson," she said, "we scarcely expected you, as we hear you never go out."

"Indeed!" said I.

"Oh, yes! your friend, Mr. Fellows there, has presented you to us in most formidable aspects – such a Diogenes! so devoted to your tub! no getting you out on any terms!"

"I'm sure," I answered, laughing, "I wasn't aware that I had ever had the honor of being discussed in your circle at all."

"Oh, indeed, Mr. Henderson, you gentlemen who make confidants of the public are often known much better than you know. I have felt acquainted with many of your thoughts for a long while."

What writer is insensible to such flattery as this? especially from the prettiest of lips. I confess I took to this sort of thing kindly, and was ready if possible for a little more of it. I began to say to myself how charming it was to find beauty and fashion united with correct literary taste.

"Now," she said, as the rooms were rapidly filling, "let me show you if I have not been able to read aright some of your tastes. Come into what I call my 'Italy.'" She lifted a portiére and we stepped into a charming little boudoir, furnished in blue satin, whose walls were finished in compartments, in each of which hung a copy of one of Fra Angelico's Angels. Over the white marble mantel was a superb copy of "The Paradise." "There," she said, turning to me, with a frank smile, "am I not right?"

"You are, indeed, Miss Van Arsdel. What beautiful copies! They take me back to Florence."

"See here," she added, opening a velvet case, "here is something that I know you noticed, for I read what you thought of it."

It was an exquisite copy of that rarest little gem of Fra Angelico's painting, "The Death-Bed of the Virgin Mary," – in time past the theme of some of my verses, which Miss Van Arsdel thus graciously recalled.

"Do you know," she said, "the only drawback when one reads poems that exactly express what one would like to say, is that it makes us envious; one thinks, why couldn't I have said it thus?"

"Miss Van Arsdel," said I, "do you remember the lines of Longfellow: 'I shot an arrow through the air?'"

"What are they?" she said.

I repeated:

"I shot an arrow into the air,It fell to earth, I knew not where;For, so swiftly it flew, the sightCould not follow it in its flight."I breathed a song into the air,It fell to earth, I knew not where;For who has sight so keen and strong,That it can follow the flight of song?"Long, long afterward, in an oakI found the arrow, still unbroke;And the song, from beginning to end,I found again in the heart of a friend."

"Do you know," I said, "that this expresses exactly what a poet wants? It is not admiration, it is sympathy. Poems are test papers, put in the atmosphere of life to detect this property; we can find by them who really feel with us; and those who do, whether near or far, are friends. The making of friends is the most precious gift for which poetic utterance is given."

"I don't think," said she, "you should say 'make friends' – friends are discovered, rather than made. There are people who are in their own nature friends, only they don't know each other; but certain things like poetry, music, and painting, are like the free-mason's signs – they reveal the initiated to each other."

And so on we went, deliciously talking and ranging through portfolios of engravings that took us through past days; rambling through all our sunny Italian life, up the Campanile, through the old Duomo; sauntering through the ilexes of the Boboli Garden; comparing notes on the pictures in the Pitti and the Belle Arte – in short, we had one of that blessed kind of times which come when two enthusiasts go back together over the brightest and sunniest passages of their experience.

My head swam; a golden haze was around me, and I was not quite certain whether I was in the body or not. It seemed to me that we two must always have known each other, so very simple and natural did it seem for us to talk together, and to understand one another. "But," she said, suddenly checking herself, "if we get to going on all these things there is no end to it, and I promised sister Ida that I would present you in her study to-night."

"Seems to me it is so very delightful here!" said I, deprecatingly, not well pleased to come out of my dream.

"Ah, but you don't know, Mr. Henderson, this proposed presentation is a special honor. I assure you that this is a distinction that is almost never accorded to any of our callers; you must know sister Ida has retired from the world, and given herself up to the pursuit of wisdom, and it is the rarest thing on earth that she vouchsafes to care for seeing any one."

"I should be only too much flattered," said I, as I followed my guide across a hall, and into a little plainly furnished study, whose air of rigid simplicity contrasted with the luxury of all the other parts of the house.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE YOUNG LADY PHILOSOPHER

Seated, reading by a shaded study-lamp, was a young woman of what I should call the Jeanie Deans order – one whose whole personal appearance indicated that sort of compact, efficient union of energy and simplicity characteristic of the Scottish heroine. Her hair, of a pretty curly brown, was cut short, à la Rosa Bonheur; her complexion glowed with a sort of a wholesome firmness, indicative of high health; her large, serious grey eyes had an expression of quiet resolution, united with careful observation. Her figure inclined to the short, stout and well-compacted order, which gave promise of vitality and power of endurance – without pretensions to beauty. There was a wholesome, thoughtful cheerfulness and good humor in the expression of the face that made it decidedly prepossessing and attractive.

The furniture of the room, too, was in contrast with all the other appointments of the house. It was old and worn, and of that primitive kind that betokened honest and respectable mediocrity. There was a quaint, old-fashioned writing-desk, with its array of drawers and pigeon-holes; there were old slippery wooden arm-chairs, unrelieved by cushions; while the floor was bare, excepting in front of the fire, where it was covered by a large square of what New England housekeepers call rag-carpet. The room, in fact, was furnished like the sitting-room of an old New England farm-house. A cheerful, bountiful wood-fire, burning on a pair of old-fashioned brass andirons, added to the resemblance.

"You see, Mr. Henderson," said Miss Eva, when I had been introduced and seated, "you are now in the presence of Miss Van Arsdel proper. This room is Papa's and Ida's joint territory, where their own tastes and notions have supreme sway; and so you see it is sacred to the memories of the past. There is all the old furniture that belonged to papa when he was married. Poor man! he has been pushed out into grandeur, step by step, till this was all that remained, and Ida opened an asylum for it. Do you know, this is the only room in the house Papa cares much for. You see, he was born on a farm, dear gentleman, and he has an inveterate yearning after primitive simplicity – huckleberries and milk, you know, and all that. Don't this look like the old 'keeping-room' style?"

"Yes," said I, "it looks like home. I know rooms just like it."

"But I like these old primitive things," said Ida. "I like hardness and simplicity. I am sick to death of softness and perfumed cushions and ease. We women are sweltered under down beds, and smothered with luxuries, in our modern day, till all the life dies out of us. I want to live while I live, and to keep myself in such trim that I can do something – and I won't pet myself nor be petted."

"There," said Eva, laughing, "blood will tell; there's the old Puritan broken loose in Ida. She don't believe any of their doctrines, but she goes on their track. She's just like a St. Bernard dog that she brought home once. As soon as snow came, he was wild to run out and search in it, and used to run off whole days in the woods, just because his ancestors were trained to hunt travelers. Ida is as bent on testifying and going against the world as any old Covenanter."

"The world needs going against," said Ida. "By the by, Mr. Henderson, you must allow me to thank you for your article on the 'Woman of our Times,' in the Milky Way. It is bracing, and will do good."

"And I," said Eva, kindling with a sort of flame-like vivacity, "have been perfectly dying to tell you that you don't know us fashionable girls, and that we are not, after all, such poor trash as you seem to think. All the out-of-jointness of society is not our fault."

"I protest, Miss Eva," said I, astonished at the eagerness of her manner. "I'm sure I don't know what I have said to give that impression."

"Oh, I dare say not. You have only used the good stock phrases and said the usual things. You reformers and moralists, and all that have got a way of setting us girls down as sinners as a matter of course, so that you never think when you do it. The 'Dolls of fashion,' the 'Butterflies,' &c., &c., are used to point the moral and adorn the tale. The girl of the period is the scapegoat for all the naughty things going. Now, I say the girl of the period isn't a particle worse than the boy of the period; and I think reformers had better turn their attention to him."

"But I don't remember," said I, astonished and confused at the sudden vivacity of this attack, "that I said anything."

"Oh, yes, but I do. You see it's the party that's hit that knows when a blow is struck. You see, Mr. Henderson, it isn't merely you, but everybody, from the London Spectator down, when they get on their preaching-caps, and come forth to right the wrongs of society, begin about us– our dressiness, our expensiveness, our idleness, our extravagance, our heartlessness. The men, poor, dear creatures, are led astray and ruined by us. It's the old story of Adam: 'The woman beguiled me.'"

"You see," said Ida, laughing, "Eva's conscience troubles her; that's why she's so sensitive."

"Well, that's the truth," said Eva. "I'm in the world, and Ida has gone out of it; and so she can sit by, all serene, when hits are made at us, and say, 'I told you so.' But, you see, I am in, and am all the while sure that about half what they say of us is true, and that makes me sensitive when they say too much. But, I insist upon it, it isn't all true; and if it is, it isn't our fault. We are in the world just as we are in a railroad-car, and we can't help its carrying us on, even if we don't like the places it takes us through."

"Unless you get out of it," said Ida.

"Yes, but it takes courage to get out alone, at some desolate way station, and set up your tent, and make your way, and have everybody in the cars screaming remonstrances or laughing at you. Ida has the courage to do it, but I haven't. I don't believe in myself enough to do it, so I stay in the car, and wish I didn't, and wish we were all going a better way than we do."

"No," said Ida; "women are brought up in a way to smother all the life out of them. All literature from the earliest ages teaches them that it is graceful to be pretty and helpless; they aspire to be superficial and showy. They are directed to look on themselves as flowers —

Gay without toil, and lovely without art,They spring to cheer the sense, and warm the heart;Nor blush, my fair, to be compared to these —Your best, your noblest mission, is to please."

"Well," said Eva, flushing, "wasn't it a man that wrote that? and don't they always misunderstand us? We are soft – we are weak – we do love beauty, and ease, and comfort; but there is a something in us more than they give us credit for. Where is that place in Carlyle?" she said, rising with a hasty impulse, and taking down a volume, and running rapidly over the leaves – "Oh, here it is!" and she read with energy from Carlyle's Hero Worship:

'It is a calumny to say that men are nerved to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense – sugar-plums of any kind – in this world or the next. In the meanest mortal there is something nobler. The poor, swearing soldier, hired to be shot, has his honor of a soldier different from drill, regulations, and the shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, and the dullest drudge kindles into a hero.

'They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, and you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations.'

"Now," she said, her face glowing, and bringing down her little fist with emphasis, "that is true of women as well as men. They wrong woman greatly who say she is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are allurements that act on the heart of woman. Now, Mr. Henderson, every woman that is a woman, feels this in the depths of her heart, and it is this feeling suppressed that is at the bottom of a great deal of unhappiness in woman's life. You men have your chance to express it – that is your great good fortune. You are called to be heroes – your hour comes – but we are buried under eternal common-places and trifles."

"Yet, Miss Eva," said I, "I don't think we are so very much better off than you. The life of the great body of men is a succession of mere ignoble drudgeries, with nothing great or inspiring. Unless we learn to ennoble the common-place by a heroic spirit, most of us must pass through life with no expression of this aspiration; and I think that more women succeed in doing this than men – in fact, I think it is the distinctive prerogative of woman to idealize life by shedding an ennobling spirit upon its very trifles."

"That is true," she said, frankly; "but I confess it never occurred to me; yet don't you think it harder to be heroic in every-day affairs?"

"Certainly; but those that can inspire common-place drudgery with noble and heroic meanings are the true heroes. There was a carpenter once in Nazareth who worked thirty years quietly at his bench; but who doubts that every stroke of that work was inspired and heroic, as much as the three public years that followed? And there are women, like him, toiling in poverty – hard-working wives, long-suffering mothers, whose every breath is heroic. There can be no common-place where such noble creatures live and suffer."