University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
AUNT MARIA CLEARS HER CONSCIENCE.

WHEN Mrs. Wouvermans met our young friends,
she was just returning home after performing
her morning devotions in one of the most time-honored
churches in New York. She was as thorough and faithful
in her notions of religion as of housekeeping. She
adhered strictly to her own church, in which undeniably
none but ancient and respectable families worshiped, and
where she was perfectly sure that whatever of dress or
deportment she saw was certain to be the correct thing.

It was a church of eminent propriety. It was large
and lofty, with long-drawn aisles and excellent sleeping
accommodations, where the worshipers were assisted to
dream of heaven by every appliance of sweet music, and
not rudely shaken in their slumbers by any obtrusiveness
on the part of the rector.

In fact, everything about the services of this church
was thoroughly toned down by good breeding. The responses
of the worshipers were given in decorous whispers
that scarcely disturbed the solemn stillness; for
when a congregation of the best-fed and best-bred people
of New York on their knees declare themselves “miserable
sinners,” it is a matter of delicacy to make as little
disturbance about it as possible. A well-paid choir of
the finest professional singers took the whole responsibility
of praising God into their own hands, so that the
respectable audience were relieved from any necessity
of exertion in that department. As the most brilliant

lights of the opera were from time to time engaged to
render the more solemn parts of the service, flocks of
sinners who otherwise would never have entered a church
crowded to hear these “morning stars sing together;”
let us hope, to their great edification. The sermons of
the rector, delivered in the dim perspective, had a
plaintive, far-off sound, as a voice of one “crying in the
wilderness,” and crying at a very great distance. This
was in part owing to the fact that the church, having
been built after an old English ecclesiastical model in
days when English churches were used only for processional
services, was entirely unadapted for any purposes
of public speaking, so that a man's voice had about as
good chance of effect in it as if he spoke anywhere in
the thoroughfares of New York.

The rector, the Rev. Dr. Cushing, was a good, amiable
man; middle-aged, adipose, discreet, devoted to “our
excellent liturgy,” and from his heart opposed to anything
which made trouble.

From the remote distances whence his short Sunday
cry was uttered, he appeared moved to send protests
against two things: first, the tendency to philosophical
speculation and the skeptical humanitarian theories of
the age; and second, against Romanizing tendencies in
the church. The young missionary, St. John, who got
up to early services at conventual hours, and had prayers
every morning and evening, and communion every Sunday
and every Saint's day; who fasted on all the Ember
Days, and called on other people to fast, and seemed
literally to pray without ceasing; appeared to him a
bristling impersonation of the Romanizing tendencies of
the age, and one of those who troubled Israel. The
fact that many of the young ladies of the old established
church over which the good Doctor ministered were
drawn to flock up to the services of this disturber gave

to him a realizing sense of the danger to which the
whole church was thereby exposed.

On this particular morning he had selected that well-worn
text, “Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus,
better than all the waters of Jordan? May I not
wash in them and be clean?”

Of course, like everybody who preaches on this text,
he assumed that Jordan was the true faith as he preached
it, and that the rivers of Damascus were any and every
faith that diverged from his own.

These improper and profane rivers were various.
There was, of course, modern skepticism with profuse allusions
to Darwin; there were all sorts of modern humanitarian
and social reforms; and there was in the bosom
of the very church herself, he regretted to state, a disposition
to go off after the Abana and Pharpar of Romish
abominations. All these were to be avoided, and people
were to walk in those quiet paths of godliness in which
they had been brought up to walk, and, in short, do
pretty much as they had been doing, undisturbed by new
notions, or movements, or ideas, whether out of the
church or in.

And as he plaintively recited these exhortations, his
voice coming in a solemn and spectral tone adown the
far-off aisles, it seemed to give a dreamy and unreal effect
even to the brisk modern controversies and disturbances
which formed his theme. The gorgeous, many-colored
lights streamed silently the while through the stained
windows, turning the bald head of one ancient churchwarden
yellow, and of another green, and another purple,
while the white feathers on Mrs. Demas's bonnet
passed gradually through successive tints of the rainbow;
and the audience dosed off at intervals, and awakened
again to find the rector at another head, and talking
about something else; and so on till the closing ascription

to the Trinity, when everybody rose with a solemn sense
that something or other was over. The greater part of
the audience in the intervals of somnolency congratulated
themselves that they were in no danger of running after
new ideas, and thanked God that they never speculated
about philosophy. As to turning out to daily morning
and evening prayers, or fasting on any days whatsoever,
or going into any extravagant excesses of devotion and
self-sacrifice, they were only too happy to find that it was
their duty to resist the very suggestion as tending directly
to Romanism.

The true Jordan, they were happy to find, ran directly
through their own particular church, and they had only
to continue their stated Sunday naps on its borders as
before.

Mrs. Wouvermans, however, was not of a dozing or
dreamy nature. Her mind, such as it was, was always
wide awake and cognizant of what she was about. She
was not susceptible of a dreamy state: to use an idiomatic
phrase, she was always up and dressed; everything
in her mental vision was clear cut and exact. The sermon
was intensified in its effect upon her by the state of
the Van Arsdel pew, of which she was on this Sunday
the only occupant. The fact was, that the ancient and
respectable church in which she worshiped had just been
through a contest, in which Mr. Simons, a young assistant
rector, had been attempting to introduce some of
the very practices hinted at in the discourse. This fervid
young man, full of fire and enthusiasm, had incautiously
been made associate rector for this church, at the
time when Dr. Cushing had been sent to Europe to recover
from a bronchial attack. He was young, earnest
and eloquent, and possessed with the idea that all those
burning words and phrases in the prayer-book, which had
dropped like precious gems dyed with the heart's blood of

saints and martyrs, ought to mean something more than
they seemed to do for modern Christians. Without introducing
any new ritual, he set himself to make vivid
and imperative every doctrine and direction of the
prayer-book, and to bring the drowsy company of pew-holders
somewhere up within sight of the plane of the
glorious company of apostles and the noble army of
martyrs with whose blood it was sealed. He labored
and preached, and strove and prayed, tugging at the
drowsy old church, like Pegasus harnessed to a stone
cart. He set up morning and evening prayers, had communion
every Sunday, and annoyed old rich saints by
suggesting that it was their duty to build mission chapels
and carry on mission works, after the pattern of St. Paul
and other irrelevant and excessive worthies, who in their
time were accused of turning the world upside down.
Of course there was resistance and conflict, and more
life in the old church than it had known for years; but
the conflict became at last so wearisome that, on Mr.
Cushing's return from Europe, the young angel spread
his wings and fled away to a more congenial parish in a
neighboring city.

But many in whom his labors had wakened a craving
for something real and earnest in religion strayed off to
other churches, and notably the younger members of the
Van Arsdel family, to the no small scandal of Aunt Maria.

The Van Arsdel pew was a perfect fort and intrenchment
of respectability. It was a great high, square wallpew,
well cushioned and ample, with an imposing array of
prayer-books; there was room in it for a regiment of
saints, and here Aunt Maria sat on this pleasant Sunday
listening to the dangers of the church, all alone. She
felt, in a measure, like Elijah the Tishbite, as if she
only were left to stand up for the altars of her faith.

Mrs. Wouvermans was not a person to let an evil run

on very far without a protest. “While she was musing
the fire burned,” and when she had again mounted guard
in the pew at afternoon service, and still found herself
alone, she resolved to clear her conscience; and so she
walked straight up to Nellie's, to see why none of them
were at church.

“It's a shame, Nellie, a perfect shame! There wasn't
a creature but myself in our pew to-day, and good Dr.
Cushing giving such a sermon this morning!”

This to Mrs. Van Arsdel, whom she found luxuriously
ensconced on a sofa drawn up before the fire in her bedroom.

“Ah, well, the fact is, Maria, I had such a headache
this morning,” replied she, plaintively.

“Well, then, you ought to have made your husband
and family go; somebody ought to be there! It positively
isn't respectable.”

“Ah, well, Maria, my husband, poor man, gets so
tired and worn out with his week's work, I haven't a
heart to get him up early enough for morning service.
Mr. Van Arsdel isn't feeling quite well lately; he hasn't
been out at all to-day.”

“Well, there are the girls, Alice and Angelique and
Marie, where are they? All going up to that old Popish,
ritualistic chapel, I suppose. It's too bad. Now, that's
all the result of Mr. Simons's imprudences. I told you,
in the time of it, just what it would lead to. It leads
straight to Rome, just as I said. Mr. Simons set them
a-going, and now he is gone and they go where they have
lighted candles on the altar every Sunday, and Mr. St.
John prays with his back to them, and has processions,
and wears all sorts of heathenish robes; and your daughters
go there, Nellie.”

The very plumes in Aunt Maria's hat nodded with
warning energy as she spoke

“Are you sure the candles are lighted?” said Mrs.
Van Arsdel, sitting up with a weak show of protest, and
looking gravely into the fire. “I was up there once, and
there were candles on the altar, to be sure, but they were
not lighted.”

“They are lighted,” said Mrs. Wouvermans, with
awful precision. “I've been up there myself and seen
them. Now, how can you let your children run at loose
ends so, Nellie? I only wish you had heard the sermon
this morning. He showed the danger of running into
Popery; and it really was enough to make one's blood run
cold to hear how those infidels are attacking the church,
carrying all before them; and then to think that the
only true church should be all getting divided and
mixed up and running after Romanism! It's perfectly
awful.”

“Well, I don't know what we can do,” said Mrs. Van
Arsdel, helplessly.

“And we've got both kinds of trouble in our family.
Eva's husband is reading all What's-his-name's works—
that evolution man, and all that; and then Eva and the
girls going after this St. John—and he's leading them
as straight to Rome as they can go.”

Poor Mrs. Van Arsdel was somewhat fluttered by
this alarming view of the case, and clasped her pretty,
fat, white hands, that glittered with rings like lilies with
dew-drops, and looked the image of gentle, incapable
perplexity.

“I don't believe Harry is an infidel,” she said at last.
“He has to read Darwin and all those things, because
he has to talk about them in the magazine; and as to
Mr. St. John—you know Eva is delicate and can't walk
so far as our church, and this is right round the corner
from her; and Mr. St. John is a good man. He does
ever so much for the poor, and almost supports a mission

there; and the Bishop doesn't forbid him, and if the
Bishop thought there was any danger, he would.”

“Well, I can't think, for my part, what our Bishop can
be thinking of,” said Aunt Maria, who was braced up to
an extraordinary degree by the sermon of the morning.
“I don't see how he can let them go on so—with candles,
and processions, and heathen robes, and all that. I'd
process 'em out of the church in quick time. If I were
he, I'd have all that sort of trumpery cleaned out at
once; for just see where it leads to! I may not be as
good a Christian as I ought to be—we all have our short-comings—but
one thing I know, I do hate the Catholics
and all that belongs to them; and I'd no more have such
goings on in my diocese than I'd have moths in my carpet!
I'd sweep 'em right out!” said Aunt Maria, with a
gesture as if she held the besom of destruction.

Mrs. Wouvermans belonged to a not uncommon class
of Christians, whose evidences of piety are more vigorous
in hating than in loving. There is no manner of doubt
that she would have made good her word,had she been a
bishop.

“Oh, well, Maria,” said Mrs. Van Arsdel, drawing
her knit zephyr shawl about her with a sort of consolatory
movement, and settling herself cosily back on her
sofa, “it 's evident that the Bishop does n't see just as
you do, and I am content to allow what he does. As to
the girls, they are old enough to judge for themselves,
and, besides, I think they are doing some good by teaching
in that mission school. I hope so, at least. Anyway,
I could n't help it if I would. But, do tell me, did
Mrs. Demas have on her new bonnet?”

“Yes, she did,” said Aunt Maria, with vigor; “and
I can tell you it 's a perfect fright, if it did come from
Paris. Another thing I saw—fringes have come round
again! Mrs. Lamar's new cloak was trimmed with fringe.”

“You do n't say so,” said Mrs. Van Arsdel, contemplating
all the possible consequences of this change.
“There was another reason why I could n't go out this
morning,” she added, rather irrelevantly—“I had no
bonnet. Adrienne could n't get the kind of ruche necessary
to finish it till next week, and the old one is too
shabby. Were the Stuyvesants out?”

“Oh, yes, in full force. She has the same bonnet she
wore last year, done over with a new feather.”

“Oh, well, the Stuyvesants can do as they please,”
said Mrs. Van Arsdel; “everybody knows who they are,
let them wear what they will.”

“Emma Stuyvesant had a new Paris hat and a sacque
trimmed with bullion fringe,” continued Aunt Maria.
“I thought I'd tell you, because you can use what was on
your velvet dress over again; it 's just as good as ever.”

“So I can”—and for a moment the great advantage
of going punctually to church appeared to Mrs. Van
Arsdel. “Did you see Sophie Sidney?”

“Yes. She was gorgeous in a mauve suit with hat to
match; but she has gone off terribly in her looks—yellow
as a lemon.”

“Who else did you see?” said Mrs. Van Arsdel, who
liked this topic of conversation better than the dangers
of the church.

“Oh, well, the Davenports were there, and the Livingstones,
and of course Polly Elmore, with her tribe,
looking like birds of Paradise. The amount of time and
money and thought that family gives to dress is enormous!
John Davenport stopped and spoke to me
coming out of church. He says, `Seems to me, Mrs.
Wouvermans, your young ladies have deserted us; you
must n't suffer them to stray from the fold,' says he. I
saw he had his eye on our pew when he first came into
church.”

“I think, Maria, you really are quite absurd in your
suspicions about that man,” said Mrs. Van Arsdel. “I
do n't think there 's anything in it.”

“Well, just wait now and see. I know more about it
than you do. If only Alice manages her cards right, she
can get that man.”

“Alice will never manage cards for any purpose. She
is too proud for that. She has n't a bit of policy.”

“And there was that Jim Fellows waiting on her
home. I met him this morning, just as I turned the
corner.”

“Well, Alice tries to exert a good influence over Jim,
and has got him to teach in Mr. St. John's Sunday-school.”

“Fiddlesticks! What does he care for Sunday-school?”

“Well, the girls all say that he does nicely. He has
more influence over that class of boys than anybody else
would.”

“Likely! Set a rogue to catch a rogue,” said Aunt
Maria. “It 's his being seen so much with Alice that
I 'm thinking of. You may depend upon it, it has a bad
effect.”

Mrs. Van Arsdel dreaded the setting of her sister's
mind in this direction, so by way of effecting a diversion
she rang and inquired when tea would be ready. As the
door opened, the sound of very merry singing came up
stairs. Angelique was seated at the piano and playing
tunes out of one of the Sunday-school manuals, and the
whole set were singing with might and main. Jim's tenor
could be heard above all the rest.

“Why, is that fellow here?” said Aunt Maria.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Van Arsdel; “he very often stays
to tea with us Sunday nights, and he and the girls sing
hymns together.”

“Hymns!” said Aunt Maria. “I should call that a
regular jollification that they are having down there.”

“Oh, well, Maria, they are singing children's tunes
out of one of the little Sunday-school manuals. You
know children's tunes are so different from old-fashioned
psalm tunes!”

Just then the choir below struck up

with a marching energy and a vivacity that was positively
startling, and, to be sure, not in the least like the old,
long-drawn, dolorous strains once supposed to be peculiar
to devotion. In fact, one of the greatest signs of
progress in our modern tunes is the bursting forth of religious
thought and feeling in childhood and youth in
strains gay and airy as hope and happiness—melodies
that might have been learned of those bright little “fowls
of the air,” of whom the Master bade us take lessons, so
that a company of wholesome, healthy, right-minded
young people can now get together and express themselves
in songs of joy, and hope, and energy, such as
childhood and youth ought to be full of.

Let those who will talk of the decay of Christian faith
in our day; so long as songs about Jesus and his love are
bursting forth on every hand, thick as violets and apple
blossoms in June, so long as the little Sunday-school song
books sell by thousands and by millions, and spring forth
every year in increasing numbers, so long will it appear
that faith is ever fresh-springing and vital. It was the
little children in the temple who cried, “Hosanna to the
Son of David,” when chief priests and scribes were
scowling and saying, “Master, forbid them,” and doubtless
the same dear Master loves to hear these child-songs
now as then.

At all events, our little party were having a gay and

festive time over two or three new collections of Clarion,
Golden Chain, Golden Shower, or what not, of which Jim
had brought a pocketful for the girls to try, and certainly
the melodies as they came up were bright and lively and
pretty enough to stir one's blood pleasantly. In fact,
both Aunt Maria and Mrs. Van Arsdel were content for
a season to leave the door open and listen.

“You see,” said Mrs. Van Arsdel, “Jim is such a
pleasant, convenient, obliging fellow, and has done so
many civil turns for the family, that we quite make him
at home here; we don't mind him at all. It's a pleasant
thing, too, and a convenience, now the boys are gone, to
have some young man that one feels perfectly free with
to wait on the girls; and where there are so many
of them, there 's less danger of anything particular.
There 's no earthly danger of Alice's being specially interested
in Jim. He is n't at all the person she would
ever think seriously of, though she likes him as a friend.”

Mrs. Wouvermans apparently acquiesced for the time
in this reasoning, but secretly resolved to watch appearances
narrowly this evening, and if she saw what warranted
the movement to take the responsibility of the
case into her own hands forthwith. Her perfect immutable
and tranquil certainty that she was the proper person
to manage anything within the sphere of her vision
gave her courage to go forward in spite of the fears and
remonstrances of any who might have claimed that they
were parties concerned.

Mr. Jim Fellows was one of those persons in whom a
sense of humor operates as a subtle lubricating oil through
all the internal machinery of the mind, causing all which
might otherwise have jarred or grated to slide easily.
Many things which would be a torture to more earnest
people were to him a source of amusement. In fact,
humor was so far a leading faculty that it was difficult to

keep him within limits of propriety and decorum, and
prevent him from racing off at unsuitable periods like a
kitten after a pin-ball, skipping over all solemnities of
etiquette and decorum. He had not been so long intimate
in the family without perfectly taking the measure
of so very active and forth-putting a member as Aunt
Maria. He knew exactly—as well as if she had told
him—how she regarded him, for his knowledge of character
was not the result of study, but that sort of clear
sight which in persons of quick perceptive organs seems
like a second sense. He saw into persons without an
effort, and what he saw for the most part only amused
him.

He perceived immediately on sitting down to tea
that he was under the glance of Mrs. Wouverman's
watchful and critical eye, and the result was that he became
full and ready to boil over with wicked drollery.
With an apparently grave face, without passing the limits
of the most ceremonious politeness and decorum, he
contrived, by a thousand fleeting indescribable turns
and sliding intonations and adroit movements to get all
the girls into a tempest of suppressed gaiety. There are
wicked rogues known to us all who have this magical
power of making those around them burst out into indiscreet
sallies of laughter, while they retain the most edifying
and innocent air of gravity. Seated next to Aunt
Maria, Jim managed, by most devoted attention and
reverential listening, to draw from her a zealous analysis
of the morning sermon, which she gave with the more
heat and vigor, hoping thereby to reprove the stray sheep
who had thus broken boundaries.

Her views of the danger of modern speculation, and
her hearty measures for its repression, were given with
an earnestness that was from the heart.

“I can 't understand what anybody wants to have

these controversies for, and listen to these infidel philosophers.
I never doubt. I never have doubted. I do n't
think I have altered an iota of my religious faith since I
was seven years old; and if I had the control of things,
I 'd put a stop to all this sort of fuss.”

“You then would side with his Holiness, the Pope,”
said Jim. “That's precisely the ground of his last allocution.”

“No, indeed, I shouldn't. I think Popery is worse
yet—it's terrible! Dr. Cushing showed that this morning,
and it's the greatest danger of our day; and I think
that Mr. St. John of yours is nothing more than a decoy
duck to lead you all to Rome. I went up there once and
saw 'em genuflecting, and turning to the east, and burning
candles, and that's all I want to know about them.”

“But the east is a pertectly harmless point of the compass,”
said Jim, with suavity; “and though I don't want
candles in the daytime myself, yet I don't see what harm
it does anybody to burn them.”

“Why, that's just what the Catholics do,” said Mrs.
Wouvermans.

“Oh, that 's it, is it!” said Jim, with a submissive air.
“Must n't we do any thing that Catholics do?”

“No, indeed,” said Aunt Maria, falling into the open
trap with affecting naïveté.

“Then we must n't pray at all,” said Jim.

“Oh, pshaw! of course I did n't mean that. You know
what I mean.”

“Certainly, ma'am. I think I understand,” said Jim,
while Alice, who had been looking reprovingly at him,
led off the subject into another strain.

But Mrs. Wouvermans was more gracious to Jim that
evening than usual, and when she rose to go home that
young gentleman offered his attendance, and was accepted
with complacency.

Mrs. Wouvermans, in a general way, believed in what
is called Providence. That is to say, when any little
matter fell out in a manner exactly apposite to any of
her schemes, she called it providential. On the present
occasion, when she found herself walking in the streets
of New York alone, in the evening, with a young man
who treated her with flattering deference, it could not
but strike her as a providential opportunity not to be
neglected of fulfilling her long-cherished intentions and
giving a sort of wholesome check and caution to the
youth. So she began with infinite adroitness to prepare
the way. Jim, the while, who saw perfectly what she was
aiming at, assisting her in the most obliging manner.

After passing through sundry truisms about the necessity
of caution and regarding appearances, and thinking
what people will say to this and that, she proceeded
to inform him that the report was in circulation that he
was engaged to Alice.

“The report does me entirely too much honor,” said
Jim. “But of course if Miss Alice is n't disposed to
deny it, I am not.”

“Of course Miss Alice's friends will deny it,” said
Aunt Maria, decisively. “I merely mentioned it to you
that you may see the need of caution. You know, of
course, Mr. Fellows, that such reports stand in the way
of others who might be disposed—well, you understand.”

“Oh, perfectly, exactly, quite so,” said Jim, who could
be profuse of his phrases on occasion, “and I 'm extremely
obliged to you for this suggestion; undoubtedly
your great experience and knowledge of the ways of society
will show you the exact way to deal with such
things.”

“You see,” pursued Mrs. Wouvermans, in a confidential
tone, “there is at present a person every way
admirable and desirable, who is thinking very seriously

of Alice; it 's quite confidential, you know; but you must
be aware—of the danger.”

“I perceive—a blight of the poor fellow's budding
hopes and early affections,” said Jim, fluently; “well,
though of course the very suggestion of such a report in
regard to me is flattery far beyond my deserts, so that I
can 't be annoyed by it, still I should be profoundly sorry
to have it occasion any trouble to Miss Alice.”

“I felt sure that you would n't be offended with me
for speaking so very plainly. I hope you 'll keep it entirely
private.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Jim, with the most cheerful
goodwill. “When ladies with your tact and skill in human
nature talk to us young fellows you never give offense.
We take your frankness as a favor.”

Mrs. Wouvermans smiled with honest pride. Had
she not been warned against talking to this youth as
something that was going to be of most explosive tendency?
How little could Nellie, or Eva, or any of them,
appreciate her masterly skill! She really felt in her heart
disposed to regret that so docile a pupil, one so appreciative
of her superior abilities, was not a desirable
matrimonial parti. Had Jim been a youth of fortune
she felt that she could have held up both hands for him.

“He really is agreeable,” was her thought, as she shut
the door upon him.