University of Virginia Library

38. CHAPTER XXXVIII.
MAKING LOVE TO ONE'S FATHER IN-LAW.

LIFE has many descents from romance to reality
that are far from agreeable. But every exalted
hour, and every charming passage in our mortal
pilgrimage, is a luxury that has to be paid for with something
disagreeable. The German story teller, Tieck, has
a pretty legend of a magical region where were marvelous
golden castles, and fountains, and flowers, and bright-winged
elves, living a life of ceaseless pleasure; but all
this was visible only to the anointed eyes of some favored
mortal to whom was granted the vision. To all others
this elfin country was a desolate wilderness. I had had
given me within a day or two that vision of Wonderland,
and wandered—scarce knowing whether in the body or
out—in its enchanted bowers. The first exhilarating joy
of the moment when every mist rose up from the landscape
of love; when there was perfect understanding, perfect
union, perfect rest; was something that transfigured life.
But having wandered in this blessed country and spoken
the tongue of angels, I was now to return to every-day
regions and try to translate its marvels and mysteries into
the vernacular of mortals. In short, I was to wait upon Mr.
Van Arsdel and ask of him the hand of his daughter.

Now however charming, with suitable encouragement,
to make love to a beautiful lady, making love to a
prospective father-in-law is quite another matter.

Men are not as a general thing inclined to look sympathetically
on other men in love with any fine woman of
their acquaintance, and are rather provoked than otherwise
to have them accepted. “What any woman can see in
that fellow!” is a sort of standing problem. But possessors

of daughters, are, a fortiori, enemies ready made to
every pretender to their hands. My own instincts made
me aware of this, and I could easily fancy that had I a
daughter like Eva I should be ready to shoot the fellow
who came to take her from me.

Mr. Van Arsdel, it is true, had showed me, hitherto,
in his quiet way, marked favor. He was seldom much of
a talker, though a shrewd observer of all that was said
by others. He had listened silently to all our discussions
and conversations in Ida's library, and oftentimes to the
reading of the articles I had subjected to the judgment
of the ladies; sometimes, though very rarely, interposing
little bits of common sense criticism which showed keen
good sense, and knowledge of the world.

Mr. Van Arsdel, like many of our merchant princes,
had come from a rural district, and an early experience
of the hard and frugal life of a farm. Good sense, acute
observation, an ability to take wide and clear views of
men and things, and an incorruptible integrity, had been
the means of his rise to his present elevation. He was a
true American man in another respect, and that was his
devotion to women. In America, where we have a clear
democracy, women hold that influence over men that is
exerted by the aristocracy in other countries. They are
something to be looked up to, petted, and courted. The
human mind seems to require something of this kind.
The faith and fealty that the middle-class Englishman
has toward his nobility is not all snobbery. It has something
of poetry in it—it is his romance of life. Up in those
airy regions where walk the nobility, he is at liberty to
fancy some higher, finer types of manhood and womanhood
than he sees in the ordinary ways of life, and he
adores the unseen and unknown. The American life
would become vulgar and common-place did not a chivalrous
devotion to women come in to supply the place of
recognized orders of nobility. The true democrat sees no

superior in rank among men, but all women are by
courtesy his superiors.

Mr. Van Arsdel had married a beauty and a belle.
When she chose him from among a crowd of suitors he
could scarcely believe his own eyes or ears, or help marveling
at the wondrous grace of the choice; and, as he told
her so, Mrs. Van Arsdel believed him, and their subsequent
life was arranged on that understanding. The Van Arsdel
house was an empire where women ruled, though as the
queen was a pretty, motherly woman, her reign was easy
and flowery.

Mr. Van Arsdel delighted in the combinations of business
for its own sake. It was his form of mental activity.
He liked the effort, the strife, the care, the labor, the
success of winning; but when money was once won he
cared not a copper for all those forms of luxury and
show, for the pride, pomp, and circumstance of fashion,
which were all in all to his wife.

In his secret heart he considered the greater part of
the proceedings in and about his splendid establishment as
a rather expensive species of humbug; but then it was
what the women wanted and desired, and he took it all
quietly and without comment. I felt somewhat nervous
when I asked a private interview with him in Ida's
library.

“I have told mamma, Harry,” whispered Eva, “and she
is beginning to get over it.”

Mrs. Van Arsdel received me with an air of patient endurance,
as if I had been the toothache or any of the other
inevitable inflictions of life, Miss Alice was distant and
reserved, and only Ida was cordial.

I found Mr. Van Arsdel dry, cold, and wary, not in the
least encouraging any sentimental effusion, and therefore I
proceeded to speak to him with as matter-of-fact directness
as if the treaty related to a bag of wool.

“Mr. Van Arsdel, I love your daughter. She has honored
me so far as to accept of my love, and I have her permission
to ask your consent to our marriage.”

He took off his spectacles, wiped them deliberately while
I was speaking, and coughed drily.

“Mr. Henderson,” he said, “I have always had a great
respect for you so far as I knew you, but I must confess I
don't know why I should want to give you my daughter.”

“Simply, sir, because in the order of nature you must
give her to somebody, and I have the honor to be chosen
by her.”

“Eva could do better, her mother thinks.”

“I am aware that Miss Van Arsdel could marry a man
with more money than I have, but none who would love
her more or be more devoted to her happiness. Besides
I have the honor to be the man of her choice, and perhaps
you may be aware that Miss Eva is a young lady
of very decided preferences.”

He smiled drily, and looked at me with a funny twinkle
in his eye.

“Eva has always been used to having her own way,” he
remarked.

“Then, my dear sir, I must beg leave to say that the
choice of a companion for life is a place where a lady has
a good right to insist on her own way.”

“Well, Mr. Henderson, you may be right. But perhaps
her parents ought to insist that she shall not make an
imprudent marriage.”

“Mr. Van Arsdel, I do not conceive that I am proposing
an imprudent marriage. I have not wealth to offer, it is
true, but I have a reasonable prospect of being able to
support a wife and family. I have good firm health, I
have good business habits, I have a profession which already
assures me a certain income, and an influential
position in society.”

“What do you call your profession?”

“Literature,” I replied.

He looked skeptical, and I added—“Yes, Mr. Van Arsdel,
in our day literature is a profession in which one may hope
for both fame and money.”

“It is rather an uncertain one, isn't it?” said he.

“I think not. A business which proposes to supply a
great, permanent, constantly increasing demand you must
admit to be a good one. The demand for current reading
is just as wide and steady as any demand of our life,
and the men who undertake to supply it have as certain a
business as those that undertake to supply cotton cloth,
or railroad iron. At this day fortunes are being made in
and by literature.”

Mr. Van Arsdel drummed on the table abstractedly

“Now,” said I, determined to speak in the language of
men and things, “the case is just this: If a young man
of good, reliable habits, good health, and good principles,
has a capital of seventy thousand dollars invested in a fair
paying business, has he not a prospect of supporting a
family in comfort?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Van Arsdel, regarding me curiously, “I
should call that a good beginning.”

“Well,” rejoined I, “my health, my education, my power
of doing literary work, are this capital. They secure to me
for the next year an income equal to that of seventy thousand
dollars at ten per cent. Now, I think a capital of that
amount invested in a man, is quite as safe as the same
sum invested in any stocks whatever. It seems to me
that in our country a man who knows how to take care of
his health is less likely to become unproductive in income
than any stock you can name.”

“There is something in that, I admit,” replied Mr. Van
Arsdel.

“And there's something in this, too, papa,” said Eva, who
entered at this moment and could not resist her desire to
dip her oar in the current of conversation, “and that is,
that an investment that you have got to take for better or
worse and can't sell or get rid of all your life, had better be
made in something you are sure you will like.”

“And are you sure of that in this case, Pussy?” said her
father, pinching her cheek.

“Tolerably, as men go. Mr. Henderson is the least tiresome
man of my acquaintance, and you know, papa, it's

time I took somebody; you don't want me to go into a
convent, do you?”

“How about poor Mr. Sydney?”

“Poor Mr. Sydney has just called, and I have invited
him to a private audience and convinced him that I am
not, in the least, the person to make him happy—and he is
one of the sort that feel that it is of the last importance
that he should be made happy.”

“Well, well! Mr. Henderson, I presume you have seen,
in the course of your observations, that this is one of the
houses where the women rule. You and Eva will have
to settle it with her mother.”

“Then I am to understand,” exclaimed I, “that, as far as
you are concerned —!”

“I submit,” said Mr. Van Arsdel.

“The ayes have it, then,” said Eva.

“I'm not so sure of that, young lady,” said Mr. Van
Arsdel, “if I may judge by the way your mother lamented
to me last night.”

“Oh, that's all Aunt Maria! You see, papa, this is an
age of revolution, and there's going to be a revolution in
the Aunt Maria dynasty in our house. She has governed
mamma and all the rest of us long enough, and now
she must go down and I must rule. Harry and I are going
to start a new era and have things all our own way. I'm
going to crown him King, and he then will crown me
Queen, and then we shall proceed to rule and reign in our
own dominions, and Aunt Maria, and Mrs. Grundy, and all
the rest of them, may help themselves; they can't hinder
us. We shall be happy in our own way, without consulting
them.”

“Well, well!” said Mr. Van Arsdel, following with an
amused eye, a pirouette Eva executed at the conclusion of
her speech, “you young folks are venturesome.”

“Yes, papa, I am `The woman who dared,”' said Eva.

“`Nothing venture, nothing have,”' quoted I.

“Eva knows no more about managing money than a
this year's robin,” said her father.

“Yet this year's robins know how to build respectable
nests when their time comes,” said she. “They don't bother
about investments and stocks and all those things, but
sing and have a good time. It all comes right for them,
and I don't doubt it will for us.”

“You have a decided talent for spending money most
agreeably, I confess,” said Mr. Van Arsdel.

“Now, papa, it's too bad for you to be running down
your own daughter! I'm not appreciated. I have a world
of undeveloped genius for management. Harry has agreed
to teach me accounts, and as I belong to the class who
always grow wiser than their teachers, I'm sure that before
six months are over I shall be able to suggest improved
methods to him. When I get a house you'll all be glad
to come and see me, I shall make it so bright and sunny
and funny, and give you such lovely things to eat; and
in my house everybody shall do just as they please, and
have their own way if they can find out what it is. I
know people will like it.”

“I believe you, Pussy,” said Mr. Van Arsdel; “but
houses don't grow on bushes, you know.”

“Well, haven't I six thousand dollars, all my own, that
grandma left me?”

“And how much of a house do you think that would
buy?”

“Perhaps as big a one as you and mother began in.”

“You never would be satisfied with such a house as we
began in.”

“Why not? Are we any better than you were?”

“No. But nowadays no young folks are contented to
do as we did.”

“Then, papa, you are going to see a new thing upon the
earth, for Harry and I am going to be pattern folks for
being rational and contented. We are going to start out
on a new tack and bring in the golden age. But, bless me!
there's Aunt Maria coming down the street! Now, Harry,

comes the tug of war. I am going now to emancipate mamma
and proclaim the new order of things,” and out she
flitted.

“Mr. Henderson,” said Mr. Van Arsdel, when she had
gone, “I think it is about certain that I am to look on you
as a future member of our family. I'll be fair with you,
that you may take steps with your eyes open. My daughters
are supposed to be heiresses, but, as things are tending,
in a very short time I may be put back to where I started
in life and have all to begin over. My girls will have
nothing. I see such a crisis impending and I have no
power to help it.”

“My dear sir,” said I, “while I shall be sorry for your
trouble, and hope it may not come, I shall be only too glad
to prove my devotion to Eva.”

“It is evident,” said Mr. Arsdel, “that her heart is set on
you, and, after all, the only true comfort is in having the one
you want. I myself never cared for fashion, Mr. Henderson,
nor parties, nor any of this kind of fuss and show the
women think so much of; and I believe that Eva is a
little like me. I like to go back to the old place in summer
and eat huckleberries and milk, and see the cows come
home from pasture, and sit in father's old arm-chair. It
wouldn't take so much running and scheming and hard
thinking and care to live, if folks were all of my mind.
Why, up in New Hampshire where I came from, there's
scarcely ever an estate administered upon that figures up
more than five thousand dollars, and yet they all live well—
have nice houses, nice tables, give money in charity, and
make a good thing of life.”

There was something really quite pathetic in this burst
of confidence from the worthy man. Perhaps I was the
first one to whom he had confessed the secret apprehensions
with which he was struggling.

“You see, Mr. Henderson, you never can tell about investments.
Stocks that seem to stand as firm as the foundations
of the earth, that the very oldest and shrewdest and

longest-headed put into, run down and depreciate—and
when they get running you can't draw out, you see. Now I
advanced capital for the new Lightning Line Railroad to the
amount of two hundred thousand, and pledged my Guatemala
stock for the money, and then arose this combination
against the Guatemala stock, and it has fallen to a fourth
of its value in six months, and it takes heavy rowing—
heavy. I'd a great deal rather be in father's old place,
with an estate of five thousand dollars, and read my newspaper
in peace, than to have all I have with the misery of
managing it. I may work out and I may not.”