University of Virginia Library

40. CHAPTER XL.
CONGRATULATIONS, ETC.

THE announcement of my engagement brought the
usual influx of congratulations by letter and in
person. Bolton was gravely delighted, shook my
hand paternally, and even promised to quit his hermit hole
and go with me to call upon the Van Arsdels.

As to Jim, he raised a notable breeze among the papers.

“Engaged!—you, sly dog, after all! Well! well! Let
your sentimental fellows alone for knowing what they're
about. All your sighing, and poetry, and friendship, and
disinterestedness and all that don't go for nothing. Up
to `biz' after all! Well, you've done a tolerably fair stroke!
Those Van Arsdel girls are good for a hundred thousand
down, and the rest will come in the will. Well, joy to
you my boy! Remember your old grandfather.”

Now there was no sort of use in going into high heroics
with Jim, and I had to resign myself to being congratulated
as a successful fortune hunter, a thing against which
all my resolution and all my pride had always been directed.
I had every appearance of being caught in the
fact, and Jim was prepared to make the most of the
situation.

“I declare, Hal,” he said, perching himself astride a chair
“such things make a fellow feel solemn. We never know
when our turn may come. Nobody feels safe a minute; it's
you to-day and me to-morrow. I may be engaged before
the week is out—who knows!”

“If nothing worse than that happens to you, you needn't
be frightened,” said I. “Better try your luck. I don't find
it bad to take at all.”

“Oh, but think of the consequences, man! Wedding

journey, bandboxes and parasols to look after; beefsteaks
and coffee for two; house rent and water taxes; marketing,
groceries; all coming down on you like a thousand
of brick! And then `My dear, won't you see to this?'
and `My dear, have you seen to that?' and `My dear, what
makes you let it rain?' and `My dear, how many times
must I tell you I don't like hot weather?' and `My dear,
won't you just step out and get me the new moon and
seven stars to trim my bonnet?' That's what I call getting
a fellow into business! It's a solemn thing, Hal,
now I tell you, this getting married!”

“If it makes you solemn, Jim, I shall believe it,” I said.

“Well, when is it to come off? When is the blissful
day?”

“No time fixed as yet,” said I.

“Why not? You ought to drive things. Nothing under
heaven to wait for except to send to Paris for the folderols.
Well, I shall call up and congratulate. If Miss Alice there
would take me, there might be a pair of us. Wouldn't it be
jolly? I say, Hal, how did you get it off?”

“Get what off?”

“Why, the question.”

“You'll have to draw on your imagination for that, Jim.”

“I tell you what, Harry, I won't offer myself to a girl on
uncertainties. I'd pump like thunder first and find out
whether she'd have me or not.”

“I fancy,” said I, “that if you undertake that process
with Miss Alice, you'll have your match. I think she has
as many variations of yes and no as a French woman.”

“She doesn't catch this child,” said Jim, “though she's
mag. and no mistake. Soberly, she's one of the nicest girls
in New York—but Jim's time isn't come yet.

So now, Hal, don't disturb my mind with these trifles. I've
got three books to review before dinner, and only an hour
and a half to do it in.”

In my secret heart I began to wish that the embarrassments
that were hanging over the Van Arsdel fortunes
would culminate and come to a crisis one way or another,
so that our position might appear to the world
what it really was. Mr. Van Arsdel's communications to
me were so far confidential that I did not feel that I
could allude to the real state of things even with my
most intimate friends; so that while I was looked upon
from the outside as the prospective winner of an heiress,
Eva and I were making all our calculations for the future
on the footing of the strictest prudence and economy.
Everybody was looking for splendor and festivities;
we were enacting a secret pastoral, in which we forsook
the grandeurs of the world to wander forth hand in hand
in paths of simplicity and frugality.

A week after this I received a note from Caroline which
announced her arrival in the city, and I lost no time in
waiting on her and receiving her congratulations on my
good fortune. Eva and Ida Van Arsdel were prompt in
calling upon her, and the three struck up a friendship
which grew with that tropical rapidity and luxuriance
characteristic of the attachments of women. Ida and
Caroline become at once bosom friends.

“I'm so glad,” Eva commented to me, “because you and I
are together so much now that I was afraid Ida might feel
a little out in the cold; I have been her pet and stand-by.
The fact is, I'm like that chemical thing that dyers call a
mordant—something that has an affinity for two different
colors that have no affinity for each other. I'm just enough
like mamma and just enough like Ida to hold the two together.
They both tell me everything, and neither of them
can do without me.”

“I can well believe that,” said I, “it is an experience
in which I sympathize. But I am coming in now, like the
third power in a chemical combination, to draw you away
from both. I shouldn't think they'd like it.”

“Oh, well, it's the way of nature! Mamma left her

mother for papa—but Ida!—I'm glad for her to have so
nice a friend step in just now—one that has all her peculiar
tastes and motives. I wish she could go to Paris
and study with Ida when she goes next year. Do you
know, Harry, I used to think you were engaged to this
cousin of yours? Why weren't you?”

“She never would have had me,—her heart was gone to
somebody else.”

“Why isn't she married, then?”

“Oh! the course of true love, you know.”

“Tell me all about it.”

“She never made me her confidant,” said I, evasively.

“Tell me who it was, at all events,” demanded she.

“Bolton.”

“What! that serious, elegant Bolton that you brought
to call on us the other night! We all liked him so much!
What can be the matter there? Why, I think he's superb
and she's just the match for him. What broke it off?”

“You know I told you she never made me her confidant.”

“Nor he, either?”

“Well,” said I, feeling myself cornered, “I throw myself
on your mercy. It's another man's secret, and I ought not
to tell you, but if you ask me I certainly shall.”

“Right or wrong?”

“Yes, fair Eve, just as Adam ate the apple, so beware!”

“I'm just dying to know, but if you really ought not
to tell me I won't tease for it; but I tell you what it is'
Harry, if I were you I should bring them together.”

“Would you dare take the responsibility of bringing any
two together?”

“I suppose I should. I am a daring young woman.”

“I have not your courage,” said I, “but if it will do you
any good to know, Bolton is in a fair way to renew the acquaintance,
though he meant not to do it.”

“You can tell me how that happened, I suppose?”

“Yes, that is at your service. Simply, the meeting was
effected as some others of fateful results have been,—in a
New York street-car.”

“Aha!” she said, laughing.

“Yes; he was traveling up Sixth Avenue the other night
when a drunken conductor was very rude to two ladies.
Bolton interfered, made the man behave himself, waited on
the ladies across the street to their door as somebody else
once did,—when, behold! a veil is raised, the light of the
lamp flashes, and one says `Mr. Bolton!' and the other
`Miss Simmons!' and the romance is opened.”

“How perfectly charming! Of course he'll call and see
her. He must, you know.”

“That has proved the case in my experience.”

“And all the rest will follow. They are made for each
other. Poor Ida, she won't have Caroline to go to Paris
with her!”

“No? I think she will. In fact I think it would be the
best thing Caroline could do.”

“You do! You don't want them to be married?”

“I don't know. I wouldn't say—in fact it's a case I
wouldn't for the world decide.”

“Oh, heavens! Here's a mystery, an obstacle, an unknown
horror, and you can't tell me what it is, and I
must not ask. Why, this is perfectly dreadful! It isn't
anything against Bolton?”

“Bolton is the man I most love, most respect, most revere,”
I said.

“What can it be then?”

“Suppose we leave it to fate and the future,” said I.