University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
THE FAMILY DICTATOR AT WORK.

FROM the foregoing letter our readers may have conjectured
that the natural self-appointed ruler of the
fortunes of the Van Arsdel family was “Aunt Maria,” or
Mrs. Maria Wouvermans.

That is to say, this lady had always considered such
to be her mission, and had acted upon this supposition
up to the time that Mr. Van Arsdel's failure made shipwreck
of the fortunes of the family.

Aunt Maria had, so to speak, reveled in the fortune
and position of the Van Arsdels. She had dictated the
expenditures of their princely income; she had projected
parties and entertainments; she had supervised lists of
guests to be invited; she had ordered dresses and carriages
and equipages, and hired and dismissed servants at
her sovereign will and pleasure. Nominally, to be sure,
Mrs. Van Arsdel attended to all these matters; but really
Aunt Maria was the power behind the throne. Mrs. Van
Arsdel was a pretty, graceful, self-indulgent woman, who
loved ease and hated trouble—a natural climbing plant
who took kindly to any bean-pole in her neighborhood,
and Aunt Maria was her bean-pole. Mrs. Van Arsdel's
wealth, her station, her éclat, her blooming daughters, all
climbed up, so to speak, on Aunt Maria, and hung their
flowery clusters around her, to her praise and glory. Besides
all this, there were very solid and appreciable
advantages in the wealth and station of the Van Arsdel
family as related to the worldly enjoyment of Mrs. Maria
Wouvermans. Being a widow, connected with an old

rich family, and with but a small fortune of her own
and many necessities of society upon her, Mrs. Wouvermans
had found her own means in several ways
supplemented and carried out by the redundant means of
her sister. Mrs. Wouvermans lived in a moderate house
on Murray Hill, within comfortable proximity to the
more showy palaces of the New York nobility. She had
old furniture, old silver, camel's hair shawls and jewelry
sufficient to content her heart, but her yearly income was
far below her soul's desires, and necessitated more economy
than she liked. While the Van Arsdels were in full
tide of success she felt less the confinement of these
limits. What need for her to keep a carriage when a
carriage and horses were always at her command for the
asking—and even without asking, as not infrequently
came to be the case? Then, the Van Arsdel parties and
hospitalities relieved her from all expensive obligations of
society. She returned the civilities of her friends by invitations
to her sister's parties and receptions; and it is an
exceedingly convenient thing to have all the glory of
hospitality and none of the trouble—to have convenient
friends to entertain for you any person or persons with
whom you may be desirous of keeping up amicable relations.
On the whole, Mrs Wouvermans was probably
sincere in the professions, to which Mr. Van Arsdel used
to listen with a quiet amused smile, that “she really enjoyed
Nelly's fortune more than if it were her own.”

“Haven't a doubt of it,” he used to say, with a twinkle
of his eye which he never further explained.

Mr. Van Arsdel's failure had nearly broken Aunt
Maria's heart. In fact, the dear lady took the matter
more sorely than the good man himself.

Mr. Van Arsdel was, in a small dry way, something of
a philosopher. He was a silent man for the most part,
but had his own shrewd comments on the essential worth

of men and things—particularly of men in the feminine
gender. He had never checked his pretty wife in any of
her aspirations, which he secretly valued at about their
real value; he had never quarreled with Aunt Maria or
interfered with her sway in his family within certain limits,
because he had sense enough to see that she was the
stronger of the two women, and that his wife could no
more help yielding to her influence than a needle can
help sticking to a magnet.

But the race of fashionable life, its outlays of health
and strength, its expenditures for parties, and for dress
and equipage, its rivalries, its gossip, its eager frivolities,
were all matters of which he took quiet note, and which
caused him often to ponder the words of the wise man
of old, “What profit hath a man of all his labor and the
vexation of his heart, wherein he hath labored under the
sun?”

To Mr. Van Arsdel's eye the only profit of his labor
and travail seemed to be the making of his wife frivolous,
filling her with useless worries, training his daughters to
be idle and self-indulgent, and his sons to be careless and
reckless of expenditure. So when at last the crash came,
there was a certain sense of relief in finding himself once
more an honest man at the bottom of the hill, and he
quietly resolved in his inmost soul that he never would
climb again. He had settled up his affairs with a manly
exactness that won the respect of all his creditors, and
they had put him into a salaried position which insured
a competence, and with this he resolved to be contented;
his wife returned to the economical habits and virtues
of her early life; his sons developed an amount of
manliness and energy which was more than enough to
compensate for what they had lost in worldly prospects.
He enjoyed his small, quiet house and his reduced establishment
as he never had done a more brilliant one, for

he felt that it was founded upon certainties and involved
no risks. Mrs. Van Arsdel was a sweet-tempered, kindly
woman, and his daughters had each and every one met
the reverse in a way that showed the sterling quality
which is often latent under gay and apparently thoughtless
young womanhood.

Aunt Maria, however, settled it in her own mind, with
the decision with which she usually settled her relatives'
affairs, that this state of things would be only temporary.

“Of course,” she said to her numerous acquaintances,
“of course, Mr. Van Arsdel will go into business again—
he is only waiting for a good opening—he 'll be up again
in a few years where he was before.”

And to Mrs. Van Arsdel she said, “Nelly, you must
keep him up—you mustn't hear of his sinking down and
doing nothing”—doing nothing being his living contentedly
on a comfortable salary and going without the
“pomps and vanities.” “Your husband, of course, will
go into some operations to retrieve his fortunes, you
know,” she said. “What is he thinking of?”

“Well, really, Maria, I don't see as he has the least
intention—he seems perfectly satisfied to live as we do.”

“You must put him up to it, Nelly—depend upon it,
he 's in danger of sinking down and giving up; and he
has splendid business talents. He should go to operating
in stocks, you see. Why, men make fortunes in that way.
Look at the Bubbleums, and the Flashes, they were all
down two years ago, and now they're up higher than ever,
and they did it all in stocks. Your husband would find
plenty of men ready to go in with him and advance
money to begin on. No man is more trusted. Why,
Nelly, that man might die a millionaire as well as not,
and you ought to put him up to it; it's a wife's business
to keep her husband up.”

“I have tried to, Maria; I have been just as cheerful

as I knew how to be, and I've retrenched and economized
everywhere, as all the girls do—they are wonderful, those
girls! To see them take hold so cheerfully and help
about household matters, you never would dream that
they had not been brought up to it; and they are so prudent
about their clothes—so careful and saving. And
then the boys are getting on so well. Tom has gone into
surveying with a will, and is going out with Smithson's
party to the Rocky Mountains, and Hal has just got a
good situation in Boston —”

“Oh, yes, that is all very well; but, Nelly, that isn't
what I mean. You know that when men fail in business
they are apt to get blue and discouraged and give up
enterprise, and so gradually sink down and lose their
faculties. That's the way old Mr. Snodgrass did when
he failed.”

“But I don't think, Maria, that there is the least
danger of my husband's losing his mind—or sinking
down, as you call it. I never saw him more cheerful and
seem to take more comfort of his life. Mr. Van Arsdel
never did care for style—except as he thought it pleased
me—and I believe he really likes the way we live now
better than the way we did before; he says he has less
care.”

“And you are willing to sink down and be a nobody,
and have no carriage, and rub round in omnibuses, and
have to go to little mean private country board instead
of going to Newport, when you might just as well get
back the position that you had. Why, it's downright
stupidity, Nelly!”

“As to mean country board,” pleaded Mrs. Van
Arsdel, “I don't know what you mean, Maria. We kept
our old homestead up there in Vermont, and it's a very
respectable place to spend our summer in.”

“Yes, and what chances have the girls up there—

where nobody sees them but oxen? The girls ought to
be considered. For their sakes you ought to put your
husband up to do something. It's cruel to them, brought
up with the expectations they have had, to have to give
all up just as they are coming out. If there is any time
that a mother must feel the want of money it is when she
has daughters just beginning to go into society; and it is
cruel towards young girls not to give them the means of
dressing and doing a little as others do; and dress does
cost so abominably, now-a-days; it's perfectly frightful—
people cannot live creditably on what they used to.”

“Yes, certainly, it is frightful to think of the requirements
of society in these matters,” said Mrs. Van Arsdel.
“Now, when you and I were girls, Maria, you know we
managed to appear well on a very little. We embroidered
our own capes and collars, and wore white a good
deal, and cleaned our own gloves, and cut and fitted our
own dresses; but, then dress was not what it is now.
Why, making a dress now is like rigging a man-of-war—
it's so complicated—there are so many parts, and so
much trimming.”

“Oh, it's perfectly fearful,” said Aunt Maria; “but,
then, what is one to do? If one goes into society with
people who have so much of all these things, why one
must, at least, make some little approach to decent
appearance. We must keep within sight of them. All I
ask,” she added, meekly, “is to be decent. I never expect
to run into the extremes those Elmores do—the
waste and the extravagance that there must be in that
family! And there's Mrs. Wat Sydney coming out with
the whole new set of her Paris dresses. I should like to
know, for curiosity's sake, just what that woman has
spent on her dresses!”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Van Arsdel, warming with the subject,
“you know she had all her wardrobe from Worth,

and Worth's dresses come to something. Why, Polly
told me that the lace alone on some of those dresses
would be a fortune.”

“And just to think that Eva might have married Wat
Sydney,” said Aunt Maria. “It does seem as if things
in this world fell out on purpose to try us!”

“Well, I suppose they do, and we ought to try and
improve by them,” said Mrs. Van Arsdel, who had some
weak, gentle ideas of a moral purpose in existence, to
which even the losses and trials of lace and embroidery
might be made subservient. “After all,” she added, “I
don't know but we ought to be contented with Eva's
position. Eva always was a peculiar child. Under all
her sweetness and softness she has quite a will of her
own; and, indeed, Harry is a good fellow, and doing
well in his line. He makes a very good income, for a
beginning, and he is rising every day in the literary
world, and I don't see but that they have as good an
opportunity to make their way in society as the Sydneys
with all their money.”

“Sophie Sydney is perfectly devoted to Eva,” said
Aunt Maria.

“And well she may be,” answered Mrs. Van Arsdel,
“in fact, Eva made that match; she actually turned him
over to her. You remember how she gave her that prize
croquet-pin that Sydney gave her, and how she talked to
Sydney, and set him to thinking of Sophie—oh, pshaw!
Sydney never would have married that girl in the world
if it had not been for Eva.”

“Well,” said Aunt Maria, “it's as well to cultivate
that intimacy. It will be a grand summer visiting place
at their house in Newport, and we want visiting places
for the girls. I have put two or three anchors out to the
windward, in that respect. I am going to have the
Stephenson girls at my house this winter, and your girls

must help show them New York, and cultivate them, and
then there will be a nice visiting place for them at Judge
Stephenson's next summer. You see the Judge lives
within an easy drive of Newport, so that they can get
over there, and see and be seen.”

“I'm sure, Maria, it's good in you to be putting yourself
out for my girls.”

“Pshaw, Nelly, just as if your girls were not mine—
they are all I have to live for. I can't stop any longer
now, because I must catch the omnibus to go down to
Eva's; I am going to spend the day with her.”

“How nicely Eva gets along,” said Mrs. Van Arsdel,
with a little pardonable motherly pride; “that girl takes
to housekeeping as if it came natural to her.”

“Yes,” said Aunt Maria; “you know I have had Eva
a great deal under my own eye, first and last, and it
shows that early training will tell.” Aunt Maria picked
up this crumb of self-glorification with an easy matter-of-fact
air which was peculiarly aggravating to her sister.

In her own mind Mrs. Van Arsdel thought it a little
too bad. “Maria always did take the credit of everything
that turned out well in my family,” she said to herself,
“and blamed me for all that went wrong.”

But she was too wary to murmur out loud, and bent
her head to the yoke in silence.

“Eva needs a little showing and cautioning,” said
Aunt Maria; “that Mary of hers ought to be watched,
and I shall tell her so—she mustn't leave everything to
Mary.”

“Oh, Mary lived years with me, and is the most devoted,
faithful creature,” said Mrs. Van Arsdel.

“Never mind—she needs watching. She's getting
old now, and don't work as she used to, and if Eva don't
look out she won't get half a woman's work out of her—
these old servants always take liberties. I shall look into

things there. Eva is my girl; I sha'n't let anyone get
around her;” and Aunt Maria arose to go forth. But if
anybody supposes that two women engaged in a morning
talk are going to stop when one of them rises to go,
he knows very little of the ways of womankind. When
they have risen, drawn up their shawls, and got ready to
start, then is the time to call a new subject, and accordingly
Aunt Maria, as she was going out the door, turned round
and said: “Oh! there now! I almost forgot what I came
for:—What are you going to do about the girls' party
dresses?”

“Well, we shall get a dressmaker in the house. If we
can get Silkriggs, we shall try her.”

“Now, Nelly, look here, I have found a real treasure
—the nicest little dressmaker, just set up, and who works
cheap. Maria Meade told me about her. She showed
me a suit that she had had made there in imitation of a
Paris dress, with ever so much trimming, cross-folds
bound on both edges, and twenty or thirty bows, all cut
on the bias and bound, and box-plaiting with double quilling
on each side all round the bottom, and going up the
front—graduated, you know. There was waist, and
overskirt, and a little sacque, and, will you believe me, she
only asked fifteen dollars for making it all.”

“You don't say so!”

“It's a fact. Why, it must have been a good week's
work to make that dress, even with her sewing machine.
Maria told me of her as a great secret, because she really
works so well that if folks knew it she would be swamped
with work, and then go to raising her price—that's what
they all do when they can get a chance—but I've been to
her and engaged her for you.”

“I'm sure, Maria, I don't know what we should do if
you were not always looking out for us.”

“I don't know—I'm getting to be an old woman,”

said Aunt Maria. “I'm not what I was. But I consider
your family as my appointed field of labor—just as our
rector said last Sunday, we must do the duty next us. But
tell the girls not to talk about this dressmaker. We shall
want all she can do, and make pretty much our own
terms with her. It's nice and convenient for Eva that
she lives somewhere down in those out-of-the-way regions
where she has chosen to set up. Well, good morning;”
and Aunt Maria opened the house-door and stood upon
the top of the steps, when a second postscript struck her
mind.

“There now!” said she, “I was meaning to tell you
that it is getting to be reported everywhere that Alice and
Jim Fellows are engaged.”

“Oh, well, of course there's nothing in it,” said Mrs.
Van Arsdel. “I don't think Alice would think of him
for a moment. She likes him as a friend, that's all.”

“I don't know, Nelly; you can't be too much on your
guard. Alice is a splendid girl, and might have almost
anybody. Between you and me—now, Nelly, you must
be sure not to mention it—but Mr. Delafield has been
very much struck with her.”

“Oh, Maria, how can you? Why, his wife hasn't
been dead a year!”

“Oh, pshaw! these widowers don't always govern
their eyes by the almanac,” said Aunt Maria, with a
laugh. “Of course, John Delafield will marry again. I
always knew that; and Alice would be a splendid woman
to be at the head of his establishment. At any rate, at
the little company the other night at his sister's, Mrs.
Singleton's, you know, he was perfectly devoted to her,
and I thought Mrs. Singleton seemed to like it.”

“It would certainly be a fine position, if Alice can
fancy him,” said Mrs. Van Arsdel. “Seems to me he is
rather querulous and dyspeptic, is n't he?”

“Oh, well, yes; his health is delicate; he needs a
wife to take care of him.”

“He's so yellow!” ruminated Mrs. Van Arsdel, ingenuously.
“I never could bear thin, yellow men.”

“Oh, come, don't you begin, Nelly—it's bad enough
to have girls with their fancies. What we ought to look
at are the solid excellences. What a pity that the marrying
age always comes when girls have the least sense!
John Delafield is a solid man, and if he should take a
fancy to Alice, it would be a great piece of good luck.
Alice ought to be careful, and not have these reports
around, about her and Jim Fellows; it just keeps off advantageous
offers. I shall talk to Alice the first time I
get a chance.”

“Oh, pray don't, Maria—I don't think it would do
any good. Alice is very set in her way, and it might put
her up to make something of it more than there is.”

“Oh, never fear me,” said Aunt Maria, nodding her
head; “I understand Alice, and know just what needs to
be said. I sha'n't do her any harm, you may be sure,”
and Aunt Maria, espying her omnibus afar, ran briskly
down the steps, thus concluding the conference.

Now it happened that adjoining the parlor where this
conversation had taken place was a little writing-cabinet
which Mr. Van Arsdel often used for the purposes of
letter-writing. On this morning, when his wife supposed
him out as usual at his office, he had retired there to attend
to some correspondence. The entrance was concealed
by drapery, and so he had been an unintentional
and unsuspected but much amused listener to Aunt
Maria's adjurations to his wife on his behalf.

All through his subsequent labors of the pen, he might
have been observed to pause from time to time and laugh
to himself. The idea of lying as a quiet dead weight on
the wheels of the progress of his energetic relation was

something vastly pleasing to the dry and secretive turn
of his humor—and he rather liked it than otherwise.

“We shall see whether I am losing my faculties,” he
said to himself, as he gathered up his letters and departed.