University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
THE SETTLING OF THE WATERS.

IT will not be doubted by those who know the ways of
family dictators that Mrs. Maria Wouvermans left
Eva's house after her day's visit in a state of the most
balmy self-satisfaction, as one who has done a good day's
work.

“Well, I 've been up at Eva's,” she said to her sister,
as she looked in on returning, “and really it was well I
went in. That Mary of hers is getting careless and negligent,
just as all old servants do, and I just went over the
whole house, and had a plain talk with Mary. She flew up
about it, and was impertinent, of course; but I put her
down, and I talked plainly to Eva about the way she 's
beginning with her servants. She 's just like you, Nellie,
slack and good-natured, and needs somebody to keep
her up. I told her the way she is beginning—of petting
Mary, and fussing up her room with carpet and pictures,
and everything, just like any other—would n't work.
Servants must be kept in their places.”

Now, Mrs. Van Arsdel had a spirit of her own; and
the off-hand, matter-of-fact manner in which her sister
was accustomed to speak of her as no manager touched a
vital point. What housekeeper likes to have her capacity
to guide a house assailed? Is not that the spot where
her glory dwells, if she has any? And it is all the more
provoking when such charges are thrown out in perfect
good nature, not as designed to offend, but thrown in
par parenthèse, as something everybody would acknowledge,

and too evident to require discussion. While proceeding
in the main part of a discourse Mrs. Wouvermans
was quite in the habit of these frank side disclosures of
her opinion of her sister's management, and for the most
part they were submitted to in acquiescent silence, rather
than to provoke a controversy; but to be called “slack”
to her face without protest or rejoinder was more than
she could bear; so Mrs. Van Arsdel spoke up with spirit:

“Maria, you are always talking as if I do n't know
how to manage servants. All I know is that you are
always changing, and I keep mine years and years.”

“That 's because you let them have their own way,”
said her sister. “You can keep servants if you do n't
follow them up, and insist on it that they shall do their
duty. Let them run all over you and live like mistresses,
and you can keep them. For my part, I like to change
—new brooms always sweep clean.”

“Well, it 's a different thing, Maria—you with your
small family, and mine with so many. I 'd rather bear anything
than change.”

“Oh, well, yes; I suppose there 's no help for it,
Nellie. Of course I was n't blaming you, so do n't fire
up about it. I know you can 't make yourself over,”
said Aunt Maria. This was the tone with which she
usually settled discussions with those who differed from
her on modes and measures. After all, they could not
be like her, so where was the use of talking?

Aunt Maria also had the advantage in all such encounters
of a confessed reputation as an excellent manager.
Her house was always elegant, always in order.
She herself was gifted with a head for details that never
failed to keep in mind the smallest item, and a wiry,
compact constitution that never knew fatigue. She held
the keys of everything in her house, and always turned
every key at the right moment. She knew the precise

weight, quantity, and quality of everything she had in
possession, where it was and what it might be used for;
and, as she said, could go to anything in her house without
a candle in the darkest night. If her servants did
not love, they feared her, and had such a sense of her
ever vigilant inspection that they never even tried to
evade her. For the least shadow of disobedience she
was ready to send them away at a moment's warning,
and then go to the intelligence office and enter her name
for another, and come home, put on apron and gloves,
and manfully and thoroughly sustain the department till
they came.

Mrs. Wouvermans, therefore, was celebrated and lauded
by all her acquaintances as a perfect housekeeper, and
this added sanction and terror to her pronunciamentos
when she walked the rounds as a police inspector in the
houses of her relations.

It is rather amusing to a general looker-on in this odd
world of ours to contrast the serene, cheerful good faith
with which these constitutionally active individuals go
about criticising, and suggesting, and directing right and
left, with the dismay and confusion of mind they leave
behind them wherever they operate.

They are often what the world calls well-meaning people,
animated by a most benevolent spirit, and have no
more intention of giving offense than a nettle has of
stinging. A large, vigorous, well-growing nettle has no
consciousness of the stings it leaves in the delicate hands
that have been in contact with it; it has simply acted out
its innocent and respectable nature as a nettle. But a
nettle armed with the power of locomotion on an ambulatory
tour, is something the results of which may be
fearful to contemplate.

So, after the departure of Aunt Maria our little
housekeeper, Eva, was left in a state of considerable

nervousness and anxiety, feeling that she had been
weighed in the balance of perfection and found wofully
wanting. She was conscious, to begin with, that her
characteristic virtues as a housekeeper, if she had any,
were not entirely in the style of her good relative. She
was not by nature statistical, nor given to accounts and
figures. She was not sharp and keen in bargains; she
was, she felt in her inmost, trembling soul, a poor little
mollusk, without a bit of a shell, hiding in a cowardly
way under a rock and ready at any time to be eaten up
by big fishes. She had felt so happy in her unlimited
trust in Mary, who knew more than she did about housekeeping—but
she had been convicted by her aunt's cross-questions
of having resigned the very signet ring and
scepter of her house into her hands. Did she let Mary
go all over the house? Did she put away the washing?
Did Eva allow her to open her drawers? Did n't she
count her towels and sheets every week, and also her
tea-spoons, and keep every drawer and cupboard locked?
She ought to. To all these inquiries Eva had no satisfactory
response, and began to doubt within herself
whether she had begun aright. With sensitive, conscientious
people there is always a residuum of self-distrust
after discussions of the nature we have indicated, however
vigorously and skillfully they may have defended
their courses at the time.

Eva went over and over in her own mind her self-justifications—she
told herself that she and her aunt were
essentially different people, incapable of understanding
each other sympathetically or acting in each other's ways,
and that the well-meant, positive dicta of her relative
were to be let go for what they were worth, and no more.

Still she looked eagerly and anxiously for the return
of her husband, that she might reinforce herself
by talking it over with him. Hers was a nature so

[ILLUSTRATION]

TALKING IT OVER
"Come now, Puss, out with it. Why that anxious brow? What
domestic catastrophe?"—p. 73.

[Description: 710EAF. Illustration page. Image of a man and woman sitting at a dinner table talking. The man has a soup spoon in one hand. The woman is holding her napkin.]

transparent that, before he had been five minutes in the
house, he felt that something had gone wrong; but, the
dinner-bell ringing, he retired at once to make his
toilet, and did not open the subject till they were fairly
seated at table.

“Well, come now, Puss—out with it! Why that
anxious brow? What domestic catastrophe? Anything
gone wrong with the ivies?”

“Oh, no; the ivies are all right, growing beautifully
—it is n't that—”

“Well, then, what is it? It seems there is something.”

“Oh, nothing, Harry; only Aunt Maria has been
spending the day here.”

Eva said this with such a perplexed and woful face
that Harry leaned back in his chair and laughed.

“What a blessing it is to have relations,” he said;
“but I thought, Eva, that you had made up your mind
not to care for anything Aunt Maria says?”

“Well, she has been all over the house, surveying
and reviewing as if she owned us, and she has lectured
Mary and got her into hysterics, and talked to
me till I am almost bewildered—wondering at everything
we mean to do, and wanting us to take her ways
and not ours.”

“My dearest child, why need you care? Take it as
a rain-storm, when you 've been caught out without your
umbrella. That 's all. Or why can 't you simply and
firmly tell her that she must not go over your house or
direct your servants?”

“Well, you see, that would never do. She would
feel so injured and abused. I 've only just made up
and brought things to going smoothly, and got her pacified
about our marriage. There would be another fuss if
I should talk that way. Aunt Maria always considered

me her girl, and maintains that she is a sort of special
guardian to me, and I think it very disagreeable
to quarrel with your relations, and get on unpleasant
terms with them.”

“Well, I shall speak to her, Eva, pretty decidedly, if
you don't.”

“Oh, do n't, do n't, Harry! She 'd never forgive
you. No. Let me manage her. I have been managing
her all day to keep the peace, to keep her satisfied and
pleased; to let her advise me to her heart's content,
about things where I can take advice. Aunt Maria is
a capital judge of linens and cottons, and all sorts of
household stuffs, and can tell to a certainty just how
much of a thing you 'd want, and the price you ought
to pay, and the exact place to get it; and I have been
contriving to get her opinion on a dozen points where
I mean to take it; and I think she has left, on the
whole, highly satisfied with her visit, though in the main
I did n't give in to her a bit about our plans.”

“Then why so tragic and tired-looking?”

“Oh, well, after all, when Aunt Maria talks, she says
a great many things that have such a degree of sense
in them that it worries me. Now, there 's a good deal
of sense in what she said about trusting too much to
servants, and being too indulgent. I know mamma's
girls used to get spoiled so that they would be perfect
tyrants. And yet I cannot for the life of me like Aunt
Maria's hard, ungracious way of living with servants,
as if they were machines.

“Ah, well, Eva, it 's always so. Hard, worldly people
always have a good deal of what looks like practical
sense on their side, and kindness and unselfishness certainly
have their weak points; there 's no doubt of that.
The Sermon on the Mount is open to a great deal of
good hard worldly criticism, and so is every attempt

to live up to it practically; but, never mind. We all
know that the generous way is the strong way, and the
best way, in the long run.”

“And then you know, Harry, I have n't the least
talent for being hard and sharp,” said Eva, “and so I
may as well take the advantages of my sort of nature.”

“Certainly you may; people never succeed out of
their own line.”

“Then there 's another trouble. I 'm afraid Aunt Maria
is going to interfere with Alice, as she tried to do with
me. She said that everybody was talking about her
intimacy with Jim, and that if I didn 't speak to Alice
she must.”

“Confound that woman,” said Harry; “she 's an unmitigated
old fool! She 's as bad as a runaway steam
engine; somebody ought to seize and lock her up.”

“Come, sir, keep a civil tongue about my relations,”
said Eva, laughing.

“Well, I must let off a little to you, just to lower
steam to the limits of Christian moderation.”

“Alice is n't as fond of Aunt Maria as I am, and has
a high spirit of her own, and I 'm afraid it will make a
terrible scene if Aunt Maria attacks her, so I suppose I
must talk to her myself; but what do you think of Jim,
Harry? Is there anything in it, on his part?”

“How can I say? you know just as much as I do and
no more, and you are a better judge of human nature
than I am.”

“Well, would you like it to have Alice take Jim—
supposing there were anything.”

“Why, yes, very well, if she wants him.”

“But Jim is such a volatile creature—would you
want to trust him?”

“He is constant in his affections, which is the main
thing. I 'm sure his conduct when your father failed

showed that; and a sensible, dignified woman like Alice
might make a man of him.”

“It 's odd,” said Eva, “that Alice, who is so prudent,
and has such a high sense of propriety, seems so very
indulgent to Jim. None of his escapades seem to offend
her.”

“It 's the doctrine of counterparts,” said Harry; “the
steady sensible nature admires the brilliancy and variety
of the volatile one.”

“For my part,” said Eva, “I can 't conceive of Jim 's
saying anything in serious earnest. The very idea of his
being sentimental seems funny—and how can anybody
be in love without being sentimental?”

“There are diversities of operation,” said Harry.
“Jim must make love in his own way, and it will probably
be an original one.”

“But, really now, do you know,” persisted Eva, “I
think Alice might be mated with a man of much higher
class than Jim. He is amiable, and bright, and funny,
and agreeable. Yet I do n't deny but Alice might do
better.”

“So she might, but the perversity of fate is that the
superior man is n't around and Jim is; and, ten to one,
if the superior man were in the field, Alice would be perverse
enough to choose Jim. And, after all, you must
confess, give Jim Fellows a fortune of a million or two,
a place in Newport, and another on the North River,
and even you would call it a brilliant match, and think
it a fortunate thing for Alice.”

“Oh, dear me, Harry, that's the truth, to be sure.
Am I so worldly?”

“No; but ideal heroes are not plentiful, and there
are few gems that don't need rich setting. The first
questions as to a man are, is he safe, has he no bad habits,
is he kind and affectionate in his disposition and capable

of constant affection? and, secondly, does the woman feel
that sort of love that makes her prefer him even to men
that are quite superior? Now, whether Alice feels in
that way toward Jim is what remains to be seen. I'm
sure I can't tell. Neither can I tell whether Jim has any
serious intentions in regard to her. If they were only let
alone, and not watched and interfered with, I 've no doubt
the thing would adjust itself in the natural course of
things.

“But see here, I must be going to my club, and,
now I think of it, I 've brought some Paris letters from
the girls for you, to pass the evening with.”

“You have? Letters from Ida and Caroline? You
naughty creature, why did n't you give them to me before?”

“Well, your grave face when I first came in put everything
else out of my head; and then came on all this
talk: but it 's just as well, you 'll have them to read while
I 'm gone.”

“Do n't stay late, Harry.”

“No; you may be sure I 've no temptation. I 'd
much rather be here with you watching our own backlog.
But then I shall see several fellows about articles
for the magazine, and get all the late news, and, in short,
take an observation of our latitude and longitude; so,
au revoir!”