University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.
JIM AND ALICE.

THE recent discussions of the marriage question,
betokening unrest and dissatisfaction with the immutable
claims of this institution, are founded, no doubt,
on the various distresses and inconveniences of ill-assorted
marriages.

In times when the human being was little developed,
the elements of agreement and disagreement were simpler,
and marriages were proportionately more tranquil.
But modern civilized man has a thousand points of possible
discord in an immutable near relation where there
was one in the primitive ages.

The wail, and woe, and struggle to undo marriage
bonds, in our day, comes from this dissonance of more
developed and more widely varying natures, and it shows
that a large proportion of marriages have been contracted
without any advised and rational effort to ascertain
whether there was a reasonable foundation for a close
and life-long intimacy.

It would seem as if the arrangements and customs of
modern society did everything that could be done to render
such a previous knowledge impossible.

Good sense would say that if men and women are to
single each other out, and bind themselves by a solemn
oath, forsaking all others to cleave to each other as long
as life should last, there ought to be, before taking vows
of such gravity, the very best opportunity to become
minutely acquainted with each other's dispositions, and
habits, and modes of thought and action. It would

seem to be the dictate of reason that a long and intimate
friendship ought to be allowed, in which, without any
bias or commitment, young people might have full opportunity
to study each other's character and disposition,
being under no obligation, expressed or implied, on account
of such intimacy to commit themselves to the
irrevocable union.

Such a kind of friendship is the instinctive desire of
both the parties that make up society. Both young men
and young women, as we observe, would greatly enjoy a
more intimate and friendly intercourse, if the very fact
of that initiatory acquaintance were not immediately
seized upon by busy A, B, and C, and reported as an
engagement. The flower that might possibly blossom
into the rose of love is withered and blackened by the
busy efforts of gossips to pick it open before the time.

Our young friend, Alice Van Arsdel, was what in
modern estimation would be called just the “nicest kind
of a girl.” She had a warm heart, a high sense of justice
and honor, she was devout in her religious profession,
conscientious in the discharge of the duties of
family life. Naturally, Alice was of a temperament
which might have inclined her to worldly ambition. She
had that keen sense of the advantages of wealth and
station which even the most sensible person may have,
and, had her father's prosperity continued, might have
run the gay career of flirtation and conquest supposed to
be proper to a rich young belle.

The failure of her father not only cut off all these
prospects, but roused the deeper and better part of her
nature to comfort and support her parents, and to assist
in all ways in trimming the family vessel to the new navigation.
Her self-esteem took a different form. Had she
been enthroned in wealth and station, it would have taken
pleasure in reigning; thrown from that position, it became

her pride to adapt herself entirely to the proprieties
of her different circumstances. Up to that hour, she had
counted Jim Fellows simply as a tassel on her fan, or any
other appendage to her glittering life. When the crash
came, she expected no more of him than of a last summer's
bird, and it was with somewhat of pleased surprise
that, on the first public tidings of the news, she received
from Jim an expensive hot-house bouquet of a kind that
he had never thought of giving in prosperous days.

“The extravagant boy!” she said. Yet she said it
with tears in her eyes, and she put the bouquet into
water, and changed it every day while it lasted. The
flowers and the friends of adversity have a value all their
own.

Then Jim came, came daily, with downright unsentimental
offers of help, and made so much fun and gaiety
for them in the days of their breaking up as almost
shocked Aunt Maria, who felt that a period of weeping
and wailing would have been more appropriate. Jim
became recognized in the family as a sort of factotum,
always alert and ready to advise or to do, and generally
knowing where every body or thing which was wanted
in New York was to be found. But, as Alice was by
no means the only daughter, as Marie and Angelique
were each in their way as lively and desirable young
candidates for admiration, it would have appeared that
here was the best possible chance for a young man to
have a friendship whose buds even the gossips would
not pick open to find if there were love inside of them.
As a young neophyte of the all-powerful press, Jim had
the dispensation of many favors, in the form of tickets to
operas, concerts, and other public entertainments, which
were means of conferring enjoyment and variety, and
dispensed impartially among the sisters. Eva's house,
in all the history of its finding, inception, and construction,

had been a ground for many a familiar meeting
from whence had grown up a pleasant feeling of comradeship
and intimacy.

The things that specialized this intimacy, as relating
to Alice more than to the other sisters, were things as indefinite
and indefinable as the shade mark between two
tints of the rainbow; and yet there undoubtedly was
a peculiar intimacy, and since the misfortunes of the
family it had been of a graver kind than before, though
neither of them cared to put it into words. Between a
young man and a young woman of marriageable age a
friendship of this kind, if let alone, generally comes to its
bud and blossom in its own season; and there is something
unutterably vexatious and revolting to every fibre
of a girl's nature to have any well-meaning interference
to force this denouement.

Alice enjoyed the unspoken devotion of Jim, which
she perceived by that acute sort of divination of which
women are possessed; she felt quietly sure that she had
more influence over him, could do more with him, than
any other woman; and this consciousness of power over
a man is something most agreeable to girls of Alice's degree
of self-esteem. She assumed to be a sort of mentor;
she curbed the wild sallies of his wit, rebuking him if he
travestied a hymn, or made a smart, funny application of
a text of Scripture. But, as she generally laughed, the
culprit was not really overborne by the censure. She
had induced him to go with her to Mr. St. John's church,
and even to take a class in the Sunday-school, where he
presided with the unction of an apostle over a class of
street “gamins,” who certainly never found a more entertaining
teacher.

Now, although Marie and Angelique were also teachers
in the same school, it somehow always happened that
Jim and Alice walked to the scene of their duties in company.

It was one of those quiet, unobserved arrangements
of particles which are the result of laws of chemical
affinity. These street tête-à-têtes gave Alice admirable
opportunity for those graceful admonitions which are so
very effective on young gentlemen when coming from
handsome, agreeable monitors. On a certain Sunday
morning in our history, as Alice was on her way to the
mission school with Jim, she had been enjoining upon
him to moderate his extreme liveliness to suit the duties
of the place and scene.

“It 's all very well, Alice,” he said to her, “so long as
I do n't have to be too much with that St. John. But
I declare that fellow stirs me up awfully: he looks so
meek and so fearfully pious that it 's all I can do to keep
from ripping out an oath, just to see him jump!”

“Jim, you bad fellow! How can you talk so?”

“Well, it 's a serious fact now. Ministers ought n't
to look so pious! It 's too much a temptation. Why,
last Sunday, when he came trailing by so soft and meek
and asked me what books we wanted, I perfectly longed
to rip out an oath and say, `Why in thunder can't you
speak louder.' It 's a temptation of the devil, I know;
but you must n't let St. John and me run too much together,
or I shall blow out.”

“Oh, Jim, you must n't talk so. Why, you really
shock me—you grieve me.”

“Well, you see, I 've given up swearing for ever so
long, but some kinds of people do tempt me fearfully,
and he 's one of 'em, and then I think that he must think
I 'm a wolf in sheep's clothing. But then, you see, a
wolf understands those cubs better than a sheep. You
ought to hear how I put gospel into them. I make 'em
come out on the responses like little Trojans. I 've
promised every boy who is `sharp up' on his Collect
next Sunday a new pop-gun.”

“O Jim, you creature!” said Alice, laughing.

“By George, Alice, it 's the best way. You do n't
know anything about these little heathen. You 've got to
take 'em where they live. They put up with the Collect
for the sake of the pop-gun, you see.”

“But, Jim, I really was in hopes that you would look
on this thing seriously,” said Alice, endeavoring to draw
on a face of protest.

“Why, Alice, I am serious; did n't I go round to the
highways and hedges, drumming up those little varmints?
Not a soul of them would have put his head inside a
Sunday-school room if it had n't been for me. I tell you
I ought to be encouraged now. I 'm not appreciated.”

“Oh Jim, you have done beautifully.”

“I should think I had. I keep a long face while
they are there, and do n't swear at Mr. St. John, and
sing like a church robin. So I think you ought to let
me let out a little to you going home. That eases my
mind; it 's the confessional—Mr. St. John believes in
that. I did n't swear, mind you. I only felt like it; maybe
that 'll wear off, by-and-by. So do n't give me up, yet.”

“Oh, I do n't; and I 'm perfectly sure, Jim, that you
are the very person that can do good to these wild boys.
Of course the free experience of life which young men
have, enables them to know how to deal with such cases
better than we girls can.”

“Yes, you ought to hear me expound the commandments,
and put it into them about stealing and lying.
You see Jim knows a thing or two, and is up to their
tricks. They do n't come it round Jim, I tell you. Any
boy that do n't toe the crack gets it. I give 'em C sharp
with the key up.”

“O Jim, you certainly are original in your ways!
But I dare say you 're right,” said Alice. “You know
how to get on with them.”

“Indeed I do. I tell you I know what 's what for
these boys, though I do n't know, and do n't care about,
what the old coves did in the first two centuries, and all
that. Do n't you think, Alice, St. John is a little prosy
on that chapter?”

“Mr. St. John is such a good man that I receive
everything he says on subjects where he knows more
than I do,” said Alice, virtuously.

“Oh pshaw, Alice! if a fellow has to swallow every
good man's hobby-horses, hoofs, tail and all, why he 'll
have a good deal to digest. I tell you St. John is too
`other-worldly,' as Charles Lamb used to say. He
ought to get in love, and get married. I think, now,
that if our little Angie would take him in hand she would
bring him into mortal spheres, make a nice fellow of
him.”

“Oh, Mr. St. John never will marry,” said Alice, solemnly;
“he is devoted to the church. He has published
a tract on holy virginity that is beautiful.”

“Holy grandmother!” said Jim; “that 's all bosh,
Ally. Now you are too sensible a girl to talk that way.
That 's going to Rome on a high canter.”

“I don't think so,” said Alice, stoutly. “For my
part, I think if a man, for the sake of devoting himself
to the church, gives up family cares, I reverence him.
I like to feel that my rector is something sacred to the
altar. The very idea of a clergyman in any other than
sacred relations is disagreeable to me.”

“Go it, now! so long as I 'm not the clergyman!”

“You sauce-box!”

“Well, now, mark my words. St. John is a man, after
all, and not a Fra Angelico angel, with a long neck and
a lily in his hand, and, I tell you, when Angie sits there
at the head of her class, working and fussing over those
girls, she looks confoundedly pretty, and if St. John

finds it out I shall think the better of him, and I think
he will.”

“Pshaw, Jim, he never looks at her.”

“Do n't he? he does though. I 've seen him go round
and round, and look at her as if she was an electrical
battery, or something that he was afraid might go off
and kill him. But he does look at her. I tell you, Jim
knows the signs of the sky.”

With which edifying preparation of mind, Alice found
herself at the door of the Sunday-school room, where the
pair were graciously received by Mr. St. John.