University of Virginia Library

31. CHAPTER XXXI.
WHAT THEY TALKED ABOUT.

THE dinner party, like many impromptu social ventures,
was a success. Mr. Selby proved one of
that delightful class of English travelers who travel in
America to see and enter into its peculiar and individual
life, and not to show up its points of difference from
old-world social standards. He seemed to take the sense
of a little family dinner, got up on short notice, in which
the stereotyped doctrine of courses was steadfastly ignored;
where there was no soup or fish, and only a good
substantial course of meat and vegetables, with a slight
dessert of fruit and confectionery; where there was no
black servant, with white gloves, to change the plates,
but only respectable, motherly Mary, who had tidied
herself and taken the office of waiter, in addition to her
services as cook.

A real high-class English gentleman, when he fairly
finds himself out from under that leaden pale of conventionalities
which weighs down elasticity like London
fog and smoke, sometimes exhibits all the hilarity of a
boy out of school on a long vacation, and makes himself
frisky and gamesome to a degree that would astonish the
solemn divinities of insular decorum. Witness the
stories of the private fun and frolic of Thackeray and
Dickens, on whom the intoxicating sense of social freedom
wrought results sometimes surprising to staid Americans;
as when Thackeray rode with his heels out of the
carriage window through immaculate and gaping Boston
and Dickens perpetrated his celebrated walking wager.

Mr. Selby was a rising literary man in the London
writing world, who had made his own way up in the
world, and known hard times and hard commons,
though now in a lucrative position. It would have been
quite possible, by spending a suitable sum and deranging
the whole house, to set him down to a second-rate imitation
of a dull, conventional London dinner, with waiters
in white chokers, and protracted and circuitous courses;
and in that case Mr. Selby would have frozen into a stiff,
well preserved Briton, with immaculate tie and gloves,
and a guarded and diplomatic reserve of demeanor.
Eva would have been nervously thinking of the various
unusual arrangements of the dinner table, and a general
stiffness and embarrassment would have resulted. People
who entertain strangers from abroad often re-enact
the mistake of the two Englishmen who traveled all
night in a diligence, laboriously talking broken French
to each other, till at dawn they found out by a chance
slip of the tongue that they were both English. So,
at heart, every true man, especially in a foreign land, is
wanting what every true household can give him—sincere
homely feeling, the sense of domesticity, the comfort
of being off parade and among friends; and Mr.
Selby saw in the first ten minutes that this was what he
had found in the Hendersons' house.

In the hour before dinner, Eva had shown him her
ivies and her ferns and her manner of training them, and
found an appreciate observer and listener. Mr. Selby
was curious about American interiors and the detail of
domestic life among people of moderate fortune. He
was interested in the modes of warming and lighting,
and arranging furniture, etc.; and soon Eva and he
were all over the house, while she eloquently explained
to him the working of the furnace, the position of
the water pipes, and the various comforts and con

[ILLUSTRATION]

CONFIDENCES.
"In due course followed an introduction to 'my wife,' whose photograph
Mr. Selby wore dutifully in his coat-pocket over the exact
region of the heart."—p. 287.

[Description: 710EAF. Illustration page. Image of a man and a woman sitting in a drawing room. The woman is holding a photograph in one hand and they are both looking at it.]

veniences which they had introduced into their little
territories.

“I've got a little box of my own at Kentish town,
Mr. Selby said, in a return burst of confidence, “and I
shall tell my wife about some of your contrivances; the
fact is,” he added, “we literary people need to learn all
these ways of being comfortable at small expense. The
problem of our age is, that of perfecting small establishments
for people of moderate means; and I must say, I
think it has been carried further in your country than
with us.”

“In due course followed an introduction to “my
wife,” whose photograph Mr. Selby wore dutifully in his
coat-pocket, over the exact region of the heart; and then
came “my son,” four years old, with all his playthings
round him; and, in short, before an hour, Eva and he
were old acquaintances, ready to tell each other family
secrets.

Alice and Angelique were delightful girls to reinforce
and carry out the home charm of the circle. They had
eminently what belongs to the best class of American
girls,—that noble frankness of manner, that fearless giving
forth of their inner nature, which comes from the atmosphere
of free democratic society. Like most high-bred
American girls, they had traveled, and had opportunities
of observing European society, which added breadth
to their range of conversation without taking anything
from their frank simplicity. Foreign travel produces
two opposite kinds of social effect, according to character.
Persons who are narrow in their education, sensitive
and self-distrustful, are embarrassed by a foreign experience:
they lose their confidence in their home life, in
their own country and its social habitudes, and get nothing
adequate in return; their efforts at hospitality are
repressed by a sort of mental comparison of themselves

with foreign models; they shrink from entertaining
strangers, through an indefinite fear that they shall come
short of what would be expected somewhere else. But
persons of more breadth of thought and more genuine
courage see at once that there is a characteristic American
home life, and that what a foreigner seeks in a
foreign country is the peculiarity of that country, and not
an attempt to reproduce that which has become stupid
and tedious to him by constant repetition at home.

Angelique and Alice talked readily and freely; Alice
with the calm, sustained good sense and dignity which
was characteristic of her, and Angelique in those sunny
jets and flashes of impulsive gaiety which rise like a fountain
at the moment. Given the presence of three female
personages like Eva, Alice, and Angelique, and it would
not be among the possibilities for a given set of the other
sex to be dull or heavy. Then, most of the gentlemen
were more or less habitués of the house, and somewhat
accorded with each other, like instruments that have
been played in unison; and it is not, therefore to be
wondered at that Mr. Selby made the mental comment
that, taken at home, these Americans are delightful, and
that cultivated American women are particularly so
from their engaging frankness of manner.

There would be a great deal more obedience to the
apostolic injunction, “Be not forgetful to entertain
strangers,” if it once could be clearly got into the heads
of well-intending people what it is that strangers want.
What do you want, when away from home, in a strange
city? Is it not the warmth of the home fireside, and
the sight of people that you know care for you? Is it
not the blessed privilege of speaking and acting yourself
out unconstrainedly among those who you know understand
you? And had you not rather dine with an old
friend on simple cold mutton, offered with a warm heart,

than go to a splendid ceremonious dinner party among
people who don't care a rush for you?

Well, then, set it down in your book that other people
are like you; and that the art of entertaining is the art
of really caring for people. If you have a warm heart,
congenial tastes, and a real interest in your stranger,
don't fear to invite him, though you have no best dinner
set, and your existing plates are sadly chipped at the
edges, and even though there be a handle broken off
from the side of your vegetable dish. Set it down in
your belief that you can give something better than a
dinner, however good,—you can give a part of yourself.
You can give love, good will, and sympathy, of which
there has, perhaps, been quite as much over cracked
plates and restricted table furniture as over Sèvres china
and silver.

It soon appeared that Mr. Selby, like other sensible
Englishmen, had a genuine interest in getting below the
surface life of our American world, and coming to the
real “hard-pan” on which our social fabric is founded.
He was full of intelligent curiosity as to the particulars
of American journalism, its management, its possibilities,
its remunerations compared with those of England; and
here was where Bolton's experience, and Jim Fellows's
many-sided practical observations, came out strongly.

Alice was delighted with the evident impression that
Jim made on a man whose good opinion appeared to be
worth having; for that young lady, insensibly perhaps to
herself, held a sort of right of property in Jim, such as
the princesses of the middle ages had in the knights that
wore their colors, and Jim, undoubtedly, was inspired by
the idea that bright eyes looked on, to do his devoir manfully
in the conversation. So they went over all the
chances and prospects of income and living for literary
men and journalists in the two countries; the facilities

for marriage, and the establishment of families, including
salaries, rents, prices of goods, etc. In the course of the
conversation, Mr. Selby made many frank statements of
his own personal experience and observation, which were
responded to with equal frankness on the part of Harry
and Eva and others, till it finally seemed as if the whole
company were as likely to become au courant of each
other's affairs as a party of brothers and sisters. Eva,
sitting at the head, like a skillful steerswoman, turned
the helm of conversation adroitly, now this way and now
that, to draw out the forces of all her guests, and bring
each into play. She introduced the humanitarian questions
of the day; and the subject branched at once upon
what was doing by the Christian world: the high church,
the ritualists, the broad church, and the dissenters all
rose upon the carpet, and St. John was wide awake and
earnest in his inquiries. In fact, an eager talking spirit
descended upon them, and it was getting dark when Eva
made the move to go to the parlor, where a bright fire
and coffee awaited them.

“I always hate to drop very dark shades over my
windows in the evening,” said Eva, as she went in and
began letting down the lace curtains; “I like to have the
firelight of a pleasant room stream out into the dark,
and look cheerful and hospitable outside; for that reason
I don't like inside shutters. Do you know, Mr. Selby,
how your English arrangements used to impress me?
They were all meant to be very delightful to those in
side, but freezingly repulsive to those without. Your
beautiful grounds that one longs to look at, are guarded
by high stone-walls with broken bottles on the top, to
keep one from even hoping to get over. Now, I think
beautiful grounds are a public charity, and a public education;
and a man shouldn't build a high wall round
them, so that even the sight of his trees, and the odor

of his flowers, should be denied to his poor neighbors.”

“It all comes of our national love of privacy,” said
Mr. Selby; “it isn't stinginess, I beg you to believe, Mrs.
Henderson, but shyness,—you find our hearts all right
when you get in.”

“That we do; but, I beg pardon, Mr. Selby, oughtn't
shyness to be put down in the list of besetting sins, and
fought against; isn't it the enemy of brotherly kindness
and charity?”

“Certainly, Mrs. Henderson, you practice so delightfully,
one cannot find fault with your preaching,” said
Mr. Selby; “but, after all, is it a sin to want to keep
one's private life to himself, and unexposed to the comments
of vulgar, uncongenial natures? It seems to me,
if you will pardon the suggestion, that there is too little
of this sense of privacy in America. Your public men,
for instance, are required to live in glass cases, so that
they may be constantly inspected behind and before.
Your press interviewers beset them on every hand, take
down their chance observations, record everything they
say and do, and how they look and feel at every moment
of their lives. I confess that I would rather be comfortably
burned at the stake at once than to be one of your
public men in America; and all this comes of your not
being shy and reserved. It's a state of things impossible
in the kind of country that has high walls with glass bottles
around its private grounds.”

“He has us there, Eva,” said Harry; “our vulgar,
jolly, democratic level of equality over here produces
just these insufferable results; there's no doubt about
it.”

“Well,” said Jim, “I have one word to say about
newspaper reporters. Poor boys! everybody is down
on them, nobody has a bit of charity for them; and yet,

bless you, it isn't their fault if they're impertinent and
prying. That is what they are engaged for and paid for,
and kicked out if they're not up to. Why, look you,
here are four or five big dailies running the general
gossip-mill for these great United States, and if any one
of them gets a bit of news before another, it's a victory
—a “beat.” Well, if the boys are not sharp, if other
papers get things that they don't or can't, off they must
go; and the boys have mothers and sisters to support—
and want to get wives some day—and the reporting business
is the first round of the ladder; if they get pitched
off, it's all over with them.”

“Precisely,” said Mr. Selby; “it is, if you will pardon
my saying it, it is your great American public that wants
these papers and takes them, and takes the most of those
that have the most gossip in them, that are to blame.
They make the reporters what they are, and keep them
what they are, by the demand they keep up for their
wares; and so, I say, if Mrs. Henderson will pardon me,
that, as yet, I am unable to put down our national shyness
in the catalogue of sins to be fought against. I
confess I would rather, if I should ever happen to have
any literary fame, I would rather shut my shutters, evenings,
and have high walls with glass bottles on top around
my grounds, and not have every vulgar, impertinent fellow
in the community commenting on my private affairs.
Now, in England, we have all arrangements to keep
our families to ourselves, and to such intimates as we
may approve.”

“Oh, yes, I knew it to my cost when I was in England,”
said Eva. “You might be in a great hotel with
all the historic characters of your day, and see no more
of them than if you were in America. They came in
close family carriages, they passed to close family rooms,
they traveled in railroad compartments specially secured

to themselves, and you knew no more about them than
if you had stayed at home.”

“Well,” said Mr. Selby, “you describe what I think
are very nice, creditable, comfortable ways of managing.”

“With not even a newspaper reporter to tell the
people what they were talking about, and what gowns
their wives and daughters wore,” said Bolton, dryly. “I
confess, of the two extremes, the English would most
accord with my natural man.”

“So it is with all of us,” said St. John; “the question
is, though, whether this strict caste system which links
people in certain lines and ruts of social life, doesn't
make it impossible to have that knowledge of one another
as human beings which Christianity requires. It struck
me in England that the high clergy had very little practical
comprehension of the feelings of the lower classes,
and their wives and daughters less. They were prepared
to dispense charity to them from above, but not to study
them on the plane of equal intercourse. They never
mingle, any more than oil and water; and that, I think, is
why so much charity in England is thrown away—the
different classes do not understand each other, and never
can.”

“Yes,” said Harry; “with all the disadvantages and
disagreeable results of our democratic jumble in society,
our common cars where all ride side by side, our hotel
parlors where all sit together, and our tables d' hote where
all dine together, we do know each other better, and
there is less chance of class misunderstandings and jealousies,
than in England.”

“For my part, I sympathize with Mr. Selby, according
to the flesh,” said Mr. St. John. “The sheltered
kind of life one leads in English good society is what I
prefer; but, if our Christianity is good for anything, we
cannot choose what we prefer.”

“I have often thought,” said Eva, “that the pressure
of vulgar notoriety, the rush of the crowd around our
Saviour, was evidently the same kind of trial to him that
it must be to every refined and sensitive nature; and yet
how constant and how close was his affiliation with the
lowest and poorest in his day. He lived with them, he
gave them just what we shrink from giving—his personal
presence—himself.”

Eva spoke with a heightened color and with a burst
of self-forgetful enthusiasm. There was a little pause
afterwards, as if a strain of music had suddenly broken
into the conversation, and Mr. Selby, after a moment's
pause, said:

“Mrs. Henderson, I give way to that suggestion.
Sometimes, for a moment, I get a glimpse that Christianity
is something higher and purer than any conventional
church shows forth, and I feel that we nominal
Christians are not living on that plane, and that if we
only could live thus, it would settle the doubts of modern
skeptics faster than any Bampton Lectures.”

“Well,” said Eva, “it does seem as if that which
is best for society on the whole is always gained by a
sacrifice of what is agreeable. Think of the picturesque
scenery, and peasantry, and churches, and ceremonials in
Italy, and what a perfect scattering and shattering of all
such illusions would be made by a practical, common-sense
system of republican government, that would make
the people thrifty, prosperous, and happy! The good
is not always the beautiful.”

“Yes,” said Bolton to Mr. Selby, “and you Liberals
in England are assuredly doing your best to bring on
the very state of society which produces the faults that
annoy you here. The reign of the great average masses
never can be so agreeable to taste as that of the cultured
few.”

But we will not longer follow a conversation which
was kept up till a late hour around the blazing hearth.
The visit was one of those happy ones in which a man
enters a house a stranger and leaves it a friend. When
all were gone, Harry and Eva sat talking it over by the
decaying brands.

“Harry, you venturesome creature, how dared you
send such a company in upon me on washing day?”

“Because, my dear, I knew you were the one woman
in a thousand that could face an emergency and never
lose either temper or presence of mind; and you see I
was right.”

“But it isn't me that you should praise, Harry; it's
my poor, good Mary. Just think how patiently she
turned out of her way and changed all her plans, and
worked and contrived for me, when her poor old heart
was breaking! I must run up now and say how much I
thank her for making everything go off so well.”

Eva tapped softly at the door of Mary's room.
There was no answer. She opened it softly. Mary was
kneeling with clasped hands before her crucifix, and
praying softly and earnestly; so intent that she did not
hear Eva coming in. Eva waited a moment, and then
kneeled down beside her and softly put her arm around
her.

“Oh, dear, Miss Eva!” said Mary, “my heart's just
breaking.”

“I know it, I know it, my poor Mary.”

“It's so cold and dark out-doors, and where is she?”
said Mary, with a shudder. “Oh, I wish I'd been kinder
to her, and not scolded her.”

“Oh, dear Mary, don't reproach yourself; you did it
for the best. We will pray for her, and the dear Father
will hear us, I know he will. The Good Shepherd will
go after her and find her.”