University of Virginia Library

35. CHAPTER XXXV.
A SOUL IN PERIL.

IT will be seen by the way in which we left poor
Maggie that she stood in just one of those critical
steep places of life where a soul is in pain and peril;
where the turning of a hair's breadth may decide between
death and life. And it is something, not only to
the individual, but to the whole community, what a
woman may become in one of these crises of life.

Maggie had a rich, warm, impulsive nature, full of
passion and energy; she had personal beauty and the
power that comes from it; she had in her all that might
have made the devoted wife and mother, fitted to give
strong sons and daughters to our republic, and to bring
them up to strengthen our country. But, deceived,
betrayed, led astray by the very impulses which should
have ended in home and marriage, with even her best
friends condemning her, her own heart condemning her,
the whole face of the world set against her, her feet
stood in slippery places.

There is another life open to the woman whom the
world judges and rejects and condemns; a life short,
bad, desperate; a life of revenge, of hate, of deceit; a
life in which woman, outraged and betrayed by man,
turns bitterly upon him, to become the tempter, the betrayer,
the ruiner of man,—to visit misery and woe on
the society that condemns her.

Many a young man has been led to gambling, and
drinking, and destruction; many a wife's happiness has
been destroyed; many a mother has wept on a sleepless

pillow over a son worse than dead,—only because some
woman, who at a certain time in her life might have been
saved to honor and good living, has been left to be a vessel
of wrath fitted to destruction. For we have seen in
Maggie's history that there were points all along, where
the girl might have been turned into another and a better
way.

If Mrs. Maria Wouvermans, instead of railing at her
love of feathers and flowers, watching for her halting, and
seeking occasion against her, had only had grace to do
for her what lies in the power of every Christian mistress;
if she had won her confidence, given her motherly
care and sympathy, and trained her up under the protection
of household influences, it might have been otherwise.
Or, supposing that Maggie were too self-willed,
too elate with the flatteries that come to young beauty,
to be saved from a fall, yet, after that fall, when she rose,
ashamed and humbled, there was still a chance of retrieval.

Perhaps there is never a time when man or woman
has a better chance, with suitable help, of building a
good character than just after a humiliating fall which
has taught the sinner his own weakness, and given him a
sad experience of the bitterness of sin.

Nobody wants to be sold under sin, and go the whole
length in iniquity; and when one has gone just far
enough in wrong living to perceive in advance all its
pains and penalties, there is often an agonized effort to
get back to respectability, like the clutching of the
drowning man for the shore. The waters of death are
cold and bitter, and nobody wants to be drowned.

But it is just at this point that the drowning hand is
wrenched off; society fears that the poor wet wretch will
upset its respectable boat; it pushes him off, and rows
over the last rising bubbles.

And this is not in the main because men and women

are hard-hearted or cruel, but because they are busy,
every one of them, with their own works and ways, hurried,
driven, with no time, strength, or heart-leisure for
more than they are doing. What is one poor soul struggling
in the water, swimming up stream, to the great
pushing, busy, bustling world?

Nothing in the review of life appears to us so pitiful
as the absolute nothingness of the individual in the great
mass of human existence. To each living, breathing,
suffering atom, the consciousness of what it desires and
suffers is so intense, and to every one else so faint. It is
faint even to the nearest and dearest, compared to what
it is to one's self. “The heart knoweth its own bitterness,
and a stranger intermeddleth not therewith.”

Suppose you were suddenly struck down to-day by
death in any of its dreadful forms, how much were this
to you, how little to the world! how little even to the
friendly world, who think well of you and wish you
kindly! The paper that tells the tale scarcely drops from
their hand; a few shocked moments of pity or lamentation,
perhaps, and then returns the discussion of what
shall be for dinner, and whether the next dress shall be
cut with flounces or folds: the gay waves of life dance
and glitter over the last bubble which marks where you
sank.

So we have seen poor Maggie, with despair and bitterness
in her heart, wandering, on a miserable cold day,
through the Christmas rejoicings of New York, on the
very verge of going back to courses that end in unutterable
degradation and misery; and yet, how little it was
anybody's business to seek or to save her.

“So,” said Mrs. Wouvermans, in a tone of exultation,
when she heard of Maggie's flight, “I hope, I'm sure,
Eva's had enough of her fine ways of managing! Miss
Maggie's off, just as I knew she'd be. That girl is a

baggage! And now, of course, nothing must do but
Mary must be off to look for her, and then Eva is left
with all her house on her hands. I should think this
would show her that my advice wasn't so altogether to
be scorned.”

Now, it is not to be presumed that Mrs. Wouvermans
really was so cruel as to exult in the destruction of
Maggie, and the perplexity and distress of her mother,
or in Eva's domestic discomfort; yet there was something
very like this in the tone of her remarks.

Whence is the feeling of satisfaction which we have
when things that we always said we knew, turn out just
as we predicted? Had we really rather our neighbor
would be proved a thief and a liar than to be proved in
a mistake ourselves? Would we be willing to have
somebody topple headlong into destruction for the sake
of being able to say, “I told you so”?

Mrs. Wouvermans did not ask herself these pointed
questions, and so she stirred her faultless coffee without
stirring up a doubt of her own Christianity—for, like you
and me, Mrs. Wouvermans held herself to be an ordinarily
good Christian.

Gentle, easy Mrs. Van Arsdel heard this news with
acquiescence. “Well, girls, so that Maggie's run off and
settled the question; and, on the whole, I'm not sorry,
for that ends Eva's responsibility for her; and, after
all, I think your aunt was half right about that matter.
One does n't want to have too much to do with such
people.”

“But, mamma,” said Alice, “it seems such a dreadful
thing that so young a girl, not older than I am, should
be utterly lost.”

“Yes, but you can't help it, and such things are happening
all the time, and it isn't worth while making ourselves
unhappy about it. I'm sure Eva acted like a little

saint about it, and the girl can have no one to blame but
herself.”

“I know,” said Alice; “Eva told me about it. It
was Aunt Maria, with her usual vigor and activity, who
precipitated the catastrophe. Eva had just got the girl
into good ways, and all was going smoothly, when Aunt
Maria came in and broke everything up. I must say, I
think Aunt Maria is a nuisance.”

“Oh, Alice, how can you talk so, when you know
that your aunt is thinking of nothing so much as how to
serve and advance you girls?”

“She is thinking of how to carry her own will and
pleasure; and we girls are like so many ninepins that
she wants to set up or knock down to suit her game.
Now she has gone and invited those Stephenson girls to
spend the holidays with her.”

“Well, you know it's entirely on your account, Alice,
—you girls. The Stephensons are a very desirable family
to cultivate.”

“Yes; it's all a sort of artifice, so that they may
have to invite us to visit them next summer at Newport.
Now, I never was particularly interested in those girls.
They always seemed to me insipid sort of people; and
to feel obliged to be very attentive to them and cultivate
their intimacy, with any such view, is a sort of maneuvering
that is very repulsive to me; it doesn't seem
honest.”

“But now your aunt has got them, and we must be
attentive to them,” pleaded Mrs. Van Arsdel.

“Oh, of course. What I am complaining of is that my
aunt can't let us alone; that she is always scheming for
us, planning ahead for us, getting people that we must
be attentive to, and all that; and then, because she's our
aunt and devoted to our interests, our conscience is all
the while troubling us because we don't like her better.

The truth is, Aunt Maria is a constant annoyance to
me, and I reproach myself for not being grateful to her.
Now, Angelique and I are on a committee for buying
the presents for the Christmas-tree of our mission-school,
and we shall have to go and get the tree up; and it's no
small work to dress a Christmas-tree—in fact, we shall
just have our hands full, without the Stephensons. We
are going up to Eva's this very morning, to talk this
matter over and make out our lists of things; and, for
my part, I find the Stephensons altogether de trop.”

Meanwhile, in Eva's little dominion, peace and prosperity
had returned with the return of cook to the
kitchen cabinet. A few days' withdrawal of that important
portion of the household teaches the mistress
many things, and, among others, none more definitely
than the real dignity and importance of that sphere
which is generally regarded as least and lowest.

Mary had come back disheartened from a fruitless
quest. Maggie had indeed been at Poughkeepsie, and
had spent a day and a night with a widowed sister of
Mary's, and then, following a restless impulse, had gone
back to New York—none knew whither; and Mary was
going on with her duties with that quiet, acquiescent
sadness with which people of her class bear sorrow
which they have no leisure to indulge. The girl had
for two or three years been lost to her; but the brief
interval of restoration seemed to have made the pang
of losing her again still more dreadful. Then, the anticipated
mortification of having to tell Mike of it, and
the thought of what Mike and Mike's wife's would say,
were a stinging poison. Though Maggie's flight was
really due in a great measure to Mike's own ungracious
reception of her and his harsh upbraidings, intensified
by what she had overheard from Mrs. Wouvermans, yet
Mary was quite sure that Mike would receive it as a

confirmation of his own sagacity in the opinion he had
pronounced.

The hardness and apathy with which even near relations
will consign their kith and kin to utter ruin is one
of the sad phenomena of life. Mary knew that Mike
would say to her, “Didn't I tell you so? The girl's
gone to the bad; let her go! She's made her bed; let
her lie in it.”

It was only from her gentle, sympathetic mistress
that Mary met with a word of comfort. Eva talked with
her, and encouraged her to pour out all her troubles and
opened the door of her own heart to her sorrows. Eva
cheered and comforted her all she could, though she had
small hopes, herself.

She had told Mr. Fellows, she said, and Mr. Fellows
knew all about New York—knew everybody and everything—and
if Maggie were there he would be sure to
hear of her; “and if she is anywhere in New York I will
go to her,” said Eva, “and persuade her to come back
and be a good girl. And don't you tell your brother
anything about it. Why need he know? I dare say we
shall get Maggie back, and all going right, before he
knows anything about it.”

Eva had just been talking to this effect to Mary in
the kitchen, and she came back into her parlor, to find
there poor, fluttering, worried little Mrs. Betsey Benthusen,
who had come in to bewail her prodigal son, of whom, for
now three days and nights, no tidings had been heard.

“I came in to ask you, dear Mrs. Henderson, if anything
has been heard from the advertising of Jack? I
declare, I haven't been able to sleep since he went, I am
so worried. I dare say you must think it silly of me,”
she said, wiping her eyes, “but I am just so silly. I
really had got so fond of him—I feel so lonesome without
him.”

“Silly, dear friend!” said Eva in her usual warm,
impulsive way, “no, indeed; I think it's perfectly natural
that you should feel as you do. I think, for my
part, these poor dumb pets were given us to love; and
if we do love them, we can't help feeling anxious about
them when they are gone.”

“You see,” said Mrs. Betsey, “if I only knew—but I
don't—if I knew just where he was, or if he was well
treated; but then, Jack is a dog that has been used to
kindness, and it would come hard to him to have to
suffer hunger and thirst, and be kicked about and
abused. I lay and thought about things that might
happen to him, last night, till I fairly cried”—and the
tears stood in the misty blue eyes of the faded little old
gentlewoman, in attestation of the possibility. “I got so
wrought up,” she continued, “that I actually prayed to
my Heavenly Father to take care of my poor Jack. Do
you think that was profane, Mrs. Henderson?—I just
could not help it.”

“No, dear Mrs. Betsey, I don't think it was profane;
I think it was just the most sensible thing you could do.
You know our Saviour says that not a sparrow falls to
the ground without our Father, and I'm sure Jack is a
good deal larger than a sparrow.”

“Well, I didn't tell Dorcas,” said Mrs. Betsey, “because
she thinks I'm foolish, and I suppose I am. I'm a
broken-up old woman now, and I never had as much
strength of mind as Dorcas, anyway. Dorcas has a very
strong mind,” said little Mrs. Betsy in a tone of awe;
“she has tried all she could to strengthen mine, but she
can't do much with me.”

Just at this instant, Eva, looking through the window
down street, saw Jim Fellows approaching, with
Jack's head appearing above his shoulder in that
easy, jaunty attitude with which the restored lamb is

represented in a modern engraving of the Good Shepherd.

There he sat, to be sure, with a free and easy air of
bright, doggish vivacity; perched aloft with his pink
tongue hanging gracefully out of his mouth, and his
great, bright eyes and little black tip of a nose gleaming
out from the silvery thicket of his hair, looking anything
but penitent for all the dismays and sorrows of which he
had been the cause.

“Oh, Mrs. Betsey, do come here,” cried Eva; “here
is Jack, to be sure!”

“You don't say so! Why, so he is; that dear, good
Mr. Fellows! how can I ever thank him enough!”

And, as Jim mounted the steps, Eva hastened to
open the door in anticipation of the door-bell.

“Any dogs to-day, ma'am?” said Jim in the tone of a
pedlar.

“Oh, Mrs. Henderson!” said Mrs. Betsey. But what
further she said was lost in Jack's vociferous barking.
He had recognized Mrs. Betsey and struggled
down out of Jim's arms, and was leaping and capering
and barking, overwhelming his mistress with obstreperous
caresses, in which there was not the slightest recognition
of any occasion for humility or penitence. Jack
was forgiving Mrs. Betsey with all his might and main
for all the trouble he had caused, and expressing his
perfect satisfaction and delight at finding himself at
home again.

“Well,” said Jim, in answer to the numerous questions
showered upon him, “the fact is that Dixon and I
were looking up something to write about in a not very
elegant or reputable quarter of New York, and suddenly,
as we were passing one of the dance houses, that girl
Maggie darted out with Jack in her arms, and calling
after me by name, she said: `This poor dog belongs to

the people opposite Mrs. Henderson's. He has been
stolen away, and won't you take him back?' I said I
would, and then I said, `Seems to me, Maggie, you'd
better come back, too, to your mother, who is worrying
dreadfully about you.' But she turned quickly and said,
`The less said about me the better,' and ran in.”

“Oh, how dreadful that anybody should be so depraved
at her age,” said little Mrs. Betsey, complacently
caressing Jack. “Mrs. Henderson, you have had a fortunate
escape of her; you must be glad to get her out of
your house. Well, I must hurry home with him and get
him washed up, for he's in such a state! And do look at
this ribbon! Would you know it ever had been a ribbon?
it's thick with grease and dirt, and I dare say he's coverved
with fleas. O Jack, Jack, what trouble you have
made me!”

And the little woman complacently took up her criminal,
who went off on her shoulder with his usual waggish
air of impudent assurance.

“See what luck it is to be a dog,” said Jim. “Nobody
would have half the patience with a ragamuffin
boy, now!”

“But, seriously, Jim, what can be done about poor
Maggie? I've promised her mother to get her back, if
she could be discovered.”

“Well, really she is in one of the worst drinking
saloons of that quarter, kept by Mother Mogg, who is,
to put the matter explicitly, a sort of she devil. It isn't
a place where it would do for me or any of the boys to
go. We are not calculated for missionary work in just
that kind of field.”

“Well, who can go? What can be done? I've
promised Mary to save her. I'll go myself, if you'll show
me the way.”

“You, Mrs. Henderson? You don't know what you

are talking about. You never could go there. It isn't
to be thought of.”

“But somebody must go, Jim; we can't leave her
there.”

“Well, now I think of it,” said Jim, “there is a
Methodist minister who has undertaken to set up a mission
in just that part of the city. They bought a place
that used to be kept for a rat-pit, and had it cleaned up,
and they have opened a mission house, and have prayer-meetings
and such things there. I'll look that thing up;
perhaps he can find Maggie for you. Though I must say
you are taking a great deal of trouble about this girl.”

“Well, Jim, she has a mother, and her mother loves
her as yours does you.”

“By George, now, that's enough,” said Jim. “You
don't need to say another word. I'll go right about it,
this very day, and hunt up this Mr. What's-his-name, and
find all about this mission. I've been meaning to write
that thing up this month or so.”