University of Virginia Library

42. CHAPTER XLII.
JIM'S FORTUNES.

“WELL, hurrah for Jim!” exclaimed our friend
Jim Fellows, making tumultuous entrance into
the Henderson house, with such a whirl and breeze of
motion as to flutter the music on the piano, and the
papers on Harry's writing-desk, while he skipped round
the room, executing an extemporary pas seul.

“Jim, for goodness sake, what now?” said Harry,
rising. “What's up?”

“I've got it! I've got it!—the first place on `the
Forum!' Think of the luck! I've been talking with
Ivison and Sears about it, and the papers are all drawn.
I'm made now, you'd better believe. It's firm land at
last, and I tell you, if I have n't scratched for it!”

“Wish you joy, my boy, with all my heart,” said
Harry, shaking his hand. “It's the top of the ladder.”

“And I, too, Jim,” said Eva, offering her hand frankly.
“Sit down and have a cup of tea with us.”

“You don't care, I suppose, what happens to me,”
said Jim in an abused tone, turning to Alice, who had
sat quietly in a shaded corner through this outburst.

“Bless me, Jim, I've been holding my breath, for I
did n't know what you'd do next. I'm sure I wish you
joy with all my heart. There's my hand on it,” and
Alice reached out her hand as frankly as Eva.

It was a hand as fair, soft and white as a man might
wish to have settle like a dove of peace and rest in his
own; and, as it went into his palm, Jim could not help
giving it a warm, detaining grasp that had a certain

significance, especially as his eyes rested upon her with
a flash of expression before which hers fell.

Alice had come to Eva's to dine, and they were now
just enjoying that pleasant after-dinner hour around the
fireside, when they sat and played with their tea in pretty
teacups, and chatted, and looked into the fire. It is the
hour dear to memory, when the home fireside seems like
a picture, when the gleams of light that fall on one's
plants and pictures and books and statuettes, bring forth
some new charm in each one, giving rise to the exulting
feeling, “Nowhere in the world is there a place so pretty
and so cosy as this.”

Now, Alice had been meditating a return to her own
home that night, trusting to Harry for escort; but, at the
moment that Jim took her hand and she saw the expression
of his eyes, she mentally altered her intentions and
resolved to remain all night. She was sure if she rose
to go Jim would, of course, be her escort. She was not
going to walk home alone with him in his present mood,
and trust herself to hear, and be obliged to answer, anything
he might be led to say.

The fact is well known to observers of mental phenomena,
that an engagement suddenly sprung upon a
circle of intimate acquaintances is often productive of
great searchings of heart, and that it is apt to have a
result similar to the knocking down of one brick at the
extreme of a line of them.

Alice had been startled and astonished by finding
her rector descending from the semi-angelic sphere
where she had, in her imagination, placed him, and
coming into the ranks of mortal and marrying men.
She had seen and handled the engagement ring which
sparkled on Angie's finger, and it looked like any other
ring that a gentleman of good taste might buy, and
she had heard all the comments of the knowing ones

thereon. Already there was activity in the direction of
a prospective trousseau. Aunt Maria, with her usual
alertness, was prizing stuffs and giving records of prices
and of cheap and desirable shopping places, and racing
from one end of the city to the other in self-imposed
pilgrimages of research. There were discussions of
houses for the future rectory. Everything was in a
whirl of preparation. There was marriage in the very
air: and the same style of reflection which occurs when
there is a death, is apposite also to the betrothal—
“Whose turn shall come next?” “Hodie mihi—cras tibi.”

Jim Fellows, the most excitable, sympathetic of all
mortal Jims, may well be supposed to have felt something
of the general impulse.

Now, Miss Alice was as fine a specimen of younglady-hood
at twenty-two as is ordinarily to be met with
in New York or otherwhere. She was well read, well
bred, high-minded and high-principled. She was a little
inclined to the ultra-romantic in her views, and while
living along contentedly, and with a moderate degree of
good sense and comfort, with such people as were to be
found on earth, was a little prone to indulge dreams of
super-celestial people—imaginary heroes and heroines.
In the way of friendship, she imagined she liked many
of her gentlemen associates; but the man she was to
marry was to be a hero—somebody before whom she
and every one else should be irresistibly constrained to
bow down and worship. She knew nobody of this species
as yet.

Harry was all very well; a nice fellow—a bright,
lively, wide-awake fellow—a faultless husband—a desirable
brother-in-law; but still Harry was not a hero.
He was a man subject to domestic discipline for at
times littering the parlor table with too many pamphlets,
for giving imprudent invitations to dinner on an

ill-considered bill of fare, and for confounding solferino
with pink when describing colors or matching worsteds.
All these things brought him down into the sphere of
the actual, and took off the halo. In review of all the
married men of her acquaintance, she was constrained
to acknowledge that the genus hero was rare. Nobody
that she was acquainted with ever had married this kind
of being; and, in fact, within her own mind his lineaments
were cloudy and indistinct, like the magic looking-glass
of Agrippa before the destined image shone out.
She only knew of this or that mortal man of her
acquaintance, that he was not in the least like this ideal
of her dreams.

Meanwhile, Miss Alice was not at all insensible to
the charm of having a friend of the other sex wholly
and entirely devoted to her.

She thought she had with most exemplary frankness
and directness indicated to Jim that they were to be
friends and only friends; she had contended for her right
to be just as intimate with him as he and she pleased, in
the face of Aunt Maria and of all the ranks and orders
of good gossips who make the regulation of other people's
affairs a specialty; and she flattered herself that
she had at last conquered this territory and secured for
herself this independent right.

People had almost done telling her they had heard
that she was engaged to Jim Fellows, and asking her
when it was going to be announced. She plumed herself,
in a quiet way, on the independence and spirit she
had shown in the matter.

Now, Jim was one of those fellows who, in certain
respects, remain a boy forever. The boy in him was certainly
booked for as long a mortal journey as the man;
and, at threescore years and ten, one ought not to expect
to meet in him other than a white-headed, vivacious old

boy. He was a driving, industrious, efficient creature.
He was, in all respects, ideally fitted to success in the
profession he had chosen; the very image and body of
the New York press man—lively, versatile, acute, unsleeping,
untiring, always wide-awake, up and dressed,
and in full command of his faculties, at any hour of day
or night, ready for any emergency, overflowing with
inconsiderate fun and frolic, and, like the public he
served, going for his joke at any price. Since his intimacy
with Alice she had assumed to herself the right of
looking over his ways and acting the part of an exterior
conscience; and Jim had formed the habit of bringing
to her his articles for criticism. And Alice flattered herself
that she was not altogether selfish in accepting his
devotion, but was saving him from many an unwise escapade,
and exciting him to higher standards and nobler
ways of looking at life.

Of all the Christian and becoming rôles in the great
drama of life, there is none that so exactly suits young
ladies of a certain degree of gravity and dignity as that
of guardian angel.

Now, in respect to Jim, Alice certainly was fitted to
sustain this rôle. She was well-poised, decided, sensible
and serious in her conceptions of life, truthful and conscientious;
and the dash of ideality which pervaded all
her views gave to her, in the eyes of the modern New
York boy, a sort of sacred prestige, like the halo around
a saint.

No one sees life on a harder, colder, more utterly
unscrupulous side than the élève of the New York press.
He grinds in a mill of competition. He serves sharp and
severe masters, who in turn are driven up by an exacting,
irresponsible public, panting for excitement, grasping for
the latest sensation. The man of the press sees behind
the scenes in every illusion of life; the shapeless pulleys,

the dripping tallow candles that light up the show, all are
familiar to him.

To him come all the tribes who have axes to grind,
and want him to turn their grindstones. Avarice, ambition,
petty vanity, private piques, mean intrigues, sly
revenges, all unbosom themselves to him as to a father
confessor, and invoke his powerful aid. To him it is
given to see the back door and back stairs of much that
the world venerates, and he finds there filthy sweepings
and foul débris. Even the church of every name and
sect has its back door, its unsightly sweepings. He who
is in so many secrets, who expolres so many cabals, who
sees the wrong side of so many a fair piece of goods, with
all its knots, and jags, and thrums, what wonder if he
come to that worse form of scepticism—the doubt of all
truth, of all virtue, of all honor? When he sees how
reputations can be made and unmade in the secret conclaves
of printing offices, how generous and holy enthusiasms
are assumed as a cloak for low and selfish designs,
how the language which stirs man's deepest nature lies
around loose in the hands of skilled word-experts, to be
used in getting up cabals and carrying party intrigues,
it is scarcely to be wondered at if he come to regard life
as a mere game of skill, where the shrewdest player wins.
It is exactly here that a true, good woman is the moral
salvation of man. Such a woman seems to a man more
than she can ever seem to her female acquaintances.
She is to him the proof of a better world, of a truer life,
of the reality of justice, purity, honor, and unselfishness.
He regards her, to be sure, as unpractical, and ignorant
of the world's ways, but with a holy ignorance which
belongs to a higher region.

Jim had dived into New York life at first with the
mere animal recklessness with which an expert swimmer
shows his skill in difficult navigation. Life was an

adventure, a game, a game at which he was determined
nobody should cheat him, a race in which he was determined
to come out ahead. Nobody should catch him
napping; nobody should outwit him; he would be
nobody's fool. His acquaintance with a certain class of
girls was only a continuation of the bright, quick, adroit
game of fencing which he played in the world. If a girl
would flirt, so would Jim. He was au courant of all the
positions and strategy of that sort of encounter; he had
all the persiflage of flattery and compliment at his
tongue's end, and enjoyed the rustle and flutter of ribbons,
the tapping of fans, and the bustle and mystery of
small secrets, the little “ohs and ahs,” and feminine commotions
that he could stir up in almost any bevy of
nymphs in evening dresses. Speaking of female influence,
there are some exceptions to be taken to the general
theory that woman has an elevating power over
man. It may be doubted whether there goes any of
this divine impulse from giggling, flirting girls, whose
highest aim is to secure the admiration and attention
of men, and who, to get it, will flatter and fawn, profess
to adore tobacco smoke, and even to have a warm
side towards whiskey punch,—girls whose power over
men is based on an indiscriminate deference to what
men themselves feel to be their lower and less worthy
nature.

The woman who really wins for herself a worthy
influence with a man is she who recognizes in him the
divine under all worldly disguises, and invariably and
strongly takes part with his higher against his lower
nature. This was the secret of Alice's power over Jim;
and this was why she had become, in the secret and
inner world of his life, almost a religious image. All his
dawning aspirations to be somewhat better than a mere
chaser of expedients, to be a man of lofty objects and

noble purposes, had come from her acquaintance with
him—an acquaintance begun on both sides in the spirit
of mere flirtation, and passing from that to esteem and
friendship. But, in the case of a marriageable young
man of twenty-five, friendship is like some of those rare
cacti of the greenhouses which, in an unexpected hour,
burst out into blossoms of untold splendor. An engagement
just declared in their circle had breathed a warmer
atmosphere of suggestion around them, and upon that
had come a position in his profession which offered him
both consideration and money; and when Jim was
assured of this, his first thought was of Alice.

“Friendship is a humbug,” was that young gentlemen's
mental decision. “It may do all very well with
some kinds of girls”—and Jim mentally reviewed some of
his lady acquaintances—“but with Alice Van Arsdel, it
is all humbug for me to go on talking friendship. I
can't, and shan't, and WON'T.” And in this mood it was
that he gave to Alice's hand that startling kind of
pressure, and something of this flashed from his eyes
into hers. It was that something, like the gleam of a
steel blade, determined, resolute, assured, that disconcerted
and alarmed her. It was like the sounding of a
horn, summoning a parley at the postern gate of a fortress,
and the lady chatelaine not ready either to surrender
or to defend. So, in a moment, Alice resolved
not to walk the four or five squares between her present
position and home, tête-à-tête with Jim Fellows; and she
sat very composed and very still in her corner, and put
in demand all those quiet, repressive tactics by which
dignified young ladies keep back issues they are not
precisely ready to meet.

The general subject under discussion when Jim came
in, was a party to be given at Aunt Maria's the next
evening in honor of the Stephenses, when Angie and Mr.

St. John would make their first appearance together as
a betrothed couple.

“Now, Jim,” said Eva, “how lucky that you came in,
for I was just going to send a note to you! Here's
Harry has got to give a lecture to-morrow night and
can't come in till towards the end of the evening.
Alice is coming to dine and dress down here with me,
and I want you to dine with us and be our escort to the
party—that is, if you will put up with our dressing time
and not get into such a state of perfect amazement as
Harry always does when we are not ready at the moment.”

“If you ever get a wife, Jim, you'll be made perfect
in this science of waiting,” said Harry. “The only way
to have a woman ready in season for a party is to shut
her up just after breakfast and keep her at it straight
along through the day. Then you may have her before
ten o'clock.”

“You see,” said Eva, “Harry's only idea, when he
is going to a party, is to get home again early. We
almost never go, and then he is in such a hurry to get
there, so as to have it over with and be at home again.”

“Well, I confess, for my part, I hate parties,” said
Harry. “They always get agoing just about my usual
bed-time.”

“Well, Harry, you know Aunt Maria wants an old-fashioned,
early party, at eight o'clock at the latest; and
when she says she wants a thing, she means it. She
would never forgive us for being late.”

“Dear me, Eva, do begin to dress over night then,”
said Harry. “You certainly never will get through to-morrow,
if you don't.”

“Harry, you sauce-box, I think you talk abominably
about me. Just because I have so many more things
to see to than he has! A woman's dress, of course,

takes more time; there's a good deal more to do and
every little thing has to be just right.

“Of course, I know that,” said Harry. “Have n't I
stood, and stood, and stood, while bows were tied, and
picked out, and patted, and flatted, and then pulled out
and tied over, and when we were half an hour behind
time already?”

“I fancy,” said Alice, “that if the secrets of some
young gentlemen's toilets were unveiled, we should see
that we were not alone in tying bows and pulling them
out. I've known Tom to labor over his neck-ties by the
hour together; it took him quite as long to prink as any
of us girls.”

“But do n't you be alarmed, Jim,” said Eva; “we intend
to be on time.”

“No, do n't,” said Harry; “you can have my writing-table,
and get up your editorials, while the conjuration
is going on up-stairs.”

“Just think,” said Alice, “how Aunt Maria is coming
out.”

“Why, yes, it's a larger affair than usual,” said Eva.
“A hundred invitations! That must be on account of
Angie.”

“Oh, yes,” said Alice, “Aunt Maria is pluming herself
on Angie's engagement. Since she has discovered
that Mr. St. John has an independent fortune, there is
no end to her praises and felicitations. Oh, and she
has altered her opinion entirely about his ritualism.
The Bishop, she says, stands by him; and what the
Bishop doesn't condemn, nobody has any right to; and
then she sets forth what a good family he belongs to, and
so well connected! I'd like to see anybody say anything
against Mr. St. John's practices before Aunt Maria now!”

“I'm sure this party is quite an outlay for Aunt
Maria,” said Eva.

“Oh,” said Alice, “she's making all her jellies, and
blanc-manges, and ice creams in the house. You know
how perfectly she always does things. I've been up
helping her. She will have a splendid table. She was
rather glorifying herself to me that she could get up so
fine a show at so little expense.”

“Well, she can,” said Eva. “No one can get more
for a given amount of money than Aunt Maria. I suppose
that is one of the womanly virtues, and one can
learn as much of it from her as anybody.”

“Yes,” said Alice, “if a stylish party is the thing to
be demonstrated, Aunt Maria will get one up more successfully,
more perfect in all points, and for less money,
than any other woman in New York. She will have
exactly the right people, and exactly the right things to
give them. Her rooms will be lovely. She will be
dressed herself to a T, and she will say just the right
thing to everybody. All her nice silver and her pretty
things will come out of their secret crypts and recesses
to do honor to the occasion, and, for one night, all will be
suavity and sociability personified; and then everything
will go back into lavender, the silver to the safe, the
chairs and lounges to their cover, the shades will come
down, and her part of the world's debt of sociability will
be done up for the year. Then she will add up the
expense, and set it down in her account book, and that
thing 'll be finished and checked off.”

“A mode of proceeding which she was very anxious
to engraft upon me,” said Eva; “but I am a poor
stock. My instincts are for what she would call an
expensive, chronic state of hospitality, as we live down
here.”

“Well,” said Jim, “when I get a house of my own,
I'm going to do as you do.”

“Jim has got sight of the domestic tea-kettle in the

future,” said Harry. “That's the first effect of his promotion.”

“Oh, do n't be in a hurry about setting up a house of
your own,” said Eva. “I'm afraid we should miss you
here, and you're an institution, Jim; we could n't get on
without you.”

“Oh, Jim ought not to give up to one what was
meant for mankind,” said Alice, hardily. “I think there
would be a universal protest against his retiring to private
life.”

And Alice looked into the fire, apparently as sweetly
unconscious of anything particular on Jim's part as if
she had not read aright the flash of his eye and the pressure
of his hand.

Jim seemed vexed and nervous, and talked extravaganzas
all the evening, with more than even his usual
fluency, and towards ten o'clock said to Alice:

“I am at your command at any time, when you are
ready to return home.”

“Thank you, Jim,” said Alice, with that demure and
easy composure with which young ladies avoid a crisis
without seeming to see it. “I am going to stay here
to-night, to discuss some important points of party costume
with Eva; so mind you don't fail us to-morrow
night. Au revoir!”