University of Virginia Library

44. CHAPTER XLIV.
FLUCTUATIONS.

MIDNIGHT conversations of the sort we have chronicled
between Alice and Eva, do not generally lead
to the most quiet kind of sleep. Such conversations suggest
a great deal, and settle nothing; and Alice, after
retiring, lay a long time with her great eyes wide open,
looking into the darkness of futurity, and wondering, as
girls of twenty-two or thereabouts do wonder, what she
should do next.

There is no help for it; the fact may as well be confessed
at once, that no care and assiduity in fencing and
fortifying the conditions of a friendship between an
attractive young woman and a lively, energetic young
man, will ensure their always remaining simply and
purely those of companionship and good fellowship, and
never becoming anything more.

In the case of St. John and Angie, the stalk of friendship
had had but short growth before developing the
flower of love; and now, in Alice's mind and conscience,
it was becoming quite a serious and troublesome question
whether a similar result were not impending over her.

The wise man of old said: “He that delicately bringeth
up his servant from a child shall have him for his son
at last.” The proverb is significant, as showing the
gradual growth of kindly relations into something more
and more kindly, and more absorbing.

So, in the night-watches, Alice mentally reviewed all
those looks, words and actions of Jim's which produced
a conviction in her mind that he was passing beyond the

allotted boundaries, and approaching towards a point in
which there would inevitably be a crisis, calling for a
decision on her part which should make him either more
or less than he had been. Her talk with Eva had only
set this possibility more distinctly before her.

Was she, then, willing to give him up entirely, and
to shut the door resolutely on all intimacy tending to
keep up and encourage feelings that could come to no
result? When she proposed this to herself, she was surprised
at her own unwillingness to let him go. She
could scarcely fancy herself able to do without his ready
friendship, his bright, agreeable society—without the
sense of ownership and power which she felt in him.
Reviewing the matter strictly in the night-watches, she
was obliged to admit to herself that she could not afford
to part with Jim; that there was no woman she could
fancy—certainly none in the circle of her acquaintance—
whom she could be sincerely glad to have him married
to; and when she fancied him absorbed in any one else,
there was a dreary sense of loss which surprised her.
Was it possible, she asked herself, that he had become
necessary to her happiness—he whom she never thought
of otherwise than as a pleasant friend, a brother, for
whose success and good fortune she had interested herself?

Well then, was she ready for an engagement? Was
the great ultimate revelation of woman's life—that dark
Eleusinian mystery of fate about which vague conjecture
loves to gather, and which the imagination invests with
all sorts of dim possibilities—suddenly to draw its curtains
and disclose to her neither demi-god nor hero, but
only the well-known, every-day features of one with
whom she had been walking side by side for months
past—“only Jim and nothing more?”

Alice could not but acknowledge to herself that she

knew no man possible or probable that she liked better;
and yet this shadowy, ideal rival—this cross between
saint and hero, this Knight of the Holy Grail—was as
embarrassing to her conclusions as the ghost in “Hamlet”
It was only to be considered that the ideal hero
had not put in an actual appearance. He was nowhere
to be found or heard from; and here was this warm-hearted,
helpful, companionable Jim, with faults as plenty
as blackberries, but with dozens of agreeable qualities to
every fault; and the time seemed to be rapidly coming
when she must make up her mind either to take him or
leave him, and she was not ready to do either! No
wonder she lay awake, and studied the squares of the
dim window and listened to the hours that struck, one
after another, bringing her no nearer to fixed conclusions
than before! A young lady who sees the time coming
when she must make a decision, and who does n't want to
take either alternative presented, is certainly to be pitied.
Alice felt herself an abused and afflicted young woman.
She murmured at destiny. Why would men fall in love?
she queried. Why would n't they remain always devoted,
admiring friends, and get no further? She was having
such good times! and why must they end in a dilemma
of this sort? How nice to have a gentleman friend, all
devotion, all observance, all homage, without its involving
any special consequences!

When she came to shape this feeling into words and
look at it, she admitted that it savored of the worst kind
of selfishness, and might lead to trifling with what is
most precious and sacred. Alice was a conscientious,
honorable girl, and felt all the force of this. She had
justified herself all along by saying that her intimacy
with Jim had so far been for his good; that he had often
expressed to her his sense that she was leading him to a
higher and better life, to more worthy and honorable

aims and purposes: but how if he should claim that
this very ministry had made her necessary to him, and
that, if she threw him off, it would be worse than if she
had never known him? Looking over the history of
the last few months, she could not deny to herself that,
as their acquaintance had grown more and more confidential,
her manners possibly had expressed a degree of
kindness which might justly have inspired hopes. Was
she not bound to fulfill such hopes if she could?

These were most uncomfortable inquiries, and she
was glad of morning and a cheerful breakfast-table to
dispel them. Things never look so desperate by daylight,
and Alice managed a good breakfast with a tolerable
appetite. Then there was the tarlatan dress to be
made over and rearranged, and Eva's toilette to be put
into party order—quite enough to keep two young women
of active fancy and skillful fingers busy for one day. It
was a snowy, unpleasant day, and, as they lived on an
out-of-the-way street, they were secure from callers and
took their work into the parlor so soon as Harry had
gone for the day. The little room soon became a
brilliant maelstrom of gauzy stuffs and bright ribbons,
among which the two sat chatting, arranging, combining,
compounding; as of old, one might imagine a pair of
heathen goddesses in the clouds, getting up rainbows.
No matter how solemn and serious we of womankind
are in our deepest hearts, or how philosophically we
may look down on the vanity of dress, we must all
confess that a party is a party; and the sensible, economical
woman who does not often go, and does not
make a point of having all the paraphernalia in constant
readiness, has to give all the more care and thought to
the exceptional occasion when she does. Even Scripture
recognizes the impossibility of appearing at a feast
without the appropriate garment; and so Eva and Alice

cut and fitted and trimmed and tried experiments in
head-dresses and arrangements of hair, and meanwhile
Alice had the comfort of talking over and over to Eva
all the varying shades of the subject that was on her
mind.

What woman does not appreciate the blessing of a
patient, sympathetic listener, who will hear with unabated
interest the same story repeated over and over as it rises
in one's thoughts? Eva listened complacently and with
the warmest interest to the same things that Alice had
said the night before, and went on repeating to her the
same lessons of matronly wisdom with which she had
then enriched her, neither of them betraying the slightest
consciousness that the things they were saying were not
just fresh from the mint—entirely new and hitherto
unconsidered.

Jim's character was discussed, and with that fine,
skillful faculty of analysis and synthesis which forms
the distinctive interest of feminine conversation. In
the course of these various efforts of character portrait-painting,
it became quite evident to Eva that Alice was
in just that state in which some people's admitted faults
are more interesting and agreeable than the virtues of
some others. When a woman gets thus far, her final
decision is not a matter of doubt to any far-sighted
reader of human nature.

Alice was by nature exact and conscientious as to all
rules, forms, and observances. Her pronunciation,
whether of English or French, was critically perfect; her
hand-writing and composition were faultless to a comma.
She was an enthusiastic and thorough maintainer of all
the boundaries and forms of good society and of churchly
devotion. Jim, without being in any sense really immoral
or wicked, was a sort of privileged Arab, careering
in and out through the boundaries of all departments,

shocking respectable old prejudices and fluttering reverential
usages, talking slang and making light of dignitaries
with a free and easy handling that was alarming.

But it is a fact that very correct people, who would
not violate in their own persons one of the convenances,
are often exceedingly amused and experience a peculiar
pleasure in seeing them tossed hither and thither by
somebody else. Nothing is so tiresome as perfect correctness,
and we all know that everything that amuses
us and makes us laugh lies outside of it; and Alice, if
the truth were to be told, liked Jim all the better for the
very things in which he was most unlike herself. Well,
such being the state of the garrison on the one side,
what was the position of the attacking party?

Jim had gone home discontented at not having a
private interview with Alice, but more and more resolved,
with every revolving hour since the accession of
good fortune which had given him a settled position,
that he would have a home of his own forthwith, and
that the queen of that home should be Alice Van Arsdel.
She must not, she could not, she would not say him
Nay; and if she did, he wouldn't take No for an answer.
He would have her, if he had to serve for her as
long as Jacob did for Rachel. But when Jim remembered
how many times he had persuaded Alice to his
own way, how many favors she had granted him, he was
certain that it was not in her to refuse. He had looked
with new interest at the advertisements of houses to
let, and the furniture stores for the last few days had
worn a new and suggestive aspect. He had commenced
transactions with regard to parlor furniture, and actually
bought a pair of antique brass andirons, which he was
sure would be just the thing for their fireside. Then
he had bought an engagement ring, which lay snugly ensconced
in its satin case in a corner of his vest pocket,

and he was inly resolved that he would make to himself
a chance to lodge it on the proper finger in the
next twenty-four hours. How he was to get an interview
did not yet appear; but he trusted to Providence.
It is a fact on record, that before the twenty-four hours
were up the deed was done, and Jim and Alice were engaged;
but it came about in a way far different from
any foreseen by any party, as we shall proceed to show.