51. CHAPTER LI.
THE HOUR AND THE WOMAN.
IT is said that Queen Elizabeth could converse in five
languages, and dictate to three secretaries at once, in
different tongues, with the greatest ease and composure.
Perhaps it might have been so—let us not quarrel with
her laurels; it only shows what women can do if they
set about it, and is not a whit more remarkable than
Aunt Maria's triumphant management of all the details
of two weddings at one time.
That estimable individual has not, we fear, always
appeared to advantage in this history, and it is due to
her now to say that nobody that saw her proceedings
could help feeling the beauty of the right person in the
right place.
Many a person is held to be a pest and a nuisance
because there is n't enough to be done to use up his
capabilities. Aunt Maria had a passion for superintending
and directing, and all that was wanting to bring
things right was an occasion when a great deal of superintendence
and direction was wanting.
The double wedding in the family just fulfilled all
the conditions. It opened a field to her that everybody
was more than thankful to have her occupy.
Lovers, we all know, are, ex-officio, ranked among the
incapables; and if, while they were mooning round in
the fairy-land of sentiment, some good, strong, active,
practical head were not at work upon the details of real
life, nothing would be on time at the wedding. Now, if
this be true of one wedding, how much more of two! So
Aunt Maria stepped at once into command by acclamation
and addressed herself to her work as a strong man
to run a race; and while Angie and St. John spent blissful
hours in the back parlor, and Jim and Alice monopolized
the library, Aunt Maria flew all over New York,
and arranged about all the towels and table-cloths and
napkins and doilies, down to the very dish-cloths. She
overlooked armies of sewing women, milliners and
mantua-makers—the most slippery of all mortal creatures—and
drove them all up to have each her quota in
time. She, with Mrs. Van Arsdel, made lists of people
to be invited, and busied herself with getting samples
and terms from fancy stationers for the wedding cards.
She planned in advance all the details of the wedding
feast, and engaged the cake and fruit and ice-cream.
Nor did she forget the social and society exigencies
of the crisis.
She found time, dressed in her best, to take Mrs. Van
Arsdel in full panoply to return the call of Mrs. Dr.
Gracey, who had come, promptly and properly, with the
doctor, to recognize Miss Angelique and felicitate about
the engagement of their nephew.
She arranged for a dinner-party to be given by Mrs.
Van Arsdel, where the doctor and his lady were to be
received into family alliance, and testimonies of high
consideration accorded to them. Aunt Maria took occasion,
in private converse with Mrs. Dr. Gracey, to
assure her of her very great esteem and respect for Mr.
St. John, and her perfect conviction that he was on the
right road now, and that, though he might possibly burn
a few more candles in his chapel, yet, when he came
fully under family influences, they would gradually be
snuffed out,—intimating that she intended to be aunt, not
only to Arthur, but to his chapel and his mission-work.
The extraordinary and serene meekness with which
that young divine left every question of form and etiquette
to her management, and the sort of dazed humility
with which he listened to all her rulings about the
arrangements of the wedding-day, had inspired in Aunt
Maria's mind such hopes of his docility as led to these
very sanguine anticipations.
It is true that, when it came to the question of renting
a house, she found him quietly but unalterably set
on a small and modest little mansion in the unfashionable
neighborhood where his work lay.
“Arthur is going on with his mission,” said Angelique,
“and I'm going to help him, and we must live
where we can do most good”—a reason to which Aunt
Maria was just now too busy to reply, but she satisfied
herself by discussing at length the wedding affairs with
Mrs. Dr. Gracey.
“Of course, Mrs. Gracey,” she said, “we all feel that
if dear Dr. Gracey is to conduct the wedding services,
everything will be in the good old way; there 'll be
nothing objectionable or unusual.”
“Oh, you may rely on that, Mrs. Wouvermans,” replied
the lady. “The doctor is not the man to run
after novelties; he's a good old-fashioned Episcopalian.
Though he always has been very indulgent to Arthur, he
thinks, as our dear bishop does, that if young men are
left to themselves, and not fretted by opposition, they
will gradually outgrow these things.”
“Precisely so,” said Aunt Maria; “just what I have
always thought. For my part I always said that it was
safe to trust the bishop.”
Did Aunt Maria believe this? She certainly appeared
to. She sincerely supposed that this was what she
always had thought and said, and quite forgot the times
when she used to wonder “what our bishop could be
thinking of, to let things go so.”
It was one blessed facility of this remarkable woman
that she generally came to the full conviction of the
axiom that “whatever is, is right,” and took up and
patronized anything that would succeed in spite of her
best efforts to prevent it.
So, in announcing the double wedding to her fashionable
acquaintance, she placed everything, as the
popular saying is, best foot foremost.
Mr. Fellows was a young man of fine talents, great
industry and elegant manners, a great favorite in society,
and likely to take the highest rank in his profession.
Alice had refused richer offers—she might perhaps have
done better in a worldly point of view, but it was purely
a love match, &c., &c. And Mr. St. John, a young man
of fine family and independent fortune, who might command
all the elegancies of life, was going to live in a
distant and obscure quarter, to labor in his work. These
facts brought forth, of course, bursts of sympathy and
congratulation, and Aunt Maria went off on the top of
the wave.
Eva had but done her aunt justice when she told her
mother that Aunt Maria would be all the more amiable
for the firm stand which the young wife had taken against
any interference with her family matters. It was so.
Aunt Maria was as balmy to Eva as if that discussion had
never taken place, though it must be admitted that Eva
was a very difficult person to keep up a long quarrel with.
But just at this hour, when the whole family were at
her feet, when it was her voice that decided every question,
when she knew where everything was and was to
be, and when everything was to be done, she was too
well pleased to be unamiable. She was the spirit of the
whole affair, and she plumed herself joyously when all
the callers at the house said to Mrs. Van Arsdel, “Dear
me! what would you do, if it were not for your sister?”
Verily she had her reward.
