We and Our Neighbors: or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street

CHAPTER XLV
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW

It wanted yet twenty minutes to eight o'clock, and Jim was sitting alone in the glow of the evening fireside. The warm, red light, flickering and shadowing, made the room seem like a mysterious grotto. Jim, in best party trim, sat gazing dreamily into the fire, turning the magic ring now and then in his vest pocket, and looking at his watch at intervals, while the mysterious rites of the toilet were going on upstairs.

Alice had never made a more elaborate or more careful toilet. Did she want to precipitate that which she said to herself she dreaded? Certainly she did not spare one possible attraction. She evidently saw no reason, under present circumstances, why she should not make herself look as well as she could.

As the result of the whole day's agitations and discussions, she had come to the conclusion that if Jim had anything to say she would listen to it advisedly, and take it into mature consideration. So she braided her long, dark hair, and crowned herself therewith, and then earrings and brooches came twinkling out here and there like stars, and bits of ribbon and velvet fluttered hither and thither, and fell into wonderfully apposite places, and the woman grew and brightened before the glass, as a picture under the hands of the artist.

It wanted yet a quarter of an hour of the time for the carriage, when there came a light fluff of gauzy garments, and the two party goddesses floated in in all misty splendor, and seemed to fill the whole room with the flutter of dresses.

Alice was radiant; her eyes were never more brilliant, and she was full of that subtle brightness which comes from the tremor of fully-awakened feeling. She was gayer than was her usual wont as she swept about the room and courteseyed with much solemnity to Jim, and turned herself round and round after the manner of a revolving figure in the shop windows.

Suddenly – and none of them knew how – there was a quick flash; the gauzy robe had swept into the fire, and, before any of them could speak, the dress was in flames. There was a scream, an utterance of agony from all parties at once, and Eva was just doing the most fatal thing possible in rushing desperately towards her sister, when Jim came between them, caught the woolen cloth from the table, and wrapped it around Alice; then, taking her in his arms, he laid her on the sofa, and crushed out the fire, beating it with his hands, and tearing the burning fragments away and casting them under foot. It all passed in one fearful, awe-struck moment, while Eva stood still, with the very shadow of death upon her, and saw Jim fighting back the fire, which in a moment or two was entirely extinguished. Alice had fainted, and Jim and Eva looked at each other as people do who have just seen death rising up between them.

"She is safe now," said Jim, as he stood there, pale as death and quivering from head to foot, while the floor around was strewed with the blackened remains of the gauzy material which he had torn away. "She is all right," he added; "the cloth has saved her throat and lungs."

It seemed now the most natural thing in the world that Jim should lay Alice's head upon his arm and administer restoratives; and, when she opened her eyes, that he should call her his darling, his life, his love. They had been in the awful valley of the shadow together – that valley where all that is false perishes and drops off, and what is true becomes the only reality. Alice felt that she loved Jim – that she belonged to him, and she did not dispute his right to speak as he did, and to care for her as one had a right to care for his own.

"Well," said Eva, drawing a long breath, when the bell rang and the carriage was announced, "we cannot go to the party, that is certain; and, Jim, tell him to go for Doctor Campbell. Mary, bring down a wrapper; we'll slip it over your torn finery, Alice, for the present," said Eva, endeavoring to be practical and self-possessed, though with a little hysterical sob every now and then betraying the shock to her nerves. "Then there must be a note sent to Aunt Maria, or what will she think?" pursued Eva, when Alice had been made comfortable on the sofa, where Jim was devoting himself to her.

"Don't, pray, tell all about it," said Alice. "One doesn't want to become the talk of all New York."

"I'll tell her that you have met with an accident that will detain you and me, but that you are not dangerous," said Eva, as she wrote her note and sent Mary up with it.

It was not until tranquillity had somewhat settled down on the party that Jim began to feel that his own hands were blistered; for, though a man under strong excitement may handle fire for a while and not feel it, yet nature keeps account and brings in her bill in due season.

"Why, Jim, you brave fellow," said Alice, suddenly raising herself, as she saw an expression of pain on his face, "here I am thinking only of myself, and you are suffering."

"Oh, nothing; nothing at all," said Jim; but Eva and Alice, now thoroughly aroused, were shocked at the state of his hands.

"The doctor will have you to attend to first," said Alice. "You have saved me by sacrificing yourself."

"Thank God for that!" said Jim, fervently.

Well, the upshot of the story is that Eva would not hear of Jim's leaving them that night. Doctor Campbell pronounced that the burns on his hands needed serious attention, and the prospect was that he would be obliged to rest from using them for a day or two.

But these two or three days of hospital care were not on the whole the worst of Jim's life, for Alice insisted on being his amanuensis, and writing his editorials for him, and, as she wrote with the engagement ring sparkling on her finger, Jim thought that he had never seen it appear to so great advantage. It was said that Jim's editorials, that week, had a peculiar vigor and pungency. We should not at all wonder, under the circumstances, if that were the case.

CHAPTER XLVI
WHAT THEY ALL SAID ABOUT IT

And so Jim Fellows and Alice Van Arsdel were engaged at last. The reader who has cared to follow the workings of that young lady's mind has doubtless seen from the first that she was on the straight highway to such a result.

Intimate friendship – what the French call "camaraderie" – is, in fact, the healthiest and the best commencement of the love that is needed in married life; because it is more like what the staple of married life must at last come to. It gives opportunity for the knowledge of all those minor phases of character under which a married couple must at last see each other.

Alice and Jim had been side by side in many an every-day undress rehearsal. They had laughed and frolicked together like two children; they had known each other's secrets; they had had their little miffs and tiffs, and had gotten over them; but, through all, there had been a steady increase on Jim's part of that deeper feeling which makes a woman the ideal guide and governor and the external conscience of life. But his habit of jesting, and of talking along the line of his most serious feelings in language running between joke and earnest, had prevented the pathos and the power of what was really deepest in him from making itself felt. There wanted something to call forth the expression of the deep manly feeling that lay at the bottom of his heart. There wanted, on her part, something to change friendship to a warmer feeling. Those few dreadful moments, when they stood under the cloud of a sudden and frightful danger, did more to reveal to them how much they were to each other than years of ordinary acquaintance. It was as if they had crossed the river of death together, and saw each other in their higher natures. Do we not all remember how suffering and danger will bring out in well-known faces a deep and spiritual expression never there before? It was a marked change in the faces of our boys who went to the recent war. Looking in a photograph book, one sees first the smooth lines of a boyish face indicating nothing more than a boy's experience, but, as he turns the following pages, he sees the same face, after suffering and danger and death have called up the strength of the inner man, and imparted a higher and more spiritual expression to the countenance.

The sudden nearness into which they had come to the ever possible tragedy that underlies human life, had given a deep and solemn tenderness to their affection. It was a baptism into the love which is stronger than death. Alice felt her whole heart going out, without a fear or a doubt, in return for the true love that she felt was ready to die for her.

Those few first days that they spent mostly in each other's society, were full of the real, deep, enthusiastic tenderness of that understanding of each other which had suddenly arisen between them.

So, to her confidential female correspondent – the one who had always held her promise to be the first recipient of the news of her engagement – she wrote as follows:

"Yes, dear Belle, I have to tell you at last that I am engaged– engaged, with all my heart and soul, to Jim Fellows. I see your wonder, I hear you saying, 'You said it never was to be; that there never would be anything in it.' Well, dear Belle, when I said that I thought it; but it seems I didn't know myself or him. But Eva has told you of the dreadful danger I ran; the shock to my nerves, the horror, the fright, were something I never shall forget. By God's mercy he saved my life, and I saw and felt at that time how dear I was to him, and how much he was willing to suffer for me. The poor fellow is not yet fully recovered, and I cannot recall that sudden fright without being almost faint. I cared a good deal for him before, and knew he cared for me; but this dreadful shock revealed us to each other as we had never known each other before. I am perfectly settled now and have not a doubt. There is all the seriousness and all the depth that is in me in the promise I have at last given him.

 

"Jim is not rich, but he has just obtained a good position as one of the leading editors of the Forum, enough to make it prudent for him to think of having a home of his own; and I thank God for the reverses of fortune that have taught me how to be a helpful and sensible wife. We don't either of us care for show or fashion, but mean to have another fireside like Eva's. Exactly when this thing is to be, is not yet settled; but you shall have due notice to get your bridesmaid's dress ready."

So wrote Alice to her bridesmaid that was to be. Meanwhile, the declared engagement went its way, traveling through the circle, making everywhere its sensation.

We believe there is nothing so generally interesting to human nature as a newly-declared engagement. It is a thing that everybody has an opinion of; and the editorial comments, though they do not go into print, are fully as numerous and as positive as those following a new appointment at Washington.

Especially is this the case where the parties, being long under suspicion and accusation, have denied the impeachment, and vehemently protested that "there was, and there would be, nothing in it," and that "it was only friendship." When, after all the strength of such asseveration, the flag is finally struck, and the suspected parties walk forth openly, hand in hand, what a number of people immediately rise in their own opinion, saying with complacency: "There! what did I tell you? I knew it was so. People may talk as much as they please, they can't deceive me!"

Among the first to receive the intelligence was little Mrs. Betsey, who, having been over with Jack to make a morning call at the Henderson house, had her very cap lifted from her head with amazement at the wonderful news. So, panting with excitement, she rushed back across the way to astonish Miss Dorcas, and burst in upon her, with Jack barking like a storming party in the rear.

"Good gracious, Betsey, what's the matter now?" said Miss Dorcas. "What has happened?"

"Well, what should you think? You can't guess! Jack, be still! stop barking! Stop, sir!" – as Jack ran under a chair in a distant corner of the room, and fired away with contumacious energy.

"Yes, Dorcas, I have such a piece of news! I declare, that dog! – I'll kill him if he don't stop!" and Mrs. Betsey, on her knees, dragged Jack out of his hiding-place, and cuffed him into silence, and then went on with her news, which she determined to make the most of, and let out a bit at a time, as children eat gingerbread.

"Well, now, Betsey, since the scuffle is over between you and Jack, perhaps you will tell me what all this is about," said Miss Dorcas, with dignity.

"Well, Dorcas, it's another engagement; and who do you guess it is? You never will guess in the world, I know; now guess."

"I don't know," said Miss Dorcas, critically surveying Mrs. Betsey over her spectacles, "unless it is you and old Major Galbraith."

"Aren't you ashamed, Dorcas?" said the little old lady, two late pink roses coming in either cheek. "Major Galbraith! – old and deaf and with the rheumatism!"

"Well, you wanted me to guess, and I guessed the two most improbable people in the circle of our acquaintance." Now, Major Galbraith was an old admirer of Mrs. Betsey's youth, an ancient fossil remain of the distant period to which Miss Dorcas and Mrs. Betsey belonged.

He was an ancient bachelor, dwelling in an ancient house on Murray hill, and subsisting on the dry hay of former recollections. Once a year, on Christmas or New Year's, the old major caused himself to be brought carefully in a carriage to the door of the Vanderheyden house, creaked laboriously up the steps, pulled the rusty, jangling old bell, and was shown into the somber twilight of the front parlor, where he paid his respects to the ladies with the high-shouldered, elaborate stateliness and gallantry of a former period. The compliments which the major brought out on these occasions were of the most elaborate and well-considered kind, for he had an abundance of leisure to compose them, and very few ladies to let them off upon. They had, for the parties to whom they were addressed, all the value of those late roses and violets which one now and then finds in the garden, when the last black frosts have picked off the blooms of summer. The main difficulty of the interview always was the fact that the poor major was stone-deaf, and, in spite of both ladies screaming themselves hoarse, he carried away the most obviously erroneous impressions, to last him through the next year. Yet, in ages past, the major had been a man of high fashion, and he was, if one only could get at him, on many accounts better worth talking to than many modern beaux; but as age and time had locked him in a case and thrown away the key, the suggestion of tender relations between him and Mrs. Betsey was impossible enough to answer Miss Dorcas's purpose.

But Mrs. Betsey was bursting to begin on the contents of her news-bag, and so, out it came.

"Well now, Dorcas, if you won't go to being ridiculous, and talking about Major Galbraith, I'll tell you who it is. It's that dear, good Mr. Fellows that got Jack back again for us, and I'm sure I never feel as if I could do enough for him when I think of it, and besides that, he always is so polite and considerate, and talks with one so nicely and is so attentive, seems to think something of you, if you are an old woman, so that I'm glad with all my heart, for I think it's a splendid thing, and she's just the one for him, and do you know I've been thinking a great while that it was going to be? I have noticed signs, and have had my own thoughts, but I didn't let on. I despise people that are always prying and spying and expressing opinions before they know."

This lucid exposition might have proceeded at greater length, had not Miss Dorcas, whose curiosity was now fully roused, cut into the conversation with an air of judicial decision.

"Well now, after all, Betsey, will you have the goodness, since you began to tell the news, to tell it like a reasonable creature? Mr. Fellows is the happy man, you say. Now, who– is – the woman?"

"Oh, didn't I tell you? Why, what is the matter with me to-day? I thought I said Miss Alice Van Arsdel. Won't she make him a splendid wife? and I'm sure he'll make a good husband; he's so kind-hearted. Oh! you ought to have seen how kind he was to Jack that day he brought him back; and such a sight as Jack was, too – all dirt and grease! Why it took Dinah and me at least two hours to get him clean, and there are not many young gentlemen that would be so patient as he was. I never shall forget it of him."

"Patient as who was?" said Miss Dorcas. "I believe Jack was the last nominative case in that sentence; do pray compose yourself, Betsey, and don't take entire leave of your senses."

"I mean Mr. Fellows was patient, of course, you know."

"Well, then, do take a little pains to say what you mean," said Miss Dorcas.

"Well, don't you think it a good thing – and were you expecting it?"

"So far as I know the parties, it's as good a thing as engagements in general," said Miss Dorcas. "They have my very best wishes."

"Well, did you ever think it would come about?"

"No; I never troubled my head with speculations on what plainly is none of my concern," said Miss Dorcas.

It was evident that Miss Dorcas was on the highest and most serene mountain-top of propriety this morning, and all her words and actions indicated that calm superiority to vulgar curiosity which, in her view, was befitting a trained lady. Perhaps a little pique that Betsey had secured such a promising bit of news in advance of herself, added to her virtuous frigidity of demeanor. We are all mortal, and the best of us are apt to undervalue what we did not ourselves originally produce. But if Miss Dorcas wished in a gentle manner to remind Mrs. Betsey that she was betraying too much of an inclination for gossip, she did not succeed. The clock of time had gone back on the dial of the little old lady, and she was as full of chatter and detail as a school-girl, and determined at any rate to make the most of her incidents, and to create a sensation in her sister's mind – for what is more provoking than to have people sit calm and unexcited when we have a stimulating bit of news to tell? It is an evident violation of Christian charity. Mrs. Betsey now drew forth her next card.

"Oh, and, Dorcas! you've no idea. They've been having the most dreadful time over there! Miss Alice has had the greatest escape! The most wonderful providence! It really makes my blood run cold to think of it. Don't you think, she was all dressed to go to Mrs. Wouvermans's party, and her dress caught on fire, and if it hadn't been for Mr. Fellows's presence of mind she might have been burned to death – really burned to death! Only think of it!"

"You don't say so!" said Miss Dorcas, who now showed excitement enough to fully satisfy Mrs. Betsey. "How very dreadful! Why, how was it?"

"Yes – she was passing in front of the fire, in a thin white tarlatan, made very full, with flounces, and it was just drawn in and flashed up like tinder. Mr. Fellows caught the cloth from the table, wrapped her in it and laid her on the sofa, and then tore and beat out the fire with his hands."

"Dear – me! dear – me!" said Miss Dorcas, "how dreadful! But he did just the right thing."

"Yes, indeed; you ought to have seen! Mrs. Henderson showed me what was left of the dress, and it was really awful to see! I could not help thinking, 'In the midst of life we are in death.' All trimmed up with scarlet velvet and bows, and just hanging in rags and tatters, where it had been burned and torn away! I never saw any thing so solemn in my life."

"A narrow escape, certainly," said Miss Dorcas. "And is she not injured at all?"

"Nothing to speak of, only a few slight burns; but poor Mr. Fellows has to have his hands bandaged and dressed every day; but of course he doesn't mind that since he has saved her life. But just think of it, Dorcas, we shall have two weddings, and it'll make two more visiting places. I'm going to tell Dinah all about it," and the little woman fled to the kitchen, with Jack at her heels, and was soon heard going over the whole story again.

Dinah's effusion and sympathy, in fact, were the final refuge of Mrs. Betsey on every occasion, whether of joy or sorrow or perplexity – and between her vigorous exclamations and loud responses, and Jack's running commentary of unrestrained barking, there was as much noise over the announcement as could be made by an average town meeting.

Thus were the tidings received across the way. In the Van Arsdel family, Jim was already an established favorite. Mr. Van Arsdel always liked him as a bright, agreeable evening visitor, and, now that he had acquired a position that promised a fair support, there was no opposition on his part to overcome. Mrs. Van Arsdel was one of the motherly, complying sort of women, generally desirous of doing what the next person to her wanted her to do; and, though she was greatly confused by remembering Alice's decided asseverations that "it never was and never would be anything, and that Jim was not at all the person she ever should think of marrying," yet, since it was evident that she was now determined upon the affair, Mrs. Van Arsdel looked at it on the bright side.

"After all, my dear," she said to her spouse, "if I must lose both my daughters, it's a mercy to have them marry and settle down here in New York, where I can have the comfort of them. Jim will always be an attentive husband and a good family man. I saw that when he was helping us move; but I'm sure I don't know what Maria will say now!"

"No matter what Maria says, my dear," said Mr. Van Arsdel. "It don't make one hair white or black. It's time you were emancipated from Maria."

But Aunt Maria, like many dreaded future evils, proved less formidable on this occasion than had been feared.

The very submissive and edifying manner in which Mr. Jim Fellows had received her strictures and cautions on a former occasion, and the profound respect he had shown for her opinion, had so far wrought upon her as to make her feel that it was really a pity that he was not a young man of established fortune. If he only had anything to live on, why, he might be a very desirable match; and so, when he had a good position and salary, he stood some inches higher in her esteem. Besides this, there was another balm which distilled resignation in the cup of acquiescence, and that was the grand chance it gave her to say, "I told you so." How dear and precious this privilege is to the very best of people, we need not insist. There are times when it would comfort them, if all their dearest friends were destroyed, to be able to say, "I told you so. It's just as I always predicted!" We all know how Jonah, though not a pirate or a cut-throat, yet wished himself dead because a great city was not destroyed, when he had taken the trouble to say it would be. Now, though Alice's engagement was not in any strict sense an evil, yet it was an event which Aunt Maria had always foreseen, foretold and insisted on.

So when, with heart-sinkings and infinite precautions, Mrs. Van Arsdel had communicated the news to her, she was rather relieved at the response given, with a toss of the head and a vigorous sniff:

"Oh, that's no news to me; it's just what I have foreseen all along – what I told you was coming on, and you wouldn't believe it. Now I hope all of you will see that I was right."

"I think," said Mrs. Van Arsdel, "that it was Jim's presence of mind in saving her life that decided Alice at last. She always liked him; but I don't think she really loved him till then."

"Well, of course, it was a good thing that there was somebody at hand who had sense to do the right thing, when girls will be so careless; but it wasn't that. She meant to have him all along; and I knew it," said Aunt Maria. "Well, Jim Fellows, after all, isn't the worst match a girl could make, either, now that he has some prospects of his own – but, at any rate, it has turned out just as I said it would. I knew she'd marry him, six months ago, just as well as I know it now, unless you and she listened to my advice then. So now all we have to do is to make the best of it. You've got two weddings on your hands, now Nellie, instead of one, and I shall do all I can to help you. I was out all day yesterday looking at sheeting, and I think that at Shanks & Maynard's is decidedly the firmest and the cheapest, and I ordered three pieces sent home; and I carried back the napkins to Taggart's, and then went rambling off up by the Park to find that woman that does marking."

"I'm sure, Maria, I am ever so much obliged to you," said Mrs. Van Arsdel.

"Well, I hope I'm good for something. Though I'm not fit to be out; I've such a dreadful cold in my head, I can hardly see; and riding in these New York omnibuses always makes it worse."

"Dear Maria, why will you expose yourself in that way?"

"Well, somebody's got to do it – and your judgment isn't worth a fip, Nellie. That sheeting that you were thinking of taking wasn't half so good, and cost six cents a yard more. I couldn't think of having things go that way."

"But I'm sure we don't any of us want you to make yourself sick."

"Oh, I sha'n't be sick. I may suffer; but I sha'n't give up. I'm not one of the kind. If you had the cold in your head that I have, Nellie, you'd be in bed, with both girls nursing you; but that isn't my way. I keep up, and attend to things. I want these things of Angie's to be got up properly, as they ought to be, and there's nobody to do it but me."

And little Mrs. Van Arsdel, used, from long habit, to be thus unceremoniously snubbed, dethroned, deposed, and set down hard by her sister when in full career of labor for her benefit, looked meekly into the fire, and comforted herself with the reflection that it "was just like Maria. She always talked so; but, after all, she was a good soul, and saved her worlds of trouble, and made excellent bargains for her."