My Wife and I. Harry Henderson's History

I was very careful to keep the knowledge of my increasing intimacy from Jim Fellows. Early rising was not his forte, and I, very improperly, congratulated myself on the fewness of the worshipers at early service. By and by, I grew so conscious that I got a way of stealing out at an opposite door, appearing to walk off another way, and joining Eva at the next corner – lest haply my invariable constancy should attract attention. She noticed all these things with a droll, amused, little, half-conscious look. True daughter of Eve as she was, she had probably seen many a shy fish before, swimming around her golden net as artlessly as I was doing.

I soon became her obedient slave and servant, interpreting all her motions and intimations with humble assiduity. Of course I presented myself duly with Jim in the Wednesday evening receptions, where, as the rooms were filled with other company, we already began to practice an involuntary hypocrisy, keeping up our friendly intimacy by that kind of intuitive and undemonstrative communication natural to those who know each other by sympathy, and learn to understand each other without words.

I was a great deal in Ida's studio, probably much to the satisfaction of Aunt Maria and Mrs. Van Arsdel – while Eva glanced and twinkled in and out like a fire-fly in a meadow, taking my heart with her as she came and went, yet awing me with a dutiful reticence, lest "people should talk."

Ida was one of those calm, quiet, essentially self-poised women, with whom it would be quite possible for a man to have a very intimate friendship, without its toning off into anything warm, either on her part or on his. Everything with her was so positive and definite, that there was no possibility of going over the limits. I think that she really had a very warm esteem for me; but she looked at me and judged me solely in relation to Eva, and with a quiet persistency favored the intimacy that she saw growing between us. Her plans of life were laid far ahead; she was wedded to a purpose which she would not have renounced for any man on earth; but Eva was the very apple of her eye, and I think she had her own plans as to the settling of her life's destiny; in short, Ida was from the start the best friend I could have.

CHAPTER XXII.
I AM INTRODUCED TO THE ILLUMINATI

A young man who commences life as a reformer, and a leader in the party of progress, while saying the best and most reasonable things in the world, and advocating what appear to him the most needed reforms, often finds himself, in consequence, in the condition of one who has pulled the string of a very large shower-bath. He wanted cold water, and he gets a deal more than he bargained for; in fact, often catches his breath, and wonders when this sort of thing is going to stop. My articles on the "Modern Woman," in the Milky Way, had brought me into notice in certain enthusiastic circles, and I soon found myself deluged with letters, appeals, pamphlets, newspapers, all calling for the most urgent and immediate attention, and all charging me on my allegiance to "the cause," immediately, and without loss of time, to write articles for said papers gratuitously, to circulate said pamphlets, to give favorable notices of said books, and instantly to find lucrative situations for hosts of distressed women who were tired of the humdrum treadmill of home-life, and who wished to have situations provided where there was no drudgery and no labor, but very liberal compensation. The whole large army of the incapables, – the blind, the halt, the lame, the weary, and the forlorn, – all seemed inclined to choose me as their captain, and to train under my banner. Because I had got into a subordinate position on the Great Democracy, they seemed to consider that it was my immediate business to make the Great Democracy serve their wants, or to perish in the attempt.

My friend, Ida Van Arsdel, was a serious, large-minded, large-brained woman, who had laid a deep and comprehensive plan of life, and was adhering to it with a patient and silent perseverance. Still she had no sympathy in that class of society where her lot was cast. Her mother and her Aunt Maria were women who lived and breathed merely in the opinions of their set and circle, and were as incapable of considering any higher ideal of life, or any unworldly purpose, as two canary-birds. Mr. Van Arsdel, a quiet, silent man, possessed a vein of good sense which led him to appreciate his eldest daughter at her real worth; and he was not insensible to the pleasure of having one feminine companion who, as he phrased it, "understood business," and with whom he could talk and advise understandingly. But even he had no sympathy with those larger views of the wants and needs of womanhood, in view of which Ida was acting. It followed very naturally that as Ida got no sympathy in her own circle, she was led to seek it in the widening sphere of modern reformers – a circle in which so much that is fine and excellent and practical, is inevitably mixed with a great deal that is crude and excessive.

At her request I accompanied her and Eva one evening to a sort of New-Dispensation salon, which was held weekly at the house of Mrs. Stella Cerulean. Mrs. Stella Cerulean was a brilliant woman – beautiful in person, full of genius, full of enthusiasm, full of self-confidence, the most charming of talkers, and the most fascinating of women. Her career from early life had been one of those dazzling successes which always fall to the lot of beauty, seconded by a certain amount of tact and genius. Of both these gifts Mrs. Cerulean had just enough to bewilder the head of any gentleman who made her acquaintance. She had in her girlhood made the tour of Europe, shone as a star in the courts of France and Russia, and might be excused for a more than ordinary share of complacency in her successes. In common with handsome women generally, she had, during the greater part of her life, never heard anything but flattery from gentlemen, and it always agreed with her remarkably well. But Mrs. Cerulean was one of those women, with just intellect and genius enough to render her impatient of the mere common-place triumphs of beauty. She felt the intoxicating power of the personal influence which she possessed, and aspired to reign in the region of the mind as well as to charm the senses. She felt herself called to the modern work of society regeneration, and went into it with all the enthusiasm of her nature, and with all that certainty of success which comes from an utter want of practical experience. Problems which old statesmen contemplated with perplexity, which had been the despair of ages, she took up with a cheerful alacrity.

She had one simple remedy for the reconstruction of society about whose immediate application she saw not the slightest difficulty. It was simply and only to be done by giving the affairs of the world into the hands of women, forthwith. Those who only claim equality for women were, in Mrs. Cerulean's view, far behind the age. Woman was the superior sex, the divine sex. Had not every gentleman of her acquaintance, since she could remember, told her this with regard to herself? Had they not always told her that she could know everything without study, simply by the divine intuitions of womanhood; that she could flash to conclusions without reasoning, simply by the brilliancy of her eyes; that her purity was incorruptible in its very nature; that all her impulses were heavenly and God-given? Naturally enough, then, it was her deduction that all that was wanting to heal the woes and wants of society was that she and other such inspired beings should immediately take to themselves their power, and reign.

Such is a general sketch of Mrs. Cerulean's view of the proper method of introducing the millennium. Meanwhile, she did her part in it by holding salons once a week, in which people entertaining similar views met for the purpose, apparently, of a general generation of gas, without any particular agreement as to the method in which it should be applied. This was the company of people to whom Eva rather pathetically alluded in one of her conversations once, as such nice people, who were so very puzzling to her, because no two of them ever seemed to think alike on any subject; and all agreed in opening their eyes very wide in astonishment if anybody quoted the Bible to them as an authority in faith and practice.

Ida was much courted and petted by this circle. And sensible, good girl as she was, she was not wholly without pleasure in the admiration they showed for her. Then, again, there were, every evening, ventilated in this company quantities of the most splendid and heroic ideas possible to human beings. The whole set seemed to be inspired with the spirit of martyrdom, without any very precise idea of how to get martyred effectually. It was only agreed that everything in the present state of society was wrong, and was to be pulled down forthwith. But as to what was to come after this demolition, there were as many opinions in the circle as there were persons, and all held with a wonderful degree of tenacity. A portion of them were of opinion that a new dispensation fresh from the heavenly realms was being inaugurated by means of spiritualistic communications daily and hourly conveyed to privileged individuals. It was, however, unfortunate that these communications were, very many of them, in point-blank opposition to each other; so that the introduction of revelations from the invisible world seemed only likely to make the confusion worse confounded. Then again, as to all the existing relations of life, there was the same charming variety of opinion. But one thing seemed to be pretty generally conceded among the whole circle, that in the good time coming, nobody was ever to do anything that he did not want to do, or feel at the moment just like doing. The great object of existence apparently was to get rid of everything that was disagreeable and painful. Thus, quite a party of them maintained that all marriage relations ought to drop, from the moment that either party ceased to take pleasure in them, without any regard to the interest of the other party or the children; because the fundamental law of existence was happiness – and nothing could make people happy but liberty to do just as they had a mind to.

I must confess that I found my evening at Mrs. Cerulean's salon a very agreeable one; the conversation of thoroughly emancipated people has a sparkling variety to it which is exactly the thing to give one a lively, pleasant evening. Everybody was full of enthusiasm, and in the very best of spirits. And there appeared to be nothing that anybody was afraid to say. Nobody was startled by anything. There was not a question, as it appeared, that had been agitated since the creation of the world, that was not still open to discussion.

As we were walking home after spending an evening, Ida asked me:

"Now, Mr. Henderson, what do you think of it?"

"Well, Miss Ida," said I, "after all, I'm a believer in the old-fashioned Bible."

"What, really, Mr. Henderson?"

"Really and squarely, Miss Ida. And never more so than when I associate with very clever people who have given it up. There is, to my mind, a want of common sense about all theories of life that are not built on that."

"Well," said Ida, "I have long since made up my mind, for my own part, that if the cause of woman is to be advanced in this world, it is not so much by meeting together and talking about it, as by each individual woman proposing to herself some good work for the sex, and setting about it patiently, and doing it quietly. That is rather my idea; at the same time, I like to hear these people talk, and they certainly are a great contrast to the vapid people that are called good society. There is a freshness and earnestness of mind about some of them that is really very interesting; and I get a great many new ideas."

"For my part," said Eva, "to be sure I have been a sad idler, but if I were going to devote myself to any work for women, it should be in the church, and under the guidance of the church. I am sure there is something we can do there. And then, one's sure of not running into all sorts of vagaries."

"Now," said Ida, "all I want is that women should do something; that the lives of girls, from the time they leave school till the time they are married, should not be such a perfect waste as they now are. I do not profess to be certain about any of these theories that I hear; but one thing I do know: we women will bear being made a great deal more self-sustaining and self-supporting than we have been. We can be more efficient in the world, and we ought to be. I have chosen my way, and mean to keep to it. And my idea is that a woman who really does accomplish a life-work is just like one that cuts the first path through a wood. She makes a way where others can walk."

"That's you, Ida," said Eva; "but I am not strong enough to cut first paths."

I felt a little nervous flutter of her hand on my arm as she said this. It was in the dark, and involuntarily, I suppose, my hand went upon hers, and before I thought of it I felt the little warm thing in my own as if it had been a young bird. It was one of those things that people sometimes do before they know it. But I noticed that she did not withdraw her hand, and so I held it, querying in my own mind whether this little arrangement was one of the privileges of friendship. Before I quite resolved this question we parted at the house-door.

CHAPTER XXIII.
I RECEIVE A MORAL SHOWER-BATH

A day or two after, as I was sitting in my room, busy writing, I heard a light footstep on the stairs, and a voice saying, "Oh yes! this is Mr. Henderson's room – thank you," and the next moment a jaunty, dashing young woman, with bold blue eyes, and curling brown hair, with a little wicked looking cap with nodding cock's-feather set askew on her head, came marching up and seated herself at my writing-table. I gazed in blank amazement. The apparition burst out laughing, and seizing me frankly by the hand, said —

"Look here, Hal! don't you know me? Well, my dear fellow, if you don't it's time you did! I read your last 'thingumajig' in the Milky Way, and came round to make your acquaintance."

I gazed in dumb amazement while she went on,

"My dear fellow, I have come to enlighten you," – and as she said this she drew somewhat near to me, and laid her arm confidingly on my shoulder, and looked coaxingly in my face. The look of amazement which I gave, under these circumstances, seemed to cause her great amusement.

"Ha! ha!" she said, "didn't I tell 'em so? You ain't half out of the shell yet. You ain't really hatched. You go for the emancipation of woman; but bless you, boy, you haven't the least idea what it means – not a bit of it, sonny, have you now? Confess!" she said, stroking my shoulder caressingly.

"Really, madam – I confess," I said, hesitatingly, "I haven't the honor" —

"Not the honor of my acquaintance, you was going to say; well, that's exactly what you're getting now. I read your piece in the Milky Way, and, said I, that boy's in heathen darkness yet, and I'm going round to enlighten him. You mean well, Hal! but this is a great subject. You haven't seen through it. Lord bless you, child! you ain't a woman, and I am – that's just the difference."

Now, I ask any of my readers, what is a modest young man, in this nineteenth century, – having been brought up to adore and reverence woman as a goddess – to do, when he finds himself suddenly vis-à-vis with her, in such embarrassing relations as mine were becoming? I had heard before of Miss Audacia Dangyereyes, as a somewhat noted character in New York circles, but did not expect to be brought so unceremoniously, and without the least preparation of mind, into such very intimate relations with her.

"Now, look here, bub!" she said, "I'm just a-going to prove to you, in five minutes, that you've been writing about what you don't know anything about. You've been asserting, in your blind way, the rights of woman to liberty and equality; the rights of women, in short, to do anything that men do. Well, here comes a woman to your room who takes her rights, practically, and does just what a man would do. I claim my right to smoke, if I please, and to drink if I please; and to come up into your room and make you a call, and have a good time with you, if I please, and tell you that I like your looks, as I do. Furthermore, to invite you to come and call on me at my room. Here's my card. You may call me 'Dacia, if you like – I don't go on ceremony. Come round and take a smoke with me, this evening, won't you? I've got the nicest little chamber that ever you saw. What rent do you pay for yours? Say, will you come round?"

"Indeed – thank you, miss – "

"Call me 'Dacia for short. I don't stand on ceremony. Just look on me as another fellow. And now confess that you've been tied and fettered by those vapid conventionalities which bind down women till there is no strength in 'em. You visit in those false, artificial circles, where women are slaves, kept like canary birds in gilded cages. And you are afraid of your own principles when you see them carried out in a real free woman. Now, I'm a woman that not only dares say, but I dare do. Why hasn't a woman as much a right to go round and make herself agreeable to men, as to sit still at home and wait for men to come and make themselves agreeable to her? I know you don't like this, I can see you don't, but it's only because you are a slave to old prejudices. But I'm going to make you like me in spite of yourself. Come, now, be consistent with your principles; allow me my equality as a woman, a human being."

I was in such a state of blank amazement by this time as seemed to deprive me of all power of self-possession. At this moment the door opened, and Jim Fellows appeared. A most ludicrous grimace passed over his face as he saw the position and he cut a silent pirouette in the air, behind her. She turned her head, and he advanced.

"Fairest of the sex! (with some slight exceptions) – to what happy accident are we to attribute this meeting?"

"Hallo, Jim! is this you?" she replied.

"Oh, certainly, it's me," said Jim, seating himself familiarly. "How is the brightest star of womanhood – the Northern Light; the Aurora Borealis; the fairest of the fair? Bless its little heart, has it got its rights yet? Did it want to drink and smoke? Come along with Jim, now, and let's have a social cocktail."

"Keep your distance, sir," said she, giving him a slight box on his ear. "I prefer to do my own courting. I have been trying to show your friend here how little he knows of the true equality of women, and of the good time coming, when we shall have our rights, and do just as we darn please, as you do. I'll bet now there aint one of those Van Arsdel girls that would dare to do as I'm doing. But we're opening the way sir, we're opening the way. The time will come when all women will be just as free to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as men."

"Good heavens!" said I, under my breath.

"My beloved Audacia," said Jim, "allow me to remark one little thing, and that is, that men also must be left free to the pursuit of happiness, and also, as the Scripture says, new wine must not be put into old bottles. Now my friend Hal – begging his pardon – is an old bottle, and I think you have already put as much new wine into him as his constitution will bear. And as he and I both have got to make our living by scratching, and tempus fugit, and we've got articles to write, and there is always, so to speak, the devil after us folks that write for the press, may I humbly request that you will withdraw the confusing light of your bright eyes from us for the present, and, in short, take your divine self somewhere else?"

As Jim spoke these words, he passed his arm round Miss Audacia's waist, and drew her to the door of the apartment, which he threw open, and handed her out, bowing with great ceremony.

"Stop!" she cried, "I aint going to be put out that way. I haven't done what I came for. You both of you have got to subscribe for my paper, The Emancipated Woman."

"Couldn't do it, divinest charmer," said Jim, "couldn't do it; too poor; mill runs low; no water; modest merit not rewarded. Wait till my ship comes in, and I'll subscribe for anything you like."

"Well, now, you don't get rid of me that way. I tell you I came in to get a subscription, and I am going to stay till I get one," said Miss Audacia. "Come, Hal," she said, crossing once more to me, and sitting down by me and taking my hand, "write your name there, there's a good fellow."

I wrote my name in desperation, while Jim stood by, laughing.

"Jim," I said, "come, put yours down quick, and let's have it over."

"Well, now," said she, "fork out the stamps – five dollars each."

We both obeyed mechanically.

"Well, well," said she, good naturally, "that'll do for this time, good morning," and she vanished from the apartment with a jaunty toss of the head and a nod of the cock's feathers in her hat.

Jim closed the door smartly after her.

"Mercy upon us! Jim," said I, "who, and what is this creature?"

"Oh, one of the harbingers of the new millennium," said Jim. "Won't it be jolly when all the girls are like her? But we shall have to keep our doors locked then."

"But," said I, "is it possible, Jim, that this is a respectable woman?"

"She's precisely what you see," said Jim; "whether that's respectable, is a matter of opinion. There's a woman that's undertaken, in good faith, to run and jostle in all the ways that men run in. Her principle is, that whatever a young fellow in New York could do, she'll do."

"Good heavens!" said I, "what would the Van Arsdels think of us, if they should know that she had been in our company?"

"It's lucky that they don't, and can't," said Jim. "But you see what you get for belonging to the new dispensation."

"Boys, what's all this fuss?" said Bolton, coming in at this moment.

"Oh, nothing, only Dacia Dangyeeyes has been here," said Jim, "and poor Hal is ready to faint away and sink through the floor. He isn't up to snuff yet, for all he writes such magnificent articles about the nineteenth century."

"Well," said I, "it was woman as woman that I was speaking of, and not this kind of creature. If I believed that granting larger liberty and wider opportunities was going to change the women we reverence to things like these, you would never find me advocating it."

"Well, my dear Hal," said Bolton, "be comforted; you're not the first reformer that has had to cry out, 'Deliver me from my friends.' Always when the waters of any noble, generous enthusiasm rise and overflow their banks, there must come down the drift-wood – the wood, hay, and stubble. Luther had more trouble with the fanatics of his day, who ran his principles into the ground, as they say, than he had with the Pope and the Emperor, both together. As to this Miss Audacia, she is one of the phenomenal creations of our times; this time, when every kind of practical experiment in life has got to be tried, and stand or fall on its own merits. So don't be ashamed of having spoken the truth, because crazy people and fools caricature it. It is true, as you have said, that women ought to be allowed a freer, stronger, and more generous education and scope for their faculties. It is true that they ought, everywhere, to have equal privileges with men; and because some crack-brained women draw false inferences from this, it is none the less true. For my part, I always said that one must have a strong conviction for a cause, if he could stand the things its friends say for it, or read a weekly paper devoted to it. If I could have been made a pro-slavery man, it would have been by reading anti-slavery papers, and vice versa. I had to keep myself on a good diet of pro-slavery papers, to keep my zeal up."

"But," said I, anxiously, to Jim, "do you suppose that we're going to be exposed to the visits of this young woman?"

"Well," said Jim, "as you've subscribed for her paper, perhaps she'll let us alone till she has some other point to carry."

"Subscribe!" said I; "I did it from compulsion, to get her out of the office; I didn't think the situation respectable; and yet I don't want her paper, and I don't want my name on her subscription list. What if the Van Arsdels should find it out? People are apt enough to think that our doctrines lead to all sorts of outré consequences; and if Mrs. Wouverman, their Aunt Maria, should once get hold of this, and it should get all through the circle in which they move, how disagreeable it would be."

"Oh, never fear," said Jim; "I guess we can manage to keep our own secrets; and as to any of them ever knowing, or seeing, anything about that paper, it's out of the question. Bless you! they wouldn't touch it with a pair of tongs!"