Гарриет Бичер-Стоу
We and Our Neighbors: or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street

CHAPTER XXXVII
THEREAFTER?

According to the view of the conventional world, the brief, sudden little passage between Mr. St. John and Angelique among the Christmas-greens was to all intents and purposes equivalent to an engagement; and yet, St. John had not actually at that time any thought of marriage.

"Then," says Mrs. Mater-familias, ruffling her plumage, in high moral style, "he is a man of no principle – and acts abominably." You are wrong, dear madam; Mr. St. John is a man of high principle, a man guided by conscience, and who would honestly sooner die than do a wrong thing.

"Well, what does he mean then, talking in this sort of way to Angie, if he has no intentions? He ought to know better."

Undoubtedly, he ought to know better, but he does not. He knows at present neither his own heart nor that of womankind, and is ignorant of the real force and meaning of what he has been saying and looking, and of the obligations which they impose on him as a man of honor. Having been, all his life, only a recluse and student, having planned his voyage of life in a study, where rocks and waves and breakers and shoals are but so many points on paper, it is not surprising that he finds himself somewhat ignorant in actual navigation, where rocks and shoals are quite another affair. It is one thing to lay down one's scheme and law of life in a study, among supposititious men and women, and another to carry it out in life among real ones, each one of whom acts upon us with the developing force of sunshine on the seed-germ.

In fact, no man knows what there is in himself till he has tried himself under the influence of other men; and if this is true of man over man, how much more of that subtle developing and revealing power of woman over man. St. John, during the first part of his life, had been possessed by that sort of distant fear of womankind which a person of acute sensibility has of that which is bright, keen, dazzling, and beyond his powers of management, and which, therefore, seems to him possessed of indefinite powers for mischief. It was something with which he felt unable to cope. He had, too, the common prejudice against fashionable girls and women as of course wanting in earnestness; and he entered upon his churchly career with a sort of hard determination to have no trifling, and to stand in no relation to this suspicious light guerrilla force of the church but that of a severe drill-sergeant.

To his astonishment, the child whom he had undertaken to drill had more than once perforce, and from the very power of her womanly nature, proved herself competent to guide him in many things which belonged to the very essence of his profession – church work. Angie had been able to enter places whence he had been excluded; able to enter by those very attractions of life and gaiety and prettiness which had first led him to set her down as unfit for serious work.

He saw with his own eyes that a bright little spirit, with twinkling ornaments, and golden hair, and a sweet voice, could go into the den of John Price in his surliest mood, could sing, and get his children to singing, till he was as persuadable in her hands as a bit of wax; that she could scold and lecture him at her pleasure, and get him to making all kinds of promises; in fact that he, St. John himself, owed his entrée into the house, and his recognition there as a clergyman, to Angie's good offices and persistent entreaties.

Instead of being leader, he was himself being led. This divine child was becoming to him a mystery of wisdom; and, so far from feeling himself competent to be her instructor, he came to occupy, as regards many of the details of his work, a most catechetical attitude towards her, and was ready to accept almost anything she told him.

St. John was, from first to last, an idealist. It was ideality that inclined him from the barren and sterile chillness of New England dogmatism to the picturesque forms and ceremonies of a warmer ritual. His conception of a church was a fair ideal; such as a poet might worship, such as this world has never seen in reality, and probably never will. His conception of a life work – of the priestly office, with all that pertains to it – belonged to that realm of poetry that is above the matter-of-fact truths of experience, and is sometimes in painful conflict with them. What wonder, then, if love, the eternal poem, the great ideal of ideals, came over him without precise limits and exact definitions – that when the divine cloud overshadowed him he "wist not what he said."

St. John certainly never belonged to that class of clergymen who, on being assured of a settlement and a salary, resolve, in a general way, to marry, and look up a wife and a cooking-stove at the same time; who take lists of eligible women, and have the conditional refusal of a house in their pockets, when they go to make proposals.

In fact, he had had some sort of semi-poetical ideas of a diviner life of priestly self-devotion and self-consecration, in which woman can have no part. He had been fascinated by certain strains of writing in some of the devout Anglicans whose works furnished most of the studies of his library; so that far from setting it down in a general way that he must some time marry, he had, up to this time, shaped his ideal of life in a contrary direction. He had taken no vows; he had as yet taken no steps towards the practical working out of any scheme; but there floated vaguely through his head the idea of a celibate guild – a brotherhood who should revive, in dusty modern New York, some of the devout conventual fervors of the middle ages. A society of brothers, living in a round of daily devotions and holy ministration, had been one of the distant dreams of his future cloud-land.

And now, for a month or two, he had been like a charmed bird, fluttering in nearer and nearer circles about this dazzling, perplexing, repellent attraction.

For weeks, unconsciously to himself, he had had but one method of marking and measuring his days: there were the days when he expected to see her, and the days when he did not; and wonderful days were interposed between, when he saw her unexpectedly – as, somehow, happened quite often.

We believe it is a fact not yet brought clearly under scientific investigation as to its causes, but a fact, nevertheless, that young people who have fallen into the trick of thinking about each other when separated are singularly apt to meet each other in their daily walks and ways. Victor Hugo has written the Idyl of the Rue Plumette; there are also Idyls of the modern city of New York. At certain periods in the progress of the poem, one such chance glimpse, or moment of meeting, at a street corner or on a door-step, is the event of the day.

St. John was sure of Angie at her class on Sunday mornings, and at service afterwards. He was sure of her on Thursday evenings, at Eva's reception; and then, besides, somehow, when she was around looking up her class on Saturday afternoons, it was so natural that he should catch a glimpse of her now and then, coming out of that house, or going into that door; and then, in the short days of winter, the darkness often falls so rapidly that it often struck him as absolutely necessary that he should see her safely home: and, in all these moments of association, he felt a pleasure so strange and new and divine that it seemed to him as if his whole life until he knew her had been flowerless and joyless. He pitied himself, when he thought that he had never known his mother and had never had a sister. That must be why he had known so little of what it was so lovely and beautiful to know.

Love, to an idealist, comes not first from earth, but heaven. It comes as an exaltation of all the higher and nobler faculties, and is its own justification in the fuller nobleness, the translucent purity, the larger generosity, and warmer piety, it brings. The trees do not examine themselves in spring-time, when every bud is thrilling with a new sense of life – they live.

Never had St. John's life-work looked to him so attractive, so possible, so full of impulse; and he worshiped the star that had risen on his darkness, without as yet a thought of the future. As yet, he thought of her only as a vision, an inspiration, an image of almost childlike innocence and purity, which he represented to himself under all the poetic forms of saintly legend.

She was the St. Agnes, the child Christian, the sacred lamb of Christ's fold. She was the holy Dorothea, who wore in her bosom the roses of heaven, and had fruits and flowers of Paradise to give to mortals; and when he left her, after ever so brief an interview, he fancied that one leaf from the tree of life had fluttered to his bosom. He illuminated the text, "Blessed are the pure in heart," in white lilies, and hung it over his prie dieu in memorial of her, and sometimes caught himself singing:

 
"I can but know thee as my star,
My angel and my dream."
 

As yet, the thought had not yet arisen in him of appropriating his angel guide. It was enough to love her with the reverential, adoring love he gave to all that was holiest and purest within him, to enshrine her as his ideal of womanhood.

He undervalued himself in relation to her. He seemed to himself coarse and clumsy, in the light of her intuitions, as he knew himself utterly unskilled and untrained in the conventional modes and usages of the society in which he had begun to meet her, and where he saw her moving with such deft ability, and touching every spring with such easy skill.

Still he felt a craving to be something to her. Why might she not be a sister to him, to him who had never known a sister? It was a happy thought, one that struck him as perfectly new and original, though it was – had he only known it – a well-worn, mossy old mile-stone that had been passed by generations on the pleasant journey to Eden. He had not, however, had the least intention of saying a word of this kind to Angie when he came to the chapel that morning. But he had been piqued by her quiet, resolute little way of dissent from the flood of admiration which his illumination had excited. He had been a little dissatisfied with the persistent adulation of his flock, and, like Zeuxis, felt a disposition to go after the blush of the maiden who fled. It was not the first time that Angie had held her own opinion against him, and turned away with that air of quiet resolution which showed that she had a reserved force in herself that he longed to fathom. Then, in the little passage that followed, came one of those sudden overflows that Longfellow tells of:

 
"There are moments in life when the heart is so full of emotion
That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble
Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret,
Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together."
 

St. John's secret looked out of his eager eyes; and, in fact, he was asking for Angie's whole heart, while his words said only, "love me as a brother." A man, unfortunately, cannot look into his own eyes, and does not always know what they say. But a woman may look into them; and Angie, though little in person and childlike in figure, had in her the concentrated, condensed essence of womanhood – all its rapid foresight; its keen flashes of intuition; its ready self-command, and something of that maternal care-taking instinct with which Eve is ever on the alert to prevent a blunder or mistake on the part of the less perceiving Adam.

She felt the tones of his voice. She knew that he was saying more than he was himself aware of, and that there were prying eyes about: and she knew, too, with a flash of presentiment, what would be the world's judgment of so innocent a brotherly and sisterly alliance as had been proposed and sealed by the sacrifice of her glove.

She laughed a little to herself, fancying her brother Tom's wanting her glove, or addressing her in the reverential manner and with the beseeching tones that she had just heard. Certainly she would be a sister to him, she thought, and, the next time she met him at Eva's alone, she would use her liberty to reprove him for his imprudence in speaking to her in that way when so many were looking on. The little empress knew her ground; and that it was hers now to dictate and his to obey.

CHAPTER XXXVIII
"WE MUST BE CAUTIOUS."

Eva was at the chapel that morning and overheard, of the conversation between Miss Gusher and Miss Vapors, just enough to pique her curiosity and rouse her alarm. Of all things, she dreaded any such report getting into the whirlwind of gossip that always eddies round a church door where there is an interesting, unmarried rector, and she resolved to caution Angie on the very first opportunity; and so, when her share of wreaths and crosses was finished, and the afternoon sun began to come level through the stained windows, she crossed over to Angie's side, to take her home with her to dinner.

"I've something to tell you," she said, "and you must come home and stay with me to-night." And so Angie came.

"Do you know," said Eva, as soon as the sisters found themselves alone in her chamber, where they were laying off their things and preparing for dinner, "do you know that Miss Gusher?"

"I – no, very slightly," said Angie, shaking out her shawl to fold it. "She's a very cultivated woman, I believe."

"Well, I heard her saying some disagreeable things about you and Mr. St. John this morning," said Eva.

The blood flushed in Angie's cheek, and she turned quickly to the glass and began arranging her hair.

"What did she say?" she inquired.

"Something about the Van Arsdel girls always getting up flirtations."

"Nonsense! how hateful! I'm sure it's no fault of mine that Mr. St. John came and spoke to me."

"Then he did come?"

"Oh, yes; I was perfectly astonished. I was sitting all alone in that dark corner where the great hemlock tree was, and the first I knew he was there. You see, I criticised his illuminated card – that one in the strange, queer letters – I said I couldn't understand it; but Miss Gusher, Miss Vapors, and all the girls were oh-ing and ah-ing about it, and I felt quite snubbed and put down. I supposed it must be my stupidity, and so I just went off to my tree and sat down to work quietly in the dark corner, and left Miss Gusher expatiating on mottoes and illuminations. I knew she was very accomplished and clever and all that, and that I didn't know anything about such things."

"Well, then," said Eva, "he followed you?"

"Yes, he came suddenly in from the vestry behind the tree, and I thought, or hoped, he stood so that nobody noticed us, and he insisted on my telling him why I didn't like his illumination. I said I did like it, that I thought it was beautifully done, but that I did not think it would be of any use to those poor children and folks to have inscriptions that they didn't understand; and he said I was quite right, and that he should alter it and put it in plain English; and then he said, what a help it was to have a woman's judgment on things, what a misfortune it was that he had never had a sister or any friend of that kind, and then he asked me to be a sister to him, and tell him frankly always just what I thought of him, and I said I would. And then" —

"What then?"

"Oh, Eva, I can't tell you; but he spoke so earnestly and quick, and asked me if I couldn't love him just a little; he asked me to call him Arthur, and then, if you believe me, he would have me give him my glove, and so I let him take it, because I was afraid some of those girls would see us talking together. I felt almost frightened that he should speak so, and I wanted him to go away."

"Well, Angie dear, what do you think of all this?"

"I know he cares for me very much," said Angie, quickly, "more than he says."

"And you, Angie?"

"I think he's good and noble and true, and I love him."

"As a sister, of course," said Eva, laughing.

"Never mind how – I love him," said Angie; "and I shall use my sisterly privilege to caution him to be very distant and dignified to me in future, when those prying eyes are around."

"Well now, darling," said Eva, with all the conscious dignity of early matronage, "we shall have to manage this matter very prudently – for those girls have had their suspicions aroused, and you know how such things will fly through the air. The fact is, there is nothing so perplexing as just this state of things; when you know as well as you know anything that a man is in love with you, and yet you are not engaged to him. I know all about the trouble of that, I'm sure; and it seems to me, what with Mamma, Aunt Maria, and all the rest of them, it was a perfect marvel how Harry and I ever came together. Now, there's that Miss Gusher, she'll be on the watch all the time, like a cat at a mouse-hole; and she's going to be there when we get the Christmas-tree ready and tie on the things, and you must manage to keep as far off from him as possible. I shall be there, and I shall have my eyes in my head, I promise you. We must try to lull their suspicions to sleep."

"Dear me," said Angie, "how disagreeable!"

"I'm sorry for you, darling, but I've kept it off as long as I could; I've seen for a long time how things are going."

"You have? Oh, Eva!"

"Yes; and I have had all I could do to keep Jim Fellows from talking, and teasing you, as he has been perfectly longing to do for a month past."

"You don't say that Jim has noticed anything?"

"Yes, Jim noticed his looking at you, the very first thing after he came to Sunday-school."

"Well, now, at first I noticed that he looked at me often, but I thought it was because he saw something he disapproved of – and it used to embarrass me. Then I thought he seemed to avoid me, and I wondered why. And I wondered, too, why he always would take occasion to look at me. I noticed, when your evenings first began, that he never came near me, and never spoke to me, and yet his eyes were following me wherever I went. The first evening you had, he walked round and round me nearly the whole evening, and never spoke a word; then suddenly he came and sat down by me, when I was sitting by Mrs. Betsey, and gave me a message from the Prices; but he spoke in such a stiff, embarrassed way, and then there was an awful pause, and suddenly he got up and went away again; and poor little Mrs. Betsey said, 'Bless me, how stiff and ungracious he is'; and I said that I believed he wasn't much used to society – but, after a while, this wore away, and he became very social, and we grew better and better acquainted all the time. Although I was a little contradictious, and used to controvert some of his notions, I fancy it was rather a novelty to him to find somebody that didn't always give up to him, for, I must say, some of the women that go to our chapel do make fools of themselves about him. It really provokes me past all bearing. If any body could set me against a man, it would be those silly, admiring women who have their hands and eyes always raised in adoration, whatever he does. It annoys him, I can see, for it is very much against his taste, and he likes me because, he says, I always will tell him the truth."

Meanwhile St. John had gone back to his study, walking as on a cloud. The sunshine streaming into a western window touched the white lilies over his prie dieu till they seemed alive. He took down the illumination and looked at it. He had a great mind to give this to her as a Christmas present. Why not? Was she not to be his own sister? And his thoughts strolled along through pleasant possibilities and all the privileges of a brother. Certainly, he longed to see her now, and talk them over with her; and suddenly it occurred to him that there were a few points in relation to the arrangement of the tree about which it would be absolutely necessary to get the opinion of Mrs. Henderson. Whether this direction of the path of duty had any relation to the fact that he had last seen her going away from the vestry arm in arm with Angie, we will not assume to say; but the solemn fact was that, that evening, just as it came time to drop the lace curtains over the Henderson windows, when the blazing wood fire was winking and blinking roguishly at the brass andirons, the door-bell rang, and in he walked.

Angelique had her lap full of dolls, and was sitting like Iris in the rainbow, in a confused mélange of silks, and gauzes, and tissues, and spangles. Three dressed dolls were propped up in various attitudes around her, and she was holding the fourth, while she fitted a sky-blue mantilla which she was going to trim with silver braid. Where Angie got all her budget of fineries was a standing mystery in the household, only that she had an infinitely persuasive tongue, and talked supplies out of admiring clerks and milliners' apprentices. It was a pretty picture to see her there in the warm, glowing room, tossing and turning her filmy treasures, and cocking her little head on one side and the other with an air of profound reflection.

Harry was gone out. Eva was knitting a comforter in her corner, and everything was as still and as cosy as heart could desire, when St. John made his way into the parlor and got himself warmly ensconced in his favorite niche. What more could mortal man desire? He talked gravely with Eva, and watched Angie. He thought of a lean, haggard picture of a St. Mary of Egypt, praying forlornly in the desert, that had hitherto stood in his study, and the idea somehow came over him that modern New York saints had taken a much more agreeable turn than those of old. Was it not better to be dressing dolls for poor children than to be rolling up one's eyes and praying alone out in a desert? In his own mind he resolved to take down that picture forthwith. He had, in his overcoat in the hall, his illuminated lilies, wrapped snugly in tissue paper and tied with a blue ribbon; and, all the while he was discoursing with Eva, he was ruminating how he could see Angie alone a minute, just long enough to place it in her hands. Surely, somebody ought to make her a Christmas present, she who was thinking of every one but herself.

Eva was one of the class of diviners, and not at all the person to sit as Madame de Trop in an exigency of this sort, and so she had a sudden call to consult with Mary in the kitchen.

"Now for it," thought St. John, as he rose and drew nearer. Angie looked up with a demure consciousness.

He began fingering her gauzes and her scissors unconsciously.

"Now, now! I don't allow that," she said, playfully, as she took them altogether from his hand.

"I have something for you," he said suddenly.

"Something for me!" with a bright, amused look. "Where is it?"

St. John fumbled a moment in the entry and brought in his parcel. Angie watched him untying it with a kittenish gravity. He laid it down before her. "From your brother, Angie," he said.

"Oh, how lovely! how beautiful! O Mr. St. John, did you do this for me?"

"It was of you I was thinking; you, my inspiration in all that is holy and good; you who strengthen and help me in all that is pure and heavenly."

"Oh, don't say that!"

"It's true, Angie, my Angie, my angel. I knew nothing worthily till I knew you."

Angie looked up at him; her eyes, clear and bright as a bird's, looked into his; their hands clasped together, and then, it was the most natural thing in the world, he kissed her.

"But, Arthur," said Angie, "you must be careful not to arouse disagreeable reports and gossip. What is so sacred between us must not be talked of. Don't look at me, or speak to me, when others are present. You don't know how very easy it is to make people talk."

Mr. St. John promised all manner of prudence, and walked home delighted. And thus these two Babes in the Wood clasped hands with each other, to wander up and down the great forest of life, as simply and sincerely as if they had been Hensel and Grettel in the fairy story. They loved each other, wholly trusted each other without a question, and were walking in dream-land. There was no question of marriage settlements, or rent and taxes; only a joyous delight that they two in this wilderness world had found each other.

We pity him who does not know that there is nothing purer, nothing nearer heaven than a young man's first-enkindled veneration and adoration of womanhood in the person of her who is to be his life's ideal. It is the morning dew before the sun arises.