Chapter XI: Part 11

"Why, mother shuts them slides _part_ up, when the fire gets agoing too fast," said Midge--"so;" and Midge manipulated the mysterious slides, and the roaring monster grew calm.

But my turkey needed to be turned, and I essayed to turn him--a thing which seems the simplest thing in life, till one tries it and becomes convinced of the utter depravity of matter. The wretched contrary bird of evil! how he slipped and slid, and went every way but the right way! How I wrestled with him, getting hot and combative, outwardly and inwardly! How I burned my hand on the oven door, till finally over he flounced, spattering hot gravy all over my hand and the front breadth of my dress. I had a view then that I never had had before of the amount of Christian patience needed by a cook. I really got into quite a vengeful state of feeling with the monster, and shut the oven door with a malignant bang, as Hensel and Gretel did when they burned the old witch in the fairy story.

But now came the improvising of my dessert! I had projected an elegant arrangement of boiled custard, with sponge-cake at the bottom, and feathery snow of egg-froth on top--a showy composition, which, when displayed in a high cut-glass dish, strikingly ornaments the table.

I felt entirely equal to boiled custard. I had seen Mary make it dozens of times. I knew just how many eggs went to the quart of milk, and that it must be stirred gently all the time, in a kettle of boiling water, till the golden moment of projection arrived. So I stirred and stirred, with a hot face and smarting hands; for the burned places burned so much worse in the heat as to send a doubt through my mind whether I ever should have grace enough to be a martyr at the stake, for any faith or cause whatever.

But I bore all for the sake of my custard; when, oh! from some cruel, mysterious, unexplained cause, just at the last moment, the golden creamy preparation suddenly separated into curd and whey, leaving my soul desolate within me!

What had I done? What had I omitted? I was sure every rite and form of the incantation had been performed just as I had seen Mary do it hundreds of times; yet hers proved a rich, smooth, golden cream, and mine unsightly curd and watery whey!

The mysteriousness of natural laws was never so borne in upon me. There is a kink in every one of them, meant to puzzle us. In my distress, I ran across to the back door again and consulted Dinah.

"What can be the matter, Dinah? My custard won't come, when I've mixed everything exactly right, according to the rules; and it's all turned to curd and whey!"

"Land sake, missis, it's jest cause it will do so sometimes--dat are's de reason," said Dinah, with the certainty of a philosopher. "Soft custard is jest de aggravatinest thing! you don't never know when it's goin' to be contrary and flare up agin you."

"Well, Dinah," said Miss Dorcas, "you try your luck with some of our fresh morning's milk--you always have luck--and carry it over to Mrs. Henderson."

The dear old angel! No morning cap, however fearful, could disguise her. I fell upon her neck and kissed her, then and there, she was so good! She is the best old soul, mother, and I feel proud of having discovered her worth. I told her how I did hope some time she would let me do something for her, and we had quite a time, pledging our friendship to each other in the kitchen.

Well, Dinah brought over the custard, thick and smooth, and I arranged it in my high cut-glass dish and covered it with foamy billows of whites of egg tipped off with sparkles of jelly, so that Dinah declared that it looked as well "as dem perfectioners could do it;" and she staid to take my turkey out for me at the dinner hour; and I, remembering my past struggle and burned fingers, was only too glad to humbly accept her services.

Dinah is not a beauty, by any of the laws of art, but she did look beautiful to me, when I left her getting up the turkey, and retired to wash my hot cheeks and burning hands and make my toilette; for I was to appear serene and smiling in a voluminous robe, and with unsullied ribbons, like the queen of the interior, whose morning had been passed in luxurious ease and ignorant of care.

To say the truth, dear mother, I was so tired and worn out with the little I had done that I would much rather have lain down for a nap than to have enacted the part of charming hostess. Talk about women meeting men with a smile, when they come in from the cares of business! I reflected that, if this sort of thing went on much longer, Harry would have to meet me with a smile, and a good many smiles, to keep up my spirits at this end of the lever. However, it was but for once; I summoned my energies and was on time, nicely dressed, serene and fresh as if nothing had happened, and we went through our dinner without a break down, for little Midge was a well-trained waiter and did heroically.

Only, when I came to pour the coffee after dinner, I was astonished at its unusual appearance. Our clear, limpid, golden coffee had always been one of our strong points, and one on which I had often received special compliments. People had said, "How do you contrive to always have such coffee?" and I had accepted with a graceful humility, declaring, as is proper in such cases, that I was not aware of any particular merit in it, etc.

The fact is, I never had thought about coffee at all. I had seen, as I supposed, how Mary made it, and never doubted that mine would be like hers; so that when a black, thick, cloudy liquid poured out of my coffee pot, I was, I confess, appalled.

Harry, like a good fellow, took no notice, and covered my defect by beginning an animated conversation on the merits of the last book our gentleman had published. The good man forgot all about his coffee in his delight at the obliging things Harry was saying, and took off the muddy draught with a cheerful zeal, as if it was so much nectar.

But, on our way to the parlor, Harry contrived to whisper,

"What has got into Mary about her coffee to-day?"

"O Harry," I replied, "Mary's gone. I had to get the dinner all alone."

"You did! You wonderful little puss!" said the good boy. "Never mind the coffee! Better luck next time."

And, after we were alone that night, Harry praised and admired me, and I got out the cookery book to see how I ought to have made my coffee.

The directions, however, were not near as much to the point as the light I got from Dinah, who came across on a gossiping expedition to our kitchen that evening, and to whom I propounded the inquiry, "Why wasn't my coffee clear and nice like Mary's?"

"Land sakes, Mis' Henderson, ye didn't put in no fish-skin, nor nothing to clar it."

"No. I never heard of such a thing."

"Some uses fish-skin, and some takes an egg," continued Dinah. "When eggs is cheap, I takes an egg. Don't nobody have no clarer coffee 'n mine."

I made Dinah illustrate her theme by one practical experiment, after the manner of chemical lecturers, and then I was mistress of the situation. Coffee was a vanquished realm, a subjugated province, the power whereof was vested henceforth, not in Mary, but myself.

Since then, we have been anxiously looking for Mary every day; for Thursday is coming round, and how are we to have "our evening" without her? Alice and Angie are both staying with me now to help me, and on the whole we have pretty good times, though there isn't any surplus of practical knowledge among us. We have all rather plumed ourselves on being sensible domestic girls. We can all make lovely sponge cake, and Angie excels in chocolate caramels, and Alice had a great success in currant jelly. But the thousand little practical points that meet one in getting the simplest meal, nobody knows till he tries. For instance, we fried our sausages in butter, the first morning, to the great scandal of little Midge, who instructed us gravely that they were made to fry themselves.

Since "our boys" have found out that we are sole mistresses of the kitchen, they often drop in to lighten our labors and to profess their own culinary accomplishments. Jim Fellows declares that nobody can equal him in coffee, and that he can cook a steak with tomato sauce in a manner unequaled; and Bolton professes a peculiar skill in an omelette; so we agreed yesterday to let them try their hand, and we had a great frolic over the getting up of a composition dinner. Each of us took a particular thing to be responsible for; and so we got up a pic-nic performance, which we ate with great jollity. Dr. Campbell came in with a glass coffee-making machine by which coffee was to be made on table for the amusement of the guests as well as for the gratification of appetite; and he undertook, for his part, to engineer it. Altogether we had a capital time, and more fun than if we had got the dinner under the usual auspices; and, to crown all, I got a letter from Mary that she is coming back to-morrow,--so all's well that ends well. Meanwhile, dear mother, though I have burned my hands and greased the front breadth of my new winter dress, yet I have gained something quite worth having by the experience of the last few days.

I think I shall have more patience with the faults and short-comings of the servants after this; and if the custard is a failure, or the meat is burned, or the coffee doesn't come perfectly clear, I shall remember that she is a sister woman of like passions with myself, and perhaps trying to do her very best when she fails, just as I was when I failed. I am quite sure that I shall be a better mistress for having served an apprenticeship as a maid.

So good by, dear mother.

Your loving

EVA.

_CHAPTER XXXIII._

A FOUR-FOOTED PRODIGAL.

There was dismay and confusion in the old Vanderheyden house, this evening. Mrs. Betsey sat abstracted at her tea, as one refusing to be comforted. The chair on which Jack generally sat alert and cheerful at meal times was a vacant chair, and poor soft-hearted Mrs. Betsey's eyes filled with tears every time she looked that way. Jack had run away that forenoon and had not been seen about house or premises since.

"Come now, Betsey," said Miss Dorcas, "eat your toast; you really are silly."

"I can't help it, Dorcas; it's getting dark and he doesn't come. Jack never did stay out so long before; something must have happened to him."

"Oh, you go 'way, Miss Betsey!" broke in Dinah, with the irreverent freedom which she generally asserted to herself in the family counsels, "never you fear but what Jack'll be back soon enough--too soon for most folks; _he_ knows which side _his_ bread's buttered, dat dog does. Bad penny allers sure to come home 'fore you want it."

"And there's no sort of reason, Betsey, why you shouldn't exercise self-control and eat your supper," pursued Miss Dorcas, authoritatively. "A well-regulated mind"--

"You needn't talk to me about a well-regulated mind, Dorcas," responded Mrs. Betsey, in an exacerbated tone. "I haven't got a well-regulated mind and never had, and never shall have; and reading Mrs. Chapone and Dr. Watts on the Mind, and all the rest of them, never did _me_ any good. I'm one of that sort that when I'm anxious I _am_ anxious; so it don't do any good to talk _that_ way to me."

"Well, you know, Betsey, if you'll only be reasonable, that Jack always has come home."

"And good reason," chuckled Dinah. "Don't he know when he's well off? you jest bet he does. I know jest where he is; he's jest off a gallivantin' and a prancin' and a dancin' now 'long o' dem low dogs in Flower Street, and he'll come back bimeby smellin' 'nuff to knock ye down, and I shall jest hev the washin' on him, that's what I shall; and if I don't give him sech a soapin' and scrubbin' as he never hed, I tell you! So you jest eat your toast, Mis' Betsey, and take no thought for de morrer, Scriptur' says."

This cheerful picture, presented in Dinah's overpoweringly self-confident way, had some effect on Mrs. Betsey, who wiped her eyes and finished her slice of toast without further remonstrance.

"Dinah, if you're sure he's down on Flower Street, you might go and look him up, after tea," she added, after long reflection.

"Oh, well, when my dishes is done up, ef Jack ain't come round, why, I'll take a look arter him," quoth Dinah. "I don't hanker arter no dog in a gineral way, but since you've got sot on Jack, why, have him you must. Dogs is nothin' but a plague; for my part I's glad there won't be no dogs in heaven."

"What do you know about that?" said Mrs. Betsey, with spirit.

"Know?" said Dinah. "Hain't I heard my Bible read in Rev'lations all 'bout de golden city, and how it says, 'Widout are dogs'? Don't no dogs walk de golden streets, now I tell you; got Bible on dat ar. Jack'll hev to take his time in dis world, for he won't get in dere a promenadin'."

"Well then, Dinah, we must make the most we can of him here," pursued Miss Dorcas, "and so, after you've done your dishes, I wish you'd go out and look him up. You know you can find him, if you only set your mind to it."

"To think of it!" said Mrs. Betsey. "I had just taken such pains with him; washed him up in nice warm water, with scented soap, and combed him with a fine-tooth comb till there wasn't a flea on him, and tied a handsome pink ribbon round his neck, because I was going to take him over to Mrs. Henderson's to call, this afternoon; and just as I got him all perfectly arranged out he slipped, and that's the last of him."

"I'll warrant!" said Dinah, "and won't he trail dat ar pink ribbon through all sorts o' nastiness, and come home smellin' wus 'n a sink-drain! Dogs hes total depravity, and hes it _hard_; it's no use tryin' to make Christians on 'em. But I'll look Jack up, never you fear. I'll bring him home, see if I don't," and Dinah went out with an air of decision that carried courage to Mrs. Betsey's heart.

"Come, now," said Miss Dorcas, "we'll wash up the china, and then, you know, it's Thursday--we'll dress and go across to Mrs. Henderson's and have a pleasant evening; and by the time we come back Jack'll be here, I dare say. Never mind looking out the window after him now," she added, seeing Mrs. Betsey peering wistfully through the blinds up and down the street.

"People talk as if it were silly to love dogs," said Mrs. Betsey, in an injured tone. "I don't see why it is. It may be better to have a baby, but if you haven't got a baby, and have got a dog, I don't see why you shouldn't love that; and Jack was real loving, too," she added, "and such company for me; he seemed like a reasonable creature; and you were fond of him, Dorcas, you just _know_ you were."

"Of course, I'm very fond of Jack," said Miss Dorcas, cheerfully; "but I'm not going to make myself miserable about him. I know, of course, he'll come back in good time. But here's Dinah, bringing the water. Come now, let's do up the china--here's your towel--and then you shall put on that new cap Mrs. Henderson arranged for you, and go over and let her see you in it. It was so very thoughtful in dear Mrs. Henderson to do that cap for you; and she said the color was very becoming."

"She is a dear, sweet little woman," said Mrs. Betsey; "and that sister of hers, Miss Angelique, looks like her, and is so lovely. She talked with me ever so long, the last time we were there. She isn't like some young girls, she can see something to like in an old woman."

Poor good Miss Dorcas had, for the most part, a very exalted superiority to any toilet vanities; but, if the truth were to be told, she was moved to an unusual degree of indulgence towards Mrs. Betsey by the suppressed fear that something grave might have befallen the pet of the household. In a sort of vague picture, there rose up before her the old days, when it was not a dog, but a little child, that filled the place in that desolate heart. When there had been a patter of little steps in those stiff and silent rooms; and questions of little shoes, and little sashes, and little embroidered robes, had filled the mother's heart. And then there had been in the house the racket and willful noise of a school-boy, with his tops, and his skates, and his books and tasks; and then there had been the gay young man, with his smoking-caps and cigars, and his rattling talk, and his coaxing, teasing ways; and then, alas! had come bad courses, and irregular hours, and watchings, and fears for one who refused to be guided; night-watchings for one who came late, and brought sorrow in his coming; till, finally, came a darker hour, and a coffin, and a funeral, and a grave, and long weariness and broken-heartedness,--a sickness of the heart that had lasted for years, that had blanched the hair, and unstrung the nerves, and made the once pretty, sprightly little woman a wreck. All these pictures rose up silently before Miss Dorcas's inner eye as she busied herself in wiping the china, and there was a touch of pathos about her unaccustomed efforts to awaken her sister's slumbering sensibility to finery, and to produce a diversion in favor of the new cap.

The love of a pet animal is something for which people somehow seem called upon to apologize to our own species, as if it were a sort of _mésalliance_ of the affections to bestow them on anything below the human race; and yet the Book of books, which reflects most faithfully and tenderly the nature of man, represents the very height of cruelty by the killing of a poor man's pet lamb. It says the rich man had flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing save one little ewe lamb, which he had brought and nourished up, which grew up together with him and his children, which ate of his bread, and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, and was to him as a daughter.

And how often on the unintelligent head of some poor loving animal are shed the tears of some heart-sorrow; and their dumb company, their unspoken affection, solace some broken heart which hides itself to die alone.

Dogs are the special comforters of neglected and forgotten people; and to hurt a poor man's dog, has always seemed to us a crime akin to sacrilege.

We are not at all sure, either, of the boasted superiority of our human species. A dog who lives up to the laws of his being is, in our view, a nobler creature than a man who sinks below his: he is certainly a much more profitable member of the community. We suggest, moreover, that a much more judicious use could be made of the city dog-pound in thinning out human brutes than in smothering poor, honest curs who always lived up to their light and did just as well as they knew how.

To say the honest truth about poor Jack, his faults were only those incident to his having been originally created a dog--a circumstance for which he was in no way responsible. He was as warm-hearted, loving, demonstrative a creature as ever wagged a tail, and he was anxious to please his mistress to the best of his light and knowledge. But he had that rooted and insuperable objection to soap and water, and that preference for dirt and liberty, which is witnessed also in young animals of the human species, and Mrs. Betsey's exquisite neatness was a sore cross and burden to him. Then his destiny having made him of the nature of the flesh-eaters, as the canine race are generally, and Miss Dorcas having some strict dietetic theories intended to keep him in genteel figure, Jack's allowance of meat and bones was far below his cravings: and so he was led to explore neighboring alleys, and to investigate swill-pails; to bring home and bury bones in the Vanderheyden garden-plot, which formed thus a sort of refrigerator for the preservation of his marketing. Then Jack had his own proclivities for society. An old lady in a cap, however caressing and affectionate, could not supply all the social wants of a dog's nature; and even the mixed and low company of Flower Street was a great relief to him from the very select associations and good behavior to which he was restricted the greater part of his time. In short, Jack, like the rest of us, had his times when he was fairly tired out of being good, and acting the part of a cultivated drawing-room dog; and then he reverted with a bound to his freer doggish associates. Such an impulse is not confined to four-footed children of nature. Rachel, when mistress of all the brilliancy and luxury of the choicest _salon_ in Paris, had fits of longing to return to the wild freedom of a street girl's life, and said that she felt within herself a "_besoin de s'encanailler_." This expresses just what Jack felt when he went trailing his rose-colored bows into the society of Flower Street, little thinking, as he lolled his long pink ribbon of a tongue jauntily out of his mouth, and enjoyed the sensation he excited among the dogs of the vicinity, of the tears and anxieties his frolic was creating at home. But, in due time, the china was washed, and Mrs. Betsey entered with some interest into preparations for the evening.

Miss Dorcas and Mrs. Betsey were the earliest at the Henderson fireside, and they found Alice, Angelique and Eva busy arranging the tea-table in the corner.

"Oh, don't you think, Miss Dorcas, Mary hasn't come back yet, and we girls are managing all alone," said Angelique; "you can't think what fun it is!"

"Why didn't you tell me, Mrs. Henderson?" said Miss Dorcas. "I would have sent Dinah over to make your coffee."

"Oh, dear me, Miss Dorcas, Dinah gave me private lessons day before yesterday," said Eva, "and from henceforth I am personally adequate to any amount of coffee, I grow so self-confident. But I tried my hand in making those little biscuit Mary gets up, and they were a failure. Mary makes them with sour milk and soda, and I tried to do mine just like hers. I can't tell why, but they came out of the oven a brilliant grass-green--quite a preternatural color."

"Showing that they were the work of a green hand," said Angelique.

"It was an evident reflection on me," said Eva. "At any rate, I sent to the bakery for my biscuit to-night, for I would not advertise my greenness in public."

"But we are going to introduce a novelty this evening," said Angelique; "to wit: boiled chestnuts; anybody can cook chestnuts."

"Yes," said Eva; "Harry's mother has just sent us a lovely bag of chestnuts, and we are going to present them as a sensation. I think it will start all sorts of poetic and pastoral reminiscences of lovely fall days, and boys and girls going chestnutting and having good times; it will make themes for talk."

"By the by," said Angelique, "where's Jack, Mrs. Benthusen?"

"Oh! my dear, you touch a sore spot. We are in distress about Jack. He ran away this morning, and we haven't seen him all day."

"How terrible!" said Eva. "This is a neighborhood matter. Jack is the dog of the regiment. We must all put our wits together to have him looked up. Here comes Jim; let's tell him," continued she, as Jim Fellows walked up.

"What's up, now?"

"Why, our dog is missing," said Eva. "The pride of our hearts, the ornament of our neighborhood, is gone."

"Do you think anybody has stolen him?" said Alice.

"I shouldn't wonder," said Mrs. Betsey; "Jack is a dog of a very pure breed, and very valuable. A boy might get quite a sum for him."

"I'll advertise him in our paper," said Jim.

"Thank you, Mr. Fellows," said Mrs. Betsey, with tears in her eyes.

"I don't doubt he'll get back to you, even if he has been stolen," said Harry. "I have known wonderful instances of the contrivance, and ingenuity, and perseverance of these creatures in getting back home."

"Well," said Jim, "I know a regiment of our press boys and reporters, who go all up and down the highways and byways, alleys and lanes of New York, looking into cracks and corners, and I'll furnish them with a description of Jack, and tell them _I_ want him; and I'll be bound we'll have him forthcoming. There's some use in newspaper boys, now and then."

And Jim sat down by Mrs. Betsey, and entered into the topic of Jack's characteristics, ways, manners and habits, with an interest which went to the deepest heart of the good little old lady, and excited in her bosom the brightest hopes.

The evening passed off pleasantly. By this time, the habitual comers felt enough at home to have the sort of easy enjoyment that a return to one's own fireside always brings.

Alice, Jim, Eva, Angelique, and Mr. St. John discussed the forthcoming Christmas-tree for the Sunday-school, and made lists of purchases to be made of things to be distributed among them.

"Let's give them things that are really useful," said St. John.

"For my part," said Eva, "in giving to such poor children, whose mothers have no time to entertain them, and no money to buy pretty things, I feel more disposed to get bright, attractive playthings--dolls with fine, fancy dresses, and so on; it gives a touch of poetry to the poor child's life."

"Well, I've dressed four dolls," said Angie; "and I offer my services to dress a dozen more. My innate love of finery is turned to good account here."

"I incline more to useful things," said Alice.

"Well," said Eva, "suppose we do both, give each child one useful thing and one for fancy?"

"Well," said Alice, "the shopping for all this list of eighty children will be no small item. Jim, we shall have to call in your services."

"I'm your man," said Jim. "I know stores where the fellows would run their feet off to get a good word from us of the press. I shall turn my influence in to the service of the church."

"Well," said Alice, "we shall take you with us, when we go on our shopping tour."

"I know a German firm where you can get the real German candles, and glass balls, and all the shiners and tinklers to glorify your tree, and a little angel to stick on the top. A tip-top notice from me in the paper will make them shell out for us like thunder."

Mr. St. John opened his large, thoughtful, blue eyes on Jim with an air of innocent wonder. He knew as little of children and their ways as most men, and was as helpless about all the details of their affairs as he was desirous of a good result.

"I leave it all in your hands," he said, meekly; "only, wherever I can be of service, command me."

It was probably from pure accident that Mr. St. John as he spoke looked at Angie, and that Angie blushed a little, and that Jim Fellows twinkled a wicked glance across at Alice. Such accidents are all the while happening, just as flowers are all the while springing up by the wayside. Wherever man and woman walk hand in hand, the earth is sown thick with them.

It was a later hour than usual when Miss Dorcas and Mrs. Betsey came back to their home.

"Is Jack come home?" was the first question.

No, Jack had not come.

_CHAPTER XXXIV._

GOING TO THE BAD.

It was the week before Christmas, and all New York was stirring and rustling with a note of preparation. Every shop and store was being garnished and furbished to look its best. Christmas-trees for sale lay at the doors of groceries; wreaths of ground-pine, and sprigs and branches of holly, were on sale, and selling briskly. Garlands and anchors and crosses of green began to adorn the windows of houses, and were a merchantable article in the stores. The toy-shops were flaming and flaunting with a delirious variety of attractions, and mammas and papas with puzzled faces were crowding and jostling each other, and turning anxiously from side to side in the suffocating throng that crowded to the counters, while the shopmen were too flustered to answer questions, and so busy that it seemed a miracle when anybody got any attention. The country-folk were pouring into New York to do Christmas shopping, and every imaginable kind of shop had in its window some label or advertisement or suggestion of something that might answer for a Christmas gift. Even the grim, heavy hardware trade blossomed out into festal suggestions. Tempting rows of knives and scissors glittered in the windows; little chests of tools for little masters, with cards and labels to call the attention of papa to the usefulness of the present. The confectioners' windows were a glittering mass of sugar frostwork of every fanciful device, gay boxes of bonbons, marvelous fabrications of chocolate, and sugar rainbows in candy of every possible device; and bewildered crowds of well-dressed purchasers came and saw and bought faster than the two hands of the shopmen could tie up and present the parcels. The grocery stores hung out every possible suggestion of festal cheer. Long strings of turkeys and chickens, green bunches of celery, red masses of cranberries, boxes of raisins and drums of figs, artistically arranged, and garnished with Christmas greens, addressed themselves eloquently to the appetite, and suggested that the season of festivity was at hand.

The weather was stinging cold--cold enough to nip one's toes and fingers, as one pressed round, doing Christmas shopping, and to give cheeks and nose alike a tinge of red. But nobody seemed to mind the cold. "Cold as Christmas" has become a cheery proverb; and for prosperous, well-living people, with cellars full of coal, with bright fires and roaring furnaces and well-tended ranges, a cold Christmas is merely one of the luxuries. Cold is the condiment of the season; the stinging, smarting sensation is an appetizing reminder of how warm and prosperous and comfortable are all within doors.

But did any one ever walk the streets of New York, the week before Christmas, and try to imagine himself moving in all this crowd of gaiety, outcast, forsaken and penniless? How dismal a thing is a crowd in which you look in vain for one face that you know! how depressing the sense that all this hilarity and abundance and plenty is not for you! Shakespeare has said, "How miserable it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes--to see that which you might enjoy and may not, to move in a world of gaiety and prosperity where there is nothing for you!"

Such were Maggie's thoughts, the day she went out from the kindly roof that had sheltered her, and cast herself once more upon the world. Poor hot-hearted, imprudent child, why did she run from her only friends? Well, to answer that question, we must think a little. It is a sad truth, that when people have taken a certain number of steps in wrong-doing, even the good that is in them seems to turn against them and become their enemy. It was in fact a residuum of honor and generosity, united with wounded pride, that drove Maggie into their street, that morning. She had overheard the conversation between Aunt Maria and Eva; and certain parts of it brought back to her mind the severe reproaches which had fallen upon her from her Uncle Mike. He had told her she was a disgrace to any honest house, and she had overheard Aunt Maria telling the same thing to Eva,--that the having and keeping such as she in her home was a disreputable, disgraceful thing, and one that would expose her to very unpleasant comments and observations. Then she listened to Aunt Maria's argument, to show Eva that she had better send her mother away and take another woman in her place, because she was encumbered with such a daughter.

"Well," she said to herself, "I'll go then. I'm in everybody's way, and I get everybody into trouble that's good to me. I'll just take myself off. So there!" and Maggie put on her things and plunged into the street and walked very fast in a tumult of feeling.

She had a few dollars in her purse that her mother had given her to buy winter clothing; enough, she thought vaguely, to get her a few days' lodging somewhere, and she would find something honest to do.

Maggie knew there were places where she would be welcomed with an evil welcome, where she would have praise and flattery instead of chiding and rebuke; but she did not intend to go to them just yet.

The gentle words that Eva had spoken to her, the hope and confidence she had expressed that she might yet retrieve her future, were a secret cord that held her back from going to the utterly bad.

The idea that somebody thought well of her, that somebody believed in her, and that a lady pretty, graceful, and admired in the world, seemed really to care to have her do well, was a redeeming thought. She would go and get some place, and do something for herself, and when she had shown that she could do something, she would once more make herself known to her friends. Maggie had a good gift at millinery, and, at certain odd times, had worked in a little shop on Sixteenth Street, where the mistress had thought well of her, and made her advantageous offers. Thither she went first, and asked to see Miss Pinhurst. The moment, however, that she found herself in that lady's presence, she was sorry she had come. Evidently, her story had preceded her. Miss Pinhurst had heard all the particulars of her ill conduct, and was ready to the best of her ability to act the part of the flaming sword that turned every way to keep the fallen Eve out of paradise.

"I am astonished, Maggie, that you should even think of such a thing as getting a place _here_, after all's come and gone that you know of; I am astonished that you could for one moment think of it. None but young ladies of good character can be received into our work-rooms. If I should let such as you come in, my respectable girls would feel insulted. I don't know but they would leave in a body. I think _I_ should leave, under the same circumstances. No, I wish you well, Maggie, and hope that you may be brought to repentance; but, as to the shop, it isn't to be thought of."

Now, Miss Pinhurst was not a hard-hearted woman; not, in any sense, a cruel woman; she was only on that picket duty by which the respectable and well-behaved part of society keeps off the ill-behaving. Society has its instincts of self-protection and self-preservation, and seems to order the separation of the sheep and the goats, even before the time of final judgment. For, as a general thing, it would not be safe and proper to admit fallen women back into the ranks of those unfallen, without some certificate of purgation. Somebody must be responsible for them, that they will not return again to bad ways, and draw with them the innocent and inexperienced. Miss Pinhurst was right in requiring an unblemished record of moral character among her shop-girls. It was her mission to run a shop and run it well; it was not her call to conduct a Magdalen Asylum: hence, though we pity poor Maggie, coming out into the cold with the bitter tears of rejection freezing her cheek, we can hardly blame Miss Pinhurst. She had on her hands already all that she could manage.

Besides, how could she know that Maggie was really repentant? Such creatures were so artful; and, for aught she knew, she might be coming for nothing else than to lure away some of her girls, and get them into mischief. She spoke the honest truth, when she said she wished well to Maggie. She did wish her well. She would have been sincerely glad to know that she had gotten into better ways, but she did not feel that it was her business to undertake her case. She had neither time nor skill for the delicate and difficult business of reformation. Her helpers must come to her ready-made, in good order, and able to keep step and time: she could not be expected to make them over.

"How hard they all make it to do right!" thought Maggie. But she was too proud to plead or entreat. "They all act as if I had the plague, and should give it to them; and yet I don't want to be bad. I'd a great deal rather be good if they'd let me, but I don't see any way. Nobody will have me, or let me stay," and Maggie felt a sobbing pity for herself. Why should she be treated as if she were the very off-scouring of the earth, when the man who had led her into all this sin and sorrow was moving in the best society, caressed, admired, flattered, married to a good, pious, lovely woman, and carrying all the honors of life?

Why was it such a sin for _her_, and no sin for him? Why could he repent and be forgiven, and why must she never be forgiven? There wasn't any justice in it, Maggie hotly said to herself--and there wasn't; and then, as she walked those cold streets, pictures without words were rising in her mind, of days when everybody flattered and praised her, and he most of all. There is no possession which brings such gratifying homage as personal beauty; for it is homage more exclusively belonging to the individual self than any other. The tribute rendered to wealth, or talent, or genius, is far less personal. A child or woman gifted with beauty has a constant talisman that turns all things to gold--though, alas! the gold too often turns out like fairy gifts; it is gold only in seeming, and becomes dirt and slate-stone on their hands.

Beauty is a dazzling and dizzying gift. It dazzles first its possessor and inclines him to foolish action; and it dazzles outsiders, and makes them say and do foolish things.

From the time that Maggie was a little chit, running in the street, people had stopped her, to admire her hair and eyes, and talk all kinds of nonsense to her, for the purpose of making her sparkle and flush and dimple, just as one plays with a stick in the sparkling of a brook. Her father, an idle, willful, careless creature, made a show plaything of her, and spent his earnings for her gratification and adornment. The mother was only too proud and fond; and it was no wonder that when Maggie grew up to girlhood her head was a giddy one, that she was self-willed, self-confident, obstinate. Maggie loved ease and luxury. Who doesn't? If she had been born on Fifth Avenue, of one of the magnates of New York, it would have been all right, of course, for her to love ribbons and laces and flowers and fine clothes, to be imperious and self-willed, and to set her pretty foot on the neck of the world. Many a young American princess, gifted with youth and beauty and with an indulgent papa and mamma, is no wiser than Maggie was; but nobody thinks the worse of her. People laugh at her little saucy airs and graces, and predict that she will come all right by and by. But then, for her, beauty means an advantageous marriage, a home of luxury and a continuance through life of the petting and indulgence which every one loves, whether wisely or not.

But Maggie was the daughter of a poor working-woman--an Irishwoman at that--and what marriage leading to wealth and luxury was in store for her?

To tell the truth, at seventeen, when her father died and her mother was left penniless, Maggie was as unfit to encounter the world as you, Miss Mary, or you, Miss Alice, and she was a girl of precisely the same flesh and blood as yourself. Maggie cordially hated everything hard, unpleasant or disagreeable, just as you do. She was as unused to crosses and self-denials as you are. She longed for fine things and pretty things, for fine sight-seeing and lively times, just as you do, and felt just as you do that it was hard fate to be deprived of them. But, when worse came to worst, she went to work with Mrs. Maria Wouvermans. Maggie was parlor-girl and waitress, and a good one too. She was ingenious, neat-handed, quick and bright; and her beauty drew favorable attention. But Mrs. Wouvermans never commended, but only found fault. If Maggie carefully dusted every one of the five hundred knick-knacks of the drawing-room five hundred times, there was nothing said; but if, on the five hundred and first time, a moulding or a crevice was found with dust in it, Mrs. Wouvermans would summon Maggie to her presence with the air of a judge, point out the criminal fact, and inveigh, in terms of general severity, against her carelessness, as if carelessness were the rule rather than the exception.

Mrs. Wouvermans took special umbrage at Maggie's dress--her hat, her feathers, her flowers--not because they were ugly, but because they were pretty, a great deal too pretty and dressy for her station. Mrs. Wouvermans's ideal of a maid was a trim creature, content with two gowns of coarse stuff and a bonnet devoid of adornment; a creature who, having eyes, saw not anything in the way of ornament or luxury; whose whole soul was absorbed in work, for work's sake; content with mean lodgings, mean furniture, poor food, and scanty clothing; and devoting her whole powers of body and soul to securing to others elegancies, comforts and luxuries to which she never aspired. This self-denied sister of charity, who stood as the ideal servant, Mrs. Wouvermans's maid did not in the least resemble. Quite another thing was the gay, dressy young lady who, on Sunday mornings, stepped forth from the back gate of her house with so much the air of a Murray Hill demoiselle that people sometimes said to Mrs. Wouvermans, "Who is that pretty young lady that you have staying with you?"--a question that never failed to arouse a smothered sense of indignation in that lady's mind, and added bitterness to her reproofs and sarcasms, when she found a picture-frame undusted, or pounced opportunely on a cobweb in some neglected corner.

Maggie felt certain that Mrs. Wouvermans was on the watch to find fault with her--that she wanted to condemn her, for she had gone to service with the best of resolutions. Her mother was poor and she meant to help her; she meant to be a good girl, and, in her own mind, she thought she was a very good girl to do so much work, and remember so many different things in so many different places, and forget so few things.

Maggie praised herself to herself, just as you do, my young lady, when you have an energetic turn in household matters, and arrange and beautify, and dust, and adorn mamma's parlors, and then call on mamma and papa and all the family to witness and applaud your notability. At sixteen or seventeen, household virtue is much helped in its development by praise. Praise is sunshine; it warms, it inspires, it promotes growth: blame and rebuke are rain and hail; they beat down and bedraggle, even though they may at times be necessary. There was a time in Maggie's life when a kind, judicious, thoughtful, Christian woman might have kept her from falling, might have won her confidence, become her guide and teacher, and piloted her through the dangerous shoals and quicksands which beset a bright, attractive, handsome young girl, left to make her own way alone and unprotected.

But it was not given to Aunt Maria to see this opportunity; and, under her system of management, it was not long before Maggie's temper grew fractious, and she used to such purpose the democratic liberty of free speech, which is the birthright of American servants, that Mrs. Wouvermans never forgave her.

Maggie told her, in fact, that she was a hard-hearted, mean, selfish woman, who wanted to get all she could out of her servants, and to give the least she could in return; and this came a little too near the truth ever to be forgotten or forgiven. Maggie was summarily warned out of the house, and went home to her mother, who took her part with all her heart and soul, and declared that Maggie shouldn't live out any longer--she should be nobody's servant.

This, to be sure, was silly enough in Mary, since service is the law of society, and we are all more or less servants to somebody; but uneducated people never philosophize or generalize, and so cannot help themselves to wise conclusions.

All Mary knew was that Maggie had been scolded and chafed by Mrs. Wouvermans; her handsome darling had been abused, and she should get into some higher place in the world; and so she put her as workwoman into the fashionable store of S. S. & Co.

There Maggie was seen and coveted by the man who made her his prey. Maggie was seventeen, pretty, silly, hating work and trouble, longing for pleasure, leisure, ease and luxury; and he promised them all. He told her that she was too pretty to work, that if she would trust herself to him she need have no more care; and Maggie looked forward to a rich marriage and a home of her own. To do her justice, she loved the man that promised this with all the warmth of her Irish heart. To her, he was the splendid prince in the fairy tale, come to take her from poverty and set her among princes; and she felt she could not do too much for him. She would be such a good wife, she would be so devoted, she would improve herself and learn so that she might never discredit him.

Alas! in just such an enchanted garden of love, and hope, and joy, how often has the ground caved in and let the victim down into dungeons of despair that never open!

"_The sweet-faced woman calls the attention of her husband. He frowns, whips up the horse, and is gone.... Bitterness possesses Maggie's soul.... Why not go to the bad?_"--p. 327.]

Maggie thinks all this over as she pursues her cheerless, aimless way through the cold cutting wind, and looks into face after face that has no pity for her. Scarcely knowing why she did it, she took a car and rode up to the Park, got out, and wandered drearily up and down among the leafless paths from which all trace of summer greenness had passed.

Suddenly, a carriage whirred past her. She looked up. There he sat, driving, and by his side so sweet a lady, and between them a flaxen-haired little beauty, clasping a doll in her chubby arms!

The sweet-faced woman looks pitifully at the haggard, weary face, and says something to call the attention of her husband. An angry flush rises to his face. He frowns, and whips up the horse, and is gone. A sort of rage and bitterness possess Maggie's soul. What is the use of trying to do better? Nobody pities her. Nobody helps her. The world is all against her. Why not go to the bad?

_CHAPTER XXXV._

A SOUL IN PERIL.

It will be seen by the way in which we left poor Maggie that she stood in just one of those critical steep places of life where a soul is in pain and peril; where the turning of a hair's breadth may decide between death and life. And it is something, not only to the individual, but to the whole community, what a woman may become in one of these crises of life.

Maggie had a rich, warm, impulsive nature, full of passion and energy; she had personal beauty and the power that comes from it; she had in her all that might have made the devoted wife and mother, fitted to give strong sons and daughters to our republic, and to bring them up to strengthen our country. But, deceived, betrayed, led astray by the very impulses which should have ended in home and marriage, with even her best friends condemning her, her own heart condemning her, the whole face of the world set against her, her feet stood in slippery places.

There is another life open to the woman whom the world judges and rejects and condemns; a life short, bad, desperate; a life of revenge, of hate, of deceit; a life in which woman, outraged and betrayed by man, turns bitterly upon him, to become the tempter, the betrayer, the ruiner of man,--to visit misery and woe on the society that condemns her.

Many a young man has been led to gambling, and drinking, and destruction; many a wife's happiness has been destroyed; many a mother has wept on a sleepless pillow over a son worse than dead,--only because some woman, who at a certain time in her life might have been saved to honor and good living, has been left to be a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction. For we have seen in Maggie's history that there were points all along, where the girl might have been turned into another and a better way.

If Mrs. Maria Wouvermans, instead of railing at her love of feathers and flowers, watching for her halting, and seeking occasion against her, had only had grace to do for her what lies in the power of every Christian mistress; if she had won her confidence, given her motherly care and sympathy, and trained her up under the protection of household influences, it might have been otherwise. Or, supposing that Maggie were too self-willed, too elate with the flatteries that come to young beauty, to be saved from a fall, yet, after that fall, when she rose, ashamed and humbled, there was still a chance of retrieval.

Perhaps there is never a time when man or woman has a better chance, with suitable help, of building a good character than just after a humiliating fall which has taught the sinner his own weakness, and given him a sad experience of the bitterness of sin.

Nobody wants to be sold under sin, and go the whole length in iniquity; and when one has gone just far enough in wrong living to perceive in advance all its pains and penalties, there is often an agonized effort to get back to respectability, like the clutching of the drowning man for the shore. The waters of death are cold and bitter, and nobody wants to be drowned.

But it is just at this point that the drowning hand is wrenched off; society fears that the poor wet wretch will upset its respectable boat; it pushes him off, and rows over the last rising bubbles.

And this is not in the main because men and women are hard-hearted or cruel, but because they are busy, every one of them, with their own works and ways, hurried, driven, with no time, strength, or heart-leisure for more than they are doing. What is one poor soul struggling in the water, swimming up stream, to the great pushing, busy, bustling world?