I put my hand over his mouth. "Come, you born magpie," said I, "you shan't make yourself out so much worse than you are."
[Eva Van Arsdel to Isabel Convers.]
My Dear Belle:—I told you I would write the end of my little adventure, and whether the "hermit" comes or not. Yes, my dear, sure enough, he did come, and mamma and we all like him immensely; he had really quite a success among us. Even Ida, who never receives calls, was gracious and allowed him to come into her sanctum because he is a champion of the modern idea about women. Have you seen an article in the "Milky Way" on the "Women of our Times," taking the modern radical ground? Well, it was by him; it suited Ida to a hair, but some little things in it vexed me because there was a phrase or two about the "fashionable butterflies," and all that; that comes a great deal too near the truth to be altogether agreeable. I don't care when Ida says such things, because she's another woman, and between ourselves we know there is a deal of nonsense current among us, and if we have a mind to talk about it among ourselves, why its like abusing one's own relations in the bosom of the family, one of the sweetest domestic privileges, you know; but, when lordly man begins to come to judgment and call over the roll of our sins, I am inclined to tell him to look at home, and to say, "Pray, what do you know about us sir?" I stand up for my sex, right or wrong; so you see we had a spicy little controversy, and I made the hermit open his eyes, (and, between us, he has handsome eyes to open). He looked innocently astonished at first to be taken up so briskly, and called to account for his sayings. You see the way these men have of going on and talking without book about us quite blinds them; they can set us down conclusively in the abstract when they don't see us or hear us, but when a real live girl meets them and asks an account of their sayings they begin to be puzzled. However, I must say my lord can talk when he fairly is put up to it. He is a true, serious, earnest-hearted man, and does talk beautifully, and his eyes speak when he is silent. The forepart of the evening, you see we were in a state of most charming agreement; he was in our little "Italy," and we had the nicest of times going over all the pictures and portfolios and the dear old Italian life; it seems as if we had both of us seen, and thought of, and liked the same things—it was really curious!
Well, like enough, that's all there is to it. Ten to one he never will call again. Mamma invited him to be here every Wednesday, quite urged it upon him, but he said his time was so filled up with work. There you see is where men have the advantage of girls! They have something definite to fill up their time, thought and hearts; we nothing, so we think of them from sheer idleness, and they forget us through press of business. Ten to one he never calls here again. Why should he? I shouldn't think he would. I wouldn't if I were he. He isn't a dancing man, nor an idler, but one that takes life earnestly, and after all I dare say he thinks us fashionable girls a sad set. But I'm sure he must admire Ida; and she was wonderfully gracious for her, and gave him the entrée of her sanctum, where there never are any but rational sayings and doings.
Well, we shall see.
I am provoked with what you tell me about the reports of my engagement to Mr. Sydney, and I tell you now once again "No, no." I told you in my last that I was not engaged, and I now tell you what is more that I never can, shall or will be engaged to him; my mind is made up, but how to get out of the net that is closing round me I don't see. I think all these things are "perplexing and disagreeable." If a girl wants to do the fair thing it is hard to know how. First you refuse outright, and then my lord comes as a friend. Will you only allow him the liberty to try and alter your feelings, and all that? You shall not be forced; he only wants you to get more acquainted, and the result is you go on getting webbed and meshed in day after day more and more. You can't refuse flowers and attentions offered by a friend; if you take them you may be quite sure they will be made to mean more. Mamma and Aunt Maria have a provoking way of talking about it constantly as a settled thing, and one can't protest from morning till night, apropos to every word. At first they urged me to receive his attentions; now they are saying that I have accepted so many I can't honorably withdraw. And so he doesn't really give me an opportunity to bring the matter to a crisis; he has a silent taking-for-granted air, that is provoking. But the law that binds our sex is the law of all ghosts and spirits; we can't speak till we are spoken to; meanwhile reports spread, and people say hateful things as if you were trying and failing. How angry that makes me! One is almost tempted sometimes to accept just to show that one can; but, seriously, dear Belle, this is wicked trifling. Marriage is an awful, a tremendous thing, and we of the church are without excuse if we go into it lightly or unadvisedly, and I never shall marry till I see the man that is my fate. I have what mamma calls domestic ideas, and I'm going to have them, and when I marry it shall be for the man alone, not a pieced up affair of carriages, horses, diamonds, opera boxes, cashmeres with a man, but a man for whom all the world were well lost; then I shall not be afraid of the church service which now stands between me and Mr. Sydney. I cannot, I dare not lie to God and swear falsely at the altar, to gain the whole world.
I wish you could hear our new rector. He is making a sensation among us. If the life he is calling on us all to live is the real and true one, we shall soon have to choose between what is called society, and the church; for if being a church-woman means all he says, one cannot be in it without really making religion the life's business—which, you know, we none of us do or have. Dear man, when I see him tugging and straining to get our old, sleepy, rich families into heavenly ways, I think of Pegasus yoked to a stone cart. He is all life and energy and enthusiasm, he breathes fire, and his wings are spread heavenward, but there's the old dead, lumbering cart at his heels! Poor man!—and poor cart too—for I am in it with the rest of the lumber!
We are in all the usual Spring agonies now about clothes. The house reverberates with the discussion of hats and bonnets, and feathers and flowers, and overskirts and underskirts, and all the paraphernalia—and what an absurd combination it makes with the daily services in Lent. Absurd? No—dreadful! for at church we are reading of our Saviour's poverty and fasting and agonies—what a contrast between his life and ours! Was it to make us such as we are that he thus lived and died?
Cousin Sophia is happy in her duties in the sisterhood. Her church life and daily life are all of a piece—one part is not a mockery of the other. There's Ida too—out of the church, making no profession of churchly religion, but living wholly out of this bustling, worldly sphere, devoted to a noble life purpose—fitting herself to make new and better paths for women. Ida has none of these dress troubles; she has cut loose from all. Her simple black dress costs incredibly less than our outfit—it is all arranged with a purpose—yet she always has the air of a lady, and she has besides a real repose, which we never do. This matter of dress has a thousand jars and worries and vexations to a fastidious nature; one wishes one were out of it.