[CHAPTER XIV.]
MR. ST. JOHN IS OUT-ARGUED.
A woman has two vernal seasons in her life. One is the fresh, sweet-brier, apple-blossom spring of girlhood—dewy, bird-singing, joyous and transient. The other is the spring of young marriage, before the austere labors and severe strains of real life commence.
It is the spring of wedding presents, of first housekeeping, of incipient, undeveloped matronage. If the young girl is charming, with her dawning airs of womanhood, her inexperienced naïve assumptions, her grave, ignorant wisdom, at which elders smile indulgently—so is the new-made wife with her little matronly graces, her pretty sense of responsibility in her new world of power.
In the first period, the young girl herself is the object of attention and devotion. She is the permitted center of all eyes, the leading star of her own little drama of life. But with marriage the center changes. Self begins to melt away into something higher. The girl recognizes that it is no longer her individuality that is the chief thing, but that she is the priestess and minister of a family state. The home becomes her center, and to her home passes the charm that once was thrown around her person. The pride that she may have had in self becomes a pride in her home. Her home is the new impersonation of herself; it is her throne, her empire. How often do we see the young wife more sensitive to the adornment of her house than the adornment of her person, willing even to retrench and deny in the last, that her home may become more cheerful and attractive! A pretty set of china for her tea-table goes farther with her than a gay robe for herself. She will sacrifice ribbons and laces for means to adorn the sacred recesses which have become to her an expansion of her own being.
The freshness of a new life invests every detail of the freshly arranged ménage. Her china, her bronzes, her pictures, her silver, her table cloths and napkins, her closets and pantries, all speak to her of a new sense of possession—a new and different hold on life. Once she was only a girl, moving among things that belonged to mamma and papa; now she is a matron, surrounded everywhere by things that are her own—a princess in her own little kingdom. Nor is the charm lessened that she no longer uses the possessive singular, but says our. And behind those pronouns, we and our, what pleasant security! What innocent pharisaism of self-complacency, as each congratulates the other on "our" ways, "our" plans, "our" arrangements; each, the while, sure that they two are the fortunate among mankind, and that all who are not blest as they are proper subjects for indulgent pity. "After all, my dear," says he, "what can you expect of poor Snooks?—a bachelor, poor fellow. If he only had a wife like you, now," etc., etc. Or, "I can't really blame Cynthia with that husband of hers, Harry dear. If I were married to such a man, I should act like a little fiend. If she had only such a husband as you, now!" This secret, respectable, mutual admiration society of married life, of how much courage and hope is it the parent! For, do not our failures and mistakes often come from discouragement? Does not every human being need a believing second self, whose support and approbation shall reinforce one's failing courage? The saddest hours of life are when we doubt ourselves. To sensitive, excitable people, who expend nervous energy freely, must come many such low tides. "Am I really a miserable failure—a poor, good-for-nothing, abortive attempt?" In such crises we need another self to restore our equilibrium.
Our young friends were just in the second spring of life's new year. They were as fond and proud of their little house as a prince of his palace—possibly a good deal more so. They were proud of each other. Eva felt sure that Harry was destined to the high places of the literary world. She read his editorials with sincere admiration, hid his poems away in her heart, and pasted them carefully in her scrap-book. Fame and success she felt sure ought to come to him, and would. He was "such a faithful, noble-hearted fellow, and worked so steadily." And he, with what pride he spoke the words "my wife"! With what exultation repressed under an air of playful indifference he brought this and that associate in to dine, and enjoyed the admiration of her and her pretty home, and graceful, captivating ways. He liked to see the effect of her gay, sparkling conversation, her easy grace, on these new subjects; for Eva was, in truth, a charming woman. The mixture of innocent shrewdness, of sprightly insight, of bright and airy fancy about her, made her society a thing to be longed after, as people long for a pleasant stimulant. Like all bright, earnest young men, Harry wanted to "lend a hand" to make the world around him brighter and better, and had his ideas of what a charming, attractive home might do as a center to many hearts in promoting mutual brotherhood and good fellowship. He had not a doubt of their little social venture in society, nor that Eva was precisely the person to make of their house a pleasant resort, to be in herself the blending and interpreting medium through whom differing and even discordant natures should be brought to understand the good that was in one another.
As a preparation for the first experiment, Eva had commenced by inviting Mr. St. John to dinner, that she might enlist his approbation of her scheme and have time to set it before him in that charming fireside hour, when spirits, like flowers, open to catch the dews of influence. After dinner Harry had an engagement at the printing-office, and left Eva the field all to herself; and she managed her cards admirably. Mr. St. John had been little accustomed to the society of cultured, attractive women; but he had in his own refined nature every sensibility to respond agreeably to its influences; and already this fireside had come to be a place where he loved to linger. And so, when she had him comfortably niched in his corner, she opened the first parallel of her siege.
"Now, Mr. St. John, you have been preaching to us about self-denial, and putting us all up to deeds of self-sacrifice—I have some self-denying work to propose to you."
Mr. St. John opened his blue eyes wide at this exordium, and looked an interrogation.
"Well, Mr. St. John," pursued Eva, "we are going to have little social reunions at our house every Thursday, from seven till ten, for the purpose of promoting good feeling and fellowship, and we want our rector to be one of us and help us."