CHAPTER XLIV.
FLUCTUATIONS.
Midnight conversations of the sort we have chronicled between Alice and Eva, do not generally lead to the most quiet kind of sleep. Such conversations suggest a great deal, and settle nothing; and Alice, after retiring, lay a long time with her great eyes wide open, looking into the darkness of futurity, and wondering, as girls of twenty-two or thereabouts do wonder, what she should do next.
There is no help for it; the fact may as well be confessed at once, that no care and assiduity in fencing and fortifying the conditions of a friendship between an attractive young woman and a lively, energetic young man, will ensure their always remaining simply and purely those of companionship and good fellowship, and never becoming anything more.
In the case of St. John and Angie, the stalk of friendship had had but short growth before developing the flower of love; and now, in Alice's mind and conscience, it was becoming quite a serious and troublesome question whether a similar result were not impending over her.
The wise man of old said: "He that delicately bringeth up his servant from a child shall have him for his son at last." The proverb is significant, as showing the gradual growth of kindly relations into something more and more kindly, and more absorbing.
So, in the night-watches, Alice mentally reviewed all those looks, words and actions of Jim's which produced a conviction in her mind that he was passing beyond the allotted boundaries, and approaching towards a point in which there would inevitably be a crisis, calling for a decision on her part which should make him either more or less than he had been. Her talk with Eva had only set this possibility more distinctly before her.
Was she, then, willing to give him up entirely, and to shut the door resolutely on all intimacy tending to keep up and encourage feelings that could come to no result? When she proposed this to herself, she was surprised at her own unwillingness to let him go. She could scarcely fancy herself able to do without his ready friendship, his bright, agreeable society—without the sense of ownership and power which she felt in him. Reviewing the matter strictly in the night-watches, she was obliged to admit to herself that she could not afford to part with Jim; that there was no woman she could fancy—certainly none in the circle of her acquaintance—whom she could be sincerely glad to have him married to; and when she fancied him absorbed in any one else, there was a dreary sense of loss which surprised her. Was it possible, she asked herself, that he had become necessary to her happiness—he whom she never thought of otherwise than as a pleasant friend, a brother, for whose success and good fortune she had interested herself?
Well then, was she ready for an engagement? Was the great ultimate revelation of woman's life—that dark Eleusinian mystery of fate about which vague conjecture loves to gather, and which the imagination invests with all sorts of dim possibilities—suddenly to draw its curtains and disclose to her neither demi-god nor hero, but only the well-known, every-day features of one with whom she had been walking side by side for months past—"only Jim and nothing more?"
Alice could not but acknowledge to herself that she knew no man possible or probable that she liked better; and yet this shadowy, ideal rival—this cross between saint and hero, this Knight of the Holy Grail—was as embarrassing to her conclusions as the ghost in "Hamlet." It was only to be considered that the ideal hero had not put in an actual appearance. He was nowhere to be found or heard from; and here was this warm-hearted, helpful, companionable Jim, with faults as plenty as blackberries, but with dozens of agreeable qualities to every fault; and the time seemed to be rapidly coming when she must make up her mind either to take him or leave him, and she was not ready to do either! No wonder she lay awake, and studied the squares of the dim window and listened to the hours that struck, one after another, bringing her no nearer to fixed conclusions than before! A young lady who sees the time coming when she must make a decision, and who doesn't want to take either alternative presented, is certainly to be pitied. Alice felt herself an abused and afflicted young woman. She murmured at destiny. Why would men fall in love? she queried. Why wouldn't they remain always devoted, admiring friends, and get no further? She was having such good times! and why must they end in a dilemma of this sort? How nice to have a gentleman friend, all devotion, all observance, all homage, without its involving any special consequences!
When she came to shape this feeling into words and look at it, she admitted that it savored of the worst kind of selfishness, and might lead to trifling with what is most precious and sacred. Alice was a conscientious, honorable girl, and felt all the force of this. She had justified herself all along by saying that her intimacy with Jim had so far been for his good; that he had often expressed to her his sense that she was leading him to a higher and better life, to more worthy and honorable aims and purposes: but how if he should claim that this very ministry had made her necessary to him, and that, if she threw him off, it would be worse than if she had never known him? Looking over the history of the last few months, she could not deny to herself that, as their acquaintance had grown more and more confidential, her manners possibly had expressed a degree of kindness which might justly have inspired hopes. Was she not bound to fulfill such hopes if she could?
These were most uncomfortable inquiries, and she was glad of morning and a cheerful breakfast-table to dispel them. Things never look so desperate by daylight, and Alice managed a good breakfast with a tolerable appetite. Then there was the tarlatan dress to be made over and rearranged, and Eva's toilette to be put into party order—quite enough to keep two young women of active fancy and skillful fingers busy for one day. It was a snowy, unpleasant day, and, as they lived on an out-of-the-way street, they were secure from callers and took their work into the parlor so soon as Harry had gone for the day. The little room soon became a brilliant maelstrom of gauzy stuffs and bright ribbons, among which the two sat chatting, arranging, combining, compounding; as of old, one might imagine a pair of heathen goddesses in the clouds, getting up rainbows. No matter how solemn and serious we of womankind are in our deepest hearts, or how philosophically we may look down on the vanity of dress, we must all confess that a party is a party; and the sensible, economical woman who does not often go, and does not make a point of having all the paraphernalia in constant readiness, has to give all the more care and thought to the exceptional occasion when she does. Even Scripture recognizes the impossibility of appearing at a feast without the appropriate garment; and so Eva and Alice cut and fitted and trimmed and tried experiments in head-dresses and arrangements of hair, and meanwhile Alice had the comfort of talking over and over to Eva all the varying shades of the subject that was on her mind.
What woman does not appreciate the blessing of a patient, sympathetic listener, who will hear with unabated interest the same story repeated over and over as it rises in one's thoughts? Eva listened complacently and with the warmest interest to the same things that Alice had said the night before, and went on repeating to her the same lessons of matronly wisdom with which she had then enriched her, neither of them betraying the slightest consciousness that the things they were saying were not just fresh from the mint—entirely new and hitherto unconsidered.
Jim's character was discussed, and with that fine, skillful faculty of analysis and synthesis which forms the distinctive interest of feminine conversation. In the course of these various efforts of character portrait-painting, it became quite evident to Eva that Alice was in just that state in which some people's admitted faults are more interesting and agreeable than the virtues of some others. When a woman gets thus far, her final decision is not a matter of doubt to any far-sighted reader of human nature.
Alice was by nature exact and conscientious as to all rules, forms, and observances. Her pronunciation, whether of English or French, was critically perfect; her hand-writing and composition were faultless to a comma. She was an enthusiastic and thorough maintainer of all the boundaries and forms of good society and of churchly devotion. Jim, without being in any sense really immoral or wicked, was a sort of privileged Arab, careering in and out through the boundaries of all departments, shocking respectable old prejudices and fluttering reverential usages, talking slang and making light of dignitaries with a free and easy handling that was alarming.
But it is a fact that very correct people, who would not violate in their own persons one of the convenances, are often exceedingly amused and experience a peculiar pleasure in seeing them tossed hither and thither by somebody else. Nothing is so tiresome as perfect correctness, and we all know that everything that amuses us and makes us laugh lies outside of it; and Alice, if the truth were to be told, liked Jim all the better for the very things in which he was most unlike herself. Well, such being the state of the garrison on the one side, what was the position of the attacking party?
Jim had gone home discontented at not having a private interview with Alice, but more and more resolved, with every revolving hour since the accession of good fortune which had given him a settled position, that he would have a home of his own forthwith, and that the queen of that home should be Alice Van Arsdel. She must not, she could not, she would not say him Nay; and if she did, he wouldn't take No for an answer. He would have her, if he had to serve for her as long as Jacob did for Rachel. But when Jim remembered how many times he had persuaded Alice to his own way, how many favors she had granted him, he was certain that it was not in her to refuse. He had looked with new interest at the advertisements of houses to let, and the furniture stores for the last few days had worn a new and suggestive aspect. He had commenced transactions with regard to parlor furniture, and actually bought a pair of antique brass andirons, which he was sure would be just the thing for their fireside. Then he had bought an engagement ring, which lay snugly ensconced in its satin case in a corner of his vest pocket, and he was inly resolved that he would make to himself a chance to lodge it on the proper finger in the next twenty-four hours. How he was to get an interview did not yet appear; but he trusted to Providence. It is a fact on record, that before the twenty-four hours were up the deed was done, and Jim and Alice were engaged; but it came about in a way far different from any foreseen by any party, as we shall proceed to show.