CHAPTER LI.
THE HOUR AND THE WOMAN.
It is said that Queen Elizabeth could converse in five languages, and dictate to three secretaries at once, in different tongues, with the greatest ease and composure.
Perhaps it might have been so—let us not quarrel with her laurels; it only shows what women can do if they set about it, and is not a whit more remarkable than Aunt Maria's triumphant management of all the details of two weddings at one time.
That estimable individual has not, we fear, always appeared to advantage in this history, and it is due to her now to say that nobody that saw her proceedings could help feeling the beauty of the right person in the right place.
Many a person is held to be a pest and a nuisance because there isn't enough to be done to use up his capabilities. Aunt Maria had a passion for superintending and directing, and all that was wanting to bring things right was an occasion when a great deal of superintendence and direction was wanting.
The double wedding in the family just fulfilled all the conditions. It opened a field to her that everybody was more than thankful to have her occupy.
Lovers, we all know, are, ex-officio, ranked among the incapables; and if, while they were mooning round in the fairy-land of sentiment, some good, strong, active, practical head were not at work upon the details of real life, nothing would be on time at the wedding. Now, if this be true of one wedding, how much more of two! So Aunt Maria stepped at once into command by acclamation and addressed herself to her work as a strong man to run a race; and while Angie and St. John spent blissful hours in the back parlor, and Jim and Alice monopolized the library, Aunt Maria flew all over New York, and arranged about all the towels and table-cloths and napkins and doilies, down to the very dish-cloths. She overlooked armies of sewing women, milliners and mantua-makers—the most slippery of all mortal creatures—and drove them all up to have each her quota in time. She, with Mrs. Van Arsdel, made lists of people to be invited, and busied herself with getting samples and terms from fancy stationers for the wedding cards. She planned in advance all the details of the wedding feast, and engaged the cake and fruit and ice-cream.
Nor did she forget the social and society exigencies of the crisis.
She found time, dressed in her best, to take Mrs. Van Arsdel in full panoply to return the call of Mrs. Dr. Gracey, who had come, promptly and properly, with the doctor, to recognize Miss Angelique and felicitate about the engagement of their nephew.
She arranged for a dinner-party to be given by Mrs. Van Arsdel, where the doctor and his lady were to be received into family alliance, and testimonies of high consideration accorded to them. Aunt Maria took occasion, in private converse with Mrs. Dr. Gracey, to assure her of her very great esteem and respect for Mr. St. John, and her perfect conviction that he was on the right road now, and that, though he might possibly burn a few more candles in his chapel, yet, when he came fully under family influences, they would gradually be snuffed out,—intimating that she intended to be aunt, not only to Arthur, but to his chapel and his mission-work.
The extraordinary and serene meekness with which that young divine left every question of form and etiquette to her management, and the sort of dazed humility with which he listened to all her rulings about the arrangements of the wedding-day, had inspired in Aunt Maria's mind such hopes of his docility as led to these very sanguine anticipations.
It is true that, when it came to the question of renting a house, she found him quietly but unalterably set on a small and modest little mansion in the unfashionable neighborhood where his work lay.
"Arthur is going on with his mission," said Angelique, "and I'm going to help him, and we must live where we can do most good"—a reason to which Aunt Maria was just now too busy to reply, but she satisfied herself by discussing at length the wedding affairs with Mrs. Dr. Gracey.
"Of course, Mrs. Gracey," she said, "we all feel that if dear Dr. Gracey is to conduct the wedding services, everything will be in the good old way; there'll be nothing objectionable or unusual."
"Oh, you may rely on that, Mrs. Wouvermans," replied the lady. "The doctor is not the man to run after novelties; he's a good old-fashioned Episcopalian. Though he always has been very indulgent to Arthur, he thinks, as our dear bishop does, that if young men are left to themselves, and not fretted by opposition, they will gradually outgrow these things."
"Precisely so," said Aunt Maria; "just what I have always thought. For my part I always said that it was safe to trust the bishop."
Did Aunt Maria believe this? She certainly appeared to. She sincerely supposed that this was what she always had thought and said, and quite forgot the times when she used to wonder "what our bishop could be thinking of, to let things go so."
It was one blessed facility of this remarkable woman that she generally came to the full conviction of the axiom that "whatever is, is right," and took up and patronized anything that would succeed in spite of her best efforts to prevent it.
So, in announcing the double wedding to her fashionable acquaintance, she placed everything, as the popular saying is, best foot foremost.
Mr. Fellows was a young man of fine talents, great industry and elegant manners, a great favorite in society, and likely to take the highest rank in his profession. Alice had refused richer offers—she might perhaps have done better in a worldly point of view, but it was purely a love match, &c., &c. And Mr. St. John, a young man of fine family and independent fortune, who might command all the elegancies of life, was going to live in a distant and obscure quarter, to labor in his work. These facts brought forth, of course, bursts of sympathy and congratulation, and Aunt Maria went off on the top of the wave.
Eva had but done her aunt justice when she told her mother that Aunt Maria would be all the more amiable for the firm stand which the young wife had taken against any interference with her family matters. It was so. Aunt Maria was as balmy to Eva as if that discussion had never taken place, though it must be admitted that Eva was a very difficult person to keep up a long quarrel with.
But just at this hour, when the whole family were at her feet, when it was her voice that decided every question, when she knew where everything was and was to be, and when everything was to be done, she was too well pleased to be unamiable. She was the spirit of the whole affair, and she plumed herself joyously when all the callers at the house said to Mrs. Van Arsdel, "Dear me! what would you do, if it were not for your sister?"
Verily she had her reward.