Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866», sayfa 11

And of course, as goods are higher in small quantities, so in living by this individual way it will be discovered that prices are prodigious, but that weights and measures are not. After opening the small purse regularly at half-hour intervals for several weeks, one at length finds herself opening it when there is nothing to be bought, from mere muscular habit. Altogether it is easy to spend as much as a second-rate Congressman, without any of his accommodations. This is wherein one does not master civilization.

Mr. McCulloch, in his Report on the Treasury, suggested an increase of salary for certain subordinates in his department, declaring that they could not support their families in due rank on four, five, or even six thousand dollars a year. It is easy to believe it. It is easy to believe anything that may be stated with regard to money, except that one will ever be able to get enough of it to cover these terrible charges. The entire fabric of things rests on money; and our prices would drive a respectable Frenchman into suicide. O poor Robin Ruff! alas for your grand visions that you sang so glowingly to dear Gaffer Green! In this age of the world, O what could you do, or where could you go, e'en on a thousand pounds a year, poor Robin Ruff?

And so long as each must keep her separate establishment, it will not be found possible to reduce living much below the present figures. But London has more wisely met the pressure of the times in those magnificent clubhouses, which have made Pall Mall almost a solid square of palaces hardly inferior to the homes of the nobility themselves. Each of these houses has its hundreds of members, who really fare sumptuously, having all the luxuries of wealth on the prices that one pays here for poverty. The food is furnished by the best purveyors, and charged to the consumers at cost; all other expenses of the establishment being met by the members' initiation fees, ranging from £32 entrance fee and £11 annual subscription, to £9 and £6 for entrance and subscription. Being admirably officered and planned throughout, these gigantic households are systematized to the beautiful smoothness of small ones; their phrase of "fare-well" is one of epicurean invitation, not of dismissal; while such are the combined luxuriousness and economy that, says one authority, "the modern London club is a realization of a Utopian cœnobium,—a sort of lay convent, rivalling the celebrated Abbey of Thelemé, with the agreeable motto of Fais ce que voudras, instead of monastic discipline."

Of course, New York also has followed suit, and there, too, clubs are trumps; but, according to "The Nation," with this remarkable exception, that "at these houses the leading idea seems to be, not to furnish the members at cost price, but to increase the finances with a view to some future expenditure." The writer reasonably observes, that "what a man wants is his breakfast or dinner cheaper than he can get it at the hotel, and not to pay thirty or sixty dollars annually in order that ten years hence the club may have a new building farther up town." And Boston has followed New York, with its trio of well-known clubs, differing also from those of London in having poorer appointments and the highest conceivable charges.

But most of these clubs do not include lodgings, and none of them include ladies. It remains for America to give us the club complete in both. There is every reason why women should secure elegant and economical homes in this way. Indeed, in the present state of things, there seems no other way to secure them. There is no remedy but in a system of judicious clubbing. Since this phase of the world seems made up for the family relation, then ladies must make themselves into a sort of family to face it. Where is the coming man who shall communicate this art of clubbing, which has not yet even been admitted into the feminine dialect? Mr. Mercer is doing for the women who wish to go out in the world that which womanly gratitude can but lightly repay.⁶ Where is the kindly, honest-hearted Mr. Mercer who shall further a like enterprise here,—a provision of quarters for those who can pay reasonably and who do not wish to go away? This would be a genuine Stay-at-home Club, a Can't-get-away Club of the very happiest sort. And this alone can put life in our noble cities, where active-brained women love to be, on something like possible terms.

In Miss Howitt's "Art Student at Munich,"—a charming sketch, by the way, of women living en bachelier abroad,—we find one young enthusiast idealizing upon this very need of feminine life, which she christens an Associated Home. In her artistic mind it takes the form of an outer and inner sisterhood,—the inner devoted to culture, the outer attending to the useful, ready alike to broil a steak or toe a stocking for the more ethereal ones of the household. This is all quite amiably intended, but no queen-bee and common-bee scheme of the sort seems to be either generous or practicable. It involves at once too much caste and too much contact. We do not wish to find servants or scrubs in our sisters, nor do we wish at all times even to see our sisters. There must be elbow-room for mood and temperament, as well as high walls of defence. The social element is too shy and elusive, and will not, like a monkey, perform on demand; therefore our plan abjures all these poetic organizations, which have a great deal of cant and very little good companionship; it has no sentimentalism to offer, proposing an association of purses rather than of persons,—a household on the base of protection rather than of society,—a mere combining for privileges and against prices. It is resolved into a simple matter of business; and the only help women need is that of an organizing brain to put themselves into this associate form, whereby they can meet the existing state of things with somewhat of human comfort.

Are we never to obtain even this, until the golden doors of the Millennium swing open? Ah, then indeed one must melt a little, looking regretfully back to Brook Farm, undismayed by the fearful Zenobia; looking leniently toward Wallingford, Lebanon, and Haryard. Anything for wholesome diet, free life, and a quiet refuge.

But whether to live alone or together, the first want is of houses,—which is another hitch in the social system. In the city a building-lot is an incipient fortune; and the large sum paid for it is the beginning of reasons for the large rent of the building that is put upon it. But then if ground is costly, air is cheap,—land is high, but sky is low; and one need have but very little earth to a great deal of house. A writer, describing the London of thirty years ago, speaks of the huge, narrow dwellings, full five stories high, and says that the agility with which the inmates "ran up and down, and perched on the different stories, gave the idea of a cage with its birds and sticks"; and the like figure seems to have occurred to the queer Mademoiselle Marchand of "Denise," who, as she toiled to her eyrie on the topmost landing, exclaimed, "One would think these houses were built by a winged race, who only used stairs when they were moulting!" But these same lofty houses are the very thing we must have to-day, all but the running up and down. Build us houses up, and up, as high as they will stand; give us plenty of sky-parlors, but also plenty of steam-elevators to go to and from "my lady's chamber." It is not a wise economy to devote one's precious power to this enormous amount of stair-work. It is not a kind of exercise that is sanitive. The Evans House and Hotel Pelham, for instance, are very pretty Bostonianisms, but all their rooms within range of ordinary means are beyond the range of ordinary strength. The achievement of twenty flights a day, back and forth, would leave but small surplus of vigor. While the steam power is there for heating purposes, why not use some of it to propel the passengers up and down that wilderness of rosy boudoirs? Is there any reason why this labor-saving machine, the steam-elevator, which we now associate with Fifth Avenue luxury, should not be the common possession of all our large tenanted buildings? And is there any reason, indeed, in our houses being no better appointed than the English houses of thirty years ago? Ruskin has been honorably named for renting a few cottages with an eye to his tenants as well as himself; but the men who in our crowded cities shall erect these mammoth rental establishments, with steam access to every story, will build their own best monuments for posterity. We commend it to capitalists as a chance to invest in a generous fame. Until this is done, we shall even disapprove of bestowing any more mansions upon our beloved General Grant. It is not gallant. Until then, too, how shall one ever pass that venerable Park Street Church of Boston, without the irreverent sigh of "What capital lodgings it would make!" Those three little windows in the curve, looking up and down the street, and into the ever-fascinating Atlantic establishment; the lucky tower, into which one might retreat, pen in hand, if not wishing to be at home to callers nor abroad to himself,—Carlyle-like, making the library at the top of the house; and all within glance of the dominating State-House, whither one might steal up for an occasional lunch of oratory or a digest of laws. We also hear of a new hotel being builded on Tremont Street, and wonder if there will be any rooms fit for ladies, and whether one of those in the loft will rent for as much as a charming villa should command.

But while we ask now for immediate relief by clubs and rental establishments, the great practical and artistic problem of America still remains in learning to manage its civilization; in acquiring a forecaste, a system, that meets individual wants; in adjusting resource to requirement. Then we shall not be driven into association. It is jocosely said, that in the West, whose rivers are shallow and uncertain, the steamers are built to run on a heavy dew. Allowing for the joke, this is not more nice than wise. To be dexterous, fine-fingered, facile! How perfect is the response in all the petty personalities of politics! In this America, where all men aspire, and more men get office than one would think there were offices to get, what miracles of adroitness! It is one perpetual, Turn, turn again, Lord Mayor! If but half the genius were diverted from office-getting to house-building, what towering results! But since it is the misery of a republic that politics is supreme, and that a people who govern themselves can have little leisure for anything else, I have sometimes feared that the only way to get these woman questions through is by tacking them on to politics. If, then, any of our masculine friends now go to Congress on an amelioration of labor, Heaven speed the day when they can only go on an amelioration of lodgings.

But on this side of the question we as yet hold close to the leeward. For to make it political, women must have political power, the power of the ballot; and this claim she chooses to defer to the more oppressed race,—chooses first to secure justice to all men, before entering the long campaign of justice to women.

Meanwhile, we young housekeepers, who are neither capitalists to build what we need, nor politicians to procure it builded, can only live on these real-unreal lives as we may. But sometimes, when the city lamps are agleam in the early evening, we go out for a walk of romance upon the brilliant avenue near by, gazing eagerly into those superb drawing-rooms where the curtains are kindly lifted a little, and tempted to ring at the door on a false errand where they are not,—simply to get a peep at the captivating comfort inside. And thus we too possess houses and homes; with all these to enjoy and none of them to care for, why may not one easily remain the wealthiest person in the universe? Ah, no one knows what riches we have in our thoughts, and how little bliss there is in the world that we have not!

DOCTOR JOHNS

LIII

Reuben, meantime, is leading a dashing life in the city. The Brindlock family have taken him to their arms again as freely and heartily as if he had never entered the fold over which the good Doctor exercised pastoral care, and as if he had never strayed from it again.

"I told you 't would be all right, Mabel," said Mr. Brindlock to his wife; and neither of them ever rallied him upon his bootless experience in that direction.

But the kindly aunt had not forborne (how could she?) certain pertinent inquiries in regard to the pretty Miss Maverick, under which Reuben had shown considerable disposition to flinch; although he vainly fancied that he stood the interrogation with a high hand. Mrs. Brindlock drew her own conclusions, but was not greatly disturbed by them. Why should she be, indeed? Reuben, with his present most promising establishment in business, and with a face and air that insured him a cordial welcome in that circle of wealthy acquaintances which Mrs. Brindlock especially cultivated, was counted a bon parti, independent of his position as presumptive heir to a large share of the Brindlock estate.

Once or twice since his leave of Ashfield he has astonished the good people there by a dashing visit. Perhaps he has enjoyed (such things are sometimes enjoyed) setting forth before the quiet parishioners of his father his new consequence as a man of the world and of large moneyed prospects. It is even possible that he may have entertained agreeably the fancy of dazing the eyes of both Rose and Adèle with the glitter of his city distinctions. But their admiration, if they felt any, was not flatteringly expressed. Adèle, indeed, was always graciously kind, and, seeing his confirmed godlessness, tortured herself secretly with the thought that, but for her rebuff, he might have made a better fight against the bedevilments of the world, and lived a truer and purer life. All that, however, was irrevocably past. As for Rose, if there crept into her little prayers a touch of sentiment as she pleaded for the backslidden son of the minister, her prayers were none the worse for it. Such trace of sentimental color—like the blush upon her fair cheek—gave a completed beauty to her appeals.

Reuben saw that Phil was terribly in earnest in his love, and he fancied, with some twinges, that he saw indications on the part of Adèle of its being not wholly unacceptable. Rose, too, seemed not disinclined to receive the assiduous attentions of the young minister, who had become a frequent visitor in the Elderkin household, and who preached with an unction and an earnestness that touched her heart, and that made her sigh despondingly over the outcast son of the old pastor. Watching these things with a look studiedly careless and indifferent, Reuben felt himself cut off more than ever from such charms or virtues as might possibly have belonged to continued association with the companions of his boyhood, and nerved himself for a new and firmer grip upon those pleasures of the outer world which had not yet proved an illusion. There were moments—mostly drifting over him in silent night-hours, within his old chamber at the parsonage—when it seemed to him that he had made a losing game of it. The sparkling eyes of Adèle, suffused with tears,—as in that memorable interview of the garden,—beam upon him, promising, as then, other guidance; they gain new brilliance, and wear stronger entreaty, as they shine lovingly upon him from the distance—growing greater and greater—which now lies between them. Her beauty, her grace, her tenderness, now that they are utterly beyond reach, are tenfold enticing; and in that other sphere to which, in his night revery, they seem translated, the joyous face of Rose, like that of an attendant angel, looks down regretfully, full of a capacity for love to which he must be a stranger.

He is wakened by the bells next morning,—a Sunday morning, may be. There they go,—he sees them from the window,—the two comely damsels, picking their way through the light, fresh-fallen snow of March. Going possibly to teach the catechism; he sneers at this thought, for he is awake now. Has the world no richer gift in store for him? That Sophie Bowrigg is a great fortune, a superb dancer, a gorgeous armful of a woman. What if they were to join their fortunes and come back some day to dazzle these quiet townsfolk with the splendor of their life? His visits in Ashfield grow shorter and more rare. There is nothing particularly alluring. We shall not meet him there again until we meet him for the last time.

Mr. Catesby is an "acceptable preacher." He unfolds the orthodox doctrines with more grace than had belonged to the manner of the Doctor, and illustrates them from time to time with a certain youthful glow, and touches of passionate exhortation, which for many years the Ashfield pulpit had not known. The old ladies befriend him and pet him in their kindly way; and if at times his speculative humor (which he is not wholly without) leads him beyond the bounds of the accepted doctrines, he compounds the matter by strong assertion of those sturdy generalities which lie at the bottom of the orthodox creed.

But his self-control is not so apparent in his social intercourse; and before he has been three months in Ashfield, he has given tongue to gossip, and all the old ladies comment upon his enslavement to the pretty Rose Elderkin. And they talk by the book; he is desperately enamored. Young clergymen have this way of falling, at sight, into the toils, which is vastly refreshing to middle-aged observers. But we have no occasion to detail his experience. An incident only of his recreative pursuits in this direction belongs to our narrative.

Upon one of the botanical excursions of later spring which he had inaugurated, and to which the maidenly modesty of Rose had suggested that Adèle should make a party, the young Catesby (who was a native of Eastern Massachusetts) had asked in his naïve manner after her family connections. An uncle of his had known a Mr. Maverick, who had long been a resident of Europe.

"It may possibly be some relation of yours, Miss Maverick," said the young minister.

"Do you recall the first name?" said Rose.

Mr. Catesby hesitated in that interesting way in which lovers are wont to hesitate. No, he did not remember; but he was a jovial, generous-hearted man, (he had heard his uncle often describe him,) who must be now some fifty or sixty years old.—"Frank Maverick, to be sure; I have the name."

"Why, it is my father," said Adèle with a swift, happy rush of color to her face.

"O no, Miss Maverick," said the young Catesby with a smile, "that is quite impossible. The gentleman of whom I speak, and my uncle visited him only three years ago, is a confirmed bachelor, and he had rallied him, I remember, upon never having married."

The color left the cheeks of Adèle.

"Frank, did you say?" persisted Rose.

"Frank was the name," said the innocent young clergyman; "and he was a merchant, if I remember rightly, somewhere upon the Mediterranean."

"It's very strange," said Rose, turning to Adèle.

And Adèle, all her color gone, had the fortitude to pat Rose lovingly upon the shoulder, and to say, with a forced smile, "Life is very strange, Rose."

But from this time till they reached home,—fortunately not far away,—Adèle said nothing more. Rose remarked an unwonted pallor in her cheeks.

"You are tired, Adèle," said she; "you are so pale!"

"Child," said Adèle, tapping her again, in a womanly way that was strange to her companion, "you have color for us both."

At this, her reserve of dignity and fortitude being now wellnigh spent, she rushed away to her chamber. What wonder if she sought the little crucifix, sole memento of the unknown mother, and glued it to her lips, as she fell upon her knees by the bedside, and uttered such a prayer for help and strength as had never uttered before?

"It is true! it is true! I see it now. The child of shame! The child of shame! O my father, my father! what wrong have you done me!" And again she prays for help and strength.

There is not a doubt in her mind where the truth lies. In a moment her thought has flashed over the whole chain of evidence. The father's studied silence; her alienation from any home of her own; the mysterious hints of the Doctor; and the strange communication of Reuben,—all come up in stately array and confound her with the bitter truth. There is a little miniature of her father which she has kept among her choicest treasures. She seeks it now. Is it to throw it away in scorn? No, no, no. Our affections are after all not submissible to strict moral regimen. It is with set teeth and a hard look in her eye that she regards it at first; then her eyes suffuse with tears while she looks, and she kisses it passionately again and again.

"Can there be some horrible mistake in all this?" she asks herself. At the thought she slips on hat and shawl and glides noiselessly down the stairs, (not for the world would she have been interrupted!) and walks swiftly away to her old home at the parsonage.

Dame Tourtelot meets her and says, "Good evening, Miss Adeel."

And Adèle, in a voice so firm that it does not seem her own, says, "Good evening, Miss Tourtelot." She wonders greatly at her own calmness.