We and Our Neighbors: or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street

CHAPTER XXXIV
GOING TO THE BAD

It was the week before Christmas, and all New York was stirring and rustling with a note of preparation. Every shop and store was being garnished and furbished to look its best. Christmas-trees for sale lay at the doors of groceries; wreaths of ground-pine, and sprigs and branches of holly, were on sale, and selling briskly. Garlands and anchors and crosses of green began to adorn the windows of houses, and were a merchantable article in the stores. The toy-shops were flaming and flaunting with a delirious variety of attractions, and mammas and papas with puzzled faces were crowding and jostling each other, and turning anxiously from side to side in the suffocating throng that crowded to the counters, while the shopmen were too flustered to answer questions, and so busy that it seemed a miracle when anybody got any attention. The country-folk were pouring into New York to do Christmas shopping, and every imaginable kind of shop had in its window some label or advertisement or suggestion of something that might answer for a Christmas gift. Even the grim, heavy hardware trade blossomed out into festal suggestions. Tempting rows of knives and scissors glittered in the windows; little chests of tools for little masters, with cards and labels to call the attention of papa to the usefulness of the present. The confectioners' windows were a glittering mass of sugar frostwork of every fanciful device, gay boxes of bonbons, marvelous fabrications of chocolate, and sugar rainbows in candy of every possible device; and bewildered crowds of well-dressed purchasers came and saw and bought faster than the two hands of the shopmen could tie up and present the parcels. The grocery stores hung out every possible suggestion of festal cheer. Long strings of turkeys and chickens, green bunches of celery, red masses of cranberries, boxes of raisins and drums of figs, artistically arranged, and garnished with Christmas greens, addressed themselves eloquently to the appetite, and suggested that the season of festivity was at hand.

The weather was stinging cold – cold enough to nip one's toes and fingers, as one pressed round, doing Christmas shopping, and to give cheeks and nose alike a tinge of red. But nobody seemed to mind the cold. "Cold as Christmas" has become a cheery proverb; and for prosperous, well-living people, with cellars full of coal, with bright fires and roaring furnaces and well-tended ranges, a cold Christmas is merely one of the luxuries. Cold is the condiment of the season; the stinging, smarting sensation is an appetizing reminder of how warm and prosperous and comfortable are all within doors.

But did any one ever walk the streets of New York, the week before Christmas, and try to imagine himself moving in all this crowd of gaiety, outcast, forsaken and penniless? How dismal a thing is a crowd in which you look in vain for one face that you know! how depressing the sense that all this hilarity and abundance and plenty is not for you! Shakespeare has said, "How miserable it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes – to see that which you might enjoy and may not, to move in a world of gaiety and prosperity where there is nothing for you!"

Such were Maggie's thoughts, the day she went out from the kindly roof that had sheltered her, and cast herself once more upon the world. Poor hot-hearted, imprudent child, why did she run from her only friends? Well, to answer that question, we must think a little. It is a sad truth, that when people have taken a certain number of steps in wrong-doing, even the good that is in them seems to turn against them and become their enemy. It was in fact a residuum of honor and generosity, united with wounded pride, that drove Maggie into their street, that morning. She had overheard the conversation between Aunt Maria and Eva; and certain parts of it brought back to her mind the severe reproaches which had fallen upon her from her Uncle Mike. He had told her she was a disgrace to any honest house, and she had overheard Aunt Maria telling the same thing to Eva, – that the having and keeping such as she in her home was a disreputable, disgraceful thing, and one that would expose her to very unpleasant comments and observations. Then she listened to Aunt Maria's argument, to show Eva that she had better send her mother away and take another woman in her place, because she was encumbered with such a daughter.

"Well," she said to herself, "I'll go then. I'm in everybody's way, and I get everybody into trouble that's good to me. I'll just take myself off. So there!" and Maggie put on her things and plunged into the street and walked very fast in a tumult of feeling.

She had a few dollars in her purse that her mother had given her to buy winter clothing; enough, she thought vaguely, to get her a few days' lodging somewhere, and she would find something honest to do.

Maggie knew there were places where she would be welcomed with an evil welcome, where she would have praise and flattery instead of chiding and rebuke; but she did not intend to go to them just yet.

The gentle words that Eva had spoken to her, the hope and confidence she had expressed that she might yet retrieve her future, were a secret cord that held her back from going to the utterly bad.

The idea that somebody thought well of her, that somebody believed in her, and that a lady pretty, graceful, and admired in the world, seemed really to care to have her do well, was a redeeming thought. She would go and get some place, and do something for herself, and when she had shown that she could do something, she would once more make herself known to her friends. Maggie had a good gift at millinery, and, at certain odd times, had worked in a little shop on Sixteenth Street, where the mistress had thought well of her, and made her advantageous offers. Thither she went first, and asked to see Miss Pinhurst. The moment, however, that she found herself in that lady's presence, she was sorry she had come. Evidently, her story had preceded her. Miss Pinhurst had heard all the particulars of her ill conduct, and was ready to the best of her ability to act the part of the flaming sword that turned every way to keep the fallen Eve out of paradise.

"I am astonished, Maggie, that you should even think of such a thing as getting a place here, after all's come and gone that you know of; I am astonished that you could for one moment think of it. None but young ladies of good character can be received into our work-rooms. If I should let such as you come in, my respectable girls would feel insulted. I don't know but they would leave in a body. I think I should leave, under the same circumstances. No, I wish you well, Maggie, and hope that you may be brought to repentance; but, as to the shop, it isn't to be thought of."

Now, Miss Pinhurst was not a hard-hearted woman; not, in any sense, a cruel woman; she was only on that picket duty by which the respectable and well-behaved part of society keeps off the ill-behaving. Society has its instincts of self-protection and self-preservation, and seems to order the separation of the sheep and the goats, even before the time of final judgment. For, as a general thing, it would not be safe and proper to admit fallen women back into the ranks of those unfallen, without some certificate of purgation. Somebody must be responsible for them, that they will not return again to bad ways, and draw with them the innocent and inexperienced. Miss Pinhurst was right in requiring an unblemished record of moral character among her shop-girls. It was her mission to run a shop and run it well; it was not her call to conduct a Magdalen Asylum: hence, though we pity poor Maggie, coming out into the cold with the bitter tears of rejection freezing her cheek, we can hardly blame Miss Pinhurst. She had on her hands already all that she could manage.

Besides, how could she know that Maggie was really repentant? Such creatures were so artful; and, for aught she knew, she might be coming for nothing else than to lure away some of her girls, and get them into mischief. She spoke the honest truth, when she said she wished well to Maggie. She did wish her well. She would have been sincerely glad to know that she had gotten into better ways, but she did not feel that it was her business to undertake her case. She had neither time nor skill for the delicate and difficult business of reformation. Her helpers must come to her ready-made, in good order, and able to keep step and time: she could not be expected to make them over.

"How hard they all make it to do right!" thought Maggie. But she was too proud to plead or entreat. "They all act as if I had the plague, and should give it to them; and yet I don't want to be bad. I'd a great deal rather be good if they'd let me, but I don't see any way. Nobody will have me, or let me stay," and Maggie felt a sobbing pity for herself. Why should she be treated as if she were the very off-scouring of the earth, when the man who had led her into all this sin and sorrow was moving in the best society, caressed, admired, flattered, married to a good, pious, lovely woman, and carrying all the honors of life?

Why was it such a sin for her, and no sin for him? Why could he repent and be forgiven, and why must she never be forgiven? There wasn't any justice in it, Maggie hotly said to herself – and there wasn't; and then, as she walked those cold streets, pictures without words were rising in her mind, of days when everybody flattered and praised her, and he most of all. There is no possession which brings such gratifying homage as personal beauty; for it is homage more exclusively belonging to the individual self than any other. The tribute rendered to wealth, or talent, or genius, is far less personal. A child or woman gifted with beauty has a constant talisman that turns all things to gold – though, alas! the gold too often turns out like fairy gifts; it is gold only in seeming, and becomes dirt and slate-stone on their hands.

Beauty is a dazzling and dizzying gift. It dazzles first its possessor and inclines him to foolish action; and it dazzles outsiders, and makes them say and do foolish things.

From the time that Maggie was a little chit, running in the street, people had stopped her, to admire her hair and eyes, and talk all kinds of nonsense to her, for the purpose of making her sparkle and flush and dimple, just as one plays with a stick in the sparkling of a brook. Her father, an idle, willful, careless creature, made a show plaything of her, and spent his earnings for her gratification and adornment. The mother was only too proud and fond; and it was no wonder that when Maggie grew up to girlhood her head was a giddy one, that she was self-willed, self-confident, obstinate. Maggie loved ease and luxury. Who doesn't? If she had been born on Fifth Avenue, of one of the magnates of New York, it would have been all right, of course, for her to love ribbons and laces and flowers and fine clothes, to be imperious and self-willed, and to set her pretty foot on the neck of the world. Many a young American princess, gifted with youth and beauty and with an indulgent papa and mamma, is no wiser than Maggie was; but nobody thinks the worse of her. People laugh at her little saucy airs and graces, and predict that she will come all right by and by. But then, for her, beauty means an advantageous marriage, a home of luxury and a continuance through life of the petting and indulgence which every one loves, whether wisely or not.

But Maggie was the daughter of a poor working-woman – an Irishwoman at that – and what marriage leading to wealth and luxury was in store for her?

To tell the truth, at seventeen, when her father died and her mother was left penniless, Maggie was as unfit to encounter the world as you, Miss Mary, or you, Miss Alice, and she was a girl of precisely the same flesh and blood as yourself. Maggie cordially hated everything hard, unpleasant or disagreeable, just as you do. She was as unused to crosses and self-denials as you are. She longed for fine things and pretty things, for fine sight-seeing and lively times, just as you do, and felt just as you do that it was hard fate to be deprived of them. But, when worse came to worst, she went to work with Mrs. Maria Wouvermans. Maggie was parlor-girl and waitress, and a good one too. She was ingenious, neat-handed, quick and bright; and her beauty drew favorable attention. But Mrs. Wouvermans never commended, but only found fault. If Maggie carefully dusted every one of the five hundred knick-knacks of the drawing-room five hundred times, there was nothing said; but if, on the five hundred and first time, a moulding or a crevice was found with dust in it, Mrs. Wouvermans would summon Maggie to her presence with the air of a judge, point out the criminal fact, and inveigh, in terms of general severity, against her carelessness, as if carelessness were the rule rather than the exception.

Mrs. Wouvermans took special umbrage at Maggie's dress – her hat, her feathers, her flowers – not because they were ugly, but because they were pretty, a great deal too pretty and dressy for her station. Mrs. Wouvermans's ideal of a maid was a trim creature, content with two gowns of coarse stuff and a bonnet devoid of adornment; a creature who, having eyes, saw not anything in the way of ornament or luxury; whose whole soul was absorbed in work, for work's sake; content with mean lodgings, mean furniture, poor food, and scanty clothing; and devoting her whole powers of body and soul to securing to others elegancies, comforts and luxuries to which she never aspired. This self-denied sister of charity, who stood as the ideal servant, Mrs. Wouvermans's maid did not in the least resemble. Quite another thing was the gay, dressy young lady who, on Sunday mornings, stepped forth from the back gate of her house with so much the air of a Murray Hill demoiselle that people sometimes said to Mrs. Wouvermans, "Who is that pretty young lady that you have staying with you?" – a question that never failed to arouse a smothered sense of indignation in that lady's mind, and added bitterness to her reproofs and sarcasms, when she found a picture-frame undusted, or pounced opportunely on a cobweb in some neglected corner.

Maggie felt certain that Mrs. Wouvermans was on the watch to find fault with her – that she wanted to condemn her, for she had gone to service with the best of resolutions. Her mother was poor and she meant to help her; she meant to be a good girl, and, in her own mind, she thought she was a very good girl to do so much work, and remember so many different things in so many different places, and forget so few things.

Maggie praised herself to herself, just as you do, my young lady, when you have an energetic turn in household matters, and arrange and beautify, and dust, and adorn mamma's parlors, and then call on mamma and papa and all the family to witness and applaud your notability. At sixteen or seventeen, household virtue is much helped in its development by praise. Praise is sunshine; it warms, it inspires, it promotes growth: blame and rebuke are rain and hail; they beat down and bedraggle, even though they may at times be necessary. There was a time in Maggie's life when a kind, judicious, thoughtful, Christian woman might have kept her from falling, might have won her confidence, become her guide and teacher, and piloted her through the dangerous shoals and quicksands which beset a bright, attractive, handsome young girl, left to make her own way alone and unprotected.

But it was not given to Aunt Maria to see this opportunity; and, under her system of management, it was not long before Maggie's temper grew fractious, and she used to such purpose the democratic liberty of free speech, which is the birthright of American servants, that Mrs. Wouvermans never forgave her.

Maggie told her, in fact, that she was a hard-hearted, mean, selfish woman, who wanted to get all she could out of her servants, and to give the least she could in return; and this came a little too near the truth ever to be forgotten or forgiven. Maggie was summarily warned out of the house, and went home to her mother, who took her part with all her heart and soul, and declared that Maggie shouldn't live out any longer – she should be nobody's servant.

This, to be sure, was silly enough in Mary, since service is the law of society, and we are all more or less servants to somebody; but uneducated people never philosophize or generalize, and so cannot help themselves to wise conclusions.

All Mary knew was that Maggie had been scolded and chafed by Mrs. Wouvermans; her handsome darling had been abused, and she should get into some higher place in the world; and so she put her as workwoman into the fashionable store of S. S. & Co.

There Maggie was seen and coveted by the man who made her his prey. Maggie was seventeen, pretty, silly, hating work and trouble, longing for pleasure, leisure, ease and luxury; and he promised them all. He told her that she was too pretty to work, that if she would trust herself to him she need have no more care; and Maggie looked forward to a rich marriage and a home of her own. To do her justice, she loved the man that promised this with all the warmth of her Irish heart. To her, he was the splendid prince in the fairy tale, come to take her from poverty and set her among princes; and she felt she could not do too much for him. She would be such a good wife, she would be so devoted, she would improve herself and learn so that she might never discredit him.

Alas! in just such an enchanted garden of love, and hope, and joy, how often has the ground caved in and let the victim down into dungeons of despair that never open!

Maggie thinks all this over as she pursues her cheerless, aimless way through the cold cutting wind, and looks into face after face that has no pity for her. Scarcely knowing why she did it, she took a car and rode up to the Park, got out, and wandered drearily up and down among the leafless paths from which all trace of summer greenness had passed.

Suddenly, a carriage whirred past her. She looked up. There he sat, driving, and by his side so sweet a lady, and between them a flaxen-haired little beauty, clasping a doll in her chubby arms!

The sweet-faced woman looks pitifully at the haggard, weary face, and says something to call the attention of her husband. An angry flush rises to his face. He frowns, and whips up the horse, and is gone. A sort of rage and bitterness possess Maggie's soul. What is the use of trying to do better? Nobody pities her. Nobody helps her. The world is all against her. Why not go to the bad?

CHAPTER XXXV
A SOUL IN PERIL

Ite will be seen by the way in which we left poor Maggie that she stood in just one of those critical steep places of life where a soul is in pain and peril; where the turning of a hair's breadth may decide between death and life. And it is something, not only to the individual, but to the whole community, what a woman may become in one of these crises of life.

Maggie had a rich, warm, impulsive nature, full of passion and energy; she had personal beauty and the power that comes from it; she had in her all that might have made the devoted wife and mother, fitted to give strong sons and daughters to our republic, and to bring them up to strengthen our country. But, deceived, betrayed, led astray by the very impulses which should have ended in home and marriage, with even her best friends condemning her, her own heart condemning her, the whole face of the world set against her, her feet stood in slippery places.

There is another life open to the woman whom the world judges and rejects and condemns; a life short, bad, desperate; a life of revenge, of hate, of deceit; a life in which woman, outraged and betrayed by man, turns bitterly upon him, to become the tempter, the betrayer, the ruiner of man, – to visit misery and woe on the society that condemns her.

Many a young man has been led to gambling, and drinking, and destruction; many a wife's happiness has been destroyed; many a mother has wept on a sleepless pillow over a son worse than dead, – only because some woman, who at a certain time in her life might have been saved to honor and good living, has been left to be a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction. For we have seen in Maggie's history that there were points all along, where the girl might have been turned into another and a better way.

If Mrs. Maria Wouvermans, instead of railing at her love of feathers and flowers, watching for her halting, and seeking occasion against her, had only had grace to do for her what lies in the power of every Christian mistress; if she had won her confidence, given her motherly care and sympathy, and trained her up under the protection of household influences, it might have been otherwise. Or, supposing that Maggie were too self-willed, too elate with the flatteries that come to young beauty, to be saved from a fall, yet, after that fall, when she rose, ashamed and humbled, there was still a chance of retrieval.

Perhaps there is never a time when man or woman has a better chance, with suitable help, of building a good character than just after a humiliating fall which has taught the sinner his own weakness, and given him a sad experience of the bitterness of sin.

Nobody wants to be sold under sin, and go the whole length in iniquity; and when one has gone just far enough in wrong living to perceive in advance all its pains and penalties, there is often an agonized effort to get back to respectability, like the clutching of the drowning man for the shore. The waters of death are cold and bitter, and nobody wants to be drowned.

But it is just at this point that the drowning hand is wrenched off; society fears that the poor wet wretch will upset its respectable boat; it pushes him off, and rows over the last rising bubbles.

And this is not in the main because men and women are hard-hearted or cruel, but because they are busy, every one of them, with their own works and ways, hurried, driven, with no time, strength, or heart-leisure for more than they are doing. What is one poor soul struggling in the water, swimming up stream, to the great pushing, busy, bustling world?

Nothing in the review of life appears to us so pitiful as the absolute nothingness of the individual in the great mass of human existence. To each living, breathing, suffering atom, the consciousness of what it desires and suffers is so intense, and to every one else so faint. It is faint even to the nearest and dearest, compared to what it is to one's self. "The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not therewith."

Suppose you were suddenly struck down to-day by death in any of its dreadful forms, how much were this to you, how little to the world! how little even to the friendly world, who think well of you and wish you kindly! The paper that tells the tale scarcely drops from their hand; a few shocked moments of pity or lamentation, perhaps, and then returns the discussion of what shall be for dinner, and whether the next dress shall be cut with flounces or folds: the gay waves of life dance and glitter over the last bubble which marks where you sank.

So we have seen poor Maggie, with despair and bitterness in her heart, wandering, on a miserable cold day, through the Christmas rejoicings of New York, on the very verge of going back to courses that end in unutterable degradation and misery; and yet, how little it was anybody's business to seek or to save her.

"So," said Mrs. Wouvermans, in a tone of exultation, when she heard of Maggie's flight, "I hope, I'm sure, Eva's had enough of her fine ways of managing! Miss Maggie's off, just as I knew she'd be. That girl is a baggage! And now, of course, nothing must do but Mary must be off to look for her, and then Eva is left with all her house on her hands. I should think this would show her that my advice wasn't so altogether to be scorned."

Now, it is not to be presumed that Mrs. Wouvermans really was so cruel as to exult in the destruction of Maggie, and the perplexity and distress of her mother, or in Eva's domestic discomfort; yet there was something very like this in the tone of her remarks.

Whence is the feeling of satisfaction which we have when things that we always said we knew, turn out just as we predicted? Had we really rather our neighbor would be proved a thief and a liar than to be proved in a mistake ourselves? Would we be willing to have somebody topple headlong into destruction for the sake of being able to say, "I told you so"?

Mrs. Wouvermans did not ask herself these pointed questions, and so she stirred her faultless coffee without stirring up a doubt of her own Christianity – for, like you and me, Mrs. Wouvermans held herself to be an ordinarily good Christian.

Gentle, easy Mrs. Van Arsdel heard this news with acquiescence. "Well, girls, so that Maggie's run off and settled the question; and, on the whole, I'm not sorry, for that ends Eva's responsibility for her; and, after all, I think your aunt was half right about that matter. One doesn't want to have too much to do with such people."

"But, mamma," said Alice, "it seems such a dreadful thing that so young a girl, not older than I am, should be utterly lost."

"Yes, but you can't help it, and such things are happening all the time, and it isn't worth while making ourselves unhappy about it. I'm sure Eva acted like a little saint about it, and the girl can have no one to blame but herself."

"I know," said Alice; "Eva told me about it. It was Aunt Maria, with her usual vigor and activity, who precipitated the catastrophe. Eva had just got the girl into good ways, and all was going smoothly, when Aunt Maria came in and broke everything up. I must say, I think Aunt Maria is a nuisance."

"Oh, Alice, how can you talk so, when you know that your aunt is thinking of nothing so much as how to serve and advance you girls?"

"She is thinking of how to carry her own will and pleasure; and we girls are like so many ninepins that she wants to set up or knock down to suit her game. Now she has gone and invited those Stephenson girls to spend the holidays with her."

"Well, you know it's entirely on your account, Alice, – you girls. The Stephensons are a very desirable family to cultivate."

"Yes; it's all a sort of artifice, so that they may have to invite us to visit them next summer at Newport. Now, I never was particularly interested in those girls. They always seemed to me insipid sort of people; and to feel obliged to be very attentive to them and cultivate their intimacy, with any such view, is a sort of maneuvering that is very repulsive to me; it doesn't seem honest."

"But now your aunt has got them, and we must be attentive to them," pleaded Mrs. Van Arsdel.

"Oh, of course. What I am complaining of is that my aunt can't let us alone; that she is always scheming for us, planning ahead for us, getting people that we must be attentive to, and all that; and then, because she's our aunt and devoted to our interests, our conscience is all the while troubling us because we don't like her better. The truth is, Aunt Maria is a constant annoyance to me, and I reproach myself for not being grateful to her. Now, Angelique and I are on a committee for buying the presents for the Christmas-tree of our mission-school, and we shall have to go and get the tree up; and it's no small work to dress a Christmas-tree – in fact, we shall just have our hands full, without the Stephensons. We are going up to Eva's this very morning, to talk this matter over and make out our lists of things; and, for my part, I find the Stephensons altogether de trop."

Meanwhile, in Eva's little dominion, peace and prosperity had returned with the return of cook to the kitchen cabinet. A few days' withdrawal of that important portion of the household teaches the mistress many things, and, among others, none more definitely than the real dignity and importance of that sphere which is generally regarded as least and lowest.

Mary had come back disheartened from a fruitless quest. Maggie had indeed been at Poughkeepsie, and had spent a day and a night with a widowed sister of Mary's, and then, following a restless impulse, had gone back to New York – none knew whither; and Mary was going on with her duties with that quiet, acquiescent sadness with which people of her class bear sorrow which they have no leisure to indulge. The girl had for two or three years been lost to her; but the brief interval of restoration seemed to have made the pang of losing her again still more dreadful. Then, the anticipated mortification of having to tell Mike of it, and the thought of what Mike and Mike's wife's would say, were a stinging poison. Though Maggie's flight was really due in a great measure to Mike's own ungracious reception of her and his harsh upbraidings, intensified by what she had overheard from Mrs. Wouvermans, yet Mary was quite sure that Mike would receive it as a confirmation of his own sagacity in the opinion he had pronounced.

The hardness and apathy with which even near relations will consign their kith and kin to utter ruin is one of the sad phenomena of life. Mary knew that Mike would say to her, "Didn't I tell you so? The girl's gone to the bad; let her go! She's made her bed; let her lie in it."

It was only from her gentle, sympathetic mistress that Mary met with a word of comfort. Eva talked with her, and encouraged her to pour out all her troubles and opened the door of her own heart to her sorrows. Eva cheered and comforted her all she could, though she had small hopes, herself.

She had told Mr. Fellows, she said, and Mr. Fellows knew all about New York – knew everybody and everything – and if Maggie were there he would be sure to hear of her; "and if she is anywhere in New York I will go to her," said Eva, "and persuade her to come back and be a good girl. And don't you tell your brother anything about it. Why need he know? I dare say we shall get Maggie back, and all going right, before he knows anything about it."