CHAPTER XL. THE ENGAGEMENT ANNOUNCED

Meanwhile Dr. Gracey found his way to Arthur's study.

"So, Arthur," he said, "that pretty Miss Van Arsdel's engaged."

The blank expression and sudden change of color in St. John's face was something quite worthy of observation.

"Miss Van Arsdel engaged!" he repeated with a gasp, feeling as if the ground were going down under him.

"Yes, that pretty fairy, Miss Angelique, you know."

"How did you hear—who told you?"

"How did I hear? Why, it's all over town. Arthur, you bad boy, why haven't you told me?"

"Me?"

"Yes, you; you are the happy individual. I came to congratulate you."

St. John looked terribly confused.

"Well, we are not really exactly engaged."

"But you are going to be, I understand. So far so good. I like the family—good stock—nothing could be better; but, Arthur, let me tell you, you'd better have it announced and above board forthwith. You are not my sister's son, nor the man I took you for, if you could take advantage of the confidence inspired by your position to carry on a flirtation."

The blood flushed into St. John's cheeks.

"I'm not flirting, uncle; that vulgar word is no name for my friendship with Miss Van Arsdel. It is as sacred as the altar. I reverence her; I love her with all my heart. I would lay down my life for her."

"Good! but nobody wants you to lay down your life. That is quite foreign to the purpose. What is wanting is, that you step out like a man and define your position with regard to Miss Van Arsdel before the world; otherwise all the gossips will make free with her name and yours. Depend upon it, Arthur, a man has done too much or too little when a young lady's name is in every one's mouth in connection with his, without a definite engagement."

"It is all my fault, uncle. I hadn't the remotest idea. It's all my fault—all. I had no thought of what the world would say; no idea that we were remarked—but, believe me, our intimacy has been, from first to last, entirely of my seeking. It has grown on us gradually, till I find she is more to me than any one ever has been or can be. Whether I am as much to her, I cannot tell. My demands have been humble. We are not engaged, but it shall not be my fault if another day passes and we are not."

"Right, my boy. I knew you. You were no nephew of mine if you didn't feel, when your eyes were open, the honor of the thing. God made you a gentleman before he made you a priest, and there's but one way for a gentleman in a case like this. If there's anything I despise, it's a priest who uses his priestly influence, under this fine name and that, to steal from a woman love that doesn't belong to him, and that he never can return, and never ought to. If a man thinks he can do more good as a single man and a missionary, well; I honor him, but let him make the sacrifice honestly. Don't let him want pretty girls for intimate friends or guardian angels, or Christian sisters, or any such trumpery. It's dishonest and disloyal; it is unfair to the woman and selfish in the man."

"Well, uncle, I trust you say all this because you don't think it of me; as I know my heart before God, I say I have not been doing so mean and cowardly a thing. There was a time when I thought I never should marry. Those were my days of ignorance. I did not know how much a true woman might teach me, and how much I needed such a guide, even in my church work."

"In short, my boy, you found out that the Lord was right when he said, 'It is not good for man to be alone.' We pay the Lord the compliment once in a while to believe he knows best. Depend on it, Arthur, that Christian families are the Lord's church, and better than any guild of monks and nuns whatsoever."

All which was listened to by Mr. St. John with a radiant countenance. It is all down-hill when you are showing a man that it is his duty to do what he wants to do. Six months before, St. John would have fought every proposition of this speech, and brought up the whole of the Middle Ages to back him. Now, he was as tractable as heart could wish.

"After all, Uncle," he said, at last, "what if she will not have me? And what if I am not the man to make her happy?"

"Oh, if you ask prettily, I fancy she won't say nay; and then you must make her happy. There are no two ways about that, my boy."

"I'm not half good enough for her," said St. John.

"Like enough. We are none of us good enough for these women; but, luckily, that isn't apt to be their opinion."

St. John started out from the conference with an alert step. In two days more, rumor was met with open confirmation. St. John had had the decisive interview with Angie, had seen and talked with her father and mother, and been invited to a family dinner; and Angie wore on her finger an engagement-ring. There was no more to be said now. Mr. St. John was an idol who had stepped down from his pedestal into the ranks of common men. He was no longer a mysterious power—an angel of the churches, but a man of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, it is an undoubted fact that, for all the purposes of this mortal life, a good man is better than an angel.

But not so thought the ecstasia of his chapel. A holy father, in a long black gown, with a cord round his waist, and with a skull and hour-glass in his cell, is somehow thought to be nearer to heaven than a family man with a market-basket on his arm; but we question whether the angels themselves think so. There may be as holy and unselfish a spirit in the way a market-basket is filled as in a week of fasting; and the oil of gladness may make the heavenward wheels run more smoothly than the spirit of heaviness. The first bright day, St. John took Angie a drive in the park, a proceeding so evidently of the earth, earthy, that Miss Gusher hid her face, after the manner of the seraphim, as he passed; but he and Angie were too happy and too busy in their new world to care who looked or who didn't, and St. John rather triumphantly remembered the free assertion of the great apostle, "Have we not power to lead about a sister or a wife?" and felt sure that he should have been proud and happy to show Angie to St. Paul himself.

Alice was at first slightly disappointed, but the compensation of receiving so very desirable a brother-in-law reconciled her to the loss of her poetic and distant ideal.

As to little Mrs. Betsey, she fell upon Angie's neck in rapture; and her joy was heightened in the convincing proof that she was now able to heap upon the unbelieving head of Dorcas that she had been in the right all along.

When dear little Mrs. Betsey was excited, her words and thoughts came so thick that they were like a flock of martins, all trying to get out of a martin-box together,—chattering, twittering, stumbling over each other, and coming out at heads and points in a wonderful order. When the news had been officially sealed to her, she begged the right to carry it to Dorcas, and ran home and burst in upon her with shining eyes and two little pink spots in her cheeks.

"There, Dorcas, they are engaged. Now, didn't I say so, Dorcas? I knew it. I told you so, that Thursday evening. Oh, you can't fool me; and that day I saw him standing on the doorstep! I was just as certain! I saw it just as plain! What a shame for people to talk about him as they do, and say he's going to Rome. I wonder what they think now? The sweetest girl in New York, certainly. Oh! and that ring he bought! Just as if he could be a Roman Catholic! It's big as a pea, and sparkles beautiful, and's got the 'Lord is thy keeper' in Hebrew on the inside. I want to see Mrs. Wouvermans and ask her what she thinks now. Oh, and he took her to ride in such a stylish carriage, white lynx lap-robe, and all! I don't care if he does burn candles in his chapel. What does that prove? It don't prove anything. I like to see people have some logic about things, for my part, don't you, Dorcas? Don't you?"

"Mercy! yes, Betsey," said Miss Dorcas, delighted to see her sister so excitedly happy, "though I don't exactly see my way clear through yours; but no matter."

"I'm going to crochet a toilet cushion for a wedding present, Dorcas, like that one in the red room, you know. I wonder when it will come off? How lucky I have that sweet cap that Mrs. Henderson made. Wasn't it good of her to make it? I hope they'll invite us. Don't you think they will? I suppose it will be in his chapel, with candles and all sorts of new ways. Well, I don't care, so long as folks are good people, what their ways are; do you, Dorcas? I must run up and count the stitches on that cushion this minute!" And Mrs. Betsey upset her basket of worsteds in her zeal, and Jack flew round and round, barking sympathetically. In fact, he was so excited by the general breeze that he chewed up two balls of worsted before recovering his composure. Such was the effect of the news at the old Vanderheyden house.