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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12354 ***
+
+“MAKE THEIR ACQUAINTANCE; FOR AMY WILL BE FOUND DELIGHTFUL, BETH VERY
+LOVELY, MEG BEAUTIFUL, AND JO SPLENDID!”—_The Catholic World._
+
+
+LITTLE WOMEN. By LOUISA M. ALCOTT. In Two Parts. Price of each $1.50.
+
+“Simply one of the most charming little books that have fallen into our
+hands for many a day. There is just enough of sadness in it to make it
+true to life, while it is so full of honest work and whole-souled fun,
+paints so lively a picture of a home in which contentment, energy, high
+spirits, and real goodness make up for the lack of money, that it will
+do good wherever it finds its way. Few will read it without lasting
+profit.”—_Hartford Courant._
+
+“LITTLE WOMEN. By Louisa M. Alcott. We regard these volumes as two of
+the most fascinating that ever came into a household. Old and young
+read them with the same eagerness. Lifelike in all their delineations
+of time, place, and character, they are not only intensely interesting,
+but full of a cheerful morality, that makes them healthy reading
+for both fireside and the Sunday school. We think we love ”Jo“ a
+little better than all the rest, her genius is so happy tempered with
+affection.”—_The Guiding Star._
+
+The following verbatim copy of a letter from a “little woman” is a
+specimen of many which enthusiasm for her book has dictated to the
+author of “Little Women:”—
+
+                                            —— March 12, 1870.
+
+    DEAR JO, OR MISS ALCOTT,—We have all been reading “Little
+    Women,” and we liked it so much I could not help wanting to
+    write to you. We think _you_ are perfectly splendid; I like
+    you better every time I read it. We were all so disappointed
+    about your not marrying Laurie; I cried over that part,—I
+    could not help it. We all liked Laurie ever so much, and
+    almost killed ourselves laughing over the funny things you
+    and he said.
+
+    We are six sisters and two brothers; and there were so many
+    things in “Little Women” that seemed so natural, especially
+    selling the rags.
+
+    Eddie is the oldest; then there is Annie (our Meg), then
+    Nelly (that’s me), May and Milly (our Beths), Rosie,
+    Rollie, and dear little Carrie (the baby). Eddie goes away
+    to school, and when he comes home for the holidays we have
+    lots of fun, playing cricket, croquet, base ball, and every
+    thing. If you ever want to play any of those games, just
+    come to our house, and you will find plenty children to play
+    with you.
+
+    If you ever come to ——, I do wish you would come and see
+    us,—we would like it so much.
+
+    I have named my doll after you, and I hope she will try and
+    deserve it.
+
+    I do wish you would send me a picture of you. I hope your
+    health is better, and you are having a nice time.
+
+    If you write to me, please direct —— Ill. All the children
+    send their love.
+
+    With ever so much love, from your affectionate friend,
+
+                                                       NELLY.
+
+
+_Mailed to any address, postpaid, on receipt of the advertised price._
+
+                                 ROBERTS BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
+                                                         _Boston._
+
+
+
+
+AN OLD-FASHIONED GIRL. By LOUISA M. ALCOTT. With Illustrations. Price
+$1.50.
+
+
+“Miss Alcott has a faculty of entering into the lives and feelings of
+children that is conspicuously wanting in most writers who address
+them; and to this cause, to the consciousness among her readers that
+they are hearing about people like themselves, instead of abstract
+qualities labelled with names, the popularity of her books is due.
+Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy are friends in every nursery and schoolroom,
+and even in the parlor and office they are not unknown; for a good
+story is interesting to older folks as well, and Miss Alcott carries
+on her children to manhood and womanhood, and leaves them only on the
+wedding-day.”—_Mrs. Sarah J. Hale in Godey’s Ladies’ Book._
+
+“We are glad to see that Miss Alcott is becoming naturalized among us
+as a writer, and cannot help congratulating ourselves on having done
+something to bring about the result. The author of ‘Little Women’ is
+so manifestly on the side of all that is ‘lovely, pure, and of good
+report’ in the life of women, and writes with such genuine power and
+humor, and with such a tender charity and sympathy, that we hail her
+books with no common pleasure. ‘An Old-Fashioned Girl’ is a protest
+from the other side of the Atlantic against the manners of the creature
+which we know on this by the name of ‘the Girl of the Period;’ but
+the attack is delivered with delicacy as well as force.”—_The London
+Spectator._
+
+“A charming little book, brimful of the good qualities of intellect and
+heart which made ‘Little Women’ so successful. The ‘Old-Fashioned Girl’
+carries with it a teaching specially needed at the present day, and we
+are glad to know it is even already a decided and great success.”—_New
+York Independent._
+
+“Miss Alcott’s new story deserves quite as great a success as her
+famous ”Little Women,“ and we dare say will secure it. She has written
+a book which child and parent alike ought to read, for it is neither
+above the comprehension of the one, nor below the taste of the other.
+Her boys and girls are so fresh, hearty, and natural, the incidents of
+her story are so true to life, and the tone is so thoroughly healthy,
+that a chapter of the ‘Old-Fashioned Girl’ wakes up the unartificial
+better life within us almost as effectually as an hour spent in the
+company of good, honest, sprightly children. The Old-Fashioned Girl,
+Polly Milton, is a delightful creature!”—_New York Tribune._
+
+“Gladly we welcome the ‘Old-Fashioned Girl’ to heart and home! Joyfully
+we herald her progress over the land! Hopefully we look forward to
+the time when our young people, following her example, will also
+be old-fashioned in purity of heart and simplicity of life, thus
+brightening like a sunbeam the atmosphere around them.”—_Providence
+Journal._
+
+
+_Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of the advertised price, by the
+Publishers_,
+
+                                        ROBERTS BROTHERS,
+                                                    _Boston._
+
+
+
+
+MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS’
+
+RECENT NEW BOOKS.
+
+
+    A VISIT TO MY DISCONTENTED COUSIN. Handy-Volume Series, No.
+    8. 16mo. $1.00.
+
+    BURNAND (F. C.). More Happy Thoughts. 16mo. $1.00.
+
+    ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. The Forest House and Catherine’s Lovers.
+    16mo. $1.50.
+
+    HELPS (ARTHUR). Essays Written in the Intervals of Business.
+    16mo. $1.50.
+
+    —— Brevia: Short Essays and Aphorisms. 16mo. $1.50.
+
+    —— Conversations on War and General Culture. 16mo. $1.50.
+
+    HALE (EDWARD E.). Ten times One is Ten. 16mo. $0.88.
+
+    HAMERTON (PHILIP G.). Thoughts about Art. 16mo. $2.00.
+
+    INGELOW (JEAN). The Monitions of the Unseen, and Poems of
+    Love and Childhood. 12 Illustrations. 16mo. $1.50.
+
+    JUDD (SYLVESTER). Margaret: A Tale of the Real and the
+    Ideal, of Blight and Bloom. 16mo. $1.50.
+
+    —— Richard Edney and the Governor’s Family. 16mo. $1.50.
+
+    KONEWKA (PAUL). Silhouette Illustrations to Goethe’s Faust.
+    Quarto. $4.00.
+
+    LOWELL (MRS. A. C.). Posies for Children. 16mo. $0.75.
+
+    LANDOR (WALTER SAVAGE). Pericles and Aspasia. 16mo. $1.50.
+
+    MAX AND MAURICE. Translated by Charles T. Brooks. 12mo.
+    $1.50.
+
+    MICHELET (M. JULES). France Before Europe. 16mo. $1.00.
+
+    PARKER (JOSEPH). Ad Clerum: Advices to a Young Preacher.
+    16mo. $1.50.
+
+    PRESTON (HARRIET W.). Aspendale. 16mo. $1.50.
+
+    PUCK’S NIGHTLY PRANKS. Silhouette Illustrations by Paul
+    Konewka. Paper Covers. $0.50
+
+    SEELEY (J. R.). Roman Imperialism and Other Lectures and
+    Essays. 16mo. $1.50.
+
+    STOWE (HARRIET BEECHER). Pink and White Tyranny. 16mo. $1.50.
+
+    JOHN WHOPPER’S ADVENTURES. 16mo. $0.75.
+
+
+“MISS ALCOTT IS REALLY A BENEFACTOR OF HOUSE-HOLDS.”—_H. H._
+
+
+LITTLE MEN: Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys. By LOUISA M. ALCOTT. With
+Illustrations. Price $1.50.
+
+“The gods are to be congratulated upon the success of the Alcott
+experiment, as well as all childhood, young and old, upon the singular
+charm of the little men and little women who have run forth from
+the Alcott cottage, children of a maiden whose genius is beautiful
+motherhood.”—_The Examiner._
+
+“No true-hearted boy or girl can read this book without deriving
+benefit from the perusal: nor, for that matter, will it the least
+injure children of a larger growth to endeavor to profit by the
+examples of gentleness and honesty set before them in its pages. What
+a delightful school ‘Jo’ did keep! Why, it makes us want to live our
+childhood’s days over again, in the hope that we might induce some
+kind-hearted female to establish just such a school, and might prevail
+upon our parents to send us, ‘because it was cheap.’ ... We wish the
+genial authoress a long life in which to enjoy the fruits of her labor,
+and cordially thank her, in the name of our young people, for her
+efforts in their behalf.”—_Waterbury American._
+
+“Miss Alcott, whose name has already become a household word among
+little people, will gain a new hold upon their love and admiration by
+this little book. It forms a fitting sequel to ‘Little Women,’ and
+contains the same elements of popularity.... We expect to see it even
+more popular than its predecessor, and shall heartily rejoice at the
+success of an author whose works afford so much hearty and innocent
+enjoyment to the family circle, and teach such pleasant and wholesome
+lessons to old and young.”—_N. Y. Times._
+
+“Suggestive, truthful, amusing, and racy, in a certain simplicity of
+style which very few are capable of producing. It is the history of
+only six months’ school-life of a dozen boys, but is full of variety
+and vitality, and the having girls with the boys is a charming novelty,
+too. To be very candid, this book is so thoroughly good that we hope
+Miss Alcott will give us another in the same genial vein, for she
+understands children and their ways.”—_Phil. Press._
+
+A specimen letter from a little woman to the author of “Little Men.”
+
+                                                    June 17, 1871.
+
+DEAR MISS ALCOTT,—We have just finished “Little Men,” and like it so
+much that we thought we would write and ask you to write another book
+sequel to “Little Men,” and have more about Laurie and Amy, as we like
+them the best. We are the Literary Club, and we got the idea from
+“Little Women.” We have a paper two sheets of foolscap and a half.
+There are four of us, two cousins and my sister and myself. Our assumed
+names are: Horace Greeley, President; Susan B. Anthony, Editor; Harriet
+B. Stowe, Vice-President; and myself, Anna C. Ritchie, Secretary. We
+call our paper the “Saturday Night,” and we all write stories and have
+reports of sermons and of our meetings, and write about the queens of
+England. We did not know but you would like to hear this, as the idea
+sprang from your book; and we thought we would write, as we liked your
+book _so_ much. And now, if it is not too much to ask of you, I wish
+you would answer this, as we are very impatient to know if you will
+write another book; and please answer soon, as Miss Anthony is going
+away, and she wishes very much to hear from you before she does. If you
+write, please direct to —— Street, Brooklyn, N.Y.
+
+                                            Yours truly,
+                                                     ALICE ——.
+
+
+_Mailed to any address, postpaid, on receipt of the advertised price,
+by the Publishers,_
+
+                                         ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON.
+
+
+
+
+PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.
+
+    A Society Novel.
+
+    BY
+    MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE,
+    AUTHOR OF “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN,” “THE MINISTER’S WOOING,” ETC.
+
+    “Come, then, the colors and the ground prepare;
+     Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air;
+     Choose a firm cloud before it fall, and in it
+     Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute.”
+                                                    POPE.
+
+
+    BOSTON:
+    ROBERTS BROTHERS.
+    1871.
+
+
+
+
+    Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by
+
+    HARRIET BEECHER STOWE,
+
+    In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
+
+
+    CAMBRIDGE:
+    PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+MY DEAR READER,—This story is not to be a novel, as the world
+understands the word; and we tell you so beforehand, lest you be in
+ill-humor by not finding what you expected. For if you have been told
+that your dinner is to be salmon and green peas, and made up your mind
+to that bill of fare, and then, on coming to the table, find that it
+is beefsteak and tomatoes, you may be out of sorts; _not_ because
+beefsteak and tomatoes are not respectable viands, but because they are
+not what you have made up your mind to enjoy.
+
+Now, a novel, in our days, is a three-story affair,—a complicated,
+complex, multiform composition, requiring no end of scenery and
+_dramatis personæ_, and plot and plan, together with trap-doors,
+pit-falls, wonderful escapes and thrilling dangers; and the scenes
+transport one all over the earth,—to England, Italy, Switzerland,
+Japan, and Kamtschatka. But this is a little commonplace history,
+all about one man and one woman, living straight along in one little
+prosaic town in New England. It is, moreover, a story with a moral;
+and for fear that you shouldn’t find out exactly what the moral is,
+we shall adopt the plan of the painter who wrote under his pictures,
+“This is a bear,” and “This is a turtle-dove.” We shall tell you in the
+proper time succinctly just what the moral is, and send you off edified
+as if you had been hearing a sermon. So please to call this little
+sketch a parable, and wait for the exposition thereof.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  CHAP.                                                    PAGE
+       I. FALLING IN LOVE                                     1
+      II. WHAT SHE THINKS OF IT                              19
+     III. THE SISTER                                         31
+      IV. PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE                           39
+       V. WEDDING, AND WEDDING-TRIP                          56
+      VI. HONEY-MOON, AND AFTER                              63
+     VII. WILL SHE LIKE IT?                                  74
+    VIII. SPINDLEWOOD                                        86
+      IX. A CRISIS                                           92
+       X. CHANGES                                           104
+      XI. NEWPORT; OR, THE PARADISE OF NOTHING TO DO        112
+     XII. HOME À LA POMPADOUR                               126
+    XIII. JOHN’S BIRTHDAY                                   137
+     XIV. A GREAT MORAL CONFLICT                            152
+      XV. THE FOLLINGSBEES ARRIVE                           161
+     XVI. MRS. JOHN SEYMOUR’S PARTY, AND WHAT CAME OF IT    181
+    XVII. AFTER THE BATTLE                                  197
+   XVIII. A BRICK TURNS UP                                  213
+     XIX. THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE                           228
+      XX. THE VAN ASTRACHANS                                243
+     XXI. MRS. FOLLINGSBEE’S PARTY, AND WHAT CAME OF IT     250
+    XXII. THE SPIDER-WEB BROKEN                             268
+   XXIII. COMMON-SENSE ARGUMENTS                            281
+    XXIV. SENTIMENT _v._ SENSIBILITY                        284
+     XXV. WEDDING BELLS                                     291
+    XXVI. MOTHERHOOD                                        297
+   XXVII. CHECKMATE                                         304
+  XXVIII. AFTER THE STORM                                   321
+    XXIX. THE NEW LILLIE                                    326
+
+
+
+
+PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+_FALLING IN LOVE._
+
+[Illustration: LILLIE.]
+
+
+“WHO _is_ that beautiful creature?” said John Seymour, as a light,
+sylph-like form tripped up the steps of the veranda of the hotel where
+he was lounging away his summer vacation.
+
+“That! Why, don’t you know, man? That is the celebrated, the divine
+Lillie Ellis, the most adroit ‘fisher of men’ that has been seen in our
+days.”
+
+“By George, but she’s pretty, though!” said John, following with
+enchanted eyes the distant motions of the sylphide.
+
+The vision that he saw was of a delicate little fairy form; a
+complexion of pearly white, with a cheek of the hue of a pink shell;
+a fair, sweet, infantine face surrounded by a fleecy radiance of soft
+golden hair. The vision appeared to float in some white gauzy robes;
+and, when she spoke or smiled, what an innocent, fresh, untouched,
+unspoiled look there was upon the face! John gazed, and thought of all
+sorts of poetical similes: of a “daisy just wet with morning dew;” of a
+“violet by a mossy stone;” in short, of all the things that poets have
+made and provided for the use of young gentlemen in the way of falling
+in love.
+
+This John Seymour was about as good and honest a man as there is going
+in this world of ours. He was a generous, just, manly, religious young
+fellow. He was heir to a large, solid property; he was a well-read
+lawyer, established in a flourishing business; he was a man that all
+the world spoke well of, and had cause to speak well of. The only
+duty to society which John had left as yet unperformed was that of
+matrimony. Three and thirty years had passed; and, with every advantage
+for supporting a wife, with a charming home all ready for a mistress,
+John, as yet, had not proposed to be the defender and provider for any
+of the more helpless portion of creation. The cause of this was, in
+the first place, that John was very happy in the society of a sister,
+a little older than himself, who managed his house admirably, and was
+a charming companion to his leisure hours; and, in the second place,
+that he had a secret, bashful self-depreciation in regard to his power
+of pleasing women, which made him ill at ease in their society. Not
+that he did not mean to marry. He certainly did. But the fair being
+that he was to marry was a distant ideal, a certain undefined and
+cloudlike creature; and, up to this time, he had been waiting to meet
+her, without taking any definite steps towards that end. To say the
+truth, John Seymour, like many other outwardly solid, sober-minded,
+respectable citizens, had deep within himself a little private bit
+of romance. He could not utter it, he never talked it; he would have
+blushed and stammered and stuttered wofully, and made a very poor
+figure, in trying to tell any one about it; but nevertheless it was
+there, a secluded chamber of imagery, and the future Mrs. John Seymour
+formed its principal ornament.
+
+The wife that John had imaged, his _dream_-wife, was not at all like
+his sister; though he loved his sister heartily, and thought her one of
+the best and noblest women that could possibly be.
+
+But his sister was all plain prose,—good, strong, earnest, respectable
+prose, it is true, but yet prose. He could read English history with
+her, talk accounts and business with her, discuss politics with her,
+and valued her opinions on all these topics as much as that of any
+man of his acquaintance. But, with the visionary Mrs. John Seymour
+aforesaid, he never seemed to himself to be either reading history or
+settling accounts, or talking politics; he was off with her in some
+sort of enchanted cloudland of happiness, where she was all to him,
+and he to her,—a sort of rapture of protective love on one side, and
+of confiding devotion on the other, quite inexpressible, and that John
+would not have talked of for the world.
+
+So when he saw this distant vision of airy gauzes, of pearly whiteness,
+of sea-shell pink, of infantine smiles, and waving, golden curls, he
+stood up with a shy desire to approach the wonderful creature, and yet
+with a sort of embarrassed feeling of being very awkward and clumsy.
+He felt, somehow, as if he were a great, coarse behemoth; his arms
+seemed to him awkward appendages; his hands suddenly appeared to him
+rough, and his fingers swelled and stumpy. When he thought of asking
+an introduction, he felt himself growing very hot, and blushing to the
+roots of his hair.
+
+“Want to be introduced to her, Seymour?” said Carryl Ethridge. “I’ll
+trot you up. I know her.”
+
+“No, thank you,” said John, stiffly. In his heart, he felt an absurd
+anger at Carryl for the easy, assured way in which he spoke of the
+sacred creature who seemed to him something too divine to be lightly
+talked of. And then he saw Carryl marching up to her with his air of
+easy assurance. He saw the bewitching smile come over that fair,
+flowery face; he saw Carryl, with unabashed familiarity, take her fan
+out of her hand, look at it as if it were a mere common, earthly fan,
+toss it about, and pretend to fan himself with it.
+
+[Illustration: “I didn’t know he was such a puppy.”]
+
+“I didn’t know he was such a puppy!” said John to himself, as he stood
+in a sort of angry bashfulness, envying the man that was so familiar
+with that loveliness.
+
+Ah! John, John! You wouldn’t, for the world, have told to man or woman
+what a fool you were at that moment.
+
+“What a fool I am!” was his mental commentary: “just as if it was any
+thing to me.” And he turned, and walked to the other end of the veranda.
+
+“I think you’ve hooked another fish, Lillie,” said Belle Trevors in the
+ear of the little divinity.
+
+“Who. . . ?”
+
+“Why! that Seymour there, at the end of the veranda. He is looking at
+you, do you know? He is rich, very rich, and of an old family. Didn’t
+you see how he started and looked after you when you came up on the
+veranda?”
+
+“Oh! I saw plain enough,” said the divinity, with one of her
+unconscious, baby-like smiles.
+
+“What are you ladies talking?” said Carryl Ethridge.
+
+“Oh, secrets!” said Belle Trevors. “You are very presuming, sir, to
+inquire.”
+
+“Mr. Ethridge,” said Lillie Ellis, “don’t you think it would be nice to
+promenade?”
+
+This was said with such a pretty coolness, such a quiet composure, as
+showed Miss Lillie to be quite mistress of the situation; there was, of
+course, no sort of design in it.
+
+Ethridge offered his arm at once; and the two sauntered to the end of
+the veranda, where John Seymour was standing.
+
+The blood rushed in hot currents over him, and he could hear the
+beating of his heart: he felt somehow as if the hour of his fate was
+coming. He had a wild desire to retreat, and put it off. He looked
+over the end of the veranda, with some vague idea of leaping it; but
+alas! it was ten feet above ground, and a lover’s leap would have only
+ticketed him as out of his head. There was nothing for it but to meet
+his destiny like a man.
+
+Carryl came up with the lady on his arm; and as he stood there for a
+moment, in the coolest, most indifferent tone in the world, said, “Oh!
+by the by, Miss Ellis, let me present my friend Mr. Seymour.”
+
+[Illustration: “Let me present my friend, Mr. Seymour.”]
+
+The die was cast.
+
+John’s face burned like fire: he muttered something about “being happy
+to make Miss Ellis’s acquaintance,” looking all the time as if he would
+be glad to jump over the railing, or take wings and fly, to get rid of
+the happiness.
+
+Miss Ellis was a belle by profession, and she understood her business
+perfectly. In nothing did she show herself master of her craft, more
+than in the adroitness with which she could soothe the bashful pangs of
+new votaries, and place them on an easy footing with her.
+
+“Mr. Seymour,” she said affably, “to tell the truth, I have been
+desirous of the honor of your acquaintance, ever since I saw you in the
+breakfast-room this morning.”
+
+“I am sure I am very much flattered,” said John, his heart beating
+thick and fast. “May I ask why you honor me with such a wish?”
+
+“Well, to tell the truth, because you strikingly resemble a very
+dear friend of mine,” said Miss Ellis, with her sweet, unconscious
+simplicity of manner.
+
+“I am still more flattered,” said John, with a quicker beating of the
+heart; “only I fear that you may find me an unpleasant contrast.”
+
+“Oh! I think not,” said Lillie, with another smile: “we shall soon be
+good friends, too, I trust.”
+
+“I trust so certainly,” said John, earnestly.
+
+Belle Trevors now joined the party; and the four were soon chatting
+together on the best footing of acquaintance. John was delighted to
+feel himself already on easy terms with the fair vision.
+
+“You have not been here long?” said Lillie to John.
+
+“No, I have only just arrived.”
+
+“And you were never here before?”
+
+“No, Miss Ellis, I am entirely new to the place.”
+
+“I am an old _habituée_ here,” said Lillie, “and can recommend myself
+as authority on all points connected with it.”
+
+“Then,” said John, “I hope you will take me under your tuition.”
+
+“Certainly, free of charge,” she said, with another ravishing smile.
+
+“You haven’t seen the boiling spring yet?” she added.
+
+“No, I haven’t seen any thing yet.”
+
+“Well, then, if you’ll give me your arm across the lawn, I’ll show it
+to you.”
+
+All of this was done in the easiest, most matter-of-course manner in
+the world; and off they started, John in a flutter of flattered delight
+at the gracious acceptance accorded to him.
+
+Ethridge and Belle Trevors looked after them with a nod of intelligence
+at each other.
+
+“Hooked, by George!” said Ethridge.
+
+“Well, it’ll be a good thing for Lillie, won’t it?”
+
+“For her? Oh, yes, a capital thing _for her_!”
+
+“Well, for _him_ too.”
+
+“Well, I don’t know. John is a pretty nice fellow; a very nice fellow,
+besides being rich, and all that; and Lillie is somewhat shop-worn by
+this time. Let me see: she must be seven and twenty.”
+
+“Oh, yes, she’s all that!” said Belle, with ingenuous ardor. “Why, she
+was in society while I was a school-girl! Yes, dear Lillie is certainly
+twenty-seven, if not more; but she keeps her freshness wonderfully.”
+
+“Well, she looks fresh enough, I suppose, to a good, honest, artless
+fellow like John Seymour, who knows as little of the world as a
+milkmaid. John is a great, innocent, country steer, fed on clover and
+dew; and as honest and ignorant of all sorts of naughty, wicked things
+as his mother or sister. He takes Lillie in a sacred simplicity quite
+refreshing; but to me Lillie is played out. I know her like a book. I
+know all her smiles and wiles, advices and devices; and her system of
+tactics is an old story with me. I shan’t interrupt any of her little
+games. Let her have her little field all to herself: it’s time she was
+married, to be sure.”
+
+Meanwhile, John was being charmingly ciceroned by Lillie, and scarcely
+knew whether he was in the body or out. All that he felt, and felt with
+a sort of wonder, was that he seemed to be acceptable and pleasing
+in the eyes of this little fairy, and that she was leading him into
+wonderland.
+
+They went not only to the boiling spring, but up and down so many
+wild, woodland paths that had been cut for the adornment of the Carmel
+Springs, and so well pleased were both parties, that it was supper-time
+before they reappeared on the lawn; and, when they did appear, Lillie
+was leaning confidentially on John’s arm, with a wreath of woodbine in
+her hair that he had arranged there, wondering all the while at his
+own wonderful boldness, and at the grace of the fair entertainer.
+
+[Illustration: “Lillie was leaning confidentially on John’s arm.”]
+
+The returning couple were seen from the windows of Mrs. Chit, who sat
+on the lookout for useful information; and who forthwith ran to the
+apartments of Mrs. Chat, and told her to look out at them.
+
+Billy This, who was smoking his cigar on the veranda, immediately ran
+and called Harry That to look at them, and laid a bet at once that
+Lillie had “hooked” Seymour.
+
+“She’ll have him, by George, she will!”
+
+“Oh, pshaw! she is always hooking fellows, but you see she don’t get
+married,” said matter-of-fact Harry. “It won’t come to any thing, now,
+I’ll bet. Everybody said she was engaged to Danforth, but it all ended
+in smoke.”
+
+Whether it would be an engagement, or would all end in smoke, was the
+talk of Carmel Springs for the next two weeks.
+
+At the end of that time, the mind of Carmel Springs was relieved by the
+announcement that it was an engagement.
+
+The important deciding announcement was first authentically made by
+Lillie to Belle Trevors, who had been invited into her room that night
+for the purpose.
+
+“Well, Belle, it’s all over. He spoke out to-night.”
+
+“He offered himself?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+“And you took him?”
+
+“Of course I did: I should be a fool not to.”
+
+“Oh, so I think, decidedly!” said Belle, kissing her friend in a
+rapture. “You dear creature! how nice! it’s splendid!”
+
+Lillie took the embrace with her usual sweet composure, and turned to
+her looking-glass, and began taking down her hair for the night. It
+will be perceived that this young lady was not overcome with emotion,
+but in a perfectly collected state of mind.
+
+“He’s a little bald, and getting rather stout,” she said reflectively,
+“but he’ll do.”
+
+“I never saw a creature so dead in love as he is,” said Belle.
+
+A quiet smile passed over the soft, peach-blow cheeks as Lillie
+answered,—
+
+“Oh, dear, yes! He perfectly worships the ground I tread on.”
+
+“Lil, you fortunate creature, you! Positively it’s the best match
+that there has been about here this summer. He’s rich, of an old,
+respectable family; and then he has good principles, you know, and all
+that,” said Belle.
+
+“I think he’s nice myself,” said Lillie, as she stood brushing out
+a golden tangle of curls. “Dear me!” she added, “how much better he
+is than that Danforth! Really, Danforth was a little too horrid: his
+teeth were dreadful. Do you know, I should have had something of a
+struggle to take him, though he was so terribly rich? Then Danforth had
+been horridly dissipated,—you don’t know,—Maria Sanford told me such
+shocking things about him, and she knows they are true. Now, I don’t
+think John has ever been dissipated.”
+
+[Illustration: “I think he’s nice myself.”]
+
+“Oh, no!” said Belle. “I heard all about him. He joined the
+church when he was only twenty, and has been always spoken of as a
+perfect model. I only think you may find it a little slow, living
+in Springdale. He has a fine, large, old-fashioned house there, and
+his sister is a very nice woman; but they are a sort of respectable,
+retired set,—never go into fashionable company.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t mind it!” said Lillie. “I shall have things my own way,
+I know. One isn’t obliged to live in Springdale, nor with pokey old
+sisters, you know; and John will do just as I say, and live where I
+please.”
+
+She said this with her simple, soft air of perfect assurance, twisting
+her shower of bright, golden curls; with her gentle, childlike face,
+and soft, beseeching, blue eyes, and dimpling little mouth, looking
+back on her, out of the mirror. By these the little queen had always
+ruled from her cradle, and should she not rule now? Was it any
+wonder that John was half out of his wits with joy at thought of
+possessing _her_? Simply and honestly, she thought not. He was to be
+congratulated; though it wasn’t a bad thing for her, either.
+
+“Belle,” said Lillie, after an interval of reflection, “I won’t be
+married in white satin,—that I’m resolved on. Now,” she said, facing
+round with increasing earnestness, “there have been five weddings
+in our set, and all the girls have been married in just the same
+dress,—white satin and point lace, white satin and point lace, over and
+over, till I’m tired of it. _I’m_ determined I’ll have something new.”
+
+“Well, I would, I’m sure,” said Belle. “Say white tulle, for instance:
+you know you are so _petite_ and fairy-like.”
+
+“No: I shall write out to Madame La Roche, and tell her she must get up
+something wholly original. I shall send for my whole _trousseau_. Papa
+will be glad enough to come down, since he gets me off his hands, and
+no more fuss about bills, you know. Do you know, Belle, that creature
+is just wild about me: he’d like to ransack all the jewellers’ shops in
+New York for me. He’s going up to-morrow, just to choose the engagement
+ring. He says he can’t trust to an order; that he must go and choose
+one worthy of me.”
+
+“Oh! it’s plain enough that that game is all in your hands, as to him,
+Lillie; but, Lil, what will your Cousin Harry say to all this?”
+
+“Well, of course he won’t like it; but I can’t help it if he don’t.
+Harry ought to know that it’s all nonsense for him and me to think of
+marrying. He does know it.”
+
+“To tell the truth, I always thought, Lil, you were more in love with
+Harry than anybody you ever knew.”
+
+Lillie laughed a little, and then the prettiest sweet-pea flush
+deepened the pink of her cheeks.
+
+“To say the truth, Belle, I could have been, if he had been in
+circumstances to marry. But, you see, I am one of those to whom the
+luxuries are essential. I never could rub and scrub and work; in fact,
+I had rather not live at all than live poor; and Harry is poor, and he
+always will be poor. It’s a pity, too, poor fellow, for he’s nice.
+Well, he is off in India! I know he will be tragical and gloomy, and
+all that,” she said; and then the soft child-face smiled to itself in
+the glass,—such a pretty little innocent smile!
+
+All this while, John sat up with his heart beating very fast, writing
+all about his engagement to his sister, and, up to this point, his
+nearest, dearest, most confidential friend. It is almost too bad to
+copy the letter of a shy man who finds himself in love for the first
+time in his life; but we venture to make an extract:—
+
+    “It is not her beauty merely that drew me to her, though
+    she is the most beautiful human being I ever saw: it is the
+    exquisite feminine softness and delicacy of her character,
+    that sympathetic pliability by which she adapts herself to
+    every varying feeling of the heart. You, my dear sister,
+    are the noblest of women, and your place in my heart is
+    still what it always was; but I feel that this dear little
+    creature, while she fills a place no other has ever entered,
+    will yet be a new bond to unite us. She will love us both;
+    she will gradually come into all our ways and opinions,
+    and be insensibly formed by us into a noble womanhood. Her
+    extreme beauty, and the great admiration that has always
+    followed her, have exposed her to many temptations, and
+    caused most ungenerous things to be said of her.
+
+    “Hitherto she has lived only in the fashionable world; and
+    her literary and domestic education, as she herself is
+    sensible, has been somewhat neglected.
+
+    “But she longs to retire from all this; she is sick of
+    fashionable folly, and will come to us to be all our own.
+    Gradually the charming circle of cultivated families which
+    form our society will elevate her taste, and form her mind.
+
+    “Love is woman’s inspiration, and love will lead her to all
+    that is noble and good. My dear sister, think not that any
+    new ties are going to make you any less to me, or touch your
+    place in my heart. I have already spoken of you to Lillie,
+    and she longs to know you. You must be to her what you have
+    always been to me,—guide, philosopher, and friend.
+
+    “I am sure I never felt better impulses, more humble, more
+    thankful, more religious, than I do now. That the happiness
+    of this soft, gentle, fragile creature is to be henceforth
+    in my hands is to me a solemn and inspiring thought. What
+    man is worthy of a refined, delicate woman? I feel my
+    unworthiness of her every hour; but, so help me God, I shall
+    try to be all to her that a husband should; and you, my
+    sister, I know, will help me to make happy the future which
+    she so confidingly trusts to me.
+
+    “Believe me, dear sister, I never was so much your
+    affectionate brother,
+
+                                                 “JOHN SEYMOUR.
+
+    “P.S.—I forgot to tell you that Lillie remarkably resembles
+    the ivory miniature of our dear sainted mother. She was
+    very much affected when I told her of it. I think naturally
+    Lillie has very much such a character as our mother; though
+    circumstances, in her case, have been unfavorable to the
+    development of it.”
+
+Whether the charming vision was realized; whether the little sovereign
+now enthroned will be a just and clement one; what immunities and
+privileges she will allow to her slaves,—is yet to be seen in this
+story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+_WHAT SHE THINKS OF IT._
+
+
+[Illustration: “From John, good fellow.”]
+
+SPRINGDALE was one of those beautiful rural towns whose flourishing
+aspect is a striking exponent of the peculiarities of New-England
+life. The ride through it presents a refreshing picture of wide, cool,
+grassy streets, overhung with green arches of elm, with rows of large,
+handsome houses on either side, each standing back from the street
+in its own retired square of gardens, green turf, shady trees, and
+flowering shrubs. It was, so to speak, a little city of country-seats.
+It spoke of wealth, thrift, leisure, cultivation, quiet, thoughtful
+habits, and moral tastes.
+
+Some of these mansions were of ancestral reputation, and had been in
+the family whose name they bore for generations back; a circumstance
+sometimes occurring even in New-England towns where neither law nor
+custom unites to perpetuate property in certain family lines.
+
+The Seymour house was a well-known, respected mansion for generations
+back. Old Judge Seymour, the grandfather, was the lineal descendant of
+Parson Seymour; the pastor who first came with the little colony of
+Springdale, when it was founded as a church in the wilderness, amid all
+the dangers of wild beasts and Indians.
+
+This present Seymour mansion was founded on the spot where the house of
+the first minister was built by the active hands of his parishioners;
+and, from generation to generation, order, piety, education, and high
+respectability had been the tradition of the place.
+
+The reader will come in with us, on this bright June morning, through
+the grassy front yard, which has only the usual New-England fault of
+being too densely shaded. The house we enter has a wide, cool hall
+running through its centre and out into a back garden, now all aglow
+with every beauty of June. The broad alleys of the garden showed
+bright stores of all sorts of good old-fashioned flowers, well tended
+and kept. Clumps of stately hollyhocks and scarlet peonies; roses of
+every hue, purple, blush, gold-color, and white, were showering down
+their leaves on the grassy turf; honeysuckles climbed and clambered
+over arbors; and great, stately tufts of virgin-white lilies exalted
+their majestic heads in saintly magnificence. The garden was Miss
+Grace Seymour’s delight and pride. Every root in it was fragrant with
+the invisible blossoms of memory,—memories of the mother who loved
+and planted and watched them before her, and the grandmother who had
+cared for them before that. The spirit of these charming old-fashioned
+gardens is the spirit of family love; and, if ever blessed souls from
+their better home feel drawn back to any thing on earth, we think it
+must be to their flower-garden.
+
+Miss Grace had been up early, and now, with her garden hat on, and
+scissors in hand, was coming up the steps with her white apron full
+of roses, white lilies, meadow-sweets, and honeysuckle, for the
+parlor-vases, when the servant handed her a letter.
+
+“From John,” she said, “good fellow;” and then she laid it on the
+mantel-shelf of the parlor, while she busied herself in arranging her
+flowers.
+
+“I must get these into water, or they will wilt,” she said.
+
+The large parlor was like many that you and I have seen in a certain
+respectable class of houses,—wide, cool, shady, and with a mellow
+_old_ tone to every thing in its furniture and belongings. It was
+a parlor of the past, and not of to-day, yet exquisitely neat and
+well-kept. The Turkey carpet was faded: it had been part of the wedding
+furnishing of Grace’s mother, years ago. The great, wide, motherly,
+chintz-covered sofa, which filled a recess commanding the window, was
+as different as possible from any smart modern article of the name.
+The heavy, claw-footed, mahogany chairs; the tall clock that ticked in
+one corner; the footstools and ottomans in faded embroidery,—all spoke
+of days past. So did the portraits on the wall. One was of a fair,
+rosy young girl, in a white gown, with powdered hair dressed high over
+a cushion. It was the portrait of Grace’s mother. Another was that of
+a minister in gown and bands, with black-silk gloved hands holding
+up conspicuously a large Bible. This was the remote ancestor, the
+minister. Then there was the picture of John’s father, placed lovingly
+where the eyes seemed always to be following the slight, white-robed
+figure of the young wife. The walls were papered with an old-fashioned
+paper of a peculiar pattern, bought in France seventy-five years
+before. The vases of India-china that adorned the mantels, the framed
+engravings of architecture and pictures in Rome, all were memorials of
+the taste of those long passed away. Yet the room had a fresh, sweet,
+sociable air. The roses and honeysuckles looked in at the windows; the
+table covered with books and magazines, and the familiar work-basket
+of Miss Grace, with its work, gave a sort of impression of modern
+family household life. It was a wide, open, hospitable, generous-minded
+room, that seemed to breathe a fragrance of invitation and general
+sociability; it was a room full of associations and memories, and its
+daily arrangement and ornamentation made one of the pleasant tasks of
+Miss Grace’s life.
+
+She spread down a newspaper on the large, square centre-table, and,
+emptying her apronful of flowers upon it, took her vases from the
+shelf, and with her scissors sat down to the task of clipping and
+arranging them.
+
+Just then Letitia Ferguson came across the garden, and entered the back
+door after her, with a knot of choice roses in her hand, and a plate of
+seed-cakes covered with a hem-stitched napkin. The Fergusons and the
+Seymours occupied adjoining houses, and were on footing of the most
+perfect undress intimacy. They crossed each other’s gardens, and came
+without knocking into each other’s doors twenty times a day, _apropos_
+to any bit of chit-chat that they might have, a question to ask, a
+passage in a book to show, a household receipt that they had been
+trying. Letitia was the most intimate and confidential friend of Grace.
+In fact, the whole Ferguson family seemed like another portion of the
+Seymour family. There were two daughters, of whom Letitia was the
+eldest. Then came the younger Rose, a nice, charming, well-informed,
+good girl, always cheerful and chatty, and with a decent share of
+ability at talking lively nonsense. The brothers of the family, like
+the young men of New-England country towns generally, were off in
+the world seeking their fortunes. Old Judge Ferguson was a gentleman
+of the old school,—formal, stately, polite, always complimentary to
+ladies, and with a pleasant little budget of old-gentlemanly hobbies
+and prejudices, which it afforded him the greatest pleasure to air
+in the society of his friends. Old Mrs. Ferguson was a pattern of
+motherliness, with her quaint, old-fashioned dress, her elaborate
+caps, her daily and minute inquiries after the health of all her
+acquaintances, and the tender pityingness of her nature for every thing
+that lived and breathed in this world of sin and sorrow.
+
+Letitia and Grace, as two older sisters of families, had a peculiar
+intimacy, and discussed every thing together, from the mode of clearing
+jelly up to the profoundest problems of science and morals. They were
+both charming, well-mannered, well-educated, well-read women, and
+trusted each other to the uttermost with every thought and feeling and
+purpose of their hearts.
+
+As we have said, Letitia Ferguson came in at the back door without
+knocking, and, coming softly behind Miss Grace, laid down her bunch of
+roses among the flowers, and then set down her plate of seed-cakes.
+
+Then she said, “I brought you some specimens of my Souvenir de
+Malmaison bush, and my first trial of your receipt.”
+
+“Oh, thanks!” said Miss Grace: “how charming those roses are! It was
+too bad to spoil your bush, though.”
+
+“No: it does it good to cut them; it will flower all the more. But try
+one of those cakes,—are they right?”
+
+“Excellent! you have hit it exactly,” said Grace; “exactly the right
+proportion of seeds. I was hurrying,” she added, “to get these flowers
+in water, because a letter from John is waiting to be read.”
+
+
+“A letter! How nice!” said Miss Letitia, looking towards the shelf.
+“John is as faithful in writing as if he were your lover.”
+
+“He is the best lover a woman can have,” said Grace, as she busily
+sorted and arranged the flowers. “For my part, I ask nothing better
+than John.”
+
+“Let me arrange for you, while you read your letter,” said Letitia,
+taking the flowers from her friend’s hands.
+
+Miss Grace took down the letter from the mantelpiece, opened, and began
+to read it. Miss Letitia, meanwhile, watched her face, as we often
+carelessly watch the face of a person reading a letter.
+
+Miss Grace was not technically handsome, but she had an interesting,
+kindly, sincere face; and her friend saw gradually a dark cloud rising
+over it, as one watches a shadow on a field.
+
+When she had finished the letter, with a sudden movement she laid her
+head forward on the table among the flowers, and covered her face with
+her hands. She seemed not to remember that any one was present.
+
+Letitia came up to her, and, laying her hand gently on hers, said,
+“What is it, dear?”
+
+Miss Grace lifted her head, and said in a husky voice,—
+
+“Nothing, only it is so sudden! John is engaged!”
+
+“Engaged! to whom?”
+
+“To Lillie Ellis.”
+
+“John engaged to Lillie Ellis?” said Miss Ferguson, in a tone of
+shocked astonishment.
+
+[Illustration: “She laid her head forward on the table.”]
+
+“So he writes me. He is completely infatuated by her.”
+
+“How very sudden!” said Miss Letitia. “Who could have expected it?
+Lillie Ellis is so entirely out of the line of any of the women he has
+ever known.”
+
+“That’s precisely what’s the matter,” said Miss Grace. “John knows
+nothing of any but good, noble women; and he thinks he sees all this in
+Lillie Ellis.”
+
+“There’s nothing to her but her wonderful complexion,” said Miss
+Ferguson, “and her pretty little coaxing ways; but she is the most
+utterly selfish, heartless little creature that ever breathed.”
+
+“Well, _she_ is to be John’s wife,” said Miss Grace, sweeping the
+remainder of the flowers into her apron; “and so ends my life
+with John. I might have known it would come to this. I must make
+arrangements at once for another house and home. This house, so
+much, so dear to me, will be nothing to her; and yet she must be its
+mistress,” she added, looking round on every thing in the room, and
+then bursting into tears.
+
+Now, Miss Grace was not one of the crying sort, and so this emotion
+went to her friend’s heart. Miss Letitia went up and put her arms round
+her.
+
+“Come, Gracie,” she said, “you must not take it so seriously. John is a
+noble, manly fellow. He loves you, and he will always be master of his
+own house.”
+
+“No, he won’t,—no married man ever is,” said Miss Grace, wiping her
+eyes, and sitting up very straight. “No man, that is a gentleman, is
+ever master in his own house. He has only such rights there as his wife
+chooses to give him; and this woman won’t like me, I’m sure.”
+
+“Perhaps she will,” said Letitia, in a faltering voice.
+
+“No, she won’t; because I have no faculty for lying, or playing
+the hypocrite in any way, and I shan’t approve of her. These soft,
+slippery, pretty little fibbing women have always been my abomination.”
+
+“Oh, my _dear_ Grace!” said Miss Ferguson, “do let us make the best of
+it.”
+
+“I _did_ think,” said Miss Grace, wiping her eyes, “that John had some
+sense. I wasn’t such a fool, nor so selfish, as to want him always to
+live for me. I wanted him to marry; and if he had got engaged to your
+Rose, for instance ... O Letitia! I always did so _hope_ that he and
+Rose would like each other.”
+
+“We can’t choose for our brothers,” said Miss Letitia, “and, hard as it
+is, we must make up our minds to love those they bring to us. Who knows
+what good influences may do for poor Lillie Ellis? She never has had
+any yet. Her family are extremely common sort of people, without any
+culture or breeding, and only her wonderful beauty brought them into
+notice; and they have always used that as a sort of stock in trade.”
+
+“And John says, in this letter, that she reminds him of our mother,”
+said Miss Grace; “and he thinks that naturally she was very much such a
+character. Just think of that, now!”
+
+“He must be far gone,” said Miss Ferguson; “but then, you see, she is
+distractingly pretty. She has just the most exquisitely pearly, pure,
+delicate, saint-like look, at times, that you ever saw; and then she
+knows exactly how she does look, and just how to use her looks; and
+John can’t be blamed for believing in her. I, who know all about her,
+am sometimes taken in by her.”
+
+“Well,” said Miss Grace, “Mrs. Lennox was at Newport last summer at the
+time that she was there, and she told me all about her. I think her an
+artful, unscrupulous, unprincipled woman, and her being made mistress
+of this house just breaks up our pleasant sociable life here. She has
+no literary tastes; she does not care for reading or study; she won’t
+like our set here, and she will gradually drive them from the house.
+She won’t like me, and she will want to alienate John from me,—so there
+is just the situation.”
+
+“You may read that letter,” added Miss Grace, wiping her eyes, and
+tossing her brother’s letter into Miss Letitia’s lap. Miss Letitia took
+the letter and read it. “Good fellow!” she exclaimed warmly, “you see
+just what I say,—his heart is all with you.”
+
+“Oh, John’s heart is all right enough!” said Miss Grace; “and I don’t
+doubt his love. He’s the best, noblest, most affectionate fellow in the
+world. I only think he reckons without his host, in thinking he can
+keep all our old relations unbroken, when he puts a new mistress into
+the house, and such a mistress.”
+
+“But if she really loves him”—
+
+“Pshaw! she don’t. That kind of woman can’t love. They are like cats,
+that want to be stroked and caressed, and to be petted, and to lie soft
+and warm; and they will purr to any one that will pet them,—that’s all.
+As for love that leads to any self-sacrifice, they don’t begin to know
+any thing about it.”
+
+“Gracie dear,” said Miss Ferguson, “this sort of thing will never do.
+If you meet your brother in this way, you will throw him off, and,
+maybe, make a fatal breach. Meet it like a good Christian, as you
+are. You know,” she said gently, “where we have a right to carry our
+troubles, and of whom we should ask guidance.”
+
+“Oh, I do know, ’Titia!” said Miss Grace; “but I am letting myself be
+wicked just a little, you know, to relieve my mind. I ought to put
+myself to school to make the best of it; but it came on me so _very_
+suddenly. Yes,” she added, “I am going to take a course of my Bible and
+Fénelon before I see John,—poor fellow.”
+
+“And try to have faith for her,” said Miss Letitia.
+
+“Well, I’ll try to have faith,” said Miss Grace; “but I do trust it
+will be some days before John comes down on me with his raptures,—men
+in love are such fools.”
+
+“But, dear me!” said Miss Letitia, as her head accidentally turned
+towards the window; “who is this riding up? Gracie, as sure as you
+live, it is John himself!”
+
+“John himself!” repeated Miss Grace, becoming pale.
+
+“Now do, dear, be careful,” said Miss Letitia. “I’ll just run out this
+back door and leave you alone;” and just as Miss Letitia’s light heels
+were heard going down the back steps, John’s heavy footsteps were
+coming up the front ones.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+_THE SISTER._
+
+
+GRACE SEYMOUR was a specimen of a class of whom we are happy to say New
+England possesses a great many.
+
+She was a highly cultivated, intelligent, and refined woman, arrived
+at the full age of mature womanhood unmarried, and with no present
+thought or prospect of marriage. I presume all my readers, who are in
+a position to run over the society of our rural New-England towns, can
+recall to their minds hundreds of such. They are women too thoughtful,
+too conscientious, too delicate, to marry for any thing but a purely
+personal affection; and this affection, for various reasons, has not
+fallen in their way.
+
+The tendency of life in these towns is to throw the young men of the
+place into distant fields of adventure and enterprise in the far
+Western and Southern States, leaving at their old homes a population in
+which the feminine element largely predominates. It is not, generally
+speaking, the most cultivated or the most attractive of the brethren
+who remain in the place where they were born. The ardent, the daring,
+the enterprising, are off to the ends of the earth; and the choice of
+the sisters who remain at home is, therefore, confined to a restricted
+list; and so it ends in these delightful rose-gardens of single women
+which abound in New England,—women who remain at home as housekeepers
+to aged parents, and charming persons in society; women over whose
+graces of conversation and manner the married men in their vicinity go
+off into raptures of eulogium, which generally end with, “Why hasn’t
+that woman ever got married?”
+
+It often happens to such women to expend on some brother that stock of
+hero-worship and devotion which it has not come in their way to give to
+a nearer friend. Alas! it is building on a sandy foundation; for, just
+as the union of hearts is complete, the chemical affinity which began
+in the cradle, and strengthens with every year of life, is dissolved
+by the introduction of that third element which makes of the brother a
+husband, while the new combination casts out the old,—sometimes with a
+disagreeable effervescence.
+
+John and Grace Seymour were two only children of a very affectionate
+family; and they had grown up in the closest habits of intimacy. They
+had written to each other those long letters in which thoughtful people
+who live in retired situations delight; letters not of outward events,
+but of sentiments and opinions, the phases of the inner life. They had
+studied and pursued courses of reading together. They had together
+organized and carried on works of benevolence and charity.
+
+The brother and sister had been left joint heirs of a large
+manufacturing property, employing hundreds of hands, in their vicinity;
+and the care and cultivation of these work-people, the education of
+their children, had been most conscientiously upon their minds. Half
+of every Sunday they devoted together to labors in the Sunday school
+of their manufacturing village; and the two worked so harmoniously
+together in the interests of their life, that Grace had never felt the
+want of any domestic ties or relations other than those that she had.
+
+Our readers may perhaps, therefore, concede that, among the many
+claimants for their sympathy in this cross-grained world of ours, some
+few grains of it may properly be due to Grace.
+
+Things are trials that try us: afflictions are what afflict us; and,
+under this showing, Grace was both tried and afflicted by the sudden
+engagement of her brother. When the whole groundwork on which one’s
+daily life is built caves in, and falls into the cellar without one
+moment’s warning, it is not in human nature to pick one’s self up, and
+reconstruct and rearrange in a moment. So Grace thought, at any rate;
+but she made a hurried effort to dash back her tears, and gulp down
+a rising in her throat, anxious only not to be selfish, and not to
+disgust her brother in the outset with any personal egotism.
+
+So she ran to the front door to meet him, and fell into his arms,
+trying so hard to seem congratulatory and affectionate that she broke
+out into sobbing.
+
+“My dear Gracie,” said John, embracing and kissing her with that
+gushing fervor with which newly engaged gentlemen are apt to deluge
+every creature whom they meet, “you’ve got my letter. Well, were not
+you astonished?”
+
+“O John, it was so sudden!” was all poor Grace could say. “And you
+know, John, since mother died, you and I have been all in all to each
+other.”
+
+“And so we shall be, Gracie. Why, yes, of course we shall,” he said,
+stroking her hair, and playing with her trembling, thin, white hands.
+“Why, this only makes me love you the more now; and you will love my
+little Lillie: fact is, you can’t help it. We shall both of us be
+happier for having her here.”
+
+“Well, you know, John, I never saw her,” said Grace, deprecatingly,
+“and so you can’t wonder.”
+
+“Oh, yes, of course! Don’t wonder in the least. It comes rather
+sudden,—and then you haven’t seen her. Look, here is her photograph!”
+said John, producing one from the most orthodox innermost region,
+directly over his heart. “Look there! isn’t it beautiful?”
+
+“It is a very sweet face,” said Grace, exerting herself to be
+sympathetic, and thankful that she could say that much truthfully.
+
+“I can’t imagine,” said John, “what ever made her like me. You know
+she has refused half the fellows in the country. I hadn’t the remotest
+idea that she would have any thing to say to me; but you see there’s no
+accounting for tastes;” and John plumed himself, as young gentlemen do
+who have carried off prizes.
+
+“You see,” he added, “it’s odd, but she took a fancy to me the first
+time she saw me. Now, you know, Gracie, I never found it easy to get
+along with ladies at first; but Lillie has the most extraordinary way
+of putting a fellow at his ease. Why, she made me feel like an old
+friend the first hour.”
+
+[Illustration: “It _is_ a very sweet face.”]
+
+“Indeed!”
+
+“Look here,” said John, triumphantly drawing out his pocket-book, and
+producing thence a knot of rose-colored satin ribbon. “Did you ever
+see such a lovely color as this? It’s so exquisite, you see! Well, she
+always is wearing just such knots of ribbon, the most lovely shades.
+Why, there isn’t one woman in a thousand could wear the things she
+does. Every thing becomes her. Sometimes it’s rose color, or lilac, or
+pale blue,—just the most trying things to others are what she can wear.”
+
+“Dear John, I hope you looked for something deeper than the complexion
+in a wife,” said Grace, driven to moral reflections in spite of herself.
+
+“Oh, of course!” said John: “she has such soft, gentle, winning ways;
+she is so sympathetic; she’s just the wife to make home happy, to
+be a bond of union to us all. Now, in a wife, what we want is just
+that. Lillie’s mind, for instance, hasn’t been cultivated as yours
+and Letitia’s. She isn’t at all that sort of girl. She’s just a dear,
+gentle, little confiding creature, that you’ll delight in. You’ll form
+her mind, and she’ll look up to you. You know she’s young yet.”
+
+“Young, John! Why, she’s seven and twenty,” said Grace, with
+astonishment.
+
+“Oh, no, my dear Gracie! that is all a mistake. She told me herself
+she’s only twenty. You see, the trouble is, she went into company
+injudiciously early, a mere baby, in fact; and that causes her to have
+the name of being older than she is. But, I do assure you, she’s only
+twenty. She told me so herself.”
+
+“Oh, indeed!” said Grace, prudently choking back the contradiction
+which she longed to utter. “I know it seems a good many summers since I
+heard of her as a belle at Newport.”
+
+“Ah, yes, exactly! You see she went into company, as a young lady,
+when she was only thirteen. She told me all about it. Her parents were
+very injudicious, and they pushed her forward. She regrets it now.
+She knows that it wasn’t the thing at all. She’s very sensitive to the
+defects in her early education; but I made her understand that it was
+the _heart_ more than the head that I cared for. I dare say, Gracie,
+she’ll fall into all our little ways without really knowing; and you,
+in point of fact, will be mistress of the house as much as you ever
+were. Lillie is delicate, and never has had any care, and will be only
+too happy to depend on you. She’s one of the gentle, dependent sort,
+you know.”
+
+To this statement, Grace did not reply. She only began nervously
+sweeping together the _débris_ of leaves and flowers which encumbered
+the table, on which the newly arranged flower-vases were standing. Then
+she arranged the vases with great precision on the mantel-shelf. As she
+was doing it, so many memories rushed over her of that room and her
+mother, and the happy, peaceful family life that had hitherto been led
+there, that she quite broke down; and, sitting down in the chair, she
+covered her face, and went off in a good, hearty crying spell.
+
+Poor John was inexpressibly shocked. He loved and revered his sister
+beyond any thing in the world; and it occurred to him, in a dim wise,
+that to be suddenly dispossessed and shut out in the cold, when one has
+hitherto been the first object of affection, is, to make the best of
+it, a real and sore trial.
+
+But Grace soon recovered herself, and rose up smiling through her
+tears. “What a fool I am making of myself!” she said. “The fact is,
+John, I am only a little nervous. You mustn’t mind it. You know,” she
+said, laughing, “we old maids are like cats,—we find it hard to be put
+out of our old routine. I dare say we shall all of us be happier in the
+end for this, and I shall try to do all I can to make it so. Perhaps,
+John, I’d better take that little house of mine on Elm Street, and set
+up my tent in it, and take all the old furniture and old pictures, and
+old-time things. You’ll be wanting to modernize and make over this
+house, you know, to suit a young wife.”
+
+“Nonsense, Gracie; no such thing!” said John. “Do you suppose I want
+to leave all the past associations of my life, and strip my home bare
+of all pleasant memorials, because I bring a little wife here? Why,
+the very idea of a wife is somebody to sympathize in your tastes; and
+Lillie will love and appreciate all these dear old things as you and
+I do. She has such a sympathetic heart! If you want to make me happy,
+Gracie, stay here, and let us live, as near as may be, as before.”
+
+“So we will, John,” said Grace, so cheerfully that John considered the
+whole matter as settled, and rushed upstairs to write his daily letter
+to Lillie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+_PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE._
+
+
+MISS LILLIE ELLIS was sitting upstairs in her virgin bower, which was
+now converted into a tumultuous, seething caldron of millinery and
+mantua-making, such as usually precedes a wedding. To be sure, orders
+had been forthwith despatched to Paris for the bridal regimentals,
+and for a good part of the _trousseau_; but that did not seem in the
+least to stand in the way of the time-honored confusion of sewing
+preparations at home, which is supposed to waste the strength and
+exhaust the health of every bride elect.
+
+Whether young women, while disengaged, do not have proper
+under-clothing, or whether they contemplate marriage as an awful
+gulf which swallows up all future possibilities of replenishing a
+wardrobe,—certain it is that no sooner is a girl engaged to be married
+than there is a blind and distracting rush and pressure and haste to
+make up for her immediately a stock of articles, which, up to that
+hour, she has managed to live very comfortably and respectably without.
+It is astonishing to behold the number of inexpressible things with
+French names which unmarried young ladies never think of wanting, but
+which there is a desperate push to supply, and have ranged in order,
+the moment the matrimonial state is in contemplation.
+
+Therefore it was that the virgin bower of Lillie was knee-deep in a
+tangled mass of stuffs of various hues and description; that the sharp
+sound of tearing off breadths resounded there; that Miss Clippins and
+Miss Snippings and Miss Nippins were sewing there day and night; that
+a sewing-machine was busily rattling in mamma’s room; and that there
+were all sorts of pinking and quilling, and braiding and hemming,
+and whipping and ruffling, and over-sewing and cat-stitching and
+hem-stitching, and other female mysteries, going on.
+
+As for Lillie, she lay in a loose _negligé_ on the bed, ready every
+five minutes to be called up to have something measured, or tried on,
+or fitted; and to be consulted whether there should be fifteen or
+sixteen tucks and then an insertion, or sixteen tucks and a series of
+puffs. Her labors wore upon her; and it was smilingly observed by Miss
+Clippins across to Miss Nippins, that Miss Lillie was beginning to show
+her “engagement bones.” In the midst of these preoccupations, a letter
+was handed to her by the giggling chambermaid. It was a thick letter,
+directed in a bold honest hand. Miss Lillie took it with a languid
+little yawn, finished the last sentences in a chapter of the novel she
+was reading, and then leisurely broke the seal and glanced it over. It
+was the one that the enraptured John had spent his morning in writing.
+
+“Miss Ellis, now, if you’ll try on this jacket—oh! I beg your pardon,”
+said Miss Clippins, observing the letter, “we can wait, _of course_;”
+and then all three laughed as if something very pleasant was in their
+minds.
+
+“No,” said Lillie, giving the letter a toss; “it’ll _keep_;” and she
+stood up to have a jaunty little blue jacket, with its pluffy bordering
+of swan’s down, fitted upon her.
+
+“It’s too bad, now, to take you from your letter,” said Miss Clippins,
+with a sly nod.
+
+“I’m sure you take it philosophically,” said Miss Nippins, with a
+giggle.
+
+“Why shouldn’t I?” said the divine Lillie. “I get one every day; and
+it’s all the old story. I’ve heard it ever since I was born.”
+
+“Well, now, to be sure you have. Let’s see,” said Miss Clippins, “this
+is the seventy-fourth or seventy-fifth offer, was it?”
+
+“Oh, you must ask mamma! she keeps the lists: I’m sure I don’t trouble
+my head,” said the little beauty; and she looked so natty and jaunty
+when she said it, just arching her queenly white neck, and making soft,
+downy dimples in her cheeks as she gave her fresh little childlike
+laugh; turning round and round before the looking-glass, and issuing
+her orders for the fitting of the jacket with a precision and real
+interest which showed that there _were_ things in the world which
+didn’t become old stories, even if one had been used to them ever since
+one was born.
+
+Lillie never was caught napping when the point in question was the fit
+of her clothes.
+
+When released from the little blue jacket, there was a rose-colored
+morning-dress to be tried on, and a grave discussion as to whether the
+honiton lace was to be set on plain or frilled.
+
+So important was this case, that mamma was summoned from the
+sewing-machine to give her opinion. Mrs. Ellis was a fat, fair, rosy
+matron of most undisturbed conscience and digestion, whose main
+business in life had always been to see to her children’s clothes. She
+had brought up Lillie with faithful and religious zeal; that is to say,
+she had always ruffled her underclothes with her own hands, and darned
+her stockings, sick or well; and also, as before intimated, kept a list
+of her offers, which she was ready in confidential moments to tell off
+to any of her acquaintance. The question of ruffled or plain honiton
+was of such vital importance, that the whole four took some time in
+considering it in its various points of view.
+
+“Sarah Selfridge had hers ruffled,” said Lillie.
+
+“And the effect was perfectly sweet,” said Miss Clippins.
+
+“Perhaps, Lillie, you had better have it ruffled,” said mamma.
+
+“But three rows laid on plain has such a lovely effect,” said Miss
+Nippins.
+
+“Perhaps, then, she had better have three rows laid on plain,” said
+mamma.
+
+“Or she might have one row ruffled on the edge, with three rows laid on
+plain, with a satin fold,” said Miss Clippins. “That’s the way I fixed
+Miss Elliott’s.”
+
+“That would be a nice way,” said mamma. “Perhaps, Lillie, you’d better
+have it so.”
+
+“Oh! come now, all of you, just hush,” said Lillie. “I know just how I
+want it done.”
+
+The words may sound a little rude and dictatorial; but Lillie had the
+advantage of always looking so pretty, and saying dictatorial things
+in such a sweet voice, that everybody was delighted with them; and she
+took the matter of arranging the trimming in hand with a clearness of
+head which showed that it was a subject to which she had given mature
+consideration. Mrs. Ellis shook her fat sides with a comfortable
+motherly chuckle.
+
+“Lillie always did know exactly what she wanted: she’s a smart little
+thing.”
+
+And, when all the trying on and arranging of folds and frills and pinks
+and bows was over, Lillie threw herself comfortably upon the bed, to
+finish her letter.
+
+Shrewd Miss Clippins detected the yawn with which she laid down the
+missive.
+
+“Seems to me your letters don’t meet a very warm reception,” she said.
+
+“Well! every day, and such long ones!” Lillie answered, turning over
+the pages. “See there,” she went on, opening a drawer, “What a heap of
+them! I can’t see, for my part, what any one can want to write a letter
+every day to anybody for. John is such a goose about me.”
+
+[Illustration: “Shrewd Miss Clippins detected the yawn.”]
+
+“He’ll get over it after he’s been married six months,” said Miss
+Clippins, nodding her head with the air of a woman that has seen life.
+
+“I’m sure I shan’t care,” said Lillie, with a toss of her pretty head.
+“It’s _borous_ any way.”
+
+Our readers may perhaps imagine, from the story thus far, that our
+little Lillie is by no means the person, in reality, that John supposes
+her to be, when he sits thinking of her with such devotion, and writing
+her such long, “borous” letters.
+
+She is not. John is in love not with the actual Lillie Ellis, but with
+that ideal personage who looks like his mother’s picture, and is the
+embodiment of all his mother’s virtues. The feeling, as it exists in
+John’s mind, is not only a most respectable, but in fact a truly divine
+one, and one that no mortal man ought to be ashamed of. The love that
+quickens all the nature, that makes a man twice manly, and makes him
+aspire to all that is high, pure, sweet, and religious,—is a feeling
+so sacred, that no unworthiness in its object can make it any less
+beautiful. More often than not it is spent on an utter vacancy. Men and
+women both pass through this divine initiation,—this sacred inspiration
+of our nature,—and find, when they have come into the innermost shrine,
+where the divinity ought to be, that there is no god or goddess
+there; nothing but the cold black ashes of commonplace vulgarity and
+selfishness. Both of them, when the grand discovery has been made, do
+well to fold their robes decently about them, and make the best of
+the matter. If they cannot love, they can at least be friendly. They
+can tolerate, as philosophers; pity, as Christians; and, finding just
+where and how the burden of an ill-assorted union galls the least, can
+then and there strap it on their backs, and walk on, not only without
+complaint, but sometimes in a cheerful and hilarious spirit.
+
+Not a word of all this thinks our friend John, as he sits longing,
+aspiring, and pouring out his heart, day after day, in letters that
+interrupt Lillie in the all-important responsibility of getting her
+wardrobe fitted.
+
+Shall we think this smooth little fair-skinned Lillie is a cold-hearted
+monster, because her heart does not beat faster at these letters which
+she does not understand, and which strike her as unnecessarily prolix
+and prosy? Why should John insist on telling her his feelings and
+opinions on a vast variety of subjects that she does not care a button
+for? She doesn’t know any thing about ritualism and anti-ritualism;
+and, what’s more, she doesn’t care. She hates to hear so much about
+religion. She thinks it’s pokey. John may go to any church he pleases,
+for all her. As to all that about his favorite poems, she don’t like
+poetry,—never could,—don’t see any sense in it; and John _will_ be
+quoting ever so much in his letters. Then, as to the love parts,—it may
+be all quite new and exciting to John; but she has, as she said, heard
+that story over and over again, till it strikes her as quite a matter
+of course. Without doubt the whole world is a desert where she is
+not: the thing has been asserted, over and over, by so many gentlemen
+of credible character for truth and veracity, that she is forced to
+believe it; and she cannot see why John is particularly to be pitied
+on this account. He is in no more desperate state about her than the
+rest of them; and secretly Lillie has as little pity for lovers’ pangs
+as a nice little white cat has for mice. They amuse her; they are her
+appropriate recreation; and she pats and plays with each mouse in
+succession, without any comprehension that it may be a serious thing
+for him.
+
+When Lillie was a little girl, eight years old, she used to sell her
+kisses through the slats of the fence for papers of candy, and thus
+early acquired the idea that her charms were a capital to be employed
+in trading for the good things of life. She had the misfortune—and a
+great one it is—to have been singularly beautiful from the cradle, and
+so was praised and exclaimed over and caressed as she walked through
+the streets. She was sent for, far and near; borrowed to be looked at;
+her picture taken by photographers. If one reflects how many foolish
+and inconsiderate people there are in the world, who have no scruple in
+making a pet and plaything of a pretty child, one will see how this one
+unlucky lot of being beautiful in childhood spoiled Lillie’s chances of
+an average share of good sense and goodness. The only hope for such a
+case lies in the chance of possessing judicious parents. Lillie had not
+these. Her father was a shrewd grocer, and nothing more; and her mother
+was a competent cook and seamstress. While he traded in sugar and salt,
+and she made pickles and embroidered under-linen, the pretty Lillie was
+educated as pleased Heaven.
+
+Pretty girls, unless they have wise mothers, are more educated by
+the opposite sex than by their own. Put them where you will, there
+is always some _man_ busying himself in their instruction; and the
+burden of masculine teaching is generally about the same, and might be
+stereotyped as follows: “You don’t need to be or do any thing. Your
+business in life is to look pretty, and amuse us. You don’t need to
+study: you know all by nature that a woman need to know. You are, by
+virtue of being a pretty woman, superior to any thing we can teach
+you; and we wouldn’t, for the world, have you any thing but what you
+are.” When Lillie went to school, this was what her masters whispered
+in her ear as they did her sums for her, and helped her through her
+lessons and exercises, and looked into her eyes. This was what her
+young gentlemen friends, themselves delving in Latin and Greek and
+mathematics, told her, when they came to recreate from their severer
+studies in her smile. Men are held to account for talking sense.
+Pretty women are told that lively nonsense is their best sense. Now
+and then, an admirer bolder than the rest ventured to take Lillie’s
+education more earnestly in hand, and recommended to her just a little
+reading,—enough to enable her to carry on conversation, and appear
+to know something of the ordinary topics discussed in society,—but
+informed her, by the by, that there was no sort of need of being either
+profound or accurate in these matters, as the mistakes of a pretty
+woman had a grace of their own.
+
+At seventeen, Lillie graduated from Dr. Sibthorpe’s school with a
+“finished education.” She had, somehow or other, picked her way
+through various “ologies” and exercises supposed to be necessary for a
+well-informed young lady. She wrote a pretty hand, spoke French with a
+good accent, and could turn a sentimental note neatly; “and that, my
+dear,” said Dr. Sibthorpe to his wife, “is all that a woman needs, who
+so evidently is intended for wife and mother as our little Lillie.” Dr.
+Sibthorpe, in fact, had amused himself with a semi-paternal flirtation
+with his pupil during the whole course of her school exercises, and
+parted from her with tears in his eyes, greatly to her amusement; for
+Lillie, after all, estimated his devotion at just about what it was
+worth. It amused her to see him make a fool of himself.
+
+Of course, the next thing was—to be married; and Lillie’s life now
+became a round of dressing, dancing, going to watering-places,
+travelling, and in other ways seeking the fulfilment of her destiny.
+
+She had precisely the accessible, easy softness of manner that
+leads every man to believe that he may prove a favorite, and her
+run of offers became quite a source of amusement. Her arrival at
+watering-places was noted in initials in the papers; her dress on
+every public occasion was described; and, as acknowledged queen of
+love and beauty, she had everywhere her little court of men and women
+flatterers. The women flatterers around a belle are as much a part of
+the _cortége_ as the men. They repeat the compliments they hear, and
+burn incense in the virgin’s bower at hours when the profaner sex may
+not enter.
+
+The life of a petted creature consists essentially in being deferred
+to, for being pretty and useless. A petted child runs a great risk,
+if it is ever to outgrow childhood; but a pet woman is a perpetual
+child. The pet woman of society is everybody’s toy. Everybody looks
+at her, admires her, praises and flatters her, stirs her up to play
+off her little airs and graces for their entertainment; and passes
+on. Men of profound sense encourage her to chatter nonsense for their
+amusement, just as we delight in the tottering steps and stammering
+mispronunciations of a golden-haired child. When Lillie has been in
+Washington, she has had judges of the supreme court and secretaries
+of state delighted to have her give her opinions in their respective
+departments. Scholars and literary men flocked around her, to the
+neglect of many a more instructed woman, satisfied that she knew enough
+to blunder agreeably on every subject.
+
+Nor is there any thing in the Christian civilization of our present
+century that condemns the kind of life we are describing, as in any
+respect unwomanly or unbecoming. Something very like it is in a measure
+considered as the appointed rule of attractive young girls till they
+are married.
+
+Lillie had numbered among her admirers many lights of the Church. She
+had flirted with bishops, priests, and deacons,—who, none of them,
+would, for the world, have been so ungallant as to quote to her such
+dreadful professional passages as, “She that liveth in pleasure is dead
+while she liveth.”
+
+In fact, the clergy, when off duty, are no safer guides of attractive
+young women than other mortal men; and Lillie had so often seen their
+spiritual attentions degenerate into downright, temporal love-making,
+that she held them in as small reverence as the rest of their sex.
+Only one dreadful John the Baptist of her acquaintance, one of
+the camel’s-hair-girdle and locust-and-wild-honey species, once
+encountering Lillie at Saratoga, and observing the ways and manners
+of the court which she kept there, took it upon him to give her a
+spiritual admonition.
+
+“Miss Lillie,” he said, “I see no chance for the salvation of your
+soul, unless it should please God to send the small-pox upon you. I
+think I shall pray for that.”
+
+“Oh, horrors! don’t! I’d rather never be saved,” Lillie answered with a
+fervent sincerity.
+
+The story was repeated afterwards as an amusing _bon mot_, and a
+specimen of the barbarity to which religious fanaticism may lead; and
+yet we question whether John the Baptist had not the right of it.
+
+For it must at once appear, that, had the small-pox made the
+above-mentioned change in Lillie’s complexion at sixteen, the entire
+course of her life would have taken another turn. The whole world then
+would have united in letting her know that she must live to some useful
+purpose, or be nobody and nothing. Schoolmasters would have scolded her
+if she idled over her lessons; and her breaking down in arithmetic, and
+mistakes in history, would no longer have been regarded as interesting.
+Clergymen, consulted on her spiritual state, would have told her
+freely that she was a miserable sinner, who, except she repented, must
+likewise perish. In short, all those bitter and wholesome truths, which
+strengthen and invigorate the virtues of plain people, might possibly
+have led her a long way on towards saintship.
+
+As it was, little Lillie was confessedly no saint; and yet, if much
+of a sinner, society has as much to answer for as she. She was the
+daughter and flower of the Christian civilization of the nineteenth
+century, and the kind of woman, that, on the whole, men of quite
+distinguished sense have been fond of choosing for wives, and will go
+on seeking to the end of the chapter.
+
+Did she love John? Well, she was quite pleased to be loved by him, and
+she liked the prospect of being his wife. She was sure he would always
+let her have her own way, and that he had a plenty of worldly means to
+do it with.
+
+Lillie, if not very clever in a literary or scientific point of view,
+was no fool. She had, in fact, under all her softness of manner, a
+great deal of that real hard grit which shrewd, worldly people call
+common sense. She saw through all the illusions of fancy and feeling,
+right to the tough material core of things. However soft and tender and
+sentimental her habits of speech and action were in her professional
+capacity of a charming woman, still the fair Lillie, had she been a
+man, would have been respected in the business world, as one that had
+cut her eye-teeth, and knew on which side her bread was buttered.
+
+A husband, she knew very well, was the man who undertook to be
+responsible for his wife’s bills: he was the giver, bringer, and
+maintainer of all sorts of solid and appreciable comforts.
+
+Lillie’s bills had hitherto been sore places in the domestic history of
+her family. The career of a fashionable belle is not to be supported
+without something of an outlay; and that innocence of arithmetical
+combinations, over which she was wont to laugh bewitchingly among her
+adorers, sometimes led to results quite astounding to the prosaic,
+hard-working papa, who stood financially responsible for all her finery.
+
+Mamma had often been called in to calm the tumult of his feelings on
+such semi-annual developments; and she did it by pointing out to him
+that this heavy present expense was an investment by which Lillie was,
+in the end, to make her own fortune and that of her family.
+
+When Lillie contemplated the marriage-service with a view to going
+through it with John, there was one clause that stood out in consoling
+distinctness,—“_With all my worldly goods I thee endow._”
+
+As to the other clause, which contains the dreadful word “obey,” about
+which our modern women have such fearful apprehensions, Lillie was
+ready to swallow it without even a grimace.
+
+“Obey John!” Her face wore a pretty air of droll assurance at the
+thought. It was too funny.
+
+“My dear,” said Belle Trevors, who was one of Lillie’s incense-burners
+and a bridesmaid elect, “_have_ you the least idea how rich he is?”
+
+“He is well enough off to do about any thing I want,” said Lillie.
+
+“Well, you know he owns the whole village of Spindlewood, with all
+those great factories, besides law business,” said Belle. “But then
+they live in a dreadfully slow, pokey way down there in Springdale.
+They haven’t the remotest idea how to use money.”
+
+“I can show him how to use it,” said Lillie.
+
+“He and his sister keep a nice sort of old-fashioned place there, and
+jog about in an old countrified carriage, picking up poor children and
+visiting schools. She is a _very_ superior woman, that sister.”
+
+“I don’t like superior women,” said Lillie.
+
+“But you must like her, you know. John is perfectly devoted to her, and
+I suppose she is to be a fixture in the establishment.”
+
+“We shall see about that,” said Lillie. “One thing at a time. I don’t
+mean he shall live at Springdale. It’s horridly pokey to live in those
+little country towns. He must have a house in New York.”
+
+“And a place at Newport for the summer,” said Belle Trevors.
+
+“Yes,” said Lillie, “a cottage in Newport does very well in the season;
+and then a country place well fitted up to invite company to in the
+other months of summer.”
+
+“Delightful,” said Belle, “_if_ you can make him do it.”
+
+“See if I don’t,” said Lillie.
+
+“You dear, funny creature, you,—how you do always ride on the top of
+the wave!” said Belle.
+
+“It’s what I was born for,” said Lillie. “By the by, Belle, I got a
+letter from Harry last night.”
+
+“Poor fellow, had he heard”—
+
+“Why, of course not. I didn’t want he should till it’s all over. It’s
+best, you know.”
+
+“He is such a good fellow, and so devoted,—it does seem a pity.”
+
+“Devoted! well, I should rather think he was,” said Lillie. “I believe
+he would cut off his right hand for me, any day. But I never gave him
+any encouragement. I’ve always told him I could be to him only as a
+sister, you know.”
+
+“You ought not to write to him,” said Belle.
+
+“What can I do? He is perfectly desperate if I don’t, and still
+persists that he means to marry me some day, spite of my screams.”
+
+“Well, he’ll have to stop making love to you after you’re married.”
+
+“Oh, pshaw! I don’t believe that old-fashioned talk. Lovers make a
+variety in life. I don’t see why a married woman is to give up all the
+fun of having admirers. Of course, one isn’t going to do any thing
+wrong, you know; but one doesn’t want to settle down into Darby and
+Joan at once. Why, some of the young married women, the most stunning
+belles at Newport last year, got a great deal more attention after they
+were married than they did before. You see the fellows like it, because
+they are so sure not to be drawn in.”
+
+“I think it’s too bad on us girls, though,” said Belle. “You ought to
+leave us our turn.”
+
+“Oh! I’ll turn over any of them to you, Belle,” said Lillie. “There’s
+Harry, to begin with. What do you say to him?”
+
+“Thank you, I don’t think I shall take up with second-hand articles,”
+said Belle, with some spirit.
+
+But here the entrance of the chamber-maid, with a fresh dress from
+the dressmaker’s, resolved the conversation into a discussion so very
+minute and technical that it cannot be recorded in our pages.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+_WEDDING, AND WEDDING-TRIP._
+
+
+WELL, and so they were married, with all the newest modern forms,
+ceremonies, and accessories.
+
+Every possible thing was done to reflect lustre on the occasion. There
+were eight bridesmaids, and every one of them fair as the moon; and
+eight groomsmen, with white-satin ribbons and white rosebuds in their
+button-holes; and there was a bishop, assisted by a priest, to give
+the solemn benedictions of the church; and there was a marriage-bell
+of tuberoses and lilies, of enormous size, swinging over the heads of
+the pair at the altar; and there were voluntaries on the organ, and
+chantings, and what not, all solemn and impressive as possible. In the
+midst of all this, the fair Lillie promised, “forsaking all others, to
+keep only unto him, so long as they both should live,”—“to love, honor,
+and obey, until death did them part.”
+
+During the whole agitating scene, Lillie kept up her presence of mind,
+and was perfectly aware of what she was about; so that a very fresh,
+original, and crisp style of trimming, that had been invented in Paris
+specially for her wedding toilet, received no detriment from the
+least unguarded movement. We much regret that it is contrary to our
+literary principles to write half, or one third, in French; because
+the wedding-dress, by far the most important object on this occasion,
+and certainly one that most engrossed the thoughts of the bride, was
+one entirely indescribable in English. Just as there is no word in the
+Hottentot vocabulary for “holiness,” or “purity,” so there are no words
+in our savage English to describe a lady’s dress; and, therefore, our
+fair friends must be recommended, on this point, to exercise their
+imagination in connection with the study of the finest French plates,
+and they may get some idea of Lillie in her wedding robe and train.
+
+Then there was the wedding banquet, where everybody ate quantities of
+the most fashionable, indigestible horrors, with praiseworthy courage
+and enthusiasm; for what is to become of “_paté de fois gras_” if we
+don’t eat it? What is to become of us if we do is entirely a secondary
+question.
+
+On the whole, there was not one jot nor tittle of the most exorbitant
+requirements of fashion that was not fulfilled on this occasion. The
+house was a crush of wilting flowers, and smelt of tuberoses enough
+to give one a vertigo for a month. A band of music brayed and clashed
+every minute of the time; and a jam of people, in elegant dresses,
+shrieked to each other above the din, and several of Lillie’s former
+admirers got tipsy in the supper-room. In short, nothing could be
+finer; and it was agreed, on all hands, that it was “stunning.”
+Accounts of it, and of all the bride’s dresses, presents, and even
+wardrobe, went into the daily papers; and thus was the charming Lillie
+Ellis made into Mrs. John Seymour.
+
+Then followed the approved wedding journey, the programme of which had
+been drawn up by Lillie herself, with _carte blanche_ from John, and
+included every place where a bride’s new toilets could be seen in the
+most select fashionable circles. They went to Niagara and Trenton, they
+went to Newport and Saratoga, to the White Mountains and Montreal;
+and Mrs. John Seymour was a meteor of fashionable wonder and delight
+at all these places. Her dresses and her diamonds, her hats and her
+bonnets, were all wonderful to behold. The stir and excitement that
+she had created as simple Miss Ellis was nothing to the stir and
+excitement about Mrs. John Seymour. It was the mere grub compared with
+the full-blown butterfly,—the bud compared with the rose. Wherever she
+appeared, her old admirers flocked in her train. The unmarried girls
+were, so to speak, nowhere. Marriage was a new lease of power and
+splendor, and she revelled in it like a humming-bird in the sunshine.
+
+And was John equally happy? Well, to say the truth, John’s head was a
+little turned by the possession of this curious and manifold creature,
+that fluttered and flapped her wings about the eyes and ears of his
+understanding, and appeared before him every day in some new device
+of the toilet, fair and fresh; smiling and bewitching, kissing and
+coaxing, laughing and crying, and in all ways bewildering him, the
+once sober-minded John, till he scarce knew whether he stood on his
+head or his heels. He knew that this sort of rattling, scatter-brained
+life must come to an end some time. He knew there was a sober,
+serious life-work for him; something that must try his mind and soul
+and strength, and that would, by and by, leave him neither time nor
+strength to be the mere wandering _attaché_ of a gay bird, whose string
+he held in hand, and who now seemed to pull him hither and thither at
+her will.
+
+John thought of all these things at intervals; and then, when he
+thought of the quiet, sober, respectable life at Springdale, of the
+good old staple families, with their steady ways,—of the girls in his
+neighborhood with their reading societies, their sewing-circles for
+the poor, their book-clubs and art-unions for practice in various
+accomplishments,—he thought, with apprehension, that there appeared
+not a spark of interest in his charmer’s mind for any thing in this
+direction. She never had read any thing,—knew nothing on all those
+subjects about which the women and young girls in his circle were
+interested; while, in Springdale, there were none of the excitements
+which made her interested in life. He could not help perceiving that
+Lillie’s five hundred particular friends were mostly of the other sex,
+and wondering whether he alone, when the matter should be reduced to
+that, could make up to her for all her retinue of slaves.
+
+Like most good boys who grow into good men, John had unlimited faith
+in women. Whatever little defects and flaws they might have, still
+at heart he supposed they were all of the same substratum as his
+mother and sister. The moment a woman was married, he imagined that
+all the lovely domestic graces would spring up in her, no matter what
+might have been her previous disadvantages, merely because she was a
+woman. He had no doubt of the usual orthodox oak-and-ivy theory in
+relation to man and woman; and that his wife, when he got one, would
+be the clinging ivy that would bend her flexible tendrils in the way
+his strong will and wisdom directed. He had never, perhaps, seen, in
+southern regions, a fine tree completely smothered and killed in the
+embraces of a gay, flaunting parasite; and so received no warning from
+vegetable analogies.
+
+Somehow or other, he was persuaded, he should gradually bring his wife
+to all his own ways of thinking, and all his schemes and plans and
+opinions. This might, he thought, be difficult, were she one of the
+pronounced, strong-minded sort, accustomed to thinking and judging for
+herself. Such a one, he could easily imagine, there might be a risk
+in encountering in the close intimacy of domestic life. Even in his
+dealings with his sister, he was made aware of a force of character and
+a vigor of intellect that sometimes made the carrying of his own way
+over hers a matter of some difficulty. Were it not that Grace was the
+best of women, and her ways always the very best of ways, John was not
+so sure but that she might prove a little too masterful for him.
+
+But this lovely bit of pink and white; this downy, gauzy, airy little
+elf; this creature, so slim and slender and unsubstantial,—surely he
+need have no fear that he could not mould and control and manage her?
+Oh, no! He imagined her melting, like a moon-beam, into all manner of
+sweet compliances, becoming an image and reflection of his own better
+self; and repeated to himself the lines of Wordsworth,—
+
+    “I saw her, on a nearer view,
+     A spirit, yet a woman too,—
+     Her household motions light and free,
+     And steps of virgin liberty.
+     A creature not too bright or good
+     For human nature’s daily food,
+     For transient pleasures, simple wiles,
+     Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.”
+
+John fancied he saw his little Lillie subdued into a pattern wife,
+weaned from fashionable follies, eagerly seeking mental improvement
+under his guidance, and joining him and Grace in all sorts of edifying
+works and ways.
+
+The reader may see, from the conversations we have detailed, that
+nothing was farther from Lillie’s intentions than any such conformity.
+
+The intentions of the married pair, in fact, ran exactly contrary to
+one another. John meant to bring Lillie to a sober, rational, useful
+family life; and Lillie meant to run a career of fashionable display,
+and make John pay for it.
+
+Neither, at present, stated their purposes precisely to the other,
+because they were “honey-mooning.” John, as yet, was the enraptured
+lover; and Lillie was his pink and white sultana,—his absolute
+mistress, her word was law, and his will was hers. How the case was
+ever to be reversed, so as to suit the terms of the marriage service,
+John did not precisely inquire.
+
+But, when husband and wife start in life with exactly opposing
+intentions, which, think you, is likely to conquer,—the man, or
+the woman? That is a very nice question, and deserves further
+consideration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+_HONEY-MOON, AND AFTER._
+
+
+WE left Mr. and Mrs. John Seymour honey-mooning. The honey-moon, dear
+ladies, is supposed to be the period of male subjection. The young
+queen is enthroned; and the first of her slaves walks obediently in her
+train, carries her fan, her parasol, runs of her errands, packs her
+trunk, writes her letters, buys her any thing she cries for, and is
+ready to do the impossible for her, on every suitable occasion.
+
+A great strong man sometimes feels awkwardly, when thus led captive;
+but the greatest, strongest, and most boastful, often go most
+obediently under woman-rule; for which, see Shakspeare, concerning
+Cleopatra and Julius Cæsar and Mark Antony.
+
+But then all kingdoms, and all sway, and all authority must come to
+an end. Nothing lasts, you see. The plain prose of life must have its
+turn, after the poetry and honey-moons—stretch them out to their utmost
+limit—have their terminus.
+
+So, at the end of six weeks, John and Lillie, somewhat dusty and
+travel-worn, were received by Grace into the old family-mansion at
+Springdale.
+
+Grace had read her Bible and Fénelon to such purpose, that she had
+accepted her cross with open arms.
+
+Dear reader, Grace was not a severe, angular, old-maid sister, ready to
+snarl at the advent of a young beauty; but an elegant and accomplished
+woman, with a wide culture, a trained and disciplined mind, a
+charming taste, and polished manners; and, above all, a thorough
+self-understanding and discipline. Though past thirty, she still had
+admirers and lovers; yet, till now, her brother, insensibly to herself,
+had blocked up the doorway of her heart; and the perfectness of the
+fraternal friendship had prevented the wish and the longing by which
+some fortunate man might have found and given happiness.
+
+Grace had resolved she would love her new sister; that she would look
+upon all her past faults and errors with eyes of indulgence; that she
+would put out of her head every story she ever had heard against her,
+and unite with her brother to make her lot a happy one.
+
+“John is so good a man,” she said to Miss Letitia Ferguson, “that I am
+sure Lillie cannot but become a good woman.”
+
+So Grace adorned the wedding with her presence, in an elegant Parisian
+dress, ordered for the occasion, and presented the young bride with a
+set of pearl and amethyst that were perfectly bewitching, and kisses
+and notes of affection had been exchanged between them; and during
+various intervals, and for weeks past, Grace had been pleasantly
+employed in preparing the family-mansion to receive the new mistress.
+
+John’s bachelor apartments had been new furnished, and furbished, and
+made into a perfect bower of roses.
+
+The rest of the house, after the usual household process of
+purification, had been rearranged, as John and his sister had always
+kept it since their mother’s death in the way that she loved to see
+it. There was something quaint and sweet and antique about it, that
+suited Grace. Its unfashionable difference from the smart, flippant,
+stereotyped rooms of to-day had a charm in her eyes.
+
+Lillie, however, surveyed the scene, the first night that she took
+possession, with a quiet determination to re-modernize on the very
+earliest opportunity. What would Mrs. Frippit and Mrs. Nippit say to
+such rooms, she thought. But then there was time enough to attend
+to that. Not a shade of these internal reflections was visible in
+her manner. She said, “Oh, how sweet! How perfectly charming! How
+splendid!” in all proper places; and John was delighted.
+
+She also fell into the arms of Grace, and kissed her with effusion; and
+John saw the sisterly union, which he had anticipated, auspiciously
+commencing.
+
+The only trouble in Grace’s mind was from a terrible sort of
+clairvoyance that seems to beset very sincere people, and makes them
+sensitive to the presence of any thing unreal or untrue. Fair and soft
+and caressing as the new sister was, and determined as Grace was to
+believe in her, and trust her, and like her,—she found an invisible,
+chilly barrier between her heart and Lillie. She scolded herself, and,
+in the effort to confide, became unnaturally demonstrative, and said
+and did more than was her wont to show affection; and yet, to her own
+mortification, she found herself, after all, seeming to herself to be
+hypocritical, and professing more than she felt.
+
+As to the fair Lillie, who, as we have remarked, was no fool, she
+took the measure of her new sister with that instinctive knowledge of
+character which is the essence of womanhood. Lillie was not in love
+with John, because that was an experience she was not capable of.
+But she had married him, and now considered him as her property, her
+subject,—_hers_, with an intensity of ownership that should shut out
+all former proprietors.
+
+We have heard much talk, of late, concerning the husband’s ownership
+of the wife. But, dear ladies, is that any more pronounced a fact than
+every wife’s ownership of her husband?—an ownership so intense and
+pervading that it may be said to be the controlling nerve of womanhood.
+Let any one touch your right to the first place in your husband’s
+regard, and see!
+
+Well, then, Lillie saw at a glance just what Grace was, and what her
+influence with her brother must be; and also that, in order to live the
+life she meditated, John must act under her sway, and not under his
+sister’s; and so the resolve had gone forth, in her mind, that Grace’s
+dominion in the family should come to an end, and that she would, as
+sole empress, reconstruct the state. But, of course, she was too wise
+to say a word about it.
+
+“Dear me!” she said, the next morning, when Grace proposed showing her
+through the house and delivering up the keys, “I’m sure I don’t see why
+you want to show things to me. I’m nothing of a housekeeper, you know:
+all I know is what I want, and I’ve always had what I wanted, you know;
+but, you see, I haven’t the least idea how it’s to be done. Why, at
+home I’ve been everybody’s baby. Mamma laughs at the idea of my knowing
+any thing. So, Grace dear, you must just be prime minister; and I’ll be
+the good-for-nothing Queen, and just sign the papers, and all that, you
+know.”
+
+Grace found, the first week, that to be housekeeper to a young duchess,
+in an American village and with American servants, was no sinecure.
+
+The young mistress, the next week, tumbled into the wash an amount of
+muslin and lace and French puffing and fluting sufficient to employ
+two artists for two or three days, and by which honest Bridget, as she
+stood at her family wash-tub, was sorely perplexed.
+
+But, in America, no woman ever dies for want of speaking her mind; and
+the lower orders have their turn in teaching the catechism to their
+superiors, which they do with an effectiveness that does credit to
+democracy.
+
+“And would ye be plased to step here, Miss Saymour,” said Bridget to
+Grace, in a voice of suppressed emotion, and pointing oratorically,
+with her soapy right arm, to a snow-wreath of French finery and puffing
+on the floor. “What I asks, Miss Grace, is, _Who_ is to do all this?
+I’m sure it would take me and Katy a week, workin’ day and night, let
+alone the cookin’ and the silver and the beds, and all them. It’s a
+pity, now, somebody shouldn’t spake to that young crather; fur she’s
+nothin’ but a baby, and likely don’t know any thing, as ladies mostly
+don’t, about what’s right and proper.” Bridget’s Christian charity and
+condescension in this last sentence was some mitigation of the crisis;
+but still Grace was appalled. We all of us, my dear sisters, have stood
+appalled at the tribunal of good Bridgets rising in their majesty and
+declaring their ultimatum.
+
+[Illustration: “_Who_ is to do all this?”]
+
+Bridget was a treasure in the town of Springdale, where servants
+were scarce and poor; and, what was more, she was a treasure that
+knew her own worth. Grace knew very well how she had been beset with
+applications and offers of higher wages to draw her to various hotels
+and boarding-houses in the vicinity, but had preferred the comparative
+dignity and tranquillity of a private gentleman’s family.
+
+But the family had been small, orderly, and systematic, and Grace the
+most considerate of housekeepers. Still it was not to be denied, that,
+though an indulgent and considerate mistress, Bridget was, in fact,
+mistress of the Seymour mansion, and that her mind and will concerning
+the washing must be made known to the young queen.
+
+It was a sore trial to speak to Lillie; but it would be sorer to be
+left at once desolate in the kitchen department, and exposed to the
+marauding inroads of unskilled Hibernians.
+
+In the most delicate way, Grace made Lillie acquainted with the
+domestic crisis; as, in old times, a prime minister might have carried
+to one of the Charleses the remonstrance and protest of the House of
+Commons.
+
+“Oh! I’m sure I don’t know how it’s to be done,” said Lillie, gayly.
+“Mamma always got my things done _somehow_. They always _were_ done,
+and always must be: you just tell her so. I think it’s always best to
+be decided with servants. Face ’em down in the beginning.”
+
+“But you see, Lillie dear, it’s almost impossible to _get_ servants
+at all in Springdale; and such servants as ours everybody says are an
+exception. If we talk to Bridget in that way, she’ll just go off and
+leave us; and then what shall we do?”
+
+“What in the world does John want to live in such a place for?” said
+Lillie, peevishly. “There are plenty of servants to be got in New York;
+and that’s the only place fit to live in. Well, it’s no affair of mine!
+Tell John he married me, and must take care of me. He must settle it
+some way: I shan’t trouble my head about it.”
+
+The idea of living in New York, and uprooting the old time-honored
+establishment in Springdale, struck Grace as a sort of sacrilege;
+yet she could not help feeling, with a kind of fear, that the young
+mistress had power to do it.
+
+“Don’t, darling, talk so, for pity’s sake,” she said. “I will go to
+John, and we will arrange it somehow.”
+
+A long consultation with faithful John, in the evening, revealed to
+him the perplexing nature of the material processes necessary to get
+up his fair puff of thistledown in all that wonderful whiteness and
+fancifulness of costume which had so entranced him.
+
+Lillie cried, and said she never had any trouble before about “getting
+her things done.” She was sure mamma or Trixie or somebody did them,
+or got them done,—she never knew how or when. With many tears and
+sobs, she protested her ardent desire to realize the Scriptural idea
+of the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field, which were fed
+and clothed, “like Solomon in all his glory,” without ever giving a
+moment’s care to the matter.
+
+John kissed and embraced, and wiped away her tears, and declared she
+should have every thing just as she desired it, if it took the half of
+his kingdom.
+
+After consoling his fair one, he burst into Grace’s room in the
+evening, just at the hour when they used to have their old brotherly
+and sisterly confidential talks.
+
+“You see, Grace,—poor Lillie, dear little thing,—you don’t know how
+distressed she is; and, Grace, we must find somebody to do up all her
+fol-de-rols and fizgigs for her, you know. You see, she’s been _used_
+to this kind of thing; can’t do without it.”
+
+“Well, I’ll try to-morrow, John,” said Grace, patiently. “There is Mrs.
+Atkins,—she is a very nice woman.”
+
+“Oh, exactly! just the thing,” said John. “Yes, we’ll get her to take
+all Lillie’s things every week. That settles it.”
+
+“Do you know, John, at the prices that Mrs. Atkins asks, you will have
+to pay more than for all your family service together? What we have
+this week would be twenty dollars, at the least computation; and it is
+worth it too,—the work of getting up is so elaborate.”
+
+John opened his eyes, and looked grave. Like all stable New-England
+families, the Seymours, while they practised the broadest liberality,
+had instincts of great sobriety in expense. Needless profusion shocked
+them as out of taste; and a quiet and decent reticence in matters of
+self-indulgence was habitual with them.
+
+Such a price for the fine linen of his little angel rather staggered
+him; but he gulped it down.
+
+“Well, well, Gracie,” he said, “cost what it may, she must have it as
+she likes it. The little creature, you see, has never been accustomed
+to calculate or reflect in these matters; and it is trial enough to
+come down to our stupid way of living,—so different, you know, from the
+gay life she has been leading.”
+
+Miss Seymour’s saintship was somewhat rudely tested by this remark.
+That anybody should think it a sacrifice to be John’s wife, and a
+trial to accept the homestead at Springdale, with all its tranquillity
+and comforts,—that John, under her influence, should speak of the
+Springdale life as _stupid_,—was a little drop too much in her cup. A
+bright streak appeared in either cheek, as she said,—
+
+“Well, John, I never knew you found Springdale stupid before. I’m sure,
+we _have_ been happy here,”—and her voice quavered.
+
+“Pshaw, Gracie! you know what I mean. I don’t mean that _I_ find
+it stupid. I don’t like the kind of rattle-brained life we’ve been
+leading this six weeks. But, then, it just suits Lillie; and it’s so
+sweet and patient of her to come here and give it all up, and say not
+a word of regret; and then, you see, I shall be just up to my ears in
+business now, and can’t give up all my time to her, as I have. There’s
+ever so much law business coming on, and all the factory matters at
+Spindlewood; and I can see that Lillie will have rather a hard time of
+it. You must devote yourself to her, Gracie, like a dear, good soul,
+as you always were, and try to get her interested in our kind of life.
+Of course, all our set will call, and that will be something; and
+then—there will be some invitations out.”
+
+“Oh, yes, John! we’ll manage it,” said Grace, who had by this time
+swallowed her anger, and shouldered her cross once more with a womanly
+perseverance. “Oh, yes! the Fergusons, and the Wilcoxes, and the
+Lennoxes, will all call; and we shall have picnics, and lawn teas, and
+musicals, and parties.”
+
+“Yes, yes, I see,” said John. “Gracie, _isn’t_ she a dear little
+thing? Didn’t she look cunning in that white wrapper this morning? How
+do women do those things, I wonder?” said John. “Don’t you think her
+manners are lovely?”
+
+“They are very sweet, and she is charmingly pretty,” said Grace; “and I
+love her dearly.”
+
+“And so affectionate! Don’t you think so?” continued John. “She’s a
+person that you can do any thing with through her heart. She’s all
+heart, and very little head. I ought not to say that, either. I think
+she has fair natural abilities, had they ever been cultivated.”
+
+“My dear John,” said Grace, “you forget what time it is. Good-night!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+_WILL SHE LIKE IT?_
+
+
+“JOHN,” said Grace, “when are you going out again to our Sunday school
+at Spindlewood? They are all asking after you. Do you know it is now
+two months since they have seen you?”
+
+“I know it,” said John. “I am going to-morrow. You see, Gracie, I
+couldn’t well before.”
+
+“Oh! I have told them all about it, and I have kept things up; but then
+there are so many who want to see _you_, and so many things that you
+alone could settle and manage.”
+
+“Oh, yes! I’ll go to-morrow,” said John. “And, after this, I shall
+be steady at it. I wonder if we could get Lillie to go,” said he,
+doubtfully.
+
+Grace did not answer. Lillie was a subject on which it was always
+embarrassing to her to be appealed to. She was so afraid of appearing
+jealous or unappreciative; and her opinions were so different from
+those of her brother, that it was rather difficult to say any thing.
+
+“Do you think she would like it, Grace?”
+
+“Indeed, John, you must know better than I. If anybody could make her
+take an interest in it, it would be you.”
+
+Before his marriage, John had always had the idea that pretty,
+affectionate little women were religious and self-denying at heart, as
+matters of course. No matter through what labyrinths of fashionable
+follies and dissipation they had been wandering, still a talent for
+saintship was lying dormant in their natures, which it needed only the
+touch of love to develop. The wings of the angel were always concealed
+under the fashionable attire of the belle, and would unfold themselves
+when the hour came. A nearer acquaintance with Lillie, he was forced
+to confess, had not, so far, confirmed this idea. Though hers was a
+face so fair and pure that, when he first knew her, it suggested ideas
+of prayer, and communion with angels, yet he could not disguise from
+himself that, in all near acquaintance with her, she had proved to
+be most remarkably “of the earth, earthy.” She was alive and fervent
+about fashionable gossip,—of who is who, and what does what; she was
+alive to equipages, to dress, to sightseeing, to dancing, to any thing
+of which the whole stimulus and excitement was earthly and physical.
+At times, too, he remembered that she had talked a sort of pensive
+sentimentalism, of a slightly religious nature; but the least idea
+of a moral purpose in life—of self-denial, and devotion to something
+higher than immediate self-gratification—seemed never to have entered
+her head. What is more, John had found his attempts to introduce such
+topics with her always unsuccessful. Lillie either gaped in his face,
+and asked him what time it was; or playfully pulled his whiskers, and
+asked him why he didn’t take to the ministry; or adroitly turned the
+conversation with kissing and compliments.
+
+Sunday morning came, shining down gloriously through the dewy
+elm-arches of Springdale. The green turf on either side of the wide
+streets was mottled and flecked with vivid flashes and glimmers of
+emerald, like the sheen of a changeable silk, as here and there long
+arrows of sunlight darted down through the leaves and touched the
+ground.
+
+The gardens between the great shady houses that flanked the street were
+full of tall white and crimson phloxes in all the majesty of their
+summer bloom, and the air was filled with fragrance; and Lillie, after
+a two hours’ toilet, came forth from her chamber fresh and lovely as
+the bride in the Canticles. “Thou art all fair, my love; there is
+no spot in thee.” She was killingly dressed in the rural-simplicity
+style. All her robes and sashes were of purest white; and a knot of
+field-daisies and grasses, with French dew-drops on them, twinkled
+in an infinitesimal bonnet on her little head, and her hair was all
+_créped_ into a filmy golden aureole round her face. In short, dear
+reader, she was a perfectly got-up angel, and wanted only some tulle
+clouds and an opening heaven to have gone up at once, as similar angels
+do from the Parisian stage.
+
+“You like me, don’t you?” she said, as she saw the delight in John’s
+eyes.
+
+John was tempted to lay hold of his plaything.
+
+“Don’t, now,—you’ll crumple me,” she said, fighting him off with a
+dainty parasol. “Positively you shan’t touch me till after church.”
+
+John laid the little white hand on his arm with pride, and looked down
+at her over his shoulder all the way to church. He felt proud of her.
+They would look at her, and see how pretty she was, he thought. And
+so they did. Lillie had been used to admiration in church. It was one
+of her fields of triumph. She had received compliments on her toilet
+even from young clergymen, who, in the course of their preaching and
+praying, found leisure to observe the beauties of nature and grace in
+their congregation. She had been quite used to knowing of young men
+who got good seats in church simply for the purpose of seeing her;
+consequently, going to church had not the moral advantages for her that
+it has for people who go simply to pray and be instructed. John saw the
+turning of heads, and the little movements and whispers of admiration;
+and his heart was glad within him. The thought of her mingled with
+prayer and hymn; even when he closed his eyes, and bowed his head, she
+was there.
+
+Perhaps this was not exactly as it should be; yet let us hope the
+angels look tenderly down on the sins of too much love. John felt as if
+he would be glad of a chance to die for her; and, when he thought of
+her in his prayers, it was because he loved her better than himself.
+
+As to Lillie, there was an extraordinary sympathy of sentiment between
+them at that moment. John was thinking only of her; and she was
+thinking only of herself, as was her usual habit,—herself, the one
+object of her life, the one idol of her love.
+
+Not that she knew, in so many words, that she, the little, frail bit of
+dust and ashes that she was, was her own idol, and that she appeared
+before her Maker, in those solemn walls, to draw to herself the homage
+and the attention that was due to God alone; but yet it was true
+that, for years and years, Lillie’s unconfessed yet only motive for
+appearing in church had been the display of herself, and the winning of
+admiration.
+
+But is she so much worse than others?—than the clergyman who uses the
+pulpit and the sacred office to show off his talents?—than the singers
+who sing God’s praises to show their voices,—who intone the agonies
+of their Redeemer, or the glories of the _Te Deum_, confident on the
+comments of the newspaper press on their performance the next week? No:
+Lillie may be a little sinner, but not above others in this matter.
+
+“Lillie,” said John to her after dinner, assuming a careless,
+matter-of-course air, “would you like to drive with me over to
+Spindlewood, and see my Sunday school?”
+
+“_Your_ Sunday school, John? Why, bless me! do _you_ teach Sunday
+school?”
+
+“Certainly I do. Grace and I have a school of two hundred children and
+young people belonging to our factories. I am superintendent.”
+
+“I never did hear of any thing so odd!” said Lillie. “What in the world
+can you want to take all that trouble for,—go basking over there in
+the hot sun, and be shut up with a room full of those ill-smelling
+factory-people? Why, I’m sure it can’t be your duty! I wouldn’t do it
+for the world. Nothing would tempt me. Why, gracious, John, you might
+catch small-pox or something!”
+
+“Pooh! Lillie, child, you don’t know any thing about them. They are
+just as cleanly and respectable as anybody.”
+
+“Oh, well! they may be. But these Irish and Germans and Swedes and
+Danes, and all that low class, do smell so,—you needn’t tell me,
+now!—that working-class smell is a thing that can’t be disguised.”
+
+“But, Lillie, these are our people. They are the laborers from whose
+toils our wealth comes; and we owe them something.”
+
+“Well! you pay them something, don’t you?”
+
+“I mean morally. We owe our efforts to instruct their children, and
+to elevate and guide them. Lillie, I feel that it is wrong for us to
+use wealth merely as a means of self-gratification. We ought to labor
+for those who labor for us. We ought to deny ourselves, and make some
+sacrifices of ease for their good.”
+
+“You dear old preachy creature!” said Lillie. “How good you must be!
+But, really, I haven’t the smallest vocation to be a missionary,—not
+the smallest. I can’t think of any thing that would induce me to take a
+long, hot ride in the sun, and to sit in that stived-up room with those
+common creatures.”
+
+John looked grave. “Lillie,” he said, “you shouldn’t speak of any of
+your fellow-beings in that heartless way.”
+
+“Well now, if you are going to scold me, I’m sure I don’t want to go.
+I’m sure, if everybody that stays at home, and has comfortable times,
+Sundays, instead of going out on missions, is heartless, there are a
+good many heartless people in the world.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, my darling. I didn’t mean, dear, that _you_ were
+heartless, but that what you said _sounded_ so. I knew you didn’t
+really mean it. I didn’t ask you, dear, to go to _work_,—only to be
+company for me.”
+
+“And I ask you to stay at home, and be company for _me_. I’m sure it is
+lonesome enough here, and you are off on business almost all your days;
+and you might stay with me Sundays. You could hire some poor, pious
+young man to do all the work over there. There are plenty of them, dear
+knows, that it would be a real charity to help, and that could preach
+and pray better than you can, I know. I don’t think a man that is busy
+all the week ought to work Sundays. It is breaking the Sabbath.”
+
+“But, Lillie, I am _interested_ in my Sunday school. I know all my
+people, and they know me; and no one else in the world could do for
+them what I could.”
+
+“Well, I should think you might be interested in _me_: nobody else can
+do for me what you can, and I want you to stay with me. That’s just the
+way with you men: you don’t care any thing about us after you get us.”
+
+“Now, Lillie, darling, you know that isn’t so.”
+
+“It’s just so. You care more for your old missionary work, now,
+than you do for me. I’m sure I never knew that I’d married a
+home-missionary.”
+
+“Darling, please, now, don’t laugh at me, and try to make me selfish
+and worldly. You have such power over me, you ought to be my
+inspiration.”
+
+“I’ll be your common-sense, John. When you get on stilts, and run
+benevolence into the ground, I’ll pull you down. Now, I know it must
+be bad for a man, that has as much as you do to occupy his mind all
+the week, to go out and work Sundays; and it’s foolish, when you could
+perfectly well hire somebody else to do it, and stay at home, and have
+a good time.”
+
+“But, Lillie, I _need_ it myself.”
+
+“Need it,—what for? I can’t imagine.”
+
+“To keep me from becoming a mere selfish, worldly man, and living for
+mere material good and pleasure.”
+
+“You dear old Don Quixote! Well, you are altogether in the clouds above
+me. I can’t understand a word of all that.”
+
+“Well, good-by, darling,” said John, kissing her, and hastening out of
+the room, to cut short the interview.
+
+Milton has described the peculiar influence of woman over man, in
+lowering his moral tone, and bringing him down to what he considered
+the peculiarly womanly level. “You women,” he said to his wife, when
+she tried to induce him to seek favors at court by some concession of
+principle,—“you women never care for any thing but to be fine, and to
+ride in your coaches.” In Father Adam’s description of the original
+Eve, he says,—
+
+    “All higher knowledge in her presence falls
+     Degraded; wisdom, in discourse with her,
+     Loses, discountenanced, and like folly shows.”
+
+Something like this effect was always produced on John’s mind when he
+tried to settle questions relating to his higher nature with Lillie. He
+seemed, somehow, always to get the worst of it. All her womanly graces
+and fascinations, so powerful over his senses and imagination, arrayed
+themselves formidably against him, and for the time seemed to strike
+him dumb. What he believed, and believed with enthusiasm, when he was
+alone, or with Grace, seemed to drizzle away, and be belittled, when
+he undertook to convince her of it. Lest John should be called a muff
+and a spoon for this peculiarity, we cite once more the high authority
+aforesaid, where Milton makes poor Adam tell the angel,—
+
+                “Yet when I approach
+    Her loveliness, so absolute she seems
+    And in herself complete, so well to know
+    Her own, that what she wills to do or say
+    Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.”
+
+John went out from Lillie’s presence rather humbled and over-crowed.
+When the woman that a man loves laughs at his moral enthusiasms, it is
+like a black frost on the delicate tips of budding trees. It is up-hill
+work, as we all know, to battle with indolence and selfishness, and
+self-seeking and hard-hearted worldliness. Then the highest and holiest
+part of our nature has a bashfulness of its own. It is a heavenly
+stranger, and easily shamed. A nimble-tongued, skilful woman can so
+easily show the ridiculous side of what seemed heroism; and what is
+called common-sense, so generally, is only some neatly put phase of
+selfishness. Poor John needed the angel at his elbow, to give him the
+caution which he is represented as giving to Father Adam:—
+
+                “What transports thee so?
+    An outside?—fair, no doubt, and worthy well
+    Thy cherishing, thy honor, and thy love,
+    Not thy subjection. Weigh her with thyself,
+    Then value. Oft-times nothing profits more
+    Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right
+    Well managed: of that skill the more thou knowest,
+    The more she will acknowledge thee her head,
+    And to realities yield all her shows.”
+
+But John had no angel at his elbow. He was a fellow with a great
+heart,—good as gold,—with upward aspirations, but with slow speech;
+and, when not sympathized with, he became confused and incoherent, and
+even dumb. So his only way with his little pink and white empress was
+immediate and precipitate flight.
+
+Lillie ran to the window when he was gone, and saw him and Grace get
+into the carriage together; and then she saw them drive to the old
+Ferguson House, and Rose Ferguson came out and got in with them.
+“Well,” she said to herself, “he shan’t do that many times more,—I’m
+resolved.”
+
+No, she did not say it. It would be well for us all if we _did_ put
+into words, plain and explicit, many instinctive resolves and purposes
+that arise in our hearts, and which, for want of being so expressed,
+influence us undetected and unchallenged. If we would say out boldly,
+“I don’t care for right or wrong, or good or evil, or anybody’s rights
+or anybody’s happiness, or the general good, or God himself,—all I care
+for, or feel the least interest in, is to have a good time myself, and
+I mean to do it, come what may,”—we should be only expressing a feeling
+which often lies in the dark back-room of the human heart; and saying
+it might alarm us from the drugged sleep of life. It might rouse us to
+shake off the slow, creeping paralysis of selfishness and sin before it
+is for ever too late.
+
+But Lillie was a creature who had lost the power of self-knowledge.
+She was, my dear sir, what you suppose the true woman to be,—a bundle
+of blind instincts; and among these the strongest was that of property
+in her husband, and power over him. She had lived in her power over
+men; it was her field of ambition. She knew them thoroughly. Women are
+called ivy; and the ivy has a hundred little fingers in every inch of
+its length, that strike at every flaw and crack and weak place in the
+strong wall they mean to overgrow; and so had Lillie. She saw, at a
+glance, that the sober, thoughtful, Christian life of Springdale was
+wholly opposed to the life she wanted to lead, and in which John was to
+be her instrument. She saw that, if such women as Grace and Rose had
+power with him, she should not have; and her husband should be hers
+alone. He should do her will, and be her subject,—so she thought,
+smiling at herself as she looked in the looking-glass, and then curled
+herself peacefully and languidly down in the corner of the sofa, and
+drew forth the French novel that was her usual Sunday companion.
+
+Lillie liked French novels. There was an atmosphere of things in them
+that suited her. The young married women had lovers and admirers; and
+there was the constant stimulus of being courted and adored, under the
+safe protection of a good-natured “_mari_.”
+
+In France, the flirting is all done after marriage, and the young
+girl looks forward to it as her introduction to a career of conquest.
+In America, so great is our democratic liberality, that we think
+of uniting the two systems. We are getting on in that way fast. A
+knowledge of French is beginning to be considered as the pearl of
+great price, to gain which, all else must be sold. The girls must go
+to the French theatre, and be stared at by French _débauchées_, who
+laugh at them while they pretend they understand what, thank Heaven,
+they cannot. Then we are to have series of French novels, carefully
+translated, and puffed and praised even by the religious press, written
+by the corps of French female reformers, which will show them exactly
+how the naughty French women manage their cards; so that, by and by,
+we shall have the latest phase of eclecticism,—the union of American
+and French manners. The girl will flirt till twenty _à l’Américaine_,
+and then marry and flirt till forty _à la Française_. This was about
+Lillie’s plan of life. Could she hope to carry it out in Springdale?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+_SPINDLEWOOD._
+
+
+IT seemed a little like old times to Grace, to be once more going with
+Rose and John over the pretty romantic road to Spindlewood.
+
+John did not reflect upon how little she now saw of him, and how much
+of a trial the separation was; but he noticed how bright and almost gay
+she was, when they were by themselves once more. He was gay too. In the
+congenial atmosphere of sympathy, his confidence in himself, and his
+own right in the little controversy that had occurred, returned. Not
+that he said a word of it; he did not do so, and would not have done so
+for the world. Grace and Rose were full of anecdotes of this, that, and
+the other of their scholars; and all the particulars of some of their
+new movements were discussed. The people had, of their own accord,
+raised a subscription for a library, which was to be presented to John
+that day, with a request that he would select the books.
+
+“Gracie, that must be your work,” said John; “you know I shall have an
+important case next week.”
+
+“Oh, yes! Rose and I will settle it,” said Grace. “Rose, we’ll get the
+catalogues from all the book-stores, and mark the things.”
+
+“We’ll want books for the children just beginning to read; and then
+books for the young men in John’s Bible-class, and all the way
+between,” said Rose. “It will be quite a work to select.”
+
+“And then to bargain with the book-stores, and make the money go ‘far
+as possible,’” said Grace.
+
+“And then there’ll be the covering of the books,” said Rose. “I’ll tell
+you. I think I’ll manage to have a lawn tea at our house; and the girls
+shall all come early, and get the books covered,—that’ll be charming.”
+
+“I think Lillie would like that,” put in John.
+
+“I should be so glad!” said Rose. “What a lovely little thing she is!
+I hope she’ll like it. I wanted to get up something pretty for her. I
+think, at this time of the year, lawn teas are a little variety.”
+
+“Oh, she’ll like it of course!” said John, with some sinking of heart
+about the Sunday-school books.
+
+There were so many pressing to shake hands with John, and congratulate
+him, so many histories to tell, so many cases presented for
+consultation, that it was quite late before they got away; and tea had
+been waiting for them more than an hour when they returned.
+
+Lillie looked pensive, and had that indescribable air of patient
+martyrdom which some women know how to make so very effective. Lillie
+had good general knowledge of the science of martyrdom,—a little spice
+and flavor of it had been gently infused at times into her demeanor
+ever since she had been at Springdale. She could do the uncomplaining
+sufferer with the happiest effect. She contrived to insinuate at times
+how she didn’t complain,—how dull and slow she found her life, and yet
+how she endeavored to be cheerful.
+
+“I know,” she said to John when they were by themselves, “that you and
+Grace both think I’m a horrid creature.”
+
+“Why, no, dearest; indeed we don’t.”
+
+“But you do, though; oh, I feel it! The fact is, John, I haven’t a
+particle of constitution; and, if I should try to go on as Grace does,
+it would kill me in a month. Ma never would let me try to do any thing;
+and, if I did, I was sure to break all down under it: but, if you say
+so, I’ll try to go into this school.”
+
+“Oh, no, Lillie! I don’t want you to go in. I know, darling, you could
+not stand any fatigue. I only wanted you to take an interest,—just to
+go and see them for my sake.”
+
+“Well, John, if you must go, and must keep it up, I must try to go.
+I’ll go with you next Sunday. It will make my head ache perhaps; but no
+matter, if you wish it. You don’t think badly of me, do you?” she said
+coaxingly, playing with his whiskers.
+
+“No, darling, not the least.”
+
+“I suppose it would be a great deal better for you if you had married a
+strong, energetic woman, like your sister. I do admire her so; but it
+discourages me.”
+
+“Darling, I’d a thousand times rather have you what you are,” said
+John; for—
+
+                    “What she wills to do,
+    Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.”
+
+“O John! come, you ought to be sincere.”
+
+“Sincere, Lillie! I am sincere.”
+
+“You really would rather have poor, poor little me than a woman like
+Gracie,—a great, strong, energetic woman?” And Lillie laid her soft
+cheek down on his arm in pensive humility.
+
+“Yes, a thousand million times,” said John in his enthusiasm, catching
+her in his arms and kissing her. “I wouldn’t for the world have you any
+thing but the darling little Lillie you are. I love your faults more
+than the virtues of other women. You are a thousand times better than
+I am. I am a great, coarse blockhead, compared to you. I hope I didn’t
+hurt your feelings this noon; you know, Lillie, I’m hasty, and apt to
+be inconsiderate. I don’t really know that I ought to let you go over
+next Sunday.”
+
+“O John, you are so good! Certainly if you go I ought to; and I shall
+try my best.” Then John told her all about the books and the lawn tea,
+and Lillie listened approvingly.
+
+So they had a lawn tea at the Fergusons that week, where Lillie was
+the cynosure of all eyes. Mr. Mathews, the new young clergyman of
+Springdale, was there. Mr. Mathews had been credited as one of the
+admirers of Rose Ferguson; but on this occasion he promenaded and
+talked with Lillie, and Lillie alone, with an exclusive devotion.
+
+“What a lovely young creature your new sister is!” he said to Grace.
+“She seems to have so much religious sensibility.”
+
+“I say, Lillie,” said John, “Mathews seemed to be smitten with you. I
+had a notion of interfering.”
+
+“Did you ever see any thing like it, John? I couldn’t shake the
+creature off. I was so thankful when you came up and took me. He’s
+Rose’s admirer, and he hardly spoke a word to her. I think it’s
+shameful.”
+
+The next Sunday, Lillie rode over to Spindlewood with John and Rose and
+Mr. Mathews.
+
+Never had the picturesque of religion received more lustre than from
+her presence. John was delighted to see how they all gazed at her
+and wondered. Lillie looked like a first-rate French picture of the
+youthful Madonna,—white, pure, and patient. The day was hot, and the
+hall crowded; and John noticed, what he never did before, the close
+smell and confined air, and it made him uneasy. When we are feeling
+with the nerves of some one else, we notice every roughness and
+inconvenience. John thought he had never seen his school appear so
+little to advantage. Yet Lillie was an image of patient endurance,
+trying to be pleased; and John thought her, as she sat and did nothing,
+more of a saint than Rose and Grace, who were laboriously sorting
+books, and gathering around them large classes of factory boys, to whom
+they talked with an exhausting devotedness.
+
+When all was over, Lillie sat back on the carriage-cushions, and
+smelled at her gold vinaigrette.
+
+“You are all worn out, dear,” said John, tenderly.
+
+“It’s no matter,” she said faintly.
+
+“O Lillie darling! _does_ your head ache?”
+
+“A little,—you know it was close in there. I’m very sensitive to such
+things. I don’t think they affect others as they do me,” said Lillie,
+with the voice of a dying zephyr.
+
+“Lillie, _it is not your duty to go_,” said John; “if you are not made
+ill by this, I never will take you again; you are too precious to be
+risked.”
+
+“How can you say so, John? I’m a poor little creature,—no use to
+anybody.”
+
+Hereupon John told her that her only use in life was to be lovely
+and to be loved,—that a thing of beauty was a joy forever, &c., &c.
+But Lillie was too much exhausted, on her return, to appear at the
+tea-table. She took to her bed at once with sick headache, to the
+poignant remorse of John. “You see how it is, Gracie,” he said. “Poor
+dear little thing, she is willing enough, but there’s nothing of her.
+We mustn’t allow her to exert herself; her feelings always carry her
+away.”
+
+The next Sunday, John sat at home with Lillie, who found herself too
+unwell to go to church, and was in a state of such low spirits as to
+require constant soothing to keep her quiet.
+
+“It is fortunate that I have you and Rose to trust the school with,”
+said John; “you see, it’s my first duty to take care of Lillie.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+_A CRISIS._
+
+
+ONE of the shrewdest and most subtle modern French writers has given
+his views of womankind in the following passage:—
+
+    “There are few women who have not found themselves, at least
+    once in their lives, in regard to some incontestable fact,
+    faced down by precise, keen, searching inquiry,—one of those
+    questions pitilessly put by their husbands, the very idea
+    of which gives a slight chill, and the first word of which
+    enters the heart like a stroke of a dagger. Hence comes the
+    maxim, _Every woman lies_—obliging lies—venial lies—sublime
+    lies—horrible lies—but always the obligation of lying.
+
+    “This obligation once admitted, must it not be a necessity
+    to know how to lie well? In France, the women lie admirably.
+    Our customs instruct them so well in imposture. And woman is
+    so naïvely impertinent, so pretty, so graceful, so true, in
+    her lying! They so well understand its usefulness in social
+    life for avoiding those violent shocks which would destroy
+    happiness,—it is like the cotton in which they pack their
+    jewelry.
+
+    “Lying is to them the very foundation of language, and
+    truth is only the exception; they speak it, as they are
+    virtuous, from caprice or for a purpose. According to their
+    character, some women laugh when they lie, and some cry;
+    some become grave, and others get angry. Having begun life
+    by pretending perfect insensibility to that homage which
+    flatters them most, they often finish by lying even to
+    themselves. Who has not admired their apparent superiority
+    and calm, at the moment when they were trembling for the
+    mysterious treasures of their love? Who has not studied
+    their ease and facility, their presence of mind in the midst
+    of the most critical embarrassments of social life? There is
+    nothing awkward about it; their deception flows as softly as
+    the snow falls from heaven.
+
+    “Yet there are men that have the presumption to expect to
+    get the better of the Parisian woman!—of the woman who
+    possesses thirty-seven thousand ways of saying ‘No,’ and
+    incommensurable variations in saying ‘Yes.’”
+
+This is a Frenchman’s view of life in a country where women are trained
+more systematically for the mere purposes of attraction than in any
+other country, and where the pursuit of admiration and the excitement
+of winning lovers are represented by its authors as constituting the
+main staple of woman’s existence. France, unfortunately, is becoming
+the great society-teacher of the world. What with French theatres,
+French operas, French novels, and the universal rush of American women
+for travel, France is becoming so powerful on American fashionable
+society, that the things said of the Parisian woman begin in some cases
+to apply to some women in America.
+
+Lillie was as precisely the woman here described as if she had been
+born and bred in Paris. She had all the thirty-seven thousand ways
+of saying “No,” and the incommensurable variations in saying “Yes,”
+as completely as the best French teaching could have given it. She
+possessed, and had used, all that graceful facility, in the story of
+herself that she had told John in the days of courtship. Her power over
+him was based on a dangerous foundation of unreality. Hence, during the
+first few weeks of her wedded life, came a critical scene, in which she
+was brought in collision with one of those “pitiless questions” our
+author speaks of.
+
+Her wedding-presents, manifold and brilliant, had remained at home, in
+the charge of her mother, during the wedding-journey. One bright day,
+a few weeks after her arrival in Springdale, the boxes containing the
+treasures were landed there; and John, with all enthusiasm, busied
+himself with the work of unpacking these boxes, and drawing forth the
+treasures.
+
+Now, it so happened that Lillie’s maternal grandfather, a nice, pious
+old gentleman, had taken the occasion to make her the edifying and
+suggestive present of a large, elegantly bound family Bible.
+
+The binding was unexceptionable; and Lillie assigned it a proper place
+of honor among her wedding-gear. Alas! she had not looked into it, nor
+seen what dangers to her power were lodged between its leaves.
+
+[Illustration: “He found the date of the birth of ‘Lillie Ellis.’”]
+
+But John, who was curious in the matter of books, sat quietly down in
+a corner to examine it; and on the middle page, under the head “Family
+Record,” he found, in a large, bold hand, the date of the birth of
+“Lillie Ellis” in figures of the most uncompromising plainness; and
+thence, with one flash of his well-trained arithmetical sense, came the
+perception that, instead of being twenty years old, she was in fact
+twenty-seven,—and that of course she had lied to him.
+
+It was a horrid and a hard word for an American young man to have
+suggested in relation to his wife. If we may believe the French
+romancer, a Frenchman would simply have smiled in amusement on
+detecting this petty feminine _ruse_ of his beloved. But American men
+are in the habit of expecting the truth from respectable women as a
+matter of course; and the want of it in the smallest degree strikes
+them as shocking. Only an Englishman or an American can understand the
+dreadful pain of that discovery to John.
+
+The Anglo-Saxon race have, so to speak, a worship of truth; and they
+hate and abhor lying with an energy which leaves no power of tolerance.
+
+The Celtic races have a certain sympathy with deception. They have a
+certain appreciation of the value of lying as a fine art, which has
+never been more skilfully shown than in the passage from De Balzac we
+have quoted. The woman who is described by him as lying so sweetly and
+skilfully is represented as one of those women “qui ont je ne sais quoi
+de saint et de sacré, qui inspirent tant de respect que l’amour,”—“a
+woman who has an indescribable something of holiness and purity which
+inspires respect as well as love.” It was no detraction from the
+character of Jesus, according to the estimate of Renan, to represent
+him as consenting to a benevolent fraud, and seeming to work miracles
+when he did not work them, by way of increasing his good influence over
+the multitude.
+
+But John was the offspring of a generation of men for hundreds of
+years, who would any of them have gone to the stake rather than have
+told the smallest untruth; and for him who had been watched and guarded
+and catechised against this sin from his cradle, till he was as true
+and pure as a crystal rock, to have his faith shattered in the woman
+he loved, was a terrible thing.
+
+As he read the fatal figures, a mist swam before his eyes,—a sort of
+faintness came over him. It seemed for a moment as if his very life was
+sinking down through his boots into the carpet. He threw down the book
+hastily, and, turning, stepped through an open window into the garden,
+and walked quickly off.
+
+“Where in the world is John going?” said Lillie, running to the door,
+and calling after him in imperative tones.
+
+“John, John, come back. I haven’t done with you yet;” but John never
+turned his head.
+
+“How very odd! what in the world is the matter with him?” she said to
+herself.
+
+John was gone all the afternoon. He took a long, long walk, all by
+himself, and thought the matter over. He remembered that fresh,
+childlike, almost infantine face, that looked up into his with such a
+bewitching air of frankness and candor, as she professed to be telling
+all about herself and her history; and now which or what of it was
+true? It seemed as if he loathed her; and yet he couldn’t help loving
+her, while he despised himself for doing it.
+
+When he came home to supper, he was silent and morose. Lillie came
+running to meet him; but he threw her off, saying he was tired. She was
+frightened; she had never seen him look like that.
+
+“John, what is the matter with you?” said Grace at the tea-table. “You
+are upsetting every thing, and don’t drink your tea.”
+
+“Nothing—only—I have some troublesome business to settle,” he said,
+getting up to go out again. “You needn’t wait for me; I shall be out
+late.”
+
+“What can be the matter?”
+
+Lillie, indeed, had not the remotest idea. Yet she remembered his
+jumping up suddenly, and throwing down the Bible; and mechanically she
+went to it, and opened it. She turned it over; and the record met her
+eye.
+
+“Provoking!” she said. “Stupid old creature! must needs go and put that
+out in full.” Lillie took a paper-folder, and cut the leaf out quite
+neatly; then folded and burned it.
+
+She knew now what was the matter. John was angry at her; but she
+couldn’t help wondering that he should be so angry. If he had laughed
+at her, teased her, taxed her with the trick, she would have understood
+what to do. But this terrible gloom, this awful commotion of the
+elements, frightened her.
+
+She went to her room, saying that she had a headache, and would go
+to bed. But she did not. She took her French novel, and read till
+she heard him coming; and then she threw down her book, and began to
+cry. He came into the room, and saw her leaning like a little white
+snow-wreath over the table, sobbing as if her heart would break. To
+do her justice, Lillie’s sobs were not affected. She was lonesome and
+thoroughly frightened; and, when she heard him coming, her nerves gave
+out. John’s heart yearned towards her. His short-lived anger had burned
+out; and he was perfectly longing for a reconciliation. He felt as if
+he must have her to love, no matter what she was. He came up to her,
+and stroked her hair. “O Lillie!” he said, “why couldn’t you have told
+me the truth? What made you deceive me?”
+
+“I was afraid you wouldn’t like me if I did,” said Lillie, in her sobs.
+
+“O Lillie! I should have liked you, no matter how old you were,—only
+you should have told me _the truth_.”
+
+“I know it—I know it—oh, it _was_ wrong of me!” and Lillie sobbed, and
+seemed in danger of falling into convulsions; and John’s heart gave
+out. He gathered her in his arms. “I can’t help loving you; and I can’t
+live without you,” he said, “be you what you may!”
+
+Lillie’s little heart beat with triumph under all her sobs: she had got
+him, and should hold him yet.
+
+“There can be no confidence between husband and wife, Lillie,” said
+John, gravely, “unless we are perfectly true with each other. Promise
+me, dear, that you will never deceive me again.”
+
+Lillie promised with ready fervor. “O John!” she said, “I never should
+have done so wrong if I had only come under your influence earlier. The
+fact is, I have been under the worst influences all my life. I never
+had anybody like you to guide me.”
+
+John may of course be excused for feeling that his flattering little
+penitent was more to him than ever; and as to Lillie, she gave a sigh
+of relief. _That_ was over, “anyway;” and she had him not only safe,
+but more completely hers than before.
+
+A generous man is entirely unnerved by a frank confession. If Lillie
+had said one word in defence, if she had raised the slightest shadow
+of an argument, John would have roused up all his moral principle to
+oppose her; but this poor little white water-sprite, dissolving in a
+rain of penitent tears, quite washed away all his anger and all his
+heroism.
+
+The next morning, Lillie, all fresh in a ravishing toilet, with
+field-daisies in her hair, was in a condition to laugh gently at John
+for his emotion of yesterday. She triumphed softly, not too obviously,
+in her power. He couldn’t do without her,—do what she might,—that was
+plain.
+
+“Now, John,” she said, “don’t you think we poor women are judged
+rather hardly? Men, you know, tell all sorts of lies to carry on their
+great politics and their ambition, and nobody thinks it so dreadful of
+_them_.”
+
+“I _do_—I should,” interposed John.
+
+“Oh, well! _you_—you are an exception. It is not one man in a hundred
+that is so good as you are. Now, we women have only one poor little
+ambition,—to be pretty, to please you men; and, as soon as you know
+we are getting old, you don’t like us. And can you think it’s so very
+shocking if we don’t come square up to the dreadful truth about our
+age? Youth and beauty is all there is to us, you know.”
+
+“O Lillie! don’t say so,” said John, who felt the necessity of being
+instructive, and of improving the occasion to elevate the moral tone of
+his little elf. “Goodness lasts, my dear, when beauty fades.”
+
+“Oh, nonsense! Now, John, don’t talk humbug. I’d like to see _you_
+following goodness when beauty is gone. I’ve known lots of plain old
+maids that were perfect saints and angels; and yet men crowded and
+jostled by them to get the pretty sinners. I dare say now,” she added,
+with a bewitching look over her shoulder at him, “you’d rather have me
+than Miss Almira Carraway,—hadn’t you, now?”
+
+And Lillie put her white arm round his neck, and her downy cheek to
+his, and said archly, “Come, now, confess.”
+
+Then John told her that she was a bad, naughty girl; and she laughed;
+and, on the whole, the pair were more hilarious and loving than usual.
+
+But yet, when John was away at his office, he thought of it again, and
+found there was still a sore spot in his heart.
+
+She had cheated him once; would she cheat him again? And she could
+cheat so prettily, so serenely, and with such a candid face, it was a
+dangerous talent.
+
+No: she wasn’t like his mother, he thought with a sigh. The “je ne sais
+quoi de saint et de sacré,” which had so captivated his imagination,
+did not cover the saintly and sacred nature; it was a mere outward
+purity of complexion and outline. And then Grace,—she must not be
+left to find out what he knew about Lillie. He had told Grace that
+she was only twenty,—told it on her authority; and now must he become
+an accomplice? If called on to speak of his wife’s age, must he
+accommodate the truth to her story, or must he palter and evade? Here
+was another brick laid on the wall of separation between his sister
+and himself. It was rising daily. Here was another subject on which he
+could never speak frankly with Grace; for he must defend Lillie,—every
+impulse of his heart rushed to protect her.
+
+But it is a terrible truth, and one that it will not hurt any of us to
+bear in mind, that our judgments of our friends are involuntary.
+
+We may long with all our hearts to confide; we may be fascinated,
+entangled, and wish to be blinded; but blind we cannot be. The friend
+that has lied to us once, we may long to believe; but we cannot. Nay,
+more; it is the worse for us, if, in our desire to hold the dear
+deceiver in our hearts, we begin to chip and hammer on the great
+foundations of right and honor, and to say within ourselves, “After
+all, why be so particular?” Then, when we have searched about for
+all the reasons and apologies and extenuations for wrong-doing, are
+we sure that in our human weakness we shall not be pulling down the
+moral barriers in ourselves? The habit of excusing evil, and finding
+apologies, and wishing to stand with one who stands on a lower moral
+plane, is not a wholesome one for the soul.
+
+As fate would have it, the very next day after this little scene,
+who should walk into the parlor where Lillie, John, and Grace were
+sitting, but that terror of American democracy, the census-taker. Armed
+with the whole power of the republic, this official steps with elegant
+ease into the most sacred privacies of the family. Flutterings and
+denials are in vain. Bridget and Katy and Anne, no less than Seraphina
+and Isabella, must give up the critical secrets of their lives.
+
+John took the paper into the kitchen. Honest old Bridget gave in her
+age with effrontery as “twinty-five.” Anne giggled and flounced, and
+declared on her word she didn’t know,—they could put it down as they
+liked. “But, Anne, you _must_ tell, or you may be sent to jail, you
+know.”
+
+Anne giggled still harder, and tossed her head: “Then it’s to jail I’ll
+have to go; for I don’t know.”
+
+“Dear me,” said Lillie, with an air of edifying candor, “what a fuss
+they make! Set down my age ‘twenty-seven,’ John,” she added.
+
+Grace started, and looked at John; he met her eye, and blushed to the
+roots of his hair.
+
+“Why, what’s the matter?” said Lillie, “are you embarrassed at telling
+your age?”
+
+“Oh, nothing!” said John, writing down the numbers hastily; and then,
+finding a sudden occasion to give directions in the garden, he darted
+out. “It’s so silly to be ashamed of our age!” said Lillie, as the
+census-taker withdrew.
+
+“Of course,” said Grace; and she had the humanity never to allude to
+the subject with her brother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+_CHANGES._
+
+SCENE.—_A chamber at the Seymour House. Lillie discovered weeping. John
+rushing in with empressement._
+
+
+“LILLIE, you _shall_ tell me what ails you.”
+
+“Nothing ails me, John.”
+
+“Yes, there does; you were crying when I came in.”
+
+“Oh, well, that’s nothing!”
+
+“Oh, but it _is_ a great deal! What is the matter? I can see that you
+are not happy.”
+
+“Oh, pshaw, John! I am as happy as I ought to be, I dare say; there
+isn’t much the matter with me, only a little blue, and I don’t feel
+quite strong.”
+
+“You don’t feel strong! I’ve noticed it, Lillie.”
+
+“Well, you see, John, the fact is, that I never have got through this
+month without going to the sea-side. Mamma always took me. The doctors
+told her that my constitution was such that I couldn’t get along
+without it; but I dare say I shall do well enough in time, you know.”
+
+“But, Lillie,” said John, “if you do need sea-air, you must go. I can’t
+leave my business; that’s the trouble.”
+
+“Oh, no, John! don’t think of it. I ought to make an effort to get
+along. You see, it’s very foolish in me, but places affect my spirits
+so. It’s perfectly absurd how I am affected.”
+
+“Well, Lillie, I hope this place doesn’t affect you unpleasantly,” said
+John.
+
+“It’s a nice, darling place, John, and it’s very silly in me; but it is
+a fact that this house somehow has a depressing effect on my spirits.
+You know it’s not like the houses I’ve been used to. It has a sort of
+old look; and I can’t help feeling that it puts me in mind of those who
+are dead and gone; and then I think I shall be dead and gone too, some
+day, and it makes me cry so. Isn’t it silly of me, John?”
+
+“Poor little pussy!” said John.
+
+“You see, John, our rooms are lovely; but they aren’t modern and
+cheerful, like those I’ve been accustomed to. They make me feel pensive
+and sad all the time; but I’m trying to get over it.”
+
+“Why, Lillie!” said John, “would you like the rooms refurnished? It can
+easily be done if you wish it.”
+
+“Oh, no, no, dear! You are too good; and I’m sure the rooms are lovely,
+and it would hurt Gracie’s feelings to change them. No: I must try and
+get over it. I know just how silly it is, and I shall try to overcome
+it. If I had only more strength, I believe I could.”
+
+“Well, darling, you must go to the sea-side. I shall have you sent
+right off to Newport. Gracie can go with you.”
+
+“Oh, no, John! not for the world. Gracie must stay, and keep house for
+you. She’s such a help to you, that it would be a shame to take her
+away. But I think mamma would go with me,—if you could take me there,
+and engage my rooms and all that, why, mamma could stay with me, you
+know. To be sure, it would be a trial not to have you there; but then
+if I could get up my strength, you know,”—
+
+“Exactly, certainly; and, Lillie, how would you like the parlors
+arranged if you had your own way?”
+
+“Oh, John! don’t think of it.”
+
+“But I just want to know for curiosity. Now, how would you have them if
+you could?”
+
+“Well, then, John, don’t you think it would be lovely to have them
+frescoed? Did you ever see the Folingsbees’ rooms in New York? They
+were so lovely!—one was all in blue, and the other in crimson, opening
+into each other; with carved furniture, and those _marquetrie_ tables,
+and all sorts of little French things. They had such a gay and cheerful
+look.”
+
+“Now, Lillie, if you want our rooms like that, you shall have them.”
+
+“O John, you are too good! I couldn’t ask such a sacrifice.”
+
+“Oh, pshaw! it isn’t a sacrifice. I don’t doubt I shall like them
+better myself. Your taste is perfect, Lillie; and, now I think of it,
+I wonder that I thought of bringing you here without consulting you
+in every particular. A woman ought to be queen in her own house, I am
+sure.”
+
+“But, Gracie! Now, John, I know she has associations with all the
+things in this house, and it would be cruel to her,” said Lillie, with
+a sigh.
+
+“Pshaw! Gracie is a good, sensible girl, and ready to make any rational
+change. I suppose we have been living rather behind the times, and are
+somewhat rusty, that’s a fact; but Gracie will enjoy new things as much
+as anybody, I dare say.”
+
+“Well, John, since you are set on it, there’s Charlie Ferrola, one of
+my particular friends; he’s an architect, and does all about arranging
+rooms and houses and furniture. He did the Folingsbees’, and the
+Hortons’, and the Jeromes’, and no end of real nobby people’s houses;
+and made them perfectly lovely. People say that one wouldn’t know that
+they weren’t in Paris, in houses that he does.”
+
+Now, our John was by nature a good solid chip of the old Anglo-Saxon
+block; and, if there was any thing that he had no special affinity
+for, it was for French things. He had small opinion of French morals,
+and French ways in general; but then at this moment he saw his Lillie,
+whom, but half an hour before, he found all pale and tear-drenched,
+now radiant and joyous, sleek as a humming-bird, with the light in her
+eyes, and the rattle on the tip of her tongue; and he felt so delighted
+to see her bright and gay and joyous, that he would have turned his
+house into the Jardin Mabille, if that were possible.
+
+Lillie had the prettiest little caressing tricks and graces imaginable;
+and she perched herself on his knee, and laughed and chatted so gayly,
+and pulled his whiskers so saucily, and then, springing up, began
+arraying herself in such an astonishing daintiness of device, and
+fluttering before him with such a variety of well-assorted plumage,
+that John was quite taken off his feet. He did not care so much whether
+what she willed to do were, “Wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best,”
+as feel that what she wished to do must be done at any rate.
+
+[Illustration: “She perched herself on his knee.”]
+
+“Why, darling!” he said in his rapture; “why didn’t you tell me all
+this before? Here you have been growing sad and blue, and losing your
+vivacity and spirits, and never told me why!”
+
+“I thought it was my duty, John, to try to bear it,” said Lillie, with
+the sweet look of a virgin saint. “I thought perhaps I should get used
+to things in time; and I think it is a wife’s duty to accommodate
+herself to her husband’s circumstances.”
+
+“No, it’s a husband’s duty to accommodate himself to his wife’s
+wishes,” said John. “What’s that fellow’s address? I’ll write to him
+about doing our house, forthwith.”
+
+“But, John, do pray tell Gracie that it’s _your_ wish. I don’t want her
+to think that it’s I that am doing this. Now, pray do think whether you
+really want it yourself. You see it must be so natural for you to like
+the old things! They must have associations, and I wouldn’t for the
+world, now, be the one to change them; and, after all, how silly it was
+of me to feel blue!”
+
+“Don’t say any more, Lillie. Let me see,—next week,” he said, taking
+out his pocket-book, and looking over his memoranda,—“next week I’ll
+take you down to Newport; and you write to-day to your mother to meet
+you there, and be your guest. I’ll write and engage the rooms at once.”
+
+“I don’t know what I shall do without you, John.”
+
+“Oh, well, I couldn’t stay possibly! But I may run down now and then,
+for a night, you know.”
+
+“Well, we must make that do,” said Lillie, with a pensive sigh.
+
+Thus two very important moves on Miss Lillie’s checker-board of life
+were skilfully made. The house was to be refitted, and the Newport
+precedent established.
+
+Now, dear friends, don’t think Lillie a pirate, or a conspirator, or a
+wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing, or any thing else but what she was,—a pretty
+little, selfish woman; undeveloped in her conscience and affections,
+and strong in her instincts and perceptions; in a blind way using what
+means were most in her line to carry her purposes. Lillie had always
+found her prettiness, her littleness, her helplessness, and her tears
+so very useful in carrying her points in life that she resorted to them
+as her lawful stock in trade. Neither were her blues entirely shamming.
+There comes a time after marriage, when a husband, if he be any thing
+of a man, has something else to do than make direct love to his wife.
+He cannot be on duty at all hours to fan her, and shawl her, and admire
+her. His love must express itself through other channels. He must be a
+full man for her sake; and, as a man, must go forth to a whole world of
+interests that takes him from her. Now what in this case shall a woman
+do, whose only life lies in petting and adoration and display?
+
+Springdale had no _beau monde_, no fashionable circle, no Bois de
+Boulogne, and no beaux, to make amends for a husband’s engrossments.
+Grace was sisterly and kind; but what on earth had they in common
+to talk about? Lillie’s wardrobe was in all the freshness of bridal
+exuberance, and there was nothing more to be got, and so, for the
+moment, no stimulus in this line. But then where to wear all these fine
+French dresses? Lillie had been called on, and invited once to little
+social evening parties, through the whole round of old, respectable
+families that lived under the elm-arches of Springdale; and she had
+found it rather stupid. There was not a man to make an admirer of,
+except the young minister, who, after the first afternoon of seeing
+her, returned to his devotion to Rose Ferguson.
+
+You know, ladies, Æsop has a pretty little fable as follows: A young
+man fell desperately in love with a cat, and prayed to Jupiter to
+change her to a woman for his sake. Jupiter was so obliging as to grant
+his prayer; and, behold, a soft, satin-skinned, purring, graceful woman
+was given into his arms.
+
+But the legend goes on to say that, while he was delighting in her
+charms, she heard the sound of _mice_ behind the wainscot, and left him
+forthwith to rush after her congenial prey.
+
+Lillie had heard afar the sound of _mice_ at Newport, and she longed
+to be after them once more. Had she not a prestige now as a rich young
+married lady? Had she not jewels and gems to show? Had she not any
+number of mouse-traps, in the way of ravishing toilets? She thought it
+all over, till she was sick with longing, and was sure that nothing
+but the sea-air could do her any good; and so she fell to crying, and
+kissing her faithful John, till she gained her end, like a veritable
+little cat as she was.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+_NEWPORT; OR, THE PARADISE OF NOTHING TO DO._
+
+
+BEHOLD, now, our Lillie at the height of her heart’s desire, installed
+in fashionable apartments at Newport, under the placid chaperonship
+of dear mamma, who never saw the least harm in any earthly thing her
+Lillie chose to do.
+
+All the dash and flash and furbelow of upper-tendom were there; and
+Lillie now felt the full power and glory of being a rich, pretty, young
+married woman, with oceans of money to spend, and nothing on earth to
+do but follow the fancies of the passing hour.
+
+This was Lillie’s highest ideal of happiness; and didn’t she enjoy it?
+
+Wasn’t it something to flame forth in wondrous toilets in the eyes of
+Belle Trevors and Margy Silloway and Lottie Cavers, who were _not_
+married; and before the Simpkinses and the Tomkinses and the Jenkinses,
+who, last year, had said hateful things about her, and intimated that
+she had gone off in her looks, and was on the way to be an old maid?
+
+And wasn’t it a triumph when all her old beaux came flocking round her,
+and her parlors became a daily resort and lounging-place for all the
+idle swains, both of her former acquaintance and of the newcomers, who
+drifted with the tide of fashion? Never had she been so much the rage;
+never had she been declared so “stunning.” The effect of all this good
+fortune on her health was immediate. We all know how the spirits affect
+the bodily welfare; and hence, my dear gentlemen, we desire it to be
+solemnly impressed on you, that there is nothing so good for a woman’s
+health as to give her her own way.
+
+Lillie now, from this simple cause, received enormous accessions of
+vigor. While at home with plain, sober John, trying to walk in the
+quiet paths of domesticity, how did her spirits droop! If you only
+could have had a vision of her brain and spinal system, you would have
+seen how there was no nervous fluid there, and how all the fine little
+cords and fibres that string the muscles were wilting like flowers out
+of water; but now she could bathe the longest and the strongest of
+any one, could ride on the beach half the day, and dance the German
+into the small hours of the night, with a degree of vigor which showed
+conclusively what a fine thing for her the Newport air was. Her
+dancing-list was always over-crowded with applicants; bouquets were
+showered on her; and the most superb “turn-outs,” with their masters
+for charioteers, were at her daily disposal.
+
+All this made talk. The world doesn’t forgive success; and the ancients
+informed us that even the gods were envious of happy people. It is
+astonishing to see the quantity of very proper and rational moral
+reflection that is excited in the breast of society, by any sort of
+success in life. How it shows them the vanity of earthly enjoyments,
+the impropriety of setting one’s heart on it! How does a successful
+married flirt impress all her friends with the gross impropriety of
+having one’s head set on gentlemen’s attentions!
+
+“I must say,” said Belle Trevors, “that dear Lillie does astonish me.
+Now, I shouldn’t want to have that dissipated Danforth lounging in
+my rooms every day, as he does in Lillie’s: and then taking her out
+driving day after day; for my part, I don’t think it’s respectable.”
+
+“Why don’t you speak to her?” said Lottie Cavers.
+
+“Oh, my dear! she wouldn’t mind _me_. Lillie always was the most
+imprudent creature; and, if she goes on so, she’ll certainly get
+awfully talked about. That Danforth is a horrid creature; I know all
+about him.”
+
+As Miss Belle had herself been driving with the “horrid creature”
+only the week before Lillie came, it must be confessed that her
+opportunities for observation were of an authentic kind.
+
+Lillie, as queen in her own parlor, was all grace and indulgence.
+Hers was now to be the sisterly _rôle_, or, as she laughingly styled
+it, the maternal. With a ravishing morning-dress, and with a killing
+little cap of about three inches in extent on her head, she enacted the
+young matron, and gave full permission to Tom, Dick, and Harry to make
+themselves at home in her room, and smoke their cigars there in peace.
+She “adored the smell;” in fact, she accepted the present of a fancy
+box of cigarettes from Danforth with graciousness, and would sometimes
+smoke one purely for good company. She also encouraged her followers
+to unveil the tender secrets of their souls confidentially to her, and
+offered gracious mediations on their behalf with any of the flitting
+Newport fair ones. When they, as in duty bound, said that they saw
+nobody whom they cared about now she was married, that she was the only
+woman on earth for them,—she rapped their knuckles briskly with her
+fan, and bid them mind their manners. All this mode of proceeding gave
+her an immense success.
+
+[Illustration: “And would sometimes smoke one purely for good
+company.”]
+
+But, as we said before, all this was talked about; and ladies in their
+letters, chronicling the events of the passing hour, sent the tidings
+up and down the country; and so Miss Letitia Ferguson got a letter from
+Mrs. Wilcox with full pictures and comments; and she brought the same
+to Grace Seymour.
+
+“I dare say,” said Letitia, “these things have been exaggerated; they
+always are: still it does seem desirable that your brother should go
+there, and be with her.”
+
+“He can’t go and be with her,” said Grace, “without neglecting his
+business, already too much neglected. Then the house is all in
+confusion under the hands of painters; and there is that young artist
+up there,—a very elegant gentleman,—giving orders to right and left,
+every one of which involves further confusion and deeper expense; for
+my part, I see no end to it. Poor John has got ‘the Old Man of the Sea’
+on his back in the shape of this woman; and I expect she’ll be the ruin
+of him yet. I can’t want to break up his illusion about her; because,
+what good will it do? He has married her, and must live with her; and,
+for Heaven’s sake, let the illusion last while it can! I’m going to
+draw off, and leave them to each other; there’s no other way.”
+
+“You are, Gracie?”
+
+“Yes; you see John came to me, all stammering and embarrassment, about
+this making over of the old place; but I put him at ease at once. ‘The
+most natural thing in the world, John,’ said I. ‘Of course Lillie has
+her taste; and it’s her right to have the house arranged to suit it.’
+And then I proposed to take all the old family things, and furnish
+the house that I own on Elm Street, and live there, and let John and
+Lillie keep house by themselves. You see there is no helping the thing.
+Married people must be left to themselves; nobody can help them. They
+must make their own discoveries, fight their own battles, sink or swim,
+together; and I have determined that not by the winking of an eye will
+I interfere between them.”
+
+“Well, but do you think John wants you to go?”
+
+“He feels badly about it; and yet I have convinced him that it’s best.
+Poor fellow! all these changes are not a bit to his taste. He liked the
+old place as it was, and the old ways; but John is so unselfish. He has
+got it in his head that Lillie is very sensitive and peculiar, and that
+her spirits require all these changes, as well as Newport air.”
+
+“Well,” said Letitia, “if a man begins to say A in that line, he must
+say B.”
+
+“Of course,” said Grace; “and also C and D, and so on, down to X,
+Y, Z. A woman, armed with sick-headaches, nervousness, debility,
+presentiments, fears, horrors, and all sorts of imaginary and real
+diseases, has an eternal armory of weapons of subjugation. What can a
+man do? Can he tell her that she is lying and shamming? Half the time
+she isn’t; she can actually work herself into about any physical state
+she chooses. The fortnight before Lillie went to Newport, she really
+looked pale, and ate next to nothing; and she managed admirably to seem
+to be trying to keep up, and not to complain,—yet you see how she can
+go on at Newport.”
+
+“It seems a pity John couldn’t understand her.”
+
+“My dear, I wouldn’t have him for the world. Whenever he does, he will
+despise her; and then he will be wretched. For John is no hypocrite,
+any more than I am. No, I earnestly pray that his soap-bubble may not
+break.”
+
+“Well, then,” said Letitia, “at least, he might go down to Newport
+for a day or two; and his presence there might set some things right:
+it might at least check reports. You might just suggest to him that
+unfriendly things were being said.”
+
+“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” said Grace.
+
+So, by a little feminine tact in suggestion, Grace despatched her
+brother to spend a day or two in Newport.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His coming and presence interrupted the lounging hours in Lillie’s
+room; the introduction to “my husband” shortened the interviews. John
+was courteous and affable; but he neither smoked nor drank, and there
+was a mutual repulsion between him and many of Lillie’s _habitués_.
+
+“I say, Dan,” said Bill Sanders to Danforth, as they were smoking on
+one end of the veranda, “you are driven out of your lodgings since
+Seymour came.”
+
+“No more than the rest of you,” said Danforth.
+
+“I don’t know about that, Dan. I think _you_ might have been taken for
+master of those premises. Look here now, Dan, why didn’t you _take_
+little Lill yourself? Everybody thought you were going to last year.”
+
+“Didn’t want her; knew too much,” said Danforth. “Didn’t want to keep
+her; she’s too cursedly extravagant. It’s jolly to have this sort of
+concern on hand; but I’d rather Seymour’d pay her bills than I.”
+
+“Who thought you were so practical, Dan?”
+
+“Practical! that I am; I’m an old bird. Take my advice, boys, now: keep
+shy of the girls, and flirt with the married ones,—then you don’t get
+roped in.”
+
+“I say, boys,” said Tom Nichols, “isn’t she a case, now? What a head
+she has! I bet she can smoke equal to any of us.”
+
+“Yes; I keep her in cigarettes,” said Danforth; “she’s got a box of
+them somewhere under her ruffles now.”
+
+“What if Seymour should find them?” said Tom.
+
+“Seymour? pooh! he’s a muff and a prig. I bet you he won’t find her
+out; she’s the jolliest little humbugger there is going. She’d cheat a
+fellow out of the sight of his eyes. It’s perfectly wonderful.”
+
+“How came Seymour to marry her?”
+
+“He? Why, he’s a pious youth, green as grass itself; and I suppose she
+talked religion to him. Did you ever hear her talk religion?”
+
+A roar of laughter followed this, out of which Danforth went on. “By
+George, boys, she gave me a prayer-book once! I’ve got it yet.”
+
+“Well, if that isn’t the best thing I ever heard!” said Nichols.
+
+“It was at the time she was laying siege to me, you see. She undertook
+the part of guardian angel, and used to talk lots of sentiment. The
+girls get lots of that out of George Sand’s novels about the _holiness_
+of doing just as you’ve a mind to, and all that,” said Danforth.
+
+“By George, Dan, you oughtn’t to laugh. She may have more good in her
+than you think.”
+
+“Oh, humbug! don’t I know her?”
+
+“Well, at any rate she’s a wonderful creature to hold her looks. By
+George! how she _does_ hold out! You’d say, now, she wasn’t more than
+twenty.”
+
+“Yes; she understands getting herself up,” said Danforth, “and touches
+up her cheeks a bit now and then.”
+
+“She don’t paint, though?”
+
+“Don’t paint! _Don’t_ she? I’d like to know if she don’t; but she does
+it like an artist, like an old master, in fact.”
+
+“Or like a young mistress,” said Tom, and then laughed at his own wit.
+
+Now, it so happened that John was sitting at an open window above, and
+heard occasional snatches of this conversation quite sufficient to
+impress him disagreeably. He had not heard enough to know exactly what
+had been said, but enough to feel that a set of coarse, low-minded men
+were making quite free with the name and reputation of his Lillie; and
+he was indignant.
+
+“She is so pretty, so frank, and so impulsive,” he said. “Such women
+are always misconstrued. I’m resolved to caution her.”
+
+“Lillie,” he said, “who is this Danforth?”
+
+“Charlie Danforth—oh! he’s a millionnaire that I refused. He was wild
+about me,—is now, for that matter. He perfectly haunts my rooms, and is
+always teasing me to ride with him.”
+
+“Well, Lillie, if I were you, I wouldn’t have any thing to do with him.”
+
+“John, I don’t mean to, any more than I can help. I try to keep him off
+all I can; but one doesn’t want to be rude, you know.”
+
+“My darling,” said John, “you little know the wickedness of the world,
+and the cruel things that men will allow themselves to say of women who
+are meaning no harm. You can’t be too careful, Lillie.”
+
+“Oh! I am careful. Mamma is here, you know, all the while; and I never
+receive except she is present.”
+
+John sat abstractedly fingering the various objects on the table; then
+he opened a drawer in the same mechanical manner.
+
+“Why, Lillie! what’s this? what in the world are these?”
+
+“O John! sure enough! well, there is something I was going to ask you
+about. Danforth used always to be sending me things, you know, before
+we were married,—flowers and confectionery, and one thing or other;
+and, since I have been here now, he has done the same, and I really
+didn’t know what to do about it. You know I didn’t want to quarrel
+with him, or get his ill-will; he’s a high-spirited fellow, and a man
+one doesn’t want for an enemy; so I have just passed it over easy as I
+could.”
+
+“But, Lillie, a box of cigarettes!—of course, they can be of no use to
+you.”
+
+“Of course: they are only a sort of curiosity that he imports from
+Spain with his cigars.”
+
+“I’ve a great mind to send them back to him myself,” said John.
+
+“Oh, don’t, John! why, how it would look! as if you were angry, or
+thought he meant something wrong. No; I’ll contrive a way to give ’em
+back without offending him. I am up to all such little ways.”
+
+“Come, now,” she added, “don’t let’s be cross just the little time you
+have to stay with me. I do wish our house were not all torn up, so that
+I could go home with you, and leave Newport and all its bothers behind.”
+
+“Well, Lillie, you could go, and stay with me at Gracie’s,” said John,
+brightening at this proposition.
+
+“Dear Gracie,—so she has got a house all to herself; how I shall miss
+her! but, really, John, I think she will be happier. Since you would
+insist on revolutionizing our house, you know”—
+
+“But, Lillie, it was to please you.”
+
+“Oh, I know it! but you know I begged you not to. Well, John, I don’t
+think I should like to go in and settle down on Grace; perhaps, as I am
+here, and the sea-air and bathing strengthens me so, we may as well
+put it through. I will come home as soon as the house is done.”
+
+“But perhaps you would want to go with me to New York to select the
+furniture?”
+
+“Oh, the artist does all that! Charlie Ferrola will give his orders to
+Simon & Sauls, and they will do every thing up complete. It’s the way
+they all do—saves lots of trouble.”
+
+John went home, after three days spent in Newport, feeling that Lillie
+was somehow an injured fair one, and that the envious world bore down
+always on beauty and prosperity.
+
+But incidentally he heard and overheard much that made him uneasy. He
+heard her admired as a “bully” girl, a “fast one;” he heard of her
+smoking, he overheard something about “painting.”
+
+The time was that John thought Lillie an embryo angel,—an angel a
+little bewildered and gone astray, and with wings a trifle the worse
+for the world’s wear,—but essentially an angel of the same nature with
+his own revered mother.
+
+Gradually the mercury had been falling in the tube of his estimation.
+He had given up the angel; and now to himself he called her “a silly
+little pussy,” but he did it with a smile. It was such a neat, white,
+graceful pussy; and all his own pussy too, and purred and rubbed its
+little head on no coat-sleeve but his,—of that he was certain. Only a
+bit silly. She would still _fib_ a little, John feared, especially when
+he looked back to the chapter about her age,—and then, perhaps, about
+the cigarettes.
+
+Well, she might, perhaps, in a wild, excited hour, have smoked _one
+or two_, just for fun, and the thing had been exaggerated. She had
+promised fairly to return those cigarettes,—he dared not say to himself
+that he feared she would not. He kept saying to himself that she would.
+It was necessary to say this often to make himself believe it.
+
+As to painting—well, John didn’t like to ask her, because, what if she
+shouldn’t tell him the truth? And, if she did paint, was it so great
+a sin, poor little thing? he would watch, and bring her out of it.
+After all, when the house was all finished and arranged, and he got her
+back from Newport, there would be a long, quiet, domestic winter at
+Springdale; and they would get up their reading-circles, and he would
+set her to improving her mind, and gradually the vision of this empty,
+fashionable life would die out of her horizon, and she would come into
+his ways of thinking and doing.
+
+But, after all, John managed to be proud of her. When he read in the
+columns of “The Herald” the account of the Splandangerous ball in
+Newport, and of the entrancingly beautiful Mrs. J. S., who appeared in
+a radiant dress of silvery gauze made _à la nuage_, &c., &c., John was
+rather pleased than otherwise. Lillie danced till daylight,—it showed
+that she must be getting back her strength,—and she was voted the belle
+of the scene. Who wouldn’t take the comfort that is to be got in any
+thing? John owned this fashionable meteor,—why shouldn’t he rejoice in
+it?
+
+Two years ago, had anybody told him that one day he should have a wife
+that told fibs, and painted, and smoked cigarettes, and danced all
+night at Newport, and yet that he should love her, and be proud of her,
+he would have said, Is thy servant a dog? He was then a considerate,
+thoughtful John, serious and careful in his life-plans; and the wife
+that was to be his companion was something celestial. But so it is. By
+degrees, we accommodate ourselves to the actual and existing. To all
+intents and purposes, for us it is the inevitable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+_HOME À LA POMPADOUR._
+
+
+WELL, Lillie came back at last; and John conducted her over the
+transformed Seymour mansion, where literally old things had passed
+away, and all things become new.
+
+There was not a relic of the past. The house was furbished and
+resplendent—it was gilded—it was frescoed—it was _à la_ Pompadour,
+and _à la_ Louis Quinze and Louis Quatorze, and _à la_ every thing
+Frenchy and pretty, and gay and glistening. For, though the parlors
+at first were the only apartments contemplated in this _renaissance_,
+yet it came to pass that the parlors, when all tricked out, cast such
+invidious reflections on the chambers that the chambers felt themselves
+old and rubbishy, and prayed and stretched out hands of imploration to
+have something done for _them_!
+
+So the spare chamber was first included in the glorification programme;
+but, when the spare chamber was once made into a Pompadour pavilion, it
+so flouted and despised the other old-fashioned Yankee chambers, that
+they were ready to die with envy; and, in short, there was no way to
+produce a sense of artistic unity, peace, and quietness, but to do the
+whole thing over, which was done triumphantly.
+
+The French Emperor, Louis Napoleon, who was a shrewd sort of a man in
+his day and way, used to talk a great deal about the “logic of events;”
+which language, being interpreted, my dear gentlemen, means a good deal
+in domestic life. It means, for instance, that when you drive the first
+nail, or tear down the first board, in the way of alteration of an old
+house, you will have to make over every room and corner in it, and pay
+as much again for it as if you built a new one.
+
+John was able to sympathize with Lillie in her childish delight in the
+new house, because he _loved_ her, and was able to put himself and his
+own wishes out of the question for her sake; but, when all the bills
+connected with this change came in, he had emotions with which Lillie
+could not sympathize: first, because she knew nothing about figures,
+and was resolved never to know any thing; and, like all people who know
+nothing about them, she cared nothing;—and, second, because she did
+_not_ love John.
+
+Now, the truth is, Lillie would have been quite astonished to have been
+told this. She, and many other women, suppose that they love their
+husbands, when, unfortunately, they have not the beginning of an idea
+what love is. Let me explain it to you, my dear lady. Loving to be
+admired by a man, loving to be petted by him, loving to be caressed by
+him, and loving to be praised by him, is not loving a man. All these
+may be when a woman has no power of loving at all,—they may all be
+simply because she loves herself, and loves to be flattered, praised,
+caressed, coaxed; as a cat likes to be coaxed and stroked, and fed with
+cream, and have a warm corner.
+
+But all this _is not love_. It may exist, to be sure, where there
+_is_ love; it generally does. But it may also exist where there is
+no love. Love, my dear ladies, is _self-sacrifice_; it is a life out
+of self and in another. Its very essence is the preferring of the
+comfort, the ease, the wishes of another to one’s own, _for the_ love
+we bear then? Love is giving, and not receiving. Love is not a sheet
+of blotting-paper or a sponge, sucking in every thing to itself; it is
+an out-springing fountain, giving from itself. Love’s motto has been
+dropped in this world as a chance gem of great price by the loveliest,
+the fairest, the purest, the strongest of Lovers that ever trod this
+mortal earth, of whom it is recorded that He said, “It is more blessed
+to give than to receive.” Now, in love, there are ten receivers to
+one giver. There are ten persons in this world who like to be loved
+and love love, where there is one who knows _how to love_. That, O my
+dear ladies, is a nobler attainment than all your French and music and
+dancing. You may lose the very power of it by smothering it under a
+load of early self-indulgence. By living just as you are all wanting
+to live,—living to be petted, to be flattered, to be admired, to be
+praised, to have your own way, and to do only that which is easy and
+agreeable,—you may lose the power of self-denial and self-sacrifice;
+you may lose the power of loving nobly and worthily, and become a mere
+sheet of blotting-paper all your life.
+
+You will please to observe that, in all the married life of these two,
+as thus far told, all the accommodations, compliances, changes, have
+been made by John for Lillie.
+
+_He_ has been, step by step, giving up to her his ideal of life, and
+trying, as far as so different a nature can, to accommodate his to
+hers; and she accepts all this as her right and due.
+
+She sees no particular cause of gratitude in it,—it is what she
+expected when she married. Her own specialty, the thing which she has
+always cultivated, is to get that sort of power over man, by which she
+can carry her own points and purposes, and make him flexible to her
+will; nor does a suspicion of the utter worthlessness and selfishness
+of such a life ever darken the horizon of her thoughts.
+
+John’s bills were graver than he expected. It is true he was rich; but
+riches is a relative term. As related to the style of living hitherto
+practised in his establishment, John’s income was princely, and left
+a large balance to be devoted to works of general benevolence; but he
+perceived that, in this year, that balance would be all absorbed; and
+this troubled him.
+
+Then, again, his establishment being now given up by his sister must be
+reorganized, with Lillie at its head; and Lillie declared in the outset
+that she could not, and would not, take any trouble about any thing.
+
+“John would have to get servants; and the servants would have to see to
+things:” she “was resolved, for one thing, that she wasn’t going to be
+a slave to housekeeping.”
+
+By great pains and importunity, and an offer of high wages, Grace and
+John retained Bridget in the establishment, and secured from New York
+a seamstress and a waitress, and other members to make out a domestic
+staff.
+
+This sisterhood were from the isle of Erin, and not an unfavorable
+specimen of that important portion of our domestic life. They were
+quick-witted, well-versed in a certain degree of household and domestic
+skill, guided in well-doing more by impulsive good feeling than by any
+very enlightened principle. The dominant idea with them all appeared
+to be, that they were living in the house of a millionnaire, where
+money flowed through the establishment in a golden stream, out of which
+all might drink freely and rejoicingly, with no questions asked. Mrs.
+Lillie concerned herself only with results, and paid no attention to
+ways and means. She wanted a dainty and generous table to be spread
+for her, at all proper hours, with every pleasing and agreeable
+variety; to which she should come as she would to the table of a
+boarding-house, without troubling her head where any thing came from
+or went to. Bridget, having been for some years under the training and
+surveillance of Grace Seymour, was more than usually competent as cook
+and provider; but Bridget had abundance of the Irish astuteness, which
+led her to feel the genius of circumstances, and to shape her course
+accordingly.
+
+With Grace, she had been accurate, saving, and economical; for Miss
+Grace was so. Bridget had felt, under her sway, the beauty of that
+economy which saves because saving is in itself so fitting and so
+respectable; and because, in this way, a power for a wise generosity
+is accumulated. She was sympathetic with the ruling spirit of the
+establishment.
+
+But, under the new mistress, Bridget declined in virtue. The
+announcement that the mistress of a family isn’t going to give herself
+any trouble, nor bother her head with care about any thing, is one the
+influence of which is felt downward in every department. Why should
+Bridget give herself any trouble to save and economize for a mistress
+who took none for herself? She had worked hard all her life, why not
+take it easy? And it was so much easier to send daily a basket of cold
+victuals to her cousin on Vine Street than to contrive ways of making
+the most of things, that Bridget felt perfectly justified in doing it.
+If, once in a while, a little tea and a paper of sugar found their way
+into the same basket, who would ever miss it?
+
+The seamstress was an elegant lady. She kept all Lillie’s dresses and
+laces and wardrobe, and had something ready for her to put on when
+she changed her toilet every day. If this very fine lady wore her
+mistress’s skirts and sashes, and laces and jewelry, on the sly, to
+evening parties among the upper servant circles of Springdale, who was
+to know it? Mrs. John Seymour knew nothing about where her things were,
+nor what was their condition, and never wanted to trouble herself to
+inquire.
+
+It may therefore be inferred that when John began to settle up
+accounts, and look into financial matters, they seemed to him not to be
+going exactly in the most promising way.
+
+He thought he would give Lillie a little practical insight into his
+business,—show her exactly what his income was, and make some estimates
+of his expenses, just that she might have some little idea how things
+were going.
+
+So John, with great care, prepared a nice little account-book, prefaced
+by a table of figures, showing the income of the Spindlewood property,
+and the income of his law business, and his income from other sources.
+Against this, he placed the necessary out-goes of his business, and
+showed what balance might be left. Then he showed what had hitherto
+been spent for various benevolent purposes connected with the schools
+and his establishments at Spindlewood. He showed what had been the
+bills for the refitting of the house, and what were now the running
+current expenses of the family.
+
+He hoped that he had made all these so plain and simple, that Lillie
+might easily be made to understand them, and that thus some clear
+financial boundaries might appear in her mind. Then he seized a
+favorable hour, and produced his book.
+
+“Lillie,” he said, “I want to make you understand a little about our
+expenditures and income.”
+
+“Oh, dreadful, John! don’t, pray! I never had any head for things of
+that kind.”
+
+“But, Lillie, _please_ let me show you,” persisted John. “I’ve made it
+just as simple as can be.”
+
+[Illustration: “I never had the least head for figures.”]
+
+“O John! now—I just—can’t—there now! Don’t bring that book now; it’ll
+just make me low-spirited and cross. I never had the least head for
+figures; mamma always said so; and if there _is_ any thing that seems
+to me perfectly dreadful, it is accounts. I don’t think it’s any of a
+woman’s business—it’s all _man’s_ work, and men have got to see to it.
+Now, _please_ don’t,” she added, coming to him coaxingly, and putting
+her arm round his neck.
+
+“But, you see, Lillie,” John persevered, in a pleading tone,—“you see,
+all these alterations that have been made in the house have involved
+very serious expenses; and then, too, we are living at a very different
+rate of expense from what we ever lived before”—
+
+“There it is, John! Now, you oughtn’t to reproach me with it; for you
+know it was your own idea. I didn’t want the alterations made; but you
+would insist on it. I didn’t think it was best; but you would have
+them.”
+
+“But, Lillie, it was all because you wanted them.”
+
+“Well, I dare say; but I shouldn’t have wanted them if I thought it was
+going to bring in all this bother and trouble, and make me have to look
+over old accounts, and all such things. I’d rather never have had any
+thing!” And here Lillie began to cry.
+
+“Come, now, my darling, do be a sensible woman, and not act like a
+baby.”
+
+“There, John! it’s just as I knew it would be; I always said you wanted
+a different sort of a woman for a wife. Now, you knew when you took me
+that I wasn’t in the least strong-minded or sensible, but a poor little
+helpless thing; and you are beginning to get tired of me already. You
+wish you had married a woman like Grace, I know you do.”
+
+“Lillie, how silly! Please do listen, now. You have no idea how simple
+and easy what I want to explain to you is.”
+
+“Well, John, I can’t to-night, anyhow, because I have a headache. Just
+this talk has got my head to thumping so,—it’s really dreadful! and I’m
+so low-spirited! I do wish you had a wife that would suit you better.”
+And forthwith Mrs. Lillie dissolved in tears; and John stroked her
+head, and petted her, and called her a nice little pussy, and begged
+her pardon for being so rough with her, and, in short, acted like a
+fool generally.
+
+“If that woman was _my_ wife now,” I fancy I hear some youth with a
+promising moustache remark, “I’d make her behave!”
+
+Well, sir, supposing she was your wife, what are you going to do about
+it?
+
+What are you going to do when accounts give your wife a sick headache,
+so that she cannot possibly attend to them? Are you going to enact the
+Blue Beard, and rage and storm, and threaten to cut her head off? What
+good would that do? Cutting off a wrong little head would not turn it
+into a right one. An ancient proverb significantly remarks, “You can’t
+have more of a cat than her skin,”—and no amount of fuming and storming
+can make any thing more of a woman than she is. _Such_ as your wife is,
+sir, you must take her, and make the best of it. Perhaps you want your
+own way. Don’t you wish you could get it?
+
+But didn’t she promise to obey? Didn’t she? Of course. Then why is it
+that I must be all the while yielding points, and she never? Well, sir,
+that is for you to settle. The marriage service gives you authority;
+so does the law of the land. John could lock up Mrs. Lillie till she
+learned her lessons; he could do any of twenty other things that no
+gentleman would ever think of doing, and the law would support him
+in it. But, because John is a gentleman, and not Paddy from Cork, he
+strokes his wife’s head, and submits.
+
+We understand that our brethren, the Methodists, have recently decided
+to leave the word “obey” out of the marriage-service. Our friends are,
+as all the world knows, a most wise and prudent denomination, and
+guided by a very practical sense in their arrangements. If they have
+left the word “obey” out, it is because they have concluded that it
+does no good to put it in,—a decision that John’s experience would go a
+long way to justify.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+_JOHN’S BIRTHDAY._
+
+
+“MY dear Lillie,” quoth John one morning, “next week Wednesday is my
+birthday.”
+
+“Is it? How charming! What shall we do?”
+
+“Well, Lillie, it has always been our custom—Grace’s and mine—to give a
+grand _fête_ here to all our work-people. We invite them all over _en
+masse_, and have the house and grounds all open, and devote ourselves
+to giving them a good time.”
+
+Lillie’s countenance fell.
+
+“Now, really, John, how trying! what shall we do? You don’t really
+propose to bring all those low, dirty, little factory children in
+Spindlewood through our elegant new house? Just look at that satin
+furniture, and think what it will be when a whole parcel of freckled,
+tow-headed, snubby-nosed children have eaten bread and butter and
+doughnuts over it! Now, John, there is reason in all things; _this_
+house is not made for a missionary asylum.”
+
+John, thus admonished, looked at his house, and was fain to admit that
+there was the usual amount of that good, selfish, hard grit—called
+common sense—in Lillie’s remarks.
+
+Rooms have their atmosphere, their necessities, their artistic
+proprieties. Apartments _à la_ Louis Quatorze represent the ideas
+and the sympathies of a period when the rich lived by themselves in
+luxury, and the poor were trodden down in the gutter; when there was
+only aristocratic contempt and domination on one side, and servility
+and smothered curses on the other. With the change of the apartments
+to the style of that past era, seemed to come its maxims and morals,
+as artistically indicated for its completeness. So John walked up and
+down in his Louis Quinze _salon_, and into his Pompadour _boudoir_, and
+out again into the Louis Quatorze dining-rooms, and reflected. He had
+had many reflections in those apartments before. Of all ill-adapted and
+unsuitable pieces of furniture in them, he had always felt himself the
+most unsuitable and ill-adapted. He had never felt at home in them. He
+never felt like lolling at ease on any of those elegant sofas, as of
+old he used to cast himself into the motherly arms of the great chintz
+one that filled the recess. His Lillie, with her smart paraphernalia of
+hoops and puffs and ruffles and pinkings and bows, seemed a perfectly
+natural and indigenous production there; but he himself seemed always
+to be out of place. His Lillie might have been any of Balzac’s
+charming duchesses, with their “thirty-seven thousand ways of saying
+‘Yes;’” but, as to himself, he must have been taken for her steward or
+gardener, who had accidentally strayed in, and was fraying her satin
+surroundings with rough coats and heavy boots. There was not, in fact,
+in all the reorganized house, a place where he felt _himself_ to be
+at all the proper thing; nowhere where he could lounge, and read his
+newspaper, without a feeling of impropriety; nowhere that he could
+indulge in any of the slight Hottentot-isms wherein unrenewed male
+nature delights,—without a feeling of rebuke.
+
+John had not philosophized on the causes of this. He knew, in a
+general and unconfessed way, that he was not comfortable in his new
+arrangements; but he supposed it was his own fault. He had fallen into
+rusty, old-fashioned, bachelor ways; and, like other things that are
+not agreeable to the natural man, he supposed his trim, resplendent,
+genteel house was good for him, and that he ought to like it, and by
+grace should attain to liking it, if he only tried long enough.
+
+Only he took long rests every day while he went to Grace’s, on Elm
+Street, and stretched himself on the old sofa, and sat in his mother’s
+old arm-chair, and told Grace how very elegant their house was, and how
+much taste the architect had shown, and how much Lillie was delighted
+with it.
+
+But this silent walk of John’s, up and down his brilliant apartments,
+opened his eyes to another troublesome prospect. He was a Christian
+man, with a high aim and ideal in life. He believed in the Sermon on
+the Mount, and other radical preaching of that nature; and he was a
+very honest man, and hated humbug in every shape. Nothing seemed meaner
+to him than to profess a sham. But it began in a cloudy way to appear
+to him that there is a manner of arranging one’s houses that makes
+it difficult—yes, well-nigh impossible—to act out in them any of the
+brotherhood principles of those discourses.
+
+There are houses where the self-respecting poor, or the honest
+laboring man and woman, cannot be made to enter or to feel at home.
+They are made for the selfish luxury of the privileged few. Then John
+reflected, uneasily, that this change in his house had absorbed that
+whole balance which usually remained on his accounts to be devoted to
+benevolent purposes, and with which this year he had proposed to erect
+a reading-room for his work-people.
+
+“Lillie,” said John, as he walked uneasily up and down, “I wish you
+would try to help me in this thing. I always have done it,—my father
+and mother did it before me,—and I don’t want all of a sudden to depart
+from it. It may seem a little thing, but it does a great deal of good.
+It produces kind feeling; it refines and educates and softens them.”
+
+“Oh, well, John! if you say so, I must, I suppose,” said Lillie, with
+a sigh. “I can have the carpets and furniture all covered, I suppose;
+it’ll be no end of trouble, but I’ll try. But I must say, I think all
+this kind of petting of the working-classes does no sort of good; it
+only makes them uppish and exacting: you never get any gratitude for
+it.”
+
+“But you know, dearie, what is said about doing good, ‘hoping for
+nothing again,’” said John.
+
+“Now, John, please don’t preach, of all things. Haven’t I told you that
+I’ll try my best? I am going to,—I’ll work with all my strength,—you
+know that isn’t much,—but I shall exert myself to the utmost if you say
+so.”
+
+“My dear, I don’t want you to injure yourself!”
+
+“Oh! I don’t mind,” said Lillie, with the air of a martyr. “The
+servants, I suppose, will make a fuss about it; and I shouldn’t wonder
+if it was the means of sending them every one off in a body, and
+leaving me without any help in the house, just as the Follingsbees and
+the Simpkinses are coming to visit us.”
+
+“I didn’t know that you had invited the Follingsbees and Simpkinses,”
+said John.
+
+“Didn’t I tell you? I meant to,” said Mrs. Lillie, innocently.
+
+“I don’t like those Follingsbees, Lillie. He is a man I have no respect
+for; he is one of those shoddy upstarts, not at all our sort of folks.
+I’m sorry you asked him.”
+
+“But his wife is my particular friend,” said Lillie, “and they were
+very polite to mamma and me at Newport; and we really owe them some
+attention.”
+
+“Well, Lillie, since you have asked them, I will be polite to them; and
+I will try and do every thing to save you care in this entertainment.
+I’ll speak to Bridget myself; she knows our ways, and has been used to
+managing.”
+
+And so, as John was greatly beloved by Bridget, and as all the domestic
+staff had the true Irish fealty to the man of the house, and would
+run themselves off their feet in his service any day,—it came to pass
+that the _fête_ was holden, as of yore, in the grounds. Grace was there
+and helped, and so were Letitia and Rose Ferguson; and all passed off
+better than could be expected. But John did not enjoy it. He felt all
+the while that he was dragging Lillie as a thousand-pound weight after
+him; and he inly resolved that, once out of that day’s festival, he
+would never try to have it again.
+
+Lillie went to bed with sick headache, and lay two days after it,
+during which she cried and lamented incessantly. She “knew she was not
+the wife for John;” she “always told him he wouldn’t be satisfied with
+her, and now she saw he wasn’t; but she had tried her very best, and
+now it was cruel to think she should not succeed any better.”
+
+“My dearest child,” said John, who, to say the truth, was beginning to
+find this thing less charming than it used to be, “I _am_ satisfied. I
+am much obliged to you. I’m sure you have done all that could be asked.”
+
+“Well, I’m sure I hope those folks of yours were pleased,” quoth
+Lillie, as she lay looking like a martyr, with a cloth wet in ice-water
+bound round her head. “They ought to be; they have left grease-spots
+all over the sofa in my boudoir, from one end to the other; and cake
+and raisins have been trodden into the carpets; and the turf around the
+oval is all cut up; and they have broken my little Diana; and such a
+din as there was!—oh, me! it makes my head ache to think of it.”
+
+“Never mind, Lillie, I’ll see to it, and set it all right.”
+
+“No, you can’t. One of the children broke that model of the Leaning
+Tower too. I found it. You can’t teach such children to let things
+alone. Oh, dear me! my head!”
+
+[Illustration: “Oh, me! it makes my head ache to think of it.”]
+
+“There, there, pussy! only don’t worry,” said John, in soothing tones.
+
+“Don’t think me horrid, _please_ don’t,” said Lillie, piteously. “I did
+try to have things go right; didn’t I?”
+
+“Certainly you did, dearie; so don’t worry. I’ll get all the spots
+taken out, and all the things mended, and make every thing right.”
+
+So John called Rosa, on his way downstairs. “Show me the sofa that they
+spoiled,” said he.
+
+“Sofa?” said Rosa.
+
+“Yes; I understand the children greased the sofa in Mrs. Seymour’s
+boudoir.”
+
+“Oh, dear, no! nothing of the sort; I’ve been putting every thing to
+rights in all the rooms, and they look beautifully.”
+
+“Didn’t they break something?”
+
+“Oh, no, nothing! The little things were good as could be.”
+
+“That Leaning Tower, and that little Diana,” suggested John.
+
+“Oh, dear me, no! I broke those a month ago, and showed them to Mrs.
+Seymour, and promised to mend them. Oh! she knows all about that.”
+
+“Ah!” said John, “I didn’t know that. Well, Rosa, put every thing up
+nicely, and divide this money among the girls for extra trouble,” he
+added, slipping a bill into her hand.
+
+“I’m sure there’s no trouble,” said Rosa. “We all enjoyed it; and I
+believe everybody did; only I’m sorry it was too much for Mrs. Seymour;
+she is very delicate.”
+
+“Yes, she is,” said John, as he turned away, drawing a long, slow sigh.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That long, slow sigh had become a frequent and unconscious occurrence
+with him of late. When our ideals are sick unto death; when they are
+slowly dying and passing away from us, we sigh thus. John said to
+himself softly,—no matter what; but he felt the pang of knowing again
+what he had known so often of late, that his Lillie’s word was not
+golden. What she said would not bear close examination. Therefore, why
+examine?
+
+“Evidently, she is determined that this thing shall not go on,” said
+John. “Well, I shall never try again; it’s of no use;” and John went
+up to his sister’s, and threw himself down upon the old chintz sofa as
+if it had been his mother’s bosom. His sister sat there, sewing. The
+sun came twinkling through a rustic frame-work of ivy which it had been
+the pride of her heart to arrange the week before. All the old family
+pictures and heirlooms, and sketches and pencillings, were arranged in
+the most charming way, so that her rooms seemed a reproduction of the
+old home.
+
+“Hang it all!” said John, with a great flounce as he turned over on the
+sofa. “I’m not up to par this morning.”
+
+Now, Grace had that perfect intuitive knowledge of just what the matter
+was with her brother, that women always have who have grown up in
+intimacy with a man. These fine female eyes see farther between the
+rough cracks and ridges of the oak bark of manhood than men themselves.
+Nothing would have been easier, had Grace been a jealous _exigeante_
+woman, than to have passed a fine probe of sisterly inquiry into the
+weak places where the ties between John and Lillie were growing slack,
+and untied and loosened them more and more. She could have done it so
+tenderly, so conscientiously, so pityingly,—encouraging John to talk
+and to complain, and taking part with him,—till there should come to be
+two parties in the family, the brother and sister against the wife.
+
+How strong the temptation was, those may feel who reflect that this
+one subject caused an almost total eclipse of the life-long habit of
+confidence which had existed between Grace and her brother, and that
+her brother was her life and her world.
+
+But Grace was one of those women formed under the kindly severe
+discipline of Puritan New England, to act not from blind impulse or
+instinct, but from high principle. The habit of self-examination and
+self-inspection, for which the religious teaching of New England has
+been peculiar, produced a race of women who rose superior to those mere
+feminine caprices and impulses which often hurry very generous and
+kindly-natured persons into ungenerous and dishonorable conduct. Grace
+had been trained, by a father and mother whose marriage union was an
+ideal of mutual love, honor, and respect, to feel that marriage was the
+holiest and most awful of obligations. To her, the idea of a husband or
+a wife betraying each other’s weaknesses or faults by complaints to a
+third party seemed something sacrilegious; and she used all her womanly
+tact and skill to prevent any conversation that might lead to such a
+result.
+
+“Lillie is entirely knocked up by the affair yesterday; she had a
+terrible headache this morning,” said John.
+
+“Poor child! She is a delicate little thing,” said Grace.
+
+“She couldn’t have had any labor,” continued John, “for I saw to every
+thing and provided every thing myself; and Bridget and Rosa and all the
+girls entered into it with real spirit, and Lillie did the best she
+could, poor girl! but I could see all the time she was worrying about
+her new fizgigs and folderols in the house. Hang it! I wish they were
+all in the Red Sea!” burst out John, glad to find something to vent
+himself upon. “If I had known that making the house over was going to
+be such a restraint on a fellow, I would never have done it.”
+
+“Oh, well! never mind that now,” said Grace. “Your house will get
+rubbed down by and by, and the new gloss taken off; and so will
+your wife, and you will all be cosey and easy as an old shoe. Young
+mistresses, you see, have nerves all over their house at first. They
+tremble at every dent in their furniture, and wink when you come near
+it, as if you were going to hit it a blow; but that wears off in time,
+and they they learn to take it easy.”
+
+John looked relieved; but after a minute broke out again:—
+
+“I say, Gracie, Lillie has gone and invited the Simpkinses and the
+Follingsbees here this fall. Just think of it!”
+
+“Well, I suppose you expect your wife to have the right of inviting her
+company,” said Grace.
+
+“But, you know, Gracie, they are not at all our sort of folks,” said
+John. “None of our set would ever think of visiting them, and it’ll
+seem so odd to see them here. Follingsbee is a vulgar sharper, who has
+made his money out of our country by dishonest contracts during the
+war. I don’t know much about his wife. Lillie says she is her intimate
+friend.”
+
+“Oh, well, John! we must get over it in the quietest way possible. It
+wouldn’t be handsome not to make the agreeable to your wife’s company;
+and if you don’t like the quality of it, why, you are a good deal
+nearer to her than any one else can be,—you can gradually detach her
+from them.”
+
+“Then you think I ought to put a good face on their coming?” said John,
+with a sigh of relief.
+
+“Oh, certainly! of course. What else can you do? It’s one of the things
+to be expected with a young wife.”
+
+“And do you think the Wilcoxes and the Fergusons and the rest of our
+set will be civil?”
+
+“Why, of course they will,” said Grace. “Rose and Letitia will,
+certainly; and the others will follow suit. After all, John, perhaps
+we old families, as we call ourselves, are a little bit pharisaical
+and self-righteous, and too apt to thank God that we are not as other
+men are. It’ll do us good to be obliged to come a little out of our
+crinkles.”
+
+“It isn’t any old family feeling about Follingsbee,” said John. “But I
+feel that that man deserves to be in State’s prison much more than many
+a poor dog that is there now.”
+
+“And that may be true of many another, even in the selectest circles
+of good society,” said Grace; “but we are not called on to play
+Providence, nor pronounce judgments. The common courtesies of life do
+not commit us one way or the other. The Lord himself does not express
+his opinion of the wicked, but allows all an equal share in his
+kindliness.”
+
+“Well, Gracie, you are right; and I’ll constrain myself to do the thing
+handsomely,” said John.
+
+“The thing with you men,” said Grace, “is, that you want your wives to
+see with your eyes, all in a minute, what has got to come with years
+and intimacy, and the gradual growing closer and closer together. The
+husband and wife, of themselves, drop many friendships and associations
+that at first were mutually distasteful, simply because their tastes
+have grown insensibly to be the same.”
+
+John hoped it would be so with himself and Lillie; for he was still
+very much in love with her; and it comforted him to have Grace speak so
+cheerfully, as if it were possible.
+
+“You think Lillie will grow into our ways by and by?”—he said
+inquiringly.
+
+“Well, if we have patience, and give her time. You know, John, that you
+knew when you took her that she had not been brought up in our ways
+of living and thinking. Lillie comes from an entirely different set
+of people from any we are accustomed to; but a man must face all the
+consequences of his marriage honestly and honorably.”
+
+“I know it,” said John, with a sigh. “I say, Gracie, do you think the
+Fergusons like Lillie? I want her to be intimate with them.”
+
+“Well, I think they admire her,” said Grace, evasively, “and feel
+disposed to be as intimate as she will let them.”
+
+“Because,” said John, “Rose Ferguson is such a splendid girl; she is so
+strong, and so generous, and so perfectly true and reliable,—it would
+be the joy of my heart if Lillie would choose her for a friend.”
+
+“Then, pray don’t tell her so,” said Grace, earnestly; “and don’t
+praise her to Lillie,—and, above all things, never hold her up as a
+pattern, unless you want your wife to hate her.”
+
+John opened his eyes very wide.
+
+“So!” said he, slowly, “I never thought of that. You think she would be
+jealous?” and John smiled, as men do at the idea that their wives may
+be jealous, not disliking it on the whole.
+
+“I know I shouldn’t be in much charity with a woman my husband proposed
+to me as a model; that is to say, supposing I had one,” said Grace.
+
+“That reminds me,” said John, suddenly rising up from the sofa. “Do you
+know, Gracie, that Colonel Sydenham has come back from his cruise?”
+
+“I had heard of it,” said Grace, quietly. “Now, John, don’t interrupt
+me. I’m just going to turn this corner, and must count,—‘one, two,
+three, four, five, six,’”—
+
+John looked at his sister. “How handsome she looks when her cheeks have
+that color!” he thought. “I wonder if there ever was any thing in that
+affair between them.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+_A GREAT MORAL CONFLICT._
+
+
+“NOW, John dear, I have something very particular that I want you to
+promise me,” said Mrs. Lillie, a day or two after the scenes last
+recorded. Our Lillie had recovered her spirits, and got over her
+headache, and had come down and done her best to be delightful; and
+when a very pretty woman, who has all her life studied the art of
+pleasing, does that, she generally succeeds.
+
+John thought to himself he “didn’t care _what_ she was, he loved her;”
+and that she certainly was the prettiest, most bewitching little
+creature on earth. He flung his sighs and his doubts and fears to the
+wind, and suffered himself to be coaxed, and cajoled, and led captive,
+in the most amiable manner possible.
+
+His fair one had a point to carry,—a point that instinct told her was
+to be managed with great adroitness.
+
+“Well,” said John, over his newspaper, “what is this something so very
+particular?”
+
+“First, sir, put down that paper, and listen to me,” said Mrs. Lillie,
+coming up and seating herself on his knee, and sweeping down the
+offending paper with an air of authority.
+
+“Yes’m,” said John, submissively. “Let’s see,—how was that in the
+marriage service? I promised to obey, didn’t I?”
+
+“Of course you did; that service is always interpreted by
+contraries,—ever since Eve made Adam mind her in the beginning,” said
+Mrs. Lillie, laughing.
+
+“And got things into a pretty mess in that way,” said John; “but come,
+now, what is it?”
+
+“Well, John, you know the Follingsbees are coming next week?”
+
+“I know it,” said John, looking amiable and conciliatory.
+
+“Well, dear, there are some things about our establishment that are not
+just as I should feel pleased to receive them to.”
+
+“Ah!” said John; “why, Lillie, I thought we were fine as a fiddle, from
+the top of the house to the bottom.”
+
+“Oh! it’s not the house; the house is splendid. I shouldn’t be in the
+least ashamed to show it to anybody; but about the table arrangements.”
+
+“Now, really, Lillie, what can one have more than real old china and
+heavy silver plate? I rather pique myself on that; I think it has quite
+a good, rich, solid old air.”
+
+“Well, John, to say the truth, why do we never have any wine? I don’t
+care for it,—I never drink it; but the decanters, and the different
+colored glasses, and all the apparatus, are such an adornment; and
+then the Follingsbees are such judges of wine. He imports his own from
+Spain.”
+
+John’s face had been hardening down into a firm, decided look, while
+Lillie, stroking his whiskers and playing with his collar, went on with
+this address.
+
+At last he said, “Lillie, I have done almost every thing you ever
+asked; but this one thing I cannot do,—it is a matter of principle. I
+never drink wine, never have it on my table, never give it, because I
+have pledged myself not to do it.”
+
+“Now, John, here is some more of your Quixotism, isn’t it?”
+
+“Well, Lillie, I suppose you will call it so,” said John; “but listen
+to me patiently. My father and I labored for a long time to root out
+drinking from our village at Spindlewood. It seemed, for the time, as
+if it would be the destruction of every thing there. The fact was,
+there was rum in every family; the parents took it daily, the children
+learned to love and long after it, by seeing the parents, and drinking
+little sweetened remains at the bottoms of tumblers. There were, every
+year, families broken up and destroyed, and fine fellows going to
+the very devil, with this thing; and so we made a movement to form a
+temperance society. I paid lecturers, and finally lectured myself. At
+last they said to me: ‘It’s all very well for you rich people, that
+have twice as fine houses and twice as many pleasures as we poor folks,
+to pick on us for having a little something comfortable to drink in
+our houses. If we could afford your fine nice wines, and all that,
+we wouldn’t drink whiskey. You must all have your wine on the table;
+whiskey is the poor man’s wine.’”
+
+“I think,” said Lillie, “they were abominably impertinent to talk so to
+you. I should have told them so.”
+
+“Perhaps they thought I was impertinent in talking to them about their
+private affairs,” said John; “but I will tell you what I said to them.
+I said, ‘My good fellows, I will clear my house and table of wine, if
+you will clear yours of rum.’ On this agreement I formed a temperance
+society; my father and I put our names at the head of the list, and we
+got every man and boy in Spindlewood. It was a complete victory; and,
+since then, there hasn’t been a more temperate, thrifty set of people
+in these United States.”
+
+“Didn’t your mother object?”
+
+“My mother! no, indeed; I wish you could have known my mother. It was
+no small sacrifice to her and father. Not that they cared a penny for
+the wine itself; but the poetry and hospitality of the thing, the fine
+old cheery associations connected with it, were a real sacrifice. But
+when we told my mother how it was, she never hesitated a moment. All
+our cellar of fine old wines was sent round as presents to hospitals,
+except a little that we keep for sickness.”
+
+“Well, really!” said Lillie, in a dry, cool tone, “I suppose it was
+very good of you, perfectly saintlike and all that; but it does seem a
+great pity. Why couldn’t these people take care of themselves? I don’t
+see why you should go on denying yourself just to keep them in the ways
+of virtue.”
+
+“Oh, it’s no self-denial now! I’m quite used to it,” said John,
+cheerily. “I am young and strong, and just as well as I can be, and
+don’t need wine; in fact, I never think of it. The Fergusons, who are
+with us in the Spindlewood business, took just the same view of it, and
+did just as we did; and the Wilcoxes joined us; in fact, all the good
+old families of our set came into it.”
+
+“Well, couldn’t you, just while the Follingsbees are here, do
+differently?”
+
+“No, Lillie; there’s my pledge, you see. No: it’s really impossible.”
+
+Lillie frowned and looked disconsolate.
+
+“John, I really do think you are selfish; you don’t seem to have any
+consideration for me at all. It’s going to make it so disagreeable and
+uncomfortable for me. The Follingsbees are accustomed to wine every
+day. I’m perfectly ashamed not to give it to them.”
+
+“Do ’em good to fast awhile, then,” said John, laughing like a
+hard-hearted monster. “You’ll see they won’t suffer materially. Bridget
+makes splendid coffee.”
+
+“It’s a shame to laugh at what troubles me, John. The Follingsbees are
+my friends, and of course I want to treat them handsomely.”
+
+“We will treat them just as handsomely as we treat ourselves,” said
+John, “and mortal man or woman ought not to ask more.”
+
+“I don’t care,” said Lillie, after a pause. “I hate all these moral
+movements and society questions. They are always in the way of people’s
+having a good time; and I believe the world would wag just as well as
+it does, if nobody had ever thought of them. People will call you a
+real muff, John.”
+
+“How very terrible!” said John, laughing. “What shall I do if I am
+called a muff? and what a jolly little Mrs. Muff you will be!” he said,
+pinching her cheek.
+
+“You needn’t laugh, John,” said Lillie, pouting. “You don’t know how
+things look in fashionable circles. The Follingsbees are in the very
+highest circle. They have lived in Paris, and been invited by the
+Emperor.”
+
+“I haven’t much opinion of Americans who live in Paris and are invited
+by the Emperor,” said John. “But, be that as it may, I shall do the
+best I can for them, and Mr. Young says, ‘angels could no more;’ so,
+good-by, puss: I must go to my office; and don’t let’s talk about this
+any more.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And John put on his cap and squared his broad shoulders, and, marching
+off with a resolute stride, went to his office, and had a most
+uncomfortable morning of it. You see, my dear friends, that though
+Nature has set the seal of sovereignty on man, in broad shoulders and
+bushy beard; though he fortify and incase himself in rough overcoats
+and heavy boots, and walk with a dashing air, and whistle like a
+freeman, we all know it is not an easy thing to wage a warfare with a
+pretty little creature in lace cap and tiny slippers, who has a faculty
+of looking very pensive and grieved, and making up a sad little mouth,
+as if her heart were breaking.
+
+John never doubted that he was right, and in the way of duty; and yet,
+though he braved it out so stoutly with Lillie, and though he marched
+out from her presence victoriously, as it were, with drums beating and
+colors flying, yet there was a dismal sinking of heart under it.
+
+“I’m right; I know I am. Of course I can’t give up here; it’s a matter
+of principle, of honor,” he said over and over to himself. “Perhaps if
+Lillie had been here I never should have taken such a pledge; but as I
+have, there’s no help for it.”
+
+Then he thought of what Lillie had suggested about it’s looking
+niggardly in hospitality, and was angry with himself for feeling
+uncomfortable. “What do I care what Dick Follingsbee thinks?” said he
+to himself: “a man that I despise; a cheat, and a swindler,—a man of
+no principle. Lillie doesn’t know the sacrifice it is to me to have
+such people in my house at all. Hang it all! I wish Lillie was a little
+more like the women I’ve been used to,—like Grace and Rose and my
+mother. But, poor thing, I oughtn’t to blame her, after all, for her
+unfortunate bringing up. But it’s so nice to be with women that can
+understand the grounds you go on. A man never wants to fight a woman.
+I’d rather give up, hook and line, and let Lillie have her own way
+in every thing. But then it won’t do; a fellow must stop somewhere.
+Well, I’ll make it up in being a model of civility to these confounded
+people that I wish were in the Red Sea. Let’s see, I’ll ask Lillie if
+she don’t want to give a party for them when they come. By George! she
+shall have every thing her own way there,—send to New York for the
+supper, turn the house topsy-turvy, illuminate the grounds, and do any
+thing else she can think of. Yes, yes, she shall have _carte blanche_
+for every thing!”
+
+All which John told Mrs. Lillie when he returned to dinner and found
+her enacting the depressed wife in a most becoming lace cap and wrapper
+that made her look like a suffering angel; and the treaty was sealed
+with many kisses.
+
+“You shall have _carte blanche_, dearest,” he said, “for every thing
+but what we were speaking of; and that will content you, won’t it?”
+
+And Lillie, with lingering pensiveness, very graciously acknowledged
+that it would; and seemed so touchingly resigned, and made such a merit
+of her resignation, that John told her she was an angel; in fact, he
+had a sort of indistinct remorseful feeling that he was a sort of cruel
+monster to deny her any thing. Lillie had sense enough to see when she
+could do a thing, and when she couldn’t. She had given up the case
+when John went out in the morning, and so accepted the treaty of peace
+with a good degree of cheerfulness; and she was soon busy discussing
+the matter. “You see, we’ve been invited everywhere, and haven’t given
+any thing,” she said; “and this will do up our social obligations to
+everybody here. And then we can show off our rooms; they really are
+made to give parties in.”
+
+“Yes, so they are,” said John, delighted to see her smile again; “they
+seem adapted to that, and I don’t doubt you’ll make a brilliant affair
+of it, Lillie.”
+
+“Trust me for that, John,” said Lillie. “I’ll show the Follingsbees
+that something can be done here in Springdale as well as in New York.”
+And so the great question was settled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+_THE FOLLINGSBEES ARRIVE._
+
+[Illustration: THE FOLLINGSBEES.]
+
+
+NEXT week the Follingsbees alighted, so to speak, from a cloud of
+glory. They came in their own carriage, and with their own horses; all
+in silk and silver, purple and fine linen, “with rings on their fingers
+and bells on their toes,” as the old song has it. We pause to caution
+our readers that this last clause is to be interpreted metaphorically.
+
+Springdale stood astonished. The quiet, respectable old town had not
+seen any thing like it for many a long day; the ostlers at the hotel
+talked of it; the boys followed the carriage, and hung on the slats of
+the fence to see the party alight, and said to one another in their
+artless vocabulary, “Golly! ain’t it bully?”
+
+There was Mr. Dick Follingsbee, with a pair of waxed, tow-colored
+moustaches like the French emperor’s, and ever so much longer. He was
+a little, thin, light-colored man, with a yellow complexion and sandy
+hair; who, with the appendages aforesaid, looked like some kind of
+large insect, with very long _antennæ_. There was Mrs. Follingsbee,—a
+tall, handsome, dark-eyed, dark-haired, dashing woman, French dressed
+from the tip of her lace parasol to the toe of her boot. There was
+Mademoiselle Thérèse, the French maid, an inexpressibly fine lady; and
+there was _la petite_ Marie, Mrs. Follingsbee’s three-year-old hopeful,
+a lean, bright-eyed little thing, with a great scarlet bow on her back
+that made her look like a walking butterfly. On the whole, the tableau
+of arrival was so impressive, that Bridget and Annie, Rosa and all the
+kitchen cabinet, were in a breathless state of excitement.
+
+“How do I find you, _ma chère_?” said Mrs. Follingsbee, folding Lillie
+rapturously to her breast. “I’ve been just dying to see you! How
+lovely every thing looks! Oh, _ciel_! how like dear Paris!” she said,
+as she was conducted into the parlor, and sunk upon the sofa.
+
+“Pretty well done, too, for America!” said Mr. Follingsbee, gazing
+round, and settling his collar. Mr. Follingsbee was one of the class
+of returned travellers who always speak condescendingly of any
+thing American; as, “so-so,” or “tolerable,” or “pretty fair,”—a
+considerateness which goes a long way towards keeping up the spirits of
+the country.
+
+“I say, Dick,” said his lady, “have you seen to the bags and wraps?”
+
+“All right, madam.”
+
+“And my basket of medicines and the books?”
+
+“O. K.,” replied Dick, sententiously.
+
+“Oh! how often must I tell you not to use those odious slang terms?”
+said his wife, reprovingly.
+
+“Oh! Mrs. John Seymour knows _me_ of old,” said Mr. Follingsbee,
+winking facetiously at Lillie. “We’ve had many a jolly lark together;
+haven’t we, Lill?”
+
+“Certainly we have,” said Lillie, affably. “But come, darling,” she
+added to Mrs. Follingsbee, “don’t you want to be shown your room?”
+
+“Go it, then, my dearie; and I’ll toddle up with the fol-de-rols and
+what-you-may-calls,” said the incorrigible Dick. “There, wife, Mrs.
+John Seymour shall go first, so that you shan’t be jealous of her
+and me. You know we came pretty near being in interesting relations
+ourselves at one time; didn’t we, now?” he said with another wink.
+
+It is said that a thorough-paced naturalist can reconstruct a whole
+animal from one specimen bone. In like manner, we imagine that, from
+these few words of dialogue, our expert readers can reconstruct Mr. and
+Mrs. Follingsbee: he, vulgar, shallow, sharp, keen at a bargain, and
+utterly without scruples; with a sort of hilarious, animal good nature
+that was in a state of constant ebullition. He was, as Richard Baxter
+said of a better man, “always in that state of hilarity that another
+would be in when he hath taken a cup too much.”
+
+Dick Follingsbee began life as a peddler. He was now reputed to be
+master of untold wealth, kept a yacht and race-horses, ran his own
+theatre, and patronized the whole world and creation in general with a
+jocular freedom. Mrs. Follingsbee had been a country girl, with small
+early advantages, but considerable ambition. She had married Dick
+Follingsbee, and helped him up in the world, as a clever, ambitious
+woman may. The last few years she had been spending in Paris, improving
+her mind and manners in reading Dumas’ and Madame George Sand’s novels,
+and availing herself of such outskirt advantages of the court of the
+Tuileries as industrious, pains-taking Americans, not embarrassed by
+self-respect, may command.
+
+Mrs. Follingsbee, like many another of our republicans who besieged the
+purlieus of the late empire, felt that a residence near the court, at a
+time when every thing good and decent in France was hiding in obscure
+corners, and every thing _parvenu_ was wide awake and active, entitled
+her to speak as one having authority concerning French character,
+French manners and customs. This lady assumed the sentimental literary
+_rôle_. She was always cultivating herself in her own way; that is to
+say, she was assiduous in what she called keeping up her French.
+
+In the opinion of many of her class of thinkers, French is the key
+of the kingdom of heaven; and, of course, it is worth one’s while to
+sell all that one has to be possessed of it. Mrs. Follingsbee had not
+been in the least backward to do this; but, as to getting the golden
+key, she had not succeeded. She had formed the acquaintance of many
+disreputable people; she had read French novels and French plays such
+as no well-bred French woman would suffer in her family; she had lost
+such innocence and purity of mind as she had to lose, and, after all,
+had _not_ got the French language.
+
+However, there are losses that do not trouble the subject of them,
+because they bring insensibility. Just as Mrs. Follingsbee’s ear was
+not delicate enough to perceive that her rapid and confident French was
+not Parisian, so also her conscience and moral sense were not delicate
+enough to know that she had spent her labor for “that which was not
+bread.” She had only succeeded in acquiring such an air that, on a
+careless survey, she might have been taken for one of the _demi-monde_
+of Paris; while secretly she imagined herself the fascinating heroine
+of a French romance.
+
+The friendship between Mrs. Follingsbee and Lillie was of the most
+impassioned nature; though, as both of them were women of a good solid
+perception in regard to their own material interests, there were
+excellent reasons on both sides for this enthusiasm.
+
+Notwithstanding the immense wealth of the Follingsbees, there were
+circles to which Mrs. Follingsbee found it difficult to be admitted.
+With the usual human perversity, these, of course, became exactly the
+ones, and the only ones, she particularly cared for. Her ambition was
+to pass beyond the ranks of the “shoddy” aristocracy to those of the
+old-established families. Now, the Seymours, the Fergusons, and the
+Wilcoxes were families of this sort; and none of them had ever cared to
+conceal the fact, that they did not intend to know the Follingsbees.
+The marriage of Lillie into the Seymour family was the opening of a
+door; and Mrs. Follingsbee had been at Lillie’s feet during her Newport
+campaign. On the other hand, Lillie, having taken the sense of the
+situation at Springdale, had cast her thoughts forward like a discreet
+young woman, and perceived in advance of her a very dull domestic
+winter, enlivened only by reading-circles and such slow tea-parties as
+unsophisticated Springdale found agreeable. The idea of a long visit to
+the New-York alhambra of the Follingsbees in the winter, with balls,
+parties, unlimited opera-boxes, was not a thing to be disregarded; and
+so, when Mrs. Follingsbee “_ma chèred_” Lillie, Lillie “my deared” Mrs.
+Follingsbee: and the pair are to be seen at this blessed moment sitting
+with their arms tenderly round each other’s waists on a _causeuse_ in
+Mrs. Follingsbee’s dressing-room.
+
+“You don’t know, _mignonne_,” said Mrs. Follingsbee, “how perfectly
+_ravissante_ these apartments are! I’m so glad poor Charlie did them so
+well for you. I laid my commands on him, poor fellow!”
+
+“Pray, how does your affair with him get on?” said Lillie.
+
+“O dearest! you’ve no conception what a trial it is to me to keep him
+in the bounds of reason. He has such struggles of mind about that
+stupid wife of his. Think of it, my dear! a man like Charlie Ferrola,
+all poetry, romance, ideality, tied to a woman who thinks of nothing
+but her children’s teeth and bowels, and turns the whole house into a
+nursery! Oh, I’ve no patience with such people.”
+
+“Well, poor fellow! it’s a pity he ever got married,” said Lillie.
+
+“Well, it would be all well enough if this sort of woman ever would
+be reasonable; but they won’t. They don’t in the least comprehend the
+necessities of genius. They want to yoke Pegasus to a cart, you see.
+Now, I understand Charlie perfectly. I could give him that which he
+needs. I appreciate him. I make a bower of peace and enjoyment for him,
+where his artistic nature finds the repose it craves.”
+
+“And she pitches into him about you,” said Lillie, not slow to perceive
+the true literal rendering of all this.
+
+“Of course, _ma chère_,—tears him, rends him, lacerates his soul;
+sometimes he comes to me in the most dreadful states. Really, dear, I
+have apprehended something quite awful! I shouldn’t in the least be
+surprised if he should blow his brains out!”
+
+And Mrs. Follingsbee sighed deeply, gave a glance at herself in an
+opposite mirror, and smoothed down a bow pensively, as the prima donna
+at the grand opera generally does when her lover is getting ready to
+stab himself.
+
+“Oh! I don’t think he’s going to kill himself,” said Mrs. Lillie, who,
+it must be understood, was secretly somewhat sceptical about the power
+of her friend’s charms, and looked on this little French romance with
+the eye of an outsider: “never you believe that, dearest. These men
+make dreadful tearings, and shocking eyes and mouths; but they take
+pretty good care to keep in the world, after all. You see, if a man’s
+dead, there’s an end of all things; and I fancy they think of that
+before they quite come to any thing decisive.”
+
+“_Chère étourdie_,” said Mrs. Follingsbee, regarding Lillie with a
+pensive smile: “you are just your old self, I see; you are now at the
+height of your power,—‘_jeune Madame, un mari qui vous adore_,’ ready
+to put all things under your feet. How can you feel for a worn, lonely
+heart like mine, that sighs for congeniality?”
+
+“Bless me, now,” said Lillie, briskly; “you don’t tell me that you’re
+going to be so silly as to get in love with Charlie yourself! It’s
+all well enough to keep these fellows on the tragic high ropes; but,
+if a woman falls in love herself, there’s an end of her power. And,
+darling, just think of it: you wouldn’t have married that creature if
+you could; he’s poor as a rat, and always will be; these desperately
+interesting fellows always are. Now you have money without end; and of
+course you have position; and your husband is a man you can get any
+thing in the world out of.”
+
+“Oh! as to that, I don’t complain of Dick,” said Mrs. Follingsbee:
+“he’s coarse and vulgar, to be sure, but he never stands in my way,
+and I never stand in his; and, as you say, he’s free about money. But
+still, darling, sometimes it seems to me such a weary thing to live
+without sympathy of soul! A marriage without congeniality, _mon Dieu_,
+what is it? And then the harsh, cold laws of human society prevent any
+relief. They forbid natures that are made for each other from being to
+each other what they can be.”
+
+“You mean that people will talk about you,” said Lillie. “Well, I
+assure you, dearest, they _will_ talk awfully, if you are not very
+careful. I say this to you frankly, as your friend, you know.”
+
+“Ah, _ma petite_! you don’t need to tell me that. I _am_ careful,” said
+Mrs. Follingsbee. “I am always lecturing Charlie, and showing him that
+we must keep up _les convenances_; but is it not hard on us poor women
+to lead always this repressed, secretive life?”
+
+“What made you marry Mr. Follingsbee?” said Lillie, with apparent
+artlessness.
+
+“Darling, I was but a child. I was ignorant of the mysteries of my own
+nature, of my capabilities. As Charlie said to me the other day, we
+never learn what we are till some congenial soul unlocks the secret
+door of our hearts. The fact is, dearest, that American society, with
+its strait-laced, puritanical notions, bears terribly hard on woman’s
+heart. Poor Charlie! he is no less one of the victims of society.”
+
+“Oh, nonsense!” said Lillie. “You take it too much to heart. You
+mustn’t mind all these men say. They are always being desperate and
+tragic. Charlie has talked just so to me, time and time again. I
+understand it all. He talked exactly so to me when he came to Newport
+last summer. You must take matters easy, my dear,—you, with your
+beauty, and your style, and your money. Why, you can lead all New York
+captive! Forty fellows like Charlie are not worth spoiling one’s dinner
+for. Come, cheer up; positively I shan’t let you be blue, _ma reine_.
+Let me ring for your maid to dress you for dinner. _Au revoir._”
+
+The fact was, that Mrs. Lillie, having formerly set down this lovely
+Charlie on the list of her own adorers, had small sympathy with the
+sentimental romance of her friend.
+
+“What a fool she makes of herself!” she thought, as she contemplated
+her own sylph-like figure and wonderful freshness of complexion in the
+glass. “Don’t I know Charlie Ferrola? he wants her to get him into
+fashionable life, and knows the way to do it. To think of that stout,
+middle-aged party imagining that Charlie Ferrola’s going to die for her
+charms! it’s too funny! How stout the dear old thing does get, to be
+sure!”
+
+It will be observed here that our dear Lillie did not want for
+perspicacity. There is nothing so absolutely clear-sighted, in certain
+directions, as selfishness. Entire want of sympathy with others clears
+up one’s vision astonishingly, and enables us to see all the weak
+points and ridiculous places of our neighbors in the most accurate
+manner possible.
+
+[Illustration: MR. CHARLIE FERROLA.]
+
+As to Mr. Charlie Ferrola, our Lillie was certainly in the right in
+respect to him. He was one of those blossoms of male humanity that
+seem as expressly designed by nature for the ornamentation of ladies’
+boudoirs, as an Italian greyhound: he had precisely the same graceful,
+shivery adaptation to live by petting and caresses. His tastes were all
+so exquisite that it was the most difficult thing in the world to keep
+him out of misery a moment. He was in a chronic state of disgust with
+something or other in our lower world from morning till night.
+
+His profession was nominally that of architecture and landscape
+gardening; but, in point of fact, consisted in telling certain rich,
+_blasé_, stupid, fashionable people how they could quickest get rid of
+their money. He ruled despotically in the Follingsbee halls: he bought
+and rejected pictures and jewelry, ordered and sent off furniture, with
+the air of an absolute master; amusing himself meanwhile with running
+a French romance with the handsome mistress of the establishment.
+As a consequence, he had not only opportunities for much quiet
+feathering of his own nest, but the _éclat_ of always having the use
+of the Follingsbees’ carriages, horses, and opera-boxes, and being
+the acknowledged and supreme head of fashionable dictation. Ladies
+sometimes pull caps for such charming individuals, as we have seen in
+the case of Mrs. Follingsbee and Lillie.
+
+For it is not to be supposed that Mrs. Follingsbee, though she had
+assumed the gushing style with her young friend, wanted spirit or
+perception on her part. Her darling Lillie had left a nettle in her
+bosom which rankled there.
+
+“The vanity of these thin, light, watery blondes!” she said to herself,
+as she looked into her own great dark eyes in the mirror,—“thinking
+Charlie Ferrola cares for her! I know just what he thinks of _her_,
+thank heaven! Poor thing! Don’t you think Mrs. John Seymour has gone
+off astonishingly since her marriage?” she said to Thérèse.
+
+“_Mon Dieu, madame, q’oui_,” said the obedient tire-woman, scraping
+the very back of her throat in her zeal. “Madame Seymour has the real
+American _maigreur_. These thin women, madame, they have no substance;
+there is noting to them. For young girl, they are charming; but, as
+woman, they are just noting at all. Now, you will see, madame, what I
+tell you. In a year or two, people shall ask, ‘Was she ever handsome?’
+But _you_, madame, you come to your prime like great rose! Oh, dere is
+no comparison of you to Mrs. John Seymour!”
+
+And Thérèse found her words highly acceptable, after the manner of all
+her tribe, who prophesy smooth things unto their mistresses.
+
+It may be imagined that the entertaining of Dick Follingsbee was no
+small strain on the conjugal endurance of our faithful John; but he was
+on duty, and endured without flinching that gentleman’s free and easy
+jokes and patronizing civilities.
+
+“I do wish, darling, you’d teach that creature not to call you ‘Lillie’
+in that abominably free manner,” he said to his wife, the first day,
+after dinner.
+
+“Mercy on us, John! what can I do? All the world knows that Dick
+Follingsbee’s an oddity; and everybody agrees to take what he says for
+what it’s worth. If I should go to putting on any airs, he’d behave ten
+times worse than he does: the only way is, to pass it over quietly, and
+not to seem to notice any thing he says or does. My way is, to smile,
+and look gracious, and act as if I hadn’t heard any thing but what is
+perfectly proper.”
+
+“It’s a tremendous infliction, Lillie!”
+
+“Poor man! is it?” said Lillie, putting her arm round his neck, and
+stroking his whiskers. “Well, now, he’s a good man to bear it so well,
+so he is; and they shan’t plague him long. But, John, you must confess
+Mrs. Follingsbee is nice: poor woman! she is mortified with the way
+Dick will go on; but she can’t do any thing with him.”
+
+“Yes, I can get on with her,” said John. In fact, John was one of
+the men so loyal to women that his path of virtue in regard to them
+always ran down hill. Mrs. Follingsbee was handsome, and had a gift
+in language, and some considerable tact in adapting herself to her
+society; and, as she put forth all her powers to win his admiration,
+she succeeded.
+
+Grace had done her part to assist John in his hospitable intents, by
+securing the prompt co-operation of the Fergusons. The very first
+evening after their arrival, old Mrs. Ferguson, with Letitia and Rose,
+called, not formally but socially, as had always been the custom
+of the two families. Dick Follingsbee was out, enjoying an evening
+cigar,—a circumstance on which John secretly congratulated himself as
+a favorable feature in the case. He felt instinctively a sort of uneasy
+responsibility for his guests; and, judging the Fergusons by himself,
+felt that their call was in some sort an act of self-abnegation on
+his account; and he was anxious to make it as easy as possible.
+Mrs. Follingsbee was presentable, so he thought; but he dreaded the
+irrepressible Dick, and had much the same feeling about him that one
+has on presenting a pet spaniel or pointer in a lady’s parlor,—there
+was no answering for what he might say or do.
+
+The Fergusons were disposed to make themselves most amiable to Mrs.
+Follingsbee; and, with this intent, Miss Letitia started the subject of
+her Parisian experiences, as being probably one where she would feel
+herself especially at home. Mrs. Follingsbee of course expanded in
+rapturous description, and was quite clever and interesting.
+
+“You must feel quite a difference between that country and this, in
+regard to facilities of living,” said Miss Letitia.
+
+“Ah, indeed! do I not?” said Mrs. Follingsbee, casting up her eyes.
+“Life here in America is in a state of perfect disorganization.”
+
+“We are a young people here, madam,” said John. “We haven’t had time to
+organize the smaller conveniences of life.”
+
+“Yes, that’s what I mean,” said Mrs. Follingsbee. “Now, you men don’t
+feel it so very much; but it bears hard on us poor women. Life here
+in America is perfect slavery to women,—a perfect dead grind. You
+see there’s no career at all for a married woman in this country, as
+there is in France. Marriage there opens a brilliant prospect before a
+girl: it introduces her to the world; it gives her wings. In America,
+it is clipping her wings, chaining her down, shutting her up,—no more
+gayety, no more admiration; nothing but cradles and cribs, and bibs
+and tuckers, little narrowing, wearing, domestic cares, hard, vulgar
+domestic slaveries: and so our women lose their bloom and health and
+freshness, and are moped to death.”
+
+“I can’t see the thing in that light, Mrs. Follingsbee,” said old Mrs.
+Ferguson. “I don’t understand this modern talk. I am sure, for one, I
+can say I have had all the career I wanted ever since I married. You
+know, dear, when one begins to have children, one’s heart goes into
+them: we find nothing hard that we do for the dear little things. I’ve
+heard that the Parisian ladies never nurse their own babies. From my
+very heart, I pity them.”
+
+“Oh, my dear madam!” said Mrs. Follingsbee, “why insist upon it
+that a cultivated, intelligent woman shall waste some of the most
+beautiful years of her life in a mere animal function, that, after
+all, any healthy peasant can perform better than she? The French are
+a philosophical nation; and, in Paris, you see, this thing is all
+systematic: it’s altogether better for the child. It’s taken to the
+country, and put to nurse with a good strong woman, who makes that her
+only business. She just lives to be a good animal, you see, and so is
+a better one than a more intellectual being can be; thus she gives the
+child a strong constitution, which is the main thing.”
+
+“Yes,” said Miss Letitia; “I was told, when in Paris, that this system
+is universal. The dressmaker, who works at so much a day, sends her
+child out to nurse as certainly as the woman of rank and fashion. There
+are no babies, as a rule, in French households.”
+
+“And you see how good this is for the mother,” said Mrs. Follingsbee.
+“The first year or two of a child’s life it is nothing but a little
+animal; and one person can do for it about as well as another: and all
+this time, while it is growing physically, the mother has for art, for
+self-cultivation, for society, and for literature. Of course she keeps
+her eye on her child, and visits it often enough to know that all goes
+right with it.”
+
+“Yes,” said Miss Letitia; “and the same philosophical spirit regulates
+the education of the child throughout. An American gentleman, who
+wished to live in Paris, told me that, having searched all over it, he
+could not accommodate his family, including himself and wife and two
+children, without taking _two_ of the suites that are usually let to
+one family. The reason, he inferred, was the perfection of the system
+which keeps the French family reduced in numbers. The babies are out
+at nurse, sometimes till two, and sometimes till three years of age;
+and, at seven or eight, the girl goes into a pension, and the boy into
+a college, till they are ready to be taken out,—the girl to be married,
+and the boy to enter a profession: so the leisure of parents for
+literature, art, and society is preserved.”
+
+“It seems to me the most perfectly dreary, dreadful way of living I
+ever heard of,” said Mrs. Ferguson, with unwonted energy. “How I pity
+people who know so little of real happiness!”
+
+“Yet the French are dotingly fond of children,” said Mrs. Follingsbee.
+“It’s a national peculiarity; you can see it in all their literature.
+Don’t you remember Victor Hugo’s exquisite description of a mother’s
+feelings for a little child in ‘Notre Dame de Paris’? I never read any
+thing more affecting; it’s perfectly subduing.”
+
+“They can’t love their children as I did mine,” said Mrs. Ferguson:
+“it’s impossible; and, if that’s what’s called organizing society, I
+hope our society in America never will be organized. It can’t be that
+children are well taken care of on that system. I always attended to
+every thing for my babies _myself_; because I felt God had put them
+into my hands perfectly helpless; and, if there is any thing difficult
+or disagreeable in the case, how can I expect to _hire_ a woman for
+money to be faithful in what I cannot do for love?”
+
+“But don’t you think, dear madam, that this system of personal devotion
+to children may be carried too far?” said Mrs. Follingsbee. “Perhaps in
+France they may go to an extreme; but don’t our American women, as a
+rule, sacrifice themselves too much to their families?”
+
+“_Sacrifice!_” said Mrs. Ferguson. “How can we? Our children are our
+new life. We live in them a thousand times more than we could in
+ourselves. No, I think a mother that doesn’t take care of her own baby
+misses the greatest happiness a woman can know. A baby isn’t a mere
+animal; and it is a great and solemn thing to see the coming of an
+immortal soul into it from day to day. My very happiest hours have been
+spent with my babies in my arms.”
+
+“There may be women constituted so as to enjoy it,” said Mrs.
+Follingsbee; “but you must allow that there is a vast difference among
+women.”
+
+“There certainly is,” said Mrs. Ferguson, as she rose with a frigid
+courtesy, and shortened the call. “My dear girls,” said the old lady to
+her daughters, when they returned home, “I disapprove of that woman.
+I am very sorry that pretty little Mrs. Seymour has so bad a friend
+and adviser. Why, the woman talks like a Fejee Islander! Baby a mere
+animal, to be sure! it puts me out of temper to hear such talk. The
+woman talks as if she had never heard of such a thing as love in her
+life, and don’t know what it means.”
+
+“Oh, well, mamma!” said Rose, “you know we are old-fashioned folks, and
+not up to modern improvements.”
+
+“Well,” said Miss Letitia, “I should think that that poor little weird
+child of Mrs. Follingsbee’s, with the great red bow on her back, had
+been brought up on this system. Yesterday afternoon I saw her in the
+garden, with that maid of hers, apparently enjoying a free fight. They
+looked like a pair of goblins,—an old and a young one. I never saw any
+thing like it.”
+
+“What a pity!” said Rose; “for she’s a smart, bright little thing; and
+it’s cunning to hear her talk French.”
+
+“Well,” said Mrs. Ferguson, straightening her back, and sitting up
+with a grand air: “I am one of eight children that my mother nursed
+herself at her own breast, and lived to a good honorable old age after
+it. People called her a handsome woman at sixty: she could ride and
+walk and dance with the best; and nobody kept up a keener interest in
+reading or general literature. Her conversation was sought by the most
+eminent men of the day as something remarkable. She was always with her
+children: we always knew we had her to run to at any moment; and we
+were the first thing with her. She lived a happy, loving, useful life;
+and her children rose up and called her blessed.”
+
+“As we do you, dear mamma,” said Rose, kissing her: “so don’t be
+oratorical, darling mammy; because we are all of your mind here.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+_MRS. JOHN SEYMOUR’S PARTY, AND WHAT CAME OF IT._
+
+
+MRS. JOHN SEYMOUR’S party marked an era in the annals of Springdale.
+Of this, you may be sure, my dear reader, when you consider that it
+was projected and arranged by Mrs. Lillie, in strict counsel with her
+friend Mrs. Follingsbee, who had lived in Paris, and been to balls
+at the Tuileries. Of course, it was a tip-top New-York-Paris party,
+with all the new, fashionable, unspeakable crinkles and wrinkles, all
+the high, divine, spick and span new ways of doing things; which,
+however, like the Eleusinian mysteries, being in their very nature
+incommunicable except to the elect, must be left to the imagination.
+
+A French _artiste_, whom Mrs. Follingsbee patronized as “my
+confectioner,” came in state to Springdale, with a retinue of
+appendages and servants sufficient for a circus; took formal possession
+of the Seymour mansion, and became, for the time being, absolute
+dictator, as was customary in the old Roman Republic in times of
+emergency.
+
+Mr. Follingsbee was forward, fussy, and advisory, in his own
+peculiar free-and-easy fashion; and Mrs. Follingsbee was instructive
+and patronizing to the very last degree. Lillie had bewailed in her
+sympathizing bosom John’s unaccountable and most singular moral
+Quixotism in regard to the wine question, and been comforted by her
+appreciative discourse. Mrs. Follingsbee had a sort of indefinite
+faith in French phrases for mending all the broken places in life. A
+thing said partly in French became at once in her view elucidated,
+even though the words meant no more than the same in English; so she
+consoled Lillie as follows:—
+
+“Oh, _ma chère_! I understand perfectly: your husband may be ‘_un peu
+borné_,’ as they say in Paris, but still ‘_un homme très respectable_,’
+(Mrs. Follingsbee here scraped her throat emphatically, just as her
+French maid did),—a sublime example of the virtues; and let me tell
+you, darling, you are very fortunate to get such a man. It is not often
+that a woman can get an establishment like yours, and a good man into
+the bargain; so, if the goodness is a little _ennuyeuse_, one must put
+up with it. Then, again, people of old established standing may do
+about what they like socially: their position is made. People only say,
+‘Well, that is their way; the Seymours will do so and so.’ Now, we have
+to do twice as much of every thing to make our position, as certain
+other people do. We might flood our place with champagne and Burgundy,
+and get all the young fellows drunk, as we generally do; and yet people
+will call our parties ‘_bourgeois_,’ and yours ‘_recherché_,’ if you
+give them nothing but tea and biscuit. Now, there’s my Dick: he
+respects your husband; you can see he does. In his odious slang way,
+he says he’s ‘some’ and ‘a brick;’ and he’s a little anxious to please
+him, though he professes not to care for anybody. Now, Dick has pretty
+sharp sense, after all, or he’d never have been just where he is.”
+
+Our friend John, during these days preceding the party, the party
+itself and the clearing up after it, enacted submissively that part
+of unconditional surrender which the master of the house, if well
+trained, generally acts on such occasions. He resembled the prize
+ox, which is led forth adorned with garlands, ribbons, and docility,
+to grace a triumphal procession. He went where he was told, did as
+he was bid, marched to the right, marched to the left, put on gloves
+and cravat, and took them off, entirely submissive to the word of his
+little general; and exhibited, in short, an edifying spectacle of that
+pleasant domestic animal, a tame husband. He had to make atonement for
+being a reformer, and for endeavoring to live like a Christian, by
+conceding to his wife all this latitude of indulgence; and he meant
+to go through it like a man and a philosopher. To be sure, in his
+eyes, it was all so much unutterable bosh and nonsense; and bosh and
+nonsense for which he was eventually to settle the bills: but he armed
+himself with the patient reflection that all things have their end
+in time,—that fireworks and Chinese lanterns, bands of music and kid
+gloves, ruffs and puffs, and pinkings and quillings, and all sorts of
+unspeakable eatables with French names, would ere long float down the
+stream of time, and leave their record only in a few bad colds and days
+of indigestion, which also time would mercifully cure.
+
+So John steadied his soul with a view of that comfortable future, when
+all this fuss should be over, and the coast cleared for something
+better. Moreover, John found this good result of his patience: that he
+learned a little something in a Christian way by it. Men of elevated
+principle and moral honesty often treat themselves to such large slices
+of contempt and indignation, in regard to the rogues of society, as to
+forget a common brotherhood of pity. It is sometimes wholesome for such
+men to be obliged to tolerate a scamp to the extent of exchanging with
+him the ordinary benevolences of social life.
+
+John, in discharging the duty of a host to Dick Follingsbee, found
+himself, after a while, looking on him with pity, as a poor creature,
+like the rich fool in the Gospels, without faith, or love, or prayer;
+spending life as a moth does,—in vain attempts to burn himself up in
+the candle, and knowing nothing better. In fact, after a while, the
+stiff, tow-colored moustache, smart stride, and flippant air of this
+poor little man struck him somewhere in the region between a smile and
+a tear; and his enforced hospitality began to wear a tincture of real
+kindness. There is no less pathos in moral than in physical imbecility.
+
+It is an observable social phenomenon that, when any family in a
+community makes an advance very greatly ahead of its neighbors in
+style of living or splendor of entertainments, the fact causes great
+searchings of spirit in all the region round about, and abundance of
+talk, wherein the thoughts of many hearts are revealed.
+
+Springdale was a country town, containing a choice knot of the old,
+respectable, true-blue, Boston-aristocracy families. Two or three
+of them had winter houses in Beacon Street, and went there, after
+Christmas, to enjoy the lectures, concerts, and select gayeties of
+the modern Athens; others, like the Fergusons and Seymours, were in
+intimate relationship with the same circle.
+
+Now, it is well known that the real old true-blue, Simon-pure, Boston
+family is one whose claims to be considered “the thing,” and the only
+thing, are somewhat like the claim of apostolic succession in ancient
+churches. It is easy to see why certain affluent, cultivated, and
+eminently well-conducted people should be considered “the thing” in
+their day and generation; but why they should be considered as the
+“only thing” is the point insoluble to human reason, and to be received
+by faith alone; also, why certain other people, equally affluent,
+cultivated, and well-conducted are _not_ “the thing” is one of the
+divine mysteries, about which whoso observes Boston society will do
+well not too curiously to exercise his reason.
+
+These “true-blue” families, however, have claims to respectability;
+which make them, on the whole, quite a venerable and pleasurable
+feature of society in our young, topsy-turvy, American community. Some
+of them have family records extending clearly back to the settlement
+of Massachusetts Bay; and the family estate is still on grounds first
+cleared up by aboriginal settlers. Being of a Puritan nobility,
+they have an ancestral record, affording more legitimate subject of
+family self-esteem than most other nobility. Their history runs back
+to an ancestry of unworldly faith and prayer and self-denial, of
+incorruptible public virtue, sturdy resistance of evil, and pursuit of
+good.
+
+There is also a literary aroma pervading their circles. Dim suggestions
+of “The North American Review,” of “The Dial,” of Cambridge,—a sort of
+vague “_miel-fleur_” of authorship and poetry,—is supposed to float
+in the air around them; and it is generally understood that in their
+homes exist tastes and appreciations denied to less favored regions.
+Almost every one of them has its great man,—its father, grandfather,
+cousin, or great uncle, who wrote a book, or edited a review, or was a
+president of the United States, or minister to England, whose opinions
+are referred to by the family in any discussion, as good Christians
+quote the Bible.
+
+It is true that, in some few instances, the _pleroma_ of aristocratic
+dignity undergoes a sort of acetic fermentation, and comes out in
+ungenial qualities. Now and then, at a public watering-place, a man or
+woman appears no otherwise distinguished than by a remarkable talent
+for being disagreeable; and it is amusing to find, on inquiry, that
+this repulsiveness of demeanor is entirely on account of belonging to
+an ancient family.
+
+Such is the tendency of democracy to a general mingling of elements,
+that this frigidity is deemed necessary by these good souls to
+prevent the commonalty from being attracted by them, and sticking to
+them, as straws and bits of paper do to amber. But more generally
+the “true-blue” old families are simple and urbane in their manners;
+and their pretensions are, as Miss Edgeworth says, presented rather
+_intaglio_ than in cameo. Of course, they most thoroughly believe in
+themselves, but in a bland and genial way. “_Noblesse oblige_” is with
+them a secret spring of gentle address and social suavity. They prefer
+their own set and their own ways, and are comfortably sure that what
+they do not know is not worth knowing, and what they have not been in
+the habit of doing is not worth doing; but still they are indulgent of
+the existence of human nature outside of their own circle.
+
+The Seymours and the Fergusons belonged to this sort of people; and,
+of course, Mr. John Seymour’s marriage afforded them opportunity
+for some wholesome moral discipline. The Ferguson girls were frank,
+social, magnanimous young women; of that class, to whom the saying
+or doing of a rude or unhandsome thing by any human being was an
+utter impossibility, and whose cheeks would flush at the mere idea of
+asserting personal superiority over any one. Nevertheless, they trod
+the earth firmly, as girls who felt that they were born to a certain
+position. Judge Ferguson was a gentleman of the old school, devoted to
+past ideas, fond of the English classics, and with small faith in any
+literature later than Dr. Johnson. He confessed to a toleration for
+Scott’s novels, and had been detected by his children both laughing and
+crying over the stories of Charles Dickens; for the amiable weaknesses
+of human nature still remain in the best regulated mind. To women and
+children, the judge was benignity itself, imitating the Grand Monarque,
+who bowed even to a chambermaid. He believed in good, orderly,
+respectable, old ways and entertainments, and had a quiet horror of all
+that is loud or noisy or pretentious; which sometimes made his social
+duties a trial to him, as was the case in regard to the Seymour party.
+
+The arrangements of the party, including the preparations for an
+extensive illumination of the grounds, and fireworks, were on so
+unusual a scale as to rouse the whole community of Springdale to a
+fever of excitement; of course, the Wilcoxes and the Lennoxes were
+astonished and disgusted. When had it been known that any of their
+set had done any thing of the kind? How horribly out of taste! Just
+the result of John Seymour’s marrying into that class of society!
+Mrs. Lennox was of opinion that she ought not to go. She was of the
+determined and spicy order of human beings, and often, like a certain
+French countess, felt disposed to thank Heaven that she generally
+succeeded in being rude when the occasion required. Mrs. Lennox
+regarded “snubbing” in the light of a moral duty devolving on people
+of condition, when the foundations of things were in danger of being
+removed by the inroads of the vulgar commonalty. On the present
+occasion, Mrs. Lennox was of opinion that quiet, respectable people, of
+good family, ought to ignore this kind of proceeding, and not think of
+encouraging such things by their presence.
+
+Mrs. Wilcox generally shaped her course by Mrs. Lennox: still she had
+promised Letitia Ferguson to be gracious to the Seymours in their
+exigency, and to call on the Follingsbees; so there was a confusion
+all round. The young people of both families declared that _they_ were
+going, just to see the fun. Bob Lennox, with the usual vivacity of
+Young America, said he didn’t “care a hang who set a ball rolling, if
+only something was kept stirring.” The subject was discussed when Mrs.
+Lennox and Mrs. Wilcox were making a morning call upon the Fergusons.
+
+“For my part,” said Mrs. Lennox, “I’m principled on this subject. Those
+Follingsbees are not proper people. They are of just that vulgar,
+pushing class, against which I feel it my duty to set my face like
+a flint; and I’m astonished that a man like John Seymour should go
+into relations with them. You see it puts all his friends in a most
+embarrassing position.”
+
+“Dear Mrs. Lennox,” said Rose Ferguson, “indeed, it is not Mr.
+Seymour’s fault. These persons are invited by his wife.”
+
+“Well, what business has he to allow his wife to invite them? A man
+should be master in his own house.”
+
+“But, my dear Mrs. Lennox,” said Mrs. Ferguson, “such a pretty young
+creature, and just married! of course it would be unhandsome not to
+allow her to have her friends.”
+
+“Certainly,” said Judge Ferguson, “a gentleman cannot be rude to his
+wife’s invited guests; for my part, I think Seymour is putting the best
+face he can on it; and we must all do what we can to help him. We shall
+all attend the Seymour party.”
+
+“Well,” said Mrs. Wilcox, “I think we shall go. To be sure, it is not
+what I should like to do. I don’t approve of these Follingsbees. Mr.
+Wilcox was saying, this morning, that his money was made by frauds on
+the government, which ought to have put him in the State Prison.”
+
+“Now, I say,” said Mrs. Lennox, “such people ought to be put
+down socially: I have no patience with their airs. And that Mrs.
+Follingsbee, I have heard that she was a milliner, or shop-girl, or
+some such thing; and to see the airs she gives herself! One would
+think it was the Empress Eugénie herself, come to queen it over us in
+America. I can’t help thinking we ought to take a stand. I really do.”
+
+“But, dear Mrs. Lennox, we are not obliged to cultivate further
+relations with people, simply from exchanging ordinary civilities with
+them on one evening,” said Judge Ferguson.
+
+“But, my dear sir, these pushing, vulgar, rich people take advantage of
+every opening. Give them an inch, and they will take an ell,” said Mrs
+Lennox. “Now, if I go, they will be claiming acquaintance with me in
+Newport next summer. Well, I shall cut them,—dead.”
+
+“Trust you for that,” said Miss Letitia, laughing; “indeed, Mrs.
+Lennox, I think you may go wherever you please with perfect safety.
+People will never saddle themselves on you longer than you want them;
+so you might as well go to the party with the rest of us.”
+
+“And besides, you know,” said Mrs. Wilcox, “all our young people will
+go, whether we go or not. Your Tom was at my house yesterday; and he is
+going with my girls: they are all just as wild about it as they can be,
+and say that it is the greatest fun that has been heard of this summer.”
+
+In fact, there was not a man, woman, or child, in a circle of fifteen
+miles round, who could show shade or color of an invitation, who was
+not out in full dress at Mrs. John Seymour’s party. People in a city
+may pick and choose their entertainments, and she who gives a party
+there may reckon on a falling off of about one-third, for various other
+attractions; but in the country, where there is nothing else stirring,
+one may be sure that not one person able to stand on his feet will
+be missing. A party in a good old sleepy, respectable country place
+is a godsend. It is equal to an earthquake, for suggesting materials
+of conversation; and in so many ways does it awaken and vivify the
+community, that one may doubt whether, after all, it is not a moral
+benefaction, and the giver of it one to be ranked in the noble army of
+martyrs.
+
+Everybody went. Even Mrs. Lennox, when she had sufficiently swallowed
+her moral principles, sent in all haste to New York for an elegant
+spick and span new dress from Madame de Tullegig’s, expressly for the
+occasion. Was she to be outshone by unprincipled upstarts? Perish the
+thought! It was treason to the cause of virtue, and the standing order
+of society. Of course, the best thing to be done is to put certain
+people down, if you can; but, if you cannot do that, the next best
+thing is to outshine them in their own way. It may be very naughty
+for them to be so dressy and extravagant, and very absurd, improper,
+immoral, unnecessary, and in bad taste; but still, if you cannot help
+it, you may as well try to do the same, and do a little more of it.
+Mrs. Lennox was in a feverish state till all her trappings came from
+New York. The bill was something stunning; but, then, it was voted by
+the young people that she had never looked so splendidly in her life;
+and she comforted herself with marking out a certain sublime distance
+and reserve of manner to be observed towards Mrs. Seymour and the
+Follingsbees.
+
+The young people, however, came home delighted. Tom, aged twenty-two,
+instructed his mother that Follingsbee was a brick, and a real jolly
+fellow; and he had accepted an invitation to go on a yachting cruise
+with him the next month. Jane Lennox, moreover, began besetting her
+mother to have certain details in their house rearranged, with an eye
+to the Seymour glorification.
+
+“Now, Jane dear, that’s just the result of allowing you to visit in
+this flash, vulgar genteel society,” said the troubled mamma.
+
+“Bless your heart, mamma, the world moves on, you know; and we must
+move with it a little, or be left behind. For my part, I’m perfectly
+ashamed of the way we let things go at our house. It really is not
+respectable. Now, I like Mrs. Follingsbee, for my part: she’s clever
+and amusing. It was fun to hear all about the balls at the Tuileries,
+and the opera and things in Paris. Mamma, when are we going to Paris?”
+
+“Oh! I don’t know, my dear; you must ask your father. He is very
+unwilling to go abroad.”
+
+“Papa is so slow and conservative in his notions!” said the young lady.
+“For my part, I cannot see what is the use of all this talk about the
+Follingsbees. He is good-natured and funny; and, I am sure, I think
+she’s a splendid woman: and, by the way, she gave me the address of
+lots of places in New York where we can get French things. Did you
+notice her lace? It is superb; and she told me where lace just like it
+could be bought one-third less than they sell at Stewart’s.”
+
+Thus we see how the starting-out of an old, respectable family in any
+new ebullition of fancy and fashion is like a dandelion going to seed.
+You have not only the airy, fairy globe; but every feathery particle
+thereof bears a germ which will cause similar feather bubbles all over
+the country; and thus old, respectable grass-plots become, in time,
+half dandelion. It is to be observed that, in all questions of life
+and fashion, “the world and the flesh,” to say nothing of the third
+partner of that ancient firm, have us at decided advantage. It is easy
+to see the flash of jewelry, the dazzle of color, the rush and glitter
+of equipage, and to be dizzied by the babble and gayety of fashionable
+life; while it is not easy to see justice, patience, temperance,
+self-denial. These are things belonging to the invisible and the
+eternal, and to be seen with other eyes than those of the body.
+
+Then, again, there is no one thing in all the items which go to make
+up fashionable extravagance, which, taken separately and by itself, is
+not in some point of view a good or pretty or desirable thing; and so,
+whenever the forces of invisible morality begin an encounter with the
+troops of fashion and folly, the world and the flesh, as we have just
+said, generally have the best of it.
+
+It may be very shocking and dreadful to get money by cheating and
+lying; but when the money thus got is put into the forms of yachts,
+operas, pictures, statues, and splendid entertainments, of which you
+are freely offered a share if you will only cultivate the acquaintance
+of a sharper, will you not then begin to say, “Everybody is going,
+why not I? As to countenancing Dives, why he is countenanced; and my
+holding out does no good. What is the use of my sitting in my corner
+and sulking? Nobody minds me.” Thus Dives gains one after another to
+follow his chariot, and make up his court.
+
+Our friend John, simply by being a loving, indulgent husband, had
+come into the position, in some measure, of demoralizing the public
+conscience, of bringing in luxury and extravagance, and countenancing
+people who really ought not to be countenanced. He had a sort of
+uneasy perception of this fact; yet, at each particular step, he seemed
+to himself to be doing no more than was right or reasonable. It was a
+fact that, through all Springdale, people were beginning to be uneasy
+and uncomfortable in houses that used to seem to them nice enough, and
+ashamed of a style of dress and entertainment and living that used to
+content them perfectly, simply because of the changes of style and
+living in the John-Seymour mansion.
+
+Of old, the Seymour family had always been a bulwark on the side of a
+temperate self-restraint and reticence in worldly indulgence; of a kind
+that parents find most useful to strengthen their hands when children
+are urging them on to expenses beyond their means: for they could say,
+“The Seymours are richer than we are, and you see they don’t change
+their carpets, nor get new sofas, nor give extravagant parties; and
+they give simple, reasonable, quiet entertainments, and do not go into
+any modern follies.” So the Seymours kept up the Fergusons, and the
+Fergusons the Seymours; and the Wilcoxes and the Lennoxes encouraged
+each other in a style of quiet, reasonable living, saving money for
+charity, and time for reading and self-cultivation, and by moderation
+and simplicity keeping up the courage of less wealthy neighbors to hold
+their own with them.
+
+The John-Seymour party, therefore, was like the bursting of a great
+dam, which floods a whole region. There was not a family who had not
+some trouble with the inundation, even where, like Rose and Letitia
+Ferguson, they swept it out merrily, and thought no more of it.
+
+“It was all very pretty and pleasant, and I’m glad it went off so
+well,” said Rose Ferguson the next day; “but I have not the smallest
+desire to repeat any thing of the kind. We who live in the country, and
+have such a world of beautiful things around us every day, and so many
+charming engagements in riding, walking, and rambling, and so much to
+do, cannot afford to go into this sort of thing: we really have not
+time for it.”
+
+“That pretty creature,” said Mrs. Ferguson, speaking of Lillie, “is
+really a charming object. I hope she will settle down now to domestic
+life. She will soon find better things to care for, I trust: a baby
+would be her best teacher. I am sure I hope she will have one.”
+
+“A baby is mamma’s infallible recipe for strengthening the character,”
+said Rose, laughing.
+
+“Well, as the saying is, they bring love with them,” said Mrs.
+Ferguson; “and love always brings wisdom.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+_AFTER THE BATTLE._
+
+
+“WELL, Grace, the Follingsbees are gone at last, I am thankful to say,”
+said John, as he stretched himself out on the sofa in Grace’s parlor
+with a sigh of relief. “If ever I am caught in such a scrape again, I
+shall know it.”
+
+“Yes, it is all well over,” said Grace.
+
+“Over! I wish you would look at the bills. Why, Gracie! I had not the
+least idea, when I gave Lillie leave to get what she chose, what it
+would come to, with those people at her elbow, to put things into her
+head. I could not interfere, you know, after the thing was started;
+and I thought I would not spoil Lillie’s pleasure, especially as I had
+to stand firm in not allowing wine. It was well I did; for if wine had
+been given, and taken with the reckless freedom that all the rest was,
+it might have ended in a general riot.”
+
+“As some of the great fashionable parties do, where young women get
+merry with champagne, and young men get drunk,” said Grace.
+
+“Well,” said John, “I don’t exactly like the whole turn of the way
+things have been going at our house lately. I don’t like the influence
+of it on others. It is not in the line of the life I want to lead, and
+that we have all been trying to lead.”
+
+“Well,” said Gracie, “things will be settled now quietly, I hope.”
+
+“I say,” said John, “could not we start our little reading sociables,
+that were so pleasant last year? You know we want to keep some little
+pleasant thing going, and draw Lillie in with us. When a girl has been
+used to lively society, she can’t come down to mere nothing; and I
+am afraid she will be wanting to rush off to New York, and visit the
+Follingsbees.”
+
+“Well,” said Grace, “Letitia and Rose were speaking the other day of
+that, and wanting to begin. You know we were to read Froude together,
+as soon as the evenings got a little longer.”
+
+“Oh, yes! that will be capital,” said John.
+
+“Do you think Lillie will be interested in Froude?” asked Grace.
+
+“I really can’t say,” said John, with some doubting of heart; “perhaps
+it would be well to begin with something a little lighter, at first.”
+
+“Any thing you please, John. What shall it be?”
+
+“But I don’t want to hold you all back on my account,” said John.
+
+“Well, then again, John, there’s our old study-club. The Fergusons
+and Mr. Mathews were talking it over the other night, and wondering
+when you would be ready to join us. We were going to take up Lecky’s
+‘History of Morals,’ and have our sessions Tuesday evenings,—one
+Tuesday at their house, and the other at mine, you know.”
+
+“I should enjoy that, of all things,” said John; “but I know it is of
+no use to ask Lillie: it would only be the most dreadful bore to her.”
+
+“And you couldn’t come without her, of course,” said Grace.
+
+“Of course not; that would be too cruel, to leave the poor little thing
+at home alone.”
+
+“Lillie strikes me as being naturally clever,” said Grace; “if she only
+would bring her mind to enter into your tastes a little, I’m sure you
+would find her capable.”
+
+“But, Gracie, you’ve no conception how very different her sphere of
+thought is, how entirely out of the line of our ways of thinking. I’ll
+tell you,” said John, “don’t wait for me. You have your Tuesdays, and
+go on with your Lecky; and I will keep a copy at home, and read up
+with you. And I will bring Lillie in the evening, after the reading is
+over; and we will have a little music and lively talk, and a dance or
+charade, you know: then perhaps her mind will wake up by degrees.”
+
+    SCENE.—_After tea in the Seymour parlor. John at a table, reading.
+                 Lillie in a corner, embroidering._
+
+_Lillie._ “Look here, John, I want to ask you something.”
+
+_John_,—putting down his book, and crossing to her, “Well, dear?”
+
+_Lillie._ “There, would you make a green leaf there, or a brown one?”
+
+_John_,—endeavoring to look wise, “Well, a brown one.”
+
+_Lillie._ “That’s just like you, John; now, don’t you see that a brown
+one would just spoil the effect?”
+
+“Oh! would it?” said John, innocently. “Well, what did you ask me for?”
+
+“Why, you tiresome creature! I wanted you to say something. What are
+you sitting moping over a book for? You don’t entertain me a bit.”
+
+“Dear Lillie, I have been talking about every thing I could think of,”
+said John, apologetically.
+
+“Well, I want you to keep on talking, and put up that great heavy book.
+What is it, any way?”
+
+“Lecky’s ‘History of Morals,’” said John.
+
+“How dreadful! do you really mean to read it?”
+
+“Certainly; we are all reading it.”
+
+“Who all?”
+
+“Why, Gracie, and Letitia and Rose Ferguson.”
+
+“Rose Ferguson? I don’t believe it. Why, Rose isn’t twenty yet! She
+cannot care about such stuff.”
+
+“She does care, and enjoys it too,” said John, eagerly.
+
+“It is a pity, then, you didn’t get her for a wife instead of me,” said
+Lillie, in a tone of pique.
+
+Now, this sort of thing does well enough occasionally, said by a
+pretty woman, perfectly sure of her ground, in the early days of the
+honey-moon; but for steady domestic diet is not to be recommended.
+Husbands get tired of swearing allegiance over and over; and John
+returned to his book quietly, without reply. He did not like the
+suggestion; and he thought that it was in very poor taste. Lillie
+embroidered in silence a few minutes, and then threw down her work
+pettishly.
+
+“How close this room is!”
+
+John read on.
+
+“John, do open the door!”
+
+John rose, opened the door, and returned to his book.
+
+“Now, there’s that draft from the hall-window. John, you’ll have to
+shut the door.”
+
+John shut it, and read on.
+
+“Oh, dear me!” said Lillie, throwing herself down with a portentous
+yawn. “I do think this is dreadful!”
+
+“What is dreadful?” said John, looking up.
+
+“It is dreadful to be buried alive here in this gloomy town of
+Springdale, where there is nothing to see, and nowhere to go, and
+nothing going on.”
+
+“We have always flattered ourselves that Springdale was a most
+attractive place,” said John. “I don’t know of any place where there
+are more beautiful walks and rambles.”
+
+“But I detest walking in the country. What is there to see? And you
+get your shoes muddy, and burrs on your clothes, and don’t meet a
+creature! I got so tired the other day when Grace and Rose Ferguson
+would drag me off to what they call ‘the glen.’ They kept oh-ing and
+ah-ing and exclaiming to each other about some stupid thing every
+step of the way,—old pokey nutgalls, bare twigs of trees, and red and
+yellow leaves, and ferns! I do wish you could have seen the armful
+of trash that those two girls carried into their respective houses.
+I would not have such stuff in mine for any thing. I am tired of all
+this talk about Nature. I am free to confess that I don’t like Nature,
+and do like art; and I wish we only lived in New York, where there is
+something to amuse one.”
+
+[Illustration: “But I detest walking in the country.”]
+
+“Well, Lillie dear, I am sorry; but we don’t live in New York, and are
+not likely to,” said John.
+
+“Why can’t we? Mrs. Follingsbee said that a man in your profession,
+and with your talents, could command a fortune in New York.”
+
+“If it would give me the mines of Golconda, I would not go there,” said
+John.
+
+“How stupid of you! You know you would, though.”
+
+“No, Lillie; I would not leave Springdale for any money.”
+
+“That is because you think of nobody but yourself,” said Lillie. “Men
+are always selfish.”
+
+“On the contrary, it is because I have so many here depending on me, of
+whom I am bound to think more than myself,” said John.
+
+“That dreadful mission-work of yours, I suppose,” said Lillie; “that
+always stands in the way of having a good time.”
+
+“Lillie,” said John, shutting his book, and looking at her, “what is
+your ideal of a good time?”
+
+“Why, having something amusing going on all the time,—something bright
+and lively, to keep one in good spirits,” said Lillie.
+
+“I thought that you would have enough of that with your party and all,”
+said John.
+
+“Well, now it’s all over, and duller than ever,” said Lillie. “I think
+a little spirit of gayety makes it seem duller by contrast.”
+
+“Yet, Lillie,” said John, “you see there are women, who live right here
+in Springdale, who are all the time busy, interested, and happy, with
+only such sources of enjoyment as are to be found here. Their time does
+not hang heavy on their hands; in fact, it is too short for all they
+wish to do.”
+
+“They are different from me,” said Lillie.
+
+“Then, since you must live here,” said John, “could you not learn to be
+like them? Could you not acquire some of these tastes that make simple
+country life agreeable?”
+
+“No, I can’t; I never could,” said Lillie, pettishly.
+
+“Then,” said John, “I don’t see that anybody can help your being
+unhappy.” And, opening his book, he sat down, and began to read.
+
+Lillie pouted awhile, and then drew from under the sofa-pillow a copy
+of “Indiana;” and, establishing her feet on the fender, she began to
+read.
+
+Lillie had acquired at school the doubtful talent of reading French
+with facility, and was soon deep in the fascinating pages, whose theme
+is the usual one of French novels,—a young wife, tired of domestic
+monotony, with an unappreciative husband, solacing herself with the
+devotion of a lover. Lillie felt a sort of pique with her husband. He
+was evidently unappreciative: he was thinking of all sorts of things
+more than of her, and growing stupid, as husbands in French romances
+generally do. She thought of her handsome Cousin Harry, the only man
+that she ever came anywhere near being in love with; and the image of
+his dark, handsome eyes and glossy curls gave a sort of piquancy to the
+story.
+
+John got deeply interested in his book; and, looking up from time to
+time, was relieved to find that Lillie had something to employ her.
+
+“I may as well make a beginning,” he said to himself. “I must have my
+time for reading; and she must learn to amuse herself.”
+
+After a while, however, he peeped over her shoulder.
+
+“Why, darling!” he said, “where did you get that?”
+
+“It is Mrs. Follingsbee’s,” said Lillie.
+
+“Dear, it is a bad book,” said John. “Don’t read it.”
+
+“It amuses me, and helps pass away time,” said Lillie; “and I don’t
+think it is bad: it is beautiful. Besides, you read what amuses you;
+and it is a pity if I can’t read what amuses me.”
+
+“I am glad to see you like to read French,” continued John; “and I can
+get you some delightful French stories, which are not only pretty and
+witty, but have nothing in them that tend to pull down one’s moral
+principles. Edmond About’s ‘Mariages de Paris’ and ‘Tolla’ are charming
+French things; and, as he says, they might be read aloud by a man
+between his mother and his sister, without a shade of offence.”
+
+“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Lillie. “You had better go to Rose
+Ferguson, and get her to give you a list of the kinds of books she
+prefers.”
+
+“Lillie!” said John, severely, “your remarks about Rose are in bad
+taste. I must beg you to discontinue them. There are subjects that
+never ought to be jested about.”
+
+“Thank you, sir, for your moral lessons,” said Lillie, turning her back
+on him defiantly, putting her feet on the fender, and going on with her
+reading.
+
+John seated himself, and went on with his book in silence.
+
+Now, this mode of passing a domestic evening is certainly not agreeable
+to either party; but we sustain the thesis that in this sort of
+interior warfare the woman has generally the best of it. When it comes
+to the science of annoyance, commend us to the lovely sex! Their
+methods have a _finesse_, a suppleness, a universal adaptability, that
+does them infinite credit; and man, with all his strength, and all his
+majesty, and his commanding talent, is about as well off as a buffalo
+or a bison against a tiny, rainbow-winged gnat or mosquito, who bites,
+sings, and stings everywhere at once, with an infinite grace and
+facility.
+
+A woman without magnanimity, without generosity, who has no love, and
+whom a man loves, is a terrible antagonist. To give up or to fight
+often seems equally impossible.
+
+How is a man going to make a woman have a good time, who is determined
+not to have it? Lillie had sense enough to see, that, if she settled
+down into enjoyment of the little agreeablenesses and domesticities
+of the winter society in Springdale, she should lose her battle, and
+John would keep her there for life. The only way was to keep him as
+uncomfortable as possible without really breaking her power over him.
+
+In the long-run, in these encounters of will, the woman has every
+advantage. The constant dropping that wears away the stone has passed
+into a proverb.
+
+Lillie meant to go to New York, and have a long campaign at the
+Follingsbees. The thing had been all promised and arranged between
+them; and it was necessary that she should appear sufficiently
+miserable, and that John should be made sufficiently uncomfortable, to
+consent with effusion, at last, when her intentions were announced.
+
+These purposes were not distinctly stated to herself; for, as we have
+before intimated, uncultivated natures, who have never thought for
+a serious moment on self-education, or the way their character is
+forming, act purely from a sort of instinct, and do not even in their
+own minds fairly and squarely face their own motives and purposes; if
+they only did, their good angel would wear a less dejected look than he
+generally must.
+
+Lillie had power enough, in that small circle, to stop and interrupt
+almost all its comfortable literary culture. The reading of Froude was
+given up. John could not go to the study club; and, after an evening
+or two of trying to read up at home, he used to stay an hour later at
+his office. Lillie would go with him on Tuesday evening, after the
+readings were over; and then it was understood that all parties were
+to devote themselves to making the evening pass agreeable to her. She
+was to be put forward, kept in the foreground, and every thing arranged
+to make her appear the queen of the _fête_. They had tableaux, where
+Rose made Lillie into marvellous pictures, which all admired and
+praised. They had little dances, which Lillie thought rather stupid
+and humdrum, because they were not _en grande toilette_; yet Lillie
+always made a great merit of putting up with her life at Springdale. A
+pleasant English writer has a lively paper on the advantages of being
+a “cantankerous fool,” in which he goes to show that men or women of
+inferior moral parts, little self-control, and great selfishness, often
+acquire an absolute dominion over the circle in which they move, merely
+by the exercise of these traits. Every one being anxious to please
+and pacify them, and keep the peace with them, there is a constant
+succession of anxious compliances and compromises going on around them;
+by all of which they are benefited in getting their own will and way.
+
+The one person who will not give up, and cannot be expected to be
+considerate or accommodating, comes at last to rule the whole circle.
+He is counted on like the fixed facts of nature; everybody else must
+turn out for him. So Lillie reigned in Springdale. In every little
+social gathering where she appeared, the one uneasy question was,
+would she have a good time, and anxious provision made to that end.
+Lillie had declared that reading aloud was a bore, which was definitive
+against reading-parties. She liked to play and sing; so that was always
+a part of the programme. Lillie sang well, but needed a great deal of
+urging. Her throat was apt to be sore; and she took pains to say that
+the harsh winter weather in Springdale was ruining her voice. A good
+part of an evening was often spent in supplications before she could be
+induced to make the endeavor.
+
+Lillie had taken up the whim of being jealous of Rose. Jealousy is said
+to be a sign of love. We hold another theory, and consider it more
+properly a sign of selfishness. Look at noble-hearted, unselfish women,
+and ask if they are easily made jealous. Look, again, at a woman who
+in her whole life shows no disposition to deny herself for her husband,
+or to enter into his tastes and views and feelings: are not such as she
+the most frequently jealous?
+
+Her husband, in her view, is a piece of her property; every look, word,
+and thought which he gives to any body or thing else is a part of her
+private possessions, unjustly withheld from her.
+
+Independently of that, Lillie felt the instinctive jealousy which a
+_passée_ queen of beauty sometimes has for a young rival.
+
+She had eyes to see that Rose was daily growing more and more
+beautiful; and not all that young girl’s considerateness, her
+self-forgetfulness, her persistent endeavors to put Lillie forward, and
+make her the queen of the hour, could disguise this fact. Lillie was
+a keen-sighted little body, and saw, at a glance, that, once launched
+into society together, Rose would carry the day; all the more that no
+thought of any day to be carried was in her head.
+
+Rose Ferguson had one source of attraction which is as great a natural
+gift as beauty, and which, when it is found with beauty, makes it
+perfectly irresistible; to wit, perfect unconsciousness of self. This
+is a wholly different trait from unselfishness: it is not a moral
+virtue, attained by voluntary effort, but a constitutional gift, and
+a very great one. Fénelon praises it as a Christian grace, under the
+name of simplicity; but we incline to consider it only as an advantage
+of natural organization. There are many excellent Christians who are
+haunted by themselves, and in some form or other are always busy with
+themselves; either conscientiously pondering the right and wrong of
+their actions, or approbatively sensitive to the opinions of others, or
+æsthetically comparing their appearance and manners with an interior
+standard; while there are others who have received the gift, beyond
+the artist’s eye or the musician’s ear, of perfect self-forgetfulness.
+Their religion lacks the element of conflict, and comes to them by
+simple impulse.
+
+    “Glad souls, without reproach or blot,
+     Who do His will, and know it not.”
+
+Rose had a frank, open joyousness of nature, that shed around her a
+healthy charm, like fine, breezy weather, or a bright morning; making
+every one feel as if to be good were the most natural thing in the
+world. She seemed to be thinking always and directly of matters in
+hand, of things to be done, and subjects under discussion, as much as
+if she were an impersonal being.
+
+She had been educated with every solid advantage which old Boston can
+give to her nicest girls; and that is saying a good deal. Returning
+to a country home at an early age, she had been made the companion
+of her father; entering into all his literary tastes, and receiving
+constantly, from association with him, that manly influence which
+a woman’s mind needs to develop its completeness. Living the whole
+year in the country, the Fergusons developed within themselves a
+multiplicity of resources. They read and studied, and discussed
+subjects with their father; for, as we all know, the discussion of
+moral and social questions has been from the first, and always will be,
+a prime source of amusement in New-England families; and many of them
+keep up, with great spirit, a family debating society, in which whoever
+hath a psalm, a doctrine, or an interpretation, has free course.
+
+Rose had never been into fashionable life, technically so called. She
+had not been brought out: there never had been a mile-stone set up
+to mark the place where “her education was finished;” and so she had
+gone on unconsciously,—studying, reading, drawing, and cultivating
+herself from year to year, with her head and hands always so full of
+pleasurable schemes and plans, that there really seemed to be no room
+for any thing else. We have seen with what interest she co-operated
+with Grace in the various good works of the factory village in which
+her father held shares, where her activity found abundant scope, and
+her beauty and grace of manner made her a sort of idol.
+
+Rose had once or twice in her life been awakened to self-consciousness,
+by applicants rapping at the front door of her heart; but she answered
+with such a kind, frank, earnest, “No, I thank you, sir,” as made
+friends of her lovers; and she entered at once into pleasant relations
+with them. Her nature was so healthy, and free from all morbid
+suggestion; her yes and no so perfectly frank and positive, that there
+seemed no possibility of any tragedy caused by her.
+
+Why did not John fall in love with Rose? Why did not he, O most sapient
+senate of womanhood? Why did not your brother fall in love with that
+nice girl you know of, who grew up with you all at his very elbow, and
+was, as everybody else could see, just the proper person for him?
+
+Well, why didn’t he? There is the doctrine of election. “The election
+hath obtained it; and the rest were blinded.” John was some six years
+older than Rose. He had romped with her as a little girl, drawn her on
+his sled, picked up her hair-pins, and worn her tippet, when they had
+skated together as girl and boy. They had made each other Christmas and
+New Year’s presents all their lives; and, to say the truth, loved each
+other honestly and truly: nevertheless, John fell in love with Lillie,
+and married her. Did you ever know a case like it?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+_A BRICK TURNS UP._
+
+
+THE snow had been all night falling silently over the long elm avenues
+of Springdale.
+
+It was one of those soft, moist, dreamy snow-falls, which come down
+in great loose feathers, resting in magical frost-work on every tree,
+shrub, and plant, and seeming to bring down with it the purity and
+peace of upper worlds.
+
+Grace’s little cottage on Elm Street was imbosomed, as New-England
+cottages are apt to be, in a tangle of shrubbery, evergreens, syringas,
+and lilacs; which, on such occasions, become bowers of enchantment when
+the morning sun looks through them.
+
+Grace came into her parlor, which was cheery with the dazzling
+sunshine, and, running to the window, began to examine anxiously the
+state of her various greeneries, pausing from time to time to look out
+admiringly at the wonderful snow-landscape, with its many tremulous
+tints of rose, lilac, and amethyst.
+
+The only thing wanting was some one to speak to about it; and, with a
+half sigh, she thought of the good old times when John would come to
+her chamber-door in the morning, to get her out to look on scenes like
+this.
+
+“Positively,” she said to herself, “I must invite some one to visit
+me. One wants a friend to help one enjoy solitude.” The stock of
+social life in Springdale, in fact, was running low. The Lennoxes and
+the Wilcoxes had gone to their Boston homes, and Rose Ferguson was
+visiting in New York, and Letitia found so much to do to supply her
+place to her father and mother, that she had less time than usual
+to share with Grace. Then, again, the Elm-street cottage was a walk
+of some considerable distance; whereas, when Grace lived at the old
+homestead, the Fergusons were so near as to seem only one family, and
+were dropping in at all hours of the day and evening.
+
+“Whom can I send for?” thought Grace to herself; and she ran over
+mentally, in a moment, the list of available friends and acquaintances.
+Reader, perhaps you have never really estimated your friends, till you
+have tried them by the question, which of them you could ask to come
+and spend a week or fortnight with you, alone in a country-house, in
+the depth of winter. Such an invitation supposes great faith in your
+friend, in yourself, or in human nature.
+
+Grace, at the moment, was unable to think of anybody whom she could
+call from the approaching festivities of holiday life in the cities to
+share her snow Patmos with her; so she opened a book for company, and
+turned to where her dainty breakfast-table, with its hot coffee and
+crisp rolls, stood invitingly waiting for her before the cheerful open
+fire.
+
+At this moment, she saw, what she had not noticed before, a letter
+lying on her breakfast plate. Grace took it up with an exclamation of
+surprise; which, however, was heard only by her canary birds and her
+plants.
+
+Years before, when Grace was in the first summer of her womanhood, she
+had been very intimate with Walter Sydenham, and thoroughly esteemed
+and liked him; but, as many another good girl has done, about those
+days she had conceived it her duty not to think of marriage, but to
+devote herself to making a home for her widowed father and her brother.
+There was a certain romance of self-abnegation in this disposition
+of herself which was rather pleasant to Grace, and in which both the
+gentlemen concerned found great advantage. As long as her father lived,
+and John was unmarried and devoted to her, she had never regretted it.
+
+Sydenham had gone to seek his fortune in California. He had begged
+to keep up intercourse by correspondence; but Grace was not one of
+those women who are willing to drain the heart of the man they refuse
+to marry, by keeping up with him just that degree of intimacy which
+prevents his seeking another. Grace had meant her refusal to be final,
+and had sincerely hoped that he would find happiness with some other
+woman; and to that intent had rigorously denied herself and him a
+correspondence: yet, from time to time, she had heard of him through an
+occasional letter to John, or by a chance Californian newspaper. Since
+John’s marriage had so altered her course of life, Grace had thought of
+him more frequently, and with some questionings as to the wisdom of her
+course.
+
+This letter was from him; and we shall give our readers the benefit of
+it:—
+
+    “DEAR GRACE,—You must pardon me this beginning,—in the old
+    style of other days; for though many years have passed, in
+    which I have been trying to walk in your ways, and keep
+    all your commandments, I have never yet been able to do
+    as you directed, and forget you: and here I am, beginning
+    ‘Dear Grace,’—just where I left off on a certain evening
+    long, long ago. I wonder if you remember it as plainly as
+    I do. I am just the same fellow that I was then and there.
+    If you remember, you admitted that, were it not for other
+    duties, you might have considered my humble supplication. I
+    gathered that it would not have been impossible _per se_,
+    as metaphysicians say, to look with favor on your humble
+    servant.
+
+    “Gracie, I have been living, I trust, not unworthily of you.
+    Your photograph has been with me round the world,—in the
+    miner’s tent, on shipboard, among scenes where barbarous men
+    do congregate; and everywhere it has been a presence, ‘to
+    warn, to comfort, to command;’ and if I have come out of
+    many trials firmer, better, more established in right than
+    before; if I am more believing in religion, and in every way
+    grounded and settled in the way you would have me,—it has
+    been your spiritual presence and your power over me that has
+    done it. Besides that, I may as well tell you, I have never
+    given up the hope that by and by you would see all this, and
+    in some hour give me a different answer.
+
+    “When, therefore, I learned of your father’s death, and
+    afterwards of John’s marriage, I thought it was time for me
+    to return again. I have come to New York, and, if you do not
+    forbid, shall come to Springdale.
+
+    “Will you be a little glad to see me, Gracie? Why not? We
+    are both alone now. Let us take hands, and walk the same
+    path together. Shall we?
+
+                       “Yours till death, and after,
+                                           ”WALTER SYDENHAM.“
+
+Would she? To say the truth, the question as asked now had a very
+different air from the question as asked years before, when, full
+of life and hope and enthusiasm, she had devoted herself to making
+an ideal home for her father and brother. What other sympathy or
+communion, she had asked herself then, should she ever need than these
+friends, so very dear: and, if she needed more, there, in the future,
+was John’s ideal wife, who, somehow, always came before her in the
+likeness of Rose Ferguson, and John’s ideal children, whom she was sure
+she should love and pet as if they were her own.
+
+And now here she was, in a house all by herself, coming down to her
+meals, one after another, without the excitement of a cheerful face
+opposite to her, and with all possibility of confidential intercourse
+with her brother entirely cut off. Lillie, in this matter, acted,
+with much grace and spirit, the part of the dog in the manger; and,
+while she resolutely refused to enter into any of John’s literary or
+intellectual tastes, seemed to consider her wifely rights infringed
+upon by any other woman who would. She would absolutely refuse to go
+up with her husband and spend an evening with Grace, alleging it was
+“pokey and stupid,” and that they always got talking about things
+that she didn’t care any thing about. If, then, John went without
+her to spend the evening, he was sure to be received, on his return,
+with a dead and gloomy silence, more fearful, sometimes, than the
+most violent of objurgations. That look of patient, heart-broken woe,
+those long-drawn sighs, were a reception that he dreaded, to say the
+truth, a great deal more than a direct attack, or any fault-finding
+to which he could have replied; and so, on the whole, John made up
+his mind that the best thing he could do was to stay at home and rock
+the cradle of this fretful baby, whose wisdom-teeth were so hard to
+cut, and so long in coming. It was a pretty baby; and when made the
+sole and undivided object of attention, when every thing possible was
+done for it by everybody in the house, condescended often to be very
+graceful and winning and playful, and had numberless charming little
+ways and tricks. The difference between Lillie in good humor and Lillie
+in bad humor was a thing which John soon learned to appreciate as one
+of the most powerful forces in his life. If you knew, my dear reader,
+that by pursuing a certain course you could bring upon yourself a
+drizzling, dreary, north-east rain-storm, and by taking heed to your
+ways you could secure sunshine, flowers, and bird-singing, you would be
+very careful, after a while, to keep about you the right atmospheric
+temperature; and, if going to see the very best friend you had on earth
+was sure to bring on a fit of rheumatism or tooth-ache, you would
+soon learn to be very sparing of your visits. For this reason it was
+that Grace saw very little of John; that she never now had a sisterly
+conversation with him; that she preferred arranging all those little
+business matters, in which it would be convenient to have a masculine
+appeal, solely and singly by herself. The thing was never referred to
+in any conversation between them. It was perfectly understood without
+words. There are friends between whom and us has shut the coffin-lid;
+and there are others between whom and us stand sacred duties,
+considerations never to be enough reverenced, which forbid us to seek
+their society, or to ask to lean on them either in joy or sorrow: the
+whole thing as regards them must be postponed until the future life.
+Such had been Grace’s conclusion with regard to her brother. She well
+knew that any attempt to restore their former intimacy would only
+diminish and destroy what little chance of happiness yet remained to
+him; and it may therefore be imagined with what changed eyes she read
+Walter Sydenham’s letter from those of years ago.
+
+There was a sound of stamping feet at the front door; and John came
+in, all ruddy and snow-powdered, but looking, on the whole, uncommonly
+cheerful.
+
+“Well, Gracie,” he said, “the fact is, I shall have to let Lillie go
+to New York for a week or two, to see those Follingsbees. Hang them!
+But what’s the matter, Gracie? Have you been crying, or sitting up all
+night reading, or what?”
+
+The fact was, that Gracie had for once been indulging in a good cry,
+rather pitying herself for her loneliness, now that the offer of relief
+had come. She laughed, though; and, handing John her letter, said,—
+
+“Look here, John! here’s a letter I have just had from Walter Sydenham.”
+
+John broke out into a loud, hilarious laugh.
+
+“The blessed old brick!” said he. “Has he turned up again?”
+
+“Read the letter, John,” said Grace. “I don’t know exactly how to
+answer it.”
+
+John read the letter, and seemed to grow more and more quiet as he read
+it. Then he came and stood by Grace, and stroked her hair gently.
+
+“I wish, Gracie dear,” he said, “you had asked my advice about this
+matter years ago. You loved Walter,—I can see you did; and you sent him
+off on my account. It is just too bad! Of all the men I ever knew, he
+was the one I should have been best pleased to have you marry!”
+
+“It was not wholly on your account, John. You know there was our
+father,” said Grace.
+
+“Yes, yes, Gracie; but he would have preferred to see you well
+married. He would not have been so selfish, nor I either. It is your
+self-abnegation, you dear over-good women, that makes us men seem
+selfish. We should be as good as you are, if you would give us the
+chance. I think, Gracie, though you’re not aware of it, there is a
+spice of Pharisaism in the way in which you good girls allow us men
+to swallow you up without ever telling us what you are doing. I often
+wondered about your intimacy with Sydenham, and why it never came to
+any thing; and I can but half forgive you. How selfish I must have
+seemed!”
+
+“Oh, no, John! indeed not.”
+
+“Come, you needn’t put on these meek airs. I insist upon it, you have
+been feeling self-righteous and abused,” said John, laughing; “but
+‘all’s well that ends well.’ Sit down, now, and write him a real
+sensible letter, like a nice honest woman as you are.”
+
+“And say, ‘Yes, sir, and thank you too’?” said Grace, laughing.
+
+“Well, something in that way,” said John. “You can fence it in with as
+many make-believes as is proper. And now, Gracie, this is deuced lucky!
+You see Sydenham will be down here at once; and it wouldn’t be exactly
+the thing for you to receive him at this house, and our only hotel is
+perfectly impracticable in winter; and that brings me to what I am here
+about. Lillie is going to New York to spend the holidays; and I wanted
+you to shut up, and come up and keep house for us. You see you have
+only one servant, and we have four to be looked after. You can bring
+your maid along, and then I will invite Walter to our house, where he
+will have a clear field; and you can settle all your matters between
+you.”
+
+“So Lillie is going to the Follingsbees’?” said Grace.
+
+“Yes: she had a long, desperately sentimental letter from Mrs.
+Follingsbee, urging, imploring, and entreating, and setting forth all
+the splendors and glories of New York. Between you and me, it strikes
+me that that Mrs. Follingsbee is an affected goose; but I couldn’t
+say so to Lillie, ‘by no manner of means.’ She professes an untold
+amount of admiration and friendship for Lillie, and sets such brilliant
+prospects before her, that I should be the most hard-hearted old Turk
+in existence if I were to raise any objections; and, in fact, Lillie is
+quite brilliant in anticipation, and makes herself so delightful that I
+am almost sorry that I agreed to let her go.”
+
+“When shall you want me, John?”
+
+“Well, this evening, say; and, by the way, couldn’t you come up and see
+Lillie a little while this morning? She sent her love to you, and said
+she was so hurried with packing, and all that, that she wanted you to
+excuse her not calling.”
+
+“Oh, yes! I’ll come,” said Grace, good-naturedly, “as soon as I have
+had time to put things in a little order.”
+
+“And write your letter,” said John, gayly, as he went out. “Don’t
+forget that.”
+
+Grace did not forget the letter; but we shall not indulge our readers
+with any peep over her shoulder, only saying that, though written with
+an abundance of precaution, it was one with which Walter Sydenham was
+well satisfied.
+
+Then she made her few arrangements in the housekeeping line, called in
+her grand vizier and prime minister from the kitchen, and held with
+her a counsel of ways and means; put on her india-rubbers and Polish
+boots, and walked up through the deep snow-drifts to the Springdale
+post-office, where she dropped the fateful letter with a good heart on
+the whole; and then she went on to John’s, the old home, to offer any
+parting services to Lillie that might be wanted.
+
+It is rather amusing, in any family circle, to see how some one member,
+by dint of persistent exactions, comes to receive always, in all the
+exigencies of life, an amount of attention and devotion which is never
+rendered back. Lillie never thought of such a thing as offering any
+services of any sort to Grace. Grace might have packed her trunks to go
+to the moon, or the Pacific Ocean, quite alone for matter of any help
+Lillie would ever have thought of. If Grace had headache or toothache
+or a bad cold, Lillie was always “so sorry;” but it never occurred to
+her to go and sit with her, to read to her, or offer any of a hundred
+little sisterly offices. When she was in similar case, John always
+summoned Grace to sit with Lillie during the hours that his business
+necessarily took him from her. It really seemed to be John’s impression
+that a toothache or headache of Lillie’s was something entirely
+different from the same thing with Grace, or any other person in the
+world; and Lillie fully shared the impression.
+
+Grace found the little empress quite bewildered in her multiplicity of
+preparations, and neglected details, all of which had been deferred to
+the last day; and Rosa and Anna and Bridget, in fact the whole staff,
+were all busy in getting her off.
+
+“So good of you to come, Gracie!” and, “If you would do this;” and,
+“Won’t you see to that?” and, “If you could just do the other!” and
+Grace both could and would, and did what no other pair of hands could
+in the same time. John apologized for the lack of any dinner. “The fact
+is, Gracie, Bridget had to be getting up a lot of her things that were
+forgotten till the last moment; and I told her not to mind, we could do
+on a cold lunch.” Bridget herself had become so wholly accustomed to
+the ways of her little mistress, that it now seemed the most natural
+thing in the world that the whole house should be upset for her.
+
+But, at last, every thing was ready and packed; the trunks and boxes
+shut and locked, and the keys sorted; and John and Lillie were on their
+way to the station.
+
+“I shall find out Walter in New York, and bring him back with me,” said
+John, cheerily, as he parted from Grace in the hall. “I leave you to
+get things all to rights for us.”
+
+It would not have been a very agreeable or cheerful piece of work to
+tidy the disordered house and take command of the domestic forces
+under any other circumstances; but now Grace found it a very nice
+diversion to prevent her thoughts from running too curiously on this
+future meeting. “After all,” she thought to herself, “he is just the
+same venturesome, imprudent creature that he always was, jumping to
+conclusions, and insisting on seeing every thing in his own way. How
+could he dare write me such a letter without seeing me? Ten years make
+great changes. How could he be sure he would like me?” And she examined
+herself somewhat critically in the looking-glass.
+
+“Well,” she said, “he may thank me for it that we are not engaged, and
+that he comes only as an old friend, and perfectly free, for all he has
+said, to be nothing more, unless on seeing each other we are so agreed.
+I am so sorry the old place is all demolished and be-Frenchified. It
+won’t look natural to him; and I am not the kind of person to harmonize
+with these cold, polished, glistening, slippery surroundings, that have
+no home life or association in them.”
+
+But Grace had to wake from these reflections to culinary counsels with
+Bridget, and to arrangements of apartments with Rosa. Her own exacting
+carefulness followed the careless footsteps of the untrained handmaids,
+and rearranged every plait and fold; so that by nightfall the next day
+she was thoroughly tired.
+
+She beguiled the last moments, while waiting for the coming of the
+cars, in arranging her hair, and putting on one of those wonderful
+Parisian dresses, which adapt themselves so precisely to the air of the
+wearer that they seem to be in themselves works of art. Then she stood
+with a fluttering color to see the carriage drive up to the door, and
+the two get out of it.
+
+It is almost too bad to spy out such meetings, and certainly one has
+no business to describe them; but Walter Sydenham carried all before
+him, by an old habit which he had of taking all and every thing for
+granted, as, from the first moment, he did with Grace. He had no idea
+of hesitations or holdings off, and would have none; and met Gracie as
+if they had parted only yesterday, and as if her word to him always had
+been yes, instead of no.
+
+In fact, they had not been together five minutes before the whole life
+of youth returned to them both,—that indestructible youth which belongs
+to warm hearts and buoyant spirits.
+
+Such a merry evening as they had of it! When John, as the wood fire
+burned low on the hearth, with some excuse of letters to write in his
+library, left them alone together, Walter put on her finger a diamond
+ring, saying,—
+
+“There, Gracie! now, when shall it be? You see you’ve kept me waiting
+so long that I can’t spare you much time. I have an engagement to be in
+Montreal the first of February, and I couldn’t think of going alone.
+They have merry times there in mid-winter; and I’m sure it will be ever
+so much nicer for you than keeping house alone here.”
+
+Grace said, of course, that it was impossible; but Walter declared
+that doing the impossible was precisely in his line, and pushed on his
+various advantages with such spirit and energy that, when they parted
+for the night, Grace said she would think of it: which promise, at the
+breakfast-table next morning, was interpreted by the unblushing Walter,
+and reported to John, as a full consent. Before noon that day, Walter
+had walked up with John and Grace to take a survey of the cottage,
+and had given John indefinite power to engage workmen and artificers
+to rearrange and enlarge and beautify it for their return after the
+wedding journey. For the rest of the visit, all the three were busy
+with pencil and paper, projecting balconies, bow-windows, pantries,
+library, and dining-room, till the old cottage so blossomed out in
+imagination as to leave only a germ of its former self.
+
+Walter’s visit brought back to John a deal of the warmth and freedom
+which he had not known since he married. We often live under an
+insensible pressure of which we are made aware only by its removal.
+John had been so much in the habit lately of watching to please Lillie,
+of measuring and checking his words or actions, that he now bubbled
+over with a wild, free delight in finding himself alone with Grace and
+Walter. He laughed, sang, whistled, skipped upstairs two at a time, and
+scarcely dared to say even to himself why he was so happy. He did not
+face himself with that question, and went dutifully to the library at
+stated times to write to Lillie, and made much of her little letters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+_THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE._
+
+
+IF John managed to be happy without Lillie in Springdale, Lillie
+managed to be blissful without him in New York.
+
+“The bird let loose in Eastern skies” never hastened more fondly home
+than she to its glitter and gayety, its life and motion, dash and
+sensation. She rustled in all her bravery of curls and frills, pinkings
+and quillings,—a marvellous specimen of Parisian frostwork, without one
+breath of reason or philosophy or conscience to melt it.
+
+The Follingsbees’ house might stand for the original of the Castle of
+Indolence.
+
+              “Halls where who can tell
+    What elegance and grandeur wide expand,—
+    The pride of Turkey and of Persia’s land?
+    Soft quilts on quilts; on carpets, carpets spread;
+    And couches stretched around in seemly band;
+    And endless pillows rise to prop the head:
+    So that each spacious room was one full swelling bed.”
+
+It was not without some considerable profit that Mrs. Follingsbee had
+read Balzac and Dumas, and had Charlie Ferrola for master of arts in
+her establishment. The effect of the whole was perfect; it transported
+one, bodily, back to the times of Montespan and Pompadour, when life
+was all one glittering upper-crust, and pretty women were never
+troubled with even the shadow of a duty.
+
+It was with a rebound of joyousness that Lillie found herself once
+more with a crowded list of invitations, calls, operas, dancing, and
+shopping, that kept her pretty little head in a perfect whirl of
+excitement, and gave her not one moment for thought.
+
+Mrs. Follingsbee, to say the truth, would have been a little careful
+about inviting a rival queen of beauty into the circle, were it not
+that Charlie Ferrola, after an attentive consideration of the subject,
+had assured her that a golden-haired blonde would form a most complete
+and effective tableau, in contrast with her own dark rich style of
+beauty. Neither would lose by it, so he said; and the impression, as
+they rode together in an elegant open barouche, with ermine carriage
+robes, would be “stunning.” So they called each other _ma sœur_, and
+drove out in the park in a ravishing little pony-phaeton all foamed
+over with ermine, drawn by a lovely pair of cream-colored horses, whose
+harness glittered with gold and silver, after the fashion of the Count
+of Monte Cristo. In truth, if Dick Follingsbee did not remind one of
+Solomon in all particulars, he was like him in one, that he “made
+silver and gold as the stones of the street” in New York.
+
+Lillie’s presence, however, was all desirable; because it would draw
+the calls of two or three old New York families who had hitherto stood
+upon their dignity, and refused to acknowledge the shoddy aristocracy.
+The beautiful Mrs. John Seymour, therefore, was no less useful than
+ornamental, and advanced Mrs. Follingsbee’s purposes in her “Excelsior”
+movements.
+
+“Now, I suppose,” said Mrs. Follingsbee to Lillie one day, when they
+had been out making fashionable calls together, “we really must call on
+Charlie’s wife, just to keep her quiet.”
+
+“I thought you didn’t like her,” said Lillie.
+
+“I don’t; I think she is dreadfully common,” said Mrs. Follingsbee:
+“she is one of those women who can’t talk any thing but baby, and bores
+Charlie half to death. But then, you know, when there is a _liaison_
+like mine with Charlie, one can’t be too careful to cultivate the
+wives. _Les convenances_, you know, are the all-important things. I
+send her presents constantly, and send my carriage around to take
+her to church or opera, or any thing that is going on, and have her
+children at my fancy parties: yet, for all that, the creature has not a
+particle of gratitude; those narrow-minded women never have. You know
+I am very susceptible to people’s atmospheres; and I always feel that
+that creature is just as full of spite and jealousy as she can stick in
+her skin.”
+
+It will be remarked that this was one of those idiomatic phrases which
+got lodged in Mrs. Follingsbee’s head in a less cultivated period of
+her life, as a rusty needle sometimes hides in a cushion, coming out
+unexpectedly, when excitement gives it an honest squeeze.
+
+“Now, I should think,” pursued Mrs. Follingsbee, “that a woman who
+really loved her husband would be thankful to have him have such a
+rest from the disturbing family cares which smother a man’s genius,
+as a house like ours offers him. How can the artistic nature exercise
+itself in the very grind of the thing, when this child has a cold, and
+the other the croup; and there is fussing with mustard-paste and ipecac
+and paregoric,—all those realities, you know? Why, Charlie tells me he
+feels a great deal more affection for his children when he is all calm
+and tranquil in the little boudoir at our house; and he writes such
+lovely little poems about them, I must show you some of them. But this
+creature doesn’t appreciate them a bit: she has no poetry in her.”
+
+“Well, I must say, I don’t think I should have,” said Lillie, honestly.
+“I should be just as mad as I could be, if John acted so.”
+
+“Oh, my dear! the cases are different: Charlie has such peculiarities
+of genius. The artistic nature, you know, requires soothing.” Here they
+stopped, and rang at the door of a neat little house, and were ushered
+into a pair of those characteristic parlors which show that they have
+been arranged by a home-worshipper, and a mother. There were plants and
+birds and flowers, and little _genre_ pictures of children, animals,
+and household interiors, arranged with a loving eye and hand.
+
+“Did you ever see any thing so perfectly characteristic?” said Mrs.
+Follingsbee, looking around her as if she were going to faint.
+
+“This woman drives Charlie perfectly wild, because she has no
+appreciation of high art. Now, I sent her photographs of Michel
+Angelo’s ‘Moses,’ and ‘Night and Morning;’ and I really wish you would
+see where she hung them,—away in yonder dark corner!”
+
+“I think myself they are enough to scare the owls,” said Lillie, after
+a moment’s contemplation.
+
+“But, my dear, you know they are the thing,” said Mrs. Follingsbee:
+“people never like such things at first, and one must get used to high
+art before one forms a taste for it. The thing with her is, she has no
+docility. She does not try to enter into Charlie’s tastes.”
+
+The woman with “no docility” entered at this moment,—a little snow-drop
+of a creature, with a pale, pure, Madonna face, and that sad air of
+hopeless firmness which is seen unhappily in the faces of so many women.
+
+“I had to bring baby down,” she said. “I have no nurse to-day, and he
+has been threatened with croup.”
+
+“The dear little fellow!” said Mrs. Follingsbee, with officious
+graciousness. “So glad you brought him down; come to his aunty?” she
+inquired lovingly, as the little fellow shrank away, and regarded
+her with round, astonished eyes. “Why will you not come to my next
+reception, Mrs. Ferrola?” she added. “You make yourself quite a
+stranger to us. You ought to give yourself some variety.”
+
+“The fact is, Mrs. Follingsbee,” said Mrs. Ferrola, “receptions in New
+York generally begin about my bed-time; and, if I should spend the
+night out, I should have no strength to give to my children the next
+day.”
+
+[Illustration: “I had to bring baby down.”]
+
+“But, my dear, you ought to have some amusement.”
+
+“My children amuse me, if you will believe it,” said Mrs. Ferrola, with
+a remarkably quiet smile.
+
+Mrs. Follingsbee was not quite sure whether this was meant to be
+sarcastic or not. She answered, however, “Well! your husband will
+come, at all events.”
+
+“You may be quite sure of that,” said Mrs. Ferrola, with the same
+quietness.
+
+“Well!” said Mrs. Follingsbee, rising, with patronizing cheerfulness,
+“delighted to see you doing so well; and, if it is pleasant, I will
+send the carriage round to take you a drive in the park this afternoon.
+Good-morning.”
+
+And, like a rustling cloud of silks and satins and perfumes, she bent
+down and kissed the baby, and swept from the apartment.
+
+Mrs. Ferrola, with a movement that seemed involuntary, wiped the baby’s
+cheek with her handkerchief, and, folding it closer to her bosom,
+looked up as if asking patience where patience is to be found for the
+asking.
+
+“There! didn’t I tell you?” said Mrs. Follingsbee when she came out;
+“just one of those provoking, meek, obstinate, impracticable creatures,
+with no adaptation in her.”
+
+“Oh, gracious me!” said Lillie: “I can’t imagine more dire despair than
+to sit all day tending baby.”
+
+“Well, so you would think; and Charlie has offered to hire competent
+nurses, and wants her to dress herself up and go into society; and she
+just won’t do it, and sticks right down by the cradle there, with her
+children running over her like so many squirrels.”
+
+“Oh! I hope and trust I never shall have children,” said Lillie,
+fervently, “because, you see, there’s an end of every thing. No more
+fun, no more frolics, no more admiration or good times; nothing but
+this frightful baby, that you can’t get rid of.”
+
+Yet, as Lillie spoke, she knew, in her own slippery little heart, that
+the shadow of this awful cloud of maternity was resting over her;
+though she laced and danced, and bid defiance to every law of nature,
+with a blind and ignorant wilfulness, not caring what consequences she
+might draw down on herself, if only she might escape this.
+
+And was there, then, no soft spot in this woman’s heart anywhere?
+Generally it is thought that the throb of the child’s heart awakens
+a heart in the mother, and that the mother is born again with her
+child. It is so with unperverted nature, as God meant it to be; and
+you shall hear from the lips of an Irish washer-woman a genuine poetry
+of maternal feeling, for the little one who comes to make her toil
+more toilsome, that is wholly withered away out of luxurious circles,
+where there is every thing to make life easy. Just as the Chinese have
+contrived fashionable monsters, where human beings are constrained to
+grow in the shape of flower-pots, so fashionable life contrives at last
+to grow a woman who hates babies, and will risk her life to be rid of
+the crowning glory of womanhood.
+
+There was a time in Lillie’s life, when she was sixteen years of age,
+which was a turning-point with her, and decided that she should be
+the heartless woman she was. If at that age, and at that time, she
+had decided to marry the man she really loved, marriage might indeed
+have proved to her a sacrament. It might have opened to her a door
+through which she could have passed out from a career of selfish
+worldliness into that gradual discipline of unselfishness which a true
+love-marriage brings.
+
+But she did not. The man was poor, and she was beautiful; her beauty
+would buy wealth and worldly position, and so she cast him off. Yet
+partly to gratify her own lingering feeling, and partly because she
+could not wholly renounce what had once been hers, she kept up for
+years with him just that illusive simulacrum which such women call
+friendship; which, while constantly denying, constantly takes pains to
+attract, and drains the heart of all possibility of loving another.
+
+Harry Endicott was a young man of fine capabilities, sensitive,
+interesting, handsome, full of generous impulses, whom a good woman
+might easily have led to a full completeness. He was not really
+Lillie’s cousin, but the cousin of her mother; yet, under the name of
+cousin, he had constant access and family intimacy.
+
+This winter Harry Endicott suddenly returned to the fashionable circles
+of New York,—returned from a successful career in India, with an ample
+fortune. He was handsomer than ever, took stylish bachelor lodgings,
+set up a most distracting turnout, and became a sort of Marquis of
+Farintosh in fashionable circles. Was ever any thing so lucky, or so
+unlucky, for our Lillie?—lucky, if life really does run on the basis of
+French novels, and if all that is needed is the sparkle and stimulus of
+new emotions; unlucky, nay, even gravely terrible, if life really is
+established on a basis of moral responsibility, and dogged by the fatal
+necessity that “whatsoever man or woman soweth, that shall he or she
+also reap.”
+
+In the most critical hour of her youth, when love was sent to her heart
+like an angel, to beguile her from selfishness, and make self-denial
+easy, Lillie’s pretty little right hand had sowed to the world and
+the flesh; and of that sowing she was now to reap all the disquiets,
+the vexations, the tremors, that go to fill the pages of French
+novels,—records of women who marry where they cannot love, to serve
+the purposes of selfishness and ambition, and then make up for it by
+loving where they cannot marry. If all the women in America who have
+practised, and are practising, this species of moral agriculture should
+stand forth together, it would be seen that it is not for nothing that
+France has been called the society educator of the world.
+
+The apartments of the Follingsbee mansion, with their dreamy
+voluptuousness, were eminently adapted to be the background and
+scenery of a dramatic performance of this kind. There were vistas
+of drawing-rooms, with delicious boudoirs, like side chapels in a
+temple of Venus, with handsome Charlie Ferrola gliding in and out,
+or lecturing dreamily from the corner of some sofa on the last most
+important crinkle of the artistic rose-leaf, demonstrating conclusively
+that beauty was the only true morality, and that there was no sin but
+bad taste; and that nobody knew what good taste was but himself and
+his clique. There was the discussion, far from edifying, of modern
+improved theories of society, seen from an improved philosophic point
+of view; of all the peculiar wants and needs of etherealized beings,
+who have been refined and cultivated till it is the most difficult
+problem in the world to keep them comfortable, while there still
+remains the most imperative necessity that they should be made happy,
+though the whole universe were to be torn down and made over to effect
+it.
+
+The idea of not being happy, and in all respects as blissful as they
+could possibly be made, was one always assumed by the Follingsbee
+clique as an injustice to be wrestled with. Anybody that did not
+affect them agreeably, that jarred on their nerves, or interrupted
+the delicious reveries of existence with the sharp saw-setting of
+commonplace realities, in their view ought to be got rid of summarily,
+whether that somebody were husband or wife, parent or child.
+
+Natures that affected each other pleasantly were to spring together
+like dew-drops, and sail off on rosy clouds with each other to the land
+of Do-just-as-you-have-a-mind-to.
+
+The only thing never to be enough regretted, which prevented this
+immediate and blissful union of particles, was the impossibility of
+living on rosy clouds, and making them the means of conveyance to the
+desirable country before mentioned. Many of the fair _illuminatæ_, who
+were quite willing to go off with a kindred spirit, were withheld by
+the necessities of infinite pairs of French kid gloves, and gallons
+of cologne-water, and indispensable clouds of mechlin and point lace,
+which were necessary to keep around them the poetry of existence.
+
+Although it was well understood among them that the religion of the
+emotions is the only true religion, and that nothing is holy that you
+do not feel exactly like doing, and every thing is holy that you do;
+still these fair confessors lacked the pluck of primitive Christians,
+and could not think of taking joyfully the spoiling of their goods,
+even for the sake of a kindred spirit. Hence the necessity of living in
+deplored marriage-bonds with husbands who could pay rent and taxes, and
+stand responsible for unlimited bills at Stewart’s and Tiffany’s. Hence
+the philosophy which allowed the possession of the body to one man, and
+of the soul to another, which one may see treated of at large in any
+writings of the day.
+
+As yet Lillie had been kept intact from all this sort of thing by the
+hard, brilliant enamel of selfishness. That little shrewd, gritty
+common sense, which enabled her to see directly through other people’s
+illusions, has, if we mistake not, by this time revealed itself to our
+readers as an element in her mind: but now there is to come a decided
+thrust at the heart of her womanhood; and we shall see whether the
+paralysis is complete, or whether the woman is alive.
+
+If Lillie had loved Harry Endicott poor, had loved him so much that
+at one time she had seriously balanced the possibility of going to
+housekeeping in a little unfashionable house, and having only one girl,
+and hand in hand with him walking the paths of economy, self-denial,
+and prudence,—the reader will see that Harry Endicott rich, Harry
+Endicott enthroned in fashionable success, Harry Endicott plus fast
+horses, splendid equipages, a fine city house, and a country house on
+the Hudson, was something still more dangerous to her imagination.
+
+But more than this was the stimulus of Harry Endicott out of her power,
+and beyond the sphere of her charms. She had a feverish desire to see
+him, but he never called. Forthwith she had a confidential conversation
+with her bosom friend, who entered into the situation with enthusiasm,
+and invited him to her receptions. But he didn’t come.
+
+The fact was, that Harry Endicott hated Lillie now, with that kind of
+hatred which is love turned wrong-side out. He hated her for the misery
+she had caused him, and was in some danger of feeling it incumbent
+on himself to go to the devil in a wholly unnecessary manner on that
+account.
+
+He had read the story of Monte Cristo, with its highly wrought plot of
+vengeance, and had determined to avenge himself on the woman who had so
+tortured him, and to make her feel, if possible, what he had felt.
+
+So, when he had discovered the hours of driving observed by Mrs.
+Follingsbee and Lillie in the park, he took pains, from time to time,
+to meet them face to face, and to pass Lillie with an unrecognizing
+stare. Then he dashed in among Mrs. Follingsbee’s circle, making
+himself everywhere talked of, till they were beset on all hands by the
+inquiry, “Don’t you know young Endicott? why, I should think you would
+want to have him visit here.”
+
+After this had been played far enough, he suddenly showed himself one
+evening at Mrs. Follingsbee’s, and apologized in an off-hand manner to
+Lillie, when reminded of passing her in the park, that really he wasn’t
+thinking of meeting her, and didn’t recognize her, she was so altered;
+it had been so many years since they had met, &c. All in a tone of
+cool and heartless civility, every word of which was a dagger’s thrust
+not only into her vanity, but into the poor little bit of a real heart
+which fashionable life had left to Lillie.
+
+Every evening, after he had gone, came a long, confidential
+conversation with Mrs. Follingsbee, in which every word and look
+was discussed and turned, and all possible or probable inferences
+therefrom reported; after which Lillie often laid a sleepless head
+on a hot and tumbled pillow, poor, miserable child! suffering her
+punishment, without even the grace to know whence it came, or what it
+meant. Hitherto Lillie had been walking only in the limits of that
+kind of permitted wickedness, which, although certainly the remotest
+thing possible from the Christianity of Christ, finds a great deal
+of tolerance and patronage among communicants of the altar. She had
+lived a gay, vain, self-pleasing life, with no object or purpose but
+the simple one to get each day as much pleasurable enjoyment out of
+existence as possible. Mental and physical indolence and inordinate
+vanity had been the key-notes of her life. She hated every thing that
+required protracted thought, or that made trouble, and she longed
+for excitement. The passion for praise and admiration had become
+to her like the passion of the opium-eater for his drug, or of the
+brandy-drinker for his dram. But now she was heedlessly steering to
+what might prove a more palpable sin.
+
+Harry the serf, once half despised for his slavish devotion, now stood
+before her, proud and free, and tantalized her by the display he made
+of his indifference, and preference for others. She put forth every
+art and effort to recapture him. But the most dreadful stroke of fate
+of all was, that Rose Ferguson had come to New York to make a winter
+visit, and was much talked of in certain circles where Harry was quite
+intimate; and he professed himself, indeed, an ardent admirer at her
+shrine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+_THE VAN ASTRACHANS._
+
+
+THE Van Astrachans, a proud, rich old family, who took a certain
+defined position in New-York life on account of some ancestral passages
+in their family history, had invited Rose to spend a month or two with
+them; and she was therefore moving as a star in a very high orbit.
+
+Now, these Van Astrachans were one of those cold, glittering,
+inaccessible pinnacles in Mrs. Follingsbee’s fashionable Alp-climbing
+which she would spare no expense to reach if possible. It was one of
+the families for whose sake she had Mrs. John Seymour under her roof;
+and the advent of Rose, whom she was pleased to style one of Mrs.
+Seymour’s most intimate friends, was an unhoped-for stroke of good
+luck; because there was the necessity of calling on Rose, of taking her
+out to drive in the park, and of making a party on her account, from
+which, of course, the Van Astrachans could not stay away.
+
+It will be seen here that our friend, Mrs. Follingsbee, like all
+ladies whose watch-word is “Excelsior,” had a peculiar, difficult, and
+slippery path to climb.
+
+The Van Astrachans were good old Dutch-Reformed Christians,
+unquestioning believers in the Bible in general, and the Ten
+Commandments in particular,—persons whose moral constitutions had been
+nourished on the great stocky beefsteaks and sirloins of plain old
+truths which go to form English and Dutch nature. Theirs was a style
+of character which rendered them utterly hopeless of comprehending
+the etherealized species of holiness which obtained in the innermost
+circles of the Follingsbee _illuminati_. Mr. Van Astrachan buttoned
+under his coat not only many solid inches of what Carlyle calls “good
+Christian fat,” but also a pocket-book through which millions of
+dollars were passing daily in an easy and comfortable flow, to the
+great advantage of many of his fellow-creatures no less than himself;
+and somehow or other he was pig-headed in the idea that the Bible and
+the Ten Commandments had something to do with that stability of things
+which made this necessary flow easy and secure.
+
+He was slow-moulded, accurate, and fond of security; and was of opinion
+that nineteen centuries of Christianity ought to have settled a few
+questions so that they could be taken for granted, and were not to be
+kept open for discussion.
+
+Moreover, Mr. Van Astrachan having read the accounts of the first
+French revolution, and having remarked all the subsequent history of
+that country, was confirmed in his idea, that pitching every thing into
+pi once in fifty years was no way to get on in the affairs of this
+world.
+
+He had strong suspicions of every thing French, and a mind very ill
+adapted to all those delicate reasonings and shadings and speculations
+of which Mr. Charlie Ferrola was particularly fond, which made every
+thing in morals and religion an open question.
+
+He and his portly wife planted themselves, like two canons of the
+sanctuary, every Sunday, in the tip-top highest-priced pew of the
+most orthodox old church in New York; and if the worthy man sometimes
+indulged in gentle slumbers in the high-padded walls of his slip, it
+was because he was so well assured of the orthodoxy of his minister
+that he felt that no interest of society would suffer while he was off
+duty. But may Heaven grant us, in these days of dissolving views and
+general undulation, large armies of these solid-planted artillery on
+the walls of our Zion!
+
+Blessed be the people whose strength is to sit still! Much needed are
+they when the activity of free inquiry seems likely to chase us out of
+house and home, and leave us, like the dove in the deluge, no rest for
+the sole of our foot.
+
+Let us thank God for those Dutch-Reformed churches; great solid
+breakwaters, that stand as the dykes in their ancestral Holland to keep
+out the muddy waves of that sea whose waters cast up mire and dirt.
+
+But let us fancy with what quakings and shakings of heart Mrs.
+Follingsbee must have sought the alliance of these tremendously solid
+old Christians. They were precisely what she wanted to give an air of
+solidity to the cobweb glitter of her state. And we can also see how
+necessary it was that she should ostentatiously visit Charlie Ferrola’s
+wife, and speak of her as a darling creature, her particular friend,
+whom she was doing her very best to keep out of an early grave.
+
+Charlie Ferrola said that the Van Astrachans were obtuse; and so, to
+a certain degree, they were. In social matters they had a kind of
+confiding simplicity. They were so much accustomed to regard positive
+morals in the light of immutable laws of Nature, that it would not have
+been easy to have made them understand that sliding scale of estimates
+which is in use nowadays. They would probably have had but one word,
+and that a very disagreeable one, to designate a married woman who was
+in love with anybody but her husband. Consequently, they were the very
+last people whom any gossip of this sort could ever reach, or to whose
+ears it could have been made intelligible.
+
+Mr. Van Astrachan considered Dick Follingsbee a swindler, whose proper
+place was the State’s prison, and whose morals could only be mentioned
+with those of Sodom and Gomorrah.
+
+Nevertheless, as Mrs. Follingsbee made it a point of rolling up her
+eyes and sighing deeply when his name was mentioned,—as she attended
+church on Sunday with conspicuous faithfulness, and subscribed to
+charitable societies and all manner of good works,—as she had got
+appointed directress on the board of an orphan asylum where Mrs. Van
+Astrachan figured in association with her, that good lady was led
+to look upon her with compassion, as a worthy woman who was making
+the best of her way to heaven, notwithstanding the opposition of a
+dissolute husband.
+
+As for Rose, she was as fresh and innocent and dewy, in the hot whirl
+and glitter and glare of New York, as a waving spray of sweet-brier,
+brought in fresh with all the dew upon it.
+
+She really had for Lillie a great deal of that kind of artistic
+admiration which nice young girls sometimes have for very beautiful
+women older than themselves; and was, like almost every one else,
+somewhat bejuggled and taken in by that air of infantine sweetness and
+simplicity which had survived all the hot glitter of her life, as if a
+rose, fresh with dew, should lie unwilted in the mouth of a furnace.
+
+Moreover, Lillie’s face had a beauty this winter it had never worn:
+the softness of a real feeling, the pathos of real suffering, at times
+touched her face with something that was always wanting in it before.
+The bitter waters of sin that she would drink gave a strange feverish
+color to her cheek; and the poisoned perfume she would inhale gave a
+strange new brightness to her eyes.
+
+Rose sometimes looked on her and wondered; so innocent and healthy and
+light-hearted in herself, she could not even dream of what was passing.
+She had been brought up to love John as a brother, and opened her heart
+at once to his wife with a sweet and loyal faithfulness. When she told
+Mrs. Van Astrachan that Mrs. John Seymour was one of her friends from
+Springdale, married into a family with which she had grown up with
+great intimacy, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to the
+good lady that Rose should want to visit her; that she should drive
+with her, and call on her, and receive her at their house; and with her
+of course must come Mrs. Follingsbee.
+
+Mr. Van Astrachan made a dead halt at the idea of Dick Follingsbee. He
+never would receive _that_ man under his roof, he said, and he never
+would enter his house; and when Mr. Van Astrachan once said a thing of
+this kind, as Mr. Hosea Biglow remarks, “a meeting-house wasn’t sotter.”
+
+But then Mrs. Follingsbee’s situation was confidentially stated to
+Lillie, and by Lillie confidentially stated to Rose, and by Rose to
+Mrs. Van Astrachan; and it was made to appear how Dick Follingsbee had
+entirely abandoned his wife, going off in the ways of Balaam the son
+of Bosor, and all other bad ways mentioned in Scripture, habitually
+leaving poor Mrs. Follingsbee to entertain company alone, so that he
+was never seen at her parties, and had nothing to do with her.
+
+“So much the better for them,” remarked Mr. Van Astrachan.
+
+“In that case, my dear, I don’t see that it would do any harm for you
+to go to Mrs. Follingsbee’s party on Rose’s account. I never go to
+parties, as you know; and I certainly should not begin by going there.
+But still I see no objection to your taking Rose.”
+
+If Mr. Van Astrachan had seen objections, you never would have caught
+Mrs. Van Astrachan going; for she was one of your full-blooded women,
+who never in her life engaged to do a thing she didn’t mean to do: and
+having promised in the marriage service to obey her husband, she obeyed
+him plumb, with the air of a person who is fulfilling the prophecies;
+though her chances in this way were very small, as Mr. Van Astrachan
+generally called her “ma,” and obeyed all her orders with a stolid
+precision quite edifying to behold. He took her advice always, and
+was often heard naively to remark that Mrs. Van Astrachan and he were
+always of the same opinion,—an expression happily defining that state
+in which a man does just what his wife tells him to.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+_MRS. FOLLINGSBEE’S PARTY, AND WHAT CAME OF IT._
+
+
+OUR vulgar idea of a party is a week or fortnight of previous
+discomfort and chaotic tergiversation, and the mistress of it all
+distracted and worn out with endless cares. Such a party bursts in
+on a well-ordered family state as a bomb bursts into a city, leaving
+confusion and disorder all around. But it would be a pity if such a
+life-long devotion to the arts and graces as Mrs. Follingsbee had
+given, backed by Dick Follingsbee’s fabulous fortune, and administered
+by the exquisite Charlie Ferrola, should not have brought forth some
+appreciable results. One was, that the great Castle of Indolence was
+prepared for the _fête_, with no more ripple of disturbance than if
+it had been a Nereid’s bower, far down beneath the reach of tempests,
+where the golden sand is never ruffled, and the crimson and blue sea
+flowers never even dream of commotion.
+
+Charlie Ferrola wore, it is true, a brow somewhat oppressed with care,
+and was kept tucked up on a rose-colored satin sofa, and served with
+lachrymæ Christi, and Montefiascone, and all other substitutes for the
+dews of Hybla, while he draughted designs for the floral arrangements,
+which were executed by obsequious attendants in felt slippers; and
+the whole process of arrangement proceeded like a dream of the
+lotus-eaters’ paradise.
+
+Madame de Tullegig was of course retained primarily for the adornment
+of Mrs. Follingsbee’s person. It was understood, however, on this
+occasion, that the composition of the costumes was to embrace both hers
+and Lillie’s, that they might appear in a contrasted tableau, and bring
+out each other’s points. It was a subject worthy a Parisian artiste,
+and drew so seriously on Madame de Tullegig’s brain-power, that she
+assured Mrs. Follingsbee afterwards that the effort of composition had
+sensibly exhausted her.
+
+Before we relate the events of that evening, as they occurred, we must
+give some little idea of the position in which the respective parties
+now stood.
+
+Harry Endicott, by his mother’s side, was related to Mrs. Van
+Astrachan. Mr. Van Astrachan had been, in a certain way, guardian
+to him; and his success in making his fortune was in consequence
+of capital advanced and friendly patronage thus accorded. In the
+family, therefore, he had the _entrée_ of a son, and had enjoyed the
+opportunity of seeing Rose with a freedom and frequency that soon
+placed them on the footing of old acquaintanceship. Rose was an easy
+person to become acquainted with in an ordinary and superficial manner.
+She was like those pellucid waters whose great clearness deceives the
+eye as to their depth. Her manners had an easy and gracious frankness;
+and she spoke right on, with an apparent simplicity and fearlessness
+that produced at first the impression that you knew all her heart. A
+longer acquaintance, however, developed depths of reserved thought and
+feeling far beyond what at first appeared.
+
+Harry, at first, had met her only on those superficial grounds of
+banter and _badinage_ where a gay young gentleman and a gay young lady
+may reconnoitre, before either side gives the other the smallest peep
+of the key of what Dr. Holmes calls the side-door of their hearts.
+
+Harry, to say the truth, was in a bad way when he first knew Rose:
+he was restless, reckless, bitter. Turned loose into society with an
+ample fortune and nothing to do, he was in danger, according to the
+homely couplet of Dr. Watts, of being provided with employment by that
+undescribable personage who makes it his business to look after idle
+hands.
+
+Rose had attracted him first by her beauty, all the more attractive to
+him because in a style entirely different from that which hitherto had
+captivated his imagination. Rose was tall, well-knit, and graceful,
+and bore herself with a sort of slender but majestic lightness, like
+a meadow-lily. Her well-shaped, classical head was set finely on
+her graceful neck, and she had a stag-like way of carrying it, that
+impressed a stranger sometimes as haughty; but Rose could not help
+that, it was a trick of nature. Her hair was of the glossiest black,
+her skin fair as marble, her nose a little, nicely-turned aquiline
+affair, her eyes of a deep violet blue and shadowed by long dark
+lashes, her mouth a little larger than the classical proportion, but
+generous in smiles and laughs which revealed perfect teeth of dazzling
+whiteness. There, gentlemen and ladies, is Rose Ferguson’s picture:
+and, if you add to all this the most attractive impulsiveness and
+self-unconsciousness, you will not wonder that Harry Endicott at first
+found himself admiring her, and fancied driving out with her in the
+park; and that when admiring eyes followed them both, as a handsome
+pair, Harry was well pleased.
+
+Rose, too, liked Harry Endicott. A young girl of twenty is not a
+severe judge of a handsome, lively young man, who knows far more of
+the world than she does; and though Harry’s conversation was a perfect
+Catherine-wheel of all sorts of wild talk,—sneering, bitter, and
+sceptical, and giving expression to the most heterodox sentiments, with
+the evident intention of shocking respectable authorities,—Rose rather
+liked him than otherwise; though she now and then took the liberty to
+stand upon her dignity, and opened her great blue eyes on him with a
+grave, inquiring look of surprise,—a look that seemed to challenge
+him to stand and defend himself. From time to time, too, she let fall
+little bits of independent opinion, well poised and well turned, that
+hit exactly where she meant they should; and Harry began to stand a
+little in awe of her.
+
+Harry had never known a woman like Rose; a woman so poised and
+self-centred, so cultivated, so capable of deep and just reflections,
+and so religious. His experience with women had not been fortunate, as
+has been seen in this narrative; and, insensibly to himself, Rose was
+beginning to exercise an influence over him. The sphere around her was
+cool and bright and wholesome, as different from the hot atmosphere of
+passion and sentiment and flirtation to which he had been accustomed,
+as a New-England summer morning from a sultry night in the tropics.
+Her power over him was in the appeal to a wholly different part of
+his nature,—intellect, conscience, and religious sensibility; and
+once or twice he found himself speaking to her quietly, seriously,
+and rationally, not from the purpose of pleasing her, but because she
+had aroused such a strain of thought in his own mind. There was a
+certain class of brilliant sayings of his, of a cleverly irreligious
+and sceptical nature, at which Rose never laughed: when this sort of
+firework was let off in her presence, she opened her eyes upon him,
+wide and blue, with a calm surprise intermixed with pity, but said
+nothing; and, after trying the experiment several times, he gradually
+felt this silent kind of look a restraint upon him.
+
+At the same time, it must not be conjectured that, at present, Harry
+Endicott was thinking of falling in love with Rose. In fact, he scoffed
+at the idea of love, and professed to disbelieve in its existence.
+And, beside all this, he was gratifying an idle vanity, and the wicked
+love of revenge, in visiting Lillie; sometimes professing for days
+an exclusive devotion to her, in which there was a little too much
+reality on both sides to be at all safe or innocent; and then, when
+he had wound her up to the point where even her involuntary looks
+and words and actions towards him must have compromised her in the
+eyes of others, he would suddenly recede for days, and devote himself
+exclusively to Rose; driving ostentatiously with her in the park,
+where he would meet Lillie face to face, and bow triumphantly to her
+in passing. All these proceedings, talked over with Mrs. Follingsbee,
+seemed to give promise of the most impassioned French romance possible.
+
+Rose walked through all her part in this little drama, wrapped in a
+veil of sacred ignorance. Had she known the whole, the probability
+is that she would have refused Harry’s acquaintance; but, like many
+another nice girl, she tripped gayly near to pitfalls and chasms of
+which she had not the remotest conception.
+
+Lillie’s want of self-control, and imprudent conduct, had laid her open
+to reports in certain circles where such reports find easy credence;
+but these were circles with which the Van Astrachans never mingled.
+The only accidental point of contact was the intimacy of Rose with the
+Seymour family; and Rose was the last person to understand an allusion
+if she heard it. The reading of Rose had been carefully selected by
+her father, and had not embraced any novels of the French romantic
+school; neither had she, like some modern young ladies, made her mind a
+highway for the tramping of every kind of possible fictitious character
+which a novelist might choose to draw, nor taken an interest in the
+dissections of morbid anatomy. In fact, she was old-fashioned enough to
+like Scott’s novels; and though she was just the kind of girl Thackeray
+would have loved, she never could bring her fresh young heart to enjoy
+his pictures of world-worn and decaying natures.
+
+The idea of sentimental flirtations and love-making on the part of a
+married woman was one so beyond her conception of possibilities that it
+would have been very difficult to make her understand or believe it.
+
+On the occasion of the Follingsbee party, therefore, Rose accepted
+Harry as an escort in simple good faith. She was by no means so wise
+as not to have a deal of curiosity about it, and not a little of dazed
+and dazzled sense of enjoyment in prospect of the perfect labyrinth of
+fairy-land which the Follingsbee mansion opened before her.
+
+On the eventful evening, Mrs. Follingsbee and Lillie stood together to
+receive their guests,—the former in gold color, with magnificent point
+lace and diamond tiara; while Lillie in heavenly blue, with wreaths
+of misty tulle and pearl ornaments, seemed like a filmy cloud by the
+setting sun.
+
+Rose, entering on Harry Endicott’s arm, in the full bravery of a
+well-chosen toilet, caused a buzz of admiration which followed them
+through the rooms; but Rose was nothing to the illuminated eyes of
+Mrs. Follingsbee compared with the portly form of Mrs. Van Astrachan
+entering beside her, and spreading over her the wings of motherly
+protection. That much-desired matron, serene in her point lace and
+diamonds, beamed around her with an innocent kindliness, shedding
+respectability wherever she moved, as a certain Russian prince was said
+to shed diamonds.
+
+[Illustration: “Rose, entering on Harry Endicott’s arm.”]
+
+“Why, that is Mrs. Van Astrachan!”
+
+“You don’t tell me so! Is it possible?”
+
+“Which?” “Where is she?” “How in the world did she get here?” were
+the whispered remarks that followed her wherever she moved; and Mrs.
+Follingsbee, looking after her, could hardly suppress an exulting _Te
+Deum_. It was done, and couldn’t be undone.
+
+Mrs. Van Astrachan might not appear again at a _salon_ of hers for
+a year; but that could not do away the patent fact, witnessed by so
+many eyes, that she had been there once. Just as a modern newspaper
+or magazine wants only one article of a celebrated author to announce
+him as among their stated contributors for all time, and to flavor
+every subsequent issue of the journal with expectancy, so Mrs.
+Follingsbee exulted in the idea that this one evening would flavor all
+her receptions for the winter, whether the good lady’s diamonds ever
+appeared there again or not. In her secret heart, she always had the
+perception, when striving to climb up on this kind of ladder, that the
+time might come when she should be found out; and she well knew the
+absolute and uncomprehending horror with which that good lady would
+regard the French principles and French practice of which Charlie
+Ferrola and Co. were the expositors and exemplars.
+
+This was what Charlie Ferrola meant when he said that the Van
+Astrachans were obtuse. They never could be brought to the niceties of
+moral perspective which show one exactly where to find the vanishing
+point for every duty.
+
+Be that as it may, there, at any rate, she was, safe and sound;
+surrounded by people whom she had never met before, and receiving
+introductions to the right and left with the utmost graciousness. The
+arrangements for the evening had been made at the tea-table of the Van
+Astrachans with an innocent and trustful simplicity.
+
+“You know, dear,” said Mrs. Van Astrachan to Rose, “that I never like
+to stay long away from papa” (so the worthy lady called her husband);
+“and so, if it’s just the same to you, you shall let me have the
+carriage come for me early, and then you and Harry shall be left free
+to see it out. I know young folks must be young,” she said, with a
+comfortable laugh. “There was a time, dear, when my waist was not
+bigger than yours, that I used to dance all night with the best of
+them; but I’ve got bravely over that now.”
+
+[Illustration: THE VAN ASTRACHANS.]
+
+“Yes, Rose,” said Mr. Van Astrachan, “you mayn’t believe it, but ma
+there was the spryest dancer of any of the girls. You are pretty nice
+to look at, but you don’t quite come up to what she was in those days.
+I tell you, I wish you could have seen her,” said the good man, warming
+to his subject. “Why, I’ve seen the time when every fellow on the floor
+was after her.”
+
+“Papa,” says Mrs. Van Astrachan, reprovingly, “I wouldn’t say such
+things if I were you.”
+
+“Yes, I would,” said Rose. “Do tell us, Mr. Van Astrachan.”
+
+“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Mr. Van Astrachan: “you ought to have seen
+her in a red dress she used to wear.”
+
+“Oh, come, papa! what nonsense! Rose, I never wore a red dress in my
+life; it was a pink silk; but you know men never do know the names for
+colors.”
+
+“Well, at any rate,” said Mr. Van Astrachan, hardily, “pink or red, no
+matter; but I’ll tell you, she took all before her that evening. There
+were Stuyvesants and Van Rennselaers and Livingstons, and all sorts of
+grand fellows, in her train; but, somehow, I cut ’em out. There is no
+such dancing nowadays as there was when wife and I were young. I’ve
+been caught once or twice in one of their parties; and I don’t call
+it dancing. I call it draggle-tailing. They don’t take any steps, and
+there is no spirit in it.”
+
+“Well,” said Rose, “I know we moderns are very much to be pitied. Papa
+always tells me the same story about mamma, and the days when he was
+young. But, dear Mrs. Van Astrachan, I hope you won’t stay a moment,
+on my account, after you get tired. I suppose if you are just seen with
+me there in the beginning of the evening, it will matronize me enough;
+and then I have engaged to dance the ‘German’ with Mr. Endicott, and I
+believe they keep that up till nobody knows when. But I am determined
+to see the whole through.”
+
+“Yes, yes! see it all through,” said Mr. Van Astrachan. “Young people
+must be young. It’s all right enough, and you won’t miss my Polly after
+you get fairly into it near so much as I shall. I’ll sit up for her
+till twelve o’clock, and read my paper.”
+
+Rose was at first, to say the truth, bewildered and surprised by the
+perfect labyrinth of fairy-land which Charlie Ferrola’s artistic
+imagination had created in the Follingsbee mansion.
+
+Initiated people, who had travelled in Europe, said it put them in
+mind of the “Jardin Mabille;” and those who had not were reminded of
+some of the wonders of “The Black Crook.” There were apartments turned
+into bowers and grottoes, where the gas-light shimmered behind veils
+of falling water, and through pendant leaves of all sorts of strange
+water-plants of tropical regions. There were all those wonderful
+leaf-plants of every weird device of color, which have been conjured
+up by tricks of modern gardening, as Rappacini is said to have created
+his strange garden in Padua. There were beds of hyacinths and crocuses
+and tulips, made to appear like living gems by the jets of gas-light
+which came up among them in glass flowers of the same form. Far away
+in recesses were sofas of soft green velvet turf, overshadowed by
+trailing vines, and illuminated with moonlight-softness by hidden
+alabaster lamps. The air was heavy with the perfume of flowers, and the
+sound of music and dancing from the ballroom came to these recesses
+softened by distance.
+
+The Follingsbee mansion occupied a whole square of the city; and
+these enchanted bowers were created by temporary enlargements of the
+conservatory covering the ground of the garden. With money, and the
+Croton Water-works, and all the New-York greenhouses at disposal,
+nothing was impossible.
+
+There was in this reception no vulgar rush or crush or jam. The
+apartments opened were so extensive, and the attractions in so many
+different directions, that there did not appear to be a crowd anywhere.
+
+There was no general table set, with the usual liabilities of rush and
+crush; but four or five well-kept rooms, fragrant with flowers and
+sparkling with silver and crystal, were ready at any hour to minister
+to the guest whatever delicacy or dainty he or she might demand; and
+light-footed waiters circulated with noiseless obsequiousness through
+all the rooms, proffering dainties on silver trays.
+
+Mrs. Van Astrachan and Rose at first found themselves walking
+everywhere, with a fresh and lively interest. It was something quite
+out of the line of the good lady’s previous experience, and so
+different from any thing she had ever seen before, as to keep her in a
+state of placid astonishment. Rose, on the other hand, was delighted
+and excited; the more so that she could not help perceiving that she
+herself amid all these objects of beauty was followed by the admiring
+glances of many eyes.
+
+It is not to be supposed that a girl so handsome as Rose comes to her
+twentieth year without having the pretty secret made known to her
+in more ways than one, or that thus made known it is any thing but
+agreeable; but, on the present occasion, there was a buzz of inquiry
+and a crowd of applicants about her; and her dancing-list seemed in
+a fair way to be soon filled up for the evening, Harry telling her
+laughingly that he would let her off from every thing but the “German;”
+but that she might consider her engagement with him as a standing one
+whenever troubled with an application which for any reason she did not
+wish to accept.
+
+Harry assumed towards Rose that air of brotherly guardianship which a
+young man who piques himself on having seen a good deal of the world
+likes to take with a pretty girl who knows less of it. Besides, he
+rather valued himself on having brought to the reception the most
+brilliant girl of the evening.
+
+Our friend Lillie, however, was in her own way as entrancingly
+beautiful this evening as the most perfect mortal flesh and blood
+could be made; and Harry went back to her when Rose went off with her
+partners as a moth flies to a candle, not with any express intention of
+burning his wings, but simply because he likes to be dazzled, and likes
+the bitter excitement. He felt now that he had power over her,—a bad, a
+dangerous power he knew, with what of conscience was left in him; but
+he thought, “Let her take her own risk.” And so, many busy gossips saw
+the handsome young man, his great dark eyes kindled with an evil light,
+whirling in dizzy mazes with this cloud of flossy mist; out of which
+looked up to him an impassioned woman’s face, and eyes that said what
+those eyes had no right to say.
+
+There are times, in such scenes of bewilderment, when women are as
+truly out of their own control by nervous excitement as if they were
+intoxicated; and Lillie’s looks and words and actions towards Harry
+were as open a declaration of her feelings as if she had spoken them
+aloud to every one present.
+
+The scandals about them were confirmed in the eyes of every one that
+looked on; for there were plenty of people present in whose view of
+things the worst possible interpretation was the most probable one.
+
+Rose was in the way, during the course of the evening, of hearing
+remarks of the most disagreeable and startling nature with regard to
+the relations of Harry and Lillie to each other. They filled her with a
+sort of horror, as if she had come to an unwholesome place; while she
+indignantly repelled them from her thoughts, as every uncontaminated
+woman will the first suspicion of the purity of a sister woman. In
+Rose’s view it was monstrous and impossible. Yet when she stood at
+one time in a group to see them waltzing, she started, and felt a
+cold shudder, as a certain instinctive conviction of something not
+right forced itself on her. She closed her eyes, and wished herself
+away; wished that she had not let Mrs. Van Astrachan go home without
+her; wished that somebody would speak to Lillie and caution her; felt
+an indignant rising of her heart against Harry, and was provoked at
+herself that she was engaged to him for the “German.”
+
+She turned away; and, taking the arm of the gentleman with her,
+complained of the heat as oppressive, and they sauntered off together
+into the bowery region beyond.
+
+“Oh, now! where can I have left my fan?” she said, suddenly stopping.
+
+“Let me go back and get it for you,” said he of the whiskers who
+attended her. It was one of the dancing young men of New York, and it
+is no particular matter what his name was.
+
+“Thank you,” said Rose: “I believe I left it on the sofa in the yellow
+drawing-room.” He was gone in a moment.
+
+Rose wandered on a little way, through the labyrinth of flowers and
+shadowy trees and fountains, and sat down on an artificial rock where
+she fell into a deep reverie. Rising to go back, she missed her way,
+and became quite lost, and went on uneasily, conscious that she had
+committed a rudeness in not waiting for her attendant.
+
+At this moment she looked through a distant alcove of shrubbery,
+and saw Harry and Lillie standing together,—she with both hands
+laid upon his arm, looking up to him and speaking rapidly with an
+imploring accent. She saw him, with an angry frown, push Lillie from
+him so rudely that she almost fell backward, and sat down with her
+handkerchief to her eyes; he came forward hurriedly, and met the eyes
+of Rose fixed upon him.
+
+[Illustration: “She saw him, with an angry frown, push Lillie from
+him.”]
+
+“Mr. Endicott,” she said, “I have to ask a favor of you. Will you be so
+good as to excuse me from the ‘German’ to-night, and order my carriage?”
+
+“Why, Miss Ferguson, what is the matter?” he said: “what has come over
+you? I hope I have not had the misfortune to do any thing to displease
+you?”
+
+Without replying to this, Rose answered, “I feel very unwell. My head
+is aching violently, and I cannot go through the rest of the evening. I
+must go home at once.” She spoke it in a decided tone that admitted of
+no question.
+
+Without answer, Harry Endicott gave her his arm, accompanied her
+through the final leave-takings, went with her to the carriage, put her
+in, and sprang in after her.
+
+Rose sank back on her seat, and remained perfectly silent; and Harry,
+after a few remarks of his had failed to elicit a reply, rode by her
+side equally silent through the streets homeward.
+
+He had Mr. Van Astrachan’s latch-key; and, when the carriage stopped,
+he helped Rose to alight, and went up the steps of the house.
+
+“Miss Ferguson,” he said abruptly, “I have something I want to say to
+you.”
+
+“Not now, not to-night,” said Rose, hurriedly. “I am too tired; and it
+is too late.”
+
+“To-morrow then,” he said: “I shall call when you will have had time to
+be rested. Good-night!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+_THE SPIDER-WEB BROKEN._
+
+
+HARRY did not go back, to lead the “German,” as he had been engaged to
+do. In fact, in his last apologies to Mrs. Follingsbee, he had excused
+himself on account of his partner’s sudden indisposition,—a thing which
+made no small buzz and commotion; though the missing gap, like all gaps
+great and little in human society, soon found somebody to step into it:
+and the dance went on just as gayly as if they had been there.
+
+Meanwhile, there were in this good city of New York a couple of
+sleepless individuals, revolving many things uneasily during the
+night-watches, or at least that portion of the night-watches that
+remained after they reached home,—to wit, Mr. Harry Endicott and Miss
+Rose Ferguson.
+
+What had taken place in that little scene between Lillie and Harry,
+the termination of which was seen by Rose? We are not going to give
+a minute description. The public has already been circumstantially
+instructed by such edifying books as “Cometh up as a Flower,” and
+others of a like turn, in what manner and in what terms married women
+can abdicate the dignity of their sex, and degrade themselves so far
+as to offer their whole life, and their whole selves, to some reluctant
+man, with too much remaining conscience or prudence to accept the
+sacrifice.
+
+It was from some such wild, passionate utterances of Lillie that Harry
+felt a recoil of mingled conscience, fear, and that disgust which man
+feels when she, whom God made to be sought, degrades herself to seek.
+There is no edification and no propriety in highly colored and minute
+drawing of such scenes of temptation and degradation, though they
+are the stock and staple of some French novels, and more disgusting
+English ones made on their model. Harry felt in his own conscience
+that he had been acting a most unworthy part, that no advances on the
+part of Lillie could excuse his conduct; and his thoughts went back
+somewhat regretfully to the days long ago, when she was a fair, pretty,
+innocent girl, and he had loved her honestly and truly. Unperceived
+by himself, the character of Rose was exerting a powerful influence
+over him; and, when he met that look of pain and astonishment which he
+had seen in her large blue eyes the night before, it seemed to awaken
+many things within him. It is astonishing how blindly people sometimes
+go on as to the character of their own conduct, till suddenly, like a
+torch in a dark place, the light of another person’s opinion is thrown
+in upon them, and they begin to judge themselves under the quickening
+influence of another person’s moral magnetism. Then, indeed, it often
+happens that the graves give up their dead, and that there is a sort
+of interior resurrection and judgment.
+
+Harry did not seem to be consciously thinking of Rose, and yet the
+undertone of all that night’s uneasiness was a something that had
+been roused and quickened in him by his acquaintance with her. How he
+loathed himself for the last few weeks of his life! How he loathed
+that hot, lurid, murky atmosphere of flirtation and passion and French
+sentimentality in which he had been living!—atmosphere as hard to draw
+healthy breath in as the odor of wilting tuberoses the day after a
+party.
+
+Harry valued Rose’s good opinion as he had never valued it before;
+and, as he thought of her in his restless tossings, she seemed to him
+something as pure, as wholesome, and strong as the air of his native
+New-England hills, as the sweet-brier and sweet-fern he used to love
+to gather when he was a boy. She seemed of a piece with all the good
+old ways of New England,—its household virtues, its conscientious sense
+of right, its exact moral boundaries; and he felt somehow as if she
+belonged to that healthy portion of his life which he now looked back
+upon with something of regret.
+
+Then, what would she think of him? They had been friends, he said to
+himself; they had passed over those boundaries of teasing unreality
+where most young gentlemen and young ladies are content to hold
+converse with each other, and had talked together reasonably and
+seriously, saying in some hours what they really thought and felt.
+And Rose had impressed him at times by her silence and reticence in
+certain connections, and on certain subjects, with a sense of something
+hidden and veiled,—a reserved force that he longed still further to
+penetrate. But now, he said to himself, he must have fallen in her
+opinion. Why was she so cold, so almost haughty, in her treatment of
+him the night before? He felt in the atmosphere around her, and in the
+touch of her hand, that she was quivering like a galvanic battery with
+the suppressed force of some powerful emotion; and his own conscience
+dimly interpreted to him what it might be.
+
+To say the truth, Rose was terribly aroused. And there was a great deal
+in her to be aroused, for she had a strong nature; and the whole force
+of womanhood in her had never received such a shock.
+
+Whatever may be scoffingly said of the readiness of women to pull one
+another down, it is certain that the highest class of them have the
+feminine _esprit de corps_ immensely strong. The humiliation of another
+woman seems to them their own humiliation; and man’s lordly contempt
+for another woman seems like contempt of themselves.
+
+The deepest feeling roused in Rose by the scenes which she saw last
+night was concern for the honor of womanhood; and her indignation at
+first did not strike where we are told woman’s indignation does, on
+the woman, but on the man. Loving John Seymour as a brother from her
+childhood, feeling in the intimacy in which they had grown up as if
+their families had been one, the thoughts that had been forced upon
+her of his wife the night before had struck to her heart with the
+weight of a terrible affliction. She judged Lillie as a pure woman
+generally judges another,—out of herself,—and could not and would
+not believe that the gross and base construction which had been put
+upon her conduct was the true one. She looked upon her as led astray
+by inordinate vanity, and the hopeless levity of an undeveloped,
+unreflecting habit of mind. She was indignant with Harry for the part
+that he had taken in the affair, and indignant and vexed with herself
+for the degree of freedom and intimacy which she had been suffering
+to grow up between him and herself. Her first impulse was to break it
+off altogether, and have nothing more to say to or do with him. She
+felt as if she would like to take the short course which young girls
+sometimes take out of the first serious mortification or trouble in
+their life, and run away from it altogether. She would have liked to
+have packed her trunk, taken her seat on board the cars, and gone home
+to Springdale the next day, and forgotten all about the whole of it;
+but then, what should she say to Mrs. Van Astrachan? what account could
+she give for the sudden breaking up of her visit?
+
+Then, there was Harry going to call on her the next day! What ought
+she to say to him? On the whole, it was a delicate matter for a young
+girl of twenty to manage alone. How she longed to have the counsel
+of her sister or her mother! She thought of Mrs. Van Astrachan; but
+then, again, she did not wish to disturb that good lady’s pleasant,
+confidential relations with Harry, and tell tales of him out of school:
+so, on the whole, she had a restless and uncomfortable night of it.
+
+Mrs. Van Astrachan expressed her surprise at seeing Rose take her place
+at the breakfast-table the next morning. “Dear me!” she said, “I was
+just telling Jane to have some breakfast kept for you. I had no idea of
+seeing you down at this time.”
+
+“But,” said Rose, “I gave out entirely, and came away only an hour
+after you did. The fact is, we country girls can’t stand this sort of
+thing. I had such a terrible headache, and felt so tired and exhausted,
+that I got Mr. Endicott to bring me away before the ‘German.’”
+
+“Bless me!” said Mr. Van Astrachan; “why, you’re not at all up to
+snuff! Why, Polly, you and I used to stick it out till daylight! didn’t
+we?”
+
+“Well, you see, Mr. Van Astrachan, I hadn’t anybody like you to stick
+it out with,” said Rose. “Perhaps that made the difference.”
+
+“Oh, well, now, I am sure there’s our Harry! I am sure a girl must be
+difficult, if he doesn’t suit her for a beau,” said the good gentleman.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Endicott is all well enough!” said Rose; “only, you observe,
+not precisely to me what you were to the lady you call Polly,—that’s
+all.”
+
+“Ha, ha!” laughed Mr. Van Astrachan. “Well, to be sure, that does make
+a difference; but Harry’s a nice fellow, nice fellow, Miss Rose: not
+many fellows like him, as I think.”
+
+“Yes, indeed,” chimed in Mrs. Van Astrachan. “I haven’t a son in the
+world that I think more of than I do of Harry; he has such a good
+heart.”
+
+Now, the fact was, this eulogistic strain that the worthy couple were
+very prone to fall into in speaking of Harry to Rose was this morning
+most especially annoying to her; and she turned the subject at once, by
+chattering so fluently, and with such minute details of description,
+about the arrangements of the rooms and the flowers and the lamps and
+the fountains and the cascades, and all the fairy-land wonders of the
+Follingsbee party, that the good pair found themselves constrained to
+be listeners during the rest of the time devoted to the morning meal.
+
+It will be found that good young ladies, while of course they have all
+the innocence of the dove, do display upon emergencies a considerable
+share of the wisdom of the serpent. And on this same mother wit and
+wisdom, Rose called internally, when that day, about eleven o’clock,
+she was summoned to the library, to give Harry his audience.
+
+Truth to say, she was in a state of excited womanhood vastly becoming
+to her general appearance, and entered the library with flushed cheeks
+and head erect, like one prepared to stand for herself and for her sex.
+
+Harry, however, wore a mortified, semi-penitential air, that, on
+the first glance, rather mollified her. Still, however, she was not
+sufficiently clement to give him the least assistance in opening the
+conversation, by the suggestions of any of those nice little oily
+nothings with which ladies, when in a gracious mood, can smooth the
+path for a difficult confession.
+
+She sat very quietly, with her hands before her, while Harry walked
+tumultuously up and down the room.
+
+“Miss Ferguson,” he said at last, abruptly, “I know you are thinking
+ill of me.”
+
+Miss Ferguson did not reply.
+
+“I had hoped,” he said, “that there had been a little something more
+than mere acquaintance between us. I had hoped you looked upon me as a
+friend.”
+
+“I did, Mr. Endicott,” said Rose.
+
+“And you do not now?”
+
+“I cannot say that,” she said, after a pause; “but, Mr. Endicott, if we
+are friends, you must give me the liberty to speak plainly.”
+
+“That’s exactly what I want you to do!” he said impetuously; “that is
+just what I wish.”
+
+“Allow me to ask, then, if you are an early friend, and family
+connection of Mrs. John Seymour?”
+
+“I was an early friend, and am somewhat of a family connection.”
+
+“That is, I understand there has been a ground in your past history for
+you to be on a footing of a certain family intimacy with Mrs. Seymour;
+in that case, Mr. Endicott, I think you ought to have considered
+yourself the guardian of her honor and reputation, and not allowed her
+to be compromised on your account.”
+
+The blood flushed into Harry’s face; and he stood abashed and silent.
+Rose went on,—
+
+“I was shocked, I was astonished, last night, because I could not help
+overhearing the most disagreeable, the most painful remarks on you and
+her,—remarks most unjust, I am quite sure, but for which I fear you
+have given too much reason!”
+
+“Miss Ferguson,” said Harry, stopping as he walked up and down, “I
+confess I have been wrong and done wrong; but, if you knew all, you
+might see how I have been led into it. That woman has been the evil
+fate of my life. Years ago, when we were both young, I loved her as
+honestly as man could love a woman; and she professed to love me in
+return. But I was poor; and she would not marry me. She sent me off,
+yet she would not let me forget her. She would always write to me just
+enough to keep up hope and interest; and she knew for years that all my
+object in striving for fortune was to win her. At last, when a lucky
+stroke made me suddenly rich, and I came home to seek her, I found her
+married,—married, as she owns, without love,—married for wealth and
+ambition. I don’t justify myself,—I don’t pretend to; but when she met
+me with her old smiles and her old charms, and told me she loved me
+still, it roused the very devil in me. I wanted revenge. I wanted to
+humble her, and make her suffer all she had made me; and I didn’t care
+what came of it.”
+
+Harry spoke, trembling with emotion; and Rose felt almost terrified
+with the storm she had raised.
+
+“O Mr. Endicott!” she said, “was this worthy of you? was there nothing
+better, higher, more manly than this poor revenge? You men are
+stronger than we: you have the world in your hands; you have a thousand
+resources where we have only one. And you ought to be stronger and
+nobler according to your advantages; you ought to rise superior to the
+temptations that beset a poor, weak, ill-educated woman, whom everybody
+has been flattering from her cradle, and whom you, I dare say, have
+helped to flatter, turning her head with compliments, like all the rest
+of them. Come, now, is not there something in that?”
+
+“Well, I suppose,” said Harry, “that when Lillie and I were girl and
+boy together, I did flatter her, sincerely that is. Her beauty made a
+fool of me; and I helped make a fool of her.”
+
+“And I dare say,” said Rose, “you told her that all she was made for
+was to be charming, and encouraged her to live the life of a butterfly
+or canary-bird. Did you ever try to strengthen her principles, to
+educate her mind, to make her strong? On the contrary, haven’t you been
+bowing down and adoring her for being weak? It seems to me that Lillie
+is exactly the kind of woman that you men educate, by the way you look
+on women, and the way you treat them.”
+
+Harry sat in silence, ruminating.
+
+“Now,” said Rose, “it seems to me it’s the most cowardly and unmanly
+thing in the world for men, with every advantage in their hands, with
+all the strength that their kind of education gives them, with all
+their opportunities,—a thousand to our one,—to hunt down these poor
+little silly women, whom society keeps stunted and dwarfed for their
+special amusement.”
+
+“Miss Ferguson, you are very severe,” said Harry, his face flushing.
+
+“Well,” said Rose, “you have this advantage, Mr. Endicott: you know, if
+I am, the world will not be. Everybody will take your part; everybody
+will smile on you, and condemn her. That is generous, is it not? I
+think, after all, Noah Claypole isn’t so very uncommon a picture of the
+way that your lordly sex turn round and cast all the blame on ours.
+You will never make me believe in a protracted flirtation between a
+gentleman and lady, where at least half the blame does not lie on
+his lordship’s side. I always said that a woman had no need to have
+offers made her by a man she could not love, if she conducted herself
+properly; and I think the same is true in regard to men. But then, as I
+said before, you have the world on your side; nine persons out of ten
+see no possible harm in a man’s taking every advantage of a woman, if
+she will let him.”
+
+“But I care more for the opinion of the tenth person than of the nine,”
+said Harry; “I care more for what you think than any of them. Your
+words are severe; but I think they are just.”
+
+“O Mr. Endicott!” said Rose, “live for something higher than for what
+I think,—than for what any one thinks. Think how many glorious chances
+there are for a noble career for a young man with your fortune, with
+your leisure, with your influence! is it for you to waste life in this
+unworthy way? If I had your chances, I would try to do something worth
+doing.”
+
+Rose’s face kindled with enthusiasm; and Harry looked at her with
+admiration.
+
+“Tell me what I ought to do!” he said.
+
+“I cannot tell you,” said Rose; “but where there is a will there is
+a way: and, if you have the will, you will find the way. But, first,
+you must try and repair the mischief you have done to Lillie. By your
+own account of the matter, you have been encouraging and keeping up a
+sort of silly, romantic excitement in her. It is worse than silly; it
+is sinful. It is trifling with her best interests in this life and the
+life to come. And I think you must know that, if you had treated her
+like an honest, plain-spoken brother or cousin, without any trumpery of
+gallantry or sentiment, things would have never got to be as they are.
+You could have prevented all this; and you can put an end to it now.”
+
+“Honestly, I will try,” said Harry. “I will begin, by confessing my
+faults like a good boy, and take the blame on myself where it belongs,
+and try to make Lillie see things like a good girl. But she is in bad
+surroundings; and, if I were her husband, I wouldn’t let her stay there
+another day. There are no morals in that circle; it’s all a perfect
+crush of decaying garbage.”
+
+“I think,” said Rose, “that, if this thing goes no farther, it will
+gradually die out even in that circle; and, in the better circles of
+New York, I trust it will not be heard of. Mrs. Van Astrachan and I
+will appear publicly with Lillie; and if she is seen with us, and at
+this house, it will be sufficient to contradict a dozen slanders.
+She has the noblest, kindest husband,—one of the best men and truest
+gentlemen I ever knew.”
+
+“I pity him then,” said Harry.
+
+“He is to be pitied,” said Rose; “but his work is before him. This
+woman, such as she is, with all her faults, he has taken for better or
+for worse; and all true friends and good people, both his and hers,
+should help both sides to make the best of it.”
+
+“I should say,” said Harry, “that there is in this no best side.”
+
+“I think you do Lillie injustice,” said Rose. “There is, and must be,
+good in every one; and gradually the good in him will overcome the evil
+in her.”
+
+“Let us hope so,” said Harry. “And now, Miss Ferguson, may I hope that
+you won’t quite cross my name out of your good book? You’ll be friends
+with me, won’t you?”
+
+“Oh, certainly!” said Rose, with a frank smile.
+
+“Well, let’s shake hands on that,” said Harry, rising to go.
+
+Rose gave him her hand, and the two parted in all amity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+_COMMON-SENSE ARGUMENTS._
+
+
+HARRY went straightway from the interview to call upon Lillie, and
+had a conversation with her; in which he conducted himself like a
+sober, discreet, and rational man. It was one of those daylight,
+matter-of-fact kinds of talks, with no nonsense about them, in which
+things are called by their right names. He confessed his own sins, and
+took upon his own shoulders the blame that properly belonged there;
+and, having thus cleared his conscience, took occasion to give Lillie a
+deal of grandfatherly advice, of a very sedative tendency.
+
+They had both been very silly, he said; and the next step to being
+silly very often was to be wicked. For his part, he thought she ought
+to be thankful for so good a husband; and, for his own part, he should
+lose no time in trying to find a good wife, who would help him to be
+a good man, and do something worth doing in the world. He had given
+people occasion to say ill-natured things about her; and he was sorry
+for it. But, if they stopped being imprudent, the world would in time
+stop talking. He hoped, some of these days, to bring his wife down to
+see her, and to make the acquaintance of her husband, whom he knew to
+be a capital fellow, and one that she ought to be proud of.
+
+Thus, by the intervention of good angels, the little paper-nautilus
+bark of Lillie’s fortunes was prevented from going down in the great
+ugly maelstrom, on the verge of which it had been so heedlessly sailing.
+
+Harry was not slow in pushing the advantage of his treaty of friendship
+with Rose to its utmost limits; and, being a young gentleman of parts
+and proficiency, he made rapid progress.
+
+The interview of course immediately bred the necessity for at least a
+dozen more; for he had to explain this thing, and qualify that, and,
+on reflection, would find by the next day that the explanation and
+qualification required a still further elucidation. Rose also, after
+the first conversation was over, was troubled at her own boldness, and
+at the things that she in her state of excitement had said; and so was
+only too glad to accord interviews and explanations as often as sought,
+and, on the whole, was in the most favorable state towards her penitent.
+
+Hence came many calls, and many conferences with Rose in the library,
+to Mrs. Van Astrachan’s great satisfaction, and concerning which Mr.
+Van Astrachan had many suppressed chuckles and knowing winks at Polly.
+
+“Now, pa, don’t you say a word,” said Mrs. Van Astrachan.
+
+“Oh, no, Polly! catch me! I see a great deal, but I say nothing,” said
+the good gentleman, with a jocular quiver of his portly person. “I
+don’t say any thing,—oh, no! by no manner of means.”
+
+Neither at present did Harry; neither do we.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+_SENTIMENT v. SENSIBILITY._
+
+
+THE poet has feelingly sung the condition of
+
+    “The banquet hall deserted,
+     Whose lights are fled, and garlands dead,” &c.,
+
+and so we need not cast the daylight of minute description on the
+Follingsbee mansion.
+
+Charlie Ferrola, however, was summoned away at early daylight, just
+as the last of the revellers were dispersing, by a hurried messenger
+from his wife; and, a few moments after he entered his house, he
+was standing beside his dying baby,—the little fellow whom we have
+seen brought down on Mrs. Ferrola’s arm, to greet the call of Mrs.
+Follingsbee.
+
+It is an awful thing for people of the flimsy, vain, pain-shunning,
+pleasure-seeking character of Charlie Ferrola, to be taken at times,
+as such people will be, in the grip of an inexorable power, and held
+face to face with the sternest, the most awful, the most frightful
+realities of life. Charlie Ferrola was one of those whose softness and
+pitifulness, like that of sentimentalists generally, was only one form
+of intense selfishness. The sight of suffering pained him; and his
+first impulse was to get out of the way of it. Suffering that he did
+not see was nothing to him; and, if his wife or children were in any
+trouble, he would have liked very well to have known nothing about it.
+
+But here he was, by the bedside of this little creature, dying in the
+agonies of slow suffocation, rolling up its dark, imploring eyes, and
+lifting its poor little helpless hands; and Charlie Ferrola broke out
+into the most violent and extravagant demonstrations of grief.
+
+The pale, firm little woman, who had watched all night, and in whose
+tranquil face a light as if from heaven was beaming, had to assume the
+care of him, in addition to that of her dying child. He was another
+helpless burden on her hands.
+
+There came a day when the house was filled with white flowers, and
+people came and went, and holy words were spoken; and the fairest
+flower of all was carried out, to return to the house no more.
+
+“That woman is a most unnatural and peculiar woman!” said Mrs.
+Follingsbee, who had been most active and patronizing in sending
+flowers, and attending to the scenic arrangements of the funeral. “It
+is just what I always said: she is a perfect statue; she’s no kind of
+feeling. There was Charlie, poor fellow! so sick that he had to go to
+bed, perfectly overcome, and have somebody to sit up with him; and
+there was that woman never shed a tear,—went round attending to every
+thing, just like a piece of clock-work. Well, I suppose people are
+happier for being made so; people that have no sensibility are better
+fitted to get through the world. But, gracious me! I can’t understand
+such people. There she stood at the grave, looking so calm, when
+Charlie was sobbing so that he could hardly hold himself up. Well, it
+really wasn’t respectable. I think, at least, I would keep my veil
+down, and keep my handkerchief up. Poor Charlie! he came to me at last;
+and I gave way. I was completely broken down, I must confess. Poor
+fellow! he told me there was no conceiving his misery. That baby was
+the very idol of his soul; all his hopes of life were centred in it.
+He really felt tempted to rebel at Providence. He said that he really
+could not talk with his wife on the subject. He could not enter into
+her submission at all; it seemed to him like a want of feeling. He said
+of course it wasn’t her fault that she was made one way and he another.”
+
+In fact, Mr. Charlie Ferrola took to the pink satin boudoir with a
+more languishing persistency than ever, requiring to be stayed with
+flagons, and comforted with apples, and receiving sentimental calls
+of condolence from fair admirers, made aware of the intense poignancy
+of his grief. A lovely poem, called “My Withered Blossom,” which
+appeared in a fashionable magazine shortly after, was the out-come of
+this experience, and increased the fashionable sympathy to the highest
+degree.
+
+Honest Mrs. Van Astrachan, however, though not acquainted with Mrs.
+Ferrola, went to the funeral with Rose; and the next day her carriage
+was seen at Mrs. Ferrola’s door.
+
+“You poor little darling!” she said, as she came up and took Mrs.
+Ferrola in her arms. “You must let me come, and not mind me; for I know
+all about it. I lost the dearest little baby once; and I have never
+forgotten it. There! there, darling!” she said, as the little woman
+broke into sobs in her arms. “Yes, yes; do cry! it will do your little
+heart good.”
+
+There are people who, wherever they move, freeze the hearts of those
+they touch, and chill all demonstration of feeling; and there are warm
+natures, that unlock every fountain, and bid every feeling gush forth.
+The reader has seen these two types in this story.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Wife,” said Mr. Van Astrachan, coming to Mrs. V. confidentially a day
+or two after, “I wonder if you remember any of your French. What is a
+_liaison_?”
+
+“Really, dear,” said Mrs. Van Astrachan, whose reading of late years
+had been mostly confined to such memoirs as that of Mrs. Isabella
+Graham, Doddridge’s “Rise and Progress,” and Baxter’s “Saint’s Rest,”
+“it’s a great while since I read any French. What do you want to know
+for?”
+
+“Well, there’s Ben Stuyvesant was saying this morning, in Wall Street,
+that there’s a great deal of talk about that Mrs. Follingsbee and that
+young fellow whose baby’s funeral you went to. Ben says there’s a
+_liaison_ between her and him. I didn’t ask him what ’twas; but it’s
+something or other with a French name that makes talk, and I don’t
+think it’s respectable! I’m sorry that you and Rose went to her party;
+but then that can’t be helped now. I’m afraid this Mrs. Follingsbee is
+no sort of a woman, after all.”
+
+“But, pa, I’ve been to call on Mrs. Ferrola, poor little afflicted
+thing!” said Mrs. Van Astrachan. “I couldn’t help it! You know how we
+felt when little Willie died.”
+
+“Oh, certainly, Polly! call on the poor woman by all means, and do all
+you can to comfort her; but, from all I can find out, that handsome
+jackanapes of a husband of hers is just the poorest trash going. They
+say this Follingsbee woman half supports him. The time was in New York
+when such doings wouldn’t be allowed; and I don’t think calling things
+by French names makes them a bit better. So you just be careful, and
+steer as clear of her as you can.”
+
+“I will, pa, just as clear as I can; but you know Rose is a friend of
+Mrs. John Seymour; and Mrs. Seymour is visiting at Mrs. Follingsbee’s.”
+
+“Her husband oughtn’t to let her stay there another day,” said Mr.
+Van Astrachan. “It’s as much as any woman’s reputation is worth to be
+staying with her. To think of that fellow being dancing and capering at
+that Jezebel’s house the night his baby was dying!”
+
+“Oh, but, pa, he didn’t know it.”
+
+“Know it? he ought to have known it! What business has a man to get
+a woman with a lot of babies round her, and then go capering off?
+’Twasn’t the way I did, Polly, you know, when our babies were young. I
+was always on the spot there, ready to take the baby, and walk up and
+down with it nights, so that you might get your sleep; and I always had
+it my side of the bed half the night. I’d like to have seen myself out
+at a ball, and you sitting up with a sick baby! I tell you, that if I
+caught any of my boys up to such tricks, I’d cut them out of my will,
+and settle the money on their wives;—that’s what I would!”
+
+“Well, pa, I shall try and do all in my power for poor Mrs. Ferrola,”
+said Mrs. Van Astrachan; “and you may be quite sure I won’t take
+another step towards Mrs. Follingsbee’s acquaintance.”
+
+“It’s a pity,” said Mr. Van Astrachan, “that somebody couldn’t put it
+into Mr. John Seymour’s head to send for his wife home.
+
+“I don’t see, for my part, what respectable women want to be
+gallivanting and high-flying on their own separate account for, away
+from their husbands! Goods that are sold shouldn’t go back to the
+shop-windows,” said the good gentleman, all whose views of life were of
+the most old-fashioned, domestic kind.
+
+“Well, dear, we don’t want to talk to Rose about any of this scandal,”
+said his wife.
+
+“No, no; it would be a pity to put any thing bad into a nice girl’s
+head,” said Mr. Van Astrachan. “You might caution her in a general way,
+you know; tell her, for instance, that I’ve heard of things that make
+me feel you ought to draw off. Why can’t some bird of the air tell
+that little Seymour woman’s husband to get her home?”
+
+The little Seymour woman’s husband, though not warned by any particular
+bird of the air, was not backward in taking steps for the recall of his
+wife, as shall hereafter appear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+_WEDDING BELLS._
+
+
+SOME weeks had passed in Springdale while these affairs had been going
+on in New York. The time for the marriage of Grace had been set; and
+she had gone to Boston to attend to that preparatory shopping which
+even the most sensible of the sex discover to be indispensable on such
+occasions.
+
+Grace inclined, in the centre of her soul, to Bostonian rather than
+New-York preferences. She had the innocent impression that a classical
+severity and a rigid reticence of taste pervaded even the rebellious
+department of feminine millinery in the city of the Pilgrims,—an idea
+which we rather think young Boston would laugh down as an exploded
+superstition, young Boston’s leading idea at the present hour being
+apparently to outdo New York in New York’s imitation of Paris.
+
+In fact, Grace found it very difficult to find a milliner who, if left
+to her own devices, would not befeather and beflower her past all
+self-recognition, giving to her that generally betousled and fly-away
+air which comes straight from the _demi-monde_ of Paris.
+
+We apprehend that the recent storms of tribulation which have beat
+upon those fairy islands of fashion may scatter this frail and fanciful
+population, and send them by shiploads on missions of civilization to
+our shores; in which case, the bustle and animation and the brilliant
+display on the old turnpike, spoken of familiarly as the “broad road,”
+will be somewhat increased.
+
+Grace however managed, by the exercise of a good individual taste,
+to come out of these shopping conflicts in good order,—a handsome,
+well-dressed, charming woman, with everybody’s best wishes for, and
+sympathy in, her happiness.
+
+Lillie was summoned home by urgent messages from her husband, calling
+her back to take her share in wedding festivities.
+
+She left willingly; for the fact is that her last conversation with her
+cousin Harry had made the situation as uncomfortable to her as if he
+had unceremoniously deluged her with a pailful of cold water.
+
+There is a chilly, disagreeable kind of article, called common sense,
+which is of all things most repulsive and antipathetical to all petted
+creatures whose life has consisted in flattery. It is the kind of talk
+which sisters are very apt to hear from brothers, and daughters from
+fathers and mothers, when fathers and mothers do their duty by them;
+which sets the world before them as it is, and not as it is painted by
+flatterers. Those women who prefer the society of gentlemen, and who
+have the faculty of bewitching their senses, never are in the way of
+hearing from this cold matter-of-fact region; for them it really does
+not exist. Every phrase that meets their ear is polished and softened,
+guarded and delicately turned, till there is not a particle of homely
+truth left in it. They pass their time in a world of illusions; they
+demand these illusions of all who approach them, as the sole condition
+of peace and favor. All gentlemen, by a sort of instinct, recognize the
+woman who lives by flattery, and give her her portion of meat in due
+season; and thus some poor women are hopelessly buried, as suicides
+used to be in Scotland, under a mountain of rubbish, to which each
+passer-by adds one stone. It is only by some extraordinary power of
+circumstances that a man can be found to invade the sovereignty of a
+pretty woman with any disagreeable tidings; or, as Junius says, “to
+instruct the throne in the language of truth.” Harry was brought up
+to this point only by such a concurrence of circumstances. He was in
+love with another woman,—a ready cause for disenchantment. He was in
+some sort a family connection; and he saw Lillie’s conduct at last,
+therefore, through the plain, unvarnished medium of common sense.
+Moreover, he felt a little pinched in his own conscience by the view
+which Rose seemed to take of his part in the matter, and, manlike, was
+strengthened in doing his duty by being a little galled and annoyed
+at the woman whose charms had tempted him into this dilemma. So he
+talked to Lillie like a brother; or, in other words, made himself
+disagreeably explicit,—showed her her sins, and told her her duties
+as a married woman. The charming fair ones who sentimentally desire
+gentlemen to regard them as sisters do not bargain for any of this
+sort of brotherly plainness; and yet they might do it with great
+advantage. A brother, who is not a brother, stationed near the ear of
+a fair friend, is commonly very careful not to compromise his position
+by telling unpleasant truths; but, on the present occasion, Harry made
+a literal use of the brevet of brotherhood which Lillie had bestowed
+on him, and talked to her as the generality of _real_ brothers talk
+to their sisters, using great plainness of speech. He withered all
+her poor little trumpery array of hothouse flowers of sentiment, by
+treating them as so much garbage, as all men know they are. He set
+before her the gravity and dignity of marriage, and her duties to her
+husband. Last, and most unkind of all, he professed his admiration of
+Rose Ferguson, his unworthiness of her, and his determination to win
+her by a nobler and better life; and then showed himself to be a stupid
+blunderer by exhorting Lillie to make Rose her model, and seek to
+imitate her virtues.
+
+Poor Lillie! the world looked dismal and dreary enough to her. She
+shrunk within herself. Every thing was withered and disenchanted. All
+her poor little stock of romance seemed to her as disgusting as the
+withered flowers and crumpled finery and half-melted ice-cream the
+morning after a ball.
+
+In this state, when she got a warm, true letter from John, who always
+grew tender and affectionate when she was long away, couched in those
+terms of admiration and affection that were soothing to her ear, she
+really longed to go back to him. She shrunk from the dreary plainness
+of truth, and longed for flattery and petting and caresses once
+more; and she wrote to John an overflowingly tender letter, full of
+longings, which brought him at once to her side, the most delighted of
+men. When Lillie cried in his arms, and told him that she found New
+York perfectly hateful; when she declaimed on the heartlessness of
+fashionable life, and longed to go with him to their quiet home,—she
+was tolerably in earnest; and John was perfectly enchanted.
+
+Poor John! Was he a muff, a spoon? We think not. We understand well
+that there is not a _woman_ among our readers who has the slightest
+patience with Lillie, and that the most of them are half out of
+patience with John for his enduring tenderness towards her.
+
+But men were born and organized by nature to be the protectors of
+women; and, generally speaking, the stronger and more thoroughly
+manly a man is, the more he has of what phrenologists call the “pet
+organ,”—the disposition which makes him the charmed servant of what is
+weak and dependent. John had a great share of this quality. He was made
+to be a protector. He loved to protect; he loved every thing that was
+helpless and weak,—young animals, young children, and delicate women.
+
+He was a romantic adorer of womanhood, as a sort of divine mystery,—a
+never-ending poem; and when his wife was long enough away from him to
+give scope for imagination to work, when she no longer annoyed him with
+the friction of the sharp little edges of her cold and selfish nature,
+he was able to see her once more in the ideal light of first love.
+After all, she was his wife; and in that one word, to a good man, is
+every thing holy and sacred. He longed to believe in her and trust her
+wholly; and now that Grace was going from him, to belong to another,
+Lillie was more than ever his dependence.
+
+On the whole, if we must admit that John was weak, he was weak where
+strong and noble natures may most gracefully be so,—weak through
+disinterestedness, faith, and the disposition to make the best of the
+wife he had chosen.
+
+And so Lillie came home; and there was festivity and rejoicing. Grace
+found herself floated into matrimony on a tide bringing gifts and
+tokens of remembrance from everybody that had ever known her; for all
+were delighted with this opportunity of testifying a sense of her
+worth, and every hand was ready to help ring her wedding bells.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+_MOTHERHOOD._
+
+
+IT is supposed by some that to become a mother is of itself a healing
+and saving dispensation; that of course the reign of selfishness
+ends, and the reign of better things begins, with the commencement of
+maternity.
+
+But old things do not pass away and all things become new by any such
+rapid process of conversion. A whole life spent in self-seeking and
+self-pleasing is no preparation for the most august and austere of
+woman’s sufferings and duties; and it is not to be wondered at if the
+untrained, untaught, and self-indulgent shrink from this ordeal, as
+Lillie did.
+
+The next spring, while the gables of the new cottage on Elm Street were
+looking picturesquely through the blossoming cherry-trees, and the
+smoke was curling up from the chimneys where Grace and her husband were
+cosily settled down together, there came to John’s house another little
+Lillie.
+
+The little creature came in terror and trembling. For the mother had
+trifled fearfully with the great laws of her being before its birth;
+and the very shadow of death hung over her at the time the little new
+life began.
+
+Lillie’s mother, now a widow, was sent for, and by this event installed
+as a fixture in her daughter’s dwelling; and for weeks the sympathies
+of all the neighborhood were concentrated upon the sufferer. Flowers
+and fruits were left daily at the door. Every one was forward in
+offering those kindly attentions which spring up so gracefully in
+rural neighborhoods. Everybody was interested for her. She was little
+and pretty and suffering; and people even forgot to blame her for the
+levities that had made her present trial more severe. As to John, he
+watched over her day and night with anxious assiduity, forgetting every
+fault and foible. She was now more than the wife of his youth; she was
+the mother of his child, enthroned and glorified in his eyes by the
+wonderful and mysterious experiences which had given this new little
+treasure to their dwelling.
+
+To say the truth, Lillie was too sick and suffering for sentiment. It
+requires a certain amount of bodily strength and soundness to feel
+emotions of love; and, for a long time, the little Lillie had to be
+banished from the mother’s apartment, as she lay weary in her darkened
+room, with only a consciousness of a varied succession of disagreeables
+and discomforts. Her general impression about herself was, that she
+was a much abused and most unfortunate woman; and that all that could
+ever be done by the utmost devotion of everybody in the house was
+insufficient to make up for such trials as had come upon her.
+
+A nursing mother was found for the little Lillie in the person of a
+goodly Irish woman, fair, fat, and loving; and the real mother had none
+of those awakening influences, from the resting of the little head
+in her bosom, and the pressure of the little helpless fingers, which
+magnetize into existence the blessed power of love.
+
+She had wasted in years of fashionable folly, and in a life led only
+for excitement and self-gratification, all the womanly power, all the
+capability of motherly giving and motherly loving that are the glory
+of womanhood. Kathleen, the white-armed, the gentle-bosomed, had all
+the simple pleasures, the tendernesses, the poetry of motherhood; while
+poor, faded, fretful Lillie had all the prose—the sad, hard, weary
+prose—of sickness and pain, unglorified by love.
+
+John did not well know what to do with himself in Lillie’s darkened
+room; where it seemed to him he was always in the way, always doing
+something wrong; where his feet always seemed too large and heavy, and
+his voice too loud; and where he was sure, in his anxious desire to
+be still and gentle, to upset something, or bring about some general
+catastrophe, and to go out feeling more like a criminal than ever.
+
+The mother and the nurse, stationed there like a pair of chief
+mourners, spoke in tones which experienced feminine experts seem to
+keep for occasions like these, and which, as Hawthorne has said, give
+an effect as if the voice had been dyed black. It was a comfort and
+relief to pass from the funeral gloom to the little pink-ruffled
+chamber among the cherry-trees, where the birds were singing and the
+summer breezes blowing, and the pretty Kathleen was crooning her Irish
+songs, and invoking the holy virgin and all the saints to bless the
+“darlin’” baby.
+
+[Illustration: “An’ it’s a blessin’ they brings wid ’em, sir.”]
+
+“An’ it’s a blessin’ they brings wid ’em to a house, sir; the angels
+comes down wid ’em. We can’t see ’em, sir; but, bless the darlin’, she
+can. And she smiles in her sleep when she sees ’em.”
+
+Rose and Grace came often to this bower with kisses and gifts and
+offerings, like a pair of nice fairy godmothers. They hung over the
+pretty little waxen miracle as she opened her great blue eyes with a
+silent, mysterious wonder; but, alas! all these delicious moments, this
+artless love of the new baby life, was not for the mother. She was not
+strong enough to enjoy it. Its cries made her nervous; and so she kept
+the uncheered solitude of her room without the blessing of the little
+angel.
+
+People may mourn in lugubrious phrase about the Irish blood in our
+country. For our own part, we think the rich, tender, motherly nature
+of the Irish girl an element a thousand times more hopeful in our
+population than the faded, washed-out indifferentism of fashionable
+women, who have danced and flirted away all their womanly attributes,
+till there is neither warmth nor richness nor maternal fulness left
+in them,—mere paper-dolls, without milk in their bosoms or blood in
+their veins. Give us rich, tender, warm-hearted Bridgets and Kathleens,
+whose instincts teach them the real poetry of motherhood; who can love
+unto death, and bear trials and pains cheerfully for the joy that is
+set before them. We are not afraid for the republican citizens that
+such mothers will bear to us. They are the ones that will come to high
+places in our land, and that will possess the earth by right of the
+strongest.
+
+Motherhood, to the woman who has lived only to be petted, and to be
+herself the centre of all things, is a virtual dethronement. Something
+weaker, fairer, more delicate than herself comes,—something for her to
+serve and to care for more than herself.
+
+It would sometimes seem as if motherhood were a lovely artifice of
+the great Father, to wean the heart from selfishness by a peaceful
+and gradual process. The babe is self in another form. It is so
+interwoven and identified with the mother’s life, that she passes by
+almost insensible gradations from herself to it; and day by day the
+distinctive love of self wanes as the child-love waxes, filling the
+heart with a thousand new springs of tenderness.
+
+But that this benignant transformation of nature may be perfected, it
+must be wrought out in Nature’s own way. Any artificial arrangement
+that takes the child away from the mother interrupts that wonderful
+system of contrivances whereby the mother’s nature and being shade off
+into that of the child, and her heart enlarges to a new and heavenly
+power of loving.
+
+When Lillie was sufficiently recovered to be fond of any thing,
+she found in her lovely baby only a new toy,—a source of pride and
+pleasure, and a charming occasion for the display of new devices of
+millinery. But she found Newport indispensable that summer to the
+re-establishment of her strength. “And really,” she said, “the baby
+would be so much better off quietly at home with mamma and Kathleen.
+The fact is,” she said, “she quite disregards me. She cries after
+Kathleen if I take her; so that it’s quite provoking.”
+
+And so Lillie, free and unencumbered, had her gay season at Newport
+with the Follingsbees, and the Simpkinses, and the Tompkinses, and
+all the rest of the nice people, who have nothing to do but enjoy
+themselves; and everybody flattered her by being incredulous that one
+so young and charming could possibly be a mother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+_CHECKMATE._
+
+
+IF ever our readers have observed two chess-players, both ardent,
+skilful, determined, who have been carrying on noiselessly the moves
+of a game, they will understand the full significance of this decisive
+term.
+
+Up to this point, there is hope, there is energy, there is enthusiasm;
+the pieces are marshalled and managed with good courage. At last,
+perhaps in an unexpected moment, one, two, three adverse moves follow
+each other, and the decisive words, _check-mate_, are uttered.
+
+This is a symbol of what often goes on in the game of life.
+
+Here is a man going on, indefinitely, conscious in his own heart that
+he is not happy in his domestic relations. There is a want of union
+between him and his wife. She is not the woman that meets his wants
+or his desires; and in the intercourse of life they constantly cross
+and annoy each other. But still he does not allow himself to look the
+matter fully in the face. He goes on and on, hoping that to-morrow
+will bring something better than to-day,—hoping that this thing, or
+that thing or the other thing will bring a change, and that in some
+indefinite future all will round and fashion itself to his desires.
+It is very slowly that a man awakens from the illusions of his first
+love. It is very unwillingly that he ever comes to the final conclusion
+that he has made _there_ the mistake of a whole lifetime, and that the
+woman to whom he gave his whole heart not only is not the woman that he
+supposed her to be, but never in any future time, nor by any change of
+circumstances, will become that woman,—that the difficulty is radical
+and final and hopeless.
+
+In “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” we read that the poor man, Christian,
+tried to persuade his wife to go with him on the pilgrimage to the
+celestial city; but that finally he had to make up his mind to go
+alone without her. Such is the lot of the man who is brought to the
+conclusion, positively and definitely, that his wife is always to be
+a hinderance, and never a help to him, in any upward aspiration; that
+whatever he does that is needful and right and true must be done, not
+by her influence, but in spite of it; that, if he has to swim against
+the hard, upward current of the river of life, he must do so with her
+hanging on his arm, and holding him back, and that he cannot influence
+and cannot control her.
+
+Such hours of disclosure to a man are among the terrible hidden
+tragedies of life,—tragedies such as are never acted on the stage. Such
+a time of disclosure came to John the year after Grace’s marriage; and
+it came in this way:—
+
+The Spindlewood property had long been critically situated. Sundry
+financial changes which were going on in the country had depreciated
+its profits, and affected it unfavorably. All now depended upon the
+permanency of one commercial house. John had been passing through an
+interval of great anxiety. He could not tell Lillie his trouble. He
+had been for months past nervously watching all the in-comings and
+out-goings of his family, arranged on a scale of reckless expenditure,
+which he felt entirely powerless to control. Lillie’s wishes were
+importunate. She was nervous and hysterical, wholly incapable of
+listening to reason; and the least attempt to bring her to change any
+of her arrangements, or to restrict any of her pleasures, brought tears
+and faintings and distresses and scenes of domestic confusion which he
+shrank from. He often tried to set before her the possibility that they
+might be obliged, for a time at least, to live in a different manner;
+but she always resisted every such supposition as so frightful, so
+dreadful, that he was utterly discouraged, and put off and off, hoping
+that the evil day never might arrive.
+
+But it did come at last. One morning, when he received by mail the
+tidings of the failure of the great house of Clapham & Co., he knew
+that the time had come when the thing could no longer be staved off. He
+was an indorser to a large amount on the paper of this house; and the
+crisis was inevitable.
+
+It was inevitable also that he must acquaint Lillie with the state of
+his circumstances; for she was going on with large arrangements and
+calculations for a Newport campaign, and sending the usual orders to
+New York, to her milliner and dressmaker, for her summer outfit. It
+was a cruel thing for him to be obliged to interrupt all this; for
+she seemed perfectly cheerful and happy in it, as she always was when
+preparing to go on a pleasure-seeking expedition. But it could not be.
+All this luxury and indulgence must be cut off at a stroke. He must
+tell her that she could not go to Newport; that there was no money for
+new dresses or new finery; that they should probably be obliged to move
+out of their elegant house, and take a smaller one, and practise for
+some time a rigid economy.
+
+John came into Lillie’s elegant apartments, which glittered like a
+tulip-bed with many colored sashes and ribbons, with sheeny silks and
+misty laces, laid out in order to be surveyed before packing.
+
+“Gracious me, John! what on earth is the matter with you to-day? How
+perfectly awful and solemn you do look!”
+
+“I have had bad news, this morning, Lillie, which I must tell you.”
+
+“Oh, dear me, John! what is the matter? Nobody is dead, I hope!”
+
+“No, Lillie; but I am afraid you will have to give up your Newport
+journey.”
+
+“Gracious, goodness, John! what for?”
+
+“To say the truth, Lillie, I cannot afford it.”
+
+“Can’t afford it? Why not? Why, John, what is the matter?”
+
+“Well, Lillie, just read this letter!”
+
+Lillie took it, and read it with her hands trembling.
+
+“Well, dear me, John! I don’t see any thing in this letter. If they
+have failed, I don’t see what that is to you!”
+
+“But, Lillie, I am indorser for them.”
+
+“How very silly of you, John! What made you indorse for them? Now that
+is too bad; it just makes me perfectly miserable to think of such
+things. I know _I_ should not have done so; but I don’t see why you
+need pay it. It is their business, anyhow.”
+
+“But, Lillie, I shall have to pay it. It is a matter of honor and
+honesty to do it; because I engaged to do it.”
+
+“Well, I don’t see why that should be! It isn’t your debt; it is their
+debt: and why need you do it? I am sure Dick Follingsbee said that
+there were ways in which people could put their property out of their
+hands when they got caught in such scrapes as this. Dick knows just how
+to manage. He told me of plenty of people that had done that, who were
+living splendidly, and who were received everywhere; and people thought
+just as much of them.”
+
+“O Lillie, Lillie! my child,” said John; “you don’t know any thing of
+what you are talking about! That would be dishonorable, and wholly out
+of the question. No, Lillie dear, the fact is,” he said, with a great
+gulp, and a deep sigh,—“the fact is, I have failed; but I am going to
+fail honestly. If I have nothing else left, I will have my honor and
+my conscience. But we shall have to give up this house, and move into
+a smaller one. Every thing will have to be given up to the creditors
+to settle the business. And then, when all is arranged, we must try
+to live economically some way; and perhaps we can make it up again.
+But you see, dear, there can be no more of this kind of expenses at
+present,” he said, pointing to the dresses and jewelry on the bed.
+
+“Well, John, I am sure I had rather die!” said Lillie, gathering
+herself into a little white heap, and tumbling into the middle of the
+bed. “I am sure if we have got to rub and scrub and starve so, I had
+rather die and done with it; and I hope I shall.”
+
+John crossed his arms, and looked gloomily out of the window.
+
+“Perhaps you had better,” he said. “I am sure I should be glad to.”
+
+“Yes, I dare say!” said Lillie; “that is all you care for me. Now there
+is Dick Follingsbee, he would be taking care of his wife. Why, he has
+failed three or four times, and always come out richer than he was
+before!”
+
+“He is a swindler and a rascal!” said John; “that is what he is.”
+
+“I don’t care if he is,” said Lillie, sobbing. “His wife has good
+times, and goes into the very first society in New York. People don’t
+care, so long as you are rich, what you do. Well, I am sure I can’t do
+any thing about it. I don’t know how to live without money,—that’s a
+fact! and I can’t learn. I suppose you would be glad to see me rubbing
+around in old calico dresses, wouldn’t you? and keeping only one girl,
+and going into the kitchen, like Miss Dotty Peabody? I think I see
+myself! And all just for one of your Quixotic notions, when you might
+just as well keep all your money as not. That is what it is to marry
+a reformer! I never have had any peace of my life on account of your
+conscience, always something or other turning up that you can’t act
+like anybody else. I should think, at least, you might have contrived
+to settle this place on me and poor little Lillie, that we might have a
+house to put our heads in.”
+
+“Lillie, Lillie,” said John, “this is too much! Don’t you think that
+_I_ suffer at all?”
+
+“I don’t see that you do,” said Lillie, sobbing. “I dare say you are
+glad of it; it is just like you. Oh, dear, I wish I had never been
+married!”
+
+“I _certainly_ do,” said John, fervently.
+
+“I suppose so. You see, it is nothing to you men; you don’t care any
+thing about these things. If you can get a musty old corner and your
+books, you are perfectly satisfied; and you don’t know when things are
+pretty, and when they are not: and so you can talk grand about your
+honor and your conscience and all that. I suppose the carriages and
+horses have got to be sold too?”
+
+“Certainly, Lillie,” said John, hardening his heart and his tone.
+
+“Well, well,” she said, “I wish you would go now and send ma to me.
+I don’t want to talk about it any more. My head aches as if it would
+split. Poor ma! She little thought when I married you that it was going
+to come to this.”
+
+John walked out of the room gloomily enough. He had received this
+morning his _check-mate_. All illusion was at an end. The woman that
+he had loved and idolized and caressed and petted and indulged, in
+whom he had been daily and hourly disappointed since he was married,
+but of whom he still hoped and hoped, he now felt was of a nature not
+only unlike, but opposed to his own. He felt that he could neither love
+nor respect her further. And yet she was his wife, and the mother of
+his daughter, and the only queen of his household; and he had solemnly
+promised at God’s altar that “forsaking all others, he would keep only
+unto her, so long as they both should live, for better, for worse,”
+John muttered to himself,—“for better, for worse. This is the worse;
+and oh, it is dreadful!”
+
+In all John’s hours of sorrow and trouble, the instinctive feeling of
+his heart was to go back to the memory of his mother; and the nearest
+to his mother was his sister Grace. In this hour of his blind sorrow,
+he walked directly over to the little cottage on Elm Street, which
+Grace and her husband had made a perfectly ideal home.
+
+When he came into the parlor, Grace and Rose were sitting together with
+an open letter lying between them. It was evident that some crisis of
+tender confidence had passed between them; for the tears were hardly
+dry on Rose’s cheeks. Yet it was not painful, whatever it was; for her
+face was radiant with smiles, and John thought he had never seen her
+look so lovely. At this moment the truth of her beautiful and lovely
+womanhood, her sweetness and nobleness of nature, came over him, in
+bitter contrast with the scene he had just passed through, and the
+woman he had left.
+
+“What do you think, John?” said Grace; “we have some congratulations
+here to give! Rose is engaged to Harry Endicott.”
+
+“Indeed!” said John, “I wish her joy.”
+
+“But what is the matter, John?” said both women, looking up, and seeing
+something unusual in his face.
+
+“Oh, trouble!” said John,—“trouble upon us all. Gracie and Rose, the
+Spindlewood Mills have failed.”
+
+“Is it possible?” was the exclamation of both.
+
+“Yes, indeed!” said John; “you see, the thing has been running very
+close for the last six months; and the manufacturing business has been
+looking darker and darker. But still we could have stood it if the
+house of Clapham & Co. had stood; but they have gone to smash, Gracie.
+I had a letter this morning, telling me of it.”
+
+Both women stood a moment as if aghast; for the Ferguson property was
+equally involved.
+
+“Poor papa!” said Rose; “this will come hard on him.”
+
+“I know it,” said John, bitterly. “It is more for others that I feel
+than for myself,—for all that are involved must suffer with me.”
+
+“But, after all, John dear,” said Rose, “don’t feel so about us at any
+rate. We shall do very well. People that fail honorably always come
+right side up at last; and, John, how good it is to think, whatever you
+lose, you cannot lose your best treasure,—your true noble heart, and
+your true friends. I feel this minute that we shall all know each other
+better, and be more precious to each other for this very trouble.”
+
+John looked at her through his tears.
+
+“Dear Rose,” he said, “you are an angel; and from my soul I
+congratulate the man that has got _you_. He that has you would be rich,
+if he lost the whole world.”
+
+“You are too good to me, all of you,” said Rose. “But now, John, about
+that bad news—let me break it to papa and mamma; I think I can do it
+best. I know when they feel brightest in the day; and I don’t want it
+to come on them suddenly: but I can put it in the very best way. How
+fortunate that I am just engaged to Harry! Harry is a perfect prince
+in generosity. You don’t know what a good heart he has; and it happens
+so fortunately that we have him to lean on just now. Oh, I’m sure we
+shall find a way out of these troubles, never fear.” And Rose took the
+letter, and left John and Grace together.
+
+“O Gracie, Gracie!” said John, throwing himself down on the old chintz
+sofa, and burying his face in his hands, “what a woman there is! O
+Gracie! I wish I was dead! Life is played out with me. I haven’t the
+least desire to live. I can’t get a step farther.”
+
+“O John, John! don’t talk so!” said Grace, stooping over him. “Why, you
+will recover from this! You are young and strong. It will be settled;
+and you can work your way up again.”
+
+“It is not the money, Grace; I could let that go. It is that I have
+nothing to live for,—nobody and nothing. My wife, Gracie! she is worse
+than nothing,—worse, oh! infinitely worse than nothing! She is a chain
+and a shackle. She is my obstacle. She tortures me and hinders me every
+way and everywhere. There will never be a home for me where she is;
+and, because she is there, no other woman can make a home for me. Oh, I
+wish she would go away, and stay away! I would not care if I never saw
+her face again.”
+
+[Illustration: “O Gracie! I wish I was dead!”]
+
+There was something shocking and terrible to Grace about this
+outpouring. It was dreadful to her to be the recipient of such a
+confidence, to hear these words spoken, and to more than suspect their
+truth. She was quite silent for a few moments, as he still lay with his
+face down, buried in the sofa-pillow.
+
+Then she went to her writing-desk, took out a little ivory miniature of
+their mother, came and sat down by him, and laid her hand on his head.
+
+“John,” she said, “look at this.”
+
+He raised his head, took it from her hand, and looked at it. Soon she
+saw the tears dropping over it.
+
+“John,” she said, “let me say to you now what I think our mother would
+have said. The great object of life is not happiness; and, when we
+have lost our own personal happiness, we have not lost all that life
+is worth living for. No, John, the very best of life often lies beyond
+that. When we have learned to let ourselves go, then we may find that
+there is a better, a nobler, and a truer life for us.”
+
+“I _have_ given up,” said John in a husky voice. “I have lost _all_.”
+
+“Yes,” replied Grace, steadily, “I know perfectly well that there
+is very little hope of personal and individual happiness for you in
+your marriage for years to come. Instead of a companion, a friend,
+and a helper, you have a moral invalid to take care of. But, John, if
+Lillie had been stricken with blindness, or insanity, or paralysis,
+you would not have shrunk from your duty to her; and, because the
+blindness and paralysis are moral, you will not shrink from it, will
+you? You sacrifice all your property to pay an indorsement for a debt
+that is not yours; and why do you do it? Because society rests on
+every man’s faithfulness to his engagements. John, if you stand by a
+business engagement with this faithfulness, how much more should you
+stand by that great engagement which concerns all other families and
+the stability of all society. Lillie is your wife. You were free to
+choose; and you chose her. She is the mother of your child; and, John,
+what that daughter is to be depends very much on the steadiness with
+which you fulfil your duties to the mother. I know that Lillie is a
+most undeveloped and uncongenial person; I know how little you have in
+common: but your duties are the same as if she were the best and the
+most congenial of wives. It is every man’s duty to make the best of his
+marriage.”
+
+“But, Gracie,” said John, “is there any thing to be made of her?”
+
+“You will never make me believe, John, that there are any human beings
+absolutely without the capability of good. They may be very dark, and
+very slow to learn, and very far from it; but steady patience and love
+and well-doing will at last tell upon any one.”
+
+“But, Gracie, if you could have heard how utterly without principle she
+is: urging me to put my property out of my hands dishonestly, to keep
+her in luxury!”
+
+“Well, John, you must have patience with her. Consider that she has
+been unfortunate in her associates. Consider that she has been a petted
+child all her life, and that you have helped to pet her. Consider
+how much your sex always do to weaken the moral sense of women, by
+liking and admiring them for being weak and foolish and inconsequent,
+so long as it is pretty and does not come in your way. I do not mean
+you in particular, John; but I mean that the general course of society
+releases pretty women from any sense of obligation to be constant in
+duty, or brave in meeting emergencies. You yourself have encouraged
+Lillie to live very much like a little humming-bird.”
+
+“Well, I thought,” said John, “that she would in time develop into
+something better.”
+
+“Well, there lies your mistake; you expected too much. The work of
+years is not to be undone in a moment; and you must take into account
+that this is Lillie’s first adversity. You may as well make up your
+mind not to expect her to be reasonable. It seems to me that we can
+make up our minds to bear any thing that we know must come; and you
+may as well make up yours, that, for a long time, you will have to
+carry Lillie as a burden. But then, you must think that she is your
+daughter’s mother, and that it is very important for the child that she
+should respect and honor her mother. You must treat her with respect
+and honor, even in her weaknesses. We all must. We all must help
+Lillie as we can to bear this trial, and sympathize with her in it,
+unreasonable as she may seem; because, after all, John, it is a real
+trial to her.”
+
+“I cannot see, for my part,” said John, “that she loves any thing.”
+
+“The power of loving may be undeveloped in her, John; but it will
+come, perhaps, later in life. At all events take this comfort to
+yourself,—that, when you are doing your duty by your wife, when you
+are holding her in her place in the family, and teaching her child to
+respect and honor her, you are putting her in God’s school of love.
+If we contend with and fly from our duties, simply because they gall
+us and burden us, we go against every thing; but if we take them up
+bravely, then every thing goes with us. God and good angels and good
+men and all good influences are working with us when we are working for
+the right. And in this way, John, you may come to happiness; or, if you
+do not come to personal happiness, you may come to something higher
+and better. You know that you think it nobler to be an honest man than
+a rich man; and I am sure that you will think it better to be a good
+man than to be a happy one. Now, dear John, it is not I that say these
+things, I think; but it seems to me it is what our mother would say, if
+she should speak to you from where she is. And then, dear brother, it
+will all be over soon, this life-battle; and the only thing is, to come
+out victorious.”
+
+“Gracie, you are right,” said John, rising up: “I see it myself. I will
+brace up to my duty. Couldn’t you try and pacify Lillie a little, poor
+girl? I suppose I have been rough with her.”
+
+“Oh, yes, John, I will go up and talk with Lillie, and condole with
+her; and perhaps we shall bring her round. And then when my husband
+comes home next week, we’ll have a family palaver, and he will find
+some ways and means of setting this business straight, that it won’t
+be so bad as it looks now. There may be arrangements made when the
+creditors come together. My impression is that, whenever people find a
+man really determined to arrange a matter of this kind honorably, they
+are all disposed to help him; so don’t be cast down about the business.
+As for Lillie’s discontent, treat it as you would the crying of your
+little daughter for its sugar-plums, and do not expect any thing more
+of her just now than there is.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have brought our story up to this point. We informed our readers in
+the beginning that it was not a novel, but a story with a moral; and,
+as people pick all sorts of strange morals out of stories, we intend to
+put conspicuously into our story exactly what the moral of it is.
+
+Well, then, it has been very surprising to us to see in these our times
+that some people, who really at heart have the interest of women upon
+their minds, have been so short-sighted and reckless as to clamor for
+an easy dissolution of the marriage-contract, as a means of righting
+their wrongs. Is it possible that they do not see that this is a
+liberty which, once granted, would always tell against the weaker sex?
+If the woman who finds that she has made a mistake, and married a man
+unkind or uncongenial, may, on the discovery of it, leave him and seek
+her fortune with another, so also may a man. And what will become of
+women like Lillie, when the first gilding begins to wear off, if the
+man who has taken one of them shall be at liberty to cast her off
+and seek another? Have we not enough now of miserable, broken-winged
+butterflies, that sink down, down, down into the mud of the street?
+But are women-reformers going to clamor for having every woman turned
+out helpless, when the man who has married her, and made her a mother,
+discovers that she has not the power to interest him, and to help his
+higher spiritual development? It was because woman is helpless and
+weak, and because Christ was her great Protector, that he made the law
+of marriage irrevocable. “Whosoever putteth away his wife causeth her
+to commit adultery.” If the sacredness of the marriage-contract did not
+hold, if the Church and all good men and all good women did not uphold
+it with their might and main, it is easy to see where the career of
+many women like Lillie would end. Men have the power to reflect before
+the choice is made; and that is the only proper time for reflection.
+But, when once marriage is made and consummated, it should be as fixed
+a fact as the laws of nature. And they who suffer under its stringency
+should suffer as those who endure for the public good. “He that
+sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not, he shall enter into the
+tabernacle of the Lord.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+_AFTER THE STORM._
+
+
+THE painful and unfortunate crises of life often arise and darken
+like a thunder-storm, and seem for the moment perfectly terrific and
+overwhelming; but wait a little, and the cloud sweeps by, and the
+earth, which seemed about to be torn to pieces and destroyed, comes
+out as good as new. Not a bird is dead; not a flower killed: and the
+sun shines just as he did before. So it was with John’s financial
+trouble. When it came to be investigated and looked into, it proved
+much less terrible than had been feared. It was not utter ruin. The
+high character which John bore for honor and probity, the general
+respect which was felt for him by all to whom he stood indebted, led to
+an arrangement by which the whole business was put into his hands, and
+time given him to work it through. His brother-in-law came to his aid,
+advancing money, and entering into the business with him. Our friend
+Harry Endicott was only too happy to prove his devotion to Rose by
+offers of financial assistance.
+
+In short, there seemed every reason to hope that, after a period of
+somewhat close sailing, the property might be brought into clear water
+again, and go on even better than before.
+
+To say the truth, too, John was really relieved by that terrible burst
+of confidence in his sister. It is a curious fact, that giving full
+expression to bitterness of feeling or indignation against one we
+love seems to be such a relief, that it always brings a revulsion of
+kindliness. John never loved his sister so much as when he heard her
+plead his wife’s cause with him; for, though in some bitter, impatient
+hour a man may feel, which John did, as if he would be glad to sunder
+all ties, and tear himself away from an uncongenial wife, yet a good
+man never can forget the woman that once he loved, and who is the
+mother of his children. Those sweet, sacred visions and illusions of
+first love will return again and again, even after disenchantment; and
+the better and the purer the man is, the more sacred is the appeal to
+him of woman’s weakness. Because he is strong, and she is weak, he
+feels that it would be unmanly to desert her; and, if there ever was
+any thing for which John thanked his sister, it was when she went over
+and spent hours with his wife, patiently listening to her complainings,
+and soothing her as if she had been a petted child. All the circle of
+friends, in a like manner, bore with her for his sake.
+
+Thanks to the intervention of Grace’s husband and of Harry, John was
+not put to the trial and humiliation of being obliged to sell the
+family place, although constrained to live in it under a system of more
+rigid economy. Lillie’s mother, although quite a commonplace woman as
+a companion, had been an economist in her day; she had known how to
+make the most of straitened circumstances, and, being put to it, could
+do it again.
+
+To be sure, there was an end of Newport gayeties; for Lillie vowed
+and declared that she would not go to Newport and take cheap board,
+and live without a carriage. She didn’t want the Follingsbees and the
+Tompkinses and the Simpkinses talking about her, and saying that they
+had failed. Her mother worked like a servant for her in smartening her
+up, and tidying her old dresses, of which one would think that she had
+a stock to last for many years. And thus, with everybody sympathizing
+with her, and everybody helping her, Lillie subsided into enacting the
+part of a patient, persecuted saint. She was touchingly resigned, and
+wore an air of pleasing melancholy. John had asked her pardon for all
+the hasty words he said to her in the terrible interview; and she had
+forgiven him with edifying meekness. “Of course,” she remarked to her
+mother, “she knew he would be sorry for the way he had spoken to her;
+and she was very glad that he had the grace to confess it.”
+
+So life went on and on with John. He never forgot his sister’s words,
+but received them into his heart as a message from his mother in
+heaven. From that time, no one could have judged by any word, look, or
+action of his that his wife was not what she had always been to him.
+
+Meanwhile Rose was happily married, and settled down in the Ferguson
+place; where her husband and she formed one family with her parents. It
+was a pleasant, cosey, social, friendly neighborhood. After all, John
+found that his cross was not so very heavy to carry, when once he had
+made up his mind that it must be borne. By never expecting much, he
+was never disappointed. Having made up his mind that he was to serve
+and to give without receiving, he did it, and began to find pleasure
+in it. By and by, the little Lillie, growing up by her mother’s side,
+began to be a compensation for all he had suffered. The little creature
+inherited her mother’s beauty, the dazzling delicacy of her complexion,
+the abundance of her golden hair; but there had been given to her also
+her father’s magnanimous and generous nature. Lillie was a selfish,
+exacting mother; and such women often succeed in teaching to their
+children patience and self-denial. As soon as the little creature could
+walk, she was her father’s constant play-fellow and companion. He took
+her with him everywhere. He was never weary of talking with her and
+playing with her; and gradually he relieved the mother of all care of
+her early training. When, in time, two others were added to the nursery
+troop, Lillie became a perfect model of a gracious, motherly, little
+older sister.
+
+Did all this patience and devotion of the husband at last awaken any
+thing like love in the wife? Lillie was not naturally rich in emotion.
+Under the best education and development, she would have been rather
+wanting in the loving power; and the whole course of her education had
+been directed to suppress what little she had, and to concentrate all
+her feelings upon herself.
+
+The factitious and unnatural life she had lived so many years had
+seriously undermined the stamina of her constitution; and, after
+the birth of her third child, her health failed altogether. Lillie
+thus became in time a chronic invalid, exacting, querulous, full of
+troubles and wants which tasked the patience of all around her. During
+all these trying years, her husband’s faithfulness never faltered.
+As he gradually retrieved his circumstances, she was first in every
+calculation. Because he knew that here lay his greatest temptation,
+here he most rigidly performed his duty. Nothing that money could give
+to soften the weariness of sickness was withheld; and John was for
+hours and hours, whenever he could spare the time, himself a personal,
+assiduous, unwearied attendant in the sick-room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+_THE NEW LILLIE._
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+WE have but one scene more before our story closes. It is night now in
+Lillie’s sick-room; and her mother is anxiously arranging the drapery,
+to keep the fire-light from her eyes, stepping noiselessly about the
+room. She lies there behind the curtains, on her pillow,—the wreck and
+remnant only of what was once so beautiful. During all these years,
+when the interests and pleasures have been slowly dropping, leaf by
+leaf, and passing away like fading flowers, Lillie has learned to do
+much thinking. It sometimes seems to take a stab, a thrust, a wound,
+to open in some hearts the capacity of deep feeling and deep thought.
+There are things taught by suffering that can be taught in no other
+way. By suffering sometimes is wrought out in a person the power of
+loving, and of appreciating love. During the first year, Lillie had
+often seemed to herself in a sort of wild, chaotic state. The coming
+in of a strange new spiritual life was something so inexplicable to
+her that it agitated and distressed her; and sometimes, when she
+appeared more petulant and fretful than usual, it was only the stir
+and vibration on her weak nerves of new feelings, which she wanted the
+power to express. These emotions at first were painful to her. She
+felt weak, miserable, and good for nothing. It seemed to her that her
+whole life had been a wretched cheat, and that she had ill repaid the
+devotion of her husband. At first these thoughts only made her bitter
+and angry; and she contended against them. But, as she sank from day
+to day, and grew weaker and weaker, she grew more gentle; and a better
+spirit seemed to enter into her.
+
+On this evening that we speak of, she had made up her mind that she
+would try and tell her husband some of the things that were passing in
+her mind.
+
+“Tell John I want to see him,” she said to her mother. “I wish he would
+come and sit with me.”
+
+This was a summons for which John invariably left every thing. He laid
+down his book as the word was brought to him, and soon was treading
+noiselessly at her bedside.
+
+“Well, Lillie dear,” he said, “how are you?”
+
+She put out her little wasted hand; “John dear,” she said, “sit down; I
+have something that I want to say to you. I have been thinking, John,
+that this can’t last much longer.”
+
+“What can’t last, Lillie?” said John, trying to speak cheerfully.
+
+“I mean, John, that I am going to leave you soon, for good and all; and
+I should not think you would be sorry either.”
+
+“Oh, come, come, my girl, it won’t do to talk so!” said John, patting
+her hand. “You must not be blue.”
+
+“And so, John,” said Lillie, going on without noticing this
+interruption, “I wanted just to tell you, before I got any weaker, that
+I know and feel just how patient and noble and good you have always
+been to me.”
+
+“O Lillie darling!” said John, “why shouldn’t I be? Poor little girl,
+how much you have suffered!”
+
+“Well, now, John, I know perfectly well that I have never been the
+wife that I ought to be to you. You know it too; so don’t try to say
+anything about it. I was never the woman to have made you happy; and
+it was not fair in me to marry you. I have lived a dreadfully worldly,
+selfish life. And now, John, I am come to the end. You dear good man,
+your trials with me are almost over; but I want you to know that you
+really have succeeded. John, I do love you now with all my heart,
+though I did not love you when I married you. And, John, I do feel
+that God will take pity on me, poor and good for nothing as I am, just
+because I see how patient and kind you have always been to me when I
+have been so very provoking. You see it has made me think how good God
+must be,—because, dear, we know that he is better than the best of us.”
+
+“O Lillie, Lillie!” said John, leaning over her, and taking her in his
+arms, “do live, I want you to live. Don’t leave me now, now that you
+really love me!”
+
+“Oh, no, John! it is best as it is,—I think I should not have strength
+to be _very_ good, if I were to get well; and you would still have your
+little cross to carry. No, dear, it is all right. And, John, you will
+have the best of me in our Lillie. She looks like me: but, John, she
+has your good heart; and she will be more to you than I could be. She
+is just as sweet and unselfish as I _was_ selfish. I don’t think I am
+quite so bad now; and I think, if I lived, I should try to be a great
+deal better.”
+
+“O Lillie! I cannot bear to part with you! I never have ceased to love
+you; and I never have loved any other woman.”
+
+“I know that, John. Oh! how much truer and better you are than I have
+been! But I like to think that you love me,—I like to think that you
+will be sorry when I am gone, bad as I am, or _was_; for I insist on it
+that I am a little better than I was. You remember that story of Undine
+you read me one day? It seems as if most of my life I have been like
+Undine before her soul came into her. But this last year I have felt
+the coming in of a soul. It has troubled me; it has come with a strange
+kind of pain. I have never suffered so much. But it has done me good—it
+has made me feel that I have an immortal soul, and that you and I,
+John, shall meet in some better place hereafter.—And there you will be
+rewarded for all your goodness to me.”
+
+As John sat there, and held the little frail hand, his thoughts went
+back to the time when the wild impulse of his heart had been to break
+away from this woman, and never see her face again; and he gave thanks
+to God, who had led him in a better way.
+
+      .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+And so, at last, passed away the little story of Lillie’s life. But
+in the home which she has left now grows another Lillie, fairer and
+sweeter than she,—the tender confidant, the trusted friend of her
+father. And often, when he lays his hand on her golden head, he says,
+“Dear child, how like your mother you look!”
+
+Of all that was painful in that experience, nothing now remains. John
+thinks of her only as he thought of her in the fair illusion of first
+love,—the dearest and most sacred of all illusions.
+
+The Lillie who guides his household, and is so motherly to the younger
+children; who shares every thought of his heart; who enters into every
+feeling and sympathy,—she is the pure reward of his faithfulness and
+constancy. She is a sacred and saintly Lillie, springing out of the sod
+where he laid her mother, forgetting all her faults for ever.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber’s Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 47, “embroided” changed to “embroidered” (embroidered under-linen)
+
+Page 79, “wo ld” changed to “world” (do it for the world)
+
+Page 203, “spirt” changed to “spirit” (little spirit of gayety)
+
+Page 223, “Syndenham” changed to “Sydenham” (with which Walter Sydenham
+was)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Pink and White Tyranny, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12354 ***