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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 ***
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pink and White Tyranny, by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12354 ***</div>
+
+<h1 class='faux'>PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.</h1>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 614px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="614" height="872" alt="cover" />
+</div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+
+
+<p class='blockquot'><span class="smcap">“Make their acquaintance; for Amy will be
+found delightful, Beth very lovely, Meg beautiful, and Jo splendid!</span>”—<i>The Catholic World.</i></p>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>LITTLE WOMEN. By <span class="smcap">Louisa M. Alcott</span>.
+In Two Parts. Price of each $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”—<i>Hartford Courant.</i></p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Little Women.</span> 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.”—<i>The Guiding Star.</i></p>
+
+<p>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:”—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class='right'>
+—— March 12, 1870.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Jo, or Miss Alcott</span>,—We have all been reading “Little Women,” and
+we liked it so much I could not help wanting to write to you. We think <i>you</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>We are six sisters and two brothers; and there were so many things in “Little
+Women” that seemed so natural, especially selling the rags.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>If you ever come to ——, I do wish you would come and see us,—we would
+like it so much.</p>
+
+<p>I have named my doll after you, and I hope she will try and deserve it.</p>
+
+<p>I do wish you would send me a picture of you. I hope your health is better,
+and you are having a nice time.</p>
+
+<p>If you write to me, please direct —— Ill. All the children send their love.</p>
+
+<p>With ever so much love, from your affectionate friend,</p>
+
+<p class='sig'>
+<span class="smcap">Nelly</span>.<br />
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p><i>Mailed to any address, postpaid, on receipt of the advertised
+price.</i></p>
+
+<p class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 2em;"><span class="smcap">ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers</span>,</span><br />
+<i>Boston</i>.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>AN OLD-FASHIONED GIRL. By <span class="smcap">Louisa
+M. Alcott</span>. With Illustrations. Price $1.50.</p>
+
+
+<p>“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.”—<i>Mrs. Sarah
+J. Hale in Godey’s Ladies’ Book.</i></p>
+
+<p>“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.”—<i>The London Spectator.</i></p>
+
+<p>“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.”—<i>New York Independent.</i></p>
+
+<p>“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!”—<i>New York Tribune.</i></p>
+
+<p>“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.”—<i>Providence Journal.</i></p>
+
+
+<p><i>Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of the advertised price, by
+the Publishers</i>,</p>
+
+<p class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 2em;">ROBERTS BROTHERS,</span><br />
+<i>Boston</i><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<div class='adtitle2'><small>MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS’</small><br />
+
+<span class="smcap">Recent New Books.</span></div>
+
+
+
+<p>A VISIT TO MY DISCONTENTED COUSIN. Handy-Volume
+Series, No. 8. 16mo. $1.00.</p>
+
+<p>BURNAND (F. C.). More Happy Thoughts. 16mo. $1.00.</p>
+
+<p>ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. The Forest House and Catherine’s
+Lovers. 16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>HELPS (<span class="smcap">Arthur</span>). Essays Written in the Intervals of Business.
+16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>—— Brevia: Short Essays and Aphorisms. 16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>—— Conversations on War and General Culture. 16mo.
+$1.50.</p>
+
+<p>HALE (<span class="smcap">Edward E.</span>). Ten times One is Ten. 16mo. $0.88.</p>
+
+<p>HAMERTON (<span class="smcap">Philip G.</span>). Thoughts about Art. 16mo.
+$2.00.</p>
+
+<p>INGELOW (<span class="smcap">Jean</span>). The Monitions of the Unseen, and Poems
+of Love and Childhood. 12 Illustrations. 16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>JUDD (<span class="smcap">Sylvester</span>). Margaret: A Tale of the Real and the
+Ideal, of Blight and Bloom. 16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>—— Richard Edney and the Governor’s Family. 16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>KONEWKA (<span class="smcap">Paul</span>). Silhouette Illustrations to Goethe’s
+Faust. Quarto. $4.00.</p>
+
+<p>LOWELL (<span class="smcap">Mrs. A. C.</span>). Posies for Children. 16mo. $0.75.</p>
+
+<p>LANDOR (<span class="smcap">Walter Savage</span>). Pericles and Aspasia. 16mo.
+$1.50.</p>
+
+<p>MAX AND MAURICE. Translated by Charles T. Brooks.
+12mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>MICHELET (<span class="smcap">M. Jules</span>). France Before Europe. 16mo. $1.00.</p>
+
+<p>PARKER (<span class="smcap">Joseph</span>). Ad Clerum: Advices to a Young Preacher.
+16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>PRESTON (<span class="smcap">Harriet W.</span>). Aspendale. 16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>PUCK’S NIGHTLY PRANKS. Silhouette Illustrations by
+Paul Konewka. Paper Covers. $0.50</p>
+
+<p>SEELEY (J. R.). Roman Imperialism and Other Lectures and
+Essays. 16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>STOWE (<span class="smcap">Harriet Beecher</span>). Pink and White Tyranny.
+16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>JOHN WHOPPER’S ADVENTURES. 16mo. $0.75.</p>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Miss Alcott is really a benefactor of House-holds.</span>”—<i>H. H.</i></p>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>LITTLE MEN: Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys.
+By <span class="smcap">Louisa M. Alcott</span>. With Illustrations. Price
+$1.50.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”—<i>The Examiner.</i></p>
+
+<p>“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.’ .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. 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.”—<i>Waterbury American.</i></p>
+
+<p>“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.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. 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.”—<i>N. Y. Times.</i></p>
+
+<p>“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.”—<i>Phil. Press.</i></p>
+
+<p>A specimen letter from a little woman to the author of “Little Men.”</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p class='right'>
+June 17, 1871.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Miss Alcott</span>,—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 <i>so</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 4em;">Yours truly,</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Alice</span> ——.<br />
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p><i>Mailed to any address, postpaid, on receipt of the advertised
+price, by the Publishers,</i></p>
+
+<p class='sig'>
+ROBERTS BROTHERS, <span class="smcap">Boston</span>.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+<div class='maintitle'><span class="smcap">Pink and White
+Tyranny.</span></div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<big>A Society Novel.</big><br />
+<br /><br /><br />
+BY<br />
+<span class='author'>MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE,</span><br />
+<span class='authorof'>AUTHOR OF “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN,” “THE MINISTER’S WOOING,” ETC.</span><br />
+<br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse">“Come, then, the colors and the ground prepare;</div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air;</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Choose a firm cloud before it fall, and in it</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute.”</span></div>
+<div class='sig'><span class="smcap">Pope.</span></div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+
+<p class='center'><br /><br /><br />
+BOSTON:<br />
+<small>ROBERTS BROTHERS.</small><br />
+1871.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class='copyright'>
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by<br />
+<small>HARRIET BEECHER STOWE,</small><br />
+In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.<br />
+<br />
+<br /><br /><br />
+<small>CAMBRIDGE:</small><br />
+<small>PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.</small><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>MY <span class="smcap">Dear Reader</span>,—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; <i>not</i> because beefsteak and
+tomatoes are not respectable viands, but because they
+are not what you have made up your mind to enjoy.</p>
+
+<p>Now, a novel, in our days, is a three-story affair,—a
+complicated, complex, multiform composition, requiring
+no end of scenery and <i>dramatis personæ</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="contents">
+<tr>
+<td align="left" colspan='2'><span class="smcap">Chap.</span></td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Page</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">I.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Falling in Love</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">II.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">What she thinks of it</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">III.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Sister</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">IV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Preparation for Marriage</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">V.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Wedding, and Wedding-trip</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Honey-moon, and after</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Will she like it?</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Spindlewood</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">IX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Crisis</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_92">92</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">X.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Changes</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_104">104</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Newport; or, the Paradise of Nothing to do</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Home à la Pompadour</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">John’s Birthday</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Great Moral Conflict</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Follingsbees arrive</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Mrs. John Seymour’s Party, and what came of it</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XVII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">After the Battle</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_197">197</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XVIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Brick turns up</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_213">213</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XIX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Castle of Indolence</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_228">228</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Van Astrachans</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_243">243</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Mrs. Follingsbee’s Party, and what came of it</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_250">250</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Spider-web broken</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_268">268</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Common-sense Arguments</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_281">281</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Sentiment</span> <i>v.</i> <span class="smcap">Sensibility</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_284">284</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Wedding Bells</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_291">291</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Motherhood</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_297">297</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXVII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Checkmate</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_304">304</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXVIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">After the Storm</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_321">321</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXIX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The New Lillie</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_326">326</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I.<br />
+
+<i><small>FALLING IN LOVE.</small></i></h2>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 313px;">
+<img src="images/i001.jpg" width="313" height="471" alt="girl with parasol" />
+<div class="caption"><span class="smcap">Lillie.</span></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>“WHO <i>is</i> that beautiful creature?” said John
+Seymour, as a light, sylph-like form tripped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
+up the steps of the veranda of the hotel where he was
+lounging away his summer vacation.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“By George, but she’s pretty, though!” said John,
+following with enchanted eyes the distant motions of
+the sylphide.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>The wife that John had imaged, his <i>dream</i>-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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Want to be introduced to her, Seymour?” said
+Carryl Ethridge. “I’ll trot you up. I know her.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 380px;">
+<img src="images/i005.jpg" width="380" height="501" alt="Man talking to girl in crowd" />
+<div class="caption">“I didn’t know he was such a puppy.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! John, John! You wouldn’t, for the world,
+have told to man or woman what a fool you were at
+that moment.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“I think you’ve hooked another fish, Lillie,” said
+Belle Trevors in the ear of the little divinity.</p>
+
+<p>“Who.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;?”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! I saw plain enough,” said the divinity, with
+one of her unconscious, baby-like smiles.</p>
+
+<p>“What are you ladies talking?” said Carryl Ethridge.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, secrets!” said Belle Trevors. “You are very
+presuming, sir, to inquire.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Ethridge,” said Lillie Ellis, “don’t you think it
+would be nice to promenade?”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Ethridge offered his arm at once; and the two sauntered
+to the end of the veranda, where John Seymour
+was standing.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 386px;">
+<img src="images/i007.jpg" width="386" height="303" alt="Man lifting hat to young woman with man by her side" />
+<div class="caption">“Let me present my friend, Mr. Seymour.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The die was cast.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! I think not,” said Lillie, with another smile:
+“we shall soon be good friends, too, I trust.”</p>
+
+<p>“I trust so certainly,” said John, earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“You have not been here long?” said Lillie to John.</p>
+
+<p>“No, I have only just arrived.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you were never here before?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, Miss Ellis, I am entirely new to the place.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am an old <i>habituée</i> here,” said Lillie, “and can
+recommend myself as authority on all points connected
+with it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then,” said John, “I hope you will take me under
+your tuition.”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly, free of charge,” she said, with another
+ravishing smile.</p>
+
+<p>“You haven’t seen the boiling spring yet?” she
+added.</p>
+
+<p>“No, I haven’t seen any thing yet.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, then, if you’ll give me your arm across the
+lawn, I’ll show it to you.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Ethridge and Belle Trevors looked after them with a
+nod of intelligence at each other.</p>
+
+<p>“Hooked, by George!” said Ethridge.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, it’ll be a good thing for Lillie, won’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>“For her? Oh, yes, a capital thing <i>for her!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, for <i>him</i> too.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+wonderful boldness, and at the grace of the fair entertainer.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 293px;">
+<img src="images/i011.jpg" width="293" height="324" alt="couple walking" />
+<div class="caption">“Lillie was leaning confidentially on John’s arm.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“She’ll have him, by George, she will!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, pshaw! she is always hooking fellows, but you
+see she don’t get married,” said matter-of-fact Harry.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+“It won’t come to any thing, now, I’ll bet. Everybody
+said she was engaged to Danforth, but it all ended
+in smoke.”</p>
+
+<p>Whether it would be an engagement, or would all
+end in smoke, was the talk of Carmel Springs for the
+next two weeks.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of that time, the mind of Carmel Springs
+was relieved by the announcement that it was an
+engagement.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Belle, it’s all over. He spoke out to-night.”</p>
+
+<p>“He offered himself?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you took him?”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course I did: I should be a fool not to.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, so I think, decidedly!” said Belle, kissing her
+friend in a rapture. “You dear creature! how nice!
+it’s splendid!”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“He’s a little bald, and getting rather stout,” she
+said reflectively, “but he’ll do.”</p>
+
+<p>“I never saw a creature so dead in love as he is,”
+said Belle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A quiet smile passed over the soft, peach-blow cheeks
+as Lillie answered,—</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, dear, yes! He perfectly worships the ground
+I tread on.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 247px;">
+<img src="images/i013.jpg" width="247" height="277" alt="two girls talking" />
+<div class="caption">“I think he’s nice myself.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Oh, no!” said Belle. “I heard all about him. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>her?</i> Simply
+and honestly, she thought not. He was to be
+congratulated; though it wasn’t a bad thing for her,
+either.</p>
+
+<p>“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>I’m</i>
+determined I’ll have something new.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Well, I would, I’m sure,” said Belle. “Say white
+tulle, for instance: you know you are so <i>petite</i> and fairy-like.”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>trousseau</i>. 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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“To tell the truth, I always thought, Lil, you were
+more in love with Harry than anybody you ever knew.”</p>
+
+<p>Lillie laughed a little, and then the prettiest sweet-pea
+flush deepened the pink of her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>“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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+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!</p>
+
+<p>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:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Hitherto she has lived only in the fashionable
+world; and her literary and domestic education, as she
+herself is sensible, has been somewhat neglected.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p>
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Believe me, dear sister, I never was so much your
+affectionate brother,</p>
+
+<p class='sig'>
+“<span class="smcap">John Seymour</span>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+character as our mother; though circumstances, in
+her case, have been unfavorable to the development
+of it.”</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER II.<br />
+
+<i><small>WHAT SHE THINKS OF IT.</small></i></h2>
+
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 212px;">
+<img src="images/i019.jpg" width="212" height="417" alt="woman reading card that came with bouquet" />
+<div class="caption">“From John, good fellow.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“I must get these into water, or they will wilt,” she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>old</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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, <i>apropos</i>
+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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Then she said, “I brought you some specimens of
+my Souvenir de Malmaison bush, and my first trial of
+your receipt.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, thanks!” said Miss Grace: “how charming those
+roses are! It was too bad to spoil your bush, though.”</p>
+
+<p>“No: it does it good to cut them; it will flower all
+the more. But try one of those cakes,—are they
+right?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>“A letter! How nice!” said Miss Letitia, looking
+towards the shelf. “John is as faithful in writing as if
+he were your lover.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Let me arrange for you, while you read your letter,”
+said Letitia, taking the flowers from her friend’s hands.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Letitia came up to her, and, laying her hand gently
+on hers, said, “What is it, dear?”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Grace lifted her head, and said in a husky
+voice,—</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing, only it is so sudden! John is engaged!”</p>
+
+<p>“Engaged! to whom?”</p>
+
+<p>“To Lillie Ellis.”</p>
+
+<p>“John engaged to Lillie Ellis?” said Miss Ferguson,
+in a tone of shocked astonishment.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 293px;">
+<img src="images/i026.jpg" width="293" height="386" alt="young woman with head on table, another woman bending over her" />
+<div class="caption">“She laid her head forward on the table.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“So he writes me. He is completely infatuated by
+her.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“There’s nothing to her but her wonderful complexion,”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+said Miss Ferguson, “and her pretty little coaxing
+ways; but she is the most utterly selfish, heartless
+little creature that ever breathed.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, <i>she</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps she will,” said Letitia, in a faltering voice.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, my <i>dear</i> Grace!” said Miss Ferguson, “do let
+us make the best of it.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“I <i>did</i> 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 .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. O Letitia! I always did so
+<i>hope</i> that he and Rose would like each other.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But if she really loves him”—</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+to carry our troubles, and of whom we should ask
+guidance.”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>very</i> suddenly.
+Yes,” she added, “I am going to take a course
+of my Bible and Fénelon before I see John,—poor
+fellow.”</p>
+
+<p>“And try to have faith for her,” said Miss Letitia.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“John himself!” repeated Miss Grace, becoming
+pale.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER III.<br />
+
+<small><i>THE SISTER.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>GRACE SEYMOUR was a specimen of a class of
+whom we are happy to say New England possesses
+a great many.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+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?”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“My dear Gracie,” said John, embracing and kissing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+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?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, you know, John, I never saw her,” said Grace,
+deprecatingly, “and so you can’t wonder.”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is a very sweet face,” said Grace, exerting herself
+to be sympathetic, and thankful that she could say
+that much truthfully.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“You see,” he added, “it’s odd, but she took a fancy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 280px;">
+<img src="images/i035.jpg" width="280" height="337" alt="couple talking" />
+<div class="caption">“It <i>is</i> a very sweet face.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Indeed!”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+her. Sometimes it’s rose color, or lilac, or pale
+blue,—just the most trying things to others are what
+she can wear.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Young, John! Why, she’s seven and twenty,” said
+Grace, with astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+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 <i>heart</i> 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.”</p>
+
+<p>To this statement, Grace did not reply. She only
+began nervously sweeping together the <i>débris</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But Grace soon recovered herself, and rose up smiling
+through her tears. “What a fool I am making of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.<br />
+
+<small><i>PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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 <i>trousseau;</i>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>As for Lillie, she lay in a loose <i>negligé</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+it over. It was the one that the enraptured John had
+spent his morning in writing.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Ellis, now, if you’ll try on this jacket—oh! I
+beg your pardon,” said Miss Clippins, observing the
+letter, “we can wait, <i>of course;</i>” and then all three
+laughed as if something very pleasant was in their
+minds.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” said Lillie, giving the letter a toss; “it’ll
+<i>keep;</i>” and she stood up to have a jaunty little blue
+jacket, with its pluffy bordering of swan’s down, fitted
+upon her.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s too bad, now, to take you from your letter,”
+said Miss Clippins, with a sly nod.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m sure you take it philosophically,” said Miss
+Nippins, with a giggle.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, now, to be sure you have. Let’s see,” said
+Miss Clippins, “this is the seventy-fourth or seventy-fifth
+offer, was it?”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>were</i> things in the world which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+didn’t become old stories, even if one had been used to
+them ever since one was born.</p>
+
+<p>Lillie never was caught napping when the point in
+question was the fit of her clothes.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Sarah Selfridge had hers ruffled,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“And the effect was perfectly sweet,” said Miss Clippins.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps, Lillie, you had better have it ruffled,” said
+mamma.</p>
+
+<p>“But three rows laid on plain has such a lovely
+effect,” said Miss Nippins.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps, then, she had better have three rows laid
+on plain,” said mamma.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“That would be a nice way,” said mamma. “Perhaps,
+Lillie, you’d better have it so.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! come now, all of you, just hush,” said Lillie.
+“I know just how I want it done.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Lillie always did know exactly what she wanted:
+she’s a smart little thing.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Shrewd Miss Clippins detected the yawn with which
+she laid down the missive.</p>
+
+<p>“Seems to me your letters don’t meet a very warm
+reception,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 406px;">
+<img src="images/i044.jpg" width="406" height="322" alt="young girl on floor stretching" />
+<div class="caption">“Shrewd Miss Clippins detected the yawn.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m sure I shan’t care,” said Lillie, with a toss of
+her pretty head. “It’s <i>borous</i> any way.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+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 <i>will</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>man</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+Lillie, after all, estimated his devotion at just about
+what it was worth. It amused her to see him make a
+fool of himself.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<i>cortége</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, horrors! don’t! I’d rather never be saved,”
+Lillie answered with a fervent sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>The story was repeated afterwards as an amusing
+<i>bon mot</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+astounding to the prosaic, hard-working papa, who
+stood financially responsible for all her finery.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,—“<i>With
+all my worldly goods I thee endow.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Obey John!” Her face wore a pretty air of droll
+assurance at the thought. It was too funny.</p>
+
+<p>“My dear,” said Belle Trevors, who was one of Lillie’s
+incense-burners and a bridesmaid elect, “<i>have</i> you the
+least idea how rich he is?”</p>
+
+<p>“He is well enough off to do about any thing I want,”
+said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I can show him how to use it,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“He and his sister keep a nice sort of old-fashioned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+place there, and jog about in an old countrified carriage,
+picking up poor children and visiting schools. She is
+a <i>very</i> superior woman, that sister.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t like superior women,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“And a place at Newport for the summer,” said Belle
+Trevors.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Delightful,” said Belle, “<i>if</i> you can make him do
+it.”</p>
+
+<p>“See if I don’t,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“You dear, funny creature, you,—how you do
+always ride on the top of the wave!” said Belle.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s what I was born for,” said Lillie. “By the by,
+Belle, I got a letter from Harry last night.”</p>
+
+<p>“Poor fellow, had he heard”—</p>
+
+<p>“Why, of course not. I didn’t want he should till
+it’s all over. It’s best, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“He is such a good fellow, and so devoted,—it does
+seem a pity.”</p>
+
+<p>“Devoted! well, I should rather think he was,” said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“You ought not to write to him,” said Belle.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, he’ll have to stop making love to you after
+you’re married.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think it’s too bad on us girls, though,” said Belle.
+“You ought to leave us our turn.”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you, I don’t think I shall take up with
+second-hand articles,” said Belle, with some spirit.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V.<br />
+
+<small><i>WEDDING, AND WEDDING-TRIP.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>WELL, and so they were married, with all the
+newest modern forms, ceremonies, and accessories.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 “<i>paté de fois gras</i>” if we don’t
+eat it? What is to become of us if we do is entirely a
+secondary question.</p>
+
+<p>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;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed the approved wedding journey, the
+programme of which had been drawn up by Lillie herself,
+with <i>carte blanche</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+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
+<i>attaché</i> of a gay bird, whose string he held in hand,
+and who now seemed to pull him hither and thither at
+her will.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+John was not so sure but that she might prove a little
+too masterful for him.</p>
+
+<p>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,—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse">“I saw her, on a nearer view,</div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A spirit, yet a woman too,—</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Her household motions light and free,</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And steps of virgin liberty.</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A creature not too bright or good</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">For human nature’s daily food,</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">For transient pleasures, simple wiles,</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.”</span></div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The reader may see, from the conversations we have
+detailed, that nothing was farther from Lillie’s intentions
+than any such conformity.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.<br />
+
+<small><i>HONEY-MOON, AND AFTER.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Grace had read her Bible and Fénelon to such purpose,
+that she had accepted her cross with open arms.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“John is so good a man,” she said to Miss Letitia
+Ferguson, “that I am sure Lillie cannot but become a
+good woman.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>John’s bachelor apartments had been new furnished,
+and furbished, and made into a perfect bower of roses.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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,—<i>hers</i>, with an intensity
+of ownership that should shut out all former proprietors.</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>Grace found, the first week, that to be housekeeper
+to a young duchess, in an American village and with
+American servants, was no sinecure.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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, <i>Who</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 367px;">
+<img src="images/i068.jpg" width="367" height="410" alt="Two women talking" />
+<div class="caption">“<i>Who</i> is to do all this?”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! I’m sure I don’t know how it’s to be done,”
+said Lillie, gayly. “Mamma always got my things done
+<i>somehow</i>. They always <i>were</i> 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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“But you see, Lillie dear, it’s almost impossible to <i>get</i>
+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?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t, darling, talk so, for pity’s sake,” she said.
+“I will go to John, and we will arrange it somehow.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+the field, which were fed and clothed, “like Solomon in
+all his glory,” without ever giving a moment’s care to
+the matter.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>used</i> to
+this kind of thing; can’t do without it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I’ll try to-morrow, John,” said Grace, patiently.
+“There is Mrs. Atkins,—she is a very nice woman.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, exactly! just the thing,” said John. “Yes,
+we’ll get her to take all Lillie’s things every week.
+That settles it.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Such a price for the fine linen of his little angel
+rather staggered him; but he gulped it down.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>stupid</i>,—was a little drop too much
+in her cup. A bright streak appeared in either cheek, as
+she said,—</p>
+
+<p>“Well, John, I never knew you found Springdale
+stupid before. I’m sure, we <i>have</i> been happy here,”—and
+her voice quavered.</p>
+
+<p>“Pshaw, Gracie! you know what I mean. I don’t
+mean that <i>I</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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes, I see,” said John. “Gracie, <i>isn’t</i> 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?”</p>
+
+<p>“They are very sweet, and she is charmingly pretty,”
+said Grace; “and I love her dearly.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“My dear John,” said Grace, “you forget what time
+it is. Good-night!”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.<br />
+
+<small><i>WILL SHE LIKE IT?</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“I know it,” said John. “I am going to-morrow.
+You see, Gracie, I couldn’t well before.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! I have told them all about it, and I have kept
+things up; but then there are so many who want to
+see <i>you</i>, and so many things that you alone could
+settle and manage.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you think she would like it, Grace?”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed, John, you must know better than I. If<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+anybody could make her take an interest in it, it would
+be you.”</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>créped</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>“You like me, don’t you?” she said, as she saw the
+delight in John’s eyes.</p>
+
+<p>John was tempted to lay hold of his plaything.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>As to Lillie, there was an extraordinary sympathy of
+sentiment between them at that moment. John was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>Te Deum</i>,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Your</i> Sunday school, John? Why, bless me! do
+<i>you</i> teach Sunday school?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly I do. Grace and I have a school of two
+hundred children and young people belonging to our
+factories. I am superintendent.”</p>
+
+<p>“I never did hear of any thing so odd!” said Lillie.
+“What in the world can you want to take all that trouble<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+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!”</p>
+
+<p>“Pooh! Lillie, child, you don’t know any thing about
+them. They are just as cleanly and respectable as anybody.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, these are our people. They are the
+laborers from whose toils our wealth comes; and we
+owe them something.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well! you pay them something, don’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>John looked grave. “Lillie,” he said, “you shouldn’t<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+speak of any of your fellow-beings in that heartless
+way.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I beg your pardon, my darling. I didn’t mean,
+dear, that <i>you</i> were heartless, but that what you said
+<i>sounded</i> so. I knew you didn’t really mean it. I
+didn’t ask you, dear, to go to <i>work</i>,—only to be company
+for me.”</p>
+
+<p>“And I ask you to stay at home, and be company
+for <i>me</i>. 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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, I am <i>interested</i> 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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I should think you might be interested in <i>me:</i>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Now, Lillie, darling, you know that isn’t so.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, I <i>need</i> it myself.”</p>
+
+<p>“Need it,—what for? I can’t imagine.”</p>
+
+<p>“To keep me from becoming a mere selfish, worldly
+man, and living for mere material good and pleasure.”</p>
+
+<p>“You dear old Don Quixote! Well, you are altogether
+in the clouds above me. I can’t understand a
+word of all that.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, good-by, darling,” said John, kissing her,
+and hastening out of the room, to cut short the interview.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+any thing but to be fine, and to ride in your coaches.”
+In Father Adam’s description of the original Eve, he
+says,—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse">“All higher knowledge in her presence falls</div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Degraded; wisdom, in discourse with her,</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Loses, discountenanced, and like folly shows.”</span></div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>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,—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“Yet when I approach</span></div>
+<div class="verse">Her loveliness, so absolute she seems</div>
+<div class="verse">And in herself complete, so well to know</div>
+<div class="verse">Her own, that what she wills to do or say</div>
+<div class="verse">Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.”</div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+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:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“What transports thee so?</span></div>
+<div class="verse">An outside?—fair, no doubt, and worthy well</div>
+<div class="verse">Thy cherishing, thy honor, and thy love,</div>
+<div class="verse">Not thy subjection. Weigh her with thyself,</div>
+<div class="verse">Then value. Oft-times nothing profits more</div>
+<div class="verse">Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right</div>
+<div class="verse">Well managed: of that skill the more thou knowest,</div>
+<div class="verse">The more she will acknowledge thee her head,</div>
+<div class="verse">And to realities yield all her shows.”</div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>No, she did not say it. It would be well for us all
+if we <i>did</i> put into words, plain and explicit, many instinctive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 “<i>mari</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>débauchées</i>, 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 <i>à
+l’Américaine</i>, and then marry and flirt till forty <i>à
+la Française</i>. This was about Lillie’s plan of life. Could
+she hope to carry it out in Springdale?</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.<br />
+
+<small><i>SPINDLEWOOD.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Gracie, that must be your work,” said John; “you
+know I shall have an important case next week.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“And then to bargain with the book-stores, and
+make the money go ‘far as possible,’” said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think Lillie would like that,” put in John.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, she’ll like it of course!” said John, with
+some sinking of heart about the Sunday-school books.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“I know,” she said to John when they were by
+themselves, “that you and Grace both think I’m a
+horrid creature.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, no, dearest; indeed we don’t.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“No, darling, not the least.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Darling, I’d a thousand times rather have you
+what you are,” said John; for—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 8em;">“What she wills to do,</span></div>
+<div class="verse">Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.”</div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>“O John! come, you ought to be sincere.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sincere, Lillie! I am sincere.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+promenaded and talked with Lillie, and Lillie alone,
+with an exclusive devotion.</p>
+
+<p>“What a lovely young creature your new sister is!”
+he said to Grace. “She seems to have so much religious
+sensibility.”</p>
+
+<p>“I say, Lillie,” said John, “Mathews seemed to be
+smitten with you. I had a notion of interfering.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>The next Sunday, Lillie rode over to Spindlewood
+with John and Rose and Mr. Mathews.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When all was over, Lillie sat back on the carriage-cushions,
+and smelled at her gold vinaigrette.</p>
+
+<p>“You are all worn out, dear,” said John, tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s no matter,” she said faintly.</p>
+
+<p>“O Lillie darling! <i>does</i> your head ache?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Lillie, <i>it is not your duty to go</i>,” said John; “if you
+are not made ill by this, I never will take you again;
+you are too precious to be risked.”</p>
+
+<p>“How can you say so, John? I’m a poor little
+creature,—no use to anybody.”</p>
+
+<p>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, &amp;c., &amp;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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.<br />
+
+<small><i>A CRISIS.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>ONE of the shrewdest and most subtle modern
+French writers has given his views of womankind
+in the following passage:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“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, <i>Every
+woman lies</i>—obliging lies—venial lies—sublime lies—horrible
+lies—but always the obligation of lying.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Lying is to them the very foundation of language,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.’”</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+American fashionable society, that the things said of
+the Parisian woman begin in some cases to apply to
+some women in America.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 274px;">
+<img src="images/i095.jpg" width="274" height="327" alt="man sitting down reading" />
+<div class="caption">“He found the date of the birth of ‘Lillie Ellis.’”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+this petty feminine <i>ruse</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+his faith shattered in the woman he loved, was a terrible
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Where in the world is John going?” said Lillie,
+running to the door, and calling after him in imperative
+tones.</p>
+
+<p>“John, John, come back. I haven’t done with you
+yet;” but John never turned his head.</p>
+
+<p>“How very odd! what in the world is the matter
+with him?” she said to herself.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“John, what is the matter with you?” said Grace at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+the tea-table. “You are upsetting every thing, and
+don’t drink your tea.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“What can be the matter?”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+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?”</p>
+
+<p>“I was afraid you wouldn’t like me if I did,” said
+Lillie, in her sobs.</p>
+
+<p>“O Lillie! I should have liked you, no matter
+how old you were,—only you should have told me
+<i>the truth</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know it—I know it—oh, it <i>was</i> 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!”</p>
+
+<p>Lillie’s little heart beat with triumph under all her
+sobs: she had got him, and should hold him yet.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>John may of course be excused for feeling that
+his flattering little penitent was more to him than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+ever; and as to Lillie, she gave a sigh of relief. <i>That</i>
+was over, “anyway;” and she had him not only safe,
+but more completely hers than before.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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
+<i>them</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“I <i>do</i>—I should,” interposed John.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, well! <i>you</i>—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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, nonsense! Now, John, don’t talk humbug.
+I’d like to see <i>you</i> 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?”</p>
+
+<p>And Lillie put her white arm round his neck, and
+her downy cheek to his, and said archly, “Come, now,
+confess.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>As fate would have it, the very next day after this
+little scene, who should walk into the parlor where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>must</i> tell, or you may be sent
+to jail, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>Anne giggled still harder, and tossed her head:
+“Then it’s to jail I’ll have to go; for I don’t know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dear me,” said Lillie, with an air of edifying
+candor, “what a fuss they make! Set down my age
+‘twenty-seven,’ John,” she added.</p>
+
+<p>Grace started, and looked at John; he met her eye,
+and blushed to the roots of his hair.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, what’s the matter?” said Lillie, “are you
+embarrassed at telling your age?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course,” said Grace; and she had the humanity
+never to allude to the subject with her brother.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER X.<br />
+
+<small><i>CHANGES.</i></small></h2>
+
+<div class='blockquot'><p><span class="smcap">Scene.</span>—<i>A chamber at the Seymour House. Lillie discovered weeping.
+John rushing in with empressement.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>“LILLIE, you <i>shall</i> tell me what ails you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing ails me, John.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, there does; you were crying when I came in.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, well, that’s nothing!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, but it <i>is</i> a great deal! What is the matter?
+I can see that you are not happy.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t feel strong! I’ve noticed it, Lillie.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie,” said John, “if you do need sea-air,
+you must go. I can’t leave my business; that’s the
+trouble.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Lillie, I hope this place doesn’t affect you
+unpleasantly,” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“Poor little pussy!” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, Lillie!” said John, “would you like the rooms
+refurnished? It can easily be done if you wish it.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, darling, you must go to the sea-side. I shall
+have you sent right off to Newport. Gracie can go
+with you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, no, John! not for the world. Gracie must stay,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+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,”—</p>
+
+<p>“Exactly, certainly; and, Lillie, how would you like
+the parlors arranged if you had your own way?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, John! don’t think of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“But I just want to know for curiosity. Now, how
+would you have them if you could?”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>marquetrie</i> tables, and all sorts of little French
+things. They had such a gay and cheerful look.”</p>
+
+<p>“Now, Lillie, if you want our rooms like that, you
+shall have them.”</p>
+
+<p>“O John, you are too good! I couldn’t ask such
+a sacrifice.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Gracie! Now, John, I know she has associations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+with all the things in this house, and it would
+be cruel to her,” said Lillie, with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 273px;">
+<img src="images/i108.jpg" width="273" height="368" alt="Young woman on man's lap" />
+<div class="caption">“She perched herself on his knee.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, John, do pray tell Gracie that it’s <i>your</i> 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!”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know what I shall do without you, John.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, well, I couldn’t stay possibly! But I may run
+down now and then, for a night, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, we must make that do,” said Lillie, with
+a pensive sigh.</p>
+
+<p>Thus two very important moves on Miss Lillie’s
+checker-board of life were skilfully made. The house<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+was to be refitted, and the Newport precedent established.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>Springdale had no <i>beau monde</i>, 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?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But the legend goes on to say that, while he was
+delighting in her charms, she heard the sound of <i>mice</i>
+behind the wainscot, and left him forthwith to rush
+after her congenial prey.</p>
+
+<p>Lillie had heard afar the sound of <i>mice</i> 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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.<br />
+
+<small><i>NEWPORT; OR, THE PARADISE OF NOTHING
+TO DO.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>This was Lillie’s highest ideal of happiness; and
+didn’t she enjoy it?</p>
+
+<p>Wasn’t it something to flame forth in wondrous
+toilets in the eyes of Belle Trevors and Margy Silloway
+and Lottie Cavers, who were <i>not</i> 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?</p>
+
+<p>And wasn’t it a triumph when all her old beaux
+came flocking round her, and her parlors became a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+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!</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why don’t you speak to her?” said Lottie Cavers.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, my dear! she wouldn’t mind <i>me</i>. 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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Lillie, as queen in her own parlor, was all grace and
+indulgence. Hers was now to be the sisterly <i>rôle</i>,
+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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+“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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 370px;">
+<img src="images/i115.jpg" width="370" height="326" alt="young woman smoking" />
+<div class="caption">“And would sometimes smoke one purely for good company.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are, Gracie?”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, but do you think John wants you to go?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said Letitia, “if a man begins to say A in
+that line, he must say B.”</p>
+
+<p>“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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“It seems a pity John couldn’t understand her.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>So, by a little feminine tact in suggestion, Grace despatched
+her brother to spend a day or two in Newport.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>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 <i>habitués</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“No more than the rest of you,” said Danforth.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know about that, Dan. I think <i>you</i> might<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+have been taken for master of those premises. Look
+here now, Dan, why didn’t you <i>take</i> little Lill yourself?
+Everybody thought you were going to last
+year.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who thought you were so practical, Dan?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; I keep her in cigarettes,” said Danforth;
+“she’s got a box of them somewhere under her ruffles
+now.”</p>
+
+<p>“What if Seymour should find them?” said Tom.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“How came Seymour to marry her?”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Well, if that isn’t the best thing I ever heard!”
+said Nichols.</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>holiness</i>
+of doing just as you’ve a mind to, and all that,” said
+Danforth.</p>
+
+<p>“By George, Dan, you oughtn’t to laugh. She may
+have more good in her than you think.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, humbug! don’t I know her?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, at any rate she’s a wonderful creature to
+hold her looks. By George! how she <i>does</i> hold out!
+You’d say, now, she wasn’t more than twenty.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; she understands getting herself up,” said Danforth,
+“and touches up her cheeks a bit now and then.”</p>
+
+<p>“She don’t paint, though?”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t paint! <i>Don’t</i> she? I’d like to know if she
+don’t; but she does it like an artist, like an old master,
+in fact.”</p>
+
+<p>“Or like a young mistress,” said Tom, and then
+laughed at his own wit.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“She is so pretty, so frank, and so impulsive,” he
+said. “Such women are always misconstrued. I’m
+resolved to caution her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Lillie,” he said, “who is this Danforth?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Lillie, if I were you, I wouldn’t have any
+thing to do with him.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! I am careful. Mamma is here, you know, all
+the while; and I never receive except she is present.”</p>
+
+<p>John sat abstractedly fingering the various objects
+on the table; then he opened a drawer in the same
+mechanical manner.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, Lillie! what’s this? what in the world are
+these?”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, a box of cigarettes!—of course, they
+can be of no use to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course: they are only a sort of curiosity that he
+imports from Spain with his cigars.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve a great mind to send them back to him myself,”
+said John.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Lillie, you could go, and stay with me at
+Gracie’s,” said John, brightening at this proposition.</p>
+
+<p>“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”—</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, it was to please you.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But perhaps you would want to go with me to
+New York to select the furniture?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, the artist does all that! Charlie Ferrola will
+give his orders to Simon &amp; Sauls, and they will do
+every thing up complete. It’s the way they all do—saves
+lots of trouble.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>fib</i> a little, John feared, especially when he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+looked back to the chapter about her age,—and then,
+perhaps, about the cigarettes.</p>
+
+<p>Well, she might, perhaps, in a wild, excited hour,
+have smoked <i>one or two</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>à la nuage</i>, &amp;c.,
+&amp;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+to be got in any thing? John owned this fashionable
+meteor,—why shouldn’t he rejoice in it?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.<br />
+
+<small><i>HOME À LA POMPADOUR.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>There was not a relic of the past. The house was
+furbished and resplendent—it was gilded—it was
+frescoed—it was <i>à la</i> Pompadour, and <i>à la</i> Louis
+Quinze and Louis Quatorze, and <i>à la</i> every thing
+Frenchy and pretty, and gay and glistening. For,
+though the parlors at first were the only apartments
+contemplated in this <i>renaissance</i>, 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
+<i>them!</i></p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>John was able to sympathize with Lillie in her childish
+delight in the new house, because he <i>loved</i> 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 <i>not</i> love John.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>But all this <i>is not love</i>. It may exist, to be sure,
+where there <i>is</i> love; it generally does. But it may
+also exist where there is no love. Love, my dear
+ladies, is <i>self-sacrifice;</i> 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, <i>for
+the</i> 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
+<i>how to love</i>. 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><i>He</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+not, and would not, take any trouble about any
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+might appear in her mind. Then he seized a favorable
+hour, and produced his book.</p>
+
+<p>“Lillie,” he said, “I want to make you understand a
+little about our expenditures and income.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, dreadful, John! don’t, pray! I never had any
+head for things of that kind.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, <i>please</i> let me show you,” persisted John.
+“I’ve made it just as simple as can be.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 358px;">
+<img src="images/i133.jpg" width="358" height="379" alt="young woman with hand on forehead looking away from man holding account book out to her" />
+<div class="caption">“I never had the least head for figures.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“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;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+mamma always said so; and if there <i>is</i> 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
+<i>man’s</i> work, and men have got to see to it. Now,
+<i>please</i> don’t,” she added, coming to him coaxingly,
+and putting her arm round his neck.</p>
+
+<p>“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”—</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, it was all because you wanted them.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Come, now, my darling, do be a sensible woman,
+and not act like a baby.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Lillie, how silly! Please do listen, now. You
+have no idea how simple and easy what I want to
+explain to you is.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“If that woman was <i>my</i> wife now,” I fancy I hear
+some youth with a promising moustache remark, “I’d
+make her behave!”</p>
+
+<p>Well, sir, supposing she was your wife, what are you
+going to do about it?</p>
+
+<p>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. <i>Such</i> 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?</p>
+
+<p>But didn’t she promise to obey? Didn’t she? Of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII.<br />
+
+<small><i>JOHN’S BIRTHDAY.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>“MY dear Lillie,” quoth John one morning, “next
+week Wednesday is my birthday.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is it? How charming! What shall we do?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Lillie, it has always been our custom—Grace’s
+and mine—to give a grand <i>fête</i> here to all our
+work-people. We invite them all over <i>en masse</i>, and
+have the house and grounds all open, and devote ourselves
+to giving them a good time.”</p>
+
+<p>Lillie’s countenance fell.</p>
+
+<p>“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; <i>this</i> house is not made for a
+missionary asylum.”</p>
+
+<p>John, thus admonished, looked at his house, and was
+fain to admit that there was the usual amount of that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+good, selfish, hard grit—called common sense—in
+Lillie’s remarks.</p>
+
+<p>Rooms have their atmosphere, their necessities, their
+artistic proprieties. Apartments <i>à la</i> 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 <i>salon</i>, and into his
+Pompadour <i>boudoir</i>, 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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+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 <i>himself</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But you know, dearie, what is said about doing
+good, ‘hoping for nothing again,’” said John.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“My dear, I don’t want you to injure yourself!”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I didn’t know that you had invited the Follingsbees
+and Simpkinses,” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“Didn’t I tell you? I meant to,” said Mrs. Lillie,
+innocently.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>And so, as John was greatly beloved by Bridget, and
+as all the domestic staff had the true Irish fealty to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+man of the house, and would run themselves off their
+feet in his service any day,—it came to pass that the
+<i>fête</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>“My dearest child,” said John, who, to say the truth,
+was beginning to find this thing less charming than it
+used to be, “I <i>am</i> satisfied. I am much obliged to
+you. I’m sure you have done all that could be asked.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Never mind, Lillie, I’ll see to it, and set it all right.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 404px;">
+<img src="images/i143.jpg" width="404" height="372" alt="Girl in bed with man looking down at her" />
+<div class="caption">“Oh, me! it makes my head ache to think of it.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“There, there, pussy! only don’t worry,” said John,
+in soothing tones.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t think me horrid, <i>please</i> don’t,” said Lillie, piteously.
+“I did try to have things go right; didn’t I?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So John called Rosa, on his way downstairs. “Show
+me the sofa that they spoiled,” said he.</p>
+
+<p>“Sofa?” said Rosa.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; I understand the children greased the sofa in
+Mrs. Seymour’s boudoir.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, dear, no! nothing of the sort; I’ve been putting
+every thing to rights in all the rooms, and they
+look beautifully.”</p>
+
+<p>“Didn’t they break something?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, no, nothing! The little things were good as
+could be.”</p>
+
+<p>“That Leaning Tower, and that little Diana,” suggested
+John.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, she is,” said John, as he turned away, drawing
+a long, slow sigh.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+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?</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Hang it all!” said John, with a great flounce as he
+turned over on the sofa. “I’m not up to par this
+morning.”</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>exigeante</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Lillie is entirely knocked up by the affair yesterday;
+she had a terrible headache this morning,” said John.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Poor child! She is a delicate little thing,” said
+Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>John looked relieved; but after a minute broke out
+again:—</p>
+
+<p>“I say, Gracie, Lillie has gone and invited the Simpkinses
+and the Follingsbees here this fall. Just think
+of it!”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I suppose you expect your wife to have the
+right of inviting her company,” said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“But, you know, Gracie, they are not at all our sort<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then you think I ought to put a good face on their
+coming?” said John, with a sigh of relief.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, certainly! of course. What else can you do?
+It’s one of the things to be expected with a young
+wife.”</p>
+
+<p>“And do you think the Wilcoxes and the Fergusons
+and the rest of our set will be civil?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Gracie, you are right; and I’ll constrain
+myself to do the thing handsomely,” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“You think Lillie will grow into our ways by and
+by?”—he said inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I think they admire her,” said Grace, evasively,
+“and feel disposed to be as intimate as she will
+let them.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>John opened his eyes very wide.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“That reminds me,” said John, suddenly rising up
+from the sofa. “Do you know, Gracie, that Colonel
+Sydenham has come back from his cruise?”</p>
+
+<p>“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,’”—</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV.<br />
+
+<small><i>A GREAT MORAL CONFLICT.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>“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.</p>
+
+<p>John thought to himself he “didn’t care <i>what</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>His fair one had a point to carry,—a point that
+instinct told her was to be managed with great adroitness.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said John, over his newspaper, “what is this
+something so very particular?”</p>
+
+<p>“First, sir, put down that paper, and listen to me,”
+said Mrs. Lillie, coming up and seating herself on his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+knee, and sweeping down the offending paper with
+an air of authority.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes’m,” said John, submissively. “Let’s see,—how
+was that in the marriage service? I promised
+to obey, didn’t I?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“And got things into a pretty mess in that way,”
+said John; “but come, now, what is it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, John, you know the Follingsbees are coming
+next week?”</p>
+
+<p>“I know it,” said John, looking amiable and conciliatory.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, dear, there are some things about our establishment
+that are not just as I should feel pleased
+to receive them to.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah!” said John; “why, Lillie, I thought we were
+fine as a fiddle, from the top of the house to the
+bottom.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+the apparatus, are such an adornment; and then the
+Follingsbees are such judges of wine. He imports his
+own from Spain.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Now, John, here is some more of your Quixotism,
+isn’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+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.’”</p>
+
+<p>“I think,” said Lillie, “they were abominably impertinent
+to talk so to you. I should have told them so.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Didn’t your mother object?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+don’t see why you should go on denying yourself just
+to keep them in the ways of virtue.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, couldn’t you, just while the Follingsbees are
+here, do differently?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, Lillie; there’s my pledge, you see. No: it’s
+really impossible.”</p>
+
+<p>Lillie frowned and looked disconsolate.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“We will treat them just as handsomely as we treat
+ourselves,” said John, “and mortal man or woman
+ought not to ask more.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+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 <i>carte blanche</i>
+for every thing!”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“You shall have <i>carte blanche</i>, dearest,” he said, “for
+every thing but what we were speaking of; and that
+will content you, won’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+to everybody here. And then we can show off
+our rooms; they really are made to give parties in.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XV.<br />
+
+<i><small>THE FOLLINGSBEES ARRIVE.</small></i></h2>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 367px;">
+<img src="images/i161.jpg" width="367" height="419" alt="Couple walking in company" />
+<div class="caption"><span class="smcap">The Follingsbees.</span></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>NEXT week the Follingsbees alighted, so to speak,
+from a cloud of glory. They came in their own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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?”</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>antennæ</i>.
+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 <i>la petite</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>“How do I find you, <i>ma chère?</i>” said Mrs. Follingsbee,
+folding Lillie rapturously to her breast. “I’ve<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+been just dying to see you! How lovely every thing
+looks! Oh, <i>ciel!</i> how like dear Paris!” she said, as she
+was conducted into the parlor, and sunk upon the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“I say, Dick,” said his lady, “have you seen to the
+bags and wraps?”</p>
+
+<p>“All right, madam.”</p>
+
+<p>“And my basket of medicines and the books?”</p>
+
+<p>“O. K.,” replied Dick, sententiously.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! how often must I tell you not to use those
+odious slang terms?” said his wife, reprovingly.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! Mrs. John Seymour knows <i>me</i> of old,” said
+Mr. Follingsbee, winking facetiously at Lillie. “We’ve
+had many a jolly lark together; haven’t we, Lill?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly we have,” said Lillie, affably. “But
+come, darling,” she added to Mrs. Follingsbee, “don’t
+you want to be shown your room?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>parvenu</i> was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+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 <i>rôle</i>. She was always cultivating herself
+in her own way; that is to say, she was assiduous
+in what she called keeping up her French.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>not</i> got the
+French language.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>demi-monde</i>
+of Paris; while secretly she imagined herself
+the fascinating heroine of a French romance.</p>
+
+<p>The friendship between Mrs. Follingsbee and Lillie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+“<i>ma chèred</i>” Lillie, Lillie “my deared” Mrs.
+Follingsbee: and the pair are to be seen at this blessed
+moment sitting with their arms tenderly round each<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+other’s waists on a <i>causeuse</i> in Mrs. Follingsbee’s dressing-room.</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t know, <i>mignonne</i>,” said Mrs. Follingsbee,
+“how perfectly <i>ravissante</i> these apartments are! I’m
+so glad poor Charlie did them so well for you. I laid
+my commands on him, poor fellow!”</p>
+
+<p>“Pray, how does your affair with him get on?” said
+Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, poor fellow! it’s a pity he ever got married,”
+said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“And she pitches into him about you,” said Lillie,
+not slow to perceive the true literal rendering of all
+this.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course, <i>ma chère</i>,—tears him, rends him, lacerates<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+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!”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Chère étourdie</i>,” 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,—‘<i>jeune
+Madame, un mari qui vous adore</i>,’ ready to put all
+things under your feet. How can you feel for a worn,
+lonely heart like mine, that sighs for congeniality?”</p>
+
+<p>“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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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, <i>mon Dieu</i>, 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.”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean that people will talk about you,” said
+Lillie. “Well, I assure you, dearest, they <i>will</i> talk awfully,
+if you are not very careful. I say this to you
+frankly, as your friend, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, <i>ma petite!</i> you don’t need to tell me that. I
+<i>am</i> careful,” said Mrs. Follingsbee. “I am always lecturing
+Charlie, and showing him that we must keep up
+<i>les convenances;</i> but is it not hard on us poor women
+to lead always this repressed, secretive life?”</p>
+
+<p>“What made you marry Mr. Follingsbee?” said
+Lillie, with apparent artlessness.</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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, <i>ma reine</i>. Let me ring for your maid
+to dress you for dinner. <i>Au revoir.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>It will be observed here that our dear Lillie did not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 335px;">
+<img src="images/i171.jpg" width="335" height="412" alt="Man seated with paper" />
+<div class="caption"><span class="smcap">Mr. Charlie Ferrola.</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>His profession was nominally that of architecture
+and landscape gardening; but, in point of fact, consisted
+in telling certain rich, <i>blasé</i>, 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
+<i>éclat</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>her</i>, thank
+heaven! Poor thing! Don’t you think Mrs. John Seymour
+has gone off astonishingly since her marriage?”
+she said to Thérèse.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Mon Dieu, madame, q’oui</i>,” said the obedient tire-woman,
+scraping the very back of her throat in her
+zeal. “Madame Seymour has the real American
+<i>maigreur</i>. 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 <i>you</i>, madame, you come to your prime
+like great rose! Oh, dere is no comparison of you to
+Mrs. John Seymour!”</p>
+
+<p>And Thérèse found her words highly acceptable,
+after the manner of all her tribe, who prophesy smooth
+things unto their mistresses.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Mercy on us, John! what can I do? All the world<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a tremendous infliction, Lillie!”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“You must feel quite a difference between that country
+and this, in regard to facilities of living,” said Miss
+Letitia.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, indeed! do I not?” said Mrs. Follingsbee, casting
+up her eyes. “Life here in America is in a state
+of perfect disorganization.”</p>
+
+<p>“We are a young people here, madam,” said John.
+“We haven’t had time to organize the smaller conveniences
+of life.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+better one than a more intellectual being can be; thus
+she gives the child a strong constitution, which is the
+main thing.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>two</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+boy to enter a profession: so the leisure of parents for
+literature, art, and society is preserved.”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>myself;</i> 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 <i>hire</i> a woman for money to be
+faithful in what I cannot do for love?”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Sacrifice!</i>” said Mrs. Ferguson. “How can we?
+Our children are our new life. We live in them a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, well, mamma!” said Rose, “you know we are
+old-fashioned folks, and not up to modern improvements.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“What a pity!” said Rose; “for she’s a smart,
+bright little thing; and it’s cunning to hear her talk
+French.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI.<br />
+
+<small><i>MRS. JOHN SEYMOUR’S PARTY, AND WHAT CAME
+OF IT.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>A French <i>artiste</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Follingsbee was forward, fussy, and advisory, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+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:—</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, <i>ma chère!</i> I understand perfectly: your husband
+may be ‘<i>un peu borné</i>,’ as they say in Paris, but
+still ‘<i>un homme très respectable</i>,’ (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 <i>ennuyeuse</i>, 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 ‘<i>bourgeois</i>,’ and yours ‘<i>recherché</i>,’
+if you give them nothing but tea and biscuit. Now,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+the stream of time, and leave their record only in a
+few bad colds and days of indigestion, which also time
+would mercifully cure.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>not</i>
+“the thing” is one of the divine mysteries, about
+which whoso observes Boston society will do well not
+too curiously to exercise his reason.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 “<i>miel-fleur</i>”
+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.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that, in some few instances, the <i>pleroma</i>
+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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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 <i>intaglio</i> than
+in cameo. Of course, they most thoroughly believe in
+themselves, but in a bland and genial way. “<i>Noblesse
+oblige</i>” 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>they</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dear Mrs. Lennox,” said Rose Ferguson, “indeed,
+it is not Mr. Seymour’s fault. These persons are invited
+by his wife.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, what business has he to allow his wife to
+invite them? A man should be master in his own
+house.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, my dear Mrs. Lennox,” said Mrs. Ferguson,
+“such a pretty young creature, and just married! of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+course it would be unhandsome not to allow her to
+have her friends.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, Jane dear, that’s just the result of allowing
+you to visit in this flash, vulgar genteel society,” said
+the troubled mamma.</p>
+
+<p>“Bless your heart, mamma, the world moves on, you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+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?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! I don’t know, my dear; you must ask your
+father. He is very unwilling to go abroad.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+Ferguson, they swept it out merrily, and thought no
+more of it.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“A baby is mamma’s infallible recipe for strengthening
+the character,” said Rose, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, as the saying is, they bring love with
+them,” said Mrs. Ferguson; “and love always brings
+wisdom.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII.<br />
+
+<small><i>AFTER THE BATTLE.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, it is all well over,” said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“As some of the great fashionable parties do, where
+young women get merry with champagne, and young
+men get drunk,” said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said John, “I don’t exactly like the whole<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said Gracie, “things will be settled now
+quietly, I hope.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes! that will be capital,” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you think Lillie will be interested in Froude?”
+asked Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Any thing you please, John. What shall it be?”</p>
+
+<p>“But I don’t want to hold you all back on my account,”
+said John.</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+‘History of Morals,’ and have our sessions Tuesday
+evenings,—one Tuesday at their house, and the other
+at mine, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you couldn’t come without her, of course,”
+said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course not; that would be too cruel, to leave
+the poor little thing at home alone.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p class='center'>
+<span class="smcap">Scene.</span>—<i>After tea in the Seymour parlor. John at a table, reading.<br />
+Lillie in a corner, embroidering.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><i>Lillie.</i> “Look here, John, I want to ask you something.”</p>
+
+<p><i>John</i>,—putting down his book, and crossing to her,
+“Well, dear?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Lillie.</i> “There, would you make a green leaf there,
+or a brown one?”</p>
+
+<p><i>John</i>,—endeavoring to look wise, “Well, a brown
+one.”</p>
+
+<p><i>Lillie.</i> “That’s just like you, John; now, don’t you
+see that a brown one would just spoil the effect?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! would it?” said John, innocently. “Well,
+what did you ask me for?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dear Lillie, I have been talking about every thing
+I could think of,” said John, apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I want you to keep on talking, and put up
+that great heavy book. What is it, any way?”</p>
+
+<p>“Lecky’s ‘History of Morals,’” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“How dreadful! do you really mean to read it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly; we are all reading it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who all?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, Gracie, and Letitia and Rose Ferguson.”</p>
+
+<p>“Rose Ferguson? I don’t believe it. Why, Rose
+isn’t twenty yet! She cannot care about such stuff.”</p>
+
+<p>“She does care, and enjoys it too,” said John, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a pity, then, you didn’t get her for a wife
+instead of me,” said Lillie, in a tone of pique.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“How close this room is!”</p>
+
+<p>John read on.</p>
+
+<p>“John, do open the door!”</p>
+
+<p>John rose, opened the door, and returned to his book.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, there’s that draft from the hall-window. John,
+you’ll have to shut the door.”</p>
+
+<p>John shut it, and read on.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, dear me!” said Lillie, throwing herself down
+with a portentous yawn. “I do think this is dreadful!”</p>
+
+<p>“What is dreadful?” said John, looking up.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 314px;">
+<img src="images/i202.jpg" width="314" height="392" alt="girl under parasol" />
+<div class="caption">“But I detest walking in the country.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Well, Lillie dear, I am sorry; but we don’t live
+in New York, and are not likely to,” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“Why can’t we? Mrs. Follingsbee said that a man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+in your profession, and with your talents, could command
+a fortune in New York.”</p>
+
+<p>“If it would give me the mines of Golconda, I would
+not go there,” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“How stupid of you! You know you would, though.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, Lillie; I would not leave Springdale for any
+money.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is because you think of nobody but yourself,”
+said Lillie. “Men are always selfish.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“That dreadful mission-work of yours, I suppose,”
+said Lillie; “that always stands in the way of having
+a good time.”</p>
+
+<p>“Lillie,” said John, shutting his book, and looking at
+her, “what is your ideal of a good time?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, having something amusing going on all the
+time,—something bright and lively, to keep one in
+good spirits,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“I thought that you would have enough of that with
+your party and all,” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“They are different from me,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, I can’t; I never could,” said Lillie, pettishly.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“I may as well make a beginning,” he said to himself.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+“I must have my time for reading; and she must
+learn to amuse herself.”</p>
+
+<p>After a while, however, he peeped over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, darling!” he said, “where did you get that?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is Mrs. Follingsbee’s,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear, it is a bad book,” said John. “Don’t read it.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>John seated himself, and went on with his book in
+silence.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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 <i>finesse</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>fête</i>.
+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 <i>en grande toilette;</i>
+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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Independently of that, Lillie felt the instinctive
+jealousy which a <i>passée</i> queen of beauty sometimes
+has for a young rival.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse">“Glad souls, without reproach or blot,</div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Who do His will, and know it not.”</span></div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII.<br />
+
+<small><i>A BRICK TURNS UP.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>THE snow had been all night falling silently over
+the long elm avenues of Springdale.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The only thing wanting was some one to speak
+to about it; and, with a half sigh, she thought of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+hot coffee and crisp rolls, stood invitingly waiting
+for her before the cheerful open fire.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>This letter was from him; and we shall give our
+readers the benefit of it:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Grace</span>,—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 <i>per se</i>, as metaphysicians say, to look with
+favor on your humble servant.</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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?</p>
+
+<p class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 4em;">“Yours till death, and after,</span><br />
+”<span class="smcap">Walter Sydenham.</span>“<br />
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sound of stamping feet at the front door;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+and John came in, all ruddy and snow-powdered, but
+looking, on the whole, uncommonly cheerful.</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>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,—</p>
+
+<p>“Look here, John! here’s a letter I have just had
+from Walter Sydenham.”</p>
+
+<p>John broke out into a loud, hilarious laugh.</p>
+
+<p>“The blessed old brick!” said he. “Has he turned
+up again?”</p>
+
+<p>“Read the letter, John,” said Grace. “I don’t know
+exactly how to answer it.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“It was not wholly on your account, John. You
+know there was our father,” said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes, Gracie; but he would have preferred to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+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!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, no, John! indeed not.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“And say, ‘Yes, sir, and thank you too’?” said
+Grace, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>“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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“So Lillie is going to the Follingsbees’?” said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“When shall you want me, John?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes! I’ll come,” said Grace, good-naturedly, “as
+soon as I have had time to put things in a little order.”</p>
+
+<p>“And write your letter,” said John, gayly, as he went
+out. “Don’t forget that.”</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+it was one with which Walter Sydenham was
+well satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+she stood with a fluttering color to see the carriage
+drive up to the door, and the two get out of it.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,—</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX.<br />
+
+<small><i>THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>IF John managed to be happy without Lillie in
+Springdale, Lillie managed to be blissful without
+him in New York.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>The Follingsbees’ house might stand for the original
+of the Castle of Indolence.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">“Halls where who can tell</span></div>
+<div class="verse">What elegance and grandeur wide expand,—</div>
+<div class="verse">The pride of Turkey and of Persia’s land?</div>
+<div class="verse">Soft quilts on quilts; on carpets, carpets spread;</div>
+<div class="verse">And couches stretched around in seemly band;</div>
+<div class="verse">And endless pillows rise to prop the head:</div>
+<div class="verse">So that each spacious room was one full swelling bed.”</div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>It was not without some considerable profit that
+Mrs. Follingsbee had read Balzac and Dumas, and had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>ma sœur</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>Lillie’s presence, however, was all desirable; because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought you didn’t like her,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>liaison</i> like mine
+with Charlie, one can’t be too careful to cultivate the
+wives. <i>Les convenances</i>, 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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>genre</i> pictures of children, animals, and household
+interiors, arranged with a loving eye and hand.</p>
+
+<p>“Did you ever see any thing so perfectly characteristic?”
+said Mrs. Follingsbee, looking around her as
+if she were going to faint.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“I think myself they are enough to scare the owls,”
+said Lillie, after a moment’s contemplation.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“I had to bring baby down,” she said. “I have no
+nurse to-day, and he has been threatened with croup.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“The fact is, Mrs. Follingsbee,” said Mrs. Ferrola,
+“receptions in New York generally begin about my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+bed-time; and, if I should spend the night out, I should
+have no strength to give to my children the next day.”</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 271px;">
+<img src="images/i233.jpg" width="271" height="426" alt="Nurse holding baby" />
+<div class="caption">“I had to bring baby down.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“But, my dear, you ought to have some amusement.”</p>
+
+<p>“My children amuse me, if you will believe it,” said
+Mrs. Ferrola, with a remarkably quiet smile.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Follingsbee was not quite sure whether this
+was meant to be sarcastic or not. She answered,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+however, “Well! your husband will come, at all
+events.”</p>
+
+<p>“You may be quite sure of that,” said Mrs. Ferrola,
+with the same quietness.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>And, like a rustling cloud of silks and satins and
+perfumes, she bent down and kissed the baby, and
+swept from the apartment.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, gracious me!” said Lillie: “I can’t imagine
+more dire despair than to sit all day tending baby.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! I hope and trust I never shall have children,”
+said Lillie, fervently, “because, you see, there’s an end<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<i>illuminatæ</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+cologne-water, and indispensable clouds of mechlin and
+point lace, which were necessary to keep around them
+the poetry of existence.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>
+hands by the inquiry, “Don’t you know young Endicott?
+why, I should think you would want to have him
+visit here.”</p>
+
+<p>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,
+&amp;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XX.<br />
+
+<small><i>THE VAN ASTRACHANS.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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 <i>illuminati</i>. 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>
+best of her way to heaven, notwithstanding the opposition
+of a dissolute husband.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Van Astrachan made a dead halt at the idea of
+Dick Follingsbee. He never would receive <i>that</i> 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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“So much the better for them,” remarked Mr. Van
+Astrachan.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI.<br />
+
+<small><i>MRS. FOLLINGSBEE’S PARTY, AND WHAT
+CAME OF IT.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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
+<i>fête</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>entrée</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Harry, at first, had met her only on those superficial
+grounds of banter and <i>badinage</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Harry had never known a woman like Rose; a woman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 365px;">
+<img src="images/i257.jpg" width="365" height="434" alt="Couple entering ball" />
+<div class="caption">“Rose, entering on Harry Endicott’s arm.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Why, that is Mrs. Van Astrachan!”</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t tell me so! Is it possible?”</p>
+
+<p>“Which?” “Where is she?” “How in the world
+did she get here?” were the whispered remarks that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>
+followed her wherever she moved; and Mrs. Follingsbee,
+looking after her, could hardly suppress an exulting
+<i>Te Deum</i>. It was done, and couldn’t be undone.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Van Astrachan might not appear again at a
+<i>salon</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
+for the evening had been made at the tea-table of the
+Van Astrachans with an innocent and trustful simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 387px;">
+<img src="images/i259.jpg" width="387" height="317" alt="Older couple and younger woman, all seated" />
+<div class="caption"><span class="smcap">The Van Astrachans.</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Yes, Rose,” said Mr. Van Astrachan, “you mayn’t<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Papa,” says Mrs. Van Astrachan, reprovingly, “I
+wouldn’t say such things if I were you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I would,” said Rose. “Do tell us, Mr. Van
+Astrachan.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Mr. Van Astrachan: “you
+ought to have seen her in a red dress she used to
+wear.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>
+not help perceiving that she herself amid all these
+objects of beauty was followed by the admiring glances
+of many eyes.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, now! where can I have left my fan?” she said,
+suddenly stopping.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you,” said Rose: “I believe I left it on the
+sofa in the yellow drawing-room.” He was gone in a
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+backward, and sat down with her handkerchief to her
+eyes; he came forward hurriedly, and met the eyes of
+Rose fixed upon him.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 344px;">
+<img src="images/i266.jpg" width="344" height="429" alt="man pushing woman down" />
+<div class="caption">“She saw him, with an angry frown, push Lillie from him.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Ferguson,” he said abruptly, “I have something
+I want to say to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not now, not to-night,” said Rose, hurriedly. “I
+am too tired; and it is too late.”</p>
+
+<p>“To-morrow then,” he said: “I shall call when you
+will have had time to be rested. Good-night!”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII.<br />
+
+<small><i>THE SPIDER-WEB BROKEN.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+dead, and that there is a sort of interior resurrection
+and judgment.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>esprit de
+corps</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>
+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?</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.’”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, you see, Mr. Van Astrachan, I hadn’t anybody
+like you to stick it out with,” said Rose. “Perhaps
+that made the difference.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+which ladies, when in a gracious mood, can smooth the
+path for a difficult confession.</p>
+
+<p>She sat very quietly, with her hands before her, while
+Harry walked tumultuously up and down the room.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Ferguson,” he said at last, abruptly, “I know
+you are thinking ill of me.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ferguson did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I did, Mr. Endicott,” said Rose.</p>
+
+<p>“And you do not now?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s exactly what I want you to do!” he said
+impetuously; “that is just what I wish.”</p>
+
+<p>“Allow me to ask, then, if you are an early friend,
+and family connection of Mrs. John Seymour?”</p>
+
+<p>“I was an early friend, and am somewhat of a
+family connection.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>The blood flushed into Harry’s face; and he stood
+abashed and silent. Rose went on,—</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>Harry spoke, trembling with emotion; and Rose felt
+almost terrified with the storm she had raised.</p>
+
+<p>“O Mr. Endicott!” she said, “was this worthy of
+you? was there nothing better, higher, more manly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>
+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?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>Harry sat in silence, ruminating.</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>
+these poor little silly women, whom society keeps stunted
+and dwarfed for their special amusement.”</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Ferguson, you are very severe,” said Harry,
+his face flushing.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>
+waste life in this unworthy way? If I had your chances,
+I would try to do something worth doing.”</p>
+
+<p>Rose’s face kindled with enthusiasm; and Harry
+looked at her with admiration.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell me what I ought to do!” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I pity him then,” said Harry.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I should say,” said Harry, “that there is in this no
+best side.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, certainly!” said Rose, with a frank smile.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, let’s shake hands on that,” said Harry, rising
+to go.</p>
+
+<p>Rose gave him her hand, and the two parted in all
+amity.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII.<br />
+
+<small><i>COMMON-SENSE ARGUMENTS.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, pa, don’t you say a word,” said Mrs. Van
+Astrachan.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>Neither at present did Harry; neither do we.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV.<br />
+
+<small><i>SENTIMENT</i> v. <i>SENSIBILITY.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>THE poet has feelingly sung the condition of</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse">“The banquet hall deserted,</div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Whose lights are fled, and garlands dead,” &amp;c.,</span></div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class='unindent'>and so we need not cast the daylight of minute description
+on the Follingsbee mansion.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Honest Mrs. Van Astrachan, however, though not
+acquainted with Mrs. Ferrola, went to the funeral with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>
+Rose; and the next day her carriage was seen at Mrs.
+Ferrola’s door.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>“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
+<i>liaison?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>liaison</i>
+between her and him. I didn’t ask him what ’twas;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, but, pa, he didn’t know it.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>
+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!”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, dear, we don’t want to talk to Rose about
+any of this scandal,” said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>
+air tell that little Seymour woman’s husband to get her
+home?”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV.<br />
+
+<small><i>WEDDING BELLS.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>demi-monde</i> of Paris.</p>
+
+<p>We apprehend that the recent storms of tribulation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Lillie was summoned home by urgent messages from
+her husband, calling her back to take her share in wedding
+festivities.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>
+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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>
+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 <i>real</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Poor John! Was he a muff, a spoon? We think
+not. We understand well that there is not a <i>woman</i>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVI.<br />
+
+<small><i>MOTHERHOOD.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The little creature came in terror and trembling.
+For the mother had trifled fearfully with the great laws<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
+of her being before its birth; and the very shadow
+of death hung over her at the time the little new
+life began.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>
+in the house was insufficient to make up for such
+trials as had come upon her.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 383px;">
+<img src="images/i300.jpg" width="383" height="371" alt="Young woman seated holding baby, man kneeling before them" />
+<div class="caption">“An’ it’s a blessin’ they brings wid ’em, sir.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Motherhood, to the woman who has lived only to be
+petted, and to be herself the centre of all things, is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>
+a virtual dethronement. Something weaker, fairer,
+more delicate than herself comes,—something for her
+to serve and to care for more than herself.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>And so Lillie, free and unencumbered, had her gay<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVII.<br />
+
+<small><i>CHECKMATE.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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, <i>check-mate</i>, are uttered.</p>
+
+<p>This is a symbol of what often goes on in the game
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>
+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 <i>there</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:—</p>
+
+<p>The Spindlewood property had long been critically<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>But it did come at last. One morning, when he received
+by mail the tidings of the failure of the great
+house of Clapham &amp; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Gracious me, John! what on earth is the matter
+with you to-day? How perfectly awful and solemn
+you do look!”</p>
+
+<p>“I have had bad news, this morning, Lillie, which I
+must tell you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, dear me, John! what is the matter? Nobody
+is dead, I hope!”</p>
+
+<p>“No, Lillie; but I am afraid you will have to give
+up your Newport journey.”</p>
+
+<p>“Gracious, goodness, John! what for?”</p>
+
+<p>“To say the truth, Lillie, I cannot afford it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Can’t afford it? Why not? Why, John, what is
+the matter?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Lillie, just read this letter!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lillie took it, and read it with her hands trembling.</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, I am indorser for them.”</p>
+
+<p>“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>I</i> should not have done so; but I don’t see why you
+need pay it. It is their business, anyhow.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>John crossed his arms, and looked gloomily out of
+the window.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps you had better,” he said. “I am sure I
+should be glad to.”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“He is a swindler and a rascal!” said John; “that is
+what he is.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Lillie, Lillie,” said John, “this is too much! Don’t
+you think that <i>I</i> suffer at all?”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“I <i>certainly</i> do,” said John, fervently.</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly, Lillie,” said John, hardening his heart and
+his tone.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>John walked out of the room gloomily enough. He
+had received this morning his <i>check-mate</i>. 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!”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>
+bitter contrast with the scene he had just passed through,
+and the woman he had left.</p>
+
+<p>“What do you think, John?” said Grace; “we have
+some congratulations here to give! Rose is engaged to
+Harry Endicott.”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed!” said John, “I wish her joy.”</p>
+
+<p>“But what is the matter, John?” said both women,
+looking up, and seeing something unusual in his face.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, trouble!” said John,—“trouble upon us all.
+Gracie and Rose, the Spindlewood Mills have failed.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is it possible?” was the exclamation of both.</p>
+
+<p>“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 &amp; Co. had stood; but they have gone to
+smash, Gracie. I had a letter this morning, telling me
+of it.”</p>
+
+<p>Both women stood a moment as if aghast; for the
+Ferguson property was equally involved.</p>
+
+<p>“Poor papa!” said Rose; “this will come hard on
+him.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>John looked at her through his tears.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear Rose,” he said, “you are an angel; and from
+my soul I congratulate the man that has got <i>you</i>. He
+that has you would be rich, if he lost the whole
+world.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not the money, Grace; I could let that go. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 317px;">
+<img src="images/i314.jpg" width="317" height="380" alt="woman comforting man" />
+<div class="caption">“O Gracie! I wish I was dead!”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>There was something shocking and terrible to Grace
+about this outpouring. It was dreadful to her to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“John,” she said, “look at this.”</p>
+
+<p>He raised his head, took it from her hand, and looked
+at it. Soon she saw the tears dropping over it.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I <i>have</i> given up,” said John in a husky voice. “I
+have lost <i>all</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Gracie,” said John, “is there any thing to be
+made of her?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I thought,” said John, “that she would in
+time develop into something better.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot see, for my part,” said John, “that she
+loves any thing.”</p>
+
+<p>“The power of loving may be undeveloped in her,
+John; but it will come, perhaps, later in life. At all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII.<br />
+
+<small><i>AFTER THE STORM.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>In short, there seemed every reason to hope that,
+after a period of somewhat close sailing, the property<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>
+might be brought into clear water again, and go on even
+better than before.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Rose was happily married, and settled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span>
+education had been directed to suppress what little she
+had, and to concentrate all her feelings upon herself.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIX.<br />
+
+<i><small>THE NEW LILLIE.</small></i></h2>
+
+<div>
+<img  class="splittop" src="images/i326a.jpg" alt="vine and sleeping woman" width="328" height="105" />
+<img src="images/i326b.jpg" alt="vine and sleeping woman" width="200" height="266" class="split" />
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell John I want to see him,” she said to her
+mother. “I wish he would come and sit with me.”</p>
+
+<p>This was a summons for which John invariably left
+every thing. He laid down his book as the word was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span>
+brought to him, and soon was treading noiselessly at
+her bedside.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Lillie dear,” he said, “how are you?”</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>“What can’t last, Lillie?” said John, trying to speak
+cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, come, come, my girl, it won’t do to talk so!”
+said John, patting her hand. “You must not be
+blue.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“O Lillie darling!” said John, “why shouldn’t I
+be? Poor little girl, how much you have suffered!”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, no, John! it is best as it is,—I think I should
+not have strength to be <i>very</i> 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 <i>was</i> 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.”</p>
+
+<p>“O Lillie! I cannot bear to part with you! I never
+have ceased to love you; and I never have loved any
+other woman.”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>was;</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p class='center'>
+<b><span class='spaced'>........</span></b><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>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!”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 193px;">
+<img src="images/i331.jpg" width="193" height="213" alt="Cross with the word &quot;Lillie&quot; on it" />
+</div>
+
+<p class='copyright'><br /><br /><br />———————————————————————————————<br />
+Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son.<br />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<div class='tnote'><div class='center'><b>Transcriber’s Notes:</b></div>
+
+<p>Obvious punctuation errors repaired.</p>
+
+<p>Page 47, “embroided” changed to “embroidered” (embroidered under-linen)</p>
+
+<p>Page 79, “wo ld” changed to “world” (do it for the world)</p>
+
+<p>Page 203, “spirt” changed to “spirit” (little spirit of gayety)</p>
+
+<p>Page 223, “Syndenham” changed to “Sydenham” (with which Walter Sydenham was)
+</p></div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12354 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12354 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12354)
diff --git a/old/12354-0.txt b/old/12354-0.txt
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+Project Gutenberg's Pink and White Tyranny, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Pink and White Tyranny
+       A Society Novel
+
+Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+Release Date: January 13, 2015 [EBook #12354]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Emmy, Curtis Weyant, Tim Koeller
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+“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
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Pink and White Tyranny, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Pink and White Tyranny
+       A Society Novel
+
+Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+Release Date: January 13, 2015 [EBook #12354]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Emmy, Curtis Weyant, Tim Koeller
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<h1 class='faux'>PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.</h1>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 614px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="614" height="872" alt="cover" />
+</div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+
+
+<p class='blockquot'><span class="smcap">“Make their acquaintance; for Amy will be
+found delightful, Beth very lovely, Meg beautiful, and Jo splendid!</span>”—<i>The Catholic World.</i></p>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>LITTLE WOMEN. By <span class="smcap">Louisa M. Alcott</span>.
+In Two Parts. Price of each $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”—<i>Hartford Courant.</i></p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Little Women.</span> 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.”—<i>The Guiding Star.</i></p>
+
+<p>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:”—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p class='right'>
+—— March 12, 1870.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Jo, or Miss Alcott</span>,—We have all been reading “Little Women,” and
+we liked it so much I could not help wanting to write to you. We think <i>you</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>We are six sisters and two brothers; and there were so many things in “Little
+Women” that seemed so natural, especially selling the rags.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>If you ever come to ——, I do wish you would come and see us,—we would
+like it so much.</p>
+
+<p>I have named my doll after you, and I hope she will try and deserve it.</p>
+
+<p>I do wish you would send me a picture of you. I hope your health is better,
+and you are having a nice time.</p>
+
+<p>If you write to me, please direct —— Ill. All the children send their love.</p>
+
+<p>With ever so much love, from your affectionate friend,</p>
+
+<p class='sig'>
+<span class="smcap">Nelly</span>.<br />
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p><i>Mailed to any address, postpaid, on receipt of the advertised
+price.</i></p>
+
+<p class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 2em;"><span class="smcap">ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers</span>,</span><br />
+<i>Boston</i>.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>AN OLD-FASHIONED GIRL. By <span class="smcap">Louisa
+M. Alcott</span>. With Illustrations. Price $1.50.</p>
+
+
+<p>“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.”—<i>Mrs. Sarah
+J. Hale in Godey’s Ladies’ Book.</i></p>
+
+<p>“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.”—<i>The London Spectator.</i></p>
+
+<p>“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.”—<i>New York Independent.</i></p>
+
+<p>“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!”—<i>New York Tribune.</i></p>
+
+<p>“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.”—<i>Providence Journal.</i></p>
+
+
+<p><i>Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of the advertised price, by
+the Publishers</i>,</p>
+
+<p class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 2em;">ROBERTS BROTHERS,</span><br />
+<i>Boston</i><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<div class='adtitle2'><small>MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS’</small><br />
+
+<span class="smcap">Recent New Books.</span></div>
+
+
+
+<p>A VISIT TO MY DISCONTENTED COUSIN. Handy-Volume
+Series, No. 8. 16mo. $1.00.</p>
+
+<p>BURNAND (F. C.). More Happy Thoughts. 16mo. $1.00.</p>
+
+<p>ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. The Forest House and Catherine’s
+Lovers. 16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>HELPS (<span class="smcap">Arthur</span>). Essays Written in the Intervals of Business.
+16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>—— Brevia: Short Essays and Aphorisms. 16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>—— Conversations on War and General Culture. 16mo.
+$1.50.</p>
+
+<p>HALE (<span class="smcap">Edward E.</span>). Ten times One is Ten. 16mo. $0.88.</p>
+
+<p>HAMERTON (<span class="smcap">Philip G.</span>). Thoughts about Art. 16mo.
+$2.00.</p>
+
+<p>INGELOW (<span class="smcap">Jean</span>). The Monitions of the Unseen, and Poems
+of Love and Childhood. 12 Illustrations. 16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>JUDD (<span class="smcap">Sylvester</span>). Margaret: A Tale of the Real and the
+Ideal, of Blight and Bloom. 16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>—— Richard Edney and the Governor’s Family. 16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>KONEWKA (<span class="smcap">Paul</span>). Silhouette Illustrations to Goethe’s
+Faust. Quarto. $4.00.</p>
+
+<p>LOWELL (<span class="smcap">Mrs. A. C.</span>). Posies for Children. 16mo. $0.75.</p>
+
+<p>LANDOR (<span class="smcap">Walter Savage</span>). Pericles and Aspasia. 16mo.
+$1.50.</p>
+
+<p>MAX AND MAURICE. Translated by Charles T. Brooks.
+12mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>MICHELET (<span class="smcap">M. Jules</span>). France Before Europe. 16mo. $1.00.</p>
+
+<p>PARKER (<span class="smcap">Joseph</span>). Ad Clerum: Advices to a Young Preacher.
+16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>PRESTON (<span class="smcap">Harriet W.</span>). Aspendale. 16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>PUCK’S NIGHTLY PRANKS. Silhouette Illustrations by
+Paul Konewka. Paper Covers. $0.50</p>
+
+<p>SEELEY (J. R.). Roman Imperialism and Other Lectures and
+Essays. 16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>STOWE (<span class="smcap">Harriet Beecher</span>). Pink and White Tyranny.
+16mo. $1.50.</p>
+
+<p>JOHN WHOPPER’S ADVENTURES. 16mo. $0.75.</p>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Miss Alcott is really a benefactor of House-holds.</span>”—<i>H. H.</i></p>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>LITTLE MEN: Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys.
+By <span class="smcap">Louisa M. Alcott</span>. With Illustrations. Price
+$1.50.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”—<i>The Examiner.</i></p>
+
+<p>“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.’ .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. 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.”—<i>Waterbury American.</i></p>
+
+<p>“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.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. 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.”—<i>N. Y. Times.</i></p>
+
+<p>“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.”—<i>Phil. Press.</i></p>
+
+<p>A specimen letter from a little woman to the author of “Little Men.”</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p class='right'>
+June 17, 1871.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Miss Alcott</span>,—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 <i>so</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 4em;">Yours truly,</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Alice</span> ——.<br />
+</p></blockquote>
+
+
+<p><i>Mailed to any address, postpaid, on receipt of the advertised
+price, by the Publishers,</i></p>
+
+<p class='sig'>
+ROBERTS BROTHERS, <span class="smcap">Boston</span>.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+
+<div class='maintitle'><span class="smcap">Pink and White
+Tyranny.</span></div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<big>A Society Novel.</big><br />
+<br /><br /><br />
+BY<br />
+<span class='author'>MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE,</span><br />
+<span class='authorof'>AUTHOR OF “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN,” “THE MINISTER’S WOOING,” ETC.</span><br />
+<br /><br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse">“Come, then, the colors and the ground prepare;</div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air;</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Choose a firm cloud before it fall, and in it</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute.”</span></div>
+<div class='sig'><span class="smcap">Pope.</span></div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+
+<p class='center'><br /><br /><br />
+BOSTON:<br />
+<small>ROBERTS BROTHERS.</small><br />
+1871.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class='copyright'>
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by<br />
+<small>HARRIET BEECHER STOWE,</small><br />
+In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.<br />
+<br />
+<br /><br /><br />
+<small>CAMBRIDGE:</small><br />
+<small>PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.</small><br />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>MY <span class="smcap">Dear Reader</span>,—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; <i>not</i> because beefsteak and
+tomatoes are not respectable viands, but because they
+are not what you have made up your mind to enjoy.</p>
+
+<p>Now, a novel, in our days, is a three-story affair,—a
+complicated, complex, multiform composition, requiring
+no end of scenery and <i>dramatis personæ</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="contents">
+<tr>
+<td align="left" colspan='2'><span class="smcap">Chap.</span></td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Page</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">I.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Falling in Love</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">II.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">What she thinks of it</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">III.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Sister</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">IV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Preparation for Marriage</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">V.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Wedding, and Wedding-trip</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Honey-moon, and after</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Will she like it?</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">VIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Spindlewood</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">IX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Crisis</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_92">92</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">X.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Changes</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_104">104</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Newport; or, the Paradise of Nothing to do</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Home à la Pompadour</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">John’s Birthday</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Great Moral Conflict</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Follingsbees arrive</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Mrs. John Seymour’s Party, and what came of it</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XVII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">After the Battle</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_197">197</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XVIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Brick turns up</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_213">213</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XIX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Castle of Indolence</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_228">228</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Van Astrachans</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_243">243</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Mrs. Follingsbee’s Party, and what came of it</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_250">250</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Spider-web broken</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_268">268</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Common-sense Arguments</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_281">281</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Sentiment</span> <i>v.</i> <span class="smcap">Sensibility</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_284">284</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Wedding Bells</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_291">291</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Motherhood</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_297">297</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXVII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">Checkmate</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_304">304</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXVIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">After the Storm</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_321">321</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right">XXIX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="left"><span class="smcap">The New Lillie</span></td>
+<td align='right'><a href="#Page_326">326</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I.<br />
+
+<i><small>FALLING IN LOVE.</small></i></h2>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 313px;">
+<img src="images/i001.jpg" width="313" height="471" alt="girl with parasol" />
+<div class="caption"><span class="smcap">Lillie.</span></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>“WHO <i>is</i> that beautiful creature?” said John
+Seymour, as a light, sylph-like form tripped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>
+up the steps of the veranda of the hotel where he was
+lounging away his summer vacation.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“By George, but she’s pretty, though!” said John,
+following with enchanted eyes the distant motions of
+the sylphide.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>The wife that John had imaged, his <i>dream</i>-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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Want to be introduced to her, Seymour?” said
+Carryl Ethridge. “I’ll trot you up. I know her.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 380px;">
+<img src="images/i005.jpg" width="380" height="501" alt="Man talking to girl in crowd" />
+<div class="caption">“I didn’t know he was such a puppy.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! John, John! You wouldn’t, for the world,
+have told to man or woman what a fool you were at
+that moment.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“I think you’ve hooked another fish, Lillie,” said
+Belle Trevors in the ear of the little divinity.</p>
+
+<p>“Who.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;?”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! I saw plain enough,” said the divinity, with
+one of her unconscious, baby-like smiles.</p>
+
+<p>“What are you ladies talking?” said Carryl Ethridge.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, secrets!” said Belle Trevors. “You are very
+presuming, sir, to inquire.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Ethridge,” said Lillie Ellis, “don’t you think it
+would be nice to promenade?”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Ethridge offered his arm at once; and the two sauntered
+to the end of the veranda, where John Seymour
+was standing.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 386px;">
+<img src="images/i007.jpg" width="386" height="303" alt="Man lifting hat to young woman with man by her side" />
+<div class="caption">“Let me present my friend, Mr. Seymour.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The die was cast.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! I think not,” said Lillie, with another smile:
+“we shall soon be good friends, too, I trust.”</p>
+
+<p>“I trust so certainly,” said John, earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“You have not been here long?” said Lillie to John.</p>
+
+<p>“No, I have only just arrived.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you were never here before?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, Miss Ellis, I am entirely new to the place.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am an old <i>habituée</i> here,” said Lillie, “and can
+recommend myself as authority on all points connected
+with it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then,” said John, “I hope you will take me under
+your tuition.”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly, free of charge,” she said, with another
+ravishing smile.</p>
+
+<p>“You haven’t seen the boiling spring yet?” she
+added.</p>
+
+<p>“No, I haven’t seen any thing yet.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, then, if you’ll give me your arm across the
+lawn, I’ll show it to you.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Ethridge and Belle Trevors looked after them with a
+nod of intelligence at each other.</p>
+
+<p>“Hooked, by George!” said Ethridge.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, it’ll be a good thing for Lillie, won’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>“For her? Oh, yes, a capital thing <i>for her!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, for <i>him</i> too.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+wonderful boldness, and at the grace of the fair entertainer.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 293px;">
+<img src="images/i011.jpg" width="293" height="324" alt="couple walking" />
+<div class="caption">“Lillie was leaning confidentially on John’s arm.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“She’ll have him, by George, she will!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, pshaw! she is always hooking fellows, but you
+see she don’t get married,” said matter-of-fact Harry.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+“It won’t come to any thing, now, I’ll bet. Everybody
+said she was engaged to Danforth, but it all ended
+in smoke.”</p>
+
+<p>Whether it would be an engagement, or would all
+end in smoke, was the talk of Carmel Springs for the
+next two weeks.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of that time, the mind of Carmel Springs
+was relieved by the announcement that it was an
+engagement.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Belle, it’s all over. He spoke out to-night.”</p>
+
+<p>“He offered himself?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you took him?”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course I did: I should be a fool not to.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, so I think, decidedly!” said Belle, kissing her
+friend in a rapture. “You dear creature! how nice!
+it’s splendid!”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“He’s a little bald, and getting rather stout,” she
+said reflectively, “but he’ll do.”</p>
+
+<p>“I never saw a creature so dead in love as he is,”
+said Belle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A quiet smile passed over the soft, peach-blow cheeks
+as Lillie answered,—</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, dear, yes! He perfectly worships the ground
+I tread on.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 247px;">
+<img src="images/i013.jpg" width="247" height="277" alt="two girls talking" />
+<div class="caption">“I think he’s nice myself.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Oh, no!” said Belle. “I heard all about him. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>her?</i> Simply
+and honestly, she thought not. He was to be
+congratulated; though it wasn’t a bad thing for her,
+either.</p>
+
+<p>“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>I’m</i>
+determined I’ll have something new.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Well, I would, I’m sure,” said Belle. “Say white
+tulle, for instance: you know you are so <i>petite</i> and fairy-like.”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>trousseau</i>. 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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“To tell the truth, I always thought, Lil, you were
+more in love with Harry than anybody you ever knew.”</p>
+
+<p>Lillie laughed a little, and then the prettiest sweet-pea
+flush deepened the pink of her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>“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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+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!</p>
+
+<p>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:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Hitherto she has lived only in the fashionable
+world; and her literary and domestic education, as she
+herself is sensible, has been somewhat neglected.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p>
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Believe me, dear sister, I never was so much your
+affectionate brother,</p>
+
+<p class='sig'>
+“<span class="smcap">John Seymour</span>.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+character as our mother; though circumstances, in
+her case, have been unfavorable to the development
+of it.”</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER II.<br />
+
+<i><small>WHAT SHE THINKS OF IT.</small></i></h2>
+
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 212px;">
+<img src="images/i019.jpg" width="212" height="417" alt="woman reading card that came with bouquet" />
+<div class="caption">“From John, good fellow.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“I must get these into water, or they will wilt,” she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>old</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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, <i>apropos</i>
+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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Then she said, “I brought you some specimens of
+my Souvenir de Malmaison bush, and my first trial of
+your receipt.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, thanks!” said Miss Grace: “how charming those
+roses are! It was too bad to spoil your bush, though.”</p>
+
+<p>“No: it does it good to cut them; it will flower all
+the more. But try one of those cakes,—are they
+right?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<p>“A letter! How nice!” said Miss Letitia, looking
+towards the shelf. “John is as faithful in writing as if
+he were your lover.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Let me arrange for you, while you read your letter,”
+said Letitia, taking the flowers from her friend’s hands.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Letitia came up to her, and, laying her hand gently
+on hers, said, “What is it, dear?”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Grace lifted her head, and said in a husky
+voice,—</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing, only it is so sudden! John is engaged!”</p>
+
+<p>“Engaged! to whom?”</p>
+
+<p>“To Lillie Ellis.”</p>
+
+<p>“John engaged to Lillie Ellis?” said Miss Ferguson,
+in a tone of shocked astonishment.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 293px;">
+<img src="images/i026.jpg" width="293" height="386" alt="young woman with head on table, another woman bending over her" />
+<div class="caption">“She laid her head forward on the table.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“So he writes me. He is completely infatuated by
+her.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“There’s nothing to her but her wonderful complexion,”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+said Miss Ferguson, “and her pretty little coaxing
+ways; but she is the most utterly selfish, heartless
+little creature that ever breathed.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, <i>she</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps she will,” said Letitia, in a faltering voice.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, my <i>dear</i> Grace!” said Miss Ferguson, “do let
+us make the best of it.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“I <i>did</i> 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 .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. O Letitia! I always did so
+<i>hope</i> that he and Rose would like each other.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But if she really loves him”—</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+to carry our troubles, and of whom we should ask
+guidance.”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>very</i> suddenly.
+Yes,” she added, “I am going to take a course
+of my Bible and Fénelon before I see John,—poor
+fellow.”</p>
+
+<p>“And try to have faith for her,” said Miss Letitia.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“John himself!” repeated Miss Grace, becoming
+pale.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER III.<br />
+
+<small><i>THE SISTER.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>GRACE SEYMOUR was a specimen of a class of
+whom we are happy to say New England possesses
+a great many.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+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?”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“My dear Gracie,” said John, embracing and kissing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+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?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, you know, John, I never saw her,” said Grace,
+deprecatingly, “and so you can’t wonder.”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is a very sweet face,” said Grace, exerting herself
+to be sympathetic, and thankful that she could say
+that much truthfully.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“You see,” he added, “it’s odd, but she took a fancy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 280px;">
+<img src="images/i035.jpg" width="280" height="337" alt="couple talking" />
+<div class="caption">“It <i>is</i> a very sweet face.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Indeed!”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+her. Sometimes it’s rose color, or lilac, or pale
+blue,—just the most trying things to others are what
+she can wear.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Young, John! Why, she’s seven and twenty,” said
+Grace, with astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+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 <i>heart</i> 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.”</p>
+
+<p>To this statement, Grace did not reply. She only
+began nervously sweeping together the <i>débris</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But Grace soon recovered herself, and rose up smiling
+through her tears. “What a fool I am making of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.<br />
+
+<small><i>PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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 <i>trousseau;</i>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>As for Lillie, she lay in a loose <i>negligé</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+it over. It was the one that the enraptured John had
+spent his morning in writing.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Ellis, now, if you’ll try on this jacket—oh! I
+beg your pardon,” said Miss Clippins, observing the
+letter, “we can wait, <i>of course;</i>” and then all three
+laughed as if something very pleasant was in their
+minds.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” said Lillie, giving the letter a toss; “it’ll
+<i>keep;</i>” and she stood up to have a jaunty little blue
+jacket, with its pluffy bordering of swan’s down, fitted
+upon her.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s too bad, now, to take you from your letter,”
+said Miss Clippins, with a sly nod.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m sure you take it philosophically,” said Miss
+Nippins, with a giggle.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, now, to be sure you have. Let’s see,” said
+Miss Clippins, “this is the seventy-fourth or seventy-fifth
+offer, was it?”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>were</i> things in the world which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+didn’t become old stories, even if one had been used to
+them ever since one was born.</p>
+
+<p>Lillie never was caught napping when the point in
+question was the fit of her clothes.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Sarah Selfridge had hers ruffled,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“And the effect was perfectly sweet,” said Miss Clippins.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps, Lillie, you had better have it ruffled,” said
+mamma.</p>
+
+<p>“But three rows laid on plain has such a lovely
+effect,” said Miss Nippins.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps, then, she had better have three rows laid
+on plain,” said mamma.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“That would be a nice way,” said mamma. “Perhaps,
+Lillie, you’d better have it so.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! come now, all of you, just hush,” said Lillie.
+“I know just how I want it done.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Lillie always did know exactly what she wanted:
+she’s a smart little thing.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Shrewd Miss Clippins detected the yawn with which
+she laid down the missive.</p>
+
+<p>“Seems to me your letters don’t meet a very warm
+reception,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 406px;">
+<img src="images/i044.jpg" width="406" height="322" alt="young girl on floor stretching" />
+<div class="caption">“Shrewd Miss Clippins detected the yawn.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m sure I shan’t care,” said Lillie, with a toss of
+her pretty head. “It’s <i>borous</i> any way.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+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 <i>will</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>man</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+Lillie, after all, estimated his devotion at just about
+what it was worth. It amused her to see him make a
+fool of himself.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<i>cortége</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, horrors! don’t! I’d rather never be saved,”
+Lillie answered with a fervent sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>The story was repeated afterwards as an amusing
+<i>bon mot</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+astounding to the prosaic, hard-working papa, who
+stood financially responsible for all her finery.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,—“<i>With
+all my worldly goods I thee endow.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Obey John!” Her face wore a pretty air of droll
+assurance at the thought. It was too funny.</p>
+
+<p>“My dear,” said Belle Trevors, who was one of Lillie’s
+incense-burners and a bridesmaid elect, “<i>have</i> you the
+least idea how rich he is?”</p>
+
+<p>“He is well enough off to do about any thing I want,”
+said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I can show him how to use it,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“He and his sister keep a nice sort of old-fashioned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+place there, and jog about in an old countrified carriage,
+picking up poor children and visiting schools. She is
+a <i>very</i> superior woman, that sister.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t like superior women,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“And a place at Newport for the summer,” said Belle
+Trevors.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Delightful,” said Belle, “<i>if</i> you can make him do
+it.”</p>
+
+<p>“See if I don’t,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“You dear, funny creature, you,—how you do
+always ride on the top of the wave!” said Belle.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s what I was born for,” said Lillie. “By the by,
+Belle, I got a letter from Harry last night.”</p>
+
+<p>“Poor fellow, had he heard”—</p>
+
+<p>“Why, of course not. I didn’t want he should till
+it’s all over. It’s best, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“He is such a good fellow, and so devoted,—it does
+seem a pity.”</p>
+
+<p>“Devoted! well, I should rather think he was,” said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“You ought not to write to him,” said Belle.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, he’ll have to stop making love to you after
+you’re married.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think it’s too bad on us girls, though,” said Belle.
+“You ought to leave us our turn.”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you, I don’t think I shall take up with
+second-hand articles,” said Belle, with some spirit.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V.<br />
+
+<small><i>WEDDING, AND WEDDING-TRIP.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>WELL, and so they were married, with all the
+newest modern forms, ceremonies, and accessories.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 “<i>paté de fois gras</i>” if we don’t
+eat it? What is to become of us if we do is entirely a
+secondary question.</p>
+
+<p>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;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed the approved wedding journey, the
+programme of which had been drawn up by Lillie herself,
+with <i>carte blanche</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+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
+<i>attaché</i> of a gay bird, whose string he held in hand,
+and who now seemed to pull him hither and thither at
+her will.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+John was not so sure but that she might prove a little
+too masterful for him.</p>
+
+<p>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,—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse">“I saw her, on a nearer view,</div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A spirit, yet a woman too,—</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Her household motions light and free,</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And steps of virgin liberty.</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A creature not too bright or good</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">For human nature’s daily food,</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">For transient pleasures, simple wiles,</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.”</span></div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The reader may see, from the conversations we have
+detailed, that nothing was farther from Lillie’s intentions
+than any such conformity.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.<br />
+
+<small><i>HONEY-MOON, AND AFTER.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Grace had read her Bible and Fénelon to such purpose,
+that she had accepted her cross with open arms.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“John is so good a man,” she said to Miss Letitia
+Ferguson, “that I am sure Lillie cannot but become a
+good woman.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>John’s bachelor apartments had been new furnished,
+and furbished, and made into a perfect bower of roses.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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,—<i>hers</i>, with an intensity
+of ownership that should shut out all former proprietors.</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>Grace found, the first week, that to be housekeeper
+to a young duchess, in an American village and with
+American servants, was no sinecure.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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, <i>Who</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 367px;">
+<img src="images/i068.jpg" width="367" height="410" alt="Two women talking" />
+<div class="caption">“<i>Who</i> is to do all this?”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! I’m sure I don’t know how it’s to be done,”
+said Lillie, gayly. “Mamma always got my things done
+<i>somehow</i>. They always <i>were</i> 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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“But you see, Lillie dear, it’s almost impossible to <i>get</i>
+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?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t, darling, talk so, for pity’s sake,” she said.
+“I will go to John, and we will arrange it somehow.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+the field, which were fed and clothed, “like Solomon in
+all his glory,” without ever giving a moment’s care to
+the matter.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>used</i> to
+this kind of thing; can’t do without it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I’ll try to-morrow, John,” said Grace, patiently.
+“There is Mrs. Atkins,—she is a very nice woman.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, exactly! just the thing,” said John. “Yes,
+we’ll get her to take all Lillie’s things every week.
+That settles it.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Such a price for the fine linen of his little angel
+rather staggered him; but he gulped it down.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>stupid</i>,—was a little drop too much
+in her cup. A bright streak appeared in either cheek, as
+she said,—</p>
+
+<p>“Well, John, I never knew you found Springdale
+stupid before. I’m sure, we <i>have</i> been happy here,”—and
+her voice quavered.</p>
+
+<p>“Pshaw, Gracie! you know what I mean. I don’t
+mean that <i>I</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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes, I see,” said John. “Gracie, <i>isn’t</i> 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?”</p>
+
+<p>“They are very sweet, and she is charmingly pretty,”
+said Grace; “and I love her dearly.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“My dear John,” said Grace, “you forget what time
+it is. Good-night!”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.<br />
+
+<small><i>WILL SHE LIKE IT?</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“I know it,” said John. “I am going to-morrow.
+You see, Gracie, I couldn’t well before.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! I have told them all about it, and I have kept
+things up; but then there are so many who want to
+see <i>you</i>, and so many things that you alone could
+settle and manage.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you think she would like it, Grace?”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed, John, you must know better than I. If<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+anybody could make her take an interest in it, it would
+be you.”</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>créped</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>“You like me, don’t you?” she said, as she saw the
+delight in John’s eyes.</p>
+
+<p>John was tempted to lay hold of his plaything.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>As to Lillie, there was an extraordinary sympathy of
+sentiment between them at that moment. John was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>Te Deum</i>,
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Your</i> Sunday school, John? Why, bless me! do
+<i>you</i> teach Sunday school?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly I do. Grace and I have a school of two
+hundred children and young people belonging to our
+factories. I am superintendent.”</p>
+
+<p>“I never did hear of any thing so odd!” said Lillie.
+“What in the world can you want to take all that trouble<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+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!”</p>
+
+<p>“Pooh! Lillie, child, you don’t know any thing about
+them. They are just as cleanly and respectable as anybody.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, these are our people. They are the
+laborers from whose toils our wealth comes; and we
+owe them something.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well! you pay them something, don’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>John looked grave. “Lillie,” he said, “you shouldn’t<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+speak of any of your fellow-beings in that heartless
+way.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I beg your pardon, my darling. I didn’t mean,
+dear, that <i>you</i> were heartless, but that what you said
+<i>sounded</i> so. I knew you didn’t really mean it. I
+didn’t ask you, dear, to go to <i>work</i>,—only to be company
+for me.”</p>
+
+<p>“And I ask you to stay at home, and be company
+for <i>me</i>. 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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, I am <i>interested</i> 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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I should think you might be interested in <i>me:</i>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Now, Lillie, darling, you know that isn’t so.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, I <i>need</i> it myself.”</p>
+
+<p>“Need it,—what for? I can’t imagine.”</p>
+
+<p>“To keep me from becoming a mere selfish, worldly
+man, and living for mere material good and pleasure.”</p>
+
+<p>“You dear old Don Quixote! Well, you are altogether
+in the clouds above me. I can’t understand a
+word of all that.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, good-by, darling,” said John, kissing her,
+and hastening out of the room, to cut short the interview.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+any thing but to be fine, and to ride in your coaches.”
+In Father Adam’s description of the original Eve, he
+says,—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse">“All higher knowledge in her presence falls</div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Degraded; wisdom, in discourse with her,</span></div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Loses, discountenanced, and like folly shows.”</span></div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>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,—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“Yet when I approach</span></div>
+<div class="verse">Her loveliness, so absolute she seems</div>
+<div class="verse">And in herself complete, so well to know</div>
+<div class="verse">Her own, that what she wills to do or say</div>
+<div class="verse">Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.”</div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+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:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“What transports thee so?</span></div>
+<div class="verse">An outside?—fair, no doubt, and worthy well</div>
+<div class="verse">Thy cherishing, thy honor, and thy love,</div>
+<div class="verse">Not thy subjection. Weigh her with thyself,</div>
+<div class="verse">Then value. Oft-times nothing profits more</div>
+<div class="verse">Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right</div>
+<div class="verse">Well managed: of that skill the more thou knowest,</div>
+<div class="verse">The more she will acknowledge thee her head,</div>
+<div class="verse">And to realities yield all her shows.”</div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>No, she did not say it. It would be well for us all
+if we <i>did</i> put into words, plain and explicit, many instinctive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 “<i>mari</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>débauchées</i>, 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 <i>à
+l’Américaine</i>, and then marry and flirt till forty <i>à
+la Française</i>. This was about Lillie’s plan of life. Could
+she hope to carry it out in Springdale?</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.<br />
+
+<small><i>SPINDLEWOOD.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Gracie, that must be your work,” said John; “you
+know I shall have an important case next week.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“And then to bargain with the book-stores, and
+make the money go ‘far as possible,’” said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think Lillie would like that,” put in John.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, she’ll like it of course!” said John, with
+some sinking of heart about the Sunday-school books.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“I know,” she said to John when they were by
+themselves, “that you and Grace both think I’m a
+horrid creature.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, no, dearest; indeed we don’t.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“No, darling, not the least.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Darling, I’d a thousand times rather have you
+what you are,” said John; for—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 8em;">“What she wills to do,</span></div>
+<div class="verse">Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.”</div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>“O John! come, you ought to be sincere.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sincere, Lillie! I am sincere.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+promenaded and talked with Lillie, and Lillie alone,
+with an exclusive devotion.</p>
+
+<p>“What a lovely young creature your new sister is!”
+he said to Grace. “She seems to have so much religious
+sensibility.”</p>
+
+<p>“I say, Lillie,” said John, “Mathews seemed to be
+smitten with you. I had a notion of interfering.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>The next Sunday, Lillie rode over to Spindlewood
+with John and Rose and Mr. Mathews.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When all was over, Lillie sat back on the carriage-cushions,
+and smelled at her gold vinaigrette.</p>
+
+<p>“You are all worn out, dear,” said John, tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s no matter,” she said faintly.</p>
+
+<p>“O Lillie darling! <i>does</i> your head ache?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Lillie, <i>it is not your duty to go</i>,” said John; “if you
+are not made ill by this, I never will take you again;
+you are too precious to be risked.”</p>
+
+<p>“How can you say so, John? I’m a poor little
+creature,—no use to anybody.”</p>
+
+<p>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, &amp;c., &amp;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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.<br />
+
+<small><i>A CRISIS.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>ONE of the shrewdest and most subtle modern
+French writers has given his views of womankind
+in the following passage:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“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, <i>Every
+woman lies</i>—obliging lies—venial lies—sublime lies—horrible
+lies—but always the obligation of lying.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Lying is to them the very foundation of language,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.’”</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+American fashionable society, that the things said of
+the Parisian woman begin in some cases to apply to
+some women in America.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 274px;">
+<img src="images/i095.jpg" width="274" height="327" alt="man sitting down reading" />
+<div class="caption">“He found the date of the birth of ‘Lillie Ellis.’”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+this petty feminine <i>ruse</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+his faith shattered in the woman he loved, was a terrible
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Where in the world is John going?” said Lillie,
+running to the door, and calling after him in imperative
+tones.</p>
+
+<p>“John, John, come back. I haven’t done with you
+yet;” but John never turned his head.</p>
+
+<p>“How very odd! what in the world is the matter
+with him?” she said to herself.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“John, what is the matter with you?” said Grace at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+the tea-table. “You are upsetting every thing, and
+don’t drink your tea.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“What can be the matter?”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+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?”</p>
+
+<p>“I was afraid you wouldn’t like me if I did,” said
+Lillie, in her sobs.</p>
+
+<p>“O Lillie! I should have liked you, no matter
+how old you were,—only you should have told me
+<i>the truth</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“I know it—I know it—oh, it <i>was</i> 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!”</p>
+
+<p>Lillie’s little heart beat with triumph under all her
+sobs: she had got him, and should hold him yet.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>John may of course be excused for feeling that
+his flattering little penitent was more to him than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+ever; and as to Lillie, she gave a sigh of relief. <i>That</i>
+was over, “anyway;” and she had him not only safe,
+but more completely hers than before.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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
+<i>them</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“I <i>do</i>—I should,” interposed John.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, well! <i>you</i>—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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, nonsense! Now, John, don’t talk humbug.
+I’d like to see <i>you</i> 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?”</p>
+
+<p>And Lillie put her white arm round his neck, and
+her downy cheek to his, and said archly, “Come, now,
+confess.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>As fate would have it, the very next day after this
+little scene, who should walk into the parlor where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>must</i> tell, or you may be sent
+to jail, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>Anne giggled still harder, and tossed her head:
+“Then it’s to jail I’ll have to go; for I don’t know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dear me,” said Lillie, with an air of edifying
+candor, “what a fuss they make! Set down my age
+‘twenty-seven,’ John,” she added.</p>
+
+<p>Grace started, and looked at John; he met her eye,
+and blushed to the roots of his hair.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, what’s the matter?” said Lillie, “are you
+embarrassed at telling your age?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course,” said Grace; and she had the humanity
+never to allude to the subject with her brother.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER X.<br />
+
+<small><i>CHANGES.</i></small></h2>
+
+<div class='blockquot'><p><span class="smcap">Scene.</span>—<i>A chamber at the Seymour House. Lillie discovered weeping.
+John rushing in with empressement.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>“LILLIE, you <i>shall</i> tell me what ails you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing ails me, John.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, there does; you were crying when I came in.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, well, that’s nothing!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, but it <i>is</i> a great deal! What is the matter?
+I can see that you are not happy.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t feel strong! I’ve noticed it, Lillie.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie,” said John, “if you do need sea-air,
+you must go. I can’t leave my business; that’s the
+trouble.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Lillie, I hope this place doesn’t affect you
+unpleasantly,” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“Poor little pussy!” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, Lillie!” said John, “would you like the rooms
+refurnished? It can easily be done if you wish it.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, darling, you must go to the sea-side. I shall
+have you sent right off to Newport. Gracie can go
+with you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, no, John! not for the world. Gracie must stay,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+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,”—</p>
+
+<p>“Exactly, certainly; and, Lillie, how would you like
+the parlors arranged if you had your own way?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, John! don’t think of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“But I just want to know for curiosity. Now, how
+would you have them if you could?”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>marquetrie</i> tables, and all sorts of little French
+things. They had such a gay and cheerful look.”</p>
+
+<p>“Now, Lillie, if you want our rooms like that, you
+shall have them.”</p>
+
+<p>“O John, you are too good! I couldn’t ask such
+a sacrifice.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Gracie! Now, John, I know she has associations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+with all the things in this house, and it would
+be cruel to her,” said Lillie, with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 273px;">
+<img src="images/i108.jpg" width="273" height="368" alt="Young woman on man's lap" />
+<div class="caption">“She perched herself on his knee.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, John, do pray tell Gracie that it’s <i>your</i> 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!”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know what I shall do without you, John.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, well, I couldn’t stay possibly! But I may run
+down now and then, for a night, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, we must make that do,” said Lillie, with
+a pensive sigh.</p>
+
+<p>Thus two very important moves on Miss Lillie’s
+checker-board of life were skilfully made. The house<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+was to be refitted, and the Newport precedent established.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>Springdale had no <i>beau monde</i>, 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?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But the legend goes on to say that, while he was
+delighting in her charms, she heard the sound of <i>mice</i>
+behind the wainscot, and left him forthwith to rush
+after her congenial prey.</p>
+
+<p>Lillie had heard afar the sound of <i>mice</i> 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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.<br />
+
+<small><i>NEWPORT; OR, THE PARADISE OF NOTHING
+TO DO.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>This was Lillie’s highest ideal of happiness; and
+didn’t she enjoy it?</p>
+
+<p>Wasn’t it something to flame forth in wondrous
+toilets in the eyes of Belle Trevors and Margy Silloway
+and Lottie Cavers, who were <i>not</i> 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?</p>
+
+<p>And wasn’t it a triumph when all her old beaux
+came flocking round her, and her parlors became a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+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!</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why don’t you speak to her?” said Lottie Cavers.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, my dear! she wouldn’t mind <i>me</i>. 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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Lillie, as queen in her own parlor, was all grace and
+indulgence. Hers was now to be the sisterly <i>rôle</i>,
+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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+“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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 370px;">
+<img src="images/i115.jpg" width="370" height="326" alt="young woman smoking" />
+<div class="caption">“And would sometimes smoke one purely for good company.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are, Gracie?”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, but do you think John wants you to go?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said Letitia, “if a man begins to say A in
+that line, he must say B.”</p>
+
+<p>“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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“It seems a pity John couldn’t understand her.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>So, by a little feminine tact in suggestion, Grace despatched
+her brother to spend a day or two in Newport.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>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 <i>habitués</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“No more than the rest of you,” said Danforth.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know about that, Dan. I think <i>you</i> might<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+have been taken for master of those premises. Look
+here now, Dan, why didn’t you <i>take</i> little Lill yourself?
+Everybody thought you were going to last
+year.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who thought you were so practical, Dan?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; I keep her in cigarettes,” said Danforth;
+“she’s got a box of them somewhere under her ruffles
+now.”</p>
+
+<p>“What if Seymour should find them?” said Tom.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“How came Seymour to marry her?”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Well, if that isn’t the best thing I ever heard!”
+said Nichols.</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>holiness</i>
+of doing just as you’ve a mind to, and all that,” said
+Danforth.</p>
+
+<p>“By George, Dan, you oughtn’t to laugh. She may
+have more good in her than you think.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, humbug! don’t I know her?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, at any rate she’s a wonderful creature to
+hold her looks. By George! how she <i>does</i> hold out!
+You’d say, now, she wasn’t more than twenty.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; she understands getting herself up,” said Danforth,
+“and touches up her cheeks a bit now and then.”</p>
+
+<p>“She don’t paint, though?”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t paint! <i>Don’t</i> she? I’d like to know if she
+don’t; but she does it like an artist, like an old master,
+in fact.”</p>
+
+<p>“Or like a young mistress,” said Tom, and then
+laughed at his own wit.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“She is so pretty, so frank, and so impulsive,” he
+said. “Such women are always misconstrued. I’m
+resolved to caution her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Lillie,” he said, “who is this Danforth?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Lillie, if I were you, I wouldn’t have any
+thing to do with him.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! I am careful. Mamma is here, you know, all
+the while; and I never receive except she is present.”</p>
+
+<p>John sat abstractedly fingering the various objects
+on the table; then he opened a drawer in the same
+mechanical manner.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, Lillie! what’s this? what in the world are
+these?”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, a box of cigarettes!—of course, they
+can be of no use to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course: they are only a sort of curiosity that he
+imports from Spain with his cigars.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve a great mind to send them back to him myself,”
+said John.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Lillie, you could go, and stay with me at
+Gracie’s,” said John, brightening at this proposition.</p>
+
+<p>“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”—</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, it was to please you.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But perhaps you would want to go with me to
+New York to select the furniture?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, the artist does all that! Charlie Ferrola will
+give his orders to Simon &amp; Sauls, and they will do
+every thing up complete. It’s the way they all do—saves
+lots of trouble.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>fib</i> a little, John feared, especially when he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+looked back to the chapter about her age,—and then,
+perhaps, about the cigarettes.</p>
+
+<p>Well, she might, perhaps, in a wild, excited hour,
+have smoked <i>one or two</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>à la nuage</i>, &amp;c.,
+&amp;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+to be got in any thing? John owned this fashionable
+meteor,—why shouldn’t he rejoice in it?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.<br />
+
+<small><i>HOME À LA POMPADOUR.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>There was not a relic of the past. The house was
+furbished and resplendent—it was gilded—it was
+frescoed—it was <i>à la</i> Pompadour, and <i>à la</i> Louis
+Quinze and Louis Quatorze, and <i>à la</i> every thing
+Frenchy and pretty, and gay and glistening. For,
+though the parlors at first were the only apartments
+contemplated in this <i>renaissance</i>, 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
+<i>them!</i></p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>John was able to sympathize with Lillie in her childish
+delight in the new house, because he <i>loved</i> 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 <i>not</i> love John.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>But all this <i>is not love</i>. It may exist, to be sure,
+where there <i>is</i> love; it generally does. But it may
+also exist where there is no love. Love, my dear
+ladies, is <i>self-sacrifice;</i> 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, <i>for
+the</i> 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
+<i>how to love</i>. 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><i>He</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+not, and would not, take any trouble about any
+thing.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+might appear in her mind. Then he seized a favorable
+hour, and produced his book.</p>
+
+<p>“Lillie,” he said, “I want to make you understand a
+little about our expenditures and income.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, dreadful, John! don’t, pray! I never had any
+head for things of that kind.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, <i>please</i> let me show you,” persisted John.
+“I’ve made it just as simple as can be.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 358px;">
+<img src="images/i133.jpg" width="358" height="379" alt="young woman with hand on forehead looking away from man holding account book out to her" />
+<div class="caption">“I never had the least head for figures.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“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;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+mamma always said so; and if there <i>is</i> 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
+<i>man’s</i> work, and men have got to see to it. Now,
+<i>please</i> don’t,” she added, coming to him coaxingly,
+and putting her arm round his neck.</p>
+
+<p>“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”—</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, it was all because you wanted them.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Come, now, my darling, do be a sensible woman,
+and not act like a baby.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Lillie, how silly! Please do listen, now. You
+have no idea how simple and easy what I want to
+explain to you is.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“If that woman was <i>my</i> wife now,” I fancy I hear
+some youth with a promising moustache remark, “I’d
+make her behave!”</p>
+
+<p>Well, sir, supposing she was your wife, what are you
+going to do about it?</p>
+
+<p>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. <i>Such</i> 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?</p>
+
+<p>But didn’t she promise to obey? Didn’t she? Of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII.<br />
+
+<small><i>JOHN’S BIRTHDAY.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>“MY dear Lillie,” quoth John one morning, “next
+week Wednesday is my birthday.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is it? How charming! What shall we do?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Lillie, it has always been our custom—Grace’s
+and mine—to give a grand <i>fête</i> here to all our
+work-people. We invite them all over <i>en masse</i>, and
+have the house and grounds all open, and devote ourselves
+to giving them a good time.”</p>
+
+<p>Lillie’s countenance fell.</p>
+
+<p>“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; <i>this</i> house is not made for a
+missionary asylum.”</p>
+
+<p>John, thus admonished, looked at his house, and was
+fain to admit that there was the usual amount of that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+good, selfish, hard grit—called common sense—in
+Lillie’s remarks.</p>
+
+<p>Rooms have their atmosphere, their necessities, their
+artistic proprieties. Apartments <i>à la</i> 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 <i>salon</i>, and into his
+Pompadour <i>boudoir</i>, 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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+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 <i>himself</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But you know, dearie, what is said about doing
+good, ‘hoping for nothing again,’” said John.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“My dear, I don’t want you to injure yourself!”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I didn’t know that you had invited the Follingsbees
+and Simpkinses,” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“Didn’t I tell you? I meant to,” said Mrs. Lillie,
+innocently.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>And so, as John was greatly beloved by Bridget, and
+as all the domestic staff had the true Irish fealty to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+man of the house, and would run themselves off their
+feet in his service any day,—it came to pass that the
+<i>fête</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>“My dearest child,” said John, who, to say the truth,
+was beginning to find this thing less charming than it
+used to be, “I <i>am</i> satisfied. I am much obliged to
+you. I’m sure you have done all that could be asked.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Never mind, Lillie, I’ll see to it, and set it all right.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 404px;">
+<img src="images/i143.jpg" width="404" height="372" alt="Girl in bed with man looking down at her" />
+<div class="caption">“Oh, me! it makes my head ache to think of it.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“There, there, pussy! only don’t worry,” said John,
+in soothing tones.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t think me horrid, <i>please</i> don’t,” said Lillie, piteously.
+“I did try to have things go right; didn’t I?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So John called Rosa, on his way downstairs. “Show
+me the sofa that they spoiled,” said he.</p>
+
+<p>“Sofa?” said Rosa.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; I understand the children greased the sofa in
+Mrs. Seymour’s boudoir.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, dear, no! nothing of the sort; I’ve been putting
+every thing to rights in all the rooms, and they
+look beautifully.”</p>
+
+<p>“Didn’t they break something?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, no, nothing! The little things were good as
+could be.”</p>
+
+<p>“That Leaning Tower, and that little Diana,” suggested
+John.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, she is,” said John, as he turned away, drawing
+a long, slow sigh.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+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?</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Hang it all!” said John, with a great flounce as he
+turned over on the sofa. “I’m not up to par this
+morning.”</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>exigeante</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Lillie is entirely knocked up by the affair yesterday;
+she had a terrible headache this morning,” said John.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“Poor child! She is a delicate little thing,” said
+Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>John looked relieved; but after a minute broke out
+again:—</p>
+
+<p>“I say, Gracie, Lillie has gone and invited the Simpkinses
+and the Follingsbees here this fall. Just think
+of it!”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I suppose you expect your wife to have the
+right of inviting her company,” said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“But, you know, Gracie, they are not at all our sort<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then you think I ought to put a good face on their
+coming?” said John, with a sigh of relief.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, certainly! of course. What else can you do?
+It’s one of the things to be expected with a young
+wife.”</p>
+
+<p>“And do you think the Wilcoxes and the Fergusons
+and the rest of our set will be civil?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Gracie, you are right; and I’ll constrain
+myself to do the thing handsomely,” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“You think Lillie will grow into our ways by and
+by?”—he said inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I think they admire her,” said Grace, evasively,
+“and feel disposed to be as intimate as she will
+let them.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>John opened his eyes very wide.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“That reminds me,” said John, suddenly rising up
+from the sofa. “Do you know, Gracie, that Colonel
+Sydenham has come back from his cruise?”</p>
+
+<p>“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,’”—</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV.<br />
+
+<small><i>A GREAT MORAL CONFLICT.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>“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.</p>
+
+<p>John thought to himself he “didn’t care <i>what</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>His fair one had a point to carry,—a point that
+instinct told her was to be managed with great adroitness.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said John, over his newspaper, “what is this
+something so very particular?”</p>
+
+<p>“First, sir, put down that paper, and listen to me,”
+said Mrs. Lillie, coming up and seating herself on his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+knee, and sweeping down the offending paper with
+an air of authority.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes’m,” said John, submissively. “Let’s see,—how
+was that in the marriage service? I promised
+to obey, didn’t I?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“And got things into a pretty mess in that way,”
+said John; “but come, now, what is it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, John, you know the Follingsbees are coming
+next week?”</p>
+
+<p>“I know it,” said John, looking amiable and conciliatory.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, dear, there are some things about our establishment
+that are not just as I should feel pleased
+to receive them to.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah!” said John; “why, Lillie, I thought we were
+fine as a fiddle, from the top of the house to the
+bottom.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+the apparatus, are such an adornment; and then the
+Follingsbees are such judges of wine. He imports his
+own from Spain.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Now, John, here is some more of your Quixotism,
+isn’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+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.’”</p>
+
+<p>“I think,” said Lillie, “they were abominably impertinent
+to talk so to you. I should have told them so.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Didn’t your mother object?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+don’t see why you should go on denying yourself just
+to keep them in the ways of virtue.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, couldn’t you, just while the Follingsbees are
+here, do differently?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, Lillie; there’s my pledge, you see. No: it’s
+really impossible.”</p>
+
+<p>Lillie frowned and looked disconsolate.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“We will treat them just as handsomely as we treat
+ourselves,” said John, “and mortal man or woman
+ought not to ask more.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+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 <i>carte blanche</i>
+for every thing!”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“You shall have <i>carte blanche</i>, dearest,” he said, “for
+every thing but what we were speaking of; and that
+will content you, won’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+to everybody here. And then we can show off
+our rooms; they really are made to give parties in.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XV.<br />
+
+<i><small>THE FOLLINGSBEES ARRIVE.</small></i></h2>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 367px;">
+<img src="images/i161.jpg" width="367" height="419" alt="Couple walking in company" />
+<div class="caption"><span class="smcap">The Follingsbees.</span></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>NEXT week the Follingsbees alighted, so to speak,
+from a cloud of glory. They came in their own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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?”</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>antennæ</i>.
+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 <i>la petite</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>“How do I find you, <i>ma chère?</i>” said Mrs. Follingsbee,
+folding Lillie rapturously to her breast. “I’ve<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+been just dying to see you! How lovely every thing
+looks! Oh, <i>ciel!</i> how like dear Paris!” she said, as she
+was conducted into the parlor, and sunk upon the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“I say, Dick,” said his lady, “have you seen to the
+bags and wraps?”</p>
+
+<p>“All right, madam.”</p>
+
+<p>“And my basket of medicines and the books?”</p>
+
+<p>“O. K.,” replied Dick, sententiously.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! how often must I tell you not to use those
+odious slang terms?” said his wife, reprovingly.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! Mrs. John Seymour knows <i>me</i> of old,” said
+Mr. Follingsbee, winking facetiously at Lillie. “We’ve
+had many a jolly lark together; haven’t we, Lill?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly we have,” said Lillie, affably. “But
+come, darling,” she added to Mrs. Follingsbee, “don’t
+you want to be shown your room?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>parvenu</i> was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+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 <i>rôle</i>. She was always cultivating herself
+in her own way; that is to say, she was assiduous
+in what she called keeping up her French.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>not</i> got the
+French language.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>demi-monde</i>
+of Paris; while secretly she imagined herself
+the fascinating heroine of a French romance.</p>
+
+<p>The friendship between Mrs. Follingsbee and Lillie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+“<i>ma chèred</i>” Lillie, Lillie “my deared” Mrs.
+Follingsbee: and the pair are to be seen at this blessed
+moment sitting with their arms tenderly round each<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+other’s waists on a <i>causeuse</i> in Mrs. Follingsbee’s dressing-room.</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t know, <i>mignonne</i>,” said Mrs. Follingsbee,
+“how perfectly <i>ravissante</i> these apartments are! I’m
+so glad poor Charlie did them so well for you. I laid
+my commands on him, poor fellow!”</p>
+
+<p>“Pray, how does your affair with him get on?” said
+Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, poor fellow! it’s a pity he ever got married,”
+said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“And she pitches into him about you,” said Lillie,
+not slow to perceive the true literal rendering of all
+this.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course, <i>ma chère</i>,—tears him, rends him, lacerates<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+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!”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Chère étourdie</i>,” 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,—‘<i>jeune
+Madame, un mari qui vous adore</i>,’ ready to put all
+things under your feet. How can you feel for a worn,
+lonely heart like mine, that sighs for congeniality?”</p>
+
+<p>“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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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, <i>mon Dieu</i>, 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.”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean that people will talk about you,” said
+Lillie. “Well, I assure you, dearest, they <i>will</i> talk awfully,
+if you are not very careful. I say this to you
+frankly, as your friend, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, <i>ma petite!</i> you don’t need to tell me that. I
+<i>am</i> careful,” said Mrs. Follingsbee. “I am always lecturing
+Charlie, and showing him that we must keep up
+<i>les convenances;</i> but is it not hard on us poor women
+to lead always this repressed, secretive life?”</p>
+
+<p>“What made you marry Mr. Follingsbee?” said
+Lillie, with apparent artlessness.</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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, <i>ma reine</i>. Let me ring for your maid
+to dress you for dinner. <i>Au revoir.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>It will be observed here that our dear Lillie did not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 335px;">
+<img src="images/i171.jpg" width="335" height="412" alt="Man seated with paper" />
+<div class="caption"><span class="smcap">Mr. Charlie Ferrola.</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>His profession was nominally that of architecture
+and landscape gardening; but, in point of fact, consisted
+in telling certain rich, <i>blasé</i>, 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
+<i>éclat</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>her</i>, thank
+heaven! Poor thing! Don’t you think Mrs. John Seymour
+has gone off astonishingly since her marriage?”
+she said to Thérèse.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Mon Dieu, madame, q’oui</i>,” said the obedient tire-woman,
+scraping the very back of her throat in her
+zeal. “Madame Seymour has the real American
+<i>maigreur</i>. 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 <i>you</i>, madame, you come to your prime
+like great rose! Oh, dere is no comparison of you to
+Mrs. John Seymour!”</p>
+
+<p>And Thérèse found her words highly acceptable,
+after the manner of all her tribe, who prophesy smooth
+things unto their mistresses.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Mercy on us, John! what can I do? All the world<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a tremendous infliction, Lillie!”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“You must feel quite a difference between that country
+and this, in regard to facilities of living,” said Miss
+Letitia.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, indeed! do I not?” said Mrs. Follingsbee, casting
+up her eyes. “Life here in America is in a state
+of perfect disorganization.”</p>
+
+<p>“We are a young people here, madam,” said John.
+“We haven’t had time to organize the smaller conveniences
+of life.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+better one than a more intellectual being can be; thus
+she gives the child a strong constitution, which is the
+main thing.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>two</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+boy to enter a profession: so the leisure of parents for
+literature, art, and society is preserved.”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>myself;</i> 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 <i>hire</i> a woman for money to be
+faithful in what I cannot do for love?”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Sacrifice!</i>” said Mrs. Ferguson. “How can we?
+Our children are our new life. We live in them a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, well, mamma!” said Rose, “you know we are
+old-fashioned folks, and not up to modern improvements.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“What a pity!” said Rose; “for she’s a smart,
+bright little thing; and it’s cunning to hear her talk
+French.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI.<br />
+
+<small><i>MRS. JOHN SEYMOUR’S PARTY, AND WHAT CAME
+OF IT.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>A French <i>artiste</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Follingsbee was forward, fussy, and advisory, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+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:—</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, <i>ma chère!</i> I understand perfectly: your husband
+may be ‘<i>un peu borné</i>,’ as they say in Paris, but
+still ‘<i>un homme très respectable</i>,’ (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 <i>ennuyeuse</i>, 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 ‘<i>bourgeois</i>,’ and yours ‘<i>recherché</i>,’
+if you give them nothing but tea and biscuit. Now,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+the stream of time, and leave their record only in a
+few bad colds and days of indigestion, which also time
+would mercifully cure.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>not</i>
+“the thing” is one of the divine mysteries, about
+which whoso observes Boston society will do well not
+too curiously to exercise his reason.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 “<i>miel-fleur</i>”
+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.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that, in some few instances, the <i>pleroma</i>
+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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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 <i>intaglio</i> than
+in cameo. Of course, they most thoroughly believe in
+themselves, but in a bland and genial way. “<i>Noblesse
+oblige</i>” 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>they</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dear Mrs. Lennox,” said Rose Ferguson, “indeed,
+it is not Mr. Seymour’s fault. These persons are invited
+by his wife.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, what business has he to allow his wife to
+invite them? A man should be master in his own
+house.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, my dear Mrs. Lennox,” said Mrs. Ferguson,
+“such a pretty young creature, and just married! of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+course it would be unhandsome not to allow her to
+have her friends.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, Jane dear, that’s just the result of allowing
+you to visit in this flash, vulgar genteel society,” said
+the troubled mamma.</p>
+
+<p>“Bless your heart, mamma, the world moves on, you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+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?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! I don’t know, my dear; you must ask your
+father. He is very unwilling to go abroad.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+Ferguson, they swept it out merrily, and thought no
+more of it.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“A baby is mamma’s infallible recipe for strengthening
+the character,” said Rose, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, as the saying is, they bring love with
+them,” said Mrs. Ferguson; “and love always brings
+wisdom.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII.<br />
+
+<small><i>AFTER THE BATTLE.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, it is all well over,” said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“As some of the great fashionable parties do, where
+young women get merry with champagne, and young
+men get drunk,” said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said John, “I don’t exactly like the whole<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said Gracie, “things will be settled now
+quietly, I hope.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes! that will be capital,” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you think Lillie will be interested in Froude?”
+asked Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Any thing you please, John. What shall it be?”</p>
+
+<p>“But I don’t want to hold you all back on my account,”
+said John.</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+‘History of Morals,’ and have our sessions Tuesday
+evenings,—one Tuesday at their house, and the other
+at mine, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you couldn’t come without her, of course,”
+said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course not; that would be too cruel, to leave
+the poor little thing at home alone.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p class='center'>
+<span class="smcap">Scene.</span>—<i>After tea in the Seymour parlor. John at a table, reading.<br />
+Lillie in a corner, embroidering.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><i>Lillie.</i> “Look here, John, I want to ask you something.”</p>
+
+<p><i>John</i>,—putting down his book, and crossing to her,
+“Well, dear?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Lillie.</i> “There, would you make a green leaf there,
+or a brown one?”</p>
+
+<p><i>John</i>,—endeavoring to look wise, “Well, a brown
+one.”</p>
+
+<p><i>Lillie.</i> “That’s just like you, John; now, don’t you
+see that a brown one would just spoil the effect?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! would it?” said John, innocently. “Well,
+what did you ask me for?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dear Lillie, I have been talking about every thing
+I could think of,” said John, apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I want you to keep on talking, and put up
+that great heavy book. What is it, any way?”</p>
+
+<p>“Lecky’s ‘History of Morals,’” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“How dreadful! do you really mean to read it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly; we are all reading it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who all?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, Gracie, and Letitia and Rose Ferguson.”</p>
+
+<p>“Rose Ferguson? I don’t believe it. Why, Rose
+isn’t twenty yet! She cannot care about such stuff.”</p>
+
+<p>“She does care, and enjoys it too,” said John, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>“It is a pity, then, you didn’t get her for a wife
+instead of me,” said Lillie, in a tone of pique.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“How close this room is!”</p>
+
+<p>John read on.</p>
+
+<p>“John, do open the door!”</p>
+
+<p>John rose, opened the door, and returned to his book.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, there’s that draft from the hall-window. John,
+you’ll have to shut the door.”</p>
+
+<p>John shut it, and read on.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, dear me!” said Lillie, throwing herself down
+with a portentous yawn. “I do think this is dreadful!”</p>
+
+<p>“What is dreadful?” said John, looking up.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 314px;">
+<img src="images/i202.jpg" width="314" height="392" alt="girl under parasol" />
+<div class="caption">“But I detest walking in the country.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Well, Lillie dear, I am sorry; but we don’t live
+in New York, and are not likely to,” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“Why can’t we? Mrs. Follingsbee said that a man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+in your profession, and with your talents, could command
+a fortune in New York.”</p>
+
+<p>“If it would give me the mines of Golconda, I would
+not go there,” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“How stupid of you! You know you would, though.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, Lillie; I would not leave Springdale for any
+money.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is because you think of nobody but yourself,”
+said Lillie. “Men are always selfish.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“That dreadful mission-work of yours, I suppose,”
+said Lillie; “that always stands in the way of having
+a good time.”</p>
+
+<p>“Lillie,” said John, shutting his book, and looking at
+her, “what is your ideal of a good time?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, having something amusing going on all the
+time,—something bright and lively, to keep one in
+good spirits,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“I thought that you would have enough of that with
+your party and all,” said John.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“They are different from me,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, I can’t; I never could,” said Lillie, pettishly.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“I may as well make a beginning,” he said to himself.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+“I must have my time for reading; and she must
+learn to amuse herself.”</p>
+
+<p>After a while, however, he peeped over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, darling!” he said, “where did you get that?”</p>
+
+<p>“It is Mrs. Follingsbee’s,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear, it is a bad book,” said John. “Don’t read it.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>John seated himself, and went on with his book in
+silence.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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 <i>finesse</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>fête</i>.
+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 <i>en grande toilette;</i>
+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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Independently of that, Lillie felt the instinctive
+jealousy which a <i>passée</i> queen of beauty sometimes
+has for a young rival.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse">“Glad souls, without reproach or blot,</div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Who do His will, and know it not.”</span></div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII.<br />
+
+<small><i>A BRICK TURNS UP.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>THE snow had been all night falling silently over
+the long elm avenues of Springdale.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The only thing wanting was some one to speak
+to about it; and, with a half sigh, she thought of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+hot coffee and crisp rolls, stood invitingly waiting
+for her before the cheerful open fire.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>This letter was from him; and we shall give our
+readers the benefit of it:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Grace</span>,—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 <i>per se</i>, as metaphysicians say, to look with
+favor on your humble servant.</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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?</p>
+
+<p class='sig'>
+<span style="margin-right: 4em;">“Yours till death, and after,</span><br />
+”<span class="smcap">Walter Sydenham.</span>“<br />
+</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sound of stamping feet at the front door;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+and John came in, all ruddy and snow-powdered, but
+looking, on the whole, uncommonly cheerful.</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>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,—</p>
+
+<p>“Look here, John! here’s a letter I have just had
+from Walter Sydenham.”</p>
+
+<p>John broke out into a loud, hilarious laugh.</p>
+
+<p>“The blessed old brick!” said he. “Has he turned
+up again?”</p>
+
+<p>“Read the letter, John,” said Grace. “I don’t know
+exactly how to answer it.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“It was not wholly on your account, John. You
+know there was our father,” said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes, Gracie; but he would have preferred to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+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!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, no, John! indeed not.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“And say, ‘Yes, sir, and thank you too’?” said
+Grace, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>“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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“So Lillie is going to the Follingsbees’?” said Grace.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“When shall you want me, John?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes! I’ll come,” said Grace, good-naturedly, “as
+soon as I have had time to put things in a little order.”</p>
+
+<p>“And write your letter,” said John, gayly, as he went
+out. “Don’t forget that.”</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+it was one with which Walter Sydenham was
+well satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+she stood with a fluttering color to see the carriage
+drive up to the door, and the two get out of it.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,—</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX.<br />
+
+<small><i>THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>IF John managed to be happy without Lillie in
+Springdale, Lillie managed to be blissful without
+him in New York.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>The Follingsbees’ house might stand for the original
+of the Castle of Indolence.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">“Halls where who can tell</span></div>
+<div class="verse">What elegance and grandeur wide expand,—</div>
+<div class="verse">The pride of Turkey and of Persia’s land?</div>
+<div class="verse">Soft quilts on quilts; on carpets, carpets spread;</div>
+<div class="verse">And couches stretched around in seemly band;</div>
+<div class="verse">And endless pillows rise to prop the head:</div>
+<div class="verse">So that each spacious room was one full swelling bed.”</div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>It was not without some considerable profit that
+Mrs. Follingsbee had read Balzac and Dumas, and had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>ma sœur</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>Lillie’s presence, however, was all desirable; because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought you didn’t like her,” said Lillie.</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>liaison</i> like mine
+with Charlie, one can’t be too careful to cultivate the
+wives. <i>Les convenances</i>, 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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>genre</i> pictures of children, animals, and household
+interiors, arranged with a loving eye and hand.</p>
+
+<p>“Did you ever see any thing so perfectly characteristic?”
+said Mrs. Follingsbee, looking around her as
+if she were going to faint.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“I think myself they are enough to scare the owls,”
+said Lillie, after a moment’s contemplation.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“I had to bring baby down,” she said. “I have no
+nurse to-day, and he has been threatened with croup.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“The fact is, Mrs. Follingsbee,” said Mrs. Ferrola,
+“receptions in New York generally begin about my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+bed-time; and, if I should spend the night out, I should
+have no strength to give to my children the next day.”</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 271px;">
+<img src="images/i233.jpg" width="271" height="426" alt="Nurse holding baby" />
+<div class="caption">“I had to bring baby down.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“But, my dear, you ought to have some amusement.”</p>
+
+<p>“My children amuse me, if you will believe it,” said
+Mrs. Ferrola, with a remarkably quiet smile.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Follingsbee was not quite sure whether this
+was meant to be sarcastic or not. She answered,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+however, “Well! your husband will come, at all
+events.”</p>
+
+<p>“You may be quite sure of that,” said Mrs. Ferrola,
+with the same quietness.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>And, like a rustling cloud of silks and satins and
+perfumes, she bent down and kissed the baby, and
+swept from the apartment.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, gracious me!” said Lillie: “I can’t imagine
+more dire despair than to sit all day tending baby.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! I hope and trust I never shall have children,”
+said Lillie, fervently, “because, you see, there’s an end<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<i>illuminatæ</i>, 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+cologne-water, and indispensable clouds of mechlin and
+point lace, which were necessary to keep around them
+the poetry of existence.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>
+hands by the inquiry, “Don’t you know young Endicott?
+why, I should think you would want to have him
+visit here.”</p>
+
+<p>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,
+&amp;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XX.<br />
+
+<small><i>THE VAN ASTRACHANS.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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 <i>illuminati</i>. 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>
+best of her way to heaven, notwithstanding the opposition
+of a dissolute husband.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Van Astrachan made a dead halt at the idea of
+Dick Follingsbee. He never would receive <i>that</i> 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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“So much the better for them,” remarked Mr. Van
+Astrachan.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI.<br />
+
+<small><i>MRS. FOLLINGSBEE’S PARTY, AND WHAT
+CAME OF IT.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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
+<i>fête</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>entrée</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Harry, at first, had met her only on those superficial
+grounds of banter and <i>badinage</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Harry had never known a woman like Rose; a woman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 365px;">
+<img src="images/i257.jpg" width="365" height="434" alt="Couple entering ball" />
+<div class="caption">“Rose, entering on Harry Endicott’s arm.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Why, that is Mrs. Van Astrachan!”</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t tell me so! Is it possible?”</p>
+
+<p>“Which?” “Where is she?” “How in the world
+did she get here?” were the whispered remarks that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>
+followed her wherever she moved; and Mrs. Follingsbee,
+looking after her, could hardly suppress an exulting
+<i>Te Deum</i>. It was done, and couldn’t be undone.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Van Astrachan might not appear again at a
+<i>salon</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
+for the evening had been made at the tea-table of the
+Van Astrachans with an innocent and trustful simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 387px;">
+<img src="images/i259.jpg" width="387" height="317" alt="Older couple and younger woman, all seated" />
+<div class="caption"><span class="smcap">The Van Astrachans.</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“Yes, Rose,” said Mr. Van Astrachan, “you mayn’t<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Papa,” says Mrs. Van Astrachan, reprovingly, “I
+wouldn’t say such things if I were you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I would,” said Rose. “Do tell us, Mr. Van
+Astrachan.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Mr. Van Astrachan: “you
+ought to have seen her in a red dress she used to
+wear.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>
+not help perceiving that she herself amid all these
+objects of beauty was followed by the admiring glances
+of many eyes.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, now! where can I have left my fan?” she said,
+suddenly stopping.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you,” said Rose: “I believe I left it on the
+sofa in the yellow drawing-room.” He was gone in a
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+backward, and sat down with her handkerchief to her
+eyes; he came forward hurriedly, and met the eyes of
+Rose fixed upon him.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 344px;">
+<img src="images/i266.jpg" width="344" height="429" alt="man pushing woman down" />
+<div class="caption">“She saw him, with an angry frown, push Lillie from him.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Ferguson,” he said abruptly, “I have something
+I want to say to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not now, not to-night,” said Rose, hurriedly. “I
+am too tired; and it is too late.”</p>
+
+<p>“To-morrow then,” he said: “I shall call when you
+will have had time to be rested. Good-night!”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII.<br />
+
+<small><i>THE SPIDER-WEB BROKEN.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+dead, and that there is a sort of interior resurrection
+and judgment.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>esprit de
+corps</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>
+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?</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.’”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, you see, Mr. Van Astrachan, I hadn’t anybody
+like you to stick it out with,” said Rose. “Perhaps
+that made the difference.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+which ladies, when in a gracious mood, can smooth the
+path for a difficult confession.</p>
+
+<p>She sat very quietly, with her hands before her, while
+Harry walked tumultuously up and down the room.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Ferguson,” he said at last, abruptly, “I know
+you are thinking ill of me.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ferguson did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I did, Mr. Endicott,” said Rose.</p>
+
+<p>“And you do not now?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s exactly what I want you to do!” he said
+impetuously; “that is just what I wish.”</p>
+
+<p>“Allow me to ask, then, if you are an early friend,
+and family connection of Mrs. John Seymour?”</p>
+
+<p>“I was an early friend, and am somewhat of a
+family connection.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>The blood flushed into Harry’s face; and he stood
+abashed and silent. Rose went on,—</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>Harry spoke, trembling with emotion; and Rose felt
+almost terrified with the storm she had raised.</p>
+
+<p>“O Mr. Endicott!” she said, “was this worthy of
+you? was there nothing better, higher, more manly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>
+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?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>Harry sat in silence, ruminating.</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>
+these poor little silly women, whom society keeps stunted
+and dwarfed for their special amusement.”</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Ferguson, you are very severe,” said Harry,
+his face flushing.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>
+waste life in this unworthy way? If I had your chances,
+I would try to do something worth doing.”</p>
+
+<p>Rose’s face kindled with enthusiasm; and Harry
+looked at her with admiration.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell me what I ought to do!” he said.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I pity him then,” said Harry.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I should say,” said Harry, “that there is in this no
+best side.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, certainly!” said Rose, with a frank smile.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, let’s shake hands on that,” said Harry, rising
+to go.</p>
+
+<p>Rose gave him her hand, and the two parted in all
+amity.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII.<br />
+
+<small><i>COMMON-SENSE ARGUMENTS.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, pa, don’t you say a word,” said Mrs. Van
+Astrachan.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>Neither at present did Harry; neither do we.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV.<br />
+
+<small><i>SENTIMENT</i> v. <i>SENSIBILITY.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>THE poet has feelingly sung the condition of</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse">“The banquet hall deserted,</div>
+<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Whose lights are fled, and garlands dead,” &amp;c.,</span></div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class='unindent'>and so we need not cast the daylight of minute description
+on the Follingsbee mansion.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Honest Mrs. Van Astrachan, however, though not
+acquainted with Mrs. Ferrola, went to the funeral with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>
+Rose; and the next day her carriage was seen at Mrs.
+Ferrola’s door.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>“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
+<i>liaison?</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>liaison</i>
+between her and him. I didn’t ask him what ’twas;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, but, pa, he didn’t know it.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>
+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!”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, dear, we don’t want to talk to Rose about
+any of this scandal,” said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>
+air tell that little Seymour woman’s husband to get her
+home?”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV.<br />
+
+<small><i>WEDDING BELLS.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>demi-monde</i> of Paris.</p>
+
+<p>We apprehend that the recent storms of tribulation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Lillie was summoned home by urgent messages from
+her husband, calling her back to take her share in wedding
+festivities.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>
+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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>
+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 <i>real</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Poor John! Was he a muff, a spoon? We think
+not. We understand well that there is not a <i>woman</i>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVI.<br />
+
+<small><i>MOTHERHOOD.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The little creature came in terror and trembling.
+For the mother had trifled fearfully with the great laws<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
+of her being before its birth; and the very shadow
+of death hung over her at the time the little new
+life began.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>
+in the house was insufficient to make up for such
+trials as had come upon her.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 383px;">
+<img src="images/i300.jpg" width="383" height="371" alt="Young woman seated holding baby, man kneeling before them" />
+<div class="caption">“An’ it’s a blessin’ they brings wid ’em, sir.”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Motherhood, to the woman who has lived only to be
+petted, and to be herself the centre of all things, is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>
+a virtual dethronement. Something weaker, fairer,
+more delicate than herself comes,—something for her
+to serve and to care for more than herself.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>And so Lillie, free and unencumbered, had her gay<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVII.<br />
+
+<small><i>CHECKMATE.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>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, <i>check-mate</i>, are uttered.</p>
+
+<p>This is a symbol of what often goes on in the game
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>
+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 <i>there</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:—</p>
+
+<p>The Spindlewood property had long been critically<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>But it did come at last. One morning, when he received
+by mail the tidings of the failure of the great
+house of Clapham &amp; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Gracious me, John! what on earth is the matter
+with you to-day? How perfectly awful and solemn
+you do look!”</p>
+
+<p>“I have had bad news, this morning, Lillie, which I
+must tell you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, dear me, John! what is the matter? Nobody
+is dead, I hope!”</p>
+
+<p>“No, Lillie; but I am afraid you will have to give
+up your Newport journey.”</p>
+
+<p>“Gracious, goodness, John! what for?”</p>
+
+<p>“To say the truth, Lillie, I cannot afford it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Can’t afford it? Why not? Why, John, what is
+the matter?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Lillie, just read this letter!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Lillie took it, and read it with her hands trembling.</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Lillie, I am indorser for them.”</p>
+
+<p>“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>I</i> should not have done so; but I don’t see why you
+need pay it. It is their business, anyhow.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>John crossed his arms, and looked gloomily out of
+the window.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps you had better,” he said. “I am sure I
+should be glad to.”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“He is a swindler and a rascal!” said John; “that is
+what he is.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Lillie, Lillie,” said John, “this is too much! Don’t
+you think that <i>I</i> suffer at all?”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“I <i>certainly</i> do,” said John, fervently.</p>
+
+<p>“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?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly, Lillie,” said John, hardening his heart and
+his tone.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>John walked out of the room gloomily enough. He
+had received this morning his <i>check-mate</i>. 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!”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>
+bitter contrast with the scene he had just passed through,
+and the woman he had left.</p>
+
+<p>“What do you think, John?” said Grace; “we have
+some congratulations here to give! Rose is engaged to
+Harry Endicott.”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed!” said John, “I wish her joy.”</p>
+
+<p>“But what is the matter, John?” said both women,
+looking up, and seeing something unusual in his face.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, trouble!” said John,—“trouble upon us all.
+Gracie and Rose, the Spindlewood Mills have failed.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is it possible?” was the exclamation of both.</p>
+
+<p>“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 &amp; Co. had stood; but they have gone to
+smash, Gracie. I had a letter this morning, telling me
+of it.”</p>
+
+<p>Both women stood a moment as if aghast; for the
+Ferguson property was equally involved.</p>
+
+<p>“Poor papa!” said Rose; “this will come hard on
+him.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>John looked at her through his tears.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear Rose,” he said, “you are an angel; and from
+my soul I congratulate the man that has got <i>you</i>. He
+that has you would be rich, if he lost the whole
+world.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“It is not the money, Grace; I could let that go. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 317px;">
+<img src="images/i314.jpg" width="317" height="380" alt="woman comforting man" />
+<div class="caption">“O Gracie! I wish I was dead!”</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>There was something shocking and terrible to Grace
+about this outpouring. It was dreadful to her to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“John,” she said, “look at this.”</p>
+
+<p>He raised his head, took it from her hand, and looked
+at it. Soon she saw the tears dropping over it.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I <i>have</i> given up,” said John in a husky voice. “I
+have lost <i>all</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“But, Gracie,” said John, “is there any thing to be
+made of her?”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I thought,” said John, “that she would in
+time develop into something better.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“I cannot see, for my part,” said John, “that she
+loves any thing.”</p>
+
+<p>“The power of loving may be undeveloped in her,
+John; but it will come, perhaps, later in life. At all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII.<br />
+
+<small><i>AFTER THE STORM.</i></small></h2>
+
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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.</p>
+
+<p>In short, there seemed every reason to hope that,
+after a period of somewhat close sailing, the property<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>
+might be brought into clear water again, and go on even
+better than before.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Rose was happily married, and settled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span>
+education had been directed to suppress what little she
+had, and to concentrate all her feelings upon herself.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIX.<br />
+
+<i><small>THE NEW LILLIE.</small></i></h2>
+
+<div>
+<img  class="splittop" src="images/i326a.jpg" alt="vine and sleeping woman" width="328" height="105" />
+<img src="images/i326b.jpg" alt="vine and sleeping woman" width="200" height="266" class="split" />
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-cap'>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell John I want to see him,” she said to her
+mother. “I wish he would come and sit with me.”</p>
+
+<p>This was a summons for which John invariably left
+every thing. He laid down his book as the word was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span>
+brought to him, and soon was treading noiselessly at
+her bedside.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Lillie dear,” he said, “how are you?”</p>
+
+<p>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.”</p>
+
+<p>“What can’t last, Lillie?” said John, trying to speak
+cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, come, come, my girl, it won’t do to talk so!”
+said John, patting her hand. “You must not be
+blue.”</p>
+
+<p>“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.”</p>
+
+<p>“O Lillie darling!” said John, “why shouldn’t I
+be? Poor little girl, how much you have suffered!”</p>
+
+<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>“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!”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, no, John! it is best as it is,—I think I should
+not have strength to be <i>very</i> 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 <i>was</i> 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.”</p>
+
+<p>“O Lillie! I cannot bear to part with you! I never
+have ceased to love you; and I never have loved any
+other woman.”</p>
+
+<p>“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 <i>was;</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span>
+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.”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p class='center'>
+<b><span class='spaced'>........</span></b><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>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!”</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 193px;">
+<img src="images/i331.jpg" width="193" height="213" alt="Cross with the word &quot;Lillie&quot; on it" />
+</div>
+
+<p class='copyright'><br /><br /><br />———————————————————————————————<br />
+Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son.<br />
+</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<div class='tnote'><div class='center'><b>Transcriber’s Notes:</b></div>
+
+<p>Obvious punctuation errors repaired.</p>
+
+<p>Page 47, “embroided” changed to “embroidered” (embroidered under-linen)</p>
+
+<p>Page 79, “wo ld” changed to “world” (do it for the world)</p>
+
+<p>Page 203, “spirt” changed to “spirit” (little spirit of gayety)</p>
+
+<p>Page 223, “Syndenham” changed to “Sydenham” (with which Walter Sydenham was)
+</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg's Pink and White Tyranny, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Pink and White Tyranny
+       A Society Novel
+
+Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+Release Date: May 14, 2004 [EBook #12354]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Curtis Weyant, Tim Koeller and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.
+
+A Society Novel
+
+BY
+
+MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
+
+1871.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+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 pease, 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 personae_, 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.
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+  I. FALLING IN LOVE
+  II. WHAT SHE THINKS OF IT
+  III. THE SISTER
+  IV. PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE
+  V. WEDDING, AND WEDDING-TRIP
+  VI. HONEY-MOON, AND AFTER
+  VII. WILL SHE LIKE IT?
+  VIII. SPINDLEWOOD
+  IX. A CRISIS
+  X. CHANGES
+  XI. NEWPORT; OR, THE PARADISE OF NOTHING TO DO
+  XII. HOME � LA POMPADOUR
+  XIII. JOHN'S BIRTHDAY
+  XIV. A GREAT MORAL CONFLICT
+  XV. THE FOLLINGSBEES ARRIVE
+  XVI. MRS. JOHN SEYMOUR'S PARTY, AND WHAT CAME OF IT
+  XVII. AFTER THE BATTLE
+  XVIII. A BRICK TURNS UP
+  XIX. THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE
+  XX. THE VAN ASTRACHANS
+  XXI. MRS. FOLLINGSBEE'S PARTY, AND WHAT CAME OF IT
+  XXII. THE SPIDER-WEB BROKEN
+  XXIII. COMMON-SENSE ARGUMENTS
+  XXIV. SENTIMENT _v_. SENSIBILITY
+  XXV. WEDDING BELLS
+  XXVI. MOTHERHOOD
+  XXVII. CHECKMATE
+  XXVIII. AFTER THE STORM
+  XXIX. THE NEW LILLIE
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+[Illustration: "I didn't know he was such a puppy."]
+
+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 _habitu�e_ 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 schoolgirl! 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_.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: "From John, good fellow."]
+
+"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.
+
+[Illustration: "She laid her head forward on the table."]
+
+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.
+
+"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 light 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 F�nelon 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.
+
+[Illustration: "It _is_ a very sweet face."]
+
+"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."
+
+"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 _d�bris_ 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 _neglig�_ 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.
+
+[Illustration: "Shrewd Miss Clippins detected the yawn."]
+
+"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."
+
+"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 _cort�ge_ 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 land 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 "_pat� 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 _attach�_ 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 Caesar 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 F�nelon 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, Oracle," 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 _cr�ped_ 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 them 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 _d�bauch�es_, 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 _�
+l'Am�ricaine_, and then marry and flirt till forty _� la Fran�aise_.
+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 naively 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.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: "He found the date of the birth of 'Lillie Ellis.'"]
+
+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 sacr�, 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 sacr�," 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. Little 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, Aesop 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 _r�le_, 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,--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 _habitu�s_.
+
+"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 _� 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 � 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 _� la_ Pompadour,
+and _� la_ Louis Quinze and Louis Quatorze, and _� 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
+them. 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 house-keeping."
+
+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 _f�te_ 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 _� 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 _f�te_ 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."
+
+[Illustration: "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!"
+
+"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 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 saint-like 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_.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: THE FOLLINGSBEES.]
+
+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 _antennae_. 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 Th�r�se, 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 ch�re_?" 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 _r�le_. 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 ch�red_"
+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 ch�re_,--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."
+
+"_Ch�re �tourdie_," 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!"
+
+[Illustration: MR. CHARLIE FERROLA.]
+
+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.
+
+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,
+_blas�_, 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 _�clat_ 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
+Th�r�se.
+
+"_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 Th�r�se 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 ch�re_! I understand perfectly: your husband may be '_un peu
+born�_' as they say in Paris, but still '_un homme tr�s 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
+'_recherch�_', 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 Eugenie 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 spirt 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 _f�te_. 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
+_pass�e_ 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. F�nelon 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 aesthetically 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 house-keeping 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 tooth-ache 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 tooth-ache 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 midwinter; 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 soeur_, 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."
+
+[Illustration: "I had to bring baby down."]
+
+"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."
+
+"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! I 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 _illuminatae_ 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
+Ferfola'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 _f�te_ 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
+lachrymae 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 _entr�e_ 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 ball-room 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,--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 yoking 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.
+
+"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."
+
+[Illustration: "An' it's a blessin' they brings wid 'em, sir."]
+
+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; for then the
+difficulty seems 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
+outgoings 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."
+
+[Illustration: "O Gracie! I wish I was dead!"]
+
+"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."
+
+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 of life 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]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Pink and White Tyranny, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
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+Project Gutenberg's Pink and White Tyranny, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Pink and White Tyranny
+       A Society Novel
+
+Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
+
+Release Date: May 14, 2004 [EBook #12354]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Curtis Weyant, Tim Koeller and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY.
+
+A Society Novel
+
+BY
+
+MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
+
+1871.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+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 pease, 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 personae_, 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.
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+  I. FALLING IN LOVE
+  II. WHAT SHE THINKS OF IT
+  III. THE SISTER
+  IV. PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE
+  V. WEDDING, AND WEDDING-TRIP
+  VI. HONEY-MOON, AND AFTER
+  VII. WILL SHE LIKE IT?
+  VIII. SPINDLEWOOD
+  IX. A CRISIS
+  X. CHANGES
+  XI. NEWPORT; OR, THE PARADISE OF NOTHING TO DO
+  XII. HOME A LA POMPADOUR
+  XIII. JOHN'S BIRTHDAY
+  XIV. A GREAT MORAL CONFLICT
+  XV. THE FOLLINGSBEES ARRIVE
+  XVI. MRS. JOHN SEYMOUR'S PARTY, AND WHAT CAME OF IT
+  XVII. AFTER THE BATTLE
+  XVIII. A BRICK TURNS UP
+  XIX. THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE
+  XX. THE VAN ASTRACHANS
+  XXI. MRS. FOLLINGSBEE'S PARTY, AND WHAT CAME OF IT
+  XXII. THE SPIDER-WEB BROKEN
+  XXIII. COMMON-SENSE ARGUMENTS
+  XXIV. SENTIMENT _v_. SENSIBILITY
+  XXV. WEDDING BELLS
+  XXVI. MOTHERHOOD
+  XXVII. CHECKMATE
+  XXVIII. AFTER THE STORM
+  XXIX. THE NEW LILLIE
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+[Illustration: "I didn't know he was such a puppy."]
+
+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 _habituee_ 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 schoolgirl! 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_.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: "From John, good fellow."]
+
+"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.
+
+[Illustration: "She laid her head forward on the table."]
+
+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.
+
+"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 light 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 Fenelon 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.
+
+[Illustration: "It _is_ a very sweet face."]
+
+"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."
+
+"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 _debris_ 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 _neglige_ 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.
+
+[Illustration: "Shrewd Miss Clippins detected the yawn."]
+
+"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."
+
+"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 _cortege_ 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 land 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 "_pate 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 _attache_ 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 Caesar 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 Fenelon 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, Oracle," 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 _creped_ 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 them 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 _debauchees_, 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 _a
+l'Americaine_, and then marry and flirt till forty _a la Francaise_.
+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 naively 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.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: "He found the date of the birth of 'Lillie Ellis.'"]
+
+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 sacre, 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 sacre," 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. Little 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, Aesop 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 _role_, 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,--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 _habitues_.
+
+"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 _a 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 A 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 _a la_ Pompadour,
+and _a la_ Louis Quinze and Louis Quatorze, and _a 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
+them. 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 house-keeping."
+
+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 _fete_ 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 _a 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 _fete_ 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."
+
+[Illustration: "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!"
+
+"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 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 saint-like 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_.
+
+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.
+
+[Illustration: THE FOLLINGSBEES.]
+
+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 _antennae_. 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 Therese, 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 chere_?" 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 _role_. 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 chered_"
+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 chere_,--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."
+
+"_Chere etourdie_," 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!"
+
+[Illustration: MR. CHARLIE FERROLA.]
+
+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.
+
+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,
+_blase_, 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 _eclat_ 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
+Therese.
+
+"_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 Therese 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 chere_! I understand perfectly: your husband may be '_un peu
+borne_' as they say in Paris, but still '_un homme tres 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
+'_recherche_', 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 Eugenie 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 spirt 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 _fete_. 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
+_passee_ 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. Fenelon 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 aesthetically 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 house-keeping 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 tooth-ache 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 tooth-ache 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 midwinter; 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 soeur_, 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."
+
+[Illustration: "I had to bring baby down."]
+
+"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."
+
+"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! I 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 _illuminatae_ 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
+Ferfola'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 _fete_ 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
+lachrymae 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 _entree_ 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 ball-room 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,--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 yoking 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.
+
+"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."
+
+[Illustration: "An' it's a blessin' they brings wid 'em, sir."]
+
+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; for then the
+difficulty seems 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
+outgoings 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."
+
+[Illustration: "O Gracie! I wish I was dead!"]
+
+"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."
+
+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 of life 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]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Pink and White Tyranny, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
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