[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 ful 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 al 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, al 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 al 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 fel ow! al 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 al sorts of imaginary and real diseases, has an eternal armory of weapons of subjugation. What can a man do? Can he tel her that she is lying and shamming? Half the time she isn't; she can actual y work herself into about any physical state she chooses. The fortnight before Lillie went to Newport, she real y 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 jol y 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 fel ow 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 fol owed 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! wel , 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 real y 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 fel ow, 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 al 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 al torn up, so that I could go home with you, and leave Newport and al 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 al to herself; how I shal miss her! but, real y, 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 al 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 "bul y" 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 essential y 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 cal ed her "a silly little pussy," but he did it with a smile. It was such a neat, white, graceful pussy; and al 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--wel , John didn't like to ask her, because, what if she shouldn't tel 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 al , 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 gradual y 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 bal 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 bel e 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 al 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 al 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 literal y 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 al 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 al 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 al ,--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 al 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 al your life.
You will please to observe that, in al 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 al 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, wel -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 al 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 al 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 usual y 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 al 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 al 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 al _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, al 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 al 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 general y.
"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 al 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 shal 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 al over _en masse_, and have the house and grounds al open, and devote ourselves to giving them a good time."
Lillie's countenance fell.
"Now, real y, John, how trying! what shall we do? You don't real y 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--cal ed 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 al ill-adapted and unsuitable pieces of furniture in them, he had always felt himself the m